As I wrote earlier, MoveOn dot Org is upset that the Republicans are staging a revolt on the floor of the House this week demanding that Speaker Pelosi recognize that this is a crisis and that Congress do something about it instead of taking an well-deserved vacation after accomplishing absolutely nothing in the last two years. Under the gaze of Ulysses S. Grant MoveOn.org tried to protest for $10/gallon gas today. General Grant didn’t look pleased.
Washington Post’s “On Faith” discussion drifted off into the spiritual realm of politics today asking if either Obama or McCain were really “The One” we’re looking for. David Waters says this election is about finding our messiah;
In this presidential election, as in every presidential election, we’re all looking for The One who can lead us to the promised land, The One who can heal the economy, deliver us from demonic forces of evil, save us from the dreadful mistakes of The Previous One.
I thought it was pretty juvenile to think that any politician could lead us into the Promised Land. As you read through the piece, Waters admits it, too. But looking at the moon-eyed Obama supporters, a rational person would ask “what’s wrong with these people? ” The Ron Paul crowd is no different – they think their prophet isn’t really a crooked self-serving politician, even though all of the rest are crooked and self-serving.
Then I ran across this article on Breitbart and it all came home for me
Police said the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub [sandwich] made correctly. The second call was to complain that officers weren’t arriving fast enough.
Subway workers told police Peterson became belligerent and yelled when they were fixing his order. They locked him out of the store after he left to call police.
When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed, and he was arrested on a charge of making false 911 calls.
That’s an Obama supporter; government has all of the solutions to every petty problem that pops up in our lives. Can’t pay your mortgage because you don’t understand variable rate mortgages? Vote for someone who promises to bail you out. Can’t find a broker who gives you good investment advice? Vote for someone who wants to regulate the industry. Remember in the 1992 election some pinhead in Virginia asked Bill Clinton to be our national father?
We don’t need father-figures, we need someone who does what the Constitution says he should do; defend the Constitution from our enemies and preserve our rights. I already have a savior and I know how to fix my own sandwiches.
(This Ain’t Hell file photo)
How do you write a story about Marion Barry, convicted whore monger, crack head and tax evader without mentioning his past? Ask Marc Fisher of the Washington Post.
Even now, in the waning years of the Barry era, the man who once dubbed himself The Situationist is playing his pragmatic brand of politics with consummate craft. The same politician who railed against the evils of gentrification when Williams was replacing old housing projects with hundreds of new homes embraces those developments as the heart of “the new Ward 8.”
Barry is an evangelist for a plan to transform national parkland at Poplar Point into a high-end retail and residential community, a project not unlike those he used to deride during the Williams years as the vanguard of a yuppie takeover of working-class black neighborhoods.
Yes, he’s a tireless champion of the ever-poor in the Ward 8 neighborhood he now represents on the City Council of Washington, DC, but he also embodies the corruption and empty promises that have kept the poor in that state for the last three decades. Hardly a year passes that we don’t read another article about his difficulties with obeying the law.
In 2002, before he began his poltical comeback, he was arrested in a Virginia national park with a powdery substance. A few years later the IRS had him in court for tax evasion (to my knowledge, he hasn’t paid a penny in federal taxes since 1999). When the IRS tried to toss him in jail when he failed to make any effort to repay the tens of thousands of dollars he owes, a judge blocked his imprisonment.
When he was robbed by several teens last year, the inventory of the property stolen included jewelry worth $14,000. And he still hasn’t bothered to repay the taxes he owes because there’s no punishment for his behavior.
But for the Marc Fishers and Washington Posts of the world, he’s a saint among men;
Still, the poverty in Ward 8 is palpable. We stop at a red light, and a 60-ish woman sidles up to Barry’s window. “It’s the mayor,” she says. “I need $4.”
“Y’all breaking me over here,” Barry grumbles, with a smile.
He reaches into his pocket and counts out four singles, hands them through the window. “These people wearing me out,” he says.
From the corner a few yards away, a middle-age man calls out, “What’s up, Barry? Got some for me?”
Marion, you’re wearing me out.
Celebrity stalkers TMZ.com happened upon John Kerry partying on Nantucket with some very young co-eds Saturday night. Yes, there are a thousand limericks bouncing around in my noggin right now.
Yes, that’s a penis straw – it’s required at all Senatorial shindigs in Massachusetts;
Never does a man look so dorky as when he’s trying to be “hip” with some young girls. Yes, we all look just like this when we’re way out of our league. But, one has to wonder why someone with such poor judgment ever thought he could win the Presidency of the United States.
The Washington Post has a discussion forum named On Faith where they allow the God-less to bash Christians with impunity. Today’s “discussion” topic in the forum “Under God; A daily look at the news and what we do in the name of God” is entitled Whole Lot of Ugly and written by David Waters recounts the story of Jim David Atkisson who took a shotgun to a congregation in Tennessee this weekend.
No Conservative I associate with could condone Atkisson or even excuse just a little what he did. But then, all of the Conservatives I know are real Conservatives who hold people responsible for their own actions. Atkisson was ill and was trying to commit “suicide by police” until he was thwarted by brave parishioners.
But see, in his dementia, he blamed “Liberals” for his condition (his wife left him, he lost his job and the “liberals” reduced his food stamps). Atkisson needed an excuse other than himself for his condition and he took it out on a liberal congregation. But, in order to inflame his readership, Waters included this in his reportage;
Adkisson, who had served in the military, said “that because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement he would then target those that had voted them in office,” the search warrant states. Among the items seized from Adkisson’s house were three books: “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television commentator Bill O’Reilly; “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,” by radio personality Michael Savage; and “Let Freedom Ring,” by political pundit Sean Hannity.
I think we can all agree that education is an important issue…perhaps one of the most important issues. Across the country, teachers’ unions have made mediocrity acceptable and failure the norm. Our inner city school districts produce thousands of illiterate and disinterested students every year. The solution of course is that the politics and policies of the past have failed and that we need a new way forward. We need change.
So what will the touted candidate of change do improve our education system and rescue us from those failed policies? According to the Wall Street Journal not much. First some background on actual facts;
Mr. McCain cited the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally financed school-choice program for disadvantaged kids signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Qualifying families in the District of Columbia receive up to $7,500 a year to attend private K-12 schools. To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.
A recent Department of Education report found nearly 90% of participants in the D.C. program have higher reading scores than peers who didn’t receive a scholarship. There are five applicants for every opening.
Then the solutions from the Candidate of Change;
Congressional Democrats have refused to reauthorize the D.C. voucher program and are threatening to kill it. Last month, Philadelphia’s school reform commission voted to seize six schools from outside managers, including four from Edison. In L.A., local school board members oppose the expansion of charters even though seven in 10 charters in the district outperform their neighborhood peers.
It’s well known that the force calling the Democratic tune here is the teachers unions. Earlier this month, Senator Obama accepted the endorsement of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union. Speaking recently before the American Federation of Teachers, he described the alternative efforts as “tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.”
Mr. Obama told an interviewer recently that he opposes school choice because, “although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom.” The Illinois Senator has it exactly backward. Those at the top don’t need voucher programs and they already exercise school choice. They can afford exclusive private schools, or they can afford to live in a neighborhood with decent public schools. The point of providing educational options is to extend this freedom to the “kids at the bottom.”
So like everything else, Senator Obama talks about how he we should have Hope and how he’ll Change the country, but the truth is this; he’s still relying on the poltics of the past…the empty rhetoric that has given us only two Democrat presidents in the last forty years. There is no change, there is no hope, there’s only Democrats who want to remain in power. Period. The solution for the Democrats is the same solution they’ve always had…enslave the country to the whims of corrupt teachers’ unions.
By now everyone has read that the National Enquirer busted John Edwards leaving the hotel where his paramour Rielle Hunter was staying with their love child in a Beverly Hills hotel earlier this week. Micky Kaus at Slate reported the LA Times has enacted a blackout on the news “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations.”
Extra writes that Hunter denies the affair;
“Completely unfounded and ridiculous” is how Hunter describes a National Enquirer story claiming she has a love child with Edwards — and that she was recently visited by the married Edwards at a Los Angeles hotel.
Edwards denies it, too;
When asked about the allegations today in Houston, Edwards called the stories “tabloid trash,” adding, “They’re full of lies.”
Well, now Fox News has verified it independently;
The Beverly Hilton Hotel guard said he encountered a shaken and ashen-faced Edwards — whom he did not immediately recognize — in a hotel men’s room early Tuesday morning in a literal tug-of-war with reporters on the other side of the door.
“What are they saying about me?” the guard said Edwards asked.
So, why aren’t the media holding Edwards’ feet to the fire like the did Larry Craig and Mark Foley? Well Jack Shafer at Slate says it’s because Edwards isn’t provably gay;
So why hasn’t the press commented on the story yet? Is it because it broke too late yesterday afternoon, and news organizations want to investigate it for themselves before writing about it? Or are they observing a double standard that says homo-hypocrisy is indefensible but that hetero-hypocrisy deserves an automatic bye?
That’s my sense.
Well, NPR chose this week to run their exclusive interview with John Edwards and his war against poverty. He’s still running for President, he’s still talking about two Americas, and oddly enough, how America needs to find a solution to the problem of single-parenthood. More of that hetero-hypocrisy, I guess. Couldn’t be because he’s a Democrat, could it?
A convicted felon and his lawyer have decided that the Heller vs. DC Supreme Court decision applies to the rights of felons to protect themselves in their home according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette;
James F. Barton Jr. argues that the court’s opinion lifting the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. — and the assertion that the possession of guns in the home is an individual right — must be applied to all people.
Senior U.S. District Judge Alan N. Bloch has scheduled a July 31 hearing on the matter .
On its face, Mr. Barton’s argument appears to have no merit because the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller specifically noted: “[Nothing] in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill … .”
But it’s precisely because of that language that attorney David B. Chontos, who represents Mr. Barton, filed his motion to dismiss.
Several legal scholars agree that the instruction in the opinion is nothing but dictum, merely a statement by the court that is not binding as a precedent in lower courts or for the future Supreme Court.
But Mr. Chontos based his argument on language included in the Second Amendment, which reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Mr. Chontos argues that the phrase “the people,” must mean the same as it does in other amendments, including the First, which guarantees free speech and freedom of religion, and the Fourth, which guarantees privacy and the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
Well, then eight-year-olds should take to the courts, too, because surely, and eight-year-old might have the occasion to defend themselves in their homes. Eight-year-olds are people, too. An eight-year-old lacks the judgment to safely own a handgun…and a convicted felon lacks the judgment to safely own a handgun.
Stupid ambulance chasing lawyers.