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

Category: Society

  • The “Me” city’s “Me” mayor disappointed

    Ray Nagin, most selfish and laziest mayor of the most selfish and laziest city in the country is disappointed that none of the presidential candidates are discussing how they can give more money to a city that sucked hundreds of billions of dollars from our national treasury to rebuild. (Washington Times link)

    New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said yesterday that the presidential candidates have not seriously addressed the remaining economic and human needs of his city, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

    “I think they are, I won’t say afraid, but a little hesitant to tackle the issues” that still confront the city “and the lack of preparedness to deal with future natural disasters,” Mr. Nagin told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.

    “The candidates are a little hesitant about fully embracing our dilemma. I would like to hear more about what they would do to bring about the full recovery of our infrastructure, which is in deplorable shape,” he said.

    Or maybe the candidates realize that most of the country is tired of hearing the whining and racist rhetoric that pours out of New Orleans.

    “My gut tells me we’ll have a New Orleans somewhat similar racially to what we had before. But we’re adding a lot of Hispanics. That’s going to change the demographics of New Orleans for the long term,” he said. “Too many of our citizens are not coming back.”

    First of all, what does the racial makeup have to do with anything? Secondly, if Mayor Nagin didn’t have such a lucrative job that pays him whether he does what he’s supposed to do or not, I’m sure, if he had a lick of common sense he wouldn’t come back to a city that was below sea level and filled with people who’d rather die than get out of their Lazy-Boy when the federal government warned them to get out.

    The reason the city is filling with Latins is because the Latins are the ones who are coming into the city to rebuild it, while the former residents are sitting in luxury hotel rooms waiting for the work to finish.

    I remember in SIXTH GRADE music class, we watched a documentary on New Orleans which described the geography of the city and I remember when I was in the SIXTH GRADE wondering why anyone would live in a place that was so close to disaster every moment. I’m still wondering.

    It’s the single most glaring example of government funding people’s bad choices.

     “Our best opportunities are with the Democratic-controlled Congress right now. That is who we have been talking with to see if we can get some things in these upcoming appropriations bill to fill the gap,” he said.

    “There’s lots of talk, but the actions have not caught up with the talk,” he said of Washington’s response to his city’s needs. “We’ll probably have to await the next administration.”

    The Republican Congress handed out hundreds of billions of dollars, and that’s not enough. A congress worth it’s salt would ask for an accounting of every penny that’s been poured into New Orleans up until this point and not a penny more should be disbursed until that accounting is complete.

    Oh, and the guy who sat out the hurricane, the broken levee and avoided the Super Dome  from his hotel room in Baton Rouge should be tossed in prison.

  • Ferraro cut loose from Clinton campaign

    The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire reports that the Clinton campaign bid adieu to Geraldine Ferraro today over her ill-considered remarks about Barak Obama;

    Obama senior adviser David Axelrod Tuesday pressed the Clinton campaign to separate itself from what he deemed “very, very poorly chosen and offensive” words.

    Ferraro herself has not backed down from her remarks. “My comments have been taken so out of context and have been spun by the Obama campaign as racist that it’s doing precisely what they don’t want done — it’s going to the Democratic Party and dividing us even more,” Ferraro said this morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

    I can see now that there’ll be daily demands from the Obama campaign to the McCain campaign to dismiss staffers during this election season. Everything that’s true is considered offensive -living in DC for 9 years, I have some experience with that eggshell-walking.

    Ferraro is the second major Clinton surrogate to be distanced from the campaign over racial remarks. The first was New Hampshire co-chairman Bill Shaheen. Obama’s campaign dropped foreign policy adviser Samantha Power last week after she made disparaging remarks about Clinton.

    So I guess the candidate with one staffer left will be declared the winner. Big Dog welcomes Ferraro to our club of folks who offend everyone with every word we speak.

    While they’re playing musical staffers, Obama decided to make himself look presidential and hired soldier-poets to make up rhymes for his name on a movie set;

    Sen. Barack Obama took to the podium this afternoon at Chicago’s Museum of History in a setting that looked to replicate the East Room of the White House, complete with red carpet and flags for each of the military branches.

    Four of the retired officers delivered brief remarks touting the Illinois senator’s judgment and poise. Gen. Merrill “Tony” McPeak offered up a couple of nicknames: “No Shock Barack. No Drama Obama.”

    Cute, huh? Everyone knows that only the most effective commanders can write bumperstickers. McPeak, you might remember advised the Dean campaign, then switched to the Kerry campaign and spent the rest of 2004 preaching that “Bush must go“.

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    Now that he’s campaigning for Obama, we can figure that it wasn’t really Bush that had to go, but all Republicans. McPeak’s claim to fame was redesigning the Air Force uniform – most changes were undone after he retired .

    But the setting illustrated the weaknesses facing either Democratic candidate against Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who has made his national security experience the core of his campaign at a time that both Democratic candidates have attacked each other over foreign policy experience and judgment.

    In recent weeks, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has suggested that her rival may not be qualified to be commander in chief. Pressed to say whether he believed Sen. Clinton was qualified to be commander in chief, Obama answered positively. “Yes, as I believe Sen. McCain is and as I believe I am.”

    Yes, because Obama (or Clinton, for that matter) proved himself a leader…how?

  • Who are the racists in PW County?

    Just when you thought you’d seen the worst that evil conservatives can do to the least of us, they do something new and something more evil. Now, they’ve almost destroyed soccer in Prince William County, Virginia…well, according to the page one story of the Washington Post;

    When Northern Virginia’s Latino soccer leagues kick off the 2008 season early next month, fans of Honduras de Manassas will have to travel outside their base in Prince William County to see their team score goals. So will supporters used to watching Juventus Sure¿o crush the competition in Woodbridge. Devotees of longtime Manassas powerhouse Fiorentina will need to switch allegiance. Their team is sitting out this season.

    As Prince William proceeds with its crackdown on illegal immigrants, one result is a shake-up and shrinking of the area’s entrenched Hispanic soccer leagues. The reason is simple, organizers say: Players and fans, among them many illegal immigrants, are so worried about being detained by authorities en route to or at games that they are avoiding local fields. Legal immigrants are also wary, for themselves or their illegal relatives, organizers say.

    Honduras of Virginia? That doesn’t indicate to me that there’s much assimilation going on, or that people who benefit from our economic and political situation are grateful that they’re here. Legal residents have nothing to fear, do they? Can anyone name even ONE legal immigrant who has been mistakenly deported by US immigration officers? Cheech Marin in the movie “Born in East LA” doesn’t count.

    Officials have said the policy is not meant to intimidate but to remove illegal immigrants, particularly those who commit crimes. The imperiled leagues draw little sympathy from backers of the county’s enforcement program.

    “I would hope that the soccer leagues didn’t depend on illegal aliens to make them viable,” said Greg Letiecq, president of Help Save Manassas, an anti-illegal-immigration group. “It just doesn’t seem like a valid reason for overturning the rule-of-law resolution: because without the illegal aliens, the soccer clubs will all fall apart.”

    Indeed. The illegal aliens are here ILLEGALLY (hence the label), they’ve already committed crimes and until recently there’s been no repercussions for that illicit behavior. Me, personally, since I’m married to a LEGAL resident of hispanic origin, stepfather to another LEGAL resident, and step-grandfather to yet another LEGAL resident, I enjoy the abundance of Latins in the area.

    I like to immerse myself in the Latin culture from time-to-time. My barber, a legal immigrant from Paraguay, have long passionate discussions in Spanish about US politics in relation to Latin America. There’s a lot of tropical foods and pastries I enjoy.

    Learning Spanish in barrooms and discos has helped me learn and use my own language better. I’ve never spent a day in a Spanish class although I have two years of college credit in Spanish and the Army designated me a Latin American and Castillian Spanish interpreter.

    But I don’t like lawbreakers. People who break one law are forced to break more laws to cover up their disregard for the first – and it becomes easier every time. Sooner or later, there grows an entire lawless underground culture – the tentacled arms of Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) proves that.

    To try to allay fears, league owners have hosted team meetings at which police have explained the county’s policy, which took effect last week and requires officers to check the immigration status of crime suspects who they think might be in the country illegally. There are to be no immigration checkpoints, racial profiling or sidelines raids, the teams were told. The meetings have had little impact, league owners said.

    Well, that’s because the Left and groups like La Raza have turned the illegal immigration discussion into something racial and use that to spread fear – and increase their membership and donations. Trying to assimilate Latins into American culture has been met with charges of racism from the entities that have the most to gain from an ignorant and frightened community of Latins – the racist groups like La Raza and the American Spanish language media.

    Latins in the United States are being victimized and stigmatized by their own people – the illegals who’ve created the whole problem and the race-baiters who perpetuate the illusion of American racism. Instead of blaming the American nativists for the collapse of their soccer league, Latins in Prince William County should be pointing at the real villains here.

  • FBI; Spitzer investigation wasn’t about sex

    According to ABC News, the FBI says they first became interested in NY goveror Elliot Spitzer because of large money transfers. Thinking it was bribes, they tracked his money;

    The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought kin the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad.

    “We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.

    Spitzer, who made his name by bringing high-profile cases against many of New York’s financial giants, is likely to be prosecuted under a relatively obscure statute called “structuring,” according to a Justice Department official.

    Structuring involves creating a series of financial movements designed to obscure the true purpose of the payments.

    Prosecutors reportedly have a series of e-mails and wiretapped phone conversations of Spitzer.

    And then the money shot (so to speak);

    In a interview two years ago, Spitzer, then-attorney general, told ABC News he had some advice for people who break the law. “Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it’s death. You’re giving prosecutors all the evidence we need,” he said.

    I’ve never been a criminal or a prosecutor, but it’s been my experience that criminals are idiots – such idiots that they do stuff they know is wrong because they think they’re the smartest guy that ever tried to do this particular thing. SpikeTV and TruTV run hours of programming of these guys – just before they’re caught.

    The Associated Press writes about the charges Spitzer might face;

    Charges against Spitzer have not been decided and it depends mostly on “how aggressive the U.S. attorney wants to be,” the law enforcement official said. Charges could including anything from Mann act violations to banking violations to possibly wire fraud.

    The Left lines up to spit out names like Gingrich, Giuliani, and all of the rest of the Republicans who’ve been caught in extra-marital affairs, but this thing by Spitzer was criminal – the transaction took place across state lines, the participants crossed state lines to commit the crime.

    This isn’t just a guy cheating on his wife or a guy with a wide stance in a public bathroom. It’s criminal activity – Spitzer formerly prosecuted people for the same crime he committed. If you can’t see the hypocrisy in that, you don’t know the meaning of the word.

    As for the “everyone does it defense” – no, everyone doesn’t do it. Only sociopaths who think they commit a crime and get away with it do it.

    Michele Malkin reports a bipartisan consensus that Spitzer should go. I noticed that the DOW and NASDAQ were poised for a higher opening. CNBC called it the “Spitzer bounce.”

    Somehow, the folks at Firedoglake decide that Spitzer’s behavior is the fault of Michael Chartoff. If Spitzer didn’t break the law, he’d have said so by now – what with him being a slick former prosecutor and all. It doesn’t matter how they caught the Governor of New York in an illegal interstate transaction, the fact remains that they did catch him and he’s not denying it. Banks are regulated by the feds, and they have to comply with regulations or lose their status – that’s not hard to figure out.

    Instead of trying to weasel Spitzer out of this, try admitting he was a criminal involved in illicit behavior and take the high road for a change.

    Please notice, I’m not holding my breath.

  • It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy

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    Soon-to-be-former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has just admitted that he frequented hookers. The New York Times reports;

    Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.

    The wiretap recording, made during an investigation of a prostitution ring called Emperors Club VIP, captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

    Syracuse Channel 10;

    Spitzer has built his political legacy on rooting out corruption, including several headline-making battles with Wall Street while serving as attorney general. He stormed into the governor’s office in 2006 with a historic share of the vote, vowing to continue his no-nonsense approach to fixing one of the nation’s worst governments.

    During his two terms as attorney general, his cases included a few criminal prosecutions of prostitution rings and into tourism involving prostitutes.

    In 2004, he was part of an investigation of an escort service in New York City that resulted in the arrest of 18 people on charges of promoting prostitution and related charges.

    Do I sound pleased? Yes, I am. Spitzer was one of the reasons (the other reasons being Schumer and Clinton) I left New York State – I figured if my neighbors were stupid enough to elect him to the office of Attorney General for being a “pragmatic Liberal”, I didn’t want to live among them anymore.

    From Associated Press;

    According to the law enforcement official, Spitzer is the person identified in legal papers as “Client 9,” who paid for a four-hour tryst with a woman identified as “Kristen” at a Washington hotel on Feb. 13.

    A defendant, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, confirmed that the client would be “paying for everything — train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel time, and hotel,” the court papers said.

    Client 9 paid $4,300 in cash to the service, with some being used for the encounter and the rest apparently to be used for credit.

    The prostitute, described in the complaint as a “petite, pretty brunette, 5-feet-5 inches, and 105 pounds” met the client in Room 871 at about 10 p.m., according to the complaint.

    In a conversation with the booking agent, Kristen said that she liked the client and that she did not think he was difficult, according to the papers.

    So there you go – he’s got the hooker vote locked up because “she did not think he was difficult”. A john with a spare $4300 and is not difficult is a goldmine. I drive through New York State every summer and I wonder how many of those folks up there between Syracuse and Buffalo have an extra $4300 laying around that they can afford to blow in a four-hour tryst.

    All of those years blackmailing US corporations and it all comes to this. Apparently, he thinks he won’t resign – but he’s been rendered ineffective. If he were a Republican, the Left would be crying for his resignation. This isn’t a “wide stance” in a public bathroom stall. This is an interstate criminal transaction. Throw his monkeyass in jail.

    As expected, the Kos Kids defend him against the charge of hypocrisy (Little Green Footballs link).

    Many more background links at Jammie Wearing Fool.

    That younger demographic at Ace of Spades is having fun with it. Here, too.

    American Pundit says he’s going to resign.

    Atlas Shrugs and Michele Malkin seem as pleased as me that Spitzer’s reign of idiocy has ended thus.

    Bob Owens is much classier than me and thinks of his kids first – and says Spitzer may be indicted.

    VanHelsing at Moonbattery gets the award for quote of the day;

    With his wife at his side, Spitzer apologized for his behavior, while downplaying it as a “private matter.” The phrase must have tasted funny in the mouth of a guy who has prosecuted prostitution rings, and who thinks even how much you weigh should be subject to state supervision.

    Hat tip to my cousin Scott (one of Spitzer’s constituents) for emailing me the story.

  • Self-inflicted, willful ignorance on the Left

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    On Little Green Footballs, there’s a link to a Daily Kos diary entry (you’ll have to go to LGF to see the article – I don’t want those peawits over here) that seeks to defend the way women are treated in the Islamic world by essentially claiming they have it the same under all religions;

    …there’s little support for the notion that women living in “traditional” Islamic cultures enjoy a lower social status than those in orthodox Christian, Jewish or Hindu communities, to name a few examples. Think of the perfectly backwards Eastern Orthodox Church, the largest Christian communion in the world. Or consider the country where women may be brutalized more terribly than in any other, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is 70 percent Christian and 10 percent Muslim. Or go to Utah, where tens of thousands of Mormon fundamentalists believe that women are literally the property of their fathers or husbands.

    Well, when I read that, it made me fairly angry that someone could be so ignorant as to disregard everything we’ve learned over the past few years – learned because the scales fell from our eyes.

    I read this on Invincible Armor (in reference to this CNN article);

    Crimes against women in Iraq’s south have included killings and amputations.

    Police chief: “Two women were killed in front of their kids”.

    Not wearing headscarves, other violations of “Islamic teachings” bring crimes.

    Woman tells CNN “fear is always there,” but “we don’t know who to be afraid of”.

    Yeah, I’ve heard the same complaints from Mormon women (insert eye roll here).

    How about these honor killing victims – women and teenage girls – from Atlas Shrugs. When was the last time a father and brother killed teenage daughters and sisters for breaking the tenets of Christianity?

    Does anyone think these missing/murdered models (link to Fausta’s Blog) were kidnapped by Buddhist extremists? Are there Eastern Orthodox Christians publicly stoning their women and hanging homosexuals from construction cranes?

    How willingly ignorant can these people be to blame these atrocities on a few “extremists” and equate the barbarity inflicted on Islamic women with the treatment of women in more civil and modern cultures? It’s this blatant, self-inflicted ignorance that has gotten us to this place in time.

    All of the statistical analysis mumbo-jumbo like “I’ve seen no empirical data to suggest that an Islamic majority itself correlates with the subordination of women better than other co-variables like…blah, blah, blah…” is boob bait for the bubbas (to borrow a phrase from Pat Moynihan). In the comment section of the Kos piece, all of the mental midgets fall in line with the typical “separation of church and state”, “all extremists are dangerous” blather often reserved for their empty-head, rattle-nodding to make each other feel smarter than they could ever hope.

    These same Leftists who excuse the inexcusable in Islam in this day and age, are the same people who judge our own history outside of the context of it’s own time. There’s no other phrase for it than self-inflicted, willful ignorance.

  • Saturday night must-reads

    I’ve got two cats sleeping on my lap and so all you get is links tonight;

    First, stop by and take at look at the Gathering of Eagles who were rewarded for braving the weather to support the military recruiters in Times Square by a visit from Pamela Gellar from Atlas Shrugs.

    If Baldilocks says he’s dead, then he’s dead as far as I’m concerned.

    Big Dog defends John McCain in the Boeing contract kerfuffle.

    The American Pundit catches the media lying about McCain’s position on waterboarding.

    Bloodthirsty Liberal examines Arab techniques of border control.

    Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard writes on the absurdity of Hillary’s statement that she ended the hundreds of years of Britain’s war with the Irish.

    Jammie Wearing Fool writes about an idiot judge who disagrees with the war against terror, so she keeps a foster kid from enlisting. I’d always thought judges were supposed to lay aside their own bias when they rule – I must be wrong.

    The Liberty Pundit ties in yesterday’s job report to the only legislation the Democrats passed last year – the minimum wage.

    Gateway Pundit rounds up news on the death of the latest FARC leader found in pieces several miles apart.

    Bob Parks at Outside the Wire dissects the Obama sucker factor and reports that Obama doesn’t have a plan to withdraw from Iraq. Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee explains what that means. Meanwhile, Flopping Aces writes that Hillary’s military advisor says she won’t pull troops out of Iraq. I’m beginning to see a pattern here.

    Wild Thing explains in detail the history of the Weather Underground buddies of Barak Obama.

    Crotchety Old Bastard compares Michele Obama’s speeches to Che Guevara’s “New Man” speech.

    Pam at Right Voices reports on a stunning archaeological find.

    The Hatemonger’s Quarterly has the exclusive report on several fictional TV characters and who they support in the Presidential campaign.

    Moonbattery‘s Van Helsing warns that environmentalists are coming for your X-Box.

    Jay at Stop the ACLU explains why he’s voting for John McCain.

    GI Jane at The Foxhole tears up the Washington Post for their self-flagellating over their treatment of Muslims.

    Weasel Zippers writes on the Hamas admission that they’re supported by Iran – and I feign surprise.

    Dean Barnett at The Weekly Standard Blog writes that the New York Times will take a swipe at Barak’s Iraq policy tomorrow.

  • Tortuous debate

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    The President is about to veto a measure passed by Congress (AP link) that forbids the practice of “waterboarding” to extract information from a difficult terror suspect who might have time sensitive information – information which might save American lives. The truth is; only three high profile terrorists have been water boarded by the US government. It’s not common practice, so why should there even be a law forbidding it?

    More protesters of the practice have been waterboarded by each other than terrorists (as portrayed above). If it really were as dangerous as they’d have us believe, why are they able to do it to each other without fear of deadly results?

    Vetoing the ill-considered ban alone is a strong enough message without even practicing the method. It tells terrorists that we’re serious about saving American lives – that we’ll do anything to prevent their dastardly plots from hatching. If this were to become law, we’re sending the message that we value the lives of terrorists above that of their potential victims. No one has died from the practice (despite what the Left would like you to believe), no one has been injured and valuable information has been extracted and probably saved lives.

    I think it’s vacuous of the Left to be outraged at waterboarding but protective of late-term abortion, which is much more barbarous.