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

Category: Society

  • Immigration; just another wedge

    Sometimes, I gotta think that the media and the Democrats are just using the issue of what to do with illegal immigrants to divide Republicans – to separate us from the President and from Congress. And apparently it’s working. last year, when the media could use Latin immigrants marching against the President’s policies (or lack thereof) they did. This year, they can parade Republicans protesting the President and Congress.

    Why else would Democrats bring the immigration bill back after it collapsed a few months ago and they’d declared it wouldn’t be back during this session – except that they saw how deeply divided Republicans and Conservatives are on the issue.

    It’s funny how we conservatives point and laugh at Leftists for being single-issue voters on the environment or gay “rights” or women’s “rights” or healthcare “rights” – yet some of us get our panties twisted in a knot and threaten to leave the party, leave “Jorge”, leave the country over things like immigration.

    It’s how the Democrats won in 1992 (it was that “read my lips” lie they told ya’all that year and ya’all believed it) and it’s how they’re going to win in 2008. Except this time, it’s going to be an entirely different nation when 2016 rolls around.

  • Ya’all Leftists created Ann Coulter, so suck it up

    In the 1992 election, the Democrats spent the whole time yammering about “it’s the economy, stupid” even though the economy was on its way to recovery. But the Republicans didn’t have anyone to answer the charges – they were too polite to call the Democrats liars. The 1994 election was full of charges that Republicans would starve children and throw the elderly out in the street. The 1996 election had Democrats charging that electing Dole would bring more burning Black churches in the South. And all of these charges went unanswered.

    David Horowitz, in 1998, wrote in his book “The Politics of Bad Faith” that Republicans needed to battle the Democrats using their own tactics – little did he know that Republican was already well-known  among many Conservatives. Ann Coulter wrote her first book “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” – a credible, well sourced legal brief for the impeachment of the President.

    Since the Left couldn’t dispute her facts, they attacked Ann personally and as time went on, she became nastier to counter the nasty attacks against her. Now, she’s nastier than almost anyone I knew in all my years as a paratrooper. So nasty, there’s hardly a Conservative that’ll defend her. David Horowitz, who called for a Conservative to step forward like Coulter, condemned her tactics when she was fired from USA Today in 2004.

    Hell, tonight I watched her on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show call him an idiot! Larry Kudlow, for pete’s sake.

    And the laughable part of this latest dust-up is about a woman who used her cancer to increase fund raising for her silver-spoon-born husband who tried to run his neighbor out of the neighborhood because of the way he could afford to live and talks about Two Americas while he’s clearly in the America most of us aren’t. Edwards has used his dead son as a campaign issue, called us all morons by claiming to have taken a $1/2 million consulting job so he could learn about poverty and expected us to believe it – and operated a charity to cure poverty which so far has only helped Edwards afford his campaign.

    Elizabeth Edwards had the unmitigated gall to accuse Coulter that she “lowers the political dialogue at precisely the time we need to raise it.” The political dialogue reached its low in 1992, doll. And then this portly twit’s husband used his wife’s plea to Coulter as a fund-raising theme. Yeah, that raises the political dialogue.

    Ya know, I’m probably the only person left in America who feels sorry for Ann Coulter and the venom that she deals with every moment of every day – perhaps not undeservedly. But she’s a creation of the Left, so they should just suck it up. If she wasn’t so effective at uncovering their hypocrisy and criminal behavior, they’d ignore her. 

    And unless you’ve seen the whole clip of Coulter’s comments about Edwards’ assasination (not the clipped piece that’s been circulating) shut up until you have the whole story. Curt at Flopping Aces has the complete video.

  • John Murtha; the broad side of the barn

    I love taking shots at Jack Murtha – for one thing you can’t miss him no matter where you shoot. Physically or otherwise.

    There is still no answer from his office on his forthcoming apology to the Marines he publicly indicted as cold blooded murders. I still call every morning like clockwork – but oddly, Murtha hasn’t heard anything.

    Well, today the Washington Times editorial board took their shots at him in “John Murtha, venture capitalist“;

    Funny how attempts at congressional ethics reform keep running into roadblocks like Rep. Jack Murtha. The Pennsylvania Democrat and chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee is best known in this context as the man who once called the ethics package “total crap.” He represents an economically depressed corner of southwest Pennsylvania whose largest city, Johnstown, has lost 5 percent of its population since 1990. Not even considering the man’s unique personal qualities, one senses where this earmark story is headed.

    “Murtha has almost — but not quite — single-handedly created a new economy in his district,” concludes Roll Call this week in an overview of the lawmaker’s earmarking activities.

    […]

    The self-styled “most ethical and honest Congress in history” must get a grip on Mr. Murtha and friends if it is to make any headway whatsoever on ethics reforms. At this rate, Mr. Murtha just about torpedoes whatever chance House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to deliver on her campaign promises.

    The Pittsburgh Post Gazette calls Murtha “The King of Pork“;

    Are you the owner of business that is looking to get some big federal contracts? A move to Johnstown, hometown of Rep. John Murtha, might help, according to today’s Roll Call.

    […]

    “Murtha has almost – but not quite – single-handedly created a new economy in his district, with start-up companies getting Murtha earmarks, getting contracts from other companies that have gotten Murtha earmarks or getting trained on how to get government money by other institutions that have gotten Murtha earmarks.

    “A good guide to the patterns of Murtha’s largesse is the client list of KSA Consulting, a lobbying firm that employs a former Murtha staffer and used to employ Murtha’s brother, Kit Murtha.

    […]

    “The pattern that appears dominant is that the companies’ federal contract dollars expand shortly after they open an office in the 12th Congressional district – though it is not entirely clear how much of their work is actually conducted in the district.” 

    The Roll Call story (subscription required) goes into greater detail – here’s a sample;

    Kit Murtha, who says he retired from KSA a year ago, told Roll Call that he doesn’t believe there is any connection between the earmarks and the companies’ move to the Johnstown area. “You can’t really answer that … which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” he said. KSA represents “people that are in Johnstown, and some came to Johnstown, and which came first, and why, you can’t say.”

    But KSA’s client list indicates a pattern. Applied Ordnance Technologies was a Maryland-based firm that signed up with KSA in 2001, opened a Johnstown office in 2004 and saw the value of its government contracts jump from $12 million in 2003 to $21 million in 2004 and $24 million in 2005.

    Murtha’s office issued a press release declaring that “Congressman Murtha helped to attract AOT to Johnstown.” Murtha said in the release, “AOT represents the type of organization that is helping to revitalize our communities — small, technology-based companies with potential to grow.”  

    […]

    Rodney Ruddock, chairman of the Indiana County Commission, pointed out that local efforts are geared toward weaning these businesses off defense contracts and getting them to broaden into other work that is more sustainable. “We don’t want to put all of our eggs into the defense industry basket,” Ruddock said.

    Instead, companies are shifting into homeland security work, Ruddock noted, in part with the assistance of the John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security at IUP.

    The institute itself grew out of Murtha earmarks. The university, in announcing the center in 2003, said that “Congressman Murtha has arranged for more than $20 million in funding to IUP for homeland security initiatives.”

    I think it’s totally laughable that there’s a John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security. That’s like opening the Barney Fife Academy of Police Sciences.

    Now, much of this isn’t news – we’ve been hearing about KSA Consulting since last summer before the Congressional midterms. So why are we not hearing of Congressional investigations? If this was a Republican, we’d be reading everyday about it – Hell, we read every day about Republican scandals that haven’t ever happened.

    So I guess we now know why Murtha has positioned himself as the (ughh) darling of the anti-war Left – it makes him bulletproof. As long as he says the most outrageous things about the troops, Pelosi, et al. will leave him alone. It really tells something about the Left – they threw Joe Lieberman, probably the most ethical Democrat in Washington, out of the boat because of his pro-terror war stance, but they’ll cover for a crook like Murtha because of his pro-terrorist stance.

    I take some satisfaction that Roll Call gets the same reactions I get from Murtha’s office;

    Murtha’s office declined to provide comment for this article.

    The Influence Peddler and Don Surber have good summaries of the Roll Call Article. 

  • Christopher Hitchens takes on Islamic Rage Boy

    I met Mr. Hitchens briefly at an event at the National Press Club a few years back – right after he left The Nation for his support of the war against terrorism. We spoke for several minutes and he was a friendly-enough guy – so friendly and interesting that I’ve found it very hard to criticize anything he’s written since.This bit of uncommon sense he’s written for Slate reminds me of those few minutes I spent with him that evening all of those years ago;

    This mental and moral capitulation has a bearing on the argument about Iraq, as well. We are incessantly told that the removal of the Saddam Hussein despotism has inflamed the world’s Muslims against us and made Iraq hospitable to terrorism, for all the world as if Baathism had not been pumping out jihadist rhetoric for the past decade (as it still does from Damascus, allied to Tehran). But how are we to know what will incite such rage? A caricature published in Copenhagen appears to do it. A crass remark from Josef Ratzinger (leader of an anti-war church) seems to have the same effect. A rumor from Guantanamo will convulse Peshawar, the Muslim press preaches that the Jews brought down the Twin Towers, and a single citation in a British honors list will cause the Iranian state-run press to repeat its claim that the British government—along with the Israelis, of course—paid Salman Rushdie to write The Satanic Verses to begin with. Exactly how is such a mentality to be placated?

    We may have to put up with the Rage Boys of the world, but we ought not to do their work for them, and we must not cry before we have been hurt.

    There’s nothing else to add. No matter how hard I try. Good job, Mr. Hitchens.

    Someone tell Rage Boy to get his angryface out – Gates of Vienna‘s Baron Bodissey (by way of Gateway Pundit) reports that some Danes have burned Muhammed in effigy.

  • Plotting the coup

    The Democrats were pretty angry back in 1972 when their boy George McGovern couldn’t even score a yawn at the polls. I remember my hippie friends in those days had longer faces than John Kerry because their idealistic dreams of a socialist president had crashed down on their pointy heads and they’d suddenly had to get back to reality. It pretty much ended the Peace and Love generation – they cut their hair, got jobs and conformed to the “establishment”.

    So, to prove they still had teeth, the Congressional Democrats tried to stage a coup. The Watergate burglary gave them their ammunition – that and Spiro Agnew’s resignation. President Nixon then had to name a Vice President – which the Senate had to approve. John Conyers and some others tried to convince the Senate to delay their advice and consent hearings for Gerald Ford so that when they forced their impeachment of Nixon, there’d be no Republicans to take over the reins of government – Speaker of the House Democrat Carl Bert Albert would be the de facto president – completely overturning the 1972 election. Of course, in those days, even Democrats cared more about the country than they did politics and the coup never took place.

    Well, here we are again. The Washington Post ran a series of articles and photos this weekend about the Devil Incarnate (otherwise known as Dick Cheney) and now, they’ve sent their tiny-brained columnist morons out in force, drooling and licking their curled lips in anticipation, to advocate for Cheney’s dismissal. 

    Sally Quinn, wife of Bill Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate years, insists there’s a plot afoot by Republicans to replace Cheney – even though she names no sources, quotes no Republicans, or claims no special knowledge;

    Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents’ living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.

    Today, another group of party elders, led by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, could well do the same. They could act out of concern for our country’s plummeting reputation throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East.

    For such a plan to work, however, they would need a ready replacement. Until recently, there hasn’t been an acceptable alternative to Cheney — nor has there been a persuasive argument to convince President Bush to make a change. Now there is.

    Oh, yeah? Says who? Just because Barry Goldwater came to your house once before Watergate, Sally, that doesn’t make you the guardian of all Republican knowledge. I get the feeling she’s just tossing this out there to give Republicans an idea. Why? Well, my favorite turd among the WaPo’s idiots Eugene Robinson has his wettened lips up to the koolaid glass, to tell us why we should dump Cheney;

    I’m often asked why, given my lower-than-low opinion of this administration, I don’t at least raise the subject of whether George W. Bush should be impeached. I answer with three scary words that tend to end the discussion: President Dick Cheney.

    Then again, Cheney would probably think of moving into the Oval Office as a demotion. The president, at least, has some accountability to public opinion — if he’s going to defy it, he has to offer some explanation. The president has to hold an occasional news conference, tolerate meetings with his opponents on Capitol Hill and endure lectures from world leaders who question his policies. Cheney can just blow it all off.

    Yeah, scary-assed Cheney who’s not accountable to the public – except that he’s been elected twice to his office by voters, just like the President, just like Al Gore. Robinson is a token on the editorial board – he can’t have been hired for his intellect. I swear he cuts and pastes his “opinions” from Democratic Underground posts.

    More red meat for the nutroots – once we get Cheney fired, we can impeach the President. For what, numbskull? What charges? For paying attention to the same intelligence on Iraq that Democrats used as justification for Operation Desert Fox?

    At least Richard Cohen (he of Wasted Lives fame) shows a little bit of common sense today, for a change. He insists that if Democrats don’t come up with a coherent stategy for the war (not necessarily ending it, but actually fighting it) they’re going to end up getting smoked at the polls in ’08;

    The polls tell you that with George Bush’s approval ratings abysmally low; with the war in Iraq becoming increasingly unpopular; with the GOP lacking a dominant candidate; and with the party divided over immigration, social issues and even religion ( Mitt Romney’s Mormonism), the next president is bound to be a Democrat. History begs to differ.

    The history I have in mind is 1972. By the end of that year, 56,844 Americans had been killed in Vietnam, a war that almost no one thought could still be won and that no one could quite figure out how to end. Nevertheless, the winner in that year’s presidential election was Richard M. Nixon. He won 49 of 50 states — and the war, of course, went on. Just as it is hard to understand how the British ousted Winston Churchill after he had led them to victory in Europe in World War II, so it may be hard now to appreciate how Nixon won such a landslide while presiding over such a dismal war. In the first place, he was the incumbent, with all its advantages and with enormous amounts of money at his disposal. In the second place, back then the Vietnam War was not as unpopular as you might think — or, for that matter, as the Iraq war is now. In 1972, almost 60 percent of Americans approved of the way Nixon was handling the war.

    Cohen goes on to point out that Democrats thought, in 1972, that the election was in the bag (probably because of the echo-chamber where the Left lives) because they hang their hats on polls. Cohen warns that the netroots could lose the election for the Democrats;

    Will history trump the polls? It will if, as in the past, the Democratic Party so wounds itself fighting the war against the war, it nominates a candidate beloved by a minority but mistrusted by a majority. It has happened before.

    And he’s probably right – Americans don’t stand with the anti-war Left like the candidates stand with them. You don’t see Republicans candidates running to get to the Left (or Right, whichever) of Ron Paul despite the massive poll fraud committed by Ron Paulists on the internet. Yet, the Democrats think that internet support for their anti-war agenda (whatever that is) is real.

    We’ll see.

  • Chavez warns of US guerilla war (Updated)

     

    (Photo from Venezuela Llora, Venezuela Sangra)

    Well, Chavez is acting like he plans on blaming the student protests against his dictatorship on the US. According to the AP;

    President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.

    Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela’s military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!”

    “We must continue developing the resistance war, that’s the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday,” said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation’s immense oil reserves.

    Como no? The US is the boogeyman that hides in every dictator’s closet – especially in Latin America. No matter who is President, he is evil incarnate to those who rape and pillage their own communities for personal gain.

    I guess it couldn’t have anything to do with Chavez tossing out oil companies this weekend could it? I linked to this earlier from Reuters (by way of CNNMoney):

    Some major oil companies have rejected Venezuela’s terms for the takeover of their multi-billion dollar projects and can leave the OPEC nation, President Hugo Chavez said Friday, days before a deadline for them to strike nationalization deals.

    Exxon Mobil , ConocoPhillips , Chevron Corp . , Norway’s Statoil , Britain’s BP Plc and France’s Total are the targeted companies in projects valued above $30 billion and capable of producing 600,000 barrels per day.

    “It seems there are some transnational companies that do not want to accept (the terms),” said Chavez, who met his energy minister to review the progress in negotiations earlier Friday.

    “Well if they do not want (to accept the terms), I told the minister to tell them they can go, that they should leave, that we, in truth, do not need them,” he added during a political speech to swear in the government’s new “central planning committee.”

    Chavez, who calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor and is on a drive to nationalize swathes of the economy this year, did not say which companies rejected the government’s terms.

    Or it couldn’t have anything to do with his anticipated purchase of Russian Subs, which I also mentioned earlier from Bloomberg;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his government may buy a fleet of Russian-made submarines when he visits Moscow next week, continuing an arms buildup that has cost his nation more than $4.3 billion since 2005.

    “The only way Venezuela could totally discard the idea of not buying submarines is if we didn’t have a sea,” Chavez told cabinet members at a televised ceremony tonight in Caracas. “We have to protect that sea.”

    Chavez said he also is looking to strengthen the nation’s short-range air-defense system to counter supersonic and “invisible” radar-evading aircraft he claimed Venezuela would face in the event of a U.S. invasion. Most U.S. analysts deem such an offensive unlikely.

    And the LATimes is, of course, impressed with Chavez’ socialist tendencies;

    Last year, public spending leapt to one-third of Venezuela’s economic output of about $180 billion, up from the average of one-quarter of output in the 1990s, said Jose Manuel Puente, an economist with the Institute for Advanced Administrative Studies in Caracas.

    Chavez’s social engineering has taken his predecessors’ plans a step further in giving worker groups a piece of the enterprises and letting them manage the businesses in concert with networks of “community councils” that are local governing modules.

    But, the thing is; it all depends on the world maintaining the status quo. When Chavez’ business sense finally shows no result, the world finds its oil elsewhere  – or finds it doesn’t need his oil at all, Venezuela collapses and Chavez needs to blame someone – of course the best people to blame are Americans. 

    Afterall, we’re the ones that caused Cuba’s economy to collapse, right? Even though Cuba trades with the 160+ other countries in the world, because we refuse to trade with them, they’re destitute – according to the Left. And everything bad that happens in Cuba is blamed either on our policies or the Cuban “ex-patriots”.

    So that’s really all Chavez is doing – setting us up to take the blame for his anticipated failures. from the AP article;

    “It’s not just armed warfare,” said Chavez, a former army officer who is leading what he calls the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist movement named after 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar. “I’m also referring to psychological warfare, media warfare, political warfare, economic warfare.”

    Yeah, we’re going to be attacking them, but no one can tell because we’re so sneaky. Typical Latin American paranoia. probably more disturbing is;

    Under Chavez, Venezuela has recently purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.

    All the stuff needed to quell his own rebellions and control the inevitable “counter-revolution”. Bloomberg reports that Chavez is also aware of the fact that the military is the final arbiter in Latin American politics. He urged his troops to support his socialism;

    “The armed forces are an institution of the people, meant to promote our constitutionally mandated national project, and the national project we have is socialism,” Chavez told 3,000 troops gathered at a military ceremony in Caracas. “You can’t separate military thinking from political thinking.”

    “When a soldier says `Country, Socialism or Death,’ he’s giving the essence of the project we’re now involved in, and don’t be fooled, socialism is the road to nationhood,” he said at the event….

    It’s a pretty well known fact that if a Latin American leader can’t convince the military that what he’s doing is in the best interest of the country, they’re doomed. The military acts in the interests of the country and the people, not an ideology – that’s why there have already been attempts at a military coup against Chavez. His slogan “Fatherland (the article says ‘country’, but I know he used ‘patria‘ – which means ‘Fatherland’), Socialism or Death” doesn’t mention the pueblo – that means that Chavez wants his soldiers to defend socialism against their own people if they must.

    Ed Morrisey at Captain’s Quarters writes that Chavez is building his military might to use against US interests, but I think it’s to use against his own people when war with the US doesn’t overtly materialize in the form of a shooting war. Then he can blame the Compania and start shooting his own folks as agents of the imperialist US. That seems more plausible. The chavistas appear willing to swallow any red meat Hugo throws them-kind of like Noreiga’s Dignity Battalions.

    Meanwhile, as I also mentioned earlier this weekend, Evo Morales, Chavez’ “Mini-Me” is having his own problems with a few thousand protesters according to The Lima Bean (by way of Gateway Pundit);

    Locals of an ecological reserve in Bolivia have held protests demanding that they be annexed by Peru. Waving Peruvian flags, as many as 4,000 people filled the local square and called on the mayor to extend an invitation to Peru to occupy the region.

    The small town of Apolo, located just 6 hours’ walk from the Peruvian border, marks the entrance to the Madidi National Park, an Amazon wildlife refuge that includes around 1.8 million hectares (4.5 million acres) of pristine rainforest.

    Officials opposing the protest claimed that the people were angered that the protected nature of the area prevents them from being legally allowed to log the forest or take advantage of oil reserves thought to exist in the region.

    Speaking from La Paz 200km away, Bolivian President Evo Morales referred to the protesters as “drug traffickers and wood smugglers”.

    Well, at least it’s only wood smugglers. A couple thousand of them.

    Oddly enough, the protest happened just after the documentary “Cocalero”, Morales’ political biography opened at the Sundance Film Festival according to Bloomberg;

    “Cocalero,” the directorial debut of 26-year-old Alejandro Landes, chronicles Morales’s rise to power with the backing of the coca growers, or cocaleros, who fought U.S.- supported efforts to cut Bolivian drug production. Coca leaves, chewed for religious and cultural purposes across the Andes, are the main ingredient in cocaine.

    “The cocaleros are the sons and daughters of the U.S. war on drugs,” the Brazilian-born Landes said. “Their defense of the coca leaf detonated a nationalist wave that drove Evo to power.”

    The evil US makes such a convenient foil for Latin American dictators. Because we’re interested in criminals who poison our people in our own country, somehow we’re responsible for the rise of socialist governments. Suddenly, “defense of the coca leaf” is noble. 

    If you want to read about what’s happening inside Venezuela, on recommendation of my new friend Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective, I’ve been rereading much of the posts by Julia at The end of Venezuela as I know it – an English language blog written by a student in the middle of the White Hands movement. Last week, she wrote about the class-struggle inuendos that being flung at the students from Chavistas as if “rich kids are not people“ 

    I’ve noticed an increase in my traffic from Venezuela, Chile and Peru everytime I type Chavez’ name, so I have to guess that the internet is becoming an important information pipeline in that direction. So if I repeat myself and links, I apologize. 

    UPDATE: Apparently there was more to this speech to the army than was reported by the press (unsurprisingly) and the truth about what the event was supposed to represent and how it was staged from Daniel at Venezuela News and Views;

    Yesterday was yet another anniversary of the battle of Carabobo, our Yorktown (our Austerlitz?, our Waterloo?), that battle that made the independence of Venezuela irreversible.

    Usually at that date the armed forces hold a nice rally on the Carabobo field, in all regalia. The background is not bad, graced with the famous Carabobo arch, with lots of space for crowds to attend the festivities, a large tribune for officials, speeches and what not.

    Well, under Chavez things have started to change. First the governor of Carabobo was barred to attend the festivities…

    […]

    This year, Chavez is hurt by the student dissenting protest, a general animosity as per the closing of RCTV, and duly scalded by the failure of the intended pump and circumstances of the bridge reopening when crowds of neighboring shantytowns crashed the party. Thus Chavez did not take chances: Carabobo now was held in Caracas, as a private ceremony between Chavez and HIS army, the one he will use to stop the invasion of the Empire.

    There is much more at Daniel’s blog including screenshots Daniel took from his television. It appears that Chavez is getting a bit paranoid and not the guy he used to be among his “pueblo“. It appears more and more that yesterday’s speech was a plea to the military that they not toss his butt out of Venezuela.

    Daniel also tells of food and fuel shortages here.

  • Obama issues fatwa

    Apparently, Barack Obama, boy-Senator, is threatened by the faithful Christians because he issued a fatwa in the form of raw red meat for Leftists. According to USAToday;

    Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama told a church convention Saturday that some right-wing U.S. evangelical leaders have exploited and politicized religious beliefs in an effort to sow division.

    “Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a 30-minute speech before the national meeting of the United Church of Christ.

    “Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us,” the Illinois senator said.

    “At every opportunity, they’ve told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design,” he said, according to an advance copy of his speech.

    “There was even a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich,” Obama said. “I don’t know what Bible they’re reading, but it doesn’t jibe with my version.”

    Hmmm. I don’t remember the Christian Coalition preaching tax cuts for the rich. I remember some passage from the Bible about “render unto Cesaer that which is Cesaer’s and render unto God that which is God’s”.

    And I think that Obama is saying that paying taxes has something to do with Christian charity – which is just too ridiculous for a rational person such as myself to discuss.

    I’ll admit that the Christian Coalition is operating under the false assumption that they can legislate morality, but I think they’re mistaken. I also think that the Christian Coalition has much less influence in the Republican party than Obama would care to admit.

    Not a week goes by that I don’t get a hate-filled email from some Leftist that accuses me of being a Bible-thumping lunatic, even though it’s been ten years since I set a foot in church. Somehow the entire Left is operating under the misapprehension that all Republicans are religious fanatics – I just think a person can be a good and charitable person without adhering to some set of religious tenets – it doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God or Jesus.

    I can believe that abortions are wrong on purely secular grounds – I don’t need Bible verses or a Pope to tell me that intentionally killing unborn babies is evil. I don’t need a Jerry Falwell to tell me that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral.

    It’s people like Obama that are using religion to divide America – its their own cowardice of being judged evil that makes them mistrustful of the faithful.  His speech yesterday was less about bringing the faithful together than about dividing this country even further – for his own political gain.

    Crotchety Old Bastard and Marathon Pundit’s John Ruberry eat Obama’s lunch while The Barack Obama Report carries his water. 

  • Leftist hyperbole on parade

      There was a demonstration in front of the White House yesterday called “Voices Against Terrorism” – sounds like a good reason to protest, doesn’t it? Except the “terrorism” they’re “against” is that which is inflicted (supposedly) on people by the Bush Administration. According to Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson;

    In 1996, [Sister Dianna] Ortiz founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International, which brings together survivors and advocates for human rights issues, and she began to travel across the country to tell her story. Participants at this weekend’s vigil, the coalition’s 10th, included 75 survivors from some of the 150 countries the organization cites for practicing and condoning torture.

    “We’re not just telling it — we’re reliving it,” Ortiz said. “We feel like we are back in our cell.”

    This year, survivors and activists had a specific mission: demanding the repeal of the Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed in October. Coalition members say they think the act is unconstitutional, is a severe violation of human rights and essentially legalizes acts of torture, she said.

    The act establishes procedures for conducting military investigations and hearings for suspected terrorists and combatants. One of the activists, Ray McGovern, who was a CIA analyst for 27 years, said the act ignores prisoner rights established by the Geneva Conventions and the 1996 U.S. War Crimes Act.

    Well, ya know what, I went to the Military Commissions Act (.pdf), known to the legal world as Public Law 109-366, and read all 39 pages. There is nothing in the law that “legalizes acts of torture”. It doesn’t even address torture except to make it a crime and forbid it’s use to extract evidence. It doesn’t violate the Constitution because it’s mandated purpose (948b) is;

    This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission.

    That’s it - nothing about American citizens, so it can’t be unConstitutional. In fact, it specifically forbids the admisibility of evidence extracted using torture during Military Commission procedings;

    ‘‘§ 948r. Compulsory self-incrimination prohibited; treatment of statements obtained by torture and other statements.
    ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—No person shall be required to testify against himself at a proceeding of a military commission under this chapter.
    ‘‘(b) EXCLUSION OF STATEMENTS OBTAINED BY TORTURE.—A statement obtained by use of torture shall not be admissible in a military commission under this chapter, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made.
    ‘‘(c) STATEMENTS OBTAINED BEFORE ENACTMENT OF DETAINEE TREATMENT ACT OF 2005.—A statement obtained before December 30, 2005 (the date of the enactment of the Defense Treatment Act of 2005) in which the degree of coercion is disputed may be admitted only if the military judge finds that—
    ‘‘(1) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable and possessing sufficient probative value; and
    ‘‘(2) the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.‘‘(d) STATEMENTS OBTAINED AFTER ENACTMENT OF DETAINEE TREATMENT ACT OF 2005.—A statement obtained on or after December 30, 2005 (the date of the enactment of the Defense Treatment Act of 2005) in which the degree of coercion is disputed may be admitted only if the military judge finds that—
    ‘‘(1) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable and possessing sufficient probative value;‘‘(2) the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence; and
    ‘‘(3) the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement do not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment prohibited by section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

    Of course, the Washington Post couldn’t bother to find that section of the law before publishing their story, could they? Nope, they just quote the moonbats – cuz that’s much better copy than some dry old facts;

    “The act needs to be banned for practical and moral reasons,” McGovern told yesterday’s crowd. An opponent of the Iraq war, he accused then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in May 2006 of lying about prewar intelligence during the question-and-answer session of a speech in Atlanta.

    I guess Ms. Johnson couldn’t help but inject a bit of the standard “Bush lied, troops died” meme into her obviously biased “story”. 

    Mr. McGovern would do himself a favor by actually reading the Act instead of going off half-cocked, but that wouldn’t serve his search for fame very well, would it?

    The Act, which grants non-Americans the same Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections as the Bill of Rights, is a reasonable law, under the circumstances. Given that many of the nations from which these suspected criminals come would execute them nearly as soon as they are apprehended, it’s pretty damn civilized.

    I think it’s kind of disingenuous for the Left to be so upset about what they consider terrorism committed by the United States but they wouldn’t dare speak out against Islamofacists who behead journalists for video-fare, send six-year-olds with bomb vests into battle,  and hide under females’ clothing to perpetrate their crimes.

    But the Left, and these want-wits in particular, make wild, unfounded accusations hoping no one will ever have the gumption or the wherewithall to prove them liars. They depend on ignorance and laziness.

    Ms. Johnson concludes her front page piece with a quote from terror victim, Sister Ortiz;

    Ortiz said that the protest and vigil were significant and that her goal is to raise public awareness.

    “When I first came back, very few people were speaking out,” Ortiz said. The torture survivors in this country “believe that we don’t have the right to be silent. We have the moral responsibility to speak the truth.”

    I agree and sympathize, Sister, however, your message is being diluted by Leftist hyperbole and you’ve become a political tool of the anti-Bush moonbats.