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

Category: Society

  • Stunning strategy change; DC cops arrest criminals (Updated)

    The Washington Post announced today that over this last weekend, DC Metro police changed their tactics and began arresting criminals;

    The District’s stepped-up campaign to fight crime brought 492 arrests in its first two days, including 51 for felonies, a 70 percent increase over the previous weekend that has left city leaders hopeful about the new strategy.

    […]

    Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced last week that all of the force’s 3,300 sworn officers would work longer hours this weekend to give the summer crime-fighting program a jump-start. The plan, which cost $1.3 million in overtime pay, was intended to help prevent an increase in homicides, robberies, car thefts and gang activity that typically comes in the summer.

    It’s not all good news, though. They aren’t changing their strategy so much that they’ll stop relying on useless surveillance cameras;

    Police are also expanding their network of neighborhood surveillance cameras, adding five last week and 24 by the end of June, for a total of 72 across the city.

    Surveillance cameras haven’t done a thing except push criminals into areas that aren’t surveilled – or into Prince Georges County, Maryland.

    Cops got so excited that they could actually investigate crimes and catch criminals, they started running into each other;

     A police chase after a murder suspect ended in a violent crash Sunday. Two DC Police cruisers slammed into each, other injuring the officers inside, all while horrified residents looked on at the intersection of 13th and K Streets in southeast.

    And of course the City Council is on board…well…sort of;

    “I’m assuming all are valid arrests,” said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. “Some neighborhoods are enormously frustrated with ongoing criminal activity. If police are cracking down, I’m sure residents are pleased to be feeling a bit safer.”

    Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) agreed that the more aggressive tactics could be a good start to tamping down crime. “If these arrests are warranted, I’m happy it happened and they’re getting people off the streets,” he said.

    But councilmember Brown had a proviso;

    “The questions become, ‘How do you take those arrests and deal with them on the front end and back end?’ ” Brown said. “People arrested — fine. But at the same time, we need to focus why they are out there getting arrested in the first place.”

    Um, probably because they’re criminals, Council Member. I know you see it as an opening for convincing the already over-taxed, working residents of DC that you need to increase their taxes so you can “solve” poverty in the District, or you can blame over-crowded classrooms or some other equally vacuous platitude about how tax money can prevent crime. The Council and Mayor’s office have consistently prevented police from doing their jobs, and call for half-measures that mask their incompetence and disregard for the safety of law-abiding citizens.

    Like those idiot “Police Emergencies” that old Ramsey called last year that were nothing more than police doing their jobs for a few weeks and getting overtime pay for doing it. I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one who could see through that ploy.

    There’s no revenue in catching criminals. They’d rather have cops writing tickets and putting boots on car wheels. That brings in cash. They think government is their own little business which doesn’t have it’s excesses and abuses regulated. The City Council is just too secure in their jobs – they know the voters will vote them back into office not because of what they’ve done, but because of what they are. Voters don’t hold the City Council responsible for their incompetence, because City Council blames everything on Congress and the President – and because the citizens are willfully blind and ignorant, they throw their votes away on lazy and incompetent government.

    As soon as arrests become politically unpopular, the City Council will jump back off board, I’m sure. 500 arrests means 1 in 1000 residents of DC were arrested this weekend (if they were indeed all DC residents). I expect to see angry parents and spouses on TV soon complaining that their criminal relatives were framed by over-zealous cops and the cops will go back to solving crimes at the drive-through window of the Popeye’s chicken joints.

    Not related to the sweep, but a trial that begins tomorrow for – guess who;

    DC Council member Marion Barry is expected to be in court Tuesday to face several traffic charges stemming from traffic stops that occurred last year in the District.

    In September, Barry was stopped by Secret Service officers near the White House after he allegedly ran a red light. Police also said he smelled of alcohol.

    Barry was charged with driving under the influence after refusing to take a urine test. A breath test came in below the legal limit.

    In December, Barry was stopped by US Park Police in Southeast for driving too slowly. He was charged with misuse of temporary tags and operating an unregistered vehicle.

    Barry insists the charges are unfounded.

     

    See, there’s the damn problem. This criminal is a council member, too. He’s delinquent on his taxes for seven years (and the federal prosecutors can’t force him to pay, because the judge won’t force him) and he’s a menace to society and the entire city.

    And do you know how hard it was to find links to these stories about Barry? I guess the local media is burying the criminal behavior of it’s most [in]famous resident.

    I don’t want anyone to get me wrong. I don’t blame the DC Metro Police for their inability to stop criminals and arrest criminals and jail criminals. I completely blame the local government. I know and I’ve met great dedicated cops on the Metro DC police force (there are some useless turds, too – they know who they are) – but the politicians won’t let them do their jobs the way they should because the criminals run the media like sock puppets and the media run the politicians like sock puppets. So, politicians; guess who’s hand is really up your…um…sock.

    UPDATE: The Washington Times reports this morning that;

    The Metropolitan Police Department made more than 650 arrests last weekend as part of a kickoff to the District’s summer anti-crime initiative, Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday.
        “I think overall we hit our goal of what the initiative was,” Chief Lanier said during a press conference announcing the arrest totals. Now, we “take those examples and then determine how we turn that around, listen to what people have said to us.”
        The 650 arrests were made from 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Sunday. That was more than twice the average number made during the previous five weekends, police said, and the arrests also resulted in a drop of about 10 percent in serious crime compared with the previous weekends.
        The adult arrests included 109 on narcotics charges, 11 for aggravated assaults, 14 for unauthorized use of a vehicle, nine on robbery charges and four from three homicide cases.
        Police also arrested 33 juveniles on charges ranging from weapons offenses to narcotics.

    I wonder where the Post got it’s numbers; 24% more arrests from the Times is pretty significant. Now the Post is conceding the 650 number;

    D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday that crime across the District dipped 10 percent last weekend as a result of her “all hands on deck” initiative, in which 3,300 members of the force worked a pair of overtime shifts.

    I guess they rushed yesterday’s story to print. But the fact remains that if DC deployed it’s police force more effectively, they could fight crime better. Giuliani put cops on beats pounding the pavement and it worked fine then.

  • The anti-Israel rally in DC

    We went to the rally against Israel this afternoon. We got there at about 2:30 and went by the pro-Israel group first (I had to get my bearings and I knew where the good guys were going to be). All-in-all they were a small, rational group;

    Before we left home, I checked the opposition’s websites and they predicted hundreds of thousands of partcipants. I’m sure they were fairly disappointed because there seemed to be only a few hundred. This was the view of their rally from the Pro-Israel rally;

    Most of the anti-Israeli group were crowded around the entrance. There were “marshalls” there that censored the signs that people brought themselves. I guess they were looking for overtly racist signs. The organizing moonbats brought scores of signs to hand out to participants. Too many it seems. These are the crews bringing the extras in after the rally started;

    This is about the size of the crowd at the mainstage just before it started;

    Not really hundreds of thousands was it? But as always at these events, it’s more important to see who’s on the periphery of the main rally;

    Ask us about socialism – that has to be my favorite line. As if any of the attendees were confused about the tenets of socialism.

    Here’s another little bit of hypocrisy. If the Bible isn’t a deed, then why is the Koran a deed?

    It’s a great day when you can wrap your kids in an Arafat scarf and make them a poster supporting the “next generation” of suicide-bombing haters.

    And you can muddy the debate with an accidental friendly fire incident

    And the fat cow coalition supports impeaching AIPAC, an organization that can’t be impeached. But it sure sounds stern, doesn’t it.

    And I don’t know who this guy is, but I’m fairly sure that there aren’t any Palestinians waving any flags for him or his clerical collar;

    Here’s my favorite guy. Guess what he is. That’s right, he’s a “twoofer”. His type are easily recognizable by the portable beer coaster he sports under his shirt and the aire of an intellectually superior being.

    And the dollar bill he’s holding? Well, my wife snatched it from him (before I could grab his  stubby little paw that he thrust in my face) and here it is;

    And the back;

    Isn’t that cute? That’s a real website, too, if you have the stomach for it. But I’m not driving traffic there.

    Well, we went back had a couple of gallons of ice tea at the Dubliner where we could keep an eye on foot traffic to the rally and as near as I can tell, not more than a few hundred more showed up, in dribbles and drabs (anti-democracy people are easily recognizable among the tourist foot traffic in DC when you’ve lived here as long as I have). So I’m not sure how the media is going to call this one, but I’d put attendance at about a thousand – tops.

    The pro-Israel rally was only about a hundred or so, but the Left had big expectations for their rally, guessing by the internet support. The Left generally pooh-poohed the low attendence at the March on the Pentagon back in March because of cold weather, but today was a gorgeous spring day. It was probably near 80 degrees and overcast – so what’s the excuse this time?

    My guess; the Left is just tired of pointless rallies. There were no puppets on stilts, no wildly dressed malcontents. Even the Socialist recruiting tables were less-attended than usual. I think the Left is losing it’s fire. Too bad really – I wanted some more pictures of puppets – I miss those little buggers.

    Ah, heck here’s one from last years Code Pink Mother’s Day rally for old time’s sake. (I know the date stamp is wrong – I’m no technical wiz)

    Solomonia and djca.org agree that today’s rally was pretty pathetic. More commentary from Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs.

    UPDATE: More pictures and a much better commentary at The Age of Hooper.

    Oh, ya know what? I forgot to mention that the were a couple of thousand people at the Capitol (Gay) Pride festivities (basically a street festival) just a few blocks away that generally just ignored the fact that their allies on the Left were having a rally that day. So I guess the lesson is that you can’t count on the Gay community for your goofy Leftist rallies. I’m sure the anti-Israel forces were counting on the Gays incidental appearances to swell their numbers. But it didn’t work out for ’em.

  • Speculation is speculation

    I don’t give investment advice anymore since everyone stopped paying me for my advice. But I used to give advice to people for a living, it was a tough living, though. Many people thought they knew more than I knew because of the popular culture of investing. In fact, I spent my evenings and weekends reading and watching the garbage on magazine racks and on the pop-culture CNBC to be able to counter prospective clients’ know-it-all-isms. Many (many, many, many) never became my clients because it’s nearly impossible to overcome the twaddle that passes as investment advice, especially in the 90s when the Democrat Administration announced that they’d done away with down strokes in the business cycle.

    The know-it-alls were buying stocks on their margin accounts, paying 9-13% in interest in hopes of turning a huge profit in stocks that were selling at 85 times earnings – the same stocks everyone else was buying. It was a fine strategy for a while, but then when stocks melted down in the Spring of 2000 and margin accounts came due, investors had to pay the accounts by cashing out stocks for which they had paid a lot more – which drove stock prices down even further.

    One of the first things I read about the history of investing was a story about how Joe Kennedy knew there was an impending stock market correction in 1929 because he listened to his shoe-shine guy running down the list of stocks the bootblack owned and many matched Kennedy’s portfolio. I guess the lesson is that you shouldn’t be investing with the crowd.

    For about four years now, I’ve heard about the “housing boom”. It became the barometer of the economy on pop-culture CNBC (yes I still watch it – for reasons that will become apparent, if they haven’t already) – the welfare of companies building multi-million dollar houses drove the excitement on those ridiculous programs. Ray Charles could’ve seen this one coming. When housing starts and existing home sales dipped last year, CNBC and $400 haircut guys warned that a new recession was coming. A few years before that, it was the consumer confidence reports that rocked the market (while we were inundated with reports from retailers) after years of pinning the hopes for the market to B2P (business to people sales) while the tech-boom had been tied to B2B sales.

    But this year, it’s the mortgage/housing market that is causing fear among investors. Bond yields have been fairly depressed the past several years and it was inevitable that yields would begin to rise pretty soon, especially since all of those “savvy” investors who listened to CNBC and used their homes like ATMs while they refinanced for lower variable rate mortgages – but what goes down (interest rates) must go up and the interest rate chickens are home to roost. Everyone was doing it, new mortgage companies sprang up overnight to handle the business. Didn’t they see it coming?

    No, they pooh-poohed the doomsayers in favor of the blatherskites who promised instant cash at low interest rates – especially the jabberwocky that CNBC was pushing on people daily.  

    The Wall Street Journal reports what happened in case you missed it last week;

    The drop in U.S. government bond prices this past week is expected to cause pain for some homeowners and mortgage shoppers, and bring fresh opportunities to income investors.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves in the opposite direction to the price, jumped above the psychologically significant 5% threshold, ending Friday at 5.119%, up from 4.955% a week earlier. The 10-year’s yield is now at its highest level since July 2006.

    In fact, when the 10-year note jumped above 5.2% early Thursday morning, I actually heard Michele Caruso Cabrera squeal with delight on CNBC’s pre-7 am international market program (whatever clever moniker it has been christened this week).

    Well, anyway, it’s affected all of those savvy investors who re-fi’d their homes and spent the cash on remodeling their homes to improve the value – so they improved the value of a home that they can’t sell. Like owning millions of dollars of Confederate money or Enron stock. One mortgage company, Counrywide, had a default rate near 20% in April mainly from people who refi’d to varibale rate mortgages who’s payments creeped higher with interest rates.

    So here comes the Democrats. Hillary came out in March and called for a revision of government programs to bail out these “savvy” investors;

    The presidential candidate also said she will soon reintroduce legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Clinton said she also favors raising FHA loan limits for high-income areas to help more low-income home buyers.

    “I also propose a stop to prepayment penalties designed to trap borrowers,” Clinton said in a speech to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

    But the Bush Administration was already on the job;

    Federal banking regulators are negotiating with lenders to restructure high-interest rate mortgages given to home buyers with poor credit.

    The effort by the Office of Thrift Supervision is aimed at softening the impact of the housing market’s slowdown and bolsters the argument of lawmakers who say mortgage reforms may not be needed.

    While it may also result in accounting charges on quarterly earnings reports of public companies with mortgage lending units later this year, it could limit any broad economic damage from the risky mortgage practices of the past few years.

    So, homeowners might get a break from the government for being so damn stupid that they they listen to the morons on CNBC. They don’t deserve it. Easy money is never easy forever.

    Not that he gave any advice to invest in mortgages, but why anyone listens to that Jim Cramer, I’ll never know. He had as much to do as anyone to do with the losses from Enron’s collapse. Still thousands invest using his one-size-fits-all prattle everyday.

    But, here’s the only investment advice I’m ever going to give you. Print it out if you need to remember it; there’s no easy way to make millions, unless you’re a crook (ex. Hillary Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, Kenneth Lay). Invest only that which you can afford from your earnings  (notice I didn’t say savings) and don’t chase returns. Slow and steady wins the race; develop an investment strategy (with a professional if you need one) and stick to it – avoid investing in trendy investments. With a proper diversification of your portfolio, you’ll be in the “trendy markets” before everyone else. Keep your savings separate from your investments – that’ll keep you from dipping into your investments at inopportune times.

    And most importantly; borrowing money is never any part of sound investment strategy.

  • Mud Season in Vermont

    I lived in Vermont almost 20 years ago – in the good old days when there was a Republican governor (who always rebated tax money because the government hardly spent any revenue), a Republican Senator and the only Congressman was a Republican. It was said there were more cows in Vermont than Vermonters, and that might have been true. When I went to get my driver license in the town where I lived, they told me that if I wanted my photo on my license, I’d have to go to the State capitol in Montpelier because Vermont DMV only had one camera.

    State legislators only made about $6000/year because they were only a part-time legislature. Most had other jobs in their home districts that they needed while they nearly voluntarily served as legislators.

    Burlington, the most populous city in Vermont was run by a whacky Socialist named Bernie Sanders that no one paid much attention. The local joke was “The nicest thing about Burlington is that it’s so close to Vermont” meaning that Burlington couldn’t really be called a Vermont city because it was populated by college students (in one of the five colleges in the Burlington area) and flatlanders from New York (like Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean).

    Well, the joke is on Vermont now. The one Republican Senator they had twenty years ago, Jim Jeffords became a turncoat, Bernie Sanders is now their Senator, they haven’t had a Republican governor (or a tax rebate) since 1990. Flatlanders are running the state.

    There was a tiny faction of people in Vermont who used to, once every year, make the papers by pushing Vermont secession. Everyone chuckled, and agreed “Yeah, we should”. But now, ABC reported the other day;

    In 2005, about 300 people turned out for a secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont’s Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before.

    “The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable it’s too big, it’s too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens,” said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession.

    “We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war,” Williams said. “If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what’s left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire.”

    Doesn’t sound like a bunch of dairy farmers to me – sounds like flatlanders hijacking an entire state. Newbusters’ Ken Shepard did a longer more complete piece on the Vermont Secession movement on Monday, if you’re interested in a hearty laugh.

    James Taranto did a bit on Vermont secession yesterday – I usually don’t pilfer Taranto’s stuff, but it’s so good;

    Some people “want Vermont to secede from the United States,” the Associated Press reports from Montpelier:

    Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics is plotting political strategy and planting the seeds of separatism.

    They’ve published a “Green Mountain Manifesto” subtitled “Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union.” They hope to put the question before citizens at Town Meeting Day next March.

    Among those urging secession, as blogger Charles Johnson points out, is one Thomas Naylor, who in March issued a list of 20 tenets titled “Radical Nonviolence and the Power of Powerlessness.”

    Anyway, we think Vermont secession is a good idea, if for no other reason than that it’d be a nice morale boost for the U.S., which is weary of the long struggle in Iraq. Vermont has only a few thousand people, and most of them are hippies. It should be easier to pacify than Grenada.

    After all, as Naylor’s second tenet has it, “Violence begets more violence, not the other way around.”

    I also tripped over this article from the Burlington Free Press that the State is looking to end “racial profiling” – regardless of the fact that there are hardly any other races but white people there;

    Close to 50 people crowded into a small conference room at Burlington College on Wednesday evening to begin a dialogue on racial profiling in Burlington.The meeting was called by Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan, who described racial issues in Burlington and Vermont — one of the country’s two whitest state — as “complex, emotional and sensitive. I don’t have all the answers,” he said. “I have to listen and learn.”The exchanges Wednesday, though sometimes angry, resembled a conversation more than a typical public meeting, and a central frustration emerged early and often: Few data exist in the city or state about how often blacks are stopped by the police, let alone whether those stops are justified. 

     

    Well I checked on the racial make up of Vermont;

    Whites; 96.9%

    Blacks 0.6%

    That’s out of a population of 623,000 (that’s about a 20% increase over the population when I lived there) – that means there are 3743 blacks (about the same as when I lived there, give or take a coupla hundred) in the entire state. How big of a problem can racial profiling be?

    And alot of people think that Vermonters are racist just because there are so few minorities in Vermont – that’s not the case at all. When I was teaching at UVM, there was a national search for Black professors to teach there. They were paying huge signing bonuses and big benefit packages to attract them – but nary a bite.

    Vermont is cold in the winter – one December morning I got up to drive to work and it was minus-30 degrees. And from November thru March, there was only one thing to do in Vermont – ski. Or go to hockey games. Not to be racist or anything, but there are probably very few Blacks who ski or enjoy hockey, or have any tolerance for cold weather.

    The first thing our new Black clerk from rural Virginia asked after his first weekend in Vermont was “Where are the jazz stations on the radio dial? I can’t find any”. Cuz jazz wasn’t very popular in Vermont – that may have changed like everything else, but I doubt it.

    The point is; Vermont is not a racist community, but the climate and culture just aren’t what most Blacks are looking for.

    The real problem is that Vermont now has a full-time legislature and legislators make about $30,000/year these days. Now they’ve got plenty of time to sit around and make stupid rules and support stupid secession movements.

  • “Learning and Labor”

    Oberlin Ohio is located about 35 miles south of Cleveland and its college namesake has all the ambiance of Berkeley. Yeah, like the one in California.  In that vein, the Class of 2007 wore “non traditional” attire, as demonstrated by one young lady dressed like a sixties flower child. 

    Commencement Speaker Connie Shultz, journalist and wife of Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, made the gratuitous Democratic gesture of a “moment of silence” for veterans, then proceeded to get down to the business of injecting anti-war politics into her speech.  Said she to the graduates: “You’re entering a world which we’ve royally screwed up for you, and I’m sorry for that.  But because I know you are better than you think you are, I am filled with hope.”  She did the perfunctory PR about the plight of the middle and working class while decrying U.S. policy in the war against Islamic terrorism.

    Ok, first of all, who’s “we” and why the pessimistic reference about the world?  This planet has never been a hospitable place 100% percent of the time.  If she wants to take the blame for a “screwed up world”, be my guest. But I can tell her this: the reason she and her fellow anti-war mates are able to stand before a graduating class of like-minded leftist ditto heads, is because the veterans she so briefly honored stand between freedom and tyrants who want to take it away and replace it with something not conducive to their way of life.

    If Ms. Schultz thinks that this new generation is “better than they think they are”, let’s see what they do for their families, their communities and their country before we get our hopes up.  Every successive group of graduates has a sense of enthusiasm and hope tempered by a bit of trepidation. From what I’ve seen on my almost 50 years on this earth, we Americans have it pretty good.  Our standard of living is among the world’s best and even the poorest among us has a tax-payer working-class funded government dole.

    And speaking of “royally screwed”, this particular crop of Congressional and Senatorial Democrats are some of the most mentally and emotionally unstable politicians, ever. Once known as the ‘loyal opposition’, they have morphed into a gang of disloyal collaborators. Their distain for George W. Bush and the war against Islamic despots overrides any possibility of a unified, bi-partisan effort for the defense of the United States. 

    Domestically, they are elitist poufs who manipulate the unionized working class, the poor, and minorities into believing that in spite of the stark contrast between their lifestyles and their constituents, they really care. (wink,wink)

    Now that the Democrats run amok, we shall see how the “cut and run” strategy, sympathy for terrorists, and lax attitude toward illegals and national security pans out.

    As long as there are American citizens and Soldiers guarding this country from despicable enemies, Schultz should keep her mea culpas to herself. 

  • Scam targeting military spouses

    Mike at Lamplighter emailed me this notice from the Red Cross last night;

    The American Red Cross has learned about a new scam targeting military families. This scam takes the form of false information to military families as described below:

    The caller (young-sounding, American accent) calls a military spouse and identifies herself as a representative from the Red Cross. The caller states that the spouse’s husband (not identified by name) was hurt while on duty in Iraq and was med-evacuated to a hospital in Germany. The caller stated they couldn’t start treatment until paperwork was accomplished, and that in order to start the paperwork they needed the spouse to verify her husband’s social security number and date of birth. In this case, the spouse was quick to catch on and she did not provide any information to the caller.

    The American Red Cross representatives typically do not contact military members/dependents directly and almost always go through a commander or first sergeant channels. Military family members are urged not to give out any personal information over the phone if contacted by unknown/unverified individuals, to include confirmation that your spouse is deployed.

    It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 5 years in prison, for a person to falsely or fraudulently pretend to be a member of, or an agent for, the American National Red Cross for the purpose of soliciting, collecting, or receiving money or material.

    In addition, American Red Cross representatives will contact military members/dependents directly only in response to an emergency message initiated by your family. The Red Cross does not report any type of casualty information to family members. The Department of Defense will contact families directly if their military member has been injured. Should any military family member receive such a call, they are urged to report it to their local Family Readiness Group or Military Personnel Flight.

    The American Red Cross ensures that the American people are in touch with their family members serving in the United States military by operating a communications network that is open 24-hours, 7 days-a-week, 365 days-a-year. Through a network of employees and volunteers at Red Cross national that link families during emergencies, access to emergency financial assistance, confidential counseling, community support headquarters, local chapters, on military installations, and deployed with troops, the Red Cross offers a broad range of services. Among these services, the Red Cross provides communications for families left behind, assistance to veterans, and preparedness courses for military personnel and their families

    The American Red Cross helps people prevent, prepare for and respond to emergencies. Last year, almost a million volunteers and 35,000 employees helped victims of almost 75,000 disasters; taught lifesaving skills to millions; and helped U.S. service members separated from their families stay connected. Almost 4 million people gave blood through the Red Cross, the largest supplier of blood and blood products in the United States. The American Red Cross is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. An average of 91 cents of every dollar the Red Cross spends is invested in humanitarian services and programs. The Red Cross is not a government agency; it relies on donations of time, money, and blood to do its work.

    So if you know somebody who might potentially be a target of this, you need to let them know – and everyone else you know, too. Who let these screwy folks loose?

  • Playing right into their hands

    Let me say this upfront; I don’t like illegal immigrants. They are lawbreakers, just as much as anyone robbing a liquor store or jacking a car. And just like a thief robbing a store or stealing a car, economics is no excuse for breaking the law. I certainly sympathize with the conditions with which people are forced to exist in Central America (having spent quite a few years down there, I understand it better than most Americans). The United States is certainly an irresistable beacon to the millions mired in poverty south of our border. But that’s a problem better-solved with local solutions. 

    I don’t like that the current administration is crafting a plan to give what might be considered “amnesty” with the likes of Ted Kennedy. Today in the Washington Times I read that declining donations to the RNC triggered the firing of their solicitors;

        Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.
        “Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue,” said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee. 

    The RNC denies falling revenues, but I believe the people who were fired. I’ve been snubbed by a couple of the Right’s biggest bloggers in the past few weeks and I’m pretty sure it’s because of my wishy-washy position on immigration that I wrote about a week or so ago calling for calm on the Right.

    I honestly believe the Right is overreacting – overreacting on the same scale that the anti-war Left is overreacting to the collapse of their Congressional heros. And I think that it’s playing right into the hands of the Democrats.

    The Democrats know that unless they come up with a coherent strategy for the war against terror next year, they’ve lost the election. So they pretend there is no war against terror – and they try to divide the Republican party. How do they do it? They know this president is a man of action – unlike his predecessor who just had blue-ribbon commissions and town hall meetings and the press tried to convince us that he had solved whatever problem he was interested in that moment.

    They know this president wants to solve the immigration problem. They also know that the reactionary xenophobes on the Far Right will run to the microphones and their PCs and condemn anyone who avocates anything short of shipping 12 million illegals home and they’ll whip the blogs into a frenzy of anti-immigration platitudes. Which is exactly what happened.

    Yeah, we all feel betrayed by Republicans, but are we going to let our emotions drive us into a third and fourth Clinton term? On one single issue? I’ll grant that it’s an important issue, but is it so important that we’ll gamble the future of our country?

    I guess I’ve set myself up for some more snubbing.

  • 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.