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

Category: Society

  • Me? I’ll vote for any Republican.

    I’ve heard, and read, so many Republicans complain about certain members of the Republican field of candidates and declare “I wouldn’t vote for that guy under any circumstances!” Well, I “feel” the same way sometimes. There are none of the top three or four that excite me to action. But the alternative is frightening.

    Reading the websites of the Democrat candidates is like looking through a tear in time and space.

    Apparently Barack Obama has been busy during his two years as a Senator;

    Reaching across the aisle, Obama has tackled problems such as preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and stopping the genocide in Darfur.

    I’m sure the folks in Darfur are grateful that Obama has stopped the genocide being inflicted on their population. I suppose they all live on peaceful cul de sacs now that the genocide has ended. And I suppose Obama personally went to Libya and disarmed Gaddafi – what a brave soul.

    As far on the war against terror goes, Obama, apparently had intelligence that no one in the federal government had;

    In 2002, then Illinois State Senator Obama said Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States and that invasion would lead to an occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

    How did that youngster know about the status of Hussein’s weapons when the entire world thought he had weapons? And President Bush said the same thing about the length of time and the cost, didn’t he?

    Energy? Obama is a “leader”;

    Senator Obama has been a leader in the Senate in pushing for a comprehensive national energy policy and has introduced a number of bills to get us closer to the goal of energy independence.

    Does that mean that he’s for drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf or opening the reserves in Alaska? Of course not;

    By putting aside partisan battles, he has found common ground on CAFE, renewable fuels, and clean coal.

    Yep, that’s the ticket – half-assed, feel good, “progressive” non-solutions. A fine candidate , indeed.

    But, try to find out what Hillary Clinton’s issues are. You have to slog through through her biography to find…nothing;

    Hillary has not wavered in her work to expand quality affordable health care to more Americans…

    Her strong advocacy for children continues in the Senate…

    Hillary has been a powerful advocate for women in the Senate…

    Hillary is strongly committed to making sure that every American has the right to vote in fair, accessible, and credible elections….

    Nothing disagreeable there. So she’s a bland candidate with nothing to offer Americans except bland platitudes – and don’t forget to sign up to have a Hillary Party in your home or hand over some cash – these webs sites ain’t free ya know.

    And my personal favorite, John Edwards – I’d vote for him in a primary because he’s so fricken transparent in his hypocrisy.

    On his web site Edwards claims he wants to end our dependence on foreign oil – no, not by drilling our own oil, by;

    …investing in clean, renewable energies like wind, solar, and biofuels to create a new energy economy, developing a new generation of efficient cars and trucks, and putting new energy-saving technologies to work in buildings, transportation, and industry.

    Of course if we don’t drill our own oil, we’ll still be buying foreign oil for those “efficient cars and trucks”, won’t we? But not to worry, Edwards will be leading us to energy independence because his mega-mansion and his campaign are “energy neutral“. Apparently just by declaring that in public makes it so.

    But that ain’t all! Edwards is going to eliminate poverty;

    Every day, 37 million Americans wake in poverty.

    Yeah, they wake up about noon, roll over and turn on “The View” and grab the “Cheetos” bag next to the bed from the night before. Do any of these 37 million people have families that can start haranguing them about looking for work? Nope, but they’ve got John Edwards;

    We can reach that goal by creating and rewarding work, strengthening families, helping workers save and get ahead, transforming our schools, expanding access to college, breaking up areas of concentrated poverty, reaching overlooked rural areas, and expecting people to help themselves by working whenever they are able.

    It’s just that simple – just expect people to do better, and they will. Why hasn’t anyone else thought of this?

    And on the overarching issue of our time, our war against terrorism? Well, Edwards wants to restore our moral leadership in the world. How you ask? By surrendering and pulling our troops out of the war;

    …immediately withdrawing 40,000-50,000 troops from Iraq, with the complete withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq within 12-18 months — allowing the Iraqis to assume greater responsibility for rebuilding their own country. It also means working to restore our legitimacy by leading on the great challenges before us like the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the genocide in Darfur, extreme poverty, and living up to our ideals in the fight against terrorism.

    I guess Edwards didn’t hear that Obama already ended genocide in Darfur.

    I’ll grant that none of the Republicans look particularly vote-worthy, but compared to what’s on the other side, they look like gems to me. For the best liveblogging of the Republican debate last night, see Sister Toldjah, for the best wrap-up see Rick Moran at the Rightwing Nuthouse.

  • Take THAT Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan

    I don’t usually post more article than commentary, but this story says it all.

    John Ward in the Washington Times writes about the pen President Bush used yesterday to veto the Democrats’ cobbled-together, pork-laden defense spending bill – otherwise known as the Capitulation Proclamation; 

        The pen was a gift from the father of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq, who asked Mr. Bush last month to use it when he vetoed a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq.
        Robert Derga, of Uniontown, Ohio, gave Mr. Bush the pen after an April 16 speech by the president at the White House.
        Mr. Bush invited a number of “Gold Star Families” — families who have lost a U.S. military member in Iraq — to the speech, and met with them afterwards in the Oval Office.
    * * * * *

     “I looked the president square in the eye,” Mr. Derga said. “I looked at him and said, ‘Mr. President, if this Iraq supplemental comes down to a veto I want you to use my pen to do it.’”
        Mr. Bush “kind of looked at me funny for a moment and then said, ‘Absolutely,’ and then handed the pen to his assistant,” Mr. Derga said.
        “He assured me he would use it,” Mr. Derga said.
    * * * * *

      Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Derga was shutting off his computer at work, around 5:30, when he received a call from Jared Weinstein, Mr. Bush’s personal aide.
        Mr. Weinstein was calling “to tell me that the president had signed the veto with my pen.”
        “They wanted to again give their heartfelt condolences on our loss of Dustin,” Mr. Derga said. “I was pretty blown away is one way of putting it. I couldn’t believe he actually did it.”

    I thought it was more than appropriate. Please read the rest of the story for more background.

    UPDATE: The Washington Post is running the same story in an Anne Flaherty-written AP story – well sorta. You have to plow through a page-and-a-half of anti-Bush blather until you reach a two-paragraph blurb followed by;

    Minutes after Bush vetoed the bill, an anti-war demonstrator stood outside the White House with a bullhorn: “How many more must die? How many more must die?”

    Then another page-and-a-half of anti-Bush blather. But, there’s no bias in the media.

  • Joan Baez banned from Walter Reed

    I don’t usually comment on news about entertainers, but I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that Joan Baez stopped entertaining anyone about 40 years ago – so my self-imposed restriction remains intact. Anyway, the Washington print media are a-buzz about the Army denying Baez entry to Walter Reed to screech for the troops. From the Washington Examiner;

    Folk singer and anti-war activist Joan Baez says she doesn’t know why she was not allowed to perform for recovering soldiers recently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as she planned.

    In a letter to The Washington Post published Wednesday, she said rocker John Mellencamp had asked her to perform with him last Friday and that she accepted his invitation.

    “I have always been an advocate for nonviolence and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago,” she wrote. “I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, four days before the concert, I was not ‘approved’ by the Army to take part. Strange irony.”

    “Strange irony?” I don’t think it’s strange or ironic. For one thing, I don’t think most of the troops at Walter Reed even know what the ancient gasbag does or did. Other than playing for aging hippes who long for their wasted youth, what does she do for a living these days so anyone the age of our troops would recognize her?

    For another thing, we know that the 66 year-old would feel a need to “speak truth to power” and what volunteer soldier who just sacrificed a limb or their youth for their country want to hear about how Baez thinks they’re babykillers and puppy-rapers?

    From the Washington Post;

    Reached by telephone yesterday at her home in Menlo Park, Calif., Baez, 66, said she wasn’t told why she was given the boot, but speculated, “There might have been one, there might have been 50 [soldiers] that thought I was a traitor.”

    …or there could have been one soldier who actually remembered who the Hell you are. Maybe not that many, even. The fact that you contributed greatly to the disrespectful treatment of our troops when they returned from Viet Nam and the Army’s desire to comfort the wounded troops might have something to do with the Army’s decision. Think?

    “One of my more cynical friends said, ‘They let the rats in, why not you?’ ” Baez said, laughing, referring to a recent expose of living conditions at Walter Reed.

    I don’t know why you’re laughing. Do you and your friend think you’re better than a rat? Well, the rest of us don’t, ya old hag.

    After the concert, Baez said, Mellencamp left her a message to say, “I hope you’re not mad at me.” Her response: ” ‘Of course not. It’s an honor to be turned down by the Army.’ . . . But I would have been happier getting in . . . I thought times had changed enough.”

    You’re still living in the 60s and you “thought times had changed”? Remember the veteran who spit on Jane Fonda a few years back? What makes you think that there’s a statute of limitations on treason in the minds and opinions of Americans.

    The fact that Baez thinks that it’s an honor to be turned down by the Army, as opposed to being ashamed she’s been rejected by the institution that defends her right to sing what she wants, is proof the Army made the right choice.

    Personally, I applaud the Army’s decision. Usually, the Army makes the politically correct decision for PR purposes – this time they just made the right decision. Why give this brain-dead, crotch-rotted, screeching hag a platform from which she can bite the hand that feeds her?

    Army Strong!

    UPDATE: According to the Washington Post , “At Walter Reed, Mellencamp Shuts His Mouth and Sings”. You can bet that we couldn’t have counted on Baez to behave similarly.

  • Left’s new conniption fit (Updated)

    This afternoon Rupert Murdoch made a $5 billion bid for the Dow Jones Company which owns the Wall Street Journal. The Dow Jones Co.  stock shot up from $35/share to $55 in about two minutes after the bid. In fact before this bid, the stock had languished between $32 and $40 for years.

    Just as quickly as the stock spiked higher, Bernie Sanders (Communist-VT) shot to the nearest CNBC microphone to tell Larry Kudlow that Murdoch’s owning the Wall Street Journal would violate the Fairness Doctrine that Sanders is trying to get reinstituted into law. I think that’s a stretch.

    Murdoch owns local newspapers, a broadcast TV network and a cable news channel – no national newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. One of the Leftists on Kudlow’s show claimed that Murdoch would ruin the WSJ like he did with the Times of London (his words not mine – I have no idea how good or bad the Times does it’s business).

    Murdoch would be a fool to tinker with the internals of the extremely successful WSJ – besides it’s editorial and commentary pages are already fairly conservative. What could Murdoch do to make it moreso that frightens the Left so much?

    The Bancroft family, which holds a slim majority of the stock that controls the Dow Jones Company, have said they won’t sell, so the whole deal may fall through, but Murdoch is a pretty tenacious little Aussie. He probably wants the WSJ to bolster his planned Fox Business Channel venture and to cripple CNBC which has a colaborative agreement with the WSJ and it’s accompanying journalists.

    The Wall Street Journal is probably the most successful news organization in the country and their internet presence is unmatched – despite the fact that they’re one of the few who successfully charge a subscription fee. I’ve been a subscriber for years because, as a source, they are unimpeachable and they just have news and commentary not available anywhere else.

    I just about spit my chocolate milk out when Bill Press, on Kudlow and Company blurted out that Murdoch wanted WSJ so he could compete with the New York Times. Who wants to compete with that fat whale? That’d be like buying the Baltimore Ravens to compete with the Washington Redskins.

    But Press went on to condemn Murdoch and his News Corp. empire as a vast right wing conspiracy (oblivious, apparently to the Leftist media in this country).

    Now I don’t know if Murdoch’s latest acquisition is legal or ethical, I just know that if it gets the Left (especially Press and Sanders) in a lather, it must be good for the country. To quote Montgomery Burns on Rupert Murdoch, “He’s one beautiful man.”

    UPDATE: CNBC is totally freaking out this (Wednesday) morning over this story. Carlos Quintanilla began his “Squawk Box” show (ostensibly about the markets) by calling the bid “Rupert Murdoch’s lastest bid for world conquest” with a backdrop of the scene from Star Wars of Darth Vader light-saber fencing with Luke Skywalker. He’s apparently convinced that the WSJ will become a right-wing newspaper. What the Hell is the Wall Street Journal now? Leftwing? F’pete’s sake.

  • The high price of consumerism

    The news programs seem to be obsessed with the high price of gasoline this morning – expected to reach $4/gallon by Memorial Day weekend in some places. On Fox and Friends, they reported that a convenience store owner has suspended selling gasoline at his business because of the recent price hike. How noble. He’s probably on the right track, though.

    Everyone knows that commodity prices are dependent on supply-and-demand, but apparently, no one wants to admit that one of the major reasons fuel prices remain high is that Americans don’t want to curb their driving habits not one bit. Even my hippie neighbor with the “No Blood For Oil” sign in his window hasn’t walked the five minutes it takes to get the subway station since he moved here.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m no rabid conservationist who’ll preach about evil Big Oil and conspiracies between Cheney and Haliburton to suck our spear change out of our pockets, but I’m just tired of hearing from people who are too well-off to use public transportation instead of navigating their two-and-a-half-ton SUVs through bumper-to-bumper traffic five-days-a-week that they can’t afford $4/gallon for their fuel needs. Besides, I own oil stocks, so I’m profiting from this rabid consumerism. Thank you very much.

    I work thirteen miles from my home, a few blocks from the Capitol Building – about an hour-and-a-half-hour drive during rush hour. That’s why I moved next to the subway station. I commute 20 times a month and there’s no way I want to spend 60 hours every month driving – plus pay the $185 parking fees. Riding the subway costs me about $120/month and takes about 30 minutes each way – 20 hours/month compared to the alternative of 60 hours of driving time. And I’m in a much better mood when I get home than I would be if I drove through that third world, lawless place the rest of you know as Washington, DC.  

    Despite the high cost of gas, none of my neighbors have changed their commuting habits. They still drive as much as they always have and no one seems to recognize that their continued willingness to pay more than they paid before only encourages even higher prices. The streets around here are constantly jammed with traffic – where all of these people are going at 9 o’clock on Sunday morning is beyond me.

    The convenience store owner in Wisconsin who stopped selling gas at higher prices almost understands unbridled consumerism. Selling less gas would probably drive the price down, but his former customers are just going somewhere else to buy their fuel, so, no matter how well-intentioned he might be, he’s just missing out on fat profits – unless, of course, he’s expecting higher prices and he’s hoarding the gas he bought at current prices to sell at the higher price later.

    The only thing consumers can do to drive down fuel prices, is to drive less. I know it’s easier to rage against the oil companies or President Bush, or Congress (see the Bill Gertz story below) or the Democrat candidates and their private jets – but that’s not particularly useful. Be like me – buy oil stock and sit at home complaining about others’ bad behavior on your own blog. 

    I’m just saying; if you’re not willing to drive less, quit yapping about the price of gas.

  • Same old leftist solutions; just let me rant

    Just browsing through the Washington Post, I found an opinion piece entitled “A plan to cut poverty in half” by Mark Greenberg and Elisa Minoff. Man, I’d like to see that happen so I began reading. Turns out, it’s about a report from the Center for American Progress. Hey, I’m all for American progress, so I flipped over to the report. What did I find? The same old “progressive” clap trap. The same failed “Great Society” programs except with more money thrown in. How is that progress?

    It was the same old drivel about raising the minimum wage, increasing child tax credits, the government providing more safety nets and pouring more money into our failing education system. All of the mediocre proposals the Democrats have been clinging to like grim death since the LBJ War on Poverty days.

    I guess that’s what passes as research for Leftist think tanks – dust off some decades old failed program and multiply the cost figures by the inflation rate and add in a fat grant check.

    Want to reduce poverty in this country? Put schools back in the business of teaching instead of indoctrinating. Put schools back in the hands of parents and pry them away from administrators whose only function is to expand local union membership. Make schools actually teach stuff that’s relevant to the workplace instead of just passing on students to colleges where they have to take remedial-fricken-English, f’pete’s sake.

    You don’t need to raise the minimum wage if you make students employable and attractive to employers. If you educate them properly, students won’t be having so many children and they won’t need your paltry $100/year (that’s what your stupid $1000 tax credit works out to be – $100/year. Big damn deal, Leftist elistist scum). If you made students more valuable to employers, they wouldn’t be taking those minimum wage jobs after they graduate from high school.

    Maybe if we shut down half of the colleges in this country and only sent people to college who needed to be there, we wouldn’t have so many Philosophy PhDs making important-sounding French-style coffee drinks at Starbucks. Maybe we’d have fewer Psychology graduates stocking shelves at A&P.

    My current job required a college degree, but the skills I learned to perform at this job, I learned in high school – back when high school taught stuff. Why can’t high schools train our kids for jobs instead of teaching them to put condoms on a banana?

    Instead of providing useless jobs at outrageous pay for over-certified teachers, teach our kids to read and write and to be part of a functioning society without all of the Leftist drivel about everybody pooping and some poor child’s two mothers.

    If our schools did their job and educated our children, we wouldn’t be pulling our hair out worrying about job training programs for adults – adults would be smart enough to absorb employer-provided training when they started their new jobs.

    The truth is; we already pay enough money to the Federal goverment to lift Americans from poverty, but it all gets funneled out to “experts” and “non-profits” to “study” the problem. Why do you think the Center for American progress did this study? They’re taking advantage of the Democrat-controlled Congress to siphon off some more money and perpetuate their own useless jobs.

    Apparently, American Progress means “we cleave to the same old failed philosophies – but with a pretty website now”.  And the problem is; we’ve lost two generations to Leftist indoctrination and those generations don’t realize what morons they’ve become.

    EDITOR’S NOTE: I should have said something before, but please read the last line again and recognize how I might apply it to your emails. Sorry, for some of you it’s too late. My email server already sorted you into the moron file.

  • La Shawn Barber’s latest

    I read La Shawn Barber’s Corner almost every morning to get an uncommon dose of common sense to start my day. But today, she’s outdone herself. There’s nothing more to say.

  • Fences make good neighbors

    I’m beginning to wonder what the Left has against walls and fences. Reading the most partisan hack in the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, on the subject of the “gated communities” in Baghdad makes me think that the Left has never liked a fence or wall;

    Basically, we’re turning Baghdad into Belfast.

    This is supposed to be a temporary expedient, a way to tamp down Iraq’s sectarian civil war — in the capital, at least, the ostensible goal of George W. Bush’s fraudulent “surge” policy — by making it harder for the antagonists to get at each other’s throats. The “peace lines” in Belfast, separating Protestants from Catholics, were supposed to be temporary, too. That network of walls was begun in the 1970s.

    The construction of barriers and checkpoints that turn Baghdad neighborhoods into what U.S. officers sardonically call “gated communities” is another sign — as if more evidence were needed — that Bush’s “surge” is nothing more than a maneuver to buy time. His open-ended commitment for U.S. forces to patrol those barriers and guard those checkpoints will become the next president’s problem.

    But the Left is adamantly opposed to walls anywhere, as near as I can tell. Republicans want a wall along our southern border to keep illegal immigrants from infiltrating into our country and then dying of thirst or from bands of roving preditors.

    The Left also oppose the Israelis building a wall to protect themselves from Palestinian baby-killers. And it almost seems to be working.

    If the Left are peace-mongers, as they claim, wouldn’t building protective walls be a reasonable alternative to snipers and armed paramilitary police forces enforcing curfews at the point of a gun? It almost seems reasonable to me.

    During the 60s, 70s and 80s, the Left resigned themselves to the fact that the Communists had erected a deadly barrier across Europe to keep the Soviet population enslaved. The Left continues to tolerate the barrier that slashes the Korean pennisula’s two opposing ideologies. 

    In fact, the Left trembled when Ronald Reagan demanded that Soviet Premier Gorbachov tear down his wall from the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate.  And they lamented the end of history, and the failures of their ideology when that wall finally fell.

    I guess walls are only a good idea when they’re used to preserve Leftist ideology against evil capitalists instead of a bulwark for peace.

    Omar from Iraq the Model (writing on Pajamas Media) gives his thoughts on the walls from an Iraqi point of view – not from a partisan-hack-masquerading-as-a-journalist-point-of-view.

    Maybe Robinson should have taken the time to ask Iraqis what they thought of the walls instead of just going off-cocked against the Administration, specifically, and Republicans, generally, in his usual modus operandi.Â