Thursday, December 30, 2010

Even Nostalgia Isn't what it Used to Be



I know I said that I was done with looking back at 2010 but allow me one last peek.
What was the worst legislative decision of the passing year? The gigantically unpopular ObamaCare. 


And what was the year's best judicial ruling? Federal District Judge Henry Hudson's determination that in enacting ObamaCare, Congress exceeded its constitutional authority.
How about some clapping all 'round for national intelligence director James Clapper? In an ABC News interview, Clapper was asked about Britain's hours-earlier foiling of an al-Qaida plot targeting London Christmas shoppers with multiple suicide bombings. Clapper clearly had no idea what the questioner was talking about, and had to be rhetorically rescued by fellow interviewee John Brennan, the White House chief of counter-terrorism. Raucous applause, please.
And speaking of London, the December weather there and across Europe has been snowy and bitterly cold -- as it has in at least the eastern half of the U.S. 


Say something Al if it’s only "Goodbye".
The year shouldn't be allowed to pass without remarking that Steven Rattner, who oversaw the federal takeover of Chrysler and General Motors for the Obama administration, agreed to pay $6 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission in settlement of federal charges relating to kickbacks at a New York pension fund.
During the year, President Obama termed Fox News "ultimately destructive." Would he deploy the same phrase against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange?
In late October, Juan Williams wound up fired by National Public Radio for saying he gets squeamish when he boards planes with passengers wearing Muslim garb. A gentle man, Williams was characteristically mild. Years earlier, NPRist Nina Totenberg said she hoped the late Sen. Jesse Helms would get AIDS by transfusion. But it's funny how that works. Sweet Nina remains at her post.
It's evidently OK to escalate the rhetoric if you're on the correct ideological side. In the week prior to the November elections, Obama said it is "time to punish our Republican enemies." Earlier in the month, at a fundraiser in West Newton, Mass.,, he said: "Facts and science and argument (do) not seem to be winning...because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared." And there's hardly a conservative or moderate Obama hasn't blamed -- for something.
Imagine the orchestrated outrage if George Bush or any Republican had tossed around harsh language the way Obama does? What's more, imagine the howls and ululations if a Republican lame-duck Congress had failed to fund the budget and had rammed through pet legislation -- as the Pelosi/Reid Congress did in its last desperate days.
Remember when the Left demanded the removal of John Ashcroft as attorney general during the first term of the second Bush? Ashcroft was deemed too devout in his religious beliefs and too conservative in his political views. Comes now Eric Holder, the incumbent attorney general. (1) Holder has dropped voter-intimidation charges in a high-profile case in Philadelphia. (2) He botched the civilian trial of Tanzanian terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, winning just one conviction on 285 counts related to the murder of 224 innocents.
He nevertheless bristles at the very notion of (3) not closing Guantanamo and (4) not trying its inmates in civilian courts. Indeed, these days he seems more inclined to hold prisoners there indefinitely (as the Bush administration did) instead of trying them before military tribunals. And (5) Holder opposes expediting appeals of lower-court rulings on the constitutionality (etc.) of ObamaCare. Here's an idea: Remove Holder.
By the way, of the 598 Guantanamo detainees released as of October, 150 were suspected or confirmed -- in the words of a national intelligence report -- of "re-engaging in terrorist or insurgent activities after transfer."
If head-scratching pols are looking for a way out of the Social Security swamp, Chile has a suggestion. Privatize it. Thirty years ago, on the advice of Nobel economist Milton Friedman, Chile became the first country to privatize its national pension system. Today, Chile's system is rocking along with wild popularity, a 9 percent rate of return (those signing up for U.S. Social Security today will see a negative return), and pension debt at just 6 percent of GNP (compared with 100 percent in the U.S.).
Oh, and Chicago's three-member election commission concluded unanimously over the holidays that while Rahm Emanuel lived in Washington as an advisor to Barack Obama, he remained a Chicago resident in spirit. That way, the commission ruled, Emanuel may legally run for mayor without tangling with any troublesome residency issues. Perhaps the commission was bowing to the inevitable, given that Emanuel currently leads the mayoral field by 32 points -- and the commissioners, you know, covet their posts. Whatever. It's but the latest example of The Chicago Way.

Happy New Year and I really mean it this time.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The People's Flag is Deepest Red ...............


When you’ve hung around with so many people who idealize communism and socialism and loath the United States, you tend to develop an inner-Soviet voice. Obama sure has.
He let it slip with Joe the Plumber and Obama’s talk of wealth redistribution.
 He let it slip when declaring that “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money”. He’s now let it slip again.
His campaign farce, “Organizing for America”, sent out an email noting that Obama declared the United States Chamber of Commerce “a threat to our democracy.”
Why would the President of the United States want to slander 3 million American companies, and their tens of millions of employees?

Why would he assume them evil enough to subvert the law deliberately like this? Is the man who got his political start in the home of a terrorist, who spent twenty years worshipping in the church of a man who preached contempt for America, whose childhood mentor was a communist radical, and who shows no more understanding of basic economics than a cliff notes reading of Das Kapital . . . projecting?

He has now been echoed by his whole campaign team in an organized character assassination attempt with the Center for American Progress against the Chamber of Commerce.

Why?
The Chamber of Commerce accepts money from some foreign corporations that have American business interests. The Chamber has been quick to point out that it keeps those funds segregated and does not use them for political advocacy.
But there are two larger points worth noting. First and foremost, if this is the standard Barack Obama is using, then Obama himself is a threat to our democracy. Why?
Barack Obama is the biggest recipient of British Petroleum dollars. British Petroleum is a foreign corporation. If that is the standard the Chamber of Commerce is held to, Barack Obama should hold himself to that standard.

But there’s more.
Back in 2008, the Washington Post documented the ease by which foreigners and others could give the Obama’s Presidential campaign. The campaign, in fact, boasted of it.

In addition to accepting pre-paid credit cards, the Obama campaign turned off the processing mechanism that verified only United States citizens were giving to his campaign.

As commentators noted back in 2008, the Obama campaign turned off the Address Verification Service mechanism to the campaign website, allowing virtually anyone to give to the campaign.

In addition to this being another matter that Daryl Issa will have to investigate once the Republicans are in control of the House, the bigger issue is that several in the blogosphere back in 2008 knew of people living overseas who gave to the Obama campaign just to see if it was possible. Yes, Europeans gave a few bucks just to see if they could. Of those I heard of who did this, I never heard of any of them getting a refund.
In other words, unlike the Chamber of Commerce, the Obama campaign most likely accepted into its campaign coffers donations from foreign individuals and never returned the money.
But there is a larger issue here too.
The President of the United States has taken to the bully pulpit to declare an institution as American as mom, apple pie, and flags on Main Street to be a threat to our democracy.
Were Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Mark Levin or Glenn Beck to say anything of the like, the left would dismiss them and say they were no longer worthy of being taken seriously. How then can we take Barack Obama seriously?
Very easily — Barack Obama is the President of the United States. For him to call an organization instrumental to American commerce and business a ‘threat to our democracy” should trouble all of us. He and his administration have shown no ability to get the economy going again. Every advice from the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and other supporters of the entrepreneurial class have been rebuffed.
To now declare one of the few groups that has the bona fides to get the economy going again a “threat to our democracy” is as extremist as anything he and his goons would accuse conservative talk radio of saying.
It also shows this President is out of ideas and is falling back on the Soviet rhetoric his mentors of long ago all embraced.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The Promises Obama Wants You To Keep Forgetting


For a very long time, the start of the New Year has been a customary occasion to look forward and, as the two-faced Roman god Janus reminds us, to look backwards as well.

Now before my liberal readers yell that I’m about to equate Janus and Obama, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

But, in keeping with this retrospective season, let’s look back not just one year but two as, for once in my life, I’ll allow Obama a little slack in order to come through.

In early December, a combative President Obama challenged reporters at a press conference: "Look at what I promised during the campaign. There's not a single thing that I've said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven't gotten it done yet, I'm still trying to do it."

Given the president's challenge, and the fact that we're about to reach the halfway mark of his administration, let’s take a look at his campaign pledges. As it turns out, there are plenty of clearly stated promises, in areas big and small, that Obama has not kept.
A few broken promises, like Obama's pledge to shutter the prison at Guantánamo Bay, are well known. And we also know about the absolute to allow the decade-long tax rates to expire or to water down the Patriot Act. None of those happened and, in fact, the latter was toughened.
And there was not word one from the liberal Left. And now I’m really on a tear.
Do you remember when the price of gas was approaching $2 a gallon about 4 years ago? The liberal Left and their mouthpieces in the alphabet media skewered President Bush with the accusation that he was lining the pockets of “his buddies in ‘Big Oil’” Where are those same strident voices now predictions say $5 a gallon is on the horizon.
But I digress and there are plenty more campaign promises that have disappeared down the memory hole -- and that Obama would prefer to stay there. Here is a sampling of five: 
"State of the World" speech:
In an October 2007 speech on foreign policy, candidate Obama offered this novel promise: "I'll lead a new era of openness. I'll give an annual 'State of the World' address to the American people in which I lay out our national security policy."
President Obama has delivered scores of formal speeches since January 2009, but he simply never followed through on the "State of the World" idea. 
Back to the Moon
Candidate Obama's space policy -- an issue that is closely watched in the crucial state of Florida -- had this to say: "[Obama] endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars."
After the campaign, returning to the Moon faded from Obama's agenda. Finally, in the 2011 budget, the administration completely abandoned the idea, calling the NASA Moon program "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies." The budget said the Moon program had drawn funding away from the more important areas of "robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations."
Double the Peace Corps:  
 In his plan for "Renewing U.S. Leadership in the Americas," candidate Obama promised: "Barack Obama will double the Peace Corps to 16,000 by its 50th anniversary in 2011 and push Congress to fully fund this expansion, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean."

So what actually happened? According to Politifact, the administration's 2011 budget proposal called for a modest increase in funding for the popular program. But the promise to double the corps has gone out the window. The 2011 budget calls for the Peace Corps to reach just 11,000 volunteers by 2016, a lower goal set much farther off. 
"Sunlight before signing":
Obama's campaign ethics plan included this easy-to-keep pledge: "Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."
While that's the sort of thing that excited good government advocates, it's pretty clear that Obama was never really serious about this one. He broke it in the first 10 days of his administration, signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act without the five-day Web comment period. Since then he has broken it repeatedly, on pieces of legislation such as the credit card reform bill. 
Immigration bill in one year
In a May 2008 interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos, Obama said of comprehensive immigration reform: "I cannot guarantee that it is going to be in the first 100 days. But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible."
That's the only one I'm grateful he lied about   
Need I say more?.

Happy New Year

Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas


The Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has voted 212-206 to ban the Obama administration from spending any funds to try terrorism suspects in civilian court instead of military commissions. Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly all miffed and vexed.
Holder's knots will tighten if the Senate's continuing funding resolution also includes such a provision. The Democrats' $1.1 trillion dollar spending bill that was just killed included a section that prohibited expending any funds for transporting foreign terrorist detainees like KSM to the U.S.
Since Congress failed to pass a new budget for 2011, the House passed a continuing resolution on Dec. 8 to continue funding the government next year. Somebody on the House Appropriations Committee, to Holder’s supposed shock and dismay, inserted a provision that prohibits federal funds from being used to prosecute terrorist detainees in federal criminal courts, according to Susan Crabtree writing for The Hill. 
When Democrat members learned about the trial provision, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer went into damage control mode. Pelosi's office did not return a call for comment, according to Crabtree.
Holder called it “an unprecedented grab of executive authority by Congress,” according to Crabtree. ”We have been unable to identify any parallel … in the history of our nation in which Congress has intervened to prohibit the prosecution of particular persons or crimes,” Holder opined.
It’s about subject matter, venue, and funding of federal courts, Mr. Holder. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide on those. You can look it up.
Holder should have seen it coming after the House Armed Services Committee unanimously approved  a defense authorization bill last May that banned funding to build or modify any facility inside the U.S. to house Guantánamo detainees.
Public outrage had caused Holder to rethink his 2009 decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the confessed mastermind of the 9/11 act of war on America, and his co-conspirators in New York City a few blocks from Ground Zero. Holder has repeatedly promised for nearly a year that he’s a few weeks away from announcing his decision.
But then, Holder has been busy with other monumental tasks such as a trip to Switzerland, where he failed to persuade the World Cup Soccer Committee to choose the United States as the venue for either the 2018 or 2022 games. Instead, Russia will host in 2018 and the paradise known as Qatar is host in 2022. Maybe Holder was really trying to convince the Swiss to let him house and try KSM and company in an Alpine ski village.
On Dec. 11, he was off to reassure a San Francisco Muslim group that he wouldn’t let the FBI entice Muslim youngsters into becoming terrorists. Who thinks Holder’s date book will be filled up speaking to Christian and Jewish groups worried that their kids can be talked into committing mass murder?
Holder created his catch-22 when he ordered the charges dismissed against KSM and his co-conspirators in the military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As a result, they are still in custody without charges filed in any court anywhere, which makes a successful prosecution a bigger problem for Holder, who has repeatedly wrapped up the KSM cabal in the U.S. Constitution.
So there sat the befuddled Holder facing the wrath of his base on his left and the majority of Americans on his right who don’t want KSM and his band of butchers tried in the United States.
And what to his wondering eyes should appear but the Democrat leadership in the House so enraged by Obama’s tax deal with the Republicans that they turned on Obama and saved Holder’s briefs in the process?
Is Holder not smart enough to get it, or is he just faking outrage? Why wouldn’t he cherish the chance to put the blame on Mame when the anti-war Left goes ballistic if he decides to try KSM and his co-conspirators by military commissions in Gitmo, or, if he concedes that they are unlawful enemy combatants who can be held without trial?
Crabtree’s column sounds like Democrats have placed Obama on their naughty Christmas list for cutting deals with Republicans on the House resolution. Take for example, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.): “This is a lack of leadership on the part of Obama. “I don’t know where Obama is on this or anything else. They’re AWOL.”

Altogether now, let’s sum it up with some seasonal style:

’Twas right before Christmas, when all through the House
All the Democrats were stirring at the White House Mouse;
The payback was hung by leadership with care,
In hopes that the Dems wouldn’t give it a stare;
Holder was nestled all snug in his bed,
While visions of terrorists danced in his head;
And Pelosi in her ’kerchief, and Hoyer in his cap,
Had just settled their brains for Obama’s trap,
When out on the floor there arose such a clatter,
They sprang from their beds to see what was the matter.
Away to the window they flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
They heard someone say, 'ere he drove out of sight,
“Where the *%^$  is Obama on this cold winter’s night?”

The last time we saw him, he was hiding behind Bill Clinton. 

Well he had to 'cos Michelle is out of town.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Pink Berets?




I know all about spin and I learned it very early at Western Road Junior School. As if by unspoken fiat, one day each Spring the juvenile jocks stopped playing football and dug out the cricket bats while  the less athletic stopped playing marbles and brought their whips and spinning tops for recess. And I was good at the latter and held the record for keeping my top spinning for a good 15 minutes.

However, my juvenile prowess pales into obscurity when compared with Obama’s spin doctors.

Headlines in liberal newspapers and the leaders on the alphabet networks trumpet the news of the reemergence of Obama as “the Comeback Kid”. The issue of course is his “success” with the lame-duck Congress in passing “ground breaking” legislation.

Well for a start there was START, the arms limitation treaty. Would someone tell me how taking shells out of the magazine of my firearm makes me safer? And that’s what it comes down to because there is no verification that the other side is doing the same thing.

 

In fact, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President and puppet of Vladimir Putin said, “Don’t expect a reduction of weapons soon” and he could have added but didn’t, “If at all”.

And note that the treaty only addresses strategic weaponry and does nothing about those of a tactical nature where Russia holds vast numerical superiority. In other words, we’ve agreed to a reduction where we hold the advantage but Russia will not have to reduce where they hold the edge.

Sounds a one-sided deal to me and the one side is not our side.

Now we come to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. For a start what a slap in the mouth for Clinton, that doyen of the Left, who came up with the idea of DADT in the first place back in 1996?

It will be interesting to see what happens to this new policy when he’s had the opportunity to caucus with military leaders. We already know that the Commandant of the Marine Corps is implacably opposed. Now the other service branches may be more prone to fold because of political pressure and correctness but that doesn’t mean they actually approve.

So what next, coed showers? The rank and file won’t get a say in the subject nor should they because you don’t run an effective military as a democracy. However, they will have a say when it’s time to reenlist. It will be interesting to see what happens to those rates but, on the other hand, it won’t matter as I’m sure that the lines are already forming at recruitment offices with gays and lesbians who are free at last to flock to the colors. 

OK, it’s now time to turn to the greatest of Obama’s “political triumphs”.

You would have to be a latter day Rip Van Winkle to have missed this one; namely the Tax Rate legislation. At almost every speech and at almost every press conference for the last 2 years, Obama, threatened or promised to allow the Bush era tax reductions to ride off into the sunset. Even on the campaign trail before that, Obama sang very same song again and again and again.

Then, less than a month ago, he reversed his rhetorical course and was all for it. It wasn’t that the new House had been sworn in yet. He still had Democrat majorities in the Senate and the House. So why was that not enough?

Could it be that even he began to see that every policy he learned from Keynes or Chomsky or Alinsky or Jeremiah Wright didn’t work?

Nah!

He’s out of ideas and he’ll try anything.

But OK, I’ll give the Left their moment in the Sun for now. Let’s see how Obama does a few months from now when, if the 112th Congress does the job it was sent to do, gives him a fight. The petulant little boy will pout and stamp his presidential foot because nobody ever said “No” before!

And let’s hope and pray that the new Congress has the testicular fortitude to say just that.

By the way, despite my prowess as a 9 year old, I still don’t do whips.

Chains?               

Make me an offer!



Wednesday, December 22, 2010

There's no fooling Winston


As you wait for Santa to make his annual dive down your chimney, here’s a question to help pass the time. 

How can anyone take Obama seriously when he says he will focus on the deficit in the next two years, seeing as his economic and social philosophies dictate that he continue to spend our money like a drunken floozy? And that in itself is a slur on floozies everywhere without regard to their degree of sobriety

Even though he’s put it off for a couple of years Obama is still intent on punishing "the wealthy," producers, and small businesses even at the expense of hurting everyone else (for example, with his insistence on increasing capital gains tax rates despite acknowledging it would decrease revenues), nationalizing health care despite its now-proven severe fiscal shortfalls, handing out $50 billion more in stimulus money though the first $868 billion was a bust, and continuing his planned trillion-dollar-plus deficits as far as the eye can see, how can anyone believe he's interested in reducing the deficit and national debt?

Yet The Associated Press began a recent story with this lead: "Preparing for political life after a bruising election, President Barack Obama will put greater emphasis on fiscal discipline."

Duh! How could he put less emphasis on it than he already has? But we must read on to find out why the AP believes he will give "fiscal discipline" more emphasis. Answer: It will be "a nod to a nation sick of spending and to a Congress poised to become more Republican, conservative and determined to stop him."

In other words, because he will be forced to, not because he wants to or believes in it. Isn't this a tacit admission that even Obama's deficit commission is a sham designed to give him political cover? The commission's report will be coming out eventually when they can agree on its content, and it will give him an opportunity to seize the deficit issue, as if he's been agonizing over it the whole time and approaching the issue deliberately by seeking the counsel of a "bipartisan" group of experts.

We mustn't be fooled by any of this. We've already heard Obama's defiant words on the subject in clearly refusing to accept responsibility for the deficits, the debt and the miserable state of the economy, for which Dubya will always be to blame, even if things are 10 times worse than when Dubya turned over the gavel to "O."

In fact, he barely acknowledges there's a problem, other than the public's failure to possess the sophistication and presence of mind to appreciate his superior prescriptions. Obama's take is that despite tough economic times, let alone the exploding debt, things would have been much worse if he hadn't implemented his bankrupting agenda.

And he's sticking to his story -- just as he's sticking to his lies about Obamacare being deficit-neutral and not interfering with people's choice of doctors and insurers as evidence floods in contradicting both of these whoppers and many others.

So, if Obama does appear to pivot abruptly following the elections, are we going to be foolish enough to believe he has had an epiphany about the failures and recklessness of his Keynesian exploits when he just got through saying the problem is not with the economy, but in our perception?

Let's not forget that Obama possesses a political perspective that utterly rejects the reality that command-control economic experiments fail to produce wealth but instead spread misery every time they are tried. Be honest; can you imagine Obama or his fellow travelers nodding their heads in agreement to this gem of wisdom from Sir Winston Churchill, whose bust Obama drop-kicked back to Britain: "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery"?

If Democrats were truly planning on changing course, why would they be conspiratorially alleging still that the Republicans big win in the congressional elections, was because they "bought their way to power with a flood of spending by outside groups," as suggested by Politico?

Politico says that what began as Obama's strategy to rally his base with allegations about foreign donations through the Chamber of Commerce and the like has now "morphed" into "a main talking point to explain, and fend off, the recriminations over the brutal election night."

That doesn't sound as if they've learned their (economic) lesson. It's all about politics and how they can spin their losses.

Republicans would be well-advised to keep that in mind as Obama pretends to hit the reset button on "bipartisanship." They mustn't fall for it and must not be deterred from reinstating the people's will.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

An Unconvincing "Truth"


The Mexican standoff has ended in Cancun. While some will certainly see Cancun’s redistributionist gabfest as a "failure" of "the world community" to address the "imminent disaster" of Anthropogenic Global Warming. I don’t share their pessimism.
Cancun may have been a failure to bureaucrats and inhabitants of the “climate crisis” Looking Glass world. Personally, I view the "failure" as a success, for it gives us an opportunity to understand what we must do to solve the real problem of two billion people still living on less than two dollars a day – and to take action. But first, we must answer two fundamental questions.
1) What hard, factual, empirical evidence do we have that humans are causing dangerous global warming, perilous climate change or global climate disruption?
Not computer models, assertions, assumptions, questionable surface temperature data or phony consensus. Actual evidence. If the alarmist camp has that evidence, it must share not just its pasteurized, homogenized, massaged data and conclusions – but its raw data, methodologies and computer codes. And it must be willing to discuss and debate its claims and evidence with people who are not convinced we are causing a planetary climate emergency.
2) How can we make plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide emissions RISE?
From 1900 (and even earlier), life expectancies, living standards, human health and all other key indicators of quality of life in the developed world have been improving. Since at least 1970, air and water quality have steadily improved, after decades when they arguably had declined, as the developed world built sanitation, transportation, manufacturing and other infrastructure that made these improvements possible.
In recent decades, China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies have followed this lead – and greatly improved their citizens’ lives. But meanwhile, in the impoverished Third world, life expectancies, living standards and other basic indicators of quality of life have remained awful … or gotten worse.
In every case where people’s quality of life has improved, they owe that change to one thing above all others: a massive increase in productivity through the use of technology – and thus to the abundant, reliable, affordable energy that makes that technology possible. In the vast majority of cases, that has meant access to hydrocarbons and electricity. Even today, with nuclear and hydroelectric power making huge contributions, hydrocarbons remain king. And because of that, people in developed nations today live better than even kings and queens did a century ago.
Today, China is providing a model for the rest of the developing world to follow. Ignoring the hypocritical calls from the West to rein in its growth, China has lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty and given them far better quality of life – and far more opportunities – by increasing the use of oil, coal and natural gas, and accepting many tenets of the free market.
We should be thankful that these talks to replace Kyoto are failing. Kyoto failed and with good reason: given our current technology (including expensive, land-intensive, unreliable wind and solar power), it is impossible to provide a healthy economy and affordable, reasonable quality of life without using oil, coal and natural gas. (Nuclear power would certainly help, but Greens oppose that too.)
Canada did indeed sign the Kyoto Protocol – but then it wisely proceeded to abandon any attempt to comply. The Canadian economy and population were growing, in one of the coldest nations on Earth, and to restrict our economy the way Kyoto demands would severely hamper our ability to feed people, keep them warm, and keep our country prosperous.
As to “technology transfer” agreements, many talk about “incentivizing innovation” to “encourage” and “facilitate” transfers. However, UN bureaucrats do not realize that innovation cannot be generated by transferring taxpayer and consumer money to politically favored corporations. This leads only to mal-investment – the forced movement of scarce financial, material and creative resources into unproductive pursuits, like industrial wind farms. Too often, these “transfers” have meant loans, subsidies and mandates from Ottawa, Washington, Berlin, Madrid, the IMF and the World Bank, to pay politically correct and connected corporations to install expensive equipment. This is corporate welfare, nothing else.
If the EU and its member states want to "transfer" technology to the developing world, they should do it the old fashioned way – through free trade, fair trade, a fair exchange of money for the best, most efficient, lowest polluting modern technology available. They should lower barriers and let developed countries trade freely with the people of Africa and other poor regions, open EU markets to their agricultural and other products, and trade with them for what they want and need.
When it comes to deforestation and environmental protection, once again embracing the natural human “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another" would solve many problems. Taking care of the environment isn't cheap, and there is a connection that is not often noted by the greens: the richest nations also have the cleanest environments.
We in the developed world no longer need to cut down trees and destroy wildlife habitats to cook our food. We no longer endure the energy poverty – and consequent lung and intestinal diseases, malnutrition, misery and premature death – that infect billions of poor people all over the world.
There is a direct correlation between the quality of life that a country can provide to its residents and its per capita CO2 emissions. Trying to force an unneeded transition to renewable energy technologies that are not ready for prime time (and are not needed for “climate change prevention” reasons), in the name of ideologically driven goals, will lead only to unnecessary hardship for people in developed countries. It will perpetuate the economic and energy poverty, misery, disease and early death that still plague billions of people around the world who live on less than two dollars a day.
The United States and Canada need to get back to what they have done best over the last 100 years: providing a model of what the free human spirit can accomplish, if given the opportunity. In other words, guide and help poor nations to build a prosperous society that can lift all boats and all people, by providing opportunities to everyone. If we happen to create a little CO2 along the way, then so be it.
Humans are part of nature. The use of hydrocarbons is part of nature. Carbon dioxide emissions are a vital fertilizer that helps food crops and all other plants grow better and faster and with greater resistance to drought and disease, thereby making ALL life on earth possible.
We are the rational animal, and our creativity and ingenuity should not be stifled – nor should anyone seek to condemn half of humanity to a lives that shackle their ability to make full use of their gifts. Instead of worrying about carbon dioxide, we should ask: How can we make better use of the greatest resource we have yet discovered – hydrocarbons?
We should not ask, How we can reduce our CO2 emissions? Rather, we should ask, How we can raise CO2 emissions in the Third World, by giving them better access to the vast energy and opportunity stored in hydrocarbons – and thereby reducing their need to chop down forest habitats and burn trees in dangerous, polluting open fires?
The best commitment the United States and Canada can make is to promise that they will do all they can to relegate the Kyoto protocol to the dustbin of history, leave UN bureaucrats to tilt at windmills – and help all still impoverished people achieve their hopes, their dreams, their true destinies.
Even Mother Nature herself was determined to have her say about current climatic trends for, during the conference, she served up several consecutive days of the coldest weather seen in Cancun for decades. And this was just the latest in a whole series of her statements whenever and wherever these atmospheric clowns meet.
Cynics are calling it “The Gore Effect”.


Friday, December 17, 2010

With apologies to Dr. King


I’m a dreamer. I can’t help it. Just like my son, I've seen "The Lion King" too many times not to be a visionary. I have many dreams, desires and visions. Here’s one thing I’d like to see, a dream I’ve been having lately: I’d like to see a nationwide tsunami of ladies equipped to the teeth with the physical prowess and the firearm capability to kill any and all would-be murderers and rapists should such creeps ever accost them..
I have a dream!
A dream where girls and women can walk in utter confidence in the world.  A dream where women have solid assurance that they can and will serve some ham-fisted tool his own scrotum if need be.
I have a dream!
A dream where instead of reading about a cute college coed left dead and naked out in a vacant lot or bloated and floating in a river, the story reads: “dead jackass found double-tapped and dead on the curb as his soul wings its way to Hades—all because he messed with the wrong mama.”
A dream where it’s normal for girls to know a mixture of martial arts. A dream where they can shoot golf ball sized groups with their .38 at 15 feet. A dream where they have a BS detector that’s so sensitive they can read people and environments with godlike clarity within a nanosecond.
I have a dream!
A dream where the Joran van der Sloots and all the other bullying creeps in the midst of us live forever in fear. A dream where parents will raise their daughters to be sweet and deadly dames.
I have a dream where if some moron in the name of his stupid religion ever abuses his wife or daughter and G-d doesn’t strike him dead on the spot, that his wife or daughter will. Okay, maybe that’s too extreme. How about put him in an irreversible coma?
I have a dream!
A dream where the tide turns in the news cycle, and we start hearing reports of murderous men going to an early grave instead of sending a good girl to hers. A dream where if a girl tells her buddies that a guy is bothering her, her friends scare the living daylights out of him.
I have a dream!
How did this dream come about? This holy vision came from G-d in direct response to my prayers over the cultural nightmare women in the U.S. and elsewhere live with now.
In addition to G-d birthing this vision within me, another factor gave rise to this would-be dream world of mine: I just realized that protective fathers, brothers, friends and uncles aren’t omnipresent and therefore all girls everywhere have to rely upon themselves as their own first line of defense.
Yes, since their gallant male counterparts can’t be everywhere at all times to render aid, we’ve got make certain that our babies know how to leave a bad guy severely inoperative and, if need be, kill him all by their lonesome. That is my definition of “girl power.” This is my dream: all girls of every conceivable stripe having the attitude, skill, and force to pulverize a felonious punk.
I’d like to see the following:
• One million girls flooding into martial art classes
• One million girls getting handgun training
• One million girls purchasing their own piece and getting licensed to carry it
• One million girls getting a heavy dose of common sense to avoid dangerous scenarios as much as possible
This concludes my heavenly vision.
I know this not a pleasant topic to contemplate; however, this is the world we live in, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed.
Think about how many girls would be alive and pursuing their desires today … if only they had known how to fight. And think of all the punks who would be in jail or worse … if only their victims had known how to immobilize the imbeciles.
The world is a violent place and liberal hand-wringing cannot change that. Not even Imam Obama can change it and that’s saying something.
So to all fathers, one of the greatest things you can give your girl is the ability to shoot—to rock in a hard place—should the occasion ever arise.

And Yes, I have a reason to post this today but the reason is private.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

"Are you Serious?" asks Pelosi


Yes Nancy, you bet we are and so is U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson who earlier this week, ruled that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as "Obamacare," unconstitutionally imposes a requirement that everyone carry health insurance or be fined for not doing so, has placed the law on legal life support. 


Ultimately it will be up to the U.S. Supreme Court to either pull the plug on this unaffordable monstrosity, or uphold it and put taxpayers in the equivalent of a persistent vegetative economic state.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed the lawsuit challenging the law's "individual mandate" provision that requires all citizens to buy health insurance or, beginning in 2014, pay a penalty. More than 20 states have similar lawsuits pending. Cuccinelli said in a news conference in Richmond, Va., that the individual mandate is the "common thread" running through all of the legal challenges. He is asking that the Supreme Court take the case immediately under its "Rule 11," which states that a case must be "of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this Court."
Cuccinelli believes the case meets that test. So does Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who quickly asked the Department of Justice for an expedited appeal to the Supreme Court. Given Attorney General Eric Holder's glacial approach to trying terrorists and opposition to the ruling by the White House, don't expect Holder to move with any great alacrity on ACA.
Instead, from Obama on down, every minion mouths the same pablum about the equivalence between the ACA requirement and car insurance. This is clearly specious for lots of reasons because, for a start, car insurance mandates are set by the states not by the Feds. And the last time I checked everyone is not required to own a car.
But let’s play along with this thought a little while longer and equate the ACA and car insurance. Does this mean that, for example, many residents of Manhattan who don’t own a car now be required to buy insurance for it?  
Judge Hudson is the first judge to strike down the law. Other judges in Virginia and Michigan have upheld it. Cuccinelli says the next state challenge to be ruled on is Florida, which may come soon.
Even if the Supreme Court disagrees with Judge Hudson and strikes down the law, few will notice any effect, as its major provisions, including the individual mandate, won't take effect for three years. That leaves plenty of time for newly-empowered Republicans to draft legislation that reflects the type of health care reform they have proposed; one based more on the free market and individual choice, not top-down government mandates. Obama is likely to veto such a Republican plan, but congressional and presidential candidates in 2012 could make the issue central to their campaigns. Public opinion has swung against Obamacare, as more people come to understand what's in the law and its negative consequences.
In a statement shortly after the ruling, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) got to the heart of what bothers most opponents of ACA: "Obamacare's 'individual mandate' always rested on the absurd premise that the Commerce Clause empowered the federal government to regulate Americans' decisions not to engage in commercial activity. Adoption of such an argument would have vested the federal government with the power to regulate virtually every aspect of Americans' lives..."
King is correct. If the federal government can get away with ordering individuals to buy health insurance based on interstate commerce laws, it could order us to submit to any other practice it deems for our good based on similar misinterpretations of the Constitution. Such a course would further erode our liberties and move us closer to dictatorship and away from principles the Constitution was written to protect.
Should Judge Hudson's ruling be upheld on appeal, a significant corner will have been turned in the Left's march toward a socialist state. Polls, as reflected in last month's election, show that a majority of the public has grown tired of ceding too much power to government, no matter which party runs it.
Growing numbers of us have awakened to the misappropriation of funds we taxpayers have given Washington. It is time not only to stop them, but to begin reversing the process with legislative sunset laws, periodic reauthorization of all government programs and agencies, a reform of the tax code and lower tax rates that will return power to the people where it belongs and where the Founders intended it to remain.