The Heritage Foundation brings us “The Debt Limit Made Simple. This video takes you to the United Estates–a gated community in sunny Florida–to help you understand the impact of Congress decision to annually raise our nations debt limit without addressing the out-of-control spending that keeps us buried in debt.
Society/Culture
Cuz Animals Are People Too, Ya Know?
-By Warner Todd Huston
I’ve always been amazed at liberals when it comes to their absurd penchant for acting as if animals are somehow just like people. This anthropomorphizing of the animal kingdom is fine if you are talking with kids, reading fairy tales, or creating entertainment, but when you are talking like adults about science or generally about animals there is no place for it. Animals are not people. It’s just that simple.
But apparently we can’t tell that to the left-wingers at NPR because on Dec. 22 on the Morning Edition program we got a pretty silly story about baboons and their “mystical moment” that beggers description.
The story is about a troop of 30 baboons in Kenya that was being observed by professor Barbara Smuts who was studying them for several months. As it happened, one day as Smuts was following the troop back to its sleeping area, the whole troops stopped dead in its tracks.
Here is how NPR described the incident:
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Cuz Animals Are People Too, Ya Know?”
Surprise: Obama Springs to Action With Federal Cash for Alabama
-By Warner Todd Huston
Tropical Storm Ida happened well over a month ago, almost two now. But regardless, the great father in Washington has generously opened up the federal purse to help those struggling folks that lost so much to that storm. The devastation was so bad that USA Today said of the storm, “Tropical Storm Ida slogged ashore in the area in November with heavy rains but left relatively little damage.”
Huh? Wait a minute? If the storm wasn’t so bad, why is the Obama Administration suddenly, almost two months later, making a show of sending federal disaster money to Alabama?
Oh, wait. Maybe this is why…
Rep. Griffith of Alabama leaves Democrats for Republicans
Freshman Rep. Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) switched his affiliation to the Republican Party on Tuesday, saying he could “no longer align myself with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country.”
Hmmm. Maybe Obama is trying to bribe the left over Democrats of Alabama with federal “disaster” cash in order to make sure no more of them jump into Representative Griffith’s boat?
What else could explain this quixotic largess but bribery?
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Surprise: Obama Springs to Action With Federal Cash for Alabama”
Idiot We Call Senator Makes Fool of Self
-By Warner Todd Huston
Seat warmer Roland Burris, the doddering Illinois pol that bought his Senate seat from the criminal Governor that now sits awaiting to be sent to jail wanted to give the Senate some good cheer today during the socialist helathcare debate.
Burrie thought maybe a poem would help bring the Senate together in its hour of bickering…
… so much for the congeniality of the Senate, eh? This creep thought he’d use the Christmas spirit for partisan name calling and vitriol.
What a jerk.
But my friend Moe Lane had a better version that trades tit for tat…
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Idiot We Call Senator Makes Fool of Self”
The Fire ‘Em All Approach to Voting is Just Silly
-By Warner Todd Huston
Many good, honest conservatives want to fire all of Congress. One of the latest efforts is a website called goooh.com (as in GetOutOfOurHouse.com). Believe me, I understand the feeling. Congress has miserably failed to satisfy the voters. They’ve been arrogant, they’ve spent more time accumulating personal wealth than legislating, they’ve casually ignored the entirety of the Constitution, they’ve lied, stolen and become so filled with hubris that even when they stand silent people assume they are lying. Yes, I get it when people say that we should “fire ’em all.” But unfortunately the righteousness of the populist anger doesn’t make the sentiment the right prescription to cure what ails our nation.
Let’s be clear here, this contemporary disgust with Congress is in no way unusual. The fact of the matter is that you can go back to any time in our nation’s history and find that the same anti-Congressional sentiment abounded. The assumption that the current sad state of affairs in Congress is completely new is simply an ahistorical, ill-informed concept.
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The Fire ‘Em All Approach to Voting is Just Silly”
Kwanzaa Created by a Rapist and Torturer?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Every year I post a pre-Christmas piece on the farce that is Kwanzaa. This year will be no exception. Note, some of the newspaper articles I quote are several years old so some may no longer be online.
Each year, with the onset of Christmas, we are treated to another gauzy, fluff piece about how great Kwanzaa is by yet another PC spewing newspaper columnist. This year, among many others, we find aggrandizement such as the Progressive’s “Kwanzaa is more relevant than ever in recession,” the Chattanooga Times Free Press with theirs titled, “Common ground,” or the one from the Providence Journal headlined, “Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah brighten even the darkest season of the year.”
Several years ago, the Houston Chronicle got in the act with a piece by Leslie Casimir titled “Learning about Kwanzaa from the holiday’s creator.” This one, though, was a bit off the usual track of the how-great-is-Kwanzaa theme because this particular piece celebrated the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana Karenga, himself. So, instead of merely celebrating this manufactured holiday Casimir amazingly made a hero of the rapist, race monger and violent thug who created it!
Casimir waxed a’glow about how wonderful Maulana Karenga is and her column found a gullible parent who, with kid in tow, went to see the man at a local community center.
Kwanzaa Created by a Rapist and Torturer?”
Googleopoly V — Why the FTC Should Block Google-AdMob
-By Scott Cleland
Below is the abstract of the latest white paper in my five-part “Googleopoly” series of antitrust white papers. The full white paper is at this link and at www.googleopoly.net.
Googleopoly V* — Why the FTC Should Block Google-AdMob
The Top Ten Reasons Why Google-AdMob Would “Substantially Lessen Competition”
Abstract: A Google acquisition of AdMob would eliminate Google’s only substantial rival platform in mobile in-application advertising and catapult Google from an estimated 25% share to over 75% share of this strategic gatekeeper market for monetizing mobile Internet applications. Combined with Google’s search advertising monopoly and dominance of mobile search advertising, Google’s acquisition of AdMob, “the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace,” would likely tip the broader mobile advertising marketplace from a competitive to a monopoly trajectory. In short, the AdMob acquisition threatens to foreclose competition and facilitate monopoly in a strategic gatekeeper market essential to the Internet economy, which would harm: consumers, developers, advertisers, publishers, smart-phone manufacturers, and broadband providers.
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Googleopoly V — Why the FTC Should Block Google-AdMob”
The Lobbying Army in Congress for Healthcare
The Chicago Tribune has an excellent resource reporting the number of lobbyists that are involved in the healthcare debate as it winds through Congress.
For instance, did you know that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev.) has 13 of his former staff members now working as lobbyists for the healthcare industry? Our own Senator, Dick Durbin (D, Ill.) who is also the Majority Whip, has 8 of his former staffers lobbying for the healthcare industry and GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has seen 5 of his staffers quit to lobby for healthcare.
The webpage is interactive and you can search by lawmaker and committee. You can also search by client and download all the data.
It is some very interesting info that you should check out.
The information was assembled by the Trib staff and the Medill News Service of the Northwestern University School of Journalism.
Cokie Roberts Proves She is a Liar
-By Warner Todd Huston
I am finding it increasingly impossible to discuss current politics without pointing out that Democrats and liberals are simply a pack of liars and “journalist” Cokie Roberts fits quite neatly into this category for what she said about the healthcare debate on ABC’s This Week Sunday morning talk show.
As Brent Baker of Newsbusters reported on December 20, Cokie Roberts was all aflutter over the “Christmas gift” that is the Senate healthcare bill. But her characterizing this anti-American piece of legislation as a “Christmas gift” isn’t the lie. After all, when you want America destroyed like Cokie obviously does, then this bill is, indeed, a sort of gift.
No, here is what made her out to be a liar.
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Cokie Roberts Proves She is a Liar”
Professor: Say, Let’s Pardon a Domestic Terrorist
-By Warner Todd Huston
CUNY Graduate Center professor David S. Reynolds has an idea. He wants to pardon an American criminal that is a known murderer and fanatic and who led a life that was steadily radicalized by an extreme religious ideology. This domestic terrorist even went so far as to attempt to start a war inside the USA and advocated for American citizens to be killed in their homes for not seeing things his way.
No, Reynolds is not hoping to pardon Islamic terrorist Nidal Hasan, though being a professor of one of our wonderful universities it would not be surprising if he should. No, the domestic terrorist that Reynolds wants pardoned is abolitionist hero John Brown, he of pre-Civil War history.
For those that may not remember their civil war era history, John Brown tried to incite a slave insurrection in Virginia but ended up corralled in a firehouse at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. At the time, Harper’s Ferry housed a federal weapons arsenal that Brown hoped to use to arm his insurrectionists. His plan failed and he was eventually captured, tried, and hanged for his crimes by Virginia’s authorities in 1859.
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Professor: Say, Let’s Pardon a Domestic Terrorist”
Do you Believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Stimulus?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Christmas for adults is never quite the same as Christmas for the under 12-year-old set. Not that it’s all bad if you are an adult, it’s just that it takes a different form for adults. For kids it’s all about the magic of Santa Claus. When you believe it all seems so wondrous. This blindly, uninformed reliance on mere belief is a perfect definition of the Democrat voter.
As an adult, of course, a lot of what many of us see during Christmas are the mounting bills for gifts, growing credit card debt, and draining bank accounts. It always makes for a bit of a dark cloud for which the silver lining is a day with family, the bright smiling faces of our kids on Christmas morning, and a celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus.
Recently I was reflecting on this Christmas reality trying to apply it as a metaphor for Obama’s wasted stimulus money. But, soon I realized that the only similarities between believing in Santa and believing in the stimulus is the fact that they are both a fantasy. Sadly, whereas Christmas offers much that is wonderful (despite that the bills will come due) the stimulus has no such silver lining… unless you are a Democrat politician needing votes because a vote getting device is all the stimulus really was.
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Do you Believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Stimulus?”
Understanding the Global-warming Jihadists
-By Selwyn Duke
“I was born with a chronic anxiety about the weather,” said John Burroughs in 1877. Today, anxiety about the weather is more common than ever, although it’s not inborn but cultivated in schoolrooms, through television sets and by lying, rapacious ex-vice presidents. And I have anxiety about the weather, too — especially when it’s being used to promote a destructive agenda.
This brings us to Climategate, the scandal everyone is talking about and that inspired British journalist James Delingpole to write “it’s [the climate con is] all unravelling now.” I only wish I could be so optimistic. Sure, we have the smoking gun of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia, which provide evidence that we “deniers” were only denying a lie. And the erstwhile head of its Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones — a con man with a science degree if ever there were one — had to resign in disgrace. But don’t for a moment confuse a smoking gun with a coup de grace, or being sacrificed for the team with waving the white flag. I say this because I long ago realized something about man’s nature, something that may sound like a gross exaggeration: If a person has a strong enough vested interest in believing 2+2=5, he will surely insist it is so — in the face of all evidence to the contrary. But before I talk about who the real deniers are and what is being denied, let’s discuss the ugly reality reaffirmed by Climategate.
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Understanding the Global-warming Jihadists”
Why This Conservative Wants To Be Like Al Gore
-By Warner Todd Huston
I have to admit it. I am jealous of former Vice President Al Gore. I want what he’s got, at least in a generalized way.
It isn’t that I envy him for having been vice president. The number two spot has traditionally been one not well regarded and only a few VPs have made the position an important one, if only in a fleeting way. Thomas Jefferson did some excellent work fashioning the procedure of the Senate while he was the veep, Nixon became an important part of Ike’s foreign policy team, and Dick Cheney became, well, Dick Cheney! But Al Gore was not in that class. He, like most other vps, was a seat warmer without much of import to his stint in the junior chair.
The office has been chided as “not worth a warm bucket of spit” (though I am fairly certain VP Garner said the “s” word and not spit), been called “the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived” by John Adams, and at least one occupant of the office spawned such trenchant bits of philosophy as, “what this nation needs is a good 5-cent cigar.” (That last bit of philosophical legerdemain uttered by vp Thomas Marshal. In other words, the office has not been very consequential on its own merits.)
So, it isn’t Al’s rather pointless stint as VP that I admire. No it’s his almost universal acceptance as a man of great expertise because he once narrated a movie script. Not unlike how so many graying old TV news readers have been hailed as men of substance because they can read aloud with conviction, Al Gore has been hailed around the world because he can read and talk at the same time.
Brilliant!
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Why This Conservative Wants To Be Like Al Gore”
At This Point It’s About Defining the “Win”
-By Frank Salvato
Does anyone remember back to when the current healthcare reform initiative began? What were the goals? What were the reasons for the subject even being broached? Progressives and Democrats insisted that the healthcare system was broken because there were millions of people (figures varied, but averaged around 37 million) who were uninsured and that those who had health insurance were subject to continuously rising insurance premiums and diminished coverage. The goal, Progressives and Democrats said, was to provide every American with health insurance and lower healthcare costs for all…all by the end of President Obama’s first term.
Today, as we approach the end of President Obama’s first term, the House and Senate bills that are being presented to the American people fail – miserably – to achieve these two basics goals. Instead, they present as a wish list for special interest groups, establish an unnecessary and additional government bureaucracy and stand as testimony to the opportunistic ineptitude of today’s Progressive controlled Democrat Party. The only saving grace is that these bills will have to go through the reconciliation process before they are presented to President Obama for his signature, at which time the final product will become the law of the land…for now, at least.
Interesting in all of this is how the target goals have changed.
At This Point It’s About Defining the “Win””
One Again Teachers Union Shows Kids Don’t Matter
-By Warner Todd Huston
A recalcitrant teachers union in Florida once again shows that reform for the sake of the kids doesn’t interest it. A federal program called Race to the Top bestows federal money on any district that institutes merit pay and reforms its schools. Guess who hates the idea. Yep, you guessed it: Florida’s teachers unions.
Instead of launching in full support of school reform in order to help kids get a better education, the union has announced that it will instead be foot draggers and opposers.
Rightly or wrongly, the federal government is offering billions of federal dollars to Florida schools, but the teachers union wants to stand in the way of that largess because it opposes requiring its teachers to be worthy of their pay through merit.
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One Again Teachers Union Shows Kids Don’t Matter”
Closing the Barn Door
-By Thomas E. Brewton
Procrustean regulation of banks and other financial institutions, passed by the House and pending in the Senate, will not prevent the next credit debacle and economic recession.
The House of Representatives has just passed a bill, primarily the brain child of Congressman Barney Frank, that expands the scope and detailed depth of financial markets’ regulation.
For public consumption, Congressman Frank’s legislation aims to prevent future financial meltdowns. This it will fail to do. It will, however, continue the long standing animosity between Democrat/Socialists and Wall Street and the business community.
Accepting the Democrat/Socialist Party’s nomination for the presidency in 1936, Franklin Roosevelt railed against the “economic royalists” who were allegedly seeking a “new industrial dictatorship.” Privately, he opined that businessmen as a class were stupid, that newspapers were just as bad. During the election campaign of 1936, in an address at Madison Square Garden, he fulminated against the magnates of “organized money.” To uprorious applause, he threatened: “I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”
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Closing the Barn Door”
Jim Dodge Beats Out Topinka For Another Endorsement
From the Dodge for Comptroller campaign:
The Ford County Republican Organization voted Thursday night to endorse Jim Dodge, Republican candidate for Illinois Comptroller in the February 2, 2010 Republican Primary.
“I believe he has the intellect and the confidence to do the job and the ambition and integrity to follow through on the tough decisions that need to be made for the state,” said Eric Thompson, Ford County GOP Chairman. “Our organization sees that Jim Dodge embodies these characteristics that make him the right candidate for Comptroller.”
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Jim Dodge Beats Out Topinka For Another Endorsement”
Here’s A Deal With Cuba I Endorse
-By Warner Todd Huston
There hasn’t been much news about it in the U.S. but an American citizen has been arrested by Cuban authorities and has been placed in one of Cuba’s most secure facilities.
Cuba has yet to announce what charges they are leveling against the man but he was arrested after he gave out laptop computers, cellphones and other communication equipment to Cuba’s beleaguered citizens. The Cuban government claims these items are against the law for its citizens to own because it “subverts” government authority.
The American was a contractor for Development Alternatives, Inc. a company that has worked for the State Department since 2008 and is part of a Cuban democracy project that has received some $40 million in federal aid.
U.S. officials have been quiet on the matter and have yet to make too many demands of the Cuban government for this man’s release. They aren’t even releasing his name to us.
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Here’s A Deal With Cuba I Endorse”
Obama Administration Sets The Stage For Bogus Asylum Seekers To Take America By Storm
-By Ann “Babe” Huggett
It’s such a little AP notice; hardly more than a blip on the news ticker but, as of January 4, 2010, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will no longer detain asylum seekers to the US if they can prove a credible fear of persecution in their home countries. ICE Director, John Morton, under the orders of the Obama Administration, said that if asylum seekers can meet certain conditions then they can temporarily enter the US.
At time of entry, the asylum seeker must be able to prove their identities, not be a danger to America, not be a flight risk and must fear for their lives or physical safety if they return home. As it stands now, any asylum seeker without documentation is deported immediately while many of the documented are detained until processed.
As with any so-called “improvement” by socialist dominated regimes in once free Western countries, it is always important to go beyond what looks good on their paper to see what such programs look like in practice in other nations. In spite of President Obama’s best efforts to totally alienate them, one need not look any further than our still closest ally, Great Britain.
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Obama Administration Sets The Stage For Bogus Asylum Seekers To Take America By Storm”
2nd District: Isaac Hayes Adds Phylicia Lyons as School Adviser
-By Warner Todd Huston
Republican south-sider Isaac Hayes has a tall order on his hands; face and defeat Chicago machine favorite and incumbent Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. But Hayes has added a new education adviser to his campaign staff that shows that he is serious in his effort to defeat Jackson and offer the voters a starkly different choice.
Joining the Hayes campaign in the role of Education Policy Director is Phylicia Lyons, President of School Choice Illinois.
Founded in 2006 School Choice Illinois is a policy group that has dedicated itself to pursuing vouchers, tax breaks and increasing the reach of charter schools all in an effort to give parents more options besides the failing public schools with which to educate their children. SCI feels that current laws stifle and prohibit parents from seeking more effective schools and its goal is to explore and create sustainable education policies that work for our kids.
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2nd District: Isaac Hayes Adds Phylicia Lyons as School Adviser”
Ten Ways to Stop Illinois Corruption
-By Warner Todd Huston
Jerry Agar is a Chicago area radio host and a member of the Illinois Policy Institute, a free-market centric policy center. Agar also has a column on the IPI website often centered around a list of one type of another. Today’s piece is titled, “10 Ways to Stop Political Corruption in Illinois.”
He begins:
Since 1970, more than 1500 individuals have been convicted, and the cost to Illinois taxpayers is estimated at $500 million a year. If we had that money back, instead of just watching an endless perp-walk, we would be in much better shape on several levels.
Agar goes on to list his ten points, but most of them seem to have an aspect of government transparency to them — such as number ten, “Appoint the Sunshine Commission”
Now, I have to say that I agree with an effort at state transparency. DuPage County has done a fantastic job putting all its business transactions, funding, and accounts online for everyone to see. This sort of thing can lead to two things. One, that govt officials might feel less likely to waste and steal tax money if their accounts are so easily discovered by the voters, and two… well, two is that the voters can see what their government is doing.
Still, transparency is not the only thing we can and should do to clean up government. We, the voters, need to be far more careful of who we vote into office in the first place. Being an informed voter is even more important than transparency.
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Ten Ways to Stop Illinois Corruption”
Fugedaboutit: Healthcare Bill Not Socialist Enough for This Union
-By Warner Todd Huston
This is momentous news, harrowing news if you are a Democrat that wants Obamacare passed at all costs. The powerful and very rich Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is wavering in its until now stated support of Obamacare.
The Hill is reporting that the SEIU just backed out of an event promoting the Senate’s healthcare bill over “concerns” about the changes that have recently been made to get the support of Joe Lieberman and centrist Democrats.
Apparently the SEIU was going to attend a rah-rah session with the AARP, the liberal advocacy group Families USA, Consumers Union and the American Cancer Society Action Network but unexpectedly dumped out of the event on Wednesday.
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Fugedaboutit: Healthcare Bill Not Socialist Enough for This Union”
Govt Healthcare Will Give us ALL Pay Cuts
-By Warner Todd Huston
Big Labor has, for the most part, fallen all over itself to help its patron President get his Obamacare policies passed in Congress spending millions to do so. If Obamacare should pass many millions will lose their healthcare and will be forced into government healthcare. According to the CBO at least 10 million will lose their insurance in short order. The CBO is likely lowballing the number, too.
That means many people that now have insurance through their employers will lose it and, thereby, lose some of their compensation and that brings up a major point that few people are talking about. I’ve mentioned it offhandedly in the past, but reader D. Harrison brought the issue before me in a recent email and I thought we should make it a point here.
Mr. Harrison wrote:
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Govt Healthcare Will Give us ALL Pay Cuts”
Ben Franklin: On Science
-By John Armor
As most of you know, the international recognition of me as a scientist began with the day that I captured lightning with a kite. Had I done that experiment the way the popular myth says, I probably would have been electrocuted, an early end to an ordinary career.
You probably recall that my formal education ended when I was 14. After that, I bought and read every worthwhile book I could find. I died in 1790, but one aspect of the Other Side that I can share with you is that we get to read and see whatever interests us about the continuing fate of this nation we created, and started on its way.
You are in the middle of national consideration of laws that would involve more than a trillion dollars of public and private spending for purposes based, or claiming to be based, on scientific weather considerations. Now, I know the word trillion, but I never had occasion to use it. I recall the greatest warship Congress approved in my day, the USF Constitution and known as “Old Ironsides” now lies at harbor in Boston. She cost about $60,000 to build and equip. That gives you an idea of how far the value of the dollar has declined.
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Ben Franklin: On Science”
Peter Roskam: Illinois Deserves Better Than This
A Statement from Representative Peter Roskam:
President Obama’s decision to relocate Guantanamo Bay’s inmates to my home state of Illinois is a misguided decision that will ultimately be regretted. Proponents of the decision have failed to prove how this move will make America safer. Let’s be clear: the Administration is not closing Guantanamo, they are simply moving Guantanamo to Illinois.
The multi-million dollar Guantanamo facility will be left dormant while U.S. courts extend an invitation to expand their reach into national security affairs. The move from a military tribunal to U.S. civilian courts will treat individuals who committed an act of war against the United States as common criminals. It flies in the face of logic, long precedence, and assumes the military is not capable of fairly administering justice.
Illinois deserves a better Christmas present than hardened terrorists.
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Peter Roskam: Illinois Deserves Better Than This”
Rep. Brian Billbray: Rep. Gutierrez is Creating the Next Wave of Illegal Immigration
-By Warner Todd Huston
Representative Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) will introduce another stab at “comprehensive immigration reform” this month and it’s been given another one of those Orwellian names that you know means the opposite of what it says in the title. Gutierrez is calling this mess the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, or the CIR ASAP — in other words Comprehensive Immigration Reform ASAP.
The simple fact of the matter is that, regardless of the name, this legislation will do nothing whatever to help our security or our prosperity. In fact it will damage both.
In his press release touting this bill, Gutierrez said the following:
“We have waited patiently for a workable solution to our immigration crisis to be taken up by this Congress and our President,” said Rep. Gutierrez. “The time for waiting is over. This bill will be presented before Congress recesses for the holidays so that there is no excuse for inaction in the New Year. It is the product of months of collaboration with civil rights advocates, labor organizations, and members of Congress. It is an answer to too many years of pain —mothers separated from their children, workers exploited and undermined security at the border— all caused at the hands of a broken immigration system. This bill says ‘enough,’ and presents a solution to our broken system that we as a nation of immigrants can be proud of.”
This morning I spoke to Representative Brian Billbray in that nation’s capitol and found him chagrined by the whole thing. Billbray is the Chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus and is from California’s 50th District which is situated in the San Diego County area.
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Rep. Brian Billbray: Rep. Gutierrez is Creating the Next Wave of Illegal Immigration”
For the General Welfare, or an Encroachment on Rights?
-By Nancy Salvato
Taking Metra usually affords me a solid 20 minutes to read on my Kindle during my commute home and I relish that pause from responsibility to research many of the topics on which I write. Tonight’s train ride, however, provided an unanticipated diversion during which I mused on a variety of scenarios that left me pondering. What percentage of the population would place such scenarios under the category of an encroachment on one’s individual rights in the guise of the public interest or visa-versa? The catalyst for the redirection of my concentration was correlated to one particular passenger who seriously compromised my efforts to focus on the inner workings of the Executive Branch of our government. Due to the exercise of her individual rights, and some really “gawd-awful” perfume, I determined to leave my seat -preferring to wait in an icy cold vestibule until the train reached my stop.
Though I felt frustrated and put out by someone whose liberal use of perfume almost immediately gave me a piercing headache, I recognize that it is well within her right to wear the stuff. What I would often prefer from my fellow passengers is very different from what I can reasonably expect from my fellow passengers. This is not the first time my olfactory organ has been overwhelmed by the odors I confront as I make my way home. Who can account for what one delights in eating? Though it is not permitted on the train, people consume anything from fried chicken to Asian Cuisine on the BNSF Line, with complete disregard for those around them. Some of the extremely inconsiderate sit down next to a complete stranger and proceed to gorge themselves. Others have no compunctions about what falls to the floor or is left behind on the seat. What bothers me most is the co-mingling of smells in a confined area. It is the opposite of appetizing, and usually has the effect of making me want to, in the words of Garth from SNL’s Wayne’s World, “hurl”.
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For the General Welfare, or an Encroachment on Rights?”
Apostates Devise New Ways To Spoil Everyone’s Christmas
-By Frederick Meekins
One of the shortcomings I remember the most about the Christian elementary school I attended was how a number of the less-than dedicated educators would punish all of the students for the misbehavior of a single pupil. To this day, I remain convinced this had more to do with lazy teachers preferring not to mess around with recess than correcting actually delinquency.
As miniature societies, the dynamics of schools often reflect the processes that govern nations and countries. Unfortunately, the good students — or rather citizens in the macrocosmic case — are having something that is by every right their’s taken away just because those in charge don’t want to deal with those out to ruin things for everyone.
For nearly 15 years (or at least since I’ve been writing about the topic annually), Christians and allied conservatives have waged a noble effort against secularists claiming the First Amendment, through an expansionist interpretation of the Separation Clause, forbids the erection of Nativity scenes and even less conspicuously devout Christmas symbols on public property.
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Apostates Devise New Ways To Spoil Everyone’s Christmas”
Obama Says He Gives ‘Better Gifts’? Don’t Ask the Brits About That One
-By Warner Todd Huston
On yet another appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show, President Barack Obama broke his own arm patting himself on the back telling the talk show maven that he gives better gifts than he gets. As Chicago’s Lynn Sweet reports, “When it comes to gifts, President Obama says he gives ‘nicer stuff that I get,’ an assertion disputed by First Lady Michelle Obama.”
Barack had better hope that no one shows this episode to the Brits because they would fall off their easy chairs in laughter over Obama’s ill-considered claims. After the Obama’s perpetrated “giftgate” back in March, the Brits would beg to differ that Barack Obama gives good gifts.
The Obamas, Barack and Michelle both, pretty much diplomatically botched the March visit of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife. Oddly enough, the U.S. Old Media seemed uninterested in the story that was a hot topic in England, a story that left many Brits a bit miffed at the Obamas. It wasn’t just bad gifts that marred the visit, either.
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Obama Says He Gives ‘Better Gifts’? Don’t Ask the Brits About That One”
Science, Smoking, Healthcare, All Prove Gov’t Can’t be Trusted
-By Warner Todd Huston
Just sit back and let big daddy government show you the way. The Democrat Party is assuring us that they know better because they have science, educated people, doctors, all that “expertise” in their control and further more they “care” about us all and they want us to know that they’d never do anything to lead us astray.
If you feel like the con is about to begin, you are right.
Of course, we don’t need mere suspicion to divine that the Democrats are liars. We can look at what government and Democrats have already done in several related areas — science, smoking and healthcare — to prove that this newest attempt to “help” us is based on lies, smoke and mirrors.
Let us begin with science. In two areas we see the failure that Democrats perpetuate even with science as their justification: global warming and healthcare.
We are all by now familiar with the lies that global warming is based upon as revealed by the scheming to hide failure of the science that went on behind the scenes with the email correspondence of the “scientists” at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The science went from settled “consensus” to “ClimateGate” in only a matter of weeks. Yet governments all across the globe have based their policies on these lies. Total failure.
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Science, Smoking, Healthcare, All Prove Gov’t Can’t be Trusted”