politicalpartypoop.com

Click photo to view VENT

Lara Logan’s cry for help
Talisman Gate notices terrorist footage
Alphabet City reacts 

“Senator Mary Landrieu’s outrageous outburst this morning in which she remarked that

“we would have been better off if the terrorists had blown up our levees”

is the latest episode in a stream of recent Democratic blame-shifting and accusations.  Landrieu appears to be joining with Governor Blanco among the ungrateful Louisiana Democrats that seem to have forgotten the federal government has already appropriated billions and billions of dollars of aid to the state and its citizens, only to have Blanco’s Road Home Program set a new standard in bureaucratic inefficiency.  The notion that Louisiana would be better off if terrorists attacked our state should be unthinkable to an elected Senator.  Did she forget the terrorist attacks on our country a few years ago and the suffering that the people of New York and the country as a whole felt?” stated Republican Party of Louisiana Chairman, Roger Villere, Jr.

Read the rest here, but why bother..

Perfect example of absolute mental masturbation. What was that Hussein Obama said in the post Reality vs Perception:

“The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact,” 

I swear liberals make blogging so easy, they are incapable of saying anything rational. You just have too close your eyes and pick a news site or a blog and you will find a liberal saying something amazingly stupid.

Matt Lauer on the Today show said this morning on a segment talking about Global Warming:

“A controversy in Washington about what literally could be the end of the world as we know it” - Matt Lauer, Today Show - Segment - Scientists claim pressure on warming

Oh man all I can do is laugh and enjoy. Liberals are so entertaining.  

Found this entry on Little Green Footballs. There are several good stories there, check out! 

Here’s a piece on Barack Obama’s past, based on his own account of his shockingly racist anti-white attitudes, in a biography written before he entered politics: ‘Trapped between two worlds’.

After his sophomore year, Obama transferred to Columbia University. Later, looking back on his years in New York City, he recalled: “I had grown accustomed, everywhere, to suspicions between the races.”

His pessimism about race relations seemed to pervade his worldview.

“The emotion between the races could never be pure,” he laments in “Dreams.” “Even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.”

After graduating from college, Obama eventually went to Chicago to interview for a job as a community organizer. His racial attitudes came into play as he sized up the man who would become his boss. “There was something about him that made me wary,” Obama wrote. “A little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.”

Harris-Lacewell said such expressions of distrust toward whites will not hurt Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries, which are dominated by liberal voters.

“To win the Democratic nomination, he’s got to get a part of the progressive, anti-war, white folks,” she said. “And those white folks tend to be suspicious of any black person who wouldn’t be suspicious of white people.”

Wow.

YES WOW!!!

Via Powerline, note link to story is down, being blown up I imagine, because of Drudge 

Here is what Senator Biden reportedly said about Barack Obama in an interview with Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer:

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Biden may be right about the “storybook” part, but I’m not sure what he means by “mainstream African-American.” If one considers that Obama is half-white with an African father, one can debate how “mainstream” he is. I guess Biden meant that Obama is not a radical or an activist in the tradition of past black presidential candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (we’ll leave Shirley Chisholm out of this discussion). However, it would be interesting to learn excatly what substantive disagreements Obama has with Jackson.

Jackson and Sharpton are the subjects of Biden’s comparison — he certainly wasn’t referring to all African-Americans. The two of them might disagree with Biden’s claim that they are not mainstream African-Americans who are articulate, bright, and nice-looking. But keep in mind that Biden also said “clean.”

In case your forgot another Biden brain fart…

 

Reason #4,459,002 why I have liberal Democrats. If you people talk long enough your stupidity and racist mindset will eventually show itself.

Biden Responds to Obama ‘Clean’ Black Comment

By Bernie Woodall

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California lawmaker wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs as part of California’s groundbreaking initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The “How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act” would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

“Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications,” California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine said on Tuesday.

“Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light.”

Levine is expected to introduce the legislation this week, his office said. (link)

I’m not even bothering to post the rest of this nonsense.
The first question that comes to my mind is just which one of these California legislators has stock in the company that will benefit by this bullshit proposal.

As always You must follow the money trail when you read stupid shit like this. 

Bill Sammon, The Examiner  

WASHINGTON - Although he frequently makes a point of finding something charitable to say about his opponents’ arguments, Sen. Barack Obama almost always ends up voting liberal.

“The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact,”

Ok when I read this I had a slight laughing attack, that is just too funny… sorry

the Illinois Democrat wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” a memoir published last year. “Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal.”

Obama has a 95 percent liberal rating from Americans for Democratic Reform, a liberal advocacy group that ranks all members of Congress. Yet he is often portrayed as a centrist.

“His record is liberal, and his rhetoric is moderate,” explained Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

For example, Obama goes out of his way to voice approval of at least some aspects of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

“At times, in arguments with some of my friends on the left, I would find myself in the curious position of defending aspects of Reagan’s worldview,” he wrote in “Audacity.” “When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, I had to give the old man his due, even if I never gave him my vote.”

But in summing up Reagan, Obama concluded that the former president’s “clarity about communism seemed matched by his blindness regarding other sources of misery in the world.”

By pointing out the merits of both sides of an argument, Obama often sounds statesmanlike, even if he almost never ends up siding with conservatives. This dichotomy can be seen in Obama’s analysis of President Bush’s foreign policy.

“I agree with George W. Bush when in his second inaugural address he proclaimed a universal desire to be free,” Obama wrote. “But there are few examples in history in which the freedom men and women crave is delivered through outside intervention.”

If Obama survives the Democratic primaries and becomes his party’s presidential nominee, his liberal positions will not necessarily hurt him among the centrist voters who cast ballots in the general election, according to Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report.

“How you come across is more important than how you vote,” Cook said. “If voters perceive you as moderate, then your voting record isn’t terribly relevant. Perception is more important than reality.”

Will Women Sweep Hillary Into the White House? Not likely according to her…

By Linda Hirshman
Posted Sunday, January 28, 2007 in the Washington Post

Hillary Rodham Clinton sure got it right when she announced her candidacy for president while sitting on her living room couch. Her success may very well turn on the decisions of millions of women sitting on their living room couches.

Clinton advisers James Carville and Mark Penn have said they’re counting on a women’s vote (the “X factor”) to catapult their client into the White House. They’re obviously hoping that a female candidate will get much more support from women and are banking on the “gender gap,” the idea, trumpeted by the media and women’s organizations, that women believe in liberal policies and will therefore, as rational political actors, support the Democratic Party.

But I have news for Messrs. Carville and Penn: All the gender gap talk notwithstanding, there’s no guarantee that Clinton would receive enough votes from women to be elected. I’ve studied women and women’s politics for 20 years, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that, except for possibly once in 1996, female voters have not by themselves put anyone in the White House.

If Clinton is going to attract the women she needs, she’s probably going to have to do something more than simply have a pair of X chromosomes herself. And much as it pains a feminist like me to say it, a lot of her campaign will have to involve putting her on the couch and analyzing her character and motivation. Again.

In every election, there’s a chance that women will be the decisive force that will elect someone who embraces their views. Yet they seem never to have done so, and I’ve never seen a satisfactory answer as to why. My own theory is that women don’t decide elections because they’re not rational political actors — they don’t make firm policy commitments and back the candidates who will move society in the direction they want it to go. Instead, they vote on impulse, and on elusive factors such as personality.

With Clinton’s candidacy on the horizon, I decided to test my theory by asking a few white, married women — the key demographic — what they are up to this time.

If any women were going to be politically aware, I figured, it would be those in the Washington area. So I contacted half a dozen members of the Wednesday Morning Group, a D.C. area organization that provides speakers and programs mostly for stay-at-home moms. (One even told me I had caught her sitting on her living room couch.)

All the women voted in the midterm elections last year and intend to vote in 2008. But how do they decide which lever to pull? My small sampling is admittedly unscientific, but what they told me reveals a lot about why campaigning to women is so tricky.

A 49-year-old former public relations executive in suburban Maryland told me she votes the political agenda she learned from her lefty father. She reads The Washington Post, but there are no books on her bedside table. She counts on her husband to tell her what’s in the Nation magazine and on the Web.

A 36-year-old former financial sales executive considers herself an independent, reads only the Style and Weekend sections of The Post and the Marketplace and Personal Journal sections of the Wall Street Journal, and also counts on her husband, a Republican, to tell her what’s interesting in the rest of the paper.

A former human rights activist told me that she still reads the New York Times, skims the Economist, and gathers political information from PBS’s “News Hour,” a local broadcast from the BBC and from her church.

Neither the former teacher nor the retired television reporter read any newspapers at all.

There are some constants. Most of the women read People and Real Simple magazines. They all listen to news on the car radio, mostly National Public Radio. And almost all their full-time working husbands consume immeasurably more political information than they do. (”He reads 10 times what I do,” one told me), reading news magazines and political Web sites and bringing home political information from their jobs. The women gather little information from their almost exclusively female society of other stay-at-home moms.

(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

 By David S. Broder - The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - When Lt. Gen. David Petraeus came before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week in open session, its members understandably had many questions for the new commander of American forces in Iraq.
They knew of his reputation as a battlefield leader, a trainer of Iraqi troops and the author of the Army manual on counterinsurgency warfare. They also recognized the difficulty and importance of his new assignment.
Many of the questions probed deeply into the rationale for the president’s new strategy of injecting more U.S. troops into Baghdad neighborhoods wracked by killings by rival Sunni and Shiite gangs. Others challenged the readiness of Iraqi forces and the Baghdad government to do their part in reducing sectarian violence.
A few of the questions were naive, self-serving or off on tangents. But virtually the entire membership of the committee was present and senators of both parties recognized the value of probing this experienced and candid witness.

With one exception. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York used her time to make a speech about Iraq policy and did not ask a single question of the man who will be leading the military campaign.
Her speech replayed some of the themes from her news conference the previous week, on her return from Iraq, when she made clear her disagreement with President Bush’s decision to add 21,500 soldiers and
Marines to Petraeus’ force.

She began by blaming the Iraq crisis on a “Congress (that) was supine under the Republican majority, failing to conduct oversight and demanding accountability, and because the president and his team, particularly the former secretary of defense (Don Rumsfeld), refused to adapt to the changing circumstances on the ground.”
From that partisan opening, Clinton went on to decry “the failures of the Iraqis to step up and take responsibility for their own future.” She said the escalation Bush ordered was too little and too late, and instead called on Congress to “threaten to cut money for the Iraqi troops and for the security for the Iraqi leadership,” as a way to break the political gridlock in Baghdad and force efforts at national reconciliation.
She wound up the speech by saying that despite her disagreement with the policy, she wanted Petraeus’ assurance that “we have every possible piece of equipment and resource necessary to protect these young men and women” going into battle.

“I’ll do that, senator,” Petraeus said, and after that four-word response, Clinton was finished. She had no questions to ask.
Judging by all the polls, Clinton is the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a leading candidate for the Republican nomination, is also a member of the Armed Services Committee.

McCain asked Petraeus 14 questions, ranging from the political situation in Iraq to the morale of the troops to the time line for the planned “surge.” He ran out of time before he ran out of questions - quite a contrast to Clinton.

Clinton aides said the senator thought it was important to rebut the comments from several other committee members suggesting that congressional resolutions opposing the president’s policy would “undercut the troops,” so she used her time for that purpose. But I can think of three other possible explanations for her remarkable reluctance to probe the general’s thinking.

First, she has been treading a careful line from her early support of military action against Saddam Hussein to an increasingly sharp criticism of the war and calls for troop reductions. Perhaps she feared that dialogue with Petraeus would lead her into dangerous, uncharted waters. Caution is commendable, but she is sometimes faulted for being too calculating.

Second, the hearing came only three days after she announced her presidential exploratory committee, and she may have decided it was a good opportunity to repeat her views on Iraq policy before TV cameras rather than share time with the general. That wouldn’t say much about her priorities as she begins a second six-year term as senator, but New York voters last November presumably knew she might have loftier goals than just minding her Senate duties.
The third, less-benign possibility is that Clinton is reverting to the mode of her ill-fated 1993-94 health-care initiative, when she gave members of Congress and other interested folks the impression that she thought she had all the answers - so please just do as I say. In that period, she and her deputy, Ira Magaziner, two of the smartest policy wonks in captivity, were also supremely self-confident - and in some eyes, arrogant. And it cost them support, even among potential allies.

Last week, Clinton began her presidential campaign, as she did her first race for the Senate in New York, by saying she wanted to do a lot of listening. She sure wasn’t listening to Gen. Petraeus. She wasn’t even asking.

 

This from Right Wing News 

A lot of conservatives out there are continually scratching their heads and trying to figure out why Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Hagel love to slam a shiv into the back of other conservatives as often as possible.

Well, it’s because they get fawning press coverage when they do it. Just look at this mash note from Newsweek to Chuck Hagel over his opposition to the surge. There are two different things that can inspire the mainstream press to speak this fondly about a Republican: their death and/or their betrayal of other conservatives.

Here’s how the piece, entitled “Rebel Chuck Hagel: A President in the making?” starts:

 

Chuck Hagel wears pain on his face. The senior senator from Nebraska earned two Purple Hearts in Vietnam, where a mine blew out his eardrums and delivered a sharp burn up the left side of his head. When he is thinking hard, his brow droops low, weighted and weary; when he smiles, his eyes slip into thin slits. His brother Tom calls this Hagel’s “running gear”—the thick mask of intensity he shows the world.

and also check out…

The mainstream media is absolutely determined to turn every victory in Iraq into a defeat no matter how they have to twist things around. The latest example is the Iraqi/US victory over a Shiite cult in Najaf. Here’s the New York Times spin on this incredibly successful operation from an article called, “Missteps by Iraqi Forces in Battle Raise Questions.”

Check out on RWN

I found via EURweb, this from a blog called The Mo’Kelly Report.

Here goes Snoop again only posting stuff he agrees with, yes I think Al Sharpton is a moron, but I wanted to post because this guys points out Al’s shortcomings in a slightly more eloquent and civil manner, something Snoop has a little problem with, LOL!   

The Rev. Al Sharpton is “threatening” to run again. Yes, “threatening” to run for President of the United States…again. According to Sharpton, if the Democratic candidates collectively have an agenda he feels he can endorse, then he’ll remain on the bench and not report to the scorer’s table so he can come in the game and post up Barack Obama.  Yes, if and only if the Democratic agenda meets Al Sharpton’s approval, there will be no sequel to the disaster of 2004. 

Yes, “threatening” is an apt description of Sharpton’s intentions.

Please don’t run Al.  Mo’Kelly begs of you, please don’t run.

We can only hope that this is an “idle” threat.  To be sure, Mo’Kelly is not against Al Sharpton RUNNING for president.  That’s not the problem.  Mo’Kelly is against AL SHARPTON running for president…that’s the problem.

Note the difference.

When Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984, his success in the primaries forced Democrats to remind themselves of the viability of the African-American electorate.  In 2008, Al Sharpton only forces politicos to recite his questionable and sordid past, in all of its gory splendor.  The phrase “but you pleaded guilty to tax evasion” is an accurate and formidable retort in any presidential debate.

(Al Sharpton faces off against Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a debate, Jim Lehrer moderates.)

Jim Lehrer:  “Good evening candidates…America is ready to hear from you.”

Hillary Clinton: “America needs something better than a vast right-wing conspiracy.  America needs the new, improved and moderate Hillary Clinton.  And it takes a village of voters like you and me to elect her.”

Barack Obama: “America needs someone who can understand her from both the Black and White perspective.  Someone, who has the audacity of hope.”

Al Sharpton: “America simply deserves honesty.  America deserves…Al Sharpton.”

Jim Lehrer: “But Mr. Sharpton, didn’t you plead guilty to tax evasion and weren’t you successfully sued for your part in the Tawana Brawley case/hoax?”

Al Sharpton: “Well, what had happened was…”

Hillary Clinton: “Didn’t you say you would stop using the hot comb if/when James Brown died?  Don’t get me wrong, I love your hair…isn’t that Ultra Sheen?”

Al Sharpton: “Like I was saying…what had happened was…”

You can call Mo’Kelly crass and cynical; but you won’t be calling him wrong.  Nothing negates a well-reasoned debate about the supposed dishonesty of the Republican Party or the alleged inferiority of fellow Democratic candidates quicker than words like “Tawana Brawley” or “tax evasion.”

Not to mention other words like “FBI undercover sting with Sharpton caught on tape in drug negotiations.”  Those too are pretty powerful words.

And his opposition would be well within their right to use any and all of these subtle reminders of his past.  They are accurate and solid comebacks.

If such embarrassments weren’t enough to discourage Sharpton in 2004, one would hope his most recent campaign financial “issues” would have been reason enough to leave well enough alone this time around.

(more…)

Sphere: Related Content

I saw a TV commercial talking about this website www.petakillsanimals.com, I figured since I hate PETA so much I thought I would post.
I personally think the folks at PETA are a bunch of stupid, crazy, racist ass bastards anywho.
So any website trashing these jackasses will get my attention.   

1) PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk has described her group’s overall goal as “total animal liberation.” This means no meat, no milk, no zoos, no circuses, no wool, no leather, no hunting, no fishing, and no pets (not even seeing-eye dogs). PETA is also against all medical research that requires the use of animals.

2) Despite its constant moralizing about the “unethical” treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, PETA has killed over 14,400 dogs and cats at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. During 2005, PETA put to death over 90 percent of the animals it collected from members of the public.

3) PETA has given tens of thousands of dollars to convicted arsonists and other violent criminals. This includes a 2001 donation of $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an FBI-certified “domestic terrorist” group responsible for dozens of firebombs and death threats. During the 1990s, PETA paid $70,200 to an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activist convicted of burning down a Michigan State University research laboratory. In his sentencing recommendation, a federal prosecutor implicated PETA president Ingrid Newkirk in that crime. And PETA vegetarian campaign coordinator Bruce Friedrich told an animal rights convention in 2001 that “blowing stuff up and smashing windows” is “a great way to bring about animal liberation.”

4) PETA activists regularly target children as young as six years old with anti-meat and anti-milk propaganda, often waiting outside their schools to intercept them as they walk to and from class-without notifying parents. One piece of kid-targeted PETA literature tells small children: “Your Mommy Kills Animals!” PETA brags that its messages reach over 2 million children every year, including thousands reached by e-mail without the permission of their parents. One PETA vice president told the Fox News Channel’s audience: “Our campaigns are always geared towards children, and they always will be.”

5) PETA has used a related organization, the PETA Foundation, to fund the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a deceptive animal rights group that promotes itself as an unbiased source of medical and nutritional information. PCRM’s president also serves as president of the PETA Foundation.

6) PETA runs campaigns seemingly calculated to offend religious believers. One entire PETA website is devoted to the claim-despite ample evidence to the contrary-that Jesus Christ was a vegetarian. PETA holds protests at houses of worship, even suing one church that tried to protect its members from Sunday-morning harassment. Its billboards taunt Christians with the message that hogs “died for their sins.” PETA insists, contrary to centuries of rabbinical teaching, that the Jewish ritual of kosher slaughter shouldn’t be allowed. And its infamous “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign crassly compares the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide with farm animals.

7) PETA has repeatedly attacked research foundations like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, because they support animal-based research that might uncover cures for birth defects and life-threatening diseases. PETA president Ingrid Newkirk has said that “even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we would be against it.”

By JAMIE PYATT - The Sun UK
 
JAIL bosses are rebuilding toilets so Muslim inmates don’t have to use them while facing Mecca.

Thousands of pounds (foreigner money) of taxpayers money are being spent to ensure lags are not offended.

The Islamic religion prohibits Muslims from facing or turning their backs on the Kiblah — the direction of prayer — when they visit the lav.

Muslim lags claimed they have had to sit sideways on prison WCs. SO FUCKEN WHAT!!!? YOU ARE PRISONERS YOU IDIOT BASTARDS, ROT IN HELL!!

But after pressure from faith leaders the Home Office has agreed to turn the existing toilets 90 degrees at HMP Brixton in London.

The Home Office refused to reveal the cost of the new facilities — part of an “on-going refurbishment”.

One Muslim former inmate said: “The least the Prison Service can do is make sure people can practise their religion correctly in prison.” YOU ARE LUCKY YOU GET FED, YOU ARE A CRIMINAL, HELLOOOO!

But a Brixton jail officer said: “If they didn’t get locked up for committing crime they would not have this problem. Yet we have to sort out their loos. If we weren’t paying for it as taxpayers I’d laugh my socks off.”

Around a quarter of prisoners at the Category B jail are Muslims.

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood said: “As far as I understand this rule only applies in a place of worship.”

Tory MP Ann Widdecombe said: “Some common sense needs to be applied.”

(Washington Times) Air America Radio was rescued from bankruptcy yesterday, but still faces the impending loss of Al Franken, its most popular talker.

The liberal network will be sold to Stephen Green, a Manhattan real estate investment mogul with heavy Democratic ties, including his brother Mark Green, who ran for mayor against Michael R. Bloomberg in 2001. The sale of the network — deemed a “personal investment” by the two brothers — will be completed in mid-February for an undisclosed sum.

Mr. Green is intent on bringing solvency to Air America, which has been troubled by flagging ratings, cash deficits and management turmoil since it was founded almost three years ago as a foil to popular conservative talk radio.

The network was often called “Err America” by critics.
“In the long run, content is king,” said Mr. Green, vowing to stabilize the network’s finances, beef up the talent roster and extend the Air America “brand” into other marketing or broadcast opportunities. The network’s weekly audience has been stuck at just under 2 million since the beginning — about one-tenth the number of listeners who tune in each week to conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. 

Read the rest, but why bother Err America Sux anyway, I don’t care if Bill Gates sunk all of his money into it, nobody wants to listen to a bunch of starchy, boorish, elitist, liberal assholes every day.   

They should close it down and rename it because frankly the “Air America” label is permanently tarnished.   

This post from the Blog Say Anything , found via KXNet.com .

This is simply John Kerry being the grandiose moronic idiot that he is.
I continue to be amazed at just how stupid this man is and his willingness to open his mouth and say some really stupid shit.
Kerry is just a poor pathetic dude, I almost feel sorry for him, NOT!

I also don’t understand this liberal trait of going overseas and talking shit about this country. Does it not occur to these jackasses that news does manage to make its way across the ocean?

Here’s John Kerry speaking while sitting just a few feet away from Mohammad Khatami, the former President of the Iranian terror state.

Kerry was asked about whether the U.S. government had failed to adequately engage Iran?s government before the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.

Kerry said the Bush administration has failed in addressing a number of foreign policy issues.

“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

“So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East ? in the world, really. I’ve never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today.”

Kerry criticized what he called the “unfortunate habit” of Americans to see the world “exclusively through an American lens.”

The Bush administration walked away from Kyoto?  Methinks the Senator is revising history:

On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. . . .

The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the Kyoto principles, but because of the exemption granted to China (the world’s second largest emitter of carbon dioxide). Bush also opposes the treaty because of the strain he believes the treaty would put on the economy; he emphasizes the uncertainties which he asserts are present in the climate change issue.

It was a unanimous Senate (with five abstainers) as well as the Clinton administration who walked away from Kyoto.  The current administration walked away from Kyoto as well, but for the same reasons as the Clinton administration.  Kerry himself, in fact, voted for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution to keep us out of Kyoto.  Yet here he is now, a decade later, dishonestly accusing the current administration of isolating this country from the world on an issue like Kyoto that Kerry himself opposed for the very same reasons the Bush administration opposes it.

Why should we believe anything that comes out of this guy’s mouth?  It’s bad enough that he’s sitting next to one of America’s enemies bad mouthing his own country, but he’s flat-out lying in what he’s saying as well.

Oh, and stopping off to give an autograph to a guy who supports executing gays for being gay is a real nice touch. But don’t expect any of the gay rights groups to hold Kerry accountable for that, though.

 By Jed Babbin - Human Events

While President Bush and our military prepare the Iraqi battlefield for the troops we are surging into Baghdad, the Democrats are preparing the political battlefield of 2008.  One aspect of shaping any battlefield — political or actual — is in manipulating the adversary by psychological warfare.   It’s a matter of shaping the imagery of both sides: how they see each other, and how they see themselves.  Hillary Clinton wants to pull the Clinton Cloak over the Dems again, relying on her pals in the media to maintain the façade of moderation and reasonableness.  Though too many Republicans are making her job easy, it’s her own Senate pals — this week Chuck Schumer and John Kerry — who are the obstacle. 

The Senate continues its dance around a non-binding resolution that opposes the President’s plan to surge 21,500 more American troops into Iraq to impose order in the Baghdad area.  But as they score soundbites for the evening news and the Sunday talk shows, the Senate Dems — and all too many Republicans — seem eager to prove that they are willfully ignorant of the facts on the ground.  In his confirmation hearings last week, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus — the new overall commander in Iraq — warned that these resolutions would embolden the enemy and hurt the morale of our troops. The RINOs charging into the anti-surge resolution find themselves comfortable with the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) and see no irony or inconsistency in voting to confirm Petraeus — which they did — and voting for the anti-surge resolution, which they are about to do. 

Read the rest here

 This via Neal Bortz, If you have not seen the video of Ted Kennedy ranting about the minimum wage you should for a great laugh. Dude is a nut!

The Democrats class warfare minimum wage increase is now being debated in the Senate .. and Ted Kennedy is about to have a stroke. Did you hear this pathetic man screaming at the Republicans? [video] “What is it about it (the minimum wage) that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?”

Well … of course .. most of you will recognize this as cheap demagoguery. There are two faulty premises to Kennedy’s question:

1. The working wage has some meaningful connection to “working” men and women.
    
2. Republicans are offended by working men and women.

Both premises are false.

Let’s deal with this “working men and women” line first. This rhetorical nonsense is now a basic part of the left wing class warfare arsenal. The goal here is to foster the idea that the more money you make the less you work. The reality is that there we have two resources we can use to make money, physical labor and mental labor. Most of us use a combination of the two. The ugly little fact is that, generally speaking, and professional athletes aside, the more of your mind you use the more money you will make, and the more of your muscle you use the less money you’ll make.

Here’s another fact. The more money you make, the more likely it is that you will vote Republican. The less money you make, the more likely you will vote Democrat. Bring this all together and you’ll soon figure out that the more you use physical labor to earn money, the more likely it is you will vote Democrat.

Knowing that almost all Americans value the concept of hard work, the Democrats have worked to promote the concept that the only real work that physical labor. Working with your mind — managing investments, for instance — just isn’t work. Therefore the only real working people out there are those who work with their hands instead of their brains …. or those more likely to vote Democrat. Once you’ve made this absurd concept a reality you have created a wonderful class warfare weapon. If you’re smarter than the average bear, and if you realize that it is not the role of government to set wages, you then become an enemy of “working men and women.”

This, then, enables Ted Kennedy’s demagoguery. He first asks what it is about the minimum wage that, as he says, drives Republicans so crazy. Simple. First — there are still a few Republicans out there who believe that in a free market economy it is not the role of government to set wages. If the government can set a minimum wage, what is to stop the government from setting a maximum wage? If the government can set a minimum wage, then why can’t the government set a minimum wage based on family size? Why can’t the Imperial Federal Government of the United States just pass a law saying that the minimum wage goes up by $2.00 per hour for every child born to the worker? Once you allow the government to have a say in establishing the value of labor … the sky is the limit. Where does it stop?

Secondly … Republicans realize that less than 20% of the people in this country who earn the minimum wage live in families that are anywhere near or below the poverty level. Over six out of ten people who begin work at the minimum wage have received their first raise within the first year. Only 15% of minimum wage workers are still receiving the minimum wage after three years on their job. What percentage of the full time work force is earning just the minimum wage? Around 1 percent.

So .. to answer Kennedy’s screaming questions: The minimum wage drives (some) Republicans crazy because there is absolutely nothing in our Constitution that allows the government to set wages, and the minimum wage is used by Democrats as nothing more than a tool of class warfare. Around one percent of full-time workers earn the minimum wage, and most of them are part of families that are well above the poverty line. It just isn’t an issue. Knowing Republicans are also upset because they know that the Democrats push for the minimum wage increases are just another way of telling unions “thanks for your support.”

And to answer Kennedy’s second question, there is nothing about “working men and women” that Republicans find offensive. What they do find offensive is the Democrat use of the phrase “working people” as a tool of class warfare through their attempts to convince lower income Americans that those who make more than they do aren’t really working for the money they earn.

By Chuck Neubauer and Tom Hamburger, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times - Link

BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz. — It’s hard to buy undeveloped land in booming northern Arizona for $166 an acre. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively did just that when a longtime friend decided to sell property owned by the employee pension fund that he controlled.

In 2002, the Nevada Democrat paid $10,000 to a pension fund controlled by Clair Haycock, a Las Vegas lubricant dealer and his friend for 50 years. The payment gave the senator full control of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City that Reid and the pension fund had jointly owned. Reid’s price for the equivalent of 60 acres of undeveloped desert was less than one-tenth of the assessed value at the time.

If Reid were to sell the property for any of the various estimates of its value, his gain on the $10,000 investment could range from $50,000 to $290,000.

Six months after the deal closed, Reid introduced legislation to address the plight of lubricant dealers who had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies. It was an issue the Haycock family brought to Reid’s attention in 1994, according to a source familiar with the events. Reid’s legislation was unsuccessful.

It is a potential violation of congressional ethics for a member to accept anything of value–including a real estate discount–from a person with interests before Congress.

In a statement, Reid’s spokesman Jon Summers said the transaction was not a gift and that the price was due to the property’s history and the fact that only a partial interest was sold. Reid’s action on the lubricant issue was unrelated to the sale and reflected the senator’s interest in fairness for small businesses, Summers said.

Because an employee pension fund owned the land Reid purchased, a below-market sale raises additional questions, labor law experts said. Pension fund trustees have a duty in most cases to sell assets for their market value, the experts said.

“I think this would have been considered a potentially serious issue” at the time, said Ian Lanoff, who led the Labor Department’s pension division during the Carter administration and was provided basic details of the case–though not the identity of the lawmaker. “Theoretically it’s a serious issue for the trustee who sold the property, though practically it may not be” because the plan is now closed and its obligations were met.

John Haycock said workers received all promised benefits from the Haycock Distributing Co. pension plan and were unaffected by the land transaction. Federal records confirm that.

See I know you people don’t care about this shit; United States Senators get sweetheart deals all the time.
But lets not forget, the Democrats are in charge now, I distinctly remember the Democrats saying before the 2006 elections that they were going to clean up Washington and end the culture of corruption in Washington.

Now folks I knew that was a lie, but what I also find interesting is how under reported this story is. Google News has just a handful of references to this story.

Sounds like the culture of corruption is simply being swept under the rug.

I was watching “Meet the Depressed” (Rush terminology) and one segment had some dude mentioning how he was disappointed that Bush did not mention New Orleans in his State of the Union speech.

SNOOP RANT WARNING…I have said before, but to anyone who happens to be browsing blogs and have not been here before might be shocked.

Fuck New Orleans, I’m sick of people bitching about their ongoing doom at the hand of Bush!

I have never seen the game of politics played more with one location in my life.
Let me just say what no other person in the media will say.

If there were more white folks floating in those flood waters liberal Democrats would not have given a shit about NOLA, and they damm sure would not be giving a damm that Bush was silent about it during his SOTU Speech.

I know “Da Mayor” Nigga Nagin, and Idiot Blanco does not give a shit about rebuilding NOLA because all through the college bowl season I kept hearing the broadcasters say that 80% of the damm city is still jacked up, what the fuck!? How come that damm place is STILL jacked, especially after BILLIONS of dollars have been sent there?

Yet I heard Blanco cackling like an idiot bitch about Bush “has forgotten about NOLA.”

Someone has to make me understand this: Y’all crazy bastards have been saying all along that Katrina was “Bush’s fault.” That he personally carried the buckets of water and dumped it on the streets of NOLA.
He was out of touch, not sympathetic and asleep at the switch and was racists because he personally told the rescue workers: “y’all just hold off saving those Negros, shit they didn’t vote for me anyway.” 

 After all of that NOW you want to bitch that nary a mention about NOLA and Katrina was suppose to be some big diss on the city and the people? What kind of idiot logic is that? 

If I were G Dub I would have done the same thing under the circumstances.

Now in case you people forgot, this was a BIG Hurricane and New Orleans was not the only location affected by the storm.
I seem to recall that most of Biloxi (I was stationed at Keesler AFB years ago) was wiped off the map, as was most of the Mississippi gulf coast.
But let’s not let facts get in the way of a nice anti-Bush rant.         
 
If a similar disaster happened in Middle America, the majority of it would have been cleaned up by now.
Another thing, people in the heartland would not be profiting off of the disaster by booking damm “disaster tours.”

They have figured out that they can profit on the morbid curiosity of people by basically saying “fuck it don’t clean that shit up, people will pay good money to look at human suffering”

You Democrats and the people of New Orleans don’t fool me, I know what you bastards are up too.
The plan is to keep NOLA jacked up until Bush leaves office. The Democrats are hoping that they take the White House in 08, THEN they will get the rebuilding effort in high gear so that on one glorious day, a Democrat can figuratively cut the ribbon on a “New” NOLA.

The last thing Democrats wanted was for some significant rebuilding and reconstruction to take place only to have G Dub take the podium and take credit for it.

Talk about playing politics.

***

I am reposting some old articles since I brought this up, to remind some of you people what was said in the past.
On Katrina, it is not necessary to rewrite shit on the topic because too much bullshit was said about it already.

By Alison Espach
CNSNews.com Correspondent - Article Link

(CNSNews.com) - Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city of New Orleans, some prominent black conservatives and religious leaders blame cultural problems among African Americans, not the government, for “the great breakdown witnessed during and following” the natural disaster.
The conservative leaders will meet in Washington, D.C., on July 26 to discuss how best to transform the “human spirit,” the destruction of which they say “is at the heart” of the still evolving crisis in New Orleans.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Tuesday awarded $4.2 billion — up to $150,000 for each Louisiana homeowner seeking to rebuild or sell their houses that were destroyed or damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.
But, many African Americans who were living in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent catastrophic flooding of the city believe the Bush administration’s slow response to the disaster was racially motivated.
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, the African American founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) is not willing to blame the Bush administration. Instead, he faults what he calls the “black culture.”

TIMEOUT! Shhhhh!, you white folks are not suppose to know that shit. It gives ammunition to racist bastards to say “see, those ignorant ass negros are fucking shit up, killing each other and sucking the system dry. That is why they are in the condition that are in.”
Unfortunately that is true. Oh if there was some inspiring and angry negro who wanted to come here and chastize me for catering to the “whitey mentality”, I would simply say you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.
Black folks unfortunately segregate themselves culturally, even when they have the means to get out of a crime ridden and culturally destructive situation.
I remember this dude when I lived in Wichita. He worked for Boeing making almost three times what I was (low 6 figures) and he REFUSED, to move from one of the most crime ridden neighborhoods in Wichita. He basically told me that he would rather dodge bullets in a black neighborhoods rather than enduring the cold isolation racist ass white people would subject him to. Dude was living in a mental jail. So what is the rest of society suppose to do to help him get over that?
That mental jail causes a corrosive mix in predominantly black areas. It’s been said before that black and black crime is simply an expression of self hate.
No amount of bling, bling in your grill, or on some shiny rims or dollar sign necklaces is going to remedy that.
Is that culture, I guess. The less you have or the lack of self worth you have, flashing that bling is all you got. Your fucken priorities are all screwed up. Frankly niggas need to release themselves from those mental jails and spread out. Infiltrate the white world, meet other people and cultures.
Now don’t get me all wrong, white folks have their issues too. They just hide them better.
They can hide their misery with shiny cars too. But they also have the fancy homes and nice lawns. They have scheduled activities for the kids, dinner at the table, the obligatory family trip to church. The white worlds chaos is managed better, it’s more orderly, therefore more refined.
Now, to Katrina, Bush, racially motivated. That is the dumbest thing anybody could utter.
Look, I’m not an economist, I’m not a sociology expert, but one basic reason why the argument that Katrina and the governments response was racially motivated is that with conservatives, ok white folks, is that flooding people out of house and home is not profitable.
Just like with every other issue follow the money trail. Maybe in the old days racism trumped dollars in some (most) cases, but today oh hell no. The crime ridden negros were held up in their own area. Dollars were flowing in NOLA. Black folks were killing each other. For the racist fucks, what a great situation. Why would somebody want to scatter those negros around costing taxpayers billions, putting people out of work and screech “profit’ to a halt?
Ok, some might argue, well scattering that concentration of degenerate black folks was good for New Orleans,” you even said so Snoop.”  Now rich white folks can come back in and rebuild in a smaller, whiter NOLA.
So you don’t think there are some scheming black folks out there thinking the same thing?
Get real people. It’s not a white thing, or a racial thing. It’s not a Republican or Democrat thing. It’s a money thing. 
I still find it amusing that still, nobody factors in Mississippi and all the white folks who lost everything. White folks just can’t catch a break.
That tis your Snoop sociology lesson for today. Now the rest of the article.   

“It’s not President Bush’s responsibility to make us get up and take care of ourselves. That was a political ploy in order to make blacks believe the Republican Party was against them and that they really don’t care,” Peterson said.
Peterson will moderate the July 26 conference at the Heritage Foundation.
Rev. Grant Storm, who is the Caucasian minister and president of Conservative Christians for Reform, echoed Peterson’s view. “The mentality of ‘government’s going to bail me out. Where’s the government?’” is “in the black culture,” Storm said. “The mentality is instilled within their churches and in their homes — of ‘the government owes you, the government is your solution, and the government will come and help you.’
“When the government doesn’t come and help them, frankly all they do is yap and complain,” said Storm, instead of “saying ‘Hey, I better go get a job, I better go on my own, I better go find an apartment, I better go take care of myself and my family.
“They are waiting for more FEMA money, they are waiting for more relief money and it ain’t coming, or it’s coming slow; meanwhile, the surrounding parishes — the predominantly white parishes — they are rebuilding on their own, and the same way in the Gulf of Mississippi,” said Storm. “Orleans — they still don’t have their flooded cars off the streets.”
Storm also noted that people living in project housing prior to its destruction from Hurricane Katrina are now demanding that the government quickly rebuild and return them to their old homes. One woman, Storm noted, is a 30-year resident of the projects who is threatening to sue the government.
“Now what in the heck is she doing in the housing projects for 30 years? It’s like they own them, but they don’t own them,” he said. “The government owns them, and that’s the mentality.”
Peterson places most of the blame for the lackluster hurricane response on New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
“[H]e did nothing. He had the buses sitting there for days — over 200 buses. He made no attempt to use those buses in order to get the people out. He is a black Democrat mayor of the city; how come they didn’t blame him?” Peterson asked.
Storm and Peterson believe the federal government is also to blame for enabling the cultural problems because it fears being branded racist unless it acts.
“In general, you have a federal government very sensitive to that — the race issue — and very intimidated and they cater to that,” said Storm, who cited the example of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s assistance to Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
“Not to say these people don’t need help,” Storm said, “but it went way, way beyond catering to some of this.”
Peterson said the black culture problem has also been fueled by “false black leaders.”
“Over the last 50 years, they have heard: ‘You need government’ from these false black leaders like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the NAACP. They have told black people ‘You need affirmative action, you need more welfare programs’ and that’s not what black folk need. They need less of that and more family,” Peterson said.
“They need to get married instead of having 70 percent of children out of wedlock. They need to teach their children to work by being an example of that,” he added.
The NAACP and the National Urban League did not return calls seeking comment on this article.

From Swoosh

and why they are not as serious about the war as they say.

Tens of Thousands March Against Iraq War - BIG FUCKEN DEAL!

WASHINGTON (AP) - Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.

Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.

Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years.

“Silence is no longer an option,” Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as “Hanoi Jane” by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now.

Read the rest (here) but why bother
I was in DC for six days, was in the Capital area on numerous occasions.
The entire time only one lone dude with a sign saying “Bush just purchased 90,000 acres in Paraguay” was the only representative of the loony left on display, what the hell!
Also remember I was there the day of the State of the Union Address.
If these mutherfuckers on the left are were outraged at the war and troop increases, then where the fuck were they on State of the Union Tuesday?

The area around the mall was full of satellite trucks, a couple of the network evening news programs were done live from there that day.
There were reporters all over the damm place and that does not include the folks covering the Libby mess.

So where the fuck were the protesters? On a day where you could have received shit loads of attention and coverage you choose to stay away?

So today they have some bullshit protest with what 10,000 idiots lead by Hanoi Jane and Sean Penn? Where is the goddamm outrage, where are the hundreds of thousands of people?

It only tells me that either there is not as much momentum on the left as the media says there is or you people on the left have punked out.
All of your bitching before the election is now down to a dull roar.
Your designated representatives who were suppose to go to Washington and bitch slap Bush and take back Washington from the evil GOP are now looking like a bunch of punk ass pussies passing “non-binding” resolutions and making bullshit trips to Iraq.

Why didn’t these bastards take their asses to Iraq before the elections?

This is why I’m almost glad the idiot Democrats won in November, because they look like a bunch of ignorant, confused dolts, confused about what direction they want to go in and unable to come to a consensus about any damm thing.

The Republican Party is kinda jacked right now, but with the Democrats fumbling their opportunities, the GOP will hopefully have time to get their shit together before “08.” 

Where too was Cindy Sheehan? I brought my camera just to get that idiot bitch on tape.
Even she was too damm lazy to protest. Snoop was soooo disappointed!

 In case you forgot: James Webb Writes About Incest and Pedophilia

Posted by Hugh Hewitt - Hat Tip - Thinking Right 

An essay from an active duty officer with more than 25 years of service, addressed to his fellow USNA alum, Senator James Webb.

Senator Jim “Copperhead” Webb

Why did the new Democratic majority select Senator James Webb (D-VA) to give the Democratic response to the president’s State of the Union Address? Since when does this privilege fall to a freshman, even a freshman senator? It’s seems that despite the bad experience with nominating John Kerry to be their standard bearer in 2004, the Democrats have learned nothing. At least they recognize that they have a serious national security credibility problem but the leadership and the base simply cannot get beyond Vietnam. Hence, they asked a US Marine officer turned novelist, turned Navy Secretary, turned Democrat to present their–well, their opposition to all things Bush, because one certainly did not hear ANY tangible plans. Senator Webb is a graduate of my alma mater, the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He is a highly decorated Marine from Vietnam who unlike Senator Kerry actually and definitively earned his commendations for bravery and valor in combat. His novels have sold very well because he is a very talented writer. But on close inspection, something about Senator Webb is very disturbing. Perhaps it harkens all the way back to his midshipman days in Annapolis and a simple boxing match lost. You see, James Webb lost a boxing match to a man he clearly despises, Oliver North. Webb, as chronicled by Robert Timberg in his best-selling book, The Nightingale’s Song, was heavily favored to beat North in the Brigade boxing championships but lost. Timberg claims that Webb believed he was intentionally denied the title by poor preparation from his coach, or more accurately the boxing coach made sure Ollie was better prepared to beat him! Regardless, Webb believes he was wronged and today we can see this streak of vengeance in him. More on this later.

Read the rest

Let me preface this Sowell piece by saying I am in the middle of reading his book “Black Rednecks, White Liberals”.
Anybody who is interested in race, racism, culture issues, slavery and its affect on American society particularly as it applies to blacks I strongly recommend you read this book.
I would go as far to say this book should be required reading for ALL blacks and should be required reading at all higher educational institutions and in particular African-American studies programs. 

I personally was never able to articulate why I found white liberalism so repugnant and this book systematically spells out what I have always felt and believed.

I have always said through Thomas Sowell I have been able to discover why I have the social and political beliefs that I have, but this book adds new dimension to those thoughts.   
 

By Thomas Sowell 

In an era when our media and even our education system exalt emotions, while ignoring facts and logic, perhaps we should not be surprised that so many people explain economics by “greed.”

Today there are adults — including educated adults — who explain multimillion-dollar corporate executives’ salaries as being due to “greed.”

Think about it: I could become so greedy that I wanted a fortune twice the size of Bill Gates’ — but this greed would not increase my income by one cent.

If you want to explain why some people have astronomical incomes, it cannot be simply because of their own desires — whether “greedy” or not — but because of what other people are willing to pay them.

The real question, then, is: Why do other people choose to pay corporate executives so much?

One popular explanation is that executive salaries are set by boards of directors who are spending the stockholders’ money and do not care that they are overpaying a CEO, who may be the one responsible for putting them on the board of directors in the first place.

It makes a neat picture and may even be true in some cases. What deals a body blow to this theory, however, is that CEO compensation is even higher in corporations owned by a few giant investment firms, as distinguished from corporations owned by thousands of individual stockholders.

In other words, it is precisely where people are spending their own money and have financial expertise that they bid highest for CEOs. It is precisely where people most fully understand the difference that the right CEO can make in a corporation’s profitability that they are willing to bid what it takes to get the executive they want.

If people who are capable of being outstanding executives were a dime a dozen, nobody would pay eleven cents a dozen for them.

Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.

All of us have thousands of things happening around us that we do not understand. We use computers all the time but most of us could not build a computer if our life depended on it — and those few individuals who could probably couldn’t grow orchids or train horses.

In short, we all have grossly inadequate knowledge in other people’s specialties.

The idea that everything must “justify itself before the bar of reason” goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world.

Given the high degree of specialization in a modern economy, demanding that everything “justify itself before the bar of reason” means demanding that people who know what they are doing must be subject to the veto of people who don’t have a clue about the decisions that they are second-guessing.

It means demanding that ignorance override knowledge.

The ignorant are not just some separate group of people. As Will Rogers said, everybody is ignorant, but just about different things.

Should computer experts tell brain surgeons how to do their job? Or horse trainers tell either of them what to do?

One of the reasons why central planning sounds so good, but has failed so badly that even socialist and communist governments finally abandoned the idea by the end of the 20th century, is that nobody knows enough to second guess everybody else.

Every time oil prices shoot up, there are cries of “greed” and demands by politicians for an investigation of collusion by Big Oil. There have been more than a dozen investigations of oil companies over the years, and none of them has turned up the collusion that is supposed to be responsible for high gas prices.

Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their “greed”? Or could it all be supply and demand — a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like “greed”?

Claycomo, Mo. — Now in the driver’s seat of an iconic American automaker, Alan Mulally traveled from the company’s Michigan headquarters to its sprawling Kansas City Assembly Plant to spread a message Friday of optimism, hope and realistic expectations.

That he grew up a few miles west on Interstate 70, in Lawrence, just made the trip all that more special.

“It’s nice to be home,” Mulally said.

Four months after taking over as Ford’s president and chief executive officer, Mulally had climbed into a new Ford Escape and enjoyed a smooth ride from the airport to the company’s 4.7 million-square-foot plant for a formal introduction of two of its latest products: 2008 versions of the Escape and Mercury Mariner.

The trip came a day after Ford, the company that invented the assembly line and effectively brought automobiles to the masses, reported that it had lost $12.7 billion in 2006, enough for nearly $2,000 on every company vehicle sold last year.

But Mulally — the upbeat graduate of Lawrence High School and Kansas University — spent Friday morning smiling and shaking hands, listening intently as workers shared stories of cost-savings initiatives and promising to do whatever it takes to make the company successful.

Read the rest of the article (here) but why bother
Although I think it’s cool that we have a local homeboy running the company and I wish him all the luck in the world, but the bottom line as to why Ford is losing market share is because FORD CARS SUCK.

I’m mean, seriously people, there is not one single Ford Automobile and that includes the Mustang that I would even consider buying.
Ok, maybe a Ford Truck, but the car line is the most boring in the entire auto world. 

They are lifeless, the cars have no personality.
 I’m thinking to myself when I read a number of articles and seen some news segments where executives were “scratching their heads” trying to figure out why they keep losing traction in the market. I’m like you mean the engineers at Ford can’t take an honest look at those crappy cars they have drawn up and figure that out? 

If it were possible, I would skip an entire production year and completely blow up the entire auto line, just sell trucks and commercial vehicles.

I would fire every design engineer who has worked for the company over the last decade and start from scratch.

It is not a hard concept to ask your executives and engineers to design an auto line that infuses excitement.

I drive a 1997 BMW 7-Series and I would not trade it for any car Ford makes today.

New cars are already ridiculously overpriced. If I’m gonna go broke buying one I want to at least feel good about driving it.  

Hire me to “pimp” up Ford, and you won’t have to pay me anywhere near what those sorry ass executives at Ford make.
To make matters worse I heard on the radio coming home yesterday they are considering giving executives at Ford pay raises to boost morale.
That right there tells you why Ford SUX!

From the Smoking Gun 

JANUARY 25–Students at a Texas college threw a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that featured attendees wearing gang apparel and Afro wigs, carrying malt liquor, handguns, and fried chicken, and even one woman dressed as Aunt Jemima.

Photos of the January 15 event were discovered on a Facebook.com page by a Tarleton State University sophomore who heads the school’s NAACP chapter. A selection of party photos can be found on the following pages.

When he discovered the images, Donald Ray Elder told TSG, he sent an e-mail to Tarleton student Jeremy Pelz, on whose Facebook page the photos were placed in a folder titled “MLK.” In a reply e-mail, Pelz (seen in the picture on left) told Elder that he would rename the folder in which the photos were placed “so it does not bring any disrespect to Mr. King.”

Pelz noted that the party was started a few years earlier “because one of best friends is black or African American, whichever you deem politically correct, to be his day not to dishonor him.” He added, “So I do apologize if you felt any disrespect because none was intended.” School officials have launched an investigation into the party and the university’s president, Dennis P. McCabe, has denounced the photos as despicable. In a subsequent post, Pelz–who has yanked the party photos from his Facebook page–stated that the party was not meant to be “racist or discriminating.”

My take is this; if you are going to celebrate “clown” culture in real life (just watch VH1, MTV or the Hip Hop Channel on Dish Network) you can’t get upset at some rednecks wanting to emulate it.

All kinds of TV advertising suggest we look, act and dress like these white kids did at this party.

If some black folks are upset then they have to look a lot harder at the black folks who are knee deep and living out this “cultural identity” every day and like I said celebrating it and frankly making money off of it.

Just ask any “so-called” gansta rapper. 

By John Tompkins
The Facts - Link  

BRAZORIA, Texas — A proposed ordinance to ban use of the “N-word” did not draw much support from black youth who attended a town hall meeting Thursday night.

The ordinance, proposed by Brazoria Mayor Ken Corley, would have meant a possible $500 fine for anyone caught using it in an inflammatory manner. But after hearing overwhelming objections to the proposed ordinance, Corley told the crowd, “this evening you will hear the last of it.”

If the ordinance passed, it likely would increase racial tensio