Airlines, travel companies get in on “carbon offsets” scheme
A fool and his money are soon parted. From the NJ fishwrap:
“Every business has an impact on the environment,” said Lawrence Hunt, chief executive of Silverjet, who describes himself as both the chief executive and the chief environmental officer of the airline. “We realized we had an opportunity before we started the airline 18 months ago, and we decided to go fully carbon neutral at the start.”
Silverjet is part of a “green” movement in the aviation industry that has taken off in the past year. Major airlines including Delta, Continental, British Airways and Air Canada; and travel companies such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity are now offering “carbon offsets” to passengers for as little as $5 a flight when they book their tickets.
As stated before, carbon offsets are a total sham, akin to “indulgences” in the Middle Ages. It gives those with money a license to spew CO2 and “atone” by paying a glorified licensing fee, all while doing nothing to reduce the so-called “footprint”. I would be critical of the airlines, but all they’re doing is making money off of idiots.
Second-grader suspended for drawing picture of water gun
Government schools strike again. From MSNBC:
A New Jersey second-grader’s drawing of a stick figure shooting a gun has earned him a one-day school suspension.
Seven-year-old Kyle Walker’s mom told an The Press newspaper of Atlantic City that her son was suspended for violating the district’s zero-tolerance policy on guns. She said her son told her he’d drawn a water pistol.
Kyle gave the picture to another child on the school bus, and that child’s parents complained about it to school officials.
The case is not the first in New Jersey in which students were suspended for depictions of weapons.
Four kindergarten boys were suspended in 2000 for playing cops and robbers, even though they were using their fingers as guns.
Just remember this: “zero tolerance” means “zero common sense” in a government school. My gosh, our decayed society won’t even let kids be kids anymore.
Chuck Norris endorses Mike Huckabee
Yes, he does. So, maggots, that’s who you’re going to vote for. After all, as Allah says, “Chuck Norris doesn’t vote, Chuck Norris tells America how it’s going to be.”
Osamabama thinks national anthem is sooooooooooo passé
From Moonbattery:
Barack Obama has moved beyond rejecting flag pins. Via Time, here he is enduring our National Anthem:
Bill Richardson and even Shrillary have their hands over their hearts, as respect and the United States Code demand. But Osama Abominable doesn’t go for that corny stuff.
If you have not yet done so, feel free to go ahead and question his patriotism.
LA elects immigrant’s son as new guv
Overcoming the most shameful smear tactics by state Democrats, Bobby Jindal (Republican) became the newly elected governor of Louisiana this past weekend. From Breitbart/AP:
Changing Louisiana’s reputation for corruption would do more than just make over its image, Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal said Sunday: It could help the state attract businesses and win federal aid for hurricane recovery.
The Republican congressman, a day after his historic win in an election that featured a dozen candidates for governor, pressed ahead with his campaign pledge, saying in an interview with The Associated Press that one of his first acts will be to call a special legislative session to reform ethics laws.
…
The son of immigrants on Saturday won more than 50 percent of the vote in a primary election to make him Louisiana’s first non-white governor since Reconstruction and the nation’s first Indian-American chief executive. That tally averted the need for a November runoff election.
It won’t be easy for Jindal, since he has to clean up the bumbling incompetent Blanco’s messes. But I do get the feeling that he’s up for the job, and Louisianans agree.
BET gives props to Jena Six
“Yo, yo, yo! I’d like to give a shout out to my homeys, the Jena 6. Th’ Man is tryin’ to keep them down ‘cuz they put the beatdown on Whitey. Wassup wit’ dat, dawg?”
BET invited two of the thugs who viciously assaulted a white kid to their celebrity-studded Hip Hop Awards show. They got a standing ovation and were lionized for their “victimhood”!
Side thought: do you see any white American lionizing the student who got assaulted? No! Why? Because he supposedly engaged in racist behavior that nearly all people (regardless of race) find appalling. Why is it that so many times, the black community cannot properly condemn what any proper-thinking individual can plainly see is wrong? The Jena 6 are not heroes. They’re gangsters. Period.
Fortunately, there has been much criticism from the black community, including himself. However, as long as displays like this from BET continue to Bill Cosbyhappen, race relations will continue to deteriorate.
Burglar ransacks home, then cleans it up at gunpoint
Non-political post of the day, without a doubt:
A burglar in Montgomery chose the wrong family to mess with, literally. Adrian and Tiffany McKinnon returned home on Tuesday after a week away to find that thieves had emptied almost everything the family of five owned, Tiffany McKinnon said through tears.
“Tears just rolled down my face as I walked in and saw everything gone and piles of trash all over my home,” she said.
Adrian McKinnon sent his wife to see her sister while he inspected the piles left behind. As he walked back into the sunroom, a man walked through the back door straight into him, Tiffany McKinnon told the Montgomery Advertiser in a story Thursday.
“My husband Adrian caught the thief red-handed in our home,” she said. “And what is even crazier, the man even had my husband’s hat sitting right on his head.”
Adrian McKinnon held the suspect, 33-year-old Tajuan Bullock, at gunpoint and told him to sit on the floor until he decided what to do.
“We made this man clean up all the mess he made, piles of stuff, he had thrown out of my drawers and cabinets onto the floor,” Tiffany McKinnon said.
When police arrived, Bullock complained about being forced to clean the home at gunpoint.
“This man had the nerve to raise sand about us making him clean up the mess he made in my house,” she said. “The police officer laughed at him when he complained and said anybody else would have shot him dead.”
No word as to whether the ACLU will be getting involved on behalf of the criminal…or, in their view, the real victim.
Someone needs to teach a Hilldawg new tricks
This stuff is getting old. Who will be the next Hsu to drop? From the LA Times:
Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door.
And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan bridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes.
All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate — Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.
…
As with other campaigns looking for dollars in unpromising places, the Clinton operation also has accepted what it later conceded were improper donations (Funny how that seems to happen all the time! – Ed.). At least one reported donor denies making a contribution. Another admitted to lacking the legal-resident status required for giving campaign money. (Well, that would certainly help explain her affinity for illegal aliens! – Ed.)
…
The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.
And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs — including dishwasher, server or chef — that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election.
Her Highness sure has a knack of finding poor Chinese folks who somehow give tons of jack to her quest for power, doesn’t she?
MSM yawns over moonbat rep’s remarks
From Michelle Malkin:
Rep. Pete Stark starts blabbering about Republicans who don’t want to spend money on children, but instead want to spend it on “an illegal war” to be fought by children whom Republicans want to send to Iraq to “blow people up” and “get their heads blown up” for “his amusement.”
…
See my new post on Pete StarkRavingMad. These people can’t contain themselves. And let’s stop the delusion that the Starks are the fringe. They are the center of the nutroots-i-fied Democrat Party.
Shocker! Not a word in the NYTimes coverage of the override vote failure about Stark’s remarks.
Nothing in the latest WaPo story, either!
Because, you know, Democrats debasing the president and dragging the debate into the sewer on the House floor is just not news.
Compare and contrast: Trent Lott (Republican) waxes eloquent about how much better life would be had Strom Thurmond been elected president back in 1948; Pete Stark (Democrat) accuses the commander-in-chief of getting his rocks off to the thought of American GI’s getting decapitated. Which one does the MSM find outrageous? Nope…no liberal media bias!
Patriots outnumber hippies at demonstration…in Berkeley!
It’s official: Hell has frozen over. From Contra Costa Times:
Flag-waving demonstrators far outnumbered a group of peace advocates who were protesting a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in downtown on Wednesday.
But groups on both sides of Shattuck Avenue slowed traffic and jammed sidewalks as they shouted back and forth at each other.
Police kept the two competing groups across the street from each other; there were no arrests.
One protester who was burning something was cited by police after he was warned by officers not to burn anything in public, said police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary Kusmiss.
…
This is 2007, and we support our troops. We are not going to let CodePINK disgrace our military heroes,” yelled Deborah Johns, a Granite Bay woman whose 23-year-old son is preparing to head to Iraq for his fourth tour of duty. “My son is a hero, and so are all the others who served this country.”
Berserkley has shown the world that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.
News bytes
I’m busier than Israeli bombers over a Syrian nuke plant today, so here’s some reading to tide you over:
Dem guv of Michigan: “YOUR money? NOT!”
This is just jaw-droppingly appalling. From New Fallujah (AKA Detroit):
The guv’s spin machine hit overdrive this past weekend with an over-the-top interview that strained credulity and probably pushed more than a few aortas toward the breaking point. Michigan’s budget woes, it turns out, are the fault of its greedy citizens.
“It’s not just about me, me, me. It’s about investing in Michigan,” Gov. Jennifer Granholm told the Free Press in a piece Sunday. “Where’s the notion of the common good? It’s been lost over decades because there’s been … this idea that it’s your money, it’s your money. (Yeah, what kind of crazy talk is THAT? – Ed.) What happened to, ‘It’s your schools, and it’s your roads and it’s your parks, your libraries?’”
There you have it folks: It’s not your money. It’s hers. Or the Legislature’s. Or the state bureacracy’s — anybody’s but yours. Don’t ask questions about how it is spent, or on what. Don’t demand better results from your schools or your local governments. Don’t ask how Michigan stacks up to other Great Lakes states or anywhere else. Just pay up, shut up and sit down.
Otherwise, you don’t want good schools, good roads, good parks and good libraries, just squalor for as far as the eye can see. The accusation is as absurd as the fact that it was aired unchallenged.
Yes, Michigan: You’re the problem. And if you weren’t gobsmacked by the guv’s high-handedness on public revenue, there was her claim that Michigan could position itself as the nation’s alternative-energy manufacturing hub. Really? How?
“Those alternative energy companies are going to come where it makes business sense for them, from the standpoint of geography, workforce, where there is the talent for development and research,” Granholm said. “Nobody has what Michigan has in terms of water, wind, wood, the workforce, the history of the automobile, the technology and research. We have this place that is second to none.”
And the evidence that this is so? Anyone? In the waves of new investment? How could it be so with the nation’s highest unemployment rate, lowest job creation rate, high cost of doing business, increasing tax burden and deserved reputation as one of the nation’s labor strongholds?
From the jackass’ mouth. Of course, the guv is just saying what every other liberal thinks but doesn’t usually have the stones to be so public about it.
Ninth Circus: Statutory rape no big whoop
From Moonbattery:
The latest from San Franfreakshow’s Ninth Circus Court of Appeals:
On Tuesday, the court decided that Alberto Quintero-Salazar – a Mexican national and legal resident of the U.S. – could not be deported on the basis of a sex crime he committed in 1998, namely illegal intercourse between an adult over 21 and a youth under 16. According to the court, adults taking sexual advantage of a minor (so long as they have the “consent” that minors are legally unable to provide) are not guilty of a crime of “moral turpitude,” which is needed to subject legal U.S. residents to deportation.
Congrats to the militant degenerates who make up this court: they’ve managed to advance both the Mexican invasion and the sexual exploitation of children — two favorite progressive causes — in a single misruling.
Judge Sidney Thomas wrote for the majority that statutory rape “is not inherently base, vile or depraved.” Oh yes it is, Thomas. And so are moonbats like you.
This is great news for guys like R. Kelly and Scott Ritter, whose mottos are “as long as there’s grass on that field, play ball!” For the rest of non-depraved and normal America, I’d recommend not raising your kids in San Fransicko.
MO government school files complaint to stop “neglect”, AKA homeschooling
From WND:
A Missouri public school is pursuing a complaint against a mother for withdrawing her son and daughter from the school and teaching them at home, after an apparent threat to the daughter’s life at the school.
The case involves Moberly, Mo., mother Anita Nicoli, who withdrew her daughter and a son from Moberly Middle School recently after what she has described as a two-year campaign of intimidation by other students.
The breaking point came when another student, who allegedly had harassed and assaulted her daughter, drew a picture of herself holding a gun and pointing it directly at Nicoli’s daughter. The picture was passed around among students, she said.
But she now has been cited in a complaint filed by the school after she withdrew two of her children.
Multiple telephone messages left with officials at the school district were not returned. But Nicoli told WND that she is accused of “educational neglect” by social services, based on a complaint from the school.
…
In Nicoli’s encounter with school officials in Moberly, she said her children had been subjected to harassment and badgering at the school for several years. She cited incidents of being slapped, bullied, kicked and butted, as well as threatened. Her son was shoved into a metal bar. Another time a student used a seat belt buckle on the school bus to hit him.
The last situation with her daughter happened when the other student hit her daughter in the face with a locker door, leaving a bruise on her check. Then the other student slapped her daughter, punched her, and threatened to “kick” her.
The attacker then drew the picture and showed it to Nicoli’s daughter before it was taken by the teacher, she said.
Discussions with school administrators led nowhere, so she notified the school of her homeschool plans and went forward.
“Three days after I pulled my kids out, the school apparently wrote a letter to juvenile authorities [with a complaint],” she told WND. She was notified by juvenile authorities and went in to talk with them.
The complaint letter, filed by a counselor at the school, essentially said, “I couldn’t adequately teach (neither can a lot of government school teachers, but that doesn’t stop them from collecting paychecks! – Ed.),” Nicholi said. But she said juvenile authorities would not let her touch, or even see the letter, instead reading from it to her.
…
“They’re lashing out because they didn’t want to deal with the reason for this – what they were not doing for my children,” Nicoli said. “I told them, ‘My children have a right to a safe and proper education, and you’re not doing it so I’m pulling them out.’” …
“Educational neglect” is educrat speak for “not letting your kids get assaulted or killed in our war zone facilities”, I guess.
Homeschooling threatens the government school bureaucracy, so by God (insert politically correct deity here), they’re not going to just sit back and allow that to happen! Who in the hell does this woman think she is, educating and protecting her own kids instead of trusting her local government school to do better than she does? Since when do we allow parents to determine their kids’ best interests?
Hilldawg: Say “yes” to “war for oil”!
How this must agitate the leftards who support this wench! From the AP:
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton advocated talks to settle differences with Iran but said Saturday that Tehran would invite U.S. action if it were to disrupt oil supplies.
In other words, Her Highness would launch a “war for oil”, presumably just to show Dubya how a real “war for oil” should be conducted!
MSM: Bush causing Iraqi gravediggers to lose jobs
George Bush doesn’t care about Iraqi gravediggers. Dammit, we need more deaths to keep these folks from losing their jobs! From Say Anything:
You ever get to thinking that President Bush literally can’t do anything right in Iraq as far as the media is concerned? Like maybe the journalists are going to find something negative about everything that happens there?
You’re not alone.
That’s right. Go ahead and cry a little tear for all the grave diggers put out of work by General Betrayus’ surge strategy.
Nope…no liberal media bias!
Rudy to Barry O: “You’re no Ronald Reagan!”
I don’t think anyone will be confusing Barrack Hussein with the Great Communicator anytime soon. That’s the understatement of the decade, Rudy. From Breitbart/AP:
Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday ridiculed Democratic rival Barack Obama for saying he would meet, without precondition, with leaders of renegade nations.
The Obama campaign answered back, arguing that Giuliani may not want to engage in diplomacy with outlaw leaders but he’s been willing to take their money.
Addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition, Giuliani described Obama’s offer, during a presidential debate in July, to meet as president with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
“Then he went on to explain that Ronald Reagan negotiated with the communists (Reagan talked to Obama? – Ed.) ,” Giuliani said, pausing and sighing. “I say this most respectfully: You’re not Ronald Reagan, you know?”
The audience in a downtown Washington hotel laughed and clapped.
“Here’s what Ronald Reagan did before he negotiated with communists,” the former New York mayor continued. “First he called them the evil empire. Then he took missiles, intermediate-range missiles … and he put them in European cities, and he pointed the missiles at Russian cities with names on them.
“Then he said, in a very nice way, ‘Let’s negotiate.’”
Get some aloe for that freshly spanked tush, Barry O!
San Fransicko: Give me your tired, your poor, your…heroin-addled masses?
Only in San Franfreakshow does this make sense to people. From San Franistan’s fishwrap:
Two months ago I wrote about an idea for a place in San Francisco where intravenous drug users could shoot up under the supervision of trained personnel. A lot of people thought it sounded crazy.
Well, get ready to hear about it again, because the idea is gaining momentum.
On Thursday, an all-day symposium – co-hosted by the city Department of Public Health – will examine the idea of creating safe injection centers where users could bring their drugs, shoot up and leave, without fear of arrest.
The idea is to decrease overdoses, keep dirty needles off the street, and cut the risk of spreading HIV and hepatitis C. Those are all good things. It is the idea of providing addicts with their own injection clinic that riles people up.
“What’s next?” a reader wrote when the first column appeared. “Giving them the drugs, too?”
No. But there’s no doubt that if San Francisco ever established such a center, even as a pilot program, there would be an enormous brouhaha.
“It would be huge international news,” said Peter Davidson, a researcher at UCSF in the epidemiology and biostatistics department. “It would be the first facility in the United States, and there would probably be a firestorm for a while.”
You can count on that. The conservative radio talk show hosts (and bloggers – Ed.) are probably already jump-starting their tonsils. Wacky San Francisco, providing a party room for junkies. (Guilty as charged. – Ed.)
Reid to retire in 2010?
It’s a rumor, to be sure. With poll numbers like these, who can blame him? Good grief, how it must chap Harry’s defeatist posterior that he ranks below Dubya and Rush in his own state!
Brits pulling their own teeth, thanks to socialized medicine
And leftards want to bring this to America? No thanks! From Hot Air:
Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday.
Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 separate extractions on himself with pliers…
[A] lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment…
Almost half of all dentists — 45 percent — said they no longer take NHS patients, while 41 percent said they had an “excessive” workload. Twenty-nine percent said their clinic had problems recruiting or retaining dentists.
“These findings indicate that the NHS dental system is letting many patients down very badly,” said Grant.Here’s basically the same article published seven months ago in the Daily Mail, just to illustrate how slow things are to change in the public model. It’s chock full of excerptable nuggets but I’ll settle for this: “Having an NHS dentist should be viewed as an aspiration rather than a reality.”
When the Goron and his ilk say that universal health care is a right, does that mean we have the right to have other people subsidize us pulling our own choppers out of our pieholes? The Euros have their socialist panacea called “universal care”, and they’re more than welcome to it.
Moonbat hostess Rhodes mugged by wingnut her dog
Sorry, moonbats…this cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. From LGF:
Loony leftist Air America radio host Randi Rhodes was allegedly mugged Sunday night in New York outside her apartment, and the cast and crew of Air America already know who to blame.
Jon Elliott was extremely agitated when he reported on the incident. He opened his show by saying “it is with sadness that tonight I inform you that my Air America colleague Randi Rhodes was assaulted last night while walking her dog near her New York City home.”
Pointing out that Rhodes was wearing a jogging suit and displayed no purse or jewelry, Elliott speculated that “this does not appear to me to be a standard grab the money and run mugging.”
“Is this an attempt by the right wing hate machine to silence one of our own,” he asked. “Are we threatening them. Are they afraid that we’re winning. (Yes, bankrupt radio networks with a dozen nationwide listeners must be winning! – Ed.) Are they trying to silence intimidate us.”
Some of blog posters also expressed concerns that the attack on Rhodes was hate crime. Other posters warned that we need more facts before any judgements are made.When has that stopped you in the past?
Never. And this time is no different:
Air America radio host Randi Rhodes is temporarily off the air, but claims she was brutally attacked near her Manhattan apartment are bogus, her lawyer and a police source said today.
Fellow host Jon Elliott claimed on the liberal radio network that Rhodes had been mugged while walking her dog, Simon, on Sunday night. Elliot, who said Rhodes lost several teeth in the attack, waxed about a possible conspiracy.
…
Rhodes’ lawyer told the Daily News she was injured in a fall while walking her dog. He said she’s not sure what happened, and only knows that she fell down and is in a lot of pain. The lawyer said Rhodes expects to be back on the air Thursday. He stressed there is no indication she was targeted or that she was the victim of a “hate crime.”
The pain of an unrealized conspiracy theory (much like every other conspiracy theory those tinfoil nutters have) is probably much worse than the pain of this Yorkie-induced dental work that Randi “let’s off the prez…hey, what’s the Secret Service doing here?” Rhodes will have to endure.
Pelosi sabotaging war efforts
Feel free to question her and her ilk’s patriotism. From Thomas Sowell:
With all the problems facing this country, both in Iraq and at home, why is Congress spending time trying to pass a resolution condemning the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago?
Make no mistake about it, that massacre of hundreds of thousands — perhaps a million or more — Armenians was one of the worst atrocities in all of history.
As with the later Holocaust against the Jews, it was not considered sufficient to kill innocent victims. They were first put through soul-scarring dehumanization in whatever sadistic ways occurred to those who carried out these atrocities.
Historians need to make us aware of such things. But why are politicians suddenly trying to pass Congressional resolutions about these events, long after all those involved are dead and after the Ottoman Empire in which all these things happened no longer exists?
The short answer is irresponsible politics.
People of Armenian ancestry in the United States and around the world are justifiably outraged at what happened in the Ottoman Empire — and at subsequent governments in Turkey which have refused to acknowledge or accept historical responsibility for the mass atrocities that took place on their soil.
But the sudden interest of Congressional Democrats in this issue goes beyond trying to pick up some votes.
They want a resolution to condemn what happened as “genocide” — a word that provokes instant anger among today’s Turks, since genocide means a deliberate government policy aimed at exterminating a whole people, as distinguished from horrors growing out of a widespread breakdown of law and order in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
These are issues of historical facts and semantics best left to scholars rather than politicians.
If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq war?
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the latest in a series of Congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct of that war.
Large numbers of American troops and vast amounts of military equipment go to Iraq through Turkey, one of the few nations in the Islamic Middle East that has long been an American ally.
Turkey has also thus far refrained from retaliating against guerrilla attacks from the Kurdish regions of Iraq onto Turkish soil. But the Turks could retaliate big time if they chose.
There are more Turkish troops on the border of Iraq than there are American troops within Iraq.
Turkey has already recalled its ambassador from Washington to show its displeasure over Congress’ raising this issue. The Turks may or may not stop at that.
In this touchy situation, why stir up a hornet’s nest over something in the past that neither we nor anybody else can do anything about today?
Japan has yet to acknowledge its atrocities from the Second World War. Yet the Congress of the United States does not try to make worldwide pariahs of today’s Japanese, most of whom were not even born when those atrocities occurred.
Even fewer, if any, Turks who took part in attacks on Armenians during the First World War are likely to still be alive.
Too many Democrats in Congress have gotten into the habit of treating the Iraq war as President Bush’s war — and therefore fair game for political tactics making it harder for him to conduct that war.
In a rare but revealing slip, Democratic Congressman James Clyburn said that an American victory in Iraq “would be a real big problem for us” in the 2008 elections.
Unwilling to take responsibility for ending the war by cutting off the money to fight it, as many of their supporters want them to, Congressional Democrats have instead tried to sabotage the prospects of victory by seeking to micro-manage the deployment of troops, delaying the passing of appropriations — and now this genocide resolution that is the latest, and perhaps lowest, of these tactics.
But hey…they “support the troops”, right?
More kiddie human shields, just as irrelevant as ever
Not content with having embarrassed themselves by picking a middle-income family with three late-model gas guzzlers and nearly $500k in assets (to go along with four kids in private school) as a poster family for needing to expand S-CHIP, the Dems one-upped themselves. They pick another child (this one is two years old) to trot out for their shameful emotional (and not factual) plea to grow the imperial federal government.
Enter Bethany Wilkerson:
Now meet Bethany Wilkerson, the latest youngster enlisted by congressional Democrats or their allies to help build support for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Having suffered from heart failure as an infant, USAction says, the Florida toddler would not be alive today but for the government-funded program for moderate-income families not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.
Now Bethany is scheduled to speak at a Capitol Hill rally Tuesday evening, according to a release this morning by Americans United For Change.
There was no word on what the 2-year-old plans to say. But she joins a flurry of 11th-hour activity in advance of the attempt by House Democrats on Thursday to override Bush’s veto of legislation to expand coverage to 4 million more children at a cost of $35 billion over five years.
There’s just a slight problem here: the Wilkersons are already covered by S-CHIP today! In other words, Bush’s veto has exactly zero impacton them! Hell, the Wilkersons aren’t even arguing for the expansion of S-CHIP at all, so aside from their beautiful child being used as another human shield by the left, why are we seeing the Wilkersons in the first place?
Notes the Right Wing Nut House:
Funny how we don’t see any poster families who are 400% above the poverty level being pushed forward as examples of the kinds of people the $35 billion expansion of S-CHIP will help. Why not? Since the original parameters of the S-CHIP program enjoys the overwhelming support of Congress and the President, why trot forward families like the Frosts and the Wilkersons who qualify under the current rules? Why not bring to the fore those families at the high end of the expansion requirements and let the American people decide if they want to subsidize insurance for them?
The answer is obvious; a family living 400% above poverty are not as sympathetic as those, like the Wilkerson’s, who couldn’t get by without S-CHIP. In fact, pushing forward people who make more than 40% of all the families in America as the poster family for S-CHIP expansion would probably torpedo the bill then and there.
…The Democrats just don’t have a clue about the true nature of the opposition to their S-CHIP expansion. For that, they would have to give a fig about the tradeoffs we make between dependency and freedom every time they get some not so bright idea about “helping” those who can usually be counted on to help themselves.
You know with certainty that a big government power grab is unneeded when those who argue for it cannot even produce one single family to show why said power grab is even necessary. With this S-CHIP expansion debate, the left is 0-for-2: a family with the means of procuring their own inexpensive health care plan (the Frosts), and a family that is already being served by the S-CHIP plan (the Wilkersons).
Care to try again, you shameless loathsome b#stards?
Hilldawg: Snoop on political opponents, not on terrorists
Nice to see Her Highness has her priorities straight. From The Hill:
Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance.
Government surveillance will be at the forefront of the political debate this fall as congressional Democrats and President Bush square off over legislation allowing electronic spying on U.S. soil without a warrant.
Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents.
In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.
“The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill,” Gerth and Van Natta wrote in reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. “Bill’s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.”
A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year.”
…
“Every president should save those powers for limited, critical situations,” said Clinton, according to a copy of the speech posted on her campaign website.
Those “limited, critical situations” include preventing her hubby’s next bimbo eruption, but do not include listening to terrorist phone calls. Brilliant.
If a suicide bombing goes down and no one sees it, does it make a sound?
According to the MSM, “yes, it does”! From Confederate Yankee:
Via a reader in the comments of my most recent TNR post, a story about a solider wounded and a squad virtually wiped out in an apparent youth suicide bombing in Iraq in the Cleveland Daily Banner in Cleveland, TN:
Christopher H. Bagwell, grandson of Nancy and Richard Hughes of Cleveland, was severely wounded Tuesday, Sept. 18, in Iraq.
Bagwell and his squad leader were the only two survivors of a 12-member squad decimated when an Iraqi youth detonated explosives wrapped around his body.
A graduate of York Institute and Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Bagwell spoke with his grandmother last week.
She said the young soldier told her he had just passed the youthful bomber with his squad leader, with his squad following behind handing out candy to children. The Iraqi village was believed to be a friendly zone for the U.S. military.
The youngster, believed to be 10 to 12 years old, detonated the explosives as the soldiers were walking by. Ten members of the squad were killed, along with the youngster.Bagwell was severely injured.The thing is, I can’t find any such record of a young suicide bomber causing so many fatalities among U.S. troops in Iraq, or for that matter, even ten U.S. fatalities on Sept. 18 in total.
Anti-war casualty clearinghouse icasualties.org has no record of such an attack, or even anything similar. According to U.S. Central Command Casualty Reports, there was one attack on Sept. 18, where 3 soldiers were killed and 3 wounded near Tikrit. There was nothing like a suicide bombing attack that killed ten soldiers and wounded two. A search of Google News also fails to uncover a similar account.
Update: The military weighs in:Sir,
After reviewing available information, we are unable to confirm the
story’s legitimacy. Thank you.
V/R,
BRYON J. MCGARRY, 1Lt, USAF
OIC, JOC Public Affairs
Multi-National Corps – Iraq
Well, thank goodness the MSM has all of these “multiple layers of fact-checkers” at their disposal! Otherwise, one might get the silly notion they don’t thoroughly vet their stories. I know, I know, that’s just crazy talk!
Nope…no liberal media bias!
Navy: You’ll take this expensive boat, and you’ll like it!
From Seattlestan’s fishwrap:
Tucked away on Seattle’s Portage Bay, a sleek, 85-foot speedboat sat idle for years — save for an annual jaunt to maintain its engine.
The Navy paid $4.5 million to build the boat. But months before the hull ever touched water, the Navy gave the boat to the University of Washington. The school never found a use for it, either.
Why would the Navy waste taxpayer dollars on a boat that nobody wanted?
Blame it on Sen. Patty Murray and Congressmen Norm Dicks and Brian Baird. All three exercised their political muscle to slip language into a 2002 spending bill to force the Navy to buy the boat from Edmonds shipbuilder Guardian Marine International.
Year after year, the Washington lawmakers did favors for the tiny company, inserting four “earmarks” into different bills to force the Navy and Coast Guard to buy boats they didn’t ask for — $17.65 million in all. None of the boats was used as Congress intended.
The congressional trio say they were helping Guardian Marine because it had a great product. But each has also received generous campaign donations from the company’s three executives, its sole employees: $14,277 to Baird, $15,000 to Murray, and $16,750 to Dicks.
Earmarks are federal dollars that members of Congress dole out to favor seekers — often campaign donors. In the process, lawmakers advocate for the companies, helping them bypass the normal system of evaluation and competition.
This can result in earmarks that are wasteful or potentially harmful.
For example, Murray directed $6 million to a Redmond company for high-tech battle gear that the Army had rejected as flawed for its armored-vehicle Stryker Brigade.
Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., directed the Marines to buy $2 million of combat T-shirts from an Oregon company. But they couldn’t be used in battle in Iraq due to a subsequent ban on polyester garments that could melt under fire and badly burn the troops.
Until recently, the earmark process was secretive. Congress did not have to publicly reveal the names of companies getting the contracts or those of the sponsoring lawmakers.
The Seattle Times investigated the 2007 defense bill, examining the relationships between who got money in the bill and who gave to lawmakers’ campaign funds. Reporters were able to tie nearly half of the bill’s 2,700 earmarks to their sponsoring lawmakers.
Government waste and corruption at its finest.
NYT fails to cover first Operation Enduring Freedom Medal of Honor winner
From the New York Post:
Every major daily paper in New York took note of President Bush’s decision to bestow the first Medal of Honor of Operation Enduring Freedom on Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy – a Long Islander who gave his life for his country and his fellow SEALs.
Every paper but one, that is.
And it shouldn’t be particularly hard to guess which one.
By now, most folks know exactly how much The New York Times despises the U.S. military.
How it detests any mission that involves U.S. troops – whether to protect Americans by killing terrorists or to help stave off a bloodbath in the Middle East.
How the paper works tirelessly to promote its anti-war, anti-military agenda – even in its supposedly objective news pages.
So while Bush’s announcement merited stories and appreciative editorials in The Post, The New York Sun, the Daily News and even the front page of liberal Newsday, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that the Times didn’t publish a single word about Murphy’s well-deserved honor.
What did the paper of record focus on yesterday? No fewer than three stories reported on how Americans had killed innocent Iraqi civilians.
Regarding the war, of course, the Times’ “coverage” was pernicious long before the fighting began.
Since then, it has focused obsessively on the mistakes and sins of American GIs (Abu Ghraib, anyone?) – and rarely has it played up U.S. victories.
Indeed, it would be hard to cite a news outlet more responsible for sapping U.S. morale – and emboldening America’s enemies – than the Times.
But Murphy was a New Yorker.
He served with unusual valor and distinction in Afghanistan.
When Taliban militants ambushed his four-man team in 2005, he risked his life scrambling to an open spot to radio for help. He got his call through, but was later killed in the battle.
Surely even editors at the Times could have had the heart to report - if not honor – such courage and self-sacrifice.
Unless, of course, they’re so blinded by their disdain for America’s fighting men and women and their missions that they just can’t muster the decency to do so.
That must be it.
One of their own, the first to win a prestigious (unlike the Nobel “Peace” Prize) award, and the Old Gray Hag can’t see fit to put it in their fishwrap? You can be sure that had this guy been accused in a Murthaesque fashion of killing innocent civilians, the NYT would have been on that story like Jimmah Carter on peanut butter.
Nope…no liberal media bias!
GA in drought to save mussels
Congrats, environuts. You guys trump common sense more often than not. From AJC:
If Georgia orders watering restrictions in metro Atlanta beyond the current outdoor ban, it will be taking drought-fighting steps that not even arid Southern California or Las Vegas has had to make.
As the state considers restrictions on commercial and industrial users, water experts around the nation say they don’t recall any major U.S. metro area being forced into such dire drought measures in about two decades.
“Most large metropolitan areas have systems in place where they try to be better managers of the resource than that,” said Don Wilhite, who founded the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and has been involved in drought responses for at least three decades.
Within two weeks, Georgia Environmental Protection Division director Carol Couch is expected to send Gov. Sonny Perdue options to tighten water restrictions.
Couch has authority to limit water use as necessary with as little as five days’ notice.
Missing from that AJC article is this one that gives us the main culprit:
Pat Stevens, an environmental planner for the Atlanta Regional Commission who regularly keeps tabs on how much water is available for Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb and other metro Atlanta governments, said the Corps’ “wastes water unnaturally.”
“When you move into a drought like we’ve moved into, you’ll drain the system,” Stevens said.
The Corps’ water releases are based on two key requirements: the minimum flow needed to operate Plant Scholtz, Gulf Power’s small coal-fired facility just below Lake Seminole, and federal mandates to protect two mussel species in a Florida river.
If the Chattahoochee were undammed and running freely, Mother Nature would be providing only half the water the Corps is sending, Corps officials have said.
Val Perry Jr., a homeowner and officer of the Lake Lanier Association, told the Corps last week that “If there were no dams at all, some mussels would die and [the species would] not become extinct. … Does a couple of mussels trump 5 million people? What I hear from the Corps is that the answer to that is yes.”
Nice job, feds. The big, bloated, common-sense-devoid federal government is solely to blame for this, and we should trust these guys to manage our health care? No thanks.
In CA, “Mom”, “dad”, “husband”, “wife” are sooooooo yesterday!
From Neal Boortz:
According to this story from WorldNetDaily, California government schools have banned the words “Mom,” “Dad,” husband,” and “wife.” Well .. at least that’s the argument from the Capitol Resource Institute, and since we’re talking about California here … they may not be too far off. All it will take now is a lawsuit or two to get things rolling. Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill which also orders government schools to allow boys to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms and vice versa.
One of the bills signed is SB777, which ban anything that could be interpreted as negative toward homosexuality, bisexuality and alternative lifestyles. Another is AB394 which targets parents and teachers with “anti-harassment” training.
Any text, reference or teaching aid that alludes to the idea of marriage as only between a man and a woman is banned. Any materials that say that people are born as either male or female – and does not offer an ‘in between’ option – is officially banned. Any sources that do not include transsexual, bisexual and homosexual historical figures can no longer be used. And sex education materials must offer the option of a sex change.
Moving on, homecoming kings can no longer be limited to just males. The same goes for homecoming queens. And students can choose which restrooms and locker rooms they want to use, the restrooms that correspond to what they believe their sexual orientation to be.
This same bill will promote these issues by using taxpayer money to create publications, postings, curricula and handouts for students, teachers and parents. It also says that parents who refer to marriage by only its “traditional” terms in the presence of a gay teacher could be convicted of harassment. And students who believe that you are born just male and female could be reported as a harasser.
Analysts are afraid that this legislation will affect schools across the county. This is because textbook publishers must cater to their largest purchaser … and that is often-times California. It would be too expense (sic) to have separate editions of textbooks for other states.
Californiastan…who knew?
Leftists: Leave kids alone…unless they’re Republican kids
Recall the Graeme Frost kerfuffle from last week, where the Dems trotted out a kid to make the mean ol’ GOP look like they’re trying to kill children (ironic, coming from the party of unfettered access to abortion, but I digress). When people like me questioned whether a family of the Frosts’ means (over $80k in income, two SUV’s, four kids in private schools, nearly a half million in real estate equity, etc.) warranted the taxpayers paying for their health insurance, the left resorted to the predictable and dishonest tactic of accusing us of attacking not the program, but the kid. Again, why think when you can feel?
Anywho, I’d say it’s about time to ignore the faux outrage on the part of the left when it comes to “attacking the children”, wouldn’t you agree? From Hot Air:
As if to reward the righty bloggers for their fidelity to facts, leftwing pundits and bloggers have taken to childish name-calling and assertions of moral superiority. Say the folks over at blackfacing Firedoglake:
The difference between the far right wing and the far left wing: the far right will do anything — anything — so long as the ends justifies the means. The far left folks have ethical boundaries that they try very hard not to cross: things like attacking other people’s minor children is bad form . . .
Really? Is that your final answer?
Cuz it’s a lie.
2005. The Republicans trot out a kid to tout their Social Security reform. His name was Noah McCollough, and he was nine years of age at the time.
And the bloggers on the left savaged him. They made sexual references to him, called him a “budding young fascist” and made up a derogatory nickname for him. Q&O has the details.
What was is that the Firedoglakers said again?
Noah McCollough wasn’t the only one to incur the moonbats’ wrath. Remember the John Roberts confirmation hearings? His four-year-old son Jack was mocked by the nutroots as being gay (odd, considering the left purports to be champions of all things queer), adopted (“I think we should research Jack”), or Nazis redux.
Then there’s former Senator Rick Santorum’s young children, which are clearly fair game for the “don’t attack the children” hypocrites on the left. Ugly, pouty, slutty, destined to be a pole dancer…you get the idea. Yes, those kind and compassionate liberals sure do care about the children, don’t they?
As Bryan puts it:
…Wonkette is one of about 7 or 8 large leftwing blogs whose archives prove that many leftwing bloggers don’t regard attacking the minor children of political enemies as out of bounds. They seem to regard it as perfectly acceptable, except when they believe that they can score points by saying otherwise.
These vermin are evil, pure and simple. They know no shame.
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