The End of Self-Esteem

As I sat through another interminable middle school award ceremony that lasted longer than the contest itself, I pondered how the self-esteem movement has wrecked this country. I had plenty of time since well-meaning adults were handing out participation medals to every eager participant.

This current financial calamity is the logical result of the self-esteem movement. Don't get me wrong, I think self-esteem is wonderful when sprung from a healthy self-image and buoyed by real accomplishments. But like diversity, it is worthless when pursued for its own sake.

Presidents Clinton and Bush were full of self-esteem as terrorists plotted the 9/11 attacks under the noses of our clueless but confident alphabet soup bureaucracies. The attacks themselves dented no one's esteem. Richard Clarke was the only government official to feel any blame and apologize as far as I can remember. President Bush awarded CIA Director George Tenant a medal for crying out loud!

Politicians of all all stripes are arrogant and proud as interest on the national debt and entitlement spending slowly, blob-like, consume the federal budget. And now the private sector and state governments follow suit with stumblebum mismanagement that has wrecked the nation's economy. Finally, individual citizens soil themselves after gorging on credit, new cars and McMansions. And mommy government will pick them up and clean them off. Don't want them to feel bad...

Like spoiled children in a no-fault world, this endless chain of fools lines up to receive participation prizes. Congress responds by creating the Federal Failure Reward Package on the advice of the same geniuses who caused the debacle.

This is how unbridled, unwarranted self-esteem destroys a culture that once believed in personal responsibility, thrift and self-reliance.

Outside of our military, self-esteem is turning this country into a colossal failure. Our car manufacturers are going broke while Japanese companies move in and make a profit, on our soil, with American workers. This shows that the average American still knows how to work and achieve, but our leaders and managers are egotistical losers too stupid to leverage it. What has any government agency or public enterprise done right in the last 8, 16, 20 years?

I could give a damn whether our next president is the messiah or the anti-Christ; all I want is competence from my government and our public institutions. If that's too much to ask, could they at least stop rewarding failure?

It's high time that people who screw up got the good old-fashioned ego-destroying, ass-kicking they deserve.

Did you lose a billion dollars today? Then your self-esteem should be crappy, and by the way, you're fired!

Bought more house and more car than you can afford? Looks like you may need to find a cardboard box underneath the interstate off-ramp. Your fellow citizens won't be paying for your stupidity.

You're a failure. Want a self-esteem builder? You can start by cleaning up your own mess. Our nation is out of balance: We have a surplus of self-esteem and a deficit of personal responsibility. Third-world countries are made of this.

Saving Private Hitler

How would you like to be the medic who saved Hitler's life? What a burden for a man named Johan Jambor, who was a WW I medic and treated a wounded Private Hitler. He died aged 94 in 1985, but had told his secret to priest Franciszek Pawlar, who kept a note of their conversation.

Johan’s friend Blassius Hanczuch confirmed the priest’s account of how the medic saved Hitler’s life. He said:

In 1916 they had their hardest fight in the Battle of the Somme.

For several hours, Johan and his friends picked up injured soldiers. He remembers Hitler.

They called him the ‘Screamer’. He was very noisy. Hitler was screaming ‘help, help’.

His abdomen and legs were all in blood. Hitler was injured in the abdomen and lost one testicle. His first question to the doctor was: ‘Will I be able to have children?’.”

Blassius said that when the Nazis swept to power Johan began to suffer nightmares and blame himself for saving Hitler.

You can go read the entire account in The Sun, a British Newspaper. The article focuses on Der Fuhrer's testicular deficiency, but I found the account of the medic who saved a future genocidal madman to be much more interesting. Oh, the cruel twists of history...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1945960.ece

Virtue begat prosperity, and the daughter killed the mother.
-- Cotton Mather

CEOs Rushing into U.S. Treasury Building Trample Policeman to Death

-- Satire --

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Federal police were busy this morning reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a security guard after a crowd of CEOs burst through the doors of the U.S. Treasury looking for a corporate handout.

Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individuals in Friday's video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Jim Rockford, a D.C. police spokesman.

Other bureaucrats were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and CEOs stepped over him and became irate when officials said the Treasury was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

Police said about 2,000 CEOs and CFOs were gathered outside the Treasury building before its 8 a.m. opening. The impatient crowd knocked the employee to the ground as he opened the doors, leaving a metal portion of the frame crumpled like an accordion...

----

This corporate bailout has hit 8.5 Trillion Dollars.

A million of something is difficult for us to visualize; a trillion almost impossible. Let me put this into perspective:

- One trillion dollars, laid end to end, would be 94 million miles long. This is well past the orbit of Mars and almost to the asteroid belt. Light would take over eight minutes to travel this distance!

- 8.5 trillion dollars, stacked in currency bundles, would be enough to re-create three Great Pyramids - of solid cash. You could make almost six Sears Towers.

- $28,000 for every man, woman and child in America.

I considered writing a rant about the sacking of our Treasury and tax dollars, but this anonymous quote says it all, succinctly:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship."

-Hugh Farnham

Europeans thought they had extirpated the superstition of religion from the continent. All they really did was create a vacuum. And we all know nature abhors a vacuum:

Within Germany, a fierce debate is taking place about the strictures of Islamic law, especially regarding the status of women. A series of so-called honour killings have focused the issue, and the practice of arranged marriage is receiving media attention.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/243903,uneasy-peace-for-berlins-ahmadi-mosque--feature.html

Resuscitating Republicanism

Conservatism is dead in New England. There are no GOP congressmen left, and only a few Rockefeller Republican senators. The GOP is barely limping along in all other areas of the country outside of the South. Obviously, what they've been doing hasn't been working. Not so obvious is what to do about it.

James Peyser, Republican and former Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, has written a really good article on the Death of Republicanism in New England. His lessons and suggestions could apply to other areas of the country as well. Here are his main points:

In the post-Reagan GOP, any viable governing philosophy has to be grounded in the basic tenets of conservatism: limited and accountable government, individual liberty and responsibility, and free markets.

... a reformed Republicanism should embrace the rising cadre of social entrepreneurs who are redefining what it means to be an active citizen and who are taking initiative to solve big problems, without first asking permission from the political class.

Similarly, pushing for broader school choice places the interests of parents above those of educational bureaucracies and introduces healthy competition into a marketplace that has long suffered under a de facto monopoly.

Unfortunately, the loudest voices of conservatism on the national stage today are more likely to bemoan America's decline than to praise its potential. They are also increasingly known for their resistance to science, technology, and change. This rejection of hope and progress runs against the grain of the American spirit and is a formula for even more electoral defeats.

Instead of investing their limited political capital in opposing or nitpicking the budget-cutting proposals that the Democrats will have to put forward, Republicans should concentrate their energy on developing bold proposals for transforming the state's bloated and costly bureaucracy, not only to save money, but also to deliver better performance.

His prescriptions are for Bay State Republicans, but they fit just as well to the national party.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/11/09/republicans_rebranded/?page=full

Black Friday: Third World USA

In poor third-world countries, people riot and stampede over food and basic necessities. It is literally a matter of life and death.

In America, shoppers trample fellow human beings over DVD players and video games.

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

Paramedics treated the woman inside the store and then, according to Keys, told the woman:

"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."

He could have been talking about our society as well...

Russian Loser Visits Latin American Loser

Vlad the Impaler has sent his little boy Dmitri to visit Fidelito Chavez in Venezuela.

So the Russians will sell their military junk to a Venezuelan megalomaniac who is losing favor with his own citizens and bankrupting his country. I still don't understand how that impacts US national security.

We should encourage such partnerships in the hope that the negative synergy will hasten the downward spiral of both parties. This is a skid-row drunk and an a heroin addict prostitute who found a thousand dollars on the street and decide to shack up in a seedy motel. It's bound to end badly.

Here's a laugh line from the bloomberg article:

“The world is becoming multipolar,” Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said yesterday at the event in Caracas. “Latin America is also one of the poles of strength.”

That Russian spokesman is either stupid or he is laying out a gigantic line of BS. A continent whose greatest exports are cocaine and angry, overheated Marxist rhetoric is hardly a "pole of strength."

It's more likely Venezuela will end up being either abandoned or owned by Russia who, unlike America, is impervious to indignant cries of it's "victims" and the clamor of world option. This could actually provide a valuable lesson to the naive.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aQHOA3f_7wSE&refer=latin_america

Happy Thanksgiving

Thankful for Free Computer Stuff

Yes, I am thankful for God, and America and those who defend us, but I'm also thankful for free computer stuff. You don't need to buy an anti-virus program, spyware remover, or other useful utilities. You can get them all free, and legally.

My computer's performance was straining under the detritus and remains of various compilers, database engines and SQL servers and other toys I had played with at one time or another. You can get rid of a program, but some of it always sticks to your computer's innards. My computer had indigestion; it needed a purge. So I blew a perfectly good day off reloading the factory image and setting it all back up again.

"There's gotta be a better way," I thought to myself.

Well, there is. Here's a cool idea that is just hitting the everyday home computer user: disk imaging. You make a complete copy of your computer hard drive that you can use to restore your computer in the event of a catastrophe. The restore disks or partition that come with a new computer essentially do the same thing, but using them wipes out all of the programs and drivers you loaded. Also, after restoring your computer with the factory disks, you have to decrapify your machine all over again, removing all that useless junk the manufacturers, who have a pact with the devil, have larded up your new machine with.

So once you've set up your computer just like you want it, clean out the useless stuff, run defrag and do a virus and adware scan. Then make your restore disk and the disk image. I used a free version of Macrium Reflect. You've now saved your personalized computer settings.

Disk images can be big, so I recommend having an external USB drive to do your backups. The next time your computer is acting sick, don't reach for the factory restore disks, use the rescue disk and image you made. This restores your computer to like new condition without trashing your printer install, your games, and other software you've installed yourself. Be sure to back up your personal files, pictures, etc. Restoring a disk image will wipe everything out!

You can find all the free stuff at a trusted site like www.download.com. It is run by CNet, which is a reputable internet and computer web site. Don't look for free stuff via Google or Yahoo. Many downloads purporting to be an antivirus programs or spyware removal tools actually put viruses and spyware on your machine. So start from a trusted source like CNet.

So how does a conservative, free-marketeer enjoy, and even justify free stuff when I know there is no such thing as a free lunch? Easy. Companies give away the stripped down versions, and charge for the luxury models. You will have to put up with scanty help, few bells and whistles and many ambiguous messages trying to scare you into buying the full version.

For free, it's all worth it.

He Was A Great Uncle

The numbers of WW II Veterans are dwindling and we just lost another one. My Uncle Lloyd passed on last Sunday. He fought in France and Italy but never told any war stories. But he could go on about the fun times he had at stateside bases before going over and after returning.

He came back a decorated hero. He also came back "shell shocked," but pressed on like a true soldier. He married his sweetheart, raised two fine children with her, retired from his factory job after 30 years, and became a beloved uncle and grandpa to many, including me.

His claim to fame was his ability to calm a crying baby and charm any child. He was a friendly card sharp and an avid Cardinals fan.

He lost his hearing and his sight in his last years. We think he lost his memory too. But he could still tell tales of an 18 year old boy breaking horses and fleecing his fellow soldiers in barracks poker games. His final years brought declining health and mobility, but he never lost his kind and gentle nature. Quiet in his own darkening world, he would still respond immediately when a child entered his presence, embracing her and setting her on his knee.

The picture I have in my mind is from the last time I saw him, my children at his feet. This gentle man, eyes unseeing but still alert, holding my hand, voice reduced to a whisper, and there behind him the black and white picture of the brave soldier of 65 years ago.

God bless you Uncle Lloyd. May you rest in The Lord's peace. You've earned it.

Gone-Tanamo

President Obama will close Guantanamo. It's just a matter of time. We should forcibly repatriate the prisoners and avoid the inevitable legal farce that will ensue. That won't happen because Europeans are shameless hypocrites.

European Hypocrisy

Earth Times reported a few months back how we had just returned six more well-fed, tanned and rested Guantanamo prisoners back to the 8^th century house of horror societies they came from. One paragraph from the article stood out:

“About 270 detainees are still being held at Guantanamo. The Defense Department said it was still looking for countries that would take in about 65 prisoners deemed eligible for release. The US has released about 500 prisoners since 2002, but has often struggled to find countries that will accept the detainees and sought guarantees that they will not be tortured."

Europe clamors for us to shut down Guantanamo, but studiously turns the other way when we address the subject of repatriating the European ones back to the old continent.

Men with strong British names like Mohammad and Farook may never play darts on the old sod again. A certain Herr Al-Jihadi, of the old and venerable Hamburg Jihadis, fears he will never again cast his bushy-browed gaze upon the land of Beer and Bratwurst.

While refusing to ease the plight of their imprisoned countrymen, the Euros also insist these poor men from delightful Middle Eastern and South Asian countries may not be repatriated for fear they will be tortured. So here we are in a logical cul-de-sac: Can’t keep them in prison, can’t turn them loose. The Euros and the Internationales are good at scolding bad behavior, but come up a little short on solutions.

I don’t know what the alternative is. They sure as hell can’t be turned loose on American soil (of course, that is the conclusion the Bush-haters have steered us into.) I don’t even want them stinking up American jails.

Let's Try Them in an International Criminal Court at The Hague

Maybe we could turn them over to the men and women in powdered wigs at the Hague. Things have been pretty quiet there since Slobo kicked the bucket. For those who need a reminder, the Clinton administration cast Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic as the demon in the Balkan tragedy. He was perfect for the part: He looked mean, had an evil-sounding name, and had directed the killing of Muslims (just ignore the fact that some of his victims were terrorists.)

We dragged him to The Hague, where he made a shambles of international justice with his angry, long-winded angry tirades. The Euros stood around looking helplessly at one another and flapping their arms futilely in response. Anyway, I think the Hague is the perfect place to wrap this whole debacle up.

Wasn’t it Karl Marx who said something about history repeating itself, first as tragedy, secondly as farce?

The only alternative left is to interrogate future captives on the battlefield then shoot them dead after getting what we want out of them. There’s probably some international law against that…

Remember rendition? You know, secret CIA flights (probably in black planes with meat hooks hanging from the ceiling) that carried to their doom poor innocent men who accidentally stumbled onto the battle field with rocket launchers in their hands? Remember talk about how the US had turned the world into our own global Gulag Archipelago? Why aren’t we hearing about that anymore?

Here’s your answer: Old Europe was complicit all along.

It’s a game we play. The US plays good cop, and bad cop, while Europe plays the moral cop, blowing the whistle on the actions we take to protect ourselves and them. It’s all part of the deal: European governments cravenly cooperate in private while criticizing us in public.

If the Euros and the Internationales want us to adopt humane (according to them) policies, then they need to grow up and take some responsibility for their actions, or inaction, as the case may be. We can argue the legalities of Guantanamo, but let’s get all the cards on the table first. Fritz and Basil and Pierre still have a few up their grubby sleeves.

Links:
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/202927,nine-prisoners-released-from-guantanamo.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/16/AR2006101601339.html

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42218

Your Politician: Drive It Like You Stole It!

I don't see a hero when I see a politician, I see a vehicle. Like Wall Street, The Big Three, and every other welfare queen standing in line, I see a politician as a vehicle to get us where we want to go. The difference is, I want it to go down Constitution Freeway, they want to steer it down Handout Highway.

We need to stop worshiping our politicians and start riding them like a stolen motorcycle. And when it don't go no more, ditch it and grab another one. That's how the hijackers who are looting our treasury see things.

It's time we grow up and drop the hero worship of our politicians, Republican or Democrat. We are not here to serve our government, our government serves us. Not by giving us things but by ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense and otherwise staying the hell out of the way.

Consider this quote by George Washington:

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

This dangerous servant has plundered our treasure, made off with the silver and good china, and flings a few pennies at us as it leaves our house in flames.

This fearful master squeezes more and more out of us and gives less and less in return. Our country is in debt and the government just keeps creating more. The candyman just can't stop doling out sweets to the overweight trick-or-treaters. And it all goes on your tab.

Time to grab the handlebars and drive it like you stole it.

Huck and Mitt Need to Go Away

I think Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are both good men, and they both need to withdraw from Republican presidential politics.

The running gun battles between the Huck and Mitt camps are not healthy for the conservative movement. Huck is a slick, smiling gut-fighter who easily lapses into thinly disguised anti-Mormon conceit and liberal tinged populism. Mitt is a wildly successful businessman who is also an ideological chameleon.

I am tired of the bickering between these two men and their fervid supporters. Like matches and gasoline, each man is good in his own way, but mixed together they cause a conflagration that can only damage the conservative movement. And the arguments that spring up around this dreadful duo traffic in religion and personality rather than substantive issues. The ongoing argument has devolved into a third-world political mudball fight where the faithful worship their political idol and smear and demean the opponent. Viva Huck! Mitt is el diablo!

We need substantive debates on core issues, not personality contests. And these two shape-shifters and their cohorts have generated light and heat and sparks but very little substance.

And for this reason I also believe we need to take a cold-eyed view of Sarah Palin. She is a woman of great accomplishment, but we need to drop the mythology and ask if she really has the foreign policy credentials to be president.

Let's be honest, president Bush had no foreign policy experience, and I think that worked against him and the nation. President-Elect Obama does not, but it remains to be seen how that will work out. If it works out well for him, then Sarah Palin can make a case for herself by pointing to President Obama's success in spite of his inexperience. She can then make a case based on judgment and her Alaska record, which I think would put her in good stead.

We need to drop the politics of personality and judge our candidates on the merits of their ideas and experience.

Yin and Yang in America

Is America out of balance? Feminine Yin and masculine Yang must be in balance to achieve harmony, according to the Chinese ancients. Has our nurturing Yin outstripped our self-reliant Yang?

Ed Kaitz has written a provocative piece in the American Thinker entitled, The Testosterone Crisis. He makes a convincing case that testosterone rich Yang is in short supply here in America. My personal observation is that it is publicly nonexistent in Europe outside of soccer hooligans and the dwindling klatch of professional soldiers.

The author arrived at this conclusion while in the park observing that dads simply shouted encouragement to their kids when they fell down, while mothers tended to take more nurturing actions.

In his book The Suicide of Reason Lee Harris argues that our present state of liberal democracy has led to "eliminating the alpha males from our midst, and at a dizzyingly accelerating rate." Instead of supporting and valuing testosterone's virtues we're "drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin." In addition, one could view Barack Obama's election as the triumph of yin over yang. Obama's policies promise to cast the father out of America's parks and replace him with the more "caring" and yin oriented federal government.

Both political parties now believe that they can garner votes by playing the yin, or compassion card. We've seen this with the Bush Administration and its heavily statist "compassionate conservatism." On the other hand, Democrats in congress thought that extending loans to unqualified borrowers was an act of compassion. An excess of yin is now causing many of our states, like California, to go broke. Despite these examples an "uncaring" America was the chief rallying cry of Barack and Michelle Obama during the recent election.

Read the entire piece here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/the_testosterone_crisis.html

US Intel Report Predicts US Decline

Our enemies blast out self-serving propaganda. We publish our own obituary:

http://www.reuters.com/article/usDollarRpt/idUSN2041155720081120?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10341

... And that's why we're the greatest country in the history of the world and why we will continue to be. We don't needlessly focus on the past. No parades of crappy 1950's technology featuring alcoholic goose stepping conscripts like in Russia. No Argentinian egos inflated with 100 year old hot air.

This is America! We look to the future and use the specter of failure to spur us to future greatness. That's why they hate us, and we should wear it like a badge of honor.

God Bless America!

Sign of the Times

A sign of the times...

Dear Sirs,

In view of current developments in the banking market, if one of my checks is returned marked 'insufficient funds', does that refer to me or to you?

Sincerely Yours,

Silverfiddle

President Bush Leaves Us a Cooler Planet

The planet has cooled since President Bush took office eight years ago. Go to http://www.globalwarming.org/node/2756 for details.

Ocean Ice is back to 1980's levels and October wasn't such a hot month after all.

As you enjoy the thought of this, go read this article about the fallacy of green jobs. Every dollar our government directs to something is a dollar taken from something else.

Illegal Immigrants do Illegal Things

Thousands of inmates admit they're in the U.S. illegally, but even those convicted of violent crimes are often released right back onto Houston's streets.

This is from a Houston Chronicle article. Illegal aliens do illegal things. This is not news. ICE and local law enforcement turn them loose. Now that's news. And it should be illegal.

Not to worry, President Obama will fix everything:

"We voted in large numbers for Obama," said Juan Salgado, board president of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a nonprofit based in Chicago, Obama's training ground for immigration issues when he was a senator. "If we're sitting here two and a half years from now and absolutely nothing's been done, people are going to start asking questions."

Immigration advocates say Obama owes a debt to Latino voters, who voted 67 percent in his favor overall, according to a poll for America's Voice, a national communications campaign that favors legal residency for illegal immigrants. Latino support helped him capture such formerly Republican states as Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. Immigrant voters gave Obama the highest support - 78 percent of Latino immigrants voted for him, compared with 61 percent of US born-Latinos.

So the Democrats will pass amnesty, rewarding another block of liberal voters. What? Latinos are natural Republicans because they have family values ? Bull!

They divorce and drop out of school at higher rates than African Americans. Half of Hispanic babies are born out of wedlock. Hispanic illegal aliens put their children in peril as they break our laws. So much for family values. This is a group of permanent liberal Democratic voters.

If you're against illegal immigration and amnesty, you'd better start marshaling an intelligent argument, because the deck is stacked against you.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6115223.html

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/11/17/obama_faces_pressure_on_immigration_reform/

Piracy (No, This Isn't About The US Financial Crisis)

Back in the old days, great nations knew how to handle piracy. Looks like that knowledge has joined the many other lessons on history's junk pile.


The US Navy is tied up elsewhere, European "powers" dither and bluster, while internationalists enumerate the legal reasons for not acting against the Somali Pirates.

Meanwhile, India shows us the way: Crush the pirates under foot like the pissants they are. And they didn't even ask for a UN resolution or consult with France first.

An Indian warship has exchanged fire with a pirate "mother vessel" off the hijacking-plagued Horn of Africa, leaving the ship ablaze, an official said Wednesday.

Indian naval spokesman Nirad Sinha said: "Given the condition we left it in, it would have sunk by now," he said.

Now if we could just end the pirate standoff in this country.


http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/19/somalia.pirates/?iref=mpstoryview

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2008/11/a_surge_to_wipe_out_pirates_of.html

Dem Press Targets Hillbilly Health

Remember how America had no homeless people until uncaring conservatives elected that evil Ronald Reagan? Then, when The Man From Hope was elected, homelessness magically disappeared. These are the silly gyrations the press goes through during White House transitions.

Well, the agenda this time is health care and the focus is on (Republican) rural West Virginia and its benighted country folk:

Huntington's economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city's financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

Nearly half the adults in Huntington's five-county metropolitan area are obese — an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.

Huntington leads in a half-dozen other illness measures, too, including heart disease and diabetes. It's even tops in the percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (half of them have).

Now that the Democrats have the inner-city poor permanently corralled, their next step is to socialize those ignorant, slack-jawed yokels who cling to guns and religion. And all this unhealthiness calls for more nanny state restrictions on fatty foods, smoking, drinking, number of pizza parlors per square mile, etc...

Expect more focus on poor, rural America and it's unenlightened ways...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081116/ap_on_he_me/med_unhealthiest_city_1

$5 Trillion and Counting: TARP is a TRAP

The the pirates of Wall Street, led by Dirty Hank and Big Ben, have breached the Treasury walls and looted more than Five Trillion Dollars of taxpayer funds. They are now busy spreading it around to their gangster buddies.

That's $5,000,000,000,000. Twelve zeroes. With a five in front.

By comparison, our annual federal budget is around $3 Trillion and our government takes in around $2.2 Trillion per year in revenue.

Henry Paulson is an investment banker from Goldman Sachs, and Ben Bernanke supervised the nose dive of our dollar. Congress, drunk on Fannie and Freddie political contributions, fiddled while the mortgage market burned. Do you trust the people who got us into this mess to get us out of it? The craftiest crooks don't sneak in at night; they devise a cover scheme to calmly take the loot in broad daylight.

Senator Jeff Sessions injects some common sense into this tale of greed and hubris:

“Secretary Paulson thinks he’s an investment banker instead of Secretary of Treasury,” Sessions said on the financial network. “He’s allocating taxpayers’ money right and left without any control. Am I wrong about that?”

“[Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi don’t run the world,” Sessions said.

He also has a dose of common sense for the incompetent boobs who have wrecked Ford, Chrysler and GM:

“So, we have a mechanism for companies that are in trouble which is reorganization and Chapter 11 [bankruptcy]. That’s what would normally happen. It’s happened in other big companies. And it could happen here, but they are determined to see if they can’t move forward with another expanded bailout on top of the $25 billion that we have.”

Finally, there are rumors that the Troubled Asset Relief Program, referred to as TARP, is being renamed Taxpayer Rape And Plunder, now known as TRAP.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20081111134359.aspx
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/11/12/paulson-bernanke-fed-biz-wall-cx_lm_1112bailout.html

Ignorant Obama Voters

Zogby is under fire for publishing a poll showing the gross ignorance Obama voters have of the ticket they voted for:

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden.

They could answer questions about McCain and Palin, even erroneous ones asking which candidate considered it a foreign policy credential to be able to see Russia from his or her house? Answer: Sara Palin, but not really. Actually, Tina Fey said it, but in the Messiah-induced press frenzy, little facts like that don't matter:

Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. When asked which candidate said they could "see Russia from their house," 87% chose Palin, although the quote actually is attributed to Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey during her portrayal of Palin during the campaign.

Obama Voters didn't do so well answering questions about their messiah and his sidekick, Palooka Joe:

83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President.

The criticism of this poll, and it is a valid one in the realm of statistical sampling, is the equivalency of the questions asked about the two tickets. Nonetheless, it calls our stinking press into question and it also highlights voter ignorance. Maybe the two are related. Hmmm...

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1641

Europe: Where Are Your Black Leaders?

The Euro-racists reveal themselves. They cheer Mr. Obama's victory, but also make snide comments about his race.

Europeans are fun-loving people and are great to have as friends. They are also colossal hypocrites. These enlightened "social democrats" routinely trade work with one another and barter under the table to dodge the confiscatory tax rates.

Egalitarianism is crushed by a rigid class system. Upward mobility is almost non-existent. If you were born a plumber's son chances are you'll die a plumber. And Europeans are tribal: Not only do they sneer at people from other countries, they don't think too much of those from the next town over, either.

They loudly criticize CIA "black sites" while quietly hosting them. They rend their garments and shake accusing fingers at us over Guantanamo, but then refuse to take back their citizens and residents we have locked up there. They love looking down their noses condescendingly at us while lounging under our security umbrella.

I had African friends when I lived in Europe, and they all had first-hand accounts of Euro-racism. It sometimes manifests itself in low-brow acts such as football fans throwing bananas at their star players. More often it is the quiet, tacit kind that only works when everybody is silently in on it, sub-rosa, so nobody actually has to say anything incriminating out loud.

Yes, a German or a Brit will share a beer with a darker-skinned fellow human being while lounging at table on the old continent's cobblestone streets. But it goes no deeper than that. True societal integration has not happened there to the degree it has in the US. European minorities are much more segregated, physically and socially, than in this country.

I did not vote for President-elect Obama, but the comments by these effete, inbred Euroweenies, while not surprising, are upsetting. They have no business trashing my president. Yes, they're cheering on the outside, but they're jeering, hypocritical racists on the inside.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/europe/germany.php

Democrat Technicolor Dream Fight

Mr. Obama's election has sparked heady talk of "liberal mandates" and a "progressive America." David Sirota at Salon joins a chorus of pundits urging President Obama to go progressive and go big. It's a good article, but I'm suspicious of any argument based on comic book philosophy:

Maximizing this opportunity relies on Democrats understanding the parable from Spider-Man comics -- the one about great power coming with "great responsibility." In politics, that latter phrase is a euphemism for high expectations.

Just as soaring campaign rhetoric easily slips the surly bonds of reality, boastful and grandiose pronouncement are to by expected from euphoric victors. Let them have their fun while it lasts. Remember the one about how President Bush had ushered in a permanent Republican majority? Campaign hot air and post-election fantasies are inevitably doomed to dissipate into the ether.

A piece written by the Heritage Foundation produces some needles to prick the balloon. It points out Mr. Obama's late breaking conservative spasms (Pro-gun, pro-FISA, middle class tax cuts, fiscal responsibility, larger military). It also reveals the inconvenient truth that while the Obama campaign ran no ads claiming the support of the liberal Center for American Progress, it did run some wrongly claiming conservative Heritage Foundation support for its tax policies.

There is clearly a yawning gap between the what the left expects from an Obama presidency and the rhetoric that Obama actually ran on. As to who the real Obama is — a pragmatic centrist or a progressive ideologue — our guess is as good as anyone’s. After all, Obama has never governed anything, so there is no track record to make predictions.

Finally, America just ain't that liberal. Democrats might outnumber Republicans, but there are still more conservatives (34%) than liberals (22%.) And the Wall Street Journal reports that swing voters who ushered in an Obama Presidency nontheless do not want big government. I know, that doesn't make sense, but little in politics does...

A poll commissioned by the Club for Growth in 12 swing congressional districts over the past weekend shows that the voters who made the difference in this election still prefer less government -- lower taxes, less spending and less regulation -- to Sen. Obama's economic liberalism. Turns out, Americans didn't vote for Mr. Obama and Democratic congressional candidates because they support their redistributionist agenda, but because they are fed up with the Republican politicians in office. This was a classic "throw the bums out" election, rather than an embrace of the policy views of those who will replace them.

The great struggle will not be between a triumphant Democratic Empire and a small band of persecuted Republican hiding out in the catacombs. The real battle will rage within the Democratic Party between ideological centrists and doctrinaire liberals each convinced they have a mandate. Meanwhile, Republicans need only stand aside and look responsible.

The most interesting question is, which side will President Obama come down on? It will take the wisdom of Solomon to thread that needle.

Global Warming Follies

Somebody get Reverend Algore on the phone! Despite what the alarmists told us, this past October was not the hottest on record. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies made an oopsie:

GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery.

The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

Hey! When you can't get real data, just make stuff up! Here is the entire global warming farce summed up in one ridiculous event. I hope these guys aren't working on shuttle launches; our astronauts would end up on Mars...

Here's what October really looked like, but when your head is stuck so far up your statistical models it's near impossible to see reality:

Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

How much do you want to bet that if their data showed a 10 degree drop in temperatures they would have dug in and found the error immediately? The global warming scientists represent the very worst of advocacy science. Where is the scientific skepticism they constantly employ to tell us there is no God?

There is no god but Gaia, and Algore i$ her profit!

Debt and Bombs

Here's some laughter for your Saturday, courtesy of Fred Reed, America's expatriate curmudgeon.

Debt is easy to avoid. Herewith some blinding wisdom: If you can’t pay for it, don’t buy it. You saw it here first...

Or how about this? Don’t buy more house than you can live in. Move over, Keynes, Ricardo, here I come.

Who made the bad loans? Permit me another searing insight. If you lend money to people who can’t pay it back, they won’t. I know, I know, a difficult concept. Not something a Wall Street banker would know.

He also comes up with a new name for the TSA that I hadn't heard before, (unprintable here).

Go read it all at Fred on Everything. and enjoy a good Saturday laugh.

Happy Saturday!

Hillary for Secretary of State?

Forgive me for raining on the parade, but what qualifies Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State? This doesn't smell right.

Sam Nunn, Richard Holbrooke, Rand Beers, even John Kerry... All are more qualified than Hillary to be our next Secretary of State.

There's more here than meets the eye, I just don't know what it is... I can predict with certainty this won't end with Ms. Clinton assuming the post.

I just love those satirical headlines. This one had me rolling:

Bush Warns Against Too Much Government

Three Stooges: Politicians, Automakers, UAW

In the liberal failed state of Michigan, US Automakers and the UAW have created a monstrosity that is collapsing about them, and here comes congress with broom handles and plaster, trying to keep the creaking eyesore from caving in on us all.

So the inept Washington DC pols who brought us the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle that tipped our economy over now want to show Detroit automakers the path to destruction.

I think I saw this in a Three Stooges movies once.

Here's the Pelosi solution: "Take taxpayer money, build electric cars nobody will buy, cut executive pay, and ignore the union giveaways that have destroyed you." That's their plan. But what do you expect from the crowd that tells us there's nothing wrong with Medicare and Social Security?

Thankfully, Minority Leader Boehner is taking a hard line. No more double eye-pokes to the taxpayer. No more Congressionally-administered citizen slaps.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody in this great country must be allowed to fail and pay the piper for the stupid decisions they have made. Ford, GM and Chrysler need to file for bankruptcy and dismantle the financially impossible workers paradise they've created. Let the unions howl; they helped create this financial fantasy land.

This can be done in a controlled manner that keeps the factories operating and people working. They need to restructure themselves so they can finally become competitive in the new millennium. Anything less delays the inevitable and wastes taxpayer money.

Anyone who seriously thinks government intervention will help this situation doesn't just need his head examined; he deserves to have his head knuckled by Moe.

One More Reason The Press Stinks

Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country. Remember that one, along with the other anonymous smears? It was all a hoax, and our lazy, ignorant press bought it all hook line and sinker. Most surprising is that the New York Times is actually reporting this press stupidity. I figured they'd use the old Dan Rather "The faked documents are real" defense.

“Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

I wouldn't be too proud of myself if I were the hoaxsters. Fooling the press isn't really that hard. They go after anti-Republican propaganda like a dog on its hind legs going after a dangling sausage.

No to Newt

Washington Times reports the Republican National Committee (RNC) is looking for new leadership. Michael Steele and Newt Gingrich are the two most mentioned to replace the decent but ineffectual Mike Duncan.

Newt is not the one. Don't get me wrong. I think he's a brilliant man and his brain is just the engine to drive the GOP to renewed victory. He just shouldn't be the face of the party. He is too polarizing. Half of the country hates him, quite unfairly I think, but these are the facts. The left has drawn horns and a pointy tail on him with an indelible sharpie.

We're are a nation split down the middle:

MSNBC, Air America, HuffPo, Daily Kos
-vs-
Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Free Republic, RightWingNews

... and never the twain shall meet.

The GOP needs a leader who is intelligent, conservative, charismatic, articulate, and can appeal to all Americans, not just right-wingers like me. Michael Steel is that man:

Those ... who want to see Mr. Steele as the face of the party say he has the "it" required for national stardom - that he is tall, articulate and charismatic. Mr. Steele headed the Maryland Republican Party (and was the only black state party chairman) before being elected lieutenant governor and then losing his U.S. Senate race two years ago.

Meanwhile, Newt can continue being Newt, cranking out ideas and debating them in various forums throughout the country. The GOP needs to listen to his ideas if they want to get their mojo back. But putting him out front would be a mistake. Michael Steele is an accomplished man who proved his leadership skills as GOPAC chairman. The RNC needs him at the helm.

A final note: Will the GOP finally abandon the creaking, decrepit country club republicanism once and for all? The RNC needs to fire everybody over 30 and hire a bunch of 20-something conservatives. That would get the sick elephant back up on its feet and scattering donkeys in no time.

Why Isn't Toyota USA In Trouble?

So the Big Three are asking for a government handout... You should write your representatives and ask them this question:

Why are the Big Three going broke and asking for taxpayer money while Toyota USA is expanding?

Ford, GM and Chrysler have become as sclerotic as the liberal states that host them. Like the failed state of Michigan, the Big Three promised goodies to the masses and now they have the gall to ask the American taxpayer to fund their generosity. Note to nanny-state liberals (in government and on corporate boards): It's not generosity when you do it with other people's money!

If you want to get mad, go read this WSJ article about how GM pays people to not work. Speaker Pelosi is worried about excessive executive pay when she should be focusing on excessive executive stupidity.

So why isn't Toyota in trouble? Pro-union folks will tell you it's because down south they are able to exploit their workers. Well, maybe Detroit didn't exploit its workers, but it's now extorting money from the entire country as a reward.

Despite what Democrats tell us, our nation does not have one uniform economic policy. Each state and locality employs distinct taxation, employment and business laws that affect employment rates and wages. We can study these various economies to learn what works and what doesn't. People in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan can tell you that things ain't workin' there. Is it President Bush's fault, or is it the fault of corruption, high taxation, and business unfriendly state governments?

Professor Phil Gramm points the finger at dysfunctional state governments:

Business conditions were better in the successful states than in the lagging ones. Capital and labor gravitated to where the burdens were smaller and the opportunities greater.

No one should let Michigan politicians blame their problems solely on the decline of the U.S. auto industry.

Yes, Michigan lost 83,000 auto manufacturing jobs during the past decade and a half, but more than 91,000 new auto manufacturing jobs sprung up in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

The facts show that soak the rich policies, over-regulation, and yes, overreaching unions, destroy jobs. States like Ohio and Michigan have only their failed liberal policies to blame. And the same can be said for the welfare queens who run the Big Three: They overpromised and undersold on pensions and benefits. You can pile the goodies sky high, but somebody has to pay the bill. Toyota knows this, as does Texas, Tennessee, and Florida.

Liberal Democrats and the press (but I repeat myself) will be trying to convince you otherwise. Arm yourself against their economic nonsense by going here and reading the entire article on state economies. I also recommend you read everything written by the erudite and highly entertaining economics professor Walter E. Williams. Here is a quote from his web site:

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
-- Aesop

Walter E. Williams home page:
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/

Gramm Article on State Economies
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122126282034130461.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

A Salute to Our Vietnam Vets

Armistice Day, a National Holiday declared by President Woodrow Wilson to honor the veterans of WW I, grew into Veterans Day. This is the day we honor all veterans, but I want to specifically honor our Vietnam veterans.

Betrayed by our politicians, maligned by the press as mentally ill homeless bums, and negatively stereotyped by Hollywood as dope smoking baby killers, no group of veterans has been more defamed.

Thankfully, our nation overcame those false negative images after 9/11, and these veterans are now getting the respect and honor they have earned. I love seeing the RVN ribbon stickers in the back window of pickups and SUVs.

I attended a Veterans Day ceremony at my daughter's school and looked around at my fellow veterans. The WW II vets were stooped over canes or sitting in wheelchairs, ears cocked, straining to hear. The younger Vietnam vets were still quite vibrant and had the older veterans outnumbered. I was heartened to see so many of them. These were professors, teachers, engineers, and deputy sheriffs. Some were now retired or 100% disabled. It did my heart good to see them soaking up the honor these children bestowed upon them with songs, poetry and patriotic readings.

In Vietnam they didn't have the hard billets and Burger Kings my generation had in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. These men and women were not honored at airports and civic functions. They returned home under a cloud of shame they did not earn. And they showed us how men and women carry themselves with dignity despite having their honor questioned and being cheated by the society they fought for.

Vietnam vets, I salute you. Sam, Johnny, Richard, Larry, Galen, Paul, Dick, Tony, my drill instructor Sergeant Smith... I am honored to be your friend. You represent the very best of America. Thank you for being my friend, and for showing us all what heroism, patriotism, self-sacrifice and dignity look like.

May God bless you.

It's Only Politics

DC politics is controlled by an exclusive power club. The real "us -vs- them" is "We the People -vs- the DC Powerful."

The entrenched DC powers are a bipartisan collection of moneyed backscratchers and button-holers who do a lot of winking and nodding. They also know how to circle the wagons. Note how Fannie, Freddie and the rest of the gang escaped unscathed from the ruins they created. All that "Republican versus Democrat" stuff is just for the rubes watching CNN and Fox. Both parties are branches of the same powerful DC tribe, and they all subscribe to a modified version of that old Arab saying:

I against my party; I and my party against the opposition party; I and my party and the opposition party against the reformers and the people.

Ordinary citizens get madder and more emotional over politics than the politicians themselves do. We observers take personally what the politicians themselves do not. They get over it and keep climbing. They routinely cooperate with their rivals to gain some later advantage. The Washington Power Elite are more deal makers than ideologues.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I often wonder if overheated partisan rhetoric is designed to keep us proles occupied with arguments over personalities and trivial surface issues to divert our attention from the real dirty work Republicans and Democrats routinely cooperate in.

Who wants to talk about the constitution? Let's shout at each other over abortion and gay marriage!

Stuff like this is stupid. Impeach Obama? He's not even in office yet! An impeachment arises from high crimes and misdemeanors while in office, bozos!

This is also stupid. President Bush is not Hitler, despite pronouncements by policy experts Michael Moore and Sean Penn.

My advice? Be more like Lee Troxler. He started a fairly well-reasoned anti-Obama site that is now in hiatus as he decides what to do next. His last post was to congratulate Mr. Obama on his victory and to wish him well.

Think about the Anti-Bush wackadoos and their purple rage, foam at the mouth rants. Did they sway your opinion? How effective was Cindy Sheehan bleating on about how George Bush is guilty of murdering her son? Did those calling President Bush chimpie, Bu$hCo, and other flattering names make you more or less likely to support him?

Emotional, over-the-top diaper rash rants may be fun to watch, and even engage in occasionally, but they're not very effective in swaying partisan opinions. Relax. It's only politics.

Politics: A Definition

Sometimes, to understand a concept, it is useful to break the word down and trace its etymological roots. Let's take the word "Politics"

Politics: A word formed from two distinct words. Poli, Greek for many, and tics, the Latin derivative of the blood sucking insect common to North America.

So, from this we get the true definition of Politics: Many bloodsuckers.

I know, it's an old joke, but I thought it was time to dust it off and bring it back. :)

Conservatism

We are still a nation where conservatives (34%) outnumber liberals (22%). 40% are up for grabs, and the Democratic party has been attracting them by sounding conservative (Talk right, vote left).

Here's a post-election e-mail from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that produces scholarly analysis of political issues that ordinary folks like you and me can understand.

I keep telling everyone to keep their powder dry. Well, the Heritage Foundation is the armory where you can get all the ammo you need to fight for the conservative cause. Go to the Heritage Web Site and arm yourself for battle!

November 7, 2008| By Nathaniel Ward

What the election means

On Tuesday, American voters elected Senator Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States. His Democratic Party allies also realized substantial gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

In a column circulated nationwide, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner explains what this election means for conservatives.

An abiding belief in our country's greatness, tinged with optimism, has long been a cornerstone of conservatism. And Obama's been tacitly leaning toward conservative ideas since he became the Democratic nominee. Even though his record indicated he was the most liberal candidate in (at least) a generation, he ran as a conservative on major issues like taxes (promising to cut them), the military (vowing to add some 92,000 new troops) and energy (saying he'd at least consider offshore drilling).

"The problem," he continues,

is that both political parties have failed Americans

In recent years the Republican Party, which in Reagan's hands carried the conservative standard to new heights, lost its way. Federal spending now tops $25,000 per household annually, and the coming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs of 77 million retiring baby boomers threaten to add another $12,000 per household to the taxpayers' annual tab. Yet neither party offers a solution to the entitlement crisis or a real plan to cut spending.

And while "Republicans who have lost touch with their conservative roots are in trouble," Feulner argues, "conservatives are thriving," dominating the talk radio airwaves and expanding their online presence on sites like Townhall.com.

Still a center-right nation

Heritage Vice President Mike Franc made two key observations about the election results in a National Review Online symposium.

First, with the defeat of Republican moderates, "returning House Republicans will be more uniformly conservative. To the extent congressional Republicans plan to rediscover their inner conservative selves, this enhanced ideological uniformity will serve them well."

Secondly, and more importantly, Franc notes that "the exit polls, to the extent they can be believed, remind us once again that America remains a decisively right-of-center nation."

Liberal remains a dirty word. In fact, many more Americans continue to self-identify as conservative (34 percent) than as liberal (only 22 percent). Knowing this, successful Democratic candidates across the country used conservative rhetoric and themes to score points against their Republican opponents and win the hearts of voters. The Democrats' repeated refrain on behalf of middle class tax relief was but one of several such examples.

Hopes & Dreams & Enlightenment

Vatican City - Roman Catholics "pray that God may enlighten" US president-elect Barack Obama so that he can successfully respond to the hope his election has generated, Pope Benedict XVI's spokesman said Wednesday. Obama has raised expectations on "justice and finding appropriate ways to promote peace in the world," Father Federico Lombardi was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency. Read the entire article at Earth Times.

Amen! That's a message Baptists, Jews, Mormons, Log Cabin Republicans and even right-wing agnostics can get behind. President-elect Obama is young and inexperienced. I pray for his enlightenment.

Those of you hoping for a Big O Crash and Burn need to ask yourselves, what would that mean for America? I guess my hope is that he engenders some international goodwill without selling us all down the river. I can also dream that his most liberal tendencies will be tempered by reality.

I can also hope that if he and congress are hell-bent on pushing a far-left agenda they do it quickly and imperiously. Greedy overreach will trigger a conservative reconquista in the 2010 congressional elections. Knowing congressional Democrats, this is a smart money bet.

You also need to look at the wackadoo left and how they became unhinged at the mention of Bush or Cheney. Leave the personal attacks to the poop throwing monkeys on the left and stick to reasoned opposition of the policies.

Relax, keep your powder dry. There'll be plenty of things to criticize once he gets in office. Starting now just makes you look peevish.

Meanwhile, indulge yourself in the dream of Thomas Cooley of Forbes magazine. If his dream comes true I will vote to reelect President Barack Obama.

Turn Those Guns Around!

ABC News trains their guns on an Obama Democrat. Would this be heresy, blasphemy...? Anyway, it's good to the the press actually try to stand up on its hind legs.

President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

The GOP target is so riddled it's more holes than paper. Time to shoot up a new target, but who'd a thunk the target would have a donkey on it?

Obama's Coup de Prague

Historians refer to a special kind of revolution where a totalitarian regime is democratically installed: it is called a "Coup de Prague".

We have just experienced one here. The band is still playing, the Captain is drinking his tea, and no one seems to be looking for the lifeboats - or even care for that matter.

Czechoslovakia, 1948: in a general election, the Communists are elected and quietly, overnight, the old Republic is dismantled. Communist bureaucrats and officials take the reins of power and the nation remains in the stranglehold of socialism for forty years.

So what happened here in 2008?

By the numbers:

64.5 million for Obama

56.8 million for McCain

Let's take a look at some of those liberal votes in light of fraud and illegal aliens. Examining these is a slippery subject. But we can estimate to some degree.

In Georgia, it was discovered that over 100,000 voter registrations were from people outside the state. Extrapolated across the United States, we are looking at potentially 6.5 million votes.

Of the 15 to 20 million illegal aliens in the country, it is estimated by David Simcox that 2.7 million participated in this election. Many have a saying: "If we don't vote, they will kick us out!" Thank goodness for Bill Clinton's Motor-Voter initiative of 1993.

ACORN has registered millions of "voters" in the past few years. Many voting districts reported recently of having more registered voters than voting-age residents!

With all that being said, we are looking at potentially 9.2 million fraudulent votes - the vast majority going Democrat. No addition was made for ACORN, which would push the total higher. Only 7.7 million votes separated McCain from Obama.

This wasn't an election. It was peaceful Socialist revolution. Perhaps we should refer to President Obama as "His Fraudulency". But not too loudly...

- Hugh Farnham

It's Not Racism

Black voters turned out in force and voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. General Colin Powell endorsed him. An emotional Condoleezza Rice spoke Wednesday of how excited she was to see this historic event. Some are pointing to this as black racism. That's nonsense, and here's why.

We're all aware of the history of race relations in this country. Even those of us who under no circumstances would have voted for Obama can at least breath a sigh of relief: Finally, race is no longer a barrier to the pinnacle of national and world leadership. As a bonus, we can now look down our noses disapprovingly at those backward, racist Europeans: not one black leader to be found on the entire Olde Continent!

Black voters traditionally vote Democratic anyway, so I don't know how a group of people sticking to their voting patterns can be called racist.

General Powell is a doer, has been all his life. He is obviously not content to sit by the fire with grandkids on his knee telling war stories. His has been a life of dedicated service to his country, and it appears he wants to continue serving in some capacity, regardless of which party is in power. I salute him.

Finally, Secretary Rice. A beautiful, scholarly woman of great accomplishments who has personally been touched by racial hatred as a child. Unlike the Clintons' imaginary church burnings, she saw such things for real. Ms. Rice was 8 years old when Klansmen bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing her 11 year old friend Denise McNair. I can understand her becoming emotional at this historic event.

People of all stripes and creeds are celebrating president-elect Obama. Don't sneer. Be joyful at this historic national milestone, and allow that people have a right to celebrate this momentous occasion.

And once he's in office, fight him every step of the way when he works to implement policies you disagree with. To cut him any slack because he is black would be, well... racist!