Author: papundits

Former Rep. Eric Massa

The Patriot Post Chronicle

The Foundation

“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” –Samuel Adams

The Demo-gogues

Political bathhouse: “I was in the congressional gym, and I went into the showers which, by the way, I for the life of me can’t figure out why they took all the shower curtains off the shower stalls in the congressional shower. The last thing I want to look at is my fellow colleagues naked, but they don’t have shower curtains down in the gym, and I’m sitting there showering naked as a jaybird and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?” –former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), who is accused of sexually harassing male staffers and resigned Monday

More accusations: “Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn. He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.” –Eric Massa   …  

Changing the tune: “I wasn’t forced out. I forced myself out.” –Massa on Tuesday night

Non Compos Mentis: “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), confirming that too much Botox can kill brain cells   …

Tell a lie often enough: “Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs.” –Pelosi, repeating her lie from the summit

Changing the climate: “What we have to do is go on the offensive. [The science on climate change] has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back… [P]eople [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts themselves.” –Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

It’s all about jobs: “What we are talking about is a jobs bill. It is not a climate bill. It is a jobs bill, and it is a clean air bill. It is a national security, energy independence bill.” –John Kerry on cap-n-tax

“[E]very decision, every debate, no matter how important it is, with the same question: ‘What does this mean for the next election? What does it mean for your poll numbers? Is this good for the Democrats or good for the Republicans? Who won the news cycle?’ That’s just how Washington is. They can’t help it. They’re obsessed with the sport of politics.” –Barack Obama, who isn’t a bit different

“Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (See the video.)

Editorial Exegesis

“The strange case of New York Democrat Eric Massa keeps getting stranger. Rep. Massa resigned last week under a cloud of ethics charges, but he now claims he was pushed out for opposing health care reform. Massa claims he’s being investigated by the House Ethics Committee on trumped-up charges that he sexually harassed a male aide. If true, it shows the White House and Congress are indeed being run the ‘Chicago Way’ — with bluster, threats and even physical intimidation. Wasn’t this administration supposed to be different? Let’s be clear: We don’t know for sure the White House did anything illegal. But if any of Massa’s claims is true, it speaks volumes about the thuggery of an administration desperately trying to pass its wildly unpopular health care bill. For his part, Massa says Obama aide Rahm Emanuel went ballistic when he dared to vote against ObamaCare last November. With health care hanging by a string, Emanuel and the House leadership bullied him into resigning last Wednesday, Massa now claims. ‘Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill,’ the one-term congressman told radio station WKPQ Sunday. ‘And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they’ve gotten rid of me, and it will pass. You connect the dots.’ … White House and House Democratic leaders have all issued denials. So, for now, the political row has a ‘he said-she said’ quality. But if what Massa says is even partly true, and it certainly seems plausible, this is gangsta politics, Chicago-style — a case of political bullies making an example of someone to get others to fall into line. Al Capone would be proud.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Upright

“The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many — if any — guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that. To preserve freedom we must fight for it.” –columnist Cal Thomas

“True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.” –economist Walter E. Williams

“With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party’s top policy priority in more than a generation — well, that’s not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and pressure like they’ve never experienced.” –columnist Byron York

“In my entire career, I have never been as confounded as I am over President Obama and the Democratic leadership’s obsession with a piece of legislation that not one major national poll has shown to be popular. … So I have to ask, why are the president and the leaders of Congress willing to see their entire party and a multitude of other policy proposals go down in flames over something that the public can’t stand? … Folks, this is nothing more than a power grab. It’s an effort to take one of the most essential elements of every person’s life — their health — and put it under the control of government.” –columnist Matt Towery

“The president cannot show us he is looking out for our interests and our future by forcing a quick, partisan vote on an issue that will impact not only this time but generations to come. This is especially true since he was so adamant in his opposition to using this very parliamentary measure in governance during his campaign. And he cannot show us that he is listening when polls show that only 35-40 percent of Americans support this bill.” –radio talk-show host Michael Reagan

Dezinformatsia

Delusions from a parallel universe: “Campaign promises are about getting elected; once there, they are quickly forgotten. Courage is not a word you hear very often in discussions about politics. Not Barack Obama. Whether or not you support or even understand his health care plan — and the polls suggest that right now most Americans don’t — you must admit this: Obama is a man who does everything humanly possible to keep his promises. He promised health care reform, and he is risking his presidency to deliver it. If that’s not courage, what is?” –political commentator Susan Estrich (Try blind ideology.)

Oh no! “Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama’s signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn’t make good on a year’s worth of false starts. And it won’t even be the opposition’s fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead.” –New York Times columnist Frank Rich

Propaganda FAIL: “John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings.” –Christian Science Monitor staff writer Peter Grier (Oops, Bedell was a registered Democrat and an anti-Bush 9/11 “truther.”)

Rather racist: “One, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. ‘Listen he just hasn’t been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.’ And a version of, ‘Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate’ — this is what’s been used against him — ‘but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.’” –HDNet’s Dan Rather trying to put words in Republicans’ mouths

Newspulper Headlines:

Now All We Have Left Is Change: “Closure of Hope Plant to Cost 50-60 Jobs” –Associated Press

We Blame Global Warming: “Obama Turns Up Heat for Health Care Overhaul Plan” –Associated Press

Wide Ends, Poor Hardest Hit: “Obesity Hits New York’s Poor Neighborhoods Hardest” –Reuters

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Subprime Mortgage Crisis Hits Whorehouses” –Human Events

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Gore Still Hot on His Doomsday Rhetoric” –Boston Globe

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

You don’t say: “I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis.” –Algore on his efforts to educate the world about climate change

Unsolicited advice: “I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that’s been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do.” –from an open letter to BO from crockumentarian Michael Moore

Useful idiot: “Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. … [T]ruly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.” –actor Sean Penn on his buddy Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator (No wonder they get along so well!)

In need of remedial history: “Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” –actor Tom Hanks promoting his upcoming HBO miniseries “The Pacific”

Somehow not comforting: “Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing. Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do.” –White House adviser David Axelrod

Short Cuts

“Nancy Pelosi, the speaker and leader of the San Francisco Democrats, says her members ‘are very excited about what comes next.’ For many of them, that’s ‘excited’ as in ‘hysterical.’” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

“So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that ‘now is the hour when we must seize the moment,’ the same moment he’s been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.” –columnist Mark Steyn

“President Obama met with ten House Democrats opposed to the health care bill. He did all he could to get their votes. He promised to campaign for them in their districts and when that didn’t work, he threatened to campaign for them in their districts.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“These self-anointed intellectuals are people who think that those who believe in God and Jesus Christ, those who ‘cling to their guns and their religion,’ are a lower form of animal life, while they, themselves, have no problem whatever accepting Obama as a messiah and, in the past, deifying the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Let’s face it, when you kneel in a church, you’re accepting that there is something greater and wiser than yourself in the universe. When, on the other hand, you kneel to a left-wing politician, you’re merely emulating Monica Lewinsky.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

Filed under: 111th Congress, Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama), Climate Change, Demo-gogues, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, News and Views Tagged: -Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Annie, congressional gym, Jobs Bill, naked, Political bathhouse, Rahm Emanuel, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), The Patriot Post

By Alan Caruba

Wars come and go, cities are destroyed and rebuilt, monuments are erected, and life goes on. This is the traditional view of war, but right now the world is engaged in the latest battle of a “climate war” that has been going on since the 1970s when the Club of Rome concluded in a report titled, “The real enemy then, is humanity itself”, that the world’s population had to be reduced.

Whereas wars in the modern era have killed millions and communism as practiced in the former Soviet Union and the early decades of Red China under Chairman Mao killed millions more on a scale with which war could not compete, the advocates of population reduction rival the worst despots to have ever walked among us.

With the revelations from leaked emails between the conspirators who kept the global warming fraud going for many years, the so-called “climate scientists” who, in fact, had created phony computer models and engaged in endless studies to “prove” that global warming posed a threat to mankind, the term “Climategate” was coined to describe their collusion.

Billions are at stake so far as the “climate scientists” are concerned. They have received millions for their research in the United States and in England. Presumably other nations, too, have provided such grants and the result of the research must always be a continuation of the “global warming” fraud. Beyond the scientists are those who profit from the sale of “carbon credits” to permit “greenhouse gas emissions”, and the millions that environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and others rake in.

It is no surprise, then, that those who have been victimized by the fraud will see a coordinated campaign of opinion editorials in newspapers, advertisements, and other means to keep the “global warming” fraud intact. These efforts have been renamed “climate change”, but therein lies the utter mendacity of the campaign because the Earth has always passed through cycles of climate change and always will.

On February 15th, the Boston Globe published an opinion editorial by Kerry Emanuel, the director of the Program in Atmosphere, Oceans, and Climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was filled with the usual “global warming” themes; the repetition of the lie that carbon dioxide and other minor atmospheric gases are causing a huge shift that is warming the Earth. Smoothly, the inaccuracies of climate computer models are dismissed as “uncertainties” resulting in “divergent predictions.”

The finest weather-related computer models available are unable to account for the action of clouds, an essential element in weather everywhere, nor can they include the unknown effects of countless undersea volcanoes in the world’s oceans that are another contributing factor. At best, if your local weatherman can accurately predict what will occur in the next two to four days, he’s doing fine.

Predicting what the climate—not the weather—will be decades and even centuries from now is pure fiction. It is the claim that is central to “global warming” and/or “climate change.”

In a rebuttal to Emanuel’s opinion editorial, Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University, noted that “A high percentage of meteorologists and/or climate scientists do not agree that the climate changes we have seen are mostly man-made. Thousands of us think that the larger part of the climate changes we have observed over the last century are of natural origin.” He added, “Over 31,000 American scientists have recently signed a petition advising the U.S. not to sign any fossil fuel reduction treaty.”

Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has just released a statement based on the release of still more emails between desperate “climate scientists” whose careers depend on the “global warming” fraud.

“According to recently disclosed e-mails from a National Academies of Science listserv, prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science, have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism.”

The emails explored the ways the public could be distracted from the revelations of Climategate and enticed back to believing that “global warming” is based in real science and occurring. Among the suggestions were “Op eds in the NY Times and other national newspapers would also be great.”

Referring to this as a climate war is no exaggeration. One email said, “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.” One of those rules most certainly is to tell the truth!

What the public has never grasped is that this is not a science-based war. It is entirely political in nature and the Green’s enemy has been the resource industries, oil, natural gas, and coal that provide the means by which energy is generated for industrial use and for societies that depend on electricity to function. The subtext of the war is the deliberate destruction of human life on the planet on a mass scale.

That explains why it is especially troubling that President Obama continues to refer to global warming as real and advocates “cap-and-trade” legislation, the largest tax on energy use in the history of mankind. It is the reason he continues to divert millions to “clean energy” and “green jobs”, neither of which have ever proven to equal traditional energy sources or provide sufficient employment to merit support.

So now the climate wars shift into a new phase, one intended to obfuscate and confuse the public again in the quest to foist the greatest fraud and attack on mankind in human history

Editor’s Note: For further insight, read Dr. Tim Ball’s commentary at:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/20782
To learn why the world’s glaciers are not melting and the seas are not rising, click here:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Our_glaciers_are_growing_not_melting.htm

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at Warning Signs. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Read more thought provoking articles at Warning Signs

Filed under: America (USA), Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama), Blundering Bureaucrats, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Conniving Politicians, Democrats, Environment, Environmental activists, Fanatics, Fear-mongering, Fraud/Waste, Global Warming, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Political Prostitutes, Politics, Power Hungry, Propaganda, Public Opinion, Spine Donor Politicians Tagged: Alan Caruba, Climate Change Fraud, Climate Change Funding, Climate Change Religion, Climate Science, Climategate, Global Warming Alarmism, Global Warming Hype, Tony, Warning Signs

By P.J. Gladnick

Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty. —Derek Zoolander

I don’t know which is funnier; a global warming themed fashion show or the fact that the Associated Press reports on it with a completely straight face. They assume the polar ice caps are melting so what to do? Waste carbon shipping giant icebergs from Sweden just to adorn a Paris fashion show runway. Jenny Barchfield delivers the report on “Chanel does climate change, with real icebergs” which sounds like a story pitch for a Zoolander sequel:

PARIS — Models in head-to-toe yeti suits picked their way around towering but quickly melting icebergs, sloshing through a deep puddle of Arctic melt in their shaggy fake fur.

Call it climate change chic, Chanel style.

Designer Karl Lagerfeld looked Tuesday to global warming, turning the melting of the polar ice caps into fodder for Chanel’s fall-winter 2010-11 ready-to-wear look. Because, after all, what use is the threat of a catastrophe of global proportions if not to fuel fashion trends and inspire clever variations on Chanel’s iconic styles?

Models in classic Chanel suits with fur trim or tweed jackets paired with pants that looked like they were made out of Chewbacca, the “Star Wars” Wookiee, struck poses in front of the giant icebergs, which had apparently been special-delivered from Sweden.

Could Al Gore do an audit on how much carbon was wasted putting on this Global Warming fashion show complete with special delivery icebergs? Oh, there was also a sort of serious note in the report:

Fur panels dressed up the hemlines of the classic Chanel skirtsuits and the label’s blockbuster chain-strapped handbags, and the Chewbacca trousers were paired with little tweed jackets.

Animal lovers can breathe easy. Lagerfeld assured journalists that the fur was fake.

“One of the most beautiful furs in the world is Chanel’s fake fur,” he told The Associated Press Television News in a post-show interview. “This fake fur gives a very beautiful new volume. It’s a pleasure to touch and to wear it. It’s light and warm.”

Still, Lagerfeld, a born provocateur, couldn’t resist taking just one little jab at anti-fur activists.

“It is easy to be against fur, but people in the North have to make their living, they are living with nothing else … (and) have no other jobs,” he said in his rat-a-tat diction.

Fake fur. About as real as the Global Warming threat…and both used as fashion show props. There has to be real justice in that.

P.J. Gladnick is a contributor at NewsBusters and is a freelance writer.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters

Filed under: Airhead Celebrities, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Environment, Environmental activists, Europe, France, Global Warming, Imbecile Celebrities, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Media Mind Manipulators, Muddled Media, Propaganda, Pseudo-Journalism Tagged: Chanel, Climate Change Hypocrisy, Climate Change Religion, Global Warming Alarmism, Global Warming Hype, Karl Lagerfeld, NewsBusters, Tony

By Richard J. Douglas

Icelanders have revolted against government hubris, banking greed, and foreign arm-twisting. Americans could learn a thing or two from their Viking neighbors.

In a March 7th plebiscite (referendum) watched closely in Europe but below the radar in America, Iceland’s voters overwhelmingly declared that their island nation’s largest bank is emphatically NOT too big to fail.

The plebiscite cleaned the clocks of Icelandic government dealmakers bent upon handing billions over to Britain and Holland. These two nations demand reimbursement from Reykjavik for losses they covered domestically when Iceland’s biggest private bank failed in 2008. But on March 7th, Icelanders showed their Viking ire by revolting against these demands and against their own government’s part in the shakedown. On Monday, shell-shocked Reykjavik bureaucrats returned to the drawing board with irritated British and Dutch counterparts. The three governments must try again to find a way to help repay injured depositors in Britain and Holland – without further punishing or angering already beleaguered Icelanders.

This far-off mid-ocean nation is suffering record unemployment and economic woes aggravated by the American fiscal crisis. European arm-twisting that fueled public anger in Iceland suggests that we in America should dust off copies of the Monroe Doctrine. Alone in the North Atlantic, Iceland is neither fish nor fowl geographically. But she is American in outlook because of her distinguished history as a pathway for Viking explorers in the 1000s, her more recent part in killing Nazi wolfpacks, and her NATO membership.

Should Americans stand by silently and watch Iceland’s steady impoverishment by European powers? For America, the Icelandic uprising invites intriguing questions about the financial disaster which has been unfolding in our own country since 2007.

First, one wonders whether are there parallels between what occurred among Iceland, Britain, and Holland and the financial and banking turmoil here that has hurt millions of Americans. Britain and Holland have openly threatened Iceland and suggested that the International Monetary Fund and European currency talks will be used to bludgeon the Icelandic people into submission to Anglo-Dutch reimbursement demands. Americans should now picture China in the role of Britain and Holland, and themselves in the role of Iceland. Far-fetched? Not as far as it used to be.

Second, the Icelandic revolt certainly could be compared with American concern about the use of taxpayer funds to rescue failing banks and businesses. Indeed, the revolt begs the question whether an American plebiscite is warranted insofar as our larger economic and debt problems are concerned. What sort of message would such a plebiscite send to America’s foreign and domestic debtors, and their servants in Washington? Perhaps more important, what sort of message would it send to Congress, that crumbling, co-opted, snoring citadel intended by the Framers to “protect” us from executive incompetence and overreach?

The March 7th “nei” in Iceland was aimed at an identified cadre of government dealmakers – one of which confidently called the plebiscite “meaningless.” This group quietly made commitments to London and The Hague without buy-in from already hard-pressed compatriots. Icelandic bureaucrats and politicians (who should have known better) confidently “volunteered” their fellow citizens to pay a staggering bill: 90 British pounds each, per month, for the next eight years, according to one source. Thus, the price of hubris.

Sound familiar? Americans should ask themselves:

* Who are the American dealmakers shoveling over America’s substance to an army of “too big to fail” claimants and unfriendly nations, while small American businesses, workers, their pensions, and their health care are left to the wolves?
* Who allowed America’s debt to reach enormous proportions without any realistic hope that the men, women, and children who will come after us will ever be able to pay it?

The best place to look for the intellectual fathers and mothers of these critical problems is the United States Congress, on both sides of the aisle.

Perhaps Americans need a plebiscite too.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Richard J. Douglas worked in the Senate from 2000 to 2005. He is a lawyer and Navy veteran of Iraq and the submarine service.

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

Filed under: America (USA), Blundering Bureaucrats, Conniving Politicians, economy, Europe, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Political Prostitutes, Politics, Public Opinion, Spine Donor Politicians Tagged: Banking Crisis, Financial Crisis, Financial Meltdown, FSM (Family Security Matters), Iceland, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Tony

By Conn Carroll

The White House’s National Economic Council’s September 2009 report, A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs, informs us: “A strong economy, but too reliant on precarious, bubble-driven growth, is unsustainable.” And it is true: our government should not try and inflate bubbles in order to spur short-term economic growth. Which is why the White House should read today’s The New York Times article on the Spanish solar program that President Barack Obama so often holds out as a model for our country to follow:

Two years ago, this gritty mining city hosted a brief 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun.

Armed with generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: “The Sun Moves Us.”
…
But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own.

In September the government abruptly changed course, cutting payments and capping solar construction. Puertollano’s brief boom turned bust. Factories and stores shut, thousands of workers lost jobs, foreign companies and banks abandoned contracts that had already been negotiated.

According to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, for every “green job” created by Spain’s solar subsidies, 2.2 jobs in other sectors were destroyed and $758,471 was spent to create each green job. Germany is also paying dearly for their solar subsidies. A study commissioned by the Institute for Energy Research (IER),  found per worker subsidies for solar industry jobs are as high as $240,000.

Spending six figures for temporary “green jobs” is not A Strategy for American Innovation.

Conn Carroll is the Assistant Director of Strategic Communications at The Heritage Foundation and is also an Editor at The Foundry.

Read more from The Heritage Foundation at The Foundry

Filed under: 111th Congress, America (USA), Blundering Bureaucrats, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Conniving Politicians, economy, Environment, Environmental activists, Europe, Fanatics, Fear-mongering, Fraud/Waste, Global Warming, Infrastructure Problems, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Political Prostitutes, Politics, Power Hungry, Propaganda, Public Opinion, Spine Donor Politicians Tagged: Climate Change Religion, Global Warming Alarmism, Global Warming Hype, Green Jobs, Heritage – The Foundry, Solar Power Generation, Spanish Solar Power Problems, Tony

By Tim Potts

More Support for the Referendum

More (Pennsylvania) lawmakers and candidates have signed the petition for a referendum this fall, joining the 72% of voters who support a Constitution convention. The lawmakers (still no state senators) are:

• Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, who also is a candidate for lieutenant governor.
• Rep. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe.

The candidates are:

• Michael Slipp, Bristol Township, who is among four Democrats seeking the seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Tony Melio, D-Bucks.
• Mark Stevens is running to replace Rep. Barbara McIlvaine-Smith, the first lawmaker to sign the petition.
• Fred Baldwin is the sole Democrat running to replace Rep. Will Gabig, R-Cumberland, who is not seeking re-election.

The highest profile support for a convention (although not yet the petition) comes from Auditor General and gubernatorial candidate Jack Wagner. Appearing on Pittsburgh’s KD-PG television program yesterday morning, Wagner said, “I am fighting the status quo as a candidate for Governor. I want to change the status quo….After more than 40 years, it is time for another constitutional convention in order to directly involve the public in bringing these and other fundamental reforms to state government.” Click here for the full interview. KD-PG is a joint production of KDKA-TV and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.   …  

Judges Suffer from Pay Raise Excess

There is good news and bad news about the budget for the judiciary. The good news is that the Supreme Court is talking openly about its budget problems. The bad news is that the justices apparently don’t recognize this as a problem partly of their own creation.

In 2006, the judges ruled that the Pay Raise of 2005 was unconstitutional – except for themselves. Now they lament a $20 million budget shortfall that arises entirely from the higher salaries they decided to pay themselves.

The raise of about $15,000 per judge is going to 1,058 judges. That’s $15,870,000. Since they have all received the higher amount for four years, compounded by annual COLAs (except last year)…well, you get the picture.
In a pithy editorial, the Altoona Mirror takes justices to task for seeking more money without being willing to cut costs. One idea that Justice Max Baer rejected in budget hearings was for judges to pay 1% of their health care costs. Senators and staff currently pay 1% while Representatives, like the judges, pay nothing toward their top-of-the-line health care benefits.

As the Mirror points out, there are many people making far less money than judges who pay far more for health care that isn’t nearly as good. Click here for the editorial.

Reality Check:

• Years since the Pay Raise of 2005: 4.5
• Number of laws enacted to prevent another midnight pay grab: 0

Defending the Indefensible

The Bonus Scandal trial plods along, and the strategy of defense attorneys reveals some startling notions. Perhaps the most startling is the contention that campaigning at taxpayer expense is really just another form of legislative business. Attorney Dan Raynak suggested that since lawmakers’ job is to vote on legislation, and since they can’t vote on legislation without being elected, it’s OK to use tax-funded staff, equipment and services for their political campaigns.

Click here for a column by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ruth Ann Dailey expressing appropriate outrage.

As an incumbent protection strategy, this one is hard to beat. Once elected to office, incumbents could use the unlimited resources (in their minds) of taxpayers to stay in office. No one but the super-rich could hope to compete with people who already have a surplus of at least $180 million at their disposal while they debate what programs to cut that serve ordinary citizens.

But that’s not all. Once you use the “anything-I-do-is-public-business” defense, it’s hard to imagine what’s out of bounds. With this defense, Watergate isn’t even a third-rate burglary. It’s just another way of staying in power to do the people’s business. How about hacking your opponent’s computers? How about filing fraudulent nominating petitions?

Better yet, how about obeying the law and keeping campaigning separate from governance?

Reality Check:

• Years since the Bonus Scandal investigation began: 3
• Number of laws passed to prevent future scandals: 0

A New Reality

We don’t have to settle for whatever government lawmakers, judges and governors want to give us.

1. Click here to sign the petition for a referendum on a Constitution convention.
2. Forward this edition of DR News to others and ask them to sign the petition.
3. Donate to keep the pressure on.

A new reality is up to us, because only we can keep democracy rising!

Thanks!

Democracy Rising Pennsylvania P.O. Box 618, Carlisle, PA 17013

Filed under: Conniving Politicians, PA Constitution, PA Government, PA Judicial Branch, PA Legislative Branch, Pennsylvania, Political Prostitutes, Politics Tagged: Democracy Rising PA, Ed, Tim Potts

By Andrew Bolt

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ticks off yet another ally by letting domestic politics again get in the way of good policy:

AUSTRALIA’S restrictions on the deployment of its troops in Afghanistan have sparked a serious rift between military leaders in Washington and Canberra, and are likely to be a key issue during the the US President Barack Obama’s visit later this month.

The coalition’s military commander in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, has ‘’warned that the Rudd governments’ refusal to allow Australian troops to take the fight to the Taliban was impairing the US-led war effort’”.

General McChrystal delivered the warning in a private phone call late last year to the Australian Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has blocked moves to send Australian-trained Afghan soldiers, and their Australian mentors, to the NATO offensive in Marja in Helmand province.

Senior military sources said General McChrystal had used ‘’blunt language’’, complaining that Canberra was making his job ‘’incredibly difficult’’. The sources said there was potential for ‘’permanent damage’’ to the US perception of Australia’s military commitment.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

Filed under: Afghanistan, America (USA), Australia, Conniving Politicians, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Middle East, Military, Politics, Spine Donor Politicians Tagged: Afghanistan Military Committment, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, General Stanley McChrystal, War In Afghanistan

By Jeff Poor

ClimateGate, when a hacker broke into computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and released a myriad of confidential files, continues to cause controversy. The documents showed scientists had attempted to suppress and manipulate data that would hurt the case proving anthropogenic global warming. They also cast doubts about what sort of policy measures should be implemented to attack this alleged global problem.

However, according to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it’s not ClimateGate – but the messenger who is at fault for growing hesitation to enact a cap-and-trade policy that would radically change the U.S. economy. Although traditional media went for weeks without reporting the matter, it was talk radio that busted the story wide open and the target of Kerry’s frustration, which he revealed in an interview with the Boston Globe on March 8. (h/t Matt Dempsey, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee)

“What we have to do is go on the offensive,” Kerry said. The science “has been maligned and misinterpreted, and we need to fight back . . . people [need to] stop being moved by these talk show [hosts] and start looking for the facts” themselves.”

And the public’s trust in the scientific community’s work on the issue is waning. The Globe explained an ABC/Washington Post poll released last month “found 56 percent of those surveyed don’t trust the things scientists say about the environment – up from 49 percent a year and a half earlier.”

This has put Kerry’s efforts, as an influential voice in the U.S. Senate on the issue of climate change in question, as Beth Daley pointed out for the Globe.

“Environmental policy specialists say the controversies, along with the struggling economy, could hurt Kerry’s effort to pass climate legislation,” Daley wrote. “Kerry said recently that he is closing in on a bipartisan bill. He vowed to push forward, noting the issue is as much about jobs and national security as about the environment.”

Jeff Poor writes at the NewsBusters site.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters

Filed under: 111th Congress, America (USA), Blundering Bureaucrats, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Conniving Politicians, Democrats, Environment, Environmental activists, Fanatics, Fear-mongering, Fraud/Waste, Global Warming, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Political Prostitutes, Politics, Power Hungry, Propaganda, Public Opinion, Spine Donor Politicians Tagged: Carbon Cap And Trade Legislation, Climate Change Fraud, Climate Change Religion, Climategate, Global Warming Alarmism, Global Warming Hype, NewsBusters, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), Tony

This is for those who missed seeing the Conference live. We will be including the other videos as they become available. (Completed: 5 Videos – Total viewing time 55.2 minutes)

Filed under: Freedom, Islam, Islamic Terrorists, IslamoFascists, Muslim Terrorists, News and Views, Video, War against Militant Islamism, War on Terrorism Tagged: Ed, Geert Wilders

The Patriot Post Brief

The Foundation

“No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.” –Alexander Hamilton

Liberty

“While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant’s primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite. We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine’s warning that ‘Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.’” –George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams …  

Insight

“Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself. It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it.” –French judge, writer, political philosopher Etienne de la Boetie (1530-1563)

Re: The Left

“The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans’ private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as ‘an imperfect document … a document that reflects some deep flaws … (and) an enormous blind spot.’ He also said, ‘The Framers had that same blind spot.’ In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those ‘blind Framers,’ who just couldn’t see the big picture as he does today. After all, he’s the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document!” –columnist Chuck Norris

The Gipper

“The path we will chart is not an easy one. It demands much of those chosen to govern, but also from those who did the choosing. And let there be no mistake about this: We have come to a crossroad, a time of decision and the path we follow turns away from any idea that government and those who serve it are omnipotent. It is a path impossible to follow unless we have faith in the collective wisdom and genius of the people. Along this path government will lead but not rule, listen but not lecture. It is the path of a Creative Society.” –Ronald Reagan

Opinion in Brief

“What was really going on at the [health care] summit was reflected in the persistent, obviously pre-arranged, transparently false theme among the Democrats that, hey, you know, we are not really that far apart, there is really a lot of agreement. That was meant to set the Republicans up so the Democrats could say afterward that the Republicans refused to support Obamacare simply for partisan, political reasons, or because they really were in the pocket of industry, and so the Democrats are justified in ramming it through without them, through reconciliation. That was the real point and goal of the summit. That didn’t work because the Republicans were surprisingly good in articulating their reasons for opposing the legislation, and those reasons resonated strongly with the American people. By giving the Republicans such a high profile forum to express these reasons and their far more common sense alternatives, the summit backfired into yet another disastrous loss for Obamacare.” –columnist Peter Ferrara

Culture

“Much, if not most, of health care depends on what individuals do in the way they live their own lives — including eating habits, alcohol intake, exercise, narcotics and homicide. A study some years ago found that Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. But nobody believes that Mormons’ doctors are that much better than other doctors. When you don’t do a lot of things that shorten your life, you live longer. That is not rocket science. Americans tend to have higher rates of obesity, narcotics use and homicide than people in some other countries. And there is not much that doctors can do about that. If those who make international comparisons were serious, instead of clever, they would compare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the highest. When you can get to see a doctor faster, and get treatments underway without waiting for months, while the cancer grows and spreads, you have a better chance of surviving. That, too, is not rocket science. But it is also something that you are not likely to see featured in most of the media, where people are promoting their own pet notions and agendas, instead of giving you the facts on which you can make up your own mind.” –economist Thomas Sowell

Political Futures

“America is, quite simply, a Center-Right country. Many have cited polling data showing that self-described conservatives outnumber liberals two to one. But that’s not nearly so telling as the fact that self-identified conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every year since 1968; when combined with self-proclaimed moderates, the country is enduringly 65 to 75 percent moderate-to-conservative. As president, Bill Clinton initially governed as if he’d won a more Left-leaning mandate than the voters intended. Clinton admitted in a 1995 interview with the then-columnist Ben Wattenberg that he’d gone astray philosophically. With the help of Machiavellian pollster Dick Morris, Clinton recalibrated to the center and saved his presidency. No surprise that [Obama Chief of Staff Rahm] Emanuel’s most politically formative years were spent as a Clinton strategist. Yet Obama has indicated that he never considered the Clinton model appropriate or appealing. He wants to be ‘transformative’ like Ronald Reagan. But such a transformation requires an electorate willing to be and capable of being transformed.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

For the Record

“The deficit for last year was $1.4 trillion. The deficit rose as a share of the gross domestic product from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009, the highest deficit as a share of GDP since 1945. The projected deficit for the fiscal year that ends in September is another $1.3 trillion. So much for all that fiscal sanity blather from Team Obama in ‘08. How dishonest. … [Sen. Jim] Bunning pushed the stop button on the perpetual federal spending machine by holding up a $10 billion package to extend (yet again) unemployment benefits and keep cash flowing to the highway trust fund. Mirabile dictu, he insisted that the Congress should find the money to pay for this — for example, in unspent ’stimulus’ money — instead of just adding another multibillion-dollar layer to the deficit lasagna. Break out the smelling salts. The network nightly news crews tried to manufacture instant outrage, earning their reputation as the enablers of incessant and unrestrained deficit-building. … Bunning was right to say if the Congress can’t find any place in the federal budget to trim away a measly $10 billion, they won’t stop spending anywhere. But the media on this story aren’t really on the side of the taxpayers (and debt payers). They’re on the side of Team Obama and the debt builders. … Bunning [wasn’t] proposing job cuts — or even spending cuts. He’s using a hold and demanding that legislators of both parties put up or shut up when they declare they’re for ‘pay as you go’ budgeting.” –columnist L. Brent Bozell

Reader Comments

“Mark Alexander’s ‘Second Amendment… was a great article. The comment on the Times article is correct. It does not expand the right, it validates it. The comment on the fall of the murder rate in DC is also very good. The fact that the murder rate has dropped has nothing to do with the right to bear arms. However, is sure shows that armed citizens have a direct effect on the murder rate.” –Jericho

“Mr. Alexander’s commentary on the Second Amendment and the upcoming Supreme Court case reflects a clarity of thought and adherence to constitutional precept that goes beyond anything I’ve ever read on the subject. Our right to keep and bear arms is a principal bellwether for our freedom. Abridgment of that right is like losing the canary in a mineshaft.” –Mike

“You guys must not be hearing. President Obama has never said anything about taking our guns away. Guns only kill people. Ask any law enforcement officer and they will tell you guns should be banned. From reading this website all I hear is hate. How about doing something constructive for a change. Do you want to see our President assasinated [sic]? That’s what guns are about.” –James

Editor’s Reply: Our readers have sufficiently taken James to task for his ignorance.

“You are wrong about Obama planning to jam health care down our throats. Those people standing behind Obama in the white coats are proctologists; you’ve got the point of entry wrong.” –morefandave

The Last Word

“Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever expanding number of government jobs will be statists — sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily ‘compassionate’ statists, but always statists. The short history of the postwar welfare state is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect ‘conservatives,’ as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence-ha’penny or some such would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place. Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A big-time GOP consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass ObamaCare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November. Okay, then what? You’ll roll it back — like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel ‘n’ dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus: ‘Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?’ Indeed.” –columnist Mark Steyn

Read more informative articles at The Patriot Post

Filed under: 111th Congress, Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama), Conniving Politicians, Constitution, Demo-gogues, Freedom, Liberals, Marxists, News and Views, Political Prostitutes, Politicians for the Destruction of America Tagged: Annie, Health care, Mark Steyn, ObamaCare Catastrophe, The Patriot Post, Tyrant

By Alan Caruba

The news on Sunday, March 7th, is that Adam Gadahn, an American who became a Muslim and then joined al Qaeda, was arrested in Pakistan by intelligence officers and the only question I have is how long will it take to ship his sorry ass back to the land of the free and the home of the brave?

This poor excuse for a human being grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, converted to Islam at a nearby mosque, and found his purpose in life with the enemies of his country and, for that matter, every country. Even the Pakistanis are not keen on al Qaeda and the Taliban.

If he stays in the Middle East, the chances of his being rescued by his al Qaeda buddies or that a sizeable enough bribe will leave his cell door unlocked escalate with each day. A bunch of these jihadists were broken loose from a prison in Yemen. It apparently was constructed from sponge cake and marshmallows.

If returned to the U.S., Gadahn, age 31, should be put before a military tribunal as an enemy combatant, tried, and then taken out to face a firing squad. This is the way the U.S. used to deal with traitors, but we have become so feminized that some will surely cry out that it is cruel and unusual punishment. There is, however, nothing unusual about it.

Briefly, Gadahn starred in several al Qaeda videos urging his fellow American Muslims to join the jihad against the Great Satan. After conversion, he moved to Pakistan in 1998 and went looking for an al Qaeda training camp. I’ve never been there, but you get the feeling that they have highway signs that say turn left for Rawalpindi and right for the Osama bin Laden Terrorist Camp.

By 2004 the Federal Bureau of Investigation put his face on a wanted poster and offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction. In 2006, a U.S. court charged him with treason, making him the first American to face that charge in more than 50 years.

In his last video, he praised Major Hassan for having killed thirteen fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, calling him a role model for Muslims. To say the least, he is just one more twisted sister who has found the ultimate justification to kill civilians and military alike because Mohammed said it’s okay.

What Americans need to draw from this is the reminder that mosques throughout our great, benevolent and tolerant nation are hothouses for jihadist recruitment and plots. Other favorite recruiting locations are prisons.

It doesn’t matter what the official spokesmen of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has to say. They are part of the “problem.”

To whom do all Muslims owe their loyalty? First, last, and always, it is to Islam.

Are there Muslim Americans who love America? Yes. Do some serve honorably in our military? Yes. Sorting them out from those who have bad intentions is the job of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA. It would probably help if their next-door neighbors kept an eye on them as well.

The good news is that the U.S. and its Pakistani ally are beginning to make real progress in degrading al Qaeda through the capture of its various serial killers. The bad news is that these people and wannabe groups are not going to go away for a very long time to come.

Gadahn, the show-off, got most of the attention, but any number of Americans, mostly young men, either converts or born into Islam, have demonstrated that killing their countrymen was perfectly fine with them. They are not “crazy”, they are Muslims.

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at Warning Signs. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Read more thought provoking articles at Warning Signs

Filed under: al Qaeda, America (USA), CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), Fanatics, Islamic Terrorists, Propaganda, Taliban Tagged: al Qaeda, Alan Caruba, American Muslims, CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations], Tony, Warning Signs

By Andrew Bolt

Through gritted teeth, AFP acknowledges the miracle of Iraqi democracy:

Iraqis defied waves of bomb, mortar and rocket attacks that killed 38 people to turn out in huge numbers to vote in elections seen as a test of the war-shattered state’s fragile democracy.

Gritted teeth? So what’s to object to there?

First, Iraq’s economy was not shattered by the short war that liberated the country from Saddam Hussein. It’s Saddam’s misrule that did most to ruin it, and since the 2003 war the economy has grown:

Second, what is the evidence that Iraq’s democracy – a rarity in the Arab Middle East – is “fragile”? Since the 2001 war, the country has held two general elections, a presidential election, a governate election and a referendum, with many millions of voters turning out each time, despite threats to their lives.

I think it’s time to frankly acknowledge that a country that was once a sinkhole of tyranny, state-sanctioned theft and devastating misrule is now that rarest and most valuable of things in the Middle East – a democracy with a fast-thriving economy.

And which leaders did most to achieve this transformation?

TonyfromOz …..

Gee! This wouldn’t be Bush’s fault too, now would it?

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

Filed under: America (USA), Democracy, Freedom, Iraq, Middle East, Politics Tagged: Andrew Bolt, Iraq Democracy, Iraq Elections, Iraq Recovery, Tony

Satire by  Shawn Goodwin

Greetings! My name is Dmitry Medvedev, and I am the president of the Russian Federation. Recently, the elite athletes of my country competed in the Vancouver Olympic Games and their performances were – how you say? – less than exemplary. In fact, many of these men and women looked as about as athletic as Wilfred Brimley. The once mighty Russian hockey team did not make it to the medal round, and our previously dominant ice skating squad left Vancouver with more gold in their teeth than around their necks. This is unacceptable, and I hold the members of my country’s Olympic committee solely responsible. As a result, the men and women of the committee have been brought to my dacha and have been punished for their crimes. Er, figuratively, or course.

The survivors were released with a new appreciation of the phrase, “No pain, no gain.” They have also been offered a pretty good deal: either accept early retirement or receive a free vacation in beautiful Siberia. Sadly, the Western media completely misread my attempt at constructive criticism and posted these lies instead:

President Dmitry Medvedev ordered Olympic officials to quit or be fired on Monday and demanded drastic changes to training procedures after a poor showing at the Winter Games dented national pride. Once mighty Russia limped in 11th in the medals table with just three golds, its worst ever tally. The result was especially embarrassing because Russia is due to host the next Winter Olympics in 2014 at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“Those responsible should take the brave decision and sign a letter (of resignation),” Medvedev said in televised comments. “If they can’t we will help them.”

Now, some capitalist pundits are misinterpreting my comments as threats. Nothing can be further from the truth. We are merely offering to help a few guilty bureaucrats sign their letters, because it is difficult to do so with broken arms and legs. You see, a few of them “fell” during their stay at my dacha – the inevitable spoils of hardwood flooring. Damn you, Mop & Glo!

The Western writers did get one item correct during their propaganda piece, however. The failures of our Olympians cast a pall over our sense of national pride. February has been a very dreary month in Moscow, a place that is usually nothing but sunshine and lollipops. The malaise has been so severe that Prime Minister Putin only takes his shirt off in public every other day. Vladimir is the eternal optimist, though, as you can see from his statement:

“Of course we expected more from our team,” Putin said, while the games were nearing their close on Friday. “But that’s not cause to throw up our hands, wear a sackcloth and ashes or beat ourselves with chains.”

Oh Vlad, you are such a madcap. We would never wear sackcloths and beat each other with chains. That is what the Georgians are for! We have a plan in the works that will spell doom for the Yankee dogs. Starting on May 1st, we will be resurrecting the Soviet Union in order to regain our dominance in the Olympic Games. You heard correctly. The hammer and sickle shall rise again, and we will be ready for our competitors in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. How will this come to pass, you ask? It is simple, really, as we are constructing a three-step plan.

Step 1: A Return to the Old Country. Like Joan Rivers, Mother Russia yearns to relive the glory days of the early 1900s. Step 1 helps to achieve that goal by restoring our icons of old. The May Day Parade will proceed through Red Square, we will reacquire our satellite countries, and Zombie Lenin will be resuscitated and released upon the masses. Once the Iron Curtain is raised, we will treat our athletes like pieces of meat. The Red Army will put our hockey players through boot camp, captured Romanian nationals will train our gymnasts 12 hours a day, and East German women with unibrows will develop our figure skaters. We will dominate the world in Sochi, or we will choke the rivers with their dead! What? Too far?

Step 2: Voodoo Economics. Since the best teams that money can buy cost, um, money, we will gladly take from the masses to give to the few. Besides, the American president said that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” The Motherland will do the same thing, except when we say “everybody,” we actually mean only athletes, politicians, and chubby female interns of Polish descent. Sure, the proletariat will have to wear potato sacks and eat horse fat for a while, but a renewed sense of national pride keeps every family warm and every belly full.

Step 3: Cheat To Win. In the unlikely event that Steps 1 and 2 fail, Step 3 is our ace in the hole. Since our country will be hosting the 2014 Winter Games, former members of the KGB will be assigned to oversee certain events – events that have proven troublesome for us of late. For example, our women’s curling team finished ninth out of ten teams, beating only the Americans. Inconceivable! At Sochi, Comrade Svitov has been instructed to arm our opponents’ curling stones with a small explosive charge. When a capitalist team tries to knock our stone out of the circle, the charge will detonate, knocking the stone away from ours. We estimate that this will guarantee a gold medal, but will probably lose a game to Japan on purpose just to keep up appearances.

Similarly, Comrade Kubina has been instructed to transport nuclear rods from Chernobyl and place them under the locker room floor of Team Canada. Destroy our team in the quarterfinals, will you? Try relying on Sidney Crosby when he is slowed by radiation poisoning! I sincerely doubt he will be scoring goals when he is worrying about his third arm!

Finally, Comrade Davydov will be making some after hours “adjustments” to the figure skating rink. We will be ready for Lysacek and Johnny Weir this time. Now, while I cannot divulge the Davydov’s instructions, I can give you two words: trap doors.

While these steps may seem drastic to the pink doily, underpantsy, liberal crowd, they are the norm for the people of Russia. Life here is hard, but our citizens are tenacious. We have suffered before; under the boot of Napoleon and under the fist of Nazi Germany. And while Western athletes are nothing like the evils this country has faced, how can we in good conscience lose a hockey game to Slovakia and a gold medal to Evan Lysacek?

I mean, really, the American doesn’t do a quad. How can he win a gold medal without doing a quad?!!!

FamilySecurityMatters.org’s official satirist, Shawn Goodwin, is a blogger and police detective from Philly.

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

Filed under: Humor, Russia, Satire Tagged: FSM (Shawn Goodwin), Political Humor, Political Satire, Russian Federation, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russian Winter Olympic Team Results, Tony

By Alan Caruba

One of the keystones of the Obama administration’s energy policies has been a very expensive emphasis on “clean energy”, sometimes called “renewable energy”, allocating billions to the wind and solar energy producers. Like much of the “stimulus” bill that money is a waste.

The wind power trade group, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has been pouring big bucks into a public relations effort to convince Americans that wind is the energy source of the future and that acres of wind turbines should be installed to replace the proven sources, primarily coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants currently providing more than 80% of the nation’s electricity needs.

Thanks to Freedom of Information requests, the Chicago Tribune revealed significant collusion among Department of Energy officials and AWEA, as well as other third-party special interest groups such as the Center for American Progress, a think tank that pushes Green and other liberal agendas.

The Tribune reported that an Assistant Secretary of Energy, Cathy Zoi, who formerly held top positions at Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, was charged with crafting renewable energy policy for the Obama administration and emails obtained revealed that she was working closely with AWEA to rebut and discredit a ground-breaking study by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University.

Dr. Calzada’s research concluded that, for every “green job” the Spanish government created, 2.2 jobs were destroyed and that nine out of ten government-created “green jobs” were temporary at a time when Spain’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high, not unlike the situation in the U.S.

At the time that Dr. Calzada’s study was reported, the Obama administration was pushing “Cap-and-Trade” legislation through the House. This legislation would set up a system for the sale, auction, and trade of “carbon credits” based on the totally discredited assertion that “greenhouse gases”, primarily carbon dioxide, were “causing” global warming. The bill remains in the Senate awaiting a vote.

Back in January AWEA was ecstatic over an Obama administration award of $2.3 billion in “clean energy manufacturing tax credits and the President’s call for an additional $5 billion.” There is no economic or scientific justification for the waste of taxpayer dollars in this fashion.

Also in January, a Boston Herald article by Jay Fitzgerald revealed that “National Grid customers will experience sticker shock after the giant utility negotiates a long-term electric contract with Cape Wind developers, energy experts warn.”

“The Rhode Island deal calls for National Grid to pay an eye-popping 24 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity from Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm off Block Island for 20 years. That’s three times higher than the current price of natural-gas generated electricity—and the Rhode Island deal includes a 3.5 percent annual increase over the life of the contract.”

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, in February eleven wind turbines froze because their hydraulic fluid had turned to gel and oil lubricants were rendered sluggish. These kinds of problems do not occur in other sources of electricity. In Oregon, General Electric had announced a big wind project involving 338 wind turbines that it claimed would power 235,000 homes. Naturally, it was applying for federal subsidies.

In Great Britain, in January, its wind turbines representing six percent of total generating capacity and billions invested, supplied virtually no power most days because, as Dennis T. Avery, a former senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department noted “The wind tends not to blow when and where it’s already cold.”

Avery pointed out that neither Denmark, nor Germany, leaders in wind energy projects, has decommissioned any fossil fuel plants. “The fossil generators are kept in ‘spinning reserve’ to keep the lights on in the schools, factories, and hospitals when the wind dies.”

The wind and solar energy industries, as well as the biofuels industry, continue to depend on government subsidies to exist, as opposed to private enterprises that have a long track record of providing affordable electricity.

First the government gives the wind energy producers your money and then you end up paying higher energy bills as a result. Both wind and solar energy depend on government mandates for their use. If cap-and-trade is enacted, you will be further taxed for its use.

These are facts you need to keep in mind every time President Obama speaks of “clean energy” and “green jobs.” Like so much else one hears from the TelePrompter-in-Chief, it has no relation to the truth.

Editor’s Note: For more information about wind power, visit http://windpowerfacts.info.

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at Warning Signs. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Read more thought provoking articles at Warning Signs

Filed under: 111th Congress, America (USA), Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama), Blundering Bureaucrats, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Conniving Politicians, Democrats, Environment, Environmental activists, Fanatics, Fear-mongering, Fraud/Waste, Global Warming, Infrastructure Problems, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Political Prostitutes, Politics, Power Hungry, Propaganda, Spine Donor Politicians Tagged: Alan Caruba, Carbon Cap And Trade Tax, Carbon Credits, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions, Clean Energy, Climate Change Religion, Climate Change Scaremongering, Global Warming Alarmism, Global Warming Hype, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Renewable Energy Targets, Tony, Warning Signs, Wind Power Generation

By Andrew Bolt

TonyfromOz prefaces …..

In this earlier post, I wrote of the flood damage in the State of Queensland. This major storm event in Melbourne was as a result of the remnants of this rain depression which moved to the East as well as to the South. Melbourne is around 1,000 miles to the South of those floods in Queensland. This post has a series of four short videos, all of them after the ‘read more’ link. When the first video shows images of Flemington Race Course, what you see covering those lush green paddocks is a covering of icy hail, in places inches deep. As you watch the hail splashing into the water, and also bouncing off the ground in the other videos, those hailstones are around the size of golf balls, and in some cases some of those hailstones were 4 inches across.

Part of the roofs of Southern Cross station and Etihad stadium have collapsed. Even more amazingly, the deluge of ice brought polar bears with it.   …  

HAIL has blanketed Melbourne like snow as a severe thunderstorm ripped through the city, forcing the cancellation of horse racing and sporting events.

Nineteen millimetres (almost an inch) of rain bucketed down over the city in less than 18 minutes this afternoon, the weather bureau said.

The huge storm cell, which hit about 2.40pm (AEDT), resulted in a total of 26 millimetres of rain in Melbourne in less an hour, bringing emergency services to a grinding halt as reports of flooding came in from across the city.

I’ve never seen hail that big or rain that hard – in Melbourne or anywhere else

I’m amazed I had only two panes of glass crack in my own home.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

Filed under: Australia, Disaster, Video Tagged: Andrew Bolt, Australian Flood Crisis, Australian Storms, Tony

By Alan Caruba

News you will NOT find in the mainstream press was posted March 2nd on Watt’s Up With That, a blog that is an excellent source of climate news and views.

Steven Goddard reported “Now that we have reached the end of the meteorological winter (December-February,) Rutgers University Global Snow Lab numbers (1967-2010) show that the just completed decade (2001-2010) had the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record.”

“The just completed winter was also the second snowiest on record, exceeded only by 1978.”

Among the facts the Global Snow Lab reported were that:

Average winter snow extent has increased since the 1990s, by nearly the area of Texas and California combined.

Three of the four snowiest winters in the Rutgers record occurred during the last decade – the top four winters are (in order) 1978, 2010, 2008, 2003.

The third week of February, 2010 had the second highest weekly extent out of the 2,229 week record.

“It appears that anthropogenic global warming claims of the demise of snowfall have been exaggerated. And so far things are not looking very good for the climate model predictions of declining snowfall in the 21st century”

“Many regions of the Northern Hemisphere have seen record snowfall this winter, including Washington, D.C., Moscow, China, and Korea.”

This is just further proof that the warmists, led by Al Gore, have been lying to us, not just for years, but for decades.

This is a very strong argument against the “cap-and-trade” legislation awaiting a vote in the Senate and the Environmental Protection Agency’s threat to regulate carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” on the grounds that they are causing global warming.

There is no global warming. Weather satellites confirm that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle since 1998.

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at Warning Signs. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Read more thought provoking articles at Warning Signs

Filed under: America (USA), Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Environment, Environmental activists, Fanatics, Fear-mongering, Global Warming, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Power Hungry, Propaganda, Public Opinion Tagged: Alan Caruba, Anthony Watts, Climate Change Hypocrisy, Climate Change Religion, Global Warming Alarmism, Global Warming Hype, Tony, Warning Signs

By Andrew Bolt

Yet more evidence of what I’ve long argued – that women are more superstitious than men, and some even brag about it:

Natalie Isaacs, founder and CEO of the 1 Million Women campaign, says it’s now more important than ever for women to stand up and be change agents in society for practical action on reducing CO2 emissions…

She says the just-published Who Cares about the Environment? – a three-yearly research report from the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW) – raises a number of significant gender issues in regard to climate change and environmental attitudes and action.

It found that:…

Women were more likely than men to think that climate change is having an impact now (42% compared to 33% of men)…

BUT, men were likely to be correct on knowledge questions about the greenhouse effect than women (men 57% correct, women 45%).

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia. Read the excellent Andrew Bolt’s Blog

Filed under: Australia, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Environment, Environmental activists, Fanatics, Fear-mongering, Global Warming, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Power Hungry, Propaganda, Public Opinion Tagged: Andrew Bolt, Climate Change Hypocrisy, Climate Change Religion, Global Warming Alarmists, Global Warming Hype, Tony

By William Warren

See more Cartoons by William Warren, and Great Articles at NetRight Nation Blog

Filed under: 111th Congress, America (USA), Cartoons, Democrats, Humor, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Political Prostitutes, Politics, Satire, Spine Donor Politicians Tagged: Ethics Violations, NetRight Nation Blog, Political Cartoons, political corruption, Political Humor, Political Satire, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Tony, U.S. Congress, William Warren

See more videos at the NewsBusted video channel

See and Read more Quality Material at NewsBusters

Filed under: America (USA), Humor, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Satire, Video Tagged: NewsBusted, NewsBusters, Political Comment, Political Humor, Political Satire, Tony, Video

By Colleen Kaveney

All high school math teacher Bradley Johnson wanted to do was honor our nation’s history and religious heritage the same way he always had. For twenty five years, a red, white and blue-striped banner adorned his classroom walls with national maxims such as “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God, “ “God Bless America,” and “God Shed his Grace On Thee.” A second banner accompanied it, containing an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, “All Men are Created Equal and They Are Endowed by Their Creator.”

But displaying a portion of the Declaration of Independence and other national mottos was just too offensive to the Poway Unified School District in San Diego. It ordered Johnson to remove the banners from his classroom because they “over-emphasized” God – one school official said it might “offend” Muslim students. Fortunately, Johnson went to federal court to fight this absurd order (represented by the Thomas More Law Center), and even more fortunately, given that California is in the 9th Circuit, the most liberal appeals circuit in the nation, a federal judge found on February 26 that the school board’s actions violated Mr. Johnson’s constitutional rights.

Judge Roger T. Benitez did not allow the censorship because “it has been clear for over 90 years that teachers do not lose their constitutional rights inside the schoolhouse gate, and that government may not squelch one viewpoint while favoring another.”

It turned out that the school district allowed teachers to display other posters promoting controversial political issues such as gay rights and global warming, and banners showing other religious preferences such as Tibetan prayer flags, Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi’s “Seven Social Sins,” and John Lennon and the lyrics of his song “Imagine,” which opens with lyrics about no heaven, no hell, and no religion. The school district just seemed to have a problem with Christian religious and American patriotic sentiments.

No student, parent or school administrator had ever objected to Johnson’s banners – until January 23, 2007, when the entire school board ordered Johnson to remove the posters which “conveyed a Judeo-Christian viewpoint.”

Judge Benitez was scathing in his denunciation of the school board, which apparently feared that “students are incapable of dealing with diverse viewpoints that include God’s place in American history and culture.” The fact that “God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls.” The board not only failed to comply with the long-standing policy that “a teacher’s classroom walls serve as a limited public forum for a teacher to convey non-curriculum messages,” but also went so far as to silence Johnson’s speech.

Judge Benitez cracked down on the board’s bias, concluding that “by squelching Johnson’s patriotic and religious viewpoint, while permitting speech promoting Buddhist, Hindu, and anti-religious viewpoints, Defendants clearly abridged Johnson’s constitutional free speech rights.” An “imaginary” Islamic student was “not entitled to a heckler’s veto on a teacher’s passive, popular or unpopular, expression.”

This is a common-sense decision that hostility towards our nation’s history, its religious heritage, and expressions of patriotism will not be tolerated in our public school classrooms. Hopefully, other school boards around the country will take notice.

Collen Kaveney currently is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation, and she contributes posts to The Foundry.

Read more informative articles at Heritage – The Foundry

Filed under: America (USA), Education, Edukashun idjots, GOD, Liberals, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Propaganda, Public Opinion Tagged: Education Standards, Heritage – The Foundry, Religious Freedom, Tony