Islam’s Culture of Death

The Islamotards in Lebanon have made a death and terrorism themed tourist attraction

Beirut was once The Paris of the Levant. It is where Middle Eastern intellectuals escaped bloody regimes, women enjoyed freedom, and learning was cherished.  First the Palestinian radicals moved in, later Hezbollah hijacked the place, and the rest is history.

Resistance Land
Hezbollah's new tourist park, meant to indoctrinate visitors with the ideals of the Islamic Resistance, may be the latest sign that another war is on the horizon. (Read more at FP - Resistance Land)

Too Hot to Handle: The Naked Truth

Why we Can't Trust the News Media, #5,843

We've Investigated Ourselves and Find No Wrongdoing

A Panel at East Anglia University and paid for by East Anglia University investigated the CRU at East Anglia University and found no wrongdoing.  Here's the biggest criticism they could muster:

"The question that arises was openness in relation to how that science was then being challenged, being discussed, and the commerce that there was between them and critics and critics and challengers right round the world," he said.


Also criticised was a graph prepared for the World Meteorological Organisation, showing temperatures from 1850 ticking up sharply at the end of the 20th century.  The inquiry found the graph was misleading, but not intentionally so.

I heard they all celebrated by going off with Al Gore for a congratulatory massage...

Levi Johnson Apologizes to the Palins

"...To the Palin family in general and to Sarah Palin in particular, please accept my regrets and forgive my youthful indiscretion....I hope one day to restore your trust."

I guess the whole naked celebrity wanna-be thing must have played itself out... 

Google news returned a whole six news items about this.  But what do you expect from a news media that investigated an Ohio plumber more than it investigated a presidential candidate from a major party?

Obamanomic Uncertaintly Killing Jobs

Liberals are pointing at Republicans and screaming that they are stopping Obama’s economic recovery.  

This after they used the press as a giant bullhorn to continually badmouth the Bush economy until it finally did start sinking.  They don’t understand that unemployment benefits are not an economic stimulus...  but anyway, it’s a bog of economic ignorance and class warfare rhetoric too muddled to even try and sort out.




Here’s a Question for Sensible Americans...
If you don’t know what regulations will befall you in the near future, and your future earnings are in doubt, and you suspect taxes and fees will be raised, how will you react?   Will you blow your money, or will you stash it away?  

Simple decision, isn’t it?.  Well, businesses have reached the same conclusion:

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that U.S. corporations are sitting on $1.6 trillion in cash reserves, a record amount, because they are reluctant to expand in the uncertain policy environment.

It’s the Economic Uncertainty, Stupid!
Thomas Cooley tells us what’s wrong with job growth:  Economic Uncertainty.

He starts with the specter of ballooning debt at the state and municipal levels.  We know it’s there, we just don’t know how big it is yet, but we know it’s big.  Add to that...

There is also a lot of uncertainty about the extent of underfunded pension liabilities and the impact they will have because they do not typically show up on budgets.

Given the rhetoric and previous policy initiatives of the Obama administration, it is virtually certain that corporations and wealthy individuals are going to face higher taxes, but in what form?

Even the liberal NY Times gets it, although they stand the uncertainty argument on its head.  They perversely argue that now is the time to set up a program to funnel more money to states while passing cap and trade that will increase the cost of energy.  Get the pain over with so businesses can calculate the costs and press on with hiring and expansion plans.  At least they're half right...

Becoming Europe Won’t Help, Either
Even the liberal intelligentsia realize becoming Europe will only make things worse, reports Lloyd Grove at the Daily Beast:

He said jobs were going to be his No. 1 priority—there’s a huge disconnect between Washington and what’s going on out in the country,”

“The president’s economic team kept talking about a ‘cyclical’ problem. Larry Summers said jobs were a lagging economic indicator. All these things are simply wrong. The president put all his trust in the wrong economic team—an economic team that didn’t understand what was happening.”

That quote is not from a vengeful Rush Limbaugh, but from Obama supporter Ariana Huffington.  It’s the economy, stupid, and businesses, not government, fuel expansion by hiring people.  Even liberals are waking up to that fact.

Tea Party or Tar and Feather Party?

Is the tea party a dangerous conservative monolith controlled by nefarious powers, as the liberals claim?  

Or is it a hapless, incoherent rabble, as the liberals claim?

They can’t have it both ways.  Actually they can.  Liberalism thrives on logical incoherence.  


Anyway, USA Today printed a most admirable article about the Tea Party Movement.  I think they nailed it:

The "Tea Party" is less a classic political movement than a frustrated state of mind.

"I don't really understand it, but I like what they stand for," says Terry Rushing, 63, of Greensburg, La., who was among those surveyed. "They just support everything I'm looking for — lower taxes, less government. ... All the good things, you know."

This is what worries establishment Republicans...

Even so, the movement is less a party than an anti-party, with no clear consensus about whom its national leaders are and a generally dyspeptic view of organized political power.

"It's a party opposed to the idea of parties," says Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian whose book about the movement, The Whites of Their Eyes, is scheduled to be published in October.

This is what worries liberals...

The Tea Party reminds her more of a religious revival than a political movement. She compares it to the Second Great Awakening in the 1830s, a religious resurgence that helped fuel temperance and abolitionism.

Much of what the tea party embraces is non-partisan:  Opposition to insane spending, bloated government and capricious regulation on individuals and businesses.  A general sense that government has gotten out of control and our representatives and bureaucrats no longer listen to us.

Skepticism is Healthy

What emerges from the polls and interviews is a deeply engaged, highly skeptical group of people — even toward others in their ranks.

The age of believing what our political heroes tell us is over.  For tea partiers, the age of political heroes is over as well.  We know we need government, and it takes people to run it.  We’ll vote for you, but we’ve also got our eye on you.  We made you, Mr. Politician, and we can break you.


The libs (and establishment Republicans) are scared witless of the Tea Party movement, and that’s a good thing.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.  -- Thomas Jefferson

Liberal Lies about Taxes

What is it with liberals and taxes?  
Despite all real-world evidence to the contrary, liberals see higher taxes as the solution to every fiscal problem.  The chart at the bottom of the post refutes this.  States with the highest levels of taxation have the worst economies and the greatest debt.  Low taxation states have healthier economies and less debt.

It Takes a Crime-Ridden Village...
The New York Times, in detailing Illinois’s budget crisis, steers clear of facts and instead plucks the liberal heartstrings by focusing on community organizer agencies...

...holding together poor and working-class neighborhoods. With an annual budget of $16 million, the agency tends to families torn by crime and violence as well as people who are psychologically stressed and abusing drugs.

Jail the violent criminals and the drug pushers and you won’t have “families torn by crime” and “people psychologically stressed and abusing drugs.”  There you go!  $16 million saved, and these counselors and their helpless wards are now free to pursue real jobs!

Of course, you need a good business climate in order to put people to work.  Last time I checked, businesses and the rich people who own them are where the jobs come from, and the data shows that a low tax environment creates jobs.  

New York Times:  Fueling Liberal Ignorance
The Times ignores all reality and repeats that tired liberal refrain that calls for more taxes.  They state:

“The state’s income tax burden is not terribly high — Illinois ranks in the bottom half of states”   

True statement.  Personal Income Taxes are not terribly high, but every other conceivable tax is!!! ranking Illinois right around the 14th highest in the nation for overall tax burden.

News articles like this serve only to confuse the issue and add to the economic ignorance of the liberal reader.    

Here is the overall taxation chart, courtesy of The Tax Foundation.  Higher number means more taxation, lower number less.

Gun Rights are Natural Rights

Self-Defense: An Inalienable Right

Statesmen from ancient Rome to the American Revolution laid the foundation in law for the right of self-defense. America's founders were influenced by these classic philosophic teachings and the European tradition derived from them.

"Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson is inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself," wrote the great Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.

"They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives from violence of any and every kind by all the means within their power." (Claremont Institute)

 

Do you have a right to life?

The right to self-defense is the first and most fundamental right contained in Natural Law.  Without life, nothing else matters.

Think we should surrender that right to government so the state can protect us?  

OK, then riddle me this:  Does the family of a murder victim have a legal right to sue the state for failing to use its police powers to prevent the murder?

American courts have ruled again and again that police have no duty to protect individuals from deadly assault. The only alternatives for a person in such danger are to rely on the mercy of criminals or to carry a gun illegally. No one should be forced to break the law to exercise a basic right. (Claremont Institute)

Your only recourse is to your natural right of self-defense.  Take that away (violate it) and you have deprived a free person of the fundamental right to life.  Welcome to progressivism!

For an interesting and understandable legal discussion, see Volokh - Jim Lindgren

* - Cross Posted at Rational Nation

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July! 

Enjoy the long weekend, but please pause to remember those who fought and died to make that enjoyment possible. Freedom is never free.






A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774


But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
-- John Adams


I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
-- Abraham Lincoln


Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
-- Ronald Reagan


Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
-- Ronald Reagan

It Has Always Been The Soldier

It is the soldier,
not the President who gives us democracy.
It is the soldier,
not the Congress who takes care of us.
It is the soldier,
not the Reporter who has given us Freedom of Press.
It is the soldier,
not the Poet who has given us Freedom of Speech.
It is the soldier,
not the campus Organizer who has given us the
Freedom to Demonstrate.
It is the soldier,
who salutes the flag;
who serves beneath the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
that allows the protester to burn the flag.
(Father Dennis O'Brien, US Marine Corp. Chaplain)

http://www.foundingfathers.info/
http://www.vfwpost1503.org/it's_the_soldier.html