Voting more than once is against the law. It's good thing that a-hole doesn't live in Massachusetts. If that is the advice he is offering the libs there and they accept it, they don't deserve to win.
"for us or against us" is this really what you are down to? you cannot think on your own?
but, I suppose it is easy to be sucked up by all the dogma & propoganda - on both sides
Don't you understand? There is not "both sides". There is only right and wrong. If you can ascertain this simple concept, then the thoughts of fierobear and randye make more sense! Please do not impune their thoughts, in any way. The logical thinking people cannot be compared with those who cannot think there way out of a wet paper bag.
Cordially, Kevin
[This message has been edited by kevin (edited 01-18-2010).]
A variety of moves being undertaken by Democrats are designed to ensure their permanent hold on power through engineering a new electorate.
In a recent article, we discussed the possibility that Democrats will introduce universal voter registration (UVR) legislation this year, and we offered that as an explanation for their seeming carelessness in the face of plummeting poll numbers. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, who originally brought this item to public attention (saying it would be proposed in January), has reiterated his belief that UVR will be proposed sometime this year, although it will await the outcome of the health care bill still under consideration.
Fund asserts that UVR will open the nation up to massive vote fraud. The reasons are straightforward and many. Among them, (1) registering people using existing government databases will result in many duplicates, (2) many of the lists contain names of illegal immigrants; and (3) the list could be expanded to include felons currently ineligible to vote.
Like most leftist agenda items, the notion of universal voter registration has been a long time in the making, but it has been flying beneath the radar for all but those paying close attention. As a result, most of us are behind the curve. The left can thus present universal voter registration as a much-needed "reform," with talking points and ready answers to objections all lined up, while the rest of us struggle to assess the damage it will do. But it will do damage -- potentially permanent damage to our representative republic.
Voter Registration and Registration Fraud
Most of the calls for UVR cite the fact that about thirty percent of eligible voters remain unregistered. (In the last election cycle, 29 percent were not registered.) The radical left Nation magazine effuses:
It doesn't have to be this way. Registration rates in other countries frequently run upwards of 90 percent (both Canada and France hit that mark, for example, while Venezuela stands at roughly 94 percent, and Russia about 97).
Venezuela and Russia. How has voter registration worked out for them? They're not exactly the role models for democracy if you ask me, but then, for the folks at Nation, they're all of a piece. Just ask Bill Ayers.
These folks also argue that UVR will prevent voter registration fraud. If the feds do all the registering, they reason, groups like ACORN that have been tied to rampant registration fraud -- not to mention all their other illegal activities -- will be disenfranchised.
But a look at who is supporting the idea gives the lie to that one. An article appeared last year on Alternet.org, a leftist website run by former Mother Jones publisher Don Hazen. Titled "Consensus Builds for Universal Voter Registration," the byline was Project Vote. This is the same Project Vote where Barack Obama cut his teeth organizing for the Senate election of communist-sympathizer Carol Moseley Braun. Project Vote is at the forefront of the voting rights movement. It is also an ACORN subsidiary.
In 1993, Bill Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act into law. Commonly known as Motor Voter, the law allows for people to register to vote at welfare offices, motor vehicle departments, and other government agencies. These agencies are required to provide necessary forms and even promote voter registration. Democrats billed Motor Voter as a method to make it easier for "disenfranchised voters" to become registered. Note that there was nothing except their own inertia preventing eligible people from registering to vote before this was passed, but the Democrats are all about saving the "poor and oppressed," especially when most of those poor and oppressed will be guaranteed Democrat voters.
A 2008 Project Vote report titled "Unequal Access: Neglecting the National Voter Registration Act 1995-2007" claimed that "40 percent of voting-aged citizens from households earning under $25,000 were unregistered." The report further complains that "Thousands of eligible low income voters could be brought fully into the democratic process every day if states fully complied with the NVRA." Once again, these people are perfectly capable of bringing themselves into the "democratic process" if they so choose, but that's not good enough for Democrats. The report also observed that twenty percent of qualified citizens making $100,000 or more remain unregistered, but that didn't seem to bother them.
Motor Voter was anticipated to create a massive potential for voter registration fraud. Events since its passage seem to have borne that out. And while supporters of the law claim that vote registration fraud does not necessarily lead to vote fraud, the danger is clearly there, especially from absentee ballots and in states where only minimal identification is required. It also creates opportunities for voting activists to challenge elections. If the registration process is flawed, they argue, why not the election process itself?
The Motor Voter law was the brainchild of socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Inventors of the Cloward/Piven Crisis Strategy, these two radical activists spent a lifetime dreaming up ways to wreak havoc upon our government, hoping that the crises they fomented would ultimately lead to its collapse. ACORN has been the main vehicle for this strategy. Therefore, the filing of excessive and fraudulent voter registrations may be an end in and of itself. It certainly has created chaos and undermined the integrity of our voting system.
It also could be the pretext upon which the left intended to base their push for universal voter registration. And while there is little doubt, given the current condition of federal and state databases, that such a move would create all kinds of duplication, Democrats would achieve their goal of getting all of those unregistered fellow travelers on the rolls. Then all they'd have to do is get them to the polls. No longer having to sully itself with fraudulent registrations, maybe ACORN could turn its attention more fully to get-out-the-vote activities the ones it illegally conducted for the Obama campaign in 2008.
Illegal Immigrant Voting
Critics fear that universal voter registration will allow many illegal immigrants to register and vote. UVR proponents will dismiss the "illegal immigrant" objections by countering that such individuals either won't be counted or could be weeded from voter rolls depending upon the methodology used to register voters. Congressional opponents of UVR will of course seek amendments making sure illegals and felons are excepted. But that is a throwaway for the left. They have something else in mind.
Separate and distinct from UVR legislation, Congress intends to move forward once again on immigration "reform." According to Reuters, the Obama administration has already signaled its intention to push for this in 2010, including "a path to citizenship for the 12 million immigrants living here illegally." There are probably more than 12 million at this point. During the health care debates, the Democrats reduced their estimates of people needing coverage from 47 million to 30 million to subtract out illegal immigrants. This suggests that they believe the current number to be 17 million.
Getting the illegal immigrant vote is key for Democrats in 2010. While registering low-income people to vote will guarantee more Democrat voters, it may not in and of itself provide the winning margins Democrats need to overcome their growing unpopularity. And while amnesty would provide Democrats with a huge pool of potential new voters, without UVR, the logistical problem of getting them registered to vote in time for the 2010 elections would remain. UVR would solve this problem, guaranteeing these people to be registered to vote the minute they achieve citizenship.
But it doesn't end there. Once again, separate and distinct from UVR, legislators are contemplating granting felons the right to vote. A bill, S. 1516, was proposed by Democrats in the Senate last summer. While the Senate bill deals only with felons who have served their time, don't expect it to end there. An organization called ProCon.org claims that in 2004, there were 5.2 million felons "disenfranchised" from voting. That's a lot of potential Democrats.
This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Washington state law banning felons from voting. Fortunately, saner heads still exist, and the state of Washington has asked the Supreme Court to review the 9th Circuit ruling. The Obama administration likely agrees with the 9th Circuit, however, having appointed felon-rights advocate Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
So look to Congress to propose both immigration reform and felon "voting rights" legislation. For all this to work, however, Congress needs to propose universal voter registration first. That way, they can pretend that illegal immigrants and felons will not be included. This may be why John Fund was so confident that UVR will be proposed sometime in January 2010.
But it doesn't end even there. Expect to hear calls for abolishing the electoral college and moving toward direct presidential elections. That's in the works, too. It can be accomplished without a constitutional amendment. State legislatures can vote to give all their electors to the winner of the popular vote. Direct elections will become law when enough state legislatures have passed legislation to make up a majority of the electoral vote (270 of 538). Only five states holding 61 electoral votes -- Hawaii, Washington, Illinois (go figure), New Jersey, and Maryland -- have signed on to this so far, so it will take longer to accomplish. But if they get it done, direct elections will be the last nail in the coffin for our beloved Republic.
Add to this the deliberate sabotage of our economy with unprecedented deficit spending, stimulus bills that stimulate only Democrats while unemployment rises to Depression-era levels, cap-and-trade legislation that threatens devastating tax increases justified by a hoax, a health care bill that will make us all sick while dramatically ramping up costs, and all the other garbage legislation designed to keep us distracted, distraught, and demoralized, and you have the prescription for an unprecedented takeover of our country from which we may never recover.
I had hoped that it wouldn't come to this. But if it is the Democrats' agenda to use UVR, illegal immigration, and felon votes to steal the 2010 election -- and I believe it is -- then they need to know that we are going to do everything within our power to stop them. They represent gangster government, a radical cabal aiming to consolidate power once and for all by duplicitously using our own institutions against us. If they attempt this, then they have lost the legitimate right to lead, and those institutions, by definition, will have been corrupted beyond repair. It will be left to us to get rid of them, and it will be our right to do so by any means at our disposal.
Only raw and unrestrained liberalism could have destroyed the world's 8th-largest economy. Boasting unparalleled assets in agriculture, high technology, entertainment, and tourism, and blessed with ample energy resources, deep-water ports and ideal weather, California has nonetheless managed to turn itself into a perfect dystopia.
California's governor offered this in his last State of the State message: "We need to work with the feds so that we can fix the flawed formula that demands that states spend money they do not have." Certainly that's a good start from Schwarzenegger, who only recently, as part of a degrading suck-up routine, graded Obama's performance as president with an A. But pointing to the federal government's brazen overreach doesn't address California's true malady: a self-inflicted, endless orgy of failed leftist policies and programs enacted under one-party legislative rule.
The litany of problems is well-known and oft-cited. We Californians are overtaxed, our state workers are too numerous and coddled, our businesses are overregulated, and our environmentalists are too radical and powerful.
And the list goes on. We tolerate nearly three million illegal residents draining us of $10 billion annually -- enough to pay down half of our deficit through this and the next fiscal year. The educational system is dysfunctional and expensive, while our infrastructure is adequate for the third world -- not 40 million modern consumers growing to 50 million by mid-century. Our energies are diluted by frequent and incomprehensible voter propositions that often focus on divisive social agendas (gay marriage) or are driven by well-funded special interests (stem-cell research).
California is in an exciting race to the bottom with other liberal bastions like New York and New Jersey to see who can best tax its citizens and businesses into oblivion. But California's stunning fall to mediocrity is alarming because it had to do so much wrong for so long to neuter so much of its enormous potential.
Highly regarded for its nonpartisan analysis of government tax policy and its effect on the business climate, the Tax Foundation publishes an extensive yearly review that ranks state competitiveness across the nation. Its most recent output shows California to be a very hostile place to do business, ranking at number 48 (just behind New York and New Jersey) in overall competitiveness. With a crushing 10.3% top marginal income tax rate (third-highest in the country) and a state sales tax of 8.25% (the country's highest), should any other outcome be expected?
Late last year, the Nummi plant in the Bay Area, a joint partnership between GM and Toyota, announced that it was closing shop. It was the last operating car plant in California. Northrop Grumman in Los Angeles proclaimed "Happy New Year, 2010" with the announcement that Nummi was moving its headquarters to the Washington, D.C. area in 2011, a continuation of the hollowing out of southern California's once-vibrant defense industry.
California's unemployment rate is now over 12%, well above the national average, placing it in the pathetic company of other man-made disasters like Michigan and Rhode Island. First-tier commercial vacancy rates are so high in Silicon Valley that some real estate analysts have labeled the situation a "bloodbath."
In his lame duck address, Schwarzenegger noted that the cost of state employee pensions is up 2,000% in the last ten years, while state revenues have increased only 24%. In addition to this alarming figure, government itself is one of the few growth industries in the state. The private economy has to deal with high unemployment and small business bankruptcy rates that grew 81% from 2008 to 2009, but fat and happy state workers were able to add 1% to their ranks.
Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Schwarzenegger and the environmental cultists that hold him as a consenting prisoner believe that turning everything green is the solution to all of California's economic woes. State residents are already burdened with some of the highest gasoline prices in the country thanks to a boutique blend that the rest of the country shuns and only California refineries can make. California has proposed its own carbon tax, while the use of slant drilling techniques that could efficiently extract new offshore oil supplies (and new taxes) from existing platforms has been prohibited.
Though Norwegians and Brazilians -- with as interesting and beautiful coastlines as Santa Barbara's -- have no problem drilling madly to exploit their offshore reserves, our irrational environmentalists believe that we Californians are too pure to be touched.
California, on the brink of a violent demise, must choose among three fates: rescue, restructure, or failure. Of these, a rescue by the rest of the country would be the most disastrous. If U.S. taxpayers from the other 49 states were forced to save California -- using the same broken logic that "saved" Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and AIG, because they too were too big to fail -- the very notion of a republic with sovereign states would dissolve before our eyes. California would suffer few painful consequences from its liberal mismanagement, while every other state would calculate how large its own rewards could be for mismanaging its own economy. And the fifty states would devolve into nothing but geographical boundaries, like counties within a state.
The kinds of policies that could save California are easy to formulate: Reduce the state government by 30% by permanently eliminating (not furloughing) state workers; eliminate the personal income tax; provide any new business that stays in the state for ten years with a corporate tax moratorium; abandon threats of a carbon tax and open the state to aggressive (not unregulated) offshore and onshore drilling; cut welfare rolls to reflect the 16% share of the U.S. population residing in the state; establish a constitutional amendment limiting increases in state spending to population growth plus inflation; eliminate all benefits to illegals.
But if we Californians refuse to establish a rational economic order, then let us fail, whatever that might mean for our bond rating or reputation. And learn from our mistakes by not following our irresponsible descent into fiscal hell.
fierobear, I am simply enamored by your intelligent thoughts, description(s) and exposure of the ineptness and vapid understanding of life as we know it, emanating from the left. Your depth of knowledge is incredible. It is no wonder that the dead-head, ray b, does not wish to bring any of his thoughts forward. I have not read anything intelligent from him? Why? Becasue he is not learned. I am reading every word you write <3
Cordially, Kevin
p.s. Where did you go to school to gain all this knowledge?
[This message has been edited by kevin (edited 01-18-2010).]
fierobear, I am simply enamored by your intelligent thoughts, description(s) and exposure of the ineptness and vapid understanding of life as we know it, emanating from the left. Your depth of knowledge is incredible. It is no wonder that the dead-head, ray b, does not wish to bring any of his thoughts forward. I have not read anything intelligent from him? Why? Becasue he is not learned. I am reading every word you write <3
Cordially, Kevin
Thanks!
quote
p.s. Where did you go to school to gain all thiks knowledge?
It's not schooling, but regular reading of articles. I spend at least an hour a day, often more, reading articles and following the news.
www.americanthinker.com is my favorite. Drudgereport, realclearpolitics.com and others are good sources as well.
It is getting so that we cannot publicly report politics without a discussion of vulgar remarks, much as during the time of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Times Square porno store district) called Scott Brown, the opponent of Martha Coakley, a "far right teabagger Republican."
You can see a video of Fox News asking Scott Brown for his response to Chuck Schumer using the vulgarity "teabagger" to describe the candidate.
The New York Tea Party's co-leader, David Webb, has created a statement on Schumer's remarks:
"New York, NY...January 16, 2010 - The senior Senator from New York has joined the ranks of Janeane Garofalo, Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews in insulting Americans who exercise their rights in a Democratic manner. These stalwarts of Liberalism claim to uphold fiercely the rights of all, unless you hold a position that does not suit them. Massachusetts residents have legitimate policy concerns about Martha Coakley and a 1st Amendment Right to voice them.
Senator Schumer stated in an official email "Martha Coakley is running to fill the rest of Ted Kennedy's term, and her opponent is a far-right tea-bagger Republican." The accurate definition of "tea-bagger" or any derivation is an offensive sexual slur referring to the placement of a man's testicles on a woman's chin. One can only wonder how the women in Senator Schumer's offices, residents of New York or any woman who interacts with the Senator feel about his public and official use of such an offensive sexual slur in referring to American citizens he is elected to represent.
On the weekend when Americans celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who fought for all to be judged by the content of one's character, is this the best character Senator Schumer has to offer?
He owes an apology to all Americans especially women. Senator Schumer is not misinformed, and I welcome the opportunity to speak with him in any forum on issues not insults.
David Webb
Co-Founder Tea Party 365, Inc."
Is this what New Yorkers were hoping for in their Senators? This is the same Chuck Schumer who insulted a flight attendant a few weeks ago when she asked him to close his cell phone.
In the coming weeks and months, the best political spectator sport around might not be Democrats versus Republicans or conservatives versus liberals, but Democrats of all stripes turning on one another.
Other than demagoguery, what Democrats are most accomplished at is fratricide (think back to the '60s and '70s). In the wake of Scott Brown's hosing of Martha Coakley, the Democrats are about to have a good old-fashioned civil war. Pity for them; bully for America.
The Democrats are dividing roughly along these lines: left ideologues against pols, the latter being those congressional Democrats who like their jobs and don't intend to wrap themselves in the European Union flag and jump off a craggy cliff into the Potomac.
It's Pelosi and Frank and their ilk versus Heath Shuler and his ilk. But given Tuesday night's win for Scott Brown in deep blue Massachusetts, it may be more than self-styled Democratic moderates who choose to defect. A few liberals may join in, too.
President Obama is showing every sign of being a cliff-jumper. Word out of the White House is that he plans to go on a populist offensive. In other words, he aims to demagogue anyone and anything in an attempt to divert voters' attention from his utterly woeful, ideologically blind performance to date. And did I mention that under the cover of a hate, resentment, and envy campaign, Mr. Obama and his chief congressional lieutenants, the envenomed Nancy Pelosi and the passive-aggressive Harry Reid, will still scheme to foist statism on America?
While the President's bravado may warm the hearts of Huffington Post and Daily Kos denizens, and while he may win plaudits from the Davids (Broder, Gergen, and Brooks) and the New York Times (among other liberal mouthpieces) for his supposed shrewdness, plenty of work-a-day congressional Democrats aren't going to enlist in a lemmings' march into the sea.
Self-preservation is a powerful instinct. The Coakley upending is the fork in the road for Democrats who are more enamored of themselves than stinky left-wing orthodoxy. The marker at the road's fork points right, toward the middle ground. It's where these Democrats know they must go if they are to stand a prayer of retaining their seats in November.
With every passing day, expect a few, and then lots of sobered Democrats to take the road right, regardless of the sharp disapproval of Pelosi and Reid or the threats of the White House Capone crew.
Congressional members peeling away from their party's failing president is nothing new in Washington annals. LBJ and Richard Nixon could have given you earfuls.
But left-wing activists and fundraisers and money-givers aren't going to take defections lightly. While keeping guns trained on Mr. Obama to ensure his fealty, expect left-wingers to turn other guns on congressional Democrats cheeky enough to scuttle ideology in favor of survival.
Nowadays, the left isn't so much a movement as it is a death pact. If you've taken its money or accepted its campaign ground troops or benefited from its uncoordinated expenditures -- and most Democrats have -- then you're on the hook. It's like the mafia: Once you're made, you can't be unmade. Woe to the good fella or gal who wishes to part company.
Don't expect defecting Democrats to go gentle into the night. When the left opens fire on them, expect them to fire back. It's to their advantage. Positioning will be critical at this point on to the defectors. They'll need to demonstrate to voters that they've separated themselves from the dead weight that are Obama's health care legislation and his cap-and-tax and immigration reform aims (only liberals can turn "reform" into a dirty word).
This Democratic civil war means that the president's health care reform legislation is as dead as the Articles of Confederation. Cap-and-tax proposals based on specious climate change arguments and economy-killing provisions are already floundering, and they will go the way of the dinosaur if the president, Pelosi, and Reid push them harder. Immigration reform is a sticky-wicket. Attempting to liberalize immigration laws at a time when the economy is hurting and unemployment hovers around ten percent isn't the swiftest move.
Watch to see what higher-profile Democratic senators like Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln do. Throw Jim Webb in the mix as well. Unlike the wretched Ben Nelson or the oily Mary Landrieu, who have so conspicuously sold their souls to Mr. Obama and the left, the aforementioned senators have a limited opportunity to act to rehabilitate themselves by jumping off the Obama train to nowhere. If these senators are as self-serving as I suspect them to be, that's three votes that Mr. Obama and Majority Leader Reid can't count on. And more names can be added to the list.
If the Democrats' civil war plays out as expected, the result will be legislative torpor, magnificent wheels-squealing, and grinding-to-a-halt gridlock for 2010. Much to the relief of taxpayers and Main Street Americans, the 111th Congress will do no more damage...because it can't.
Civil wars typically don't have pretty endings. This one won't, either. A bad economy made worse by a "waste no crisis" president and his henchmen and a War on Terror that's devolving into an ACLU parody combined with a fracturing and fighting Democratic Party is the stuff of electoral bloodbaths, perhaps eclipsing the Democrats' 1994 carnage.
But that's for another day. Right now, let's just thank conservatives, tea party patriots, and independents (and some rank-and-file Democrats) for Scott Brown's victory. Bay Staters, along with their brethren earlier in Virginia and New Jersey, have a made a stout first line of defense against Mr. Obama's and the left's encroachment on our liberties.
A new documentary, Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss, chronicles America's moral decay. Sharlene Azam, a Canadian filmmaker, says, "If you talk to teens [about oral sex], they'll tell you it's not a big deal. In fact, they don't consider it sex. They don't consider a lot of things sex." In the documentary, teenage girls talk casually about their sexual experiences and even their forays into prostitution.
One girl sums up the new attitudes: "Five minutes and I got $100. If I'm going to sleep with them anyway because they're good-looking, might as well get paid for it, right?"
Azam said that this was going on in good homes right under parents' noses: "The prettiest girls from the most successful families [are the most at risk]. We're not talking about marginalized girls. [Parents] don't want to know because they really don't know what to do. I mean, you might be prepared to learn that, at age 12, your daughter has had sex, but what are you supposed to do when your daughter has traded her virginity for $1,000 or a new bag?"
This is the bitter fruit of forty years of feminist domination in the United States.
Virtue, self-worth, and man's moral value are DOA in the age of the cultural domination of the left. What an awful stench this decaying corpse gives off, lying in a smoldering, fetid pile of ash.
This is how the phony feminist movement empowered women? Girls selling the it for a handbag? Those men-hating parasites have ruined the glorious exaltation of women in 20th-century America. I know. I grew up in it. All one has to do is watch movies from the forties, fifties, and sixties (before the left culture rout) to catch a glimpse of the status of women. We were then formidable, respected, treasured, and above all...revered. It was as good as it gets.
Azam's vulgar and depressing documentary is no surprise. The atmosphere is already poisoned by the left's attitudes toward teenage sex. And these attitudes come out everywhere. Two weeks ago, in Crosby Middle School in Hitchcock, Texas, a member of the Hitchcock school board, Shirley Price, gave what was supposed to be a motivational talk to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade girls. Instead, she gave a graphic, smut-filled rant about oral and anal sex.
I am sickened by this -- not because I am prudish, but because it speaks volumes about how girls view themselves and their roles, not to mention the ever-increasing diminishing of women in American society.
To say that feminism was one of the worst things to happen to women is being easy. It has been worse for men. The demon seeds of the "liberation" movement are everywhere -- including the epidemic of single motherhood, the breakdown of the American family, the street vernacular of "bitches and hos," the emasculation of men, and the bone-crushing responsibility of single moms acting as mother, father, breadwinner, chief cook, and bottle-washer.
And what has Obama done about all this? He has appointed Kevin Jennings, the founder of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network), to be his Safe Schools Czar. GLSEN is notorious for having sponsored a conference at Tufts University at which teenagers were given instruction in an array of risky and dangerous sexual practices. Obama has appointed this radical to head up America's "safe schools," but who is going to keep kids safe from him? This is another terrible Obama choice. Whatever one's sexual preferences or proclivities may be, do not traumatize children. Why can't the schools just teach reading, writing, arithmetic -- and civics?
But this is no surprise, of course. A breakdown of sexual mores and a flouting of convention is part and parcel of the agenda in every society to which socialism has come.
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be lefties.
Every child in America, all 73.7 million of them, should be kept safe from the leftist inculcation of the public school curriculum. Taxpayer money should be used to help set up home-schooling networks and resources across the country.
We spend more per capita on education than virtually every other nation, and yet we rank close to the bottom in math and science -- so busy are our children being force-fed global warming junk science, the LGBT agenda, a whitewashed Muhammad, and other assorted propaganda.
This is how the left has been destroying America since they took over in the '60s. Now the teenage girls in Azam's documentary are reaping what the left has been sowing for decades.
When Sarah Palin made Rahm Emanuel's expletive-enhanced use of the word "retarded" an embarrassment for him and the president, she forced the left to live up to its own P.C. standards. Saul Alinsky would be proud.
Normally, according to the media elites' rulebook, when liberals rant, it's called free speech; when conservatives rant, it is hate speech.
Members of the media elite appear to sincerely believe that liberals are less vitriolic than conservatives, and through repetition they have convinced a large part of the public that this is true. The reason liberals can "rant" without fear of being labeled terrorists is that their "rants" are justified in the eyes of the media elite. Liberals believe that their beliefs are based on the rational analysis of scientific data. Their opponents' beliefs are based on superstition and prejudice.
This perspective was exemplified by comedian Bill Maher, who explained that "half this country wants to guide our ship of state by a compass. A compass, something that works by science and rationality, and empirical wisdom. And half this country wants to kill a chicken and read the entrails like they used to do in the old Roman Empire." Opponents of the liberal agenda are frequently described as "racist," "unpatriotic," and "ignorant." Conservative "rants" are not only incorrect; they are evil. It is therefore not "hateful" to describe opponents for what they are: "ignorant, unpatriotic racists."
Criticism of liberal administrations is seen as destroying public faith in our institutions, and in some cases, it is called dangerous. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Washington Post columnist David Broder opined, "The bombing shows how dangerous it really is to inflame twisted minds with statements that suggest political opponents are enemies." During the Clinton administration, columnist Anthony Lewis criticized Rush Limbaugh, saying Limbaugh's "game" was "to throw dirt on government and anyone who believes that society needs government. In his hateful talk about President and Mrs. Clinton and others in office, he is really trying to destroy public faith in our institutions."
Recent criticisms of President Obama and his policies have been characterized as un-American. Suggestions that his policies should fail are equated with a suggestion that America should fail. This concern for American institutions may be something new, because it apparently was not a factor in the past. In 1986, Washington Post columnist William Raspberry commented on his view of the Reagan administration: "Ronald Reagan is in trouble, and [we might as well own up that] some of us are tempted to take a certain fiendish pleasure in the fact." Later, Michael Kinsley of the New Republic wrote in the Washington Post, "The fall of Reagan is a laughable matter. The only irritating aspect of the otherwise delightful collapse of the Reagan administration is the widespread insistence that we must all be poker-faced about it."
Liberals can demonize entire classes of people. One of the favorite targets of the liberal elite is the Christian right. According to Michael Weisskopf of the Washington Post, the followers of people like the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson "are largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command." These people are not only ignorant, but they are also a definite threat. Chris Matthews has declared, "The group in this country that most resembles the Taliban, ironically, is the religious right." Rosie O'Donnell asserted, "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America." This demonization makes it permissible to say some pretty outlandish things. NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu on his "All Things Considered" segment stated, "The evaporation of four million [people] who believe in this [Christian] crap would leave this world a better place." Actress Megan Fox, admittedly not a representative of the elite intelligentsia, said that if given the chance, she'd urge the fictional character Megatron to murder only the "white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super Bible-beating people in Middle America."
Of course, Republicans and conservatives are the prime target of liberal spleen. Sen. Ted Kennedy gave this description of Republicans: "The Republican Party is basically anti-civil rights, anti-immigration, anti-women, and anti-worker." Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, stated, "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for." Jesse Jackson after the 1994 GOP victory claimed that "[h]ate and hurt are on a roll in America. If what was happening here was happening in South Africa, it'd be called racist apartheid. If it was happening in Germany, we'd call it Nazism. And in Italy, we'd call it fascism. Here we call it conservatism."
Liberals appear to get a pass when they attack conservative individuals. USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux expressed her opinion of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on PBS: "The man is on the Court. You know, I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that's how I feel. He is an absolutely reprehensible person." Nina Totenberg, National Public Radio and ABC News reporter, commenting on Senator Jesse Helms, said, "I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it." Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill had a less than flattering opinion of Ronald Reagan: "The evil is in the White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and future generations of America and who likes to ride a horse. He's cold. He's mean. He's got icewater for blood." New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis claimed that President Reagan "spews out rage and hate, fear and falsehood." It would take volumes to chronicle the outrageous attacks on George Bush or Sarah Palin.
On "Late Night with David Letterman," Sam Donaldson said, "I think he's [Reagan] going to have to pass three tests. The first is, will he get there, stand in front of the podium, and not drool?" After the audience showed its disapproval, Donaldson responded, "Wait a minute, I don't mean that disrespectfully." Letterman replied, "Well, I think we all took that as flattery, Sam, we did." When Whoopi Goldberg drew a distinction between "rape" and "rape-rape," she possible provided an explanation for liberal "rants." They are not "hate-hate" -- simply "hate."
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has now identified with certainty the heaviest element known to science. The new element, Pelosium (PL), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Pelosium is inert, and has no charge and no magnetism. Nevertheless, it can be detected because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Pelosium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Pelosium has a normal half-life of 2 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a biennial reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. Pelosium mass will increase over time, since each reorganization will promote many morons to become isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Pelosium becomes Senatorium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Pelosium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.*
*missing from this monograph is that fact that, although Pelosium is among the most expensive elements to maintain, it has no apparent useful function. Recent research, however, suggests that Pelosium may actually cause deterioration and ultimate degradation when it comes in contact with truth, freedom, ethics, and fiscal responsibility.
The next one to head for the door is rumored to be Barbara Mikulski. Expect a lot more of this in the next few months.
I'd celebrate, but I'm concerned that a lot of bad s*** is going to happen. I can't help but think that something is going on that's making the Dems bail. You know the "Chicago way". I have to wonder if there's something like that behind this.
One year ago today, President Barack Obama signed into law the first major legislation of his presidency, the Congressional Democrats' so-called "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." The Obama Democrats made many bold claims about what this $862 billion bill would do for America's ailing economy.
Let's see how their promises measure up to reality.
Obama Promised Unemployment Would Not Rise Above 8 Percent With $862 Billion Stimulus. (Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, "The Job Impact Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Plan," 1/9/09)
REALITY: Unemployment Currently At 10 Percent. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 2/4/10)
Obama Promised His Stimulus Would Create 3.5 Million Jobs By End Of 2010. (President Barack Obama, Remarks At The Signing Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act, Denver, CO, 2/17/09)
REALITY: Since Obama Signed Stimulus Last February, America Has Lost 2.8 Million Jobs. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 2/4/10) Biden Promised Stimulus Would Create Construction Jobs. "Road projects, energy projects and construction projects are being started as soon as they pass review, contracts are competitively bid and reporting systems are in place." (Joe Biden, "What You Might Not Know About The Recovery," The New York Times, 7/26/09)
REALITY: Since Obama Signed The Stimulus Last February, 712,000 Construction Jobs Have Been Lost. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 2/4/10) Obama Claims Stimulus Created Manufacturing Jobs. "That's right -- the Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus bill. Economists on the left and the right say this bill has helped save jobs and avert disaster. But you don't have to take their word for it -- Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created." (President Barack Obama, Remarks In State Of The Union Address, Washington, DC, 1/27/10)
REALITY: Since Obama Signed The Stimulus Last February, 847,000 Manufacturing Jobs Have Been Lost. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 2/4/10) Obama Claims Stimulus Created Teaching Jobs. "Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed -- 300,000 are teachers and other education workers." (President Barack Obama, Remarks In State Of The Union Address, Washington, DC, 1/27/10)
REALITY: Since Obama Signed The Stimulus Last February, 55,000 Education Jobs Have Been Lost. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 2/4/10) Obama Promised Recovery Act "Will Create Good Jobs That Pay Well And Can't Be Shipped Overseas." (The White House, "Remarks By The President And The Vice President On The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act," 4/13/09)
REALITY: Recently Distributed Stimulus Funds Going To Foreign Corporations Creating Jobs Overseas. "Nearly half of the $2.4 billion in federal grant money awarded Wednesday to stimulate the U.S. economy and boost the production of hybrid and electric vehicles went to six companies with ties to places as far away as Russia, China, South Korea and France. ... But because so few American companies have the necessary technology, much of the money will initially go toward manufacturing electric vehicle batteries overseas." (Jerry Seper, "Obama Sends Stimulus Aid To Foreign Firms," The Washington Times, 8/6/09)
Obama Promised Stimulus Would Have "Responsibility and Accountability." "'What I will need from [U.S. Mayors] is unprecedented responsibility and accountability on all of our parts,' Obama said. 'The American people are watching.'" (Michael D. Shear, "Obama To Watch Cities' Stimulus Spending," The Washington Post, 2/21/09)
REALITY: GAO Says Transparency, Oversight Lacking When Keeping Track of Stimulus' Effectiveness. "The Government Accountability Office said in a report that increased transparency and better oversight is needed to track stimulus money being sent to state and local governments. -- 'Questions remained about how to count jobs and measure performance under Recovery Act-funded programs,' the report said." (Rich Edson and Joanna Ossinger, "GAO: More Transparency Needed To Track Stimulus Money," Fox Business, 7/7/09)
Barack Obama and his big-spending Democrat allies in the U.S. Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, have proven, their claims notwithstanding, that their kind of "Stimulus" will only run America's economy into the ground.
And this massive transfer of wealth to the Democrats' public sector union allies in local and state governments was just the beginning of Obamanomics -- soak the private sector to feed the never-ending growth of government.
In fact, as the Obama Democrats moved on from their bloated "Stimulus" Bill to take over the American auto industry, implement Cap-and-Trade energy taxes, and socialize private health care, they made it obvious to everyone not on their gravy train that they care not a whit for the millions of unemployed who simply want a chance to earn an honest living in the free marketplace.
Americans know that the Obama Democrats have no intention of doing what will really create new jobs -- reducing the punishing tax rates on American small business and investors to spur job growth and vitalize our economy.
So faced with the reality of the voters' backlash in New Jersey and Virginia, then Massachusetts and soon the entire country, they are cloaking their next spending boondoggle as a "jobs bill."
Sorry, Democrats, but the American people have had enough of your "Stimulus" -- they demand an end to the childish double talk and irresponsible wealth transfers. But no one expects the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Democrats to listen.
Obama Promised Stimulus Would Have "Responsibility and Accountability." "'What I will need from [U.S. Mayors] is unprecedented responsibility and accountability on all of our parts,' Obama said. 'The American people are watching.'" (Michael D. Shear, "Obama To Watch Cities' Stimulus Spending," The Washington Post, 2/21/09)
He does understand that this isn't complicated language or a complicated principle, that we know what accountability means? When do we get accountability and responsibility from you, Mr. President?
He does understand that this isn't complicated language or a complicated principle, that we know what accountability means? When do we get accountability and responsibility from you, Mr. President?
No, they actually do think we're stupid, and cannot understand. The President thinks he just hasn't explained things to us well enough.
Disneyland may be the happiest place on earth, but Berkeley is the looniest. Imagine commingling with people who act like Keith Olbermann on steroids. Not a day goes by where I don't scratch my head in utter disbelief -- not just because of the insanity, but because two years ago, I was one of them!
So here is an actual week in the life. I hope that you enjoy this snapshot of living at ground zero, the birthplace of such peace-loving groups as the Black Panthers. All of the following events are true. The names have been changed to prevent my tires from being slashed.
Monday, Monday:
I am in Whole Foods examining some (non-organic) strawberries. Out of nowhere, a woman charges at me like a mad bull. She launches into an impassioned and very scary tirade about nasty pesticides and poisoned farm workers. I feel lucky to get out of there in one piece (but without strawberries).
Tuesday:
I spend fifty minutes staring at Obama -- well not Barack in the flesh, but his likeness on my young client's t-shirt. Fantasize about closing up shop and hanging up my shingle in Texas. But does anyone in those red states actually need a shrink?
Wednesday:
Head over to my local holistic pharmacy for some personal hygiene products. After handing over the cash to the cashier, she stares at me blankly. I look at her, she looks at me, I look at her, she looks at me...until finally I break the stalemate.
I utter the five most scandalous words in Berkeley: "May I have a bag?" What I actually want to say is, "Do you expect me to carry my intimate female products on my head like they do in the third world?!" -- but instead, I simply glare. Upon exiting the store, I am certain I hear snickering.
Thursday:
Over at my local independent bookstore (which, incidentally, isn't so independent that it would deign to carry a single conservative book), I stop in to pick up a Wall Street Journal. The line is long, and I'm in a rush. Though I'm not in a pissy mood, I might be sending out a serious, no-nonsense vibe.
A woman fondling a Noam Chomsky book sprints over to me and asks, all fake and syrupy-like, "Are you okay?" Befuddled, I respond, "Why do you ask?" (After thirty years in Berkeley, I've learned never to answer a stranger's question directly.)
She answers, "Your energy tells me that something is wrong." (Honestly, I could not make this stuff up.)
I say I'm fine; I shed the Wall Street Journal and race back to my office to foil Berkeley's thought police.
Friday:
Terrific day -- best one so far this week. Strangers have not preached to me; I have seen no Obama bumper stickers. No one has foamed at the mouth about tea parties and Sarah Palin.
Of course, I haven't actually been out of the house, as I'm taking a sick day. This sneezing and hacking is a most welcome respite from the real (surreal?) world.
Saturday:
If ever I need a reminder of why I stay underground, today is the day.
I forward an e-mail to a bunch of Jewish friends and family. It says, "Remember the Holocaust," with graphic photos from Nazi Germany. The text informs the reader that the U.K. may eliminate any mention of the Holocaust from its schools in deference to the Holocaust-denying Muslims.
The e-mail ends with a photo of the World Trade Center in flames, with the words, "Let's not forget 9/11 because we don't want to offend the Muslims."
The e-mail seems innocuous enough, so I dispatch it to people, both left and right. Moments later I hear from a Berkeley friend, Laura, who wrote the following, and I quote: "Dear Robin: I am shocked by this mailing. I am not going to pass it along because of the part that talks about the World Trade Center. I think it stirs up racist hatred of practitioners of Islam in this country, and I don't feel comfortable with that."
I'm tempted to write back, "What has radical Islam done for you lately?" I'm not sure which is more disturbing -- the United Kingdom's erasing the Holocaust, or the American Left pooh-poohing 9/11. The bigger question is this: How in the world did radical Islam amass this much power?
Sunday:
The highlight of my week! My sweetie and I hightail it to a magical, foreign land -- the suburbs! After driving thirty minutes, I know that we are heading in the right direction when the car in front of us displays the following bumper sticker: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder. I laugh uproariously while my leftist hubby scowls his disapproval.
It's a whole new world: No one is all up in my business, the streets aren't trashed, and I see only see a handful of Obama bumper stickers.
But the pièce de résistance is when I buy shampoo at CVS and the cashier places the product in a bag without even asking. She does so with a warm smile rather than a contemptuous growl! I now know ecstasy!
****
So, friends, welcome to a slice of Berkeley life! If you like what you've heard, please support any and all Obama policies. Because the far left would love nothing more than to export its thought police and green meanies to a neighborhood near you.
I'm starting to dread seeing the postal worker. That's when my leftist mate's magazines start showing up. Some days, it feels like Saul Alinsky himself has risen from the dead and invaded my mailbox.
Last month, Jon's Harper's Magazine wailed about the White Supremacy movement. But his March/April Mother Jones takes the paranoid cake.
The cover features the most despised life form on the planet: the white male. He's wearing a hoody and looking menacingly into the camera. The headline thunders: "Age of Treason. This Soldier Is Ready To Take Up Arms Against the Obama Administration. He's Not Alone."
The hit piece is all about the enemy within. But the author's not talking about those domestic terrorists who planned to bomb Jewish centers in New York. Not the infiltration of our military (our military!) by jihadist Muslims. Certainly not the far-left Obama-holic who killed her brother and blew the brains out of her University of Alabama colleagues.
It's something much more hair-raising: the God-fearing, conservative-voting, white male.
Inside Mother Jones, a rather good-looking young white guy is wearing a camouflage outfit and cradling a pistol. He's part of a small group of military and police officers called the Oath Keepers. While the organization numbers only a miniscule 14,000 nationwide, Mother has elevated them to Public Enemy Number One.
From the article: "Glenn Beck loves them. Tea Partiers court them. Congressmen listen to them." The 912 Project and former Rep. Dick Armey are also implicated. In fact, to read the lengthy exposé, you'd think that the multitudes were fleeing to the hills and taking up arms, Waco-style.
The article does everything a good left-wing rag should do: whip up hatred and paranoia. Of course, in vilifying people as dangerous, Mother is the one inciting violence.
Why does the Left engage in such inflammatory behavior? For one, demonizing works. The brainwashed masses buy into it.
In one local example, the Bay Area Patriots, organized by the indomitable Sally Zelikovsky, are being accused of "sedition" by a former AP reporter.
Outraged that the Patriots are holding a meeting at the Mill Valley Community Center, a liberal rants, "We have young kids going there to swim, to go to classes ... I feel our local government has to make a stand against this movement, which I view as seditious."
By tarring and feathering the Right as dangerous nutjobs, the Left tries to drive a wedge into the Tea Party movement. Their hope is that moderates and independents will distance themselves from the unhinged conservatives.
The Left also amasses power by touting themselves as the injured party. Radicals bring billy clubs to polling places, trash Middle America with a vile sexual term, and bite off fingers. Yet Obama and the Left masterfully paint themselves as damsels in distress.
Take California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is running for reelection with only a 50/50 chance of winning. Her campaign ad: "Protect Barbara Boxer from the Tea Baggers." Rather than the fiery radical who disses Condi Rice and humiliates a Brigadier General, this Boxer is a true-blue victim.
Even the Big Guy himself, Bill Clinton, has been enlisted to character-assassinate the tea partiers. (Why he wants to do Obama's dirty work given the Barack/Hillary primary debacle is a mystery to me.) In a month's time, Clinton has gone from helping Haitians to promoting hate.
In our Alice in Wonderland world, crazy people are normal, flag-wavers are traitors, and the Pope hurts Jesus. And in a truly freak-show moment, a liberal commentator cajoles Obama to get even more gansta.
(Am I the only one out there thinking that the Left, with its combustible brew of domestic terrorists and communists, doesn't need to be any more mafiosi?)
Demonizing enemies, cracking down on opponents -- these are methods endemic to third-world despotisms. But the Left embrace these lowdown tactics because they see their cause as sacrosanct. Sitting at the left hand of God (right next to Jesus?), they're allowed to usurp common decency.
The Left also cleanse their collective conscience by projecting aggression outward. They never are the mean ones, the evildoers. Sanitizing their vicious deeds, the Left dump all the badness on the other.
Regardless of the Left's topsy-turvy version of reality, the way to be a decent human being is fairly straightforward. If you act in an honorable, caring way, you're good. If you throw your weight around, abuse your power, and whip up paranoia, you're bad.
There's a story about a man who teaches his grandson the following: that every person has a good and a bad wolf inside him, battling for control. The good wolf is compassionate, moral, and principled. The bad wolf is selfish, violent, and mean.
The little boy asks, "Which wolf wins?"
The wise grandpa answers, "The one that you feed."
With every cry of Nazi or racist, with every gleeful joke about Cheney's or Limbaugh's heart problems, the Left feeds the bad wolf.
Branding dissenters as Enemies of the State, usurping the Constitution, and disrespecting the will of the people, this evil wolf gets bigger and fatter and meaner.
The moral imperative of the Tea Party movement? To forbid this brutal wolf to win.
I want to close with an excerpt from a favorite poem by the Sufi poet Kabir. Though it was written 600 years ago, to me, this poem captures the radical Left:
About what we've come to expect from this drooling, lefitst, nincompoop.
Via Newsbusters:
BILL MAHER: Now, speaking of crazy white people, you know about the Truthers? You know who these people are? I had to throw them out of the studio one night. These people who think 9/11 was an inside job, that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile. Well, yesterday one of them tried to shoot his way into the Pentagon. Or did he? This sad, he left a, they got him, but you know, he left a rambling, paranoid manifesto on the Internet about how the government was going after his freedom. You know, it's sad. When we see crazy, senseless deaths like this, we can only ask why, why, why couldn't it have been Glenn Beck?
You may also recall that Maher thought it hysterically funny when he wished Vice President Cheney dead also.
Is it more nauseating that Maher said this or his audience filled with rabid liberal haters laughed at it?
It would be ironic of one of his followers actually did kill or try to kill someone because of his wishes. I can see the lawsuits right now if this happened.
"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) said. "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."
Rep. Massa describes a confrontation with Emanuel in a shower: "I am 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."
http://www.realclearpolitic...other_for_votes.html [QUOTE]"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) said. "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."
Rep. Massa describes a confrontation with Emanuel in a shower: "I am 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."
I tried to warn people about Chicago politics.
[This message has been edited by fierobear (edited 03-08-2010).]
"Stop messing with Texas!" That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to Texas' anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democratic politicians as well as Republicans. His point was that the big-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters' independence and ability to make decisions for themselves. No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state's history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed. They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation's second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic. But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress -- or lack of it -- over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues. Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine with referenda was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million -- all originally extracted from taxpayers -- into effective TV ads. Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California -- almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census. Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes -- and no state income taxes -- and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California's year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent. But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California's. But its test scores -- and with a demographically similar school population -- are higher. California's once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. In the meantime, Texas' economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs. And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California. Texas is on the way to gain four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment. This was not always so. In the two decades after World War II California, with its pleasant weather, was the Golden State, a promised land, for most Americans, while Texas seemed a provincial rural backwater. Many saw postwar California's expansion of universities, freeways and water systems a model for the nation. Few experts praised Texas' low-tax, low-services government. Now it is California's ruinously expensive and increasingly incompetent government that seems dysfunctional, while Texas' approach has generated more creativity and opportunity. So it's not surprising that Texas voters preferred Perry over an opponent who has spent 16 years in Washington. What's surprising is that Democrats in Washington are still trying to impose policies like those that have ravaged California rather than those that have proved so successful in Texas.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — New York Rep. Eric Massa is blaming his resignation on a conspiracy led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and House Democratic leaders to force him out before a crucial vote on healthcare.
Massa was one of 39 Democrats who voted against an earlier House version of the healthcare bill in November. Democratic leaders will "stop at nothing" to advance the healthcare overhaul, he said.
He also had some choice words for Emanuel during a recent radio interview in which he called the top Obama adviser "the son of the devil's spawn."
Fox News host Glenn Beck apologized to his viewers for “wasting your time” Tuesday after an interview in which former New York Rep. Eric Massa seemingly backtracked on his allegations that he was forced to resign over his opposition to Obamacare.
fierobear, I am simply enamored by your intelligent thoughts, description(s) and exposure of the ineptness and vapid understanding of life as we know it, emanating from the left. Your depth of knowledge is incredible. It is no wonder that the dead-head, ray b, does not wish to bring any of his thoughts forward. I have not read anything intelligent from him? Why? Becasue he is not learned. I am reading every word you write <3
Cordially, Kevin
p.s. Where did you go to school to gain all this knowledge?
OMFG, he bought it.
quote
Originally posted by fierobear: Thanks.
quote
Originally posted by fierobear:
It's not schooling, but regular reading of articles. I spend at least an hour a day, often more, reading articles and following the news.
www.americanthinker.com is my favorite. Drudgereport, realclearpolitics.com and others are good sources as well.
He actually BOUGHT it.
Wow. ------------------
[This message has been edited by NEPTUNE (edited 04-02-2010).]
