Race-Baiting Rears Its Ugly Head

I knew it wouldn't take long before the leftwing race-baiters began to rationalize O'Bama's inevitable defeat in November as racism. Anyone who says anything negative about any leftwing black person is, in the twisted logic of the left, a racist. Jacob Weisberg, writing in Slate, has fulfilled my expectations:

If it makes you feel better, you can rationalize Obama's missing 10-point lead on the basis of Clintonite sulkiness, his slowness in responding to attacks, or the concern that Obama may be too handsome, brilliant, and cool to be elected. But let's be honest: If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn't ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

And of course, the fact that O'Bama's political ideas place him at the very far left of the Democrat party, or the fact that he has accomplished very little in his short political career do not figure into Weisberg's analysis.

It's too bad that the first black candidate for president from one of the two main parties isn't someone like Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, or Michael Steele. Then it would be clear to any thinking person that these "older white voters" are not racist towards blacks. But of course, idiots like Weisberg would find a way to rationalize it as racism anyway.

Biden Plagiarized a Paper in Law School

Leftwing politicians are, by definition, frauds and crooks. It is not surprising that their dishonesty should become apparent at an early age. Teddy Kennedy hired a man to take an exxam for him at Harvard. Joe Biden plagiarized a paper in law school that should have resulted in his expulsion:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fighting to salvage his Presidential campaign, today acknowledged ''a mistake'' in his youth, when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.

The file distributed by the Senator included a law school faculty report, dated Dec. 1, 1965, that concluded that Mr. Biden had ''used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution'' and that he ought to be failed in the legal methods course for which he had submitted the 15-page paper.

The joker was given an F for the course but he was allowed to repeat it and then have the F removed from his transcript. As a result he felt confident about plagiarizing Kinnock's speech. If you allow someone to get away with something, they will often continue to do it.

Vice-Presidential Candidate Biden's Speechwriter

O'Bama Picks a Plagiarist

Joe Biden ran for president in 1988 and during one of the debates leading up to the election, he started off by saying "I was just thinking as I was driving up here tonight..." and then he said:

"Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife... is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? ...Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It's because they didn't have a platform on which to stand."

Neil Kinnock, the former leader of the British Labour Party said earlier in 1987:

"Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand"

Biden is a first-class jackass. He will be quite vulnerable in the upcoming campaign. O'Bama was a fool to pick him.

It's About Time

The International Olympic Committee is just now realizing what most of us recognized quite easily: He Kexin and other members of the Chinese Women's gymnastics team are under the minimum age of 16:

The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into mounting allegations that Chinese authorities covered up the true age of their gold-medal winning gymnastics star because she was too young to compete.
An IOC official told The Times that because of "discrepancies" that have come to light about the age of He Kexin, the host nation’s darling who won gold in both team and individual events, an official inquiry has been launched that could result in the gymnast being stripped of her medals.
The investigation was triggered as a US computer expert claimed today to have uncovered Chinese government documents that he says prove she is only 14 - making her ineligible to compete in the Olympics - rather than 16, as officials in Beijing insist is her age.

So what tipped you off, IOC? Was it the fact that the girls still have their baby teeth? Or was it because they brought their Barbies with them to the gym?

Tell Ya What I Want, What I Really Really Want

Oklahoma Taxpayers Forced to Pay Because Father Scalded His Own Son to Death

It's bad enough when people commit horrific crimes like scalding their own son to death. It's even worse when the taxpayers, who had nothing to do with the crime, have to pay for it:

TULSA — A lawsuit against the Department of Human Services has been settled.

The lawsuit accused the state agency of negligence in the way it monitored the care of a 2-year-old Tulsa boy who was later scalded to death has been settled.
A federal judge late Friday approved a $160,000 settlement in the lawsuit filed after the 2005 scalding death of 2-year-old Keenan Taylor.
The child died on June 9, 2005, a day after being burned by hot water over more than 50 percent of his body.
His father, Carlis Anthony Ball, is in prison awaiting resentencing after being convicted of murdering and neglecting the boy. The 26-year-old Ball has claimed the boy was burned accidentally.
The lawsuit was filed by Archie James Taylor, Keenan's maternal grandfather. It alleged that DHS was negligent for failing to remove the boy from his father's care despite previous reports of suspected abuse.

Why should we pay $160,000 to Archie Taylor? That will not bring his grandson back to life. It is clear that the responsibility lays with the deceased boy's family. Only those who believe in the nanny state would agree to this ridiculous settlement.

IRA Terrorist Violence Increases Further In Northern Ireland

IRA/Sinn Fein, whose goal is an Ireland united under a marxist dictatorship, have intensified their reign of terror:

Paramilitaries have stepped up their efforts across Northern Ireland to control the communities they live among through brutal beatings and shootings.
And republican paramilitaries in particular are bringing guns out more frequently to enforce their influence and drive people from their homes, according to figures compiled by the PSNI.
The escalation in so-called punishment attacks coincides with renewed efforts by the Real and Continuity IRA elements to kill Catholic police officers and a political impasse between Sinn Fein and the DUP which has paralysed the Stormont Executive.
PSNI figures show that between April and June this year the number of paramilitary attacks trebled compared to the same period in 2007 and reported attacks last month show that the bid to exert control in nationalist areas in particular is continuing unabated.

IRA Terrorist Attacks Continue in Northern Ireland

This type of stuff was supposed to come to an end when the law-abiding people of Northern Ireland agreed to share power with IRA terrorists like Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams. That was apparently too much to expect:

Police in Northern Ireland narrowly avoided injury when a dissident republican rocket-propelled grenade failed to explode.
Three officers were on foot patrol in Main Street, Lisnaskea, shortly after 11pm last night and two were taken to hospital with severe shock and minor injuries.
Renegade republicans have been blamed for at least five other murder attempts on officers in the last year and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) chief constable Sir Hugh Orde has warned the threat is at its highest level for many years.
Friday saw the tenth anniversary of the Real IRA Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people and two unborn twins in the conflict's bloodiest massacre.

So what happens when you take a rattlesnake to bed with you? Does he turn into a nice fluffy teddy bear and cuddle up with you and keep you warm?

Op-Ed from Harry Bruce

The Op-Ed from John Feffer that I linked to a while ago was such an outstanding work of leftwing flatulence that I doubted it would be topped any time soon. I was wrong. Now, from Nova Scotia, we have a brainfart of a transcendant order coming from one Harry Bruce. The quality of his leftist psychobabble is so excellent that I have made him Socialist of the Week!

MILLIONS OF working-class Americans are fat, sweaty and white. They are addicted to beer and junk food, and have never wanted to read a book, go to university or visit Europe. Can they bring themselves to vote for a presidential candidate who is thin, trim and black, and who is addicted to exercise, turns down desserts, drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea and eats organically grown health food?

Well I got news for you Harry. When we're not too busy swilling Pabst Blue Ribbon and munching on fried pork rinds, us fat sweaty white guys are waddling into college at the rate of 35% of the population in the USA, versus only 28% in Canada. As for why someone might not want to vote for O'Bama, do you think there might be some reason other than the fact that he is skinny and eats organically grown arugula?

More than 200,000 Berliners rapturously greeted Obama last month, but as Henrik Hertzberg points out in the New Yorker, "Berliners are Germans and Germans are foreigners, and since well before John Kerry was demonized for knowing how to speak French, it has been axiomatic that heartland Americans don’t like foreigners piping up about our elections."

Harry, is there some reason why American voters could care one way or another whether or not the Germans like him? I suspect for most it is irrelevant.

If being slim and impressing foreigners weren’t doing Obama much good politically, neither was the phenomenon that the Washington Post calls "the Dumbing of America."
People in the U.S. have long been so abysmally ignorant about the rest of the world that an old joke in Europe says, "God invented war to teach Americans about geography."
Today, however, most Americans can’t even find Iraq on a map. In 2006, half the Americans who participated in one poll could name two or more members of the Simpsons cartoon family, but only one-quarter could name more than one of the five freedoms that the First Amendment of their own constitution upholds.
In the most Christian nation in the industrialized world, most adults can’t name the four Gospels or the first book of the Bible. In the most scientifically advanced nation, one in five adults thinks the sun revolves around the earth.

Wow, aren't we stupid?! I'll bet that most Americans don't even know that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming and that high taxes are good for the economy.

The Left's Love Affair with Castro

Mary Anastasia O'Grady has an interesting article about Armando Valladares, a cuban dissident who refused to give in to Castro even after being imprisoned and tortured for 22 years.

Valladares certainly had a great deal of difficulty with the Castro regime. But he and his wife and other Cuban dissidents have had more problems trying to convince the world outside of Cuba of what was going on in the country:

When Mrs. Valladares was allowed to leave Cuba in 1972 with her father -- who had also been a political prisoner -- and began an international effort to bring attention to the Cuban prisoners, the brutality of the regime was already well established. But as she found out, the facts weren't much help. "It was very difficult," she tells me, slowly and deliberately with more than a touch of sadness.
As an example, she describes her encounter with Seán MacBride, who was the former Amnesty International Chairman, at a human-rights conference in Venezuela in 1977. "He was very nice to me at first because he didn't realize who I was. But when I tried to speak about the Cuban prisoners of conscience, he began banging on the microphone and screaming, 'Don't translate that! Don't translate that!' The journalists covering the event asked me, 'Why is this man telling you to shut up?'"
The next day in the Venezuelan press there was a story titled "Human rights violated in a human-rights conference." That same year MacBride was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize given by the Soviet Union.
Mr. Valladares says that as amazing as it sounds, it took Amnesty International until 1978 to "discover" that there were political prisoners in Cuba. "Eighteen years after I was jailed! There were already thousands murdered, tortured, Boitel had already died."

MacBride was also an IRA terrorist. It's no wonder that Amnesty International has no credibility.

Valladares also had trouble trying to convince the government of Spain that Castro was up to no good:

Still AI has been downright progressive compared to some European governments. Mr. Valladares says that in 1988 the Spanish government of Felipe González was especially disingenuous, when its foreign minister told Mr. Valladares that Spain had no evidence of human-rights violations in Cuba. Only weeks later, he says, the Spanish embassy in Havana produced a report documenting the atrocities of the Cuban regime, but opted to bury it so as to give cover to Fidel.
When the report was leaked to the press, Mr. Valladares says he brought dozens of the Spanish newspapers to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva and distributed them. "I told the Spanish ambassador, 'Congratulations, your report is very good. It is as good as the CIA report.'"
Mr. Valladares was giving the Spaniard a dig, but not without provocation. Both he and Mrs. Valladares say that over the years European government officials (Spain and Sweden to name but two) repeatedly acknowledged privately the regime's unacceptable brutality. But the same officials also said that to come out against it publicly would be to admit that the U.S. was right about Castro. And nobody wanted to do that.
"Castro is still there because the world envies the U.S., and all that hatred for the U.S. has gone to support Fidel Castro," Mr. Valladares says. As a result, the Cuban people have been left to fend for themselves against the jackboots and East German spy techniques of Cuban state security. Thousands have died trying to flee.

Castro and his supporters in democratic countries have long used the United States as a red herring to justify the abuse of the Cuban people. Its kind of like Charles Manson saying "those awful black people are out to get me. I think I'll have Sharon Tate murdered to retaliate".

And above all, it shows what the left want the USA to be like. A police state with no individual rights whatsoever.

Warp Drive: Coming to a Starship Near You

I have always wanted to visit the M-31 galaxy in Andromeda. But the thought of taking 2 million years or more at sublight speeds makes the idea rather boresome. I mean, how many times can you replay your Led Zeppelin IV CD?

That is why I am heartened to hear of two physicists who have conceived of a workable warp drive:

Now Dr Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Richard Obousy have come up with a new twist on an existing idea to produce a warp drive that they believe can travel faster than the speed of light, without breaking the laws of physics.
In their scheme, in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, a starship could "warp" space so that it shrinks ahead of the vessel and expands behind it.
By pushing the departure point many light years backwards while simultaneously bringing distant stars and other destinations closer, the warp drive effectively transports the starship from place to place at faster-than-light speeds.

All this extraordinary feat requires, says the new study, is for scientists to harness a mysterious and poorly understood cosmic antigravity force, called dark energy.
Dark energy is thought responsible for speeding up the expansion rate of our universe as time moves on, just like it did after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded much faster than the speed of light for a very brief time.
This may come as a surprise since, according to relativity theory, matter cannot move through space faster than the speed of light, which is almost 300,000,000 metres per second. But that theory applies only to unwarped 'flat' space.

Whoever gets the first patent on warp drive will make a fortune.

Arctic Sea Ice Not Cooperating with the Left

As can be seen in the above photo and this article. The sea ice in the arctic ocean are not following the lefties wishes that it help them 'prove' that humans are causing global warming.

Will facts such as these help pursuade the likes of Al Gore that their theories might be flawed? Not a wit. The problem is that they want anthropogenic global warming to be true. Whether or not it is actually true is of no concern to them whatsoever.

Who is This?

Tsar Nicholas II and his mother Maria Fyodorovna.

Russia is so fouled up. I often wonder if they should go back to the beginning and start over. Figure out who is next in line for the Romanov throne, crown him as the Tsar. And then take it from there.

The US Dollar is Skyrocketing

The last time I checked, the euro FX rate was $1.48. The pound $1.86. And the swiss franc $0.91.

The Sleazy Side of Open Borders Advocates

One of the tactics of open borders advocates that has really irked those of us who favor law and order has been the use of race-baiting methods. Even president Bush, senator McCain, and many other Republicans have stooped to the level of the left in order to promote amnesty for illegal aliens.

Ira Mehlman has an excellent article about this problem.

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) explicitly compared U.S. enforcement of its immigration laws to the policies of Nazi Germany, and U.S. law enforcement to the Gestapo. Commenting on recent stepped-up raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency (a division of the Department of Homeland Security), Congressman Gutierrez asked rhetorically, “You know who is in charge now? The Gestapo agents at Homeland Security. They are in charge.”
Gutierrez, along with much of the pro-amnesty lobby, has been on a crusade to muzzle critics of illegal immigration. They routinely claim that any criticism of illegal immigration, any intimation that illegal aliens create problems or burdens for American society, stigmatizes all Hispanics in the United States (deliberately blurring the distinction between people of a certain ethnic group and immigration law-breakers) and, in their estimation, exacerbates social tensions if not outright hatred.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, of which Gutierrez is a prominent member, went so far as to urge media self-censorship on the issue of immigration. Earlier this year, 20 members of the caucus signed a letter to the top brass at Time-Warner, the parent company of CNN, urging them to silence some of their own journalists. (Their pleas were ignored.) Other pro-amnesty activist groups have orchestrated a campaign to have nearly all of the leading immigration enforcement spokespeople banned from the airwaves and the mainstream print media under the pretext that they use “code words” to promote hatred and intolerance.
While one would require a Rosetta stone to ferret out to the “codes” allegedly being transmitted by those supporting enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, comparisons between ICE and the Gestapo do not require anyone to read between the lines. The vile description of ICE – by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives – is clearly designed to evoke fear and hatred, delegitimize the immigration policies of the United States, and promote resistance to U.S. immigration enforcement officers.

A favorite tactic of the left. Anyone who disagrees with them on any issue must be a KKK, racist, sexist, homophobic member of the Waffen SS.

Richmond, Ky Mall Discriminates Against Beautiful Young Woman

In an outrageous act of discrimination, the security guards at a shopping mall booted a young woman off the premises for wear a dress she had previously purchased at the mall:

A Kentucky college student has hired a lawyer after she was escorted out of a mall by security on Sunday because her dress was deemed too short, MyFOXBoston reports.
Kymberly Clem, a 20-year-old student at Eastern Kentucky University, wore the dress Sunday after purchasing it from the mall in Richmond the previous day, the Richmond Register reported Tuesday. After just a few minutes inside of the mall, a security guard approached her and expressed concerns over the length of the garment.
According to MyFOXBoston, the guard informed her that several female patrons had complained that she was disrupting their shopping experience because their husbands were “checking her out.”

How ridiculous is this? If that dress is too short to wear at the mall, then it is too short to sell at the mall. I hope Kymberly sues the mall for everything they have.

Isn't it amazing, what some makeup, trick photography, and airbrushing can do?

Government Censorship and Intimidation in China

I can just picture some lefties here in the USA turning green with envy as they read this:

BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese police roughed up a British TV crew and stopped them covering a pro-Tibet protest, witnesses said, in the latest case of interference with media freedom at the Beijing Olympic Games.

Uniformed police pounced on John Ray, China correspondent for Independent Television News (ITN), shortly after protesters unfurled a pro-Tibet banner near the main Olympic complex, witnesses and the reporter said.
His cameraman Ben England was also manhandled and prevented from filming the protest, they said.
Pro-Tibetan independence group Students for a Free Tibet said two protesters who unfurled the banner were arrested while six other members of the group were also detained for protesting nearby.
Ray said he was wrestled to the ground and dragged into a nearby restaurant where he was forcibly held down by uniformed and plainclothes officers who also stamped on his hands.

Georgians Evacuate City of Gori

In a move filled with irony, people in Georgia were forced to evacuate the city of Gori:

A full-scale evacuation of the Georgian city of has Gori started as fears rose that Russia would soon advance its troops across the border from the breakaway republic of South Ossetia into the main body of Georgia itself.

Any such incursion would be a dangerous escalation of a conflict that has already reportedly claimed thousands of lives and displaced thousands more. Russia, which said it moved into South Ossetia last week to protect pro-Russians there from "genocide" commited by Georgians, has now been accused of "ethnic cleansing" itself. Russia regained total control of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, and Georgia offered a unilateral ceasefire as it withdrew all its troops.

Gori was the birthplace of Iosif Vissarionovitch Djugashvili, also known as Joseph Stalin.

Words of Wisdom From Ted Nugent

Most artists are strictly right-side-of-the-brain thinkers. Even though they may be a brilliant painter, dancer, or musician, many of them appear to have oatmeal for brains when it comes to politics. That is why I find it refreshing when one of them shows some intellect. Ted Nugent shows it well:

Similar to communism, socialism, fascism, and religious voodooism, liberalism is a political cancer designed to control you, not liberate you. Liberalism is based upon the theory that government—and lots of it--knows better than you what is best for you. Liberals believe you are too stupid to make wise decisions for yourself.
The entrenched liberal paradigm is to grow and sustain Fedzilla, the amorphous blob that is gobbling up more and more of our tax dollars and in the process, becoming more and more unresponsive and unaccountable to its employers—you and me, the American taxpayer.

Amen!

A Just Execution --- And Biased Reporting of It

The Houston Chronicle reports that Jose Medellin was executed tonight, and they perpetuate the myth that he was denied any opportunity to contact the Mexican embassy:

At issue in Medellin's last-minute appeal was his assertion that authorities refused his right to contact the Mexican Consulate after his arrest. By doing so, his attorneys argued, officials violated a 1963 treaty signed by the U.S. and 165 other countries that should have granted him access. His case stirred international controversy when the United Nations' high court found his rights had been violated. The court ordered the execution be stayed.
While some cheered Texas' decision to execute him on Tuesday, others warned that his death could render the treaty void, putting the lives of American citizens arrested overseas in jeopardy.

Sandra Babcock, a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago and an attorney for Medellin, said the case was not just about one Mexican national on death row.
"It's also about ordinary Americans who count on the protections of the consulate when they travel abroad in strange lands," she said. "It's about the reputation of the U.S. as a nation that adheres to the rule of law."

They make it sound as if Medellin ASKED the authorities in Texas if he could contact the Mexican embassy and was denied. The fact is, Medellin never even told them that he was a Mexican citizen until years after his conviction. And he never asked to contact the embassy.

Reuters also helps perpetuate the myth:

The World Court last month ordered the U.S. government to "take all measures necessary" to halt the upcoming executions of five Mexicans including Medellin's on the grounds that they had been deprived of their right to consular services after their arrests.
Medellin's execution is sure to anger neighboring Mexico and analysts have said it could make life rough for Americans arrested abroad if other countries decide to evoke the U.S. example and deprive them of their right to consular services.

It's Now a Three-Way Race for the White House

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: 1918 - 2008

A courageous man, who stood up to the tyrants in the Soviet Union.

Columbia University Engages in Legalized Theft

Thanks to the idiotic supreme court justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Souter, Stevens, and Kennedy, it is perfectly legal for a local, state, or federal government to seize one person's real property and give it to someone else. Their ludicrous decision in the Kelo v. New London case made this possible.

Accordingly, Columbia University in Manhattan is using the coercive power of New York state to seize 17 acres in Manhattan, including the land owned by two businesses that refused to sell to them.

The Empire State Development Corporation today declared blighted a 17-acre swath of Manhattanville where Columbia University is seeking to expand, a major step toward allowing the state to use eminent domain to acquire the property of two businesses that have declined to sell their land to the university.
Opponents of the $6 billion expansion plan said the results of the study that found the area to be blighted were a foregone conclusion, because AKRF Inc., the firm hired by the state to conduct the report, known as a blight study, had also performed an environmental analysis of the same site for Columbia University. (Two courts have questioned whether it was appropriate for the state to have used the same consultant that Columbia did.)
The report by AKRF found that the area mostly comprised “aging, poorly maintained and functionally obsolete industrial buildings with little indication of recent reinvestment to revive their generally deteriorated condition.”
Columbia already owns most of the 17-acre area where it plans to expand. Among the exceptions are two businesses: a gas station and a moving and storage company that have refused to sell to the university. The development corporation’s report is significant because it could mean that the gas station and the moving and storage company will have to relocate.
The university plans to demolish all but four of the buildings in the area, which is bounded roughly by Broadway on the east, Riverside Drive on the west, West 129th Street on the south and West 133rd Street on the north.
At least one public hearing regarding the university’s expansion is planned, probably in September, said Warner Johnston, a spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation.

They call this an area with 'deteriorated condition'. If it were truly so bad, the owners of the gas station and moving company would be eager to sell. Obviously, the offers made to them by Columbia were not sufficient. Instead of making them a more lucrative offer, Columbia has used its political influence to get the state of New York to literally seize the property and throw the rightful owners off their land by force.

Leftists are constantly telling us how they are for the poor and downtrodden, but cases like this and Kelo show this to be a bald-faced lie. Their top priority is to maximize the power of the government. Justices Ginsberg and Breyer were nominated by Clinton (and personally picked by Hillary). Justices Souter and Stevens were nominated by Republican presidents, but they have turned into leftist chameleons and they vote in each case in the manner that Ginsberg and Breyer vote.

It is time that we stand up for our rights and tell our elected officials that we will not tolerate their despotic activities any further.

Blog of the Week: Captain Capitalism

An excellent blog, with many useful insights into the contemporary political scene. Yesterday he pondered why some idiots want socialism:

While we listen to talk radio, and we have empirical proof capitalism works, and we have history on our side and know, NOT "feel", but KNOW we are right, we have to understand that too high a percentage of Americans do not think this way. A critical mass (arguably the majority) of Americans no longer believe in freedom, self-reliance, capitalism, profit, manliness, competition, "nuclear" families, and everything else that is quintessentially American.

.

.

I like it no more than you. And I'm not saying that you still don't fight the good fight. But we have to realize that we can apply all the logic and empirical evidence we want to help support our case, but it will fall on deaf ears as socialism is not founded in reality. That's the only way socialism can work. That you convince enough sheeple they don't have to work to eat. They're poor not because they produce nothing, but because they are from disadvantaged group "x." Or some preppy Amercrombie and Fitch Harvard elitist fools people that he will bring them "hope and change" and everything will be chocolates and kittens thereafter.

I would like to add that the racist "affirmative action" programs do much to perpetuate the myth that hard work is not important. Like I have said previously, it would be interesting to know Barack and Michelle O'Bama's GPAs and LSAT scores.

Still No Recession

The Democrats are trying their damndest to make sure that the USA has a recession. O'Bama is proposing all kinds of new taxes. The Democrat-controlled congress refuses to allow drilling for oil and gas in many parts of the USA. They don't want energy prices to go down because it helps reduce 'carbon emissions' to help exorcise their 'global warming' bogeyman.

In spite of all these efforts. GDP rose by an annualized 1.9% in the second quarter of this year (April - June).

What Is Up With Real Interest Rates?

Look at the yields on the following TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) as of yesterday, as compared with the end of June:

Maturity: 2010 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
-0.454 %
7/29/08 yield
0.297 %

Maturity: 2011 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
-0.011 %
7/29/08 yield
0.692 %

Maturity: 2012 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
0.396 %
7/29/08 yield
0.977

Maturity: 2014 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
0.844 %
7/29/08 yield
1.326 %

Why were the yields so low in June? Did investors pile into the TIPS, fearing that skyrocketing energy prices signaled a massive increase in future inflation? And then did they jump out of them later in July when energy prices began to subside?

If there were a big changes in expected inflation, you would think that the yields on nominal treasuries would have increased and then decreased. Here are the yields for the corresponding nominal securities with maturities closest to the above TIPS:

Maturity: 2010 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
2.34 %
7/29/08 yield
2.33 %

Maturity: 2011 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
2.69 %
7/29/08 yield
2.69 %

Maturity: 2012 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
3.08 %
7/29/08 yield
3.06 %

Maturity: 2014 Jan 15
6/30/08 yield
3.38 %
7/29/08
3.42 %


Almost no change in the nominal yields! What has happened here? If anyone has an idea, please send me an email.

Source: wsj.com Markets Data Center

Bolton on O'Bama's Berlin Speech

The Moustachioed One has an excellent analysis of the messiah's recent speech in Berlin. One excerpt:

First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."

Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik -- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.

Very true. And I would like to add that during the cold war, many of the left both in the USA and in western europe admired both the ideals and the methods of soviet-style communism. They want the government to control commerce. They want restrictions on freedom of expression. They want to restrict the rights of their political opponents.

Back during the cold war, anyone who criticized communists was derided as being like "McCarthy". The fact that millions of people who directly experienced communism, voted with their feet when given the opportunity, was irrelevant to the left.

The left favored rapprochement with the soviets because they had the same goals as the bolsheviks.

What Warming?

Andrew Bolt shows some interesting information about the climate.

Well Boo Hoo

According to the New York Times, Bill Clintons former supporters in Harlem feel disrespected by the former president:

THE streets were bright with promise on the sunny July day in 2001 when former President Bill Clinton arrived in Harlem, the historic capital of black America, to celebrate the opening of his office on 125th Street. A chant of “We love Bill!” rose from the adoring crowd of 2,000 well-wishers, some of whom wore buttons and waved fans decorated with Mr. Clinton’s face.

After a violin rendition of “We Shall Overcome,” Mr. Clinton and the crowd sang along to a vibrant saxophone version of the soul song “Stand by Me.” “You were always there for me,” the ebullient former president declared before descending into the crowd for handshakes and hugs. “And I will try to be there for you.”

But the relationship between Mr. Clinton and Harlem’s African-American community has gone through a distinctly rocky patch this year. Many black residents say they were hurt and angered by what they perceived as racially disrespectful comments made by Mr. Clinton during the Democratic presidential primary fight between Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya.

Cry me a river, Harlemites. During the eight years that Clinton spent in the white house, you had ample opportunity to observe the fact that his top priority, no... his ONLY priority.... is Bill Clinton.

Scottish National Party Has Huge Victory over Labour Party in Glasgow

The Scottish National Party, who favor full independence for Scotland from the UK, have won an historic victory over the British Labour Party:

GORDON Brown was hit by a political earthquake early this morning when the SNP narrowly snatched a sensational victory in the Glasgow East by-election.

John Mason won by 365 votes over Labour's Margaret Curran after recording a 22 per cent swing to the SNP. The declaration had been held up after Labour demanded a recount at 1:30am, with only 355 votes separating the two main parties.

Mr Mason, who had arrived at the count to a hero's welcome from party activists, told The Scotsman: "This is going to have a huge impact. Somebody said it's No 10 on the Richter scale. It just feels tremendous. It was a huge challenge, a huge majority to overcome.

"It is going to send a message all around the country."

This is quite ironic, since Gordon Brown, the Labour Prime Minister is himself a Scot. He will find it difficult to maintain Labour's majority in the next general elections.

The Scots are voting for the Scottish National Party candidates. The Ulstermen are voting for the DUP and Sinn Fein. The Welsh are voting for their Plaid Cymru party. And the English will probably vote heavily for Tories. There won't be very many Labour seats in the next Parliament.

Chicago Freedom-Haters Go to the Mattresses to Protect Criminals from Law-Abiding Citizens

We all know how much the stupid whiny leftists hate to lose. Thats why they are still in a state of denial in the state of Illinois:

Chicago Police will continue to enforce the city's handgun ban and firearm registration laws while lawyers fight the pro-gun lobby in federal court.
The National Rifle Association and the Illinois State Rifle Association filed federal lawsuits to shoot down Chicago's gun laws after the U.S. Supreme Court voided the District of Columbia's handgun ban last

City Corporation Counsel Mara Georges told a City Council committee Thursday that she's prepared to fight those lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court.
"Chicago's gun ordinance was not invalidated by the . . . decision. Three prior Supreme Court decisions have found that the Second Amendment does not apply to states and municipalities," Georges said. "The decision did not change that case law."
Georges said she's confident that the U.S. District Court will dismiss the gun lobby lawsuit challenging Chicago's existing laws.
"What would happen for it to apply to Chicago is that the district court would have to fail to follow well-established Supreme Court precedent . . . and say that we should be treated like a federal jurisdiction," she said. "That's the difference here. D.C. was considered a federal jurisdiction. . . . We are not."

Blah blah blah......

Hey Mara, read what Justice Scalia of the Supreme Court had to say:

...the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

It is so ordered.

Do you got that Mara?

It is so ordered.

Blog of the Week: The Bleat

James Lileks, a journalist in Minneapolis, has a way with words that I can only envy. From today's blog post about His Holiness' speech about world citizenship in Deutschland:

As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I would love to live in an age when the globe was united in peace and prosperity, but I am unwilling to endure the paradigm-wrecking nation-shattering nuclear war and eugenic-master-race tyranny required to get to that point. Absent those factors, the idea that post-national / trans-national ideas represent a glimmering ideal within our grasp seems naïve at best and alarming at worst, a gilded facade erected by those who wish to pursue self-interest behind a new arrangement that defines traditional concepts of culture and national identity as regressive impediments.

I rather like my first and second amendment rights. There are many countries where they don't have these and there are many people here in the USA who would like to take those rights away from me. Most of the freedom-haters are also Obama fans.

That's why I don't want to merge with other countries nor do I want the USA to submerge our sovereignty in any way to some international organization like the UN. Any world government instituted at the present time would be a totalitarian nightmare, as Lileks says.

One last thing: Obama said "That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand." But of course they must, and will, if national sovereignity has any meaning. If he defines the "wall" as the existence of factual reasons why some countries succeed and others do not, it is unclear how these facts will be overcome. There's not a wall around Zimbabwe that creates a special magical inflation zone. There is, in spots, a wall between the US and Mexico; are we to expect he will make a campaign stop at the border crossing, and ask Mr. Bush to Tear Down This Wall? In a sense that would make him the heir to Reagan - in the same sense Paris Hilton is heir to Conrad.

There is a reason why so many people in Mexico, Central America, the Carribbean, etc., find it necessary to come to the USA to find work. It can be summarized adequately with one word: Socialism.

Unless and until certain other countries adopt free market capitalism and their own equivalents of the first and second amendments, it will be necessary to keep the walls up.

The Obamessiah Refuses to Meet with Servicement in Bagram, Afghanistan

Blackfive received an interesting email from a soldier stationed at Bagram in Afghanistan:

Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to ' The War Zone ' . I wanted to share with you what happened.
He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.
As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand, he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service.
So really he was just here to make a showing for the Americans back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you.
I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States . I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.
In service,
CPT J

Bagram, Afghanistan

And Barack wants to be Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces? I would much prefer to have one of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in the white house.

The Perverse Nature of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Paul Gigot in the Wall Street Journal has an interesting expose of the politics behind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

I recount all this now because it illustrates the perverse nature of Fannie and Freddie that has made them such a relentless and untouchable political force. Their unique clout derives from a combination of liberal ideology and private profit. Fannie has been able to purchase political immunity for decades by disguising its vast profit-making machine in the cloak of "affordable housing." To be more precise, Fan and Fred have been protected by an alliance of Capitol Hill and Wall Street, of Barney Frank and Angelo Mozilo.
I know this because for more than six years I've been one of their antagonists. Any editor worth his expense account makes enemies, and complaints from CEOs, politicians and World Bank presidents are common. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are unique in their thuggery, and their response to critics may help readers appreciate why taxpayers are now explicitly on the hook to rescue companies that some of us have spent years warning about.

The thuggery that Gigot refers to is the same leftist thuggery that Fannie Mae executives Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick learned from their time in the Clinton administration. The sheer savagery and contempt for law that many in the Clinton administration displayed was appalling. Remember the attacks on Kenneth Starr and Linda Tripp? Remember all the people who were audited by the IRS? Remember the people who were thrown in jail for yelling "you suck" to Clinton? Remember Billy Dale who was falsely prosecuted because Hillary wanted an excuse to clean house in the white house travel office?

Fan and Fred also couldn't prosper for as long as they have without the support of the political left, both in Congress and the intellectual class. This includes Mr. Frank and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Capitol Hill, as well as Mr. Krugman and the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein in the press. Their claim is that the companies are essential for homeownership.
Yet as studies have shown, about half of the implicit taxpayer subsidy for Fan and Fred is pocketed by shareholders and management. According to the Federal Reserve, the half that goes to homeowners adds up to a mere seven basis points on mortgages. In return for this, Fannie was able to pay no fewer than 21 of its executives more than $1 million in 2002, and in 2003 Mr. Raines pocketed more than $20 million. Fannie's left-wing defenders are underwriters of crony capitalism, not affordable housing.
So here we are this week, with the House and Senate preparing to commit taxpayer money to save Fannie and Freddie. The implicit taxpayer guarantee that Messrs. Gray and Raines and so many others said didn't exist has become explicit. Taxpayers may end up having to inject capital into the companies, in addition to guaranteeing their debt.
The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Campaigning to spare taxpayers from that result would represent genuine "change," not that either presidential candidate seems interested.

While we're paying the increased taxes for years to come on this ridiculous bailout, remember Franklin Raines earning $90 million and Jamie Gorelick earning $26 million. I can just picture those jackasses chuckling to themselves while they are thinking "those poor taxpayers are suckers!"

How Much To Bail Out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

After having created the twin monsters known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and having given them a blank check from the US taxpayers, the losers in Washington are trying to figure out how much it will cost to bail them out.

The Bush administration's plan to rescue ailing mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is likely to cost about $25 billion during the next two years, according to congressional budget analysts.
In a letter to lawmakers released this morning, the Congressional Budget Office said there is "a significant chance -- probably better than 50 percent -- that the proposed new Treasury authority" to lend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money or buy their stock would not need to be used before the authority expired at the end of 2009.
However, "that scenario is far from the only possible result," the letter says, and the cost estimate takes into account "the probability of various possible outcomes." That means rescuing the mortgage firms could cost significantly more than $25 billion if the authority is exercised, the letter says.

Isn't this great? Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick get to keep their millions that they made at Fannie Mae. The federal government will bail out the two quasi-private companies and allow them to continue dominating the mortgage industry with their backing from the taxpayers. The people who foolishly bought more house than they can afford get bailed out.

And what about those of us who have diligently made our monthly mortgage payments? We did not buy more house than we could afford. And what of those people who live in areas where housing prices went sky-high but knew better than to pay $600,000 for a little 3-2 tract house? They toughed it out in tiny apartments rather than take out a mortgage with unaffordable payments. We will have to pay the bill, while Goldman Sachs clowns like Henry Paulson and Keynesian economists like Ben Bernanke made stupid decisions.