Liberal hero: the coward.

First, let me state here that I am going to use some very broad generalizations that probably don’t describe many or possibly most liberals. Instead, I am going to take liberal philosophies to their logical conclusions, but to do so I will probably overstate the beliefs of many liberals. But I digress. As Scott McClellan begins his opportunist book tour, (I’m sure it’s pure coincidence this book is coming out in an election year less than 6 months prior to the election) the liberals are discovering their love for this no count nobody in their non-judgemental hearts. Liberals love this stuff. This is how a liberal would write a book. A negative book about a very unpopular president just months before an election. Talk about cojones. This is what passes as political courage in this Brave New World. This is the sort of courage Bill Maher will certainly laud, which congressmen who relish every opportunity to grill oil company CEOs will certainly admire, and every aspiring suicide bomber can respect. Am I crossing the line? Perhaps. But believe this: liberals love a coward. This is the result of the belief in major liberal doctrines like relativism and pragmatism. Make no mistake, the reason liberals pander so much is not because deep down they’re cowards. The reason liberals act with cowardice is because deep down they have nothing which they hold to. When you embrace both relativism and pragmatism there really is nothing worth fighting for, so the liberal takes the easy road. This is why there are so many opportunists among the liberal elite. Scavenging is preferrable to the risk of unpopularity.

I went to a circus and a congressional hearing broke out.

Haven’t we heard this joke before? Am I having an extremely silly and boring type of deja vu? Here again, the circus is coming to Washington DC and there are bozos right and (mostly) left. I’m referring of course to the ridiculous congressional hearings which apparently Democrats would hold year round 24/7. The purpose of these hearings can either be stated to destroy capitalism in the US or to make the involved congressmen look good. Or maybe they just have too much time on their hands. I honestly don’t know if anyone really knows the purpose of these hearings since absolutely nothing was actually attempted let alone accomplished. Of course, this won’t be the last hearing (if it’s over yet) and it certainly isn’t the first. In fact, in the last few years, congress has held an embarassing 43 hearings with oil executives, accomplishing exactly nothing. But that isn’t going to stop Democrats. The last hearing was less than two months ago and I’m guessing there will be a minimum of 1 hearing for each 10 cent rise in the price of gas between now and the November election. There’s almost something pathological about it. It is the dreaded do something disease and there certainly should be some sort of psychotropic medication to treat it. I would personally be in favor of compulsory sedatives for all congressmen who insist on grandstanding, self congratulation and vacuous speech making disguised as questioning. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the purpose of some in congress might be to destroy US capitalism altogether. As that luminary stateswoman Maxine Waters stated “And guess what this member* would be all about? This member would be all about socializing — er, uh. [Pauses for several moments] …. would be about … [pause] … basically … taking over, and the government running all of your companies.” Think about that. How proud her constituents in the 35th district of California must be, to be the first congressperson to suggest nationalizing the oil industry. Just like Venezuela. The absurdity of this particular hearing was through the roof, but I can proudly say that I watched almost none of it, unfortunately that means I have little to add to this blog. But every part I have seen of any of the past dozen or so hearing has been utterly ridiculous, from the silly questioning of whether a certain oil company donated enough money to Burma, to the questioning of whether the oil executives made too much money. This from millionaires who never hesitate to raise their congressional pay. But it always leaves me wondering. Who voted for these idiots? Do these people know how stupid they sound and look? And give these oil executives credit. I think they should each get paid at least a million extra for each congressional hearing they have to attend. Not only that, they have managed to point to at least part of the reason for high oil and gas prices: congress won’t let them expand drilling in the US. The accusatory finger that these congressmen are pointing should be at each other, not the oil companies, for they have much more to do with the high price of gas than the oil executives.

State of Texas: “My Bad.”

The state of Texas overreached its authority in their raid of the FLDS compound in San Angelo, an appeals court said today. The story is here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080522/ap_on_re_us/polygamist_retreat;_ylt=AmcceConoydBFfotk4ndlaes0NUE
There are many probably saying “I told you so” now, and I count myself among them. I don’t doubt that there was probably sexual abuse at least in the sense of underage girls “marrying” adults, but to remove 400 children from the ranch immediately, without any actual evidence of abuse, without any evidence at all is wrong. This was from the beginning a usurpation of the law. When officers of the law are allowed to shoot first and ask questions later, individual rights are infringed. When 400 children are abducted by their own government without due process, one begins to wonder if their rights are real or merely imagined. I hope for these kid’s sake that any and all instances of abuse are brought to light. But I hope we all learned the lesson that just because we don’t like cults or the ideas of a certain group that doesn’t give us the right to take away their children. There is certainly a good possibility there is abuse or neglect going on here, but a possibility isn’t enough for a warrant. I would love to see the title of my blog in a newspaper. Perhaps the New York Post will use it.

Spiting Your Face

Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to be my last blog on this subject. John McCain is going to win the Republican nomination for President, and it’s time for the nay-sayers and idealogues on the far right to join the party. There is no point in joining the the constipation party or the losertarians (I stole those pejoratives from Michael Medved, I must admit) unless you don’t care about the result of the 2008 election. Many of the same people who would have or had endorsed Rudy Guiliani are rebelling against McCain. The reason? There are many, and I probably agree on the issues more with those who are against McCain than McCain himself, but the logic is lacking.
I think there is a great deal of personal dislike of McCain, and part of that is because of his admittedly maverick personality. McCain has effectively separated himself from the identity of the Republican party, which as Paul Mirengoff points out on powerline, might be a good strategy.  http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/05/020514.php Of course, to Rush Limbaugh, the opposite is true. This is going on my very limited and fallible memory, but I recalled hearing Limbaugh saying this morning something to the effect that the reason Republicans are struggling is that they are acting too liberal and that conservatives are staying home. Regardless of whether he said this or not, you can hear this opinion from almost any conservative commentator, particularly on talk radio. They say that if McCain loses, it is because he isn’t “energizing the base.” Yet liberal and moderate commentators tend to think that McCain is bringing previous ”blue states” like Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Hampshire into play.  The Political Lizard breaks it down here: http://politicallizard.blogspot.com/2008/03/blue-to-red.html.
First, I would take umbrage at the idea that “the base” or conservative Republicans don’t support McCain. Afterall, what is more grassroots than primaries? Were conservatives not ”energized” for the primaries? If so, I don’t know what could energize them. The primary is the time to choose who will best represent your party. But McCain won a great deal of the primaries and finished well in those he didn’t win. So either the base wasn’t represented in the primaries –an idea which is absurd on its face– or the base does like McCain. 
But Assuming this is true, that conservatives aren’t “energized” and consider McCain hardly better than Obama or Clinton, what should conservatives do? I believe in a way, what is happening now is the desireable: the most obnoxious voices are denouncing McCain, confirming to moderates that he is a maverick, but McCain is doubtless getting the message that conservatives need to be won over by his policies. The question is whether or not McCain will govern conservatively. My greatest hope for McCain is that he will be the budget hawk that Bush couldn’t be because Bush had to use his “political capital” to fight the war in Iraq. I believe that the growth of the national budget and debt is one of the biggest complaints which conservatives have with the Bush administration, and McCain should be significantly better in this department. My next biggest issue is judges, and McCain has promised to appoint great judges. I could go down the line showing where I agree and where I disagree with John McCain on the issues, but I can tell you now that I agree with Clinton and Obama on almost no issues. What kind of comparison is this? Who would waste a vote on a libertarian or not vote at all? If we are defining by party loyalty, these are the Republicans in Name Only (RINO). This is not a case of the lesser of two evils, unless you call anyone who doesn’t share 100% of your opinions evil. For a conservative to refuse to participate in the election, or support a third party candidate “to make a point” or “to make a statement” is cutting off your nose to spite your face. And it is quite the whiny, liberal behavior of those whose actions are based on their feelings rather than logic. Like it or not, politics will always be a game of compromise, a stage where three steps forward and two steps back is overwhelming progress. Unless you choose one of those more “efficient” forms of government– like a dictatorship.

McCain: wrong on the environment

I must preface this blog with my overwhelming endorsement of John McCain for president in 2008. A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for the Democrats…unless you sort of like the democrats but don’t think Barak Obama is radical enough and vote for the green party or socialist party, in which case vote away for the third party. But I must save that argument for a forthcoming blog.
Yesterday, John McCain exposed his biggest flaw in my opinion, his pandering to the environmentalist wackos. The enviromentalist wackos will never vote for an enviromental moderate like McCain, only for like minded wackos. It seems that McCain believes that most people believe that we have to “do something” (the dreaded do something disease) about the global warming because they’ve seen some one sided piece on CNN or saw some alarmist front page of time magazine or the like. Unfortunately, McCain is probably right. But he was mostly wrong in his speech on the environment yesterday.
First, he was at least in part wrong to suggest that he might revisit the awful kyoto protocol, which might be best summarized as an economic suicide pact. A pact which many of the signers have decided to ignore. Witness:
http://www.upi.com/International_Intelligence/Analysis/2005/12/28/10_eu_nations_to_miss_kyoto_emissions_goal/1435/
In perhaps his most disturbing comment, McCain stated ” I will not accept the same dead-end of failed diplomacy that claimed Kyoto. The United States will lead and will lead with a different approach — an approach that speaks to the interests and obligations of every nation,” This is neither feasible nor likely, but it certainly does show a good deal of optimism. If the US can do what Europe did– sign the kyoto protocol and immediately ignore it, that would be one thing, but it certainly doesn’t speak to our integrity. As Barak Obama would say in plagarism, words mean things. Which is another reason why invading Iraq was the right thing to do. But I digress. McCain has admittedly adopted the “what could it hurt?” or “shoot first, ask questions later” philosophy on global warming that ignores any contrary evidence and instead calls for immediate action, (mostly) ignoring the costs and consequences. And he certainly ignored the facts in his speech in several areas.
First, McCain incorrectly states that “satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets” yet the fact is that, particularly in Antartica the ice is thickening, something that even those right wingers at ABC news recognize. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98113&page=1 Furthermore, McCain states “We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion.” I don’t know who wrote this speech but they obviously didn’t do any research here and frankly, it makes McCain look stupid. First off, how is “carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuel combustion” any different from carbon dioxide produced by any other natural means? I’m no organic chemist, but I’m willing to go out on a limb on this one and say there’s no difference. More importantly, McCain is absolutely, no debate necessary wrong that carbon dioxide is the worst green house gas. The number 1 offender in this category? That awful polutant, water vapor, which is almost exclusively of natural origin. It also contributes about 95% to the green house effect. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html Nitrous Oxide and methane, though less abundant than CO2, are nonetheless more potent greenhouse gases.
McCain in the end does seek to find market based incentives and answers, but it is not enough to be satisfactory and the cap and trade system that he is proposing is nearly the same as what Clinton and Obama are proposing. He is right to call out China and India to contribute to the cause but wrong in identifying the cause. He has made the most foolish move to take actions which have great costs to pursue advantages of unspecified or verified value.

Gore the Opportunist

Al Gore’s insistence that the Myanmar cyclone is a “consequence” (sounds like Reverend Wright saying the chickens are coming home to roost, doesn’t it?) of global warming is case #3,000,000,000 of the left wing exploiting tragedy for political gain. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, and not giving the political left the benefit of the doubt. One thing I’ve realized since I began reading Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is that to the left everything is political. That’s because they seek to replace religion with the state. Therefore, the left can’t conceive how the cyclone could possibly be apolitical. Just as the religious will look to God in times of trouble, the left look to government. In the case of Albert Arnold Gore Jr., everything is because of, or a response to, a consequence, or sign of global warming, except (and this is the beautiful part) when it isn’t. Therefore, climate change advocates (or whatever you want to call them: alarmists, believers in the goddess gaia, etc.) say that the global cooling exhibited in the last 6 months is merely a blip on the radar and has to be considered in light of the last 30 years or so, but certainly not in light of the last 60 years or so because that might not paint the picture they want to paint because it would show that there was significant global cooling in the 70s which makes current temperatures look like global warming.
I am quite sure that scientists who believe in anthropogenic (human caused) global warming would not chalk the cyclone up to global warming, but Al Gore is no scientist. Al Gore is an opportunist. He doesn’t let the facts get in the way of his agenda. Nonetheless, these scientists know what side their bread is buttered on, and refuse to even admit that the global cooling that has happened lately is “climate” but “weather” two words that have been codified to classify anything that global warming advocates want. Therefore, record high temperatures in 1998 are evidence of global warming, but record lows in 2008 are abberations. Indeed, Gore was ever the opportunist during the heat wave of 1998, and criticized republicans for stalling Clinton’s Global Warming bill of the day.
This is an issue that is usually if not always oversimplified. Ironically, both sides can and have accused the other side of oversimplifying the issue. In the case of the recent global cooling scientists have rightly chalked this up to weather and la nina and reduced sun spots. But the opposite is true, whether or not the alarmists on the left (or in the pocket of big government) want to admit it. The warming of the 90’s was the result of a multitude of factors, including el nino, increased sun activity, yadah, yadah, yadah, etc., etc. Moreover, as the “globe” is warming, there are spots that are cooling as well as places warming. Just as the Antartic ice has been getting thicker while artic ice has been thinning. The opportunist simply ignores the former, and crows about drowning polar bears and the latter.

Everything you know about the war in Iraq is wrong.

I heard it just as recently as this weekend, when a local conservative blogger on my favorite radio station said something to the effect that “we now know there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” And every time I hear that I always wonder do we? So much becomes considered common knowledge without the slightest bit of of investigation. Think about all the things like trans fat, WMDs in Iraq, anthropogenic global warming, the goodness of “organic” food…all of these things we take our knowledge of for granted. But in every case there are issues with what is perceived to be true, with what those talking heads on tv believe to be true. And these talking heads or whoever writes their material never bother to look at these issues or bother to apply the tiniest bit of skepicism to their story. If they did, they would find out what Ken Timmerman, author of Shadow Warriors discovered: credible sources with no agenda believe that WMDs were removed from Iraq to Syria, sometimes on a stripped down 747 or 727 othertimes by unmarked trucks. Eyewitnesses to these programs are quoted in his book. Also there is evidence that there is an as yet unexplored underground uranium enrichment facility, called site 555 or the al Fajr facility.
There is no need to change what the Iraq war was fought about. We didn’t go there to free the Iraqi people, though our mission was titled “Iraqi Freedom.” This was about national security, and for good reason: Iraq had WMDs and even if they wouldn’t use them against us, they certainly wouldn’t balk at terrorists using them against us. Furthermore, everyone knows that Iraq didn’t have ties with al Qaeda. Of course, “everyone” is wrong. While Saddam Hussein might not have been directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, it appears he was a supporter of al Qaeda, this also from Shadow Warriors. On page 260, Timmerman notes “Another document, dated January 18, 1993 transmitted Saddam Hussein’s order, delivered through his personal secretary, ‘to hunt the Americans that are in Arab lands, especially Somalia, by using Arab elements or Asian [Muslims] or friends.’”
Timmerman continues, “In response, the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service informed Hussein that Iraq already had ties with a large number of international terrorist groups, including ‘the Islamist Arab elements that were fighting in Afghanistan and [currently] have no place to base and are physically present in Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt.’ In other words al Qaeda.”  (emphasis his)
In George W. Bush’s speech shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush laid down the gauntlet: you’re either with us or against us in the war on terrorism, a declaration of such honest and profound objectivity it no doubt still gives mealy-mouthed liberals and wishy-washy moderates nightmares. There can be no debate on which side Saddam Hussein fell. And because of his own hubris he brought on his own destruction. If liberals had their way (though many would have to go back in time to change the way they felt before the invasion of Iraq) Saddam would still be charge in Iraq and Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and terrorists in general would know that the USA didn’t have the will to enforce their demands.
Liberalism has destroyed the United States’ ability to defend itself, not through disarmament (though the Clinton administration certainly did a significant amount of disarmament) but through the destruction of the political will of the people of the United States. It is only through politics, the peace movement and the resulting loss of morale that the United States has ever lost a war, it is only through military strength that we can ensure peace.

Jumping on a Sinking Ship

Despite the fact that Barak Obama is taking major hits in the media and appears to be more vulnerable than Hillary Clinton, every day there are more of the mythical “superdelegates” jumping on the sinking ship that is the Barak Obama campaign. Is this because democrats love losers (witness France) or do they just have a pathelogical self destructive side? Perhaps they would rather complain about stolen elections or something. I realize there’s a lot of time before the elections and we don’t know who will be the more popular political figure in November, but it seems to me that the more we learn about Obama, the less flattering the perception. Hillary Clinton may be one of the most polarizing figures in politics, but at least she is well known. As we have gotten to know Obama we have discovered he has a condescending side, he associates with unrepentant terrorists, his “spiritual mentor” is a racist demagogue, and he doesn’t like to be questioned when he’s eating his waffles. If Obama is the Democrat candidate these issues will be fully exploited, I believe with devastating effectiveness.