My Sister Goes to a Sarah Palin Book Signing in Grand Rapids

Her e-mail to my wife who asked her to get a copy for her:

Hi Mary,

I was successful, they did allow two books.

It was an all day affair but well worth the effort. With the number of people at the signing we didn't know if they would just shove us through or if we would have a chance to say something.

Some people spent the night outside the mall, the earliest people coming even before the mall closed the night before. I got there at 6:15 in the morning. On the way there, I was listening to WOOD 1300 and they said there were so many people at the mall entrance already, if you weren't there you might as well forget it. I decided I was not listening to that, but I wonder how many people didn't come because of what they said.

They were opening the doors at 7:00 to give out the wristbands and sell the books. The actual book signing started at 6:00PM. It was chilly and breezy outside, but not frigid and the only thing that got really cold were my feet. Should have worn hiking boots instead of shoes. A really cute young couple, newly married, was in front of me in line. The guy was very tall and very cold, but his wife wouldn't let him leave. We finally made it to the Mall doors by 9:30 and that was welcome warmth. As an aside, I had a dentist appointment scheduled for Tuesday the 17th, which I had been able to switch to Wednesday, since my dentist office is not far from the Mall. My appointment was supposed to be at 10:00, which I thought would be plenty of time; little did I know. We were still not quite in the store by 10:00, so the tall young man let me use his Blackberry to call the dentist office to tell them where I was. After all the time in line I wasn't leaving, and I guess they had quite a laugh at the office.

After I got the books and wrist band I headed to the Dentist. Pam, my hygienist, was able to rearrange her schedule so I even still got my cleaning in. After that I went back to the mall, ate lunch, and got right back into the already growing line by 2:00. At least this time we got to wait inside. I had wondered what I was going to do with all my time in Grand Rapids, but then I knew the answer; stand in line. They did start the signing right at 6:00, we got into the store by 7:00 and were out by 7:30.

When I finally got to her table, she shook my hand, I thanked her for coming to Grand Rapids and told her that my son Matt wanted me to tell her he thought she was awesome. She, looked up, flashed that great smile, and said to tell him thank you very much, and thanks for the encouragement. She struck me as very genuine, no special airs, certainly not a diva.

I plan on putting the book in the mail to you tomorrow. Consider it my Christmas present to you guys. I had a lot of fun, met a lot of neat people in line and even saw Andrea Mitchel, NBC News. She is a little person with quite a large nose.

You can't buy that commitment. These are people who will stand in line all day in the cold to get an autographed copy of her book. The Left hates her, the middle is doubtful, but the Right loves her with an intensity that burns like a nova. Love is stronger than hate. She may be the next Ronald Reagan and the nay-sayers have no idea what they are dealing with.

"...a gang of arrogant bullies..."

I was going to start this essay with the question: are the people who work for the Virginian Pilot “teabaggers?” Let me explain how that term has come to relate to the “arrogant bullies” part of the headline.

About a year ago, a middle class revolt began by people who called their meetings “tea parties.” The MSM (or as Rush Limbaugh characterizes them, the “State Run Media” for their slavish devotion to the Obama administration), beginning with the execrable Anderson Cooper, began to snigger and call the Tea Party goers “teabaggers.” No one outside of the environs of the media (and the sexually perverse) knew that this was a reference to a sex act. Just to be clear, “teabagging” refers to the sex act in which a male places his scrotum in the mouth of his partner. This is the kind of perverse sophomoric put-down that represents the sum total of Liberal discussion of conservatives and their ideas. It’s representative of the arrogance and the intellectual bullying that the Left engages in. An in-joke that’s intended to demean and insult. And it’s caught on in an administration that thrives on the ability to demean and insult. Obama himself now refers to the Tea Party protesters as teabaggers. It’s all of a piece with giving the finger to his debate opponents, his telling Hillary that she’s “likeable enough” and referring to Sarah Palin as a pig. It’s the sort of thing that people do whose development is arrested. It’s the sort of thing that people do who have contempt for ordinary people. It’s the arrogant bullying of the “in crowd” in Mean Girls.

John Stossel describes the way that Liberals want to run our lives. It’s the reason behind their desire to take over the health care industry. There are literally dozens of ways of getting uninsured people health insurance, at less cost and with less disruption of the current system. But the desire for control is overwhelming in Liberalism; they can’t help themselves.

The arrogance of the self anointed Liberal elite is breathtaking.

It's not that taxes don't anger me. They do. But I'm more angry about the arrogance of the ruling class. It reminds me of Walter Williams' riff: "Politicians are worse than thieves. At least when thieves take your money, they don't expect you to thank them for it."

Taxes, even counting hidden taxes, are not the real measure of what the thieves take. The true burden of government, the late Milton Friedman said, is the spending level. Taxation is just one way government gets money. The other ways -- borrowing and inflation -- are equally burdens on the people. (State governments can't inflate, but they sure can borrow.)

O'Reilly told me that America is ready for a tax revolt. I hope he's right. But I don't think it will happen until more people see the ruling elite for what it is: a gang of arrogant bullies that has the audacity to believe that they know how to direct our lives better than we do.

That's why, bad as the taxes are, I'm more upset about ObamaCare, Medicare, the "stimulus," the auto bailout, the bank bailouts, the Fannie/Freddie bailouts, the trillions in guarantees, and on and on.

The politicians' spending schemes represent presumptuous interference in our lives. They are an assault on our autonomy.

Every day the newspaper has another call for government to do, to act, to control, to regulate, all for “our own good.” Never a call for getting out of our lives, leaving us alone, providing a space to breathe free of the overwhelming power of the almighty State. They’re “teabaggers.” And not in a nice way.

The Problem with Moderate Muslims

After describing two Canadian Muslim women, part of the "moderate" Muslim majority, this troubling conclusion arises:

Both Hardi and Mubarka present us with a perplexing conundrum because they are members of what has become known as the “peaceful” Muslim majority. They don’t have a violent bone in their bodies, and are clearly law abiding and productive members of Canadian society. But, they are also both part of a very small minority within Canada where they and their fellow Muslims have very little effect on Canadian politics or on the evolution of Canadian cultural norms. What if though, Hardi and Mubarka were part of a Muslim majority where they and their co-religionists held the power?

Both women are Muslims first and Canadians second. No matter how much respect one may have for either woman’s character, there is little doubt where either would place her loyalty if faced with chosing between the Canadian traditions of liberty for all, or Sharia. There is also little doubt that if they were part of a majority, they would acquiesce to the demands of the Muslim clerical class and choose Sharia for all Canadians.

It is therefore irrelevant in the grand scheme of things whether or not Hardi or Mubarka are “good” people; most people on the planet are, no matter their religion, race, or culture. What matters in the greater sense, is that as parts of the Muslim collective, neither woman would set aside her Muslim beliefs in order to safeguard and protect the full rights of non-Muslims to live as they choose. What’s even more disturbing, is that both women have experienced the gender freedoms afforded them in Canada, yet both have voluntarily resigned themselves to the greater Muslim collective.

As long as each woman is part of a small minority within Canada, she offers Canada much; but once she becomes part of a significant minority, or heaven forbid, a majority, she becomes dangerous. Why? Because Muslims wherever they form a majority choose Islamic norms over the broader more tolerant standards of the West. If given a chance, as has been clearly demonstrated the world over, they would unravel hundreds of years of hard fought human rights gains and replace them with the medieval practices of their faith. As such, both Hardi and Mubarka are simply bit players in a monstrous and destructive Muslim vortex that would drag civilization backwards hundreds of years.

The Human Horror of Islam

Christopher Hitchins of Major Hasan: Seven salient facts about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

What about the emphasis on Hasan's supposedly knife-edge mental state? Well, even supposing it to have been precarious, it can hardly have been improved by immersion in the rantings of Anwar al-Awlaki. I do not say that all practitioners of woman-hating, anti-Semitic, sadomasochistic suicide immolations are themselves insane, but I do say that the teaching itself is demented. In the same way, I do not say that all Muslims are terrorists, but I have noticed that an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim. A paranoid or depressive person—of whom we have many millions in our midst—does not have to end up screaming religious slogans while butchering his fellow creatures. But a paranoid or depressive person who is in regular touch with a jihadist "spiritual leader" is presented with a ready-made script that offers him paradise in exchange for homicide.....

By the time the mushy "pre-post-traumatic" school was done with the story, Maj. Hasan was not just acquitted of being a bad Muslim. He was more or less exonerated of having even done a bad deed.
...
I wrote some years ago that the three most salient characteristics of the Muslim death-squad type were self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred. Surrounded as he was by fellow shrinks who were often very distressed by his menacing manner, Maj. Hasan managed to personify all three traits—with the theocratic rhetoric openly thrown in for good measure—and yet be treated even now as if the real word for him was troubled. Prepare to keep on meeting those three symptoms again, along with official attempts to oppose them only with therapy, if that. At least the holy warriors know they are committing suicide.

I bought another Garmin Nuvi

I love these things. Without a GPS I have spent literally hours trying to find an address in a small town like Roanoke or Lynchburg, Virginia. Since getting my first Garmin Street Pilot years ago I never have to worry about getting lost, or wasting time driving around wondering where I am and where I'm going.

The prices have come down, portability has improved and functionality has increased. They make great gifts.

Rush Limbaugh Interviews Governor Sarah Palin

RUSH: We are going to open this hour with a rare personal interview, a rare guest. It doesn't happen much on this program, but we are happy to have with us former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose book, Going Rogue, hits the shelves today and it's already headed for I think a record in sales. Governor Palin, thanks for making time. It's great to talk to you again. We spoke last Thursday in an interview for the Limbaugh Letter, but it's great to have you here on the radio.

GOV. PALIN: Hey, thank you so much, and dittos from an Alaskan.

RUSH: Where are you, by the way? Where are we speaking to you from?

GOV. PALIN: In a hotel room in New York City. I'm going to do a couple of interviews after that and then head to Grand Rapids for the kickoff of the book tour.

RUSH: This is going to be exciting. Are you looking forward to that?

GOV. PALIN: I am so looking forward to this. I cannot wait to meet some of these good Americans all across this country. It's going to be a blast.

RUSH: They can't wait to meet you, judging by the reception you got during the campaign. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Governor Palin, when we spoke last Thursday I spoke to her a lot about the things in her book regarding the campaign. That stuff you'll read in the Limbaugh Letter, and I predicted to Governor Palin then that much of her book would be ignored in light of the dirt that she was supposedly dishing from the campaign. So Governor Palin what I'd like to do here is go some different directions from what we did in the newsletter interview and start with the economy. We have 10.2% unemployment. We see no end in sight. The administration and others are suggesting next year could be just as bad with unemployment going up to 11%. What would you do differently than is being done now?

GOV. PALIN: It's over 10%, and in fact it could be closer to 17 or 18 when you consider those who have kind of given up and are not applying for unemployment benefits. So it's bad, it's really bad and then of course Fed Chair Bernanke announced that there are still weak job prospects for the very short term and probably long term, and that's an uncomfortable place for our country to be. What we need to do is shift gears and really head in another direction because what we're doing right now with the Fed, it's not working. We need to cut taxes on the job creators. This is all about jobs, creating jobs. We have to ramp up industry here in America, and of course reduce the federal debt, quit piling on and growing more. But those commonsense solutions there, especially with the cutting taxes on the job creators, that's not even being discussed. In fact, increased taxes is the direction it sounds like Obama wants to go.

RUSH: You mean that you don't even hear it being discussed on the Republican side or within the administration?

GOV. PALIN: Within the administration, and as it is discussed on the Republican side, Republicans need to be bolder about it. Independents need to be bolder about that solution that has got to be considered and plugged in. This is the only solution that will be successful. We need to rehash some history that proves its success. Let's go back to what Reagan did in the early eighties and stay committed to those commonsense free market principles that worked. He faced a tougher recession than what we're facing today. He cut those taxes, ramped up industry, and we pulled out of that recession. We need to revisit that.

RUSH: Why do you think this administration is ignoring that blueprint? What is their ultimate objective here? They're sitting in the middle of abject failure of their number-one stated goal, and that's job creation. So what are they really trying to do here do you think?

GOV. PALIN: Well, you wonder, you wonder because history proves what will work and you wonder if they're realizing that and if it's just perhaps a stubbornness at this point that they are so committed to going down this road of growing government and interjecting the Feds' control in the private sector more and more, which will prove to be more failure. I don't know if it's obstinate thinking that they're engaged in right now or if they truly just do not believe what the free market, free enterprise economic solutions are that built up this country.

RUSH: Do you think this is going to be a major issue in the congressional elections in 2010, and if so, how would you advise Republicans to pursue it?

GOV. PALIN: It better be a major issue, absolutely. Of course, national security will be, too, and hopefully we'll talk a little bit about some of the decisions being made in that arena that cause so many of us concern but, yeah, the economy, that's what it's going to be because it's all about jobs, it's all about Americans who are hurting right now and what those solutions are that are so obvious, so commonsense that need to be plugged in. And those are Republican, they're commonsense conservative principles that we just need to apply.

RUSH: New York-23 is being portrayed as a race in which you and I -- because we supposedly went up there -- handpicked Doug Hoffman, he supposedly lost, even though that race, they still haven't finished counting the votes. It's two weeks! This is not Chicago. They haven't finished counting the votes. He says he wishes he could un-concede now. But they're trying to diminish conservatism, and I think in the process intimidate the Republican Party from going in that direction. What's your read on New York-23?

GOV. PALIN: I think this is exciting. It's encouraging. No matter the outcome even with his recount of some of those, well, uncounted ballots, it's exciting that the race is going to be even closer, and it's a clearer and clearer picture that what Americans are seeking, even in a district there in New York, they are seeking commonsense, conservative solutions to all the challenges that we're facing. I'm glad to see this.

RUSH: So the positive thing there is that the Republican Party was rebuffed in nominating essentially a RINO, a liberal?




GOV. PALIN: Well, I think what you saw there is -- and of course it's not just the Republican machine, it's the Democrat machine, too. You know, if you're not the anointed one within the machine, sometimes you have a much tougher row to hoe and that's what Hoffman faced. He was the underdog. I think great timing for him, though, to stand strong on his conservative credentials and essentially come out of nowhere and prove that an American without that resume, without that machine backing can truly make a difference in an election like this.

RUSH: Well, now, you used the term, "If you're not the anointed one by the party machine, you're the underdog and you have a tough row to hoe." Based on things that I read, the Republican establishment would not anoint you to be a nominee of their party should you choose to go that way. I'm not asking you the question because I know you're not going to answer and give away what your plans are in 2012.

GOV. PALIN: (chuckles)

RUSH: Do you consider yourself one of these unanointed ones within your own party?

GOV. PALIN: Well, to some in both parties, politics is more of a business. It's not so much a commitment to an agenda or a person or values or issues. It's more of a business -- and, no, I'm not a part of that. So if they're going to keep using that way of thinking in their decisions on who they anoint, who they will support or not then, no. I'll never be a part of that. But hopefully we're going to see a shift with independents, with the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, and we're going to get back to what the issues are, what really matters, and then hopefully we're going to go from there, which will be much fairer to the electorate.

RUSH: All right, independents, slash, third party. A lot of people -- mistakenly, in my view -- are looking at New York-23 as evidence that, see, a third party could actually do well. But that's not a good example because there was no primary there. As you said, the party bosses chose Dede Scozzafava on the Republican side and a Democrat. Had there been a primary, New York-23 would not have been constituted as it was. So what are your thoughts now on the viability of a third party if the Republican Party can't be brought around?

GOV. PALIN: You know, to be brutally honest, I think that it's a bit naive when you talk about the pragmatism that has to be applied in America's political system. And we are a two-party system. Ideally, sure, a third party or an independent party would be able to soar and thrive and put candidates forth and have them elected, but I don't think America is ready for that. I think that it is... Granted it's quite conventional and traditional, but in a good way that we have our two parties, and I think that that's what will remain. And I say that, though, acknowledging that I'm not an obsessive panther, I understand why people -- good people like my own husband -- refuse to register in a party. Todd's not a Republican and yet he's got more commonsense conservatism than a whole lot of Republicans that I know because he is one who sees the idiosyncrasies of the characters within the machine and it frustrates him along with a whole lot of other Americans who choose to be independent. But in answer to your question, I don't think that the third party movement will be what's necessary to usher in some commonsense conservative ideals.

RUSH: Now, you mentioned independents. We need to get independents. Independents right now are abandoning the Democrat Party. They did so in New Jersey. They did so in Virginia. And the White House pretty much proves this because the White House was out prior to the election saying, "Ah, Republican Party identification in polls is as low as it's ever been." Therefore, for Republicans to win these races there had to be independents moving in their direction. Now, I know you're not in politics now but you have political experience. I'm not in politics. I've never gone out and gotten votes. I've always been curious about the professional politicians' insistence that we go out and "get independents." Sure you want to shore up the base. But these magical, whatever it is, 20% of people that are not identified or do not self-identify themselves with either party, what's the way to get them?

GOV. PALIN: I think just naturally independents are going to gravitate towards that Republican agenda and Republican platform because the planks in our platform are the strongest to build a healthy America. We're all about cutting taxes and shrinking government and respecting the inherent rights of the individual and strengthening families and respecting life and equality. You have to shake your head and say, "Who wouldn't embrace that? Who wouldn't want to come on over?" They don't have to necessarily be registered within the Republican Party in order to hook up with us and join us with that agenda standing on those planks. In Alaska, about 70% of Alaskans are independent. So that's my base. That's where I am from and that's been my training ground, is just implementing commonsense conservative solutions. Independents appreciate that. You're going to see more and more of that attraction to the GOP by these independents as the days go on.

RUSH: If the GOP articulates what you just articulated. I've always believed the way to get them... Reagan got them by just being who he was, articulating conservatism. Conservatism is nothing different than the founding principles of the country. Therefore, the key to getting independents is Republicans who can articulate those beliefs.

GOV. PALIN: You know another key to this, too, is to not hesitate duking it out within the party. This is what I appreciate about the Republican Party. We have contested, aggressive, competitive primaries. We're not like this herd mentality like a bunch of sheep -- with the fighting instincts of sheep, as Horowitz would say -- like some in the Democrat Party; where, heaven forbid, you take a stand and you oppose somebody within your own party because it's the right thing to do. I appreciate that in the Republican Party. Some on the other side say -- you know, they're observing what goes on in the GOP and say -- "That's infighting, and they can't get along, and there's no consensus there." No. This is healthy debate, good competition that makes candidates work harder. It makes for a better product, if you will, at the end of the day. I appreciate that about our party.

RUSH: We are talking to Governor Sarah Palin. We take a brief prosperity time-out. We'll be back and continue with Governor Palin right after this.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And we're back. Our remaining moments with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, starting her book tour today. Let's talk about your book tour, your career in general, Governor Palin. Who are you trying to reach, and for what purpose, with the book and your book tour? What's your goal here?

GOV. PALIN: I'm not trying to reach the liberal elites in this country, and it's a good thing I'm not trying to, because I'm not succeeding there. Just everyday, hardworking Americans who want government back on their side and I want to help them have their voice be heard. And the book is all about that, and the book is about my record and my accomplishments as a mayor and as a governor that kind of lay the foundation for Americans to see where it was that I was and how I got to where I am. It was just a lot of hard work and it was a lot of very commonsense measures that I undertook politically and practically speaking, and the book is about that, and hopefully people will read it and enjoy it and learn something from it.

RUSH: What's our biggest energy challenge as a country? Do you believe at all or some or a lot in the modern-day go-green movement of solar and wind and all of these nefarious things that really don't produce anything yet?

GOV. PALIN: I think there's a lot of snake oil science involved in that and somebody's making a whole lot of money off people's fears that the world is... It's kind of tough to figure out with the shady science right now, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our climate. Are we warming or are we cooling? I don't think Americans are even told anymore if it's global warming or just climate change. And I don't attribute all the changes to man's activities. I think that this is, in a lot of respects, cyclical and the earth does cool and it warms. And our greatest challenge with energy is that we're not tapping it to the abundant domestic supplies that God created right underfoot on American soil and under our waters. It's ridiculous that we are circulating hundreds of billions of dollars a year in foreign countries, asking them to ramp up production so that we can purchase it from them -- especially from the regimes that can control us via energy, using it as a weapon against us, potentially. It's nonsense that this administration and past administrations haven't really understood yet that inherent link between energy and security. I think more and more Americans are waking up to the fact, though, and we will hopefully see changes there soon.

RUSH: Vice President Biden chided you, saying, "It's a little bit more complicated," Governor Palin, than "Drill, Baby, Drill," which is one of your chapter titles. What's complicated about drilling for oil?

GOV. PALIN: Exactly. What is complicated about tapping into abundant, safe domestic supplies that could provide stability for our country and security for our country? I know Alaska has billions of barrels of oil underfoot, and we have the natural gas that's waiting to be tapped, too; and other states do, too. It's not that complicated. It's political, and that's what is the shame in this, is that for political reasons we're not allowing to tap these domestic supplies.

RUSH: What are your thoughts on the congressional health care reform bills going through the House and the Senate?

GOV. PALIN: Well, we don't really know, do we, what's in that Senate version, the Senate consideration? It will be soon but we have no idea of costs. We don't know how many will be insured. We're waiting to hear that. We don't know if the tax funding of abortions will be in this new version that's sitting over on the Senate side. We don't know if those who choose not to purchase this government-mandated level of coverage will face jail time as punishment. There are so many questions unanswered. I don't like the idea, in general, of the federal government thinking it needs to take over health care -- which essentially this is -- and control one-sixth of our economy. Not when there are commonsense solutions to meeting health care challenges in our country, like allowing the intra- and interstate competition with insurers, tort reform, cutting down on the waste and fraud that the Obama administration insists if we just did that we'll pay for this one-point-some trillion-dollar health care reform package. So lots of commonsense solutions that need to be plugged in before ever considering federal government taking it over.

RUSH: You mentioned earlier you wanted to talk about national security, that you hoped it came up. Well, here it is: What do we face? What are our threats, and are we prepared, or not?

GOV. PALIN: Well, I think domestically a threat that we're facing right now is the dithering and hesitation in sending a message to the terrorists that we're going to claim what Ronald Reagan claimed. Our motto is going to be: "We win, you lose." The way that we do that is allow McChrystal to have the reinforcements that he's asking for in Afghanistan. That sends that message to the terrorists over there that we're going to end this thing with our victory. We need to start facing Iran with tougher and tougher sanctions that need to be considered. We need to work our allies with the Iranian issues, like Britain and France and not allow access to favorable international monetary deals. That's a great threat that I think would kind of shake up Ahmadinejad and get him to listen. We need to look at halting Iran's imports of refined petroleum products. They're quite reliant on imported gasoline, and we need to use that hammer to wake up the leadership there, too. Those are two big challenges that we have right now, domestically and in naming those two countries, Afghanistan and Iran. Two big challenges there, too.

RUSH: Thirty seconds: Immigration. Can you do it in 30 seconds before we have to go?

GOV. PALIN: I can't do it in 30 seconds but just know that... You know, let me put it simply: Illegal immigrants are called "illegal" for a reason. We need to crack down on this. We need to listen to the border states where the governors there have some solutions and we need to get serious about that.

RUSH: Governor Palin, thanks very much. It's been a pleasure. It's been fun. Thanks for last week as well and good luck on what I know is going to be a life-changing book and book tour.

GOV. PALIN: Hey, thank you. Keep up the good work.

RUSH: Thank you.

GOV. PALIN: And all the best to all your listeners.

ON THE ARCH-CONSERVATIVE, BUT ILLOGICAL NATURE OF GLOBAL WARMERS

Via Dennis Gartman

We have never hidden our antipathy toward those who believe in global warming, for we find their thesis illogical at worst, poorly based on ill-advised facts, and antiprogress.

As we said last week, and as we have said for years, however, we do indeed believe in global climate change. The climate always changes. The world is malleable and its climate has always changed… radically… and it will continue to change into the future. Man’s “imposition” on that change is minimal at best, made all but insignificant when compared to the effects of the sun, gravity, ocean drifts, tectonic plate shifts, et al.

However, what really bothers us are the egregious economic consequences of the demands being made by the likes of Al Gore and other global warming alarmists. The damage they shall wreak upon the US… and the global economy… is shocking, and none of it is good. According to the American Enterprise Institute, as reported in Newsweek magazine this week in George Will’s column, the Waxman-Markey “global warming” legislation, the goal is just slightly more than 1 billion tons of greenhouse-gas emissions in 2050. The last time this nation had that small an amount was 1910, when there were only 92 million Americans, 328 million fewer than the 420 million projected for 2050. To meet the 83 percent reduction target in a nation of 420 million, per capita carbon-dioxide emissions would have to be no more than 2.4 tonnes per person, which is one quarter the per capita emissions of 1910, a level probably last when the population was 45 million--- in 1875.

Forcing the US to accept such nonsense is the very worst of the Luddite-like, anti-business posture of the Left. It is reactionary to the highest degree imaginable, and it is what we call the illogical arch-conservatism of the eco-Left that must be stopped before very real damage can and will be done to the US and the global economy. What do these people smoke? And how often?

Government, having solved all the big problems, decides to invade our lives.

Dennis Gartman reminds us how intrusive the government actually is.

...the government is moving leftward rapidly here in the US, and as it moves leftward it becomes more and more intrusive into the day-to-day lives of the American people. The federal government mandates the size of our toilets; it mandates the water than can be pushed through our shower heads; it mandates fuel usage for automobiles; it has moved to stop the use of various bats in children’s’ baseball games; it mandates that children wear helmets when riding bicycles… and the list goes on. The Left makes these decisions because it believes it knows better how our lives are to be managed. This is nonsense, and it is becoming worse.

We note then that Dennis Kucinich, one of the most far-left-of-centre Congressmen from our former home state of Ohio, has proposed legislation that will disallow any tax deductions as a business expense for any advertising that is directed at children! What right does Mr. Kucinich have to tell the advertising companies of the US to whom they can advertise and why? Where in the Constitution is the power to regulate advertising to children granted to Congress? Which amendment was adopted that would allow Kucinich to even put this sort of legislation forward? We have read and re-read our copy of the Constitution, and the word “advertising” is not mentioned once! Yet, this sort of legislation has a good chance of passing.

Great Observatories Explore Galactic Center

Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud

The Obama Position

RAT Board Fakes Figures

When you have an UberLiberal like Davide Obey telling you your numbers are fake, you have a problem. And when the number one issue that people are worried about is jobs, the problem is magnified.

Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, took the administration to task for pervasive errors on the Web site designed to monitor disbursement of the stimulus funds. He called those errors "outrageous."

"Credibility counts in government and stupid mistakes like this undermine it. We've got too many serious problems in this country to let that happen," Obey said in a statement. "Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now."

Obey demanded a commitment from the executive branch that they would "work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes." Congress and the public should be able to trust reports by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency (RAT) Board, he said.

That Stimulus is So Freaking Awesome it Has Created or Saved Jobs in Congressional Districts That Don't Even Exist!

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There's one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.

There's no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government's recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don't exist.

I wonder if either Obama or Biden will have the gall to mention the claim of jobs created or saved ever again.

On further consideration, yes they will ... they have zero shame.

Tea Party Protestors assaulted by ANSWER

We are beginning to see way too many echoes of the 1930s, as national socialist and Marxian socialist thugs try to drive competing political views off the streets. The worst offenders so far have been the Service Employees' International Union, which has repeatedly sent its members out into the streets to beat up anyone who isn't toeing the Obama line on issues like socialized medicine.

Most recently it's International ANSWER, a hard-core Communist group supported by shadowy funding sources that have never been made public, but appear to consist of a handful of rich people. ANSWER, notwithstanding its unabashedly Communist ideology, now feels comfortable enough to assault non-communist demonstrators who show up in the streets. In this case, the non-communists were protesting illegal immigration, seeking to uphold the nation's laws, when they were set upon by ANSWER's thugs:

It looks as if the Right will have to have its own "enforcers" in the streets since the ObamaPolice will not be there to stop the violence.

The "God Damn America" Presidency

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line characterizes the Obama Presidency ...

On the morning after the deadliest instance of Islamist terrorism in the United States since 9/11, President Obama warned the American public not to "jump to conclusions" about the motives that impelled Nidal Hasan's rampage of mass murder at Fort Hood.
By the time Obama issued this warning, it had already been reported that Hasan yelled "Allahu akbar" before he opened fire. This assertion of the supremacy of Allah is invoked by Islamic terrorists worldwide before they kill. It was also known that Hasan's fellow participants in an Army program on public health had complained to military authorities about Hasan's anti-American propaganda.Hasan had made a presentation that justified suicide bombing and argued that the war on terror is a war against Islam.

Yet no conclusions were warranted, as far as Obama was concerned. "We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing," our "philosopher in chief" intoned.

Obama has not always been cautious about jumping to conclusions.When a white police officer in Cambridge, Mass., arrested an African-American Harvard professor, the president was quick to proclaim that the officer had "acted stupidly." Obama was soon forced to back away from that statement, which was based on ignorance of the facts.

There is no underlying inconsistency between these seemingly divergent responses. Both are founded on the same antipathy Obama harbors toward America. Obama prematurely concluded that the professor's arrest was improper because this conclusion comported with his view that American law enforcement officers habitually harass black Americans. In Hasan's case, it was imperative to resist the obvious connection between Islamism and the killings because, in Obama's view, Americans habitually are on the verge of persecuting Muslims.

As the president's wife once put it, America is "just downright mean."

Our malevolence is not confined to relations with our own minority groups, either.In our president's opinion, we are global miscreants. For example, Obama has insisted that to compensate for our past arrogance, we need to negotiate, even absent any preconditions, with our worst enemies, including Iran. Applied to Russia, this has meant going hat in hand to the Kremlin and agreeing, among other concessions, to abandon missile defense for Russia's Eastern European neighbors in the hope of demonstrating that we have turned over a new leaf.

Obama must therefore believe that the thuggish, autocratic, expansionist Russian regime is more sinned against than sinning in its relations with the United States. But if Russia is our victim, are there any regimes as to which we hold the high moral ground? Judging by Obama's foreign policy to date, only Israel, Honduras, and perhaps Great Britain come to mind.

It might be argued in our defense that the United States faced down the Soviet Union, paving the way for the triumph of freedom in Central and Eastern Europe. But this fact apparently does not impress Obama.When heads of state gathered in Berlin last week to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Obama was absent.

Obama did appear in Berlin via video. But the president omitted from his remarks any mention of the Soviet Union or communism, Harry Truman, or Ronald Reagan. As my blog partner Scott Johnson put it, Obama neither "decried the villains nor saluted the heroes of the story." That's because we were the heroes.

Obama reportedly is contemplating a visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki , . . The venue is perfect for Obama's signature public hand-wringing on behalf of his country.

Obama's antipathy toward America should come as no surprise. Although he has lived a rich and varied life, there has been one constant - exposure to the left's disparaging narrative about America.

Obama grew up in a radically left-wing household, attended elite colleges where a jaundiced view of America is orthodox, and spent the remainder of his formative years as a community organizer alongside the likes of former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and the "God damn America" ranting Jeremiah Wright.

No wonder Obama is serving up a "God damn America lite" presidency.

What will be the consequences of that presidency? Domestically, we can expect the president to continue trying to remodel the American economy along radical lines. And given his mistrust of his countrymen's instincts, we can expect attempts to curb personal freedom.

Fortunately, in the domestic realm, Obama cannot implement very much of this agenda without the "consent of the governed," as expressed through their elected representatives. Thus, Obama can be constrained. If the electorate chooses not to constrain him, he will have earned the right to work his radical transformation.

In the area of foreign and national security policy, however, Obama can operate largely unchecked. And a weak, guilt-ridden policy toward our foreign adversaries is almost certain to produce grave consequences.

To some extent, we have seen this act before. The damage of just four years of Jimmy Carter's America-effacing presidency included Soviet expansion, communist inroads in Latin America, the replacement of a friendly government with a virulently anti-American theocracy in Iran, and a prolonged hostage crisis that came to symbolize the new American impotence.

But although Carter was ambivalent about America, his efforts to promote democracy abroad showed that he thought we had something to offer to world. Obama will not grant America even that. Emulating Carter the ex-president, rather than President Carter, Obama has shown essentially no interest in human rights or democracy promotion. His belated support of the Iranian protesters following this summer's election could hardly have been more lukewarm.

It seems that, in Obama's view, all we have to offer the world is our non-interference in its affairs, except perhaps when it comes to bullying our allies.

In the past, we have offered much more. We defeated fascism and communism, liberated Europe in two world wars, and took the lead in fighting back against Islamist extremism. A country burdened by a battered self-image will be incapable of any such achievements. We will suffer for it, and so will the world.

Why is this man bowing?

President Obama, representative of the American people bows to Japan's Emperor



Like he bowed to the Saudi king.

When the story emerged from the shadows of the Internet, Ben Smith ran an item on Politico with the White House denying the bow. "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Oh?

Once may be a mistake, twice is a pattern.

Obama's breach of protocol is of a piece with the substance of his foreign policy. He means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs. He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege and royal bloodlines. He gives expressive form to the idea that the United States now willingly prostrates itself before the rest of the world. He declares that the United States is a country like any other, only worse, because we have so much for which to apologize.

But let's not mistake his deference to hereditary rulers:

Obama is a man of extraordinary arrogance. He seeks fundamentally to transform the United States. With him, a new age begins.

Was this the "change" you were hoping for?

Flight 1549 3D Reconstruction

Fantastic!

Incredible video of Flight 1549 reconstructed in 3D from take off to landing.

Twisted and Nuts

From the American Thinker ...

Listening to government leaders and media avoid any connection between Islamist terrorism and the murderous attack at Ft. Hood is, to use their terminology, about as "twisted" and "nuts" as it gets.
...
What is "twisted" is ignoring what Hasan believed and taught from the Quran to his fellow physicians at Walter Reed Hospital. One of them told Fox News: "He was a lightning rod. He made his views known and he was very vocal; he had extremely radical jihadist views." Despite the fact that high-ranking officers heard Hasan, they didn't report him because "they were too concerned about being politically correct."


Then there's the "nut" factor. These are the government and media whiz-bangs who feel competent to diagnose an individual who takes the Quran seriously, but are incompetent to spot terrorism.


Bob Schieffer, chief nut expert and host of CBS's "Sunday's Face the Nation," babbled that "Islam doesn't have a majority -- or the Christian religion has its full, you know, full helping of nuts too."


His guest, Sen. Lindsay Graham, agreed, and after lecturing the rest of us not to overreact, Graham then jumped to this crank conclusion. "It's certainly not about his religion, Islam. It's not about the army; it's not about the war. At the end of the day, I think it's going to be about him."


Yelling "Allahu Akbar" before killing soldiers isn't about his religion? Accusing the army of waging war against Islam isn't about the army? Objecting to the war isn't about the war?


Sen. Dick Durbin from Chicagoland added to the anti-reality frenzy: "How did it happen ... we must remain thoughtful and reserve judgment."


The clueless Durbin is the thoughtless military-basher who had to apologize for comparing our guards at Guantanamo Bay to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others."


One thing we can conclude from Durbin and the Schieffer/Graham interview is that the media and the Senate have their share of mixed nuts.
Then there's the FBI, which concluded in 2008 that Hasan didn't pose a terrorist threat, despite his contacts with "a Yemen-based militant Islamist prayer leader who had ties to Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers."


Here's the FBI's profile of the lone individual terrorist threat. If Hasan doesn't fit the profile, who does?

One particularly insidious concern that touches all forms of domestic extremism is the lone offender -- a single individual driven to hateful attacks based on a particular set of beliefs without a larger group's knowledge or support. In some cases, these lone offenders may have tried to join a group but were kicked out for being too radical or simply left the group because they felt it wasn't extreme or violent enough. We believe most domestic attacks are carried out by lone offenders to promote their own grievances and agendas.

FBI director Robert Mueller told Congress in 2007 that "[t]he diversity of homegrown extremists and the direct knowledge they have of the United States makes the threat they pose potentially very serious. The radicalization of U.S. Muslim converts is of particular concern."


Nonetheless, the FBI's domestic terrorism web page doesn't mention Islam or Muslim in conjunction with domestic terrorism: "Today's domestic terror threats run the gamut, from hate-filled white supremacists ... to highly destructive eco-terrorists ... to violence-prone anti-government extremists ... to radical separatist groups."


Let's add another clue for Obama, Durbin, the FBI, Graham, Schieffer, and their fellow "nut"-detectors such as Evan Thomas of Newsweek. Check out the 24 photos of the FBI's most wanted terrorists.


Altogether now -- can you say M-U-S-L-I-M T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T-S?

When John Wilkes Booth opened fire on President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in April 1865, the media was puzzled.

“True, the actor was outspoken in his Confederate sympathies and viewed himself as a Southerner,” said someone who knew him, “but that was no reason he might want Lincoln to be dead.” The day before he went on his shooting spree, Booth hoisted a big Confederate flag outside his hotel room. After he leaped onto the stage he shouted, "Thus ever to tyrants!" the motto of the rebel state of Virginia.

The New York Times reported that Booth was psychologically unstable and was frightened of the Civil War coming to an end and having to face a peacetime actors’ surplus. “His political views had nothing to do with the motives for this tragic act,” it said, quoting experts.

WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Baseball Crank (H/T Tom Maguire)

So, Barack Obama will be staging his own New York production of Chicago, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as Roxy Hart ("You had it coming, you had it coming, you only have yourselves to blame...." ). We will be treated to months upon months of front page headlines giving a platform to this lunatic war criminal. The courthouses and City office buildings in lower Manhattan (City Hall, the state courts, the immigration offices, the Court of International Trade, the US Attorney's Office, the DA's office, and the main city office building that does marriage licenses and the like are all within about a two-block radius of the federal courthouses and the Metropolitan Correctional Center) will be snarled with massive security, as if lower Manhattan needs more traffic and more armed men. We'll have to have pretrial hearings on the inevitable countless motions about how KSM was apprehended and the evidence against him collected, undoubtedly to the detriment of vital sources of intelligence, like when we lost the ability to track Osama bin Laden by cellphone after our tracing of his calls was revealed by a prosecution under the DOJ Criminal Division then headed by...Eric Holder. And that's even before he starts in on the sob stories about being waterboarded. I'm not seriously concerned that KSM stands any chance of being acquitted, but a hung jury? It only takes one person with extreme political or religious views, one juror who just can't abide the death penalty (even assuming Obama's DOJ pursues it). Just imagine the controversy, if there are Muslims in the jury pool, over what questions prosecutors are permitted to ask them and whether they can be challenged. And of course, it sends the message to our enemies that there's nothing you can do to us that will get you sent through a process rougher than the one we used on Michael Vick or Martha Stewart.

I know I have spoken and written many rough things about Obama, but as Michael Moore would say, most New Yorkers voted for the man - why is he doing this to us?

It's impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn't run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don't buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another - Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it - and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it - nothing to show for anything he's done in foreign affairs. All but ignore democratic protests in Iran while supporting an illegal effort by Honduras' president to stay on beyond the end of his term. Suddenly complain about corruption and electoral fraud in Afghanistan, while seeking the favor of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Vladimir Putin - heck, Obama endorsed half a dozen people in Chicago more corrupt than Hamid Karzai. On and on and on we go, with President Apology constantly straining to run down his country's record and talk up the propagandized view of history of its enemies. He's taken more time to "evaluate" General McChrystal's recommendations about Afghan policy than it took George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and capture Kabul after September 11. It would be funny if it wasn't tragically stupid and bound to get people killed. There is no mistake of our past that Obama is unwilling to remake.

If there's an upside to all this, after months of watching KSM up close, even liberal New Yorkers may be ready to give Dick Cheney a medal.

Hasan Depressed by Health Care Bill Delays ... Kills and Maims Fellow Soldiers

Ann Coulter has hit on THE reason that Major Hasan decided to shoot up Fort Hood. I'm surprised that the NY Times, LA Times and the Washington Post has not picked up on this.

Depression? Car being keyed? Mortified about deployment? Guilt over visiting strip clubs? These are such pedestrian, unimaginative reasons for the killing spree. This it the time for the press to get to the "real" reason for what Obama said was "incomprehensible:" failure to nationalize health care before Thanksgiving.

It's sure to be the reason that an investigation of Hasan's motives will reveal. Pass "Health Care" to prevent further terrorist attacks! Why didn't they think of that?

The Times Explains

Via Powerline.

You can't make this stuff up. The NY Times

It is unclear what might have motivated Major Hasan, who is suspected of killing 13 people.

Suspected? Maybe he can spend the rest of his life looking for the real killer, like OJ Simpson?

"I don't understand why the Muslim-American community has to take responsibility for him," said Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America. "The Army has had at least as much time and opportunity to form and shape this person as the Muslim community."

Maybe if he had yelled "Hooah" as he opened fire....

This, though, is the nadir:

Muslim leaders, advocates and military service members have taken pains to denounce the shooting and distance themselves from Major Hasan. They make the point that his violence is no more representative of them than it is of other groups to which he belongs, including Army psychiatrists.

Yes, we've witnessed quite a string of terrorist attacks by Army psychiatrists. It's a funny thing--a disproportionate number of psychiatrists have always been Jewish, but I can't remember a single instance of one of them flying an airplane into a building. The whole thing is a puzzle, really.

No, really, we have to stop associating mass murder with Islam when we have the Amish, Methodists and Baptists going on similar killing sprees. [sarcasm off]

There is a problem here that must be faced. There is a creed that sanctions, indeed, encourages the killing of people who are not part of their belief system. We have to define what that creed is and neutralize it.

I love Germany and its people, and I don’t condemn all Germans for World War 2. But there is a subset of Germans that were responsible for that war. We call them Nazis, and they represented enough of the German people to lead to a terrible war. At the same time, people of German descent worked hard on the American and Allied home front and fought valiantly in the military during World War 2 to end the Nazi regime.

We can distinguish between peaceful Muslims and Muslim extremists. Different religions have learned to worship their own God without killing each other. We must – for our own safety – learn the difference between Muslims who differ like Baptists and Unitarians, Christians and Jews.

The Left would have us believe that if we cannot identify and struggle against Islamic extremism without condemning all Muslims. That is a false dichotomy and it has led Liberals to wildly seek a way of explaining Major Hasan without reference to his embrace of violent Jihad, a uniquely Muslim article of faith.

If we can learn to tell the difference between the average German and the Nazi, surely we can do the same with Muslims.

Blind diversity equals death

It is easy and attractive for those of us on the Right to put the blame for the Fort Hood massacre at the feet of the Obama administration, but it would be wrong. Just as George Bush was not responsible for 9/11, the planning for that began long before he was inaugurated and the failure of our intelligence services was a legacy of the previous administration. But it happened on his watch. How he led the nation in reacting to it is his legacy and his responsibility. Following 9/11 part of the federal government went into full war mode and mass attacks on the homeland were averted.

But part of the government apparatus did not change its views of what constituted a threat, and that led to Fort Hood. Major Hasan is a legacy of political correctness conflated with multiculturalism that is truly deadly. How the Obama administration reacts to that will determine its legacy in the war declared by radical Islam.

The Army’s death grip on “diversity” as articulated by Army Chief of Staff Casey got us to this point and will not fix the problem. Homeland Security Chief Napolitano’s expression of concern was for Muslims and the always feared but never seen “backlash.” Attorney General Holder is not sending out federal marshals to protect vulnerable targets as he did after the killing of an abortion doctor. Instead he’s going to address the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism financing case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

And finally Mr. Obama himself is setting the tone of his administration – and the tone of the MSM reports on the attack on our soldiers by calling it “inexplicable.”

It's not. Michelle Malkin has it right ...

The violence at Fort Hood, President Obama told mourners on Tuesday, was "incomprehensible." The "twisted logic that led to the tragedy," he reiterated, may be "too hard to comprehend." If the Bush administration suffered a systemic failure of imagination on homeland security, the Obama administration is suffering a willful failure of comprehension.

What exactly is so hard to comprehend? Fort Hood jihadist Maj. Nidal Hasan made his means, motives and inspiration all too clear for those willing to see and hear. In his 2007 slide presentation to fellow Army doctors on "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the Military," Hasan spelled it out: "We love death more then (sic) you love life!"

The Bush administration saw that we had a problem with Islamic terrorism and changed policy that kept the Homeland safe for the rest of his term. Major Hasan is proof that that policy was not airtight. Bush changed part of the culture, but not all of the culture and that was what allowed Major Hasan to commit his act of Jihad. From all appearances the Obama administration does not see any problem with the security measures that we have in place. The biggest issue they see before them is insuring that the American people do not offend our Muslim friends.