Thursday, January 28, 2010

More of the same

A majority of the people in America think the country is on the wrong track, two out of every three Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing and President Obama's job approval is at a record low.
The reason? Well, now we know.
As implied by the president in his State of the Union speech and stated by one of his media cheerleaders, Joe Klein, the reason is that Americans are too stupid to comprehend his greatness!
See Fox News for a fact check on his speech and consider these facts.
He was going to unite America. According to Gallup, he is the most polarizing president ever.
He was going to make the rest of the world love us. After touring the world apologizing for America's presence on the Earth, bowing to other leaders and coddling petty tyrants, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela scorn Obama openly and al-Qaida is working harder than ever to murder Americans.
The economy, which would have recovered by now, is limping along and could relapse anytime because of, not in spite of, trillions of dollars spent by the government with money it does not have.
Obama failed get the Olympics in Chicago and failed to get the world to agree to stop global warming -- even if it had the power to do so.
As for his claim that the health care takeover failed because he failed to explain it well enough, that's just nuts. In the first place, he failed to do it openly and in a bipartisan way as he promised, but he also has had literally hundreds of opportunities to explain it in speeches and press conferences. What kept him from doing it? George Bush?
The real problem is that enough information leaked out that Americans knew they didn't want any part of it. Yet -- and this is the mind-boggling part -- Nancy Pelosi and Company still are determined to pass the boondoggle.
The sooner the fall elections come, the better.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

I see you

See Avatar if you can. It is visually stunning, especially in 3-D.
But the script is silly and the dialogue must have been written by a sixth-grader.
This is standard Hollywood fare: Evil, greedy capitalists despoil the environment and oppress noble savages who worship Mother Nature.
But if you are into special effects, see it on the big screen. If you wait until it's on TV, you might as well skip it.

Friday, January 22, 2010

The wealthbuster

If only Barack Obama would wage war on our enemies with the zeal he wages war against our way of life.
Having failed at destroying the health insurance industry, he is now out to destroy the banking industry.
Bankers create wealth and jobs, two things America needs desperately.
Obama is out to crush them with regulations, and make them wards of the government, like the domestic auto industry has become.
This is certainly in line with the aims of the labor unions, his main supporters. They hate capitalism and admire socialism.
I'm with Rush Limbaugh on this one. I hope Obama fails. He has so far, but how long can our luck hold out?

War is waged to win, not to please the ACLU

More information is coming out about the court martial of three Navy SEALS but unless there is a lot more to the story, the military could end up looking foolish when it’s over.
In the Washington Times, there is detail about a September raid by a six-man SEAL team in Anbar province, Iraq. They surprised and captured one of the worst terrorists, Ahmed Hashim Abed.
They returned to the base with Abed and, according to the Times, another sailor reported seeing one of the SEALS strike Abed in the stomach during the night.
That SEAL and two others now are charged with assault and lying about the incident.
This might have been avoided had they simply allowed Abed to reach for the gun under his pillow and then filled him with lead. They even could have burned his body, dragged it by the heels to the base and then hanged him. That is what Abed and his gang did to four Americans in 2004.
But they didn't.
Maybe the military is overlooking a few things. Did the SEALS have a warrant to enter the safe house? Was their Humvee outside parked legally? If you are going to punish American warriors for heroic actions, you need to cover all the bases.
There is a more we need to know. If the SEAL did strike Abed, was he attacked first? Performing a Heimlich maneuver? The other three SEALS are refusing to talk unless they are given immunity, the Times said.
More than 100,000 Americans have signed up on Facebook to support the SEALS. They might agree that if he is guilty of hitting a ruthless killer, the SEAL should get an appropriate punishment, such as two weeks leave in Naples.
If the military is going to conduct a politically correct war, they need to strike the colors and bring the troops home instead.

Air pollution is lessening

Air America is bankrupt and goes off the air Monday.
Thus ends the grandiose plan liberals had to take over talk radio.
Liberals cannot brook dissent and are frustrated by the fact that Rush Limbaugh commands 20 million listeners.
So they predicted confidently that the likes of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, two pathetic clowns who echoed the liberal masters in Washington, would bury Limbaugh.
But no one listened.
This means liberals will only have Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the St. Pete Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, to spread the gospel of hope and change.
Oh yes, and the president who, after more than 400 TV speeches and 150 press conferences in less than a year and all the aforementioned, complained recently that his crushing defeat in Massachusets happened because he hasn't been able to get his message out to the American people.
Liberalworld is a strange, dark place. No wonder Americans don't want to go there.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Blame is the name of the game

Compare Barney Frank's rational response to the election of Scott Brown (below) with the spin a few Democrats are trying to put on the Senate election in Massachusetts.
It wasn't a referendum on President Obama's health care takeover, they say, because Massachusetts already has a similar health care plan.
Yes, and it is working the same way: big costs, small benefits. Independent voters in Massachusetts showed their independence by trying to save the rest of America from the same fate.
Other variations are blame Martha Coakley, the inept Democrat candidate, blame the stupid voters, blame the evil GOP.
But the clincher came from Obama himself. He blames George Bush.
People are fed up about what has happened "in the past eight years," he said from the state of Denial, where he is currently residing.
Just recently, one of Obama's flunkies was bashing Bush for being a big spender. And he was. But Obama has spent more in a year than Bush did in eight, and he's just getting started.
This from a guy that a Newsweek flak compared favorably to God.
"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God," Evan Thomas said last summer on MCNBC.
Funny, I don't remember God playing the blame game and refusing to take responsibility for his own actions. (Nor do I remember Obama creating the Earth, although he did promise to make the waters recede.)
But -- let's be clear -- that's what Obama is all about. No one is responsible for anything -- except Bush. You have to wonder if even liberal Democrats will be tired of that excuse by 2012.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Blowing in the wind

The government has issued a report on the feasibility of windmills.
This is the lead of the New York Times story:
"WASHINGTON — Wind could replace coal and natural gas for 20 to 30 percent of the electricity used in the eastern two-thirds of the United States by 2024, according to a study released Wednesday by the Energy Department.
"But doing so would require a reorganization of the power grid and a significant increase in costs. And it would have only a modest impact on cutting emissions linked to global warming, the study found."
Wading through the report is a treat. It buries the useful information in a haystack of fluff and stuff about how wonderful windmills are but if you persevere you can learn that the cost would be horrendous, at best. It would do little to reduce carbon emissions, even if that were a worthy goal. Lawyers and greens would have a field day over the ensuing fights about where they would be built.
Oh yes, lots of new power plants, burning fossil fuels, would have to be built to supply backup power for the times when the wind isn't blowing.
You can predict the liberal solution: the government will form a windmill industry, staff it with union labor, spend billions of your dollars to pay for all this, then subsidize the output as it does TVA electricity -- and make "the rich" pay for it all. Whoopee, the New Deal is back.


Another earthquake

Feel the ground shifting?
This, from of all people, Barney Frank, via MSNBC:
“I have two reactions to the election in Massachusetts. One, I am disappointed. Two, I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results. If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate health care bills. But since Scott Brown has won and the Republicans now have 41 votes in the Senate, that approach is no longer appropriate. I am hopeful that some Republican Senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform because I do not think that the country would be well-served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the Senate rule which means that 59 votes are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of the process.”
What he is saying is that Democrats should not use dirty tricks or sleazy politics to ram the health care takeover down the public's throat. Instead, they should actually work with Republicans in a bipartisan way to fashion a consensus bill -- exactly what President Obama promised to do when he ran for office.
This is what Frank said on MSNBC last September about bipartisanship:
"The Republicans represent an extremely conservative faction and the notion that those of us who won the election with a solid majority should compromise 50/50 with those who won’t… well then why have elections?"
What a difference a day makes.

Shirley Jordan

Stan Jordan's wife, Shirley, has died.
Jordan, a longtime School Board member and former legislator, said she died from a heart attack 12 days before their 50th anniversary. Shirley Jordan suffered from diabetes.
The couple had two children and a number of grandchildren.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Tuesday's decision in Massachusetts

Tuesday, Massachusetts will elect a new senator. Democrats, anticipating an earthshaking defeat of the Democrat candidate, are talking about delaying the Republican candidate's acceptance into the Senate if he is elected, by whatever means possible.
Scott Brown has a better than even chance of winning the seat, which Rep. Barney Frank has said would derail the radical health care bill in Congress.
But Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard has an interesting take on the Democrat delaying tactic. The current interim senator, named to fill the vacancy after the death of Ted Kennedy, will no longer be a senator after tomorrow, in the view of some lawyers.
That means they can delay Brown's seating, but it won't help their hurryup effort to pass Obamacare.
Another issue is whether Brown will be allowed to win, as the polls say he will. Democrats tried to steal the 2000 presidential election in Florida and could make another effort tomorrow in the critical Senate race.
A lot is a stake and in a high-stakes political game, anything goes.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Here they go

For many moons, I've been warning this was going to happen.
The one-worlders at the United Nations sit around and hatch up schemes to suck America dry of its wealth. The most powerful force on the planet today is the Internet. It was inevitable that they would want to control it.
And they do. Fox News reports an effort at the U.N. to impose a global tax on the Internet to raise money for its wasteful schemes.
Communist China already is censoring the Web to keep its subjects from learning about freedom. The Party is nervous about the capitalistic tiger it has allowed to be unleashed and is fighting to keep the fire of freedom dampened.
Censorship is the first form of control and taxation is the second. After that, the Internet becomes just a worldwide Pravda.
Some might argue that the Internet is too big to control. I'm hope they are right, but I'm not so sure.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Hurry up time

There are intense closed-door, deal-making sessions going on in the White House and on the hill, as Democrats scramble to ram socialized medicine down the public's throat.
What has provoked the rush is the incredible turnaround in Massachusetts, where polls show a GOP candidate now leading the liberal Democrat in a race to fill the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by the late Teddy Kennedy.
This is nothing more than a referendum on Obama's health care plan -- and he's losing.
If the Republican does win, he would be the vote needed to block Obama's plan, which is why the Dems already are formulating plans to delay seating him in the Senate.
Nothing must interfere with socialized medicine, which is the keystone in Obama's agenda. The current bill is not socialized medicine itself but puts the nation on the inevitable and probably irrevocable path to that Holy Grail of liberalism.
All the interest groups lined up, from unions to trial lawyers, may have to give up something to get the stepping-stone bill passed. I expect it to pass, to the nation's eternal regret.

Them old liberals, at it again

The inane Jon Stewart is blasting Rush Limbaugh for "politicizing" the disaster in Haiti.
This follows predictable attempts by the left to misquote Limbaugh.
On his highly popular radio show, Limbaugh said people who wanted to help would get more bang for their buck by contributing to private agencies such as the Red Cross because government efforts usually waste a lot of the money donated.
This was reported by leftist outlets as "Limbaugh tells people not to help Haiti."
Thus, Stewart's attempt at humor.
Hours after Hurricane Katrina, while the Old Media reported unfounded rumors and rampant speculation, leftists were piling criticism on George Bush. Stewart joined in, saying about FEMA Director Michael Brown's resignation, "No word yet on Mr. Brown's future plans, though sources say he does want to spend more time doing nothing for his family."
Who's politicizing what?

Merry Christmas

For Christmas, I got a Kindle. I think it is the wave of the future.
Kindle is a device that stores books, magazines and other content and allows you to read it anytime anywhere. You get content two ways: either download it instantly via wireless or download it to your computer and transfer it to your Kindle, which acts like another drive when connected.
The first book I bought and read was Band of Brothers, an excellent and true World War II story.
But this is what hooked me. While I was in Tampa visiting my brother, I picked up a book he was reading, called The 5,000 Year Leap. I had read good reviews and read a couple of chapters. It was excellent.
I put down the book, picked up my Kindle and in less than two minutes, at a cost of $7.96, I had the book.
Ebooks are cheap but what many people don't realize is that many free books are available online. I got Study in Scarlet, Wealth of Nations and Penrod, for example, free.
Newspapers and magazines tend to be pricey but blogs are cheap.
Devices similar to Kindle are emerging daily.
Imagine the possibilities. Millions of kids may not have to lug heavy bookpacks around campus. Huge, expensive libraries may not be necessary.
The world is changing. Usually for the better.

Bad idea shelved

According to First Coast News, the Charter Revision Commission has nixed the idea of appointing a sheriff. Good riddance.
This is an old idea, and a bad one. In the original Blueprint for Improvement, the plan was to let the mayor appoint five constitutional officers -- the sheriff, tax collector, property appraiser, elections supervisor and clerk of the court.
People didn't like the idea and it was dropped in the proposed charter approved 2-1 at the polls.
In my view there would be nothing much wrong with appointing the elections supervisor and court clerk, which mainly have administrative duties.
But the sheriff, tax collector and property appraiser have jobs that directly affect people's lives and property. They, like local judges, should be answerable to the voters.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Sustainability

There's a lot of talk these days about this and that being "unsustainable."
I'll tell you what is unsustainable.
"America owes six times what it collects in tax revenues each year, and that ratio is projected to explode with the retirement of the baby boomers."
That's from a guy named Bob Wiedemer, who predicted the housing market collapse.
He says buy gold.
A better strategy might be to move to Bora Bora or Tora Tora or one of those Pacific islands that is supposed to sink beneath the sea any day now because of "unsustainable" global warming.

Say it ain't so, Joe

Joe Arpaio, America's most well-known sheriff, is under investigation.
A U.S. attorney in Arizona is investigating the Maricopa County sheriff, according to Fox News. Arpaio, in the meantime, has been investigating the mayor of Phoenix, the chairman of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, the state attorney general, the country manager and a criminal judge.
Arpai is controversial because he makes prisoners wear pink underwear, feeds them two cheap meals a day, created a female chain gang and houses prisoners in tents. When the criminals complain about being int ents, he tells them soldiers in Iraq live in tents in 120 degree heat and they haven't committed any crimes. Naturally, he has been re-elected to office for the past 18 years by huge margins.
But people who favor coddling criminals -- such as Amnesty International, the ACLU and the New York Times -- don't much like Arpaio. They claim he is cruel.
There is some evidence to support that claim. Arpaio only allows prisoners to watch two channels -- Disney and CSpan.
If watching CSpan isn't harsh punishment, what is?

Barack Obama: His frugal side

Here's a shocker: The Washington Times reports that President Obama succeeded in beating his predecessor in getting spending cuts.
According to the Times, Obama got Congress to approve 60 percent of the cuts he recommended, whereas George Bush got only 40 percent.
But don't pop the champagne cork yet. The cuts amounted to less than $7 billion, which is pocket change in Washington as Congress is setting records in deficits and debt.
Most of the "savings" came from eliminating the F-22 Raptor program. The Raptor, according to the U.S. Air Force is the best fighter aircraft in the world, now or in the forseeable future.
But it is a bit pricey, at around $145 million per aircraft.
Congress decided to scrap it and replace it with the F-35, formerly called Joint Strike Fighter.
My take is that this free-spending Congress was after every dollar it could get and was willing to cut a few programs for that purpose, especially in national defense. Obama and the liberal Democrats running Congress still own the spending record, however, and are likely to exceed it this year.
But the Times story also highlights the weakness of Bush and the Republican majority in Congress before 2009 and helps explain why a Democrat is in the Oval Office and the GOP is the minority party. The mystery is why some clueless Republicans are still calling for the party to be more like Democrats, especially when polls show that vital independent voters are fleeing the liberal party.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

No news

Here we are less than two weeks into the new year and already the Biggest Understatement of 2010 has been recorded.
According to the Associated Press, Barack Obama has said he has failed to bring the country together.
Obama has done more to tear the country apart than any president before him.
However, this headline from CNN may be accurate: "Muslim activist: Obama has brought us together."
Obama promised to be ethical, transparent, bipartisan and frugal with people's money. He also promised tax cuts although I know of no one -- liberal or conservative -- who believed that one.
Indeed, during the past year he has shown that he is a classical tax-and-spend liberal. The only twist is that he combines it with Chicago-style politics, the lowest form of that art.
He promised that if Congess would spend billions of dollars, unemployment would not top 8 percent. If it did not, unemployment would reach 9 percent. Congress did and today unemployment is 10 percent.
He promised the spending would create 3.5 million jobs. It cost 3.5 million jobs.
He promised health care reform that would lower costs. The plan being formulated behind closed doors would greatly increase costs. He promised health insurance for everyone. The plan does not do that.
As for ethics, read Michell Malkin's book Culture of Corruption.
If he were unifying, his poll numbers would be high and people would be supporting Democrats. Instead, his approval ratings are low and sinking and pundits say Democrats could lose Congress this year.
Quite an achievement.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Granting exceptions

Speaking of political correctness, don't you love the Harry Reid controversy?
Reid, the liberal majority leader in the U.S. Senate referred to the president as a "Negro."
Everyone went nuts, and there are demands for Reid to resign.
But Reid apologized. Liberals are very big on apologies. President Obama forgave his fellow liberal Democrat, which he never would have done had Reid been a Republican. Now Democrats say it is "over."
This is how dictionary.com defines Negro: "a member of the peoples traditionally classified as the Negro race, esp. those who originate in sub-Saharan Africa: no longer in technical use."
Well, Obama's father originated in sub-Saharan Africa.
But liberals have decided the word Negro is no long acceptable (depending on who utters it, of course).
A derivative of that word, in fact, is now the ONLY word in the English language that white people are not allowed to utter, anywhere, anytime without universal liberal condemnation.
They ran Trent Lott out of the Senate because he said something nice about a senator on the senator's 100th birthday and 60 years ago the senator supported segregation.
That's how far they have to reach in order to invoke the rules they establish as to how much freedom of speech Americans may enjoy.
I ran into a classic example of this when I was an editorial writer. I wrote an editorial the purpose of which was to recognize a local hero of many years ago who was a member of the peoples traditionally classified as the Negro race.
But what made him a hero was the fact that he was, as described in a quotation used in the editorial, a "Negro." Speaking out as he did probably endangered his life but showed his courage.
Yet, some idiot liberal editor in the newsroom changed the quote -- which is something that should never be done to begin with -- to eliminate the word "Negro" and thus remove the entire point of the editorial.
I googled the newspaper and found that the word had been used hundreds of times before, but this lib wasn't going to allow it to be used by a conservative editorial writer.
Liberals always want to define the terms of debate, because of the Liberal Golden Rule: Them that sets the rules get the gold.

Another view

One reader took issue with my description of the Obama approach to national security as "politically correct." (See "How to lose a war," below.)
Well, this is what John Lehman, secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11 Commission, recently told National Review Online:
"“President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He’s made a lot of commission’s members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations.” He said Obama has taken a “lawyer-like, politically-correct approach” to national security issues like terrorist watchlists and no-fly lists. “You got to blame the president for enforcing the politically-correct and legalistic policies that led to these failures.”

Friday, January 8, 2010

Tolerance

It wasn't coincidence that the Underwear Bomber tried to strike on Christmas Day, anymore than it was coincidence that airplanes smashed into the World Trade Center.
The Twin Towers were a distinct symbol of capitalism.
Terrorists hate capitalism and Christianity. So a strike on Christmas or Easter also should have been expected.
Yet, during the gulf wars, the coalition forces would reduce or eliminate engagement with the enemy on Muslim holy days.
Liberals say we must be better than our adversaries.
Maybe so. How many American soldiers and civilians are we required to sacrifice while making such noble gestures?

Stick it to me time

A few years back, the politicians in Washington -- as always on the lookout for ways to relieve American families of their earnings and use their ill-gotten gains to buy votes -- came up with a doozy.
As it turns out, there were a few dozen taxpayers who were earning substantial sums of money but, paying little or no income tax.
They weren't tax cheats, like some of President Obama's appointees. They were following all the rules that Congress had laid down in the labyrinthine tax code.
But Congress still didn't like the result so they passed a law that basically created another tax code to extract money from these honest taxpayers.
It was called the Alternative Minimum Tax -- quite possibly the most unfair tax law ever written.
It was only supposed to affect about 100 people. But it was cleverly designed to expand each year and ensnare more taxpayers.
This year -- believe it or not -- it will turn 25 million American taxpayers upside down, shaking $63 billion from their pockets. Families that earn as little as $75,000 will be included.
It is only one of about 70 new taxes that descended on middle America Jan. 1, according to Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal. The Democrat Congress allowed the Bush tax relief to expire, a further blow to economic recovery.
But the continued expansion of the AMT means schoolteachers and bus drivers and many other Americans who didn't fancy themselves among the "rich" are learning the liberal lexicon the hard way.
Is there any wonder that the Tea Party movement is the largest and fastest growing political force in decades?
How's that hope and change working out for you?

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Words of wisdom

In the late 19th century, the U.S. House had a wise and effective Speaker named Thomas Brackett Reed.
One of the wisest things he said was, “One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.”
As we know, this is a core belief of liberals. Even now they are engaged in trying to cure all the evils in the world by passing laws (without regard to costs and actual benefits).
Reed once said of a couple of his colleagues, “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”
That applies to liberals as well.
Reed's wisdom is needed today.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

More on poverty

To hear the left tell it, America is a horrible place to live because some people live in "poverty."
Liberals must not own a dictionary. If they did, they would know that poverty cannot be eliminated.
Poverty is a relative term. It means those lowest in the economic strata. Unless everyone from Bill Gates to some unemployed street sweeper earns the same, poverty will exist.
What the left doesn't like for people to know is that poverty declined in the United States until the liberals began their War on Poverty in the 1960s. Then it remained stable until welfare was eliminated in the 1990s, after spending more than $5 trillion.
They also hate it when people point out that the poorest Americans are better off than the vast majority of the people on the planet.
Each year, the Heritage Foundation does a report timed to coincide with the release of the poverty figures, which the left always seizes upon to rail at America again and try to pump up the poverty industry -- those who make a good living off of "relieving" poverty.
This from the most recent Heritage report:
"According to the government's own surveys, the typical "poor" American has cable or satellite TV, two color TVs, and a DVD player or VCR. He has air conditioning, a car, a microwave, a refrig­erator, a stove, and a clothes washer and dryer. He is able to obtain medical care when needed. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs."
It is also extremely important to realize that the government does not take into account all the government aid when it tabulates the income of the poor.
Governments spent more than $714 billion in 2008 on aid to the poor. Heritage says, "If converted into cash, this aid would be nearly four times the amount needed to eliminate poverty in the U.S...."
Nearly two-thirds of poor people live in single parent homes, a condition exacerbated by policies championed by the left. When the War on Poverty began, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage and today the number is 39 percent, Heritage said.
It is difficult not to conclude that the left is merely using the poor as another interest group and that it is to their advantage for the poor to remain poor.

Rooting out root causes

Well, Jimmy Jones won't be around the 'hood for a while.
News4Jax.com reports that the 38-year-old Jacksonville man will spend 15 years in a federal prison after being convicted on charges of possessing a firearm by a convicted felon.
Citizen Jones is considered a career criminal for multiple prior felony convictions, including armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
Jones might be poor, since he probably never had a job, but that isn't the reason for crime. Heather MacDonald wrote an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal that pretty much knocked that old liberal mantra "poverty causes crime" silly.
As she noted, the actual trend is that crime decreases during recessions such as the current one and the one in the 1960s. More poor people should have the opposite effect.
But, guess what? If you put criminals in jail and use effective police techniques, crime goes down. Can you believe it?
The prisons are bulging and crime is down. Liberals simply can't wrap their minds around this. Nor could they accept the facts reported by Ann Coulter showing that the most likely cause of both crime and poverty is single motherhood, which robs a child of a family that will keep him in line, push him to get an education and help him land a job.
Lastly, police know that crime increases when the population of males 15-24 is larger. From 1990 to today, that cohort has dropped relative to the overall population.
Mayor John Peyton is boasting that murders are down 22 percent in Jacksonville, and no doubt would like to ascribe it to the $30 million the city spent on the Jacksonville Journey. But murders are down 25 percent in Los Angeles. Unless Los Angeles spent a like amount for a Journey, Peyton may need to look elsewhere.
Peyton might look at the fact that there are fewer criminals like Jones and many of them are in prison, where they can't commit crimes.

Friday, January 1, 2010

How to lose a war

OK. A Nigerian Muslim man gets on a plane in Amsterdam. He pays cash for a one-way ticket and checks no luggage. His father previously had notified authorities that his son had been schmoozing around with terrorists and the youth had been placed on a watch list.
So, they let him on the plane and he tries to blow it up in Detroit.
Flashback: A Marine hero of World War II tries to get on a plane and security personnel find a congressional Medal of Honor. It has a pin -- used by President Roosevelt to affix it to the Marine's uniform -- so they figure it is a weapon. He is detained for hours.
Every terrorist captured or killed to date has been a Muslim male. Not a single one has been a U.S. Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipient.
Nevertheless, to even mention that a terrorist is a Muslim is to invite rage from the left, and from suspect organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, so the government studiously avoids the touchy subject.
Furthermore, the terrorist admits he was trained and armed in Yemen by al-Qaida and that other terrorists will follow him, attempting to kill Americans. Rather than waterboarding him to save American lives, he is given a Miranda warning and lawyers up, then clams up.
Flashback again, to 1942. Four Nazis are dropped on Ponte Vedra Beach by a sub, make it to New York and team up with four others to indulge in some sabotage. They are captured and within weeks of their arrival, six are executed.
The Nazis never attempted another sabotage mission. We won World War II. How are we going to win the current war when the current president refuses to even acknowledge that we are at war?



Welcome to 2010

It’s a new year. What lies ahead? A fork in the road.
As Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
One path is toward European-style socialism. We began veering sharply in that direction last year.
Without changes, the left’s existing entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – will, along with debt payments, consume 92 percent of the federal government’s spending within 10 years. And they are about to add another entitlement of gargantuan size.
About debt, no one put it better than Gordon Liddy: “A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man .... which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.”
Another portent: Within a year or two, more than half the people in this country will pay no federal income taxes.
“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner,” James Bovard said.
A majority can feed on a minority until there is nothing left but the bones. Then who eats what?
Politicians say the recession is over. I don’t buy it. Why would anybody invest money in such conditions, and with so much uncertainty about inflation and future taxes?
What we need are more people paying less taxes. Slash marginal tax rates and capital gains taxes, which are among the highest anywhere, and get the economy moving again.
Politicians created the problems and they can only make the problems worse.
Our choices at the fork in the road: More government and less prosperity or less government and more prosperity.