Here is the latest manifestation of the compassion and tolerance and inclusiveness of liberals. Ed Schultz has a prime time (10:00 p.m.) show on MSNBC, the "Ed Show". On May 24, he called noted conservative activist Laura Ingram a "right wing slut". He them immediately apologized and took a self-imposed one week leave without pay.
This also lays bare the breath-taking media double-standard. While they ignore this latest outpouring of hate form a liberal, I want you to do a little thought experiment. What would the media response be if Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Neil Boortz or any prominent conservative referred to, say, Hillary Clinton as a left wing slut? What would the response be in the new media then? But when a liberal does it ----- complete silence.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
"Cash For Clunkers" Pushes Up Used Car Prices
Back when Congress passed one of the most idiotic laws in the history of the country, cash-for-clunkers, I pointed out that one of it’s likely effects would be to drive up the price of used cars. Now that has happened. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, it is reported at length that used car prices have gone up dramatically. “Prices for used cars hit a record high in April and are poised to go even higher ----.”
I scored a bulls-eye on that one.
I scored a bulls-eye on that one.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
FEMA Tells Virginia To Take A Hike
Many people are struggling to understand FEMA’s decision to deny disaster assistance funds to Virginia; it seems to make no sense. Dear reader, let me explain. In 2009, Virginians elected a Republican governor, a Republican lieutenant governor, and a Republican attorney general. In 2010, voters in Southwest Virginia turned a 28 year incumbent Democrat U.S. Representative out of office and installed a Republican.
Obama is on the record as saying that Democrats should punish their enemies.
Obama is on the record as saying that Democrats should punish their enemies.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Obama's New Energy Policy
President Obama announced his new energy policy this week; he says he wants to ramp up domestic oil production. "Drill Baby Drill", in other words.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Big Bird Loving Liberals Go Wild
Hell hath no fury like a liberal spurned.
It is truly amusing, as well as very telling, to watch the left-wing liberals squeal like stuck pigs over reductions in state funding for public broadcasting (PBS). Based upon what I’ve seen in the Roanoke Times of late, I have visions of them rolling on the ground, foaming at the mouth, sputtering “Puh ----puh, puh puh, P – B - S. Not PBS!!!! “
On May 5, the Times ran an editorial (“McDonnell’s final budget shot”) bemoaning Gov. McDonnell’s line item veto of a $424,000 increase in PBS funding for educational programming. Note the word “increase” there. In that editorial, the Times uses the word “cut” five times, while fully admitting that what happened was the elimination of an increase. Regardless of what one may think of PBS, it is instructive to note that in the minds of big government liberals, eliminating an increase is a cut. The editorial goes on to note that PBS in Virginia will still, after the “cut” of an increase, receive $3.18 million of your tax dollars.
Three days later, Dan Casey just goes nuts in his Times column (“PBS cut nothing to crow about”). I don’t want to hear any more of you Liberals trying to denigrate Conservatives with your talk about birthers and global warmers and what-not-ers when you’ve got Casey spouting off in public about the conspiratorial machinations of McDonnell and Republicans concerning the 2012 Presidential election. I follow this stuff pretty closely, and nowhere have I seen or heard anyone in the national media mention McDonnell as possibly running for President. In the Fox News debate of Republican Presidential contenders the other night, McDonnell wasn’t there or even talked about for not being there. I have asked McDonnell personally myself about this, and have been told he has no plans to run. Yet here is Casey claiming that such an insignificant event as a line item veto of $424,000 in the state budget is McDonnell’s opening move in his run for the President. Laughable.
And then the Times really loses it on May 10 by running a cartoon showing heavily armed soldiers (Navy SEALS, not doubt), receiving orders form McDonnell to “take out PBS.” It is also very telling that the Times impugns the motives of anyone who dares to disagree with them by publically saying those people are willing, nay, anxious, to resort to extreme violence. Oh yes, today McDonnell exercises his line item veto authority, as every governor does, and tomorrow he’ll be sending out the commandos to the PBS offices.
This cartoon is highly offensive and I demand an apology from the Times.
Liberals, take three deep breaths and listen to me carefully: Tomorrow, the sun will rise.
In order to fully understand the PBS issue, we must review some history.
PBS was started in 1970 as an attempt to provide additional television programming content that normally wouldn’t be found on the commercial TV stations at that time. This was due to the nature of the TV industry in that era. There was no cable (much less satellite) TV; virtually all TV programs came over the air from three privately owned national networks (ABC, NBC, CBS). These networks were commercial enterprises and were financially viable by means of the selling of on-air commercials. That meant that they were primarily interested in broadcasting programs that a lot of people would want to watch.
It was felt by many that an alternative TV outlet was needed that could carry programs that were not totally dependent on their ability to sell commercials for their existence, perhaps more educational programs. So Congress established PBS and subsidized it.
As a side note, I remember when my family got its first TV. I was about nine years old. The set was large and bulky, and we got a grand total of ------ one ------ channel from an antenna on the roof of the house.
Now, of course, things are much different. We have cable TV, satellite TV, hundreds of channels, the internet, YouTube, HULU, DVD’s, etc. We have Animal Planet, The History Channel, A&E, Discovery Channel, Healthy Living Channel, all of the news channels, etc. ad nauseum.
It is not realistic to now claim that society or our education system cannot, in any stretch of the imagination, continue to function effectively without PBS. The world has changed in the last forty years, and PBS is now an anachronism. If some people want to preserve it, have at it (send your check to --- well, look it up). But please, behave like adults rather than throwing childish hissy-fits. And, especially, don’t tell the rest of us that we have to pay for your favorite TV channel with our tax dollars.
It is truly amusing, as well as very telling, to watch the left-wing liberals squeal like stuck pigs over reductions in state funding for public broadcasting (PBS). Based upon what I’ve seen in the Roanoke Times of late, I have visions of them rolling on the ground, foaming at the mouth, sputtering “Puh ----puh, puh puh, P – B - S. Not PBS!!!! “
On May 5, the Times ran an editorial (“McDonnell’s final budget shot”) bemoaning Gov. McDonnell’s line item veto of a $424,000 increase in PBS funding for educational programming. Note the word “increase” there. In that editorial, the Times uses the word “cut” five times, while fully admitting that what happened was the elimination of an increase. Regardless of what one may think of PBS, it is instructive to note that in the minds of big government liberals, eliminating an increase is a cut. The editorial goes on to note that PBS in Virginia will still, after the “cut” of an increase, receive $3.18 million of your tax dollars.
Three days later, Dan Casey just goes nuts in his Times column (“PBS cut nothing to crow about”). I don’t want to hear any more of you Liberals trying to denigrate Conservatives with your talk about birthers and global warmers and what-not-ers when you’ve got Casey spouting off in public about the conspiratorial machinations of McDonnell and Republicans concerning the 2012 Presidential election. I follow this stuff pretty closely, and nowhere have I seen or heard anyone in the national media mention McDonnell as possibly running for President. In the Fox News debate of Republican Presidential contenders the other night, McDonnell wasn’t there or even talked about for not being there. I have asked McDonnell personally myself about this, and have been told he has no plans to run. Yet here is Casey claiming that such an insignificant event as a line item veto of $424,000 in the state budget is McDonnell’s opening move in his run for the President. Laughable.
And then the Times really loses it on May 10 by running a cartoon showing heavily armed soldiers (Navy SEALS, not doubt), receiving orders form McDonnell to “take out PBS.” It is also very telling that the Times impugns the motives of anyone who dares to disagree with them by publically saying those people are willing, nay, anxious, to resort to extreme violence. Oh yes, today McDonnell exercises his line item veto authority, as every governor does, and tomorrow he’ll be sending out the commandos to the PBS offices.
This cartoon is highly offensive and I demand an apology from the Times.
Liberals, take three deep breaths and listen to me carefully: Tomorrow, the sun will rise.
In order to fully understand the PBS issue, we must review some history.
PBS was started in 1970 as an attempt to provide additional television programming content that normally wouldn’t be found on the commercial TV stations at that time. This was due to the nature of the TV industry in that era. There was no cable (much less satellite) TV; virtually all TV programs came over the air from three privately owned national networks (ABC, NBC, CBS). These networks were commercial enterprises and were financially viable by means of the selling of on-air commercials. That meant that they were primarily interested in broadcasting programs that a lot of people would want to watch.
It was felt by many that an alternative TV outlet was needed that could carry programs that were not totally dependent on their ability to sell commercials for their existence, perhaps more educational programs. So Congress established PBS and subsidized it.
As a side note, I remember when my family got its first TV. I was about nine years old. The set was large and bulky, and we got a grand total of ------ one ------ channel from an antenna on the roof of the house.
Now, of course, things are much different. We have cable TV, satellite TV, hundreds of channels, the internet, YouTube, HULU, DVD’s, etc. We have Animal Planet, The History Channel, A&E, Discovery Channel, Healthy Living Channel, all of the news channels, etc. ad nauseum.
It is not realistic to now claim that society or our education system cannot, in any stretch of the imagination, continue to function effectively without PBS. The world has changed in the last forty years, and PBS is now an anachronism. If some people want to preserve it, have at it (send your check to --- well, look it up). But please, behave like adults rather than throwing childish hissy-fits. And, especially, don’t tell the rest of us that we have to pay for your favorite TV channel with our tax dollars.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Water Boarding vs. Being Shot In The Head
For years while Republican George Bush was President, Democrats railed incessantly about how water boarding was torture, as bad as anything that happened in the gulags, not consistent with our American values, Bush and Cheney were war criminals for allowing this to happen, etc. ad nauseum.
Now that there is a Democrat in the White House, the very same Democrats who insisted that terrorists could not be water boarded because it was an inhumane practice apparently have no problem with an unarmed terrorist being shot in cold blood and his body dumped in the ocean.
Now that there is a Democrat in the White House, the very same Democrats who insisted that terrorists could not be water boarded because it was an inhumane practice apparently have no problem with an unarmed terrorist being shot in cold blood and his body dumped in the ocean.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Climate Refugees, Not Found
From The Wall Street Journal:
In 2005, the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.
Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made - and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of it s own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.
The map, which still can be found elsewhere on the Web, disappeared from the program's website sometime after April 11, when Gavin Atkins asked on AsianCorrespondent.com: "What happened to the climate refugees?" It's now 2011 and, as Mr. Atkins points out, many of the locales that the map identified as likely sources of climate refugees are "not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world."
The program's spokesman tells us that the map vanished because "it's not a UNEP prediction. ...that graphic did not represent UNEP views and was an oversimplification of UNEP views." He added that the program would like to publish a clarification, now that journalists are "making hay of it."
The climate-refugee prediction isn't the first global warming-related claim that has turned out to be laughable, and everyone can make mistakes. More troubling is the impulse among some advocates of the global warming alarmism to assert that they never said what they definitely said before the evidence went against them.
These columns have asked for some time how anyone can still manage to take the U.N.-led climate crowd seriously. Maybe the more pertinent question is whether the climateers have ever taken the public's intelligence seriously.
In 2005, the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.
Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made - and the U.N. has done a vanishing act of it s own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.
The map, which still can be found elsewhere on the Web, disappeared from the program's website sometime after April 11, when Gavin Atkins asked on AsianCorrespondent.com: "What happened to the climate refugees?" It's now 2011 and, as Mr. Atkins points out, many of the locales that the map identified as likely sources of climate refugees are "not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world."
The program's spokesman tells us that the map vanished because "it's not a UNEP prediction. ...that graphic did not represent UNEP views and was an oversimplification of UNEP views." He added that the program would like to publish a clarification, now that journalists are "making hay of it."
The climate-refugee prediction isn't the first global warming-related claim that has turned out to be laughable, and everyone can make mistakes. More troubling is the impulse among some advocates of the global warming alarmism to assert that they never said what they definitely said before the evidence went against them.
These columns have asked for some time how anyone can still manage to take the U.N.-led climate crowd seriously. Maybe the more pertinent question is whether the climateers have ever taken the public's intelligence seriously.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
To Every Thing There Is A Season
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to reap;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to breakdown, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 8
On September 11, 2001, as I was getting dressed to go to work, my wife was fixing breakfast while watching the news on TV. She came into the bedroom and said that a plane had gone into the World Trade Center. I assumed it was some wacko in a small, private plane or something, and I thought to myself, “How much damage can that do?” So, I went about getting ready for the day’s work. Then, as I walked into the kitchen to sit down for breakfast, I happened to look at the TV and saw the second plane hit the buildings. Now my thought was, “Wait, that’s a big plane!”.
We all know the rest of the story.
Instead of writing my usual type of column this time, it seems appropriate to do something different. As I think back to that day, some memories and images are still vivid. Here are some vignettes of my remembrances from that day and afterwards.
- Firemen going into the buildings as the office workers were coming out, running for their lives.
- The poignant spectacle of people jumping from the top floors of the buildings, since there was no escape route and their only alternative was to be burned alive.
- The building collapsing on itself, with people running away in the streets from the huge dust cloud coming their way, like something out of a space invaders movie.
- When I got to the office, how odd and abnormal it was that no airplanes were landing at the nearby, major airport.
- People on the doomed planes calling their loved ones on cell phones to say goodbye.
- Learning the story of the plane that was apparently trying to hit the White House but which was brought down in the Pennsylvania countryside by some of the passengers who stormed the cockpit.
- An interdenominational prayer service at a Mosque in the city where I lived.
- The feeling of oneness and unity and solemnity we had as a country.
- President Bush telling the world that if they weren’t with us in our war on terror, then they were against us.
- People dancing in the streets in the Arab world.
This was the second “day of infamy” experienced by America. And now, as with the first, it has been avenged.
I am so proud of our armed forces, and especially the Navy Seals who executed this raid flawlessly. But they couldn’t have done it alone. The intelligence community also deserves our praise, as do all of the people in various supporting roles.
And now, let us once again remember those who died on 911 and say another little prayer for them and their families. Let us vow that they shall not have died in vain, that America will continue to be strong, free, a place where all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, a shining city on a hill, the world’s last best hope.
God bless America, land that I love.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to reap;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to breakdown, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 8
On September 11, 2001, as I was getting dressed to go to work, my wife was fixing breakfast while watching the news on TV. She came into the bedroom and said that a plane had gone into the World Trade Center. I assumed it was some wacko in a small, private plane or something, and I thought to myself, “How much damage can that do?” So, I went about getting ready for the day’s work. Then, as I walked into the kitchen to sit down for breakfast, I happened to look at the TV and saw the second plane hit the buildings. Now my thought was, “Wait, that’s a big plane!”.
We all know the rest of the story.
Instead of writing my usual type of column this time, it seems appropriate to do something different. As I think back to that day, some memories and images are still vivid. Here are some vignettes of my remembrances from that day and afterwards.
- Firemen going into the buildings as the office workers were coming out, running for their lives.
- The poignant spectacle of people jumping from the top floors of the buildings, since there was no escape route and their only alternative was to be burned alive.
- The building collapsing on itself, with people running away in the streets from the huge dust cloud coming their way, like something out of a space invaders movie.
- When I got to the office, how odd and abnormal it was that no airplanes were landing at the nearby, major airport.
- People on the doomed planes calling their loved ones on cell phones to say goodbye.
- Learning the story of the plane that was apparently trying to hit the White House but which was brought down in the Pennsylvania countryside by some of the passengers who stormed the cockpit.
- An interdenominational prayer service at a Mosque in the city where I lived.
- The feeling of oneness and unity and solemnity we had as a country.
- President Bush telling the world that if they weren’t with us in our war on terror, then they were against us.
- People dancing in the streets in the Arab world.
This was the second “day of infamy” experienced by America. And now, as with the first, it has been avenged.
I am so proud of our armed forces, and especially the Navy Seals who executed this raid flawlessly. But they couldn’t have done it alone. The intelligence community also deserves our praise, as do all of the people in various supporting roles.
And now, let us once again remember those who died on 911 and say another little prayer for them and their families. Let us vow that they shall not have died in vain, that America will continue to be strong, free, a place where all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, a shining city on a hill, the world’s last best hope.
God bless America, land that I love.
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