Category: politics

Moron of the Day

Via Patterico comes this priceless quote from the LA Times about the bailout bill:

“The late Jack Kennedy made a remark that sometimes, just sometimes, your party asks too much of you,” Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) told Republicans on the House floor. “Why they would ask you to vote against this, I will never know.”

How about because it is the most glaringly obvious symbol of your party’s malicious intent toward this country, Mr. Rangel? The bailout is downright insulting in how blatantly it steps all over any intended uses of the money and just goes hog-wild paying off every special interest group that worked to get the Democrats into power.

Now Obama’s making sure they get paid, even if it means putting a knife in the back of the nation.

Yeah, I have no idea why they’d vote against it.

Daily Hopechange for January 28

Day eight, still no unicorn. I’m beginning to lose hope.

Remember when George Bush was leaving a press conference in Beijing and found that the door was locked? He laughed it off, but the photos captured are still used to portray him as a bonehead. Well, apparently today Obama tried to walk through a window to get into the White House instead of using the door. Surprisingly, not many photos of this have surfaced, and I doubt I’ll be seeing it all over CNN, NYT, and WaPo anytime soon…

Also, it appears that Obama suddenly does have Muslim roots. He says that his Muslim family members and time living in Muslim countries give him an advantage in relating to Muslims as he tries to “reach out to them.” What this means, I’m not quite sure, but I do think it’s interesting that a fact so vehemently denied during the primaries is now embracied as a positive attribute. Certainly makes you wonder about John McCain calling any mention of Islam in relation to Obama a “shameless attack.”

And the stimulus package from hell just keeps on rolling… the good news is that the Republicans are letting the Democrats own every festering ounce of it. It passed the house today 244-188, with every Republican voting against it (along with 11 Democrats). As Pelosi said, “We won the election. We wrote the bill.” It’s become plain as day where the Democrats stand now – firmly on the side of pork spending and shady interest groups. Thankfully, this time the Republicans are actually standing firm against this one, so when this house of cards crumbles – and it will – then it will be Obama and his party who correctly take the blame.

Fight FOCA

Those of you who have been around for a while know my stance on the issue of abortion. It falls in the same column as the issue of murder – “don’t do it.” This isn’t a religious issue, despite how much the media (or the President) might want to play it off as such. This is a simple issue of whether or not the government should legalize genocide. The battle just became more difficult with Obama taking office and the Democrats securely holding both houses, so I was grateful when Prester Scott put out the call today to support, and made me aware of, Fight FOCA – an organized coalition dedicated to fighting the monstrocity that is the “Freedom Of Choice Act.” I’m going to shamelessly steal his assessment of the act:

FOCA, in the form in which it was filed in 2007, is a brief and sweeping bill that would eliminate, in one stroke, all federal, state and local laws and regulations that restrict or “discriminate against” abortion in any way. Among other things, this would:

  • End the ban on partial-birth abortion (which is really infanticide on a fully-developed child who just hasn’t left the womb yet).
  • Force taxpayers to fund abortion.
  • Spit in the face of (what’s left of) the Tenth Amendment’s protection of State powers. If a bulldozer measure like this were passed to preserve clearly enumerated Constitutional protections, that would be one thing, but abortion is not one of them. Roe v. Wade was patent judicial activism.
  • Eliminate parental-consent laws for minors seeking abortions. (If the States don’t matter, the rights of mere parents and families count even less.)
  • Potentially, strike down public health regulations and medical licensing on the practice of abortion. So much for keeping abortion “safe.”
  • Potentially, force medical personnel and/or hospitals that accept government-funded insurance (such as Medicaid) to perform abortions on demand. This is probably the most severe consequence. Doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion for religious or philosophical reasons could lose their licenses, or just find themselves practically unable to find employment. Catholic and other religious hospitals might have to close, all the charity work they do now to go undone. (What will this do to the economy, I wonder?)

President Obama told Planned Parenthood, “The first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.” His record shows him to be arguably the most pro-abortion senator in the country, and he was infamously against Illinois’ Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a position which put him beyond pro-abortion and into pro-infanticide territory. His reasoning for opposing that act tottered somewhere between weak and absurd, to the point of directly stating that the inconvenience to doctors simply wasn’t outweighed by the fact human life was at risk. Now he has the opportunity to take his insanity to the national stage, having already slashed the regulations put in place by Bush (and Reagan, before Clinton had his way) to prevent our foreign aid money from being used to perform abortions.

Nancy Pelosi has also introduced a new expenditure in the montrous bailout plan being worked by Congress – an extra couple hundred million for “family planning” and contraceptives. She defends this by suggesting that children put an unnecessary burden on the goverment, and so by reducing births, they will reduce government costs, and stimulate the economy.

We are fighting an uphill battle here, and need to be on our toes at the very least until we can get some power back in 2010. Signing that petition would be a good start.

Speed camera followup

Techdirt reports that Pinal County here in AZ has ditched its speed cameras, for a reason that’s rather obvious to me but quite shocking for Ms. Napolitano and her fan club: it makes the roads more dangerous – not less.

[Pinal County Sheriff Paul] Babeu said most of the total $134,199.43 in fines and fees from the paid citations covered administrative and operational costs, leaving the county with a net profit of $12,391.58 that Babeu dismissed as paltry.

Moreover, Babeu said, total motor-vehicle accidents increased by 16 percent in the same time period, and fatal collisions in the Queen Creek area doubled from three to six.

[…]

“I’m against photo speed enforcement completely,” Babeu said, walking the three-member panel through a detailed PowerPoint presentation. “Here in Pinal, it’s failed miserably.”

Miserably, indeed. Good for them for facing reality – and then actually acting accordingly. Let’s hope the rest of the state (or at least my own county!) follows in their footsteps.

Daily Hopechange – guns edition

Via the Rott comes this gem:

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is hoping to pass a firearm-licensing bill that will significantly rewrite gun-ownership laws in America.

Among the more controversial provisions of the bill are requirements that all handgun owners submit to the federal government a photo, thumb print and mental heath records. Further, the bill would order the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer and owner’s address in America.

It also forbids the transfer of “qualifying firearms” to anyone who is not a registered and licensed gun dealer or collector. What makes a “qualifying firearm,” you wisely ask? “[A]ny handgun or any semiautomatic firearm that takes an ammunition clip.” So basically… everything except revolvers or single shot weapons. I knew I liked those wheelguns for a reason.

Three guesses as to what his justification is for this travesty.

“to protect the public against the unreasonable risk of injury and death associated with the unrecorded sale or transfer of firearms to criminals and youth.”

For the chidren! As long as you can somehow tie it back to that, any violation of rights or liberties is justified – at least in the mind of your average politician.  The bill even starts off with a tragic tale of a boy who used his body to shield a girl in the line of fire of a lunatic who decided he was going to shoot up a bus. Unfortunately, even had this law been in effect, the result would have been the same. Why? Because criminals don’t obey laws. This is a crucial cognitive disconnect present in nearly every member of congress, and especially the Democrats – these sort of registries and transfer penalties and fines and fees do not work on those who ignore the law. The only people who this kind of legislation affects are the law-abiding ones who don’t need to be tracked in the first place. It makes it even more inconvenient to buy or own a firearm, which means those aforementioned law-abiding citizens will be less likely to have one, which in turn means that when the aforementioned law-ignoring citizens decide they want a crack at his home theater system, he is left helpless – or even dead.

Self-defense is a basic human right, outlined and explicitly declared in the Constitution of the United States. “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” it says – and this law seeks, yet again, to infringe on that right. It seems so absurdly obvious that this would be the case that it never ceases to raise frustration levels in people like myself, Rott, and others – namely, people with basic cognitive skills who can recognize simple truths about reality. Unfortunately, very few of these sort of people get elected into public office.