Saturday, January 15, 2011

Mexican gunman fires across border toward U.S. highway workers

El Paso Times  "Drug cartels use this busy smuggling corridor in between the Quitman Mountains and mountains in the northwestern part of Chihuahua state to traffic marijuana and sometimes cocaine, Doyle said."....
"The shots from across the border angered U.S. Rep. Francisco "Quico" Canseco, R-Texas, who represents the area.
""It is completely unacceptable that Americans at work, doing their job in America, come under gunfire from across the border in Mexico," Canseco said in a statement. "Our border is not secure from violence that threatens American lives. Securing our border against the cartels and their violent threat must be a top priority.""

The End Of Sarah Palin?

Outside the Beltway   "...Doyle McManus asserts that the Arizona shootings, and most importantly, Palin’s not-very-well-received response to the controversy that erupted thereafter, will effectively mark her end as a serious political force. McManus acknowledges, and I agree, that the argument that Palin is in any responsible for the shootings is absurd, but, he argues, that doesn’t really matter:"
I do appreciate Sarah Palin very much and have always thought she would make a excellent vice-president; much better than Joe Biden. And I feel she has been much more qualified than Barack Obama, who would have been the ideal vice president for a Bernie Sanders administration.

Fidel Castro on Obama’s speech in Arizona

Taken from CubaDebate  "When he began his speech yesterday, I observed that he was tense and highly dependent on the written pages. He soon recovered his serenity, his usual presence on the stage and the precise words for expressing his ideas. What he did not say was not said because he did not want to say it.
"As a literary piece and just praise of those who deserve it, it could be given a prize.
"As a political speech it left much to be desired."
Castro's expectations were high, most likely because he saw the Che posters along with Cuban and Soviet flags at Obama offices and rallies.
Photo: outsidethebeltway

Blame Palin

National Review  "In the week since the Arizona shootings, much of the media’s commentary exemplified Palin Derangement Syndrome. It became a joke: On Twitter, one of the most popular “hashtags” was #blamePalin, which was used to, well, blame Palin for TV-show cancellations, malfunctioning toilets, and bad restaurant service.
"Unfortunately, for all the joking of the Twitterati, liberals were serious. Here’s a list of the top ten most inane comments connecting Palin to the shootings."
Now if Democrats could only blame George W. Bush for Sarah Palin they would have all bases covered. I'm just sayin'.

10 principles for improved business climates

insider online : "A good business climate encourages existing businesses to grow, people to start new businesses, and national and international businesses to invest in an area. A poor business climate does the opposite."
1. Keep total tax burden low.
2. Keep taxes on businesses low.
3. Avoid corporate welfare.
4. Remove privileges enjoyed by labor unions.
5. Lower or eliminate minimum wages.
6. Reduce workers compensation costs.
7. Keep housing affordable.
8. Reduce the burden of regulations.
9. Discourage lawsuit abuse.
10. Attract members of the creative class.
Do not expect these principles to be adopted by the current administration.

Are we as free as we once were?

Economic Freedom Is Foundation Of All Other Freedoms  "Next Monday, January 17, is the 50th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address. The speech is most commonly remembered for President Eisenhower’s warning about the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex,” but often left out of the story is Ike’s warning about profligate federal spending as well: “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” Ike went on to call for “balance in and among national programs” including “balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable.”"
I think we are now at the stage where opposing the "comfortably desirable" is likened to genocide and/ or racism by liberals.

Why Does Religious Freedom Matter? "The American model of religious liberty takes a strongly positive view of religious practice, both private and public. While it does not mean that anything and everything done in the name of religious liberty is not subject to the rule of law, it does mean that the law ought to make as much room as possible for the practice of religious faith. Far from privatizing religion, it assumes that religious believers and institutions will take active roles in society, including engaging in politics and policy-making and helping form the public’s moral consensus. In fact, the American Founders considered religious engagement in shaping the public morality essential to ordered liberty and the success of their experiment in self-government."  Jennifer Marshall

Religious Freedom On Trial At Mt. Soledad  "The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court panel ruled that the 43-foot Mt. Soledad Cross, which has occupied a seaside hill in La Jolla, California for over 50 years, violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution."...
"Despite the cross’s memorializing purpose and its incorporation into a national tribute to fallen soldiers, the Ninth Circuit wrote in their opinion: “The history and absolute dominance of the Cross are not mitigated by the belated efforts to add less significant secular elements to the Memorial.""
What now about the thousands of crosses on soldiers' graves around this country and in Europe?  The American Civil Liberties Union seems to prefer the population have fewer civil liberties rather than offend even one person. Yet strangely, when I wrote to a TV program that I found their many uses of the exclamation, "oh, my god!" to be extremely hurtful, they wrote back saying, basically, tough toenails.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Making It Up As We Go Along

Victor Davis Hanson  "Gone is Bush the great Constitution-shredder. Tribunals, renditions, Predators, wiretaps, Iraq, Guantanamo, preventative detention — these are now either embraced or expanded. Iraq (“the surge is not working”) is Obama’s “greatest achievement.” The public I think believes Obama demagogued all those protocols for political advantage, then as commander-in-chief looked at the intelligence, and quietly adopted them all. Okay, politicians do that. But how can one “virtually” oppose all that he embraces? Does he just make things up as he goes along, assuming we all have collective amnesia?"

Federal policies failing the Central Valley

Hot Air  "The crisis in the Central Valley comes directly from the application of the Endangered Species Act to the Delta smelt, one of a number of bait fish species indigenous to the area. The order by a federal judge relying on that law cut off irrigation to a massive area of arable land and created a vast wasteland out of a farming bonanza, all to protect one species of inedible fish. Congress needs to curtail the ESA and get the water turned back on in the valley."
calwatchdog

Blame Righty: A Condensed History

Michelle Malkin  "That same month, a sick, evil man named Jiverly Voong ambushed an immigration center in Binghamton, N.Y. Recently fired from his job, Voong murdered 13 people, critically wounded four others, and then committed suicide. The instant psychologists of the Left knew nothing about the disgruntled man of Vietnamese descent and undetermined political affiliation. But within hours of the shooting, commenters at liberal mega-website Huffington Post had overwhelmingly convicted GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the National Rifle Association, Fox News, Lou Dobbs, and yours truly. Liberal radio host Alan Colmes pointed his finger at the “huge anti-immigrant backlash in this country” — never mind that tens of millions of legal immigrants and naturalized citizens have coped with hardship, overcome racism, and embraced assimilation without going bloody bonkers."

Let Me Be Equally Clear  "Let me be equally clear. I am not arguing that the shooting caused the media to be recklessly irresponsible and wrong in its coverage of the cause of the shooting. It did not. But, separate from the Tucson shooting incident, now is a time to pause and publicly discuss the degraded state of mainstream media reporting and its effect on the health of our democracy."

Tucson and the Failure of the Political Class "The stampede to blame this terrible incident on a political movement that appears to represent more people than the traditional Republican and Democratic parties is horrifying, though perhaps not surprising. The attempt of Paul Krugman...to blame this shooting on what one saw “just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies” in the 2008 election campaign is the lowest and deepest excavation on public taste the Times has conducted since the 1985 headline about President Reagan’s planned visit to Bitburg, Germany: “Reagan Likens Nazi War Dead to Concentration Camp Victims.”"

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Krugman?  "Clearly, the MSM now has no justification to continue to make bogus charges against Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, or conservatives in general. And Krugman and Olbermann and the rest are in a pickle. This is a potential public relations disaster for the left and they are in the middle of it. Fortunately, they have the MSM to cover-up for them.
"It would be media suicide for Krugman and Olbermann to admit they were wrong. Consequently, they have only one choice: continue the lie."
Ed Driscoll at Pajamas Media


Civility

http://townhall.com/cartoons/stevekelley
http://townhall.com/cartoons/kencatalino
http://townhall.com/cartoons/bobgorrell

Conservatives Criticize Free T-Shirts At Tucson Memorial Service (Updated)

TPM  "The shirts, which bear the same logo that adorns other items from the event -- including press passes, signage and volunteer t-shirts -- were placed on many of the seats in the lower sections of the arena when tonight's capacity crowd walked in. "
Weasel Zippers

















Theme of “Together We Thrive” T-shirt came from Obama’s Organizing for America  "University of Arizona brass did not originate the “Together We Thrive” T-shirt. They merely recycled it for Obama—and recycled it in time for what should have been a dignified Memorial for the dead.
"If you were a mourner who took home a “Together We Thrive” T-shirt have a look at the bottom of your shirt. “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote” is a common theme of the DNC, and it’s right there on your Memorial T-shirt memento.
"Welcome to the era of Obama, where cheering and standing ovations, for the first time in history, became part of the Requiem for the Dead."
This is what the Democrats have become.

Random Thoughts from Neal Boortz

Nealz Nuze  "....•People will scream louder and longer over a 15 cent increase in the price of their gas than they will about the loss of another freedom."....
"....•If you're in a bar, and some deranged killer walks in with a gun ... do you want him to be the only one in that bar with a gun?"....