PIG News Digest | Odds 'n' Ends

MARCH 2011

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [03/31/11]

National Border Patrol Council takes on Jihad Janet Napolitano..
"If the border was better now than it has ever been, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry would not have been brutally murdered by heavily armed Mexican criminals operations over 13 miles inside the United States. In some countries," it added, "that is construed as an act of war."

Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies' executive director, bitch-slaps Jihad Janet.
"The whole immigration-border issue is a sensitive one for this administration because no one believes they're interested in border security — and with good reason. And so they've had to go through all sorts of contortions to show they're really not open border supporters. This is just part of that marketing campaign."

But Krikorian tells Newsmax that as a former border governor herself in Arizona, Napolitano's defense of the administration's policies is becoming "something of a laughingstock."

"Every time she says this people belief her even less," Krikorian tells Newsmax. "She's like Baghdad Bob during the evasion of Iraq, saying there are no American tanks in Bagdad even as they're driving by right behind her. It's becoming something of a joke."

Cochise County (Arizona) Sheriff Larry Dever, exposes the truth about Jihad Janet's border bullshit.

Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever told FoxNews.com that a supervisor with the U.S. Border Patrol told him as recently as this month that the federal agency's office on Arizona's southern border was under orders to keep apprehension numbers down during specific reporting time periods.

"The senior supervisor agent is telling me about how their mission is now to scare people back," Dever said in an interview with FoxNews.com. "He said, 'I had to go back to my guys and tell them not to catch anybody, that their job is to chase people away. . . . They were not to catch anyone, arrest anyone. Their job was to set up posture, to intimidate people, to get them to go back."

Dever said his recent conversation with the Border Patrol supervisor was the latest in a series of communications on the subject that he has had with various federal agents over the last two years.

Honk, Honk, WTF!
Source: PIG News Wire [03/31/11]

I won't swear on a stack of pizza boxes that this is a response to the runaway Toyota problems that dominated the automotive news, last year, but the idea is officially in play. Why? VW Jettas that were built between March 2010 and March 2011 might have an interesting quirk. What quirk? I'll give you a hint: if your new Jetta goes into runaway Toyota mode, try honking the horn. Why? For starters it will warn the other drivers that, "Houston, we have a problem". There's also that other matter, the one cited in this Chicago Tribune news story:

Volkswagen of America is recalling about 71,000 2011 Jetta sedans for a wiring problem that could cause the car to turn off when the horn is used.

Under certain rare circumstances using the horn could cause a short circuit that would, in turn, cause an electronic part called a converter box to disconnect from the car's power supply, a VW spokeswoman said.

The converter box supplies power to various components, including the headlights, wipers and engine controller. Cutting off power to the engine controller shuts off the car's engine.

VW is not aware of any accidents or injuries resulting from this problem, Volkswagen of America said in an announcement. The recall affects Jettas built between March 2010 and March 2011.

Honking the horn kills the engine? I'm sure it looked a lot better on paper.

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [03/25/11]

Edward Cline shows how Multiculturalism and Islam combine to eviscerate our liberty.

[The] inaugural stage of American dhimmitude began with President George W. Bush proclaiming that Islam was a religion of “peace” hijacked by “extremists.”

Although freedom of speech was in a tenuous state before 9/11 (e.g., the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law), the orchestrated and violent reaction to the Danish cartoons virtually guaranteed its demise. It has since existed in a kind of post-traumatic stupor of denial. Not criticizing Muslims or Islam serves as the garlic or crucifix intended to ward off the specter of violent recriminations from Islamists. It is a species of Pavlovian conditioning. If a Muslim commits a horrific crime, the first thing modern journalists and critics and policymakers do is not attempt to identify the culprit or his motive, but to evade the task and point fingers in other directions.

Major Nidal Hassan perhaps had a glass of sour orange juice that morning, so he opened fire on American soldiers at Ft. Hood. A Muslim woman had a bad hair day, so she blew herself up in a bus full of Israeli schoolchildren. A mere marital disagreement between “moderate” Muslim Muzzammil Hassan and his wife Aasiya resulted inexplicably in his beheading her. Sure, the MSM will concede, all these instances of violence were gruesome. But they had nothing to do with Islam. And if they did, what business is it of ignorant Westerners? That would be imposing our moral standards on Muslims.

In regards to Islam, multiculturalism fosters a kind of Star Trek–inspired “Prime Directive”: Thou shalt not criticize, look askance at, or mock Islam or Muslims, no matter how primitive, brutal, savage, or backward they may demonstrate themselves to be. Nor even think of interfering with the religious practices or of examining its Mafia-style legal system.

It would be easier to comprehend the phenomenon of the West’s retreat from its once-cherished freedom of speech – in this instance, the freedom to criticize, ridicule, and even condemn Islam and that “silent majority” of Muslims here in the West or abroad who sanction by their muteness terrorism and the jihad – if one understood that the phenomenon is a consequence of the wider and more fundamental corrosive philosophy: multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is the great leveler of values and of the means to measure or gauge them. It is a conscious negation of values, claiming that no culture is superior to another, that no value could be superior to another. In the steady corrosion of actual values in the West, over a period of time, ever since the philosophy was first introduced decades ago, multiculturalism must logically default to the lowest common denominator of cultures. In this instance, it is Islam. That is the inevitable end of multiculturalism. Faced with the threat of Islam – an ideology insulated from criticism – multiculturalists must retreat and keep their minds and mouths shut. It is a monster they defended and touted and claimed as an ally in the name of “tolerance” and “religious freedom.”

Multiculturalism behaves like a Komodo dragon that bites its prey, lets it wander off, and waits until it succumbs to its poisonous saliva and dies. Then it sniffs out the putrefying corpse to feed on it. Islam has been emulating the Komodo dragon’s methods for decades now.

Islam is not “multicultural.” It is totalitarian and brooks no rivalry, competition or disagreement. Come the global caliphate, the first Westerners to be beheaded, censored, or enslaved will be multiculturalists. Then Islam’s putative “reformers.” Then the rest of us.

It is only logical that such a systematic negation would culminate at the lowest common denominator, Islam, itself a system for destroying values. It is an omnibus system of nihilism that mirrors the nature of multiculturalism. And naturally, Islam claims to be superior to all other cultures and creeds, because it requires no thought, no values apart from ready-made ones, unalterable and mandatory. All Islam offers the individual is the “joy” of selflessness and the security of obedience, neither of which asks of the individual any degree of evaluation or intellectual independence. It offers the quietude of living death.

Brain Food
Source: PIG News Wire [03/18/11]

IMAO’s Frank J Isn’t Impressed With The One.

Obama is not very good at being president. I wish I could give more constructive criticism, but he just really sucks at it. His best course of action would be to resign and hope someone better takes over, but maybe he’s afraid no one else will give him another job after they saw how he did as president.

“I’m not going to let you manage this Arby’s. You’ll just stand around useless when there’s a crisis such as us running out of Horsey Sauce.”

Not only is he is a bad president and a bad choice to manage an Arby’s, he’s not even a very good person. Like if you had an opening for someone to be a person and were interviewing candidates, I don’t think Obama would get that job. A well-trained German Shepherd would probably be chosen over him. Yeah, a German Shepherd doesn’t make an ideal person as it can’t talk or operate a doorknob, but it at least appears to be aware of its surroundings and care for other people. These are qualities we like in a person that a German Shepherd has and Obama lacks. Plus, I’ve seen no real evidence that Obama knows how to operate a doorknob.

Anyway, my point is that come 2012, we should probably get someone else as president who doesn’t suck so much. We have like 300,000,000 people in America, and my guess is that most of them would make a better president than Obama. You’d think we’d want the best of the best to be president, but I’d settle for someone not in the bottom 10% in being president. There could be a slogan for the 2012 Republican presidential candidate: “The odds of him being worse than Obama are extremely low to the point that they should be disregarded.” A little clunky, but I think it gets the point across.

IMAO’s Frank J Explains Why We Need More Bullying.

When there are huge crises both foreign and domestic, we can count on Obama to not care about any of that and focus on some issue no one is really concerned about. This time: Bullying.

I thought we had all these great union teachers with all their benefits in charge of classrooms; shouldn’t they have watched our kids for us and ended bully years ago? I guess we just need to pay them more.

I think Obama’s main problem with bullying, though, is that it’s the only way to get him to do anything. Remember when we had to bully Obama into continuing the Bush tax cuts? And we had to bully him to making a statement supporting pro-democracy Iranian demonstrators? And then we had to bully him into not having civilian terrorist trials in New York City? Though it’s hard to imagine, without bullying Obama would be even worse.

So we must call on Republicans to bully Obama even more. Wedgies, purple nurples, Facebook harassment — whatever kids do these days. With enough psychological trauma, maybe we can keep Obama from being completely and utterly awful. Or we could cause him to snap and shoot everybody… but those are the risks.

Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson sounds off on the public union threats against Wisconsin business owners.

"In a thinly veiled threat to business owners that have supported Governor Scott Walker, police and firefighter unions imposed a March 17th deadline for those businesses to publicly denounce recently enacted legislation signed by Walker eliminating collective bargaining for health care and pension benefits paid for by taxpayers. If they refuse, the public sector unions have promised a boycott of those businesses. This is essentially ransom.

"When those tasked with protecting society are willing to publicly target individuals simply for their political beliefs, it is clear that this debate has headed into dangerous waters. Any public safety employee that engages in such activity should be fired.

"Taxpayers should not have to live in fear for demanding accountability and fiscal responsibility from the public sector, the expansion of which has drowned states like Wisconsin in a sea of red ink. Making threats complete with deadlines against businesses and individuals who believe that the public sector must be scaled back to avert a fiscal catastrophe likens these unions' tactics to what one would expect from gangsters or terrorists."

Neal Boortz reveals the real reason for the Wisconsin union hissy fit.

Virtually all of the media coverage in Wisconsin has been about collective bargaining. Scott Walker wanted to take the collective bargaining rights away from government workers on all issues except basic pay. The unions, and the Democrats who supported the unions, would love for you to believe that this was the real issue. It was not. The real issue was how union dues would be collected.

Under the law before Gov. Walker signed his new bill last week, the union dues were collected by the employer -- the government. Now the workers will get to make up their own mind whether or not they want to pay the union dues. That is because they're going to have to write a check for these dues every month, every quarter, or however they pay them. What really troubles the union leaders is the fact that about 50% or more of union members have clearly indicated that they would rather not be paying union dues, and, in fact, would rather not be union members at all. Now is their chance. In these tough economic times, many of these government union members can find a lot better things to spend their money on than union dues. They know that their jobs are protected by the Wisconsin civil service system. They also know that, generally speaking, they're making more than their counterparts in the private sector. The new law provides that they will pay what amounts to a pittance toward their health care, and they're going to be paying towards their own retirement just as private sector workers do. So all-in-all they know that they don't have it quite so bad. So, for many of them, paying dues will be problematic.

This presents a big problem for the union leaders, and an even bigger problem for Democrats. The problem for the union leaders is obvious. Most of them earn salaries in the six figure range -- salaries that come from union dues. Without the government collecting these union dues from the workers, the union leaders may find the financial cupboard running a bit bare. That puts their fat paychecks in, you should pardon the expression, the crosshairs. But there's an additional problem. Union leaders also derive a huge amount of power from how they decide to spend union dues. Were talking about political campaign donations here. Surveys during the midterm election process of 2010, showed that Wisconsin government union members pretty much split their vote between Democrats and Republicans. The union leaders weren't quite so bipartisan. Wisconsin government employee unions made about 93% of their campaign donations to Democrats. This might sit well with the union members who supported the Democrats, but remember about half of them supported Republicans. These might be the very union members who will rethink this idea about paying union dues, especially if they can't control how those dues are spent. So now you see why this is a huge problem for Democrats as well. You can also understand why The Community Organizer mobilized his Organizing for America volunteer squad to head to Wisconsin for the purpose of promoting and beefing up the demonstrations.

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [03/11/11]

Ace Proposes An Election Cycle Theme For ‘Our Candidates’ In 2012. Here are some things he wants them to stress:

What do we need Obama for? On the stimulus, he let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid write a trillion dollar waste of money; he offered them no guidance, he did not threaten to veto any pork spending. He just deferred. He did not lead; he delegated.

On ObamaCare, he expressly campaigned against Hillary Clinton's proposal of an individual mandate -- an idea so unpopular in the caucus (and the nation at large) that he made political hay over it every time the subject came up.

But when it was time to write the law that he had only vaguely alluded to, he showed no leadership again, offering silly "goals" that he wanted met (and in fact were largely not met by the ultimate legislation). Having campaigned against the individual mandate, he left it in the hands of Harry Reid and his lawyers to write the bill; they included the mandate he had made a major stand in campaigning against. Once again, he deferred to others.

In the cases of uprisings in Iran and Libya, rather than show American leadership, he once again voted present and said little and did even less. He left a leadership void in world leadership now being filled, thankfully, by the British and the French.

All of these cases illustrate that Obama really isn't bringing anything to the table. He is not contributing to the most important questions facing the country -- he does not offer ideas, or support for particular plans. He lets other people do the deciding, and then he embraces whatever consensus others have created.

A Republican candidate for President should ask: For $400,000 per year in salary, what are we actually getting? Is he actually doing his job? Couldn't anyone do what Obama has done? Put anyone in the office, someone unqualified and well over their heads, and they'd do the same thing, sit back, let other people handle it.

A Republican candidate should ask if someone being paid $400,000 per year to do a job should maybe spend less time golfing and more time doing the job.

Patrick Dorinson explains the Nanny State’s fiscal policy in terms that even a government-schooled idiot with self esteem could understand.

Congress doesn’t put together a budget like many Americans already do. So let me make it easy so they will understand.

First you get comfortable around the kitchen table. Second you get a piece of paper and you write down your expenses. Then you write down your revenue. Next you subtract your expenses from your revenue.

If your expenses are more than your revenue you have to cut expenses. If your revenue is more than your expenses you take the money left over and pay down debt or put money away for future expenses like your kid’s education.

Simple right?

Here is how Congress does it: First they can’t agree whether the table should be round or square. After months of deliberation they agree the table will be oval.

Second they argue what the definition of expenses is. Democrats want to call them targeted investments and Republicans want to call them reckless spending.

They finally agree to disagree on this and move on to revenue. But they can’t agree on what to do about revenue. Democrats call for revenue enhancements which Republicans decry as tax increases.

Finally after wasting a year arguing they pass a continuing resolution, or C.R., and Congress adjourns.

And just as sure as summer turns to fall last year’s deficit is added to the long term national debt. This will be paid for by future generations to our debt holders, the Chinese. Let’s hope they don’t demand early payment.

What America desperately needs to do is go on a crash fiscal diet. And all Congress and the White House want to do is switch to Diet Coke.

But just like getting physically fit ain’t painless or easy, getting fiscally fit won’t be painless or easy either. Hell if it was, it would’ve been done a long time ago.

A retired Lt. Colonel and a newly-elected Congressman, Alan West, didn’t mince his words, when he took on the Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC) and its ‘findings’ that there are too many white males in senior military positions.

According to the MLDC’s report, released Monday, 77 percent of active duty senior officers are white, 8 percent are black, 5 percent are Hispanic and 16 percent are women. The report suggested the lack of minorities in military leadership is something that needs to change. To that end, the commission’s report includes 20 recommendations on how to increase the proportion of minority officers in the military in order to create a fighting force that better represents the make up of the population it defends.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, West, who is black, was not pleased with the report, saying that the military is not a social experiment for outside groups to impose their theories. Rather, he said, it is a merit based organization where anybody can succeed.

“Everyone that comes into the military has an equal opportunity to get promoted to the next level. It is not about outside entities trying to engineer and design results and outcomes or create a sense of equal achievement and when some military diversity group writes a report saying there are too many white men on top,” West said. “It is kind of a slap in the face to those who have risen through the ranks such as four star General [Lloyd] Austin, [General] Kip Ward, many others. We don’t need these outside entities trying to design or shape a military.”

West continued by noting that many confuse privileges with rights. To West, it is a privilege to serve in the military. He also said it is not an institution with which outsiders should tinker, especially while engaged in conflicts abroad.

“I think that when you look at these groups and other liberal special interest groups that keep trying to chip away at the military,” he said. “We are engaged with a very vicious enemy in two combat areas and who knows what is going to happen in North Africa and the Middle East and now is not the time for us to stop and start sensitivity training.”

West suspects that the military as an institution is targeted by liberals because of the things it represents.
“The military stands for things that liberals don’t care for: standards, discipline, honor, character. And those are things they don’t like because they believe everyone should be equal…that is not what the military is all about.”

Synaptic Snacks
Source: PIG News Wire [03/04/11]

Henry J. Reske and Kathleen Walter paint a rhetorical bull’s eye on Messiah Barry’s "thugocracy".

President Obama and his supporters are stirring up trouble in Wisconsin, says Citizens United President David Bossie. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker could win a big victory against unions that&rsquo;ll likely to spread across the nation, he says.

The White House’s political operation, Organizing for America, quickly got involved to protect the key Democratic constituency by helping to organize the mass protests. Obama himself took the unusual step of inviting a Milwaukee television station to interview him. During the interview, the president alleged that Walker’s moves were “more of an assault on unions.”

“Everybody knows the Chicago way and the union thugocracy that runs Chicago . . . is at work in Madison,” Bossie said. “You’ve seen these legislators, Republican legislators, both men and women, being intimidated. The misogynistic attitude towards the female legislators, calling them unbelievable names by other members of the Legislature, is ridiculous.”

Bossie said the actions “should be renounced” and said the president “loves to talk about civility” but is allowing the opposite by not demanding that his supporters stop attacking “people both physically and verbally.”

Lloyd Marcus sounds off on the MSM’s ability to ‘define’ public figures - Sarah Palin, for example - to suit their political agenda.

Conservatives saying under their breath at cocktail parties that Palin isn't too bright is evidence the liberal media's branding of her has worked on some level.

Frustratingly, the facts completely prove otherwise. Palin was extremely successful as Governor of Alaska.

For crying out loud, what has His Royal Obamaness achieved qualifying him to run the country? Nothing. Obama was a community organizer. He taught people they were entitled victims of an unfair America and how to extort freebies. He only served 144 days in the senate before running for president.

Obama's presidential qualifications: He is half black and liberal. This won him 100% liberal media support and 96% of the black vote. Obama is well spoken and looked good in a swim suit.

Remember when Obama said America had 57 states? Immediately to his defense, the liberal media said, "Obama was tired". Imagine if Palin had said the same thing. The liberal media would have gagged us with at least three days of 24/7 coverage of the story. Every report would parrot the same mantra, "This conservative woman is truly an idiot".

While the liberal media no longer enjoys their Walter Cronkite single voice "bully pulpit", their ability to brand a person or issue is still quite powerful. They took a man who had never run a business, state or donut shop and convinced millions of Americans he was a political leader unlike any before him. Obama was the smartest guy in the room; eminently qualified to run America and probably the world.

Brilliantly despicable, the liberal media exploited Obama's race to get their liberal black guy elected. They deemed any attempt to subject Obama to the normal vetting procedures for one applying for the position of Leader of the Free World to be racist. Even Obama's anti-America associates and racist pastor of 20 years did not matter.

With fake Greek columns on the set behind him, extra reverb on his voice and a teleprompter, the democrats with liberal media support branded Obama, in the minds of millions, as The Messiah. He was "The One we have been waiting for". You could almost hear angels singing, "Ahhhhhhhhh!"

Meanwhile, without special effects, Sarah Palin truly is a super woman epitomizing everything feminists claim to wish for all women. She has achieved extraordinary success in and outside of the home. And yet, Palin is successfully branded by the liberal media, an idiot, in the minds of many.

Clearly, Palin's presidential qualifications far exceed Obama's. As I stated, this article is not about endorsing Palin for President. I am simply illustrating the liberal media's power to shape an image and public opinion, including opinions of some conservatives.

Writing in Capitalism Magazine, Michael Hurd delves into the inherent irrationality of Liberalism and Socialism.

Liberal socialists seek majorities where they can, but when they can't find them they take action anyway (or run into hiding, as in Wisconsin).

Liberalism and socialism do not, and by their nature cannot, speak the language of reason, logic, and factual discourse because by definition this ideology is committed to the use of force -- not persuasion.
Liberals in the United States want to be associated with reason. Most of them are still savvy enough to understand that America is a mostly rational place. This is not to say that everyone in America is rational all the time, but they know that most Americans must be convinced with facts, logic and proof in order to be sold on something.

Liberals remind me of psychological abusers and dictators. Such people gain control over families, children or spouses by disguising the nature of what they’re doing. “Angry? I’m not angry. What are you talking about?” Abusers are known for attacking their victims verbally and physically, and then turning around a few hours later and pretending to be the picture of reasonable virtue.
This creates confusion in their victims, amplifying their already low self-confidence. “Maybe it’s just me? He’s being so reasonable now.

Maybe I’m overreacting to everything that happened.” Not all victims of abusers react this way, but many do, and it’s this very self-doubt and inner weakness that bullies of all types -- familial or political bullies -- rely on in trying to gain control over others. This is how Big Government increases its suffocation of liberty and reason more with each passing year: Through gradualism and guilt.

When liberals form organizations with names like “The National Institute for Civil Discourse” it reminds me of the family abuser who says, “We’re all reasonable people here. What’s the problem?” And then, an hour or a day or a week later, the abuser proceeds to throttle you. Rest assured that the liberals who fund and promote these pretentious parodies, seeming so decent and calm in one context, are more than ready to expropriate your wealth (if you have any), determine your medical treatment, authorize what kind of cars you’re to buy and how much fuel you’re allowed to have to put into them. They attack the private sector with taxes, rules and contradictory regulations and then scream it's the private sector's fault when unemployment rises.

Advocates of liberalism are control freaks, and it’s control over every aspect of your life that they seek. There’s no “discourse” to be had about that!

Don’t mistake the sweet tones of "civil discourse" for the fraudulent, phony rationalization of brute force that they are. Socialism and liberalism are not about reason. They’re about coercion, plain and simple. No words can alter that fact.

FEBRUARY 2011

Quote of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [02/25/11]

Revolutions everywhere--in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they're protesting against it. I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote? Isn't it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process? Isn't it interesting that some of those who--rightly--protest the assorted Republican efforts to stymie majority rule in the U.S. Senate are celebrating the Democratic efforts to stymie the same in the Wisconsin Senate?
Joe Klein

Brain Food
Source: PIG News Wire [02/25/11]

The Daily Caller delineates the key points of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s proposal.

* Public sector employees would still be allowed to collectively bargain on wages, but not on health-care or pension plans.

* Raises would be tied to the inflation rate, unless the state’s voters deemed the employees worthy of larger raises.

* Public sector employees would have to pay slightly higher rates for their health care and other benefits, but those rates would remain lower than those of the average private sector employee.

* Public sector employees would be required to pay 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums; they currently pay about 6 percent.

* Public sector employees would have to contribute 5.8 percent of their salaries to their pensions under Walker’s plans; currently some pay nothing. From 2000 to 2009, public sector employees paid $55.4 million into a pension system that cost $12.6 billion.

* Police, firefighters and other public safety workers would be exempt from the new collective bargaining restrictions.

Neal Boortz explains why collective bargaining must end.
Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin is doing a good job of presenting the issues between the taxpayers of Wisconsin and the government union workers ... a good job in all areas except one. Maybe I just haven't heard it, but he hasn't really explained why collective bargaining for benefits needs to end in Wisconsin. Maybe I should take a stab at it ... not that my opinion is worth any more than anyone else's.

1. Collective bargaining needs to end for Wisconsin's government union workers simply because it is collective bargaining that created the problems Governor Scott is trying to solve right now. The state didn't walk up to these workers and say "Hey! Here's an idea! We'll pay you more than you could make in the private sector! We're also going to give you incredible job security through the state civil service system. Then we're going to make sure that you don't have to contribute anything to your pensions and a pittance to your health insurance premiums? Sound good? Nope ... didn't happen that way. The unions negotiated the freebie retirement plan and "pay for your aspirin and nothing else" health care plan. So if we leave collective bargaining in place for benefits you will simply try to regain these out-of-line benefits with union action a year or two down the road.

2. We will leave collective bargaining in place for pay because your pay - not a free retirement or free health care - is the essence of what you're working for.

There is also the question of why Governor Scott isn't including the police and firemen in his union reform plan. Perhaps it is because of the special place these men and women have in the hearts and minds of the citizens of Wisconsin. It is police and fire fighters who put their lives on the line in the performance of their duties, not teachers (except in Detroit) and clerks in the professional licensing division. Be willing to stand between a citizen and a man with a gun, or be ready to run into a burning building to save a small child ... and you occupy a completely different place in our hearts.

Synaptic Snacks
Source: PIG News Wire [02/18/11]

Nicholas Kristof serves up 4 lessons America can learn from the Egyptian meltdown.

1.) Stop treating Islamic fundamentalism as a bogyman and allowing it to drive American foreign policy. American paranoia about Islamism has done as much damage as Muslim fundamentalism itself.

In Somalia, it led the U.S. to wink at a 2006 Ethiopian invasion that was catastrophic for Somalis and resulted in more Islamic extremism there. And in Egypt, our foreboding about Islamism paralyzed us and put us on the wrong side of history.

We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we’ve treated the Arab world as just an oil field.

Too many Americans bought into a lazy stereotype that Arab countries were inhospitable for democracy, or that the beneficiaries of popular rule would be extremists like Osama bin Laden. Tunisians and Egyptians have shattered that stereotype, and the biggest loser will be Al Qaeda. We don’t know what lies ahead for Egypt — and there is a considerable risk that those in power will attempt to preserve Mubarakism without Mr. Mubarak — but already Egyptians have demonstrated the power of nonviolence in a way that undermines the entire extremist narrative. It will be fascinating to see whether more Palestinians embrace mass nonviolent protests in the West Bank as a strategy to confront illegal Israeli settlements and land grabs.

2.) We need better intelligence, the kind that is derived not from intercepting a president’s phone calls to his mistress but from hanging out with the powerless. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, there was a painful post-mortem about why the intelligence community missed so many signals, and I think we need the same today.

In fairness, we in the journalistic community suffered the same shortcoming: we didn’t adequately convey the anger toward Hosni Mubarak. Egypt is a reminder not to be suckered into the narrative that a place is stable because it is static.

3.) New technologies have lubricated the mechanisms of revolt. Facebook and Twitter make it easier for dissidents to network. Mobile phones mean that government brutality is more likely to end up on YouTube, raising the costs of repression. The International Criminal Court encourages dictators to think twice before ordering troops to open fire.

Maybe the most critical technology — and this is tough for a scribbler like myself to admit — is television. It was Arab satellite television broadcasts like those of Al Jazeera that broke the government monopoly on information in Egypt. Too often, Americans scorn Al Jazeera (and its English service is on few cable systems), but it played a greater role in promoting democracy in the Arab world than anything the United States did.

We should invest more in these information technologies. The best way to nurture changes in Iran, North Korea and Cuba will involve broadcasts, mobile phones and proxy servers to leap over Internet barriers. Congress has allocated small sums to promote global Internet freedom, and this initiative could be a much more powerful tool in our foreign policy arsenal.

4.) Let’s live our values. We pursued a Middle East realpolitik that failed us. Condi Rice had it right when she said in Egypt in 2005: “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.”

I don’t know which country is the next Egypt. Some say it’s Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Syria or Saudi Arabia. Others suggest Cuba or China are vulnerable. But we know that in many places there is deep-seated discontent and a profound yearning for greater political participation. And the lesson of history from 1848 to 1989 is that uprisings go viral and ricochet from nation to nation. Next time, let’s not sit on the fence.

An unidentified participant in an Objectivism Online discussion group painted a rhetorical bull’s-eye on the calls for ‘democracy’ in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, citing comments by Middle East expert, Daniel Pipes.

‘...In this interview, Pipes offers his views on the prospects of Egypt becoming a “democracy.”

One can appreciate Pipes’ assessment of Egypt and the “regime change” there, and certainly respect his appraisal of Islam and the Mideast, but I shudder every time I encounter an otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable person employing the term “democracy” so carelessly. It is as though Pipes (and many, many others) had never read what the American Founders and Framers had to say about “democracy.” They feared and loathed democracy.

Democracy, they saw in history, was always an overture to tyranny of one kind or another. Democracy was and remains mob rule. The purpose of the Founders and Framers was to establish an individual rights-protecting republic, one that would be proof against the whims and fashions of mobs, majorities, and power-seeking politicians.

Democracy, for example, is a state or local government banning smoking in private restaurants and bars, because some group with political pull wanted it that way; or Obama patronizing millions of people who want lower health-care costs and endorsing socialized medicine legislation; or state or municipal governments banning plastic (or paper) bags in supermarkets to curry favor with environmentalists. The instances of “democracy” in action are legion, and they all depend on the employment of government force and the diminishment of individual rights.

Democracy is not just about “free elections.” What would people vote for in these elections? What would be legitimate issues that could be voted on, and what would not be legitimate issues? Democracy makes no distinctions between these things. Regarding “democracy” a kind of stable political environment that sort of promotes freedom and does not require armies of police to regulate it – such as in the U.S. – is a rather sloppy concept of “good” government. Democracy cannot be equated with limited government. Democracy means unlimited government.

But “free elections” in a politically backward country such as Egypt usually means the last election, replaced with farces such as the “free elections” in Iran. The only country in the Mideast that has “free elections” is Israel...’

‘...Pipes and other anti-Islamist observers make no distinction between “democracy” and a government that protects individual rights, between one that recognizes no rights and one that does and so promotes the expansion and enjoyment of freedom.

Islam is certainly compatible with democracy – a democracy of, by, and for Muslims only. All others would be at the bottom of the political ladder, paying jizya to the Muslim collective/majority. Islam will not tolerate a “pluralistic” political system. Islam cannot be “modernized.” Neither can Christianity be “modernized,” only kept divorced from the political life of a nation. But the moral code of Christianity has been secularized in national politics. Else, why the constant appeals to selflessness and self-sacrifice by politicians?

Strip Islam of Sharia law, and what would be left but a cult and the subject of hilarity?...’

‘...Strip Islam of its appeal to collective superiority – the creed of the second-hander – rip out Sharia law, and what would be its appeal? Why not just join the Amish, or the Mennonites, or the Scientologists? Islamism is Islam, and cannot be reformed. It can only be repudiated and abandoned. The trouble is with religion per se, and not its assimilative capacity with “democracy” or with any other political system.

The United States is now a de facto “democracy,” having slid into that perilous status with little or no opposition for over a century thanks to statist legislation that has nullified or usurped any protection against mob rule offered by the Founders and Framers. President Obama is stealthily “progressing” towards authoritarian “democracy” with his most recent legislation and policies, and his authoritarianism is evident in his “soft” approach to Islam, with whose totalitarian nature he has a natural and undeniable affinity...’

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [02/18/11]

“There are Islamic forces and movements that wish to change the Middle East, creating Islamic States, caliphates, in which Shariah (law) rules."

“They are voices that could find fertile ground in Egypt and elsewhere and therefore should not be underestimated, also because there are regional powers whose leaders have defined these revolts as the ‘reawakening of Islam’.”
Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, Iraq

“The threat from an unsecured border is real, where 241,000 illegals were apprehended last year by the border patrol and an additional 400,000 got away just in Arizona alone! These are failing grades by anyone’s score card.”

“I’m sending out deputies to meet these armed cartel members. And we will not use less than lethal force. They want us to sit and shut up. Well, that’s not going to happen. This isn’t a time to sit on our hands and ignore the issue. It’s a time for action.”
Pinal County (Arizona) Sheriff Paul Babeu

Brain Candy
Source: PIG News Wire [02/11/11]

David Bozeman sounds off about incivility among the ruling elites.

There exists a significant degree of animus among the ruling class toward ordinary Americans, even among some on the right, but the preponderance festers on the left. Who would be more likely to enjoy a down-home barbeque with a factory worker, Sarah Palin or Barbara "Call me Senator" Boxer? Who invests more faith in the industriousness of average Americans, Rush Limbaugh or the smarmy Bill Maher?

Indeed, leftist power holders and their champions in the media consider the passions of ordinary Americans a nuisance. Consider Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik after the Tucson tragedy, blaming the country's heated rhetoric for the actions of one dangerous, disturbed individual. To liberals, their words and policies don't merely match the public orthodoxy, they define it.

Power in general and liberalism in particular are always in fashion — thought-control chic — and to question their edicts is akin to wearing white socks with a tuxedo. Isn't it liberals who typically inform the public that debate on certain subjects, such as the teaching of evolution, global warming and the inherent evil of corporate CEOs is now closed?

Like an exclusive society founded on admiration for their own benevolence and intellectual superiority, ruling class elitists know that if everyone can join their country club, then what have they got? Harry Reid once famously complained of the smell of visitors to the capital in the summer. The affinity they feign for average Americans only puffs up their own sense of self-importance, and they maintain their grip by shaming the ingrate masses into silence.

If, as a self-governing people, we decide to soften the tenor of public debate, then the burden falls on the servants of the people as well as on the nation at large. We don't bow to autocrats in this country, nor do we take marching orders from the haughty neighbors up the road. Ideally, the nation's wealth and power belong to the producers and not to smooth-talking snake-oil salesmen whose dominance in public life hinges on charisma over substance and tactic over principle. Only as long as everyday Americans assert their voice will we reclaim our heritage as a Constitutional republic governed by and for the people.

Someone once noted that a society is defined not by the aspirations and pretenses of its leaders but by the character of its everyday citizens. Their hopes and values define a great nation that candidate Obama vowed to "transform," but we don't need the pieties of arrogant rulers to prosper, only a heightened belief in ourselves as a free people and a resolve that our leaders will try to emulate us and not the other way around.

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [02/11/11]

Barack Obama is a man who has referred to the private sector as "the enemy." And don't think that these men and women of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce didn't remember that line while he was reading his teleprompter in front of them yesterday. In short ... this is a man who has no idea in the universe what it means to own and operate a business, yet there he is telling businesses that they have to go out there and figure out how they can hire more people? Is he serious? In what parallel universe does it become the purpose and overriding objective business to simply try to figure out how to hire more people?
-- Neal Boortz

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [02/04/11]

Jack Kerwick, cuts to the chase to dispense ‘just the facts’ on Mecca Mania.

Almost everyone on the left, and some on the right, insist that Islamic hostilities toward America stem from America's support of the state of Israel. That is, ultimately, it is the existence of Israel that accounts for why Muslims throughout the Middle East (and elsewhere) hate us. For the leftist, however, Israel is just the latest chapter in a long history of "oppression" that Muslims -- "people of color" -- have experienced for over a millennium.

The conventional wisdom among establishment Republicans is that Islamic aggression toward America is due solely to "the radical Islamists'" contempt for "our freedoms," a disdain born of an ignorance to which "the democratization" of the Islamic world would be an antidote. Within recent days, much of the Republican commentary on Egypt has reflected this bias.

These competing positions on the question of the West's relationship to Islam are as long on ideology as they are short on reality, for they each fail to take seriously the elephant in the room: Islam.

It isn't that they are wrong, necessarily. There can be no question that legions of Muslims resent the existence of Israel -- and the support that the latter receives from the United States. It is also doubtless correct that similar numbers of Muslims despise the cultural and political arrangements of America and the West. But because neither view recognizes the other, what truth each possesses is obscured.

It doesn't require much familiarity with the Islamic tradition, and the Quran in particular, to discover that Islam is an intrinsically militant religion. It demands even less familiarity with the contemporary experience of Muslims throughout the world to realize that true Islam calls on its adherents to conquer, or destroy, all non-Muslims.

I will not embark upon the enterprise -- well-accomplished by now, thanks to such brave souls as Robert Spencer, Brigitte Gabriel, and others -- of quoting the many passages from the Quran that substantiate this point. But however unpleasant a thought this may be, it is a reality.

Anyone seriously concerned with coming to terms with "the nature of our enemy" must give up all of this silly talk of "Islamofascists," "Islamonazis," "Islamists," "radical Muslims," and "Islamic extremists." The "enemy" -- and anyone who looks upon me as an "infidel" to be converted or killed I do indeed consider my enemy -- is the orthodox Muslim. America and the West are in conflict with "Quranic literalists" -- or "Islamic fundamentalists," if you will -- and no one else.

Interestingly, in refusing to take the Islamic fundamentalist at his word, the leftist betrays his own "Eurocentrism" -- those parochial proclivities that he deplores in others -- for he judges Muslims not by their own standards, by his own.

Self-avowed "conservatives," on the other hand, are no less guilty of contradicting themselves. In staunch contrast to their leftist counterparts, conservatives have always been keenly aware of the fact that culture is fundamentally, ultimately more important to human life than politics. To borrow the Marxist's idiom, culture is "the substructure," politics "the superstructure." Yet in ignoring the "second nature" with which the religion of Islam has clothed the inhabitants of the Islamic world, in treating the problems of the Middle East as if they were primarily a matter of political arrangements, "the conservative" has betrayed his own position.

If we really want to take our situation seriously, it is high time that we left ideology behind.

JANUARY 2011

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [01/28/11]

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla), new chairwench of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, isn’t thrilled spitless about Uncle Sam’s ongoing support for the Black Helicopter Club:

“I’d like to make sure that we once and for all kill all U.S. funding for that beast,” she said last month. “Because I don’t think that it advances U.S. interests, I don’t think that that’s a pro-democracy group, it’s a rogue’s gallery, pariah states, they belong there because they don’t want to be sanctioned.” (The Hill)

A Daily Kos lefty - he’s known only as Stranded Wind - thinks Olbermann would make a spiffy U.S. Senator. His plan is to have Keith run for the Connecticut U.S. Senate slot currently held by retiring Senator Joe Lieberman.

“There isn’t even an exploratory committee yet so there is no way to fundraise for this effort,” Stranded Wind wrote. “There are two other Connecticut Democrats who think they’d like that seat. I think that those of us behind this effort can start pushing now, making this about raising awareness and driving voter registration. If Keith gets into the race that benefits him, and if he doesn’t we’re helping the chances of the other two lesser known candidates.”

Whorehouse Harry Reid wasn’t thrilled spitless when Messiah Barry painted a rhetorical POTUS bull’s-eye on earmarks. Obviously, Whorehouse Harry didn’t get BHO’s "just kidding" memo.

“I think this is an issue that any president would like to have that takes power away from the legislative branch of government. I think it’s the wrong thing to do. I don’t think it’s helpful. It’s a lot of pretty talk, but it only gives the president more power. He’s got enough power already."

Lloyd Marcus is fed up with Al Sharpton’s race baiting, excuse making, and finger pointing. Lloyd is especially incensed by this Rev. Al screed, during a gun control discussion on Moonbat Central: MSNBC.

"There are no gun manufacturing plants in the black community." Rev. Al.

Annoyed by Rev. Al’s race card rant, Lloyd hit the Sharpton with some PIG-worthy shots.

So according to Sharpton, black youths shooting each other, as always, is whitey's fault. Evil gun manufacturers infiltrated the black community. Poor powerless simple minded blacks, seduced by the shiny things, purchase their guns and use them on each other. Incredibly, sycophant white liberal members of the MSNBC panel nodded in agreement with Sharpton.

Will somebody please tell this despicable man to "Stop it." Passing the buck regarding black on black crime to gun manufacturers will not save the life of one black youth.

Mr Sharpton, rather than seeking another way to portray blacks as victims, which always leads to another government program/government check, how about doing something truly useful.

"Reverend" Sharpton, address the moral decay in the black community. In your rant on MSNBC, you said black kids want to be like, Scarface. Most black kids today have not seen the movie.

You completely ignored the real "elephant in the black community's living room", fatherless black boys who join gangs and black gangsta rappers who call black women "B" and "W", rap about killing police and killing anyone who dares "dis" them.

Democrats give black gangsta rappers a pass because they further the democrat agenda to create a "blacks are victims of a rich white racist America" mindset in as many blacks as possible. Thus, insuring a monolithic black vote for Democrats.

Address the tsunami of black kids dropping out of school; why a majority of blacks are born out of wedlock and genocide level black abortion rates.

Rev Sharpton, these issues have nothing to do with, nor are the fault of, white people, the rich or America.

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [01/21/11]

Lloyd Marcus isn’t impressed with The One’s antics at the Tucson Memorial Service.

I'm just a regular guy who puts stock into who a person really is -- people who say what they mean, mean what they say, and do it.

Listening to Obama's speech, all I heard was a despicable man exploiting the event to silence opposition to his destruction of America as we know it.

Frankly, I am proud to be named among the tea party patriots, rather than the political elites on both sides of the aisle. We have had enough of putting pretty smooth talking scoundrels in political office who betray us. I'll take character over eloquent oratory, any day.

Bob Parks responds to Congresspunk Jerrold Nadler (Demoncrat) who thinks America needs to reinvoke the Fairness Doctrine.

Most of us understand the sophistry of Nadler’s desire, but if that’s what the left really wants, I’d see their hand and raise them one.

Most of us know that a lot of taxpayer money goes to all public schools and most colleges. We know the majority of teachers and administrators of those educational institutions are liberals. Because of many stories that have come out recently, we also know that the majority of the presentations students receive are from a left wing perspective.

IF Congressman Nadler truly seeks to have both sides presented to the public, then conservative books need be on the National Education Association’s suggested reading lists to counter works like Saul Alinksky’s Rules for Radicals. Students should be able to view Lord Monckton’s Apocalypse? No! before or after they view An Inconvenient Truth in classrooms. If The New York Times is required reading in some college classrooms, so should be The Weekly Standard.

But we also know there are things the Fairness Doctrine requires, and with that, it would also mean for every liberal group that meets on campus, there would have to be a conservative group or else no groups would meet. For every student publication that pushes a liberal point of view, there also need to be a conservative one or there will be no publications at all.

And here’s where we’ll find out just how serious the left really is when it comes to “fairness”.

With a broadcast Fairness Doctrine, for every conservative show there has to be a liberal for balance. In schools, for every teacher who’s a registered Democrat, there needs to be a registered Republican to assure students get both sides of issues.

I realize there are some legal issues involved here, but as this is ultimately about The Children, I’m sure the left would bend a little here, right?

Of course there will be those teachers who say certain subjects are apolitical but we’ve all seen stories about homerooms that recently had Gore, Kerry, and Obama posters proudly displayed next to blackboards.

If the left is really concerned how messages are disseminated over the public airwaves then they should be equally interested in how messages are disseminated in taxpayer-funded classrooms. Obviously the money that goes to education towers over the value of the public airwaves, thus they should be more concerned about the fairness of information that goes to The Children.

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [01/14/11]

Here’s Maine Governor Paul LePage’s response to NAACP whining, after the Governor declined an invite to attend the Martin Luther King Day festivities.

“Tell them to kiss my butt. If they want play the race card, come to dinner and my son will talk to them. They are a special interest. End of story...and I'm not going to be held hostage by special interests. And if they want, they can look at my family picture. My son happens to be black, so they can do whatever they'd like about it.”

Writing in American Thinker, Lauri B. Regan takes the MSM to the woodshed.

The mainstream media reached a new low with their coverage of the Tucson shooting spree by a deranged "left-wing pothead" (as one classmate described him). It seemed that with each attempted terrorist attack on our soil by a Muslim extremist, the journalistic community's refusal to call a spade a spade and identify and report to the public the reality of a very pervasive and genuine threat to national security was a symptom of political correctness run amok. However, the Arizona shooting proved that the real issue with news outlets is that their reporting is guided not by politically correct standards, but rather by biases so pervasive that there is no longer a moral compass involved in the reporting of world events. Editors and producers either do not care to or are no longer able to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, victim and attacker.

El Rushbo gets real about the Tucson killer.

"[Jared Loughner] knows what's going on. He knows that the Democrat Party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim. He's the latest in a never-ending parade of victims brought about by the unfairness of America....[He] understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder — but something lesser."

Sheriff Joe Arpaio sounds off on Pima County Sheriff Claude Dipshit.

“I don’t like to criticize my colleagues, but he’s elected and I presume he says what he wants to say. I don’t agree with it.
“I’m a former top federal law enforcement official and understand you have to be very careful when you’re conducting an investigation to make sure there’s no pretrial publicity that may affect the case and give the perpetrator a chance to use comments made, especially by the chief investigator, which happens to be the sheriff
.
“Sheriffs are elected, like I am, thank God. I’m sure if he was a police chief he’d probably be fired tomorrow. I’m not trying to defend him, but he’s the one that runs that sheriff’s office. I do not.

“I don’t want to keep talking about politics. I don’t think we should do so over this tragedy.

“But I think this has gone into politics now. People are using this for their own political agenda. I don’t think that’s right. I think we should let the criminal justice system do its job and not have too much pretrial publicity to help this guy and give him a chance to defend himself, and probably utilize statements that have been made to his benefit to try to get out of this.

“I think we have to very careful about what we say, especially law enforcement officials or government officials. I think right now I think we ought to shut our mouth and let the justice system take its course.”

Brain Food
Source: PIG News Wire [01/07/11]

Writing in American Thinker, J. Robert Smith sounds the warning on the Marxist Messiah’s agenda.

Make no mistake, President Obama's "Socialist Realignment Strategy" has the stuff of a coup -- a coup using legislative and executive authority to ram through radical changes that empower Washington politicians and bureaucrats as never before. Americans have witnessed this strategy in action since Mr. Obama assumed power in January of 2009. Stopping ObamaCare would be a critical practical and symbolic victory in the war for freedom.

If ObamaCare and the President's other initiatives aren't stopped, then Mr. Obama and the left will have severed many of the vital cords that connect the republic to its founding. Americans will be less free, and less in charge of their lives. The American experience will effectively end, and a European socialized America will begin.

In 1899 Winston Churchill made this short speech about Mecca Mania:

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

Neal Boortz aims some chin music at the diversity dimwits in the Society of Professional Journalists who have their panties in a wad because "illegal immigrants" gives border jumpers a boo-boo.

Offensive to Latinos? Like I give a great speckled flying damn? How about what's offensive to Americans? Here's some advice: Latinos, Hispanics, Mexicans ... whatever ... ought to spend a few momentos worrying about what is offensive to us. Here's a start:

* Calling yourselves "reconquistadores" and claiming that the Southwestern United States really belongs to Mexico anyway.

* Raising unholy hell when Arizona tries to enforce an immigration law that is much less severe than the laws in effect and being enforced in Mexico.

* Refusing to extradite Mexican murderers who flee to Mexico if they will face the death penalty in America while Mexican border cities and towns are becoming lawless killing fields.

* Marching around with signs saying "we are not criminals" when you broke the law coming here, break the law staying here, and break the law working here. Maybe "criminals" means something completely different in Spanish.

Just give this "that's offensive" crap a rest. If you're in this country illegally you're "illegal aliens." I don't even like applying the word "immigrant" to your actions. That's a slam to every immigrant who went by the rules to become a resident and then citizen of this amazing (for now) country.

The Center for Individual Freedom’s Troy Senik complied this list of 15 Lessons From 2010.

1. Teleprompters do not have a humility setting.

2. Joe Biden’s Ritalin prescription has not been refilled since the late eighties.

3. When liberals talk about a “living, breathing constitution,” what they really mean is a “dying, asphyxiating constitution.”

4. We're going to have to repeal the health care law to find out what's in it.

5. In modern America, the government has the right to force you to buy health insurance, but not to question you about whether you’re in the country legally.

6. Because of its small carbon footprint, unemployment is now considered a "green job."

7. Up until recently, many White House staffers believed that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" referred to the Obama Administration's economic policies.

8. God has a sense of humor. We know this because New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg – a man who has spent his entire political career crusading against the evils of salt – was done in by snow.

9. The dual examples of Hillary Clinton and Kim Jong-il have definitively proved that anyone wearing an ill-fitting pantsuit is incapable of effective international diplomacy.

10. Two years ago, Eric Holder called the American people "cowards." Yet today he can’t stand up to an Australian waif with a French-sounding name who’s undermining American national security from an Internet café.

11. The next candidate to run against Harry Reid ought to carry a crucifix, garlic and a wooden stake.

12. Nancy Pelosi believes that unemployment benefits are one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus available. We can only presume that she will next propose replacing conventional agricultural subsidies with Soviet bread lines.

13. It’s George W. Bush's fault.

14. The stimulus was too small. After all, China still has some money left.

15. The American electorate has become a death panel.

DECEMBER 2010

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [12/31/10]

Thomas Sowell sounds off on the Obamunist Regime’s end run around the Constitution.

The Constitution of the United States begins with the words "We the people." But neither the Constitution nor "we the people" will mean anything if politicians and judges can continue to do end runs around both.

Bills passed too fast for anyone to read them are blatant examples of these end runs. But last week, another of these end runs appeared in a different institution when the medical "end of life consultations" rejected by Congress were quietly enacted through bureaucratic fiat by administrators of Medicare.

Although Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Jay Rockefeller had led an effort by a group of fellow Democrats in Congress to pass Section 1233 of pending Medicare legislation, which would have paid doctors to include "end of life" counseling in their patients' physical checkups, the Congress as a whole voted to delete that provision.

Republican Congressman John Boehner, soon to become Speaker of the House, objected to this provision in 2009, saying: "This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."

Whatever the merits or demerits of the proposed provision in Medicare legislation, the Constitution of the United States makes the elected representatives of "we the people" the ones authorized to make such decisions. But when proposals explicitly rejected by a vote in Congress are resurrected and stealthily made the law of the land by bureaucratic fiat, there has been an end run around both the people and the Constitution.

Congressman Blumenauer's office praised the Medicare bureaucracy's action but warned: "While we are very happy with the result, we won't be shouting it from the rooftops because we are not out of the woods yet."

In other words, don't let the masses know about it.

When her ‘rat out thy neighbor’ scheme (if you see something, say something) was portrayed, quite rightly, as Big Brotherish, by CNN’s Candy Crowley, Jihad Janet Napolitano spewed the usual, self-serving, drivel.

"It just sounds very Big Brother to me, turning in the next door neighbor." CNN's Candy Crowley said to Napolitano during an interview on "State of the Union."

"It's not," Napolitano insisted. "It depends on the common sense of the American people. I think they have common sense. And it depends on, again ... getting through this notion that our safety, our security and the world we live in today is a shared responsibility."

Crowley suggested that the type of activity that citizens are supposed to report is totally undefined, but Napolitano argued that -- with a reminder -- people can figure out for themselves what merits reporting. She also noted that the campaign started not with the federal government, but in the New York subway system after Sept. 11.

"All we have done is expand it. And the reason we have [the campaign] is because we want the citizenry of the United States to be alert, not alarmed, but alert -- alert to situations, alert to unattended packages at the airport or unattended bags at a bus stop, alert to things that are highly unusual," Napolitano said. (Politico)

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [12/24/10]

From our ‘full of herself’ news pile, the FSOP gives you this snippet of snobbery from Sports Illustrated cover girl and Victoria’s Secret mannequin, Jess Hart.

"If you see me, or another model, in a bar wait until you are spoken to before you speak. If we are interested in you we will make the first move." (Fox News)

Sara Payne Scarbro, a spokeswench for Senator Bobby Byrd’s replacement, Senator Joe Manchin, offers up a lame excuse for Senator Joe’s absence, when the DREAM Act and DADT repeal were voted on in the United States Senate.

"[Senator Manchin and his wife Gayle had] "planned a holiday gathering over a year ago with all their children and grandchildren as they will not all be together on Christmas Day. While he regrets missing the votes, it was a family obligation that he just could not break. However, he has been clear on where he stands on the issues." (American Thinker)

Robert M. McDowell, a Republican commissioner for the FCC, sounds the warning on the FCC’s blatant power grab.

"...feeling quixotic pressure to fight an imaginary problem, the FCC leadership this fall pushed a small group of hand-picked industry players toward a "choice" between a bad option (broad regulation already struck down in April by the D.C. federal appeals court) or a worse option (phone monopoly-style regulation). Experiencing more coercion than consensus or compromise, a smaller industry group on Dec. 1 gave qualified support for the bad option. The FCC's action will spark a billable-hours bonanza as lawyers litigate the meaning of "reasonable" network management for years to come. How's that for regulatory certainty?

To date, the FCC hasn't ruled out increasing its power further by using the phone monopoly laws, directly or indirectly regulating rates someday, or expanding its reach deeper into mobile broadband services. The most expansive regulatory regimes frequently started out modest and innocuous before incrementally growing into heavy-handed behemoths.

On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation. The darkest day of the year may end up marking the beginning of a long winter's night for Internet freedom."

Congressman Fred Upton, incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sounds off on theFCC’s Internet power grab.

“The FCC’s hostile actions toward innovation, investment and job creation cannot be allowed to stand. Today’s vote is a sad commentary that this administration and the FCC continue to ignore the will of the American people – our new majority is committed to protecting personal liberty and reducing the size and scope of the government.”

U.S. Representative Lee Terry also sounds off on the FCC’s power grab.

“The FCC has irresponsibly decided to pursue a course unauthorized and opposed by most members of Congress. This is just more big government intervention in the marketplace to try and fix something that isn’t broken.”

Harry Beadle takes some well known race card wranglers to the woodshed.

The Reverends Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jim Wallis, and Jeremiah Wright, and Father Michael Pfleger, insist that racism is alive and well in America. And they are right. All they need do is look in their respective mirrors to see some of its most active proponents...I suggest that the true racists are those who constantly try to pit one race against another -- that those the reverends lead are victims not of white racism, but of a racist game being played by the reverends themselves and those like them. The simple fact is that victimization is big business. If it were not, the reverends would not enjoy the incomes they do or the political influence they wield. It is beyond irony that what the reverends actually achieve is the perpetuation of slavery: emotional, intellectual, economic, and, in a sense, physical. It is the slavery of ignorance.

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [12/17/10]

Clarice Feldman isn’t impressed by The One’s presidential performance.

From the beginning of the week to the end, the president made crystal-clear to anyone who paid attention that he was over his head in this position and that he was startlingly disengaged in all but the most trivial of ceremonial matters.

When you elect to the office of chief executive someone with not one minute's worth of executive experience, this is what you get. He can't do his job, and the people he appointed to work with him are just as ill-suited for their positions.

Barry’s DeathCare takes a hit when U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson rules the individual mandate unconstitutional.

“Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market,” he wrote. “In doing so, enactment of the [individual mandate] exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I [of the Constitution.]

Richard Salsman sounds off on the American Jihad against Capitalism.

Obama is only the latest to concede capitalism’s productive power, while adamantly opposing its morals. “The reason we’ve got an unparalleled standard of living in the history of the world,” he said recently, “is because we’ve got a free market that’s dynamic and entrepreneurial, and that free market has to be nurtured and cultivated.” All that’s true enough–to the extent we’ve had freedom in markets. But Obama’s policies, like those of his predecessor, only stifle markets instead of nurturing them. Obama has said capitalism’s profit motive is corrupting, its wealth distribution is “unjust” and its financiers are “fat cats.” As with Marx, Keynes and Hayek, such biases reflect a deep disdain for capitalism’s morals.

The collapse of socialist regimes two decades ago didn’t mean capitalism was finally being hailed for its many virtues; the historic event only merely reminded people of capitalism’s productive ability–an ability that already long-proven and long-acknowledged even by its worst enemies. Persistent animosity toward capitalism today rests on moral, not practical grounds. Unless rational self-interest is understood as the one moral code consistent with genuine humanity, and the moral estimate of capitalism thus improves, socialism will keep making comebacks, despite its deep and dark record of human misery.

Lt. General William G. Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.) sounds the warning: Islam is the enemy.

"I believe today we face as great a threat as we faced in 1776. The situation in America is much far more serious than most Americans realize, and there's no longer any excuse for not knowing...You need to remember one thing from tonight's presentation. Their objective is to replace our Constitution with Sharia Law...You need to understand that this is a war of ideology -- it's not a war of Islam versus Christianity. This is a war of Islam against everybody that is not submitted to Allah. Now because most of the world is Christian, it falls out that most of the people who are under persecution, or the targets of Islam, are Christians."

Synaptic Snack Food
Source: PIG News Wire [12/10/10]

Randall Hoven expounds on Class Warfare and its unintended consequences.

A good class warrior wishes for three things (at least).

1. For tax rates to be highest on the richest. Ideally, only the rich would pay taxes. The Father of Class War, Karl Marx, made "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax" one of the ten planks of his Manifesto.

2. For no one to be super-rich. Ideally, no one would make more than some amount considered too much. Barack Obama, the Son of Class War, once said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

3. For government to have plenty of money so that it can spread the wealth and help the needy. The Democratic Party, the Holy Ghost of Class War, put this in its 2008 platform: "For families making more than $250,000, we'll ask them to give back a portion of the Bush tax cuts to invest in health care and other key priorities."

Now think about that for a moment. If the class warriors got their first two wishes, their third wish would be impossible. If you tax only the rich, yet you have no rich, then government collects no revenue. You can't spread wealth if there is no wealth.

And here is the punchline: that is exactly what is happening now, just not as starkly.

In 2007, those making over $200,000 per year did not pay all federal income taxes -- just 52% of them. Then came the Great Recession. Taxable income of that group declined 16% from 2007 to 2008. Taxable incomes went up slightly for the middle class, or those households making between $40,000 and $200,000.

And what about the really rich: those with gross incomes over one million dollars? There were 18% fewer tax returns from such households and 25% less taxable income. As a result, the federal government collected $60 billion less from such households in 2008 than in 2007. (See tables at the end of this article.)

The Great Recession was a great time for class warriors. Incomes for the rich went down quite a bit in a single year (and only the first year of the Great Recession), while those for the middle class stayed about the same.

The result was predictable: much less revenue for the government. Federal income taxes from the middle class ($40,000 to $200,000) went up by $2 billion, but those from the rich (over $200,000) went down by $73 billion. This was not because of tax rate cuts; there weren't any. It was because there were fewer rich households and less income for such households.

Real GDP fell only 2.8% from 2007 to 2008, but federal revenue fell almost twice as much: 5.2% in constant dollars. Through 2009, federal revenues were down 21% from 2007, leaving a gaping shortfall in revenue of over half a trillion dollars (inflation-adjusted) and an unprecedented federal deficit. (Tax figures for 2009 are not yet available. I suspect they will show the same pattern: loss of federal revenue due to loss of income at the higher levels.)

Revenues did not fall because of a tax rate cut; there was no tax rate cut between 2007 and 2009. Revenues did not fall because of some giveaway to the rich. In fact, the problem was just the opposite. Revenues fell because there were fewer rich, and the rich made less money -- just as class warriors wanted.

We had a progressive tax structure that relied on the rich getting richer. Then we got what we wished for: for the rich to become like us. So now we're all broke. We had a bubble-based tax system, and the bubble burst.

Why do you think revenues fell by over 20% to the federal government and states like California during the Great Recession, when GDP fell only 4%? Because the federal government and states like California have extremely progressive tax structures. You get rid of the rich, and you get rid of government revenues (and job creation). Believe it or not, the rich lost more money in the Great Recession than the rest of us did. Our golden goose is cooked.

Discussions of how much to tax the rich are ever more akin to fiddling while Rome is burning. Before you can get money from the rich, you have to have rich households, and they have to have money. You can't tax what you've destroyed.

Amit Ghate gives us a peek at the workings of an unregulated marketplace.

In a free, unregulated market, anyone who is highly risk averse can—and always could—refrain from using new products or adopting new ideas. Indeed, on a smaller scale, this is what differentiates technology late-adopters from first-adopters. Those worried about the latest cancer drug can limit themselves to treatments that have been on the market for 15 or 20 years. Those who don’t understand the stock market or distrust corporate leaders can invest elsewhere, or keep their money in a safe. Those who find planes too risky can drive rather than fly, or spend extra for a premium airline with a sparkling safety record. (As discussed elsewhere, there are many free market mechanisms to convey knowledge and help with such choices.)

Moreover, in a free market, the regulatory “geniuses” who now rule our lives could still try to persuade us of the best course of action—they could even set up shop and charge us for their knowledge. The only thing they could no longer do is forcibly impose their judgments on us. (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide what it says about regulators’ confidence in their own edicts that they so vehemently refuse to go the route of persuasion, preferring instead to rule by government force.)

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [12/06/10]

John Bolton

“Both our friends and our adversaries alike have assessed this as a very weak administration, uncomfortable with asserting American interests or defending them, particularly through the use of force internationally. To raise national security back into the center of the debate – which is where I think it belongs – it could well take a presidential candidacy, because that is what helps focus people’s attention on these issues and that’s why I’m thinking of doing it.”

“The most likely outcome with respect to Iran is that it gets nuclear weapons and very, very soon. Given that diplomacy has failed, given that sanctions have failed, the only alternative to an Iran with nuclear weapons is a limited military strike against the nuclear weapons program.”

“A preemptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear program would not cause chaos in the Middle East because the Arab states don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons any more than Israel does.”

Geert Wilders (From a speech in Tel Aviv)

"I am not ashamed to stand with Israel, but proud. I am grateful to Israel. I will always defend Israel. Your country is the cradle of Western civilization. We call it the Judeo-Christian civilization with good reason."

"The world looks at the plight of the Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza, and other places, and many blame Israel. The UN claims that there are over 4.7 million Palestinian refugees, and many blame Israel. These voices say the Palestinians should be allowed to return to "Palestine." But where is Palestine? Many say Israel must solve the problems of Palestine. But is Israel guilty of the plight of the Palestinian refugees?"

"My answer is "No." The Arab leaders are to be blamed - and Islam is to be blamed. "We must speak the truth. The truth that Jordan is Palestine, the truth that Samaria and Judea are part of Israel, the truth that Jerusalem may not fall, the truth that Israel is the only democracy in a dark and tyrannical region, the truth that Israel is the linchpin of the West."