I said that justice is justice, whereas "social justice" is code for one set of rules for the rich, another for the poor; one set for whites, another set for minorities; one set for straight men, another for women and gays. In short, I pointed out, it's the opposite of actual justice.And so it is.
In a stinging rebuff to the United Nations and its anti-poverty efforts, Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in Africa, has told the world body that it wants out of its long-term development agreement because the U.N. makes the problem worse, not better.Liberal policies always do more harm than good, however well intentioned.
The reason, given in a January 26 notification letter from the country's powerful Finance Minister, obtained by Fox News, is that "aid only postpones the basic solutions to crucial development problems by tentatively ameliorating their manifestations without tackling their root causes. The structural, political, economic, etc. damage that it inflicts upon recipient countries is also enormous." In other words, the government argues, U.N. aid does more harm than good.
President Obama finally and quietly accepted his "transparency" award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on MondayThis is the essence of Obama's presidency: transparency is opacity, up is down, right is wrong, good is evil.
According to a Roll Call survey of vehicles parked on Capitol Hill and at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, as of mid-March, lawmakers were carrying at least $15,000 in outstanding tickets — ranging from expired meters to speeding camera violations — and potentially thousands of dollars more.Obeying the law is so... proletariat.
Three-quarters of those tickets, worth about $11,500, were in default at the time of the survey, having gone more than 60 days, and in some cases years, without payment.
"Nation-building was bad enough. It would seem that Barack Obama is now into caliphate-building. It's almost as though Obama might believe he's the 12th Imam."Entirely within the realm of possibilities.
--Rush Limbaugh
Union members, government workers and Democrats are also aided by one other group of people. These are the people who will tell you very loudly that the government needs to cut spending, but who will raise unholy hell if the government tries to cut spending on the program or an issue that is personally important to them. There are a lot of corn farmers in Iowa who will tell you that absolutely the government needs to cut spending, but who will work very hard to defeat any candidate who ever proposes cutting up one penny from the asinine ethanol subsidy program. The attitude of the typical American is clearly that the government should cut spending, but that the government shouldn't even think about cutting spending on any program that is in any way important to them. It is always somebody else's government spending program that needs to be cut.How do you reach them? It's the age old problem - let go, and blessings come to you. Hold tight and lose it all. It goes against the grain of human nature.
After 90 minutes he was allowed out to hear Biden and Nelson speak for 35 minutes, before being taken back to the closet for the remainder of the event.Why would you allow yourself to be put in a closet? And then go back in? Was only one journalist at the event? Where were the rest of the journalists?
"Because the Obama administration looks like they're trying to cover it up. The justice department is trying to spin it and ATF is at war with themselves over this and the American public needs the truth."
--Wayne LaPierre
Surrounded by incredible hazards on all sides, ranging from obscene currents capable of dislodging houses from their moorings, sharp twisted metal that could easily have punctured his oxygen line (at best) or impaled him (at worst), and with giant f-ing cars careening through the water like toys, he pressed on. Past broken glass, past destroyed houses, past downed power lines arcing with electrical current, through undertow that could have dragged him out to sea never to be heard from again, he searched.I saw this posted at Improved Clinch a few days back, just now got around to posting it myself. It's a great story.
"I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone," Rhodes said. "Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end."Obviously.
"Is this not a form of terrorism this guy is preaching?"
When a burly ex-convict forced his way into a posh Florida home last week, he had no idea what awaited him -- a 25-year-old beauty queen with a pink .38-caliber handgunHer fiance doesn't know when to keep his big mouth shut, though.
Leftists like to think of themselves as clear-thinking realists who are sensitive to nuance and irony. In reality, they are like little children who regard fairy tales as non-fiction. For instance, they champion socialism even though the past hundred years have proven time and again that it doesn't work in practice the way it does in theory. On the contrary, in every country where it has existed, it has inevitably led to loss of liberty, widespread poverty and mass murder on a scale that has no parallel in human history. Point out this obvious fact to a liberal, and once he gets done calling you a greedy, heartless, bloodthirsty reactionary, he'll insist that we haven't yet seen true socialism. Actually, we have, though. We've seen it in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, in China, Cambodia, North Korea and Cuba.
Washington has given Petrobras America Inc. permission to start oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a regulator said.I'm not OK with that. American companies should be drilling in American waters.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement gave Petrobras approval to use a floating production storage offloading facility at its Cascade-Chinook project in the Gulf of Mexico.
The approval marks the first time FPSO technology will be used in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The oil and gas project is about 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 8,200 feet of water. The FPSO has a production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.
One of the things about Petrobras that I want to make clear ('cause it's a little bit confusing): The regime, the Obama administration has given permission to Petrobras to have a floating underwater storage facility in the Gulf of Mexico that will hold 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of gas. A floating underwater storage facility. No worries about leakage. No problem. We have to shut down our Gulf drilling because of a fire on board a rig. But we okay a floating underwater storage facility. Well, since it's a Brazilian company which has gotten heavy investments from George Soros, apparently there are no possible risks to the environment here. It just seems like all the obstacles that this administration seeks to place in people's way happen to be in the way of the United States.And I'm sure there will be no leaks, too.
--Rush Limbaugh
It seems like it was just yesterday when we had an "imperialist warmonger" in the White House who was going to be replaced by a peace-loving Democrat who promised "hope" and "change" instead. It's funny how that worked out, isn't it? We still have troops in Iraq, we've escalated the war in Afghanistan, and now we're bombing everything that moves in Libya. Yet, the same liberals who were protesting in the streets and calling George Bush a war criminal have mostly been meek and quiet about the fact that the President they supported has been following in George Bush's footsteps.
So, the obvious question is, Did you lefties believe ANY of the crap you were spewing about the war on terrorism before Obama got into office?" If so, maybe you could answer a few questions prompted by the things liberals were saying during the Bush years.
Inside the foreign ministers' meeting, a loud and contentious debate erupted about whether to move forward with stronger action to halt Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's campaign against the Libyan rebels and the violence being perpetrated against civilians. Britain and France argued for immediate action while Germany and Russia opposed such a move, according to two European diplomats who were briefed on the meeting.Emphasis mine.
Clinton stayed out of the fray, repeating the administration's position that all options are on the table but not specifically endorsing any particular step. She also did not voice support for stronger action in the near term, such as a no-fly zone or military aid to the rebels, both diplomats said.
"The way the U.S. acted was to let the Germans and the Russians block everything, which announced for us an alignment with the Germans as far as we are concerned," one of the diplomats told The Cable.
Clinton's unwillingness to commit the United States to a specific position led many in the room to wonder exactly where the administration stood on the situation in Libya.
"Frankly we are just completely puzzled," the diplomat said. "We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States."
No one doubts the bravery of the Fukushima Fifty — those workers who have chosen to ignore radiation warnings and continue trying to restore stability at Japan's damaged nuclear reactors. The 180 rotating workers are anonymous and hailed as heroes. But new details of their heartbreaking ordeal are coming to light as family members receive haunting messages detailing their mission.Shouldn't it be the Fukushima 180 though, give them all credit.
The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.They seem to be very interested in anything that will give them more control over the proletariat.
Democratic politicians tend to be a bit more enthusiastic about the topic. Biden was a close Senate ally of copyright holders, and President Obama picked top copyright industry lawyers for Justice Department posts. Last year, Biden warned that "piracy is theft."I'm not promoting piracy, it's just interesting what this administration takes interest in.
The Middle East is afire with rebellion, Japan is imploding from an earthquake, and the battle of the budget is on in the United States, but none of this seems to be deterring President Obama from a heavy schedule of childish distractions.If he had even an inkling of love for the United States he would step down now. He's way out of his league and everyday he is in office does further damage to the Republic and to the world. The people of the United states need to start demanding his resignation. And Biden right after him. At least Republicans know when to step down, Democrats never do.
This morning, as Japan's nuclear crisis enters a potentially catastrophic phase, we are told that Obama is videotaping his NCAA tournament picks and that we'll be able to tune into ESPN Wednesday to find out who he likes.
Saturday, he made his 61st outing to the golf course as president, and got back to the White House with just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to party with Washington’s elite journalists at the annual Gridiron Dinner.
With various urgencies swirling about him, Saturday's weekly videotaped presidential address focusing on "Women's History Month" seemed bizarrely out of touch.
Can we imagine a world sixty-seven years from now in which all people will live peaceably with those currently committed to violent, hate-filled extremist beliefs held by many in the Moslem world today? If Japan is a model, the answer is yes. However, that vision can only come to fruition if those beliefs are utterly obliterated. Just as in the past, one side has to win for both sides to eventually be winners. If the side of evil wins, both sides, and all humanity loses.
In California, a substantial black population has simply been forced by economics to vacate many communities near the coast and move farther inland, where the environmental zealots are not yet as strong politically, and where housing prices are therefore not yet as unaffordable.I am not impressed with the Republicans performance since the last election, to put it mildly. They're ineffectual, weak and easily intimidated. There is no leadership and only a few are out there fighting the good fight.
With all the Republican politicians' laments about how overwhelmingly blacks vote for Democrats, I have yet to hear a Republican politician publicly point out the harm to blacks from such policies of the Democrats as severe housing restrictions, resulting from catering to environmental extremists.
In much of the Arab Muslim and some of the non-Arab Muslim world today (such as Iran), "Jew" is not a person. "Jew" is not even merely the enemy. In fact, there is no parallel on Earth to what "Jew" means to a hundred million, perhaps hundreds of millions of Muslims.
Think of any conflict in the world – Pakistan-India, China-Tibet, North Korea-South Korea, Tamil-Sinhalese. There are some deep hatreds there, and atrocities have been committed on one or both sides of those conflicts. But in none of those conflicts nor anywhere else is there something equivalent to what "Jew" means to millions of Muslims.
There really is only one historical parallel, and it, too, involved the word "Jew." The Nazis also succeeded in fully dehumanizing the word "Jew." Thus, for Nazism, it was as important (if not more so) to murder Jewish babies and children – often through as cruel a means as possible (being burned alive, buried alive or thrown up in the air and impaled on bayonets) – as it was to murder Jewish adults.
The human being does not have to learn to hate. It seems to come pretty naturally. Nor does the human being have to learn to murder, steal or rape. These, too, seem to be in the natural human repertoire of evils.
But the human being does have to learn to hate children and babies, and to regard the torture and murder of them as morally desirable acts. It takes years of work to undo normal protective human attitudes toward children.
That is precisely what the Nazis did and what significant parts of the Muslim world have done to the word "Jew." To them, the Jew is not just sub-human; the Jew – and his or her children – is sub-animal.
The animals, the killers, were a team of Hamas murderers and, when word of the murders spread throughout Gaza, candy was given out to children there to celebrate.The Palestinians and other Muslims of like mind have become what they believe Jews are. Their raging hatred of Jews has so corrupted and distorted their psyche over so many generations that they are what they have loved to hate.
"I will bet you that the Japanese make more ground in their rebuilding and recovery sooner than we get the World Trade Center rebuilt -- and we got a ten-year head-start."
--Rush Limbaugh
Worse than the obnoxious arrogance, the political/religious movement now known as climate change, or CC, is having a corrosive effect on a human quality that has enabled us to survive and thrive on this planet – adaptation.
CC puts the focus on every real and imagined negative effect of every human action, calling into question whether anything we do can ever be right. This focus would have prevented the major inventions of the last 200 years. We were a "can do" society; CC advocates the virtues of "can't do" and "never should have done."
"Can't do" societies do not last long. Adaptation to change is the primary human survival behavioral trait. Opposition to adaptation is suicide. Blaming every natural disaster on human activity is arrogant, wrong and folly.
"Lest we forget, an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history(and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."The book is even recommended reading by the NEA. You know, the National Education Association, yea, that NEA.
Oh, and let's not forget this — the kingdom that the first radical "won" was hell.
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.Unions eventually destroy the host, as many parasites do, as the coal, steel and automobile industries can attest.
To unions, workers are just the raw material used to create union power, just as iron ore is the raw material used by U.S. Steel and bauxite is the raw material used by the Aluminum Company of America.
The most fundamental fact about labor unions is that they do not create any wealth. They are one of a growing number of institutions which specialize in siphoning off wealth created by others, whether those others are businesses or the taxpayers.
When it was installed last spring, Anderson didn't think Wind One would cause a problem. For 35 years, he’s owned and operated a passive solar company on Cape Cod.Just like every other liberal policy, it worked in theory.
The energy conservationist in Anderson considered wind power a good principle. He wasn't alone — before the turbine switched on, Falmouth residents almost universally welcomed Wind One as a symbol of renewable energy and a way to keep taxes down.
"I was proud looking at it from this viewpoint — until it started turning," Anderson said.
But now, as many as 50 people are complaining about the turbine and the noise it makes at different speeds. A dozen families are retaining a lawyer for that reason.
"It is dangerous. Headaches. Loss of sleep. And the ringing in my ears never goes away. I could look at it all day, and it does not bother me. It's quite majestic — but it's way too close," Anderson said.
Obama asks Saudis to airlift weapons into BenghaziActually, it's also not a good sign that your secret plan is published on the web. Just sayin.
In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are," He said. "Tell them what is wrong, and why, and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you, and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."
Today, American culture is cut by a canyon. It doesn't separate whites from blacks; it doesn't separate rich from poor; it doesn't separate men from women. It divides those who regard Judeo Christian values as vital for our nation's survival from those who consider the Biblical blueprint to be nothing more than a primitive obstruction to progress. And there are blacks and whites on both sides; there are rich and poor on both sides, and there are men and women on both sides.
The other day, I found myself thinking about two of the 19th century's most influential men. Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died in 1883. John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 and died in 1937. So far as I know, they never had occasion to meet. But they would have been aware of each other, and each would have thought the other was a dangerous lunatic. Only one of them would have been right.I think the following quote applies in this instance:
For much of the world, then and now, Marx was a benevolent visionary, while Rockefeller would be dismissed as an avaricious villain.
Still, it was Rockefeller who helped create Standard Oil, thus providing jobs, homes and oil for hundreds of millions of people here in America and around the world. In addition, his charitable contributions to medical research led to the eradication of hookworm and yellow fever.
Karl Marx, on the other hand, never did anything that helped propel a car, turn a rotor, heat a home or fuel the world's industries. His writings were productive, I suppose, but only in the sense that they helped to produce the likes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Che and Kim Jong-il.
I suppose if one wished to be charitable, you could credit Marx with helping to create employment opportunities for executioners, gravediggers and gulag guards.
Just for the record, Rockefeller believed in the profit motive. He was a realist and a pragmatist who understood the best and worst of human nature. For his part, Marx believed in a stateless, classless society. He believed that the only thing that prevented men from being perfect saints and angels was capitalism. He was a complete nincompoop. Which is just another way of saying that Rockefeller was a conservative and Marx was a left-winger.
A man may deal with theory, and miss the whole impact of the truth.People are enamored with Marxist theory, which demonstrably doesn't work in real life, and against the Judeo-Christian way of life, which brings real and substantive blessing to the society that embraces it.
--G. Campbell Morgan
But there is something deeper here than just favor-selling and vote-buying. There is something that almost amounts to a twisted idealism in the Democrats' crusade. They are fighting, not just to preserve their special privileges, but to preserve a social ideal. Or rather, they are fighting to maintain the illusion that their ideal system is benevolent and sustainable.The rub, as they say, is that it is not a self-sustaining system.
Unionized public-sector employment is the distilled essence of the left's moral ideal. No one has to worry about making a profit. Generous health-care and retirement benefits are provided to everyone by the government. Comfortable pay is mandated by legislative fiat. The work rules are militantly egalitarian: pay, promotion, and job security are almost totally independent of actual job performance. And because everyone works for the government, they never have to worry that their employer will go out of business.
In short, public employment is an idealized socialist economy in miniature, including its political aspect: the grateful recipients of government largesse provide money and organizational support to re-elect the politicians who shower them with all of these benefits.
But the socialist utopia of public employment has crossed the Thatcher Line: the point at which, as the Iron Lady used to warn, you run out of other people's money.
That's what "collective bargaining" is about: It enables unions rather than citizens to set the price of government. It is, thus, a direct assault on republican democracy, and it needs to be destroyed. Unlovely as they are, the Greek rioters and the snarling thugs of Madison are the logical end point of the advanced social democratic state: not an oppressed underclass, but a spoiled overclass, rioting in defense of its privileges and insisting on more subsidy, more benefits, more featherbedding, more government.
Big Unions fund Big Government. The union slices off two per cent of the workers’ pay and sluices it to the Democratic Party, which uses it to grow government, which also grows unions, which thereby grows the number of two-per-cent contributions, which thereby grows the Democratic Party, which thereby grows government… Repeat until bankruptcy. Or bailout.
When I think of America and the founding principles of this country, "collective bargaining" doesn't cross my mind. Thoughts of freedom, individual liberty, personal responsibility and property rights do. Do you know who might think that collective bargaining is at the core of American democracy? A collectivist, that's who. Someone who looks at people as members of a specific group, rather than as sovereign individuals. Someone who believes in group rights, as opposed to individual rights. Someone who believes that the rights of the individual must be subjugated to the rights of the mob.
