Return on investment...

Yesterday on the Sean Hannity radio show, Pat Buchanan appeared as a guest. After a discussion of the Meiers withdrawl, the conversation turned to Iraq and the "War on Terror".

Buchanan drew an analogy to the Reagan White House, for which he served, and its policy in Lebanon and its chosen strategy to defeating the Soviets.

Unfortunately we're told that the only correct patriotic position is to support the Iraq war indefinitely, for otherwise would be to somehow disrespect the sacrifices made by the 2000 dead Americans whose lives were spent in Iraq trying to build George Bush's Wilsonian vision of world-wide "democracy".

In any case, listeners were reminded of the history lesson some of us learned when Ronald Reagan sent Marines into Lebanon. Once he recognized the reality of Middle East politics, Reagan understood that he had made a mistake and reversed himself. Similarly, Reagan realized that direct confrontation of the Soviets in their own backyard would be costly and success would not be assured. Therefore, he used a variety of approaches other than direct pursuit of an overt military war thousands of miles from American soil.

Unfortunately, George Bush has either not recognized his error or is unwilling to reverse himself and his strategy in the War Against Islamofascism.

We have now lost 2000 Americans in Iraq, as well as tens of billions of dollars, spent to create a theocracy likely to end up close allies with Iran (whose Chief Anti-Semite recently said Israel needs to be wiped off the map).

A reasoned review of America's foreign policy towards the Middle East shows very little success over the past decades, but much damage done to the people there as well as our own economy and military.

We are now preoccupied with Iraqi nationalists who want us out of their land instead of pursuing the illegals streaming into our country every day or the islamofascists whose populations in Europe and Central America are increasing rapidly.

Representative Ron Paul addresses the Iraq war effort in this recent column. Perhaps instead of exporting war around the world, we could try bringing capitalism and prosperity to the People of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, China and others whose governments enslave the People while enriching themselves and their cronies.

On second thought, perhaps we could use a lesson or two about the realities of capitalism in this country and some anecdotal truths about the secret agendas of our leaders.

Wal-mart seeks higher minimum wage...

Why doesn't Wal-mart simply raise its wages instead of lobbying for an increase in the minimum wage?

Llewellyn Rockwell takes a stab, suggesting that higher minimum wages would damage Wal-mart competetitors whose margins won't allow for mandatory wage increases.

Of course, everyone on Earth is both a consumer and a producer. While raising minimum wages may increase the apparent size of a producer's paycheck, no evidence exists that demonstrates any increase in the buying power of a consumer following a rise in minimum wage, since most companies offset rises in labor with rises in price.

Wal-mart

Setback in Bush's War on Liberty...

An ACLU press release states the following:

Late this afternoon, Judge Perry A. Little of the 13th Judicial Circuit in Hillsborough County stopped the suspicionless pat-down searches of all persons entering Raymond James Stadium for National Football League games. The ruling comes in the first legal challenge to a controversial policy the NFL has sought to impose on stadiums across the country.

Judge Little issued the preliminary injunction to stop the searches while a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida goes forward. The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of Tampa Bay Buccaneers season ticket holder Gordon Johnston, a high school civics teacher.

George Bush's War Against Liberty, commonly referred to as the War Against Terror, has suffered a great setback today, and hopefully Americans will soon wakeup to the reality that absolute security cannot be provided by any government. Further, I hope that the People will begin to recognize that trading liberty for presumptions of security directly contradicts the moral compass of our Republic and our Constitution.

ACLU
War on Liberty

Why people aren't watching...

Drudge has this headline on his page today:
"World Series Is Lowest-Rated Ever"

The Chicago White Sox's first world championship in 88 years was also the lowest-rated World Series ever.

Chicago's four-game sweep of the Houston Astros averaged an 11.1 national rating with a 19 share on Fox. That's down about 7 percent from the previous low, an 11.9 with a 20 share for the 2002 World Series between the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants.

While the 2002 World Series, which went seven games, rated higher overall, it was only averaging an 11.0 through four games.

This year was a drop of almost 30 percent from last year's series, in which the Boston Red Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals for their first title in 86 years. That had a 15.8 rating with a 25 share.

Why the dramatic drop this year from last? Perhaps Peggy Noonan is right in her column published yesterday, in which she says:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon.

More than likely, people concerned about the future of the nation and their children are less likely to find time for sports nor the requisite ability to relax and enjoy professional entertainment.

My consumption of sports and entertainment has dwindled dramatically in the past year or two since I began thinking the things Ms. Noonan discusses in her article.

UN calls for more international socialism...

According to Reuters:

Earthquake relief efforts in Pakistan will have to be scaled back putting tens of thousands of lives at risk unless donors give another $250 million immediately, the United Nations said on Friday.

What Pakistanis need is not more charity handout programs, designed to transfer wealth from middle-class Americans to United Nations bureaucrats.

What they need is a rapid infusion of capitalism and private property rights so that they may begin to invent and to build a modern economy for themselves in order to secure their own cities and People from disasters like the recent earthquake.

Sending welfare funds to the "victims" will encourage individuals in Pakistan to resist any attempts to transform themselves into a People able to sustain themselves and their family. Since human nature clearly lends itself to laziness, people who can procure wealth via plunder from those to whom it belongs will not refuse handouts in favor of laboring to earn their own property unless and until it becomes easier to labor than to plunder.



Pakistan
Socialism
United Nations
Private property

Able Danger...

FReepers are suggesting that Bush has no reason to hide the Able Danger story. I disagree.

If things are as Curt Weldon says, doesn't Bush's whole notion about needing to fight the terrorists on offense lose a substantial amount of credibility?

Soviet conservatism...

If, and so long as Donald Rumsfeld obstructs full and complete public disclosure regarding the 'Able Danger' military unit, I can't help but be pessimistic about the future of this Republic.

I'm tired of the Republican talk shows carrying water for the GOP and Bush who brush off allegations of soft dictatorship taking hold in the White House, and even more frustrating are the callers who cannot think critically enough to criticize anything that this President does.

The joke is on you...

In America, the poor uneducated people are happy because they think everybody else is paying their way, and the rich people are happy because they know they aren't really paying nearly the real rates of taxation being born by lower and middle class people.

Carl Levin contradicts himself...

On Tim Russert's NBC program Meet the Press, Carl Levin said the following:

And without that political unity, they're not going to defeat the insurgents, and we're not contributing to that when we tell them that we're going to keep our troops there as long as they're needed, the way the secretary of state has said previously. We're there as long as we're needed, that message to the Iraqis is the wrong message. It should be, "Hey, folks, unless you get your political house in order, since it's so essential to defeating the insurgency, we have got to consider a departure timetable for our troops."

But then he went on to say:

It's a haven right now, according to the CIA, as reported in a number of newspapers. The CIA has said Iraq is now a haven for terrorists.

So, if Iraqis won't "get their political house in order", we should cut and run from a known terrorist haven?

Neo-con war mongering...

The pro-war right rejects comparisons to Vietnam because they know they are true, yet they went into this war attempting to prove how Republicans can effectively prosecute wars where Democrats cannot, yet they have not proven that to be true.

Instead, the neo-con war mongers have fallen into the same traps as did LBJ and his administration.

Once again, brave soldiers fighting somebody else's war are paying the price for a cause unlikely to achieve lasting success.

The solution to welfare dependence...

Dependence on welfare programs in this country is at an all time high. Whole generations of families have been taught to trade away their freedom and responsibility with a vote to people promising social "safety nets" in return.

The solution is to set up camps in some remote areas of the many rural areas across the heartland of this country from Pennsylvania through Kansas and Montana. People who don't want to work can go to the camps.

Nobody at the camp is required to work. Nobody at the camp may vote. No rent will ever be charged and basic medical care will be available free of charge. Nobody will ever be forced to leave.

People will be paid for doing the work necessary to ensure food, shelter, and clothes are available for all people with federal tax dollars.

Transportation to the camp will be paid for in full by the federal government for any legal resident or Citizen. No transportation from the camp will be paid for by any government agency.

The cities and coastlines so precious and desirable to the productive majority of people in America would be returned to the people who provide for their upkeep.

50% of the federal government would become obsolete immediately and would be dissolved within 6 months. 25% of state agencies would disappear within a year.

Huge numbers of Democrat voters would also disappear, along with them the infectious liberalism which threatens to destroy the Republic for ever.

Visa Express and Khalid al Mihdar...

If you don't know who Khalid al-Mihdar is, find out immediately. It seems as though he played a large role in the bombing of the USS Cole, and according to the official government story, was one of the hijackers on American Airlines flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.

He got to this country with a visa issued through a program called "Visa Express" which put Saudis on the fast track to getting US Visas without visiting an embassy or any other US immigration official.

According to this article published by National Review on 14 June 2002:

• Three Saudis who were among the last of the Sept. 11 homicide hijackers to enter this country didn't visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to get their visas; they went to a travel agent, where they only submitted a short, two-page form and a photo.
  
  Three of the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. through Visa Express, even though the program had only been in place for three months at that point and that's not the only reason the program raises alarm. Take a sample month: The U.S. consulate in Jeddah interviewed only two of 104 applicants, rejecting none. The month in question? The first 30 days after 9/11.
  

That's right. The program began under the watch of George Bush, and it granted access to 3 of the 9/11 hijackers.

I still don't believe that George Bush orchestrated 9/11, or even knew the specifics of the plot, however it becomes more clear all the time that neither he, nor Bill Clinton, were very interested in taking steps to counter the rapidly growing threat posed by radical islamic jihadists in the months and years before 9/11.

One person who did attempt to sound the alarm bells was a man named John O'Neill. John O'Neill was sent to Yemen to investigate the USS Cole attack, and sometime thereafter dramatically stepped up his efforts to sound the warning bell about bin Laden and al Qaeda. He grew frustrated with the refusal by Clinton and his top advisors to step up anti-terrorism efforts or to carry out a thorough and appropriate response to the Cole bombing.

John O'Neill finally quit the FBI and took the job of World Trade Center security chief. He died on 9/11/2001.

Khalid al-Mihdar
9/11
John O'Neill

The real price "gougers"...

How is it that the same people who complain about oil companies "gouging" consumers never complain about being gouged by bottled water companies?

Gasoline = $3.00/gallon.
Water = $1.00/20 oz. bottle

One gallon = 128 oz.

At those prices, water costs over $6.00 /gallon. For "designer" brands like Evian or Perrier, prices are much higher.

Trusting George Bush...

Conservatives are being told by GOP water carriers to "trust the President" and his choice of Harriet Meiers to be the next Supreme Court justice.

In today's column, Pat Buchanan claims:

• White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan drove the knife in: "The president believes the (Bennett) comments were not appropriate."

Of course, one should remember what the response to Pat Robertson's comments about a potential assassination of Hugo Chavez. Essentially, McLellan suggested that Robertson's commentary as a private citizen are of his own volition, and the White House need not address them.

Why Bennett but not Robertson?

Bush's bigotry...

Often when we hear the President champion his marxist federal education policy, he uses the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations".

MSNBC reports:

• The Bush administration said Tuesday it would boost the number of contracts given to small and minority-owned businesses for Hurricane Katrina cleanup work, calling the amount now awarded too low.
  

Isn't this policy bigoted, in as much as it presumes that minority based businesses cannot compete in a free market bidding process to earn contracts according to meritocracy?

Will the disaster areas be better off in the long run if they are rebuilt by second-rate companies who only received contracts because of the race or gender of their owners?

• The Commerce Department, meanwhile, announced a new information center and Web site to help smaller, disadvantaged firms get information about how to competitively bid for Katrina contracts.

Also, could someone explain how these firms are disadvantaged, and who it is that prevents them from bidding competitively for these windfall contracts?

Wal-mart sued by illegals...

According to Forbes magazine online:

• Wal-Mart Stores fended off a racketeering charge on Friday, but a U.S. judge decided that a lawsuit brought against the behemoth retailer by the undocumented workers who once buffed its superstore floors can proceed. Wal-Mart will have to answer to charges of not paying these workers fair wages and overtime, and that its store managers locked the doors on overnight cleaning crews, keeping them prisoner until the doors were opened the next morning to let in bargain-hunting shoppers.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Greenaway permitted the suit to stand, which was brought by New York City labor lawyer James Linsey. Enemies of America, both.

I wish I could figure out what vision of the future lives in the minds of these left-wing America hating lawyers, because they surely seem not to understand that if our nation slips into some third-world anarchy like those from where the illegals come, these rat lawyers will be the first ones to experience vigilante violence.

Illegal alien

New Orleans' poor refuse to work...

From the Washington Times:

• Many of those engaged in the huge cleanup and reconstruction effort here -- nobody has an exact count -- are immigrants, both legal and illegal, from Mexico and Central America.
  
• 
  Meanwhile, as many as 80,000 New Orleanians sit idle in shelters around the country. They are out of work, homeless and destitute.

Of course, the left will tell you that the enormous majority of those on welfare want to work.

Welfare

Big government Republicans march on...

According to AP:

• Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed a bill barring high school athletes from using certain nutritional supplements, a year after he vetoed similar legislation.

Since when does the government have an interest in dictating to us what constitutes a proper diet?

More on Meiers...

From ABC News:

• Miers and her supporters are working the phones and knocking on doors to rally conservatives who argue that Bush has reneged on his promise to name justices with proven records as strong conservatives.

Conservatives smart enough to elect Bush and all these great Senators are too dumb to recognize the greatness of Harriet Meiers, but some phone call or knock at the door by a stranger will change their minds?

More irony from the neo-con warmongers...

I find it very ironic that the US government assumes the authority to kill, imprison, and search people or their property at will in Iraq, yet refuses to consider interning or even racial profiling muslims at home.

This PC crap will kill us all, and when the next major attack happens in America, I don't think the "innocent" muslims are going to appreciate the response by those of us whose ancestors built this once great nation.

Military spending bills...

President Bush believes that captured "terrorists" should be tortured to gain information about upcoming "terror" attacks.

The Senate recently disagreed 90-9, and attached an amendment to a military spending bill putting limits on the methods that could potentially be used on captured enemies.

Remember when we were told by Hush Bimbo and the other GOP water carriers that anyone voting against a military spending bill was a traitor who wants our military personnel to be underequipped to the point that they die unnecessarily?

I'm betting that they won't be calling George Bush a sellout to the troops if he vetoes this military spending bill...

Bushbot syndrome...

"What could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest--whether it be chess, bridge, or stock selection--than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy?" - Warren Buffett on Efficient Market Theory

It seems that most Americans fall into the category of people who find themselves getting carried away by phony rhetoric by professional politicians.

Sadly, a simple analysis of the Iraq war/"War on Terror" using logic and reason would clearly show the foolishness of those who believe we can eliminate the threat from islamic radicals by a further implementation of the same policy responsible for their radical behavior in the first place.

The big lie...

I don't believe we are fighting a war on terror, and I won't believe any of the Bush/Cheney/war-machine rhetoric unless and until we close the border to the wave of illegal aliens flooding our country.

Can GWB really not comprehend the concept that people walking across the border every day are more than capable of setting off attacks like the one that almost happened last Saturday in Norman, Oklahoma?

Losing civil liberties...

Months ago, we were told that the NYPD was going to set aside the 4th amendment and begin randomly searching the possessions of subway passengers.

Now, we are told of a huge plot to set off multiple explosions in the subway. That leads me to believe that the random illegal searches were not successful at identifying and preventing just this type of situation from occurring.

Will the NYPD reverse course, and get back in line with the previously understoond meaning of the 4th amendment by abandoning their probable causeless random searches of innocent people?

President Bush's speech...

Today's Fact Sheet for George Bush's speech

My general responses to various points therein:

GWB insists on championing the notion of democracy. Does he not know the difference between a democracy, which revolves around mob rule that violates individual rights on the whim of a majority, and a republic built upon the foundation of unalienable individual rights? Or does he admit that Americans are too stupid to know the difference?

GWB claims that human beings always choose liberty over slavery when given a choice. How can he say that when his policies of borrow and spend will enslave the next generation of Americans with debt they did not accumulate and for which they are not responsible? Does that mean that nobody would choose his policies if they had a choice?

GWB suggests that people dedicated to the destruction of America are fighting in Iraq, so we should go there to fight them. What about the people dedicated to our destruction already in America? Why aren't we fighting them?

GWB tells us that “spreading freedom” across the Middle East will lead to an increase in American homeland security. How did we “spread freedom” across the Middle East by encouraging the Jews to abandon Gaza?

GWB pretends that Americans have an interest in the futures of Iraqi children. Why am I supposed to be concerned with the next generation of Iraqi children when my children are facing a future of collapsed schools, hospitals, and social programs under the weight of the invasion by illegals from Mexico?

GWB thinks that Americans believe in self-determination. What happened to the private retirement savings accounts initiative? What about the failure of New Orleansians to take action to provide for themselves before Hurricane Katrina? Why were taxes stolen from working Americans to spend $60 billion on people who have spent a lifetime choosing not to secure their own well-being and that of their families?

The Oklahoma bombing...

The MSM will not touch this story. ABC News is too busy reminding radio listeners each hour about Tom Cruise's upcoming baby.

I am left with the sad conclusion of wishing some people had been killed by this apparent terrorist.

At least that way, America might be awake today to the reality that terrorism is here, again, and that the time to stop watching Entertainment Tonight is now.

Unfortunately, he didn't manage to kill anyone else, and America's slumber continues.

The right to die...

In other news, the SCOTUS is hearing a case revolving around an Oregon law making legal the right of a person to authorize a doctor assisted suicide.

There are a number of arguments on this issue on both sides of the debate. Most are knee-jerk reactionaries, but I'll explain my thinking on the issue very simply with a series of logical steps that lead me to only one possible conclusion.

Instead of trying to prove why a person should be allowed to receive assistance from a medical professional to end his own life, I will show why he should not be prevented from doing so. While equivalent to one another, the latter is much easier to demonstrate with existing law and sound logic rather than the emotion needed to illustrate the former.

In a country founded on the ideals of individual liberty and limited government, certainly the logical premise must be that any person wishing to end his own life by his own hand may do so.

Premise #1: A person may legally choose to end his own life in America.

Having established that a person may legally kill himself, attention turns to whether or not one person may legally kill another person under any circumstance. Of course, the answer is yes. Military personnel are trained to kill, and police officers are taught how to injure or kill in the event such actions become necessary. State agents are licensed to kill when criminal defendants have been sentenced to execution in courts of law. Using deadly force in defense of self or others against criminals in the act of threatening the life, liberty or property of another person has also long since been accepted as solid legal ground.

Premise #2: There are acceptable legal bases for one person to deliberately murder another.

In fact, in the above mentioned cases, the victim of the murder isn't even dying by his own choice.

America has long since operated on the notion of free markets in which buyers and sellers freely engage in economic transactions. In this case, the buyer would be the individual who wishes to end his life and the seller would be the doctor who carries out the act.

So, I've established that a free person ought to have the right to end his own life as he so chooses. Deliberately ending the life of another person is very much acceptable under our justice system in certain circumstances, and therefore it would follow that a free market system in which individuals engage with one another in order to match supply with demand, those who demand to end their own lives ought be free to receive services from someone willing to provide them.

Hypothetically speaking, what happens if assisted suicide remains illegal, and somebody who wants to die but is unable to do so decides that he will commit a crime and plead guilty to state sanctioned murder or "death by police"?

Who objects to legalizing assisted suicide?

1. The right to life crowd (many of whom support war and the death penalty) who see this as another brick in the wall of support for abortion. Of course, such a viewpoint is hysterical as assisted suicide implies a choice whereas unborn babies cannot make choices about their intent or desire to live or die.

2. Those who think that federal law prohibits such a practice according to the canons of medical ethics. I cannot find the relevant section of the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to dictate how its citizens should conduct their lives so long as the behavior does not violate the rights of other people, including what constitutes appropriate medical treatment. Thus, unless assisted suicide harms the right to life, liberty or property of others, I would conclude that anyone who invokes the supremacy clause within the framework of this debate actually has proven the inverse according to the 9th and 10th amendments.

I heard Rush Limbaugh today make the case that a "right" to life is essentially an "obligation" to live, as if someone cannot refuse chemotherapy or open heart surgery if he so chooses.

Also, Rush said that the Constitution prevents people from determining the course of their own destiny because it doesn't explicitly state that the people retain such a right. Of course, as with most Americans, he reads the 9th and 10th amendments backwards (if at all) when it suits his personal agenda.

Since the Constitution doesn't preclude individuals from carrying out their own death as they so choose, the States and/or People retain all such rights.

Do we have some sort of obligation to keep people alive who wish to die? Who pays the medical bills of people who are stuck in hospitals unable to choose to end their own lives yet unable to carry out the act of suicide?

How can the people of this country permit our government to murder people at Waco or Ruby Ridge who presumably wanted to live, and who received no due process in a court of law, yet deny those who wish to end their lives with dignity and in peace at a time of their choosing?

Overall, the focal point of the issue seems to be whether or not the sole determination as to who lives and who dies shall be made by politicians in Washington D.C.

In the end, I must respect the wishes of the People of Oregon, and the right of each to do as they wish so long as they refrain from infringing upon the rights of anyone but himself.

Fishy smelling pork...

This picture illustrates everything wrong with our federal government today. The Congress of the United States is telling the taxpayers that the fruit of our labor should be taken away from us to paint murals on airplanes in Alaska instead of left in the wallets of those who earn it for the education of our own children, the improvement of our own houses, a vacation or a personal retirement savings account.

Nope. Ted Stevens and the rest of the big spending Republicans believe that they sit in power to spend money they didn't earn on projects which benefit few people except themselves.

Can it be that the party that runs on a platform of larger government is actually the party of smaller government?

This article illustrates the point I made on Rush Limbaugh's show yesterday about how each party actually moves in the other direction from its stated platform in an effort to steal voters from the opposition party.

With the Republicans in charge of both chambers of the Congress and the White House, government spending has increased more than any time since the disastrous Great Society of LBJ. Not only that, but the Majority Leader in the House recently told America that the federal government is operating at near peak efficiency.

(Don't try to tell me this spending is all about homeland security. Think about the doubling of the Department of Education, the huge prescription drug spending bill, the massive highway bill with over 6000 pork projects, the Katrina relief package...)

While I am not yet ready to register with a political party, as I am committed to maintaining my independence, my patience with the Republican Party has been exhausted as of this moment.

Having recently found out that my representative in the House opposes oil drilling off the coast of Florida on the basis that such activity should be decided by the People of Florida alone I was discouraged about our nation's committment to release itself from the stranglehold the Arabs have on us by virtue of our addiction to oil.

As if that weren't enough, I then learned that my Congressman supports federal authority to investigate and prosecute people who "price gouge" during disasters. Sadly, I am realizing that even a man annually ranked among the most conservative of all House members has caved into political pressure from the uneducated masses who have no basic understanding of economics.

An email I received from the Constitution Party states:

As American Conservative Union Chairman David A. Keene pointed out, "Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression." Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste announced that his group will soon be releasing a list of $2 trillion in proposed federal budget cuts.

In the end, salvation of our once great Republic may be impossible before we experience another massive national depression. It has happened before, and with the "small" government party running the country into bigger debts and fraud than ever before, can you be so sure that it won't happen again?

Reverse psychology...

The federal government gets smaller with Democrats in power, and gets larger with Republicans in power.

Such a phenomenon happens because each party tries to steal "moderate" voters from each other.

Nathan Smith writing for Tech Central Station explains it better.

Rita vs. Katrina...

1. Texas: Productive industrious state run by Republicans.

Louisiana: Government dependent welfare state run by Democrats.

2. Texas: Residents take responsibility to protect and evacuate
themselves.

Louisiana: Residents wait for government to protect and evacuate them.

3. Texas: Local and state officials take responsibility for protecting
their citizens and property.

Louisiana: Local and state officials blame federal government for not
protecting their citizens and property.

4. Texas: Command and control remains in place to preserve order.

Louisiana: Command and control collapses allowing lawlessness.

5. Texas: Law enforcement officers remain on duty to protect city.

Louisiana: Law enforcement officers desert their posts to protect
themselves.

6. Texas: Local police watch for looting.

Louisiana: Local police participate in looting.

7. Texas: Law and order remains in control, 8 looters tried it, 8
looters arrested.

Louisiana: Anarchy and lawlessness breaks out, looters take over city,
no arrests, criminals with guns have to be shot by federal troops.

8. Texas: Considerable damage caused by hurricane.

Louisiana: Considerable damage caused by looters.

9. Texas: Flood barriers hold preventing cities from flooding.

Louisiana: Flood barriers fail due to lack of maintenance allowing city
to flood.

10. Texas: Orderly evacuation away from threatened areas, few remain.


Louisiana: 25,000 fail to evacuate, are relocated to another flooded
area.

11. Texas: Citizens evacuate with personal 3 day supply of food and
water.
Louisiana: Citizens fail to evacuate with 3 day supply of food and
water, do without it for the next 4 days.

12. Texas: FEMA brings in tons of food and water for evacuees. State
officials provide accessible distribution points.

Louisiana: FEMA brings in tons of food and water for evacuees. State
officials prevent citizens from reaching distribution points and vice
versa.

13. Louisiana: Media focuses on poor blacks in need of assistance,
blames Bush.

Texas: Media can't find poor blacks in need of assistance, looking for
something else to blame on Bush.

14. Texas: Coastal cities suffer some infrastructure damage, Mayors tell
residents to stay away until ready for repopulation, no interference
from federal officials.

Louisiana: New Orleans is destroyed, Mayor asks residents to return home
as another hurricane approaches, has to be overruled by federal
officials.

15. Louisiana: Over 400 killed by storm, flooding and crime.

Texas: 24 killed in bus accident on highway during evacuation, no storm
related deaths.

16. Texas: Jailed prisoners are relocated to other detention facilities
outside the storm area.

Louisiana: Jailed prisoners are set free to prey on city shops,
residents, and homes.

17. Texas: Local and state officials work with FEMA and Red Cross in
recovery operations.

Louisiana: Local and state officials obstruct FEMA and Red Cross from
aiding in recovery operations.

18. Texas: Local and state officials demonstrate leadership in managing
disaster areas.

Louisiana: Local and state officials fail to demonstrate leadership,
require federal government to manage disaster areas.

19. Texas: Fuel deliveries can't keep up with demand, some run out of
gas on highway, need help from fuel tankers before storm arrives.


Louisiana: Motorists wait till storm hits and electrical power fails.
Cars run out of gas at gas stations that can't pump gas. Gas in
underground tanks mixes with flood waters.

20. Texas: Mayors move citizens out of danger.

Louisiana: Mayor moves himself and family to Dallas.

21. Texas: Mayors continue public service announcements and updates on
television with Governor's backing and support.

Louisiana: Mayor cusses, governor cries, senator threatens president
with violence on television, none of them have a clue what went wrong or
who's responsible.

22. Louisiana: Democratic Senator says FEMA was slow in responding to
911 calls from Louisiana citizens.

Texas: Republican Senator says "when you call 911, the phone doesn't
ring in Washington, it rings here at the local responders".

What if state and local elected officials were forced to depend on
themselves and their own resources instead of calling for help from the
federal government? Texas cities would be back up and running in a few
days. Louisiana cities would still be under water next month.

Lame duck season...

George Bush is now a failed President. Having just heard him give a press conference where he said nothing new and sounded like a defeated man unwilling to fight, I thought it was over. But when he was asked if he is still a conservative, I knew in my heart that he is not.

That question gave him the perfect opportunity to reassure his base by reminding them of his achievements which furthered his agenda. He could not even reassert his campaign promise to build "a culture of life" by indicating that his nominees are decidedly against abortion, even in its most barbaric forms such as late term abortion.

Today is a sad day in our history. The only chance the Republican legislators have to keep their jobs is to start opposing Bush's policies and to remember who put them into power.

Federal law enforcement...

Isn't it ironic that President Bush tells us that his judicial nominees will strictly enforce the Constitution and our federal laws while he refuses to perform his Constitutional obligation to repel the invasion from Mexico or to enforce our federal immigration laws?

Did someone forget to tell King George that the courts are not the branch in charge of law enforcement, but that rather he is the chief of the law enforcement branch of our federal government?

The future of the GOP...

Does George Bush want a Republican to occupy the White House upon his exit? Could he actually want Hillary Clinton to be the next President?

I have stated in the past that I suspected the Clintons of helping George Bush defeat John Kerry in order to open the Democrat nomination for Hillary in 2008 instead of forcing her to run a primary against Kerry's VP in 2012.

The President has given us many reasons to wonder about his motives in office.

He has failed to secure our southern border, he has failed to control the growth of federal spending (in fact he has greased the skids for it to expand more than anyone since LBJ and his Great Society), he has failed to make significant progress in the Iraq War after having admitted that his pre-war warnings about Iraqi WMD threats were greatly overblown, and he has now chosen to put two unknown lawyers onto the Supreme Court instead of two well-known jurists with a clear record of Constitutional rulings.

Couple all of that with the President's economic policies which have been used as a weapon by the left media to convince people that tax cuts should be implemented for people who don't pay taxes to begin with, and you've got a Republican party which seems to stand for nothing other than increasing its own power by ignoring its stated principles and the core values of its typical base voter. (Remember, most American voters have been educated in our pathetic government schools and thus have a limited understanding of basic economic principles.)

George Bush was reelected in 2004 by a majority of people who held their nose at most of his policies but who wanted to give him another chance at redemption by remaking the federal judiciary. Now that he has twice failed to do so, and with the takeover of the Republican party by the big spending, War mongering "neocons", the paleocons who keep these supposed conservatives in power have had enough.

The Democrats will make some strong pickups in 2006, and the emerging wing of the Republican party of Arlen Specter, Lindsay Graham, Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chafee will be the cause. Will Senators like Jeff Sessions of Alabama and the others towards the far right have the will to take the party back for the conservatives before Hillary Clinton's name appears on a national ballot?

The devil you know...

Rush and the other knee jerk Republican propogandists often point out the moderate nature of John McCain and others like him. I cannot discern the difference between George Bush and John McCain.

In recent history, Republican presidents have not had much success getting Supreme Court appointments confirmed who actually turn out to be "strict constructionists". A thinking person would conclude one of two things. Either those Republicans didn't actually want conservative justices on the Supreme Court, or they misjudged the character of their nominees because they were not well enough known quantities.

Therefore, in order to reverse this trend, that same logical thinking person would tend to select a known conservative commodity such as Janice Brown or Michael Luttig. He has not done so, leaving only one alternative. George Bush doesn't want a conservative justice to replace Justice O'Connor. If he did, he would have nominated someone who has a clearly established track record as being such a judge instead of some unknown insider with links back to Bush's political career in Texas.

Remembering that we were told by John Roberts that lawyers make a legal case on behalf of their clients, independent of his own judgment or point of view on a particular legal issue. Thus, if Harriet Meiers holds the same belief about lawyering, we have exactly no material of any substance with which to gauge her personal philosophy or the manner in which she might decide cases.

So, the true believers are left with no alternative but the "trust Bush" mantra. What actions by George Bush make him so trustworthy?

He promised Americans tax cuts, and he delivered 3 times in his first term, although it is worth noting that the Republicans seem to be backing away from a permanent repeal of the estate tax.

He has done nothing to secure our border with Mexico. Instead, he has installed his gestapo agents in our nation's airports with the authority to interrogate and molest everyone except people who might actually be terrorists.

He has waged a war of choice in Iraq which is proving to be more unwinnable all the time as our military follows the orders of an inept bureaucracy which failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam about over management by politicians in Washington.

He has abandoned the attempts to abolish or at least dramatically overhaul our draconian Social Security system.

He has expanded the size of the federal government with such speed and efficiency that it would make even the most liberal Democrat blush with glee. Doubling the Department of Education's budget and the huge prescription drug benefit now attached to Medicare have virtually insured the continuation of our runaway federal spending for decades to come. (Or at least until our economy collapses and we sink into a depression.)

He has signed us on to CAFTA, an international agreement which will likely do to American business what NAFTA has done over the past 10 years. A few wealthy international businessmen will benefit by the lower wages they will pay to workers in Central America while the working class Americans whose parents built this country after World War 2 will suffer or find themselves without a job or a future. Americans will continue to be encouraged to overconsume as our markets are flooded with cheap goods, yet our domestic manufacturing will take a nosedive as the laws and regulations which govern American business make them unable to compete in the global marketplace.

In decades or centuries past, perhaps we could have trusted the Senate to respond to the will of the People. In this case, that would mean a tough grilling of the judicial nominee in order to at least appear to be interested in avoiding the mistakes of the President's father with Kennedy and Souter. The GOP Senators will not grill her just like they gave Roberts a pass.

In the end, I cannot point my finger at a single reason as to why I should trust either this President, or this current crop of Republican Senators. As Daniel Webster once stated, the collapse of this republic will happen when the people stop scrutinizing the politicians.

Harriet Meiers...

Several notions are already coming to the forefront, and I wanted to commit my thoughts to words for the sake of posterity.

Many Bush supporters are repeatedly mentioning how the President's choices for other federal court judges have been strongly conservative, and therefore the Meiers nomination, as well as the Roberts nomination, must fit this mold. Essentially, we're being told by the diehards that by appointing Janice Rogers Brown and others like her, we can be sure that Harriet Meiers will stronly uphold the Constitution as intended by its authors.

Of course, such logic is faulty at best, and dangerous at worst.

The reality is that the Supreme Court acts as the boss of the lower courts, and the lower courts are supposed to use Supreme Court rulings to direct their own rulings on cases which come before the appellate courts.

Therefore, by this theory, Janice Rogers Brown is helpless to overrule the opinions of the Supreme Court. As such, Harriet Meiers would find herself in the position to neuter any "originalism" on the part of various appellate judges heralded as "strong constructionists".

So, in classic Bush fashion, I predict that he has carefully calculated his judicial strategy as follows. Nominate people to lower courts who satisfy the voting base, but only nominate people to the Supreme Court who will go along with the New World Order agenda of George Bush and his corporate puppeteers. When the voting base expresses concern for SCOTUS nominees, simply point to the appellate appointments and suggest a trend.

Of course, the problem in all of this is that the White House will never explain exactly what it is about Janice Brown or Priscilla Owen that caused the President to choose someone other than them. Remember, these women (and some others as well) have clear track records of strong conservatism and a fundamental understanding of Constitutional application according to the intent of our nation's founders.

Overall, one poster on Free Republic put it best. The immediate fallout of this nominee exposes a big problem for the Republican party lurking just under the surface. Clearly mainstream America does not support the far left agenda of the Democrat party, but the majority of Americans, and conservatives specifically, do not trust President Bush. Though many people thinly veil their distrust with patriotic rhetoric, those who vote according to a basic philosophy have been ignored by this President time and again.

In the end, knowing nothing about Ms. Meiers, I make my analysis by the reaction of the media and individual Americans who call radio talk shows or post on internet web sites. I suspect that she will emerge as a center-left judge who won't do much to advance an agenda on either side. In other words, she won't push the court to the left but she won't do anything to pull it back to its appropriate role in American government. On key issues, she will not be willing to side with Justices Thomas and Scalia.

One more slash in the heart of conservatism as it dies a slow death by a thousand cuts in America.

Hate speech...

It took the anti-American forces quite a long time, but they have finally succeeded.

Speaking about the fundamentals of Christianity has now become "hate" speech.