Clueless

You would think that this would be obvious to even a blind man.

"The political battle in Washington over a Democratic plan to pull U.S. troops from Iraq is being exploited by al Qaeda, which has stepped up attacks to hasten a withdrawal, Iraq's foreign minister said on Sunday."

Sadly, our friends on the left don't seem to get that at all.....

You have got to be kidding me.

I almost drove off of the road when I heard this story.

"Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she sees her sometimes Southern accent as a virtue.
"I think America is ready for a multilingual president," Clinton said during a campaign stop at a charter school in Greenville, S.C.
The New York senator who said she's been thinking about critics who've suggested that she tried to put on a fake Southern accent in Selma, Ala. noted that she's split her life between Arkansas, Illinois and the East Coast."

Now I grew up in Chicago and I am married to a Pittsburgher. I am willing to admit that I am one of those folks that can pick up on an accent quickly. When I went to college in St. Louis, I would pick up on their version of a "drawl" (although I had a classmate from Southern Illinois who sounded like she grew up in Alabama her drawl was so thick). Since I bounced back and forth (between college and home) fairly often I would catch all kinds of crap from my friends for speaking like a Yankee (when I was at school) and a southerner (when I was home). However, I would have never been so arrogant to have claimed to be "multilingual" just because I could pick up a dialect. Multilingual is being able to speak Spanish AND German AND English (as I do) Madam Senator. Multilingual is being able to speak Spanish AND German AND English AND Italian AND French AND Japanese (as many of my German friends did) Madam Senator. We you start talking to us in German or French or Spanish or something OTHER than English (or an English dialect) then you can claim to be "multilingual". Until then ma'am, with all due respect, get real!

But it makes me feel good....

The same folks that are pushing for more ethanol production and $4.00 a gallon gas are at it again. The same folks who are spouting the "reality" of man-made global warming are now decrying President Bush's agreement with Brazil for sugar cane based ethanol. Their reason.....rainforest depletion. However, as this IBD column points out, that is not a "reality" either.

"Instead, we hear how sugar production for ethanol is trashing the otherwise forgotten rain forest and now adds to global warming. The United Nations stepped right up with this new warning. Others are blaming ethanol for everything from poverty to floods.
The argument doesn't even get the facts right. For one, Brazil is not growing sugar for ethanol production on rain forest land but in the southern grasslands, making environmentalists' renewed interest in cuddly rain forest creatures irrelevant.
And on the grasslands, ethanol production has barely started. Brazil's entire agricultural production is done on only 8% of the nation's arable land. Clearly there is room to expand.
Environmentalists, however, are trying to sell Brazil as one big rain forest in need of 'saving' instead of a diverse, rapidly industrializing country whose development is critical to conservation."

WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!! What happened to the "concensus" that man made global warming had to be stopped AT ALL COSTS????? What happened to doing something "now"? Well if you look at the Democrats running for President, you would swear that there was an unlimited supply of oil and no need to reduce carbon emissions. Robert F. Kennedy and Al Gore, both very vocal advocates of everyone else cutting back both fly private jets to all of their global warming speaking arrangements! They live in mansions that use more electricity in one day, than my humble abode uses in a year. Yet we peons are supposed to only use compact fluoroscent lights (regardless of the fact that they are considered hazardous waste if broken) and drive hybrids and do without air conditioning and electric appliances....all so some can feel good about "doing something now". People in Mexico are starving because corn prices have shot through the roof - so Democrats (and some squishy Republicans) can feel good about "doing something".

It has never been about the environment...it has always been about dictating a specific lifestyle on everyone else. Which is a hallmark of socialism and that is NOT what a free society is about.

Move on....nothing to see here....

If you are a follower of the Minnesota media, you have been hearing a lot of that for the last two weeks. On Saturday April 14, almost 7000 people gathered on the steps of the State Capital to protest the revenue grab that is coming out of Democratic Leadership in St. Paul. The local press never really reported on the tax cut rally other than to lump our numbers in with the much smaller Sierra Club global warming rally that was held at the other end of the mall at the same time. Well, the word is finally getting out. Last Saturday, Jason had a column in non-other than the Wall Street Journal. Jason laid out the scenario in his usual blunt style.

"ST. PAUL, Minn. -- What do you call the largest political rally for tax relief in Minnesota history? A non-story, at least according to the Twin Cities media.
Then again, Minnesota taxpayers probably weren't too surprised. The lead anchor for the CBS television affiliate here as well as the Star Tribune of Minneapolis played up a competing "global warming day of action" rally on the mall, while playing down the much larger tax protest just a few hundred feet north on the Capitol steps.
Indeed, on Saturday, April 14, an estimated 7,000 Minnesotans lined up in St. Paul to protest against run-away government spending and a push to feed it with yet with more tax hikes on the "rich." Former State Senator and now Congresswoman Michelle Bachman told me it was one of the largest rallies -- if not the largest -- she had ever seen at the Capitol.
Not bad. But rather than report that tax protestors far outnumbered a much better financed (MoveOn.org was sending email reminders) Sierra Club event by at least 2-1, local news outlets merely noted the combined totals for both. The local CBS affiliate also posted an Internet story on the global warming get-together using video footage of our anti-tax rally. Under protest, the piece was pulled."

Well it sounds like this column did what it was supposed to do. Jason was talking (in the first hour of his program today) that he was interviewed on the subject by both CNN and Glenn Beck. Jason will be on Glenn's MSNBC program tonight. Both Glenn and the CNN interviewer were dumbfounded by the fact that the local media totally ignored this story!

All I can say is "It's about time". The Minneapolis Star Tribune (aka Prairie Pravda) has long been a mouthpiece of the state and national Democratic Parties. Maybe a little pressure from their national peers will be just the ticket to turn things around.....Oh who am I kidding! The national media is just as bad.......

Oh well, I can dream.

Solutions

OK - I set the ideals and I laid out what the base is saying is wrong with the Republican Party. Now is the time for solutions. I think it's really pretty simple.

1) Along with identifying the RINO's we need to identify and encourage those Republicans that are sticking to their principles! When you find the RINO's, chastise them. Let them know where they have strayed, but when you find the ones that are sticking to their principles, encourage them. The more the ones that stick to their principles hear from those of us who appreciate them, the more that they stick to their princples. It IS a self fulfilling prophecy!

2) The party activists look to the state party (and it's sub-divisions in the Congressional Districts and the BPOUs) for direction. GIVE IT TO THEM!!!! Give them something to believe in, something that they can share with their friends and neighbors.

3) When you do communicate with the activists - give them a positive message! The line that we got over the last two years - "you don't want the Democrats in charge do you?" does not jazz up the volunteers and donors. They want IDEAS - ideas like tax cuts and fiscal responsibility. Once they latch on to the ideas and put you in power - do everything you can to impliment those ideas. Don't listen to the lobbyists and the press tell you it can't be done.....do the right thing and JUST DO IT!!!!

4) Give the rest of the world a simple message - one that is easy to understand. The MNGOP Party platform is a cumbersome beast! Boil it down to 10 simple points. The family knows best - whether it is abortion, health care, school choice, charitable giving or spending....THE FAMILY KNOWS BEST. You can cover multiple planks in a simple sentence! Go back and read my post "Why I am a Republican." and turn the plank into something that simple!

5) Listen to the your base. When your base is happy, share the joy. When they are dis-satisfied, listen to them. Don't tell them to just shut up and come vote, because if they do shut up, they will NOT come out and vote for you on election day. Don't believe me - go back and look at the last election! Don't rely on pollsters and outside advisors.

6) You can not rely on the middle to win elections for you alone. You still need to court your base.

Now it's your turn, fellow Republicans. We have one month to decide the direction of the Republican Party of Minnesota. What do YOU think they should do to move the party forward?

The Joys of the Internet

I was poking around on the State Legislatures website when I found a new toy! Archives of the telecasts of the floor sessions. Now to be honest, I do have better things to do with the few hours that I have in my day, but I had heard buzz about a speech that my House Rep (Rep. Mike Beard R-Shakopee) made on Tuesday, so I checked it out. After listening to his speech, I noticed that there was video from this morning's session. It was voting on the Minority Reports to the Omnibus Tax bill so I figured I would check out some of the debate. Boy was it worth the time spent.

Rep. Steve Sviggum (R-Kenyon) spoke first on the Minority Report. The Minority Report was that the House adopt the Governor's budge AND give the $1b+ surplus back to taxpayers in the form of property tax relief. He hit the majority hard on the fact that this was their last chance (of this session) to address property tax relief - something that the DFL hit hard on in the last election. He said that the Minority report divides the surplus equitably among all property owners in the state - giving them a 15% decrease in their property tax debt to the state. Contemplate that for just a moment readers.....that decrease would (at the Logical Household) be a little more than what it went up in the last year (11.75%). He then listed out the things that would not be possible if the Minority Report were adopted. Taxes would not go up, spending would not go up, $2million in padding of the Met Council's budget would not happen, child care program spending would not go up 106%, the Secretary of State would not get a 14% increase in their budget, we would not be able to afford to go toward single payer health care, we would not be able to increase the per deum and housing that is paid to our legislators (remember - their first action in January was to vote themselves a pay raise!). We would have to actually have to maintain the welfare reforms that were undone in the Health and Human Services bill that passed last week. You have to listen to his whole speech. He hit the DFL hard on a lot of issues. On a side note - when he thanked Rep. Mindy Greiling (D-Roseville) for making the children of his district 2nd class citizens as a result of her "education" bill, I about fell off my chair!

The other thing the made me sit up and was when Rep. Paul Marquardt (DFL-Dilworth) called a tax refund a tax INCREASE on property taxes because of decreases in Local Government Aid (LGA). That brought Rep. Mark Buesquens (R-Jordan) to the mike. He wanted Rep. Marquardt to please point out which page and line that tax increase was in because this was the 2nd day in a row that Rep. Marquardt made that claim! Rep. Marquardt admitted that the dollar figure he threw out was incorrect...that he refers to a simulation put together by researchers. Rep. Buesgens reminded the House that these property tax increases (in the simulation) are a result of LOCAL decisions - not state decisions. The bills that are coming before the House do nothing to address the "insatiable" local government spending. Rep. John Berns (R-Hopkins) added that only to the DFL would "giving money back to Minnesota's hardworking taxpayers be called a tax increase..." He brought up the fact that there was $200million in spending that could wait until next year. He said that we don't need to grow government 19% which is what this bill does. He said that we were headed for another $5-7 BILLION deficit in 2-4 years if we do not act. He reminded several of his DFL colleagues that they campaigned as fiscal conservatives/moderates and that there was nothing moderate in this bill! Rep. Steve Gottwalt (R-St. Cloud) got up and said that we can not talk about permanent tax relief in the same breath as talking about a $5BILLION INCREASE in spending.

Then came Rep. Mike Beard (R-Shakopee). Now I've known Mike for many years. Mike is a kind, soft-spoken gentleman who rarely gets "mad". However, the subject of LGA "cuts" is one of those subjects that gets Rep. Beard going. Rep. Beard reminded Rep. Marquardt that local governement spending went up $2.3 BILLION (in the last 4 or 5 years) while LGA "cuts" were only approximately $300 million! Rep. Marquardt argued that the cuts were almost $1BILLION. If you add in school district bonding that was $60million (personally I don't see how building more schools - as many districts are doing - has anything to do with this but I digress.....). Either Reps. math shows that the cuts were much less than the spending increases. Rep. Beard then got up and spoke about budget discipline and how it was healthy for families, cities, counties, school districts and states! You can not argue with that logic! He also spoke that maybe it was time to enact levy limits. He also mentioned that it was better to leave money in the hands of the taxpayers in the firstplace rather than send the money to St. Paul and then send it back to the taxpayer they just took it from.

If you live in Representative Beard's district, you really should listen to the whole speech. I simply can not do justice, in the written word, to the passion that was behind his speech.

My new "toy" may not be the shiniest on the block, but it did make for a very entertaining afternoon. I'm glad I took the hour to look up these speeches and I think I may have to tune in again - especially as the session draws to a close.

Where it went wrong.

First sorry for the delay in getting this out. Sadly, life got in the way of blogging.....darned responsibilities....

In my previous post, I outlined why I am a Republican. However, one can certainly say that the Republican Party (both nationally and in Minnesota) seem to have strayed from those basic core priniples.

During the 2006 election, I volunteered to work on a campaign. One of the things that I did was to set up phone banks and door knocking campaigns. All I had to do was contact people (on a list that was given to my by the state party) who had worked phone banks and door knocking campaigns before and ask them when they could help. The vast majority of those that I contacted said "I love X but I can not in good conscience work for a party that has abandoned it's principles." WOW what an eye opener! Since I knew a few of these people from activites other than politics so I asked what specifically had upset them. In no particular order they said:

1) Spending like Democrats (given that our governor proposed spending a $2+b surplus you can't argue with that)
2) Failure to secure the border
3) Encouraging government growth (Medicare part D, No Child Left Behind...need I go on?)
4) Lack of a message (no we don't consider "you don't want the Democrats to be in charge do you?" to be a "message"!)
5) Drilling in ANWR and the high cost of gasoline.
6) Undercutting the President on judges and the war (HELLO SENATOR COLEMAN?????)
7) There is much much more but you get the idea.....

Now I live in a strongly Republican county, but it was not that long ago that we were represented by Democrats (David Minge) in the US House and the State House (Becky Otto for one and I can not remember the others for the life of me)! When I talked to my friends and neighbors and people at the soccer fields and school events all said the same thing "There is no difference between the two parties anymore." and to a great extent these people were right. If you looked at the actions of the people at the top of the ticket (President, Governor and Senator) there was little distinguishable difference. That perception hurt a lot of good people further down on the ticket.

Then in March, the BPOU (Basic Political Operating Unit - the grassroots level) convention and people who had long served on the BPOU committee walked away - saying that the party no longer "represented" their beliefs.

This is the crossroads that Minnesota GOP is facing! What the party does in the next 45 days will determine to long term fate of the Minnesota Republican Party. It could either move forward and retake the House and maybe even the Senate or it will whither away into obscurity. What is the answer? Based on my discussions with the activists that stepped away and the average "Joe and Jane" voter, there are a few things that can save the party.

And that is the topic of the next post.....

Why I am a Republican

This was something I got from an RNC publication. It sums up why I am a Republican.

I believe the strength of our nation lies with the individual and that each person's dignity, freedom, ability and responsibility must be honored.

I believe in equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all, regardless or race, creed, sex, age or disability.

I believe free enterprise and encouraging individual initiative have brought this nation opportunity, economic growth and prosperity.

I believe government must practice fiscal responsibility and allow individuals to keep more of the money they earn.

I believe the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those critical functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations and that the best government is that which governs least.

I believe the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people.

I believe Americans must retain the principles that have made us strong while developing new and innovative ideas to meet the challenges of changing times.

I believe Americans value and should preserve out national strength and pride while working to extend peace, freedom and human rights throughout the world.

Finally, I believe the Republican Party is the best vehicle for translating these ideas into positive and successful principles of government.

This is what Ronald Reagan believed and why I became a Republican. It is the promise of this nation that I love and believe in. This is also why (in upcoming posts) I will attempt to explain why I feel that the Republican Party, nationally and in Minnesota, are worth fighting for.

How green is my......carbon offset....

Gee - the chirping crickets in the media were sure loud when National Geographic released THIS global warming - eh - global climate change story!

"Climate change could lead to stronger wind shear, a weather pattern that weakens hurricanes, a new study says. Some previous, widely publicized studies have linked global warming to stronger hurricanes. "

Gee I wonder why that was.....

One thing that the global warming/global climate change zealots don't tell you is the adverse effect on the economy.

"FOOD-PRICE inflation so severe that central banks are forced to raise interest rates to growth-stifling levels; corn prices so high that poor Mexicans can’t afford their tortillas; massive deforestation to make way for more corn and palm oil; poor farmers pushed off their land to make room for carbon-offsetting plantings paid for by rich jet-setters; and Al Gore for president.
These are some of the unintended consequences of hastily conceived environmental policies."

They also don't talk about the hypocricy of their "carbon offsets" or how those "offsets" don't really do a darned thing other than make the stars and starlets "feel better" about their MONSTEROUS carbon footprint.

"...you get the idea: the reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions claimed by those intent on being green without changing their lifestyles are often bogus — they would have happened without the purchase of offsets. "

They really don't care that poor farmers are being forced off of their land to plant "carbon offsetting trees" for their rich neighbors, they don't care that South American rainforests are being clear cut in order to produce palm oil for biofuel. All they care about is making an empty gesture to show that "they care". If they really cared, they would park the jet, ditch the entourage and drive a Prius on their daily commute like the rest of us.

Wolves in sheeps clothing

One of the things I learned when I was a young, naive animal lover was the nature of the animal rights movement.

"Glen Kissel did not recognize the name. Reading through the website of his employer, the University of Southern Indiana, on March 29th, the assistant professor of engineering marked that the following Monday the school was slated to play host to someone named Gary Yourofsky. By all appearances an animal-rights activist, he was to deliver a lecture on “Ethical Veganism.” According to the school’s description, Yourofsky “asks people to be kind to animals and ultimately, to go vegan.” It seemed innocent enough. "

It all seems innocent enough when you read the flyers that exhort you to spay or neuter your pet to "control overpopulation" or the flyers that talk about stopping animal "abuse". What they never tell you (on the glossy flyers) is what their defination of "abuse" is or what their end goals are.

"Until Kissel clicked on Yourofksy’s website, adaptt.org, featured prominently on the school‘s online bulletin. What he found there shocked him. No common campaigner for the virtues of tofu of wheat germ, Yourokfsy, it turned out, was an animal-rights ultra who openly endorsed violence against humans and forthrightly supported eco-terrorist organizations. "

You think I exhaggerate? Take a look at some of the things that Yourofsky (and other A/R activists) have said and written:

"I hope that fathers accidentally shoot their sons on hunting excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them slowly. Every women ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disembowelled. Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly, may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because research dollars that could have been used to treat them was wasted on the barbaric, unscientific practice of vivisection." Yourosky

Alex Pacheco Director of PETA "We feel that animals have the same rights as retarded children." and "Arson, property destruction, burglary and theft are 'acceptable crimes' when used for the animal cause."
Michael W. Fox, Vice President, The Human Society of the United States, "The life of an ant and that of my child should be granted equal consideration."
Tom Regan when asked which he would save, a dog or a baby, if a boat capsized in the ocean: "If it were a retarded baby and a bright dog, I'd save the dog."
Bill Maher, PETA celebrity spokesman "To those people who say, `My father is alive because of animal experimentation,' I say `Yeah, well, good for you. This dog died so your father could live.' Sorry, but I am just not behind that kind of trade off."
Chris De Rose, Director, Last Chance for Animals "If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn't make any difference to me."
Peter Singer wrote in Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals, "An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable."
John Bryant"The cat, like the dog, must disappear..... We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist."
PETA's Statement on Companion Animals "As John Bryant has written in his book Fettered Kingdoms, they [pets] are like slaves, even if well-kept slaves."
Ingrid Newkirk, President, PETA "Pet ownership is an abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation." and "One day we would like an end to pet shops and breeding animals [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild." and "I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down."
Tim Daley, British Animal Liberation Front Leader "In a war you have to take up arms and people will get killed, and I can support that kind of action by petrol bombing and bombs under cars, and probably at a later stage, the shooting of vivisectors on their doorsteps. It's a war, and there's no other way you can stop vivisectors."
Jerry Vlasak, Animal Defense League, Internet post to AR Views list "Get arrested. Destroy the property of those who torture animals. Liberate those animals interned in the hellholes our society tolerates."

These people are the "mainstream" of the animal rights movement and they are the ones behind H.F 1046 and S.F.121. Minnesota is not the only state to propose this kind of legislation either. California, for example, has a similar bill pending in their state legislature as does New Mexico. If you are really interested in animal welfare (as opposed to animal "rights") the best way that you can help is to get involved with your local animal shelter. They are the ones that do the real work taking care of abused and unwanted animals. They would love to have your support.

Putting blame where it belongs.

This is my last entry on the sad events that took place on Monday at Virginia Tech.

There were two really good opinion pieces that came out today that I would like to bring to your attention. The first comes from Linda Chavez:

"Thirty-three people are dead; 32 of them innocents, gunned down by a young man who then killed himself. We want to know why. We want to understand how such a horrific thing could happen on a bucolic college campus. Could it have been prevented? Do we need better laws? Did university officials ignore the warning signs of a dangerous young man bent on destruction? Did police fail to protect students in the hours between the first shootings in the dorms and the massacre that ensued in the engineering building later that morning? "

Ms. Chavez's column goes through all of the questions that every one of us have had running through our heads this week. What went wrong? Could we have prevented this?

"In the end, we will never know why Cho Seung-Hui chose to murder students and teachers at Virginia Tech. Surely not by looking for clues in the videos and 1,800-page manifesto he mailed to NBC in the interlude between the first shootings and his final killing spree. In the videos, Cho reads from a script in which he is the victim, and all around him are his persecutors. Cho fancied himself a martyr when he was nothing more than a puerile narcissist. There has been much discussion of Cho's mental state. A parade of psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health experts has weighed in to posthumously diagnose Cho as mentally ill....blaming the doctor who let Cho go, or even blaming mental illness for what Cho did, it seems to me, is wrong. It is almost as if we have succumbed to Cho's fantasy. He is simply a victim, carrying out an inevitable course of action that others have allowed to happen. Perhaps it is easier in our postmodern age to ascribe illness to evil. Surely no one in his right mind would do the things that Cho did, we want to believe. But this explanation, like all the others that have been offered to try, even after the fact, to exert some control over what happened, misses the point. "

The point is that the person responsible for Monday's tragedy was Cho Seung-hui and on that note we come to the second column.

"The problems are not bullets but single-parent families and the absence of male authority figures. Not pistols but parents never seeing their kids because both are working. Not rifles but teachers unable to chastise children. Our malaise is an obsession with self-esteem when kids actually need and want boundaries and borders. If we control anything it ought to be the endless discussions about young people's feelings and our encouraging them to act out their slightest whim. If we limit anything it ought to be the constant attacks on family, chastity, faith and duty and the television stations that deaden the mind and the sensibilities with graphic violence, grotesque pornography and vacuous pop videos. After which hosting long discussions asking why kids go wrong. The mantra of the modern youth. I want, I know, I am, I'm cool, I'm everything. You're nothing, you don't understand, you suck. Feel my pain or I'll destroy you. Most of these attacks in schools and colleges have nothing to do with the United States, the race of the murderers or the type of guns used. They are about the killing of morality and the destruction of standards and unless we act now we're going to see far more of the consequences. Wake up and smell the cordite. "

Our children are dying but not from guns. They are dying from the indifference that has been shown to them by the very people that claim to be working "for the children"....

Where are the grown-ups?

Peggy Noonan has her usual grand take on the issues of the day - today her take is on Monday's VTech shootings. What really hit me was her comments on how the "adults" in the situation failed....

"There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don't notice in the day-to-day but that become obvious after a story like this. Common sense says a person like Cho Seung-hui, who was obviously dangerous and unstable, should have been separated from the college population. Common sense says someone should have stepped in like an adult, like a person in authority, and taken him away. It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won't help. "

She is right - again. There was a dearth of common sense in this whole horrible tragedy - from the the adults who said that Cho Seung-hui was a danger and did nothing to the press who ran his screeds on nation-wide television spawning scores of "copy-cat" threats.

Read it all and weep for a nation of "grown-ups" who are too afraid of hurting someones feelings to take charge.

More proof of WMDs

Several months ago, I got an email from a very nice gentleman in response to my post here. He confirmed much of what I wrote and pointed me to his website. He told me a little bit about what he has done in the days since the beginnings of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the search for Saddam's "non-existant" WMD's. Well his work is getting recognition!

"It’s a fair bet that you have never heard of a guy called Dave Gaubatz. It’s also a fair bet that you think the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found absolutely nothing, nada, zilch; and that therefore there never were any WMD programmes in Saddam’s Iraq to justify the war ostensibly waged to protect the world from Saddam’s use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Dave Gaubatz, however, says that you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know, because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war."

The articles author, Melanie Phillips, does a good job telling you why Mr. Gaubatz deserves your attention.

"Having served for 12 years as an agent in the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, Mr Gaubatz, a trained Arabic speaker, was hand-picked for postings in 2003, first in Saudi Arabia and then in Nasariyah in Iraq. His mission was to locate suspect WMD sites, discover threats against US forces in the area and find Saddam loyalists, and then send such intelligence to the Iraq Survey Group and other agencies. "

She then goes into great detail describing the sites in question.

"Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq — two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra — which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true.
This was, in the first place, because of the massive size of these sites and the extreme lengths to which the Iraqis had gone to conceal them. Three of them were bunkers buried 20 to 30 feet beneath the Euphrates. They had been constructed through building dams which were removed after the huge subterranean vaults had been excavated so that these were concealed beneath the river bed. The bunker walls were made of reinforced concrete five feet thick.
‘There was no doubt, with so much effort having gone into hiding these constructions, that something very important was buried there’, says Mr Gaubatz. By speaking to a wide range of Iraqis, some of whom risked their lives by talking to him and whose accounts were provided in ignorance of each other, he built up a picture of the nuclear, chemical and biological materials they said were buried underground.
‘They explained in detail why WMDs were in these areas and asked the US to remove them,’ says Mr Gaubatz. ‘Much of this material had been buried in the concrete bunkers and in the sewage pipe system. There were also missile imprints in the area and signs of chemical activity — gas masks, decontamination kits, atropine needles. The Iraqis and my team had no doubt at all that WMDs were hidden there.’
There was yet another significant piece of circumstantial corroboration. The medical records of Mr Gaubatz and his team showed that at these sites they had been exposed to high levels of radiation."

You really need to read the whole article. It continues to debunk a meme that was debunked a long time ago - that there were indeed WMD's in Saddam's Iraq.

Worse than petroleum

Well, well, well.....I really hate to be a broken record and say I told you so, but.......

"Switching from gasoline to ethanol — touted as a green alternative at the pump — may create dirtier air, causing slightly more smog-related deaths, a new study says.
Nearly 200 more people would die yearly from respiratory problems if all vehicles in the United States ran on a mostly ethanol fuel blend by 2020, the research concludes. Of course, the study author acknowledges that such a quick and monumental shift to plant-based fuels is next to impossible.
Each year, about 4,700 people, according to the study's author, die from respiratory problems from ozone, the unseen component of smog along with small particles. Ethanol would raise ozone levels, particularly in certain regions of the country, including the Northeast and Los Angeles."

Ethanol.....the green solution to our dependence on foreign oil, the green solution to our global warming problem ACTUALLY MAKES THINGS WORSE!!!!!

"It's not green in terms of air pollution," said study author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor. "If you want to use ethanol, fine, but don't do it based on health grounds. It's no better than gasoline, apparently slightly worse." (emphasis mine)

Sigh.......can we NOW get off of the corn based ethanol train Governor Pawlenty? Senator Coleman? ANYONE??????

The full study can be found here if you are interested in reading all of the technical details.

H/T the Logical Husband

A time to mourn, a time to blame

One of the many wonderful things about living in Minnesota is the Minneapolis Star Tribune (aka Prairie Pravda). Today's Op-Ed page gives us yet another reason to be thankful for the paper of record in Minnesota. Today they give us an editorial entitled "A time to mourn, not to point fingers" and then turn around and point fingers!

"Mourning today is fitting and proper. Frustrations and recriminations will rise soon enough. That's because Americans are tired to the bone of gunmen, rampages, swat teams -- and of needing grief counselors. We are weary to death of the "healing process," and want simply an end to the violence, or, more realistically, a receding to some explainable level.
But unstable people can do unpredictable things, and we've made a decision in this country that guns can be easily obtained. And so we must live with greater risks than those tolerated by other "civilized" societies." (emphasis mine)

Easily obtained huh? As the days go by and we learn about the methodical planning that went in to Monday's rampage, the more we find out that this was not "easy" by any stretch of the imagination.

"Given the risks we have chosen it is unfair to heap blame on the university administration and police for not anticipating this extraordinary two-step mass murder. Hindsight comes too glibly from the sidelines. Cho Seung-Hui could easily have concealed his handguns and ammo clips and slipped in among his fellow students in the two hours between the dormitory slayings and the carnage that followed.
Turning campuses into stockades cannot be the answer. Unless we decide to clamp down on guns and the culture of violence, or to more aggressively intercept dangerous, unstable people, America must expect that Blacksburg won't be its last killing field. " (emphasis again mine)

So the Pretentious Philosophers of Portland Avenue want to crack down on violence? Do they call to clamp down on violent rap music - the kind of music that encourages and glamorizes just this kind of violent behavior? Do they call for a clamp down on "first person shooters" - the games where the player walks through all kinds of "normal" scenarios with the goal of shooting as many people as possible as quickly as possible? OF COURSE NOT!!!! The ONLY thing that the Pretentious Philosophers of Portland Avenue want us to crack down on is GUN USE!

Monday afternoon, I told a discussion group that I belong to that the DFL lead legislature in St Paul was already writing the legislation to repeal our conceal carry legislation based on the VTech shooting. At the time, I was being quite facetious. Based on this editorial, I fear that I was more than a bit prescient.

Another day, another celebrity puts his foot where it doesn't belong.

I LOVE Roxy Music. To me there is nothing more relaxing than sitting in the back yard, in the summer listening to "More than This" (off of the Avalon album) with a glass of wine in hand. Life, is good. I got hooked on the band when the Logical Husband and I lived in Germany where the band was very, very popular.

Now I love the band and their music, but when it comes to social commentary I just do not lok to musicians for "direction" - and with good reason. Bryan Ferry is the lead singer of Roxy Music in an interview last week with die Welt Am Sonntag, had the following to say about Nazi Germany:

"The way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord!
"I'm talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags -- just fantastic. Really beautiful."

Now I get that he is talking about the iconography. However, to say that the Nazi's did anything "right" even if you are talking about their effective use of images for propoganda's sake is not a smart move at all. Jewish leaders in Britian, on cue, responded with outrage and demands that Ferry be dropped from his gig as a model for a large British retail chain. Ferry, equally on cue, apologized.

" I apologize unreservedly for any offence caused by my comments on Nazi iconography, which were solely made from an art history perspective.
"I, like every right-minded individual, find the Nazi regime, and all it stood for, evil and abhorrent."

To give the British Jewish Community credit, they did the right thing (unlike the "aggrieved" community leadership in the Don Imus affair) accepted the apology and dropped the boycott.

"We do welcome the fact that he has issued a swift comment that there was no intention to condone the Nazi regime," said Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council.

The left loves to bash America as a crash, uncivilized society - often pointing to Europe as an example of civilization and enlightenment. On one hand, as a member of the "smarter than America" class, you would think that Ferry would have known better. One the other, they have a point. At least in Britian, when you say something stupid and offensive and then apologize, the apology is ACCEPTED. That kind of graciousness is sorely lacking in American discourse today.

For every thing there is a season.....

Like the rest of the country, my heart is breaking because of the horrors that were visited on the campus of Virginia Tech yesterday. We have family going to school at Va.Tech so yesterday was especially frightening for our household. Several thoughts occured to me yesterday (as details of the shootings trickled out) and I thought I would share them with you.

The first indication of trouble hit my email box at approximately 10:15 in the form of a breaking news alert from the Atlanta Journal Constitution (one of the dozen or so e-newspapers I read). I glanced at the alert and deleted it figure it was just an isolated incident. It was not until Dennis Prager hit the air, that I realized just HOW big it was. Soon after that, the breaking news alerts hit fast and furious, as did the emails from my news groups. Because information was soooo slow to be release and what was coming out was incomplete, so speculated that maybe this was another terrorist attack and that the shooter was Muslim.

I want you to let that sink in...have random attacks by Muslims has become so "common" that people assume that the worst when attacks like this happen?

It didn't take long for the media to blame guns and call for stronger gun control. However, Virginia Tech is already a "gun free zone" and we see how well that worked for them, didn't we? Conversely, what if one of the teachers or a student had a legal hand-gun as well? Would that have stopped the rampage before so many innocents lost their lives? Some are advocating that. While we may never know for sure, there are instances where it has helped minimize the loss of life.

Many are trying to place blame.....the school should have done something more, the police should have responded sooner. However short of being mind readers just what could they have done? Others are saying we should not "politicize" this event. I think John at Powerline covers that question quite succinctly when he says:

"In general, there is nothing wrong with "politicizing" an issue. This is a democracy, and politics is the process we use to resolve conflicts. Important issues of legitimate public concern should be "politicized." When a political group says that an issue shouldn't be "politicized," it generally means that they are on the losing side of the political argument.
Nor is there anything wrong with using a tragedy to support a political argument; it happens all the time, and should. Do you remember, when the Bush administration was being criticized for its allegedly inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, lots of people in the media saying that the event shouldn't be politicized? I don't."

So in the midst of all of this - what is a parent to do? What do they tell their kids? Some say that the kids should follow school policy and comply. Others disagree. I know what I am telling the Junior Logician. We can not live in fear of "what if's". All we can do is mourn and grieve for the lost, pray for their families and thank God for what He has given us. Every day that we are alive is a great gift that we should celebrate. We can not stop those who are intent on doing evil. Nor can we totally avoid evil in this world. Evil is around us. It is how we respond to that evil that separates us. We can either succumb to the evil or we can find the good in the evil situation.

Let us mourn the lost - celebrating the heroism that we saw yesterday. Let us celebrate people like Professor Liviu Librescu - a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed his life so that his students could escape from the approaching gunman. Let us celebrate Derek O'Dell - a VTech student who was injured by the shooter and yet he (and several classmates) baracaded the door to their classroom to prevent the shooter from coming back in and killing the rest of his classmates. Let us remember all of the lives lost and celebrate the joy that they brought into this world, even if it was for all too brief of a moment.

Pictures from the rally

Frequent commenter JEwing sent me these shots from last Saturdays Tax Cut Rally. We start with the signs.

I don't know which sign I like better. The "Pawlenty of Taxes" sign or the Global Warming/Cooling one. Either one works well.

Now take a look at this crowd shot (from the area around the podium). Does this look like a crowd of dozens or hundreds to you? That is what it looked like to the Star Tribune and WCCO (aka WDFL).

Hmmmmm.........

Congressman John Kline (2nd District) and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (6th District) address the crowd. Of course they were the warm up for the main attraction.....

MINNESOTA'S MISTER RIGHT! You can tell that Jason is having the time of his life and who can blame him. You can see pictures taken by the KTLK staff and see video of Jason's speech at the KTLK website. Take a peek at the video to see why Jason IS Minnesotas Mr. Right!

Does this sound familiar?

I got this in an email. No one is credited with authorship.

TAXES:WE CANT AFFORD 2 LIVE!! Tax his land, tax his bed, tax the table at which he's fed. Tax his tractor, tax his mule, teach him taxes are the rule. Tax his cow, tax his goat, tax his pants, tax his coat. Tax his ties, tax his shirt, tax his work, tax his dirt. Tax his tobacco, tax his drink, tax him if heTries to think. Tax his cigars, tax his beers, if he cries, then tax his tears. Tax his car, tax his gas, find other ways to tax his a$$. Tax all he has then let him know that you won't be done till he has no dough.When he screams and hollers, then tax him some more, tax him till he's good and sore. Then tax his coffin, tax his grave, tax the sod in which he's laid. Put these words upon his tomb," Taxes drove me to my doom..." When he's gone, do not relax, its time to apply the inheritance tax.

Now does that sound like anyone we know? Rep. Mary Liz Holberg thinks so as do the 6000 people who attended the Tax Cut rally last Saturday.

On this Tax Day 2007, take a few moments to contact your State Senators and Representatives and remind them that Minnesotans are indeed TAXED ENOUGH!

Star Tribune to Minnesota - you still aren't taxed enough!

It's a rare mid-day appearance for me today. The lines between work and home are being blurred this week due to vacations.

Last year, during the campaign season, Minnesotans were lobbied HARD to vote for a constitutional amendment that would dedicate the entire amount collected in Minnesota Vehicle Sales Tax (MVST) to updating and funding our transportation infrastructure. It would (the proponents said) solve all of our transportation funding problems. The Star Tribune (shockingly) supported approval of the amendment telling the voters that this was a much needed solution to our transportation "woes". Well either the Strib's editorial writers think we have horrible memories or that we just don't pay attention because they are out today pimping the new transportation talking points issued by their friends in the DFL by claiming that our current gas tax is "too low".

"Today the state's gasoline levy, at 20 cents a gallon, is not only lower than it was in the beginning, adjusted for inflation, but also lower than it has ever been in the intervening 82 years."

When the tax proposals first came out, I asked "Were the residents of Minnesota sold a bill of goods" when the transportation amendment was foisted upon us? The way things stand now, I think that the answer is a resounding yes!

To all my dear friends who spent the last election cycle assuring me that the MVST Amendment would solve all of our transportation funding woes, I ask, are you still so sure about that?

Notes from the tax cut rally

Like many others, I did get to the tax cut rally. Unlike the rest, I did not take a camera or notes or anything else. I figured with the Sierra Club crowd on hand, knowing that someone would try to cause trouble, I left the electronics at home. That actually gave me the opportunity to drink in the atmosphere - and what an atmosphere.

I got there early and the very FIRST person that I run into (in the parking lot) was my old blogging mate Amendment X. We chatted as we walked from the parking lot up to the Capital Steps and parted ways when he ran over to the Taxpayers League booth to deliver a message. I continued on to the Capital to see if I could find anyone else that I knew. I talked to a couple of gents with a cute orange and white dog (a Brittney Spaniel cross possibly). We talked dogs and politics for a bit and then I moved on. There were probably already 100 people there by the time I got there at around 10:30. As the crowd built I couldn't help but notice the diversity of the crowd. Every walk of Minnesota life was represented. And oh the signs! I literally tripped over Sequel from Anti Strib (he was there with Baddablogger and a couple of others) as I was wandering around so I stopped and watched the event with them.

Chief from Freedom Dogs has a post with a lot of pictures of the signs. Badda Blogger was there with a camera and he said that he was going to post some but there is nothing yet. My personal favorites were two signs with "DFL - Demanding Fiscal Leeches" and "DFL - Destroying Families Lives with taxes". Both were carried by young children which made the signs even more appropriate.

AAA from Residual Forces was there with a video camera and has posts of the whole thing. The speeches of the day had to have been SD35B's Rep. Mark Buesgens and SD 37B's Rep. Mary Liz Holberg. You have GOT to hear Rep. Holberg's spoof on "Green Eggs and Ham". The payoff line "34 Billion is enough my liberal friend!" had the crowd chanting along with her.

There were a couple of times when the Global Warming folks tried to infiltrate our rally. The one that just made my day was a single "gentleman" who came and stood by us. He had on the oddest outfit (drab brown jacket, bright floral shorts, white long johns under the shorts, boots and a bombaderes hat with the ear flaps down and a killer whale beanie baby fastened to the top of it). He had beanie platypus and penguin in his hands along with a paper bag that had "stop global warming" written on it. Badda, Sequel and I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out if he was real or if he was one of our spoofing the global warming crowd. I suspect that he was really one of theirs because he kept trying to draw attention to himself in the hopes that someone would pick a fight? He was there for almost 10 minutes and then disappeared into the crowd.

The Tax Cut Rally crowd was, I'm guessing almost twice that of the Global Warming folks which was good. According to KTLK's estimates, there were 5,000 to 7,000 in attendance. A good day for Minnesota taxpayers to be sure.

What's the difference?

Can you tell me what the difference is between this...

The front of the Quran, Islam's holy book, read "Mohammad pedophile." An expletive was written inside, smeared under two strips of bacon, according to a Clarksville police report. The report labeled the incident a hate crime.

and this?????

"Someone wrote "Free Palestine" on the door in English as well as Arabic writings, said. Izzie Weinzweig, president of the congregation. "Death to Israel" and similar language was spray-painted on signs posted on the side of the building, he said."

And why is this kind of "art" ok...

"Described as the ultimate arbitration between politics and Christianity, “Christ Killa” is a video game linked to video projectors and television monitors. A first person shooter in which the player shoots hordes of homicidal Jesus Christs, the game landscape is filled with Googled images of Christian propaganda posters, religious shrines such as St. Peter’s in Rome, and clichéd representations of Christ who constantly mumbles messages of tolerance and compassion. "

while this kind of art is censored because it might offend someone?

" Word began to spread about the comic strip, titled 'Yes to Pistachios', and rumors soon swirled about repercussions if it were ever to be published on our website. These repercussions included walkouts, mass de-enrollment at MCTC, and even unconfirmed threats of violence."

I'm sorry - defacing a book - holy or otherwise is not a crime. Vandalizing private property is! And if drawing a cartoon about the Islamic prophet is offensive, why must Christians put up with a first person shooter game that lets players KILL THEIR PROPHET?

I keep thinking back to some comments that were made at Congressman Kline's townhall meeting. A speaker got up and admonished the audience to "respect Islam". WELL RESPECT IS A TWO WAY STREET!!!!! If you expect Christians to respect Islam, then people need to start "respecting" Christianity! It's really that simple.

As frustrating as this double standard is (for someone who deeply believes in fair treatment FOR EVERYONE) it does not surprise me in the least. For in the Bible, Christ predicted this very type of "prosecution". While it certainly does not fall into the same category of "suffering" that Christians in Islamic countries or in China face, it is a fact of life that we should all wear with pride.

Codes of conduct

Debate is central to our political system. An civil exchange of ideas is necessary for civil growth. However lately "civil" debate has been less than civil.

"It began with a very brief item – exactly six sentences -- I wrote on the Corner, a blog hosted by National Review Online. I questioned a talking point that was being asserted by many on the left: that in the last election the voters sent a clear message: "Get out of Iraq!"
...My inbox was soon filled with emails castigating me in vulgar terms. Few had read what I had actually written. And most hadn't read Greenwald's column carefully. I asked a Mr. Vincent M. Muller, what exactly was the "false statement" to which he was so furiously objecting? He responded: "Almost every public utterance you have ever made requires correction."

In some cases (think Michelle Malkin for one) disagreement has turned to death threats!

"As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I'm not. I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs... blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers."

While I don't find myself falling into the camp that is calling for a "Blogging Code of Conduct" (you simply can not legislate morality or common sense or civility) I certainly understand the thought process that went into the call. What happened to Ms. Sierra is simply beyond the pale!

In a previous post, I commented on the atmosphere that I strive to maintain on this site. Many of the blogs I frequent also strive to maintain a similar atmosphere. Even at Anti-Strib (a site that a recent commenter said was no place for a lady) maintains a certain "decorum" when it comes to debate. There are many times when Dennis or Ed will vehemently disagree with Tracy or the rest, but at no time do any of the commenters decend into uncivil debate which is one reason why I joined their crew.

I'm sure a day will come when I post something that sends someone on the "other side of the aisle" over the edge. If, on that day, anything is left in the comments that is threatening or is in any other way falls into the category of "cyber-bullying" I will remove the offending comments and (if necessary) contact the appropriate law enforcement organization. However, rather than demand that my particular sense of decorum be imposed on others, I will monitor my "cyber-home" just as diligently as I would my brick and mortar home. After all, that is part of being in the "public eye". Thankfully, the readers that I have now are smart and savvy enough to be of the same mindset.

Equal treatment...Required or not?

Every time the left tries to disuade the so-called "Christian right" they trot out the supposed wall of separation of church and state. Yet in an effort to "embrace diversity" we have state funded support of Islam.

"Where Christianity is concerned, the college (Minneapolis Community & Technical College - ed) goes to great lengths to avoid any hint of what the courts call "entanglement" or support of the church. Yet the college is planning to install facilities for Muslims to use in preparing for daily prayers, an apparent first at a public institution in Minnesota."

Not to be outdone, the City of Minneapolis is offering special financing for Islamic small businesses. (H/T AAA at Residual Forces)

"The City of Minneapolis is joining with the African Development Center to offer a new financing option for small businesses, aimed primarily at Muslims.
The program allows Muslim Minnesotans, as well as others, to repay loans without traditional interest. Many Muslims avoid conventional loans because paying or receiving interest goes against their religious beliefs. "

Okay......here we have a public school accomodating Islamic prayer and the biggest city in the state offering special interest free financing to Muslim businesses. I wonder if the City of Minneapolis would be so accomodating to a Christian businessman who wanted to not do business with homosexuals (for example). After all, just as charging interest on loans is against Islamic teaching, condoning homosexuality is against Christian teaching.

The First Amendment is quite clear. Government shall MAKE NO LAW respecting the establishment of religion. If the administration of the Minneapolis Community and Technical College is going to accomodate Islamic prayer, they had best make similar concessions to Christians and Buddhists! If the City of Minneapolis is going to make special dispensations for Muslim businessmen, they had best be ready to make similar dispensations to Shinto and Jewish businesses as well!

More universal health care horror stories

The "good thing" about universal health care (according to it's advocates) is that it makes health care services available to everyone. What they don't tell you about (as I have said here many times) is the rationing that happens as a result. The much touted (by advocates of universal care) Canadian system gave us yet another lesson of the realities of universal health care.

"The Supreme Court will not hear arguments on the matter of who should pay for costly specialized treatment for autistic children in Ontario.
The court's decision Thursday halts the lengthy legal challenge of 28 Ontario families with autistic children who argued the province was discriminating against autistic children and should pay for intensive behavioural intervention therapy (IBI), as well as provide it in schools."

The families of these autistic children have said (does this sound familiar) that the treatments for the children would bankrupt them.

"The families have said the expensive treatment can eat up an entire year's salary and should not be a crippling financial burden. Private therapy costs between $30,000 and $80,000 a year for one child."

The Logical Husband has a brother who has Down's Syndrome and autism so these subjects always hit home in our household. His parents have spent a lot of money for both (they adopted another Down's Syndrome child after the first was born) in health care costs. It can indeed be a financial burden - but it is also a burden of love. They would do anything for them and it shows! It is not a dollars and cents issue, it is love, it is family. So they paid a little extra for insurance that would cover any treatments that might be needed.

However, these families do not have that choice. The same legislators who want government out of women's "health decisions" (aka abortion) feel that the government knows how to best treat the choices that women make in bringing children into the world. Does that make sense to you?

One nightmare is over

I have not discussed the Duke Lacrosse issue, mostly because so many others who were closer to the situation have covered it so very well. However, now that it is done I am wondering what will happen next. What will happen to the three young men whose lives were torn apart for the last 13 months? How will they get their lives and their reputations back?

"Mr. Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David F. Evans no longer face the threat of prison time. But after spending a year vilified as symbols of racism, sexism, and class privilege, they cannot return to their lives of 13 months ago, before the fateful off-campus party.

What will happen to the coach who resigned under pressure? Who will give him his livelyhood back?

"Mr. Evans, his voice breaking at one point, said the players were "just as innocent today as we were back then. Nothing has changed. The facts don't change."
The Bethesda-raised player also got emotional when thanking coach Mike Pressler, who resigned less than a month after the party, saying his coach sacrificed everything. "Sixteen years he spent building up a team to fall on a sword so that we could continue as a team at the university he loved," Mr. Evans said. "We owe him everything."
At a press conference in Rhode Island, the former Duke coach struggled to contain his emotion when asked about Mr. Evans' comments. "A lot was taken from us," Mr. Pressler said. "

Will the teachers and students who convicted these students before the legal process even got started apologize to the students?

"After initial press reports of the March 13, 2006, incident, Duke's lacrosse team was denounced by several commentators -- including Raleigh News & Observer columnist Ruth Sheehan, who urged the university to "shut down" its lacrosse program. Durham Mayor Bill Bell made a similar demand. The university did exactly that -- suspending and then canceling the season for the lacrosse team. Duke students and faculty members also condemned the lacrosse program. English professor Houston A. Baker Jr. accused the university of fostering a "culture of silence that seeks to protect white, male, athletic violence," and 88 faculty members signed a full-page ad in the Duke student newspaper calling the incident a "social disaster." At one of a string of campus protests, Duke student Meenakshi Chivukula said she was "outraged that legal rights are used to quiet this issue." According to a Raleigh News & Observer account, a poster at that same demonstration read: "The DNA will talk, even if the cowards of men's lacrosse won't."

And when the DNA DID talk and it said that the lacrosse players did NOT have sex with the accuser, where were the apologies?

These young men were treated horribly by the University, the DA's office and the Raleigh/Durham community. Where are all of the cries of outrage at the way that these athletes were treated?

At least Don Imus apologized. I doubt these young men will ever get the same - and they certainly deserve it as much as the Rutgers ladies basketball team does.

Speaking of Mommy Government

The DFL has yet another "Mommy" bill pending.

"The bills instruct the state to adopt rules requiring safety screens, window guards or other devices on residential buildings, possibly including single-family houses. The details on how and where devices could be used would be worked out by the Department of Labor and Industry and become regulations in the state building code."

Now when I was first pregnant with the Junior Logician one of the first things I did was make sure that there was no way that a toddler could hurt him/herself on things such as cleaning supplies, falling books, falling down stairs, tipping televisions or other appliances and falls from windows. It is common sense not to put a bed or chair or anything else like that near a window if you have a toddler and if you DID have a chair or bed or whatever by a window, you had a lock or gate in front of the windown to keep the child from falling through.

These kinds of accidents are NOT NEW. They were not new when the Junior Logician was born over a decade ago, they were not new when I was a young child. Parents should be held responsible for keeping their children safe from harm - it is not the government's responsibility!

I know that there are many people who are lauding this "common sense" legislation. However, the common sense needs to be on the part of the parents. Government does not control (yet) where we live, so it has to be our responsibility to keep our homes safe for children!

Big mother is watching you.

Least you think that Minnesota has the lock on the nanny state insanity, fear not. For California has us beat. The LA Times even admits that it is "Big mother".

"SACRAMENTO -- Enjoy fast food? Like to light up while you watch the waves? Forget to sock away money for your kids' education?Some California lawmakers want to change your ways. They've planted a crop of proposals this year — "nanny" bills, as they're called — that would:
• Restrict the use of artery-clogging trans fat, common in fried and baked foods and linked to heart disease, in restaurants and school cafeterias.
• Bar smoking at state parks and beaches, and in cars carrying children.
• Open a savings account, seeded with $500, for every newborn Californian to use at 18 for college, a first home purchase or an investment for retirement.
• Fine dog and cat owners who don't spay or neuter their pets by 4 months of age.
• Require chain restaurants to list calorie, saturated fat and sodium content on menus.
• Phase out the sale of incandescent light bulbs, which are less energy-efficient than compact fluorescent bulbs."

The Republican legislators in California are speaking out - as they should be doing here!

"Could you imagine the founding fathers dealing with — I don't know — wearing a helmet when you're in the buggy?" said the Assembly's Republican leader, Mike Villines of Clovis."We all know you can't mandate behavior; it just does not work," he said. "It creates criminals of people for things that are not criminal behavior…. You can't legislate for stupidity."

Indeed - can you imagine how the Founding Fathers would handle this? I would think that the answer is easy.

The answer - from a Constructionist point of view - is a simple one. LIMITED GOVERNMENT. It is time for the citizens to start holding government accountable and make sure that government shrinks and not grows.

I hope to see you ALL on Saturday at the Tax Cut Rally. Noon at the Capital Steps. BE THERE!

Alarmist in Action

Yet another climatological expert comes out against Al Gore.....

"NEW ORLEANS -- Dr. William Gray, the scientist known as America's most reliable hurricane forecaster, on Friday called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" for making the Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.
"For someone of his statue (stature), he's a gross alarmist," Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference, where he delivered the closing speech.
"He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Gray, 77, said....
Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm. For the past 24 years, Gray's hurricane forecasts have become the main barometer; recently, his mentee, Philip Klotzbach, has begun doing the bulk of the forecasting work.
Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures are going to drop in the next five to 10 years." (emphasis mine)

As I said here, here, here, here, here and here - there seems to be a cycle to the earths cooling and warming and that there is still much more research on the subject that needs to be done. Nothing new here.

It is Dr. Gray's theory on what is causing the alarmism that is new (to me anyway).

"He claims the current wave of global warming scholars relies too much on models.
"Us older guys that were around in the pre-satellite, pre-computer age, we had to deal with the real weather. Most of these people don't forecast," he said. "They don't live in a real world. They're living in an imaginary world."

Even more enlightening (and I will admit a bit entertaining) is this little tidbit.

"After Gore became vice president, Gray, who says he voted for the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992, said he saw his government funding get the ax.
"Gore knew what the answer was before we even started (looking into climate change), so he arranged funding to only go to those to tell only one side of the story," Gray said.
He voted against Gore in 2000.
Today, skeptics are left out of government funding and even endure a kind of "mild McCarthyism," Gray said.
"If you don't go along with it (global warming), you pay a bit of a price. There's a bit of mild McCarthyism about this whole thing," he said. Critics allege that skeptics are "all tools of the fossil fuel industry," Gray said. "I've never gotten any money from the fossil fuel industry."

More proof that the belief in anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is nothing more than a secular "religion".

Speaking of global warming....the Junior Logician just started a geography section on Minnesota history. His first homework packet dealt with the recession of the glaciers that covered this state 600 years ago. The first question on the homework packet was "what caused the glaciers to retreat?" His answer was a simple 2 words.....GLOBAL WARMING. We'll see what the teacher has to say about that at the end of this week.

One step forward, one step back

A positive step in Eritrea.

"Eritrea has banned the life-threatening practice of female circumcision, the Eritrean information ministry has said. "

Female circumcision is a barbaric, painful proceedure that is common in Africa and the Middle East. There has been a large push to get this practice stopped and every country that abolishes this barbaric practice is one more country moving into the 20th century (in terms of womens rights).

Now the step backward.

"Though Christmas is 8 months away, the traditional celebration of the birth of Christ in Italian school districts has become a raging controversy.
Parents of pupils at the Casa del Bosco nursery school in the multi-ethnic Oltrisarco district of Bolzano have been informed that at the school's Christmas concert, the students will not be permitted to sing "Tu scendi dalle stelle" [From Starry Skies Thou Comest].
Ths school's teachers singlehandedly made the decision to eliminate the carol to placate Muslim and other foreign born children, though they celebrate Chinese New Years and "learn about the significance of Ramadan."

Sigh.....I have no problem with the school learning about ALL religious celebrations. Bring on Ramadan, bring on the Chinese New Year, bring on Passover, Easter and anything else! BUT you are wrong, wrong WRONG when you allow the children to celebrate every religion BUT ONE!!! That is discrimination, that is bias and that is government entities promoting one religion over another.

The teachers overstepped their boundaries - the local imam even said so (I'll give credit where credit is due). Rather that trying to justify their actions they should just rescind the decision and move on. What will they do?

The Ethanol Lies are coming 'round to bite its supporters

Now some may think that this is beating a dead horse, however as long as the ethanol mandates are in place, it's not.

"The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.
This might sound like nirvana to corn producers, but it is hardly that for consumers, especially in poor developing countries, who will be hit with a double shock if both food prices and oil prices stay high. The World Bank has estimated that in 2001, 2.7 billion people in the world were living on the equivalent of less than $2 a day; to them, even marginal increases in the cost of staple grains could be devastating. filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn -- which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. By putting pressure on global supplies of edible crops, the surge in ethanol production will translate into higher prices for both processed and staple foods around the world. Biofuels have tied oil and food prices together in ways that could profoundly upset the relationships between food producers, consumers, and nations in the years ahead, with potentially devastating implications for both global poverty and food security."

WCCO ran a story last night that talked about how the cost of corn is causing the cost of staples such as eggs to go up (30% so far according to the televised report). Back in February, I posted about how the cost of corn (for tortillas) has gone up a resounding 400% in Mexico.

Then Kevin over at Eckernet found a story that blows up all the reasons why ethanol is supposedly better than gasoline.

"Scientists at Environment Canada studied four vehicles of recent makes, testing their emissions in a range for driving conditions and temperatures.
"Looking at tailpipe emissions, from a greenhouse gas perspective, there really isn't much difference between ethanol and gasoline," said Greg Rideout, head of Environment Canada's toxic emissions research. (emphasis mine)

Oh snap - that's gonna leave a mark.

I think I will email this to Governor Pawlenty and to Senator Coleman. Maybe this will get them off of the ethanol train finally.