Huckabee May Have Found a Running Mate

The ambush style murders of four Puget Sound area cops is understandably a shock to people across the nation.

While I have read no reports that Maurice Clemmons is anything more than a person whom the police would like to question in the killings, it does bring back into my consciousness the fact that prison terms are not just about the criminal. Prison terms for the convicted are justifiable to protect the public from violence, and forgetting that criminal incarceration is a vitally important tool for promoting the public safety is a mistake.

Maurice Clemmons is free today and mingling in the area. Why?

Clemmons' criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington. The record also stands out for the number of times he has been released from custody despite questions about the danger he posed.

Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child.

He was released from custody just six days ago, even though he was wanted on a fugitive warrant out of Arkansas and was staring at eight felony charges in all out of Washington state.

In his Arkansas history is this:

In 1990, Clemmons, then 18, was sentenced in Arkansas to 60 years in prison for burglary and theft of property, according to a news account. Newspaper stories describe a series of disturbing incidents involving Clemmons while he was being tried in Arkansas on various charges.

During one trial, Clemmons was shackled in leg irons and seated next to a uniformed officer. The presiding judge ordered the extra security because he felt Clemmons had threatened him, court records show.

Another time, Clemmons hid a hinge in his sock, and was accused of intending to use it as a weapon. Yet another time, Clemmons took a lock from a holding cell, and threw it toward the bailiff. He missed and instead hit Clemmons' mother, who had come to bring him street clothes, according to records and published reports.

On another occasion, Clemmons had reached for a guard's pistol during transport to the courtroom.

When Clemmons received the 60-year sentence, he was already serving 48 years on five felony convictions and facing up to 95 more years on charges of robbery, theft of property and possessing a handgun on school property. Records from Clemmons' sentencing described him as 5-foot-7 and 108 pounds. The crimes were committed when he was 17.

Clemmons served 11 years before being released.

News accounts say [then Governor Mike] Huckabee then commuted Clemmons' sentence, citing Clemmons' young age at the time the crimes were committed.

At this point who knows is Clemmons is the crazy thug that killed those officers, but his violent history and all-out-nuts thought processes should have been worth consideration when he was granted his freedom despite convictions and sentences that the state had already proven and justified.

Lee Atwater successfully made Willie Horton the running mate of Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign. We are still several years away from 2012, but Mike Huckabee may have found his running mate too.

Federal Funds at Risk!

This is about the umpteenth verse to a song that has been blaring in the taxpayers' ears ever since wise government operatives first decided to get involved in every facet of the lives' of its people.

Howard Myerson writes in the GR Press:

The House voted this month (76-26) to repeal riding restrictions on all state lands, opening every acre to horseback use if it was open in January 1999.

Their primary target is the Pigeon River Country State Forest near Gaylord. A 2008 decision by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources limited riding to certain trails and roads and closed others. It also eliminated cross-country riding.

State officials said it was needed to reduce the impact riders had on the forests, trails and wildlife there.

Riders devoted to Pigeon River Country understandably were upset. They had hoped for a better compromise than they got. They claimed the DNR trumped up its case.

Anger followed, and they got organized. HB 4610, introduced by Rep, Tim Moore, R-Farwell, is the result.

Moore's bill has good points. It calls for an Equine Trailways Advisory Council and the creation of an equestrian trail network on state land. But it also jeopardizes $24.8 million in federal funds the Michigan Department of Natural Resources receives annually from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- a loss the state cannot afford.

I am not a hunter or a horse rider so I'd like to sidestep the hunter versus the rider angle, but it seems to me as if everyone is a victim here.

What disturbs me most about this sort of thing is the threatened withholding or incidental loss of money if the taxed do not kowtow to a favored orthodoxy. The feds take the money from the citizens, and as soon as the citizens don't tow the line exactly as prescribed by the feds, there is a threat.

We see it with our schools (where not only the feds threaten the states but also the state tries to threaten the local districts,) we see it with health care, we see it on transportation, and we see it in land management. We see it everywhere that benevolent government has been allowed to prosper beyond its charter.

Tax dollars are squeezed out of the population so that those dollars (minus the predicated administration costs, of course) can be later used as leverage to mold behavior of those from whom the money has been taken. When Mom used to threaten me with withheld allowance at least it was her money to withhold. She didn't sneak into my piggy bank and steal my lawn mowing money in order to threaten me with it.

This whole tactic is insidious. We Americans and Michiganders are turning into sheep who have placed way too much trust in our shepherds.

Train Bombed in Russia

"[...] either militants from Russia's North Caucasus region or nationalist extremists, pro-Nazi groups"

are likely to blame.

"I think we can expect the Russian authorities to come up with some names soon, because this attack is politically very embarrassing.

"This is an expensive, high speed train, used by an elite which has been pushing to transfer parts of government functions to St Petersburg. We already have reports of several high-ranking government and local officials among the dead.

"Whoever is responsible, this attack clearly seems aimed not so much at the public, but directly at the ruling class."

Protestant militants from Russia's North Caucasus region would seem like persons of interest.

A Post in Which I Agree With Iran

I haven't agreed with anything an official representative of Iran has said since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a group of well intentioned Mennonites a couple of years ago, "Hey, you infidels sure know how to make a good beef pot roast."

Now I must again agree with an Iranian official, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, this time having nothing to do with delicious Anabaptist cuisine; that the IAEA's latest resolution condemning Iran's nuclear program is both "theatrical" and "useless."

The UN nuclear watchdog's governing body has passed a resolution condemning Iran for developing a uranium enrichment site in secret.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also demanded that Iran freeze the project immediately.

The resolution, the first against Iran in nearly four years, was passed by a 25-3 margin with six abstentions.

But Iran's Foreign Ministry dismissed the resolution, calling its passage theatrical and useless.

It is theatrical and it is useless, because those delivering the condemnation will do nothing substantive about the program. Iran knows that historical rebukes mean nothing, and it knows that western civilization has effectively hunkered down philosophically into a position that accepts that there are worse things than having significant portions of the Earth living under a daily threat of nuclear annihilation (though Israel might have something to say about that.)

The west's strategy of engaging in a no-holds-barred dialog with evil, as if prodding it to change its spots will turn the leopard into a purring Persian cat, has purchased the murderous Iranian-mullah Islamist theocracy exactly what it has needed--a perceived global political legitimacy with its discouraged downtrodden masses, and an ability to pursue its nuclear quest within tolerable international political limits.

This latest rebuke will carry with it just about as much impact as the last several hundred have. Nothing.

And there you thought I could never agree with Iran. Give me a little credit.

George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houfes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requefted me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablifh a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of thefe States to the fervice of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our fincere and humble thanksfor His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the fignal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpofitions of His providence in the courfe and conclufion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have fince enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to eftablish Conftitutions of government for our fafety and happinefs, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are bleffed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffufing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleafed to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in moft humbly offering our prayers and fupplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and befeech Him to pardon our national and other tranfgreffions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private ftations, to perform our feveral and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a bleffing to all the people by conftantly being a Government of wife, juft, and conftitutional laws, difcreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all fovereigns and nations (especially fuch as have shewn kindnefs unto us); and to blefs them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increafe of fcience among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind fuch a degree of temporal profperity as he alone knows to be beft.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand feven hundred and eighty-nine.

G. Washington

Tax the Rich!

cross posted at Right Michigan

Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith thinks that voters are of a frame of mind that they might do something radical next year. They have been pushed too far!

She believes that citizens have noticed the way that Michigan's state government has shut down in two of the last three budget processes. She believes that teachers, parents and children have noticed too that their school's funding has been under attack. She is pretty sure that voters have noticed that prisons have been closed and that police have been laid off, that the state fair is being shut down, that libraries are closing, and that somewhere on a vacant stretch of little used highway far from civilization, there is a pothole.

Alma Wheeler Smith is running for governor and as a long shot candidate, she needs an issue to make waves and get attention. Amidst the government shutdowns, the layoffs, the budget cutbacks, closed schools, sidelined police cruisers, shuttered libraries, empty pig stalls, and remote potholes, she thinks she may have found it, and it is radical.

Tax the rich!

She may be on to something too, for no appeal to any voter will resonate louder than the one that appeals to the worst in each of our human natures; a calling that goes right to the heart of our greed and our envy. Here, Smith gets a twofer as reported by Up North Live.

Tax the rich and get something for nothing!

A veteran Michigan lawmaker and Democratic gubernatorial candidate says she thinks Michigan voters will support swapping the state's flat income tax rate for a graduated one next year.

And why wouldn't the vast majority of voters at face value prefer a method of taxation that shifted more of the costs onto others? This is simply human nature.

It is, of course, an undisputed fact that at both the federal and state levels a vast majority of taxes are already being paid by the very few in the higher tax brackets. It is also an undisputed economic reality that punishing behavior (through higher taxation) gets less of that behavior. Conversely, as was proved during times of tax reductions, lower tax rates on all payers will create more tax revenues for the public coffers, but these things don't matter overmuch to political operatives needing an angle of attack.

So Smith plows on.

She unveiled her plan Tuesday morning at a Capitol news conference. She says a comprehensive solution is needed to fix Michigan's budget problems.

Democratic state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith also is hoping lawmakers will vote in the next two months to eliminate a business tax surcharge and some business tax breaks while lowering the sales tax rate to 5.5 percent and extending it to services.

Please note that all of her comprehensive components include either raising taxes (or shifting them around a bit to increase their bite overall) and include nothing substantive about reining in out of control spending. In fact, her plan veers off into the opposite direction when it comes to spending.

Smith's plan includes a new income tax credit that would completely cover tuition at a state university, community college or vocational school, or preschool costs.

This is the second part of the twofer, appealing to the "get something for nothing" crowd. This crowd, incidentally, is a favored historical Democrat constituency proven to be willing to support a candidate for incentives a lot smaller than the cost of free tuition.

Of course the question of the hour is this. If we cannot squeeze enough revenue out of the taxpayers of Michigan to adequately fund our public schools and cannot pay the Promise Grant to current college students, how on Earth will there ever be enough money in the system to support this sort of grand larceny?

Each dollar that is sucked out of the taxpayer's pocket for benevolent redistribution is another dollar than cannot be spent on goods and services in the private sector. Our economy has already reached the saturation point and simply cannot absorb more taxation. All increased taxation now directly results in a shrinking of the tax base as blown away businesses close down and blown away potential workers have to flee to areas where jobs are being created by robust economies.

P.T. Barnum once said that there is a sucker born every minute, and Alma Wheeler Smith, while being a devotee of Barnum's, nonetheless hopes that he greatly underestimated the birth rate of voting suckers, at least here in Michigan.

She needs the sucker vote, and she is willing to promise to pay for it with the tax dollars of those citizens and businesses who have yet to buy a padlock or book a U-Haul. She had better hurry for there isn't much time left.

NPR's Take on the Leaked Climate Emails (Really, I Heard the Program)

Much is being made of the assumed hacked (but possibly leaked) CRU emails that have popped up all over the internet.

For those of you unaware, the leaked emails produced evidence that climate scientists were engaging in systematic deceit. Climate science, those who have studied the emails charge, has become too politicized.

To drive the point home, NPR dragged out NASA climate expert James Hansen in this evening's edition of All Things Considered.

In fact, one of the world's most celebrated climate scientists says the review system has gotten so distorted, it's even thwarting him. James Hansen at NASA's Goddard Institute argues that the consensus view of global warming actually understates the risks. In his new book, Storms of my Grandchildren, he writes that he wanted to publish a big paper critical of the consensus view, but he had "no realistic chance of publishing it in a regular scientific journal" because he assumed the reviewers would reject it to defend their centrist point of view.

In a disclosure story where the evidence is tearing at the liberal scientific community for its political deceit, NPR has found an angle that accepts the tenor of the accusation, but declares an unexpected victim--green climate hysterics.

When it comes to deceit and drowning out contrary opinions, climate scientists have nothing on National Socialist Radio.

Lansing One More Time

This is a long one.

To Lansing this morning for ortho. To St. Ignace from Lansing. To Oscoda County from St. Ignace.

I hope to be home by midnight. I hate days like this.

Medal or Court Marshal?

One of the baddest of the bad guys in Iraq has been captured by American forces. The terrorist in question, Ahmed Hashim Abed, is the kingpin behind the torture deaths of four BlackWater USA contractors in Fallujah whose charred bodies were left hanging on the side of a bridge.

Here is the twist. In our new world of fighting terrorists with a copy of the US Constitution, Abed has sued his captors. From FoxNews:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

What a country.

h/t Michelle Malkin

More AGW Threats

While writing my previous post I found this list from the Heritage Foundation highlighting 100 things for which AGW is being blamed.

Late for a party? Miss a meeting? Forget to pay your rent? Blame climate change; everyone else is doing it. From an increase in severe acne to all societal collapses since the beginning of time, just about everything gone wrong in the world today can be attributed to climate change. Here’s a list of 100 storylines blaming climate change as the problem.

List is here.

AGW Causing Prostitution

Calamitous global climate change is forcing poor third world women into the flesh trade according to a UN official. What seems to be missed by the wise Suneeta Mukherjee is that it is the lack of wealth that drives most people into poverty and forces people already suffering from poverty to stay there.

And it is poverty itself that overwhelmingly serves as the bludgeon that knocks people into the sex trades, not the alleged (and disputed) rise in Earth's temperature of 0.74 degrees Celsius.

Yet, it is poverty promoting measures such as the ones to be divined at the Copenhagen conference that the UN is pushing to solve a problem that has existed since halitosis suffering fat ugly perverts first discovered a heavy coin purse could buy more than merely gruel and ale.

Three Points Essential To Climate Change Negotiations

Among observers, the consensus is that, in order to achieve that sort of success, three points must be agreed upon.

• Mid- and long-term goals for reductions in greenhouse gases
• Financial support for newly industrialized countries and developing countries from developed nations
• Technology transfer to poorer countries

Global wealth redistribution, or international welfare, is an essential ingredient that UN authorities believe it must ultimately achieve in order to save the planet, and the UN's Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen is a critical step along that path for the world body. All the other arguments are merely window dressing.

That mandated global reductions in CO2 emissions will help to cripple the world economy seems to have little import to these people, and by default, the crocodile tears being shed by international bureaucrats over prostitutes in Manila seems more than a bit forced. A bad world economy will compel more people to wander into prostitution than any CO2 action being pushed by the UN will ever prevent.

They know this, they simply don't care. It doesn't fit the narrative.

h/ts to Watts and Drudge

Harry Reid: Worker of Miracles

It is almost a joke these days as to how much people believe that the government can cure their ills.

Broke? They can fix that.

Unemployed? They can fix that.

Uneducated? They can fix that too.

Fearful of "illness and death"? Even that can be fixed by government if Harry Reid is allowed to talk about it long enough.

“Today we vote whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation – indeed, one of the greatest issues this body has ever face: whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from the fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all.

Gosh, who wouldn't want to be guaranteed the right to live free from the fear of illness and death?

Our Senate has morphed from a political body into a hall of Angels. If they have the power to cure us of our fear of death and illness, why don't they just wave an angelic hand and miraculously cure all of our diseases to begin with instead of birthing some entanglement of bureaucracies whose primary cost saving feature will be the creation of a big ass queue?

h/t Darlene at Protein Wisdom who says

Who the hell can hear this statement and not want to reach for the phone and call 911 and have Reid 5150′d?

News That Couldn't Come At A Better Time

The arrogance of government is often hard to stomach.

Here we are struggling in the midst of what is the greatest economic global collapse in nearly 100 years. This collapse is a gift to this country and the world from our benevolent overlords whose intestines get tied in knots whenever they detect either inequality between private citizens or private enterprise freely taking place without government's direct involvement.

Despite our government's inability to even deliver mail without a multibillion dollar shortfall, predict unemployment more than a couple of months in the future, or teach school children where the Earth is on a globe, it thinks it can predict the mature form of industries that are yet in their infancy. (Do we even need to mention that the industry-child is a cloned creation of government implanted into the womb of a surrogate mother?)

If only given the opportunity to look into an expensive taxpayer financed crystal ball, it feels it will be able to determine what jobs unemployed workers should start training for on more of the taxpayer's dime.

The U.S. Secretary of Labor announced this morning that Michigan will share a $4 million pot of federal stimulus funds with Indiana and Ohio to collect information about the labor market and help workers and businesses enter renewable energy industries.

On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was joined by U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek. and others to discuss how the grant will help auto manufacturers looking to diversify and workers who have lost their jobs find employment in the green energy sector.

Schauer said this will help a number of businesses in his district, which includes Jackson.

“This news couldn’t come at a better time,” he said.

Ya, this really is a great time to witness that our government continues to be willing to toss good money after bad. This in a failing economy that it helped nurture by spending borrowed money on stupid shit like this that will not make a blip's worth of difference in anyone's life other than the people that will be paid to collect the data.

If bureaucrats had to pony up their own money to perpetuate this nonsense it would stop cold in its tracks. It is unaccountable, it is incorrigible, and it is spending our money for the sake of spending our money.

Indeed, this sort of news could never come at a better time. Where can I apply for one of these data collecting jobs?

Another Chapter in Stimulus Idiocy

From QandO:

This one is right out of the “you’ve got to be kidding me” category.

It seems that stimulus funds, you know that 787 billion bill without an “ounce” of pork in it, are funding a study at the University of Illinois (wow, there’s a surprise) to look at “the relationship between fat taxes and food consumption, diet quality, and obesity.”

In reality it is a study to assess the feasibility of taxing soda, under the guise of fighting obesity, to fund health care reform. You remember all the trial balloons that were launched earlier in the year concerning this tax? Well, now taxpayers are funding research to figure out if it is feasible to further tax taxpayers.

Grubbing as much money as can be gotten out of the wallets of the innocent has become the new American pastime.

Remote, Pristine, Undeveloped and Poor: Just the Way They Like It

cross posted at Right Michigan

It is easy to identify the geographic division between Michigan's two peninsulas. The Straits of Mackinac provides a clearly visible deep blue barrier between the two disparate land masses. Even though they are today connected by a mighty ribbon of concrete and steel that stretches the five miles between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, the human division is sometimes a bit harder to detect.

The two areas, while now sharing a statehood and a bridge, have lived quite different lives and have not always been the most understanding of neighbors. In fact, it was a shotgun marriage of sorts that got the two together in the first place with the pre-statehood Michigan legislature in 1836 finally accepting the U.P. as a booby prize in its war with Ohio over the Toledo Strip. It wasn't long after this however that mining proved that there was indeed great intrinsic value in the Upper Peninsula if one only cared look beneath the surface of the Earth.

During the years since the wedding there have been many freezings and thawings of the relationship. Generally there was tolerance but there were also some spats. A few dozen years ago there was even a movement afoot to turn the U.P. into the 51st state of Superior, a movement that left me deeply upset for having been left out of the plan.

As Detroit boomed by selling high quality Gremlins, Vegas, Pintos, and Pacers to discerning buyers from places like Ishpeming and Hessel, the mining sector of the U.P.s economy was already struggling. The opening of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957 helped to replace some of the area's reliance on the waning mining industry by making the U.P. more accessible to the thick wallets owned by those on Detroit's payroll.

By 1995 the last of the copper mines had been closed and today iron ore is only mined in the Marquette area. Detroit's major industry has fared a bit better (okay, arguable) as portions of it only tentatively hang on, and even that much due in part to the support of U.P. taxpayers.

Those early year attitudes have changed toward the U.P. While it was once considered a sterile wilderness, it is now a coveted vacation destination to be scenically enjoyed from the deck of a boat, to the seat of a snowmobile, to the back of a horse, though I wouldn't recommend all in one day. Most of these weekenders want the region to remain a wilderness and unblemished by any future mining ventures, regardless of how many of those scraping by on meager restaurant tips and the sales of smoked whitefish feel about it.

There are a few northern state legislators from the solidly democratic Upper Peninsula that are tiring of being thought of as a tourist only region, especially in light of a renewed interest in the U.P.'s mineral potential.

Five of the six legislators that represent any part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Sen Mike Prusi, Sen. Jason Allen, Rep. Mike Lahti, Rep. Steve Lindberg, and Rep. Judy Nerat, signed on to a press release that attacked Detroit area activists for a ballot proposal that would severely restrict future mining operations in the U.P. under the "guise" of water safety. All but Allen are Democrats.

In a state where divisions between people and regions have held us back for far too long, we can’t help but look askance at proposals that divide our state, rather than unite us.

As elected leaders from the U.P., we view a recently-announced ballot proposal to ban mining under the clever guise of protecting water to be nothing more than an attack by special interests on the U.P. and its people, heritage, and economic future. The people of the U.P. should have the right to decide what is in their region’s best interest. Additionally, a statewide precedent could be set where ballot initiatives could negatively impact other industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, or siting of renewable energy facilities.

The Upper Peninsula is solidly Democrat. Not only are all the state representatives from the UP Democrats, but the only state senator whose district is totally within the U.P. is a Democrat. Democrat Bart Stupak represents all of the U.P. as well as much of the northern lower peninsula in the US House. To add insult to injury, Jennifer Granholm and Barack Obama received a majority of U.P. votes cast in their last elections.

Let us be honest. If there was ever a region outside of the city of Detroit that more deserved to suffer the consequences of dumb votes cast, it is Michigan's Upper Peninsula. And yet, there might be a slight shaking of the foundation.

For many years it has been the Democrat Party that pushed initiatives that favored collective causes over the desires of the individual. A great democrat philosopher once put it perfectly..."the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one." Unfortunately for the Yoopers hoping to find economic deliverance from renewed mining interests, they are now outnumbered by many others from Michigan's south side that feel that the whitefish and pastie industries should be plenty for Yoopers to live on. I understand too that Spock absolutely loves him some pasties.

If people from Michigan's U.P. (and indeed from all of its rural areas) want to preserve their ability to look after their own best interests, they will make it much easier on themselves if the stop buying into a political philosophy that prevents the individual or the few from having to succumb to the desires of the many. Individual rights are the backbone of this country, and this is the reason that our Founding Fathers feared democracy rather than embrace it (despite what you might hear blathered about by today's politicians on National Socialist Radio.)

Our Founding Fathers did not want distant Kings controlling the citizenry any more that they would want Detroit and Washington DC. area lawyers and vacationers controlling the economic destiny of Marquette and Iron Mountain.

The U.P.’s business, labor, and governmental leaders are already coalescing around efforts to defeat this ill-timed and ill-intentioned proposal. Just this past October, the Upper Peninsula Association of County Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution opposing the ballot proposal. We will stand with them in their efforts and oppose this attempt by narrow, selfish interests from below the bridge to impose their will on those of us proud to call the U.P. home.

Perhaps the solidly Democrat Upper Peninsula is waking up.

MARK STEYN: JIHAD AND THE SCANDAL OF “BRAIN-DEAD” DIVERSITY

Everyone should read Mark Steyn's column from last Friday.

There are ten solid quotes that just jumped off the page at me but I'll only tease you with one:

“Diversity” is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in “multiculturalism” doesn’t require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them.

Please read it.

You can find all of Mark's writing at Steyn Online.

In the UK, A Man's Home is His Nanny's Castle

In another step toward the dark abyss, the UK is drawing up regulations that would allow health/safety inspectors unprecedented access into private homes for the purpose of preventing childhood accidents.

Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.

New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.

Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.

What kind of a stretch is it from here to assume that these same benevolent servants of the state will be headed back every few months to check battery strength, whether the water temperature gauges have been fiddled with, or whether gates at the top of stairways are in place at all times?

When inside the house, what other potential negative situations do you suppose will be encouraged to be reported? Will objectionable reading materials be cause for alarm, or will the recycling police be alerted should a parent here or there not be separating their plastics properly? Will refrigerators be checked for balanced diets? What if, gasp, out of season fruits are on the table?

Nice [National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence] also recommends the creation of a new government database to allow GPs, midwives and other officials who visit homes to log health and safety concerns they spot.

The guidance aims to “encourage all practitioners who visit families and carers (sic) with children and young people aged under 15 to provide home safety advice and, where necessary, conduct a home risk assessment”. It continues: “If possible, they should supply and install home safety equipment.”

This should really keep the midwives hopping. I can hear it now. "Ma'am, your water just broke. I'll go boil some water, collect some clean linens, and head to the truck for a smoke alarm."

A h/t to Bruce at Q and O who opines

Two things at work here – one of which we’re all familiar, even in the US. This is what? It is “for the children”. All manner of state intrusion is prefaced by claiming it is “for the children”. Which brings us to the second thing – the assumption by the state that parents are too dumb and inept to properly care for their children. While this is true of some, certainly, the standard is applied to all. And we’ve certainly seen evidence that the state is so much better, haven’t we?

So why does the state not only feel the necessity but right to intrude at such a level?

About 100,000 children are admitted to hospital each year for home injuries at a cost of £146m.

Well, creating a whole new bureaucracy for the purpose of installing fire alarms and window latches won't be cheap but, after all, the right to the freedom of children from suffering accidental injury cannot be exactly free.

So, lets just call it even on the expenses side of the equation--savings in accidents minus the cost of midwife spies and AAA batteries. As for the liberty side, citizens dumb enough to expose their children to unnecessary risks might not even notice that their freedoms are being trampled.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to see the once proud UK just keel over and die rather than having to watch it slowly rot away like an Alzheimer's patient. Having given up most of its sovereignty to the EU already, many of its citizens seem more than willing to cede what little freedom it still has to the remaining nannies inside its own country.

Stabenow Speaks on Health Care

What is it with our esteemed overlords in that they cannot go after fraud and waste until another $1 trillion or so dollars are pumped into the system?

It has been said, wisely I might add, that you have to follow the money. Large pools of dollars themselves create the potential for fraud and abuse. Management of pools of money this large become, almost by definition, impossible to rid of abuse. A small budget of, for argument's sake, $100 is easy to watch. Each transaction can be evaluated as to its need. This becomes less and less true as the amounts of money reach into the millions, billions, and trillions.

As money pools reach astronomical levels, more and more individuals have to enter the system as overseers and administrators. Each and every one of these added individuals is another crack through which lost money may flow. A fifty dollar transaction in a $100 budget is large enough to pay attention to. A million dollar expense in a budget of several hundred billion becomes like a drop to a bucket.

Debbie Stabenow believes another $1 trillion is necessary to be pumped into the health care system. It is only then that bureaucrats like her will be bothered enough to take the time to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse already contained therein. It is this promised to be saved money that Stabenow says will help finance the overall cost of nationalized health care as supported by today's politicians. She avers, in essence, that by adding $1 trillion to the size of a program, abuse and fraud will become easier to detect and stamp out. This goes against all reason.

Adding a trillion dollars to the health care system will not alleviate fraud and abuse but will make more of it a certainty, and will make it necessary to borrow even more money from our grandchildren to compensate.

Like Dr. Peter Venkman said in Ghostbusters, "Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no job is too big, no fee is too big!"

I'd be a bit more comforted if Debbie Stabenow and company weren't taking their cues from a Hollywood comedy writing team.

The Apologist in Chief

We all know that Barack Obama thinks that America sucks. This was evident by his many anti-American associations prior to his ever becoming elected president, and from a number of the statements he has made both before and after he took the highest office of the country he dislikes so much.

It was, in fact, a major cornerstone of his foreign policy during the election, and has remained a part of it now that he is Commander in Chief.

America was wrong. It is sorry. Forgive it. It will be better behaved. It sucks.

While this attitude was disturbing to me from day one of his campaign, it has become infinitely more disturbing now that Obama has the keys to Air Force One and a long list of foreign countries more than willing to accept America's apology for all the evil things it has done in the name of unilateralism, imperialism, and George Bush.

Hope and change for America has meant, in foreign policy circles at least, turning our back on and insulting allies, groveling at the feet of evil dictators, and the commencement of a new era of emboldened enemies.

I see nothing good coming out of it.

Deficit Perspective

I thought it would be nice to be able to see a bit of perspective.

Everyone here in Michigan knows that the state is flat broke. Governor Granholm is hinting at a 20% reduction in the size of state government, school districts just took a huge hit on their per pupil foundation grant, prisons are closing, police are being laid off, scholarships have been slashed, and local governments are taking it on the chin because Lansing has chopped its support.

All of these cuts, and countless more, have occurred or may occur in the near future because the state faced a nearly $2 billion debt when it had to present a balanced budget for the upcoming fiscal year and because tax revenues, despite tax and fee increases, are continuing to plummet. If not for the bailout money that Granholm diverted from stimulus projects, the state would have had to make much deeper cuts.

$2 billion in its annual budget does sound like a lot of money. Good grief, how much is that these days, about 250,000,000 packs of smokes?

Here comes the promised perspective...in the month of October alone, the federal government racked up a deficit of $176.36 billion dollars.

The good news is that at least it was a 31 day month.

So, for each day in October, including Saturdays and Sundays, the federal government went more that twice as far in debt as the state of Michigan did the entire year of 2008, a year that saw Michigan nearly paralyzed because of funding issues.

We are so screwed.