A Tea Party Challenge

I spend a few minutes several days a week speaking with my parents. They are in their golden years and every Christmas that I can celebrate with them is another answer to a year's worth of prayers.

They are true blue (or is it red these days) Republicans. They have never voted anything but Republican (except for a few silly Stupak votes) for decades. It is my parents, and people like my parents, who are the biggest challenge for tea party enthusiasts.

Tea party folk such as myself needn't waste our breath trying to compel progressive democrats onto a path of economic sanity--these are people who truly believe that the socialist model is what is best. That same thirty percent of the population believes that wealth equals greed, that greed equals imperialism, and that imperialism convicts America of crimes that not only can never be forgiven, but will also cloud whatever maneuverings America might make in the future. To that thirty percent of the population, America is an ill-conceived sociopath that needs to be jailed or transformed--and socialism is the way to do so.

My parents are of a different lot. They believe in the goodness of America and the goodness of its people. They believe in the country's industriousness, the vision of its founders, and in the moral character of a country whose wealth makes it possible for its people to donate billions of dollars annually to survivors of disasters and plight around the world.

This morning my Mother was interested in who I think would become our next president. I sighed as these conversations always take a familiar turn. I was noncommittal only throwing out a name or two behind which I would gladly hold a banner. She replied with a familiar tenor, "I think Romney or Huckabee would be good."

Predictably, my face fell.

This is not to say that I believe that those two Republican stalwarts would not be more than a mite better than the typical stumblebums the Democrats put forward--I do believe they would be much better. Yet, if the tea party has meant anything to me and to others within the movement, Romney (a very good man) and Huckabee (another very good man) will do little to put the brakes on our American crisis; a crisis created by generations of do-good government bureaucrats who also thought they knew all the answers.

When it comes to selecting their next presidential candidate, Republicans must embrace a candidate whose philosophy on government and governing is different than the candidates they have been putting at the head of the ticket these last few election cycles.

In the last presidential election Republicans put most of their support behind big-stater "maverick" John McCain, big-stater Mike Huckabee, big-stater Mitt Romney, and big-stater Rudy Guiliani. The only small government Republican in the lot was the uninspired Fred Thompson who posed no serious risk to the establishment and bowed out around Valentine's Day.

Republican voters in the next presidential election, such as my parents, need to embrace candidates who believe in a smaller government and in a wise citizenry capable of solving most of its own problems. They should not pursue anyone among the stable of recent Republican candidates who feel the need to build a larger benevolent government with all the powers and resources necessary to solve the peoples' problems for them.

My parents have fond recollections of the Party of Reagan; a party that believed in the goodness of America. But in the long run, I'm afraid, that sentiment has compelled too many voters to choose candidates based on their party's legacy rather than on current party member philosophies.

I'm going to work on my parents. Will you work on yours?

What Religion?

What could be the possible cementing factor among nine men, all between the ages of 19 and 28, arrested this week for an alleged plot to blow shit up in the UK during the run up to Christmas? (Incidentally, I may have identified the only circumstance in which it is allowed to mention Christmas in a newspaper article--it being too offensive to identify around the holiday season among certain non-Christian people, that is, unless it happens to be the particular happy holiday motivating the blowing up a few Christians.)

Well, because the article is particularly informative in some aspects, we do know where the suspect are from--Cardiff, London, and Stoke-On-Trent. They all appear to be British! They all at least live in Britain. This is a relief, honestly, because we'd hate to worry about foreign elements in society. You go multiculturalism!

We know too that potential targets included the US embassy as well as political and religious figures within the UK. As it goes, many random Brits between the ages of 19 and 28 can be a bit touchy near the winter solstice.

Let's put on our thinking caps. What could possibly be the common denominator between Mohammed Moksudur Rahman Chowdhury, Shah Mohammed Lutfar Rahman, Gurukanth Desai, Omar Sharif Latif, Abdul Malik Miah, Nazam Hussain, Usman Khan, Mohibur Rahman, and Mohammed Shahjahan?

The Verdict Is In

and as it turns out, the economic policies embraced by our Governor, the leaders of our largest industry, the labor unions, unelected regulators, and dipshit legislators who believe that employers want to do business in this state for the sake of sheer public advocacy were wrong.

In fact, this brave troop of seers has helped manage to make Michigan the only state in the union that actually lost population over this past decade; a ten year period in which the country as a whole gained nearly ten percent in population.

As it turns out, Michigan residents weren't quite so willing to wait around for the government blessed jobs of tomorrow.

Updated for clarity.

Offended!

I fear of living in a land where the act of offending someone else is a crime. To be honest, I don't much like having to be careful about uttering "Merry Christmas" to a Jew or an atheist either. It simply takes too much mental work, and besides, why should my own personal happiness over this wonderful season be subjugated to the whims of someone who gets hacked off over a nativity scene?

Oh, by golly, if I want to wish you holly, jolly Christmas this year, you had better have one, even if I do offer you the option, as an interpreter of what I'm saying, to interject Happy Holidays over top of my insensitive wishes. I can be a jerk that way.

So, I'll just kindly wish you a Merry Christmas and you can cordially wish me Happy Holidays! Neither of us needs to be offended over the ordeal, and honestly, someone who is so predisposed to offense should maybe lighten up a bit.

I believe in America that we are of a bit more hearty stock. Perhaps it was our nation's early embrace of the Melting Pot theme that has allowed us to develop as a people in a way that predisposes us to more or less get along.

A generation ago, today's American Catholics and Protestants living side by side from coast to coast would have taken up arms against each other in Northern Ireland. The French and Germans have stacked up millions of each others corpses along their common border over social and political differences, but in this country these old world national interests seem irrelevant. And the Baptists...okay, bad example. They still don't get along with anyone.

If we Americans sought out reasons to become offended over the behaviors and beliefs of others we wouldn't have to look very far--pants sag too far in the butt, too many people waste their time watching American Idol, and who can stand a New York Yankee fan anyway?

But most of us don't go around seeking to be offended. Most of us look at ourselves as being individuals who can operate and believe largely within our own decided parameters and we accept that others can look at themselves in the same way.

Which brings me to this:

The parents of a Muslim boy who attends a secondary school in La Línea, Cádiz province, have reported their son's teacher for an incident in the boy's geography class which the child said caused him offence as a Muslim.

The teacher, José Reyes Fernández, with more than 20 years in the profession, was explaining to the class how the cold climate in Trevélez, Granada province, aided in the curing of the village's most famous local product, jamón serrano. The boy told his teacher that hearing the word 'ham' in class was offensive to him because of his religion and asked his geography teacher to stop referring to the product which caused him offence.

El Mundo newspaper reports that the boy's parents then reported the teacher to both the National Police and to the courts. They placed a denuncia against the teacher for psychological ill-treatment in the context of xenophobia and racism.

This kid and his parents need to be offended once in a while. It will toughen them up.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Carl Levin's Opinion Matters Most

The Senate Arms Services Committee, chaired by Michigan's own Carl Levin, has determined that it is just as important that the military attain an enlightened social construct as it is for it to kill America's enemies. (Word has it that next month the committee will consider making it mandatory for forces to stay under fire until all spent shell casings can be collected for a new battlefield recycling initiative.)

We're making a point people!

Passage of this bill is a victory for our military, which can now implement this change in a deliberate, responsible way. It’s a victory for our country, which has taken another step toward living up to our highest ideals. And it is a victory for thousands of brave men and women who now can serve the nation they love without having to conceal part of their identity.

I can agree that this is a victory for our gay service people. On the first two points however, I have a hard time buying in.

How exactly is this a victory for the military? It must now implement policies that embrace and protect the gay lifestyle when clearly a significant portion of combat troops are resistant to the change and while many military leaders themselves fear a loss of unit cohesion because of it. Shouldn't our military leaders have more important things to worry about?

When a victory for the military is measured by its social impact I think someone has lost track of what the purpose of a military is.

How can this be a victory for our country? By taking a step toward attainment of its highest ideals?

Our country has already taken unprecedented steps toward fighting wars in as moral a manner as possible. We use smart weaponry. We use explosives designed to destroy only the immediate target. We have enacted rules of engagement that place our own fighting forces at heightened risk in order to safeguard the lives of civilians. We bombard the airwaves and use large leaflet drops that inform both innocents and the enemy when we are planning to attack so that they are not caught in the maelstrom.

Now we must send a less effective fighting force into battle against a morally vacant enemy in order to achieve our country's highest social ideals.

All of this is done despite the fact that our enemies intentionally operate in the opposite manner. They target civilians, intentionally destroy public infrastructure, and they hide among civilian populations in direct contradiction of the Geneva Conventions. Oh, and on Wednesdays they kill gays for the evil of being gay. Why do they deserve the benefits of our social ideals?

True, when pressed into answering the questions of social engineers, many among the military brass have said that they believe that Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) is an albatross--that it is ineffective, and that it is unnecessary. However, many among them do not. At best the overall attitude is agnostic.

And yet, Carl Levin makes it sound as if the military has been chomping at the bit to initiate these new changes. If the military had truly been doing so it would have aggressively lobbied for a change in the rules themselves, and not relied on people like Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow to do the sales work for them.

For the record, my personal opinion is that any person with the proper training, straight or gay, should be able to aim and shoot and effectively kill our enemies. Any person with the proper training, straight or gay, should be able to drive a transport. And any person with the proper training, straight or gay, should be able to serve this country well and with honor.

But, what I think about the situation should be irrelevant. What you think about the situation should be irrelevant. And, honestly, what Carl Levin thinks about the situation should also be irrelevant. What should not be irrelevant is how the fighting men and women feel about the policy change. It is they, after all, who must face the enemy's fire, not me, you, Carl, or the gay activist lobby living in Washington. But, apparently, what Carl thinks is most important.

Clearly this should have been the military's decision to make. It should not be made by people like Carl Levin too willing to send an incohesive fighting force into oncoming enemy fire so that Jeffrey and Bruce can announce their plans to hook up after mess.

Doug Giles has more.

Who's the sucker now?

Coldest December weather in Atlanta since 1917.

And I brought a light jacket.

Georgia On My Mind

Tonight the old Buick is getting packed up with underwear and socks in preparation for another week of work in the Atlanta area.

Just, as I exit northern Michigan the first major winter storm of this season is forecast to be entering the area. Enjoy the snow!

Suckers.

A Struggling Conservative Provides A Cell Phone Caution

Any one of you sons of bitches that sends me a text message will be tracked down and killed.

With Friends Like These...

it is so much easier to call myself an independent.

After all the bloodletting in the last midterm election season that knocked off dozens of establishment Republicans in both the primaries and the general election, we still have more old-school dolts carrying the GOP banner than Michael Moore has dimples rippling through his khaki Sansabelts.

In the past couple of days we have seen Fred Upton receive chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Upton's record is replete with votes that run not only contrary to free market ideas but many of his votes spoon disgustingly with those of some of the most progressive jackasses in all of congress.

Fred Upton is a man who believes the best ideas come, not from the millions of individuals who make up our society, but from the crowned heads within the American government who have the power to make people behave in a way that is best for society.

So, why should I possibly be disgusted that a GOP vote has elevated him to this chairmanship?

In the past few days we have seen Sen. Chuck Grassley step forward with a ringing endorsement of continued corn subsidies for the ethanol industry; a fraud industry entirely concocted within the craniums of silly politicians whose elections depended upon the support of deep pocketed crony capitalists.

Finally, these eight Republicans voted under the cover of bi-partisanship to help pass the DREAM Act through the House last night.

Cao
Castle
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Djou
Ehlers
Inglis
Ros-Lehtinen

They cast their votes with a clear conscience knowing that no Republican amendments were even allowed to be considered. Thankfully, most of these pinheads have either been ousted from office by angry tea partiers, or are leaving office voluntarily.

In a two party system we sometimes have to live with dirty socialist scumbag Republicans (not that I mean to insult bags filled mostly with scum) because uninformed voters keep returning these clowns to office election after election.

I applaud the tea party for the impact it has had on so many elections around the nation and for its struggle to inform otherwise ignorant voters. But, these recent political maneuverings on the part of remaining GOP leaders makes it all the more apparent that what was started by fed-up American taxpayers just two short years ago has yet a long and narrow path to follow.

Our ETS Can Pole Vault

Perhaps ETS cannot literally pole vault, mind you, but how else can you explain its ability to transport itself through an unlikely catacomb of walls, windows, and doors that provides a substantial barrier between a host and an unsuspecting victim?

Unlike some of the more famous historical plagues, this killer is not known to be carried by rats or fleas or mosquitoes. It is not incubated in the filth of leaking sewage, is not a byproduct of mold or mildew, and it does not worm its way into our bodies through compromised food sources.

Yet, its ability to penetrate through and around walls on seemingly nothing more than a wisp makes it responsible for endangering the health and safety of anyone who might happen to be casually and unintentionally exposed.

Fortunately, we the people can count on all levels of government to protect us from all hazard, and the Detroit Housing Commission may be next in line to take this killer head on. If early indications are accurate, the commission next week will take a bold step that could benefit the health of all those unfortunate souls who might otherwise be exposed to the dangers of ETS while living under a wonderfully maintained government provided tenement roof.

But, the Detroit Housing Commission is not marching into battle alone. It has the full backing of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an agency whose acronym for years was assumed by many to actually stand for "Hell Upon Detroit." Not any more.

Because Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) can migrate between units in multifamily housing, causing respiratory illness, heart disease, cancer, and other adverse health effects in neighboring families, the Department is encouraging PHAs to adopt non-smoking policies. By reducing the public health risks associated with tobacco use, this notice will enhance the effectiveness of the Department’s efforts to provide increased public health protection for residents of public housing. Smoking is also an important source of fires and fire-related deaths and injuries.

Government owned tenements are apparently just another of a countless number of battle grounds in the never ending war between our benevolent government caregivers and the rights of individual citizens to live lives without a nagging Mom sitting on their shoulder.

While those living in government owned housing voluntarily cede many of their rights and responsibilities to the government itself, this exposes yet again one of the favorite tactics that bureaucrats have in wresting liberties away from individuals; that is, money with strings.

If you are going to enjoy the benefits of a public park, you had better not light up. If you are going to open a business that needs a license, you had better operate it in an approved manner. If you are going to use a public health care system, you had better put on that helmet. If you are going to build a home with a loan underwritten by a government agency, you had better put in an access ramp. And, if you are going to live in government housing, you had better walk off the property every time you want to grab a smoke.

Where will it end? Not all subsidized housing is government owned. Yet, if the government has franchise to control the behaviors of those who choose to live within the walls it wholly provides, could it not conceivably have the ability to control the behaviors of people that enjoy the benefits of housing units that accept reduced rent subsidies?

If that is the case, why can't the government force preferred behaviors onto those who purchased their home with a strings-attached loan guaranteed by government? Why can't it force behaviors on people who build their homes during a process that requires government inspection after government inspection before occupancy? Why can't it force behaviors on people who can only access their property through easement on public lands? On and on and on.

No, ETS cannot pole vault--it merely travels out the window of a smoker's flat, takes a hard right or left, travels horizontally down the walk for twenty feet or so, and then eddies through the windows or door of an unsuspecting non-smoking neighbor. All this while maintaining the power to kill!

No, I don't fear ETS's ability to transport itself by whatever means. What I do fear is a government intent upon transferring its benevolent power onto the rest of us by whatever conceivable means possible.

A Nanny Assumes

"[...]This is really about supporting parental choice. Most parents don't want their kids to use their lunch money to buy junk food. They expect they'll use their lunch money to buy a balanced school meal."

Or, so saith Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

And yet, it is actually more than this. You see, while I want my children to make good choices with their money and their health (not just at school but everywhere that they go,) I also want to be entrusted with the franchise to parent my own children.

How is it that Ms. Wooten can so adamantly embrace what she conveniently feels I would want as a parent (so much so that she takes it upon herself to enforce my assumed attitude,) while at the same time she can so nonchalantly dispose of my larger concerns over a nanny state government that feels it can do anything it desires under the guise that it is what a "good parent" would want?

Such assumptions give Wooten and her ilk the unendorsed authority to enter into every facet of child rearing, while parents, both of the nurturing and neglectful types, are either left frustrated with the system created by the Wootens of the world, or left fully compliant with one that encouraged their abdication of responsible parenting to begin with.

h/t overlawyered

In the Best Interests of a Detroit Child

In the best interests of the child is a term most often raised when it comes to family court and child custody. It is a term that helps to describe how child advocates, both those within the legal system and those on the outside, attempt to arrive at legal judgments that most benefit the children.

It is also a system that on its face is too often turned on its head with advocates and judges routinely making decisions based on arbitrary factors such as sex of the parent, money, and which parent is most easily pacified. Best interest of the child?

While at least legal lip service is given to the term in family, probate and circuit courts, no such whispers of "in the best interests of the child" are being entertained in the recent victory of the Detroit school board over its emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb.

But, this must all be put in context. Robert Bobb is, after all, an emergency financial manager. He did not come to serve in the Detroit School District in a time of peace, for the district's academic and financial track records had been dismal for years.

Need examples?

Detroit's school children ranked dead last in national standardized tests that pitted its students against those enrolled in other large publicly run school districts. Detroit's school district ranked dead last in graduation rates in the entire country coming in at only 25 percent, and many of those students that did manage to graduate from Detroit's crumbling educational system needed remedial education courses upon enrollment in college. To top all of that off, the district itself had churned up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt despite the fact that it had for years enjoyed special funding status among all of Michigan's school districts due to its sheer size. To put it frankly, the school board, administration, contractors and teachers of Detroit's public school system had fiddled with their children's educations while Rome burned--for many, many years.

Along came Robert Bobb. Appointed to the position of emergency financial manager by Governor Jennifer Granholm (a move that came way too late as far as I'm concerned,) Bobb hit the ground running and didn't bother to groom the egos of those who he determined were partially responsible for the district's demise.

He wrestled with school board members, he took on ineffective administrators, he attacked graft within the system, he shut down ongoing financial fraud schemes, he ended contracts, shut down schools, and he butted heads with the well entrenched Detroit unions. While every one of these head butts provided financial benefits to the district itself, few of the head knockings produced any friends among the wolves who had been protecting the hen house all along.

Bobb entered the Detroit scene with his eye firmly focused on finances, but it didn't take an airport scanner to see through the layers of academic deception that was the DPS. The test scores made it visible. The graduation rates made it visible. Feedback from recruiters at the college level made it visible. Bobb determined (as any sane person would) that the academic structure of the DPS was every bit of the failure that its financial structure was.

Bobb then began taking academic control from the people who had failed so miserably. He installed sweeping academic reforms for the district over the objections of those who had a track record of failure. He already had the enemies, but now he was making them even angrier.

Bobb's enemies sought the only recourse that they had--the courts. The courts in this instance had no reason to even consider what was in the best interests of the children. All the courts had to do was determine whether Bobb acted legally or not by stepping beyond his role of emergency financial manager.

The children? Never mind them.

Judge Wendy Baxter's ruling chastised Bobb for marginalizing the board's role, which she said exceeded his power. She noted, for instance, that Bobb would be within his rights to close a school for financial shortfalls, but not for academic performance.

In April, Baxter granted the school board an injunction to halt Bobb's authority over academic decisions. That order was overturned on appeal.

In Monday's ruling, she granted the board a permanent injunction, pointedly calling Bobb's academic plan "uninformed by the lack of education expertise."

Hmmm. Does she mean that Bobb's academic plan needs the educational expertise of those same outstanding educators that had helped lift the children of Detroit to the lofty academic perches of both the lowest test scores and the highest dropout rates in the entire nation?

The school board won while Bobb and the children lost. Now, whose best interests were served here?

Conference on Climate Change Begs Attendees to Be Inspired by Mesoamerican God Ixchel

I found some of the opening comments at the Cancun conference on global climate change very interesting. Christiana Figueres, herself a Costa Rican and also the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the name of Ixchel at the meeting.

From the Washington Post:

With United Nations climate negotiators facing an uphill battle to advance their goal of reducing emissions linked to global warming, it's no surprise that the woman steering the talks appealed to a Mayan goddess Monday.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also "the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you -- because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools."

She called for "a balanced outcome" which would marry financial and emissions commitments from industrialized countries aimed at combating climate change with "the understanding of fairness that will guide long-term mitigation efforts."

"Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skilful interlacing of many threads," said Figueres, who hails from Costa Rica and started her greetings in Spanish before switching to English. "I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel."

This reminded me of an article I posted here a couple years ago. I think it is still worth while.

No one knows for sure how many people were sacrificed to the Earthen Gods of Mesoamerica.

In 1487, just a few years before savage Europeans were to begin their genocidal assault on the New World, the Aztecs themselves claimed to have sacrificed 80,400 victims over the course of only one four day festival. The claims of that celebration, in honor of the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, were spread far and wide on the tongues of the Aztecs who bathed in the glorification of blood and sacrifice. A more likely number, one not inflated by the ego of conspicuous sacrifice, a mere 2,000 to 10,000, were probably killed during the festivities, each one ceremoniously butchered on one of several specialized tables located at the top of the temple from where the body could be easily flung aside to carom down the bloody steps of the pyramid.

Estimates of the annual carnage are widely disputed, though Victor Davis Hanson has speculated that 20,000 is a plausible number while others have guessed that as many as one quarter of a million people were sacrificed annually. The author Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl has estimated that one in five children met his or her fate through ritualistic sacrifice, be it by knife or fire.

Sacrifice was not the burden of the captured soldier, slave or servant alone. According to legend, the King Cóxcox had his own daughter sacrificed and skinned at the founding of the city-state capital, Tenochtitlan, on the ruins of which Mexico City stands today. His example of selflessness helped serve as a model for generations.

The Gods of night (Tezcatlipoca,) sun (Huitzilopochtli,) rain (Tláloc,) and fire (Huehueteotl) were not easy to appease, and each, according to custom, demanded sufficient ceremony in death.

Huitzilopochtli would require his victims to:

[...] be placed on a sacrificial stone.[19] Then the priest would cut through the abdomen with an obsidian or flint blade.[20] The heart would be torn out still beating and held towards the sky in honor to the Sun-God [...]

Not to be spared the fear of pain and death, child sacrifices to Tláloc were only sufficient if the children wept on their way to final passage, their tears to be repaid by nourishing rains falling from temperamental skies onto a fragile Earth.

To the Aztecs, all life sprung from these protectorate Gods of Earth. Food, rain, sun, health and every other particle of good or distress was bestowed upon the Aztecs through Godly blessing or wrath. Life literally sprung from the Earth at the command of the Gods--the Earth was the ultimate source of life; penance and tribute were worthy and reasonable.

Humanity has an ugly ancient history, the Aztec chapter being but one of many. We would like to think that, at least in the Americas of today, that this sort of unconscionable loss of life is as deeply buried as most of the Aztec's cultural reminders.

Liking a thought does not make it true.

Today's Earth is worshiped to the same depth and breadth that the Earthen Gods were worshiped those few centuries ago just south of our border. Though the celebration of the death ritual may have changed, there is still a candid acceptance of what is necessary for the survival of our planet and its life giving essence, and that necessity, though absent of ceremony, demands the death of millions.

It is easy to point to Rachel Carson's writing of Silent Spring in 1962 as the gambit of the environmentalist movement. In her work, Carson, though falling short of demanding that DDT be totally banned, created a largely unfounded world wide hysteria over charges that the pesticide was harmful to human health, the environment, and birds. Shortly thereafter, DDT was banned in many countries. Malaria, dengue fever and typhus exploded.

With the help of DDT, the global malaria death rate--which had been 1,740 deaths per million in 1930--dropped more than 70 percent, to 480 per million in 1950.

Since Uganda stopped using DDT, however, malaria has ravaged the country. Government officials have decided to rebuff environmental activists and once again use it to combat malaria.

Niger Innis, spokesman for the U.S. branch of the Congress of Racial Equality, said, "Environmentalists always claim to be stakeholders. But every day that they succeed in delaying the use of DDT and other insecticides, another 3,000 to 5,000 people die from malaria. Those victims and the half billion who get this disease every year, who lie in bed shaking with convulsions, who can't work or go to school, who end up with permanent brain damage from malaria--they are the real stakeholders. It's their views that count."

Well, that depends on who you ask, for those championing environmentalism today pay little attention to the anonymous millions that die silently outside of camera range because of their advocacy. They still worship Earthen Gods, humankind a reasonable sacrifice, their faith killing millions of innocent people every year over the simple misfortune of having been born off the beaten dirt paths of a third world country.

DDT is but one example of a pervasive elitist attitude that devalues distant human life in the cause of environmentalism.

Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said,

"People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any."

Today's hysteria over global warming and climate change, if alarmists are allowed to pursue their restrictive tactics, will claim millions of lives as its wealth choking mandates and regulations drive more and more people into poverty, ill health, and starvation.

As Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger travel back and forth between mansions, work, and conferences on private jets fueled, apparently, only on carbon credits, much of the rest of the world is starving--their diets shaved of calories so that my Buick can burn food instead of gasoline in its fuel tank.

And, while Al and Arnold no doubt adopt a less calloused stance than some others in the environmental movement of today, there are countless proponents within the movement that strongly advocate zero population growth and population reduction--by whatever means.

The Seguin Gazette quotes [Dr. Eric R.] Pianka saying, “Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine.”

“[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity,” Pianka said in his March 3 speech. “We're looking forward to a huge collapse.” He said, “We've grown fat, apathetic and miserable,” and described the world as a “fat, human biomass.”

Of course, the environmental movement today is diverse and filled with many people who advocate environmental issues on Saturday, quickly followed by outspoken advocacy for the homeless, or battered women, or children in foster care on Sunday. Most environmentalists are not evil people and they do not celebrate human suffering.

However, most environmentalists engage, ignorant or not, in activities that are not consequence free, as most people of sub-Sahara Africa could easily attest. In the same tone of voice that environmentalists use to admonish the rest of us for daring to reproduce and survive on gasoline, it is our duty to admonish the environmentalists who ignorantly take part in the sacrificing of millions of people around the world to Earthen Gods.

Dying silently in some remote hut in Uganda doesn't have nearly the shock value that a corpse has while tumbling down the side of a stone pyramid.

Shouldn't it?

h/t Michelle Malkin

Many in GOP Still Stupid on Ethanol

The wiser among us have been saying that ethanol is a hopeless endeavor to positively impact the environment. I know this for a fact because I have been saying it for some time.

It is also an endeavor that has accidentally caused food prices to rise, accidentally wasted precious water resources, accidentally lowered automobile efficiency, accidentally sucked billions of dollars out of the economy to keep heavily leveraged ethanol and corn producers viable, accidentally caused the starvation of millions of third world children, and accidentally, despite the blatherings of well intentioned bureaucrats that launched the programs and needlessly kept them operating for so many years, contributed to the increased spewing of one of the most lethal forms of greenhouse gas--that same one exhaled whenever an unfortunate human has the strength to gasp for another breath--CO2.

Even Algore recently admitted that the ethanol hoax that he had helped perpetrate (due to his inability to say no to the ethanol lobby) was ill founded. Now, if a skull as thick and densely packed as the cranium owned by that of one Albert Gore can get the picture, why cannot six Republican senators serving today grasp the same concept?

Why cannot these gentlemen, those supposedly grounded within the founding concepts of a political party dedicated to a smaller and less intrusive government, get the fact that when government hoists its own micro managerial constructs upon an otherwise fluid and efficient free market economy that what results is a mutated economic outcome amounting to a circus geek with dull eyes, a thickened forehead, and the nose of a chicken. (I used all the obvious facial features of Algore that I could think of.)

The tea party movement obviously has a long way to go if it is going to return sanity to a government so deeply leveraged into a failed bipartisan notion of liberal fascism.

I am going to continue to call myself an independent until the economically ignorant are either purged from the GOP, or until they decide to learn a thing or two. For which, I'm certain, they are bawling their eyes out.

Sigh.

An Apple That Fell Next To The Tree, Grabbed a Ladder, and Climbed Right Back Up

I present to you John Conyers III.

It's difficult to raise a child properly these days among the mean streets of Detroit.

Seriously, even if highly paid congressional staffers do your babysitting for you, even if the staffers run the kids to and from location, even if you let the gentle cherubs themselves jaunt around town inside taxpayer provided luxury Cadillacs with well stocked bars, it's still hard.


John III asks 'Is it too early to pop a bottle?' as he sits behind the wheel of a Cadillac I suspect might be being leased by the taxpayers.

Well, I have no idea what time of day it was when the picture was snapped, but with him being just twenty years old I'd say the bottle popping took place before he became of legal drinking age.

So, yeah, its at least a bit early.

By my count there are at least three laws being broken (if the bottle actually gets popped) in this one snapshot. Then again, I cannot tell if his seat belt is on.

Don't worry about any of this however. I'm certain that John I and his incarcerated wife will quickly take care of the problem by paying back any money owed for the vehicle's usage--because that will, like, totally erase the illegality of the whole incident.

Then they're going to have to chew the asses off all those staffers that allowed things to get so out of hand.