Right Minded Online

I can’t say that I’m surprised at this in the least:

A shocking set of recordings was released this week that could prove disastrous for Planned Parenthood’s ties with the African-American community. Lila Rose, a pro-life student and reporter at UCLA, launched an undercover investigation aimed at exposing the racism of the nation’s largest abortion merchant. With the help of an actor, she contacted Planned Parenthood clinics in seven states, inquiring if they would be willing to accept a donation earmarked for the abortion of black babies. The results were jaw-dropping.

Rose was appalled to discover that every last clinic agreed. Not one employee objected or questioned the request, even when the actor insisted that the purpose was to “lower the number of black people” in America. When the caller phoned an Ohio branch, he was told that Planned Parenthood “will accept the money for whatever reason.” Read the outrageous transcript from the Idaho clinic, which is also available with Rose’s other recordings in a montage at http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=LK08B57&f=WA08B46.

Actor: …I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids.

Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.

Actor: And we don’t, you know, we just think the less black kids out there the better.

Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable… This is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

And so, the legacy of Margaret Sanger is alive and well in the abortion industry.

UPDATE: Terry Frank covers this, as well.

Citing several sources, DailyTech reported yesterday that a “Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming.”

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

I wonder how the global warming kooks are going to try to blame this on human activity.

Related news story: Northern Residents Lament Snowy Winter

There’s an excellent article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal today on the Memphis Tigers following their loss to UT on Saturday.

Though the Tigers didn’t want to learn how it felt to lose this season, especially to an in-state rival on such a public stage, Tennessee may have ultimately done them a favor. At least, that’s what several colleagues told Calipari, including former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, whose 1991 team lost in the national semifinals after entering the NCAA Tournament undefeated.

Only through the prism of a loss could the Tigers truly grasp what happens when they don’t scrap for rebounds, when they don’t run their offense and when they don’t make intelligent decisions down the stretch.

I was almost sick after that loss to UT, but I’ve gotten over it. The polls came out yesterday, and had the Tigers #2 in the AP, and #3 in the coaches poll. The world did not come to an end. Perhaps, sometime in early April, we will look back on that loss and realize that it was the best thing that could have happened to us.

Joseph Farah of World Net Daily is campaigning for choice on light bulbs.

While it is perfectly legal to kill unborn babies for any reason or no reason at all, soon it will be strictly against federal law to buy, sell or traffic in incandescent light bulbs.

I have a problem with this.

The deaths of tens of millions of American children since 1973 have been justified on the basis of “choice.” Activists for abortion on demand say they don’t necessarily justify the moral decision to kill unwanted, pre-born children, but they believe every mother has a right to make that “choice” for herself. They’re not pro-abortion, they say. They are “pro-choice.”

Of course, I’m pro-choice, too. I think women who don’t want children should do everything in their power to avoid pregnancy – up to and including becoming abstinent. That is the proper way to exercise “choice” about children.

Choice ends, however, when the life of another human being enters the picture. Just as I don’t have the right to choose to kill another human being who inconveniences me, no mother has the right to kill her unborn child because he or she inconveniences her.

Except in the extremely rare instance when a rape results in a pregnancy, women make their choices when they have sex. But even in those extremely rare instances when rape is involved, the crime hardly justifies the murder of another innocent human being.

But enough about abortion. I don’t want to talk about abortion today. I want to talk about light bulbs.

Because my right to choose is being taken away from me – and so is yours.

Did you know the congressional busybodies in Washington have actually passed a law that will ban the sale and possession of incandescent light bulbs a few years from now?

It has been said that Barack Obama says nothing better than anyone else in politics. Senator Obama is all about hope. There’s nothing wrong with having hope. Hope is a fine thing. But whereas the hope of conservatives tends to be vested in God, the hope of liberals tends to be vested in government.

For example, during a speech on February 12, Senator Obama remarked “It’s a dream shared in big cities and small towns; across races, regions and religions — that if you work hard, you can support a family; that if you get sick, there will be health care you can afford; that you can retire with the dignity and security and respect that you have earned; that your kids can get a good education, and young people can go to college even if they’re not rich. That is our common hope. That is the American Dream.”

That all sounds very good. But when you dig into Senator Obama’s policies, you will find that he believes government should be the provider of all these things. Jobs? Obama believes the government should create jobs through “investments” (i.e., taxes and spending). Health care? Obama believes in taxpayer-funded universal health care. Retirement? Obama’s hope is in Social Security. Education? Obama believes we should spend MORE money on public education, from pre-K all the way through college. The American Dream? Yes, the government can provide that, too, if only we elect Obama.

Senator Obama, good-looking and well-spoken, has taken on the aura of a religious figure. On January 7, while campaigning in New Hampshire, the Illinois senator asserted “… a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany … and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama.”

And earlier this month, Michelle Obama remarked that “…we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”

(Hey, where’s the separation of church and state crowd?)

Government is not in the business of fixing souls. Government’s duty is to protect our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s the PURSUIT of happiness. Government does not provide actual happiness. That’s our job.

Now, back in 2006, a Pew Research poll found that 45% of Republicans are “very happy,” compared to just 30% of Democrats. The General Social Survey, which has been taken every two years since 1972, has consistently found that Republicans are happier than Democrats. Regardless of who is in power, regardless of economic background, Republicans are happier than Democrats.

Furthermore, people who attend religious services regularly are more likely to report being “very happy” than those who don’t — 43% to 26%. I don’t have to tell you who is more likely to regularly attend religious services (conservatives), nor do I have to tell you who is more likely to malign the faith of those who regularly attend religious services (liberals).

Some of their own pet policies are to blame for Democrats’ unhappiness, as well. Once in power, Democrats tend to focus on issues that, according to the science of happiness, have little effect on our contentment, such as income equality and racial diversity. Neither is linked to greater happiness. But liberals will vote for a guy like Obama, who promises them hope, then sit around expecting government to improve their lives.

It is human nature to seek a source of hope. Senator Obama has created a following out of promising hope, and, as of this writing, has accumulated the most delegates of any Democrat running for president. Unfortunately, Obama’s flock consists largely of individuals who are looking to his promises of bigger government as that source of hope.

The bigger government becomes, the more likely it is to fail the people it is intended to serve. Indeed, the federal government, especially the entitlement system, has grown exponentially since the New Deal of the 1930’s, and yet there seem to be more people dissatisfied with government now than ever before. Obama advocates even more government. Yet the more liberalism becomes ingrained in public policy, the more problems we seem to incur. Perhaps government isn’t the answer, after all.

Placing one’s hope in government is a guarantee for future dissatisfaction, while placing hope in God usually results in far greater happiness. After all, genuine hope comes from God and the assurance of eternal salvation for those who believe in Christ. From the promise of salvation flow hope, joy, and inner peace.

Not even God has promised his followers free health care, a secure retirement, or a government-funded education. Only liberals do that. On the contrary, God warned humankind after the fall of man that our lives would be filled with hardship and pain as a result of sin, but he also gave us fallen creatures a way to eternal paradise through Christ. Thus, only God can fix “broken souls.” That is the essence of hope. It cannot be bestowed by any man or woman — not even Obama.

Today the Tennessee Volunteers basketball team will be voted the #1 team in college basketball, and deservedly so, after beating the former #1 team, the Memphis Tigers, on their home court.

Wherever Memphis ends up later today — I’m predicting we’ll be #3 — Tennessee and Memphis were ranked #1 and #2 in the RPI before Saturday’s game, and were still #1 and #2 after Saturday’s game. Both teams are going to get #1 seeds for the NCAA basketball tournament. Memphis is going to win its last four regular season games. We will then win the Conference USA tournament, and we will go to the Big Dance with a 33-1 record. Not a bad showing.

Congratulations to UT. You can be #1 now, hang that bull’s eye around your neck, and let the media hound you relentlessly for as long as you can stay #1. We were #1 for five weeks. It was an honor. But the sports media do not let you enjoy it. Because of this, being #1 is more of a burden than a blessing.

Watching Saturday’s game on ESPN, I cannot count the number of times the announcers referred to our “dream of an undefeated season.” They would occasionally flash the graphic on what’s at stake. For UT, it was the #1 ranking. For Memphis, it was the undefeated season.

Note to media: we Memphis fans didn’t harbor any dreams of an undefeated season. We couldn’t care less about going undefeated. I’m not saying we wanted to lose, but sooner or later, no matter how good your program, you’re going to lose a game, or two, or three. Our dream is simply to win the national championship. That dream is very much alive, perhaps even more so now that the sports media can no longer hold the Sword of Damocles of going undefeated over our heads. It’s over. We’ve lost a game — a very close down-to-the-wire game — to the new #1 team in the nation. All of our much-touted streaks have been reset to zero.

I hate losing. I hate losing to UT even more. I don’t like the orange. Never have. But sometimes it’s good to taste defeat. It’s humbling, and it’s good to be humbled every now-and-then. Champions often rise from the ashes of humility. I’d much rather taste it now than in the NCAA tournament, when losing automatically ends your season. And we won’t enter the field of 65 bearing the added pressure of being undefeated.

The sports media do not like Memphis. They never have — not when we were in the Metro Conference, not when we were in the Great Midwest Conference, not when Conference USA was a powerhouse, and not now. If you don’t believe me, listen to the CBS announcers during a Memphis game during the NCAA tournament. No, I’m not claiming victimhood here. I actually relish being despised by the media.

Memphis is not from one of the BCS conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-10, or SEC). We’re from Conference USA. Our schedule is loaded with “patsies.” Never mind that we have played 7 games this season against teams from the BCS conferences — winning six of those games — and never mind that, as of yesterday morning, we had played the 15th toughest schedule in the nation, we are not the fortunate son.

You could take the Memphis team as it is, put them in Duke jerseys, change John Calipari’s name to Mike Krzyzewski, and you would have an instant media darling. But that’s not the way it is. And it’s fine by me. As I often remind my son, who is frustrated to no end by the sports media, words don’t win basketball games, predictions don’t put any points on the board, and the prophets on ESPN and CBS don’t know any more about who is going to win than we do.

Mrs. Bill Clinton often refers to her 35 years of advocacy for the children. But, as we all know, what she says and what she does are two different things.

But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn’t mention in her standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas – using her child development background to help the defendant.

…

However, that account leaves out a significant aspect of her defense strategy – attempting to impugn the credibility of the victim, according to a Newsday examination of court and investigative files and interviews with witnesses, law enforcement officials and the victim.

Rodham, records show, questioned the sixth grader’s honesty and claimed she had made false accusations in the past. She implied that the girl often fantasized and sought out “older men” like Taylor, according to a July 1975 affidavit signed “Hillary D. Rodham” in compact cursive.

…

The victim, now 46, told Newsday that she was raped by Taylor, denied that she wanted any relationship with him and blamed him for contributing to three decades of severe depression and other personal problems.

“It’s not true, I never sought out older men – I was raped,” the woman said in an interview in the fall. Newsday is withholding her name as the victim of a sex crime.

[Link]

Ugh.

I was listening to the Memphis-Tulane game on the radio last night — won by Memphis 97-71 — and learned that Saturday’s game between Memphis and UT will mark the 38th time #1 has played #2 in college basketball. Furthermore, the state of Tennessee will be only the third state to ever host such a matchup, the others being North Carolina (UNC-Duke) and Ohio (Ohio St.-Cincinnati).

I read an AP story the Lebanon Democrat on Saturday that I dug up on the Internet so I could comment on it here. The story is “Generation Green Pushing Parents to Save the Planet: Youth use lessons they’ve learned since birth to take older Americans to task.” It’s a long story, so I can’t parse every word here, but you can probably tell where this is headed by the subtitle.

The story begins:

Marika Martin is a vegetarian. So is her husband, Charles Gonzalez, who rides his bicycle to work every day in New York City traffic, rain or shine. The couple care deeply about the environment, but if you ask their kids, 12-year-old Sinika and 8-year-old Soren, it’s sometimes not deeply enough.

“My hopeless mother is obsessed with plastic bags,” said Soren, a third-grader and huge fan of Al Gore’s global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

My hopeless mother? Folks, this is perfectly consistent with the liberal belief that parents are too stupid to be able to raise their children properly, and that the children are really the wise ones. This also shows how many of our public schools are simply indoctrination factories where children are taught to question the values they learn at home from the dumb parents.

I would love to know how much meteorology these kids are being taught in school. I would guess very little. They are being given the theology of global warming without any actual science. Of course, a scientific teaching of global warming would destroy the myth than humans are causing the planet to warm, and we can’t let science get in the way of the left’s religion du jour.

“He’s adamant that I drive 55 but I’m naturally a speedster,” Bluemle said. “We have a bumper sticker on the car saying ‘55 slows down global warming.’ It’s killing me.”

Will has begged his parents to buy a new dishwasher to cut down on energy use. He imagines redesigning their house with solar and wind power and a passthrough of used kitchen sink water to flush toilets. Earth, he said, “is a lot of animals’ home. If a lot of animals become extinct it would be hard for us to live.”

I wonder if these parents ever assert themselves to their children, such as “Hey, kid, as long as I’m buying the gas, I drive however fast I want,” or “When you save up the money for a new dishwasher, go ahead and buy one.”

Compromise is key, said Julie Ross, a parent and family therapist in New York who has written three books on child-rearing.

Not every family can afford to install solar panels, but they can put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat, she suggested. If a new car isn’t in the budget, a hybrid is out of the question, but carpooling to school or turning off the car rather than idling when stopped in the pickup line might work. Some parents think composting toilets are way too big a hassle, but they’re willing to share a flush.

They can put on a sweater? Folks, this is classic liberalism, telling other people how to live.

“I definitely hear a lot of frustration and anger in young kids,” Ross said. “They don’t feel powerful enough to be able to make changes themselves, yet they’re being told that this is a big issue and they’re going to have to deal with it. Parents have a tendency to dismiss the young.”

Yes, I do have a tendency to dismiss the young, especially on issues like this. It’s for one simple reason. I’m smarter and wiser than your average 12-year-old. I cannot imagine as an adult allowing myself to be dressed down by a 12-year-old.

Amanda Brosius, 6, of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, recently watched a television special on the plight of polar bears losing their icy hunting grounds to global warming. Soon after, she could hear the shower running way too long in the apartment above, where a 7-year-old friend lives. The boy’s long, water-guzzling showers prompted her to speak up.

Once again, this is the primary driving force behind the global warming hoax: telling other people how to live.

“He doesn’t care about the polar bears, but I do,” Amanda said. “We’re running out of fresh water, and if you don’t be careful the ice will never get frozen and the polar bears will have nowhere to go. Santa will have nowhere to live.”

We’re not running out of fresh water. We will never run out of fresh water. The amount of available fresh water doesn’t change appreciably over time. Ever hear of the water cycle?

See also: Bill would require California’s science curriculum to cover climate change

We have a first here in Tennessee coming up on Saturday night. That’s the night Tennessee plays at the FedEx Forum in Memphis. They will play as the top two ranked teams in the nation. The news polls came out yesterday. Memphis is #1 for the fifth week in a row. With Duke losing at Wake Forest on Sunday, Tennessee has moved up to #2, setting up the intra-state showdown on the home court of the Memphis Tigers. This is the first time two schools from Tennessee have held the top two rankings, and so it stands to reason that this will also be the first ever #1 vs. #2 matchup between two teams from Tennessee.

(Note to Memphis: You have a game at Tulane tomorrow night. Don’t forget to show up.)

I recently read a Tim LaHaye/Jerry Jenkins novel on the ministry of the disciple John, and it spurred an interest in some of the early Christian martyrs. Even though John wasn’t martyred, he did survive an attempt by the Romans to boil him in oil. Still, two of his disciples, Ignatius and Polycarp, were martyred, and so I decided to look up the martyrdom of the other 11 disciples.

Simon Peter suffered death by crucifixion, possibly head down.

James, son of Zebedee, was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I.

Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, suffered death by crucifixion. Legend has it that his was an X-shaped cross, and that he was bound instead of nailed.

Philip suffered death by crucifixion in the city of Hierapolis.

Bartholomew was flayed alive and then crucified head down.

Matthew was either burned, stoned, or beheaded.

Thomas was martyred in India by spearing.

James, son of Alphaeus, was crucified in Lower Egypt, and his body was sawed to pieces.

Thaddeus, also known as St. Jude, was martyred in Beirut, Lebanon, possibly together with the apostle Simon the Zealot, although there are at least seven different accounts of the death of the latter. Christian Ethiopians claim he was crucified in Samaria, while a separate account insists he was sawn in half at Suanir, Persia. The historian Moses of Chorene claimed he was martyred at Weriosphora in Caucasian Iberia. Another tradition holds that Simon died peacefully at Edessa. Yet another account says he visited Britain — possibly Glastonbury — and was martyred in modern-day Lincolnshire. Or he may have been involved in a Jewish revolt against the Romans, which was violently suppressed.

Matthias, who was chosen by the other eleven disciples to replace Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed Jesus and then hung himself, was crucified in Colchis (now located in Caucasian Georgia).

John was the only disciple to die a natural death. However, two of his disciples, Ignatius and Polycarp, were ultimately martyred. Ignatius was 85 years of age when he was killed by wild animals in the Flavian Amphitheater (what we know as the Colisseum). Polycarp, who served as Bishop of Smyrna, was stabbed to death after burning at the stake failed. He was about 86 years old.

St. Stephen, although not one of the twelve, is regarded as the first Christian martyr, having been accused of blasphemy. He was stoned to death around AD 33, just as the early Christians had begun to spread out. Paul was present at Stephen’s stoning, had even given approval to it, as he was a vociferous persecutor of Christians. Ironically, Paul was soon converted to Christianity himself while traveling along the Damascus Road, and subsequently became a passionate defender of the faith. Paul wrote much of our New Testament, and suffered many hardships as a result of his faith in Christ and subsequent missionary journeys. Paul was ultimately beheaded during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero either in AD 64 or 67.

The UK’s Daily Express — why do all the reasonable global warming stories come from the UK? — reports that the ice caps that were once on the verge of extinction, have made a comeback.

Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature.

It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming.

But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back.

Ice levels which had shrunk from 13 million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.

The data flies in the face of many current thinkers and will be seized on by climate change sceptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

A photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg has become one of the most enduring images in the campaign against climate change.

It was used by former US Vice President Al Gore during his Inconvenient Truth lectures about mankind’s impact on the world. But scientists say the northern hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades.

They add that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966.

I can guarantee you that this information will be totally ignored by the global warming hysterics, who will continue to insist that the ice caps are melting.

Dear Senator McCain:

I am going to have a hard time voting for you this November. I supported Fred Thompson. When he dropped out, I supported Mitt Romney. When he dropped out, it left us with no conservatives running for president in 2008. I’m thinking of doing a write-in vote for Memphis Tigers’ head basketball coach John Calipari.

You say you are a conservative. You often invoke the name of Ronald Reagan. Senator McCain, you are not a conservative. You have never been a conservative. And I don’t hold out much hope that you’ll ever be a conservative.

You have spent the past 7+ years making nice with Democrats while busting conservatives in the kneecaps. In 2001, you considered leaving the GOP. You offered to be John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. You gave us McCain-Feingold, otherwise known as “campaign finance reform,” which was supposed to get the money out of politics, but was instead nothing more than a muzzle on certain political speech during campaigns. Meanwhile, there is more money in politics now than ever before.

You opposed the Bush tax cuts. You tried to give us amnesty for illegal immigrants. You opposed a constitutional amendment that would have limited marriage to one man and one woman. You are endorsed by Republicans for Choice. You have the support of liberal Republicans such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Don Sundquist.

You support embryonic stem-cell research, undercut Bill Frist’s ability to end judicial filibusters with your “Gang of 14,” and said that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. You said Samuel Alito was too conservative, played the class warfare card when you demeaned Mitt Romney’s wealth with your “patriotism over profit” remark, and are prepared to create public policy out of the global warming hoax.

You are a war hero. I respect you for the sacrifices you made while serving this great nation in Vietnam. But your status as a war hero does not grant you immunity from criticism in the political arena.

Likewise, you have told us conservatives that we need to “calm down” in order to give you the chance to unite the party. You’re a day late and a dollar short. Why is it always us conservatives who are supposed to “calm down” while liberal Republicans are free to alienate the conservative base of the party?

You want us to get along with you, but you have never made the effort to get along with us. You want to wear the “Reagan conservative” label by claiming some newly-revised definition of conservatism, which in no way reflects traditional, Reagan-era conservatism. As a conservative, I don’t want to get along with you, because I would have to sell out my beliefs to do so.

Even before George W. Bush was first elected president, you have sought the approval and adoration of the Democrats and the mainstream press, all the while undercutting conservatives at every opportunity. For this, you have been called a “maverick.” Senator, you are not a maverick. You are a turncoat. You are a Democrat masquerading as a Republican. And that you say you espouse conservative ideals is contradicted on almost every point by your legislative record.

The media love you, Senator McCain, because they want a Republican nominee who will LOSE the general election. The moment the Democrats decide on a nominee, the media will turn on you with the same relentlessness in which you have turned on conservatives. When that happens, you won’t have support from the Democrats, you won’t have the conservative base to rally, and that will leave you with the country-club Republicans who place party above ideology.

For too long, we conservatives have been taken for granted and told to hold our noses and vote for non-conservative Republicans. In 2006, lacking conservative leadership in the mid-term elections, we were told we’d better show up on Election Day for the sake of keeping the GOP in power. The GOP didn’t run on conservatism. Republicans lost both the House and Senate to the Democrats as a result.

The era of conservatives holding our noses is over. We are right back where we were in 1976, when the party served up Gerald Ford instead of Ronald Reagan, who promptly lost to a relative unknown in the person of Jimmy Carter. That spawned the most painful four years in recent history, and I guess you could say it took four years of Carter to give us Reagan.

So now we are supposed to vote for you solely in order to keep Bill and Hillary Clinton out of the White House for a third term. Sorry, but simply being the anti-Hillary is not good enough. You are much closer ideologically to the Clintons than mainstream conservatives. Judging by your voting record, I expect you to do nothing less than sell our country down the road to that morally bankrupt form of liberalism so warmly embraced by Hillary Clinton and the rest of her far left nutroots comrades. We will bear serious consequences for that, and if we’re going to sell the country down the road, it may as well happen with a Democrat in the driver’s seat. We conservatives have plenty to vote AGAINST, but nothing to vote FOR.

The way to win an election as a Republican is by articulating conservatism and presenting a contrast to the liberalism of the Democrats. But you are more or less a Democrat yourself and don’t present much of an alternative.

You can tell us you are conservative all you want, Senator McCain, but your record as a politician is what it is. We won’t get fooled again.

Sincerely,

An honest conservative

The short-lived ESPN headline said it all:

IMPERFECT

And then there were none. No. 1 Memphis is unbeaten no longer. UAB, on the back of sharp shooter Robert Vaden, knocked off the lone perfect team in Division I on Saturday night.

I say “short-lived” because the headline had to come right back down. UAB didn’t win. Memphis did. Trailing 77-70 inside of a minute-and-a-half, the Tigers hit back-to-back three pointers to pull within a point. Then, trailing 78-76, Chris Douglas-Roberts converted a three-point play with 6.5 seconds remaining to put the Tigers up by a point. UAB, now 17-8, missed a desperation three-point shot, got the rebound, and hit what appeared to be a game-winner. The fans stormed the court. But the shot was waved off because it occurred AFTER the final buzzer, leaving more than 9,000 stunned UAB fans wondering what had happened. Following a brief altercation between UAB fans and Memphis players, security got the officials and the Tigers safely off the court.

“When I got the rebound, I looked up and saw that the (shot clock) light was red,” Kinnard said. “I was hoping and praying they might give it to us, but I knew it was too late.”

It wasn’t the last scary scene for Memphis players. Several had angry exchanges with UAB fans who rushed the court celebrating what they thought was a win. Then the Tigers (25-0, 11-0 Conference USA) were quickly herded to their locker room.

“They thought the shot had counted so they wanted to get on the court,” said Memphis’ Robert Dozier, who had eight rebounds. “They stormed on the court and they realized the time had expired and they got kind of mad. They started spitting at us and stuff. Guys got kind of heated. We got out of there.”

The win leaves #1-ranked Memphis, 25-0, as the only unbeaten team in Division I men’s college basketball. The Tigers have now won 50 of their last 51 games overall, and have not lost a Conference USA game in nearly two years (34 in a row), their last conference loss coming at UAB near the end of the 2005-2006 regular season. In addition, the Tigers have now tied Texas’ 1913-17 teams for the eighth-best regular-season winning streak at 44 games.

Senator Barack Obama is pushing what he calls the “Global Poverty Act,” that would mandate far more foreign aid than is being provided now — a whopping 0.7% of not the federal budget, but 0.7% of the GNP! Folks, the best way to fight poverty abroad is the same way you fight it at home: capitalism. The liberals’ War on Poverty and the resulting social welfare programs have cost the U.S. taxpayer some $8-10 trillion or so — more than the current national debt — and have not reduced the U.S. poverty rate in the more than 40 years since the Great Society was legislated in 1965. Yet Obama wants to ship 0.7% of our economic output overseas in the form of handouts, and probably a lot of the recipients will be those same nations who trash the United States. The best way to fight world poverty is not to transfer wealth from capitalist nations to non-capitalists, but to simply spread freedom and capitalism to nations who currently don’t enjoy it. But we know by the way the left has opposed the War on Terrorism that they aren’t interested in spreading freedom to nations who currently don’t enjoy it.

The next time you hear some liberal rail against the current administration for wasting our resources in Iraq when we have so many problems here at home, ask him what he thinks about Obama’s Global Poverty Act. If he thinks it’s a good idea, ask him why we should waste so much of our resources abroad when we have so many problems here at home.

Justice has been served.

A Hizballah terrorist believed to be involved in the murders of hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s was killed overnight in a car bombing in the Syrian capital of Damascus.

Although his name is not as familiar as that of Osama bin Laden, Imad Fayez Mugniyah was wanted in more than 40 countries, including the United States and Israel.

Mugniyah was Hizballah’s military commander and deputy secretary general. He was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for his role in planning and carrying out the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which resulted in the death of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem.

The U.S. also blames Mugniyah for the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine Corps compound in Beirut in 1983, when more than 200 U.S. troops died in their barracks. He was also blamed for the bombing of a French army compound in Beirut that killed 60 French servicemen.

Israel held Mugniyah responsible for masterminding the 1992 bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He’s also blamed for the bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994 as well as other attacks against Israelis.

Hizballah’s Al-Manar television station announced Mugniyah’s death on Wednesday morning and blamed Israel for it. Israel, in its first public comment on the assassination, denied any involvement.

“With all pride we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs… The brother commander hajj Imad Mughinyah became a martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis,” a statement on Hizballah TV said.

Iranian television called it the “biggest blow” that Hizballah has absorbed since its founding in 1982.

Al-Jazeera said Mugniyah’s assassination in Damascus was a “major security breach” for the Syrian regime.

The killing comes just two days before the third anniversary of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a pro-Western leader who openly criticized Syrian control of his country.

Syria and Hizballah are suspected of involvement in Hariri’s murder, which sparked massive protests in Lebanon that forced the Syrian army to leave the country after decades of occupation.

See also:
Hizballah Calls for ‘Open War’ on Israel
Rampant Islamic Jew-Hatred in Europe

Michelle Malkin has been reporting on a $1.4 billion economic stimulus package FOR MEXICO that is to be funded by U.S. TAXPAYERS.

Here’s Malkin quoting Border Blog:

The U.S. Congress is offering $1.4 BILLION of taxpayer money to the corrupt nation of Mexico with the hope that it will be used in that country’s war on drug cartels. It’s quite a generous sum of money, and one would think that any nation receiving these funds would be grateful to the American people.

But not Mexico.

In an UNBELIEVABLE statement, Calderon reacted to the possibility that there might be some conditions on the donation as follows:

“I cannot accept any submission or subordination…Give it to me. And give it to me without conditions!”

This ungrateful schmuck’s statement should be immediately shot down by the President of the United States. The U.S. Congress should immediately end discussion on the aid package, and instead invest the $1.4 billion in border security.

But our current Executive and Legislative branches are full of deballed, pathetic individuals who remain too happy to give away taxpayer money. Don’t look for a response any time soon.

But Calderon didn’t stop there. He also said that U.S. presidential candidates are “swaggering, macho, and anti-Mexican.”

He said that Americans have “a total lack of understanding and aggravation, hostility toward Mexico.”

He then bizarrely criticized the way the U.S. spends its own money, saying that U.S. leaders are “spending Americans’ money and putting the government into debt to finance their military adventure, and that is squeezing out private investment.”

This last statement is supremely odd considering that Mexico has limited private enterprise in most of its industries — namely, the oil industry — a economic decision that has put 50% of Mexicans below the poverty level.

Bottom line, this is OUR money, Felipe. If you expect our country to hand over a billion dollars to one of the most corrupt countries in the Western Hemisphere with no conditions whatsoever, you are truly ignorant and arrogant. We’ve already taken in 15 million of your poverty-stricken countrymen to the detriment of the American taxpayer. And now we’re offering you free money, yet you complain. Do you really wonder why Americans are becoming “anti-Mexican”?

Next time, Felipe, just say ‘thank you’ and follow our lead. Clearly, you need all the help you can get.

When will the U.S. stop offering the hand that gets bitten?