Archive for June 2008
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The brilliance of Thomas Sowell
If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion.
Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger turned around and tried to golf left-handed, like Mickelson, he probably wouldn’t be as good as Mickelson, much less as good as he is golfing the way he does right-handed.
Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe, often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.
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Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American “cowboys.” But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests — including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival.
In the course of the 20th century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth — communism, fascism, Nazism — in peacetime, and to start the two World Wars, the bloodiest in all human history. In each of these wars, both the winners and the losers ended up far worse off than they were before these wars were started.
After both World Wars, the U.S. had to step in to save millions of people in Europe from starving amid the wreckage and rubble that their wars had created. These do not seem like people whose sophistication we should defer to.
These are just snippets from Dr. Sowell’s rather long piece. The point is clear. Why would the United States try to import an inferior ideology when the one we have has made us the greatest, richest, most powerful nation on the planet. Europe should be looking to us for advice.
Just how good were the Memphis Tigers this year?
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On my reading list
Happy Father’s Day
Why Ben Shapiro is voting Democrat
This is hilarious! And on the money.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe that the best strategy in war is defeat. It broadens the mind to learn Japanese, German and Arabic. Talk about multiculturalism!
I’m voting Democrat because I’m mad that George W. Bush hasn’t caught Bin Laden. That’s because Bin Laden is the only Islamic terrorist in the world.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe that if I don’t have enough money, the solution is for the government to take more of my money. Who needs money when gas is $5 per gallon?
I’m voting Democrat because I believe that the ideal family is two homosexual bonobos, a goat and a parrot raising a human baby. Love and compassion is all it takes to make a successful family!
I’m voting Democrat because it’s my body, and if I want to kill my baby, I’ll do it, even if its head is in the birth canal. If I want to cut out my intestines and feed them to the crocodiles, I’ll do that too. That’s the freedom our forefathers enshrined in the Constitution.
I’m voting Democrat because our enemies on the battlefield deserve comfy hotel rooms, Pay-Per-View, prostitutes and all the benefits of American citizenship.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe we need other countries’ permission for me to turn down my thermostat.
I’m voting Democrat because I care about the real victims of crime — criminals.
I’m voting Democrat because the real cure for racism includes preferential policies based on race — particularly in presidential voting. If you believe that a black candidate ought to be qualified, as well as black, you’re worse than Bull Conner.
I’m voting Democrat because everyone deserves crappy healthcare. Sure, you’ll have to wait years for that life-saving cancer surgery. But it’s first come, first served at the cemetery!
I’m voting Democrat because I believe in minority rights (except in Muslim countries), free speech (with regard to pornography but not conservative talk radio), environmentalism (unless we’re talking about Al Gore’s house) and diplomacy (but never backed by the threat of military force).
I’m voting Democrat because I like the words “hope” and “change.” Also “kazoo.” That’s a funny word.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe that America’s founders were rich, white, greedy xenophobes, and that America’s founding principles are hogwash requiring periodic editing from an unelected group of liberal judges.
Most of all, I’m voting Democrat because I like the ideas they have over in France, but I don’t feel like moving there. I’ll threaten to move, but I really won’t. After all, I have a good job, healthcare, lower taxes, free speech and a social framework that promotes family structure. And all of it is defended by the most effective fighting force on the planet.
If only the institution of far-left values resulted in a great country. Oh, well. That won’t stop me from voting Democrat, though. After all, I’m voting Democrat because thought isn’t one of my strong suits.
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Obama attacks another white guy
Speaking to reporters on his campaign plane before landing in Los Angeles, Obama said the speech made the argument that people of faith, like himself, “try to translate some of our concerns in a universal language so that we can have an open and vigorous debate rather than having religion divide us.”
Obama added, “I think you’ll see that he was just making stuff up, maybe for his own purposes.”
In his program, Dobson focused on examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy. For instance, Obama said Leviticus suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination. Obama also cited Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”
“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said in the speech.
Pot, meet kettle.
And by the way, I thought we weren’t supposed to mix politics and religion by allowing Biblical views to guide public policy. Oh, wait. That premise only applies to conservatives. It’s okay for liberals to twist the Bible to lend support to their leftist agenda. No outcries from the separation of church and state crowd when that happens.
Additional reading: Dr. Dobson’s Take on Obama
Plus, FRC Action sent out the following e-mail update this evening:
Before Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) tries to extend his presidential appeal to the faith community, he would do well to understand its core beliefs. In his daily radio show today, Dr. James Dobson is taking a deeper look at Obama’s a la carte interpretation of God’s Word. During today’s broadcast, he questions a speech Obama gave in 2006 in which the senator said, “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is Ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount–a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles.”
As Dr. Dobson said on today’s show, “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.” He said Obama, who supports radical abortion rights, is trying to govern by the “lowest common denominator of morality,” and labeled it “a fruitcake interpretation” of our Constitution. “Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” Dobson said. “What he’s trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.”
Obama’s statement reflects the Democratic Party’s pre-2008 position, which is that you must check your faith at the gate of the public arena. Now that Democrats appear to have gotten religion, Sen. Obama is saying that while he is a Christian, he doesn’t think that faith or the Bible should have any role in shaping public policy. There’s either a disconnect between Sen. Obama’s faith and the policy positions he holds, or his theology is off. Every Christian–including Dr. Dobson–has the right to evaluate a candidate’s use of faith. As Obama tries to build bridges into the Christian community, we have to ask–are these bridges stable or swinging?
Today’s Lebanon Democrat column: “Passing the buck, who’s really to blame for oil prices?”
Proving that Senate Republicans are still good for something, the minority party recently blocked an attempt by Democrats to impose a windfall profits tax on Big Oil. Indeed, Democrats have set Big Oil up as the fall guy for the high gasoline prices Americans are paying, when it is, in fact, the policies of the left that have contributed most to the soaring prices at the pump.
For example, Exxon recently announced that it is getting out of the retail gasoline business by selling the 2,220 stations in the U.S. it currently owns. This shoots the left’s “windfall profits” myth out of the sky. If Exxon were reaping windfall profits by selling $4/gallon gasoline, it stands to reason that it would be seeking to expand its market share rather than get out of the market altogether.
The truth is, over the past quarter-century, oil companies have paid more than $2.2 trillion in taxes to federal and state governments — more than three times their profits during the same period. The effective tax rate on oil companies is about 40%, while the average income tax rate for all corporations is 35%.
On average, 15% of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while 4% represents oil company profits. And for every $1 profit in first quarter 2008, Exxon paid almost $3 in taxes.
If anyone is reaping windfall profits from the sale of gasoline, it’s the federal government (which doesn’t produce a single drop of oil), and not the oil companies. The last time Congress imposed a windfall profits tax on the oil industry was in 1980. Revenues ended up nearly 75% less than predicted. Domestic oil output fell 8%, while imports increased 16%.
Now, according to federal estimates, there are 112 billion barrels of oil in areas that Democrats and environmentalists have placed off limits — enough oil to power more than 60 million cars for 60 years without importing any oil.
Since 1977, Democrats in Congress have prevented the U.S. from building any new oil refineries. On the other hand, we now have 147 ethanol plants, with plans to build or expand another 61.
During the Clinton presidency, U.S. oil production declined by 1,349,000 barrels per day (19%), while foreign imports increased 3,574,000 barrels per day (45%).
In 1995, when oil was $19 a barrel, President Clinton vetoed legislation to begin drilling in ANWR — which would today produce one million barrels of U.S. oil per day (the amount imported from Saudi Arabia).
Congressional Democrats have defeated all bills that would allow the U.S. to drill offshore (100 miles out in deep sea). The American Energy Protection Act of 2008 would have removed restrictions on exploration and drilling in ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), containing about 24 billion barrels of oil — enough to provide U.S. needs for five years with no foreign imports. In May, Democrats denied passage of this bill.
A separate bill, also in May, would have allowed exploration of oil-shale-rich areas of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, containing an estimated two trillion barrels of oil. No Democrats voted in favor of oil shale development.
According to the Department of the Interior, 19 billion barrels of oil under U.S. public lands are off limits to drilling.
At the same time, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that 4 billion gallons of ethanol be mixed with U.S. gasoline by 2006, 6.1 billion gallons by 2009, 7.5 billion by 2012, 15 billion by 2015, and 36 billion gallons by 2022. We are currently diverting 28% of our corn crop to ethanol. As a result, corn prices have shot up 30% just this year. If nothing changes, in 14 years our entire national corn crop will have to be sacrificed to ethanol.
In a nutshell, Democrats blame oil companies and their “windfall profits” for the high price of gasoline. In reality, Big Oil already pays far more in taxes than it earns in income, and Democrats wants to tax them even more.
Thanks to Democrat policies, domestic oil production has decreased steadily since 1985, while imports have risen. There is plenty of oil underneath U.S. soil and offshore that Democrats will not let us get.
Meanwhile, food prices are also up due to the mandate that we convert an ever-increasing share of our corn crop to ethanol. While our own oil supply remains untouchable, we are running our cars on our food supply. And we are building new ethanol refineries, while the left hasn’t allowed us to build a new oil refinery in 31 years.
Folks, this is what you get with liberalism: a series of adverse consequences that the left never owns up to, but instead passes the buck. This time, the buck is getting passed to Big Oil, which is the one entity that delivers oil from the ground to the pump, while enjoying a profit margin that is far smaller than the federal government’s.
And these Democrats also want to run our health care.
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Historical marker blogging
Dr. D.B. Todd, Jr. Blvd., Nashville, Tennessee
More energy and global warming reading
Recently, in defending his lack of military and foreign policy experience, Barack Obama said of Republicans, “what they’re doing is what they’ve done every election cycle, which is to use terrorism as a club to make the American people afraid.”
While I personally think reminding the American people of the clear and present danger imposed by Islamo-fascists is wise, I am thoroughly disgusted by the Democrat’s use of fear in trying to dissuade our government from allowing oil exploration and drilling off our coasts. Fortunately, the way we are getting clubbed at the pump is causing the majority of us to realize that drilling for new sources of domestic oil is in our best interest. Increasing the supply of oil will decrease prices at the pump.
Carbon: the New Chemical Villain
According to the popular press, carbon has now joined toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium on Peck’s Bad Boy list. The phrase “carbon footprint” in the lexicon of lazy pseudo science writers and amateur climatologists provokes images of radioactive dirty shoes betraying our every move leaving deadly indelible impressions on the path to oblivion.
Why has the image of carbon been so distorted and demonized? Most of us even having a glancing familiarity with organic chemistry at one time knew that carbon is the building block of life on earth. From simple sugars to amino acids and DNA from industrial polymers to Q-tips, carbon is everywhere on earth, as it necessarily must be as carbon’s structure invites nearly every other element to bond with it.
We often hear of how we must reduce our carbon footprint. We are told as Americans, that CO2 is a pollutant and that we release upwards of 20 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year into the atmosphere. This sounds incredible and evokes images of black soot and dirt clogging the air.
Most of us have seen the advertisement for the environmental movie with a big muddy boot print, representing our carbon footprint, stomped into the planet. But CO2 is not black or dirty or muddy, it is not even visible, nor can one smell it nor taste it. Because we exhale CO2, a crowded university lecture hall may have 10 times more CO2 than average atmospheric concentrations.
Plus, we have the top 10 reasons to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices. They are:
10. ANWR
9. Coastal drilling
8. Insistence on alternative fuels
7. Nuclear power
6. Coal
5. Refinery capacity
4. Reduced competition
3. The global warming myth
2. Speculation
1. Defeat of President Bush’s 2001 energy package
It’s about darn time
Ah-hem, as I have said…
Booth’s sermon included several Scripture passages that he claimed clearly defined the biblical stance on marriage and abortion. Then he said, “You have heard our Lord’s commands about the sanctity of life and marriage. You have heard the positions of the candidates. There is no middle ground in this election. … I urge you, when you enter that voting booth, to not vote for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or candidates like them that support and encourage activities our Lord condemns in the strongest terms.”
Booth knows he has invited trouble, and he didn’t do so lightly. “A month before I made the sermon I talked to the church leadership,” he told ABC News. “I told them, ‘If we do this we could lose our tax-exempt status. Are you prepared for that?’ We spent a week in prayer, and I felt God was telling me to make that speech.”
Trouble may have indeed found him. The Americans United for the Separation of Church and State sent a letter last week to the IRS urging the government to take Booth up on his challenge.
As I have pointed out numerous times, groups like AU only go after evangelical Christians and their churches. If a liberal wants to campaign in church, it’s perfectly fine with Barry Lynn, because in his mind separation of church and state only applies to conservatives.
Related news story: Atheist wants Frankenmuth to remove religious symbols
I thought this ended after the Medieval period
I thought prosecution for religious heresy ended several hundred years ago, but apparently Mr. Hanson believes spreading doubt about the religion of global warming constitues a crime. This is what the global warming nuts are made of. So if we’re going to have separation of church and state, then we absolutely must have separation of global warming and state.
Meanwhile, in the UK, where the global warming hoax is even more entrenched than it is over here, a majority of Britons do not believe in man-made climate change, meaning that a majority are sane enough to recognize a hoax when they see it.
Related reading:
‘Polar Bears’ Protest Exxon Ads at ‘Green’ Nationals Park
The Climate Alarmist Manifesto
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