Right Minded Online

A little-covered aspect of the Holocaust is gaining exposure with the publication of a new book and accompanying museum exhibition.

The Holocaust has a landscape engraved in the minds eye: barbed-wire fences, gas chambers, furnaces.

Less known is the “Holocaust by Bullets,” in which over 2 million Jews were gunned down in towns and villages across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Their part in the Nazi’s Final Solution has been under-researched, their bodies left unidentified in unmarked mass graves.

“Shoah,” French filmmaker Claude Lanzmanns documentary, stands as the 20th centurys epic visual record of the Holocaust. Now another Frenchman, a Catholic priest named Patrick Desbois, is filling in a different part of the picture.

Desbois says he has interviewed more than 800 eyewitnesses and pinpointed hundreds of mass graves strewn around dusty fields in the former Soviet Union. The result is a book, “The Holocaust by Bullets,” and an exhibition through March 15 at New Yorks Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Priest uncovering beginnings of Final Solution – Yahoo News.

Rod Blagojevich has been impeached and thrown out of office as governor of Illinois. I had come to like this guy. Yes, I know he’s a Democrat, and he may one day even be convicted of criminal charges, but I admire his fortitude. I wish the GOP would learn from him. Unfortunately, Republican politicians have this habit of resigning from office at the first whiff of scandal, the first suggestion by Democrats that they resign. Or they serve up apologies when no apology was ever needed (i.e., Trent Lott).

Rod Blagojevich did not resign. Even when members of his own party called on him to resign, he refused. He nominated Raymond Burris to the U.S. Senate, even when the Obamessiah himself disapproved, and when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would never seat Burris, and demanded the nomination of someone else. Governor Blagojevich stuck with Burris, anyway, and the man ended up being seated as a member of the U.S. Senate.

True, the Blagojevich saga ended up with him being removed from office, but the former Illinois governor has proven that a little fortitude will carry you far, and that standing up for yourself and refusing to acquiesce to bullies will fortify your own position and sometimes force the bullies to back off. Bullies are energized by the smell of blood, and Rod Blagojevich never gave them a whiff. Good for him.

Blagojevich ousted as Ill. gov.; Quinn sworn in – Yahoo! News.

President Obama and the Democrats are starting to sound like a broken record in telling the private sector what to do with its money. The latest target is Wall Street executives who took home large bonuses. It’s none of government’s business what private sector executives take home in compensation. None whatsoever. But when said businesses accept bailout money from the government, then those companies set themselves up for this kind of scrutiny, and it suddenly becomes the business of taxpayers what they do with their money.

President Barack Obama, who has ordered a pay freeze on six-figure White House aides, wants to talk to Wall Street executives about a report indicating payments of over $18 billion in bonuses as the economy was in virtual free fall.

“It is shameful,” Obama said from the Oval Office Thursday. “And part of what we’re going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, and show some discipline, and show some sense of responsibility.”

Obama slams Wall Street for rich executive bonuses – Yahoo! News.

For some reason, President Obama still wants bi-partisan support for his stimulus behemoth, even after every single Republican in the House voted against it. I’m not sure why the Obamessiah is so obsessed with having Republicans sign onto this travesty. He doesn’t need one GOP vote, unless he’s worried about a filibuster, but I’m sure John McCain will see to it that Republicans don’t pull off a filibuster. If bi-partisanship is so important — even more important than ideology — why don’t the Democrats come over to our side and pass tax cuts instead of spending $819 billion, or $1.1 trillion, or however much it is? After all, we will have “done something,” and it will have been done with bi-partisan support.

President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus legislation is headed for the Senate after a surprisingly partisan vote in the House in which Republicans united in opposition and 11 mostly conservative Democrats defected.

Obama hailed his recovery plan, saying it would “save or create more than 3 million new jobs over the next few years.”

During Senate debate next week, the measure is expected to pick up at least some GOP support. But Obama’s hopes of changing Washingtons partisan culture went unmet despite the popular president’s separate high-profile meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday with House and Senate Republicans.

The $819 billion measure has attracted criticism from Republicans and, privately, from some Democrats for spending billions on Democratic favorites like education despite questions as to whether these expenditures would actually create new jobs.

Obama seeks GOP help for recovery bill – Yahoo News.

Assuming the passage of their $1.1 trillion bailout bill, the Democrats, who railed against deficit spending during the Bush presidency, are about to write the how-to book on deficit spending. They have not only run out of our money to spend, they are now spending our kids’ tax money — taxes that haven’t even been paid yet, because the wealth that will be used to generate those taxes has yet to be produced. Who knows who all is going to get a piece of that pie? Well, we do know that global warming alarmists are going to get $140 million of the bailout money. How this is going to stimulate the economy is a mystery. But then, the bailout was never about stimulating the economy. The bailout is simply a method Democrats have chosen to grow government, and the current recession is nothing more than the excuse Democrats needed to do it.

Stimulus Plan: Non-Existent Unemployed Climate Modelers Get $140 Million » The Foundry.

Algore was back in the U.S. Senate yesterday, this time to testify on the impending doom of global warming. Everywhere, senators fawned over Algore. Even Tennessee Senator Bob Corker shamelessly groveled in the presence of Algore. Dana Milbank has a terrific column in the Washington Post on some of the exchanges between senators and The Prophet.

The lawmakers gazed in awe at the figure before them. The Goracle had seen the future, and he had come to tell them about it.

What the Goracle saw in the future was not good: temperature changes that “would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth — and this is within this century, if we don’t change.”

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry (D-Mass.), appealed to hear more of the Goracle’s premonitions. “Share with us, if you would, sort of the immediate vision that you see in this transformative process as we move to this new economy,” he beseeched.

“Geothermal energy,” the Goracle prophesied. “This has great potential; it is not very far off.”

Another lawmaker asked about the future of nuclear power. “I have grown skeptical about the degree to which it will expand,” the Goracle spoke.

A third asked the legislative future — and here the Goracle spoke in riddle. “The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it,” he said.

I wish I had been there to question The Prophet myself.

“Mr. Gore, if human activity and over-consumption are detroying the environment, and if you are demanding that we all cut back on our energy use, why do you insist on flying all over the planet, and why does your Belle Meade home use 20 times the energy as the average family dwelling? Shouldn’t you be leading the way to the promised land by your own example?”

“Mr. Gore, if global warming really is occurring, how come there has been no planetary warming in the last decade, even as we pour carbon emissions into the atmosphere as never before?”

If I hadn’t been thrown out of the Senate on my ear by this point, I would have asked:

“Mr. Gore, since weather forecasters use numerical modeling and still can’t reliably forecast the weather beyond about 7 days, how is it that global warming alarmists are able to use numerical models to forecast the weather decades, even centuries in advance and be taken seriously?”

By now, I would probably be ushered out by three or four very large, armed men, so, shouting over my shoulder, I would offer one parting question for The Prophet:

“Mr. Gore, since cold weather kills far more people than hot weather, and since you want to cool the planet by cutting everyone’s energy use except your own, how many more people must die from the cold before you declare an end to your global warming hoax?”

Dana Milbank – With Al Due Respect, We’re Doomed.

Plus, Skeptics Global Warming has six questions to ask your favorite global warming huckster.

A victory for conservatism. The U.S. House passed a $1.1 trillion bailout bill yesterday. It’s also called the “Generational Theft Act of 2009.” Not one Republican voted for it. Not one. The GOP even peeled off 11 Democrats. But the bill still passed, and because the GOP was willing to take a stand on conservatism, President Obama and the Democrats didn’t get the bipartisanship they wanted. This mess is entirely on their hands.

Afterwards, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin poured out her praise for the House GOP. She writes:

…the GOP held the line this evening in a remarkable, powerful way. They may have lost the vote, but they sent a lasting message. They took a stand for principle and posterity. They took a stand against generational theft. They reclaimed their brand as the party of small government, low taxes, and fiscal responsibility. They restored their damaged credibility.

And guess what? It didn’t take a lot of fancy new slogans or flashy, high-tech tools or slick, high-priced strategists. They simply united and said “NO.” They slammed their foot on the brakes in a Congress full of reckless, panicky drivers. They peeled off 11 Democrats in the process. They forced the Obamedia to cover the excessive pork and dubious stimulative value of this monstrosity. They made conservative values count.

There’s no mystery in how best to rebuild the party and energize the base: Talk like conservatives. Walk like conservatives. Vote like conservatives.

Senate Republicans, take note. Don’t squander this opportunity for redemption. Make no apologies for principled obstructionism. Counter the inevitable liberal overreaching with plain facts and free-market alternatives.

Stop licking boots. Start kicking a**.

Michelle Malkin.

Skeptics Global Warming has put together a comedy of errors committed by global warming hucksters. He gives detailed descriptions of each. They are:

#6: Global Warming Gives Way to Global Cooling
#5: Environmentalists Don’t Know How to Use Public Transportation
#4: Followers of Environmentalism Sign Petition to Ban Water
#3: Al Gore’s Excesses and Hypocrisy
#2: The Hockey Stick Graph shown in An Inconvenient Truth Debunked
#1: Not in My Back Yard

“The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.” — Senator Barack Obama, speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, July 17, 2007

Fortunately, that wasn’t the first thing Barack Obama did as president, but only because Congress hasn’t passed it yet. For those who don’t know, the Freedom of Choice Act is a grossly misnamed piece of legislation that would remove any freedom of choice for those who choose life. Oddly, abortion-rights activists typically refer to us pro-lifers as “anti-choice,” yet pro-abortion liberals are the most anti-choice people on the planet. Just recall the battle it took to legalize “Choose Life” license plates here in Tennessee.

Among many things, the FOCA would supercede any and all state laws that restrict abortion in any way. It would also overturn the Federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which was passed back in the good ol’ days when Republicans ran things. Furthermore, FOCA would overturn laws restricting government funding of abortion and laws prohibiting abortions in public hospitals, meaning the concept of “choice” gets tossed out the window when that choice happens to be for life instead of abortion.

“Freedom of Choice Act” Index Page.

Not only do Democrats control Congress and the White House, and not only do their comarades control the mainstream media, they’re going after the one bastion conservatives control, that being conservative talk radio (i.e., the Maha Rushie).

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched an online petition to express outrage at conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for saying he wanted President Obama to “fail.”

“Jobs, health care, our place in the world — the stakes for our nation are high and every American needs President Obama to succeed,” the petition reads. “Stand strong against Rush Limbaugh’s Attacks — sign our petition, telling Rush what you think of his attacks on President Obama.”

The petition comes after Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill Friday that they need to quit listening to Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.

Rush Limbaugh said he wanted President Obama to fail, because Obama is pursuing a liberal agenda. I want President Obama to fail for the same reason. If he succeeds, it means Americans will have been dealt a powerful blow of liberalism that will take many years to overcome. Like Limbaugh, if Obama were to pursue, say, tax cuts, then I would wish him success. But to wish Obama success as things are is to wish for the implementation of his liberal agenda, and that’s simply not something we can afford.

Democrats Launch Petition Against Rush Limbaugh After Firing Back at Obama – First 100 Days of Presidency – Politics FOXNews.com.

Al Gore has gone up to D.C. to give testimony on global warming. The weather there? Light freezing drizzle.

Michelle Malkin » Kerry and Gore give global warming skeptics cold shoulder.

Apparently, Speaker Kent Williams doesn’t like the way the Senate is being run. I would guess not. The Senate, after all, is run by Republicans. Here’s the money quote from Speaker Williams: “The only difference between Ron Ramsey and myself is Ron could only get one Democrat to vote for him. I got 49.”

That’s an excellent point — if you’re a Democrat. But for a Republican, I’d sort of like to have Republicans voting for me. That would be more important than winning Democrat votes. In that respect, Lt. Gov. Ramsey received all 19 GOP votes in the Senate. Other than himself, Speaker Williams got zero GOP votes in the House. Only a Democrat would measure his success by how many Democrats he got to vote for him.

Camp4u: Williams insults Ramsey.

Here’s a classic quote from Stacey Campfield’s blog:

“Will lying be covered as part of our ethics training?”

The response?

No. Lying is not part of ethics.

Camp4u: Kelsey ethics complaint.

Once again, when a private sector company accepts public money disguised as a bailout, that company opens itself up to having government telling it what it should and should not spend its money on. It’s better not to accept public money, because that way it’s none of the government’s business what that company does with its money. But this is what you get when politicians meddle with the economy.

Citigroup wont be getting a new corporate jet after all. Under pressure from President Barack Obama, one of the nation’s largest banks reversed course, announcing that it will not take delivery of the jet it had planned to purchase before the credit crisis unfolded.

The canceled deal came as many politicians voiced concern about how banks are spending government bailout money.

The White House reached out to Citigroup on Monday to reiterate Obama’s position that such jets are not “the best use of money at this point,” calling them “outrageous” spending for a company getting taxpayer dollars, said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was describing private conversations.

Citigroup will not take possession of new aircraft – Yahoo News.

My friend Brad, who is also my personal research assistant, forwarded along the link to Thomas Sowell’s latest and greatest where he discusses, in his clever, brilliant way, the fallacy of the Democrats’ method for stimulating the economy. I’ve said for a long time that if I didn’t have my own brain, I would want Thomas Sowell’s.

Spending money for infrastructure is another time-consuming way of dealing with what is called an immediate crisis. Infrastructure takes forever to plan, debate, and go through all sorts of hearings and adjudications, before getting approval to build from all the regulatory agencies involved.

Out of $355 billion newly appropriated, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only $26 billion will be spent this fiscal year and only $110 billion by the end of 2010.

Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire.

If you cut taxes tomorrow, people would have more money in their next paycheck, and it would probably be spent by the time they got that paycheck, through increased credit card purchases beforehand.

Thomas Sowell : What Are They Buying? – Townhall.com.

Normally, it’s none of anyone’s business what a privte sector company does with its own money. But when that private sector company accepts taxpayer money disguised as a bailout, it suddenly opens itself up to scrutiny, and it, unfortunately, becomes our business what that company does with its money. This is one of many reasons why private sector companies should never be bailed out with taxpayer money.

Former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain defended the acquisition of the brokerage by Bank of America Corp BAC.N and said the bank knew of Merrill’s losses and bonuses before the merger closed.

In a memo to Merrill employees, Thain also said he plans to reimburse Bank of America for $1.2 million spent to renovate his office a year ago, including $35,115 reportedly spent on commode and $1,405 reportedly paid for a trash can. He called the expenses “a mistake in the light of the world we live in today.”

Thain says hid nothing from BofA – Yahoo News.

Funny, but when Bill clinton fired all U.S. attorneys during his first term in office, Democrats thought nothing of it. President Bush fired nine of them, and Democrats are seeking legal action.

The House Judiciary Committee chairman subpoenaed former White House adviser Karl Rove on Monday to testify about the Bush administrations firing of nine U.S. attorneys and its prosecution of a former Democratic governor.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said the ongoing legal battle to get Rove and other former Bush administration aides to testify may have success with a new president in the White House.

Former President George W. Bush upheld Rove and two other senior aides who asserted they did not have to testify before Congress about their actions in the White House.

House Judiciary chairman subpoenas Karl Rove – Yahoo News.

This is absolutely hilarious.

Right before Inauguration Day, CNN ran a poll asking black Americans whether they believed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream had finally been fulfilled. Sixty-nine percent answered in the affirmative, more than double the 34% who agreed with that statement just last March.

This is great! If the election of Barack Obama was the last benchmark in fulfilling King’s dream that he shared back in 1963, can we please finally bring the race industry to a close? After all, the battles that were fought back in the 1950’s and 1960’s were won long ago. Isn’t it time to graduate from the civil rights movement?

Unfortunately, the answer is “no.”

While black Americans were declaring the fulfillment of MLK’s dream, CNN also reported that hate crimes experts and law enforcement were carefully monitoring white supremacists leading up to the Inauguration.

Mark Potok of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center fretted, “I think we are in a very worrisome moment historically. I say that because there are several things converging that could foster the continued growth of these groups: continuing high levels of nonwhite immigration, the prediction by the Census Bureau that whites will lose their majority in 2042, the tanking economy, and what is seen as the final insult, the election of a black man to the White House.”

Well, Inauguration Day has come and gone, and there was never a peep from the white supremacists. In fact, the only racial slur of the event was uttered by the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery during his benediction/speech to wrap up the Inauguration ceremony.

The Reverend Lowery, an icon of the civil rights era, concluded his benediction/speech with the plea, “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

When white will embrace what is right? Excuse me?

Similarly, Tom Brokaw, while supposedly engaging in objective journalism on Inauguration Day, remarked, “Having been in the South in the 60’s and Los Angeles, in Watts and northern urban areas, when we were evolving as a country, I’m thinking of all the bigots and rednecks and people I met along the way. I’m saying to them, ‘Take this.’”

Both Lowery and Brokaw obviously cling to the stereotypical Jim Crow-era card-carrying-member of the Ku Klux Klan, complete with the white sheet, Confederate flag, hanging noose, burning cross, and ”Segregation Forever” bumper sticker. Those stereotypes don’t exist anymore, except in isolated pockets. Every race has its supremacists. White supremacists in 2009 are a tiny, irrelevant minority. The rest of us reject them.

The Reverend Lowery is stuck in the 1950’s and 1960’s, back when there was real injustice and discrimination, back when there were battles worth fighting. But the median age in the U.S. is 36.4, meaning that most of us have no recollection of the civil rights era. Most of us were not brought up as racists or taught that whites are superior to blacks. We were taught differently, and therefore we behave differently than those who ran the South during that time (back when the South was the exclusive domain of Democrats, by the way).

This is what makes Reverend Lowery’s plea that whites should embrace what it right so aggravating. He had the privilege of seeing first-hand the America of fifty years ago, and America today. How could someone who fought for civil rights back then not be able to marvel at America in 2009 and relish the progress that has been made just within the span of two generations?

Indeed, the America that existed during Jim Crow does not exist anymore. But try telling that to Joseph Lowery, Tom Brokaw, and other leftists who still project the gross caricatures of George Wallace, Bull Connor, and William Fulbright — all of them pro-segregation, all of them Democrats – onto white people today.

In the most recent presidential election, 4% of black voters voted for John McCain, while 44% of white voters voted for Barack Obama, meaning that white voters proved far more willing to cross racial lines in voting for president. Indeed, black Americans are almost exclusively Democrats, which is ironic, given that the last discriminatory barriers left standing are kept in place by Democrats.

Writes conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, “Teachers’ unions and government school protectionists have stood in the schoolhouse door, blocking innovation, competition, and parental choice — leaving minority children and their families to languish in some of the country’s worst schools.”

Aside from education, liberal social programs that were erected in the 1960’s to fight poverty have done nothing to cure poverty, but have instead decimated the black family by discouraging two-parent households and thus contributing to soaring fatherlessness. But try suggesting that we dismantle these costly, yet worthless programs, and you will be called, among other things, a “racist.”

Since white people long ago learned to embrace what is right, what we need now is an Emancipation Proclamation freeing black Americans from the chains of liberalism, from perpetual victimization, from the soft bigotry of low expectations, and from government programs that have ravaged their families.