Democrat Congress Has No Shame

After losing 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate just a month ago, Congressional Democrats have learned.......absolutely nothing. What did the voters reject, exactly? Why did they toss Democrats en masse?

Everyone besides committed liberals understands that big government and unapologetic rampant deficit spending were what the voters were protesting against. Not just Republican wins, but Tea Party-backed conservative wins proves this point.

The Democrat Response

So how have Democrats responded in the "lame duck" session between the election and the end of this Congress? By acknowledging the will of the people? Being contrite, making arrangements for a smooth transition to a more conservative legislative body? Negative. They have responded by throwing a circus tent up and working as hard as possible to ram through every left-leaning bill they can find. Senate Majority Leader Reid is dragging the session out, working on weekends and, it looks like, right up to Christmas, and maybe even after Christmas, to maximize the number of hours spent on these bills. He has had two years, since President Obama took office, to push the bills through, yet now is the time.

They Lie. Why?

The really hilarious part of this is that he stands up there and claims that Republicans, with their opposition, caused the mad rush, and that by keeping everyone there and trying to run all this through he is obeying the will of the people, doing the people's work.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Gallup just released a poll that shows Congress's approval by the public at 13%, the lowest in history. The 83% disapproval (only 4% had no opinion) is also a record. And this poll was taken before Reid started cracking the whip on all the liberal legislation.

In reality, what happened was that Reid and his counterpart in the House, Nancy Pelosi, calculated before the November election that they might be able to salvage a few seats if they held off on controversial votes that would force Democrats in Congress to go on the record with what they all knew were unpopular stands. Stands against raising taxes across the board, stands for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," stands for further extensions of unemployment insurance (without corresponding reductions in other spending, leading to new deficit spending), etc.

In the end, the damage done to Democrat/liberal power by the election was amazing. Yet the most powerful Democrats (none of whom lost their seats) never acknowledged the reasons for the "shellacking," as President Obama put it. Obama himself never admitted that voters had rejected his decidedly leftist policies of growing government; forcing through unpopular and earth-shaking legislation (i.e. Obamacare) on purely partisan votes, with no input from conservatives and no transparency in the bill's development; extending the welfare state; and taking the nation deep into debt. Instead he rationalized that he hadn't sold these policies well enough. That people didn't understand them. That was all he took responsibility for.

Changing Course...Or Not

To his credit, Obama has been the only liberal on the Hill to actually start changing course, responding to the imminent demise of his super-majority in Congress. He actually sat down at the table with Republican leaders, showed a tiny bit of contrition, and hammered out a compromise with Republicans on "extending the Bush tax cuts," which means not raising taxes come January 1. He publicly came out and vented about having to make such a deal, but make it he did. Then his own party came out against the compromise, and he has spent a week trying to get them all in line.

So here we find Congress, arguing about this compromise bill, in which both sides won, and both sides lost. But the really galling part of this is all the other bills that Reid and Pelosi have been bringing out, knowing that they only have a few weeks left before the big shift in power arrives. Rather than respect that shift, and the voice of the voters, Pelosi and Reid are pushing through votes on legislation they know they will have no chance of passing come January. More legislation that is wildly unpopular, some of which is reckless in its spending.

Some of What They're Working On

We have "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," that invention of the Clinton administration that acknowledged tolerance for homosexuals in the military, a genuinely good piece of legislation. Having established tolerance, the gay lobby has moved to "acceptance" as their new goal, and have been demanding to serve "openly" in the military (I can only guess what they have in mind). The conservatives wish to hold hearings about this and demonstrate that the decision is hardly the slam-dunk the liberals claim it is. But Pelosi and Reid will have none of that. They voted on it already in the House, and it's coming up in the Senate unless the GOP filibusters it, which is not clear if they will.

Then there is the DREAM act, which would, among other things, give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and allow them to get in-state tuition at state universities despite their illegal status. This is, according to Reid, again a very urgent piece of legislation. Except that it's really not.

There is also the issue of the START treaty, an arms-control treaty with Russia currently under consideration by Congress. President Obama wants something he can hang his hat on besides the controversial Obamacare, and something that looks like a foreign-policy success. Republican experts on these types of treaties have been counseling to take a breath, and let them get a look at the negotiation minutes because they want to see what Russia is expecting from us if we sign the treaty. The White House has so far ignored the requests. And Reid/Pelosi push it forward for vote.

But They're Having Success

What's so remarkable about all this activity is the success they seem to be having. DADT was passed by a wide margin in the House today. It's not clear what will happen in the Senate, but it's entirely possible this legislation will go through before year-end, results be damned. In a survey of combat Marine troops in the Middle East, 57% were negative or "very negative" on the idea of repeal of DADT. Yet they are not heard. Reportedly, many troops around the world did not bother to fill out the survey because they did not believe anyone would look at it anyway, since the politicians, and even the Chairman of the JCS, have already endorsed the repeal. What will happen to troop retention? Combat readiness? Who knows? Who cares? Not the liberals, apparently.

If the Republicans don't halt Reid's excesses right here and now, what good are they? McConnell and Boehner were in power when the GOP lost horribly 4 years ago, and they should not be the leaders now, in my opinion. If they let Harry Reid walk all over them, drag them through the Christmas season voting, but failing to stop, all manner of liberal legislation, then what good are they?

A Bridge Too Far

Liberal Democrats, when in power, always get somewhat totalitarian, and they also always eventually over-reach. Reid made jaws drop all around a couple days ago when he wheeled out a new 2000-page "omnibus" bill containing a trillion dollars of spending, including nearly 6,500 earmarks totalling $8 billion. And he announced this monstrosity, like all the others, needed to be passed right away, in the lame duck session, and that he would keep everyone there until the last possible moment, on January 4th, 2011, if necessary, "to do the people's will." At this point, Reid has crossed over into the Twilight Zone.

Time To End It

Stop the insanity. Hold a filibuster party. Get a few copies of the phone book you can read out loud. Whatever it takes. If Reid's or Pelosi's pride or dignity won't stop them from force-feeding the country bad legislation that will take years, if ever, to undo, the GOP needs to pull out all the stops and run out the clock to stop them. That should be their mandate until 1/4/11.

Everywhere I Look, Liberal Stupidity

It's getting to where I can't even look through my local paper without tripping over story after story of liberal idiocy these days. It used to just be the columnists, now it's everywhere in the news, too. My theory is that the left must know their days are now numbered, what with the large majority of the country turning on them, and so they're making whatever they can stick between now and November.

Exhibit 1: Boycott

Right there on the front page this morning was the headline, "L.A. County board votes to boycott Arizona," and the sub-head for good measure, "School district also criticizes state's immigration law." In the article we find that the county board voted 3-2, all 3 votes FOR boycotting were Democrats (liberals) and both of the NO votes were Republicans. Now, whether you like the Arizona law or not (I do), when you're a board governing a county in California, a state that's been on the verge of bankruptcy for several years, you have zero business commenting on a law in another state. Do what you were elected to do: Run the county. That goes doubly for the L.A. Unified School District, owned by the left. They have even LESS business criticizing laws in another state. They're not even a law-making or law-commenting body!

The problem is, the idiot liberals on both of these boards just can't stop themselves from playing the race card whenever they see a chance. Racism in this country is practically non-existent and has been for years, but supervisors like Gloria Molina feel the need to grandstand, even busing people in to cheer for her at the meeting, crowing about how racist such a law is. Her evidence? Just that people should "look at me, because I'm the kind of person who would probably have trouble in Arizona." Yeah, right, Gloria. I'm sure you've been such a victim of racism your whole life, right? Give me a break.

And as has been pointed out all over the place, the law in Arizona specifically FORBIDS racial profiling! It says that right there in the text! But that doesn't stop these liberals, who argue - as always - on raw emotion, not facts or logic. They can whip up a crowd into a frenzy with their rhetoric, even when the rhetoric is totally contradicted by the facts.

The Arizona law is MORE RESTRICTIVE than the federal law that it was written to mirror at the state level. The federal law has been in place forever, and allows ICE agents to stop anyone, anytime, any place, for any reason, and demand to see their proof of citizenship. Yet not a word about that law. Why? Because the left knows the federal law is almost never enforced. Since it's never enforced, it's meaningless. That is the whole point of the Arizona law. Arizona, plagued by illegal immigration-created crime problems, created this law so that their own cops could get a handle on the situation, since the fed's obviously have no interest in doing their job. Good for Arizona!!

Exhibit 2 : Unloaded Gun Control

Fast-forward to page A6, where we see California state-level liberal politics in all their glory. Here's the first headline: "Carrying unloaded gun may be illegal." Seems our liberal state legislature, upset that people are allowed to carry UNLOADED pistols in plain sight, are making a law against doing that. They are doing so for "safety reasons," because said gun carriers could maybe be carrying ammunition in their pockets, and that's dangerous. Why? Who knows? Apparently the liberal sponsor of the bill, Lori Saldana (D) from San Diego, feels it's not enough to ban people from carrying handguns around, even unloaded ones. The fact is, of course, having more gun owners walking around with guns would make us MORE safe, not less so. More guns in the hands of responsible people would lead to fewer idiot criminals committing crimes against individuals because the victims can't fight back. But such logic is misplaced on a liberal.

Exhibit 3 : Evil Pet Insurers

Next on the list is a law going through the state legislature that "improves disclosure" on PET INSURANCE. Yes, that's a burning issue. People are being swindled by pet insurers because they buy policies and don't know that certain things aren't covered, or that there are limits to their coverage. Actually, if I had to guess I'd bet that "people" aren't having this issue, but that a single person who knows the idiot Democrat (liberal) politician who wrote this law, Dave Jones, whined that he didn't get something he thought he was entitled to, and wanted to punish the insurer so he got his buddy the politician to come up with yet another moronic anti-business law that forces companies to put all kinds of disclosures on their websites. It's people like this who force lawn mower companies to display warnings to keep your feet away from the underside of the mower.

Exhibit 4 : Nanny State vs Skiers

Then there is a new law - in two different bills, it's so important - that would mandate that young skiers be required to wear helmets when they go skiing! Obviously needed because SO MANY kids are dying from head traumas while skiing. It's a huge problem, haven't you heard?? Listen, putting aside the fact that government has no business telling you or me to wear a helmet or a seat belt or anything else, millions upon millions of people (Yours Truly included) have learned to ski without wearing helmets and done just fine, thank you. This law doesn't just over-step government's boundaries, it does so for no good reason.

Exhibit 5 : Hollywood Will Fix the Gulf

Finally I heard on the news this morning that the Obama administration, apparently desperate to make it look like they're actually doing something productive in the Gulf of Mexico, has begun criminal investigations against British Petroleum (BP). Eric Holder was talking sternly about how they would be prosecuting basically anyone they could find who looked like they had done something wrong. The one bizarre part of this story is that BP hasn't plugged the leak yet!!! Don't you think it makes a small amount of sense to put everything you have behind BP, your most important partner right now, instead of moving against them with criminal proceedings??? Talk about stupid. That's like arresting the pilot of the airplane you're flying in before he lands the thing. Right now we need BP to put every ounce of their abilities into plugging the oil leak. Setting the dogs on them while they're trying to do that isn't just stupid, it's reckless!But I'm sure the lib's in Obama's administration feel like they're in good shape. I mean, they've got James Cameron, of "Titanic" fame, meeting with them to brainstorm how to fix this problem. What do they need BP for?

Give the "Lost" Creators a Break

I know I always write about politics, but I'm going to digress for once.

Like millions of other TV viewers, I watched the "Lost" series finale this past week. Apparently UNlike many of those viewers, I actually enjoyed the heck out of it. I thought it lived up to the hype, that it had just as much suspense as any of their other episodes, and I liked how everything played out. I had a few complaints, but they were minor. Overall I liked the wrap-up and respected the storyline that they came up with. Was I the only one?

The day after I watched the finale, I paged through the newspaper and online magazines for reactions, and saw just a lot of negativity. They hadn't answered any big questions, they said; the whole "purgatory" thing was as bad as the "dream" season on "Dallas"; all the reunion moments were just "sniff sniff" tissue moments, unworthy of the show.

I have to say, all that is garbage. I think these reviewers would have been disappointed no matter what the writers ultimately came up with. Look, this is a fictional TV show that takes plenty of liberties with reality. You're simply not going to get a complete explanation as to why everything happened, because there just isn't one. Furthermore, you're much better off in many cases not having heard one, because you can imagine one yourself that's just as plausible as whatever the writers might have come up with, and it'd be just as valid.

The one good review I read, a couple of lengthy pieces in Entertainment Weekly, I thought was pretty dead-on. The reviewer mentioned his favorite "hankie" moments and I even agreed with almost all of them. Come on, most of the "reunion moments" were tear-jerkers, reminding viewers of a lot of great moments from years ago in the series.

This last season was particularly satisfying because they knew they had a finite number of shows left in which to tell the rest of their story; so they didn't introduce many new questions, while spending a lot of time answering questions they'd raised in the prior 5 seasons. They gave us Jacob's life story and what his job was. They explained - mostly - how Smokey came to be, and revealed that he'd been the one Jack had seen in the form of his deceased father, Christian. They explained why our cast had been brought to the island, why they weren't supposed to have left, and why they'd been chosen in the first place. The list goes on.

In the end they even explained what we'd been seeing with all the "flash-sideways" events from this last season. The survivors had been in a sort of Purgatory, perhaps in an area they had made, themselves, in order to reunite with each other in the afterlife, before "moving on" to Heaven. Far from being alive and well because Juliet had detonated the atom bomb in the mid 1970's, in fact they were all just living a "second" life of sorts in this purgatory, until they eventually snapped out of it and realized where they were and that they'd died sometime earlier. Since their purgatory was outside of space and time, they'd all just come there after they had died, whether they'd died in the first season on the island, like Boone and Shannon, or at the end of the series, like Jack, or even some time much later than that, like Hugo and Ben. I thought it was a clever device to bring back all the viewers' favorite characters in one place again, to reunite and be happy, and to ultimately go away to that "better place" we all long for.

I also thought the very ending, with Jack nearing death and wandering back to the exact spot where he had been lying when his first plane crashed on the beach, then closing out the series with his closing eye in exact opposite to the series opening, was brilliant. I actually went back and watched the last 30 minutes of the show a few times, it was so moving.

One review I read ranked the "Lost" series finale right up there among the worst ever, including the "Seinfeld" series ender that was so horrible. I think that's just crazy. The "Lost" finale was riveting all throughout, wrapping up what they'd been working up to all season long, giving us a solid "win" against the smoke monster and resurrecting our favorite characters one last time so we could send them all off into the light for good.

Obamacare Actually To Become Law???

Tonight the supposed "pro-life" Democrats (what an oxymoron) caved and decided to vote for Obamacare. Previously they'd been the only thing standing in Pelosi & Obama's way to passing their health care boondoggle, proving that even the moderate Democrats are out-to-lunch.

Bart Stupak, leader of the pro-life Dem's, claims he got what he wanted: assurance from the White House that abortions would somehow not get funded through this national health care system. He is going to get this via an executive order signed by Obama stating so. How that is satisfying to Stupak is beyond me. An executive order can be overturned by any president, at any time. Or just not even written by Obama. Or written in such a way that it doesn't give pro-lifers what they want.

Or it could be that Stupak's just an idiot. That seems unlikely, but what kind of person sells out on such a core moral issue when offered so very little? And then Stupak makes it worse (for his reelection campaign) by getting behind the bill and promoting it, claiming Democrats are the good guys, here, when Republicans tried to make motions to kill the bill earlier tonight:

"The motion is really a last-ditch effort of 98 years of denying Americans health care. It is the Democrats who have stood up for the principal of no public funding of abortions. It is Democrats through the president's executive order that ensure the sanctity of life is protected."

Does any serious adult believe that Democrats, not Republicans, are the ones who have been protecting life all these years? Fighting abortion? It's the godless liberals, supporters of the Democrat party, that got abortion to be enshrined into law through the court system, and who continue to argue for it today. Religious conservatives are the ones fighting abortion. The GOP is the party that has anti-abortion language written into its platform. The Democrats are the ones who removed it from theirs.

And this idea that Congress has been "denying Americans health care" for 98 years??? Talk about a drama queen. Where is it, exactly, Mr. Stupak, you moron, where it says Congress has the AUTHORITY, much less the mandate, to provide health care for its citizens?? Where is it, exactly, Ms. Pelosi, you communist, in the constitution where it says health care is a RIGHT??

Pelosi and Obama want one thing: Big Government. They want to "re-make" this country into a socialist utopia. They can deny it all they want, but their actions give them away, even if they themselves are too cowardly to stand up for what they really believe. Taking over the health care system is a big step in that direction. And they just convinced the majority of their party to commit political suicide in order to get it.

Statists In Our Midst

The Nanny State just got a lot larger. Businesses, the life force of our economy, will be required to provide health insurance to their employees. Something that businesses began to offer employees as a benefit, as a way to attract good employees, will now be mandated by law: If you run a business, you have to provide health insurance for your employees, or pay a fine. Furthermore, if you're an insurance company, you won't be allowed to exclude pre-existing conditions anymore (which effectively changes the nature of the product you offer, making it unlike actual insurance).

Why? Because when people started depending on their workplace to provide their health insurance, they found they had problems when they wanted to switch jobs, because anything they'd been being treated for would now be a "pre-existing condition" and thus not qualified to be insured. This is Insurance 101. It's not unfair, and it makes perfect sense from the insurance company's perspective.

But the Statist Democrats saw an opportunity to grab an enormous chunk of power, to the tune of 1/6 of the entire economy, and couldn't pass it up. In ostensibly trying to help people grapple with this problem, rather than seek out conservative, market-based solutions like removing health insurance from workplaces, or allowing private individuals to purchase their own health insurance at the same rate and tax-deductibility as companies do, the statists instead decided to take workplace-provided health insurance a step FURTHER (making an existing bad situation even worse) by mandating that employers provide health insurance, then turning around and mandating that insurers ignore pre-existing conditions. So in one fell swoop, Congress has injected itself into the operations of almost all private businesses in the country, and into all health insurers in the country.

But this is just one tiny piece of what grew into a 2700+ page bill. As bad as what I just described is, it's the tip of the iceberg for this legislation. The government's own Medicare program (a ponzi scheme within 10 years of going bankrupt) and Medicaid (a taxpayer-funded health provider program for the poor that is in the red) programs will also be affected by this, as millions more people are added to Medicaid and billions of dollars are cut out of Medicare to try to pay for the new health care system. Clearly, taxes will have to be raised across-the-board, and even that won't cover the additional expenses. And this is all happening at a time when we still have double-digit unemployment and an unstable economy trying to recover from a nasty recession.

Stupid or Smart?

Democrats, in their short-sighted unwise attempts to "reform" a health care system that is not fundamentally broken and actually is the envy of the world, are going to wreck that system and risk bringing down the entire American economy in the process. By not intelligently analyzing the health care system to determine what its core problems are, Democrats are instituting new rules that do not address the real issues, and add on more burdens instead. Are they just stupid, and really believe they're helping people? Or are they smart, and targeting for takeover a sixth of the economy that will open the door for more takeovers? It's one or the other, take your pick.

Phil Angelides and the Left's Expectations of Corporate America

This morning I read this editorial in my local paper. I wrote a letter to the editor in response, but they never publish me so here it is:

Your editorial supporting Phil Angelides as the head of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission illustrates one of the problems we have in the media in this country right now: An attitude that the nation's corporations are at fault for all of our woes and should be hauled out in public, beaten senselessly, slapped with a boatload of new regulations, then sent back to work with a pat on the head for their trouble.

Angelides should be interviewing congressmen like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, who beat back Republicans that saw FNMA and FHLMC getting too big and wanted more regulation. He should be interrogating Fannie and Freddie's enablers and their executives, and examining the wisdom of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to lend to the bad risks that ultimately started the financial meltdown. My bet is that he won't do that because he's a Democrat, and while both parties share responsibility for this mess, the Democrats and their wrong-headed idealistic policies have considerably more.

But whether or not we think Angelides is the best choice for this role is secondary to why your editorial is bad. Your attitude toward corporate America in general, and banks in particular, is wrong and destructive. You refer to Angelides's role as "lead attack dog on banks" and note that he has a history of "staying one step ahead of corporate fat cats" and that you hope he is as aggressive as possible because the "arrogance of the nation's financial leaders knows no bounds." Your contempt for these companies, which employ millions of Americans and make it possible for our economy to function, is just bizarre. It's similar to Democrats' recent demonization of the health insurance industry.

We live in a capitalist nation. Corporations exist for the sole purpose of earning profits for their shareholders. They are not immoral, but they are typically amoral. Your outrage is misplaced because you expect them to do things they are not there to do. Angelides's question to Goldman's CEO about selling mortgages and betting their value would go down seems pointless to me. Blankfein's response that the investors knew the risks seems reasonable. What did you expect him to say??

Laws and regulations exist to maintain a level playing field for all corporate combatants. If a corporation breaks a law, they should be punished, and if Goldman or others did, obviously they should pay a price. But sitting on your high horse and complaining that times are tough and someone ought to pay, even though they didn't legally do anything wrong, is ridiculous.

The Real Driver Behind Global Warming

It's no surprise I think "global warming" is a bunch of made-up garbage with no basis in reality. More and more people are realizing this, and we can only hope that within a few years, there will be enough of us to stop all this insane legislation that is designed to turn the world economy into a socialist utopia (like most liberal legislation's aim).

One proof of this is that the leaders of this idiotic movement all stand to be made billionaires from the policies they are foisting on the developed countries of the world. Al Gore's investments and chairmanships have been well documented and when he is questioned about them, instead of admitting the obvious -- that they are a clear conflict of interest -- Gore proudly states that he's just putting his money where his mouth is; that he so believes in this nonsense he's peddling that he's willing to invest in it to help prove his point. Furthermore, reporters never follow-up on this response. Dick Cheney divested himself of all his Halliburton holdings when he became Vice President years ago, yet still liberals were all over him for supposed conflicts of interest arising from his work as VP in the defense arena. Somehow, though, when it comes to the Goracle, they lose their spine and let him get away with ridiculous answers like that.

Another example, even more egregious than Gore, is Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, a leader right alongside Al Gore, as chairman of the IPCC, the U.N. body that is driving global warming legislation all over the planet. Conservative blog RedState has posted a short and interesting profile of Pachauri here and, as blogger Vladimir puts it, "he makes Al Gore look like a piker."

To start with, like a great many global warming advocates (Gore included), Pachauri is touted by the supportive mainstream media as an expert on the subject, yet has zero credentials in the area. According to an article in UK's "The Telegraph" that RedState's post references,

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

Actual climate scientists, true experts in the field, who disagree with global warming are often dismissed as un-serious and challenged and debated in the media, while journalists, former Vice Presidents, and railway engineers like Pachauri are touted as experts whose conclusions are beyond reproach.

The old saying "Follow the money" is always true, and it is just as true in this case. Global warming purveyors stand to make billions of dollars from their invented currency, "carbon credits," and no one in the mainstream media follows up on it. Because they're in the tank. Wonder why people are running away from them in droves? CNN is down 30% in 2009 total viewers, MSNBC down 14%. They're not balanced, and people know it. Fox News is up 7% in the same time period. Do they have an agenda? I think all 3 have a bias one way or the other. But the country is center-right and people perceive Fox as being closer to the ideal of reporting the facts whether you like them or not.

2010 is going to be a big year for America. The health care "reform" monstrosity is poised to be passed into law; "Cap and Trade," the global warming fanatics' solution and money-maker, is also set to be advocated for (it should be crushed); terrorist incidents are on the rise; and the American economy is still in the tank. How will Obama respond to all of these pressures? I'm betting: Predictably (as a leftist/statist) and Poorly (as a politican not as a leader).

Guy Gets On a Plane With Explosive Underpants....

Watching DHS Director Janet Napolitano being interviewed by CNN's Candy Crowley about this attempted terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound plane the other day should make you cringe whether you hail from the left or the right. Why? Several reasons:

1) Napolitano doesn't seem at all disturbed by this total breakdown in airport security, and even goes so far as to say that "the system worked." Really?? In what way? In fact the system did NOT work and Napolitano should have said so. The only reason that plane didn't blow up is because some other passengers tackled the guy, much like with Richard Reid a few years ago.

2) Napolitano goes on to defend the fact that the terrorist had not been placed on a narrow "watch list" that would have prevented him from boarding the plane, despite the fact that the man's own father called DHS a month ago and warned them about him. So again, agency not competent, she should have the guts to say so and vow to make it better, rather than to sit there and crow about how everything worked. NOTHING WORKED.

3) Napolitano also revisits the familiar liberal mantra of, "well there's nothing to suggest that he was working with anyone" in order to avoid having to state (another) obvious point that this was an attempted terrorist act. Liberals always come back to whether or not a terrorist had connections to Al Qaeda; whether he consulted with other people, or conspired with them to do the act, before it "qualifies" as an act of terrorism. WHY?? What possible difference does it make? It is the ACT and its PURPOSE that determine whether it was terrorism. Not whether a bunch of bad people were involved or just one. The purpose of this act was to destroy an American plane; kill American civilians; and strike fear into the hearts of travelers. That is terrorism, by definition. It matters not one iota whether this idiot consulted with a single other person. The exact same was true of Major Hassan, the lone terrorist in last month's Army base shooting.

4) Candy Crowley could not have been more accomodating. Her questioning was not adversarial in any way. Despite Napolitano's non-sensical answers, Crowley's follow-up questions were asked in a very respectful tone, almost as though she were trying to coach Napolitano through the interview. This was not an interrogation, this was a Good Morning America-type interview where all parties were on the same side. Napolitano should have been grilled, both for DHS's poor performance in this case, AND for her moronic answers to questions. CNN failed, displaying its liberal bias yet again. Would Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday have let her off the hook this easily? NO! And no interviewer should have, whatever their political persuasion.

Liberals get into power and people get killed. It's pretty much that simple. They appear to have no ability to accurately self-assess, and the mainstream media accomodates them. The whole thing is disgusting.

Give Democrats a Year and They Can Ruin the Country

Somehow, the Democrats in Congress -- not just the liberal ones, but ALL of them -- are on the verge of passing health care "reform," despite many months of angry debate, grassroots political activism, and political will that is so reckless that it's stunning. Either the Democrats are what conservatives like me say they are -- insane, out of touch, and about to lose their jobs -- or they are what Obama says they are -- courageous and effective doers of the people's will. There is no middle ground, here. They are going way out on a left-dangling limb and expecting the country not to punish them for it. We will see who was right in November 2010.

Democrats have begun to move the country far to the left in just the 11 months since Obama took the presidency.

• They passed the second half of a horrible idea (Bush 43 passed the first half), the TARP bailout plan, a $700 billion stimulus-turned-slush-fund boondoggle that tripled the country's deficit in a single year for virtually no benefit.
• They passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change "Cap and Trade" bill in the House, a bill that will raise costs on every sector of our current energy infrastructure, which will adversely impact all Americans.
• Obama himself signed an executive order legalizing the production of human embryos for scientific research.
• Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, has granted civilian rights to terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay and is working to bring them to a prison in Illinois and to trial in Manhattan, where they will infect the country with their hateful ideology.
• They are in the midst of passing a 2000+ page health care "reform" bill into law that will impose major regulations on an industry that comprises more than 1/6 of the American economy.

All of these moves have been far-left in nature, and done almost entirely without any kind of Republican support. In the case of health care reform, it's also being done with polls showing that Americans are against its passage roughly 2:1. All of the bills have been very important, not minor ones, affecting gigantic pieces of our economy (in the cases of Cap & Trade and Health Care) or by changing sides on a moral issue (in the case of embryonic research)

I've already written my thoughts on the embryonic stem cell research, which is morally repugnant and scientifically unnecessary. For an administration that claims to be beholden to whatever Science says, they selectively ignore it when it doesn't fit their politics.

Cap & Trade will increase the costs of energy for everyone by forcing non-renewable energy producers to pay money to renewable energy producers. These new costs will of course be provided by energy consumers. That means higher taxes/less disposable income for you and me, plus many companies moving operations to other countries, where energy costs are lower. (This, by the way, is the true aim of these proposals and their backers: A global socialist village)

Health Care "reform" is a scary monstrosity that will increase the number of people who own health insurance, but at the cost of increasing premiums, fewer doctors, fewer insurance companies, and degrading health care quality every year.

The American people see this going on, and must say to themselves as 1-in-10 of them sit at home looking for a job, "what in the hell are these fools doing??" As well they should. The Democrats won themselves both houses of Congress last year, and the presidency, and at a time when the president-elect was the most liberal ever elected into office. This "Perfect Storm" has manifested itself in the debacle we now find our country in: A deep recession with no real signs of recovery in sight yet, and with all kinds of new taxes on their way in the coming years.

To add insult to injury, the liberals' talking points on all these issues have been stupid, and the same, for all of them. Basically they are that anyone who is disagreeing with them is either lying or scare-mongering, or both. When the public disagrees with them, such as on health care reform, it's because "hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising have been directed against them" to misinform the public about the bills. With the Democrats, it's never an honest debate that they're engaged in. It is, instead, always an issue of the do-gooder Democrats being badmouthed by those evil, lying Republicans. I heard this today even from senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), normally a pretty reasoned voice I can respect.

In short, the Democrats are running this country into the ground. Furthermore, they show no signs at all of letting up anytime soon. They are increasing taxes; lowering the quality of medical care; nudging companies out of the country; nudging older doctors out of the profession and undergrad students away from pre-med; and doing nothing whatsoever to stimulate private-sector job growth.

So the real question to me is, when do they pay? Do they get stopped before the country comes completely apart? How far gone will we have to get before people boot these idiots out of office and stop Obama in his tracks? Must we really wait until November 2010? I mean, considering the damage they have done between January 20th, 2009, and December 20, 2009, can we really afford 11 more months?

New Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Go Active

The descent toward Hell continues for America, led by President Obama. Reversing an executive order of George W. Bush's that restricted the use of embryonic stem cells for research to around 20 existing "lines" of them, Obama has created a storm of activity using new lines of embryos. According to the Washington Post today, scientists are falling all over themselves to get at the new lines, with almost 300 lines submitted for approval.

"This is the first down payment on what is going to be a much longer list that will empower the scientific community to explore the potential of embryonic stem cell research," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins. "Today's announcement is the first wave."

"We've been waiting with bated breath to get started," said George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston

"This is what we've been waiting for," said Amy Comstock Rick of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which has been leading the lobbying effort to loosen the federal restrictions. "We're very excited."

This is so wrong on so many levels. First, these are human lives they are experimenting on. They have to destroy human lives for their research. Second, these are federal dollars, my money and your money, being used to pay the scientists to do the research/killing. Third, not a single successful treatment has ever emerged from all the research done on embryonic stem cells, despite gigantic amounts of money being spent on this research. All the breakthrough treatments have come from adult stem cell research, to which no one has any objection.

And the icing on the cake, as if all that weren't enough, is that this research is totally unnecessary now that scientists have learned how to synthesize them from adult stem cells. A couple of years ago, scientists trying to figure out how to research embryonic stem cells without killing human beings discovered how to "reprogram" adult stem cells to behave exactly like embryonic ones. So using actual embryos is totally and completely unnecessary. This is one area (of many) where President Obama and his leftist friends in the Congress, who claim to be all about "science" driving all their decisions, in this case are completely ignoring the science - for what reason I have no idea - in favor of doing things the original way, which is morally wrong and scientifically unnecessary.

Once again, President Obama shows his true colors and supports the wanton destruction of innocent human life. It's reprehensible; indefensible; repugnant; not to mention gravely sinful. He and all these idiot scientists who are so giddy at the prospect of being able to rip up human embryos - on federal taxpayers' dimes - are headed straight to Gehenna.

Conservatives are making a huge stink about the possibility that abortions could be funded with tax dollars in the new health care legislation. Can't we muster up some strong opposition to using the same dollars for this, which is just as bad?

Backlash Shmacklash

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, even more egregious examples of willful blindness in the media (big surprise) have started to appear. NewsBusters reported on 2 participants on today's "Inside Washington" whose comments made it clear that the shooter's Muslim religion was just a coincidence, that it had nothing to do with the shootings or its motivations. Not only that, but one of the two, Newsweek's Evan Thomas, made a comment that the shooter's Muslim status would "inflame" the right, inciting them to - what, write columns like mine? What are you worried about, Evan? Does the right have a history of personally attacking people they disagree with? Oh yeah, that's the Left. My bad. Dirtbag.

Wake. Up. America.

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Reactions, now, from people in the newspaper about the shooting at Ft Hood the other day, and more information about the shooter, a Muslim who reportedly was shouting "Alahu Akbar" as he shot up the place. Beautiful. There were reactions from the shooter's family members, who all expressed dismay and amazement that this person they thought they knew would do such a thing. And there were reactions from local soldiers who were not there but who had served at Ft Hood in the past.

Most interestingly, there were reactions from local Muslims, and the reactions are a mixed bag. On the one hand, they are pretty universally outraged and condemn the acts of violence. On the other hand, they all are supposedly nervous about an anti-Muslim backlash because of this. In fact, I'm not sure which these interviewees were more upset about: The shooting itself, or the possibility of being (unfairly) targeted by other citizens.

Missing from these reactions was anyone lamenting the fact that, once again, we have a Muslim at the center of the shooting rampage, shouting "God Is Great!" that well-known Muslim phrase, and the message that someone within Islam should be loudly condemning such violence in the name of Islam. No one I have seen has done so yet. Instead of whining about an unfair backlash - which has never happened despite decades of Muslim violence in the world - peaceful Muslims should be focused on eliminating Islamic violence.

If any objective disinterested third party were to look at the statistics alone for terrorism in the world (and I think this shooting qualifies), they would find very quickly that Islamic violence accounts for the vast majority of it; I would bet upwards of 95%. Again, to any fair observer, this suggests that there is something about Islam that promotes violence. People of all religions should be upfront and honest about these facts, in order that as a society we may deal with them. Peaceful Muslims ought to be at the forefront of this battle, arguing that the Islamists who promote such violence in the name of that religion are wrong to do so, and that such people should be marginalized and ostracized. If they cannot do that, for whatever reason, then they should either leave that religion or stop complaining about the possibility that Muslims could come under heavier scrutiny because of the above facts.

If we can't face this threat honestly, in the end we will lose, without question. The sooner we all acknowledge the real threat and start taking real, politically-incorrect, steps to deal with it, the sooner we will be on the road to success against the terrorists.

When Are We Going To Learn?

Sitting here before bed watching the news out of Texas tonight about this shooting at Fort Hood, I get to marvel at the ridiculousness of news anchors, both on Fox (Shep Smith & Greta) and CNN (Anderson Cooper), as they try to interview relatives and neighbors of this shooter without the benefit of a teleprompter telling them what to say. It reminds me of the local news guys, back when I watched local news, every time there was any kind of earthquake here in Southern California, who would get on camera, hair disheveled and tie half-done, vamping for what seemed like hours about the seriousness of the quake (regardless of its size) and talking to people on the telephone who called in to get on the news program and describe what it felt like - to people who were also in it. "It was sort of a rolling motion, Paul, and then for a few seconds there was some jolting!"

Equally maddening is listening to the alleged shooter's cousin, on the phone with Shepard Smith, trying to reassure everyone watching that his cousin, Major Nidal Hasan, a 40-year-old Army psychiatrist, really is a patriotic American who loves his country and would never hurt a fly. He goes on to start offering lame excuses for the man, saying that Hasan was trying desperately to get out of the military because being deployed in the Middle East was "his worst nightmare," and that he had been dealing with some harassment issues because of his Islamic faith. Somehow this all seems legitimate to this nitwit cousin.

Here is reality: this lifelong Muslim either volunteered to serve in the Army or was paying off years of payments the Army made on his behalf for his college and medical school costs. Nobody put a gun to his head. And if you're either stupid enough or unethical enough to let the military pay for your education only because you think they'll never deploy you into a war zone, then at least don't complain about it or, as his cousin stated, try to pay off the military to let you out of your contract and think that's fair. Stay quiet so no one else knows how pathetic you are. And news flash, Cuz: A few hours after the guy kills 12 people and wounds dozens more in a shooting spree is maybe not the best time to go around claiming he's a pacifist.

CNN showed surveillance footage from a convenience store that morning, where the American-born-and-raised peaceful Muslim bought coffee, dressed head-to-toe in a white head piece, robe and pants, and slippers. Even the CNN commentator had to admit that this is not typical garb in the U.S. At a time when most of our military is fighting wars against Muslim insurgents and terrorists, is that really the message you want to send at an Army post? In Texas? And you really expect not to have anyone make a comment about it? Then when you get your marching orders to go overseas, you go on a shooting spree and kill a dozen people, wounding several dozen more, and still your family has the audacity to suggest that you were the victim, and that the soldiers who victimized you targeted you - unfairly - because of your religion? When does the lunacy end??

The Pattern Is There - Use It
How many incidents like this have to happen - a shooting by a disgruntled Muslim - before everyone (Liberals included) finally wake up and admit that maybe Islam isn't such a peaceful religion after all? That it maybe makes sense to really examine the religion and what it teaches, and to start putting up a stronger guard against Muslims, especially those like this guy, who reportedly complained bitterly several times about America's presence in the wars in the Middle East.

Leftists like Rosie O'Donnell, Chris Matthews, and others have made statements that Christianity is at least as big a threat to the world as Islam. Chris Matthews just last month said, closing out his show on that oh-so-fair-and-balanced MSNBC, "The closest thing to the Taliban in this country is the [Christian] Religious Right." Never do they provide any evidence, and never are they challenged. No, every time I turn on the news and start to hear a story about some targeted violence in the world, it's not a Christian who turns out to have perpetrated it; it's a Muslim. Why is that so hard for people to admit?

This is not to say all Muslims are at fault. Reportedly about 10-20% of the world's Muslims empathize with the "Islamists," those extremists who perpetrate these acts of violence. But 10-20% of a billion people is a gigantic number of dangerous people. The point here is that it's not reasonable for law enforcement or the military, or airport security, to go around watching everyone; they should pay particular attention to Muslims. Instead of trying to ignore the warning signs or profile of these fanatics, we should be figuring out how to ignore the 90% of peace-loving Muslims and target the 10% of dangerous ones. This will not be comfortable, perhaps, but it's foolish not to do.

Who's Right About Islam?
In a talk I listened to a few years ago about Islam, the speaker made a comment that stuck with me: "Muslims are not peaceful because of Islam. Muslims are peaceful in spite of Islam." Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-raised Muslim woman who has become internationally recognized because of her speaking out against Islam, has made similar comments regarding talk of "reform" of Islam, much like the Protestant Reformation of Christianity 500 years ago. Sultan, Pope Benedict XVI, and others I've heard, have said they don't believe such a reformation may be possible, partly because the words of Mohammed are to be taken literally, not interpreted, and that leads a proper reading of the Koran to advocate precisely what the Islamists advocate. That is, the dangerous Muslims in the world are the ones who "get" Islam as it was intended.

It's high time for the peaceful people - of ALL religions, including Islam - to stop pretending that Islam itself has no role in this violence and instead work to flush out the extremists.

One Step Toward Peace??

I was reading my morning paper today when I coughed up my english muffin reading this op-ed. I quickly penned a response and emailed it to the paper. It'll never get published (mine haven't yet) so here it is anyway.

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Anwer Mahmood Khan's op-ed today made me sick to my stomach with its ridiculousness. He claims President Obama has made great strides toward peace with Muslims already, showing "that he is willing to negotiate terms with the Muslim world on (sic) an equal and reconciliatory terms," while President Bush represented "an aura of bigotry and policing." Such statements could only be made by someone who willfully ignored the situation that Muslim nations, not the United States, have put us in today. The idea that, as Khan claims, Obama "loudly declare(s) that he certainly wants to establish peace in the world" imagines that Bush, or America for that matter, previously did not! Nothing could be further from the truth. A more newsworthy statement would be one where Iran or Syria or some other terrorism-sponsoring Muslim nation reached out to the United States, loudly declaring that THEY wanted peace in the world.

Khan laughably claims that Obama, as opposed to Bush, represented those of us who cherish "freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, all of which are and should be the hallmark of Islamic society." Really, Mr. Khan? Really? Islamic society embraces NONE of those freedoms. Where was the freedom of speech respected by the Iranian government after the last election? Where was freedom of the press (all the news we got came from bloggers with cell phone video cameras because the press was ousted)? Where in the Koran does it say that those who choose religions other than Islam, moreover those who convert to other religions from Islam, should be respected as equals? In fact it says exactly the opposite.

I will agree with and even commend Mr. Khan for calling on Islamic governments worldwide to embrace peace and turn away from hate. But I will not pretend, as many liberals do, that the United States is the one at fault in creating the tension in this relationship. President Bush declared Islam to be "a religion of peace" and embraced American Muslims in New York while the World Trade Center was still smoldering. The USA is the only thing standing up against Muslim aggression throughout the world right now. If you want world peace, support the U.S.'s continuing (not "new") efforts to stand up for individual liberty and against Islamic law being imposed far and wide. Don't instead act as if the Islamic world would coexist peacefully with everyone else if only they were given the opportunity.

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Democrats Demonize All Who Disagree

For what seems like years we've had the

spectacle of House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid, two nutjob leftists, raking anyone associated with the GOP over the coals every chance they got. To them and other leftists, worthy ideas from the right are non-existent, and the country would be a better place if the right would just disappear. To them, people on the right are not just wrong; they're evil. Worth shouting down, and shutting down, however possible. The right is worthy of real hatred, not just respectful disagreement.

Conservative speakers like David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and others go out to try and speak in traditionally liberal venues like university campuses, and get shouted down in organized campaigns by leftists who don't want the conservative message to be heard. Nary a peep out of anyone on the left when this kind of thing happens, despite these people's First Amendment rights being clearly violated. Liberal congresspeople don't complain, and liberal television outlets don't cover it. And now that the GOP is the minority party in Congress and speaking up against the liberal agenda every day, all we get from the White House and the majority leaders in Congress is pathetic whining about "the party of 'No'" and how conservatives just disagree for the fun of it, because they just want to throw monkey wrenches (i.e. not because their ideas are worth anything). The double standard is really stunning.

The media also haven't been covering anything that might make President Obama, now in the 8^th month of his first (and hopefully last) term, look bad. When the huge ACORN scandal broke, no networks lifted a finger to cover it besides Fox News. When the president appoints crazy, potentially dangerous, goons to "czar" positions in his administration, no one says a thing in protest besides Fox News. When Obama's foolish economic advisor Christina Romer talks about "jobs saved or created" and other nonsense, no one challenges her except for Fox News. And when Saturday Night Live runs a mildly funny and critical skit about President Obama's failure to address much of what he promised to do during his campaign (thankfully) to open their show, CNN goes after SNL with a "fact check," rebutting the points made during the skit. Just a week later, as pointed out by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, this same CNN refused to investigate blatantly libelous quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh by Al Sharpton and others in a successful effort to keep him from becoming a minority owner of an NFL football team.

In the past couple of weeks, the White House has pushed this criticism a step further, and has crossed a line, even by the measure of many liberals. In a style many have likened to "Chicago-style politics," the Obama administration has been orchestrating campaigns of destruction against any who would dare to disagree with it. The three most prominent right now are against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the entire health insurance industry; and Fox News Channel. The Chamber has found itself arguing with the administration a lot since they took office because of Obama's socialist and anti-business tendencies. The health insurance industry has disagreed on the White House's ideas for nationalizing their industry; and Fox News is regularly critical of the administration on a wide variety of issues (this, by the way, is their job). So all three have found themselves victims of smear campaigns by the White House. Not content to argue their cases on the merits, the Democrats in power have instead resorted to demonizing everyone who disagrees with them in an effort to marginalize them and their viewpoints.

Modus Operandi

The first time I noticed this (and blogged about it) was in the president's last speech to a joint session of Congress. In it, he repeatedly referred to people who disagreed with what he was trying to do as liars, and their ideas intentional misstatements, intended to confuse people, not enlighten them. Lamenting the state of the health care reform debate, the president said, "instead of honest debate, we've seen scare tactics," and, "some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost." About Sarah Palin's charge that government-run health care would necessitate the creation of bureaucrats deciding against spending money on old people because this is where most of health care costs stem from (commonly referred to as "death panels"), Obama said, "such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple." Harsh words directed at a prior adversary (an adversary who, by the way, had been mercilessly smeared during the campaign and ultimately left office to get away from the leftist lawsuits that threatened to personally bankrupt her).

We see this type of argumentation – if you can call it that – played out by the left over and over again. Al Gore has used this tactic since his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," came out and people skeptical of its claims blasted it. Instead of debating, or even respecting, the arguments of the opposition, Gore simply vilifies them and tries to marginalize them as not credible. As far as I can tell he has never once debated any knowledgeable skeptic; he even routinely avoids taking reporters' questions at events. At one event earlier this year, an attendee offered to debate Mr. Gore, and his response was, ""The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a 'on the one hand, on the other hand' issue. It's not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake." Earlier this month, an Irish filmmaker asked Gore in a Q&A at an event what he had to say about a British court's ruling that his movie could only be shown to schoolchildren if it was balanced by an opposing point of view, due to numerous factual errors in the film. Gore tried to dodge the question, and the questioner's microphone was cut off and he was led away.

The point here isn't so much that liberals refuse to debate or defend their arguments. It's that they believe their philosophy and their arguments are so superior to those of their opposition that they don't think they should bother with debating or defending. To them, debate is not only not necessary, but their opponents are not worthy of the respect that debate would demand. And that's a real problem going forward. If you can't respect those who disagree with you, where does that leave you in a free country like ours? It either leaves you marginalized since you can't "play well with others," or if you have enough of a following, it leaves you working hard to shove your ideas down your opponents' throats, while disrespecting them and trying to appear as though that stance is the reasonable one to those in the middle. That, it seems to me, is where the "progressives" find themselves today.

The Saga Continues Today

Back to the current demonization. The White House, and now leftist congressional leaders, have lately been attacking their opponents directly, accusing them of impure motives and downright evil. The health insurance industry has been savaged by President Obama himself, as he has painted them as greedy, faceless corporations built on the backs of policyholders who they have literally left to die after taking all their money. Apparently not content that enough people support "the public option" of government-run health insurance and that he can actually debate the topic successfully, Obama has instead turned to the familiar tactic of painting his opposition as evil in an effort to make people feel like no right-minded person could possibly side with them. He is "taking them on" as though they were the Mob, rather than a legitimate industry covering 1/6 of our nation's economy. According to BusinessWeek magazine, in his most recently weekly radio address, Obama "harshly attacked insurers for trying to block health care reform efforts, charging the industry with 'filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads' and 'funding studies designed to mislead the American people.'" This is not honest disagreement being debated; this is a deliberate attempt to vilify your opponent so you don't have to debate the ideas, and it's despicable, especially when you realize it's coming from the President himself.

Now the president is also targeting Fox News directly. Fox is despised by the left because of their perceived right-leaning stance. I think even Fox reporters would generally agree that the network does lean a little to the right. But I also think their reporters, despite their political leanings, try hard to get it right and be fair with every report. I also think that most other news organizations out there do the same thing, except they lean a bit to the left instead. The important point here is that they be up-front about any ideology, and that they try to be fair in every case. When liberal networks ignore important stories (like ACORN) until it becomes obvious that they're willfully doing so, that's a problem. If Fox ignored an important story that painted President Bush or some other conservatives poorly, that would be similarly wrong.

But what the president and his staff are now doing – disparaging Fox News in public by name – is so unbelievably wrong and stupid that I am amazed they have not yet backed off after two weeks of this nonsense. The more they denigrate Fox, the more foolish they look, to the point where they will eventually begin losing support from their base. We've had Anita Dunn, Obama's head of communications; Rahm Emanuel, his Chief of Staff; and David Axelrod, the p.r. guy who ran his campaign and now enjoys some high-ranking advisory position to the president, telling competing news outlets that Fox is not a real news organization like they are, that they shouldn't be treated as a news organization, and that legitimate news organizations shouldn't follow up on any stories coming out of Fox. Besides being outrageous claims and obvious to any honest observer that their goal is to marginalize their only serious media opposition, the fact that this comes from the office of the POTUS himself is stunning and should be scary.

Last week the White House tried to ban Fox from participating in pool interviews with the "pay czar" regarding a big news story where he was going to totally re-vamp the pay structures of executives at companies bailed out by the government. Thankfully (and surprisingly), the other four competing networks actually stood up to the administration and said that if Fox couldn't participate, none of them would, either. The White House quickly caved and allowed Fox in, though as punishment they cut everyone's time with the czar down from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Even that, it seems to me, is outrageous. And by the way, no news channels covered this story besides Fox. What does that tell you? Think about the gravity of this story (i.e. it's definitely newsworthy) and then consider that those networks accused of leaning and slanting coverage left did not report on this story at all. Why?

It Gets Worse

As if that weren't bad enough, and as if the administration should not have by now learned its lesson, I read this comment last night on several blogs and have been so amazed by its idiocy that I've been trying to track it back to a guaranteed legitimate source. Many blogs are reporting the following:

Nancy Pelosi announced that she would move to bring a vote to the floor of The House of Representatives as early as next week to ban Fox from covering Congress. "That Fox regularly grants access to Republican Congressman to spread their lies and propaganda on their airwaves is a violation of the public trust, and their continued desire to challenge such well documented facts as Global Warming, and the efficacy of single payer health insurance, proves that they are simply doing the work of the special interests. They should thus be stripped of their journalistic access in the halls of Congress," argued Pelosi.

If true, this is beyond incredible. If true, Nancy Pelosi should be censured or removed from her post as Speaker. If true, every news outlet in the country ought to be reporting on this and challenging Pelosi to explain what she is smoking and how on earth she would ever expect to get such legislation through Congress, putting aside the blatant anti-constitutional nature of it and just focusing on its outrageousness.

This is where the Left in this country is today. They cannot defend their ideas and utterly refuse to debate them in any fair venue. They have a majority in Congress and they have the White House, which means they don't have to debate a single thing if they don't want to, so they're getting away with it. And to avoid debate, they routinely vilify their opponents and characterize them as having evil agendas and being dishonest.

What Can We Do?

I believe that whether you live on the left or on the right, you should demand from your politicians that they be honest and debate their opponents when confronted. We're not talking about fringe elements like 9/11 Truthers or people arguing about alien abductions or something. These are legitimately elected politicians and credible news organizations with a mandate to cover important issues and to challenge authorities in the government at every turn. When congresspeople like Obama or Pelosi start striking back against these legitimate critics, it ought to de-legitimize them to some extent each time they do it. They are not God; they do not know all and command power over all. They are people just like you and me, who have opinions on subjects and who have been given the authority (by you and me) to enact laws that we all agree to live under. It's appropriate and necessary that these people and their legislation be challenged, and that they should have to stand up and defend their ideas in a public forum.

I would also stay away from any commentators of any stripe who routinely vilify their opposition. I won't listen to Michael Savage and I don't much enjoy Mark Levin, because they go beyond debate into the area of just insults and disparagement. I may agree with a lot of their opinions, but I don't like the way they conduct themselves or refer to their opponents. I quit listening to Laura Ingraham for the same reasons. She's great on monologues, but when she debates she is rude and very angry with her guests.

I will absolutely commit to holding my conservative icons to that standard. I would ask my liberal friends to do the same for their heroes. If we can all do that, we're a giant step closer to coexisting peacefully again.

Obama's Big Health Care Speech

Before I get a chance to listen to my favorite radio pundits on the matter, I wanted to jot down my thoughts on the president's big speech last night to a joint session of Congress. I watched it with my wife, who is an insurance actuary, then got to hear it two more times while I was driving to and from a meeting with an old friend (more on that in a minute).

Overall it was a well-delivered speech, but then we've come to expect that from him, haven't we. One thing I liked about it was that he really has gone out on a limb with this issue. He was very aggressive in his speech; very demanding that Congress get this reform accomplished this year. He was forceful to the point that I remember thinking that if Congress does not get something big done, Obama is going to look impotent. To me, that's leadership. I don't agree with most of what he is saying, but I have to give the guy credit for standing on his principles and fighting hard for them.

One thing I did not like was his partisan tone and outright dismissal of those who have argued against the proposals now being created in the House of Representatives. Over and over again, while trying to come off sounding bi-partisan, Obama claimed that opponents of "his" plan were liars and driven only by political expediency. He gave no credence at all to the points they have been making for months, now. He also pointed the finger at Republicans as the source of these supposedly "wild" arguments, not acknowledging that his real fight is with conservative "blue dog" Democrats, not the Republicans. This is something some in Congress have been trying to do, blame Republicans for their problems even though they have the votes to do whatever they want.

On three separate occasions, Obama took a shot at the Bush administration, which I also didn't like. Presidents are supposed to be above that. Reagan never whined about Carter's screw-ups, and Bush 43 never complained about the deep recession he inherited from Clinton (you never hear about that anymore, do you?). Presidents should take ownership of their office and not look back. Play the hand you are dealt. Instead, Obama and many in his administration are still taking potshots, 7 months after arriving in office, at the outgoing administration. Give it a rest.

A Little Overheated

The speech was not boring, at least not until Obama started doing a eulogy of Ted Kennedy. At one point he did something that Bush 43 rarely did: Stood up to his critics directly. He got to this point where he had laid out all his big improvements to the system, then he paused and started acknowledging that people were arguing about them. At least he's seeing what's been happening at town halls around the country, I suppose. Anyway he started listing several of the major arguments against his proposals, calling each one of them "a lie." That's very aggressive for a president. He also disparaged those who have been pushing these arguments. The first one he attacked was the idea of "death panels," first propagated by Sarah Palin. I found his attack to be unbecoming of a president because, while he didn't name her (everyone knew exactly who he meant), he disparaged her as a person and her motives, neither of which he has any place to be doing. He should have mentioned it, disagreed with it, and let it go.

His next attack as "false" was the idea that illegal immigrants would be covered under this plan. He was very dismissive of the very idea, and conservative pundits have pointed out that in H.R. 3200, illegals WOULD be covered; further, that they had asked that liberals put in a specific statement saying that they would NOT be covered and they were denied. So when Obama attacked Sarah Palin, conservatives started making noise, aware that they were being targeted. When he called this illegal immigrant claim "false" and dismissed it, one congressman actually yelled "that's a LIE!" from off to the president's left. Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and V.P. Biden all turned toward the shout. Pelosi looked as though she would have throttled the congressman with her bare hands; she was VERY angry. I thought she reacted childishly, like the bully she is. Obama, for his part, recovered quickly and continued on, which I thought was good and proper. This is the major leagues, and this is an important and emotional issue.

Something for Conservatives?

Later, the president appeared to throw a bone to conservatives when he acknowledged that they wanted litigation reform in the package. His wording, though, was murky and he never said he supported it. The democrats complain constantly about "special interests" but they only mean "Republican special interests," never Democrat special interests, one of the most prominent being trial lawyers. It doesn't seem credible that he or any other Democrat would get behind reducing malpractice lawsuits; but we'll see. Obama also, I think, stunned everyone when he said outright that no federal dollars would be used to pay for abortions, and all "conscience" laws would be upheld and respected. There was stunned silence for a couple of seconds, then applause, I assume from conservatives. No liberal, and few Democrats, would applaud such an idea. Again, let's see if he means it.

Smoke & Mirrors

Obama talked a good game defending "his" plan, but as even Democrats involved in the process (Kent Conrad, for one) have stated, the president has no plan. What he has is an idea, a concept, a framework in his head. The real plans are being hammered out in Congress. It's these congressional plans that conservatives have been attacking and critiquing. So it seems really easy for the president to defend "his" plan by saying it will do everything and cost little; because when he defends it in a speech, it IS whatever he SAYS it is. It seems intellectually dishonest to me, sort of a "bait and switch" tactic. Obama sells this nice, shiny plan that people go "ooh" and "ah" for, knowing that what's actually being built in the factory isn't nearly as pretty.

Several of the things conservatives have opined on, which Obama attacked, were things that, as he rightly pointed out, are not actually in the bills being proposed. But he didn't acknowledge that they were things that could conceivably, even likely, come to pass should this legislation become law. "Death panels" are one example, but another is the idea that it's fair for the government to run a competitive enterprise against private insurers because the government's company will be self-sustaining, based only on premiums, never drawing money from taxpayers. Yes, this is in the bill (I assume). However, it seems highly unlikely that the company he describes could possibly stay solvent. If it doesn't, then what? Will they just let it go bankrupt? Or will we hear the "too big to fail" bit again, just like with FNMA, and pull taxpayer money to prop it up? The answer seems obvious. And if we can reasonably expect such a thing to happen one day, why is it not fair or correct to argue about it now, before this thing gets passed into law? Maybe there's a good argument that it WON'T happen. So make that argument. Just don't sit there and say "it's not in the bill so we shouldn't be debating it."

Parting Shots

My wife is a career actuary. She doesn't like the demonization of insurance companies and she doesn't see how Obama's proposed system will work, financially. She wonders why no one is attacking doctors or hospitals, who create the charges in the first place. Why all the fuss at insurance companies?

My old friend who I had a meeting with last night at the local hotel where he's staying, it turns out, is a management consultant specializing in health care. We had a long conversation about the whole plan and I learned a few things. One concrete thing he left me with was, "I GUARANTEE you there will not be a single-payer" system in place, which is what many conservatives fear and what Obama has said he wants. Also, my friend disagreed with something I told him I thought Newt Gingrich made a good point with, which was that instead of going for one gigantic bill, why not do it in small steps each year? Jeff said that has been tried and doesn't do anything. He pointed to HIPPA, a piece of legislation I'd never heard of but that he said passed 15 years ago, putting all kinds of rules in place for healthcare providers, and yet today there still is little compliance and no real change.

My best friend got bitten by a monkey during a vacation in Indonesia, and had to start rabies shots this past week. He went to the E.R. to get the first one, and a) his insurance company said they won't pay for it; and b) the hospital hit him with a bill for almost $9,000 for a single injection! My friend immediately got online and declared that he wanted socialized medicine.

This is one of the most contentious debates I've ever seen, rivaled only by the illegal immigration / amnesty fight from a few years ago. George W. Bush eventually backed away from that fight, but Obama seems to be pressing forward with this one. It will be interesting, if nothing else, to see how it all plays out in the next few months.

New Evidence for Liberal Scuminess

Miss California 2009

I've never in my life paid any attention at all to beauty pageants. It just doesn't interest me. But in the Miss USA pageant a few weeks ago, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, made headlines by daring to say - in public - that she believed marriage should be between a man and a woman. Think about that. In 2009, this is ACTUALLY a controversial subject. Where has this country gone in the last generation?

What happened was that (video here) she was leading the competition and entered a phase where you have to answer a question on your feet while the whole world watches. Now, when I grew up this was a big joke because the stereotypical question was something like "What do you wish for in the world" and the answer was something along the lines of "world peace." This is a famously ridiculous Q & A.

But this time, for some reason, the process went differently. Somehow, this gay activist, Perez Hilton (why name yourself after an amateur porno star? Doesn't that just make you look like a loser to start with?) got to be a judge, and was drawn to ask Miss Prejean her question, and it was, roughly, since Vermont is the 4th state to legalize gay marriage, do you think all the other states should follow suit? Without missing a beat (I've done this kind of Q&A before as an exercise, and I usually stall a few seconds at least), Miss Prejean answered that she was happy to live in such a wonderful country where we can actually HAVE such a choice and, no offense to anyone else, the way she was raised she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

That was about it. Tough question, very impressive answer. Whether you agree with her position or not is (should be) irrelevant. What is important here is that she gave a substantive answer to a difficult question and she did so quickly and thoughtfully, and was pretty articulate, too. She deserved high marks for her answer.

Wrong Answer

Of course, this was not how it went for her. She went on to get second place in the competition overall. Before even leaving the building, Hilton posted a video on YouTube where he ranted about her answer and basically what a low-life idiot she was. He called her "a dumb bitch" and said she deserved to lose because of her answer. Days later, he reportedly filed another video wherein he referred to her as a "c--t."

A few more days later, Keith Olbermann "interviewed" another gay columnist (video here) by the name of Musto on his nationally televised MSNBC show. The two of them played off of one another, going back and forth to see who could toss out the meanest insult at Miss Prejean. They sounded like two junior-high kids. Olbermann made several crude remarks about Miss Prejean's breasts, and then Musto said things like this: "This is the kind of girl who sits on the TV and watches the sofa. She thinks 'innuendo' is an Italian suppository." This banter went on, and on, and on. Again, on national television. It was absolutely disgusting.

The left went on a crusade, as they often do, to destroy this poor woman publicly. Another of the pageant judges said that she would have ranked Miss Prejean 51st specifically because of the answer she gave to that question. Leftists got on talk shows and mouthed off similarly about how vile she was. Someone posted some risque pictures she had taken several years ago and the Miss California pageant announced they would be investigating and may strip her of her title.

The Left Now Does This Regularly

These tactics are familiar to those who remember, during last year's presidential campaign, the similarly brutal attacks on Sarah Palin (and her family), and against Joe "the Plumber." These people stood up and said what their values were, and because they weren't leftist values, they were publicly humiliated by Leftist wingnuts and their compliant mass media. Governor Palin was ridiculed by reporters and anchorpeople as being stupid, and hordes of operatives were sent to Alaska to try and dig up personal dirt on her. Pictures of her in a swimsuit, during a long-ago beauty pageant, were circulated and made fun of. Her daughter was called "a tramp" and the maternity of her newborn son was questioned. As though any of those things was anyone's business or had a shred of relevance to her campaign.

Joe the Plumber was investigated and the fact that he owed some back taxes, and that he was not properly licensed as a plumber, were put out on the air. They tried to ruin the man's life, and he had never run for a single thing. He just happened to be at the wrong place (in his front yard) at the wrong time (when Obama came into the neighborhood for a visit) and asked Obama a challenging question, to which Obama gave a truthful answer supporting socialism. For this the left tried hard to destroy him.

The Prejean Saga Continues

During all this time, interviews with Miss Prejean showed her to be the kind of upstanding young person we dream about being raised in this country: Beautiful; devout Christian; server of the poor and downtrodden; polite; hard working; focused. She never wished ill to any of her critics, just expressed that she shouldn't have lost or been persecuted for expressing her opinion. Which is absolutely correct. She took the high road, despite being mercilessly bashed in the media for weeks.

Ultimately the pageant, led by Donald Trump, announced that "the pictures are fine" and that she would keep her title. Miss Prejean choked up a bit when defiantly - and rightly - pointing out that, in this free country, she ought to have the ability to speak her mind without fear of public persecution or of losing a beauty contest.

White House Leftist Piles On

This horrible saga should be over by now; it's been 3 weeks. But just when you thought it would be, none other than Barack Obama's right-hand man, David Axelrod, who ran his successful presidential campaign, referred to Miss Prejean as a dog during a quiz show on National Public Radio (audio here). Talking about helping pick the new dog that the Obama family just acquired at the White House, Axelrod joked that he'd been consulted on "the final three. And one was Miss California." This is the guy who got Obama elected, one of the president's closest confidants. How sick is this country that we are taking seriously and electing people like this to high office?

Axelrod's rude comment comes, of course, on the heels of an absolutely despicable performance at last week's annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, an event that the president himself attends and where he is typically made fun of - in a good-natured way - by the correspondents or by people they invite. The group this year invited an obscure black comedienne named Wanda Sykes to do a few minutes of standup at the lectern, mere feet away from the president. During her performance she somehow never got around to making fun of the Messiah, the president, but dished it out hard on his critics. Discussing Rush Limbaugh, Sykes mis-interpreted something Limbaugh famously said about hoping Obama fails, using it to liken Limbaugh to Osama bin Laden and then to say that she believed Rush was the 20th hijacker but had missed his flight because he was strung out on painkillers. She went on to say she hoped his kidneys failed (i.e. "I hope you die"). Throughout all this mess, President Obama sat there and laughed at every joke. Our president, laughing at a 9/11 joke and at wishing one of his toughest critics - an honorable man - dead.

And the media, by the way, reported nothing about the disgusting routine until word of it leaked out from the British press and conservative bloggers and talk show hosts began talking about it. We used to make fun of the old Soviet newspaper, "Pravda" and how they only reported what the government wanted people to hear. How is this situation with our American media much different? As Obama himself said in his speech at the dinner, "Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me." God forbid they ask him a tough question at a press conference, or make fun of him in any way, even at a dinner that is known particularly for such things.

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This is the world we live in. How we got here in such a short time I have no idea, but the left, which has hypocritically complained about partisan politics and about the country's divisions, is by far the worst offender in this regard. With the left, you either agree with them or they try to ruin your life. They hate you; despise you; might like to kill you. It is not enough to even tolerate their views as Carrie Prejean stated she did. You must accept them outright or you will be destroyed personally.

The only thing I wonder at this point is whether there will be any kind of backlash against these people. What has happened to the good and decent country I grew up in and love so much? How do such hateful people get to be in such lofty positions, put there by my fellow citizens?? When will I wake up from this nightmare?

Anti-Smoking Zealots Not Thinking Straight

I read a front-page article yesterday in my local paper by Wendy Leung about how anti-smoking laws are becoming more prevalent everywhere (not exactly news) and what new laws are on their way. The article interviewed a number of people, mostly anti-smoking zealots, who didn't even bother to try to make the case for why smoking in places like parks or beaches is bad. These folks just bypassed that whole conversation and went straight to how they were going to get these laws passed and how they eventually would completely shut down the tobacco industry.

I have watched this debate for years, now, and have always been astounded at the lack of pushback from smokers and the tobacco industry. It would seem that they could get plenty of backing from Libertarians, for starters, and they should get it from the Republicans, as well. Hell, the Libertarians have backed de-criminalization of marijuana (and other drugs) for years, now. Why doesn't the Cato Institute publish pieces about the tyranny of the anti-smoking lobby?

Besides being seemingly unconstitutional, the laws these people manage to get onto the books are just blatantly stupid. I'm convinced they're based on virtually no science, and can be chalked up to people simply not liking smokers or smoking, and deciding that they will get rid of this annoyance by making laws against them. This is akin to not liking skateboarders and pushing through laws that outlaw skateboarding. Or seat belt laws. "I am annoyed by 'X' and I want the government to make it illegal." It really is as simple as that.

When I entered the workforce in 1988, people could smoke in the office. And did. A lot. I didn't like it, but I didn't much complain about it. Was I exposed to some risk? Probably. I had 3 chain smokers smoking almost all day within 20 feet of me. At my next job smokers were relegated to outdoors, and while this made the office nicer, it also ticked off non-smokers who didn't like that smokers got all these extra breaks throughout each day. Then my next job, my direct boss smoked a pipe all day long in his office. I actually liked the smell of that. In the end, I think indoor smoking should have been left to each business to decide on. If you don't like that the company allows smoking, then don't work for them. Very simple.

But this is California, which is controlled by leftists, and I emphasize the word "controlled." Leftist legislators feel the need to write a law about pretty much everything, including where you can and cannot smoke. So they passed all these laws outlawing smoking inside buildings throughout the state. Restaurants; bars; office buildings. Only private residences have been spared, as far as I can tell. Not sure why. It started with government buildings, but the Left quickly realized they could reach way beyond that and so they outlawed it in all buildings.

They also jacked up the tax on cigarette packs by a couple hundred percent. Again, how do they get away with something like this? How is that even constitutional? Tobacco is not an illegal substance. How can a government impose an obviously confiscatory or punitive tax on a legal product? Not only that, but the California Dept of Health has run, for years, ads that blatantly and un-repentantly paint the tobacco companies as truly evil and out to kill smokers and others. Again, how is this legal?? You have a legitimate industry that has been around since literally the birth of our country, and government now imposes gigantic taxation and runs defamatory advertising against it? Why hasn't anyone sued the state to stop this insanity?

It doesn't end there. At first I thought this was a joke, but it's not. In California they are banning smoking outdoors. They have banned smoking on BEACHES, and are doing it in parks and other places as we speak. In this article I referred to earlier, we read that, "The council is interested in prohibiting smoking in outdoor dining areas and lines to movie theaters and ATMs. It also wants to establish designated smoking areas at Victoria Gardens and transit stops." Seriously?? ATM lines??? Is secondhand smoke breathed while standing in line for an ATM a serious problem? Are you really THAT stupid?

Apparently Rancho Cucamonga mayor Don Kurth is. Kurth is quoted in the article as believing that some day, there will be no tobacco. Well, Hallelujah, Don! What a great day that will be. Let's shut down an entire industry. Why not. Because you don't like it. Because it annoys you. That makes a ton of sense. That's what makes America great!

Kurth continues, and sounds more moronic with each quote. "Every year, the government pays a larger portion of health care. With Medicare & Medi-Cal...the government is responsible for these bills, and the government is going to have a say in how people lead their lives." Thank you for making the conservative point against Obamacare, by the way. Kurth inadvertently points out what the Left is really after: Control over our lives. "And as cigarette smoking decreases...at some point it will become too expensive for cigarette manufacturers to produce cigarettes for such a small group purchasing them." Hence the death of the industry. The icing on the cake for these quotes is Kurth's assertion that he is "a Republican with a Libertarian bent," and that he has said he believes in small government.

Kurth fails to note that smokers, on average, die younger than non-smokers, so they wind up costing Medicare LESS money. If you want to be honest about it, you should encourage everyone to smoke, to decrease Medicare's total liabilities. Maybe we could save that doomed system then.

He goes on to state what most people who advocate these bizarre and stupid laws state. "I see it more as protection. I think residents want their children to be protected from second-hand smoke. How are kids going to protect themselves?" Yes, friends and neighbors, "it's for the children." Isn't everything, at the end of the day? Certainly every liberal proposition ever made is "for the children." Haven't we used up that old canard by now?

Once again, we are all (especially children) idiots, in dire need of government's protection. We cannot decide not to go to a particular restaurant or store because we don't like their policy on smoking. We must wait for government to dictate to these businesses that they shall not allow such heinous activity on their premises.

The article unquestioningly mentions that Stanford measured "air pollution levels" at outdoor places like parks and found that secondhand smoke exposure levels there were the same as indoors. Now this is a truly bizarre statement to anyone who owns a functioning brain. You're telling me that smoke floating around an outdoor park is the same as it is in some smoker's house? Really? With a straight face you can say that?

Then we hear from another government bureaucrat, Michele Jacknik, from the San Bernardino County Dept of Public Health, who likes the bans not just because they reduce secondhand smoke (which probably doesn't actually exist at a single park or ATM line in the state anyway), but because, "these bans reduce the modeling for children to see smoking everywhere. It makes it less normal to think that everybody smokes." Yes, because smoking is akin to what, murder, rape, or theft? It's something that kids objectively should not be exposed to? Again, because none of us can think for ourselves. We need government bureaucrats to decide what we should and should not see. The all-knowing, all-seeing government. Big Brother.

Thankfully, Leung, the author, relieves the reader temporarily from the burn of all these fascistic non-smoking bureaucrats by interviewing some opponents, one of whom in particular, a Denver Post columnist, capsulizes my point succinctly:

"If I own a restaurant and I want to allow smoking in it, what business is it of some city council member? It is a voluntary choice between the owner and the person who steps inside. But now that a precedent of ignoring these basic rights has been set, what does that mean for our future? These people are so proud of themselves but what they're doing is killing freedom in bits and pieces." {emphasis added}

One scary aspect of this is that I'm not convinced it's just a "right vs left" issue. I serve on the pastoral council of my local Catholic parish, and a few months ago the topic of eliminating the small "smoking allowed" area - a corner of our large outdoor courtyard - came up. Our council and pastor makes up about 13 people, and I was the only person to say I thought this was a bad idea. "You're treating these people like lepers or something, just because you don't like smoking." I had said. Although every person in the room was a devout Catholic (meaning they should be conservatives), I got leftist arguments in return. A couple people offhandedly remarked that "you must be a smoker," following the standard liberal method of argument: attack your opponent personally, rather than address his argument. No one put forth a credible argument beyond that one and the "hey, second-hand smoke!" canard. It was very disappointing to hear. I basically got pig-piled and dropped it. I said my peace, the majority spoke.

For what it's worth, I am not a smoker and never will be. I have felt this way for years because I am a conservative and believe in individual liberty, which founded this great country. In recent years I think we've seen a lot of people who claim to support liberty impose greater and greater control and restrictions over how we each live our lives, and I think we're seeing creeping totalitarianism.

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I became an occasional cigar smoker recently. After smoking a cigar every couple years with friends at social occasions, I decided I liked it and bought a little humidor and proudly own about a dozen cigars, which will probably take me all summer to smoke. Not that it should matter, but cigar-smoking is entirely different from cigarette-smoking. With cigars, you don't inhale, for starters. So there's no risk of lung cancer at all. You smoke for the taste, not for the buzz or whatever it is that drives cigarette smokers. There's also no addiction with cigars. I can smoke a cigar, or not smoke one, any time. No nicotine = no addiction. Just smoke - sorry, "pollution."

I bring this up because the last quote in Leung's article is from Rex Gutierrez, a councilman in Rancho Cucamonga, who maybe is feeling some pangs of conscience and liberty when he pushes back ever so slightly against the tide of meddlesome regulations on this subject there. His last comment is that, "I do feel we need to be realistic and understand that smokers who have not yet kicked the habit, they have rights also." Right on, Rex! But here's a brain-twister for you: Many cigarette smokers have no interest in kicking the habit. Many guys (mostly men) like me actually like smoking cigars and plan to increase, not decrease, our smoking. Some guys I've met really like pipe smoking (very similar to cigar smoking). So when you make these restrictive laws you're affecting them, too, not these poor people who apparently are too weak (your opinion, not mine) to "kick the habit" and join the rest of upstanding society in not smoking.

I don't agree with anti-smoking laws in private buildings, but I'll admit you can make a secondhand-smoke case for them. However, parks and beaches? ATM and movie lines? You'll never convince me that there is a credible secondhand smoke threat in these places. And yet, anti-smoking zealots amazingly aren't even stopping there. Lance Armstrong, a guy I personally admire for other reasons, is on a crusade to eliminate smoking from entire states. Imagine that: Smoking illegal in your state. Everywhere. Why? Because some folks don't like it. What's American about that?