I did not get the opportunity to watch President Obama’s speech in Cairo this morning. When my local news switched over to carry the speech, I was getting ready to head out for my paying job out in the real world. So I only got to see bits and pieces between brushing my teeth, showering, and getting dressed.
Having not seen the entire speech, I am in no way able to critique the content or effectiveness of the speech. There was one segment of the speech that did stick with me, and tells me all I need to know about the Arab world and their view of the Unites States.
President Obama gave a synopsis of his life and experiences with Islam. To quote the President, “So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” That last statement drew an immediate and loud round of applause.
The next statement the President makes tells me all I need to know. Obama continues, “But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.” This statement was met with no immediate reaction, but silence. Eventually some polite applause came, but the initial silence was telling.
They want their world, their culture, to be respected and honored. They do not want to extend the same courtesy to us or others.
Let’s talk about the eventual confirmation hearing of Sonia Sotomayor. I don’t want to delve into the details into the same issues that others have talked about in terms of her past comments or the merits of her judicial decisions. Instead, I want to talk about the folks who are charged with deciding whether or not to seat Judge Sotomayor to the highest court of the land. I am talking about the Senate, and in particular Senate majority leader Harry Reid.
Sonia Sotomayor is being considered for the highest court in the land. One would think that if you are charged with the task of choosing somebody for the Supreme Court, that one would want to do a thorough investigation into their judicial record. After all, this is a life time appointment. The Supreme Court is the last vestige for justice in the USA. It is not a position in which you want to err in your judgement.
Senate majority leader, Harry Reid has praised Obama’s pick of Sotomayor for the Court. Reid thinks that she is an impressive person. Her record and qualifications speak for themselves. Yet Reid goes on to say that he has not read a single one of her judicial decisions, and he hopes that by the time the process is over he hopes he doesn’t have to read any of them.
Are you kidding me??!! This is the type of person we have leading the Senate? How can you realistically decide that a person is qualified for a position, and an extremely vital position at that, without reviewing their qualifications? I think it is vital to examine the types of decisions that any candidate for the Supreme Court has made, and not just rubber stamp the choice because it was made by a member of your own party. Let’s hope the people of Nevada wise up and elect somebody other than Harry Reid in 2010.
Two teens entered the Reliable Discount Pharmacy in Oklahoma City and demanded money and narcotics. The pharmacist on duty, Jerome Ersland was armed. When the teens shot at Ersland, he shot back, striking one of the teens in the head. The other teen fled the scene. According to Ersland, the wounded teen was attempting to get up in spite of the head wound, so he fired a second gun striking the teen five times in the chest, killing him. Ersland has since been charged with first degree murder.
While I personally do not think that I will ever own a gun, I fully support the 2nd amendment and the right of law abiding citizens to own guns, just for this very reason. Let’s face it, as much as I support our law enforcement personnel, they can not be every where at all times. More often than not, they arrive at the scene after the fact. Law abiding citizens with weapons can thwart these types of crimes.
On the one hand, I applaud Ersland for foiling this attempted robbery. I do believe that he was in fear of his life, and that is the primary motivation for his actions. However, one has to wonder if he would currently be charged with murder had he not emptied a full clip of ammunition into the intruder’s chest. That could be consider a bit of overkill (no pun intended.)
Controversial abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered today while serving as an usher in his church. Dr. Tiller was one of the few physicians in the country who performed late term abortions, sometimes as late as the ninth month of pregnancy. His willingness to perform such procedures made him a frequent target of pro-life protests and had earned him the dubious nickname of “Tiller the baby killer.”
It was not his first brush with violence. Previously he had survived a shooting 16 years ago when he was shot in both arms. His clinic has been vandalized and bombed. Earlier this year, Tiller was charged and acquitted for breaking a Kansas law that prohibits abortions to babies that could survive outside of the womb unless two doctor’s certified that the pregnancy would cause major harm to the mother.
Regardless of where you stand on the abortion issue, murder is not the answer. I personally am opposed to abortion (with some limited exceptions), because I believe your actions have consequences. If you don’t want to have a baby, then either don’t have sex or make sure to use birth control. As the old saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right. If you are pro-life, the person who committed this crime is as guilty as the abortionist, and is really no better than a radical Muslim extremist.
I do find it somewhat ironic that the doctor was serving as an usher in a church service. Most of the mainstream Christian churches would take a pro-life stand and would find Dr. Tiller’s abortion procedures to a blatant sin. Not that any member of a church would be without sin, but most of the churches that I have ever attended would not allow someone to serve if they were blatantly involved in what they consider a sinful act.
A popular tactic of the Democrat party is to promote class envy. We need more tax revenue so let’s increase taxes on the wealthy. After all, they can afford it, and they need to pay their fair share. At least that is what they tell us. However, the rich, did not get to be rich by being stupid and just accepting whatever comes their way.
The Wall Street Journal published an enlightening story on taxing the wealthy that caught my interest, mainly because it concerned my state of Maryland. Like many states, Maryland has been having trouble balancing the budget. Governor Martin O’Malley’s (a Democrat) solution, implement a “Millionaire’s Tax” by raising the state income tax on anybody earning over $1 million. O’Malley asserted that this small percentage of Marylander’s was willing and able to pay the extra taxes.
The result, is that in 2009 there were 2000 returns filed by people who earned $1 million in 2008 compared to 3000 returns the previous year. This resulted in a decline of $100 million in taxes collected from those filers. They had predicted an increase of $106 million. Not exactly the desire result. Some of the decline can be attributed to the economy, but some can be attributed to people leaving the state due to the tax increase.
We hear everyday about the budget woes of the state of California. California has one of the highest state tax rates in the country (according to the Tax Foundation they were the 6th highest state for taxes). Wealthy Californians and businesses are leaving the state for more tax friendly locales like Nevada (49th in the country). The same can be said for New York where Rush Limbaugh recently announced he was leaving the state because of the ever increasing taxes in the state (#2 according to the Tax Foundation).
Increasingly, the rich (and I am far from being one of those folks) are being asked to be responsible for more of the load. If they are continually forced to pay more of their income in taxes, they will leave for friendlier climates. It is clearly happening on the state level leaving more of the burden to fall on the middle class.
Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats are quickly pushing their “cap and trade” energy bill that they say our country needs. The Environmental Protection Agency has released their report on how the “cap and trade” bill will impact our economy. Let’s take a look at some of their findings and decide whether or not this is good for the USA.
First, the EPA projects that the bill could cause some domestic manufacturing to shift to countries that do not have similar cap and trade rules. This shift would result in no global decrease in carbon output which is supposedly the purpose of such a bill. At a time when unemployment is the highest it has been in years, can we really afford to have more job losses due to such a shift? Strike One.
Second, the analysis states that cap and trade will cause the price of “energy intensive goods” will increase substantially. These costs will ultimately be passed on to the consumers, which lower and middle income citizens will be impacted the most as they spend a higher fraction of their income on such goods. Strike Two.
Third, the EPA estimates that energy costs, particularly electricity and gasoline, will increase by 22%, again impacting lower and middle class citizens the most. The EPA estimates that gasoline will increase to around $5.50 per gallon by 2050. Without cap and trade, they estimate the cost to be around $4.50 per gallon. Strike Three.
Obama and his fellow Democrats claim that cap and trade will allow the US to become a clean energy economy. The EPA analysis suggests otherwise. In 2050, the EPA analysis projects that we will still be using over 60% of our energy from fossil fuels. They also state that most of the “clean” energy will come from nuclear power and clean coal technology, not renewable sources.
Will the EPA report have any impact on Obama and the Democrats desire to implement a cap and trade policy? Probably not. Obama and his ilk are more tied to their ideologies and satisfying their green constituents than they are in doing what is actually best for the country and the economy.
It has been a little longer than I like to post something, but I have been away on business in Chicago most of the week attending a trade show. Last night, I was sitting in O’Hare airport with my boss and two coworkers waiting for our flights home. My boss and my assistant were scheduled to fly to Reagan National Airport, while another coworker and I were scheduled to fly home to BWI. Coincidentally, we were scheduled to depart from adjacent gates, so we were all sitting together.
As the flight to Reagan was starting to board, they announced that they were going to be doing random screenings and searches prior to boarding. There had been no other announcements of any other flights performing those searches. My boss commented that something must be going on because they were only performing the searches on the flight to DC. When I was driving home from the airport, I heard the news that the FBI had arrested four men in New York City who were planning a terrorist attack.
The FBI had been investigating the suspects since June of last year. The four men were attempting to create a car bomb to blow up a Jewish temple in NYC. They were also were trying to purchase anti-aircraft missiles in an attempt to shoot down military aircraft. The suspects had said they wanted to commit Jihad.
This should serve as a loud warning as to how real the threat from terrorism continues to be to our country. Now we no longer have to concerned about the threat of radical Muslim extremists from the Middle East, but now we have them in our own backyard.
It is always interesting to come across the various programs that get our tax dollars. We have money going to study controlling the odor at pig farms. Now we have money from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a part of the National Institute of Health, is using $2.6 million of our tax dollars to fund a program to teach prostitutes in China to drink responsibly on the job.
Now this is obviously a fantastic use of our tax dollars. After all, who wants to pay for sex with somebody who is so drunk that they can’t perform the job properly. My only concern is that we are sending this money overseas instead of keeping it here at home. Don’t we have our own sex workers in this country that might benefit from this program?
In all seriousness, the study will take place in the province of Guangxi, which has a thriving sex trade, but also has the third highest rate of HIV infection in China. The purpose of the study is to try to develop a program to help curtail the amount of alcohol the sex workers consume on the job. The hope is that it will reduce the amount of risky sexual behavior and thus reduce the rate of HIV infection. A laudable goal.
With the election of Barack Obama, and the Democrats in control of the of the House and the Senate, the media has pronounced that the conservative movement is dead. On the surface, that would seem to be the case, or at least it is on serious life support. In reality, it is not so much the conservative movement that is dead as it is the fact that the GOP has strayed away from its conservative roots.
If you need proof that conservatism is alive and well, look no further than the success of Mark Levin’s best selling book “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.” “Liberty & Tyranny” debuted six weeks ago at number one on the NY Times hardcover non-fiction list and has stayed in the number one position. Not bad considering that it is primarily getting promoted on conservative talk radio. Levin has yet to be asked to appear on any of the mainstream media outlets to discuss the book.
Levin argues for a return to the values of the Founding Fathers vision for this country. A vision that calls on the value of the individual and limited government. Levin has a love for the Constitution and takes offense at those who seek to usurp the checks and balances built into it by the Founding Fathers.
I am about half way through “Liberty and Tyranny.” For my fellow conservatives, it could be one of the most important books you could pick up and read. Please note that “conservative” does not necessarily equal “Republican,” but it is a far cry from “Democrat.”
I was first eligible to vote during the 1980 Presidential election. At the time, I registered as an independent. In my first election, I could not vote for Jimmy Carter because during his term as POTUS the country was in pretty bad shape with unemployment and interest rates both above 10%. At the time, for reasons I can not recall, I did not vote for Ronald Reagan, so I ended up voting for John Anderson.
By the end of Reagan’s first term, I had registered as a Republican. In most elections, I have primarily voted Republican. Though I am still registered as a Republican, I identify more with the Libertarian party than the GOP. For most of my life, I have considered myself to be conservative, so it should come as no big surprise that I am not a big fan of Barack Obama and his (or any Democrat’s) policies.
So, last night I was watching Sean Hannity on Fox News. Hannity was talking about the endless news coverage of everything the President does. I agree that it is a little much to see news coverage of his “date night” with his wife or the coverage of him ordering burgers at a local burger joint. Those things are “nice” and puts a human spin on the POTUS, but are they really newsworthy?
The thing though that bugged me about the segment on Hannity’s show was not the criticism of the media for covering these little trivial things. What bugged me was Hannity mocking and criticizing the President for how he ordered his burger. So what if he wanted a spicy mustard or a dijon mustard for his burger? I was hoping that I could find a video of the segment on YouTube, but could not.
I have disagreed with just about everything that President Obama has tried to accomplish in his presidency. If you want to criticize his politics and policies, that is one thing. However, I think it is a bit petty to attack him for his choice of condiments for his cheeseburger. It definitely does not help your cause any.
It is always interesting to come across the various programs that get our tax dollars. We have money going to study controlling the odor at pig farms. Now we have money from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a part of the National Institute of Health, is using $2.6 million of our tax dollars to fund a program to 
With the election of Barack Obama, and the Democrats in control of the of the House and the Senate, the media has pronounced that the conservative movement is dead. On the surface, that would seem to be the case, or at least it is on serious life support. In reality, it is not so much the conservative movement that is dead as it is the fact that the GOP has strayed away from its conservative roots.