Monthly Archives: November 2009

This is my 1,265th post on The Constitution Club blog. That is over three times more than any other blogger on Conclub and in reality, this post is the end result of all those posts, hundreds of hours writing on this blog, and many years of otherwise engaging as a blogger and columnist in the great debates of the day. It is also the end of a personal journey that started many years ago but one that I did not attempt to capitalize upon until I was older, wiser, and had gained the sufficient moral and ideological clarity and foundation to commit to wholeheartedly without reservation. Therefore, it is with mixed emotions that I present the culmination of my years of blogging, column writing, and political activism even as the most integral part of that process, this blog, collapses around me. One can surmise that even as life and circumstances closes one door others will invariably be opened. I cannot control the decisions of others and do not know what the future may hold, but I am resolved to look forward to whatever that may be. Some may describe my views as sanctimonious and dogmatic, but I prefer resolute, principled, and uncompromising. It is who I am, the central core of my being, and an indelible aspect of my character. I gave a bit of my heart and soul to this project and it (and recent events) has left me emotionally exhausted and spent.  I now understand why many authors turn into bloated, alcoholic suicides. If you choose to purchase this book I sincerely hope you enjoy it and that it opens other avenues of thought and consideration on the events of the day in ways that you might not otherwise have experienced.

The pressures of the last thirty days have been incredible, but my ability to focus and overcome some pretty daunting obstacles has surpassed anything I would have ever previously expected.  It’s been an eye-opening and revealing set of circumstances. I’ve learned a lot about myself and about others. I am a better man today for having gone through it. Like a lump of coal under intense pressure, I hope I have produced a diamond as a result. I have now moved mentally to a very reflective mood which is my typical response to a long period of intense and severe mental pressure. Quite interesting. Was it all worth it and worthy of the time and effort I have put into it? The reader will have to be the judge of that. I’m just glad it is finally finished. So without further ado, I present to you No Apologies: In Defense of Common Sense and the Conservative Ideology. There should be something here to challenge and galvanize each and every reader. If there is not, then I have not done my job.

Click here to purchase your copy of No Apologies

Effective, immediately.  Please remove his name from your list, and good luck to you in the future.

The Real Clear Politics approval average for Obama (which is an average of all polls, including the butt-kissy ones) has waxed and waned since his first precipitous drop last summer. It’s gone from 53 to 50-ish on and off. But for the first time it’s dropped below 50. This is an all-time low, but  the Beast suspects we have not seen the bottom yet.

Remember that census guy who was lynched because Glen Beck and Rush had whipped up anti government sentiment among the racist rednecks?

Suicide!

FRANKFORT, Ky. – On the surface it all seemed like a gruesome hate crime in a rural part of Kentucky with a history of disdain for the government: a census worker found bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree, the word “fed” scrawled across his chest.

But investigators noticed the foot-tall letters scrawled in black felt-tip pen looked like they could have been written by the victim himself, and they soon found out that he believed he had cancer, had two insurance policies worth $600,000, and had an adult son in need of money.

Investigators said Tuesday what they had been hinting at for weeks, that Bill Sparkman’s hanging was a ruse to mask his suicide for a big insurance payout.

Remember, it’s important not to jump to conclusions when a guy screaming “Allahu Akhbar” shoots dozens of soldiers, but okay when the right wing can be blamed.

” Go shoot a bear.  Make some stew.  I’m hungry in here.”

Don’t miss Eric’s NFL 2009 -  Week 11 recap. The Tygrrrr Express does as great a job as any in recapping the day’s games.

I’m a bit edgy about the football pool that I recently joined. This was my first week to anty in and I picked both the Steelers and the Bengals to win. Yikes. Though I bet the bank that the Broncos would self-destruct and they did so that will help me a bit. I’ll get a good look at the official rankings of my opponents tomorrow. I’m betting on the Titans to take out the Texans Monday night. Wish me luck.

This is too funny:  lefty rag “The Guardian” parrots climate doom, citing a “study” from the University Of East Anglia Crew. Yes – THE UEA Crew that got hacked, releasing 61 MB of devastating emails showing a pattern of corruption and number cooking.

The article begins with the subtitle:  “Most comprehensive CO2 study to date is expected to give greater urgency to diplomatic manoeuvring before Copenhagen”

Yeah, comprehensive, all right.  The article begins with the first few graphs of standard “We’re all gonna die” enviro-boilerplate , then comes to this:

The new study is the most comprehensive analysis to date of how economic changes and shifts in the way people have used the land in the past five decades have affected the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

“The global trends we are on with CO2 emissions from fossil fuels suggest that we’re heading towards 6C of global warming,” said Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia who led the study with colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey.

Got that? This was most likely set to go out before the aforementioned catastrophic release of info, tentatively titled “Climategate”. The Guardian ran the piece anyway, trying to ignore the story to death and play the “Consensus” angle for as long as it lasts.  How’s it going for them? Click on the link and run to the bottom of the page to view the comment section. It says:

Not only are they not accepting new comments, the old ones are gone. Deleted, ALL of them.  Word is that the editors earlier in the day were deleting all comments referencing the new image problem at dear old UEA.  Then they just shut the whole thing down and wiped it all.

Houston, we have a problem!

SNL gives it to Obama. Looks like the man that comics claimed they couldn’t make jokes about because he wasn’t funny now has things to be funny about after all.

The Beast can hardly wait for the CNN Fact-Checking to come.  And the AP has eleven fact checkers with nothing to do now, so perhaps they’ll throw in as well.

Bonus points to anyone who can spin this in a convincing way to say that she WASN’T just repeating what she read from a piece of paper. And “slip of the tongue” doesn’t count, Hannity JUST SAID Iran at the start of the question.

The more interesting question, then, is what would be the ranking were these historical hurricanes to recur today. Using current property exposures, the only recent storm to break the top ten is Hurricane Katrina. First on the list is a hurricane unknown to many: the 1926 Miami hurricane (hurricanes were not systematically named until 1953). The 1926 Category 4 storm made a direct hit on Miami, but at the time, Dade and Broward counties had a combined population estimated at roughly 135,000. Today, that storm would likely result in insured losses exceeding $100 billion.

That’s right.  Only two of the top 10 most expensive (in insurance loss) hurricanes of the past 100 years have occurred in the past 10 years.  The number and intensity of super hurricanes is increasing, right?  Al, aren’t they?

AIR Worldwide: Top Ten Historical Hurricanes and Earthquakes in the U.S.: What Would They Cost Today?.

Did you hear about the guy who drove his Bugatti into the water a few days ago. Here is a vid shot by some kids driving on a road parallel to the Bugatti driver.

According to the incomparable (NH resident) Mark Steyn:  “That’s 1.8333333 writers for each error.”

Here’s his post in today’s NRO “The Corner”:

Rogue’s Eleven [Mark Steyn]

If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

Wow. That’s ten “AP writers” plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That’s 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to “fact-check” Sarah Palin’s new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That’s 1.8333333 writers for each error. What earth-shattering misstatements did they uncover for this impressive investment? Stand well back:

Read the rest of this entry →

“Are you kidding me? This should be against the law….son.” Great call by Mark Jackson

This year I am an “official” project leader for Operation Christmas Child. Individuals in my small church have already given me about $120 in cash donations towards putting boxes together and I have pledges for about 25-30 boxes above and beyond the six boxes my family and I are putting together. The goal this year is to collect a record breaking eight million boxes. I’ve given several small presentations about this missons and charity outreach project and am deeply moved by the outpouring of interest and participation that my own passion and interest has provoked. I made a very last ditch and unprepared appeal last year that brought in eleven boxes in addition to my own. This year I got myself plugged in to the official effort and came armed with prepared boxes, brochures, posters and videos. And it payed off.  I basically tripled the amount of participation from my small circle of contacts from what it was last year.

My family and I shop year around for clearance items and good deals for Operation Christmas Child and by the time November rolls around I’ve got boxes and bags of items ready to go for this effort. It’s a great way to reach out to others, to fulfill the Great Commission, and to teach not only my children but also myself about how generousity and sharing with someone you will never get to meet (at least in this world) is one of the best things you could ever do. If you ever have the opportunity to participate in this program please do so. It’s ability to change lives is amazing and it has become a passion for me. I am considering donating ten percent of all profits from my soon to be released book to charity and I think Operation Christmas Child would be a great place to start.

Operation Christmas Child (9 min version)

Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China

October 14, 2009, the 30^th annual awards ceremony of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund took place at the Asia Society in New York City. Lu Guang (卢广) from People’s Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project “Pollution in China.”

In Defense Of Cyborg Athletes (H/T Instapundit):

Much of the debate on the place of advanced prostheses for the disabled in competitive sports often downplays arguably the most important perspective: that of the athletes who couldn’t compete without them. In light of the recent MIT research project that found prosthetic limbs offering no advantage over natural legs, sprinter and double Cheetah leg user Aimee Mullins has some even more thought-provoking (and first-hand) analysis of the issue.

Well, who really looks at feet in bed anyway? Only the sickoes….

Cyborgs can be sexy, though:

The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of GoodSongs | Overthinking It.

Many rock purists and music snobs (myself included) often lament the quality of most modern pop/rock music.  “Music these days is so trite and derivative,” they say.  “It’s just been downhill since the 60’s and 70’s.  Those were the days.”

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.  Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis.  So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:

So the question is…If we start drilling offshore and in Alaska, will the quality of rock music improve?

Another jihadist and poor excuse for a human being received the justice he deserved this evening and FreeRepublic even had an execution live thread (well, then it became a “dead” thread) to pass the time during the death watch countdown. The Beltway sniper is no more but his victims, and his crimes, should not be forgotten.

Execution time: 9:11 p.m Eastern.

Here is a list of the people shot by the D.C. snipers during their coast-to-coast crime wave in 2002.

1. Keenya Cook, 21, killed Feb. 16 in Tacoma, Wash. She lived in the home of a friend of John Allen Muhammad’s estranged wife.

2. Jerry Ray Taylor, 60, killed March 19 on a golf course in Tucson.

3. Paul J. LaRuffa, 55, wounded Sept. 5 in the parking lot of his restaurant in Clinton.

4. Rupinder “Benny” Oberoi, 22, wounded Sept. 14 outside a beer and wine store in Silver Spring.

5. Muhammad Rashid, 32, wounded Sept. 15 outside a liquor store in Brandywine.

6. Million A. Woldemariam, 41, killed Sept. 21 outside a liquor store in Atlanta.

7. Claudine Lee Parker, 52, killed Sept. 21 outside a liquor store in Montgomery, Ala.

8. Kellie Adams, 24, wounded outside a liquor store in Montgomery, Ala.

9. Hong Im Ballenger, 45, killed Sept. 23 outside a beauty store in Baton Rouge.

10. James D. Martin, 55, killed Oct. 2 outside a supermarket in Wheaton.

11. James L. “Sonny” Buchanan, 39, killed Oct. 3 while mowing grass behind an auto dealership in White Flint.

12. Premkumar A. Walekar, 54, killed Oct. 3 while pumping gas at a service station in Aspen Hill.

13. Sarah Ramos, 34, killed Oct. 3 while sitting on a bench waiting for a ride in a shopping center in Silver Spring.

14. Lori Lewis Rivera, 25, killed Oct. 3 while vacuuming a car at a Shell gas station in Kensington.

15. Pascal Charlot, 72, killed Oct. 3 while waiting to cross a street in Northwest Washington.

16. Caroline Seawell, 43, wounded Oct. 4 while loading her car in the parking lot of a store in Fredericksburg.

17. Iran Brown, 13, wounded Oct. 7 outside a school in Bowie.

18. Dean H. Meyers, 53, killed Oct. 9 while pumping gas in Manassas.

19. Kenneth H. Bridges, 53, killed Oct. 11 while pumping gas near Massaponax, Va. His first grandchild will be 2 next month.

20. Linda Franklin, 47, killed Oct. 14 in a Home Depot parking lot in Falls Church.

21. Jeffrey Hopper, 37, wounded Oct. 19 while walking hand in hand with his wife in a restaurant parking lot in Ashland, Va.

22. Conrad E. Johnson, 35, killed Oct. 22 while standing in the doorway of the bus he drove in Aspen Hill.

The Beast is not the only one who finds our President disconnected and passionless.  The Brits over at the Telegraph have noticed it, too.

During the election campaign, Barack Obama‘s cool detachment was a winning quality, the “No Drama Obama” a welcome contrast with the “Mr Angry” John McCain, never mind the hot-headed “I’m the decider” President George W Bush.

A year into his presidency, however, Mr Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone’s guess as to whether an event or issue truly moves him.

Read the rest of this entry →

Obama starts his speech on the tragic Fort Hood massacre with two minutes touting a conference, including a “Shout-out” to a participant. This is inappropriate at best, but it also shows how cold the man is.  Does he show genuine emotion about anything?

Commentary magazine’s Linda Chavez compare it to Bush reacting to the news of the 911 attacks: “Obama’s Pet-Goat Moment”.

We still don’t know what was behind the killings at Ft. Hood this afternoon, in which 11 soldiers and the killer died, but President Obama’s rushed press conference was surprising in its flippancy nonetheless. Before he got to the issue on everyone’s mind — namely the deaths of Americans in uniform — the president gave a “shout-out” to government bureaucrats gathered for a previously scheduled conference at the Interior Department, complete with appreciative chuckles. He treated the event like a pep rally rather than a tragic occasion with a wider audience than those gathered in the room.

CBS even trimmed the start of this speech, presumably to make it look less – cold and self promoting?

UPDATE: Even NBC Chicago thinks Obama blew it:

Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting

A bad week for Democrats compounded by an awful moment for Barack Obama.

By ROBERT A. GEORGE

President Obama didn’t wait long after Tuesday’s devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.

After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.”  Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That’s the least that should occur.

Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.

Did the president’s team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on — and the initial words coming out of their president’s mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.

“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.” – Proverbs, 11.29

Oh and let us not forget the second sentence:

“And the foolish will be servant to the wisehearted.”

“I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”

William F. Buckley

“V” aims at Obamamania

Ha.

I remember the original. If you can believe it.

AP calls it for  Christie.

It wasn’t even that close, heh. It was gonna go all night in a squeaker – and the race is called one hour and 12 minutes after the NJ POlls CLosed.

The Beast predicts a clean sweep – Dems lose Jersey, Virginny and NY-23. Anybody else?

There is absolutely no reason why operating a business in New Jersey should be a losing proposition. I contend that we have the best infrastructure in place to accomdate manufacturing, distribution or most any other type of business in the nation. We have the busiest seaport in the nation at Port Newark, a major international airport in Newark, and are situated between two of the largest cities in the country in New York and Philadelphia. We are chock full of interstate highways and rail lines.  

But businesses are leaving the state in droves. When I was growing up we had 3 auto plants in the state. We currently have none. The textile business in northern New Jersey and the glass manufacturers down south are all but gone.

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The two paths of the GOP

The GOP is not dead yet and that ‘paradigm shift’ proclamation may have been a bit premature.

This is a “don’t miss” video from townhall.com.

Guantanamo Idol

(Click link)

Classic.