Green Wind Farm Applies for Permit to Kill Bald Eagles

I'd call that a metaphor.

But it's true:

Before

Texas billionnaire T. W. Pickens is applying for a federal "license to kill" nesting bald eagles in Minnesota. His weapons of choice: the 48 wind turbines he wants to erect near Red Wing, a city on the  Mississippi River known for its  "enviable natural environment.”

Last Thursday, Minnesota residents who have been fighting this wind "farm" for years won a delay on its groundbreaking to give Pickens's company, AWA Goodhue Wind, a chance to finally produce an "an adequate plan to protect America's national symbol and other flying creatures." 

"I don't think that the American people are ready to watch Minnesota's nesting bald eagles be destroyed on behalf of a Texas millionaire," said Mary Hartman, a local resident.

However, if Pickens gets his kill permit, he won't have to worry about protecting eagles and other flying creatures. And why wouldn't he? There seems to be an exemption waiting in the Obama administration for just about anyone willing to fly the green flag. In this case, the exemption from laws protecting endangered species would come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which reportedly originated the idea:

Goodhue Wind has recently conceded that the project would probably harm an unknown number of eagles, and has started an application for a federal permit that would legally allow it to kill the birds. The permit is a new strategy by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage the often-lethal conflict between birds and turbine blades. Only one other wind project has applied -- West Butte Power Project in Oregon -- but no permits have been granted.

The decision to develop such permits is controversial among environmental and bird conservation groups. "The public cares deeply about bald eagles," Fuller said. "I've never met anyone who thinks it's a good idea to kill bald eagles. They are special birds."

Even the utilities commissioners expressed some discomfort with the idea at Thursday's hearing. Commissioner J. Dennis O'Brien called it "a license to kill."

"Every fall I apply for a duck hunting license," O'Brien said. "You will have a license to kill up to a specified number of eagles."

That "specified number" could get really high. 

After

According to a 2004 California Energy Commission report, spinning "windmill" blades at the Altamont Wind Resource Area in California kill several thousand (up to around 5,000) wild birds per year, especially golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, and burrowing owls, but also waterfowl and songbirds with formerly glorious voices. Any critter flying by. 

There's nothing like getting sucked up by a wind turbine and then being chopped to bits with a dull blade to help reduce CO2. Greenies call these incidents "avian collisions."

Also in danger are the local bat population. Wind "farms" are B-A-D for eagles, but even worse for bats,

useful little mammals that dine on mosquitoes and other bugs at night while you sleep and live otherwise peaceful, non-invasive lives for about 30 years, producing a couple of offspring a year, unless they wander into the turbulence of a wind turbine, where the changed air pressure does truly horrible and wicked things to their bodies that are definitely not in Nature's scheme. At two wind "farms" in Virginia, researchers estimated that about 3,000 bats suffered a terrible fate in a mere six weeks, the length of the study.

Who would be keeping track of the number of eagles, bats, and other winged critters destroyed by the (let's face it) least efficient of renewable energy sources? That's a little problem right there.

Bald eagles for accurate nest counts

Minnesota observers have testified that Goodhue Wind has been doing a pretty poor job of it up to this point. For one thing, the Goodhue Wind eagle surveys counted fewer eagle nests in the killer turbine radius than citizens did, and the technology Goodhue Wind used to monitor bat calls during their bat population survey worked only about half the time--hardly a track record that instills confidence in the company's devotion to environmental concerns.

From Climate Gate to Capn' Tax to Solindra and beyond, every day that goes by produces more evidence that the race for green energy is really a push for the old dough-re-me.

Addendum: Interested? Watch this video about the fast tracking of wind energy in Minnesota, and coming to a neighborhood near you (via blog commenter Rick Conrad @ Goodhue County Wind Energy).

Hat tip: Minnesotans for Global Warming
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America's Real Apology to Hamid Karzai

More intelligence in one young woman than in the entire White House:

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Progress Report on the Terrorist Literacy Front

What Afghans think of Obama's apology. H/t: Atlas Shrugs

In the last few days, texts for terrorists has borne the expected fruit.

Twenty Twenty-eight* Thirty** people dead and who knows how many injured because Afghani workers found a few Korans being burned in a Bagram Air Base trash pit--together with a truckload of Islamic texts removed from a U.S.-run prison library.

Insurgents incarcerated in the Parwan Detention Facility Library had been using the texts to send contraband messages to each other, an eventuality unforeseen (or so they'd like us to believe) by the International Red Cross (or is it the International Red Crescent?).

Obama promised (in writing) to "hold accountable" those responsible.

How about the Afghans who killed two four* six**American soldiers in retaliation and wounded others ? Who is holding them accountable?

NATO crickets.

How about the "protesters" who set fire to an ammunition truck, killing three people? Who is holding them accountable?

Afghan crickets.

However, in the State of Washington, Newt Gingrich stated, in no uncertain terms, that "Afghan President Hamid Karzi owes the U.S. an apology for the shootings."

"The president apologized for the burning, Gingrich observed, but I haven't seen the president demand that the government of Afghanistan apologize for the killing of two young Americans."

"There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama's attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States period," Gingrich said.

"And, candidly, if Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, doesn't feel like apologizing then we should say good bye and good luck, we don't need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn't care."

Which would be the end of Hamid Karzai. I think Afghanistan could scrape together enough resources to construct an effigy of him. Oh, wait. That's been done already  . . .

Afghans burn an effigy representing Hamid Karsai.

*Update 2/25/12: Eight more people dead since yesterday, including two more American soldiers shot inside Hamid Karsai's Interior Ministry. (Via This Ain't Hell, via Marooned in Marin)
**Update 3/1/12. Two U.S. troops killed by the security forces they were training. (H/T Right Scoop)
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Venting

Phew!

Just returned from Progressive Paradise Central, where Obama is a Great Guy, Republicans Are a Bunch of Mindless Criticizers Who Attack Obama for No Reason at All, Nobody is Catholic, and the Price of Gas has Nothing (that is to say, Nothing) to do with Drilling and Everything to Do with U.S. Oil Company Greed (and Only U.S. Oil Company Greed). Where is Kucinich when we Need Him? Save the Environment.

I am so tired of being the enemy in the room.



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Podcast: Rick Santorum's 2008 "Father of Lies" Speech

Santorum titled this speech, "Faith in Public Life: A Personal Journal." He was addressing an audience at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida. 

A podcast of this speech can be downloaded from the University Website.

Or, listen here. Please.

You won't be sorry.
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Note to US Music Teachers: All Cultures Are Not Equal

 

I am forwarding this note to music teachers and choir directors promoting performances of Zikr, a chant praising Allah, that has been making the rounds of classrooms and even Christmas concerts throughout the U.S.

Newsflash: 6- to 11-year-old Muslim children are being used as bomb carriers, taught to be suicide bombers in Islamic seminaries.

For example, on February 15, the Afghan government released 41 such boys who had been captured as they embarked on a mountain trek into Pakistan to "be educated" as suicide bombers. The government returned the young ones to their families.

Returning the boys to their families, however, doesn't always work out as well as hoped.

Six months ago, 20 other Afghani child suicide-bombers-in-training were similarly released after having been pardoned by Hamid Karzai but, just a couple of weeks ago, 2 ten-year-olds from this group were rearrested as they planned a mass murder in Kandahar.

Islamic terrorists using children as bombs has been an ongoing problem for years. From The Guardian:

Children as young as six are being used by the Taliban in increasingly desperate suicide missions, coalition forces in Afghanistan claimed yesterday.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to which Britain contributes 5,000 troops in southern Afghanistan, revealed that soldiers defused an explosive vest which had been placed on a six-year-old who had been told to attack Afghan army forces in the east of the country.

The boy was spotted after appearing confused at a checkpoint. The vest was defused and no one was hurt.

"They placed explosives on a six-year-old boy and told him to walk up to the Afghan police or army and push the button," said Captain Michael Cormier, the company commander who intercepted the child, in a statement. "Fortunately, the boy did not understand and asked patrolling officers why he had this vest on."

The inquisitive innocence of that little boy turned out to be a lucky break. Unusually lucky. Terrorists have succeeded in killing hundreds of people using little kids as explosive devices.

Who knows how many people would have died if his impatient-to-kill Taliban handlers had waited a year or two before sending this little boy to a checkpoint to "push the button"?
 
As reported by Bare Naked Islam, "the going price for child bombers" in Pakistan was US $7,000 to $14,000, depending "on how quickly the bomber is needed and how close the child is expected to get to the target."

I do not argue that all innocent little children are not equally beautiful. But I do question: Do we really need American teachers telling their young charges that, despite all evidence to the contrary, all cultures are equal representations of American ideals?
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Congressional Budget Office: US Economy Will Shut Down in 15 Short Years

But Obama supporters think that the U.S. economy (people with jobs) will be able to provide them with a palette of free, high-quality contraceptive choices?

Yeah, right.

The Congressional Budget Office is a little less optimistic. If Obama keeps getting his way, the U.S. economy will shut down soon, in a mere 15 years, strangled by debt rising to 900% of GDP. And it's not going to be a fun journey, count on that.

 
Through the lens of Mark Steyn, as usual, focused to incinerate: 

America's Treasury Secretary, Timmy Geithner the TurboTax Kid, thought the chart would have been even more hilarious if they'd run the numbers into the next millennium: "You [addressing House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan] could have taken it out to 3,000 or to 4,000" he chortled, to supportive titters from his aides. . . .

"Yeah, right." replied Ryan. "We cut it off at the end of the century because the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path."

Wow.

Total collapse of the economy in 15 years under Obama's budget.

What a guy!

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Black History Month: How Times Have Changed

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A Favorite Hymn of Abe Lincoln -- When I Can Read My Title Clear

Tomorrow is President's Day, commemorating the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Abe Lincoln was born 203 years ago on February 12, 1809. This hymn, which was popular in his childhood, is said to have been one of his favorites:

Lyrics:

When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I'll bid farewell to ev'ry fear
And wipe my weeping eyes.

Should earth against my soul engage,
And fiery darts be hurled,
Then I can smile at Satan's rage
And face a frowning world.

Let cares, like a wild deluge come,
And storms of sorrow fall!
May I but safely reach my home,
My God, my heav'n, my all.

There shall I bathe my weary soul
In seas of heav'nly rest,
And not a wave of trouble roll
Across my peaceful breast.

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Illegal Alien Moroccan Straps on Suicide Vest in DC [UPDATED]

Amine El Khalifi, an Alexandria, VA, resident, left a mosque today and headed over to the U.S. Capitol strapped into a suicide vest. His target, according to ABC News, was the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center.

[Update, 2/19/12: The mosque visited by El Khalafi for his Friday prayers was the same one at which Anwar al-Awlaki was imam in 2001 and 2002. Al-Awlaki was the al-Qaeda recruiter linked to the terror attacks of 9/11, the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, and the 2009 Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, among others. Al-Awaki and his son were reportedly killed in separate American drone strikes in Yemen in 2001.]

Law enforcement officials, who had been tracking El Khalifi for more than a year, said that "the explosives were inert" and that the public and Congressional community were "never in danger." By that definition, the "public" apparently does not include El Khalifi's landlord, whom the mass-murderer-wannabe threatened to beat up after the landlord suspected him and his buddies of making bombs in his apartment and then asked him to leave.

El Khalifi has been charged with knowingly and unlawfully attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against property owned and used by the United States.

You will no doubt be shocked to learn that El Khalifi is a 29-year-old unemployed illegal alien who came to the U.S. from Morocco when he was 16 years old and overstayed his visa. He was arrested wearing a green shirt and black pants.

Officials are calling this a "lone wolf" attack.

My, my, my. There seem to be a lot of lone wolves out there.

The Green and The Black

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Allen West: Gov't Handouts the Most Insidious Form of Slavery in the World Today . . .

West tells the House:

The Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us.

Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact the most insidious form of slavery remaining in the world today, and it does not promote economic freedom.

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A Miniature Miracle

Meet one little chameleon, a member of the newly discovered Brookesia micra species:

This teensy-tiny guy (or gal, not sure which) is a juvenile member of a species discovered in 2007. They live on the ground among limestone pebbles and dry deciduous forest leaf litter near a small stream on Nosy Hara in the Antsiranana Province of northern Madagascar. At night, they climb 2 to 4 inches up the stems of very small plants to hide in their leaves.

He's got a baby brother, even smaller:

Baby B. Micra

Adult B. micras, which are only 1/5th of an inch long, have orange-colored tails:

Daddy B. micra, actual size = 1/5th of an inch

These little creatures are among the smallest amniotes in the world, an amniote being a reptile, bird, or mammal. It is hard to believe that highly complex animal like this, complete with a set of organs similar to those of much bigger animals, is packed into such a tiny package.

Life is a miracle all around though, isn't it?

Read more about these new discoveries in a recently published paper, Rivaling the World's Smallest Reptiles: "Discovery of Miniaturized and Microendemic New Species of Leaf Chameleons (Brookesia) from Northern Madagascar," by Frank Glaw, Jorn Kohler, Ted M. Townsend, and Miguel Vences.
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Valentine's Day Special: Let It Be Me -- Petula Clark

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That Spoon Just Wasn't Long Enough

There was a time when Roman Catholicism was the great defender not only of its own liberty but of that of others. There was a time when the prelates recognized that the liberty of the church to govern itself in light of its guiding principles was inseparable from the liberty of other corporate bodies and institutions to do the same.

No longer. Catholic leaders became so interested in "social justice" that they forgot to consult the history of their own Church's contributions to human liberty and neglected to consider the likely consequences of their pact with government: so argues conservative historian Paul A. Rahe.

Rahe isn't 100% correct in his analysis, I think, but he certainly sheds much light on how the American Church managed to lose the respect of government, a process that must be reversed. Recommended by Rush today, American Catholicism's Pact With the Devil is a thoughtful article, followed by a conversation between Rahe and his commenters that answers many questions.
 
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Obama: Money Should Not Drive Politics

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I Shall Not Be Moved -- Mississippi John Hurt

After 0bama's HHS assault on our precious First Amendment, many people are thinking what John Hurt was singing:

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Fait Accompli: Obama Makes the HHS Regulation Federal Law

Remember when you first noticed that Obama always promised exactly the opposite of what he actually delivered?

The following is reprinted from Pundit & Pundette. You need to know this, but watch your blood pressure:

It's from Nothing But Squid Ink, Ed Haislmaier and Jennifer A. Marshall's analysis of Obama's bogus "accommodation." I'm no lawyer, but the part about putting the mandate "into federal law" yesterday afternoon seems pretty clear:

Despite what President Obama said at his White House press conference, the actual regulations make permanent the “interim final regulations” issued August 3, 2011 — the ones that sparked the furor in the first place.

Prefaced by 17 pages of the kind of rhetorical squid ink that President Obama defensively deployed at his press conference, the words that have the force of law appear on pages 18 to 20. That’s where the actual amendments to the Code of Federal Regulations are made by three departments — Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services — that Congress previously granted joint oversight of employer health plans.

The bottom line is this: “Accordingly, the amendment to the interim final rule with comment period amending 45 CFR 147.130(a)(1)(iv) which was published in the Federal Register at 76 FR 46621-46626 on August 3, 2011, is adopted as a final rule without change.” [Emphasis added.]

Translation: The Obama administration Friday afternoon put into federal law the very regulation that drew objections from almost 200 Catholic bishops, some 50 religiously affiliated colleges and universities, 65 North American bishops of Orthodox churches, numerous other Jewish, Evangelical and Lutheran leaders, and even some liberals — and without changing so much as a comma.

From this point forward, any changes to this regulation have to go through the formal regulatory process all over again. [. . .]

Thus, instead of delaying final regulations until they could be revised to reflect the prospective changes President Obama outlined Friday, the administration went ahead and locked into regulation its original position, accompanied by a (non-binding) promise to revisit the issue.

Bold emphasis is mine.

Kinda makes Obama's protestations of "accommodation" look even more like a fraud and a lie than they already did. Pass it on.

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NJ City Charges Handicapped for Handicapped Parking

From CBS New York:

The city of Passaic sent letters last week to almost 240 disabled resident saying their free handicapped parking spots will now cost $50 a year.

“That’s terrible,” reacted 80-year-old Wanda Walis, who is disabled with leg and lung problems.

She doesn’t know how she’ll afford it.

“I get $18,000 a year.”

. . .

The city council blames budget strains.

Too bad for Wanda that she doesn't want free abortion-inducing drugs and free "contraception services."
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Come on, Mr. President

Posting on my blog is my little way of casting a vote for what stays in public discussion. Search engines can count, and journalists have a way of writing about topics of interest to readers.

I strongly believe that freedom of religion (i.e., freedom of thought) should remain front-and-center in public discourse until everybody in the U.S. has a good, long, chance to think it through. While it's still legal to think.

To that end, reposted from Weasel Zippers, comes this little video of Barack Obama showing his annoyance at the "audacity" of anyone to wonder what the president of the United States thinks about freedom of religion.

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Q. What's more fun than having someone else pay for your contraception or abortion?

A. Making sure the person doing the paying believes that by doing so, he sins against humanity and God.

That's the New Revised American Way.

I must confess that even a conservative blogger like myself, hardened by long residence in a teeming hive of progressive orthodoxy, can still be sadly surprised by the intensity of the display of vitriol toward Catholics, their Church, and their religious beliefs that has been unleashed by the Obama administration's insistence that religious institutions--most particularly those based on respect for human life--pay for abortion-inducing and contraception drugs.

Contraception and abortion are available everywhere in the U.S.*

What is becoming scarce, it seems, are people who strongly believe in the sanctity of human life.

One must admit that people who believe in the sanctity of life are mighty handy to have around when it is your life--or the life of someone you love--that could use some saving. Hence, the existence of thousands of Catholic healthcare institutions in the U.S., ranging from the highest-ranked teaching hospitals to lowly local providers of home health assistance for the elderly and disabled.

On the other hand, people who respect the sanctity of life are a major pain in the butt when you are trying to, ahem, "reduce the surplus population," through such expediencies as, say, refusal of medical or health-care services and/or life-saving drugs, euthanasia, abortions, abortion-inducing drugs, etc., etc. (see socialized medicine, aka ObamaCare).

Choose your medicine, America, while you've still got the chance.

*As Mark Levin, among others, has pointed out.
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Why Your Religious Beliefs Mean Nothing . . .

Big Brother knows best.

Update:

From George Orwell's 1984:

’Does Big Brother exist?’
’Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of
the Party.’
’Does he exist in the same way as I exist?
’You do not exist . . . .’

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Wonderful -- Sam Cooke & The Soul Stirrers

 

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Downtwinkle: Rat Families Evicted from Occupy DC

McPherson Park in happier days.

Minus their four-legged companions, stored-up bottles of urine, and other paraphernalia, two-legged occupods are being allowed to remain in McPherson Square, a downtown DC park, after a brief, albeit police enforced, cleaning operation.

Cleaning up after occupods, the unsavory new item on the job description of U.S. Park Police officers, requires a new "uniform": a full "sanitation" suit, complete with respirator mask. New police equipment includes a cherry picker, which today was used to remove a Guy Fawkes mask from the face of the statue of the Civil War hero, Maj. General James McPherson, for whom the park was named after he sacrificed his life in battle to preserve the Union and end slavery.

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Something to Celebrate

Whew! Two weeks of intense work and family responsibilities have kept me away from my computer until this evening, and right off the bat I notice two blogger milestones to celebrate:

• Amusing Bunni's magnificent 5-year blogoversary; 

          and . . . 

• Zilla's launch of her new and improved (imagine it!) blog on her very own server.

Thank you, Bunni and Zilla, for outstanding guardianship of blog readers' sanity!
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Get in Line, Brother -- Flatt & Scruggs

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Just Hold On -- The Sensational Nightingales

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Georgia Judge Subpoenas Obama to Prove His Natural Born Citizenship

Eight plaintiffs have joined a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's legitimacy to appear on the Georgia ballot, based on the admitted non-citizenship of his father. The U.S. Constitution requires that the chief executive be a "natural born citizen" free of divided loyalties. As the son of a British subject, Barack Obama Jr. was born a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (UKC), affording him dual Kenyan/US citizenship.

Georgia election law specifically requires certified candidates for federal office to meet the constitutional qualifications for the office being sought. A Georgia court has agreed to hear the complaint and has ordered Obama to attend the hearing on next Thursday, January 26, 2012.

Via the Washington Post:

A judge has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court in Atlanta for a hearing on a complaint that says Obama isn’t a natural-born citizen and can’t be president. . . .

The hearing is set for Thursday before an administrative judge. Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi on Friday denied a motion by the president’s lawyer to quash a subpoena that requires Obama to show up.

In denying the motion to quash the subpoena, the court found that defendant Obama "is a candidate for federal office who has been certified by the state executive committee of a political party, and therefore must, under Code Section 21-2-5, meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.
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The Keystone Pipeline: Everything You Never Wanted to Know

Passing on this fantastic Ezra Levant rant (via Big Fur Hat at I Own the World).

Obama's thumbs-down of the Keystone Pipeline isn't all (or even much) about the Leftie Green Coalition, as the optimists among us would have us believe.

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Everything That Looks Like Charity and Tolerance--Isn't

I accidentally deleted today's post, which pointed out that 54% of American Catholics voted for Obama in 2008, despite his previous support of a bill that mandated infanticide for premature newborns who survived induced birth abortions, even horribly depriving those little ones of the barest comforts customarily afforded to the suffering dying. It is being reported that, as the economy tanks under Obama's policies, abortions are rising, mainly because so many pregnant women think they can't afford the children they are carrying.

I'm hoping that, unlike in 2008, the word will spread among Catholics, who represent about 25% of American voters, that Obama is not the charitable good guy that so many of them thought (without doing the requisite research) that he was three years ago.

To that end, a group called Catholic Vote has been putting together videos endorsing Rick Santorum, like the one below:

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New York Taxpayers "Work for All People," Governor Cuomo Says

Well, maybe not "all."

If you are an (ahem) "immigrant" who hasn't been in this country long enough to speak the little bit of English needed to apply for a driver's license, sign up for unemployment checks, get government-subsidized housing, or apply for 24 other types of New York State services or benefits, Governor Andrew Cuomo has vowed to "somehow find the money" to hire an interpreter/translator to take care of that little problem for you. You don't even need to endure the outrageous inconvenience of bringing along a bilingual friend or relative to help. Mind you, New York's legislature didn't vote through this new benefit. Cuomo ordered innumerable state employees to "make it so" via executive order.

Our state works for all people, regardless of where you were born or what language you speak,” Cuomo said. “We are proud that people from all around the world call New York home, making our state a beacon of diversity and tolerance.

Unless, of course, you were born in New York State and speak (horrors!) English as your native language.

If, say, you are a poor and bedridden elderly man or woman who has been a resident of New York State for your entire life, paying New York's exorbitantly high taxes in peacetime and putting your life on the line in wartime, Cuomo isn't inclined to "somehow find the money" to enable you to get some assistance with that bedpan. Ask any health care professional in the state.

I don't know how many bedridden elderly people manage to send in an absentee ballot, but I do know that in New York and at least 24 other states, the inability to speak English is no more a barrier to casting a vote than having a tombstone over your head. Federal law requires states with high "don't bother me with English" populations to provide bilingual voting information, materials, and ballots in 68 covered languages where bilingual census takers indicated that census respondents think they don't speak English "very well."

Cuomo's intention demonstrates the real meaning of "transparency in government." Anyone can see through it.
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Obama Has a Dream . . .

And, of course, he intends them to be. After all, they are growing up on $4 million vacations.
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It Is No Secret What God Can Do -- Jim Reeves

No Shariah Law in OK Courts? Appeals Court Sides with CAIR

Seventy percent of Oklahoma voters approved a referendum (State Question 755) to require their courts to uphold U.S. law without consideration of international law or Shariah law. It took CAIR only two days to sue on the grounds that Muslims' constitutional rights were being violated.

Today, a federal appeals court pat CAIR on the head and sent Oklahoma voters to the corner.

(CNN) – A federal appeals court has blocked an Oklahoma voter-approved measure barring state judges from considering Islamic and international law in their decisions.

The three-judge panel at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier injunction preventing State Question 755 from being certified until the free speech questions are resolved. The decision Tuesday allows a lawsuit brought by Islamic-American groups to move ahead to a bench trial.

“The proposed amendment discriminates among religions,” said the judges. “The Oklahoma amendment specifically names the target of its discrimination. The only religious law mentioned in the amendment is Sharia law.”

A federal judge last summer had issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which had sued to nullify the law completely.

The amendment would require Oklahoma courts to “rely on federal and state law when deciding cases” and “forbids courts from considering or using” either international law or Islamic religious law, known as Sharia, which the amendment defined as being based on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.

In bringing suit, CAIR argued that the amendment violates the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. The group’s local leader, Muneer Awad, has said the amendment passed in November 2010 under a campaign of fear and misinformation about Islam.
(H/t Weasel Zippers)

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, the lawyer of a German Muslim who opened fire on a group of U.S. soldiers at the Frankfort airport, killing two of them and wounding two others, is being defended because he is "well meaning." It is worth noting that Shariah law has made inroads in

to the legal system of Germany, where, for example, Jordanian immigrants are married and divorced in accordance with Jordanian law, and polygamous marriages are recognized.

Arid Uka, 21, who was born in Kosovo but grew up in Frankfurt, “wanted to make his personal contribution to the holy war” but not knowing how to get to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban, opted to act closer to home, the federal prosecutor told the court.

He should serve at least the usual maximum sentence in Germany of 15 years, argued prosecutor Jochen Weingarten, saying the case involving two charges of murder and three of attempted murder was a particularly severe one.

Defence lawyer Michaela Roth did not contest Uka’s guilt but argued extenuating circumstances, describing the difficult background of the “shy, quiet and well meaning” young man who had never previously been aggressive and was “without future prospects.”

The March 2 attack took place at Frankfurt airport, where Uka allegedly opened fire on a group of US soldiers on their way to fight in Afghanistan. Airmen Nicholas Jerome Alden, 25, and Zachary Ryan Cuddeback, 21, were killed. Two more soldiers were wounded. (H/t: @fuzislippers)

A little closer to home on Planet Earth, a judge found that a woman has no legal protection from frequent beatings and rapes by her husband in New Jersey as long as he thinks that beating and raping her is, uh, A-Okay according to Shariah law.

And now a New Jersey judge sees no evidence that a Muslim committed sexual assault of his wife -- not because he didn't do it, but because he was acting on his Islamic beliefs: "This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited."

Rick Santorum on Shariah law and the U.S. Constitution:

“Jihadism is evil and we need to say what it is,” Santorum said last March [3/2011]. “We need to define it and say what it is. And it is evil. Sharia law is incompatible with American jurisprudence and our Constitution.” He added correctly, and in sharp contrast to the prevailing view, that “Sharia law is not just a religious code. It is also a governmental code. It happens to be both religious in nature and origin, but it is a civil code. And it is incompatible with the civil code of the United States.”

That's a view that gets my vote.

Santorum speaking last October:

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Obama's Defense Policy: Ramirez Sums It Up

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The Fiery Badge of Zilla

It isn't every day that this blogger gets credited with "awesomeness," but . . .

In her First Annual Zilla Awards for Awesomeness in the Dextrosphere, the indefatigable Zilla of the Resistance has included yours truly under the category, "Nicest Bloggers," in some very classy company, including Adrienne at Adrienne's Corner, DaTechGuy at DaTechguy's Blog, Jimmie at The Sundries Shack, Jill at Pundit & Pundette, and The Lonely Conservative.

This is one awesome experience!

Thanks, Zilla.

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I Know Who Holds Tomorrow -- Gospel Ukelele by Ken Middleton

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Obama and the I-Word

For once, the I-word appearing in the same headline as Obama's name is not the narcissistic I that Obama usually uses to decorate his limp oratory. Nor is it the word Imperial, Immigration, Idiot, Illegal, Islam, or any other of a number of other words usually associated with Obama's name.

This time, it's the word Impeach, as in: Obama's Recess Appointments: An Impeachable Offense?

I personally do not see the current House of Representatives as capable of sufficient force of character to impeach Obama for crossing "from socialistic extremism into lawlessness" by making recess appointments when Congress is not legally recessed. Judging from past experience, Obama has every reason to rely on an irresolute House (where impeachment proceedings must lawfully begin) to permit his "subjective whim" to override the "clearly written" constitutional power of Congress to determine whether and when they is in session.

Slighted Democrats hoping to even the score by
demanding the impeachment of a Republican,
G.W. Bush, after Ceegar Willie escaped impeachment
convictions for perjury and obstruction of justice.

If the legislative apathy continues, this Molotov cocktail aimed at the U.S. Constitution will have found its mark, and the debris of what once was the Senate's role of "advise and consent" will soon be reincorporated to mean "rubber & stamp."

But, say, patriotic conviction (or even jealous guarding of Congressional or personal power) favorably inclines the ears of House members to the murmurs of impeachment abroad in the land.

That would produce for Obama the victim label that might suit a crafty president--and his political party--quite well in their efforts to revive the passions of their lethargic fans. If there's anything a Democrat likes, it's an underdog--real or imagined. 

And then again, a huge fight over whether Obama is guilty of an impeachable offense might be just what Dr. Soros ordered to replace Obama with a more palatable candidate on the Democrat ticket.

The one thing that Americans can count on, it seems obvious, is that whatever the Socialist Democrats and their top guy are up to, they are up to no good.
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A Patriot Speaks: Bachmann's Magnificent Withdrawal Speech

Howard Chandler Christy's Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States

But make no mistake: I'll continue to be a strong voice. I'll continue to stand and fight for the country and for the American people, and for our freedom because Mr. Franklin and all the founders, all the men, all the women, who have given their last full measure of devotion, and our military, our veterans, are watching us. They're expecting us to stand up and protect what they fought to give us, and so we owe it to them and to our posterity and to the God that we serve Who created us, Who gave us life in our very being, to keep our Republic free. 

 ~ Michelle Bachman, 1/4/12

Words worth hearing:

 

Obama Trying to Earn that Nobel Prize by Freeing Taliban Held in Gitmo?

Hot off the press via Weasel Zippers:

(Guardian) — The US has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantánamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian has learned.

According to sources familiar with the talks in the US and in Afghanistan, the handful of Taliban figures will include Mullah Khair Khowa, a former interior minister, and Noorullah Noori, a former governor in northern Afghanistan.

More controversially, the Taliban are demanding the release of the former army commander Mullah Fazl Akhund. Washington is reported to be considering formally handing him over to the custody of another country, possibly Qatar.

The releases would be to reciprocate for Tuesday’s announcement from the Taliban that they are prepared to open a political office in Qatar to conduct peace negotiations “with the international community” – the most significant political breakthrough in ten years of the Afghan conflict.

The Taliban are holding just one American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, a 25-year-old sergeant captured in June 2009, but it is not clear whether he would be freed as part of the deal.

“To take this step, the [Obama] administration have to have sufficient confidence that the Taliban are going to reciprocate,” said Vali Nasr, who was an Obama administration adviser on the Afghan peace process until last year. “It is going to be really risky. Guantánamo is a very sensitive issue politically.”

Nasr, now a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said the Taliban announcement on the opening of an office in Qatar was a dramatic breakthrough.

Read the whole thing here. Lowlights:

• "The next phase will need concessions on both sides." 
• "Even if all five of these people they release went straight back to Quetta [the Taliban stronghold in Pakistan] to rejoin a fight, it wouldn't make any real difference."

Words fail.
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Obama's Night Cap

Remember when Obama wondered whether he could "mobilize the citizenry" into accepting "skyrocketing" electrical rates and bankrupted coal-burning power plants?

The problem is, uh, can you get the American people to say, “This is really important,” and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake. Uh, and climate change is a great example.

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket

Obama made that statement in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle as the nation moved into January of the last presidential election year.

Here in Progressive Paradise, even Obama's most ardent supporters never did get entirely "mobilized" into the "really important" desire to suffer from the cold all winter because they couldn't afford to pay for heat.

Regulatory chicanery via unelected czars being what it is, however, Obama did manage to mobilize the owner of my local coal-fired power plant into bankruptcy, and he did mobilize the folks who sell electricity and natural gas to the people in our area to include the following friendly note with our December energy bills. Read it and weep.

Help Avoid Hypothermia

Cold Weather Can Put You at Risk of Hypothermia, a dangerous condition caused by a lowering of body temperature. Symptoms include feeling very cold, tired and weak; shivering and confusion. To help avoid hypothermia:

• Wear a hat indoors, outdoors and even in bed. Half of our body heat is lost through the head and neck.

It used to be that the power company focused on selling energy to consumers. Now, it seems, they are worried that those customers might freeze to death.

Reality check:

Current temperature here in Progressive Paradise: 12F.

Current temperature in Obama's vacation paradise hometown, Honolulu: 79F.

Current temperature in the White House: 80F.

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Turning the Table in 2012

For three long, painful years, the blogosphere has provided evidence aplenty that an increasing multitude of Americans have been longing for the arrival of 2012 to signal the start of our opportunity to remove from office the current president of the United States.

Starting with a trickle of the economically alert and the politically astute whose numbers were soon bolstered by the newly unemployed, underemployed, and the nervous, for at least the past three years Americans have been hoarding money and supplies against the deepening economic winter, even as our stores of faith in the survival of our political system grow thin (along with, ironically, the celebrated "hope" for our future pleasure and prosperity).

Americans greeting 2012 as the opportunity to reclaim our eroding liberties are a special blend: we are a motley crew of descendents of the hardiest and bravest escapees of some of history's most villainous political and economic oppression. It is more than likely that your parents, your grandparents, yourself--or whoever it was in your family who first set foot on American soil--arrived here in the face of incredible odds against them. And, if you look over your shoulder at your family's past, you cannot escape noticing that a whole lot of surviving has been accomplished since then.

In our wait for 2012, those of us who have refused to be partisans of Barack H. Obama have been carrying on a defensive strategy: we have contested and annoyed Obamatons and we have gathered together as TEA partiers to study, entrench, and build and fortify our own networks. Lacking a leader in the executive office and a majority in the Senate, we have resolutely maintained our defensive position, but we are itching to climb of the trenches.

Now is the moment for us to oblige Obama to take full ownership of his gains, not merely in the luxurious privacy of whatever vacation resort he happens to be occupying at the moment, but far less comfortably in the eyes of the Americans on whose suffering he has built those gains.

The songs of schoolchildren establishing Obama as a juvenile superhero have quietened. Nobody believes that Obama is a deity anymore. His fingerprints are on so many of America's current problems that even formerly fierce supporters of Hope and Change have gone AWOL. In conversations in which former Obama supporters complain about their difficulties paying the most recent jump in their utility or food bill or finding a doctor who takes Medicare, a few well placed words can plant seeds of awareness.

Convincing Americans that a gain for Republicans is a loss for America is a game that Democrats have been playing for a long, long, time, using every kind of chicanery at their disposal.

The time is ripe to turn the table on them--but all we need to use is the truth. It is Democrats who ought to be fearing their own legislative or judicial victory because it will cost them the votes of people who recognize that, for them, that Democrat victory creates a real, tangible loss.

Our opportunities are everywhere. 2012 is a year in which I plan to make use of those opportunities.

Happy New Year to All!
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Psalm 67 -- Lionel Valdellon

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