Can everyone say, “Culture of Corruption”. That is the umbrella the Democrats are living under in Pennsylvania.
According to e-mails from Eric Webb, director of the Democratic Office of Member Services, state employees were instructed to use LexisNexis to dig up dirt on political opponents. (LINK)
This comes in the wake of a Democrat bonus scandal where Democrats had employees stay late (doing nothing) so that they could build up time and/or money to offset campaigning later in the year.
This is how the Democrats took the House in PA.
The corrupt Democrats in Philly are legendary.
Again…repeat after me….”Culture of Corruption”
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
PA Politics on July 21st, 2008
I did not want to get distracted by this initially, but it is not going away.
There were questions about Barack Obama’s natural citizen status (Hawaii had just recently become a state, so his actual age is very important). In response, the DailyKos of all people, published Barack Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii.
The fact that it was published first by the DailyKos raised red flags. Why would they publish it? Where did they get it? Their story didn’t sound credible, so the investigation into the birth certificate began.
The Atlas Shrugs blog (LINK) has a good analysis of the problems with the document presented. This analysis looks a lot more trust worthy than the idiots a the DailyKos.
But it gets weirder.
The Obama campaign used the same document on their Fight the Smears website…and the guy who was investigating the document had his car vandalized and had a dead, mutilated rabbit hung on his front door. It’s like the God Fathers for kindergartners.
I’m doubting this will go anywhere, but I will be keeping an eye out for any news. The Swift Boaters started off as an ignored news story and it grew out of control right before the election. Is this a similar story or one destined for the trash heap?
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Election on July 21st, 2008
Barack Obama thinks that he will be dealing with foreign leaders for the next 8 to 10 years. (LINK with video)
Eight to TEN years. The 22nd Amendment says otherwise.
This guy is a disaster without a teleprompter. The liberals in this country have spent the last eight years telling us how stupid George Bush is, and now they have fallen in love with an idiot. It will be fun to watch them squirm for the next three and half months.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Election on July 20th, 2008
Tonight is Ocean City New Jersey’s Night In Venice. It is a night time parade of boats. It attracts over 100,000 spectators.
It was a hot day today, so it is likely that the boardwalk and beach were busy. It will be interesting to see how the pice of gas effects this event. Not only will tourist be concerned about the cost driving, but the marina gas is going for $5 per gallon.
UPDATE: According to the Press of Atlantic City, the night went well (LINK). Could it be that the talk of our economic decline is overstated?
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Uncategorized on July 20th, 2008
Bob Roggio is running for Congress in PA District 6. I just got done reading his “Issues” page. It took about 2 minutes (LINK)
It is straight Democrat party talking points. The silence on some issues speaks volumes. Not once does he speak of terrorism. He only speaks of national security in the context of seeking alternative fuels.
He speaks of financial responsibility and then launches into what he wants to “invest” in. When a Democrat says he wants to be fiscally responsible, it means he has a new tax for each no spending plan…and they are loaded with those spending plans.
He speaks of Iraq and ending the war. Weren’t the current Democrats in the House suppose to do that. He wants to leave with honor. Our soldiers have honor and even if the Democrats defund the war, they will come home with honor. It is the honor of those who would leave millions of lives at the mercy of terrorist that I question.
He supports a woman’s right to chose, but stays away from any controversy. Does he support the right chose at any time? Does he support partial birth abortion? Does he support parental notification? Will he use tax dollars to fund planned parenthood? Will he protect babies who survive the abortion and are born alive? You really can’t tell. There is chance that a bill will hit the floor that will end abortion. His lame two sentence paragraph gives us no indication as to how he would vote on issues that might actually be voted on.
He is a Global Warming kool-aid drinker that jumps right into hysterics with comments like “imminent threat” and “environmental peril”…and leads right into international cooperation. Will he get cooperation from India and China. No. He wants to show our European allies how sophisticated enlighten liberals are. Those would be our allies that are drowning in nanny-state entitlement programs that are so weak that they can’t defend themselves.
He finishes with energy independence. Like his Democratic Party bosses, he is at the alternative energy wishing well saying our future depends on government funding of research into the mythical alternative that will save the day. What is this alternative? How long will it take? I’m not saying it won’t happen some day, but Bob Roggio and his Democrats will let cut off our energy supply in the meantime.
The immediate problem is that our economy is struggling under high energy costs. The market would find a solution if government would get out of the way, but Bob’s and his environmental friends are not going to admit that their no-drilling plan didn’t work.
There is nothing special about Bob Roggio. If you want someone to go to Washington and vote party line every time…he’s your man.
This should come as no surprise:
The price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country. Thousands of jobs could be lost. And the environment may, in the end, be no better off.
And…
But at the moment there is only one winner: the German state. Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück can expect tax revenues from the climate protection program which will far exceed estimates from the start of the year. (LINK)
And what will they do with that extra money. They will probably use some of it to offset the additional energy costs that are poorer people are paying. In otherwords, they will shift money from those that produce to those who do not.
The left finds this acceptable…except that this policy will drive jobs away. Jobs that will then drive more people into poverty…requiring subsidies.
This scheme hurts the creation of wealth and therefore hurts everyone in the economy…not just the rich. This would be acceptable if you buy into the hype about saving the planet. For those of us grounded in reality, this is nothing more than covert socialism.
Should anyone be listening to this guy about matters that concern national security?
I can just hear liberals saying “He only looks crazy taken out of context”…like there is an appropriate time to drop your drawers at a press conference.
It would have taken a lot more courage to show us water boarding.
Diane Feinstein has an opinion piece in the LA Times where she repeats the Democrats empty talking point, “We cannot drill our way out of the energy problem.” (LINK) Let’s ask a simple question. If drilling for more oil won’t solve the problem, would it also make sense to cap wells already in production. If more oil won’t help, less oil shouldn’t hurt.
Feinstein actually contradicts herself within a couple of paragraphs.
Opening the protected areas of the continental shelf, on the other hand, wouldn’t produce a drop of oil for seven years or longer. It takes a minimum of two years to process the new leases. Industry experts tell us that there’s a three- to five-year waiting list for new drilling ships and other equipment.
Followed up by this toward the end
We need to forge a long-term energy strategy…And there’s no time to waste.
We need a long term strategy, but we are going to ignore the benefits of adding oil to the market because it is seven years away.
Feinstein says we need conservation and new technologies. Americans are already conserving. We are using less oil, not more. That didn’t solve the problem. We have also spent BILLIONS on clean technologies and ethanol subsidies and it has led to higher gas prices and higher food prices.
The Democrats claim they want change, but all they ever do is proposed failed policies from the past.
In cold economic terms, people are resources just like gas or copper. There is a lot of work to be done and a limited number of human resources with the ability to tackle certain tasks. Some employment requires advanced degrees or years of experience.
There is a limited number of people who can perform well in the sciences. There are so many fields to study that listing them here is nearly impossible. It is the reason we have a special visa for people with technical or scientific skills.
When the government gets involved and throws tax dollars at a problem, then they distort the human market. Accoring to John Knox at the University of Colorado,
the number of undergraduate meteorology degree recipients will increasingly exceed the number of meteorology employment opportunities into the next decade. (LINK)
What this glut of meteorology students means is that other sciences will be depleted. In otherwords, the hysteria over global warming will have the unintended consequence of limiting the talent pool in other more important science endevours. I am not saying that meteorology is unimportant, but do we really need more people to tell us what the weather is. Every tool that looks at the radar on TV thinks he is a meteorologist. Furthermore, the certified meteorologist are wrong nearly as often as amateurs.
MSNBC.COM/BusinessWeek has a piece on California pensions which are suffering due to politically correct investing. Read the article to see the details about the loss (LINK). I think the “money quote” is about politicians who don’t suffer the consequences of bad investment decisions.Â
The Double Bottom Line saga also provides a cautionary tale for all public funds that let investment decisions be made by politicians, rather than by the investment professionals hired to do so in the first place. Politicians on the campaign trail can generate fast headlines by announcing bold investment initiatives, but the bottom-line consequences of such actions take years to show up.
I have nothing against socially responsible investment funds on an individual basis. It is good that people have this option, but this story should be a reminder to why government screws things up. It is easy to grand stand with someone else’s money and future. Investing can be tricky without tying one hands. Politically correct investment decissions were bound to under perform.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Common Sense on July 16th, 2008
According the Gallup Polls (LINK), Democrats approval of Congress are returning to the pre-takeover levels. Notice the graph shown here. When the Democrats swept into power, the Democratic voters all of a sudden gave thumbs up simply because they were in control. Overtime, they have returned to their prior levels. Republicans did not show the same partisan swing. The approval rating by Republicans has been on a steady decline since before the last election.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Election on July 16th, 2008
Mark Steyn rebutts John McCain claim that we need “scholarships” to fight Muslims
There’s plenty of evidence out there that the most extreme “extremists” are those who’ve been most exposed to the west – and western education: from Osama bin Laden (summer school at Oxford, punting on the Thames) and Mohammed Atta (Hamburg University urban planning student) to the London School of Economics graduate responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl. The idea that handing out college scholarships to young Saudi males and getting them hooked on Starbucks and car-chase movies will make this stuff go away is ridiculous…(LINK)
That is an excellent point that flies in the face of liberals (like John McCain) who think more understanding and talk will solve the problem.
National Snow and Ice Data Center has a real time chart of Arctic Ice sheet. Notice that the ice extends further now than at the same point in 2007.
Last spring there was a big melt and of course the media jumps all over these things when they confirm the notion of global warming. Although the ice is thinner than the average, the same spring time anomaly is not repeating.
Predictions of open water at the North Pole seem highly unlikely. I’m guessing you won’t see that news on the front page of the New York Times.
The Democrats have been telling us for years that we are running out of oil. Their solution is to invest in alternative source of energy. As the oil runs out, the price will sky rocket. Let’s say for the moment they are correct.
Once their dire prediction starts to come true, then Democrats then say that the speculators are to blame for high oil prices. Speculators have one function. They try to profit by predicting the future. In the case of oil, they see that supply is not keeping up with demand and the world oil sources are in volatile political climates. Tag on severe restrictions to using resource in the United States and what looks like a no-drilling, Democratic wave sweeping into Washington, and all of a sudden it does not take a genius speculator to realize that oil prices are going to stay high, at least for years to come.
We can then draw a clear line from Democrats telling us that the future of oil is bleak to speculators deducing that future oil prices will be higher than today. The Democrats than have the kutzpah to tell us that high oil prices are because of speculation.
John Hinderaker of Power Line Blog does a superb job of laying out Barack Obama’s dishonesty when speaking Iraq and Afghanistan (LINK). Obama now claims he opposed the surge for a variety of reason which still exist. That is simply not true. He opposed the surge becuase he said it wouldn’t work. Here are some highlights from :
- On January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:
I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.
- On July 18, 2007, on the Today show, he said:
My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.
- Worst of all, far from being committed to victory in Afghanistan, Obama voted to cut off all funding for all of our military efforts in Afghanistan on May 24, 2007
- Obama has been so uninterested in Afghanistan that when he went to Iraq and other countries in the Middle East with a Congressional delegation in January 2006, he skipped the opportunity to continue on to Afghanistan
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