Just DAYS after the Left had apoplectic fits over George Bush leaving the “-ic” off when referring to the Democrat Party, they local branch of that party proves his point (though he spinelessly denies it, and claims it was a honest mistake - oh well, my opinion of Mr. Bush is not glowing).
As Stefan Sharkansky noted over at Sound Politics noted yesterday:
The Senate Government Operations & Elections Committee holds a “public hearing” at 1:30pm today on several bills designed to cripple the people’s Constitutional right to initiative:
SB 5181 - Requiring signature gatherers to wear identification.
SB 5182 - Requiring signature gatherers to sign initiative and referendum petitions.
SB 5356 - Prohibiting payment of petition signature gatherers on a per-signature basis.
SB 5392 - Increasing the initiative filing fee.
SB 5418 - Requiring ballot titles to indicate tax consequences of the ballot measure.
SJR 8205 - Relating to the constitutional provisions regarding initiatives and referendums.
Most members of the public whose rights these bills aim to vaporize are too busy working to attend the hearing. But Tim Eyman, whom the anti-citizen coup-plotters in the permanent government love to hate, will be there. Watch live on TVW.
Thus proving that there is little, if anything “Democratic” about the party that calls itself “Democrat”, any more than the “Democratic Peoples Republic Of Korea” deserves appellation of Democratic OR Republic. But isn’t it funny that the farther left, and intolerant of dissent a movement goes, the more it tries to garb itself in the name “Democratic”, to try to hide their true intent?
Courtesy of DANEgerus:
“In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.”
– Edward Gibbon
Courtesy of Examiner.Com:
Although he frequently makes a point of finding something charitable to say about his opponents’ arguments, Sen. Barack Obama almost always ends up voting liberal.
“The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact,” the Illinois Democrat wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” a memoir published last year.
In my life to date, I have been able to have rational, reasonably unemotional conversations with (to the best of my recollection) 5 “liberals”. In every other case, the conversations either begin or (fairly quickly) end with an increase in volume, and lowering of actual “reason and fact” into cliche and epithets.
In fact, I am disturbed that the left uses the phrase “Liberal” to describe itself, since the broad definition of Liberal means:
showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; “a broad political stance”; “generous and broad sympathies”; “a liberal newspaper”; “tolerant of his opponent’s opinions”
The Left is ANYTHING but tolerant. No dissent is tolerated from party line. You are part of THEIR SOLUTION, or you are part of the problem.
Not sure where Reason and Fact enter into it…
Charles Krauthammer, whose name is only slightly less cool than Wolf Blitzer (though he surpasses the Communist News Network host on every other level), shows the way on Energy Independence:
There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear.
That’s the really important part. You can stop reading now if you like, and go on to the next post. Still here? Well, he gets down to the details:
First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation — fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of “renewable and alternative fuels in 2017″ and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies — of the kind we have been trying for three decades. Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years…
This also works on another level… The best way to wean people from a behavior that the government decides is BAD FOR THEM, is to TAX IT. Just look at Cigarettes… And those that continue to indulge, pay the freight. This will give the government some revenue that can be used to create a prize for the first practical process to create Hydrogen Gas, that costs less or pollutes less or uses less energy than it consumes, or something like that. Or fuel cells, or a Pocket Nuclear Reactor. Whatever.
No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It’s the essence of capitalism.
Second, immediate drilling to recover oil that is under U.S. control, namely in the Arctic and on the Outer Continental Shelf. No one pretends that this fixes everything. But a million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 5 percent of our consumption. In tight markets, that makes a crucial difference.
Combining these two, we should be able to cut our 60% reliance on imports to 1970ish levels (say 35%).
No one has a remotely good idea about how to make any difference in global warming without enlisting China and India, and without destroying the carbon-based Western economy. The obvious first step, however, is an extremely powerful source of energy that produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear.What about nuclear waste? Well, coal produces toxic pollutants, as does oil. Both produce carbon dioxide that we are told is going to end civilization as we know it. These wastes are widely dispersed and almost impossible to recover once they get thrown into the atmosphere. Nukes produce waste as well, but it comes out concentrated — very toxic and lasting nearly forever, but because it is packed into a small manageable volume, it is more controllable. And it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere. At all.
I have expanded on this topic in the past. Anyone interested can go to the old American Empire page and check the Energy category. I really like the finish too:
So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.
Check out Whackynation.
Here’s one reason why:
I am amused by the pledge drive going on at Horses Ass.
It seems a liberal blogger can’t survive without the public paying his bills.
How pathetic. Yet, how democrat. You want others to pay your bill.
I’d shoot myself first. I have too much pride than to beg.
Yet, the pathic liberal community has given almost $2400, according to to blogger David Goldstein.
P.T. Barnum was right.
From the Christian Science Monitor:
As the Senate begins a debate this week on whether to oppose President Bush’s “new way forward” in Iraq, many lawmakers are balancing what they see as competing constitutional responsibilities – and stepped up pressure from voters long weary of a war that most Americans no longer think can be won.A first step is the debate over a non binding resolution to oppose the escalation of the war in Iraq. But should that vote succeed, Democrats expect to move next to curb defense funding.
You must remember that because of the Seniority system, the majority of Congressman and Senators in true positions of power now are from the 60’s generation. They remember the heady days when they were young, blooming flower children, protesting the war in Vietnam. Some of them were even in the House and Senate at the time.
And when the Democrat Party gained power in the early 70’s, the used it to quickly cut off funding to the South Vietnamese government, ensuring the triumph of the North Vietnamese, and through them, their overlords from the Soviet Union.
In the ensuing spasms of falling dominoes, more than 2 Million people died, and entire nations were devastated.
Not content with their past glory, the fellow travellers want one more sip from the well.
Of course, despite the best efforts of the Commissars of the Education Unions, many Americans can still read and, more importantly, think. Many can still remember the after effects of the last time the Democrat Party cut and ran.
“But Democrats also have this internal debate over just how far they can go. They are still afraid of being perceived by the American people as being antitroops or antipatriotic,” he adds. A strong showing from antiwar voters – expressed in e-mails, phone calls, or turnout at protests – “could provide an extra prod for Democrats to go that step further,” Mr. (pollster John) Zogby adds.
So they will tiptoe into this, with their eager supporters repeating the same winning strategy from the 60’s, holding protests, and gleaning as much coverage from the like minded media as they can, in an attempt to indoctrinate the supporters of the action in Iraq that they are in the minority, and should either opppose the war, or shut up.
But if the Democrat Party members in Washington think they can do this slow and stealthy, they are going to find the true moon-bat wing of their party forcing their hand.
“The president is irrelevant at this point. We are not going to change his mind. Thank goodness we have a Congress that is a co-equal branch of government,” says Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War and a former Democratic representative from Maine.
“We’re going to use the Internet to make it absolutely clear who is doing what. Members of Congress need to know that we have their back when they’re attacked, and if they are against us, they will feel the heat.”
How many millions will die this time, due to the failure of the Democrat Party to recognize that Appeasement and Defeatism only emboldens totalitarians and religious extremists?
How can it be that the Party that enthusiastically slaughtered Christians in Waco, cannot recognize the same type of megalomania in Iran and other Muslim extremist leaders?
“Either you create your future, or you become the victim of the future someone creates for you.”
-Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, USN
At the *NEW* Wal-Mart Super center that just opened on South Hill, in Pierce County!
No longer have to make that long and painful 3.5 mile drive to the Wal-Mart Mega-Center at the South Hill Mall.
They have brought with them (so far) an Applebees, with Popeyes Chicken (The Shiznit!), Panda Express, and I would estimate at least 6 more storefronts on the property (all currently under construction).
The big losers? The Subway store down the street (there is one inside of the Wal-Mart). And now Albertsons and Fred Meyer will have to get aggressive (both have stores within 1 mile).
Looks like a net gain of jobs to the area to me. But then, I am just looking at life through Capitalist/Consumerish lenses (available in the Wal-Mart Optometry kiosk).
Many thanks to Mr. Postman for this classic picture:
You KNOW the guy in back: Joseph Stalin, Patron Saint of the Democrat Party.
You may NOT know the lady woman politician in front: Sen. Jeannie Kohl-Welles. Not my favorite politician in the State of Washington.
Stay tuned for updates concerning her. She was worth several posts LAST session!
That is the title of an editorial from the Seattle Post (lack of) Intelligencer concerning the Federal Way School Board requirement that teachers wishing to show Al Gore’s PowerPoint on Film “An Inconvenient Truth”, must run the decision through an administrator, and present the opposing viewpoint.
Those Federal Way School Board members are such clever politicians. They have used bureaucratic rules to gore classroom exploration of climate change, a critical topic for students’ futures.
To the contrary, the School Board feels that the debate is SO important to students future that they need to hear more than ONE SIDE of the argument. And the use of the word “gore” is just a little over the line of cute. I am sure the writer thought it was an inside joke, that only good Liberals would catch…
In responding to a parent complaint about Al Gore’s documentary on the threat of global warming, the board put a mythical pursuit of balance ahead of reality.
First, there were at least half a dozen complaints, not ONE, as is implied. But then, accuracy is not important, when the writers heart is pure. And how, exactly, does REQUIRING the opposing viewpoint be shown create a “mythical” pursuit of balance?
They enacted what is apparently a first: a virtual ban on showing “An Inconvenient Truth,” hidden behind hobbling of teachers’ options through demands for principal and superintendent OKs and presentation of opposing views to Gore’s stirring calls to concern and action.
What they did, was enact a “Virtual Ban” on presenting ONE SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT.
Any classroom teacher worth his salt is going to let students know about debates on the science of global warming.
Classroom: “Now kids, some people think that global warming is not real, just like they used to think the world was flat. Now here is former Vice President Gore to tell you about the REALITY and SCIENCE of Global Warming for the next 90 minutes”.
But equating the consensus on mankind’s role in causing the problem (which even the Bush White House now acknowledges, for crying out loud) with the voices of doubt is a flat misrepresentation of prevailing views.
Considering the Liberals opinion of President Bush, and the Administration, I would think this would have been enough to convert them all to skeptics. Don’t even get me started on the illogic of using government officials as a gauge of scientific process and reality.
As school board members well know, teachers have only so much time. Teachers also need a certain amount of freedom in using it. Maybe the duck-and-cover board members forgot that.
What they REALLY mean with this parting shot, is that there is a LOT of propaganda and indoctrination to cram into the young heads full of mush, and the requirement to present a balanced view on dogma is distracting and dangerous to the Liberal mindset they are trying to enforce.
What never ceases to amaze me is that since the 1960s, it is the Liberals (showing or characterized by broad-mindedness ) in this nation that demand that there be NO DEBATE on things like Climate Change, Minimum Wage, Abortion, Social Security, and other items in their quasi-religious world view. These things are TOO IMPORTANT TO DEBATE in their twisted little world.
You can never have too much information (well, there is one person that I work with, who has some questionable personal habits), only too much censorship.