From the mouth of the enemy (AP);

Analysis: Clinton calm in hostage crisis

When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.

Easy to be poised and calm, when you were hundreds of miles away from the incident.  I mean, c’mon, it’s not like she was office where it nutbar was threatening the lives of people Hillary has probably only met in pasing, if at all.

The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for — namely, that the Democratic presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner.

“I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well,” she declared as she stood alone at the microphone….

It was a vintage example of a candidate taking a negative and turning it into a positive. And coming just six weeks before the presidential voting begins, the timing could hardly have been more beneficial to someone hoping to stave off a loss in the Iowa caucuses and secure a win in the New Hampshire primary.

Okay, that last line is about the only thing is this whole puff piece that could even remotely be considered “objective”…

Aides said Clinton was home Friday afternoon, getting ready to deliver a partisan speech in Virginia to the Democratic National Committee, when she was told three workers in her Rochester, N.H., headquarters had been taken hostage by a man claiming to have a bomb….

The aides said Clinton immediately canceled her trip and began working the phones. She later told reporters she had New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, a fellow Democrat, on the phone in eight minutes.

Over the ensuing five hours, as a state trooper negotiated with the suspect and hostages were released one-by-one, Clinton continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials.

“I knew I was bugging a lot of these people, it felt like on a minute-by-minute basis, trying to make sure that I knew everything that was going on so I was in a position to tell the families, to tell my campaign and to be available to do anything that they asked of me,” the New York senator said.

THAT is how she is “Calm in the face of a crisis”?  By pertering the first responders, who were just a tad busy trying to save lives?  But then she quickly recovers:

“They were the professionals, they were in charge of this situation, whatever they asked me or my campaign to do is what we would do,” Clinton said.

But the reporter still has to give the impression that Hillary was in control:

Along with taking charge while giving the professionals free rein, Clinton offered up a third dimension to her crisis character: humanity. She said she felt “grave concern” when she first heard the news of the hostage-taking.

“It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time,” Clinton said.

Ah yes, play the mommy card. 

It was a thawing moment for a stoic figure who once snapped that she opted for professional life instead of staying home to bake cookies…

You can just imagine the reporter casting a longing gaze at a freeze frame of Hillary from the news conference as he writes the piece.

And them he implies that Hillary has “schooled” us:

Class dismissed.

It’s too bad that the “class” wasn’t on journalistic ethics and objectivity.

A quick search of “Glen Johnson AP” beings up a number of his pieces for that news service.  From a glance at the first page of results, I see a number of negative pieces on Mitt Romney, and one positive on Rep. Barney Frank (D- GLBT).

The Washington Times reports on a new revelation that, indeed, the Democrat Party is the party of the RICH.

Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional districts.

In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who lives in the Seattle or Portland areas. Indeed, we are reminded of it every election cycle.

My personal theory is that these people (the Money behind the Democrat Party, if not the foot-soliders), are, to a minor extent, Old Money (not so much on the Left Coast as on the East) who have little or no concept of the value of Work and sacrifice.  But far more so New Money, that DO understand the value of work and personal sacrifice – but little else.  Unfortunately, most have been raised and indoctrinated through the schools, and worse, Higher Education, to be souless, amoral, and with only progressive oriented ethics.  Since they are spending a great deal of their time amassing, and maintaining, wealth and possessions (se McMansion), the guilt-load becomes almost unbearable, and they must enlist others to “do good for them” (see Affluenza).

In steps the Democrat Party, and their affiliated hangers on and fellow travellers, willing to take their money to support the Party’s goal of taking more of everyones money, to DO GOOD.

The most egregious case is Warren Buffett, constantly complaining that his Taxes aren’t high enough.  Strange, since I am unaware of ANY law preventing him from paying MORE than the required amount of taxes – or from donating his entire wealth to the government – or better, directly to charity.  What he really means is, everyone should pay more taxes, because the Government is a better arbiter of where your money gets spent than you are.

Imagine my shock and horror this morning, when I began to go about the normal Sunday morning routine, and discovered that it was 60 minutes later than we thought it was.

It took about 240 seconds for me to realize what had happened:  My alarm clock (which we both use, as it has two alarm settings) had, thinking the old DST rules were still in effect, fell back one hour last night.

As my wife said, hurrying out the door, as she was now running very late, “time for a new alarm clock”.

This is particularly annoying as the changeover to the new DST was very disrtruptive to my industry, having a large cost in software upgrades and manhours to patch and update older systems, whose programmers had no inkling that COngress, in a fit of trying to show the people that they were trying to DO something about Energy Conservation, cost the economy a huge some of money.

To date, I cannot find a recored that anyone has calculate to the to the economy of the change to the new start/stop dates, but I am sure that there are many people (like me) and companieis that got over the first hump, and neglegted to make a permanent fix, so the total cost is still rising.  An old Estimate is $500 Million, to $1 Billion dollars. 

So, Congress is going to cost me another $40 today, for a new alarm clock. 

And it will STILL be dark when I get up.  Oh, and research seems to be coming up to speed with common sense.  DST may be bad for you.

Oh, and there is still the possibility that DST may go back to the previous rules, (so I am keeping the old clock, just in case), becuase, according to the Act:

SEC 110 DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

    (c) Report to Congress.–Not <<NOTE: 15 USC 260a note.>> later than 9 months after the effective date stated in subsection (b), (March 1, 2007 -ed.) the Secretary shall report to Congress on the impact of this section on energy consumption in the United States.

By my calculations, that is Nov 1, 2007.  Though, considering that Congress is still working on Appropriations Bills that were due Oct 1st, I doubt they will get to this anytime soon.

Thanks to the American Thinker, we learn that:

Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) has been a stalwart supporter of the American-Israel alliance. He recently introduced an amendment to the foreign aid bill that would prohibit groups that deny Israel’s right to exist from receiving American (taxpayer dollar) foreign aid. The amendment passed 390-30.

Of the 30 members of Congress who have no problem with giving money to groups that advocate and plan for the destruction of Israel, 27 of them were Democrats.

I am more aware than most of the reasons the Union movement was so popular in the United States around the turn of the century, and through the 40′s and 50′s.  I am also more aware than most of the reasons Union membership has declined so precipitously in recent decades.

Coming from a long line of Coal miners (and still having some relatives in that industry today) I am painfully and personally aware of the working conditions and treatment of workers that lead to Unionization.  The unbridled expansion and growth of the American economy from the end of the War of Northern Agression, and the hard times of the Depression, led to widespread and horrendous abuse and mistreatment of emplyees, and horrible working conditions, in many industries.

A lot of things began to change after World War II.  Criminal takeovers of some Union leadership, the transformation of America into a manufacturing and industrial powerhouse, and the return of millions of war veterans changed the complexion of the workplace.

As the economy grew and changed, the average worker had to become more educated, and technically savvy.  To compete, business had to adopt, and in some cases exceed, Union type benefits.  This led to the decline of the Unions in all but the most menial, and low skilled jobs, or in those industries where they had a death grip, such as the teamsters, and government employees.

Wait!  Government employees?  What’s up with that?  Are they not skilled, technically adept, and educated?  The inital goal of the Government workers unions were (and remain) the retention of Government jobs as career civil service positions, supplanting the old Patronage system of political appointment. 

Unfortunately, as is always the case when a great deal of money, and therfore Power, is at stake; corruption inevitably follows.  And when the onerus demands of the Union become oppressive, and the “return on investment” of the workers in supporting the Union becomes a liability, the Union loses membership.  And with that Membership, goes both Numbers and Money.

In an effort to stem the tide, the Union bosses have joined with the other bastion of corruption in America, the Political Aristocracy.  As the Arab saying goes, the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend; so the Unions and the political Left work to the same end goal of growing the Unions, and in return, the Unions support the Left – and since many of their end goals are similar, this is also a fairly comfortable marriage of convenience.  The only real disagreement on the end goal, is who will be in charge when all is said and done, but the goal is the same – the complete control of the people and the means of production.  Dress it up in any semantic clothes that you want.

We can see this most evident in Washington State, and on a National Level:

SVC Alumnus has done yoemans work following the HB 2079 scandal here in Washington.  For those unaware, HB 2079 was put forward by the Unions friends on the Left as a way to side step what will surely be an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling that they CANNOT USE AGENCY FEES (monies from non-uinion members that they are REQUIRED to pay the Union in compensation for contract negotiation that the non-union employee benefits from) to support Political spending.  HB 2079 essentially erases the distinction from monies the Union raises for political activities from all other funds collected. 

Nationally, the Employee Free Choice Act  would ELIMINATE the Secret Ballot for votes to Unionize a shop.  Where today, all ballots are secret, under the Act, Union Thugs would be present to see each employee vote, opening the employee up to psychological, and physical, coercion.  If this Act is passed (already in the House, pending in the Senate) and not Vetoed, there would be a wave of unionization unlike anything seen previously.  The economic carnage would be unimagineable, and the political effect profound, and decided left.  America would, in short order, become France, where being just left of center makes you a Right Wing Reactionary, and 35 Hours in the work week is considered akin to being a fuedal serf.

How people can look at Europe, and think that Left wing politics, and powerful, omni-present Unions are a GOOD thing defies logic and common sense.

Most of us in America today (around 85%) are At Will employees.  We are free to quit and move at any time, and we bargain for ourselves in the workplace.  Likewise, our employer can terminate our employment At Will.  In a competetive job market, this system works well, and those that work hard, and improve their job skills, typically advance.  In the world of the Left, and the Unions, Seniority rules, and personal accomplishment and skill means little or nothing.  It is the consistent message of the left, that everyone must be dragged DOWN to the same level, that equality of result is the most important thing.

Except for the Union Bosses, and Political Aristocracy…

NOTE:  For some Fun Facts, check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Union Facts.