International Alarmism . . . on an Olympic scale

One thing about the global warming nuts . . . most of them aren't stupid enough to put a date on their claimed disasters.  They don't want to make claims that - when time passes - are proven wrong.  But, in her push for the 2016 Olympics, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara stuck her neck out (sort of) stating that the 2016 games "could be . . . the last Olympics in the history of mankind" because "global warming is getting worse.  We have to come up with measures without which the Olympic Games could not last long.  Scientists have said we have passed the point of no return."  (Link to story here.)

So, you heard it from Shitaro first . . . the 2020 Olympics are canceled due to climate change.

Think she'll admit her mistake during the opening ceremonies? 

Obamacare Update

Federal funding of abortion . . . in.  (Link here.)

Requirements to show identification to prevent illegal immigrants from participating in the plan . . . out.  (Link here.)

Senators taking their planned recess in October to go home and, very likely, hear more from angry constituents . . . no bleeping way.  (Link here.)

Why the rush Harry?  Are you afraid of what the folks in Nevada might tell you?  Are you afraid that if you wait much longer the rest of Obamacare's dwindling support will fade away?  All of the above?

Keep the pressure on folks.  Keep exposing the truth about this so-called reform.  Contact Claire McCaskill and tell her to "just say no."

Washington University . . . the good and the very, very bad

Today, my wife and I had the extreme joy of seeing our baby on an ultrasound.  The facility where it was performed was operated by Washington University and staffed by its employees.  Our technician was kind, and wonderful.  And the sight of our unborn child was breathtaking, as it always is.  Life . . .  so small but so wonderfully real.  Thanks to Washington University for that.  It is good.

But seeing the Washington University Physicians logo on the ultrasound technician's lab coat reminding me of this entry I had noticed on a friend's blog a few days ago.  That post linked to one from Joe Ortwerth at the Missouri Family Policy Council's site.  The headline says it all . . . "Washington University Teams with Barnes Hospital to Train Abortionists."  For all the sad details, link here.

What's the difference between God and Barack Obama?

God doesn't think that he's Barack Obama.

I know, I know.  It is an old, possibly bad joke.  Maybe even a cheap shot.  But check out the link below.  Even if the president doesn't, it sure as **** looks like Obama's supporters think he's God.

 

(Thanks to the Timman for posting this video at his blog, with his own Catholic twist.  Link here.)

May you live in interesting times.

Today, Iran (which is, of course, only pursuing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes) "test-fired missiles with sufficient range to strike Israel, parts of Europe and American bases in the Persian Gulf." (Link to story here.)

Liberal Semantic Games

The House of Representatives passed a "cap-and-trade" bill in June and since then the Senate has gotten an earful from angry constituents hoping to scuttle such a major fiasco from becoming law. "Cap-and-trade" has fallen out of favor. Shocking how that happens when folks discover what it means to them.

What's a good liberal environmentalist to do? Repent and move on?

Nope. Not if you're John Kerry (D-Mass.). If you're Senator Kerry you just change the words. Kerry is quoted in this New York Times piece as saying his new version of the House bill is not a "cap-and-trade bill." Instead, he's calling it "a pollution reduction bill." And who couldn't support that?

What to do when you're losing in the realm of ideas? Resort to semantics. I hate to return to the lipstick on a pig imagery . . . but if the shoe fits.

Neck-and-Neck . . . but looking good for Roy Blunt

Results were recently released for Rasmussen's survey of likely Missouri voters polled on September 21.  (Link to Political Fix blurb from the Post-Dispatch here; and poll details here.)  Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan are in a dead heat for the U.S. Senate in 2010 - tied with 46% of the vote.  Blunt has gained significant ground since the last-cited poll in April, which showed him way behind.  

But even better than the horse-race trend are the results of the other polling questions that Rasmussen asked of Missourians . . .

44% strongly disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president (while just 30% strongly approve;

59% oppose Obamacare (48% strongly oppose it) and 51% believe that the quality of healthcare in America will get worse and 57% believe that costs will go up if the plan passes;

And 79% believe that taxes will have to be raised if Obamacare is implemented.

The long and short of this poll is this . . . Missouri is not liberal.  This is a conservative or, at the very least conservative-leaning state.  We don't (and shouldn't) trust Barack Obama.  It is no wonder that Robin Carnahan is nowhere to be see or heard.

2010 is vitally important.  Roy Blunt is vitally important.  Missouri can't afford to sent Obama and the Democrats another vote in the Senate.

Was Muammar Qaddafi's speech to the United Nations yesterday the longest since . . .

somebody took the microphone away from Bill Clinton?

Another St. Louis Democrat going to jail

Last month saw State Senator Jeff Smith and Representative Steve Brown plead guilty to corruption charges.  (Link here.)  

Today Representative T.D. El-Amin plead guilty to federal bribery charges.  (Link here.)

What might happen at the end of October?

Will any Democrats be left when the Missouri legislature reopens in January?

Do as we say . . . not as we do.

The United Nations is hosting a Summit on Climate Change where world leaders have gathered to see who can sound the most alarmist about the death and destruction soon to be wrought by "global warming."  They're all calling for action now . . . action from you and me - not them, they're special.  As Mark Knoller reports at cbsnews.com, "each foreign leader in town has a convoy of vehicles.  Some of them, like President Obama's motorcade, are 20-to-30 vehicles in length.  It's so long - it seems that when the front of it reaches the U.N., the back end is still back at his hotel."  (Link here.)

A bunch of hypocrites?  Or, do they know that the "threat" caused by automobile emissions is actually minimal?

"Will Babies with Down Syndrome Just Disappear?"

That's a question asked in a sad and thoughtful piece posted by Albert Mohler on Friday.  In its lead paragraph, Mohler writes:

"The development of prenatal diagnostic technologies presents a constellation of moral issues -- with the diagnosis of Down syndrome front and center.  Over the past several years, a marked decrease in the number of babies born with Down syndrome has been both observed and widely reported.  This decrease can be traced directly to the decision to abort after prenatal diagnosis."

(Emphasis added.  Link to read Mohler's piece here.)

Screening babies for various diseases, including many that cannot be treated - like Down syndrome - has become the norm these days.  But why screen for something that can't be treated?  What's the point?

A legitimate point could be to prepare the parents for the challenges of raising a child with special needs.  But, I fear, the point of most of this testing is to cull the herd - to weed out and kill the children society deems not good enough.  And that fear, it seems, is being realized in modern America.

Before my first child was born, he was given standard screening tests.  The results were scary.  There was a high risk for Down syndrome.  We cried.  We worried.  And we were told that an amniocentesis would give us certainty.  We declined that procedure because it posed a risk to the baby (a low one, but a risk nonetheless) and because certainty would not change anything.  There would be no change in prenatal care and no way to "treat" the genetic abnormality, if there was one.  And we already loved our baby.  Our baby may or may not have had Down syndrome but he was our baby - a baby - a human life - a miracle as all babies are miracles.

Does anyone really believe that all the men and women, boys and girls living their lives today with Down syndrome would rather be dead?  Would the world be a better place without "those people?"

Aborting children because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome is appalling, disgusting, horrid.  

Killing these babies before they can be born is morally equivalent to rounding up all the toddlers in the country with Down syndrome and drowning them in a lake.  (Or, I should say, immorally equivalent.)  If the first is an okay choice, wouldn't the second be?

Will Jimmy Carter please shut up?

It seems like former president Jimmy Carter has been in the news as much in the last week as he was in 1978.  First, he belittled opposition to Barack Obama as racist.  I didn't worry much about that, though, and chalked it up to the ramblings of a washed-up, liberal has-been who is enjoying a return to the limelight mostly because large numbers of Americans aren't old enough to remember what a horrible job he did as president.

But now Carter is criticizing his country, our country, abroad and in support of a South American dictator.  Talking about a coup staged against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Carter told a newspaper in Columbia that, "I think there is no doubt that in 2002, the United States had at the very least full knowledge about the coup, and could even have been directly involved."  (Link to story here.)

If Carter was merely a private citizen, that would be one thing.  Every American is entitled to his or her own opinion - even if it is baseless or outrageous or anti-American.  But Carter is not merely a private citizen.  As a former president, he is, like it or not, a representative of the nation everywhere forever.  And his words are giving aid and comfort to an enemy.  

It is time for Jimmy Carter to shut up and fade away.

Maybe we should "swear in" President Obama before he speaks

Witnesses in a court of law are required to be sworn in before giving testimony.  They swear to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."  

Joe Wilson (R-SC) famously interrupted Barack Obama during his healthcare speech to Congress shouting "You lie!" when the president claimed that his healthcare plans would not cover illegal immigrants.  Since then that interruption, folks have debated whether or not Obamacare (Version ?) did or did not provide such coverage.  

Whether Obama was telling the truth or not is one thing but now we can be certain that he was not telling the whole truth . . .

Obama doesn't want to give "illegal immigrants" taxpayer-funded healthcare - nope - he wants to give them amnesty, convert them into "legal immigrants" and then provide them with taxpayer-funded healthcare.  (Link to story here.)

So Obama doesn't support ONLY free healthcare for illegal immigrants - he wants to grant them all citizenship first.

Next time Obama speaks, I want him to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Obama Abandons Allies

Today, on the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland, Barack Obama announced that the United States would not (though promised by his predecessor) build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.  (Link to story here.)

Update 9/18/09 . . . The front page of a Polish newspaper today screamed "Betrayal!  The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back."  (Link to story here.)

Thanks Sarah!

Sarah Steelman will not be running for U.S. Senate in 2010.  (Link to story here.)  Her decision to avoid a sure-to-be bitter primary fight with Roy Blunt is commendable.  It is good for the State and the GOP.

But I'm not saying that because I don't like Steelman as a candidate.  I do.  Rather I believe that Republicans fighting each other helps Democrats.  Steelman's challenge of Kenny Hulshof in the gubernatorial primary last year all but ensured Jay Nixon's election.  With no serious primary challenger, Blunt can focus on conservative Missouri's real opponent . . . Robin Carnahan.  (Where is she, by the way?)

Here's hoping that Steelman sets her sights on Claire McCaskill in 2012.

Wow - even Jay Rockefeller now realizes that Obamacare is a bad idea.

Yesterday, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) released his long-awaited and no-longer-bipartisan healthcare reform bill.  The bill proposes to pay for Obamacare by imposing a huge tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance plans.  But even fellow Democrat Jay Rockefeller has figured out what such a tax would really mean . . . "virtually every single coal miner is going to have a big, big tax put on them," just like millions of other middle-class Americans.  (Link to story here.)

This thing must be stopped.  Now and forever.

Signs of Hope in D.C.

What would happen if a million people showed up in Washington, D.C., to protest Barack Obama and creeping socialism?

Well, they showed up (link to story here), so I suppose we'll see in the days and months ahead.

Thanks to those of you who attended and made your voice heard.

What happens when you place a "community organizer" in charge of U.S. foreign policy? (Part 2)

Part 1, back in March, showed one of America's foes taking advantage of Barack Obama's foreign policy naiveté.  (They're still at it, by the way.)

Now, in Part 2, we see America's friends "betrayed . . . irked . . . slighted" as the Obama administration considers pulling the plug on Bush administration plans to protect Central Europe with a missile defense system and fails to send a top official to Poland for the commemoration ceremony recognizing the beginning of World War II.

While Democrats quarrel with the "Bush Doctrine," the Obama Doctrine seems to be developing into "dialogue" with our enemies, capitulation, and snubbing of our allies.

Illegal Immigrants beware . . . Walker is on patrol

Texas Governor Rick Perry, fed up with the continuing failure of the federal government to secure America's border with Mexico, has called in the Rangers.  (Link to story here.)  Perry's calls to Washington for National Guard troops have been ignored and somebody's got to step in and do the job.  

Good luck Gov. Perry and good luck Rangers.  Thanks for your efforts.

A cyberspace pat on the back to Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer

Why does he deserve a pat on the back?  Read his response to a selfish, whining, e-mail that he received from someone upset by the inconvenience of a fallen hero's funeral procession at this link.  Thanks for telling it like it is Sheriff.

Don't trust ANYTHING you hear on CNN

CNN's Political Ticker is touting a "double-digit post-speech jump" in support for Obamacare.  (Link here.)  "Two out of three Americans who watched President Barack Obama's health care reform speech Wednesday night," the CNN report continues, "favor his health care plans - a 14-point gain among speech-watchers."

Wow.  That sure differs with the mood on the street here in St. Louis.  But CNN isn't bothering to tell you that it created the numbers, very nearly, from whole cloth.  What they actually did (and give them some credit for disclosing it, though at the bottom of the article) is poll a bunch of Democrats and almost no Republicans.  So, shocker, a bunch of Democrats think Obama's plan is just peachy.

This isn't news.  This isn't reporting.  This certainly isn't journalism.  No, as James Earl Jones would say, this is CNN. 

What's buried in the healthcare bills?

According to Mark Mix at the Wall Street Journal, forced unionization of healthcare workers.  (Link here.)

Do Democrats represent Americans? Or not?

I'm just wondering because the latest poll shows that 52% of American oppose Obamacare.  (Link here.)

Where's Robin Carnahan?

Apparently, nobody knows . . . and her silence is being noticed nationally. (Link to story here.) But, as Jake Wagman notes in the Post-Dispatch piece, she's keeping Missouri voters "in the dark on certain policy positions in the here-and-now, issues such as health care and environmental legislation. While those votes may be in the rear view mirror, the issues provide telling insight into how a candidate would behave as a legislator."

Shocker: Obama wants tax on soda

In a complete surprise, Barack Obama is open to a new tax on consumption of soda and other sugary drinks. (Link to story here.)

Actually, of course, it is no surprise at all. None of us should be surprised that a liberal Democrat stands ready and willing to raise your taxes. The fact that doing so could take a swipe at your freedom to drink what you want to drink is an added bonus. Dealing a blow to American businesses, like Coca-Cola and Pepsico . . . well, that's icing on the cake.

Democrats like to yell and scream about keeping government "out of the bedroom." How about keeping it out of our refrigerators!

Obama wants to end healthcare debate . . . me too!

I'm always pleased when Barack Obama and I agree on something.  Today, in his Labor Day speech in Cincinnati, the president said "every debate at some point comes to an end.  At some point, it's time to decide.  At some point, it's time to act.  Ohio, it's time to act and get this thing done."  (Link here.)

I agree completely.  It is time to stick a fork in Obamacare and call it done.

But let's dig a little deeper into Obama's statement.  He's calling for a vote on and, presumably, passage of "this thing" when nobody, nowhere, knows the details of the "thing" he's talking about.  The House has passed a bill; the Senate hasn't; and the president has proposed nothing.  The "public option" is on the table one day and off the table the next.

Doesn't calling for an end to debate at this point in time seem a bit ludicrous?

Three Peas in a bad Pod . . .

According to a new paper published by the Institute of Economic Affairs and endorsed by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan, Barack Obama is making the same mistakes made by Franklin Roosevelt (which prolonged the Great Depression by several years) and also by Argentinean dictator Juan Peron (which caused his country's economy "collapse from first to Third World status").  (Link to story here.)

If lessons in history are not well learned . . . 

Carnahan ducking Blunt . . . and the issues

Today, I was in the car listening to Rep. Roy Blunt on the Mark Reardon Show on KMOX.  (Link here to hear it yourself.)  Blunt referred to a challenge that he has consistently issued to his presumptive opponent in Missouri's 2010 race for the U.S. Senate, Robin Carnahan, since February.  That challenge is, in Blunt's own words, "let's talk about the issues anywhere, anytime, anyplace."  The latest incarnation of the challenge was to have a joint news conference on healthcare tomorrow in front of Carnahan's office in Jefferson City.  But Carnahan has refused, as she's been refusing for months.

Is Carnahan simply ducking Blunt, afraid to face off with him on these issues?  Or is she ducking the issues themselves?  

I think both . . . she's nowhere to be seen.  She's not talking about he issues.  And she's trying to stay out of the public eye.  Why?  Because she's a liberal Democrat . . . and, thankfully, the bloom seems to be coming off that rose nationwide.

Robin . . . if you want to be a U.S. Senator, tell Missourians what you would do if you were sitting in Kit Bond's chair today.  We deserve to know what kind of Senator you would be.

Obama Propaganda in the Schools

Seriously folks.  This isn't just a pro-Obama video.  It is a propaganda film.  Celebrities pledging allegiance to the Supreme Leader, Barack Obama.  This is scary stuff.  

And it is being used at elementary school assemblies (link to story here) to indoctrinate the youth of America.

I'm a big proponent of public schools.  But if this dung was shown in my children's school, I would seriously consider pulling them.  Parents and communities cannot abandon their responsibility for the education of their children to the government or N.E.A.  If they do, this stuff will be the end result.

Question: How does the U.S. end dependence on foreign oil?

Answer:  More domestic oil.

In related news, oil giant BP announced today "another 'giant' oil discovery" in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.  (Link to story here.)

Fantasy Football Break

Sorry to my regular readers.  Tonight was SLC's fantasy football draft.  No time to blog.  Hopefully, I'll have some time in the morning.