Up, Up, and Away

The U.S. government's budget deficit in 2008 was $450 billion.  (Link here.)

The deficit in 2009 ballooned.  It more than tripled to over $1.4 trillion.  (Link here.)

After Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, where he portrayed himself as as deficit hawk, you would expect the deficit to go down, right?  Not so much.

The White House is projecting a budget deficit for 2010 of $1.6 trillion.  (Link here.)

Will enough ever be enough?

This can't continue.  Cut now.

Another "Global Warming" Lie Exposed - Again

Last week, I wrote about the U.N.'s global warming panel's false claim that the glaciers in the Himalayas were melting so fast that they would be gone by 2035.  (Link here.)

Now, yet another lie has been exposed.  In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report, "it state that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa were being caused by global warming."  Two sources were claimed for these "observed reductions."  Now, it turns out, that those sources were a magazine article and and a geography student's master's degree dissertation.  And both of those sources based their conclusions on, get this, interviews with mountain climbers . . . not scientific measurements . . . interviews.  (Link to story here.)

I suspect that the interviews went something like this . . . 

"Yo, Mr. mountain climber, was there a lot of ice up there?" 

"Yeah man."

"But not as much as last year was there?"

"I dunno, it's all white man.  Snow and ice all over the place.  But it's sure not like it was back in '78.  Man, that was a cold winter."

"So you're telling me that in your experience, it is warmer now than it was that winter."

"Oh yeah.  That was a cold one."

"So the planet must be warming, right?"

"Well, huh, I guess you're right.  Want some granola?"

"No thanks.  I've got what I need."

Is anything about the IPCC scientific?  It sure doesn't seem so.  

Return to the Gulag?

Today in Moscow, "police detained up to 100 anti-Kremlin protesters, including leading opposition figure Boris Nemtsov."  (Link to story here.)  "Hundreds of people gathered to protest what they say is a long-running Kremlin campaign to dismantle the constitutional right to peaceful protest."

If lessons in history are not well-learned . . . Vladimir Putin will start us down the Soviet path once again.

iPad

The Liberals Just Won't Quit

Like the zombies in Michael Jackson's Thriller, the Democrats just won't quit.  Even after losing Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat in deep blue Massachusetts, Nancy Pelosi and her party pals aren't ready to give up on Obamacare.  "We will move on many fronts - - any front we can," said the Speaker of the House and - until we throw the Democrats out of office in the next election - third in line to the presidency, "we are going to get [so called] healthcare reform passed for the American people [whether they want it or not]."  (Link to story here.)

What do you think "any front we can" means?  Political shenanigans, of course.  Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama are still looking for ways to ram socialized medicine through before the November elections and the seating of a new Congress in January.  Be watchful.  Ethics and rules won't stop these people.  And they won't quit - they're like zombies.

Why is a commercial about Pam Tebow's "choice" to keep her baby controversial?

Yesterday, I posted the upcoming commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother's decision not to kill him in 1987. Though the commercial is clearly Pro-Life, why is the "Pro-Choice" community up in arms. Erin Matson a V.P. of the National Organization for Women called the commercial "frankly offensive." She claimed it was "hate masquerading as love. It sends a message that abortion is always a mistake." And Jehmu Greene of the Women's Media Center plans to hold "CBS and the NFL and the other Super Bowl advertisers accountable for inserting an exceedingly controversial issue" into the Super Bowl. (Link to story here.)

Why is this controversial? Aren't these people supposed to be in favor of "choice"? Shouldn't they be applauding the "choice" that Pam Tebow made?

Or are these people finally showing their true colors. They're not "Pro-Choice." They're simply, and sadly, "Pro-Abortion."

"That's not true." -Samuel Alito

Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) didn't call President Obama a liar tonight (like he did last year), but Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito did.  Alito didn't shout it out and his opinion is only known to us through the magic of lip-reading but he's right.  And, thankfully, it seems as though Americans are starting to realize that.

Random thoughts on the State of the Union

To any of you who want my exhaustive opinion of the State of the Union address delivered earlier this evening by Barack Obama, I am sorry.  I can't oblige.  I can't stomach the soaring oratory - soaring over the truth that is.

I did tune in long enough (during a commercial break from Friends re-run on TBS) to see Obama blaming George W. Bush for all our woes, even though the deficit more than tripled in the first year of Obama's presidency.  But, of course, we should all know, sayeth the president, things would be so much worse if he (and the Congress - with its big Democrat majorities) hadn't spent all our money.

Now, after the speech, I'm seeing the headlines that Obama declared, "I don't quit."  My first reaction . . . darn, that's too bad.  My second reaction . . . even if he did, would Joe Biden be any better.  I can't imagine he'd be worse.  But better?  My third reaction . . . it is amazing that the thought of quitting the presidency could appear in a man's first State of the Union address.  I don't think things have worked out quite like Barry thought they would.

But, by far, the most noteworthy thing from my, admittedly limited, viewing of tonight's speech was Joe Biden's persistent practice of nodding in agreement after nearly every sentence uttered.  I swear I saw the man nod his head in the background more times than I saw him blink!  I hope he didn't get a concussion.

Tim Tebow is my new favorite quarterback

Why? Tebow will be appearing in a Pro-Life Super Bowl commercial for Focus on the Family. (Link to story here.) Apparently, the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback came after a difficult pregnancy. But his mother chose life.

Thank God for all the mothers who choose life.

One day, may they all.

Drudge Report Corrects Headline

This afternoon, a friend alerted me to the fact that the Drudge Report had scratched out the "THEY" in its headline about who owed the federal debt and replaced it with "WE".

I wonder what made Matt Drudge realize his mistake.

Thanks for getting it right Matt. And thanks for reading Saint Louis Conservative.

Blunt leads Carnahan . . . by six points

For those of you wondering about the Missouri 2010 Senate Race, there's a new poll out . . .

Roy Blunt 49% - Robin Carnahan 43%  (Link to Rasmussen Report here.)

Imagine how high Blunt's numbers will go when/if Carnahan starts speaking in public again.

What's wrong with this Drudge Report headline?

Matt Drudge is the best at what he does.  He (or his people, he probably has people by now) seem to screen everything and pull out the truly newsworthy pieces from everywhere around the internet and provide links in one place.  The Drudge Report is the first place I go to find out what is going on around the world.  

But I've got a gripe.  He's linked to this Associated Press story (for lack of a better word) that lists the public debt, receipts, and outlays of the federal government for fiscal 2008 and 2009.  The numbers are too big for the AP to print in their entirety.  No big deal, right?  Lots of financial statements drop off three zeros.  Well, when talking about the U.S. federal debt, they had to drop six - SIX - zeros to make the numbers comprehensible.  How could anyone comprehend that the total public debt outstanding as of January 22 was $12,302,465,000,000.  That's over 12 TRILLION dollars folks.  TWELVE TRILLION!

The Drudge Report added the zeros, so what's my gripe?  Well, "THEY" don't owe that massive amount of money -- "WE" do.  If only "they" did, I wouldn't be worried.  But since I do, and my kids do, and you and your kids and grandkids and their grandkids do, I'm a little bit worried.  And more than a little bit angry . . .

Dear Washington,

It's time to cut spending, massively.  Cut, cut, cut.  No new programs, not a one, until you've cut three times its cost from the budget.  And no fuzzy math.  Real numbers, real cuts, not reductions in percentage increase for your pet projects.  Not President Obama's tiny, tinkering, proposal to freeze - that's freeze, not roll back - spending on a part of the budget.

And, while you're tinkering, you might want to stimulate growth in the economy by maybe, get this, cutting taxes.

Sincerely,

SLC

Himalayan Glacier Update

They're still there.

Now, in an update to the previous story about the IPCC's false and unscientific claim that all the glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains would melt away by 2035, we have verification from the IPCC report's author that the claim was included for political reasons . . . Dr. Murari Lal told the U.K.'s Daily Mail that he was well aware of the fact that the claim "did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research."  Nonetheless, Lal admitted, "we thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action."  (Link to story here.)

In other words, the IPCC is willing to say anything - true or not, verified or not - to support their political agenda.

Shocker, eh.  It is almost as shocking as the breakup of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.  Hollywood marriages are usually so solid.

Here's something just as shocking . . . the chairman of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute used the "bogus" claims about melting Himalayan glaciers to win grants worth more than a million dollars.  (Link to story here.)

So is the IPCC falsely pushing its "global warming" agenda for political purposes - or personal economic gain?  Or, like most liberals worldwide, do they see those two things as one in the same?

More Meaningless Babble and Fuzzy Math

In the midst of mass unemployment and the tanking U.S. economy, the Obamites are still patting themselves - and the president - on the back for the jobs they claim were "saved or created" by the "stimulus" plan.  Just in case there is anyone out there who still believes them - check this out - three top Obama advisors appeared on three different Sunday morning talk shows today and gave three different totals for the number of jobs that the government spending a trillion dollars of your children's and grandchildren's money "saved or created."  Valerie Jarrett gave a vague "thousands and thousands," while Robert Gibbs put the figure at 1.5 million, and David Axelrod claimed credit for "more than 2 million jobs."

They're making it up as they go.  If you didn't realize it before, the evidence is now pretty clear.

Don't believe a word you hear from these people without some independent verification.

I'm from Missouri . . . you've got to show me.

Hugo's New Conspiracy Theory . . . or is it an old movie plot?

It seems that our hemisphere's loudest communist dictator, Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez, is blaming the United States Navy for testing a massive new weapon that caused the earthquake in and destruction of Alderaan, I mean Haiti.  This test, of course, was only a test and the true target is the Secret Rebel Base on Yavin IV, I mean Iran.

I wish that I was making this all up.  But I'm not.  Link here for the story.

This latest Chavez rant is worthy of Oliver Stone . . . or is it George Lucas?

"Government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker's corporate identity."

So says Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark decision issued today striking down a major plank of the abominable 2002 campaign-finance law known as McCain-Feingold.  (Link to story here.)

I'm amazed that it took this long to strike down that monstrosity.  Though four liberals and questionable Kennedy explain a lot.

I'm also amazed that, with straight faces, can read the First Amendment (quoted here as a convenience for those who may never have - Stephen Breyer perhaps - "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech") and say that the Constitution allows Congress to make a law prohibiting television commercials advocating support of or opposition to a political candidate in an upcoming election.  Liberalism, again, explains a lot.

It is vital to your freedom and mine that the current balance of power on the Supreme Court remains until the next Republican president.  We should all be praying for the health of Chief Justice John Roberts,  and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito.  And we should be praying that three years from yesterday, the remaining Justices all decide to take up golf and retire.

Three years from today . . .

Barack Obama will be sworn in for another four years in office . . . OR, if we all do everything we can, he will no longer be president.

One quarter, twenty five percent of this national nightmare is over.

Hang in there America.  Together, we can make it.

Do you believe in miracles? . . . YES!

A Republican Senator from Massachusetts.  (Link to story here.)  Congratulations Senator-elect Scott Brown.

Could he be #41?

The latest polls show Scott Brown well ahead of Martha (or is it Marcia?) Coakley in Massachusetts.  (Link here to see for yourself.)

Let's hope only live, local, registered voters, vote tomorrow . . . and only once each.

Scott Brown Election-Night Watch Party

Ed Martin, a Republican candidate hoping to unseat Russ Carnahan for Congress in October is hosting a Senate Watch Party tomorrow night from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at 1921 South Brentwood Boulevard in Brentwood.  Here's a link to the events page at Martin's website.  The establishment is only identified by its street address at the site but, since the address matches, I'm assuming that the party will be at O'B. Clark's.  

The party is, of course, organized to watch the election reports from the special election in Massachusetts where Republican Scott Brown is gaining momentum in his bid to end the Democrats' super-majority in the U.S. Senate.

Go Scott Go!  And, in October, Go Ed Go!

If you've got the time and inclination, head to Brentwood tomorrow night and lend two fellow conservatives your support.