"A Nation of Cowards"

I'm not sure whether Attorney General Eric Holder is ignorant or dishonest. (My cynicism puts its money on deliberate stupidity.)

In a speech last week, Holder said "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." He also said that "we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race." and that America today frequently "does not ... differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago."

No one with eyes and a brain can possibly say this country "does not ... differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago." Fifty years ago, the Democratic Party in Congress was still blocking anti-lynching legislation, and blacks and Hispanics were second-class citizens at best. Fifty years ago, the civil rights movement was barely under way and the Civil Rights Act was still five years in the future. Fifty years ago, there were still "Whites Only" water fountains, and signs in this state saying "No Dogs Or Mexicans". Somehow, Eric Holder thinks that's still the way it is.

At least in this part of the country, there are two reasons race isn't a big topic of discussion.

• The main reason is that, most of the time, race is simply not an issue.

• The minor secondary reason is the concern that you will be attacked by the race-baiters and professional grievance-mongers if you don't preach their gospel.

Somehow I doubt this state is all that different from the rest of the country. Seems to me it's just Eric Holder.

The Reality of Islam

Today, I come before you to warn of another great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, the end of democracy. It is not a religion, it is a political ideology. It demands you respect, but has no respect for you.

This is a quotation (emphasis added) from the speech Dutch parliament member Geert Wilders would have given at the House of Lords if Britain hadn't decided pandering to violent Muslims was more important than freedom of speech.

Remembering the Carter Years

A commenter on Gateway Pundit made a very insightful observation:

There are two kinds of people in the electorate:
 
1. People who remember how horrible the Jimmy Carter years were.
 
2. People who are about to find out.

That would be Jimmy Carter, the worst president the U.S. has ever had. Will Barack Obama be as bad? The evidence isn't in yet, but it doesn't look good.

The Earth Is Cooling

The global warming crowd must be going nuts! The things man is doing that are supposedly responsible for "global warming" are increasing, but global temperatures are going down. That strongly suggests man isn't actually responsible. That's why "650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis."

There are lots of examples of this trend running around. American Digest provides one, from St. Augustine, Florida, earlier this month.


A broader, less anecdotal, view comes from NOAA.


The bottom line: Global temperatures have been dropping for a decade — right in line with solar activity — and are now back where they were when the news magazines were warning of the threat of a new ice age.

Why the Rush?

No hope — just fear.

President Obama has been saying the stimulus bill must be rushed through, and that any delay “will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession.” His supporters have also been working overtime to make Americans fear the future so they can get this bill passed.

Others have suggested another reason Congressional Democrats feel the need to rush: “The responsibilities of leadership have a way of broadening a president's views. Democrats want to act before that happens.”

I don’t think these adequately explain it. (I especially doubt the second reason — so far — given that Obama sent a White House aircraft to drag Senator Sherrod Brown from his mother’s wake to cast the deciding vote for this bill.) I think the Administration and Congressional Democrats are afraid that, if they don’t act right now, the recession will end before they can do something so they can claim credit for the improvement.

So, now that this massive, monstrous “stimulus” spending bill has been passed — with the President sure to sign it — what can we expect from it? I think Albuquerque Journal cartoonist John Trever is right on point (as usual):

An Open Letter on the "Stimulus" Pork Bill

Senator

How can this be called a stimulus bill when its spending goes out for a decade? If it's stimulus, it has to have an effect NOW. This bill won't do it.

This bill has very little stimulus in it. It is a bad bill, misleadingly titled, that appears designed simply to circumvent normal budget processes and policy debate. Nothing is such an emergency that it justifies passing such a garbage bag.

The President says we need a rescue and recovery bill, and that may be true. But this "stimulus" and "recovery" bill will only make things worse. Your own Congressional Budget office says that within two years, at most, this bill will be worse than doing nothing.

This bill is a pig -- and it's not even half-baked. It's going to make us all sick. It's going to give us economic trichinosis.

Your choice is simple: You can help kill this pile of garbage, or you can follow Harry Reid's orders. Please show you are not just a minor flunkey. Kill this bill and start over.

A Modest Stimulus Proposal

Somehow, I don't think the Congressional Democrats have economic stimulus in mind in pushing their "stimulus" bill. The weekend's action illuminates this point. If economic stimulus was really the point of the bill, it wouldn't have so much of its spending from 3 to 19 years out from the present. In addition, if stimulus was really the point, Congressional Democrats would not have blocked a "trigger" amendment to cut off the bill's spending if the economy recovered since such post-recovery stimulus would only cause an economy-destroying inflation. Indeed, this bill is so bad the Congressional Budget Office says it will damage the economy in the longer term.

But then this is really a spending bill, not a stimulus bill. That being the case, I would suggest Mrs Critter's substitute for the Congressional Democrats' bill:

1. All taxpayers keep all their income and spend it any way they wish, thereby creating many jobs.

2. The Congress spends money as they wish.

3. The Treasury prints as much money as is needed to cover Congress' expenditures.

This proposal is exquisitely simple — Congress is already doing numbers 2 and 3, and needs only to find enough honesty to include number 1 explicitly (rather than implicitly) in the nation's fiscal policy. And by doing away with all tax collections (income, excise, estate, etc.), the nation will do away with an expensive and useless exercise and recognize that it can never collect enough taxes to make any difference with regard to Congressional spending. In fact, we will save money by doing away with the IRS and other associated agencies.