Mike Gravel: Libertarian

(originally published March 27, 2008)

WTH???

Mike Gravel recently joined the Libertarian Party.

It is people like him that separate the men from the boys (or the women from the girls) when it comes to claiming one is a libertarian.

Claiming oneself to be libertarian (or Libertarian) is much in vogue these days. Especially among Republicans who are fed up with the "business as usual" aspects of Washington politics. However, many fail the important sniff test of big vs. small government.

And Gravel fails that test.

If there were a sanity test he'd fail that one too, but that is besides the point. Gravel is a big supporter of direct democracy and drafted the proposed constitutional amendment to allow a National Initiative, allowing citizens to initiate federal legislation.

You cannot be a big government libertarian anymore than you can be a liberal libertarian (although you can be a big government Libertarian or a liberal Libertarian, but you are just deceiving yourself.)

Direct Democracy and National Initiative are manners in which the federal government would expand exponentially. The federal government needs to contract and the states need to reassert their authority. The more local the control to more people have a say in their government.
In order to lay claim to being a libertarian (and hence a Libertarian) Gravel has to cherry pick specific votes during his three decades in politics while ignoring the bulk of them.

And to top it off Gravel is considering another run for President, this time on the LP ticket. Outstanding, instead of a no name candidate with no chance the party may offer up a known candidate with no chance.

Aside from aligning itself with the Marijuana Party and allowing its candidates to represent multiple "third parties" this is another reason we have a two party system in the US. If the Libertarian Party allows big government statists who have demonstrable histories of not being libertarians on their ticket they will never be anything but a "third" party.

Global Alarming flies south for Spring Break

(originally posted March 25, 2008)

All last year we heard about how global warming was melting Arctic ice at a record pace. Then in December it was noted that the Arctic ice mass was equal to it's post winter size and growing at a much faster pace than imagined.

Also in 2007 the Cult of Global Warming was telling us how the glaciers in Greenland were melting due to carbon dioxide emissions. You had to be a news junkie to learn that the large melt off, on Greenland's Northern Glacier was caused by thermal activity from below the Earth' mantle... air temperature had nothing to do with it.

These two stories, if they were covered at all by the MSM were found buried in the Science pages.

Now the Global Alarmists have turned their attention to the south, specifically Antarctica.
They claim that a giant section of the ice shelf is falling off the Antarctic land mass because of global warming. Since the MSM won't tell you I will... this is bullsh*t!

The piece is falling off, without a doubt, it is the reason why that is faulty. Unlike the Arctic ice mass, Antarctica is a continent with a land mass to support the ice. Ice bergs are always being calves from the Greenland, Arctic, Antarctic and other glaciers. Sometimes these are due to ice melting, others, like in the case of this Antarctic mass, are pushed off because the glacier is growing, not shrinking.

The Antarctic ice mass has been growing over the last few decades and as it grows it pushes outwards, this pushes the ice off the land mass and it continues to grow over the water, once a large section is being buoyed by the water instead of cradled by the earth it begins to fissure, crack and then ice bergs are calved... sometimes huge sections of ice the size of islands break off.

But this Antarctic mass, like the previous ones, are being cast off because the Antarctic glaciers are growing, not because they are shrinking.

The main stream media has bought so much into this global warming scheme that they will not stop at lying to keep the propaganda flowing to the people. They have already marginalized scientists who are skeptical of the scheme and who criticize the MSM for publishing such tainted stories that ignore science.

The main stream media just sucks

(originally posted March 20, 2008)

For years the media has wanted Bill Clinton to allow the National Archives permission to turn over papers from his term as POTUS. Since Hillary threw her name in the ring one of the sets of documents the press requested access to was her schedule as First Lady.

And what was the first great piece of vital and essential information to de derived from this pursuit? What was so important that the MSM threatened to file FOIA lawsuits to get their hands on it?

The first thing that the MSM had to plaster all over the place was that Hillary was in the White House the day Bill sullied Monica's dress in the Oval Office.

That is not news, that is sensationalism. The media outlets are starting to resemble the bastard child of People magazine and The National Enquirer.

How long until Keith Olbermann or Wolf Blitzer is bringing us stories about Bat Boy?

Lie about McCain's anger is nationwide news, truth of liberal hit job ignored

(originally posted March 9, 2008)

Do a web search today and enter the phrase "McCain and New York Times reporter" and you'll find story after story describing McCain's reaction as "flipping out", or McCain as "angry", or "losing cool", "losing nerve" or some other phrase that describes him as having lost this temper and control.

If you haven't seen the clip, and you've just read the transcript it is easy to believe he did lose his temper. However, the attached clip shows that wile he is bringing it home to Bumiller, he is not angry, although I would concede annoyed, angry is not the emotion be displays.

The clip doesn't start at the beginning of the encounter, but the reporter had been pressing home the issue of the conversation between Kerry and McCain in 2004. Bumiller claims to have no knowledge of the conversation, a point alone that would justify having her tossed out of the plane immediately for lying as the NYT would not be likely to plant a greenhorn in the McCain camp, they would embed a veteran, as they did with Bumiller who has been writing for the NYT since at least 1994.

What they don't also show is that McCain gets chummy with his press entourage, he goes back to where they are seated and gives them plenty of extra "unofficial" press time. Sometimes he'll serve them food, other times sit back there and eat off their plates. he has developed a report with the press covering him.. with the exception of Bumiller.

Watch the clip and note he is not yelling, his face remains normal, showing no signs of anger, but the best part is that at times he appears he is smirking. He has her on the ropes and she is clearly unable to deal with it and he appears to know it. And then at 1:10 listen as she finally reveals her hidden agenda. She prodded McCain until he reacted, and then asked "Why are you so angry?"

That was her intent all along, to push him over the edge and she failed miserably. So she asked the question so she could edit out the beginning of the encounter and try to couch her encounter as being attacked by an angry McCain, instead of being owned by a veteran politician.

And just so you understand my perception of these events, and lest you think I am a McCain apologist or carrying his water...

I remember watching the 2000 GOP debates and watching McCain screaming and losing his mind. It only happened once or twice but I remember thinking he was a lunatic. Of course I was voting for Gore that year so perhaps, in retrospect, it was not his sanity that should have been questioned.

But I've seen angry people, and I've seen John McCain angry... and the McCain in the clip is not angry.

So a big thank you to the liberal media for lying to the public once again. The sad part is many people believe it despite evidence that the encounter is not the way the media is describing it, all they have to do is watch the video without the media implanted bias.

Study: Informed People Feel Less Responsible for Climate Change

(originally posted March 4, 2008)

What many of us have known all along... the better informed you are the more you know that global warming is BS!

From Environmental Protection Magazine:

Study: Informed People Feel Less Responsible for Climate Change
March 4, 2008

Mass media efforts to raise American public concern about climate change -- such as Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and the "scientific consensus" media drumbeat – ironically may be having the opposite effect, according to results from a new study appearing in the scientific journal Risk
Analysis.

"Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA" by three scientists at Texas A&M University appears in the February 2008 issue of the peer-reviewed journal.

Paul Kellstedt, Sammy Zahran, and Arnold Vedlitz examined results from an original and representative sample of Americans and found that "more informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global worming and also show less concern for global warming." The researchers also found that "confidence in scientists has unexpected effects: respondents
with high confidence in scientists feel less responsible for global warming."

The basis for the study was a national telephone survey of randomly selected adults in July and August 2004. Overall, 1,093 interviews were conducted, constituting a +/- 3 percent sampling error.

Morristown, NJ and 287G

(originally posted March 4, 2008)

A while back the national news picked up on how the mayor of Morristown, NJ, Donald Cresitello wanted to have 10 of his officers trained by INS under the 287G legislation allowing local law enforcement to enforce immigration law. This would give those officers the ability to detain and hold for INS any illegal aliens who commit a crime, although what is less clear is if they are empowered to do random stops looking for people without papers. A feat that is pretty daunting in Morristown since a crack down on illegal immigrants would effect 50% of the town as it is 25% legal immigrant, and another 25% illegal.

But illegal immigration is not Morristown's biggest problem. Like most of NJ there is no more land for development, but Morristown has the double curse of being an old town with many house 70 to 100 years old, meaning they are huge on large tracts of land but limited ratability. What is inconceivable to many on the west and midwest is that Morristown is not just small, but it is circled completely by another town, and neither town has much land still yet to develop. And on top of Morristown's illegal immigration situation it is also beset by a large public housing development and lots of section 8 housing throughout the town.

So you have a town with few increasing ratables and lots of housing available for ratables has been purchased by the town for subsidized housing, further reducing income. Add to the a downtown that is being refurbished that has caused business to leave until the town square is viable and you have the recipe for disaster. Also, if that weren't bad enough Morristown is the county seat of Morris County, so the county has absorbed lots of space for their purposes, further reducing ratables.

How is tax ratables related to 287G? Glad you asked. The town council and mayor are playing budget chicken. The mayor insists he needs more cops to make 287G pay off for the town and still maintain the same level of protection for the citizens. The council however, told the mayor he had to cut money from his budget. The mayor's solution, cut 12 police jobs; that is over 25% of the force.

Cresitello was also dealt another blow when the INS put in a change to the 287G regulations stating that the county jail had to agree to house the prisoners for INS until they could be placed in the INS detention center. The local sheriff said they could not afford the amount of space Cresitello estimated would be necessary to house illegal immigrants that would be processed due to 287G.

But Cresitello remains undaunted in his pursuit to train his officers in 287G even though he may be laying off the officers he needs to make it work. And even though he doesn't have a place to house detainees. And even though he had a reality check that goes against his, and others, misconceived ideas on illegal immigrants in Morristown.

You see in the first two months of 2008 Morristown has arrested almost 200 people, of that 56 are immigrants, of that 56 only one is an illegal.

And this is where most who claim to be conservatives and I will part ways, at least on this issue. The only way Cresitello will be able to justify having officers trained in 287G is if they make an immediate and effective impact on the number of illegals, and that means detaining illegals that have not committed crimes. It is easy to say that the crime they have committed is being here illegally and that is true. But in order to determine of they are here legally or not means that the police will be stopping people on the street and asking for IDs. And that is not the precepts upon which this country was founded, it was behind the Iron Curtain where you had to show your papers to every officer that asked, not in the USA.

People should not have to prove they are here legally, and the police should not have the power to randomly stop people and ask for ID. If a crime is committed, fine. But with an estimated 12 million illegal aliens, and with 60 million people here legally claiming to be of spanish/hispanic heritage there is an awful lot of people, such as myself, who would potentially be stopped and asked to show proof of citizenship/residency, which I don't carry with me. Nor should I be asked to show ID unless there is a reason, my skin color is not a reason.

And if the police start rounding up people based upon residency status illegals will not report when they are the victims of crime, or I should say, they will report it to an even lesser extent than they do now. That will have the effect of making it open season on illegals once the predators know that the illegals are not going to report the crime. Not reporting crime makes the statistics drop (part of his agenda) but not reporting it does not make crime go away.

If you are from Morristown the name of the mayor is well known as he has owned a business and been a local politician for decades. But what most people forget is that about 15 years ago Mr Cresitello owned the largest, dirtiest, most densely stacked haven for illegals in town. The conditions were so poor, broken doors, broken windows, rats, cockroaches, electrical code violations, no or broken smoke detectors, and over-stacked rooms that he was taken to court and the judge fined him and ordered him to 30 days of house arrest to be served in one of his apartments in that building. Cresitello then appealed saying that he would lose his business and that the sentence was cruel and beyond the scope of the judge. He won and escaped being sentenced to stay in his building that had conditions so harsh it was illegal to make him live there.

So when all is said and done, the reason Cresitello wants to crack down on illegal immigrants in town is because they reported him for being a slum lord and they have caused the crime rate in the town to go up by reporting that they were the victims of crime. Which when the facts are examined it explains why he is so adamant about getting 287G training for some of his officers despite only 1 of 200 arrests being an illegal immigrant and his town being virtually bankrupt. For Cresitello its not business, it's personal.

Leftards

I use this phrase quite often. And almost as often I get nastygrams from the occasional leftard who doesn't like my use of that phrase. They think it is a meaningless word that only serves to spite or annoy them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Being a leftard is a pathological mental disease. The ultraleft has been suffering from a number of disorders, such as Bush Derangement Syndrome, that has left them unable to think, act, feel, or behave like rational adults. Devout liberalism is in fact a mental disorder. But unlike most mental disorders it can be cured. And much to the chagrin of most liberals, without medication.

But it requires self discipline. It means reading a whole article instead of just the headlines. it means questioning a reporters bias instead of accepting it blindly. It means standing up for the rights of all people, not just select groups of them.

Leftardism can make people forget simple things, like there are 50 states in the US, not 57. And why we fought WW2. And they will call Marines baby killers. And after this display of ignorance of US history and denigrating those who chose to serve the USA they will claim (not in the video but in usual Code Pink dogmatic rhetoric) that they love the country and support he troops, that is why they want the troops home now.

B. Hussein is just another lying politician...

...regardless of what the staged fainting Obamarettes want you to believe.




Prior to the start of the primaries I had said Obama is way inexperienced on national matters to be a serious contender for the White House, lacking in both policy and executive skills and experience. But to get where he is he had to have an impressive body count to make it that far in the Chicago political machine.

Now it appears that his NAFTA attacks on Clinton and McCain are typical political filibustering. Big bang, no explosion.

Out of one side of his mouth he slams NAFTA, while at the same time having his minions apologize to Canada and explain he is only talking, he doesn't really mean it.

So what is worse, that B. Hussein lies, or that he feels the need to explain himself to Canada? He is already surrendering to Canada and he hasn't won the nomination yet.

CTV.ca News Staff
Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned.
Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have been critical of the long-standing North American
Free Trade Agreement over the course of the Democratic primaries, saying that the deal has cost U.S. workers' jobs. Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama's campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.
The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.
But Tuesday night in Ohio, where NAFTA is blamed for massive job losses, Obama said he would tell Canada and Mexico "that we will opt out unless we renegotiate the core labour and environmental standards."

Hillary Clinton: 1992 - 2008

(originally posted March 3, 2008)

When political historians look back on the election of 2008 and how Hillary blew her veritable coronation there will be no moment defined as her Waterloo. And while she may not end her campaign on Tuesday, it will, if all indicators are correct, effectively end nonetheless. It appears as though the phenomenon known as B. Hussein Obama will continue his teflon glide and Hillary will have her doughy backside spanked yet again. But there is no woodshed to protect her modesty, pundits, political insiders, the media and many others are reveling in her humiliation.

Hillary's key to winning was simple, eviscerate her Democrat opponents in typical Clinton/Carville style and get the nomination on Super Duper Tuesday, then begin to roll out plan after plan and set the agenda for November while reminding everyone how evil Republicans are and how horribly Bush failed America while the GOP nominees all fought it out until June before choosing their Presidential candidate. She would have had a four month lead in setting the table before the GOP attended the banquet.

But she forgot one thing, she had to win first. So she kissed up to her competitors, telling everyone how wonderful and qualified her opponents for the DNC nomination were. And then she jumped into talking about how bad Bush is, and how bad Republicans are, in effect making Obama's slogan of change appealing, while operating under the delusion that her victory was a given and she did not have to campaign, as though she were above it.

The nomination was hers to win, especially with the "idiot proof" super delegate system in place. But when it appeared that there was an option to Hillary the super delegates began slowly dropping her like a bad habit and getting on the B. Hussein Express. Even if she does well and wins, or if she gets enough delegates in these split states to stay within striking distance Hillary will be pressure to drop her pursuit of the nomination by the DNC. The highly undemocratic super delegate system will be the way the candidate is picked if it remains close, and the power brokers don't want that to become as issue. The Democrats always cry about disenfranchising voters, but the super delegates and unseating delegates for "breaking party rules" are blatantly robbing people who vote in the primaries of their voice. (Which is why I hate the blatant hypocrisy of the Democrat party and am proud to call myself a recovering Democrat.)

But I digress...

When an autopsy is performed on the Election of 2008 I believe most political scientists and pundits will agree that the reason for Hillary's demise was her failure to attack Obama early and often, sticking to the issues, and her penchant for attacking Bush and the GOP when she was not running against them, but against Obama. And when she saw the "change" issue worked it was too late, and when she started repeating it instead of diverting attention away from Obama's campaign it made her look like his biggest cheerleader, especially the way she said how much respect she had for her Democrat opponents before each debate. Her downfall was never running against Obama.