Post Thanksgiving Ramblings: Troop Surge, Anger at Federal Gov't, etc.

First, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. My brother Lee is working an honest job again for the first time since 1991. He's got a tough, rugged and uphill road to travel on but he's made some good first steps. I'm contributing in my own little way but this is about Lee, not me, so suffice it to say that I hope that Lee will continue to contact me to report "good news" and that he will also contact me when he needs support. My son Christopher, a Lance Corporal in the Marines, returned safely from his first overseas deployment and is currently spending time with us here in Phoenix. He looks great. He's about to be reassigned to a new infantry unit and the odds of that new unit going to Afghanistan is about 100%. His opinion concerning the news that President Obama has signed an order authorizing 30,000 additional troops for the Afghanistan theater of operations was typically Marine blunt: "About damn time. And we could use more guys." My wife is recovering from her throat surgery and is now doing fidgety projects about the house. Every time that happens, I end up spending more money. Oh well. It helps the economy, right? And my daughter Heather and her hubby Mat are settling in beautifully in their new home. I am also grateful that my Mother is now living with me and that we were also able to have my In-Laws in town for the holiday. That's right! I get along with my In-Laws! It doesn't get much better than that.

Second: President Obama today signed orders to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. I think this is the right decision. Of course, the minute that President Obama starts acting like an actual Commander-in-Chief, the liberal base that helped elect him starts chewing on him. Representative David Obey (D-WI) stated that propping up a corrupt regime is "a fool's errand". Does he forget that Afghanistan is where our current conflict with militant Islamic jihad started? If we do not eliminate the Taliban then Afghanistan will once again be the favored location to train young Muslims in the ways of terror attacks to be used against the West. I believe that this new 30,000 is only the start. I also believe, as President Bush predicted, that the "War on Terror" will be a generational conflict fought out over decades, with the ultimate result the elimination of militant Islam fundamentalists or the adoption by all the world of sharia (sp). Who will win? I wonder.

Third: The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has stated that it's own peer-review policies would negate the attempts by a "small segment" ofpro-AGW (anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming) scientists to stifle dissenting opinion in scientific discussions and journals as well as to skew the data to make it look more dramatic. These efforts have come to light because of a hacker's successful intrusion into the University of East Anglia's email system and the dump of over 100 gigabytes (one billion characters per gigabyte) of emails onto the internet. In the center of this growing controversy is Professor Phil Jones, who is the head of UoEA's climate research department. In 2004, an email from him allegedly supported the rejection of at least two dissenting research papers because they were "'flawed" and yet he indicated in the same email that if necessary, he would support changing the peer-review process to facilitate prevention of the publication of dissenting opinions. The jury is still out on whether Prof. Jones was simply venting in a private email or that he was alluding to actual intentions or actions. To be fair, I think it is safe to say that we have all written things in personal correspondence that should not be taken literally (eg: "I'm gonna kill him!"). Contrarily, scientists have a responsibility to be detached and objective to their research and that such comments coming from such an influential member of the pro-AGW camp, especially in light of the fact that AGW is not a "settled" science, smacks of a scientific inquisition.

A far more worrisome issue is the confirmation by certain scientists at UoEA that they have destroyed much of the raw temperature data that was used to predict global warming. This means that other scientist cannot independently verify their assumptions. This revelation was obtained after a request for the raw data was made under the UK's Freedom of Information Act. The only data still available is the revised "quality assured and homogenized" data. The revisions were made for the stated purpose of adjusting the data to reflect variables in the way the data was collected. The raw data was not saved when the Climate Research Unit moved to a new facility.

How Business is Done in D.C.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/the-100-million-health-care-vote.html

Read the article first. Of course, over time weblinks will fail. So here's the synopsis.

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), a moderate Democrat, has been playing "hard to get" on committing to an up vote for the Senate version of the US Health Care reform bill. Apparently, a whole section has been added to the bill that benefits one state and one state only; Louisiana. The section is 58 lines and contains 660 words. It can be found on page 432 of the Reid bill, and the section is titled: "SEC. 2006. SPECIAL ADJUSTMENT TO FMAP DETERMINATION FOR CERTAIN STATES RECOVERING FROM A MAJOR DISASTER."

In summary this section increases federal Medicaid subsidies for certain states recovering from a major disaster. There is only one state that meets the conditions set forth in this section: Louisiana.

Since Harry Reid needs all 60 of his Democrat Senators to bring this bill onto the Senate floor for debate, he needs Mary Landrieu's vote. And this is apparently how he will get it.

Oh, one other thing... The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this provision will cost U.S. taxpayers $100 million.

I'm sure that Majority Leader Reid, who is battling an uphill fight in his own state to be re-elected next November, expects Senator Landrieu to stay "bought".

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how bizness is done in DC.

Kudos to ABC News' Jonathan Karl for bringing this to the harsh light of day.

Random Thoughts on November 19th.

Thought #1: U of Calif students think they are guaranteed an edumacation.
Numerous news outlets are reporting that students in the University of California system are gathering in "near-riots" to protest a 32% hike in tuition. One young man who spoke on an ABC news radio clip indicated that "rich white men" were responsible for this. I'm going to go with "not so much". If this young skull full of mush would listen to something other than Air America or MSNBC, he might have heard that the State of California is looking at a 21 BILLION dollar short-fall in their state budget. Unlike the U.S. Federal government, California can't just crank up the printing presses to monitize their debt. Hey, California DUDE! You're state is BROKE, man! There isn't any more money in the TREASURY. My recommendation... get a job, like I did.

Thought #2: Apparently, conservative black men aren't black.
Ask Jesse Jackson, who apparently isn't very happy with Representative Artur Davis (D-Ala) who was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the current version of the bill. “We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” More proof that if you are black and you have decided to try and live free of the government dole and further, you expect others to do so as well, then you are an "Uncle Tom". Quote was courtesy of www.thehill.com. The hypocrisy is as deafening as the reporting by the "mainstream media" is non-existent.

Thought #3: If you write a book and you are a conservative, you get "fact-checked" by the AP. But if you are a liberal candidate for president, you get a free ride.
The AP managed to get a hold of a "printer's proof" copy of former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue. What did they do with it? They assigned 11 reporters "part-time" to fact-check it. Apparently, only Fox News feels this is newsworthy because neither President Obama's book Audacity of Hope or VP Biden's book Promises to Keep were given the same scrutiny. If you use the following search text: "obama's book fact checked", the links that came up were to articles about the fact that Sarah Palin's book was fact-checked but Pres. Obama's wasn't. More proof that liberals get a free pass from the "fourth estate" while conservatives are grilled.

Thought #4: Senate Marjority Leader Harry Reid is going to try and ram a 2,074 page version of the health-care reform bill through the Senate this weekend.
Republicans are trying to slow down the process by invoking a parliamentarian rule that requires the Senate Clerk to read, in total, the text of a bill before discussion begins. At a minute per page, which should be easily attained because the text is double-spaced and relatively large font, it will take somewhere between 34 and 45 hours to read it entirely.
Courtesy of John Boehner, one more reason that conservative will hate this bill: Section 1303(a)(2)(C) defines the process whereby the Health Benefits Commission will assess the monthly premiums that will be used to pay for elective abortions under the government-run health plan as well as those who are given "affordability credits" to buy such coverage that includes abortion through the Exchange. Minimum charge: $1 per month. You can read it for yourself at page 118.

Why Do the Dems Want to Bankrupt Us, both Morally and Fiscally?

I've been silent recently on this blog, although only a few would take notice of it. I had a very busy weekend, spending a lot of time with the boys of my DeMolay chapter. When I woke up on Sunday I saw that Speaker Pelosi had managed to ram through the "health care reform" bill, all 2,000+ pages of it.

Right now, I'm thinking of two things about this bill.

First, the bill as currently written includes language provided by Representative Bart Stupak, specifically prohibits the usage of any government funds for human-fetus abortions. From www.thehill.com, the following synopsis is provided:
"Stupak’s language not only prohibits abortion coverage in the public insurance option included in the House bill. It would also prevent private plans from offering coverage for abortion services if they accept people who are receiving government subsidies.

Allowing the vote represented a major concession by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Stupak and other pro-life Democrats who had threatened to oppose the bill. But it came at the cost of angering liberals in the Democratic conference.

Abortion-rights supporters called it a “de facto” abortion ban and mounted an intense but unsuccessful lobbying campaign against it."

This amendment to the bill was the primary reason why some moderate Republicans and "dozens" of centrist Democrats were able to reverse their position and vote for it.

Now that it has passed, there is already movement to remove this language. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, stated on MSNBC that she and other pro-abortion (often called "pro-choice") forces would work to remove this language from the bill while the bill was under reconciliation. She stated that she "was confident" that this prohibition will not be present in the final version of the bill.

So now that the liberals have largely succeeded in removing any kind of morality from government and our public schools, they now want those of us who consider abortion to be an immoral act to help fund abortions, regardless of the reason for performing that abortion.

Wasserman Shultz stated that the language essentially created a ban on abortion. Really? Really? No -- it simply states that Federal money (that would be taxpayer money) cannot be used to pay for abortions. Anybody that wants an abortion would have to pony up the money themselves, but there is no ban.

This might be an item that I make my stand on as far as my taxes are concerned. Meaning that if my tax monies might be used to pay for abortions that are performed for reasons other than rape, incest or danger to the mother's life then I will not pay my full share of taxes. How can my government make me subsidize an act I consider immoral?

Joseph Liebermen, independent Senator from Connecticut, stated on Fox News Sunday that any government option in the health care reform bill would cause the Federal debt to climb from twelve trillion dollars today to twenty trillion by 2020! It is unlikely that the U.S. government could ever recover from that much debt without printing literally multiple trillions of paper dollars to "monetize" that debt. In so doing, they would cause the value of the dollar to drop so low that no sane nation would continue to hold dollars as a "reserve" currency. This would cause a flood of dollars on the market as countries divest themselves of their dollar holdings. And just like anything else in a market, if you have a surplus of something with correspondingly low demand, the value drops like a stone in a gravity-well. This would cause the dollar to become literally worthless. You think cars are expensive today? Well, imagine how you are going to feel when you go to the grocery store and pay thirty-five thousand dollars for a loaf of bread or a half-gallon of milk.

You don't think that can happen? If you don't then you are not a student of history. Look at what happened to the German Deutschemark in the interwar period ("Weimar Republic") and then think again. It can and will if we allow our Federal government to sell us all into foreign servitude by spending money we do not have.

So, if representatives like Wasserman Schulze and Pelosi have their own way, we will not have only bankrupted our treasury but we will have also bankrupted our souls. And we will be paying for this unconscionable and profligate spending for generations to come.

I shudder to think what our grandchildren will say about this moment in American history. I don't think it will be kind.