"The party will announce its Great Ape Project at a press conference tomorrow. An organization with the same name is seeking a UN declaration on simian rights which would defend ape interests "the same as those of minors and the mentally handicapped of our species."Proving beyond reasonable doubt that chimps are more intelligent than Socialists.
Not since the up-and-down summer of 1864 has this country at war seen such equivocating and self-serving editorialists and politicians.
No one pauses to suggest what the region would now look like with Saddam reaping windfall oil profits, 15 years of no-fly zones, ongoing corruption in Oil-for-Food, the bad effects of the U.N. embargo, Libya's weapons program, and an unfettered Dr. Khan. If a newly provocative Russia is willing to sell missiles to Iran's crazy Ahmadinej(ih)ad, imagine what its current attitude would be to its old client Saddam.
Or perhaps, as in the 1980s when over a million perished, our realists, who seem fond of such good old days of order and stability, could once again encourage an unleashed Saddam, with Uday and Qusay at his side, to be played against Iran for a (nuclear) round two. How sad that those who once fallaciously argued that the fascist Saddam was the proper counterweight to the fascist Iran now ignore that the genuine corrective is a democratic and humane Iraq.
The latest Democratic proposal is for a "windfall profits tax," whereby they would steal the oil companies' money and create a windfall for themselves. This might be the single stupidest thing that could be done in connection with the current shortage of gasoline. If we steal the oil companies' money, the result will be less investment in drilling, pipelines and refineries, which means less supply of oil, which means higher prices indefinitely.Are the Democrats too dumb to understand this? No. (ed.note: the puppetmasters aren't; their moonbat minions are) But they think the American people are too dumb to understand it, and they are happy to pursue destructive policies if it will help them win in November.
President Bush handled the issue quite well in his press conference today:
Q. So "no" to a tax on profits?THE PRESIDENT: Look, the temptation in Washington is to tax everything, and they spend the money -- "they" being the people in Washington. The answer is, is for there to be strong reinvestment to make this country more secure from an energy perspective.
Listen, these oil prices are a wake-up call. We're dependent on oil and we need to get off oil. And the best way to do so is through technology...
But it's also important for the people to understand that one of the reasons why the price is gasoline is up is there's tight gasoline supplies. And one reason there's tight gasoline supplies is because we haven't built any new refineries since the 1970s. And, therefore, Congress needs to provide regulatory relief so people can expand their refineries.
By the way, corporations already pay income taxes of around 35%, in addition to all of the property taxes, sales taxes, etc., that they also pay, and when they pay dividends to their shareholders, more taxes are collected. I can still recall my tax professor saying, when I was in law school, that there is no intellectually respectable argument for the existence of the corporate income tax, other than the fact that it provides employment for legions of accountants and lawyers. And endless opportunities, I would add, for mindless demagoguery by Democrats.
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." - Thomas Paine
I can't just run into Mexico and say, "hey! I deserve to be a citizen of your country with full rights of a native born Mexican because I am here and this is how I feel". The Mexican government would let me know how they feel 'real fast'.And inspired by another comment, I think the slogan for the day should be "A Day Without Illegals Is Like A Day Without Cancer."
(To illegals who want to be American) Pay taxes, defend your country, wave the AMERICAN FLAG and sing the Star Spangled Banner in ENGLISH.
How does failing to show up for work prove that you are doing "jobs that Americans won't do"?
I'm getting increasingly tired of the "We stole the Southwest from Mexico" line. Read your history, and you will find that the United States paid 15 million dollars to Mexico for that land, an exorbitant amount in 1848. Did the Spanish reimburse the Aztecs or other native tribes?
"We are under attack by madmen who want nothing more than to simply kill us all. They wish not to negotiate territory or borders. They simply wish to kill us all. Its is not our “support of the Jews” which has caused their grievance, its our very existence. Their god has forsaken them, and rather than face up to the shame generated by that fact, they choose instead to seek vengeance against those that appear to have found God's favor. They hate happiness and freedom in every form, and wish only the worst conditions on all mankind. We can no more accept the Jihadi conditions for our surrender than the people of United 93 could just sit in their seats."
"As May 1st draws near and America prepares for the hardship and suffering of “A Day without Illegal Immigrants”, the Justice Department announced today plans to mark the protest movement with its own act of civil disobedience.Si? Mexico seems to agree.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he’ll encourage federal, state and local law enforcement on Monday to respond to illegal immigration rallies by observing “A Day without Miranda Rights” followed by “A Month without Habeas Corpus” and “A Year without Bail.”"
It turns out that the chicken hawk is a pretty impressive predator. It's the largest of its family. This species vigorously defends its territory, getting even more aggressive when the conditions get harshest. It adapts to all climates. Most impressively, it feeds on chickens, mice, and rats. Make of that what you will.
1. L.A. County has 10 million people. 40% of all workers in L.A. County are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.
2. Of the 10 million people in L.A. County, 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak only Spanish.
3. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
4. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
5. Over two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
6. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
7. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
8. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
9. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
10. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish language only.
11. Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 36% are on welfare.
12. Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.
13. The United States receives more immigrants every year than the rest of the world combined.
14. The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University].
15. The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE.
16. 29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.
"Recently, media and politicians have virtually stopped talking about global warming and are now referring to climate change instead," states de Freitas. "That's because predictions of doom and gloom from warming just aren't coming true. But with 'climate change,' Kyoto advocates can now cite any change or phenomenon as proof that CO2 emissions have upset the global apple cart."via this post at Cox & Forkum, which has many more interesting links.
It's the old 'heads-I-win, tails-you-lose' trick played on a massive scale by "the global warming industry" who want to keep their hundreds of millions of research dollars flowing when their dire predictions of catastrophic warming are proven false, if not completely fraudulent...
Currently, Greenland is losing ice on its southern margins but is gaining ice in its interior -- a measurable fact.
Meanwhile, the Antarctic is cooling, with the exception of a small Antarctic peninsula as a result of currents.
"There's been global cooling since 1998 because 1998 was the hottest year in the last 150 years," says de Freitas, adding "10,000 years ago it was much warmer than it is now."
"From 1900 to 1940 there was global warming," he says, even though large scale industrialization didn't start until 1948.
"Then, from 1940 to 1979 there was global cooling and that happened when we were putting heaps of carbon into the air."
(emphases mine)
"The White House rejected calls by a Senate committee yesterday to close down the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the government body lambasted for its woeful response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The push to scrap the agency came after a scathing report by a bipartisan Senate investigation into the disaster, which said that Katrina had exposed flaws in Fema “too substantial to mend”."Dismantling ineffective bureaucracy?!? Inconceivable!! How can the country survive if the federal government is restricted to its constitutionally-mandated powers?!? People might go deaf from all the freedom ringing throught the land!!
Bush can call for all the investigations he wants, but all he will find is a ridiculous American energy policy that practically guarantees our inherent risk of market manipulation and foreign extortion...(emphases mine)
Until we find ways to produce more crude in order to get more oil onto the market, the prices will continue to increase. Oil is, after all, a commodity -- a free-market product that will fetch the best price possible in trade. The more oil produced, the cheaper it will become. That mechanism does not rely on cost, either, except to the extent that high production costs would lower the amount of oil in the marketplace until prices rose high enough to cover the overhead.
If the US would start producing its own crude oil, then global prices would start dropping due to the increased worldwide supply and the drop in demand. We have vast fields of petroleum available for this purpose. Both coasts have proven oil deposits, and the Alaskan arctic area has stood ready for years to produce crude. In the case of our deposits off of the Florida coast, others such as Cuba may exploit those reserves instead. However, environmentalists refuse to allow for this production, forcing us to buy our oil elsewhere, artificially propping up prices and surrendering to the instability of the markets...
The main problem with gasoline prices is the number of varieties of gasoline that must be produced for local markets. Instead of having one single formulation, states have passed their own standards for the composition of gasoline, with various additives required in differing concentrations depending on where it is sold. If states all had their own refineries, this would present less of a problem...
So let's have an investigation, but let's not confine it to ExxonMobil's profit margin. Let's expand the probe into the bankruptcy of our energy policy for the past thirty years and the handcuffs we put on ourselves that force us to rely on unstable sources of crude oil and gasoline to meet our energy needs. Let's start getting realistic about those needs and start proposing rational methods of meeting them. Take the shackles off the US energy industry and allow us to shrug off the mullahs that control the world market.
