My View From the Road, 1-20-11

Avon, NY– Took a load from Batavia, NY to Carlisle, PA yesterday, and  today, brought one back.  Because of what I consider company security, I won’t get into a lot of detail of the problems encountered, but I will say without question it was a full moon.

I’ll post some pics over the weekend.

I note today Dr Krauthammer saying “Everything begins with repeal”. Well, of course.

Suppose someone – say, the president of United States – proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now.  I’ve got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by $770 billion.

He’d be laughed out of town. And yet, this is precisely what the Democrats are claiming as a virtue of Obamacare. During the debate over Republican attempts to repeal it, one of the Democrats’ major talking points has been that Obamacare reduces the deficit – and therefore repeal raises it – by $230 billion.

That, of course is just one of the little absurdities attached to the huge absurdity called Obamacare.

But, you know, one thing that bothers me greatly about the position the Doctor has been taking on this, is that Obamacare needs to be replaced by some other governmental giveaway program.

This does not absolve the Republicans from producing a health-care replacement. They will and should be judged by how well their alternative addresses the needs of the uninsured and the anxieties of the currently insured.

So it is, that even if repealed, what Obamacare does it hand the left a victory that they couldn’t have obtained without it; They have one of the biggest names in conservative punditry, arguing that a government program is a requirement… that government needs to be involved in healthcare at all. I suggest thisis exactly why Obamacare doesn’t make sense…. it didn’t have to. All it needed to do was exist as law so as to solidify the governmental grip on one seventh of our economy… and leaving the opposition in the position of trying to our give-away the Democrats. It even works when as Krauthammer’s opening paras suggest, we’re well beyond broke, and ANY government program is unsustainable.

Myself, I continue to argue that healthcare costs have skyrocketed in this country in direct and exponential proportion, to the degree of governmental involvement in it. Track the costs of healthcare since 1965, and Johnson’s “great society” spending extravaganzas, until today and you’ll see I’m right.What;s needed then is someone who can articulate and empower the free market economy and explain how that’s supposed to work to a people who for generations have been spoonfed socialism by various governmental giveaways.

And that, I think is going to be the determining factor in the next election…. who can articulate that point, and can do something about it. That’s going to take a lot of things. Mostly courage.

I see a lotta chatter about courage. Michelle Malkin and Melissa Clothier both have tweeted about it just recently.

People, do you want to know what courage is? It’s the simple recognition when action is less costly (Goods, riches, lives and freedoms) than is inaction. That and the strength to act on that information.

As an example:  Consider the 17 year old boy… offering a carnation to someone he’s sweet on but has been this far too shy to say anything. Sure, he’s scared to death… of rejection, mostly… but he begins to see that he’d be hurt more if he didn’t act and let her know how he felt, and she got away.

Soldiers, of course, see this equation somewhat more seriously, in that they’re willing to take action, up to and including the loss of their life, because they think not action would be too costly a situation to even consider. And so on.

Hey, Brian? I told you so.

Lots of snow around here today, and tonight. Gotta bundle up. I’ll talk with you tomorrow.

Grizzly Gosnell, massacre in Pennsylvania, where are the calls to ban high capacity assault scissors?  Where is the Pennsylvania Department of Health berated for promoting a climate of hate?  Why has not Barack Obama been made to account for his legislative support for infanticice:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A doctor accused of running a filthy “abortion mill” for decades in an impoverished Philadelphia neighborhood delivered babies alive, killed them with scissors and allowed a woman who had survived 20 years in a refugee camp to be overmedicated and die at his clinic, prosecutors said.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, was charged Wednesday with eight counts of murder for the deaths of seven babies and one patient. Nine employees also were charged, including four with murder

[…]

Gosnell typically worked weeknights, arriving hours after his unskilled staff administered anesthesia and drugs to induce labor. He then “forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

Dumbo gets the race card,  Rick Santorum plays the race card on Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama, and some liberals are pissed, from Garance Franke-Ruta, Atlantic:

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who is considering a bid for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, invoked President Obama’s race during an interview with the conservative CNS News network show “Online with Terry Jeffrey” as a reason the president should oppose abortion.

“The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no,” Santorum said in the interview, which was posted online Wednesday. “Well if that person, human life is not a person, then, I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'”

Franke-Ruta clearly does not think much of unborn human life.  Let Ruta remember this, humanity is a gift from God.  Just as Chief Justice Roger Taney could not make the Negro any less human, then neither can Justice Harry Blackmun make an unborn human being any less human.  For humanity is not a gift from the Supreme Court but rather from God.  Santorum sees it.  Ruta refuses.

Is Taylor Marsh just a dumb white woman? From Ms Marsh:

The question needs to be asked just why women were resorting to going to Kermit Goswell? For the same reason women rose up to make abortion legal and safe, but also affordable and accessible. People like Rick Santorum and others who rail against women’s freedoms, but also the murder of Dr. Tiller, has caused an atmosphere of fear to develop around women’s reproductive health issues, which even had an impact on the Democratic health care bill recently passed.

Where I and Gosnell (and likely Santorum) agree is that the value of a human being does not change by his mere passage through his mother’s birth canal.    Of  courses, Gosnell  sees him merely as a product to be butchered for profit.   Whereas Ms Marsh, seems to think something magical happens in that short journey.   Well maybe some miraculous did happen prior to birth, about nine months prior.

The smartest democrat in Congress, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (TX -18), from Philip Klein, American Spectator:

Arguing that the Commerce Clause provides the constitutional basis for ObamaCare, Jackson Lee said repealing the law by passing Republicans’ H.R. 2 violates both the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

“The Fifth Amendment speaks specifically to denying someone their life and liberty without due process,” she said in a speech on the House floor moments ago. “That is what H.R. 2 does and I rise in opposition to it. And I rise in opposition because it is important that we preserve lives and we recognize that 40 million-plus are uninsured.

She continued, “Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?”

In the Air Force, this is what is known as a target rich environment.    However, not being a selfish blogger, I see no need to  destroy all of them.    So let me start with a few observed hiss, from R. S. McCain, Other McCain:

When you begin to think you have the “right” to goods and services that others must work to produce, clearly you have descended into hopeless madness.

Or you’re a liberal Democrat. Six of one, half-dozen of the other

Being schooled in the Thomas Sowell school of classic economics, what Stacy calls goods and services, I’d would call commodities.  Sobeit.    In a democracy, you can not create a right to a commodity.    Because before you give a commodity, say health care to Jackson-Lee, you must first take it away from somebody else, like Stacy McCAin.    So in Jackson-Lee’s universe, she has more right to health care than dose Stacy.    Different rights for different people is not hallmark of a Jeffersonian democracy, but rather of Fidel Castro’s  Cuba.

Phineas, Sister Toldjah:

Last summer I wrote a post about the mind-numbing witlessness of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX). Now, on top of her ignorance of History and Science, she’s shown herself to be devoid of any understanding of the Constitution*, too, by declaring that a repeal of ObamaCare would be unconstitutional:

Witlessness?  Is that mean to be a euphemism for bone dumb ignorant?   Jackson-Lee talks about due process.    As I see it, due process is an adversarial process where the interests of all parties are represented.    Whereas under Obama Care, some unelected, and unaccountable bureaucrat decides if you will receive an an allotment of government rationed health care based on your demographics and recent campaign donations.    Note the Jackson-Lee declares Obama Care to be a right, but somehow she and her fellow congresscritters are exempt from its provisions.

John Hnderaker loses his mind, from Powerline:

The time has come to put any thoughts of Sarah Palin running for President to rest. I say that not because I dislike her; on the contrary, I’m a fan. I think she did an excellent job as a vice-presidential candidate in 2008 and has been an effective spokeswoman for conservative causes in the years since. But there is no way she is ever going to be elected President, and the sooner Republicans get over that idea, the better.

The time has come to put any thoughts of Sarah Palin running for President to rest. I say that not because I dislike her; on the contrary, I’m a fan. I think she did an excellent job as a vice-presidential candidate in 2008 and has been an effective spokeswoman for conservative causes in the years since. But there is no way she is ever going to be elected President, and the sooner Republicans get over that idea, the better.

You can not win, if can not learn from your mistakes.   The republicans lost in Aught Eigjht, jn large part, because we let the democrats pick our candidate.    We can allow democrat the privilege of using trumped out charges  to throw our candidate under the bus, from Professor William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection:

Why is such an announcement necessary now, at the very moment that the conservative movement is trying to fight back against the mainstream media campaign related to the Tucson shooting?

You can throw Palin under the bus if you want, but what will you do when the next candidate faces blistering false accusations which drive negatives high after a mainstream media feeding frenzy?

If we consent to let the ‘rate disqualify any viable candidate on the basis of concocted charges, we see soon be left with no candidate smarter than the Dope from Hope, Mike Huckabee.

Sarah Palin is not perfect, but the prime qualification to a legitimate candidate is willingly enter the arena.  Palin is in the arena.   Where are the wannabees?    Seriously, can say a Mitt Romney or Huckabee stand in muted silence when the libertarded media savages a candidate  with wholly concocted charges?

Dumbo has no birth certificate,  Birthers everywhere rejoice   Governor admits he can not find a copy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, from tbe Star-Advertiser (HI):

Q: You stirred up quite a controversy with your comments regarding birthers and your plans to release more information regarding President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. How is that coming?

A: I got a letter from someone the other day who was genuinely concerned about it; it is not all just political agenda. They were talking on Olelo last night about this; it has a political implication for 2012 that we simply cannot have.

(Abercrombie said there is a recording of the birth in the State Archives and he wants to use that.)

It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down …

…What I can do, and all I have ever said, is that I am going to see to it as governor that I can verify to anyone who is honest about it that this is the case.

If the Governor of Hawaii can not find  a supposed official state document  in the state archives,  it is simply not reasonable  to assume that said document actually exists.

Abortion Kills, from Maryclaire Dale and Patrick Walters, Associated Press:

PHILADELPHIA — A doctor whose abortion clinic was described as a filthy, foul-smelling “house of horrors” that was overlooked by regulators for years was charged Wednesday with murder, accused of delivering seven babies alive and then using scissors to kill them.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell was also charged with murder in the death of a woman who suffered an overdose of painkillers while awaiting an abortion

Reax, from Melissa Clouthier, Liberty Pundits:

How does one live with himself? Answer me this question.

How does a man murder an innocent child in cold blood and then go about his business?

How do people aid and abet this abomination? There are nurses and assistants there.

How does anyone socially befriend this monster?

And how do state regulators live with themselves? How are they not complicit?

Later.

Special better late then never edition.

Dumping on Dupnik, I admit it cheap amusement, but I do enjoy it, form Gregory Kane, Washington Examiner

It just gets better and better with Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz., doesn’t it? The city of Tucson is in Pima County. Friends and relatives of the victims of the Jan. 8 shootings that left six dead and at least 14 wounded should regret that Dupnik is their sheriff.  […] “Sheriff Dupnik would do far better to spend his time figuring out how Jared Loughner managed to buy a gun last November to commit his crimes,” opined John Fund in a commentary for the Wall Street Journal’s Web site

Joe the Ho, Joe Scarborough the former conservative rants,  via Bruce McQuain, Questions and Observation:

And who on the right is really stupid enough to not understand that the political movement that has a near monopoly on gun imagery may be the first focus of an act associated with gun violence? As a conservative who had a 100 percent rating with the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America over my four terms in Congress, I wonder why some on the right can’t defend the Second Amendment without acting like jackasses. While these types regularly attack my calls for civility, it is their reckless rhetoric that does the most to hurt the cause.

Sure Joe, video:

STFU Joe and get back in the bathtub with Olberbite.  Bob Herbert vs. Freedom, Herbert thinks the students of Virginia Tech should treated as serfs and not citizens, from New York Times:

On April 22, 2008, almost exactly one year after 32 students and faculty members were slain in the massacre at Virginia Tech, the dealer who had sold one of the weapons used by the gunman delivered a public lecture on the school’s campus. His point: that people at Virginia Tech should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus.

Free men are free to carry their weapon where ever they may travel.  Serfs are not.  Herbert is in favor of serfdom.  And you?  Public School attacks modesty, from Fausta.

(East Syracuse, NY)— Came in from Carlisle, PA last night, and spent the night at Binghamton, NY. I can’t say I’m overly impressed with this truck; the steering feels a little vauge, especially when the roads are wet. Past that, (and a lown out brake line on the trailer last night) things have been fairly uneventful on the road.

They called me a couple days ago and told me I’d be long haul going forward. I didn’t get nearly the time to prepare I would ahve liked, but that’s this biz, I guess. Donna had to pack me a care kit to keep me going for a while. I’ll have a chance to get better set up this weekend for next week, I suppose… but for now, I have clothing my meds and so on, for a week.

Doing yet another road test for a prospective employee, this morning, here in East Syracuse. I guess this means they trust my judgment which is encouraging, but it does screw up my miles and occasionally raises my blood pressure. New guys usually are not the best of drivers. I know I wasn’t. It’s more complex a task than it looks.

I’m just now starting to get back into the network swing, and getting my timing down… and I’m feeling a little isolated from world news…. particularly since the AM section in the radio in this rig doesn’t work. I’ve only been over the road for two days now and so I guess that’s to be expected.

I notice over at OTB, that the usuals are still trying to put the bite on Sarah Palin, trying to convince us all… as the GOP establishment and the left have been doing for some time now… that Palin is a lightweight. If she’s such a lightweight, and thereby not a threat…why expend all of this negative energy on her?  Well, look at the pattern of who these folks attack. Real conservatives. What we have here is the state and it’s adherents, protecting the status quo. It’s really that simple.

I see a lot of chatter on the web about civility. Civility? Sorry, I don’t see the use of it in politics…. well, actually, I do and it’s not good. It tends to support the status quo.  Freedom is seldom supported by people who are civil. Usually the civil ones are the well-established pols who bring to mind the song “Smiling Faces Sometimes”

To that point, I remember being in school and the teachers sometimes separating kids from their freinds to prevent certain interactions.  The seating arrangements at vthe State of the Union address seem to me modeled on that approach. Keep the conservatives isolated and they’re going to be less bold about calling Obama a liar.

I’ll be injecting this kind of post  as  have time and bandwidth going forward… with observations of the day and thoughts on the passing parade.

WaPo to Arizona, take a hike, the Washington Post has her priorities and the people of Arizona are clearly note one of them, from Philip Rucker, Washington Post:

TUCSON – Even as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shows signs of a near miraculous recovery, with doctors upgrading her condition from critical to serious Sunday, a little-known statutory provision in Arizona state law could endanger the Democratic congresswoman’s hold on her seat through what doctors say will be a protracted medical struggle.

A statute buried in Arizona law states that if a public officeholder ceases to “discharge the duties of office for the period of three consecutive months,” the office shall be deemed vacant – at such time a special election could be called to fill the vacancy.

I can sympathize with the citizens of Arizona.  My former governor, Blindman Patterson screwed me out of representation in the House for near a year because he refused to call a special election with Eric “Periscope” Massa resigned in disgrace.    If Representative Giffords is unable to resume her duties, the citizens of Tucson still deserve representation in the  House,  even if the WaPo doesn’t like it.

WaPo discovers honesty? E.J. Dionne Jr.purports to plead for honesty in the Dumbo Care repeal debete, from Washington Post:

President Obama’s call for “a more civil and honest public discourse” will get its first test much sooner than we expected.

Having properly postponed all legislative action last week out of respect for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of the Tucson shootings, the House Republican leadership decided it could abide no further delay in a vote on its “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” And so, as a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor explained, “thoughtful consideration of the health care bill” is slated for this week.

If you want an honest debate over the repeal of Obama Care, the first step should be for Barack Obama to say admit that everything he said in support of Obama Care was a lie.

Al Sharpton does not,  the Reverend Al Sharpton opens mouth and inserts foot, from Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

Ah, those layers of fact-checkers and editors in the mainstream media come in handy, don’t they? Thank goodness NBC imposes news standards for its cable channel; otherwise, MSNBC would just spew misinformation and smears to advance a political agenda. Watch MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch connect the Tucson shootings with the “fact” that Arizona doesn’t recognize Martin Luther King Day, celebrated today — and frequent MSNBC contributor Al Sharpton declaring that Arizona has already seceded by not joining the rest of the country in honoring the civil rights activist for his non-violent pursuit of equality

[…]

There’s only one problem with this analysis … it’s flat-out wrong. Arizona began recognizing MLK Day in 1992, after a long battle over adding another paid holiday for government workers in the state. They weren’t even the last state to recognize it; New Hampshire changed Civil Rights Day to MLK Day in 1999. Utah changed Human Rights Day in 2000 to MLK Day, the same year South Carolina made it a paid holiday rather than just a day of remembrance.

I wonder just how much Reverend Al gets paid for his well informed commentary?

Martin Luther King:

“I”I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Jesse Jackson, video:

If you pass comment on the Reverend Jackson’s distinct lack of character, he will call you a racist.  It is race merchants like Jackson who are killing King’s dream, circa 1963 version.

About half the murder victims cited by Jackson are black, as are about half of the murders.    So who would bear the burnt of Jackson’s demand for more gun control, the black criminals who don’t obey the laws in the first place or their black victim?

I don’t pretend to be able to follow the trajectory of King’s philosophy, where it went,  or where it would have gone.    However I do fully endorse King vision of August 28, 1963.   Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech may the most eloquent speech ever given on American soil.  It the speech which defines King in the eyes of the Americans who honor him.

To just what version of  King,  for which Jackson is pining,  I do not know.

No Loughning matter, from Kim Strassel,Wall Street Journal:

One of the tragedies of tragedies is that some politicians just can’t resist the urge to use them for political gain. The Tucson shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords first inspired liberals to score points against the tea party and is now inspiring a new round of political calls for gun control.

Within days of the Arizona tragedy, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy renewed her call for a ban on high-capacity clips and said she’ll reintroduce legislation. She’s been joined by fellow New York Rep. Peter King, one of the only outspoken Republicans on gun control, who said he wants a new law that would make it a crime to knowingly carry firearms within 1,000 feet of high-ranking officials (which conveniently includes congressmen.) In the Senate, New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg intends to pursue parallel legislation to Ms. McCarthy’s on clips that carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition. And New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has piped up, again, in favor of expanding the sort of burdensome restrictions his city places on the Second Amendment to the nation as a whole

Why is every time a mental case, such as Jared Lee Loughner, goes on a rampage, it the defenders of  Second Amendment, but not the advocates for the mentally wacked out t that are forced defend their positions?   Loughner was nutcase, two all beef patties short of a Big Mac,who was routinely making threats for the last three years.   In other words, the Arizona authorities, especially one Clarence Dupnix had more that ample opportunity to have Loughner mentally evaluated.

Loughner.s murder spree was not  because of some lack of  laws.   Rather Loughner was roaming around untethered because Arizona officials were remiss in doing the duty.  We  don’t need more laws to restrain the future Loughner.   We need public officials to do their darn jobs, and in the case of Dupnix, to do their job rather then giving political speeches.

Sliming the mainstream, from P.J. O’Rourke, Weekly Standard:

The Times ran, as its second lead, above the fold on the front page, a story about the Tucson shootings headlined “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.” The article, by Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike, contains almost nothing newsworthy. Nor can it be called news analysis, beginning as it does with an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: “The shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords .??.??. set off what is likely to be a wrenching debate over anger and violence in American politics.”

If you want to tone down the anger in American Politics, tune out Organizing for America.

From unassailable moral authority to common criminal. alas within a week, James Eric Fuller has gone from media darling to common criminal, from Politico:

The self-described liberal and military veteran became distraught Saturday, authorities said, when he began ranting at the end of a televised town hall meeting about the tragedy. He took a picture of a local tea party leader and yelled “you’re dead” before calling others in the church a bunch of “whores,” authorities said.

Deputies arrested him [James Eric Fuller] and called a doctor. They decided he should be taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation, said Pima County sheriff’s spokesman Jason Ogan said.

Nice to see the Pima County sheriffs department finally taking their job seriously.

System Updates Http://f.ast.ly… http://f.ast.ly/xKxLM

System Updates http://f.ast.ly/QAaJh

By now, you will have noticed some odd posting behavior.

Not to worry, I’m just getting the kinks out of my Twitter crosslinks. THe object here is when I post on Twitter, which I do frequently, I’d like the post to show up here as well. Trouble is, I also have Bitsblog posting fresh posts to Twitter as well, so there’s a few kinks to work out.

I’m working on it

I’m At Light At Long Pond Rd… http://f.ast.ly/QJtWK

Loughner And the Political Rep… http://f.ast.ly/QYVSe

Loughner And the Political Rep… http://f.ast.ly/Qrr8p

I’m At Light At Long Pond Rd A… http://f.ast.ly/QB4Gj