Dems Spark Alarm with Call for National ID Card

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/95235-democrats-spark-alarm-with-call-for-national-id-card

Big Brother is watching and he likes what he sees.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/29/AR2010042904700.html

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes.  Here is a hero from Quincy, Illinois, video:

Hat tips: video,  Founding Bloggers and commentary Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit.

10 year-old Amy and her mother spoke with me yesterday after the tea party rally in Quincy, Illinois.  The poor child was saddened and confused after the Obama SWAT Team came marching into the rally.  Her mother is near tears as she recalls the event. Founding Bloggers put together this terrific video.
Notice the intro music- “We Shall Overcome.” It may become our new theme song because the Obama-Pelosi goon squad will never keep Middle America down!

Whereas cowards come in pant suits.  Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:

The Iranian regime was elected to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women today.
Neda will not be attending the ceremonies.
The regime killed her last June

Jennifer Rubin, Commentary:

As I noted, Iran made its bid to join the UN Commission on the Status of Women. And Joseph Abrams of Fox News tells us that the mullahs did it — they now get to instruct the international community on the importance of gender equality. But it seems as though the UN didn’t want to advertise this exciting new addition to their august body:

Buried 2,000 words deep in a U.N. press release distributed Wednesday on the filling of “vacancies in subsidiary bodies,” was the stark announcement: Iran, along with representatives from 10 other nations, was “elected by acclamation,” meaning that no open vote was requested or required by any member states — including the United States.

The U.S. couldn’t muster a word of opposition — not even call for a vote. That would be because .

More Jen, Commentary:

Last night Hillary Clinton spoke to the AJC gala in Washington D.C.  Her speech is a hodgepodge of platitudes and reveals how sharply the Obami’s rhetoric departs from their policies — the inevitable result of a disingenuous “charm” offensive that seeks to soothe domestic critics of their assault on Israel while continuing their disastrous approach to the Middle East.

She began, as she did with AIPAC, with a series of fluffy assurances, which bear no relationship to the Obami’s actions

The difference between Mrs. Clinton and Monica Lewinsky?  At least Lewinsky gave good lip service.

Do they really all look alike? The Washington Post’s Macaca moment.

Aliens who are  not welcome, from Fausta:

If outsiders do not enhance the country’s “economic or national interests” or are “not found to be physically or mentally healthy,” they are not welcome. Neither are those who show “contempt against national sovereignty or security.” They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own health care.

In Mexico!

It seems the if Mexican illegal immigrants respected their own standards, they would all have to leave.   Note the Mexican law does not preclude legal immigration.  It does however preclude all “undocumented” immigration.  Shall the liberal now boycott Mexico?

Your papers please, William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection:

Remember when Democrats fell all over themselves trying to prove that Obamacare would not cover illegal aliens? When Joe Wilson shouted “you lie” about coverage for illegal aliens, Obama and Democratic leaders assured the nation that illegal aliens would be excluded.

Under the final Senate health care bill signed into law (unlike the earlier House version), illegal aliens are screened out. Only persons who can prove they are “a citizen or national of the United States or an alien lawfully present in the United States” get to participate.

In other words, when you try to buy a policy through an exchange, or seek a subsidy, or receive any of the other supposed benefits, you will be told “show me your papers.”

Hypocrisy by the Bay, Thomas Lipson, American Thinker:

As San Francisco prepares to boycott Arizona, the city itself issues identity cards, intended to prove residency.

Hypocrisy Dumbo sized version, Mark Levin, video:

Hat tip: Kathy Shaidle, Five Feet of Fury.

Five point five million dollars in royalties for a books that Obama did not write and could not write.    Greed thy name is Obama.

Squids to put chicks on pig boats, from CNN:

(CNN) — The first women to serve on U.S. Navy submarines are expected to be on the job by fall of 2011, Navy officials said Thursday, ushering in a policy change to what has been an elite service open only to men since the start of the modern Navy’s submarine program.

[…]

Smaller, fast-attack submarines are considered to be too small to accommodate the necessary infrastructure change in living quarters that is possible on the larger subs, Navy officials explained.

Gentlemen, this is stupid.  Tell me what you taking out of our missile carrying submarines in order to accommodate the chicks and how this will improve the our combat effectiveness?  Now get down and give me twenty.

Florida Senate, did Charlie Crist just endorse Marco Rubio. from Ed Morrissey, Hot Air. video:

As I said about Arlen Specter yesterday, all a politician has to offer is credibility and Crist just shot his.  Say good night Charlie.

Dumbo steps in how own  poop. I don’t know about you, but some of those little old ladies look mighty scary to me.  To you?  Speaking of scared, it appears that the Secret Service pressured the Quincy police to call out the riot squad because Dim Won does not like the sight of dissent, from Dana Loesch:

Who gave the order to call in the riot police on protesters? Word is that Secret Service from inside the venue and the presidential team pressured local law enforcement, who were against the idea. Local cops were overruled, I’m told by various sources, including a few members of local press. Moore reported that she overheard Secret Service telling the riot squad to “push them back, out of sight.“

The Quincy protest was small, and peaceful.  Yet the Dim Won can not tolerate any dissent. video:

Bitsblog commends the fine behavior of the Quincy police in an embarrassing situation, and the civil behavior of the Tea Party goers.  A pox on the clown that called in the riot squad and a pox on Barack Obama until he issues a personal apology.

Earth to WaPo, come in please. Tim Talley, Associated Press. “Clinic: New Okla. abortion law hard on patients.”    While Oklahoma abortion law may, or may not, be hard on patients, actually mothers, it is even harder on babies.  It kills them.  Thought that you would like to know.

War Crime: Evil Jews murder Palestinian patriots, by Rizek Abdel Jawad. Associated Press:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Egyptian forces pumped gas into a cross-border tunnel used to smuggle goods into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing four Palestinians, Hamas officials said.

Egypt has been under pressure to seal off the hundreds of tunnels that are a key economic lifeline for the blockaded Palestinian territory but which are also used to bring in weapons for the Islamic militant group.

My Emily Litella, it was the Egyptians, no problem.

Dim Won thinks Arizona immigration law poorly conceived, from CNN:

[Barack] Obama criticized the recently passed Arizona immigration bill, calling it “poorly conceived.”

“You can imagine if you are an Hispanic American in Arizona, your great grandparents may have been there before Arizona was even a state, but now suddenly if you don’t have your papers, and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re gonna be harassed,” Obama said. “That’s something that could potentially happen. That’s not the right way to go.”

If you are illegal and don’t like being harassed, go back to Mexico.   As for the papers requirement, that is existing federal immigration law, not that Dumbo would actually know that.   Hint to Dim Won, why do think illegal aliens are referred to as undocumented by open border apologists?

Bama the Bully,  by Dennis Kneale, CNBC:

Will someone please rein in our relentlessly hectoring President? Barrack Hussein Obama has taken his gift for inspirational oratory—one of the traits that got him elected—and turned it into something darker and more insidious.

Bam is a bully. Bad enough that he bashes Wall Street, but this President has gone farther than any in modern history in putting the wrong kind of “bully” back into what Teddy Roosevelt

Not only is Dim Won a bully, he is dumb bully.  At least Richard Nixon was smart.

Free citizen – 1:  Wild Animal – 0. Jim Vertuno, Associated Press:

AUSTIN, Texas — Pistol-packing Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a message for wily coyotes out there: Don’t mess with my dog.

Perry told The Associated Press on Tuesday he needed just one shot from the laser-sighted pistol he sometimes carries while jogging to take down a coyote that menaced his puppy during a February run near Austin.

In a free republic a free citizen is free to carry a weapon where ever he may travel.   A serf has no rights not granted to him by his master.   Are you man or a serf.   Wild coyotes should stick to preying a serft and not free citizens.

Specter of the ‘rat, Morning Call:

WASHINGTON

At times, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has wondered if he should have stayed a Republican.

For three decades, Specter prided himself on being a coalition builder, relishing a self-appointed role as a liaison striving to find the moderate solutions to liberal and conservative extremes.

Now as a Democrat, that role has vanished. For that reason alone, Specter has questioned his storied party switch.

”Well, I probably shouldn’t say this,” he said over lunch last month. ”But I have thought from time to time that I might have helped the country more if I’d stayed a Republican.”

Hat tip:   Jim Geraghty, National Review

You’all come back Arlen.   You left the ‘pubs become you thought you would lose.  Now you think you’ll lose as a ‘rat.     Am sure that your new  republican voters would even less than the democrats.   Trust it the only commodity a politician has and without  it, you are nothng.  Enjoy your retirement, Arlen.  You have earned it.

Specter of Dracula, New York State assemblyman and pervert. wants state to steal body parts, from CBS:

To fix that,[New York State Assemblyman Richard] Brodsky Brodsky introduced a new bill in Albany that would enroll all New Yorkers as an organ donor, unless they actually opt out of organ donation. It would be the first law of its kind in the United States.

Not with my organs.  Keep for greed paws off my body.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/igeneration/?p=4808&tag=nl.e589

WTF – Over, on what planet does the Reverend Al Sharpton reside? From the New York Daily News:

New York activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, compared Arizona‘s new immigration law to apartheid, Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South – and vowed to shut it down with mass protests

Mass protests in  Nazi Germany?    To what planet’s history is the Reverend Sharpton refering?  Certainly not to Planet Earth.

Hat tip:  Jammie Wearing Fool.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy was spotted doing vodka shots last week at a Capitol Hill bar just hours after he spoke about his history of substance abuse at a charity event.

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken

More Obama Care disaster, via Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:

When major companies declared that a provision of the new health care law would hurt earnings, Democrats were skeptical. But after investigating, House Democrats have concluded that the companies were right to tell investors and the government about the expected adverse effects of the law on their financial results…

In a memorandum summarizing its investigation, the Democratic staff of the committee said, “The companies acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards in submitting filings to the S.E.C. in March and April.”

In order to curb Chicago’s rampant and increasing outbreak of violence, State Representatives John Fritchey (D-11th District) and LaShawn Ford (D-8th District) want to call in the National Guard. Yesterday, the legislators urged city and state officials to use the Guard to bolster a thinly stretched Chicago Police. “As we speak, National Guard members are working side-by-side with our troops to fight a war halfway around the world,” said Representative Fritchey via press release, “…we have another war that is just as deadly taking place right in our backyard.”

When Senator Levin says “Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market” what do we think he might have meant?  Knowing some of the political philosophy of the esteemed senator from Michigan, it is obvious that his inference was that Goldman was acting in a fashion that was either illegal or immoral.  How could any American institution bet against motherhood, apple pie or the American dream of universal home ownership?  And certainly the notion of “making a lot of money” is of dubious quality on its face.  The Senator is literally screaming “These people are the enemy of the state, and they need to be leashed, or chained, or imprisoned, or tortured…all for the good of the system of the people.”

It is always amusing when a single statement contains such a large number of fallacies.  Let us count the ways.

First, Goldman was acting in their role as an investment broker.  Everything they do is essentially either a bet for or against something…or the facilitating of someone else doing the same thing.  More technically, they are simply acting as brokers, and not as agents. Agents represent a buyer or seller.  Brokers facilitate the transaction. This is the “market mechanism” and it is what guides the whole system of the effective allocation of resources.  It is fundamental to our material progress.  As significantly, if people would have actually listened to Goldman, the whole mortgage disaster might have been avoided.  Starting in 2004 Goldman was very publicly saying that the US housing market was overpriced and that we were headed for real trouble.  Unfortunately, too few actually listened to them, including Senator Levin.  In the case of the SEC-driven synthetic CDO case, Goldman was actually not making a bet against the mortgage market…an investor was.  But even if they were, it was completely their right to do so.

“But the disclosure wasn’t adequate…” Please.  If you hear anyone say this just say “stop,” and remember that these things were bought (not sold) by some of the most sophisticated investors the world has ever seen.  These buyers were high-powered investors looking for levels of interest unavailable in our low-interest world, and they got torched.  Anyone who uses the word “disclosure” in this argument is either very poorly educated, or more likely concealing a very ugly hidden agenda.  Funny, have you heard anything from the actual investors who lost all the money?  Most of the money that was lost in the mortgage meltdown was not even held by the banks.  Unlike the power-mongering Senator Levin however, they all know and accept the penalty for the sin of their ill-fated and over-reaching greed.

Secondly, and contrary to Mr. Levin’s fear of profit, the world has proven over and over again that without the opportunity for “profit” the world tends towards universal impoverishment.  We should very quickly notice that profit is not a word to be used exclusively with respect to corporations; it is a universally human word.  All of us require “profits” as a source of motivation.  Mr. Levin demonizes corporate profits, but fails to recognize the evil of “government profits,” which are the desired fruits of his labors.  In the case of government, the profits take the form of the shifting of funds from individuals and corporations into the pockets of government.  Profits, thus defined, always flow out of a system where productivity is advancing.  It has to. The only question is who gets them.  Mr. Levin has decided that they should flow to him and his kind, as opposed to those with the brains and drive to actually create something of real value.  Profit is virtuous.  The conscription of profits by the government is the true evil.  This is particularly evident in the case where the “disclosure” of the intentions of the government (think Mr. Levin) is what is so entirely deceptive and completely lacking.

Lastly, Mr. Levin effectively is saying “And what we need is a really, really, really big solution to this really, really, really big problem.”  What we have in the case of the mortgage crisis is actually a really limited problem with a very large set of consequences.  The failure that we experienced was a classic simultaneous failure of the banking and insurance systems resulting from too little capital required to support the levels of risks being taken.  This is hardly a new problem.  The current financial services bill, like the health care bill, is just an opportunistic ruse that only tangentially relates to the real problems that we face.  All we need to fix the problems with mortgage-backed securities and their “derivatives” are a set of rules around the capital needed to support both their issuance and their holding.  End of story.  Mr. Levin actually knows this.  And that is the real problem…and a crying shame.

Sophisticated systems like ours create “sophisticated solutions” to create take-overs by the government that are accepted by “We the people.”  The financial services bill is sophisticated only its complexity, and has nothing to do with the problems we really face.  And herein we see the real evil.  Goldman is not our problem.  Levin is.

The ears are already falling off of Dumbo Care. The Dim Won wants to fix anthropogenic global warming and the evils of capitalism.  Before we give Barack Obama more carte blanch power, we ought to demand that the Obami demonstrate some competency.  Having already wrecked the economy and wrecking health care, they need keep their greedy mitts off Wall Street and energy,from Grace-Marie Turner, National Review, via Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit:

Not one of its major programs has gotten started, and already the wheels are starting to come off of Obamacare.  The administration’s own actuary reported on Thursday that millions of people could lose their health insurance, that health-care costs will rise faster than they would have if the law hadn’t passed, and that the overhaul will mean that people will have a harder and harder time finding physicians to see them.

Yes we can, beat the jihadists and throw the rats out, video:

Hat tip: Rich, Wizbang.

Welcome back my friends, to the show that was on pause too long… the BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• YEAH, I KNOW…. I let these Nightly Forays into political  and social commentary slide for a few nights. I’m still getting used to the new job.  I’ve been coming home each night well after 4pm, so tired so as to have enough to shower, eat dinner and go to bed.  I think I may end up running this thing on a different schedule, but we’ll see.
• A VAT TAX? Fox News has an opinion piece by Olivier Garret suggesting that the implications of any Value-Added Tax (VAT),  such as what is currently being floated by the Democrats, would be most harmful  to those who are least able to afford tax increases.  Funny thing; aren’t the Democrats supposed to be fighting for the poor, instead of the poor’s money?   Oh… and of course, it would fuel additional levels of  spending by government .  Obama taxing and spending in record amounts. Please spare me the pretense that you’re shocked by any of this.
• HAWKING SAYS FORGET “CLOSE ENCOUNTERS” IN an artcile in the Times of London, Jonathan Leake reports:
  

  

  Doctor Hawking

  THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

  The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

  Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

  Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

  Fair enough so far. But why the fear of contact?

  “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

  Hmmm. A reasonable point.And that assumes that the species we contact will be friendly.  Columbus while hardly overtly hostile to the natives he found here, caused a health crisis as well as a cultural one. Add the 50/50 likelihood that anyone we do manage to contact won’t be nearly as warm and non-aggressive as our little friends here.

• FANNIE AND FREDDIE AMNESIA: That’s the headline on this Wall Street Journal bit from the other day.  Peter Wallison reminds us how we’ve gotten to the fix we’re in with both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and what the Obama administration wants to do to fix a problem he helped create five years ago. Of course the trouble is, as with every other fix Obama has ever applied, it’ll make the situation worse, not better.
• WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM, AGAIN? Bio-Diesel is a cure for a problem that didn’t exist.  Now, we find out it’s worse than what it cured.

http://w2.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/how-opt-out-facebook-s-instant-personalization/

Arizona to Dumbo: “Arizona immigration law: Are you listening, Mr. President?”

A brain is horrible thing to waste, from Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:

Today democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with Democratic Senators Jay Rockefeller and Robert Byrd, and Democratic Governor Joe Manchin III held a memorial/rally for the 29 miners who perished in the nation’s worst mining disaster in 25 years earlier this month.

During the 2008 election Barack Obama admitted that his cap and trade bill would kill the coal industry. Today at the coal miners memorial in West Virginia he praised the coal miners for the energy they bring to America.

Dumbo wanted to kill the coal industry before he wanted to save coal miner’s lives.

Professor William A. Jacobson, on the Arizona immigration law, Legal Insurrection:

The Governor of Arizona just signed a bill which, in the words of opponents, is the equivalent of the Japanese internment during WWII, the Nazi Nuremberg laws, and a host of other racist or allegedly racist wrongs which have been committed since the dawn of mankind. Cassy Fiano has a good roundup of the reaction.

I then did something almost no one else has done. Certainly not the people claiming the bill is racist. I actually read the bill, not just the news reports.

The bill does raise public policy issues as to whether we really want to enforce the immigration laws, but it is not racist.

Here are a few graphic points for you to ponder:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/google_streetview_logs_wlans/

Why is Google interested in the WiFi network in your house?

Google is not your friend…