Staying One Step Ahead of the Curve

I want to take a quick moment and say thank you to some folks who rarely ever get thanked by someone like me.

Thank you Nancy Pelosi.
Thank you Harry Reid.
Thank you Ted Kennedy.
Thank you Chuck Shumer.
Thank you Daily Kos and the Kos Kids.
Thank you Cindy Sheehan.
Thank you John Murtha.
Thank you Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon and the rest of the Hollywood liberal left.
Thank you to every moonbat and peace activist who urged the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

And I really mean it. You see, without their strong push to end the fighting in Iraq, the surge, which admittedly, they opposed, might never have happened,and then we wouldn’t be seeing all the positive developments in Iraq, like the drop in violence, the ouster of al-Qaida, and the regulation of the militias, not to mention the new atmosphere of co-operation between Shia and Sunni sects. None of this would have happened without the surge,and the surge wouldn’t have happened without the constant drumbeat for surrender coming from the left which forced President Bush to take decisive action to bring the conflict to a victorious conclusion.

Which was their plan all along. You see, the Dems don’t want to see America destroyed, just the conservative half of it. So they couldn’t really want a debacle in Iraq that could potentially destabilize the world, no matter how much their rhetoric made it seem that way. At the same time, they couldn’t come out and say we had to win in Iraq because that would have alienated their base and cost them their majority in Congress.

So they came up with the devious plan to turn up the heat on President Bush and force him to win this thing now at any cost, even if it temporarily made them look like anti-American douchebags.

Now that is true patriotism for you folks,and once again, I just want to say “Thank you!” to each and every one of them.

We couldn’t have done it without you.

Happy Mother’s Day: Woman pregnant with 18th child

AP Photo: In this Aug. 2, 2007 file photo, Michelle Duggar, left, is surrounded by her children..

By JILL ZEMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri May 9, 5:25 PM ET

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – It’s a happy Mother’s Day for an Arkansas woman — she’s pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year’s Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins.

“We’ve had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us,” she said, laughing.

The Duggars’ oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.

The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children — whose names start with the letter J — are home-schooled.

Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.

The new show looks at life inside the Duggar home, where chores — or “jurisdictions” — are assigned to each child. One episode of the new show involves a “jurisdiction swap,” where the boys do chores traditionally assigned to the girls, and vice versa, Duggar said.

“The girls swapped jurisdictions, changing tires, working in the garages, mowing the grass,” she said. “The boys got to cook supper from start to finish, clean the bathrooms,” among other chores.

Duggar said she’s six weeks along and the pregnancy is going well. She and her husband, Jim Bob Duggar, said they’ll keep having children as long as God wills it.

“The success in a family is first off, a love for God, and secondly, treating each other like you want to be treated,” Jim Bob Duggar said. “Our goal is for each one of our children to be best friends, and everybody working together to serve each other makes that happen.”

The other Duggar children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph, 13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7; James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2.

___

On the Net:

Duggar family Web site: http://www.duggarfamily.com

Discovery Health site: http://health.discovery.com/convergence/duggars/duggarfamily.htm

Is this woman fucking Crazy? I think she needs to stop having sex! Imgaine how many grandchildren she will have!

Present, But Not Voting

No,this isn’t a slam on Obama. Instead, it’s more a description of my own feelings about the election process.

It’s hard for me to get excited about exercising my right to vote, given the three stooges we have running for President right now. (Apologies to Larry, Curly, and Moe. These clowns couldn’t even pass for Shemp, Joe or Curly Joe. Well, maybe Curly Joe.) McCain is wrong on everything with the exception of national defense, where he’s at least half right. He believes we should defend our national interests, except for our borders, which is kind of strange. Obama is wrong on everything, which is an interesting achievement since he has utterly failed to articulate a a detailed position on anything. And Hillary, well, she’s still Hillary.

How did we get here? Are these three really the best we can do? This is the land of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Washington, and Jefferson. Bold men, with vision, who made decisions without focus groups and polling data, who said what they meant, without equivocation or reservation. Where are they now?

The answer is telling; the sad fact is that if one of those giants ran for President today, he wouldn’t make it out of the primaries. (Except maybe for Lincoln. He was exceptionally good at tailoring his message to the people he was talking to. As his rival for the Senate seat, Stephen “the Little Giant” Douglas once said, “When I debate you in the north, you’re white; in the south, you’re black.”) Men of principle still exist, so why don’t we see them in national politics?

The answer is that it isn’t the quality of the candidates that have changed, it is the quality of the electorate that has changed. Today, we blindly accept the idea that the only qualification to vote are a pulse lasting longer than 18 years. A natural born US citizen has no knowledge requirements in order to vote. He doesn’t have to know anything about the issues. He doesn’t have to know how our government works. Heck, he doesn’t even have to know how to read and write. If he’s illiterate, we will supply somebody to read the ballot for him. He can be as useless as male nipples, as ignorant as a newborn, and as lazy as an old dog on a summer day, and his vote counts just as much as the most rabid policy wonk.

Think about that for a minute. Can you think of any other area of endeavor where we allow the ignorant and apathetic equal say with the engaged and informed? Would you let the typical voter decide what car you should by? Would you let him dictate your medical care? How about your investment choices? Or in each of the above examples, would you rather trust the opinion of an expert? Somebody who has a wealth of knowledge about the subject, and who has demonstrated at least a basic competency?

But when it comes to selecting a government that can affect all of these choices and more, we’ll give the same worth to Otis Campbell’s choice as to Andy Taylor’s. I don’t care how you slice it folks, that just doesn’t make sense.

And when you look back at American history, you find out that the folks who wrote our Constitution agreed with me. They established requirements for voting, some fair,and some a product of the times. In order to vote, and even more importantly to hold office, you had to be a productive member of society. Government salaries were kept low to make sure that nobody sought office for financial gain. Additionally, in order to hod office,you had to be able to afford to take a pay cut which meant that you were not only successful in your field, but financially astute enough to build up wealth in the form of savings.

In essence, the poll tax ensured that the folks exercising the franchise had a vested interest in good governance, and the low salaries ensured that the men running for office were capable individuals in their fields.

Fast forward 200+ years and what do we have? A warm body electorate voting in their own interests, not in the interests of the nation as a whole. Special interest groups rule Washington DC, and votes are for sale.

And they’re usually sold cheap.

Maybe it’s time we recognize that the franchise is too important to be taken for granted. Maybe it shouldn’t be tossed out as freely as beads at Mardi Gras. Maybe, just maybe, voting should be something we earn through demonstrated competence, or by having a net positive effect on America, rather than being a drain.

When you look at the difference in the quality of our elected officials from then and now., can you honestly say that we are better off now with an unrestricted electorate?

I can’t.

I might be posting another blog today 😀

Democrats Debate; Rove Wins

Did you ever think you’d hear Hillary Clinton parroting Republican talking points?

There she was, questioning Obama’s electability because of his association with Bill Ayres. And I thought only Sean Hannity was talking about that.

To be honest, as much as I loath the thought of voting for John McCain, after listening to Heckle and Jeckle discuss Iran and Iraq, I just might have to swallow my disgust and pull the lever for the man.

Both Hillary and Barack stated that regardless of what their generals might say, they will pull troops out of Iraq immediately upon taking office. Remember when they criticized Bush for not listening to his generals? Now Obama is criticizing Bush for listening to his generals, and says he will not make the same mistake. Barack says it’s because “the buck stops here.” (Oopsie! The last time I checked, “buck” is a derogatory term used for young black men. Will he have to apologize to himself? Or will he claim that he didn’t know he said it because he wasn’t there when it was said? Hey, it worked with Rev. Wright, right?)

Hillary says we can’t know what will happen when we pull out. “We can’t predict the future.” Hmmm. She didn’t seem to believe that when questioning why the Bush Administration didn’;t see 9/11 coming. Maybe she thinks Republicans are better at evaluating trends and predicting future events than Democrats.

What is all boils down to is that both Barack and Hillary said that they will end the US presence in Iraq, regardless of the consequences, which makes Hillary’s response to the next question very odd. She suggests that we gather all the other Middle Eastern nations together and tell them that if they won’t develop nuclear weapons to respond to the threat of Iran, we’ll place them under our “umbrella of protection.” Not only is she going to tie us militarily to the Middle East forever, just how convincing will that promise be after we cut and run leaving Iraq at the tender mercies of Iranian jihadis, Sunni terror cells, and Shia militias?

That “umbrella” seems to have a few too many holes to be much good.

Remarkably, Hillary had the better of the two answers to this question. I don’t have the transcript yet, but if I’m not mistaken, Barack spoke for 2 minutes and said absolutely nothing substantive other than “We need to make our position very clear to Iran.”

How can you do that when you can’t even make it clear to your own country? Here’s a challenge for anyone who watched the debate: If Israel is attacked, will Obama respond militarily? If you can’t answer that question, and I certainly can’t after listening to his answer, what good will a direct meeting between Obama and Ahmadinejad do. Except maybe confuse Ahmadinejad as much as the rest of us.

Gracie Allen diplomacy…it’s a provocative concept.

You know, it takes a lot of work to make a McCain presidency tolerable, but these two are making it look easy.

On gun control, there was nothing really shocking. Hillary want to renew the Assault Weapons Ban and says she prefers to allow the states to make their own rules. She says she supports New York laws because “They have worked.”

Tell that the people getting mugged at gunpoint every day.

Obama said that the 2nd Amendment recognizes an individual right but that the state or local government can constrain it. He went on to say “I have never favored an all out ban on handguns!” I’m betting that Uncle is researching that one as I type these words.

It was very clear that both candidates were more concerned with reaching the superdelagates rather than the Pennsylvania voters and it was equally clear that Hillary was more successful in doing so. Hillary’s use of conservative criticisms was well played, although I’m sure it left a bitter taste in the mouths of her supporters. She was very careful not to agree with the charges, but she made it very clear that Obama had baggage that the Republicans would exploit while minimizing her own baggage at the same time.

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript for those interested.

Also, take a look at Andrew Sullivan’s take on the debate. A few choice quotes:

• That opening silence was priceless. But he seems exhausted. Since she has had her humanity surgically removed, she seems less so.
• Because she’s shameless, she’s doing better.
• I have to say I am actually shocked at the appallingly poor quality of the questions: the worst of the campaign so far. Pure MSM process bullshit. Again: it’s now halfway through and there has not been a single question on the economy, foreign policy, healthcare, terrorism, Iraq or any other actual policy issue in this campaign. How much longer can ABC News avoid the actual policy issues in this election?
• Clinton will disappoint her neoconservative supporters by such a strong, unequivocal commitment to withdrawal from Iraq. She is, of course, lying. But she does it so well.
• It’s a huge night for the Republicans. If McCain went up against either of these two in the form they have shown tonight, he’d win.

Given both candidates’ poor performance on the policy questions, I’m surprised to see Democrats complaining that there weren’t more of them. Think about it for a minute: immediately after promising not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $200,000 per year, Obama says he’s going to allow the Bush tax cuts to sunset and raise the capital gains tax, both of which will certainly affect people under that threshold. And Hillary’s “We’ve got to abandon Iraq so we can enforce peace between every other Middle Eastern nation” was just as lame.