According to The New York Times, on Saturday evening the President of the United States used a thoroughly disgusting gay-baiting slur to refer to people that previous presidents might have called “My Fellow Americans”. Speaking with congressional Democrats, our situationally unaware, amateur-night chief executive asked,

“Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care?”

Call me an old-timer, but I can remember when U.S. Presidents had class. They might have called their political opponents any number of things in private, but you would not hear of them demeaning American citizens.

It is a measure of how low-rent Professional Democrats have become that The New York Times reports this as though sexual slurs were not a new low in presidential discourse… merely another term that ‘progessives’ use every day to refer to their subhuman opponents.

Did President Obama intend to be disgusting in using that term? I hope so, because I sure am disgusted.

Someone named Michael Casey at the Associated Press has written a collection of paragraphs concerning the so-called Climate Negotiations. Someone else needs to follow along behind Mr. Casey with a broom, because he has apparently "gone native" in his capacity as an ’environmental writer’ and now speaks with the voice of some sort of eco-nut. Since the Sunday night football game contains teams that I could not care less about, the task of fisking Mr. Casey’s "news" story has fallen to me.

We can begin with the headline, which warns ominously, US says climate bill might not pass in time. Let us pity those who have been following the dire warnings of Al Gore et Cie, for they probably read this headline and concluded that we’re all gonna die. "The US didn’t act in time. The planet is doomed! Woe is us!" The rest of us have become bored with environmental alarmism, and so treated this headline as just another in a long series of headlines that tell us that the planet is doomed and we’re all gonna die. Nothing new here, we can move along. Besides, what they really meant was "in time for some big meeting", which is not all that scary.

The fate of a U.S. bill capping carbon emissions was expected to weigh heavily on delegates in U.N. climate talks that begin in the Thai capital on Monday..

That’s Mr. Casey’s opening bid. We can’t tell whether he’s just sloppy, or actually believes that capping carbon emissions is as simple a matter as politicians passing a law. There’s been an epidemic lately of starry-eyed people believing that government can do anything, and now we’re at the point where they’re legislating the weather. Mr. Casey is apparently among the people who goes along with this. Perhaps the delegates to the U.N. climate talks go along with it too, which explains why the fate of a bill in the US Congress "weighs heavily" on them. My guess is that many of them don’t even know there is a bill pending, or think it passed when the House approved it, or haven’t had a thought about it one way or the other. I think that what weighs heavily on them is that the meeting after this is in Copenhagen, and they can’t find a smoking hotel room within 100 km.

As most of us could have predicted had we given the matter even a moment’s thought — which we hadn’t — the UN Climate Talks have degenerated into yet another venue in which the developing countries badger the rich countries (that’d be us, as if we were rich instead of in debt for two years’ worth of GDP) for money. According to Mr. Casey, if we rich countries do not pony up tens of billions of dollars, the Other Guys won’t sign a deal. We will then have Zambia and the like pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, using whatever means they might have at their disposal. And then we’re all gonna die. This has become a pattern, with the Other Guys declining to sign deals at the AIDS talks, the arugula talks, the child labor talks, etc., unless we bring wheelbarrows full of money.

In June, the House of Representatives passed the first U.S. legislation to cap carbon emissions. The Senate, which is currently embroiled in the health care debate, is expected to take up the legislation as early as this week.

That’s Mr. Casey again, this time failing to tell his readers that polar bears will be extinct before the "climate" bill escapes from whatever committee the Senate sent it for safekeeping. Our chief negotiator at the talks is aware of this; he doubts there’s enough time to pass a bill before the really, really, big climate meeting in Copenhagen, in December. Between now and then, if things go according to a plan Mr. Casey obviously knows nothing about, Republicans will have won elections in New Jersey and Virginia and scared the bejeesus out of every Democrat who doesn’t have an iron-clad safe seat in 2010. And that will be the end of humans legislating climate, at least until the next time the Democrats get ahead of themselves.

I had not been aware of this:

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao — whose countries are the world’s two biggest emitters, each accounting for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas pollution — both vowed tough measures to combat climate change at the New York talks.

In the case of Obama, one hopes that the measures he employs to deal with Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions will be as tough. Probably not.

Here’s Mr. Casey performing a trick a lot of environmentally-conscious stupid people perform:

Hu said China would generate 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources within a decade

"Renewable sources" have become a kind of magic. They apparently have something to do with saving the planet, reducing global warming, and so on, even though most "renewable energy" turns out to be the product of burning food, which involves combining organic material with oxygen in a process called "burning". Which process releases CO2 the same as if one burned, oh, gasoline. So it’s not clear why China’s quest for "renewable" energy has anything to do with climate change, except that the word renewable has become a talisman to the dull-normal left.

Here is something you probably did not know. I certainly didn’t.

Most countries agree that temperature increases should be limited to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels of about 150 years ago

To me it’s just amazing that humans acting as "countries" have determined the optimum temperature for a planet they had nothing to do with designing, and which has gone from really, really hot to really, really cold several times without any help from governments. How does anyone with a puny human mind have the temerity to imagine that he or she can possibly know what the temperature "should" be? What are they messing with? Do they even know? Of course not. They are guessing, and they propose to make the lives of everyone on Earth a bit more miserable for no reason other than their silly guess. Arrrgggghhh. We cannot defeat these people at the polls soon enough.

The world’s average temperature already has risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) since the 19th century.

There goes Mr. Casey again, this time adopting the dishonest tactic of environmental alarmists in which they carefully pick their starting and ending dates to produce the result they want. Mr. Casey does not add that the world’s average temperature has been declining for a decade now. It may be true that the temperature right now is higher than it was in the 19th century, but it’s going down, and until we know how and why it’s going down, it might be really stupid to take measures to make it go down even more. Ice ages do happen. Such a thing would kill hundreds of millions of humans. This is the problem with having big meetings in Copenhagen to propose changes to climate. No human knows enough to do it without having a 50-50 chance of making things worse. Yet nothing in Mr. Casey’s article suggests that there is any risk in having human beings meddle with the atmospheric/climate system of a planet with almost 7 billion people on it.

Today has not been a good day for our president in terms of his coverage overseas. In an analysis piece entitled Why everyone is saying no to Obama, Amir Mizroch at the Jerusalem Post recounts the many ways that foreign leaders — the Saudi royals, Dear Leader Kim, Mahmoud Abbas, the Iranian Mullahs, even friends like Benyamin Netanyahu — are beating our president like a drum. Mizroch concludes…

Everyone has worked it out by now: The great secret is out. America’s economy has made Obama a weak president, and he will likely remain weak throughout his first term. He has about two years to pull the American economy out of its free-fall before he begins his reelection campaign. If he can do it, and that’s a big if, chances are good that he’ll get reelected, and in his second term he can try to pull some geopolitical strings. But for the next three years, expect to see a world that says no to Obama. No meaningful and dramatic diplomatic initiative can come out of the White House in the next three years, as long as Obama remains weak.

Read More →

Today brings news that the government is investigating a major insurance company. What’d they do this time? Rescind the coverage from an old lady while she was falling down the stairs? Collude with a competitor to fix prices?

No, according to the Associated Press, the government is investigating Humana for sending out a mailer that could be construed as opposing Democratic Party policy.

You probably didn’t know that it was a crime to oppose the Democratic Party’s policy positions. Well, if truth be told it isn’t. But now that we have thugs running the government, you can be investigated anyway.

Read More →

Among the many Americans rendered ignorant about current events by too much dependence on mainstream media we must now count one Charles Gibson, anchor of the ABC World News. Michelle Malkin tells the story:

Several Chicago readers and Twitterers report that ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson told WLS-AM Chicago talk show hosts Don Wade and Roma this morning that the reason he hasn’t covered the ACORN scandal is that he didn’t know about it.

Never mind three shocking videos featuring waste, fraud, and child abuse, Gibson didn’t even know that the Senate had voted yesterday, 83 to 7, to cut off housing funds to ACORN. This despite the fact that Jake Tapper’s blog entry about the vote is highlighted on the front page of the ABC News web site.

Which raises an interesting question: where does this guy get his news? And why should anyone trust him to keep them informed when he doesn’t know what’s going on himself?

Hope Yen is an Associated Press writer. That’s as opposed to a "reporter", or a "journalist", or indeed anything at all except a propagandist for the Democratic Party and its friends.

Writing about the Census Bureau severing its ties with ACORN, Ms. Yen tells Associated Press readers that ACORN…

has been hit with Republican accusations of voter-registration fraud

Imagine that. Just a little partisan bickering, according to Ms. Yen. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

I guess she’s hoping that her readers have short memories, because it was only Wednesday that the Miami-Dade (Florida) State Attorney’s Office “issued arrest warrants for each of the 11 suspects, all of whom worked for the local chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN.”

Read More →

Most of us here on Red State, regardless of our religious convictions or lack of them, are familiar with the contempt with which secular liberals say they regard Creationism and those who profess it. To hear them tell it, only yahoos from the all-white, all-male, rural South could possibly believe such a thing. Well, they and Sarah Palin.

We are therefore greatly indebted to Mr. James Murdoch, the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, for his observation during the recent MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Referring to the BBC, Murdoch noted that "the UK broadcasting sector is wrongly governed by ‘creationism’ — the belief in a process managed by a single omniscient authority." He argued that it needs to be more ‘evolutionary.’

I dare say we’ve seen the same thing on this side of the pond. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that liberals in the United States argue that market processes, i.e. incremental changes made seemingly at random in response to forces in the environment, cannot possibly produce a health care system that functions. Instead, these same secular liberals tell us that a health care system that works can only come into existence fully-formed, from the mind of a single omniscient authority, whose name is Government. Say what?

Read More →

For all the flack that President Obama gets here on Red State, he does propose some amazing things that deserve recognition. Today, for example, he said concerning his health care reform plan, “You will not be waiting in any lines.” Let’s be honest: we Republicans would not know how to do that. If we added 47 million more people to the health care system, there would be lines. We wouldn’t even know how to send 47 million more people to McDonald’s without causing lines.

I’m unfamiliar with the details, but apparently there is some provision in Obama’s plan that expands the number of doctors, nurses, hospital beds, etc., to instantly accommodate 47 million more people. It usually takes eight to ten years to school a new doctor, so whatever the Democrats are doing here is a major advance. We should begin sharing it immediately with the Third World, where doctor shortages have long been a problem. Thank goodness they won’t be here, if this plan passes.

The other good thing the plan will do is spend an additional 1.6 trillion dollars. This will prevent Medicare and Medicaid, the government’s previous health care initiatives, from going bankrupt. I know this because the audience in New Hampshire cheered when Obama said that a bankrupt Medicare was not a future he wanted for his children. I wish I could have been there, because we Republicans need to learn how adding 47 million more people to the system will lower costs. And for all the deficit spending that George Bush did, we never figured out how to avert bankruptcy by spending even more money, faster. I wish the reporters would ask Obama how this works, but they never do. I guess they figure everybody already knows.

On the eve of the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, the Review Journal there did a roundup of recent polling on the subject, concluding that the Political climate for energy policies cools. The combination of a bad economy and continuing evidence that the Earth is simply not warming has led an increasing number of people to either dismiss the Global Warming alarmists’ claims entirely, or to decide that whatever the merits of their arguments, we can’t afford to spend money on “green energy” measures right now.

Read More →

Every so often the leftish bent of the news media causes its fellow members of the Democratic Party to believe their own bullroar. Their own talking points are echoing from all their trusted news sources. This can put Democrats, especially Democratic Party office holders, into a kind of frenzy not unlike that of a dog chasing its own tail. They come to believe that they are on a sacred mission doing the people’s work, and that they are proceeding to great acclaim. Faster and faster they must run.

Once this phenomenon starts, the Democrats almost never escape before they do something profoundly stupid. And sometimes, profoundly harmful as well.

This is going to be one of those times. Stupid, and harmful, in great measure.

Read More →

Even though the government and its friends in the United Auto Workers now own General Motors, the class warrior in Obama just can’t stop thinking of “Cadillac people” as The Enemy. In a PBS interview last week, President Obama talked of "penalizing insurance companies who are offering super, gold-plated, Cadillac plans." Ditto the Democrats in Congress. Kent Conrad (D-ND) is among those on the Senate Budget Committee who "would tax companies that offer Cadillac plans." On Face the Nation Sunday, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) said that a surtax on so-called "Cadillac" insurance plans might be something that the Blue Dogs could support.

OK, so what’s the message here? The first is that there is something that, as the Texans say, “needs penalizing” about buying or selling Cadillacs. The second is that people who buy or sell Cadillacs will be penalized. And the third is that Democrats from the White House on down really don’t want anyone actually having a Cadillac, or being in the business of selling them. One wonders whether any of this rhetoric has been cleared with the Car Czar.

So far the Democrats are not threatening to tax the Lexus plans. And a good thing, too. If our politicians are going to refer to super, gold-plated stuff — even to demonize it and penalize people for having any of it — they should at least promote our own.

Yesterday, Senator John Kerry said his plan to tax "Cadillac" health benefits is gaining support. Makes you want to run right out and buy a Cadillac, doesn’t it?

Any Republican who peeks in on the pages of a left-wing web site like Daily Kos or Politico is immediately struck by how strongly our friends across the aisle believe that opposition to their ideas stems from racism. To hear a Democrat tell it, all Republicans are racists. Furthermore, virtually the entire Republican Party consists of white males from the Southern states.

One wonders how, if this were true, Republicans ever win an election. But never mind that. Once a liberal feels that something is true, mere logic and empirical evidence cannot stand in the way.

Apparently not even party labels get in the way. According to The New York Times this morning…

One African-American Democrat, Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, pointed out that the seven Blue Dog Democrats holding up the health care bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee were “a nondiverse group” of white men.

As a Republican, I find this promising. It had long been my wish that Democrats’ not-so-subtle racism, which comes disguised as them calling other people racists, would someday turn inward… on themselves. Alas, it hadn’t happened. But now, thanks to the president’s police relations program and this House member from Georgia, I have hope that this will change.

Salesman, entrepreneur, capitalist

There will be no tribute to Billy Mays today at the American Enterprise Institute. He won’t be on the cover of Newsweek with a halo on his head. The Wall Street Journal gave him barely a mention.

We need to do better. If we who celebrate free enterprise, capitalism, and The American Dream will not pay attention to his passing, why should we expect anyone to admire his achievements? Why would any young person want to emulate him?

Billy Mays started out hawking a washer-in-a-bucket on the Atlantic City boardwalk. He was a shameless pitchman, became an entrepreneur and a capitalist, and died a multimillionaire… all on the back of his skill as a salesman. Is there anything more quintessentially capitalist than that? Does anyone’s life better represent the promise of free enterprise? Does Billy Mays not belong in the American Dream Hall of Fame?

We’re told daily that “the free market has failed.” Instead of having people like Billy Mays on its cover, Newsweek tells the public “We’re All Socialists Now.” To read the newspapers in this country, virtue resides in government; the private sector is composed entirely of thieves and bandits. On Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham — the new John McCain — explained that young people today are just not listening to Republicans. Why should they? Does anything good ever come of Republican principles? And if so, when are we going to hear about it?

I’m hoping that when Billy got to the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter told him, “But wait! There’s more!”

Josh Gerstein, a front page contributor at the liberal blog Politico, today trots out the old "some say" trick to spray veterans and conservatives with the acts of notorious racist James von Brunn, who yesterday shot up the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, killing security guard Stephen T. Johns.

Gerstein reminds us that Republicans roundly criticized a recent "report" from the Department of Homeland Security warning about right-wing extremism:

The sharpest criticism of the report, titled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," was focused on a part of the report asserting that "the return of military veterans…could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks."

As if on cue, some say that yesterday’s violence validates the DHS "report." In this case the some are from the Southern Poverty Law Center, but any left-of-center bullhorn will do. Sooner or later one of them was bound to link the terms "Republicans," "conservatives," and "violent Holocaust-denying racists." The only question was which liberal pretender to reasonableness would step in to help them try to sell it.

Here we have an 88-year-old man who last saw military service in World War II. And that’s if we believe von Brunn; so far as I know his service in WWII has not been verified. Regardless, Gerstein would evidently have us believe that von Brunn’s status as a "veteran" is somehow related to what he did yesterday. Is it just Gerstein, or are all left-wingers that nuts? Are the liberals at Politico so creeped out by "veterans" that they think we should keep these men on the ’might go off any minute’ radar well into their eighties?

Fortunately, Gerstein himself supplies the best explanation for what he’s trying to do. He quotes Newt Gingrich’s spokesman Michael Steel:

"Trying to exploit this awful tragedy to score political points – from the right or the left - is simply grotesque," Steel said.

The Ministry of Hope invites all members of The Party to celebrate Two Minutes’ Hate against the following enemies of the people:

Hates will begin promptly at 6:30 p.m. (5:30 Central) on central feeds NBC, CBS, CNN, and PBS.

We are at war with the Private Sector. We have always been at war with The Private Sector

Shame on you. Every time you use Google, you are helping to destroy our planet. So says Alex Wissner-Gross, a no-good physicist from Harvard who is one of those annoying people who wants to take the fun out of everything. He has researched the carbon footprint of operating the Internet and now threatens to publish his results.

According to the Sunday Times,

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea

Another one of these blokes, Liam Newcombe of the British Computer Society, is all atwitter about the carbon cost of, you know, tweeting. The Times has Newcombe "warning" us that things like Twitter are not simply fun and hot air; they have a carbon cost.

If you’re like me, your first thought upon learning this was to wonder how long it takes Mr. Wissner-Gross to exhale as much carbon dioxide as it takes to boil a kettle for a cup of tea. Or alternatively, to atone for the Google search I used to find the answer. Which is “ten minutes.”

The Times does not say how seriously Mr. Wissner-Gross takes his research, or indeed whether he even cares if the planet bursts into flame. So I propose a test. I ask the professor to stop breathing for ten minutes every time I do a Google search. I will let him know by email each time his services are required (I recognize that sending him an email probably requires that we keep him breathless for another minute or two, but if he is serious about saving the planet he shouldn’t mind).

Opinion Research Corporation has just announced a poll which tells us that 77% of Americans blame the media for making the economic crisis worse.

No surprise there. It’s been nothing but "We’re All Gonna Die!" for virtually the entire eight years of the Bush presidency. What’s new is the idea that media organizations could potentially be held liable for some of the damage they’ve caused:

Richard L. Scheff, a national expert on corporate liability and white collar crime issues, warns media that they could potentially be exposed to liability despite apparent constitutional protections:

"Although statements by the media are protected by the First Amendment, the survey results demonstrate that the public believes that the press bears some responsibility for the lack of confidence in the economy. One would hope that the media would act less out of self-interest in these times of national crisis," said Mr. Scheff, vice chairman and partner with Philadelphia-based law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads.

In a country where a judge took seriously a claim that the loss of a pair of pants was worth $54 million, surely someone could claim that the loss of half the value of their 401(k) was worth $100 million, and that The New York Times was the culprit who caused it. The Times might win the suit, but so did the couple who ran the dry cleaning store in the Great Pants Suit. The “win” cost them $64,000 in attorney’s fees. (Generous donors held a fund-raiser and covered this cost, but would anyone do that for The New York Times?)

Where’s John Edwards when you need him?

If you’re a Republican and you haven’t yet cancelled your newspaper, you are missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime. Between the Internet and the gathering clouds of recession, most newspapers today are in serious financial difficulty. A few thousand more angry Republicans canceling the paper might not have had much impact a few years ago. Today you might have the distinction of participating in the final Drive Toward Receivership for your own local chapter of the Associated Press.

If the election of 2008 did not provide you with enough reasons to want to see massive layoffs in the newspaper industry, perhaps this will strike your fancy:

Tina Fey is the entertainer of the year? You betcha. Fey was voted The Associated Press’ Entertainer of the Year, an annual honor chosen by newspaper editors and broadcast producers across the country.

Tina Fey is a talented person. If the Academy of Comedic Arts and Sciences had given her such an award, I would not be writing this. However, the people who voted to give her this particular award are the ones writing, editing, and selecting our news. And their selection confirms what we already know about what goes on in their heads. And that in turn tells us that we Republicans cannot expect to be treated fairly in any news account, anywhere, at any time, so long as these people are in charge of writing and editing it.

The ‘newspaper editors and broadcast producers across the country’ do not even realize that they spend their days insulting and angering a good half of the people who pay their salaries. Or perhaps they do know and they don’t care. Regardless, the only way to ‘reform’ the news industry in this country in the hopes of making it fair to us and the people who represent our values, is to get virtually everyone who works there now fired or laid off. Until the sort of people who think that ridiculing Sarah Palin is the height of hilarity are removed from positions where they get to select what’s “news” and what isn’t, we can only expect more Chicago machine pols with halos decorating the covers of our news magazines, and ever-more reasons to tear our hair out over the blatancy of the Democratic Party activism coming from our press.

Those of us who are not Democrats have no reason to be funding Democratic Party activism. If you still subscribe to a daily newspaper, then you are helping to fund the Associated Press and the Democratic Party activists who write and edit the news that most voters rely on to make decisions. That’s insane. So stop. Cancel the paper.

MSNBC’s Courtney Hazlett is reporting that thousands of subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions to Us Weekly in the 24 hours since the magazine’s Sarah Palin smear job became known on the Internet. Most subscribers have not even received their issues yet.