Gotta protect their meal ticket, don’t you know?

Sen. Robert Casey (D., Pa.) and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D., N.D.) are pushing legislation that would commit taxpayers’ dollars to bailing out the Teamsters’ retirement pension fund. The financial crisis and the Great Recession may have upset your retirement plans, but that’s not reason that politically connected union thugs have to share the pain…

…This is worrisome for a lot of reasons, as Vernuccio points out: First, it establishes a precedent for taxpayer-funded bailouts of union pensions. As galling as it would be to bail out the Teamsters and their other private-sector union buddies — whose meatheaded management of their pensions has left them with as much as $165 billion in unfunded obligations, according to Moody’s — things would immediately get much, much worse if that precedent were used to justify a bailout of the public-sector unions, whose unfunded pension liabilities run into the trillions…

This is the price of continued union donations to the Democrat party – make sure the unions, public and private, are parked on the taxpayer’s dime, forever. Unions know they are getting politically toxic and also know that the private sector just can’t afford the lavish union benefits…so, hook them up to Uncle Sam’s teat! After all, its only taxpayer money! That grows on fricking trees!

Do understand that our entire nation is being sold down the river by a political class which only wants to keep itself in power for one more election cycle…that is all they care about. If they manage to bamboozle us in 2010, then their whole goal will be to keep in power for yet another cycle. Whatever it takes, they’ll do it…and they don’t care, even if they realize, that this is bankrupting our nation and leading us on a path to destruction…all they want is their personal power and wealth to be ever increased.

There is much debate these days about what to do with social issues. With liberalism in melt-down mode, many voices are calling for a muting of social issues in our political discourse. It is said that we have to concentrate on economic issues, at any rate, and why bring up those contentious social issues which may allow our liberal friends a new lease on life?

All of such thinking is just so much rot – social conservatism is conservatism; the economic stuff is just icing on the cake. What matters if taxes are low and spending is cut if our society is disintegrating in a riot of immorality? What soldier fights for easy access to pornography and a healthy stock market?

Dave Hartline covers this issue excellently over at The American Catholic in a genuine must-read article. The fact of the matter is that if we give up the fight for basic morality – for basic truth, that is – then we surrender the field to liberalism. Hartline points out that those Catholic dioceses which have fallen in to the liberal swamp on social issues are lacking any spirit – they are dying away, even as they appear on the surface to remain large and powerful. Meanwhile, those areas where orthodoxy reigns are surging in strength and growing by leaps and bounds.

Our arguments about government spending, taxes and national defense will be quiet academic if we surrender the field to liberal morality. We might triumph over the next few election cycles on merely economic grounds, but if we are not also firmly engaged in the defense of morality, we’ll find our economic victories to be fleeting, at best. At the end of the day, we’ll find we have an empty shell of conservatism – something which looks impressive on paper, but which is wasting away for lack of a back bone.

I’ve said before that the most crucial issue we face today is abortion. Second only to abortion is gay marriage. These two fights are for the bedrock of our civilization. If we do not respect life and if we do not defend the traditional family, then we have lost everything, even if we gain 6% in GDP. A nation owned by the Culture of Death and pretending that a gay couple is the same as a straight, married couple with children is a nation which is doomed, no matter what else happens.

The merest glance at Europe’s disintegration and increasingly violent and aggressive Islamization is all we need to convince ourselves that their path must not be ours – but their path will be ours if we follow European conservatism down the path of “me too” on social immorality. Conservatism over there ceased to defend family and traditional morality – concentrating on the allegedly more important bread and butter economic issues. Now Europe can’t even defend itself; whole areas of European cities have become no-go zones of Moslem domination…and while European gays can marry, the majority of children being born in some areas are to Moslem parents.

Man does not live by bread alone – we don’t live by tax rates and GDP growth statistics. In order to live – really live, as men and women – we need a firm foundation of truth in our lives. That is what conservatism arose to defend, and must defend or simply have no point, at all.

Because if its a choice between academic freedom and indulging in continued hatred of President Bush, its really no contest:

Anti-war activists are protesting at the University of California, Berkeley to demand the removal of a law professor who used to craft legal theories for the Bush administration on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques.

Monday is the first day of classes at UC Berkeley’s School of Law. The target of the protest there is John Yoo, who worked for President Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2001-03. The demonstators want Yoo to be prosecuted for war crimes…

Of course, these same demonstrators will never call for, say, Fidel Castro to be prosecuted – after all, he really did commit war crimes, but because he’s a socialist, its all ok. Be a Republican who merely offers some legal advice to a President you hate – up against the wall, you SOB!

From NRO’s Campaign Spot:

In the most recent Gallup poll, the generic ballot shows Republicans ahead of Democrats, 50 percent to 43 percent.

The GOP’s seven-point margin is the largest they have enjoyed since . . . the dawn of creation, according to Gallup’s chart.

Strangely, the GOP had a five-point margin in July 1994, but the generic ballot remained tied in August and November.

That last bit is very important – in 1994 with the generic ballot tied up, the GOP still scored historic gains. This is because of the oddity of polling – it always understates GOP strength. There are a lot of theories for this, none of them completely convincing – I don’t bother with them any longer: I just always mentally add 2-3 points to the GOP for polls of likely voters, 3-5 points for polls of registered voters and 5-7 points for polls of adults – it works very well.

Right now, with a 7 point lead, if the election were held today, the Democrats would be utterly crushed. Will this polling sustain itself in to November? No way to tell – but unless things turn around very fast for the Democrats, they are looking at some pretty serious losses on November 2nd.

From Legal Insurrection:

The Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has granted a stay pending an expedited appeal of the District Court Order which held that California Prop. 8 violated the U.S. Constitution. The Court specifically ordered the supporters of Prop. 8 to brief if they had standing to appeal…

A little surprised that the 9th would do this – after all, this is reasonable and just and entirely in accordance with the law…things not often seen out of the 9th. Could be, of course, that they just realized if the upheld the order then the Supreme Court would just issue a stay.

Bottom line – this delays the issue until after the election, and then shortly after that California may have a governor and/or attorney general who will do their darned job and defend the will of the people of California.

UPDATE: The brief which “smacked down” Walker is available here. A quote:

…to read the district court’s confident, though often startling, factual pronouncements, one would think that reasonable minds simply cannot differ on the key legislative facts implicated by this case. Again, however, the district court simply ignored virtually everything—judicial authority, the works of eminent scholars past and present in all relevant academic fields, extensive documentary and historical evidence, and even simple common sense—opposed to its conclusions. Indeed, even though this case implicates quintessential legislative facts— i.e., “general facts which help the tribunal decide questions of law and policy and discretion,” Langevin v. Chenango Court, Inc., 447 F.2d 296, 300 (2d Cir. 1971) (Friendly, J.)—the district court focused almost exclusively on the oral testimony presented at trial. See Daggett v. Commission on Governmental Ethics & Election Practices, 172 F.3d 104, 112 (1st Cir. 1999) (Boudin, J.) (legislative facts “usually are not proved through trial evidence but rather by material set forth in the briefs”); Indiana H. B. R.R. Co. v. American Cyanamid Co., 916 F.2d 1174, 1182 (7th Cir. 1990) (Posner, J.) (legislative facts “more often are facts reported in books and other documents not prepared specially for litigation”). The district court’s treatment of the trial testimony, moreover, was likewise egregiously selective and one-sided. The district court eagerly and uncritically embraced the highly tendentious opinions offered by Plaintiffs’ experts and simply ignored important concessions by those witnesses that undermined Plaintiffs’ claims. And it just as consistently refused to credit (or even qualify) the two experts offered by Proponents…

As I’ve said – he just ruled the way he preferred things to come out. That the MSM is retailing Plaintiff’s lie that the Proponents made a poor case doesn’t change the fact that it was the Plaintiff’s who were making absurd arguments. They made them, however, in front of a “judge” determined to find for them.

This judicial usurpation simply cannot be allowed to stand – and even a proponent of gay marriage who has an ounce of Americanism in his bones will demand that this ruling be overturned. It is un-American, unjust and hateful – if gay marriage is to be, it simply must not come about via a black robed tyrant.

ABC news writes up the “class war” brewing between government employees and their employers – ie, you and me, dear taxpayer. While the report does cover some useful ground, it is an MSM report and thus does give plenty of space for the defenders of the status quo. The most absurd thing is a quote from a liberal pressure group and the AFSCME union stating that, on average, a public sector employee only gets $20,000 per year in pension benefits.

This is supposed to make us feel bad about the poor, little government employees. But as I recall, my dad was only getting about $14,000 per year from Social Security – and he only started getting that at 65. Public sector employees can start collecting their pension at 50, and keep collecting it until death, with regular cost of living increases, even if the cost of living doesn’t go up (say a person lives to 75 and retires at 55, even if its only 20k per year, that is $400,000.00…dad got about $238,000…and he paid for the guys getting 400k!). Additionally, public employee contributions to the plan are minimal…far less than, say, the SS taxes a private sector worker pays.

Additionally, I’ll bet dollars to donuts the figure is far higher than 20k. But aside from that, there are these two stark facts:

1. Public sector pensions are higher than the private sector pensions.

2. Public sector workers can retire much earlier than private sector workers.

That is the unfairness of it – the employees are getting more than the employers. If I hire someone to work for me, he gets paid less than me, period. It is absurd that someone I hire makes more than me – on average, public sector wages should be lower than private sector wages. Adjusted for State and local conditions, of course, but still lower on average.

Secondly, why does a public sector employee get to retire so young? I’ve got to slog it out until I’m 67 before I get my full social security benefits (supposing there even are such by 2031) – why doesn’t my public sector counter-part have to do the same? Heck, even on my employers pension plan, I don’t get it until I hit retirement age…even if I quit tomorrow.

Simple fairness requires a major reduction in public sector pay, as well as an end to early retirement. You can quit your public sector job after 20 or 30 years and keep your pension – but you don’t get it until you reach normal retirement age. No more 50 year old “retirees” living off the public dime or, as if often the case, taking new government employment while keeping the first pension (and thus building up a “double dip” pension in addition to the first).

We’re all supposed to be in this together – and it should be that public sector pay only rises after private sector pay, thus providing an incentive to government workers to increase the wealth of the private economy. To do otherwise is unjust, plain and simple.

Pat Toomey lays out the case for the GOP in 2010:

There seems to be serious consideration having Ted’s widow run for his old seat:

Nearly one year after Edward M. Kennedy’s death, prominent Democrats in Washington and Massachusetts are promoting his widow as the party’s best shot at winning back the Senate seat he held for nearly five decades.

Though she has seemed to bat down the idea of challenging Sen. Scott Brown (R) in 2012, Victoria Reggie Kennedy has been in some ways acting the part of a candidate. She has raised her public profile by campaigning for other politicians and appearing at events across the country…

A party so bereft of ideas and candidates that they can’t think of anything else in Massachusetts than to drag out another Kennedy is a party on its way down.

Good morning everyone – it is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, today…for all you non-Catholics out there, this means its the day we celebrate Mary’s assumption in to Heaven. As Mary counted her blessings, it is a good day for all of us to count ours, and show some gratitude for them.

In Connecticut, the wrestling lady, Linda McMahon, has a decent shot at winning – which was unthinkable even a month ago in that heavily Democrat State.

Home equity lines of credit are becoming un-collectable. An odd phenomena, to be sure…but the most important part of it is how it indicates another raft of bad debt on banks’ books without an acknowledgment.

Palin leads among stoner-Republicans. Which might not be as helpful as our libertarian friends think…we don’t have nearly as many people stoned in our party as the Democrats do, at least if we take statements in the media as an indication.

Black and Right asks You Tube to ban the racism in comments.

Tired of the red/blue divide in America? Then perhaps we can change it to the “Free America” and “Sissy America” divide? Works for me.

Geesh:

TVNewser has learned the human resources department of TBS Inc. has sent out an email this afternoon alerting staffers of a bed bug problem in their New York City offices at Time Warner Center — home to CNN, CNNMoney.com and other Time Warner entities.

The Time Warner Center Facilities Department advises that bed bugs have been detected in Time Warner Center. This determination was made after testing was conducted on several floors of the building.

A CNN spokesperson tells TVNewser, “the building management is addressing the issue and is taking immediate action.”

How Third World are we going to get before we really start taking things seriously? A bit of DDT would cure TBS’ problem, but DDT was banned because a lady once wrote a book blaming it for killing cute, little birdies…too bad, CNN…scratch away and, before you come visit, be sure to take a shower.