The must-see video of the year.

8,000 in Orange Country, California:

They’re revolting. Families with children, bikers, seniors, pirates – by the thousands descended on a Fullerton bar Saturday to join talk show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of KFI in protesting tax increases recently approved in Sacramento.

Police estimated that some 8,000 people came to the Slidebar Café in downtown Fullerton to listen to The John & Ken Show.

“I expected a lot and it was way more than I expected,” said co-host John Kobylt.

The talk show hosts put forward an ambitious goal for their Tax Revolt 2009 live broadcast that ran for more than three hours.

“The purpose is to vote down Prop 1A on May 19 because it’s a two-year tax extension,” said Kobylt. “The purpose is to tell people how their Republican legislators lie about their votes. The purpose is to get support to recall Schwarzennegger, (Assemblyman) Anthony Adams, (Assemblyman) Jeff Miller, and everybody else.”

Some wore buttons. One man brought a bloody effigy head of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and waved it from the end of a pike, while the crowd joined their hosts in a chant of “Repeal, recall, revolt.”

Please note the ire being directed at “moderate” Republicans who are trying to be bi-partisan and do the people’s business and make the hard choices and yadda, yadda, yadda…Democrats are beneath contempt on this issue, but the GOP is expected to be the party of the people, and the people are demanding the GOP live up to its ideals. And a good thing, too.

Let this be a warning to any GOPer out there who wants the GOP to pursue a more liberal line on things – that nonsense might sell in New York and DC, but it isn’t going to sell anywhere else.

UPDATE: Click here for the picture which really captures the moment.

Amnesty International enters the Prop 8 debate:

Amnesty International is calling on the California Supreme Court to overturn California’s Proposition 8, the voter-passed amendment that enshrined the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman in the state constitution

In anticipation of a case challenging the validity of Proposition 8 being heard this week in the California Supreme Court, Dalia Hashad, Amnesty International (AI) USA Policy Director issued a statement, outlining AI’s position in favor of homosexual “marriage” and demanding that the court ignore the referendum that passed the Proposition.

“Amnesty International opposes discrimination in civil marriage. But this case is not just about same-sex marriage,” reads the statement. “It is about the basic human right to be treated equally under the law, without regard to an individual’s sexual orientation, race, religion or gender.

“States should never withhold rights based on minority status. Denying equal civil recognition of same-sex relationships compounds the effects of discrimination, undermines other rights, such as the right to housing or social security and tragically, stigmatizes those relationships in ways that can fuel further discrimination.”

There are two equally insane strands of liberal thought converging here:

1. A constitution, of any sort, must secure the broadest, most liberal concept of what human rights are.

2. A constitution does not in any way, shape or form permit the people to do anything liberals disagree with.

Even supposing you believe that same-sex marriage is a basic human right (which, in itself, is an insane idea because you can’t have a right to do a thing which requires the voluntary cooperation of more than one person), it is still a fact that governments are instituted among men to secure basic human rights and derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The enforcement of the Amendments to our constitution is non-controversial because they were placed in the constitution by the consent of the governed – the reason we’re still involved, more than three decades on, in a contentious debate over abortion is because a few judges placed abortion rights in the constitution without the consent of the governed. Now along comes liberalism with its new-found right to same-sex marriage and an insistence that the consent of the people is not required to enforce this alleged right.

The anti-human nature of liberalism is starkly displayed here – so in love with the concept of humanity, liberalism finds it impossible to love actual, individual humans. If a human is opposed to liberalism it is, according to liberals, the result of wickedness or idiocy, in neither case should liberals consider dissent from liberalism to be valid. Human beings, after giving it careful consideration over many years and hearing the argument well presented from both sides of the issue have repeatedly and by strong to overwhelming majorities decreed that whatever else anyone wishes to do, marriage shall be a union of one man and one woman. This is, of course, in contravention of liberal thinking, and thus the people have to be taken out of the equation – and so we have the liberal resort to judges to try and over turn the will of the people.

Some years back I opined on a blog that modern liberals are junior-league Leninists – meaning they are just as sure of themselves as Lenin and just as insistent upon the crushing of dissent, but they thus far lack the sheer insanity of a Lenin which allowed him to murder millions of people to advance his cause. I begin to wonder if the junior-league Leninsts are trying to graduate to the major league…

The news story:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday he’d seriously consider running for president in 2012.

With the mantle of the Republican Party still unclaimed, Gingrich told reporters in Ashland, Va., before a speech to Randolph-Macon College that he and his family would examine the political environment in early 2011, and “look seriously at whether or not we think it’s necessary to do it.”

“And if we think it’s necessary we’ll probably do it. And if it isn’t necessary we probably won’t do it,” he said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Certainly, Gingrich is one of the most intelligent men in American politics, but I think his negatives are waaaay too high for him to actually win, should he secure the nomination. On the other hand, he’d swiftly raise the level of debate in the GOP primary were he to run, even if he didn’t get the nomination. And if Obama is riding high in 2012 (highly unlikely), then a Gingrich campaign would shred Obama, even if Obama won in the end – nothing like having a real intellect take on a phony like Obama.

Just like the filthy fever swamps of anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-western bigotry – normally, such a kook as Freeman wouldn’t be a problem, but he’s to be the man advising President Obama on intelligence matters:

It should be pointed out that, despite his position as former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman seems not to have too deep an understanding of the history of the Middle East. For instance, after the first Gulf War, Freeman told the left-wing journalist Alexander Cockburn that the prospect of an Iraq fractured by sectarian warfare was unlikely because, after all, the Shia and Sunni are actually pretty close pals.

“The behavior of the Iraqi Shia in the Iran-Iraq war convinced the Saudis that the Shia were not Iranian surrogates. Washington was obsessed by that idea, and attributed it to the Saudis. I don’t know where all this panic about the breakup of Iraq came from. After all, Mesopotamia has been there for quite a while-about six thousand years. Iraq is not a flimsy construction.”

The man knows nothing but the leftist bigotry he’s paid to parrot – and Obama, or his handlers, have selected him to handle the intelligence portfolio of the Administration! I mean, one must start to think that Freeman has some pretty nasty dirt on someone in the Obama Administration – if it isn’t that, then we have to go with Obama and his handlers being the most ignorant set of fools to ever govern a nation.

The MSM headline when Bush mangled his words:

Bush stumbles while asserting progress in education

The MSM headline when Hillary mangled her words:

Tongue-tied Clinton gets warm EU welcome

Now, what did Bush say?

“As yesterday’s positive report card shows,” Bush said, “childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.”

And what did Hillary say?

Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state when she mispronounced her EU counterparts’ names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe’s…

…”I have never understood multiparty democracy.

“It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy.”

Bush “stumbles” because, you see, he’s a hick moron…Hillary is “tongue-tied” because she’s a genius liberal…

Meanwhile, all Bush did was accidentally put an “s” at the end of “children”, while Hillary showed massive ignorance of basic facts.

It was in 1993, along with Virginia – and in both Virginia and New Jersey, the GOP is the early favorite:

Gov. Jon S. Corzine could face a tough re-election bid, according to the results of a new poll showing his approval ratings slipping and the Democrat trailing his likely Republican challenger.

Only 40 percent of registered voters polled in the Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind survey released Wednesday approved of Corzine’s job performance, with 46 percent disapproving upside down from results released in January.

At the same time, Corzine is behind former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie by 9 percentage points in a theoretical matchup, 32 percent to 41 percent.

The survey comes in the midst of a state budget crisis and follows Corzine’s proposal to cut more than $1 billion from the budget and to furlough state workers for two days to help close a $3.6 billion gap in the current state spending plan, brought on by plummeting revenues.

It also comes days before the governor is set to unveil the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, with sharp cuts and other actions expected to offset a projected $6 billion to $7 billion shortfall, potentially including additional furloughs, and even layoffs, if public workers continue to resist a wage freeze.

“When budgets are cut, public employees laid off, and taxes are in danger of being raised, lots of people think twice about their support for the incumbent,” said PublicMind poll director Peter Woolley.

Naturally, this is still waaaay the heck early and Corzine has vast resources to apply to his re-election bid, but no Democrat can be pleased that the GOP is holding the advantage in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests. Especially when one considers that we’re still pretty heavily into the Glo-Bama phase of the Obama Administration and he’s still riding high at around 60% approval. If Obama’s popularity tanks – highly likely given the economic disaster we’re heading into – then the headwind against Democrats will just become stronger and stronger.

I’m all in on this idea:

An organization called Tax Day Tea Party is getting ready to stage a national tea party on April 15 income tax return day, protesting what day call the “out of control government spending.”

The Tax Day Tea Party is the second round of the Nationwide Tea Party protests. The first tax party was in Chicago. It built upon the success of the February 27th “Chicago Tea Party” Rallies.

The organizers are now working to develop an even larger day of protests set to happen on April 15th, 2009 and have named it National Tax Day Tea Party.

If we can really gin up interest in this, we should turn it into a nationwide general strike – everyone who works to take April 15th off and pour into the streets to let the politicians know that we are, finally, mad as heck and aren’t going to take it any more. No more of this utter BS where bankrupt corporations like GM and Citi get billions of our dollars while we’re sitting down here wondering what to do with houses worth 50% of their value of two years ago. I haven’t even looked at my 401K in a month as I just don’t want to see it.

Yes, its very true that I’m a conservative – but don’t any of you liberals feel a bit burned by now? I mean, come on: the guy promised us not a single earmark, and now it looks like we’ve got 9,000 of them coming down the pike. Just how many tax cheats has he nominated? We, the people, need to stand up for a moment here – demand that this stop, and work to defeat every single politician we can who proposes higher taxes in a recession, proposes pork-barrel projects while people are losing their homes, proposes that Big Union and Big Corporation get our money.

We’re heading for catastrophe here (and don’t even get me started on foreign and defense policy), and only we, the people, can stop it.

Given how bad Obama’s decisions have been and the ever clearer disaster he’s leading us to, when can we start calling for him to resign?

I’m going with October 1st.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball asks – is he incompetent, or malevolent?

Via a “we’ll help ya die” “assisted suicide” law passed in Washington state this past November with the assistance of the Orwellian-named “Compassion & Choices”:

An assisted suicide group has announced it will compile a directory of physicians who will assist terminally ill patients seeking lethal medication prescriptions after a Washington state assisted suicide law takes effect on Thursday. The group expects a “cultural shift” in the state will encourage more doctors to assist in suicides.

The move follows the passage of Washington’s Initiative 1000, which won nearly 60 percent of the vote in the November 2008 election.

Under the law, two doctors must certify that the suicidal patient has a terminal condition and has six months or less to live. The patient must be a state resident and must make two oral requests 15 days apart and submit a written request witnessed by two people.

Physicians and pharmacists are not required to write or fill lethal prescriptions if they are opposed to doing so.

Some hospitals are opting out of participation, which prevents doctors from participating in assisted suicides on hospital property, the Associated Press reports.

The group Compassion & Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society, backed the ballot measure.

The group’s executive director Rob Miller told the Associated Press the group is now compiling a directory listing physicians who are not opting out of the law and pharmacies willing to fill lethal prescriptions for the suicidal terminally ill.

“Physicians don’t understand yet exactly how the law works,” Miller explained. “Whenever there’s lack of understanding, there tends to be some reluctance.”

Some reluctance, indeed – but the “compassionate” murderers hope to get the ball rolling soon and, after people are desensitized, just start whacking people all the time who have become elderly, ill or otherwise inconvenient. I recall with my late mother-in-law that the doctors told us six months before she died that she’d be dead in a few weeks…if the Hemlock people had been around, someone might have offed her, and we would have missed having her around for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. God calls people home when they he, in his completely superior wisdom, knows they should go – for any one of us tiny, frail beings to try and figure out when we or anyone else should go is the acme of arrogance.

Where do we get these people who think that death is the answer? Don’t want the kid you’ve brought into the world? Kill him. Grandpa getting on in years and becoming a bit of a hassle to care for? Kill him. Having a bad time? Kill yourself.

Right now I’m in the process of caring for my father in what is very likely his last few months on Earth – this involves doing some rather graphic things which, in the normal course of events, one would never want to do…but, he’s my father and I’m glad to have him around for a while longer and he expresses joy that he is still here, even though he needs help even with some of the very basic tasks of daily living. These Hemlock-murderers would have me try to talk Dad into killing himself…or they would try to talk him into it, directly…explaining how his quality of life just isn’t “good enough”. A bunch of anti-human horsesh** is all that is. We’re all terminally ill, and have been since the moment of conception. We’re all gonna die – and, you know what?, you might die tomorrow, while in the pink of health…so why not kill yourself right away?

Last night I took the old man out for a little while – he played a little blackjack (he won $35, while they cleaned me out), had himself a scotch and soda, smoked a couple cigarettes and generally enjoyed himself. I had to use a wheel chair to get him in and out of the place and had to help him dress before going, and undress before he went to bed. I wouldn’t give that up for all the money in the world – and my Dad enjoyed being out; it is now a precious moment in my memory which I will carry with me to my grave. A comfort and a reminder, and a promise that one day we’ll all be back together again.

Kill him, or take him out for a scotch – you tell me, which was the better thing to do.