California Public Unions Ok Political Suicide

Mark Noonan

And if this happens, the GOP should be able to mop the floor with the Democrat party in California in 2010:

California’s largest state employees’ union voted on Saturday to approve a strike authorization measure to protest furloughs of state workers and pressure state officials to ratify its labor contract.

A spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 1000 said a strike was not imminent but that the vote authorized union officers to initiate certain job actions, including a strike if necessary.

The SEIU represents about 95,000 state employees, including clerical workers and teachers.

Please, please, please go on strike – it would so clearly indicate just how out of touch this major portion of the liberal base is. We’ve been looking for the means of demonstrating the problem – this would neatly fill the bill.

You see, the parts of the liberal problem tend to distance themselves, in the public mind, from each other – there is a public perception that the SEIU is not a mere adjunct of the Democrat party. If they go on strike during this crisis, it would force the Democrat leadership to back the strike. Presto! In the public mind, Democrats and SEIU are one, and both go down to defeat.

Weekly Recap (2009-08-01)

Matt Margolis

Defending Human Rights (as Long as Israel Can be Cast as the Bad Guy)

Mark Noonan

So typical:

…From 2006 to the present, Human Rights Watch’s reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict have been almost entirely devoted to condemning Israel, accusing it of human rights and international law violations, and demanding international investigations into its conduct. It has published some 87 criticisms of Israeli conduct against the Palestinians and Hezbollah, versus eight criticisms of Palestinian groups and four of Hezbollah for attacks on Israel. (It also published a small number of critiques of both Israel and Arab groups, and of intra-Palestinian fighting.)

It was during this period that more than 8,000 rockets and mortars were fired at Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza. Human Rights Watch’s response? In November 2006 it said that the Palestinian Authority “should stop giving a wink and a nod to rocket attacks.” Two years later it urged the Hamas leadership “to speak out forcefully against such [rocket] attacks . . . and bring to justice those who are found to have participated in them.”

In response to the rocket war and Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in June 2007, Israel imposed a partial blockade of Gaza. Human Rights Watch then published some 28 statements and reports on the blockade, accusing Israel in highly charged language of an array of war crimes and human rights violations…

The bottom line for international do-gooder organizations is that they simply cannot be trusted. Its not a gigantic, anti-Israel or anti-America conspiracy. But the fact is that the people who volunteer to staff these organizations come from a small group of similar-minded people. Its not too often that, say, a US soldier will leave the Army after an illustrious career and go in to Human Rights Watch – he should, as he’s done more for human rights than most, but its just not in the cards. Meanwhile, people with advanced degrees – but no practical experience – flock to such groups and as they have been heavily pre-indoctrinated in to a leftist worldview, it is natural that they’ll reserve their heaviest fire for those targets hated by the left.

We shouldn’t allow this state of affairs to continue – we should get some real money and talent behind groups who will tell the truth – the whole truth – about the state of human rights in the world. We should not have groups more beholden to a leftist worldview than to truth.

Normal Man Shocks Journalists

Mark Noonan

Its actually a sad commentary on how pathetic we’ve become:

Last week Florida Gators Quarterback Tim Tebow’s photo may have graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, the same magazine that is best known for its annual “swimsuit issue,” but the contrast between the two cover stories couldn’t have been more glaring.

At 21 years of age and graced with boyish good looks, Tebow is one of the most talked about rising stars of the NCAA; but the football superstar literally left reporters speechless last week when he answered a question during a press conference about whether or not he is “saving himself” for marriage.

“Yes I am,” said Tebow briefly, who then indicated he was ready for the next question. However, in the video of the press conference, a reporter is heard stumbling over his words in the background as he tries to ask a follow-up question. Tebow then laughs, obviously reacting to the reactions of the reporters in the room.

“I think y’all were stunned by that,” he says. “Y’all can’t even ask a question. Wow. I mean, I was ready for that question. I don’t think y’all were.”

It wasn’t the only controversial remark that Tebow made that day. In response to another question about whether or not people may be tired of the volume of coverage devoted to the young football star, Tebow, a devout Christian, said that the level of exposure he receives is a mixed blessing. However, he said, he looks at the positive side that, thanks to his fame, he has been able to share his Christian faith with so many people.

Tebow is also an abortion survivor – as the story goes on to note, Tebow’s mother was pressured to have an abortion due to infections during her pregnancy. She chose life, the world got a good quarterback and, more importantly, someone who is smarter than most of us.

I think all of us who convert or “revert” (as I did) to the Christian faith almost immediately realize that pre-conversion, we were a bunch of creeps and we’d give just about anything if we could make the past as if it had never been. Talking it over not too long ago with a single-mother friend of mine – shortly after I got married and after she became engaged to be married – we both realized that it is a very large regret that the particular aspect of physical intimacy would never be, for us, something we solely self-donated to the person we decided to marry. Tebow will, God willing, never have such issues. It is to be hoped that he’ll find himself a woman who is as wise as he’s been (though, of course, if God wills that it end up being a woman who gave herself to folly, then that will be fine, too; and Tebow will be a rock of support for such a woman rebuilding her life).

This is a man who is altogether admirable – doubly so because I’ll bet large amounts of money that he’d be the first person to deny anything special about himself. And in the larger sense he is right – he is the normal man; those of us who bought in to the lies of the modern world, we’re the abnormal ones…even if that means most people alive are abnormal.

Palin and "People vs Powerful"

Mark Noonan

John Hawkins comments on the level of elite conservative vitriol directed at Sarah Palin:

…But why would the right have it in for Palin? The excessively vicious attacks on Palin from some quarters on the right make people scratch their heads — particularly since her critics claim to agree with her on the issues and so much of their criticism seems to be, at least on its face, completely irrational.

They said Sarah Palin wasn’t experienced enough — but, despite the fact that Obama has been in the White House for six months, he still has less executive experience than Palin. They said Palin spent too much time talking in platitudes — after America elected a man whose campaign primarily consisted of repeating the words “change” and “hope” over and over again. They got upset because Palin was parodied on Saturday Night Live — but what candidate isn’t going to be ripped to pieces on that show?

To many conservatives, those complaints didn’t seem to make sense when the people making them often seemed to give Obama a free pass for the very flaws they seemed to hate so much in Palin. Where did these strange complaints come from? …

…An unspoken assumption was made by many conservatives: Palin is like me and the real problem that Palin’s enemies on the right have with her is that they’re snobs and they don’t accept common people like me in their leadership.

Given the way that conservatives are regularly betrayed and the contempt for them that some Republicans have shown over the last few years, that assessment is probably correct more often than not.

Palin is, indeed, just like me. Just like most of the people I know. Quite honestly, whom do you want coming over for dinner – Sarah Palin, or John Kerry? The former has “American” on her like a crown; the later is barely identifiable as an American, at all. There are two Americas – that part which is proud to be American and that part which is not, or at least not so proud of being American that it trumps an Ivy League degree or the knowledge that the oyster fork is placed to the right of the plate. Palin is hated because she’s one of us who also has a chance of governing the elite – and they can’t stand it.

We are to sit down and shut up. Pay our taxes. Serve in the military/police/fire department. And leave governing to those who know better than us – and, sad to say, there is a substantial conservative elite who also feel this way. Even if they would agree to policies which allow the common man more leeway, they still don’t want that common man barging in and breaking wind in the palaces of the great (10 points to whomever can identify where I took that last bit from). This is why I characterize the real political battle of 2010 forward as “people vs powerful”.

The left is going to be excluded from this – they think that with Obama in charge they’ve got a seat at the table. They haven’t learned that their seat is in the corner where fund raising and volunteering is done…not where decisions are made. Conservatism may be excluded – to a degree – if the GOP leadership listens to the DC/NYC conservative elite and tries to shut out things like the TEA Party movement. The changes which are sought in the populace are revolutionary – no more tinkering about the edges and trying to figure out who gets what government subsidy. The desire is for a complete house cleaning and a re-emphasis on the rights of the people.

Scared to death of Palin and what she represents, the powerful are essentially closing ranks – preferring, to a certain extent, even the continuation of the Obama disaster if that is the only means of keeping the people out of power. Anything is better than some yokel like Palin (backed by a legion of House members and Senators elected first elected in 2010) actually ripping the government to shreds and insisting upon honesty and results. She must be stopped – and so they go after her thinking that if they get her, the danger is over (they forget people like Jindal – after his excruciating national debut, he’s discounted…but, he’s also of the people and, if you take any random 1,000 Americans, you’ll probably find he’s smarter than any of them…even if that 1,000 people were made up of Harvard and Yale PhD’s). Of course, she can be stopped – but what she stands for, can’t be. At best, the powerful will win a temporary reprieve – but the political executioner is not to be denied.

Pelosi Suckers Democrat Base With Anti-Insurance Co. Rhetoric

Mark Noonan

And they’ll be sure to buy it:

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday ramped up her criticism of insurance companies, accusing them of unethical behavior and working to kill a plan to create a new government-run health plan.

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi said to reporters…

Meanwhile, Her Majesty has taken – over her career – $311,250.00 from the insurance industry, $176,450.00 from the pharmaceuticals industry, $542,250.00 from “health professionals” (which ain’t all selfless docs and nurses, ya know? A phrase like that covers a multitude of job descriptions…and sins) and $324,369.00 from lobbyists, some substantial part of which is sure to be insurance lobbyists.

She won’t be giving any of this money back.

Liberals will not put two and two together.

She’ll be thumpingly re-elected in 2010.

Four More Banks Fail

Mark Noonan

If a GOPer were in office, this would lead the news:

Regulators on Friday shut down banks in Florida, New Jersey, Ohio and Oklahoma, boosting to 68 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year amid the pressures of the weak economy and mounting loan defaults.

We’re not even close to the bottom, good people – the second wave of foreclosures is hitting, and it will be accelerated by people just bailing out on their over-mortgaged properties. All Obama’s trillion or so in spending did was slow it down by a few months – and, in the end, make it worse than it had to be.

Meanwhile, as the economy contracts more than expected, Wall Street shows that the “Greater Fool” theory of stock investment is alive and well.

Remembering Woodstock?

Mark Noonan

As we are about to get a dose of former hippies telling us what a wonderful, epoch-making event it was to have half a million unwashed stoners listening to rock and roll, the VFW magazine (article not yet available), notes that there is another group of 500,000+ Americans we should remember: those who were fighting in Vietnam during that four day mud-fest.

109 American servicemen died while draft dodgers got laid and listened to music over a bad sound system. Quoting from the article:

They mirrored the population of the time. A full 92% were white (seven of whom had Spanish surnames) and 8% black. Some 67% were Protestants; 28% Catholic. A disproportionate number – more than one third – hailed from the South. Over two-thirds were single; nearly one-third married. Now surprisingly, the vast majority (92%) were under the age of 30, with 78% between the ages of 18 and 22.

Overwhelmingly (87%), they were in the Army. Marines and airmen accounted for 8% and 4% of the deaths respectively, with sailors sustaining 1%. Again, not unexpectedly, two-thirds were infantrymen. That same proportion was lower ranking enlisted men. Enemy action claimed 84% of their lives; non-hostile causes, 16%. The preponderance (56%) had volunteered while 43% has been drafted. One was in the National Guard.

Whom do you think I’ll spend my time remembering?