Blogs For Victory

If you love Sarah – and we all do, of course; only panty-waist liberals and ugly lesbians take issue with her, as we all know – then this website will become a regular for you.

Nicholas Kristof has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times, entitled, “Humanity, Even for Nonhumans,” speaking of those who believe that the human race has the moral obligation to relieve suffering of species that we tend to uh… eat. Some interesting tidbits in Kristof’s column include this pioneer in animal “rights.”

One of the few exceptions was Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher who 200 years ago also advocated for women’s rights, gay rights and prison reform. He responded to Kant’s lack of interest in animals by saying: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

Interesting line of questioning, especially the italicized phrase.

Fast forward to a modern, “enlightened” animal rights whacko, also mentioned in the Kristoff piece:

Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer.

Professor Singer wrote a landmark article in 1973 for The New York Review of Books and later expanded it into a 1975 book, “Animal Liberation.” That book helped yank academic philosophy back from a dreary foray into linguistics and pushed it to confront such fascinating questions of applied ethics as: What are our moral obligations to pigs?

John Maynard Keynes wrote that ideas, “both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” This idea popularized by Professor Singer — that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species — is one whose time appears to have come.

“There’s some growth in numbers of vegetarians, but the bigger thing is a broad acceptance of the idea that animals count,” Mr. Singer reflected the other day.

Kristoff goes on to further describe the encounter he had with Singer:

I eagerly pushed Mr. Singer to find his boundaries. “Do you have any compunctions about swatting a cockroach?” I asked him. “Not much,” he replied, citing reasons to doubt that insects are capable of much suffering. Mr. Singer is somewhat unsure about shellfish, although he mostly gives them the benefit of the doubt and tends to avoid eating them.

If Mr. Singer, a known leftist, would channel his compassion toward ending suffering for all forms of life, animal and human, I may have respect for what he has to say. But like most leftists with regard to their storeroom of compassion, Mr. Singer’s capacity for compassion weighs empty when it comes to human beings:

An internationally known Princeton “bioethicist” and animal-rights activist says he’d kill disabled babies if it were in the “best interests” of the family, because he sees no distinction in the child’s life whether it is born or not, and the world already allows abortion.

The comments come from Peter Singer, a controversial bioethics professor, who responded to a series of questions in the UK Independent this week.

Earlier, WND reported Singer believes the next few decades will see a massive upheaval in the concept of life and rights, with only “a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists” still protecting life as sacrosanct.

To the rest, it will be a commodity to be re-evaluated regularly for its worth.

To the irreligious left who eschew boiling lobster, who protest killing whales, or baby seals, or for that matter Mr. Singer, who eschews eating oysters on the half-shell due at the mere ‘possibility’ of their suffering, their stores of compassion somehow run precariously dry when newborn or soon-to-be-born human beings enter the equation.

Being leftists, they celebrate human death. That’s why they worshipped Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara and the North Vietnamese communists, and continue to worship Castro, Chavez and other murderers. That is why they celebrated the banning of DDT, even though they knew it would result in untold human deaths due to malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

To the left, human death is cool. Human death is righteous. For human death fits right in to the Marxist bromide, “Everything that exists deserves to be destroyed.” In their view, which is reflective of their über prophet, Karl Marx, their phoenix that is their otherwise unattainable socialist utopia must necessarily rise from the ashes of human debris.

To the leftist, death is cleansing; death means rebirth.

Human death, anyway.

In short, leftists, at their very core, operate from a platform of pure evil.

Victor Davis Hanson notes that the narrative might come out very negative for the Democrats:

There is a great deal of chest-thumping among Obama’s supporters that “comprehensive immigration” reform is an invaluable campaign issue that will ensure a Democratic Southwest, as Republicans fall into some sort of nativist trap.

I’m not so sure. Hispanics respect the rule of law as much as anyone; closing the borders first, then worrying about the auxillary issues later, won’t necessarily prove polarizing, especially if presented in terms of a desire to insist on the rule of law and a racially/ethnically blind nation. This year’s immigration lead-ins on the evening news are not Minutemen on the border and poor immigrants wandering the desert deprived of water by cruel Americans, but lines of Americans at job fairs, reports that the unemployed are looking for any sort of work that they can get their hands on, and a brutality and savagery right across the border every bit as disturbing as what we’ve seen on jihadist videos.

What will cause polarization is a radical Democratic drive now for de facto amnesty without border closure — at a time of rising unemployment here at home and utter chaos and violence in Mexico. So far the real extremist rhetoric (cf. Ms. Pelosi’s recent rants in California) has come from the open-borders side, not from those who wish to return to legal immigration and a border run in accordance with the law.

It must be kept in mind that the people of real cruelty in this debate are those who are in favor of open borders – open borders which only profit the corrupt in Mexico and the United States who see human beings as objects to be exploited. The reason we hold that the rule of law is precious is because without law, humans are sheep thrown to the wolves. While we have only one ultimate Shepherd, while we live on Earth the law is our day to day shepherd. Part of our problem, I think, is that liberals and their leftist offspring don’t really understand what law is, nor what justice is…nor, indeed, what charity is, when you get right down to it.

It is illegal to cross our borders without permission – liberals say that the law is to be set aside based on a narrative of alleged American racism, imperialism in hispanic lands and the poverty of the illegal immigrants. It is unjust to Americans to force them to provide social services to those who are in the country illegally – liberals say that justice actually means anyone who arrives in any state of need must be given all we have. Charity is when a person volunteers to help another, including those Americans who go down south and work as teachers, doctors, engineers and such to help alleviate the poverty of our brothers and sisters in hispanic lands – liberals say that charity is providing taxpayer funds for race-baiting groups who thrive on having poor, excluded groups they can run as private fiefdoms.

The topsy-turvy liberal view of immigration had the benefit of a friendly media and a heart-tugging narrative…but such things have worn thin. The first blow against the narrative was when those pro-illegal immigration demonstrators carried Mexican flags through America’s streets…the American people awoke to the fact that we weren’t just getting gardeners and dry wall installers, we were actually importing a foreign nation, hostile to America as a whole. The second blow came with the downturn in the economy…Americans are suffering a lot of hardship, themselves, and so stories of Mexican poverty will pull less heart strings than they used to. The third and, perhaps, final blow is the growing levels of nauseating violence in Mexico…who wants to get mixed up in that sort of thing? Better to keep it in Mexico and try to help the Mexicans stamp it out, but no need to bring it into El Paso, San Diego and Albuquerque.

As I’ve said before and will continue to say – I’m in favor of immigration and have an especial desire for those Mexican and other immigrants who are willing to work so hard and who’s religious faith is so strong that in both labor and faith, these immigrants will go a long way towards reinvigorating America’s moral and economic health. I want those who are here and have settled into our community as good Americans to be given amnesty and made citizens on a fast track. I want a guest worker program to allow foreigners to fill those jobs American’s won’t do (I note with great care that even with unemployment heading towards 10% there is a lack of Americans applying for work in the fields and ditches of America’s hardest labor). But the first thing: a secure border. The laws enforced. Justice assured. Charity for all who need it.

If the Democrats believe they can secure a permanent majority by pandering to the advocates of illegal immigration, then by all means: have at it. We GOPers should counter that with a program designed to bring all Americans – immigrant and native – into the support of the rule of law and a genuine sense of justice and mercy for those who suffer poverty in foreign lands. We can simply tell the truth – Democrats are pandering for votes, America be damned; illegal immigrant advocates are either race-hustlers or corporate exploiters; the people who profit from illegal immigrants aren’t the immigrants, but corrupt Mexican politicians, Mexican criminal gangs and those in America who view human beings as a commodity. I believe that we will win such a debate.

Now, lets have it – if the Democrats have the guts (and idiocy) to try.

The news story:

Republican strategist Karl Rove called Vice President Biden a “liar” on Thursday, dramatically escalating a feud between Biden and aides to former President George W. Bush over Biden’s claims to have rebuked Bush in private meetings.

“I hate to say this, but he’s a serial exaggerator,” Rove told FOX News. “If I was being unkind I would say liar. But it is a habit he ought to drop.”

Rove added: “You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the Vice President of the United States.”

Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, although Biden spokesman Jay Carney told Fox on Wednesday: “The vice president stands by his remarks.”

Carney was referring to two controversial assertions by Biden, the latest coming Tuesday during an interview on CNN.

“I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office,” Biden began, “‘Well, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’m a leader.’ And I said: ‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'”

The exchange is purely “fictional,” said Rove, who was Bush’s top political adviser in the White House.

“It didn’t happen,” Rove, a FOX News contributor and former Bush adviser, told Megyn Kelly in an interview taped for “On The Record.” “It’s his imagination; it’s a made-up, fictional world.

Given the number of times Biden has been found to be stunningly wrong in his statements, we’ll have to go with Rove’s assertion – but I would add, in being generous, that Biden probably thinks it did happen. He does seem to live in a bit of a dream world where imagination and reality are interchangeable – Biden probably wanted to say something like that, and he likely rehearsed it over and over again in his head enough times that it started to become real to him…and then, in typical Biden fashion, when he needed something to say, it just popped out. Its really no different from his absurdly stupid statement during the VP debate where he asserted that the US and France had kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.

The bad news is that Biden is Vice President of the United States – this curiously means that we conservatives are praying daily for the continued good health of the President. Still, thought should be given to trying to force Biden out – get him to resign and allow Obama to select someone a bit more grounded in reality to take over the number 2 slot. Still not too late to get Hillary in there – though I can understand why Obama wouldn’t want to paint a target on his own back…

Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief; when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand; he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. – Isaiah 53:1-12

All the glory and beauty of Christ are manifested within, and there He delights to dwell; His visits there are frequent, His condescension amazing, His conversation sweet, His comforts refreshing; and the peace that He brings passeth all understanding. – Thomas a’ Kempis

And the fear is palpable:

The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party-people consider themselves a coherent and diverse network of Americans from every conceivable walk of life. They are cultural warriors fighting against the tax-happy, spend-happy ways of the evil Obama cabal, real American patriots, and staunch defenders against the creeping evils of Socialism.

In reality, their ‘movement’ is incredibly divisive, a mindset that stands in sharp contrast to Obama’s calls for bipartisanship in this time of great national need. Their arguments have the potential to divide the country along titanic lines not seen since the bloody days of the Civil War.

Think I’m exaggerating here? The Tea Party movement is an incredibly dangerous concept, fuelled by the usual gushes of sycophantic support from the conservative news media (here’s looking at you, Fox). Consider a recent poll posted on Sean Hannity’s website, asking his loyal followers if they thought America was ripe for ‘revolution’. Or perhaps you’ve heard some of the vitriolic treasonous crap spewing forth from the mouth of Fox’s resident white-haired lunatic, He Who Shall Go Unnamed. You can tune in to his show practically any day of the week for an (increasingly) thinly veiled call to arms against the President and his evil liberal cronies.

The Tea Party Movement is basically a flag for Republicans disenfranchised by last year’s election results to rally behind. Give it up, guys. You lost fair and square. Obama and his policies have the mandate of the people- unlike a certain Bush I could mention.

If the country continues down this dark path, a second Civil War might not just be a cool idea for a sci-fi novel anymore. Can you imagine the potential for chaos if some of these ‘protesters’ decide to exercise the Second Amendment and bring their weapons to these rallies? There’s a thin line between peaceful protest and bloodthirsty patriotic fervor, especially if those protesting are used to being on the side of the mighty status quo.

In a certain sense, this kook is right – we are ripe for a civil war in this country. But the threat doesn’t come from that fact that people will be out protesting Obamunism, but from the past 30 years of leftist hate- and fear-mongering. We on the right are simply tired of trying to accommodate the left. We’ve been insulted one too many times, and we’re in no mood to continue with the status quo.

For the past 30 years, if a conservative said that affirmative action is misguided, he’s been called a racist; if he says that homosexual sex is a sin, he’s been called a homophobe; if he holds that the border should be controlled, he’s been called a racist; if he asserts that physical standards for cops and firefighters shouldn’t be lowered to allow more women in, he’s been called a sexist; if he states that America stand against communist tyranny, he’s been called an imperialist; if he welfare is destructive, he hates the poor; if he thinks that social security should be privatized, he wants to kill old people…on and on and on; pick any conservative position, and the left doesn’t argue against it – all it does is try to demonize the conservative messenger.

Well, we conservatives are not a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic, greedy, imperialist bastards. We just don’t think that the prescriptions of liberalism and its offspring, socialism, are correct. And we’re not going to lay down any longer for the left – we had one, last chance at national unity after 9/11 and we extended the olive branch. All we got for our trouble was a campaign of slander against President Bush and any GOPer who the left could lay its hands on. The cup of concord is broken – we are willing to repair it, but the left must cease and desist with its attempts to destroy us. Argue with us; contest us at the polls – but don’t try to force us out of the debate by slandering us, and then turning about demanding bi-partisanship. Nothing doing.

We intend to demonstrate, agitate and do everything we can to obtain power over the next two election cycles. If we win, we won’t spend even a moment reaching out to the left – we’re just going to completely overturn the left’s policies and set America back on its proper, conservative path. Once we do obtain power, if the left shows proper respect and treats us decently, then if we are forced out of power at some future election, we’ll be more than willing to do the same…but the first move is up to the left. The left has to atone for the poison it has injected into our politics – only then can national unity be restored.

In case you haven’t heard, Obama’s media disinformation machine at the White House is denying that Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah while at the G-20 Summit…

“It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah,” said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Washington Times called the alleged bow a  “shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate” and said it violated centuries of American tradition of not deferring to royalty. The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, noted that American protocol apparently rules out bowing, or at least it reportedly did on the occasion of a Clinton “near-bow” to the emperor of Japan.

Interestingly, a columnist in the Saudi-backed Arabic paper Asharq Alawsat also took the gesture as a bow and appreciated the move.

Of course this explanation is actually contradicted by video of the incident, which undeniably shows Obama bowing, and the Saudi King actually looking down towards Obama, not at his eye level.

Click here for the video. Here is a screenshot, with King Abdullah’s line of sight illustrated.

That, my friends, is all you need to see. That was a bow. Obama bowed roughly 10-12 inches lower than the King’s eyes, much more than necessary if it were only to aid in the grasping of his hands. So the excuse by the White House is laughable. 

Who is the greater Great Leader and Teacher of the People? Frank J. reports, you decide.

Once again Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor makes the corruption news:

State Attorneys General regularly hire private plaintiffs lawyers on a contingency-fee basis to prosecute cases. The trial bar returns the favor with campaign donations to state office holders. And despite the inherent conflicts of interest and questionable ethics of the practice, corporate defendants have rarely challenged such arrangements. Which is why a motion pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is so remarkable — and deserves more public attention.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by the state of Pennsylvania over Janssen’s antipsychotic drug Risperdal. The state alleges that Janssen has improperly marketed the drug for off-label uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Janssen denies the accusation, but the merits of the case — which hasn’t gone to trial yet — are not what’s at issue in the motion before the court.

Rather, what’s at issue is the fact that the civil action against Janssen is being prosecuted on behalf of the state by Bailey, Perrin & Bailey, a Houston law firm. And it turns out that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s Office of General Counsel was negotiating this potentially lucrative no-bid contingency fee contract with Bailey Perrin at the same time that the firm’s founding partner, F. Kenneth Bailey, was making repeated campaign contributions totaling more than $90,000 to the Democratic Governor’s 2006 re-election bid.

Janssen’s motion seeks to invalidate the contingency-fee arrangement and lays out a detailed timeline of Mr. Bailey’s political contributions and the subsequent actions of the Governor’s office.

The article goes on with the time line, and its pretty damning. Rendell, of course, first gained national notoriety with his attempts to suppress the soldier vote during the 2004 campaign, as well as rather questionable vote totals in Democrat-heavy areas of Pennsylvania which moved the State to Kerry in 2004. Rendell, former mayor of Philadelphia (a city not noted for clean government), is hip deep in the disgusting, pay-for-play politics of our time, raised to the normal mode of governance when Democrats rule the roost. How does he get elected and re-elected?

For the longest time I just put it down to sheer stupidity on the part of the people – I mean, come on, corruption so obvious and so destructive that only idiocy could explain how people get away with it. Lately, however, I’ve been revising my views. Hardly anyone pays close attention to politics – there might be 5 or 10 million people in America who take a daily interest in it, another 20 million who look into it on a fairly regular basis, but all of this together is only about 10% of the population and about 25% of the electorate. Most people don’t pay that much attention – and therein lies the ability of scoundrels to prosper…not because people are stupid, but because – it seems to me – that we are hard-wired for faith and thus have a natural presumption to believe what we are told.

We’re supposed to have faith in only one thing, as it were, but being what we are and surrounded by the temptations of the world, we often place our faith in created things and people rather than in God…and thus we trust the news, trust the politician (even if we say we don’t), trust the apparent consensus of opinion. It takes something really brazen and out front for us to start doubting in any consistent manner. Unless someone like Rendell is caught robbing a church, the basic assumption of the people is that he’s relatively honest and trying to do a good job – and most of the time most of the information provided doesn’t go into arcane details of corrupt practices, as detailed in the linked article.

Its a hard thing to actually get this right – to strike a balance, that is, between our requirement to be generous in our views but also skeptical about the motivations of others. But it is something we must do – the trick must be learned, lest we become forever the playthings of people who believes rules are made to be broken, all the time and everywhere. Blessed are those who believe without seeing, but Our Lord never said “blessed are those who believe but never think about their beliefs”. The key is to think about things – to ponder just why someone wants to do a particular thing and, especially, wants us to act in a certain manner. If we think things over carefully, we are likely to come to a reasonably correct solution. And thus the normal mode of the scammers is to call everything a crisis demanding immediate action, no thinking to slow things up.

A hurricane, flood or earthquake requires immediate action – but if it isn’t about to knock your house down, action can be delayed and, indeed, must be delayed while we think through the likely effects of whatever is proposed. Rendell might not be breaking any laws in what he’s doing – but the laws he may be on the right side of are a hodge-podge of ad-hoc actions, likely enacted on the run, and tailor made for crooks to take unfair advantage. Out here in Nevada we have a rather clever provision for amending our Constitution – it must be passed on two successive elections by the vote of the people. This allows for calm reflection and for passions, if aroused, to be cooled. We need more of this sort of thing in all government actions – wait a bit, and lets think things over.

Calm reflection by a well informed electorate is the key to success in any democratic republic, like ours – we must get away from crisis-mode governance and back to a much more deliberate manner of proposing, enacting and enforcing laws. We do more of that, we’ll end up with less of Rendell, and that would be a good thing for our country.

Well, that is, if this story pans out:

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

Mr. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system,” said the official, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

Mr. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, administration officials said, and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.

Some White House officials said that immigration would not take precedence over the health care and energy proposals that Mr. Obama has identified as priorities. But the timetable is consistent with pledges Mr. Obama made to Hispanic groups in last year’s campaign.

Keeping in mind that I was one of the 4.7 people who supported the Bush-McCain immigration reform bill…

This is political suicide – I can only figure that Obama will push it either because Obama is really, really stupid or that the hispanic groups have gained so much leverage over the Democrat party that they can’t be refused. The latter is more likely, but we can’t discount the former – Obama is showing clear signs of megalomania, so anything is possible. He might feel that he can do it and come out a winner on it.

What we learned vis a vis immigration reform is that the American people, by an overwhelming majority, want the border secured first. Only after it is clear that no more illegal immigrants are able to just waltz across the border will there start to be support for any program to legalize those illegals already in-country and start up a guest-worker program for foreigners not currently in-country. Any effort to pass a bill which can in any way, shape or form be portrayed as amnesty will become a millstone ’round the neck of any party identified with it. Obama would get less grief if he revived gun control efforts.

We shall see if this actually comes to pass – but, if it does, I’ll gladly accept the rather large number of GOP seats we’ll get out of it. I mean, if Obama is determined to pull a Clinton and spend his term making legislative Democrats politically toxic, I see no reason to stand in his way.