Hewitt and Hitchens, on Obama and Iraq

Christopher Hitchens explains the importance of Iraq clearly and effectively.

Hitchens, Hewitt, Obama & Iraq

[ht: hughhewitt.com]

Green vs. Reality

The problem with BioFuels and Ethanol:

Allow me to re-print this Steyn Quote:

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.

[...]

Whether or not there’s very slight global cooling or very slight global warming, there’s no need for a “war” on either, no rationale for loosing a plague of eco-locusts on the food supply. So why be surprised that totalitarian solutions to mythical problems wind up causing real devastation? As for Time’s tree, by all means put it up: It helps block out the view of starving peasants on the far horizon.

-Mark Steyn

I wrote a much lengthier post about this quite a while back (long before people were talking about food shortages) called Green Conservatism. Please read it. We need to come up with realistic practical solutions to our energy problems. 

 

Greatest Headline: Code Pink Protesters Try Witchcraft at Anti-Marine Rallies

 

I guess shrieking and throwing tantrums like a bunch of whiny babies just wasn’t getting the job done.

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley’s controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center.

The women’s anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for “Witches, clowns and sirens day,” the last of the group’s weeklong homage to Mother’s Day.

“Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we’re going to end war,” Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

source

 

Star Wars - Excessive Wilhelms

History of the Wilhelm

And a compilation of Wilhelms in case you missed them:

Understanding High Oil Profits

It’s that time of year again when the oil companies report their profits and everyone throws a fit. I admit, my own initial reaction to hearing about high profits is negative. But logical decisions and understanding are not based on gut reactions and emotional perceptions. Here is a great article from Investors Business Daily that adds some clarity to the role that profits play in supply side economics (I have added emphasis for skimmers):

Profits Of Doom?

Profits: Exxon Mobil’s first-quarter earnings of $10.9 billion, up 17% from a year earlier, are stirring outrage in Washington. Some are calling such profits “obscene.” What a sad lack of understanding of economics.

Case in point: Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Like her rival, Barack Obama, she’s pushing a massive “windfall profit” tax on those “greedy” oil companies. “There is something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon’s record $11 billion in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street,” Clinton said Thursday. “This is truly Dick Cheney’s wonderland.”
No, what’s seriously wrong is that politicians such as Clinton can cynically manipulate public opinion to enact disastrous policies.

Indeed, rather than be upset at Exxon’s profits, Americans should be thrilled — and angry at a Congress that doesn’t seem to want to encourage the oil industry to make even more.
Our free-market economy is built on profit. Higher profits mean more jobs, higher incomes, more investment in equipment and people, higher standards of living. Yes, profits are the engine for all of this — and that includes the profits of “Big Oil.”

By signaling that supply is scarce, higher profits encourage more production. Except, that is, when Congress through its inept lawmaking stands in the way. And that’s the case now with the oil industry.

Congress seems almost constantly at war with the oil companies — slapping them with taxes and pillorying their CEOs while ignoring the fact that higher profits lead to more exploration, drilling and development.

If anyone is to blame for our current energy mess, it’s Congress. At least 20 billion barrels of oil sit untapped in Alaska and another 30 billion lie offshore. Such sources that could help satisfy U.S. demand for years to come. Yet, Congress has put them out of bounds.
Instead, Congress scapegoats oil profits. In reality, according to Ernst & Young, from 1992 to 2006 the U.S. oil industry spent $1.25 trillion on long-term investment vs. profits of $900 billion.

Truth is, oil industry profits are in line with the rest of American industry. In 2007, a record year, they earned 8.3 cents per dollar of sales. Beverage companies and cigarette makers, by contrast, earned 19.1 cents. Drug makers, 18.4 cents. Indeed, all manufacturers, 8.9 cents on average, made more than “Big Oil.”

Besides, we’ve tried windfall profits taxes before, in the early 1980s, and they were an utter failure. As the Congressional Research Service found, revenues produced for the government were nearly 75% below what was expected. Meanwhile, domestic oil output fell 8%, while oil imports surged 16%.

That’s just poor policy, and even worse economics.

Remember: Oil companies don’t really pay “windfall profit” taxes, anyway. You do. Some 50 million Americans today own oil company stock, either directly or through 401(k)s and mutual funds. Don’t be suckered: “Windfall profits” taxes come right out of your retirement account, not out of the oil industry’s business.

Oh sure, Big Oil’s profits are up. But so are the taxes they pay. In 2006, that came to $90 billion — up 334% in just four years.

This is how Clinton-style populism works. It starts with ignorance and ends with serious damage to our economy.

Oil prices aren’t high because profits are up; they’re high because we don’t have enough oil. By clamping down on drilling, refusing to move forward on nuclear energy and hitting producers with punitive taxes, Congress is doing all it can to ensure we don’t have enough in the future.

New Favorite Blog : English Fail

Awesome… http://englishfail.wordpress.com

Here are some samples:

You can read more about Anus Burger’s here.

Do you agree with the leaders of the DNC and others heading the Democratic Party?

My dear friends on the left, this is the chairman of your party, Howard Dean:

Recently Dean has been passing around this:

John McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years. He’s said it, and it’s on tape.
But his campaign hates that he was caught. They’ve viciously attacked anyone who reminded the American people that he said it, including me. They’ve said that those who reference the 100 years comments are “deliberately misleading voters.”

So we’ve taken John McCain’s own words — video of him saying that 100 years would be “fine with me” — and made a TV ad. There’s no confusion, no distortion, no misleading — it’s John McCain, on tape, for voters to judge on their own.
It’s one of the most powerful political ads I’ve ever seen. It’s devastating — and the McCain campaign will spend the rest of the election trying to fight it.

My friends, I have commented about this before (here and here), and it is an outright lie. If DNC Chairman Howard Dean is concerned about “deliberately misleading voters,” why doesn’t he play the whole quote from John McCain? Here is video of what John McCain said:

“Make it a hundred”

“We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.”

“It’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world.”

Hello? Does that equal wanting 100 years of war in Iraq? Only if you have no clue what we are doing in Japan, South Korea, etc… Or of course - if you just totally ignore that part of his statement. Charles Krauthammer illuminates the following folks who have done just that:

• “He (McCain) says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq” (Barack Obama, Feb. 19)

• “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years” (Obama, Feb. 26)

• “He’s (McCain) willing to keep this war going for 100 years” (Hillary Clinton, March 17).

• “What date between now and the election in November will he (McCain) drop this promise of a 100-year war in Iraq?” (Chris Matthews, March 4)

• Why, even a CNN anchor (Rick Sanchez) buys it: “John McCain is telling us … that we need to win even if it takes 100 years” (March 16). “

As Lenin is said to have said: “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” And as this lie passes into truth, the Democrats are ready to deploy it “as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain’s national security credentials against him,” reports David Paul Kuhn of the Politico.

Hence: A Howard Dean fundraising letter charging McCain with seeking “an endless war in Iraq.” And a Democratic National Committee press release in which Dean asserts: “McCain’s strategy is a war without end. . . . Elect John McCain and get 100 years in Iraq.

[...]

The Democrats are undeterred. “It’s seldom you get such a clean shot,” a senior Obama adviser told the Politico. It’s seldom that you see such a dirty lie.

Even The New Republic has a piece on this:

Howard Dean whines that he’s been “viciously attacked.” Cry me a river. He deserves whatever he’s getting for his dishonest and cynical pandering to unadulterated isolationist sentiment (which is becoming quite a trend in the Democratic Party; remember John Kerry’s disgraceful “opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America” remark in his 2004 acceptance speech). Of course, Iraq may never become the place where “Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed,” in which case keeping American troops there may not be in our best interest. But McCain never said he supported keeping American soldiers in harm’s way for “100 years.” In fact, he explicitly warned against it. Howard Dean, Barack Obama and any semi-sentient person who bothered to spend 30 seconds listening to McCain’s answer knows what he meant.

So here is my question to my dear friends on the left (and I really mean this, as some of my best friends are totally rational people and center left politically) - What do you think of this? Remember - this isn’t some random gaffe from a nobody- these are the leaders of your party and presidential contenders. Ultimately, do you agree with the positions of the democratic party leadership? The reason I ask, is because - at least, as far as my friends on the left go - I don’t actually believe that you do.

Here are 23 questions about currently held liberal positions: Are You A Liberal?

I used to lean left politically too - but once I actually discovered where the left actually stood on issues (even more importantly - once I really learned where conservative philosophy stood) I realized that I held conservative values.

I have no problem with people questioning whether or not McCain’s idea is good on the merits of it’s full context. (aka. maintaining a military presence similar to Japan and N. Korea.) But the Democratic leadership are not doing this, and instead, are distorting what McCain clearly said.

100k +

That’s right - as of today, 100,200 people have wondered, “Seriously…what the crap?”

It’s good to know I am not alone. Thanks everyone for visiting!

-wtc

Oh - and just for the heck of it - Have some Jar Jar:

Taco Bell Tax - New Jersey lawmakers consider sin tax on fast food…

No, Not a joke.

The sputtering economy has caused an increase in prices of many staples including gasoline, rice, ice cream, even beer. Now some lawmakers in New Jersey are considering taking food taxes a step further and install a proverbial “sin” tax on fast food. 

Yes, the idea of marking up your favorite fast food burger or pack of fries is actually being tossed around, and it’s not settling well with many residents. 

“They’re taxing everything. Now you’re gonna tax fast food? That’s crazy,” said Newark resident Miriam Robertson. 

Only moronic bureaucrats could come up with something like this.

Paula’s been smokin’ too much crack…

Sorry, but I had to post this…

Riten’ stuvz B Hardz.