28
Dec
The United Nations has released this advertisement for US consumption:
I really don’t want my kid seeing this advertisement. You think he’d want to play soccer if he saw it? Once again, the United Nations is proving how useless they truly have become. This is just stupid.
I just love Opensecrets.org. They get all kinds of neat stuff. Especially for those like me who prefer numbers and facts to "what someone else said". Today’s fun with numbers lesson involves the political stereotype that Republicans are all about big money and greed. That’s been the main staple of Nancy Pelosi for about five years now. So, let’s take a look-see into who’s getting what. Shall we? Check this out CLOSELY:
| Barack Obama (D-Ill) | $1,225,406 |
| Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) | $877,356 |
| John McCain (R-Ariz) | $309,282 |
| Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) | $184,959 |
| Dick Durbin (D-Ill) | $159,031 |
| Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) | $148,266 |
| Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del) | $133,000 |
| Trent Lott (R-Miss) | $106,210 |
| Robert C. Byrd (D-WVa) | $103,095 |
| Mel Martinez (R-Fla) | $74,258 |
| Tom Coburn (R-Okla) | $69,580 |
| Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass) | $50,000 |
| Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) | $42,504 |
| Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) | $42,500 |
| Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) | $40,126 |
| Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) | $39,092 |
| Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) | $35,819 |
| Jim Bunning (R-Ky) | $20,000 |
| Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) | $13,869 |
| Mike Enzi (R-Wyo) | $12,000 |
| Rick Santorum (R-Pa) | $12,000 |
| Arlen Specter (R-Pa) | $10,223 |
| Ben Nelson (D-Neb) | $8,310 |
| Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind) | $7,697 |
| Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) | $7,007 |
What this shows is what Senators got what from outside sources ( speaking engagements and the like ). Unlike campaign contributions, there is no limit to what they can receive. Now, what I will imply is SOME use this to further the political agenda no differently than if they received a PAC or 527 contribution. In other words, it’s the very simplest way to skirt campaign finance reform laws. You go to a rally for, let’s say, opposing the war in Iraq, get paid upfront, and it’s no longer a political expense. Who does this better and most often than anyone? The golden boy of the moment, Barack Obama. The bigger picture to me is thirteen of the twenty-five TOP receivers were Democrat, eleven Republican, and one Independent. To be the party of corruption, as Nancy Pelosi and many bloggers as well as CBS and CNN would have you believe, the Democrats raked in $3,028,422 to the Republicans paltry $667,349. Kinda makes me wonder who’s greedier than who if all SOME of them are apparently doing is collecting their Senatorial paycheck and hitting the road to speak all the time. I can see speaking during recesses and earning $100,00 or so, but $1.2 MILLION? When Kos and CBS start harping on the Republican culture of corruption, think about this post again.
What’s that you say? I ignored Congress? OK, let’s look at it as well:
| Charles W. Boustany Jr (R-La) | $ 264,000 |
| Jim Costa (D-Calif) | $ 177,705 |
| Ted Poe (R-Texas) | $ 119,653 |
| Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ) | $ 111,632 |
| Al Green (D-Texas) | $ 110,501 |
| Dave Reichert (R-Wash) | $ 109,615 |
| Paul E. Gillmor (R-Ohio) | $ 98,165 |
| John Campbell (R-Calif) | $ 90,958 |
| Joe Pitts (R-Pa) | $ 90,867 |
| Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md) | $ 83,064 |
| John Tanner (D-Tenn) | $ 83,018 |
| Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo) | $ 79,250 |
| John Carter (R-Texas) | $ 77,467 |
| John R. Kuhl Jr (R-NY) | $ 71,160 |
| Madeleine Z. Bordallo (D-Guam) | $ 61,874 |
| Timothy V. Johnson (R-Ill) | $ 59,076 |
| Bill Delahunt (D-Mass) | $ 56,724 |
| Kay Granger (R-Texas) | $ 55,105 |
| Ralph M. Hall (D-Texas) | $ 54,514 |
It’s a lot more even, with nine Democrats and 10 Republicans. Democrats raking in $818,282 and the Republicans claiming $1,036,066. For both parties, the average is right at $98,000. Charles Boustany Jr could probably due to spend a little more time doing his job and a little less going for the cash. For some reason, if there’s loose cash hanging around, Louisiana reps seem to be all over it.
Now that this info’s available, and easily found, whenever you hear people like Pelosi summarily judging Republicans, you can check out how true her claims are. You can also search your personal representatives as well.
Some disclaimers:
- Opensecrets ranks people by the combined income of the legislator AND their spouses. I omitted the spouses and re-sorted them. When doing that, some legislators had no income so I omitted them from the list. That’s why there are odd numbers of people in the lists.
- Your legislators may or may not have income. The list as explained above, only list the top 25 by their definition. If your representatives didn’t make THEIR Top 25, they aren’t on my list at all.
- There are several ways to skirt reporting speaking income as outside income. For example, speaking on behalf of a non-profit or 527. I have no clue how that would be reported anywhere outside of the organizations.
Either John Kerry is so elitist he gets his own table at a mess hall. Or, no one wanted to join him. However he wants to spin this, it’s a mess. I seriously question the man’s sanity. What’s amazing is this is the man who was almost President. And, at least up until this picture was taken, thought he still had a chance. I’m sure he’ll laugh it off as a joke and go right back to pretending he’s got a chance at being president. Honestly, this picture is sad to me because I know he won’t get the message and will continue to embarass himself publicly due to the misperception that in 2004 nearly voted FOR him instead of voting against someone else. There is a big difference. What also amazes me is the people of Massachusetts can’t find anyone less embarassing to represent them.
More on this PR fiasco at:
- Michelle Malkin
- Ben of Mesopotamia
- Black Five ( Good post, great comments! )
- Power Line
25
Dec
This was a rather heavy read for a late Christmas night:
Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could disappear by 2015, a National Academy of Sciences analysis found.
And, I stumbled on this while trying to find the actual source document for the above information:
"The budget allocated to the government will run out by the end of (the Iranian month of) Azar (December 22)," the agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
"We are going to put forward a supplementary budget bill to cover the three remaining months (of the Iranian year, ending on March 20 2007) and the first two months of next year.
The president did not give a reason why the budget had run over.
Now, Roger Stern ( NAS ), assumes we can peacefully wait out the current Iranian crisis. However, I don’t think it’s going to be quite that simple. Apparently the Iranian government realizes it’s hitting a crisis already, hence the rush for nuclear power. Now, with Iraq totally destabilized, Pakistan almost always destabilized, and several other Middle Eastern countries in a proverbial mess, I’m not sure a destabilized Iran is a good thing. Althought the government may go belly up, that doesn’t mean a lot of individuals have made a gazillion bucks already. I am assuming Stern thinks that once the Iranian coffers are bare, they’ll peacefully enter the civilized world and quit doing the bad things the US is fighting against. I think Stern, if that is truly his thinking, is horribly naive. Even with the total collapse of government rule in Iraq, with the offer to assist them in forming the government of their choice, the Iraqis have chosen to a large degree to endorse total chaos based on very selective religious preferences. It’s not good enough that they are all Muslem, you have to be a certain KIND of Muslem to avoid the car bombs and death squads. That’s how deep these fanatic convictions go. I can’t see how Iran is any different than the Cradle of Mankind. If the Iranian government does go broke, and the military collapses with it, we’ll just get more fanatical chaos. That hasn’t done the US any good at all. It was the chaos in Afghanistan that allowed one individual to garner so much influence and power that he could destroy the World Trade Centers in New York CIty, USA, while never leavind his cave. So, I can’t go along with Stern’s conclusion that the Iranian situation could resolve itself peacefully if we just wait it out. Chaos has never benefitted the US or the world and only leaves voids for tyrants and radicals to fill.
Now, what I think will work is to allow the Russians to give the Iranians all the energy, via nuclear power, they want. However, until Iran is more stable and world-friendly, just run lines INTO Iran.
And until those lines are finished, bomb the hell out of any nuclear plants Iran builds.
24
Dec
A lot of adults are debating whether Christmas should be a religious celebration in the United States. There has been adult arguments about whether Christmas trees should be in airports, adult fights over companies allowing charities to raise money during Christmas. All over the country, adults find negatives to worry about and fret over. Those adults doing everything they can to sour their Christmas are missing the main point of Christmas. There really is only one. This is it:
Christmas, no matter what adults want to call it, or interpret it, is for kids.
There may be religious connotations to Christmas, but the only thing I teach my kid during Christmas is the joy of giving, and receiving. He’ll learn about the birth of Jesus in church when he can understand it. Until then, Christmas is a very self-serving holidy for me. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the joy in their faces when they get something that excites them. If adults spent more time searching for that joy and a lot less time worrying about the adult politics, which never deliver joy of any sort, the world would be a much better place. And, no matter how hard some adults try, when my boy asks why we celebrate Christmas, I will tell him we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus. And, for the rest of his life, if he asks, I will tell him Santa is real.
Merry Christmas to all the Moonies who drop by!
( That picture is actually a picture of Moonlet’s birthday party. He was born on 12/23, we brought him home on Christmas day, four years ago. Every year, we start opening presents on the 23rd, and don’t stop until at LEAST the 25th. I kinda like it that way. )
21
Dec
I’m fairly shocked by this one. Congressman Virgil Goode wrote this letter to his constituents:
Thank you for your recent communication.
When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand.
I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.
We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country.
I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.
The Ten Commandments and "In God We Trust" are on the wall in my office. A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Koran. My response was clear, "As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, The Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office." Thank you again for your email and thoughts.
Now, I got a real problem with his attitude. Mainly, he seems to be completely ignorant of the entire history of the United States, which is not good for a Congressman. The original members of the Mayflower came to America to escape the totalitarian rigidness of the Church of England. Their religious beliefs were Christian, but a very different form of belief than the "official" religion of England. After The Pilgrims, other waves of settlers came to America to escape religious persecution at the behest of the "official" religion du jour of their governments. This desire for religious freedom manifested itself in the United States Constitution in the form of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What Congressman Goode is doing is, in his official position as a US Representative, he is punishing US Representative Ellison for using the Koran for his inauguration. This is so wrong. Congressman Goode is proposing becoming what the United States was formed against.
If Congressman Ellison wants to use the Koran, that’s his right. During the Cold War, the United States actually had a Communist Party that was more than happy to bring down the current US government. We’ve allowed extremism in this country for the entire duration of this country for a reason. That reason is above everything else, we cherish our freedoms here more than anything else. People might not be saying that when they promote extremism, but they are showing that it works by doing it. Just because Ellison is Muslem does not mean his is extremist. If we elected 100 Muslem Congressman it would not mean they all had to be extremist and desiring to destroy what it is their families came here for. If we elected every single leader of our government it would only mean the government reflected the majority of the voters. However, since extremist Islam is no different than all the other extremist entities that have existed during the 230 this country has existed, my bet is it won’t be any more of a threat than the US Communists of the Cold War or the Christian bombers of the last decade eventually proved to be. The bigger threat right now to me is Congressman Goode’s intolerance. I have a reason to feel threatened by his intolerance, I’m not a Christian by HIS definition. Goode has got to go.
This is totally un-freaking-believable:
A federal appeals court tossed out the 10-year prison sentence of a St. Louis, Mo., woman who rented her 9-year-old daughter out to a pedophile more than 200 times at $20 a session……
The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her daughter’s identity, often held the girl down in their home while Joe J. Champion of Granite City, Ill., molested her, according to court documents. The daughter testified the molestation occurred about twice a week, either in the bathroom or her mother’s bedroom.
The abuse began when the daughter was nine and continued for two years, both the daughter and Champion testified, according to court documents……
The mother also often threatened to send her daughter to foster care if she didn’t cooperate……
Champion pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The woman, convicted by a jury in 2003 of aggravated sexual abuse and conspiring with Champion to help him molest the girl, was sentenced to 17 1/2 years in prison the minimum provided under federal sentencing guidelines.
She appealed. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in United States v. Booker that federal sentencing guidelines were not mandatory.
So, an 8th Circuit Appeals Court judges sent her case back to U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw, saying he might have given her a lighter sentence if he had known he wasn’t bound by the federal guidelines. The court did not, however, recommend any particular sentence or a more lenient term.
But then Shaw in December sentenced the woman to 10 years, saying mental problems and drug addiction had influenced her behavior. The judge also noted that she had taken parenting classes, had vocational training and gotten her GED while in prison.
The judge said he did not believe the woman posed a danger to the public and was unlikely to repeat the actions, according to court documents.
Prosecutors appealed that sentence, claiming it was too light and the judge’s reasoning was flawed.
The 8th Circuit appeals judges agreed Monday, saying the basis of her sentence is "unreasonable" and that the district court failed to "sufficiently consider the seriousness of the offense."
This "is a mother who, for $20, repeatedly (1) sold her minor daughter to a pedophile for sexual exploitation, and (2) physically participated and restrained her daughter so the pedophile could sexually abuse her.
Now, my reasoning is a little different. Sure, 17 1/2 years sounds about right, for EACH OFFENSE. 200 convictions at 17 1/2 years would amount to 3,500 years. Given the average life expectancy of about 70 years or so, that would be fifty consecutive life sentences. This "mother" doesn’t have the conscience of a human being. To expect her to suddenly become one is unrealistic. To blame it squarely on drug use doesn’t cut it to me. She’s just not human. She sure has hell has no reason to live. In other words, she just needs killin in the worst possible way.
And, that goes for Champion as well.
God only knows how that little girl is going to cope with what’s happened to her.
And, I’d sure like to see how that dumbass U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw, who reduced the sentence, would react if those people did it to his daughter.
18
Dec
Leading up to the election, Mark Foley was on every paper, every tv political comment show, and 99% of the political blogs going. After the election, no one cares.
Well, here’s what’s happened since election day:
- No cover-up was found.
- No charges have been filed against Foley
- No charges have been filed against ANYONE
- Nothing has been proven to have occurred outside of his creepy behavior
And, one more thing to that list, no media that I am aware of has reported any of that stuff.
Ever feel like Big Brother’s got his thumb on you? Raise your hand, how many people voted against a Republican because of all the sordid stories about one Republican and the "culture of corruption" that one Republican represented? Fact is, major media did everything they could to affect this past election. And, if you voted against a Republican based on the headlines you were seeing instead of the issues, they got you. YOU are Big Brother. Not the media, not the politicians, not the government, not the society, but you for allowing them to manipulte you so very, very, very, easily. Big Brother only works when you let it.
18
Dec
Barack Obama has been the golden boy of the 2008 presidential election. However, that’s mainly because almost no one outside of Illinois has a clue who he is. With the media’s enraptured support, Obama has enjoyed almost every media angle there is with most just drooling over his presence. However, when the spotlight starts to bore of the mutual circle jerk, it starts looking for new stuff. When the media does find this new stuff, things tend to change rapidly for the candidate of the moment as we get to see how they handle their dirty laundry, rumors, innuendo, and stuff they can’t script. Barack Obama I think has reached that point two years before the election. To wit:
That’s right. His middle name is Hussein. How did he handle it publicly? "His middle name is no big deal, he says, "when you are already starting with ‘Barack Obama’."" Nicely done. He’ll survive this round. Some people are getting kind of stupid dealing with his middle name, Rush Limbaugh leading that pack. And, given he’s a member of a Christian church and his family is from Kenya, it does tend to make the Rush’s look that much stupider.
But, I do wonder, how much of this country actually could vote for a Hussein?
Time magazine named everyone who reads the internet as their "person" of the year:
How lame is that? Why not name everyone who uses a cell phone? The internet is just the technology that brings the information to us. Most people have always wanted that information. The people haven’t changed, how the news is delivered has. So, naming everyone who uses the internet is about as lame as you can possibly get. So, what gives? Time has never been accused of being lame before?
Stengel said if the magazine had decided to go with an individual, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the likely choice. "It just felt to me a little off selecting him," Stengel said.
Well, I think Stengel knew the absolute hell-hath-no-fury response he would have gotten if he had pursued this ludicrous choice. I can think of only one reason why Ahmadinejad should have gotten it, and a whole bunch of reasons why he should not. The only reason would have been he was in the news a lot. Anyone want to take stabs at the myriad of reasons why not?
What is it with news magazines of late? I used to think it was just liberal bias. Anymore it’s like they have a death wish going.
