And that's how silly you sound to value-life people. Barack Obama is deeply committed to the belief that

1. members of an entire class of human beings have no rights that others must respect


2. the smallest and most vulnerable members of the human family can be denied the basic protection of the laws


3. judges should be appointed who will support Roe v. Wade and even expand it


4. the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion is moral and right


5. a baby who survives abortion is not entitled to comfort care as she dies


6. making moral decisions about life "is above my pay grade"


7. the production of human embryos for use in scientific experimentation is not immoral


8. federal money to fund an alternative to embryonic stem cell research should be opposed.

All the above have been documented in his voting record.

Christians who think Obama's social policies will reduce the demand for abortion need to look again. Government never reduces poverty--it just expands the definition and broadens the base, taxing you more so there's less of a gap. We have far more programs in place than ever existed in the 1960s and 1970s, yet the abortion carnage continues in the millions in spite of welfare, WIC, S-CHIP, housing subsidies, school breakfasts, school lunches, summer lunches, Medicaid and a multitude of religious and non-profit organizations.

See Public Discourse

Elders to get a cost of living raise--maybe

The government giveth, the government taketh away.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn (WVLT) -- Social security checks are going up $63 a month for the typical retiree.

Nancy Walker, 87, lives in subsidized housing.
The additional $63 a month in Social Security will cause her to lose benefits.

"Means I'm gonna pay more for rent for one thing," Grace Lindsey says.
It will cost her rent to increase because her income's going up, her food stamps will decrease and she may not continue to receive 20% off Medicaid.

For all of you looking forward to Medicare, (health care and social security dwarf war costs), I had a better deal when I was working. I don't think Obama can make good his promises by just taxing the rich, so if that's your reason, think again. The Democrats took care of that last year by refusing to look into fraud in Fannie and Fred. Now the rich he wanted to tax are showing losses big time.

So, next? Step up, folks, it's just patriotic.

HT Dr. Helen.

My thoughts exactly

Yesterday I was browsing a number of college-campus, liberal websites. What handsome, adorable young people. And so bright, talented, and apparently, well-heeled. Far more so than my generation. Just like that houseful of students that invaded Columbus to steal our election during voter golden week. Much more fashionably dressed and better teeth than even the college students I used to hire in the 80s. Their parents have worked hard for them--private schools, braces and dermatologists--the best our capitalist system could buy. They are truly the spiritual children of the 1960s radicals, like Diana Oughton of Illinois whose headless body with both hands missing was found in the rubble of that Greenwich Village townhouse in March 1970 with Terry Robbins' torso, the guy from Kent State. They had enough explosives to blow up the city block, but only killed three of their own Weather People, a group founded by Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn. The unrepentant Ayers who say they didn't do enough to bring down the USA so they went into education.

Browsing the CampusProgressive.org site I noticed a review of the latest book about President Nixon, a man I never liked and never voted for, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. However, he did significantly change our relationship with Communist China and the USSR, so I'm not sure why he isn't an icon of the left. Oh well, who can fathom them? In the review I noticed this conclusion--arrived at from a different angle than my own--but everything the left wanted in the 60s they got. The right can only plug the dike from time to time but the steady stream of their views washes over us constantly.

While his electoral strategy remains popular, the success of Nixon’s ideology remains an open question. The burning issues of the 1960’s—civil rights, women’s rights, and the political agency of young people—have resulted perhaps not in complete triumph for the left, but the left’s vision has prevailed.

The whole anti-war thing, then as now, was just an excuse to get drunk, do drugs and burn a few flags before getting down to business. The problem we face in the 21st century is not the specter of a growing right wing (i.e. popularity of talk radio of Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh, according to these easily offended youngsters), but that today's students have to stretch and bend the edges and the constitution that much more than their baby boomer parents and college faculty did at the same age. They all want to out-do Dad and Mom in being big, bad liberals.

The Education Debate

Last night the Obama and McCain advisors on education had a debate. Anyone see it? Will the video, for which you had to register, be made available to the general public?

For Obama
A former public school teacher [2 years in the early 70s], Linda Darling-Hammond, Palo Alto, Calif. is a leading researcher on how improving teacher quality helps student achievement, particularly for low-income children. A Yale graduate who earned her doctorate at Temple University, she has taught at Stanford since 1998. She led the redesign of Stanford’s Teacher Education Program to better prepare teachers to work in schools with diverse student populations. She and other professors helped found a charter school in Palo Alto, and she serves as vice president of the Stanford nonprofit that runs the school. Some education reformers have criticized her negative assessment of Teach for America, a popular program that puts recent college graduates in struggling schools after a few weeks of training. Darling-Hammond has said that no matter how bright and enthusiastic, a beginning teacher needs to have extensive training and certification. In 2005, she led a study that concluded certified teachers consistently produced stronger student achievement than Teach for America recruits in Houston.

For McCain
A one-time speech pathologist, Lisa Graham Keegan, Scottsdale, Ariz. began working on education policy issues as a state legislator and in 1994, was elected to the first of two terms as Arizona’s state schools superintendent. After helping to create a controversial test that set tougher academic standards for high school graduation, she took the entire test herself and posted her passing scores. Keegan, who has a master’s degree in communication disorders from Arizona State University, has served on education policy teams for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Soon after she joined the Education Leaders Council in 2001, the group amassed more than $33 million in federal grants for a program to help states and school districts meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The group came under fire after news reports in 2003 questioned its financial management. Graham Keegan resigned in 2004. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Education charged that the council wasn’t fully complying with federal regulations for spending. However, after subsequent audits, grant funding was eventually restored.

These bios came from the Catalyst Chicago web site, and it's not hard to pick out the bias, but it's the only place I found all the candidates. Plus, because this site has an archive, it is interesting to scroll through 1995-2000 reports on the Annenberg Challenge (the funds which Barack Obama distributed for various projects to improve Chicago schools) and see no progress or failure. There are other ways to track the careers on the internet, so this is just a taste.

Abortion and Obama

Except for the early days of the 70s woman's movement when I attended lunch talks in the OSU library and carried my poster down at the courthouse in support of the ERA, I've met almost no women who identify themselves as "pro-abortion." They always say, "I believe in a woman's right to choose," or "I wouldn't have an abortion myself, but I want other women to make their own decision." We generally don't say that about other laws that involve killing. I try to be consistent about life and death issues without lapsing into values clarification, the parlor game liberals like to play.

I don't support the death penalty even for the most heinous crime; I believe in certain health regulations like required vaccinations and safety codes, because the lives they save are more important than the rights you choose; I wouldn't have tobacco stock in my portfolio no matter what the returns; I believe good intentions sometimes have disastrous results--like removing DDT from the international market which killed millions of Africans; I believe communism in the 20th century killed more human beings than all other despotic forms of government combined; I believe the US government and its flipped coin the anti-war movement contributed to the deaths of millions of Vietnamese when we fled our responsibilities, and we're getting pay back now from the resurrected 60s radicals. So, am I concerned about a presidential candidate who is vigorously pro-abortion? As Sarah would say, You betcha!

"Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States. He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate. Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress.

Yet there are Catholics and Evangelicals-even self-identified pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals - who aggressively promote Obama's candidacy and even declare him the preferred candidate from the pro-life point of view.

. . . Senator Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. In fact, Obama has opposed key provisions of the Act, including providing coverage of unborn children in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), and informed consent for women about the effects of abortion and the gestational age of their child. This legislation would not make a single abortion illegal. It simply seeks to make it easier for pregnant women to make the choice not to abort their babies. Here is a concrete test of whether Obama is "pro-choice" rather than pro-abortion. He flunked. Even Senator Edward Kennedy voted to include coverage of unborn children in S-CHIP. But Barack Obama stood resolutely with the most stalwart abortion advocates in opposing it."

What is going on here?

Spotlight on Campus Freedom

The Ohio State University gets a red light! I wonder who determines what is an unwanted flirtation? Or leering? If a drunk girl sits on a guy's lap at the campus bar, has she committed sexual harassment?

"Sexual harassment is illegal. Inappropriate behavior includes: * Sexual jokes, innuendoes, gestures * Unwanted flirtation, advances, or propositions * Pressure for sex * Leering * Display of sexually suggestive objects/visuals * Display/transmission of sexually suggestive electronic content * Any unnecessary, unwanted physical contact * Sexual assault"

This page says OSU doesn't have a loyalty oath or an honor code, however, when I was re-hired in the 1970s, I'm quite sure a loyalty oath was required of employees--perhaps not for students, though. I know the Veterinary College had its own honor code.

Check your state's colleges and universities here.

Mandatory Fees aggravate conservative students

The fees that are tacked on to your child's college tuition may be going to support causes and policies you'd prefer not to underwrite--like women's studies programs, or bisexual social events. Here's a story in a Campus Magazine Online by CJ Ciaramella, Blog Editor for CAMPUS Magazine Online.

"The publication I write for at the University of Oregon, the Oregon Commentator, has been fighting the mandatory fee (known at UO as the Incidental Fee) for the better part of 20 years. In 1995, before Southworth and viewpoint neutrality, one of the members of the Oregon Commentator sued the State Board of Higher Education on the "freedom of conscience" grounds.His main objection was the previously mentioned OSPIRG, a political group that sends student money off campus for lobbying purposes. He lost, and OSPIRG still filches thousands of dollars from students. Coincidentally, the case was cited in Southworth.

Furthermore, the mandatory fee creates bad incentives in student government. For years now at the UO (and I'm sure other universities) student unions have maintained a stranglehold on the student government. With low voter turnout, student unions are able to swing elections to candidates that promise to keep the gravy train running. I won't even get into the instances of student government using I-fee money to send themselves to fancy conferences, throw parties (excuse me, "retreats"), etc."

Time to ask the university/college to explain the fees, don't you think? It's your money. Think ACORN with training wheels.

Fifty Largest cities graduation rate

The chart in today's WSJ shows Detroit at the bottom of the 50 largest cities with a graduation rate of 24.9; San Francisco is near the top with 73.1.

However, about 5 years ago the WSJ published an article, "Curse of the Creative Class" about creativity and entrepreneurship. There was a "Bohemian Index" created by one Richard Florida which showed that cities with a large gay population, many forms of entertainment and high tech companies, i.e., "the no-collar workplace" were very attractive to upwardly mobile knowledge workers and the "culture class." Guess who was at the top of that index? San Francisco, of course. The article continues about where the real growth was:

In 2001, a National Commission on Entrepreneurship study entitled "Mapping America's Entrepreneurial Landscape" ranked U.S. cities on how well they hatch high-growth companies. . .

Among major cities, Detroit--omitted from Mr. Florida's most creative cities--finished second in the commission's report, incubating about 50% more fast-growing companies than the average of all major cities, with a particular strength in nurturing high-growth manufacturing businesses. . .

The city that sits at the pinnacle of Mr. Florida's list, often jokingly referred to as the "People's Republic of San Francisco" because of its socialistic political culture, is the perfect example of what happens to cities that follow this heavy-handed governing philosophy. While San Francisco sports taxes higher than all but a few U.S. cities, and passes laws forcing business to boost wages, San Francisco's jobs economy has expanded at only one-fourth the rate of the national economy over the past 20 years.

Similarly, high-tax New York has been caught in a cycle of boom and bust that has produced no net job growth in 40 years. During the mid-1990s, the city briefly got back to basics when the Giuliani administration focused on fighting crime and cutting some taxes and spending, and--presto!--for the longest period since World War II, the city's economy outpaced the nation's. However, now that the city's political culture has veered sharply to the left again, with a mayor who declares that taxes don't matter to businesses or residents, New York is once again an economic slacker, having lost 200,000 jobs, or nearly 6% of its jobs base, in the current recession.

So isn't that odd. Detroit with a dismal graduation rate seems to be an incubator for manufacturing, and San Francisco with its over regulated vegans and heavy handed government, can't catch a break on growth.

The Coming Test

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. This is the same Joe Biden who voted against the first Gulf War in 1990 because the US would sustain astronomical losses. So maybe we should just ignore his predictions. The same Joe Biden who voted for the Iraq War in 2002 and then took it back in 2007 when he wanted to run for President. So maybe he'll change his mind tomorrow on this threat.

Joe Biden-His-Time thinks President McCain wouldn't be tested in the first six months by these scenarios, but President Obama would. Why? Might be experience. Might be character. Might be age. Might be the stand on the Iraq War. Might be he knows something we don't?

For 22 years, Mr. McCain was an aviator in the US Navy. During the Vietnam War after a missile struck his plane in 1967, he was taken prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. Five and a half years later, he was released. His naval honors include a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. McCain has also coauthored five books. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. He had two terms in the U.S. House and 4 in the Senate.

Mr. Obama began his career as a community organizer in Chicago and worked there for a foundation distributing money for education projects. He has written two books about himself and his ambition. He graduated from Columbia University in New York and received his law degree from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass. He is in his first term as a U.S. Senator, and served in the Illinois legislature.

Who knows what Joe Biden means when he rambles, wanders, wonders, and fumbles. But if Sarah Palin had said this, you can betcha it would be all over the papers and the cable channels. They would be screaming racist, bigot, fear-mongerer, stupid-in-lipstick girl-talk.

Barack Obama's relationship with the New Party.

The following appeared in the Post Journal written by Dr. Warren Throckmorton . I know nothing about either the publication or the author, but I had seen before that New Party had endorsed Obama (possibly the Illinois legislature web site).

"The New Party is a political movement aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America. The New Party actually endorsed Barack Obama's successful 1996 Illinois state Senate campaign. Obama, in turn, encouraged New Party involvement in his voter education and registration efforts. According to a 1995 issue of the Democratic Socialists of America newsletter, the New Party required endorsed candidates to sign a contract to have a ''visible and active relationship'' with the party. While the New Party's influence has waned, the Democratic Socialists of America remain an active movement.

What do the Democratic Socialists of America believe? Here is what the group's by-laws advocate:

... a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships.

Surely, we can all agree with the values of racial and gender equality and non-oppressive relationships. Free-market adherents believe in those principles as well. However, consider the group's support of income distribution. There, one can see the intellectual foundation for Barack Obama's answer to Mr. Wurzelbacher. Redistributing wealth, which is a foundational principle of socialism, is part and parcel of the Obama tax plan, even though Obama has avoided using the S-word.

And why not? Despite periodic, and hopefully temporary, interventions in free markets (such as is occurring in the financial sector), most Americans do not want to live in a socialist economy. We value the personal freedoms inherent in a free-market economy.

When the productive plumber protests that his tax burden will increase, Obama intuits the problem inherent in "equitable distribution." He says to his questioner, "It's not that I want to punish your success. ..."

Unfortunately, punished success is precisely the kind of mischief that successful Americans fear. Obama's desire to "spread the wealth around" may not come with malevolent intent, but, to be sure, such policies, which, again, are advocated by the Democratic Socialists, may result in inhibitions of initiative and innovation.
Rudolph Penner recently said on a C-Span call-in show that capitalism isn't perfect but it is better than the alternatives. Indeed, many have suggested that the current mortgage mess derives from well-intended attempts to spread the wealth around. In unraveling the causes of the housing bust, one finds multiple targets of blame. However, it seems clear that government policies which encouraged home ownership beyond a borrower's means were part of the chaos. In light of the federal government's inability to manage markets, it is a fair question to ask: Do we need more central planning or less?

"Careless, outrageous comments" says Obama

Gosh, you would think it was Sarah Palin who said Barack Obama's election will precipitate an international crisis instead of Joe Biden, that guy on the ticket with all the gravitas, good education and 30 years experience. Although if she had said it, the press would have called her a racist for noting his youth and inexperience.

Earlier Monday, Obama denounced the "say-anything, do-anything politics" of McCain's camp, but said "careless, outrageous comments" won't distract him from addressing the nation's ills.

I think BO's safe. The MSM has him covered. I checked the Columbus Dispatch, USAToday and Wall Street Journal today and there was no mention of Biden's gaffe (a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth).

When in doubt, blame the parents

Almost on cue, an older woman stopped at my table at the coffee shop this morning to tell me she liked my McCain-Palin button. "Everyone where I work is so young, they want everything given to them, so they think Obama is great," she said. "Lots of Ohio State students."

I had just finished the extensive summary of The Trophy Kids in today's Wall Street Journal.

With Wall Street in turmoil and a financial system in crisis mode, companies are facing another major challenge: figuring out how to manage a new crop of young people in the work force -- the millennial generation. Born between 1980 and 2001, the millennials were coddled by their parents and nurtured with a strong sense of entitlement. In this adaptation from "The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace," Ron Alsop, a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, describes the workplace attitudes of the millennials and employers' efforts to manage these demanding rookies.

Before reading the review I'd been in a "heated" discussion with a school teacher, about how much is expected of teachers when it is the home that is the problem. We'd segued into that from an even more heated discussion about how to remedy the inequity in women's pay (on which I completely disagree with her, even though we are both conservative Christians and both have children and are/were career women). I had just pointed out to her that Columbus is among the bottom five in major cities in the nation in graduation rates, with Detroit at the bottom. All the failing school districts are heavily into the failed policies of the Democrats and the teachers' unions.

It would appear that the adult off-spring of the successful Baby Boomer couples and the adult off-spring of the welfare moms have all grown up with a sense of entitlement, resisting all expectations that they might need to conform to someone's expectations, want to be tied technologically to their music and friends, and take comfort in an inflated view of their skill level and contribution.

It's interesting that these young people who are at opposite ends of the quintiles of household income will overwhelmingly be voting Obama. "Take care of me Mama," should go on their political badge and be their motto for living and contributing to society.

Politics at work

In an article about discussing politics at work, I noticed this comment by one Obama supporter:

I decided now that we're in the final stages of this mega-important event and because I'm more passionate about this election than I have been since JFK, I would wear my favorite candidate's campaign button," said Ms. Geissal, 58, a registered nurse from Monticello, Ill.

Let me do a little math here. I was 21 years old when I voted for JFK and she's 11 years younger than me. She must have been a very astute campaigner for a 10 year old. The How-to of politics at work can be found here.

I see JFK's name (initials) comes up frequently, regardless of the party. Even Rush Limbaugh speaks fondly of his tax cuts. Joe Biden made reference to him in his warning about an impending disaster which he guarantees will happen under President Obama. Generally, historians say JFK failed or flubbed when tested by the USSR. So why bring it up? However, that's not the memory it evoked for me. Senator Biden, I remember the assassination of JFK, I can go clammy just thinking about how we hovered over Fran's little portable radio at work, crying and praying, and then the terrible news that he was gone. I truly wish Biden would have left that name and memory out of his fear mongering threat.

I am wearing my political badge to the coffee shop, but I have already voted. Like the day I ran into the PUMA at the library, it opens the door for discussion.

The ad that makes Ohio's Governor swear in public

But it's all true. It's not even a smear. All of it's out there in Ayers book, in books about the "revolution," in the archives of the Annenberg Collection and in newspapers. This ad hardly uses any adjectives or adverbs, it is so low-key. If you were living back then, it was indeed a "reign of terror." Ayers and his wife were on the Most Wanted List. The reason they aren't serving time is the government used some shady tactics, but they weren't any less guilty--they've even admitted it. It's a badge of pride. So why is our Governor losing his temper in public about robocalls? Obama couldn't be where he is today without some pretty shady, rich white guys helping him, and the money continues to pour in and the origins will never be investigated by a Democratic Congress. Ayers isn't just another aging bald white man in a Cuba shirt, he's an unrepentant, hate-America terrorist.

Halloween

"Halloween is probably also the weekend to run over your legislators' records, so you aren't just using the voter guides sent out by your pet group (whether it's NRA or the Sierra Club) for that kind of thing. Particularly given the work Congress and Senate have ahead of them (passing laws, or--my preference--overturning 'em) in order to save the economy, we need to do our homework there. For the record, capitalism is better run by capitalists. And capitalism creates more jobs than any other system. So a few pro-business people in Congress and in your state capitols will help us enormously, given the times we find ourselves in."Little Miss Attila

I don't give a damn

said Governor Strickland, our former Methodist pastor governor elected to clean up after Governor Taft's riotous golf game misbehavior. Put your hands over the kids' ears.

“I don’t give a damn about Bill Ayers but I do care about the people of Ohio and the people who need leadership that will be concerned about them and their problems,” Strickland said. Politickeroh.com

He's upset about robocalls, but not Obama's friendship with his mentor Bill Ayers. Doesn't this seem a bit skewed? Has anyone ever been killed with a robocall, or building blown up? The unrepentant, domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, who hired Obama to help radicalize Chicago school children with bundles of money from the Annenberg Challenge, and then helped him launch his political campaign when Chicago schools remained mired in the muck. He, the terrorist, is no threat to the people of Ohio, but robocalls are?

Potty mouth.

I am Joe, and he doesn't mean Biden

I am Joe.

I shop at WalMart at least once a week. I take my own car, a Ford Taurus that I bought used, to Jiffy Lube. I’ve lived in the same suburban town all my life and I’m ten minutes away from the house where I grew up. My Sundays consist of two things: church and football. During hunting season my freezer is full of deer meat given to me by my friends who are avid hunters. I’ve been on Jeopardy and consider myself highly-educated, though I don’t have a degree. I’ve worked in a gas station, a hotel, a warehouse, and for most of my adult life, for two different police departments. I fix my own faucets when they leak and unclog my own drains. When I go out to dinner, it’s to Olive Garden or a good burger joint. If you pick a fight with my family or my friends, you’ve picked a fight with me. I roll my own smokes and like a good, cheap cigar from time to time. The wine I prefer doesn’t cost 50 bucks a bottle. It comes from Australia and I’m more likely to drink it with a hamburger as I am a filet mignon. I’ve never ordered “lobster hors d’oeuvres, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar and champagne” from room service in a hotel. Heck, I’ve never ordered room service from a hotel at all. Though I’ve never been a community organizer, I’ve served on the Board of Directors of two non-profit community musical groups, one of which I helped to start.

I don’t want nor do I need some handout from the Magic Government Fairy. I know better what to do with my money than any bureaucrat in Washington or any socialist goon who believes he was born to “change the world”. I’m sick and tired of people looking down their noses at me and mine because I don’t live the kind of life they believe I should be living. I’m proud to live in a country that threw off that threw off the old class system and says, even today, that you can live your dream if you’re willing to put in the work. I have no intention of letting Barack Obama’s Thugocracy or the media green rooms full of elitist snobs put an end to that “for the common good”.

Come November, I’m thinking that we’re going to find out that there are a lot more Joes out there. They’ve riled us up and, to quote Mal Reynolds, we aim to misbehave.
Little Miss Attila is Joe, too.

from Sundries Shack

Joe Biden does it again!

Maybe he needs Joe the Plumber to stop the leaks! Now he's promising us an international incident when Obama is elected. Holy Moly, and you Dems and Fems and faint hearted RINOs think Sarah Palin says strange things. If this is what 30 years experience gets you, maybe it's good that you're putting an ingenue at the top of the ticket.

"“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. … Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

[...] “This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. … There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued . … Biden emphasized that the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border is of particular concern, with Osama bin Laden “alive and well” and Pakistan “bristling with nuclear weapons.”

As the birthday card I just gave my son-in-law who likes to fish says: Holy Carp! Cover your basses! Look who you're planning to elect, folks. A man whose running mate doesn't know when to shut up about the possibilities for a reign of terror during his watch. It sounds like he hopes someone will take BO out so he can be president--the man no Democrat wanted for President.

Didn't we get into Afghanistan and Iraq because all during the late 1990s and immediately after 9/11 the Democrats constantly beat the drums about WMD and the dangers of Saddam? Go back and listen to the speeches of Kennedy, Edwards, Berger, Byrd, Clinton and others--they were hysterical--and I don't mean funny--while George Bush was minding his own business back in Texas thinking about domestic issues.

"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

Now, Nancy, here we go again.

Spasiba--спасибо

While shopping at two grocery stores, I was reminded of why we need immigrants--to keep American workers on their toes! The woman had a thick Russian accent and was extremely careful in her job--even fretted a bit about where the other sack of Honey Crisps were which she was sure she'd rung up (I think she wanted to bag them together). I could understand her English--and especially her big smile and helpful demeanor. She told me she was from a tiny area between Poland and Germany. Poland was part of Russia in the 19th century and was only briefly a country in the 20th before Germany invaded in 1939, so I'm sure many Russian nationals lived there. There wasn't time to sort out world events. She wasn't eager for me to practice my Russian--had to move on to the next customer, but that's OK.

At the other store, which usually has very well trained, polite staff, I got a young man about 25 who either hadn't been to bed yet after a big week-end, had rolled out "on the wrong side of bed," as we say, or thinks clerking is beneath him. I had to ask him several times to repeat his question, and then couldn't understand him when he told me the amount (good thing I checked the little digital thingy because he'd morphed the subtotal and the taxable total). There was a 60s Beatles song on the loud speaker, so I said to him, "That song is older than you," and he replied (I think), "Everything they play here is older than me."

What happens if you question Obama

A media circus.