A few years ago, I wasn’t all that concerned at the concept of a senator or congressman spending several terms in his/ her office, but I’ve since developed a different opinion as I’ve watched these folks “do their thing”.

The majority of voters, Democrat and Republican alike, read the papers, watch the news and so-forth, but don’t really delve into the details of their senators’ and reps’ job performances. They reelect a lot of complacent, useless, pontificating assholes because they simply don’t have time to do any research. Many figure, “Who cares? They’re all the same!”

Because of the above, we now have a permanent ruling class, people who have been in Congress forever and take their jobs for granted the same way semi-literate union factory workers might take their own positions.

It gets worse: Now these same parasites are fighting their constituencies’ efforts to impose term limits on their miserable, lazy, useless asses!

A Monday editorial at WSJ’s Opinion Journal by John Fund sums it up nicely.

If elected officials were half as imaginative at solving real problems as they are at perpetuating themselves in office, we’d see real confidence in government restored. Alas, the big issue on many pols’ minds right now is getting rid of the term-limit laws that threaten to knock down their impregnable incumbent fortresses.

Read the entire OpEd here.

Another spot on column by Suzanne Fields.

I couldn’t resist linking to this, I’m sometimes easily amused.

One day I look forward to in my daily perusals over at Jewish World Review is Monday, when Mark Steyn’s column appears. As usual, today’s is a winner.

That’s the issue: Pan-Islamism is the profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood. Of course, if you say that at the average Ivy League college, you’ll get a big shrug: Modern multicultural man disdains to be bound by the nation state, too; he prides himself on being un citoyen du monde. The difference is that, for Western do-gooders, it’s mostly a pose: They may occasionally swing by some Third World basket-case and condescend to the natives, but for the most part the multiculti set have no wish to live anywhere but an advanced Western democracy. It’s a quintessential piece of leftie humbug. They may think globally, but they don’t act on it.

Read the entire outstanding column.

Yes, another must-publish from the ranks of my emails.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because…… WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were. Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

Yes, indeed!

Hat Tip, BJS.

Hurricane Harry at H H Blowhard has a great post on how to negotiate with terrorists, LOL, that you’ve just got to check out, it’s pretty funny but at the same time couldn’t be any truer.

It is purely amazing that western leaders still haven’t figured out what happens when they extend Arab Muslims any kind of trust, as in the trust that they will honor peace agreements.

While it’s true that Israel left a lot of room for improvement in strategizing their ground war in Lebanon — not the fault of the IDF, but the fault of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his jolly retinue for taking it upon themselves to manage the war rather than let his generals do what they’re paid to do — the result has been a sort of aimless deployment of reservist troops who don’t have a clue as to what, exactly, their objectives are — President Bush lived up to the liberals’ claim that he is “dumb”, in this case, by reversing his earlier policy and endorsing a cease-fire. As a two-time Bush voter, I am, at the very least, profoundly disappointed.

I mean, what does it take for the most powerful politician in the world to finally “get it?” A man who’s been spearheading a global war against Islamic terrorists for nearly five (count ‘em 5) years, who has had all that time to learn, from vast experience, the charactar of the enemy. This has to be one of the biggest screw-ups of our President’s career, one that will ultimately result in putting our troops in Iraq and elsewhere in greater danger than they need be, to say nothing of what Israel will now have to deal with.

And Olmert shares the blame, for signing off on the cease-fire.

Naturally, the Lebanese government and Hezbollah also signed off on it — why not?

Just as the Arab Muslim world viewed Israel’s previous withdrawal from Lebanon as a victory for Hezbollah — giving the terrorist organization the dubious reputation as the only Arab entity ever to beat Israel in war, they will do so once again. U.N. resolution 1701 is not law, Olmert could have told Bush, Kofi and the capitulative socialist powers of Europe to go piss up a rope, instead he agreed to a plan that not only may never see the return of two abducted Israeli soldiers, assuming they’re really even alive at this point, but one that places the responsibility, for the moment, of disarming Hezbollah in the hands of their comrades in the Lebanese Army. It also leaves, for the time being, the same impotent U.N. presence in southern Lebanon — you know, the one that has thus far been more a help than a hindrance to the terrorist organization — that’s been there since the last U.N. resolution regarding the Israeli-Lebanese border area. This means that in short order, Hezbollah can be back to the business of firing rockets into Israel and launching the occasional cross-border raid.

In the convoluted, primitive Muslim mind, this will be a major victory for Hezbollah and, as we’ve seen in the aftermath of past perceived terrorist victories, this perceived victory will inspire Hezbollah and all other Islamic terrorist groups to increase their attacks, not only against Israel, now that they will have perceived weakness there, but also against U.S. forces in Iraq, as President Bush’s support for the cease-fire plan will send the Islamofascist terrorists and backers of terrorism in Iran, and indeed throughout the Arab world, the message that our resolve has been weakened by world opinion.

Caroline Glick has an on-point analysis up at GAMLA’s website.

There is a good reason that Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah has accepted UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which sets the terms for a cease-fire between his jihad army and the State of Israel.

The resolution represents a near-total victory for Hizbullah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria, and an unprecedented defeat for Israel and its ally the United States. This fact is evident both in the text of the resolution and in the very fact that the US decided to sponsor a cease-fire resolution before Israel had dismantled or seriously degraded Hizbullah’s military capabilities.

While the resolution was not passed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter and so does not have the authority of law, in practice it makes it all but impossible for Israel to defend itself against Hizbullah aggression without being exposed to international condemnation on an unprecedented scale.

This is the case first of all because the resolution places responsibility for determining compliance in the hands of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Annan has distinguished himself as a man capable only of condemning Israel for its acts of self-defense while ignoring the fact that in attacking Israel, its enemies are guilty of war crimes. By empowering Annan to evaluate compliance, the resolution all but ensures that Hizbullah will not be forced to disarm and that Israel will be forced to give up the right to defend itself.

The resolution makes absolutely no mention of either Syria or Iran, without whose support Hizbullah could neither exist nor wage an illegal war against Israel. In so ignoring Hizbullah’s sponsors, it ignores the regional aspect of the current war and sends the message to these two states that they may continue to equip terrorist armies in Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and Iraq with the latest weaponry without paying a price for their aggression.

The resolution presents Hizbullah with a clear diplomatic victory by placing their erroneous claim of Lebanese sovereignty over the Shaba Farms, or Mount Dov - a vast area on the Golan Heights that separates the Syrian Golan from the Upper Galilee and is disputed between Israel and Syria - on the negotiating table. In doing so, the resolution rewards Hizbullah’s aggression by giving international legitimacy to its demand for territorial aggrandizement via acts of aggression, in contravention of the laws of nations.

Truncating {that’s the “sophisticated” version of snip}

Aside from the resolution’s egregious language, the very fact that the US has sponsored a resolution that leaves Hizbullah intact as a fighting force constitutes a devastating blow to the national security of both Israel and the US, for the following reasons:

It grants the Lebanese government and military unwarranted legitimacy. The resolution treats the Lebanese government and military as credible bodies. However, the Lebanese government is currently under the de facto control of Hizbullah and Syria.
Moreover, the Lebanese army is paying pensions to the families of Hizbullah fighters killed in battle, and its forces have actively assisted Hizbullah in attacking Israel and Israeli military targets.

Indeed, the seven-point declaration issued by the Lebanese government, which the UN resolution applauds, was dictated by Hizbullah, as admitted by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Nasrallah last week.

It incites Shi’ite violence in Iraq. From a US perspective, the resolution drastically increases the threat of a radical Shi’ite revolt in Iraq. Hizbullah is intimately tied to Iraqi Shi’ite terrorist Muqtada al-Sadr. In April 2003, Hizbullah opened offices in southern Iraq and was instrumental in training the Mahdi Army, which Sadr leads. During a demonstration in Baghdad last week, Sadr’s followers demanded that he consider them an extension of Hizbullah, and expressed a genuine desire to participate in Hizbullah’s war against the US and Israel.

It should be assumed that Hizbullah’s presumptive victory in its war against Israel will act as a catalyst for violence by Sadr and his followers against the Iraqi government and coalition forces in the weeks to come. Indeed, the Hizbullah victory will severely weaken moderate Shi’ites in the Maliki government and among the followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

It empowers Iran. Iran emerges as the main victor in the current war. Not only was it not condemned for its sponsorship of Hizbullah, it is being rewarded for that sponsorship because it is clear to all parties that Iran was the engine behind this war, and that its side has won.

The entire article can be read here.

This just arrived in one of my inboxes and I thought I’d share it, though it will be some time before I’m done checking each of the stats — perhaps someone(s) more familiar with some of the technology references can point me in the right direction there, but if this is all, or even mostly true, the French Ambassador to England definitely exemplifies the French and illustrates why socialist France is such a miserable economic has-been failure.

The Middle East has been growing date palms for centuries. The
average tree is about 18-20 feet tall and yields about 38 pounds of
dates a year.

* Israeli date trees are now yielding 400 pounds/year and are short
enough to be harvested from the ground or a short ladder.

* Israel the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the
world’s population, can lay claim to the following:

· The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

· Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.

* The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.

* Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor
were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.

* The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel.

* Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.

* Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

* The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

* Israel has the fourth largest air force in the world (after the U.S., Russia and China). In addition to a large variety of other aircraft, Israel’s air force has an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16’s.
This is the largest fleet of F-16 aircraft outside of the U. S.

* Israel ’s $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined .

* Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers
per capita.

* According to industry officials! , Israel designed the airline industry’s most impenetrable flight security. US officials now look (finally) to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.

* Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.

Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin - 109 per 10,000 people –as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.

In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the U.S. (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).

With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups,! Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world — apart from the Silicon Valley, U. S.

Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the U. S.

Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.

Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East.

The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.

On a per capita basis, Israel has the largestnumber of biotech startups.

Twenty-four per cent of Israel’s workforce holds university degrees, ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland and 12 per cent hold advanced degrees.

Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews (Operation Solomon) at Risk in Ethiopia, to safety in Israel.

When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world’s second elected female leader in modern times.

When the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day — and saved three victims from the rubble.

Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship — and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.

Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity. (Hundreds of thousands from the former Soviet Union)

Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as “conflict free.”

* Israel has the world’s second highest per capita of new books.

Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.

* Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.

* Medicine… Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U. S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.

Israel’s Given Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, cancer and digestive disorders .

Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the camera helps doctors diagnose heart’s mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.

* Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U. S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.

A new acne treatment developed i! n Israel , the Clear Light device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct — all without damaging surrounding skin or tissue.

An Israeli company was the first to devvelop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in southern California’s Mojave desert.

All the above while engaged in regular wars with an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction, and an economy continuously under strain by having to spend more per capita on its own protection than any other county on earth.

AND THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR IN ENGLAND SAYS :

“ISRAEL IS NOTHING BUT A SHITTY LITTLE COUNTRY”

H/T Brenda

You mean, it was those surveillance policies the left snarls about that saved the lives of thousands of airline passengers?

Let’s emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.

All I can add to that is “Amen!”

It certainly must rankle the leftists over at the NYT that they didn’t have the scoop in time to sabotage that one!

Liberals are leftists — that is to say, they are enemies of the capitalist system that has made America great and continues to sustain our free and prosperous society.

They attack the system every chance they get, from pushing for regulation of private industry to trying to enact legislation that will tax business mercilessly to levelling fraudulent and overstated lawsuits against successful business concerns.

Former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards made himself rich sueing hospitals for things that weren’t their fault, such as hereditary birth defects and impairments suffered by children delivered on their premises.

These greedy, sleazy liberal trial lawyers are everywhere, and there’s little if anything we can do about it, since significantly large elements of the litigious society the left has created are forever on the lookout for opportunities to benefit from largesse they themselves didn’t earn.

New products, including medical breakthroughs that might benefit millions of people, are curtailed because the potential producers of these would-be products are afraid they might be sued for any real or fabricated negative side effects, no matter how minor, of these new discoveries by people who, thanks to hungry liberal sleazeball toilet-cake piece of shit trial lawyers, are forever on the lookout for any chance to screw any business they can out of any free lucre they can get.

Some goods and services many Americans might enjoy or otherwise benefit from, including life-saving, misery relieving or actually curative drugs never see the light of day for the same reason — those who might introduce them are simply too wary of doing so because of the self-same fear that some tiny percentage of those availing themselves of said products might well sue the profits, to say nothing of the capital invested, out from under them.

John Stossel’s latest OpEd details this phenomenon with examples aplenty.

Imagine if an evil business routinely deprived us of products that would help us live longer with less pain and more comfort. We’d be outraged, and lawyers would line up to sue. Yet something similar happens today, thanks to lawsuit abuse. Makers of all kinds of products are afraid to sell them to us because one lawsuit could ruin them.

Personal-injury lawyers claim they make America safer, but that’s a myth. It’s easy to see who benefits from those big damage awards we read about. Less obvious — but just as real — are the things we’d all like to have but never will get because of this climate of fear. Here are a few examples.

Read on….