….with the President on this issue. I’m also pleased to see that he’s actually getting backing from the Congress critters on the right side of the aisle.

Collective bargaining venues have no place in any vital infrastructure, let alone in homeland security.

…zero dark hundred hours and dawn (a more than frequent Seth consciousness time), I’m sitting here in my office and thinking about things in general, and asking myself the “is it all worth it?” question – no, not a prelude to suicide, LOL, just weighing the hypothetical options between carrying on and simply going off into the limbo of total retirement from society, or what’s left of it.

Let’s see, what do we have here?

We blog, we attend demonstrations when we can get to them, we defend the conservative point of view in conversation and debate, we send donations to, and support, political action committees, we write or call our political leaders to express our opinions, we vote…

And it seems that no matter what we do, we run into a solid wall called the mainstream media (MSM). This is a left leaning kollektive that abuses a great and sacred trust – that of keeping the people informed on the current events level, giving us the tools we need to form honest opinions so that we might be able to plan our lives according to the directions taken by political and economic trends and, just as important, that we will be qualified to vote for political leaders based on viable data.

In short, the MSM, by accepting the privileges of access they enjoy, has an awesome responsibility: They are the keystone of Democracy – the accuracy or inaccuracy of their reporting, given that the vast majority of Americans look to them for news, is directly responsible for the outcomes of our elections.

The fact that the MSM has become nothing short of a propaganda outlet for the liberal side of our political equation and a champion of the War on Bush, the War on Homeland Security, the War on Corporations, the War on America and American Values, the War on Decency, the War on G-d, the War on Any Semblance of Morality and the War on Common Sense leads me to this grim conclusion –

They have all but decimated our entire political system.

I mean, how can we say, after an election, that “the people have spoken” with any kind of confidence in the outcome when we know that The People went to the polls armed with disinformation? Garbage in, garbage out, right?

The same can be said for opinion polls. How can we have faith in a poll when we know that its participants had formed their opinions based on lies that they were led to believe as truth.

Take Iraq as a prime example:

In this post at Robert’s most excellent blog, Conservative Commentary, is a first rate list of many of the positives that have been achieved in Iraq since we “fired” Saddam, began helping the Iraqis form a democratic government and helping them to rebuild their country and their infrastructure. My comment on that thread got me thinking and formed the basis for this post I am now typing.

Go do some reading there while I go grab another cup of coffee, then come back.

So, you read the list, now compare it to what you read in MSM newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post or watched on the news at the alphabet networks.

Pure doomsday exaggerations — Quagmire, another Vietnam, our troops are being butchered in the cross-fire of a vicious religious civil war, our presence over there is getting thousands of Iraqis killed, it’s all about the oil, it’s all about profits for the evil Halliburton, yadda yadda yadda… But we see or hear no mention of what has been accomplished (see linked post and list) thanks to the coalition presence in Iraq.

The American people, looking to the MSM for hard, accurate, full story news, are instead saturation bombed with what amounts to pure, one-sided liberal propaganda.

Global Warming is another issue in which the MSM misleads the American people.

There hasn’t been a shred of evidence, other than unproven statements made by “authorities” on the subject, that anything mankind does has any effect on climate change – for that matter, there has been a paucity of credible evidence that the atmosphere is heating up to any significant extent – yet the MSM supports the left’s assertion that man is creating a catastrophic scenario that promises certain doom, melting the Arctic, causing the likes of Hurricane Katrina, etc, etc.

Once, it was blame it on El Nino… Now, it’s blame it on Bush.

While these portside media venues have yet to produce any viable conclusive study results backing up the Global Warming Armageddon story, they have simply moved on to portray it as “understood” as a reality, while ignoring any and all infinitely more credible evidence to the contrary. They deny equal time to those who might prove them wrong, because they could not find any effective counter argument. After all, it’s profoundly difficult to defend a lie against detailed truth.

Taking the two above examples, we have…

1. The bulk of the American people believing the left’s falsities regarding Iraq, and

2. The bulk of the American people believing the left’s falsities regarding Global Warming.

Just look at the poll results, which are based on those “garbage in, garbage out” news reports.

And these examples are only the tip of an iceberg.

Acceptance of the first by the American public could ultimately result in the premature withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, the penalties being not only the slaughter of tens of thousands or more Iraqis by Islamofascists and the country itself becoming a virtual terrorist firebase, training, logistics and deployment center for terror organizations targeting the west.

Acceptance of the second by the American public could ultimately result, by way of the Kyoto accords, in severe damage to our economy, including millions of lost jobs – all due to an unproven – and disproven – myth.

The first would endanger large numbers of the populations of the U.S. and other western countries. The second would cause the necessity, in order to preserve the lives and security of millions of unduly financially challenged American families, to move closer to the socialist blueprint envisioned and sought after by the left.

In short, the MSM has become an enemy of the state rather than a source of accurate information, but they are “winning” – they have indelible credibility status among the American people, and they enjoy the advantage that they can ignore anything that refutes the opinions they interweave in their “news” reports.

It is in my very nature to fight to the death, but I have begun to feel just a bit like a certain Cervantes character. At what point does one finally reach across the chessboard and lay down ones’ king?

In response to an AFA email regarding HR 254, a bill purportedly geared toward protecting homosexuals from hate crimes (included therein would be prohibition within houses of worship to quote Biblical scripture in which G-d prohibits same gender sex, Boy Scout troops to reject gays as leaders and granting permission for schools to teach homosexual agendas to grade school children, enveloping all in the same context as violent hate crimes), I sent an email to my congressman, Robin Hayes (Republican - North Carolina), asking him how he intends to vote on the issue.

This would be a simple task — yea or nay — that would require no further explanation. Here is what he emailed me back:

Dear Seth,

Thank you for contacting me regarding HR 254, The David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Although great strides have been made in recent years to overcome discrimination based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation, unfortunately ignorance and hate persist. This ignorance is sometimes manifested into crimes against those in society who are in a minority.

As you may know, hate crime legislation in the form of H.R. 254 was introduced in the House by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) on January 5, 2007. This bill seeks to enhance federal enforcement in cases that are classified as hate crimes.

It is my belief that all violent crimes are hate crimes and must be punished under the full extent of the law. However, I am uncertain about the need for a duplicative set of laws and separate standards for “hate crimes.” While we should continue with our efforts to eliminate hate and ignorance, I question whether overlapping laws will help us achieve this goal. Please be assured that I will continue to work for a safer society for all individuals, and actively support legislation that helps promote a safer society.

Again, thank you for expressing your views on this issue. It is an honor to serve as your United States Representative, and I look forward to tackling the issues 8th District constituents sent me here to address. Please know that I have assembled what I believe is the most responsive and courteous staff in Congress. Your suggestions are always welcome, and if ever we may be of assistance, please do not hesitate to call.

Sincerely,
Robin Hayes
Member of Congress

You’ll notice that it was the typical generic reply, committing to nothing, favored by no-account, politically motivated, PC, vote pandering career politicians, not the response of an honest man seeking candidly to answer a question posed by a constituent.

Being accustomed to receiving such generic replies, I sent him a further email informing him that I had not asked for the lengthy say-nothing response, just a simple three letter word telling me which way he planned to vote on the bill.

While I was emailing anyway and having meant to do so to begin with, I also commented on his being among the seventeen “Republicans” who joined the Democrats in their no-confidence vote against the President and our troops in Iraq. I pointed out that he and the rest of the Republicans on the Hill were only there because we conservatives put them there to represent our point of view in Congress, and his no-confidence vote was a sell-out to his voting base. I added that it seemed that he, like several of his colleagues, had evidently failed to learn the lesson imparted at the polls in November, 2006 — that he and other so-called Republicans hadn’t been elected and reelected to lick leftist and moderate derrier (ugh, French, spit!) — well, I didn’t put that part in the email, but I think it was well implied — or to play the political correctness game to gain votes, but to serve the nation and his constituents as a Republican member of Congress is expected to.

I even indicated that I intended to post his reply in this forum.

His reply was a duplicate of the email I posted above, leading me to believe that he and his staff don’t even bother to read his constituents’ emails — they simply seize on a keyword, in this case HR 254, and send out their non-committal generic responses.

If you ever hear of this dishonest Republican-in-name-only saying that he listens to his constituents, remember this post. He is a disgrace not only to the Republican Party, but to all true Americans, and ought to be regarded the same respect by all conservatives that we reserve for the likes of John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi.

Julia A. Seymour and Amy Menefee of the Business & Media Institute do a great job of dispelling the “income inequality as a menace” myth.

The argument that income inequality is bad is based on an underlying assumption: that if one person has more, another automatically has less. This “zero-sum” approach bases its logic on a pie chart that adds up to 100 percent. If one person has 30 percent of the pie, that leaves 70 percent for all the others to divide among themselves.

The problem is, that isn’t how a free-market economy works. And the media have left out economists who could explain it on the nightly news.

Read the entire article here.

…. of Conservatives is speculated upon in the latest YouTube video by Julia Goren and friends of Republican Girls Gone Wild fame, to be found here. Atheists and liberal fellow travellers, pay close attention. You will encounter this material again, but only once.

Yes, of course — and man-made, to boot! At least, if we ignore science and go with Gore, LOL…

Phil Brennan’s got yet another scientific perspective that leaves the alarmists of the left in the Gorehouse.

As a blizzard of snow and ice pummels the Northeast after trouncing the Midwest, and waves of Arctic cold fronts drop much of America below sub freezing weather, the $64,000 question is, Where is Al Gore?

Gore claims that global warming is an immediate problem facing the United States and the world, and places like New York and Chicago could feel like Caribbean haunts.

Yeah, whew! In upstate New York, I understand it’s been freezing hot… Colorado hasn’t fared much warmer of late.

If there is any doubt that God has a sense of humor, it has to be dispelled by a headline in Wednesday’s Drudge Report: “House hearing on ‘warming of the planet’ canceled after ice storm.”

He followed up with this: “Save it for a sunny day: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area canceling screening of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ because of a snowstorm.”

What must have evoked the loudest laugh in heaven is the notion that if global warming is really occurring, puny mankind is going to overcome it by legislation and business regulation that would strangle the U.S. economy and be overseen by the super efficient United Nations.

At any rate, the linked article advances still another theory — scientifically derived, rather than politically — as to the causes of temperature change — and again, having nothing to do with anything done by mankind.

The world’s oceans are being heated by underwater tectonic activity — underwater volcanic eruptions and blisteringly hot magma seeping up from cracks in the sea floor.

The heated ocean water creates high levels of CO2 that it sends aloft along with huge amounts of moisture. That moisture becomes precipitation — rain in the spring, summer, and fall, and snow in the winter. Increased amounts of moisture in the upper atmosphere equals increased amounts of precipitation.

The hotter the oceans, the more water vapor sent heavenward and the heavier the precipitation. This explains the large number of record-breaking rainfalls we’ve been seeing in the past couple of years — with as noted above, areas of the United States getting 20 inches of rain in a day or so.

As for that dreaded greenhouse gas, CO2, atmospheric levels of which now exceed 400 parts per million (ppm), it is important to note that paleological records show that every time CO2 levels have exceeded 300 ppm there has been an ice age. Every time — without exception.

The same records show that there have been a series of ice ages over the past 5 million years, naturally occurring every 100,000 years, with about 90,000 years of glaciation followed by about 12,000 years of interglacial climate.

The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. Clearly we are in line for the next period of glaciation. But more about that later.

Suffice it to say that unless Al Gore has managed to repeal a demonstrated law of nature, the iceman cometh.

The befuddled Gore keeps blathering about how the oceans are being heated by global warming, instead of the warming being created by the oceans, as the facts clearly show.

Definitely read on…

…. here is a really fun Wal-Mart discussion on YouTube, that covers all the bases, between Julia Gorin and a couple of friends.

… there was a segment where, exasperated at the continued antics of the head bad guy’s spoiled son when catching him in action yet again, Billy Jack shook his head while looking down and pinching the bridge of his nose, and said, “You know, you remind me of a little monkey…”

For some reason, I’m reminded of that scene whenever I read where the Democrats are offering up yet another spin, half truth or bald faced lie about the state of affairs regarding one issue or another, just to make the President look bad or to sabotage one of his agendas for purely political reasons.

They demonstrate, time and time again, that the good of the United States or the people herein are of absolutely no importance to them, except where getting votes from the latter is concerned.

They lie about every aspect of our involvement in Iraq, they seek to sabotage our homeland security operations wherever possible, up to and including publicizing secret anti-terrorist ops so that the enemy learns of them and then, going a step further, spins them into surveillance operations that invade the privacy of all Americans.

They scream for independence from Arab oil, yet block any efforts to expand our domestic petroleum recovery.

When the Reagan Administration broadened our economy, creating jobs and allowing industries to flourish, they invented the term “Reaganomics” and made an obscene lie of it, citing it as a failure. When the Clinton Administration reaped the rewards of Reagan’s economic endeavors, they gave all the credit to Bubba, yet when Clinton’s administration went out in a recession, they blamed it on the incoming Bush Presidency, as though the instant he was elected, Dubya caused the entire economy to come crashing down, ignoring the fact that an economy rarely changes all that drastically in less than three or four years.

Even today, the Democrats holler that the Bush economy is a tragedy, purely for partisan political purposes, when in reality it is the healthiest it’s been in decades.

Politicians are typically late in picking up trends, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes Washington to acknowledge the big story in the Fiscal 2008 budget that President Bush unveiled yesterday: To wit, with a little spending restraint, Congress could balance the budget in no time.
You wouldn’t know this from all the garment-rending yesterday in response to Mr. Bush’s proposal to spend the not-so-meager sum of $2.9 trillion. Our favorite agonist is Kent Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, and he didn’t disappoint. “The President’s budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality, and continues to move America in the wrong direction,” said the Senator who was himself blocked from sneaking nearly $5 billion in “emergency” farm spending into a military construction bill in the final days of the last Congress. The North Dakotan needs to keep shouting disaster in a crowded political theater so he can justify his desire for a big tax increase.

The news Mr. Conrad won’t broadcast is that over the past three years the federal deficit has shrunk by 58%. The Congressional Budget Office–not the White House–is estimating that the current year’s deficit (for fiscal 2007) will fall to $172 billion. That’s not bad given continuing Katrina relief spending, $30 billion for homeland security, and a couple hundred billion or so to fight the war on terror.

The White House is projecting that its new budget will eliminate the deficit by 2012 assuming Mr. Bush’s tax cuts are extended after 2010. We don’t put much stock in future budget forecasts because they depend on so many variables. But even CBO predicts the deficit should remain near or below 1% of GDP for the rest of the Bush Presidency. That’s well below the 40-year average of 2.4% of GDP.

This also means that the federal debt burden will continue to fall. Alarmists point to the $1.4 trillion rise in total federal debt from 2003-2006, but that amount is dwarfed by the $14 trillion in new household wealth created over the same period. And for all the international scolding of an allegedly profligate America, U.S. federal debt as a share of GDP is falling again (see the top chart nearby). At 37% in 2006 and heading south, the U.S. figure compares to 52% in Germany, 43% in France, and 79% in Japan. Once again rising total “debt” is a scare word used to justify higher taxes.

So once again, we see where the Democrats ignore the realities that most affect Americans and that signal a healthy economy in order to cast aspersions upon the President and on the Republicans in general, and at the same time lay the groundwork for gaining the approval of the people to do what the Democrats most love to do: Raise taxes, taking more money out of the pocket of the working American to spend on social programs that will purchase them more votes from the beneficiaries of these programs.

The issue I’m thinking about here is, of course, the Congressional Democrat majority’s intention to target the Bush tax cuts for extinction, and after seeing that goal reach fruition, increase taxes still more. Naturally, as stated, they aim to target the wealthiest Americans. You know, the same ones who, thanks entirely to the tax cuts, were able to invest more money in venues that have expanded their business interests, created jobs, generated more profit and created even more jobs, all the while multiplying, by taxpayer and revenue volume, the amount of taxes paid in to the U.S. Treasury far beyond what increasing taxes would have done.

The other news you won’t often hear concerns the soaring tax revenues in the wake of the 2003 supply-side tax cuts. Tax collections have risen by $757 billion, among the largest revenue gushers in history. Receipts, especially from high-income individuals and corporations, have been growing for some two years at nearly twice the rate of spending, which explains the falling deficit. Economic growth is always the key to eliminating red ink, which is why keeping this 63-month expansion rolling needs to be the main domestic priority. This requires making those lower 2003 tax rates permanent, rather than letting them expire in 2010 and socking the economy with the biggest tax increase in history.

If the mainstream media weren’t functioning as a propaganda agent for the Democrats and were instead telling the American people the truth as journalistic ethics actually require, today’s Democratic Party and the America-hating, socialist liberals who own it would have long since been relegated to the realm of distant memory.

….and the rest of the treasonous, socialist, anti-American toilet cakes folks at the New York Times didn’t know about this particular FBI undercover operation while it was still underway, or they would have made sure the subject of the investigation read about it or watched it on the news before enough evidence could be gathered to warrant an arrest.

An employee at O’Hare International Airport was charged Monday with pocketing cash payoffs to help an undercover federal agent bypass security and smuggle nearly $400,000 in U.S. currency on flights overseas.

Riad Skaff, who had unlimited access at O’Hare’s international terminal, was arrested Sunday evening as he worked there for a subcontractor of Air France, Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles Ex said.

Hmmmm… Riad. Do you suppose that he is of Muslim descent? Hmmm… Air France (spit!).

Skaff, an employee of Sunline Services Inc., worked for Air France as a ground services coordinator whose airport security badge gave him access to O’Hare’s jetways and tarmac without undergoing security screening, authorities said.

In return for cash payoffs totaling $21,500, Skaff agreed to circumvent security at O’Hare on three occasions between October 2005 and November 2006, the charges alleged.

The undercover agent usually passed the cash to Skaff at the welcome desk near Air France’s ticket counter in a public area in the international terminal, authorities said.

The agent would then pass through the security checkpoint without the cash. Skaff returned the cash to him as he was about to board a flight to Paris, the charges alleged.

In that way, the agent was able to smuggle a combined $396,000 in cash overseas. On one trip, he also smuggled a device capable of jamming cellular-phone reception, authorities said.

One has to wonder how much money and technology has already been smuggled out of the United States and into the hands of terrorists via the services of Riad Skaff. After all, there had to be a reason the Bureau singled him out to begin with.

It’s good to know that despite the inanities the left spews about the government and Homeland Security as run by Bush, our national security and law enforcement agencies are doing their jobs rather well.

It’s great that Keller and friends weren’t cognizant of this one, so they were unable to sabotage it.

Go, Bureau!