Filed under: Domestic Policy, Election 2008, Emerald City Elephant, Foreign Policy, News, Politics | Tags: John McCain, Obama, Susan Sarandon, Useful Idiots
At least he will if Americans learn the insufferable, arrogant, idiot — radical socialist Susan Sarandon — has promised to move to Canada or Italy if he wins.
SUSAN SARANDON, who appeared in three films last year and won kudos for her TV movie “Bernard and Doris,” is still not a contented soul. She says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada. She adds, “It’s a critical time, but I have faith in the American people.”
…What? You thought Susan of all people would be for Hillary Clinton? Well, no. She told John Hiscock: “I thought the whole point of feminism is that you’re not supposed to be defined by gender. I don’t understand the reasoning behind that, because I wouldn’t vote for Condoleezza Rice, and I hated Margaret Thatcher.”
Contribute to John McCain here.
American Elephant adds: So, does she take her insufferable idiot husband, Tim Robbins, with her?
Larry Craig writing book about airport sexcapades.
I know what’s on your Christmas list!
Filed under: Uncategorized
That is the headline from an important piece by John Hinderaker at Power Line blog, on Sunday, when many of you were out at the barbecue. Mr. Hinderaker says:
On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, “and it hasn’t made us safer.” It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its variouis alleged blunders have only contributed to thenumber of jihadists who want to attack us.
Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.
Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history:
Filed under: American Elephant, Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, History, Iraq, Military | Tags: Afghanistan, Air Force, America, Army, Coast Guard, Holidays, Honor the Fallen, Iraq, Mansions of the Lord, Marines, Memorial Day, Military, National Guard, Navy, Support the Troops!
For over 230 years, far better men than I have risked everything fighting for our independence, fighting to keep us together, putting themselves between America and the evils of the world. They are doing so now.
To a man they knew the dangers. To a man they went anyway.
Today we honor those who have fallen to keep us safe and free. We are forever in their debt.
We must always remember what they’ve done for us. Too many take it for granted. Still others really have no idea. That makes it even more important that the rest of us remember and honor them.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Of all the Memorial Day tributes I found, this was my favorite, but it is one that I can’t embed on our page, so I hope you’ll click the link and watch it. These were also very moving tributes…
Thank you to all who serve. God bless and keep those who gave all.
According to Investors Business Daily, “at a hearing of the House Committee on Global Warming Representative Edward Markey, D—Mass., said he didn’t understand why President Bush wasn’t releasing oil from the nation’s reserves stored in underground salt domes in Texas and Louisiana.”
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman attempted to explain that the reserves are “meant to deal with…the physical interruption of the flow of oil to this country. We don’t have that issue today.”
Representative Markey apparently believes that releasing oil from our strategic reserve in order to lower the price of gas at the pump is more important than national security.
Last year Representative Markey introduced a bill (H.R. 39 ) that would make the 1.2 million acre coastal plain of ANWR — which was set aside for oil exploration when ANWR was established — a permanently off-limits wilderness. Please note that the area to be drilled is about the size of an ordinary airport in an area the size of South Carolina, and is mostly mud-flats.
So extracting 10 billion barrels of oil from ANWR is unimportant and doesn’t affect the price of gas, but opening the strategic reserves…
Can you follow this logic?
Filed under: American Elephant, Conservatism, Election 2008, Foreign Policy, History, Iraq, Liberalism, Media Bias, News, Politics | Tags: 9/11, ABC News, Democrat Corruption, Democrat lies, Iraq War, Liberal lies, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Support the Troops!, The Connection, War on Terror
I am shocked to have just stumbled across this video for the first time. I’ve never seen it before in my life — and I should have! Every American should have. Have you?
In it, ABC News shows the clear and increasingly dangerous connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden… in 1999! Over two years before the 9/11 attacks!
Filmed and aired long before then Governor Bush ever ran for the White House to begin with, and over 2 years before he took office, this video proves several very important things:
- That President Bush’s rationale for removing Saddam Hussein from power was entirely justified and based on widely accepted facts.
- That the idea that Saddam and Bin Laden would never work together because Saddam was secular and Bin Laden fundamentalist was ridiculous from the get go, and…
- That the intelligence that justified removing Saddam existed and was understood long before the Bush administration was even in Washington to supposedly manipulate it.
The deranged left will never be convinced of anything remotely resembling the truth, but remember this video next time you wonder if the war in Iraq was justified…
This video makes it clear: following 9/11, there was no other responsible alternative.
Tom Joscelyn elaborates at Powerline:
In any event, Saddam’s response was telling. Just two days after Operation Desert Fox ended he dispatched one of his top intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. As I and others have written, Hijazi was no low-level flunky. He was one of Saddam’s most trusted goons and was responsible for overseeing a good deal of the regime’s terrorist and other covert activities. It was this meeting that led to widespread reporting on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. I collected a bunch of these reports, including the ABC News report, in “The Four-Day War.” Another, earlier piece also discusses Saddam’s conspicuous response to Operation Desert Fox.
The consensus in the media then was that there was a relationship between the two and that Saddam’s regime was very willing to work with al Qaeda against their common foe: America. And vice versa. Indeed, the reporting indicated that they had been working together even long before Operation Desert Fox…. [Read the rest]
Has anyone noticed ABC airing this report since we invaded Iraq? And why the hell haven’t they!? Where the hell was this report during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings??
Unconscionable!
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Environment, Liberalism, Politics, Socialism, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Big Oil, Congress, Debunking Liberal Lies, Democrat Demagogues, Democrats, Gas Prices, Global Warming, Liberal lies, liberalism, Oil Companies, Pat Leahy, Price Gouging, Socialism, Taxes
Oh My! The Congressional Democrats are at it again. Today the Senate Judiciary Committee dragged in executives from the American petroleum industry for an imperial inquisition that Chairman Pat Leahy thought would be politically helpful. The price of gas has reached a new high, and Senator Leahy wants to be sure that you are blaming the right people.
They called on the executives to explain high oil prices, and attacked them for their profits and pay packages. ( I’m sure you have noticed the portion of the Constitution that allows Congress to determine how much profit is allowed and to set salaries for businessmen.)
The group from industry was a formidable bunch. John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Co., John Lowe, Executive Vice President of Conoco Philips Co., Steven Simon, Senior Vice President of Exxon Mobil Corp., Robert Malone, Chairman and President of BP America, Inc. and Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman of the Board of Chevron Corp. The petroleum executives quickly demonstrated that they were immeasurably better informed and far more public-spirited than their inquisitors.
Because foreign companies and foreign governments control the majority of the world’s oil, most of the price you pay at the pump is what the American oil company has to pay to buy crude oil from someone else. Exxon Mobil refined 2 million barrels per day in 2007. Ninety percent of that was purchased abroad. Exxon Mobil spends nearly $1 billion each day to maintain current operations and make needed capital investments.
On average, Federal and state government taxes account for 15 percent of the cost of gasoline at the pump (And likely much more if you live in Democrat-run state, and much less if you live in a Republican-run state), while oil companies’ profits amount to only 4 percent. So much, senators, for your supposed “price gouging”. Shell’s John Hofmeister explained clearly where the problem lies:
Meanwhile, in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people.
Senator Sessions, I agree, it is not a free market.
According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas projects. I urge you to review it. It is a long list….
The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chosen to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exportation and production of oil and gas. Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development.(emphasis added)
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that will allow the U.S. government to sue OPEC for conspiring to raise prices. If you think this is sensible, reverse the situation and assume that OPEC wanted to buy our timber, but was demanding that we drop the price and cut more trees. (h/t R. Rapier)
According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the outer continental shelf contains as much as 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas, 10 times the oil and 20 times the natural gas we use each year. The oil shale formations across the Rocky Mountains and into Canada contain at least 1 trillion, or possibly as much as 2 trillion barrels of crude oil, more than 7 times the amount of crude oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and enough to meet current U.S. demand for over 250 years. Yet Congress prefers to put it off limits. The mud-flats in ANWR would add another 1 million barrels of oil a day.
Why? Well, environmental organizations show you pictures of cute baby animals and tell you that the Earth will die unless you send them money. They use the money to lobby Congress and to sue anyone asking to drill for oil. Or they use it to sue the EPA to demand that the cute animals are put on the endangered species list, to prevent any drilling. They oppose drilling, not for any environmental damage that oil might do, but to destroy our capitalist economy, for they don’t like capitalism.
If this stupidity makes you angry, don’t grumble at the gas station attendant. Call your representatives in Congress. Let them know that you’re mad as hell and you won’t take it any more.
Filed under: American Elephant, Economy, Education, Environment, Global Warming, Liberalism, Media Bias, News, Politics, Socialism | Tags: Al Gore, Climate Change, Global Warming, IPCC, Junk Science, United Nations
When is a consensus not a consensus?
How about when the number of prominent, respected, and world-renowned scientists dissenting from the liberal global-warm-mongering far exceeds the number of scientists involved in the UN’s whole fraudulent International Panel on Climate Change?
As American Thinker points out, we have reached just such a number…and then some.
32,000 American scientists, including over 9,000 Ph.D’s, have now signed the “Oregon Petition” rejecting Kyoto and other similar measures, and the premise of “global warming” itself. The petition reads:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
With a corrupt Democrat majority in congress and both parties’ presidential candidates poised to do enormous damage to the US economy over nothing more than environmental hysteria and junk science, this story needs to get out.
But you know as well as I do, the mainstream media won’t cover it. (The National Post gives a detailed account of just how actively the media has been burying and trying to discredit real global warming dissent.) At least not until the story reaches such a critical mass that they can no longer ignore it.
I hope you’ll all join me in getting the word out. Blog about it, email it to friends, Digg it, Reddit it… pass it on.
Update: The official site of the Oregon Petition lists the signators of the petition by name and state, breaks them down by degree, and answers all sorts of questions you may have about the petition.
Filed under: American Elephant, Environment, History, News, Pop Culture, Science/Technology, Uncategorized | Tags: Mt. St. Helens, Washington
Chances are, if you’re not from Washington or Oregon, the date May 18th has little meaning to you. Heck, even around here many don’t think of it unless someone reminds them. But I remember, every year. It’s one of the only world events I remember from back then — I was only eleven; but the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980 was just the kind of event that little boys remember forever.
We were very fortunate, the mountain exploded northwards, but the winds carried the ashcloud away to the southeast. I remember being somewhat disappointed that the ash wasn’t turning day to night for us like it was for all the people on the television. In fact, we didn’t seem to get any ashfall at all, much to my chagrin; while people on the other side of the mountain were measuring it in inches, like snow.
So much excitement! …and so little pay off.
About the most exciting thing I personally experienced was standing on my father’s roof to see the enormous plume looking fairly small and unimpressive so many miles away. I’m not sure if we heard the explosion or not. They say people heard it as far as 700 miles away, and we were certainly much closer than that. I think we did — but that could just be my memory playing tricks on me.
So close, and yet so far. But I still remember it every year.
Filed under: Uncategorized
They were back again yesterday with the “America is on the wrong track” thing. Another new poll, I guess. Part of what puts us on the wrong track is the constant proliferation of polls. What does it mean that America is on the wrong track? Says who? And just what do they mean by saying so?
Nobody called me, but I would agree. The artificial price of gasoline is troubling, raised to precarious levels by speculators and a Democrat controlled Congress unwilling to annoy their environmental-activist supporters. The simple and correct response of drilling for more of the oil that we know is there cannot be approved because…?
We cannot build new nuclear plants because wind and solar seem so much more…um…natural and nice. The fact that without vast subsidies (higher taxes) they are not cost effective, is to be ignored. Besides there was Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and where will they put the waste. Did you ever look into any of these supposed problems? Chernobyl was a faulty design, Three Mile Island didn’t hurt anyone, and Yucca Mountain is the safest repository for nuclear waste that can be devised, but I guess you’d rather the nuclear waste sat all over the country in warehouses, perhaps in your neighborhood.
The leaders of an opposition party, which shall remain nameless, have made an unprecedented attack on a war which they authorized and on the Commander-in Chief of that war while American troops were in the field fighting that war. They supported the war until the march-up to Baghdad proved triumphantly successful. When it looked as if President Bush might become a national hero, they turned viciously against the war. Unthinkable to have a popular president. All else has flowed from that moment.
Not quite what others have in mind as “wrong track”. Michael Medved asked those of his listeners last week who really thought President Bush was “the worst president in history” to tell him why. The only constant was the price of gas, over which the President has no control whatsoever. Other reasons cited included the Bilderburgers and Rothschilds, the 9/11 conspiracy, the war for oil conspiracy, the Katrina conspiracy and President Bush’s grandfather. sheesh!
Charles Schumer is out in front of the microphones almost daily trying to portray this as the worst economy since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, the economy is playing him for a fool. Inflation is at 3 percent, down from 4.1% for 2007. Unemployment has dropped to 5.0%. Statistics like these are used to describe a good economy. Some economists are saying that the recession is over. That remains to be seen, but it really, really isn’t the 1930s.
So my idea of “the wrong track” might not be the same as the moonbats, but it is a slightly more sensible reason for thinking something is wrong.
Before you start panicking, do a little research. See if the propaganda the Democrats are handing out has any relation to reality. And relax and take pride in the fabulous country in which you live.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Global Warming, Politics, The Elephant's Child | Tags: Climate Change, Congressional Democrats, Endangered Species Act, Environment, Global Warming, Oil Drilling, Polar Bears, Politics, Price of Gas
Are you confused by the whole global warming thing? Do your eyes glaze over and do you quickly turn the page at the very mention? You are not alone.
The Interior Department ruled today that the polar bear will be protected as a “threatened species”. The polar bear population across the Arctic has doubled from an estimated 12,000 to 25,000 since 1960. But some scientists believe that sea ice, necessary to the bears, may diminish in future years because of global warming. This is an enormous threat to the American economy.
But there has been no global warming for the past 10 years, and there has been actual cooling for the last 5 years. What’s up with that?
“Threatened” is a term with specific meaning. It means their numbers are declining and the species is likely to become “endangered”. But if the numbers of bears are increasing, then why… Because the predictions of computer climate models said that in future years the sea ice may diminish. But…
But the predictive ability of the climate models is increasingly in question. Meteorologists will tell you that they can predict the weather with some degree of accuracy about 5 to 7 days out. Many scientists say that the climate models have no predictive ability whatsoever.
Well then, how effective is the Endangered Species Act? It’s very hard to tell. In some cases, an order to stop shooting the animal in question meant that the species increased. Many have been de-listed because it turned out that they weren’t threatened or endangered in the first place. Counting species accurately is exceedingly tricky. Do they only live here, or could they live just as well there? Is this a lone population or are there 20 more just over the next ridge? Faulty data is frequent.
The Endangered Species Act is, for many environmentalists, not a law to protect plant and animal species, but a back door means of preventing economic development of some chosen area. It is for others a mythical attachment to the idea of “a balance of nature”, which does not exist, for in nature there is only constant change.
The drive to list the polar bear as endangered is more about drilling for oil in the Arctic than it is about the bears. And the propaganda has been intense. We watched “The Golden Compass” recently, a movie made about a children’s book, a fantasy that includes ice-bears — essentially talking polar bears. To watch the movie, we had to endure a commercial from the WWF featuring a little girl pleading for other children to enlist their parents in the campaign to save the polar bear. Unbelievably crass.
So, it is back to the courts, for both sides have said they will sue.
This is a dreadfully dishonest way to deal with national conundrums. No matter how much the naive urban people dream of a world energized by the power of the sun and the wind and hydroelectric power, it’s not going to happen. At least not in the foreseeable future. And if you don’t like the price of gas, write to the Congressional Democrats — they have a lot to answer for.
In the meantime, no wonder your eyes glaze over…
Filed under: American Elephant, Conservatism, History, News, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion | Tags: Bush Wedding, Crawford Texas, Henry Hager, Jenna Bush, Laura Bush, President Bush
The wedding photos are here. Looks like it was a beautiful ceremony. Also looks like Henry was keeping his knees bent to keep from fainting. Smart move!
Filed under: Conservatism, Domestic Policy, Health Care, Liberalism, Politics, Religion, Science/Technology, The Elephant's Child, Uncategorized | Tags: Democrats, ethics, President Bush, Republicans, Stem Cells
All too often, issues that ought to be scientific debates slop out of their petri dishes and get involved with fashion and enthusiasm. Such has been the case with the stem cell debate. Adult stem cells have been the subject of scientific experiment since the late 1960s.
The stem cell debate began in the 1990s, and as is usual, became a matter of fashion as a succession of celebrities became involved. It reached fever pitch when President Bush limited the study of embryonic stem cells to existing lines. On one side of the battle were the proponents of embryonic stem cells who believed that only cells derived from embryos could become pluripotent and become any other kind of cell. On the other side were those who believed that it was deeply unethical to experiment with human embryos.
Well. Religion and government. Fundamentalists. Abortion enthusiasts. Outrage on both sides. Embryonic stem cells had some real problems. Cells from another individual, even an embryo, involved problems of rejection. And the nature of stem cells, which is to divide and multiply, often divided and multiplied into cancerous growths. Adult stem cells had a long head start, and had been successfully curing laboratory mice and showing great possibilities in human disease.
But Bush was some kind of religious nut, so obviously he was banning the real hope for people, especially celebrities who yearned to walk again or be cured of their disease.
Last November, two teams of scientists announced that they had successfully re-programmed adult cells to function as pluripotent cells. This presented the possibility of a win-win solution — scientists could work with the cells deemed most promising without the ethical conflict. Researchers are excited about the work and it is moving forward quickly. Induced pluripotent stem cells will be not only easier to use, but they would share both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA with the original patient.
Politicians and enthusiasts aren’t ready to give up on the battle, but there is at least hope now that science might win the argument. Wouldn’t that be refreshing.
