I’ll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I’ve worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven’t called in sick in seven or eight years.

I make a good salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there’s no retirement in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.

I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth around” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it.

I’m tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to “keep people in their homes.” Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I’m willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them-with their own money.

I’m tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros, and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia , the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China , the crime, and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran , and the freedom of speech of Venezuela . Won’t multiculturalism be beautiful?

I’m tired of being told that Islam is a “Religion of Peace,” when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family “honor;” of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they a ren’t “believers;” of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for “adultery;” of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur’an and Shari’a law tells them to.

I believe “a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.” I’m tired of being told that “race doesn’t matter” in the post-racial world of President Obama, when it’s all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US Senators from Illinois. I think it’s very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less in an all-knowing government.

I’m tired of a news media that thinks Bush’s fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama’s, at triple the cost, were wonderful. That thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress, that picked over every line of Bush’s military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his, that slammed Palin with two years as governor for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn’t vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I’m tired of being told that out of “tolerance for other cultures” we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue, or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.

I’m tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore’s, and if you’re greener than Gore, you’re green enough.

I’m tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don’t t hink Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I’m tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I’m tired of illegal aliens being called “undocumented workers,” especially the ones who aren’t working, but are living on welfare or crime. What’s next? Calling drug dealers, Undocumented Pharmacists”? And, no, I’m not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic and it’s been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I’m willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn’t have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need.

I’m tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people then themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years-and still are? Not even close. So here’s the deal. I’ll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we’ll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I’m tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers-bums are bipartisan. And I’m tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the “Illinois Combine” of Democrats and Republicans has worked together harmoniously to loot the public for years. And I notice that the tax cheats in Obama’s cabinet are bipartisan as well.

I’m tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers, and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I’m tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

Speaking of poor, I’m tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TV s and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn’t have that in 1970, but we didn’t know we were “poor.” The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I’m real tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I’m damn tired. But I’m also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I’m not going to get to see the world these people are making. I’m just sorry for my granddaughter.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.

In the matter of just 50 days, a fissure has widened into a split; the split has become a gap; and the gap is becoming a gulf. I have in mind the extraordinary contradiction between what President Obama says and what he does.

Consider a partial list, starting with earmarks. During the campaign, Obama said, “the truth is, our earmark system — what’s called pork-barrel spending in Washington — is fraught with abuse.  It badly needs reform — which is why I didn’t request a single earmark last year, why I’ve released all my previous requests for the public to see, why I’ve pledged to slash earmarks by more than half when I am President of the United States.” And as ABC’s Jake Tapper pointed out, after John McCain picked Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, Obama criticized her for having been of two minds on earmarks. “When you have been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person,” Obama said, “that is not change, come on. I mean, words mean something.”

Yet yesterday, Obama signed rather than vetoed a massive, $410 billion omnibus spending bill — which contained more than 8,500 earmarks. Adding chutzpah to his hypocrisy, Obama told reporters, “The future demands that we operate in a different way than we have in the past. So let there be no doubt: this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability that the American people have every right to expect and demand.” This is the fiscal version of St. Augustine’s prayer, “Lord, make me chaste — but not yet.”

Second, Obama made bi-partisanship a cornerstone of his campaign. It was he, we were told, who would repair the breach and “turn the page.” It is he who wrote that “genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take” and that the majority must be constrained “by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate” to “negotiate in good faith.” Yet Republicans have been shut out from writing and offering substantive input into key legislation. Obama has so far demonstrated no interest in authentic bi-partisanship; he is allowing Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid to muscle through their agenda, even at the cost of losing almost every elected Republican in the United States Congress.

Third, Obama made ethics reform central to his candidacy. In arguably the most important speech of the campaign, the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa in 2007, Obama said, “[Lobbyists] have not funded my campaign, they will not work in my White House…” Upon taking office, Obama made quite a show of announcing new ethics rules barring lobbyists from working in the administration on issues that fell under their lobbying bailiwick. Yet Obama immediately allowed waivers for lobbyists working on issues that fell under their lobbying bailiwick.

Fourth, Obama praised his Administration for putting an end to “phony accounting.” His budget, we were told, was an honest budget, without gimmicks, numbers you could trust. Except that we learned that when President Obama, in his speech to a joint session of Congress, said his Administration had identified “$2 trillion in savings,” it turns out that $1.6 trillion of the “savings” Obama is claiming are based on the surge in Iraq continuing for 10 more years — even though on February 27, in a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Obama said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,” and the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration, which calls for all U.S. forces to be out of Iraq, is set for December 2011.

Fifth, President Obama has continually presented himself as trans-ideological, the answer to “worn-out dogmas” and “worn-out ideas” and “stale political arguments.” He doesn’t subscribe to an “old, discredited philosophy.” It is his critics, he insists, who do. It is they who are intellectually rigid, dogmatic, captives of old ways of thinking. Obama is the one who, like Lincoln, will “think anew and act anew.”

Except that it is Obama himself who displays rutted thinking. It is he who is championing worn-out dogmas. And it is he who is advancing a deeply ideological agenda. Unlike Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who demonstrated policy creativity and attempted to advance “third way” solutions, President Obama is turning out to be utterly and conventionally liberal, embracing record-breaking spending programs and record-breaking tax increases and giving us a record-breaking deficit and record-breaking debt. Rather than par down his liberal aims in the light of the economic crisis we face, he is enlarging them.

Sixth, Obama has decried “the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle the big problems of America.” He has said to his fellow citizens, “Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.“ Yet Obama’s White House, led by his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and his most important political adviser, David Axelrod, hatched a poll-tested plot to target radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. They are promoting what they pretend to lament: phony and foolish diversions, distractions and manipulations, immaturity and pettiness.

There is more. Obama has promised time and again to make “hard decisions,” yet he has made almost none. He has talked about the importance of embodying a culture of responsibility, yet he pretends that the omnibus spending bill he signed yesterday was “last year’s decision.” He says our responsibility to our children is “to ensure that we do not pass on to them a debt they cannot pay” — yet based on his own budget figures, Obama will add $7 trillion to our debt from 2009 to 2019.

This has led, sooner than anyone could have imagined, to a serious credibility gap. It would be unfair to say that Obama is unique in this regard; many times public officials make claims they cannot keep or find that governing requires them to make amendments to what they said during the campaign. What is striking about Obama, though, is how antithetical his acts are compared to his words, his unwillingness to admit he is not practicing what he preached, and the sheer audacity of his hypocrisy and moral conceit. He still insists on presenting himself as the man who will cleanse the Augean stables, even as he adds to the mess.

Barack Obama is perpetrating a fiction. And it is fiction from a man who made “change” and “new politics” centerpieces of his campaign. Even many who voted against Obama took him at his word because, to quote Obama himself, “words mean something.” We admired not simply his skills, but his capacity to tap into something real and hopeful in America .

“Where we are met with cynicism and doubt and those who tell us that we can’t,” Obama said on the night he was elected, “we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.”

And when we are met with politicians who pretend that the politics of cynicism is the politics of hope and ask us to go along for the ride, who vulgarize and invert the meaning of words in order to advance their own narrow aims, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the wisdom of an awakened people: No we won’t.

The following is John McCain’s editorial, as published on the Drudge Report

Once again, bloggers are the ones bringing the real news..and I find it sad that I, as an Australian, have a better understanding of the spirit of the US First Amendment than the American press ever will.

Whether you like John McCain or not, this is not about his campaign or his policies…this is about freedom of speech and about teaching the MSM the same lesson over and over again..if you dont have the guts to tell the truth..we will tell it for you.

As I understand it, Americans consider the First Amendment an inviolable right. Whether you agree with the Senator or not, in fairness, here is his editorial.

The DRUDGE REPORT presents the McCain editorial in its submitted form:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Thank you, Senator, I will crosspost this elsewhere, so that you may be heard.

Note to the New York Times: this is called reporting the news.

Next week we learn how to spellcheck.

What the child rapist, saved today by Supreme Court liberals, did to his 8-year-old stepdaughter

Anthony Kennedy and the leftists on the Supreme Court ruled this morning that what child rapist Patrick Kennedy did to his 8-year-old stepdaughter is a crime that should not be punishable by death.

The MSM will tiptoe around what child rapist Patrick Kennedy actually did.

I’m reprinting the full description of the crime from Kennedy’s ruling below in the interest of fully informing you all (warning – explicit). Is the death penalty “not a proportional punishment” to this crime? You decide. And the next time liberals wave the “For the children” banner, ask them about L.H.

***

From Kennedy’s majority opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, decided June 25, 2008:

…Petitioner’s crime was one that cannot be recounted in these pages in a way sufficient to capture in full the hurt and horror inflicted on his victim or to convey the revulsion society, and the jury that represents it, sought to express by sentencing petitioner to death. At 9:18 a.m. on March 2, 1998, petitioner called 911 to report that his stepdaughter, referred to here as L. H., had been raped.

He told the 911 operator that L. H. had been in the garage while he readied his son for school. Upon hearing loud screaming, petitioner said, he ran outside and found L. H. in the side yard. Two neighborhood boys, petitioner told the operator, had dragged L. H. from the garage to the yard, pushed her down, and raped her. Petitioner claimed he saw one of the boys riding away on a blue 10-speed bicycle.

When police arrived at petitioner’s home between 9:20 and 9:30 a.m., they found L. H. on her bed, wearing a T-shirt and wrapped in a bloody blanket. She was bleeding profusely from the vaginal area. Petitioner told police he had carried her from the yard to the bathtub and then to the bed. Consistent with this explanation, police found a thin line of blood drops in the garage on the way to the house and then up the stairs. Once in the bedroom, petitioner had used a basin of water and a cloth to wipe blood from the victim. This later prevented medical personnel from collecting a reliable DNA sample.

L. H. was transported to the Children’s Hospital. An expert in pediatric forensic medicine testified that L. H.’s injuries were the most severe he had seen from a sexual assault in his four years of practice. A laceration to the left wall of the vagina had separated her cervix from the back of her vagina, causing her rectum to protrude into the vaginal structure. Her entire perineum was torn from the posterior fourchette to the anus. The injuries required emergency surgery.

At the scene of the crime, at the hospital, and in the first weeks that followed, both L. H. and petitioner maintained in their accounts to investigators that L. H. had been raped by two neighborhood boys. One of L. H.’s doctors testified at trial that L. H. told all hospital personnel the same version of the rape, although she reportedly told one family member that petitioner raped her. L. H. was interviewed several days after the rape by a psychologist. The interview was videotaped, lasted three hours over two days, and was introduced into evidence at trial. On the tape one can see that L. H. had difficulty discussing the subject of the rape. She spoke haltingly and with long pauses and frequent movement. Early in the interview, L. H. expressed reservations about the questions being asked:

“I’m going to tell the same story. They just want me to change it. . . . They want me to say my Dad did it. . . . I don’t want to say it. . . . I tell them the same, same story.” Def. Exh. D–7, 01:29:07–:36.

She told the psychologist that she had been playing in the garage when a boy came over and asked her about Girl Scout cookies she was selling; and that the boy “pulled [her by the legs to] the backyard,” id., at 01:47:41–:52, where he placed his hand over her mouth, “pulled down [her] shorts,” Def. Exh. D–8, 00:03:11–:12, and raped her, id., at 00:14:39–:40.

Eight days after the crime, and despite L. H.’s insistence that petitioner was not the offender, petitioner was arrested for the rape. The State’s investigation had drawn the accuracy of petitioner and L. H.’s story into question. Though the defense at trial proffered alternative explanations, the case for the prosecution, credited by the jury, was based upon the following evidence: An inspection of the side yard immediately after the assault was inconsistent with a rape having occurred there, the grass having been found mostly undisturbed but for a small patch of coagulated blood. Petitioner said that one of the perpetrators fled the crime scene on a blue 10-speed bicycle but gave inconsistent descriptions of the bicycle’s features, such as its handlebars. Investigators found a bicycle matching petitioner and L. H.’s description in tall grass behind a nearby apartment, and petitioner identified it as the bicycle one of the perpetrators was riding. Yet its tires were flat, it did not have gears, and it was covered in spider webs. In addition police found blood on the underside of L. H.’s mattress. This convinced them the rape took place in her bedroom, not outside the house.

Police also found that petitioner made two telephone calls on the morning of the rape. Sometime before 6:15 a.m., petitioner called his employer and left a message that he was unavailable to work that day. Petitioner called back between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. to ask a colleague how to get blood out of a white carpet because his daughter had “ ‘just become a young lady.’ ” Brief for Respondent 12.

At 7:37 a.m., petitioner called B & B Carpet Cleaning and requested urgent assistance in removing bloodstains from a carpet. Petitioner did not call 911 until about an hour and a half later.

About a month after petitioner’s arrest L. H. was removed from the custody of her mother, who had maintained until that point that petitioner was not involved in the rape. On June 22, 1998, L. H. was returned home and told her mother for the first time that petitioner had raped her. And on December 16, 1999, about 21 months after the rape, L. H. recorded her accusation in a videotaped interview with the Child Advocacy Center.

The State charged petitioner with aggravated rape of a child under La. Stat. Ann. §14:42 (West 1997 and Supp. 1998) and sought the death penalty. At all times relevant to petitioner’s case, the statute provided:

“A. Aggravated rape is a rape committed . . . where the anal or vaginal sexual intercourse is deemed to be without lawful consent of the victim because it is committed under any one or more of the following circumstances:
. . . . .
“(4) When the victim is under the age of twelve years. Lack of knowledge of the victim’s age shall not be a defense.
. . . . .
“D. Whoever commits the crime of aggravated rape shall be punished by life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.

“(1) However, if the victim was under the age of twelve years, as provided by Paragraph A(4) of this Section:
“(a) And if the district attorney seeks a capital verdict, the offender shall be punished by death or life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, in accordance with the determination of the jury.”

(Since petitioner was convicted and sentenced, the statute has been amended to include oral intercourse within the definition of aggravated rape and to increase the age of the victim from 12 to 13. See La. Stat. Ann. §14:42 (West Supp. 2007).)

Aggravating circumstances are set forth in La. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 905.4 (West 1997 Supp.). In pertinent part and at all times relevant to petitioner’s case, the provision stated:

“A. The following shall be considered aggravating circumstances:

“(1) The offender was engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of aggravated rape, forcible rape, aggravated kidnapping, second degree kidnapping, aggravated burglary, aggravated arson, aggravated escape, assault by drive-by shooting, armed robbery, first degree robbery, or simple robbery.
. . . . .
“(10) The victim was under the age of twelve years or sixty-five years of age or older.”

The trial began in August 2003. L. H. was then 13 years old. She testified that she “ ‘woke up one morning and Patrick was on top of [her].’ ” She remembered petitioner bringing her “[a] cup of orange juice and pills chopped up in it” after the rape and overhearing him on the telephone saying she had become a “young lady.” 2005–1981, pp. 12, 15, 16 (La. 5/22/07), 957 So. 2d 757, 767, 769, 770. L. H. acknowledged that she had accused two neighborhood boys but testified petitioner told her to say this and that it was untrue. Id., at 769.

The jury having found petitioner guilty of aggravated rape, the penalty phase ensued. The State presented the testimony of S. L., who is the cousin and goddaughter of petitioner’s ex-wife. S. L. testified that petitioner sexually
abused her three times when she was eight years old and that the last time involved sexual intercourse. Id., at 772. She did not tell anyone until two years later and did not pursue legal action.

The jury unanimously determined that petitioner should be sentenced to death…

***

I can’t say it any better;

It’s becoming increasingly clear what the Democratic campaign strategy is going to be this election season: Vote for Obama or you’re a racist. I’m not sure I think too much of this approach to bullying the American electorate into selecting a candidate. Aside from the fact that, if you’re a Republican, it’s always a mistake to let your adversary define you, it also seems to me to free people from certain otherwise laudatory restraints.

As for me, because I’m preemptively being defined as a racist (since I most certainly won’t vote for Obama), I’ve decided to step up to the plate and embrace that definition. From here on in, I’ve got my mantra.

When I vote against Obama on November 4, 2008:

• It won’t be because Obama wants to withdraw from Iraq, which I think will weaken America’s interests beyond repair, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama thinks that a nuclear Iran is no threat to the Western World, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because I think it’s an incredibly stupid idea for the most powerful nation in the world to approach evil totalitarian dictators as a supplicant, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because I hate the idea of a President who will subordinate America’s interests to the UN (as he inevitably will), it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama has the thinnest resume ever in the history of Presidential candidates, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because I think Obama’s Leftist connections (Ayres, Dohrn, Soros, Pfleger, Wright, etc.) show him to be either stupid about or complicit with an agenda antithetical to basic American values, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama consistently chooses as advisers people who have opted for the wrong side in the completely binary debate about Israel’s right to exist, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama wants to socialize American medicine, which I believe will destroy the high quality of medical care available to most Americans, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama wants to gut the military and reduce us to a nation with a big target painted on our collective backside, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama wants to gut the Second Amendment and destroy Americans’ Constitutional right to protect themselves from foreign and domestic enemies, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama has already announced loud and clear that he will support activist judges who place their “feelings” above the law, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama supports judicial decisions creating a right to gay marriage, when I think that decision is one for the voters, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama’s announced that he will dramatically increase taxes, putting the slow, inflexible, ill-informed government in charge of what should be a quick-reacting, knowledgeable marketplace, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama’s record in the Senate (albeit short and undistinguished) has been so liberal he makes Teddy Kennedy look like a reactionary, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama’s an open-borders kind of guy, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama has shown himself to be a scarily slow thinker and speaker when released from the teleprompter (which really doesn’t bode well for those cozy private chats with Ahmadinejad, Jong-Il, and Assad), it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama’s wife clearly loathes America and everything it stands for, despite the fact that she’s done pretty well out of it, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama was affiliated for more than 20 years with a church that preached white hatred and began to care only when it looked as if it would affect his campaign, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama was good buddies with Tony Rezko, and other sleazy characters (showing again that Obama was complicit or a singularly bad judgment of character), it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama’s a compulsive liar who clearly thinks we in the public are too stupid to catch up with his lies, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama’s campaign has proven to be fly-paper for every two bit troofer and anti-Semite in America, it will be because I’m a racist.
• It won’t be because Obama’s promised already to start down the totalitarian path of purging his predecessors through criminal prosecutions, it will be because I’m a racist.

All things considered, when I think about being a racist as I’ve defined it, not as they have, let me say it loud and let me say it proud: I am a racist — and, on November 4, 2008, this racist is not voting for Obama.

UPDATE: Welcome, readers from Confederate Yankee, The Anchoress and American Thinker! To new visitors, if you’d like to leave a comment (and feel welcome to do so), you’ll have to register. Your first post will automatically be sent to moderation, where it will sit for a couple of hours, since I’ll be out and about for quite a while, and won’t be able to update things.

UPDATE II: With regard to Obama’s habit of associating with truly unsavory people, whether because of their criminal antics or their political, religious, or racial beliefs, Terry Trippany has a good list identifying many of Obama’s “friends.”

]]> http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/vote-for-obama-or-youre-a-racist/feed/ 0 mgnmfrc1 http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/clint-eastwood-the-last-real-man/ http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/clint-eastwood-the-last-real-man/#comments Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:37:38 +0000 mgnmfrc1 http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/?p=83 ]]> June 06, 2008. Clint Eastwood is steaming mad. MediaTakeOut.com told you a few weeks ago that director Spike Lee criticized Clint for not using African American actors in his movie Flags Of Our Fathers. Well now Clint is going hard at Spike. Here’s what he said in a recent interview:

On Spike Lee:

[Spike] was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that’s why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.” As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, “but they didn’t raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go, ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.”

On why he doesn’t have to include Black actors in his new film Changeling – set in Los Angeles during the Depression

“What are you going to do, you gonna tell a f*ckin’ story about that?” he growls. “Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I’m not in that game. I’m playing it the way I read it historically, and that’s the way it is. When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people.”

On what he thinks Spike should do:

“A guy like him should shut his face.”

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/clint_eastwood_tells_spike_lee_to_shut_his_face

By Jonathan Spicer

TORONTO (Reuters) – You can browse the latest porn magazines at Canadian shops, but tough new laws mean that cigarette packages are simply too suggestive.

Shop owners in Ontario, Quebec and a few other provinces must now hide tobacco products from their customers under rules that will cover most of Canada by year-end as the country tries to stamp out smoking by young people.

The provincial governments want to discourage the habit by “de-normalizing” the presence of cigarettes, which typically enjoyed prime placement behind the cash register.

Retailers must store cigarettes in drawers or behind grey wall coverings that cost as much as C$1,000 ($980), leaving some fuming over the cost, inconvenience, and hypocrisy.

“It’s a pain in the ass, and a double-standard that the government supports liquor sales,” said a Toronto shop owner who did not want to be named, but who noted children too young to buy pornography are still free to eye the plastic-covered magazines, which are only partly hidden by their shelving.

“It’s kind of like a nanny state.”

The law has its critics, including those who point accusingly at Ontario’s provincially owned liquor stores. But advocates say the seemingly draconian measure will eventually work, and is too important to get bogged down by morality.

“Pornography, with all its faults and deficits, won’t kill you,” said Michael Perley, director of the Ontario Campaign for

Action on Tobacco, an anti-smoking lobby group. “Tobacco industry products kill one in two of their long-term users.”

Perley’s group, backed by national cancer and medical associations, complains that the cigarette industry paid retailers to display their colorful products in prominent positions in retail stores.

The latest move puts Canada, which already bans cigarette advertising and sports sponsorships by tobacco companies, among a small group of countries which hides tobacco products at the cash register.

Iceland was first in 2001 and Thailand followed in 2005, while Ireland is moving in the same direction.

Canadian retailers complain the law will confuse customers and sellers, and stifle sales of their top product.

But the provinces, which are responsible for managing Canada’s publicly funded healthcare system, say they are trying to curb the country’s No. 1 cause of early death, cancer.

Canada’s explicit health warnings on tobacco products, including graphic images of blackened lungs and rotten teeth, are already considered among the world’s most direct.

“It doesn’t take long to de-normalize social psychology,” said Toronto cigarette-smoker Karolina Jonsson. “People underestimate just how much advertising we are exposed to every day, and cigarettes are the same.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer, editing by Janet Guttsman)

It’s an amazing time to be alive in America. We’re in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first front-running freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.

We won’t truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won’t arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender. Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.

The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him. Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He’s not. He’s the next George McGovern. And it’s time people learned the facts.

Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton. Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.

Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he’s not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.. Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let’s look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial ‘beauty.’

Start with national security, since the president’s most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists – something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.

Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on ‘the rich.’ How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.

Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, ‘All praise and glory to God!’ but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have ‘hijacked’ – hijacked – Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban – ban – on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.

The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But Mr. Obama could win if people don’t start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of ‘bringing America together’ means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.

But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and – yes – they’re talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama’s radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton.

It’s time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let’s first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.

]]> http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/the-real-obama/feed/ 0 mgnmfrc1 http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/got-mom-too-bastard-where-is-nows-outrage/ http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/got-mom-too-bastard-where-is-nows-outrage/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:41:32 +0000 mgnmfrc1 http://mgnmfrc1.wordpress.com/?p=13 ]]> Still Evil in Basra

—Gabriel Malor

A few weeks ago I read Drew’s post about the teenager in Basra named Rand who was killed by her own father for merely talking to a British soldier. The murder was an act of absolute evil that was not just condoned by a”face” culture but demanded by it. Pride and shame cultures are not dependent on fact or truth, only the feelings and perceptions of privileged individuals (in this case Muslim men). And so when pride demands death, “everyone knows that sometimes it is impossible not to carry out an ‘honour killing’.“

The story doesn’t end there. At the time, the girl’s mother, Leila, divorced from her monster husband, was fleeing from reprisals for denouncing the murder. She had been hiding in safehouses established by women’s rights movements in Basra where they had plotted an escape for her to Jordan. She didn’t make it. Leila was gunned down on the way to meet her contact.

Two men ran from their homes to help. They rushed Leila to hospital and a passing taxi took the other two [who were helping her escape]. But Leila died at 3.20pm, despite several operations to save her. As she lay in her own hospital bed receiving treatment, Mariam said that she heard someone saying that Leila had been shot in the head. But there were other mutterings that were clearly audible. ‘I could hear people talking on the corridors and the only thing that they had to say was that Leila was wrong for defending her daughter’s mistakes and that her death was God’s punishment.’In that minute I just had complete hatred in my heart for those who had killed her.’

Mother and daughter were killed because of a stupid honor culture. Keep it in mind the next time some snob tells you that we must learn to respect other cultures.

San Diego Union-Tribune
May 25, 2008

Recent events leave no doubt about just how desperate a battle Mexico is fighting to take down it’s rapacious drug-trafficking cartels and stop the escalation of drug-war violence. No American should imagine that this battle being waged on our doorstep doesn’t involve vital U.S. national interests inextricably entwined with those of our neighbor Mexico.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón has made the fight against the drug cartels and organized crime his top national priority, as well he should. Losing to the narco-traffickers’ violent syndicates would risk making Mexico a failed state, with disastrous consequences for Mexico’s economic development and political reforms. Simply put, Mexico’s modernization cannot succeed without the rule of law against which the cartels wage unrelenting war.

For the United States, a failed Mexico unable to control the escalating drug-war mayhem on its territory would have the most dire results: Tidal waves of illegal immigration, wholesale disruption of tens of billions of dollars of mutually beneficial trade, and a vastly greater threat to U.S. national security along the 1,800-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

All the more reason, then, to view recent events in Mexico with genuine alarm. Despite the 17-month-old Calderón administration’s efforts, including the dispatch of more than 24,000 Mexican army troops and federal police to locations (including Tijuana) most threatened by the narco-cartels, violence continues unabated.

Among the most recent outrages:

A running gun battle between rival narco-traffickers in Tijuana on April 26 that left a dozen dead and eight or more wounded.

Four days later, two assassins shot and killed the director of Mexico’s Organized Crime Department of the Federal Secretariat of Public Security. A day after that, the secretariat’s general staff director was assassinated as he left his home in Mexico City.

On May 8, the acting chief of Mexico’s federal police was shot nine times and killed at the door of his apartment in Mexico City.

On May 9, four gunmen killed a former commander of Mexico City’s anti-kidnapping unit, a man who was working for the Mexico City police department’s internal affairs unit, which investigates police corruption.

The next day, the deputy commander of Ciudad Juarez’s police force was ambushed and killed near his home, shot more than 50 times. The Ciudad Juarez police chief resigned that same day.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that three Mexican police chiefs, clearly in fear for their lives, have requested political asylum in the United States. This is unprecedented.

Drug-war violence killed 2,500 people last year in Mexico. The toll of dead so far this year runs to 1,100, according to Mexican press reports. Most of the dead were feuding narco-traffickers and their murderous enforcers, but the victims also include Mexican government officials, police and prosecutors, soldiers, journalists and innocent civilians caught in crossfires.

Of Mexico’s fight against the cartels, John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, minced no words in an interview in San Diego last week.

“They’re fighting for their lives and their futures,” Walters said.

As the violence in border areas, notably including the Mexican states of Baja California and Chihuahua, grows, Americans are increasingly put at risk. Dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped, and some murdered, by Mexican criminals in the Tijuana region who are believed linked to drug traffickers.

The U.S. State Department’s current travel advisory on Mexico says this about the growing risk to Americans in the border region:

“Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade continues along the U.S.-Mexico border … Foreign visitors and residents, including Americans, have been among the victims of homicides and kidnappings in the border region. Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades … Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas.”

The Department of Homeland Security reports that escalating border violence increasingly threatens U.S. Border Patrol agents. Assaults against Border Patrol officers have nearly tripled since 2001 – from 335 that year to 987 during fiscal year 2007. Four Border Patrol agents and three other border security officers were killed last year. Two Border Patrol agents have been killed to date in 2008.

The Bush administration’s response to the growing threat of Mexican drug cartels is the Merida Initiative now pending in Congress, a $1.4 billion, multi-year security-assistance plan to help Mexico and the Central American countries fight drug trafficking and organized crime. President Bush is proposing $500 million in security assistance to Mexico this year, including badly needed drug-detection technology, communications equipment, helicopters and surveillance aircraft, technical advice and training, case-management software for Mexico’s creaky criminal justice system and help in establishing witness protection programs.

Critics, among them the usual chorus of Mexico bashers, deride the Merida Initiative as an unwarranted giveaway to a corrupt country not worthy of U.S. assistance. They couldn’t be more wrong, more misinformed or uninformed.

Whatever Mexico’s problems with drug-money corruption, and they are undeniably immense, the transnational drug cartels can only be defeated by a transnational strategy built around U.S.-Mexico cooperation. Ditto for helping Central America’s small states cope with growing drug trafficking through their territory, nearly all of it intended for the lucrative U.S. market, plus such vicious street-gang networks as the El Salvador-based MS-13 organization now lethally present in Los Angeles and other American cities.

A model for dismantling Mexico’s drug cartels could well be the law enforcement successes scored in recent years against the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix Organization. Hammered by U.S. and Mexican law enforcement, the AFO is now a shell of the feared, ultra-violent narco cartel it once was. Many of these successes, including the apprehension of numerous AFO kingpins, have been the result of painstakingly patient cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement.

Only effective cooperation between the United States and Mexico offers any reasonable hope of defeating the drug cartels that threaten both countries. The Merida Initiative, blueprint for a closer, more effective U.S.-Mexico alliance against the sources of 80 percent of all illicit narcotics entering the United States, is a key to victory.

For the United States and Mexico alike, this is a war we cannot afford to lose.