Ann Coulter is at it again and this time she is taking on the supposed "victims" of the left. Liberals have long considered themselves the protectors of the downtrodden but how accurate is this portrayal? Not accurate at all according to Coulter.
Far from speaking for victims, liberals use victims or even create victims to inoculate themselves against criticism. As if showing the face of someone suffering makes it impossible to argue against what the liberal believes is the best way to help that person.
Coulter shows how liberals claim to be victims even when they are rewarded for what they do, like when Hollywood celebrities talk out against Bush. She explains how by celebrating victim status, such as women having children out of wedlock, damage is done to the second generation and dependency is created. She gives example after example of liberals receiving fawning media attention for their anti-war protests while claiming victim-hood.
A book review of an Ann Coulter book might even be largely unnecessary. You either love Coulter or you hate her. There is very little middle ground. Ann is an unabashed conservative who mixes in humor all while destroying liberals arguments. She doesn't pull punches or let the chance that she might offend someone get in the way of a great punchline.
Guilty is definitely not the book to get your liberal friends to try to get them to turn their beliefs around but she certainly could be appreciated by rock-rib conservatives as our answer to Bill Maher.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Healthcare Reform Is The Real Christmas Turkey
Most weeks, Congress does not work Fridays. Most holiday seasons, congressmen and Senators are home with their families long before the average worker starts his vacation. So why is the Senate in session on Christmas Eve? As Mark Twain put it, “No Man's Life Liberty or Property is Safe…While the Legislature is in Session.”
The Senate is in session on Christmas Eve for the same reason the House was in session during the wee hours of the morning on a Saturday, because they hope you don't notice what they are doing. The passage of the dueling healthcare bills in Congress will force Americans to do something they have never had to do up until this point, buy a service or risk fees and jail time.
Worse still, no one really knows what's in these bills. The House version has a public option and a ban on public money spent on abortion. The Senate version has no public option but allows federal dollars to be used on abortion. What comes out of the reconciliation process of these bills might very well be the worse of both worlds.
Items like individual mandates requiring every man, woman and child to buy a "state-approved" plan are a given. Community rating, charging the same rate regardless of health condition, destroys the incentive for the young to buy coverage by overcharging them to account for the elderly. Even with these provisions, the CBO says 24 million of the 46.3 million uninsured will remain so.
The money spent just to cajole congressmen and senators to vote for this bill is breaking all records. Mary Landrieu from Lousiana got 300 million dollars in earmarks for her vote. Ben Nelson of Nebraska got a state exemption that his state will never have to contribute to new Medicaid patients. All these bribes are really drops in the bucket when you consider the bill will cost 1 trillion dollars just in the next ten years, if anything they didn't get enough for their vote.
There is still time to stop the bill. Either the House will vote on the Senate version or the bill will go to reconciliation and need to be voted on again by both bodies. We are not done yet! A Rasmussen poll taken Dec 22-23 found that 41 percent favored the health care bill but 55 percent were opposed. If that number rises and we become more vocal about throwing the bums out of office who vote for this monstrosity, many Democrats may decide the political price is too high and change their vote.
Tort reform, buying insurance across state lines and health care savings accounts are all good solutions that would cost the American taxpayers nothing. Health care needs to be reformed but they know this Frankenstein monster of bad ideas and bribes for congressmen is NOT the way to get it done.
The Senate is in session on Christmas Eve for the same reason the House was in session during the wee hours of the morning on a Saturday, because they hope you don't notice what they are doing. The passage of the dueling healthcare bills in Congress will force Americans to do something they have never had to do up until this point, buy a service or risk fees and jail time.
Worse still, no one really knows what's in these bills. The House version has a public option and a ban on public money spent on abortion. The Senate version has no public option but allows federal dollars to be used on abortion. What comes out of the reconciliation process of these bills might very well be the worse of both worlds.
Items like individual mandates requiring every man, woman and child to buy a "state-approved" plan are a given. Community rating, charging the same rate regardless of health condition, destroys the incentive for the young to buy coverage by overcharging them to account for the elderly. Even with these provisions, the CBO says 24 million of the 46.3 million uninsured will remain so.
The money spent just to cajole congressmen and senators to vote for this bill is breaking all records. Mary Landrieu from Lousiana got 300 million dollars in earmarks for her vote. Ben Nelson of Nebraska got a state exemption that his state will never have to contribute to new Medicaid patients. All these bribes are really drops in the bucket when you consider the bill will cost 1 trillion dollars just in the next ten years, if anything they didn't get enough for their vote.
There is still time to stop the bill. Either the House will vote on the Senate version or the bill will go to reconciliation and need to be voted on again by both bodies. We are not done yet! A Rasmussen poll taken Dec 22-23 found that 41 percent favored the health care bill but 55 percent were opposed. If that number rises and we become more vocal about throwing the bums out of office who vote for this monstrosity, many Democrats may decide the political price is too high and change their vote.
Tort reform, buying insurance across state lines and health care savings accounts are all good solutions that would cost the American taxpayers nothing. Health care needs to be reformed but they know this Frankenstein monster of bad ideas and bribes for congressmen is NOT the way to get it done.
Christmas Day Massacre Averted
As many people were gathering together with friends and family and celebrating the Holiest day of the Christian calendar, a terrorist was plotting to use a new kind of explosive device on a plane arriving in Detroit.
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance but the bomb composed of a powdery substance was designed to bypass TSA security. Hopefully, appropriate countermeasures will be taken in the future to account for this new threat.
It is a Christmas miracle that this unforeseen tragedy was averted thanks to the quick thinking of several passengers who subdued the man.
I sincerely hope that when Obama addresses the nation about what is being done with this terrorist, we hear that he is being interrogated and his associates are being rooted out. I hope that we don't hear about how this man is read his Miranda rights or how he is being given a lawyer. I hope that we hear about how this only strengthens the resolve of the American people to crush terror wherever it exists. I hope that we don't hear liberals trying to rationalize this as retribution for the troop surge in Afghanistan.
In short, I am hoping for a second Christmas miracle.
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance but the bomb composed of a powdery substance was designed to bypass TSA security. Hopefully, appropriate countermeasures will be taken in the future to account for this new threat.
It is a Christmas miracle that this unforeseen tragedy was averted thanks to the quick thinking of several passengers who subdued the man.
I sincerely hope that when Obama addresses the nation about what is being done with this terrorist, we hear that he is being interrogated and his associates are being rooted out. I hope that we don't hear about how this man is read his Miranda rights or how he is being given a lawyer. I hope that we hear about how this only strengthens the resolve of the American people to crush terror wherever it exists. I hope that we don't hear liberals trying to rationalize this as retribution for the troop surge in Afghanistan.
In short, I am hoping for a second Christmas miracle.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
I Hate Huckabee
Mike Huckabee came very close to winning the Republican presidential nomination in the last election. The "Huck-a-boom" as it was called happened too early in the race to lead to victory but certainly raised his political capital enough to be a front-runner for 2012.
All that evaporated the Sunday after Thanksgiving. On November 29th, Maurice Clemmons walked into a cafe in Washington state and killed four police officers. Clemmons received a reduced sentence that lead to his parole from Huckabee, his original sentence was 95 years in prison. This is not the first time Huckabee has been embarrassed by a pardon. A convicted rapist, Wayne Dumond, went on to commit rape once again after a Huckabee clemency. In fact, Huckabee granted more than 1,000 clemencies during a 10 year period as governor of Arkansas.
The forgiving governor's law-and-order bona fides are nonexistent. We have trials for a reason. It is laid out in the Constitution that a panel of one's peers after hearing the charges and evidence against one is in the best place to pass judgment. When a governor or President commutes or pardons a criminal, that system's verdict is ignored.
Huckabee's clemencies are too numerous to be the result of poor judgment, it is a pattern for the governor. This pattern of government knows best is exemplified by his positions on such issues as trans fat bans, SCHIP, smoking bans and the environment.
There should be no place for progressives like Huckabee in the Republican party. Yet, Huckabee led in the straw poll for 2012 candidates just months ago. His status as a Baptist minister seems to have created a die-hard religious-right base that is willing to overlook his stance on the issues for his personality. However, after last Sunday it will be much harder for the evangelicals to stand by their man with the specter that maybe four cops would still be walking around today if Huckabee had held to the conservative law-and-order values that his party is known for.
Note: The title of this column is a parody of the movie "I Heart Huckabee." I do not hate Mike Huckabee although I think he is unfit to be elected dogcatcher. He would probably release the hounds that had previously bitten old ladies.
All that evaporated the Sunday after Thanksgiving. On November 29th, Maurice Clemmons walked into a cafe in Washington state and killed four police officers. Clemmons received a reduced sentence that lead to his parole from Huckabee, his original sentence was 95 years in prison. This is not the first time Huckabee has been embarrassed by a pardon. A convicted rapist, Wayne Dumond, went on to commit rape once again after a Huckabee clemency. In fact, Huckabee granted more than 1,000 clemencies during a 10 year period as governor of Arkansas.
The forgiving governor's law-and-order bona fides are nonexistent. We have trials for a reason. It is laid out in the Constitution that a panel of one's peers after hearing the charges and evidence against one is in the best place to pass judgment. When a governor or President commutes or pardons a criminal, that system's verdict is ignored.
Huckabee's clemencies are too numerous to be the result of poor judgment, it is a pattern for the governor. This pattern of government knows best is exemplified by his positions on such issues as trans fat bans, SCHIP, smoking bans and the environment.
There should be no place for progressives like Huckabee in the Republican party. Yet, Huckabee led in the straw poll for 2012 candidates just months ago. His status as a Baptist minister seems to have created a die-hard religious-right base that is willing to overlook his stance on the issues for his personality. However, after last Sunday it will be much harder for the evangelicals to stand by their man with the specter that maybe four cops would still be walking around today if Huckabee had held to the conservative law-and-order values that his party is known for.
Note: The title of this column is a parody of the movie "I Heart Huckabee." I do not hate Mike Huckabee although I think he is unfit to be elected dogcatcher. He would probably release the hounds that had previously bitten old ladies.
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