Good Stuff...

So lets bring the price of diesel down and keep that good stuff affordable.

The Beginning of the End to Abortion?

FOXNEWS story:

"A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure.

Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant.

Percival's first son Thane died of multicystic dysplastic kidneys — which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby — and her second child Lewis was born with serious kidney damage and currently has just one kidney, the Daily Mail reported..."

The baby was born normal! This has got to be a blow to the people who advocate abortion for reasons of "medical necessity." How many babies have been unnecessarily killed over the last thirty years? Coupled with the point from Nordlinger's Column on NRO located below, we may finally see an end to infanticide soon.

Few weeks ago, Ron Liddle had an interesting article in The Spectator. (Here, but a subscription is required.) It was titled, “A Century From Now, We Will All Be Appalled That We Allowed Abortions At All.”

An excerpt:

As a leftie, I had always been persuaded that abortion on demand is the right of every woman, with no arguments brooked. ‘Persuaded’ is perhaps the wrong word; the rights of a woman to do whatever the hell she liked with her foetus was simply not something open to negotiation or debate with someone in possession of a penis, even if it was quite a small penis like mine. [Good grief: Ron Liddle = Ron Little?] But a dark foreboding nonetheless gnawed away at me — much as, on a personal level, it gnawed away at many of the feminists who advanced this totalitarian no-surrender hypothesis. It is still, if you are on the feminist Left, an unchallengeable shibboleth, which is why the debate today is so fraught — the god-botherers on one side, the liberal Left on the other.

I may be wrong about this, but it strikes me that in a century or so, or maybe even less, we will be appalled that we allowed abortions at all. I do not mean that we should not allow them now; it is merely a suspicion that the advance of our knowledge about the life of a foetus, coupled with an improved ability to prevent conception, will mean that we will be mystified as to how such a primitive and brutal procedure could have become state-sanctioned and commonplace. I can see politicians in 2108 erecting monuments and offering apologies to the unborn dead — divorced from the reality of where we are now, and why.

This is definately something to keep an eye on folks.

Destroying Our Nation, One Bill At A Time

Joe Lieberman and John Warner's (the man is a republican for goodness sake!) horrible cap-and-trade bill has already been discussed in depth, on NRO especially. My favorite is Ben Lieberman's five myths and Lawrence Solomon's Selective Precaution. It was also discussed on many other blogs, so I am going to try to take a slightly different tact and try to use a case study. I can only hope it works. Rockford, Illinois is a very industrial city. Until the 1980's, it was widely known as "screw city" because of the massive hardware industry located there. Rockford never really recovered from the massive recession of 1980-81. Rockford suffers from 7.2 percent unemployment, the highest in the state. This went up by 1.7% in the last year. It is well above the state average of 5.4 % (link). Some of the biggest employers in the Rockford area, in no particular order. are Hamilton Sundstrand, Woodward Governor, Chrysler, and GM. The first two corporations produce parts for aircraft and heavy machinery, and I hope everyone knows the latter two produce cars. GM is very likely to announce that they are closing their Janesville WI (which is very close to Rockford) plant. This means a loss of some 3300 jobs. These are high paying jobs which will be hard to replace, and the loss of wages will hurt the entire area economy. (link) This city of 150,000 will be absolutely devastated by losing the other three industries, which would lose a huge amount of business, be forced to lay off workers, and possibly close. There are similar cities all across the nation. Cap-and-trade would destroy these cities. Oh yeah, and it would give all the porkers something to squeal about in Washington. High unemployment directly correlates to high crime rates, broken families, and dissatisfied populations.

Politics, Illinois Style -or- Another Reason to Avoid BHO

The General Assembly must be illiterate. It is obvious from the state constitution that a budget MUST be balanced. See Article VIII. " Proposed expenditures shall not exceed funds estimated to be available for the fiscal year as shown in the budget." (8.2) It is also the responsibility of the governor to submit a balanced and passable budget to the GA, but I don't expect much from Roddy anymore. The GA passed a budget to him which was two billion dollars out of balance. Roddy came to the completely obvious conclusion that it was unconstitutional. Link. This means that the GA will once again be stuck in emergency session, battling it out for an acceptable budget. We have not had a capital improvements plan for a decade. The legislative leaders, Chicago democrats Emil Jones and Michael Madigan, have turned on their former friend and fellow Chicago democrat Rod Blagojevich (aka Roddy). It is out of this cesspool of political bickering, partisanship. and special interests from which Barack Obama got his start. Do we really want to see a man like that running this nation? I sure don't. It has been a long time since the days of Stephan Douglas and Abraham Lincoln.

Leaving Trinity UCC Now?

Obama quit his Chicago church. Too many people must have finally figured out (despite the best media efforts to cover it up) that it was not just Rev. Wright who was radical, anti-American, and out of touch with a lot of voters, but the entire church culture. To me the biggest question is why now? The worst of the shelling has been endured, it is not as if he had quit it right when this stuff came out. Why now, unless there was worse to come. BHO has very questionable judgment when it comes to assocites though, Not just Wright and other controversial black leaders; but he is also connected to Tony Rezko, the fundraiser on trial for corruption, Rod Blagovitch (not sure how to spell that) the wasteful, uncompromising, and possibly corrupt governor of Illinois;
and the fact he wants to meet with terrorists and intolerant regimes without preconditions.

Indiana v. Logic

I know I don't post that often, but I saw something today that absolutely infuriated me. My father and I were driving back from Indiana today - because we go there for the cheaper gas because prices around me are just getting ridiculous - and I saw a billboard (see picture above) on the side of the tollway. It was rather hard to miss, a giant, white billboard with the words "Out of Iraq" in big black letters across the top and the word "Now!" in bold, red letters. At the very top and very bottom of the billboard were urls for two different websites... before I get to the websites, I'd like to say my piece about the quick, total withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

It is ludicrous. Plain and simple.

I believe Ann Coulter sums up the reason we are over there best: "There can be no 'political solution' in Iraq until the Iraqis are safe, which I think requires a military solution. Political solutions tend to present themselves in the wake of military solutions." We went to Iraq initially on a quest to fight terrorists. Terrorists are everywhere, but, as the news continues to prove, they are especially in Iraq. Our troops are over there with the mission of making Iraq safe for those who live there. Until that job is done, they cannot withdraw. To leave now would be to repeat history: after World War I, all foreign countries withdrew from Germany, leaving it in complete ruin (economic, political, physical). This led to a totalitarian government in Germany, which ultimately allowed Hitler to rise to power, preying on the worst fears of the citizens. To leave Iraq in a state of chaos, which is what would happen were troops to pull out on January 20, 2009 (should a Democrat be elected to office - Heaven forbid), the country would have the perfect conditions for the rise of a Middle Eastern Hitler... only instead of the Holocaust targeting Jews, homosexuals, and the mentally retarded, everyone in America would be targeted; instead of killing with carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide showers, they'll use suicide bombers.

Arguing that the number of deaths in Iraq are a reason for withdrawal is also a weak argument. Since the start of the War, approximately 4000 US troops have died in combat (link). Not to downplay the noble deaths these American troops died, but if the Democrats want to complain about "deaths that could have been prevented," there were approximately 1.21 million abortions in 2005 alone (link) - talk about needless deaths, those far out number the soldiers who honorably died fighting a war to preserve freedom not only for our country, but for the Middle East as well.

The first website is rather basic and run by the Northwest Indiana Coalition Against the Iraq War (NWICAIW). They advocate rallies and radio show appearances to spread their cause... they have minutes for their meetings, schedules for upcoming rallies and events... and a printable fact sheet about the war - that the link does not work to. They do not state reasons they are against the war, other solutions to the war, or anything other than the fact that we should leave... now.

Now, on to the other website, which is also rather basic. The PeaceRoots Alliance states that they are "working together for a peaceful, just and sustainable world." A noble goal to be sure, however, this is not a realistic goal. Peace cannot be attained by negotiating with the "nice man" who has a bomb strapped to his chest, a detonator in his hand, and a wicked grin on his face. In the top corner of their banner, there is a young child holding a sign that reads, "stop war, bring peace & love." Again - unrealistic if the enemy you are fighting sees you as an infidel who must be killed in order to honor their god. Another main slogan: "Farms not arms: farmers say no to War & terror." Apparently, the farmers do not understand that the War in Iraq is a war ON terror itself... therefore, they cannot be against the war and terror... because if they were truely against terror, they'd have to be for the war. Their vision statement states: "We seek to create a peaceful, just and sustainable world for future generations by emphasizing our common humanity, promoting non-violence and working to remove the root causes of war." I still find it difficult to find what the humanity in the smiling man with the bomb strapped to his chest... By removing the root causes of war, one would have to remove man himself from the equation. Without man, there would be no war. Since this is not possible, preventing war is not possible. If they wish to promote non-violence, they should start with the terrorists, not with the American soldiers, who are over there protecting the Iraqis from the violent terrorists and, also, preventing the terrorists from coming here.