It Is Their Neighborhood -- Iraq

The AFP reported a group of Iraqi Sunni leaders on a trip to Egypt urged Arab States to help against the "Iranian Occupation" of Iraq.

DKK
Gateway Pundit -- Iraqi Sunnis Beg Arab States For Help Against Iranian Occupation

The Great Divide

Liberals want fairness in results not fairness in opportunity, that is the Great Divide between conservatives and liberals. And to have a wealthy society you're going to have to have different results.

Ann Coulter -- Glen Beck Show May 7, 2008
DKK

Two Dangerous Choices

So before remembering that we are now left with two dangerous choices for president -- a young liberal who is friendly with terrorists or an old liberal who is friendly with Teddy Kennedy -- take a moment to revel in the fact that our long national nightmare is over. It turns out getting rid of the Clintons was the change we've been waiting for.

DKK
Ann Coulter -- One Down Two To Go

Leno Gets It

"Leno’s punchline: Democrats say drilling in ANWR wouldn’t produce any oil for 10 years — the same point they’ve been making for more than 10 years now. President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation in 1995 that would have opened ANWR to oil exploration."

Watch the video at DANEgerus Weblog.
DKK

Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?

No: the high percentage of blacks behind bars reflects crime rates, not bigotry.

Read the whole thing.
DKK
Heather Mac Donald -- City Journal

Breaking The Laws Americans Won't

A criminal complaint was filed against a Brazilian man and a Kazakhstan woman after federal agents arrested 10 illegal immigrants in an investigation into an alleged smuggling operation involving fake documents to obtain New Mexico driver’s licenses.

…

FBI spokesman Darrin Jones said investigators learned several illegal immigrants living in New Mexico were charging thousands of dollars to help other illegal immigrants travel to the state to get licenses.

New Mexico, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, Utah and Washington do not require drivers to prove legal status to obtain a license.

In 2003, Gov. Bill Richardson signed a measure into law that allowed foreign nationals , including those living illegally in the country , to obtain a driver’s license. His office has said one of the deciding factors in signing the bill was public safety.

Applicants for a New Mexico driver’s license who don’t have a Social Security number can present identification such as a tax identification number, a foreign passport or a Matricula Consular issued by the Mexican government.

DKK
Michelle Malkin -- National Fake-ID ring exploited New Mexico’s lax driver’s license rules

Will It Stay Save -- Will We Have The Will?

Will it stay safe or not?

I guess that all depends on the American troops, since we will not have qualified Iraqi forces soon. Although most Iraqi forces are sincere you find some have been infiltrated by groups of gunmen and sectarian people who made the mess all around us.

So we still need the Americans because if they intend to leave, there will be something like a hurricane which will extract everything - people, buildings and even trees. Everything that has happened and all that safety will be past, just like a sweet dream.

As people say in my neighborhood: “The Americans are now Ansar al Sunna.” Protectors of the Sunni.

DKK

NYTimes Iraqi Blogger -- Back From Syria

Health Care Reform In Action

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, announced Monday it would expand its discounted prescription drug program to offer 90-day supplies for $10 and add several women's medications at a discount. It also said it would lower the price of more than 1,000 over-the-counter drugs.
(...)
Since 2006, Wal-Mart's $4 generic drug program has expanded to every state, except North Dakota, where Wal-Mart has no in-store pharmacies. And many company competitors have followed the retailer's lead.

While stressing that the expansion was designed to help customers at a time of exorbitant health-care costs and difficult economic times, Agwunobi said the program has worked in everyone's favor.

Real reform in action thanks to free markets.

DKK

Associated Press

The Future Of The Navy -- USS Independence

My surface ship buddy Tim passed on these photos of the second class of littoral combat ship (LCS 2), named Independence, and built by General Dynamics/Bath iron Works in their Mobile, Alabama shipyards.

Go to instapinch for more pictures of the future navy -- they are awesome!
DKK
instapinch -- PCU “USS Independence“, LCS 2

Saddam and Terror

A LOOK AT SADDAM AND TERROR: "The lasting value of the IDA report will be as a portrait of a certain type of Middle Eastern state, for whom terrorism is a normal instrument of policy. Although the report is about Iraq, it could just as easily describe the basic structure of statecraft in Iran, Syria, Egypt, 'Palestine' and Saudi Arabia. . . . But since terrorism was a typical tool in the region, as much in use by other countries as himself, a large measure of Saddam's efforts were devoted to using his terrorists to infiltrate other power's terrorists or to keep tabs on powerful independents. The IDA notes that nearly all the terror outfits in the region, including al-Qaeda, were essentially bidding for the same demographic pool of rootless, violent young men."

DKK
The Belmont Club via Instapundit

Some In Congress Actually Get It -- Drill NOW

It didn’t get much notice in the press, but last week Senator Pete Domenici and 19 cosponsors (all Republicans!) introduced the American Energy Production Act of 2008 (SB2958), which is intended to help lower energy prices in the US and lessen this country’s dependence on foreign sources of oil.

The legislation would help accomplish these goals by increasing our domestic production, expanding production offshore on the Atlantic and Pacific continental shelf, and in Alaska, and allow for the full development of billions of barrels of oil from shale.

DKK

Say Anything Blog -- GOP: Time To Get Serious About Oil

What Will The Court Look Like?

How radical was Obama’s nay vote? His was one of only 22 votes in opposition to Roberts. Chris Dodd and Patty Murray voted to confirm Roberts, and yet Obama and Hillary Clinton voted against him. Getting to the left of Dodd and Murray takes some doing, and for a man who professes to be some kind of unifying force, the result proves him to be a hard-Left ideologue.

DKK
Hot Air --McCain on judicial activism: Look no farther than Obama

Manzullo Unveils Gas Price Relief Plan

Washington, May 5 -

Congressman Don Manzullo (R-Egan) today unveiled his comprehensive gas price relief plan that aims to eliminate America’s dependence on costly foreign oil while promoting alternative energies and conservation at home.

The 12-point plan, a compilation of years of legislative and administrative proposals, uses short and long-term strategies to give the United States more control over its own fuel needs.

“There is not one easy way to reduce our gas prices. We must make many changes in policy and practice to take control of our fuel needs,” Manzullo said. “My 12-point plan brings together short and long-term strategies that promote alternative energies and conservation while eliminating our dependence on costly foreign oil. It is a comprehensive plan that would make our nation stronger, increase our energy supplies, and lower gas prices in America.”

Congressman Manzullo’s 12-point plan includes legislative and regulatory proposals to:

· Eliminate federal mandate for expensive “boutique fuels” in Illinois during summer months.

· Stop filling America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

· Reduce exorbitant taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel in Illinois.

· Encourage motorists to conserve fuel and save money by increasing their driving efficiencies.

· Provide tax incentives to encourage motorists to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles.

· Avoid tax increases on oil and gas that will be passed on to motorists.

· Scrutinize earnings and profits of oil companies and prosecute price gouging when it exists.

· Withhold assistance to OPEC countries that fail to support reasonable oil production.

· Allow more domestic exploration and development of oil and gas.

· Encourage the continued development and production of alternative and renewable fuels.

· Encourage the continued development and production of alternative vehicles.

· Provide incentives to encourage the development of new refineries in the United States.

A more complete description of the entire 12-point plan is attached.

DKK

From Don Manzullo's congressional website.

Lost Penguins or Lost MSNBC

MSNBC wanted to boost its street cred with enviro-wackos so they decided to cover (and then cover up their error) a 15 year old who failed to ski across the North Pole because there was no sea ice where sea ice existed before.

Problem is their coverage included video of penguins -- at the North Pole! Penguins don't get too far north of the Falklands let alone the North Pole.

But, at least they aren't above cleansing the video when they are caught.

Check out the corrected video and the screen shots here:
This goes to 11: Confused penguins create credibility problem for MSNBC's story on global warming
DKK

Would $200 Oil Help Spur Development?

This is my reply to this post by Pilgrim at Say Anything Blog saved here for posterity:

I don’t think $200 will do it. Today there is no replacement! (I am sick of the BP commercial that talks about the “alternatives”—alternatives just can’t replace substantial amounts of fossil fuels—with the exception of Nuclear) There is nothing as transportable, controllable, reliable, quickly refillable, or affordable (yes, I did all able’s on purpose).



The sheer volume of oil used each day is staggering and the more electronic devices we get the more we will use.



We can conserve and supplement, but we can’t replace or conserve enough.

Battery technology is not there today. It may be in 5 or 10 years, but not today and $200 oil won’t change that. You can’t recharge a 350 mile battery in 5 minutes and I can fill my car and pee in that time! (Someone could invent an electric car with exchangeable battery racks that you can change out at the Mobil station—slide in and out with a push, you don’t own the battery, you just use the power—but it has to be cheap enough, safe enough and have long enough life. Hell, I have never had one of my laptops with a decent battery that didn’t need an expensive replacement way too often! With this system you wouldn't have to worry about it. The charging station can discard - for reconditioning or recycle - any bad batteries. Eliminates the cost to the car eliminates that unknown about batter replacement! The batteries could be owned by a separate company and paid a fee for every use since - licensed to the recharging companies.)





What the government needs to do is get out of the way, stop subsidizing political options (ethanol anyone?) that sap real innovation and let the American free market solve the problem. All of the government efforts over the past 30 years have done nothing compared to what the past 5 years of the markets have done.



Worried about global warming? Start a company that puts solar units on every home in America by selling carbon credits (and maintaining them because they aren’t free forever)—why hasn’t Gore’s carbon company done this—because you would actually have to do something not just plant a friggin tree. BUT let the rest of us drill for the oil we need to fuel freedom.



DKK

Manzullo Joins Salute For Freedom Fighter

President George W. Bush signs H.R. 4286, Congressional Gold Medal: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, during a ceremony Tuesday, May 6, 2008, in the Oval Office. The bill awards a congressional gold medal to the Nobel Laureate for her courageous and unwavering commitment to peace, nonviolence, human rights and democracy in Burma. Joining him for the signing are Mrs. Laura Bush, Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA.); Congressman Joe Crowley of New York; Senator Mitch McConnell, (R-KY), and Congressman Don Manzullo of Illinois. White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

DKK

Gore's Disgusting Opportunism

Thirty days after Steve McIntyre caught NASA cooking climate history again - this time in a feeble attempt to somehow conceal the alarmist-embarrassing downward trend since 1998 -- Al Gore shamelessly portrayed Saturday's Myanmar cyclone catastrophe as a ‘consequence' of global warming.

A mere 16 days after NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation's cool phase shift would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, Gore told NPR that the "trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures." This just 6 days after a German study also predicted cooler ocean temperatures due to the Meridional Overturning Circulation entering a weak cycle, and in spite of there being absolutely no empirical evidence of a global warming / storm strength link.

Gore's monotonous and baseless account of AGW forced violent cyclones and hurricanes came just two days after McIntyre reported that 4 of the past 5 months were "'all-time' records for Southern Hemisphere sea ice" levels.

In fact, it was the very day after Anthony Watts reported another false start to the distinctly overdue Solar Cycle 24, a likely contributory factor to falling global temperatures, that the Nobel Peace Prize winner exploited the deaths of over 22,000 (reported and still rising) human beings to egoistically advance his threatened AGW political agenda while callously protecting his personal financial interest.

And with 41,000 reported missing since Cyclone Nargis devastated the former Burma, the death figures are sure to rise to unthinkable numbers. Meanwhile, the nation's corrupt military rulers are making aid delivery to ease survivor misery nearly impossible.

And while these poor souls will undoubtedly see years of unimaginable suffering and the arduous rebuilding of over a million destroyed homes, this man -- who professes his desire to save the planet - saw another opportunity. That it arrived at the end of a one month period in which another wheel fell off the greenhouse gas disinformation bus almost daily only adds to the morass.

This was an astonishingly nauseating display -- even for the likes of Gore.

This was too good to snip.
DKK
American Thinker -- Gore's Myanmar Words as Inopportune as they were Repulsive

Will The Pressure Be Too Much?

Simply put, Clinton's recent string of good results, as impressive as it is, seems to fall short of what is needed to convince superdelegates to reverse the overall result of the primaries and caucuses.

What happens next? I assume that Clinton will come under great pressure to drop out. My guess is that she will resist that pressure until even deeper into the primary season, and probably until the end of it. Her hope must be that Obama will encounter a new set of serious problems. The current set, though it revived her campaign, has not been enough to put it over the top.

DKK

Powerline -- Obama limps toward the finish line

Egg Heads and African-Americans

BEGALA: We cannot win with egg heads.

Let me finish my point.

We cannot win with egg heads and African-Americans. OK, that is the Dukakis Coalition, which carried ten states and gave us four years of the first George Bush.

President Clinton -- reached across to get a whole lot of Republicans and Independents to come. I think Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both have that capacity. They both have a unique ability -- well it's not unique if they both have it. They both have a remarkable ability to reach out to those working-class white folks and Latinos.

Senator Clinton has proven it; Barack has not yet, but he can. And I certainly hope he is not shutting the door on expanding the party.

DKK
CNN Transcript Via Instapundit

Do Nothing But Complain

DKK
Via Curmudgeonly & Skeptical