News In Review

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Libs Angry over... Wine!... in SF: In San Francisco, diners are turning their backs on an organic wine from Chile called Palin Syrah because the name sounds too much like 'Sarah Palin'.

The wine gets its name from a ball used in a Chilean hockey game.

“People like to joke about it, but for some people it evokes quite a visceral reaction,” said the co-owner of one San Francisco wine bar.

In contrast, people in conservative areas are buying more of the product.

One New York merchant said he is looking for a wine with some tie to Biden or Obama to balance out the Palin Syrah.

You have to imagine this picture. Upper-crust wine-bar patrons in San Francisco so unnerved by Sarah Palin that they are shunning anything even sounding like her name. This shows them for the insecure liberals that they are.

You really have to wonder about the maturity levels of these people. But then when you realize who they are, you understand.

This childish reaction comes out of the 'hippie' baby-boom generation. They said they shunned materialism when they were young (when most people have little anyway) and now they embrace it in every way, reflected in their slacker, wine-bar, Lexus Liberal lifestyles. Money today is everything.

The world was handed to them in their youth, and they still were never satisfied because they always believed that there must be something even better for them. They always needed to act smarter than everyone else and smarter than each other. Anyone who disagreed with them back in the 1960s was marginalized out of fear and ignorance.

How can anyone disagree with me? they wondered. I am so brilliant!

They literally did not understand it.

Their only interest, then and now, has been in themselves. Ensuing generations followed the mold. They do not understand productive, conservative Middle America because they live mostly on the unproductive, urbanized, materialistic East and West Coasts. They do not know what hard work is because their parents did all the hard work for them.

Now they are angry at…. a bottle of wine…

Neurosis, anyone?

Here's the explanation: They know that they are getting closer to the ends of their lives. They realize that they are mortal, and that they have not transformed the world the way they wanted. They are angry and confused. Most are anonymous despite their youthful delusions of grandeur. And they are getting senile at younger and younger ages because of all the drugs they took 40 years ago, and because of all the myths that they believed in the 1960s about their own greatness, which they now know deep inside are simply not true.

The guys are looking at Sarah Palin and thinking of their lost youths. The females are jealous of her beauty, her youth, her vitality and her success, which they have not achieved.

And this all is bending their minds into a pretzel.

Cheers!

Biden Gaffe on Coal: Democrat vice presidential nominee Joe Biden contradicted the Obama campaign’s official position on coal-burning power plants.

“We’re not supporting clean coal,” Biden said.

But Obama has said he does support clean-coal technology.

This is another dumb gaffe from dumb Biden. But it shouldn’t even be an issue. Our electricity generating plants should be nuclear. That would reduce demand for coal and reduce the pollution from coal. But Obama and his enviro backers do not wish to allow the efficient nuclear plants to be built. This is a huge mistake and is costing our economy dearly. Biden or no Biden, coal is not the answer. Nuclear is.

Chrysler Going Electric: Chrysler is showing off three electric cars, one of which will be for sale by 2010. Two have electric drive trains, and one an electric power system. The Chrysler vehicles will compete with the Chevrolet Volt.

The electric powered vehicle will have a backup engine for times when the power runs out.

This is more ‘green’ nonsense from the auto makers. Electric cars are very inefficient and they actually end up producing more pollution because you are using a highly refined resource (electricity) for a purpose for which you should simply be using gasoline.

The generation of electricity is a complex process that “loses” a lot of energy. In other words, the energy content of the electricity is much lower than the energy content of the fuel to make it. Therefore it really pollutes more when you apply it to an automobile.

Along with ethanol fuel, windmills and all the other 'green' stuff, electric cars will never save any energy. They will waste energy.

And the necessity of having a backup gasoline engine will greatly increase the cost of the car.

Voter Fraud Rampant: To read a frightening summary of the way that the Democrat party is encouraging voter fraud, check out this story from Newsmax.com

 www.newsmax.com/insidecover/mccain_voter_fraud/2008/09/22/133361.html

Remember that Democrats are heavily financed by rich socialists like Soros and by wealthy left-wing foundations and universities to do voter registrations, while Republicans are generally busy out working for a living and making the nation work and do not have the free time to do massive voter drives.

Transgender Stirs Trouble: The US Library of Congress has been found guilty of discrimination for backing out of a job offer made to a male Army special forces commander who told the Library that he was going to change his gender to female by the time he started the job.

The commander now is a female.

US district court judge James Robinson said that the civil rights of Diane (formerly David) Schroer were violated, and will soon decide on financial damages.

The American Civil Liberties Union represented Schroer in court.

This is an extension of the movement to grant any and all rights to gays and lesbians, including marriage. This case is a signal that no matter what behavior a person wishes to engage in, he or she is going to be protected by liberal law. Yet the same people who are asking this tolerance are utterly intolerant of Christians, gun owners, fiscal conservatives and the like, and routinely discriminate against them in worse and more blatant ways. (Note from Nikitas: I have been fired from two jobs simply for being a conservative in overwhelmingly liberal areas.)

Someday it will become a crime to even pass judgment on sex-changers if the left has its way. This is the danger because it will become a limit not only on free speech, but on freedom to think and believe the way we wish. Employers today in many cases are barred from asking even basic questions of prospective employees like "Are you married?", which takes any personal and private autonomy out of employment selection. This creates a system in which private employers are simply asked to blindly pick employees without knowing much about them. This is socialism.

The next liberal that is elected president of the United States is going to attempt to set aside the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on gays in the military. If DADT is lifted, it would mean that military recruits would be forced to serve beside openly gay members.

In other words, military men would have to live in barracks with and shower in the nude with gay males who they know are sexually aroused by them, and they would have no recourse. And this comes at the urging of the same people who charge sexual harassment when a male casts one sideways glance at a female co-worker.

If implemented, this would harm the military greatly because just a few homosexuals will end up disrupting large groups of military personnel, which is exactly what ACLU intends.

Now imagine transgender people joining the military and imagine other soldiers forced to serve with them.

These legalizations are part of a bigger movement to undermine our society slowly but surely. That the ACLU represented Schroer is telling. The ACLU is a far-left organization founded by Robert Nash Baldwin, who started as a communist sympathizer. ACLU pushes virtually all hard-left cases and occasionally defends conservatives in order to deflect criticism of itself as biased.

Homosexuality and gender-changing are choices that people make to feel better about themselves. Often it does not work, and these people suffer high rates of depression, drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide. These behaviors will hurt our military in a highly disproportionate way.    

House Adopts Oil Bill: The House of Representatives, under the majority Democrat party, has adopted an offshore oil drilling bill 236-189. The bill, if also passed by the Senate, will allow drilling beyond 50 miles of the coast and only if the states agree to go along.

Meanwhile, the House will allow a decades-old moratorium on offshore oil drilling to expire.

The Senate is unlikely to agree with the bill, and is likely to restrict drilling off the Pacific coast, in the northern Atlantic and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico if it allows any drilling at all.

The Dems are using this bill to stall real energy development in favor of ‘green’ energy. The zone inside 50 miles is where most of the oil is, and they know it. That is why it is restricted.

The bill does not include the big bonanza in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, up to 15 billion barrels or more that can be accessed under just 3 square miles of land. There would be no exploration needed. The location of the oil is already known.

Republicans voted against the House bill because it puts the richest areas off limits, and for other reasons. The bill also does not share energy royalties with the states but directs it to the federal treasury. This is a ploy by Democrats to make the states say ‘no’ to drilling, because state approval would be needed for drilling off their coasts.

Enviros also will file lawsuits to stop drilling off every state, and Democrats in state legislatures will fight it and their 'no' votes may thwart drilling. This is the Democrats' anti-oil backup in allowing the drilling moratorium to expire.

In his State of the Union address several years ago, President Bush said we needed to expand biofuels development. Enviros cheered, but ethanol production has proven to be a huge bust. Worldwide the ethanol industry is contracting as rapidly as it expanded. Now the Dems and their friends are pushing windmills and solar panels. None of this stuff works without huge government subsidies, which means they will throttle our economy.

The reason Dems are trying to stall offshore oil and every other type of ‘hard’ energy production from coal to nuclear is to push up the price of energy through scarcity so that their more expensive sources like wind and solar suddenly become economical in comparison.

The House bill includes a provision to "roll back" $18 billion in so-called oil company tax breaks and invest that money in wind and solar. What this really means in plain English is that the Dems want to increase oil company taxes $18 billion above current levels and use it to fund technologies that already exist but that are not economically viable. This would be a direct government subsidy to enviros and other Democrats who are invested in 'green' energy. Al Gore & Friends will benefit directly.

The House bill also includes a provision to take oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to drive down gasoline prices. But that reserve of 750 million barrels is for emergencies, and if 2 million barrels a day were drawn out, energy prices would go much lower but the reserve would be empty in one year. The same 2 million barrels a day could be pumped out of ANWR for 20 or 30 years depending on the actual reserves in ANWR.

The House bill also would require utilities to purchase wind and solar-powered electricity and provide further tax credits to the wind and solar industries. These credits are not necessary. These technologies have existed for decades. They just are not cost-effective.

President Bush would veto the House bill if it came to him as passed. But it won’t. The Senate will not be acting until after the election.

BPA, a New Old Scare: Government toxicology scientists are warning people to avoid certain non-recyclable plastics with the number 7 on their bottom, and avoid using them in the microwave or in dishwashers with caustic soaps.

These plastics are said to contain Bisphenol A, which is used in some baby bottles and reusable food containers. Tupperware says it does not use BPA in its child products.

BPA is used in sports water bottles, compact discs and safety goggles among other items.

Preliminary studies have shown a connection between BPA and a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Oh, woe is me. This is one of the weekly scare stories that comes out about everything in our environment. But facts show that 99% of this stuff is nonsense. Lifespans are longer than ever and we consume more chemicals than ever before in history. But that doesn’t stop “government toxicology scientists” from coming up with a new way to scare us every week.

These scientists and their friends in the universities, who live off taxpayer-funded grants, desperately need to prove why they are even worth the paychecks we give them.  

So they keep us agitated about every little thing, and scare us by telling us our children are threatened. This BPA may indeed prove to have some ill effects, but looking at the track record of this fearmongering, it is not likely. We probably never will hear about BPA again.

This is what liberals do. They “study” everything and scare us into believing what they want us to believe. Otherwise, they know that they are irrelevant to our culture.

And that is the one thing they never, ever will admit. It is too painful to them.

Rangel Needs to Step Down: Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York (Harlem, New York City) is being asked to step down from his post as chairman of the tax rules Ways and Means committee amid allegations that his own personal financial accounts are way out of order.

Rangel has failed to report income from a rental property he owns in the Dominican Republic, while he rents a number of rent-controlled properties in his home district.

He has admitted that he owes $10,000 in back taxes. Republicans have called for him to step down. Even Democrat House speaker Nancy Pelosi allegedly has asked Rangel to step aside.

He even has argued that his wife does the books so he did not know about the income, and even that he does not understand Spanish and so did not somehow know about the money.

Rangel never will step aside. It doesn’t make any difference what Democrats do, no matter how many crimes they commit, they rarely step down from their positions of power. Think Ted Kennedy.

The media will cover for Rangel until this story fades.

And again, there is a double standard, where corruption is always tolerated on the left, because corruption is the standard operating procedure of the Democrats – get money and redistribute it. But never create any wealth at all.

Rangel must go.

Venezuela Aiding Drug Traffickers: Two senior officials in the semi-communist Venezuelan government have been charged by US officials with aiding drug traffickers in next-door Colombia.

The FARC terrorist group in Colombia has terrorized that nation for decades, and has worked hand-in-hand with the drug traffickers, now with the alleged assistance of Venezuelans Hugo Armando Barrios and Henry de Jesus Rangel Silvia.

It is important to remember 'the big picture', that communist/marxist regimes always associate with whatever criminal enterprises will further their cause. Castro has encouraged drug trafficking to the US through Cuba for decades. North Korea has established state-sponsored counterfeiting of American currency to undermine the dollar. The Soviets used any illegal, underhanded or criminal tactic they could, with no regard for the rule of law. China steals every product and idea that they can, without regard for international patents or copyrights. East Germany doped their Olympic athletes for years. China recruited underage girls to participate in, and win a gold medal in, the 2008 summer Olympics team gymnastics competition. The examples are endless and they are standard operating procedures for communist regimes.

In the recent debate over a free-grade agreement with Colombia, Democrats in the US were opposed to the pact because Colombia decided to get tough on drug traffickers and their allies in the far-left labor movement in Colombia, some elements of which are associated with the FARC.

Colombia even had made a cross-border raid last Spring into Ecuador to wipe out part of the drug cartels that are being aided by Chavez and Venezuela. This raised hackles among the left-wing pseudo-human-rights activists in the US and abroad, the same people who never complain about the terrorists around the globe but only defend them.

For years, the notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar brought murder and violence to Colombia. Now he is dead and Colombia is a peaceful place. Liberals hate that. They love violence. And they want to penalize Colombia for fighting the drug traffickers and terrorists and marginalizing the radical labor unions with which the traffickers have been linked.

Just consider how the Democrat party in America has sided with the Mafia since the 1930s. Organized crime, with its murder, drug trafficking extortion, theft, loan sharking, prostitution and mayhem, is an operating arm of the Democrats, usually, but not always, through labor unions. Organized crime always votes Democrat, works to elect Democrats and funds Democrats, while Democrats in turn look the other way as organized crime steals America blind, which always happens in and around the Democrat-controlled cities.

This is what is happening in Venezuela/Colombia.  

More Dems See Racial Factor:   Democrat governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas said recently, “Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?”

Her reference was to the fact that Democrats now are charging those who oppose Obama with anti-black bias.

“That (race) may be a factor. All the code language, all that doesn’t show up in the polls. And that may be a factor for some people.”

The Republican party of Iowa, where the comments were delivered, said Sebelius’ comments were “hurtful and divisive at best” because they obviously were targeted at GOP voters.

At the Sebelius speech, one Obama supporter shouted “Lipstick can stay home! Talk about the issues!”

“Lipstick” referred to governor Palin of Alaska.

It simply is amazing how the Democrats have focused in on race, in essence ‘playing the race card’ now that Obama is falling in the polls. McCain hasn't mentioned race one single time. Yet the Democrats talk about it all the time. They are obsessed.

And for the Obama supporter to shout “Lipstick can stay home!” is another indication of how Obama's recent "lipstick on a pig" gaffe is being interpreted. This comment shows that Obama supporters know that Obama indeed was talking about Palin - in essence calling her a pig - and that they are willing to go with that.

If Obama were a Republican, liberals would be making vicious racial attacks and questioning his intelligence as they have questioned the intelligence and abilities of Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice. But now they have a woman to attack in Palin, and so they feel free to malign her in every way possible.

Democrats are obsessed with race and gender. Republicans are not. The Republican party was founded in 1854 to free the slaves, and it was the first party to support women's suffrage. Martin Luther King was a Republican.

Race War? Which Way?: Columnist Fatimah Ali, writing in the Philadelphia Daily News, stated recently that the election of John McCain will lead to a race war between blacks and whites.

In defending that column, Ali wrote in a subsequent column that “we don’t have to wait until after the election for a race war. We’re in one now.”

“I hate violence,” wrote Ali, “but I do see a growing wave of intolerance sweeping the nation…”

Rather than legitimizing this stuff, Nikitas3.com wishes to observe that Ali is correct. We are in a race war and there is a growing wave of intolerance sweeping the nation. It is a war of blacks against whites, and black intolerance for white people if you simply consider the crime statistics, which liberals do not want anyone to think about.

Go to the FBI website at fbi.gov and look up the crime stats. Look at the massive criminality that blacks inflict on white people, with some categories showing a rate of 50 times as high in black violence against whites as vice versa. (Remember when reading the stats that there are roughly 6 times as many whites in America as blacks, so be sure to include that in your calculations.)

Whites do not need to survey the data, however. They see it every day in the media. And blacks not only commit huge amounts of violence against whites, but against each other.

Columnist Ali’s claim that “I hate violence” is nonsense. Liberals love violence. Just look at all the violence in Hollywood movies and on TV - guns, murder, death, shouting, rage, punching, fighting etc. Just look at the everyday violence of 1.3 million abortions annually. Look at the violence in rock music with high rates of alcoholism, depression, drug abuse and suicide among rock musicians. Look at the violence in rap music. Look at the violence in black America in the inner cities.  Look at the violence that is a result of liberals like Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Al Sharpton claiming that white America is racist. This is code language giving blacks reason to rape, rob and murder white people because, after all, whitey is holding them down.

Ali's brand of shameful one-way race-baiting must be answered. Racism cuts both ways. And the liberal establishment has somehow placed blacks above criticism for their bottomless violence.

 As If We Didn’t Already Know: A British study conducted at Oxford University says that people with low levels of Vitamin B12 are six times more likely than others to suffer brain shrinkage.

People who follow vegan and vegetarian diets are most likely to suffer these losses because the best sources of B12 are in meat, milk and fish.

The study used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to confirm the results.

If you ever have known a vegetarian or a vegan, you now know why they always kinda seem like they aren’t all there. Because they aren't all there.

Considering that vegetarianism and veganism are key lifestyle choices of liberal, environmental and university socialism, we now know why defective thinking is so common on the political left. Those people have crazy ideas to start, and vegetarianism just exacerbates it. It all adds up.

Britain Sinking Slowly: Great Britain has officially adopted sharia law to allow official rulings on Muslim civil cases.

Five sharia courts will make rulings on divorce, financial disputes, domestic violence and other case types that now will be recognized within Britain’s judicial system.

Critics have said that this sharia system is, in essence, a parallel legal system in Britain to accommodate its Muslim population.

This is a major mistake. Britain is going to rue the day when it adopted this law. This represents the Islamization not only of the population, but now of the underlying legal structure of Britain.

Some Muslims believe that it is their mission, over centuries, to dominate the world. When Christian nations like Britain, with human and legal rights unknown in Islam, legitimize Muslim law, it is a major concession and the Islamic mission is well underway.

Sharia law has been introduced to Britain with the assistance and complicity of the leftists there who wish to undermine that nation, just as liberals in America wish to give to Islamic terrorists US Constitutional rights and to consult international law when ruling on American jurisprudence.

This is the beginning of the end for Britain. They will slowly be destroyed if this is not reversed.

Burn your Beatles Records... Now!: An audiotape has surfaced in which former Beatle John Lennon said he was interested in having sex with his own mother.

In a tape sounding very much like the rock musician, Lennon notes, “I was just remembering the time I had my hand on my mother’s tit in 1 Blomfield Road.”

“It was when I was about 14.”

“We were lying on the bed and I was thinking, ‘I wonder if I should do anything else.’”

“I always think that I should have done it. Presuming she would have allowed it.”

The recording was made September 5, 1979. Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in December 1980.

Those of us who have recognized the Beatles for the destructive force that they were can only see this as more proof of Lennon’s decadence and degeneracy.

Beatles lyrics are often violent, and make repeated references to sex, drug use and other forms of corruption. This is part of the bigger picture of rock music as a home of depression, alcoholism, violence, abuse, drug addiction, suicide and other negative forces.

Enough said.

Burn you Beatles albums now. In public, if you can.

 Another Blow for New York State Economy: In a region suffering from job and population losses, the Hudson, New York company called Kaz Inc. will close and will cut 350 manufacturing jobs out of an already-reeling economy.

Richard Katzman, the owner of the manufacturer of vaporizers, fans, air purifiers and humidifiers said that the company cannot produce its product economically in New York State and is subcontracting manufacturing to a Spokane, Wash. firm which will shift production abroad while Kaz focuses on sales and marketing. Kaz has annual sales of $500 million.

New York State has one of the most rapidly declining economies in America. The reason is simple: It is one of the most highly-taxed, regulated and anti-business economies in the nation. Meanwhile the state is in a major fiscal crisis due to its massive overspending due to the presence in its state legislature of many far-left New York City socialists.

In addition, the former New York State governor, Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace over a prostitution scandal, previously was the activist attorney general of New York State and was notorious for relentlessly harassing private-sector businesses all over the state from Wall Street to Buffalo.

The town of Hudson, which is located on the Hudson River 125 miles of New York City, is situated in an area that environmentalists have targeted for protection. Many of these environmentalists come from the city. They fought for years to defeat construction of a state-of-the-art, low-pollution cement production plant in Hudson, a major cement producing area owing to nearby limestone deposits. The new plant would have replaced older, inefficient and polluting facilities.

These environmentalists used extreme fear-mongering about the cement plant, and finally the St. Lawrence Cement company of Canada abandoned the idea of building the plant. See this link for some of the extremist language that the enviros used to fight the plant:

www.actionnetwork.org/eany/alert-description.html?alert_id=2610802

After defeating the cement plant and killing the thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs, environmentalists cheered and promised to create other jobs for the town, of which they have created none.

Now under left-wing policies of taxation, regulation, overspending and enviro restriction, the people of Upstate New York are left with fewer and fewer jobs, as are people all over America.

Recently, NXP, a manufacturer of semiconductors, said it will close its plant in nearby Poughkeepsie, killing 700 jobs.

Don't liberals always say they want to prevent poverty?

In fact they are creating it, as this website has said repeatedly.

Why Should Palin Talk to the Media?: Here are three headlines from The Politico website from Monday morning, September 8: Sarah Palin has Yet to Meet the Press; Biden Challenges Palin to take Questions; and Palin agrees to interview: Under pressure, she agrees to sit down on ABC’s World News Tonight.

…And here’s another: Media Swoon over Palin’s Fiery Speech

Palin only was the nominee for about one minute when this stuff started appearing. It actually started appearing right after she was chosen. And the media didn't swoon; they savaged her over her speech and everything else from her hairdo to her eyeglasses. Bill Maher called her a “stewardess”.

The media are beginning to panic over McCain’s lead. They are pulling out all the stops in attacking Palin.

Nikitas3.com believes that Palin should refuse to talk to these media that have attacked her. They will seek to undermine her in every way. She should talk to the American people over the heads of the media, as Ronald Reagan did.

Zoom!: Congratulations to Scott Dixon for his season championship in the IndyCar series with his second-place finish at Chicago on September 7. Helio Castroneves won the race itself by .0033 seconds (33 ten-thousandths of a second) for the second closest finish in auto racing history.

Winfrey Shuns Palin: Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been denied an interview on the Oprah Winfrey afternoon TV show. Winfrey’s audience is heavily female but Winfrey is supporting Obama.

Winfrey’s staff is divided on the issue, according to an initial article on The Drudge Report, although Winfrey has claimed that there has been no discussion of the issue.

Winfrey says that she will not “use my show as a platform for any of the candidates.”

This is obviously another case of media bias. Winfrey believes that “women” should be liberal, and that conservatives need not apply. When she claims that disagreement over Palin is not possible because there has been no discussion about Palin appearing, it is probably true. Anyone who discussed Palin probably would be fired. That is how liberals operate, after passing a million laws "protecting" workers.

Winfrey has had Obama as a guest several times, so therefore the idea that she will not use her show for political purposes is nonsense.

Winfrey has openly touted people like Al Gore and his ‘global warming’ theory, and frequently has had, among others, homosexual and transgender guests on her show, showing a bias toward the political left.

After the media savagely attacked Palin, those same media were claiming after only 7 day in the spotlight that Palin was ducking interviews.

Palin should tell the Ancient Media (NBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times etc.) that she will not do interviews with them because they are biased. She should 'talk over' them directly to the American people. She shouldn’t even bother with Winfrey, who only would attack her.

Chicago Murders Rate Spikes: The city of Chicago reported an estimated 123 people shot and killed over the summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day. 245 people were shot and wounded.

This is almost twice as many as the number of soldiers killed in Iraq in that period, which was 65.

The South Side of Chicago fared worst with 26 dead.

The South Side is Barack Obama’s home district. Have not conservatives said for years that Democrats nurture violence and mayhem in their neighborhoods? Where is Obama’s “pastor” Jeremiah Wright to protest this mass slaughter? No, he’s too busy protesting White America. By the way, Wright now lives in a white suburban neighborhood in his retirement, in a $1 million mansion.

Guess he lost interest in Barack Obama’s America once he got his pension.

It’s Back to School Time: The Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, a Los Angeles public high school, has opened 10 years late at a cost of... $350 million!

The school accommodates 2,400 students.

The school was built on the site of an old oil field and on an earthquake fault. The oil field location required expensive enviro remediation techniques.

The Los Angeles District Attorney called the school “a public works disaster of biblical proportions.” The scandal over the school led to the resignation of the superintendent and almost half of the school board.

Typical public education. This is yet another massive waste of taxpayer money. The Big Dig project in Boston was supposed to cost $2 billion and ended up costing $15 billion. These are just two cases out of thousands of massive government corruption and fraud.

The government is incapable of doing anything right - except for the military, that is. Then the libs say that the military costs too much and that the Iraq war consumes $10 billion a month.

The total cost of the Iraq war so far has been about $750 billion. Yet America spends $500 billion PER YEAR on public education, yet 65% of students in the system are said to be unprepared to enter the work force. Millions cannot even read and write. This therefore is a waste of $335 billion PER YEAR on public education.

By the way, we have won in Iraq, and the military has protected us from attack. The only Islamic terrorist attacks on American soil that succeeded were the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and then 9/11. The first WTC bombing should have been a wakeup call, but Bill Clinton did nothing for the next 8 years, allowing terrorists to move freely around the country to gear up for 9/11.

By the way, the public school teacher unions support Clinton and the Democrat party wholeheartedly.

Flint, Michigan Man Charged: Federal prosecutors have charged a Flint, Michigan man with planning to attack the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Matthew DePalma was charged with possessing unregistered firearms. He had told an FBI source that he wanted to attack the GOP.

He had assembled 5 molotov cocktails.

Where was DePalma from? Flint, Michigan. What is Flint? It was the birthplace of the radical auto workers union. Who grew up in Flint? Michael Moore, the lefty filmmaker who blamed General Motors for killing Flint by shutting down the auto plants there.

But who can blame GM for shutting the plants? The auto unions have been gutting the auto industry for decades. They are slowly strangling GM, Ford and Chrysler as we speak.

It is no surprise that DePalma came from Flint. He obviously learned his radicalism well from Michael Moore. Bombs first, ask questions later.

Anbar Safe, Handed Over: Anbar Province in Iraq has been handed over to Iraqi control by the US military. Once the most dangerous part of the nation with notorious cities like Ramadi and Fallujah, a ceremony marking the turnover on September 1 is considered one of the most significant mileposts in the history of the Iraq conflict.

The reason for the turnaround is that Sunni Muslims who control Anbar turned against the al Qadea insurgents who had been causing so much death and destruction. Al Qadea fell into disfavor after turning their attention to killing Sunnis as well as Americans.

Attacks against American and Iraqi troops today are down 90% from 2 years ago in September 2006.

Since April, American troops have played only a supporting role in Anbar. 11 of 18 Iraq provinces now are in the hands of the Iraqis. One sheikh likened the Anbar situation to “flowers of freedom.”

Said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraq chief of national security, “Not in our wildest dreams could we have imagined this.”

Neither could billions of people worldwide who have been led astray about the American character.

While Iraq and Anbar remain dangerous places, the war has been mostly won. This is why it is not being discussed by the international media.

More than 1,000 US service personnel were killed in Anbar.

The terrorists there have been defeated and they now are relying on women and young girls to do the suicide bombings, showing that their ranks have been depleted. Many terrorists have gone to Afghanistan.

What the Iraq conflict ended up doing unintentionally was turning the country into something of a “shooting gallery”. Leading terrorists from around the world flocked to Iraq to take on the Americans. Only problem is, they all concentrated in one place and were, in many battles, wiped out.

The defeat in Iraq is harming terrorist recruiting, just as morale always is adversely affected by a military loss. And it certainly must have been many high-level terrorists – the best of the best – who flocked to Iraq, only to be slaughtered.

President Bush deserves credit for staying the course in Iraq. It has been costly, but in the long run the Middle East will be transformed by the American victory there.

Missed Kiss: A new videotape of Bill and Hillary Clinton at a memorial service for congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones shows Bill offering a kiss to his wife's cheek, and his wife turning away.

...As if Bill has not suffered enough in the public mind over the last 9 months, this hilarious tape shows him all puckered up and preparing to kiss his wife. She turns away and gives a kiss to... Barack Obama!

This makes Bill look like a total fool, you know, the casanova womanizer finally put in his place, can't even get a sign of affection from his own wife. Find this video (probably on YouTube) and check it out. It will make you laugh at how far Bill Clinton has fallen.

More Enviro Malarkey, this time about Bicycles: During the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, one TV correspondent, Griff Jenkins of Fox News, went for a bicycle ride with the mayor of St. Paul's sister city, Minneapolis. The mayor stressed that his city, like many cities, is focusing on energy efficiency by encouraging people to ride bicycles to work.

He mentioned a “cycles and showers” approach. By this he meant that employers are being urged to construct showers on their premises so that sweaty employees who have bicycled in to work can be presentable for the work day.

Does anyone see more screwball enviro hype at work here? Just think about this:

First, people are not going to ride bicycles long distances to work. So most of these bike rides are going to replace relatively short commuter trips in cars.

So let’s say someone is going to bike 3 miles to work. If his car gets 24 miles to the gallon, that car will use one-quarter gallon of fuel to get to work and back. So by bicycling, that person saves one-quarter gallon of gasoline.

When that person arrives at work and needs to take a shower in the shower that the city government "required" (i.e., forced) his employer to install, however, he needs hot water. That hot water needs to be heated by petroleum fuels or electricity. So the energy you 'saved' by bicycling already is being consumed somewhere else.

Next, the extra exertion of bicycling to work requires you to fill your own 'fuel tank'. In other words, you need to eat extra food to replenish the energy you consumed on your bike ride. And that extra sandwich is made of bread and cold cuts etc. All of those foodstuffs require energy to grow and process and transport. More energy consumed.

Third, if you ride your bike to work, you have to wash more clothes every week because your clothes get sweaty and dirty. All that extra washing requires… you guessed it… energy!

Employers are also being required to install bike racks for people who want to ride to work. And of course the steel used to make a bike rack consumes a large amount of energy to produce. And what about those showers that have to be installed? It takes lots of energy to build them and to make their sinks, copper pipes, tiles, fixtures etc. And what if 8 people need to take showers? Who will go first? Won't soap be needed for the showers? Doesn't it take energy to make soap? Who will clean up the mess afterward? Won't towels need to be laundered, also using extra energy?

In addition, people who ride bikes on crowded city streets are more likely to cause accidents or to be hurt in accidents. What's so great about that?

Liberals like to say that bit by bit, that the energy we save by doing something like riding bikes to work adds up and saves lots of energy. But if you add up the energy, bit by bit, that you consume riding your bike to work, it adds up too.

Does the energy used in biking to work add up to more than the energy your car would have used?

Knowing the track record of environmentalists, it probably does. Perhaps we can get some loony left-wing college professor to get a $1 million government grant to study the issue.

Or maybe we can just consider the wisdom of Nikitas3.com and drive to work instead...

Man Bites Dog… and Wins: Accountant Charles Ulrich of Baxter, Minnesota challenged the way that the Internal Revenue Service has overtaxed the shares and the cash that is distributed by mutual life insurance firms when they reorganize as public companies. A federal court has agreed with Baxter.

In the case, tens of thousands of people could be in line for an IRS refund.

While most people who take on the IRS lose, this is being called an important case with billions at stake.

Typically, like anyone who challenges the socialist establishment, Ulrich was portrayed as a nut. The IRS tried to intimidate him and demanded the names of his clients (another leftist tactic) but he refused to buckle under.

America should erect monuments to people like Ulrich. His website is www.demutualization.biz

Ulrich said that the principle is important here. “We should have a Boston Tea Party over this,” he quipped.

The Internal Revenue Service is an overbearing and tyrannical organization. America fought the Revolution over the issue of taxation. More power to Ulrich. We need more people like him. Only through hard work can we expose the greed of the American government.

More Kids Found Dead: A pair of 3-year-old twins was found dead in a car that had been left in the sun in Kansas for more than 2 hours. Law enforcement is questioning the mother in the case.

The ongoing abuse of children, with new stories coming out every day, is part of the  ‘culture of death’ promoted by socialist ideology. This includes abortion, third-trimester abortion, pedophilia (lowering the age of sexual consent is a platform of worldwide socialism), broken families, the image of children as inconveniences which is at the heart of the abortion culture, and self-loathing that is a key trait of any socialist life.

Until we start to appreciate and cherish life, we will lose our freedoms. As Frederic Bastiat, a French economist (1801-1850) said:

 

"We hold from God the gift which includes all others. The gift is life - physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. The process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production - in other words, individuality, liberty, property - this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws (for the protection of them) in the first place."

Iraq Terrorists on the Run: The number of females arrested in Iraq with explosive vests set to detonate has risen sharply over the last year. A would-be bomber surrendered recently in Baqouba rather than blow herself up. She was 13 years old.

This is ironically good news. Here is why:

Iraq’s anti-American terrorists are on the run after American troops have routed them since the 2007 troop ‘surge’. Now the terrorists are so desperate that they need to recruit women and children to do their dirty work. Thankfully, the women and children are refusing and everyone in Iraq will be better off as terrorism is vanquished.

America has won the war in Iraq after the media tried to make us lose it. The media now are refusing to report on the war anymore. This is a sure sign of our victory!

God bless President Bush for holding on. While Iraq has been costly and bloody, the Middle East ultimately will be transformed by our victory there, and millions of lives will be saved and bettered in the long run. This is what President Bush knew all along.

Ten years from now Iraq will be seen as a major success story and Bush’s reputation will be restored. Already, opinions of him are rising.

French Hikers Killed: An avalanche swept down France’s Mt. Blanc and killed 8 hikers. The avalanche started in the middle of the night at an altitude of 11,800 feet. The area is known for its avalanches.

Seven people were hospitalized.

Ever notice how much public money is spent to rescue people who put themselves in harm’s way out in the wilderness? This happens all over America too. Many of these people are tree-hugger environmentalist extremists who tell us that nature is benign.

It is not. Nature is brutal.

Then when they get in trouble, they call desperately for help.

People who go out into the wilderness should pay the government back for the rescue missions that often have to be deployed. There is no reason the rest of us should have to pay for their stupidity and arrogance.

Pelosi Skittish, Nervous in Interview: In an extensive August 24 Meet the Press interview on NBC with Tom Brokaw, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stumbled repeatedly, and appeared even more skittish and discombobulated than usual. Pelosi seemed unable to make coherent sentences, and dodged the issues repeatedly.

Pelosi was totally unhinged, and this is someone who is making policy for the whole nation. This is frightening.

She first said that “increasing supply” will help to bring down oil prices, but then moments later said that offshore oil drilling will have only a negligible effect on prices over the next 10 years. In other words, she was trying to cover all bases.

She then said, “I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels” when natural gas IS a so-called ‘fossil fuel’. And the only reason it is cheap is because oil companies have been allowed to produce large quantities of it without endless intervention by people like Pelosi and her enviro friends.

Pelosi even refused to say when human rights should be granted to a child. Even pro-abortionists who are not total radicals should at least say “at birth”. But that doesn't allow for the extremist types of infanticide that liberals have legalized, where a woman literally is allowed to kill her child after the child is born as happened in Illinois.

See www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34900 to read the full story about that case.

Pelosi then muttered nervously that “St. Augustine said at three months” that a child has human rights. This fits in with the radical abortionist approach.

This went on and on.

When Brokaw said incorrectly that public "disapproval" of Congress was only 14% (he meant that public "approval" was only 14% as reported in one recent poll), Pelosi giggled like a schoolgirl and reminded him that the "approval" rating was 14%. This is hardly anything to laugh about.

Pelosi also said that the oil companies must "give us royalties" for the oil they find. Yet oil companies always have paid royalties and taxes to the government, employed tens of thousands of people in good jobs and provided the nation with our basic resource. But liberals are always slipping in disinformation when they speak. Pelosi said that the oil companies are getting "tax breaks", when the term "tax breaks" simply means, to liberals, that oil companies are not paying 100% of their profits in taxes. Anything less than 100% is called a "tax break" or "a subsidy" by liberals.

This is the type of government we get with extremist socialists in power. They are not rational. They are pro-abortion fanatics who have no heart for the birth process or for motherhood, they are uninformed about the crucial issues of the day, and they are shockingly misinformed.

Pelosi’s interview was a startling example of incompetence and misinformation.

McCain Struggles with Housing Question: John McCain, stung by his inability to answer the question about how many homes he owns, finally confronted the issue with Katie Couric on CBS. He explained that there was a period where “I didn’t have a kitchen table” (a reference to his time as a prisoner of war) and that his father-in-law had served in World War II and then built a beer distribution business that made his family rich. That fortune ($100 million) now belongs to McCain's wife Cindy who owns the couple's homes.

McCain should stop playing with this question. He should put the answer on his website, that his wife owns 4 homes that the couple actually lives in periodically (Washington, DC; Sedona, Ariz; Phoenix, Ariz.; and San Diego) and that the rest of the properties she owns are for family members or are investment properties that he does not keep track of.

He then should point out that the richest people in the US Senate are all Democrats; that 2004 Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry’s wife has a fortune 15 times the size of Cindy McCain’s; that the richest man in America, Warren Buffett, is supporting Obama; that the Kennedy family has a $1 billion fortune; that virtually all the multimillionaires and billionaires in Hollywood are Democrats; that Gorge Soros, with $9 billion, is a radical socialist; that Oprah Winfrey, with $2.5 billion, is a committed left-wing Democrat etc.

McCain should start to question why Democrats always think that rich liberals like JFK and FDR are somehow good for the country, but that conservatives should never be rich. FDR's policies in fact prolonged the depression, and we are still living with the fiscal time bomb of Social Security which FDR started.

McCain should then tell the media that actually it’s none of their damned business how many houses his wife owns. He also should point out that Al Gore has earned $100 million since 2001 giving ‘global warming’ (GW) speeches, and ask if that is legitimate and tell the media to find out more about how that happened. Because the truth is that people are "investing in" Al Gore and enriching him because he is becoming powerful through this GW baloney.

Republicans have to stop playing victim on economic issues, and point out that Democrats are the majority of rich people in America today, sometimes by as much as 60% or 70% or 80% in some congressional districts. See the Nikitas3.com section Who “The Rich” Really Are in America Today, accessible from the home page, to see the truth about wealth and the Democrat party.

Schumer May be Investigated: Officials at IndyMac Bancorp have asked the California attorney general to look into whether a US senator intentionally triggered a depositor run at IndyMac.

The AG has been asked to look into whether the public release of a letter by Democrat Charles Schumer of New York highlighting the fragile condition of IndyMac caused a run of more than $1.3 billion over 11 days. FDIC took control of the bank July 11.

Office of Thrift Supervision director John Reich blamed Schumer’s action for causing the run.

Fifty-one former IndyMac employees wrote to California AG Jerry Brown that “from the day (Schumer’s) letter was made public on June 26 until the closure of the bank, a run on the bank took place and failure became inevitable.”

It is time to investigate Schumer. He has played fast and loose with his position in the US Senate, and has abused his power.

Remember that Schumer is a far left figure who very likely was seeking to bring down a private-sector bank since Schumer intellectually wants to bring more and more of the American economy under government control. Schumer will deny it all, but that is his devious nature.

Since the California attorney general is Democrat Jerry Brown, don't expect much. These Democrats all work together on their agenda to undermine the American economy and then insert themselves to fix it.

College Presidents Seek Lower Drinking Age: 100 college presidents from institutions like Duke, Dartmouth, Syracuse and Ohio State have joined a movement that is asking state legislatures to lower the alcohol drinking age from 21 to 18.

Laws setting the age at 21  are being called unjust and discriminatory. The movement is called the Amethyst Initiative and has actively sought the support of college presidents. Amethyst was a gemstone used in drinking vessels and jewelry in ancient Greece that was said to prevent drunkenness.

Groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving oppose the change saying it will lead to more deaths in car crashes. Both sides agree that college-age alcohol consumption is a major problem. Some of the college presidents have claimed that binge drinking will be prevented by lowering the drinking age.

According to federal statistics, 1,700 college students die in alcohol-related car accidents every year, while 157 college-age students drank themselves to death between 1999 and 2005.

Look deeper and you will understand the real story behind this story.

Why are college presidents, of all people, being urged to support the lowering of the drinking age?

The reason being given in public is that you should be able to get a drink in a saloon at age 18 since you can both enlist in the military and vote at age 18. But the involvement of college presidents in this drive should send up your antennae immediately.

What this movement really is doing is using liberal and left-wing college presidents and administrators to further the cause of 'personal freedom'.

'Personal freedom' means engaging in whatever sexual conduct you desire, taking drugs, drinking alcohol and doing whatever else you please. It always has been, and currently is being promoted relentlessly by the leftists who run our colleges and universities.

They slyly substitute 'personal freedom' for what we have come to know as 'freedom', claiming that 'freedom' means that you are free to do whatever you want.

But in fact 'freedom' as we know it does not mean doing whatever you wish but is infinitely more profound.  It means that individuals have rare God-given rights like freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom to worship, freedom to own land and to benefit from that ownership, and freedom to defend yourself from harm. 'Freedom' in fact seeks to restrain personal license in favor of the personal discipline that contributes to the common good.

Liberals who run our universities in fact believe in none of these genuine 'freedoms'. They censor free speech if it is conservative ideas that are being discussed, sometimes destroying conservative newspapers; they seek to discourage Republican or conservative groups from lawfully assembling on campuses; they wish to limit Christian groups from meeting or worshipping God on campus and anywhere else; the enviro movement tramples private property rights all over America with endless regulations; while leftist have repeatedly sought to bar citizens from defending their own personal safety by denying gun ownership, and prosecuting people who fight back and harm criminals.

Meanwhile liberals have urged 'personal freedom' to do whatever we please. Lowering the drinking age adds to those 'personal freedoms'. The focus on 'personal freedom' is part of the ‘pleasure culture’ that universities promote in our society, i.e., do whatever you wish and the consequences be damned. This 'pleasure culture' draws individuals away from our genuine freedoms and focuses them on their own personal interests. Soon students think that 'personal freedom' is the goal, while authentic 'freedom' becomes an afterthought, as it is on our college campuses today.

This is the way that the university culture in America today draws young people away from a meaningful life outlined by our Founding Fathers, and urges them into a life of narcissism and pleasure. In the end, this makes them into self-centered Democrats.

 ‘Global Warming’ Debunked… Again: Mt. Ruapehu in New Zealand is claiming the deepest base of snow ever recorded in that nation with more than 15 feet of snow on the ground. The skiing season could last well into November.

Since New Zealand is in the Southern hemisphere, it is experiencing winter at the same time that it is summer in North America.

This massive snow deposit is exactly the type of fact that the ‘global warming’ (GW) alarmists do not want anyone to know about. There are thousands of examples of colder weather and deeper snow all over the world today, which the alarmists wish to keep concealed so that people don’t get the information which would balance out their GW hysteria.

Americans have tired of the massive propaganda assault behind the GW movement. Increasingly they are refusing to believe it, which is at it should be.

Robin Hood to the Rescue?: A high-stakes Las Vegas gambler has created a website at which people in need can sign up for a chance to allow the gambler to win money on their behalf.

The gambler calls himself a modern-day Robin Hood, and will help out one person in debt by bringing him/her to Vegas and winning the money for them. He claims he won’t lose.

The whole concept of Robin Hood is an interesting one. First, this guy is using this stunt to promote himself, not because he is some generous person.

Second, the whole Robin Hood concept is always used by the socialist left to make people think that there are magical liberals out there who will take money away from evil, rich Republicans and give to the poor and the foreclosed.

The truth is, however, that throughout the 20th century, “the rich” have been primarily left-wing socialists who hoard all the money for themselves. Look at the leaders of the communist Soviet Union and communist China and communist Cuba who have maintained massive fortunes while the people were impoverished and starved.

Look at the all ultra-rich socialists in America today from Warren Buffett (Obama supporter, $52 billion in net worth) to Oprah Winfrey (Obama supporter, $2.5 billion in wealth), to the Kennedy family (Obama supporters, $1 billion in wealth) and on and on and on, while their ideas like taxation, regulation and enviro extremism prevent people from prospering and make the nation poorer. FDR was rich. Bill Clinton is rich. Al Gore is rich. Nancy Pelosi is rich. Go to the Nikitas3.com section accessible from the home page Who “The Rich” Really are in America Today to read a set of essays that show that “the rich” even in America are increasingly left-wing socialists, as they have been throughout much of world history.

Coca Cola’s Islamic Designs: The nations of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Morocco, Tunisia and others will see Coca Cola cans adorned with a Muslim crescent and star, the international symbol of Islam. The cans will appear during the Islamic holy days of Ramadan from September 1-30.

Meanwhile, a sexually-charged historical novel based on the prophet Mohammed’s child bride has been yanked from American bookstore shelves after fear of a violent Islamic backlash.

The book portrays Mohammed’s wife A’isha as a 14-year old and describes her sexual consummation with the prophet. One Muslim scholar called the book “soft core pornography”.

Random House postponed the book’s release “indefinitely.”

Terrorist expert Steven Emerson said that pulling the book sets a dangerous precedent of “appeasement”.

Don’t expect Coca Cola to put Christian crosses on its cans here in the United States during Christmas. That would be appeasing the religion that many in the West really distrust and hate… Christianity.

And if Random House published a novel insulting to Christianity, it would double the press run and the publicity once word got out that it had insulted the Savior Jesus Christ.

There is an ongoing campaign in the West to appease Islam and to defame Christianity even among our so-called “conservative” corporations like Coca Cola. Many of these companies have become extremely liberal and socialistic after being infiltrated by leftist employees, managers and stockholders over the last 50 years. Just try uttering one politically-incorrect syllable in corporate America today, and you will be fired.

Obama Campaign Hits Rock Bottom: The Obama presidential campaign accused John McCain of “cheating” in the August 16 Saddleback Civil Forum debate.

It charged that McCain arrived late at the venue for the debate and was able to listen in on some of Obama’s performance and to know the questions in advance. It offered no proof or even evidence of the charge.

The 'debate' was not actually a debate, but was structured so that each candidate was interviewed separately for one hour. McCain was not supposed to hear the first one-on-one hour between Obama and Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren because McCain was supposed to answer the same questions without any preparation in the second hour.

This is the lowest of the low by Obama and his people and shows how dirty their campaign is. This is how Democrats operate year after year.

Throughout the summer, Obama repeatedly has been calling the McCain campaign “negative” for using any position of Obama’s in political advertisements - like saying that Obama wants to raise taxes - or by using Paris Hilton in an ad claiming that Obama is just a celebrity.

Now Obama's camp has truly hit rock bottom by accusing McCain of outright cheating in the Saddleback forum. And the accusation comes for one reason only: Because Obama did so poorly in the debate. This accusation is meant to shift the spotlight from Obama’s wishy-washy and outright deceptive performance and to cast McCain in a negative light after winning the debate easily with a masterful performance.

While most Americans did not actually see the debate itself, Obama & Co. knew that the accusation of cheating would circulate itself throughout the country. It was started by Obama’s campaign, repeated by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News and recirculated on other stations including ultra-liberal CNN and MSNBC. Democrat strategist Steve McMahon mentioned the “cheating” three times in one segment on CNN on Monday, August 18.

This is like a Soviet disinformation campaign and an outright smear on McCain. This truly is underhanded, unpatriotic and un-American.

McCain should make this a campaign issue and take every advantage of this situation to show yet again that Obama is unfit for the presidency. Polls already are showing a sharp drop in Obama's ratings among voters, and this cheating accusation is a sign of desperation.

Eco-Screwballs Trying Newer, Weirder Ideas: Researchers at Johannes Guttenburg University in Germany installed a 500 square foot tarpaulin screen (50 feet by 10 feet) on a glacier in the Swiss Alps to try and insulate that section of the glacier from the sun and to slow its melting.

The screen was set up at about 7,000 feet altitude on the Rhone glacier.

This is more environmental stupidity.

Let’s put sheets over all the ice and snow!

Or perhaps we could just realize that so-called ‘global warming’ is just a natural phenomenon and part of the earth's climate cycle.

But the most important thing to remember is that this project was simply a way to spend money on a highly visible and much-publicized project and ultimately to get more research money for ‘global warming’ alarmists to ply their trade on the public dime.

Always follow the cash when you are talking about 'warming'. It is nothing more than a scheme to get money for enviro groups, alarmists and researchers. Al Gore accumulated a $100 million fortune by giving speeches on 'global warming'.  Pretty good work if you can get it. And if you can stand to tell all those fibs with a straight face.

 Update: New York State’s Economy in Shambles: In a July 2008 News in Review segment, Nikitas3.com discussed economic woes in highly-taxed New York State:

New York State governor David Patterson has warned his subjects that their state is in “a recession”, and that the budget deficit has increased by $1.4 billion in just the second quarter of 2008 alone.

Democrat Patterson said the deficit is going to grow from the current $6.4 billion out of a budget of $122 billion, to more than $20 billion over the next 3 years.

Patterson said that the state needs to take a hard look at spending and at the size of the work force which now is 266,000. But he added that the state won’t lay off workers or cut health programs for the poor. He said the workforce may be cut through attrition, or through a hiring freeze first.

News in Review then commented.

Patterson soon will be pulling the usual ploy in which he warns the state of a fiscal catastrophe. Next the state terminates a sacrificial group of perhaps 1,000 critical state employees (firefighters, EMTs, cops etc.). Third Patterson goes on TV and says he had to fire them, that things are that bad, even though he said he wouldn't fire anybody. (Of course he never will fire any of the tens of thousands of dead-weight, do-nothing state employees.) Fourth the TV cameras run to the affected communities where the residents express shock and horror over the loss of critical cops and firefighters. And fifth, Patterson asks the legislature for a huge tax hike so that no more critical employees need be laid off.

Update to this story: Eyewitness News website, Channel 7, ABC TV, New York City, August 11, 2008:

The biggest proposed reductions would be $505 million in Medicaid funding, including $169.4 million cut from nursing homes and $99.4 million from hospitals.

The Greater New York Hospital Association and SEIU, a union representing health care workers, described the cuts as “staggering” and warned that they “would devastate New York’s health care infrastructure and severely threaten access to care.”

As Nikitas3.com predicted in July, the overpaid, bloated left-wing unionized health-care bureaucracy has played its first card already. The TV cameras showed up and recorded their reactions. This is just the beginning. Prepare for all the next steps.

Typical Democrat Manipulation: Here is a quote from Peter Brown, a Democrat member of the Houston City Council, advocating for the funding of a light-rail project to Texas State University that had been canceled previously:

“I’ll say it loud and clear; No longer is the city of Houston waffling on rail (transit)… With gas headed to $8 a gallon and oil to $200 a barrel, we have to rethink Houston as the happy motoring paradise.”

This is typical of the dangerous propaganda that liberals put out every single day. At the height of the gas-price hysteria, when Brown made his statement, the enviros and anti-oil socialists were putting out the most extreme predictions for oil just as they said for years that nuclear power was going to wipe out mankind; that the hole in the ozone layer was going to cook us all; that there was radon gas in every basement in America; that the world is running out of oil etc. All nonsense.

Nikitas3.com editorialized twice during the Spring and Summer about the oil price spike - that it was a speculative bubble, that the bubble would burst, that price would reach a point where it would dampen demand and push prices down, that gasoline never was going to reach $8 a gallon, or even $5, that oil would never reach $200 a barrel.

But people like Brown use any hysteria to try stir up enough emotion to slip their pet projects through. If they can sustain this hysteria through the next election, they can get the public to buy into these inefficient, expensive and under-used public transit projects. They use this tactic in every field of public policy.

Then the public transit projects always cost 3 or 4 times more than projected, at the same time that the dire predictions of high gasoline prices are also completely overestimated.

This is the way that Democrats use lies and emotional manipulation to get Americans to spend more and more money on all the wrong things and to further indebt themselves to the government.

Oil Demand Drops: Demand in the United States for oil fell 800,000 barrels per day in the first half of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007, said the Energy Information Administration. Consumption fell as high prices curbed demand for gasoline among American motorists.

Global oil demand only rose 500,000 barrels per day in the first two quarters of 2008 after the drop in US demand was counterbalanced by a global rise of 1.3 million BPD.

US oil demand for 2008 now is expected to average 20.08 million barrels per day, according to EIA.

...The 800,000 barrel per day drop is interesting because this is precisely the figure that Barack Obama touted as the daily savings we could get if we just inflated our tires properly.

So what is going on?

Obviously Obama, like all leftists and environmentalists, pulled a figure out of the air and started to promote it. Perhaps he heard that demand was down 800,000 BPD so he just adapted it to his argument. This is how liberals always work; whatever is convenient, they will say it.

Meanwhile economists have said that the latest price spike was artificial, that it was a speculative bubble, and that it would burst, which has happened. Prices began falling the day President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling. But something else happened that was just as powerful - people stopped buying gasoline when it got over $4 a gallon. The price simply went too high and demand fell. This was the market working.

As prices fall, however, you can expect demand to rise.

So how did Obama and his enviro friends come to say that we would save 800,000 BPD by inflating our tires in the first place?

They did the following: They said that the average motorist is driving with his tires under-inflated, although there is absolutely not the slightest bit of evidence that that is true. It is a worst-case scenario on which all enviro theory is based.

They then said that if that motorist simply inflated his tires to the proper pressure that that motorist would achieve such-and-such energy savings. Then they multiplied that energy savings by the whole American car fleet (230 million cars) and voila!  -- 800,000 barrels per day in savings.

What is wrong with this? It is false, that is what.  Most tires are properly inflated or pretty close, or perhaps a little over-inflated balanced out by those that are a little under-inflated. There is not some massive epidemic of under-inflation. It was all faked because it all was just rhetoric.

Conservatives knew that the energy markets would direct people to make the proper choices and that gas prices would fall without any tire inflation adjustments, that there are much bigger forces at work. When President Bush declined to order the public to conserve energy, he said Americans are smart enough to make their own decisions. How right he was.

Another Major al Qaeda Figure is Dead: Abu Saeed al-Masri, a senior commander in the al Qaeda terrorist group, has been killed in Pakistan. He was considered by some to be the #3 figure in al Qaeda, and the highest ranking figure ever to be killed.

Also killed recently was Abu Khabab al-Masri, a weapons expert.

...This is good news for the West and for the anti-terrorism cause. The doubters said for years that al Qaeda was too big and too spread out to be conquered, yet the opposite has proven to be true. Thousands of top al Qaeda fighters have been killed in Iraq, and the group is said to have retreated to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If a similarly high percentage of American forces had been killed along with many of our top commanders, America would be quite dispirited. Al Qaeda certainly is feeling the pressure. We should keep it up, along with our allies.

We have won the war in Iraq and now Iraq itself wants us to leave. This is good news. But we should not depart entirely. We should leave behind a fighting force that can be called in in the event of new terrorist attacks on Iraq.

AIDS Law Changing: A law barring foreigners with HIV or AIDS from entering the country has been stripped from immigration law. The law was killed by language in a bill pledging $48 billion to fight AIDS.

The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services still has to delete AIDS from the list of “communicable diseases of public health significance”, which include gonorrhea and leprosy.

“Today everyone knows that you can’t get AIDS from sitting next to someone on an airplane or sharing a bathroom,” said Victoria Nelson of Immigration Equality.

Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, a Republican who opposed lifting the ban, said that the bill will allow 5,600 AIDS-infected per year people into the country by 2018.

This is more activism from the AIDS lobby. They want to let as many AIDS-infected people into the country as possible, who then will run to hospitals for treatment at Americans’ expense.

That the government is pledging $48 billion for AIDS is a huge slap at American taxpayers. This is money that the AIDS lobby wants directed to curing AIDS so as to promote homosexuality and make it less deadly.

The Family Focused AIDS Clinical Treatment and Services in San Antonio, offers services to anyone with AIDS whether they are in the United States legally or not. Note: Most AIDS-infected people in America are not "family-focused" at all, but are homosexual.

Many AIDS carriers from Mexico are treated at the San Antonio facility. The cost is borne by Americans.

Americans cannot afford to support people from around the world who have AIDS. This is just another attempt by liberals to saddle the American economy with world health costs and to drag down the American economy and health-care system and make them ripe for takeover by the government.

Pelosi May Offer Drilling Vote: Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may offer Congress an opportunity to vote on lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling, a vote that she has been blocking to date. She even has called offshore drilling a “hoax”.

House Republicans have been demanding a vote and even have stayed behind in Washington during the summer recess in order to make Pelosi look bad. They have appeared regularly on C-Span.

“They have this thing that says drill offshore in protected areas. We can do that. We can have a vote on that,” Pelosi now has said.

She indicated that the vote would have to include a larger package of ideas including releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The ban on offshore drilling has to be renewed every year, and so a vote is needed by September 30. Otherwise the ban remains.

Pelosi and her Democrat friends are in a bind. Because they have consistently voted against increasing the energy supply here in America as needs have grown. Finding themselves on the wrong side of the issue, they are feeling political heat now, especially from the Republicans who are staying in Washington.

Note how Pelosi said that the drilling is being considered in “protected” areas. This little word “protected” is intended to slant the debate her way. As far as Democrats are concerned, any area where oil is located should be “protected”. That is how they are preventing drilling for 15 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; because Jimmy Carter declared it a “protected” area. Before that, it was just a flat, treeless coastal plain.

Pelosi will offer the legislation only if she can cram it full of enviro regulation and other giveaways to wind power and solar energy, which produce small amounts of energy and require government subsidies to survive. A nation cannot depend on an energy source that requires subsidies.

Her call to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - our nation's 'rainy day' supply - is typical Democrat strategy: Take easy oil from an emergency supply source and release it into the supply chain, even though it was not intended for that. This will bring down prices temporarily until the SPR oil runs out. But like everything Democrats propose, it is not a long-term measure.

Democrats are beholden to the most powerful special-interest group in America, the environmental lobby. They only will do what this super-wealthy lobby wants. And the enviro lobby is not interested in the common good of increased energy production, but in pie-in-the-sky energy sources that are very costly to make, like ethanol.   

Whatever happens, you can rest assured that Pelosi and the Democrats will put political maneuvering ahead of the nation's right to use its very own resources.

Edwards' Mistress Refuses to Allow DNA Test: The mistress with whom former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards has admitted having an affair said she will not allow a DNA paternity test on her 5-month old daughter.

“She wishes to maintain her privacy and her daughter’s privacy,” said a statement from the attorney of Rielle Hunter, the woman with whom Edwards had the affair.

End of story. Edwards obviously is the father.

Why?

Because Edwards has publicly said two times that he would welcome a paternity test. This makes him look like he is certain that he will be exonerated scientifically.

Meanwhile Hunter certainly has been paid off to object to any such test. Remember, Edwards is very rich. Hunter’s refusal therefore means that Edwards is the father. If he were not, she would allow the test to clear Edwards fully and scientifically.

Edwards $100 million fortune will cover Hunter for a long, long time.

Democrat Platform Committee on C-Span: The Democratic Party Platform Committee is holding televised hearings on C-Span to get voter input.

...And to get a vision of where the Democrat party wants to take this nation, tune in.

Witness after witness is offering the same testimony that powers the entire Democrat party: I lost my job, I can't afford health insurance, workers are getting screwed, I have run out of money, our schools need more funding. All completely negative. It is totally depressing like the Democrat party itself.

The Democrat response, of course, is more taxes, more unions and more government, which always make the nation poorer while thwarting growth and jobs.

And never do these witnesses admit Democrat party complicity in their plights. One former General Motors worker from Ohio testified that she lost her job at the plant which will close in 2010. She never mentioned that the unions themselves are driving General Motors out of business through wildly inflated and unsustainable wage demands.

Other witnesses included union activists who complain about worker conditions, pay, health insurance etc. Never is it mentioned that the public school system, run by the Democrat party, statistically prepares only one-third of all students for jobs in the advanced American economy. One-third drop out (mostly blacks and hispanics) and in many cases become government dependents, while one-third graduate without the proper skills.

Union representatives tell the platform committee how we need more unions and they talk about the Employee Free Choice Act, which is exactly the opposite of free choice. This act, which could be signed into law by a Democrat president, describes how unionization votes would be taken among workers by signing cards.

Only problem is the cards you might sign saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are not private ballots. You fill them out with your identity known. This is a union tactic that will lead to harassment and intimidation, and is the reason that millions of workers have voted against unions. Because workers do not want to be threatened by union thugs. To read more about his law, visit:

                    www.townhall.com/columnists/DonaldLambro/2008/08/08/obama_supports_union_ploy_to_drop_secret_ballots

You needn’t want much of this Democrat platform stuff to get the drift. It is so predictable

Novak has Brain Tumor: Conservative icon and Washington political columnist Robert Novak has been diagnosed with a brain tumor that he has called "dire". Novak is 77. He said he hoped to get back to work as soon as possible, but that he will retire for the time being to devote himself to chemotherapy.

...We all hope that Novak can recover fully and return to his post. His voice is much needed for the conservative cause.

John Edwards’ ‘Two Americas’: 2008 Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards has been identified by a Beverly Hills hotel security guard as the man targeted by tabloid reporters in a love-child drama. The National Enquirer has printed a picture of Edwards with the child in one of the hotel's rooms. 

The Enquirer has identified the mother as Rielle Hunter and has claimed that Edwards is the child's father.

A former Edwards campaign staffer said he wishes that he were “more surprised” to hear the story.

This story could ruin Edwards. Just because it appeared in the National Enquirer does not mean that it is just gossip. The Enquirer broke the Monica Lewinsky story. It will be interesting to see if the picture is legitimate. It looks so. We shall see. This story has been around for weeks without any mention by the Ancient Media.

It certainly would be embarrassing for Edwards, perhaps illuminating the “two Americas” he talked about in his campaign - the America of his mistress, and that of his cancer-stricken wife and family.

Anti-Smoking Crusader Hurt: A woman in Britain was thrown to the train tracks after scolding two boys for smoking on the platform where it is not allowed. The incident happened at the Farningham Road station in Kent. The woman was called "lucky to be alive" after falling near the high-voltage third rail.

...While Nikitas3.com never could condone this type of action, it probably was a snap reaction to the endless, perpetual, ongoing, unlimited and permanent nagging that "health nazis" have been inflicting on cigarette smokers for decades. The term "health nazi" is not a misnomer either. The National Socialist party of Adolph Hitler advocated health fanaticism and was rabidly opposed to cigarette smoking.

Anti-Gun Groups Infiltrated: Two Philadelphia gun-control groups have swept their offices for bugs after a woman accused of being a National Rifle Association spy for more than 10 years was expelled.

Mary Lou McFate, 62, was thrown out of the groups after her identity was discovered. The NRA had no comment.

...Gotta love this story. Liberals have been infiltrating conservative groups since time immemorial. They even have joined groups and then completely taken them over like many Christian churches, the arts, the media, the universities, the American Bar Association, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and many others.

Now the libs are all twisted up about one single incident where their totalitarian skin has been penetrated.

Typical. Call the lawyer! The gun-control nerds even are trying to concoct "trespassing" charges against McFate.

McFate has acted as a double-agent before. In the late 1980s she joined an animal-rights group and befriended an activist who later was convicted of bombing US Surgical, a company that did medical research on dogs.

Batman Curse?: Actress Mary-Kate Olsen has demanded immunity from prosecution before she answers any questions relating to the death of her friend Heath Ledger.

Ledger played The Joker in the hit movie Batman, The Dark Knight. He died of a drug overdose in January.

Olsen was the first person contacted after Ledger’s body was found in his apartment, even before police were notified. Ledger’s death was ruled an accidental drug overdose caused by a combination of prescription drugs and the pain reliever Oxy Contin.

Ledger was said to have been spooked and depressed over the dark nature of the Batman film and his role in it. This movie has been criticized by many viewers as unduly gloomy.

Is there a Batman curse? Batman leading man Christian Bale has been charged with assault on his wife and mother-in-law, while Morgan Freeman, another actor in the film, has been injured in a car accident.

Who says Hollywood is just fun and fiction? Conservatives have been saying for decades that Hollywood is a House of Horrors that is reflected in its dark product and in its creepy people, mostly leftists who are part of a culture of negativity, drugs, divorce, alcoholism, depression and death.

And all this despite their wealth and public adulation.

There must be more to this life than Hollywood is letting on!

AIDS Infections Higher than Thought: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has admitted that 40 percent more Americans per year are infected with the AIDS virus than previously thought. The new number is said to be 56,000 infections annually.

“CDC’s first estimates from this (new measuring) system reveal that the HIV epidemic is – and has been – worse than previously known,” said a CDC statement. HIV is a stage of AIDS.

The former estimate was 40,000 new cases per year. CDC now estimates that 1 million Americans are infected with AIDS, and that 15,000+ people die from the disease annually.

“The data really confirm that there is a severe impact of this epidemic among gay and bisexual men in the United States,” said Dr. Kevin Fenton who heads CDC’s AIDS division.

Yes, conservatives know that, Dr. Fenton.

This story is yet another example of the media and the medical community coming only grudgingly to admit the truth about AIDS,  that gay males are continuing to spread this disease at the same time that liberals all over America continue to try to legitimize homosexuality through gay marriage and other “rights”.

Conservatives could tell them a thing or two about the disease without any medical studies at all.

Meanwhile, the same liberals have inserted a ‘statistic’ into our daily lives that 400,000 people die from cigarette smoking every year. It was repeated by California congressman Henry Waxman, a Democrat, on the floor of the House of Representatives on July 30, 2008.

This is fraudulent. The fact is that 400,000 people who are cigarette smokers die every year. They may die from smoking or they may not. Some of them may be 89 years old. There are many examples of people living to old age who are cigarette smokers. Everyone knows that.

Can’t liberals just give us the real facts every once in a while on issues from smoking to AIDS?

No, they use every tactic and fabrication they can to spin things their way. Often they just lie like heck, like the ‘statistic’ that there are 3 million homeless in America.

By the latest count by the federal government, there are 1.6 million homeless including those who may be temporarily homeless at any time during the year. But the same Housing and Urban Development figures says there really are only 620,000 who are chronically homeless.

It is hard to say if those figures are anywhere near accurate because they come from homeless activists, who are likely to inflate everything in order to keep their jobs and power. And of course liberals don't want to admit how many people they themselves have made homeless by taxing and regulating business out of existence; by mis-educating people in the failing public schools; by shutting down jobs all over America through extremist environmentalism, or by driving companies away through radical union activism. How many homeless are there in Michigan, the headquarters of extremist union activity?

Watch out for their ‘statistics’. Liberals have, shall we say, a way with words and a problem with the truth

Note: The ongoing actions by people like Bill Clinton to "end the plague of AIDS" in places like Africa really is a back-door way to funnel more publicity and research money to AIDS so as to benefit homosexuals in America as well as anyone in Africa.

Too, many, many more people worldwide have died of malaria than AIDS, yet liberal environmentalists are allowing those malaria deaths by blocking use of the most effective mosquito-fighting chemical in history, DDT. To read the truth about DDT, visit the wonderful and informative JunkScience.com site and its webpage on DDT at www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm

Stevens Arraigned: Republican US senator from Alaska Ted Stevens was arraigned July 31 in a case involving allegations that Stevens lied about $250,000 worth of gifts from an oil services company.

Stevens pleaded not guilty to 7 felony counts. He is the longest serving Republican in the US Senate and has asked that his trial be completed before the November election when he will be seeking his seventh term in the Senate.

This is more bad news for the Republican party which faces 5 retirements in the US Senate already, and 33 in the House.

If Stevens is found guilty, he will pay the price big time. But Republicans always pay a price while Democrats rarely do. Consider that Democrat Massachusetts US Senator Ted Kennedy has served almost 40 years since he allowed Mary Jo Kopechne to drown at Chappadquiddick. In that incident, Kennedy ran back to his hotel room in the middle of the night to try and cover up the crime.

Meanwhile Republican US Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon was run out office for making drunken passes at female staffers.

Gay Republican Florida US representative Mark Foley was sent packing for sending racy e-mails to a male congressional page, while representative Gerry Studds, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was re-elected repeatedly after being caught actually having sex with a male page.

And homosexual Democrat representative Barney Frank, also of Massachusetts, has been re-elected many times since it was discovered that his gay partner was running a male prostitution ring out of the couple’s apartment.

These appalling Democrat behaviors show why America is in moral decline. Democrats always retain power despite their actions because A) the media cover up for them, and B) Democrats never punish members of their own party, as Republicans always do.  Republicans always panic and flee when trouble strikes because the media will savage them over every lapse.

It will be interesting to see if Democrat US senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut or Kent Conrad of North Dakota pay any price for making sweetheart loan deals with Countrywide Mortgage, one of the troubled lenders in the current housing crisis. Dodd is even chairman of the Senate Banking Committee which is looking into companies like Countrywide.

Or if congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana, a Democrat, is found guilty of corruption after investigators discovered $90,000 in illegal cash in his freezer. Jefferson has since been re-elected by a large margin by his overwhelmingly Democrat constituency, showing again that Democrats will tolerate any corruption in the name of power.

In a somewhat related story, far-left Democrat US congressman Robert Wexler, who represents West Palm Beach, Florida, has not even resided in his Florida district since he took office 11 years ago. It makes you wonder what this guy is up to. Wexler lives in Maryland with his wife and three children. His Florida address is a retirement home occupied by his father-in-law and mother-in-law.

Florida has no income tax, so Wexler certainly is interested in maintaining his Florida residence to save on taxes, although he is one of the most pro-tax legislators in the US Congress. And, oh, yes, he is the congressman down there.

Since the situation was revealed by his electoral opponent, Wexler has decided that he will lease an apartment in his Florida district. And only the voters in November now have the power to sanction him by voting him out.  Apparently he broke no laws. Don’t expect this though. Liberals have little conscience when it comes to maintaining political power. Just look at the examples above… Kennedy, Frank, Studds, Dodd, Conrad and many others too numerous to mention.

Shameful...

New York State’s 'Washington Monument' Economy: New York State governor David Patterson has warned his subjects that their state is in “a recession”, and that the budget deficit has increased by $1.4 billion in just the second quarter of 2008 alone.

“Our state now faces increasingly harsh economic times. Everywhere I go I see people losing their jobs and their homes,” he said in a speech.

Democrat Patterson said the deficit is going to grow from the current $6.4 billion out of a budget of $122 billion, to more than $20 billion over the next 3 years. He blamed much of the problem on losses on Wall Street in New York City, a major engine of the state’s prosperity. The old saying goes, "When New York City sneezes, Albany (the state capital) catches a cold".

Patterson said that the state needs to take a hard look at spending and at the size of the work force which now is 266,000. But he added that the state won’t lay off workers or cut health programs for the poor. He said the workforce may be cut through attrition, or through a hiring freeze first.

 State worker union representatives protested. “It is not the way you keep an economy healthy by taking people out of the workforce,” said one official.

You could sure see this one coming miles away. Once the economic heart of America, New York now is a depressed, high-tax state with an intransigent public workforce that is bloated beyond belief.  Businesses are fleeing New York socialism by the hundreds, and thousands of residents are leaving every year. The statewide sales tax is 8.25%!

The reason for New York’s predicament is that the state is strongly influenced by its left-wing New York City legislative contingent. They have pushed taxes after taxes on the state. Big bureaucratic agencies lord over every business and individual. Environmental rules thwart the economy, particularly hitting rural areas where people have few resources to combat Big Environmentalism.

Hillary Clinton promised in her 2000 run for US Senate from New York State to help the people of rural Upstate. But things are worse than ever because her party’s policies are hurting the people.

One state worked told WNYT TV that he was afraid of a possible hiring freeze that Patterson talked about.

So imagine that. This guy is saying that he is afraid that more new people may not be added to the state workforce. You have to understand this mentality: A unionized state worker is not concerned about being fired (because they rarely get fired, if ever), but is terrified that more union members won’t automatically be coming up and joining his bloated ranks. This comes from the lemming-like mindset of unionized government employees.

Patterson soon will be pulling the usual Washington Monument Ploy which is a tactic of all liberals. It works like this: First he warns the state of a fiscal catastrophe. Next the state terminates a sacrificial group of perhaps 1,000 critical state employees (firefighters, EMTs, cops etc.). Third Patterson goes on TV and says he had to fire them, that things are that bad, even though he said he wouldn't fire anybody. Fourth the TV cameras run to the affected communities where the residents express shock and horror over the loss of critical cops and firefighters. And fifth, Patterson asks the legislature for a huge tax hike so that no more critical employees need be laid off.

This is called The Washington Monument Ploy because when faced with shortages of revenue, socialists always do something drastic first like closing a highly visible venue like the Washington Monument rather than firing thousands of dead-weight, do-nothing state workers. This panics the public into coughing up more tax money. Nikitas3.com will update this story as The Ploy unfolds.

If the state really wanted to solve its budget problems, it could turn the state workforce over to a private contractor that could find a way to do the state’s work at one-third the cost with 100,000 employees instead of the current 266,000 employees.

Then the state would grow rapidly with a commensurate cut in spending and tax levels, more than absorbing the fired state workers.

But liberals are not interested in fixing the problem. They want the state to suffer and to spiral down so they can then rush to the rescue with more government programs, increasing their power over the people.

Americans Driving Less: In response to higher gasoline prices, Americans drove fewer miles in May for the seventh month in a row.

Vehicle-miles traveled fell 3.7% in May 2008 from the May 2007 figures. The total decline so far in 2008 is 2.4% less than 2007. In May it is calculated that Americans drove 254.7 billion miles or approximately 10 billion fewer miles than in May of 2007.

The high price of gasoline is also pushing down auto sales, homebuilding and consumer spending.

Crude oil prices have fallen to around $120 a barrel by July 29, from a high of around $147 a barrel. This occurred after the big cuts in gasoline consumption reduced demand for crude, and after plans were announced by the President to produce more oil domestically (increased supply). Further crude oil price drops are expected.

And what does this story show? It shows us that people will respond to market prices naturally, and that driving fewer miles is one factor in bringing down oil prices. If we continue to restrain consumption, prices will be easier to stabilize.

The other factor is to increase our energy supply as proposed by President Bush and the Republicans. We also should stop wasting vast amounts of energy as environmentalists are forcing us to do, as outlined in the essay accessible from the Nikitas3.com home page, 10 Ways that Environmentalists Pollute the Environment and Squander our Resources.

There is no need for President Bush to lecture people to conserve energy, as was suggested by one reporter at a press conference recently.

And since Americans decided to drive less because of higher gas prices, and fly less because of higher airline ticket prices, the sky has not fallen. America will survive. The market works perfectly well. And there is no need to panic. There is plenty of energy in America, and if we are wise about exploiting it and using it, we will do just fine.

Democrats Cheat on their Own Ideas (Again, Naturally): The very liberal and very Democrat city of Denver has been allowing the committee hosting the Democrat National Convention in August to fill up their cars at tax-free city pumps.

After the giveaway was found out, the Denver mayor said the committee would pay full price for gasoline including the 40 cents per gallon in federal and state taxes.

Now the question has arisen as to whether the committee even was paying for the gas in the first place, or whether the city was giving it to them for free, and thus making taxpayers pony up for Democrat gas.

The committee is a nonprofit organization formed to raise money for the convention, and enlists volunteers, arranges accommodations and provides media credentials.

Committee spokesman Chris Lopez said the committee is using the public pumps “for safety and security reasons”.

What a bunch of malarkey! Safety and security? Yeah, like these precious Democrats need to feel safe from the criminals, terrorists and illegal aliens they allow to roam free in our country. Those bad guys might put sugar in some Democrat's gas tank! Ooohhhhhh.... scary!

Remember these are the Democrats who do not want us rednecks out in the rest of America to have relief from gasoline sales taxes as proposed by John McCain. These are the same Dems who want relentless tax increases on everyone for everything. Yet they themselves want tax-free gas.

This is Socialism 101. Dems take all the privileges and use their friends in government all over the nation to get what they need on the sly. They then demand that the rest of America do what they say (pay full sales tax on gasoline), not what they do (pay no tax on gasoline).

What hypocrites.

 Old-Fashioned Religion in Tennessee?: Two people were killed and seven more were injured when a gunman opened fire in a Knoxville, Tennessee church. The gunman interrupted a children’s performance of the Broadway musical Annie at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.

So what is wrong with this story?

It is this: Doesn’t it seem odd that the kids were performing a Broadway show on Sunday morning at church? Can't they do that the other six days of the week? Aren’t they supposed to be studying the Bible at that time or performing a religious play?

Obviously this has nothing to do with the shootings, but it is a telling story about what is happening to many of our Christian churches which have been commandeered by secularists. The Unitarians are a very liberal sect that has gone off the charts. Today many churches from the Episcopalians, United Church of Christ and others are no longer even Christian in nature, but, like Obama’s church, have become activist arms of the Democrat party.

They promote popular culture, anti-Americanism, homosexuality, environmentalism, wealth redistribution, labor unions, multiculturalism and other leftist issues, while the word of God is essentially shoved aside or twisted to fit the political agenda.

This is why America is in the poor moral state that it finds itself today. And everyone in America ends up paying financially for broken families, crime, gay diseases, energy shortages, sky-high taxes and other expenses that society incurs as churches moves away from religious piety and morality and toward liberal secular humanism in which people are instructed how to think about political, social and economic issues, and that “freedom” means freedom to do whatever you want.

This also is a great crisis in Europe where church attendance and religious study are dropping into the single digits percentage-wise. Because in Europe we know that more than 100 million people died in the 20th century alone in wars and genocide sparked by Hitler and Stalin, both of whom were committed anti-Christian atheists.

Cuba News Network (CNN) Notes Anniversary: The American cable news network CNN has taken note of the 55th anniversary of Revolution Day in the police state of Cuba, the day when Castro and his revolutionaries first attacked the Cuban establishment in 1953. A total of 160 journalists from around the world will be on hand to mark the day, noted CNN.

CNN reports that the people of Cuba still cannot buy or sell cars or houses, but some can own cell phones. CNN also reported that Raul Castro, brother of Fidel Castro, who now runs Cuba, will make a speech that will be "shorter" than Castro's usual speeches.

Ever notice how CNN is always there to mark every event in Cuba – Castro’s birthday, May Day, Revolution Day, fake elections etc.? Meanwhile tens of thousand of lefty vacationers from all over the world visit Cuba every year in order to intentionally support the police state when they easily could go elsewhere.

At the same time, CNN and the worldwide left paint American conservatives as evil.  

It is astonishing to watch the worldwide media acting as lapdogs for terror states like Cuba. Hollywood too. These people literally hate freedom. They believe that the world is better as a feudal state where the leftist elite (rich liberals, socialist politicians, journalists, Hollywood actors and producers, college professors, union members, government functionaries etc.) have every material luxury, while everyone else is an impoverished serf. This is exactly what happens under communism and America’s leftists are jealous.

More (Good) (Bad) News on the Media: The New York Times reported that its advertising revenue fell a whopping 16.4% in June. Times officials are predicting a “tough” second half for 2008.

Isn’t it wonderful to see the Times suffering after the policies they advocate have caused Americans to pay higher taxes, lose their jobs and suffer food and energy shortages?

You wonder if the hallowed Times will lay off workers or give them food, clothing and shelter like compassionate liberals should. Doubt it.

There are positive elements to this economic slowdown. If the Times goes down, it will be good for America.

Enviros Going After Bottled Water: Environmentalists across America are now seeing bottled water as an ecological nightmare and a sign of conspicuous consumption. Many cities are banning bottled water on their public premises and at events like news conferences.

While physicians are claiming that bottled water is a perfectly good drink, environmentalists are concerned over the effect of all those thrown-away plastic bottles. Beverage Marketing Corporation reports that Americans consumed 8.8 billion gallons of bottled water in 2007, an average of 167 half-liter bottles for every American, or more than 50 billon bottles. And 80% of those bottles are not recycled, but end up in landfills.

The Pacific Institute said that bottle production alone required 17 million barrels of oil in 2006 in addition to the fuel needed to transport the bottled water from its source to the consumer. Tap water uses zero bottles and zero transport fuel.

And who is it that started the bottled-water craze in the first place? Well it sure wasn’t us redneck Republicans out in Hayseed Village. It is a trend that started in the cities, you know, where all the epicurean liberals drink white wine when they aren’t drinking bottled water. No, those libs didn’t want to dirty their precious palates with city water. They were too good for that.

Now the anti-bottled-water enviros are teaming up with other socialists to urge people to drink from the tap and to “promote, protect and ensure public funding for public water systems by getting people to choose tap water over bottled water,” says one group. Lefty actor Martin Sheen suddenly is acting as Mr. Tap Water after all his Hollywood friends helped to glamorize bottled water over the last 20 years.

Note the quote though… “to promote, protect and ensure public funding for public water systems…”

That is code language for 'ensuring even more money for the government to do the job that already costs three times more than it should in the first place'.

Liberals always use this tactic, taking any campaign that ostensibly is for the public good and then throwing in suggestions of a tax increase or government spending hike. It’s in their DNA.

Shepherd Regrets Abortions: Sherri Shepherd, co-host of the female gab-fest TV show The View, told a Christian magazine that at one point in her life she was “sleeping with a lot of guys and had more abortions that I would like to count.”

Her sister was a drug addict at the time. “I felt if someone killed me, it wouldn’t even make a difference.”

She converted to Christianity and lives a life of faith, but said she cannot talk about her faith on the View TV show.

Isn’t it sad that we live in a broken nation where people are hurting, while those who get saved cannot even talk about it because they are saved by God? If she were saved by playing video games or going to the movies, they certainly would discuss it openly.

America needs to be saved in many ways. And America needs to talk about how to go about it in a genuine fashion.

NY Lawyer Suing Delta: Thomas Mullaney is suing Delta Air Lines for $5 million claiming that he was stranded in Paris by Delta incompetence during a French airport workers’ strike.

Mullaney claims among other things that Delta refused to let him re-book his flight by phone, but insisted he go to the airport.

Notice that this lawyer, probably a New York City liberal, never mentions that the leftist labor unions in France are to blame for this. These Euro unions strike constantly and leave European nations in a lurch time after time. But don’t expect a New York lawyer to see the unions for the pain they inflict on France and would inflict on America if they had the power. He sees only dollar signs for himself.

More Violence Inspired by Hollywood: Eric Tavulares was a fan of the movie Natural Born Killers, the 1994 Oliver Stone film starring Woody Harrelson. He had been watching the movie Friday July 18 when he shut the movie off, went to bed with his girlfriend, awoke a short while later and strangled to death his childhood sweetheart Lauren Aljubouri.

Tavulares told police that he had watched Natural Born Killers 10 or 20 times. Regarding the killing, police said that Tavulares "stated he does not exactly recall what happened next, but something caused him to switch mentally and he rolled over on Lauren Aljubouri and he began strangling her.”

Ms. Aljubouri was a high-school honor student. “She was a wonderful girl, rather quiet, but a very dependable, hard worker,” said the owner of the restaurant where she had worked.

Natural Born Killers also was the film that inspired the mass murderers at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

NBK is yet another product of  ‘anti-war’ and ‘pacifist’ Hollywood. In the film, the murder spree of two lovers becomes an event of fascination in the media.

Note that the movie elevates two things: Murder and the media. This is Hollywood narcissism and Hollywood’s embrace of violence for profit, all in one neat package.

It should be obvious to any rational observer that Hollywood is a place of decadence and violence, that it promotes hatred and anger, that it influences Americans toward rage and murder. Just look at all the real-life drug addiction, alcoholism, anger, divorce, murder (Robert Blake, OJ etc.) and other social pathologies out there. And Hollywood is 95% Democrat.

Hollywood is all smiles and glamour on the surface, but underneath, it is a dark, cutthroat place that exhibits the worst of human behaviors. This also reflects atheist socialism as well; sunny on the outside for the world to see, but God-less and dark inside.

Yet the liberals who control Hollywood tell us that George Bush and the Iraq war are the sources of violence. Yet the Iraq war has been fought to stop the wars and the violence and the mass murder of Saddam Hussein. No wonder Hollywood opposes it. They admire and respect people like Hussein (and Castro) who had dictatorial power over his people like all liberals wish they had. Personas like Hussein play a central role in many of their movies.

The Democrat party and its ideology reflect violence in its many forms; media violence, abortion, defense of criminals, defense of terrorists, anger between the sexes, family breakdown, the chronic violence of the inner cities which are controlled by Democrats. Hollywood violence is the key factor in making our nation an angry place because hundreds of millions of Americans are exposed to violence through movies, TV, rock music etc.

So Ms. Aljubouri, a good, productive and intelligent young woman is dead because her boyfriend was driven mad (“something caused him to switch mentally”) by a Hollywood movie. The “something” was a carefully crafted media production by leftist Oliver Stone. It was intended to do exactly what it did - to influence its viewers to “switch mentally”, just as totalitarian propaganda is intended to make people do evil things subliminally, without even knowing what is happening.

This should be expected. Socialism is a system in which productive people are marginalized in favor of violent and mediocre people like Oliver Stone and the rest of Tinseltown, all for the goal of money. That is why Democrats do not want their public education system to enlighten people, but instead to give them nothing to think about.

“I can’t believe it. I did it,” Tavulares told the police when they arrived on the scene.

That may be true. But we know one thing for certain: Oliver Stone directed it.

Dirty, Sexy ABC: The ABC TV network will offer a series this Fall called Dirty Sexy Money. From the title and the trailers, the shows appears to be built around the cheapest exploits of greedy, venal, superficial, hyper-materialistic and sexual people.

At a time when Americans are having trouble paying for gasoline and food, and when the Democrats in our national political dialogue are roundly lambasting Bush and the Republican party for everything that is wrong, is it not unusual that Democrats in Hollywood are continuing to scrape the bottom of the barrel with shows like Dirty Sexy Money?

No, not unusual at all. Hollywood is full of bottom-of-the-barrel entertainment industry leftists. These people have no talent nor any sense of decorum, decency or propriety precisely because of who they are. They are cheap suits who are in love with money at any cost. They are the reason that so many people in our culture is sliding down into frivolity and irrelevance. These are the Hollywood honchos who act as if they are better and smarter than the rest of us, as if they and their friends in the universities know what is best for society, all built around the sexual and material permissiveness of socialism.

Don’t be fooled. These people are less important to our society than a small-town welder or insurance agent or waitress. They are undermining our society at every turn because there is nothing coming out of them that is worthy of the time of the good people of America. They are self-loathing socialists, and union activists to boot, who should have stayed on strike when they went out last year.

Starbucks Contracting: The Starbucks Corp. coffee chain will close 600 of its US stores to counter a difficult economic environment. 7 of the stores are in the Seattle area of Washington state where Starbucks was born.  California will lose 88 stores, and Florida 59, while 9 stores will be closed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The closings contrast with the aggressive expansion of Starbucks over the last decade. Starbucks' woes have come about as consumers have been less willing to spend money on pricey coffee, up to $4 and up for specialty drinks.

Starbucks is one of the elite service industry upstarts that is serving America little as our manufacturing base declines. In a Spring 2007 Public Square editorial called The Whole World in a Cup of Starbucks!, Nikitas3.com wrote about a C-Span interview with Starbucks ultra-liberal chairman Howard Schultz:

 

For instance, when Schultz stated in a recent C-Span interview that his company is expanding into China where there are “250 million people who can now afford Starbucks” or that Starbucks patronage in America requires “disposable income”, alarm bells should have sounded all across the fruited plain. And when he re-states his shopworn new-age philosophy that “we are not selling coffee really, we are creating an experience”, a sensible person would wish to jump up and shout: “Why don’t you just say ‘Starbucks sells huge amounts of overpriced coffee' and get it over with?”

With a small cuppa Starbucks selling for more than a big tube of toothpaste at Wal-Mart - a company at which Schultz took a mandatory and gratuitous swipe, criticizing it for doing to mom-and-pop retail stores precisely what Starbucks currently is doing to mom-and-pop coffee shops - you start to wonder from where his company, and from where the evolving Starbucks Economy, has emerged. Because Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, who actually manufactured hard goods like cars and steel, would positively cringe at the mumbo-jumbo that Cream-n-Sugar Schultz amazingly manages to expel in only a half-hour of air time (all that Nikitas3.com could bear to watch of an hour-long interview). Because rather than getting one’s hands dirty “creating” wealth, Starbucks is only a "service" to the economy, which stalwart Democrat party contributor Schultz actually admitted, but only in passing.

    Also:

Because card-carrying Democrat socialists like Schultz insist, and have been insisting for decades that America has run out of creativity; that the world’s energy is being depleted by the United States; that America is lazy; that all our ideas are tapped out; that we can no longer manufacture things here; that low wages abroad are sucking our economy dry; that nobody is interested in our technologies; that corporations are outsourcing our jobs; that the world is set against us; that our era is over. And to some extent, this has come to pass, but for the opposite reasons that people like Schultz apparently think. For instance, he says that “angst and concern over US foreign policy” is making American companies unpalatable to people abroad, and that only his enlightened vision (“local partners (in overseas markets) insulate us (Starbucks) from being a totally American company”) is making Starbucks acceptable to the global economy and to the worldwide dilettantes willing to dish out $6 for a venti vanilla latte.

No, here’s the real rub: The actual reason for America’s decline in “creating wealth” through mining, manufacturing, agriculture and energy production comes from Coffeepot Schultz’s own ideology – unions (liberals) have driven labor costs out of sight and destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth and millions of jobs; environmentalists (liberals) are blocking production of our domestic natural resources; colleges and universities (controlled by liberals) are charging so much tuition that many people can’t afford to be educated any more; ruthless taxation and regulation (by big-government liberals) are thwarting America’s economic growth daily; while our public school system (a monopoly operated by leftist teacher unions) is failing to educate  tens of millions of our children in even the most basic way, preventing them from becoming more productive and more wealthy citizens.  No, we don’t create enough wealth anymore, Schultz and company say. But look! Over the horizon! Galloping to the rescue! The $5 cup of Starbucks!

 

Continuing:

 

In his dash for worldwide cash, Schultz is targeting China. With 500 shops already operating in an expanding manufacturing (wealth-creating) economy in dire need of pricey perk, the sky seems to be the limit. Unfortunately Schultz found something utterly incomprehensible in Mao Tse Tung’s miserable little dystopian legacy. “Nothing is what it appears to be” in China, the Distinguished Professor opined, as if it were a big surprise. To which we republican hayseeds respond: “Hey Groucho, it’s called marxism!” But no, Schultz goes on to blithely praise the eager spirit he’s unleashed in the world’s #1 polluter and oppressor. By offering stock options to his Starbucks employees, he said that the Chinese especially have embraced his company as an engine of caffeinated prosperity, noting that communist China’s one-child policy (requiring forced abortions for any additional child) has left most “only child” Chinese unable to afford to support two aging parents. But rather than criticizing the evil of this leftist social-engineering abortion nightmare, Schultz comes to the rescue with a good cup of exorbitant espresso.

Yes Starbucks is redefining arm-and-a-leg arabica as equally important to the fulfilled life as, say, computers, cars, carrots or Christ. But in fact coffee at Starbucks is as crucial to most of the world’s citizens as dinner in an upscale restaurant; it is based on disposable income, and thus is hardly a necessary staple. Yet at the same time Schultz manages to portray his effete empire as a worldwide rampart for mass socialist revolution in some of the most bizarre ways. For instance, his company only buys product from “coffee-growing people who have not been (traditionally) taken care of.” About which rhetoric he says governments have been “puzzled”.

 

No, Mr. Schultz, there are us small-town hayseeds in America who still believe that we should be left alone by our government to start businesses to provide products for the common good and wealth for ourselves. We know that you would look down your nose at us, but we don't care.

 Schultz’s ideology runs afoul of our desires to build a better nation, insisting only that he, Schultz, should allow an empire to float on a cloud of Arabica beans.

No, Mr. Schulz, your empire is as disposable as a paper towel. Apparently the public is deciding the same thing.

Another Baggy Pants Case: The south Chicago suburb of Lynwood has passed an ordinance fining $25 to wearers of baggy pants who expose more than 3 inches of their underwear in public.

Lynwood mayor Eugene Williams said that the young men loitering around the town in such dress are discouraging commerce

The American Civil Liberties Union will challenge the ordinance, saying it targets young black males.

Since the case involves community standards of decency set by the majority, the ACLU will instead turn it into a case about personal freedom. This is a critical distinction. ACLU is a far-left lobbying group that seeks to undermine any notion of individual judgment in favor of what they call the freedom to do whatever one wishes.

But freedom does not mean freedom to do whatever you wish. Freedom has boundaries which may and must be set by the majority. One is not free to shout "Fire! in a crowded theater under freedom of speech, for instance. ACLU would argue otherwise for one reason only: To undermine the social order.

Liberals are seeking to cause chaos in our society by arguing that freedom has no discernible boundaries. They know that this is not true, but this is their position in order to challenge the very basis of our freedom and to corrupt it.

Without responsibilities and limits, freedom is meaningless. And the will of majority is critical in a free society. While the rights of the minority are always to be protected under law - one of the hallmarks of a truly free society - that does not mean that there is no right to set standards that may impinge on such fungible definitions such as appearance and decency.

Gore off His Rocker... Again: Al Gore wants America to  produce all of its electricity from renewable sources within 10 years. “I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that’s emerging now,” Gore said. “A political promise to do something in 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows its meaningless.”

'Green Al' Gore, whose measured home energy consumption was 20 times the average household’s in 2007 and actually increased after he installed “energy saving” devices like solar panels, is pushing the most radical goals ever. There is no way we could convert our energy supply to “green” in 10 years even if "green" worked, which it doesn't.

We could produce lots of energy very efficiently with new nuclear power plants, yet when we promote ideas like nuclear, Gore objects. That is because Gore does not care about efficiency or reality, but only about his own agenda in which he and his rich friends use as much energy as they want, while everyone else does with less.

Seattle Toilet Debacle Ending: Since 2004, the city of Seattle has spent more than $5 million on five high-tech, self-cleaning toilets that were placed on city streets. The city now hopes to sell the toilets on Ebay after they got trashed out by homeless and drug abusers.

The city council has directed the city to cancel its toilet contract ASAP.

Any rational person could have told the airheads in Seattle that those toilets were A) obviously way too expensive to start and that B) they’d get destroyed since they were placed in some homeless areas. But don’t try to give the urban idealists of America any common sense.

Imagine that… $1 million per toilet! If they lent $5 million to hard-working Americans to build homes, they would get their money back with interest. But don’t expect these urban socialists to get that point.

This is another boondoggle that will be charged, along with all of their other wacky ideas, to the Seattle taxpayer, those urban liberal zealots who dream up ideas like $1 million toilets in the first place. So let 'em pay it.

How About a World Funeral?: Although she is alive and well, plans are being made that Lady Margaret Thatcher be given an official state funeral when she reaches the end of her days on earth.

She would be the first British Prime Minister since Churchill to be given such honors.

The only fear is that there may not be enough troops to line the route.

Lady Thatcher, 82, was a conservative Prime Minster from 1979 to 1990, winning three elections. Like her American friend and counterpart Ronald Reagan, she turned around a dispirited nation that was declining economically due to the socialistic nature of its nationalized industries and its all-powerful labor unions.

Together with Reagan and Pope John Paul II, the trio was credited with holding strong against the allegedly invincible Soviet Union, and causing its collapse through tough, coordinated policies that eventually caused the communist state to fall of its own dead weight.

…Lady Thatcher deserves a state funeral and more. Perhaps a world funeral!? She was a great leader, very tough and committed, known as The Iron Lady. But pleasant, high-spirited and decent too, like all conservatives. For those too young to have seen her in action, she was truly a monument to conservative principle and strength. Liberals hated her just as they hated Reagan because she proved how wrong the socialist left is on every issue.

And naturally, as a conservative, she was the first woman Prime Minister of England.

The idea that there won’t be enough troops to line the funeral route is poppycock. That is just a fabrication from the ‘pacifist’ lefties who object to British participation in Iraq and Afghanistan. That participation is part of the return that Britain feels she owes America for our unflinching aid in Britain’s ‘Finest Hour’ when she was under assault from Hitler’s Third Reich.

Most of Europe has not even bothered to say ‘Thank you’ to America for all that. Or repaid us any of the billions we invested there during and after the war, trillions in today’s money

Roy Huffington’s Legacy: Roy Huffington, a Houston, Texas  oilman who helped the nation of Indonesia to develop its oil and natural gas deposits, has died at 90.

He was a field geologist for Humble Oil Co., and in 1956 started his own exploration firm called Huffco. He worked in Texas and Louisiana until 1968 when he made an exploration deal with the Indonesian government which made him wealthy by offering him a share of the profits.

Huffington sold his company for $600 million when President George HW Bush appointed him ambassador to Austria in 1990. He served in that post until 1993.

He established the Huffington Center on Aging at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. His Huffington Foundation donated millions to Houston charities. He also served 7 years as chairman of the Asia Society, which is based in New York City.

….Why would Nikitas3.com discuss this obituary?

Simple. Because it ties into a repeated theme of this website, and that is how inherited wealth leads people into socialism.

Huffington’s son Michael, born in 1947, worked in his father’s firm. In 1986 he married Arianna Stassinopoulos, a Greek émigré, known today as far-left commentator Arianna Huffington of huffingtonpost.com

The Huffingtons moved to California where Michael worked as a film producer. In 1992, he was elected as a Republican to the US Congress from California’s 22nd district for one term (1993-95). He then ran unsuccessfully in 1994 for US Senate, spending $28 million of his own money, a record at the time.

Michael Huffington divorced Arianna in 1997, and in 1998 admitted that he was bisexual. He since has been active in homosexual groups including the Log Cabin Republicans.

So here is how it works. Father Roy Huffington makes millions doing the hard, dirty and risky work of getting oil out of the ground. His son has an easy life, gets married, gets divorced, admits he's bisexual. Then the woman he married turns into a hard-left socialist activist using money she got from the Huffington family's capitalist fortune.

Doesn't all of this just figure perfectly into the left-wing strategy?

From John Kerry to Ted Kennedy to many, many inheritors of wealth, they take the capitalist money and become socialists. It is an easy thing to do – to advocate giveaway socialism -- because they did not work hard to earn any of the money in the first place.

This is a continuing story in our culture. Anyone with wealth is put upon by leftists to use their money and influence in favor of socialism. Many are pulled into this mindset, and this is one of the primary ways that socialism expands its wealth and its influence.

Tony Snow Dies at 53: Former Bush 43 White House press secretary Tony Snow, who wrote speeches for Bush 41 and also became a conservative radio talk-show host and a Fox News TV commentator, died July 12 of cancer.

Snow had battled colon cancer for many years.

Although reliably conservative, Snow once called President Bush “something of an embarrassment”. But in general, he was on the ‘right’ side of the issues, even serving as a fill-in host on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program.

All over Washington, politicians and commentators on both sides of the aisle recalled Snow with emotion.

Snow was born in Berea, Kentucky and was raised in Cincinnati. He also was an accomplished musician. He leaves behind a wife and 3 children.

…Tony Snow was known as an all-round good guy. Everybody loved Tony, who was always upbeat and smiling. To publicly watch his health decline was sad. He will be missed.

Nebraska Town Wants Illegals Kept Out: The town of Fremont, Nebraska is proposing a law to require all persons renting property within the town to present proof of their legal right to live in the United States.

The ‘occupancy license’ would cost $5 and would need to be renewed each time a renter moves. Fines for violators would range up to $500.

The Nebraska Mexican-American Commission said the ordinance is illegal and decried recent racial and anti-immigrant remarks at a Fremont council meeting.

Said councilman Bob Warner of complaints about the proposed law: “I don’t know why everybody is making a mountain out of something that is very simple.”

…Mr. Warner actually knows well what is happening. When any person tries to enforce laws to maintain our national, state and local sovereignty from foreigners seeking to settle illegally in our midst, the Democrat party and its allies seek to paint that person in a bad light. This is the pattern among liberals – to demonize those with whom they disagree.

This is a scripted and coordinated action to minimize opponents of open borders.

And while immigration is part of American history and always will be, illegal immigration in America is out of control. Citizens need to fight back and to return our immigration system to order instead of the chaos that reigns today. We must seal our borders and then begin person by person to determine who will become part of our society.

Spears Gives Birth: 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, the younger sister of troubled Hollywood celebrity Britney Spears, gave birth to a daughter Maddie June 19. The delivery was called “perfect” and Spears has vowed to become a Southern "soccer mom” to the child.

Spears announced her pregnancy when she was only 16 years old and single, and living in Los Angeles. She was star of a Nickelodeon television series called Zoey 101 which is popular with children. The announcement caused concern and outrage among those who see such events as signals of moral decline.

Spears is planning to marry the child’s father, Casey Aldridge, and to live in Louisiana where she is from and where “the focus is on family”.

…This is glass-half-full story. After years of drama over her disturbed sister Britney, Jamie Lynn appears to be giving a smooth start to her child’s life.

Throughout time, women have delivered children at young ages. Today we see pregnancy at age 16 to be abnormal. That Spears gave birth at such a young age today is unusual, and that she was single when she was impregnated was not a good sign.

But that Spears has returned to her Southern home and loves her child, that she is planning to marry the child’s father, and that she is thrilled with her daughter and already is seeing a positive life ahead all is uplifting. That Spears did not rush off to the abortionist, and that she is declining to live in some chaotic and adversarial post-modernist relationship with the child’s father all can be seen as the positive side of this story.

“I would love being the soccer mom” said Jamie Lynn. “They don’t have soccer down here, but I would love being the softball mom driving the kids around.”

Good for you Jamie Lynn. God bless you all.

Mustard Belt Cliffhanger to Chestnut: San Jose, California’s Joey Chestnut retained the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog-Eating contest Mustard Belt July 4 at Coney Island, New York, downing 59 dogs in 10 minutes -- the same as his only serious competitor -- and then winning a nail-biter 5-dog eat-off.

In the competition in which “the passions are raw, but the hot dogs are cooked”, Chestnut defeated rival Takeru Kobyashi of Japan who, for the second year in a row, was playing hurt with a form of jaw arthritis developed after years of competitive eating.

Kobayashi held the Nathan’s title from 2001 through 2006, and lost it to Chestnut in a stunning upset July 4, 2007 when Chestnut consumed 66 dogs in 12 minutes to Kobayashi’s 63.

The time frame was shifted to 10 minutes to conform to historical standards for the event.

Other competitors included jalapeno-eating champ Eric 'The Red' Denmark, Fried-Clam Eating Champ of the World 'Pretty Boy' Pete Davekos of Boston, Allen 'The Shredder' Goldstein, perennial also-ran Crazy Legs Conti, and Sonya 'The Black Widow' Thomas, who once consumed 10% of her body weight in cheesecake.

But the main event focused on the Siegfried and Roy of competitive eating, Chestnut and Kobayashi. As the digital countdown clock at the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, NY ticked down to zero from the days, hours, minutes and seconds since the end of the 2007 competition, the air was thick with anticipation because Kobayashi’s jaw injury was know to be worsening as “the two best eaters of all time” prepared to face off.

Chestnut dominated the first half. By rules sanctioned by the organization called Major League Eating, competitors may eat only hot dogs in bun (HDBs, no dressings) and are allowed water to drink or to soak the dogs and bread in. It was 34 to 31 in favor of Chestnut at the halfway point. But by 7.5 minutes, it was 49 to 48 Kobayashi.

With one minute to go, Kobayashi led 55 to 53, so dauntless Chestnut downshifted and began a furious game of ketchup… or rather, catch up -- employing his famous “chipmunking” chewing technique, and jumping up and down to settle the food in his stomach.

Astonishingly, at the 10-minute mark, both men had consumed 59 dogs, the first tie ever and the most dramatic outcome for the prestigious event, leading to wild cheers and even stunned silence from the at-times hysterical crowd.

The judges called a 5 dog eat-off, and Chestnut emerged the winner of the 2008 Mustard Belt.

“I think I lost because I was not fast enough in the dog-off,” said Kobayashi through a translator.

Said Chestnut of his victory: “He wanted it, but I needed it.”

...God Speed, Mr. Chestnut.

McCain Heckled: In a speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Senator John McCain was heckled by anti-war activists. “We want a peace candidate!” shouted one. “Your silence is consent to war crimes!” shouted two others.

…Have you ever noticed that only Republicans and conservatives get heckled? The reason: Conservatives are too busy  building the nation to go to speeches for the sole purpose of heckling.

In fact, over the last 30 years, Nikitas3.com remembers countless incidents of conservatives being disrupted, without apology ever, but only one single incident when a liberal was not even heckled, but only persistently questioned, and which garnered a slobbering apology, all of which was summarized in News in Review in the Winter of 2008:

 

Don’t Taze Me Bro!: A University of Florida student who was shocked by police with a Taser gun at a political speech has apologized to the university, its president and campus police. He was charged by the cops after persistently questioning Democrat Senator John Kerry.

Andrew Meyer, 21, famously hollered “Don't Tase me, bro!” as he scuffled with officers during the campus speech last month. In his apology, he wrote:

“I made the decision to supersede the rules, and for that I apologize. I should have acted calmer and obeyed the directives of the officers. If I had, none of the subsequent issues would ever have arisen.”

…Here’s the nonsense about this incident. If Meyer had “persistently questioned” a Republican like Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney, the police never would have intervened. He would have been joined by a dozen other student hecklers in a well-planned interruption.

And if the cops Tasered him in response, Meyer, with the help of the ACLU, would have sued the police, the Republican official and the Republican party, while the staff at the university would have rallied around  him.

But since he was challenging a liberal like Kerry, he immediately groveled and took the blame. This is to be expected. University police had recommended that he be charged with resisting arrest with violence, a felony, and with a misdemeanor for interfering with school functions. 

Officers rushed Meyer after his questioning of Kerry over his activities at Yale University. Kerry easily could have ordered the police to stop the assault, but did not, showing that Kerry does not tolerate the “free speech” that liberals claim to embrace.

“I’m so sorry that I lost my control in that auditorium,” Meyer wrote in his apology. “I went there to ask an important question. The question of voter disenfranchisement in America cuts to the heart of our democracy, and my failure to act calmly resulted in this important town forum ending without the discourse intended. For that, I am truly sorry.”

Here is how the letter would have read if Meyer had heckled Bush and had been Tasered:

“Bush is a war criminal and I am proud to have lost control in that auditorium. It is an example of the police state in America that I suffered a Taser electrocution for expressing my free-speech rights in persistently questioning our president. Voter disenfranchisement is a Republican trick. I plan to sue everybody in sight, including Bush. For that I am truly joyful.”

Meyer is a communication major. Typical lefty/liberal course of study.

 

Spain Calling for “Rights” for Apes: The Spanish parliament’s enviro committee has approved resolutions under which Spain would recognize the “rights” of apes to life and freedom.

This is the first time that any national body has called for such rights for animals. The resolutions are expected to easily become law.

The Great Apes project was established in 1993 by two Euro philosophers who believed that “non-human hominids” like chimpanzees and gorillas should have human-like rights. The move will eventually bar such animals from participating in zoos, circuses, television commercials and films.

Said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, “This a historic day in the stuggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades…”

…Uh, note the words, friends!

“Evolutionary comrades” sounds a lot like “revolutionary comrades” does it not? Are not these words associated with totalitarian communism?

And that is exactly what this type of legislation is leading to slowly but surely. Rather than simply outlaw bad treatment of animals (which is a good idea), these leftists are taking this idea further and further, ultimately to give human status to animals.

This move dovetails with Spain’s legalization of gay marriage and increasing marginalization of the Catholic Church. This all is part of the 'sophisticated' Euro outlook that we are supposed to emulate. Of course Europe gave us communism, fascism and two brutal world wars in the 20th century alone. Is there a connection?

Obviously.

And all this is part of the ongoing worldwide socialist effort to degrade humans and to make humans think of themselves as no better than animals. The ultimate goal is to allow totalitarians and dictators to eventually rule over the debased people. It all is incremental in nature, step by step, year by year.

This comes out of self-hating socialism. Socialism is based on self-doubt leading to self-hatred. That is why big government appeals to people who believe in socialism. Because they are taught first to doubt their abilities, and then are taught to hate themselves and to give their lives away.

Here is an excerpt from the News In Review section of Nikitas3.com from Spring 2008 which warned of this animal-rights trend in another European case:

 

Euro Demanding ‘Person’ Classification for Chimpanzee: A British animal-rights activist is seeking to have an Austrian chimpanzee declared a ‘person’ so that she can be appointed the animal’s guardian if its animal sanctuary is forced to close.

Paula Stibbe is taking her case before the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Human Rights. Under Austrian law, only humans can have guardians.

Stibbe said she is not trying to get the chimpanzee declared a human, only a ‘person’.

“Everybody who knows him (the chimpanzee) personally will see him as a person,” said Stibbe

Austria’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling rejecting other activists' wish to have a guardian appointed for the chimpanzee.

…It’s time to nip this in the bud. This is just another case of extremist animal-rights activists, who reside way over on the wacky left end of the political spectrum, to eventually give ‘human’ status to animals (first it's a 'person' and the next step will be to call it a 'human'). This is part of the ongoing degradation of humans and their achievements that always is at the heart of socialism (theory of evolution, easy access to abortion, defense of murderers, destruction of the family etc.) because animal-rights activists are, like all socialists, self-loathing and angry at mankind.

What this will lead to down the road is what all socialist theory leads to: Lawsuits and other legal actions on behalf of animals in order to get wealth into the hands of animal-rights activists and their friends.

It also is intended to get humans to think of themselves as the equal of animals so that humans can join in the self-loathing of the animal-rights crowd.

 

By the way, a National Geographic channel program about the killing of gorillas in Africa is entitled... The Gorilla Murders... (Note - "murders" refers to people, "killing" refers to animals)

'Noose' Professor Axed: A black female professor at  Columbia University who claimed in the Fall of 2007 that she found a hangman’s noose on her office doorknob is being fired for plagiarism.

Madonna Constantine of the Columbia Teachers College was being investigated on the plagiarism charges when she made the claim that the noose, a symbol of racial hatred, had been draped on the doorknob of her office.

The noose incident still is being investigated by police and by a grand jury. Constantine has vowed to sue for defamation over her firing.

“As one of only two tenured black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted,” she said of the two dozen charges of plagiarism from the work of a former professor and two graduate students.

…Nikitas3.com raised the issue of phony race instigation in this News in Review column last winter:

 

Let’s Look Closer at This Case (and others like it): A black Baltimore firefighter, who reported finding a knotted rope along with a threatening message with a drawing of a noose on it, actually placed the items himself.

The firefighter, who admitted the hoax, was suspended and may face internal punishment, but will not face criminal charges.

Donald Maynard, a firefighter and paramedic apprentice, sparked a federal investigation of possible civil rights violations. This followed a string of incidents harmful to the reputation of the Baltimore Fire Department, including the finding that five black firefighters had used a previous exam to study for a promotion exam, which is against department rules. The exam scandal sparked Maynard's actions.

Maynard could be fired.

…It is highly noteworthy that federal civil rights charges will not be incurred, because this case was as much a rights violation as any incident of its type. Just because Maynard is black and confessed to the hoax does not alter the seriousness of the charge. He should be held to the same account as anyone else who sets off a major scandal like this. But the fact is that he is a minority and a government employee, and this shields him in the eyes of the liberal lawyers who otherwise would be pursuing a civil rights case like this. It should not. We all should be held equal under the law.

 The FBI should be pursuing more incidents like this one, like the case of the black Columbia University professor who found a noose hanging on her doorknob. Because we know that liberals are by nature provocateurs, and it probably could be proven that some of these incidents in fact have been staged in order to create publicity and headlines for certain agitators like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and to generate racial anger against targeted groups, primarily whites.

 

Nikitas3.com was not even aware that Constantine was under investigation for plagiarism when that column was written. It just is my nature to suspect people like the radicals at New York City-based Columbia University to instigate such a stunt for their own benefit.

Constantine is a professor of psychology and education with a focus on racial issues. If this isn’t the recipe for a far-left curriculum then it is hard to know what is.

What’s Going on in Gloucester?: Eighteen girls at a Gloucester, Massachusetts high school are pregnant in what has been described as a “pact” among the girls to get pregnant, give birth and raise their children at the same time.

The situation was uncovered when the girls made repeated trips to the school’s 'clinic' for pregnancy tests. One of the males responsible for impregnating some of the girls is being described as a 24-year-old homeless male.

This mini-baby-boom is challenging the city of 30,000 with the issue of possibly providing easier access to birth control to high school students, something that this largely Catholic city is said to be resisting.

A nurse at the school was reported to have administered 150 pregnancy tests to girls in May alone, leading the ‘clinic’ medical director to request that contraceptives be given out regardless of parental consent.

…This is more baloney from another liberal enclave. This is nothing more than an epidemic of stupidity that you get in an ultra-liberal state that promotes ultra-liberal ways of living. Who told kids that sexual pleasure is the highest yearning? The weak, narcissistic ‘hippies’ of the 1960s did, that’s who. You know, people like Bill Clinton.

Why does a high school have a ‘clinic’ in the first place that obviously is nothing more than a dispensary for birth control and abortion advice once the girls have become sexually active?

Because the liberals who control our public education system have established it, that is why.

Can't they teach morality and sexual abstinence?

No. Liberals believe that life should be lived only for the moment, and that whatever you can get in that moment -- money, pleasure, fun -- should be grabbed.

Why is the ‘clinic’ director now suggesting giving out contraceptives without parental consent?

Because this is the way that liberals incrementally, step by step, tear children away from their parents, from moral authority and from a productive, selfless life.  

Who is the role model for these girls?

How about Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney Spears’ pregnant-at-16 sister, who is part of the left-wing media culture?

Who has done everything they can to put the Ten Commandments and other Biblical calls to piety, morality and virtue out of our public lives and public schools?

Liberal atheists, that is who, by pleading ‘separation of church and state’. Ultra-liberal governor Deval Patrick even has refused federal funding for abstinence education in Massachusetts schools.

And this idea that the “Catholics” in Gloucester are averse to issuing birth control through the schools is baloney. Massachusetts’ Catholics are overwhelmingly Democrat, leftist, liberal, pro-gay, pro-Kennedy, pro-welfare, pro-birth-control and pro-abortion. Many of them are just plain ignorant. They continually, year after year, vote to entrench the anti-business/welfare/gay/environmentalist paradise called Massachusetts.

Meanwhile the leftists in our government for decades now have been assuring young girls that if they get pregnant, that the government will provide them with lifetime assistance through welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies, medical care etc., all paid for by the taxpayer.

So add up all this influence from the left and it is no surprise what is happening in Gloucester, and nationwide.

What will happen in the future?

These girls will grow into their 20s and 30s as wards of the state, and will become good Democrats because, after all, the Democrats gave them money to raise their children. This is a carefully crafted strategy, a vicious circle being perpetrated by the party of “compassion” that is designed to slowly disrupt the family, degrade our society and create a nation of rudderless, foolish, uneducated citizens who will remain dependent on the government forever, as will their children… and their children too. Just look at what Democrats have done to black America and you see the pattern.

Why Does Al Gore Use So Much Energy?: ‘Global warming’ alarmist Al Gore is using more electricity than ever, even after it was reported in 2007 that his Nashville mansion used 20 times as much electricity as the average house in America.

Gore’s energy use has soared 10% since then to 213,210 kilowatt hours of electricity for the year or roughly 17,700 KwH per month.

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

“Actions speak louder than words, and Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said. “Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”

...Gore has accumulated a $100 million fortune giving speeches about the dire consequences of ‘global warming’. When the dismal 2007 figures were announced for his home energy consumption, Gore went on a crash program to install solar panels, repair windows and ductwork and install a geothermal system. Yet Gore’s electricity consumption actually rose by 1,638 KwH per month.

(My mother’s Massachusetts home used 398 kilowatt hours in May 2008 with 3 people in the home. – Nikitas)

This is more of the same that you always can expect from super-rich Democrats and their ultra-wealthy allies in the enviro movement. They use more and more energy, while we are asked to use less and less. This is why Americans increasingly are refusing to believe Gore's 'climate change' armageddon, and why the US Senate voted down its recent 'global warming' bill after only 2 days of debate.

Interestingly, President George Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch is much more environmentally friendly than Gore’s house ever will be. Here is an excerpt from the Chicago Tribune in 2001 about Bush’s house:

The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude.

Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.

A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy.

This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford.

Moral of this story? Energy conservation apparently does not work. Al Gore proves it.

Looks Like Disney to Me: A 24-year old practitioner of the Sikh religion said that he was discriminated against by Disney World which he claims would not hire him because his turban and uncut hair were not in keeping with the park’s employee appearance code.

Disney has denied the charges, says it has had no dealings with the plaintiff, and says that it does not discriminate against anyone.

Sukhbir Channa, a University of South Florida student, is suing Disney World over a job that he said was denied during the 2006 Christmas season.

Channa is seeking $1 million in damages.

...This is a perfect example of how our 'discrimination culture', fueled by leftist lawyers, will stop at nothing to get money. And don’t think this is about anything besides getting money from a wealthy corporation.

Channa should recognize that America is a democratic nation where people have the right not only to succeed, but to fail as well. And American companies have the right to hire and fire whomever they like, within reason, over issues like appearance, behavior and other relevant criteria.

That Channa’s appearance was far outside the boundaries of the so-called “Disney look” should be a gentle reminder that freedom does not mean that you have the right to a job, or to do whatever  you wish. It means that you have the right to participate in a society that does its best to offer opportunity to all, but not one that holds a special place for every citizen in every case.

How About Insurance Policies?: Searchers in Alaska have intensified their work looking for two young females who disappeared during a backpacking trip in Denali National Park.

The women were last seen Thursday, June 12 and may have fallen victim to a roaring river that they needed to cross.

Ground crews have searched about 1% of the park so far.

…When people go hiking deep in the forests of America then get lost, the overburdened taxpayer usually picks up the tab to find them. We should make sure that people either buy search insurance, pay for the search out of their own pockets, or stay the heck out of the woods. Why should those who do not take such risks subsidize those who do?

Of course these wilderness hikers usually are environmentalists who think the whole world revolves around them and their ideas, and their needs and wants.

 Sex-Obsessed Democrats: In the heart of trendy, residential ultra-liberal Brooklyn, NY, a sex shop with... changing tables for babies… has opened. Called Babeland, it is part of a new generation of cleaner, more upscale shops, featuring sex toys and videos, that are opening in respectable neighborhoods.

In another development, a Democrat internet advertisement features a young couple that hooks up for sex. When the girl discovers that the guy is a Republican, she leaves in a huff.

Meanwhile, in Westmore, Vermont, town residents want to be able to use what has been known for years as a nude beach on Southwest Cover on Lake Willoughby. The beach is on public land, but the state has no specific law banning nudity.

"For me, it's about common public decency - getting families and kids and people and Westmore back down to what they all talk about as being the most beautiful place, and they don't go there any more," said Tony Strange, who is asking the town to ban the nude bathing.

The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation has decided not act on the beach’s status, which is now a town issue. The only issue the state has had is that swimmers have been clearing the beach of driftwood and vegetation, which is said to be hurting the beach's environment.

…These are examples of the petty, juvenile and narcissistic nature of liberal America. That sex shops should be upgraded to be located in middle-class neighborhoods is typical of where liberals are taking us, and of the way that leftists push their Clinton-like sexual obsessions onto everyone. And not everyone is so impressed. Some neighbors are upset with the shop. But liberal is liberal. When you live among them, you go down with them.

And like those generations of leftists who think that self-gratification and sexual pleasure are the first and only orders of business and that things like drilling oil wells and otherwise providing for our citizens' daily needs are the domain of the barbarians on the conservative right, the advertisement is another example of the difference between the people who really make the world go round... and those Democrats who are perennially busy thinking about their sex organs.

The case in ultra-liberal Vermont case shows how these screwball nudists think their habits are perfectly 'normal'. They are not. It is an obsessive leftist behavior that impinges on the rights of truly 'normal' people. Naturally the state is only concerned about the twigs and the bugs, not about narcissistic human behavior. Typical Vermont.

Hooray for Ireland!: Irish voters have rejected 53.4 to 46.6 the Lisbon Treaty which would have consolidated European Union power. Ireland's vote kills the treaty outright. The vote will dramatically slow the concept of a single government for all of Europe.

Irish voters feared the effects of a strong centralized government, particularly since Ireland has a small population, less than 1% of the European Union’s people.

The treaty had been designed to accommodate the addition of 12 new member states to the EU since 2004.

Ireland is the only nation to buck the EU, and for good reason. Ireland has instituted a policy of lower taxes and less regulation to stimulate business. The plan has been remarkably successful. Ireland has the most vibrant economy in Europe. The Irish fear the Big Brother European Union as a monstrous, overbearing entity that favors high taxes and big bureaucracy.

Tip o’ the Hat to Ireland for the vote! 

Pelosi and Her Penny: House Speaker and California Democrat Nancy Pelosi appeared on TV holding a penny between her fingers and saying that "drilling in the ANWR will save the American people one penny per gallon by 2030".

...In yet another Democrat attempt to stave off oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), Pelosi is using completely dishonest tactics, the kind that her allies in the enviro movement have trafficked in day in and day out for 40 years.

There is no way that anyone can honestly say what she is saying about gasoline prices; what prices will be by 2030; or what effect any particular oilfield will have on prices. This is akin to Al Gore predicting that ocean levels will rise 17 feet over the next 100 years simply to alarm people. (Note: Sea levels have risen not one single inch that anyone can determine since the 'global warming' myth was propounded more than ten years ago.)

That Pelosi would use such underhanded tactics is typical of the way that Democrats manipulate images and opinions strictly for political gain, appealing to the most ignorant among us. Then when rational people say, as this website repeatedly has said, that steady increases in worldwide oil supplies are needed to moderate or bring down prices, people like Pelosi offer a thousand irrational reasons to dispute it, only offering opinions that are in no way provable. (See the essay Enviros Use Old Energy Diversion Tactic in the Thinking Points section of Nikitas3.com for more.)

Hutton Says Men are ‘Sluts’: Fashion model Lauren Hutton publicly criticized the TV show Sex and the City, saying it creates stereotypes about single women.

During an appearance on  the Today show, she also said that she had never seen Sex and the City, but said that it promotes the idea that women should be sexually promiscuous.

Of the program, she said, "It's written by guys, who happen to be gay, who are sluts. That's what I think.

"Let's face it most men are sluts. That's what testosterone is supposed to do. As a hunter, if you stayed alive after 30, nature wanted your genes out there. Women were just trying to get the best sperm to make a masterpiece.

"You have a bunch of guys who are sluts, writing for women and telling them they are supposed to act like this."

…Obviously this is another reason that airhead models should be seen and not heard. Actually Hutton was right about Sex and the City, and its portrayal of single women. But her savaging of "men" is typical of the attitude coming out New York and Hollywood. The reasons are several. First, the leftist elites in these place are feminized males and want for real "men" to be marginalized. It comes out of envy.

But more important, people like Hutton and others in the entertainment industry are unlikely to be acquainted with any real "men" anyway. Their world is populated by people who can at best be called "males".

Russian Blames Us: Russia’s president Dmitry Medvdev has blamed the United States in large part for the current worldwide economic slowdown. He called it “massive egoism”.

He added that Russia can play a role in finding a solution.

"An underestimation of risks by the largest financial companies together with the aggressive financial policy of the world's largest economy (the United States) led not only to corporate losses; unfortunately, the majority of people on the planet became poorer,'' said Medvedev.

Note to Medvdev: Russia’s dreary communist past, and the static leftist governments that exist in the world today are the main causes of economic malaise. Maybe Medvdev can look into his own history to see an example of a nation that, for 74 years under communism, was a massive drag on the world economy that impoverished and starved hundreds of million of people. And perhaps Medvdev can look at the role that state socialism is playing today in undermining prosperity from Europe to Canada, to extreme cases in North Korea and Zimbabwe.

The best way for the world to improve its economic outlook is to move to free-market economics, with low trade barriers and low taxes. That means allowing the free market to direct the exploitation of new energy supplies in the United State in order to address the world’s current energy imbalance. Lower energy prices will improve most other current economic problems.

Gays Provoke, Then Play Victim Card: Two lesbians were told at a Seattle Mariners baseball game that their kissing was inappropriate. An usher had received a complaint from a fan about the behavior.

The incident has drawn widespread attention from the Seattle media. Liberal Seattle is seen as a gay-friendly place.

Mariners management defended the action, saying that the couple was approached for “making out” and “groping” in the stands. It said that all couples are routinely asked to cease such behavior, whether gay or not.

Gay groups were outraged. “This is one of the challenges of being gay. Everyday things can become sources of trauma,” said Josh Friedes of Equal Rights for Washington.

…And gay behavior traumatizes other people too, Mr. Friedes, in case you did not know. By killing them with diseases that non-gay people have never heard of.

First, any “making out” should be stopped in a public place, no matter who is doing it. It is offensive to most other people.

And second, if homosexuals think that the American people somehow have learned to accept gay behavior, they are wrong. A clear majority of Americans are opposed to homosexuality, and particularly do not want their children exposed to it as they would be at a baseball game.

And many tens of millions more would oppose it if they knew the facts, like a few facts that are revealed in this brief excerpt from the Nikitas 3.com editorial The Ellen DeGeneres Show We'd Like to See:

 

Here are six excerpts from just one single source (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) from just one brief internet search on gay males and AIDS/HIV:

“The number of new syphilis infections in the United States rose last year for the first time in 11 years, with large increases occurring among men who have sex with men…”

“In the United States, HIV and AIDS have had a tremendous impact on MSM (men who have sex with men). Consider the facts:

“AIDS has been diagnosed for more than half a million MSM.”

“Over 300,000 MSM have died since the beginning of the epidemic.” (This translates mathematically into a proportional death rate of 30 million people in the general population. – Nikitas)

“MSM made up more than two-thirds (68%) of all men living with HIV in 2005.”

“In a large CDC study, conducted in sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics in five major cities, researchers found the rate of new HIV infections among MSM to be nine times higher than among women and heterosexual men.”

You can find volumes of this type of information if you look for it, which is exactly what you will have to do because the media are not reporting it. There are many, many facts and figures on homosexual promiscuity, risky sexual practices, multiple sexual partners, anonymous sex and other issues that can be found on the web for people who are interested. It is not a pretty picture.

(end of editorial excerpt)

Gays need to cease their confrontation tactics, and playing victim. If they continue to believe that everyone should accept their lifestyle, they are mistaken.

Terror Suspect Plays to American Liberals: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the 9/11 terrroist attacks that killed 2,973 Americans, has said that he wishes to become a martyr by being put to death.

“Yes, that is what I wish, to be a martyr for a long time,” he said.

He is being held in US detention at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and soon will be tried before an American military tribunal.

….Obviously this guy is playing straight to the American media. He knows that the whole Democrat party and its media allies believe that America itself is responsible for the 9/11 attacks, that terrorists have a legitimate grievance, that Guantanamo detention is illegal, and finally, that we never should impose the death penalty on anyone, including Islamic terrorists.

This whole military trial and the possibility of the death penalty is going to arouse the passions of the leftists and 9/11 conspiracy nuts. Mohammmed knows darned well that his plea to die and to become a martyr plays perfectly into the hands of those who wish to portray America as the guilty party. Which is what Mohammed himself believes.

What’s Wrong with these Stories?: Here are excerpts from random news stories after Barack Obama was calculated to have clinched the Democrat nomination for President:

From Yahoo.com: WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois sealed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation's first black president. A defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket.

From MSNBC: Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois claimed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, NBC News projected based on its tally of convention delegates.

By doing so, he shattered a barrier more than two centuries old to become the first black candidate ever nominated by a major political party for the nation’s highest office.

From The Politico.com: While the mantle of history settled on Obama, the first black man to be his party's nominee, drama continued to swirl around his primary opponent - who surprisingly hinted that she is interested in being his running mate. Clinton posted a convincing win in South Dakota, one of the party's final two contests. Obama won Montana.

From Kansascity.com: It was a historic step as Obama became the first black candidate to lead a major party ticket for president.

“You chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears, but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations,” Obama said at a rally in St. Paul. “Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”

From Seattlepi.com: ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois laid claim to the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, taking a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation's first black president. Sen. Hillary Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.

And on and on.

…What is wrong with these stories indicates what is wrong with the American media. They all contain a blatant lie. Barack Obama is not “black”. He is “mulatto”, which is defined in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as  1 : the first-generation offspring of a black person and a white person    2 : a person of mixed white and black ancestry

That these media and all others repeatedly refer to him as “black” is typically disingenuous. Since his parents were of two different races, he could just as easily could be called “white” as he can be called “black”. Why have no media stories referred to him as “white”?

If the media are going to start manipulating this basic fact now, imagine how bad it is going to get around election time.

Let the Rebuilding Begin: New Mexico Republican congressman Steve Pearce has defeated a more liberal and more visible Republican congresswoman, Heather Wilson, in a primary to determine who will run on the GOP ticket in the November election for the US Senate against Democrat Tom Udall.

Pearce and Udall will vie to fill the seat being vacated by the retiring Republican US Senator Pete Domenici.

After a hard-fought campaign, Pearce won by about one point.

Pearce is much more conservative than Wilson and was endorsed by the pro-growth Club for Growth, which bundled $275,000 for his campaign. Pearce has opposed tax increases and pork spending throughout his House career. Udall is a liberal who has received a zero rating from the Club for Growth.

…What this shows is that there are Republicans who are holding true to the idea that the best way to rebuild the GOP and take back the political initiative is to nominate solid conservatives, and to rebuild the party in the Ronald Reagan mold.

Middle-of-the-road Republicans who sound like Democrats increasingly cannot win against Democrats. So conservatives must appeal to the common-sense instincts of voters in advancing an agenda that addresses the big issues of the day like excessive taxation, pork barrel spending and Social Security reform, along with revamping our bloated public-education bureaucracy, getting tough on terrorists, and producing much more of our own energy.

Watch this race in November. It will be a bellwether about whether this country really wants the kind of “change” that Obama is supporting (bigger government, higher taxes), or whether Americans want real reform and genuine change.  

Senate Debating Destructive 'Global Warming' Legislation: The US Senate began debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008, which will institute a cap-and-trade system for energy emissions by private industry.

President Bush has vowed to veto the bill.

According to environmentalists who have crafted legislation like this worldwide, America is expected to cut its so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions (petroleum, coal and natural gas use) by as much as 80% below current levels by the year 2050.

…Obviously this legislation is reaching a critical point and thank God that President Bush is going to veto it. Because these absolutely irrational goals are intended to gut our use of fossil fuels. This is the goal of environmentalism, and the consequences be damned.

This legislation is an attempt by bureaucratic elites to control our entire energy supply, and through that, to control every person and industry in America, and finally the world.

Nikitas3.com has made many references to the outrageous claims of the ‘global warming/climate change’ alarmists. If this legislation ultimately is passed and signed into law, the American people will pay a huge price in a suffering economy.

If we do not stop it now, we will have to stop it further down the road after it has done much damage to our economy, just as we now have seen that enviros' decades-long obstruction of our energy supplies is causing all energy prices to rise, while the enviros’ idealist notion of ‘renewable’ ethanol fuel has driven food prices through the roof and proven itself unsustainable.

It is time to listen to rationality. The recent British election returned conservatives to power after the public had perceived the Labour party to be hostile through inordinate taxation, some of it already based on ‘global warming’ legislation. Because the entire ‘global warming/climate change’ theory is based on large tax increases on energy, and even further obstruction of oil/coal/natural gas supplies. The United States has plenty of oil, coal, natural gas and uranium left to fuel many centuries ahead. These alarmists are attempting to use junk science to set up a system where we cannot even use our own resources, and instead will live in a world of scarcity.

(In a parliamentary move, Senate Republicans on June 4 forced the reading of the entire bill aloud. It is 492 pages long and required 12 hours to read. It is a frightening document.)

Chavez Cracking Down in Venezuela: Dictator Hugo Chavez is tightening his grip on Venezuela by establishing four new spy agencies. The new setup is supposed to confront American attempts to intervene in Venezuela’s affairs.

Chavez often has said that the US is trying to overthrow him.  In 2006, he expelled one American military attache on suspicion of spying.

…And Chavez should be concerned about his future. The United States is trying to urge Venezuela away from a Cuba-like course, where freedom has disappeared for 50 years and appears nowhere on the horizon.

In a recent documentary on the History Channel about the Colombian drug wars, it was reported that rightist and leftist militias had fought each other for years in the 1960s and 1970s until the military stepped in. The rightists stopped fighting then and there, but typically the communists have continued on, as they have in many other nations including Nepal, Peru, Bolivia, Nicaragua etc.

There has been ample evidence that Chavez has been aiding the communists in Colombia and elsewhere in South America. And that is why Democrats in America have tried to sabotage the American/Colombian free trade agreement - because they are concerned that Colombia finally is wiping out the communists.

And that is why Americans like Joe Kennedy, son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, is accepting free heating oil from Chavez for distribution to the poor in Massachusetts, and is praising Chavez while criticizing American oil companies for not giving away free oil.

The article below appeared in the Thinking Points section of Nikitas3.com in the Winter of 2008. 

 

More Smoke and Mirrors from Another Kennedy: Joe Kennedy lives in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the son of US Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, and the nephew of Senator Edward Kennedy who has served Massachusetts in the United State Senate since 1962.

Joe Kennedy operates Citizens Energy Co., which provides low-cost or no-cost home-heating oil to low-income and poor people in Massachusetts, which is a good idea. America always has been a very charitable nation.

But the way that Joe Kennedy is running his company and the people he is praising give us insight into how liberals think and why we should be wary of what they say.

First, it is important to remember how much people like Joe Kennedy and his uncle Teddy rely on emotions to manipulate the public into believing what they say. The reason is simple: All of liberal socialism is based on the emotional appeal of ideas that don’t work in the real world.

For instance, it would appear that if you simply took all the wealth of a nation and re-distributed it through government policy among all the people, as in the communist Soviet Union, that nobody would be poor. But it has been proven through actual experience that this idea actually makes virtually everyone poor. It produces the opposite result of what is intended. So when Joe Kennedy talks about distributing home-heating oil to the poor, be wary.

First, neither Joe Kennedy, nor anyone in his family, nor anyone who even thinks like he does actually produces the heating oil. Liberals do not get their hands dirty doing things like drilling oil wells, transporting crude or refining it into heating oil. Liberals for the most part like to sit in government offices, print newspapers, teach at Harvard etc. In fact, every time an oil well is drilled, there is a liberal to complain about it in one way or another (the oil company is making too much money, the oil is destroying the environment etc.)

The oil that Joe Kennedy distributes to the poor in Massachusetts is produced by companies like ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and other large and small companies who, over the last century, have methodically developed the markets and the technologies that allow us to locate, drill for, extract, refine and distribute this wonderful product called oil in order to make life better for the average American.

Since Joe Kennedy does not actually produce any oil, he goes to the markets and buys leftover or surplus oil at discounted prices and then gives it to poor people or re-sells it, passing on the discount. He even asks oil companies to give him oil for free. And apparently, the big American oil companies have told Joe Kennedy that they will not give him any oil for free. So Joe Kennedy has run to the media to tell them how miserly the oil companies are, which the media have dutifully reported.

In the meantime, however, the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has given Kennedy large amounts of free oil, and so now Joe Kennedy is praising Chavez and is spreading anger at the American oil companies for not being as generous as Chavez.

On the emotional surface, Kennedy would seem to have a point. After all, ExxonMobil, for instance, has reported 2006 profits of almost $40 BILLION on sales of almost $340 BILLION worth of oil. And so the average person would say, “Heck, if they are making such huge profits, why can’t they give Joe Kennedy some free oil to give to the poor?”

Obviously, this is another emotional trap set by the liberals and amplified by the corporation-hating media (despite the fact that all of Big Media are themselves corporations). But a look at the reality of the situation will show how Joe Kennedy is manipulating us.

Companies like ExxonMobil are capitalist enterprises. Through many decades, they have built themselves up from small firms into big corporations in one way: By being successful in the marketplace, risking large amounts of capital, investing in good employees, investing in technology, making some profits for their shareholders, while wisely re-investing other of their profits back into more technology devoted to the exploration for and extraction of oil.

The market for oil has been somewhat volatile over the last 40 years. The market depends on supply and demand, refinery capacity and many other factors. Political unrest in an oil-producing nation (supply) can impact oil prices as much as cold weather in New England (demand). Oil is a global commodity at the mercy of global markets. Oil companies cannot make the price go up and down. Supplying nations like Saudi Arabia, however, can affect the price by pumping more oil, or withholding it from the market.

Companies like ExxonMobil have survived through good times and bad times. In the 1990s, when it was two separate companies (Exxon and Mobil) oil prices were very low (around $10 a barrel) because there was a large worldwide supply and relatively stagnant demand. Exxon and Mobil barely survived. And you never heard complaints from liberals like Joe or Ted Kennedy when oil prices were low and Exxon was having a hard time paying its bills and staying in business.

In 1997, Exxon and Mobil merged out of absolute economic necessity. And today, with oil prices running from $70 up to $100 a barrel, every barrel that ExxonMobil is extracting, transporting and refining is worth a lot more money than it was when oil was $10 a barrel back in the 1990s. So ExxonMobil ended up selling $340 billion worth of oil in 2006. If oil were selling at $10 a barrel, their 2006 total only would have been perhaps $50 billion worth of oil.

So ExxonMobil has survived several ups and downs, and now is making a handsome profit, primarily because worldwide demand for oil is increasing every day while environmentalists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- Joe Kennedy’s brother -- are restricting the oil supply through endless legal means like blocking oil extraction in Alaska and all over other parts of the United States. This is keeping prices high and allowing ExxonMobil to increase its profits.

ExxonMobil’s profits of $40 billion on sales of $340 billion is about an average percentage for corporate profitability. It is not an unusually large percentage of its overall revenue. Some companies and industries make more profit, and some make less as a percentage of sales.

And in the process of generating this revenue and profit, ExxonMobil is doing many positive things including:

*Providing the world with a steady supply of the critical energy resource that keeps our economies humming.

*Overcoming huge numbers of obstacles, both man-made and natural, and risking large amounts of capital to bring this crucial product to the world market.

*Developing new technologies to make oil exploration and extraction more reliable for the benefit of all of the world’s people.

*Employing tens of thousands of people at good jobs and paying them good wages for their productive work.

*Paying huge amounts of taxes and royalties to various governments worldwide for the oil extracted within their borders.

*Disbursing some of its profits to its shareholders, among which are increasing numbers of middle-class Americans who own stock, including public-school teachers, insurance salesmen, electricians, small-business owners and every other type of occupation.

*Reinvesting other parts of its profits into making ExxonMobil a better, more efficient company.

Now along comes Joe Kennedy, who comes from a family that for decades has ruthlessly criticized the oil companies and every other private, profit-making corporation in America. And Joe Kennedy thinks that a company like ExxonMobil should give him free oil.

But considering all the positive aspects of ExxonMobil’s operations mentioned above, is it not already doing enough for America and for the world’s people by providing us with a reliable supply of energy, government revenues, jobs, shareholder value and new technology?

Why must it now give oil to a persistent critic like Joe Kennedy who will then give the oil to his clients and himself take credit for it?

In the meantime, Joe Kennedy has been receiving lots of free oil from Hugo Chavez, the leftist dictator of Venezuela, who is taking that nation toward a communist/marxist state by nationalizing increasing portions of its economy. Over the last few years, Chavez has nationalized Venezuela’s huge oil industry, one of the biggest in the world.

Chavez and his leftist cronies never in a million years could have developed an oil industry because, as mentioned above, they are socialist leftists who do not know how to make technology work. They don’t even like hard work. They are intellectuals and theoreticians and politicians -- like the Kennedy family – who like to “run things” and tell other people what to do. And to seize wealth wherever possible

Chavez simply confiscated the oil industry in Venezuela from its owners (the international oil companies) and paid them off with nominal sums of government money.

Since Chavez never invested any of this own toil or capital or risk to develop the oil industry in Venezuela, he does not appreciate what it takes to produce oil. He will do whatever he pleases with the oil. He is accountable to no one. He simply seized the oil and paid off the oil companies with government money that he also did not earn. And now he is giving the oil away free to certain people like Joe Kennedy in order to make himself look good.

In the meantime, the oil industry in Venezuela is slowly degrading because Chavez is firing many of the smart, experienced, private-sector oil-industry people who built it up, and is replacing them with his political cronies who know nothing about the oil industry. This ultimately will lead to massive corruption and the demise of the oil industry in Venezuela.

The question is this: If a gangster breaks into a store and gives all the food away to poor people, is that a good thing?  Will this not drive the store owner out of business and end up hurting the people in the long run?

Of course it is not a good thing. And the idea is nonsense that Hugo Chavez is doing a good thing by taking the oil industry away from the companies that built it over decades, and giving away the oil while the Venezuelan people find their economy declining because of Chavez policies. It always is easy to give away something that you did not earn, like a rich kid spending his inheritance wildly after his father toiled for decades to build it up.

This is why Joe Kennedy should be treated with great skepticism. And this is why ExxonMobil and the other oil companies should refuse to give him any oil. They already are doing critical work to keep the world economy functioning, and should continue to do so. They should tell Joe Kennedy to try getting his own oil out of the ground. And we will see how far Joe Kennedy gets.

By the way: Aren’t all the political positions advocated by the Kennedys – taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, cronyism, rigid environmental regulation and obstructionism – are they not all hindrances to economic growth that make people poor in the first place?

(Answer: Yes.)

(end of Thinking Points essay)

 

Kennedy's action  is part of an overall attempt by leftist Americans and Venezuelans to undermine freedom and prosperity in Colombia, strengthen communist rebels throughout South America and prop up Hugo Chavez whose policies are slowly corroding freedom and prosperity in Venezuela. But the recent Venezuelan election turned down Chavez’s bid for more ultimate control. Still he continues to act without the consent of the governed.

Judge Orders Return of Texas Kids: Texas District judge Barbara Walther ordered more than 400 children who were taken from a polygamist ranch to be returned to their parents.

The children were being held in foster-care facilities around the state.

“It’s just a great day,” said Nancy Dockstader who picked up her 9-year old daughter in San Antonio. Dockstader and her husband have four other children to reclaim. 

The seizures of the children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch came in an April raid after state officials said they had received information that the breakaway Mormon sect was forcing underage girls into marriage and sex.

Sect members have denied any wrongdoing. Texas Child Protective Services will continue to investigate charges of abuse.

The Mormon church itself renounced polygamy more than 100 years ago.

…Wouldn’t it be nice if state child protective agencies stopped acting like bullies and started acting on solid information rather than hearsay and innuendo? The whole seizure process was instigated based on an anonymous phone tip. If you'd like to read more about the horrors of state abuse of families, visit www.massoutrage.com to see what is happening in just one state, Massachusetts.

These government agencies frequently harass families and separate children from their parents by using state power and strong-arm tactics.

If the children in Texas were being abused, or if any laws were being broken, then let the prosecutions begin. Conservatives are the ones who long have maintained that children need to be protected, and would support any valid prosecution.

This looks like another example of governmental power being aimed at religious people who differ from the state-sponsored atheism of many government agencies. Perhaps these agencies could spend more time looking into the tidal wave of teen pregnancy, sexual abuse, promiscuity, family breakdown and sexually-transmitted diseases that are the result of leftist sexual license originated in the 1960s. But that would require these state officials to look at the outcome of their own ideology.

Ford to Make World Cars in Mexico: Ford Motor Company will build its new fuel-efficient subcompact Fiesta Global Car in Mexico. The low-priced car is intended to position Ford in an international market that is experiencing high fuel prices.

The United Auto Workers expressed their usual anger that Ford will not build the car in the United States.

Ford’s current American line includes many low-mileage trucks and SUVs that have hurt its sales during the recent gasoline price spikes.

Ford CEO Alan Mullaly said the Fiesta will be built at a plant in Cuautitlan, north of Mexico City starting in 2010.

The Ford deal is expected to create 4,500 direct manufacturing jobs in Mexico, and more than 25,000 related jobs.

Ford began building cars in Mexico in the 1920s.

…The United Auto Workers union is upset that Ford is sending more jobs to other countries.

What a crock!

It’s about time the UAW and other American labor unions realized that it is because of unrealistically high union wage demands and confrontational labor tactics that millions of jobs have been lost in America. The most devastated cities in America Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown, Akron, Buffalo etc. – all were strongholds of organized labor that were abandoned by companies that couldn’t afford to keep up with union demands. The destroyed cityscapes left behind are the handiwork of America's 'caring' union movement.

America can become competitive again if we stop letting unions dictate the rules. And more and more workers are rejecting unionism when given the chance.

PS: One of the main reasons that US automakers like Ford have been relying so heavily on sales of big gas-guzzling trucks and luxury SUVs is that these cars are highly profitable. The automakers have needed these profitable sales to pay the outrageous wages demanded by the unions.

Hillary (the Other One) Wins Big!: In a continuing banner year for women in motorsports, congratulations to National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel dragster driver Hillary Will for her victory at the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals in Topeka, Kansas on June 1.  She became only the 7th different woman to win at least one NHRA Top Fuel event, joining the elite ranks of Shirley Muldowney, Lori Johns, Melanie Troxel and others.

Will beat out Larry Dixon with a 4.744 second blast at 304.53 MPH.

Melanie Troxel herself, who now is driving in the Funny Car class, on May 25 won her first race in that class, becoming only the second woman ever to win an FC race after Ashley Force broke that barrier on April 27. And in winning that event at Bristol, Tennessee, Troxel became the first woman ever to win in both Funny Car and Top Fuel in NHRA competition.

Watch out boys! The girls are comin’!

And congratulations to John Force for his Funny Car win at Topeka, coming off a bad accident last autumn in Dallas that left many wondering if NHRA’s winningest driver could ever win again. His Topeka victory brings his total to 126(!) wins and means that he has won at least one event each year over the last 22 years of racing.

Atta go, Grandpa!

Market Is Working: Ohio’s Kent State University has offered its custodial staff the option of working four days a week instead of five in order to cut high commuting costs from high gas prices.  

In Marietta, Georgia, the school district has instituted a 4-day work week in June and July for administrative staff to save on commuting costs, as well as air conditioning costs.

All over America, people are changing their commuter habits in response to higher gasoline prices.

….And this is a good thing. This is called “the market” and it is causing many people to make changes in the way they live in order to accommodate economic conditions. “The market” will cause people to do what is in their best economic interests, ultimately cutting gasoline consumption and putting downward pressure on prices through reduced demand.

The doomsdayers who are predicting $10 a gallon gasoline don’t believe in the power of the market. But the only thing that really can produce $10 a gallon gas is a total collapse in the worldwide oil market or continued obstruction of new energy supplies by environmentalists.

The former cannot happen because oil production is not going to tail off rapidly. But the latter is a real possibility because it is not market-based; it is based in politics, and therefore is bad for the consumer. That is why we need to listen to common sense and develop our own energy supplies.

Changes in consumer habits are another example of the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market as described by economist Adam Smith.

The 'invisible hand' always works because it is completely natural, since economic laws are like any other laws of nature. Like the law of gravity, the law of supply and demand cannot be conquered. But that does not mean we cannot act on it, and try to influence it, which we certainly can.

Rapper’s House Burns: A “definitely suspicious” fire consumed the elite suburban New York home of rapper 50 Cent. The nature of the fire came into question since the rapper has been involved in a legal dispute with his girlfriend.

That girlfriend said that someone threw something into the house that ignited the fire. She implied that it was someone acting on behalf of 50 Cent who was in Louisiana at the time of the fire.

50 Cent has been trying to evict the girlfriend and their child from the home.

…This is more violence from the world of rap music. This industry and these rappers are full of violence, murder, anger and malevolence. And this culture is promoted by left-wing, anti-Bush, entertainment-industry socialists - both black and white - who are making millions while the inner-city neighborhoods of America drown in violence and mayhem spawned in large part by rap music.

If a liberal tells you that we must get out of Iraq because he/she believes in “pacifism”, ask him/her why their leftist black brethren in the rap music culture originate so much violence, and why their "pacifism" do not lead them to speak out against that violence.

Sarandon Splitting?: Actress Susan Sarandon has said that if John McCain wins the November election that she will move to Italy or Canada.

…And conservatives will continue to refuse to watch any of Sarandon’s dopey movies and will happily escort her to the airport.

This is the usual nonsense from the Hollywood left. Barbara Streisand, Alec Baldwin and director Robert Altman all said they were going to leave when Bush got elected, but they never followed through.

Why not?

Because when these little liberals throw temper tantrums they will never admit that they said stupid, emotional things that are only intended for public consumption. And like all good liberals, they don’t even have the courage to back up their words with action.

Notice that Sarandon wants to move to a rich Western nation like Canada or Italy, which have living standards like America's. How about a poor anti-American country like, say, Zimbabwe, Susie?

But then again, she would bring all the millions she earned in evil America with her, would she not? Then she’d be comfortable. Even in Zimbabwe.

Energy Rationing Recommended for UK: Britain’s Environmental Audit Committee has recommended that every citizen use a ‘carbon ration card’ for energy purchases. The card will keep track of how much energy the consumer uses, and thus how much CO2 the consumer emits.

…And this is precisely why ‘global warming’ is discussed frequently on Nikitas3.com, because it is the most pressing economic issue of our day.

Because if these alarmists get their way, environmentalists and other socialists plan to use the ‘warming’ bogeyman to decide who gets how much energy, as is being proposed in the UK. And since energy is key not just to growth and prosperity but to survival, enviros and leftist government bureaucrats will decide who lives well and who does not. And that is the scariest thought in the world.

This UK proposal represents total socialist control over every citizen and every business. The distribution of energy will become completely politicized. In America, for instance, the pro-enviro Hollywood elite would be given a wink and a nod to keep flying their private jets as much as they want while people who are disfavored by the envirocrats (Republicans, conservatives, gun owners, Christians etc.) will be marginalized in distributing energy.

Under the UK rationing proposal, people who exceed their government-mandated allowance then would be allowed to ‘buy’ more credits. This whole scheme would be a government-run system that would be shot through with corruption, favoritism, cronyism and patronage, as all of socialism is, and ultimately will thwart economic growth and enrich liberals and environmentalists at the expense of productive citizens.

Soros (a speculator) Blames Speculators for Oil Prices: Billionaire George Soros said that speculators in the oil futures market are largely responsible for the run-up in crude oil prices. He also said that he anticipates that the energy bubble will burst, bringing oil prices down, and blamed the weak dollar and increasing worldwide demand for the rise in energy prices.

…Duh! George Soros acts like a brainiac for saying what everyone else is saying. But when he says that "speculators" are causing much of the problem, he is taking a left-wing/liberal tack, even though he himself has made his living as a speculator! (Type ‘George Soros speculator’ into your search engine to read more).

Is he in the oil futures market?

Probably. That is a 'hot' market right not. Why wouldn't he be? That is his business.

Soros is a far-left socialist. And all socialists blame ‘the oil companies’ or ‘Bush and Cheney’ or ‘speculators’ for the rising price of oil. But the overarching cause for the rise in the price of oil indeed is a shortfall in supply, which in the US is a result of environmentalist obstruction. And leftist speculator Soros is allied politically with leftist environmentalists.

Perhaps Soros could point to the actual owners of the world’s oil if he wishes to point fingers. More than 90% of the world’s oil is owned by… government-owned oil companies in Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Indonesia etc.

So perhaps we should investigate state socialism for the price rises, should we not?

Hmmmm…..

Dixon, Danica Make Waves at Indy: Congratulations to Target/Chip Ganassi team driver Scott Dixon for a well-fought victory in the May 25 Indianapolis 500. Always-a-bridesmaid Vitor Meira came in second and Marco Andretti was third.

...Andretti, whose famous family has collectively participated in 57 Indy 500s but has only one victory, claimed he could have won the race if his crew had not made a bad late-race decision to add too much aero downforce to his car, which made it quicker in the turns but slower in the straights.

The event was run in the 215-220 MPH range throughout. Fast!

The much-ballyhooed Danica Patrick was driving a fine race, but ended up 22nd after a late-race incident in the pits in which Team Penske driver Ryan Briscoe pulled out in front of Patrick as she was speeding out of pit lane. Patrick’s car was damaged. In 2006 Patrick also was knocked out of a race by Briscoe.

Patrick was cheered heartily by the Indy crowd as she stomped angrily along pit lane to confront Briscoe. She was restrained and diverted by track officials. Briscoe will long be unpopular among race fans for the incident, and Danica will be revered as the feisty “woman scorned”. Or perhaps “woman sideswiped” is a better description. It all was wonderful theater, and just what we have come to expect at Indy each year. After all, it is The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

More CNN Deceptions: On CNN’s Reliable Sources program, Howard Kurtz was discussing a new HBO movie about the 2000 Florida election recount when he said that “the Supreme Court stepped in and made George Bush president."

On another show, CNN business correspondent Ali Velshi said about future energy sources for automobiles: “I don’t know if it should be ethanol or methanol. I think it should be hydrogen.”

…Obviously this is why the public is so confused about so many things. First, the Supreme Court did not make George Bush president. He was elected by the voters. The Florida votes were counted over and over many times, and Bush won every time. Kurtz is lying to the public, and opening an old wound the way the media and their Democrat friends always do, and for one reason only: for their own political gain, and to stir up bad emotions.

Velshi’s comments demonstrate why we need to speak forcefully against these media figures who disseminate a lot of false information from the environmental movement. Neither methanol nor ethanol has proven to be even a vaguely efficient power source for automobiles, and the cheapest hydrogen fuel-cell car is highly inefficient, and costs more than $100,000.

Yet Velshi talks as if hydrogen is a perfectly useful way to power cars. It is not. It is another extremely expensive pie-in-the-sky ‘solution’ to our energy problems that is being promoted by irrational environmentalists.

America is being led astray by malicious people on networks like CNN.  We must be on guard. Offhand comments like these are irresponsible and are carefully calculated to mislead us.

Euro Demanding ‘Person’ Classification for Chimpanzee: A British animal-rights activist is seeking to have an Austrian chimpanzee declared a ‘person’ so that she can be appointed the animal’s guardian if its animal sanctuary is forced to close.

Paula Stibbe is taking her case before the Strasbourg, France-based European Court of Human Rights. Under Austrian law, only humans can have guardians.

Stibbe said she is not trying to get the chimpanzee declared a human, only a ‘person’.

“Everybody who knows him (the chimpanzee) personally will see him as a person,” said Stibbe

Austria’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling rejecting other activists' wish to have a guardian appointed for the chimpanzee.

…It’s time to nip this in the bud. This is just another case of extremist animal-rights activists, who reside way over on the wacky left end of the political spectrum, to eventually give ‘human’ status to animals (first it's a 'person' and the next step will be to call it a 'human'). This is part of the ongoing degradation of humans and their achievements that always is at the heart of socialism (theory of evolution, easy access to abortion, defense of murderers, destruction of the family etc.) because animal-rights activists are, like all socialists, self-loathing and angry at mankind.

What this will lead to down the road is what all socialist theory leads to: Lawsuits and other legal actions on behalf of animals in order to get wealth into the hands of animal-rights activists and their friends.

It also is intended to get humans to think of themselves as the equal of animals so that humans can join in the self-loathing of the animal-rights crowd.

Chicago Gas Taxes Rise Higher: Chicago gasoline prices are skyrocketing due to record rates of taxation. Taxes are almost 20% of gasoline’s price per gallon, or about 80 cents per gallon on Memorial Day. Many bargain hunters have gone over the border to Indiana to take advantage of lower gas taxes. “It was $4.20. I can come over here and get it for $3.93,” said one customer.

Meanwhile Illinois' own US Senator Dick Durbin pointedly questioned oil company executives at a congressional hearing. “Does it trouble any of you when you see what you’re doing to us?” Durbin asked.

Yet every time the price of gasoline goes up in Chicago, the taxes rise too, as a percentage. Motor fuel taxes go to the federal government, the state of Illinois, Cook County and the city of Chicago. Then the gasoline sales tax goes to Illinois, and Chicago and Cook’s share of the state sales tax; another county tax; an RTA transit tax and another Chicago tax.

…That’s 10 levels of taxation folks! And Illinois’ Democrat governor is counting on the gasoline taxes to bring in an extra $220 million to the state. This is added to Chicago's highest-in-the-nation sales tax at 10.25%!

Senator Durbin: Does it trouble you when you see what your tax-and-tax Democrat party is doing to the people of Illinois?

Meanwhile, Durbin was complaining to oil company executives about the cost of gasoline and even about their salaries. Perhaps Durbin could talk to his Democrat friends in Illinois about the outrageous levels of taxation. Or better yet, perhaps he could ask his friends and donors in the environmental movement to stop blocking domestic energy production in order to add to the world supply and bring down prices.

But Democrats never will look at their own complicity in creating the mess we are in. They always point fingers, blame Republicans, investigate the oil companies and come up with nothing but themselves to blame.

Here is an actual story from the Washington Post about a congressional investigation into oil prices. The Post once was a respected newspaper that represented serious journalism, but this story is nothing more than pedantic piece of silly political advocacy.

WASHINGTON – As oil hit a new record of $134 a barrel yesterday, lawmakers summoned energy executives to Capitol Hill for the latest in a series of ritual immolations. But this one felt more like “The Price Is Right”.

ConocoPhillips executive John Lowe – come on down!

“Last year, what was your compensation?” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy asked.

“I don’t know the exact amount,” the oilman demurred.

“Is it over, say, $100,000 a year?” coaxed Leahy, playing Bob Barker (the former host of “The Price is Right”).

“Yes, sir.”

“Considerably over $100,000?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Over $1 million a year?”

Higher, Bob, higher! Lowe’s cash compensation was $5.7 million in 2007, according to Forbes magazine, and stock options worth $10.9 million bring the price tag to – ding, ding, ding -- $16.6 million.

 

First, it is typical that Senate Democrats are demagoguing this issue in this strictly emotional way, and that the Washington Post is reporting on it in a way reminiscent of some free-form blogger, rather than as a news story.

Imagine a serious newspaper writing about a congressional hearing as if it were a TV game show, with the author injecting his own emotions into the story. This is horrendous.

This is typical liberal politics and liberal journalism today. All serious discussion of ideas is tossed out the window in favor of the most jingoistic approach to our problems.

Perhaps Durbin and Leahy could ask why baseball players are making more than oil executives; why ultra-liberal Oprah Winfrey has a $2.5 BILLION fortune; or why the richest man in America, Warren Buffett is supporting… Barack Obama.

Saudis Just Say No: Saudi Arabian leaders told President Bush that they seen no clear reason to increase their oil production, rebuffing the American request to help to raise world supply in order to bring down prices.

The Saudis increased production once already, on May 10, by 300,000 barrels, which has been called a token amount. Industry analysts say that Saudi Arabia could pump a total of 2 million extra barrels to address the world shortage.

Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said that “supply and demand are in balance today. How much does Saudi Arabia need to do to satisfy people who are questioning our oil practices and policies?”

…The Saudis are absolutely right. They can pump more, but why should they? The United States has huge untapped oil reserves that environmentalists are barring us from exploiting. While the Saudis currently are pumping more than 9 million barrels a day, the United States is producing only about 5 million barrels a day.

Rather than seeking increased production in the Middle East, President Bush and John McCain should make a campaign issue out of Democrats’ and environmentalists’ refusal to allow the United States to tap our own massive energy reserves including, but hardly limited to the 2,000 acre drill site within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is a barren, flat, treeless plain along the coast of the Beaufort Sea—until Jimmy Carter declared it a federal monument.

The US does not even need any imported oil. See the essay Is ‘Green’ Energy Worth Pursuing?, accessible from the Nikitas3.com home page, to read more about energy production worldwide and here at home, and how the United States can cut energy imports to zero, even without drilling one single oil well.

Meanwhile Democrats are demanding that we take oil from our rainy-day supply in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease the price crisis. Yet the Democrats themselves are blocking new domestic oil production and insisting that we take petroleum out of our emergency supply. Why?

Three Cheers for ‘Diversity’: The Cross Cultural Action Network in Western Massachusetts kicked off its Welcoming Community campaign, asking residents to ‘pledge to make all of its communities hospitable, welcoming and inclusive of diversity’, according to a newspaper announcement.

…CCAN is one of those far-left Massachusetts multicultural groups that includes all people as long as those people represent superficial diversity (like skin color or sexual orientation) but hold only one single political point of view and that is the advocacy of socialism.

These groups fear genuine intellectual or political diversity. If a conservative went to the group’s meeting and began to voice his/her opinion, his/her ‘diversity’ would be completely unwelcome.

Whenever you see the word ‘diversity’, it always means people who think liberal and who wish to suppress other ways of thinking.

In other word non-diversity.

Doctor Incarceration Protested in India: 22 Nobel Prize winners have appealed to the Indian government criticizing the incarceration of Binayak Sen, a prominent doctor and human-rights worker. Sen has been jailed for the past year for passing notes from a jailed terrorist leader to someone outside of the prison. Sen was giving medical treatment inside the prison to the terrorist who is a Naxalite, a member of a Maoist (communist) terror group that is waging a campaign of violence against the Indian government.

The doctor is being held under antiterrorism laws.

Sen has worked for more than 25 years in poor Indian communities.

…This doctor obviously is a communist sympathizer. The Nobel laureates want him released because he is scheduled to receive the 2008 Jonathan Mann Award for his work on health and human rights. The award is given by the US-based Global Health Council.

Did the GHC specifically choose Sen after they knew of his action concerning the terror group? After all, Sen has been imprisoned for the last year. And GHC easily could have given the award to someone else after learning of Sen's actions.

Those Nobel Prize winners obviously wish to see the doctor released so that he can continue his work helping the poor. Or perhaps to continue his selfless work passing notes from a terror leader to his followers?

UN Consuming more American Cash: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon joined other dignitaries in kicking off the renovation of the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

“Today we turn the soil which the United Nations stands on to mark the rebirth, or renovation, of our headquarters. Over the next 5 years, we will make our facilities safer, greener, and more modern and efficient.”

The complex was built in the 1940s and 1950s, and is in dire need of renovation. It was designed by world-renowned architects including Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer.

The renovation is expected to cost $1.9 billion, of which American taxpayers are expected to kick in $400 million.

…Come again? $1.9 billion? We could give every UN diplomat a one-way ticket to North Korea for a lot less than that and sell the building to the highest bidder.

Why do Americans always have to give large amounts of taxpayer money to groups like the United Nations that vote and work against American interests?

Why can’t the UN move abroad? We have hosted it for 56 years now.

This is the organization that was involved in the massive Iraqi oil-for-food scandal; that has wasted billions in the past; that has bungled most of the operations it has undertaken; that has given tyrants and thugs worldwide a platform to criticize the United States and our ally Israel.

This is the same United Nations that now also is asking donors for $775 million in funding for world food programs while the same program was sitting on $1.22 billion in funds.

Ki-moon had claimed that the program had only $18 million.

It’s time to stop hosting and funding the United Nations, and to direct our international aid money through other groups that will distribute it more efficiently so that we can really help the world’s needy.

Real Good Gas Mileage: Mike Papin and his wife drove cautiously to save fuel in their annual drive from the winter in Florida to a summer home in Vermont, according to a recent news article. As the price of gas has risen, they are driving at lower speeds and braking and accelerating more gently. Several airlines have slowed their planes to save fuel as well.

…Isn’t it interesting that these ‘energy savers’ were highlighted in the article. Because the Papins own two separate homes and drive 3,000 miles per year just to travel between their summer and winter homes.

If they’re so concerned, wouldn’t it save much more energy if they only owned one home and didn’t do all that driving?

Consider this: Most people who spend the winter in Florida leave their homes up north with the thermostat set at 40 degrees all winter, high enough to prevent freezing. They usually leave their refrigerators running, and they leave their hot-water heaters turned on, many of which constantly heat hot water and then let it cool, then heat it again over and over all winter. This all uses large amounts of energy, perhaps 750 gallons or more just in heating oil, depending on the size of the house.

Yet many of these same people are environmentalists who are worried about saving a few gallons of fuel on their drive from Florida to Vermont, who give money to the Sierra Club, and who oppose nuclear power plant construction, and oil drilling in Alaska and off the coast of Florida.

In fact their lifestyles are energy-intensive.

Keep on pedalin’ Papins. And next time we talk about new energy production here in the United States, we hope you are among the Americans who favor it.

Newsweek Shows 'Us' How Bad It Is: Nikitas3.com ran the story below last winter. CNN ran the same story on May 13. It is worth a look:

Newsweek magazine recently did an article on the woes of baby-boomers facing their pending retirements in the midst of plummeting housing and stock values. Here is how Newsweek opened its piece:

 

“Charles Burge had been counting the days until retirement. He spent decades as a New York City employee, starting as a trash hauler and working his way up to middle management. Along the way, he worked part-time as a physical therapist, pouring extra cash into retirement accounts. In mid-2006, Burge, who’s now 54, told his boss he’d retire at the end of 2008 – but things have gone downhill ever since. His financial planner, David Frisch, moved some of Burge’s savings into cash, but the portion remaining in stocks has steadily lost value as the market slid. The worth of his Long Island home, once a half-million dollars, has dropped by $70,000 thanks to the housing bust. Late last fall Burge and his wife Anna, 57, a homemaker, decided the numbers looked bleak. Instead of retiring to a Florida condo later this year, he now plans to work until 2011 to maximize his city pension. 'I don’t feel as wealthy and secure as I did,' he says." (End of Newsweek excerpt)

 

...So, what is wrong with this?

Well, just about everything, because it gives a false picture from the start.

The first supposition that all the media get wrong is that the current housing price correction is something out of the blue, an unexpected and evil capitalist omen, when in fact it is a big market correction to highly overvalued real estate. Sorry to say it, but true. How much longer could we expect home values to double every ten years? It was unsustainable.

Thus to be upset that Burge’s house and stocks are not as valuable as they were at their peaks is to somehow supposed that all values rise, that there never is any downside risk. (Note to Newsweek: Get a grip, OK? Rising housing values are not set in concrete. Neither are rising stock values. That is why they are called “markets”.)

Second, after the baby-boomers had the whole world presented to them on a silver platter, can’t they accept some upset in their lives like their parents who lived through the depression and World War II?

Third, we Americans still have one of the highest standards of living in all of human history, with ample food, medical care, housing and retirements.  

Fourth -- and this is crucial -- look at the person Newsweek chooses to start its story about our economic woes. Let’s go sentence by sentence:

“Charles Burge had been counting the days until retirement.” Analysis: Most people throughout history have basically counted off every day after age 40 as a good day, if they were still alive.

“He spent decades as a New York City employee, starting out as a trash hauler and working his way up to middle management.” Analysis: With his planned retirement at age 54, he in fact was going to work at least a full decade less than most people, which Newsweek wanted to attempt to cover over by saying "he spent decades". And since Burge started as a trash hauler – a politically-correct term for a garbage man – he most likely had no higher education, but still had planned to retire to Florida at age 54. That sounds pretty cushy, does it not? What is this guy complaining about?

And ‘middle management’ as a New York City employee means you show up in the middle of the day from 10 to 2 then go out and catch a Yankees game with the rest of your middle management friends.

Newsweek continues: “Along the way, he worked part-time as a physical therapist, pouring extra cash into retirement accounts. In mid-2006, Burge, who’s now 54, told his boss he’d retire at the end of 2008 – but things have gone downhill ever since. His financial planner, David Frisch, moved some of Burge’s savings into cash, but the portion remaining in stocks has steadily lost value as the market slid.” Analysis: A garbage man invested in the stock market. Who woulda thunk it? But of course, this is the most overpaid, bloated bureaucracy in America, with crushing tax rates on the citizens of New York City to support it, and to support a Florida retirement for Burge at age 54. Well, 57 now.

“The worth of his Long Island home, once a half-million dollars, has dropped by $70,000 thanks to the housing bust.” Analysis: Burge certainly moved to Long Island to escape the severe taxes in New York City that are collected to fund his own pay, benefits and retirement. And just imagine this poor, overworked former garbage man with only a half-million dollar home! What is this world coming to?! And to think the home’s value actually fell??!! Bush must be behind this one.

“Late last fall Burge and his wife Anna, 57, a homemaker, decided the numbers looked bleak. Instead of retiring to a Florida condo later this year, he now plans to work until 2011 to maximize his city pension. ‘I don’t feel as wealthy and secure as I did,’ he says.” Analysis: Most couples wish the wife/mother could stay at home like Mrs. Burge, but most couples and families are being hammered by ever-rising taxes… the taxes they must pay for the half-million dollar home and the decade-early retirement of people like Burge.

Now, Newsweek says, the suffering Mr. Burge will work all the way until 2011, to the ripe old age of 57, to maximize his city pension. Meanwhile, of course, the private-sector employees who are paying the taxes to support Burge and the rest of America’s bureaucracy will be working until age 70 just to keep ahead of the tax man.

This is not to disparage all government workers. Some do a good job, particularly in suburban, small-town and rural America, and in more conservative areas. But in Democrat strongholds like New York City, they are a breed apart. A greedy breed apart.

But ultimately this article is just more smoke and mirrors from Newsweek to cover up the truth… that the people with the best pay, benefit and pension packages in America today are government workers, as the private sector slides economically. This is happening because our economy is getting more and more socialistic every year, which conservatives have been warning about for the last 30 years.

Burge is certainly a Democrat. Or most of the people in his position are Democrats. And his tax-and-tax Democrat-party friends are putting huge pressure on people all across America.

Burge ought to stop belly-aching. He is one of the most privileged people in America in relation to his abilities.

Newsweek is using a form of reverse psychology by putting up this spoiled “public servant” as an object of sympathy, when in fact Burge is part of the most pampered bureaucracy in history.

Interestingly, Newsweek magazine itself is getting skinnier and skinnier every month. Perhaps someday they too will get the message that the American economy is in not such great shape, and maybe they’ll do an honest article on what really is ailing us. Instead of writing puff pieces on people like Burge and his overblown life crisis.

Myanmar Devastated: The nation of Myanmar in Southeast Asia was hit May 3 by a massive cyclone that may have killed 100,000 people and that has destroyed important parts of the nation’s infrastructure and agricultural land. Millions are dazed and are living on the brink of survival.

The outbreak of disease now is also a threat. “There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks as long as this continues,” said US charge d’affaires Shari Villarosa who called the situation “horrendous”, with shortages of drinking water and food.

The Myanmar government has refused outside aid because of what is described as its “paranoid” nature, particularly in reference to the United States. American personnel and planes are in a position of quick deployment in Thailand to help the people of Myanmar if only the government would let them. An airdrop of critical food and shelter materials is being considered by American officials even without the consent of the Myanmar government.

….With millions suffering, this is what we have come to expect from a communist dictatorship. The people living under these regimes suffer even in the best of times. In bad times, conditions become unspeakable. And the government of Myanmar is refusing to allow Americans to help because paranoia is a hallmark of leftists worldwide, and even here in America.

When Ronald Reagan called the communist Soviet Union an “evil empire”, liberals in America went nuts. But Reagan was right. Communist leaders never care a whit about their people, but only about their own power, as evidenced by Castro in Cuba and Kim Jong Il in North Korea.

Selective Indignation: 1.2 million pounds of trash was collected along the Arizona-Mexico border in 2006 alone, marking an unpublicized cost of illegal immigration.

Nearly $1 million was spent by Arizona to clean up the mess in 2007.

“It’s just like a flood” said Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. “You can’t clean up the floodwaters until you stop the flood and fix the dam,” he said in reference to unchecked immigration.

US  government efforts to stem illegal immigration around San Diego and El Paso have been successful, pushing the immigration problem onto state and federal lands in Arizona.

…Did you ever notice how strident environmentalists are about people who trash our landscape when it is done by Americans?

But when illegal immigrants do it, enviros are silent. Because enviros are liberals who are part of the coalition of groups that favors more and more illegals coming to the US to increase the power of socialism.

Many environmentalists do not care about the environment anyway. They are just leftists who use the cover of the enviro movement to influence politics leftward.

And liberals are always selective in their indignation. For instance, they are ‘pacifist’ about Iraq, and they oppose the death penalty for convicted murderers, but then look the other way when more than 20,000 third-trimester abortions are performed annually, where the child is killed at the point of birth by having its brains sucked out of its head and having its dead body disposed of in the trash.

Minuteman’s Simcox said that his group helps private border land owners to clean up their properties. The Arizona Bureau of Land management does the same thing, but not in conjunction with the Minutemen.

“Truly it’s a national disaster of our cherished outdoor areas,” Simcox said.

Hillary, Democrats Daydream about Slaying OPEC: Hillary Clinton said that as president she would seek to break up OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the oil producing cartel.

“We’re going to go right at OPEC. They no longer can be a cartel, a monopoly that gets together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, then decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what prices they’re going to put it at,” she said in a campaign stop in Merrillville, Indiana.

Clinton said that she favors a World Trade Organization action against OPEC.

…Those OPEC sheiks sitting in plush rooms setting oil prices sound a lot like Hillary's American supporters in the teacher unions and other labor unions meeting behind closed doors and setting artificially high wages that are always passed on to American taxpayers and consumers.

So couldn’t Clinton do more for our pocketbooks by concentrating on these domestic ‘cartels’ instead of going through the labyrinth of the WTO to seek to break up OPEC?

Yes. But don’t expect any action on American unions from any Democrat. Unions support Clinton/Obama wholeheartedly and the Democrat party is totally in the unions’ pockets and gives unions everything they want.

Hillary’s not going to break up OPEC. The WTO isn’t going to break up OPEC. The best way to weaken OPEC is to produce our own energy, which Hillary and her environmentalist supporters will never allow. And since unions are part of that obstructionist Democrat coalition, they will not allow us to become energy independent either.

So we will pay higher energy prices, and higher taxes and other costs to ameliorate environmentalists and to sate the bottomless financial appetites of labor unions, both public and private.

See the Thinking Points essay called We are Wasting Most of Our Gasoline for a simple prescription for America to become completely energy independent without drilling one single oil well. Also visit the essay accessible from the home page of Nikitas3.com called 12 Simple Steps to Securing our Energy Future.

 Blacks Angry over Bell Acquittals: Al Sharpton and thousands of African-American followers tied up traffic in New York City in protest of the acquittal of three New York undercover detectives in the killing of Sean Bell, who was black.

The unarmed Bell was killed in a 50-shot hail of gunfire outside a Queens nightclub.

“We have to stand up for something or we’ll fall for anything. It’s not just about Sean Bell, it’s about every man that’s been injustly killed in America,” said Sharpton.

…Obviously the Sean Bell murder was massive police overkill. But the police union and the New York City justice system, all controlled by the same people who run the Democrat party in black America, got these cops off the hook.

Where is the outrage by blacks at the liberals who protect these killer cops?

There is none.

Where are the protests over the tidal wave of black-on-black violence that has swept over black neighborhoods in the last 50 years as the Democrat party has controlled those neighborhoods lock, stock and barrel?

There is none.

Why will thousands of  blacks protest one act of police violence, while not one single black will protest thousands of acts of black-on-black violence?

Because people like Sharpton tell them to, that is why. They are manipulated to do so through emotion.

Why will blacks talk about their status as victims of police criminality, but never will discuss their status as perpetrators of huge amounts of crime, all under the watchful eye of the Democrat party?

Because the Democrats are a party of violence, that is why.

The Republican party was founded in 1854 as the anti-slavery party. Only 9 years later, Republican Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Throughout much of the 20th century, the Democrats were the party of slavery and segregation, yet today black America is in thrall to that same party.

Why?

Britain Turns Right: In a major story largely ignored by the American media, Britain’s May 1 election showed a big shift of voter sentiment away from the Labour (very liberal) party of Tony Blair and current Prime Minister Gordon Brown and toward the Conservatives. It was the worst Labour loss in 40 years.

London’s radical-left mayor “Red Ken” Livingstone, a former communist party member, was ousted from office in a major upset by Boris Johnson, 1.17 million to 1.03 million votes.

British voters also went Conservative in more than 300 municipal races, leading Conservative leader David Cameron to predict that Brown will be ousted in the coming national election sometime in the next 2 years.

“Three years ago the idea that Conservatives would win London and build up a 20 point lead across the country would have been literally unthinkable,” said Cameron.

In 159 local councils in England and Wales, conservatives gained 260 seats while Labour lost 333.

It is estimated that the Conservatives will finally tally 44% of the vote in England and Wales, while Labour got only 24%.

Johnson was elected London mayor despite his awkward and often controversial ways. He has insulted blacks and gays, and questioned the very premise of homosexual marriage.  He castigated the people of Liverpool for acting overly hurt after one of their own was taken hostage and beheaded in Iraq. He is expected to possibly make blunt comments while in office, with a particular watch on the Beijing Olympics which he will attend. Of China he once wrote that “Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil and unlikely to increase.”

...Good for the Conservatives. But that mayor-elect Johnson said, “I do hope that this does show that the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted” was a very inappropriate victory declaration that shows that many conservatives, both in the UK and here in America, still haven’t found a way to see the world their way. Johnson should have said “Conservatives will rule Britain the proper way, as they always have.” Period.

British voters were said to be concerned over rising food and fuel prices, a recent increase in middle-class and working-class taxation, and the costly nationalization of a mortgage lender called Northern Rock. The rise of radical Islam, and Labour’s somewhat laissez-faire attitude on the issue, also was said to have been a factor in the election.

After years of the American media explaining that the whole world hates America, Italy, France, Germany and now Britain all have elected conservative, pro-American leaders.

Boris Johnson joined the mayoral race only 3 months before the election. The Eton and Oxford graduate, long considered brilliant among British conservatives, came to prominence as The Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent. He was described as conservative Margaret Thatcher’s favorite journalist.

In 1999, Johnson became editor of The Spectator and once confided to a friend that he would like to be President of the United States (he was born in New York). Termed politically lightweight, he upended a powerful London mayor, and someday may reach higher.

Watch Boris Johnson. He is smart, but flawed. He could go either way.

PETA Speaks Out: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants a Kentucky Derby jockey suspended after his second-place horse was put to death following the end of the race.

PETA is claiming that Gabriel Saez, the jockey of Eight Belles, the only filly in the Derby, may have pushed the horse to the finish even thought the horse may have been injured before the end of the race. The horse fell down after a cool-down period with two broken ankles, and had to be killed.

Eight Belles’ trainer said that the horse was not injured during the race. “I don’t know how the heck they can even come close to saying that,” said trainer Larry Jones.

PETA’s letter to the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority also sought a ban on whipping horses, limits on the age of race horses and softer surfaces for horses to run on.

…Well, it is PETA.

And if Eight Belles broke its ankles during the race, how could it continue to run? Wouldn’t there be some telltale sign? Imagine if you tried to run with two broken ankles? Would there not be some indicator that your ankles were broken?

Obviously…

The whole case really is rather strange, though. How does a horse break its ankles after the end of a race? Who knows.

But here’s the key. When PETA said that the $400,000 second-place prize should be revoked if Saez is at fault, you see where this is going. PETA likes to stick its nose anywhere it can stir up the media, and certainly would seek to get some or all of that $400,000 for itself. Because these socialist/animal rights groups always are interested in getting as much money as they can because they generate no wealth themselves.

PETA really is a national laughingstock. The very initials PETA are frequently attached to a punch line. It must be really embarrassing to be a PETA person. Animal rights are understandable, but PETA is something else.

Forces to be Reckoned With: Congratulations to John Force and daughter Ashley for their recent accomplishments in the PowerAde National Hot Rod Association Funny Car division. On April 27, one week after Danica Patrick became the first woman ever to win an IndyCar race, Ashley Force became the first woman ever to win an NHRA Funny Car race event by beating her own father in the final round at the Summit Southern Nationals in Commerce, Georgia. The 25-year-old Ashley blasted her Castrol Mustang down the quarter-mile strip in 4.837 seconds, reaching a top speed of 320.36 miles per hour.

One week later on May 4, Ashley’s father, the legendary John Force, the winningest driver in NHRA history, won his 1,000th round (head-to-head race) in a 32-year career that has seen him win 121 events and 13 championships - including 10 in a row - all in the Funny Car division.

…Good go Forces, the first family of NHRA drag racing.

There have been women winners in NHRA’s Top Fuel division, which is the same engine size as Funny Car, but slightly faster due to the more optimal weight distribution and aerodynamics of TF’s slingshot dragsters. The most famous woman TF driver of all time was Shirley Muldowney who won three national championships (1977, 1980, 1982). She retired in 2003.

NHRA drag racing events are 16-car ladder races in which a driver must beat his/her opponent in 4 rounds in order to win the event. The Funny Cars, also known as ‘floppers’, are the highly stylized fiberglass-body cars that look like showroom models on steroids.

Force’s 1000th win in the first round at St. Louis is a record that is not likely ever to be broken. 

Maine Imposing Yacht, Plane Taxes: The state of Maine, along with other states, is taxing tax yacht owners and private-plane owners who visit the state. Some private-jet owners may face tax bills of up to $200,000.

Seeking additional revenue, Maine has joined states like California in taxing out-of-state craft that land or even moor temporarily in the state.

 Maine sent a bill in 2007 for more than $25,000 to Stephen Kahn, a Massachusetts venture capitalist who routinely flew to a family property in The Pine Tree State in his four-seat, single-engine Cirrus SR22 aircraft.

The authorities in Maine determined that Kahn’s plane had been in Maine for more than 20 days in 2003 and subjected it to a tax of 5% of the plane’s purchase price of $350,000. With interest, the 2007 bill came to more than $25,000.

More and more pilots are avoiding states with the tax impositions.

Maine tax agents are using flight data compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration to determine where private pilots fly to. Some pilots have sought to have their information deleted from FAA’s public database.

Maine applies a similar tax to boat owners. State tax agents regularly visit marinas looking for boats on long stays.

Said Susan Swanton of the Maine Marine Trades Association, ”It’s not just an ill effect to Maine industry. It’s an ill effect to the tourism industry in general… We notice it.”

…Note to world: Liberals are killjoys who are obsessed with money.

In the 1990s, a surtax was imposed on yachts, and the result was a sharp drop in yacht construction, and many job losses in the industry. And expectedly plane owners are deciding to avoid high-tax states.

This action by Maine is yet another move by big-government liberals to confiscate any wealth that they can find because modern-day liberals love money more than any other people ever.

America was founded as a protest over unfair taxation by the British crown. But as the nation becomes more socialistic, more and more taxes are imposed for any and every reason. Recently a sport-fishing tournament organizer in Florida was hit with a $1,500 ‘carbon tax’. The money subsequently was given to a dairy farm in New York State! See the essay Environmentalist ‘Greenmail’ Coming to a Business Near You in the Thinking Points section of this website for more on that story.)

This is not freedom. This is part of a growing socialist tyranny against the citizens of this nation. And the use of FAA data shows government complicity.

Perhaps anti-tax conservatives could see some wisdom in these tax plans, however. Conservatives could ask these states to refrain from taxing rich people unless these rich people are registered as Democrats. After all, Democrats – rich, middle class and poor -- always are asserting that wealthy people need to pay more in taxes.

Bush Unpopular (Oh, Really?...): President Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history, according a new poll by CNN/Opinion Research Corp.

The poll shows that 71% of American disapprove of his performance.

But Bush’s approval rating is 28%, which is not as low as either Nixon or Truman.

Nixon’s disapproval rating was 66% just before he resigned in August 1974.

The poll also found that approval of the Iraq war is at only 30%, while 68% disapprove, leading to Bush’s poor numbers.

"Americans are growing more pessimistic about the war,” said the poll’s director Keating Holland.

…OK, let’s look at this poll in real terms.

First, Bush is suffering largely over Iraq.

But Bush went into Iraq after the American media for more than 10 years ruthlessly criticized the fact that his father George HW Bush, who was president from 1989 to 1993, did not go all the way to Baghdad and take out Saddam Hussein in the Desert Storm war of 1991.

Bush went into Iraq in March 2003 after more than a decade in which we repeatedly were told that Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer, that he had weapons of mass destruction, that he had gassed and killed thousands of Kurds with chemical weapons, that he was acquiring atomic weapons, that he had used chemical weapons to kill tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers in Iraq’s 8-year war with Iran, that he would continue to attack his neighbors as he had attacked in Kuwait in 1990, leading to Desert Storm.

Throughout the 1990s, many major Democrats made speeches saying Hussein had to go. In 1998, both the US House and US Senate passed resolutions saying Hussein had to be removed from power. The United Nations did the same. 68% of the American public supported Bush going into Iraq at the start of the war. 72% of Americans supported the war six months after it had started. 22 Democrat US Senators approved the resolution authorizing the war.

So with much backing from both the public and Democrats, President Bush did what a real man would do -- he confronted evil. And now the media have ginned up a pathological hatred of Bush over this war. And now after 8 full years of relentless national media attacks on Bush (they started when he was Governor of Texas), along with rising oil prices (not Bush’s fault), the housing slump (not Bush’s fault) and the slowdown in the economy (a cyclical occurrence), Bush has a low approval rating.

Interestingly the Democrat-led Congress has a much lower approval rating than Bush, anywhere from 11% to 19% according to recent polls.

When the Democrats actually do something about our nation’s problems instead of either condoning them (Iraq) causing them (pushing up oil prices by obstructing our domestic energy supplies) or being Monday-morning quarterbacks, perhaps we will see whether their popularity can rise to even 28% like George Bush’s.

Chile Backsliding: A mayor in the South American nation of Chile is planning to give Viagra to men in his town over 60 years old.

“This has to do with the quality of life and it’s done responsibly,” said physician/mayor Gonzalo Navarrete of the poor town of Lo Prado.

The mayor said that any man over 60 can have up to 4 pills a month. He said he made the plan after older men in his town complained that they were not getting enough sex.

…This may seem like an insignificant story, but it is part of a pattern. Here is what is happening:

In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the marxist leader of Chile Salvador Allende because Allende was taking the nation down the road to communist destruction. Pinochet ruled Chile under a military dictatorship until 1988 when the nation voted for democratic rule. Pinochet stepped down in 1990.

During his reign, Pinochet helped Chile’s economy to develop without interference by oppressing leftists and even killing several thousand communists.

As a result of his rule, Chile became the most prosperous, democratic and stable nation in South America, much to the chagrin of the worldwide left, which sought repeatedly to prosecute Pinochet, even holding him abroad in the UK for one-and-one-half years in an attempt to put him on trial internationally.

All the efforts failed and Pinochet died in Chile in 2006. Meanwhile, of course, leftists have made zero attempts to seize or prosecute Castro, the Cuban dictator who was in power 48 years, murdered and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people, exiled millions, never has given an inch of freedom to his people, and who has driven his people into grinding poverty which is exactly what Pinochet sought to stop in Chile.

Leftists have tried everything to sabotage Chile's success. In one famous case in the 1980s, ‘poisoned’ grapes from Chile were discovered in an American importing dock, and the media flurry caused the Chilean grape industry to suffer huge losses. It has been routinely conjectured that the few affected grapes were poisoned intentionally by leftists in order to harm Chile.

Today, since Chile is a democracy, it is electing many socialists into power including its first female prime minister Michelle Bachelet. And Chile is changing from a growing, diligent, hardworking and conservative place to a liberal one. And one of the results is that some Chileans, like good liberals, are worrying more about things like old men’s sex lives rather than about maintaining their prosperity and freedom. But that is the price of the freedom that Pinochet gave them. Because this is always the trend, away from conservative capitalism in favor of lax, pleasure-seeking socialism, as in America.

In the United States, the largest single purchaser of Viagra is General Motors. As GM declines and heads toward bankruptcy, its left-wing labor unions extract every penny they can get while demanding that the company pay not only for standard employee and retiree health care, but for their elective sexual treatments as well. This is socialism at work saying “give us everything, even for our pleasure”.

If Chile continues down its road toward socialism, it will become just another ragamuffin nation struggling to survive like the rest of South America.

Another ‘Global Warming’ Skeptic Attacked: Colorado State University has said that it is considering ending financial support for a famous and respected hurricane forecaster.

William Gray, who has predicted hurricane activity for 25 years and who has become a legend in his field, claims that his efforts are being threatened because he has claimed that ‘global warming’ scientists “are brainwashing our children.”

Gray repeatedly has clashed with other climate scientists, even including his former students, calling them “medicine men” for their staunch advocacy of ‘global warming’ (GW) theories.

Many academics and climatologists have lodged written complaints about Gray with the Fort Collins, Colo.-based university.

Neil Frank, a meteorologist and former director of Gray’s National Hurricane Center said, “Bill Gray has come under a lot of fire for his views. If indeed this is happening (CSU’s terminating its support for Gray), it would be really sad that Colorado State is trying to rein in Bill Gray.”

The university contends that its action would be a result of having to deal with all the media inquiries about Gray at the expense of other professors.

…Which is malarkey. This is the same liberal state university system that for years employed radical anti-American professor Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado at Boulder. So the Colorado agenda is clear: Left-wing, anti-American and pro-‘global warming’.

It is important to remember that pro-GW scientists get huge amounts of grant money for promoting GW, so they feel that Gray’s criticisms could hurt them financially. That is why they are complaining in writing about Gray and have led CSU to threaten Gray.

This is more of the same from the totalitarians in the GW movement. GW is nothing more than a flimsy theory that is intended to strengthen government and environmentalists, weaken our free-enterprise economy, and funnel more money and power to GW advocates. Dissenters can be treated harshly because of the thousands of powerful people whose careers are at stake over GW.

That a respected researcher like Gray could be hounded from his position in a university that espouses ‘free thinking’ and ‘academic freedom’ shows how dishonest these schools have become.

And since when has the fame of a professor caused a university to throw that professor out? When professors make themselves famous by trashing Bush or defaming the military, the universities have tended to elevate them, not fire them. Ward Churchill was fired only after long-term public protest over his actions and his comments, not over intellectual differences within the professoriate.

Reefs Regenerate 50 Years after H-Bombs:  Coral reefs around Bikini Atoll in the western Pacific Ocean are flourishing 50 years after American hydrogen bomb tests on the island.

Between 1946 and 1958, more than 20 nuclear tests were carried out on Bikini. Scientists have been amazed at the recovery of the coral reefs once considered dead from radiation.

The most massive 1954 blast, measured at 1,000 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima,  vaporized everything on the atoll and left a crater 1.2 miles wide and 240 feet deep.

Scientists visiting the crater site recently found a thriving coral reef. “It was incredible, huge coral matrices had established, creating a thriving reef habitat,” said Zoe Richards of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef.

Richards said that the growing coral was a sign of natural resilience.

…And yet another sign that nuclear radiation is another enviro bogeyman that is completely overblown. Environmentalists have been using the trumped up fear of radiation to scare us away from our most valuable and efficient source of energy, nuclear power. Yet the absolute worst-case nuclear meltdown scenario, the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, killed only 59 people, most of  them firefighters battling the reactor's ensuing blaze.

We must stop listening to the extremists in the enviro movement and open our Yucca Mountain waste repository site in Nevada, and restart our American nuclear power plant construction program. Please read the column by Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore in the Thinking Points section of this website about why we need to develop nuclear power, and how Moore turned from anti-nuclear to pro, a trend that is sweeping even many in the enviro movement.

Murtha Shoots from the Hip... Again: Democrat US Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania said that Republican John McCain is too old to be President of the United States.

“I’ve served with seven presidents. When they come in, they all make mistakes. They get older. This one guy running (McCain) is about as old as me. Let me tell you something, it’s no old man’s job.”

Murtha is 75 years old, and McCain will be 72 next January when he becomes president, if elected.

McCain replied, “All I can tell you is that I admire and respect Jack Murtha. Speak for yourself, Jack. I’m doing fine.”

...The outspoken and frequently nutty Murtha has shown questionable judgment in attacking McCain, but more importantly in his accusations about a highly sensitive case involving US troops in Iraq. Using a fallacious Time magazine article describing wanton murder of civilians by US Marines in Haditha, Iraq, Murtha had accused our troops of “cold-blooded murder”. Murtha even had lied about his source of information about the case, claiming he got it from a Marine Corps briefing.

But the case against the eight Marines since has fallen apart. Most recently, charges against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum have been dropped over the November 19, 2005 case in which an investigation found that the Marines of Kilo Company indeed had killed civilians, but had responded after insurgents hid among innocent civilians, not as a vindictive rampage as charged by Time.

Only one Marine still faces court martial.

Murtha’s reactionary comments about our Marines, along with his comments about McCain’s age show that he is a typical Democrat. He will use any distortion, any demagoguery to score political points. And he will be remorseless when he is proven wrong.

This shows what kind of people the Democrats have become. No member of Murtha’s party has urged that he step down for his comments about our Marines, or for just being too old to serve in the House of Representatives.