Oct 31 2008
Because of the enormous numbers of new voters this year, and because of the high degree of partisanship in the current election cycle, the Federal Election Commission has made a very controversial decision, namely that staggered election days are the only option, in order to be sure that all registered voters are given the opportunity to vote, without possible duress from the other side.
Continue reading “Election Day has been rescheduled for Democrat voters”
Oct 31 2008
The Hedgehog Blog: Proposition 8 and California’s Schoolchildren: A Primer on Falsehoods
Perhaps the most hotly-debated question about Proposition 8 is the measure’s impact on schoolchildren. If Proposition 8 fails, will young children be taught that same-sex marriage is equal to traditional marriage? Opponents of Prop 8 have adamantly — and falsely — claimed this will not happen.
The fact is, Prop 8’s leading opponents have been very public for a long time about their goal of teaching schoolchildren about gender orientation at very young ages. What is worse, they have openly promoted strategies for overcoming or circumventing parental objections to such teaching. It is foolish to believe they will not use the same approach to teaching children about same-sex marriage.
Read it all.
Oct 31 2008
Here is an article on American foreign policy couched as a book review.
In From Colony to Superpower, George Herring, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Kentucky, provides a comprehensive, competent and rather conventional narrative history of US foreign policy from the origins of the “empire of liberty” in the 18th century to its “unipolar moment” following the fall of the Soviet Union and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001…………….
Despite some major failures, Herring argues, American foreign policy has been “spectacularly successful.” Behaving, for the most part, like a traditional great power, the US has balanced its zeal to carry out a providential mission to spread Christianity and democracy with the pragmatic pursuit of its national interests. Unilateralist, but almost never isolationist, America conquered a continent, dominated its hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean, prevailed in two world wars, won the Cold War and “extended its economic influence, military might, popular culture and ‘soft power’ through much of the world.”
Add this to the list of books (and articles) heralding the much hoped for and frequently sought end of American hegemony on the world stage, in which authors try to make the case that the USA is “losing its grip” and is no longer going to be the “hyperpower” that has dominated the world since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Oct 31 2008
If you want to learn how to blog with Scribefire (the tool I use most often), here is some help:
Oct 31 2008
Why I Fear an Obama Presidency – washingtonpost.com
Mr. Obama supports ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty that would have disastrous consequences for the American family. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the U.N. tribunal authorized to interpret and enforce the Children’s Convention, sets forth an exhaustive index of children’s rights, many at odds with the rights of parents. It has held, for instance, that Britain violated children’s rights in Wales by allowing parents to withdraw their children from public school programs without first considering the children’s wishes.
In other words, the United Nations has determined that the government will decide what is best for our children. This is the ultimate dream of elitists: They get to decide for all of us what is best for our own children.
Home schooling is already essentially illegal in Germany.
Oct 31 2008
Not exactly a scintillating read, but a sober summary of the candidates’ positions and differences on taxation. The first few graphs: (much more, with supporting charts and text, at the link)
Either Republican Senator John McCain or Democratic Senator Barack Obama will have to make very important decisions on tax policy when he takes office in January 2009. First, the U.S. economy will be recovering from the financial crisis and is already predicted to grow less than its usual rate of 3.3 percent over the last 50 years.[1] Second, President George W. Bush’s tax cuts will expire in 2011, and the President must decide how to extend or make permanent some of the tax cut provisions.
Senator McCain will make the Bush tax cuts permanent, with the exception of the estate tax. McCain credited the Bush tax cuts with helping the economy recover after the 2001 recession.
Senator Obama, on the other hand, will extend the Bush tax cuts only for those taxpayers who earn less than $250,000 a year—he has deemed the rest of the people “rich.” Senator Obama will also enact new tax increases on these rich individuals as well as a series of targeted tax credits for lower-income individuals. Senator Obama believes that the current tax system is not progressive enough and that higher taxes on the rich should be used to give money to low-income individuals or those who do not work at all, such as retired people, reduce the deficit, and reduce the size of Social Security’s shortfall.
In other words, Obama isn’t planning merely to return to the higher taxes under Clinton for “the rich”, he plans to tax them even MORE than Clinton’s Democrat congress voted in 1993, when Clinton “discovered” that he couldn’t keep his campaign pledge to lower taxes for the middle class after all. One can’t help but wonder if Obama will discover that “the rich” are those making more than $50K-$70K per year, when his staff really crunches the numbers.
Those windmills are going to be expensive.
Oct 31 2008
In describing the abuse of power by Leftist politicians invading Joe the Plumber’s privacy, Michelle Malkin hits it just right:
If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, you don’t have a spine.
Where’s the ACLU in protecting Joe from activist public officials abusing their access to his private life?
Probably getting ready for the big party in Chicago.
Oct 31 2008
Hundreds of people mysteriously disappear in Russia every day – Pravda.Ru
Several hundreds of people vanish in Russia every day. The number of those who disappeared without a trace during the recent several years has doubled and reached 120,000 people. Out-of-town visitors, entrepreneurs and lonely proprietors make the largest risk group at this point.
Oct 31 2008
Obama’s 2005 Daily Kos Post : Tone It Down, and Usher in a New Progressive Era | NewsBusters.org
Barack Obama sent a letter to the Daily Kos which was posted back in 2005 to talk strategy and “change” to the Kossacks. Obama was very serious about toning down the rhetoric only until it was safe enough to “enforce a more clearly progressive agenda.”
Read it all.
