Brutally Honest

Gingrich on the Fed and assigning responsibility

By Locutisprime

Newt pulls no punches. He directs his fire with specificity and facts. An excerpt from the Dartmouth debate: 

"Start with Barney Frank & Chris Dodd"

 

"Bernake has in secret spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out one group and not bailing out another group, I don't see anybody in the news media, demanding the kind of transparency at the Fed, that you would demand of every other aspect of the federal government and I think it is corrupt and it is wrong for one man to have that kind of secret power."

Derek Jeter! Derek Jeter!...

By tim, The Godless Heathen

Haven’t seen this anywhere, I came up with this Saturday night sitting around the fire at the lake sipping beers.

Congratulation to Derek Jeter on 3,000 hits. A class act, and a pleasure to watch all these years.

1 Home run

for

3 Thousand Hits

on a

5 for Five (Hits/At bats) game

on the

7th Month

of the

9th Day

of the

11th Year

Preety cool, no?

The Sieve of Angkar

A few weeks ago I was turned on to a book written by a local (Yorktown, VA) author.  It came highly recommended and was described to me as a tragically moving and horrifically gripping tale of survival, one that needed to be read by all.  The fact that the author is a good friend and neighbor of someone I work with was a factor in my deciding to pick up a copy.  I am so glad that I did.

The Sieve of Angkar recounts the barbarity experienced by a then 15 year old girl and her immediate and extended family over a 4 year period beginning with the Khmer Rouge taking power in 1975.  Sovannara Ky was the 6th of 10 children born to a well to do Cambodian family but in April of that year, she and her family were forced from their spacious home and driven to the countryside as pawns in the playing out of a cruel and brutal communist vision.

I too was 15 in 1975.  For the next 4 years, my struggles were those typically experienced by an Air Force brat who had moved from time to time to new places until finally finding a place to settle when my father retired in 1977.  In those same 4 years, I experienced what I might then have called adversity.   I struggled to meet new friends or to prove myself all over again to baseball coaches who knew me not.  I survived new schools and new surroundings.  I worked hard during those teenage years to make money for myself and for my family especially when my father had a tough time making ends meet shortly after retiring from the Air Force in '77.  While friends went off to college in the fall of '78, I worked 40 or more hours in a grocery store week in and week out and continued to help my family get through some lean years.

Little did I know that thousands of miles away during those same 4 years, a young girl of the same age would be facing fear, angst, starvation, disease and even death.  While I thought I had it tough in Warner Robins, Georgia and later Hampton, Virginia, Ms. Ky toiled in forced labor camps, separated from her family and working long hours daily in oppressive heat while being fed rice and gruel not fit for my Irish Setter. 

These were the thoughts I could not shake as I clicked through my Kindle version of The Sieve of Angkar.  These are the thoughts I still carry as I think through what she survived and what horrors she must still be reliving so many years later.

I encourage my readers to pick up a copy of the book and be amazed at the courage, the persistence and yes, the faith that carried Sovannara Ky through her teen years and beyond.  It's a book that will leave you counting your blessings while admiring the perseverance shown by a young woman forced to grow up way too fast.

In the coming days, I'd like to send a list of questions to Ms. Ky about her experiences in the hopes that she will answer them so I can share them here with each of you.  Please leave a question you'd like answered by Ms. Ky in the comments and I'll attempt to get them to her.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Boehner: "This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach"

Obama charges forward on health-care, damn you who oppose.

John Boehner, House minority leader, speaks for me:

“The President has crippled the credibility of this week’s summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected.  This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits. 

“This week’s summit clearly has all the makings of a Democratic infomercial for continuing on a partisan course that relies on more backroom deals and parliamentary tricks to circumvent the will of the American people and jam through a massive government takeover of health care. 

“The best way to protect families and small businesses in this time of economic uncertainty is to start over with a step-by-step approach to health care reform focused on lowering costs, and that’s exactly what Republicans are fighting for.  The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the Republican bill reduces premiums for families and small businesses by up to 10 percent.  The Republican bill reduces premiums by implementing common-sense reforms such as allowing Americans to purchase insurance across state lines.  Despite their rhetoric to the contrary, none of the Democrats’ proposals – including the President’s – provides this much-needed reform in a manner that can actually be effective.   

“Republicans are also standing with the American people by calling for health care reform to protect human life and not use taxpayer money to fund abortion.  The Republican bill would codify the Hyde Amendment and prohibit all authorized and appropriated federal funds from being used to pay for abortion, which the President’s proposal would allow.  Pro-life Democrats in the House have already pledged to vote against this provision.  Health care reform should be an opportunity to protect human life – not end it – and the American people agree.”

For you nay-sayers who doubt the notion that Obama is going against the will of the people, let's go to Rasmussen:

President Obama this week called for a televised bipartisan summit to get his health care reform plan back on track, but 61% of U.S. voters say Congress should scrap that plan and start all over again.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds just 28% who think it is better to build on the health care plan that has been working its way through the House and Senate.

Support for and opposition to the existing plan remain at the same levels they’ve been at since just after Thanksgiving.

Only 35% of voters believe Congress should pass health care reform before the upcoming midterm elections anyway. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Congress should wait until voters select new congressional representatives in November.

It’s interesting to note that in a separate survey earlier this week 63% of voters said, generally speaking, it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated this November. Just 27% now believe their current congressman is the best person for the job.

The man is an egotistical megalomaniac who is doing his level best to dicate policy the majority of Americans disagree with at great cost to the country and that threatens private care with extreme prejudice.

I've had enough hope and change.

You?

Crossposted(*).

Biting the hand that elected you

Gallup has a poll out reflecting the attitude of the American people on the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate political spending:

Americans' broad views about corporate spending in elections generally accord with the Supreme Court's decision Thursday that abolished some decades-old restrictions on corporate political activity. Fifty-seven percent of Americans consider campaign donations to be a protected form of free speech, and 55% say corporate and union donations should be treated the same way under the law as donations from individuals are.

...

The free-speech question elicits uncommon agreement across party lines. More than 6 in 10 Republicans and Democrats believe campaign donations are a protected form of free speech, but fewer than half of independents (48%) agree.

...

Public attitudes about the issues involved in the court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision come from a nationwide Gallup survey sponsored by the nonpartisan First Amendment Center. The poll was conducted Oct. 1-2, 2009, shortly after the high court heard concluding arguments in the case.

So you'd think that Obama, being a man of the people (or so he says), would be listening.

You'd be wrong:

President Obama Saturday lashed out at the Supreme Court for a dramatic ruling that gives corporate cash newfound reach in elections.

Obama said the decision "strikes at our democracy itself."

"It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way - or to punish those who don't," Obama said, calling the ruling "devastating."

The President promised a "forceful, bipartisan response" in Congress to "repair the damage that has been done" by the ruling, which Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) Saturday called "one of the worst decisions I have seen in a hundred years."

Fresh off a groundshaking victory by Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown in the race to fill the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat, the GOP used its weekly address to glory in Brown's win - and get out ahead of Obama's first State of the Union address on Wednesday.

"We'll listen to what the President has to say," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio. "But make no mistake, if the powers that be in Washington keep turning their backs on the people, Republicans will continue to challenge the status quo and offer better solutions."

There's a part of me that wants him to continue to flip the bird at the American people... something he's been doing all along but too many were distracted by his blackness to see it... but the other part of me wonders if the country can survive it all.

Let's hope she can.

"... even 'hostile glances' are Islamophobic"

American Thinker gives us something to ponder and muse this Christmas season:

Saudi King Abdullah has been urging the United Nations to pass a universal law prescribing imprisonment for criticizing Islam.  Some skeptics, including myself (notwithstanding that I twice enjoyed the King's generous hospitality in Riyadh), have suggested he start instead by establishing religious liberty in his own country,  where all religious observance other than Wahabi Islam is banned.   Two events occurring last week -- the hideous carnage in Mumbai, accompanied by shameful  proceedings at the U.N. -- convinced me it is urgent for His Majesty to radically alter his plans.

 

Since the U.N. actions were less publicized, let me begin there.  A key U.N. committee passed by 85-50 the King's "Islamophobia" resolution, criminalizing any "defamation of religion," especially Islam. The General Assembly is expected to soon approve this measure. Governments will be directed to amend their criminal codes accordingly; the resolution will be incorporated into amorphous "customary international law," which liberal Supreme Court justices are relying on,  notwithstanding that much of this "law" springs from anti-democratic sources. While "defamation of religion" conveys a sonorous label, Islamic countries consider "Islamophobic" any expression linking Islam to such subjects as 9/11,  terror attacks,  honor killings, suicide bombings, beheadings, executions by stoning, persecution of homosexuals, fatwas against authors, death threats to cartoonists, etc. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has decreed that even "hostile glances" are Islamophobic.

The intolerance of the tolerant.

Coming via a progressive legislator near you.

Today is Victory in Iraq Day

Thanks to tim aka The Godless Heathen (who quite frankly has shown himself to be as Godly if not more so than many of the Godly I know) via e-mail, we learn that today is Victory in Iraq Day. 

Click on the image to learn more and a tip of the hat to President Bush for his stick-to-it-iveness.

"He was about victory when victory wasn't cool."

Steve Shippert:

In 2004, President Bush was the only major candidate who supported the war.  And as president, he won it.  He might get a footnote in the immediate contemporary history to be written in the coming months and years, while Obama will be awarded full credit for withdrawing U.S. forces — now that, as Michael Yon describes to Glenn Reynolds via phone from Iraq, in "the 10th Mountain Division . . . about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months."

"THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:" Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen anything. I've been asking Iraqis, 'do you think the violence will kick up again,' but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they're usually dour." There's a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that's a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

To be sure, the murderous enemies of al-Qaeda, remnant insurgents and Iranian-backed Special Groups led, trained, armed and funded by the IRGC's Quds Force were not sitting back cowering in hopes of relief through talks without preconditions by then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

No, they were defeated on the battlefield by American forces, Iraqi forces, Coalition allies and an emboldened and protected citizenry. All of this made possible by one man's steadfast determination to win the war: President George W. Bush. He was about victory when victory wasn't cool.

Despite the rantings of friend and foe, the man stuck to his guns.

I continue to believe history will paint him positively.