Blame Dubya First

The new mantra for liberals is "Blame Dubya First!". Combined with a low popularity of the president, it is extremely fashionable to blame the president for everything that goes wrong. Blame Bush for the dandruff and for the dog that chases you during your morning run. I just hit my thumb with a hammer and I swore : "Damn you Bush!"

However, with the pain long gone, let me inspect the rationality of blaming the President for the various problems, perceived or real, that the country is facing. I have chosen four areas: Iraq war, energy crisis, sagging economy and mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina.

I am not an ardent supporter of wars. Not even Iraq war. But to hold the President as the sole scapegoat for whatever shortcomings of the Iraq war is delusional. The Senate and the House, both Republicans and Democrats supported the war. The same people who are blaming Bush for the failures in Iraq were spineless to oppose it before it started. Now that it is fashionable to oppose war, majority of them are against it. Blaming Bush is the way they are refusing to own up their responsibility. Why were they afraid to oppose back then? Because the polls said that the majority of Americans wanted it. They did not have guts to take a moral stand when it was unpopular. Democrats were screaming for Bush to stop Saddam and his WMD. The same people would flip again if the war in Iraq suddenly becomes very popular with the American public. This morality of convenience also makes them forget about the achievements of the war. Back then there was no question about the need of liberating a country from a tyrant who was oppressing all opposition brutally. Now that Saddam is dead and gone, people are forgetting, conveniently, about the positive effects of the invasion. If there is a mess in Iraq, we have to deal with it and let the process complete itself. We cannot just cut and run.

Everybody is bashing bush for the high gas prices. They fail to recognize two things. One: the current high prices are the result of market forces that are beyond the control of the American president. The global supply of oil is almost constant and the consumption is getting higher by the day. This results in an imbalance in the supply-demand equilibrium and the market readjusts by the way of higher prices. This brings to account the second accusation. It is his energy policy that created this mess which could have been avoided. Highly unlikely. Energy policy cannot alter the way a nation consumes energy in a few years. If any flaw in the American energy policy was responsible for the crisis, then the flaw existed for decades. So the blame should be borne by the previous administrations, including Bush Sr, Clinton, Reagan and beyond. However, whether they could have predicted the changes in the global economy that results in the higher oil prices is yet another question. Blaming bush is escapism. Again, let's consider some of the short term measures that can ease the prices a bit. The White House has repeatedly asked/begged Congress to pass legislation that allow drilling in Alaska, which has more oil than Saudi Arabia; allow offshore drilling in the Gulf Coast and California and to allow more nuclear plants to be built. Answers to all of the above from the Democrats and many Republicans is a staunch NO! The technology has evolved so much in the past decade and anyone who is for protecting the environment should add limits/provisions to ensure that in the bill. A blind opposition to any of these is downright moronic.

The main factor behind the economic downturn is the mortgage crisis and the resulting credit crunch. These are the results of decades of indiscipline and over inflation of house prices. Everyone said the house prices will continue to rise perpetually. This led to widespread fiscal irresponsibility by home owners and the lenders. George W Bush did not force these folks to buy bigger houses than they could afford by lying about their income. He did not force the hordes of people to ignore the contracts while signing Adjustable Rate Mortgages and then again use any available inflated equity to buy Plasma TVs. There is only one policy that could have saved thousands from home-foreclosures. There is only one action that could have stopped the credit crunch from happening. It is called personal responsibility.

Another blame that George W Bush has borne singlehandedly is that he is behind everything evil that happened with the Hurricane Katrina. Bush did not create the hurricane. It is a natural phenomenon. He did not make it more severe. There have been far worse hurricanes in the past. He did not designed or built the levees that were broken. Again, the Office of the President of the United States of America has nothing to do with the Hurricane Contingency plans for the area. They are formulated by the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans. The plan was put in action by the state effectively. It gave plenty of warnings and asked for mandatory evacuation from the area. It is not Dubya's fault that one in five people in New Orleans refused to leave. They were amply warned. It is not his fault that there were many people in New Orleans who had no cars or were sick. I've never read anywhere that the duties of the president includes making sure that every citizen is healthy, owns a car and shows common sense. Well, some of these are failings, but you cannot blame Bush alone for that. He rushed all the help that he could as fast as he can. You cannot expect him to go down there and start airlifting people out of rooftops all by himself. The convoys of food and other stuff takes time to organize and to reach a flooded area.

I am not claiming that George W Bush is the finest president that America has ever seen. But he is not the monster that the liberals portray him to be. To counter their claims, these facts are out there to be seen by anyone who cares to look. But as I have read in the internet, "If the sun were to explode, the Liberals would spend their last few minutes blaming it on Bush."

Assault on the First Amendment rights of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Texas

Here is another blatant assault on the first amendment. The court has thrown out the State's abduction of (yes abduction) of over 460 children from Yearning for Zion, the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) community.

I am not writing this to support any evil doers. If there were any under-aged or forceful marriages, any statutory rapes or other abuse on minors, the culprits should be tried and punished. If any of the adults in the community have committed such crimes or knowingly aided them, they all should be prosecuted to the maximum extend as allowed by law. The right of religious freedom won't protect them and first amendment does not excuse such crimes.

However, the lawyers of Child Protective Services have finally admitted that 15 of the 31 "child" mothers placed in foster care were actually adults. One is 27. A 14-year-old removed as a child mother apparently has no children. The state had raided the ranch after a 16-year-old girl called an abuse hot line saying she had been beaten and raped by her 50-year-old husband, but that girl has not been found at the ranch during the raid. Police traced the calls to 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman named Rozita Swinton. Swinton had earlier been arrested for making a false report, and accused of posing as "Jennifer," 16, who called 911 to report that her father had locked her in a basement for days. She is also accused of posing as other aliases.

That being said, in this case the Texas government officials jumped into this mess with the best of intentions. They forgot or ignored the legal procedure while earnestly trying to save another child from molestation. This lead to flagrant errors in evidence and identities of the parties involved. Even now the authorities cannot clearly find the ages, names and relationships of the 'children' taken away from the ranch. DNA tests of hundreds of people are taking weeks to process when many children are away from their parents despite of the lack of proof of any wrong doing.

The court ruling says in its third paragraph that "Removing children from their homes and parents on an emergency basis before fully litigating the issue of whether the parents should continue to have custody of the children is an extreme measure. It is, unfortunately, sometimes necessary for the protection of the children involved. However, it is a step that the legislature has provided may be taken only when the circumstances indicate a danger to the physical health and welfare of the children, and the need for protection of the children is so urgent that immediate removal of the children from the home is necessary."

The court talks about the following facts that were undisputed by the Department of Child Protective Services. The only danger to the male children or the female children who had not reached puberty identified by the Department was the Department's assertion that the "pervasive belief system" of the FLDS community groomed the males to be perpetrators of sexual abuse later in life and taught the girls to submit to sexual abuse after reaching puberty;There was no evidence that the male children, or the female children who had not reached puberty, were victims of sexual or other physical abuse or in danger of being victims of sexual or other physical abuse. Also, there was no evidence that any of the female children other than the five identified as having become pregnant between the ages of fifteen and seventeen were victims or potential victims of sexual or other physical abuse. Additionally, the Department conceded at the hearing that teenage pregnancy, by itself, is not a reason to remove children from their home and parents, but took the position that immediate removal was necessary in this case because "there is a mind-set that even the young girls report that they will marry at whatever age, and that it's the highest blessing they can have to have children."

It may sound outrageous when you hear about girls are married by guys who are old enough to be their dad. But keep in mind, a horror story alone is not a legal basis for removing hundreds of children form their parents. The Texas Court of appeals, Third District, at Austin is clearly right in pointing out that a good intention would not substitute legal procedures for proving that a child is in imminent danger.

Gas Prices Soaring, Politicians Warring.

Gas prices are soaring. New Jersey has one of the lowest prices in the nation and it was around $3.59 a couple of days ago. On the same day, just across the state border, it was $4.29 in Rockland County, NY and the price shown in the above Chicago Tribune picture in Downtown Chicago. Obviously, nobody is happy about it. Every congressman is trying hard to put the blame on someone else, whether it is Bush administration's foreign policy or record profits by oil companies. But what people want to know is where this ends.

Some of the solutions that are floating around are suspending federal gas tax, enforcing higher fuel efficiency standards and forcing the oil companies to let go of their profits. I can dissect one by one to show how each one of these measures will not put a dent on the current scenario.

Suspending or repealing the federal gas tax could save about 20 cents per gallon to the consumers. Sen. John McCain has been promoting this idea. This would only lead to about $10 savings per month for the consumers where as it would deny billions of dollars from the federal infrastructure programs. There is also a chance of the gas station owners and the oil companies will readjust the prices so that the savings may not go into the wallets of the public. Well, this is not a chance, we've seen it happening in Illinois before.

Enforcing higher fuel efficiency standards is an idea supported by the white house hopeful Sen. Barack Obama. At first glance, it looks like a pretty sound idea. But in reality, it would not work the way it is envisioned. A classic example would be story behind Chrysler PT Cruiser. The car is designed in such a way that it would be classified as a truck by NHTSA for CAFE fuel economy calculations. This enabled the company to lower the fuel economy of its light truck fleet into compliance with CAFE standards. If there is anyone out there who can challenge it when I say that it is a small car, come forward. This is just an example that shows a way by which companies circumvent the Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations. It is very clear that the regulations cannot improve fuel efficiency. Free market can. There is no better incentive for the manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency than a $5 per gallon gas price. We see that happening now. Look at how Chrysler is doing in terms of sales. Look at the Japanese companies with their smaller fuel efficient cars. You get the idea.

Another idea that Sen. Barack Obama has been promoting is enforcing windfall taxes on oil companies. He talks about record profits by Exxon Mobil of the order of $10 Billion. What he fails to bring into perspective is that Exxon Mobil made a profit of $10 Billion on an operating revenue of over $100 Billion. This is not a windfall. This is definitely not cut-throat profit. Earning 10% profit is the least that the investors can ask for from any company. Would Sen. Dick Durbin invest in a company that does not make at least some meagre profit? Go check out the share prices and the revenues and profits of different companies, oil companies or others and figure out by yourselves.

Now look at gas prices around the world: UK- $5.64, Hong Kong- $5.62 , Germany- $5.29, Italy- $4.86, Portugal- $4.80. Let us examine how these countries fare in terms of median household income. Well, most of them are behind the United states in this aspect. While I am at it, I should make one smaller point. In the UK, everything is more expensive, not just gas prices, than the in the United States and at the same time, people earn less. This has been the way things have been for a long time. There must be some way that the people in Europe got away with a higher cost of living.

One thing that we can be certain of is that the cheap gas prices of 90s are never coming back. These high prices would make the consumers reduce consumption voluntarily. The market will work if we let it. High prices would encourage conservation better than any environmental regulations. Entrepreneurs would race to develop viable alternate fuels if gas prices rose too much. However, the alternative sources have to be proven their viability in the free market for long term sustainability. Government subsidies won't cut it. Any source that is truly cheaper and cleaner and still viable would survive. Government does not need to support it. These high gas prices would make many of these sources more viable and this could help us in the long term by weaning us off our dependency of oil from the Middle East. We would definitely love to see us stop funding both sides of the war on terror.

Secondly, drill more in Alaska and Gulf Coast. This the only country in the world that denies its citizens access to known recoverable oil resources in the country. A blind opposition on more drilling is a terrible mistake that the democrats are making. Allowing offshore drilling, eliminating regulations that restrict refining, and suspending harmful tax rules that discourage domestic oil production would go a long way in helping reduce the gas prices. If you are concerned about the environment, you can create some basic guidelines to protect it. I am sure the drilling techniques have evolved in a long way in the last two decades so as to minimize the effect on the environment. People who blindly oppose any drilling are acting like they are oblivious of this fact.

In essence, if we hope to have a stable, affordable supply of gas, we must allow the free market to operate. The government can do certain things. But mainly, it should let the free market operate itself out of this situation. From a national security point of view, this is the time for America to innovate, conserve and adjust itself in many ways so that we do not have to vent all of our money to the states like the Venezuela and the ones in Middle East that definitely do not have America's prosperity and security as their first priority. The blame game must cease.

Check out the claims.

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/price.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income

Keep the immigrants. Deport the Columbia faculty.

I'm referring to a story by Jason L Riley on Wall Street Journal. Check out the article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121080967841993539.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Mr. Riley has explored into some serious stuff here. It rings true to the beliefs of most of America. And it points to the extremism that is being promoted by the hard core liberals who are against the concept of assimilation. This absolutely shows how they are out of touch with the reality.

Let me talk about assimilation, the supposedly dirty word. If I may, assimilation is the whole essence of being American. Right from the beginning, with each wave of immigration, the newcomers have tried their best to being a part of the mainstream. This may take a decade, or a couple of generations. But the whole idea is that the immigrants adjust their ways and become one to the melting pot that is America. The first generation may have their own difficulties, but the subsequent generations have always found it natural becoming American in all senses.

The key to this transformation is that there were always opportunities to do so in the past. Or at least, assimilation was always expected. Nobody talked about having Italian language education. There were no German sign boards in the public. Sure enough, the children of Catholic immigrants needed Notre Dame to come up against the odds that were stacked up in the universities then. But fast forward to the twenty first century and none of them is away from main stream America. Nobody bats an eye when a Catholic is running for president.

Again, this is not to say that assimilation is a one way street. No. It works both ways. As much as the immigrants become a part of America, they contribute to the culture, the cuisine and the folk lore: be it Pizza, Mafia or Drinking habits.

So, the pundits are wrong when they say assimilation is a bad thing. We do not need some parallel societies where a lower quality citizens exist segregated by the walls of education in a different language. There is no reason for English not becoming the official language of America. Earlier in history, there was no need for it. But now a days multiculturalists fail to realize that lack of assimilation linguistically and culturally is only enslaving the immigrants against an opportunity to self improvement : Financially and Culturally.

Good traditions never die. It never did in the past two centuries. So there is no reason to think that the sole identity of an immigrant is lost with assimilation. It only strengthens the person in a new environment. It only strengthens the country.

What happened to our first amendment rights?

What happened to our first amendment rights?

To quote wikipedia, "The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of the United States Bill of Rights. On its face, it prohibits the United States Congress from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion" (the "Establishment Clause") or that prohibit free exercise of religion (the "Free Exercise Clause"), laws that infringe the freedom of speech, infringe the freedom of the press, limit the right to peaceably assemble, or limit the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

As Politics Avalanche has mentioned before, the pro-abortion activists have the right to express their opinion, and if someone says anything against it, the whole media cries FOUL.

ACLU should show guts to fight for the very basic freedom of speech in this case. In America it is easier to defend criminals than the faithful that were peacefully showing their solidarity.

Canadian news with some spine

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=f6848b98-417b-4db9-ba63-0ebb7f4228a7&k=30619&p=1

I usually find the Canadian commentaries displaying a blatant deficiency of a backbone. But that is not the case with National Post and Lorne Gunter. I have found his opinion on the importance of Israel pretty insightful. He says that if [the Western World] gives up on Israel, [the jihadists] will simply take that as a sign they might be able to pressure us next to give up on Quebec, Mississauga, Michigan, Birmingham and the Paris suburbs.

Whatever maybe one's political belief, there is no question that Israel has managed to perfect certain techniques in dealing with terrorism. Whereas America has been under severe attack from the Jihadists only for the past one decade or so, Israel, throughout its existence of sixty years has been getting bombarded by all kinds of onslaughts imaginable. It has dealt with hostage situations and airline hijacking for ages and have been considered as the best in the world in counter-terrorism.

A big aspect of Israel is that it thrives under extreme threats. The Egyptian aerial assaults with its massive assembly of Soviet made aircraft had forced them to produce one of the best air force legions in combat scenarios. It is not a secret that the Israel had given American Soldiers training on the urban guerrilla warfare for the Baghdad streets.

Thus, we can see that Israel is useful in two ways, one as a strategic, unwavering partner in one of the most volatile regions in the world. Secondly, keeping in mind of the continuing war on terror, they could be extremely useful as a training partner or a real world lab to test the next-gen combat techniques in the long term.

Additionally, in an area of thriving dictatorships and blooming fanaticism, it could act as the beacon of freedom and democracy. Add to that the resilience and courage of Israeli people, it proves to the Western world and America that, even when the going gets tough, democracy and freedom is tough enough to get going. The unflinching strength that the country has shown in the past sixty years braving enemies from all around that have the sole agenda of erasing it from the world map is a sign of optimism and hope for the believers of liberty and democracy worldwide.

Shock : Democrats deriding American people!

First it was Obama's pastor dissing the country. Now it is a Clintonian.

Hillary once said : "Screw them!"

Regardless of who it is, both the democratic campaigns are elitists and condescending.