Say Anything Blog

This statement by Rudy is the reason he is not going to get the nomination by the GOP. The man is all over the place on gun rights.

~Lets refresh everyone’s memory.

~Rudy on the NRA

Tom Blumer

While we’re on the subject, here’s a reality check…

The quarterly report on home prices issued by the government’s Office for Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) is the most comprehensive and most reliable measure available of what is happening in the housing market.

Here is how today’s OFHEO press release describing results for the third quarter of this year started off (bolds are in original):

  For the first time in nearly thirteen years, U.S. home prices experienced a quarterly decline. The OFHEO House Price Index (HPI), which is based on data from sales and refinance transactions, was 0.4 percent lower in the third quarter than in the second quarter of 2007. This is similar to the quarterly decline of 0.3 percent (seasonally-adjusted) shown in the purchase-only index. The annual price change, comparing the third quarter of 2007 to the same period last year showed an increase of 1.8 percent, the lowest four-quarter increase since 1995. OFHEO’s purchase-only index, which is based solely on purchase price data, indicates the same rate of appreciation over the last year.

The full OFHEO report (PDF) is here.

The quarterly dip was the first since the fourth quarter of 1994. It was the worst quarterly drop since the fourth quarter of 1990, when prices fell 0.40%.

From 1995-2006, home prices nationally went up 117%, while inflation during that period was 36%. From 2002-2006, home prices went up 52%, vs. inflation of 15%.

In fact, I still say, “Bubble, schmubble.” If gas prices come down 25 cents a gallon in the next week, that will be a drop of about 8%—20 times greater than the home-price drop just reported. I don’t expect to see any reports of a gas-price “bubble” any time soon.

[...]

The MSM is making a big deal out of a predictable “crash” in a small segment of the housing market, hoping to produce bad economic effects to help the Dems in the upcoming election, but the truth keeps tripping them up.  Just think; if it were not for the “alternative media”, we wouldn’t know about any of the good news.  Scary.

When I say “predictable”, I mean that the housing loan market was jiggered to suit a social agenda, rather than being about sensible financing of housing for those who could afford it.

Christopher Alleva

Everything is Caused by Global Warming (600+ links)

Dr. John Brignell, a British engineering professor, runs a website called numberwatch. He has compiled what has to be the most complete collection of links to media stories ascribing the cause of everything under the sun to global warming.  He has already posted more than six-hundred links.

The site’s stated mission is to expose all the “scares, scams, junk, panics and flummery cooked up by the media, politicians, bureaucrats and so-called scientists and others that try to confuse the public with wrong numbers”  Professor Brignell’s motto is “Working to Combat Math Hysteria.”

This exercise is not merely a lark to show the abject absurdity of this global warming nonsense. Brignell wrote a great book titled Sorry Wrong Number, The Abuse of Measurement on this very subject.

Dr. Brignell is accepting additions to the list so if you have any send them along.

  Agricultural land increase, Africa devastated, African aid threatened, Africa hit hardest, air pressure changes, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end,  amphibians breeding earlier (or not),  ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, Antarctic grass flourishes, anxiety,  algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic lakes disappear….(much, much more)

[...]

Reductio ad absurdum

Jumpin’ GDP: Revised Third Quarter Growth is 4.9%; Media Obsessed with Recession Talk

Economic growth for the third quarter, which was estimated at 3.9% a month ago, was revised upward to 4.9% by the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The BEA announcement is here.

[...]

The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from exports, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), private inventory investment, equipment and software, federal government spending, nonresidential structures, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by a negative contribution from residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

..... The real change in private inventories added 0.98 percentage point to the third-quarter change in real GDP, after adding 0.22 percentage point to the second-quarter change. Private businesses increased inventories $32.9 billion in the third quarter, following an increase of $5.8 billion in the second quarter and an increase of $0.1 billion in the first.

Ever since the fourth quarter of 2006, when there was a big downward revision to GDP because of inventory reductions, I have been wondering when the reverse was going to occur, because it almost had to. Now it has.

Two tidbits you may not see reported elsewhere (source info from BEA is here):

* If it holds, and I believe it will, this is the best quarter since 3Q03, and the second best since 2Q-2000.

* Again if it holds, the combined 2nd and 3rd quarter total of 8.7% (after the 2nd quarter’s 3.8%; quarterly percentages are presented in annualized form) is the highest since the 3Q03 and 4Q03’s 10.2%. 2Q03 and 3Q03 were a combined 11.0%.

[...]

There is so much craziness in this story I can’t begin to even put my thoughts into words.

9-year old suspended for ‘hate crime’

This kid can sing and one of the few humans ever to hit that high note perfectly.

Few words in today’s North Dakota political landscape garner more emotional, and maybe even physical, feedback than the two words I’m about to mention. 

That’s right, you guessed it.  Property Taxes.

Wow.  Mention those two words together at the local coffee spot in the morning and you’re likely to get more personal attention than a pheasant now days. You may even end up looking like one after the deed is done if you’re not careful. 

And folks aren’t shy about it either.  They start with the local school superintendent and school board members in their assault. “I shouldn’t have to educate “their” kids”, they say. Then they turn their attention to the local property assessor. “It’s not worth “that” much!” “Would you sell it to me for that?” I asked. “No,” they say; “It’s worth more than what he said it was.” they laugh.  Then you start hearing that the local city and county boards are spending too much money on ‘services’.  “Why do people need to ask for social services? Can’t they work?”  Then finally it’s how the city and/or county employees are being paid too much. “Didn’t you notice those new cars in the parking lot?”, they whisper.

And then the coup de grace, “What do YOU think?” they ask.  Be careful here, this is where that pheasant comes to mind.  If you are brave, some would say even stupid enough to fall into this wide open trap you get what you deserve.  And man, it’s ugly, let me tell ya.  The last person I know of who took that chance ended up in yesterday’s left over coffee grinds with a day old donut sticking out of his mouth.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, then they dumped yesterday’s leftover lettuce from the lunch sandwiches on him for good measure.  “Well, he got what he deserved” they finish off.  Huh, maybe, but then again who cares about justice when the day is young.

That’s when I came to the conclusion that something must be wrong here.  Ha, famous last words uttered by General Custer, right? Surely we can figure this out and make at least some people happy.  No, I’m not talking about the local village idiot who never cares to solve anything, and doesn’t mind contributing to the cause of keeping it broke, either.  I’m talking about the people who really care about the proper and affordable functionality of North Dakota’s townships, cities, and counties.  And care even more about our schools, and volunteer fire and ambulance crews. 

You know, the ones who volunteered their Saturday for that German supper fundraiser we had last weekend.  Yeah, the one for the new community ambulance, or new sound system for the school gym, or to replace the old worn out 30 year old volunteer fire truck.  Yeah, those people.  Those are the ones I’m talking about.  That’s who I’ve started listening to.  And they have something to say, let me tell ya.

From listening to them, you would come to realize that North Dakota’s rural communities are hanging on by a thread. The last 30 years have completely turned the local economies upside down in these precious places.  And in most cases it has been so rapid that the local community simply could not change with it fast enough.  Mark that with a propensity to resist change, even in the smallest of instances’, due to the rural farm cultural tendencies, one can see the writing on the wall.  Change doesn’t come quick here.  And when it does, it always comes with a price.  And I don’t mean money, buddy.

And therein lies the problem of property taxes, I believe. Government services costs money.  Money for that spending is provided for by property taxes collected within a jurisdictions boundary. That means money collected in your county or city by property taxes stays in your county or city, and pays for your services whether that is schools, roads, or even police protection.  No one else benefits from your money, except you.

No, I’m not asking anybody else to pay for “my” services.  I just wish there were more people around to help pay for “our” services.

Writing at Human Events, celebrity game show host, Pat Sajak had this to say,

… the idea of choosing the Leader of the Free World based on the advice of someone who lives in the cloistered world of stardom seems a bit loony to me…

I suppose anything that gets people engaged in the political process is a good thing, but the idea that a gold record, a top-ten TV show or an Oscar translates into some sort of political wisdom doesn’t make much sense to me. Trust me, one’s view of the world isn’t any clearer from the back seat of a limo.

Sajak is obviously a very wise man (his IQ was once reported to be in the lower 140s, I believe).  Read the whole thing.

A while back there was a big controversy about a letter from 41 US Senators to put pressure one Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host who used the term “phony soldiers” on the air one day. It was in reference to people like Jesse Al-Said, AKA Jesse MacBeth, who claimed to have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, witnessing atrocities committed by US soldiers, but who actually lied about their service in the US military.

North Dakota’s delegation to the Senate signed a letter to the CEO of Clear Channel, the syndication partner of Limbaugh’s show, attempting to pressure Clear Channel to influence what Limbaugh says on the air. Doesn’t that fly right in the face of the first amendment? Here we have nearly half the Senate, acting in official capacity, attempting to influence political speech by a private citizen by bringing the presence of the US Senate to bear. This is precisely the kind of thing that the Constitution prohibits!

I don’t care if it’s Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken on the receiving end of this letter, it’s an affront to the idea of free speech in this country. And who’s jumped on board like the good little lap dogs we know them to be? Conrad and Dorgan. And you can bet they didn’t do it because North Dakotans were flooding them with complaints about Rush Limbaugh.

I wrote a letter outlining the points above, because I believe in free political and religious speech. I want to beat the crap out of anyone I see burning a flag, but I won’t…in fact, I believe it’s their right under our nation’s Constitution. I think most liberal talk show hosts are out of their skulls, but I defend their right to spout their lunacy for their dozens of listeners. So my motivation in going after our Senators is not conservative vs. liberal. It’s simply a free speech issue.

Back to Gaylord’s return letter to me. He states “I do not know what Mr. Limbaugh was thinking when he uttered the words “phony soldiers.” Okay, Senator Conrad…if you didn’t know, then why would you enter some very frightening territory, constitutionally speaking, attempting to influence political speech by using the power of the Senate as a bludgeoning tool? Because the national Democrat Party told you to, I’m sure.

Rather than behaving like a North Dakotan, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan showed their true colors and act like east coast liberals. Maybe that way they’ll continue to get the support of the DNC to keep their Senate seats. In the mean time, this Congress has accomplished pretty much nothing while wasting its efforts on trampling the Constitution for political gain.

Why do people continue to vote for these idiots? Haven’t they run out of farmers and senior citizens to scare into voting Democrat?

Stunning news from the NY Sun:

With the eyes of the world focused on the Middle East peace talks in Annapolis, Md., President Bush’s war tsar, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, quietly announced that the American and Iraqi governments will start talks early next year to bring about an end to the allied occupation by the close of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

The negotiations will bring to a formal conclusion the U.N. Chapter 7 Security Council involvement in the occupation and administration of Iraq, and are expected to reduce the number of American troops to about 50,000 troops permanently stationed there but largely confined to barracks, from the current 164,000 forces on active duty.

“The basic message here should be clear. Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own. That’s very good news. But it won’t have to stand alone,” General Lute yesterday told reporters in the White House.

Bringing the war to a close by the end of 2008 will ensure that the next president will face a fait accompli in Iraq, a fact that will further remove from the presidential election the Iraq war as an issue of contention.

Democrats will, of course, try to claim that they forced the troops withdrawals on an obstinately reluctant administration.  But as Ed Morrissey notes,

Given the Democrats’ inability to affect the war strategy, their argument will be rather weak, and they still will have to explain the rush to surrender in the spring of 2007, led by Harry Reid’s declaration of defeat on the Senate floor.

Not to mention the inane ranting of House Democrat leader and supposed military “expert” Jack Murtha, or the similar blather of Senate doofus, Dick Durbin.

If this comes off anywhere near as planned, the flip-flopping by congressional Democrats will be like the floor of the Naha, Okinawa fish market at 5:00 A.M.

Republicans will rightly claim that they remained steadfast in their commitment to victory, that they were the ones who put their faith in General David Petraeus’ strategic “surge” plan and the men and women of the United States military, and that Democrats’ earlier calls for surrender in Iraq only shows that the Dems simply cannot be trusted to effectively guide the country’s defense policies.

Incidentally, Bill Clinton’s latest, attempt at triangulation, stating that he has always been opposed to US actions in Iraq, is hardly likely to help his wife’s candidacy come next November, when close to 2/3 of the US combat forces will be drawn down in Iraq.  The Clintons’ alignment with the hard left radicals won’t sit well with the more rational middle of the electorate.

Scott Bloch investigates politicisation in the Administration. Then Bloch becomes subject to investigation. Bloch wipes computer hard drive. Now he’s under investigation for that too.

I’d wager that it’s time for a change in Washington just like it was time in the nineties. Regimes get tired, be they right wing or left.

Dennis Prager

One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world—so widely held it is not disputed—is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats’ major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony.

But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world’s left that hates America. However, because the left dominates the world’s news media and because most people, understandably, believe what the news media report, many people, including Americans, believe that the world hates America.

That it is the left—and those influenced by the left-leaning news and entertainment media—that hates America can be easily shown.

[...]

There is another obvious argument against the belief that the world hates America: Many millions of people would rather live in America than in any other country. How does the left explain this? Why would people want to come to a country they loathe? Why don’t people want to live in Sweden or France as much as they wish to live in America? Those are rich and free countries, too.

The answer is that most people know there is no country in the world more accepting of strangers as is America. After three generations, people who have emigrated to Germany or France or Sweden do not feel—and are not regarded as—fully German, French or Swedish. Yet, anyone of any color from any country is regarded as American the moment he or she identifies as one. The country that the left routinely calls “xenophobic” and “racist” is in fact the least racist and xenophobic country in the world.

[...]

So what America does the American left love? That is for those on the left to answer. But given their beliefs that America was founded by racists and slaveholders, that it is an imperialist nation, that 35 million Americans go hungry, that it invades countries for corporate profits, and that it is largely racist and xenophobic, it is a fair question.

Read the whole thing.  It’s time we realized who the real enemy is.

Article Worthy Of Reading

FALLUJAH, IRAQ – MICHAEL TOTTEN. Before crossing into Fallujah we passed the checkpoint that keeps non-resident vehicles out. Just past the checkpoint was a sign written in Arabic: Welcome to Fallujah. A Terrorist-Free City.

An Edgy Calm in Fallujah
“You’re probably safer here than you are in New York City,” said Marine First Lieutenant Barry Edwards when I arrived in Fallujah. I raised my eyebrows at him skeptically. “How many people got shot at last night in New York City?” he said.

“Probably somebody,” I said.

“Yeah, probably somebody did,” he said.

Nobody was shot last night in Fallujah. No American has been shot anywhere in Fallujah since the 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment rotated into the city two months ago. There have been no rocket or mortar attacks since the summer. Not a single one of the Marines has even been wounded.

J.R. Dunn

Eight Years of Liberal Hatred
In politics as in personal life, hatred is a dangerous tool. It’s like one of the early medieval cannons, just as capable of blowing up in your face as it is of lobbing a ball at the enemy. Of course, the medieval metal casters realized they had a problem and worked to correct it. Haters never seem to get that far.

For the latest evidence of this, we can thank Peter Berkowitz. Berkowitz is that rarity, a sincere liberal with as critical an eye for his own side as he has for the opposition. In a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, “The Insanity of Bush Hatred”, Berkowitz attempts to take the measure of the haters, a phenomenon generally unmentioned by the legacy media, which prefers to act as an unknowing conduit for these people (watch how quickly this changes if Madame Hillary manages to squeak in).

Berkowitz gives us several fine examples of individuals on the very edge of permanent cognitive damage from Bush Derangement Syndrome. People who can’t so much as hear the name without their faces going red and their features distorted. (My favorite is the “political moderate” who answers a civil question with: “I . . . hate . . . the . . . way . . . Bush . . . talks”, an excellent illustration of the psychological factor called “displacement”.)

[...]

All the same, the two Bush terms have been on unending carnival of hatred. Just to hit the high points, there’s the novel blueprinting his assassination, a film on the same topic, and probably more. We’ve had several impeachment attempts, all hopeless on their face, the latest proposed by the noted statesman Dennis Kucinich. And all this before we get to one single word of media coverage on Karl Rove, waterboarding, surveillance, Virginia Plame, or Scott McClellan.

It’s a waste of time looking for a rational explanation amid all this. None could conceivably cover every last convolution of paranoia, delusion, and obsession. “Bush hatred,” as Berkowitz writes, “is different.” It’s different because it has its roots in ideology.

Ideological Devils

We often overlook the fact that liberalism is an ideology, and has been since the days of the New Deal. It is not a doctrine or a school of thought, and does not operate by the rational rules required in those cases. It’s an ideology in the sense of a synthetic, politically-based replacement for religious belief, and it operates by the rules of an ideology—irrational, compulsive, and totally divorced from anything outside of the ideological system itself.

Hatred, along with fear, hysteria, and conformity, is a basic element of ideological thinking. I know of no exceptions. For the Nazis, the hate-figures were, of course, the Jews. For the Soviet communists, they were a shifting cast of kulaks, socialists, capitalists, Trotskyites and “wreckers” (saboteurs out to destroy communist achievements on the orders of any of the above). For the New Dealers, it was businessmen (as it is today for some Greens).

[...]

While it was forgotten amid all the adulation following his funeral, Reagan was loathed nearly as much as Bush during his presidential terms. (A critical moment in my political education occurred when I stepped out of my office moments after Reagan was shot in 1981 and saw Americans dancing in the street over the news.) Reagan, of course, was the halfwit who needed to be led around by his “handlers” lest he stumble in front of a bus or hit the wrong button on the nuclear football. Almost everything he said or did was reported to fit that image, for example, the widely-covered incident in which he referred to Thailand as “Siam”. What the reporters failed to realize was that for the first third of Reagan’s long life, the name of the place actually was Siam. (Late in the 80s, a small number of liberals began to wise up. Prominent among them was the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who published a cartoon showing one of his trademark wimpy liberals saying, “Reagan said the Berlin Wall would come down, and I said Reagan was a fool.” Each panel featured yet another statement by Reagan answered with the same refrain, until we reach the last: “Because if Reagan was right all along… ... then what kind of fool am I?”)

[...]

Any Republican elected to high office will be treated the same for the foreseeable future. So the media may as well knock off all the marveling on how hated Republican office holders are. At this point, it’s simply part of the job description. Liberalism has become the party of hate—the first major party to fit that description since the heyday of the Know-Nothings. You can check the record and see how long they lasted.

[...]

So we can look forward to more viciousness and more nastiness, more foully and more often expressed. It will only break when liberalism does.

Speed the day.

We might as well get used to it, recognize the truth of the hatred of the lefties, and get to work countering their hate-filled propaganda.
There is no other way.
They would have us lose to the terrorists in their hatred.

They wear pink saris and go after corrupt officials and boorish men with sticks and axes.
The several hundred vigilante women of India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state’s Banda area proudly call themselves the “gulabi gang” (pink gang), striking fear in the hearts of wrongdoers and earning the grudging respect of officials.

Whoaaaaa… wait a minute, let’s back up here for a minute. The article says WOMEN right? Hmm…

Personally, I question a lot of the womasculinity in this image.