Say Anything Blog

I was watching a rerun of CSI this evening, when the lead character, Gil Grissom, declared some staged evidence as

“ Phony as a Chappaquiddick neck brace.”

Nice. This dovetails well with an episode on CSI Miami, where Lt. Horatio Caine, played by David Caruso, investigates a Senator and his nephew who are suspects in a mysterious death. The Caruso character speaks of an earlier fatality involving the Senator where he apparently evaded justice because of his power and influence. Art imitates life, they say! Could explain in part the popularity of the programs…

And no one is talking about it.

No one but Mike Adams, it seems:

It should come as no surprise that a men’s restroom at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport has become a playground for those who want to masturbate in public and have sex with men they don’t even know. After all, Atlanta is a hotbed of homosexual activity and public restrooms are favorite gathering places of many homosexuals.



But some may be surprised that, since December, police officers have arrested and charged 11 men with public indecency in the Atlanta airport. That is because there has been little talk about the arrests. And that, in turn, may have something to do with the fact that “Dirty Nearly Dozen” includes University of North Carolina Professor Dr. Hugh Tilson and Spelman College Professor Lev T. Mills.

Nevermind that Professor Tilson is a Professor of Public Health, not to mention a very old white man who surely knows better.

Yeah yeah, I know—I’m just being judgemental again.  Wanking with strangers in a public restroom is a civil right, donchaknow!

In perhaps the biggest “Well, duh!” moment of the 2008 presidential race John Kerry says he won’t run. This may be the answer to the democrat’s question : What’s the best news we can announce to the American people to upstage the President’s State of the Union message.

Kerry won’t run for president in ‘08
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | January 24, 2007

WASHINGTON --An emotional Senator John F. Kerry today said he will not run in the 2008 presidential race…

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/01/24/kerry_to_bow_out_of_08_presidential_race/

An Army of One: ..Senator Tom Coburn.

In WorldNetDaily today is this featured article SEXTRA CREDIT Sex assaults by teachers on students an ‘epidemic’

An estimated 5 million students in United States schools have been assaulted sexually by teachers, according to a congressional report

But no one seems very upset about this

But no one is calling for investigations or law enforcement crackdowns, there have been no campaigns to ban the offenders from schools, and in many states there aren’t even any requirements such predator attacks be reported to education licensing agencies.

In recent months, there have been an alarming string of dozens of cases of female teacher-on-male student sexual assaults.  In fact, in many cases, especially where the attacker is a woman and the student a male, such assaults are treated as a joke, with a hand-slap for the teacher, and some ribald locker room humor directed at the student

For those hardup guys looking for a good time, here is a list of these women teachers posted by WND.

More seriously, this epidemic or trend of what amounts to child molestation does not bode well for the school system, the children and their families and for the nation.  Of course the NEA does not take it very serious.  For my part, I see teacher sex molestation as just another reason for parents to home school.

The article is rather long but may be worth reading especially for those that have school age children.

Graham, our sister blog proprietor, laments the lack of media standards and accuracy.

Amen, brother.

So head on over and help give more examples of this issue that should be confronted.

Crossposted from FIU.  Background on the Sister Blog idea is here.

MIAMI - Former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega hopes to immediately board a plane for Panama when he is released from prison on Sept. 9, and he plans to fight his conviction back home in the slayings of two political opponents, his attorney said.

Read the whole thing

I remember when the US went to Panama to remove Noriega.  It’s one of the first military operations that I remember.  At that time, I didn’t realize that he would one day be released.  I wonder if he had to reimburse us for the cost of apprehending him… not likely.

BALTIMORE—Federal agents taking a break from an unrelated assignment yesterday arrested 24 illegal aliens at a Fells Point 7-Eleven after the men attempted to solicit “underground” employment from the agents.

This, to me was the best part:

CASA officials invited other immigrant advocates and faith leaders to protest the arrests, which they say unfairly targeted Hispanics…

Since the majority of those caught on immigration violations are hispanic, the system obviously descriminates /sarcasm

read the whole thing it’s pretty funny

What else can get past these guys?

A young-looking sex offender enrolled in a charter school in Northwest Pheonix as a 12 year old.  He spent 1 day at the Mingus Springs Charter School. 
School officials did call authorities when an older gentleman, claiming to be his grandfather, presented guardianship papers and a birth certificate that looked phony. 
Officials said that Rodreik was busy taking a number of reading, vision, and hearing tests last week, and didn’t seem to have talked to any kids.
The director of the school had “...spoken with all of the students as a group...to see if there was any contact of any kind and there’s no evidence of anything...everybody said he was very quiet, kept withdrawn, kept his head down.”

Rodreick, went by the name Casey Price and kept his youthful appearance by shaving his body hair and using makeup.

The director did say that “he looked older, but we were thinking 14, or’ 15 years old...he did not look to be an adult.”

Rodreick, who is actually 29, and his “grandfather” Lonnie Stiffler and also Brian J. Nellis, and Robert James Snow were all arrested.  Snow, Rodreick and Nellis are all sex offenders and were held on $50,000 bond for not registering with local authorities.  Stiffler was booked on two counts of forgery and 1 count of hindering prosecution with a $100,000 cash bond.  The men are expected in court on Thursday.

If you ask me...put these guys away for a very long time, and keep them there.

A number of our left-leaning, arithmetically challenged, progressive non-economists have made it an article of faith (such as THAT is among those on the Left), that the Bush tax cuts have vastly under-funded the coffers of the federal government.  Even those RINOs who are now nodding their silent agreement when the Democrats mention raising taxes, are taken in by this charming little fable.

Fact is, though, it just ain’t so.

To help understand the numbers, we turn to economist Daniel Clifton, head of the American Shareholder Association.

In fact, since the last tax increase in 1993, a total of $2.28 trillion of tax cuts have been enacted starting in 1996 and lasting through 2016.  The bulk of these tax cuts, 88 percent, have been enacted starting in 2001 with the election of President Bush…

In total Bush has signed into law just over $2 trillion of tax cuts with $1.84 trillion being implemented during the 2001-2010.  The remainder of the tax cuts is largely the permanent expansion of 401k and IRA contributions enacted as part of the Pension Protection Act in 2006 (note these are the only Bush tax cuts made permanent).

For those who believe these tax cuts have hurt the financial position of the federal government, we have run a real live test.  Imagine if in January 1997 the Republican Leadership announced they were seeking to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next 11 years. President Clinton would have been outraged, the media would of told stories about the huge deficit that would be incurred, and the left wing think tanks would have written stories about children dying in the street of hunger.

Well, as a point of fact, over the last 11 years the federal government has cut taxes $1.5 trillion.  And today tax revenues are substantially higher than forecasted in 1997 without even taking into consideration that these taxes would be cut.

Why did this happen?  Forget the debate about dynamic v. static scoring.  1997 was the first year CBO put out a 10-year forecast of taxes, spending, and growth.  CBO’s (the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office) 10-year economic forecast underestimates economic growth over 10 year periods.  As such, the upward revisions in GDP increase the tax revenue baseline upwards.  The upward revision is so large that all of the tax cuts can fit into the budget window.
To test this analysis, we have compared CBO’s first 10 year economic and tax revenue forecast with the actual results.  During this time, the federal government cut taxes $1.5 trillion and the tech bubble collapsed.  Neither of these cases were incorporated into the forecast.  The results of our test show:

1) Tax revenues in fiscal year 2007 will be $291 billion higher (12.3 percent) than initially forecasted in 1997 without accounting for the tax cut costs;

2) Tax revenue collections above the baseline is even more significant given the fact that the federal government cut taxes more than any other 10 year period in American history;

3) Accounting for static tax cuts, tax revenue collections came in nearly $547 billion higher, 26.3 percent, above the adjusted baseline.

Please.  Read through that again.  The 10 year economic forecast put out by the CBO in 1997 projected federal tax revenues for FY 2007 at $291 billion below the current projection, and overall adjusted for static tax cuts, tax revenue collections have been nearly $547 billion higher than was projected WITHOUT the Bush tax cuts!

As noted above, all of this is based on the 10 year projections by the Congressional Budget Office in 1997.  Projections which did not account for the 2000 recession or the economic impact of 9-11, and the subsequent War on Islamist Terrorism or the War in Iraq, events which should all have had a negative effect on the overall economy and thus tax collections.

In brief then, tax cuts increase federal revenues.  Just as George Bush, Ronald Reagan, and John F. Kennedy each predicted they would.  Case closed!

Chinese is a language that lends itself more toward the aesthetic and ethereal than it does to detail-oriented scientific and engineering concerns. Gunpowder, for example, was invented at least 1000 years before Marco Polo brought the substance back from one of his trips to the Middle Kingdom for the Europeans to use inventing firearms.

I mention this because the recent shoot-down by the Chinese of one of their own weather satellites strikes me as a “great leap forward” in the development of a very complex technology. (Pun intended.)

The point is that the defense of the US rests largely on its satellite technology. Photographic spy satellites, electronic eavesdropping satellites, communications satellites, GPS satellites used specifically for an array of precision weapons targeting.

Similarly, our nation’s economy rests to a large degree on satellite technology, from secure world-wide financial transmissions to navigation of virtually all commercial vehicles, on the road, the seas, or in the sky.

It’s difficult enough to build a ballistic missile and fire it successfully. It is quite another thing entirely to make it hit a pre-determined target. Either a stationary target hundreds or even thousands of miles away, or a small target orbiting 500 miles above the earth. Both exercises in targeting require a very sophisticated system of missile guidance. So, where did the Chinese get such a capability? Where indeed?

From Salon magazine, May 1998,

The Clinton administration between 1993 and 1996 allowed numerous exports of potential ballistic-missile technology to the Chinese government despite China’s refusal, in some instances, to allow inspections to assure that the technology was only being used for civilian purposes, according to classified documents and four U.S. government officials.

Moreover, as early as 1993, a classified Pentagon study raised questions about the possible diversion of U.S. technology by the Chinese military for China’s ballistic-missile program, according to the documents and sources. Defense Department officials privately charge that the Clinton administration ignored its warnings regarding the potential diversions.

U.S. oversight of high-technology exports to China has been hampered by the fact that there has been no formal arrangement with China to allow for inspections, according to a Clinton administration official: “We don’t have an agreement with China for postshipment verification checks.”

In apparent exchange for substantial contributions to the Clinton/Gore reelection campaign by Loral chairman Bernard Schwartz, and those of overseas Chinese funneled through a number of “donors” and fundraisers such as Johnny Chung, Clinton switched the licensing authority for transfers of ballistic missile guidance and satellite technology to China from the State Department to Ron Brown’s Commerce Department, then personally signed off on the transfers.

Loral’s chairman, Bernard Schwartz, has personally been the single largest campaign contributor to the national Democratic Party during the Clinton presidency, making $1.1 million in contributions in recent years.

When Loral was granted the waiver in February by the Clinton administration, the aerospace corporation was under investigation by the Justice Department for providing unauthorized assistance to China’s ballistic-missile program. Justice Department officials were concerned that a waiver might make it tougher to bring a potential criminal prosecution against Loral.

Nor was Loral the only US defense technology firm to transfer significant defense and satelite related capability to the Chinese with the blessings of the Clinton administration.

This from the Washington Post

Hughes (Electronics Corp.), the world’s largest satellite-builder and a favorite of U.S. trade officials (Commerce Department), has gotten almost all it has sought from the Clinton administration on China deals, through in-your-face lobbying tactics and a revolving-door hiring policy for officials departing key agencies, government and industry officials said.

Angry at State, (Hughes CEO C. Michael) Armstrong… soon got Clinton to name him chairman of the President’s Export Council, a presidential advisory group. It was an odd choice, given Armstrong’s GOP affiliations and his past blunt talks with Clinton, industry officials said. But then again, Armstrong did represent a huge firm beloved by administration technology wonks in a key electoral state, they said…



From that perch, Armstrong lobbied Secretary of State Warren Christopher and many members of the administration and Congress for his key objective: moving licensing authority for all Chinese satellite deals from State to Commerce.

In 1995 Armstrong hired Loretta Dunn, then a top aide to Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, as Hughes’s vice president for trade. She lobbied numerous former colleagues in the administration and is credited with helping arrange Clinton’s March 1996 decision shifting regulatory authority over Chinese satellite deals to her former agency.

“When we say we’re questioning the Clinton administration’s policy on satellite sales to China, we should say it’s the Clinton-Hughes-Armstrong policy,” said a congressional investigator. “Hughes is the Commerce Department.”

So now we know where the technology came from… how it is that the Chinese are now able to target and destroy space-based satellites. Was the Clinton-Gore reelection worth this? I doubt it, for we are now hugely at risk, both militarily and economically.

It will be interesting to see just what Hilary has to say about China and the threat it clearly poses to US interests as she pursues her bid for the White House.

Dallas County Records 12th DNA Case was one of the featured articles in the Dallas Morning News yesterday.  Actually there have been many convictions overturn by the results of DNA testing since it became available for criminal case analysis.  Of course there has been the usual breast beating by state representatives

‘These are appalling mistakes, and in the case of Dallas County, there have been so many,’ said Democratic state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston, who is sponsoring a bill to create Texas Innocence Commission to scrutinize the state’s criminal justice system. Ellis serves as chairman of the board of directors for the Innocence Project.

This will probably result in another level of bureaucracy which will do nothing but spend more of our tax money.

The obvious questions that are brought to my mind is how are apparently innocent people being convicted in the face of what is now negating DNA evidence, and just how accurate is the overturning DNA evidence.  On conviction side is the strong possiblity of misidentifications, falsified evidence and plea bargaining.  The first 2 of my list are evident in the Duke lacrosse player rape case where a highly tainted line-up was used to identify the alleged perpetrators and the alleged victim apparently falsified her statements.  I suspect that the pressure of plea bargaining sometimes convinces innocent suspects to accept a lessor sentence rather than risk a more severe penalty if they lose in a court case.

On the DNA side, I confess to mostly ignorance on the quality of the test results.  However, it seems to me that tests on DNA material which is several years old would be problematic at best. Some of you readers/commentors may be able to discuss the veracity of these tests.

Considering how easy it must be to be falsely charged with a sex crime, I am grateful that DNA tests are available to potentially disprove the accusation.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter has a remarkably clear piece in today’s Washington Post in which she brutally castigates the Democrat’s for their obvious unwillingness to fight for America.

Sen. Hillary Clinton declared this weekend, “ I’m in to win.” Anyone who has watched her remarkable trajectory can have no doubt that she’ll do whatever it takes to win the presidency. I wish she felt the same way about the war.

In fairness, Clinton, with her proposal for arbitrary caps on troop levels and hemming and hawing about her vote for the war resolution, has company on both sides of the aisle. Sen. Joseph Lieberman is the only national Democrat showing any courage on this issue. We Republicans—with help from senators such as Chuck Hagel—seem ready to race the Democrats to the bottom…

It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, “Enough is enough.” Wishing doesn’t make it so…

What about Iran? There is no doubt that an American retreat from Iraq will embolden Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, making it even less likely that the Iranian president will bend to the will of the international community and halt his nuclear weapons program…

I suppose Hillary Clinton’s announcement was a sign of progress. In 2007, a woman can run for president and show the same level of courage and conviction about this war many of her male colleagues have. Steel in the spine? Not so much.

America deserves better.

Shredded!  Read the entire article.

From the U.K. thought police, more proof that separate IS equal and anyone who disagrees is less than equal:

“One in every 20 children adopted from care goes to live with a gay couple, official figures revealed yesterday.

...

In some towns where councils are most sympathetic to the gay rights cause, the likelihood of a child in care being adopted by a same sex couple is as high as one in five.

...

Advice from the councils’ umbrella body, the Local Government Association, has praised authorities that encourage gay adoption and instructed social workers to strike off from their list of potential adoptive parents anybody who disagrees with gay adoption...”

So let me get this straight:

Couples who are medically infertile are not to be allowed to adopt if they feel that couples who are merely socially infertile belong at the end of the line.

Furthermore, anyone who believes that diversity trumps sameness—that separate is NEVER equal—are to be discriminated against by those who advocate for gender bias and sexist bigotry.

Tammy Bruce was right.

This past weekend I tagged along with my kids who went to Bemidji, MN to visit cousins and to take in the Bemidji Winter Festivities.  On Friday night when we arrived in Bemidji the temperature was two degrees above zero.

Saturday morning the kids braved the cold and went to the lake shore to watch the polar dive.  Twenty-four brave (or stupid) persons paid $50.00 each for the opportunity to jump into the lake through a hole in the ice.  But not to worry because there were divers in the water and emergency medical personnel in case of an emergency.  After the Polar Dive, they watched ice bowling, hockey and other games going on upon the frozen lake.  It doesn’t take much to entertain a Mid-Westerner.  Everybody was having a great time.

Sunday was the main event.  My nephews had arranged for my son-in-law to drive a stock car, in a race, on the ice.  That’s right…. On the Ice.  My niece made ham sandwiches and we set out on our adventure.  After crossing the frozen lake, dodging fish houses, we arrived at the “race track.” Two snow plows were moving snow off the ice while drives revved their engines, raring to go.  Soon the plows were finished and the “hot laps” began.  I soon figured out that “hot laps” are simply practice laps.

We parked next to a race car that had a huge sign on it saying, “Fat Chicks Wanted.” A few minutes later a car with a couple and several kids drove up.  The family got out; the driver slapped a number on the car and then joined the other racers.

What fun.  But we got a little chilly sitting in the car on the ice so my brother-in-law went to get us coffee.  When he got back he said, “If you guys want a burger or a hot dog you’d better order now.  The line at the grill is really long.” We opted for ham sandwiches and chips.

Just as the first race was about to begin, a car pulling a stock car on a trailer pulled up beside us.  On the side of the car was a sign reading, “Deke’s pumping.  Your poop is our soup.” Lucky enough he made it into the race.

By now a large crowd had gathered on the lake and the races began.  Several drives loaded up women and kids and pulled into line for the first heat.  I noticed that none of the drivers or passengers had helmets or any protective gear.  When I questioned this, I was informed, “Naw.  No one ever gets hurt racin’ on the ice.”

For a little while I thought I might be at a NASCAR race.  Men were talking engines and swapping engines and what equipment is allowed, what should not be allowed and why can’t this equipment be used. 

My son-in-law drove in the first race.  With my son and my grandson in the back seat.  Horrors.  I sat there praying and saying to myself, “Slow down.  Don’t hurt my bunny.” Nevertheless, he did very well and came in fourth place which qualified him for a front row position in the feature race.  More Horrors!!!  But several laps into the race, he spun out and was finished.

When the races were done the guy who dropped off his family, picked them up again, took the number off the car and drove off.

I can’t believe I watched the whole thing.  But I did and I had a wonderful time.  Does that make me a Red Neck?