Say Anything Blog

The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has an answer for the world court’s order that the execution scheduled for August 5th of a man who raped and murdered two teen girls be stayed pending international review: Pound sand.

Texas will go ahead with the scheduled Aug. 5 execution of Houston rapist-killer Jose Medellin despite Wednesday’s United Nations world court order for a stay, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry said.

The U.N.’s International Court of Justice’s call for stays in the cases of Medellin and four other Mexican nationals awaiting execution in Texas came in response to a petition filed last month by the Mexican government.

[...]

Perry’s office dismissed the argument.

“The world court has no standing in Texas and Texas is not bound by a ruling or edict from a foreign court,” Perry spokesman Robert Black said. “It is easy to get caught up in discussions of international law and justice and treaties. It’s very important to remember that these individuals are on death row for killing our citizens.”

The families of the victims have an opinion as well:

Meanwhile, Randy Ertman, father of Jennifer Ertman, hotly denounced the world court’s order for stays.

“The world court don’t mean diddly,” he said. “This business belongs in the state of Texas. The people of the state of Texas support the execution. We thank them. The rest of them can go to hell.”

Adolfo Peña, father of Elizabeth Peña, agreed.

“I believe we’ve been through all the red tape we can go through,” he said. “It’s time to rock and roll.”

I agree with them. Those girls died ugly, horrifying deaths at the hands of this creature and his friends, their last minutes spent in agony and terror. He has received more than his share of mercy and humanity already.

Rock ‘n’ roll, baby.

Uh, Senator?  I’m pretty sure the Navy’s Pacific fleet was decimated by more than one bomb on that “day that will live in infamy.”

But it is wonderful to be back in Indiana. In a few moments, we’ll open up the discussion. But I want to offer a few comments about some of the emerging threats that we face in the 21st century and offer some ideas about how we can face those threats.

Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

This is a pretty stupid mistake to make given how vividly even Americans who weren’t alive at the time remember Pearl Harbor.  But it achieves a whole new level of stupidity when you consider that Obama grew up in Hawaii.

It’s satire, but it’s funny because the thrust of it is so, so true.

NEW YORK—Hailed by media critics as the fluffiest, most toothless, and softest-hitting coverage of the presidential candidate to date, a story in this week’s Time magazine is being called the definitive Barack Obama puff piece.

“No news publication has dared to barely scratch the surface like this before,” columnist and campaign reporter Michael King wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday. “This profile sets a benchmark for mindless filler by which all other features about Sen. Obama will now be judged. Just impressive puff-journalism all around.”

The 24-page profile, entitled “Boogyin’ With Barack,” hit newsstands Monday and contains photos of the candidate as a baby, graduating from Columbia University, standing and laughing, holding hands with his wife and best friend, Michelle, greeting a crowd of blue-collar autoworkers, eating breakfast with diner patrons, and staring pensively out of an airplane window while a pen and legal pad rest comfortably on his lowered tray table.

Read the whole thing.

That’s what Charles Krauthammer describes in a blistering column on Senator O’burry.

Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast — a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins — would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final “tear down this wall” liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Something you earn.  Dropping scandal bombs on your primary and opposition opponents to get elected apparently doesn’t give O’blurry any Machiavellian street cred with Krauthammer! What is Mr. Krauthammer’s estimation of young Obama?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

Ouch!

Obama may think he’s King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.

Double ouch!

The only part of Mr. Krauthammer’s piece that is troubling is that A) It’s all true. And B) This turkey has a shot at becoming our next President!

Hat tip Sister Toldjah
Cross Posted at Proof Positive

Apparently, some folks just don’t know their place!  From Fox News and the wire service that dislikes being quoted:

The son of Libyan dictator Qaddafi, and his pregnant wife, have been arrested by Swiss authorities on charges of beating two of their “domestic servants.” The young Qaddafi spent the past two nights in jail.  His wife was transferred to a maternity unit.

The pair are accused of beating the “servants” with a belt and a hanger.  A Tunisian woman was hospitalized with her injuries.

According to the Swiss daily, Tribune de Geneve, the beatings took place at the ultra-luxurious President Wilson Hotel in Geneva… right next door to the United Nations human rights office.

The young Qaddafi’s first name, ironically enough, is Hannibal.

David Harsanyi:

For many years, those who spread apocalyptic global-warming scenarios have warned me that a collective national sacrifice was needed to save the world.

One option, we were told, was to make gas artificially expensive, forcing our ignorant, energy-gobbling neighbors to alter their destructive habits.

Well, here we are. At $4 a gallon for gas, we already have a flailing economy. Isn’t it glorious? And isn’t it exactly what many environmentalists desired?

The problem is that there is no feasible “alternative” fuel that can haul food from farms to cities, produce affordable electricity for your plasma TV and drive your kids to school. Not yet. It can happen, of course, but only (to pinch a word from enlightened grocery shoppers) organically.

The problem is that when “green” fantasies crash onto the shores of economic reality (as they did with corn-based ethanol), we all suffer.

Read the whole thing.

The basic problem with the political approach to the energy problem is that everyone seems to be looking for a “silver bullet” fuel alternative that is going to totally replace petroleum.  That’s why politicians spend billions of our tax dollars subsidizing these “green energy” ventures.

The problem is that there probably isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all, “silver bullet” solution.  What will probably happen is we’ll develop new energy alternatives for specific applications.  Maybe local delivery vehicles will go to electric cars.  Maybe private vehicle owners will go to battery/hydrogen hybrids.  Maybe these other applications will use so much less fuel that long haul trucks will be satisfied to keep trucking on diesel.

Who knows?  The thing is that we can’t force anyone one fuel down the neck of consumers.  For one thing, we’re a free society and we don’t take kindly to being forced to do things.  We’d much rather choose things.

For another, no politician on the face of the earth is smart enough to know where this energy thing is going to end up.  So it’s best to let the free choices of billions of free people globally dictate where it will go.  After all, billions of heads are better than hundreds of heads.

I envision that one day we pull up to fuel stations and instead of being presented with a choice merely between gasoline and diesel we’ll be presented with a menu of choices from things like hydrogen to outlets for electric cars to traditional, petroleum-based gas and diesel.

That would be the best way for us to go because it would be the market-driven solution.  And all we have to do to achieve it is just get the government to stop meddling in the energy market so that the natural progression of that market can run its course.

It appears that the 'consensus' on global warming promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was reached by fraud, as proven by members of the American Physical Society:

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."

Of course, none of this will change the activism behind the global warming myth. Such activism was never based on facts to begin with - it has all been nothing more than an excuse for Al Gore and his Greenshirts to pursue jihad against capitalism.

It is nice to see common sense vindicated here. You didn't need a degree in Climatology to know that global warming was voodoo science in service of a leftist agenda.

Crossposted from Ken McCracken

The North Dakota Policy Council (a fantastic group advancing the ideals of freedom here in North Dakota, you should donate to them by clicking here) has discovered YouTube and put out an interesting video about how private contractors hired by a county board of commissioners to plan community development is trampling property rights.

This is a major problem in North Dakota, and it’s not just isolated to Burleigh County.  There seems to be an understanding among the political powers that be in this state which has them all thinking that the state should control all economic and community development.

That, my friends, is not in keeping with the ideals of freedom.  Certainly the state, and the various political localities, should be involved in ensuring that development is safe and does not infringe upon the rights of other citizens.  But outside of that citizens be free to develop their land and run their businesses as they see fit with only the barest minimum of involvement from government.

"Obama flip flops on vouchers”. Okay! I’ll admit...I’m quite frankly having a problem keeping up with them all! Is this one of the Officially Documented Flipping and Flopping of Candidate O’blurry, or is this a new, previously undiscovered flip flop to add to the list? It’s hard to keep track, but here goes:

According to Michael Reagan in his piece The Real Party of Special Interests, (and the New York Sun)

In February 2008, Obama spoke to reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying, “Let’s see if this [school voucher] experiment works, and then if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what’s best for kids.”

He danced a different waltz on Saturday, July 12, when he told the American Federation of Teachers (which, with the National Education Association, owns the Democratic Party) that like them he was opposed to vouchers, and when his campaign was asked about his newest stand on the issue, it released a statement saying, “Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers.”

Let’s do what’s best for the kids...unless it conflicts with the interest of the teachers unions that I’m beholden to, because I know which side my bread is buttered on! “Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers...except for when he wasn’t!”

Again, to recap: Since we’re all having such a hard time keeping up with ALL the flip flops, could we institute a National Clearing House to keep track of them all? I’m thinking we could get by with a facility half the size of the Library of Congress, and maybe a minimum of six full and part-time staff to provide the 24/7 coverage needed.
What do you think?

Cross Posted at Proof Positive

There is something fundamentally wrong with these people, some loose screw somewhere that makes things like this just....okay.

Yeesh.

That’s the report, and given what a loose cannon she is it can’t be anything but a good thing for Barack.

Obama has been making a lot of noise about being appalled and angry at people criticizing what his wife says instead of debating him.  The problem is that he keeps sending his wife out to campaign for him.  Even now Michelle Obama is still slated to address the Democrat national convention.

If Obama doesn’t want his wife’s statements about American politics do be criticized by other people he should move to a country where free speech isn’t a right enshrined in the founding documents.

This will undoubtedly become the baseline left wing response to anything McCain has to say about Social Security.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Although Republican presidential candidate John McCain has called Social Security “a disgrace,” he still cashes his own retirement check every month.

“I’m receiving the benefits, the system is broken and, unfortunately, my children and grandchildren, according to the trustees of the Social Security system, will not have the same benefits the present retirees have,” McCain told reporters Thursday on his campaign bus.

McCain’s 2007 tax return shows Social Security benefits of $23,157 for the year, an average of $1,929.75 a month. He said he started receiving the payments “whenever I was eligible.”

The thing about this is that McCain is just getting the money he paid into the system back out.  That’s the whole point of the Social Security system.  The government takes money from you when you’re young and then redistributes it back to you when you’re old because certain politicians think you’re too dumb to save your own money.

And you get charged an exorbitant fee along the way for the gigantic bureaucracy it takes to administer collection and redistribution.

That McCain objects to the stupidity of this ponzi scheme doesn’t not mean he, like every other American, shouldn’t at least try to get the money he paid in back out.

I, personally, feel that Social Security should be phased out.  But if I’ve been forced to pay into it my entire working life I plan on getting what I can out of it when I retire despite my feelings about the program in general.

This is a logical position to have, but given that the left has no good answers to the problems McCain is raising about Social Security they’ll cling to their shallow analysis of his “hypocrisy” on the issue.  Because it’s pretty much all they have.

I wouldn’t put it past her.

I knew his campaign was bloated, but this is ridiculous:

WASHINGTON — Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day.

One recent Q. & A. asked, for example, whether Mr. Obama supported the decision by Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to include a timetable for American troop withdrawal in any new security agreements with the United States. The answer, provided to Mr. Obama with bullet points, was yes — or “a genuine opportunity,” as he put it in a speech on Iraq this week.

Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.

One of the left’s most popular meme’s about President Bush is the idea that he’s just a talking puppet.  The not-so-bright public face of his adviser’s.  Well note that Obama apparently gets emails from this gigantic campaign bureaucracy telling him whether or not he supports certain world developments.

Not exactly what you expect from a leader, no?  I mean, shouldn’t the advisers provide advice and information so that the leader can decide for himself whether or not he supports something?  Do we really want a leader who doesn’t make up his own mind but rather relies on a support staff of hundreds to grind out his decisions for him?

If you could even call such a person a “leader” to begin with.

Regardless, you’d think Obama would take a clue from the old “too many cooks in the kitchen” adage.  But then, when you’re a candidate with a thin resume and little more than pretty-but-vague rhetoric that aspires to be all things to all people you need a vast network of bureaucrats to tell you how to think.

Did they really even need to ask?

In related news, 100% of bloggers in my living room expressed support for getting someone else to pay off their credit card debt.

From Israel National News comes some indication of just what horrific barbarians the Palestinian Hezbollah terrorists really are.

According to Israeli officials, the bodies were received in a severely-damaged state which may have lengthened the confirmation of their identities. Former IDF Medical Corps and Chief Military Rabbinate officials have noted the tragic expertise Israel has gathered in years of conflict, but remained shocked by what they saw yesterday at the Rosh HaNikra border crossing.

Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who was present during the transfer of the fallen soldiers yesterday, said that “the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I’ll leave it at that.”

Former IDF Chief Medical Officer Brig. Gen. (reserve) Dr. Hezi Levi noted this morning that only extensive procedures could verify the exact series of events following the soldier’s capture, including whether or not a gunshot wound Regev received to the head was caused by terrorists’ “confirming the kill” of the fallen IDF soldier.

The two kidnapped soldiers, uniformed legal combatants, were tortured, beaten to an unrecognizable bloody pulp, and then executed.  And to think some deluded fools in this country have their thongs in a twist about habeas corpus for some of these same non-uniformed, illegal combatants.

I wonder which Hezbollah leader Barack Obama would wish to sit and negotiate with without any sort of preconditions.  Or is that distinction reserved for the Iranians who founded, finance, arm, and direct the Hezbollah monsters?

Senator Kent Conrad (D - VIP Loans) put out a press release today detailing his opposition to those nasty oil speculators and hedge fund managers everyone is blaming for high oil prices and laying out how he’d show those speculators who’s boss.

Here’s a thought, though: If Senator Conrad doesn’t like oil speculation what does he feel about speculation in, say, wheat markets?

A common practice among farmers here in Conrad’s home state (if you can call a place he only visits to campaign his “home") is to stockpile harvested crops rather than selling them immediately.  Farmers who do this are hedging against future high prices for their crops.  They hope that by denying the market their share of the crop supply they and their fellow farmers will reap higher profits when prices are driven back up by demand.

Now, personally, I don’t have any problem with this.  It makes good business sense.  But Conrad wants to use the force of government to stop the oil industry from this sort of speculation, so we can safely assume that he also wants to use the force of government to stop farmers from leveraging the highest possible price for their crops right?

After all, if driving up the price of oil is bad certainly driving up the price of food is bad too right?

Economist Don Luskin’s “DC insider friend”, the self-styled “Mick Danger”, has a contrarian’s view of Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Who…me?” denials of culpability in the recent failure of IndyMac Bank.

Schumer, remember, caused a depositor run on the California bank, according to federal regulators investigating the collapse, when he released the contents of a letter he had written accusing the bank of being on the verge of failure.  The withdrawals, some $1.3 billion, resulted in the collapse of IndyMac.

“Mick Danger” sees a more sinister, and perhaps more venal motive behind Schumer’s actions… one that implies far more culpability, ethical and legal, than Schumer acknowledges:

The SEC is investigating hedge funds to see if they circulate rumors, knowing they are false, and trade on them, manipulating the market. Now, did the brave writers at the WSJ miss something?

Someone—with an interest—brought Schumer information on IndyMac. Who? When? Why? What are the chances that Schumer was looking into irregularities into IndyMac because some hedgie with a big short position turned him onto it?

Well, they ain’t zero.

What are the chances Schumer was “investigating” IndyMac because the Senate Banking Committee assigned that case to him? Zero.

What are the chances the SEC enforcement guys will get very shy, very fast if they pick up a trail leading up the Hill? Close to 100%. (Note, Senators have a constitutional shield against certain prosecutions of actions taken in the course of their work as Members of Congress.)

Most likely result? The SEC staff will pluck a few hapless hedgies out of the middle ranks and shoot them in the public square.

Is Schumer correct? Or did Schumer break a law by leaking his letter? What if he were a research director at a hedge fund and told people what he suspected? Would that be the kind of rumor the SEC is hunting?

Think there might be a clever hedge fund which might use Schumer to leak info so they can trade on it without fear of prosecution? Uh, yeah.

As I recall, Schumer is but one of the Democrats known to have been hitting hedge funds up for contributions lately.  Perhaps someone should look into Senator Schumer’s list of campaign contributors to see just which hedge funds and their personnel are well represented of late.

If, and I say, IF, the facts of this case are true, then this guy needed to be fired:

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—A police lieutenant in Daytona Beach was fired over accusations that he threatened slower emergency response times if he was not given complimentary specialty Starbucks coffee drinks.

An internal police investigation found that Daytona Lt. Major Garvin received free coffee for about two years from a city Starbucks coffee store.

However, when recently denied free coffee from new management, Garvin allegedly told managers that he could change the police department’s response time if they refuse to give him complimentary drinks.

Garvin is accused of saying, “If something happens, either we can respond really fast or we could respond really slow. I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve been getting whatever I want. I’m the difference between you getting a two-minute response time, if you needed a little help, or a 15 minutes response time.”

However, when confronted about the comments, police said Garvin agreed to take a polygraph test.

When asked whether or not he threatened managers with adverse response times, Garvin responded, “no.”

But polygraph test results suggested that the officer was lying, Local 6’s Tarik Minor reported. Garvin was then fired.

The days of the apple stealing cop are supposed to be long over. Most law enforcement agencies pay a living wage these days - nobody’s going to get rich from a cop’s salary but then, you know that coming in - but that being said the pay is better now than it ever was.

There is NO excuse for this type of thing. Granted, a lot of convenience stores give the guys free or discounted drinks and coffee because they like the marked units stopping in front of their “stop and robs” for a few minutes at a time. That’s up to them.

But to demand that type of thing in return for what is actually your obligation - to protect and serve - is an affront to law enforcement everywhere.

Here’s another point that bothers me: This guy was a Lieutenant, a leader and supervisor. Is that what he taught his junior officers?

You tarnish the badge, you pay the price.

The myriad mercurial musings of Barak Obama on what he would do in Iraq, should America be foolish enough to put this man in charge of our armed forces!

Note around 6:30, Barack’s pledge to leave a ”counterterrorism force to strike Al-Qaeda. Followed immediately by his denial that he ever said such a thing!

Can this country gamble on the fact that one of those positions is the one he’d actually carry out and that there’s no way of knowing which one until after he’s elected?

Hat tip The Corner
Cross Posted at Proof Positive