The Saloon dot net

PRUDEN: The dirty joke from Minnesota

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:50:14 -0500

A lot of the venal sins of Congress could be judged pornographic, both politically and otherwise, but we've never had an Official Senate Pornographer before. Sen. Chuck Schumer says Al Franken will fit right in.

"With the Minnesota recount complete," he says, gleefully, "it is now clear that Al Franken won the election." Actually, it isn't clear at all, as Mr. Schumer well knows, even though the Democrats managing the recount declared Mr. Franken the winner yesterday. The Democrats in the Senate are eager to get Al seated quickly because once he's seated among equals a bum is difficult to throw out. There's honor among senators, similar to the honor among thieves. (The difference is that thieves often hold to higher standards.)

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Obama’s Revolutionary “Vision”

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:09:49 -0500

On the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes” in December, analyst Dick Morris made the absolutely critical point that President Bush has taken the country so far to the left, in terms of his socialist-style Wall Street bailout program and his integration of the U.S. economy into a new emerging international financial order, that anything Barack Obama does in this area seems almost mainstream. This is because what we were expecting from Obama we are now getting from Bush. So Obama doesn’t look so radical anymore.

This point must be understood in order to have an appreciation of the “moderation” of the new Obama Administration.

Interestingly, some of Obama’s strongest “progressive” supporters are being brutally honest about what is happening. On the Rag Blog website, former Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd defended the “conservative appointments” of the President-elect and said that they are part of a deliberate strategy to “feint to the right” and “move left.” He explained, “Any other strategy invites sure defeat.”

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What Disappearing Sea Ice?

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:24:01 -0500

Despite the mountains of contrary evidence, concerns over disappearing sea ice and the unfounded position that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008, pushed U.S. government bureaucrats to officially list the polar bear as an endangered species in May of 2008. And then guess what happened....

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NYT's Cohen: Dangers of the Penn

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:09:14 -0500

Penn is a poor writer, as rambling as a journalist as he is disciplined as an actor. A gift for detachment is as important to the journalist as a gift for empathy is to the actor. Penn has only the latter...When I read the piece, I’d just returned from Cuba, where among the more prominent of Raúl’s reforms has been allowing Cubans into hotels for the first time (seriously!) and granting them access to cellphones costing six times their monthly salary.

Penn, by the way, traveled to Cuba from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela on a plane loaned by the Venezuelan Ministry of Energy and Petroleum. But, says Penn, that’s like a “journalist flying on Air Force One.” He’s apparently unaware that journalists on the U.S. presidential plane pay commercial rates.

But I don’t want to quibble. Penn’s not the first leftist star seduced by revolution despite dictatorship: Simone Signoret and Yves Montand touring Eastern Europe after the Soviet bludgeoning of Hungary in 1956 comes to mind. The French left had a very hard time getting Stalin in focus, just as part of the Euro-American left cannot free itself of Castro worship. Lenin’s “useful idiots” still abound.

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Freedom of Choice Act: Losing Hyde Amendment Could Drastically Increase Abortions

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:56:05 -0500

The Hyde Amendment, originally enacted in 1976, is a pro-life limitation amendment in the annual appropriations bill that restricts the direct federal funding of abortion through Medicaid.

Without the Hyde Amendment, women eligible for Medicaid would have their abortions paid for by the Federal Government – in other words, OUR tax dollars. If abortions are free to the individual, you can bet on abortion rates increasing.

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Funny Business in Minnesota (In Which Every Dubious Ruling Seems to Benefit Al Franken)

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:00:44 -0500

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

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Prez-elect to establish 600,000 new Democrat voters...err...new government employees

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 09:13:17 -0500

States want in on the looting of America, too, as governors push $1 trillion "stimulus package"

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 09:08:34 -0500

As the nation braces for Democrats to take unbridled control of the federal government, some lessons about how big a mistake that really is are already coming to light. Just as no non-union manufacturer is asking for a government bailout, only Democrat run states are begging for federal funds to avoid the inevitable bankruptcy of the states they have run into the ground.

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NRO: Life in the Clown-Car Fast Lane

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:56:58 -0500

Can you believe it? Barack Hussein Obama II hasn’t even been inaugurated yet and he’s already been interviewed by federal prosecutors in the ongoing Blago mess; he’s seen Bill Richardson immolate himself rather than stand the federal grand-jury scrutiny that would have come with his appointment as Commerce Secretary; his boy Rahm Emanuel is both en pointe, having resigned the House seat that was previously warmed by Hot Rod and Dan Rostenkowski, and, apparently, on Patrick Fitzgerald’s tapes too; and he’s facing the prospect of the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, standing like a homunculus George Wallace in the schoolhouse door, ready to deny entrance to a black man when Roland “We Are the Senator” Burris tries to take Bambi’s hardly-even-used seat tomorrow.

And here we Democrats thought the Clinton administration could never be topped!

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Rick Warren Is No Billy Graham

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:32:00 -0500

Last August I wrote a column critical of Rick Warren's decision to host a presidential candidate forum at his Saddleback Church. My reasoning then was that America's crisis is moral ambiguity.

I argued that Pastor Warren would only contribute to this ambiguity by hosting candidates with opposing views on issues such as abortion and homosexuality and presenting himself as a neutral moderator.

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Will Media Report Reid Pressuring Blago Not To Pick Black Senators?

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:13:01 -0500

Imagine for a moment the Senate was currently controlled by Republicans, and the white male majority leader advised Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich not to pick a black candidate to fill president-elect Barack Obama's vacated seat instead pressuring the governor to choose between two white candidates, do you think this would get some media attention?Probably every hour on the hour until the white majority leader was forced to apology and conceivably resign, right?

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Obama's Energy Honcho Wants to Saddle Americans (You and Me) With Higher Gasoline Prices Through Greater Taxation...Because High Fuel Prices Were So Much Fun Earlier This Year...

Roland, the Gunslinger — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:03:27 -0500

Despite growing scientific dissent to the anthropogenic global warming meme and, indeed, greater evidence to the contrary that AGW exists, Obama's Energy honcho wants to ramp those gasoline prices right back up to, ya know, force us American saps to buy more-efficient cars and to live in neighborhoods closer to work. Uh huh. So, those of us who farm and/or who live in rural areas are supposed to sell our homes and move into the cities or else...?

Echoes of Obama's pre-election threat to "bankrupt" companies who build new coal power plants...

WSJ's Neil King, Jr. and Stephen Power report

(Hat tip: Pedro!)

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The race card is played: Don't "hang or lynch" the black man chosen by Rod Blagojevich

Roland, the Gunslinger — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:40:00 -0500

Taking to the podium at the end of a bizarre, shambolic press conference in which Governor Rod Blagojevich sought to appoint Roland Burris to the US Senate, Congressman Bobby Rush dared white Democratic senators to block a black man from joining their ranks.

He urged people "not to hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer" and, after saying repeatedly that Burris would be the only African-American in the Senate, said that he believed no senator would want "to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the US Senate".

Rush is a former Black Panther who trounced Barack Obama in the 2000 Democratic primary when the then state senator challenged him for his House of Representatives seat

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UPI 'Conveniently' Neglects Party Label Mention of Indicted Puerto Rico Governor

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:40:26 -0500

Once again we have a politician who is indicted on corruption charges and once again we have a news organization who ''conveniently'' neglects to mention his party label. You will look in vain for the party name of Puerto Rico Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila in this United Press International report:...Acevedo, who was voted out of office last month, faces trial in February.

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2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:41:02 -0500

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects....First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare....Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

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Last Newsbusters 2008

Riley Jones — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:13:38 -0500

Suzanna Gratia-Hupp Explains Real Purpose of Second Amendment

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:51:07 -0500

This lady has a lot to say on the subject, but her final statement says it all.

H/T old friend, Keith!

Gratia-Hupp wiki

Theodore Roosevelt Was No Conservative

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:30:10 -0500

The fact that conservative politicians such as John McCain and writers like William Kristol and Karl Rove are attracted to our 26th president is strange because, if we want to understand where in the American political tradition the idea of unlimited, redistributive government came from, we need look no further than to Roosevelt and others who shared his outlook

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American Thinker: Problems with 'green' energy you may not have heard about

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:03:58 -0500

One major issue with many supposedly "green" energy sources is reliability, and another is maintenance. Both issues are highlighted in a strikingly honest report in today's New York Times by Kate Galbraith. Credit where it is due. Some of the problems reported:

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Dick Morris: Hey Caroline, You're Not Entitled

Roland, the Gunslinger — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:48:04 -0500

She hasn't had a job since before she went to law school in the 1980s.

So, why should Caroline be appointed senator?

Does anyone seriously believe that her audacious grab for the New York Senate seat is based on anything more than a misplaced and somewhat grandiose sense of entitlement coupled with a cynical claim of access to big money for the next election?

If her name weren't Kennedy, would anyone give any consideration at all to someone without any experience to prepare her for the job or to even inform the voters about what she stands for?

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A Christmas Tale -- 1919

Roland, the Gunslinger — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 08:28:32 -0500

It's easy to complain in the midst of a stressful holiday season. But my family has a unique remedy: We remember one special Christmas in 1919 that gave us the freedom and liberty we enjoy today. This will be the 89th anniversary of the year my father celebrated Christmas Eve deep in the snow-laden woods of Russia as he fled the Communist takeover of his homeland.

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Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus

Roland, the Gunslinger — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 07:00:02 -0500

The Department of Defense is preparing budget cuts in response to the decline in national income. The DOD budgeteers and their counterparts in the White House Office of Management and Budget apparently reason that a smaller GDP requires belt-tightening by everyone

That logic is exactly backwards.

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Buchanan: On the Death of Deep Throat

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:52:17 -0500

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

Of the dead, nothing but good.

So said Dean Acheson of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his death in 1957. "Tailgunner Joe" had bedeviled the secretary of state for his lassitude toward communist penetration of State in President Truman's time.

But the passing of Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI in the later Nixon years, lately exposed as "Deep Throat," the source for the Woodward-Bernstein stories, calls forth some rebuttal to the tributes lavished upon Felt as the honest lawman who saved our republic.

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FBI Informant: Washington Post Censors Truth About Bill Ayers

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:12:06 -0500

From the AIM article: (Editor’s Note: This column by Larry D. Grathwohl, a former FBI informant in the Weather Underground, was written in response to Charles Lane’s December 11, 2008, Washington Post column, “The Unreal Bill Ayers: Three Decades After the Weather Underground’s End, He’s Still Justifying Its Means.” This Grathwohl column was rejected for publication by the Washington Post.)

I am Larry Grathwohl and have been acknowledged as the only person to infiltrate the Weather Underground as an informant for the FBI. I offer the following comments and observations regarding the article “The Unreal Bill Ayers” recently written by Charles Lane for the Washington Post.

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Saving Capitalism No Sure Thing as Statism Undermines Economy

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:56:27 -0500

The intervention comes at what may prove to be a steep price. Future investment may be allocated less efficiently as risk-averse politicians make business decisions. Whenever banks decide to lend again, they are likely to find new capital requirements that will curb how freely they can do it. Interest rates may be pushed up by government borrowing to finance trillions of dollars of bailouts.

“We’re seeing a more statist world economy,” says Ken Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That’s not good for growth in the longer run.

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Obama's Plan to Rejoin the World Community

Roland, the Gunslinger — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:23:48 -0500

When Candidate Barack Obama declared himself a ''citizen of the world'' before thousands of cheering German socialists, and later pledged to ''rejoin the World Community,'' those weren't just his usual platitudes about ''change.'' (Snip) Obama plans to use his presidential power to get the Democratic-majority Senate to ratify a series of treaties that would take us a long way toward global rule over our money, our laws, our military, our courts

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One Plus One Equals 20 Extra Votes For Franken

Roland, the Gunslinger — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:54:25 -0500

It's bad enough that the Republican Party can't prevent Democrats from voting in its primaries and saddling us with The New York Times' favorite Republican as our presidential nominee. If the Republican Party can't protect an election won by the incumbent U.S. senator in Minnesota, there is no point in donating to the Republican Party.

The day after the November election, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman had won his re-election to the U.S. Senate, beating challenger Al Franken by 725 votes.

Then one heavily Democratic town miraculously discovered 100 missing ballots. And, in another marvel, they were all for Al Franken! It was like a completely evil version of a Christmas miracle.

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Mark Steyn: We're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan

Roland, the Gunslinger — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:02:13 -0500

So many areas of endeavor that once embodied the youth and energy of this great land are now old and sclerotic. I include, naturally, my own industry. I loved the American newsrooms you saw in movies like "The Front Page," full of hard-boiled, hard-livin' newspapermen. By the time I got there myself, there were no hard-boiled newspapermen, just bland, anemic newspaperpersons turning out politically correct snooze sheets of torpid portentousness. The owner of The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune recently filed for bankruptcy protection. The New York Times is mortgaging its office to fund debt repayment. The Detroit Free Press is cutting out home delivery except on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, thereby further depressing sales of delivery trucks in the Motor City.

The newspapers blame the Internet, just as Detroit blames Japan. But the Japanese have problems of their own. One day they'll get theirs. That's the beauty of capitalism. Nothing is forever.

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Times Public Editor Tries to Rationalize Paper’s Use of “Terrorist” Label

Roland, the Gunslinger — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:33:06 -0500

Hoyt also explains, “The Times does not call Hamas a terrorist organization, though it sponsors acts of terror against Israel,” because “Hamas was elected to govern Gaza.” And “it provides social services and operates charities, hospitals, and clinics.”

The National Socialists were elected to govern Germany. Does that mean the Holocaust wasn’t a crime against humanity? If Al-Qaeda ran hospitals and clinics, would that make it something other than a terrorist gang?

If you can’t call someone who kills a five-year-old girl to advance a political cause a terrorist, how do you describe them - as an overly enthusiastic partisan, a misguided freedom-fighter or an unfortunate individual who was driven to acts of desperation?

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AiM: Is Bernard Madoff Running the Federal Government?

Roland, the Gunslinger — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:13:14 -0500

Business cable network CNBC is asking, in a special report, whether investment manager Bernard Madoff pulled off the “scam of the century.” But Madoff is only accused of a $50 billion heist. That’s peanuts compared to what the politicians have done to us.

On Monday, December 15, in a story that went unnoticed, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the federal government has failed another financial audit. It was the 12th year in a row that the federal government has been unable to accurately report on its fiscal condition. Frankly, nobody knows precisely where the money is going. But we know where it’s coming from―the beleaguered taxpayers.

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