Politics

William Jefferson (D-La) Gets Two More

Two more allegations of bribery find their way to William Jefferson (D-La) according to Jefferson’s prosecutors. These two charges are separate from and not connected to the bribery charges that Jefferson already faces. But he won’t, at least not yet anyway, be charged with them. Instead, prosecutors intend to use them to show a pattern of corruption by Jefferson.

The government alleges that in 2002 Jefferson, a Democrat, asked a lobbyist for a U.S. oil services company for payments of $10,000 a month for a family member. In exchange, Jefferson said he would help the company promote business in Africa. The lobbyist turned down the request, according to the document.

Jefferson later made a deal to urge NASA to do business with a U.S. rocket launch services and technology company, according to the filing. The company is accused of agreeing to pay Jefferson’s family business and a relative in exchange for his help.

related links: Best defense is a good admission? | Jefferson plays the race card | Congressman Indicted In Washington | Nation’s Capitol Is No Safe Haven For Corrupt Politicians

Politics

Susan B. Anthony Anniversary

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Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady StantonOn this day in 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for casting a ballot in the election two weeks before. In a letter to another famed suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony boasted of having voted for “the Republican ticket — straight.” In 1878, Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduced the “Susan B. Anthony” amendment, which would become part of the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

More at the Grand Old Partisan.

MRIOTD

Religious Oppression Or Desperation?

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And qualifying for the most ridiculous item of the day. Is it real or is it memorex? What the heck is this about? Taking implants to a whole (no pun intended) new level among Muslim women, and at taxpayers’ expense to boot! There’s so much wrong with this.

Taxpayers funded 24 hymen replacement operations between 2005 and 2006, official figures revealed.

And increasing numbers of women are paying up to £4,000 in private clinics for the procedure apparently under pressure from future spouses or in-laws who believe they should be virgins on their wedding night.

“I love you just the way you are,” Billy Joel lyric. No, scratch that. The popularity of the operation is said to be the result of social regression caused by Islamic fundamentalism. Virgins seem to play a major role in Islam from martyrdom to marriage.

Daily Mail, UK link

2008 Election, Immigration, Judiciary, Media, MRIOTD, Politics, Supreme Court, War On Terror

CNN’s Democrat Party Primary Debate Analysis

For those who didn’t see the Democrat debate tonight, after all it was on CNN, here is a recap. It started out with some bickering among the candidates, most of whom took shots at Sen. Clinton’s inability to state a position on giving drivers licenses to illegal aliens. To that and many other questions, Hillary’s response was her usual, ‘the American people know where I stand…’ Oh really? I must have missed it. All of them seemed to be running against Bush, who isn’t running.

On the drivers license subject, some came right out and said, like Gov. Bill Richardson, that yes they should be permitted to have a drivers license. Sen. Barak Obama thought it was a good idea too. Others hid behind the smoke of ‘we need comprehensive immigration reform,’ which is code for amnesty, drivers licenses, and more, but they wouldn’t come out and answer the question whether they should have a drivers license.

All of them wanted out of Iraq, and Iran is also out of the question. The most hawkish on Iran was Hillary who did go so far as to say that we should use diplomacy with Iran but keep the stick. She didn’t elaborate on the stick part. She held true to her belief system which is she hasn’t one. She likes blue ribbon panels to make decisions for her.

Iran brought out the weakness of them all on the subject of the Quds Force, the terrorist-supporting wing of the Iranian military. There seemed to be a consensus that calling them a terrorist organization was not nice, except Hillary. She’s the one who voted in favor of the resolution that labeled them a terrorist organization. She had no where to hide on that one, especially after her drivers license debacle at their last debate.

Wolf Blitzer, host of the debate, joined the ranks of Brian Williams and Tim Russert in qualifying for the Chris Matthews award by not asking or even mentioning the Iranian made 107mm rockets and super penetrating IED’s that are killing ours and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi civilians. A fair question was again ignored, giving way to their diplomatic story line.

John Edwards’ hair looked good. He had trouble completing a sentence that didn’t have the words Bush, Cheney, and neocons in it. Obviously appealing to the Soros wing of their party, but looking very silly for harping on them.

All of them spoke confidently on raising taxes for this that and the other. And on the subject of taxes, another Chris Matthews moment came up. None of them were asked whether they would make permanent the Bush tax cuts due to expire in 2010, which if elected, would be during their first term. Hold on to your wallet or make your escape plan.

On education, Wolf did ask a relevant question. Should exceptional teachers be rewarded with higher pay or bonus incentives? They were in complete agreement in towing the line of the teachers unions with a NO. It was blatantly obvious that the success of the students were not a priority. Hillary surprised me by saying, no, don’t reward good teachers, just fire the bad ones. Another rather stunning revelation was that they couldn’t agree what made a teacher a good teacher. Joe Biden, whose wife is a teacher with a masters and doctorate degree, believes that a good teacher is one who has multiple and higher degrees than just a bachelors degree. No one, not one of them, thought that successful students were relevant in determining whether a teacher was exceptional. Hillary ignored the students’ success by taking the village format. She said all the teachers in a given school should be rewarded if the school does well. Doing well doesn’t mean that the students do well. Doing well by her standards means teachers who teach in the worst of cities or neighborhoods are the ones to be rewarded with higher pay. More like combat pay. Again, no measure of the success of the students was offered. On the subject of education, it is clear that Democrats don’t give a wit about the success of the students, let alone merit pay for a job well done.

One of the funniest and scariest subjects was that of appointments to the Supreme Court. They all wanted an abortion litmus test for potential appointments to the Supreme Court. Abortion is the holy sacrament of the liberals’ political philosophy. None of them seemed at all interested in a strict constructionist type justice. John Edwards said he didn’t want a constitutional scholar on the bench, he wanted ‘a dog catcher’ on the bench. Literally, no exaggeration. I have to give him credit on at least saying what the others wouldn’t say. Which is, they want the supreme court to be filled with justices who don’t know what it is they are supposed to uphold, and who will uphold whatever the democrats want that they can’t get done through the people, the legislature.

After those grueling two hours, I don’t think it is necessary to see any more of their debates. If you see one, you’ve seen them all.

CNN link

UPDATE 11/19/07: ‘undecided’ voters were plants, activists, and Democrat operatives.

Pensacola, Race Relations

Service Station Refuses Service To Blacks

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Sounds like something right out of the last century. But it happened last weekend right here in Pensacola, FL to a black woman. It all went down like this.

She went to get gas at a Race Track gas station near I-10 and Rt. 29 around 9:30 p.m. while they were open. There was a woman attendant there who told her through the glass window to go away, that they don’t serve blacks at night. She didn’t understand what the woman told her at first because she couldn’t hear very well through the glass and the woman was a foreigner of some sort. So the woman kept replying “What? I can’t hear you?” Something like that. The attendant then brandished a hatchet towards her, telling her to get out and leave. She did leave, but as she was leaving, a white customer came up and was served without incident.

I am not releasing the identity of the woman who was refused service, and threatened with an axe, because the course of action she may take has not yet been determined. I know her personally and have no reason to doubt what she told me, and, there was a witness.

I don’t know how prevalent a behavior this is at that gas station but for me, once is too much. If something like this has happened to you, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

Politics, Race Relations

Racial Double Standard In Full View

This incident, where a politician called a 75 yr. old Black civil rights activist “Buckwheat” is the subject of what amounts to a media blackout. Why a media blackout on such a derogatory statement? Looks like the reason is because the Louisiana State Representative Carla Blanchard Dartez is a Democrat. If she were Republican you know that Jesse Sharpton would be all over it.

Hazel Boykin, a 75-year-old civil rights activist who helped desegregate Louisiana restaurants and schools, helped Democratic State Representative Carla Blanchard Dartez get voters to the polls earlier this month. At the end of a private telephone conversation thanking Boykin for her efforts, Representative Dartez said, “Talk to you later, Buckwheat.”

Buckwheat? Where did that come from? It slimes one of my favorite TV shows growing up as a kid, Our Gang Comedy. In the context it was used, it may as well have been the n-word. The fact that it was a private phone conversation does not matter, if we are to hold Dartez to the same standard as Dwayne “Dog” Chapman. No one is demanding Carla Blanchard Dartez to resign from her seat. Mainly because no one even knows about it. We all know the mill that Chapman has been put through, including losing his job. Is this a racial double standard or a political double standard? Or both?

Project 21 chairman Mychal Massie is criticizing both the lawmaker for saying it and the media for once again appearing to take a pass on reporting about a liberal politician’s racial foible. And that criticism is well deserved.

National Center link

Politics, Whiners

Truth Is The Poor Are Getting Richer

Want to tic off a liberal who says that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer? U.S. Income MobilityShow them this report from the Treasury Department that exposes those claims as so much “populist hokum.” The reason it will tic them off is obvious. It takes the wind right out of their class warfare, class envy sails. The reality is that over the last 10 years, the lowest quintile of working people have seen the largest percent increase in their income, 90.5%. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the highest quintile realized an increase of 10 % over the same time period.

A closer examination of that highest quintile, the upper 20% of working people, highlights even more the fallacy of the left’s argument about the rich getting richer. When you look at the top 10 percent of the highest quintile, that is to say, the top ten percent of income earners, they saw their incomes actually decline to the point where the top 1 percent, the ‘filthy rich’, were the biggest losers. Their income decreased by a whopping 25%.

The great irony is that, in the name of reducing inequality, some of our politicians want to raise taxes and other government obstacles to the kind of risk-taking and hard work that allow Americans to climb the income ladder so rapidly. As the Treasury data show, we shouldn’t worry about inequality. We should worry about the people who use inequality as a political club to promote policies that reduce opportunity.

Key findings. . .

  • There was considerable income mobility of individuals in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period with roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom quintile moving up to a higher income group within 10 years.
  • About 55 percent of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile within 10 years.
  • Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996, the top 1/100 of 1 percent, only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005. Moreover, the median real income of these taxpayers declined over this period.
  • The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged from the prior decade (1987 through 1996).
  • Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation.
  • The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.

WSJ Opinion Journal link
Income Mobility Study link
NewsBusters link

Politics

Cape May County Goes Blue

In what has not happened before in my memory, New Jersey’s 1st District State Assembly goes to Democrats.  County Freeholders remain in GOP hands.  It didn’t all happen in a vacuum, it happened with lots of campaign cash from democrat strongholds in other parts of the state like Camden.

The Cape May Gazette link

2008 Election, Politics

A Question For Sen. Hillary Clinton

After the Monica Lewinsky debacle, America saw an increase in sexual activity in high schools and elementary schools. Many Americans say it was the result of the President’s statement that oral sex is not sex. As President, would you make any attempts to raise the moral standard in our public schools, and do you believe that oral sex is not sex?

Belly up to the counter. Politics are on the menu and Ross is on the grill.