WUI (Writing under the influence)

"I feel like we're all survivors of abortion," Claire said.

She has five sisters and a brother; most of her classmates, she said, come from much smaller families. The way Claire sees it, they're missing out on much joy--and she blames abortion.

"I look at my friends," she said, "and I wonder, 'Where are your siblings?'" -- Claire Levis, 17

"Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan? A man is beaten and left for dead at the side of the road. A priest and a Levite each walk by, but will not help him. But then a Samaritan shows up. He takes the dying man and shows him how to apply for Medicaid, then gets him set up for disability and food stamps. Then they live happily ever after.

Oh, you mean that's not how it goes?" -- David Freddoso

"And, needless to say, today half the folks who think it's wrong to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre think it's okay to shout "Allahu Akbar!" on a crowded commuter plane taking off from Minneapolis." -- Mark Steyn

Why aren't you?

Year 2006
Hispanic TFR 2.959
Non-Hisp. Black TFR 2.115
Non-Hisp. White TFR 1.864

What's surprising here is that nobody talks about the constitution. When Bush wants to protect us by eavesdropping on terrorists, the same people who now warn the supreme court not to pay attention to what the constitution says, insist that terrorists are protected by it. On further thought, they are consistent: bad guys always win.

WASHINGTON -- Seattle, Milwaukee and other large U.S. cities are warning the Supreme Court that gun-control laws around the nation would be jeopardized if the justices decide to eliminate the local District of Columbia ban on handguns.

In a legal brief filed with the high court, the cities, joined by the nonpartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors, argue that they suffer "disproportionately" from firearm violence and should be able to enact reasonable restrictions on the weapons.

"[By] any reasonable historical standard, the conduct of this war [in Iraq] has been a triumph, not a disaster." -- Norman Podhoretz

Via Corner

"[...] it's worth noting that the Times usually has little patience for those who value safety over privacy, as, for example, in the case of wiretapping terrorists. Are home schoolers more of a menace than al Qaeda?" -- James Taranto

No waterboarding equipment? How strange.

The US came very close.

One of the saddest accounts of the public-works job culture I came across involved a model government farm in Casa Grande, Ariz. The men were poor--close to "Grapes of Wrath" poor--but sophisticated. They knew that the government wanted them to share jobs. But they saw that the only way for the farm to get profits was to increase output and to stop milking by hand. Five dairy crew men approached the manager to propose purchasing milking machines to increase output. They even documented their plea with a shorthand memo:

"Milking machine would save two men's labor at five dollars per day . . . Beginning in September would save three men's wages or $7.50 on account of new heifers coming in."

The men were willing to strike if they didn't get the machines, though they feared they might lose their precious places on the farm if they did strike. Their fears proved justified. "You're fired," the workers later recalled the manager replying when he saw their careful plan. The government man was horrified at the idea of killing the jobs he was supposed to create. "You're jeopardizing a loan of the U.S. government, and it's my job to protect that loan. You're through, everyone of you, get out."

"It’s hard to reconcile the idea that Iowans are exemplary custodians of civil virtue with the fact that they are rabid defenders of welfare checks for government moonshine." -- Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg on why and how the left wants to control us and creates the most oppressive political and economic systems in the process:

While Time saw fit to linger on "the Russian president's pale blue eyes," they left out a fascinating rationale for Putin's power grab. For much of the last year, the Russian government has been lionizing an American president who roughly seized the reins of power, dealt briskly with civil liberties, had a harsh view of constitutional niceties and crafted a media strategy, which critics derided as "propaganda," that went "over the heads" of the Washington press corps.

George W. Bush? Nope. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

[...]
"America has a dictator," Benito Mussolini proclaimed, watching FDR from abroad. He marveled at how the forces of "spiritual renewal" on display in the New Deal were destroying the outdated notion that democracy and liberalism were "immortal principles." "Roosevelt is moving, acting, giving orders independently of the decisions or wishes of the Senate or Congress. ... A sole will silences dissenting voices." That almost sounds like Harry Reid talking about Bush.

[...]

Back in the here and now, GWB has done nothing remotely like what FDR did (for good or for ill, some might say). Despite the constant bleating about his hostility to the rule of law and civil liberties, he hasn't tried to, say, pack the Supreme Court, or round up hundreds of thousands of Japanese (or Muslim) people.

Bush's critics certainly have a point that our leaders need to think about the example we set. It's advice liberals should have heeded long ago.

Bret Stephens on why Obama's promises to unite the nation are naive:

When foreigners assail Americans for being naive, it is often on account of contrasts like these. A nation in which the poor are defined by an income level that in most countries would make them prosperous is a nation that has all but forgotten the true meaning of poverty. A nation in which obesity is largely a problem of the poor (and anorexia of the upper-middle class) does not understand the word "hunger." A nation in which the most celebrated recent cases of racism, at Duke University or in Jena, La., are wholly or mostly contrived is not a racist nation. A nation in which our "division" is defined by the vitriol of Ann Coulter or James Carville is not a truly divided one--at least while Mr. Carville is married to Republican operative Mary Matalin and Ms. Coulter is romantically linked with New York City Democrat Andrew Stein.

[...]

From The Wall Street Journal's offices in New York City, one can look down at Ground Zero, still mostly a huge pit after more than six years during which its reconstruction, now in its umpteenth design iteration, was supposed to have been the signal proof that Americans would rebuild--better, taller, prouder.

Also across the way is the hulk of the old Deutsche Bank building, critically damaged on 9/11 and slated for destruction. In an attempt to ensure that not even trace levels of asbestos and other unpalatable elements would escape the wreck, a meticulous plan was devised to dismantle the building floor by floor, at a price exceeding that of its construction. In August a fire broke out, and two firefighters died after getting lost in the maze of internal scaffolding erected to keep the asbestos in. Those brave men lost their lives for the sake of an EPA standard, and there's been no work to speak of on the building since. It's a case of the perfect becoming the enemy--the mortal enemy--of the good.

Fouad Ajami on the greatness of Bush's enterprise:

Suffice it for them that George W. Bush was at the helm of the dominant imperial power when the world of Islam and of the Arabs was in the wind, played upon by ruinous temptations, and when the regimes in the saddle were ducking for cover, and the broad middle classes in the Arab world were in the grip of historical denial of what their radical children had wrought. His was the gift of moral and political clarity.
In America and elsewhere, those given reprieve by that clarity, and single-mindedness, have been taking this protection while complaining all the same of his zeal and solitude. In his stoic acceptance of the burdens after 9/11, we were offered a reminder of how nations shelter behind leaders willing to take on great challenges.

We scoffed, in polite, jaded company when George W. Bush spoke of the "axis of evil" several years back. The people he now journeys amidst didn't: It is precisely through those categories of good and evil that they describe their world, and their condition. Mr. Bush could not redeem the modern culture of the Arabs, and of Islam, but he held the line when it truly mattered. He gave them a chance to reclaim their world from zealots and enemies of order who would have otherwise run away with it.

Christopher Hitchens on Obama and people who obsess with his race:

The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a "breakthrough," the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought.

[...]

All this easy talk about being a "uniter" and not a "divider" is piffle if people are talking out of both sides of their mouths. I have been droning on for months about how Mitt Romney needs to answer questions about the flat-out racist background of his own church, and about how Huckabee has shown in public that he does not even understand the first thing about a theory—the crucial theory of evolution by natural selection—in which he claims not to believe. Many Democrats are with me on this, but they go completely quiet when Sen. Obama chooses to give his allegiance to a crackpot church with a decidedly ethnic character.

Maybe Europeans just know better...

Italy expels Turin imam deemed threat to public security

Italy expelled a Turin imam to his native Morocco Wednesday after his sermons were secretly filmed and his views were deemed a threat to public security, officials said.

Mohamed Kohaila, who had been living in Italy for years, was deported in the evening, according to the Interior Ministry.

The ministry said local and national anti-terrorism authorities determined that Kohaila was inciting "violently anti-Western behavior" and maintained relations with extremists close to militant jihadists.

Kohaila was a close aide to another Moroccan-born imam in Turin, Bourki Bouchta, who was deemed an extremist and expelled from Italy in 2005, police in the northern Italian city said.

New U.K. nuclear plants approved

LONDON – The British government today announced support for the construction of new nuclear power plants, backing atomic energy as a clean source of power to fight climate change.

Believe it or not but liberals are in power in Italy and UK.

When Obama or Hillary makes a speech, people yell either "Obama! Obama! Obama!" or "Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!"

When McCain made his speech, people yelled "USA! USA! USA!"

Surprising? I think not.

Also, is the war popular again?

After NH it's clear it wasn't Bush who stole the election. The Clinton machine still works.

Also, and again, money means nothing. Soros couldn't do it for Kerry. Romney can't do it for himself. People, for better or worse, have other ideas.

It's so ironic given that McCain won. He doesn't trust people who voted for him tonight.

Huckabee's win in Iowa the other day proves beyond a shadow of the doubt that the election of 2004 wasn't stolen by Bush. Although a few political commentators predicted Huckabee would best Romney, everybody was blown away by the margin of his victory. No poll had predicted that margin. So what happened? As in 2004, so called evangelicals (or, as some liberals call them, Christianists) who are very difficult to poll came out in force and voted for the their candidate. In 2004 it was Bush, in 2008 it is Huckabee. The election also disproves another liberal mantra: money buys votes. Romney spent what amounted to the annual budget of a third world country and still lost. This shows that our founding fathers had it right and liberals (including McCain) and our courts have it wrong: 1st Amendment means speech includes giving as much money as one wants to anybody for whatever reason. At the end, the ideas -- good or bad -- always prevail.

By the way, Huckabee is not my man because, among many things, he believes that humans cause global warming (or climate change, as liberals faced with new evidence call it now) and that we can do something about it. That's too much religion even for me.