Green Whores?

For crying out loud:

‘Green’ Customers Get Discounts at Berlin Brothel

One bordello, hoping to stave off falling demand in the economic crisis, has begun offering discounts to customers who pedal bicycles to the door.

“It’s very difficult to find parking around here, and this option is better for our environment,” said Thomas Goetz, who owns the brothel Maison d’Envie, or House of Desire.

Local residents in Prenzlauer Berg – a part of former East Berlin now home to scores of trendy boutiques, restaurants and clubs – had staunchly supported the Green party in recent elections and have welcomed the bordello’s offer to emphasize the environment.

Ruthless exploitation of human beings for the gratification of rich men – good.

Not being “green” – bad.

We’re insane – we really are. A dying civilization – fortunately, it is the “post-Christian” civilization which is dying. Once its gone, we’ll argue with Islam over the remains of a dead Europe – and the parts we keep will once again be Christian…and so we won’t have stories about whore houses going “green”.

The Younger Reid

He’s running for governor out here in Nevada:

The son of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has formally entered the Democratic race for Nevada governor, saying the state needs to diversify its economy and stop postponing difficult decisions.

Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid said Wednesday he doesn’t think his father will have a big effect on his campaign to become the state’s top executive. He says Nevadans ask him about issues, not his father.

He says Nevada has become too reliant on the gambling industry and needs a more diverse economy to pull out of the recession.

Which is true, and credit to Rory for seeing that – but with dear, old Dad having been in the Senate all this time, you’d think we’d have a bit of that economic diversity, already. Is Rory going to point out what his Dad failed to do, and how he’ll do it better? Or will the son claim that the father has done everything he can, but we’re still screwed? Either way, it doesn’t work out well for either Reid.

Outside of that, there is something distinctly un-American in all this – its one thing for a son to follow a father in to politics, quite another when father and son are attempting to obtain high office at the same time. If Harry wanted his son to be governor, he should have refused to seek re-election. I think, in the end, that having two Reid’s on the ballot will just help convince the voters of Nevada that we should have no Reids, in office.

UPDATE: Naturally, given he’s a Democrat, his platform conflicts with the State Constitution...when this is pointed out, Reid’s determination is to find a way around that august document…like father, like son…

MSM Starts to Admit TEA Party Viability

Took a while:

Begun as a loosely affiliated groundswell of Constitution-waving protesters in tri-cornered hats, the Tea Party movement is now starting to rock the political establishment in key arenas.

The growing numbers of Americans coming out to the Tax Day Tea Party, the Fourth of July Tea Parties, and then the 9/12 Tea Party march on Washington are going back to their home districts and keeping up — even intensifying — the fight for smaller government and more transparency on spending and taxation.

In places like New York, Florida, California, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, local, state, congressional, and gubernatorial seats are suddenly being tugged to-and-fro by the new and unruly political force.

The upshot?

The street energy is welcome for an otherwise moribund Republican party looking for new moorings amid a tumultuous electorate.

The downside is that early examples shows that, in the short run, Tea Party-sponsored candidates could make it more difficult for Republicans as they — Ross Perot-like — split races as they target both “tax and spend” Democrats and those they like to call RINOs, or “Republicans-in-name-only.”

There will be a few Democrats out there who catch on and realize that a pledge against taxes and for a balanced budget will bring them TEA Party support against any RINO who happens to garner a GOP nomination next year. There will be a lot more Republicans who figure this out. But there will be enough GOPers (and a vast number of Democrats) to remain clueless to make 2010 an interesting and impossible to predict year. I was figuring on a 30 seat GOP House gain – now, I haven’t a clue. Who knows whom the TEA Party will propel to the polls? I figure the GOP will still gain seats (more Democrats on the chopping block, mid-term of a new Presidency, economy shaky, etc), but my prediction now is an absurd 1 to 100…and 1 to 10 Senate Seats.

While some in the establishment wring their hands and worry that these TEA Partiers – who lack proper, professional, elite leadership – simply won’t know that they are not smart enough to influence politics, I’m delighted with it. It’ll be one heck of a rollicking, seat-of-the-pants political year…and we’ll be changed as a nation, after it.

Sharpton Determined to Help Rush

Wonderful stuff:

The Rev. Al Sharpton is threatening to sue Rush Limbaugh for writing that the civil rights leader played a role in two New York race riots.

Limbaugh wrote that Sharpton played “a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot” and the “1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot” in a Wall Street Journal column published Saturday. Sharpton called both allegations false.

That a race-baiting slanderer like Sharpton would dare accuse someone of slandering him is just to outrageous for words…but, it keeps the issue alive, keeps Sharpton in the public eye (and that helps the GOP immensely) and will just increase El Rushbo’s ratings…so, its all good.

NY-23: Teaching the GOP Establishment a Lesson

Via the Conservative Party’s Doug Hoffman for Congress campaign.

Its a three-way race in NY-23 to fill the seat vacated by Obama’s Secretary of the Army. From Real Clear Politics, its Owens (D) at 33%, Scozzafava (R) at 26%, and Hoffman (C) at 23% – with the D and C both rising in the polls, the R dropping and 1 in 6 voters still undecided. Hoffman leads among Independents.

The Conservative Party was created in New York for the specific purpose of holding the GOP’s feet to the fire – nominate center/right candidates, or face a conservative Third Party which will siphon enough votes away to hand the seat to the Democrats. So, what is up with Scozzafava and why is she facing such a strong, Conservative challenger who seems certain, at the least, to deny her a seat in the House? As far as her positions on her website, all pretty good: for an individual right to bear arms, for making the Bush tax cuts permanent, against “cap and trade” – what gives?

She’s favors the fascist “card check” legislation and while talking a game of fiscal responsibility, she has often voted for bloated budgets and tax increases; additionally, she’s pro-choice, which ensures that social conservatives will never get enthused about her. It is just that much straying from center/right which has doomed her. Now, Hoffman may still pull off a win – the outgoing GOP House member won with 65% of the vote in 2008, which means that the current Democrat candidate is pulling no more than usual…all Hoffman has to do is get to 34% or so, and he wins. Given that his poll numbers have risen 7 points recently, this is not out of the question.

The lesson for the GOP is that even in a blue State like New York, the rank-and-file don’t want anyone who even might be a RINO (people have been unable to get Scozzafava to commit to running as a GOPer in 2010, supposing she wins next month). Rather than have a RINO, the folks would rather have a Democrat – heck, a centrist Democrat representing a GOP district might even be susceptible to GOP pressure, ya know? Meanwhile, even if we lose it, we can come right back a the Democrat in 2010, hitting him with Obama’s failures for all their worth. If we GOpers want to win, we have to run candidates who adhere to core GOP principles.

What does this mean? That you simply must pledge to low taxes, low spending, low regulation and State and local control – in other words, you must be a representative of the people, not the powerful. Some GOPers have figured it out – getting Scozzafava to sign the no-new-tax pledge, but it might be too little, too late for her. Its not the people screaming for Obamacare and massive borrowing – it is the elite; the powers-that-be. The GOP is supposed to be against this – and our GOP leadership had better wake up and smell the coffee.

Weekly Recap (2009-10-17)

• Weekly Recap (2009-10-10) http://bit.ly/349pIF #
• Obama Administration Secures More Oil Profits for Chavez, Islamists; Higher Prices for Poor Americans http://bit.ly/ayY6E #
• A Democrat Understands Afghanistan http://bit.ly/vK8jK #
• Sorry, Gore, But the Global Warming Debate Isn’t Over http://bit.ly/LzKOr #
• State Revenues Indicate Worsening Recession http://bit.ly/X6a5e #
• The TEA Party and the GOP http://bit.ly/LzWZm #
• Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Knockers http://bit.ly/SJx3g #

Our White House Maoist (Bumped)

When I heard this on the radio this morning, I was stunned:

Jeremiah Wright. William Ayers. Van Jones. Where does the rogues’ gallery of Barack Obama’s radical friends end? These people are not liberals. They are not “progressives.” They are radicals who hate America and in many cases have advocated or even perpetrated violence in an effort to destroy it.

Thanks to Glenn Beck, the American public has now been introduced to yet another radical member of Obama’s inner circle: Anita Dunn, Interim White House Communications Director, former top advisor to Obama’s political campaign, and wife of Obama’s personal lawyer, Robert Bauer.

In a speech before high school students last June, Dunn spoke passionately about her two favorite political philosophers, “the two people I turn to most” for answers to important questions like “how to do things that have never been done before.” Who are these paragons? One was Mother Teresa. Dunn didn’t have much to say about her. Most of her enthusiasm was lavished upon her other favorite fount of political wisdom: Mao Tse-Tung.

I’ve heard the audio (which you can listen to in the link). Its not out of context, its not something which can be explained away – the lady thinks that Mao is an admirable person we can learn from. She made the remarks at a high school graduation – which means she thinks that the kiddies should emulate the Great Helmsman.

As I said, I was stunned – Mao was a psychopath; a murderer; a thug. In plain fact, the man was no different from Stalin, Lening, Pol Pot, Hitler or any one of a score of the 21st century’s bloodthirsty tyrants. His name is an abomination and should be held up as precisely what no person should follow – but here comes Anita Dunn, Obamaniac, lauding him for his persistence. That he was persisting in evil designs doesn’t register.

In my view, the reason Dunn says what she says – and why other liberals have, at times, praised other tyrants – is because they earnestly wish they had that sort of power. There is really no other explanation possible, outside of sheer stupidity, for praising men who were simply vile in their actions. And now, with Dunn, we can see that the infiltration of such junior-league communist apparatchiks in to government is not just some isolated instances – there are too many such cases under Obama. This amounts to a take over of the reigns of power by people who hate democracy…who think it a hindrance in the pursuit of their ideals.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball gives a run-down on damage control:

Damage control time!

–She didn’t mean it.

–She was only quoting a Republican operative.

–Fox News is mean to Democrats.

–Glenn Beck is an extremist.

–The President is trying to clean up a big mess left by George Bush.

–Can’t we just change the subject?

When Glenn Beck aired a video of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Chairman Mao — one of her “two favorite political philosophers” — in front of an audience of high school students, the conservative blogosphere lit up like a non-denominational sustainably harvested Kwanza tree.

And the left swung in to action – and Kimball seems to not have been hit with the “she was just being ironic” meme some lefty’s have tried here.

She did mean it, she wasn’t quoting a Republican, how Fox News views Democrats is irrelevant, Glenn Beck’s views are also irrelevant, President Bush didn’t bring the Maoists in to the White House and no, we’re not going to change the subject.

The Trouble is That We Have to Use the Word, "Polycentric"

Fascinating article about how “the commons” are best preserved by people at the local level who actually use the commons, rather than having distant bureaucrats oversee use, as our enviro-fascists and sundry liberal totalitarians wish. From the article:

…In the interview at the Mercatus Center, she explained the advantages of trusting locals:

The strength of polycentric governance systems is each of the subunits has considerable autonomy to experiment with diverse rules for a particular type of resource system and with different response capabilities to external shock. In experimenting with rule combinations within the smaller-scale units of a polycentric system, citizens and officials have access to local knowledge, obtain rapid feedback from their own policy changes, and can learn from the experience of other parallel units.

Which is one of the biggest “no duh” moments in history. I do appreciate the Dr. Elinor Ostrom, the author of the italicized quote, for her clear thinking on the matter. But she’s discovering what everyone knows – or, at least, what everyone knew before half-educated dimwits came along and decided that they were smart enough to sit in judgment on 20 centuries of human effort. Everyone who thinks about it for a moment knows that the people concerned are always best equipped to figure out the best solution to the local problem. Outside forces can help – but unless the help is freely granted with no strings attached, it is apt to hinder.

Take the example of Las Vegas – we’ve got this sprawling metropolis out here suffering close to 14% official unemployment. What are we built on out here? Gambling and the California housing market. Gambling because its just what we started going back in the 30′s, and housing because California’s housing prices rose so fast that you could sell a shack in Los Angeles and buy a mini-mansion here in Las Vegas on the proceeds. So, we had people coming to gamble which provided money and then we had people moving to Las Vegas because you could buy a lot more house for the money…and it became a circle. As more people came, more gambling was done and more houses were built and more people came and more gambling was done and more houses were built…until the housing market died and now we’ve got ever more empty houses and less and less gambling going on. My fear for Las Vegas is that it will by and large die away – not Strip; that is too much an international tourist destination – but that the rest of the city will die. If no one can buy more houses and there is no market for local gambling, what are we here for?

Why did this happen? Because most of our land is held by the federal government – close to 85% of Nevada is owned by Uncle Sam. Which means that bureaucrats and politicians in DC decide what is to be done with the land. Who do you think had the ear of the distant government: regular folks, or those who represented casinos and home builders? We got more and more land out of Uncle Sam – at a price, naturally – but only to build more houses and more casinos. Where are the farms? (yes, I know, we live in a desert, but there are things which can be done agriculture-wise…example being a local pig farm which feeds the hogs off the refuse from the casino kitchens…naturally this one non-casino, non-housing enterprise had been under fire from government officials who want it gone…so they can build more houses and casinos on the land) Where are the factories? Where are the mining operations? All we’ve got is glittering casinos and houses worth 50% or less of their mortgage amount. Oh, and a few preserves and parks as a sop to the environmentalists…but still not usable to the locals, except to look at…

I’m not saying that if we, the people of Nevada, had full control that this would paradise – but I’ll bet that we wouldn’t be caught in an economic vise where we now have to try to figure out ways and means of diversifying our economy when all we’ve got are houses and casinos – and with still almost all the land not developed held by Uncle Sam, who doesn’t just want us to build a future on the land…that land is only to be used as part of political back-scratching, you fool! As an object lesson in why locals should rule, Las Vegas is perfect – and keep this sort of thing in mind as people propose to allow the same distant bureaucrats to run health care for the locals.

Turkey as an Enemy

Caroline Glick has a very informative article detailing how Turkey, step by step, moved away from the West and in to the arms of the Islamist enemy. Its a sad tale of misunderstanding and blindness, and there is blame aplenty to spread around. I recommend reading the whole thing. With that, however, what do we do now?

Turkey is officially a NATO ally and a candidate member of the EU – but Turkey’s alliances with Syria and Iran make nonsense of NATO, while Turkey’s growing Islamic radicalism would make it a poison pill in an EU already under the Islamist gun on the internal front. We must adjust ourselves to that fact that the secular, Turkish State founded by Ataturk in the 1920′s is gone and that the Turkish government is decidedly an enemy of the United States, our allies and our interests. This will require some shifts on our part.

First and foremost, we must strengthen our alliances with Greece, Bulgaria and Georgia – the three western nations which border Turkey. All these of these nations cannot withstand Turkish pressure without our help – and an increasingly Islamist Turkey will eventually start pressuring its non-Moslem neighbors. Secondly, we must officially expel Turkey from NATO, so that they will it will no longer be privy to our military plans and capabilities. Finally, we should start to support secularist, democratic movements in Turkey, as well as Kurdish and Armenian separatism.

It is sad; but it might be just the way things work out. Maybe no one is to blame for what happened with Turkey – other than that basic of human nature, the ability we have to choose wrong, and the eagerness with which we do so. Perhaps this might work out, in the end: I, for one, would be delighted if some time before I leave this world, if a Mass could be, once again, heard in St. Sophia. Maybe this is just the first step in a re-alignment of the world…

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Defies Federal Government

And good for him:

An Arizona sheriff known for cracking down on people who are in the country illegally launched a crime and immigration sweep in northwestern metro Phoenix on Friday, a half day after officials in Washington limited his powers to make federal immigration arrests.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose sweeps have led to allegations of racial profiling, said the rebuff from Washington won’t stop him. He said he can still arrest immigrants under a state smuggling law and a federal law that gives all local police agencies more limited power to detain suspected illegal immigrants.

“It doesn’t bother me, because we are going to do the same thing,” said Arpaio, whose deputies had arrested 16 people by Friday evening on unspecified charges. “I am the elected sheriff. I don’t take orders from the federal government.”

Showing that Arpaio understands our system of government better than people at Justice and DHS do – this is a federal Republic, and its not for Uncle Sam to tell local sheriffs how to do their job. Unless a sheriff is violating a federal statute, the federal government has no business there, at all…and even if there is a suspicion of law breaking, then it is up to the federal government to prove it in court beyond a reasonable doubt. Asinine accusations of “racial profiling” are just a means whereby the government is trying to demonize the sheriff – to make public support flee from him, so that his power to carry out his job will be hamstrung.

Stand firm, sheriff – and know that millions of your fellow Americans have got your back.