The Nigh Seen Creeder

Ms. Susan Sarandon says if John McCain gets elected in November, she will move to Italy or Canada.

Remember all the Hollywood celebs (Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, et al.) who said in 2000 that they'd leave the country if George W. Bush was elected President? F***in' liars, the lot of 'em.

Susie Sarandon will become yet another ****in' left-wing liar when McCain wins this November and she and her common law husband are still staying-put in their Cal-I-forn-I-A man-shun.

Come see me twelve months from now and tell me I was wrong. I dare ya.

Wonkette asks her readers this question:

"Jim Webb: Too Much Of A Manly Badass For Veep?"

"Manly Badass" ...?! Puh-leez. Try Man Who Needs The Help Of A Good Therapist ...

I had an uncle who literally drank himself to death. His red-faced, alcohol-fueled rants and shenanigans at holiday get-togethers became the stuff of legend in my family. (Thanksgiving '89, he peed in a potted plant at my Dad's first cousin's house. No sh**.)

I can't help but think about my late uncle whenever I'm confronted with sights and/or sounds of Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) . Webb is one angry sombitch; and every time I see his blood-infused visage on the boob tube, in print, or online, I ask myself: "What were the voters of Virginia thinking?" Then I tell myself: "They weren't thinking. Indeed."

I'm not suggesting that Webb is an alcoholic. (He's always red-faced probably 'cause he has high blood pressure.) What I will suggest is this: Webb really isn't temperamentally-qualified to be a U.S. Senator; he's even less temperamentally qualified to be the Vice President of the United States. I can just imagine what would happen if a VP Webb got ignored at the funeral of some tin-pot third world leader ... he'd probably punch the grave-digger and then rant about how the grave-diggers lack of health insurance is George W. Bush's fault.

On a sunny day in 1996, I voted "no" in the Nashville referendum to build the publicly-financed Adelphia Coleseum,er, LP Field. After personally voting, I re-entered the voting booth again and cast another "no" vote on my grandmother's behalf (she was in the voting booth with me).

My public stance agin' the city of Nashville's East Bank stadium effort caused me a great deal of political, ahem, difficulty (which I won't go into) back in '96. At the time, I stated that using public money to build sports stadiums never works out to be a good deal for taxpayers.

To this day I continue think - nay, know - that the promises made by Big City politicians who approve taxpayer-financed sports arenas never, ever materialize. I'm not alone in my opinion (this is good):

Who's to blame for the high cost of gas and oil? President George W. Bush? Nope? The CEOs of Exxon/Mobil, British Petroleum, et al.? Nope. God? Nope.

Lemme tell you what group of individuals you can blame the next time you're cursing whilst pumping $4 gas into your automobile: The United States Congress. Check it:

"Gasoline prices are through the roof and Americans are angry. Someone must be to blame and the obvious villain is 'Big Oil' with its alleged ability to gouge consumers and achieve unconscionable, 'windfall' profits. Congress is in a vile mood, and has dragged oil industry executives before its committees for show trials, issuing predictable threats of punishment, e.g. a 'windfall profits tax.'

"But if there is a villain in all of this, it is Congress itself. That venerable body has made it impossible for U.S. producers of crude oil to tap significant domestic reserves of oil and gas, and it has foreclosed economically viable alternative sources of energy in favor of unfeasible alternatives such as wind and solar. In addition, Congress has slapped substantial taxes on gasoline. Indeed, as oil industry executives reiterated in their appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 21, 15% of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits."

It gets better ...

"To understand the depth of congressional complicity in the high price of gasoline, one must understand that crude oil prices explain 97% of the variation in the pretax price of gasoline. That price, which has risen to record levels, is set by the intersection of supply and demand. On the one hand, world-wide demand has accelerated mainly due to the rapid growth of China and India.

"On the other hand, supply has been curtailed by the cartel-like behavior of foreign national oil companies, which control nearly 80% of world petroleum reserves. Faced with little competition in the production of crude oil, the members of this cartel benefit from keeping the commodity in the ground, confident that increasing demand will make it more valuable in the future. Despite its pious denunciations of the behavior of U.S. investor-owned oil companies (IOCs), Congress by its actions over the years has ensured the economic viability of the national oil company cartel.

"It has done so by preventing the exploitation by IOCs of reserves available in nonpark federal lands in the West, Alaska and under the waters off our coasts. These areas hold an estimated 635 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas – enough to meet the needs of the 60 million American homes fueled by natural gas for over a century. They also hold an estimated 112 billion barrels of recoverable oil – enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years." [Emphasis mine]

Read the rest here.

"I don't think [B. Hussein] Obama really understands economics."

-- Private equity investor/philanthropist Carl Icahn

It's easy to laugh at the shenanigans of European nanny-staters, but you gotta know that it's just a matter of time before this kind of **** starts happening here in the U.S. of A.:

For nearly a quarter of a century, Lourdes Maxwell has celebrated the arrival of summer by putting a paddling pool in the garden.

This year, however, her two grandchildren and the children of her neighbours may have to find another way to cool off in the heat.

Miss Maxwell's local council has decided that the pool - which is only 2ft deep - needs a lifeguard.

The 47-year-old divorced mother of three has also been told she must have insurance before she can inflate the toy outside her house in Portsmouth.

The health and safety edict came after she wrote to the city council asking for permission to put a bigger pool in the communal garden outside her home.

Not only was she told it was too dangerous, but the council told her to empty the existing pool.

After her MP intervened, the local authority softened its stance, saying Miss Maxwell could have a pool if she paid for insurance and ensured supervisors were on constant watch.

Residents near the communal gardens already have to obey a raft of rules governing their use.

They are even supposed to ask the council for permission before having a barbecue.

In 1994, Lt. Governor John Wilder pushed through the General Assembly a bill to end the direct election of state judges. The bill was signed into law by then-Gov. Ned "Big Daddy" McWherter, and Tennessee was supposed to enter an era in which judges would be chosen free from the stink and stain of partisan elections. If only ...

The centerpiece of Wilder's select-not-elect law was the Judicial Selection Commission -- a body of legal professionals who, supposedly, would pick über-qualified, and middle of the road, sorts to serve on Tennessee's courts. Again, if only.

The Judicial Selection Commission has been as politicized a body that has ever been commissioned or created in Tennessee. It has been dominated by the trial lawyers lobby, and it has taken a healthy dose of instruction from the Tennessee Democratic Party.

Today's Wall Street Journal tells us that it was a "sunny day" last week when Tennessee's convoluted - and unconstitutional - system of selecting judges was successfully dismantled by Republicans in the General Assembly. I wholeheartedly agree. Check this out:

"The plan's demise was finalized last Tuesday after an 11th-hour attempt to save it by state Senator John Wilder. On his last day in office before retirement, Mr. Wilder attempted a rare legislative maneuver to bring it directly to the floor for a vote. No dice.

"The so-called merit selection plan will now go into a one-year wind-down, after which Tennessee will revert to its constitutionally mandated method of choosing judges by direct election. That means less influence from the coterie of lawyers groups that had controlled the Judicial Selection Commission and become a thorn in the side of even Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen, who balked at their manipulation of his appointments. ...

"The Tennessee plan was devised to reduce the role of politics in judicial selection. But as the political drama surrounding it amply demonstrated, the reality has been anything but nonpartisan. Tennessee now has a chance to restore transparency and accountability to judicial nominations – and to show other states the way."

One of the dumber statements uttered in the aftermath of the Judicial Selection Commission's termination came from the State Senate's Jackass-In-Chief, Senator Jim Kyle (D-Memphis). Kyle lamented the Commision's demise, and he told the Tennessean that the state's judiciary shouldn't be "for sale."

I wonder if it's ever occurred to Senator Jim Kyle - or any other member of the legislature who's agin' the direct election of state judges, for that matter - that the same groups and individuals who're likely to give money to judicial candidates also give money to legislative candidates? If their money has a corrupting influence on judicial elections, then surely Sen. Kyle thinks it also has a corrupting influence on legislative elections.

I'm of the opinion that Sen. Kyle should announce his intention to immediately return any contribution from any person or group who also gives money to a judicial candidate. We'll see what is, and what ain't, for sale. (Betcha that Kyle will sell out his convictions before he ever agrees to empty his campaign war chest of its largesse.)

As we remember and salute those who gave the ultimate sacrifice on this Memorial Day, I'd like for you to read something I posted some six months ago ...

Once upon a time, books were written, and movies were produced, in which Congressional Medal of Honor recipients were profiled. These days, a soldier who receives a Medal of Honor is lucky if his award is even mentioned in the papers or on the nightly news.

A damn shame, if you ask me.

Earlier this week, Navy (SEAL) Lt. Michael Murphy was posthumously awarded a Medal of Honor for his brave actions in Afghanistan. Lt. Murphy is the first American serviceman to receive the Medal of Honor for combat in the Afghan theatre.

I searched high and low looking for a newspaper that mentioned Lt. Murphy's Medal of Honor on the first page. I couldn't find one.

Again, what a damn shame.

You may agree or disagree with how the War on Terror is being fought. You must agree, however, that Lt. Michael Murphy was one brave soul. To wit:

"Murphy, [Lt. Marcus] Luttrell and two other SEALs were searching for a terrorist in the Afghan mountains on June 28, 2005, when their mission was compromised after they were spotted by locals, who presumably alerted the Taliban to their presence.

"An intense gun battle ensued, with more than 50 anti-coalition fighters swarming around the outnumbered SEALs.

"Although wounded, Murphy is credited with risking his own life by moving into the open for a better position to transmit a call for help.

"Still under fire, Murphy provided his unit's location and the size of the enemy force. At one point he was shot in the back, causing him to drop the transmitter. Murphy picked it back up, completed the call and continued firing at the enemy who was closing in.

"He then returned to his cover position with his men and continued the battle. A U.S. helicopter sent to rescue the men was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing all 16 aboard.

"By the end of the two-hour gunfight, Murphy and two of his comrades were also dead. An estimated 35 Taliban were also killed. Luttrell was blown over a ridge and knocked unconscious. He escaped, and was protected by local villagers for several days before he was rescued. ...

"Murphy, who died before his 30th birthday, is the fourth Navy SEAL to earn the award and the first since the Vietnam War. Two Medals of Honor have been awarded posthumously in the Iraq war: to Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, who was killed in 2004 after covering a grenade with his helmet, and to Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, who was killed in 2003 after holding off Iraqi forces with a machine gun before he was killed at the Baghdad airport.

"Murphy's heroics have been widely recognized on Long Island, where he graduated in 1994 from Patchogue-Medford High School."

God bless Lt. Murphy and his family ...

Byrd boo-hoos

Did you see Robert Byrd weeping like a little girl on the floor of the U.S. Senate upon learning that Ted Kennedy has a inoperable brain tumor? Said Byrd:

"I want to take a moment to say how distraught and terribly shaken I am over the news of my dear friend, my dear, dear friend, Ted Kennedy."

Reckon Byrd was distraught and terribly shaken over the death of Marry Jo Kopechne -- you know, the young lady Ted Kennedy, well, killed?

The irony is delicious

The official script of Always-Aggrieved Democrats goes like this (see HBO's Recount, which premiers today):

Al Gore lost Florida in 2000 because Team Bush, which was in cahoots with the U.S. Supreme Court, successfully stopped the counting of every vote and intimidated vote-counters and blah, blah, blah.

Fast forward to 2008 ...

The Democratic National Committee is steadfastly refusing to seat Florida's delegates to this summer's convention because the state conducted its primary too close to St. New Hampshire's primary. Thus, Hillary Clinton's resounding victory in Florida is to be for naught come August; her delegates from that state ain't gonna be counted at the Democratic Convention.

Whatever happened to "let every vote be counted" ... especially in the state of Florida? I can NOT be the only one who's just marveling at the Democrats' hypocrisy; and I can NOT be the only one who appreciates the irony that's on full display here.

So surreal


I think the most surreal image I've witnessed during the Democratic primary campaign (a campaign full of surreal images and episodes), was the sight of B. Hussein Obama giving a "victory" speech in Des Moines, Iowa immediately after he'd lost the Kentucky's presidential primary by 249,000+ votes.

Since February, Obama has been trounced by Hillary Rodham (Clinton) in important swing states (Pennsylvania, Ohio) and in semi-important swing states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee). A good 30 percent of the folks who didn't vote for him in those states have indicated that they'll either vote for John McCain or stay home in November.

A lot of folks are hinting that Obama should pick Hillary Rodham (Clinton) to be his running mate. I'm of the opinion that he should choose Sisyphus.

Bye, bye Briley


Upon bidding his fellow House members farewell on Tuesday, Rep. Rob Briley criticized the local press for the “publishing of personal destruction." The Nashville City Paper quoted Rep. Briley thusly:

“We used to talk about the politics of personal destruction. Well that’s no longer what’s going on. It’s the publishing of personal destruction, and we owe it to ourselves to do better than that. We owe it to the rest of our society to do better than that.”

"Publishing of personal destruction" ...? What the **** is Briley talking about?!

Let's reminisce on what Briley did: He led police officers on an extended chase; after being pulled over and stepping out of his car, he ducked into his car and downed a cup of whiskey; he resisted arrest whilst sobbing; and after being placed in the back of a patrol car, he started kicking a window (he settled down after being roughed-up a bit).

At the time of his bizarre, drunken, Briley was the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee -- you know, the committee in charge of vetting legislation dealing with law and order issues. I fail to see how he can think - let alone say - that the reporting (publishing) of his arrest was an exercise in "personal destruction."

If a state lawmaker who sits on high in determining what's criminal law in Tennessee gets arrested for engaging in a half-dozen felony acts, that is indeed NEWS ... I don't care what nobody says (especially when they're a drunken adulterer).

"[T]he idea that black artists are conditioned by their 'oral tradition' to half-baked hoodlum exhibitionism barked out over a pneumatic backing track would have struck, say, Scott Joplin as absurd. Duke Ellington has more in common with Ravel than with Snoop Dogg."

-- Mark Steyn

"What Friedrich Hayek called the 'fatal conceit' - the idea that government can know the future's possibilities and can and should control the future's unfolding - is the left's agenda. The left exists to enlarge the state's supervision of life, narrowing individual choices in the name of collective goods. ...

"Today's 'green left' is the old 'red left' revised. ... The green left preaches pessimism: Ineluctable scarcities (of energy, food, animal habitats, humans' living space) will require a perpetual regime of comprehensive rationing."

-- George Will

Joltin' Django's gonna be out of town for the next couple of days. I'll see you when I get back.

Let's see: B. Hussein Obama sends his wife, Michelle, out on the campaign trail to stump for him; Ms. Michelle says some pretty stupid things ("[S]omeone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more," "For the first time in my adult life I'm proud of my country"); the Tennessee Republican Party runs an ad critical of Ms. Obama's comments; and B. Hussein gets his panties - I bet he wears man panties - in a twist, telling the Tennessee GOP to "lay off" his wife.

As long as B. Hussein is sending his wife out to shill for him, anything she says is subject to debate and derision (if necessary). If he's this thin-skinned 'bout legitimate criticism directed at one of his campaign surrogates, how teary-eyed do you think he'll get when he's meeting face-to-face with Hugo Chavez and Iran's mullahs?

I'm really startin' to dislike Blogger.com. Don't know why, but Thursday and Friday's posts would save as "drafts" but wouldn't publish. Well, they're up now. Enjoy!

About four minutes after last night's "Quote of the day" post was published, I got an e-mail from some jackaninny named Keepsake3609 objecting to my use of "B. Hussein" to describe Senator Barry Obama. I addressed this issue several weeks ago like this ...

During the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns, liberals couldn't resist using George Bush's middle names at any and every turn. Calling him George Herbert Walker Bush made the Vice President/President appear patrician and, thus, less understanding of the needs and concerns of the workin' man. We conservatives took this name-calling - accurate name-calling to be sure - all in stride. That's politics, we said.

Fast forward to 2008 ...

A growing number of liberals have their panties in a twist 'cause conservative radio hosts and a small number of Republican political operatives have started referring to U.S. Senator Barack Obama by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama. That's bigotry, they say.

There are two facts that the using-"Hussein"-when-referring-to-Obama-is-racist folks have conveniently ignored: First, that former-President Bill Clinton, a fellow liberal who's never exhibited any racist tendencies, was the first person to regularly use the H-word, if you will, when referring to Senator Obama; and second, that St. Obama himself was the first person to highlight the ethnic portions of his name for political purposes.

For years B. Hussein Obama was known to family, friends and colleagues as "Barry." When he began his political career, however, Obama realized that the über-ethnic "Barack" would impress left-wing money-givers and voters more than a white bread name like "Barry" (pun absolutely intended). His ethnic name game obviously worked; indeed, he went from the Illinois State Senate to presidenial front-runner in 36 short months.

I've taken to referring to Senator Obama as "B. Hussein" 'cause, to tell the truth, it gets under liberals' skin like a two-inch syringe. If liberals have a problem with conservatives using the man's honest-to-God middle name, perhaps they should try to convince their flavor-of-the month candidate to go back to bein' plain ol' "Barry." It'd make liberals and B. Hussein, er, Barry seem a tad less hypocritical.

"Someone should tell Sen. Obama that ducks are usually hunted with shotguns."

-- Sen. John McCain on B. Hussein's suggestion that Hillary Clinton's been acting like a duck-hunter with a "six-shooter"

The Wall Street Journal has the best letters-to-the-editor section of any U.S. newspaper. The WSJ's editors refuse to publish pretentious/elitist drivel like you see in the New York Times; and you will never - ever - have to read the kind of emotion-over-substance claptrap that you find at the tail-end of The Tennessean's section "A."

The following letter from a Mr. Gary Jones, who hails from Bevidere, Illinois not only proves my theory about the quality of the Journal's letters section, it goes a long way toward proving that Journal-readers are the smartest in the land ...

"Regarding Zachary Karabell's 'Who Stole the American Spirit? (op-ed, May 14): I love Pogo's famous statement 'We have met the enemy and he is us!' Most of us just don't seem to be able or willing to connect our bad choices with our problems. Even though it has been proven time and again that government is counterproductive, even dangerous, when it comes to dealing with economic problems we continue to hold our elected officials responsible every time the economy slides.

"The addiction to government remedies gives consumers the illusion of strength while actually rendering them weaker. Like an addict coming down from a government-induced high, many Americans are depressed and their self-confidence has been impaired. Are we going to kick the habit? It seems that we may need a near-death experience to provide adequate incentive.

"'Who stole the American spirit?' -- No one! Many Americans have chosen to abandoned it in favor of blind faith in government solutions. They seem to have forgotten that the government gets its strength from the people, not the other way around."

One of the biggest Canards of Camelot is the assertion that the Peace Corps in its brief history has had a massive impact on the progress of Man. According to Robert L. Strauss - who served as a Peace Corps country director, recruiter, consultant, and volunteer - the Peace Corps has failed to live up to expectations more than it's exceeded them. To wit:

"Today, the Peace Corps remains a Peter Pan organization, afraid to grow up, yet also afraid to question the thinking of its founding fathers. The rush to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign pledge was such that the Peace Corps never learned to crawl, let alone walk, before it set off at a sprinter’s pace. The result is a schizophrenic entity, unsure if it is a development organization, a cheerleader for international goodwill, or a government-sponsored cross-cultural exchange program. In any case, the Peace Corps tries to do too many things in too many places with too few people to really get much of anything done at all. ...

"Because the Peace Corps has tried to be all things to all comers, that grand vision has never been realized or even approached. To become effective and relevant, the Peace Corps must now give up on the myth that its creation was the result of an immaculate conception that can never be questioned or altered. It must go out and recruit the best of the best. It must avoid goodwill-generating window dressing and concentrate its resources in a limited number of countries that are truly interested in the development of their people. And it must give up on the risible excuse that in the absence of quantifiable results, good intentions are enough. Only then will it be able to achieve its original objective of significantly altering the lives of millions for the better."

Red State's Dan McLaughlin has an interesting take on B. Hussein Obama's recent string of primary losses:

"It's not every day you see the presumptive nominee lose a presidential primary in a swing state by 41 points (by contrast, despite a persistent protest vote faction, McCain hasn't actually lost a primary since Kansas and Louisiana on February 9), but that's exactly what happened to Barack Obama last night in West Virginia, and suggests pretty strongly why his campaign seems to be writing off the state for November. ...

"In other words, if form holds - even using the conservative projection of the vote total in Puerto Rico - Obama could end up well over half a million votes under water for the last three months of the primaries. We can only speculate as to why Obama has been struggling like this - whether it's a sign of Hillary's strength, the nature of the later primary states, a temporary weakness or permanent damage to Obama - and whether it will carry over in the general election campaign. But I can say this: if Obama was a fatally damaged general election candidate by this point, this is pretty much how you would expect him to be doing in the late primaries."

Read the rest here.

Back in January, I said this 'bout B. Hussein Obama on the now-defunct Volunteer Voters Web site:

What really scares me about Obama, though, is that I see in him shades of Jimmy Carter. Carter was an undistinguished one-term Governor of Georgia; Obama has served half of one term in the U.S. Senate, and he hasn't distinguished himself as a legislator in any way. Carter was prone to moralizing and bouts of self-righteousness; Obama ... well, just pay close attention to an Obama speech (or read one of his wretched books); Carter's failed foreign policies were the result of a great deal of naivete; Obama plans to protect America's interests abroad by holding gab-fests with every tin pot dictator on the planet. Carter played down his liberal past by talking endlessly about his religious faith; Obama has played down his liberal past by talking endlessly about his religious faith.

I'm not the only one who sees in Obama shades of James Earl Carter. Check out these comments from the American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord:

"Which makes the audacity of the Obama campaign more than amusing -- and amazing -- to watch. Consciously or not, Obama has selected the philosophical template of the Carter administration, from defunding the military, fighting the 'special interests' down to imposing the windfall profits tax on the rich. Well, as Justice Clarence Thomas might say: whoop-dee-damn-do! This is precisely the philosophy of Jimmy Carter, although Carter had the good sense not to campaign as the pacifist he really is in 1976, waiting until the moment his hand came off the bible for that.

"Is it possible that America really wants to return to those depressing days of gas lines and leisure suits? Of malaise and shock over the aggressiveness of America's enemies? The days when the policies Obama is advocating raised unemployment rates, interest rates and inflation rates into the double digits? When America's enemies looked the President of the United States in the eye -- and found he really wanted to kiss them on the cheek?"

After Ronald Reagan, Calvin Coolidge is my favorite U.S. President. I once wrote a paper about Coolidge for a graduate history class. When I got my paper back, it had this brief, snarky note scrawled across the title page (right under my "A" grade):

"A lot of people have problems with Coolidge."

The prof who scrawled that note didn't dispute any of the facts and or figures I presented in my paper. She just wanted me to know that "a lot of people," meaning a lot of left-wing college instructors, don't like Coolidge because he was a conservative champion of individual liberty.

If you wanna know why I admire Calvin Coolidge so much, check out this video from 1924, which is reportedly the first presidential film with sound recording. A sample from ol' Cal:

"Taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings and force everyone to work for a certain part of his time for the government. ...

"I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves.

I want them to have the rewards of their own energy -- this is the chief meaning of freedom.

"Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty."

UPDATE: If you want to learn more about Calvin Coolidge, my second-favorite president of all time, check out Robert Sobel's Coolidge: An American Enigma, which you should be able to find in your local library.

Work is scheduled to begin this year on a Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, to be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It will open to the public in two years.

The centerpiece of the memorial will be a granite stature of MLK. The King statue, to be carved by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, will be the largest statue on the Mall, bigger than those at the nearby memorials to Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.

Mr. Lei recently submitted a scale model of his King statue to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which reviews the design of projects in the capital area, and it was soundly rejected. Check it out:


Am I crazy or does that statue look like some something from Red Square, circa 1969?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a humble and gentle man. Ain't nothing 'bout Lei's statue that's humble or gentle. No damn wonder the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts rejected the freakin' thing.

U.S. Rep. John Tanner fancies himself a fiscal conservative without peer. For the past five years or so, Tanner's told anyone who'd listen that the United States' growing national debt is leading us all on a path to ruin.

I find it just a tad hypocritical that Tanner, who's always pissing and moaning about government red ink, has no problem delivering taxpayer-funded goodies to his district. According to the Environmental Working Group's Web site, Tanner's 8th Congressional District is set to receive $111 million in farm subsidies over the next five years. So much for fiscal conservatism ...

If you wanna know what I really think about Rep. John Tanner, check out this Nigh Seen Creeder post from September 2006:

An old saying suggests that a person should be willing to put his or her money where his or her mouth is. When it comes to elected officials, this catchphrase rings especially true. ...

A few months back, Tanner recruited U.S. Rep. - and wannabe U.S. Senator - Harold Ford, Jr., aka Junior, to take part in his debt crusade, and he has submitted op-eds to newspapers across the state in which he predicts doomsday if the national debt continues to grow. Conspicuously absent from Representative Tanner's little rants are any concrete solutions to reduce the national debt. He simply takes issue with the "fiscal irresponsibility" of the Bush Administration, and he proposes grandiose schemes to eliminate "waste, fraud, abuse."

Complaining about the size of the national debt has apparently become John Tanner's political raison d'être. Folks who visit his congressional Web site will not only find eight or ten links dealing with the debt issue (including an impressive tutorial on T-bills and the like), but a chart indicating each citizen's "share" of the national debt is prominently displayed as well. Tanner's thoughts on how to reduce the national debt, however, are rather skimpy. This is typical Tanner-speak:
Congress and the President must make a commitment to bringing the federal budget back into balance. This last happened in the mid 1990s, when the federal government balanced its budget and even began paying down its debt.

The temporary elimination of the deficit - and the "paying down" of debt - during the 1990s occurred because the Pentagon's military capability was slashed by 40 percent. Without this deep cut in military spending, John Tanner would not be able to crow about the Clinton Administration's supposed "fiscal responsibility." Furthermore, when the war on terror began in earnest in 2001, the military found itself severely lacking in both materiel and manpower. (Deficit hawks in the Democratic Party, John Tanner included, seem unwilling to discuss this particular aspect of the supposed Clinton Boom.)

That being said, Representative John Tanner was once presented with an unprecedented opportunity to tame the federal budget ... and he quickly punted. In 1994, U.S. Representatives Rob Andrews (D-NJ) and Bob Zeliff (R-NH) proposed a special session of congress during which every federal expenditure would be scrutinized on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. The ten-day special session would have been restricted to spending cuts and no federal program would have been off limits. John Tanner publicly supported the "A to Z" bill, but he would not sign a discharge petition to send the legislation to the House floor for a vote. Tanner caved when Democratic Speaker Tom Foley - who'd soon find himself out of a job - demanded from on high that the A to Z plan should be sh**-canned.

"Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it," Mark Twain once quipped. John Tanner likes to complain about the national debt, yet he's not prepared to offer one substantive idea to reduce said debt. Like a good Democrat, Tanner steadfastly refuses to lay a single federal program - in whole or in part - on the chopping block lest he offend the unions who bankroll his and his comrade's campaigns.

Put your money where your mouth is, Representative Tanner. We're waiting ...

Belmont University has launched a Web site with details 'bout the presidential debate it will host in October. Check it out here.

HT: Bill Hobbs

There's a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry says this about his Uncle Leo:

"He's one of these guys that anything goes wrong in life he blames it on anti-Semitism. Know what I mean? The spaghetti's not al dente? Cook, anti-Semite. Loses a bet on a horse? Secretariat, anti-Semitic. The High Holy Days in the temple? Rabbi, anti-Semite."

I always think about that Seinfeld whenever Al Gore pops up to blame each and every, and every and each, natural disaster on global warming. Mr. Couldn't Win His Home State In 2000 was all over the airwaves this past week touting his theory that the recent Burma cyclone was the result of, you guessed it, global warming.

Al Gore is certainly entitled to his opinions, but someone needs to tell him that only one of the twenty deadliest cyclones occurred since the onset of supposed man-made global warming. Okay, two if you add the Burma cyclone.

Check this out.

The Club for Growth on Thursday published a scorecard detailing the voting behavior of members of Congress on economic growth issues. From the Club's press release:

"We conducted a comprehensive examination of each lawmaker's record on pro-growth policies and computed an Economic Growth Score on a scale of 0 to 100. A score of 100 indicates the highest support for pro-growth policies. Those lawmakers scoring 90 or higher receive the Defender of Economic Freedom award."

The rating examines legislative actions that reflect the Club for Growth's pro-economic growth policy goals, including: Making the Bush tax cuts permanent; Death tax repeal; Cutting and limiting government spending; Social Security reform with personal retirement accounts; Expanding free trade; Legal reform to end abusive lawsuits; Replacing the current tax code; School choice; and regulatory reform and deregulation.

Tennessee's own Marsha Blackburn, who represents the 7th District in the U.S. House, received a score of 98 on the Club's scorecard. Her fellow Republicans in the Tennessee delegation received scores of: David Davis, 92; John Duncan, 81; Zach Wamp, 73.

As disappointing as Duncan and Wamp's scores were, they still did a hell of a lot better on pro-growth issues than the Democrats in Tennessee's delegation: Jim Cooper, 28; John Tanner, 14; Lincoln Davis, 12; Bart Gordon, 12; Steve Cohen, 6.

Steve Cohen ranks right down there with quasi-socialists like Sheila Jackson Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, and Jerrold Nadler. Thank you, Memphis, for sending that squirrelly sombitch to Washington!

To see how the entire U.S. House did on the Club for Growth's scorecard, click here.

Remember when I posted a couple of photos of Code Pink members who removed their tops and crashed Hillary Clinton's HQ in San Francisco? No? Perhaps this'll jog your memory:


Well, the nutbuckets at Code Pink were at it again yesterday. The object of their derision was the Marine Corps recruiting office in Berkeley. Yesterday they ... well, I'll just let you read:

"Members of the anti-war group Code Pink gathered Friday with a cauldron of flowers outside a controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center in Berkeley, Calif., to use witchcraft to rally against the Iraq war.

"Code Pink members unfurled a pink banner reading 'Troops Home Now' and waved signs as they began the protest, which they promised would include incantations and pointy hats for a 'witches, crones and sirens' day.

"'Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we're going to end war,' Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com."

I'll bet Ms. Zanne Sam Joi is a real looker. I'd inquire as to whether or not she's single, but I'm guessing she probably don't like fellers too much. Flannel, probably; but men wearing flannel, probably not.

Very interesting column this week from Patrick J. Buchanan ...

"'I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on' than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has told USA TODAY. ...

"The Democratic Party can't win with just 'eggheads and African-Americans,' Paul Begala added helpfully.

"What Hillary and Begala are saying is politically incorrect, but it is also patently true. Hillary was describing what may now fairly be called the Hillary Democrats -- a.k.a. the ex-Reagan Democrats who did not vote for Obama and may defect to John McCain. ...

"Who, exactly, are the Hillocrats, half of whom said in the exit polls from North Carolina and Indiana that, if she loses the nomination, they will stay home or vote for McCain?

"They are white, working- and middle-class, Catholic, small-town, rural, unionized, middle-age and seniors, and surviving on less than $50,000 a year. They are the people most belittled by the condescending commentary of Barack behind closed doors out at Sodom on the Bay.

"'You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, (where) the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'

"In 40 years, two Democrats have won the presidency, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and both did so only after connecting with these folks."

Read the rest here.

Thank God a majority of Tennesseans had the good sense to choose Bob Corker over Harold Ford, Jr., aka Junior, in the 2006 U.S. Senate election ...

If Junior'd been elected, he would be spending every waking moment spouting Democratic National Committee-approved talking points on any TV program that'd have him as a guest. Corker, on the other hand, has spent the last year-and-a-half establishing himself a deep-thinking member of the U.S. Senate. Check out this article from National Review if you don't believe me.

Oh, and to all of the friends, colleagues and compatriots who criticized me for supporting Corker in the '06 Republican primary, check out this passage from the above-referenced article:

"Since winning, Corker has turned out to be more conservative than people expected, particularly on the economic issues that most concern him. Earlier this year, almost all of his colleagues voted for a stimulus bill and a housing bill. Corker, moved by the quaint theory that such bills ought to stimulate the economy and help the housing market, voted no."

So there.

UPDATE: Conservatives for Corker referenced the same article earlier this week.

According to Gannett Tennessee's Turner Hutchens, the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from promoting religion. There're a great many souls in this country who share Mr. Hutchens' view; unfortunately, they're all hopelessly misguided and, well, just a little bit full of you-know-what.

I challenge Mr. Hutchens - and anyone who agrees with him - to find the words "promote" and "religion" in the constitution. They won't find 'em, of course, because, well, they ain't there.

I only wish I could have five minutes alone with Mr. Hutchens. I'd like to grab him up by his lapels and enlighten him by telling him this:

The Founding Fathers had no mindset of the separation of church and state in the way that we know of today. The Founding Fathers' mindset concerning the role of religion in American life was very narrowly defined. Indeed, James Madison himself defined it when he wrote the First Amendment.

The First Amendment, plain and simple, prohibits Congress from establishing a national denomination, as was the case in Great Britain when the Bill of Rights was ratified. The federal government cannot make us all Catholics, or all Anglicans, or all anything else.

Some would have us believe that the Founding Fathers envisioned a public square in which all forms of religious expression are to be suppressed. Not true. In fact, the first bill passed when the U.S. Capitol was completed was legislation allowing the halls of Congress to serve simultaneously as a church building. When Congress began holding regular sessions in Washington, DC, the largest church in the city met in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. (Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Separation of Church and State himself worhiped in that church during his entire presidency.)

Unfortunately, if any contemporary politician dared repeat the Founders' religious pronouncements in a public setting, he or she could bank on being portrayed as a religious nut by the ACLU and other leftist outfits. Yet, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe and others often invoked the Judeo-Christian God as the source of American liberty. One need only read Tocqueville to understand how ubiquitous open religious expression was in the daily workings of our young republic.

I do not ask folks like Mr. Hutchens to interpret the Constitution as I see it. I simply implore them to examine the writings of the great souls who bestowed upon us the single greatest enshrinement of freedoms known to man. If they just that, they will learn that many of the accepted "facts" about our Founding Fathers' religious beliefs are not only wrong, they are outright distortions and lies.

Last month, novelist Stephen King - who hasn't written an interesting book since about 1985 - told a group of students that the U.S. military is full of illiterate fools. News Busters exposed King's comments, and King ain't too happy 'bout the, well, exposing. Here's what he said last month:

"I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that."

King's shipdittery is essentially a repeat of John Kerry's infamous gaffe during the 2006 congressional election:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Back in '06, the Heritage Foundation did a masterful job debunking Kerry's U.S.-soldiers-aren't-too-bright comments in a study full of facts and figures. Methinks Steven King needs to read up on it.

"[T]he additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) sup­port the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight dif­ferences are that wartime U.S. mil­itary enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on aver­age than their civilian peers.

"Recruits have a higher percent­age of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas. ...

"The previous study noted the significant differ­ence between the national recruit high school grad­uation rate of 98 percent and the national youth graduation rate of 75 percent."

The U.K.'s Daily Mail published a list of the world's top "hippy-crites" today. That is, a list of pompous, self-righteous entertainers who go around the world telling folks to reduce their carbon footprint while they themselves emit more carbon dioxide in a year than the average person emits in his or her entire life.

Check out the hippy-crites list here.

I was going to give gas prices a rest as a topic of conversation for a while. Over the weekend, however, I received an e-mail from the Campaign for Working Families PAC which I simply must share with you. I couldn't find this particular information on the CWF's Web site, so I'm posting what I received in its entirety. Enjoy.

Let’s Be Calm and Conservative

In recent days, I’ve gotten a lot of questions (not to mention a few angry messages) about oil and gas prices. I don’t like paying these prices either, but it seems that a lot of good people are buying into the rhetoric of the Left, which suggests it’s all George Bush’s fault or some conspiracy in the boardrooms of corporate America.

Here’s the bottom line: This is a fundamental issue of supply and demand. Demand for oil and energy is booming around the world as developing nations, like China and India, grow economically and develop their own middle-classes. As these folks earn more, they want what you and I want – cars, air conditioning, TVs, better food, etc. We cannot freeze economic conditions around the world. As demand for oil increases, supplies get tighter and costs go up. That’s Economics 101. The more important question is: How do we respond to these challenges? I don’t believe the solution lies in punishing the producers of the very products we need most. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the Left is proposing.

Last week, I noted how U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon responded to the global food crisis. He warned that the world “must urgently increase food production to ease skyrocketing prices…” The same solution also applies to our growing energy crisis. We must increase production of oil and natural gas in order to meet the increasing demand worldwide. But, in the recent Philadelphia debate, when asked about energy, the only solution Barack Obama had to offer was to control demand, which would cripple our economy. Obama has also suggested imposing a “windfall profits” tax on the oil companies. We tried high taxes and price controls before. Does anybody really want to go back to the Carter malaise days of shortages and gas lines?

[Last] Tuesday, President Bush held a rare Rose Garden press conference to address economic anxieties, and he took the opportunity to castigate the Democrat Congress for doing nothing to help ease the pain at the pump. In 2006, Nancy Pelosi and her fellow liberals promised they would lower gas prices if elected. Well, they won, but prices have gone up, way up. Here are some of the president’s remarks:

…The past 18 months, gas prices have gone up by $1.40 per gallon. Electricity prices for small business and families are rising, as well. …One of the main reasons for high gas prices is that global oil production is not keeping up with growing demand. Members of Congress have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production; yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home.

They repeatedly blocked environmentally safe exploration in ANWR. The Department of Energy estimates that ANWR could allow America to produce about a million additional barrels of oil every day, which translates to about 27 millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel every day. That would be about a 20-percent increase of oil -- crude oil production over U.S. levels, and it would likely mean lower gas prices. And yet such efforts to explore in ANWR have been consistently blocked.

Congressional liberals didn’t like being called out on their broken promises, but not wanting to be labeled a “do-nothing Congress,” they put together their own list of legislative priorities aimed at controlling speculation in energy commodities markets, ending price gouging and raising taxes on oil companies. Not only was there no serious proposal by the Democrats to boost supply, New York’s senior liberal, Senator Charles Schumer, actually dismissed drilling in ANWR, saying, “ANWR wouldn’t produce a drop of oil in ten years…”

Interestingly, that’s exactly the same thing Bill Clinton said when he vetoed legislation in 1995 that would have permitted additional domestic oil exploration in the United States. In view of today’s record gas prices, rapidly approaching $4.00 a gallon, Clinton’s logic seems rather shortsighted. Had he not vetoed that bill, ANWR’s oil would be on the market today and prices would not be so high. So, instead of blaming George Bush, blame Bill Clinton for high gas prices the next time you fill up!

While Senator Schumer may be willing to bet again on Clinton’s flawed logic, a recent Canadian study predicted that oil prices, and as a result gasoline prices, could double by 2012 due to the growing supply and demand imbalance. The report also states, “An expected drop in demand in the United States due to higher prices and a weak economy will be more than offset by demand growth in developing nations.” In other words, as I noted, we cannot conserve our way out of higher prices because we cannot control demand in other nations. We must increase supply.

Two years ago, in the run-up to the 2006 elections, Senator Schumer said, “If $75 a barrel oil and a $3 average for a gallon of gasoline isn’t a wake-up call, then what is?” I would think that oil at $115 a barrel and gas at $3.50 a gallon would be enough of a wake-up call to realize that the same old do-nothing policies are not working, but evidently not. Let’s pray Senator Schumer and other liberals will have an epiphany, before gas reaches $8.00 a gallon. Let’s not wait another ten years to get a bill to the president’s desk opening ANWR.

If it seems like I have spent a lot of time on this issue, it’s for good reason. Energy is vitally important to our economy and our national security. The issue is also being used to stoke hostility to free markets and to demand more government regulations. The left-wing, socialist politicians, like Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama, who are responsible for the bad energy policies that have created this crisis now want to give us more of what doesn’t work! Let’s be calm and let’s be conservative. Don’t buy into the radical rhetoric and wild conspiracy theories. Tax hikes are not the answer. Punishing the oil companies and giving even more money to feed the appetite of Big Government is not the solution.

I am pleased to report that Senate Republicans have introduced a common-sense, conservative, free market-oriented plan – the American Energy Production Act of 2008. The bill would allow for more domestic oil and natural gas exploration, more use of coal and liquefied coal and it would tap into America’s vast oil shale fields. The result of such a plan, if enacted, would be more oil and natural gas on the market, easing supply constraints and lowering prices. It would also create tens of thousands of new jobs in America, and would go a long way toward achieving energy independence from hostile foreign regimes like Iran and Venezuela. It will take time, so the sooner we change policies, which will mean defeating liberal politicians in Congress, the better!

A few weeks back, Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr. said this 'bout presidential wannabe Sen. B. Hussein Obama: "He has the unique skills to try to lower the temperature and foster a sense of common ground, and try to figure out ways that people can agree."

The proposition that B. Hussein Obama is someone who transcends partisanship is perhaps the most whoppingest canard of Campain 2008. National Review's Fred Siegel sets the record straight:

"There is a similar chasm when it comes to Obama’s claim to post-partisanship. His achievements in reaching out to moderate voters are largely proleptic. But words are not deeds, and while Obama has few concrete achievements to his name, his voting record hardly suggests an ability to rise above Left-versus-Right. In the Illinois state senate he made a specialty of voting 'present,' but after his first two years in the U.S. Senate, National Journal’s analysis of roll-call votes found that he was more liberal than 86 percent of his colleagues. His voting record has only moved farther left since then. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action now gives him a 97.5 percent rating, while National Journal ranks him the most liberal member of the Senate. By comparison, Hillary Clinton, who occasionally votes with the GOP, ranks 16th. Obama is such a down-the-line partisan that, according to Congressional Quarterly, in the last two years he has voted with the Democrats more often than did the party’s majority leader, Harry Reid."

Joe Biddle has a great column 'bout pro golfer/human train wreck John Daly in this morning's Tennessean. A sample:

"But the most unattractive snapshot I've seen recently is John Daly playing a round of golf at his Murder Rock Golf and Country Club.

"When Daly teed off for a local morning television show, he wore jeans, sunglasses, an Arkansas football golf hat and sunglasses. That's it.

"He was barefoot and topless. No shoes. No shirt. No problem.

"As he stood over his ball on the first tee, Daly had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and a keg-sized beer belly hanging over his jeans.

"It had to be a picture PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem adored. Maybe Finchem should use it to promote the Tour. 'Hey, kids, you can grow up to be a golf slob like John Daly!'

"Daly continues to destroy what was one of golf's most promising careers. He had the game, but not the brain."

A few hours after reading Biddle's column, I visited my local K-Mart to pick up some potting soil. As I was strolling through the store, I spied a rack full of John Daly Apparel T-shirts, lightweight jackets, and rainwear.

One of the Daly Apparel T-shirts had several quotes from ol' John on beer and gluttony and such. As I examined it, I thought to myself, "Since I'm pretty sure John Daly is going to be found dead in his bed, in a hotel room, or in a ditch in the very near future, I don't think I could bring myself to buy - much less wear - this shirt."

I'd give anything if I could kit a ball off the tee like John Daly. If having that ability meant me being an alcoholic slob, with a three-packs-a-day smoking habit, I would say "No thank you."

Joltin' Django's been havin' some computer problems as of late.

If'n you don't hear from me for a day or two, don't fret. I'll be back directly ... fo' sho'.

With oil hovering around $120 a barrel, the tree-hugging politicians who've stood agin' domestic oil-drilling for the past, oh, 30 years are lookin' pretty f***in' stupid right now.

If the United States had started drilling in ANWAR when that little project was first proposed, we'd be less dependent on oil from overseas right about now (and we might be makin' some money from exports, to boot).

Check out this little bit o' information from a recent Tennessee Republican Party press release (emphases theirs):

"The high price of gasoline is antagonized by a weak dollar and a swelling demand. However, there are actions that have been viable options, yet rejected over the many years. Now, the seeds planted are coming up as a harvest we don't like and can't afford.

"As President, Bill Clinton vetoed the legislation in 1995 that would have permitted drilling in a small area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area of almost 20 million of acres (almost the size of South Carolina) designated for protection with a portion identified as holding an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Had the veto pen not killed the drilling in the northern-most parts of Alaska, marketable product would be flowing to the 'the Lower 48' right now."