Socialist Backlash? France, Germany Among European Nations That Move Right After Elections

Is there a socialist backlash starting in Europe? For decades, Europe has been the poster child for socialism. Over recent years, the tide had started to change. As I reported on my Review blog conservatives are making a comeback in Europe. The elections of France's Sarkozy and Germany's Merkel were just the beginning. Over the last few days, elections all over Europe has begun to bear significant fruit of this backlash against socialist failures:

Conservatives raced toward victory in some of Europe's largest economies Sunday as exit polls showed voters punishing left-leaning parties in European Parliament elections in France, Germany and elsewhere.

Some right-leaning parties suggested the results vindicated their reluctance to spend more on company bailouts and fiscal stimulus amid the global economic crisis.

Projections showed Germany's Social Democrats heading to their worst showing in a nationwide election since World War II. Four months before a German national election, the outcome boosted conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's hopes of ending the tense left-right "grand coalition" that has led the European Union's most populous nation since 2005.

The results from France wasn't any better for socialist parties:

Exit polls suggested France's governing conservative party scored a resounding victory with 28.3 percent of the vote, followed by the opposition Socialist Party with 17.5 percent.

French Socialists said their defeat signaled a need to rethink left-wing policies to unseat Sarkozy.

Ya, you should "rethink" your policies. For example, your party should drop all of that socialist fantasy nonsense and join us in the real world where capitalism and individual freedoms are paramount and the most effective way to ensure success in any country's economy. Entitlement programs just make people lazy, and they don't have the drive to be everything that they can be because the government will take care of them from cradle to grave.

All over Europe a socialist backlash seems to be taking root:

Opinion surveys and exit polls showed right-leaning governments edging the opposition in Italy and Belgium as well as Germany and France. Conservative opposition parties were tied or ahead in Britain and Spain, opinion polls showed.

A center-right European leader, Graham Watson, had this to say about the election results:

"People don't want a return to socialism and that's why the majority here will be a center-right majority."

While Britain didn't have any major elections this year, the socialist backlash seems to taking root there as well:

In Britain, dissident Labour legislators said a plot to oust Prime Minister Gordon Brown could accelerate after the party's expected dismal results in the European elections are announced.

Opponents say the Labour leader has been so tainted by the economic crisis and a scandal over lawmakers' expenses that the opposition Conservatives are virtually guaranteed to win the next national election, which must be called by June 2010.

Of course, the Associated Press and others in the mainstream media blame the "far-right" and other "fringe" groups gains this past week not as a sign of a significant shift in Europe but as a sign of "low voter turnout":

Exit polls also showed gains for far-right groups and other fringe parties due to record low turnout.

They repeatedly focused on low turnout to try to imply the victories as not a true indicator of the beliefs of Europeans. Also, they tried to peg some of the groups as bigots by their "Anti-Islamic" platforms.

Bulgaria, Hungry, and Poland are also moving more to the right.

Greece and Portugal are the only European countries that seems to be moving more to the left.

It's a welcome sign from across the pond. Hopefully, this is just the beginning. If Europe admits the socialist experiments as failures, maybe Americans will learn from their mistakes before we make the same ones over here.

Numerous polls show that Americans are already growing tired of it. TEA parties have popped up all over the country with plans for more on July 4th. The 2010 elections are beginning to look scary for the Democrats. It could be 1994 all over again.

Waxman's Folly: Proposed Bill Includes Provision That Allows Global Warming "Victims" to Sue Government

Whenever the Democrats want to pay back their base, everyone must pay for it. This time their looking to bestow their trial lawyer constituency with a significant reward for voting Democrat.

Reps. Henry Waxman (CA) and Edward Markey (MA) wrote a bill that allows individuals to sue the government for ailments allegedly caused by climate change. This could conceivably mean that people suffering with anything from something as serious cancer to something as minor as asthma or sunburns could sue the US, state, and local governments because they neglected to put restrictions on man-made gases that some say cause global warming. Not only that, but one could also sue for ailments that they don't even have but could "expect to suffer" from an ailment.

According to the Washington Times:

"The measure sets grounds for anyone 'who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part,' to government inaction to file a 'citizen suit.' The term 'harm' is broadly defined as 'any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring.'"

Leave it to two trial lawyers to dream this up. Frivolous doesn't even start to describe this new potential type of litigation. It would create a whole new breed of lawyers. They will make "ambulance chasers" look like boy scouts.

This is absolutely asinine. It's like suing churches because one might believe that God allegedly failed to prevent them from getting sick. The only people that this would good for is the trial lawyers.

They will get rich exploiting the "victims" and the government, and by extension every single taxpayer in this country. The government is having enough trouble paying for the Democrats' wish list as it is.

This will spark a massive onslaught of frivolous lawsuits against the government. As unpredictable as juries and judges can be, it could lead to big sums of money being awarded to people because of activist judges and juries, especially in the more liberal parts of the country.

Many people today are looking for that one big score so they won't have to ever work again. They see Uncle Sam as the rich uncle with deep pockets that they can squeeze some money from without any consequences. However, the government can't pay the bills they already have. We don't need to add more leeches sucking on a piggy bank that has already been bled dry.

How could this ever be considered a good idea? People nowadays are too sue-happy as it is. Do we really need to make it easier for them to sue the government in order to get a big payday?

The bill would limit the amount that any one person could be awarded at $75,000 in a year and $1.5 M lifetime. Considering that there are over 306 million potential litigants,...um I mean people, in this country right now, that would be about $540 M that could be conceivably given out.

The legal theory behind this bill is extremely flawed. Assuming climate change exists, the government isn't directly responsible for the carbon emissions that cause it. It's a stretch to say that they're even liable for global warming effects.

Secondly, how can one be able to sue for an ailment that they don't even have yet? It would be the equivalent of someone suing McDonald's because they "expect to suffer" from coffee burns sometime in the future... maybe.

Plus, you have to wonder where and when would it stop. Being able to sue the government for global warming would open the door wide open to sue companies for their contributions to the release of man-made gases that allegedly cause climate change. This would devastate industries like the automobile and airline industries already teetering on the edge of collapse. It wouldn't just put the final nail on the coffin. It would fill in the 6-foot deep hole with cement instead of dirt.

Other industries like energy, transportation, and different manufacturing industries would be thrown into a tailspin, if this bill was enacted. It'll cost more to make and transport the goods to sell. The only way they could survive would be to pass on the cost of the lawsuits onto the consumer by driving up the prices of everything we use and buy. All kinds of insurance in this country are already sky high because of Frivolous lawsuits. What happened to insurance would happen to most of the industries in this country.

Let's also consider that the United States only emits slightly over 20% of the world's emissions. What about the other 80%? China and the European Union emits 33% of greenhouse gases combined. China's cities have a perpetual fog that surrounds them because of the amount of air pollution in the air.

Russia and India aren't exuding as much gases as the previous countries, but they are industrializing countries that care very little about restricting emissions. Their carbon footprint is getting increasingly bigger all the time.

Can we file lawsuits against those countries for their contributions to the problem? On the flip side of the coin, would this bill allow people from other countries to sue our government for global warming caused ailments? If you consider the $1.5 per person limit from before, the 6 trillion people in this world could bankrupt the US.

Finally, global warming is just a theory, if not a myth. Should we be giving so much weight and plausibility to a half-baked belief in man-made climate change that we could be risking sweeping and devastating consequences for years to come?

This is a transparent attempt for the Democrats to pay back their trial lawyer base. There is no other logical reason to include this provision in the proposed bill.

The mainstream media has buried the story, but it must be brought to light. I would recommend that you call your representative and senators and express your objections to this provision.

Rosa Brooks Loses Touch With Reality Writing Her LA Times Swan Song

In her last article for the LA Times before going to work for the Pentagon advisor for the Obama Administration, Rosa Brooks said the only way for the press to survive so that they can keep government in check is for the government to bail them out.

Please, someone give Ms. Brooks a drug test. She must be on something.

She seems to fail to realize that the great majority of people are usually reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. As we have seen with AIG and GM, the government will ultimately exercise their ability to control what companies do and who is hired and fired by being able to have the power of the pursestrings over the companies. Therefore, if newspapers and journalists rely on the government for their salaries and survival, they will be less likely to say anything bad about the government because of the fear of losing funding or jobs.

It would give the government too much power over the press. It would bring an end the freedom of the press, at least for the ones that were bailed out. There is a reason why the freedom of the press was in the first amendment in the Bill of Rights. It is one of the cornerstones needed to keep free society like our own free. The government would be able to bury any story that would air their dirty laundry and affect their chances of getting re-elected.

A great example is when Rod Blagojevich tried to blackmail the Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Cubs. Hot Rod refused to give them any "f'n" money for Wrigley Field unless they would get rid of certain "A-holes" that wrote pieces that expressed their unfavorable opinions of the "damn" former Illinois governor and his policies.

If Rod was able to exert this kind of pressure on the paper and almost succeed with indirect control of a company's money flow, imagine what those corruptable officials in government could do with direct control of their money flow. Our newspapers would devolve into just being a mouthpiece for whoever is in charge in Washington. Our press corps would start resembling cheerleaders much like the press in dictatorships with state-run media in Venezuela and N. Korea have turned into with their coverage of the "Dear Leaders". Then again, the way the papers have covered "The One we've been waiting for" maybe they're already cheerleaders anyway, but at least they have a choice to be a cheerleader or not. If the papers are bailed out, they won't have a choice.

Brooks: "Some might say I have a 'new job,' but because I'll be escaping a dying industry -- and your tax dollars will shortly be paying my salary -- I prefer to think of it as my personal government bailout."

Does she not realize that one of the main reasons why the industry is "dying" is because of hacks like her that distort the truth to promote her own liberal agenda as she did here.

By the way, is it discomforting to anyone else that my tax dollars are going to pay her salary now, or is it just me?

In response to her piece, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air had some major disagreements with her spotty at best theory. First of all, "it’s a myth that faulty reporting led to the war; Democrats and Republicans both used the same intel and gave the same answers on Iraqi WMD, as did all of the Western democracies.  The intel was wrong, a problem that better reporting would not have solved."

He, also, rightly debunks her claim that the media was supportive of the Iraqi invasion in 2003. He goes on to wonder if papers were dependent on the Bush Administration would they do a better job of holding him accountable than one independent.

Let me get my magic 8-ball.

Um...no.

I agree with Ed to a certain extant about Brooks' view on the absurdity of equating the government's role in the newspaper industry to its role in roads and schools. Roads are definitely something that the government should control. Although, I'm not totally sold on the idea that the government should have such a huge role in the school system. They've run our schools into the ground. Why let them keep control of it ? Also, I believe that they shouldn't have so much control over what is taught to our kids especially in relation to evolution and other controversial subjects.

A newspaper bailout as Brooks presents it is a horrific idea. It'll just be another step towards socialism a la Venezuela.

EPA + CO2 = < GDP

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Obama administration are preparing to put more regulations on carbon dioxide emissions. Since many in the scientific community blame carbon dioxide for causing global warming, Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, wants to find the latest research and prepare documentation that will explain our need for such regulations.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I am personally a huge skeptic when it comes to whether global warming is actually happening and whether we are causing it, if it is. So, I don't believe that the new regulations would be necessary anyway.)

The fact is the new restrictions on carbon dioxide that have been proposed will raise the costs of energy like gas and coal. The price of manufacturing cars will go up as well because the manfactures would have to reinvent a car that will be able to comply with the new regulations.

This would be the last straw for the Big 3 in Detroit. If it costs Detroit more to make the cars, then, they will have to pass that higher cost onto the consumer in order to stay profitable. The already high price of cars will skyrocket, and people won't be able to buy the cars that they want, especially with the credit crunch in this country.

The three "too big to fail" pigs in Detroit will have to keep asking the government for more of OUR money because the Obama administration and the Democrats would be making it impossible for them to rebound and become profitable.

General Motors (GM), Chrysler, and Ford are getting attacked from both flanks in their fight for survival and profitability. The UAW is digging in their heels to demand that their workers continue to be paid way more than anyone else in the industry. They won't allow any of them to lower the wages. Although, they made some significant compromises. They eliminated jobs bank (which allows workers to receive 95% pay and benefits for a year after they were laid off from the Big 3), won't give automatic raises, and limited overtime that workers could get per week. Even with the compromises that they made, the UAW is still putting the Big 3 in a distinct disadvantage in their competition with other car manufactures.

Now that they were finally able to get the UAW to bend a little, why is the EPA wanting to make it even harder for them to turn around their businesses by making them retool all of their plans because of more restrictions that Lisa Jackson and most of the Democrats want to force them to comply to? These new requirements will make GM, Chrysler, and eventually Ford need more time and more of our money to make them viable again. GM and Chrysler have already asked for more money from the government this past week to stay alive. If Congress ever gets a backbone and says, "No" to them, it will guarantee bankruptcy and most likely bring about their fall.

The new EPA regulations would be the final nail in their coffin, if it comes to pass. They are already teetering on the verge of collapse without this kind of "help" of the administration. It is like a lifeguard trying to save the drowning man by giving him a ball-and-chain instead of a life jacket.

The automobile industry is not the only ones that would feel the effects of this ill-advised policy. Every industry will be hit with the higher prices of coal and gasoline. It will cost more to transport goods across the country and worldwide. Therefore, they will also have to pass the higher cost of transportation on to the consumers. As a result, consumers will buy less of their products or stop buying them altogether. After they stop selling, they will have to start laying people off because of a lack of sales. If sales dip too low, they will have to go out of business which will put everyone in the company out of work.

The rise in regulations will also hurt those of us that have the misfortune of having to live, eat, or leave the house. The cost of heating and air will skyrocket. Unless you want to live in the winter using just your fireplace in the winter (assuming the EPA won't try and regulate the carbon emissions coming from your fire), you will pay more to stay warm. Also, staying cool in the summer will also be much more costly.

It'll cost more to take the kids to school or go buy groceries. It'll also cost more to buy those groceries because of the higher transportation costs the companies will have to pay to get the food to the store.

This is just a bad idea any other time, but it could be a catastrophic one at a time such as this. The economy is holding on by a thread already. We don't need something like this to unravel that one string. The gross domestic product (GDP) will plummet, unemployment would go into the double digits, inflation will go nuts, and it could get us in a full blown depression.

Obama, just say no to the environmentalists. If the auto industry and the rest of economy rebounds, then you can try and get more regulations in gradually, but you can't sacrifice this nation's economy long term for the short term benefit of appeasing part of your base.

You need to put our money where your mouth is. You need to show that post-partisan spirit that you claimed to have throughout your campaign.

American's Right to Defend One's Property in Jeopardy

Imagine that you are home minding your own business. You are a simple cattle rancher who wants to spend his days in peace in the Arizona countryside next to the border with Mexico. You are not near any major cities where crime runs rampant.  You think that you are safe. However, you wake up one day and your property is getting vandalized.  Your house is getting broken into and trucks are stolen. Your livestock is dying from eating plastic bottles that are littered all over your land. In fact, there is so much litter on the ground that it is starting to look like a garbage dump. There is a steady stream of illegal immigrants invading your own version of the Ponderosa.
 
What would you do to combat the vandals? Call the cops? They don't seem to what to do anything to help watch your land or taken any type of proactive actions to prevent any future occurrences. Would you call your congressman? Senator? Governor? You could, but they don't seem to care either. If no one cares, maybe you would give up and deal with it or move.  Maybe you would fight back.
 
So many would cross his 22,000 acre ranch into the United States that the local and federal law enforcement agencies started calling it "the avenue of choice" of illegal immigrants. In 1998, Roger Barnett, of Douglas, Arizona got tired of waiting for the government to protect his land and chose to fight back. He began patrolling his own property and detaining illegal immigrants entering the country on his property while waiting on law enforcement to come and pick them up. Over the past 10 years, he has exercised his right to protect his property, home, and family by turning over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol.
 
Now, he is getting sued for $32 million by 16 people that he detained and had arrested back in March 2004. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) claims that Mr. Barnett violated the civil rights of the 5 women and 11 men he captured and held at gunpoint while waiting for law enforcement to come and apprehend them.  They go on to accuse Mr. Barnett of "yelling obscenities at them and kicking one of the women." As he was waiting for law enforcement, MALDEF claims that he threatened them in English and Spanish while pointing a pistol at them and his large dog barked at the trespassers.
 
According to the Washington Times, "Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch's established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil - which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their 'clients' to keep them running."
 
I don't know about you, but I would not put up with all that he has put up with from the felons that have crossed his property over the years. The right to the ownership of PRIVATE property is one of the founding cornerstone beliefs in what makes this country great. He has an absolute right to protect his ranch, home, and family. According to the many comments on the "Douglas Dispatch" website regarding this issue, most people agree with me.
 
This lawsuit is an abomination to the Constitution of the United States and all of our rights. He has the perfectly legal right to apprehend and detain individual that are illegally trespassing on his property. It is nothing but a Trojan horse lawsuit to make this an open border country and amnesty for illegal immigrants in this country.

Many on the left will try to demonize Mr. Barnett. "The Barnett brothers have time and time and time again held people at gunpoint," Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said. "There were cases that may well have amounted to false imprisonment, which is a felony."

Well, this statement is misrepresenting the facts of the case. It is true that if he would hold a random law-abiding person at gunpoint it would be considered kidnapping or false imprisonment. However, they were in fact in the process of committing the federal felony of entering the country illegally and a misdemeanor crime of criminal trespassing. According to Arizona law, people are allowed to do a citizen's arrest when the suspect commits a felony that the arresting citizen witnesses or when a citizen knows that a felony has been committed and has reasonable grounds to believe that the suspect committed it. [See A.R.S. section 13-3884.] (The statute also permits an arrest for a breach of the peace) He was well within his rights to do what he did.

Last March, Judge John Roll denied the Barnetts' motion to dismiss and stated there was sufficient evidence of a conspiracy, denying the plaintiffs their right to interstate travel and the Barnetts' actions were motivated by race, to allow the matter to be presented to a jury. 

The trial should have ended right there before it even started. Judge Roll been heavily criticized for his judicial activism. How could he totally ignore Barnett's property rights or the Arizona statue that allows private citizen's to make arrests of people committing felonies in their presence?

As the jury is currently deliberating the fate of Mr. Barnett, I sincerely hope that he is not found libel for violating their "civil rights". If he is, it will set a bad precedent and will basically make every American citizen's private property rights invalid.

A thug who is caught breaking into a man's house and assaulting his wife could claim that his rights were violated if the man protects his wife and apprehends the criminal while waiting for the cops. It would also make it a lot harder for us to prosecute illegal aliens.

How can a foreign criminal sue a U.S. citizen for preventing the criminal from committing another felony on said citizen's property?  Something doesn't sound right with that picture.

Could the Democrats Be Starting to Overreach?

The biggest danger the Democrats could face would be overreaching to their leftist base. This is still a center-right nation. It won't take much to start turning their constituents away. Bill Clinton found that out when he tried to get Hillacare passed and instituted the "don't ask, don't tell policy" in the military. The Democrats got thumped in the '94 mid-term elections. After only the first two weeks in power, it looks as if they haven't learned that lesson yet.

Obama's first two executive orders were to overturn the "Mexico City policy", which funds abortions internationally with federal tax money, and to close Guantanamo Bay within the year. He is, also, championing the "stimulus" package that is going through Congress. However, all of these are very unpopular with the American people.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans said they disagreed with the president's decision to give overseas funding to family planning organizations that provide abortions, according to a recent Gallup survey. Only, 35% of Americans supported decision.

The closing of Guantanamo was closer but still more Americans were against it than for it by a 50-44% margin.

The most toxic issue today for Obama and his fellow band of merry liberals is the "stimulus" bill by far. The "porkulus" bill, as it as been called by conservatives, is full of goodies for left-leaning organizations like ACORN and programs like an increase in the amount of food stamps given out that will have little to no effect on stimulating the economy.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% favor the legislation, 43% are opposed, and 20% are not sure. The support for the bill has skydived overall the past two weeks. Opposition was 34% two weeks ago to 39% last week and 43% today. Even Democrats are starting to sour on the bill. Sixty-four percent of Democrats still support the plan. That is down from 74% a week ago, though. The more people hear about the bill, the more people don't like it. A recent Gallup survey found that 54% of those surveyed wanted the bill to be changed dramatically or killed altogether. Breaking down the 54% mentioned above: 37% wanted major changes made to the legislation, and 17% said that it should be rejected entirely.

The bill needs to be scrapped down all the way and rebuilt from the floor up. In fact, 45% favor a tax-cut only plan while 34% are opposed to the idea. On the other side of the coin, 72% of voters oppose a stimulus plan that includes only new government spending without any tax cuts.
More Americans seem to favor tax cuts as a way to stimulate the economy versus government spending. Obama would be wise to listen those who voted him in.

Obama still enjoys an approval rating of 61.8% (RCP average), but it has been steadily declining since his inauguration. Now, there is a natural decline that happens to every president after the "high" of inauguration. However, it'll keep falling if they follow the same policies that kicked the Democrats out of power in the White House under Carter and the Congress under Clinton. The GOP is gaining ground on the Democrats in Congress already. The Rasmussen survey said that 42% of voters said they would vote for their district's Democratic candidate while 38% said they would choose the Republican. A week ago, the Democrats enjoyed a seven-point lead, 42-35%.

It's still way too early to predict a mid-term backlash against the Democrats, but it is not off to a good start. If the bill goes through as is, and it the economy doesn't recover, there probably will be. Obama campaigned against the deficit spending of Bush. He criticized W. for ballooning the deficit over his years in office and claimed that McCain would be an extension of the Bush administration. However, he will be seen as a major hypocrite, if he doubles-down on the Bush style deficit spending. If he's not careful, it will be Obama that will be seen as Bush squared.

The Audacity of Prayer

Yesterday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton rejected an injunction that would have prevented religious references during the upcoming presidential inauguration in a lawsuit brought about from an atheist group led by Michael Newdow and Dan Barker. This is the third time that Newdow has failed to stop the prayers. Thank God that the third time wasn't the charm. He tried to file injunctions during Bush's past two inaugurations, also.

The atheist group was attempting to take away Obama's freedom of religious expression by filing a lawsuit to prohibit any references to religion in the festivities. They didn't want any prayers in the ceremony, "So help me, God," to be included at the end of his oath, or Obama to take his oath by placing his hand on the Bible. No one is forcing the president-elect to keep the religious aspect to the ceremony. If Obama didn't want them, he could have taken it out, but he wanted to keep it. In fact, he made a personal request to use the same Bible that Lincoln used at his first inauguration.

"The inauguration is not a religious event. It is a secular event of a secular country that includes all Americans, including those of us who are not Christians, including those of us who are not believers," Dan Barker, the Freedom From Religion leader said.

He's obviously forgetting that this country is founded on Judeo/Christian principles. From John Smith to the Pilgrims, the first Americans came to the New World seeking refuge from the English monarchy which forced their people to belong to the Church of England and practice their rituals. They kept them from practicing and proclaiming their own beliefs in public. Now, they want to do the same thing, today, in this country.

The Declaration of Independence specifically says that "Nature's God" entitled us the ability to govern ourselves. In addition, it specifically says that we were also "endowed by (our) Creator with certain unalienable Rights". The founders put a reference to a higher power at the beginning of the document twice. This is proof that we are a country founded on religious principles not totally secular ones.

America was founded on the concept of a "universal" God. There wasn't just one denomination or sect that was dominant over the others. According to recent poll, 92% of Americans that believe in God in one form or another or a universal spirit. Why would we totally take God out of our public and political lives? As long as the prayers are more on the generic side and focus on God and not Jesus, there is no reason why it shouldn't be included.

They want the state religion to be agnostic and force everyone to comply with their lack of beliefs in public, so they won't feel "uncomfortable". In order to make a few people "comfortable", the rest of America must feel awkward wanting to express their beliefs but forced not to by the concern for their comfort levels.

"Yet, we are subjected to someone else's religious views with the endorsement of the government, which makes us feel like second class outsiders," Barker continued. Apparently, they want to make the overwhelming majority in this country that are religious in anyway feel like outsiders instead. That seems very intolerant for those who say they want tolerance for their beliefs or rather the lack thereof.

Michael Newdow is an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church and the founder of the First Amendment Church of True Science (FACTS).

"The First Amendment reminds us that people see things differently, and guarantees that every individual will be afforded an opportunity to express (themselves) and follow (their) own conscience," said Michael Newdow in his first "sermon" given as FACTS founder. If this is how he believes, why is he wanting to take away Obama and everyone else's ability to express themselves religiously or follow their own conscience regarding their beliefs and actions?

"I hope people understand this is not an anti-God issue -- this is a pro-equality issue," Newdow told The Associated Press. "And it's not treating people equal when the government takes one side in a religious debate." That's a bit of a oxymoron when considering that the judge is going to have to take sides in making a decision, and he wants the judge to "choose" their side of argument.

Religion is defined as "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe...and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs."

Newdow has described how he believes as a "religion", and by definition, how atheists' believe is a religion. So, if they don't want the government to "pick sides" in matters of religion, the government cannot choose their "religion" either. They shouldn't try to prevent people from praying in public. In doing so, they would be favoring the position of the atheist "religion" over all others.

Another example of their hypocrisy: On Tuesday lawyers representing the atheists submitted the 1952 Supreme Court brief filed by the United States in Brown v. Board of Education, the case the declared segregated schools unconstitutional. They used a quote out of the brief from Harry Truman to justify their demands.

"We shall not finally achieve the ideals for which this nation was founded so long as any American suffers discrimination as a result of his race, or religion, or color, or the land of origin of his forefathers," Truman said.

How can they site a court case that gave people freedoms who should have them in the first place in order to take away freedoms from other people that should have them, too? That just seems wrong on so many levels. Also, I might be wrong, but wouldn't forbidding anyone to express themselves religiously through prayer or otherwise be the kind of religious discrimination that Truman was talking about?

"These atheists who are suing to prevent prayer at the inauguration are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what the First Amendment is all about. The establishment of religion that is forbidden by the First Amendment means the official declaration of an official national church. It doesn't mean that public ceremonies can not include prayers or acknowledgment of the existence of God," Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, told FOX News Radio.

"The atheists, while they have every right to practice their atheism, they do not have an absolute right not to be exposed to viewpoints they don't agree with,"  Sprigg continued.

Another attack on Obama came a month ago. The far left were all in a tizzy over one of his choices of preachers. Rev. Rick Warren was tapped by Obama to give a prayer at the ceremony. Liberals called it a "slap in the face" to them, especially gay rights activists.

Warren has caught a lot of heat from the left for vocally opposing Prop. 8, the amendment to California's state constitution that defines marriage between a man and a woman. The passing of Prop. 8 made gay marriage illegal again, trumping the ruling made by the activist judges in Sacramento. One of the more vocal critics of the pick was everyone's favorite House bloviater, Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat.

"Giving that kind of mark of approval and honor to someone who has frankly spoken in ways I and many others have found personally very offensive, I thought that was a mistake for the president-elect to do,” said Frank.

Well, if saying something that offends many or not is the yardstick that determines who gets to speak or not, than Frank shouldn't speak either. He has been quoted as saying that conservatives “believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth”. I know that about half of America might be offended at that.

This kind of hypocrisy is par for the course for many on the left that preach tolerance and diversity while refusing to be tolerant of anyone's decision to be more diverse in who they associate with professionally especially if they have a "R" after their name.

Why is it so hard to believe that Obama might respect Warren enough to bestow him this honor? After all, their views on gay marriage is almost identical. Rev. Warren is against redefining marriage, but he is for civil unions and other gay rights.

Obama said at the presidential candidate forum at the Saddleback Church, "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian it is also a sacred union." That is exactly almost the same as Warren's position. The only difference is that Obama didn't want the definition to be added to the constitution.

They have a selective memory, when it comes to the "chosen one". They will forgive him of anything, but if you are a conservative, you are demonized.

More Ice, Ice Baby!

Since before I was born in 1979, all of the global warming doomsayers were predicting that we would be well on our way to no polar caps by now. New York City and Los Angelos would be flooded. After all the environmental Chicken Littles' dire warnings of melting polar ice has been shoved down our throats for decades, a recent report by Daily Tech Online has found out that the difference in the ice levels between 1979 and today is zero. The ice levels are the same today as they were on the day I was born almost 30 years ago.

The inconvenient truth for the left and Al Gore is that they seem to may have been duped, or they have duped all of us. Gore got rich by scaring people about global warming while flying in his private jet and spraying "greenhouse gases" all over the world to deposit all of the money from the book sales and speaking engagements in the bank laughing all the way. The global warming racket is highly profitable one. People get billions of dollars from the government and private donations to combat this possibly fictitious threat.

This has been a bad year for global warming alarmists. Last winter, there was more snowfall recorded in the US and Canada since 1966. This winter looks like it might be even worse with already brutal winter weather in the Northeast and Northwest. Even places that hardly ever sees snow got it in record amounts. Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans all received an unusual snowstorm last month. An annual dog sled race in Minnesota has been canceled this year for too much snow for the first time ever.

In fact, the coldest decade last century wasn't the 90's like most alarmists would like you to believe. It was the 30's. Records of the weather have only been kept since the late 1800's, but other evidence exists that deals another big blow to their beliefs. Medieval times is suggested to have been even hotter than the 90's based on evidence from all around the world. That's one question that scientists can't answer. How can it be hotter in a time without any man-made "greenhouse
" gases than now with all of that man-made gases in the atmosphere?

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, said. “If we go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

Weather is all about cycles. The day is warmer than nights. The summer is cooler than the winter. Those cycles are irrefutable. What if there is a bigger weather pattern that has not been realized yet because accurate weather records don't go back far enough? Could it be that every 200-300 years or so it alternates between hotter than cooler temperatures? Why is it impossible to the global warming faithful to admit that it is at least possible?

"Greenhouse gases" definitely has an affect on a local environment, but there isn't enough to believe that there is as any global warming effect caused by man.

The scientists have been trying to explain something that they didn't have enough imperical evidence to prove in the first place. Many scientists have forgotten that the role of a scientist is to constantly question everything. Unfortunately, they are too stuck in their own self-importance to admit that they might possibly be wrong.

Global-warming has become a religion. Al Gore has become their pope, and the scientists are their cardinals. The rest of the left-wing media and Hollywood are the preachers and missionaries that go around the world spreading warnings of the dangers of CO2 gases lest we create a hell on earth. Like the Holy Roman Empire, they excommunicate those who disagree with them and call them heretics. Only today, they do it first by publicly humiliating them with bad press, and if the heresy didn't stop, it might be a loss of a job.

However, more scientists than ever before have started to publicly criticize the theory of global warming. CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers recently said that it was arrogant for us to think that we can change the weather globally.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

It is almost a common occurrence for me to see a conference on global warming being accompanied by record low temperatures at wherever the conference is being held, and they still act like the world is going to burn up, if we don't act now.
It is becoming almost comical, now.

I'm not saying that global warming doesn't exist without any doubt. It is just that global warming hasn't been proven beyond all doubt either. We should treat this theory as such, a theory not fact. As I have said before, we should be environmentally conscience, but not to the point were we are blind to the facts and the possibility that we are wrong. It doesn't matter that most scientists claim that it is fact. In medieval times, scientists swore that the earth was flat and the sun went around the earth. We all know how well those "facts" worked out.