Could of said it better myself.

Check out this funny video.

Over at Jawa Report, a post states:

The post-invasion period subjected Iraqis to the tyranny of chaos. The vacuum left by the Baathist police state was filled by yet another tyranny: the tyranny of Sunni Islamists, like al Qaeda; and the tyranny of Shia Islamists, like those following Muqtada al Sadr. This is when the Second Iraq War started.

The first war was against Iraq, a nation-state. The second war is against terrorists and Islamist rebels.

I honestly believe part of the reason the administration decided to go into Iraq was to pick a fight with Islamic fundamentalists. Yes, the primary reason was weapons of mass destruction but i’m sure another reason way to bring the fight to the fantastics. In this capacity the strategy was unequivocal success particularly when you consider how soundly we routed Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Don’t forget it.

Though vilified, these people wouldn’t go away. The exit polls for George W. Bush’s victory in 2004 revealed that the No. 1 issue for most voters was “moral values.” Liberal analysts furiously attacked Karl Rove for “exploiting” these sentiments.

But even Karl Rove couldn’t invent God, and God and faith were everywhere in Grantham Sunday evening.

Sen. Clinton: Faith “is everything that makes life and its purpose meaningful as a human being . . . We want religion to be in the public square. If you are a person of faith, you have a right and even an obligation to speak from that wellspring of your faith . . . Our obligation as leaders in America is to make sure that any conversation about religion is inclusive and respectful. And that has not always happened, as we know.”

Sen. Obama: “Religion is a bulwark . . . Somebody like myself whose entire trajectory, not just during this campaign, but long before, has been to talk about how Democrats need to get in church, reach out to evangelicals, link faith with the work that we do . . . There is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down. I think that’s a mistake . . . A comprehensive approach where we focus on abstinence, where we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children.”

Does this mean that Clinton and Obama have no integrity? Hardly. It simply means they are wise enough to know that to get elected they must pander to groups of people the might not agree with. If one takes issue with this kind of behavior one would be wise to realize their own integrity is not in direct opposition with their ambition. It easy to dislike politicians for their apparent lack of integrity when your life choices never comes close to forcing the issue as it does for them daily.

Read this opinion piece by a ’scientist’ that did a literature search of article on climate change and found that almost all articles support man made climate change. Tell me if you find her argument compelling.

Several things that caught my attention.

The IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members’ expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. A National Academy of Sciences report begins unequivocally: “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.” The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and it answers yes. Others agree. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all issued statements concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.

All these organizations by their very nature must collapse the opinions of many different people into one opinion. It could very well be the case that in each one of these organizations a large minority objects to climate change. This dissent would not be very well reflected when summarized by the organization by conveying the opinion of the slight majority as the opinion of the organization.

We read 928 abstracts published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and listed in the database with the keywords “global climate change.”

Doing this search this way seems somewhat problematic since you are using the language of the people who support using the expression ‘global climate change’. It may by the case that those that dissent from this opinion use different language to argue against ‘global climate change’. A more exhaustive list of terms would of been nice just to rule out this possibility.

To be sure, a handful of scientists have raised questions about the details of climate models, about the accuracy of methods for evaluating past global temperatures and about the wisdom of even attempting to predict the future. But this is quibbling about the details. The basic picture is clear, and some changes are already occurring.

This might be the most problematic argument she makes. She seems to be saying Although our methods don’t provide an accurate view we can still see the view. This is bordering on a contradiction.

So why does it seem as if there is major scientific disagreement? Because a few noisy skeptics — most of whom are not even scientists — have generated a lot of chatter in the mass media.

Skeptics are not scientists, therefore their view is not valid. This is normally used by people attempting to advance their TRUTH when their TRUTH can’t be shown to be TRUE to that person. This kind of argumentation is the opposite of convincing. It mostly suggest that someone believes something so much that they are willing to censor others when those other deny its truthiness.

When liberals speak.

In The Know: Is Our Wealth Hurting Africa�s Feelings?

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot

The Southwest Effect.

From this we can conclude that Capitalism equals awesome.

Instapundit links to story reporting on Florida recently passing a law prohibiting businesses from keeping employees from bringing locked and stored weapons on to their premise. I won’t deny thats its nice to see legislator actually passing legislation that supports my constitutional right, butI ultimately I can’t support this bill. Since these are private companies they should be allowed to determine for themselves as to whether their employees can or can not bring firearms to work. In my view its not the state’s business to tell private companies that they must allow employees to bring firearms on their property.

If you are generally antipathetic towards guns and find my current position interesting, don’t get too excited. I also don’t think the state should tell private companies not to discriminate or build handicap accessible infrastructure. Unless their is explicit harm being done, the state should keeps its hand off private property.

In a previous post, Andrew responds to my assertion that the democrats are responsible for increasing taxes.

Get real. All the unbalanced budgets that have raised teh national debt by trillions and trillions of dollars in the last 30 years have come about under republican presidents. Sure, the republicans never actually raise taxes because they’re more concerned about winning elections than actual fiscal responsibility, but they’re the ones SPENDING 20% of the GDP.

Sigh. In regards to high taxes I didn’t say the sole responsibility of high taxes was because of democrats I said they were mostly responsible. In the following sentence I criticized the current president, who in case you were unaware is a republican.

While I take the point that military expenditure make up a large portion of my taxes I would like to point out that the social program expenditures for the 2008 look like this:

* $608 billion (+4.5%) - Social Security
* $386 billion (+5.2%) - Medicare
* $209 billion (+5.6%) - Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program
* $324 billion (+1.8%) - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending

For Military expenditures:

*$481.4 billion (+12.1%) - United States Department of Defense
* $145.2 billion (+45.8%) - Global War on Terror

Even without factoring in Social Security, the federal government is spending more money on social programs than the military. The social programs clearly are costing more. It’s also wise to point out that we are currently in the middle of a war and yet we spend much more on social programs then the military.

Let me expand on this point. Even if you don’t agree with the military action in Iraq you would most likely agree that it’s reasonable to see an increase in budget for the department of defense. In this way, one can say that increases in military expenditure are transitory, they expand when the military is engaged and retracts when we are at peace. This same point can not be made about social programs. Over the long term, social programs trend towards expansion. Complaining that the military receives a large proportion of the budget during war is not the same thing as complaining about how much of the budget is always devoted to social programs.

Furthermore, only a fool would argue that the bulk of political support for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Child Insurance, Unemployment, and Welfare is not democratic. Giving more money, and as consequence power, to the federal government is mostly the work of the democrats. They favor large more expansive government. In particular, the kind that never goes away unlike military budgets.

Doing some rough calculations, not including social security, social programs (Medicaid, Medicare, and Unemployment) make up about 30% of the budget. Including Social Security it’s about 50% of the budget. Military expenditures make up about 20% of the budget. I will grant that the bulk of increase over the last couple of years is attributable to the Middle East wars. I would hasten to add this increase is transitory and will be reduced as those conflicts come to an end. The same can not be said of social programs.

When I said:

I would also like to point out that the most of the policies that will lead to the federal goverment receiving over 20% of the GDP comes at the hands of liberal and democratic policy.

What I was actually referring to was these paragraphs in the original piece I linked to:

First, there are some differences between the Senate and House versions of the 2009 federal budget, but however the details are ironed out, the Democrats will kill President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. If his promised veto is overridden by Congress, it will mean a minimum tax hike for every American taxpayer of about $3,000 annually.

The increase could be even more, though, because buried in the Democrats’ budget resolution are 17 “reserve” funds of additional taxing authority. Even without the reserve tax hikes, allowing the Bush cuts to expire will mean that 20.3 percent, or one of every five dollars, of gross domestic product will soon be consumed by government.

Proposed action that will push the Federal budget into taking 1 out of every 5 dollars the economy produces finds strong political support among democrats. As always, this is the case.