Combs Spouts Off

"It's my opinion and it's very true."

  • Calendar

    May 2010
    S M T W T F S
     1
    2345678
    9101112131415
    16171819202122
    23242526272829
    3031  
  • Recent Posts

  • Tag Cloud

  • Archives

Archive for May, 2010

Our hero dead

Posted by Richard on May 31, 2010

"Flags In" for Memorial Day, Arlington National Cemetary. Photo from Isaac Wankerl (www.iwankerl.com).
The grave of his father, Maj. Max W. Wankerl, is in the foreground.

  

Memorial Day

by Edgar A. Guest (1881-1959)

 
The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead to-day,
Is not a rose wreath, white and red,
In memory of the blood they shed;
It is to stand beside each mound,
Each couch of consecrated ground,
And pledge ourselves as warriors true
Unto the work they died to do.

Into God's valleys where they lie
At rest, beneath the open sky,
Triumphant now o'er every foe,
As living tributes let us go.
No wreath of rose or immortelles
Or spoken word or tolling bells
Will do to-day, unless we give
Our pledge that liberty shall live.

Our hearts must be the roses red
We place above our hero dead;
To-day beside their graves we must
Renew allegiance to their trust;
Must bare our heads and humbly say
We hold the Flag as dear as they,
And stand, as once they stood, to die
To keep the Stars and Stripes on high.

The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead to-day
Is not of speech or roses red,
But living, throbbing hearts instead,
That shall renew the pledge they sealed
With death upon the battlefield:
That freedom's flag shall bear no stain
And free men wear no tyrant's chain.

 

Today, please remember those who died "that liberty shall live." I'm remembering my dad, Col. Samuel R. Combs — who, in the memorable words of Robert Denerstein, "answered his country's call even before the phone rang." I miss you, Papa. 

If you have friends or relatives — or maybe an elderly neighbor down the street — who are veterans, thank them now. Don't wait until they have a marker over their head. 

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Concealing the grim budget news

Posted by Richard on May 26, 2010

Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government:

House Democrats plan to leave the country without a budget according to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who stated, “It’s difficult to pass budgets in election years because they reflect what the [fiscal] status is.”

Now that’s courage, leadership and transparency.

Remember, the Democrats hold 59% of the seats in the House with a 255 to 176 advantage over the Republicans, yet it is too hard to put a budget together?

For perspective, consider election year 2002 when Speaker Dennis Hastert enjoyed a slender 222 to 211 advantage, yet our nation was not left without a budget.

The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan, has called this decision, “an unprecedented failure to govern.”

I call it unprecedented cowardice and dereliction of duty.

I call it a calculated and cynical attempt to hide the ugly truth from the American people during the run-up to the November elections. Will it work? Maybe not this time. Michael Barone thinks there's something different about the current mood of the country: 

It has long been a maxim of political scientists that American voters are ideologically conservative and operationally liberal. That is another way of saying that they tend to oppose government spending in the abstract but tend to favor spending on particular programs.

In the past, rebellions against fiscal policy have concentrated on taxes rather than spending.

The rebellion against the fiscal policies of the Obama Democrats, in contrast, is concentrated on spending. The Tea Party movement began with Rick Santelli's rant in February 2009, long before the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts in January 2011.

What we are seeing is a spontaneous rush of previously inactive citizens into political activity, a movement symbolized but not limited to the Tea Party movement, in response to the vast increases in federal spending that began with the TARP legislation in fall 2008 and accelerated with the Obama Democrats' stimulus package, budget and health care bills.

The Tea Party folk are focusing on something real. Federal spending is rising from about 21% to about 25% of gross domestic product — a huge increase in historic terms — and the national debt is on a trajectory to double as a percentage of gross domestic product within a decade. That is a bigger increase than anything since World War II.

I hope Barone is right — and that this long-overdue revolt against government spending is not too little or too late. 

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Republican wins in Honolulu

Posted by Richard on May 22, 2010

As recent polls predicted, Republican Charles Djou has won the special election for the House seat in Hawaii's 1st District. The district covers Honolulu, Obama's home town, and as I noted recently, has been in Democratic hands since the last ice age. 

But I suspect the mainstream media will find this election much less significant and newsworthy than the Democrats' ability to hold on to Pennsylvania's 12th District

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Posted by Richard on May 21, 2010

For your weekend listening pleasure, here's some virtuoso guitar playing by Rodrigo y Gabriela. In the first video, they perform "Buster Voodoo" on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. If this doesn't get your toes tapping and your heart thumping, you're dead. Turn it up! 


[YouTube link]

Here's their marvelous acoustic rendition of "Stairway to Heaven," in case you're not one of the 5.7 million who've already viewed it:


[YouTube link ]

That's nice, you say, but can they cover Metallica? Of course they can — here's "Orion": 

You might want to consider adding some Rodrigo y Gabriela to your music collection. Like 11:11.

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Draw Mohammed Day

Posted by Richard on May 21, 2010

In support of South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, today is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. I like the idea of depicting him doing mundane things like grocery shopping. But since I have essentially zero artistic ability, I'll just repost the twelve Jyllands-Posten cartoons that caused a world-wide frenzy of radical Muslim outrage in 2006.

 Jyllands-Posten cartoons

Check Reason Hit & Run, the Stranger, or this Facebook page later today for some of the drawings. Unless you're in Pakistan, which has blocked large portions of the internet to protect you from being offended.

UPDATE: Reason has chosen three winners from among the nearly 200 submissions they received. All three are quite clever. I think I like the second-place entry, Where's Mohammed, best. But I see why the winner won — it's at once clever, amusing, and a challenge to the viewer. 

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

A bonfire of unnecessary laws

Posted by Richard on May 20, 2010

Radley Balko has begun to "warm up to this Nick Clegg chap," and I can see why. Clegg is Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government that the Conservatives formed with Clegg's Liberal Democrats, and he's promising "ambitious and radical" political reforms that aim to empower individuals and reduce the power and scope of government. I like most of the bullet list, but like Balko, my favorite is "a bonfire of unnecessary laws." 

It's all just talk so far, but it's encouraging talk (emphasis added): 

In an attempt to reassure Liberal Democrat members and supporters who doubt the wisdom of joining forces with the Conservatives, he will promise: "This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. That values debate, that is unafraid of dissent."

He will announce plans to consult the public on which laws should be scrapped. Promising to "tear through the statute book", he will attack Labour for creating thousands of criminal offences which took away people's freedom without making the streets safe.

"Obsessive lawmaking simply makes criminals out of ordinary people. So we'll get rid of the unnecessary laws and once they're gone, they won't come back. We will introduce a mechanism to block pointless new criminal offences," he will say.

"This government is going to transform our politics so the state has far less control over you, and you have far more control over the state. This government is going to break up concentrations of power and hand power back to people, because that is how we build a society that is fair. This government is going to persuade you to put your faith in politics once again."

Mr Clegg endorsed David Cameron's flagship "big society" theme, which the Tory leader contrasts with the "big government" offered by Labour during its 13 years in power. In a U-turn, the Liberal Democrat leader told a Downing Street seminar for voluntary groups he hosted with the Prime Minister: "What I'm discovering is we've been using different words for a long time – it actually means the same thing. Liberalism, big society. Empowerment, responsibility. It means the same thing."

That sounds pretty good to my libertarian ears. It's just a hope at this point, but maybe — just maybe — Britain's messy election will lead to something really positive for that nation.

Maybe some British liberals are ready to re-embrace their roots as advocates of freedom, democracy, and civil liberties, instead of focusing on egalitarianism, regulation, and "positive rights." And maybe some British conservatives are returning to their traditional commitment to individual liberty and distrust of overarching government, instead of … well, whatever you call the inchoate policy porridge that's characterized them since the end of Thatcherism. 

Maybe this coalition government is an opportunity for a realignment in British politics, the creation of a real, lasting coalition of those across the political spectrum who've recognized the limits — and dangers — of government power. Something akin to a tea party movement. Wouldn't it be appropriate for the Brits to have something akin to a tea party? Eh, wot?

One can hope.

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Supporting financial jihad

Posted by Richard on May 20, 2010

In Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's thin resume, Frank Gaffney found evidence of something troubling (emphasis added):

It turns out that, at the very moment Ms. Kagan was pushing aggressively to remove military recruiters from the Harvard Law School campus during her tenure as its dean, she was very supportive of having what amounted to Saudi recruiters ensconced there for the purpose of enlisting some of the nation’s finest young lawyers to work for the industry known as Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF).

The first insight this record suggests is that Ms. Kagan’s true motivation in barring the armed forces was, indeed, an animus towards the military, rather than concern about its supposed mistreatment of homosexuals.  After all, the theo-political-military-legal code that authoritative Islam calls “Shariah” and that is the law of the land in Saudi Arabia is infinitely more homophobic than the Pentagon’s efforts to enforce the U.S. statute that prohibits avowed gays and lesbians from serving in uniform.  The former requires the murder of homosexuals; the latter simply kept them out of the ranks.

Ms. Kagan’s troubling tolerance of Shariah would, of course, have vastly more far-reaching implications should she reach the Supreme Court.

The promoters of Sharia-Compliant Finance and their dupes in the media explain it with some hand-wavy blather about not charging interest and not investing in "impure" things like alcohol and pork. But it's much more than that, and it's a 20th-century invention.

Sharia-Compliant Finance was created by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1940s as another tool to promote its goal of imposing radical Islam throughout the world. To be Sharia-compliant, you have to pay the zakat — a "charitable" donation that, more often than not, ends up in the hands of organizations promoting jihad or trying to rid the world of Jews. The Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood front group convicted in 2008 of conspiring to fund terrorist organizations, was an example. 

To be Sharia-compliant, you also have to get the approval of a "Sharia authority": 

Unfortunately, every one of such individuals embraces not only the supremacy of authoritative Islam’s Shariah.  Without exception, they aspire to its ultimate objective: a global theocracy in which a ruler (the “Caliph”) governs in accordance with Shariah.

Thus, the coterie of Shariah authorities now employed by most of the Western world’s financial institutions – including many in the United States – unfailingly champion a seditious program that has at its core the overthrow of the alternative legal systems like the U.S. Constitution and the government it empowers.

One of the most prominent of these authorities is Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi who sits on numerous SCF advisory boards and those of Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds.  He also has his own television program on Al Jazeera, which he uses week after week to inveigh about and call for violence against infidels, the United States, Israel, apostates and, yes, homosexuals. Interestingly, Qaradawi has called zakat, the Muslim charitable donation required by SCF, a form of “financial jihad.”

According to Gaffney, Kagan's promotion of a Sharia-compliance project at Harvard helped the proponents of financial jihad gain significant power and influence in the finance industry and in government regulatory agencies.

Government involvement in promoting Sharia is the subject of a pending federal lawsuit. The Supreme Court may one day be asked to rule on whether such government promotion of Islamic law violates the Establishment Clause. Care to speculate on how a Justice Kagan, who helped make Harvard University "a major beachhead of Shariah in America," would vote in that case?

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

How to win if you’re a Democrat

Posted by Richard on May 19, 2010

I was disappointed, but not surprised, that Democrat Mark Critz beat Republican Tim Burns in the PA-12 special election to fill Jack Murtha's seat. Burns faced an uphill battle to say the least — notwithstanding the media narrative that the Critz win was an unexpected setback for the GOP. Democrats have a 2-1 voter registration advantage in the district, and it elected the late Murtha (Critz's boss) 18 times, generally by margins like 60-40 or 70-30.

The Critz campaign's success actually provides a blueprint for Democrats running for Congress this fall to follow: 

  • Critz opposed Obamacare and cap-and-tax.
  • He emphasized economic growth and job creation.
  • He favored budget cuts to reduce the deficit.
  • He was pro-gun-rights and anti-abortion.
  • He took a hawkish stand on illegal immigration.
  • He kept the President at arms length and out of the district.

I suspect a Socialist Democrat embracing Obama and Pelosi would have lost. So the lesson for Dems is you can win by running as a bluer-than-blue Blue Dog, someone hard to distinguish from a mainstream conservative Republican.

That's actually the same formula that got a bunch of Democrats elected in 2006 and 2008. The difference is that then it was applied in mostly southern and western districts that were toss-ups or leaned Republican. This time it was applied in a northeastern district that, although socially conservative, is decidedly Democratic.

It'll be interesting to see where the Blue Dog strategy works this November. And whether it works at all for the Democrats elected in 2006 and/or 2008 as Blue Dogs who subsequently became Pelosi's lapdogs.

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Best damn governor in America

Posted by Richard on May 15, 2010

Chris Christie has been governor of New Jersey for less than four months, and he's already said and done more good things than any other governor in America. I made some modest contributions to his campaign, and I think they may be the wisest political contributions I've made in years.

Is it too soon to talk about Christie for President? Some people don't think so —  there's already a "Chris Christie for President in 2012" Facebook group. That may be a stretch, but I think Christie has a future in national politics. At least, I hope he does. 

In the following video, Christie responds to a reporter's snarky question about Christie's "confrontational tone." His reply is priceless. Keep your eye on the fellow behind and to the left of Christie — he really enjoyed it. 


[YouTube link]

If you have time, check out some of the other Christie videos, too, like his appearances on Fox & Friends, Morning Joe, and with Don Imus. And by all means, read George Will's profile of the Governor. Christie is a breath of fresh air in the fetid landscape of American politics.

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Heads in the sand

Posted by Richard on May 14, 2010

If you think I was too harsh in Naming the enemy, you need to watch Eric Holder, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, respond to a simple, direct, and non-confrontational question by Rep. Lamar Smith. It's an amazing two minutes of video, at once infuriating and hilarious.


[YouTube link]

This pathological unwillingness to identify the root cause of the problem, to name our enemies, and to acknowledge the seriousness of the threat we face is going to get a lot more people killed. Depending on blind luck and inept bomb-making to keep us safe is a losing strategy. Pretending that the real terrorist threat comes from anti-government right-wing extremists, tea partiers, and opponents of Obamacare is … well, I don't know if it's contemptibly cynical or just self-delusional.

Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn explore this issue in depth in the May 17 issue of The Weekly Standard, noting that "success in the war on terror is not apprehending terrorists after their attacks fail. Success is preventing them from attempting the attack in the first place." I strongly suggest reading the whole thing, but here's an excerpt (emphasis added): 

So, three attacks in six months, by attackers with connections to the global jihadist network—connections that administration officials have gone out of their way to diminish.

The most striking thing about all three attacks is not what we heard, but what we haven’t heard. There has been very little talk about the global war that the Obama administration sometimes acknowledges we are fighting and virtually nothing about what motivates our enemy: radical Islam. 

This is no accident. Janet Napolitano never used the word “terrorism” in her first appearance before Congress as secretary-designate of Homeland Security on January 15, 2009. Shortly thereafter, the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration had dropped the phrase “Global War on Terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operations.” And just last month, we learned that the White House’s forthcoming National Security Strategy would not use religious words such as “jihad” and “Islamic extremism.”

When asked why she did not utter the word “terrorism” in the course of her testimony, Napolitano explained that she used “man-caused disaster” instead to avoid “the politics of fear.” 

The Department of Homeland Security was created after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to prevent further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. And the head of that department is worried that using the word “terrorism” is playing the politics of fear.

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Do as they say, not as they do

Posted by Richard on May 14, 2010

Let me see if I've got this right: the administration that vociferously condemned Arizona for telling its cops to inquire into the immigration status of people whom they have reason to believe have committed a crime has taken into custody three men whom they believe may have some peripheral connection to a crime … for "immigration violations."

Wow. My irony meter is pegged. 

I'm sure that in the next few days, various administration officials will once again be congratulating each other and crowing about what a great job they're doing protecting us from terrorists. Like they did after they cleverly prevented that bomb in Times Square from exploding. And when they brilliantly stopped that airliner from being blown up at Christmas. And when they bravely saved all those soldiers at Ft. Hood from being gunned down … Oops, that last one didn't end so well — but that wasn't a terrorist attack, it was just some lone nut.

Oh, wait. Those other two were just lone nuts, too, weren't they? Tea partiers disgruntled about taxes or something? 

I'm so confused. Too many narratives! What's the narrative today? I can't keep all the narratives straight.

I know — today's narrative is that ICE is doing a great job and this administration is right on top of that big illegal Pakistani immigrant problem in the Northeast. I wonder if those three Pakistani guys were Mirandized

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

A Republican win in Honolulu??

Posted by Richard on May 13, 2010

Boy, this is looking like a tough year for Socialist Democrats running for Congress. Voting is already well under way for the May 22 special election in Hawaii's 1st Congressional District, and the latest poll shows fiscal conservative Republican Charles Djou with a commanding lead :

Djou leads with 39.5 percent of the vote, followed by former Congressman Ed Case and Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, who are tied at 25.5 percent, according to the poll by Aloha Vote, a Hawaii subsidiary of Merriman River Group (MRG), a Massachusetts research organization. Nearly 10 percent are undecided….

The automated telephone poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.0 percentage points. The poll of 1,081 likely voters was conducted on May 6 and 7.

More than half the respondents — 52.6 percent — had already voted. And of that group, Djou got 45 percent of the vote, one reason it's so difficult to imagine trends changing in any significant way between now and May 22….

Djou leads among voters who believe limiting government power or national security are the most important issues in the election. They are "through the roof" for Djou, Rosenthal said.

Hanabusa wins among voters who identify education as the most important issue, while Case wins among voters who pick energy independence and environmental protection.

The 1st District covers Honolulu, so it's Obama's "home congressional district." It's been lopsidedly Democratic since the last ice age, and would probably remain that way in a two-way race. But Djou's strong showing, plus the fact that 13% of those polled described themselves as belonging to the Tea Party, are pretty amazing for this district. 

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The tragedy that was virtually ignored

Posted by Richard on May 12, 2010

For five days, I've tried to write about the horrific 1000-year flood that inundated middle Tennessee and portions of Kentucky and Alabama, and that virtually destroyed the entire city of Nashville when the Cumberland River rose 48 feet. And about the shameful behavior of the national news media and the Obama administration with regard to this disaster.

But I've been a bit under the weather, and somewhat preoccupied, and I'm just not going to get it done. So I'll simply ask you to watch the two videos below. And read this. And this.

What happened in Nashville and the thousands of square miles that were flooded was a tragedy. The media's handling of the story was an outrage.

If you can spare a few bucks, please donate to the Nashville Red Cross or one of the other relief organizations mentioned at the end of the second video. Thank you.


[YouTube link]


[YouTube link]

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Kiss your health care plan goodbye

Posted by Richard on May 8, 2010

After Obamacare was signed into law, several major corporations took well-publicized charges (as required by SEC rules) because of the anticipated revenue loss due to elimination of a tax deduction. This angered Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and other Socialist Democrats. They demanded that the companies turn over all Obamacare-related internal documents and explain themselves at Congressional hearings.

Oddly enough, however, after the Socialist Democrats received the documents, they promptly canceled the hearings and declared that there was nothing to see. Why? 

According to Fortune, it's because the internal documents from AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere, and Verizon revealed the dirty secret of Obamacare — "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan" was a lie (emphasis added): 

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill's critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama's statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we'll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America's employers would remain the backbone of the nation's health care system.

In 2009, it cost AT&T $2.4 billion to provide health care coverage for its active employees. The alternative cost of paying the penalties for not providing coverage: $0.6 billion. It's hard to ignore math like that. AT&T could give its workers a nice raise to compensate them for dropping health care and still come out ahead.

And the numbers will likely get worse, as all four companies predicted significantly higher costs in the future due to Obamacare's new taxes, the expansion of coverage to "children" up to age 26, and other new mandates. 

Instead of dumping their health care benefits completely, many companies may find it economically and politically more palatable to offer only the basic government "pool" plan.

In any case, as many of us insisted at the time, you can kiss your current health care plan goodbye. And as at least some of us have argued all along, that's not going to be an unintended consequence — it's by design. The ultimate goal of the Socialist Democrats has always been "single payer," and Obamacare implements their stealth plan to destroy the private health care industry and eventually leave us with a "public option" as the only option.

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

CSU backs down on gun ban

Posted by Richard on May 6, 2010

Congratulations to Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and Students for Concealed Carry on Campus! On Wednesday, the Board of Governors of Colorado State University rescinded its ill-conceived gun ban.

In contempt of state law (CRS 18-12-204 and CRS 23-31-103), in December the CSU Board of Governors inexplicably urged CSU president Tony Frank to ban all firearms on campus, and he did so — despite the fact that the legislature considered a ban on campus carry (supported by the NRA) when arguing the 2003 concealed carry bill (SB24) and explicitly rejected it. And despite the obvious fact that such bans don't do anything to stop those bent on murder and mayhem — they only disarm and make helpless the peaceful and law-abiding. 

On April 15, the Colorado Court of Appeals voided the University of Colorado's gun ban, and RMGO filed a lawsuit against CSU on the same day. RMGO now plans to go after all the other state campuses that unlawfully deny their students, faculty, and visitors the right of self-defense: 

"They didn't have a legal leg to stand on," said Dudley Brown, Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO). "We told them in January, in no uncertain terms, that state law did not allow them to create their own gun ban. Unfortunately, it took a lawsuit to force them to back down."

"This has been a good couple of weeks for law-abiding citizens who want to defend themselves on Colorado campuses, and a terrible week for criminals who assume no one is able to defend themselves on campuses," Brown said. "We're now going to track the policy of every secondary education campus in the state — every community college, every university, all of them — and file suit against those who attempt to violate Colorado law."

"The citizens, students and faculty at these facilities should thank the members and donors of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the organization responsible for correcting these errant bureaucrats, and Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, who put a lot of hard work into this battle."

I'm a proud Life Member of both RMGO and Gun Owners of America, the national organization with which it's affiliated. Please join me in supporting these fine civil rights organizations.

Subscribe To Site:

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »