You know what, why not?

Congress woman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen(R-FL), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wants to make the dues paid to the UN voluntary. At first blush this sounded isolationists to me but upon further reflection…

"Making U.N. funding voluntary will give the U.S. control over how our contributions are spent at the U.N. Otherwise, U.S. taxpayer dollars will keep being spent on the bad, the ugly and the indefensible, and there will continue to be no incentive for the U.N. to reform," she said.

It appears that her goal is not for the U.S. to pull out of the U.N. altogether, but rather reform the institution. And how better to do that than controlling the purse strings? Currently the U.S. is responsible for almost a quarter of the U.N.'s budget, by far the largest contributor. So withholding that kind of funding would certainly get the attention of those in charge. And given the abuse, corruption and outright anti-American/Israeli sentiments, Congress woman Ros-Lehtinen's proposal would seem reasonable. So what does the state department have to say about it?:

"We just don't think this is the right way to go about it," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a briefing Tuesday. "Rather, we would like to work within the U.N. system and will continue to try and do so on U.N. reform."

Reform from within? REALLY! Let's take a look-see at just a few of the great deeds this hollowed body has accomplished:

1. Many sternly worded letters to North Korea that accomplished absolutely nothing.
   
2. Members of the Human Rights counsel include: Libya, China and Cuba (Murderer's row huh?)
   
3. Condemnation of Israel's attack on the Gaza Flotilla (sovereign nations can't defend their borders anymore)
   
4. Israel is the only UN member not permitted to stand for election to the full range of UN bodies (a restriction not applied to such upstanding global citizens like Iran, Cuba and until recently Libya.
   

But no the Administration and the State Department are exercising smart power here. See people like Congress woman Ros-Lehtinen and me are just not clever enough to see that by allowing the U.N. to continue its naughty ways, it is somehow good for America. The one thing these folks have in common is their lack of understanding that America as unique in the world. Something other nations should aspire too be. Rather, they see a utopian one government world order based on autocracy where the elite are the only ones qualified to rule.

Hammer time!

Donald J. Boudreaux has a terrific post today, over at Cafe Hayek,  in response to Prof. Peter Morici's guest blog at CNBC. Prof. Morici's premise is that Hurricane Irene will be good for the economy. If you do nothing else today please, please, please check out Mr. Boudreaux's response. Shear genius!

Get down with your bad self Obama!

In today's column at the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson has proposed that in Obama's much anticipated 'Jobs' speech this September( where Obama is expected to put out a plan outline of a plan to the uneasy public) Robinson says the following (emphasis mine):

President Obama's promised jobs plan needs to be unrealistic and unreasonable, at the very least. If he can crank it all the way up to unimaginable, that would be even better.

Wow, I thought 'unrealistic/unreasonable' argument was the exclusive property of the Tea Party. And what is Mr. Robinson's reasoning for lowering the President to the level of the despised Tea Party? Why to get reelected of course (Snarky comments mine):

Obama can quite likely win (reelection) by convincing voters that even if they're unhappy with his economic policies, the nation is better off sticking with him — because (wait for it) - any of the Republican candidates is likely to make things much worse.

WOW! I mean - Just… WOW! New campaign slogan: "if you vote for me it won't get any worse". Sounds like a winner to me.

And what new and exciting ideas should the President convey to the unwashed masses:

Obama and his advisers know very well that this is the wrong time to cut government spending. They know that using federal money to seed big new initiatives — to upgrade the nation's crumbling infrastructure, jump-start the "clean" energy industry, retrain the unemployed so they can compete in tomorrow's job market — would give the economy a much-needed boost.

Such ambitious proposals would demonstrate that the president is willing to think big

Is it just me or do these 'new ideas' sounds a lot like the old ideas? You know the old idea where the administration flushed almost $1 trillion down the drain under the guise of stimulus. Where do you start with this nonsense? "Jump-start the (non-existent) green industry? Increase government spending? And all the other Keynesian nonsense that has failed over and over again.

So, to get back to Mr. Robinson's premise, that Obama should be unreasonable/unrealistic/unimaginable, the question is: How much more unreasonable/unrealistic/unimaginable can the man be? Should Obama be shooting for a bond rating of single A or maybe triple B?

I like Eugene Robinson but on this one he is just re-heating the Keynesian Kool-Aid again.


 

Thank you Brian, John and NavyOne

Being new to the blogging thing I have no idea what the hell I am doing. That being said, there are some very clever folks out there that do know. Today this blog has the honor of being included on John Hawkins's site Linkiest. Please visit this site daily you will not regret it. Together, John and Brian Garst pursue the webbernets for some of the best posts of the day so that you don't have to. Additionally, I would like to give a shout out to the Mellow Jihadi for his guidance and support as well - thank you all.

Just a reminder - Al Gore is still crazy

Greenhouse Gore is at it again. This time he is being interviewed by Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky on UStream. During the interview he equated the skeptisim his movement is receiving to the civil rights movement of the sixties (emphasis mine):

"I remember, again going back to my early years in the South, when the Civil Rights revolution was unfolding, there were two things that really made an impression on me," Gore said. "My generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators and we went, 'Whoa! How gross and evil is that?' My generation asked old people, 'Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?' And when they couldn't really answer that question with integrity, the change really started."

Moral equivalence time? Bull Connor was out of his mind. And he paid dearly for his belief that blacks are inferior to whites. But now, Gaia Gore is trying to equate the hatred of blacks in the south with the 'hatred' of his beloved climate change movement. Never mind that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that man is causing any change in the climate. He continues by suggesting the way to win the day is simply ostracizing those who don't believe the way he does:

"- but there came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people would say, 'Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don't go for that so don't talk that way around me. I just don't believe that.' That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won."

"We have to win the conversation on climate," Gore added.

So, rather than blinding us with science (all apologies to Thomas Dolby), Al wants his religious followers to make the debate about conscious and faith. Brilliant! This takes that pesky scientific method out of the debate and makes it a leap of faith! Well done Al well done indeed. He then suggests that there is a 'vast right wing conspirecy' crippling he and his follower's great work.

"This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money," Gore said.

This is just rich. All the research I have seen questioning the climate alarmists have concentrated on the data NOT the reputation of the scientific community as Gore suggests here. In fact it has been the other way around. Any scientist questioning Grand Pubba Gore and his nonsense gets their funding cut off and ostracized from the scientific community. Projection?