The Doc Is In

For those that don’t know a lot about history…… here is a condensed version:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter. The two most important events in all of history were:
1. The invention of beer

2. The invention of the wheel.

The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
1. Liberals
2. Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That’s how villages were formed. Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q’s and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men. Some noted worthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant.

Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn’t fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today’s lesson in world history…….

It should be noted that a liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before linking to it it. A conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be linked immediately to other true believers, and to more liberals…just to piss them off.

Submitted by SQ

By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

President Bush is absolutely right to criticize sharply direct negotiations with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Barack Obama’s embrace of the idea of direct negotiations is both naïve and dangerous and should be a big issue in the campaign.
The reason not to negotiate with Ahmadinejad is not simply to stand on ceremony or some kind of policy of non-recognition. It is based on the fundamental need to topple his regime by increasing the sense the Iranian people have — that he has isolated Iran from the rest of the world, to its severe and ongoing detriment.

The Iranian regime is almost entirely dependent on oil and gas revenues to pay for the vast program of social subsidies with which the government buys domestic support. Gasoline costs 35 cents a gallon in Teheran. Bread and all other staples are subsidized from public funds. But 85 percent of all government revenues come from oil and gas exports. There lies the regime’s vulnerability.

Iran is sitting atop the second largest oil reserves in the world. Only Saudi Arabia has more. But it can’t get at them. It lacks the foreign investment and technology necessary to increase, or even to sustain, its petroleum output. Under the Shah, Iran pumped upwards of six million barrels of oil a day. Now, Iran generates fewer than four million daily barrels. With domestic consumption of energy increasing at 10 percent a year — due in part to the massive subsidies which hold the price down — Iran is expected to see its oil exports cut in half by 2011 and entirely eliminated by 2014. If Iran cannot export oil, it cannot pay for social peace and the regime could be in dire trouble.

Without subsidies, the Iranian people, half of whom are under 30 and only 40 percent of whom are ethnically Farsi, will become restive and resentful. Already, many complain that Ahmadinejad’s policies have led to global isolation of Iran and stymied economic growth and social upward mobility. While opinion surveys in Iran indicate that the people support the nuclear aspirations of the regime, they are not willing to pay a price of international isolation.

If a President Obama were to meet with President Ahmadinejad, it would send a signal to the Iranian people that they are not isolated but that the rest of the world has come to respect them and to have to deal with them. The leading argument for toppling the current regime will have been fatally undermined.

But if the West sustains a policy of economic sanctions, curbs on foreign investment, and diplomatic isolation, the Iranian regime’s days are numbered.

Official United Nations sanctions are having some effect on Iran but the real power lies in cutting off investment by foreign companies, particularly in the banking and energy sectors. American companies are already prohibited from doing business there, although General Electric may be seeking ways around this prohibition through foreign subsidiaries.

Frank Gaffney, formerly of Reagan’s Pentagon, has pioneered the use of private economic disinvestment in companies that do business with Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Sudan. On his Web site, he has identified almost 500 companies that do business with these terror sponsoring nations. They include such international powerhouses as Sieman’s, Shell, Repsol, BNP Paribus, and Hyundai. He has crafted a terror free mutual fund which can earn good returns while avoiding investment in any of these companies.

Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman — now running for governor — pioneered disinvesting pension funds in these companies. Now California, Florida, and Louisiana have followed suit.

We need to let these policies work and global isolation of Iran is the way to do it. Negotiating with Ahmadinejad would simply boost his domestic stature and enhance his political stability, the exact opposite of what we should — and must — be doing.

  With the announcement that he’ll seek the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination, former Georgia Republican congressman Bob Barr has added another twist to an already crazy election year.

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The debate continues about whether or not the President of the United States should sit down with leaders like Iran’s Ahmadinejad and discuss “peaceful” solutions to the mid-east situation. On Wednesday last, Ahmadinejad said this:

“The Zionist regime is dying,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northern city of Gorgan, referring to Israel. “The criminals imagine that by holding celebrations … they can save the Zionist regime from death.” “They should know that regional nations hate this fake and criminal regime and if the smallest and briefest chance is given to regional nations they will destroy (it),” said Ahmadinejad, who often rails against Israel and the United States.

Is it reasonable to expect a fruitful “discussion” will result from a tyrant with the above views? These folks, in my opinion, are hardened, intransigent, fanatics hell-bent on destruction of people who don’t share their long standing religion-based view of the world. Count me among the skeptics!

The Washington Times has an interesting article today highlighting just how partisan our politics have become. Senator McCain reaches out to liberal bloggers and some are clearly not interested in a conversation. Please! Good God how will we solve the myriad of problems facing our country if we aren’t even willing to dialog. I hope there are a vast number of voters out there who are as disgusted with this partisan approach as I am. If you can’t discuss and defend your positions why should you be given any credibility? I like the approach McCain is taking regarding the liberals and his new idea of having a British style question & answer session with the legislative branch.

“Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is trying to tap a new audience of potential voters by taking his campaign message straight to liberal and nonpolitical issues-based blogs, which reach millions of readers but don’t often delve into conservative politics.

The strategy was in full swing yesterday when Mr. McCain invited non-conservative bloggers to join his regular blogger conference call, just hours after he delivered a major speech previewing his war strategy and other priorities for a first presidential term.

It already has started a war among liberal bloggers over how to react to Mr. McCain’s overture.

In answering the first question on the call, Mr. McCain said his likely Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, lacks the judgment to be commander in chief, which set him up for a bruising from the readers at TalkingPointsMemo.com, a liberal-leaning site that joined in the call.

Blogger Greg Sargent said it amounted to “what may be [Mr. McCain’s] most direct attack yet on Barack Obama’s national security credentials.” But commenters were split: Some took aim at Mr. McCain, some said they were thankful for the intelligence on “what the enemy is planning,” and others lashed out at Mr. Sargent, saying he should have been harsher in evaluating Mr. McCain’s attack.

“This IS a Democratic blog, and as such, it would seem to me that there SHOULD be SOME bias with regards to how YOU report of McCain’s craziness, as opposed to treating his ranting and attacks with a sort of dignity they and he DO NOT deserve,” wrote one emphasis-abundant reader.” …

  A JEALOUS husband who suspected his wife of an affair took revenge – by putting her for sale on eBay. Paul Osborn, 44, kicked out wife Sharon and advertised her on the internet auction site – with bids hitting £500,100 ($972,234 US Dollar).

It offered his “cheating, lying, adulterous slag of a wife” to the highest bidder – and became an internet phenomenon, with users forwarding the link worldwide. But Sharon, 43, denies an affair and cops are now investigating Paul for harassment. ..

News | eBay | Hubby tries to flog wife on eBay | The Sun

  It was just after 10 p.m. when William Cotter, wearing a belt full of ammunition, burst into the home of his estranged wife, Dorothy, shooting her in the back with a sawed-off shot gun before taking his own life.

Just five days earlier, a court had ordered him to stay away from his wife after decades of drunken violence and she was carrying a panic button linked to the local police station, in Amesbury, Massachusetts. But it wasn’t enough to save her on the night of March 26, 2002.

Fast-forward six years. Electronic surveillance technology is changing the way authorities in the United States monitor repeat offenders. Its advocates say the new technology could have saved Dorothy’s life. Its detractors fear a widening breach of civil liberties and an illusory sense of protection.

… At the heart of the surveillance is a technology best-known for helping people on the road: the global positioning system…. Massachusetts, one of the first states to employ it in 2006, now has about 700 people fitted with electronic bracelets that send signals via satellite to computer servers if they go places they shouldn’t — so-called “exclusion zones.”

…The Massachusetts law, which allows judges to impose electronic monitoring as a condition of a restraining order, has become a model for states such as Illinois and Oklahoma.

…Part of the appeal is money. GPS is a cost-effective alternative to prison, said Paul Lucci, deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Probation Service, pointing to a chart taped to his office wall showing a state-wide surge in use of GPS — mostly to track sex offenders but also for others. …

GPS grows as a crime-fighting tool in U.S | Technology | Reuters

By DICK MORRIS

It would be an act of terminal insanity for Barack Obama to name Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential candidate. It would not help him get elected, it would drag all the Clinton controversies into the general election, and having her down the hall in the West Wing would be a recipe for disaster, dissension and civil war. Other than that, it’s a hell of an idea!

Start with the election. There are two kinds of people who backed Hillary in the primaries: her original supporters and those who joined her later in the game. Her original backers are all solid Democrats whose arms would fall off before they would back anyone who is pro-life. They are true believers, feminists, pro-choice advocates, older party loyalists who would prefer Hillary, may have doubts about Obama, but will always fall in line and vote Democratic. The more recent converts are people who are turned off by Obama’s connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and who worry that he might be a closet black radical. Their latent racial fears were heightened by the revelations about Obama’s links with Wright, and they voted for Hillary as the lesser of two evils. Putting Mrs. Clinton on the ticket will do nothing to assuage these fears. One wonders if these blue-collar, downscale, racially motivated voters would actually support Hillary against John McCain if she were to win the nomination. They certainly wouldn’t follow her into Obama’s camp just because she was on the ticket.

Obama’s key need in the election is to demonstrate his experience and ability to do the job despite only minimal federal experience. Running with someone whose experience he, himself, derided will hardly solve this problem. Voters only credit Hillary with having experience when her record is compared with Obama’s almost total lack of a record. Against McCain, she would do nothing to close the experience gap. Better for Obama to choose a senator with long tenure — a Chris Dodd (Conn.) or Joseph Biden (Del.) — just as Dukakis chose Bentsen, Bush chose Cheney, and Kennedy chose Johnson.

If Obama put Hillary on the ticket, it would re-raise all of the questions about Bill’s income sources, what he did for Dubai, what he did for Frank Guistra — the Canadian mining executive who gave millions to the Clinton library and whom Bill introduced to the president of Kazakhstan — and whether he will make public his library donors. Who needs those issues, especially when Obama is trying to wage an anti-Washington-influence-peddling campaign?

Finally, having Hillary in the West Wing would be a nightmare. There is no way that Obama could trust her. She would be a throwback to the old days when the president did not consult the vice president on anything, a situation which led Vice President John Nance Garner, FDR’s VP during his first two terms, to call the office “not worth a pitcher of warm piss.”

If Obama got into trouble, he would have to look over his shoulder at Hillary and he would always have both Bill and Hillary around to show him up, hog the limelight, generate controversy with ill-considered remarks, and make life difficult. Would Bill stop giving speeches and making money? Would his ties with Arab nations and questionable American and Canadian businessmen end? Or would Obama have to explain his VP’s husband’s business dealings over and over again.

And, the ultimate question: Can Bill Clinton be put back into the bottle? Is this recent spate of angry, finger-wagging bursts of inappropriate outrage a permanent fixture of his public persona? Does Obama want to take the risk of having him on the team and having to account for his conduct?

Hillary would add no votes to Obama, she would dog his campaign with scandal, she would be disloyal in office, and her husband would be, at best, a huge distraction. Case closed.