Quote of the Day

"The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it."

-- H.L. Mencken

Colorado Dem Headquarters Vandalized

Earlier this week, the Democratic party headquarters for the state of Colorado in Denver was vandalized. The attacker left behind anti-health care reform posters. Most of the damage occurred to windows directly in front of pictures of Obama and advertisements supporting health care reform.

It must have been carried out by some angry tea-bagging redneck gun-toting right wing anti-Obama racist, right?

That's what the state Democratic Chairman believed. That's what the press reported. And to this day, the press and the state Democratic Chairman have not backed away from that stance.

The police, on the other hand, have arrested a former Democratic canvasser and charged him with the vandalism. Maurice Schwenkler, who was paid $500 in November to walk door-to-door in support of Democrat Mollie Cullom, a candidate for the state House, was arrested on charges of criminal mischief. Schwenkler was also arrested in St. Paul, MN on the last day of the 2008 Republican convention on charges of unlawful assembly when he and a group of leftists tried to disrupt the convention.

Denver police say they have not "identified a motive" in the incident.

State representative David Balmer told the Denver post that it's possible vandals may have been trying to make Republicans look bad. That seems like a logical assumption to me, given the background of the attacker.

The official Democratic position? The Democratic leadership asserted that this was the "most ridiculous comment" they've ever heard. "This wasn't just any random kind of thing." The official position of the state Democratic party remains that the attacker was a right wing anti-Obama nutjob.

From the sounds of things, the state Dems have egg on their faces.

UPDATE: Reports are now coming out that "Maurice Schwenkler" is a transgendered ... uh .... "person" who may also be known as "Mary Schwenkler" and goes by the name of "Ariel Attack." Mr. or Ms. "Attack" is an anarchist (according to recent reports), who is has been an active democrat in the past, but is upset with Obama for not pushing a radical homosexual activist agenda.

Just a couple of observations: I'm not sure why someone who would describe themselves as an "anarchist" would have been recently involved campaigning for Democrats. I don't advocate anarchy, but by its very nature, anarchy is an extreme right position advocating no government at all, while Democrats are leftists pushing for increased government intervention in our lives.

The other observation is ... and I don't know how to put this .... I want to remain family friendly, but I also just want to understand .... I don't get why someone would CHOOSE which gender they want to be, and then become a homosexual in that chosen gender. Does that defeat the purpose? Can someone explain this to me?

White House Refuses to Answer Questions About Green Jobs Czar

More than five months after the Obama administration announced the hiring of its “green jobs czar,” Van Jones (right), the White House has refused to explain whether it knew of Jones admitted black nationalist and radical communist history and just who hired the advisor.

Also questions continue to fester about how Jones, who has an arrest history, passed security clearances for his White House position.

Cliff Kincaid, an editor at Accuracy in Media, attempted to answer some of these questions when he used the Freedom of Information Act in April to request immediate access to all documents relating to the appointment of Jones to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he serves as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation.

The Council, which hired Jones, replied that it “searched its records system and found none responsive” for Kincaid’s request.

The Council recommended more information be sought at the White House Press Office, which did not respond to Kincaid’s requests about on how Jones was hired.

The White House also did not reply to numerous WND requests for comment.

Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck program similarly asked the White House whether it was aware of Jones radical history.

The White House provided the following response: “Mr. Jones is entirely focused on one policy goal: building clean energy incentives which create 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources.”

The lack of available information concerning Jones is unusual since the Obama transition team previously touted it developed a seven-page questionnaire that included 63 questions about an applicant’s background and qualifications for a federal job. Kincaid pointed out that CNN reported the document was to be for “every candidate for Cabinet and other high-ranking positions in the incoming administration.”

However, there is no information Jones ever filled out the document.

Also, there are open questions as to how Jones obtained a White House security clearance. He spent time in jail several times, including in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots.

Jones was the leader and founder of a radical communist and black nationalist group, the communist revolutionary organization Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM. The organization had its roots in a grouping of black people organizing to protest the first Gulf War. STORM was formally founded in 1994, becoming one of the most influential and active radical groups in the San Francisco Bay area.

CIA Director Panetta Pulls Plug on al Qaeda Hit Squads

According to the Washington Post, the CIA had been developing a plan to assassinate major al Qaeda figures. The program was eight years old and was "close to becoming operational" according to one source.

CiA officials were proposing to activate a plan to train anti-terrorist assassination teams overseas when agency managers brought the secret program to the attention of CIA director Leon Panetta last month. The plan to kill top al-Qaeda leaders, which had been on the agency's back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initate what one intelligence official called a "somewhat more operational phase." Shortly after learning of the plan, Panetta terminated the program and then went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers.

The plan, which included plans to contract with private corporations to hunt down and kill al-Qaeda operatives, was cancelled according to one administration official, for reasons of moral objections to the program.

It seems the administration has moral objections to private corporations.

Finally, A President that Speaks Our Language

Menu For Health Care Reform

Tom Purcell is a syndicated columnist for the Philedelphia Enquirer. He has written an excellent column about the attempted government takeover of our health care system.

Before the government takes over more of our health care system, the least it can do is make a decent sandwich.

I refer to an interesting report that ran in The Washington Post one year ago.

The U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee oversees a network of restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops throughout the Senate complex on Capitol Hill.

Its crown jewel is the ornate Senate Dining Hall, where senators and their guests are served by waiters wearing jackets and ties.

But there was a problem: The restaurant operation was losing lots of money.

Why? For starters, the food stunk. Many Senate staffers preferred to flock across the Capitol to lunch at the privately managed House cafeteria. It offered more options and tastier grub.

The once-profitable Senate catering division had lost customers, too. That's because senators began requesting waivers so they could hire private caterers for their special events.

Imagine that: a U.S. senator seeking special treatment.

In any event, the Senate-run operation was bleeding red ink. It had lost $18 million since 2003. It was on track to lose $2 million in 2008 alone — a loss taxpayers had to eat.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., then-chairwoman of the Rules and Administration Committee, wrote to her colleagues about the matter.

She cited a troubling Government Accountability Office finding: The government employees who managed the Senate restaurants had little interest in breaking even. This was "due to an expectation that the restaurants would operate at a deficit annually."

Imagine that: a government operation that runs an annual deficit.

The solution was obvious to some: Run the Senate restaurant system the same way as the House system.

In the 1980s, you see, the Democrat-controlled House brought in a private contractor, Restaurant Associates of New York, to manage its cafeteria operations. Its food is so good — and its operations run so well — that Restaurant Associates paid $1.2 million in commissions to the House between 2003 and 2008.

And so, last summer, the Democrat-controlled Senate decided to do the same. It established basic guidelines — it required that the government employees who chose to stay on would enjoy the same pay and be allowed to unionize, for instance — and contracted Restaurant Associates to have at it.

There is a lesson here about the best way for the government to collaborate with the private sector to unleash the best of human nature to attain the best possible results.

The Senate Dining Hall food stunk. The reason the operation had been losing lots of taxpayer money was that there was no incentive to do otherwise.

Under the government model, restaurant employees were more prone to be agitated by hungry customers than pleased to serve them. The more customers who came in, after all, the more work employees and managers had to do.

Who can blame government employees for feeling this way? Whether or not customers came in to dine, government employees and managers still got their pay and their benefits.

A private organization, though, must turn a profit or the money it loses will be its own. If its employees work hard to please customers — by offering excellent grub and excellent service — the organization will thrive and every employee will benefit.

It's simple human nature: When people have a stake in something, they attain better results.

That's what many lawmakers are missing as they attempt to "reform" our health care system. Most folks don't want the government to micromanage the decisions that are ours to make. We want to increase our stake.

We want to choose our own insurance and providers. We want more options, not fewer. We want to unleash private individuals and private organizations to innovate ways to improve care and reduce costs — not more government meddling.

Government's best role here is to reset some basic guidelines to address the basic challenges — portability, pre-existing conditions, the uninsured, cost, etc. — then get the heck out of the way.

For goodness' sake, a group of elite senators couldn't oversee a lousy cafeteria operation. What makes them think they can oversee a massive health care system?

Microsoft "Whites Out" Black Model

Software giant Microsoft Corp. is apologizing for altering a photo on its Web site to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture.

A photo on the Seattle-based company's U.S. Web site shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the Web site of Microsoft's Polish business unit, the black man's head has been replaced with that of a white man. The color of his hand remains unchanged.

I don't consider myself a racist. I think everyone in our society should be given an equal opportunity to accomplish all they can accomplish in life.

Having said that, I think Microsoft is bowing to the pressure of political correctness. The changed photo was on a web site intended for the nation of Poland. (No polish jokes, please). The Polish population is a homogenous caucasian population. I also would not be offended if they took out white faces and replaced them with asian faces in a web site intended for the Pacific Rim nations, or if they replaced all the faces with black faces in a web site intended for the nation of Kenya or Nigeria.

Some folks need to get a life. It's not about you and your race. The reason you are a victim is because you are making yourself a victim. Time to move on.