Good, Bad and Ugly: Ann Coulter Talks Government Bailout

You can read the full transcript here, but really, the following exchange (one word was edited by me; I watched the video, and this is a correction) was really the most interesting part of the article:

HANNITY: You like Governor Palin?

COULTER: Yes. I’m already planning impeachment hearings.

HANNITY: All right. All right, all right.

COULTER: No. I mean, McCain – whomever is running John McCain’s campaign, he ought to promise he will take to the White House with him for one thing, Sarah Palin.

And for another thing, I mean, I don’t think this is – and I don’t think it’s a political ploy. I think it’s a serious matter. It always seems sort of strange to me when something huge is going on, and politicians are just going about their normal business. I mean, I do think McCain did the right thing. I’m against the bailout, but Congress is going to do something.

HANNITY: Yes.

COULTER: And by the way, remember how we kept saying how they rushed through the Patriot Act and, boy, nobody ever read it? They spent 12 months working on the Patriot Act. This they’re rushing through.

HANNITY: I know. And this would be the biggest…

COULTER: Can the two presidential candidates go and take a peek at it?

HANNITY: And this will be the biggest expansion of government in history.

You can also view the video of the Ann Coulter’s appearence on Hannity & Colmes by following this link, if you’re so inclined.

AP Report: Obama, McCain argue over war, taxes in 1st debate

Sep 26 10:50 PM US/Eastern
By BETH FOUHY
Associated Press Writer

OXFORD, Miss. (AP) – John McCain accused Barack Obama of compiling “the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate” Friday night in an intense first debate of their close campaign for the White House. The Democrat shot back, “Mostly that’s just me opposing George Bush’s wrong-headed policies.”

Obama said his Republican rival has been a loyal supporter of the unpopular president across the past eight years, adding that the current economic crisis is “a final verdict on eight years of failed economic policies promoted by President Bush and supported by Sen. McCain.”

The two men clashed over spending, taxes, energy and-at length-the war in Iraq during their 90-minute debate.

read the rest of the article here…

Barack Obama: “I think Senator McCain is absolutely right…”

By Noel Bagwell
September 26, 2008

I think I counted at least eight times Barack Obama said John McCain was right. Before the debate was even over, the McCain Campaign put together an ad / montage of some of the specific instances where Obama agreed with his opponent in the debate:

I think that Obama sounded very well rehearsed throughout the debate. He sounded like he was regurgitating prerehearsed lines, whereas McCain really seemed like he was thinking on his feet – though obviously much of his material was rehearsed as well. McCain slammed Obama on having the most liberal voting record in the Senate, being a tax-and-spend liberal and for his over-all inexperience and – in McCain’s apparent judgment – lack of understanding on crucial issues.

“Honor” Killings: Will Radical Islamic Cleric Bakri’s Pole-Dancer Daughter Be Next?

By Noel Bagwell
Sep 26, 2008

There is a disturbing tradition in the Islamic world of offing those with whom they disagree, but violence is not just directed at “infidels.” In Islam, there is a tradition of so-called “honor” killings – murders committed in order to “protect” the honor of the family, relatives or community in which the slain lived.

In a December 28, 2005 article, the Associated Press reported that, at that time in Pakistan, “more than 260 such honor killings” had been “documented by the rights commission, mostly from media reports, during the first 11 months of 2005.” And that’s just Pakistan. In this Associated Press article, “Nazir Ahmed appears calm and unrepentant as he recounts how he slit the throats of his three young daughters and their 25-year old stepsister to salvage his family’s “honor” — a crime that shocked Pakistan.”

But the tradition spans the globe, and has recently become a major concern in the United States and Canada. Just this year, in Dallas, Texas, “Amina Said, 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were found shot multiple times in a cab outside a suburban Dallas hotel. Police found them after one of the girls called 911 from a cell phone and said she was dying. A capital murder warrant has been issued for Yaser Said, 50, who” at the time the article was published had “not been seen since the Lewisville High School students were found dead.” The article went on to say, “According to a police report released (the following) Tuesday, a family member told investigators that Yaser Said threatened ‘bodily harm’ against Sarah for going on a date with a non-Muslim.”

Raunchy: Radical Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed's daughter Yasmin Fostok is a topless, tattooed pole-dancer

Now, Sophie Borland of the Daily Mail has revealed that “the daughter of firebrand cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed” … “has ditched not only his extreme interpretation of Islam – but also much of her clothing.”

The full article, which is definitely worth a read, goes on to say that this lovely young mother has been dancing in London’s West End clubs, “touring as a ‘podium’ dancer with a troupe called Ibiza Untouched.”

She says she doesn’t agree with her father’s extreme views, nor, by implication, his radical Islamist message.

The cleric, himself, however claims this is all a “fabrication” he calls an “attack on him and Islam.” He claims not to have seen his daughter for nine years, so this author wonders how he can be so sure she’s not the “topless, tattooed pole-dancer” she certainly appears to be?

The radical cleric went on to say, “The more you put pressure on me, the stronger I become. Islam will conquer Britain.” He went on to rant, “You are going to pay a heavy price … You can read it any way you like. The time is now.”

The article also said of Yasmin that she “grew up a devout Muslim and in her teens wore a veil. She left school in Enfield at 16 after her parents fixed an arranged marriage to a Turkish man but the couple separated.”

Apparently her, “exotic life as a pole dancer was discovered when she was contacted by a tabloid journalist posing as an agent booking acts for a gentleman’s club.”

What I am wondering is: Will Islamic extremists in Britain stand for this sort of behavior from the daughter of banned hate cleric Omar Bakri Muhammad, or will she be the victim of an “honor” killing – murdered by one of her father’s radical followers still living in London?

According to a September 11, 2008 article on mirror.co.uk, “Bakri, 59, was kicked out of Britain after the July 7, 2005 London bombings because of his activities,” but he is, apparently, still in contact with his fanatical devotees, because details that emerged the evening of September 10th indicated that he was planning to “use a live video link from Lebanon to address radicals meeting in London” to “to praise the 9/11 killers in a sick speech to British radicals… the seventh anniversary of the terror outrage.”

Will Yasmin Fostok survive the Religion of Peace?

Political Correctness To Blame for Current Financial Crisis

In her most recent article, They Gave Your Mortgage To A Less Qualified Minority, Ann Coulter wrote:

In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration’s affirmative action lending policies as one of the “hidden success stories” of the Clinton administration, saying that “black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded.”

Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn’t get out of their loans by selling their houses.

A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it’s gone off.

It is hard to deny the facts, but people tend to have such short memories. Instead of seeking a way out of the financial crisis, liberals want to test just how short Americans’ attention spans are by trying, in vain, to link McCain to the current financial crisis and by trying to divert attention away from their failed policies.

At this point, I’m wondering if another Democrat in the White House is really the answer we need. Oh, and speaking of “Less Qualified Minorities,” it reminded me of this:

The World’s Largest Machine Was Turned On Today…

By Noel Bagwell
September 10, 2008

…and very little happened, according to Neil Tweedie of the Telegraph who wrote a smashing article, which you can read here. According to the article, CERN switched on their Large Hadron Collider (LHC), today, and sent some proton streams zooming through it at speeds just under the speed of light. Fun stuff. No black holes yet.

Debate rages among armchair pundits across YouTube and the blogosphere regarding the merits and threats of CERN’s most ambitious project. The scientific evidence presented leaves us little reason to seriously believe that the LHC’s operation will precipitate the end of the Earth by creating a quantum filament, microscopic black hole or other singularity that could rip apart matter necessary to our survival in this part of the universe.

Rather, it is more plausible that a great deal of resources will be poured into generating evidence to support a Theory of Everything, which is the fundamental purpose of the device. Critics of this expenditure of resources who say the data gathered from the LHC experiments serve “no practical purpose,” might do well to consider that, because we do not yet know exactly what we will learn from these experiments, it is impossible to put a value on the application of the discoveries we make or to determine, at this phase, whether or not they serve a practical purpose.

It is my personal opinion, that opposition to operation of the LHC comes mostly from fear of the unknown. Beware! Beyond this point, there be dragons!

Obama: McCain Presidency Means the End of Roe vs. Wade

By Noel Bagwell
September 9, 2009

A recent article quoted Barack Obama saying:

“There are some people who focus on what would happen to Roe v Wade,” Obama said in response to the question. “I think it’s fair to say if John McCain wins, that would be overturned. You know during his tenure the Supreme Court, you know, is one vote away from that – I think Roe v Wade is worth preserving,” he continued.

I think Obama’s assertion that John McCain’s Presidency would mean the end of Roe vs. Wade is unfair. McCain does have a record of supporting conservative judges – who interpret the U.S. Constitution not as a “living document,” but as an unchanging standard by which our society can be governed – but supporting conservative judges does not necessarily equate to appointing them.

Interpreting the U.S. Constitution

By Noel Bagwell
September 6, 2008

So, I did a little digging, and came across a speech given by The Honorable Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Of The United States, entitled On Interpreting The Constitution. (A full transcript of the speech can be read here.)

In his speech, Scalia points out one of the greatest – if not the greatest – flaws in the idea that the Constitution is a “living document”:

“The second thing wrong with this new theory is that it leaves the Judge no criterion on the basis of which to judge. I have described for you my criterion for the meaning of The Constitution, which is what does the text say and what did that language (mean); what was that language understood to mean when it was adopted? This is called originalism.

Now you’re free to reject that theory. Fine. You are not originalists. But it’s not enough to be a non-originalist if you’re a Judge. You have to be a something else ist. You have to have some other theory of your own. If you’re not looking to the original meaning of the language what are you looking to?

And I have asked law professors and judges who don’t believe in originalism time after time, give me your criterion. There isn’t any. It’s the only game in town. You either take the original meaning, as it was understood then, or there is no criterion by which the judge may judge. Except his own prejudices.”

How is it that Americans – regardless of profession, political disposition or party membership – fail to see and recognize as incontrovertible the simple and elegant logic of this argument?

The U.S. Constitution is not a “living document” – a description Scalia derides as a “hateful phrase” – and it is not “a document that morphs from decade to decade so as to be the embodiment of the most profoundly held beliefs of society … an empty bottle which we feel free to fill up with whatever liquid seems to us passionately desirable.”

Scalia, and other self-described originalists (sometimes called “strict constructionalists”) would rather view the U.S. Constitution as being what it was always intended by its authors to be: “that rock to which the society was anchored and which it could always rely upon.” If one has eyes with which to see and an intelligent mind with which to understand, it seems beyond the realm of reason to ignore the logic of Scalia’s argument, and the fact that the Constitution is certainly not a “living document.”

Recommended Reading: Ideas Have Consequences

By Noel Bagwell
September 6, 2008

Ideas Have Consequences

From The University of Chicago Press:

In what has become a classic work, Richard M. Weaver unsparingly diagnoses the ills of our age and offers a realistic remedy. He asserts that the world is intelligible, and that man is free. The catastrophes of our age are the product not of necessity but of unintelligent choice. A cure, he submits, is possible. It lies in the right use of man’s reason, in the renewed acceptance of an absolute reality, and in the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences.

I have, of course, read this book; and I found Weaver to be prescient in his analysis of the likely chain of future events following his writing in 1948.

Though written and published in the late 1940s, Weaver’s work is as timely and relevant as ever. Understanding the concepts he discusses is the first step to laying a solid foundation for a rational world view, in our current day and age.