Thursday, April 24, 2008

Comparing Income Taxes under Bill Clinton and George Bush

Over at the Tax Foundation, a chart comparing Individual Income Taxes Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, 1999 Law and 2008 Law. Interesting. Haven't the Democrats been telling us that thos etax rates only help the wealthy? And haven't the Democrats been telling us they'll do away with the tax breaks? And won't that raise our taxes? Yup.

Obama’s Real Bill Ayers Problem-The ex-Weatherman is now a radical educator with influence

From the City Journal
The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today....
In his last debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama referred to Ayers as a “professor of English,” an error that the media then repeated. Would that Ayers were just another radical English professor. In that case, his poisonous anti-American teaching would be limited to a few hundred college students in the liberal arts. But through his indoctrination of future K–12 teachers, Ayers has been able to influence what happens in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of classrooms.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Lebanese minister: Al-Qaida UN troop threat a 'bad omen'

From the Jerusalem Post:
The call by Al-Qaida's deputy chief for Sunni militants in Lebanon to attack UN peacekeepers is a bad omen for the country and a dangerous threat to its future, a Lebanese Cabinet minister said Tuesday. (story here)

Birth Of Freedom

Here is a link to the trailer for a documentary film coming out this summer that is about the role that religion, and Christianity in particular, had in abolishing slavery around the world.

"a society which destroys its young condemns itself to oblivion."

Life Site News:
STRASBOURG, April 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has passed a resolution to declare unlimited legal abortion an unconditional right. The Assembly passed the resolution with 102 to 69 votes with 14 abstentions. Amendments seeking to make the resolution less extreme in its promotion of abortion were rejected.In preparation for what is being described as a rushed vote, the Assembly restricted plenary session speeches to three minutes, amendment speeches to 30 seconds and denied the Assembly's legal affairs committee any scrutiny. Only 185 of the 318 members of the Assembly were present for the vote. Pat Buckley of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, who was present at today's debate, said, "Today is a tragic day for Europe, not least because this report in favour of even more killing of unborn children was rushed through the Assembly without proper scrutiny...The only consolation is that the resolution is not legally binding."
(full sad story here)

Al-Qaida No. 2 says 9/11 theory propogated by Iran

heh, heh. From Breitbart, the rest of the "town hall meeting" with Al Qaida's #2. Kind of humorous and somewhat telling I think:
...One of the questioners asked about the theory that has circulated in the Middle East and elsewhere that Israel was behind the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Al-Zawahri accused Hezbollah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor.
"The purpose of this lie is clear—(to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.
"Iran's aim here is also clear—to cover up its involvement with America in invading the homes of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq," he said.
Iran cooperated with the United States in the 2001 U.S. assault on Afghanistan that toppled al-Qaida's allies, the Taliban.
Answering questions about Iraq in Tuesday's tape, al-Zawahri said the insurgent
umbrella group led by al-Qaida, called the Islamic State of Iraq, is "the primary force opposing the Crusaders and challenging Iranian ambitions" in Iraq, he said, referring to the Americans.
As he often does in his messages, al-Zawahri denounced the "Crusader invasion" of Iraq, but in Tuesday's tape he paired it with a mention of "Iranian complicity" or "Iranian agents.".......
(full story here)

I Choose God - Go Ahead and Shoot

From the VOM site:
Mary was only seventeen when Muslim fanatics raided her village in Lebanon. Mary and her parents were confronted with a grueling choice: “Become a Muslim, or you will be shot.”
Mary boldly told the man, “I choose God. Go ahead and shoot.” ...

The greatest gift to God’s service will not fit in an offering plate. When we view our entire lives as offerings to God, our resources to benefit his kingdom are unlimited. (full story)

If you have a question about Christianity or would like to talk to someone about it, feel free to contact theguyinthewindow@gmail.com

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Bringing Hugo's Tax Policy to the U.S.

More comments on the latest debate from the blog over at Heritage:
“Obamanation” was apoplectic over ABC News choice to question Barack Obama over his associations with a Louis Farrakhan sympathetic preacher and a Weather Underground professor, but his answers on questions that dealt with policy were even more illuminating. A section on the economy included this exchange: (full story)

Abstinence Education: Assessing the Evidence

What we all know in our gut but aren't told by anyone else. from Heritage.org:
Studies have shown that abstinent teens report, on average, better psychological well-being and higher academic achievement than those who are sexually active.[4] Delaying the initiation of or reducing early sexual activity among teens can decrease their overall exposure to risks of unwed childbearing, STDs, and psycho-emotional harm. Authentic abstinence programs are therefore crucial to efforts aimed at reducing unwed childbearing and improving youth well-being.
Opponents of abstinence education contend that these programs fail to influence teen sexual behav­ior. At this stage, the available evidence supports neither this assessment nor the wholesale dismissal of authentic abstinence education programs.
(full article)

Gore Won't Ask Wealthy Hollywoodans to Alter Lifestyle to Save Planet

From NewsBusters, a bit of the ole lefty hypocrisy...

Earth First! (People Later)

Nicely out over at American Thinker. Being a weather forecaster I really like #3...

...Later that week a Liberal friend asked me, "Do you believe in global warming?" As I contemplated my answer I was struck with conflicting images - a Senate sub-committee, and a child asking about Santa. To his credit, he stuck with me through my multi-part response. To wit:
1. The world has been warming since approximately 1650 when it reached its latest low and almost dipped into a modern Ice Age. This episode is well-recorded and notable for its misery as crop yields declined, economic activity contracted, and people were generally extremely cold. On the lighter side... you could ice skate on the Thames. But all in all, not a good trend...
2. The world is now the same temperature as it was in 1000 A.D. We've basically climbed out of the trough that we descended into for 650 years and now enjoy the same general climate as feudal rulers and Vikings a millennium ago. ("Beautiful day wouldn't you say Erik? This is pillaging weather Gefhert - pass me that mace!")
3. Theoretically, there is some incredibly complex formula that explains weather, temperature and climate. We will probably never comprehend it in any great detail in the lifetimes of any of us. If ever.
(more here)

By the way..regarding the church mentioned in the article? ...STAY AWAY FROM THAT CHURCH!

Time Fights Carbon Emissions; Military Fights Evil

Nicely said over at Real Clear Politics
...the left seemed never to care about the millions of Africans who continued to die from malaria largely because of the environmentalists' worldwide ban on the use of DDT as pesticide. The same holds true for another leftwing environmentalist fantasy. Changing corn into biofuels is causing a surge in food prices throughout the world. The European Union continues this policy despite warnings even from some environmentalists that food shortages, starvation and food riots are imminent. But human suffering is not as significant as environmental degradation....
... But, as with Time's 1974 article warning its readers about "another ice age" and its many articles on the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America, Time will just let public amnesia deal with credibility problems. Until then, however, one fact remains: Today, conservatives fight evil and liberals fight carbon emissions. That's what this week's cover of Time is about. (full story)

Hamas rejects Israeli recognition

From the BBC:
Palestinian militant group Hamas will not recognise Israel, its political leader Khaled Meshaal has insisted.
He was responding to comments by former US President Jimmy Carter, following their talks in Syria at the weekend.
(full story)

Of course they won't. Mr Carter has done good work with Habitat For Humanity. His comments make me think maybe he was hit in the head by a 2x4 (more than once)

Al-Qaida No. 2 says group still targeting the West

of course it's not really news to half of the country. The other half thinks we wouldn't be a target were it not for Bush.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden's chief deputy warns that al-Qaida still has plans to target Western countries involved in the Iraq war in a new audiotape released Tuesday to answer questions posed by followers. (full text)

"Gay" Sex Kills

One more bit of proof that the left does not really care for people at all. If they did, they would tell people the truth and try to save them rather than encouraging them on to their "choices" which lead to death.
Over at TownHall:
In fact, multiple studies have established that homosexual conduct, especially among males, is considerably more hazardous to one’s health than a lifetime of chain smoking.
To the consternation of “gay” activist flat-earthers and homosexual AIDS holocaust deniers everywhere,
one such study — conducted by pro-“gay” researchers in Canada — was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) in 1997.
While the medical consensus is that smoking knocks from two to 10 years off an individual’s life expectancy, the IJE study found that homosexual conduct shortens the lifespan of “gays” by an astounding “8 to 20 years” — more than twice that of smoking.
“[U]nder even the most liberal assumptions,” concluded the study, “gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871. … [L]ife expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.”
This morose reality makes a strong case for a fitting redefinition of so-called “homophobia,” that being “Homophobia: The rational fear that ‘gay sex’ will kill you!” (
full article)

Report: Muslim Leaders Want Mecca to Be Center of World Time Zones

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) could be replaced by "Mecca Time," if a group of Muslim leaders get their way.
At the conference, "Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice," Muslim scientists and clerics called for the change, arguing that the holy city in Saudi Arabia is the center of the Earth and should be the reference point for world time, not Greenwich, England, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports


Read full story here.

Friday, April 18, 2008

3 Trillion Bucks- and not apenny for security

Over at Machinist- Salon.com we have this:
Three trillion dollars is a lot of cash. You know that, but it's more than you think: For the last three hours I've tried to spend $3 trillion and I barely cracked a trillion. Can you do better?
My playground was
3Trillion.org, an antiwar Web site set up by Robert Greenwald'sBrave New Films.
In his new book, the economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the Iraq war will cost,
in total, $3 trillion. The Greenwald site aims to illustrate the opportunity cost of the war -- other things we might have done with the money.

How clever. Aside from the dubious figure of three trillion which many question, and the tiny number that represents compared to our GDP, and the fact that the money spent on the war is ABOVE the ordinary military budget and not in the domestic budget (would it still be doing the supposed damage to the economy if it was domestic spending?) I find the list of all the things the author would spend the money on enlightning. A "mooning gnome" is a good symbol for the lefts idea of security.

La. courthouse's lone Jesus painting deemed unconstitutional

Our culture on the decline reported by Salon:
Apr 16th, 2008 NEW ORLEANS -- Displaying a portrait of Jesus in the foyer of a Louisiana courthouse is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled this week, siding with civil libertarians who sued over the display.
But inserting Jesus within a group portrait of historic figures at the courthouse is permissible, the judge said. (
full story)

Pope urges all Christians to 'hold fast' to scripture

Speaking the Truth as reported in USA Today
NEW YORK — Pope Benedict XVI met with leaders of other Christian faiths on Friday evening, telling them that only by "holding fast" to sound doctrinal teaching can they confront secular ideology and the individualism that "undermines or even rejects transcendent truth."

Although each of these churches split from Roman Catholicism across centuries, the pope talked about their common birth and unity in belief in the Holy Trinity — God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and their common concerns in a world where "the very possibility of divine revelation, and therefore of Christian faith, is often placed into question by cultural trends widely present in academia, the mass media and public debate.
"Christians are challenged to give a clear account of the hope that they hold," he said.
(full article)

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Charlie Gibson of ABC News asks Obama twice why he wanted to raise capital-gains taxes

From Charles Gibson no less..
One of the meat and potato moments last night reference the capital gains tax from USNews:
1) If Obama is correct and the economy (where the current jobless rate is 5.1 percent vs. recessionary peaks of 8.8 percent in 1975, 10.8 percent in 1982, 7.8 percent in 1992, and 6.3 percent in 2003) is "in a shambles" and "teetering not just on the edge of recession, but potentially worse," why would he want to nearly double the capital-gains-tax rate, which is a tax on savings, investment, and, yes, housing?
In the YouTube moment of the debate, comoderator Charlie Gibson of ABC News asked Obama twice why he wanted to raise capital-gains taxes since such a move would both 1) hit the middle class and 2) produce less government revenue. Obama—who didn't seem to know that middle-class people pay capital-gains taxes, since he had just moments earlier promised not to raise taxes on people making under the $200,000-to-$250,000 range—gave this answer: (read it here)

Pope resolution passes after "life" language removed

From Politicos Crypt:
While Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit to Washington received wall to wall coverage, Sen. Barbara Boxer briefly held up a Senate resolution welcoming the pontiff because she objected to language about how the pope values "each and every human life." (full story)

They sound bitter to me. More proof that the Dems are out of touch. Every reasonable person should be able to agree with this. No doubt the Dems have evolved past reasonableness.

Saddam and al-Qaeda

I've said before it really didn't matter if Al-Qaeda proper was in Iraq. Saddam entertained a cauldron of bad guys. Still, the American Thinker has some interesting news:
Claims that there were no links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda are wrong. Documents just released by the Pentagon prove it.
In March 2008, the Pentagon released a document that details some of the classified documents from Saddam's regime. This document called the Iraqi Perspectives Project Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted) is an overview of "more than 600,000 original captured documents and several thousand hours of audio and video footage archived in a US Department of Defense (DOD) database. As of August 2006, only 15 percent of the captured documents have English translations."
[1] This document provides insight into how Saddam operated his regime and his ties to terrorism. (full story)

Tell your friends...

Thoughts on Global Warming- Not new but here it is anyway

A reader commented on the reliability of one of our previous posts.
Eutychus says:
Perhaps Monckton is capable of distortion, but certainly no more distorting than Gore and others. I guess we can play the "gotcha" game ad nauseum, what with the news that NASA was off on it's temps, problems with computer models,and the "snow job" that appears to be the case with the Kilimanjaro data. But my point is, and always has been, more of a cry against the shrillness and false certitude that global warming folks seem to have about the issue. It smacks of an agenda beyond science that I distrust especially since in my lifetime the pendulem of media alarmism has swung full scale from ice age predictions to the current global warming hysteria. Where is the open discussion of the matter that good science would seem to demand? We simply do not know if we have caused the warming or if it is part of the natural cyles, or indeed, whether we are warming at all. After all what is the earth's "normal" temperature? The whole discussion seems to have evolved into hubris masked as certainty.

True Happiness: No Laughing Matter

From the Dumblittle man website

Higher income and superior work outcomes; better quality work
Larger social rewards such as longer marriages, more friends
More activity and energy
Better physical health; lower stress and less pain
Longer life

If happiness is so beneficial, and we all seem to be obsessed with the notion, why aren’t more of us happy? The research suggests our focus may be misplaced:
“Pleasure-seeking, quick fixes, and self-gratification are proven to have limited long-term effects on true happiness.”Forget about buying the new outfit, the fancy car, or the latest gadget as ways to achieve happiness. Purchases simply satisfy the short-term need for self-gratification. Things do not produce a happy life…you do.
(full story

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Lesbian demands control over Christian's daughter

The proverbial "hell in a handbasket" from WND
The case, scheduled for oral arguments Thursday morning, is being argued by Mathew Staver, chief of Liberty Counsel, on behalf of Lisa Miller, a woman who left a lesbian relationship to become a Christian, and her now-6-year-old daughter.
The other part of the now-terminated relationship, Janet Jenkins, has alleged that because of Miller's Christian parenting practices, she no longer is a fit mother. (
full story)

'I'm a parent, arrest me,' woman tells lawmakers

Committee forwards plan to criminalize spanking. WND
A California mother of five has told members of a legislative committee their plan to criminalize spanking by concerned parents would mean that misbehavior and rebellion no longer could be corrected, and she could face arrest.
Sarah Berke appeared today before the Democrat-controlled Assembly Public Safety Committee, whose members listened to her, then advanced the plan to criminalize spanking with any "implement," such as a wooden spoon, little paddle, rolled-up newspaper, switch, belt or brush.
The proposal is a rerun of last year's attempt to do the same thing, criminalize parents who spank their children, by redefining it as child abuse.
full story here

Oh and you better arrest me too, and my dad, and mom and their mom and dad and...

Obama: Silence in the face of evil

American Thinker
This week when history demanded his voice, Obama once again opted for silence instead of courage. Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders have strongly condemned Jimmy Carter's planned meeting with Khaled Mashal, head of the Hamas terrorist organization. Both Democrats and Republicans demonstrated their leadership in a bipartisan letter to the former president entreating him to refrain from using his stature to undermine U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas. (Hamas is committed to the complete eradication of Israel and has forsworn any negotiations in favor of violence.) Among Democrats speaking out on the House floor was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), "In light of Hamas' continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision." Others warned that meeting with Hamas would not only undermine U.S. policy and the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, but lend legitimacy to the group that thwarts all efforts for peace.
Obama, stunningly, declined to take a moral stance and instead chose silence. He said it was not his place to criticize former President Jimmy Carter... "I'm not going to comment on former President Carter. He's a private citizen. It's not my place to discuss who he shouldn't meet with," Obama (Reuters April 11, 2008) (
full story)

Army to Move to 9 Month "In Country" Deployments

I don't remember if the original post mentioned this but I heard yesterday that the move to a 12 month deployment for the Army means only 9 months on the ground. That's good news for the Army and their families and as I said before, long overdue.

Vitamins 'may shorten your life'

The BBC reports
Research has suggested vitamin supplements do not extend life and could even lead to a premature death.
A review of 67 studies found "no convincing evidence" that antioxidant supplements cut the risk of dying.
Scientists at Copenhagen University said vitamins A and E could interfere with the body's natural defences
. (full story)

spcifically, vitamin E may be linked to lung cancer (here)

Who leads on the issues?

From the Economist
HILLARY CLINTON and Barack Obama get another chance to explain their policies on the big issues in a televised debate from Philadelphia on Wednesday April 16th. Who is better placed to beat John McCain in the election? In a head-to-head contest on the big issues, according to The Economist's weekly poll, voters appear to be aligned most closely with Mr McCain on law and order, taxes and trade. Mrs Clinton comes top on the budget and health care. Mr Obama comes second on most issues, impressing only on fuel prices.
See the full results of
The Economist/YouGov poll.