TailOverTeaKettle.com

Unfortunate news today from the Associated Press: Rep. Charlie Norwood of Georgia is leaving Washington D.C. and returning home to Augusta, GA for hospice care.

From their story:

Rep. Charlie Norwood said Wednesday he is leaving Washington to receive hospice care at home in Augusta, Ga., declining further treatment for lung cancer that has spread to his liver.

Norwood’s spokesman, John Stone, said the seven-term Republican is not resigning his seat in Congress, but he said Norwood has decided to be home with his family and “put it in the Lord’s hands.’”

“He has spent three months just sick as a dog and finally just said, ‘That’s it. I’m going home,’” Stone said. “The goal now is to make him as comfortable as he can be … for as long as the Lord will let him stay with us, and nobody knows how long that will be.’”

Stone said Norwood would re-evaluate the situation after returning home and that he was not ruling out further treatment if he feels better. Norwood’s congressional office will continue operating “as if he’s sitting in the next room,'’ Stone said.

Norwood, 65, is fighting his second bout with cancer since receiving a lung transplant in 2004. He suffers from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease.

The cancer is believed to be a side effect of immune suppression drugs he takes as a result of the transplant.

Last year, doctors discovered a small cancerous tumor on his non-transplanted lung. They removed the cancer with surgery, but then discovered more cancer on his liver when Norwood returned to Washington after the November election, in which Norwood easily won re-election.

In a press release, Stone said Norwood will leave Washington as soon as an air ambulance flight can be arranged, possibly by Thursday. The family requested continued prayers.

This is obviously not a case where one can hope for an improvement, but I hope that he and his family find peace in this time. God bless.

              

Newsbusters has the round-up of upset liberal writers on George Bush’s use of the word “Democrat” instead of “Democratic”. As in the awful phrase he included in the State of the Union, “I congratulate the Democrat majority.”

Newsbusters summarizes:

The amazing liberal vapors over over President Bush’s use of the word “Democrat” to describe, er, Democrats, continues. In an NPR interview with Juan Williams, President Bush claimed it was a simple mistake in his State of the Union speech, but liberals quickly found more of these grievous offenses in searching speech texts at the White House website. Certain left-wing media critics who lay face down in worship at the feet of Hillary Clinton are now insisting that the word “Democrat” is a “smear” and an “oft-used Republican slur.” The Washington Post and The New York Times each produced stories on Bush’s denial of this microscopic scandal. […]

But my favorite fuss comes from former Newsweek reporter and Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker, who says the plain D-word is “jarring verging on ugly. It fairly screams ‘rat.’ “

I didn’t realize that democrats objected to being called a ‘democrat’. I understand that none of them want to be termed a ‘liberal’, which was the main motivation for their inventing the term ‘moderate’ for themselves. Having done that, they also exchanged the label on the other end of the political spectrum, changing from referring to a ‘conservative’ to now the more commonly used ‘extreme right-wing KKK-loving Bible-thumping neo-Nazi sympathizer’.

But, much like I was earlier surprised to find out that the word ‘thug’ was a racial epithet, I will take it under advisement that the word ‘democrat’ is a smear and a slam. Not wanting to offend anyone, I will try to make offense in the future.

I will henceforth attempt to make sure I refer to Hilary and Obama and company as ‘democratics’. If there are other ‘democratics’ involved, I will refer to them as such. And then they can get the full benefit of the “positive connotations of its chosen appellation.” And since the ‘democratics’ now have control of Congress once again, we must be careful to give them the proper terms of respect.

              

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore.

Just let those words settle in on your brain for a minute.

Courtesy of CNN: Gore earns Nobel nomination for global warming work.

Former Vice President Al Gore has been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.

“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference,” Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen, of the Socialist Left Party, to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.

“Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila (Watt-Cloutier) works from the ground up,” Brende said.

During eight years as Bill Clinton’s vice president, Gore pushed for climate measures, including for the Kyoto Treaty, and after leaving office in 2001 has campaigned worldwide, especially with his Oscar-nominated documentary on climate change called “An Inconvenient Truth.”

I really do hope that Gore wins. It would prove that that Nobel Peace Prize is not worth paying attention to anymore, and is completely a beauty-contest for random pet causes, much like the award being given to Jimmy Carter in order to slap at George W. Bush (”With the position Carter has taken on this, it can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq.” ).

And what about the ‘Peace’ aspect?

“I think climate change is the biggest challenge we face in this century,” [Boerge] Brende said.

Apparently the good Mr. Brende has never heard of Al Qaeda and Radical Islamism.

              

Not content to simply discourage automakers from selling cars in California by threatening to sue them over global warming, it was reported today that California Democrat Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is proposing legislation which would ban incandescent lightbulbs in California.

The “How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act” would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

“Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications,” California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine said on Tuesday.

“Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light.”

Levine is expected to introduce the legislation this week, his office said.

I’m not against anyone using fluorescent lightbulbs in their home - either because they want to save the environment or because they find their use to actually give them an appreciable savings on their electric bill.

But if it were such a “no-brainer” decision… a lawmaker would not have to legislate it.

No word on what the penalty will be for using a contraband Incandescent bulb smuggled in from Nevada.

              

Tonight, George Bush will deliver the State of the Union address to the nation. Is there really anything that he could say that will be viewed positively by the media? Not a chance. He could propose all of the same programs previously championed by Democrats (and no doubt he probably *will* do some of that tonight), and he will still be vilified. We will still hear in the morning that the latest opinion poll shows that Americans disapprove of Bush.

Neal Boortz summarizes it well today:

I believe that 9/11 transformed George Bush. I believe that since that date he has been completely dedicated to the purpose of protecting this country from further terrorist attacks.

How can he be blamed for acting against Saddam Hussein? Have we all forgotten that the official U.S. policy of removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq was adopted during the Clinton administration? Have we forgotten Saddam’s cat and mouse games with U.N. weapons inspectors? Have we forgotten that American intelligence officials have recovered documents and materials that constitute proof positive that Saddam was proceeding with a program to develop nuclear weapons? Hussein defied the U.N. He defied the international community. The proof is there … he had contacts with Al Qaeda. No, I’m not saying that Saddam was behind 9/11, but there were agents in Saddam’s government who had contact with those who did plan 9/11. Add the rape rooms, the mass graves, the use of WMDs to kill tens of thousands of Iranians and his own countrymen .. .and you come up with a despot that should have been left in power — in power to continue with his weapons programs?

Come on, folks. Either you’re glad Saddam is gone, or you wish he was still in power. Which is it? You can’t just wallow in your hatred of George Bush … you have to make a decision. Saddam or no Saddam.

And what of Bush’s goals for Iraq. What did he want. He wanted to create a country in the heart of the Islamic middle east with an elected government and a rule of law that protected the rights of each and every citizen .. no matter what Islamic sect that citizen belonged to. He wanted Iraq to be a demonstration project to show the rest of the Middle East what could be accomplished through freedom and representative governments. Was this such a bad goal? Do you think that Bush should have just gone into Iraq, destroyed Saddam Hussein, and then left? That has never been the way America operated. But that’s the way you wanted it to be this time? Or are we back to leaving Saddam in power.

Mistakes?

Damn right he made mistakes. They’re easy to chronicle. But how do Bush’s mistakes compare to the Democrat Party plan to demonize George Bush? What do you think had a greater affect on the situation in the Middle East — the mistakes Bush made in the pursuit of a better way of life for the citizens of Iraq, or the Democrat’s determination to sabotage Bush’s efforts?

From where do you think the Islamic fascists have received their most encouragement? From the tactical mistakes made by George Bush, or from the weakness in the American spirit that has been fostered by the whining Democrats?

Even in the face of these depressing approval polls, Bush remains determined to protect this country from Islamic terrorism. Someday perhaps the American people will appreciate him for his determination, however flawed, to protect this nation, and will come to recognize the damage that has been done by the actions of the not-so-loyal opposition, actions that have convinced them that America is becoming weak in the face of the ongoing Islamic jihad.

Meanwhile, the posturing for the next Presidential race is in full swing, as evidenced in the announcements made over the weekend, so you can be sure to get plenty of sound bites from the various candidates pushed out into the press. And the various members of Congress all seem to be trying to craft some position in order to oppose a troop surge in Iraq.

Iraq=Vietnam. At first it was just a silly comparison. After being repeated over & over for six years, it just permeates the discussion today. Where will we as a country get the will to finish the work? Or else the terrorists are right - we talk a good game, but when push comes to shove, we are weak.

              

As part of the much bally-hooed “first 100 hours” (which appears to be measured on a broken clock), we found out that one of the first bills to be pushed through the new Democratic-controlled Congress would be to increase the minimum wage, from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour.

The Washington Times first reported that while other U.S. territories such as the Northern Mariana Islands would be included in the proposed legislation, American Samoa would be exempted from the minimum wage increase. It was first noted in that paper that one of the biggest opponents of increasing the minimum wage is Samoa is StarKist Tuna, employer to 75% of the island’s residents. It was also noted that StarKist’s parent company, Del Monte, is headquartered in San Francisco, which is coincidentally Ms. Pelosi’s district.

From there, many people raised much ado and made many snarky comments about the loophole, and implications that its presence was due to Del Monte lobbying which influenced Pelosi to make an exemption just for them.

Now I don’t know whether anyone at StarKist or Del Monte ever really discussed this with Ms. Pelosi (something she’s denied). And I certainly am not normally in the business of defending her. But while the Democrats can be blamed for a lot of things, I don’t think this is really a discussion over earmarks.

What prompted me to even write about this was yesterday’s Townhall.com article by Rich Galen. In dissecting this situation, he jumps to an interesting (but dangerous) conclusion:

That leads us to two points:

1. This is what happens when you shove major legislation through the House without proper committee hearings and minority party participation. How do we know this? Because the DEMOCRATS COMPLAINED ABOUT IT FOR 12 YEARS!

2. Unless Nancy Pelosi has hired the Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory to write legislation, it strains credulity that the bill drafters were unaware of the effect this was going to have on a major corporation headquartered in the Speakers’ district.

Tuna packers on American Samoa are, on their own, not crucial to the health of the US economy. However, this episode shows that the Democrats are a long way from cleaning up abuses of privilege in the House.

The very issue on which they ran and won.

I’m sorry, but the exemption’s existance neither proves reckless favoritism championed by Ms. Pelosi nor amateurish legislation writing.

I personally don’t believe that the bill was crafted in order to provide an intentional loophole for a Pelosi-friendly company. Period. Maybe some evidence will surface which proves this point of view wrong, but until then, I think focusing on Del Monte’s connection with Nancy Pelosi is just misleading.

But, unfortunately, the response to the accusations is equally as silly: as the Democrats now pledge to extend federal minimum wage to all U.S. territories. Loophole closed.

But is anyone asking the real question? Why did American Samoa have a different minimum wage set in the first place?

You see, American Samoa was excluded from the legislation because it was not mentioned. The previous U.S. minimum wage law did not apply to them. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that they would not have been included in an increase to said wage. This practice neither originated with this Congress nor with Ms. Pelosi.

But apart from these semantics, you can see the real problem that Democrats themselves do not want to admit. The reason that they are pushing through a miniimum wage increase is supposedly to “help” people. Specifically, to force an increase in pay to those who are currently earning only the minimum wage and, supposedly, provide them a better opportunity to care for themselves and their families. Sure, there are some who will see that $2.10 per hour (before taxes) in their paycheck and the Democrats want them to know who to thank.

But what does raising the minimum wage really do? American Samoa actually provides a great laboratory to see the effects. When the cost of labor goes up, some people lose their jobs. You see, contrary to the opinions of the anti-capitalist protestors, businesses don’t actually print cash and hoarde it away. Nothing is for free. So when the government forces an increase in labor costs, it requires the business to either (a) raise the prices it charges for its goods and services in order to pass on the increase, (b) reduce the amount of profit or increase the amount of loss generated by the business, or (c) reduce the number of employees in order to hold the labor costs stable.

American Samoa shows us this very well. As the wages go up, so will the unemployment, because the economy there is so reliant on these businesses. In fact, not only will some small number be affected, many more may become unemployed if the tuna packing businesses there decide to relocate. As Samoan Rep. Eni Faleomavaega states:

“The truth is the global tuna industry is so competitive that it is no longer possible for the federal government to demand mainland minimum wage rates for American Samoa without causing the collapse of our economy and making us welfare wards of the federal government.”

Instead of addressing accusations of favoritism by applying the minimum wage laws to American Samoa, we should instead be asking why in the world we are meddling with their economy this way. “Helping families” by raising the minimum wage could end up putting many more families completely out of a job. Even a low-paying job is better than none at all!

And while we’re at it… let’s ask ourselves why we in the world we’re even still tweaking the minimum wage law anywhere - including for the mainland USA? By any standards, we are not dealing with the same conditions of poverty that faced the population during the Great Depression. And any time those in government get the bright idea of mandating that private industry fund their latest vote-buying initiatives (whether it’s raising the minimum wage, requiring businesses to pay for health insurance, or the like), they must understand the consequences, since none of this comes for free.

Those are better questions for Republicans to be asking, not whether Pelosi knows that Del Monte is located in her district.

              

Something I missed mentioning last week, but despite recent news that Indiana’s Voter ID laws withstood the latest legal challenge, the outlook is not as good for the Georgia version. Thursday the AJC reported that new Georgia Lt. Governor Casey Cagle believes that a proposal to amend the Georgia State Consitution to clear any objections to Voter ID rules will not even come to a vote in the Georgia State Senate.

Senate Resolution 4, sponsored by Sen. Cecil Staton (R-Macon), was assigned to a Senate committee Thursday. If approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate and House, and then by Georgia voters in a statewide referendum, SR 4 would allow the General Assembly to enact regulations over voting, including a future photo ID requirement.

Past attempts by the Legislature to enact photo ID at the polls have been struck down by state and federal courts. A Fulton superior court judge last year ruled that the Legislature lacked the authority in the state Constitution to pass laws restricting the right to vote to only those who hold picture ID.

On Thursday, Sen. Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta) predicted that another bitter, divisive fight over photo ID in the General Assembly would harm the newly-inaugurated lieutenant governor’s efforts at bi-partisanship.

In a question-and-answer session in his office today with reporters, Cagle said he supports the voter ID requirement, but he said he doesn’t believe SR 4 can gain the required two-thirds majority in the Senate.

“If you don’t have the votes, it’s not worth the fight,” said Cagle, who has appointed three Democrats to chair Senate committees. “I’m not pushing it. I’m not interested in bringing bills to the floor … if there’s no possibility of it passing.”

              

When you ask anyone to categorize their intelligence into above-average, average, or below-average… I’ll bet that many more people will consider themselves above-average.

And if you ask someone whether they are wealthy, middle-class, or poor… most working people will consider themselves “working-class”.

That’s the nice part about using terms that are not really defined well (or re-defined depending on your purpose).

Anyway, you may just be about to find out how wealthy you are! Remember, George W. Bush last cut taxes for the ‘rich’ (which was another way to say that he cut taxes for people who actually paid taxes). And it’s pretty popular to invoke class warfare… let some of those ‘rich people’ pay the bills.

Now, CBS News is reporting: “Dems Won’t Rule Out Tax Hike On Wealthy”.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are not ruling out raising taxes for the wealthiest people to help pay for tax cuts for middle-income families.

We’ll just have to see how “wealthy” is defined when the dust settles: $500,000 annual family income, $100,000, $75,000, ??? …

I’m not against some fiscal responsibility in Washington. Neither Republicans nor Democrats should be spending with a blank check. But beware, until you hear about the real definition of “wealthy” - you might just find yourself in that group!

              

It took Newsbusters to highlight that a Federal Appeals Court actually *upheld* Indiana’s voter ID law. Of course, I had to read about it there, because there has been almost no coverage elsewhere in the media outside of Indiana.

Georgia’s long-standing struggle over enforcement of enhanced Voter ID rules received significantly more play in the press… and it seems that the last step we were left with was possibly needing to go as far as to amend the state constitution in order to address some of the objections.

It would be interesting to understand how the Indiana law was crafted differently that made it “not too burdensome”. We know that providing state ID’s at no cost and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on education programs was not enough. I’m sure that there are some very interested lawmakers in Atlanta right now.

UPDATE: This is exactly the same scenario that I can see with various communities trying to create ordinances regarding illegal immigrants. Whether it’s Cherokee County, GA or Hazleton, PA or Valley Park, MO, or Escondido, CA, or somewhere new… eventually one of these communities will bear the financial and time burden of navigating the myriad of lawsuits. And when one of these ordinances is eventually judged as sound law, then it will have a cascading effect as it is copied by communities across the country.

              

The new Congress was sworn in and Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker of the House. As the news outlets like the Detroit Free Press noted, this was quite a cause for celebration (”It’s a blessed day. I’m so glad the Republicans are out. Look at the price of gas, man. It’s ridiculous.”) Even John Boehner said “Whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat or an independent, today is a cause for celebration.”

Despite my mild frustration over hearing all of the recycled campaign slogans repeated by the media about how the Democratic Congress is going to champion the middle class, families, and small furry animals — I know that ‘to the victors goes the spoils’… and they should enjoy their honeymoon while it lasts.

One of the post-election dust-ups was over new Representative Keith Ellison’s decision to take the ceremonial photo op posing with a Quran rather than a Bible. I understand the point of Dennis Prager (who did not deserve the villification he got over his comments), but to me it did not seem to be anything to be up in arms about. I am sad to see when tradition is thrown out, but not improved. And while I think Dennis is correct that the Bible has been the unifying piece that really has held the fabric of American culture together, I don’t feel that the Bible’s status is either enhanced or diminshed by forcing Ellison’s choice of accessory for his photo session.

So to this point, I had nothing to say about it.

I knew that it would certainly be mentioned yesterday, given the buzz surrounding the reaction to Prager’s earlier comments. But I was caught by surprise by all of the coverage of Thomas Jefferson’s Quran/Koran/Qur’an being used as the prop. In some way, it was suggested, the use of that book once owned by a founding father somehow put the situation to rest and trumped the opinions of anyone who was against its use.

I was even more surprised to see comments Ellison made about that particular Quran in an interview with MSNBC/Newsweek:

NEWSWEEK: Your swearing in is historic in some senses. How did you come up with the idea of being sworn in with a Qur’an owned by Thomas Jefferson?
Keith Ellison: An individual wrote a letter to the office … It was like, “Wow, isn’t that interesting? Here’s a book that was owned by Thomas Jefferson, a towering figure of American democracy” … Clearly [Jefferson] thought it contained information that he wanted to know about … It just demonstrates that at the very earliest moments of this country, religious tolerance was a principle that one of the Founding Fathers was relying on.

Wow! Never knew that Jefferson had a copy of the Quran, let alone used it’s principles to shape our country.

Ellison also invoked more Jeffersonian approval:

The very foundation of our nation, the authors of our Constitution impressed, is religious freedom, and the use of Jefferson’s Koran shows that the founders not only knew of the Koran but also used it.

Eh?

This is a pretty amazing revelation. And complete poppycock.

An absolute must-read comes from the Independent Conservative, who shreds Ellison’s sound bites about Jefferson’s love of the Quran. I won’t spoil the read, but I thought that I give you at least one treat:

Given Jefferson’s library had religious books from around the world and various times. His owning a Koran does not prove any reverence for Islam any more than his copy of “William King’s Historical Account of the Heathen Gods and Heroes”, which was a popular book of that time, but not regarded as something to revere.

While there is clearly room for any religious belief (including Muslims, Muslim-converts, atheists, or worse) for a member of Congress, and while every one of those members has every right to generate a little publicity for their pet ’cause’… I would be *very* careful before pushing revisionist history about the founding of the country and the importance of the Quran in the formation of America.