Bruce Walker in American Thinker writes how the Democratic party has become totally dominated by lawyers and how this affects the political scene. The article, The Lawyer’s Party .
excerpts:
The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers’ Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer and so is his wife Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate.) Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Benson, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.
The Lawyers’ Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And so we have seen the procession of official enemies in the eyes of the Lawyers’ Party grow. Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
Tips to Bill Hudgens for pointing me to the article.
CBS’s 60 minutes ran an informative piece on the Israeli Airforce, the IAF.
Unlike other nations where the airforce fighter pilots are selected from a group of volunteers,the IAF get first dibs from the entire pool of Israeli draftees. Only 1 in 40 who are selected make it through fighter training. In Israel these selectees are rock stars.
Israel responds to $50 home made rockets fired from Gaza with $50,000 rockets that are precision guided to avoid civilian casualties. Even under these conditions the pilots spoke of the moral dilemmma of having to kill civilians to hit their targets. I doubt that any moral dilemma is faced by the Hamas who willingly fires on civilian targets.
But the IAF pilots are ordinary citizens who if not for their situation would be school teachers, postmen, truck drivers, shop keepers and doctors or nurses: true citizen soldiers. They remind me of what our WWII forces must have been like: ordinary citizens who if needed would become efficient trained killers.
The broadcast noted a framed picture given to pilots of IAF jets flying over Auschwitz. The message is clear; that Israel can not and will not entrust its security to anyone but themselves. All Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) tour Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, as the final step in their training. The message is clear: this is what happens if you lose. They are a motivated fighting force.
During my two recent trips to Israel I still observed that the Israelis are very American in their culture and in their lives. Americans, Jewish or not, would feel at home there.
tips to Deborah Adler for alerting me to the broadcast
In an interesting article in American Thinker Selwyn Duke proposes that modern psychology substitues ‘disorders’ for sins, and replaces religious values with psychologial theories that remove the human’s repsonsibility for his own actions.
The article in full.
an excerpt:
The danger of this may be obvious. I cannot prove to you that God and, therefore, Truth and true morality exist; I cannot show you a soul in a Petri dish. But this is undeniable: If you convince people they’re not responsible for their actions, you’ve set the stage for great evil to occur, as they will be able to justify anything suiting their fancy.
As to this, I recently read about psychiatrists who are labeling the desire to engage in excessive text messaging a mental disorder. Then there is “Muscle Dysmorphia,” or the obsessive belief that one isn’t muscular enough; “celebriphilia,” the strong desire for amorous relations with a celebrity; “Intermittent Explosive Disorder,” or road rage; “Sibling Rivalry Disorder”; “Mathematics Disorder”; “Caffeine Related Disorder”; and “Expressive Writing disorder,” to cite just a handful of the hundreds of made-up conditions in the DSM. And every time a new variety is conjured up, psychology’s market and earning potential increases. I have to wonder, though, what do they call the obsession with labeling behaviors mental disorders? Some might call it greed.
What future could a person have with an “illusion,” even the very attractive one that Freud seemed to believe was the opiate of the masses? Yet, with over 20 million Americans, 40 percent of college students and 1 out of 9 schoolchildren on psychiatrist-prescribed psychoactive drugs, one is left to wonder what realm is truly most deserving of that title.
HKO note- it was Karl Marx, not Freud who referred to religion as the ‘opiate of the masses.’
From Townhall.com – Bitter, Clingy Gun Owners of America By Doug Giles The article in full.
1. In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
2. In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
3. Germany established gun control in 1938, and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
4. China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated
5. Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
6. Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
7. Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
8. Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control: 56 million.
As the old adage goes: “With guns, we are citizens. Without them, we are subjects.” Therefore, I’ll cling to my gun because I really enjoy being a free bird and truly hate kissing someone else’s backside, but that’s just me.
My reluctance to accept the environmental doomsday scenarios is just that so many of such scares for centuries have been proven wrong. Scare and fear sells well and just gets more print than it merits.
Our environment does have problems that require attention but it is mostly likely local problems addressed that should be addressed at local levels and not solved by national and global command and control policies. The economics of such solutions is just too complicated to consider the possible outcomes.
For example the use of ethanol to substitute for gasoline is contributing to a crisis in the cost and availability of food.
And now those ‘bioplastics’ made to substitute for oil based plastics is causing a similar unforseen problem. Not only is it using valuable food resources for its production, it is causing the release of elevated methane level, “a greenhouse gas 23 times mor epowerful than carbon monoxide”, from our landfills. See the story from the Guardian.
Businesses have spent millions to “go green” and they will run into such dilemmas. It reminds me of a children’s pajama manufacturer who was mandated to put a flame retardant in the fabric and was then sued because the flame retardant was considered a carcinogenic substance.
