Liberty and Justice for All!

My mom once taught me that you should never give in to whining children. When you so so, you teach them the lesson that they will always be able to get what they want if they whine enough.

The people protesting against the building of the Cultural Center two blocks away from “ground zero” are acting like spoiled childish whining babies. The absolute worst thing that we could do is give in to them and allow them to get their way. That will just encourage them to continue to act that way. For their own good, we need to ignore the whining babies.

Here is a map of the site of the proposed Cordoba House. (Not a mosque, but a cultural center that will include a place to pray.)

Here is a map of an existing Mosque in New York City.  It is called Masjid Manhattan.

Notice something? Masjid Manhattan is 2 blocks away from the site of the proposed Cordoba House. Now, if you oppose the building of the Cordoba House now that you know that an existing mosque is just two blocks away… I really have to question your intelligence.

Well would you look at that!

After all the nay saying and doom and gloom that people tried to have us believe that if a moratorium was put in place that the companies would just get up and leave and never come back…

Despite uncertainty about when the federal moratorium on deepwater oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico may be lifted, drilling companies say they are readying to return to work, maintaining their full complement of rig workers at full pay, and making improvements in their rigs to meet new federal safety standards required by the Interior Department.

and

The remarks by Newman and Williams and the assessment of industry representatives, indicate that, despite concerns that the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by the Obama administration would cost rig workers their jobs and send rigs en masse to distant shores in search of work, so far that is not the case.

So it seems, the moratorium has not caused most of the companies drilling in deep water to leave and that in the short term during the moratorium, those companies are working to improve the quality of their disaster prevention techniques (exactly what the moratorium was supposed to do). We have the BP money that was set aside to pay those who lost work on those rigs and to also potentially help those whose jobs including supporting those rigs as well.

Seems as if all the chicken little politicians, like David Vitter and Bobby Jindal, have absolutely no idea what they are talking about when it comes to their criticism of President Obama and his successful moratorium plan.

The punditry commenting about these investigations into Waters and Rangel are all backwards and crazy on what party should be suffering by this.

See, when Tom Delay had his ethics scandal, the Republicans voted to weaken ethics rules to protect Delay. Our Governor, Bobby Jindal, was one of those Republicans who voted to weaken those House ethics standards.

When Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters are accused of unethical behavior, the Democrats bring ethical charges forward and pursue them.

If the DNC, Obama, and anyone else on the left had proper wordsmiths, they would be showing the differences between the parties and how they react when one of their own is accused of ethical problems.

Those Democrats and/or Liberals who do not embrace these ethics investigations, and who instead claim that there is some sort of racist witch hunt going on, are really missing the boat.

There was a lot of campaigning going on by members of the left who wanted to make sure that Fox News did not get the seat previously held by Helen Thomas. They wanted NPR to get the seat.

They partially succeeded because the AP moved to that seat from their previous front row position. However, Fox News then got the old AP seat that is in the front row.

Now, some liberals may wonder what is going on with this and why the White House would reward Fox News for their biased “journalism”. I have no problem with Fox getting the seat and here is why. By putting them closer and perhaps giving them more of an opportunity to ask questions because they are in the front row, the White House is giving Fox News just enough rope to hang themselves.

Target is running a commercial featuring the song “Free To Be… You and Me“. It can be seen here:

Target makes political contributions to conservative groups that support candidates who oppose equality for people who are homosexual.

I guess they missed the meaning of the song when choosing it for their ad.

Why is it that when Democrats bring up President Bush that some conservatives will be critical of them for looking towards the past and then those same conservatives will, in their very next breath, compare Obama to Hitler?Just sayin…

In your ranting today about how you “understand” how President Obama doesn’t like oil companies, you are uninformed. President Obama, previous to this spill, had proposed increasing drilling as part of our energy policy.The moratorium is not to punish oil companies but to make sure that the people of the gulf coast are safe from their operations.Sorry you don’t “get that”. Perhaps selecting you as Lt. Governor was another one of Jindal’s wrong decisions.

Now that Senator Byrd has been replaced, the Democrats have the votes (along with the two Senators form Maine) to pass an extension of unemployment benefits.

This is, of course, good for people who are currently unemployed and cannot find a new job in a down economy.

It does have a side effect though. For those who do not know, the unemployment rate is calculated by using the “workforce” as a group of all those people who are working and those who are actively looking for a job. How do they determine who is actively looking for a job? They count those on unemployment. So adding those who are working and those who are unemployed makes the workforce, and the unemployment rate is the percentage of all those people who are collecting unemployment.

So the side effect of extending unemployment is that it extends the amount of time that people would still be counted in the workforce. Had the Democrats not passed any unemployment extensions, the unemployment rate would be much lower. This, of course, doesn’t mean that there would be more people with jobs. It would just mean that there would be more jobless people who are not counted.

So keep that in mind when people are critical of Obama for having a higher unemployment rate than we would have under a Republican Congress and President. The reason is not because the Republican policies are better. The reason is because the Republicans would make sure that less jobless people are included as part of the workforce.

Starting today and through the end of the week I am subbing in for David Gereighty on GT morning.

Tomorrow (Tuesday the 20th for those reading this on Facebook, just in case they take forever to upload the feed) the guest will be Dr. Len Bahr, an expert on the gulf. You should read previous blog entries to see some of what he has written about Louisiana, the gulf, and the sand berms.

So tune in between 7am and 8am on 1560 AM WSLA in New Orleans or 1590 KKAY in Baton Rouge (or streaming on the GT Morning website).