Front page Archive Why Arlen? Arlen is the TV home of "King of the Hill." It's a small conservative town that is threatened with ruination on a regular basis by twig boys, enviro wackos, diversity nuts, "PC" police and other ivory tower liberals. I like to think of Arlen as a metaphor for this here great nation of ours.

Saturday, June 21, 2003 Posted 7:41 AM by Hank ANTI-PLEDGE DAD: YOUR FIFTEEN MINUTES ARE ALMOST UP Michael Newdow, the California man who challenged the Pledge on behalf of his public school student daughter--and who got the infamously liberal Ninth Circuit to declare the Pledge unconstitution--now wants to defend himself in the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the Legal Times: In a filing with the high court later this week, Newdow says, he plans to make it clear that he wants to take on the Supreme Court both pro se and pro hac vice -- joining the extremely small club of high court advocates who are not members of the Supreme Court bar but who argue their own cases nonetheless. **** "I think I am highly qualified to argue this case. There is no one who knows this case better than me," says Newdow, who notes that he has written every brief and argued every minute of his case so far. "There may be people who know the legal issues better, but I needed to get an atheist to argue this. I want me." The article also reports that this is not sitting too well with Nedrow's fellow liberals: Newdow's insistence about pressing his own case before the Supreme Court is causing discomfort among some of his natural allies.**** Both the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way are staying on the sidelines **** "He's in over his head, but he won't let anyone else take it over," says one civil liberties activist who is monitoring the case. "A lot of us would breathe a sigh of relief if the case would just go away. It's a no-win situation." Furthermore, according to the article, Nedrow is not even the girl's custodial parent, and has only limited visitation with her. Solicitor General Theodore Olson's brief challenges Newdow's standing in the case, because he is the noncustodial parent of his daughter. When asked about the standing issue in a phone interview, Newdow angrily launched into an indictment of the "insane and grossly unconstitutional family law system" that resulted in his loss of custody. "I am a terrific father, and yet I am the only person in the world who is forbidden to see her -- except every two weeks." Based on all of this. You have to wonder: is this case about his daughter? Or about him? In fact, is it even about a Constitutional principle? It seems to me that, if Nedrow really wanted to win this case before the High Court, he would be accepting help from professional attorney, the ACLU and other liberal groups that he has driven away. Instead, it seems, he is trying to make this case about himself. Someone should tell this guy there are better ways to get notoriety, especially since the Supreme Court will most likely rule against him. Maybe he should audition for a new reality show: When Idiots Attack. Thursday, June 19, 2003 Posted 7:20 PM by Hank SHARPTON EATS HIS "GREENS"? With the 2004 Presidential race hurtling towards us like a comet in a 1950s "b"movie, the left wing political parties of America, both major and minor, are attempting to find their standard bearers to take on the currently still popular President Bush. One such party is, of course, the Green Party, home to aging hippies who couldn't bother to shed their birkenstocks and young so-called anarchists who strangely enough call for more government intervention in their own lives. In 2000, the Greens ran Ralph Nader, professional scold, who, some say, was famous enough to draw enough votes away from the equally scolding Al Gore to allow President Bush to get elected. With the next election rolling around, however, there is still a question of whether or not the Greens will get Nader to run again. After all, Nader probably needs time to manage his "vast personal fortune" before venturing out again to attack the rich as evil. Therefore, the Green party is out looking for a new presidential candidate. And one potential candidate hails from Ithaca, the City of Evil. As reported in the Ithaca Times:Paul Glover, Ithaca's most well-known activist, has been tapped as a potential candidate for the Green Party to run in the 2004 presidential election [along with] party consul David Cobb, and former Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney. In support for a Green candidacy, Glover cites what he sees as the inability of the Democrat party to nominate a sufficiently "progressive" candidate, bemoaning, at his website, the fact that "Sharpton will raise important issues but will be marginalized by ...establishment...Democrats" In other words, one of the three people being most seriously considered, after Nader, as the Green Party's presidential candidate, is expressing admiration for the ideas of a known, thug, racist and anti-Semite. Sharpton first came to prominence (or notoriety) in 1987 as one of the men involved in the Tawana Brawleyhoax. For those who have forgotten, Brawley, a then-fifteen-year-old black girl, claimed a gang of white law enforcement officers had abducted and raped her, setting off a national furor over alleged racism. Later, however, her story was determined by a grand jury to be hoax. Furthermore, one of the men accused by Sharpton sued him and the others for libel. The jury found Sharpton liable for making "false and defamatory statements" about the matter. One of Sharpton's co-defendants, attorney C. Vernon Mason, "was disbarred in 1995 for price gouging, theft and abandoning clients." That was not the end of Sharpton's racial fear-mongering, however. During New York’s 1991 Crown Heights riots Sharpton reportedly said, “Don’t just talk about the jeweler [whose store was burned] on Utica. Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here.” Furthermore, as recently as eight years ago Sharpton: "marched besides picketers protesting a Jewish-owned business in Harlem as they shouted 'blood-sucking Jews' and 'Jew bastards.' That little exercise in brotherhood resulted in eight deaths" Nice guy, huh? Apparently, one of the potential national standard bearers of the Green party thinks so. Some people might say, "well, that's bad, but what makes the Greens any worse than the democratic party? They're always cozying up to Sharpton too." I'll tell you what. The Democrats are forced to deal with Sharpton because, right or wrong, they allowed him to insinuate himself in their party. Now he's there, stinking up the already putrid air of the left wing. Any other party, however, does not have Sharpton. They don't have to deal with him. And they shouldn't deal with him. But one of their "leaders," the same one who is trying to distance his party from the Democrats is expressing admiration for the fact that Sharpton espouses the same ideas the Green Party does. The fact that one of the only persons who, by the left's own admission, seems able to sell their ideas is racist ought to give the left pause as to whether those ideas are worth selling Thursday, June 05, 2003 Posted 8:41 AM by Hank REPUBLICAN SEN. HONORS AN "ENEMY" No wonder Republicans sometimes feel like we are fighting an uphill battle for the hearts and minds of America. It's hard not to feel that way when some of our own are actually honoring the very people on the left who seek to defeat us. Witness this dispatch from today's Ithaca Journal: ITHACA -- State Senator John R. Kuhl Jr., R-53rd District, recognized three women, including two from Tompkins County, in the New York State Senate's sixth annual "Women of Distinction" program at an awards ceremony in Albany. This year's honorees [included] Asma Barlas ...of Ithaca. Barlas is the associate professor and chair of the department of politics and the former director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity at Ithaca College. **** Barlas is virulantly Anti-Republican, Anti-American and appears to be an Anti-Semite. Shortly after September 11, Barlas penned a column for the Ithaca College Alumni magazine in which she proclaimed that people like Osama bin Laden, as well as all sorts of "moderates" hate America because America's foreign policy since World War II has been one that "seeks control over the entire world by any means necessary." Furthermore, Barlas said, "people everywhere are sick and tired" of our "political economy based on their systematic abuse, exploitation, expropriation, and degradation." Responding to a study that found Ithaca college "plagued by liberal bias," Barlas accused Republicans of trying to "stamp out diversity in the name of diversity" and made derogatory comments towards "conservative white male[s]." In addition, she accused the Bush administration of conducting "unilateral, unprovoked, and unlawful act of aggression" against Iraq, and surely delighted anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists everywhere by parroting the lie that war against Iraq was "promoted 'by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals ... people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history'." To be blunt, Kuhl might have better honored one of the Dixie Chicks, or even Susan Sarandon. His recognition of this venonmous toad of a woman as a "woman of distinction" demonstrates his complete incompetence as a Republican Senator and his total inability to represent the views of his conservative Upstate New York Constituency. He should step down immediately. Tuesday, June 03, 2003 Posted 4:11 PM by Hank LIVING WAGE: THE CONSERVATIVE'S FRIEND? It recently occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the folks on the left that bleat and bray about the need for a “living wage” have done those of us on “the right” a favor. Now, if you’re like me, you think the whole living wage argument is just another example of folks on the left not realizing that money doesn’t appear out of nowhere. The living wage folks ignore that raising salaries for people raises costs of doing business. That raises prices. And when the employees getting the raises are government (or school) employees, it raises taxes. All of which raises the cost of living. Which means the folks who got the raise aren’t any more ahead than they were in the first place. Still, the living wage theory may, just may, have its uses for a conservative. This thought occurred to me after I was forced (uh, I mean, requested) by my wife (who, as always, will be referred to as “Peggy” for the sake of anonymity) to come into Ithaca, the City of Evil and attend a dinner event being thrown at the home of one of her fellow Cornell employees. Other than myself, I think everyone there was a Cornell employee. In fact, most of them were professors. Once Peggy realized where the dinner conversations were going she pulled me aside and begged me to keep my opinions to myself. First of all, Peggy is my no means as conservative as me to begin with (she was born a Catholic in Boston; her parents probably had a picture of Kennedy next to the statue of Jesus in the bedroom). Second, she needs to work with these people and, as I think we all know, “tolerance” in Ithaca never includes tolerance towards conservatives. As you might expect, in a room full of college professors, the dinner conversation was dominated by two basic areas. The first was their lifestyles. I have to admit, these folks live pretty good. They travel all over the world. They live in what had to be $200,000-plus houses. They drive high end cars (mostly Volvos). They attend various cultural events. Their kids want for nothing. The second was various recitations of the standard issue liberal themes. One of which was, of course, redistribution of wealth, and how the rich don’t pay their “fair share.” Now, as always, something about this didn’t seem to make sense to me. But it didn’t hit me right away. To be frank, since I couldn’t say anything back, I was trying not to listen too hard. After all, I was trying to digest my food and having to listen to leftists drone on isn’t the most conducive situation for doing so. Later, however, it hit me just how hypocritical and foolish you could make these people look when they start whining about wealth redistribution. Now, at this point, you might be asking “but what does this have to do with why we should thank the folks who call for a living wage?” I’ll tell you what. According to the Ithaca Times (and as a good liberal paper, they should know), “‘Living Wage’” is the name for a weekly paycheck that just covers expenses - rent, transportation, food, health care, recreation and entertainment, a small amount of savings, taxes, and some miscellaneous costs.” In other words, a living wage is the basic amount of money a person needs to survive. Living wage estimates vary depending on the local cost of living, but in Ithaca, the Alternative Federal Credit Union (an “enlighted” financial institution) has estimated it should be $8.68 an hour for a 40-hour workweek. In other words, to get by in Ithaca, a person only needs to make $18,060.00 per year. Call me crazy, but I have a distinct feeling that the average Cornell professor, living in a $200,000 home, driving a $40,000 foreign car, vacationing all over the world, and giving his or her kid anything they want, probably makes a whole lot more than that $18,060.00. So, the next time you hear some leftist college professor (or similarly well off liberal) go on about how we need to redistribute wealth, ask them what they think of the “living wage” concept. Odds are that they will be 100% in favor of it. And ask them if it’s true that the living wage is the basic amount that a person needs to survive. Again, the odds are that they’ll agree. They might even half close their eyes and nod sagely, thinking that they are starting to “enlighten” you. Then say, “and in Ithaca, that’s probably–let’s be generous here– $20,000.00"? Again, more sage nodding. Possibly, they’ll add “Maybe even more.” Once they admit this (And how could they not? After all, they don’t want to start arguing against the living wage, do they?), point out to them: “Well, you obviously make A LOT more than that. So you obviously make MUCH more than is needed to survive. If you really wanted to redistribute wealth, shouldn’t you take every dime of your salary over that living wage and donate it to the poor? Instead of spending it on expensive cars, trips and houses?” “If you’re not doing that, aren’t you being greedy? Aren’t you being a hypocrite? If you’re not part of the solution, aren’t you part of the problem?!?” Once you throw that “classic” sixties slogan back at them, they should freeze like suburban deer looking into a set of headlights. Granted, they are NEVER going to admit to being wrong. Or even of being a hypocrite. But, hopefully, your line of reasoning has stunned them enough to stop talking for a while. And sometimes, getting a liberal to “shut up” is the best you can hope for. Home