The death penalty.

I have supported capital punishment in the past, and support it now, but I still wonder if I am right in my position.

There are times, however, that my first and only thought is, “Kill ‘em.” This is one of those instances:

It was clear from the bruises and other injuries on the little girl’s body that Sunday was not the first time she had been abused, Dauphin County coroner Graham Hetrick told WGAL-TV. He said it was one of the worst cases of child abuse he has ever seen.

Baez, 19, called for an ambulance Sunday and said Johnson had brought the unconscious child to her, limp and wet from an attempt to revive her in a bathtub, a police affidavit said.

Johnson, 26, acknowledged beating the girl with a video game controller but did not say why, police said. Baez said Johnson had abused the girl in the past and that she heard the girl scream after Johnson beat her Sunday, according to the affidavit.

The child’s name was Darisabel Baez. She died from the beating. Her mother heard her screams, and did nothing. This makes me so sad, sick and angry.

If anything, death is to easy for them.

AP 2004: Navy SEAL Michael A. Monsoor on a cold-weather training mission in Kodiak, Alaska.

MA2 Michael Monsoor was the only one who could have escaped the room when a grenade was tossed into it. Instead of running, he leapt upon it, shielding his partners from its blast.

It took his life.

For his heroic sacrifice, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor:

In an East Room ceremony, Bush presented the nation’s highest military honor to Monsoor’s still-grieving parents, Sally and George Monsoor. About 250 guests, including his sister and two brothers, fellow SEALS, other Medal winners, many friends and GOP Sen. John McCain and other members of Congress, looked on quietly.

“The Medal of Honor is awarded for an act of such courage that no one could rightly be expected to undertake it,” Bush said. “Yet those who knew Michael Monsoor were not surprised when he did.”

…

“His teammates liked to laugh about the way his shiny Corvette would leave everybody in the dust,” Bush said. “But deep down, they always knew Mike would never leave anybody behind when it counted.”

A true American hero: Michael Monsoor.

I hate credit cards. I don’t often use the word hate, but when it comes to credit cards, hate is not too strong a word. Most people don’t understand that each time they swipe that little piece of plastic, they’re forging another link in a chain of debt that will continue to drag them down until they are so far mired that it takes a half a lifetime to pay for that pizza they bought on credit. But I digress.

I started out to say that I didn’t think it possible to hate credit cards any more than I already do. But then, I found a Visa application in the mailbox. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. We receive at least one credit application daily. When you don’t carry a card, every company assumes you must be pining for one. This one, however, was “special.”

The Brighter Planet Visa Credit Card with EarthSmart Points, it proclaimed proudly. “A new way to have a positive impact on climate change.” So, just out of morbid curiosity, I opened it. Here’s what it offers me:

Now there’s an easy way to make each of your purchases a little greener. Brighter Planet and Bank of America haver partnered to bring you an innovative new credit card: the Brighter Planet Visa credit card with EarthSmart points. With this card, you can take action against climate change every time you use it for purchases- shopping, getting gas, dining out, traveling, and more.

The Brighter Planet credit card was recently ranked #2 in the top new credit cards by IndexCreditCards.com. Like many credit card reward programs, you’ll earn one point for every dollar you spend in net retail purchases. But unlike the rewards for travel or merchandise offered by most credit card programs, the EarthSmart points you earn with the Brighter Planet credit card will be automatically redeemed on your behalf to help build renewable energy projects (including wind turbines and farm methane) across the country.

You’ll earn 1,000 bonus points after your first transaction to help offset the creation and delivery of your card, and when you sign up for paperless statements, you’ll earn another 1,000 bonus points. And on every purchase you make with the card through December 2008, Bank of America will provide a 50% match in points. So you’ll already be making a difference: 1,000 EarthSmart points is approximately equal to 1 ton of carbon offsets, roughly the same as taking one car off the road for 2,000 miles or powering and heating or cooling your home for 1 month.

While you’re reducing your cabon footprint, you’ll be enjoying Platinum Plus benefits including emergency card replacement, zero liability for fraudulent charges, and easy access to cash at ATMs around the world.

You’ve gotta be kidding me. First of all, if they’re really concerned about helping the planet, stop papering the world with credit card offers that are unsolicited and unappreciated. If you want to make the world a greener place, leave those trees where they are and use the money you’re wasting on printing and postage to plant a few more.

Second, you’re promoting a dependent, spend-it mindset, which is about as far from “helping the earth” as it is possible to get. People who truly live greener aren’t out running up debt at the mall, eating at restaurants, and jet-setting around to need “easy access to cash at ATMs around the world.” Someone who is walking close to the earth is out on the back 40, in a little cabin, with their garden, their milk goats, and their free-range chickens. They aren’t depending on someone else to produce their food and fly it halfway across the world for someone else to cook it before they pull out their Brighter Planet Visa and pile on some more debt.

After doing their best to scare people into believing the world is coming to an end because we dare to drive big cars and consume too much, now they are offering us a way to ease the guilt and fear. Now, the more you consume, the more carbon offsets you earn, thereby saving the world. “Now you can consume all you want and not worry, because we’ve found a way to take your money and make you feel good about it” is what they should have said.

I won’t touch the whole “climate change” issue; if you want to see what I think of that, read one of Duane’s articles, like 10 Reasons to Doubt Global Warming is Man-Made. It is sufficient for me to say I think it’s a bunch of baloney. Just like this credit card, and it’s offer to take my “reward” for using their company, and use it to make their own investments.

Now, if they were offering to invest it for me (which I still wouldn’t do, by the way) that would be a little different. Say, if they were going to invest in wind turbines, and send me a check for my cut of the profits every quarter. That could be considered a reward. But using my money to make more for themselves and trying to make me feel good about it by selling me a story about the world coming to an end if I don’t use their card and help save the planet? Evil, evil, evil.

Apparently there is a code for being a “Retrosexual.” Here’s just a bit of it:

A Retrosexual, no matter what the women insists, PAYS FOR THE DATE.

A Retrosexual opens doors for a lady. Even for the ones that fit that term only because they are female.

A Retrosexual DEALS with IT, be it a flat tire, break-in into your home, or a natural disaster, you DEAL WITH IT.

A Retrosexual not only eats red meat, he often kills it himself.

A Retrosexual doesn’t worry about living to be 90. It’s not how long you live, but how well. If you’re 90 years old and still smoking cigars and drinking, I salute you.

A Retrosexual does not use more hair or skin products than a woman. Women have several supermarket aisles of stuff. Retrosexuals need an endcap (possibly 2 endcaps if you include shaving goods).

A Retrosexual does not dress in clothes from Hot Topic when he’s 30 years old.

A Retrosexual should know how to properly kill stuff (or people) if need be.

This falls under the “Dealing with IT” portion of The Code.

A Retrosexual watches no TV show with “Queer” in the title.

A Retrosexual does not let neighbors screw up rooms in his house on national TV.

A Retrosexual should not give up excessive amounts of manliness for women.

Some is inevitable, but major reinvention of yourself will only lead to you becoming a frou-frou little puss, and in the long run, she ain’t worth it.

A Retrosexual is allowed to seek professional help for major mental stress such as drug/alcohol addiction, death of your entire family in a freak tree chipper accident, favorite sports team being moved to a different city, favorite bird dog expiring, etc. You are NOT allowed to see a shrink because Daddy didn’t pay you enough attention. Daddy was busy DEALING WITH IT. When you screwed up, he DEALT with you.

A Retrosexual will have at least one outfit in his wardrobe designed to conceal himself from prey.

Are they just desperate, or have they already used everything else to scare the bejeezus out of people? Now scientists are clamoring about the future cost of beer:

Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said climate change likely will cause a decline in the production of malting barley in parts of New Zealand and Australia. Malting barley is a key ingedient of beer.

“It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up,” Salinger told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention.

Now that’s funny. Pubs without beer. Stop it! I can’t type when I am laughing like this.

These guys want me to believe that in thirty years, there will be a shortage on barley. Allow me to show you what we were being told thirty years ago:

That was the headline on the front page of the New York Times in 1975.

Here’s the Times’ headline in 1933:

And just nine years before that, in 1924:

But now, we are supposed to worry about our beer, because once again, the climate is changing. Pardon me if I don’t run for the hills in outright panic.

I know for a fact that Sean Hannity has talked about this, and I assume that Mark Levin has, along with Rush and the others. Finally the main stram media is catching up to them. It took them some time to catch up on the Jeremiah Wright issue, and there are rumblings they are now talking about Barack’s mentor, Frank:

In Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, he mentions a friend named Frank. He read poetry with this friend and received advice from this knowledgeable man. On the surface it may seem harmless, but it turns out this friend is Frank Marshall Davis who is a member of the Communist Party.

Frank was not just a member. He was accused by the Congressional Un-American Activities Committee to be involved with several communist-front organizations.

A little more on Frank Marshall Davis, from Accuracy in Media, two months ago:

The communists knew who “Frank” was, and they know who Obama is. In fact, one academic who travels in communist circles understands the significance of the Davis-Obama relationship.

Professor Gerald Horne, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, talked about it during a speech last March at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University. The remarks are posted online under the headline, “Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party.”

Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, who moved to Honolulu from Kansas in 1948 “at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson,” came into contact with Barack Obama and his family and became the young man’s mentor, influencing Obama’s sense of identity and career moves. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.

As Horne describes it, Davis “befriended” a “Euro-American family” that had “migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago.”

It was in Chicago that Obama became a “community organizer” and came into contact with more far-left political forces, including the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson.

Maybe when they get done with this story, the main stream media will recognize the name William Ayers. The alternative media has only been talking about him for about a year now.

There was a time that I thought Barack would be the tougher opponent for McCain than Hillary would be. Now I wonder if either of them can beat him in November.

Parents, there is a book and an author I want to bring to your attention. John Hawkins over at Right Wing News interviews Dawn Eden, the author of The Thrill of the Chaste.

The book sounds like a great addition to a parents library for later use when talking with your children about sex and morality. Here’s a bit of the interview:

Well obviously, there are a lot of people who are having premarital sex and still manage to get married. Why would you say being chaste is better than going that route? What would you say to them if they said to you, “I think I can have premarital sex and I’ll still get married.” What would you tell them about why they should be chaste?

I would say it’s better to be chaste because you’re learning how to really love and you’re learning how to give out your whole self and not just parcel out parts of yourself. What I’m learning is how to give my heart, which is the most important part of me. You don’t have to learn how to give your body. Nature just does that. But, giving your heart is something one can learn how to do better and better over the course of a lifetime… But, the more you learn to do it before you’re married, the happier your marriage is going to be.

I know you describe being chaste as rebellious, which is the opposite of what a lot of people probably think. Talk about that a little bit. What makes that so? Why is being chaste more rebellious than having premarital sex?

It’s really the most countercultural action that anyone can take in today’s culture. …Our culture teaches us to measure ourselves and one another by what physical qualities we have that can attract others. So, when you’re chaste, you’re off the market in that sense and you demand to be taken seriously for what’s inside of you and not what’s on the outside. So, it is very radical in the best way.

Check out the rest here.

And officials say if he hadn’t acted when he did, the students’ injuries would have been much worse:

Rolling downhill in a bus with his screaming classmates and no driver, a fast-acting 11-year-old jumped behind the wheel Monday and steered the bus into a pillar, stopping it from careening out of control.

The bus sits against a pillar it hit after an 11-year-old student took the wheel as it began to roll.

Some children jumped out the side door and rolled into the street. The driver, Michael Weir, had stopped for fuel and was in the station’s restroom when the bus started to roll with 27 children aboard.

Fifteen children suffered minor injuries and were treated at hospitals and released. The boy who stopped the bus likely saved the children from worse injuries, authorities said.

“This kid did some quick thinking,” said Larry Gray, a fire department spokesman.

(Source)

First thing I thought was, “Why is he stopping for gas when he is driving kids?” I guess that is not only unusual but illegal:

State law prohibits bus drivers from leaving their vehicles at any time when students are on board and drivers are not allowed to stop for gas during their route, said Scott Blake, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education.

Yet another headline that you will not see associated with homeschooling.