The headline for this AP story about a debate between South Dakota’s governor candidates reads “Candidates for SD governor disagree on environment.” Except, when you read the article:

HURON, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota’s candidates for governor clashed over environmental issues Saturday, with Democrat Scott Heidepriem saying the governor hasn’t done enough to promote renewable energy and Republican Dennis Daugaard claiming huge growth in the industry.

There’s no disagreement about the environment here. Both candidates believe in the global warming hoax, and both believe that they need to dump lots and lots of taxpayer dollars onto nebulous “green energy” schemes.

The only disagreement is the degree of the government largess, I guess.

And, really, this seems like a microcosm for the national “green energy” debate. We seem to have abandoned any notion that research, development and innovation in the energy markets should be driven by private investment.

In the future, judging from the status quo, all energy development and innovation will be driven not by private capital flowing to the prospects most likely to efficiently and effectively satisfy public demand but rather by the decisions of politicians whose favor will flow to the prospects and projects with the best lobbyists.

Remember how, in the wake of 9/11 when our security authorities were telling Americans to be on the look out for suspicious people? And CAIR twisted that into a warning to be on the lookout for suspicious Muslims and accused/sued the government for racial profiling?

Well, here’s CAIR warning Muslims to be on the lookout for suspicious non-Muslims looking to commit hate crimes around mosques on the anniversary of 9/11.

“We’re telling everyone to keep their eyes open and report anything suspicious to authorities and call us,” said Ramzy Kilic of the Tampa, Fla., chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

NEW YORK (AP) — American Muslims are boosting security at mosques, seeking help from leaders of other faiths and airing ads underscoring their loyalty to the United States – all ahead of a 9/11 anniversary they fear could bring more trouble for their communities.

Their goal is not only to protect Muslims, but also to prevent them from retaliating if provoked. One Sept. 11 protest in New York against the proposed mosque near ground zero is expected to feature Geert Wilders, the aggressively anti-Islam Dutch lawmaker. The same day in Gainesville, Fla., the Dove World Outreach Center plans to burn copies of the Quran.

“We can expect crazy people out there will do things, but we don’t want to create a hysteria,” among Muslims, said Victor Begg of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan. “Americans, in general, they support pluralism. It’s just that there’s a lot of misinformation out there that has created confusion.”

The ACLU will be filing suit shortly, I’m sure.

(via Dan Riehl)

This cynical double-speak from US Senate candidate Tracy Potter (who is actually polling worse against John Hoeven than national joke candidate Alvin Greene is polling against Senator Jim DeMint in South Carolina) made me chuckle:

BISMARCK — Reductions in military spending, including large cuts in the size of the U.S. Army, are necessary to reduce the federal budget, North Dakota Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tracy Potter said Friday.

Potter said he did not believe military spending cuts would need to include closing one or both of North Dakota’s U.S. Air Force bases in Minot and Grand Forks.

“I believe that our nation will be able to sustain a much smaller standing army than it has today and still be powerful,” Potter said. “This is where savings can come, and they have to.”

This reminds me of the “fiscal conservatives” and “deficit hawks” who attack national deficit spending, but then get red in the face defending the federal earmark for the local golf course. Because that spending is a-ok, right?

That’s a big part of what’s wrong with politics in America. Everyone wants fiscally responsible government, but nobody wants fiscal responsibility at the expense of their pet projects.

Anyway, I actually agree with Potter in so far as reductions in our military goes. Our military is still stationed throughout the world as if we were facing WWII/Cold War era threats. Not only does our global deployment not realize more modern threat sources, it doesn’t take into account the capabilities of modern military technology.

Our military could be cheaper, and more efficient, after a radical realignment. Unfortunately, though our military is one of the few things our federal government is doing that it should be doing it operates a lot like even the most pointless, waste-of-space bureaucracy in that a lot of times it wants to grow just for the sake of growing. And it never, ever wants to be downsized even if that downsizing could make it more effective.

And military leadership is often the worst sort of bureaucrat. They argue endlessly for more funding, and more power, just like other bureaucrats except in their case the politicians are usually afraid to take them on. Because they use our national security like a trump card for any challenge to their spending.

Though if we want to talk about federal spending problems, the military is about the worst of our worries. In 2007 global military spending, meaning all the spending on the military and wars in all the world including the United States, hit about $1.2 trillion. Or roughly $120 billion less than what America spent on entitlements in a single year in 2005.

If we want to get federal spending under control, we need to focus on the entitlements.

A sad commentary in a nation where the federal government is running over $1 trillion in deficits annually, and some 44 states are running deficits of their own.

Who are America’s fastest-growing class of millionaires? They are police officers, firefighters, teachers and federal bureaucrats, who, unless things change drastically, will be paid something near their full salaries every year–until death–after retiring in their mid-50s. That is equivalent to a retirement sum worth millions of dollars.

The whole thing is worth a read.

In a lot of ways, these government jobs and the domestic auto industry are in situations that aren’t at all dissimilar. The auto worker unions drove the auto companies to bankruptcy with ridiculous labor contracts. The government worker unions have done the same thing, except Big Government, unlike Big Auto, has the capacity to deficit spend endlessly and print more money when needed.

How The Smartest Man In The World Got Rolled By Wall Street

Our distracted commander in chief -Krauthammer

Allen West Ad: “This is What America is All About” – Video

Why Sen. Barbara Boxer will lose to Carly Fiorina -Politico

Obama’s backdoor gun ban: Government is blocking sale of historic weapons

Obama Could Use Some Clintonesque Salesmanship

Two Rallies in Washington DC One Honored Dr. King, The Other Spread Divisiveness

Friday Night Babe: Gloria Velez

Congresswoman Violated Nepotism Rules, Funneled Thousands to Family and Friends
“Drain the swamp“, anyone?

Things the U.S. government could do without

TOTUS Malfunction

So, The Wage Gap IS True. Only, It’s Men Who Earn Less

Vintage Babe of the Week: Gina Lollobrigida

Gloria Winters, Perky Star of Wholesome ‘Sky King’, Dies

Women of PETA XXII

No surprise here: More than half of Britain’s wind farms have been built where there is not enough wind because of generous government

Photo Essay: When It’s Okay to Drop the F-Bomb

“You Picked a Fine Time to Lead Us, Barack”

Use the comments as an open thread on any of these topics.

Cross posted at Proof Positive

Remember when we were being told by the Obama administration and its apologists in the media that GM had repaid its government loans? That may have been true to a point, but those loans were paid off with bailout money and we taxpayers are still the company’s majority stockholder.

And now, because we’re the company’s majority stockholder, we’re set to take a big loss on the company’s IPO:

NEW YORK/DETROIT (Reuters) – The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co in the first offering of the automaker’s stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said.

Subsequent offerings of the government’s holdings may be profitable depending on how investors trade the newly listed stock, the sources said.

But the question of whether taxpayers are ultimately made whole on GM’s $50 billion bailout could be left open for years, the people said.

It could take more than three years for the Treasury to sell down its remaining stake in GM after the IPO, one person said. That would push a final accounting into the next presidential term.

Just so we’re clear, General Motors is set to be Government Motors for years to come. Which is ridiculous not only from a fiscal standpoint (our federal government is bankrupt and has no business owning car companies) but from a regulatory standpoint too.

Our federal government is in charge of regulating a domestic auto industry in which it also owns the largest player. Our federal government is in charge of regulating labor relations in an auto industry in which it also owns the largest domestic player. These are huge conflicts of interest, and they should be eliminated.

We should never have bailed out General Motors. The company should have been allowed to go into bankruptcy and either restructure or go out of business, just like companies do all the time in the American economy. Instead we put the company on tax-subsidized life support to keep it alive as a host body for the union parasites that infest it.

Our country was founded upon the notion of equality among the people. All men are created equal. All men are endowed with certain unalienable rights. All American citizens are guaranteed equal protection under the law.

It’s something we’ve struggled with as a nation. Even as giants of liberty such as Madison, Jefferson and Washington were laying down the foundations of our nation, they owned slaves. Women weren’t enfranchised with voting rights until the 20th century. Our nation is guilty of many atrocities committed against the Indian population of this continent.

Wounded Knee. The Trail of Tears. These are some of the most shameful chapters of our nation’s history, but the shame continues to this very day. While it may not rise to the level of physical suffering and outright murder, I believe that our nation’s reservation system and the unequal brand of law and justice that has cropped up around it is every bit as shameful and embarrassing as though previous horrors.

What I’m talking about, in part, is this. Law enforcement authorities are having a horrible time trying to prosecute criminals and protect the victims of crime because how individuals are prosecuted is based on whether or not they’re an Indian. If you meet the definition of being an Indian, you’re prosecuted one way. If you’re not, you’re prosecuted another way.

That, in and of itself, is fundamentally unfair. After all, what other racial group in America gets that sort of treatment under the law? What’s more, it’s not even beneficial to the Indians themselves. Often the “Byzantine” (to use the word Senator Byron Dorgan deploys to describe it) maze of tribal and federal law delays justice and often allows the perpetrators of crimes to escape with light punishment or no punishment at all.

Which is why we need to end the reservations. End the notion of “sovereign” tribes. I’ve said this before, and actually got myself banished from the Turtle Mountain reservation here in North Dakota for writing about it. I realize that the Indians have a long history of pain and suffering at the hands of the American government, but we aren’t doing them any favors by perpetuating this legal anachronism. In fact, the only people benefiting from it are the politicians (both tribal and non-tribal) who game it for any number of reasons from getting rich on legal gambling to just plain old vote buying.

The reservations were never created to help the Indians. They were created to move the Indians out of the way of the pioneers and westward expansion. Now we’re compounding that original raw deal by pretending as though treating the Indians as something other than your basic American citizen is helping them.

The American Indian has a proud history and rich culture that can and should be preserved. Even in modern times they’ve a legacy of contribution to the greatness of our country, from service in the military to their help in building our great cities. But the only people the reservation system is helping are the politicians and victim pimps who are the loudest voices for perpetuating it.

We’ve turned these tribes, these proud people, into perpetual victims and that’s wrong.

Dependence upon the government doesn’t help people.

Rory Reid, son of Harry Reid, dropped his last name from his campaign advertising. Bumper stickers, lawn signs all say “Rory -2010″. Having an unpopular, weaselly dimbulb for a father doesn’t go a long way to help you in a Nevada campaign!

Latest Rasmussen polls show Reid, er, Rory losing to the Republican candidate 33 to 58%.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds Sandoval receiving 58% of the vote to Reid’s 33%. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, while seven percent (7%) are not sure.

Sandoval, a former federal judge and state attorney general, has consistently held a modest lead over Reid, son of Senate House Majority Leader Harry Reid. In surveys dating back to early February, support for Sandoval has ranged from 45% to 58%. In those same surveys, Reid has earned anywhere from 31% to 40% of the vote. Early last month, Sandoval led Reid 52% – 36%.

So, regardless whether or not his (in)famous father is bounced in November, there apparently won’t be a second generation of Reids to kick around!

Cross posted at Proof Positive

Not as bad as 9/11. Pretty damn awful, but not that bad.

From the Washington Post:

President Obama’s new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it’s not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama.

Dan Riehl: “Even The WH Rug Needs A Teleprompter.”