Prices of oil rising, enriching terrorist states, making us more insecure and dependent on foreign countries. At least 20% of the price is caused by speculators on the futures market. Seems to me something could be done to alleviate this problem. Hillary made hers on cattle futures. She may even be involved in oil futures. Wouldn’t put it past her! A lot of the problems in the Middle East are caused by their oil. Imagine if we had drilled for oil in ANWR and off the continental shelf, and we had a surplus – no more oil from Venezuela while searching for other energy alternatives.
This would stop the oil futures market speculators from adding to their fortunes, the vultures like George Soros and Jim Rogers speculating on a complete nation’s misery, manipulating markets. They will be gone eventually – who will miss them – moveon.org? People who enrich themselves by trading on other people’s misery are to be pitied – not envied.
Now I would like to talk about the Republican Presidential candidates – one in particular who had made me see him as a possible President… now I am not so sure. That candidate was Huckabee, and I have been looking for something to make the sale to me. However, I found some things that don’t appeal to me. I will withhold judgement until I see some answers to the news article I saw just today. See attached:
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Another Man From Hope
Who is Mike Huckabee?
Friday, October 26, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Republicans have won five of the last seven presidential elections by running candidates who broadly fit the Ronald Reagan model–fiscally conservative, and firmly but not harshly conservative on social issues. The wide-open race for the 2008 GOP nomination has generated two new approaches.
Rudy Giuliani, for example, isn’t running away from his socially liberal views, although he has modified them. But he is campaigning as a staunch, even acerbic economic conservative. Should he win the nomination, conventional wisdom has it he may balance the ticket by picking former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a running mate.
Mr. Huckabee, on the other hand, is running hard right on social issues but liberal-populist on some economic issues. This may help explain why the affable, golden-tongued Baptist minister was the clear favorite at the pro-life Family Research Council’s national forum last Saturday. And why Mr. Huckabee’s praises have been sung by liberal columnists such as Gail Collins of the New York Times and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek.
Mr. Huckabee attributes his support to the fact he is a “hardworking, consistent conservative with some authenticity about those convictions.” He is certainly qualified for national office, having served nearly 11 years as a chief executive. I have known and liked him for years; on the stump he often tells the story of how we first met outside his boarded-up office in the state Capitol, which had been sealed by Arkansas Democrats who refused to accept he had won an upset election for lieutenant governor in 1993. But I also know he is not the “consistent conservative” he now claims to be. Nor am I alone. Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key backer of his early runs for office, was once “his No. 1 fan.” She was bitterly disappointed with his record. “He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal,” she says. “Just like Bill Clinton he will charm you, but don’t be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office.”
Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum, is even more blunt. “He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles,” she says. “Yet some of the same evangelicals who sold us on George W. Bush as a ‘compassionate conservative’ are now trying to sell us on Mike Huckabee.”
The business community in Arkansas is split. Some praise Mr. Huckabee’s efforts to raise taxes to repair roads and work with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Free-market advocates are skeptical. “He has zero intellectual underpinnings in the conservative movement,” says Blant Hurt, a former part owner of, and columnist for, Arkansas Business magazine. “He’s hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales taxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more than twice the inflation rate.”
Mr. Huckabee told me yesterday he also cut some taxes, and has taken the Americans for Tax Reform no-tax pledge. Former GOP state Rep. Randy Minton is not impressed. In 1999, he was urged by the governor to back a gas-tax increase. “I’d taken a pledge against higher taxes, but he sniffed that my constituents didn’t understand what we have to do in state government to make it work,” Mr. Minton says. “His support for taxes split the Republican Party, and damaged our name brand.” The Club for Growth notes that only a handful of the 33 current GOP state legislators back their former governor.
Governors who served with him praise Mr. Huckabee for his ability to work with others, but say he was clearly a moderate. “He fought my efforts to reform the National Governors Association and always took fiscal positions to my left,” former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a supporter of Mitt Romney, told me.
Rick Scarborough, a pastor who heads Vision America, attended seminary with Mr. Huckabee and is a strong backer. But, he acknowledges, “Mike has always sought the validation of elites.” When conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention after a bitter fight in the 1980s, Mr. Huckabee sided with the ruling moderates. Paul Pressler, a former Texas judge who led the conservative Southern Baptist revolt, told me, “I know of no conservative he appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention.”
Mr. Huckabee’s reluctance to surround himself with conservatives was evident as governor, when he kept many agency heads appointed by Bill Clinton. Zac Wright, a spokesman for incoming Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe, was asked this year why 15 Huckabee agency heads had been retained. Most of them were “Clinton people,” he replied, not “Huckabee people.” Mr. Huckabee told me many of his agency heads had “apolitical” responsibilities.
Many Huckabee supporters have told me their man should be judged by what he’s saying on the campaign trail today. Fair enough. Mr. Huckabee was the only GOP candidate to refuse to endorse President Bush’s veto of the Democrats’ bill to vastly expand the Schip health-care program. Only he and John McCain have endorsed the discredited cap-and-trade system to limit global-warming emissions that has proved a fiasco in Europe. “It goes to the moral issue,” he told an admiring group of environmentalists this month. Alan Greenspan blasts cap-and-trade in his new book as not feasible, noting that “jobs will be lost and real incomes of workers constrained.” Mr. Huckabee defends his plan as an “innovative” way to attain complete energy independence from foreign oil by 2013.
During a visit to the Journal last spring, Mr. Huckabee joked that one of his biggest challenges is that “like Bill Clinton I hail from Hope, Arkansas, and not every Republican wants to take a chance like that again.” But it’s Mr. Huckabee who is creating the doubts. “He’s just like Bill Clinton in that he practices management by news cycle,” a former top Huckabee aide told me. “As with Clinton there was no long-term planning, just putting out fires on a daily basis. One thing I’ll guarantee is that won’t lead to competent conservative governance.”
Also, I would like his answer to another article which is the most disgusting and insidious article I have ever read. It concerns the Baptist religion, of which I believe he is a minister. What is his answer to the attached:
| Father: Funeral protest made him sick |
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ
Associated Press Writer
Evening Sun |
| Article Launched:10/25/2007 10:24:57 AM EDT |
| |
| BALTIMORE — The father of a Marine killed in Iraq took the stand in his invasion of privacy suit against a fundamentalist church that pickets soldiers’ funerals, saying protesters carrying signs at his son’s burial made him sick to his stomach.Albert Snyder said Wednesday he had hoped for a private funeral for his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder.”They turned this funeral into a media circus and they wanted to hurt my family,” Snyder testified. “They wanted their message heard and they didn’t care who they stepped over. My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside.”Snyder is suing the Westboro Baptist church, whose members have picketed the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming the deaths are punishment for the country’s tolerance of homosexuality. The York resident is seeking unspecified monetary damages in the case for invasion of privacy and intent to inflect emotional distress as a result of the Topeka, Kan., church’s protest at his son’s funeral in Westminster in March 2006.The church’s protests have inspired several state laws and a federal law about funeral protests, but the Maryland suit is believed to be the first filed by the family of a fallen serviceman.Asked Wednesday about a sign that read “Thank God for dead soldiers,” Snyder said he thinks about it daily.”I see that sign when I lay in bed,” Snyder said.
Asked about statements issued by the group that his son was raised to support the “Roman Catholic monstrosity” and then sent to fight for the “United States of Sodomy,” Snyder said “they have no right to do this to people they didn’t know.”
During cross-examination, defense attorney Jonathan Katz focused on obituaries and death notices and questioned Snyder on whether they said the funeral services were private. Snyder replied that the notices said friends and family were welcome, but admitted that he did not know all of the 500 or so people who attended.
The case tests the limits of the First Amendment right to free speech.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Bennett instructed jurors at the start of testimony Tuesday that the First Amendment protection of free speech has limits, including vulgar, offensive and shocking statements. Bennett said the jurors must decide “whether the defendant’s actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous, and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection.”
Church members said they are motivated by the fear of God and their need to warn America about its moral decay, rather than a desire to hurt anyone.
Katz told jurors Tuesday the protests took place 1,000 feet away from St. John Catholic Church, where the funeral was held, down a hill and out of sight and hearing from participants.
Snyder said American military personnel are in Iraq fighting for freedom of speech “they’re not fighting for hate speech.” One photo showing a child holding a sign at the funeral protest was particularly disturbing, the father said.
“I pray for their children. Their children need help. To be brought up with that kind of hatred,” Snyder said.
“My God is loving God,” Snyder said, adding later “I don’t look for hatred in the Bible.”
The church’s founder and pastor, Fred Phelps, took the stand after Snyder and prompted a strong admonition from Bennett when the pastor said he had not considered whether children would see a sign carried by protesters with the words “Semper Fi Fags” and two stick figures that appear to be engaged in sodomy.
“No, it’s an irrelevancy,” Phelps said.
Bennett then interjected sharply.
“Just answer the question, sir. Don’t determine what’s relevant or not relevant. You just answer the question,” Bennett said.
Phelps said he chose to use the term “fag” in the group’s signs because it comes from scripture but could also have used Sodomite or dog. When asked by Katz why the group made a “Semper Fi Fags” sign, Phelps said it was in response to the need for a warning to the country “that your wicked ways are going to be your doom shortly.” |
Also, what action would he take in the case of the two border agents being held in jail for doing their jobs, prosecuted by an out of control federal prosecutor named Johnny Sutton? I think this question should be asked of all Presidential candidates. Pockets Berger commits treason and gets away with it, and these two guys words weren’t good enough to mean more than that of a drug smuggler.
The Democratic Congress have not passed any bills for running the government and the war for this fiscal year at all. They have been too busy passing S-chip bills that they know President Bush will veto. They are now in the process of doing it again. For what reason? Political gain – what else! Not only that, but they take time out to attack Rush Limbaugh, trying to change the subject from their condoning of the “General Betrayus” ad, placed by their political arm, moveon.org. Then Pete Stark, a CRAZY Democrat makes a speech on the house floor saying the most disgusting things about the President and also his peers. Peers – ain’t that a laugh!
These Democrats in this Congress have the most vicious and most anti-military slime coming out of their mouths of ANY Congress EVER and that includes the Vietnam period. One question that MUST be asked of ANY candidate running for President is: Would he sign the United Nations law of the sea treaty? See attached:
George Bush’s deference to international law
Posted: October 19, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern A case now before the U.S. Supreme Court proves why the Senate must defeat the United Nations’ Law of the Sea Treaty. The oral arguments heard this month by the justices didn’t mention the treaty, but the parallels are powerful.The case concerns Jose Medellin, a Mexican national on death row in Texas. Medellin was convicted and sentenced to death after he confessed in 1993 to the rape and murder of two teenage girls in Houston.Long after Medellin had received full due process of the U.S. legal system, in 2003 the Mexican government sued the United States in the International Court of Justice. That is an agency of the United Nations that sits at The Hague in the Netherlands.In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled 14-1 in favor of Mexico and ordered the United States to give Medellin another hearing, or perhaps another trial, at which he could receive the assistance of Mexican consular employees. At that time, the International Court of Justice was headed by a judge from the People’s Republic of China.A 1963 treaty known as the Vienna Convention, which the United States and Mexico signed and ratified, provides that aliens who are accused of crimes in a foreign country are entitled to request the assistance of consular officials from their home country. Medellin never requested such assistance until long after he was tried, convicted and sentenced, and after all his appeals were denied.
Of course, Medellin did receive the assistance of competent U.S. legal defense lawyers throughout the process, which lasted longer than the lives of the girls he murdered. There is no reason to think that the presence of a Mexican consul could have made any difference in the outcome.
Incredibly, the administration of President George W. Bush knuckled under to the International Court of Justice and ordered the Texas courts to give Medellin another hearing. The Texas courts properly refused to honor this unconstitutional presidential interference, and the Texas decision was upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
This case is dramatic proof of why the U.S. Senate should not ratify any more U.N. treaties that put U.S. law in the noose of foreign tribunals. The United States has only one vote out of about 150 nations, i.e., the same vote as Cuba.
Not only are foreign tribunals hostile to the United States, but their judges have no comprehension of U.S. law, due process, or trial by jury. They often meet in secret, they arrogantly assert they can define their own jurisdiction, and their decisions may not be appealed.
U.S. sovereignty would be severely diminished if the Senate is so foolish as to ratify the pending Law of the Sea Treaty, officially called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Once the United States were to accept the validity and jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which is already functioning in Hamburg, Germany, the U.S. would will be expected to submit to its anti-American decisions.
The Bush administration is trying to claim that problems with the Law of the Sea Treaty have been “fixed” and that we can veto rulings we don’t like. Just compare: Texas rejected the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in the Medellin case, but that doesn’t stop the International Court of Justice and Bush from asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule Texas criminal law and accept the International Court of Justice’s authority over U.S. domestic law.
It’s obvious Americans cannot depend on Bush or any future president to stand up for U.S. law against busybody foreigners who hate us. Bush made it clear in the case of Medellin v. Texas that he sides with the murderer and a global court against U.S. law.
Bush’s legal adviser in the State Department, John B. Bellinger III, made a revealing speech June 6 in The Hague. He said that Bush accepts the International Court of Justice’s decision about Medellin (as well as about 51 other convicted Mexican murderers from various U.S. states), and is now trying to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to accept it, too.
Bellinger also said, “I have a staff of 171 lawyers who work every day … to promote the development of international law as a fundamental element of our foreign policy.” He added that the Bush administration entered into 429 international agreements and treaties last year alone, and now advocates a priority list of more than 35 treaty packages, including the Law of the Sea Treaty.
U.S. voters would like to know what are the 429 plus 35 international packages that the Bush administration is pushing. We do know that the worst of the bunch is the Law of the Sea Treaty, whose international tribunal, a 21-member international court based in Hamburg, Germany, claims the power to decide all matters relating to the two-thirds of the Earth’s surface.
Tell your U.S. senators that the Medellin case is further proof that they should vote no on the Law of the Sea Treaty
My opinion is we should make no further treaties with the United Nations and that we should back out of the treaties we have signed already, especially the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Remember, they say we should try the Mexican again that murdered two young girls because he hadn’t had access to his country’s consul – if you want to call Mexico a country.
May God continue to Bless the USA, I pray.
