It is in this vein that a rebellious and increasingly violent spirit of incoherent anarchy continues to fester in urban centers across the nation. This is most evident in the form of the envy-driven “Occupy wherever” nonsense embraced by the “progressive” establishment. Full Piece

“Our votes control trillions of public dollars, yet Ellison would have us believe nobody would ever steal them. We can trust everybody, right?“ said a commentary posted on the Election Integrity Watch site. Full Piece

Scott Walker, who solved a $3 billion projected deficit in Wisconsin, is a media and leftist (but I repeat myself) arch-villain because much of the balancing was done by adjusting public-sector employee contributions towards health and pension benefits to more closely but still more generously resemble what’s seen in the private sector, and by reducing public-sector employees’ ability to restore them to their formerly out-of-control levels through collective bargaining. Ditto for John Kasich in Ohio, where the projected deficit was $8 billion. Full Piece

Looking at this ordinance change in Lawrence from a legal standpoint, the city has unwittingly opened the door for massive legal battles that they are poorly equipped to handle. There are two fundamental reasons why the Lawrence City Government made such a terrible decision and passed this ordinance change. First, after being lobbied by pro-homosexual advocacy groups in Kansas, liberal council members in Lawrence were duped into thinking they would be helping the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) community by creating an ordinance that will in fact only bring civil discord, public distrust, and lay a legal mind field for the City’s court system to deal with for years to come. Why? The answer is found in debunking the common red herring argument offered by the homosexual advocacy groups, namely that the transgender community suffers the same discrimination as African Americans did in the 1960s.

Anti-discrimination laws were written and enacted in part to prevent discrimination against individuals with certain “immutable” or unchangeable qualities, such as skin color. The skin color of a minority citizen, however, remains the same from day to day, while those individuals with gender identity disorder are often in a constant state of flux on how they perceive their own gender identity within each situation in life they have to address. When will a person with this disorder agree they are being treated fairly by members of the community on issues of housing and accommodation, and when will they decide they need to start a court proceeding for discrimination? That decision now is based on the interpretation of the new ordinance created in Lawrence. The truth is that no one can answer this question; not city officials, not business owners or mainstream citizens of the community. Thanks to the new alteration in the ordinance, Lawrence, Kansas, now will be playing a city-wide game of Russian roulette, and thanks to City officials, most of the chambers are full.   

The American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders lists gender disorder as an Axis 1 mental disorder alongside schizophrenia and bipolarism with a recommendation of therapy. Lawrence officials have now placed these individuals in charge of their city. Problems like these are why the City’s Human Relations Committee twice voted not to adopt such an ordinance. If the legal ramifications of this ill thought-out municipal decision have not as yet hit home, the homosexual pressure groups will soon make it crystal clear. The court docket will need to become full for any continuation of the argument that any more cities in Kansas need to make radical alterations to their anti-discrimination ordinances.

The second reason Lawrence officials have made a terrible decision in this case is that they have declared in unequivocal terms to the Christian majority of the community that the Biblical values by which Kansas proudly operates under have no meaning within the Lawrence city limits. City officials have done far worse than just turning their backs on traditional values; they are serving up the Christian majority of their community to the lions of the court system.

Think about it. Which citizens or business owners in the community will be most likely to oppose a 250lb man in a wig and sundress wishing to follow a 5 year old girl into a restaurant bathroom?  Since both Lawrence and Manhattan had no history of complaints or abuses against members of this special interest group, the purpose of making such radical changes to the existing law has nothing to do with decreasing discrimination. It will just increase the homosexual agenda.

Indeed, the decision by Lawrence city officials to make individuals with gender identity disorder a protected class was nothing short of sinful and an act that the people of Lawrence will soon come to regret. 

Paul A. Ibbetson
http://ibbetsonusa.com/

This is the funniest thing I’ve ever….

Seen in my life.

Seen in my life.

A bunch of child-like protesters in Atlanta, Georgia refused left-wing Congressman John Lewis—a civil rights icon to many—to be allowed to address the crowd this weekend. The whole scene is reminiscent of the worst, hackneyed, new agie-styled preschool program devised for 5-year-olds by one of the most idiotic leftists imaginable. But it makes for hilarious video entertainment.

Apparently these people decided that their “assembly” would employ pure democracy. But if there was ever a more annoying way to do it, I’ve never seen it.

A scraggly, bearded, hippie wannabe playing the part of the crowd’s conscience spoke to those gathered over a megaphone system. He would say a few words and the crowd would, like five-year-olds in a preschool class, repeat his words verbatim.

It went something like this:

Anorexic Hippie Megaphone Guy: “We have someone here…“
Dirty, Ground-Sitting Hippie Crowd in Unison: “We have someone here…“
Anorexic Hippie Megaphone Guy: “Who would like to address the assembly…“
Dirty, Ground-Sitting Hippie Crowd in Unison: “Who would like to address the assembly…“

So, Anorexic Hippie Megaphone Guy explains to the crowd that they don’t “use clapping” in their “assembly” because clapping can “prevent someone else who is addressing the assembly from being heard.“  So, to “signal approval” the crowd is instructed to raise their hands and wiggle their fingers. I swear I saw this on Barney the Dinosaur show.

Anorexic Hippie Megaphone Guy then informs Dirty, Ground-Sitting Hippie Crowd that any one member of the crowd can offer a “block” or a “check” to the request. Anorexic Hippie Megaphone Guy then asks if everyone wants to hear from Congressman Lewis? One guy pipes up and claims that even though Lewis has a great record he is not important enough to hear from because he is “just one man.“

Meanwhile, others disagree. Short, Tubby, Cross Eyed Girl rises to say that Lewis should speak but that listening to him does not mean that he is “better than anyone else.“

More “blocks” or “checks” come. In the speak and repeat style these people “check” back and forth until, after eight minutes Lewis is denied the platform

Meanwhile, the guy taking the video is gobsmacked that they are refusing to allow the civil rights icon to talk. It’s all just hilarious as all get out.

You have got to see this video. It really is the funniest thing you’ll ever see. In fact, it is a perfect example of why pure democracy is one of the silliest ideas ever devised by man. Because a few goofs didn’t want to hear from a sitting congressman, he was denied a platform to speak. These people turned away a guy that might have had the power to help them in their cause—what ever the heck that is—because in an act of pure democracy, he was not allowed to speak.

This is why movements need leaders, need agendas, need particular people to guide it. Other wise it is all an exercise in futility. And this video is the most perfect example of futility as one can imagine. Lots of “dialog,“ lots of “voting,“ lots of feels-good-communalism…. but no action, no purpose no usefulness to the gathering resulted.

Also amusing is the fact that these nuts want to pretend they don’t have leaders. But even they had to have someone take the megaphone and direct the activity, even as silly as it was. Yet, I am sure that Anorexic Hippie Megaphone Guy would have fully denied he was the leader of the crowd. Unfortunately for his self-delusion, he was the leader whether he would have liked to admit it or not.

All one can do is shake one’s head at the foolishness of this crowd of left-wing lunatics.

On the other hand, maybe we conservatives should welcome this nonsense? If this sort of masturbatory, wheel-spinning is all the left can muster any more, we have nothing to fear from them!

Warner Todd Huston

The $9.5 billion decrease followed an $11.9 billion increase the previous month, the Federal Reserve said today in Washington. Non-revolving credit, which includes student loans and financing for automobile purchases, slumped by the most in three years. Full Piece

As I pointed out in a post on my blog the day after Labor Day, it is actually labor unions who have conducted, as Jimmy Hoffa Jr. put it, “a war on workers” over the years.  That sent the union hacks into even more conniptions and made the vitriol I received in my inbox even greater.  In a display of what can only be described as union talking point memos being distributed, several who wrote to me derisively referred to the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, as a reason why unions must exist and be supported.

Now, I know about the Ludlow Massacre.  Yes, believe it or not.  I have studied it and even at times started to write articles in the past incorporating the events in Colorado on April 20th of 1914 although each of those projects have been scrapped in favor of others.  But since apparently the labor unions are out there teaching their members about Ludlow, I think it is now time to address what really happened on that fateful day and the days leading up to it.  Because I am sure that none of these people who are emailing me citing that event know much, if anything, about it except that some people were killed by cruel, evil capitalists.

Jump into the WABAC Machine with me and Mr. Peabody won’t you?  At the turn of the 20th century, the Colorado coal mining industry was in quite a state of boom.  And like many jobs in 1914, those who worked in the mines were in constant danger.  Coal mining today is still very dangerous.  But it was even more so back in the early 1900’s simply because of the technology of the day.

Colorado, at the time, was credited with having quite good oversight of the mining industry through regulation.  However, enforcement was indeed sporadic.  The reasons for this were several fold.  First of all, it was the early 1900’s and people did not get around as easily as they do today.  Plus the means of communication were quite poor.  Another problem was that yes, indeed mine officials bribed inspectors from time to time.  However let us look at the other side of the coin too.  Most of the laws regulating the mining industry were pushed by the pro-labor movement.  Even though they passed through legislatures, government saw that to enforce some of these laws would cause several mines to become insolvent and close.  This would thus cause a loss of the jobs the unions had sought to protect.  So what you had was government caught between interests and government often willingly, without the need of bribes, looked the other way as laws were not followed.

But the dangers faced by those who worked in the mines was not all the fault of the mine operators and the lax regulators.  In fact the miners, called colliers, themselves took a great many risks and themselves violated safety regulations willingly in an attempt to get more tonnage out of the mine.  They did this because they were paid by the ton of coal produced.  But you will rarely ever hear these miners being called evil, greedy capitalists.  In fact I doubt that many people even know that this was what was really going on in the mines in their rush to vilify the mine owners.

Anyway, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1913 made a series of demands on mining operators in the State, not all of which were unreasonable.  But, as is often the case, there was overreach within the whole package of demands.  When the deal was rejected, the UMWA sent its members on strike and they retreated to camps they had set up on private property.

Now, to hear the unions tell it, the next thing that happened was that their members were massacred at Ludlow.  But that is not the next thing that happened.

After the UMWA went on strike, the mines found plenty of workers willing to fill their now empty shoes.  The union miners of course hated this.  Feeling that they were entitled to the jobs that these “scabs” were now taking, the miners resorted to violence.  Out of work UMWA members harassed and even assaulted replacement workers.  The violence included several deaths.  The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was hired to protect the non-union workers and, admittedly, harass the strikers back.

Things started to get ugly as the violence continued on both sides.  But usually all you hear about through the specially crafted filter of liberal, revisionist history is how the Baldwin-Felts agency fired into the compound at Ludlow, patrolled the perimeter in the machine gun equipped “Death Special” and even killed several striking workers.  However, the union kept up its own violence as well.  Do not be fooled into thinking otherwise because to do so would cause you to loose sight of the whole picture.

As the situation escalated, it was on October 28th that the governor of Colorado called in the National Guard and things settled down. There were still clashes however and everything was not a happy lovefest.  After all, the union workers were still out of work.  On March 10, 1914 the body of a “scab” was found murdered.  Reports vary as to what happened.  The National Guard’s commander, Adjutant-General John Chase, determined the act to be the work of the UMWA and revenge for this “scab” taking a union job.  Others, you know who they are, have said that the death was a ruse and a set up to give the National Guard the authority to do what they did next.

What they did next was order a UMWA tent colony at Forbes, Colorado destroyed and the inhabitants dispersed.  Shortly thereafter, due to a lack of funding, the Colorado National Guard was forced to be recalled.  But two units were left in place and the mining companies financed a militia to help protect their own interests.

Then everything fell apart on April 20th.

It was that morning when Guardsmen arrived at the camp in Ludlow seeking a man, who they claimed the striking union workers were holding against his will, be released.  During the negotiations that ensued, and in a continuation of the tensions that had been going on since the strike had been called, the militia installed a machine gun on a nearby ridge.  They were half a mile from the Ludlow Camp and it is important to understand that they did not fire on the camp.  It is also however important to understand that although they did not fire on the camp that the union workers at Ludlow saw the installation of the weapon as a threat.

At that time the members of the camp escalated the situation.  The union workers, armed, attempted to engage the militia by flanking them.  It was at this time that the firefight which would become known as the “Ludlow Massacre” broke out and the machine gun was turned on to the striking workers.

At the end of the day, a freight train stopped on the tracks between the camp and the militia who were now routing the union workers.  The workers fled and the camp was set ablaze and sacked.  It was only afterwards that it was discovered that several women and children, hiding in pits dug under the tents which were used to avoid the gun fire, were tragically burned to death.

Later Louis Tikas, the camp’s leader, was found shot in the back well after the battle had ended.

But wait, as they say, there is more!  In response to all this, the UMWA armed the striking workers and sent about 1,000 of its members out with the specific intention of killing guards at several mines.  They were successful in that mission.

It was only when President Wilson sent Federal troops to the region that the situation was finally defused.  These troops disarmed both sides.

And the ending to this sordid tale?  Well.  In December of 1914 the UMWA ran out of dough and called off the strike.  Their demands were not met and many of the workers lost their jobs anyway because the replacement workers had taken them.

Twenty-two Colorado Guardsmen were court-martialed for their actions during the strike.  Only one was found guilty and that was a Lieutenant named Linderfelt for cracking Louis Tikas over the head with his rifle butt prior to him being found dead.  But in addition, over 300 strikers were indicted for murder.  Although just one man was ever convicted and even he had his sentence overturned later on, this just goes to show you how much violence there was on the union side of this event.  There were a lot of deaths that went unpunished as the whole situation was swept mostly under the rug.  Despite plenty of witnesses to the atrocities committed on both sides,

Whew!  And that is the story, the real story, of what happened in Ludlow, Colorado.  It is a story, however, that unions do not want told because it shows how they themselves resort to violence and acted miserably during the entire affair as well.  I simply cannot let union members proclaim Ludlow as innocent “working people” getting the shaft when the unions themselves tried to prevent “working people” from taking jobs the union believed to be theirs by some imaginary right and did so through violence.  That would be a disservice to history.

J.J. Jackson
http://libertyreborn.com/

Well, now that is exactly what the Obama administration wants to do. Obama’s Department of Labor wants to make a new rule that businesses must disclose the names and addresses of individuals that are hired during strikes to replace unionized workers, whether permanently or temporarily.

With the long, long history of murder, property damage, beatings, and general harassment that unions have engaged in since unions came to this nation, the idea of having a worker’s name and address released to these union thugs so that unions can create hit lists of employees to attack is unconscionable.

Obama plans to put the property, family, and the very lives of thousands of workers in danger just so he can again give a big payoff to Big Labor.

This month the DOL has a public comment period on a 160 page rule change and tucked into that new rule is a section that will require staffing agencies to file with the government when they supply temp workers to businesses experiencing strikes, walkouts, or slow downs initiated by unions.

The new rule seems to also require that the people these temp agencies hire to also file their names and addresses with the DOL via a new form they would have to fill out. (See Labor Union Report for a copy of the form in question and for more technical info on this rule.)

These forms will be public knowledge as soon as the government gets its hands on them. That means that workers’ names and home addresses will also be public knowledge. That means that union thugs can get hold of these names and addresses so that they can amass lists of workers to scare away from their job in order to save union jobs.

Unfortunately, we only have one more day to tell Obama’s union thugs that they should not be allowed to have the names and home addresses of replacement workers. The public comments period closes at the end of the business day on Wednesday, Sept. 21.

You don’t have to be an employer or some anti-union advocate to make a comment. Any American can tell Obama that his idea of allowing unions to attack workers is a bad one. So please do go and make a short comment telling Obama that you are against his new rule putting worker’s lives in danger.

Here is the web address: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=LMSO-2011-0002-0001

This is yet one more example of the perfect storm of regulation changes that this administration is attempting to throw at the business community.

While Obama sits there on his mountaintop scolding businesses for not hiring, not expanding, and not growing, while he mouths the nice sounding words of “cutting regulations” his regulatory agencies are issuing one business-killing new rule after another. Every month is a new anti-business rules change and this one could result in blood being spilled by his dangerous union pals.

Warner Todd Huston

1) study of union violence

Al Gore is calling on folks to make September 14 a day of climate action, through a series of propaganda videos that he will be broadcasting worldwide.  The Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow call for a day of genuine “climate realism,” instead.  CFACT Collegians are responding with a bit of online levity.

CFACT’s Methane Madness game trains online players to help “Pal Gore” control the climate by corking cows and watching them float away. Methane is more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas but less than 1% of atmospheric greenhouse gases come from cattle.  Even so, radical climate campaigners call for shutting down our cattle and dairy industries, along with much of the rest our economy.  They’d even like us to go vegan. 

However, climate science IS NOT SETTLED; computer models are biased, and observations don’t reflect the models; man’s impact on climate and atmosphere is dwarfed by nature’s; Climategate is just the tip of the corrupt science iceberg; more scientists find the courage to match their analysis every day and declare against the scare; offsets are a scam; citizens can now spot warming propaganda; alternative energy is inefficient; carbon profiteers rake in tax dollars but don’t affect the climate; economies in crisis can’t afford the waste; consensus is not science; there has never been a consensus; freedom and prosperity are the proven path to cleaner environments; our meat and dairy industries are home-based, thriving industries that feed multitudes and employ the nicest people you’ll ever meet; developed nations have enough to eat for the first time in history; et cetera, et cetera.

WHOA! All those dreary, inconvenient facts! Gore won’t enjoy those.  As Scarlett O’Hara said, “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” For Al, tomorrow never comes.

If players succeed in corking all the cows, Methane Madness they can move on to further levels and put a cork in Gore & Company’s hot air.

Don’t worry. CFACT’s always been about free speech.  Corks come out.  Gore and his celebrity buddies can go right back to spewing their hot air.  It will take cold facts for realism to triumph over alarmism on climate.  CFACT wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Jobs just aren’t waiting for us when we graduate, the way they used to be,” said Methane Madness player Josh Smith, a student at University of Wisconsin. “Al Gore preaches we should live with less – while he flies

from mansion to mansion. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay my student loans. Put a cork in it, Al!”

Methane Madness is available to play online (9-14) at http://www.MethaneMadness.com.

If levity’s not your bag, you can always find plenty of solid global warming facts and analyses debunking the scare at http://www.CFACT.org and http://www.ClimateDepot.com . You’ll find them fascinating and entertaining.

The enterprising young lady emailed “three or four chemistry professors” to see if they would be interested in analyzing how much of the chemical used to dry–clean clothes remained in the clothing after it was returned to the customer.

Most of her targets ignored her - possibly because they believe in ‘global warming’ and their cleaning involves going down to the river to beat cargo shorts on the rocks - but one recipient at Georgetown University agreed.

Sure enough, after extensive cleaning and testing, the brainiacs at Georgetown discovered that dry–cleaned sweater wool retained a perchloroethylene (PERC) level “as high as 126 parts per million.”

As my lovely wife, Janet, said, “Why wouldn’t it and so what?”

For that matter, sometimes my pants return from the dry–cleaners with crumbs in a pocket and I don’t make a federal case of it. (Although after reading about this science project I doubt I’ll be eating them again.)

I’d rather have that new dry–cleaned smell on my pants than the gravy stain that was there when I dropped them off.

To add a bit of context, the feds allow wine makers a sulfite level of 350 parts per million and people are intentionally drinking vino; to say nothing of asparagus makers who cool the crop in water containing 125 parts per million of chlorine - 41 times the amount you’ll find in your neighborhood pool.

But don’t get me wrong - I’m not criticizing our girl scientist. Her idea was simple and achievable - once she recruited a major university to do the heavy lifting. It reminds me of a project my engineer roommate was assigned in college. The professor told them to improve the design of an existing product, but to keep it simple. So students were redesigning Saturn rockets, gas spectrometers and racecars. Lester, on the other hand, showed how drilling four holes in dorm soap dishes would keep the Irish Spring from turning into mush. He received an ‘A.’

The problem I have is with the coverage of the project, which proves once again you don’t have to be hysterical to report on the environment, but it helps. The Post reporter writes as if she just discovered salmonella in her sprouts.

The story moves from the analysis of PERC remaining in small squares of cloth to discussing potential devastating health effects, particularly CANCER!!!, with the usual chemical alarmists.

One heavy–breathing example: “it was difficult to say how much risk consumers might face from wearing, say, dry–cleaned wool pants for a year or breathing air from a closet full of dry–cleaned clothes.”

I can see it now - edgy high school rebels who are pushing the limits will no longer be found under the bleachers stealing a few puffs. Instead, they’ll congregate inside a walk–in closet sniffing dad’s Brooks Brothers while the au pair wonders why Brittany seems so jittery.

A worry–wart at the University of Pennsylvania thought someone “who delivers dry cleaning for a living could face higher exposures than workers in a plant.” Dry cleaning delivery? Hmmm. Oh, yes, now I remember! He’s the man who arrives each morning after the milkman drops off the 2 percent and just before the Webvan driver gets here with the rest of the groceries.

Besides the threat to imaginary occupations, there is also danger for consumers. The team used a computer model to calculate that four newly–cleaned wool sweaters, placed beside a golden retriever inside a hot SUV with the windows rolled up, might produce the dreaded 126 parts per million of PERC that exceeds OSHA limits.

But the good news is the dog’s deathbed was extremely soft.

The problem I have with that ‘evidence’ is that I don’t pile clean sweaters inside my car like a North Korean nuclear waste dump. My cleaners may be cheap, but the clothes come to me in a fume–trapping bag.

Besides the symptoms of PERC overexposure are fairly obvious. If you feel confused, dizzy, drowsy, irritated and have a headache your discomfort is not being caused by your husband’s insatiable demands for sex or a bad batch of sour mash.

You’ve simply been spending too much time in the closet with the door closed admiring your wardrobe.

Michael R. Shannon

1) Perc remains in dry-cleaned clothes

Several labor unions decry the Environmental Protection Agency’s existing and prospective rules, mainly designed to reduce coal emissions. These stalwarts of the liberal left resemble capitalists who now call the EPA the Employment Prevention Agency. Full Piece

On one hand we must either believe Joe Biden is a compete idiot, or on the other understand that he is OK with the fact that Chinese officials forced women to late term abortions and in many cases actually murdered already born babies to satisfy the one child per couple rule that the communist oppressors put into place years ago to curb the country’s population size.

Neither prospect is very auspicious for Biden or Obama.

While visiting Chinese students in southwest China, Biden raised the one-child issue but only voiced one criticism of the policy. He didn’t think it was economically viable saying it was “not sustainable.“ When asked about the U.S. debt problem, Biden somehow married U.S. entitlements to a lack of a safety net in China.

But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand – I’m not second-guessing – of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

For decades China’s violent and controversial on-child policy has been the root of the murders of many millions of Chinese babies, many of them actually born alive. For Vice resident Biden to strain to tell his communist audience that he wasn’t “second guessing” this murderous policy is appalling.

This policy is responsible for the outright murder of many babies born alive in China. After authorities found that women gave birth in violation of the policy, these babies were killed in front of distraught parents. But this policy is also responsible for millions of selective-sex abortions where Chinese culturally favor boys instead of girls and aborted babies thought to be female. Chinese authorities also engaged in a whole raft of human rights violations such as forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

So, what is Biden saying here? Are we to assume he is too stupid to know of the murderous history of China’s one-child policy? And if we assume he must know this history, then we are forced to understand that he has no problem at all with these human rights violations.

In fact, this whole thing argues against the whole claim that Democrats are “pro-choice.” Yes, they often choose abortion, like the Chinese are, but the “choice” could also include keeping the baby. You see, there is a choice here. But by agreeing with China’s one-child policy, he’s agreed with taking away the “choice” in the matter because Chinese women have no choice! It is an authoritarian policy thrust upon them regardless of their needs and desires. Biden appears totally OK with that.

Of course, back here at home, his office tried to skitter out from under this major gaffe—a full time job for his office, to say the least. Biden’s office issued this statement:

The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience.

Unfortunately for Obama and Biden’s office, this does not square at all with what he actually said. Biden said he wasn’t judging the policy and only thought it was bad for economic reasons.

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasted no time condemning Biden’s foolish comments.

China’s one-child policy is gruesome and barbaric. Instead of condoning the policy, Vice President Biden should have condemned it in the strongest possible terms. There can be no defense of a government that engages in compulsory sterilization and forced abortions in the name of population control.

Another GOP hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also condemned Biden’s comments.

China’s one child policy has led to the great human tragedy of forced abortions throughout China, and Vice President Biden’s refusal to ‘second-guess’ this horrendous policy demonstrates great moral indifference on the part of the Obama Administration. Americans value life, and we deserve leaders who will stand up against such inhumanity, not cast a blind eye.

GOP House Speaker John Boehner chimed in, as well.

I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state.

Romney and Boehner had it exactly right. China’s one-child policy is a barbaric, disgusting, condemnable policy that no freedom-loving American should condone in any way whatever.

Warner Todd Huston

Luntz also told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney looked the most presidential of the eight participating candidates and Newt Gingrich hit a populist vein by taking on the mainstream media. Full Piece

In fact, the two Republicans that lost their effort to beat the recall were the two that were a bit odd as it is, so beating them doesn’t seem to be such a great triumph. And even at that the margins of defeat were not great. David Fredosso of the Washington Examiner puts it well:

In the end, the union-backed Democrats picked up only two state Senate seats in Wisconsin last night, at a staggering cost in time, effort, and of course money. One of the seats was solidly Democratic, held by a Republican due to an apparent fluke of nature. The other was held by an alleged adulterer who had moved outside his district to live with his young mistress, and whose wife was supporting his recall.

A Pyrrhic victory, there, for sure.

Unions and left-wing Democrat operative told us that the people of Wisconsin were furious at Governor Scott Walker and his GOP partners. We were told that “the people” would swarm to the recall election polls and throw the rascals out. But aside from the two problem children above, none of the elections were even close.

So, what happened? With nearly $30 million spent on the recall efforts the two sides were pretty even (though the GOP had a slight edge). So, it wasn’t money that flipped the vote toward the GOP.

The truth is, the state is already seeing major benefits from Gov. Walker’s GOP agenda. Schools are seeing huge budget savings and some of them are even standing up to unions to find further savings. Even better, due to Gov. Walker’s efforts Wisconsin led the nation in jobs creation in June with 9,500 new jobs being created in the Badger State.

Wisconsin is growing again at last. Unions were the reason Wisconsin was being held back. And voters know it.

Mickey Kaus (a famous left-winger, but quixotic that he is often anti-union) makes some great points about this recall election, too.

Unions Lose Again in Wisconsin: It looks as if the organized labor movement has failed to recall enough Wisconsin Republicans to regain control of the state senate. That’s a) in an off-year election where union turnout usually makes the difference b) in famously progressive Wisconsin c) after spending many millions d) with a nationwide media and organizing push e) when labor had a galvanizing issue in Gov. Scott Walker’s direct assault on the institutional collective bargaining power of public employees, which led to a dramatic walkout by Democrats.

That puts it all well in perspective to show how badly the unions lost, doesn’t it?

Lastly, this whole recall idea is idiotic. We have elections to put people in office. If we don’t like them we have the opportunity to be rid of them during the next election. This frivolous use of recalls is simply illegitimate. But that aside, it is good to see that most of the people of Wisconsin understood that the folks that were only just elected needed the chance to get a fair shot at doing the job they were voted in to do.

Warner Todd Huston

The plan’s budget apparently does not take into account the insurance costs of workers’ spouses and children, meaning the Treasury could be tapped for hundreds of billions of dollars in the first decade the plan is instituted. Full Piece