IT'S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT

By Doug Patton

Earlier this year, I wrote that congressional Democrats would disappoint their liberal base because "holding power means compromise." I was wrong. Democrats are doing their level best to please their radical leftist constituencies, and it's worse than we thought. In their first 100 days in control of Congress, they have introduced legislation that would cripple small business, surrender in Iraq, socialize our medical care and extend the redundant hypocrisy of "hate crimes" to gays.

The Dems recently passed the "Employee Free Choice Act" through the House. This Communist-inspired legislation (no kidding...the Communist Party USA has proudly endorsed it) removes a worker's right to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not to join a union. Unions could invade workplaces with a "card-check" system that lets them organize if a majority of workers sign up.

Imagine a burly Teamster showing up at your home on a Saturday morning, pressuring you to vote in favor of the union. A small business owner with three employees could be forcibly unionized if two of those employees sign the card. Employees who don't want to work in a union environment would lose their right to vote on this issue.

If you think having unions infest America's 22 million small businesses, demanding absurd wages and outrageous pensions, is a good idea, ask General Motors. After being systematically eviscerated by the United Auto Workers for the last 50 years, GM has now fallen behind Toyota as the world's number one maker of automobiles.

From there we move on to the condescending protection of "minorities" in the form of superfluous hate crimes legislation. The latest attempt has been named the Matthew Shepard Act, in honor of a Wyoming meth addict killed in a drug deal gone bad. The fact that he happened to be gay apparently entitled him to more protection than your average straight meth addict.

Do we really believe that a murderer is going to pause in the commission of his crime and say, "Wait, you're not gay, are you?" What if the killer himself comes out of the closet while on trial? Is it no longer a hate crime? And what are the ramifications for a preacher who dares to tell his congregation what the Bible says about homosexuality? Suppose the next day a homosexual is beaten up in that community? Is that preacher's sermon now "hate speech?"

Then there is the issue the Dems think is their ticket back to the Oval Office: THE WAR. The "This Is Hard So Let's Give Up" bill is set to cross the president's desk this week with a date certain for U.S. surrender to the terrorists in Iraq. Predictably, it will be vetoed. This legislation was passed so that Dems can go back to their districts next year and say, "We tried to bring the boys home, but Bush wanted them to stay and get killed." One of the few Democrats I know of who has consistently hoped for our troops to fail is Dennis Kucinich. The fact that Dennis Kucinich is now a Democratic trendsetter may just be the saddest thing ever.

And, of course, there is the constant Democrat drumbeat to return to the tired old concept of "universal health care." This idea will not die, despite the utter failure of such programs in Europe, Canada and elsewhere.

Several other pieces of legislation are in the works. One is an elaboration of the original 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which would cost businesses millions and give even more paid leave to new parents. How on earth did we, as Americans, ever manage to have both kids and jobs before 1993? The average family today has fewer children and more disposable income than any previous generation, and yet we need even more time off than they did?

Democrats are singing the same socialist tune they have since FDR declared himself Nanny-in-Chief. It goes something like this (especially since the sixties): "You cannot take care of yourself. You deserve more than others. Rich people owe you. Armed conflict is never the answer, especially when it takes longer than a month. You deserve free medical coverage. If you are gay, non-white, female, 'transgendered' or whatever, you need even more protection."

Here's the reality: we are Americans. Let's start acting more like adults and less like Democrats.

MURTHA-----UGH

Moonbat Murtha strikes again. This time the democratic Congressman is using the "I" word: Impeachment. Not surprising. The goal of democrats like Murtha is to undermine America in any way possible. You might remember his little speech last summer when he called the US's presence in Iraq a greater threat to the world than North Korea or Iran. This is the same Iran that is providing money and means for insurgents in Iraq, who are attacking US and British soldiers and innocent Iraqis. This is the same North Korea that has a Gargoyle at the tip of a nuclear trigger button. And yet the United States, according to moonbat Murtha, is the source of all the wrong in the world—and George W. Bush is the ring-leader.

Mistakes were made in Iraq, but that, in no way, makes George W. Bush a war criminal. He is not like Serbian war criminal Milosevic or Iraq's Saddam Hussein, both of whom tortured and abused innocent civilians.

Calling for Impeachment of your own President because of Iraq not only attempts to place George W. Bush on this hideous level, but also makes the rest of the world think it is ok to do the same. If there is any great threat to our peace, it is John Murtha's insistence of weakening his own country.

For the first time in his relatively lackluster career in politics, Murtha is in the spotlight. He gets recognized in all the fine restaurants, and the interview shows on TV are calling every day. Pretty impressive stuff. Impressive enough to betray our men and women and uniform, not to mention our country.

DEMOCRATS DON'T WANT YOU TO READ THIS

Good news from Iraq...and from the New York Times? Say it ain't so! The Anbar province of Iraq, just west of Baghdad, is showing a homogeneous front against terrorism. Thousands have joined the police force, working with American troops. Office buildings for government workers are being renovated as well as hotels for visitors. While there is still a ways to go, the decrease in daily violent acts and a united police force is showing turns toward a better direction for stability and freedom for Iraqis.

But the reporter, Kirk Semple, points to a simple yet crucial reason as to why this turn has occurred: "While the anti-American sheiks in Anbar and Al Qaeda both opposed the Americans, their goals were different. The sheiks were part of a relatively moderate front that sought to drive the Americans out of Iraq; some were also fighting to restore Sunni Arab power. But Al Qaeda wanted to go even further and impose a fundamentalist Islamic state in Anbar, a plan that many of the sheiks did not share.... For all the sheiks' hostility toward the Americans, they realized that they had a bigger enemy, or at least one that needed to be fought first, as a matter of survival."

This is what I have been saying all along folks. You can't fight "terror" because terror is a tactic. You can't attempt to establish democracy and freedom when you are constantly worried about your basic need to just survive. Only once you have gotten rid of your threat to survival—Al Qaeda—can you finally work towards greater ideals and goals.

By the way ... I began this entry with the phrase "good news from Iraq." Remember this: Good news from Iraq is almost always bad news for the Defeatocrats. Democrats are truly invested in our defeat in Iraq. They feel that they have no chance of regaining full control in Washington if Iraq starts to go our way. With every bit of good news from Iraq look for Defeatocrats to become more vocal in their demands for immediate withdrawal. Oh ... and the media, of course, will be more than willing to help them along.

LIGHT BULBS THAT DON'T SIGNIFY IDEAS

BY MARK STEYN

Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Whether he was proposing a solution to global warming is unclear. But he would be impressed to hear that nine decades later the lights are going out all over Washington.

This week, both the House and the Senate voted for defeat in Iraq. That's to say, Congress got tired of waiting for deadbeat insurgents to get their act together and inflict devastating military humiliation on U.S. forces. So America's legislators have voted to mandate the certainty of defeat. They want the withdrawal of American forces to begin this October, which is a faintly surreal concept: Watching CNN International around the world, many viewers unversed in America's constitutional arrangements will have been puzzled by the spectacle of a nation giving six months' notice of surrender. But the cannier types in the presidential palaces will have drawn their own conclusions.

For example, as Congress was voting, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would withdraw from the post-Cold War arrangements of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in protest at American plans to install missile defense systems on the Continent. In the first months of the Bush administration -- pre-9/11 -- this issue was mostly theoretical. European leaders couldn't quite figure out why anyone would need a system to take out incoming nukes but Bush seemed hot for it and, that being so, you might as well be inside the system rather than out.

Six years on, Iran is going nuclear and nobody seems minded to stop them. So a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is a more practical benefit than it once seemed. In fact, the mullahs are precisely the kind of fellows the system's intended for: small nuclear powers less susceptible to conventional deterrence theory. There might be quite a few of these a decade down the line. Reluctant to find themselves living under a Shia Persian nuclear umbrella, the Sunni Arab dictatorships are said to be pondering whether they might benefit from going the nuke route. The Saudis and Egyptians could certainly afford it very easily.

So what's Putin's game? Well, he leads a country with severe structural defects (a collapsed birth rate for everyone except Russia's Muslims, a depopulating east, disease-ridden menfolk face down in the vodka) but a relatively buoyant economy -- or, to be more precise, kleptocracy. In particular, Western Europe is increasingly dependent on Russia as an energy supplier. Putin calculates that even a weak Kremlin can make mischief for America. The missile-defense interceptors might have been expressly designed for fin-du-civilization Europe: You don't have to do anything, you don't have to attack anyone, you don't have to be beastly and aggressive like the swaggering Texan cowboy. You just have to go about your business and, if anything's heading your way, the Yanks will press a button and blow it to smithereens and send you a confirmatory e-mail afterward. But Putin is putting Continental leaders in the position of having to choose between even this benign defensive technology and relations with Russia. And, given European dispositions, he must surely feel he's got a sporting chance of winning this one. And, if he does, he will in effect be making the world safe for Iranian nuclear blackmail.

Why would he do this? Well, why wouldn't he? As I always say, if you live in Tikrit and Ramadi, the Iraq issue is about Iraq. But, if you live anywhere else on the planet, Iraq is about America. In Tehran, Pyongyang, Khartoum, Caracas, Beijing, Moscow and the South Sandwich Islands, they watch Harry Reid & Co. on the 24/7 cable channels and draw their own conclusions about American will.

The Defeaticrats are being opportunist: They think they can calibrate the precise degree of U.S. defeat in Mesopotamia that will bring victory for them in Ohio and Florida. Contemptible as this is, it wouldn't be possible had the administration not lost the support of many of the American people over this war. The losses are devastating for the individuals' families but they are historically among the lowest in any conflict this nation or any other has fought. So I don't believe the nightly plume of smoke over Baghdad on the evening news explains the national disenchantment. Rather, the mission as framed by the president -- help the Iraqi people build a free and stable Iraq -- is simply not accepted by the American people. On the right, between the unrealpolitik "realists" and the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" isolationists and the hit-'em-harder-faster crowd, the president has fewer and fewer takers for a hunkered-down, defensive, thankless semi-colonial policing operation. Regardless of how it works on the ground, it has limited appeal at home. Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.

In Khartoum, Tehran, Moscow and elsewhere, the world's mischief-makers have reached their own conclusions about how much serious "work" America is prepared to do.

ROSIE GETS THE BOOT.....RIGHT IN THE.......

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the ousting of one Rosie O'Donnell. No longer will the public be forced to hear her fat trap jabber on about the 911 "conspiracy" or her vitriolic hatred of Donald Trump. (We all know she is just jealous of his comb over...as am I!). Barbara Walters and "The View" claim that she is leaving because of the money — the bleeding heart liberal just can't get enough. Go figure. But we all know it is because audiences, yours included, cannot stand to have her as an outrageous mouthpiece for one minute longer. The people have spoken. Rosie, you're fired!

But fear not, my friends. She plans to come back and guest host special programs on autism and depression. That's depressing. This is exactly the sane, level-headed woman that I would want preaching about the mental and physical health of our country.

Oh, and the article happens to be written by my buddy at the NYTimes Jacques Steinberg. You might remember that he is too busy to print a correction about my computer's instrumental musical selection, but he happened to have time to give a big, fat plug to Rosie's personal blog in this article. Here's an idea Jacques: why don't you print a correction to your story, attacking me and talk radio, and then link to Nealz Nuze where readers can read about it first hand (in journalism speak, you might call that "directly from the source"). This way the people can determine for themselves what is truth and what isn't, since in your job as a journalist you don't seem to feel that that is necessary.

DATE CERTAIN FOR SURRENDER

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have finally delivered to Al Qaeda and Islamic radicals across the world a message of American surrender and weakness. Sure, the Democrats call for a specific date for surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq will be vetoed ... but the message is clear. Americans -- at least the party in charge of our congress and our purse strings -- have lost their will to fight. There they were, Pelosi and Reid, standing in front of one of those made-for-TV backdrops reading "Strategy for Security" cutting the legs out from underneath every man and woman serving in our armed forces, not only in Iraq, but everywhere in the world.

Look --- I understand fully that mistakes have been made in this war. I'm one who believes that not enough troops were sent to Iraq in the first place. I still can't understand why we didn't dedicate the resources that were needed to seal the borders with Iran an Syria. Perhaps elements of Saddam's army should have been retained to serve the new Iraq. Mistakes? Sure! But what is the proper course of action when mistakes are made? Do you abandon the project, or do you regroup and forge ahead, perhaps wiser from your experience.

I think that from the very beginning the Democrat leadership has been dedicated to undermining Bush in Iraq any way they can. Their goal has been solitary and simple. Destroy the Bush presidency and pave the way for complete Democrat control in 2009. I truly believe that Democrats are perfectly willing to strengthen Islamic terrorists generally and Al Qaeda specifically if that is what needs to be done for them to destroy George Bush. The desire for revenge for 2000 is that strong. Perhaps the true motivation behind Democrat obstruction and maneuvering might have become more obvious to the American people if it were not for the fact that the mainstream media shared the Democrats goal ... destroy Bush, defeat Republicans, return liberalism to power in Washington.

By the way ... concerning last night's debate ....Hillary Rodham said last night that her vote to authorize the war in Iraq was "based on the information that was available to me at the time." Well, guess what? That is exactly the position President Bush was in when he pressed for war against Saddam Hussein. Hillary gets a pass on her "information that was available to me at the time" line, Bush does not. And so it goes.