Rage from Feminists is So Silent it's Deafening!

Over the brutal murders of two women by the Taliban yesterday.

Two women were ruthlessly gunned down by Taliban militants seeking to punish them from prostitution. Even if the prostitution charge is valid...who cares? Where is the outrage from those who see prostitution as a valid life choice?

These women had rights, which were torn apart by a hail of bullets from radical religious extremists. Yet the response is...nonexistant.

Sigh.

Father Arrested for Protecting Son

Simply amazing

I haven't met a parent yet who wouldn't have that reaction. Some stranger reaches out and starts fondling their child in front of them...guys lucky to still be breathing. Three parts of this story simply amaze me:

1. The employee, Valerio Rodriguez, 71, of Providence, allegedly told police through a translator “that he was wrong for touching the little boy.”
...
“The predator did admit to police that he touched my son, but stated he was just joking around,” the flier stated.

The hell kind of joke is it to grab someone from underneath a stall. That's like saying it was a joke to rip off a strange girls dress. Even if you're telling the truth...you're still going to jail. What kind of crap defense is this...and why did it work?

2. But others interviewed in the parking lot, most of whom declined to be identified, said they believed it was an unfortunate, isolated incident.
Police seemed to agree.
“It’s far more likely that a young kid is going to get molested by somebody he knows than by some stranger in the restroom,” said Raynham Police Chief Louis J. Pacheco.

The guy still works there. It's not less likely that a child will be groped in a bathroom...if that bathroom is frequented by a child groper who has done this in that bathroom before. It's like a pretty girl walking into a rapists house drunk and saying "I'm more likely to get raped by an aquaintance than a stranger." Well...all things equal yes. But when you cozy up to a rapist...not at all.

And 3. Police said they did not arrest Rodriguez at the scene due to his advanced age and lack of a criminal record. Arresting Rodriguez, he said, would have required police to also arrest Beatrice, a scene that might have further traumatized the young boy.

That's a bold faced lie. If you see someone hitting a woman and you intervene, you are protected by the good samaritans law from going to jail. The assinine assertion that they would have HAD to arrest both parties is belied by millions of one sided arrests after fights. There is absolutely nothing that says they'd have to arrest the father as well.

The police handled this one horribly.

Oil Schitzophrena

Nancy Pelosi seemingly can't decideon a consistant position about oil. Her bouncing around on the issue is almost a political bipolar disorder.

Last Tuesday she hammered Bush on the strategic oil reserve:

Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced to Democratic leaders Tuesday night that she has written a letter to President Bush, urging him to release a “small” amount of oil from the government stockpile to increase supply and decrease prices, a leadership aide said.
In the letter, Pelosi said the price of a barrel of oil has risen nearly five-fold during Bush’s tenure and called the effects "devastating."
...
Pelosi’s letter noted that a release at the time of the start of the first Gulf War in 1991 brought prices down $8 a barrel. When President Clinton ordered a swap in 2000 to lower prices, she wrote, prices dropped 34 percent, to a little more than $20 a barrel.
The most recent drawdown, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, lowered prices by about $5 a barrel, she said.

So we'd be looking at anywhere between a 5 and 10 dollar a barrel decrease, or a 3.7-7.4% decrease in crude oil. Congress has also previously blocked efforts to add oil to the reserve. The 70,000 barrels a day put into the reserve constitute .0028% of our 25 million barrels a day oil consumption.

On the other hand, Pelosi has balked at drilling for more oil:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday shut the door on expanding oil and gas drilling beyond areas that have already been approved for energy exploration, drawing a clear distinction from her counterparts in charge of the Senate.
“This call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax, it’s an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this administration” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. “It’s a decoy to punt your attention away from the fact that their policies have produced $4-a-gallon gasoline.”

In light her her repeating this criticism this monday, the simple question then is...does supply reduce the price or not? Will a one time release of oil really have more of an effect than continually drilling and getting an influx of oil every day?

Pointing out that this will take time is also silly. No one expects the oil to start flowing the instant that the bill is signed. But has anyone stepped up to tell Obama that investing in finding alternative technologies will do absolutely nothing to reduce the price of fuel any time soon? As even he seems to realize? It could take decades, plural. Building enough wind turbines or solar panels to make any difference would take years and lots of government subsidies. No one has dismissed this because of the fact that it's not immediate. Most people understand that a sound energy policy will not come into play overnight. Indeed, many of the objections to the gas tax holiday were to the fact that it was a short sighted venture that would do nothing to save any real money in the long term. As Obama put it:

"This is his (McCain's) solution to the problems of the energy crisis and your tax bills," Obama told several thousand at a noisy rally in Wilmington. "Keep in mind that the federal gas tax is about 5 percent of your gas bill. If it lasts for three months, you're going to save about $25 or $30, or a half a tank of gas."

So are we looking for a long term solution? A short term solution? The gas tax holiday, in theory, would provide as much savings as a "small" release from the Strategic Reserve. What are we trying to do here?

And what about those nasty speculators that Nancy always rails on about?:

“I have sent a letter to President Bush calling on him to direct the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to use its emergency powers to take immediate action to curb speculation in energy markets. They should act to investigate all energy contracts. This is authority Congress has already given to the CFTC, but which they have not used.
“Eight years ago, before another Congress made the Enron loophole law, the energy industry made 70 percent of the energy futures market trades were made by the industry—only 30 percent by speculators. Today, those numbers are reversed—and trading volume has increased six-fold.
“As the International Monetary Fund recently concluded, ‘speculation has played a significant role in the run-up of oil prices.’

Are we to believe that speculators will not react to increased supplies, or to a perceived increase by selling before the price drops? As it has 10 dollars a barrel in the two days since Bush lifted the executive ban...a purely symbolic move that has not increased the supply one drop.And it also sends a message to the Middle East gougers that we may be getting serious about getting off their oil.

If that's not enough, Pelosi's original opposition to the gas tax holiday puts all of her objections into question:

["I]t will defeat everything we've tried to do to lower the cost of oil," noting that Democrats have been trying to shift the nation to alternative fuel sources, not promote gasoline consumption.

Then what the hell is this entire debate even about? If we want people to use less gas...why are we complaining about the price of gas? Nothing encourages less use like higher prices. And why do we want to increase supply of the very substance we're supposed to use less of?

If you're confused, you're not alone. The speed at which Pelosi is spinning in circles may produce enough power in and of itself to get us off foreign oil. In which case, both Republicans and Democrats get what they want.