The Land of Ozz

Fellow blogger Mark Tapscott adds an interesting spin to a study released by the Catalogue for Philanthropy by noting which presidential candidate carried the state during the 2004 election. The study shows which states are considered to be the most generous based on a calculation they call a Generosity Index derived by using Average Adjusted Gross Income and Average Itemized Charitable Contribution. Mark says:

It may not get much play in the MSM, but the Catalogue for Philanthropy’s latest National Generosity Index finds a clear majority of the most generous states are in the Bible Belt where evangelical Christianity is strongest and household income is lowest.

Other bloggers talking about this data:
Marginal Revolution
Andrew Sullivan

One of my favorite radio hosts Glenn Beck gives us a color-coded version of the data showing elections results in blue and red.

Maybe those who give actually have more to begin with in terms of solid Christian influence in their communities.

The anti-war movement is getting very old and very ineffective from a political perspective in my opinion. I looked over the breaking news section at topix.net. The cool thing about Topix is that they have this NewsRank system that rates a story on several factors. What I found interesting tonight was the rank of the story titled “Senator Criticizes Administration for Not Leveling With Public About Iraq”. This particular article originally sourced from the Associated Press does not seem to be ranking up there with other stories like the “Oprah and Letterman finally end their feud?” article. See a screen capture below showing the NewsRanks (little number by articles) for the articles mentioned.

I tend to agree with Mark Noonan over at Blogs for Bush when he says:

“it is the so-called “anti-war” movement which is now making this campaign longer and bloodier than it ever had to be. It is the anti-war movement which provides the hope for the enemy and makes us have to fight that much longer and harder.”

Even though the MSM is not likely to make a move away from the story just because of a statement like Mark’s, maybe they will move on once their numbers start to show that they are not attacting a mass number of people with these stories of the anti-war movement.

The major national news stories of the week related to aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, the CIA Leak investigation, and the US Supreme Court nomination have overshadowed a very interesting story in Alaska related to a proposed Natural Gas Pipeline to be supported by US tax dollars. This pipeline has been on the drawing board for several years. The pipeline would deliver natural gas from the artic region of Alaska to the Mid-West of the lower 48 if endorsed by several major oil companies along with state and federal governments. The companies involved are none other than ConocoPhillips, BP and Exxon Mobil. The same companies that reported some of the highest corporate profits in US history this week. All of these companies are being courted by Alaska’s Gov. Frank Murkowski and other government officials to get these oil companies to endorse this project. The project is estimated to take approximately 18 years to construct and will come with a price tag of an approximately $20 billion.

What makes this story interesting is the resignation of several high level government officials who have been working close to the contract negotiations with these major oil companies. The Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin was at the forefront of the resignations this week. His resignation comes less than a week after he sent a five-page memo to the state attorney general questioning the legality of some concessions being offered to the major oil companies by Gov. Frank Murkowski. The details of the contract negotiations have not been released, but there are issues with the contract that may end up before the state supreme court. The Fairbanks New-Miner reports:

“North Slope oil giants Exxon Mobil, BP and ConocoPhillips want the state to provide fiscal assurances on the $20 billion project in the form of a set tax rate, potentially stripping legislators of the ability to raise taxes on gas, and possibly oil, well into the future.”

The Governor of Alaska is not the only politician or Murkowski family member working hard to get this project rolling. His daughter US Senator Lisa Murkowski is greasing the skids in Washington. Senator Murkowski landed her position in Washington when her father appointed her to fill his vacant senate seat in 2002. She has since won a full blow election and continues to offer her full support of this project. Senator Murkowski is working hard to make sure the project gets full federal support. This support would come in the form of federal tax dollars to support the construction of a pipeline that will most certainly make these high profit oil companies even more profitable.

Think tanks blast S.C. Medicaid plan was the headline of the front page of The State on Wednesday of this week.

I have had my share of battles with the Medicaid system in the state of SC and I can say from first hand experience that it needs something. I even contacted the Governor Sanford’s office a few months ago to get a little help lighting a fire to the red tape I encountered when trying to get specific coverage approved for my son Caden.

Watch this Medicaid process closely. It could help set the standards for other states who are looking at major Medicaid changes.

Surprise! Some of us support our president in a time of war no matter what party his is affiliated with. It seems that some of the folks on the liberal side of the fence are taking notice that Bush bashing is not as effective as they thought.

Michelle Malkin pulls together several resources on this developing story. It is a start. Now if hard core liberals stop screaming about what or who they hate, then that means they will have to come up with a list of what they like. Better yet they could just be quite for a while and appreciate the good job of our troops and our president.

Howard Dean is rapidly becoming a republican party ally. Some larger democratic party supporters question his ability to do anything more than give republicans a victory on a silver platter. Scott Ott at Scrappleface pulls the highlights out of Dean’s latest side show.

Read Scott Ott’s story here.

Part II:

I don’t think Howard Dean has taken the time to read the platform of the party that he leads. The last two sentences of the PDf reads like this:

We are committed to resolving our differences in a spirit of civility, hope and mutual
respect.
That’s the America we believe in.

See the entire PDF here.

The Wikipedia has this to say about civility:

Whereas incivility is defined here as behavior that causes an atmosphere of animosity, disrespect, conflict and stress, the Civility rule states that people must act with civility toward one another.

I consider Dean’s comments to be very disrespectful and racist towards white Christians.

There is a fundamental point that is being missed in the analysis of Iraq. Iraq is a magnet for anyone wanting to blow themselves up right now. The large collection of US troops in Iraq gives the would be terrorists a huge target. Yes, there is a legitimate mission in Iraq and the Iraqis will be better off once the job of building a government and creating a self-sufficient Iraqi security force in complete. The work in Iraq is benefiting Americans more than some would care to admit. The simple fact is that these troops are our family and friends. The US troops are taking the bull’s eye off of the American soil while helping a country take back their land from a tyrant. These troops are fighting these terrorist on their own soil not ours. It is much easier for a would be suicide bomber to carry out his dirty work in Iraq right now rather than do it here on US soil.

No one should take this as a view of US soil being safe. There are gapping holes in our security. For instance, just over two years ago the following was reported by our government.

Currently, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security inspects only a small percentage of cargo containers. Some are scanned with x-ray equipment; others are physically opened to verify their contents. Either way, the process is time consuming and burdensome, and historically, Customs has been able to physically screen only about two percent of these containers.

That was leaving over 20,000 containers per day to be moved onto US soil without any screening in 2003. There is no way to know exactly how many of these containers are entering the US without being screened today. That lack of information is a good thing relative to the terrorists, but there are still plenty of opportunities for some nasty stuff to have made its way onto US soil. The amount of nuclear material required to make a ash pile out of a small metropolitan area will fit into your average microwave oven. It is not likely that a terrorist could put together anything nearly as sophisticated and as powerful as one of our nuclear weapons. What is possible is that one of these guys might be able to put together a dirty version of one that could kill many and make a ton more people very sick.

Now the war in Iraq was not started to distract terrorist, but it seems to be doing just that. We continue to read stories like Sen. Feingold put out in response to President Bush’s speech where the critics rant about how insecure we have been as a result of the war in Iraq. Well why don’t they name a few examples of how we have suffered from a security perspective on US soil as a result of the war in Iraq? This may be news to some, but the US military is not you local police, FBI, or even border patrol. The troops in Iraq would not be combing the streets for terrorist if they were back on US soil. Again, why exactly are we less secure with a large number of troops in Iraq? Let’s look at the global Army commitment of troops. This graphic shows less than half of our Army deployed world wide. This graphic also shows less than one third of our national guard deployed.

The war in Iraq has not caused us a lack of security on US soil. There have been a total of zero terrorist attacks on US soil while our troops have been deployed in Iraq.

The democrats would have you believe that Dick Durbin’s recent comments comparing our troops to Nazis is equal to Rove’s comments comparing the differences in how conservative and liberals responded to the 9/11 attacks. Michelle Malkin offers an explanation of the democrat’s equation: DEMS WANT TO PLAY ROVE=DURBIN. The correct equation is Durbin = Lott. That would be where the Democrats join in the call for the resignation of their own party member the way the Republicans joined in to ask for Lott to step down.

My favorite radio talk show host has helped me come to the equation of Rove > Durbin = Lott. Glenn Beck has challenged Dick Durbin to a offer a real apology and resign. Here you can see the count down timer that Glenn is running on his web site to show how long it has been since Durbin offered his non-apology apology. Here is a link to the actual audio from the Glenn Beck show.

You can read more reactions on Rove and Durbin here, here, here, and here.

The WorldNetDaily ran a story tonight about an MSNBC online poll. The poll shows that 94% of the respondents voted yes when asked if they thought that President Bush misled the nation in order to go to war in Iraq.

The WorldNetDaily did not show reference to the fine print clearly posted on the survey with a link to more detailed information on the inaccuracies of online voluntary polling. MSNBC News tells About our Live Votes and surveys right at the bottom of the survey results.

Who in the heck is up watching MSNBC this time of the night anyway? WorldNetDaily reported approximately 6,000 responses to the poll at 10:05PM ET. This posting was put together three hours later and the count was up by another 10,000 to over 16,000 voters. At this hour most of the nation is asleep except for me and at least a few thousand folks on the West Coast watching MSNBC while surfing. That said, I can see that this poll could be accurate given the predominately liberal West Coast. That is considering that there are probably not more than 960 (6% of 16K) Bush supporters on the West Coast anyway. Of course I am joking.

All joking aside, I was beginning to trust some of the WorldNetDaily content. After all they do say in their mission statement which is quoted on their about page that they are, “…a guardian of liberty, an exponent of truth and justice, an uncompromising disseminator of news.” It looks like they are at least compromising a little bit of the truth by not giving the whole truth in that this survey is very likely to be inaccurate. The MSNBC poll and survey disclaimer page uses an example of a poll taken on the subject of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal where there was a 40% difference when compared to another poll on the same subject.

The WorldNetDaily story can be found here.