Will the real GOP please stand up

The Club for Growth points us to this editorial in the Union Leader,

Want to know who is making a bigger windfall than oil companies are making from the prices paid by the poor gasoline consumer? Itâ??s good old Uncle Sam and his 51 little brothers.

Refining costs and profits combined make up about 15 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Department. State and local taxes make up almost double that, about 27 percent. (New Hampshireâ??s 18 cents per gallon fuel tax accounted for 7.2 percent of last weekâ??s average gas price of $2.49 a gallon.)

â?¦The windfall profits tax would accomplish nothing beneficial, while almost certainly making matters worse. It is yet another economically foolish, opportunistic ploy by Democrats to squeeze money from an industry whose popularity suddenly has plummeted.

This is predictable political pandering and demonizing of big business. This next sentence should be about how predictable this is coming from Democrats, who are always railing against big business, that is, when they are not raising money from them. Sadly, the GOP is on board with this charade. What a shame.

I’ve said it before, and unfortunately, I have to say it again,

It is the liberals who have been against exploration and production in this country for thirty years. They have passed laws and made it virtually impossible for energy companies to invest in E&P. They say no to new refineries (last one built in 1976) to nuclear power (20+years), to more drilling in the lower 48 states, in the Gulf and in Alaska, to onshore liquid natural gas facilities and oceanic wind farms within view of their summer retreats.

Republicans should be making these points, not linking arms with them in an effort to demonize the industry for profiting from their mistakes.

GOP Goes After Energy Profits

WASHINGTON, Nov 1 (Reuters) – In the latest sign of Republican worry about high energy prices, the head of the Senate Finance Committee said on Tuesday he wants large oil companies to donate 10 percent of their record profits to help poor Americans pay winter heating bills.

Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about oil profits triggering a consumer backlash when winter heating bills start to arrive in the next few weeks. The government forecasts natural gas costs in the U.S. Midwest will soar by 61 percent while heating oil in the Northeast jumps nearly 30 percent this winter.

Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he sent a letter to oil companies to “embarrass” them into contributing to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

Is this the company the GOP wants to keep when it comes to energy and fiscal policy?

Kucinich Calls For Windfall Profit Tax on Oil Companies

WASHINGTON – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday blamed Vice President Dick Cheney for bungling U.S. energy policy – and proposed a $20 billion-per-year tax on oil profits to subsidize clean-fuels development.

“The facts are clear: Oil companies are making massive profits,” she said in a prepared statement. “Our families are hurting. Businesses are hurting. And the economy is in real trouble,” said Barbara Boxer.

I’m almost to the point that I won’t shed many tears if the GOP gets crushed in the mid-term elections.

I would like to respond to a few claims that were made during last weekendâ??s Pundit Review Radio Show where we discussed homosexual â??marriageâ? and the upcoming ballot initiative to vote on a Constitutional Amendment to protect traditional male-female marriage in 2008.

First, it was claimed that studies are not relevant when talking about issues that involve â??peopleâ? such as homosexual â??marriage.â? According to the argument put forth by my friend and co-host Kevin, all studies and polls are bogus and can be made to reveal whatever you want them to. I agree, some are bogus and prone to manipulation and distortion. However, as somebody who deals with scientific data every day, I know that those studies and clinical trials with high degrees of statistical significance (greater than 95%) are highly predictive and relevant. Also, studies which are published in peer reviewed highly esteemed scientific journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Medical Journal of Homosexuality, Lancet, and Journal of American Medical Association are incredibly difficult to get publicshed in. Only the highest quality cliical trails and scientific papers are published in these publications. It is easy to understand why many pro homo-marriage advocates seek to discredit â??studiesâ? since the overwhelming amount of empirical evidence has demonstrated that hetero-marriage is the optimum family configuration for the rearing of healthy societies and healthy well adjusted children.

To this point, my friend and co-host Kevin comments:

â??Here is why I donâ??t like studies in debates. Because I can point you to the US Department of Health and Human Service web site to read studies that say the following,
â??Courts have expressed concern that children raised by gay and lesbian parents may have difficulties with their personal and psychological development, self-esteem, and social and peer relationships. Because of this concern, researchers have focused on childrenâ??s development in gay and lesbian families.
The studies conclude that children of gay or lesbian parents are no different than their counterparts raised by heterosexual parents. In â??Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,â? a 1992 article in Child Development, Charlotte Patterson states, â??Despite dire predictions about children based on well-known theories of psychosocial development, and despite the accumulation of a substantial body of research investigating these issues, not a single study has found children of gay or lesbian parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.â?
Psychiatrist Laurintine Fromm, of the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, agrees with that finding. â??[The] literatureâ?¦does not indicate that these children fare any worse [than those of heterosexual parents] in any area of psychological development or sexual identity formation. A parentâ??s capacity to be respectful and supportive of the childâ??s autonomy and to maintain her own intimate attachments, far outweighs the influence of the parentâ??s sexual orientation alone.â?
http://naic.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/f_gay/f_gayb.cfm
Anyone can point to studies. What I will point to are the thousands of well adjusted kids out there who were raised by gay parents. Those arenâ??t stats, they are people. People who know through experience that the quality of the person doing the child raising is far, far more important that the sexual preference of the parent.

Kevin is correct that â??anyone can point to studies.â? Unfortunately the â??studiesâ? that the Dept of Health and Human Services cites above comes from the American Academy of Pediatricsâ?? (AAP) 2002 report that is flawed and inconclusive. The report itself cautioned that â??the small and non-representative samples studied and the relatively young age of most of the children suggest some reserve,â? and that â??Research exploring the diversity of parental relationships among gay and lesbian parents is just beginning.â? Thus, the reportâ??s conclusion that â??a growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual,â? contradicts the fact that the authors of the study acknowledge the newness of the research.

The report concludes that the same-sex families closely resemble step-families formed after heterosexual couples divorce. Strong empirical evidence exists that suggests that children fare better with a single biological parent than in a step-family. Thus, if children raised in same-sex homes resemble children raised in step and divorced families as the AAP Technical Report concludes, there is very little research to indicate that same sex parenting is healthy for children. According to the AAP Technical Report:
Step-parents provide less warmth and communicate less with their children than do biological parents.
Children living with step-families are likely to have significantly greater â??emotional, behavioral, and academic problemsâ? than children living with their biological mother and father.
Pre-school children who live with one biological parent and one step parent are 40 times more likely to become a victim of abuse than children living with a biological mother and father.
Compared to children in biological homes and even single-parent homes, â??step-children are not merely disadvantaged, but imperiled.â?
Children residing in a home with a step-parent are 8 times more likely to die from maltreatment than children living with 2 biological parents.
Judith Wallerstein (UC Berkeley) and Mavis Hetherington (U of Virginia), in one of the most comprehensive studies ever completed on the impacts of divorce concluded that divorce impacts children more dramatically and for longer periods of time than most scholars and child psychologists ever conceived.
Judith Wallerstein found, in her 25-year extensive study on the effects of divorce on children, that â??divorce is a long-term crisis that was affect the psychological profile of an entire generation.â? and that almost half of the children that she observed were â??worried, underachieving, self-deprecating, and sometimes angry.â?

National studies show that children from divorced and remarried families are more aggressive toward their parents and teachers, experience more depression, have more learning difficulties, are two to three times more likely to be referred for psychological help at school than their peers from intact families. More of them end up in mental health care clinics, have earlier sexual activity, have more children out of wed lock, have less marriage and more divorce, and experience more psychological problems than children of intact marriages.�

If children raised in same-sex households resemble those in step and divorced families as the AAP Technical Report suggests than it is clear that there is little hard clinical data to suggest that these â??same-sexâ? family configurations would be a healthy environment for children. For the AAP to suggest that â??a growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual.â? is contrary to their own mission of â??attaining physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.â?

I would challenge anybody to point to any peer reviewed scientific studies or research that concludes that children raised in homosexual households fare equally with those raised in hetero-family homes. In my opinion, the non-existence of any hard data to reinforce their central claim explains why people donâ??t want to â??talk about studies.â? I wouldnâ??t either if I didnâ??t have any that substantiated my central position.

Moreover, research comparing outcomes in child well-being in same-sex partnering homes and traditional mother/father homes is notoriously inconclusive.

Dr. Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai, professionals in quantitative analysis conducted a study for the Marriage Law Project in Washington D.C. which analyzed 49 empirical studies on same-sex partnering. They concluded that there was no basis to the assertion that children raised by homosexual families look just like those raised by heterosexual parents.

Most of the studies they analyzed were small and unrepresentative study samples with non-existent or inadequate comparison groups. Authors of 48 of the 49 studies wished to influence public policy in support of homosexual families. Steven Nock, Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a member of the editorial board of Journal of Marriage and Family concluded that: â??the current literature on lesbian mothering is inadequate to permit any conclusions to be drawn. None had a probability sample. All used inappropriate statistics given the sample sizes obtained. All had biased samples. Sample sizes were consistently smallâ?¦ I do not believe that this collection of articles indicates that lesbian and heterosexual mothers are similar. In fact, from a scientific perspective, the evidence confirms nothing about the quality of gay parents.â?

The current research comparing the outcomes of children raised in homosexual homes and in traditional heterosexual homes is young, plagued with methodological problems, and therefore inconclusive. Homosexual marriage/ adoption is an unproven social experiment that is historically and culturally radical. What the vast majority of empirical data does show is that the optimal environment for the healthy development of children is by two heterosexual biological parents.

This is one of the primary reasons that homosexual â??marriageâ? is so concerning to me. When â??homosexual marriageâ? is given equal legal standing with heterosexual marriage, the two â??familiesâ? will be deemed, by law, to be equally conducive to child rearing which again contradicts the overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary. We would be saying motherless and fatherless families are not important and that as Kevin claims:

â??â?¦it is more important to have quality people who love and care for the kids, who spend the time required and attends to their needs. Those are the qualities that make a good parent, not who you are sleeping with.â?

This actually contradicts Kevinâ??s earlier statement that â??I certainly agree that the ideal situation to raise a child is when a loving, committed, attentive husband and wife raise the child together. That is ideal. ” But letâ??s deal with a common claim by those who say it only â??takes a villageâ? to raise children, that all that matters is that children have â??lovingâ? care-takers regardless of the family configuration. Family configuration is not an inconsequential factor in the optimal raising of children. In fact, it is the most important determinant of how that child will develop physically and emotionally.

Of all the essential elements which lead to a childâ??s proper development (access to health care, nutrition, good schools, safe neighborhoods, and love) the most important factor is the marital status of the parents. According to Dr. Pitirim Sorokin, founder and first chair of the Sociology Department at Harvard, proclaimed the importance of married parents half a decade ago:

â??The most essential socio-cultural patterning of a newborn human organism is achieved by the family. It is the first and most efficient sculptor of human material, shaping the physical, behavioral, mental, moral and socio-cultural characteristics of practically every individual. â?¦From remotest past, married parents have been the most effective teachers of their children.â?

David Ellwood, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University notes that:

“The vast majority of children who are raised entirely in a two-parent home will never be poor during childhood. By contrast, the vast majority of children who spend time in a single parent home will experience poverty.â?

While it is not always possible to have the optimum family configuration (biological male and female at home), I believe that we as a society should not intentionally create and encourage “alternative homosexual families” that at best are on par with single parent/step parent family configurations with regard to how children are cared for. The way to encourage better marriage and healthier children is not to radically redefine the definition of marriage. A good place to start would be dealing with the “No Fault” divorce laws which have made divorce far too easy. Another would be to seriously consider mandatory family counseling for couples seking divorce.

On another topic that we discussed, while I respect the right of members of the same sex to live together and engage in whatever lawful sexual behavior they so choose, homosexuals donâ??t have any constitutional â??rightâ? to marry members of the same sex. Marriage is not a â??civil rightâ? as many including our guest on our radio show Sunday night Mark Solomon, Political Director for Mass Equality- the pro-homosexual “marrige”organization who opposes the constitutional amendment banning same sex â??marriage.â?

Marriage is a legal privilege regulated by the state with specifically enumerated limitations. One man canâ??t legally marry more than one woman, fathers canâ??t marry their daughters, and group Polyamourous â??marriagesâ? are illegal. Since marriage is a legal union, those entering into it must comply with the law. Only â??we the peopleâ? and our elected representatives have the constitutional authority to make these laws- defining what does and does not comprise marriage. For 5000 years the institution of marriage has always meant the union of one man and one woman. Now a diminutive group of homosexual â??marriageâ? activists have challenged the legal definition of marriage and have found a willing accomplice in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which in 2002 found a â??right to homosexual marriageâ? in our state constitution never seen in two centuries prior.

While the Court has the â??rightâ? to hand down such rulings regardless of history or legal precedent, the people of the state have the constitutional legal authority to specifically amend the constitution as 40 other states have done- to specify that marriage is the exclusive union of one man and one woman.

If there are those who believe that such an amendment violates specific provisions of the Constitution , they have every right to challenge the amendment right up to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Mark argued on the show that voters donâ??t have a right to amend the constitution that denies rights to a specific group and would be a form of discrimination. These two claims are also on their website www.massequality.org.

As to the first point, it is absurd to suggest that any sovereign state does not have the right to amend its constitution. As to the second claim, I wonder if Mark would argue that the 13th Amendment which ended slavery was unconstitutional since slave owners were denied the â??rightâ? to own slaves.

No individual or group in our country has unlimited â??rights.â? As a matter of fact, all laws in one way or another discriminate in that they set limitations and boundaries on specific behaviors and actions. The 1st Amendmentâ??s freedom of speech is limited as is the 2nd Amendmentâ??s right to â??bear arms.â?

Similarly, since all of our laws are based on moral preferences of the citizenry and their elected representatives, laws enacted by the legislative bodies reflect the collective morality of the people.

The vast majority of Americans prefer to maintain and protect the traditional male-female exclusive definition of marriage. Unless pro homosexual â??marriageâ? advocates can demonstrate that the laws such as DOMA and others that protect traditional hetero marriage are unconstitutional , then we the people of the United States of America have every â??rightâ? to have our moral preferences enshrined into law. Period. Thatâ??s how our Representative Constitutional Democracy works.

As to why I personally oppose homosexual marriage-aside from my concerns regarding the judiciary usurping the legislative authority of â??we the people,â? I like most Bible believing Christians believe that homosexuality is sinful behavior that is greatly offensive to God and violates His natural law. While I have acquaintances who practiced the homosexual lifestyle, I also personally know people who have turned away from it recognizing how self destructive, unhealthy, and dangerous it was in their lives.

While I donâ??t deny that some homosexual couples can live together- as can some polyamoroous and polygamous â??couplesâ? can- in â??committedâ? relationships, after living in San Francisco for almost 12 years having known hundreds of homosexuals, I also know that the vast majority of them reject the concept of monogamy and marriage itself. While I am happy for anybody involved in any type of “committed” relationships whether sexual or platonic, I believe that it is largely irrelevant as to the question whether we as a society should redefine marriage.

While I daily attempt toâ? love the sinner and hate the sin,â? I try to live my Judeo-Christian values out. How can any Christian claim to follow Jesus Christ if they fail to speak the truth in love and call sin what it is-sin pure and simple? Both Old and New testaments condemn homosexuality as highly offensive to God. While as Christians we are to love people unconditionally, we are also expected to hate sin just as much as God does. To glamorize and elevate it by calling it just another â??alternative life-style choiceâ? which is â??normal and healthyâ? would be to deny empirical evidence to the contrary as well as contradict what God says about homosexuality in the Bible which serves as the foundation of my life and many millions of Christians around the world.

It would be hypocritical of me to say that as somebody who believes that the Bible is the inspired word of God that overtly condemns and rejects homosexuality that I support homosexual marriage. To do so would be to take part in tacitly condoning the behavior itself. How can people condone and even encourage behavior which they know to be physically, mentally, and spiritually destructive to other human beings. I believe what God says first and foremost. He is my authority. While it may not be politically correct for me not to support homosexual â??marriageâ? I am more interested in preserving the worldâ??s oldest and most important God given institution man has ever known. Although our guest Mark, from Mass Equaltiy claimed that the decision to allow homosexual marriage had come and gone and nobody really cared, I believe that Americans care deeply about preserving what has been the cornerstone of Western civilization. Weâ??ll find out soon enough where the people of Massachussetts stand on this crucial issue.

As Paul Krugman would say, we are seeing The Great Unraveling. The Democrats prove once again that they are the party of the rear view mirror. What are the offering the American people? Vietnam and Watergate analogies and arguments about decisions that they went along with in huge numbers three years ago?

Color me crazy, but don’t we have a few things on our plate already? How about dealing with the situation on the ground in Iraq instead of calling for immediate withdrawal and defeat. How about working towards a winning solution instead of acting like children, advancing conspiracy theories being bandied about by the lunatic fringe in your party?

I’m actually embarrassed for them.

Let’s remember that Democrats looked at the same evidence as the administration and still voted for the war. Let’s talk about how the Democrats wanted to remove Saddam long before 9-11. Do I need to go and find the laundry list of quotes from leading Democrats about the dangers of Saddam’s regime?

This is so transparent, so pathetic.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, questioning intelligence that President Bush used in the run-up to the war in Iraq and accusing Republicans of ignoring the issue.

“The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions,” Reid said before invoking Senate rules that led to the closed session.

Is that so Harry Reid? Outside of the moonbats at Kos, MoveOn.org and Times Select, who is claiming that? It is certainly not the recently sainted prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Here he is, less than one week ago, basically preemptively calling people like Harry Reid disengenious partisans.

QUESTION: A lot of Americans, people who are opposed to the war, critics of the administration, have looked to your investigation with hope in some ways and might see this indictment as a vindication of their argument that the administration took the country to war on false premises. Does this indictment do that?

FITZGERALD: This indictment is not about the war. This indictment’s not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer’s identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person — a person, Mr. Libby — lied or not.

The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction.

And I think anyone’s who’s concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn’t look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

So what does this say about todayâ??s stunt? Just the latest example of the Democrats overreaching and hurting nobody but themselves. Can you image this group of clowns leading the war on terror?

For all the talk of troubles within the Republican Party, they have nowhere near the problems of the pathetic Democrats at this point. Once again, the republicans should be thanking their lucky stars that their opposition party is so pathetic. Image how bad a shape the GOP could be in if they had a legimate opposition party?

As usual, Michelle Malkin has a great round-up of links

On April 7,2004 Senator Kerry stated:

As president he would cut the deficit in half in four years by rolling back the Bush administration’s tax cuts “for the wealthiest Americans while expanding tax cuts for the middle class.” Roll back the Bush administration’s tax cuts, including dividend tax cuts, for people earning more than $200,000;

In contrast, Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow, during the campaign said the following:

The president’s tax cuts represent a key part of the nation’s deficit reduction strategy, saying: “Making the tax cuts permanent is an important part of deficit reduction because lower taxes have stimulated our economy so effectively. A growing economy leads to increased Treasury receipts, and when combined with restrained spending, deficits can be shrunk.

Today I am glad we ignored Senator Spandex “tax the rich demagogery” and re-elected the guy who promised to let us keep more of our own money:

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita haven’t blown the economy off course. Economic growth clocked in at a surprisingly strong 3.8 percent pace in the third quarter, reflecting brisk spending by consumers and businesses despite high energy prices.

It isn’t surprising to us here at Pundit Review! We know that tax cuts work every time they are enacted. The deeper the better!

Here were some of the other positive data points:

On Wall Street, release of the gross domestic product report sparked a rally. The Dow Jones industrials soared 172.82 points to close at 10,402.77, its biggest one-day gain since April 21.

When food and energy prices are excluded, “core” inflation â?? which the Federal Reserve watches closely â?? actually moderated. It rose at a rate of 1.3 percent in the third quarter, compared with 1.7 percent in the earlier three months.

As for businesses, their spending on equipment and software rose at an 8.9 percent pace in the third quarter, on top of a 10.9 percent growth rate during the prior three months.

Private analysts say the overall economy is actually doing better than the public’s perception, which has been shaped by high energy bills, the hurricanes and the jobs situation.

The Yahoo/AP story failed to mention that the deficit shrunk by $290 billion dollars due to increasing tax dollars which have poured into the federal treasury-the exact opposite of what the Lib-Dems predicted.

Don’t hold your breath for any apologies from Kerry or Kennedy.