Islamic Terrorist Pretending to be Relatives of American Soldiers

Islamic terrorists are encouraging their supporters, who can write in English, to get on American web sites and pretend to be friends or family members of American soldiers or marines. The "media jehadis" are instructed to tell stories in line with the anti-war tone of American and European media. Things like soldiers committing suicide because they were forced to take part in atrocities in Iraq. Or wounded soldiers suffering, or killing themselves, because of the poor care and abuse they have received from the army. The media jihadis are told to make it sound like they are simply passing on what a soldier said, not to pretend to be a soldier or marine. Media jihadis are told not to discuss anything from the Moslems side, and Moslems should only be referred to as innocent victims. Never mention the Sunni-Shia conflict or Islamic terrorism. Posters should not stick around for discussions, lest they be found out. Care should be taken to select screen names similar to other English speaking posters. Keep messages simple, so as not to betray the fact that you are not a native English speaker.

Until now, the people who told us heart wrenching stories about wounded suffering soldiers who commit suicide has been left to the American MSM and the denizens of the internet via Kos or DU. These people will now get help.

Of course they really don't need help because the NY Times is already in their corner and is busy writing stories about women soldiers who are subject to multiple rapes and war injuries in Iraq even though they have never been to Iraq.

The March 18 Sunday New York Times Magazine cover story was a gripping account of the emotional problems some female veterans suffer as results of their war experiences, sexual assaults or both.

One of the women featured in the story was a former builder constructionman Amorita Randall, 27, who served six years as a Seabee. Randall told the Times that while in the Navy, she was raped twice — in 2002 while she was stationed in Mississippi, and again in Guam in 2004. She also told the Times that she served in Iraq in 2004, which the Times reported as fact but which it now appears was not the case.

Webb Aide Arrested for Gun Possession

The Virginian Pilot and Washington Post's favorite Senator may want to explain why he was carrying a loaded gun in DC when doing so is a crime. Are Senators immune from gun laws?

Here's NR's take.

From Michelle Malkin:

There seems to be a lot of inconsistencies with the news reports coming out about whether or not Senators & Congressmen are exempt from our federal "disarmed victim" zones, in particular the Capitol and the associated offices of our elected representatives. What is the law? Even if all of the other DC possession laws aren't the issue, would Jim Webb be legally able to bring a firearm into the Capitol?

and..

In reading the text of the recent federal court ruling that overturned a portion of the D.C. gun ban (which ban still remains in effect pending appeal), I learned some details about D.C. gun laws.
Sen. Webb's pistol is illegal anywhere inside the city limits of Washington, D.C. unless Mr. Webb registered the gun with the D.C. police department prior to the 1976 registration deadline. The only people who have been allowed to register privately-owned handguns in D.C. since 1976 are retired D.C. police officers. Active-duty D.C. cops cannot legally own a handgun unless they registered it prior to the 1976 deadline, though they can carry a department-issued sidearm
while on duty. Thus, if Sen. Webb's pistol is less than 30 years old, it would not have existed in 1976 and he would not have been able to register it.

As for the separate issue of a concealed-firearm permit, a private citizen in D.C. can still obtain such a permit if the D.C.P.D. happens to feel like issuing it to him, but he can only carry a registered handgun, which makes it a moot point for people who moved to D.C. after 1976.

Leading Islamic Scholar: Osama Bin Laden is "A Man After My Own Heart"

From Little Green Footballs:

Interviewer: But there was an operation, for which Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility - the bombing of the Twin Towers in America, and what was described as terrorist attacks against the Americans. In this case, for example, are you with him or against him? Were you happy when you saw the towers collapse?

Fathi Yakan: If we examine the ideology of Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in depth, we see that he has become completely convinced that the only way to curb the disease that is afflicting the Islamic world... The only way to stop this octopus is to crush the serpent’s head.

Interviewer: Do you share this opinion?

Fathi Yakan: It’s fine with me. I might have crushed the serpent’s head in a different way. I might have crushed it by means of the Islamic resistance in South Lebanon, by attacking Israel. But Bin Laden said: “No, I will strike it in its own home. I will strike it in the World Trade Center, and shake its economic status.” This is his methodology, and he should bear responsibility for it, but I am not sad or depressed that this happened, and I do not condemn it. In all honestly, I have never condemned this. Just like it had negative ramifications, it had positive ones as well.

Geneva Conventions are For America's Enemies

Via Belmont Club

As currently interpreted the Geneva Conventions only apply to individuals bent on destroying America. Individuals who blow up elementary schools, kidnap children, attack churches and mosques, kill invalids in wheelchairs, plan attacks on skyscrapers in New York, behead journalists, detonate car bombs with children to camouflage their crime, or board jetliners with explosive shoes -- all while wearing mufti or even women's clothing -- these are all considered "freedom fighters" of the most principled kind. They and they alone enjoy the protections of the Geneva Convention. As to Americans like Tucker and Menchaca or Israeli Gilad Shalit -- or these fifteen British sailors for that matter, it is a case of "what Geneva Convention?" We don't need no steenkin' Geneva Convention to try these guys as spies. That's the way the Human Rights racket works. Don't go looking for any Geneva Convention in Somalia, Darfur, Basilan or Iran. Try Guantanamo Bay.

Beldar on Goldberg and Beinart on whether Democrats have paid a political price for opposing the Vietnam War

You have to be of a certain age to remember Viet Nam and to remember how we - the American people but most particularly the Democrats - were instrumental in the deaths of millions.

...for purposes of the current debate over Iraq, what's important about the history of American involvement in Vietnam, and especially the American abandonment of South Vietnam, is the blank spot in the American consciousness that continues to leave most Americans (most of whom now have come of age after 1975) serenely ignorant of what I believe to have been the single most shameful event in 20th Century American history. Millions of people died in Southeast Asia as the direct result of those votes by the anti-war Congress in 1973-1975. Almost none of the dead were Americans, though, and the American public was still distracted by Watergate and thoroughly exhausted by bitter arguments over Vietnam that by then dated back more than a decade. And as a result, for most Americans, those horrifying and eminently preventable events simply didn't happen.

*******
That's what I mean when I say that the Democratic Party never paid a price for its opposition to the Vietnam war.

When we're talking now about cutting and running from Iraq, with a risk of regional and world consequences that may well dwarf the bloodbaths in Southeast Asia after March 1975, we must, as a nation, manage to see and to appreciate — and to remember with appropriate horror and regret and, yes, shame — the blood of those millions that will forever stain American history.

Note well: I am not arguing that the piles of corpses in Cambodia's killing fields and the drowned Vietnamese boat people were intended by the Democratic Party as an institution. It wasn't the Democrats from the "Watergate Class of '74" who herded families into reeducation camps and tiger cages. Our guilt and shame ought be as enablers of madmen; our guilt and shame ought to be for failing to prevent that which we could and should, as a nation, have foreseen that the madmen would do. And in discussing the current alternatives regarding Iraq, for example, I do not think that it's particularly productive, nor even very precise, to talk about the Democratic Party's collective historical responsibility, as an institution, for the consequences of those 1973-1975 Congressional votes.

But without slapping party labels around, it is altogether appropriate — it is essential, it is a moral imperative at the risk of our collective and individual souls — that Americans finally grasp and then come to grips with what happened in Vietnam and Southeast Asia in the last half of the 1970s as a direct result of the anti-war, cut-and-run, and cut-off-the-funds politicians of either party who forced this country to abandon our allies there. The lessons here need to be learned by our nation, not just by one or the other of its political parties. In that regard, I'll appropriate Sen. McCain's comment: It's not political parties who win or lose wars; it's entire nations who win or lose wars, and it's nations who bear the consequences.

Psychologists Discuss the National Psychosis about KSM

Khalid Sheikh Muhammed has been singing like a bird in Gitmo. Whether the product of braggadocio and waterboarding, or the real deal, why are we focusing on the context of his confessions rather than the content of his crimes? Get inside the mind of the media in this week’s podcast.

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

Two cheers for James Shikwati.

Dennis Gartman has brought our attention to an interview by Mr. Shikwati in the German Magazine, Der Spiegel.

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...

"Bye-bye, GI. In Iraq you’re gonna die.”

We no longer question their patriotism.

Liberals burning an American soldier in Seattle.

No longer a fringe. These are the Democrats on parade.

How Many Does It Take Before That Mob Is More Than A Few Fringe Actors?

Liberals keep saying that the radicals on their side are a "few fringe actors." How many does it take before a few turn into the mainstream?

Click on the link to see the rest.

Glenn Reynolds, the Traffic Santa

I was re-reading some of my old - but still incredibly relevant - posts when I chanced on a link to Ace of Spades from 2006. It brought a smile to my face:

4. Traffic Santa Bloggers:

Some bloggers are known as "traffic santa's" as a single link from their widely read blog to your lesser known blog can bring in a virtual avalanche of new readers. Unfortunately, these bloggers know about their standing and seem petty about when, and to whom, they will give the gift of linkage.

As the 'sphere is all about gathering traffic, this can, inevitably, lead to tensions erupting into the open. Rather than complain that "I have to write 150 posts on razor blades and nanotechnology before some hick from East Tennessee will link me", take a deep breath and remember: civility.

Instead, you should take a few moments and write a complimentary e-mail introducing yourself, your blog, and what you think this particular "Traffic Santa" might be interested in reading. It wouldn't hurt to add a line complimenting his ability to distill your 7,500 word post into a single word like "Heh", either. Perhaps you should say he "perfectly captured the essence of the point being made, and reframed the argument in a way that illuminated it for all to see."

Civility is a wonderful thing.

SOUTH AFRICA LOWERS VOICE ON HUMAN RIGHTS:

Via Instapundit:

Thabo Mbeki is a typical African leader, and he has been busily turning South Africa into a typical African nation, marked by support for other thugocracies, a paranoid, unscientific AIDS policy and support for the murderous Mugabe regime. That doesn't leave much room for moral exceptionalism.

I have never had much use for the moral posturing of the South African black leaders and I'm rather surprised by the surprise of those who had. The reason that the ANC was able to take power bloodlessly was because the old - Apartheid - government handed the reins over without a civil war. I am not persuaded that - in 50 years - this will turn out to have been a good thing for either white or black inhabitants of Africa.

Tort Lawyer Convicted of Class Action Swindle

Mississippi is the epicenter of legal fraud.

Sadr in Splinters?

This story is fascinating at several levels. On the question of what’s going on in Iraq, it’s important to understand the control and power of the forces facing the US.

Sadr has been a force for rebellion and violence. If he has lost control and his “army” is splintering, that would be a good thing. It is certainly a good thing that he has left the country and this no longer has direct control of the thugs that made up his militia.

On the question of how he is dished up to the American people, we have two apparently disparate versions.

How is Moktada's excellent Iranian adventure going? "Al Sadr has been in Iran since early February," wrote the AP on March 21, "apparently laying low during the U.S.-Iraqi offensive, according to the U.S. military." Yet poor Moktada's been homesick. "Al Sadr tried to return to Iraq last month," says the wire story, "but turned back before he reached the Iraqi border upon learning of U.S. checkpoints on the road to Najaf, the Shiite holy city south of Baghdad where he lives."

An anonymous Sadr aide appeared to confirm the account. "Conditions are not suitable for him to return," he told the AP. "His safety will not be guaranteed if he returns."

Now, let's cut to the front page of the Washington Post on March 15. That's six whole days earlier. Sitting above the fold that day was a headline that proclaimed, "For U.S. and Sadr, Wary Cooperation," and a subhead that explained, "Radical Shiite Cleric Seen as Crucial To Success of Baghdad Security Plan."

In that story, we learned that "Sadr and the Americans are cooperating uneasily," and that "[t]he collaboration represents a remarkable shift for two adversaries who control the largest armies in Iraq and who fought some of the fiercest battles since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion." Most wonderfully, we learned that, "For Sadr, it is the latest stage in an evolution from populist cleric to guerrilla fighter to political kingmaker and now to power broker."

I guess we'll soon be reading that Moktada has evolved into one of the Eight Immortals, but never mind that for now. If the AP account is accurate, then even as the WaPo reporter was keyboarding the words, p-o-w-e-r- b-r-o-k-e-r, Moktada had already scurried away from the Iraqi border at the prospect of encountering a U.S. checkpoint. That's some impressive power brokering, no? The Post actually writes that U.S. officials now "view [Al Sadr] as a political catalyst who can help keep Iraq together -- or implode it." Would that be the same frightened Moktada last seen speeding deeper into Iran?

Now it’s clearly known that neither the AP nor the Washington Post supports the US effort in the Middle East. But to have two so-called “credible news organizations” dish up two totally different versions of reality heavily underscore the point that the “news” being fed to the American people is mental poison, akin to the poisonous pet food that has also hit the headlines in recent days. The difference is that the pet food killed a relatively small number of pet animals. The sort of poison fed to us by the MSM can – and has – killed millions.

National Geographic: Mars Is Warming

Dennis Gartman is a famous financial expert, a very successful trader and investor, and someone with extensive contacts all over the world. He has expressed antipathy toward those who he refers to as the Eco-Left.

While not doubting that the world is getting warmer he is convinced that this is part of a natural cycle that is dictated not by an evil mankind, but my much more powerful forces, primarily the sun.

After years of having the stage to themselves, the Eco-Left if finally finding the stage crowded. For the first time in our memory, those who take exception to man-made global warming are being heard...and listened to.

The February [2007] issue of National Geographic reports that:

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. [This is a bit of National Geographic editorializing. As recent evidence has shown, and more climate scientists come forward, the "vast majority" is shrinking faster than the polar icecaps.]

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Unless the Mars probes that NASA has sent to Mars have caused warming on that planet, it is the sun's natural change in heat output, the heating and cooling, that are the reasons for both earthly and Martian temperature changes.

Greenhouse gases are on the rise on Mars, and have been apparently for centuries, as the sun's cycle of sunspot activity is on the rise. As the atmosphere heats, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and in the oceans and in the water, rises, for warmer atmospheres and water are able to hold greater volumes of CO2. That is a scientific fact, and those greater volumes lag behind the heat increases that create the circumstance.

This risk is that the Eco-Left will panic the world's legislatures into implementing anti-global warming policies that will not only have no effect on global warming, but will doom millions of poor people throughout the world to miserable death. And lest I be accused of exaggerating, let me remind all that the DDT ban, which most people still reflexively support, saved countless numbers of eagles but also allowed for the recurrence of malaria resulting in hundreds of thousands of human deaths in the Third World. We banned DDT, saved the eagles and killed numberless human beings in the process. I would rather not go that route again.

UPDATE: Welcome Freepers. Feel free to look around.

Liberals on the Couch; Why They Are How They Are.

Ever wondered about the psychological roots of Liberlism? Here's an interesting theory: Nocturnal Stinkubations of the Left

One of the reasons liberal solutions don't work is that they fail to take into consideration the nocturnal aspect of history. And one of the reasons they fail to do so is that leftism in general consists of a meme-pool of the over- and undereducated -- or maternalistic elites (the dreaded "vaginocracy dentata") and the losers for whom they know what's best. Furthermore, this pathological dance creates a "night time" influence of its own, in that the solutions and programs enacted by the elites inevitably make the problems worse, thus creating a greater need for maternalistic elites (an odd conglomeration of "men with breasts" and women without them, e.g., feminists).

[snip]
Thus, we should not be surprised if we see in leftists the same pattern of projection, condescension, and sanctimony. Can I get an witness? Thank you. Where would the left be without their projected racist fantasies of the po' hepless negro? It is quite striking how blacks can tolerate the utter contempt that liberal politicians and the MSM have for them. They are infantilized, held to lower standards, excused of behavior that would not be tolerated in others, and worse. Only on the left could a low life thug such as Al Sharpton run for president without provoking comment, much less deep soul-searching. It is not ironic. It is inevitable.

But it takes two to tango to a tangle of pathology, and it is always tempting to overpathologize the abuser and underpathologize the abused, when the dysfunctional system needs both parties in order to function as a national rescue party -- to party heartily (or in the end, heartlessly). Masochists are on the lookout for sadists, driven to find their missing half just as much as the sadist seeks the weak masochist.
[snip]
For example, we all know how loving and compassionate liberals are, especially toward the terrorists who wish to destroy our civilization. The terrorists are given a pass because liberals project "victimhood" into them -- e.g., they are victims of poverty, or of imperialism, or of Jews, or of Big Oil, or of George Bush. And this codependent "idiot compassion" simply creates more terrorists.

On the other hand, no such compassion is felt toward Scooter Libby or Dick Cheney. Just a couple of days ago there was another primitive hatefest at huffingandpissed when Vice President Cheney was taken to the hospital because of a blood clot. The primitive projection is quite palpable, which is nothing new if one has any acquaintance with the base base of the left.

What is so incomprehensible -- incomprehensible in the absence of psychoanalytic knowledge, anyway -- is the hatred directed toward a public servant such as Cheney but the absence of hatred toward the terrorists. When something this illogical is going on, you know that it is governed by night-time unconscious processes of which the person is unaware. How can it be that Cheney is the one deserving of denigration, death, suffering, and hellfire, while admitted terrorists at Gitmo are deserving of the full panoply of civil rights -- even the presumption of innocence despite having admitted their crimes?

A truly fascinating article. Read the whole thing.

Duke Rape: Who Won't Pay?

John Podhoretz in the NY Post: "PROFS CAN SMEAR AGAIN"

But for those 88 professors - what consequences will they experience?

Consequences? Don't make me laugh.

The tenured ones will continue to enjoy their aristocratic installment in Durham. The untenured will be supported in their efforts to find similar perches elsewhere by the rest of the Gang of 88, because that's how academic politics works.

How about even the loss of even a single night of sleep?

Oh, no. Not these folks. They're fighting the white patriarchy. They're on the side of the dispossessed and oppressed. They're giving voice to the voiceless. They're giving hope to the hopeless.

They're fools at best and monsters at worst - and neither fools nor monsters are much troubled by attacks of conscience.

Read the whole thing.

The End Of Global Warming

When public opinion changes, the change is often dramatic. Why? Because the chattering classed don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of history and when they see that the cause they have been espousing is becoming unpopular, they will try to run to the head of the crowd marching in a new direction.

In other words, the people who tell us what to think are deathly afraid of being in the minority. Couple their juvenile fears of being left out of the ”in-crowd” with a truly staggering ignorance of any smattering of science, or even math, and you have people who can be led to believe in virtually anything by anyone.

Which explains their willingness to advocate the death of the planet by global cooling in the 1970s to the death by warming in this decade.

And now we see the beginning of another shift. This time it’s cause by climate scientists who were perfectly willing to take grant money from the government to prove the politically popular anthropomorphic global warming thesis become a little worried that ridiculous charlatans like Al Gore are making claims that make them look ridiculous.

Look, Al Gore may have been a moderately successful politician, but this drop-out from the seminary and law school is making climate science an object of ridicule.

The icing on this particular cake is the indisputable fact that other planets in our solar system are also experiencing rises in temperature. It cannot be claimed by anyone not wearing a tinfoil hat that Mars is warming due to human activity. The literally only thing that the Earth and Mars have in common regarding temperature is the sun. The sun being the cause of global warming and cooling cycles is indisputable and uncontroversial. I know of no one who finds this the least controversial, unless it’s Al Gore mopping his brow showing that the Earth has a fever.

At his point Al Gore is so deeply embedded in his global warming theories that it is impossible to extricate his corpulent ass from that particular pit. Ditto with NASA’s James Hansen. But others see the reality of the “USS Global Warming” hitting an iceberg and the rats are beginning to leave this particular ship.

What I find particularly delicious is that the two groups that almost always jump on an opinion train just before it plunges over the cliff are Liberal clergy and politicians. And just now we have perfect evidence of that particular observation.

The Newspaper Generals of Robert E. Lee

I had heard this one before, but it's too good not to pass on:

"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers!

In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late.
Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact."

-Robert E. Lee, 1863

John Edwards Buys Carbon Offsets

Bill Hobbs explains why Edwards' 28,000 foot mansion is "carbon neutral."

As Bill Cosby would say "Riiiiggghht!"

28% Approve of Congress. Congressional Approval Rating Low and Dropping.

How many times have you heard that President Bush's approval ratings are low? Guess what: the Democratic Congress's approval rating is lower.

For some reason, this hasn't been getting much press. But the low esteem in which voters held Congress prior to November's election barely changed after the Democrats took power in January. Today, Gallup notes that the modest bounce Congress experienced in January and February is now gone:

The modest uptick in approval of the job being done by Congress has dissipated for the most part after only two months.
According to Gallup's monthly update on job approval of Congress -- in a March 11-14, 2007, national poll -- 28% of Americans approve of the job being done by Congress and 64% disapprove.

Where have you read this? Not in your newspaper, I'll bet. This is why the Internet is so important to the intelligent citizen.

By the way, the press (especially the Virginian Pilot: "Required Reading For Dummies") has roughly the same approval rating as congress. And well deserved.

Get ready for the Dems complaining about Bush beating up on them.

Al Gore Continues to Demand Special Treatment. And The Great NYC Climate Debate.

From behind the scenes on Capitol Hill: Former Vice President Al Gore, despite being given major preferential treatment, has violated the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee’s (EPW) hearing rules.

Read the rest.

And from the NYC debate:Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate
Some comments (read the whole thing):

Skeptical quotes from Novelist Michael Crichton:

"I would like to suggest a few symbolic actions that right—might really mean something. One of them, which is very simple, 99% of the American population doesn’t care, is ban private jets. Nobody needs to fly in them, ban them now. And, and in addition, [APPLAUSE] "Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [electrical] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously? [APPLAUSE]"

"I suddenly think about my friends, you know, getting on their private jets. And I think, well, you know, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe all that we have to do is mouth a few platitudes, show a good, expression of concern on our faces, buy a Prius, drive it around for a while and give it to the maid, attend a few fundraisers and you’re done. Because, actually, all anybody really wants to do is talk about it."

"I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes. [LAUGHTER]"

"Everyday 30,000 people on this planet die of the diseases of poverty. There are, a third of the planet doesn’t have electricity. We have a billion people with no clean water. We have half a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Do we care about this? It seems that we don’t. It seems that we would rather look a hundred years into the future than pay attention to what’s going on now. I think that's unacceptable. I think that’s really a disgrace."

Skeptical quotes of University of London’s emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott:

"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. [LAUGHTER] But it is a very serious point."

"In the early 20th century, 95% of scientists believe in eugenics. [LAUGHTER] Science does not progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts."

"The first Earth Day in America claimed the following, that because of global cooling, the population of America would have collapsed to 22 million by the year 2000. And of the average calorie intake of the average American would be wait for this, 2,400 calories, would good it were. [LAUGHTER] It’s nonsense and very dangerous. And what we have fundamentally forgotten is simple primary school science. Climate always changes."

"Angela Merkel the German chancellor, my own good prime minister (Tony Blair) for whom I voted -- let me emphasize, arguing in public two weeks ago as to who in Annie get the gun style could produce the best temperature. ‘I could do two degrees C said Angela.’ ‘No, I could only do three said Tony.’ [LAUGHTER] Stand back a minute, those are politicians, telling you that they can control climate to a degree Celsius.”

“And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let’s use an engineer; I don’t think I’d want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge. [LAUGHTER]”

Skeptical quotes of MIT’s Professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen:

"Now, much of the current alarm, I would suggest, is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate."

Four Years In

A genius with words:

Four years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that "War is bad for children and other living things." They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.

There were children and other living things on the planes that flew into the towers. They all went into the fire and the ash just the same. But they, now, are not important. Nor is the message their deaths still send us when we listen. That message is to be silenced. The rising brand new message is "All we are say-ing is give...." And it is always off-key.

Four years in and they are upset that their party of the 90s has been so long interrupted; that their raves are foreshortened; that their sleep is persistently shaken by car bombs beyond the far horizon; that their time at the mall can not be entirely, completely, and utterly without guilt.

Four years in and the clear and present danger to the nation must be closeted in favor of the unclear and distant end of the world if we insist on exuding, as all life does, carbon dioxide. Send the nation and its armies and its wards and protectorates to the block, but keep the polar bears cold.

"Can't you see that worldwide wall of water sweeping in to inundate all life in 30, 50, 100, 500 years?"

"No. I cannot see it from here."

"Ah well, you are a warmonger, an evil person, a vile Christian, a shameless, shameless American.

Read it all.

A Message From Jihad Watch to Senator Obama

James Hansen Claims Being Stifled by Bush, Gave Only 1400 Interviews

Via Protein Wisdom:

A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he’d done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years.

James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn’t want his message to get out.

But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced.

“We have over 1,400 opportunities that you’ve availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

Chilled! Scientist "Silenced" By Bush Gave 1,500 On-The-Job Media Interviews In Recent Years
Imagine what a Chatty Kathy he'd've been had someone not blown an ill wind chilling dissent at him:

In related news, Lindsey Lohan's, Paris Hilton's, and Britney Spears' pooters all held a joint press conference declaring they had been "made all but invisible'" by Bush Administration thugs.

1400 interviews in the past few years? When does the silly bastard actually do his job?

Mr. Hansen yesterday said the Bush administration threatened him and his orifice if he didn’t actually do some productive work! The type of work for which he had been hired!

Additionally, Mr. Hansen reported,

“It was an oral threat made to an alien in Area 51 and relayed to me via telekenesis,” said Mr. Hansen, who is listed as a senior adviser to Mr. Gore and a prospective suitor for Amanda Marcotte

Additionally,

Citing what he called a “growth of political interference, which is just below VHF on the electro-magnetic spectrum” Mr. Hansen said he was forced to wear his gucci custom fit tin-foil helmet and shorts (briefs) because press officials believed the network to have a liberal bias and “Amanda kinda likes the cruchy sound of tinfoil shorts.”

I hope you’re happy now!! Bastards!

Portland loves its anarchist thugs

Via Michelle Malkin:
A reminder of just how lovely, polite, and respectful Portland's kids are:

Indoctrinate U: The Trailer

See the trailer and see the movie

An Enemy So Evil...

It is hard, sometimes, to appreciate fully how evil our enemies in the war on terror are. This AFP story is a reminder:

Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.
The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

"Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said.

"It killed the two children inside as well as three other civilians in the vicinity. So, a total of five killed, seven injured," the official said.


The perpetrators were believed to be members of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Hat tip to Power Line

Chuckie Schumer Interferes With a Federal Investigation

January 22, 2004
The Honorable James Comey
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Deputy Attorney General Comey:

I write to request an update on the investigation into allegations that senior administration officials committed a federal felony by leaking the identity of a covert CIA operative.

The investigation has been underway for four months now and we have received no meaningful reports regarding the progress you are making. I realize there are limitations on information that can be disclosed regarding an ongoing criminal investigation, but, as we have discussed, a prosecutor has the responsibility to assure public confidence in criminal investigations, especially those of such a serious nature.

In the wake of recent calls by former intelligence operatives for a Congressional investigation, I write to ask that you publicly answer several questions regarding the progress you are making:

Has a grand jury been empaneled in this case? Have members of the White House staff signed waivers, permitting journalists to discuss confidential communications? If so, what percent of the White House staff has signed such waivers? Has anyone who has been asked to sign such a waiver refused to do so?

Have journalists been interviewed as part of the investigation? Has any journalist who has been released from confidentiality (assuming any has), refused to answer questions regarding previously confidential communications?

Were White House staffers ordered as a condition of employment to submit to interviews? Has anyone asked for or been offered immunity? If so, how many individuals fit in each category and what types of immunity have been asked for and offered to each?

What other information can you provide us regarding the progress you are making with this investigation?

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator

Victoria Toensing's Comments to Congress Regarding the Plame Scandal

For those interested in learning if Valerie Plame's exposure was a crime, read what the person who wrote the law has to say.

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Happiness is a beltfed weapon.
Nuke a gay whale for Jesus
"Jesus Saves, Esposito Scores on the Rebound."
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DON'T CONFUSE LEADERSHIP WITH DRIVING SLOW IN THE LEFT LANE
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United States Marine Corps: When it absolutelty, positively has to be destroyed overnight.
MY KID BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT"
MY HONOR STUDENT WILL BE YOUR KIDS DEFENSE ATTORNEY.
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Jonah Goldberg on the Dems Betraying Their Base

Suddenly, it looks as if the Democrats are the Republicans on fast-forward. It’s early yet, and the Democrats did finish their mini-Contract with America — the so-called first 100 hours — with mixed success on the substance but great fanfare in the media. Yet items like upping the minimum wage and shafting oil companies, although certainly not insubstantial, were primarily symbolic.

The most important issue in the November elections was the war in Iraq. The weasel words and euphemisms — “strategic redeployment,” “course change,” whatever — couldn’t conceal the simple fact that the Democrats were elected largely to end the war. That was certainly how the party’s liberal base saw it, then and now.

But look at how the Democrats are behaving. They’ve completely failed to stop the surge, and their latest efforts to derail the war are so convoluted — timetables on top of timetables — that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a co-sponsor of legislation to withdraw troops by September 2008, can’t explain them.

...
Forget the war for a minute. What’s the second most important issue for liberals today? Global warming, of course. For example, Sen. John Kerry claims that he’s not running for president in’08 so that he can dedicate himself to the issues of Iraq and climate change. John Edwards says global warming will make world war look like heaven. Hollywood donors who hate the prospect of sweating in greenhouse gases as they walk to the gangway of their private jets think that global warming is the defining issue of our age.

So now’s the time to solve global warming, right? For years, we’ve been subjected to charges that President Bush “refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol.” Well, guess what? Bush couldn’t sign Kyoto. It was already signed under the previous president, who immediately shoved it in his desk drawer. (Bush didn’t sign the Treaty of Versailles either, by the way.)

If Kyoto’s such a priority, why hasn’t Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fought to take it up? There’s a strong legal case that once signed, a treaty is automatically in the Senate’s court. But you don’t hear Reid fighting to take up Kyoto even though it’s our best hope to combat the Most Dangerous Threat Facing Mankind.

Of course, Kyoto would never pass even a Democrat-controlled Senate because it would wreak havoc on the economy. Other Democratic betrayals in the making face similar problems. Democrats could never repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But that’s the ironic part. Republicans went soft because doing what the base wanted was too damn hard. It seems the same fate awaits Democrats.

Congressman's Office Vandalized by Radicals in Lansing

Vandalism in Landing, home of Michigan State University:

Congressman Mike Rogers' home is under police guard after his Lansing office was severely vandalized last night.
The case is being handled by the FBI and the US Capitol Police, who have requested that the Lansing Police investigate the matter.

According to the Congressman's spokesperson, the office was extensively damaged.

Two security cameras were destroyed and the building was spray painted.

The tapes from the cameras are being reviewed to see if they recorded anything before they were destroyed.

The vandals also spread red paint all over the 8th congressional district sign in front of the building, as well as on a sign that says "We Support Our Troops."

They also put a sign on one of the buildings windows that says Congressman Rogers has "blood on his hands."

Researchers Question Validity Of A 'Global Temperature'

Very Interesting:

Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada.
...
He explains that while it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.

I'm glad that there is finally a real discussion on global warming.

Hello, I'm John Doe. Sue Me!

From the people who brought you the "flying Imams."

The Coming War with Islam

Food for thought:

“The Americans, the Europeans, and even you Israelis really don’t know what it is all about, do you? During the last generation hundreds of thousands of children have been taught all over the Moslem world in Madrass schools to become martyrs for Allah in order to kill the infidels. These youngsters not only are ready to do it, but are actually in the process of doing it. Bombs are going off all over the world killing and maiming thousands of people, not only on 9/11 in the US, in London Madrid and Bali, but in Africa, India, Bengladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many other places. The first signs of the Islamic Tsunami is already here, but the West doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to understand what is coming."

A LOOK AT "CLIMATE CHANGE HYPOCRITES,"

Hat tip Instapundit

More on Voter Fraud and US Attorneys

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

From Powerline:

Stefan Sharkansky writes:

You've been writing about the fired U.S. Attorneys, so I thought you might be interested in another side of the story on John McKay. The national media have transmitted without challenge McKay's story that he investigated allegations of vote fraud in Washington's 2004 gubernatorial race but saw "zero evidence" of fraud. Now he's being portrayed (see Friday's NYT editorial) as the victim/hero of partisan Republicans who are punishing him for refusing to launch a groundless, politically-motivated investigation.

There's much more to this than has been widely reported. A lot more credible evidence of election violations from the 2004 governor's race has been shown to McKay than he's been willing to acknowledge, let alone investigate.

It's taken me two years and some litigation to get the King County Elections office to release enough of the appropriate records, but I've compiled evidence of hundreds of illegal votes (nearly 4 times the official 129-vote "margin of victory"). These are not just random errors, but incidents of systemic mishandling of ballots by the elections office, most of which occurred just before the election was certified when the Democrat appeared to be trailing. At the very least it's official negligence that may well have changed the outcome of the governor's race. Was it all run-of-the-mill "good enough for government work" negligence? Or was it willful? Does it meet the legal standard of "fraud"? We don't know, as there's never been an investigation into any of this.

McKay has cited the election contest trial where the judge ruled: "No testimony has been placed before the Court to suggest fraud or intentional misconduct." But all of the hundreds of illegal votes that I'm referring to were not known during the trial -- largely because King County evaded their discovery obligations and because the timeline was so compressed the litigants didn't have time to pursue every lead. This stuff was uncovered only months after the trial and long after the local mainstream press moved on to other things.

A summary of the findings is here. Some of this was presented to the local FBI in December 2005 and copied to McKay. See this letter (redacted to remove personal contact information). There's no indication that the DoJ or FBI ever followed up on this report or on other similar reports.

Why would McKay ignore the legitimate suggestions of election violations and fight back so aggressively now? Western Washington is overwhelmingly Democrat, especially Seattle. The dominant voices in the political establishment and the mainstream media were only too happy to put the embarrassing, if not incriminating, 2004 election behind them. It would be politically (and socially) risky for McKay (as a Republican appointee, no less) to be the first official to start turning over the rocks in county government. Much safer to stick with the in-crowd, call it a close but clean election and keep looking the other way. And now that McKay's in a public pissing match with Bush, who is extremely unpopular in Seattle? He's the darling of the local establishment. If he aspires to a career in state politics, this is his ticket.

300: It’s All Geek to Me

Though it opened on a relatively small number of screens, “300” made money far beyond the most optimistic projections of its producers, racking up the third-best opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie.

The critics, however, were mostly hostile, and frequently venomous. Many reviews made the same points:

• “300” is not sufficiently ironic. It takes its themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously.

• “300” is campy — meaning that many things about it can be read as sexual double entendres — yet the filmmakers don’t show sufficient awareness of this.

• All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; the distinctly non-Greek viewers at my showing seemed to have no trouble placing themselves in the sandals of ancient Spartans.)

But such criticisms aren’t really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place — and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike “300” so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie. Critics at a festival in Berlin walked out, and accused its director of being on the Bush payroll.

Thermopylae is a wedge issue!

I have not been to a movie in years. I think I'll go see it.

Mark Steyn: Victor Victorians. A lesson in real morality

We have a mental image of 18th Century England as a land of very "proper" and morally scrupulous people who shuddered at the sight of a naked leg ... a piano leg. What a ridiculous misconception:

The 18th century Church of England preached "a tepid kind of moralism" disconnected both from any serious faith and from the great questions facing the nation. It was a sensualist culture amusing itself to death: Wilberforce goes to a performance of Don Juan, is shocked by a provocative dance, and is then further shocked to discover the rest of the audience is too blase even to be shocked. The Paris Hilton of the age, the Prince of Wales, was celebrated for having bedded 7,000 women and snipped from each a keepsake hair. Twenty-five percent of all unmarried females in London were whores; the average age of a prostitute was 16, and many brothels prided themselves on offering only girls under the age of 14.
[snip]
What we think of as "the Victorian era" was, in large part, an invention of Wilberforce that he succeeded in selling to his compatriots. We children of the 20th century mock our 19th century forebears as uptight prudes, moralists and do-gooders. If they were, it's because of Wilberforce. His legacy includes the very notion of a "social conscience": In the 1790s a good man could stroll past an 11-year-old prostitute on a London street without feeling a twinge of disgust or outrage; he accepted her as merely a feature of the landscape, like an ugly hill.

Read the whole thing.

The "real" federal prosecutor scandal. Dems use it to steal the next election.

There appears to be a coordinated effort on the part of Democrats and their media allies to prevent investigation of voter fraud by US attorneys.

Reasons for the firing of 8 US Attorneys have varied. Some, like Carol Lam, were ousted for failure to pursue cases against illegal immigrants. Others, like John McKay and David Inglasias were fired for failure to pursue voter fraud.

Voter fraud, unlike many other crimes, strikes at the very heart of our system of government. We do not need to be reminded of the closeness of recent elections for the very highest offices from President to Governors to Senators and Representatives.

It will not do for the Democrats in congress to make it politically impossible to bring voter fraud charges. It will not do for the partisan press (read NY Times) to dismiss charges of widespread voter fraud and voter intimidation as non-problems when it suits their ideological purposes.

From press reports it appears that most of the voter fraud was committed by operatives from the Democrat party.

It is becoming very apparent that the faux outrage among the democrats in congress and the press is designed to insure that voter fraud committed by democrats now becomes the third rail of politics. In the future, and federal prosecutor who brings charges against Democrats who commit voter fraud will now be accused of committing a political hit job under orders from the Bush administration.

That is the real outrage and it is happening right in the open.

When And Why Joseph C Wilson IV Outed Valerie Plame

Abolutely fascinating article. What is especially devastating for Joe Wilson is that he supported the belief that Saddam had WMDs AFTER he went to Niger and before the invasion!

January 28, 2003: President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union Address.

February 6, 2003: Joe Wilson wrote an editorial for the Los Angeles Times, A ‘Big Cat’ With Nothing to Lose, in which he claimed we should not attack Saddam Hussein because he will use his weapons of mass destruction on our troops and give them to terrorists.

There is now no incentive for Hussein to comply with the inspectors or to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction to defend himself if the United States comes after him.

And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that.

February 28, 2003: Joe Wilson was interviewed by Bill Moyers. Wilson agreed with Bush’s SOTU remarks, and reiterated his belief that Saddam had WMD and that he would use them on US troops.

Read the whole thing.

Mahatma Gandhi: Immoral Moralist

Despite (or perhaps because of) the veneration of Gandhi by many with a superficial view of history, I have always viewed this wizened little man with a degree of distaste. Perhaps it was this very show of public morality in a mere mortal. Perhaps it was the fact that he did not so much free India from British rule as that the British let India go. Perhaps it was the bloody civil and religious war that followed Indian independence. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... I have now found some more concrete examples to list Gandhi as one of the great humbugs of all time.

From Powerline:

Gandhi's views on the European crisis were not entirely consistent. He vigorously opposed Munich, distrusting Chamberlain. "Europe has sold her soul for the sake of a seven days' earthly existence," he declared. "The peace that Europe gained at Munich is a triumph of violence." But when the Germans moved into the Bohemian heartland, he was back to urging nonviolent resistance, exhorting the Czechs to go forth, unarmed, against the Wehrmacht, perishing gloriously--collective suicide again. He had Madeleine Slade draw up two letters to President Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia, instructing him on the proper conduct of Czechoslovak satyagrahi when facing the Nazis.

When Hitler attacked Poland, however, Gandhi suddenly endorsed the Polish army's military resistance, calling it "almost nonviolent." (If this sounds like double-talk, I can only urge readers to read Gandhi.) He seemed at this point to have a rather low opinion of Hitler, but when Germany's panzer divisions turned west, Allied armies collapsed under the ferocious onslaught, and British ships were streaming across the Straits of Dover from Dunkirk, he wrote furiously to the Viceroy of India: "This manslaughter must be stopped. You are losing; if you persist, it will only result in greater bloodshed. Hitler is not a bad man...."

Gandhi also wrote an open letter to the British people, passionately urging them to surrender and accept whatever fate Hitler had prepared for them. "Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds." Since none of this had the intended effect, Gandhi, the following year, addressed an open letter to the prince of darkness himself, Adolf Hitler.

THE scene must be pictured. In late December 1941, Hitler stood at the pinnacle of his might. His armies, undefeated anywhere ruled Europe from the English Channel to the Volga. Rommel had entered Egypt. The Japanese had reached Singapore. The U.S. Pacific Fleet lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. At this superbly chosen moment, Mahatma Gandhi attempted to convert Adolf Hitler to the ways of nonviolence. "Dear Friend," the letter begins, and proceeds to a heartfelt appeal to the Fuhrer to embrace all mankind "irrespective of race, color, or creed." Every admirer of the film Gandhi should be compelled to read this letter. Surprisingly, it is not known to have had any deep impact on Hitler. Gandhi was no doubt disappointed. He moped about, really quite depressed, but still knew he was right. When the Japanese, having cut their way through Burma, threatened India, Gandhi's strategy was to let them occupy as much of India as they liked and then to "make them feel unwanted." His way of helping his British "friends" was, at one of the worst points of the war, to launch massive civil-disobedience campaigns against them, paralyzing some of their efforts to defend India from the Japanese.

Read the whole thing, especially the part about making the Japanese feel unwanted.

Roanoke Times Lists Names of Concealed Carry Permit Holders in Virginia

The person who posted these names is:
Christian J. Trejbal
675 School Ln.
Christianburg, VA 24073
Christian.Trejbal@roanoke.com

Some other articles about this here, here, here, here, here.

The Myth of Moral Neutrality

Gregory Koukl in a Townhall.com column does an excellent job of exploding the myth that people who criticise others for making moral judgements are being morally neutral.

All judgements are based on morals positions ... none are neutral. True neutrality equals silence.

He takes the classic expression of moral "neutrality" expressed by Faye Wattleton (see link to article), the former President of Planned Parenthood and destructs it this way:

Faye Wattleton's assessment is based on the notion of neutral ground, a place that implies no moral judgment. Wattleton is not neutral, however, as her own comments demonstrate.

In her article, Wattleton in effect argues that each of us should respect another's point of view. She then implies, however, that any point of view other than this one is immoral, un-American, and tyrannous. If you disagree with Wattleton's position that all points of view are equally valid, then your point of view is not valid. Her argument commits suicide; it self-destructs.

Read the whole thing.

The Enemy at Home

Watch how Liberals deal with the issue of free speech. Netenyahu at Concordia.

What Would Ghandi Do?

Fred Thompson on Code Pink's invocation of Gandhi.

During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

I suggest Code Pink take Ghandhi's advice. Sooner rather than later.

Point/Counterpoint

In which R2D2 and Chewbacca debate tax policy.

Meltdown at Justice

From Power Line with Links to good articles.

If You Are A Pot Smoking, Alcoholic Leftist Lawyer the CIA Is The Place For You!

There are many, many misconceptions people have about working for the CIA. Actually, people are surprised when they hear that the CIA has a General Counsel's Office at all! . . . Another misconception is that the CIA is extraordinarily conservative. That's totally not the case. I'd say that most people here would consider themselves very liberal. . . .
'Another big misconception has to do with who gets into the CIA. There's a totally wrong-headed picture in people's minds that if you've ever smoked a joint, you can't get into the CIA. That's not true. Maybe you'd say, "Oh, when I was a freshman in college, I'd light up a doobie, I drank a lot, but when I got to law school, I grew up, and I don't do that anymore." That's not going to remove you from consideration. . . . There are a lot of people who self-select out, thinking that because of some old, casual drug use they won't get in. That's a shame.

Newsweek Dishonors Our Troops

Thomas Sowell makes an excellent point regarding the MSM's portrayal of our troops:

The front cover of Newsweek’s March 5th issue featured a woman with amputated legs and a sweatshirt that said “ARMY” across the front. Inside, there were pages and pages of other pictures of badly wounded and disfigured military veterans, in a long article that began under the big headline: “Forgotten Heroes.”

The utter hypocrisy of all this can be seen in the word “heroes.” There have been many acts of heroism among our troops in Iraq — but those heroes didn’t make the front cover of Newsweek.

One man fell on a grenade to protect his buddies, smothering the fatal blast with his body, so that those around him might live when he died. But that never made the front cover of Newsweek. It was barely mentioned anywhere in the liberal media.

They are not interested in heroes. They are interested in depicting victims — in the military as in civilian society.

The Newsweek hypocrisy is not unique. It has been the rule, not the exception, as much of the mainstream media has devoted itself to filtering and spinning the news out of Iraq.

Parading casualties is called “honoring our troops.” But what does it mean to honor someone? When we gather at a memorial service to honor someone in death or at a ceremony to award prizes to them while they are alive, what do we do?

We talk about the good things they have done, their endeavors and their achievements. We don’t call simply pointing out that someone is dead “honoring” them. Nor is simply pointing out that someone is dismembered or disfigured “honoring” them.

Read the rest

Al Gore's Carbon Footprint

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Click for movie.

Your Greed Disappoints Jesus

Stock Markets and the Japanese Carry Trade

So what is the “Carry Trade” about and what does it have to do with the turmoil in the global markets?

To understand this phenomenon we have to learn two terms:
1. Carry trade and …
2. Margin call.

First, the “carry trade.” This refers to the practice of borrowing money at a low rate and investing it at a higher rate. As you all learned by reading your Wall Street Journal, interest rates in Japan have been remarkably low; virtually zero. Enterprising speculators have been borrowing money in Japan and investing it in securities that paid more. These could be as low risk as US government bonds or as high risk as Chinese stocks.

If you can borrow Japanese yen at, say, 0.5% and buy US government bonds at, say, 4.5% you can make a fortune. And if you want to take more risk and invest the Japanese loan in the Chinese stock market which doubled last year, you could become very, very rich indeed.

This worked very well for some years. But there is something that can go wrong.

In fact, several somethings.

The first thing that can go wrong is that your investment is poorly chosen and its value declines.

The second thing that can go wrong is that the value of the currency you borrowed can rise. That means that your investment in those US Government bonds may not be enough to pay off the loan you made in Japanese yen.

And those two things happened at roughly the same time.

After rising like a skyrocket during 2006, the Chinese stock market declined by about 10% in a single day. That is enough to spook a speculator.

Then the Japanese yen began rising relative to other currencies; making it more expensive to pay off those Japanese loans.

And that’s where the margin calls came in. Banks that lend you money like to know that you can pay it back. They check on their collateral. And when they are dealing with speculators they check on their collateral daily, if not hourly. If the banks see that you may have trouble paying them back, they ask you to come up with extra cash.

And here comes the “spillover effect.” If you can’t sell the security that is giving you problems but are told that you have to raise cash, you sell whatever can be sold readily. And if that happens to be a portfolio of Blue Chip stocks that you own, well, that’s what you sell.

And if that causes the DJIA to drop 500 points in a single day, well, you do what you have to do.

The lesson for us all is to be aware of all the risks we’re taking, even the ones that you don’t see coming.

Two Cheers for Boycotting FOX

I see that the “Nutroots” have compelled the Democrats in Nevada to cancel a candidate forum to be moderated and carried by the FOX network. The Left is ecstatic about their effect on the Democrats. The Right is predictably disdainful and is reproaching the Democrats for bowing to the radical left.

While I would like to join the chorus of those ridiculing the Dems for boycotting FOX, I’m not going to.

The fact is, I think it’s not a bad idea. I have been wishing that Republicans and those on the Right would stop appearing on the alphabet networks as well as CNN, NPR, et al. If I had my way, calls from the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Time, Newsweek and the Washington Bureau of the Wall Street Journal would not be answered.

Scooter Libby would not stand convicted if he had not spoken with Tim Russert.

At one time the only way Conservatives could communicate was via the MSM. This is no longer true. The Right has found its own voice via radio, TV and the Internet. We no longer need to send messages via the pages of the enemy press. And let there be no mistake, the ones I cited are our political enemies.

A century or two ago, there were many more newspapers aligned with various factions. They bias was up front and blatant. As the industry consolidated into the MSM, they assumed an “above the battle” air, but were very much part of the political debate. Today they only pay lip service to impartiality. Fine. Why suffer the hypocrisy and feed the revenues and appetite of those who despise you?

Let the divisions that have been papered over be uncovered. What’s wrong with an avowedly conservative FOX? On the radio Limbaugh, Hannity, Boortz, O’Reily and others are unabashedly Right,Libertarian or populist. That’s fine.

The Internet bloggers are blatantly partisan and identify their polical biases.

It’s not a problem; not nearly as much of a problem as Liberalism disguised as faux neutrality.

Belmont Club on Global Warming and Polar Bears

Here's a story guaranteed to induce manic-depression in Global Warming advocates. The Daily Telegraph reports "Polar bears thriving as the Arctic warms up".

A survey of the animals' numbers in Canada's eastern Arctic has revealed that they are thriving, not declining, because of mankind's interference in the environment. In the Davis Strait area, a 140,000-square kilometre region, the polar bear population has grown from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 today. "There aren't just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears," said Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent 20 years studying the animals.

Read the rest.

The Joe & Valerie Show

Jonah Goldberg commiserates with Val and Joe.

Tim Russert Lies Under Oath

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent article in Townhall on the Libby case.

Here’s the reason Libby was convicted.

Everyone agrees that Fitzgerald's perjury case against Libby hung on the testimony of NBC's Tim Russert. Libby said that he heard about Plame from Russert. Russert said he had never discussed it. The jury members who have spoken said they believed Russert.

And why should they not? Russert is a perfectly honest man who would not lie. He was undoubtedly giving his best recollection.

But he is not the pope. Given that so many journalists and administration figures were shown to have extremely fallible memories, is it possible that Russert's memory could have been faulty?

I have no idea. But we do know that Russert once denied calling up a Buffalo News reporter to complain about a story. Russert later apologized for the error when he was shown the evidence of a call he had genuinely and completely forgotten.

There is a second instance of Russert innocently misremembering. He stated under oath that he did not know that one may not be accompanied by a lawyer to a grand jury hearing. This fact, in and of itself, is irrelevant to the case, except that, as former prosecutor Victoria Toensing points out, the defense had tapes showing Russert saying on television three times that lawyers are barred from grand jury proceedings.

This demonstration of Russert's fallibility was never shown to the jury. The judge did not allow it. He was upset with the defense because it would not put Libby on the stand -- his perfect Fifth Amendment right -- after hinting in the opening statement that it might. He therefore denied the defense a straightforward demonstration of the fallibility of the witness whose testimony was most decisive.

Rick Moran: Morality Police

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse has the vapors about Ann Coulter’s use of the term “faggot.” He is anxious that “his” side of the political spectrum “…deny any of you lefties an opening.”

So we must throw Ann under the bus and to prove our good intentions he encourages us to write to editors and publishers attempting to end Ann’s career.

I left a reply to his post disagreeing with his position. He evidently did not like it because he deleted it, and then came to my website with the following comment:

Before you accuse people of deleting comments they don't like on their blog, I suggest you read their comment policy.

No obscenity.
No insulting the host personally.
No insulting other commenters.

Easy. Simple. Something any masturbating monkey could do.

Obviously, you couldn't.

Now I could have been either obscene or insulting in my comment, but you’ll never know because he deleted it.

But to answer the curious: my comments are never obscene and I avoid insults.

But is there any question that his comment was both obscene and insulting?

I suggest that you read Moran’s post because in it this self proclaimed upholder of verbal propriety uses terms such as:

…shut the F**k ...

...goal is to starve the witch

.... one of those mouth breathers

I frankly don’t give a shit what you think of my arguments

You really have to try to be that stupid and shallow. I mean, it requires a herculean effort to be such an idiot

What a moron.

I don’t presume to tell you what to think of the Rick Moran who presumes to tell us what to think about Ann Coulter. But I want it known that Rick Moran does not speak for me.

Mark Steyn on Plamegate

...an anti-war deputy secretary of an anti-war department leaking to an anti-war reporter the name of an anti-war analyst who got her anti-war husband a job with an anti-war agency is supposedly an elaborate “conspiracy” by Cheney, Rove and the other warmongers. Looked at more prosaically, it’s a freak intersection of bad personnel decisions, which is one of the worst features of this presidency. So many of the Bush Administration’s wounds come from its willingness to keep the wrong people in key positions: Tenet should not have been retained at the CIA, Armitage should not have been at State.

I'm beginning to question Bush's street smarts. And there is a lesson for all Republican administrations.

Criminalizing Republicans while Democrats Skate

In the realm of Federal Investigations, ever wonder what happened to the indictment of Richard Armitage for revealing Valerie Plame's name? Never happened.

How about Ted Kennedy for killing a girl off Dike Bridge?

How about Congressman Jefferson for taking a bribe and shashing the loot in his freezer?

Of have you seen the prosecution of major Clinton contributor Jeffrey Epstein who was nabbed in Palm Beach in a massive police investigation into his hiring of local underage schoolgirls for sex?

Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat) engaged in a complicated land swindle, buying a parcel of land for $400,000 and selling it for over $1 million a few years later. (At least it wasn't cattle futures!)

Ann Coulter's mad and names names.

Good Hillary Ad

See the sheeple.

About the "Wonderful" British National Health Service

We’ve just learnt that some hospitals are removing every third light bulb to save money, and that nurses are being paid half the minimum wage — or being asked to work for nothing — at others.

That’s how bad the financial crisis has become. Meanwhile, the National Health Service is employing shaman fairy enthusiasts as psychological counsellors, enthusiastically providing treatments invented by “an ordained minister and a personal performance coach” who thinks tapping your body can cure diabetes, promoting dowsers and crystal healers and spending vast amounts on therapies that can’t be scientifically supported.

Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

Stein on Conrad Black

On becoming a billionaire ruining a business.

Ann Coulter on Faggots

The NY Times rounds up the usual suspects called on to denounce Ann Coulter's joke about John Edwards.

On another site a someone commented that being a “faggot” is not an insult because “…there’s nothing wrong with that.” For those who condemn Ann, why is being called a homosexual bad? Are homosexuals evil? Why do you think so?

I’ll defend Ann’s speech because she is MY bomb thrower. What I find interesting is reaction of many on the Right’s knee-jerk desire to disavow its bomb throwers like Ann. There is little of this reaction on the Left to its much more numerous and much higher profile bomb throwers. Is it to the kind of gentility that maiden ladies once exhibited? Are our pundits really that desirous of being told that they are good little boys and girls? If we disapprove, perhaps we can simply avert our gaze. It’s really not necessary to be shown to take a kick. Let’s leave that to the jackals and the sideline snipers.


UPDATE:
One of the problems that many political nerds have is that they don't understand the context of Ann's joke. You have be be current with the news. To understand the joke you have to know THIS:

Isaiah Washington [Grey's Anatomy star] reportedly agreed to undergo a psychological assessment following discussions with ABC executives about his denial at the Golden Globe awards that he had called co-star T.R. Knight a "faggot,"

Say, "faggot" and you have to go into counselling. Get it now?

Of course the perennially aggrieved won't let their lack of a funny bone stop them from their favorite diversion: denunciation as moral cleansing. I have not read so much moral grandstanding since reading "The Scarlet Letter."

By the way, one first out of the box, Right Wing Nuthouse edits its posts and deletes comments it does not like.

By the way, for the punning impaired, the headline is a pun.

UPDATE:

Flopping Aces chimes in. Sounds as if he gets the joke.
Six Meat Buffet does also.
Someone posting as Blackredneck comments:

I am ssoooo tired of the Coulter bashing. As always, I’m amazed at how quickly Republicans are to throw one of their own under the bus. And it does seem to be those who are most effective at what they do. My first reaction was “gosh, what a bunch of prissy saps.”

Exactly.

But I believe some elements of the blogosphere are becoming (or trying to become) “respectable.” They have developed large (by internet standard) readerships and they now care – very much – about what they believe “respectable opinion” thinks of them.

It’s a common phenomenon in Washington, DC. A man gets elected as a Conservative and after a while the arbiters of DC society talk about how Representative X has “grown;” which means that he has abandoned his conservative ideals and is now an ineffective drone, part of the Washington hive; mouthing conventional platitudes and endorsing “approved” ideas.

It seems to be happening in the blogosphere. The almost hysterical desire to distance oneself from Ann Coulter can only be understood in this way. But I’m persuaded that most don’t realize the power of convention. I imagine that we’ll see much more of this in the years ahead as blogging goes mainstream.

And from Six Meat Buffet, we get this spoof of an Edwards ad:

How Gore's massive energy consumption saves the world: Mark Steyn

Stop me if you've heard this before, but the other day the Rev. Al Gore declared that "climate change" was "the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced.'' Ever. I believe that was the same day it was revealed that George W. Bush's ranch in Texas is more environmentally friendly than the Gore mansion in Tennessee. According to the Nashville Electric Service, the Eco-Messiah's house uses 20 times more electricity than the average American home. The average household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours.

Two hundred twenty-one thousand kilowatt-hours? What's he doing in there? Clamping Tipper to the electrodes and zapping her across the rec room every night? No, no, don't worry. Al's massive energy consumption is due entirely to his concern about the way we're depleting the Earth's resources. When I say "we," I don't mean Al, of course. I mean you -- yes, you, Earl Schlub, in the basement apartment at 29 Elm St. You're irresponsibly depleting the Earth's resources by using that electric washer when you could be down by the river with the native women beating your loin cloth dry on the rock while singing traditional village work chants all morning long. But up at the Gore mansion -- the Nashville Electric Service's own personal gold mine, the shining Cathedral of St. Al, Tennessee's very own Palace of Versal -- the Reverend Al is being far more environmentally responsible. As his spokesperson attempted to argue, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you to use less electricity.

Read the rest.

Good Thoughts by Vanderleun

Embrace the Murtha and Stick a Fork in McCain. He's Done.

Killing fields then and now

Because the MSM was complicit in the genocide that took place after America was defeated in Viet Nam, it has never acknowledged its responsibility for the deaths of millions. This is a grim reminder that there are some whose consciences are not totally callused by ideology.

... the barbaric nature of the Communist Khmer Rouge was painted over in soothing tones by much of the American press. The New York Times was the most flagrant offender. In one dispatch, its correspondent Sydney Schanberg described a ranking Khmer Rouge leader as a "French-educated intellectual" who wanted nothing more than "to fight against feudal privileges and social inequities." A bloodbath was unlikely, Schanberg reported: "since all are Cambodians, an accommodation will be found." As the last Americans were withdrawn, another upbeat article by Schanberg appeared under the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." In short order, the Khmer Rouge proceeded to march nearly two million of their fellow Cambodians to their deaths in the killing fields. Also in short order, Schanberg went on to greater glory and a Pulitzer prize.

Why so much medical research is rot

PEOPLE born under the astrological sign of Leo are 15% more likely to be admitted to hospital with gastric bleeding than those born under the other 11 signs. Sagittarians are 38% more likely than others to land up there because of a broken arm.

Read the rest.

A Unified Climate Theory

Connecting the dots is important for seeing the truth.

There is scientific evidence that Mars is warming. An inconvenient truth.

There is scientific evidence that the Earth is warming.

And we have a former Canadian defense minister, Paul Hellyer, demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change.

If you are foolish or ignorant enough to dispute these authorities you are obviously a climate denier, LGM denier, and possibly a Holocaust Denier.

Now, if you can’t connect these dots, you are just not paying attention.

It is obvious that Mars actually is inhabited by little green men (LGM). They are obviously green because they have seen what their destructive habits have had on the Martian environment. They have caused catastrophic warming, just as we are doing to our planet. As a result they have become ardent environmentalist. That is obviously the insight of Mr. Hellyer who knows that the LGM have developed “clean” fuels. They are little because Mars is little (duh).

So they (the LGM) have come to earth to escape the environmental destruction that they have wreaked on their own planet. But, as any pilot knows, the most dangerous part of any flight is landing. And the LGM have not perfected that part of their interplanetary flight and so they have crashed, mostly into Roswell, New Mexico.

We also know that the Federal Government owns or controls huge parts of New Mexico, including Area 57 (which is actually in Nevada) where it is hiding the crashed spaceships piloted by unlucky LGM. We also know that the oil companies have bribed the government to keep the technologies developed by the LGM out of the hands of the American people so that the EEEEVIL OIL COMPANIES can continue to exploit Gaia’s limited natural resources for their nefarious purposes.

So, tying it all together: LGM have destroyed the Martian environment, melting its polar ice caps. They became ardent environmentalists, developed clean-burning spaceflight and crash-landed in New Mexico. Mankind is in the process of destroying the planet using SUVs as its primary weapon. The federal government is keeping the secret to clean fuels away from the American public at the bidding of Big Oil. If this is allowed to continue we will all die by drowning as the ice caps melt and water covers all the earth.

The end.

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says

If both the Earth and Mars are warming it it just a coincidence?

Obama vs. Romney. Whose Ancestors are Worse?

This is fascinating. In a previous post I referred, with a measure of disdain, to an article written by AP writers Jennifer Dobner and Glen Johnson reporting breathlessly that

Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.

I question whether this has any bearing on Mr. Romney's qualifications for the Presidency. It does serve to remind us that he is a Mormon. And the media are ever anxious to stoke the fires of sectarian strife they imagine inhabit the breasts of Conservatives. In their world view, Liberals are open minded people who never let a wicked thought about “those others” enter their virgin minds where visions of love and peace hold court (except that part of the Liberal mind that sorrows over the fact that Dick Cheney was not killed by a suicide bomber).

So it was with some interest that I noted that that good looking, clean Barack Obama has ancestors that (gasp) owned slaves and whose father (not his great, great grandfather) was a polygamist. A polygamist father and slave owning ancestors. The article appeared in the Chicago Tribune. I wonder if this will generate an article by Dobner and Johnson?

I really don’t care who or what any candidate’s ancestors were or what they did. What is fascinating about this is that the news media should report on it. This is certainly not the media that failed to inform the public that Roosevelt was a polio victim confined to a wheel chair by only taking pictures of him that excluded that chair.

As I said, fascinating, and more than a little creepy.

UPDATE: Hold the presses:

Reitwiesner's research identifies two other presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, as descendants of slave owners. Three of McCain's great-great-grandfathers in Mississippi owned slaves, including one who owned 52 in 1860. Two ancestors of Edwards owned one slave each in Georgia in 1860.

Ronald Reagan at CPAC 1981

Excerpt (read the whole thing):

Our goals complement each other. We’re not cutting the budget simply for the sake of sounder financial management. This is only a first step toward returning power to the States and communities, only a first step toward reordering the relationship between citizen and government. We can make government again responsive to people not only by cutting its size and scope and thereby ensuring that its legitimate functions are performed efficiently and justly.

[snip]
I also believe that we conservatives, if we mean to continue governing, must realize that it will not always be so easy to place the blame on the past for our national difficulties. You know, one day the great baseball manager Frankie Frisch sent a rookie out to play center field. The rookie promptly dropped the first fly ball that was hit to him. On the next play he let a grounder go between his feet and then threw the ball to the wrong base. Frankie stormed out of the dugout, took his glove away from him and said, “I’ll show you how to play this position.” And the next batter slammed a line drive right over second base. Frankie came in on it, missed it completely, fell down when he tried to chase it, threw down his glove, and yelled at the rookie, “You’ve got center field so screwed up nobody can play it.” [Laughter]

[snip]
This is the real task before us: to reassert our commitment as a nation to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength. Only by building a wall of such spiritual resolve can we, as a free people, hope to protect our own heritage and make it someday the birthright of all men.

There is, in America, a greatness and a tremendous heritage of idealism which is a reservoir of strength and goodness. It is ours if we will but tap it. And, because of this—because that greatness is there—there is need in America today for a reaffirmation of that goodness and a reformation of our greatness.

[snip]
It is this heritage that evokes the images of a much-loved land, a land of struggling settlers and lonely immigrants, of giant cities and great frontiers, images of all that our country is and all that we want her to be. That’s the America entrusted to us, to stand by, to protect, and yes, to lead her wisely.

Fellow citizens, fellow conservatives, our time is now. Our moment has arrived. We stand together shoulder to shoulder in the thickest of the fight. If we carry the day and turn the tide, we can hope that as long as men speak of freedom and those who have protected it, they will remember us, and they will say, “Here were the brave and here their place of honor.”

Environmentalist without a Support Structure

Imagine for a moment that you are an environmentalist. Imagine that you could do away with that horrible pollutant: plastic. Then image what your beachfront Malibu mansion would look like. Actually, that mansion would fall apart … in fact could not have been built.

Ann Coulter is a verbal bomb thrower, but she does get her point across:

They think they can live in a world of only Malibu and East Hampton — with no Trentons or Detroits. It does not occur to them that someone has to manufacture the tiles and steel and glass and solar panels that go into those "eco-friendly" mansions, and someone has to truck it all to their beachfront properties, and someone else has to transport all the workers there to build it. (And then someone has to drive the fleets of trucks delivering the pachysandra and bottled water every day.)

The Al Gore Controversy Has Been Good for the Country

Up until very recently, the Global Warming (anthropomorphic version) has been a one-way blast from the global warming alarmists to the rest of us. Thanks to the discovery, in deepest, darkest, wildest Nashville, of the Gore Mansion and its octopus like reach into virtually all energy pockets we are getting some healthy debate.

For example, if you pay your bills to “Green Energy Company A” but have your electricity delivered in the usual way from, say, the TVA (which produces power from the most polluting coal it can find and even adds a dollop of soot to its stacks just so you know the furnaces are on) do you get to claim you are “carbon neutral?”

And if you are the founder and chairman of a company that sends out “carbon credit” certificates and then fly your fat ass around the country on private jets producing tons of the dreaded CO2, can you claim to be “carbon neutral?” These are all good questions and need debate.

And now we have an issue raised by a former Canadian cabinet minister who demands that world governments disclose UFO technology and use it to stop global warming: Well, why not? Jules Crittenden may say that an IMAGINARY THREAT REQUIRES A PARANOID RESPONSE, but who knows, those space aliens may be good for something. Let’s ask “Inconvenient Al.”