Link to Global Warming in Frogs’ Disappearance Is Challenged

Is global warming to blame for the disappearance of toads in South America? Some scientists are actually brave enough to finally challenge assertions made in support of global-warming-as-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it. Maybe it is the unseasonably cold winter. Maybe it’s an unnatural outbreak of honesty. Who knows. But at least some in the scientific community are putting these charlatans on the defensive.

From the NY Slimes:

In the scientific equivalent of the board game Clue, teams of biologists have been sifting spotty evidence and pointing to various culprits in the widespread vanishing of harlequin frogs.

The amphibians, of the genus Atelopus — actually toads despite their common name — once hopped in great numbers along stream banks on misty slopes from the Andes to Costa Rica. After 20 years of die-offs, they are listed as critically endangered by conservation groups and are mainly seen in zoos.

It looked as if one research team was a winner in 2006 when global warming was identified as the “trigger” in the extinctions by the authors of a much-cited paper in Nature. The researchers said they had found a clear link between unusually warm years and the vanishing of mountainside frog populations.

The “bullet,” the researchers said, appeared to be a chytrid fungus that has attacked amphibian populations in many parts of the world but thrives best in particular climate conditions.

The authors, led by J. Alan Pounds of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica, said, “Here we show that a recent mass extinction associated with pathogen outbreaks is tied to global warming.” The study was featured in reports last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Other researchers have been questioning that connection. Last year, two short responses in Nature questioned facets of the 2006 paper. In the journal, Dr. Pounds and his team said the new analyses in fact backed their view that “global warming contributes to the present amphibian crisis,” but avoided language saying it was “a key factor,” as they wrote in 2006.

Now, in the March 25 issue of PLoS Biology, another team argues that the die-offs of harlequins and some other amphibians reflect the spread and repeated introductions of the chytrid fungus. They question the analysis linking the disappearances to climate change. In interviews and e-mail exchanges, Dr. Pounds and the lead author of the new paper, Karen R. Lips of Southern Illinois University, disputed each other’s analysis. Experts who have researched the amphibian said neither group had enough evidence to nail down its case and warned that this normal tussle over scientific details should not distract from the reality that humans are clearly roiling biology in ways important and yet poorly understood.

“There is so much we still do not know!” David B. Wake, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in an e-mail note after reading the new paper. The origin of the fungus and the way it kills amphibians remain unknown, he said, and there are ample mysteries about why it breaks out in certain places and times and not others.

Dr. Pounds and Dr. Lips have both done important work, Dr. Wake said, adding, “I hope this does not turn into a ‘spitting contest,’ because we all have a lot to learn about amphibian declines.”

But that’s the thing you get when a large number of people sell their souls for a lie. There will be recriminations and there will be blood on the ground because too many have spread the hoax and too many now feel that they knew better but sat silently by and allowed the hoax to grow. The global warming ideology has caused too much harm to simply fade away. The “Good Germans” of the scientific community cannot allow the global warming Nazis to simply merge back into the background. To do so would be to taint the entire scientific community as aiders and abettors of fraud.

But the global warming Nazis are not going peacefully. They are not holed up in bunkers yet. How’s this for a question begging example:

Ross A. Alford, a tropical biologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, said such scientific tussles, while important, could be a distraction, particularly when considering the uncertain risks attending global warming.

“Arguing about whether we can or cannot already see the effects,” he said, “is like sitting in a house soaked in gasoline, having just dropped a lit match, and arguing about whether we can actually see the flames yet, while waiting to see if maybe it might go out on its own.”

You can't make this stuff up. A more perfect example of a scientific fraudster could not be invented.

The Prophetic Stream, Conspiracy Theory and Paranoia: What’s Wrong with African-American Preaching

Click on the link. Great essay (rather long) on J. Wright. It appears to be a tar baby for blacks in America.

Web site of Dutch anti-Islam film is suspended

It appears that the freedom to be critical of Islam is not supported in either the United States or the Netherlands.

AMSTERDAM: The Web site on which the Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders was promoting his film, which is said to be critical of the Koran, has been suspended by its U.S. hosting service.

The site formerly showed the film's title, "Fitna" ("Coming Soon"), and an image of a gilded Koran. Now it shows a note that the U.S. company, Network Solutions, is investigating whether the site violates its terms of service.

"Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation," the note said.

There are limits to free speech and high among them is criticism of Islam.

"How many ways are there left for me to be worked against?" the Dutch news agency ANP quoted him as saying Saturday. "If necessary, I'll go hand out DVDs personally on the Dam," he said, referring to Amsterdam's central square.

Demonstrators from many different ethnic groups crowded the square Saturday, braving wind and sleet to show their opposition to Wilders.

The protest, called "Netherlands Shows Its Colors," was primarily a reaction in advance to the film.

One protester carried a sign saying "Standing Together Against the Right-Wing Populist Witch-Hunt."

"I'm very much against Geert Wilders and racism in general," said one protester, Elisa Trepp. "I think it's really important to show not only Holland but the rest of the world that there's a lot of people who do not agree with his ideas."

Hassan Iaeti, who traveled for hours from the far south of the country to attend the demonstration, said: "The government could really do something. That's in the interest of the country - stop him, just stop him."

He said he believed Wilders was abusing the right to freedom of speech, which he said had limits.

In another part of Europe, some are willing to brave death rather than give up their faith.

Muslim baptized by pope says life in danger

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A Muslim author and critic of Islamic fundamentalism who was baptized a Catholic by Pope Benedict said on Sunday Islam is "physiologically violent" and he is now in great danger because of his conversion.

"I realize what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith," said Magdi Allam.
...
Writing in Sunday's edition of the leading Corriere della Sera, the newspaper of which he is a deputy director, Allam said: "... the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual."

Allam, who is a strong supporter of Israel and who an Israeli newspaper once called a "Muslim Zionist," has lived under police protection following threats against him, particularly after he criticized Iran's position on Israel.

He said before converting he had continually asked himself why someone who had struggled for what he called "moderate Islam" was then "condemned to death in the name of Islam and on the basis of a Koranic legitimization."

That headline should read "Christian baptized by pope says life in danger." He is no longer a Muslim and that's why he is under a death threat.

Actualizing religious freedom

Who would have thought that conversion to Christianity would have to be kept a secret ... in Rome ... lest the convert be killed?

An Italian journalist conspired with the Pope today to exercise actual freedom of religion:

Pope Benedict led the world's Catholics into Easter on Saturday at a Vatican service where he baptized a Muslim-born convert who is one of Italy's most famous and controversial journalists....

One of the seven adults he baptized on Saturday night was Magdi Allam, 55, an Egyptian-born journalist who, as deputy director of the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera, is one of Italy's best-known intellectuals.

Allam, a fierce critic of Islamic extremism and a strong supporter of Israel, is protected by a police escort because of threats he has received.

WELL-KEPT SECRET

His conversion to Christianity was a well-kept secret, disclosed by the Vatican in a statement less than an hour before the Easter eve service started.

Think, for a minute, about the implications of that last sentence: "His conversion to Christianity was a well-kept secret...." How can anybody possibly argue that Islam is not attacking the most fundamental freedoms of the West and winning when the Pope must keep the conversion of a Roman secret for fear of violence against the worshiper and the Church?

Could Obama's Supporters be Hurting Him?

Victor Davis Hanson

I made a systematic review of commentators on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and the major three networks concerning the Obama speech. And the result was abject depression.

By my count about 90 percent of the African-American studies professors, pastors, and pundits not only defended the Obama two-decade presence and subsidy to the Wright ministry, but, terribile dictu, defended Rev. Wright himself and by a variety of postmodern apologies—many white pastors are extremists (though none cited particular cases of such churchmen focusing on blacks in the way Wright did with whites), the black church has particular mitigating protocols (in a way not true of other genres where racism in sports, radio, and journalism has been rightly condemned), past good trumps present bad (applicable as a defense apparently only in the case of black racism), and there is a context of black liberation theology that makes Wright's sermons logical (all sorts of historical examples of racism, mostly half-a century to a century old follow). I note that the liberal Juan Williams is as articulate and disinterested as he is critical of Wright's venom and cognizant of Obama political problems.

The result is a depressing echo effect that will only hurt the Obama campaign further. Here's the script: a CNN or Fox airs the infamous Wright tapes, the African-American expert guest then comments and in various ways defends Wright—and the net effect will only evoke further outrage on behalf of the Asian, Hispanic and white viewer, who feels race relations, due to Obama and Wright, have gotten only worse and are in need of a reality check, albeit one the Obama base of African-American activists and white elites would not necessarily welcome.

Obama's surrogates, as a Diogenes, need to find just one honest voice, a single disinterested African-American scholar or pastor or journalist who condemns unequivocally the Wright hatred. Just one.

How many times have you read a book about someone going to a foreign country not speaking the language and trying to communicate? They speak to people and if at first the natives don’t understand, they say it again, more slowly and louder.

That seems to be what Obama’s supporters are doing. With every repetition, the impression grows that we have a serious race crisis in America. While white racism is universally condemned, black hatred for white people is excused and even justified. And rather than bridging the divide, Obama is on the side of black racists.

Music for Easter

With gratitude to Gerard Vanderleun

What Wright Revealed

I posted an essay on FreeRepublic that examined an insipid editorial in the Virginian Pilot on Barack Obama’s speech in which he tried to both repudiate Jeremiah Wright’s racist language while embracing his philosophy.

Wright’s exposure and Obama’s speech led to some soul searching in the white community. Here is a perfect example.

I'm not the typical white person (female) either. I grew up in the inner-city of Rochester, NY, went to a racially mixed highschool in the early 60's, and have worked with and for many black people over the years. I spent many years researching the black Civil War units from Massachusetts, tracked down family members of the enlisted men, and still correspond with those I've met over the years.

I don't see color or ethnic background when I meet people. That's never been an issue with me. Thus, I never viewed Obama as being of any color. It wasn't the color of his skin that turned me off, it was his political beliefs. When he started making excuses for Rev. Wright's comments, telling us we needed to understand Wright's animosity stemmed from the inequities of the past, and that those same inequitities that stirred the good Reverend on, really weren't all in the past, I began to see him in a different light. He was the one who decided to delineate himself as being black and being different. When he stepped away from just being an American, to being a black man, and lecturing us on race, how white behavior towards blacks is predictable, and how racism is still rampant in this country and needs to be addressed, he proved to me that he's the one who has the racial problem, not me.

That is Obama’s problem and it’s not one that he can solve. He has embraced the racist positions of Wright even as he claims not to have heard him make his most inflammatory statements.

He is now identified, classified and fixed. He’s no longer an American with a deep tan. He’s a Black activist who wants to be president. We will see how that sells to Middle America. A Middle America that has a lot more in common with Obama’s white grandmother than with Obama.

UPDATE:

THE LEGACY OF THE 'TYPICAL' LEFTIST

The only legacy that the candidacy of Barack Obama is going to leave with the American people is one of racial polarization ;divisiveness; and identity politics taken to the nth degree. Amazingly, this could have been predicted at the very start of the campaign as the two Democrat-approved victim groups lined up to do battle for the nomination, each believing they represented the purist victims of the evils of the white male capitalist oppressors.

As a Dutchman I can Appreciate This

It's Time For Some Straight Talk About My Gimp
A Message From Presidential Candidate Dave Burge


As a candidate for the presidency of this great nation of ours, it has been my privilege to meet and hear the concerns of voters from across the political spectrum. If there's anything I've learned along the way it's this: whether they agree with you or not, the American people want candor and straight talk about the issues of the day. That's why I would like to take this opportunity to have an open conversation about the Gimp I have chained in my basement.

By now, many of you may have heard or read the sensationalized reports about my Gimp, and the alleged muffled screams my neighbors recorded coming from my basement window wells. I frankly have to tell you, in all candor, I was as surprised as you when I heard about these audiotapes because I do not recall being in the house on the various nights when these supposed screams occurred. In all honesty, I'm guessing it probably happened during my league bowling night, and my campaign staff will be happy to check through my score sheets to verify. Also, did I mention I am a very heavy sleeper?

Yes, it is true that I've harbored the Gimp in my basement for over 20 years. I first met him outside a youth hostel / squatter's camp while vacationing in Amsterdam in 1986. Although he was a deaf mute, we struck up a quick friendship and I invited him to join me on my travels through Europe. Together we had many memorable adventures in the late night alleyways of Brussels, Berlin, and Hamburg. Over time I came to appreciate his wise counsel and impressive knot-tying skills, and invited him to return to the United States as my personal guest and spiritual mentor.

I have to admit I had second thoughts once we arrived back in America because the gimp would soon confront this country's shameful legacy of anti-Dutch bigotry, even from my own grandmother. I remembered as a child Grandma warning me not to eat gouda and to stay away from dikes, oblivious to the fact that my mother -- her very own son's wife -- was a full-blooded Vandenbriink from Pella. I had hoped her bigotry would had faded with the years but when I introduced her to the gimp it bubbled to the surface once again. I could see the irrational anti-Dutch fear in her eyes as she saw the Gimp's wooden shoes and the glistening chrome studs on his leather hood.

For my Gimp this was an object lesson in what it means to be a Dutch-American, and a lesson that would be repeated over and over again. Although he could have lashed out at Grandma, he didn't. He was in his restraints at the time. But can we, as a society, really blame the Gimp if he was driven to anger by the inbred ignorant hate of typical non-Dutch people like Grandma? And, if this anger possibly manifested itself in certain behaviors about which I have no personal knowledge, can any of us cast the first stone?

So yes, I have been keeping the Gimp in my basement for twenty years. And yes, I did construct a trap door and chute using a slide from the abandoned playground. Frankly, it just makes feeding time easier. I take full responsibility for this, and I apologize to any non-Dutch people who were offended in any way by various colorful noises coming from my basement. It's a Dutch thing, you really wouldn't understand.


Many people may ask, Dave, you've condemned the Gimp's noises, why won't you condemn the Gimp himself? Why don't you move him out to your storage shed? I guess it's because I'm a people person. I could no more repudiate my good friend and mentor the Gimp that I could repudiate my own vile, Dutch-hating, Alzheimer-ravaged grandmother. He has been like an uncle to me. Yeah, that's it! A crusty wacky old eccentric uncle, as all of us have seen on various TV situation comedies. Like Uncle Charley on "My Three Sons," except with more grunting and latex. Plus, repudiating the Gimp would only get me on his bad side, and I'd rather not do that.

Frankly, though, I am most regretful of how the entire controversy has helped the forces of division and media sensationalism. The sad fact of the matter is that no one ever talks about the good things my Gimp has done for the neighborhood. No one talks about his occasional community outreach programs where he welcomes all, Dutch and non-Dutch alike, into his basement. No one talks about the fact that he keeps the basement clean and spotless, mopping it down with bleach solution twice a week. Instead the voices of division in our country would rather talk about "mysterious noises" and "strange smells."

But, thankfully, the controversy has also provided a teachable moment for all of us, and a chance to unify this country once again. If you are non-Dutch it's a chance to confront and ovecome the old irrational windmill-driven fears of the past. Try some delicious edam, or world famous Dutch chocolate. Take in the annual Tulip Festival in Pella, Iowa. Best of all, get out and and meet the Dutch folks in your town and learn their concerns. Go ahead, they won't bite! And if you are Dutch-American, remember that basement screams are sometimes considered offensive to the non-Dutch, so remember to "put a gag in it" after 9 pm.

But the real question in this upcoming election isn't about whether we are Dutch or Non-Dutch, mysterious muffled screams, or unexplained smells, or missing neighborhood pets, or whether some candidate has one or two gimps in his basement. These are merely distractions from what we really need to be focused on: which candidate has the personal moral judgment to put this country back on the road to greatness.

No more questions. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a nation to heal.

Thank you Dave, I have been wondering when someone would sympathize with the plight of the Dutch in this racist, sexist, homophobic, cheese hating country.

Right on; Orange forever.

Watching the Democrat's Trainwreck

Jules Crittenden mentions that the Clintons don't admit defeat ... ever.

It’s called Planet Clinton. Politico goes on to talk about elephants in the room but neglects to mention the biggest elephant of all. The Clintons themselves, both of them, who will fight to the bitter end, because all those negative numbers are still numbers they can turn around. Doesn’t matter what they trample in the process. Politico talks to insiders, declares the bell has rung in the mind of notoriously fickle American voters, but misses the most fundamental rule of American sports and politics, rule No. 1 in the Clinton playbook: It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Far be it from me to defend my own wretched profession, but as collectively and individually chowderheaded as the media can be, the media also knows that rule. The media also knows a good trainwreck when it sees one, and knows no one can pry their eyes off it.

The Clintons are like the movie monster who has been killed off and everyone relaxes. But as the credits are about to roll, the monster's hand reaches out to kill once again.

Jesus On the Cross is so "Icky."

Per Mark Steyn:

Keep the Christ in Christmas...
...but take Him out of Easter:

The pastors at this church in Raleigh, North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday school lessons for preschoolers from "First Look," the publisher of the one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn't a mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired about the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight...

"Easter is a special time in churches," the letter from the publisher says. "It's a time of celebration and thankfulness. But because of the graphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we need to be careful as we choose what we tell preschoolers about Easter."

So now the story ends with the Last Supper - and presumably afterwards Jesus and His friends watch Elmo and then go to bed. That the foundational event of your faith is now excessively "disturbing" is almost too parodic a reductio of the Wimp Christianity of the mainline churches.

Climate facts to warm to: The Earth is Cooling

Charlatans are often found at the heads of movements and well meaning fools catch the fad train just as it’s going over the reality cliff. So too with the Global Warming hoax. I have in mind Al Gore and John McCain as examples.

The Australian brings out some “inconvenient truths” for both the charlatans and the fools.

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Not being discussed? Never even mentioned is more like it.

Where is this new data coming from, some kook website?

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"

Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

So THE basic tenet of global climate models is shown to be 180 degree wrong!

And the result?

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

Don't bet on it. There will be no acknowledgement that global warming proponents were wrong. There will be no media exposure of the hoax. It will disappear off the front pages, just as the war in Iraq did when we began to win.

Virginian Pilot Editors: To Paraphrase Obama = "Typical White Liberals"

Barack Obama was asked about his use of his white grandmother as an example of white racism. He replied

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know there's a reaction that's been been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society."

Obama typical white person
by dollarsandsense123


Obama shamelessly uses his grandmother and compares her to the racist rants of J. Wright.

During his speech on race Obama said his grandmother was "a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world," but he then qualified that description by noting she was also "a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Charles Krauthammer critiques Obama’s speech HERE and the reaction to it.

White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then proceeds to do precisely that. And what lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.

This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. .

The group who loved it?

That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.

What was delicious was that the Virginian Pilot's editors then printed an exact illustration of the sort of Liberal mash note that, when analyzed is fully as satisfying and designed to rot your intellectual teeth as cotton candy for the mind.

Detailing the racial make-up of the Tidewater Virginia area, the Pilot's cracked editors bleat again for a "dialog" on race. Well, J. Wright certainly revived the talk of race. Is that what they want? Well, no.

That conversation isn’t just about finding a way to get past our own bigotries, small and large. It’s about finding our way in a smaller world.

What? What does that mean?

Embracing differences — and leveraging them to compete — is already a key characteristic of successful corporations across the world; as that globe shrinks, it will also be the defining characteristic of its most successful nations.

So the racism and hatred of America expressed by Reverend Wright should be leveraged (how?) to make us a more successful nation? Wright's diatribes should be used to appeal to America's haters throughout the world to show that they are not alone in their hatred of America, we have our very own America haters right here in the United States? I'm confused, will that make them hate us more or hate us less?

As Americans, we may not like Wright’s bombast, but that neither makes it disappear nor leaves it without a significant audience. Such views are as much a part of our world as religious leaders blaming homosexuals for 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, or dismissing the Mormon and Catholic churches as cults.

Ah, yes, Wright is simply bombastic when he accuses Americans of inventing aids to wipe out blacks. When he accuses (FDR's) America of knowing in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor. If I may paraphrase J. Wright "NO! NO! NO!" That's not bombast, those are racially charged lies. That is blood libel.

Newt Gingrich has it right when he says:

For 20 years, he was a member of a church where he now says his pastor, a public figure, was saying things ... forget that they were hateful, forget that they were divisive: They were wrong. They were fundamentally, factually wrong."

And let me point out to the Pilot's cracked editors that when certain preachers blamed homosexuals for 9/11 and Katrina they were not invited in for a dialog, they were denounced! Would the Pilot like to call for a dialog those who call Mormons a cult? Regarding Catholics I have never heard anyone call them a cult, although I could imagine certain members of the looney atheist Left do so.


The Pilot then pauses to accuse those who question J. Wright's racial hatred and Obama's cynical opportunism of wishing to divide us:

Some — churches and ethnic groups, universities and politicians — are trying to take up Obama’s invitation to a larger conversation on race in America. Obama’s opponents refuse to hear his message because they choose not to, because a dialogue rooted in common hopes unwinds their hopes of dividing the nation for political gain.

Tell me, Pilot, what common hopes do I have with J. Wright and his cheering parishioners as he asks God to damn America? What common hopes do I have with the man who supported that hate speech for twenty years with his attendance and his money? I know he hopes to be president; I fervently hope he does not.

Right now, this nation is undergoing an enormous demographic earthquake. In a few years, whites will no longer make up the majority. In a few decades, they may no longer be the largest ethnic group.

It seems as if the Pilot's editors are looking to make their peace with race baiters whose skins are not white. The Pilot's staff wants to be on the side of the coming majority and if that majority wants to have God damn America, the Pilot will find a way of being there for them.

Well folks, that was the windup, here's the pitch:

We’re on that road. We got there, in part, by knowing this isn’t entirely about race and racism. It’s about citizenship. At its core, the contention over Obama’s pastor is about something deeper to our experience, our history, to our health as a nation now and to come: Who is an American? And what does that have to do with the color of our skin?

The poor Pilot; the poor, poor, pitiful Pilot. You may not like them, but there is something pitiful about people whose analytical skills arrive at this piece of intellectual detritus.

Ann Coulter on Obama and Race

As an authentic post-racial American, I will not patronize blacks by pretending Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said -- not about black people, but literally, the exact same things -- I think we'd notice that he's crazier than Ward Churchill and David Duke's love child. (Indeed, both Churchill and the Rev. Wright referred to the attacks of 9/11 as the chickens coming "home to roost.")

Imagine a white pastor saying: "Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God."

Imagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, "Condoskeezza Rice."

Imagine a white pastor saying: "No, no, no, God damn America -- that's in the Bible for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human! God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!"

We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, "Isn't that cute?" As a post-racial American, I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.

Obama tried to justify Wright's deranged rants by explaining that "legalized discrimination" is the "reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up." He said that a "lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families."

That may accurately describe the libretto of "Porgy and Bess," but it has no connection to reality. By Rev. Wright's own account, he was 12 years old and was attending an integrated school in Philadelphia when Brown v. Board of Education was announced, ending "separate but equal" schooling.

Meanwhile, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in University of California v. Bakke in 1978 -- and obviously long before that, or there wouldn't have been a case or controversy for the court to consider -- it has been legal for the government to discriminate against whites on the basis of their race.

Consequently, any white person 30 years old or younger has lived, since the day he was born, in an America where it is legal to discriminate against white people. In many cases it's not just legal, but mandatory, for example, in education, in hiring and in Academy Award nominations.

So for half of Rev. Wright's 66 years, discrimination against blacks was legal -- though he never experienced it personally because it existed in a part of the country where he did not live. For the second half of Wright's life, discrimination against whites was legal throughout the land.

Discrimination has become so openly accepted that -- in a speech meant to tamp down his association with a black racist -- Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist "old uncle," Rev. Wright.

First of all, Wright is not Obama's uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy uncles is that everyone understands that people don't choose their relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors. No one quarrels with the idea that you can't be expected to publicly denounce your blood relatives.

But Wright is not a relative of Obama's at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright's racist invective to his actual grandmother, who "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama's grandmother -- who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school -- has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.

Unlike his "old uncle" -- who is not his uncle -- Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama's grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn't get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she's white. Denounce the racist!

Fine. Can we move on now?

No, of course, not. It never ends. To be fair, Obama hinted that we might have one way out: If we elect him president, then maybe, just maybe, we can stop talking about race.

How's that for a bare knuckle reaction?

My sadness comes about because so many on the Left and in the Black community agree wtih Wright.

Obama Reverses Field

Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America's racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons.

I noted this earlier. I'm glad ABC is catchning up.

Obama's Fatal Wound

The Black community loved his speech. That's all you need to know.

I did a show last night on New England Cable News with a black preacher from Boston and a black Obama supporter. Both thought the speech was magnificent because Obama spoke the truth, and the woman thought that Obama had finally laid to rest her fears that Obama didn't see himself as part of the civil rights struggle.

Michael Goldfarb in the Weekly Standard:

Reality Check

What if I told you in 2004 that the Democratic party would run an African American candidate for president in 2008? I tell you National Journal will officially label this candidate the most liberal member of the United States Senate. This candidate will also have served less than three years in that Senate, with no executive, foreign policy, or military experience. Then I tell you that this candidate will lose the party's primaries in Texas, California, New York, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Oh, and his minister sounds like Louis Farrakhan, and actually pals around and gives awards to Farrakhan.

This is the situation the Democratic party finds itself in, and not only that, but the presumptive Republican nominee has the highest favorability rating of any candidate Gallup's tracked in the last eight years. It's a recipe for disaster in a year when the Democratic party could only defeat itself. But that's the Democrats' specialty.

...
Obama has been fatally wounded, and yet the Democratic party superdelegates, who exist solely to prevent such a catastrophe in a close primary battle, can do nothing about it. If they hand the nomination to Clinton, the party loses the black vote, and Clinton cannot win without those votes.

Just a few month after all the worry on the right about Democratic turnout, the fracturing of the Republican coalition, the lack of exciting Republican candidates...it turns out the Democrats intend to commit collective suicide with a final nod to the "reasoning abilities of the American public."

Obama and Race: is there no common standard here?

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal:

...is there no common standard here? For decades, major institutions--schools, the law, the media--have driven home the message that when it comes to racial bigotry, words matter: that one should strive to overcome one's own prejudices, and at the very least keep them to oneself.

Yet here we have someone in a position of responsibility in the black community--no less than the spiritual mentor to a would-be president--who not only has failed to live up to this aspiration but has made a career of promoting racial resentment. In response we hear a litany of excuses about understandable anger, a tradition of rebellion and so forth. The kindest thing that can be said about this is that it is a form of soft bigotry.

The incendiary hatred of “Whitey” in the black community has never been so boldly exposed as in the Obama/Wright controversy. The defense of Wright and his hate speech is sure proof that he is not an outlier, but appears to be in the mainstream of Black viewpoints regarding race.

A great appeal of Barack Obama's candidacy was, as this column put it in January, that "Obama is black, and it doesn't matter." Bill and Hillary Clinton understood this, which is why they tried to liken him to Jesse Jackson early in the primary season. That effort backfired badly. But now Jeremiah Wright has achieved what the Clintons could not: defining Obama in terms of his race.

"After largely shying away from discussions of race during his 15-month campaign, Sen. Obama turned the spotlight on his identity as a biracial African-American candidate and embraced the idea that he is the vehicle for a dialogue about race," The Wall Street Journal reports. "Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," Obama said. But as Mickey Kaus notes, "Actually, a lot of voters supported Obama because they'd kind of like to ignore race, you know?"

The issue of race in America is a scab that it appears the Black community cannot avoid picking at. Often in life people hurt us. The best way to get over it is to ignore it until we forget it. To assume a position of being superior to a hurt is often the way to healing. Marriages do not last if one partner continues to raise grievances against the other. The Wright approach to race is deliberately designed to create a gulf between the races.

Obama threw a sop to working class whites in his speech, condescending to them and telling them that they can join him in attacking the “real” enemies of America in an appeal to class warfare.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze--a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

A uniter, not a divider? Quick, look there, the real enemy!

What he seems to be offering "working- and middle-class white Americans" is to label them "resentful" rather than "misguided or even racist," in exchange for which they are expected to support an expansion of left-liberal social programs. Will this bargain appeal to voters any more than it has in the previous 10 elections?

Pulpit Bullies: The Racism of Black Churches

James Taranto has his say about what is shouted from the pulpit of Black churches when "Whitey" isn't listening.

It explains a lot.

When Barack Obama yesterday condemned the most invidious remarks of his "spiritual mentor," Jeremiah Wright, National Review's Byron York was there. The auditorium at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, York reports, "was filled mostly with guests invited by the Obama campaign." Unsurprisingly, they "thought he delivered a great speech." Disturbingly, several whom York interviewed didn't understand all the fuss about Wright:

"It was amazing," Gregory Davis, a financial adviser and Obama supporter from Philadelphia, told me. "I think he addressed the issue, and if that does not address the issue, I don't know what else can be said about it. That was just awesome oratory."
I asked Davis what his personal reaction was when he saw video clips of sermons in which Rev. Wright said, "God damn America," called the United States the "U.S. of KKK A," and said that 9/11 was "America's chickens . . . coming home to roost." "As a member of a traditional Baptist, black church, I wasn't surprised," Davis told me. "I wasn't offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct. . . . The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that's how it's said."
Vernon Price, a ward leader in Philadelphia's 22nd Precinct, told me Obama's speech was "very courageous." When I asked his reaction to Rev. Wright, Price said, "A lot of things that he said were true, whether people want to accept it, or believe it, or not. People believe in their hearts that a lot of what he said was true."

...

The Rev. James Forbes, the recently retired longtime pastor of Riverside Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side explained that, broadly speaking, there has been a historical division in the world of black churches. One group thinks you should work hard, keep quiet and get ahead; the other thinks that you need to agitate and provoke to make progress. Forbes puts himself in the first camp but supports Wright's efforts. "Some of us wish we had the nerve that Jeremiah had," he said. "We praise God that he's saying it, so the rest of us don't have to." Does Wright ever cross a line? "I think if a person is a prophet and he's not seen as ever crossing a line, then he has not told the truth as it ought to be told."

And the Rev. John H. Thomas, general minister and president of Wright's denomination, the United Church of Christ, issued a statement yesterday excusing Wright on the ground that it was wrong to remove Saddam Hussein from power:

Many of us would prefer to avoid the stark and startling language Pastor Wright used in these clips. But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild "obscenity" in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly four thousand cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered. Where is the real obscenity here? True patriotism requires a degree of self-criticism, even self-judgment that may not always be easy or genteel. Pastor Wright's judgment may be starker and more sweeping than many of us are prepared to accept. But is the soul of our nation served any better by the polite prayers and gentle admonitions that have gone without a real hearing for these five years while the dying and destruction continues?

Whatever one's opinion of the Iraq war, this is a complete non sequitur. Wright is not responsible for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, and in any case there is no reason to think he has exercised any influence on it by virtue of striking an obnoxious tone. He is responsible for the spiritual sustenance of his congregation. Does he serve that responsibility well when he uses his pulpit to stir up parishioners' hatred and anger?

As for "the soul of our nation," we have heard a lot of late about America's need for racial reconciliation. Thanks to the Obama-Wright episode, we also have learned that racial antagonism and anti-Americanism are much more common than we would have guessed among predominantly black congregations in America.

Is this not an obstacle to reconciliation? In 21st-century America, does any greater obstacle remain?

Why is J. Wright So Controversial?

Oh, sure, he a anti-Semitic, race-baiting demagogue, but so are many in the Black community. Here's the poet Nikki Giovanni, a tenured faculty member at Virginia Tech:

Ni**er

Can you kill

Can you kill

Can a ni**er kill

Can a ni**er kill a honkie

Can a ni**er kill the Man

Can you kill ni**er

Huh? Ni**er can you

kill

Do you know how to draw blood

Can you poison

Can you stab-a-Jew

Can you kill huh? Ni**er

Can you kill

Can you run a protestant down with your

‘68 El Dorado

(that's all they're good for anyway)

Can you kill

Can you piss on a blond head

Can you cut it off

Can you kill

A ni**er can die

We ain't got to prove we can die

We got to prove we can kill

And she’s trotted out at important Tech events.

One of the main reasons that J. Wright has become an issue is because Obama is a blank slate and McCain is not. That’s because McCain has an established public persona. We know who McCain is and what he believes and no comments by his supporters will change that.

Obama is a different case. He is a blank slate. He is for change, hope and the future. Now there’s a platform that you can get your teeth into.

He’s for not invading Iraq although he's considering invading Pakistan. Set the wayback machine Sherman.

I’ll bet if asked that he’s for motherhood and if pressed will swear his undying love for apple pie.

And he’s sticking to that.

So if a candidate whose acolytes faint at his mere words is such an enigma, we have to look at the people he surrounds himself with to get an idea of his values. So we look at his skinny but telling voting record. We consider the fact that he is part the Chicago political machine, not a bunch of nuns. His beliefs are reflected in his wife’s less guarded comments. So we get Mr. Rezko and his land purchase and the Reverend Wright and his anti-white anti-Semitic rants. And today we get a speech, which I have read in full, in which he contradicts what he told an interviewer just yesterday about what he knew about Wright’s sermons. A speech in which he manages to both disavow Wright while embracing him. A very neat trick. Anyone who has followed this saga can conclude he gives a great speech, as long as someone gives him a good script. I wonder who wrote it?

Obama has become the Democrat’s nightmare; derailing the second coming of the Clintons. I hope for the country’s sake he does not become America’s also.

Three Views of the Obama Speech from the American Thinker

Obama's Coming-Out SpeechLee CaryThe candidacy of the man some have said transcends race turns out, after all, to be all about race. The light that forms his world view is refracted through a prism that splits into two colors -- black and white. More

Put aside his explanation of the Jeremiah Wright matter. It gave him an opportunity to profile his mission. Only by a tortured logic do his statements about Wright align. He didn't know what Wright was preaching; then he did. Wright's comments were divisive and offered a "profoundly distorted view of this country," but he was speaking to issues of race "that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now." It's a rhetorical rat's maze with no cheese at the end -- as conflicted as the man himself.

It's Time to Call the Democrats on Race DemagogyJames LewisDemocrats have protected, excused, and enabled race demagogues. Why not denounce all racial hatred, no matter what the source? More

Wright's church is a power in the Chicago black community not in spite of its few racist flaws, but because racism appeals to an aching need for self-esteem among some blacks. Blaming bad conditions on others is a cheap way to feel better about oneself. That's why racism worked for the Nazis, and why it worked for poor Southern whites after the Civil War. But it's toxic to our social fabric.

The Real Agenda of Black Liberation TheologyJeffrey SchmidtNow, suddenly, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is misunderstood. Suddenly, so-called black liberation theology is misunderstood. More

For the left, black liberation theology makes for close to a perfect faith. It is a political creed larded with religion. It serves not to reconcile and unite blacks with the larger cultural, but to keep them separate. Here, again, The Washington Post reports that "He [Wright] translated the Bible into lessons about...the misguided pursuit of ‘middle-classness.'"

The reason he and Michelle attend the church of a hate-mongering, racist, black-segregationist, anti-Semite, is because they belong there.

A commenter at Hot Air sums the Obama speech up well in the headline.

Allahpundit has other issues:

The most rewarding thing about a day like today, when some liberal’s in trouble and anxious to save his own ass, is watching the worst, most predictable, most embarrassing hacks on the other side go face-first into the tank, exactly as you’d expect they would. Sullivan? Check. Matthews? Check. The New York Times College of Cardinals? Checkity check check.
...
Hey, guys? If the last 20 years count for anything, the best estimates of his “fundamental beliefs” are that the United States is a racist hegemon begging to have jets flown into office towers to teach it a thing or two about imperialism. He’s a gutless, opportunistic coward who was afraid to say an unkind word to one of the power brokers in the black community on whom he counted for votes as an Illinois politician, and now that he’s a national figure he’s throwing the same guy under the bus to preserve the illusion that he’s a “post-racial” politician. And you’re sitting there cheering him on because you don’t care what sort of idiocy or anti-American vitriol you have to swallow to put a Democrat back into the White House. Does that about sum it up? Have I missed any “nuance” in the “U.S. government created the AIDS virus” rant that Obama never, ever heard anything about and that you’re now willing to wave away?

Exit question invitation: Which parts of Wright’s sermons, precisely, does the New York Times have any great objection to? The punchline to all this nonsense is that the good reverend’s rantings really aren’t very far outside the liberal mainstream (his AIDS theory notwithstanding), which is probably why Obama thought he could bury this scandal in the first place. So let’s compromise: You make a list of everything Wright’s said that you think is beyond the pale or off the reservation and we’ll pretend that Obama’s objections to those statements are heartfelt and sincere and not something he’d ever, ever want his young daughters to hear. Deal?