Vocal Minority

Muslim Prison Population High ... Because of Intolerant America?

What if an upwards of 70% of the prison population was Muslim? Would that be an indicator of American intolerance? That would be the liberal explanation. After all, that's their explanation for why the black prison population is disproportionately higher than the general population. It's never because they commit disproportionately more crimes. Because that wouldn't fit the liberal template that white-controlled America is trying to keep them down. So, if now Muslims are landing in jail in droves, it must be due to Americans poisoned with Islamophooooobia!

Except, this isn't happening in the U.S. -- it's happening in France, and Britain, and Belgium, and the Netherlands. Yesterday's WaPo reports:

In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims

This prison is majority Muslim — as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country’s prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country’s population.

On a continent where immigrants and the children of immigrants are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders.

The WaPo also provides the following disturbing statistics:

In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry.

Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim.

In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.

How can this be happening in enlightened and tolerant Europe, instead of xenophobic and intolerant America? Well, it appears that just as America has apologists and victimhood pushers for minority prisoners, Europe has their own:

“The high percentage of Muslims in prisons is a direct consequence of the failure of the integration of minorities in France,” said Moussa Khedimellah, a sociologist who has spent several years conducting research on Muslims in the French penal system. [...]

French prison officials blame the high numbers on the poverty of people who have moved here from North African and other Islamic countries in recent decades. “Many immigrants arrive in France in difficult financial situations, which make delinquency more frequent,” said Jeanne Sautière, director of integration and religious groups for the French prison system. “The most important thing is to say there is no correlation between Islam and delinquency.”

The Pirate's Cove blog calls BS on the whole thing:

Well, maybe then the Muslims should work to integrate themselves into French culture and society, rather then separating themselves out and living under Sharia law and the way they lived in the places they come from. Less violence would be a start, particularly those yearly to bi-yearly riots they like to start. Maybe stop teaching hate in their schools and mosques.

... Drop the PC talk and tell us the real deal. It’s funny that so many people come from other countries, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, Cuba and Western Africa nations, and work their asses off to make something of themselves and be a part of society, yet, when all these Muslims move in, they do little.

The article goes on to say that the French prisons do not distinguish people on the basis of faith or ethnicity, and that the Muslims pitch fits over the food, which is not always halal, but the prisons cannot afford to buy it. Here’s an idea: if you want to be free to eat the foods that your religion requires, do not be a criminal. Case closed.

Yup. Pure unadulterated common sense.

But don't say any of this to a liberal clinging to the narrative that the intolerant white majority is to blame for disproportionately high minority crime rates and prison populations. Her head will explode!

Liberal Hypocrisy: Roger Waters the Capitalism Basher

There’s no liberal hypocrite more detestable, and more ubiquitous, than the super-rich actor or musician who has made millions while bashing eeevil American capitalism.

Exhibit #4236434: [via Drudge] AP reports this morning on a “surprise” unleashed by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters in concert yesterday in California :

The 64-year-old Waters, the third headliner of the three-day music festival following Prince and Jack Johnson, performed an elaborate, almost retrospective concert Sunday featuring music from throughout Pink Floyd’s catalog. […]

But Waters’ biggest prop was an inflatable pig the size of a school bus that emerged while he played a version of “Pigs” from 1977’s capitalism critique, “Animals.”

The pig, which was led above the crowd from lines held on the ground, displayed the words “Don’t be led to the slaughter” and a cartoon of Uncle Sam wielding two bloody cleavers. …

Ummm, is anybody besides me picking up on the irony here? Thanks to the “pigs” of American capitalism, Roger Waters is a super filthy rich multi-millionaire. Most Americans are just about to retire at his age, but here he is croaking on stage to a full crowd who have paid crap loads of money yesterday and over the past three decades to see him and his band.

Mr. Waters, if your advice to your audience, “Don’t be led to the slaughter,” was really sincere, you wouldn’t be on a stage in front of thousands of people who have just made you richer than you already are; you’d be glued to a wooden chair at some socialist government-appointed desk job and looking forward to retirement so you can start collecting your pension. And the ones really wielding the bloody cleavers would be the Thought Police making sure you don’t say anything politically incorrect or otherwise astray from the left-wing party line.

The article continues:

The other side [of the pig] read “Fear builds walls.” ... The underside of the pig simply read “Obama” with a checked ballot box alongside.

Ooo. Endorsing the Senate’s most liberal member for president in California. That’s bold!

If Roger Waters was really concerned about “fear,” his school-bus-sized pig would have read “McCain ‘08” or at least, “Thanks, Mr. Bush, for liberating 50 million Afghanis and Iraqis from their respective barbaric totalitarian regimes and for keeping the West safe from radical Islamic terrorism.” Display that in front of your Left Coast audience, Mr. Waters, and then you will know fear.

What a joke.

But here’s the kicker:

The performance also included speaker towers placed around the outside of the crowd. Smoke machines funneled across the stage and over the audience, thickening the atmosphere.

In addition, a music news site called NME also reports:

Elaborate pyrotechnics and old video images livened up the set, which culminated with a pyramid containing a rainbow prism—made famous on the album cover—rising above the stage.

What!?!? Speaker towers? Smoke machines? Pyrotechnics? Video images?

I wanna know just how much carbon dioxide was emitted during this concert! How much electricity was used and how much smoke was belched into the sky?

Oh, didn’t you know? Waters is one of the artists who performed last July in solidarity with others worldwide at Live Earth. He’s really concerned about global warming, you see. But not so concerned as to consider nixing the pyrotechnics and smoke machines at his own concerts …

It’s not that I don’t like Pink Floyd (although I’ve never been their hugest fan either), but I really have no patience for this crap.

The only pig in this scenario is Roger Waters.

Don’t worry, Roger. I haven’t been led to the slaughter. I can honestly say I’ve never paid one penny to purchase one of your albums or a ticket to one of your concerts. And I don’t plan to any time soon.

Liberal Media Bias: The Australian

[Via the blog Brutally Honest] Last week The Australian had the following article by geophysicist Phil Chapman on the latest science that’s in on global warming (oh sorry, climate change).

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770. [...]

... The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern. [...]

Surely, the Gore followers are not going to like these developments; in fact, I doubt this news will hit American media outlets. This is especially telling of the agenda of the mainstream media, considering that even though Chapman is Australian, he currently lives in San Francisco.

But here’s something I found more interesting. This article is in The Australian’s “Opinion” section. Does the paper have a “Science” section? Why yes; in fact, not only does it have a “Science and Nature” section, it has a separate “Climate” section. But Chapman’s article detecting “global cooling” — documenting the decade-long trend of cooling global temperatures including a significant cooling in 2007, snowfall records being broken worldwide, rare snowfall in places like Jerusalem and Baghdad, and the coincidental (?) decrease in sun spots — evidently isn’t good enough to make the “Climate” section. So, what articles are? Well, here are some current headlines that the Australian deems worthy of that page:

Earth’s carbon dioxide, methane soars THE amount of two key greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere soared in 2007, and carbon dioxide levels this year are off the chart.

Fine, this seems like a straight-ahead climate science article. Continuing on ...

Greece punished over emissions breach GREECE has been suspended from UN carbon trading in an unprecedented punishment for violating greenhouse gas reporting rules.

Carbon plan ‘to cost business $22bn’
David Uren, Economics correspondent THE Rudd Government’s planned carbon trading system will cost business between $14billion and $22billion a year and will have to be cons...

Garrett deflects coal hijack claim
Christian Kerr ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett has defended the 2020 Summit amid accusations the climate debate was hijacked by the coal industry.

Call to embark on a carbon revolution
Christian Kerr KEVIN Rudd has described climate change as the overarching national challenge, in his closing address to the 2020 Summit

OK, now we get into some articles where climate change crosses paths with business and government. Personally, I’d like to see such articles in business and/or government-related sections. If an entire nation like Greece is being suspended by U.N. for something, no matter what it is, shouldn’t it be in the “World” section? Oh, wait a minute. This article is in the World section as well. (Good thing I checked!) OK, so the paper is good at cross-referencing. The on-line version, at least; obviously the print version has to put the article in one section or the other, but I’m not running to a university library to find out. Any Aussies out there reading my blog??? Well, maybe some day ... Sigh

Then there’s this gem:

Go vegetarian, McCartney urges FORMER Beatle Paul McCartney is urging the world to go vegetarian in a bid to fight global warming.

Oh, come on!! An article written by a geophysicist gets relegated to the Opinion section, but Paul McCartney’s call for worldwide vegetarianism, for reasons that are only the man’s opinion, stays in the “Climate” section? Oh yeah, that’s reasonable ...

Next:

Climate change expert ‘underestimated’ threat Christian Kerr CLIMATE change expert Nicholas Stern says he underestimated the threat from global warming in his watershed report for the British Treas...

All right, I’m sorry. If you’re going to put an article where a climate change expert says the threat of global warming has been under-estimated in the Climate section, shouldn’t you put an article where a climate change expert says the threat of global warming has been over-estimated in the same section???

Now, to The Australian‘s credit, there is an article written about Chapman in the Climate section:

Prepare for new Ice Age, says scientist Brendan O’Keefe SUNSPOT activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low, raising fears that the globe will to return to an Ice Age.

And also to its credit, currently the top article in the Climate section is about unseasonably early snowfall lifting hopes for Australia’s skiers and ski resort owners (FYI: It’s currently Fall in the Southern Hemisphere.)

But still. Why does Chapman’s piece get put in the Opinion section at all. By doing so, the paper is letting the reader know that this isn’t truth/fact; it’s just somebody’s opinion.

BUT, by not putting some of the other above articles in the Opinion section, the paper is saying that the information being presented is truth/fact, and not subjective.

Am I right, or am I right?

Quotes of the Week

El Rushbo on Wednesday the 23rd address the Democrats' infatuation with repairing our nation's "standing in the world" and getting the world's love and approval:

... What part of the world do we care about? What part of the world do we want approval from? Do we want approval from the Europeans who have gone so damn wussy that they cannot -- they could not if they had to -- mount a military defense of themselves if they were attacked? Not even with NATO, because it has been allowed to lapse.

Is it those people that we want the approval from?

Do we want approval from people like Robert Mugabe?
Do we want approval from some of the warlords and terrorists of Al-Qaeda? ...
Do we want approval from Hamas, like Jimmy Carter does? ...
Do we want the approval of the Chinese?
Do we want the approval of Kim Jong Il? ...

I guarantee you: You live your life this way as an individual, and you are forever going to be confused and unhappy because you will be embarking on something that's impossible, and that is, A, to make everybody like you; and, B, respect you. This is something that has to be earned, particularly on the side of respect -- and respect is earned with strength. Nobody is going to respect you if they figure out you're doing whatever you have to do to get their approval. They're going to laugh at you! They're going to think you're a weak-kneed wuss.

So the hell with that! We do, hopefully, the right thing for the sake of this country. We're the only ones in charge of our affairs.

We don't farm out our defense, unless we elect Democrats.
We don't farm out our protection against attack and national security, unless we elect Democrats.
We don't farm out our economy and tear it up in the name of a hoax called global warming, unless we elect Democrats.
Riots in Denver at the Democrat convention would see to it we don't elect Democrats.

And that's the best damn thing could happen for this country as far as anything I can think: Don't elect Democrats!

Excellent advice, Maharushi!

Next, from the ever-eloquent Dennis Prager. His new article addresses the latest cover of Time magazine, which features a photo-shopped environmentalist's version of the famous photo of American Marines raising a flag on Iwo Jima.

It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil. You will be celebrated at Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the BBC and throughout the media world, no one will threaten your life, there are huge grants available to scientists and others who fight real or exaggerated environmental problems, and you may even receive an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals who fight Islamists get fatwas.

The Time cover is cheap heroism. It is a liberal attempt to depict as equally heroic those who fight carbon emissions and those who fought Japanese fascists and Nazis.

Prager also mentions in this article that while liberals are breathless about man-made global warming, they accuse conservatives concerned about radical Islam of employing "scare tactics." This is exactly the scenario I found myself in last weekend when we had family over for Passover. A cousin accused me of scare-mongering because of my desire to confront radical Islam, but almost fainted when I refused to share his fear of man-made global warming.

Schmuck Republican of the Week: Newt Gingrich

I got to meet Newt Gingrich a few months ago at our local Borders book store. He was with co-author William Forstchen to talk about their new book about World War II. He shook my hand and signed my copy of his book Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America.. It was a very moving and memorable experience for me. Now, Mr. Speaker is in a TV commercial. Sitting alongside current Speaker Nancy Pelosi--one of the most incompetent and left-wing people to occupy the position--he warns the viewer that "our country must take action to address climate change." Oh, Gawd. There's only one thing more pathetic than whiny self-important Democrats preaching the latest left-wing fad: Republicans who jump on the bandwagon with them. I mean, it's one thing for a Democrat to call for taxing and legislating the American people to oblivion. That's what Democrats do: Tax and legislate the people to death and beyond! (Incidentally, George W. Bush is just as much a schmuck on this global warming craze, but he's already had his schmuck column!) In today's American Thinker, Marc Sheppard writes:

Newt's Global Warming Surprise By Marc Sheppard [...] During an April 2007 debate on the subject with the insufferable John Kerry [video], Newt opened by effectively ceding the point of anthropogenic global warming to his not-so-jolly green opponent. Even before Kerry could utter a single word of eco-babble, Newt admitted his thoroughly off beam conviction "that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading in the atmosphere." Actually, outside of the Massachusetts Senator's emphasis on regulation as a solution, there was surprisingly little discord between the two "debaters." Declared Newt: "I want to suggest that we need a new science- and technology-based, entrepreneurial, market-oriented and locally led environmentalism." A concept Gingrich would essentially reiterate a year later when he speaks in the Gore-mercial of "spark[ing] the technology we need," not raising taxes or other big-government solutions. To be sure, if the actions of man were ever to be proven contributory, technology would be the preferred GOP response, not taxes. But that's an extremely big and currently unforeseeable if. Which leads to the primary quandary created by the highly regarded conservative's very presence in such an ad -- it broadcasts an acceptance that the actions of man have an impact on climate -- a theory never properly tested, much less proven. Moreover, Newt's suggestion that climate change is addressable in any manner other than adaptive preparation for its natural inevitability undermines the rational demand for empirical-evidence-before-action while supporting the alarmists' "debate is over" lie. How could the savvy political historian fail to foresee the tactical advantages his attendance would hand the loony Left? [...] A growing number (currently hundreds) of scientists -- many giants in their fields -- have signed a declaration during and since last month's New York Climate Conference, affirming their positions contrary to the so called "consensus." They emphatically reject CO2 as a pollutant, and assert that global climate has always and will always change -- independent of the actions of man. And that therefore, any schemes to mitigate anthropogenic carbon are a "dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity's real and serious problems." Additionally, such plans "will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate." And they conclude "that all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 [should] be abandoned forthwith." [...] Unfortunately, adding the name Gingrich to a roster of recently greened "Republicans" already including McCain, Schwarzenegger, Warner, Huckabee, Bloomberg and even - apparently Bush, can only serve to recharge the Big Green Scare Machine's eco-friendly fuel cells. [...] Doesn't The Ex-Speaker Also Deserve a Chance to Explain? He does, and he did. But contrast the president's to Mr.Gingrich's explanation, as published on his website After stating that he doesn't think there's conclusive proof of global warming, much less any anthropogenic contribution - a sharp departure from his converse words barely a year old -- Newt moves the discussion to conservation and energy policy: [emphasis added]

"There is an important debate going on right now over the right energy policy, the right environmental policy, and making sure we do the right things for our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. Conservatives are missing from this debate, and I think that's a mistake. When it comes to preserving our environment for future generations, we can't have a slogan of ‘Just yell no!' I have a different view. I think it's important to be on the stage, to engage in the debate, and to communicate our position clearly. There is a big difference between left-wing environmentalism that wants higher taxes, bigger government., more bureaucracy, more regulation, more red tape, and more litigation and a Green Conservatism that wants to use science, technology, innovation, entrepreneurs, and prizes to find a way to creatively invent the kind of environmental future we all want to live in. Unless we start making the case for the latter, we're going to get the former. That's why I took part in the ad."

Sorry, but that simply can't hold warming-ocean water. The Newt sitting beside Nancy didn't say that our country must take action to address a cleaner environment for our children and grandchildren. Nor did he say anything about energy policy -- surely no one would deny the benefits of energy independence. No -- he stared right into the camera and clearly stated that action must be taken to address climate change. And just which "debate" does Newt think conservatives are missing from? The one the Left declares only a "tiny, tiny minority" of "deniers" and "flat-Earthers" refute is over? The same Left that labels all dissenting scientists, regardless of credentials and numbers, as hacks and oil company shills? And whose de facto leader has refused Mano-a-Mano debates time and time again? The undeniable truth is that by continuing to seek knowledge rather than declaring the science "settled," Conservatives are far more involved in the debate than any of their liberal counterparts. Again, Newt's innovation-over-bureaucracy argument merits none from me. But such actions -- indeed, any actions -- in the glaring absence of proof that global temperatures can be impacted in either direction by mankind's meddling cannot be the conservative position. On the other hand, steadfastly questioning the "science" while inexhaustibly fighting the politically correct scientifically-antithetical hype must be. Bush may just be stalling bad legislation in order to prevent worse policy by fiat, hoping that both climate trends and public opinion continue to cool in the interim. McCain, while clearly wrong, is running as an independent Republican and likely believes he's properly playing the part. Other complicit Republicans are just plain wrong. But somehow with Newt, wrong cuts a whole lot deeper and bleeds a whole lot more. The former Speaker owes us all an amended explanation worthy of his intellect, and ours, soon -- soon.

Well said. I still respect Speaker Gingrich for his service in the House during the 90's and for everything he has done to support the War on Terror. But this latest development is, to be truthful, an extremely hard pill for a supporter like me to swallow.

"Nothing But Liberalism": A Miracle Insecticide and the Religious Movement That Supported Its Disuse

The Union for Reform Judaism, which is the most liberal of the Jewish denominations and which I used to affiliate with, recently began a fundraising campaign called “Nothing But Nets.” A $10 donation will buy a net to cover the sleeping area of an African threatened by malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Well screw that! The millions of people suffering from malaria in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere don’t need nets; they need DDT. Forty-five years after Rachel Carson’s environmentalist manifesto Silent Spring launched a movement hell-bent on banning the insecticide, studies have shown that its advantages vastly outweigh its drawbacks. This claim was even made by the World Health Organization in 2006.

So, what is the URJ’s position on DDT? A simple search on their website yielded this resolution, which passed at its 50th General Assembly — in 1969.

50th General Assembly
October 1969
Miami Beach, FL

ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

WHEREAS environmental pollution is a crime against life, it results from our highly industrialized, mechanical society and exploding populations, afflicting areas both urban and rural throughout the world. It effects, going unchecked, can end only in the tragedy of the destruction of all human life on earth.

The industrial and automotive pollution of our air has made the life process of breathing a dangerous health hazard in some areas. Industrial wastes, sewage and oil are contaminating many of our precious water resources. The penetration of poisonous pesticides into all living organisms is now becoming critical, thus disrupting the ecological balance of nature. This is especially the case with DDT. The indiscriminate use of DDT and other poisonous chemicals must be stopped now. [...]

Forty years later it is clear, given its latest “Nets” campaign, that the URJ still stands by its resolution deeming DDT too much of an environmental risk, even though we know now that there is no justification for such fears.

But if you need further confirmation of its stance, go to their web page for Tu Bishvat (the Jewish Arbor Day) and you can download the lyrics to the song “Big Yellow Taxi,” in which farmers are implored to "put away that D.D.T. Give me spots on my apples. But leave me the birds and the bees!"

Yeah, and let millions of humans die of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases in the process.

How deplorable.

The tragic consequences of the nearly worldwide ban on DDT—Some countries, like South Africa and Uganda, have started using it again, at the risk of sanctions by countries with a powerful environmentalist lobby—is well-documented. One informative article appeared yesterday on Townhall. The young lady who wrote it, Ashley Herzog, is only a junior in college and evidently wise beyond her years. [Emphasis mine]

An Environmental Failure: Restrictions on DDT

When DDT was first mass-produced in 1939, it was regarded as a miraculous life-saver on the level of penicillin. Malaria—which had once plagued Europe and the U.S. as well as the tropics—was well on its way to being eradicated. During World War II, soldiers and concentration camp survivors were doused with it. DDT was considered so essential that its first producer, Dr. Paul Muller, won the Nobel Prize in 1948. As the National Academy of Sciences declared, “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT ... In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”

But this life-saving chemical had yet to face the environmental movement. In 1962, Rachel Carson (whom Al Gore counts among his inspirations), wrote a book titled Silent Spring, which blamed DDT for killing birds and causing human diseases. The book launched a massive propaganda campaign against DDT. [...]

Under threat of trade sanctions from the West, African nations have been forced to use less effective and more expensive methods to fight the malaria epidemic, such as mosquito-repellent bed nets—which, according to World Health Organization estimates, have about a 50 percent success rate. (Countries that have reintroduced DDT, such as South Africa, have found it has a 90 percent success rate.) In any event, the DDT alternatives don’t seem to be doing much good: Every year, up to 300 million Africans get malaria, and it costs the continent’s economies billions in medical expenses and lost work days.

The situation was so dire that, in 2006, the World Health Organization announced its support for indoor DDT spraying in countries ravaged by malaria, saying the chemical had “a clean bill of health” and any possible negative effects of DDT did not outweigh its benefits. The usual suspects went nuts. As the environmentalist group the Sierra Club whined, “Studies have linked widespread reproductive disorders in animals to DDT exposure—including reproductive failure in the American Bald Eagle.” This is what happens when people start rating wildlife more worthwhile than human life. [...]

... Africans—many of whom are lucky to afford any food at all—have made it clear that they’re willing to accept the risk of potential side effects if it means avoiding the very real threat of malaria. Two weeks ago, Uganda initiated a program to spray houses with DDT, even though it will probably hurt their trade with the U.S. and the European Union. As Ugandan businesswoman Fiona Kobusingye told reporters, “I lost my son, two sisters and two nephews to malaria. Don’t talk to me about birds. And don’t tell me a little DDT in our bodies is worse than the risk of losing more children to this disease. African mothers would be overjoyed if that were their biggest worry.” [...]

(By the way, I thought the Left was pro-choice. Why can’t countries where environmental Leftists don’t even live decide for themselves what to do with their own bodies like Ms. Kobusingye. Oops, was I trying to find consistency in liberalism? Silly me.)

To be sure, URJ’s participants in the “Nothing But Nets” campaign think they are doing good by keeping Africans shrouded in inconvenient and unsightly nets. But they really aren’t. Like most liberal solutions to problems, they’re plugging up a dyke with chewing gum, while feeling good about themselves in the process.

The bottom line is this: If the URJ wants to truly save Africans from malaria, they should fight for lifting the ban on DDT. But they won’t, for the same reason the URJ aligns with the Left on virtually every socio-political issue:

For Jewish liberals, liberalism comes before Judaism.

And so, this major religious organization—which once vilified George W. Bush for his stubborn, inflexible, and religion-based opposition to government funding for embryonic stem-cell research—will maintain its stubborn, inflexible, and liberalism-based opposition to DDT.

I’m sure the millions worldwide who currently suffer from malaria or who have lost loved ones to this preventable disease are really proud of them.

Liberal Lie #9: Capitalism Hurts the Planet; Socialism Protects It

Earth Day might be over, but the party lingers on!

Yesterday I mentioned a post by Michelle Malkin, who cited the rantings of socialist Bolivian president Evo Morales earlier this week at the U.N. An editorial on the event appeared yesterday in Investor's Business Daily. The piece not only reiterates that environmentalism is really anti-capitalism in its most recent guise, but sets the record straight that when it comes to polluting the planet, socialist-communist nations beat capitalist ones by leaps and bounds. This is one frightening article. (Emphasis mine)

The Environmentalists' Real Agenda

Once in a while the truth accidentally tumbles out on global warming activists' real agenda. That's exactly what happened at the U.N., when Bolivia's leader called for ending capitalism to save the planet.

[...]

But in reality, it's capitalism — combined with the framework that enables it to flourish, like rule of law and property rights — that has lifted billions of people out of poverty and improved the environment. Contrary to Morales' assertions, the most capitalist countries are also the cleanest.

According to a 2006 study by the Heartland Institute, free enterprise does more to protect the environment than state intervention.

"The nations that have the best track records on environmental protection and improvement are those with the highest amount of free-market capitalism," wrote Samuel Aldrich and Jay Lehr, in "Free Enterprise Protects the Environment."

Morales is a Marxist, so the environmental records of the communist and socialist systems he touts to save the earth are instructive.

After communism fell in Eastern Europe, some of the biggest revelations were about how vast the pollution was in countries where no one was permitted to own or care for land.

Getting rid of capitalism created the black rivers of China, filled Eastern Europe's skies with unfiltered coal and diesel exhaust, brought deforestation that's led to sandstorms in China, spilled oil that destroyed Siberian lakes, and poisoned land with mercury and nickel waste in large swaths of Eastern Europe and Cuba.

It also brought the still-dead nuclear devastation of Chernobyl. Diverse as these regions are, the lack of capitalism means there was no accountability or incentives to save the earth.

And, sadly, it's still that way now. According to the Blacksmith Institute, the 10 most polluted places on earth are in Azerbaijan, China, India, Peru, Russia, Ukraine and Zambia, all of which have long histories of communism, socialism or nationalist isolation, the very alternatives Morales proposes to replace capitalism.

Morales' attack on capitalism represents the real agenda for the radical environmentalists. They seek global governance and an end to private property, an unsalable concept given the record of communist countries. So they're marketing it under a new brand name, wrapped in the greener concept of "saving the earth."

[...]

What's really going on with the people [U.N. Secretary-General] Ban extols is something else: "Too often their real agenda is power — power to remake the economic and social systems to suit their own command and control goals, not to serve the public good as they so loudly proclaim," Aldrich and Lehr wrote.

Romanticization of nature to promote state control hasn't had it this good since the days of Rousseau's noble savage. The only problem for environmental radicals, of course, is that sometimes the designated "savages" accidentally reveal the truth.

More to come. Lots more ...

Earth Day on the Blogosphere, Cont'd

Yet another blog that had fun Earth Day tips today was Crush Liberalism:

Everyone, please properly observe Earth Day today. Here are some tips to get the most out of Mother Gaia’s birthday: 1. Drive a Hummer down to Blockbuster to rent An Inconvenient Truth. 2. Club a fur seal. 3. Eat some spotted owl blackened on your charcoal-fired grill. 4. Chop down a tree for your own firewood. 5. Leave the lights on, Al Gore style. 6. Piddle around the world in a jumbo jet, Al Gore style. 7. Stand outside and empty a whole can of hair spray into the atmosphere. 8. Go grocery shopping and demand that each piece of produce you buy get put into its own plastic bag. 9. Fart. A lot. Preferably outside so as to “warm” the atmosphere. 10. Breathe. Nothing p#sses off an environut more than that one simple act.

If #9 really destroys the atmosphere, then you might as well put the cuffs on and haul me straight to jail ... And Michelle Malkin cites "Bolivian thug president" Evo Morales saying to the U.N.:

Bolivian President Evo Morales has told a UN forum that capitalism should be scrapped if the planet is to be saved from the effects of climate change. “If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system,” he said.

Sure. Whatever. They don't call today's enviro-wackos "Watermelons" for nothing (Green on the outside; Red on the inside).

Happy Earth Day! (a.k.a. America/Capitalism Sucks Day)

... Oh yeah, and Happy Birthday, Vladimir Lenin. (And to my Mom.) What? Earth Day is the same day as the birthday of the founder of the U.S.S.R.? Must be coincidence. Must also be a coincidence that Earth Day seems to bring all the left-wing America-haters come out to bash the country and blame capitalism for all the world's environmental woes. Oh yeah, and did you know that War hurts the environment? Recently, the Union for Reform Judaism, which I used to affiliate with, began a nationwide fundraising campaign called "Nothing but Nets." The URJ is asking for donations of $10, which will pay for a net to go around the sleeping area of Africans who are at risk of being stung by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Aw, how nice. Wouldn't you love to sleep with a net around your bed every night? What about when you have to eat? What about when you have to make? What about when you have to go to school or work? (That is, if you're lucky enough to be living in an African country where an ultra-leftist totalitarian dictator hasn't practically eradicated all forms of school and work.) Wouldn't it be better if the freaking parasites didn't exist at all? If only there were a pesticide that could kill all the disease-bearing bugs, which have caused millions of deaths in Africa and Latin America with comparably little environmental impact ... Ah, but there is such a pesticide: DDT. Where it had been applied, millions of Africans and Latin Americans were saved. But thanks to radical environmentalism given birth to by Rachel Carson (author of the 1962 environmentalists' bible Silent Spring) and today's carriers of that torch like Al Gore, DDT is almost universally banned from use. Because of a hyper-exaggerated threat of the supposed negative impact of this effective pesticide by Greenpeace and other left-wing groups, millions have died from malaria, as well as dengue hemmorhagic fever. More on this issue is in this article by Dr. Roger Bate, director of the South African NGO Africa Fighting Malaria and co-author of a paper called "When Politics Kills." Wait! You might be asking: Are you saying that the blood of millions worldwide is on the hands of liberal environmentalists? You damn right that's what I'm saying. Not only that, but now they're threatening the lives of millions worldwide due to global warming alarmism. But don't take my word for it. Today marks the release of a book titled The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About – Because They Helped Cause Them. (Now that's a coincidence!) It's by eeevil capitalist and global warming super-skeptic Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Introducing his new book, Murray writes the following article in the American Spectator:

The Truths Shall Set You Free About a year ago, I became convinced that the global warming debate was going the way of other environmental issues during the past 40 years. Dissenting voices were being silenced as America hurtled toward more laws, regulations, and bureaucratic control -- which, "informed" opinion makers insist, are the only solutions allowed to any problems global warming might bring. Sadly, this pattern has repeated time and again on a wide array of environmental issues since the 1960s, when the lawyers of the nascent Environmental Defense Fund began lobbying for local, then national, and then international bans on the pesticide DDT. The results in virtually every case have been disastrous: significant losses of both liberty and prosperity and, in some cases, environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. That's why I wrote my book, The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About -- Because They Helped Cause Them. I wanted to show how the preferred response of command-and-control is precisely the wrong way to address environmental problems. In a very literal sense, the truths can set you free. I wanted to warn people about the disastrous effects of biofuel policies around the world, and now events have justified my concern far more than I ever imagined. For years, biofuels were a bit player in the farm subsidies game, a losing proposition that politicians kept going to curry favor with the farm lobby. Then, as concern over global warming began to heat up, biofuels came to be seen as an easy solution to loud calls on the political left to decarbonize the nation's energy supply. Left-liberal politicians did an about-face. Once seen as a political sweetheart deal, government mandating use of ethanol in gasoline and subsidizing its production became a vital component in the fight against global warming. Yet all the world's various biofuels laws have done is to force industries to burn food as fuel. This has precipitated food shortages and massive increases in food prices around the world. There have been food riots in Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, and most recently, Haiti -- where the poor have been reduced to eating cakes made with bleach and are on the verge of bringing the government down. Even in America, some grocery stores have begun to institute a form of rationing. Meanwhile, massive tracts of rainforest are being cleared in Indonesia to produce biodiesel, threatening the orangutan and other magnificent animals with extinction. In Brazil, the growth of sugar cultivation for ethanol is forcing food producers into the Amazon. Little of this would have happened without the demands for less carbon-intensive energy from the environmental movement. Now they've let the genie out of the bottle. THIS RESULT WAS inevitable given the model, which was first used in the campaign to ban DDT. There certainly was a minor problem with egg shell thinning in large predatory birds caused by mass agricultural use of DDT. But in response, Rachel Carson, whom Al Gore cites as an inspiration, wrote a treatise, Silent Spring, which was the 1962 equivalent of a Michael Moore documentary -- loose with the facts and strong on hyperbole. While she didn't call for an outright ban on DDT, her followers demonized the product so much that the resulting ban can be attributed to Carson's book. There were several effects in the U.S., not least the loss of the noble American elm tree, which was saved from Dutch Elm Disease only by DDT; its replacements simply weren't up to the job. Internationally, the consequences have been much worse. Millions of Africans have perished from malaria, a disease that could have been well nigh eradicated long ago given judicious use of DDT. If you want to hear a true silent spring, go to the playground of a Ugandan orphanage in April. The list goes on. [...] These days, many liberals prefer to call themselves "progressives." Yet, ironically -- or possibly fittingly -- a potential solution to many of America's environmental problems was derailed during the Progressive era. By closing off the avenue of property rights and common law in favor of common ownership and government control, the progressives stopped -- deliberately in some cases -- proven methods of redress for environmental damage. [...] It is important to break that bond and show that the environment is actually best served by conservative policies that combine free-market and time-tested traditional approaches. More than anything else, confining command-and-control regulations to the trashcan of history will help prevent future ecological and humanitarian disasters.

This book is a must. Of course, it won't change many liberals' minds. They're already convinced that eeevil corporations run by eeevil CEO's are more dangerous to the planet than wrong-headed anti-capitalist policies disguised as environmentalism. Two unfortunate truths about liberals: They never learn from their mistakes, and they never say they're sorry. Incidentally, Murray has a blog called The Really Inconvenient Blog. Some other edu-taining posts about Earth Day around the blogosphere: From Saber Point:

Today is Earth Day: End Capitalism Now Today is "Earth Day." It's all part of the liberal worship of the earth as the new God. Evil humans are savaging the environment through industrialization, meat-eating, capitalism and SUVs. Liberals know that, in order to stop this disaster and save the earth, we must take drastic measures. If you read all of the liberal thought on the matter, you will find that in order to save the Earth and turn it into the City of Oz, we must do the following: 1. End capitalism. There is a well-established link between prosperity and pollution and the best way to end prosperity and industrial activity is to adopt socialism. That always stops prosperity dead in its tracks. 2. Ride bikes and get rid of cars. Think of Vietnamese peasants with straw hats in thonged sandals. We must become like them. Poor. 3. Smoke lots of pot. It's the only CO2 that doesn't harm the environment, and besides, it creates good karma. 4. Stop having babies. It is an indisputable fact that Earth would be better off without humans. Think of what a paradise the Earth would be then! For squirrels. 5. Become vegetarians. Eating meat causes global warming through cow flatulance. If hamburgers were banned, farmers wouldn't raise cows, thus lowering the flatulance level. Global warming would come to a screeching halt. 6. Celebrate diversity. This has nothing to do with saving the planet, but what the heck, it sounds good. 7. Get naked. This also has nothing to do with saving the planet, but it's a moonbat tradition and besides, we like seeing naked people, especially women. This step goes especially well with No. 3 above. Even fat hippie women with hairy armpits start to look good after awhile. 8. Support wildlife. Go whale watching. We like whales because they don't have flatulance and aren't capitalists. Also, they look really cool on sweatshirts and coffee cups. Go down to the beach and kiss a seal. Well, that's about it. I have to go now, I have to work on enlarging my carbon footprint.

The blog Yeah, Right, Whatever quips:

I'm all about practical, responsible conservation. It's just stupid to intentionally pollute our planet. I mean, we have to live here. I am against Earth-first, humanity-last, capitalism-never attitude that environmentalists tend to have. Then again, I'm also against reacting to every random theory that comes around without any scientific backing. (Sure, for every "he said" we have a "she said" and vice versa. Every time the environmentalists give X scientific information, then the skeptics come back with Y. It's a never ending cycle... kind of like climate change... but I digress.) There is this theory going around that I really agree with. While some people are hard-core environmentalists as their sole "cause," many are late comers to this form of activism. When it became clear that the Soviet Union was failing, communists around the world needed to find another way to channel their efforts. They latched onto environmentalism as their cause du jour, and they poured their Marxist ideologies into the movement. I mean, seriously, is it just a coincidence that many of the proposals that environmentalists put forward to save the world have some kind of socialist or communist undertones?

Finally Alan Caruba, author of a new book called Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy, has this excellent post on his Warning Signs blog:

Earth Day 2008. Get Over It! Of the many things most people do not know about Earth Day is that it is also the anniversary of the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. Coincidence? I doubt it. These days most people know little of history. We are witnessing a new generation who know little or nothing about the Soviet Union and the Cold War it waged against America and the world for the supremacy of Communism in the latter half of the last century. These are kids who don't even known when we fought our Civil War and for whom Korea and Vietnam are just names of places where there were wars, the latter of which we lost. [...] So we come to Earth Day 2008 and, despite the many good things to be said of America, we have let ourselves be trapped by the many lies of the Greens, incrementally allowing them to decide everything from how much water we can have in our toilet tanks to whether we can buy an incandescent light bulb. Like bin Laden, they knew they could wait us out. They also know how pliable our politicians are. All three of the candidates for president believe global warming is happening even though a kid in Meteorology 101 can cite the data since 1998 that documents a cooling trend. It’s going to get a lot colder because we are all on the forward edge of a new Ice Age. We’re due one. Any climatologist will tell you that. So Americans will blindly go along, not understanding why the food costs more and the cost of gasoline and other energy like natural gas keep climbing even though common sense says that if the government does not permit access to our own reserves—for all the blather about energy independence—the price will go up in ways beyond our control. Americans will blame Big Oil whose combined ownership of worldwide oil reserves represents a scant 4% of the world’s known reserves. That’s right, ExxonMobil, Shell, Conoco Phillips, BP and the rest own very little of the world’s oil. One of the many nations who does own oil is Russia, our former adversary in the Cold War. Now they have so many oil billions they want to buy American businesses with the surplus. There's something very wrong with that! Under Putin, they have returned to a dictatorship. The Russians seem to prefer that. Americans will blame our farmers—the 2% of the population that feeds the rest of us and whose exports represent a significant part of economy—but why blame people who the government literally pays to not plant crops? Why blame people whose own costs of planting, fertilizing, harvesting, and transporting their crops to the market cost more thanks to a crazed government mandate to turn 40% to 60% of the corn crop into moonshine and then requires oil refineries to add that moonshine to every gallon of gasoline you buy? And then taxes us for every gallon of that inefficient blend! Earth Day. What an absolutely idiotic notion. Anyone who has ever traveled around the planet will tell you that it’s filled with forests, jungles, deserts, mountains,and mostly oceans. We have pretty much used every bit of arable land we can to feed the population. Only the Green Revolution of genetically modified seeds has made it possible to get greater yields per acre of farmland. Otherwise people would have died off in the millions in recent times. They are likely to do so now if this artificial food shortage created by an idiotic “biofuels” program isn’t junked as fast as possible. The Greens will just have to be content with killing millions of Africans by denying them DDT to protect against malaria or millions more around the world from dengue fever. Add to that the third of the world’s food supplies that are lost every year to insect and rodent predation because the Greens cannot ban pesticides fast enough. Then there's that problem of refrigeration to preserve foodstuffs since the Greens got Freon, the cheapest and best refrigerant every invented, banned. Earth Day makes me want to puke. Everyone who runs around complaining about plastic supermarket bags makes me want to puke. Everyone who thinks we should all crowd onto trains and buses and not drive when we want and where we want makes me want to puke. Everyone who cries about endangered species when 95% of all the species that ever existed on Earth are extinct make me want to puke. People who don’t care that a billion people on Earth live on about $1 a day or that a billion people do not have electricity make me want to puke. People that won’t let Americans build more coal-fired or nuclear plants to generate the electricity we need make me want to puke. A government that throws billions at studies of climate change makes me want to puke.

Uh oh. I hope all that puking doesn't cause global warming. Does anyone know if vomit emits CO2?

End the Occupation! Liberals out of Our Schools Now!: Durango (CO) H.S.

[This is the first of an undoubtedly endless series exemplifying the cesspool that is our public school system, thanks to a half century of Leftist occupation.]

Exhibit #1: Durango H.S. in Colorado.

The blog Crush Liberalism reports [Ed. = Crush Liberalism's comments]:

CO government school bans honors graduation robes

The wussification of our children continues. [I think the iconoclastic George Carlin called it "pussification." -ETR]

When Kyra Rogers was younger, she dreamed of being one of those students who had earned a 4.0 GPA - and the right to wear a white robe in the front row at Durango High School’s graduation.

“It was motivational for me when I saw it,” she said of the robes.

Rogers, part of the class of 2008, earned perfect grades and looked forward to the honor. Then she heard that Principal Diane Lashinsky planned to end the tradition.

...

Lashinsky was traveling and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But she explained her decision in a recent newsletter.

“Every graduate has met the graduation requirements, and every child is special on graduation day,” Lashinsky wrote. “I feel the white gowns worn by some graduates diminish the accomplishment and hard work of other graduates by relative comparison.” (So what? Self-esteem is earned, Lashinsky…not given. Besides, I submit that the red gowns that the honors graduates wear diminishes THEIR accomplishments, which are, whether you want to admit it or not, more notable than those of their classmates! - Ed.)

Lashinsky added that while she was “very proud of the students who earn the highest level of academic achievement possible … part of my role as a principal of Durango High School is to support the growth and accomplishment of every student who walks through our doors.” (Helluva job in proving that, moron! - Ed.)

For the students, the decision to make all graduates wear red was only the latest move by the high school to reduce recognition of high-achieving learners.

The school refuses to release their class rank, sometimes leading to confusion when students apply for college or scholarships. Durango High also has not named a valedictorian for several years.

“They’re taking away the last bit of recognition we do have,” said Emily Horvath, another student with perfect grades. “It kind of seems like the only way to stand out at school is to do something bad.”

The white robes have been worn by 4.0 students the last three years.

“It’s not a long-standing tradition,” said Assistant Principal Mike Freeburn.

Some students may earn a greater-than-4.0 GPA by taking Advanced Placement courses. In previous years, any graduating student with a 4.0 or greater GPA wore white robes.

Freeburn expressed sympathy for the students.

“I know they’re disappointed, and that’s tough,” he said.

Got that? “That’s tough.” “Little Johnny, did you earn a 4.0? Were you hoping to wear the distinct color to commemorate your achievement? Well, sucks for you, pal.” Nice.

Roger that. Incidentally, Crush Liberalism's byline is "Liberalism: Why think when you can "feel"? Well, I certainly noticed there's a lot of feeling going on on the part of the moonbats running this school, but definitely no thinking. Disgraceful.

End the Occupation! Liberals out of Our Schools Now!

Liberal Hypocrisy: Al Franken the Tax Evader

Doggonit! Yesterday's Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune reported:

DFL [= Democrat-Farmer-Labor. I had to look that up - ETR] U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken owes $5,800 to the state of California after failing to file state income tax returns for his personal corporation from 2003 to 2007, officials said Wednesday.

...

AFI is considered "forfeited" by California and required to pay the state a minimum franchise tax of $800 for each year it's been delinquent, said John Barrett, a spokesman for the state Franchise Tax Board in Sacramento.

"When you start a corporation, whether it's Al Franken or Joe Blow, it's a legal entity almost like a human being, with a date of creation and a date of death," Barrett said. "He hasn't filed his '03-07 corporate returns."

Once Franken fills out the necessary forms, files the delinquent returns and pays the tax, penalties and interest, California can close down the corporation, Barrett said. According to Barrett, Franken owes $4,000 in back taxes and $1,794.60 in penalties and interest.

His mistake isn't uncommon, Barrett said. Many business owners don't understand the need to dissolve a corporation before walking away from it, he said.

If this is true, I wonder how much penalty money the state of California has siphoned from unsuspecting business owners due to this evidently obscure rule.

It was the second time in two months that an unpaid penalty has been found entered against AFI outside Minnesota. Both times the news was broken by Minnesota Democrats Exposed, a blog run by Republican activist Michael Brodkorb.

...

Last month, Franken paid a $25,000 penalty to New York state for failure to pay workers' compensation insurance while an employer from 2002 to 2005.

Franken, who said he never received the dozen-plus notices from New York in part because he had recently moved to Minnesota, paid the penalty and an $833 fine for failing to pay disability insurance.

OK, just playing devil's advocate here. Maybe the California thing was just an issue of "We didn't know what the rules were." But come on. Five years of not paying? Plus the four years not paying the workers' comp insurance in New York?

One should give credit to the Star-Tribune, a notoriously left-wing paper. It does start the article with Franken's party affiliation and does provide a reaction from Minnesota Republicans.

Other blogs covering this story: Protein Wisdom, who humorously titles its post "Al Franken is a big, fat corporate tax deadbeat." And Dr. Sanity quips:

Ah yes. Another candidate for change--YOU pay taxes and HE will enthusiastically collect them! YOU do as he says, not as HE does. Franken has made a career out of mocking others. He reminds me of Nelson in The Simpson's, who goes around saying, "HA, HA" at everything and everyone else's expense; but doesn't particularly like it and becomes bullyish when the tables are turned. HA, HA, Al.

Aren't we engaging in a little schadenfreude, Dr. S? Aw, what the hell. He deserves it.

Update on Carter-Hamas Visit: Obama Refuses to Condemn

I think it's safe to say that I'm officially against a Barack Obama presidency. And I'm now officially actively posting information supporting the argument that an Obama presidency would be an enormous disaster for this country.

The Republican Jewish Coalition put out the following statement yesterday:

Washington, D.C. (April 16, 2008) -- Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Executive Director Matt Brooks released the following statement today:

"We commend the decision of House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Rep. Howard Berman and Committee Member Rep. Gary Ackerman to take a principled stance and ask former President Carter to cancel his planned meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal," said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks. "Now more than ever, Senator Barack Obama must explain why he will not join the growing chorus of U.S. lawmakers demanding that President Carter stop undermining the Middle East peace process. Senator Obama's silence speaks volumes about his weak support of Israel."

Actually, Obama didn't say nothing about Carter's trip; he did something even worse: He defended his moral neutrality by rationalizing that it wasn't his place to judge, saying:

"I'm not going to comment on former President Carter. He's a private citizen. It's not my place to discuss who he shouldn't meet with." (Reuters April 11, 2008)

But this lack of moral judgment on the part of Barack Obama seems to be the latest in a disturbing pattern of moral confusion. In an article at the American Thinker, Peggy Shapiro documents the many times Obama has chosen to be silent when he was in a position to speak out against injustice. Let's just say his record is far from stellar:

Obama has not availed himself of other opportunities to speak out against injustice. When his words have taken take a stand on behalf of human decency and not be empty platitudes, Obama chose silence. Take the case of the anti-Islamist Muslim journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was imprisoned and tortured by Bangladeshi authorities when he requested a visa to attend a conference in Tel Aviv. Securing his release became a bi-partisan issue. Richard L. Benkin, who is spearheading efforts to release Choudhury, notes "Democratic, Republican, left, right, moderate; you name it. And every one of them reacted with support; every one of them, that is, except one. Who was the one lawmaker that took a pass on saving the life of an imprisoned US ally and opponent of Islamist extremism? That's right, my own Illinois Senator Barack Obama."

Obama's record in the Illinois legislature established his reluctance to take a courageous stand. In 1999, he was faced with a difficult vote to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults. Voting "yes" would help create the image of a man who is tough on crime, but many in the African-American community opposed the law. Faced with a moral dilemma, he did what was most comfortable: nothing. He sidestepped this issue and 130 others by voting present. "If you are worried about your next election, the present vote gives you political cover," said Kent D. Redfield, a professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. In the United States Senate, where there are no "present" votes, Obama consistently sought the safety of voting 96.7% of the time with the majority of Democrats. That is, when he voted. He has missed 39.3% of the votes during the current Congress.

Obama has found a comfortable spot straddling the fence on any potentially controversial issue. At a town hall in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Obama, was asked about U.S. policy toward Tibet and Darfur (the site of ongoing genocide against the Christian population), especially in light of the forthcoming Olympics in Beijing this summer. He equivocated, "It's very hard to tell your banker that he's wrong...And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China." Obama never once mentioned Tibet or China's relationship with Sudan.

This week when history demanded his voice, Obama once again opted for silence instead of courage. Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders have strongly condemned Jimmy Carter's planned meeting with Khaled Mashal, head of the Hamas terrorist organization. Both Democrats and Republicans demonstrated their leadership in a bipartisan letter to the former president entreating him to refrain from using his stature to undermine U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas. (Hamas is committed to the complete eradication of Israel and has forsworn any negotiations in favor of violence.) Among Democrats speaking out on the House floor was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), "In light of Hamas' continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision." Others warned that meeting with Hamas would not only undermine U.S. policy and the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, but lend legitimacy to the group that thwarts all efforts for peace.

If Obama wants to be President of the United States, it is his place to speak out for what is true, what is in the interest of the nation, and what is morally right (even if it costs him a few votes). It is called leadership.

Hear hear. Obama's populist slogan might be "Yes we can" (whatever that means) but right now I'd be saying to him, "But you didn't."

It is disheartening, to say the least, that the Democrat Party's presidential front-runner has such a broken moral compass, if he has one at all. And I'm concerned that Obama's supporters will try to dismiss all these and other criticisms by playing the race card. Obama supporters in the media and Hollywood have already been circling the wagons and pointed their fingers at "racist" right-wing radio for stoking all this "hatred" for Obama. But these charges must not be allowed to stick. My thoughts about Obama are the same as all those "racist" right-wing radio hosts: My beef with Obama is, and never was, his race; it's his lack of moral judgment as demonstrated by his politics and by the company he keeps.

Another Politician Convicted, Another Party Affiliation Suppressed

As much as liberal blogs pooh-pooh it, right-wing media watchdog sites like Newsbusters constantly catch the mainstream media conveniently omitting the party affiliation of disgraced politicians when they are Democrats. If a politician is even alleged to have committed a felony or be caught in a scandal, the word "Republican" happens to make the first sentence, if not the headline itself.

Proof of this charge has manifested itself twice since this morning. Newsbusters has posted about the convictions of aides of Chicago mayor Richard Daley. What party do Daley and his four convicted aides belong to? Who knows. The Sun-Times didn't mention it once.

And on my local New York ABC TV station, the 12:00 news began with this morning's conviction of former longtime Newark, NJ mayor Sharpe James. James was being charged on several counts of corruption and fraud. Not once during the several minute report did James' party affiliation get mentioned.

Coincidence? Or liberal media bias?

You can decide for yourself. I know my answer.

Jimmy Carter: The Worst President and Ex-President in American History

Oh, I'm sorry. Was that too opinionated? Then go elsewhere. I am so fed up with this treasonous and evil-abetting cretin who constantly coddles the sworn terrorist enemies of America and ally Israel.

There's an old anti-Semitic line from Americans questioning the loyalty of U.S. Jews: If Israel and the U.S. were ever at war (like that would ever happen), on whose side would their allegiance lie? Here's a much more realistic question: If Palestinians and the U.S. were ever at war, on whose side would Jimmy Carter's allegiance lie.

Little Green Footballs is tracking the latest activities of the worst president and ex-president in American history, each one more despicable than the next:

Jimmy Carter appears determined to do everything possible to legitimize Palestinian terrorism. In one of his more disgusting displays of pandering, today he laid a wreath on the grave of one of history’s most notorious mass murderers, Yasser Arafat, bearing the words, “President and Mrs. Carter.”

This man is a complete disgrace.

UPDATE at 4/15/08 8:47:35 am:

It gets worse: Jimmy Carter embraces Hamas official.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Former President Jimmy Carter embraced a leading Hamas figure Tuesday, according to participants in a meeting that infuriated Israeli officials already upset by Carter’s freelance Mideast peace mission.

Carter also laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, whom the Bush administration and many Israelis blame for the breakdown of peace talks seven years ago and the violence that followed.

At a reception in the West Bank town of Ramallah organized by Carter’s office, the former president hugged Nasser Shaer, a senior Hamas politician, meeting participants said. Embraces between men are a common custom in Arab culture.

“He gave me a hug. We hugged each other, and it was a warm reception,” Shaer told The Associated Press. “Carter asked what he can do to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel ... and I told him the possibility for peace is high.”

Oh, really? Then why did a member of Hamas parliament reiterate their intent on world Islamic domination on Al Aqsa TV last week?

Broadcast on official Hamas television (Al Aqsa TV) April 11, 2008, Hamas member of Parliament Yunis Al-Astal explains that the destruction of the Jews is just a precursor to Islam’s conquest of the entire world. (Courtesy of MEMRI TV.)

Yunis Al-Astal: Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion, so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security, and consolidation of power, and even to conquests thorough da’wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world. Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam – this capital of theirs will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe.

I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our Jihad and our sacrifices, and Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them. Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls, and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire on the brink of which they stand.

LGF reminds readers: Jimmy Carter wants us to engage in dialog with people like this. Yes, he does. Just like Obama wants to engage in dialog with the monsters in Iran.

In response to the Carter-Hamas visit, the Republican Jewish Coalition has issued the following statement:

On Carter, Obama Demonstrates Lack of Decisive Action

Washington, D.C. (April 14, 2008) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) today criticized Sen. Barack Obama for not denouncing former President Jimmy Carter's upcoming visit in Syria with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal.

On April 11, Reuters reported that Sen. Barack Obama said, while campaigning in Indianapolis, that he "was not going to comment on former President Carter. He's a private citizen. It's not my place to discuss who he shouldn't meet with."

"By declining to criticize President Carter's planned visit with Khaled Meshal, Senator Obama demonstrated his inability to take decisive action and show true leadership and sound moral judgment. This is in stark contrast to the moral clarity and principled stance of Senator John McCain," said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks.

Today Senator McCain said: It is a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader to meet with a terrorist organization like Hamas. Engaged in a campaign that deliberately targets innocent Israeli civilians, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. President Carter is wrong to meet with Hamas, a terrorist group that has also killed innocent Americans. The very idea that a former President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief would meet with a terrorist organization demands a clear stance from all presidential candidates.

"It is incumbent upon Senator Obama to call on President Carter to not meet with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and Senator Obama must reject President Carter's presumptive Democratic superdelegate vote. The hand that shakes Khaled Meshal's hand should not be allowed to rise in support of Senator Obama's candidacy for president," said Brooks.

On April 3, the Associated Press reported that Carter "wouldn't quite say it, but he left little doubt this week about who he'd like to see in the White House next year." Additionally, the former president reportedly noted that Obama had won Carter's home state of Georgia, hometown of Plains and the support of Carter's wife, children and grandchildren.

As of this writing, Obama has still not responded. A few weeks ago, Jewish Democrat friends said they could see no difference in any of the candidates -- Obama, Clinton, McCain -- with regard to Israel. This was even before the Rev. Wright fallout, but I still knew Obama was bad news for Israel. I think if Obama doesn't say anything, it will have a negative affect on his Jewish support. In fact, this morning my mother-in-law, a life-long Democrat, told me, "If Obama wins the Democratic ticket, I'm voting Republican!" Yow!

At least this development put a smile on my face [Again, from LGF]:

In a very unusual move, Israel has declined to provide assistance to Jimmy Carter’s Secret Service security team.

JERUSALEM - Israel’s secret service has declined to assist U.S. agents guarding former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit in which Israeli leaders have shunned him, U.S. sources told Reuters on Monday. ...

American sources close to the matter said the Shin Bet security service, which helps protect visiting dignitaries and is overseen by Olmert’s office, declined to meet the head of Carter’s Secret Service security detail or provide his team with assistance as is customary during such visits.

“They’re not getting support from local security,” an American source said.

Another source described the snub as an “unprecedented” breach between the Israeli Shin Bet and the U.S. Secret Service, which protects all current and former U.S. presidents, as well as Israeli leaders when they visit the United States.

Good for them, I say! Carter hasn't conducted himself like a U.S. ex-president, so why should the Israeli secret service? His activities and comments, which directly undermine the U.S. and Israel, are unprecedented. His public criticism of subsequent sitting presidents, particularly George W. Bush, is unprecedented.

So, if people are riled up because the Israel security service doesn't want to assist in security for him, I say tough! As far as I'm concerned, Israelis being forced to protect Carter when he hobnobs with their enemy is no different than Jewish concentration camp prisoners being forced at gunpoint to dig their own graves: In both situations they're expediting their own demise.

On Obama's "Bitter" Comments

A lot has been said over the past few days about Obama's condescending comments about "bitter" middle-Americans who live in areas where jobs have been gone for 25 years so they cling to guns and religion, hate illegal immigrants and those who don't look like them, etc. etc.

On the blogosphere, American Digest has the following clever "what if it was the other way around" scenario:

Let's imagine the same statement with just a slight shift in, ur, demographic focus:

"You go into some of these urban ghettos in Maryland, and like a lot of urban ghettos in the Chicago and New York, the work ethic has been gone now for 50 years and nothing's replaced it except crack, welfare, bastardy and gang banging. And then welfare got cut in the Clinton administration, and in the Bush administration no child left behind increased the high school drop-out rate, and each successive administration has said that somehow these Democratic plantation ghettos with their hate-Whitey churches, such as my own, are gonna regenerate but all they do is degenerate.

"So it's not surprising that blacks in urban ghettos get bitter, they cling to guns, drug dealing, racist rap groups, gang-banging, frantic feel-good religions, or antipathy to people who aren't black like them, or anti-semitic sentiments, or anti-Asian, anti-white sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

"I think what you'll find in these urban ghettos is, is that people of every background, from blathering preacher to wanna-be-rap-star gone street hustler, to con-artist, to layabout, to crack whore, to welfare scamming professional, to junkie -- there are gonna be a mix of people. You can go in the toughest urban ghettos, you know gang-banging drug-dealing folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts... The important thing is that you show up and you're doing your best to keep these eternal prisoners of the urban ghetto right there on the Democratic plantation so those votes keep rolling in. I want to thank all you rich white folks here in the Bay Area for writing those checks to keep that dream alive."

Ann Coulter once said the truth cannot be delivered with Novocaine. So, to that pretend speech, let me say, "Ouch!"

El Rushbo, who had been away from the mic while this was going on, came back yesterday with the following brilliant monologue:

Contrary to his campaign being all about hope, he wants these people to be hopeless. He wants them to be looking at the future and seeing nothing but darkness. That's how they turn these people into angry, enraged victims so that they end up voting Democrat for the false promise of happiness and economic security and independence. Well, you can take a look at any program authored by liberal Democrats aimed to fix people in dire economic circumstances, and I dare you to come back and tell me where any of them have succeeded. Quite the contrary. They have done exactly what Democrats and Obama now want them to do, they have gotten angry. They're mad, and they're fed up, and they're depressed and they're blaming everybody for their problems because they've been sold out, they have been underestimated as human beings. Democrats look at them and see pure incompetence, inability, and they foster that and they promote that, and they tell these people you have no chance because this is a racist country, it's a biased country, it's a prejudiced country, all because of the Republicans, all because of conservatives who hate you. If there's hate for the people who make this country work, if there is contempt for the people who make this country work, its home is smack-dab in the middle of the Democrat Party.

You talk about bitter, Barack Obama hangs around people who are bitter to the core. His entire inner circle is filled with almost insane rage. Jeremiah Wright, this other preacher, this Hayes fellow. He even married a person that's filled with hatred and rage, based on her own words, Michelle Obama. We now have, ladies and gentlemen, a very clear understanding of who he is. ... Barack Obama has been attracted to extreme radical elements his entire life, in college, Saul Alinsky after law school, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. This is who he is. And when we point this out, we are called racists, or McCarthyites, or they say that this is guilt by association. ... He said what he said. And what he said was that middle America is full of redneck, God-fearing racists and bigots. That's what he said.

He also said that middle America is bitter. He doesn't see middle America as strong and forward-looking, a force for greatness here and in the world. He doesn't see middle America as the place that makes this country work. No, no, no. He and his elitist buddies and their brilliance and their worldview, in their minds they're the ones who make the country work. Barack Obama and the Democrat Party couldn't do half or more of what is necessary every day in this country for it to work. They haven't the slightest idea. They haven't the slightest clue. You talk about being out of touch, this is it. Barack Obama in his own words. See, he's bitter.

Liberals are bitter and angry. You know this. You can listen to them talk about any circumstance in this country, any issue, from the war in Iraq to the economy to Wal-Mart to Big Oil to Big Drug, anything they talk about they are filled with rage, they are angry, and they want everybody else to be angry, they are bitter. And some are saying that Obama's effort here was trying to be sympathetic in his perverted liberal manner, that he was trying to relate to them that he's bitter, too, that they have a right to be bitter because they've been shafted. They've been shafted by government, they've been shafted by Republicans. And he's trying to relate to them. He thinks they should be bitter because he is. He and his fellow leftists are bitter, but they should look in the mirror.

...

There are no bitter people in San Francisco? San Francisco has gotta be one of the bitterest towns in the country! You go to parts of New York and you're going to find a whole lot of bitter people! Nothing small town about New York. There's a lot of bitter people out. The question is, why? For crying out loud, folks, if you deigned to watch a whole lot of news television 24/7, or just three hours a day or two hours a day, I will guarantee you, you're going to be mad. What Obama doesn't understand is what some of these people are bitter about. He thinks they're bitter because nobody cares about them, nobody cares about their circumstances, typical liberal attitude that people all over the country are looking to Washington for somebody to care about them and somebody to notice their pain and their suffering and then to go do something about it. The very people he's talking about are the kind of people who overcome obstacles like this on their own. It is part of their ethic. You want to talk tradition, these are the people that make the country work, for crying out loud. He has no concept of it. He has no clue whatsoever ...

In his latest article, Rush's brother David makes the astute observation that Obama's comments reveal a degree of projection:

Obama couldn't be more wrong about what motivates people to seek a relationship with G-d. Though this may not compute for the liberation-theology mindset, it seems to me people turn to God in humble repentance, seeking forgiveness for their own sins and shortcomings rather than validation for their bitterness and permission to continue sinning. They go in pursuit of that "hope" Obama waxes so eloquently about, but they tend to place their reliance on God rather than government as the source of their hope.

More and more, when Obama talks about the alleged "antipathy" people have toward "people who aren't like them," one can't help but speculate whether he's projecting his own feelings of antipathy and bitterness toward others and the nation.

Even Obama's slick tongue will have difficulty deflecting the conclusion that his assessment of G-d-loving Americans as embittered, gun-toting nativists is of a piece with his wife's regrettable remarks and the disturbing fulminations of his beloved pastor.

If Obama wants to hold himself out as a tolerant, colorblind uniter, he should do a far better job of walking that walk.

Dennis Prager also had a brilliant analysis on his show yesterday. Having studied socialism, communism, and the Soviet Union at Columbia, Prager immediately recognized the Marxist underpinnings of Obama's entire speech: Everything can be boiled down to economics (as opposed to moral values). If a person is "bitter", does bad things, or clings to guns and religion, it's because of an economic disadvantage.

There's one point I don't think people made yet: It's not only Obama's elitist, condescending, and dismissive comments towards middle Americans that's offensive; his elitist millionaire San Francisco audience cheerfully applauded to it.

This isn't only Obama's worldview; it's the worldview of the American left as a whole.

They're the same people who sat in the congregation of Jeremiah Wright's church and cheered when he excoriated the United States and accused his own country of the most diabolical things.

They're the same people who sat in the audience of "The View" and cheered when Rosie O'Donnell equated fundamentalist Christians with radical Muslims, when she cited a ridiculously inflated number of Iraqi civilian deaths and called America the terrorists, and when she spewed her fantastical 9/11 conspiracy theories.

That's enough to make any sane person embittered!

Liberal Lie #8: Capitalism in America Is Too Free and Needs More Government Regulation in Order to Be More Fair

This topic is more an instance of liberal ignorance than liberal lying. Nevertheless, this will no doubt be the first of several installments on this topic.

The liberal dogma that the American brand of capitalism is unregulated and unfair is the foundation of all the rhetoric we hear from Democrats and the mainstream media: Neglecting Americans poverty, the health insurance "crisis", the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, CEO's getting overpaid, Big Oil's "obscene" windfall profits, etc. etc. What do these all have in common? They're all articles of faith perpetuated by an economically-illiterate Democrat Party and foisted upon an economically-illiterate public.

The blog Copious Dissent disagrees with the premise that the American economic system isn't regulated enough, and provides twenty examples supporting its argument that our system is so that it might be absurd to even call it capitalism. [I've highlighted my favorites.]

In What World Is THIS Capitalism?

1) The Government created a $3,100,000,000,000 budget;

2) The Government created a $311,400,000,000 budget deficit;

3) The largest portion of the Federal Budget is filled with government entitlements, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare Part D;

4) The Government prevents us from drilling for our own oil;

5) The Government prevents us from utilizing our coal reserves;

6) The Government banned the Edison Light Bulbs by 2011;

7) The Government subsidizes Ethanol production thereby starving people around the world and increasing the cost of living;

8) The Government wants to take taxpayer money from people who pay their mortgages and give it to people who failed to pay their mortgages;

9) In 2005, 40% of taxpayers paid no taxes and actually received money back (Therefore, the only people who can get a tax cut are “the rich.” You need to pay taxes before you can get a cut.);

10) The top 10% of taxpayers pay 70% of all the federal income taxes (Congress wants to increase our taxes);

11) The Government subsidizes food production, hurting poor families;

12) The Government overregulates to the point where we eliminate economic competition and the only businesses left standing are big business;

13) The Government allows illegal aliens to utilize our government services funded by taxpayers;

14) The Government regulates interest rates;

15) The Government spends billions of dollars on pork-barrel projects;

16) The Government has a centralized / socialized education department that has magically figured out how to spend more money than any other country in the world on education (except Switzerland). Yet when children fail to learn, the government increases education funding;

17) The Government creates perverse tax incentives that entice people to purchases health insurance rather than become Healthcare consumers, driving up the price of healthcare;

18) The average combined Federal and State gasoline tax is 60 cents per gallon (gas companies make 10 cents profit per gallon);

19) The government overregulates nuclear plants to the point where nobody can build them;

20) Congress subsidizes people to go to college thereby driving up the prices of education;

In light of all of this, and more, the liberal media and the Democratic Party think the economic problems facing America are due to “unregulated capitalism.” Only in America!

Only in America indeed. Now, I've never taken an econ course in my life, but even just reading the works of the great Thomas Sowell has been enough of a start to realize how ignorant the Democrats and the liberal media are. I think it's willful ignorance, though. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to use all the emotion-stirring rhetoric that they use to buy them votes.

Sensible Liberal of the Week: Rep. John Dingell

It seems the Democrat global warming alarmists in Congress are too afraid to impose the draconian liberty-sapping carbon emission policies that they've been feverishly dreaming of (and all their inevitable failures). So, they've been trying to pass that responsibility on to the EPA. So Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) took on the global warming Chicken Littles in his own party. Today's Wall Street Journal Opinion page recounts and comments on the story:

'A Glorious Mess' April 12, 2008; Page A8

Usually Congressional subcommittee hearings are as routine and tedious as they sound, but John Dingell managed to enliven one on Thursday. The venerable Michigan Democrat had the candor to point out that if climate change is really the transcendent challenge his party says it is, then Congress should bother to pass legislation, not outsource policy to the Environmental Protection Agency.

For months, the little tyrants of the global warming caucus – Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey – have been trying to force the EPA into declaring that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws, which could result in a cap-and-trade program by regulatory decree. Such posturing allows Democrats to display crocodile outrage and take credit for "leadership" on a popular goal, while shifting the blame for the costs of achieving it onto the EPA. In the bargain, it insulates them from political consequences and avoids the grubby business of actually crafting some global warming "solution."

The charade is too much for Mr. Dingell, the Chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Diverging from his prepared remarks, he said it was leading to "a glorious mess" and called the liberal bluff: "As a matter of national policy, it seems to me to be insane that we would be talking about leaving this kind of judgment, which everybody tells us has to be addressed with great immediacy, to a long and complex process of regulatory action."

If the conclusion on CO2 is desperately self-evident for the EPA, Mr. Dingell suggested, then the same should be true for the Democratic majority – even more so. Regulating carbon involves "inherently political decisions that should be made by the Congress. It should not fall to EPA by default."

Mr. Dingell also made a useful point about "the wonderful complexity" that would result assuming his colleagues got their way. If CO2 is regulated like a conventional pollutant under the 1970 Clean Air Act, it would trigger an economy-wide cascade of new rules and mandates. Just about everything that emits carbon would be affected, including cars, factories and power plants, but also farms, schools, hospitals, restaurants, office buildings, etc. Mr. Dingell was perhaps overstating his case when he said it had "the potential for shutting down or slowing down virtually all industry and all economic activity and growth," but not by much.

Mr. Dingell sardonically emphasized that he supports regulating greenhouse-gas emissions in a "comprehensive, exhaustive, thoughtful and intelligent way." But if he was only indulging what he views as a political inevitability, he also knows that the costs will fall disproportionately on some constituencies over others, most notably his blue-collar voters. His indiscretion underscored the separation between Democratic blandishments about painless global warming controls and the economic reality.

This isn't the first time that Mr. Dingell has had some fun with the politics of global warming and drawn the wrath of Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the green lobby. Last year he proposed a carbon tax to force his fellow Democrats to be more truthful about their environmental artifices. He may be one of Congress's last honest liberals.

Articles of Note: Reform Movement Chooses Liberalism Over Israel (Richard Baehr)

This week's been too busy for posts, due to work deadlines earlier in the week and a four-day family wedding this weekend. But I did want to comment on the following story.

After being raised and educated a Reform Jew, I've recently "left" the Movement. I've simply grown too fed up with their infusion of left-wing politics and religion. In an article from last week, American Thinker writer Richard Baehr writes about the Movement's latest embarrassment. Baehr covers the latest instance of how liberal politics has corrupted the leadership of the movement and clouded its judgment.

April 04, 2008
Rabbi Yoffie Excommunicates Pastor Hagee

By Richard Baehr

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, seems to think Israel has too many allies in America. In particular, he believes that Israel can do without the support of evangelical Christians, and especially Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel.

At a convention of reform rabbis in Cincinnati this week, Yoffie lowered the boom on Hagee and urged Jews to no longer attend Hagee's series of "Nights for Israel", which have helped raise tens of millions of dollars for the Jewish state, and strengthened the connection between Jews and Evangelicals around the country.

Yoffie must think that the pro-Israel community has a lot of other places to turn for support in America. Maybe he is foolish enough to think the mainline Protestant churches will take up the slack. The problem is that while Evangelicals come to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of a strong US Israel relationship, the mainline churches are busy passing resolutions calling for boycotts and divestment from Israel .

Of course the very liberal Reform Judaism movement shares many political belief systems with the mainline churches and their very liberal members. So if Israel is thrown overboard by the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Episcopal Church in the USA, the Quakers, and the United Church of Christ, that is not enough to break any of those bonds of liberal fellowship they share with the Reform movement.

It is not hard to see in this relationship a similarity to the fraternity initiation of new pledges in the movie Animal House, with the Reform movement playing the role of pledges at the Omega House fraternity, and the mainline Churches as the upperclassmen. In one scene in the film, a pledge named Chip, played by Kevin Bacon, is paddled by a sadistic fraternity member named Neidermeyer on initiation night, ,and after each pounding, shouts out: "Thank you, sir, may I have another!" Such are the bonds among liberals, and how easily Israel can be minimized as an issue. Rabbi Yoffie,who has tossed aside the Evangelicals who support Israel, perhaps believes more dialogue is needed between the Reform movement and the Presbyterians and Methodists, and can help heal the wounds: "Thank you for divestment, can we meet again?"

Of course there are plenty of members of Reform synagogues who care little for Israel and have the same blame-Israel mindset as the mainline Protestant Church leaders. Ron Kampeas, who has made a career out of excusing and defending those who are unenthusiastic about Israel, mentions in an article on Yoffie that the Reform leader is in fact more pro-Israel than many of his members, most of whom probably can find dozens of political issues that move them more than the safety and survival of Israel. Some of Yoffie's members are embarrassed to have to defend Israel in polite company, and others are openly pro-Palestinian, and see no reason for an anachronism like a Jewish state to exist.

But the question arises: why did Yoffie choose to go after Hagee now? After all, Yoffie, a man of not inconsiderable hubris, sought an invitation and then spoke at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University two years ago, signifying an opening to the evangelical movement. The answer is not too hard to figure out. The Reform movement is in some ways, a political movement masquerading as a 501 C 3 tax exempt religious charity. This is a Presidential election year, and the likely Democrat nominee is Senator Barack Obama. Members of the Reform movement vote, and Jews in general, tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democratic nominees for President. But this year, Obama has run into trouble among the pro-Israel community for his flirtation with Palestinian hardliners in Chicago in his years in Hyde Park, for his 20 year long tie to Pastor Jeremiah Wright, who has given awards to Minister Louis Farrkahan, and blasted Israel regularly at sermons and for a collection of foreign policy advisors, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samantha Power, Robert Malley and General Tony McPeak who sound like members of a Jimmy Carter fan club or a Walt/Mearsheimer book club.

Most American Jews do not support the candidate they believe is the most pro-Israel, but the one they think is the most liberal, which for all practical purposes is the Democrat. But for most American Jews, support for Israel is at least a threshold test, low as the bar may be set. And this year., Senator Obama is having trouble clearing that bar, even at the low level at which it is set. It explains why Obama, who has won big majorities among higher income, well-educated professionals in the primaries this year, has lagged badly among Jews with similar education/income characteristics. A poll of Israelis showed Hillary Clinton with 5 times the support of Obama.

A few weeks back, Pastor Hagee endorsed Republican Senator John McCain for President. For years, evangelical Christian supporters of Israel operated outside the framework of mainstream Jewish organizations. But last year, AIPAC, the most important group lobbying for a strong US-Israel relationship, invited Hagee to speak to 6,000 attendees at its annual Policy Conference in DC. Hagee repeatedly brought the crowd its feet with his speech, and the event signified that Hagee and his group, CUFI were now part and parcel of the pro-Israel community.

With Obama as the likely Democratic nominee, and the Reverend Wright controversy still simmering, the Democratic Party and its subsidiaries (which is how the Reform movement behaves) need to change the subject. They have chosen to smear Pastor Hagee as part of that process. The charges are both familiar -- that Hagee is anti-Catholic and anti-gay, but also new -- that Hagee is damaging the "peace process" by being so hard line. Surprisingly, the New York Times gave Hagee an opportunity to respond to some of the charges that have been hurled at him in this attempt at Democratic Party damage control ("we have one bad pastor, and so do you)".

The new charge related to the peace process is interesting, in that it ties in with a comment that was made by Senator Obama in Cleveland that being pro-Israel does not have to mean adopting the Likud Party agenda. And that is what Yoffie accuses Hagee of doing -- of being uncompromising (like Likud), and hence opposed to peace.

The sad history of the Israeli -Palestinian conflict is that it does not matter whether Israel is compromising or uncompromising; the Palestinian rejection is the same in either case. But Yoffie has now written out of the pro-Israel community anyone who is more skeptical than he of Palestinian intentions, or the wisdom of the current American "engagement" in the peace process.

When one acts as if he thinks of himself as the King of the Jews, as Yoffie appears to do at times, such a stunningly ignorant and arrogant dismissal of the leader of a movement of tens of millions of pro-Israel evangelical Christians, is not hard to do. Hagee has shown the humility to understand his place in all this: he is a pro-Israel Christian American. He understands that Israelis will decide Israeli politics, not his movement, and not Reform Jews. He does not have to like the course Israelis may choose, and he can hope that Israeli politics shift in the direction he prefers in the future. But he is not the one who has written anyone in or out of the pro-Israel community. Rabbi Yoffie is the one who has done that.

Fortunately, his movement, and Yoffie himself, count for less and less each year. Demographic trends favor Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians, while Reform Jews do not produce children at anything close to replacement levels. There is much for Yoffie to envy.

And maybe this year, If Barack Obama is the nominee, the Democratic Party's long stranglehold on Jewish voters will end.

With sadness, I have to disagree with Baehr's final statement, for the very reasons he enumerates above. Most Jews I know are Reform, and I doubt that if any of them had the choice between endorsing liberal politics or supporting Israel. And, as the polls are already showing, they will vote an ultra-left-wing candidate regardless of his an anti-Israel leanings. It's a harsh charge, to be sure, but there's simply no evidence to suggest it's not true.

Liberal Media Bias: The "Economic Crisis" Pushers (cont'd): NY Times

A few posts back I pointed out the media's complicity in fabricating an economic crisis, in the hopes -- I believe -- of causing one for real. A theme in that post was that the media knows that it's not reality, but rather the perception of reality that's important when pushing an agenda.

Well, it turns out my argument was yet again bolstered when Friday's NY Times published a poll-as-news story called "81% In Poll Say Nation Is Headed On Wrong Track."

The website TimesWatch describes the underhanded and journalistically dishonest way the authors have gerrymandered the poll and then skewed the results to manufacture their resulting conclusions [Emphasis mine].

For whatever reason, polls by the Times and other media outlets almost always survey more Democrats than Republicans. But the spread of today's poll is the widest ever for a Times poll, a 15 percentage point difference, with 26% of respondents identifying themselves as Republicans compared to 41% Democrat. (Despite that skew, both Obama and Clinton only beat McCain by 5 points in the paper's hypothetical matchups.)

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

….

The unhappiness presents clear risks for Republicans in this year’s elections, given the continued unpopularity of President Bush. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they approved of the job he was doing, a number that has barely changed since last summer. But Democrats, who have controlled the House and Senate since last year, also face the risk that unhappy voters will punish Congressional incumbents.

Once again, the Times slapped a "populist" label on the liberal idea of blaming business and advocating tax money to bail out individual mortgage holders.

In assessing possible responses to the mortgage crisis, Americans displayed a populist streak, favoring help for individuals but not for financial institutions. A clear majority said they did not want the government to lend a hand to banks, even if the measures would help limit the depth of a recession.

….

Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they would support raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 to pay for tax cuts or government programs for people making less than that amount. Only 38 percent called it a bad idea. Both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidates, have made proposals along these lines.

More broadly, 43 percent of those surveyed said they would prefer a larger government that provided more services, which is tied for the highest such number since The Times and CBS News began asking the question in 1991. But an identical 43 percent said they wanted a smaller government that provided fewer services.

One new poll question in particular truly "leads the witness" by attempting to link the economy to another bad news story (according to the Times) Iraq.

Question 71: From what you know, how much do you think the cost of the war in Iraq has contributed to the U.S. economic problems -- a lot, some, not much or not at all?

Faced with that slant, it's no surprise that a whopping 67% of respondents chose the answer "A lot." (Economists don't agree.)

But please don't ask economists. They might ruin your Republican-hit-piece-disguised-as-an-objective-report with facts.

The blog Copious Dissent looks even closer at this article and concludes that the Times ...

... so mangled and intentionally distorted the results that no rational person could conclude that Leonhardt or Connelly were attempting to be objective. Not only was the analysis of the legitimate questions biased, but the most meaningless survey results were used to support a liberal agenda ...

In the New York Times article, Leonhardt and Connelly inform the reader that:

“Only 21 percent of respondents said that the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992 [Hey, wasn't that when George H.W. Bush, the last Republican president before W in 2001, was at the tail end of his term? Coincidence??? Nah! -ETR], when the recession that began in the summer of 1990 had already been over for more than a year. In the latest poll, nearly two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today.”

This statement was based on the following poll questions:

7. How would you rate the condition of the national economy these days? Is it very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad?

1% Very Good
20% Fairly Good
28% Fairly Bad
30% Very Bad
1% DN/ NA

9. Right now, do you think the United States is in an economic recession, or not?

66% Yes
27% No
7% DN/NA

After focusing heavily on the above data, the New York Times explained how terrible the economy is and how it is leading toward the public being less optimistic about the future. In fact, this data gives the impression that the hardship must be universal for most Americans. But, is that true?

To check this assumption, I combed through more of the data to realize that the New York Times consciously decided to dismiss the most important finding at the end of the article. Of course, this was done because the most important results disputed their original hypothesis. The question was as follows:

13. How would you rate the financial situation in your household these days? Is it very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad?

9% Very Good
63% Fairly Good
20% Fairly Bad
7% Very Bad
1% DK/NA

This would mean that 70% of Americans believe that they are doing well. How is this possible? We were just told that 70% of the country thinks we are presently in a recession. The reason is pretty clear: If the media tells the public everyday that we are in a recession, and then asks the people if they think we are in a recession, they will vote based on what the learn from the media. But, most people are doing just fine according to their own responses.

Rush Limbaugh has discussed this very phenomenon on his show: You ask people how they think their neighbors are doing financially and they answer that they're all in dire straits. Then you ask how they themselves are doing, and they answer they're doing quite well. Again, all perception, no reality.

Copious Dissent continues:

Sadly, even after the New York Times mentioned the good news, they still attempted to qualify this positive statistic around a sea of doom and gloom. They stated that even though people seem to be doing well, many Americans are simply staying in place rather than getting ahead. This is astonishingly misleading.

First, if a person were doing financially well before a recession, staying in the same place does not imply anything pejorative. Second, the actual data demonstrated that 23% of respondents said they were getting ahead, 48% said they stayed the same, while 28% said they were falling behind. With a 3% margin of error, the New York Times could just have easily said that more people are not feeling any negative effects from the economic downturn at all!

In terms of the housing foreclosures, the Times employed a “reverse-chunking” statistic to be blatantly dishonest. The article states that:

The poll found that Americans blame government officials for the crisis more than banks or home buyers and other borrowers. Forty percent of respondents said regulators were mostly to blame, while 28 percent named lenders and 14 percent named borrowers.

The New York Times implies from this statement and the subsequent paragraphs that the public wants to increase regulations on the housing market. But, this only appears to be the case because the New York Times’ statistic separates the individual parties at the point of the transaction. For example, 14% of people blamed the borrowers, 28% blamed the lenders, and 7% blamed a combination. If we combined the bifurcated statistics, more people blamed the people at the point of the lending transaction than the government for not interfering. In essence, they want people to take personal responsibility. But, the article states just the opposite is true by separating the groups in a misleading way!

...

Copious Dissent concludes:

Overall, if I were writing for the New York Times, I certainly could have chosen a better title to summarize the data: “Most People Unharmed by Economic Downturn: Media Perpetuating Hysteria.”

Which is the same point I made in my earlier post -- and that was even before I was even aware of this slanted excuse for an article in the Times.

Quotes of the Week

The first quote below is from the Great One, Mark Levin. On Friday's show he discussed Ted Kennedy's latest slurred, barely comprehensible rant on the Senate floor. If I lived in Massachusetts I would hide my head in shame. This excuse for a human being a such a waste of space.

It seems the Cape Cod Orca, as Levin calls him, is upset that the Bush administration isn't bailing out the thousands of people who, due to their own fiscal irresponsibility, are currently defaulting on their mortgages. Kennedy seems to think it's the federal government's responsibility to take your money and give it to them. (That's what leftist-socialists like Kennedy do: reward bad behavior; punish good behavior.)

"[T]he old Chicago movie that I remember so well. They talk about, 'Give us the old razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle me too.' Well boy, we are finding out that the American home owners who are hard-pressed are being given the old razzle dazzle ... This is as bad as Katrina and as bad as the Iraq War!!! And we have a similar response from the administration and that is the failure of leadership and the failure of action. And the American people ought to understand it."

To which the Great One replies:

[The Iraq War] is the same as somebody having to rent a home as opposed to own a home? This just shows you how sick these people are, how utterly demented they are. Everything's about politics. Everything's about exploitation. Everything's about power.

He wants you to believe, all you home-owners out there, that he stands with you. He wants you to believe, all you folks who use gasoline ... that he stands with you. All you folks who eat corn and wheat, ... he wants you to believe that he stands with you. But he's screwing every one of you! That's what Marxists do. They intervene, they destroy industries, they destroy the market, then they grab more power. Incrementally, one little step at a time. But those steps are becoming bigger and bigger and moving a lot faster, are they not?

You liberals drive up the price of fuel, you drive up food prices, you destroy the public school systems, you sympathize with the criminals against the cops, you drive jobs out of this country, you drive businesses out of this country, if you don't drive them into the dirt. And then you say you're compassionate, you care about the "little guy." You care about nothing but yourselves.

That just about sums it up for me.

Next is a string of pearls of wisdom from El Rushbo. On Wednesday and Thursday he addressed the shameful Stalinist show trials that Congress engaged in by dragging in oil executives and drilling them (no pun intended!) on their "obscene" "windfall" profits:

"Where is a congressional hearing to bring in Big Gold? Have you looked at the price of jewelry? You gonna go out there and get engaged, get married -- I hope not, but if you are -- are you going to go out there and buy diamonds? Have you seen the price escalations?"

"Big Oil ought to be conducting hearings and bringing members of Congress up and saying, 'Why are you making it so damn hard for us to conduct our business? Why are you making it so hard for us to provide the American economy what it needs: the free flow of oil at market prices. Why are you standing in our way?' That's the question that needs to be asked."

"How come Jay Rockefeller is never asked about the price of oil? Hmm? It's the source of his family fortune. How come he's never asked about it?"

"You may hate oil companies, but there's no reason for you to. You've been forced to hate 'em, but they're the ones putting gasoline in your tank and these little two-bit nerds on that committee lecturing these guys wouldn't know the first thing about raising or drilling or producing any oil if their lives depended on it."

"Ed Markey and the Democrats pointed their fingers at the Big Oil execs yesterday and told them that they need to be looking at alternative fuels. What they were essentially saying was: 'You guys are responsible for finding the product that's going to put you out of business.'"

Here's my favorite one from Rush. He's stated it more than once, but each time it gets truer and truer:

"The most expensive commodity we have in this country is ignorance. Not gasoline, not rice, not wheat, not corn."

It may be our most expensive commodity, Rush, but it's also the Democrats' most precious one. They wouldn't be able to pull half their shenanigans on the American people if more of them started to wise up.