Vocal Minority

Global Warming and the Correlation=Causation Argument

We’ve all seen it: That chart from Al Gore’s movie and book that shows a correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures. (Actually, there is up to an 800-year lag between CO2 rise and temperature rise -- and, most importantly, it’s the temperature that rises first. If there actually is a correlation, the GW alarmists got it reversed: Rising temperatures is what drives rising CO2, not the other way around! Gore doesn’t reveal the lag because he never zooms in close enough on these graphs that span several hundred thousand years.)

In any case, for kicks let’s take Gore’s word for it and assume the correlation exists, lag or no lag. This humorous post, from the blog House of Erotasthenes, follows Gore’s assumption to its logical conclusion:

Thirty Things I’d Like Blamed For Global Warming

... Indeed, presented on some of the charts, the curves do seem to line up very much ... Reverend Al, therefore, presumes that correlation must be causation. And we’re told “The Science Is Settled!” It is a curious situation, since scientists like to talk about correlation NOT being causation. Reverend Al’s theory is based on this — where are the scientists rushing out of the woodwork to rap him across the knuckles? His theory is based on the idea that correlation is causation — and on nothing else.

But Reverend Al has spoken. So if two curved lines match up, it must mean something. Can I interject something here? If that is the litmus test, I have a few things I’d like checked out. It’s pretty important. Reverend Al has told us our planet is withering away and may not be able to support life in a generation or two. I see correlation. Going by his logic, that must mean causation. Thirty times, I see it. Using Reverend Al’s science. So let’s look into it ...

Here are my favorite examples of the 30 listed:

1. Illegal immigration I’m told we have seventeen million illegal immigrants now, and just a few years ago it was less than ten million. That’s a doubling. It’s a doubling over exactly the same time frame that global warming is supposed to have skyrocketed. Correlation, suddenly, is causation, so I see a cause.

3. Reality television shows They got going, as the temperature went up. Now we’re up to our ears in reality television shows, and the temperature is through the roof. There’s no sign of a slowdown in either case. Check out a possible connection, I say.

4. White kids learning how to rap That was a 1990’s thing, wasn’t it? That’s when the temperature took off like a rocket. That’s when records were being set.

8. iPods It’s a little bit behind the curve, but it could be worth checking out. After all, they’re everywhere today, and we’re terrified of what global warming’s gonna do to us.

9. The phrase “illegal and unjust war” repeated over and over again I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out the mean global temperature went up a hundredth of a degree, every time this stupid phrase was uttered. I’m sure the charts and graphs will bear this out to Reverend Al’s liking.

10. Cell phone conversations that don’t really need to happen. Could ya pick up some milk…what’re you doing…dude, you wouldn’t believe how much this movie sucks.

Back when those conversations just plain didn’t happen…global warming was, also, just plain not happening. I see a connection.

14. Kids being diagnosed with exotic new learning disabilities The 4A’s: Autism, Aspergers, ADHD and Allergies. Is anybody keeping track of how often these things are diagnosed? And the skyrocketing is almost perfectly parallel with the global warming thing…in a way that would make Reverend Al proud.

16. Fraudulent Voting Illegal aliens. Dead people. People who live in different counties. I don’t know if the illegitimate voting is on an upswing, but the accusations of it certainly are…and where there’s smoke there must be fire. Earth’s temperature is supposed to be up. Hmm. Seems irresponsible to ignore this possible connection.

20. Hate crime legislation Perhaps global warming is God’s way of punishing us for making it our business what our fellow man is thinking…between his left ear…and his right ear. It’s none of our business. When we meddle where we don’t belong, nature has ways to retaliate. And Al Gore should like the theory just fine, because hey, the lines fit.

21. Pants that droop and show off your butt crack Another nineties fad. Except this one stuck around, and stuck around, and stuck around some more. Global temperature was sent sky-high. Cause. Effect.

23. Barbra Streisand “final” and “going away” concerts She keeps doing it. More and more often, it seems…during which time, the planet is being put in danger.

25. Hollywood making crappy anti-war anti-American movies They do it without even thinking about it, now. It doesn’t matter if the last one they did, made any money or not (and by the way, they never do).

26. The Macarena It came and went in 1996, didn’t it? Look at that graph. Find 1996. Tell me you don’t see something.

28. Oprah Winfrey recommending books to people She keeps doing it, over and over again. And the global temperature keeps rising.

29. Goatees Used to be, you only saw one once in awhile. By the time we had our “warmest years on record,” if you tuned into the American Country Music awards, you saw a room full of what looked like a hundred guys all trying to look exactly like each other. Big-ass belt buckle…big-ass cowboy hat…big-ass boots…silly looking facial hair, looked like they’d been bobbing for apples in chocolate syrup, and then kissing feather pillows turned inside out. Silly. Three things classically American, coupled with one thing from 17th-century France. Who in the world decided these go together?

And the earth got hotter.

I posted a comment on this blog post and suggested two additions:

(1) Viagra went on the market in 1998, the so-called year of record high temps. What if boners caused global warming??? I could just see it now: Buy Viagra, swipe your carbon ration card!

(2) Harry Potter madness started with book #1 being released in 1998. I say we take J.K. Rowling out back and wack ‘er.

Is That a Threat or a Promise?

Liz Smith, from her gossip page at the NY Post, reports:

SUSAN SARANDON ... says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada. She adds, “It’s a critical time, but I have faith in the American people. If they prove me wrong, I’ll be checking out a move to Italy. Maybe Canada, I don’t know. We’re at an abyss.”

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, sweetie. And please take your loudmouth lefty husband with you. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

She won’t do it anyway. She’s just saying it because, well, that’s what self-absorbed, liberal Hollywood types say. George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, Robert Redford all said it in 2004. Bush was re-elected, and they’re still here. Liars. Every last one of them.

Bob Parks, on his Black & Right blog, wonders ...

All ego aside, maybe Susan Sarandon should ask the good people of Italy and Canada if they even want her?

Articles of Note: The U.S. Energy Catastrophe (T. Nugent)

NRO Financial | May 29, 2008

The U.S. Energy Catastrophe
Brought to you by those brilliant politicians in Washington.
By Thomas E. Nugent

I suffered a minor heart attack when I saw the price of my latest fill up: $90. Gas is just under $4 a gallon here in South Carolina, and like many Americans I could be in for a major coronary when the pump price soars past $4.50 or even $5 this summer.

Rising energy prices have put a kink in vacation plans this year. Consumer confidence hasn’t been this low since 1980 (back when interest rates on car loans were 21 percent). There are still an untold number of gas-guzzling SUVs on the road, a visible contradiction to the so-called adverse consumer reaction to high gas prices. What gas price will trigger a meaningful backlash? I think we’re pretty near that point.

Of course, we’ve hardly got it as bad as Europe—especially France, where the equivalent gallon-price of gas (after the euro/liter conversion) is about $9. No wonder most of their cars look like they were built for the golf course.

That said, oil consumption is only up about 1 percent year over year. So why are oil and gas prices soaring?

Some of the blame goes to “investors” in hard assets, which includes oil. On the advice of academics who said commodities are a good portfolio diversifier, a lot of institutional investors got involved in oil speculation, thus helping bid up the barrel price. There’s also a continued rise in global demand, even as the U.S. slows. A growing third world is consuming much more oil than ever before.

But the true culprits are located in Washington, D.C.

Remember all those Democrats in 2006 who promised lower gasoline prices if they got elected? Well, they got elected. And what did we get? Much higher oil and gas prices.

Investor’s Business Daily, the free-market newspaper, has pointed out that Democrats are a prime cause of killer oil and gas prices. About a week ago the Senate failed to end the moratorium on oil-shale development in Colorado. Republicans voted for removing that moratorium; Democrats voted against. But voters put more Democrats in office than Republicans, so here we are.

By the way, that shale-oil reserve potential is about 1 trillion barrels. Then there’s Alaska and offshore, where another 50 billion barrels of oil are awaiting development. But this Congress says such exploration is off limits. The result? We’ll continue to export wealth to the tune of $600 billion per year by relying on foreign crude and OPEC for our energy needs.

Not to be outdone, politicians in Washington are still saying help is on the way. One idea is to eliminate the gas tax and thereby keep gas prices from rising. That’s it, guys and gals! Keep encouraging more consumption of something you won’t let the free-market drill for in the first place. As Ronald Reagan said, “There they go again.”

The next time Congress tries to blame oil companies for high oil prices—or OPEC, or the insatiable, over-consuming U.S. public—remember these statistics. Remember them especially when you make that trip to the polling place in November.

If economic growth means anything to you, you’ll vote for the candidate who is pro-growth, not pro-OPEC.

— Thomas E. Nugent is executive vice president and chief investment officer of PlanMember Advisors, Inc., and principal of Victoria Capital Management, Inc.

Articles of Note: Investigate Congress, Not "Big Oil" (A. Epstein)

Investigate Congress, Not "Big Oil"
By Alex Epstein
FrontPageMagazine.com | 5/30/2008

With gasoline prices exceeding $4 a gallon in some states, politicians are responding as usual: Blame Big Oil First. Several prominent senators have once again summoned industry leaders to Capitol Hill, subjecting them to yet another barrage of rhetorical questions, interruptions, accusations, and sermons. The lawmakers’ goal, claims Sen. Patrick Leahy, is to identify “causes of the rising price of oil on which Congress can act.” But the foregone conclusion is that “price gouging,” “collusion,” and “market manipulation” by Big Oil, or speculation by financiers, is responsible.

The simple fact that such Congressional investigations obscure is that the prices of oil and gasoline are determined by supply and demand—which neither private oil companies nor speculators have any power to dictate in their favor. If they had such market mastery, then why didn’t they use it in the 1990s, when gasoline was selling at a barely profitable $1 a gallon? To be sure, speculators can bid up prices—but they only do so when they believe that oil will become even more expensive in the future, and only make money when they are right.

The question Congress should really be asking, then, is: What non-market factors are distorting supply and demand? If they sought an honest answer, they would discover that much of the blame lies with Congress itself.

No one disputes that environmentalist laws passed by Congress have cut off some of our most promising and plentiful sources of oil. In the name of safeguarding a tiny portion of caribou habitat in the Alaskan wilderness, drilling is prohibited in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge—a potential source of 1 million barrels a day, 5 percent of America’s daily oil consumption. Also off-limits is 85 percent of America’s coastline, which Shell estimates contains some 100 billion recoverable barrels—13 times America’s annual oil consumption—and the vast majority of oil shale in Colorado, which Shell estimates at 1.5 trillion barrels.

Congress should publicize these facts, prepare an inventory of how many oil-rich areas they have blocked off, and bring in economists to estimate how much all of this raises gas prices.

And how about the effects of Congress’s open hostility toward the future of oil? Our politicians damn oil as an “addiction” to be eliminated, and seek to cut—by up to 90 percent—the use of oil and other vital fossil fuels that make our standard of living possible. Congress should ask oil executives how this possible forced cut in demand affects their industry. It should ask whether they feel safe to make the billion dollar investments and decades-long plans that oil production requires when Barack Obama, a leading presidential candidate, can uncontroversially proclaim that “the country that faced down the tyranny of fascism and communism is now called to challenge the tyranny of oil.” Is it a coincidence that the much-maligned speculators think oil will become even scarcer in the future, and are acting accordingly?

In addition to investigating its own impact on gasoline prices, Congress should investigate how its economic policy partner, the Federal Reserve, has raised our gas prices by lowering the value of the dollars we buy gasoline with. The Fed, along with the Treasury Department, has for years had an inflationary policy that has caused the value of the dollar to plummet relative to other currencies. Were it not for this devaluation of the dollar, oil prices would likely be 40 percent lower—as they are for those on the Euro. Why not call a free-market economist to the stand and ask how much more expensive Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and Henry Paulson have made our gasoline?

Americans deserve to know the story—in all its gory detail—of what their government has done and is doing to cause high prices at the pump, and to make gasoline—indeed, all energy—more scarce and more expensive in the future. Such a congressional investigation of Congress would be a public service.

Alex Epstein is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, California, which promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Send comments to [email protected].

Czech President Calls Algore's Bluff

I love the Czechs. When the walls of communism started crashing down in Eastern Europe in 1989-90, the Czechs (and Slovaks) were among the first to tell their Soviet masters: Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. I’ve been to the Czech Republic twice back in the ‘90s and got the chance to study Czech in Prague during graduate school. It’s a magnificent country, especially its culturally and historically rich capital city. And since the fall of East European communism, the Czech Republic has been among America’s strongest allies.

So who better than the president of this formerly communist country to confront the Marxist-socialist underpinnings of today’s man-made global warming hysteria movement, as well as the totalitarian impulses of those who wish to impose carbon regulations and taxes on an unsuspecting populace. The following story comes from a website called The Earth Times.

Czech President Klaus ready to debate Gore on climate change
2008-05-27

Washington - Czech President Václav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms. “I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he’s not too much willing to make such a conversation,” Klaus said. “So I’m ready to do it.”

Klaus was speaking a the National Press Building in Washington to present his new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?, before meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday.

“My answer is it is our freedom and, I might add, and our prosperity,” he said.

Gore a former US vice president who has become a leading international voice in the cause against global warming, was co-winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Gore’s effort was highlighted by his Oscar winning documentary film An Inconvienent Truth.

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the “climate alarmism” perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

“Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality,” he said.

“In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet,” he added. Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he oppposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

“It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda,” he said.

Klaus alleged that the global warming was being championed by scientists and other environmentalists whose careers and funding requires selling the public on global warming.

“It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only,” Klaus said.

Of course, Gore won’t accept the challenge. Why should he? He’s already informed us that the debate is settled, the science is in. Besides, Leftist ideologues don’t do debate; they only do name-calling and finger-pointing and ad hominem attacks. Which is why, if you don’t jump on Al Gore’s man-made GW hysteria bandwagon, you must be (a) a shill for Big Oil, (b) part of an insignificant minority of uneducated flat-earthers, (c) Dick Cheney, or (d) all of the above.

Articles of Note: True Liberals Must Be Appeasers (J. Lewis)

The original version of this spectacular American Thinker article is quite lengthy, but very much worth a full read if you have the time. If anyone is confused about the liberal vs. conservative strategy on foreign policy, this article will straighten you out. DanTheMyth, this one’s for you:

May 28, 2008
True liberals must be appeasers
By James Lewis

... There they go again. The big debate now is whether Obama would be a foreign policy appeaser. It’s the wrong question. All modern liberals must be appeasers—because that’s their ideology. They constantly proclaim to the world that peace-at-any-price is their single, greatest, overarching goal. The older generation of American liberals would never say that—it would sound obviously stupid to them—but they are now gone.

Conservatives have a more tragic view of life; we tend to think that in a world filled with aggressors, civilized nations must be willing to go to war. That means war in all its messy reality—not just Clinton’s Kosovo War where you never see the blood. Conservatives want to live in peace like any sensible human being. We just know there is not a single shred of evidence that we can have peace without armed vigilance. Efforts to do it, like the racist and anti-democratic UN, always turn into some morally grotesque reality show.

Like Great Britain a century ago, the United States is now the world cop, along with a few reliable allies. Without us, there would be no stable peace in the world. History has put us in that path; we can refuse it, but we would have to live with the consequences. Who else would you like to be in charge? Russia? China? Europe, which could not even get 30 transport helicopters together recently, just to rescue refugees in war-ravaged Chad? Europe loves to scream at us, but it will never step up to the responsibility we bear. Morally speaking, Europe is a hostile welfare addict. They love us only when they need us. [...]

If you tell Ahmadi-Nejad that, as a true Leftist, peace is your overarching goal, he instantly knows you’ve lost. Remember, this is the culture of the shrewd Persian rug merchant. They know how to read the cards. Fanatics like A’jad are driving for victory, not peace. They are willing to sacrifice much, much more than any Western nation. Iran lost perhaps half a million people in the Iran-Iraq war, but even then Ayatollah Khomeini was still not willing to make peace. The United States, with four times Iran’s population, has lost less than .01 percent of that number of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. You and I don’t want to look at the headlines in the morning for fear that more US soldiers have died. But jihadis constantly proclaim, “We value death; you value life.” They are not irrational, just willing to die in this world for eternal rewards in the next.

Since 9/11 liberals have made it clear in a thousand little ways that they are just not willing to resist a suicide-bombing enemy. They don’t have the moral fiber, and they always misunderstand reality. Starting from false premises, the Left always ends up with false conclusions. It is stunning to behold, but just look at Carter, Clinton and Obama. Self-righteous, blind-as-a-bat, and adored by the bubbleheads.

A few months ago 91 Iraqi civilians were blown up by two mental patients suffering from Down Syndrome, their bomb probably triggered by remote control. None of the American media made a fuss about the atrocity. They’re never going to blame the actual criminals. How many bombings have we seen aiming specifically to murder innocent civilians, women, children, shoppers in a market? There have been thousands in Iraq alone. In jihadi eyes it is glorious to kill innocent people as deliberate policy. After all, Allah will know his own in Paradise.

But have liberals paid any attention at all to Al Qaida’s war on civilians—even after the three thousand innocent victims on 9/11? I have never seen any sign of it. That all-encompassing love of humanity suddenly screeches to a halt when it comes to the victims of terrorism.

The Left is grossly out of touch with the fundamental reality of this war. Terrorism means killing innocents for solely to spread fear and intimidation. Fail to understand that, and you can’t understand anything else. For the enemy, killing civilians is a matter of policy. Liberals keep missing that point, desperately looking for “root causes.” For fanatics the root cause is always ideology.

Bin Laden’s recent audio messages openly celebrate 9/11 as a great victory. But the American Left just avoids thinking about it. They are convinced the United States is the enemy of civilization. They adore Europe, instead, without understanding that we, the United States, have been keeping the peace for Europe for sixty years. The Europeans do the very minimum possible to keep themselves safe; and with welfare chewing up their money, their military budgets are constantly shrinking, along with their courage and common sense. Without us there would be no peaceful Europe and no peaceful Middle East.

Bizarrely, Barack Obama now blames America for not “talking to Iran.” That puts the blame on the US, exculpating the mullahs. It’s pure, unadulterated fiction again. As president, Jimmy Carter talked and talked to the mullahs. He kept on trying to find out who was really behind the hostage taking, and the Khomeini crowd just gave him the runaround. Carter was desperate to appease them and save his presidency. It was “How high should I jump?” But Ayatollah Khomeini didn’t let him off the hook: He was interested in humiliating the President of the United States in front of the world. Khomeini won that confrontation against weak-willed Jimmy, who then went on to lose to Ronald Reagan as a result. Typically, he still blames Reagan, not Khomeini. [...]

The truth is that we are constantly talking with all our enemies through back channels. So this election-year banana oil that “we haven’t talked to our enemies” is just shameful. It is unworthy of a national party; it shows yet again how utterly empty-headed and morally shallow today’s Democrats are. It’s a terrible shame, because we need two parties with their heads screwed on straight. We should have intelligent debates about the war on terror; but you can’t do that with one side living in denial that there is a war at all. [...]

Exhibit A: Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter is the very prototype of modern appeasement. Three decades after the fact, he is still in denial about his history-making blunder in bringing down the Shah and letting Ayatollah Khomeini take over. The Shah was hustled out of power because Carter felt guilty about the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh 25 years before, in 1953! (That was the Stalin era, Jimmy. Look it up.) But Jimmy was trying to make up for past sins, and simply took his eyes off clear and present dangers. That is simply unforgivable incompetence. If we had a sensible media, Carter would be a discredited old man that nobody would listen to—simply as a result of his never-ending, self-glorifying incompetence. As a result of Carter’s historic failures we traded a pretty reasonable Iran for an Adolf Hitler regime. That’s what we are living with now. Thank you, Mr. Carter.

A’jad just called Israel “a stinking corpse.” That’s Hitler-Stalin talk, folks, intended to bully the world. A’jad also makes constant threats against his Arab neighbors in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. And of course he hates infidel America with an inconceivable obsession.

The Left now seems to be playing with the idea of tossing Israel to the wolves. One of Obama’s advisors believes that Israel should surrender its nukes in exchange for a piece of paper signed by A’jad. (However, the Israelis are not likely to go along with a suicide pact.) The Left simply believes in surrender and appeasement. They’re always trying to figure out better methods of appeasement.

If we’d never had smilin’ Jimmy in the White House, a pro-Western Shah would now be making Iran prosperous and largely peaceful, something like India and China. Iran would help stabilize the Middle East, as it did under Shah Reza Pahlavi. The price of oil would be lower than it is today, because tanker traffic through the Gulf would not be at risk as it is now. The murderous Iran-Iraq war could have been avoided entirely, because Saddam Hussein would not have attacked a powerful American ally. More than a million lives would have been saved if Jimmy Carter had just told the Shah of Iran to hang on.

That was the real price of Jimmy’s appeasement.

Liberals constantly accuse conservatives of evil motives. But a world without Jimmy Carter would have been spared a vast amount of suffering. What’s more evil?

Exhibit B. Bill Clinton

Clinton’s eight years of sloppiness and indecision on national defense created disasters just waiting to happen. The President of the United States would simply wander away from the nuclear “football” officer in the White House, who is strictly mandated by law to be with him wherever he goes. Clinton abandoned that solemn responsibility when he felt like it. That single fact shows what we were dealing with.

What about Clinton and 9/11? The 9/11 assault was telegraphed eight years ahead of the event by the first WTC bombing. 9/11 should in fact be known as The Second Al Qaida attack on the United States. The Clinton Administration had two whole terms in office to forestall a second attack, but it tied itself up in lawyerly knots and failed to head off far greater carnage. That is why we still see a huge gap today in the skyline of Lower Manhattan. The 9/11 assault should be placed squarely on the shoulders of President William J. Clinton.

Exhibit C. Barack Obama

If Barack Obama took over as president of the United States, all the thwarted tyrants in the world would see their big chance. They would quickly test American resolve, just as JFK was tested by the Soviets. The Chinese might seriously threaten Taiwan, which they think is theirs by right. Russia might move on Georgia and the Ukraine. Hugo Chavez might invade Columbia, just to try out his shiny new Russian jets and tanks. Under Obama, the United States might not be serious about international power, but all the hungry little tyrannies will be very serious indeed. It’s their big opportunity.

In Pakistan, President Musharraf has escaped four assassination attempts. What would Obama do if the next one succeeds—and radicals take control of Paki nukes? Could we talk them into giving up their keys to Allah’s final victory over the infidels? Obama seriously overstates his magic if he really believes that.

If Obama gets in, what will he do about Iranian nukes, now predicted for 2009? Would Obama back a civilized democracy or appease the fascists? Prediction: He would opt for appeasement. That is entirely consistent with his expressed beliefs. Liberals live in a world without hard choices. They just spin whatever happens, and the media let them get away with it.

The Left cannot escape responsibility for 9/11, for the mullah tyranny in Iran, and for undermining American security in a thousand other ways. These folks are dangerous, not because they are stupid or evil, but just because they just can’t handle reality. It’s like a truck driver who can’t see the oncoming traffic. The driver doesn’t get credit for good intentions. The Left always forgives itself these little gaffes, but reality is unforgiving.

Barack Obama is even less prepared than Clinton and Carter were. You can tell from his constant bloopers, and by the people he’s picked for his foreign policy team. They live in never-never-land, exactly what you would not want in a sane and sober US Administration. It’s a chilling sight.

The Obama camp is now boasting that their guy can magically crack the toughest nuts in the world. How is he going to do that? Oba-magic will make it happen, baby. It’s gonna be love and peace from here on out.

The Left falls for that kind of imbecility. They’re convinced their guy can somehow voodoo away the most dangerous fanatics in the world—a miracle without precedent in history. But history isn’t their strong suit, nor geography, nor straight thinking. Wishful thinking and moral posturing are. I’m sorry, but it’s true. [...]

That is why our sworn enemies are hoping and praying that Obama wins.

Can you blame them?

But Don't Question Their Patriotism: How WaPo Observes Memorial Day

Last week a close family member was asked to retire early after 30+ in journalism. Trying to save some money, his newspaper offered him and other employees a buyout.

He then told me that the Washington Post was doing the same thing, asking 100 journalists to accept early retirement. Howard Kurtz opines on this occurrence in yesterday’s paper.

I’m thinking, why is business at the WaPo so bad that they need to cut costs by buying out one hundred writers? Is it simply that, with the advent of the internet, cable, and other “instant” news sources, the print daily newspaper is slowly going the way of the dodo?

Maybe. But I have for a while thought that the demise of some newspapers might be self-inflicted: On the same day of Kurt’s editorial lamenting the downsizing at the WaPo -- Memorial Day -- that very paper decides to devote its front page with a glowing tribute disguised as an objective article. Who were they lionizing? An American soldier fallen in the War in Iraq or Afghanistan? No, none other than one of America’s arch enemies in Iraq: Moqtada al Sadr.

The blog Howling Wolf provides a quite thorough analysis of the WaPo article:

Yesterday was Memorial Day, yet there were no long articles in the Washinton Post about our soldiers sacrificing for America in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were no long stories about individual acts of heroism under fire, nor articles on acts of kindness and humanity by our soldiers. Instead, we were treated to silence yesterday while today, the WaPo runs a long story singing the praises of a man responsible for the death of our soldiers, Moqtada al Sadr. What perfidious people these are.

WaPo says:

Sadr, now 34, has since emerged as an ardent nationalist who commands the support of hundreds of thousands of devotees ...

I have yet to see a single bit of anecdotal evidence that supports that degree of popularity for Sadr. To the contrary, a year ago, as the surge was just getting started, Sadr called for a “million man march” in Najaf. The march on Najaf only drew between 5,000 and 7,000 people according to U.S. military observers. Since the start of the surge, in the areas that have been under Sadrist control, the people have chafed under the imposition of gangsterism and rule with ever “increasing similarity to the repressive Iranian theocracy.“They have celebrated when Sadr’s rule was broken. As to the characterization that Sadr is an “ardent nationalist,” given Sadr’s degree of involvement with Iran and given that the Sadrists in government are completely isolated from all other factions, it would seem that the nationalist alure of Sadr effects mostly members of our MSM. [...]

WaPo says:

Sadr has spent the past year studying in Iran under a politically influential cleric who runs the country’s judicial system, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, according to several top-ranking Sadr aides. Sadr’s effort to burnish his theological credentials may offer some insight into his ambitions, since he is descended from a line of clerics who endorse “wilayat al-faqih,” the theory that high-ranking Shiite clerics should oversee affairs of state. [...]

The myth of the brave revolutionary standing up and defeating the evil Americans. One could almost imagine the authors wearing their Che t-shirts as they wrote this paragraph. Irrespective, these “formidable” fighters were decimated in 2004, with Sadr walking away from that fight only by the grace of a conscious decision made by the Americans who had him surrounded. Since 2004, his “formidable” fighters have never attempted another similar uprising against U.S. forces. There has been a lot of sniping, but the “formidable” fighters of the Mahdi Army have yet to be foolish enough again to attempt any large scale fight against the far more “formidable” force of U.S. soldiers.

WaPo says:

Obaidi said he advised Sadr to declare a freeze on violence in exchange for commitments from the government to stop raids and mass arrests of its followers.

But Sadr refused. “He knew that if we rely on the government that they would break their promise, and we would be forced to end the freeze,” Obaidi said.

The WaPo prints the Sadrist narrative and leaves it unchallenged. The Wapo neglects to Sadrists are infamous for their brutality and criminality, yet leaves the impression of a corrupt Iraqi government of Iraq acting in bad faith. Amazing.

The Washington Post’s foreign service truly is a fifth column. One can be sure that no author or editor responsible for this article has family actually fighting in Iraq to preserve freedom. What has our MSM come to?

Articles of Note: The Consequences of Radical Feminism (R. Walker)

When asked by a family member about my position on the environment, my response was something to the effect of, "I'm all for environmentalism, just not a radical environmentalism. Unfortunately, it's the latter that is espoused by out-of-touch celebrities, politicians, and the media and pushed on us unenlightened folk.

Similarly, I'm all for feminism, just not the radical feminism which has been imposed on our society for decades, producing at least one generation of unfulfilled, bitter, confused, and unsatisfied women.

And if you think radical feminism isn't a problem for both men and women in this country, consider that last week Barack Obama had to do damage control after calling a news reporter "Sweetie." (Yes, I'm actually defending Barack Obama.)

How does one assess the effects of radical feminism? You can't do much better than to ask the daughter of one. The following heart-wrenching article is by Rebecca Walker, daughter of radical feminist icon Alice Walker. I hope the elder Walker is proud, and I hope the millions of women who bought into her ideology over the past forty years are equally as proud.

The article, printed in the U.K. Daily Mail, is quite long, but here are some highlights:

... The truth is that I very nearly missed out on becoming a mother - thanks to being brought up by a rabid feminist who thought motherhood was about the worst thing that could happen to a woman.

You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.

In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life. Far from 'enslaving' me, three-and-a-half-year-old Tenzin has opened my world. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late - I have been trying for a second child for two years, but so far with no luck.

I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying.

As the child of divorced parents, I know only too well the painful consequences of being brought up in those circumstances. Feminism has much to answer for denigrating men and encouraging women to seek independence whatever the cost to their families.

My mother's feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her. [...]

Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights around the world and set up organisations to aid women abandoned in Africa - offering herself up as a mother figure.

But, while she has taken care of daughters all over the world and is hugely revered for her public work and service, my childhood tells a very different story. I came very low down in her priorities - after work, political integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel.

My mother would always do what she wanted - for example taking off to Greece for two months in the summer, leaving me with relatives when I was a teenager. Is that independent, or just plain selfish?

I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me - a ‘delightful distraction’, but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting.

According to the strident feminist ideology of the Seventies, women were sisters first, and my mother chose to see me as a sister rather than a daughter. From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio - some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food. [...]

It’s been almost four years since I have had any contact with my mother, but it’s for the best - not only for my self-protection but for my son’s well-being. I’ve done all I can to be a loyal, loving daughter, but I can no longer have this poisonous relationship destroy my life.

I know many women are shocked by my views. They expect the daughter of Alice Walker to deliver a very different message. Yes, feminism has undoubtedly given women opportunities. It’s helped open the doors for us at schools, universities and in the workplace. But what about the problems it’s caused for my contemporaries? [...]

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women’s movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them - as I have learned to my cost. I don’t want to hurt my mother, but I cannot stay silent. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.

I hope that my mother and I will be reconciled one day. Tenzin deserves to have a grandmother. But I am just so relieved that my viewpoint is no longer so utterly coloured by my mother’s.

I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters - a happy family.

The PrestoPundit blog correctly notes:

OUR CHILDREN WILL BE FORCE FED the writings of Alice Walker, but what are the chances your kids teachers will let them read this [article]?

The chances? I would say zero to none. Kudos to the Daily Mail for even printing this article. But I don't expect the mainstream media in this country to even touch it.

Articles of Note: Congress' Hot Air (M. Steyn)

As usual, Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head in this Jewish World Review article, with all the biting wit he's famous for.

Jewish World Review | May 27, 2008

Your car can't run on Congress' hot air

By Mark Steyn

I was watching the Big Oil execs testifying before Congress. That was my first mistake. If memory serves, there was lesbian mud wrestling over on Channel 137, and on the whole that's less rigged. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz knew the routine: "I can't say that there is evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not."

Had I been in the hapless oil man's expensive shoes, I'd have answered, "Hey, you first. I can't say that there is evidence that you're sleeping with barnyard animals, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence and prima facie evidence, lady? Do I have to file a U.N. complaint in Geneva that the House of Representatives is in breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?"

But that's why I don't get asked to testify before Congress. So instead the Big Oil guy oozed as oleaginous as his product before the grand panjandrums of the House Subcommittee on Televised Posturing, and then they went off and passed 324-82 the so-called NOPEC bill. The NOPEC bill is, in effect, a suit against OPEC, which, if I recall correctly, stands for the Oil Price-Exploiting Club. "No War For Oil!," as the bumper stickers say. But a massive suit for oil — now that's the American way.

"It shall be illegal and a violation of this Act," declared the House of Representatives, "to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product ... or to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas or any petroleum product when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price or distribution of oil, natural gas or other petroleum product in the United States."

Er, OK. But, before we start suing distant sheikhs in exotic lands for violating the NOPEC act, why don't we start by suing Congress? After all, who "limits the production or distribution of oil" right here in the United States by declaring that there'll be no drilling in the Gulf of Florida or the Arctic National Mosquito Refuge? As Rep. Wasserman Schultz herself told Neil Cavuto on Fox News, "We can't drill our way out of this problem."

Well, maybe not. But maybe we could drill our way back to $3.25 a gallon. More to the point, if the House of Representatives has now declared it "illegal" for the government of Saudi Arabia to restrict oil production, why is it still legal for the government of the United States to restrict oil production? In fact, the government of the United States restricts pretty much every form of energy production other than the bizarre fetish du jour of federally mandated ethanol production.

Nuclear energy?

Whoa, no, remember Three Mile Island? (OK, nobody does, but kids and anyone under late middle age, you can look it up in your grandparents' school books.)

Coal?

Whoa, no, man, there go our carbon credits.

OK, how about if we all go back to the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe, and start criss-crossing the country on wood-fired trains?

Are you nuts? Think of the clear-cutting. We can't have logging in environmentally sensitive areas such as forests.

Rep. Wasserman Schultz believes in "alternative energy," which means not nuclear (like the French) but solar and wind power. At the moment, solar energy accounts for approximately 0.1 percent of U.S. electricity production, most of which is for devices that heat swimming pools. So if there was a tenfold increase in swimming pool construction you might be able to get it up to 1 percent, but the only way all those homeowners would be able to afford to build their new swimming pools is through the kinds of economic activity that depend on oil, gas and other forms of federally prohibited energy.

So, instead, Congress hauls Big Oil execs in for the dinner-theatre version of a Soviet show trial and then passes irrelevant poseur legislation like the NOPEC bill. The NOPEC bill is really the NO PECS bill — a waste of photocopier paper passed by what C.S. Lewis called "men without chests."

The New Yorker ran a big piece the other day called "The Fall Of Conservatism." Indeed. This November isn't going to be pleasant for those of us of a right-wing bent. Many conservative voices in the media say: This is the way it is, get used to it. Voters want the government to "fix" health care and "fix" gas prices and "fix" the environment and, if all you're offering is the virtues of small government, you too sound small — and mean and uncaring about the real issues in real people's real lives. Standing athwart history yelling "Stop!" was a cute line from William F. Buckley, but it's not a practical position for a political party that wishes to stay in business. "The fact of change is the great fact of human life," writes my National Review colleague David Frum in "Comeback," his thoughtful critique of the conservative movement.

Frum is right. Change is a constant. You're a big railroad baron,and things are going swell, and then someone invents the horseless carriage and a big metal bird that holds hundreds of people and you never saw it coming — because you thought you were in the train business rather than in the transportation business. That kind of change is the great exhilarating rhythm of American life.

But government "change," Obama change, NOPEC change is nothing to do with that. In fact, it obstructs real dynamic change. On energy, on environmentalism, on health care, government "change" generally does nothing more than set in motion the next crisis that the next change-peddling pol has to pledge to address.

So we complain about $4-a-gallon gas, and our leaders respond with showboating legislation like NOPEC and feel-good environmental regulatory overkill like putting the polar bear on the endangered-species list, while ensuring that we'll continue to bankroll every radical mosque and madrassah on the planet. In Britain, new "green taxes" do nothing to "save" the planet, but they are estimated to cost the average family about $6,000 a year. That's change you can believe in.

Two WSJ Articles Incite Debate

Commenter DanTheMyth and I have been going back and forth the past couple days regarding the two WSJ editorials by Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden. It's getting pretty interesting! Care to stick in your two cents? Visit the comment link to both these blog posts (here and here) and let us know what you think!

Articles of Note: Republicans and Our Enemies (J. Biden)

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal for taking it upon themselves -- without the use of a left-wing government-enforced "Fairness" Doctrine -- to publish a Democrat retort to Joe Lieberman, whose article appeared Wednesday.

The article, written by Joe Biden (D-DE), is unsurprisingly fraught with Dem talking points, all of which are way off base with reality, but what do you expect from a Dem hack career politician?

(Incidentally, the NY Times has an editorial today blasting Bush (oh sorry, was that redundant?) Ya think those oh-so sophisticated people at the Times will provide a counter-argument? I'm not holding my breath either.)

Republicans and Our Enemies

By JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

May 23, 2008

On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman wrote on this page that the Democratic Party he and I grew up in has drifted far from the foreign policy espoused by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

In fact, it is the policies that President George W. Bush has pursued, and that John McCain would continue, that are divorced from that great tradition – and from the legacy of Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Sen. Lieberman is right: 9/11 was a pivotal moment. History will judge Mr. Bush's reaction less for the mistakes he made than for the opportunities he squandered.

The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the "war on terrorism" that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

The intersection of al Qaeda with the world's most lethal weapons is a deadly serious problem. Al Qaeda must be destroyed. But to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.

Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win.

The results speak for themselves.

On George Bush's watch, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon and that country is on the brink of civil war.

Beyond Iran, al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 – are stronger now than at any time since 9/11. Radical recruitment is on the rise. Hamas controls Gaza and launches rockets at Israel every day. Some 140,000 American troops remain stuck in Iraq with no end in sight.

Because of the policies Mr. Bush has pursued and Mr. McCain would continue, the entire Middle East is more dangerous. The United States and our allies, including Israel, are less secure.

The election in November is a vital opportunity for America to start anew. That will require more than a great soldier. It will require a wise leader.

Here, the controversy over engaging Iran is especially instructive.

Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was "naïve and inexperienced" for advocating engagement; "What is it he wants to talk about?" he asked.

Well, for a start, Iran's nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we're stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.

Sen. Obama is right that the U.S. should be willing to engage Iran on its nuclear program without "preconditions" – i.e. without insisting that Iran first freeze the program, which is the very subject of any negotiations. He has been clear that he would not become personally involved until the necessary preparations had been made and unless he was convinced his engagement would advance our interests.

President Nixon didn't demand that China end military support to the Vietnamese killing Americans before meeting with Mao. President Reagan didn't insist that the Soviets freeze their nuclear arsenal before sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev. Even George W. Bush – whose initial disengagement allowed dangers to proliferate – didn't demand that Libya relinquish its nuclear program, that North Korea give up its plutonium, or even that Iran stop aiding those attacking our soldiers in Iraq before authorizing talks.

The net effect of demanding preconditions that Iran rejects is this: We get no results and Iran gets closer to the bomb.

Equally unwise is the Bush-McCain fixation on regime change. The regime is abhorrent, but their logic defies comprehension: renounce the bomb – and when you do, we're still going to take you down. The result is that Iran accelerated its efforts to produce fissile material.

Instead of regime change, we should focus on conduct change. We should make it very clear to Iran what it risks in terms of isolation if it continues to pursue a dangerous nuclear program but also what it stands to gain if it does the right thing. That will require keeping our allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China, on the same page as we ratchet up pressure.

It also requires a much more sophisticated understanding than Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain seem to possess that by publicly engaging Iran – including through direct talks – we can exploit cracks within the ruling elite, and between Iran's rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.

Iran's people need to know that their government, not the U.S., is choosing confrontation over cooperation. Our allies and partners need to know that the U.S. will go the extra diplomatic mile – if we do, they are much more likely to stand with us if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary.

The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran's pockets.

The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on tension with America is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word "no" from our vocabulary?

It's amazing how little faith George Bush, Joe Lieberman and John McCain have in themselves – and in America.

Articles of Note: Democrats and Our Enemies (J. Lieberman)

My eyes played a trick on me. When I first saw this article I thought the title read, “Democrats Are Our Enemies.” Hmmm.

Anyway, this is truly an excellent article by Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, from today’s WSJ. It’s presented in full:

Democrats and Our Enemies
May 21, 2008
by JOE LIEBERMAN

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom.”

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and “inordinate fear of communism” represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America’s fault.

Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party’s lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate—Vice President Gore—championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America’s moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent—and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party’s platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy” and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party’s left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.

In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right—regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it. John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately—the difference between America’s friends and America’s enemies.

There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.

If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies. A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned “no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.” This is a lesson that today’s Democratic Party leaders need to relearn. If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies. A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned “no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.” This is a lesson that today’s Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.

This man makes so much sense it’s no wonder the Democrats threw him under the bus. They haven’t been big fans of “sense” for some time now. No one in that party will even take his words to heart.

Global Warming Lie #5: That Darn Consensus Again

Get it through your thick skull, Al: The science never was, nor is it still, settled.

31,000 scientists reject ‘global warming’ agenda 

May 19, 2008
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

More than 31,000 scientists across the U.S. – including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties – have signed a petition rejecting “global warming,” the assumption that the human production of greenhouse gases is damaging Earth’s climate.

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate,” the petition states. “Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

The Petition Project actually was launched nearly 10 years ago, when the first few thousand signatures were assembled. Then, between 1999 and 2007, the list of signatures grew gradually without any special effort or campaign. But now, a new effort has been conducted because of an “escalation of the claims of ‘consensus,’ release of the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Mr. Al Gore, and related events,” according to officials with the project.

“Mr. Gore’s movie, asserting a ‘consensus’ and ‘settled science’ in agreement about human-caused global warming, conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore’s movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse,” said project spokesman and founder Art Robinson.

WND submitted a request to Gore’s office for comment but did not get a response.

Robinson said the dire warnings about “global warming” have gone far beyond semantics or scientific discussion now to the point they are actually endangering people. […]

Robinson said the project targets scientists because, “It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice.”

He said the “global warming agreement,” written in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and other plans “would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.” “Yet,” he said, “the United Nations and other vocal political interests say the U.S. must enact new laws that will sharply reduce domestic energy production and raise energy prices even higher.

“The inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness include the right of access to life-giving and life-enhancing technology. This is especially true of access to the most basic of all technologies: energy. These human rights have been extensively and wrongly abridged,” he continued. “During the past two generations in the U.S., a system of high taxation, extensive regulation, and ubiquitous litigation has arisen that prevents the accumulation of sufficient capital and the exercise of sufficient freedom to build and preserve needed modern technology.

“These unfavorable political trends have severely damaged our energy production, where lack of industrial progress has left our country dependent upon foreign sources for 30 percent of the energy required to maintain our current level of prosperity,” he said. “Moreover, the transfer of other U.S. industries abroad as a result of these same trends has left U.S. citizens with too few goods and services to trade for the energy that they do not produce. A huge and unsustainable trade deficit and rapidly rising energy prices have been the result.

“The necessary hydrocarbon and nuclear energy production technologies have been available to U.S. engineers for many decades. We can develop these resources without harm to people or the environment. There is absolutely no technical, resource, or environmental reason for the U.S. to be a net importer of energy. The U.S. should, in fact, be a net exporter of energy,” he said. […]

The Petition Project website today said there are 31,072 scientists who have signed up, and Robinson said more names continue to come in.

In terms of Ph.D. scientists alone, it already has 15 times more scientists than are seriously involved in the U.N.’s campaign to “vilify hydrocarbons,” officials told WND.

“The very large number of petition signers demonstrates that, if there is a consensus among American scientists, it is in opposition to the human-caused global warming hypothesis rather than in favor of it,” the organization noted.

The project was set up by a team of physicists and physical chemists who do research at several American institutions and collects signatures when donations provide the resources to mail out more letters. [...]

The petition is needed, supporters said, simply because Gore and others “have claimed that the ‘science is settled’ – that an overwhelming ‘consensus’ of scientists agrees with the hypothesis of human-caused global warming, with only a handful of skeptical scientists in disagreement.”

The list of scientists includes 9,021 Ph.D.s, 6,961 at the master’s level, 2,240 medical doctors and 12,850 carrying a bachelor of science or equivalent academic degree. [...]

Unbelievable.

Don’t expect the liberal media–who have done nothing but provide free publicity for Gore and his scam—to report this. Lesley Stahl comes to mind. Just last month, in a glowing puff piece dishonestly passed off as an objective interview, who did she cite as a denier of Gore’s anthropogenic GW theory? Dick Cheney. Oh yeah, that’s honest! 31,000+ scientists on a petition that’s been around for ten years, and liberal ass-kisser Lesley Stahl picks the despised “oil man” in the White House as the poster child of AGW denial.

We know what point Stahl was trying to make: Dick Cheney is a politician, not a scientist, and therefore his motives in being an AGW denier are suspect. Well, Miss Genius, what do you think Al Gore is, a climatologist or geologist? He’s a politician too, moron. And considering Al Gore has made an upwards of $100 million promoting AGW, compared to Dick Cheney’s $0 earned denying AGW, which politician’s motives would you question??

The willful ignorance of liberals would be laughable if only they weren’t so dangerous.

Articles of Note: Success in Iraq: A Media Blackout (R. Peters)

"Loud Lion" recommends this superb editorial from today's NY Post:

SUCCESS IN IRAQ: A MEDIA BLACKOUT
By RALPH PETERS

May 20, 2008 -- DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003.

To be fair to the quit-Iraq-and-save-the-terrorists media, they have covered a few recent stories from Iraq:

* When a rogue US soldier used a Koran for target practice, journalists pulled out all the stops to turn it into "Abu Ghraib, The Sequel."

Unforgivably, the Army handled the situation well. The "atrocity" didn't get the traction the whorespondents hoped for.

* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who'd turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play.

* As long as Baghdad-based journalists could hope that the joint US-Iraqi move into Sadr City would end disastrously, we were treated to a brief flurry of headlines.

* A few weeks back, we heard about another Iraqi company - 100 or so men - who declined to fight. The story was just delicious, as far as the media were concerned.

Then tragedy struck: As in Basra the month before, absent-without-leave (and hiding in Iran) Muqtada al Sadr quit under pressure from Iraqi and US troops. The missile and mortar attacks on the Green Zone stopped. There's peace in the streets.

Today, Iraqi soldiers, not militia thugs, patrol the lanes of Sadr City, where waste has replaced roadside bombs as the greatest danger to careless footsteps. US advisers and troops support the effort, but Iraq's government has taken another giant step forward in establishing law and order.

My fellow Americans, have you read or seen a single interview with any of the millions of Iraqis in Sadr City or Basra who are thrilled that the gangster militias are gone from their neighborhoods?

Didn't think so. The basic mission of the American media between now and November is to convince you, the voter, that Iraq's still a hopeless mess.

Meanwhile, they've performed yet another amazing magic trick - making Kurdistan disappear.

Remember the Kurds? Our allies in northern Iraq? When last sighted, they were living in peace and building a robust economy with regular elections, burgeoning universities and municipal services that worked.

After Israel, the most livable, decent place in the greater Middle East is Iraqi Kurdistan. Wouldn't want that news getting out.

If the Kurds would only start slaughtering their neighbors and bombing Coalition troops, they might get some attention. Unfortunately, there are no US or allied combat units in Kurdistan for Kurds to bomb. They weren't needed. And (benighted people that they are) the Kurds are pro-American - despite the virulent anti-Kurdish prejudices prevalent in our Saudi-smooching State Department.

Developments just keep getting grimmer for the MoveOn.org fan base in the media. Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who had supported al Qaeda and homegrown insurgents, now support their government and welcome US troops. And, in southern Iraq, the Iranians lost their bid for control to Iraq's government.

Bury those stories on Page 36.

Our troops deserve better. The Iraqis deserve better. You deserve better. The forces of freedom are winning.

Here in the Land of the Free, of course, freedom of the press means the freedom to boycott good news from Iraq. But the truth does have a way of coming out.

The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.

When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout.

Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People's Army in the wake of the earthquake.

Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good.

Is Jane Fonda on her way to the earthquake zone yet?

Articles of Note: Party of the Weak Horse (J. Lord)

As we all know, there's been a lot of commentary about Obama and the Democrats' crybaby reaction to Bush's speech in Jerusalem last week, in which they interpreted a comment as implicating the Democrat Party in general, and Obama in particular, in being too weak and appeasing of foreign enemies.

Here is one more fantastic article from today's American Spectator that covers quite extensively the Democrats' dismal history, proving Bush to be 1000% right:

The Party of the Weak Horse By Jeffrey Lord 5/20/2008 12:08:15 AM

It was as if a dentist had just jabbed at an exposed nerve in a rotting tooth, inducing a shrill howl from his helpless patient.

President Bush, saluting Israel on its 60th birthday, stood before the Israeli Knesset last week and recalled a simple fact of history. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Within minutes, Democrats in America were howling in rage that Bush, who had done nothing more than recount historical fact, was calling Senator Barack Obama, their presumptive presidential nominee, an appeaser. From Obama to Pelosi to John Kerry to Joe Biden to Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton (the latter undoubtedly already in a mood of "see-I-told-you-so") all felt the instinctive need to defend both Obama and their party from the sting of an appeasement charge.

What makes the instant reaction so telling is that the only American mentioned, and not even by name, was long-ago 1930s U.S. Senator William Borah from Idaho. Borah was -- wait for it -- a Republican. That being the case, why the instant outrage from 21st century Democrats?

There is a reason, and a considerable reason at that. Modern Democrats have long since adopted Borah's isolationist, pacifist philosophy lock, stock and barrel. In the 1930s, with FDR in the White House, it was the GOP that was stuck in appeasement mode as Hitler began his rise. It was a position so untenable, so politically damaging, that Republicans spent twenty years in presidential exile while Democrats Roosevelt and Harry Truman drilled the gospel of internationalism, American exceptionalism, and a strong military into the very political bones of Americans.

Yet the idea of appeasement did not die. While Republicans eventually won back the White House at last by nominating Eisenhower, the commanding general of D-Day fame, the forces of appeasement were regrouping. With FDR's one-term ex-vice president Henry Wallace at the head of the pack, the appeasement wing began to establish itself inside the Democrat party.

There was, at first, a ferocious struggle. Truman was appalled, labeling Wallace privately as "a pacifist 100 percent. He wants us to disband our armed forces, give Russia our atomic secrets and trust a bunch of adventurers in the Kremlin.... I do not understand a 'dreamer' like that." Wallace and his followers, Truman concluded, were "becoming a national danger." But Truman prevailed, and it was presumed that the ideas Wallace represented had finally faded in the trials of the Cold War.

Like a virus biding its time, however, the appeasement philosophy of Wallace lay dormant inside the Democrats' body politic, quietly out of sight through two Stevenson nominations and the presidency of JFK. But it finally began to manifest itself during LBJ's term, angrily exploding into public view over the issue of Vietnam. In time, led by Wallace supporter George McGovern, the appeasement disease took over the Democrats' body and soul.

Osama bin Ladin has famously described America as a "weak horse." His point, that what looks like a strong champion in fact tires easily and gives up, is surely still his conception of America. With good reason. Within America itself, modern Democrats have indelibly fixed their image as America's own weak horse, the political party for which appeasement and running up the white flag has become a historical reflex.

IT'S FAIR TO ASK for examples. Sadly, there are many.

Beginning with Truman's baseline description of Henry Wallace in 1948 ("He wants us to disband our armed forces, give Russia our atomic secrets and trust a bunch of adventurers in the Kremlin...."), the names and issues after the JFK/LBJ era that reflect not just a consideration but a devotion to appeasement by Democrats would show -- and only in part -- the following:

* 1971: A young John Kerry testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He tells lawmakers of U.S. Vietnam policy: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" confidently asserting that "we cannot fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now."

* 1972: The Democrats' platform for their nominee, one-time Henry Wallace supporter Senator George McGovern, states: "The majority of the Democratic Senators have called for full U.S. withdrawal by October 1, 1972. We support that position. If the war is not ended before the next Democratic Administration takes office, we pledge, as the first order of business, an immediate and complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces in Indo-China. All U.S. military action in Southeast Asia will cease. After the end of U.S. direct combat participation, military aid to the Saigon Government, and elsewhere in Indo-China, will be terminated." Nixon defeats McGovern in a 49-state landslide.

* 1975: Democrats cut off all aid for Vietnam and Cambodia. The Communists overrun the two nations, murdering millions and setting up "re-education camps." Thousands of Vietnamese refugees flee to the South China Sea, many of the "boat people" drowning before they can be rescued.

* 1977: President Jimmy Carter tells Americans in a speech at Notre Dame that they have "an inordinate fear of Communism." Instead of calling for victory he proudly proclaims that "I believe in detente with the Soviet Union. To me it means progress toward peace....We hope to persuade the Soviet Union that one country cannot impose its system of society upon another, either through direct military intervention or through the use of a client state's military force, as was the case with Cuban intervention in Angola."

* 1979: Carter admits shock as the Soviets invade Afghanistan after he has negotiated a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev. At the signing ceremony in Vienna, Carter had famously kissed Brezhnev on the cheek.

* 1979: Carter looks on as a Soviet-backed government replaces the Somoza government in Nicaragua.

* 1979: Carter abandons the Shah of Iran as the Iranian Revolution is led to power by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The shah, appalled at Carter's abandonment of Iran as a once fierce U.S. ally, tells an aide, "Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?" Carter's UN Ambassador, Andrew Young, predicts, "Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint," while Carter's ambassador to Iran says, "Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure." Newsweek quotes another Carter aide as saying Khomeini possessed "impeccable integrity and honesty." In November, the American Embassy in Tehran is overrun by Iranian students with the approval of the Ayatollah. American embassy staff is seized as hostages. They are held for over a year, released literally the day Ronald Reagan is sworn in, having defeated Carter in a landslide.

* 1983: While Reagan sets out to rebuild the American military and win the Cold War outright, Democrats embrace the idea of a nuclear freeze. When Reagan installs Pershing Missiles in Europe to challenge the Soviet SS-II missiles, a furious Senator Edward Kennedy says of Reagan's strategy for victory: "I reject the absurd theory that we can have fewer nuclear bombs tomorrow only if we build more nuclear bombs today." Former JFK/LBJ Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War disaster and now a committed dove, calls Reagan's approach "madness."

* 1983: Reagan's decision to liberate Grenada from a takeover by murderous Cuban thugs loyal to Castro is opposed by future Democratic Party nominees Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry.

* 1984: The Democrats nominate Carter's Vice President, Walter Mondale, on a platform that insists America should "initiate and establish a Peace Academy," while demanding that "we can no longer afford simplistically to blame all of our troubles on a single 'focus of evil,'" a reference to Reagan's description of the Soviet Union. Mondale loses 49 states to Reagan.

* 1988: The Democrats nominate Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who says, "Balancing the budget would require hard choices mostly on the defense side. I don't see much room for cuts on the domestic side." Dukakis campaigns as the candidate who opposes the Midgetman missile, development of the cruise missile, deployment of the Pershing missile, building the Trident submarine, the establishment of a 600-ship Navy (a Reagan goal), the testing and deployment of anti-satellite weapons, construction of newer and faster aircraft carriers, and a refusal to order the Massachusetts National Guard to Central America for two weeks of training until ordered by a federal judge to do so. Says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "...his approach to foreign policy comes so close to renouncing the unilateral use of American power to protect national interests...that it sometimes sounds as if the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt had taken control of his body." Dukakis loses in a landslide to George H.W. Bush.

* 1991: 45 of the Senate's 54 Democrats, including future 2004 nominee John Kerry, vote against throwing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. According to Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, the future 2000 nominee of the Democrats, Tennessee Senator Al Gore, votes in favor only in return for 20 minutes worth of television time to speak on the Senate floor. With the Cold War over, Gore is tapped as Clinton's running mate to send a message that the JFK Democrats have returned. Clinton wins with 43% of the vote.

* 1993: The World Trade Center in New York is bombed, killing six and injuring over a thousand. The Clinton administration decides this is a crime and not an act of war, prosecuting those jihadists it can catch.

ONE COULD go on here. On and on and on. All during this period, the Democrats' instinctive urge to appease prevailed. From the moment Clinton had America flee Somalia at the beginning of his term to his decision not to respond seriously as America's enemies attacked U.S. embassies throughout his term, or even after the attack on the USS Cole at the end of his term. Non-serious response by the Democrats running the Clinton defense and foreign policy establishment in essence created the impression of America as perceived by bin Ladin: the weak horse.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the left-wing MoveOn.org -- a major backer these days of Obama -- even opposed the idea of an American invasion of Afghanistan to remove the Taliban government. This was too much for Senator Clinton -- which, in sum, is doubtless the main reason she will not be the nominee of the Democrats. She's what passes for a hawk in the Democrats' circles these days, don't you know?

Now comes 2008. Right on cue, Senator Obama, following in the steps of Wallace, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry, steps up and says that he would "talk to America's enemies," from Iran to North Korea. He insists that he would have voted against removing Saddam Hussein from power had he been in the Senate at the time. Yet he's stunned that anybody would ever call him an appeaser. Shocked that a spokesman from the eternally violent Hamas would express the wish that Obama win the election. He would, Obama insists, never meet with terrorists. Never.

Serve on the board of the Woods Foundation with a terrorist, perhaps, or have one host a campaign fundraiser maybe, but beyond that -- certainly not. You don't believe he's that naive, do you?

As a matter of fact, yes. In the middle of a global war with horrific consequences, the ghosts of Henry Wallace and Neville Chamberlain are now riding herd for the Democrats with the heir of Jimmy Carter.

Make no mistake. There is a reason Barack Obama is going to be the nominee of the party of the weak horse.

He is one.

Quotes of the Week

Admittedly I've been lazy lately with posting these. But the reaction to the Bush speech in Jerusalem produced a few gems last week, including ...

Can Somebody Explain to Me how Obama sat in Wright’s church for 20 years and managed never to hear anything, but hears 20 seconds of a Bush speech that doesn’t mention him and perceives a shameful personal attack? - Andy McCarthy

That's lib logic. Get used to it. It's here to stay it seems. Next one:

[President Bush] hit the nail on the head yesterday in Jerusalem. And today, the nails started to complain. - Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton

And here's a great monologue from El Rushbo during his Friday show:

Not only can we not mention [Barack Obama's] ears...

We can't talk about his mother. We can't talk about his father.

We can't talk about his grandmother unless he does, brings her up as a "typical white person."

We can't talk about his wife, can't talk about his preacher, ... can't talk about his voting record, can't talk about his religion.

We can't talk about appeasement.

We can't talk about color. We can't talk about lack of color. We can't talk about race.

We can't talk about bombers and mobsters who are his friends.

We can't talk about schooling.

We can't talk about his name, "Hussein."

We can't talk about his lack of experience.

Can't talk about his income.

Can't talk about his flag pin ...

Now we can't say anything about him!

And that's just the way the Democrats want it. Welcome to liberal speech suppression.

Why I Left Liberalism #21 - They Can't Handle the Truth: Bush Gets it on Israel, the Dems Don't

During a 2003 interview, John Hawkins asked Ann Coulter, “What do you say to your critics who claim that you attack liberals just as viciously as you say Conservatives are attacked by liberals?” Coulter’s response: “Our insults are true.”

Last week, before the Knesset in Israel, President Bush gave an amazing speech which was received warmly by those in attendance. The lib media, doing what they do best, didn’t capture the really meaningful parts of the speech; that would have made their least favorite president look too good. Instead, the media focused on a couple of sentences that rankled Barack Obama, who thought the president was slandering him on foreign soil. (What irony: for years all Democrats do oversees is bash the president and the country - Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, etc.)

The infamous words?

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

There’s nothing wrong with that statement. In fact, it’s spot on. But Obama, thinking Bush was singling him out as being too weak on terrorism, called it “sad” that he used such a speech “to launch a false political attack ... It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria.”

Here’s a little truth: Obama got all bent out of shape in response to a comment made by President Bush in Israel last week not because Bush’s words were “sad,” “divisive,” or an “attack.” It’s because Bush’s words were true. And liberals/Democrats have a hard time with the truth, especially when the truth is about them.

Notice how liberals/Democrats can act or speak as unpatriotically as possible, but as soon as a conservative/Republican calls them on it (even without using the word “unpatriotic”), they have the nerve to ask: “How dare you question my patriotism!?”

Or when they propose policies that are dripping with Marxist/socialist, fascist, or totalitarian overtones and a conservative/Republican dares to call them on it, they act like monkeys whose cage has just been rattled. (On the other hand, liberals/Democrats can call us any name they want -- Nazi, fascist, totalitarian -- and if we refuse to accept the slur, then they think we’re trying to stifle their free speech.)

Indeed, the title of Mark Steyn’s piece on this topic is called: “Obama an appeaser? How dare you”

Funny thing is, Bush wasn’t even talking about Obama; he was talking about an Idaho senator who during WWII expressed an interest in talking with Hitler.

But I think Bush’s speech-writer had an inkling that the following would end up happening, and it did: By Obama’s thinking the president was implicating him, he ended up implicating himself! Brilliant!

A piece from IBD Editorials explains:

That infamous senator, William Edgar Borah of Idaho, wasn’t even a Democrat; he was a “progressive” Republican, an isolationist who in 1919 helped wreck Woodrow Wilson’s internationalist dream of a League of Nations [...]

According to the senator [Obama], “George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”

Judging from the standing ovations the president received, our Israeli allies — who have the most to fear from a nuclear Iran — disagree. Moreover, Kennedy’s blockade of Cuba, Nixon’s Vietnamization (reneged on by the post-Watergate Democratic Congress) and Reagan’s years of defense buildup and “evil empire” saber-rattling before agreeing to a Soviet summit all belie Obama’s invocation of those presidents.

Furthermore, the terrorists themselves know a President Obama will engage with them. The chief political adviser to Hamas’ Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh is on record as saying, “We like Mr. Obama, and we hope he will win the election.”

Earlier this month, Obama described the takeover of West Beirut by Hezbollah gunmen as a “power grab” and declared, “It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus.”

Letters found on the seized computer of Raul Reyes, the warlord with Colombia’s Marxist-Leninist FARC terrorist group who was killed in an army strike in March, happily reported that “two gringos” he met assured him that Obama would win the election. [...]

Also commenting on Bush’s speech and Obama’s reaction, my girl Monica [Crowley] says: Man Up!

Sounds like Obama to me.

It must have sounded a lot like Obama to Obama too, because he put out an incredibly defensive statement: “It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists.”

Pardon me: several months ago, during the Democratic YouTube debate, Anderson Cooper asked Obama point blank if he would talk—without preconditions—to the leaders of Iran and Syria. He replied, “I would.” Iran and Syria are the biggest state sponsors of terror in the world.

Three questions for Obama: if you want to talk to our terrorist enemies, 1) what are you prepared to say?; 2) are you naive enough to believe what they may tell you?; and 3) if talks fail, are you prepared to use force, whether military, economic, political?

You can’t just gas around with terrorists and tyrants and expect them to use “talks” as anything other than time to regroup, rearm, and re-strategize. Their interests and objectives aren’t about to change just because a charming American has some milk n’ cookies with them.

What’s even more fun (or pathetic, depending on how you look at it) is watching prominent Democrats circle the wagons around Obama and vilify President Bush for what lib blogs are calling “taking a shot” at Democrats and “taking a swipe” at Obama. My favorite is from Joe Biden (D-DE) who showed his usual intelligence and class by saying that “This is bullsh*t!”

As Mark Steyn said in his aforementioned article: What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies!

Obama exposes his own guilt in being soft on terrorists and terrorist regimes, without Bush even needing to make a direct charge.

And that’s a bit truth that Obama and his Democrat and media cohorts clearly can’t handle.

Why I Left Liberalism #20 - Selective Outrage: Iraq vs. Darfur and Myanmar

The Jewish Reform Movement has led a campaign for a couple years to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Teens are proudly sporting their T-shirts or sweatshirts that read “Save Darfur.” And two weeks ago, either the youth group or social action committee (I’m not sure which; maybe both) erected a tent on the temple lawn decorated with peace signs and rainbows and hearts and slogans like “Save Darfur,” “Peace and Love,” “Be Strong,” “We’re With You Guys.” Aw, how nice. I’m sure the Janjaweed militia are considering your pledges as we speak, right before continuing to hack away at their victims.

Last year I even joined a local Reform synagogue and other nearby houses of worship at a local rally to raise awareness of the crisis in Darfur. The rabbi was even interviewed on site for local cable. Standing to the side, I heard him tell the interviewer something to the effect of: I hope President Bush does the right thing and takes some action to address the crisis in Darfur.

I wonder if this rabbi, who I know initially did, but no longer, supports military action in Iraq, advocates military action in Darfur.

But it did make me contemplate this: The Left, with which the Reform movement aligns, has opposed the Iraq War based on claims that (1) Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S., (2) We have no right to invade a sovereign nation, inter alia. But they want us to take action in Darfur even though (1) Sudan is no immediate threat to the U.S. and (2) We have no right to invade a sovereign nation!

Now we face a humanitarian crisis resulting from the powerful cyclone in Myanmar/Burma. The junta that runs that prison nation has been refusing Western aid on ideological grounds. How does the left respond to this? Trudy Rubin, Pulitzer Prize writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, considers forceful intervention [Highlights mine]:

So should, or can, U.N. member states force the junta to accept the world’s outstretched hand?

Ironically, U.N. members adopted a concept back in fall 2005 that would seem to answer that question. At the urging of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the General Assembly endorsed the following principle: The international community has a “responsibility to protect” civilians when their governments can’t or won’t stop genocide or crimes against humanity — even if this means violating a country’s national sovereignty.

This concept, known variously as “humanitarian intervention” or by the abbreviation “R2P,” has gone nowhere. It has not proved useful in dealing with the quasi-genocide in Darfur. Authoritarian regimes view R2P as a potential cover for Western military efforts at regime change.

But if it ever had any relevance, the concept ought to apply to the horrific situation in Myanmar. The issue at hand is not changing the country’s regime (which has kept Nobel-prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 16 years after voiding 1990 elections). The issue is saving lives; the junta’s stonewalling could create a humanitarian catastrophe.

But wait! This is the same Trudy Rubin who in 2004 published the book Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration in Iraq. Here is how her own website describes the book:

One of American’s top foreign affairs columnists describes how the Bush administration blundered into Iraq and the prospects for getting out.

In WILLFUL BLINDNESS, Trudy Rubin tells the story of how the administration misconceived the Iraq war and mishandled the postwar.

So, let me see if I get this straight: Intervention in Darfur = good. Intervention in Myanmar/Burma = good. Intervention in Iraq = bad.

Inconsistency? Political expediency? Or just old-fashioned garden-variety lib logic? Who knows ...

Don Surber, who writes for the Charleston, WV, Daily Mail, also detects a bit of leftist inconsistency:

Liberals want us to invade Myanmar, replace its brutal regime and convert them to democracy.

First it was Bosnia. We bombed the heck out of it so NATO could take over and install a democracy. 10 years later, NATO still has troops there, although they are not getting shot at.

Liberals want us to “do something” about the Sudan. Military action? Perhaps.

Now in the wake of a cyclone, liberals want us to take over Myanmar.

Saddam Hussein diverted $22 billion in Oil for Food relief to his nation’s people to his enterprises and the paid off Jacques Chirac and the United Nations.

[Citing Rubin’s own words - ETR] “If that doesn’t constitute a crime against humanity, what does?”

Surber concludes:

Tell you what, when liberals admit that it was morally correct to invade Iraq, take over the government and hang that (expletive) Hussein, then I’ll take them serious about Myanmar.

My thoughts exactly.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the war in Iraq is without problems, miscalculations, and things unforeseen. But ya know what? It’s a WAR. Liberals expected perfection and then when it didn’t happen, they accuse the Bush administration of misleading, bungling, and mismanaging it.

So, what’s gonna happen, Trudy Rubin, when the West intervenes in Myanmar/Burma, and there are problems, miscalculations, and things unforeseen?

What’s gonna happens when the U.S. or U.N. misleads, bungles, or mismanages the operation?

What’s gonna happen when some in the “world community” accuse the West of arrogance, imperialism, and hubris for invading a sovereign country that wasn’t an immediate threat?

You’re gonna ignore it, dismiss it, excuse it, and rationalize it, aren’t you?

But Don't Question Their Patriotism: Keith Olbermann

There's a lot one can say about the angry and unintelligent anti-American rants of Keith Olbermann. There is no one he hates more than President Bush (and that includes Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden), and he makes this known on a regular basis. Yesterday he nearly blew a gasket. Highlights include the following (Fuller text available at Newsbusters):

President Bush has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration of a public life dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations. [...]

As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of "they'll greet us as liberators." And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infrastructure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American viceroyalty, enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding behind your skirts, sir. Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush! [...]

... You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons. You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, and damned fast. You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how "intelligence communities all around the world shared the same assessment." You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished everybody who didn't agree it was really chicken salad.

And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus, all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country's policy in lieu of, say, common sense. [...]

The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing! [...]

When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at; when somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation; when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abdicating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead; this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up! Good night and good luck.

Bob Weir at the American Thinker's blog: writes:

It's become almost axiomatic that whenever this country faces a challenge from without, leftists from within, like Olbermann, will always side with the enemy. When 3000 innocent civilians were massacred on 9/11, we never saw the type of outrage and bile-spewing utterances from Olbermann or his coterie of anti-America misfits. In fact, it wasn't long after the attack on this country that his ilk began insinuating, if not saying outright, that we got what we deserved. Less than a week after the Twin Towers came crumbling down, snuffing out the lives of thousands of Americans, Bill Maher, on his ABC show, "Politically Incorrect" said he didn't think the terrorists were cowards, as George Bush had described them. Instead he said, "We have been the cowards; lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That's cowardly! Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it; but it's not cowardly."

Maher is another example of the limousine liberals like Olbermann who are paid millions of dollars annually working for a system that they detest, but one that they would never walk away from. Mr. O works for NBC, which is owned by General Electric, which has been one of the largest producers and sellers of landmines, rocket launchers and other anti-personnel weapons, many of which have ended up in the hands of America's enemies. We don't hear Mr. O fulminating about the billions of dollars made by his employer as they supply killing and maiming devices to our enemies. Many of those "four thousand dead soldiers," whom he blames on Bush, may have lost their lives and limbs because of "merciless" weapons sold by the same company that signs Mr. O's paychecks. If this guy really wanted to make a statement about his integrity and antipathy over the war, he could do so by resigning his lucrative position and stating that he could no longer accept "blood money." [...]

At the conclusion of his 15 minute rant, during which viewers must have wondered when someone would run onto the set with a straightjacket, Mr. O, staring menacingly into the camera, told the president to "shut the hell up!" He forgot to thank the "merciless mercenaries" for fighting and dying for his right to say that without fear of being executed.

If Olbermann had resigned from his show, he would have been scooped up by ABC to fill Rosie's position on "The View." Certainly, he has the right genitalia for the job.

The Anchoress sticks in her two cents:

I wonder if the irony is lost on Olbermann that this year he and his media co-horts (like Chris Matthews, David Schuster and others) have had to apologize (and in some cases face suspension) several times to the Clintons for their little slips of the tongue or thoughtless statements; Olbermann himself put out a floor-licking apology to the Clinton’s for Schuster’s “pimped out” remarks on Chelsea. Yet he offers these insipid rants with impunity almost every night, against the president, and he is still on the air. Nothing at all infringes upon his free speech - which is absolutely as it should be - but he would like the president to “shut up.”

I think Olbermann has misidentified who is out to either control him or shut him up, and who is trying to protect his foolish ass and his fundamental right to free speech.

Somewhere Osama bin Laden is giving Olbermann a standing ovation, and Iran's unstable leader A'jad is wondering, "Hey, how did Keith get hold of my speech?"

Articles of Note: Polar Bear Melodrama (WSJ)

This one goes out to "Amy," a poor teen whose high screwl has brainwashed her and her classmates into thinking that the polar bears are going extinct.

Polar Bear Melodrama Wall Street Journal | May 15, 2008

Polar bears are not the fragile, vulnerable creatures of liberal iconography. They have thrived in the Arctic for thousands of years, both through periods when their sea-ice habitat was smaller, and larger, than it is now. They will continue to adapt – and the Endangered Species Act can't make the slightest difference.

Such realities haven't prevented green showboaters from claiming victory after the Bush Administration designated the polar bear as a "threatened" species yesterday. And it is a kind of victory, though the ruling itself is mostly symbolic – at least for now. However, this is really the triumph of bad legislation over the democratic process.

As Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne noted, the 1973 Endangered Species Act is "perhaps the least flexible law Congress has ever enacted." In 2005, green litigants took advantage of this rigidity, suing the government to force it to label the polar bear at risk for extinction. Since the 1980s, the sea ice that the bears use to hunt and breed has been receding. Although the population has increased from a low of 12,000 in the 1960s to roughly 25,000 today – perhaps a record high – computer projections anticipate that Arctic pack ice will continue to melt over the next half-century. This could, maybe, someday, lead to population declines.

The lawsuits were hardly motivated by concern for polar bear welfare. Instead, environmentalists asserted that the ice is thinning because of human-induced global warming. A formal endangered listing is one more arrow in their legal quiver as they try to run U.S. climate policy through the judiciary.

They'll argue that emissions from power plants, refineries, automobiles – anything that produces carbon – would contribute to warming, thus contributing to habitat destruction, and thus should be restricted by the Endangered Species Act. This logic could be used to rewrite existing environmental policy to accommodate greenhouse gasses, purposes for which they were never intended but with economy-wide repercussions.

Mr. Kempthorne laid into this legal gambit as "wholly inappropriate." But under the Species Act, the loss of polar bear habitat is enough to trigger a listing, with no space – by law – for regulatory discretion. However, Mr. Kempthorne was careful to sever the environmentalists' preposterous chain of assumptions: That ice is melting is not proof that global warming is to blame. In fact, research out of NASA in 2007 suggested that shrinking sea ice was due to changing wind patterns, corroborated by a study published in the scientific journal Nature. Neither institution is known for "denying" climate change.

To that end, Interior is promulgating rules intended to prevent the polar bear finding from being "misused to regulate global climate change," as Mr. Kempthorne put it in an interview yesterday. The ruling will have almost no immediate practical consequences, and it won't stop development in the oil- and gas-rich Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Mr. Kempthorne also noted that one of the "ironies" of the listing is that a current law called the Marine Mammal Protection Act includes more stringent protections for polar bears than any endangered-species remedies.

The greatest danger is that this ruling will be distorted by the courts, where it is inevitably headed. On the other hand, not listing the polar bear would have proceeded to litigation too, with potentially worse consequences. Climate-change lawsuits have already deformed the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and others.

The most pernicious element in the polar bear melodrama is the way the law is being run off the rails, and even a duly elected White House can't seem to throw on the brakes. If Congress wants to enact global-warming legislation, then so be it – but the costs and benefits should be argued in the open. This fly-by-night policy making is not only unscientific. It's undemocratic.

Of course it's not democratic. It's not supposed to be. The main goal of the radical environmentalist movement (which George W. Bush keeps legitimizing with each new inane policy) is not to save the planet, but to deprive you of your liberty. And they'll keep trying to do it whether it's by legislation, taxation, or litigation.