So predictably slimy.........

I was discusssing this on another blog about a month ago. After the invasion of Iraq, and the (pre-surge) policies of the Bush administration werent going so well, every pinko photographer worth his weight in Abercrombie and Fitch apparel wanted to get inside Dover AFB and take pictures of the flag-draped coffins coming home. These pictures were to be trumpeted across the land, in vivid color, on the front of every newspaper, magazine and blog to make the administration look bad. Period. I knew then, as I do now, that these photogs had no concern for the families of these fallen soldiers whatsoever. It was all orchastrated to score political points in the arena of public opinion and nothing more. Today's article by Byron York, only reinforces that belief......

"So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220--more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 combined.....The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the human cost of war are nowhere to be found."

Might that be because the CIC has a "D" in front of his name instead of an "R"? They are as completely pathetic as they are predictable.

More tolerance from the Left...

Isnt it interesting to note that the champions of free speech and the down-trodden have spoken yet again?

"Dan Fuchs said businesss was just starting to pick up at his kiosk in the Mall at Johnson City. Fuchs' business, the Graphic Edge, printed slogans and pictures on items such as coffee cups, bumper stickers and T-shirts. He said more than half his business came from the sale of anti-Obama merchandise. Bumper stickers with slogans such as "SOS: Stop Obama's Socialism", "Nobama" and "Chicago got the party but the country got the hangover" were displayed around the small stand. Now it appears that Fuchs is out of business at the mall, but mall officials say this decision was not based on political views."

Of course not. Read the story for yourself, but it appears the guy's problems only started after he began marketing anti-Obama merchandise. Sure, the mall received a few complaints, but whatever happened to freedom of speech? All I know is that I just endured 8 years of Bush Derangement Syndrome and when the slightest bit of criticism is leveled at the Sage from Mombassa, liberals shriek and wail "Racism!" at worst or cry like babies at the very least.

Michael Moore, wrong yet again...

I have heard through several media outlets that Michael Moore will be releasing yet another politically motivated, nonsensical screed movie next month called Capitalism: A Love Story. One of the columnists featured on the right side of the page here is economist Walter E. Williams. Williams has weighed in on the supposed criticisms of the capitalist system in a recent article and debunks Moore's assertions concerning the so-called evil of capitalism....

"..we can rank economies as to whether they are closer to capitalism or closer to communism or socialism. If one ranked countries according to whether they were closer to the capitalistic end of the spectrum or the socialistic or communistic end, then ranked countries according to per capita GDP and finally rank countries according to Freedom House's "Map of Freedom in the World," he would find a pattern that is by no means a coincidence. The people in those countries closer to the capitalist end of the economic spectrum have far greater income and enjoy greater human rights protections than those toward the socialist and communist end.....Moore's film features priests who say capitalism is anti-Christian by failing to protect the poor. This is pure nonsense and revealed as such by asking, "If you're an unborn spirit, condemned by God to a life of poverty but allowed to choose the country in which to be poor, would you choose a country near the communist end of the economic spectrum or the capitalist end?" If you chose the United States, you'd find that according to the government surveys, the typical "poor" American has cable or satellite TV, two color TVs, and a DVD player or VCR. He has air conditioning, a car, a microwave, a refrigerator, a stove, and a clothes washer and dryer, and whether he has health insurance or not, he is able to obtain medical care when needed. Try to find that in Cuba, Russia, China or North Korea. If we buy into the nonsense of Moore's priests, the world's poor people are incredibly stupid."

I first heard of Williams several years ago when he was filling in for Rush Limbaugh on his radio program. In the matter of whose viewpoint is closer to the truth in this matter, who are you going to believe? A political hack like Moore who is almost predictably wrong or the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University?

Czech president: U.N. climate meeting was propaganda

Fresh on the heels of last Wednesday's post, Czech president Vaclav Klaus did not mince words in his denunciation of the complete farce masquerading as science known as AGW....

" Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified. "It was sad and it was frustrating," said Klaus, one of the world's most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming."It's a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem," he said. "It's simply not dignified." At the opening of the summit attended by nearly 100 world leaders, 13-year-old Yugratna Srivastava of India told the audience that governments were not doing enough to combat the threat of climate change. Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena."

Kudos to Klaus for having the cahones to speak out against the complete hoax that is being perpetrated on the American people and on the world. It wouldnt be half bad if this fraud was simply an excuse to give impetus to cleaner air or water. This crowd, however, views the internal combustion engine as a much greater threat than narco thugs to our southern border or Islamic extremists in our midst.

EDIT: VD has an interesting entry on the subject over at his blog entitled AGW The biggest science fraud yet

Selective enforcement

As if they didnt have better things to do, Montreal's Bureau du taxi is fining an elderly, culturally Jewish taxi driver the equivalent of $1,400 USD for displaying religious items in his cab. The article states that......

"Mr. Perecowicz says he's not especially religious, but he's comforted by having articles of his Jewish faith in the car, including photos of the late Lubavitcher spiritual leader and two mezuzahs affixed to the car frame between the front and back doors. (A mezuzah, typically affixed to doorframes of Jewish homes, is a tiny prayer parchment that, according to Jewish beliefs, offers protection.)
"I am secular but I do have roots and a culture," he said. "These items mean something to me and that's why I've always had them in my car."
As for the photos of his wife, daughter and son, Mr. Perecowicz says he spends 15 hours a day in his cab. "What's the point of putting photos in an album? I don't have time to look in an album. I'm away from home all day. This is my home." "

It's sad that it has come to this. Am I the only one who believes that if instead of Jewish symbols, a Muslim star and cresent were openly displayed that the Bureau de taxi would not be nearly as quick to slap a fine on him?

CRPC makes the right decision

From yesterday's Sun-Sentinel article.....

"Members of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church on Sunday turned back an attempt to fire Pastor Tullian Tchividjian, voting in his favor by a two-thirds margin. After a contentious, two-hour congregational meeting closed to non-members, Tchividjian won 940 of 1,362 ballots cast at the Fort Lauderdale church. The vote climaxed a months-long conflict in the triple-steepled church, long known for its evangelical forthrightness and conservative politics. With 2,678 members, the church has championed evangelism, Bible-based faith and quality education. It also has hosted rallies called Reclaiming America for Christ, spurring thousands for grass roots activism on matters like abortion, homosexuality, evolution and school prayers. Tchividjian, 37, a grandson of the evangelist Billy Graham, is only the second pastor at Coral Ridge, following the Rev. D. James Kennedy(pictured above), who died in September 2007."

A few brief thoughts on the matter. In the interests of full disclosure, I'm not a member of CRPC, however I attend services there about once a month. My overall feeling is that it was too late in the process to change horses in mid-stream and after all, the job had been formally offered to Tchividjian after the congregation voted on the matter and he was officially installed last Easter. Some of the criticisms leveled at Tchividjian were not legitimate in my estimation such as not wearing the litugical robe that Kennedy always donned before worship services. If Tchividjian was not wearing a robe while pastor of New City Church, then it was unrealistic to think this would change upon becoming senior pastor of CRPC. One minor criticism that might have some merit would be the length of sermons that some have complained are too long. The average person, depending on what studies you believe, has an attention span (in meetings for example) of between 15-20 minutes. If his detractors could demonstrate that his sermons were consistantly quite a bit longer than that, then I'm sure this would be a matter that could be settled between church members, behind closed doors. That is, if any criticism offered up were constructive in nature and respectfully presented.

In conclusion, let me just say that Dr Kennedy is an incredible act to follow. There was none like him and there won't be another to follow. The church was going to take a different direction no matter who was finally settled on to take the helm. The only question would be to what degree the changes would come. Now that this matter is finally behind them, may God use this experience to refine and strengthen His church in Fort Lauderdale and and from this day forward, give discernment as to what course is best to follow in order to further His kingdom.

From red, white and blue to just plain red......

Note to self...start linking Burt Prelutsky's article over on the left side of the page. The guy is hilarious as his resume would indicate given that he was once a writer for the series M*A*S*H. Excerpts from today's article by Prelutsky.....

"It's funny how years ago, everybody laughed when Bill Clinton said he'd smoked marijuana, but he hadn't inhaled. But when Obama told a much bigger whopper, one that came with cheese and fries, about sitting in a church for 20 years without ever hearing Rev. Wright utter a single unseemly remark about America or white people, I seemed to be one of the few people who found it amusing...... There are conservatives who see FDR when they look at Obama, but I'm not one of them. There's no doubt that Obama shares FDR's dream of centralizing all power and wealth in the hands of the federal government, and whereas FDR liked and admired Josef Stalin, Obama has fond feelings for Castro and Chavez. (Chavez, by the way, suggested to Castro, after Obama took control of GM, that there was a very real possibility that the two of them would eventually wind up to the right of the president. He may have meant it as a joke, but I don't think so.) The major difference I see between Roosevelt and Obama is that I believe FDR, for all his faults, loved this country and regarded it as a special place based on a very special set of principles, whereas Obama believes it's an arrogant country run solely by and for rich white people."

How Obama thinks he can just ram his left-wing agenda through Congress without barely a wimper from the opposition is beyond me. Let's watch and see if the race card is played more often as in recent comments by the peanut farmer from Plains.

For those who still cling to the AGW myth..

From Deroy Murdock, some interesting statistics for those among us who are still duped by the Anthropogenic Global Warming hoax......

"– June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal — the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated July 1: “The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May…but not in June was back in 1903.”

– In Phoenix, June’s high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. In California’s desert, Yucca Valley’s June average was 83.5, 8.5 degrees below normal. Downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, five below normal

– Boston saw temperatures 4.7 degrees below normal. “This is the second coldest average high temp since 1872,” veteran meteorologist and Weather Channel alumnus Joseph D’Aleo reports at Icecap.com. “It has been so cool and so cloudy that trees in northern New England are starting to show colors that normally first appear in September.” Looking abroad, D’Aleo noted: “Southern Brazil had one of the coldest Junes in decades, and New Zealand has had unusual cold and snow again this year.”

– New Zealand’s National Climate Centre issued a June 2 press release headlined, “TEMPERATURE: LOWEST EVER FOR MAY FOR MANY AREAS, COLDER THAN NORMAL FOR ALL.”

- South African officials say cold weather killed two vagrants in the Eastern Cape. Both slept outdoors June 26 and froze to death."

“There has been no significant global warming since 1995, no warming since 1998, and global cooling for the past few years,” former U.S. Senate Environment Committee spokesman Marc Morano writes at ClimateDepot.com. Citing metrics gathered by University of Alabama, Huntsville’s Dr. Roy Spencer, Morano adds: “The latest global averaged satellite temperature data for June 2009 reveal yet another drop in Earth’s temperature … Despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled 0.74 degrees F since former Vice President Al Gore released ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in 2006.”

Here's the link to the entire article if anyone is so inclined. Has anybody else noticed how the terminology now is more toward "climate change" rather than "global warming" in order to push their massive cap and trade agenda without bursting with laughter?

Demographic bomb explodes

It's the title of today's article from Don Feder. There are those who say that there are entirely too many people on this planet. I've often taken the position that this is simpy hogwash. If everyone in the entire world were together in one place, standing comfortably as to not be touching one another, how big an area do you think would you need? Something along the lines of the state of California? No, smaller than that. Georgia? Nope, still smaller. OK, Rhode Island?! Nope still much smaller. Actually you could fit everyone into an area the size of Jacksonville, Florida. Some interesting excerpts from Feder's article...

"Even though it has no basis in reality, this is a favorite theme of contraceptive/abortion left – more children are a drag on the economy (mouths to feed, instead of hands and brains to carry on society's work), and anything we can do to prevent their birth is a blessing. Do they ever wonder why some of the most densely populated places on earth (Hong Kong, Singapore) are also among the most prosperous, while some of the most sparsely populated (Russia, Africa) are basket cases?..... Still, there's a stubborn fact: Worldwide, birthrates have plummeted by more than 50 percent in the last 40 years. The West is graying. There are fewer and fewer children and more and more elderly. The U.N. Population Division estimates that by 2050, there will be 248 million fewer children under 5 in the world than there are today."

Obama seems to drink this population Kool-Aid when he has people in his administration like Paul Holdren, who actually buys into this claptrap himself. All this helps give a more clear picture of the mindset of the nanny-state they invision, a key component being population control, otherwise known as abortion policies.

3 quick hits......

First, from Vox Day's entry over at his blog......

"as I pointed out in The Irrational Atheist, atheism alone cannot possibly be responsible for turning an individual into a mass slaughterer. The overwhelming majority of atheists will never kill anyone for any reason. But, the disproportional tendency of atheists who find themselves in positions of sufficient power to commit mass slaughter that subsequently engage in it cannot be dismissed as a mere coincidence or irrelevant correlation either. Because atheists practice a morality of one, both logic and history dictate that there always be some who redefine good and evil in a manner that directly contradicts the way it is defined by Christians and more conventionally moral atheists alike."

Secondly, from today's Thomas Sowell article concerning socialized healthcare...

"The most childish of all the things being said in the august setting of a joint session of Congress last week was that millions of people can be added to the government's health insurance plan without increasing the federal deficit at all. If the president of the United States could do that, it is hard to imagine what he would do as an encore. Walking on water would be an anticlimax. What is equally childish is the notion that the great majority of Americans who have medical insurance,
and who say they are satisfied with it, should be panicked and stampeded into supporting vast increases in the arbitrary power of Washington bureaucrats to take medical decisions out of the hands of their doctors – all ostensibly because a minority of Americans do not have medical insurance."

And lastly, from Janet Porter's latest installment from today...

"on Monday's Faith2Action radio program, I interviewed a guest who is one of the godliest people I know: Bo Chin, from Christians Building Unity. A disagreeable caller informed us that he didn't believe in prayer. Said it didn't work. And it was a waste of time. Then, unsolicited, the lines lit up with one call after another – each with testimony after testimony of personal proof of answered prayer. Cancer gone. Marriages healed. God and His plan showing up even in the midst of death and divorce."

Enjoy.

The false dawn

Today's article from Vox Day points out something that I've long suspected. I don't think that the economy is recovering. In fact I've had an uneasy feeling that the worst is yet to come. From that article.....

"Contrary to the belief of mainstream economists, economics is not a giant confidence game in which the government can fool enough people into feeling sufficient consumer confidence to generate a self-fulfilling prophecy of economic growth. Even as the composite leading indicators and GDP numbers turn positive, real measures of economic activity are pointing in precisely the opposite direction. International shipping has begun to slump again. After a three-month rise spurred by an aggressive stimulus program, steel prices have begun to fall once more in the world's largest steel-using country, China. Nearly 40 percent of the stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange are the worthless stocks of four zombie corporations being propped up by the federal government, BAC, C, FNM and FRE. Total U.S. loans and leases are down 4.6 percent for the year, an initial sign that the inevitable deleveraging process has begun. The percentage of failed bank deposits in 2009 are rapidly approaching twice the percentage of failed bank deposits in 1931, and the FDIC has been forced to request a $500 billion credit line from the U.S. Treasury to stave off looming bankruptcy."

.

The increasing disparity between "left" and "right"

Pat Buchanan's article hit the nail on the head in so many ways. Quote:....

"The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us is shrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third World immigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while the cacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture. "E pluribus unum" – out of many, one - was the national motto the men of '76 settled upon. One sees the pluribus. But where is the unum? One sees the diversity. But where is the unity?"

As we become increasingly balkanized in this country (probably due to lack of common language more than anything else), we become increasingly leery of the other side, whether they be conservatives or liberals. As EAAS noted "There can't be a civil debate because there is no common ground." Buchanan's entry today spells out the attitudes and realities that exist in today's America.

PS... Libertarian columnist Ilana Mercer also has a good article today in which she interviews political philosopher Paul Gottfried about the gullibility of the American right and the current state of left vs. right affairs.

Obama's speech last night "dandy if truth doesn't matter"

Among the various items that leapt out at me concerning last night's speech re: health care from President Obama was the impromtu outburst by Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) who yelled "You lie" during Obama's speech last night when the prsident stated that illegal immigrants would not be covered by socialized medicine. I believe what prompted Rep. Wilson's outburst was (among other things) this entry from CNSNews that...

"the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS), and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) would ensure that health insurance subsidy applicants are U.S. citizens or legal residents..

This language, as proposed by Rep's Deal (R-GA) and Heller (R-NV) has been scrapped. In a nutshell. the language used in the bill would state that illegals arent covered but there won't be any mechanism in which to verify that illegals are kept out of the system.

Rich Lowry's article in today's NY Post is brilliant, stating among other things....

"His speech to a joint session of Congress was delivered as if the late unpleasantness of last month never happened, or as if it were all simply "bickering" and "games" on the otherwise smooth, consensual path to reordering one-sixth of the nation's economy in one fell swoop.....In other words, please don't bother me with your inconvenient Congressional Budget Office reports, with your tiresome concerns about ballooning government in an era of exploding debt, with your facts -- yes, the House bill would end up covering abortion -- that I prefer to deny. "

Do your own research on the matter and don't buy into all of the hype for one moment. This issue is too important to be just rammed through Congress and the implications will fundamentally affect this country for generations to come.

In defense of WND

Those who know me well are aware that my favorite blogger/columnist is Theodore Beale, who also blogs under the nom de plume "Vox Day". Monday's column by Day, announcing the resignation of Van Jones, also contained a defense of World Net Daily, the alternative news source that I cite from time to time. Quote: ...

"...according to its critics, WorldNetDaily is an unreliable and histrionic news source that is one step below the National Enquirer, which at least has a printed product. And while the National Enquirer likes reporting on celebrity alien abductions by surgically inclined extraterrestrials, WND rarely misses a story dealing with the antichrist, Harry Potter, or other religious bugaboos. But this is merely flavor, and while it may be an acquired taste of sorts, it's no more meaningful than the flavor that accompanies major media institutions such as the New York Times.....The superficial dressings are irrelevant. It's only the substance that matters, and it's here that WorldNetDaily has continued to go from strength to strength over the years. Its opinion columnists are smarter and better-looking than those featured by the mainstream media's standard bearer, but more importantly, they also cover a far greater range of the political spectrum. WorldNetDaily features liberals like Bill Press and Nat Hentoff, neoconservatives like Ben Shapiro and Michelle Malkin, conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter, and libertarians such as Ilana Mercer and me. The New York Times, on the other hand, has smart liberals like Nicolas Kristof and Thomas Friedman, less-smart liberals like Paul Krugman, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, and Republican liberals such as David Brooks and Ross Douthat. "

Day did a masterful job of describing the online rag that nearly catapulted Mike Huckabee to greatness and (almost) single-handedly brought about the resignation of Jones. BTW, did you hear that a judge has finally scheduled a court date to hear arguements about Obama's eligibility to be president? In part, no doubt, to WND's determination in a matter that the MSM has completely ignored.