WEEKEND WITH THE ARTS: GABRIEL FAURE

There's more to life than war, taxes and politics - and a lot of it's more fun, too! That's why every WEEKEND, here at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, we post some of the cultural things we're into, things we think you might also find entertaining, enriching, and stimulating.

After all, the arts - ALL ARTS, not just fine arts - are a big part of what our liberty is for, and what we're fighting to defend!

THIS WEEK: GABRIEL FAURE - A FEW DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE PAVANE, AND HIS VERSION OF LIBERA ME:

FAURE HIMSELF - ON A PLAYER PIANO!


JOHN WILLIAMS AND BRANFORD MARSALIS AND THE BOSTON POPS!


A SEXTET IN A MOSCOW LIBRARY!


VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY CONDUCTING A JAPANESE ORCHESTRA IN VIENNA!


*****************************
AND THIS BONUS SELECTION: FAURE'S LIBERA ME - FROM PORTUGAL - PLEASE USE THIS LINK - YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED - IT'S AWESOME!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XZCCR7DDUA

Libera Me is a part of the Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, as such it is in Latin.
These are the lyrics:

Libera Me

Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna
in die illa tremenda
quando coeli movendi sunt et terra,
dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem.

Tremens factus sum ego et timeo,
dum discussion venerit atque venture ira:
quando coeli movendi sunt et terra.

English Translation:

Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death
on that awful day
when the heavens and earth shall be shaken
and you shall come to judge the world by fire.

I am seized with fear and trembling
until the trial is at hand and the wrath to come:
when the heavens and earth shall be shaken.

COUNTER-JIHAD IN LONDON: BRITS ORGANIZE TO STOP THE MEGA-MOSQUE

GATES OF VIENNA:

The plan is for a huge and imposing edifice, financed by Wahhabi money and implemented through the proselytizing organization Tablighi Jamaat. The structure will dominate the London skyline adjacent to the site of the Olympics.

To an infidel, this is an obvious declaration by Islam: “We are the future of Britain. Get used to it.”

But there is a large and growing movement in Britain to stop the mega-mosque. Ordinary people have risked the new law against “inciting religious hatred” and banded together in their determination to prevent the mosque from being built.

Today we received the following press release:

Opponents launch MegaMosqueNoThanks.com website “to counter mega-mosque misinformation and spin”

FROM THEIR WEBSITE:

We believe firmly in the UK’s history of cultural freedom, diversity and integration.

In the UK Muslims have the right to worship, as do Christians, Hindus and those of other faiths.

However, we object to the establishment this particular mega-mosque, by this group, and we are grateful for our democratic right to oppose it. This website will explain the reasons for that opposition.

This website will be both respectful and reasoned, reflecting our commitment to diversity and to the democratic society we live in.

We deplore both the grandstanding politics of mega-mosque supporter Mayor Ken Livingstone at one extreme, and the hate-mongering of the political far-right at the other.

We are concerned citizens and we intend to represent the moderate middle on this nationally significant issue. We base our opposition to the mega-mosque on reason and evidence.

• THE BURGEONING IMMIGRATION OF MUSLIMS INTO THE WEST IS A TROJAN HORSE.
• THEY'RE EITHER BLOWING THEMSELVES UP IN SUBWAYS - IN ORDER TO COMMIT GENOCIDAL JIHADO-TERROR, OR THEY ARE STEALTHILY CONQUERING FROM WITHIN - OFTEN BY CYNICALLY USING OUR ECUMENICAL NATURE AND OUR SECULARISM AGAINST US...

• IF EUROPEANS DON'T START DRAWING THE LINE - AND PUSHING BACK - THEY WILL SOON BECOME AS EUROPEAN AS TURKEY, WHICH IS TO SAY: MUSLIM.

• BYZANTIUM IS GONE - SWALLOWED BY ISLAMO-HEGEMONY, AND SO TOO MIGHT THE REST OF EUROPE. WITHIN OUR LIFETIMES.

• THE POSTMODERN LEFTISTS -- WHO CONTROL MUCH OF THE MSM AND MAKE UP THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE BUREAUCRATIC ELITES (AS BRUCE BAWER HAS DESCRIBED) -- HATE THE WEST AS MUCH AS THE ISLAMO-FASCISTS, AND THEY ARE AIDING AND ABETTING THIS INVASION.

• I SEE THE BATTLE AGAINST THE MOSQUE AS MORE THAN SYMBOLIC.

• IF WE LOSE HERE, WE WON'T RETAIN EUROPE AS PART OF THE WEST. NOT WITHOUT A LOT OF BLOODSHED - WHEN, SOMETIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE, THE PLEBES WHO LOVE THEIR CULTURE FIGHT BACK:
  
  IF THE GOVERNMENT WON'T COUNTER THE BURGEONING ENCROACHMENT OF SAUDI ARABIA'S MOSQUES, AND IF THE COPS WON'T FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE "YOUTHS" OF THE VARIOUS EUROPEAN INTIFADAS, THEN THE PEOPLE WILL HAVE TO TAKE THE DEFENSE OF THEIR CIVILIZATION INTO THEIR OWN HANDS.

PERINO FOR PRESIDENT

I WISH DUBYA WOULD FIGHT BACK LIKE DANA DID TODAY!

'BOUT FREAKIN' TIME!

WE'VE REALLY NEEDED THIS KIND OF VIGOROUS COUNTER-ATTACK IN THE INFO-WAR FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS.

BRAVO DANA PERINO!

AND SHE'S A HOTTIE! WOW!

MORE PROOF MUSHARRAF IS ON OUR SIDE: THE LAWYERS HATE HIM!

NYTIMES:

Lawyers and their supporters chanted slogans in opposition to Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, for his treatment of the judicial system. They were marching to the home of the former Supreme Court chief justice Mohammed Iftikhar Chaudhry, who is under house arrest in the capital, Islamabad.

WELL, WELL, WELL... MUSHARRAF HAS TWO SETS OF ENEMIES: JIHADISTS AND LAWYERS.

TWO AWFUL GROUPS. EVEN SHAKESPEARE KNEW THIS: King Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene II - LINE #59:

DICK

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

• SERIOUSLY: WE MUSTN'T ABANDON MUSHARRAF THE WAY JIMMY CARTER ABANDONED THE SHAH, AND THE WAY THE DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED CONGRESS ABANDONED SOUTH VIETNAM IN 1975 - (TWO YEARS AFTER THE LAST US COMBAT TROOPS HAD LEFT).

• AND KEEP IN MIND THAT MUSHARRAF'S ANTAGONISTIC RIVALS - BHUTTO AND SHARIF - ARE MUCH CLOSER TO THE TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA THAN HE IS.

MORE ON SCU*B*G LAWYERS - LIKE JOHN EDWARDS - HERE, AT THE WSJ - VIA GLENN.

WHO SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE? SHOULD ANYBODY VOTE? SHOULD ANYBODY EVER LOSE THAT RIGHT?

ROGER CLEGG/PJM:

There are only four groups of people who are generally not allowed to vote in the U.S. now, and the Left wants to enfranchise more of all of them: children, criminals, noncitizens, and the mentally ill.

Now, no doubt—as National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has observed—much of this is politically driven: The Left thinks that all these groups (with the possible exception of the latter) are more likely to vote with them than against them, and it may well be right.

• CLEGG DOES A LOT OF POSTURING AND OVER-ANALYZING OF THE ISSUE.

• IT'S REALLY SIMPLE: IF YOU CAN'T WIN ELECTIONS WITH LAW-ABIDING ADULT CITIZENS YOU SHOULDN'T BE ON THE BALLOT.

• EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS NOT A US CITIZEN.
  
• AND THEY HAVE NO HUIMAN RIGHT TO BECOME ONE AUTOMATICALLY, EITHER.
  
• THEY DON'T ALL PAY OUR TAXES, OR FIGHT IN OUR WARS, OR LEARN TO MAKE OUR HISTORY THEIR HISTORY.

• CITIZENSHIP IS A PRIVILEDGE.

• AND EVERYTHING THE LEFT WANTS TO DO WOULD MAKE IT LESS SO.

BTW: IF YOU ARE A DEMOCRAT AND OPPOSE GIVING FELONS AND NON-CITIZENS, NON-ENGLISH-SPEAKERS AND CHILDREN THE VOTE, THEN WHY NOT LEAVE THEM, ONCE AND FOR ALL!?

IF THE DEMOCRATS DON'T VALUE VOTING AS MUCH AS YOU DO THEN THEY DON'T DESERVE YOUR VOTE.

SOMETIMES, MURDERING A FETUS IS HOMICIDE

AP:

Authorities charged a married man Thursday with slipping his girlfriend an abortion drug that caused her to miscarry twice.

Manishkumar M. Patel, 34, of Appleton, was charged with seven felonies and two misdemeanors, including attempted first-degree murder of an unborn child, stalking, burglary and two counts of violating a restraining order.

His attorney, Thomas Zoesch, said he expected his client to plead not guilty.

Patel and his girlfriend, 39-year-old family physician Darshana Patel, have a 3-year-old child together, authorities said. They are not related, and he is married to someone else; Patel is a common Indian last name.

Darshana Patel became pregnant two more times but miscarried in December and September, Outagamie County sheriff's Capt. Michael Jobe said.

A week or two before her second miscarriage, Manishkumar Patel bought her a smoothie at an ice cream shop, Sheriff's Sgt. Ryan Carpenter said. Darshana Patel noticed white powder on the rim and, feigning illness, took the drink back to her office.

Suspecting she had been slipped mifespristone, the abortion pill also known as RU-486, Darshana Patel sent a sample of the smoothie to a California lab for analysis, Carpenter said.

When it tested positive for the drug, she approached the sheriff's department Nov. 1. Manishkumar Patel was arrested Wednesday.

Court Commissioner Brian Figy ordered Patel held on $750,000 bail after prosecutor Mark Schroeder said he had a net worth of $400,000 and investigators found evidence he had been looking at flights to Germany.

"The allegations are devious, diabolical and disturbing," Figy said.

NBC:

A Wisconsin man is facing attempted murder charges after allegedly giving his mistress a drug that caused two miscarriages.

Manish Patel is accused of slipping the drug mifespristone, also known as the abortion pill RU 486, into his girlfriend's drink during two separate pregnancies. The 39-year-old woman, who is a family physician, miscarried both times.

During her second pregnancy she became suspicious of a powder on the rim of a drink Patel bought her.

She had the substance tested and results confirmed it was the abortion drug. She then went to the county sheriff's office.

Investigators said they couldn't find a similar case anywhere in the country.
Patel, a legal immigrant from India, is being held on $750,000 dollars bond.

If convicted under Wisconsin's fetal homicide law he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Patel faces charges of attempted first-degree murder of an unborn child, stalking, burglary and violating a restraining order.

• IF THIS ISN'T MURDER, THEN NOTHING IS MURDER.

• IF THIS IS MURDER, THEN ABORTION IS MURDER. EVEN WHEN DONE BY THE MOTHER.
  

FROM A 2005 CASE IN TEXAS:

Associated Press

LUFKIN, Texas - In explicit letters written from jail, often signed with "love," 19-year-old Gerardo Flores tells his girlfriend how unworthy of him she is.

"Well, you fat, ugly troll I guess I'll let you go cuz I got tired of writting you and thinking what to put down, so hopefully I'll be especting a letter from you," Flores wrote in one of his handwritten letters to Erica Basoria, whose last name he sometimes spells "Basura," which in Spanish means trash.

Flores was convicted earlier this month on two capital murder charges for stepping on his pregnant girlfriend's stomach and causing the deaths of their unborn twin sons. He was sentenced to life in prison.

After Basoria, now 17, miscarried in May 2004, she signed an affidavit on Flores' behalf claiming she beat herself in the stomach and twice asked Flores to stand on her belly - once two weeks before she miscarried and a second time a week before.

Prosecutors, however, believe Basoria was abused by Flores and never asked him to stand on her growing abdomen nor inflicted any injury on herself.

Angelina County Assistant District Attorney Art Bauereiss says Basoria was just as much the victim of an abusive man as the twins she carried. Basoria was not charged in the twins' deaths.

For some, Flores' conviction has called into question the fairness of Texas' fetal protection law, which gives a fetus legal standing but exempts mothers and health care providers who perform a legal medical procedure.

"It's unfair that a doctor can perform an abortion, a wife can perform an abortion on herself ... (but) the person who helps them can go to prison for the rest of their life," said Flores' attorney Ryan Deaton, who plans to appeal Flores' conviction.

Deaton claims the law, passed in 2003, violates the equal protection clauses of both the U.S. and Texas constitutions.

Others, like Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, which helped craft the fetal protection legislation, say the law is constitutionally sound and working as intended.

"Even the laws that protected babies from abortion before Roe vs. Wade in Texas and elsewhere, in no cases were women prosecuted under the laws," he said. "It was always the third party."

I THINK THE LAW SHOULD PROTECT THE FETUS/BABY/HUMAN-IN-THE-WOMB FROM WHOMEVER IS TRYING TO KILL IT.

The latest IQ debate

Apparently James Flynn and Charles Murray have had another public debate about black/white IQ. Flynn is the only Leftist who is capable of sustaining an informed debate on the matter (people like Gardner and Sternberg are off with the fairies). There was another debate between Flynn and Murray a year ago. The report of the latest debate is by John Derbyshire, who is as cautious and polite as ever.

It is really sad to hear that Flynn is still leaning heavily on the Eyferth study. Flynn himself knows the problems of generalizing from that study and I point them out with my usual brutal frankness here. Flynn is a perfectly competent IQ researcher so why he clings to something so unhelpful to his case is quite a mystery. It must just be that curious Leftist inability to cope with the world as it is. In Flynn's case it is denial on a pathological scale.

If anything, the Eyferth study shows the central role of genetics in IQ. The study found that the children of black American GIs and white women had similar IQs to whites. But blacks at the time had to pass the same IQ test as whites to get into the army. So what the study shows is that what IQ tests test for is genetically transmitted! And it shows that it was genetically transmitted AMONG BLACKS! Nasty! Putting it another way, it shows that only a subset of blacks especially selected by IQ tests will get results similar to whites. Why Flynn thinks that study helps his case is rather a mystery. It does make him look like some sort of mental case.

The other study mentioned by Derb is the Ogbu ("Shaker Heights") study. Black researcher Ogbu found that the children of middle class blacks did not do as well at school as the children of middle class whites. Ogbu himself attributed that to an anti-intellectual culture among blacks and there is no doubt that such a culture exists. A more straightforward explanation of his findings, however, is that affirmative action makes it easy for blacks of only average ability to rise into the middle class whereas whites have to be above-average to get there. So the children simply reflect the genetic endowment of their parents.

There is also a statistical effect known as regression to the mean that could be at work in the Ogbu study. The effect says that parents who are exceptional within their group will IN GENERAL have less exceptional children. That regression to the mean effect has always been a bit of a teeth-grinder for me, in fact. It has always had me wondering about how bright my son would turn out to be. His recent achievements in mathematics have allayed such doubts rather convincingly, however.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

RELIAPUNDIT ADDS:

We've run some controversial posts on race in the last few weeks. On IQ and race.

All were based on facts.

All were intended to demolish leftist political use of race, groupism and collectivism, and to reinforce why we must all regard each other as individuals and not members of any group or class.

Here's a quote from one of the posts which perfectly sums up this position:

All people deserve equal treatment.

But that is not quite the same as saying they are all equal.

The error comes in taking a group difference, which may or may not be real, and using it to judge the worth of individuals.

That is racism.

That's a quote from Nigel Hawkes, the Chief Health Editor of the London Times.

He is 100% correct. And no racist. Quite the opposite.

Group differences are real.

They are reasons to do away with groupist quotas, set-asides and with affirmative action, and to re-invigorate the marketplace with meritocratic practices which correctly judge individuals as individuals with NO attention paid to their membership in any group, race or class.

EU ENVOY DISAPPOINTED WITH IRAN OVER NUCLEAR TALKS

From the BBC:

But top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said the discussions were
positive and more would be held.

The US and its allies are now expected to press for more sanctions on Tehran, but Mr Jalili said such pressure would not make Iran curb its nuclear plans.

The UN is demanding that Iran suspend uranium enrichment.

Iran says its programme is peaceful, but some Western powers fear it is seeking to make weapons.

'I expected more'

The two envoys emerged after five hours of talks and spoke to the media separately, giving dramatically different interpretations of the outcome.

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says Mr Solana was looking for signs that the Iranians were prepared to suspend uranium enrichment work as demanded by the UN Security Council, but his comments after the talks suggest there has been no progress on the issue.

"I expected more and am therefore disappointed," the EU official said.

"I will be in telephonic contact with the Iranians before the end of December," he added, saying the envoys would meet again if circumstances permitted.

Now that you are done reading that, reread the first four paragraphs of the BBC article. What you will find is that the situation is exactly the same as it was last year this time. It is also exactly the same as it was the year before, and the year before that.

The situation has not changed at all.

If nothing changes, nothing will change.

Mr. Solana ought to be disappointed with himself. After all, he has been ignoring reality for years now, and he has been doing it with regard to one of the biggest problems facing our world today.

ANNEXING JUDEA AND SAMARIA

Ted Belman at Israpundit discusses a plan that could be underway to fully annex Judea and Samaria, and why Ehud Olmert is wrong with his whining.

Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming

By David Evans. David is a mathematician, a computer and electrical engineer and is head of Science Speak. David is also a former believer in man-made warming who converted to skeptic. The summary below is an introduction to a larger paper that can be read here (PDF)

Our scientific understanding of global warming has gone through three stages:

1. 1985 - 2003. Old ice core data led us strongly suspect that CO2 causes global warming.

2. 2003 - 2007. New ice core data eliminated previous reason for suspecting CO2. No evidence to suspect or exonerate CO2.

3. From Aug 2007: Know for sure that greenhouse is not causing global warming. CO2 no longer a suspect.

The paper discusses how the ice core changes, missing greenhouse signature in the real data and the recent waning of the warming all suggest that carbon emissions are not behind the changes we have experienced in recent decades.

The IPCC 2007 report (the latest and greatest from the IPCC) is based on all scientific literature up to mid 2006. The Bali Conference is the bureaucratic response to that report. Too bad that the data has changed since then!

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

The Palestinian "Right of return" claim in context

Excerpt from Bernard Lewis:

During the fighting in 1947-1948, about three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven (both are true in different places) from Israel and found refuge in the neighboring Arab countries. In the same period and after, a slightly greater number of Jews fled or were driven from Arab countries, first from the Arab-controlled part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single Jew was permitted to remain), then from the Arab countries where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries, or in some places for millennia. Most Jewish refugees found their way to Israel.

What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees fled or were driven both ways -- Hindus and others from Pakistan to India, Muslims from India to Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too led to a massive refugee movement -- Poles fled or were driven from the Soviet Union into Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.

The Poles and the Germans, the Hindus and the Muslims, the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, all were resettled in their new homes and accorded the normal rights of citizenship. More remarkably, this was done without international aid. The one exception was the Palestinian Arabs in neighboring Arab countries.

The government of Jordan granted Palestinian Arabs a form of citizenship, but kept them in refugee camps. In the other Arab countries, they were and remained stateless aliens without rights or opportunities, maintained by U.N. funding. Paradoxically, if a Palestinian fled to Britain or America, he was eligible for naturalization after five years, and his locally-born children were citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he and his descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth generation.

The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Unsecured Nuclear Material

From this story in the Washington Post:

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia, Nov. 29 -- The arrests of three men who allegedly tried to sell contraband uranium for $1 million show how a shadowy black market for nuclear components has survived despite tightened security at nuclear facilities worldwide, experts said Thursday.

Slovak police said the material, believed to have originated in the former Soviet Union, was highly dangerous and could have been used in a radiological "dirty bomb" or other terrorist weapon.

U.N. and independent experts suggested the uranium may not have been anywhere near that lethal. But officials tracking the illicit global trade in radioactive materials said the arrests underscored the risk of nuclear substances falling into terrorists' hands.

Should that happen, "the consequences would be so catastrophic. The world would be a different place the next day," said Richard Hoskins, who supervises a database of stolen, missing, smuggled or unauthorized radioactive materials for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In 2006, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency registered 252 reported cases -- a 385 percent increase since 2002.

[...]

[N]uclear experts who were shown police photographs of radioactivity readings contended that the material probably was not as dangerous as authorities believe. They said police confused a scientific reading of the material as dealing with its "concentration" of uranium-235, when in fact it was just a "confidence" level of the machine to give an accurate reading. They suggested it may even have been natural uranium -- a common and nonlethal element.

Some guessing going on, on the part of those nuclear experts: "probably not as dangerous" and "may even have been." Nothing is certain, it seems.

So, what DO we know?

(1) When the Soviet Union fell, nuclear facilities were abandoned and fell into disrepair.

(2) On more than one occasion, Al Qaeda has stated its desire to use nuclear weapons against us infidels.

(3) Security measures to find these loose nukes cannot be 100% successful all the time.

In other words, time is our enemy.

HILLARY SPEAKS AT RICK WARREN'S CHURCH

Hillary gets a warm reception at Rick Warren's church. What is Rick Warren smoking? As if my respect level for Warren couldn't sink any lower.

Not only does he make a trip to Syria and endanger the lives of persecuted Christians there but he had Obama speak at a conference last year and now Hillary. Unbelievable!!

I am beside myself about this.

THE LEFTIST ELITE OF THE MSM AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY MUST REALLY THINK WE'RE STOOOOOPID

WHY ARE LEFTISTS ALWAYS TRYING TO PULL RIDICULOUS CRAP ON US!?

• STUFF LIKE BILL CLINTON TELLING US HE WAS AGAINST THE WAR FROM THE START!
• STUFF LIKE CNN STACKING THE DEM DEBATE WITH DEM QUESTIONERS, AND THE GOP DEBATE WITH DEM QUESTIONERS.

SIMPLE: THEY THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT!

WHAT MAKES THEM THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT!?

LEFTIST NARCISSISM. (MORE HERE.)

I CALL IT "THE AUDACITY OF LEFTIST CONCEIT."

They think they're smart and we're STOOOOOPID.

Basically, the Left thinks we're stupid because we believe in God. AND :

• Because we believe there is a real and objective difference between right and wrong, and that it transcends subjectivity and cultures.
• Because we believe that strength and not appeasement creates and best defends peace.
• Because we believe that prosperity is a by-product of liberty and not something the rich steal from the poor or the idle class takes from the working class, or the First World steals from the Third World.
• Because we believe that climate change is natural and cyclical.
• Because we believe that taking guns away from law-abiding citizens doesn't lower crime - it increases it.
• Because we believe that life begins at conception - that a fetus is a new and unique human being with unique DNA and not a part of the mother's body with which she can do as she pleases.
  
• Because we believe that we know how to spend our money better than the government.

AND BECAUSE THEY THINK WE'RE DUMB... They think they can get away with all kinds of ridiculously phony crap, outrageous lies, and incredible propaganda, like:

• Like Rather's phony TANG documents.
• And blaming Libby for Armitage's leak.
• And saying that Bush lied in the 2003 SOTU when he uttered those 16 words about Saddam and Africa and uranium.
  
• And claiming that the turkey Bush held in Iraq was plastic.
• And that pristine children's dolls just naturally appear at dozens of bombed sites in Beirut.
• And man-made CO2 causes global warming.
• And that the Bush economy is the worst since Hoover.
• And that Bush deliberately withheld federal aid from Katrina victims.
• And that Bush is a dumb, unilateralist war-monger who lied about Saddam's WMD on purpose.
• And that a genocidal massacre occurred at Jenin(grad).
• And that the across-the-board tax cuts went mostly to the rich.
• That there's no more upward mobility.
• That the Iraq War was a war for oil and Bush's oil buddies.
• That we lost in Iraq months ago.
• That Petraeus was an incompetent liar and the surge doomed.
• That the illegal immigration problem is that illegal immigrants are living in the shadows - even though you and I see them lining up for work everyday!
• AND THE CNN DEBATE CRAP...
• AND THE BALD-FACED CLINTON LIES...
• ALL THAT FAUXTOGRAPHY...
• AND THAT BUSH REALLY LOST OHIO IN 2004 AS HE DID FLORIDA IN 2000...
  
• AND SO ON...
  

YOU KNOW WHAT THE WACKIEST THING IS ABOUT THE LEFT'S "SMARTER THAN THOU" ATTITUDE!?

THE LEFT THINKS THEIR SMARTER THAN US DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY ADVOCATE POLICIES WHICH HAVE NEVER WORKED ANYWHERE AT ANYTIME.

• They want to raise taxes and have the government get more involved in the heathcare industry despite the fact that this approach is not working that well in Canada or the UK or Europe.

• They want to raise taxes on oil and gasoline and have the government more involved in the energy markets. (Instead of increasing energy supplies by allowing new coal-burning plants to be built, and new nuclear power plants to be built, and allowing drilling in ANWR and off the coasts of FL and CA!)
  

• They want to raise taxes on Big Pharma and have the government more involved in the drugs industry. (In other words: KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE WHICH IS LAYING THE EGGS WHICH ARE MAKING US HEALTHIER!)
  

• They want to raise taxes on "the rich" and give it to "the poor" even though no economy has ever grown as a result or redistribution.

• And, they want to make the USA and the Free World safer by relying more on the UN and multilateral appeasement instead of on the Pentagon and on us using our strength to assertively pursue what's in our national interest and the interest of the Free World.

• And they want to give amnesty to illegal aliens. And give them cheap tuition. And give them the right to sue employers who want them to speak English.

WHAT THE LEFT WANTS TO DO WILL ONLY MAKE US LESS FREE AND LESS PROSPEROUS.

DON'T BE FOOLED!

I HAVE A FEELING WE WON'T BE, EITHER.

YOU KNOW WHY!?

WE'RE NOT AS DUMB AS THE LEFT THINKS WE ARE!

Political Correctness and the First Amendment at risk

Investors' Business Daily interviews Rep. Susan Myrick (R-NC) regarding political correctness and the war on terror. Myrick strongly objects to the PC veil that prevents honest debate.

We should explore every means of encouraging moderate Muslims to speak out against the radicals. There are many who want to, and do — such as Sheikh (Muhammad Hisham) Kabbani (of the Islamic Supreme Council of America) and Zainab al-Suwaij (of the American Islamic Congress) and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser (of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy). But they do not get the media attention...

...We need to shed the veil of political correctness that shields government officials from speaking out against them... groups like [Council on Arab-Islamic Relations] CAIR seek to silence the debate. The American people deserve to see and hear the debate, but most people in positions of influence are afraid to say anything...

In that regard, Blogcritics' Selwyn Duke is one of only a handful of folks covering an important First Amendment case. CAIR has organized an advertiser boycott against controversial radio announcer Michael Savage and the stakes couldn't be higher. I say that no matter what you might think of Savage's diatribes: love 'em or hate 'em, he's got every right to express his opinion.

[CAIR has ] carried out campaigns against National Review magazine, radio personality Paul Harvey, the producers of the television program 24, and many others...

[Now] CAIR has been pressuring Savage's advertisers to pull their spots from his show, and I'm dismayed to learn that some businesses have capitulated to their demands. Among these cowardly companies are AutoZone, TrustedID, OfficeMax, Citrix Systems Inc., [Wal-Mart] and JCPenney...

Trade rag Radio Ink reports that a group called Act for America is taking its First Amendment message to consumers.

...Act for America, which says it "was created to provide American citizens a means to be a collective voice for the democratic values of Western civilization," is asking consumers to contact OfficeMax and tell the company they won't shop at OfficeMax stores until the ad boycott is lifted. The group plans to launch similar efforts targeted at other advertisers boycotting Savage Nation.

William Mayer reports that CAIR's "press conference" at San Francisco's AM 910 (Savage's flagship station) was attended by all of about seven people.

...Basim Elkarra, Executive Director of CAIR's Sacramento branch..., refused to condemn the terrorist group HAMAS, specifically and by name, when challenged to do so... though he was given ample opportunity.

CAIR carries some heavy baggage in this regard. Last summer, it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation [HLF] prosecution and the founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, Ghassan Elashi, was found guilty and sentenced in the Infocom terror case. Elashi remains a key defendant in the HLF trial...

There's only one word for a group that refuses to condemn Hamas, is an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorism trial, and has had a variety of its members and executives run afoul of the law, all while pillorying Savage. It's chutzpah.

First they came for Savage. Who's next, Rush? And then Hannity? Then Colmes?

If Americans don't act now -- and I mean all Americans -- there's no telling where this might end. Someday, liberals might dominate talk radio. And they would be at risk as well.

Contact Information and Sample Letter

As for AutoZone, TrustedID, OfficeMax, Citrix Systems, [Wal-Mart] and JCPenney: my recommendation is to tell them why you're steering clear. I've linked each of the company's names to go directly to a contact form or customer email address - just click, paste, and send the following message or your own equivalent.

The advertisers' boycott of the Michael Savage Radio Show at the behest of unindicted co-conspirator CAIR is misguided at best. Multiple federal officials (including current members of Congress) have stated "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism."

A swarm of bloggers are jumping on this issue.

I ask, respectfully, that you reconsider this misguided political correctness.

Sincerely, _____________

"THIS is CNN..." (Includes Updates)

Hugh Hewitt has about the best summary of the CNN Democrat (I mean) Republican debate last night that I have read:

[...] Last night's fiasco was so thorough that it will take a while to settle in just how damaging it was to CNN's reputation as a news organization. From the awful judgment displayed with the opening guitar serenade through the preposterous selection of topics and questions right to the stark reality that CNN either was easily and completely manipulated by the Dems with planted question after planted question or were totally complicit in the hijacking of a Republican debate designed to serve Republican primary voters about who ought to be the Republican nominee. The network is either incompetent in a way no serious news organization should be, or wholly captured by agenda journalists of the left.

No serious anchor would want to be where [Anderson] Cooper is today, at the center of a vast train wreck which cannot be explained away as the inevitable result of the sudden appearance of big news in a difficult setting, as with hysterical Katrina coverage of bodies stacked in freezers and gun fights in the Superdome, or the result of the input of bad data, as with the early call of Florida for Gore in 2000.

No, this [is] premeditated mediocrity. The network had months to prepare and consider and execute. But even with all that time, it lacked the minimal talent necessary to produce a serious debate about important issues using new technology. All it could deliver was a carnival of bad taste, trick questions, and full frontal left wing bias.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has got CNN dead to rights for just how tricked up these questions and questioners really were. I am so glad that this is coming out, because the American people deserve better than the double standard they have been spoon fed by those elites who "know better" than they do. I actually heard Tom Brokaw call out CNN today on the Hewitt show, and Brokaw is no right winger.

My issue with last night is not so much the questions asked; yes many questions were over the top--hell, the guy with the Bible was little more than a sneering heckler. But a President should be expected to know how to handle a hostile questioner. In a perfect world it wouldn't bother me to see Republicans pose the questions in a Democrat debate and vice versa. After all, the idea is to see how a potential candidate can handle the pressure. I think that sort of debate would be a big improvement over what we have gotten to date, because (on the Democrat side anyway) most of the questions have been layups. Pointed questioning would serve the public good. However the kind of heckling questions we saw last night were nothing more than a lame attempt to brainwash the viewers in to thinking that the vast majority of Americans are partisan Democrats.

The problem in this instance with CNN is that for its Democrat YouTube debate, the questions were from a partisan Democrat perspective. In the CNN Republican debate... the questions were from a partisan Democrat perspective. So we are supposed to believe that a network with the resources like CNN can only find good video questions from the political left of the YouTube generation? Have they not been paying attention to bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Allah, Bryan Preston, and Mary Katherine Ham? Please.

No, this was truly a disgrace; and to pretend that it was not done purposefully is a flat out lie to the people of the United States; every bit as much so as were the Rather lies and The New Republic's lies. CNN has now joined MSNBC and the network of Rather as selling out completely to Soros and the MoveOn left. It was pathetic, and a really sad day for American journalism. William Randolph Hurst would have been proud.

UPDATE: More from Glenn Reynolds.

UPDATE: Meanwhile an NBC reporter covering Sarkozy calls Bush a "monkey." Nice.

UPDATE (RELIAPUNDIT): MEMEORANDUM HAS A COMPLETE ROUNDUP AND GATEWAY HAS SOME OTHER GREAT LINKS.

THE REAL AUDACITY OF HOPE: "Venezuelans cram streets to protest Chavez's referendum to establish socialism"

THE VENEZUELANS SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING AND THEY DON'T LIKE IT:

IHT/AP: Venezuelans cram streets to protest Chavez's referendum to establish socialism

More than 100,000 people flooded the streets of the capital Thursday to oppose a referendum that would eliminate term limits for President Hugo Chavez and help him establish a socialist state in Venezuela.

Blowing whistles, waving placards and shouting "Not like this!" the marchers carried Venezuelan flags and dressed in blue — the chosen color of the opposition — as they streamed along Bolivar Avenue.

No official crowd estimates were available, but opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez said about 160,000 protesters filled the avenue, and thousands more spilled over onto surrounding roads. The rally was among the largest by the opposition in recent years.

"This is a movement by those of us who oppose a change to this country's way of life, because what (the referendum) aims to do is impose totalitarianism," said former lawmaker Elias Matta. "There can't be a communist Venezuela, and that's why our society is reacting this way."

The rally marked the close of the opposition's campaign against the proposed constitutional changes, which will be submitted to a vote Sunday. Chavez plans to lead rallies in favor of the reforms Friday.

• HUGO'S COMRADES - HILLARY, OBAMA AND EDWARDS - WOULD DO THE SAME AS HUGO, GIVEN THE CHANCE.

• THOUGH SINCE HILLARY'S DEBACLE WITH SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE THEY WOULD DO IT STEALTHILY AND INCREMENTALLY.

DON'T FALL FOR IT. IT'S ONLY A STYLE DIFFERENCE. THE SUBSTANCE IS THE SAME: SOCIALISM.

UPDATE: THE PEOPLE OF BOLIVIA ARE ALSO PROTESTING THIER LEFTIST LEADER'S PLANS TO CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION TO MAKE THE NATION MORE SOCIALISTIC:

A fractured Bolivia heading at full speed to the cliffs

Opposition leaders in Bolivia have promised a fresh wave of protests and “civil disobedience” against a new draft constitution. Their call follows a strike on Wednesday that closed banks, schools and public transport in six of Bolivia's richest provinces.

Morales described the strike as a “rich people’s strike

The opposition argues that the proposed constitutional changes will give the government too much power. President Evo Morales says the reforms will finally give indigenous and poor Bolivians a say in running the country.

The strike was relatively peaceful and attracted the strongest support in the gas and farm rich province of Santa Cruz - an opposition stronghold. The local Santa Cruz leader, Branko Marinkovic, announced an indefinite hunger strike starting on Monday.

Marinkovic also urged the provinces to lobby international organizations against what he described as a "breakdown in democracy". However there was less support for the strike in the central city of Cochabamba and the Bolivian government described the protest as a failure.

In the capital La Paz Morales condemned the strikers during a massive rally. "The strike... is against this process of change, the new economic model, against the nationalization of natural resources".

IF THE USA ELECTS A DEM IN 2008, I HOPE WE'LL SEE THE SAME PROTESTS HERE...

CO2 RECORDS PROVE AL GORE WRONG

SHOW THIS SHORT VIDEO TO YOUR FRIENDS WHO STILL BELIEVE AL GORE.

(VIA SUGIERO.)]

EUSSR: FIRST THEY COME FOR YOUR GUN...

BBC: Euro MPs back stricter gun laws

The European Parliament has voted to tighten laws on obtaining and possessing firearms.

The age at which a firearm can be bought or owned will be raised to 18, unless it is for hunting or target shooting under adult supervision.

Blank-firing guns that could be converted will also be made illegal.

Earlier this month, a student shot dead eight people at a school in Finland, where gun ownership is among the highest in the world.

EU governments are expected to approve the reforms by the end of the year and the directive is due to come into force in January 2008.

Member states will then have two years to put the changes into practice.

• THIS IS HORRIBLE LEGISLATION - A FASCIST POWER-GRAB AKIN TO WHAT CHAVEZ IS DOING IN VENEZUELA. (AND DON'T GIVE ME ANY OF THAT "IT CAN'T BE FASCIST BECAUSE IT'S COMING FROM THE LEFT!" CRAP. FASCISM IS A LEFTIST/STATIST CREED JUST LIKE ITS COUSINS NAZISM AND COMMUNISM.)
  

• FACT: FINLAND HAS AMONG THE HIGHEST GUN OWNERSHIP RATES AND THE LOWEST GUN CRIME RATES IN THE EU.
• IN FACT, MANY NATIONS WITH HIGH GUN OWNERSHIP RATES HAVE LOW CRIME RATES.

• RESTRICTIVE GUN OWNERSHIP LAWS DO NOT LOWER CRIME.

• SELF DEFENSE IS A HUMAN RIGHT.

• BY PASSING THIS LAW, THE EUSSR IS ENCROACHING ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF EUROPEANS.

• AND DIMINISHING THEIR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS OF SOVEREIGN NATIONS.

• THIS EUSSR POLICY DOVETAILS NICELY WITH THE UN'S ANTI-GUN POLICES.

• THAT'S NO ACCDIENT OR MERE COINCIDENCE: DISARMING ORDINARY, LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS - AND MAKING EVERYONE DEPENDENT ON THE SATE FOR THEIR DEFENSE IS A MAJOR GOAL OF THE LEFT. ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!

BUY A GUN - THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN!

THE RIGHTS YOU PROTECT MOST CERTAINLY WILL BE YOUR OWN.

OLMERT CASE FILE TO BE TRANSFERRED TO PROSECUTORS

The Israeli police are to send in their investigation conclusions. It's interesting that MK Zevulun Orlev feels that the police shouldn't make a recommendation on this though:

Knesset State Control Committee chairman Zevulun Orlev on Thursday appealed to Public Security Minister Avi Dichter with a request to prevent the Israel Police from submitting its recommendations on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's probe in the Bank Leumi affair.

"In no country in the West is it acceptable for the police to make recommendations. It should work on accelerating investigations rather than making dramatic announcements in the media," said Orlev.

The Israel Police is set to release its conclusions later Thursday - with Intelligence and Investigation Division Chief Cmdr. Yohanan Danino signing off on the police recommendations.

The case file will then be passed on to prosecutors for review, and it will ultimately be in the hands of the prosecutors to determine whether or not the case merits an indictment.

Sources close to the case have said over the past two weeks that they did not believe that police would recommend an indictment against the prime minister.

In January 2007, police began their criminal probe into alleged improprieties by Olmert surrounding the privatization of the bank, which occurred during Olmert's tenure as finance minister during the Sharon administration.

According to allegations, in 2005, Olmert intervened in the sale of the core ownership of Bank Leumi on behalf of Frank Lowy and Daniel Abraham, two businessmen who were also personal friends of his.

I suppose it should be left up to the prosecutors investigating the case to handle the indictment parts, so I won't argue with Orlev about that.

Update: ah, now I see why the police shouldn't have to make the decision here: they're now saying that they don't recommend indictment, and I suspect that Danino may have something to do with it:

(IsraelNN.com) The police team investigating Israel's sale of Bank Leumi have found evidence of suspicious and illegal involvement by Prime Minister Olmert - but not enough to justify recommending an indictment.

The official Israel Police investigative team has found some evidence that Ehud Olmert, when serving as Acting Finance Minister in November 2005, acted illegally in promoting his friends' interests during the privatization of Bank Leumi. The team recommended that Olmert not be indicted - but the decision is not theirs to make.

The police presented their findings to the State Prosecution this afternoon (Thursday), after which Moshe Lador, who will assume the position of State Prosecutor on Sunday, will have to make the final decision as to whether or not to indict the Prime Minister.

Well I hope he's more responsible than the police are, though now that I think of it, Orlev is right, the police shouldn't be making the recommendations, their job is to investigate and then provide the results of their inspection to the prosecutors to look over.

Also, there seems to be a slight contradiction as it's said that evidence was found, and it's police who're presumably claiming that there's not enough evidence on which to indict. Update 2: according to this article, yes, it's the police.

Update 3: the daily Yisrael HaYom reports that the investigative team itself feels there's enough evidence, but it's Yohanan Danino himself who's saying there's not. So he seems to be the problem here.

OZONE AND CO2: DEJA VU

An email to Benny Peiser from Canadian skeptic, Prof Timothy Ball [timothyball@shaw.ca] below

International Herald Tribune 22 November: The Chinese Foreign Ministry representative Song Dong is singing the same song we heard about CFCs. China (and India) said you have received the benefits of CFCs with a 30% reduction in food loss through refrigeration. Now you are telling us that this chemical is destroying the ozone and we should therefore forego the benefits you have already obtained. The proposal was the West reduce their CFCs and allow China and developing nations to increase theirs. We said no. They said fine, then we won't sign the Montreal Protocol.

I appeared before a Canadian Parliamentary Committee on the ozone issue and raised questions about this unilateral application problem. The aide to the Chair scurried out and returned 10 minutes later with the information that China and India were only producing 5% of the world's CFC production. I replied, yes, now, but if China and India increase their production to provide refrigeration for over 2 billion consumers how was our objective obtained? They changed the subject.

There never was a single piece of scientific evidence of CFCs affecting ozone in the ozone layer, no more than there is for CO2 and climate change except in computer models. Later, the IPCC TAR report identified changes in solar radiation as the most likely cause of ozone variations. This is isn't surprising because as I told the Committee and anyone else who would listen that ozone is created by sunlight or at least the ultraviolet portion. At that time climate science was still locked into the concept of a solar constant even though solar physicists were describing it as a variable star.

This mentality carried over into climate studies and still predominates today as two of the major changes in solar activity (Milankovitch Effect and the relationship between solar magnetism and cosmic radiation) that affect climate are ignored. As environmental activists have cynically understood, once politicians have something in their heads facts and logic are redundant. They are doing the same thing with CO2 - the parallels between CFCs and CO2 are amazing and the only difference is the magnitude of impact on western economies are profound.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

THE CLINTONS: LOQAUCITY & MENDACITY - AND VICE VERSA

BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON:

HE: A SLICK USED-CAR SALESMAN WHO WOULD RAPE YOUR DAUGHTER.

SHE: HIS WIFE - WHO WOULD SWEAR HE'S A GOOD HUSBAND AND THAT THEY HAVE A GOOD MARRIAGE.

SHEESH.

MORE HERE.

OBAMA WILL FINE PARENTS WHO DO NOT USE GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE

Barack Obama will force parents to pay for government health care for their children:

The issue of mandates for health care has driven the debate between Clinton and
Obama for the past few weeks. Obama says he would enforce his mandate for health
care for all children by fining parents if they refused to allow health care
coverage for their children.

“I am happy to be very clear how we enforce
mandates for children, and the reason is because children don’t have an option.”

In my opinion, this is Obama's introductory version of National Healthcare. He is working on the assumption that once the children are signed up it won't be so hard to sign the adults too.

Do not be fooled. This is totalitarianism posing as morality.

IQ: DESPERATION TO BELIEVE MYTHS LEADS TO FALLACIOUS REASONING YET AGAIN

What nonsense below! Are these guys seriously arguing that because genes with high relevance to IQ have not yet been found then there are none?

I hate to repeat an old saw but the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Genes relevant to IQ are being discovered all the time. One with a big link to IQ could be just around the corner. Though it is most probable that high IQ is the result of an accumulation of many "good" genes -- which is why high IQ people tend to be healthier and live longer etc.

A team of scientists led by Professor Robert Plomin, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, identified only six genes linked with intelligence to any degree of significance, but even those accounted for just 1 per cent of the differences in IQ between individuals. Experts said upbringing, education and a healthy diet in early life had important roles to play in helping to nurture intelligence. The research also means testing the potential intelligence of new-born babies - or improving it with genetic engineering - could be impossible.

The researchers said a study of the human genome revealed hundreds of genes which contribute to IQ, but their individual effects are barely detectable. Previous studies on twins and adopted children have established that about half of the variation in intelligence is down to environment, but almost all of the genetic component has yet to be uncovered.

Prof Plomin said: "If the biggest [genes] only account for 1 per cent of the variance [in intelligence], there's a long way to go. The most striking result is there are no large effects." However, this does not mean intelligence is not inherited. Many experts believe IQ is due to the cumulative effect of a combination of genes.

The study, published in the journal Genes, Brains and Behaviour, involved obtaining intelligence scores for 7,000 seven-year-olds and DNA samples. Dr Robin Campbell, an expert in intelligence and child development at Stirling University, said: " [This research] leaves it open that nurture, education and good early nutrition have an important role." [Of course they do. Nobody has ever said otherwise. But genetic inheritance is the major determinant]

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

SINCE THE 1828 JACKSON VERSUS ADAMS CONTEST, EVERY RACE HAS BEEN WON BY THE MORE JACKSONIAN CANDIDATE

We American's want tour president to be an American hero, of sorts.

Someone who embodies what makes this nation great.

Given the choice between an intellectual egghead and a man with common sense, we always choose the man with common sense.

We choose them man who we think is tougher in fight - and will probably win one, rather than someone who might talk his way out of one.

We prefer Andrew Jackson's stature to John Quincy Adams' weightiness.

[NOTE: EVEN IN 1824, JACKSON WON A PLURALITY IN BOTH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE AND THE POPULAR VOTE.]

• We prefer Ike's leadership to Adlai's erudition - his wonkiness.
• Truman's plain talking to Dewey's East Coast Republican urbanity.
• JFK's vim and vigor and bellicosity was preferred over Nixon's seeming weakness & sickliness - (because of their appearance on the first Presidential TV debate).
• Dubya was more likable, authentic, raw and rumpled than either Gore or Kerry.
• LBJ - a deal-making cowboy - was liked more than Goldwater, an ideologue.
• FDR was a cripple whose ability to surmount his handicap with a smile inspired a crippled America.
• Clinton felt our pain and knew the price of a gallon of milk. GHW Bush was a blue-blood at sea.
• Lincoln was born in a log cabin and chopped wood.
  

And so on.

Nearly every single race has been one by the more natural man. The man of the people. The more common man.

So what does this tell us about 2008?

Well, obviously McCain, Fred and Huckabee are the most Jacksonian on the GOP side. Rudy's okay, too. Mitt's big problem is that he seems too slick, too smooth, too smart. He can win the nomination, but - unless he can loosen up - he could lose the general election.

AND ON THE DEMOCRAT SIDE? I don't see one single solitary Jacksonian. Maybe Biden or Richardson - only it's difficult to seem Jacksonian when you've calling for retreat from Iraq for the past couple of years...

I guess I'm saying that right now - based on who is in the race right now - I'd bet that the race is in the bag for the GOP.

If they frame the race as Jackson versus Adams, and can cast their candidate as Jackson.

THEN AGAIN: 3-WAY RACES MAKE ANY OUTCOME IS POSSIBLE. ALL BETS ARE OFF WITH RON PAUL OR RALPH NADER ON THE BALLOT - OR EVEN BLOOMBERG OR DOBBS.

THIS IS THE DEMS BEST HOPE.

HEY: IT SURE HELP BJ CLINTON!

EUROPE'S FUTURE: "PRESS 2 FOR ARABIC"

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO STOP IT?

HELP THESE FOLKS KEEP EUROPE... ER, UM... EUROPEAN.

HILLARY'S HIDDEN AGENDA

HAT TIP HYSCIENCE:

A HOPEFUL SIGN FROM SWEDEN: LEFTISTS MIGHT HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF DHIMMITUDE

GOV:

Nothing exemplifies the politically correct Multicultural establishment in Sweden more fully than the Social Democrats. They are, in effect, the ruling class of Sweden, and have been the party in power for the majority of the last half century.

So this news comes as a real surprise:

‘Deport people smuggled into Sweden’

People who have been smuggled into Sweden should be deported, a leading Social Democrat politician has said. Allowing those who have paid thousands to people smugglers to stay is not fair on people who can’t afford to pay to leave their homelands.

Göran Johansson, leader of Gothenburg Council, said he based his views on the fact that many of the 20,000 Iraqis expected to come to Sweden this year came here illegally, often with the help of people smugglers.

“If it is obvious that someone has been smuggled in they should be sent back again,” Johansson told newspaper GT.

THERE'S MORE - RTWT.

The first step in controlling the huge un-assimilated "internal colonies" is to stop the inflow.

All of Europe has to do this with regard to their Muslim in-flows.

We have to do with regard to our Mexican in-flows.

Then, the un-assimilated who are already on the inside have to assimilate and become tax-payers or they should be thrown out.

The opponents of this type of policy are indigenous multicultural leftists, and imported jihadists and reconquistas - all of whom must be defeated.

PRINCE CHARLES REFUSES TO GO TO ISRAEL, BUT ADORINGLY TOURS TURKEY

HELLO MAGAZINE:

Charles and Camilla explore Turkey's ancient treasures

Royal globe-trotters Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall couldn't have been more enthusiastic visitors as they were shown the sights of the ancient ruins of Ephesus during their official tour to Turkey. Camilla continued to snap away on her camera, as she had done in Uganda, while they admired the incredible city's treasures on Tuesday.

After touring the awe-inspiring Library of Celsus, where they had been greeted by a traditional dance troupe from the nearby town of Izmir, Charles held his wife's hand as they negotiated stone steps down to some excavated terraced Roman houses. The heir to the throne spent ten minutes looking at the former home of Flavius Furius Aptas, where fragments of marble floor and mosaics hinted at the home's former grandeur.

Charles, who studied archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge University, is well known for his interest in Muslim art and culture, and seemed delighted at the opportunity to see a shrine dedicated to the 13th-century poet Mevlana Jelaleddin Rumi on Monday. He and his wife viewed the poet's sarcophagus in the southern town of Konya and a beautiful copy of his most famous work, the Mathnawi.

• MANY PEOPLE THINK CHARLES IS A CONVERT TO ISLAM.
• MORE HERE.
• HE REALLY REFUSES TO GO TO ISRAEL, AND NO MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY HAS EVER MAD AN OFFICIAL VISIT.

ROYAL SCUM.

THE BAN ON DEPICTING MOHAMMAD IS BLASPHEMY

Muslims believe they are monotheists who worship the One True God of the Universe.

A God who cannot and must not be depicted because He is beyond any depiction - because gods who can be depicted are false gods.

SO... by banning all depictions of the so-called prophet, Mohammad, Muslims are elevating him to the level of... God.

This is blasphemy. YET THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THOSE MUSLIMS WHO CALL THEMSELVES FUNDAMENTALISTS AND EXTREMELY DEVOUT CALL FOR.

They are blasphemous.

And this goes for Bin Laden and all the Wahhabists and all the other radical Muslims.

They are blasphemers.

Muslims who think they are worshiping the One True God should not follow these blasphemers..

EUROPE HAS A BIGGER TRADE DEFICIT WITH CHINA THAN THE USA

• YOU KNOW ALL THAT CONVENTIONAL WISDOM (CW) THAT SAYS THAT THE SO-CALLED US TRADE DEFICIT WITH CHINA IS WHY OUR DOLLAR IS GETTING WEAKER, AND THAT IT'S A THREAT TO OUR SECURITY AND PROSPERITY?

• WELL. THAT CW IS BS.

• EUROPE'S CURRENCY - THE EURO - IS "STRONGER" THAN THE DOLLAR RIGHT NOW, AND GUESS WHAT????????? THEY HAVE A BIGGER TRADE DEFICIT WITH CHINA THAN WE DO! (AND THEY ARE JUST AS DEPENDENT ON IMPORTS OF ENERGY AS WE ARE, TOO!)

• SO DON'T FOR THE CW/BS! (MORE ON THE FALLACY OF TRADE DEFICITS HERE. AND HERE AND HERE.)

• CURRENCY VALUATION IS A VERY COMPLEX THING WHICH DEPENDS OF SEVERAL IF NOT DOZENS OF FACTORS. THE POPULIST NOTION THAT WE NEED TRADE BARRIERS AND A STRONG CURRENCY IS WRONG.

HERE ARE THE FACTS OF EURO-CHINA TRADE: STRAITS TIMES:

CHINA yesterday pledged to do more to expand imports from Europe and give market forces more play over its currency during a tense one-day summit with the European Union.

Addressing EU criticisms over its ballooning trade deficit with China, which the bloc blames mainly on the yuan's weakness against the euro, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told the summit participants that Beijing did not seek the lopsided trade nor was it solely responsible for the currency situation.

'In China's open market, every trading partner is treated equally,' said Mr Wen, who along with other Chinese leaders and officials vowed to continue dialogue with their European counterparts to resolve the currency spat.

However, the Chinese Premier also told the audience of European and Chinese business leaders attending the summit that China would hold firm to its policy of reforming the yuan gradually.

'China will continue to reform the RMB exchange rate regime in a gradual, proactive and manageable manner,' he said, while insisting the Chinese currency was not the only reason for their trade dispute.

He added: 'I believe that the main cause of the rise of the euro is the big fall in the value of the US dollar.'

... EU trade officials have lately become as vocal as their American counterparts in criticising what they say is a significantly undervalued yuan.

The trade deficit of the EU with China is likely to reach a whopping 160 billion euros (S$341 billion) this year, while the United States' trade deficit with China was US$232.5 billion (S$336 billion) last year.

The 27-member EU bloc is China's largest trading partner.

• THE WEAKER DOLLAR HURTS THE EU AND MORE THAN IT HURTS US.

• YOU WONT HEAR THAT FROM THE BDS-AFFLICTED LEFTISTS IN THE MSM - THEY WANT TO USE THE WEAK DOLLAR TO BASH BUSH AND THE GOP.

• ESPECIALLY NOW THAT OUR VICTORY IN IRAQ IS MORE OBVIOUS, AND IT'S WINTER - AS A RESULT, THEY CAN'T GO NEGATIVE EVERY DAY AND EVERY NIGHT WITH DEFEATISM AND GLOBAL WARMING FEAR-MONGERING.

• HENCE THEIR EMPHASIS OF THE WEAK DOLLAR AND THE WEAK HOUSING MARKET AND - THEY HOPE - A WEAK CHRISTMAS RETAIL PERIOD.

DON'T FALL FOR IT.

METHANE IS A VERY POWERFUL GREENHOUSE GAS (MORESO THAN CO2) - AND IT'S ONE WHOSE AGRICULTURAL ORIGINS SCIENTISTS DON'T FULLY UNDERSTAND

NATURE:

Nearly two years after the confusing discovery that terrestrial plants may be pumping out methane through an unknown mechanism, scientists are still producing puzzling results about this strange phenomenon. A study this week seems to confirm that methane is emitted in this way, but adds that it might be limited to woody plants — again for unknown reasons.

Methane (CH4), the main component in natural gas, is a simple hydrocarbon and a potent greenhouse gas. It is most commonly released by organic matter decaying in oxygen-free environments, such as swamps and animal guts.

The original finding, published in January 2006, that green plants emit methane in the presence of atmospheric oxygen1 seemed to turn upside down textbook knowledge. It was clear that if global vegetation does release substantial amounts of the gas, one or more of the known methane sources must have been considerably overestimated (see The methane mystery).

But those initial measurements, by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg Physics, Germany, have proven hard to verify. Using a different experimental approach, other researchers failed to find evidence for any significant ‘aerobic’ methane emissions by plants. In a study published in May2, Tom Dueck, then with Plant Research International in Wageningen, the Netherlands, and his colleagues concluded that the contribution of green plants to global methane emission is very small at most.

However, a Chinese–American team has now confirmed, with a very precise carbon-isotope method, that at least some plants do indeed emit measurable, if small, amounts of methane under aerobic conditions3. But the results suggest that the effect is not universal among plants.

... But the results are by no means definitive. Although Wang did not see emissions from herbaceous plants, Keppler did. And there is also some preliminary field evidence for the effect occurring over tropical grasses.
Confusion continues

“This is a difficult process to study,” says Jay Gulledge, a microbiologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and a co-author of the newest study. “It will take a lot more work to figure out when, where, and why it happens, and whether or not it is actually important to the global methane budget.”

Keppler had estimated initially that terrestrial plants could account for up to 40% of total methane emissions, but the figure has since been revised downwards. If the effect is not universal among plants it would imply an even smaller contribution to the global methane budget.

As yet, all global estimates are extremely uncertain. But even if plants contribute little to the global methane budget, scientists are keen to understand the unknown chemistry behind the elusive effect.

• THIS SHOULD MAKE IT ABUNDANTLY CLEAR THAT SCIENTISTS STILL DO NOT KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT 'WHAT CONTRIBUTES WHAT' TO THE ATMOSPHERE, AND THAT THEREFORE MODELING BASED ON WHAT THEY THINK THEY KNOW IS MERE GUESSWORK.

• WE SHOULD NOT MAKE WHOLESALE CHANGES TO OUR REGULATORY SCHEMES, OR TAXES OR OUR INDUSTRIAL BASE BECAUSE OF WHAT UNDER-INFORMED SCIENTIST AND ILL-INFORMED POLITICIANS GUESS MIGHT HAPPEN.