ARE WE LOSING WW4?

Some governments have already fallen: Spain; Thailand; Lebanon (virtually). Berlusconi lost, too - to a socialist appeaser with alleged ties to the KGB, Prodi. Iraq's nascent democracy might fail this year; Karzai's is struggling. Sweden is in full dhimmi mode, as is Norway. Russia directly aids Iran - who will soon get nukes, unless Bush grows a set of balls. (Does "Dubya" stand for WIMP?! I'm beginning to think it does!)

Blair is through - largely because he's a hawk. Bush is struggling too; the surge in Iraq is seen by many to be a last chance; if it fails, then the USA might very well elect a dove president with a dove Congress. 1977 redux. YIPES! I lived through that. It was a disaster!

Iran's proxies may soon takeover Gaza and Lebanon - and they yearn for control of Jordan. Both al Qaeda and Iran have their eyes on Mecca - so the House of Saud is very VERY nervous.

BASIC RECAP: the EU could be majority dhimmi; Afghanistan could fail; Iraq could fail; Iran could get nukes - all in the next few years.

GOLLY: Unless things change direction, I'd say we're headed for a major cultural clash - and crash. AMERICA ALONE.

And it would likely be an America run by Hillary and Obama and Pelosi and Reid and Durbin.

They will retreat abroad, weaken our defenses at home, raise taxes and entitlements. Take us back down the road to serfdom.

They will be a disaster for the security and prosperity of the Free World.

Nevertheless, if I had to bet money today, I'd bet that these bad guys will win: the Dems; the Left; the jihadists.

Pity. It needn't happen. But it will take BOLD action to prevent it. And Bush has done NOTHING bold since 2003. As a result we drift toward surrender. Despite a thriving economy and a military that is up to the task - IF WE'D ONLY LET THEM AND SUPPORT THEM!

Pity.

GAZA OFFICES RANSACKED, AND A UNIVERSITY IS TORCHED

If it wasn't mentioned before, it is now:

In Gaza City, the coastal strip's largest town, Fatah gunmen stormed the Agriculture Ministry, ransacking offices and stealing computers, servers and official documents, said Agriculture Minister Mohammed al-Agha. [...] Officials at the Hamas-run Communications and Postal Ministry said Fatah gunmen fired two rocket-propelled grenades at the building. Gunbattles also erupted around the Interior Ministry, which Hamas controls, and the Fatah-dominated National Security headquarters.

Universities also continued to be the site of clashes. Armed men at Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold, traded fire with Fatah fighters who took up position on the rooftop of nearby al-Azhar University and surrounding buildings. In southern Gaza, gunmen stormed the Fatah-affiliated Al-Quds University campus in the town of Rafah, torching the student council building, university officials said.

Well, that pretty much takes care of buildings where hate-mongering was no doubt being taught to students.

Reliapundit: Too bad the hate-mongering couldn't be destroyed too! ACTUALLY, THIS IS THE BIG PART OF THE STORY:

In a sign of growing Iranian meddling in the Middle East, an Iranian general and six others were seized by Palestinian security officers at a Hamas-controlled university where they ran a bomb factory in the school's chemistry labs, officials said yesterday. At least six people were killed in the shootout at the Islamic University after it was stormed by forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Iran has been known to finance Hamas, but the raid on the Gaza City university offered the first evidence that Iranian officials were taking an active, on-the-ground role in helping the Hamas terrorists.

If we want peace ion the ME then we must neutralize Iran.

PROOF THAT HILLARY'S ATTACK ON "BIG OIL" IS PURE SOCIALIST DEMAGOGUERY

AP:

Chevron Corp. pumped out its third consecutive year of record profits in 2006 despite a fourth-quarter stumble that demonstrated how quickly the oil industry can be tripped up by volatile energy prices largely out of its control.

REPEAT: "... that demonstrated how quickly the oil industry can be tripped up by volatile energy prices largely out of its control."

Why should the state penalize them for doing well? The state makes more - in taxes - as the companies make more; shouldn't the state be happy with that? Are profits illegal or immoral in warped leftist Hillary's mind!? Maybe...

FACT: The oil industry PAYS MORE TAXES then it makes in profits. FACTS (January 2006):

In the past week, quarterly earnings were announced for the three largest integrated oil and gas producers in the nation. The most recent media attention is directed towards the earnings report from Exxon Mobil. (NYSE:XOM) These earnings come on the heels of last week’s announcements by ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) and Chevron (NYSE: CVX) Based on preliminary SEC filings, these companies reported combined annual corporate gross earnings of $108.2 billion, throughout the course of 2005.

It is important to remember that net income reported on financial statements, is the result of subtracting income-based taxes from corporate gross earnings. Before shareholders receive a return on their investment, the government takes its significant share off the top.

During 2005, these three companies paid a combined corporate income tax burden of $44.3 billion on their reported gross earnings. Compared to last year’s combined corporate income taxes of $29.7 billion, their burden for 2005 has increased by 49.2 percent and follows the overall trend of escalating corporate tax collections in the United States. In addition to corporate income taxes, the same companies paid or remitted over $114.5 billion in other taxes in 2005, including franchise, payroll, property, severance and excise taxes.

Just these 3 "BIG OIL" companies PAID $145 BILLION in taxes last year.
THEY ONLY MADE $108 BILLION in gross profits.
THEY ARE TAXED ENOUGH. IF NOT - TOO MUCH, ALREADY!

Lefties like Hillary are a real and present danger to our national security and our national prosperity. THEY MUST BE EXPOSED AND STOPPED.

ACCORDING TO MANY, HUMAN ACTIVITY *MIGHT* CAUSE *SOME* GLOBAL WARMING - AND WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS?

The headline above and the text excerpted below is how "The Australian" (national daily) reported the latest IPCC report.

It rightly notes the huge range in predictions offered and includes some skeptical comments.

The range of predictions is a bit like a fortune-teller saying to someone: "One day you will be either a Prince or a pauper". I doubt that such a totally vague fortune-teller would stay in business long...

"Scientists are now almost certain temperature increases over the last half of the 20th century were caused by human activity, and have warned of ominous further increases up to 4C by 2100.

The world's most significant weather forecast, released last night in Paris, revealed growing confidence in climate modeling that suggests greenhouse gases are reaching dangerous levels and need to be reduced. The first volume of the fourth assessment report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported similar warming projections to its previous report six years ago.

The new report is based on the results of 23 climate models, a three-fold increase from the seven models used in 2001 to deliver best estimates of temperature increases ranging from 1.8C to 4C.

The increased number of models has widened the likely temperature ranges from 1.1C to 6.4C, compared with from 1.4C to 5.8C six years ago. [The 1.1C prediction is at least fairly consistent with the ACTUAL rise of .6C in the 20th century]

Significantly, the report finds man-made release of greenhouse gases is more than 90 per cent likely to have caused most of the observable increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century, about 0.65C.

The range of projected rises in global sea levels is from 0.18m [a mere 7 inches over an entire century] to 0.59m by 2100, driven largely by their expansion from rising water temperatures.

The IPCC also reports greater confidence in the projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including contracting snow cover, shrinking sea ice on the poles and the high likelihood of more frequent hot extremes, heat-waves and heavy rainfall patterns.

The Antarctic ice sheets are predicted to remain too cold for widespread surface melting and are expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall. While the Greenland ice sheet is projected to contribute to sea-level rises after 2100, the report says this will need to be sustained for millenniums to result in its complete elimination and a resulting sea-level rise of about 7m.....

In Melbourne, former head of the weather bureau's National Climate Centre William Kininmonth was among the sceptics. "My feeling is that the report is more alarmist than the evidence suggests," he said. He was particularly critical of the IPCC's interpretation of the data and of the separate computer modelling systems used to predict future climate changes. He added that, along with Canadian climate-change sceptic Ross McKitrick, he had contributed to an "independent summary for policymakers", to be released in London next Monday...."

Source

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

RELIAPUNDIT: UPDATE: maybe you are being too kind to the report summary JR:

AJ STRATA:

[FIRST INDENTED SECTION IS FROM THE OFFICIAL REPORT SUMMARY; STRATA'S ANALYSIS FOLLOWS]

The research shows that between 1993 and 2006, sea levels rose by 3.3mm a year on average, while the 2001 IPCC report had predicted an annual rise of less than 2mm.

This is right at the upper limit of the uncertainty in the IPCC’s predictions due to very little data on how ice on land will respond to warming and how fast it will melt. If the climate follows this upper sea level prediction we will experience an 88cm rise in sea levels by the end of the century - much higher than the 14 - 43cm rise predicted under the IPCC’s most likely climate scenario.

A rise of close to 1m would threaten huge areas of low lying coastal land, as well as major cities such as London, New York and Tokyo.

Some things a scientist would note. First is the 3.3mm vs 2mm. Note that the period in question is from 1993 to 2006, 13 years. But the 2mm prediction was made in 2001 - five years ago. Now I would need to look at the data from the 2001 report, but what is should say (if the reporters are being accurate) is this. Over the 13 year period the the levels rose 42.9mm (let’s just call it 43mm). The earlier prediction was for it to rise 26mm over those 13 years. That earlier prediction was made in 2001 and supposedly would include the previous 8 years at 2mm/year. So one would assume the 2001 level had risen 16mm already (I don’t think it did, BTW).

So what does this mean? Well, for this story to be accurate the sea level would have had to make up some serious ground in the last 5 years and rise 27mm! That would be a rate of 5.4mm a year. Now this sounds absolutely astounding, until you realize we cannot measure sea levels globally to the millimeter level. And even if we did, the amounts we are talking about are inside the error bars. For example, the sea height ‘appears’ to be rising around New Orleans, but the truth is the land and sea bed are sinking. Is this an increase in sea hieght? Yes. Is it due to more water and less ice? No.

. Not surprisingly it operated from 1992-2006. For the propeller heads here is a report on its instrument performance over that time. It was nowhere near the mm level in measuring sea surface height (ssh). I don’t have time to go through the 13 years of reports, but my recollection has been is has not seen a significant change. The fidelity of this mission was in the centimeter range for on measurement. But the overall summary across the globe would be more on the fractions of a meter. So the 2-3.3mm range is a bit of a stretch. No one reports numbers like this without the error bars. Just like with polls, this is a statistically derived number and my guess is the error bars are larger then the number (e.g., +/- 5mm or more).

But let’s look at the last part of the screed to see how we jump from 2-3.3mm (fractions of an inch) to 3 feet, 3 inches in one kick dash.

This is right at the upper limit of the uncertainty in the IPCC’s predictions due to very little data on how ice on land will respond to warming and how fast it will melt. If the climate follows this upper sea level prediction we will experience an 88cm rise in sea levels by the end of the century - much higher than the 14 - 43cm rise predicted under the IPCC’s most likely climate scenario.

A rise of close to 1m would threaten huge areas of low lying coastal land, as well as major cities such as London, New York and Tokyo.

See how they go from mm/year to centimeters per century? And one has to wonder about their math. If I multioly 3.3mm/yr times 84 years (end of the century) I get 27 cm - not 88cm. So their models assume a continuous acceleration, which has not been seen ever. But more to the point is the clear propoganda BS at the end. 88cm is not just under 1 meter. They missed their decimeters (a measurement few use today). 88cm is 88/100th’s of a meter. [fixed the math - never do this is tandem with something else with constant interruptions!] In other words, at 88cm/century it would take 100 years to get to 1 meter in sea surface height.

So in the space of a few paragraphs we go from millimeters to meters, yet that time frame is possibly 100 years, or (given the range od 1-4 times the low end) maybe 400 years. And not a word in the article about these time frames. This is the art of propoganda - and it doesn’t belong in science, or articles on scientific speculation (which is what man-made global warming is). The day the Global Warming crowd can DEFINITIVELY measure how much of the warming is directly attributal to man then we can have a serious discussion.

RELIAPUNDIT: I THINK THE REPORT SUMMARY AND THE REPORT ARE BUNK. THE SCIENTISTS ARE TRYING TO PROVE WHAT THEY ALREADY BELIEVE.

GEO-HISTORY IS REPLETE WITH SIMILAR WARMING ERAS WHEN THERE WERE NO MAN-MADE INPUTS. END OF STORY.

TRAITOR WILLIAM ARKIN

The traitor list is growing long. William Arkin started an uproar this past tuesday with this column, The Troops Also Need to Support the American People. Many were outraged and rightly so and Arkin didn't like the hate mail so he wrote this, The Arrogant and Intolerant Speak Out. He must've gotten some heat from the higher-ups at The Washington Post because he then wrote this, A Note to My Readers on Supporting the Troops.

Arkin is your typical Drive By Media, hard-core, lefty elitist. He just doesn't "get it" when it comes to the troops. Arkin accused his readers of being arrogant but he is the one who displays the arrogance. Flopping Aces gave out his email, warkin@igc.org, for us to share our thoughts about Arkin's columns. A simple email of "You suck!" probably would've sufficed. Instead, I let him know that I thought he was the arrogant one and he had the right to write whatever he wanted but I had the right not to like it.

Also, praise is due to 3 senators (Cornyn, Kyl and Inhofe) for writing an awesome letter to The Washington Post regarding Arkin. Check it out here!

Bridge Over Troubled Water

I like this song - and each of these renditions. Do you have a favorite?

MODERNITY AND ITS ENEMIES: LEFTISM AND JIHADISM

DR SANITY:

The psychopathology of the Islamofascists and their mindless jihadi minions is equaled only by the psychopathology of the international political left and its pervasive denial of reality.

And the psychological synergy between the despots of the Middle East and the intellectual elites of the left is fascinating.

Both are masters of the coercive utopian dream; cynically and deliberately manipulating and oppressing their own populations in order to enhance their power and domination over the masses and to demonstrate their own moral and intellectual superiority.

Like the Saudi Royal Family, the neo-marxist intellectual elites of the left imagine that they will reap the personal and economic benefits of stoking the anger and rage of their "inferiors" and focusing it on convenient scapegoats like America and Israel and all that those countries represent--freedom, democracy, capitalism and progress. They are deeply oblivious--or merely completely indifferent-- to the evil and destructive forces they have unleashed in their quests for absolute power.

RTWT.

DEMOCRAT PARTY USES PRO-HIZBALLAH IMAM FOR CONVOCATION

UN-BE-F**KING-LIEVABLE.

The Dems are truly the party of Dhimmi Carter.

American Jews should take notice.

PAKISTAN TO BUILD FENCE ON BORDER WITH AFGHANISTAN

MUSHARRAF IS BUILDING A SECURITY FENCE.

AND NO ONE WILL PROTEST, AS THEY DO NON-STOP REGARDING ISRAEL'S FENCE WITH GAZA AND THE WEST BANK.

WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD?

COULD IT BE ANTI-SEMITISM?

YES.

WHO GETS MORE AID FROM THE USA, ISRAEL OR ARABS AND MUSLIMS?

Since the Camp David Accords, the USA has given Egypt 50 BILLION dollars in aid.

To SAVE MUSLIMS in Kosovo from genocide at the hands of Milosevic, the socialist and racist president of Serbia, the US bombed Serbia; this cost the US 12 BILLION. Then we spent billions more on a peace-keeping force.

The Gulf War - which we organized in order to save the MUSLIMS OF KUWAIT - cost the US $60 Billion - 54 billion was eventually reimbursed; NET COST to the USA: $6 BILLION.

We kept US troops in Saudi Arabia - to protect them and their oil fields from Saddam - and Iran - (oil fields which Europe depends on much MUCH more than the USA). All totaled, about 20,000 U.S. service personnel... and about 80 U.S. Air Force planes and about 35 U.S. Navy ships. TOTAL COST of protecting Persian Gulf Oil (owned by MUSLIMS and profited on by MUSLIMS) , about $40 BILLION PER YEAR.

Now comes word that Bush is asking for another 250 BILLION to spend in the region in ways that benefit the region's MUSLIMS. Some estimate this war and occupation/transformation will end up costing the USA ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.

So... if we add up all the aid and monies spent to protect Muslims it comes to about 1 TRILLION and 500 MILLION dollars. THAT'S $1,500,000,000,000.

Nearly 4000 US troops have died in battles to defend Muslims - including the Marines who died while peace-keeping in Lebanon in the 1980's. Ten's of thousands have been injured. Millions have risked their lives.

Now: WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL?

Israel has received in the same time-frame about 100 Billion.

And not a single US soldier has died defending Israel.

NOW TELL ME.... do you think this is proves that the Israel Lobby, that nefarious group of Zionists who run the USA and the IMF (and Bilderberg!) runs US foreign policy!?!?

It seems to me that US foreign policy and aid and military does more to protect Muslims and Arabs than it does to help Israel. BUT THAT'S JUST THE FACTS.

So, when anti-Semites like Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter and Cindy Sheehan tell you otherwise - when they parrot or excuse similar comments made by Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden and Nasrallah - you should tell them they're wrong on the facts. The USA has done MORE to aid Muslims and Arabs that Jews and Israelis. 150 times more! And no soldiers have died defending Israel.

And if they don't like it then they can go to hell.

(And to the Leftie NUTS who argue that we overthrew Saddam FOR Israel - at the behest of neo-cons and Likudniks: tell them that even without the costs of the Iraq War, the USA has spent more of it's treasure on Arabs and Muslims than on Israel! And then they can go to hell, too!)

[Facts on aid to Israel HERE.]

HILLARY TARGETS OIL PROFITS

POPINJAY: And you were worried about Hugo Chavez...

Video via YouTube.

PASTORIUS [2:30PM]:

If the Republicans don't get serious and field a candidate with media savvy and a story the Americans want to tell themselves, Hilary Clinton will be the next President of the United States.

Check out the look on her face when she says, "... the highest profits in the history of the world." She has a self-satisfied look of sarcastic bemusement on her face, as if we should all agree with her that a corporation does not have a right to make such profits.

Profits ought to be celebrated. They are evidence of success. It ought to go without saying, but it doesn't for Hilary, that we want corporations to make a healthyprofit. If all corporations failed to make a profit, we would be in a depression.

Watch this video. Honestly, I am astounded.

RELIAPUNDIT ADDS: This BS from Hillary is SOCIALISM pure & simple, and socialism is the road to serfdom. In her heart, Hillary is a socialist; hence this BS and Hillarycare; it's just how she thinks, PERIOD.

If this collectivist BS could ever work, then why did the USSR and China fail so miserably under it, and why have Cuba and Zimbabwe descended into poverty because of it? SO, WHY IS IT STILL A POPULAR POLITICAL PLOY? Because the demagogues who rant about it always make it seem like they're TAKING away from someone else in order to give it to YOU... er um for the "COMMON GOOD." Yeah right.

I'd like to remind everyone that as a percentage of gross sales profits at oil companies WERE LOWER than many other industries, so they are NOT PROFITEERING!

And ask yourself this: WHO KNOWS BETTER HOW TO INVEST IN THE ENERGY SOURCES OF TOMORROW, LIBERAL DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS, OR BUSINESS PEOPLE IN THE ENERGY BUSINESS? In other words: instead of taking away the profits of the energy companies, let them re-invest their profits however they want. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING WHEN IT COMES TO ENERGY. Sheesh!

Lefties like Hillary infuriate me: they want to wreck our economy by raising taxes and appease the enemy. They're bad for national prosperity AND national security. WAKE UP AMERICA!

Now watch Hillary ....

BIDEN SHOULD STEP DOWN FROM HIS COMMITTEE CHAIRMANSHIP

IF TRENT LOTT HAD TO STEP DOWN, THEN SO SHOULD BIDEN.

READ LA SHAWN.

GLOBAL WARMING HAS A NATURAL ANTIDOTE

The sky is falling and it's humanity's fault. At least, according to the eco-nutsies. BUT: When it gets warmer, when there's more CO2 - and less earth under glaciers, more earth where plants can grow - then there's more overall plant growth and more algae growth, too -- and that binds up more CO2. And homeostasis returns, NATURALLY. So, let's just let nature to run its course. Taking draconian measures for something that might or might not be happening due to man-made CO2 would be a HUGE mistake. And it would hurt the poor as much as the wealthy.

PALESTINIANS KILLING PALESTINIANS - WHERE ARE THE HUMAN SHIELDS?

When Israel is forced by events on the ground to take action against the terrorist organizations within the Palestinian territories, "human rights organizations" swarm into the area and battle for space before the cameras of the world's media.

But, when Palestinians kill each other for no good reason at all, well, then, that's another story, or I should say, non-story at far as the world's media is concerned:


(AP) - Fatah fighters stormed a Hamas-affiliated university on Friday morning for the second time, setting buildings on fire and threatening to escalate an already raging battle between the two factions in the Gaza Strip.


SO.... where are all the human shields? (of ISM and the other groups, like even segments of the Presbyterian Church?)

Shouldn't they be in Gaza, prtoecting Hamas from Fatah. or Fatah from Hamas. or any oither Jihadoterrror group from killing other Arabs? If they are against violence then they should be, no!?

Or, are they really only interested in stopping violence when the USA, or Israel, is fighting back with military reprisals!?

YUP: They are not for peace; they are on the other side.

DESPITE TRUCE, GAZA ERUPTS IN INTERNECINE VIOLENCE

WASH POST/AP:

Fatah fighters stormed a Hamas-affiliated university on Friday morning for the second time, setting buildings on fire and threatening to escalate an already raging battle between the two factions in the Gaza Strip.

A new round of heavy fighting throughout Gaza killed 10 people Friday - including a woman and three children - making a total of 17 since Thursday afternoon, as gunmen waged battles in the streets with mortar shells, rockets and heavy machine guns.

IF THEY CANNOT KEEP A TRUCE WITH THEIR BROTHERS, THEN THEY WILL NEVER KEEP ONE WITH ISRAELIS.

IT IS TIME TO ABANDON THE NOTION THAT A PALESTINIAN STATE CAN OR WILL EVER LIVE IN PEACE WITH ITS NEIGHBORS. UNLESS AND UNTIL THE PALESTINIANS ABANDON THEIR ATTACHMENT TO THEIR HIDEOUS IDEOLOGY - JIHADISM, AND WHEN THE INFLUENCE OF IRAN CAN BE SHUT DOWN.

(ACCOMPLISHING THE LATTER WILL HELP THE ACCOMPLISH FORMER.)

A "Right" to Spray Political Graffiti on Government Property?

I'm guessing that if Christians had tried it, the "right" would have disappeared. Maybe some Christians should try it:

"Anti-war protesters were allowed to spray paint on part of the west front steps of the United States Capitol building after police were ordered to break their security line by their leadership, two sources told The Hill. According to the sources, police officers were livid when they were told to fall back by U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Chief Phillip Morse and Deputy Chief Daniel Nichols. "They were the commanders on the scene," one source said, who requested anonymity. "It was disgusting."..

Morse responded to these claims in an e-mail Sunday afternoon explaining that the protesters were seeking confrontation with the police. "While there were minor instances of spray painting of pavement by a splinter group of Anarchists who were seeking a confrontation with the police, their attempts to breach into secure areas and rush the doors of the Capitol were thwarted," Morse said. "The graffiti was easily removed by the dedicated [Architect of the Capitol] staff, some of whom responded on their day off to quickly clean the area.

He added, "It is the USCP's duty and responsibility to protect the Capitol complex, staff and public while allowing the public to exercise their First Amendment rights

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

HOLLYWOOD LIBERALS

There is a reason why Laura Ingraham titled her book "Shut-up and Sing". The message was Barbara Streisand can sing but when it comes to politics she doesn't know what she's talking about so she just needs to shut-up!! I think this applies to most of the people in Hollywood. A lot of them can act/sing thats why they are famous but they don't have a clue when it comes to having a competent opinion on politics or current events. There are exceptions on both sides of the aisle i.e. Dennis Miller on the right and Ben Affleck on the left but for the most part this is true.

I'm a TV/movie person so if I like someone its almost better if I don't know much about their personal, political views. Goldie Hawn and Drew Barrymore are 2 of my favorite actresses but they are both complete airheads. Hawn lobbied for some bill against being cruel to circus elephants (which was absurd in and of itself) and she was asking people to contact their representatives. When asked who her representative was and had she contacted him/her she didn't even know who her representative was, sigh... Drew Barrymore did some ridiculous video tour trying to find out what politicians could do for her (a millionaire) and was upset when even Hillary Clinton wouldn't allow her to follow her around. I had to stop watching because I was so astounded at how shallow she was.

All of this leads to me watching O'Reilly and his people interview some of the Hollywood anti-war protesters. I could not believe how pathetic they were. When Fonda was told that 3 million Vietnamese died when we pulled out and was she worried about the Iraqis if we cut and ran, she had no answer. When Robbins was asked how we should stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons he just made some sarcastic answer about how it wouldn't be by bombing them. To top it off O'Reilly himself interviewed Whoopi Goldberg last night and said she had a right to her opinions but she needed to back them up. Her answer basically was that this was how she FELT and she didn't need to back up her opinions with fact. O'Reilly brought up a great point about how what if your opinion would put people in danger.

It must be nice to be a Hollywood liberal. You have fame so people pretend to care about your opinion so you get to share how you FEEL about life-altering events but you don't have to back them up with any facts.

THE THREE SURGES AND IRAN

There is more than one surge now in the Gulf region:

There's the famous Bush Surge - which AS ANNOUNCED brings our troop levels in Iraq back up to previous high levels, but which might DOUBLE IN SIZE.

There's a surge of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

And there's an on-going build up of naval forces in the Gulf, forces from the US Navy and the GCC - the nations of the Gulf who opposed Saddam and oppose Iran.

ARE THESE THREE SURGES A COINCIDENCE? After all, this is a fairly large build up of forces - a build up of forces which nearly entirely surrounds Iran, just as Iran nears completion of their illegal nuke program, and as they have stepped up their support of jihadoterrorists in Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza?

That's why I think the answer is "no, these three surges are NOT a coincidence."

CHESS ANALOGY: We are getting our pieces on the board positioned for the end-game, when we will checkmate Iran.

IS THE IRAQ ARMY A SHIITE MILITIA?

HOT AIR links to an article by TOM LASSETER and calls it a "RARE MUST READ!"

I read it. FUNNY: it reads just like and article Lasseter wrote in 2005.

Nearly all of Lasseter's reporting from Baghdad has been negative - for years, as if nothing has gone well. Things haven't been perfect, but progress has been made since 2005 - like writing a constitution and an having their first election, and getting their economy back. Kurdistan and the Shia south are largely pacified, too. There is only trouble in Anbar and Baghdad.

NOW... LOOK AT THIS GUY LASSETER: Does he look like someone who would report something if it was going well? NOT TO ME. He looks like an anti-war propagandist - one like Lara Logan and Robert Fisk - some one who wants to bad mouth Bush and the US military.

I'm disappointed that Allahpundit is giving this propagandist so much UMPH. I am glad that Bryan Preston puts it in perspective; (scroll down in the HOT AIR POST for his retort to Lasseter). *******UPDATE: MUST SEE VIDEO.

BOTTOM-LINE: Ultimately, we must neutralize Iran if we want Iraq to be peaceful. Until then, we have only two choices: gut it out, or surrender. I know which side the Leftie doves who control the Democrat Party are on - they will surrender the first chance they get. I HAD HOPED FOLKS LIKE THOSE AT "HOT AIR" COULD HANG IN THERE. The Astute Bloggers sure will.

And we don't think an Iraqi Army with a lot Shias is bad: they are the majority of Iraq, after all! And having an army which reflects the population as a whole is a good thing.

BTW: If the Iraq Army units in BAGHDAD are Shiite Militia dominated, WHY NOT JUST TRANSFER THEM TO ANBAR!? Let them do the dirty work there!

"CEASE-FIRE" DISSOLVES; FOUR DEAD

Now the AP admits it, there was never one to begin with:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gunfights between Hamas and Fatah gunmen erupted across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing four people, wounding several others and effectively destroying a three-day truce that brought a brief period of quiet to the volatile area.

Hamas militants fired mortar shells near Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' residence in Gaza City and nearby street battles sent residents fleeing in terror. Some left their cars idling while they sought shelter. Masked gunmen took up positions on rooftops, while others took cover in alleyways below. Abbas was not in Gaza at the time.

That's a shame. If he were, maybe he'd end up taking the flak he's asking for.

The violence broke out in the central Gaza town of Bureij after Hamas militants hijacked a convoy delivering supplies to the Fatah-allied security forces, security officials said. Security reinforcements were seen flooding into the town.

Soon after, separate gunbattles broke out in Gaza City and in northern Gaza outside a military intelligence post. Security officials said Hamas militants fired a rocket at the post and then sacked it, injuring five members of the security forces. At least two Hamas supporters were wounded, Hamas said.

A Fatah member was kidnapped in northern Gaza during the clashes, and one security officer was wounded, security officials said.

So now they've taken to using rockets against each other, I see. I wouldn't be surprised if grenades come next.

THE INFIDEL BLOGGERS ALLIANCE RADIO SHOW

Last night our show featured Big Mike, The Kid From Brooklyn. He is awesome, a force of nature. This video is a dramatic masterpiece. You will be awed and frightened at the prospect that you are actually about to witness a man's head explode. Watch, as Big Mike gets angrier and angrier, until his entire head turns purple and the veins bulge from his massive, inflamed skull.



Listen to the IBA Radio Show interview with Big Mike. He kicks ass.
THE VIDEO IS NSFW!

Click on the media player below to listen.

GLOBAL WARMING CONFUSION

A central variable -- cloud effects -- in the global warming "models" is admitted to be sheer guesswork and the U.N. "experts" are now NOT predicting melting icecaps and rising sea levels:

Predicting how clouds will form in a warmer world remains a haze in a UN climate report due on Friday, affecting projected rises in temperatures and sea levels, scientists say. The UN climate panel, an authoritative group on global warming numbering 2,500 experts, is set to give its strongest warning yet that human activities are heating the planet and that warming may cause huge damage to nature by 2100.

A draft report has plugged many gaps since a last report in 2001, such as anomalies between temperatures measured by satellites or at the earth's surface or how far tiny, glinting particles of air pollution reflect sunlight back into space. But cloud formation in the 21st century -- hard enough for weather forecasters to predict for tomorrow -- is among the remaining puzzles. "Large uncertainties remain about how clouds might respond to global climate change," according to a draft of the report under review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meeting in Paris. Warmer air can absorb more moisture, meaning more clouds and so more rain and snow in many regions. But much more cloud cover might also brake warming because more sunlight will bounce off the white tops back into space.

The report, the first of four on global climate this year by the IPCC, is due to be issued on Friday and will guide governments trying to work out policies to brake warming. The report says more water vapour will bring more rains and snow to many regions towards the poles, such as northern Europe, Canada, the northeast United States and the Arctic. In winter, precipitation would also increase in northern Asia and the Tibetan plateau, it says.

By contrast, rains are likely to decrease in many subtropical regions. And parts of Africa and Europe around the Mediterranean are likely to get drier, and winter rains would decrease in southwestern Australia, it says. In many regions, downpours will be more intense.

More snows could also offset any thaw of the vast Antarctic ice cap and the smaller cap on Greenland. If both melted over thousands of years world sea levels would be about 65 metres (around 215 ft) higher than today. "In a warmer climate, models suggest that the ice sheets could accumulate more snowfall, tending to lower sea level," the draft says. But it adds that rapid thawing at the fringes has probably outweighed any such trend in recent years. "In the interior of Greenland, the ice has been thickening," said Catherine Myrmehl, of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway, based upon satellite readings.

Source

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

STUNNING GOP AD

Hat tip: The News Buckit

Okay liberals, what is your response to this?

DENNIS KUCINICH AND THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

Hot Air has video of Dennis Kucinich on Hannity & Colmes stumping for a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. What's shocking about this video is that Alan Colmes appears as the voice of reason.

Forget the ideological argument over the Fairness Doctrine for a moment. In response to Kucinich's argument that we need to give a voice to other viewpoints, Colmes made the brilliant point that under the Fairness Doctrine in the 80s, radio stations had to deal with so much bureaucratic red tape to convince the government they were in compliance that after a while they would just give up and stay clear of controversial viewpoints, or change to a music format. The Fairness Doctrine not only silences conservative voices, it can silence liberal voices as well.

More at Jim-Rose.com...

GAZA & SINGAPORE: why is only one prosperous?

The Belmont Club describes the nascent Palestinian State this way:

Statesmen all over the world have paid homage to it. It's leadership has been praised and defended by Jimmy Carter. Charities have been established to support it. Fund raising in its name takes place every day. It has been provided with security training and weaponry by the International Community. If any country deserves to be called the proud creation of enlightened diplomacy and peacemaking, this is is it.

And then he points to Caroline Glick's thoughtful and heart-rending essay, "Welcome to Palestine." This is part of what she has to say:

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.

In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.

In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.

In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.

In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.

Read.The.Whole.Thing.

Wretchard also links to a 2006 essay by Spengler, in the Asia Times, who argues that the Palestinian State has no possible economic basis, other than extortion:

No peace agreement ever will emerge between Israel and the Palestinians, I believe, because economics should have dispersed the Palestinian population more than half a century ago. Mechanization of agriculture, rather than Zionist political aims, began displacing the rural Arab population in the 1930s, I observed in another location. The Zionist agency bought farms from absentee landlords, displaced the fellaheen engaged in near-subsistence agriculture, and made the land profitable and productive. From an economic standpoint, that is, the Palestinians were Okies, but with no California to go to. This led to the 1936-39 Arab uprising against the British Mandate and Jewish settlement.

Rather than disperse gradually like other agrarian populations, the Palestinian Arabs became wards of the United Nations after the 1947-48 War of Independence. Their numbers surged because of better medical care and nutrition than they previously enjoyed as well as child subsidies. That is why the 700,000 Arabs who fled or were driven from Israel grew into the 4 million "refugees" registered with the UN in 2002. I place the term "refugees" in quotation marks because in no other case has the third generation following a population transfer retained official refugee status.

Despite the best intentions of Shimon Peres and the Israeli socialists, it seems delusional to imagine that any combination of light industry and tourism will provide a livelihood for a Palestine with 5 million inhabitants (including the non-refugee West Bank population). The Palestinian entity cannot exist without subsidies, and it cannot extract subsidies from the West or from the Muslim world without constituting a military threat. The existential choices for Palestinians come down to dispersal or perpetual war.

Spengler is always interesting, but I think he is wrong to think that the West Bank and Gaza are not capable of providing a living to millions of people.

In fact, I think that the territory of Gaza alone would make a handsome state if its inhabitants would pull up their socks and devote themselves to building it up. Let's just compare Gaza and Singapore, and see if that isn't the case.

When the predominantly Chinese population of Singapore seceded from the Malaysian Federation in 1963, many voices predicted that the tiny island nation would never make it. How could it?

But the Singaporeans showed that they could make it, becoming one of the great Asian economic tigers. The citizens of Gaza could do the same thing.



Let's use the data in the CIA's World Fact Book to make a comparison.

The land area of The Gaza Strip is 360 square kilometers; Singapore's land area is 683 square kilometers. So Singapore is bigger.

But the population of Singapore ( 4,492,150) is also bigger than the population of Gaza (1,428,757), so that the population density is similar. The median age in Singapore is 37, however, while the median age in Gaza is only 15. That does mean more children, who are less able to contribute economically.

Interestingly enough, the economies of Gaza and Singapore have similar overall structures. Singapore's economy is 34% industrial, and 66% service; Gaza's economy is 8% agricultural, 18% industrial, and 74% service.

Of course, Singapore's economy is larger, with a per capita income of $30,900, while Gaza's per capita income is only $1,500.

That's quite a difference. The unemployment rate in Gaza is 31%, ten times as high as in Singapore, and 80% of Gazans are in poverty.

The population of Singapore exhibits much more ethnic and cultural diversity ( Chinese 76.8%, Malay 13.9%, Indian 7.9%, other 1.4%) than the population of Gaza (Arab 99.4%), but both populations are literate: the literacy rate in Singapore is 92.5% (96.6% male, 88.6% female) whereas in Gaza, the literacy rate is 91.9% (96.3% male, 87.4% female),

And with 349,000 land lines and 1,095,000 cell phones, it seems that everyone in Gaza is connected. In Singapore, the numbers are equivalent, with 1,848,000 land lines and 4,385,000 cell phones.

The big difference seems to be that Singaporeans do not expect the rest of the world to support them, but actually do economic work.

But Gaza has enough population and enough resources to make an economic go of it - if they really wanted to. For example, the $15,000,000 worth of high-tech agricultural greenhouses that Bill Gates paid for, so that the Israelis who built them and ran them would leave them behind when they were expelled from Gaza, would have provided jobs and income -- if the Palestinians had not looted and trashed them as soon as they could.

Gaza also has Mediterranean beaches. With some investment and a lot of sweat equity, they could probably form the basis for a lovely and competitive resort. There are surely archaeological sites that could be developed as tourist attractions. Hotels and other tourist attractions would provide the cash flow needed to make investments in light industry, and a seaport might enable Gaza to serve as a transit hub for, among other things, oil that could be piped in from Arabia.

A desalination plant would enable a wide variety of agricultural businesses to thrive. High profit crops such as cut flowers and exotic fruits would surely be welcomed in the world market.

Light manufacturing might include clothing, books and magazines, electronics, and a wide variety of household goods.

And that's only Gaza. The resources of Judea and Samaria are much greater, particularly in terms of archaeological and historic sites that should be able to attract vast numbers of Christian tourists, in particular.

It is thus a great misfortune for the Arab people of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, that the world has allowed gangsters and terrorists to declare themselves their leaders, spokesmen, and governors. That is what is keeping the Palestinians in poverty.

The Jordanian administration in the West Bank (1948-1967) allowed the economy to stagnate, and did not build a single university. During the pre-Oslo Israeli administration (1967-1990), the per capita income of the West Bank doubled and it was higher than per capita income in Jordan or Egypt (the West Bank had one of the fastest growing economies in the world) -- and several universities were founded.

With an honest, non-gangster, non-terrorist, non-jihadist administration, that would give up its cherished dream of massacring all the Jews in Israel, either the Gaza Strip alone or the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could become a thriving economy.

It's as simple as that.

GERMANY WANTS TO ARREST 13 CIA COUNTER-TERROR AGENTS

BBC: Germany issues CIA arrest orders

Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens. Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent.

Mr Masri says he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan and mistreated there. He says he was released in Albania five months later when the Americans realised they had the wrong man. Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention.

I betchya the Germans make an effort to convict our agents for crimes whose punishment will be worse than the one which they doled out to a CONVICTED 9/11 plotter -- he got all of 15 years for helping to murder 3000 people and doing a trillion dollars of damage.

Lookit: if they got the wrong man then he's entitled to damages - like anyone falsely arrested. BUT ARRESTING CIA AGENTS!?!?! Sheesh: these euroweenies hate us more than the enemy. Which is why they're all going to be muslims or dhimmis in the next 3o years... [ASIDE: it's like they wanna arrest 13 Jack Bauers!]

BBC: JANUARY 2007 IS THE WARMEST JANUARY SINCE JANUARY 1916

BBC:

This January is on course to be the second warmest in the UK since records began and the fifth warmest in central England for 350 years. The average UK-wide temperature so far for the month - which experts say is unlikely to change - is 5.9C (43F).

The average Central England Temperature (CET), which has been measured since 1658, is 7.1C (45F).

The Met Office began recording UK-wide weather in 1914, with the warmest January since that time coming in 1916. During that record month, the average temperature was 6.3C (43F).

The Met Office said temperatures had been pushed up by winds blowing warm air in from the west.

SO... ER UM... 1916 WAS WARMER???? AS WERE FOUR OTHER YEARS OUT OF THE LAST 350 - EVEN THOUGH THOSE YEARS THERE WERE NO SUV'S??? I DON'T GET IT IT??? IF THERE WAS LESS MAN-MADE CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE WAY BACK, THEN WHY WAS IT SO WARM IN 1916, OR EARLIER???? COULD IT BE MAYBE THAT FLUCTUATIONS OF AVERAGE TEMPERATURES IS NORMAL??? YA THINK???

THE HOMEGROWN AL QAEDA TERRORIST

In last week's issue of The New Yorker, there's a whole article about how Adam Gadahn became a homegrown terrorist and is NOW possibly one of the most respected member today of the al Qaeda:

Adam Gadahn, the first American to be charged with treason in more than fifty years, was born in Oregon, grew up in rural California, and converted to Islam at the age of seventeen. He is now twenty-eight. No one who knew him before his religious awakening ever thought that he would join Al Qaeda, and many people who knew him after he did are still perplexed.

And yet, in a short time, Gadahn has become one of Osama bin Laden’s senior operatives. (He is believed to be hiding in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.) He is a member of Al Qaeda’s “media committee,” and his responsibilities are thought to include those of translator, video producer, and cultural interpreter. Primarily, though, Gadahn is a spokesperson, a role he performs with tremendous conviction. He has addressed the United States in five videos, most of which reach a wide audience on the Internet and, in some form or another, have been discussed on the evening news. Last year, shortly before the fifth anniversary of September 11th, Al Qaeda’s leadership featured Gadahn in a video titled “An Invitation to Islam.”

The video began with an introduction from Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s main theoretician, who referred to Gadahn tenderly as a brother and as “a perceptive person who wants to lead his people out of darkness into the light.” Zawahiri implored his Western audience to listen to Gadahn, even to follow his example. Al Qaeda had never before given one of its members, let alone an American, an endorsement so intimate and direct.

And that's probably the single most scary part about him, that not only is he one of their most respected members, he's possibly one of their most devoted-to-Islam members as well. Read the whole thing to see what they have to report about him.

IS SAUDI ARABIA IN CAHOOTS WITH IRAN?

Terrorist funders and dictators with nuclear weapons seem to go hand in hand, don't they? And seeing the House of Saud and Iran working together on something is cause for concern:

Saudi Arabia's willingness to work with Iran likely indicates the growing alarm in the kingdom's leadership over the two simultaneous crises, which have inflamed Sunni-Shiite tensions throughout the Middle East.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has given tepid support to a new American strategy in Iraq but has expressed skepticism over whether it will succeed. Besides sending 21,000 additional American troops to Iraq, the new strategy takes a tougher stance on Iran.

Daniel Freeman says that it looks like the Saudis lied when they said last week that they weren't mediating between American and Iran, and that the only deals they're really doing are with Iran as well. Here's a note on why Iran sees the Saudis as potential allies.

"God" an Obscenity?

The attacks on Christian expression never cease. Only the excuses vary:

A censored version of the film The Queen in which all references to God were taken out has been removed from Qantas flights. The Oscar-nominated film starring Helen Mirren, which had the word "God" removed, was being screened on Qantas long-haul flights until the mistake was picked up. "God" was bleeped out seven times during the film, which centres on the Queen's relationship with Tony Blair in the weeks after the death of Princess Diana.... The company said an overzealous young employee removed "God" after being asked to delete all swear words. Management claimed he failed to distinguish between the religious significance of the term and its use as a profanity.

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

ARLEN SPECTER--TRAITOR #2

I have been accused of being a rabid Bushie among other things for my loyalty to President George W. Bush. He has won my loyalty for his character, integrity, his Christian faith and for standing strong on the war on terror. Consequently, he doesn't usually get much criticism from me.

However, if pressed I do have a few gripes against him and Arlen Specter is one of my biggest. Why did W & Rick Santorum support Arlen Specter in the primary of 2004 over his conservative challenger Pat Toomey? It makes absolutely no sense to me. I have been fed a bunch of excuses but they still don't wash with me. The guy who led W's campaign in KC was someone who knew W from his Texas days. I asked him and he said "the devil you know is better than the one you don't know." That isn't good enough for me.

I think the thought is even though he's a social liberal he will be loyal because Bush supported him in the primary. One big problem, Specter seems to have forgotten that part of the deal. I have a list of Traitor Republicans and McCain is #1 but he is followed closely in the #2 spot by Arlen Specter with Chuck Hagel #3.

All of this leads up to Specter's latest stunt yesterday. I heard about it on the news and was just beside myself. Here is an excerpt of his comments:

A Senate Republican on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush's declaration that "I am the decision-maker" on issues of war.

"I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said during a hearing on Congress' war powers amid an increasingly harsh debate over Iraq war policy. "The decider is a shared and joint responsibility," Specter said.

You've got to wonder if Bush isn't kicking Karl Rove or whoever it was that told him that Specter was the better bet.

WHO SAID THIS???

WHO SAID THIS:

"... we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance..."

Was it (a) Obama, (b) Hillary, (c) Jose Bove, (d) Segolene Royal, (e) Chavez, (f) Mugabe, (g) Kucinich, (h) Teddy Jo Kennedy, (i) John Francois Kerry, (j) Nancy Pelosi, (k) Charles Rangel, (l) Bernie Saunders, or (m) none of the above?

ANSWER: (m) none of the above. This socialist BS was spoken by Adolph Hitler. A National Socialist. More leftist BS from the socialist Hitler HERE. (WARNING: it reads like all leftist BS.) More HERE, too.

[NOTE: The fascio (an ancient Roman symbol) was used by our Founding Fathers to symbolize the fact that our nation was forged out of many states - one (nation) out of many (states). Mussolini coined the term fascism to connote how under his brand of socialism, individuals would have to submerge their individual will to the collective will - of course this "taking"by the state would be for "the common good."

Just exactly what Hillary and the other leftists of the Democrat Party say today.]

BARRY HUSSEIN OBAMA: WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM IRAQ ON MARCH 24, 2008 AT 9:23 AM

IHT:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said that U.S. combat forces should be out of Iraq by spring 2008 ...

Okay ... he didn't specify the exact date and time - just the season and the month, but "3/08" is so effin' ARBITRARY he night as well have picked a date and a time out of his... er um HAT.

Or here's another idea: if he's so damn concerned about our troops - (and NOT their mission), then why not also withdraw troops from all the other places they've been for decades, like South Korea and Japan and Germany while he's at it?

Why is having troops in South Korea, ( a mature democracy we helped create and helped defend for the last FIVE decades), more important that having them in Iraq where they are defending a NASCENT democracy and killing thousands of jihadists who might otherwise be flying into buildings a few blocks from my home!?

I REALLY think that the doves of the Left who control the Democrat party are scum. I said this FOR MONTHS before the last election: that if they had the chance that they would do to the Iraqis what they did to the South Vietnamese and the Contras: ABANDON THEM TO TYRANNY. Well, that's just what's happening. Feingold and Hillary and Obama and Biden and the rest - ALL of the Dems save Joe Lieberman - ALL SCUM planning to cut off funds (or amend the AUMF) while we are in the middle of a damn war! They may or may not have the constitutional power to do so. But they sure as heck shouldn't do it. It will only help the enemy.

But maybe that's what really want, way deep down in their Leftist anti-American anti-Judeo Christian hearts? IS THAT TOO WACKY TO POST?!? Nope. If they REALLY believed in the USA then they would want to continue the fight to defend it - no matter the time or the costs. Like our troops do.

God Bless Our Troops. God scorn our enemies - foreign and domestic - and the ones in Congress.

ARE RUMORS OF CASTRO'S TELEVISION APPEARANCE GREATLY EXAGGERATED?

Fidel Castro is appearing on Cuban Television again. Could this mean he's dead? I know it sounds like a stupid question, but, from what I can glean from this article, just two days ago, Hugo Chavez was giving a seven hour speech in Venezuela. And, who else knew he was going to be in Cuba? And, if he is in Cuba, why can I find no other news reports to corroborate that he is? This article from just ten days ago, has Hugo Chavez saying that Castro is "battling for his life." Something doesn't smell right here. In fact, it smells a little like death.

"THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS" SCOOPS DRUDGE AGAIN: TWO NEW BOOKS DEBUNK MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING

DRUDGE reports today that two scientific books are coming out soon which debunk man-made global warming.

TAB featured each of these two books MONTHS AGO - one HERE and the other HERE.

Just another reason to make TAB part of your daily blog habit.

VOLKSWAGON - THE JIHADI-PROOF CAR

The latest Volkswagon commercial. It's da' bomb.

Australia's Barrier Reef extinct in 20 years: Stupid Greenie claim

Odd that coral reefs have survived all the past warming episodes in Earth's history! Odd that coral thrives most in the WARMER waters of Northern Australia! The reef is thousands of miles long and stretches from barely warm waters in the South to very warm waters in the North. So it clearly can handle large temperature variations. Coral is mainly tropical. It LIKES warmth! What barefaced lies Greenies tell!

The Great Barrier Reef will become functionally extinct in less than 20 years if global warming continues at its current pace, a draft international report warns. A confidential draft of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), obtained by Melbourne's The Age newspaper, says that global warming will cause billions of dollars of damage to coastal areas, key ecosystems and the farming sector without massive greenhouse gas emission cuts.

In a chapter on Australia, the draft IPCC climate impacts report warns that coral bleaching in the Barrier Reef is likely to occur annually by 2030 because of warmer, more acidic seas.

Source

Australian radio station 'vilified' Lebanese Muslims

Truth is no defense in the kangaroo courts ("Tribunals") that have sprung up in many countries to police political correctness:

Leading Sydney broadcaster 2GB was guilty of vilifying Lebanese people when presenter Brian Wilshire said they were inbred and had very low IQs, according to an investigation by the media watchdog.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority found yesterday that a 2005 broadcast on the top talk station was a breach of the Commercial Radio Code of Practice. Wilshire made his remarks in a talkback segment late at night just days after the Cronulla riots.

For some facts on the Muslim inbreeding problem in Australia, see here. See also here on Muslim IQ.

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

EDITORIAL CARTOONS BY DR. SEUSS

Not many people know that besides being a famous author of children's books Dr. Seuss also made editorial cartoons during World War II. There is a whole book with the collection of them entitled, Dr. Seuss Goes to War by Richard H. Minear. Simply put they are awesome and many of them apply to what we are facing today. Dr. Seuss was actually a Democrat but he was one back when Democrats still believed in national security.

My friend found the website that has them. It is a goldmine of great cartoons that would totally apply to the appeasers of today. Check it out! You can click on the different topics and see the cartoons he did for each subject. My only wish is that all the anti-war protesters from this past weekend could see these and be able to "get" how important it is not to appease the enemy.

Dr. Seuss Went to War: A Catalog of Political Cartoons
Info about Dr. Seuss

SEGOLENE STEPS IN IT AGAIN

SHE'S A FREAKIN IDIOT. THANK GOD.

More HERE - -A GREAT ONE!

LEFTIST ECO-NUTSIES ANNOUNCE THAT 1950 WAS ECOLOGICALLY PERFECT, AND DEMAND THAT WE MAKE THE EARTH EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS BACK THEN

Well, they really didn't say it in so many words, but it sure seems like they do feel that way to me.

The eco-nutsies think that back around then or thereabouts that there were the right number of hurricanes each year and the Earth had the right average global temperature and the right number of species and the right number of trees and the right amount of algae and the right amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, etc.

And they seem to argue that any deviation from that "normal" - or even "ideal" - is BAD BAD BAD AND WRONG WRONG AND WRONG AND UNNATURAL UNNATURAL UNNATURAL!

Like today's report in the BBC, that glaciers are melting faster now than lets say in the ... 1950's. SO!?!?!?! QUOTE:

"We will enter conditions which we have not seen in the past 10,000 years, and perhaps conditions which mankind has never experienced"

Sheesh: fuh-reekin glaciers once covered half the northern hemisphere!?!? Things change, and not all change is man-made, and not all is bad.

It is ludicrous to believe that nature can be static, or that homeostasis will always occur within our lifespans. Sometimes things may swing a little uncomfortably. We will just have to adapt.



The Earth is very old, and has gone through many phases with great swings in climate and speciations and extinctions. IT IS NATURAL. Get used to it.

Besides: if the great north and great southern poles get warm, it might very well represent a HUGE INCREASE in arable land and fish stocks. Not to mention be a boon to global shipping. IOW: It'll probably be GOOD thing. Warming phases in the past have been okay: that's when Vinland and Greenland were settled.

MY ADVICE TO ECO-NUTSIES ON CLIMATE CHANGE. Shaddup and get used to it.

AND DON'T THROW AWAY YOUR POLITICALLY INCORRECT FUR COATS...

WE JUST MIGHT BE HEADED FOR ANOTHER LITTLE ICE AGE! Here:

When most of us think about Ice Ages, we imagine a slow transition into a colder climate on long time scales. Indeed, studies of the past million years indicate a repeatable cycle of Earth’s climate going from warm periods (“interglacial”, as we are experiencing now) to glacial conditions.

The period of these shifts are related to changes in the tilt of Earth’s rotational axis (41,000 years), changes in the orientation of Earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun, called the “precession of the equinoxes” (23,000 years), and to changes in the shape (more round or less round) of the elliptical orbit (100,000 years). The theory that orbital shifts caused the waxing and waning of ice ages was first pointed out by James Croll in the 19th Century and developed more fully by Milutin Milankovitch in 1938.

... Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily apparent in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. One sees clear indications of long-term changes discussed above, with CO² and proxy temperature changes associated with the last ice age and its transition into our present interglacial period of warmth. But, in addition, there is a strong chaotic variation of properties with a quasi-period of around 1500 years. We say chaotic because these millennial shifts look like anything but regular oscillations. Rather, they look like rapid, decade-long transitions between cold and warm climates followed by long interludes in one of the two states.

The best known example of these events is the Younger Dryas cooling of about 12,000 years ago, named for arctic wildflower remains identified in northern European sediments. This event began and ended within a decade and for its 1000 year duration the North Atlantic region was about 5°C colder.

... Whether the pathway for propagation of climate change is atmospheric or oceanic, or whether changes in oceanic and terrestrial sequestration of carbon may globalize effects of climate change, as suspected for glacial/inter-glacial climate changes, are open questions. Yet we begin to approach how the paradox mentioned above can happen: Global warming can induce a colder climate for many of us.

... Our main message is not just that, however. It is that global climate is moving in a direction that makes abrupt climate change more probable, that these dynamics lie beyond the capability of many of the models used in IPCC reports, and the consequences of ignoring this may be large. For those of us living around the edge of the N. Atlantic Ocean, we may be planning for climate scenarios of global warming that are opposite to what might actually occur.

BOTTOM-LINE: Climate change is natural. Get used to it. More on global cooling HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.

Free to Defame?

Does the 1st amendment protect the making of untrue defamatory statements? The issue arises from the oppressive actions of a California woman who does not like her neighbours:

"Lemen owns a cottage only feet from the restaurant and led a campaign to restrict it because she said it disrupted the neighborhood. Aric Toll, 41, a chef who bought the restaurant and bar with his parents, filed a defamation lawsuit against Lemen, saying she was ruining his business.

After a trial, a judge ordered Lemen to stop videotaping Toll's customers and barred her from telling anyone that the bar makes sex videos, dabbles in child pornography, distributes illegal drugs, encourages lesbian activities, has mafia links, is a whorehouse or sells tainted food — all false statements, the court said, that Lemen had made. She appealed the order before it could be enforced.

It looks like the case could end up before SCOTUS. I don't think any prior restriction on the woman's speech is warranted. An award against her of large monetary damages should see justice done. Once defamation is forbidden, saying negative things about politicians could end up in court so often that political free speech would effectively be ended.

Though even lawsuits by politicians seeking monetary damages for defamation can be used to have a chilling effect -- which is more or less what has already happened in Singapore. As long as truth is an absolute defence, however, that should be of no great concern. Many jurisdictions, however, require that truth alone is not a sufficient defence in defamation cases. The utterance sometimes also has to be of "public benefit".

Partly because of the 1st Amendment, defamation is much harder to prove in the USA than it is in Britain or Australia, for instance. Gutnick vs. Dow Jones is a case in point for Australia. Some comments from a lawyer about different jurisdictions here and a commentary on the current British situation here. I am an Australian and I like the Australian laws best, oddly enough.

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