Abortion Art

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In a era when depravity is the norm this initial report out of Yale University about Aliza Svarts, an undergrad art major seemed horrific but believable:

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process....

The display of Aliza Shvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Shvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Aliza Shvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

As it turns out, the above was something of a hoax, perpetrated, of course for the loftiest of reasons:

The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body," said Helaine S. Klasky, associate dean and vice president for public affairs in a statement sent to FOXNews.com. "Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials."

"She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art," Klasky wrote.

Before the story was revealed to be a fake it met with considerable outrage in some quarters,

"It’s clearly depraved. I think the poor woman has got some major mental problems," National Right to Life Committee President Wanda Franz said. "She’s a serial killer. This is just a horrible thought."

Several news outlets, including Fox News picked it up and Yale launched an investigation that found the story to be a fraud, but the University was not sufficiently alarmed with Ms. Svarts, her subject matter and her duplicity to prevent her exhibition from going forward. Instead they have fallen back on that oldest of liberal excuses for letting trash corrupt the culture; its art.

The stomach-turning display will be showcased next week — complete with depictions of blood samples and videos purporting to be from the terminated pregnancies.

Critics on campus have said the display sounds like a shock-and-awe look at the highly sensitive issue of abortion and called it a sick stunt to get attention. The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America also condemned the exhibit.

"This 'project' is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage," NARAL's communication director Ted Miller said in a statement.

But Shvarts has said the goal of the project is to encourage debate and discussion about the connection between art and the human body.

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts, whose age was withheld, told Yale's newspaper. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

Of course it isn't, Ms. Svarts.

Yale has actually accomplished what would ordinarily be the impossible. It has found something so vile and reprehensible that it has gotten the National Right To Life Committee and the NARAL Pro-Choice America to agree.

How much you want to be Ms. Svarts gets an A?

Cross-Posted on Liberty Pundit

An update on this madness can be found at Webloggin'

Wizbang is talking about it, too.

Hating The Pope - Bill Maher's Audience

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When Bill Maher launched into his now infamous verbal assault on the Pope the other day you might have wondered where such hate-filled rhetoric would be greeted favorably. The answer can be found by consulting the left-wing media (From the Huffington Post):

JohnFromCensornati See Profile I'm a Fan of JohnFromCensornati
I love it!
The Nazi pope tells us that our nation's promise fell short for blacks and Indians!
It fell kinda short for the boys the catholic church raped, too.

Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 03:43 PM on 04/17/2008
brainlego See Profile I'm a Fan of brainlego
and women, and gays, and some science (holes in condoms)

Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 03:58 PM on 04/17/2008
thatsitfortheotherone See Profile I'm a Fan of thatsitfortheotherone
Yep.

Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 03:54 PM on 04/17/2008
underdog See Profile I'm a Fan of underdog
The pied Poper
did scuffle on by
through throngs of needy believers
attracted to lies

Or from The Guardian:

I hate the Pope. Wholeheartedly, gut-wrenchingly hate him. I hate him for sitting around in his white frock, luxuriating in the infinite wealth of the Vatican while casually denying condoms to the dying of Africa. I hate him for condemning the poorest of women to early death by childbirth. And I pretty much hate, by extension, the Roman Catholics whose devotion permits his tyranny to thrive.
While we're at it, I hate the people in the sinister church at the end of my street...

Or from the RichardDawkins.net:

Both Joseph Ratzinger and the Islamists calling for his decapitation believe they have direct access to an invisible supernatural being called "God". Both believe this God wills them to make decisions that have led to the horrific deaths of tens of thousands of people. Both believe this God finds secular democratic Europe disgusting, an atheistic bog dominated by a "culture of death." Both hate feminism and gay rights and sexual freedom. Both believe they are infallible, and that the billions who refuse to follow them are incurring the wrath of the Creator of the Universe. The only real difference is the name they give to this creature, and a few added textual tweaks on either side.

The tragedy is that when there are so many good reasons to hate Joseph Ratzinger...

The ideology that says that that every culture must be "honored" and respected, that no culture is better than any other has found a culture it can hate, that it can mock, that it can revile. It is the culture of Christianity, of Catholicism. The Left really has no choice but to hate the Pope. He speaks of the importance of truth and the evils of relativism. His faith is a challenge to them. And when challenged their reaction is to hate. It is their nature. They can't help themselves.

Say hello to Bill Maher's audience.

Cross-Posted to Liberty Pundit

Of Fatheads and Fishermen

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While Pope Benedict XVI was talking about the vacuity of moral relativism today, Hugh Hefner hanger-on and unfunny "comic" Bill Maher was giving an example of what the Holy Father was talking about.

Maher's TV show, Real Time appears on HBO. Many people are calling and cancelling their subscriptions until HBO takes Maher off the air. If you have HBO, why don't you?

Bruce, Michelle, Jeremiah And Their Discontents

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I like Bruce Springsteen's music; always have. Born to Run, Thunder Road, Pink Cadillac and all the rest are great songs with interesting lyrics, catchy hooks and a way of sticking in your head. And Bruce is a helluva performer, putting on shows of legendary length and power. But I really don't give a damn who Bruce thinks should be President.

On Wednesday he announced in a letter that he was supporting Barack Obama for President saying that,

"He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next president," the letter said. "He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where '...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.' "

Well. What is he talking about? Where exactly in Obama's shallow mantra of "hope" and "change" does Springsteen see "reflectiveness"? Barack Obama is the most liberal Senator in the Senate, with policies that were old when Ted Kennedy was thin. Where does Bruce see nuance?

In all the time I've followed his career I can't remember a single instance where Springsteen ever encountered a conservative. Everything he says of his political philosophy is couched in words that could have been said by Woody Guthrie. His songs, while filled with force and yearning are also filled with images of an America stuck in a romanticized depression-era angst. His lyrics are throw-back lyrics where the union-man slaves along gettin' no break, and goes home to his wife whose hopes are gone and whose kids 'er hungry an' hurtin'. While there is certainly hardship in the US this is a country where the average poor person has cable and air conditioning. Bruce doesn't seem like he he knows he's living in an America with the Internet, and Medicaid and welfare and social programs on social programs let along 401k's and IPods.

And that is the problem with other Obama friends and family, too. Michelle Obama the other day appeared on The Colbert's Report.Here she was, a Princeton and Harvard graduate, a lawyer, a wealthy woman and the wife of the man who may well (God help us) be the next President of the US. And she was angry, dropping into ungrammatical language to whine about her upbringing which while not John Kerry wealthy was still orders of magnitude ahead of the average income level of much of the rest of the world. But then Michelle Obama always seems to be angry. Instead of seeing the miracle of a nation like the US where the descendant of slaves could accomplish all that she has, she acts like she is still suffering the indignities of the Jim Crowe days. In her head she lives in another era and can't see that America has made good and wonderful changes.

And not only is Barack Obama's wife lost in the past so is his pastor. Jeremiah Wright's ranting at an America that no longer exists (and in some cases never existed) has been documented extensively enough that there is no need to show it again. But he too can't seem to recognize that we are not living in some fictionalized America-of-the-past where FDR was the George W. Bush of the 1940s, supposedly knowing about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance.

Barack's chants of hope and change start to ring hollow when it becomes obvious that so many of those closest to him and those who are attracted to him don't seem able to see that things have changed already. How can Obama bring "change" (and we won't even get into the question of what kind of change he wants to bring) when his world seems so full of those he don't know what it looks like when it is staring them in the face?

Bruce may have been Born To Run but maybe its time he stopped running and looked around him. He might be surprised to see what year he's in.

Welcome Words

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On a beautiful sunny day on the South Lawn of the White House today President Bush and a crowd of 13,000 met Pope Benedict XVI (on what is also his 81st birthday) in the largest gathering of the the Bush presidency. With flags flying, the Marine Band playing and a 21 gun salute as background the President and the Pope delivered remarks that were remarkable for their affirmations of faith, truth and life and for their rejection of the moral relativism that pervades modern society.

I can't begin to improve on their words or expand on them in any meaningful way so I present them here in their entirety without further commentary.

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BUSH
AND HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI
IN ARRIVAL CEREMONY
South Lawn
10:38 A.M. EDT

PRESIDENT BUSH: Holy Father, Laura and I are privileged to have you here at the White House. We welcome you with the ancient words commended by Saint Augustine: "Pax Tecum." Peace be with you.

You've chosen to visit America on your birthday. Well, birthdays are traditionally spent with close friends, so our entire nation is moved and honored that you've decided to share this special day with us. We wish you much health and happiness — today and for many years to come. (Applause.)

This is your first trip to the United States since you ascended to the Chair of Saint Peter. You will visit two of our greatest cities and meet countless Americans, including many who have traveled from across the country to see with you and to share in the joy of this visit. Here in America you'll find a nation of prayer. Each day millions of our citizens approach our Maker on bended knee, seeking His grace and giving thanks for the many blessings He bestows upon us. Millions of Americans have been praying for your visit, and millions look forward to praying with you this week.

Here in America you'll find a nation of compassion. Americans believe that the measure of a free society is how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us. So each day citizens across America answer the universal call to feed the hungry and comfort the sick and care for the infirm. Each day across the world the United States is working to eradicate disease, alleviate poverty, promote peace and bring the light of hope to places still mired in the darkness of tyranny and despair.

Here in America you'll find a nation that welcomes the role of faith in the public square. When our Founders declared our nation's independence, they rested their case on an appeal to the "laws of nature, and of nature's God." We believe in religious liberty. We also believe that a love for freedom and a common moral law are written into every human heart, and that these constitute the firm foundation on which any successful free society must be built.

Here in America, you'll find a nation that is fully modern, yet guided by ancient and eternal truths. The United States is the most innovative, creative and dynamic country on earth — it is also among the most religious. In our nation, faith and reason coexist in harmony. This is one of our country's greatest strengths, and one of the reasons that our land remains a beacon of hope and opportunity for millions across the world.

Most of all, Holy Father, you will find in America people whose hearts are open to your message of hope. And America and the world need this message. In a world where some invoke the name of God to justify acts of terror and murder and hate, we need your message that "God is love." And embracing this love is the surest way to save men from "falling prey to the teaching of fanaticism and terrorism."

In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred, and that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved" — (applause) — and your message that "each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary."

In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this "dictatorship of relativism," and embrace a culture of justice and truth. (Applause.)

In a world where some see freedom as simply the right to do as they wish, we need your message that true liberty requires us to live our freedom not just for ourselves, but "in a spirit of mutual support."

Holy Father, thank you for making this journey to America. Our nation welcomes you. We appreciate the example you set for the world, and we ask that you always keep us in your prayers. (Applause.)

POPE BENEDICT XVI: Mr. President, thank you for your gracious words of welcome on behalf of the people of the United States of America. I deeply appreciate your invitation to visit this great country. My visit coincides with an important moment in the life of the Catholic community in America: the celebration of the 200th anniversary of elevation of the country's first Diocese — Baltimore — to a metropolitan Archdiocese and the establishment of the Sees of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Louisville.

Yet I am happy to be here as a guest of all Americans. I come as a friend, a preacher of the Gospel, and one with great respect for this vast pluralistic society. America's Catholics have made, and continue to make, an excellent contribution to the life of their country. As I begin my visit, I trust that my presence will be a source of renewal and hope for the Church in the United States, and strengthen the resolve of Catholics to contribute ever more responsibly to the life of this nation, of which they are proud to be citizens.

From the dawn of the Republic, America's quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator. The framers of this nation's founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature's God.

The course of American history demonstrates the difficulties, the struggles, and the great intellectual and moral resolve which were demanded to shape a society which faithfully embodied these noble principles. In that process, which forged the soul of the nation, religious beliefs were a constant inspiration and driving force, as for example in the struggle against slavery and in the civil rights movement. In our time, too, particularly in moments of crisis, Americans continue to find their strength in a commitment to this patrimony of shared ideas and aspirations.

In the next few days, I look forward to meeting not only with America's Catholic community, but with other Christian communities and representatives of the many religious traditions present in this country. Historically, not only Catholics, but all believers have found here the freedom to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, while at the same time being accepted as part of a commonwealth in which each individual group can make its voice heard.

As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find in their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more human and free society.

Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. Americans know this from experience — almost every town in this country has its monuments honoring those who sacrificed their lives in defense of freedom, both at home and abroad. The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good, and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate.

In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in Eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows time and again that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation," and a democracy without values can lose its very soul. Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity.

The Church, for her part, wishes to contribute to building a world ever more worthy of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God. She is convinced that faith sheds new light on all things, and that the Gospel reveals the noble vocation and sublime destiny of every man and woman. Faith also gives us the strength to respond to our high calling and to hope that inspires us to work for an ever more just and fraternal society. Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth and bring the wisdom born of firm moral principle to decisions affecting the life and future of the nation.

For well over a century, the United States of America has played an important role in the international community. On Friday, God willing, I will have the honor of addressing the United Nations organization, where I hope to encourage the efforts underway to make that institution an ever more effective voice for the legitimate aspirations of all the world's peoples.

On this, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the need for global solidarity is as urgent as ever, if all people are to live in a way worthy of their dignity — as brothers and sisters dwelling in the same house and around that table which God's bounty has set for all his children. America has traditionally shown herself generous in meeting immediate human needs, fostering development and offering relief to the victims of natural catastrophes. I am confident that this concern for the greater human family will continue to find expression in support for the patient efforts of international diplomacy to resolve conflicts and promote progress. In this way, coming generations will be able to live in a world where truth, freedom and justice can flourish — a world where the God-given dignity and the rights of every man, women and child are cherished, protected and effectively advanced.

Mr. President, dear friends, as I begin my visit to the United States, I express once more my gratitude for your invitation, my joy to be in your midst, and my fervent prayers that Almighty God will confirm this nation and its people in the ways of justice, prosperity and peace. God bless America. (Applause.)

First Stuart Smalley, Now This?

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No. God, no.

Stop Jimmy Carter

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Ahmed Yousuf
by krs601
"We hope that Mr. Carter's visit will help to change the climate and push the world community to engage with Hamas," Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas' top political adviser in the Gaza Strip, said In an interview with Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com and author of 'Schmoozing with Terrorists'.


In a previous post we pointed out how Jimmy Carter's meeting with leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas was just the latest example of both his famously bad judgement and his anti-semitism. The enthusiasm expressed by the Hamas official above should prove the point for anyone who might have doubted. Though advised not to go by the administration and even members of his own party, Carter, whose ego is apparently as large as is incompetence is giving aid and lending credibility to Israel's and America's enemies. At the very least he should be prevented from indulging in his mad desire for personal diplomacy. Enough is enough.

China Stinks

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The environmental movement loves to pound the US for not signing the Kyoto Protocol and big business for putting profits ahead of a clean environment. Despite what various environmental groups and the msm would have you believe, in many important ways the environment in the US is actually improving. But China's hosting of this year's Olympics is taking the spotlight away from the US and calling attention to China's environmental problems. And they are massive.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

BEIJING has unveiled drastic pollution measures for the Olympic Games, including a two-month freeze on all construction, in an admission that despite spending about $18.4 billion in the past decade to reduce smog, the capital's air quality remains a formidable challenge.

It comes as a University of California report to be published next month suggests that China's carbon dioxide emissions have been underestimated and China probably overtook the US as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2006-07, the BBC has reported.

All construction in Beijing must stop from July 20 to September 20 when both the Olympic and Paralympic Games will have finished. The unprecedented shutdown will leave Beijing eerily quiet.

Although all Olympic venues are virtually completed, other key projects such as the fast rail link between the new international airport and downtown, plus hundreds of other private and public building and infrastructure projects are still under way.

Another 19 heavy polluting industries, including steel and petrochemical plants, will have to slash emissions by a further 30 per cent or risk total closure. All quarrying, cement production, outdoor spray painting and other outdoor use of toxic solvents will be banned. Petrol stations, oil and gas tankers and oil depots that have not finished installing equipment to reduce petrol fumes will also be shut.

The situation is so extreme that it threatens to affect athlete's performances.

Some Olympic teams, including the US and Britain, have developed masks for their athletes to use. Others, including Australia, are conducting their pre-Games practice outside China and planning to fly to Beijing at the last possible moment to minimise exposure.

While the current focus on China's environmental disaster revolves around the Olympics and Beijing, the problem is, of course far greater and goes well beyond Beijing. According to The Daily Green:

..China will have increased its CO2 output by 600 million metric tons in the first decade of the 21st Century. That is more than five-times as much carbon as participating nations have pledged to cut under the Kyoto Protocol. And several nations are not on pace to meet their targets.

The analysis lends credence to the Bush Administration's contention that any international framework for reducing pollution must include China and other rapidly developing nations.

The fact is that capitalist countries are far better stewards of the environment than are communist countries and developing nations as well. Capitalism provides incentives to keeping the environment clean as cleanliness increases efficiency and more efficient systems are more profitable systems.

Despite the Left's obsession with capitalist evils, their statist solutions simply don't work. Anybody who doesn't believe this can don a face mask and head over to Beijing to ask the Olympic athletes. They'll be the folks with the face masks and the medals.

The Pope in America

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The arrival today of Pope Benedict XVI is a welcome event. It is always interesting to watch the reaction of the msm, which loves the pomp and ceremony that invariably accompanies Papal visits but is also hostile to the Pontiff, forever looking for weakness in the church and seeming to revel in the difficulties that it faces.

The press is especially conflicted with this Pope, who has expressed disagreement with the Iraq War, which they are sure to mention with joyous regularity. But George Weigel, one of the the most astute observers of the Holy See has insights that the media is likely to either miss or ignore:

In my own conversations with senior Vatican officials over the past 18 months, I have been struck by the fact that the debates of 2002-2003 are over. That there was serious disagreement between the U.S. government and the Holy See prior to the invasion of Iraq is, and was, obvious. Today, however, the page has been turned, and despite what Winters’s Vatican leakers may be telling him, the people who make the decisions tell me, as they have told the Bush administration, that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster for both Iraq and the entire Middle East.

Pope Benedict will likely urge President Bush to demand that the Iraqi government be more assertive in defending the Christian minority population of Iraq; but that means more and stronger American involvement in the evolving politics of Iraq, not the end of an “occupation.” As for a papal “denunciation” at the U.N., Winters and his friends among Catholic Democrats are likely to be disappointed; Benedict XVI is far too shrewd to give fall campaign sound-bites to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (either of whose victory in November would cause nightmares for the Holy See at the U.N. and other international agencies).

There is much for conservatives to like in Benedict, a man who has little use for moral relativism and is fully aware of the dangers a radicalized Islam presents.

Nor would a pope who thought in Eurocrat terms about world politics have appointed as his “foreign minister” Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, a man who combines extensive experience of Islamist aggression (he was formerly papal nuncio in Khartoum) with a fondness for the United States and a clear-eyed view of the weaknesses and corruptions of the present U.N. (where he served for three years). Furthermore, Benedict XVI and Archbishop Mamberti are both fully aware that the “dictatorship of relativism” of which then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned just prior to his election as pope is not only being imposed across Europe by radically secularist governments like the Zapatero regime in Spain; it is also being imposed by the E.U. bureaucracy, the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European human rights courts. Rather than the pope and Mamberti being driven by the “Brussels-think” in the permanent Vatican bureaucracy, it is far more likely that this pontificate will continue to challenge those default positions; it may even start the process by which the defaults are decisively changed.

Benedict has had large shoes to fill, following as he has the unusually popular and successful Pontificate of John Paul II. Benedict XVI may not have the personal dynamism of his extraordinary predecessor but Americans would do well to get to know him better as his intellect, natural conservatism and devotion to God are resources that America would be wise to tap.

Cross-Posted At Liberty Pundit

High Noon In The West

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The invaluable Daniel Pipes has written an article on what he sees as the three most likely possible futures for Europe:

Europe may constitute a mere 7 per cent of the world's landmass but for 500 years, 1450-1950, for good and ill, it was the global engine of change.

How it develops in the future will affect all humanity, especially daughter countries such as Australia that still retain close and important ties to the old continent. I foresee potentially one of three paths for Europe: Muslims dominating, Muslims rejected or harmonious integration.

The first scenario, Muslims dominating, is most famously articulated in Mark Steyn's America Alone. In this possible future, Europe does not wake from its current cultural and demographic stupor. Native Europeans are currently at nowhere near population replacement levels. Liberal guilt, coupled with Socialist economics and moral relativism (highlighted by a rejection of religion) has lulled the continent into a suicidal stupor from which it doesn't wake. Islam, though lacking in the inner dynamism of Western civilization retains its religious fervor coupled with a resentment of the West and a fecundity that leads it to swamping the continent.

The second scenario, Muslims rejected, posits a future in which Europe , at the 11th hour, rouses itself from its stupor and pushes back against the Muslim influx. The result is likely to be bloody and difficult, requiring not just the likely expulsion of large numbers of Muslims but a reconfiguration of dead-end European Socialist economies and a muscular reclamation of European culture.

The final scenario is favored by "most politicians, journalists, and academics, but it has little basis in fact." It basically posits a future in which the idea of either the old style conception of the "melting pot" or the current in-vogue multicultural idea takes hold and Muslims and Europeans mingle happily, happily reveling in the gorgeous mosaic Jesse Jackson likes to bleat about.

Looking around at the current social landscape of Europe it is depressingly easy to assume that the first scenario in which Muslims eventually become ascendant while shunting aside Western culture in the process, is even now taking place. Pipes however, while hardly being an optimist in this matter is a realist first and makes this final point:

Forecasting is difficult because the crisis has not yet struck. But it may not be far off. Within a decade, perhaps, the continent's evolution will become clear as the Europe-Muslim relationship takes shape.

The unprecedented nature of Europe's situation also renders a forecast exceedingly difficult. Never in history has a civilisation peaceably dissolved, nor has a people risen to reclaim its patrimony. Europe's unique circumstances make the outcome difficult to comprehend, tempting to overlook and virtually impossible to predict. With Europe, we all enter into terra incognita.

Whatever the outcome, it will have tremendous ramifications for the US, either pointing the way to our own future or acting as a cautionary tale that might cause us to develop strategies that might yet save the ideals of the West, the best of which have have yet to be equalled by any other culture.

Cross-Posted at Liberty Pundit

Aye, Matey - UK Says Pirates Welcome

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From Britain comes news of its continuing mad dash to oblivion as reported by this story:

THE Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights.

Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.

What makes this story particularly interesting is the reasons for this new concern for the civil rights of these scurvy dogs:

The Foreign Office has advised that pirates sent back to Somalia could have their human rights breached because, under Islamic law, they face beheading for murder or having a hand chopped off for theft.

Before commenting further it is important to point out that piracy isn't really indulged in by such charming folks as Johhny Depp's Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. In reality they tend to be a bit less whimsical:

In 2005 there were almost 40 attacks by pirates and 16 vessels were hijacked and held for ransom. Employing high-tech weaponry, they kill, steal and hold ships’ crews to ransom. This year alone pirates killed three people near the Philippines.

So the Brits are fearful of letting these vicious murderers get tried by Islamic courts because the possible punishment is so severe. What makes this more than a little ironic is the fact the Britain has, of late, shown some degree of receptivity to the idea of allowing Islamic Sharia' law gain a foothold in Britain, in some cases supplanting British law (as reported in this post). The apparent thinking here is that Islamic law is too terrible to subject sea-faring, often foreign criminals to but British citizens on terra firma should be accepting enough of multiculturalism and diversity that that same Sharia' law should be acceptable to them.

Following last year's humiliating capture of 15 Royal Navy sailors by Iran, this is just the latest example of the Navy's participation in the Long Sundown of the British Empire. Hail Britannia, indeed.

The Naked Democrat

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"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."


Barack Obama is touted as being the most articulate of the candidates running for President this year and these comments, which have caused such a firestorm over the past few days prove that sometimes such powers of articulation can be dangerous. Obama's words articulated how the Left really sees the American people. His mistake here was that he actually said what the Democratic party believes to be the truth.

Democrats believe in the primacy of the elites in government whose job it is to order the world for the rest of us. Statists like Obama and his devotees on the Left believe that people need government to safely organize their daily lives. Dem's believe that people cannot be trusted to choose their own health care, they cannot be trusted to buckle the seat belts in their cars and should be forced to do so for their own good by government. People need government to tell them what food to eat, how to be sensitive, how to raise their children. Obama's comments are completely in keeping with that line of thought as they highlight what happens when government isn't leading properly and people are left to their own devices; they "...cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." In other words without a Barack Obama leading them and seeing to it that they all have jobs people will devolve into a superstitious, hate-filled mob.


Almost more remarkable than Obama's loose tongue has to be Hillary Clinton's extreme cynicism in attacking him for it.

"Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and out of touch," she said. "they are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York."

Her comments are, of course true but Clinton's entire career, her writings and her policies show her to be every bit the out of touch elitist she accuses Obama of being. The thesis of It Takes a Village, her bestselling book is that people are incapable of ordering their lives as individuals; they need the community (read: government) to help them. Part of Hillary's longstanding devotion to children's issues is her desire to view children as independent of their parents, once decrying the idea that "families are private, non-political units whose interests subsume those of children." Her attack on Obama, which she is trying to portray as principled outrage is, in fact nothing more that the most hypocritical of political calculations.


But in this episode lies the seed of good news for Republicans if they can recognize it and are smart enough to use it to their advantage. The kind of elitism and disdain that Obama's comments reveal is a subtext of all of liberal ideology. Although it is too early to gauge the political impact of his comments it is likely that they will damage Obama in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. People don't like to be looked down on. John McCain and the Republican party need to hold the Democrats' feet to the fire by exposing the condescension that is at the heart of the whole liberal agenda. Not only would it be smart political strategy, it has the nice benefit of being true. Now that is the kind of "straight talk" that might really give people hope for change.

Saving The Earth One Olympic Torch At A Time

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Forget the whole Tibet/China thing; there a real reason to put out the Olympic torch: to save the Earth.

So when the torch isn't being marched through city streets and/or extinguished by protesters, how is it getting around? You guessed it, by plane -- an Air China A330 custom painted with the Olympic logo and color scheme. The A330 burns 5.4 gallons of fuel per mile. That translates into 462,400 gallons for the entire trip. With Earthlab estimating that every gallon of jet fuel burned produces 23.88 pounds of CO2, the Olympic Torch Relay is adding about 11 million pounds of carbon to the atmosphere. That's 5,500 tons.


London has a plan to ensure that the 2012 torch relay ends up carbon neutral, so we figured that Beijing must have one too, right? Sally Lu, the frazzled Olympic media relations rep that we reached in Beijing, says that if there is a plan to neutralize the torch-carrying jet's carbon emissions, she hasn't heard about it. But she thinks there is one. Probably.

For all our children's sake, let us hope there is!

Cross-Posted at Liberty Pundit

That's What Friends Are For

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''Never before has a president done so much, so fast, to undermine our relations with other nations...As a nation, we must do more than show our strength. We must show our greatness.'' - Nancy Pelosi

The Democrats are forever bemoaning the poor relations the US supposedly has with other nations under George W. Bush, as the quote above shows. We now have a pretty good idea of who the Democrats would like to buddy up to and who they're happy to kick to the curb.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives will effectively kill a free trade deal with Colombia by voting later on Thursday to delay action on it indefinitely, a White House spokeswoman said.

"We believe that if the Democrats decide to hold this vote today they are effectively killing the Colombia free trade agreement and there are lots of consequences that go along with that," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

President George W. Bush sent the Colombia free trade agreement to Congress on Tuesday in an attempt to force a vote on it before the end of the year.

The Democrats are saying that their objection is based on the amount of violence levelled at unionists in Columbia but this claim is shown to be hollow in light of the fact that such deaths have actually decreased 88% from 2002-2007. The real reason for their lack of support is the fact that US unions don't like the bill and the Dems can hear their masters' voice. The ramifications of dissing Columbia, a true US ally in an area of the world we need to be promoting free market democracies are that communist, America -hater Hugo Chavez is strengthened and the US's credibility is weakened.

Now we know who the Dems want for friends:

And who they don't:











Cross-Posted at Liberty Pundit

Goodbye, Norma Jean

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According to The Politico, at a Radio City rally for Hillary, Sir Elton John had this to say,

"I never cease to be amazed at the misogynist attitude of some of the people in this country," "I say to hell with them."

Hey, at least its not "God Damn America".

It's Miller Time

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Jimmy Carter: Bad President, Bad Man

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It is, of course undeniable that Jimmy Carter is a legend. Few Presidents have failed so monumentally as he. He brought us the first of the modern Islamofascist regimes when he ushered in the Ayotollah Khomeini in Iran. He devestated the American economy with faux oil shortages, he made accusations of American malaise (when the only malaise the American people felt was caused by his being in office), he brought 12% rate of inflation, 20% interest rates, a hostage crisis and on and on and on.

His post-Presidency has been equally illustrious and author Steven F. Hayward documented all the damage Carter has done both during and after his term in office in "The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry"

When it comes to the belligerence of North Korea, Carter's past involvement has done considerable damage. In the early 1990s, Carter traveled to North Korea on another of his "peacekeeping missions" and brokered a deal with dictator Kim Il Sung. He did so without the blessing of the Clinton administration, although, at the behest of then-Vice President Al Gore, President Clinton later agreed to adopt Carter's deal. The United States ended up providing aid, oil and, incredibly, material for building light-water nuclear reactors to the North Koreans in exchange for their abandoning their nuclear weapons program. The problem is they didn't abandon their nuclear weapons program; they just said they did. And in 2002, they admitted as much. Still, to this day, Carter claims that his approach was a success and that it was President Bush's inclusion of North Korea in the famous "axis of evil" speech that led to current leader Kim Jong Il's hostility toward America.

The fruits of Carter's history with Iran are even more rotten. Carter's abandonment of the shah in 1977-78 helped lead to the Islamic revolution (and the murder or imprisonment of many of the Iranian leftists who had supported overthrowing the shah), the emboldening of the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan and the rise of radical Islam worldwide. His botched approach to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 inspired Islamic terrorists all over the world, culminating in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The threat of nuclear war emanating from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can be seen as another offshoot of Carter's ineffective policies. Predictably, Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski, his former national security adviser, are now pushing for "direct talks" with Iran. But considering the abject failure of U.N.-brokered negotiations (supported by the Bush administration) thus far, it is difficult to imagine how U.S.-led negotiations would fare any better.

Wherever U.S. interests have been imperiled and a temporary "peace" could be bought at the expense of long-term security, Carter has always been on board. The late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up when he said of Carter in 1980, "Unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, he has essentially adopted our enemies' view of the world."

Not satisfied with this level of disgraceful behavior Carter has pushed on to new heights of awfulness. His anti-semitism, which hitherto managed to elude most of the mainstream media during his Presidency (His Secretary of State once famously said that if Carter had had a second term, he would have "sold Israel down the river." ) has lately taken center stage. His recent book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid raised such a furor with what many considered to be its blatant anti-Semitism that fourteen members of his own Carter Center resigned in protest.

So it is not surprising that today this news comes:

JERUSALEM – The Hamas terrorist organization has confirmed to WND plans are in the works for former President Jimmy Carter to meet the chief of Hamas on a trip this month to Syria.

Sources in the Gaza Strip office of Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed prime minister of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, confirmed Hamas is in talks with Carter's representatives about setting up a meeting during his trip, scheduled for later this month.

The Hamas sources said no concrete date has been set but that Carter has expressed interest in meeting Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, who resides in Syria.

In a statement to Fox News today, Carter's press secretary, Deanna Congileo, did not deny the former president was slated to meet Meshaal.

"President Carter is planning a trip to the Mideast next week; however, we are still confirming details of the trip and will issue a press release by the end of this week," Congileo said. "I cannot confirm any specific meetings at this point in time."

Earlier, Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas' top political adviser in the Gaza Strip, claimed to WND he wasn't aware of any Carter-Meshaal meeting.

"I don't know anything about any such meeting," said Yousuf, who advises Haniyeh.

Israeli security officials say Meshaal is responsible for coordinating all elements of Hamas and for calling for many of its major terror attacks.

Hamas is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization. The group is responsible for scores of deadly suicide bombings, and thousands of shooting attacks and rocket firings against civilian population centers.

Just today, Hamas-allied gunmen took part in the deadly shooting of two Israeli civilians near the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

FoxNews.com quoted a State Department spokesman in Washington stating the U.S. government is concerned about Carter's unsanctioned trip to Syria, which the Bush administration has been trying to isolate.

"The State Department has expressed our concerns and advised President Carter that past engagement with the Syrian regime has not produced positive results," the spokesman said.

If the meeting with Hamas takes place, Carter would be the highest-level American to meet with Hamas.

The evidence is in. The jury is back. The verdict is certain: Jimmy Carter wasn't just a bad President. He's a bad man.

Climate Change Crazy - Not What You Think

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The headline reads, Climate change leads to psychiatric illness: WHO so naturally I thought it was going to be an article about Al Gore and how society is ready to finally give him and his "We'll all be cannibals" minions the psychiatric care they all so desperately need. But nope, I should have known better. Instead of challenging Al's sanity the article is about yet another monstrous ramification of global warming.

New Delhi: Establishing a link between climate change and mental health, the World Health Organisation has said extreme weather conditions like floods, droughts and natural calamities can lead to psychiatric illnesses.

"Psychosocial illnesses are a part of the various health issues associated with climate change," Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Deputy Regional Director, WHO, said.

Anticipating that severe flooding may become more frequent due to global warming, a WHO report said that independent studies in cyclone-affected Orissa and a flooded town in England has shown that post-traumatic stress disorder syndromes of different severity in affected people even after an year.

So it seems, not only will we be eating each other we're all going to be really stressed about it, too. Global warming sucks, man. Really sucks.

Fred Kagan Explains The World

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American Enterprise Institute resident scholar and one of the major architects of the current Iraq surge Fred Kagan has written a a lengthy piece for NRO Why Iraq Matters, Talking back to anti-war party talking points.


It's probably a good thing that moonbats everywhere already see him as Rudolph Hess to Bush's Hitler as Kagan apologetically faces down many of the anti-war Left's arguments against the Iraq war and this article would certainly put a bullseye on his forehead, if it weren't already permanently affixed there by the Moveon.org Left.

He comes out of the gate, both guns blazing and letting the war's opponents know that their ever-changing reasons for pulling out would have real world ramifications:

Yes, in the world as it is, whatever line we sell ourselves, there really is victory and there really is defeat, the two are different, and their effects on the future diverge profoundly. And yes, the reason we must continue to spend money and the lives of the very best Americans in that far-off land is that the interests of every American are actually at stake.

He makes no effort to disguise his distaste for the Left's cynicism.

The antiwar party rather gleefully seized upon recent Iraqi Security Forces operations against Sadr’s militia and other illegal gangs as proof of this — the general glee with which the antiwar party has greeted any setback in Iraq is extremely distasteful and unseemly, whatever domestic political benefits they believe they will receive from those setbacks.

And then he begins to dismantle their arguments. He dispatches the "The War Cost Too Much" mantra by comparing Iraq War costs with the costs of previous wars.

Military spending in World War II ranged from 17.8 percent of GDP to 37.5 percent; in Korea from 5.0 percent (in 1950 — 7.4 percent in 1951) to 14.2 percent; in Vietnam from 7.4 percent to 9.4 percent. Current expenditures on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars bring total defense expenditures to something well below 5 percent of GDP. Even granting the simplistic and misleading $3 trillion figure, $3 trillion is about 5 percent of the nearly $60 trillion American GDP over the five years of the war.

He also deals with the related complaint that "The war has caused the upcoming recession" with ease as well.

Defense spending as a percentage of total federal spending is now around 20 percent. In World War II, it ranged from 73 percent to 89.5 percent; in Korea it ranged from 32.2 percent (1950 — 51.8 percent in 1951) to 69.5 percent; and in Vietnam from 42.8 percent to 46 percent. In more context: at the height of spending on this war, defense spending was only 12.3 percent of all public spending (including federal, state, and local expenditures); in World War II the high was 82.1 percent; in Korea, 52.5 percent; and in Vietnam 31.3 percent.

And he puts the lie to the assertion that "High gas prices are the result of the war — and ending the war would lower gas prices."

Oil prices do not rise because American forces are in the Middle East — they rise because of instability and fighting in the Middle East. One of the most dramatic increases in oil prices in history occurred during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when no American forces were present.

One of the arguments that I've always found to be most insincere coming from the Left is their programmed, "We're spending money on X "that would otherwise be spent on more important domestic programs. "

In the real world, there is no way that even a Democratic Congress would spend $100 billion a year in non-offset emergency authorizations for education or health care, even if some war critics think that they would like it to do so. As for increasing domestic spending, those who believe that we should raise taxes and spend more money on domestic programs can still advocate that policy, whatever its wisdom. This isn’t an argument about the cost of the war — it’s an argument about whether we want to have higher taxes to pay for increased domestic spending.

He goes on and on like this, puncturing holes in the Left's varied arguments, revealing them to be the political showthings that most of them are rather than thoughtful, reasoned arguments. The only area in which I think his argument goes weak is in addressing the Arab World's readiness for democracy. He holds up various modern states and populations as examples of how well Muslims can function under democratic rule. There are problems with all of his examples. Indonesia is hardly an example of a stable, long-lived democracy. Any discussion of Muslims in Europe being an example of how easily they can adapt to Western-style democratic ideals just doesn't pass the sniff test. If Kagan were to visit some of the Parisian suburbs or London's mosques he might rethink using these as examples of how ready Muslims are to enter the "Free World". The one example he gives that might have some legs is Turkey, but there are stresses in that country too that might yet cause Kagan to reconsider his confidence.

Of all the arguments the Left uses to attack the war, the above may be their best and seems to demand more attention than the President's "All men yearn for freedom" talk indicates that it is getting. But this argument would change the whole complexion of the Left's anti-war rationales, requiring a good faith effort to develop strategies to assist the Muslim World to reform itself into a more modern form. The Left doesn't want that. They want George W. Bush destroyed. They want him to lose and if it means (as of course it would) that America loses too, that's fine with them.

Kagan points out why their arguments are as insubstantial as their motivations. His article is well worth reading.

Iraq v. Mahdi Army - The Real Story

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The recent stories about the battles between Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Iraqi Army, in which al-Sadr was declared the victor despite calling for a ceasefire are starting to fall apart. Intuitively it just seemed wrong that al-Sadr was laying down his arms when he was supposedly giving the Iraqi government a shellacking. Well chalk one up for intuition. According to a Center for Threat Awareness symposium Iraq v. Mahdi Army (hat tip to NRO's The Tank) the media (surprise!) got it wrong.

Bill Roggio, Military Operations analyst of The Long War Journal: On March 25, the Iraqi security forces, under the command of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, launched Operation Knights Assault against the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-back Shia terror groups in the port city of Basrah. The Iraqi forces met stiff resistance in Basrah as the whole of Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army rushed to fight the security forces. A brigade from the Iraqi Army apparently cracked under the offensive, and about 500 soldiers “underperformed or defected” along with about 400 police. The Iraqi brigade was only five weeks out of training; it is the Army’s newest formation.

The Iraqi military immediately began rushing forces into Basrah; about 7,000 soldiers, special forces, and SWAT units were moved to Basrah to join the fight. Meanwhile Mahdi Army forces attacked in Baghdad and the wider South. US and Iraqi forces killed nearly 200 Mahdi fighters in Baghdad The Iraqi security forces quickly restored security in the cities of Najaf, Karbala, Hillah, Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, Al Kut, and Amarah with minimal US assistance.

Just as the new Iraqi forces began to arrive in Basrah and US and British forces were gearing up to augment the Iraqi military, Muqtada al Sadr, under orders from Iran’s Qods Force, called for his fighters to withdraw from the streets. Sadr issued a nine-point list of demands, which included that operations cease. Maliki refused and Iraqi and US forces continued to move into Basrah and conduct pinpoint raids against Shia terror groups. More than 200 Mahdi Army fighters were killed, 700 were wounded, and 300 captured during the six days of fighting in Basrah alone.

Maliki has said the military will continue to operate against the Mahdi Army, and US and Iraqi forces have kept Sadr City and Shula in Baghdad under curfew. Forces have been reported to be slowly moving into the Mahdi Army stronghold.

In other words, despite taking some punishment from al-Sadr's army the Iraqi forces pressed (and continue to press) onward. They now have control of the valuable Basran seaports. It seems that the press was too willing to buy the rather unlikely scenario that at the moment when he was looking victory in the eye al-Sadr was choosing negotiations instead.

It would be easy to blame this very large error on journalistic bias against the war and no doubt this played a part. But even more evenhanded outlets (Fox News) seemed to buy the erroneous interpretation of what happened. The Center for Threat Awareness (CTA) makes a reasonable suggestion about how to prevent or at least lessen such poor reporting in the future:

“Do we want to lose?” That is a question believed by many to unfortunately be perhaps less than rhetorical in nature. We at the Center for Threat Awareness have long held that the American public would be much better served and more accurately informed if we had more military veterans in a journalistic operation rather than journalism veterans in a military operation.

The media no doubt is looking forward to General Petraeus' testimony before Congress this week to watch members of that body slam the General on the recent escalation of violence in Iraq. Petraeus has a better story to tell than Democrats would like to hear. It will be interesting to see how honestly that story is told by the press.

My Next Read

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Stanley Kurtz over on NRO's The Corner points out what looks to be a good, informative read. The book, Culture and Conflict In The Middle East by Philip Carl Salzman is an answer to the late Palestinian academic Edward Said's theory of "Oreintalism" which places much of the blame for the current problems of the Middle East squarely at the door of US and Israeli policy decisions.

Salzman refutes this conception of the causes of current terrorism by focusing on Middle Eastern tribal culture with Islam as only a part of a greater cultural milieu. The idea of tribalism is generally alien to Western thought so it is easy to see how it can be relegated to a minor role in Arab affairs but it is, in fact central as can be seen regularly in Afghanistan and Iraq most notably, today.

Kurtz has a nice review here that should whet your appetite. It did mine and I look forward to finding out more about a perspective that is out of fashion and generally little noticed in the West.

All He Needs Is Love

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Via Lucianne.com

According to this story, it would appear that London Mayor Ken Livingstone has more on his...er...mind than merely making London safe for Islamofascists, Bush-bashing, corruption and Hugo Chavez. Besides all these other activities Livingstone somehow found time to have romantic relationships with three women at the same time, impregnating two of them within weeks of each other.

As further details of Mr Livingstone's tangled love life began to emerge, one of the mothers of his five children was yesterday named as Janet Woolf, a teacher who lives only a few streets away from his north London home.

Ms Woolf, 58, is reported to have had a relationship with Mr Livingstone during the early 1990s, when he was Labour MP for Brent East and she was a local Labour Party activist. ...


She gave birth to Mr Livingstone's son, who is now 15, at the Royal Free Hospital in north west London, in November 1992.

Another of Mr Livingstone's lovers had given birth to his daughter at the same hospital two months earlier, just over two years after she gave birth to his first daughter.

All this time the maverick politician was in a long-term relationship with Kate Allen, the UK director of Amnesty International, with whom he lived for nearly 20 years, between 1982 and 2001. Mr Livingstone subsequently took up with his office manager Emma Beal.

The mayor is up for election next month in what is reported to be a hotly contestes race against Tory candidate, Boris Johnson. If only all Mr. Livingstone's children were of voting age, he'd be a shoe-in.

Oops, They Did It Again

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Hot on the heels or left-wing radio host Randi Rhodes' recent obscenity-laced rant, fellow lefty host, Ed Schultz (jealous of all the attention Rhodes was getting?) decided to make some headlines of his own. While Rhodes let loose at an Air America promotional event, Schultz went one better,

speaking before Illinois Sen. Barack Obama at a Democratic state party event in North Dakota on Friday night...calling Republican Sen. John McCain a "warmonger."

The McCain camp immediately called on Obama personally to denounce Schultz and the reference, as McCain did after a similar incident in Ohio in late February.

Saturday in Arizona, McCain, a decorated former POW who has spoken often of the horrors of war, said, "I would hope that, in keeping with his commitment, that Senator Obama would condemn such language, since it was part of his campaign."

Apparently Senator Obama wasn't terribly offended by the comment when Schultz said it because afterwards he called Schultz the "voice of progressive radio" . Considering the tone of left-wing radio, the good Senator actually had that just about right. After Schultz's comments started to gain press attention Obama suddenly realized that (as a campaign statement later said),

"John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such. He's a supporter of a war that Senator Obama believes should have never been authorized and never been waged."

It is understandable how Senator Obama may not have noticed Schultz's slur as he was concentrating on how he would soon retell the lie that McCain is alright with a 100 year-long Iraqi war, a claim that has been debunked and which Obama has even been called on publicly.

And so it goes with the party of love.

Whatever Happened To The Promised Land?

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Today is the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King's and it is a curious thing to listen to his I Have A Dream and I've Seen The Promised Land (delivered the night before he died) speeches. On the one hand so much has changed for the better: no longer are Blacks relegated to the back of the bus, Blacks have opportunities that would have been unthinkable in King's time. A Black man is credibly running for President. And yet so much of King's vision of the Promised Land seems as far off as it did when he gave his speeches.

The Great Society programs which had been advertised as way of levelling the playing field have largely devolved into a battlefield, where various identity groups fight for more; more money, more in-kind benefits, more, more, more. Those same Great Society programs wound up breaking apart the Black family, leaving us with a new problem; single mothers, largely poor and whose children are among the most likely to drop out of school, commit crimes, experience poverty themselves etc. Instead of a bright new day they helped usher in a morally bankrupt Gangsta culture.

And the dream of a color blind society has been perverted into a new voluntary segregation as can be seen on college campus' with separate Black studies, student union's, dorms and more. Affirmative action which has been promised as a method to assure access for the disadvantage has become a perverse plan in which color is now more important than the content of one's character or one's actual achievements.

While it is a fact that a Black man may actually get the nomination for President and could win that office it is disturbing that that Black man should be running supporting the policies that have so damaged Blacks over these years since Dr. King's death:

• Abortion, an idea which was historically promoted by such as early 20th century progressive, racist and eugenicist, Margaret Sanger as a way of eliminating inferiors (i.e. Blacks) from the population is high on Barack Obama's list of priorities. Since the Roe vs. Wade decision over 12 million Black babies have been aborted. Margaret Sanger would approve of Obama's abortion position.
• Dependence on government as opposed to self reliance. Obama wants to expand the intrusion of government into more and more spheres of American life, apparently incapable of telling the difference between the Great Society's stated goals and its actual results.
• Minimum wage increases which, numerous studies have shown harms the young poor (largely Black) when the additional costs to small businesses causes them not hire where they otherwise might if wages were lower.

The list could go on and on and probably will continue to grow Dr. King has been replaced by Black "leaders" of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose stock in trade is divisiveness.

One can only wonder on this day what Martin Luther King would think of the America of 2008. No doubt there would be much that would please him but I have to wonder if he'd think we are really any closer to the Promised Land he'd once seen all those years ago.

Left-Wing Talk Radio - The REAL Hate Radio

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You may not know who Randi Rhodes is and there's a reason for that. Rhodes has a show on Air America, the Left-wing radio network that has had more reorganizations than it does listeners. Sweet Randi has a habit of saying and doing things that are ... well, slightly unfortunate. The video seen above was taken at an Air America benefit appearance in San Francisco and if potty language isn't your thing, don't watch it.

The Randster does what may be her idea of a stand-up comedy routine but due to the fact that many of the objects of her "comedy" are fellow liberals is now more appropriately labeled "hate speech". Her rant was so foul, laced as it was with four letter words and vicious slanders it actually got her suspended by Air America, showing an prudish streak, hitherto barely suspected.

Among her witticisms were calling Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro f..king wh.res. She also had nice things to say about such diverse individuals as Dick Cheney, "Dina McGreevey", wife of disgraced former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey and disgraced former Governor Elliot Spitzer. This isn't the first time Rhodes has shared her unique sense of fun with the public. Once she aired a fake commercial stating that Mitt Romney supporters planned to go on a murder spree if John McCain won the Republican nomination. Another time she compared the government's Hurricane Katrina evacuation of New Orleans to the Holocaust with (naturally) George W. Bush in the role of Hitler.

But this kind of gutter banter is heard frequently on "progressive" talk radio. Left-wing talker Mike Malloy has called for physical torture of the "Bush crime family" if they refuse to "tell the truth" (i.e. agree with him). Liberal talker Mike Webb has called for the execution of GWB for (you guessed it) "war crimes".

These kind of violent fantasies are apparently standard fare today wherever "progressives" hunker down together. Arianna Huffington has had to close down comments numerous times when reporting stories about Dick Cheney, GWB, the death of Jerry Falwell and on and on. Change the names in the Daily Kos and you might think you're reading some historical material from Nazi-era Germany. While the msm frequently bemoans the "hate speech" of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (must have been shows I missed) liberal radio and blogs are where all the hottest hate-action can really be found.

Hey, maybe this is where Jeremiah Wright gets some of his material...

Islam In Decline?

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Via Pajamas Media


After the recent story about Islam overtaking Catholicism as the world's largest religion, this story, Muslims Leaving Islam in Droves comes as an encouraging surprise. Apparently prominent Muslim journalist Magdi Allam's conversion to Catholicism (highlighted by his very public baptism by Pope Benedict) is not an aberration, but a trend.

Interviewed by al-Jazeera in 2006, Ahmad al Qataani, leader of the Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, explains the decline:

Islam used to represent … Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non-Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century.

On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed.

Watching the horrors that seem to flourish wherever Islam takes root it has always struck me as unfathomable why so many remain faithful to it, let alone why others would convert. Allam's comments are much more in line with the kind of reaction a rational mind would have. He says he,

“has been freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimizes lies and deception, violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission to tyranny, permitting me to join the authentic religion of Truth, Life, and Liberty. … I realize what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight, and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith.”

Africa is not the only place experiencing this phenomenon:

In Iran as many as 1 million people have surreptitiously converted to Evangelical Christianity in the last five years.

Some additional reasons for this:

One Iranian religious scholar believes youth are abandoning Islam because it is identified with the corrupt Iranian government.

Iran being Iran and Islam being Islam of course this is cannot be allowed so,

Now the Iranian Majlis (parliament) is debating the death penalty for conversion.

But there is reason to hope that this won't be enough. So while it seems that much of the West is too weak and morally bankrupt to present a coherent ideological defense to radical Islam, the seeds of the opposition might actually reside within Islam itself.