Cold Facts on Global Warming

Heritage Foundation: Frequently Asked Questions About Global Warming by Ben Lieberman

Hard Hitting Journalism!

Does the AP write an article on, say, Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate? Nooo, silly! How about his daughters. Do they like Paris Hilton or Britney Spears?

Meanwhile, “nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch.” I wonder why.

Remember Iran?

Iran’s Power Trip: by INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Americans preoccupied with the presidential campaign can’t be blamed for not listening too closely to Iran these days. But it’s time to lend an ear. The rhetoric over there is getting a bit scary.

It’s a sad historical fact that, when totalitarian or absolutist regimes are about to do something horrific, they often ratchet up their rhetoric. That precisely is what Iran’s mullahs and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are doing right now.

Obama’s Naive Plan for a National “Defense”

In his own words, Obama makes clear that he’d gladly make us more vulnerable and he’d do so during a state of war.

Our enemies are cheering you, Senator.

In an e-mail, Bradley A. Blakeman at Freedoms Watch writes:

We’ve seen drastic reductions in our military capabilities from liberal administrations before - with disastrous results. In 1996, defense spending in America was fully 40% lower than in 1985 under Ronald Reagan. These cuts led to a loss of air and sea lift capability, reduced research and development in new technologies, and the delay or cancellation of critical modernization programs. As a result, when America was attacked in 2001, former Reagan Administration Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger said that defense cuts had been so severe that our capability to fight the War on Terror had been greatly diminished. We are still paying the price for that “holiday from history.”

At a time when we face increasingly hostile rogue nations like Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, which are actively seeking or supporting those who seek nuclear weapons to threaten the United States and its allies, it makes no sense to pursue a policy of disarmament. We must maintain a strong nuclear deterrent, including a robust arsenal and defense shield, and modernize our military to protect America.

Yes, We Can Succeed in Iraq

The media’s effort to burying any positive news from Iraq doesn’t appear to have had its desired effect.

Hotair: Pew: Majority now believe U.S. effort in Iraq will succeed, 53-39

Obama’s Connections to Extremists

Jewish Press: Obama Served On Board That Funded Pro-Palestinian Group By:Aaron Klein

Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a “catastrophe.”

[...]

Obama may face increased scrutiny over his ties to William C. Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground terrorist group that sought to overthrow the U.S. government and took responsibility for a string of bombings in the early 1970’s.

Obama served on the Woods Fund board alongside Ayers (who is still on the board). Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has written about his involvement with the Weather Underground’s bombing of U.S. governmental buildings including the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.

Although charges against him were dropped in 1974 due to prosecutorial misconduct, Ayers told a newspaper reporter several years ago that he had no second thoughts about his violent past. “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough,” Ayers told The New York Times in an interview published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001.

Surely This Was a Mistake, Right?

Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

American Traitor Dead?

Dr Rusty Shackleford at MyPetJawa ponders whether American Traitor Adam Gadahn is Dead.

And if he is, well, one less treason artist to worry about. Enjoy your 72 virgins, Adam.

Obama Would Meet with Raul Castro

Is there a dictator that liberals don’t legitimize?

They loved Stalin and Mussolini. They’ve been holding the scrotum of Fidel Castro for 50 years.

More recently, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Kevin Spacey and Naomi Campbell actually fly to Venezuela to meet with egomaniac Hugo Chavez; the President of Columbia University invites Mahmoud “There are no gays in Iran” Ahmadinejad to speak; Barack “B.O.” Obama isn’t in the White House yet, but he’s already sending invites to Raul Castro.

Would any of these idiots do the same for, say, George W. Bush?

Politico: Bush attacks Obama foreign policy plan By: Mike Allen

President Bush attacked a key foreign policy stance of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), contending heatedly at a news conference Thursday morning that talking to dictators without preconditions can be dangerous and counterproductive.

Obama’s argument that the president “should never fear to negotiate” with America’s enemies — including Cuba’s new leader, Raul Castro — is one of his clearest differences with his rival for the presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

At a news conference where Bush showed unusual passion for a president in his waning months, he said “now is not the time” to talk with Castro.

“What’s lost … by embracing a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs?” he said. “What’s lost is, it’ll send the wrong message. It’ll send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It’ll give great status to those … who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.

“The idea of embracing a leader who’s done this, without any attempt on his part to … release prisoners and free their society, would be counterproductive and send the wrong signal.”

Warming to the subject, Bush continued: “Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him. He gains a lot from it by saying, ‘Look at me. I’m now recognized by the president of the United States.’”

More Madness/Accomodation

The dhimmitude continues.

Europeans, it seems, will do virtually anything if it means they can avoid the possibility of not offending Muslims.

Even Piglet’s pissed off.

The Times: Piggy banks are given the chop as bank tries to attract young Muslims by David Charter

Knorbert the piglet has been dropped as the mascot of Fortis Bank after it decided to stop giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims.

The decision has been viewed in the Netherlands as the ritual slaughter of a popular pig by political correctness. To some, it is the latest sign of uncertainty in Europe’s most tolerant country about how far it should go to accommodate the sensitivities of minorities. It comes as the country is braced for a backlash against the plans of Geert Wilders, a right-wing politician, to release a critical film about the Koran.

Pigs are considered an unclean animal by Muslims and Jews, and Knorbert was culled after seven years as the Fortis mascot. A spokesman told the Dutch media that “Knorbert does not meet the requirements that the multicultural society imposes on us”. The bank added that there had been “a number of reactions to the pig” and that a new gift and character were being developed that would be “fun for children of any persuasion”. Children who had received a Knorbert piggy bank for opening a EuroKids account will be given a junior encyclopaedia instead.

The “multicultural society” never meant that you abandon all rational thought and subordinate your culture to anyone elses. The irony? Multiculturalism doesn’t claim that one culture is superior to the other. It claims that all cultures and belief systems are equal, which is equally insane. Meanwhile, has history ever seen a civilization so bent on its own suicide as Europe?

Obama Pretends He’s Not a Mega-Liberal

Townhall: Obama Runs from Liberal Record in Debate By Amanda Carpenter

The other vote Obama discussed was to create an independent “Senate Office of Public Integrity” to handle complaints against senators and would work with the existing Senate Ethics Committee. Obama voted “yes.” Clinton voted “no.”

“According to the National Journal, that position is a liberal position,” said Obama regarding his vote to create the replicate office. “Now, I don’t think that’s a liberal position. I think there are a lot of Republicans and a lot of independents who would like to make sure ethics investigations are not conducted by the people being potentially investigated. So the categories don’t make sense.”

One wonders why Obama is sprinting from the label “liberal,” especially considering that he is one. Why be afraid of the votes you cast? Of the beliefs which inspired those votes?

Some of the other votes the National Journal ranked Obama on that he did not mention included his votes: to support tax hikes, to require a study of global warming effects for federal water projects, to allow union organizers to bypass secret balloting processes to organize workplaces, to mandate increased vehicle fuel efficiency standards, permit “sanctuary city” policies, against making English the official language of the United States, against defining a fetus as an “unborn child,” against renewing President Bush’s terrorist monitoring program, to support voting rights for the District of Columbia and to cut funding and withdraw troops from Iraq according to a set date.

So what exactly did the National Journal do?

A panel of National Journal editors and reporters initially compiled a list of 216 key congressional roll-call votes for 2007 — 107 votes for the Senate and 109 for the House — and classified them as relating to economic, social, or foreign policy

And what did it conclude?

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal’s 27th annual vote ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate.

And John McCain?

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the only other senator whose presidential candidacy survived the initial round of primaries and caucuses this year, did not vote frequently enough in 2007 to draw a composite score. He missed more than half of the votes in both the economic and foreign-policy categories.

I’m sure the folks in Arizona are thrilled with that.

Asked whether the liberal ranking could be used against Obama in the campaign, [campaign spokeswoman Jen] Psaki said that voters appreciate that he is up front about his positions on issues, even if those positions don’t line up with their own. “Part of the reason he’s appealing to some Republicans and independents is, he has that authenticity,” she said. “He’s very clear from the beginning that we can’t do this alone and we need to work across party lines and focus more on uniting than on dividing.”

“Authenticity”?

And this babble about “work across party lines” and “uniting” is making me ill. Can we cease with the BS? If elected, Obama will work toward a Marxist-redistribute-the-wealth-surrender-in-Iraq agenda while voting with his party 96.5% of the time. When do liberals EVER comprise their beliefs or backstab their own? Unlike some other people.

I guess none of that matters when you’re trying to hoodwink the nation about your record. Just don’t expect the mainstream media to reveal any of this. They too busy electing a President.

The Desperation of McCain Opponents, Media

International Herald Tribune: McCain’s birthplace prompts queries about whether that rules him out By Carl Hulse

McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Reverse the names “McCain” with “Obama” or “Clinton.” Think this story would still get published?

Maybe That’s What I Need to Do

AFP: Male spiders play dead for sex: study

Give the Credit Where it is Due

Townhall: Paying for “Gender Equality” By Janice Shaw Crouse

The phrase “gender equality,” as defined by the radicals, is meaningless without a commitment to meet the genuine needs of people who are concerned with getting pure water and basic medicines like aspirin and penicillin to their villages, rather than in establishing quotas for political gamesmanship or furthering Western imperialism.

And that is the crux of the problem. The agenda includes heaping blame on the U.S. for its supposed neglect of women’s issues. Recently, however, fair journalists recognized that the United States has not received credit for the effective help over the past eight years in Africa. We provided $55 million to African nations to improve legal rights for women, and we work to end violence against women in the form of honor crimes and abuse against displaced women. The U.S. has committed $15 billion in AIDS relief in more than 120 countries (especially Africa) and $500 million to combat the transmission of HIV/AIDS from mother to child. The United States has led 110 other nations in sponsoring efforts to facilitate women’s participation in political processes. We have given $400 million for educational opportunities in Africa to benefit 80 million children. In Afghanistan and Iraq, various initiatives at a cost of over $10 million have helped women gain the skills they need to participate in civic activities that build democracy and effectively empower women. In the fight against human trafficking, the U.S. has spent $280 million in 120 countries. These are just a few of the ways that our nation is helping women achieve their potential in realistic and effective ways. In contrast, the United Nations’ agenda for women hinges on universal access to abortion-on-demand.

And without the ability to annhilate one’s unborn child, what else could possibly matter?

The Media Has a Gas Attack

Every six months or so, the media decides to complain about gasoline prices. When that happens, you can be sure you’re going to hear talk about “price gouging” (a major economic myth). In all this, the lack of understanding about basic economics is amazing. Of course, remember that we’re dealing with journalists. Don’t expect gold in a pig sty.

CNN: Pain in the pocketbook — The price of gas keeps rising. Food costs are through the roof. Consumers are getting squeezed. By Tami Luhby

Squeezed? How? Uh, consumers don’t have to buy gas. They don’t have to buy anything, and if they do want to complain enough, complain to the government which heavily taxes gasoline in the first place.

And sometimes our priorities are amazing too. We will gladly spend $30 (or more) on ink for a printer, but not $3 a gallon on gasoline? Am I wrong in suspecting that gasoline is a little more complex product to produce?

Don’t expect Tami Luhby to give a drop of explanation as to why gas prices are going up. Jon Markham at The Street writes:

Higher prices at the pump today are a matter of simple economics. U.S. refiners have the ability to churn out 17 million barrels of gasoline per day. Demand is around 22 million barrels per day. To make up the difference, we bring in gasoline from foreign refiners, which means that, at the margins, pump prices are set by import prices.

Total U.S. demand for oil products is up 2.7% year to date, boosted in part by the surge in cold weather in February. But since we are far from the only country importing gasoline and other key refined products, we don’t have a lot of say in what those prices are.

Gasoline, like crude oil, is auctioned worldwide to the highest bidder, and with the dollar weak and overseas economic growth strong because of our fantastic appetite for iPods made in China and T-shirts made in Costa Rica, we have to pay up to keep our supply coming in. And that’s all there is to it.

With U.S. refinery capacity now at ridiculously low levels due in part to lack of investment in new plants amid harsh environmental rules, any little change in the supply chain has an amazingly powerful effect.

And the LAST place to place blame would be on ourselves right?

There’s no point in getting mad at the oil companies, despite their record profits. They aren’t gouging you, and the higher prices aren’t their fault.

The blame lies a lot farther upstream. It lies with Congress. It lies with corn farmers. It lies with the Chinese. It lies in Europe. And, I’m sorry to say, it mostly lies with you.

Unless you are a vegetarian city dweller who walks to work, has never let a plastic fork touch your lips and has never bought a cheap Asian-made cell phone, then you need to shoulder some of the responsibility for our consumerist culture’s absolutely extraordinary demand for crude oil and its refined byproducts.

Nor are we permitted to drill our own oil. Thank you environmentalists!

And it’s not just gas prices that are going up! Wow, even CORN is getting more expensive! Tami Luhby writes:

A bushel of yellow corn, for instance, cost an average of $5.12 in January, up 41% from a year earlier, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Not only does this contribute to the higher prices of food made from corn, but it increases farmers’ cost of feeding cattle and pigs.

But why is it getting more expensive? Could it have something to do with the use of corn for fuel? (Thanks again, environmentalists.) Maybe there is MORE DEMAND for corn and THAT is why the price is going up? Hmm? And let’s not forget what this does to poorer nations who rely heavily on corn.

Gasoline comes to you relatively cheaply when you consider that oil companies have to go to some of the worst places on earth to get the stuff, then refine it, which often involves making all sorts of different kinds of gas to satisfy the regulations of individual states, and then transport the stuff safely. I don’t like increases in anything, but there are actual reasons for it. One would think that the media has no interest in educating the public about any of this, especially if there’s negativity that they can promote instead.

And if you doubt that the media wants to blare the negativity as much as it can, it actually solicits the public in helping in their agenda:

Have you lost your job, your business or your home? Are you raiding retirement accounts to pay the bills? We want to hear from you. Tell us how you’re being affected by the weakening economy and you could be profiled in an upcoming story. Send emails to realstories@cnnmoney.com.

And if you have the sense to just accept the fact that the costs of certain things goes up from time to time, that it’s all cyclical, and there’s not alot one can do about, then CNN has no use for you.

“Obama!” “No, Clinton!” “No, Obama!” “No, Clinton!”

Smoking Gun: Clintonite Stabs Obama Supporter — Cops: Man assaulted brother-in-law during political argument

Obama Misunderstands Iraq, al Qaeda, War on Terror

CNN: McCain, Obama in heated exchange over Iraq

McCain questioned whether Obama was aware of the al Qaeda base. Obama’s response was: “There was no such thing as al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq.”

This is utter nonsense.

SADDAM HUSSEIN “always had links with international terrorist organizations.”

On the face of it, this is not a controversial statement. It comes from a CNN interview of Iyad Allawi, recently chosen as the interim prime minister of Iraq. Allawi expanded on this assessment in a December 31, 2003, interview with CNN’s Bill Hemmer, when he estimated that more than 1,000 al Qaeda terrorists were operating in Iraq. But his more interesting comment came moments later. The al Qaeda fighters, he said,

were present in Iraq, they came and they were active in Iraq before the war of liberation. They were inflicting a lot of problems on the–and inflaming the situation in northern Iraq, in Iraq Kurdistan. They killed once about a year and a half ago 42 worshipers in one of the mosques in Harachi [ph] in a very ugly way.

Again, on the surface, this was not a particularly revealing statement. After all, Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that al Qaeda was operating in Iraq–almost certainly with the knowledge and approval of the Iraqi regime–before the war. CIA Director George Tenet has testified to the presence of al Qaeda in Iraq on several occasions. Allawi went on:

Those people have had the backing of Saddam prior to liberation, and they remained in Iraq after the collapse, and after the vacuum was created. After the way, they remained in Iraq. Many joined them since then.

Rather than blaming Bush and McCain, why not also blame the many Democrats who were in favor of invasion?

“I understand that Sen. Obama said that if al Qaeda established a base in Iraq that he would send troops back in militarily. Al Qaeda already has a base in Iraq. It’s called al Qaeda in Iraq,” McCain said.

“It’s a remarkable statement to say that you would send troops back to a place where al Qaeda has established a base — where they have already established a base.”

More on the Iraq — al Qaeda connections from Brandon Miniter:

* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.

* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq’s Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam’s son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam’s mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.

* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam’s men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq’s mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is “thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq,” the Guardian reported.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane’s Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane’s reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda’s No. 2 man.

And since we’re reviewing for Senator Obama, why did we invade Iraq?

The war began in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Instead of officially ending, hostilities were suspended in 1991 with a conditional armistice. In order to retain personal power, the Iraqi dictator had to agree to unrestricted weapons inspections by the UN, among other things.

Over the course of a dozen years, Saddam violated every part of the agreement that he thought he could get away with, much to his own people’s misery. Even so, he was given every opportunity to avoid war, including an eleventh hour offer of safe passage out of the country and a life of luxury in exile.

He continued to flout the terms of the armistice by barring inspections, which must be considered a blatantly unnecessary provocation by those who now believe that he had nothing to hide. Unless international law isn’t meant to be respected (which is an entirely different debate), the UN had no choice but to authorize military action to enforce its own resolutions.

Therefore the war wasn’t started by America. It was insisted on by Saddam Hussein.

Moreover, the invasion of Iraq was part of a broader fight against global terror, which expanded greatly during the 1990s.

Obama’s ignorance / dishonesty are disturbing.

William Buckley, R.I.P.

NRO: William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P.

NBC: Conservative Commentator William F. Buckley Dead At Age 82

Peter Suderman at the American Scene writes:

“He was a man devoted to the notion that both words and ideas have a basic, intrinsic value, even apart from the political and cultural battles to which they are attached. This was obvious in every sentence he wrote, every word he uttered. His natural talent with language was simply extraordinary, as was the depth and clarity of his understanding. He was not merely clever and smart; he was wise. Conservatism lost a great defender and advocate today, and the larger world of ideas and letters lost one of its greatest minds.”

Much like they did when Pat Tillman and Ronald Reagan died, we can expect the venom from liberals to spew like a river. Such a “tolerant” bunch, aren’t they?

A Campaign or a Cult?

“This is not a campaign for president of the United States, this is a movement to change the world,” — Elijah Cummings (D-MD)

“He walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere.” — actor George Clooney (Hollyweird liberal)

“I’ll do whatever he says to do. I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.” — actress Halle Berry, (Hollyweird liberal)

“This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better. This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama’s audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed… A black man with a white mother became a savior to us. A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.” — Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, racist, Jew hater

“Racial justice is the key for the salvation of the nation and that is fair game to discuss; it is a fair message. Blacks reaching out is not new; white receptivity is new. Barack is reaching out.” — “Reverend” Jesse Jackson, racist, vulture

“Hope must be grounded in objective truth otherwise it quickly becomes wishful thinking.” — Cal Thomas, columnist

“Now I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The skies will open. The lights will come down. And you know the celestial choirs will be singing. And everyone we know will do the right thing. And the world will be perfect.’ But I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and make the special interests disappear.” — Hillary Clinton (D-NY, powermonger)

Bush is Probably at Fault

New Scientist: Hope dims that Earth will survive Sun’s death