Flying Imams, Flying Nuns? Glenn Beck Explains It All To You

For those HazZzMat aficionados who haven't been following the antics of the Islamofascsist "Flying Imams" in Minnesota, this YouTube video, courtesy of Little Green Footballs, will catch you up. You won't get this story from the MSM.

As we've mentioned before, the Flying Imams are suing the passengers who complained about their thuggish behavior, citing "discrimination." Sound familiar?

This commentator from the YouTube site where the video resides is wise to what's going on:

This is a war, a Jihad, even if many of us refuse to grasp this bit of reality. The "flying muslims" on that day were testing our defenses, and now making sure that passengers are too scared to raise concerns next time this happens. And next time will be for real. Next time they will perpetrate a real terror attack. And no one will speak up. These flying imams are enemy soldiers and they need to be dealt with accordingly.

Hey, lefties...whatever happened to that "wall of separation" between church and state you're always gasbagging about when it involves to Christianity? Does it apply to mosques, too? Hmmm? Better check your carotid artery before you answer...

It's kind of ironic. For at least the past half-century, the die-hard Marxists who effectively control today's Democrat Party have effortlessly destroyed the academy, our judicial system, and our cultural traditions one step at a time, by perverting, undercutting, or dismanteling all the unifying factors that have held us together as a Nation. Isn't it curious that they have now chosen to do nothing about the threatening Islamofascists who have made off with their playbook? What does this tell you about their much vaunted, always trumpeted "patriotism"?

Travolta Denounces Global Warming, Flies 5 Private Jets

His serious aviation habit means he is hardly the best person to lecture others on the environment. But John Travolta went ahead and did it anyway.

--ThisIsLondon

The 53-year-old actor, a passionate pilot, encouraged his fans to "do their bit" to tackle global warming.

You gotta love leftists, particularly the Hollywood variety. Like John Travolta. We rather like Travolta as an actor. But as an eco-freak, he runs into the kind of cognitive dissonance common to filthy rich politicoes and entertainers who indulge in whatever amuses them while demanding that we take responsibility and pick up the bill. It never even occurs to them that there might be a whiff of hypocrisy in this. Used to uncritical admiration and adulation from the media whenever they denounce global warming or Chimpy BushMcHitler, they answer to no one as they blithely promote dangerous socialist propaganda until it becomes, well, an "inconvenient truth."

Meanwhile, Travolta gets a pass from having to deal with an "inconvenient truth" of his own:

But although he readily admitted: "I fly jets", he failed to mention he actually owns five, along with his own private runway.

Clocking up at least 30,000 flying miles in the past 12 months means he has produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions – nearly 100 times the average Briton's tally.

Travolta made his comments this week at the British premiere of his movie, Wild Hogs.

He spoke of the importance of helping the environment by using "alternative methods of fuel" – after driving down the red carpet on a Harley Davidson.

Hey, we can't make this stuff up. Don't believe us? Check out this overhead photo of just a part of Travolta's aircraft collection, parked at his pad in Florida:



Not to worry, though. John has a solution to his dilemma—and ours:

Travolta, a Scientologist, claimed the solution to global warming could be found in outer space and blamed his hefty flying mileage on the nature of the movie business...

"It [global warming] is a very valid issue," Travolta declared. "I'm wondering if we need to think about other planets and dome cities.

Not for nothing does the right-wing blogosphere label dudes like this "moonbats." (Etymology here for latecomers.)

Reminds us of this line from e. e. cummings:

...listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

UN Rights Commission: A Naked Emperor Moment

Every once in a while there comes a diplomatic moment to remember, and New Yorkers who want to share one can go up on youtube.com and watch the representative in Geneva of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, in a March 23 speech before the 4th session of the Human Rights Council. In the adjacent columns, we print the full text of his remarks, lamenting the loss of the dream of Eleanor Roosevelt and other architects of the human rights movement within the United Nations system. Mr. Neuer offers the substance. But it's worth watching the full clip (it's only a few minutes long) to catch the scandalous behavior of the president of the council, as he — for what may be the only time in its history — refuses to thank a speaker for his intervention and declares he will ban Mr. Neuer, or any other critic of the commission, if he says anything similar again....'I Will Not Express Thanks,' Editorial, The New York Sun, 3/30/2007

The nicest moments in a great drama are often when a character does something without thinking that completely exposes his hypocrisy. Sometimes you don't have to go to the theater, as when the current President of the UN Commission on Human Rights made an ass out of himself after being told the truth about his organization by a speaker. Ambassador John Bolton would have slammed this idiot. Unfortunately, Democrats in the Senate don't want John Bolton. Perhaps they'd prefer to have Winnie the Pooh in the UN. Or here's a suggestion for Senator Clinton, should she achieve higher office: the corpse of Andy Warhol would make a fine UN Ambassador -- representative of the best of current Democrat ideas.

Luther

Socialists Futilely Chasing the Market: Fluorescent Bulbs

There's talk among the Gore-a-phytes of banning incandescent bulbs. Funny thing, the moves in Australia and Europe to do this are already about a decade late.

The free market, all on its very own -- people reacting purely to price pressures, the differences in costs of the bulbs and the electricity to power them -- is leading the switchover. We don't actually need any governmental action; we're already producing over 50% of the compact flourescents that will be needed, perhaps an even higher portion...Me, cynic that I am, would simply put it down to the fact that politicians have to be seen to be doing something to justify their existence, even if the problem already is, largely, solved without their beneficience, or, indeed, their salaries or existence...Is This Really A Bright Idea?, Tim Worstall, TCS Daily, 3/30/2007

This is not surprising. Government agencies that try to set prices usually take ten to twenty times longer to figure out a good price point than private business. The highlighted sentence in Worstall's article says it all.

Luther

Oh Those Surrendering Democrats

Congress under the Democrats has just turned thumbs down on the Pentagon’s request for $4.75 billion for the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles that can safeguard our troops from the IED explosions which are responsible for a large part of the deaths and wounding of our soldiers and Marines...How Clinton Decimated The Military, Michael Reagan, Front Page Magazine, 3/30/2007

The late President's son lays it down nicely. Remember Senator Clinton's coy demand for more armor? Her party has answered the call. This is what you can expect if Congress remains in Democrat hands (and more if joined by a Democrat President in 2009).

Luther

Taxes: Guess What?

The new Democratic majority begins dancing the next phase of the tax-and-spend minuet in the House of Representatives today. Following the example set by their Senate brethren last Friday, House Democrats will adopt a budget resolution containing the largest tax increase in U.S. history amid massive national inattention....Emboldened Tax-And-Spenders, Robert Novak, The Washington Post, 3/29/2007

As we noted below...Hey, voters, wake up! This Congress, so far, has demanded that the United States surrender in Iraq, that the US refuse to act regarding Iran's increasing bellicosity, and now, just in case you've forgotten the Clinton years, home of the formerly largest tax increase in American history, they're shooting for the moon. Or, maybe Democrats are mooning the American people.

Luther

"Iraq the Model" Cited by Bush, Trashed by Kos Kids

Wouldn't you know. President Bush made a nice, passing mention of a longtime favorite blog of ours, "Iraq the Model," and the loony left commentators had usual foul-mouthed conniption fits, loaded with conspiracy theories. Omar, at ITM, makes passing mention of the brouhaha and issues a challenge to the wingnuts:

I have noticed that our traffic nearly tripled today and that most of the extra traffic is coming from pages talking about the recent speech by President Bush in which he mentioned a quote from our March 5 article on the WSJ…New visitors, welcome to ITM!

First of all we're proud of it. It's the ultimate ambition for a political blogger to have his or her words heard and better reach the desks of decision-makers.

Second I would like to make clear one point to bloggers like dailykos and some MSM supported blogs who seem so upset for some reason that the voice of some Iraqis is being heard.

I've seen some of them publish stories full of lies and accusations they can't support and I think it's pathetic to throw the "you're a sold-out propaganda" accusation at people just because they don't share the same point of view…This only reflects their lack of knowledge and the bankruptcy of ideas they suffer.

We speak the language of facts, supported by images and statistics and more important, we live here while they don't. We write about the good days as well as the bad days in Iraq's journey to a better future.

You don't even have to search in this blog's archives, just scroll down this page and you'll see both good and bad news—we witness an explosion and we write about it and we see progress and we write about it.

If they can't see that it's their problem, not ours.

Omar's got it exactly right. But there is no room in the hearts of the nutroots for President Bush or the millions of Iraqis who, in spite of all, are thrilled to be rid of Saddam and eager for the chance to be free. (Omar is a Sunni, BTW.) With Stalinists, as with the Seinfeld crew, the motto is, "No hugging. No learning."

John Doe, the Imams, and CAIR: Round Two

We should get to the morning paper a bit earlier. In a surprise followup to a story HazZzMat just posted this morning, the Washington Times reports that House Republicans have succeeded in jamming through the kind of anti-terrorist language that will make provocateurs like the 6 Minnesota imams and their pro-terrorist backers in in CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) think twice before trying to sue alert American citizens again:

House Republicans tonight surprised Democrats with a procedural vote to protect public-transportation passengers from being sued if they report suspicious activity -- the first step by lawmakers to protect "John Doe" airline travelers already targeted in such a lawsuit.

After a heated debate and calls for order, the motion to recommit the Democrats' Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007 back to committee with instructions to add the protective language passed on a vote of 304-121.

Republicans said the lawsuit filed by six Muslim imams against US Airways and "John Does," passengers who reported suspicious behavior, could have a "chilling effect" on passengers who may fear being sued for acting vigilant.

Of course, this offended lefty Democrats like Bennie Thompson (Dimwit-MS) mightily:

Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, opposed the motion over loud objections from colleagues on the House floor, forcing several calls to order from the chair.

"Absolutely they should have the ability to seek redress in a court of law," said Mr. Thompson, who suggested that protecting passengers from a lawsuit would encourage racial profiling.

This spurious "racial profiling" accusation, a stock in trade of the Socialist Democrat party—which is always looking to encourage new mutations of class struggle—is precisely the line the imams and CAIR are using now to attack citizen vigilance against terrorism in America. As per the following harrumphing:

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in an open letter yesterday to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty that "the only individuals against whom suit may be raised in this litigation are those who may have knowingly made false reports against the imams with the intent to discriminate against them."

Right. And who gets to decide just who is discriminating or not? Would YOU want to take the chance of getting sued? The chutzpah (heh) of this terrorist front organization is breathtaking but expected.

BTW, every single one of the 121 America-haters who voted against this measure was a wingnut Democrat. (105 Dems and 199 Repubs voted in favor of the measure with no Repubs voting against.) Check out the Hall of Shame here. If one of these 121 turkeys represents you, make sure his or term is limited in November 2008. (Hear that, Kucinich voters?)

Meanwhile, for those requiring further background, this organization, with some surprising people in its corner, is helping to expose CAIR for what it really is.

Michelle Malkin and the Real John Doe Stand Up

Hopefully, most of you have been following, however desultorily, the ongoing flap up in Minnesota concerning an incident many months ago where 6 "imams" were thrown off a plane for blatantly attempting to intimidate the other passengers. Clearly attempting to be provocative, they claimed the opposite and then ripped a page from the Democrat playbook. They howled that they were being discriminated against. And now they are making the trial lawyers happy by suing each and every one of the "John Does" on the plane collectively, since it was the passengers who had complained about their provocative behavior. Absolutely unbelievable, and it shows you where America's socialists are really taking us: dhimmitude without a murmur. And worse.

Fortunately, a noted attorney and others are supporting the John Does pro bono, and Republican Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) is introducing legislation to protect all John Does from any liability in further cases like this. Rep. Pearce's website provides the backstory:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, United States Congressman Steve Pearce introduced H.R. 1640 the “Protecting Americans Fighting Terrorism Act of 2007.” If passed, this legislation would protect individuals from being sued for reporting suspicious activities to law enforcement and security personnel. The language of the Act comes as a direct response to a recent incident in Minneapolis. As reported in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The imams engaged in a variety of suspicious behaviors while boarding a US Airways flight, according to the airport police report. Some prayed loudly in the gate area, spoke angrily about the United States and Saddam, switched seats and sat in the 9/11 hijackers' configuration, and unnecessarily requested seatbelt extenders that could be used as weapons, according to witness reports and US Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader.

As a result of the aforementioned behavior, citizens contacted airline authorities and the pilot informed law enforcement to have the suspicious parties removed from the aircraft. The original incident occurred in November of 2006; now the group has filed suit against US Airways and the Minneapolis – St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission on 17 different charges. Included in the lawsuit as defendants, are “John Does” described as citizens who called authorities to report the suspicious behavior of the Imams.

Pearce comments:

“As Americans, we must not allow ourselves to be bullied by individuals who seek to disrupt our way of life. We can not allow the sympathizers of terrorism to make Americans wonder if they could be sued before reporting possible terrorist activity. Whether it is an intimidation tactic or a full scale attack, Americans have the right and responsibility to protect themselves and their fellow citizens. I introduced this legislation to protect Americans and keep all citizens alert and vocal as they serve on the front line in our battle against terrorism here in America.”

Text of the House bill is here. Let's all do our part to make sure it passes in a Democrat-infested Congress that will probably view it as discriminatory and balk at its passage.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin also sums up the story in NRO, taking things a step further by issuing a brilliant "John Doe Manifesto." Normally, we don't reprint entire pieces here, but we're sure Michelle and NRO won't mind. We regard this as a public service, and we think this manifesto deserves the widest possible dissemination before we allow out-of-control political correctness to surrender this country to sharia law without even firing a shot.

We hope others will circulate this as well. Share it with your friends, if they happen to still care about this country and our soldiers overseas. If they do, it will encourage them to continue doing their part.

Here you go:

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to "report suspicious activity."

I will embrace my local police department's admonition: "If you see something, say something."

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing "scholars."

I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderates' clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about "profiling" or "Islamophobia."

I will put my family's safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Eco-freaks Push Energy DE-pendence in U.S.

Here's a brief snippet from a Dow Jones news story today (no link; obtained via an investment service):

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--There are serious global warming risks associated with Dynegy Inc.'s (DYN) plan to buy LS Power that warrant significant investor and congressional attention, according to a report commissioned by nonprofit group National Environmental Trust.

Dynegy's $2.4 billion plan to buy LS would provide the electricity provider with eight pending coal-fired projects that would make the new company the largest developer of coal generating capacity in the U.S., said the report released Tuesday.

The study was prepared by investment research firm Innovest Strategic Value Advisors.

More than 90% of that planned electricity capacity would use old coal-plant technology that would emit high levels of global warming-causing pollutant carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the report found.

And the new plants would increase Dynegy's annual carbon emissions by an estimated 62.4 million tons, it said.

"Failure to address the material implications of climate change on the proposed merger could damage Dynegy's stake-holder relations and investor confidence," the report said. "Dynegy's decision to assume the role of the nation's largest developer of new coal generating capacity will involve significant financial challenges."

Could this be the same "Environmental Trust" that Attack Machine cited making an unsubstantiated, ad hominem attack on a respected scientist last year in a smear geared toward discrediting anyone who disagrees with Al Gore's flat earth theories?

In Vanity Fair, writer Mark Hertsgaard alleges that Frederick Seitz, the former president of the National Academy of Sciences and the former president of the prestigious Rockefeller University, was a shill for, of all things, the tobacco industry. A press release by the National Environmental Trust proclaims "Scientist Who Spearheaded Attacks on Global Warming Also Directed $45M Tobacco Industry Effort to Hide Health Impacts of Smoking." Seitz, a giant in American science, says this is all "ridiculous, completely wrong." Now 94, Seitz explained to TCSDaily.com that R.J. Reynolds had given Rockefeller University $5 million a year for basic research. Seitz says he directed the money toward non-tobacco-related efforts in the study of prions (the virus-like proteins that cause mad cow disease), tuberculosis and other diseases. Prion researcher Stanley Prusiner thanked both R.J. Reynolds and Seitz in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

You'll note that the National Environmental Trust is "nonprofit" not "nonpartisan," all though most organizations claiming the latter characteristic tend to be as reliably left as many of the former.

With funding from the leftist, and probably illegal "Tides Foundation," (DiscovertheNetworks accuse them of effectively being a money "laundering" operation meant to keep lefty donations largely untraceable); Theresa Heinz, Ted Turner, and other lefties, this socialist, eco-front organization is typical of the wingnuts who really do want to destroy this company. Follow the logic here, or lack thereof. Environmentalist wackos with a political agenda, much like this organization, shut down the nuclear power industry in this country in the 1970s and are now attempting to block our expanded use of coal, a resource of which America has an abundance. Meanwhile, they're attempting to thwart our efforts to secure a free, democratic Middle East and thus a dependable oil supply until we can develop alternatives, which are certainly needed. It's almost as if the goal of these idiots is to force America to become entirely energy DE-pendent upon the good offices of Third World thugs. This is consonant with the Gramscian left's doing everything in its power to weaken America to the point where it can be overwhelmed by our enemies without firing a shot.

The irrationality here is breathtaking. Every energy source we use is automatically wrong "because of global warming." Including oil. And yet, by attempting to thwart the use of domestic energy sources (such as coal) or essentially clean nuclear resources, these idiotarians are actually forcing us to increase our dependency on foreign oil, lessening our ability to remain energy independent.

It's time we stopped paying any attention to these Marxist front organizations. It's also time we started investigating shell games like the Tides Foundation and start de-funding the illegally funded left that is bound and determined to destroy us by eviscerating our economy in the name of unproven theories and costly remedies that will improve nothing.

Stalinists Block Conservative Content at Miami AA Club

Well now, here's something chilling but not exactly unexpected:

The gangsters at Powerline, such dominant forces in organized crime that they have dropped their former aliases (Deacon, Hind Rocket, Big Trunk) were convicted and sentenced to solitary confinement. Their crime was logged as “Hate/Violence.” Charles Johnson was also convicted and banished — his crimes included not only “Hate/Violence” but “Pornography” as well. And it certainly is no surprise that the Godfather of internet crime, Hugh Hewitt, was also convicted in the “Hate/Violence” category; after all, just look at incendiary books he has written.

What are we talking about? The American Airlines club at Miami International Airport is blocking the websites above, after its filtering program, Content Watch, convicted them of the captioned crimes. They are jailbirds now, and they are allowed no visitors — at least no internet visitors. (The case of Michelle Malkin is a bit more complex, since visitors are allowed, once they acknowledge that they are about to be exposed to her “Drugs/Alcohol” and her other “Illegal Activities.”)

It is most disturbing that mainstream Republican and conservative writers are being banned on the internet at public locations in the United States — and being smeared with accusations of drugs, violence, hate, pornography, and illegal activities. We did not do a comprehensive check of websites of a more liberal orientation, but we did note that Daily Kos was operating just fine.

Pretty interesting, eh? But wait, there's more. Little Green Footballs' (LGF's) Charles Johnson, one of the "purged" above, got comments indicating that censorship isn't only going on in Miami:

This is not just at the Admirals Club in Miami. I have had the same experience with LGF as well as Michelle Malkin, Powerline, and Blackfive at the Admirals Club in LaGuardia. No such problems at the clubs in San Jose or Austin as of early March.

I submitted all of the above sites to Content Watch to have them correct their blockage but it doesn’t appear to have worked.

And yes, both Kos and Huffington Post are available via the club at LaGuardia.

(For HazZzMat newbies, Kos and Huffington Post are both far left sites seething 24/7 with an insane hatred of America, its culture and traditions, and any patriot who believes in either. No point in gracing them with a link here, given the news we're reporting.)

Another commentator offered further corroborating info and an observation:

I had the exact same experience (LGF, Powerline, Captain’s Quarters) all blackballed at the AA Admiral’s Club at DFW this weekend. Checked Kos and it was up and running. Likely to be an internal AA staffer playing thought police ... person.

Adding to this Johnson's reportage on the systemic and systematic "burying" of LGF stories on Digg, apparently by a well-organized cadre of left-wing hacks, and an unpleasant picture comes into focus. Lefties like to chuckle at Wonker when he accuses them of Stalinist tactics, but here they are, front and center. Tools, hacks, whatever, are being employed on the Internet to censor news, views, and opinions that disagree with the Marxist orthodoxy that dominates the media, the professoriat, certain elements of the legal profession, and most traditional information channels. These, repeat, are classic Stalinist tactics, although we're not aware of anyone beside ourselves and Mark Levin who have regularly and consistently used this label to describe such thuggish behavior.

Of course, were you to turn the table on these Stalinists, they'd scream bloody murder and complain of: CENSORSHIP. You gotta love it. But that's the convenience of the dialectic. Nothing the left professes ever has to make logical sense. It just has to advance the party agenda. And nothing advances the party agenda like making sure that no one ever hears the other side of the argument. Just the Marxist propaganda.

Ask Al Gore and the environmentaloids about that. This is the real "inconvenient truth" that nobody on the far left wants you to know.

Sean Penn and Lefty Temper Tantrums

Consider for a moment this statesmanlike outburst from the mouth of Leading American Intellectual Sean Penn:

Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn was the star attraction at a town hall meeting today in Oakland, where hundreds of people gathered to denounce the war in Iraq and call for an immediate withdrawal of American troops.

Neither Penn nor Rep. Barbara Lee, the Oakland Democrat who has opposed the war since before it began four years ago, offered much in the way of specifics for ending the conflict, and they were largely preaching to the choir. The enthusiastic and occasionally boisterous crowd of 800 or so crammed into the Grand Lake Theatre wildly cheered as Penn excoriated President Bush.

"You and your smarmy pundits -- and the smarmy pundits you have in your pocket -- can take your war and shove it," Penn said.

Atypically, the reporter undercut the importance of Penn's infantile diatribe by noting the small size of the crowd along with the fact that neither Penn nor the Castro-loving Rep. Lee (Idiotarian-Oakland) offered little "in the way of specifics for ending the conflict" and that they were "largely preaching to the choir" of the usual dead-end leftist suspects.

But what's more interesting to us here is Penn's sneering outrage. Anger, rage—call it what you will—has been the stock in trade since at least Y2K of America's hard left, most of which is terminally afflicted with BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). Lefty rage has, in fact, become a virtual fashion accessory, particularly in the entertainment industry, whose members sort of keep this going as a way of giving a cheap, positive publicity shot in the derrière to flagging careers.

HazZzMat has riffed on this phenomenon many times before. But George Will had a go at it in his nationally syndicated column yesterday which neatly sums up the weird rationale behind the kind of outburst we've just descrived above. After describing a current incident, Will makes the following observation:

No wonder Americans are infatuated with anger: It is democratic. Anyone can express it, and it is one of the seven deadly sins, which means it is a universal susceptibility. So in this age that is proud of having achieved "the repeal of reticence," anger exhibitionism is pandemic.

"Anger exhibitionism." Good one. Wish we'd thought of it. Will extends his comments to encompass fulminators on the right as well as the left:

There are the tantrums -- sometimes both theatrical and perfunctory -- of talking heads on television or commentators writing in vitriol (Paul Krugman's incessant contempt, Ann Coulter's equally constant loathing). There is road rage (and parking lot rage when the Whole Foods Market parking lot is congested with expressive individualists driving Volvos and Priuses). The blogosphere often is, as one blogger joyfully says, "an electronic primal scream." And everywhere there is the histrionic fury of ordinary people venting in everyday conversations.

Many people who loathe George W. Bush have adopted what Peter Wood describes as "ecstatic anger as a mode of political action." Anger often is, Wood says, "a spectacle to be witnessed by an appreciative audience, not an attempt to win over the uncommitted."

Wood, an anthropologist and author of "A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now," says the new anger "often has the look-at-me character of performance art." His book is a convincing, hence depressing, explanation of "anger chic" -- of why anger has become an all-purpose emotional stance. It has achieved prestige and become "a credential for group membership." As a result, "Americans have been flattening their emotional range into an angry monotone."

We'd add here that neither Will nor Wood seem to grasp, at least in these excerpts, is that this "angry monotone" also excuses its practitioners from the time-consuming inconvenience of having to think. (Book link courtesy HazZzMat.)

Moving right along, after exploring the left's complete lack of anger management skills more deeply, Will concludes with the following irony:

Today, many people preen about their anger as a badge of authenticity: I snarl, therefore I am. Such people make one's blood boil.

Read the whole thing by following the link above.

We have often decried the manner in which id-driven, theatrical emotionalism and rage, welling up from Hollywood but perhaps best exemplified in the fouled ozone layer of the lefty blogosphere, has polluted constructive political debate in this country. The ironic juxtaposition of Sean Penn's latest preening outburst and Will's column indicates that at least one widely-read and respected columnist is willing to out this phenomenon for essentially what it is: another method employed by the impossibly wealthy left to destroy the civility of traditional American culture as a prelude to some kind of strange socialist utopia over which they, as our betters, will presumably rule. Problem is, these shallow Idiotarians have begun to succeed in their subversive efforts just in time for the Islamofascists to take advantage of all their hard work.

Hey, Dems, Must Be Time To Raise Taxes!

A whole host of factors...suggest that housing demand is likely to dry up at the very time when the market is characterized by oversupply. The mounting trouble in the sub-prime market space has already resulted in the shutting down of 30 sub-prime mortgage lenders and defaults on sub-prime mortgages are expected to result in around 500,000 foreclosed homes returning to a saturated market over the next six months. To make matters worse, the resetting at higher interest rates of around US$500 billion in Adjustable Rate Mortgages is only likely to compound a difficult situation in the sub-prime mortgage space, while the generalized tightening in mortgage lending standards is likely to further restrict overall housing demand...Housing Market Blues, Desmond Lachman, TCS Daily, 3/23/2007

Can't deny it any more. Except for a few spots, such as New York City, the tulip market in housing is over. What a brilliant time for the Democrats in the House and Senate to be talking about raising taxes. With housing sales drown, savings risings, what a fine idea to take the people's savings away, depressing consumption even further!

Sharply lower residential construction activity and employment alone could shave a full 1 ½ percentage points from GDP growth in 2007. More important still, in the same way that increasing home prices induced US households to run down their savings when the housing boom was in full swing, declining home prices could induce those same households to replenish their depleted savings. Since household consumption constitutes 70 percent of GDP, any attempt by households to rebuild their savings through lower consumption expenditure could have a large impact on the overall economy....(Housing Market Blues, continued.)

Given the current cabals that dominate Democrat politics in the House and Senate, it wouldn't surprise this writer at all if a serious attempt were made to revoke tax cuts, which would suck hundreds of billions of dollars out of the private economy, and, as we also know, would have the effect of ultimately suppressing government revenues as well.

As mentioned here on occasion, knowing anything about historical consequences from actions is a prime qualification for serving as a liberal Democrat in national office. So don't expect any of the current radical cabals in the House and Senate to pay attention. The only good thing is that this will probably cause a major recession in time for the 2008 House and Senate elections. The Democrats will no doubt blame the disaster on the outgoing President, trying to both steal their cake and eat it too.

Luther

Empire-Building Save-The-Worlders: Al Gore

In a rather bizarre display of the spirit of bipartisanship, he then promptly refused to appear until after the Republicans made their opening statements and insisted on being allowed to subject them to his own 35-minute rambling opening statement, delivered in the manner of a British resident commissioner reading the 39 articles of the Anglican Confederation to a conscript assemblage of Zulus....'The Imperial Mr. Gore', Michael Reagan, Front Page Magazine, 3/23/2007

Finally! Somebody said it, as if we needed reminding. For decades, without skeptical questioning by MSM, we've seen one version of Al Gore after another parading about, instructing people outside of the United States on how they should live. As the late President's son so brilliantly understands it, this is the kind of behavior that marked the era of the British Raj. It's also why the British Raj ended. People got tired of Brits landing with armed force with instructions from Her Majesty's Government.

It is also a fact that the imperial age in Europe was led by a leftwing, "progressivist", liberal crowd whose rationalization for armed occupations of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia was to save the locals from themselves. This wasn't done, as the US in Iraq, by creating conditions wherein the locals could build their own societies. Political, cultural, and social structures were imposed by the French, the British, the Germans, the Italians and anyone else who had an interest there. They acted this way because leftwing governments took on an attitude of being superior to other people. The broadly expressed racism and cultural triumphalism of France, Germany and Britain especially didn't come from reactionaries, but from progressive elites who led governments in Berlin, Paris, and London.

Freedom doesn't come by imposition. And the future of any society is determined by its members, not by an elite of outsiders. This is a lesson that the left has never learned.

Luther

The Media's Losing Game

Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) writes:

WHY CD SALES ARE PLUMMETING: The music industry blames piracy, but other factors -- from the ability to just buy the songs you like, and not a CD full of filler, to competition from other things like games and the Internet, to the fact that releases tend to suck more than they used to -- seem more significant.

It occurs to me that the media sectors that are doing badly -- movies, music, newspapers, TV women's shows -- seem to be the most highly politicized, while the sectors that are doing well, like games, aren't. I'd be interested to see more analysis on that subject.

Candidly, while the alleged trends needs some verification, HazZzMat is not surprised that this is happening. Regarding the first graf, "music" itself these days, particularly the pop variety, is in the tank and has in many ways been in the tank since the late 1970s. The talent simply isn't very good, dependent upon the miracle of electronics along with physical ugliness and a complete lack of morals to create the hype that sells third-rate product.

Today, if you're a guy entertainer, you look ugly, have the everyday speech patterns of a drunken sailor, have utter contempt for women, and convey emotion by screaming as loudly as you can, aided and abetted by state-of-the-art amplification. If you're a girl entertainer, you dress like a whore, have the everyday speech patterns of a streetwalker, have utter contempt for yourself, and convey emotion by screaming as loudly as you can, aka, "belting," aided and abetted by state-of-the-art amplification.

You don't have to be an old fogey to clearly discern the musicianship of a Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, or Placido Domingo while wondering just what is the point in promoting, say, the latest hollow "American Idol"—who has neither talent, presence, nor subtlety—as the next Great Thing. Not to mention the rapidly-tanking and relatively short-lived phenomenon of rock music which actually has absolutely nothing left to say, either philosophically or musically.

In short, people are tired of paying money for engineered crap. They eventually came to realize that they and their wallets were being massively fooled, so went the way of single-music downloads and self-created podcasts, bypassing the hype machine. What a surprise.

Likewise, Glenn's second graf. The media that are "doing badly" are doing so for the same reason. The average duded and dudette are both bypassing the leftist hype machine. From agitprop academy award winners like the Goracle's scummy "global warming" propaganda to mind-bogglingly biased Marxist house organs like the New York Times, most people (Hollywood types aside) can readily discern the snake oil salesmen in their midst and see no point in paying (and paying well) to help maintain the comfy lifestyles of people who regularly lie to them. Who knew?

Vaclav Klaus' Wake-up Call on "Global Warming" Religion

The Goracle was up on Capitol Hill today, bleating on about the "global warming" crisis that he dreamed up after his embittering loss (thank God) of the presidency. He called it a "planetary emergency." Just like the heating bills for his and ambulance-chaser Edwards' utility bills, no doubt. What a snake oil salesman this pompous ass has turned out to be.

Meanwhile, back in the Czech Republic, one courageous politician, at least, has the common sense to tell it like it is:

PRAGUE – Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Wednesday that fighting global warming has turned into a "religion" that replaced the ideology of communism and threatens to clip basic freedoms.... "Communism has been replaced by the threat of an ambitious environmentalism," Klaus wrote in response to questions from the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce.

President Klaus has it exactly right, and we can't improve on his assessment of the environmentaloids and their High Priest. They remind him too much of his former oppressors, and he obviously knows party-inspired agitprop when he sees it.

"Global warming," which is in fact, a provably cyclical phenomenon, is the latest scare-scheme by America's socialists in their unrelenting attack upon our earning power and freedom. Like the tobacco lawsuits, whose alleged aim was "health" but whose real aim was to direct an income spigot from tobacco companies directly to the pockets of politicians, "global warming" will allow the Democrats (America's Socialist Party) to save us from ourselves yet again by extracting an even larger percentage of our income and discretionary cash.

Ultimately, when everyone's tax rate is 50% or higher, we'll all end up just like the Europeans that Democrats, academics, and phony intellectuals everywhere profess to admire: living on the dole, unemployed, docile, and drunk, and lacking any ambition at all. President Klaus clearly has no interest in this. Neither does HazZzMat.

Political Math in New York City Schools

THERE'S a fifth column in New York City's public schools - radical teachers who openly undermine Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's curriculum mandates and use their classrooms to indoctrinate students in left-wing, anti-American ideology...One center for this movement is El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn, the city's first "social justice" high school. The school's lead math teacher, Jonathan Osler, is using El Puente as a base from which to organize a three-day conference in April on "Math Education and Social Justice."...Osler offers this urgent reason for the conference: "The systemic and structural oppression of low income and people of color continues to worsen. The number of people in prison continues to grow, as does our unemployment rate . . . However, in math classes around the country, perhaps the best places to study many of these issues, we continue to use curricula and models that lack any real-world - let alone socially relevant - contexts."...'Math and Marxism: NYC's Wack Job Teachers,' Sol Stern, The NY Post 3/21/2007

Kudos to The NY Post and Sol Stern for blowing the whistle -- finally! -- on the subversion of secondary public education. As bad as it is in colleges and universities, it begins in the public schools, which may be in greater need of David Horowitz's campaign for intellectual diversity than any college campus.

Luther

Global Hot Air: Prof. Stott's Analysis

In a column curiously excluded from The New York Post's Web site, Philip Stot wrote the following:

Does it matter if global warming is a 'crisis' or not? Aren't we threatened by a serious temperature rise? Shouldn't we act anyway, because we are stewards of the environment? Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about "saving the planet." What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act....('Global-Warming Hysteria,' Philip Stott, The NY Post, 3/21/2007)

Why the publisher didn't see fit to include this on the Web site is most curious. Stott hits on a principal issue in the whole matter of climate change, that it's Lefty boutique politics, something that rich hysterics can howl about while turning the other way when confronted by something immediate. The relationship between this and the so-called "anti-war" movement and its support for Islamic terrorists is not very subtle.

Luther

Mexifornia: The Sequel

As we've mentioned in other posts, it seems surpassingly difficult for either of America's decaying political parties to grapple with the average American's genuine and understandable outrage over our casual treatment of the illegal alien invasion. The Democrats, of course, and their stooges in the judiciary, have been actively been encouraging this illegal infiltration as a way of bulletproofing electoral majorities by importing large numbers of foreign individuals who reflexively vote for socialists, which the Democrats by and large are. The Republicans, on the other hand, have oddly adopted largely the same tactic, idiotically imagining they can do the same thing. The result? An increasing sense of helplessness on the part of the populace which is increasingly seeing the rule of law as something that's selectively enforced by the elites against the best interests of the average American.

At this point, we're forced in today's PC environment to state categorically that HazZzMat has zero problems with LEGAL immigration. After all, Wonk's grandpap migrated LEGALLY from Europe at the beginning of the last century, and Mrs. Wonker LEGALLY emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. as a tot in the 1950s and is now a citizen. It's the ILLEGAL stuff that is sending the wrong message and, in many respects, is being used as a hideous trick by the leftists to provide themselves, as we have said, with an absolute, permanent electoral majority for the kind of socialism that all their other thuggish tactics taken together could not ensure.

As has often been the case, California was the lab for this insidious new wrinkle on the old Democratic machine's tradition of stuffing ballot boxes in largely urban jurisdictions. And the legal, fiscal, educational, and healthcare consequences of this are immense and growing, promising to put the next generation of Americans in a social straitjacket. Which, of course, is what the lefties want. Along with not having to worry about re-election ever again.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote brilliantly on this topic back in 2002, entitled "Do We Want Mexifornia?" He revisits the piece and this topic in the Winter 2007 issue of the terrific "City Journal." The reprise is entitled "Mexifornia, Five Years Later."

In it, Hanson observes the following:

The growing national discomfort over illegal immigration more than four years after “Mexifornia” first appeared in City Journal is not only apparent in the rightward shift of the debate but also in the absence of any new arguments for open borders—while the old arguments, Americans are finally concluding, really do erode the law, reward the cynical here and abroad, and needlessly divide Americans along class, political, and ethnic lines.

We agree. To gain a better understanding of this whole complex topic, we encourage you to read the whole article here.

More on the Gathering of Eagles

Wonk continues to be amazed at the great grafix coming in documenting the "Gathering of Eagles" counter-demonstration against the Commie-crat surrender brigades that came to DC last week to demand that America chicken out in Iraq by way of "redeployment," presumably stateside. This treasonous nonsense, added to the desecration of the Capitol building by a previous crop of nutroots demonstrators, riled our seemingly forgotten 'Nam Vets enough to rise up en masse and head for DC themselves. They provided the Stalinists with a little opposition for a change, not to mention protecting the Vietnam Memorial from potential desecration by the political descendents of those 1960s leftists who did their best to flat-out guarantee that American troops did indeed die in vain. This show of force by real American patriots (as opposed to faux patriots like the disgraceful Congressman John Murtha [D-Nutroots]).

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the Republicans lost both houses of Congress last year not because of opposition to the Iraqi stanza of the Global War on Terror. They were booted out because, almost overnight, they had turned into Democrats, spending like drunken sailors and ignoring the wishes of those who had sent them to Washington on a reformist agenda. Their wishy-washiness on the illegal immigration issue also did not help.

Much as we like W, he's become tone-deaf when it comes to the anger of American citizens over the effects on our cities and our economy of the brazen hordes of illegals. The Dems are only too happy to encourage their wholesale importation as a means of adding Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to their permanent electoral lock on California where they did the same thing during the Clinton administration which actively encouraged this. (Though they'll never admit it.) Add that to W's botched management of the Iraqi theater until recently, and voilà! You have a weakened presidency.

Unfortunately, the always-myopic and never subtly leftist MSM interpreted this as putting Americans squarely behind the Democrats' surrender agenda. But the Gathering of Eagles this past weekend proved the overwhelming falsity of this facile spin. The Eagles have clearly demonstrated that we're only in the early innings of a very long ballgame—one that will result in the permanent destruction of the Hate-America-First Marxists who have been systematically been destroying our courts, our laws, our universities, our media, our churches, and our kids for generations. Welcome back, Eagles. Your leadership is needed now more than ever.

For access to more grafix on this extraordinarily significant counter-demonstration, as well as links to other sites and blogs run by real patriots, click on over to Illusion Or Reality.

UPDATE/POSTSCRIPT: In the interest of furthering the truth, here's another interesting comment from "Papa Ray," gathered from Bellmont Club's initial post on this same event:

Jeez, I just love it when sparks fly here.

By The Way..It seems that the MSM accomplished it's mission re the DC protest.

They managed to keep it low in the news, managed to misrepresent the anti-war protesters as having many thousands and the poor unwashed veterans as having a few hundred there.

Actually according to the U.S. Park Service, the Vets had over 30,000 peons there and the shining anti-war citizens at about 10,000. Many of the peaceniks left early (and left their trash) because it was too cold for their sensibilities, while the Vets patroled all of the monuments and cleaned up their trash and took it with them, long after the last socialist liberal left.

How Lansing Netroots Support "Free Speech"

A couple of posts down, HazZzMat provided an illustration of how Portland's "patriots" "support our troops." Check it out here.

But now, let's travel to the Rust Belt and see how the netroots help protect Congressman Mike Rogers' (R-Lansing, MI) rights to free speech and freedom of expression at the site of his local Congressional office:

Or how about this expression of respect?

WXYZ-TV, from whose site we obtained these images, also mentions that the office had been "severely vandalized" and that the FBI and local cops were looking at videotapes that might've caught the perps on film.

While union thuggery is a fine, longstanding Michigan tradition, this is not the work of union types who generally know better than to trash a Congressman, even if he is a Repub. Dimes to donuts, it's the handycraft of local netroots, the kind of young Stalinists who slash tires in Wisconsin and "key" car finishes in Virginia, which is why few of us down here bother to put RNC bumper stickers on our cars. So much for free speech.

As George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm many years ago:

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Remember that the next time some lefty bleats about he, or she, supports our troops and defends everyone's right to free speech. They're talking about their free speech. Not yours. And obviously, not Congressman Rogers.'

Suburban Delusions: Prager on Feelgood "Sports"

This past weekend, a friend of mine attended his 13-year-old son's baseball game. What he saw encapsulates a major reason many of us fear for the future of America and the West...His son's team was winning 24-7 as the game entered the last inning. When he looked up at the scoreboard, he noticed that the score read 0-0. Naturally, he inquired as to what happened -- was the scoreboard perhaps broken? -- and was told that the winning team's coach asked the scoreboard keeper to change the score. He and some of the parents were concerned that the boys on the losing team felt humiliated....Compassion and the Decline of America, Dennis Prager, Townhall, 3/20/2007

Prager goes on and correctly identifies the way this kind of thinking leads to mushy-headed adults who don't believe in anything and who don't fight or work for anything. Trouble is that Prager is looking at only one part of America, that font of idyllic dreams, the liberal suburban community. He is right insofar as that part of America is the predominant one in our political system. But has Prager ever attended an urban playground basketball game? Or an urban Dominican league baseball game?

If you thought the NBA was competitive, watch the lengths that teenagers and young adults will go to beat one another on a playground basketball court. If you're tired of the posturing of steroid-drenched major leaguers, you should see the talent, work ethic, and devotion to winning by unpaid baseball players in the Dominican league. Prager's suburb is not universal, but a sad artifact of the good little liberal's delusions. For some of them, it's the sweet little animals of a cartoon, the talking lions who don't rip the abdomen out of a passing human being, the snake that won't sink venomous fangs in the thigh of anyone who disturbs it. For others, frighteningly depicted by Spielberg, of all people, in depicting parents lusting for a perfectly loving child in A.I., it's a child untroubled by conflict, fear, or loss. Oh, don't we all wish for such things?

But looking at even as benign a setting as a corporate office, does anyone believe such a vision has the remotest possibility? It's not just the men who slash at each other's throats, however metaphornically. The good liberal suburbs depicted by Prager, in their gushing worry about their precious children having to experience loss in a sport, for God's sakes, represents a future once imagined by H.G. Welles in The Time Machine. In that future, the world would apparently be dominated by passive little non-aggressors, all lovey-dovey, Haight-Ashbury without the drugs. The rest of Welles's story, though, was of course the story. Passive little non-aggressors can only exist if someone else does the work, including the competition. In Welles's story, the price for this exacted from the infantilized "human" adults was to subject them to periodic cannibalism. The competitive types in urban areas will exact a different price, not so bloody perhaps, but far more decisive: domination of the future.

This I am sure Prager would agree with, smart fellow that he is. The future belongs to those willing to compete for it, not to those who feel good about the present moment. And it's no news to note that feel good present moments, like the high from crack cocaine, quickly fade.

Luther

How Portland's Leftists "Support the Troops"

The past weekend's anti-war, Vietnam nostalgia-fests pretty much revealed the American left as the seditionists they really are. We particularly enjoyed this example of how Portland, Oregon lefties, like the Democrats they vote for, really "support our troops":

Note, too, the anarcho-Marxist banner directly above the one that's heartily "supporting the troops." The artistes who put this one together fail to disclose that their own god is Karl Marx; their "country" is the utopian world order nominally run by the socialists at the U.N. (which has replaced Moscow as the seat of said new world order; and, most importantly that they themselves will be the Masters of uninformed shlubs like you and me. Should they allow us to live. BTW, you'll never see pix like this in the MSM, which collectively prefers to call these thugs "progressives," still the standard cover word for lefty radicals after all these years.

A public service of HazZzMat, defending American culture and exposing leftist groupthink 24/7, with a hat tip to LGF for the image. Click here for more.

NY Medicaid Update: Spitzer a Player?

Last week, a New York City-area hospital trade group, the Greater New York Hospital Association, which had teamed up with 1199 SEIU to pay for an expensive television advertising campaign, decided to pull the plug on its involvement in the effort at the urging of some of the city's top hospital executives....Spitzer Nears Hospital Deal That Could Isolate Union, Jacob Gershman, The New York Sun, 3/20/2007

Those like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver who thought new boy on the block Governor Spitzer was a mark may get one hell of a surprise if this deal goes through. But it has to. New York State spends more than twice as much Medicaid money per patient as does California. That's a little hard to believe, considering that California has been rightfully considered the American socialist state bar none for decades. The Peoples Republic of New York, however, has been playing the same game for decades. Now look -- its elite are discovering that the fly in the Marxist ointment is a Democrat. Whoopee!

Luther

Obama Claims No Connection To 1984 Mashup

With presidential campaigns now poised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising that will blanket television before November 2008, this seemingly home-produced video -- created with software and a laptop, and likely without the benefit of a team of expensive political consultants -- opens a new window, Rosenberg said. It has dramatized a brave new world in which passionate activists outside the structure of traditional campaigns have the power to shape the message -- even for a presidential candidate....Obama Campaigns in Oakland: Political Video Smackdown, Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/17/2007

The denials of the Obama campaign of being involved in this sensational remix of the classic Apple advertisement are probably true, but the lack of a suitably outraged response, with a loud call for regulating such abuses is even more telling. If you haven't seen this sensational bit of trickery, here's a link: 1984 Remixed.

If this sets the tone for 2008, fasten your seatbelts....

Luther

Statistic of the Day

About one-third of the people living in the national's capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a report on the District of Columbia....Study Finds One Third in D.C. Illiterate>, Breitart.com

And that was just in the House of Representatives....

;-)

I hope you aren't surprised that in the very laboratory of government action a huge minority can't read or write.

Luther

Horowitz Spots Liberal State Religion

A Pennsylvania judge ruled that “Intelligent Design” had no place in classrooms because it was “a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory,” thus violating the separation of church and state...Yet at that very moment professors in American universities were teaching a form of secular creationism as contrary to the findings of modern science as the Biblical claim that the God had made the world in seven days...The name of this theory is “social constructionism,” and its churches are Women’s Studies departments situated in universities across the United States. The feminist theory of social construction maintains that the differences between men and women – apart from obvious anatomical ones -- are not biologically determined but are created by a patriarchal social structure that is designed by men to oppress women...Critics of feminism such as Christina Hoff Sommers and neuroscientists such as Harvard’s Stephen Pinker have pointed out that this view contradicts the findings of modern science...'Secular Creationism,' David Horowitz, Front Page Magazine

One of the most beautiful things about solid, well-researched, tested theories is that they have a simplicity and obviousness that astounds on a first viewing. One asks: Why didn't somebody else see that? Maybe in this case they did, but rarely has this thesis about the Left been so well enunciated, and by someone who used to be a True Believer. Way to go, David!

Luther

Thanks to The NY Times?

The gold standard of journalistic liberalism has authenticated President Bush. For years, President Bush has stated Iraq is “the central front in the War on Terror,” while his opponents – including all the leading Democratic presidential candidates...denounced the war they once authorized as a “distraction” and “diversion” from the real enemy: al-Qaeda. That lie has been put to rest...The Times also notes the terrorists...plot feverishly to pull off another victory over a superpower in the Arab world. In two paragraphs, the mainstream media have proven:
1. Al-Qaeda is America’s most pressing enemy in Iraq;
2. Al-Qaeda is channeling its energy into defeating the United States in Iraq; and
3. Thanks to the Iraq war, Zawahiri’s footsoldiers are focusing on Baghdad and not New York, Washington, or rural Pennsylvania...'The New York Times Proves Bush Right on Iraq,' Ben Johnson, Front Page Magazine,3/19/2007, with extensive quotes from The New York Times

What next? Will the NY Times endorse Rudy Giuliani?

Ha! Don't be fooled.

Naturally, the “newspaper of record” conveniently hid all this verification under the bland headline, “Sunni Militants Disrupt Plan to Calm Baghdad.”...(Times Proves Bush Right...continued)

Luther

The Silent Majority Begins to Awaken

The so-called "anti-war" demonstrations in Washington yesterday—they might have been more accurately been dubbed the "Marxists in Favor of Jihad" demonstrations—took an interesting twist yesterday as the vicious but clueless left found a surprise waiting for them while crossing the Potomac River. The equally stunned Washington Posties provided a surprisingly accurate report of the festivities:

As war protesters marched toward Arlington Memorial Bridge en route to the Pentagon yesterday, they were flanked by long lines of military veterans and others who stood in solidarity with U.S. troops and the Bush administration's cause in Iraq. Many booed loudly as the protesters passed, turned their backs to them or yelled, "If you don't like America, get out!"

Several thousand vets, some of whom came by bus from New Jersey, car caravans from California or flights from Seattle or Michigan, lined the route from the bridge and down 23rd Street, waving signs such as "War There Or War Here." Their lines snaked around the corner and down several blocks of Constitution Avenue in what organizers called the largest gathering of pro-administration counter-demonstrators since the war began four years ago.

Wonker has often wondered throughout his increasingly long lifespan just what would happen if Vietnam War vets and real American Patriots (i.e., the ones who never get press coverage) finally got torqued off enough to stand up and shout. This weekend, perhaps, we began to find out, as the 'Nam Vets and their supporters cut through the miasma of political correctness and decided to tell it like it is:

The vets turned both sides of Constitution into a bitter, charged gantlet for the war protesters. "Jihadists!" some vets screamed. "You're brain-dead!" Others chanted, "Workers World traitors must hang!" -- a reference to the Communist newspaper. Some broke into "The Star-Spangled Banner" as war protesters sought to hand out pamphlets.

Nice banner there, for once correctly identifying the Communist front, North Korea-supported organization behind A.N.S.W.E.R. and other Red backers of this phony anti-war demo—the Workers World Party—something the press has consistently refused to do, giving aid and comfort to the seditionists who whip this agitprop up.

The large turnout surprised even some counter-demonstrators. Polls show public opinion turning against the war in Iraq, and the November election was widely seen as a repudiation of the administration's policy.

Interesting observation there in that second sentence. But, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." A commentator at the Belmont Club, which also notes this series of events, offers the following insightful observation on the MSM's common wisdumb regarding last fall's elections (italics are Wonker's):

I believe that the swing in public opinion was not due to the public turning against the war, but turning from the handling of the war. All the PC crap after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo; not to mention "catch and release" and ignoring the Shia militias made it seem like our leadership wasn't really serious. I think many were saying to themselves, "If we're going to fight, lets fight and get it over with. Playing PC games will just cause us to lose." Now that it looks like we're getting serious, support is returning fairly quickly.

In short, people want the gloves off.

MSM talking heads are paid millions of bucks, but few if any have ever cut to the chase the way this writer just has.

Central to the counter-protestors' ire, however, was the obnoxious left's disrespect for this country and its cultural traditions, not to mention its disrespect for property that, without the aid of Karl Marx, already belongs to all of us:

"Our side got apathetic," said Debby Lee, whose son Marc, a Navy SEAL, was killed in Iraq and who came to the rally from Phoenix in a caravan organized by MoveAmericaForward.org. But the war protesters have gone too far, Lee and others said. At a Jan. 27 antiwar rally, some protesters spray-painted the pavement on a Capitol terrace. Others crowned the Lone Sailor statue at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue with a pink tiara that had "Women for Peace" written across it.

Word of those incidents ricocheted around the Internet.

"That was the real catalyst, right there," said Navy veteran Larry Bailey. "They showed they were willing to desecrate something that's sacred to the American soul."

In other words, the counter-demonstrators, who'd heard that the Marxists were going to gather at the Vietnam Memorial, which memorialized thousands of their fallen buddies. And those vets still among the living, as well as those who supported them, decided to get on buses themselves to support the honor of America as well as its fallen heroes. They traveled to DC to really support the troops, support the country, and support the sacred status of the Memorial against the leftist hordes. Why?

"This is sacred ground to us," said Rick De Marco, 62, a Vietnam veteran from Cleveland. K.C. O'Brien, 65, a Vietnam vet from Fairfield, Calif., said: "We believe in freedom of speech. We're here to defend the right of people to say whatever they want. But we will not allow any desecration."

Sneering anti-war leftists might snicker at Mr. O'Brien's interpretation of the Bill of Rights, wondering aloud whether he's ever read either the Bill or the Constitution.

Maybe he hasn't. But understand them, he does.

It's America's Fault: The Default Assumption

A very interesting post today by the highly reliable Michael Barone explores something we've riffed on frequently here at HazZzMat: If anything bad happens in the world, it's always America's fault:

Where does this default assumption come from? And why is it so prevalent among our affluent educated class (which, after all, would seem to overlap considerably with the people being complained about?). It comes, I think, from our schools and, especially, from our colleges and universities. The first are staffed by liberals long accustomed to see America as full of problems needing solving; the latter have been packed full of the people cultural critic Roger Kimball calls "tenured radicals," people who see this country and its people as the source of all evil in the world.

A great piece, condensing in just a few tight paragraphs the whole essence of today's imbalanced, self-hating left. Indeed, "Hate America First," on display once again in this weekend's pathetic anti-Vietnam, er, anti-Iraq War demonstrations here in DC and elsewhere, was just another case of this reflexive tic, which is what passes these days for intelligence in the wealthy and pampered realm of today's Cocktail Party Marxists. Read the rest of it here.

NASA Improved By More ISS Funding?

The chairman of the U.S. House science committee said yesterday that NASA is headed for "a train wreck" if the space agency isn't better funded to finish building the international space station and develop the next-generation spacecraft...The White House has cut NASA's five-year budget plan by almost $2.26 billion in the three years since President Bush announced the "Vision for Space Exploration" plan to develop new spacecraft to go back to the moon and then to Mars, said Rep. Bart Gordon, a democrat from Tennessee....NASA Said to be Headed for 'Train Wreck,' Mike Schneider, AP to NY Sun, 3/16/2007

Always trust a Democrat to throw more money at a losing project. For anyone who's followed the International Space Station, that government-sponsored housing project in the sky, you know that ISS has swallowed up NASA's science budget, diverted most shuttle missions, and offered more political showtime than scientific results. The best thing that happened to NASA in the last six years was the Bush Administration orders to re-direct their mission away from ISS and toward a return to a serious plan for human exploration of the solar system, especially the moon and Mars. But Democrats know a good housing project when they see one. It's where the constituents' sense of well-being matters more than the results.

Luther

Is an SUV a Green Vehicle?

Before gasoline power arrived, beasts of burden were polluting agricultural communities along with meat producing animals such as cows, chickens and pigs. By eliminating horses, mules and oxen on farms, tractors and other types of gas-powered farm machinery greatly reduced the problem of animal waste that environmentalists, with justification, still complain about. This also eliminated the need to grow the food required by millions of farm animals. It has been estimated that it took about 93 million acres of land in 1900 to grow the food to fuel the farm animals that were soon replaced by motorized farm machinery. Much of that land has now gone back to woodlands....'Our Green ICE Age,' Dwight R. Lee, TCS Daily, 3/16/2007

One of the advantages of being on the left in the 21st century is that denial of history is a major credential of belonging. You don't know about conditions before our time because you've never, for instance, read William Blake's descriptions of the early industrial age in England, or seen photographs or read reports about conditions in Pittsburgh in 1920 or New York in 1880. In a politics that's only about now and me and instant satisfaction, the past is an irritating bit of refuse, rather like the smoke coming out of Al Gore's colossal mansion.

But consider a 6-passenger SUV, that swerving behemoth of the Interstate. To get the same six people from, say, St. Louis to Fargo, in 1890, you would have needed the following: at least six horses plus a horse-drawn wagon for the luggage, say, eight horses. Forage for a horse is several acres. So you'd need to avail yourself of thirty or forty acres a day to feed the beasts. The mounds of manure and barrels full of urine deposited by the horses enroute would bring pollutants to thousands of water sources as you traveled. Of course, the trip would probably take a month whereas a couple of days would get you there via an SUV dreadnaught. As Dwight Lee's article suggests, multiplied by tens of millions, such transport poisoned the atmosphere, water, and introduced disease and death everywhere it existed. So one may fairly say that, compared to horses, an SUV is very green.

Luther

African Aid: Canada Says Not This Way Any Longer

G8 Member Canada made a stand on an inconvenient truth. After two years of study, and taking testimony from 400 witnesses in the U. S, Europe and Africa, a Standing Senate Committee of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, issued a report on issues related to African aid. In unsparing language, the Committee determined that after 40 years of aid, little has been done with its $12.4 billion in bilateral assistance to propel Africa from economic stagnation or to improve the quality of life on the continent. "Development assistance has been a holding pattern for Africa at best, and a direct facilitator of poor governance and economic mismanagement at worst."...To drive its point home to readers, the Committee printed a graph on the front cover of: "Overcoming 40 years of Failure." After an allocation from all other donors of $570 billion, it showed the per capita GNP in Sub-Saharan Africa at 17.1% of the world average in 1965, falling to 9.7% in 2004. In many areas the people are worse off than before and "ordinary citizens have paid the highest price for these failures."...The Committee determined that it was unrealistic for the international community to expect African countries to make economic gains without shifting its focus towards the things that African citizens and leaders actually want—assistance in generating investment, creating jobs, and facilitating trade.An Easterly Aid Wind Blows Out Of Canada,' Jeremiah Norris, TCS Daily, 3/15/2007

As Norris's sharp article illuminates, aid to Africa, so highly-touted by the UN, has been about as effective in changing economic circumstances there as the old welfare system was in the US before it was abandoned in 1995. Aid to Africa, sad to say, also follows another dismal path, that of the ill-famed loan portfolio extended to Africa in the 1980s, and for about the same reasons offered in credit reports to loan committees twenty years ago.

Commercial lenders in the 1980s, rather like aid-granting governments in the early 21st century, tended to stick to public infrastructure loans. Want to build a billion dollar dam? The banks would loan the money. And, within five to ten years, banks found that their clients could not pay back the credit extended. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of debt defaulted. And yet, despite a very public disaster, the internal pressure in banks was enormous to stick to this losing formula. Why?

Well, strange thing: because interest rates were so high, if a debtor could sustain a payment schedule for, say, five years, the bank would make enough money to offset a default. And, wonder of wonders, money center banks in the United States, as elsewhere, are virtually guaranteed institutions. And, even better, the money was loaned to governments, not corporations or individuals. It was, as such, sovereign debt, whose default directly affected not only the bank but the government of the United States in its relations with the target country. As such, Uncle Sam would make good on the defaulted principal. Isn't that great? You and I, as taxpayers, got to pay for these "executive" decisions. Would one describe such bankers as cynical?

You bet. Why do you think money center bankers are sometimes called "socialists in Armani suits?" However, a few bank officers were deeply offended. One the writer worked for then, a very savvy Swiss banker who was doing a tour with a bank now merged out of existence, had a completely different thesis, one that very much gibes with the current Canadian recommendations. Instead of the model in play, which he described as a neo-colonial structure, where money was lent to benefit the banker's country or institution, not the client, he wanted instead to develop financial arrangements for assisting in building internal cash flows in African and other underdeveloped countries. "Internal cash flow is a key indicator of economic health," he noted on more than one occasion, something any Swiss banker knows a great deal about. One project he worked on involved building materials.

In the target countries, a particular mix of muds and clays made an especially durable brick. Though produced by a cottage industry, the material was in huge demand and, because of erratic supply, hugely overpriced. The bank officer, with considerable assistance from locals in-country, developed a financial plan for constructing a scaled-up business for making this kind of brick. It would be, in other words, real infrastructure, not a bridge to nowhere, nor a dam whose construction might involve wars between competing countries. The money made would become part of the internal economies of several countries, not transmitted offshore. What was the determination of the loan committee on this proposal?

Because the proposed business was not designed to produce products for exports to countries to whose banks these countries owed money, the plan was rejected. Not long after, this brilliant bank officer went back to Switzerland where he now runs a substantial bank. A large part of their business is in micro loans to the Third World, small amounts lent to the smallest of businesses. Reliability of repayment is above 90%.

Foreign aid as it's construed now, and has been for many decades, is strikingly similar in its ultimate effect, as this report by Norris suggests. The real objective isn't feeding the people of a given country, but bribing its government into pursuing interests favored by the donors. All welfare works like this. In the US, domestic welfare led to two constituencies: those who pleaded for benefits; and those who administered benefits. The only people who got out of their miserable economic conditions were the administrators, just like Africa's real beneficiaries of foreign aid. Everybody else's conditions steadily worsened.

This beat is one that a lot of drummers have sounded. The neat thing Norris reveals is that a national government in the West has decided to get in step. Maybe the US will follow.

Luther

Defeatists Defeated

Democrats aggressively challenged President Bush's Iraq policy at both ends of the Capitol building, gaining House committee approval for a troop withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008, but suffering defeat in the Senate...The vote was 50-48 against the measure, 12 short of the 60 needed for passage...'Republicans Hand Majority Leader Harry Reid a Defeat...,Fox News, 3/16/2007

Note: the vote wasn't blocked by failing to reach 60 for the proposal. It was blocked because the proposal lost. But, quite a few Senators are now in record as being officially in favor of surrender, something to remember when they come up for election in 2008.

Luther

'Nuff Said -- Senator Lieberman: Quote of the Day

There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism...There is something profoundly wrong when there is so much distrust of our intelligence community that some Americans doubt the plain and ominous facts about the threat to us posed by Iran...And there is something profoundly wrong when, in the face of attacks by radical Islam, we think we can find safety and stability by pulling back, by talking to and accommodating our enemies, and abandoning our friends and allies...Some of this wrong-headed thinking about the world is happening because we're in a political climate where, for many people, when George Bush says "yes," their reflex reaction is to say "no."...
That is unacceptable....'Comes to Your Senses About Iraq', from March 12th speech by Senator Joseph Lieberman,

With the Senate defeat of the latest Democrat Surrender Act, these words are a fine summary of the arguments that won the day.

Way to go, Joe!

Luther

Fifth Annual International "Eat an Animal for PETA Day"

Via Instapundit, we found a lovely way to start off a cold and rainy Friday here in the Nation's Capital, where we await the descent of hordes of leftist demonstrators who will attempt to relive past glories by trashing the Pentagon tomorrow as they attempt to reprise the "defeat" they caused us in Vietnam.

Lefties are all of a piece. Illogical, fanatical, perpetually enraged at the U.S. and intolerant of all other viewpoints except the Marxism for which they proselytize 24/7. Among the worst of these crazed fanatics are the wing-nuts of the socalled "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals" (PETA). You know, those folks who, wilfully ignorant of the fact that humans were designed as omnivores, are trying to stuff vegetables and only vegetables down our unwilling gullets. Typical of leftist illogic, they're complaining about clubbing baby seals again, while, no doubt, they're enthusiastically supporting abortion "rights," indicating where human beings really are in their fanatical world agenda.

Well, it looks like some enterprising folks staged a counter-demonstration for us yesterday against these Idiotarian fanatics. It was the quiet, bourgeois, tasteful kind most appreciated by civilized folks, one we can all celibrate in the security and comfort of our own homes, even if HazZzMat happens to be a day late in letting you know about it. Yourish.com tells us that The Ides of March was none other thanInternational Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA Day:

Don’t forget, this Thursday, March 15th, is the fifth annual International Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA (IEATAPETA) Day, the day on which we annoy vegans the world over, and PETA, which is right here in my state of Virginia.

This year, Sarah and I are taking the twins to lunch at Brock’s again, so we can take pictures and contrast and compare.

Go to PETA Is Full of Crap for meat-up, er, meet-up information.

What a refreshing thought. Check out the links. Pick up a bottle of industrial strength zin. Buy a juicy, well-marbled steak. And enjoy it this evening in all its bloody medium rare to rare glory. Given that it's Friday during Lent, though, you might want to consider saying an Act of Perfect Contrition if you're a practicing Catholic.

Amen. Pass the A-1.

Spitzer and the Health Care Mob

Though Spitzer’s proposals were hardly revolutionary and would have done little more than slow expansion of the $45 billion program, the state’s health-care lobby reacted fiercely to the plan, as they have to every legitimate effort to contain costs over the past decade. An alliance of the health-care workers’ union Local 1199 and the Greater New York Hospital Association fired off TV ads attacking Spitzer’s proposals and urging him instead to squeeze savings out of the profits of health-care insurers and drug companies. The groups’ spokesperson also linked Spitzer’s reforms with Bush administration efforts to control the growth of federal health-care spending...'Taking on Albany's Gorillas,' Stephen Malanga, City Journal, 3/5/2007

Poor Governor Spitzer. Hot off the backs of lawbreaking corporations (except those contributing to his gubernatorial campaign), he finds himself face-to-face with the New York State health care "system." This is a system hacked together by local, state, and federal officials, a truly bastard child of the Great Society legislative madness of forty years ago.

The feds mandated that Medicaid be carried out by the states on their own dollar; the states mandated that localities raise taxes to fund Medicaid; health care workers organized and demanded more money and benefits; and, to round things out, the people demanded more and more Medicaid coverage. The trouble with these closed loops is that, sooner or later, such systems will cause a) bankruptcy or b) mass exodus of overtaxed citizens. Bankruptcy has been staved off so far, at least in New York City, where $26 billion in bonuses in the banking and brokerage trade kept taxes flowing. But people are leaving.

New York City lost several hundred thousand middle income citizens last year. When you get north and west of Albany, large towns are caught between the squeeze of taxpayer flight and increasing demands for Medicaid funds. Not a few of them are becoming ghost towns. Practical wisdom suggests that one should look at the basis for rising costs as a possible source of information for fixing the problem. This is what Governor Spitzer is trying to do.

But practical wisdom, if one can think of such politics as a maneuverable sports car, collides head-on with the political SUV of hospital patients, hospital workers, and hospital managers and owners. Emotions, expressed in newspapers, on television and radio, and before constituent crowds rise to fair imitations of Verdi. How could you not ask for more taxes on a rich homeowner to pay for my daughter's transplant?

Funny thing, most homeowners aren't rich. Most, if they don't have full title to the house, are up to their eyeballs in debt. Throw in school taxes for schools where most parents would rather not send their children, utility costs going through the roof, not to mention the prodigious expense of hiring contractors to make repairs, and most homeowners qualify as property poor. But, in populist (or socialist) arias, the strongest melodies are howls about rich owners and poor workers and patients. Nobody asks about who's paying the speaker or for the ads. Once hysteria becomes the pre-eminent means to manipulate voters and legislators, rational reform is only possible through government edict. This is not likely to happen in New York State before the edict of bankruptcy ruins hundreds, if not thousands, of formerly middle class towns.

Luther

Eco-Freaks "Scared" of Their Own Agitprop at TED

One of the hallmarks of the looney left is the absoluteness of its pessimism. In spite of their arrogant assertions that they have all the answers, in the next breath, our lefty friends will tell you we're all doomed anyway. Take for example a wealthy nutcase, speaking at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), California's annual conference of airheaded loopsters. Or, as the Wikis write, TED "describes itself as a 'group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value.'" Wowser, they must all be rich Democrats, because the rest of us are so "unremarkable."

But we digress. At this year's TED, it seems like the Goracle has got one of those very special, nay, remarkable people spooked:

...few conference goers were prepared for venture capitalist John Doerr to choke up with emotion as he kicked off the second day of talks on Mar. 9.

"I'm scared," he told the audience, looking down at his 15-year-old daughter in the front row. "I don't think we're going to make it."

Doerr issued a passionate call to action for everyone to make environmental concerns their "next big thing." As one of several positive examples, he praised Wal-Mart for making great moves to address what he called the three largest energy drains in business—heating and cooling systems, lighting, and refrigeration. The giant's initiative forced its 60,000 suppliers to focus on environmental issues as well, he said.

"Going green is the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," said Doerr, who through his venture firm's Greentech initiative is investing in the sector. Although much attention has been focused on fighting global warming, Doerr offered a bleak assessment of these efforts. "I'm afraid it's not enough," he said.

So let's get this straight. Poor little rich boy is pushing no doubt unproven "green" solutions to the phony "global warming" crisis that are not going to be "enough." Guess that's how he got rich, eh, by throwing good money after bad. Or maybe this is just his version of the liberal guilt trip.

It is a distinguishing characteristic of today's looney left that they regularly engage their emotions as a substitute for reason rather than even attempt to use their badly atrophied brain cells to come up with actual solutions to real, not merely perceived, problems. And so here we have the spectacle of L. John Doerr, a billionaire who made his dough at Intel, intoning the left's latest mantra, "green" living, while sobbing bitterly that it will fail. Makes for a good evening of theater amongst the intellectualoids.

Doerr cites the three great "energy drains" of business: heating and cooling systems, lighting, and refrigeration. He complains that while the evil Wal-Mart is addressing his concerns in this area that, well, phooey, we're all going to die anyway. This is probably because human being, damn them, actually need heating and cooling systems, lighting, and refrigeration, not just the Great Satans at Wal-Mart. (Something Doerr never mentions.) So what's the use?

One of the reasons we at HazZzMat could never cotton to the Marxist left, as exemplified here by the eco-freak/"global warming" movement, is that they lead lives in a terminal state of despair. Address one problem and they'll have another one for you, even worse than the first. Alternating between tears and perpetual outrage, these are people have entirely lost the capacity for happiness, save when fantasizing about the assassination of Dick Cheney. Which is why their socialistic solutions to everything inevitably result not in happiness but in a universal distribution of despair, negativity, and failure.

We can just see poor Johnnie Doerr leaving the conference and quietly retiring to his multimillion $ California mansion, traversing its vast grounds in his fuel efficient Range Rover while pondering the effects of next month's immense heating, cooling, lighting, and refrigeration tally on the pitifully small family budget. Which will no doubt inspire him to take off in a Gulfstream jet to cut a vulture capitalist deal in New York next week that won't involve any of those greedy, fuelish Republicans who could care less about Mother Earth. He'll make them, and the rest of us pay. Count on it.