Bjorn Lomborg asks, why cut one 3,000th of a degree? That’s about how much difference Britain’s proposed policies will make, while costing ENORMOUS sums of money. Key graphs:
Oct 15 2008
Jews for Obama? Holy Moley
I’ve never understood why American Jews are so much more likely to vote Left than Right. I suspect it has something to do with the success of STALIN’s public relations ploy to distance himself from fascists, whom he deeply resembled, by inventing the notion that fascism is from the extreme RIGHT, while socialism is from the extreme LEFT. Jews can hardly be blamed for wanting to vote for candidates as far from fascism as possible, and I fear most do not know that they’ve essentially fallen for a Stalinist labeling system. What they fail to appreciate is that fascism and socialism have in common super-authoritative statism, and are more alike than different. The American academic establishment, which has large Jewish representation, has been happy to continue this fraud, implying that people on the Right are somehow closer to Hitler than people on the Left, while always denying that, on that scale, they must be closer to Stalin. Only super-authoritative states can carry out genocides on the grand scale. And Stalin’s treatment of Jews was hardly gentle, was it?
Continue reading “Jews for Obama? Holy Moley”
Oct 13 2008
Last chance for McCain
Dick Morris thinks there is still time for the public to become aware of the terrible alliances (not mere associations) Obama has had in the past, and still has, if the market settles down and stabilizes just a bit.
A man whose spiritual adviser is Wright, whose financial backer is Tony Rezko, and whose first major employer was William Ayers might not be a good choice for president. But for these associations to loom large enough in our consciousness to impact our vote, the market has to settle down so we can hear the campaign over its din.
Oct 12 2008
Obama and Fannie/Freddie CEOs: some clarity
As reported at SNOPES, a normally reliable fact-checking website, an email has been making the rounds linking Obama to Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines and Tim Howard. Johnson and Raines are former Fannie Mae CEOs whose tenures were marked by fraudulent accounting practices and the reporting of false profits to pump up earnings reports and get executive bonuses. Howard was CFO (Chief Financial Officer) during Raines tenure, and was right in the middle of the false accounting and false profits scandals.
Snopes declares that the email is FALSE. That’s odd, because significant parts of the email are TRUE, but it does have a few incorrect assertions. Snopes’ practice in such situations is usually to say something is partly true and partly false, and to be very clear on the distinctions regarding which is which. One can only wonder why that practice was not followed in this report, which was simply declared FALSE at the top, and only a careful reader would discover that much of it was TRUE.
The email first gives the history of the involvement with Fannie Mae of former CEO Jim Johnson, former CEO Franklin Raines, and former CFO Tim Howard. Even Snopes does not deny the accuracy of this summary.
Continue reading “Obama and Fannie/Freddie CEOs: some clarity”
Oct 12 2008
Teddy Roosevelt: not a saint, a prophet, or particularly good role model
Knowing a bit more about Teddy Roosevelt than the whitewash they teach in the public schools, I’ve gotten just a bit tired of hearing McCain constantly refer to him as an icon worthy of emulation. So I was especially glad to read George Will’s take on TR, and whether he’s the model for McCain. Speaking of TR, Will writes:
He was an individualist who considered the individualism of others an impediment to the social unity required for national greatness. Having read Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” at age 14, and having strenuously transformed himself from an asthmatic child into a robust adult, he advocated “warrior republicanism” (Hawley’s phrase). TR saw virtue emerging from struggle, especially violent struggle, between nations and between the “Anglo-Saxon” race and lesser races. Blending “muscular Christianity,” the “social gospel” — which sanctified the state as an instrument of moral reclamation — and Darwinian theory, TR believed that human nature evolved toward improvement through conflict.
Continue reading “Teddy Roosevelt: not a saint, a prophet, or particularly good role model”
Oct 10 2008
From Isaiah chapter 5
Things are looking tense around here.
15 So man will be brought low
and mankind humbled,
the eyes of the arrogant humbled.16 But the LORD Almighty will be exalted by his justice,
and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness.17 Then sheep will graze as in their own pasture;
lambs will feed [f] among the ruins of the rich.18 Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit,
and wickedness as with cart ropes,19 to those who say, “Let God hurry,
let him hasten his work
so we may see it.
Let it approach,
let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come,
so we may know it.”
Maybe we aren’t supposed to be trying to create the perfect society after all?
20 Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
That’s pretty clear. Isn’t it?
Oct 07 2008
Welcome, neighbor!
We’re letting people who hate us and who have been trained to kill us loose in our nation’s capitol. (much more at the link)
Immediately after it was released this summer, Barack Obama applauded the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5/4 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which for the first time extended rights under the U.S. Constitution to foreigners captured and held abroad based on their activities abroad. To reach that result, the Supreme Court had to declare unconstitutional a statute passed by Congress with bipartisan support and signed into law by the president which gave these individuals substantive and procedural rights comparable or superior to those we give to our own sons and daughters in uniform. It also had to ignore and/or mischaracterize decades of prior federal precedents holding that such foreigners had no right to claim the U.S. Constitution’s protections through a writ of habeas corpus, essentially extending the protections of the U.S. Constitution to the entire world.
Now as the inevitable consequence of that ruling, seventeen hard-core Islamic jihadists who’d come from their homes in China to train at terrorist camps in Afghanistan, captured there by our armed forces, and held since at Guantanamo Bay, are on the brink of being released this week, not for return to China, but into the general population of our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.:
Did you get that? We’re letting trained Chinese Islamic extremist trainee killers loose in Washington DC. This is the outcome that is praised by the Left, including Obama and acolytes. They wanted this.
So.
I propose that the government place these, uh, gentlemen in half-way houses in the same neighborhood as the Left leaning Supreme Court judges who made this idiotic decision. Or the neighborhood where the Democrat Senators live who invented Borking, or the Democrat Senators who filibustered the appointment of constructionist judges. Or, my personal favorite, the neighborhood where the ACLU lawyers live, who pushed for this ruling.
Actually, I suppose we can’t blame the Leftists on the Court for voting like “useful idiots“. But Justice Kennedy really ought to know better. So let’s just let the Chinese Islamic terrorist trainees loose in his neighborhood. Maybe that would be a nice place for the halfway house.
Oct 06 2008
Oblivious Obama? He just didn’t know?!?
Now, Obama’s campaign is claiming he didn’t know that William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were terrorists, unrepentant ones, during all the years when Obama worked with Ayers, sent foundation money in Ayers’ direction, when Ayers’ helped Obama kick off his political career, etc.
Powerline has this to say about the likelihood that Obama “didn’t know”.
This strikes me as a rather stunning development. Obama appears to be admitting that if he knew about Ayers’ terrorist history, and the fact that he still takes pride in that history and despises America, it would be an error in judgment to form a close association with him.
But it is inconceivable that Barack Obama knew Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn well enough to kick off his first political campaign in their living room, but didn’t know that Ayers and Dohrn were Communists who led the Weatherman faction of SDS, urged young people to “kill your parents,” carried out approximately 30 bombings, including New York City’s police headquarters, the Capitol and the Pentagon, celebrated the Charles Manson murders, spent years living underground to avoid criminal prosecution, and continued to express their lifelong hatred for the United States in books, magazine articles, and public speeches. This is rather like a person claiming that he had worked closely with Arnold Schwarzenegger for years, but had no idea that he was once a bodybuilder and movie actor. Ayers’ and Dohrn’s radical past is their only claim to fame.
There must be a great many people who can attest that Obama was well aware of Ayers’ and Dohrn’s history. It will be interesting to see whether any of them are willing to blow the whistle on Obama’s latest evasion.
But there are also other problems with this incredible assertion:
1) The Ayers association has been a big topic among those opposing Obama for over a year. Why, exactly, is it only NOW that we’re being told Obama didn’t know? We’re supposed to think that the campaign just noticed, this week, that Obama’s relationship with Ayers is a problem? Why didn’t Obama say so when he was asked about this in the primary campaign debates with Hillary Clinton?
2) Even if one accepted the impossible assumption of Obamian ignorance about Ayers’ past, what does this say about the KINDS of people with whom Obama works? Ayers has NEVER hidden his past: indeed, he celebrates it, and specifically refers to it often as a badge of honor, verifying his pedigree as an authentic supporter of the radically LEFT causes he supports, and with which he and Obama were involved. That means Obama’s ability to assess people is very weak, at a minimum, a charge strengthened by his pretended shock that Rev. Wright just surprised him with his hate-speech, after all those years of attending his church, being married by him, having his babies blessed by him, etc.
3) When the Obama campaign (inevitably) retracts this silly assertion, will the campaign pay a price for lying desperately to try to blunt the charges about Obama’s terrorist connections? Probably not, because the main stream media, snorkeling around in the tank for Obama, will simply not cover it, write editorials about the questions it raises, etc.
UPDATE: One more thought: even if we take a face value the argument that Obama didn’t know about Ayers’ terrorist past and unrepentant present, when Obama was working most closely with him on “education foundations”, Ayers was kicking off Obama’s political career in his home, etc., it is impossible to believe that those advising Obama at the time did not know, either. Why wouldn’t they have told Obama? Hard to think of a reason, unless it is that they knew Obama wouldn’t care.
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