"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Saturday, November 03, 2007

HILLARY REVERSES HERSELF: WILL NEGOTIATE WITH IRAN

 
So Hillary has changed her mind and will negotiate with Iran. Given her triple talk at the last Democratic debate, odds are she'll change her mind fourteen or fifteen more times before the general election, so we may end up okay.

Idea: Reliapundit. Cross-posted at Doug Ross @ Journal.

U.S. TECHNICIANS TO BEGIN DISABLING N. KOREAN NUKE REACTOR BEGINNING MONDAY

George Bush has accomplished what Bill Clinton could not (and neither the BBC, nor CNN give him credit for it):
Sung Kim is leading the team of experts in Pyongyang. A team of US technicians is due to begin disabling North Korea's nuclear complex on Monday with Pyongyang's permission, a top US envoy has said.

The technicians have left Pyongyang and are due to arrive at the main nuclear site, Yongbyon, on Sunday, according to Christopher Hill.

Pyongyang agreed to disabling in return for aid and security guarantees.

It shut down its reactor at Yongbyon in July and is to give details of its programme by the end of the year.

Speaking in Tokyo, Mr Hill said the US experts would start disabling the reactor, North Korea's only functioning one, and two other facilities on Monday.

"It's a very big day because it's the first time it [North Korea] is actually going to start dismantling its nuclear programme," he added.

TEACHING GRADE-SCHOOLERS TO CROSS DRESS

I don't think that even in his wildest dreams Gramsci envisaged this:
.- A Bay Area Middle School has canceled a scheduled cross-dressing or “gender-switch” day after parents complained, according to an Oct. 30 Pacific Justice Institute news release. The Sacramento-based institute is a legal organization that defends parental rights, religious freedom, and other civil liberties.

Adams Middle School in Brentwood encouraged students to cross-dress – boys wearing girls clothing, girls wearing boys’ clothing – on the last day of “Spirit Week,” Friday, Nov. 2. Parents were given little notice of the event, said the Pacific Justice Institute, and only found out about it after flyers were posted at the school.

A parent of a seventh-grader met with the principal, Adam Clark, to voice her concerns about the event, and was told that it would go ahead as planned. Clark told the parent she could keep her son home if he did not want to be part of the event. The parent contacted Pacific Justice Institute, which told her she needed to enlist other parents to contact the school with their concerns. The Institute itself prepared to intervene, if necessary.

On Oct. 30, the school removed the flyers advertising the event and confirmed it had been canceled. Instead, the school encourages students to wear school colors. Clark told Institute attorney Matthew McReynolds, “We want to encourage our students to be free thinkers, [but] we felt that the overall message wasn’t coming across clear to some members of the community.”

Mandatory cross-dressing in the United States and mandatory hijab-wearing in Britain are but two examples of the Gramscian assault on our culture and our values, intended to weaken every part of our society so that it can be replaced with a statist, totalitarian dystopia.

This is what happens when teachers and school administrators are educated in humanities and social science faculties that are dominated by communists, post-modernists, and cultural-relativists.

SCOOTER, TIMMY AND BJ: SHOULD BILL CLINTON BE INDICTED FOR PERJURY?

HERE'S A LINK TO A GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT RUSSERT AND HILLARY'S BACK'N FORTH ON HER HUSBAND'S UNWILLINGNESS TO MAKE AN EARLY RELEASE OF DOCUMENTS FROM HIS PRESIDENCY WHICH INVOLVE HER.

  • THE LINK HAS A GREAT VIDEO OF BJ DEFENDING HILLARY - AND ATTACKING RUSSERT - (HE EVEN WAGS HIS FINGER, JUST LIKE WHEN HE DENIED HAVING SEX WITH LEWINSKY!).

  • THERE MIGHT BE INSIGHTFUL INFORMATION IN THOSE DOCUMENTS WHICH WOULD HELP THE PUBLIC LEARN MORE ABOUT HILLARY. RUSSERT VIEWS THE CLINTON'S LACK OF CANDOR AND OPENNESS AS SUSPICIOUS - AS IN: "WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?"

  • AMONG OTHER THINGS, BILL SAYS THAT TIM SAID THE RELEASE DATE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE DOCUMENTS IN QUESTION IS 2009. BUT TIM SAID IT WAS 2012. AND TIM WAS CORRECT. THERE MIGHT BE INSIGHTFUL INFORMATION WHICH WOULD HELP THE PUBLIC LEARN MORE ABOUT HILLARY.

  • THE LAST TIME SOMEONE HAD A DIFFERENT RECOLLECTION THAN TIM RUSSERT, HE WAS CONVICTED OF PERJURY.

  • HIS NAME WAS LIBBY.

  • MAYBE IT'S TIME TO INDICT BJ CLINTON?

JUST SAYING.

EXECUTING MURDERERS DETERS MURDERS

One of the more popular moral-relativist criticisms of capital punishment is to claim that the death penalty does not deter murder. Of course, that is not its only purpose, nor even its primary purpose.

But guess what? Executing murderers does deter murder.

Roy Adler and Michael Summers, faculty members at Pepperdine University, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, in which they show that the number of murders in the United States declined in the early 1990s, just after the number of executions began rising. You may need to be a subscriber to open the article. Their main point, however, is simple:
Most commentators who oppose capital punishment assert that an execution has no deterrent effect on future crimes. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the death penalty, when carried out, has an enormous deterrent effect on the number of murders. More precisely, our recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year.
Here, fair use, is the graphic:


And, by the way, executing a murderer deters future murders by that particular murderer 100%.

FRENCH PRIEST SEARCHES FOR CLUES TO JEWISH VICTIMS IN UKRAINE'S NAZI-ERA MURDER FIELDS

An interesting report about a special search team led by a French Catholic priest that's investigating the place in the Ukraine where 1,600 Jews disappeared in Ustia during 1941.

SOME FATAH MEMBERS TURN TO AL QAEDA WHILE OTHERS THREATEN SDEROT

And rocket attacks are also continuing:
Scores of Fatah policemen who used to serve in the Palestinian Authority security forces in the Gaza Strip have now joined the al-Qaida-affiliated group calling itself the Army of Islam, sources in the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

Meanwhile, Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for firing 20 rockets from the Gaza Strip recently. The group said the attacks signaled the beginning of a military campaign dubbed "Operation Gaza Autumn," in the course of which it would fire hundreds of rockets at Israeli communities.
Meanwhile, we're also told that the US okayed wide-scale IDF operations in Gaza. Of course, with politicians like these in charge in Israel, it figures that we'd have to get the Dubya administration's green light to conduct these sort of things, wouldn't we?

WEEKEND WITH THE ARTS: PROKOFIEV AND VILLA LOBOS

WEEKEND WITH THE ARTS: PROKOFIEV AND VILLA LOBOS

There's more to life than war, taxes and politics - and a lot of it's more fun, too! That's why every WEEKEND, here at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, we post some of the cultural things we're into, things we think you might also find entertaining, enriching, and stimulating.After all, the arts - ALL ARTS, not just fine arts - are a big part of what our liberty is for, and what we're fighting to defend!


FIRST UP THIS WEEK:
PROKOFIEV'S FIFTH SYMPHONY (ONE OF MY FAVORITES) - 2ND MOVEMENT (9 MINUTES):



ALL PROKOFIEV'S SYMPHONIES HERE.

HERE IS A PIECE BY COMPOSER HEITOR VILLA LOBOS - A GENIUS (9 MINUTES):


AND HERE'S ANOTHER - Bachianas Brasileiras Aria # 5:



ANOTHER VERSION:

MUSHARRAF DECLARES EMERGENCY: PAKISTAN HAS ANOTHER MILITARY GOVERNMENT



  • I ARGUED THIS IN PART BECAUSE WE HAD DEFEATED THE JIHADIST ENEMY IN IRAQ, AND PAKISTAN REPRESENTED TO THE ENEMY THE NEXT BEST AND "RICHEST" TARGET; (THEY WANT NUKES).

WELL, THE WAR THERE IS ABOUT TO GO TO THE NEXT LEVEL.
NYTIMES:

The Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declared a state of emergency about 6 p.m. local time today, Pakistani television reported.

All members of the Supreme Court were required to sign a new provisional constitutional order mandating the state of emergency, but 8 of the 11 justices signed an order calling the state of emergency illegal and gathered at the Supreme Court building, said Gohar Khan.

The declaration came days before the Supreme Court was expected to rule on the constitutionality of General Musharraf's re-election as president last month and of his ability to serve as both the country's president and military leader.

Just after 5 p.m. signs that a state of emergency would be declared started to emerge. All television stations were blocked as news media were reporting a meeting of General Musharraf and his top aides in the president's office.

A Pakistani intelligence official said that a list had been prepared of prominent Pakistani journalists and opposition politicians who would be detained.

Before transmission was cut off, Pakistani media reported that 1,000 additional police had been deployed in Islamabad, the capital, but as of 5:30 no additional police could be seen. Groups of journalists had gathered in front of the country's Supreme Court in expectation that judges could be detained.

Government officials have said over the past several days that if a state of emergency were declared, they would not declare martial law.

A senior American commander, Adm. William J. Fallon, warned Pakistan’s president on Friday not to impose emergency rule, saying that doing so would jeopardize American financial support for the military here.

Admiral Fallon met here with the Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and his top generals to discuss a range of issues related to combating terrorism, including the Pakistani Army’s faltering efforts against Islamic militants sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, diplomats said.

The long-planned visit was at an increasingly tense time. As the date approaches for the Supreme Court to rule on whether General Musharraf can continue as president, his aides have been spreading the word that the general is considering imposing emergency rule. The court’s ruling is expected next week. Diplomats said drafts of a provisional constitutional order allowing for emergency rule had been prepared.

Admiral Fallon’s warning underscored a flurry of appeals in the past few days by Western governments for General Musharraf to abandon plans for emergency rule, a Western diplomat said.
THIS SITUATION IS NOT A SURPRISE. PAKISTAN HAS HAD MILITARY RULE FOR MOST OF THE LAST 60 YEARS.

INDIA HASN'T - NOT ONCE.

WHY THE DIVERGENCE?

I THINK BECAUSE PAKISTAN IS MUSLIM, AND ISLAM IS A MARTIAL CREED.

  • ISLAM WAS BORN IN TERROR AND GREW ONLY THROUGH TERROR, CONQUEST AND FORCED CONVERSIONS.

  • ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY ARE TENUOUS PARTNERS EVERYWHERE, AND ONLY FLOURISHES WHERE ISLAM IS DIMINISHED.

  • BIN LADEN KNOWS THIS, AND THAT'S WHY HIS DEFENSE OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM REQUIRES THAT HE ATTACK DEMOCRACIES.

AS REPUGNANT AS A MILITARY JUNTA IN PAKISTAN IS, IT IS FAR BETTER THAN A JIHADIST GOVERNMENT. MUSHARRAF DESERVES AND NEEDS OUR SUPPORT.

  • THIS IS STOP-GAP NECESSITY. NOT AN ULTIMATE SOLUTION.

THAT'S BECAUSE PERSONAL FREEDOM AND THE LITERAL KORAN ARE NOT-COMPATIBLE.

IF YOU WANT ONE, THEN YOU HAVE TO FIGHT AGAINST THE OTHER. A TEMPORARY LOSS OF SOME LIBERTY IN ORDER TO FIGHT JIHADISM IS BETTER THAN LOSING TO THE JIHADISTS - OR SURRENDERING TO THEM.

HILLARY'S DOUBLE, TRIPLE, QUADRUPLE TALK

Jim Geraghty, writing at The National Review Online:

It's very rare that I find myself in total agreement with Markos Moulitsas, creator of Daily Kos. But he calls John Edwards' response to Hillary Clinton's "pile-on" video "devastating," and I have to agree. It is the "I voted for it before I voted against it" moment, on three different issues - Iraq, Social Security, and Immigration.

My hat is off to Team Edwards. This is the toughest, most effective web ad I've seen this campaign so far. Somehow it manages to be simultaneously brutal and fair, contrasting Hillary's own words with herself, often only seconds apart.


Watch it. Rest assured this won't be the last time you see it.

Update: EIB's comments:

It's not that she doesn't know what she believes; it's that she's afraid to tell us what she believes. She's afraid to tell us what she really wants to do. The Clintons want to appear to be for and against everything. They want to play both sides of every issue down the middle so you never really know, because the purpose of this is to cover the agenda, cover it up, and then prevent it from actually getting out. We know what the agenda is...

...one day she wants to be thought of as strong like a man, as a member of the boys club. Then the other times, she's just this victim... "They're beating up on a girl! ...It isn't fair! So I'm going to go play the gender card. I'm going to go back to Wellesley."

...this is not working out [for her]. It's not. She's blowing this big time, I'm telling you. Not with rank-and-file Democrats... but the undecideds, the so-called independents. ...So now she's a girl. Before she was just as good as a man, just as strong as a man. So what are we to do now? How are we supposed to treat and how are we supposed to react to Mrs. Clinton? Is Hillary equal to a man? Is Hillary a girl? What do her supporters want us to know now? What does Clinton, Inc., want us to think of her, and what are they going to want us to think next hour? Is she a girl now, or is she a man?

...Rather than rebut her rivals' charges or confront the issues with facts and details, Clinton accused her rivals of ganging up on her. So rather than answer the questions and rather than deal with the issues, "They're hitting me! I'm a girl! They're ganging up on me!"

I wonder if the Iranians, the Syrians, the terrorists, the Chinese, or the Russians care if she's a girl or not.

Cross-posted at Doug Ross @ Journal

That famous Greenie openness to discussion (NOT)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is America's primary body for recording weather and climate data. What its scientists think about global warming is therefore of some interest. Steven Milloy decided to find out. He emailed the climate experts there a short questionnaire that enabled them to give their views in a few minutes. The reply he got back from Federal scientist Dr. Daniel Schwarzkopf was: "F**k you!" Such a high-powered intellectual! Any guesses about where he comes down on the global warming issue? Full details here (PDF).

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

GREENIE GURU HANSEN KNEW THAT THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET COULD NOT MELT IN THE NEAR FUTURE

An email from Hartwig Volz [Hartwig.Volz@rwe.com] below referring to this article

Dear Mr. Ollier,

With reference to your recent contribution, THE GREENLAND-ANTARCTICA MELTING PROBLEM DOES NOT EXIST, you may be interested in my correponence with James Hansen some years ago.

best regards
Hartwig Volz

From: Volz, Dr. Hartwig
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:16 PM
To: 'James Hansen'
Subject: Slippery Slope

Dear Dr. Hansen,

Thank you for sending me your submitted climate change editorial. Your publications are always interesting reading, though I do not always agree.

One remark: many years ago I did a lot of "adventure travelling", also mountain and ice climbing in Greenland. From this time I vaguely remember the following: the sub-ice geomorphology of Greenland is kind of shaped like a saucer. This is the reason why most of the Greenland glacier can not escape by glacier surge, because of the natural sediment and lava barrier. The same is true for Vatnajokull in Iceland, the third largest glacier in the world. So this situation is different from e.g. the situation of the North American ice shield at the end of the last glacial. The top of the Greenland glacier is far too high and too cold to melt. More details you may find by googling e.g. "Greenland sub-ice geomorphology" or asking an expert directly.

best regards
Hartwig Volz
Celle, Germany

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

VIDEO FOR MAHMOUD

HERE'S WHAT A B2 STEALTH BOMBER LOOKS LIKE, MAHMOUD.

YOU WON'T SEE THE ONES WHICH WILL BE SOON FLYING OVER IRAN...


HERE'S ANOTHER VIEW - WITH BETTER MUSIC:

The Gramscian Agenda of the Postmodern Left Has Offically Created a Major Rift in the Epsicopal Church

FILE THIS UNDER CULTURE WARS - NYTIMES:
By more than a two-to-one vote, members of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted Friday in favor of separating from the national church because of a theological rift that began with the consecration of an openly gay bishop in 2003.

The vote sets the stage for what could become a protracted legal battle between the diocese and the Episcopal Church U.S.A., which had warned Pittsburgh’s bishop not to go forward with the vote.

After passionate appeals from both sides of the debate, clergy members and lay people voted 227 to 82 to “realign” the conservative diocese.

If Friday’s vote is approved again in a year, the diocese will begin steps to remove itself from the American church and join with another province in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

After the vote, Bishop Robert W. Duncan of Pittsburgh, who is also moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, an alliance of conservative dioceses and parishes, defended the decision.

“What we’re trying to do is state clearly in the United States for the authority of Scripture,” Bishop Duncan said after the vote, taken during the diocese’s annual convention in this city about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh.

The vote was necessary, he said, because the more liberal bishops now in the majority in the national church “have hijacked my church, and that’s how most of the people here feel.”
HERE'S A BULLET POINT REVIEW:

  • THE POSTMODERN LEFT WANTS TO DEMOLISH TRADITIONAL CULTURE IN ORDER TO REPLACE IT WITH A MORALLY RELATIVIST AND SOCIALIST NANNY-STATE.

  • THEY'RE UNABASHEDLY ATTACKING THE MOST BASIC TENETS WITHIN OUR RELIGIONS - THE SCRIPTURES THEMSELVES. (THOUGH THEY WOULD NEVER EVER DREAM OF CRITIQUING THE KORAN! THIS HYPOCRISY IS NOTY UNLIKE THEIR DEFENSE OF ABORTION AND ATTACK ON THE DEATH PENEALTY: IT'S UPSIDE DOWN!)

  • TO ATTACK OUR ANCIENT AND TIME-TESTED TRADITIONS, THEY CITE FOR THEIR MORAL AUTHORITY THE RECENT EDITORIAL PAGES OF THE NYTIMES AND THE WRITINGS OF DECONSTRUCTIONISTS AND MARXISTS BORN AND DISCREDITED IN THE LAST CENTURY.

  • WHEN THEY ATTACK OUR CHURCHES, SYNAGOGUES AND TRADITIONAL FAMILY STRUCTURES - AND BASIC PARENTAL AUTHORITY - THEIR POLITICAL AGENDA, THEIR MOTTO MIGHT AS WELL BE "DIVIDE AND CONQUER." THEY INFILTRATE AND THEN AGITATE FOR CHANGES TO THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF OUR INSTITUTIONS. AND THEY'RE DOING IT IN SYNAGOGUES, TOO!

THEY MUST BE STOPPED. EVEN IF IT MEANS SCHISMS.

SCIENTIST: RAPID ICE SHEET MELT IMPOSSIBLE

NATIONAL POST:
'Big Thaw,' a summertime spectacular in National Geographic magazine, provided awesome scenes of climate-change catastrophes.

The glaciers are melting. The ice sheets are melting. They're sliding rapidly out to sea. More rapidly than anyone imagined. Look for the ice sheets to collapse. Look for sea levels to rise. Etc. Etc.

National Geographic's breathless account, brilliantly illustrated with the stunning photography for which it is famous, won headlines around the world. It has been dramatized and magnified on nightly newscasts and blogs alike, and has become a staple in the popular imagination.

But it won't happen, says Prof. Cliff Ollier of the University of Western Australia. "Rapid melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is impossible."

The National Geographic descriptions, on their face, seem plausible. "Ice seems rock hard when you crunch an ice cube or slip on a frozen puddle. But when piled in a great mass, ice oozes like slow, cold taffy," the article explained. "On Greenland, it flows outward from the heart of the ice sheet, a dome of ice the size of the Gulf of Mexico ... Four miles [six kilometres] wide and several thousand feet thick, Jakobshavn is an icy Amazon, disgorging more ice than any other Greenland glacier."

The article described fast-flowing glaciers such as Greenland's Jakobshavn. "In the past decade it doubled its speed, to roughly 120 feet [37 meters] a day. By now it discharges 11 cubic miles [45 cubic kilometres] of ice each year, jamming the fjord with fresh icebergs. As a result, Greenland lost 54 cubic miles of ice in 2005, more than twice as much as 10 years ago--"and more than some scientists were prepared to believe."

More alarmingly, the article reports that Greenland's ice sheet is starting to stir -- satellites have detected a weakening of Greenland's gravity --and that the same stirring may be occurring in Antarctica. The article describes a thinning Antarctic ice plain "of dead-flat ice" that in the next decade will be thin enough to float free.

"Once that happens and the ocean intrudes, a chain reaction of collapse could follow," the National Geographic article continues. "The bed is very deep and flat for the next 150 miles inland, so an enormous fjord would be created in the ice ... That would put the nail in the coffin -- it would go on accelerating, retreating, and drain a lot of that part of West Antarctica."

All this, Prof. Ollier explains, is nonsense. The scenarios raised in the National Geographic article stem from models divorced from the real world. They rely on imaginary glaciers and ice sheets -- not on the actual formations that exist in Greenland and Antarctica -- and demonstrate no understanding of how glaciers flow.

As one example, the models rely "on the concept of an ice sheet sliding down an inclined plane on a base lubricated by meltwater, which is itself increasing because of global warming," Prof. Ollier explains. "In reality, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets occupy deep basins, and cannot slide down a plane."

Ice sheets, which can extend to a depth of several kilometres below the surface, can melt at their base -- the warmest part of the ice sheet, due to the heat of the Earth. The drilling of ice cores, revealing complete records of depositions over periods of hundreds of thousands of years, show that the ice sheets have accumulated without melting, even when temperatures have been warmer than now.

"Ice sheets do not melt from the surface down -- only at the edges," Prof. Ollier explains. The modellers' mechanism that has "meltwater lakes on the surface finding their way down through cracks in the ice and lubricating the bottom of the glacier is not compatible with accumulation of undisturbed snow layers."

In truth, the rate of ice flow now seen in the polar regions does not depend on the present climate, but on the accumulation of ice that occurred in the distant past. Neither is today's warming extraordinary: "Arctic explorers used to get their ships a lot closer to northern Green-land than you could now," he explains.

The records "do not fit the model of surface melting, even infrequently. After three-quarters of a million years of documented continuous accumulation, how can we believe that right now the world's ice sheets are collapsing!" 'The Big Thaw' is a Big Saw.

  • AGW IS BS.

  • AGW IS A HOAX FOISTED UPON THE PUBLIC BY THE LEFT.

  • THE LEFT IS USING IT TO GIN UP FEAR IN ORDER TO THEN EXPLOIT THAT FEAR IN ORDER TO PASS HIGHER TAXES AND MORE REGULATIONS ON INDUSTRY AND THE FREE MARKET - THESE ARE LONG-HELD GOALS OF THE LEFT WHICH PRE-DATE THE CURRENT GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA.

Friday, November 02, 2007

THE DEMOCRATIC ENERGY PLAN: $5 GAS

Our beloved Democratic Congress, led by professional politicians Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, has hit another milestone. Unfortunately, their latest achievement is completely bungling U.S. energy policy, resulting in the highest oil prices ever seen on the face of the Earth.


Crude Oil and Gasoline Prices under the current Democratic Congress(source: Gateway Pundit, click to zoom)

You may ask: why would I blame the Democrats? The answer is a simple, brutal fact (hat tip: Gateway Pundit).


Democrats have prohibited drilling in all areas marked in red

The "not-in-my-backyard" Democrats have prohibited drilling in literally every oil-rich area that surrounds the country.

This US DOE Report posits that there are more than 9000 billion barrels of oil in this country alone. New technologies coming online could double U.S. oil reserves. Even the known stripper oil wells could be converted to crude oil production.

Were the Democrats' objections to local exploration based upon ecological grounds? Of course not. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita proved -- beyond a shadow of a doubt -- that offshore rigs are ecologically sound. During the twin storms, the rigs were swept away like leaves in the tailwind of a Rosie O'Donnell fart. Did you hear about any oil spills in the aftermath of the storms? Nope. The Democrats' bogus objections to offshore drilling are based upon two factors unique to the liberal progressive wing of the party: stupidity compounded with arrogance.

Meanwhile, there's important offshore drilling news that the mainstream media hasn't chosen to share with its customers: China is drilling for oil 50 miles from Key West, Florida. Yes, you heard that right. Michael Moore's socialist utopia -- Cuba -- is leasing drilling rights to the Chinese. In turn, they are draining the gulf of oil with the tacit approval of your Democratic Congressional leadership.


Cuba has leased drilling rights to China 50 miles from Key West, FL

Now, you'll forgive me as I have to write my representatives a thank you note for their wonderful stewardship of U.S. energy policy.

Read more: The No Zone. Cross-posted at Doug Ross @ Journal

WHO HAS A BETTER JOBS RECORD - CLINTON OR BUSH?

GATEWAY:
Bush Unemployment Rate Bests Clinton Years

Don't expect to see this in the MSM headlines any time soon...

Despite inheriting the Clinton Recession and managing through the corporate scandals and the 9-11 attacks that crippled the US economy, the average monthly unemployment rate during the Bush years now bests the Clinton years:


  • THE BEST THING THE CLINTON CROWD HAD TO BRAG ABOUT WAS THE ECONOMY AND THE FEDERAL DEFICIT.

  • BUT, BUSH BEATS BJ ON JOBS. AND BY THE END OF HIS TERM, HE WILL ALSO HAVE A BALANCED BUDGET.

WHO IS MORE ENLIGHTENED ABOUT LIFE AND JUSTICE, THE LEFT OR THE RIGHT?

DEMOCRATS AND LEFTIES:

  • REGARD THEMSELVES AS REASONABLE AND ENLIGHTENED.

  • BUT MOST THINK IT'S OKAY FOR FETUSES TO GET THE DEATH PENALTY, (THAT IT'S TOTALLY UP TO A JURY OF ONE - THE MOTHER).

  • AND MOST THINK IT'S NOT OKAY TO GIVE THE DEATH PENALTY TO CONVICTED MURDERERS, (EVEN AFTER YEARS OF APPEALS).

MEANWHILE, THE GOP AND CONSERVATIVES ARE REGARDED BY MANY ON THE LEFT - AND IN THE MSM - AS TROGLODYTE-LIKE AND EVIL BECAUSE THEY WANT FETUSES TO BE BORN, AND MURDERERS TO BE EXECUTED.

GO FIGURE.

IT SEEMS OBVIOUS TO ME THE POSITION OF THE GOP AND THE RIGHT IS A MUCH BETTER DEFENSE OF LIFE LIBERTY AND JUSTICE. AND MORE ENLIGHTHENED.

IS HILLARY A FACADE FOR BILL'S THIRD TERM OR A CO-PRESIDENCY?


Cartoon by Henry Payne (click to enlarge)

Charles Krauthammer has a thoughtful--as always--column up today about the comparisons which recent election of a Leftist woman in Argentina to replace her Leftist husband as El Presidente has caused for the prospects of a Clinton co-presidency. Krauthammer thinks that the people who are trying to draw a comparison between this and Hillary running on her husband's coattails are missing the point entirely--the problem is not that he is a serial Sex Addict, the problem is that the Constitution clearly calls for just one President, not a familial Politburo. And aside from being the only President in modern time to be impeached, Bill also happens to be restricted from ever serving as President again by the 22nd Amendment:
Which is why Hillary's problem goes beyond discomfort with dynastic succession. It's deep unease about a shared presidency. Forget about Bill, the bad boy. The problem is William Jefferson Clinton, former president of the United States, commander in chief of the Armed Forces, George Washington's representative on earth.

We have never had an ex-president move back into the White House. When in 1992 Bill Clinton promised "two for the price of one," it was taken as a slightly hyperbolic promotion of the role of first lady. This time we would literally be getting two presidents.

Any ex-president is a presence in his own right. His stature, unlike, say, Hillary's during Bill's presidency, is independent of his spouse. From day one of Hillary's inauguration, Bill will have had more experience than her at everything she touches. His influence on her presidency would necessarily be immeasurably greater than that of any father on any son.

Americans did not like the idea of a co-presidency when, at the 1980 Republican convention, Ronald Reagan briefly considered sharing the office with former President Gerald Ford. (Ford would have been vice president with independent powers.) And they won't like this co-presidency, particularly because the Clinton partnership involves two characters caught in the dynamic of a strained, strange marriage.

The cloud hovering over a Hillary presidency is not Bill padding around the White House in robe and slippers flipping thongs. It's President Clinton, in suit and tie, simply present in the White House when any decision is made. The degree of his involvement in that decision will inevitably become an issue. Do Americans really want a historically unique two-headed presidency constantly buffeted by the dynamics of a highly dysfunctional marriage?

Read the whole thing. (h/t Glenn Reynolds).

PROBLEM DRIVERS

Most of us have to drive every day. And the monitoring of problem drivers has a flaw which might one day affect us personally.

Excerpt from this article in the November 2, 2007 Washington Times:
A federal database of more than 40 million "problem drivers" contains hundreds of thousands of phony Social Security numbers, a new report says.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General estimates there are more than 600,000 invalid Social Security numbers — such as 111-22-3333 and 222-33-4444 — in the National Driver Registry. The database also contains about 161,000 duplicate numbers in which different drivers are using the same Social Security information.

The federal government pays $4 million a year for the National Driver Registry, which enables states to share information to prevent "license shopping," where drivers with revoked or suspended licenses try to get licenses in other states.

[...]

The report found that records for millions of problem drivers "were not recorded until at least one year after conviction — and incomplete or inaccurate information on Social Security numbers and drivers' physical attributes such as height, weight and eye color."

The lack of timely reporting by states could allow drivers convicted of drunken driving and other offenses to get licenses in other states, the report found....
Plenty of blame to go around on this story. And Social Security numbers can be used for lots more than getting a driver's license.

Who is watching the watchmen?

GUINESS RECORD FOR HUMAN SHIELDS

An IDF aircraft snapped this photo of Palestinian terrorists launching mortar shells from an elementary school. Talk about human shields!

I wonder why no one in the UN asks the obvious question: when will the Palestinian leaders lay down their arms and attempt to live in peace with their neighbors? The suffering of the Palestinian people is due solely to their corrupt, despicable leadership.

Hat tips: Atlas and Larwyn. Cross-posted at Doug Ross @ Journal

G*ogle Censoring Criticism of Islam again

Robert Spencer of "Jihad Watch" comments:
"The indefatigable Harrison Sonntag of Dartmouth notifies me that Google has removed the video of my talk at Dartmouth, with this explanation: "As set forth in the Terms & Conditions, Google Video is not required to host or display uploaded content. Google Video may refuse to host content that violates its policies"

G*ogle then lists the things that violate its policies, none of which apply to the video concerned -- which was a factual exposition of Muslim teachings drawn from the Koran and other Islamic sources.

See Spencer's full post here -- including a non-G*ogle link to the speech.

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

That unmentionable African IQ again

Anything that is almost universally regarded as being unmentionable has a high probability of being true and I reproduce below just a few tiny excerpts from the introduction to a large article in Gene Expression that gives you the actual scientific evidence on African IQ. Evidence is of course exactly what is usually missing from discussions of African IQ. But the evidence is there in great volume, it has been there for decades and it includes consideration of all the usual objections to it. Don't read the article if reality threatens you.

The public intellectual forum is being manipulated with intimidation and coercion and you are being lied to. The media is not doing its job, and the scientific community is not playing its proper public role as a beacon of dispassionate truth-seeking, as a conduit of knowledge to the public, or in fostering an open and fair intellectual climate. Both are abusing their power and authority to do the opposite of their honor bound social and intellectual roles; facts are being distorted in service of values.

It's difficult to name many more important living figures in 20th century biology than James Watson. He ushered in the current age of molecular biology with his achievements in 1953, he built up one of the world's greatest biological research facilities from damn near scratch, and he is a former head of the Human Genome Project. Given such an august curriculum vitae, you would think that this man perhaps understands just a few things about genetics. But given only the condescending media coverage, you'd think this eminent geneticist was somehow "out of his depth" on this one.

There's no point in rehashing the rapid sequence of events in detail: several of Watson's sold-out speaking engagements were cancelled, many critical articles appeared in the British press, trailed by the American press a few days later, hundreds of blogs were fuming with negative commentary, including ones by the editors of Scientific American and Wired Magazine, a number of associations issued statements condemning his words, and soon he was suspended from his chancellorship at Cold Spring Harbor. Watson cancelled his already ruined book tour and flew home to tend to the destruction. It was too late; the eminent biologist retired in disgrace on Oct. 26th.

One thing, though, was conspicuously missing from this whole irritating denouement: any semblance of factual refutation. There is good reason for this: everything Watson got in trouble for saying was entirely correct!

James Watson is one of the most important living figures in American science. The claim in his new book Avoid Boring People, that basic evolutionary logic predicts we should expect intelligence differences between racial groups is, if anything, an uncomplicated truth. Watson's claim in his recent interview with Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe that intelligence testing shows lower scores in Africa than Europe is likewise, entirely supported by the scientific literature. As is Dr. Watson's statement that there are many talented people of African descent, which clarifies he is speaking of different average scores, not that said populations are homogenous.


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

Thursday, November 01, 2007

2007 WEBLOG AWARDS: DOUG ROSS / DIRECTOR BLUE

DOUG IS TOO MODEST TO POST THIS HERE -SO I WILL - CUZ HE'S ONE OF THE BEST:

Sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut

Scientists have struggled to unravel a series of mysteries over the last few decades: where matter goes when it is sucked into a black hole; the structure of gravitational waves; and how this blog was named a 2007 Blog Awards Finalist.

Yep, it happened again. Thanks to my loyal cadre of six regular readers (thanks, Mom!), I've hit the blog jackpot again this year. Endorsements, award shows, and a steady stream of bribes from the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy aren't in the cards. But chicks seem to dig it.

In all seriousness, I'd like to say thanks to Kevin Aylward and the entire Wizbang gang for slogging through thousands of blogs to pick all of the finalists.

Polling begins in a few days. If you'd like to throw a pity vote my way, bookmark my site and visit every 24 hours (that's the maximum frequency that folks can vote). Your reward? On your deathbed, you'll achieve total consciousness. So you've got that going for you.

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GO THERE AND VOTE FOR DOUG!

SULLIVAN'S STALKING OF INSTAPUNDIT PROVES THE STALINISM OF TODAY'S POSTMODERN LEFT

EVIL GLENN:
I WASN'T GOING TO RESPOND when Andrew Sullivan -- deliberately, or in unforgivable cluelessness -- transformed my statement about leaving the Libertarian Party into something about not being a libertarian at all.

Andrew says a lot of silly things about me these days, and life is too short to pay attention to them.

But now that silliness seems to be spreading. So let me repeat what I said before: "But note that no longer being a member of the Libertarian Party is hardly the same thing as not being a libertarian. If it were, there would be precious few libertarians left."

Anyone who can't understand the difference between libertarian ideas and the Libertarian Party probably isn't smart enough to be blogging, and certainly shouldn't have his page topped with the words "Of no party or clique."
Sullivan's attack on Reynolds is Stalinist because it demonstrates how the postmodern Left doesn't tolerate any deviation from the party-line and how they attack and ostracize anyone who breaks ranks.

You see, even though Glenn supports Gay Marriage - Sullivan's BIG ISSUE, (and even though he stood against the Congress and the religious Right during the Schiavo Affair), he is a hawk, (and has many other libertarian positions at odds with conservatives like me), and therefore scum according to postmodern Leftists like Sullivan.

SULLIVAN REPRESENTS MORE OF THE FOLKS IN THE MSM THAN GLENN.

AND THAT'S A BIG PROBLEM: THEY FILTER EVERYTHING THE SWING VOTER HEARS AND SEES.

AND... THEY CONTROL THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.

AND THAT'S A HUGE PROBLEM.

THAT'S WHY I SAY, IN ORDER TO DEFEAT THE JIHADIST ENEMY ABROAD, WE HAVE TO FIRST DEFEAT THE LEFT AT HOME.

HEROIC "ENOLA GAY" PILOT DIES AT 92

  • THE BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI SAVED 10,000,000 JAPANESE LIVES AND 1,000,000 AMERICAN IVES BECAUSE IT PREVENTED A INVASION OF JAPAN.

  • THE PROOF THAT HIROSHIMA WAS NECESSARY AND THAT ALL THE DEATHS THERE (AND AT NAGASAKI) WERE JAPAN'S FAULT IS THE FACT THAT WE HAD TO WAIT UNTIL A WEEK AFTER THE SECOND NUKE WAS DROPPED ON A SECOND CITY FOR JAPAN TO SURRENDER.

  • THEREFORE A DEMONSTRATION ON A DESERTED ISLAND WOULDN'T HAVE ACCOMPLISHED A DAMN THING.

  • JAPAN IS BETTER OFF TODAY BECAUSE WE DEFEATED THEM.

  • THAT'S WHY THE PILOT OF THE ENOLA GAY IS A HERO. HE ACCOMPLISHED A MISSION WHICH ENDED A WAR AGAINST ONE OF THE MOST VICIOUS AND CRIMINAL MILTARIST REGIMES OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

  • WE MARK HIS PASSING WITH SADNESS AND PRIDE.


BBC: Hiroshima bomb pilot dies aged 92
General Tibbets always said he had no regrets

General Paul Tibbets the commander of the B-29 plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima in Japan, has died.

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr died at his home in Columbus, Ohio, aged 92.


The five-ton "Little Boy" bomb was dropped on the morning of 6 August 1945, killing about 140,000 Japanese, with many more dying later.


On the 60th anniversary of the bombing, the three surviving crew members of the Enola Gay - named after Tibbet's mother - said they had "no regrets".


A friend of the retired brigadier-general told AP news agency that Paul Tibbets had died after a two-month decline in health.


Gen Tibbets had asked for no funeral nor headstone as he feared opponents of the bombing may use it as a place of protest, the friend, Gerry Newhouse, said.


The bombing of Hiroshima marked the beginning of the end of the war in the Pacific.
Japan surrendered shortly after a second bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki, three days later.

On the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima, the surviving members of the Enola Gay crew - Gen Tibbets, Theodore J "Dutch" Van Kirk (the navigator) and Morris R Jeppson (weapon test officer) said: "The use of the atomic weapon was a necessary moment in history. We have no regrets".


Gen Tibbets said then: "Thousands of former soldiers and military family members have expressed a particularly touching and personal gratitude suggesting that they might not be alive today had it been necessary to resort to an invasion of the Japanese home islands to end the fighting."
GOD BLESS HIM.

MAY HE REST IN PEACE.

BOTTOM-LINE:

  • DURING WW2, ALL THE CASUALTIES IN THE EUROPEAN THEATER - ON OUR SIDE AND ON THE ENEMY'S - WERE HITLER'S FAULT. AND ALL THE CASUALTIES IN THE PACIFIC THEATER- ON OUR SIDE AND ON THE ENEMY'S - WERE THE FAULT OF THE JAPANESE.

  • ALL OF OUR BRAVE TROOPS WHO SERVED, KILLED AND DIED IN THAT WAR WERE HEROES.

  • WE OWN THEM ALL A HUGE DEBT.

  • ESPECIALLY THOSE WHOSE PERSONAL PART IN OUR VICTORY WAS VERY GREAT.

  • LIKE TIBBETS.

AFSCME - THE UNION OF TAX-RECEIVERS - ENDORSES HILLARY

  • WE ARE THE TAXPAYERS. THE FOLKS WHO WORK IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND SWEAT IT OUT IN THE COMPETITIVE MARKETPLACE.

  • THE UNIONS WHO WORK FOR THE FEDERAL, STATE AND MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS ARE THE TAX RECEIVERS. LEECHES.

  • THE TWO BIGGEST UNIONS REPRESENTING THE TAX-RECEIVERS ARE SEIU AND AFSCME.




  • BOTTOM-LINE: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY IS THE PARTY OF HIGH TAXES, AND TWO OF THE MAJOR BENEFICIARIES OF THESE REVENUES ARE THE SEIU AND AFSCME.

  • IF YOU ARE A TAXPAYER, THEN YOU SHOULD VOTE AGAINST ANYONE THEY ENDORSE.

WHEN IT COMES TO IRAN, OBAMA IS PROUD TO BE ALL TALK

NYTIMES:
Senator Barack Obama said he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president, and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.

In an hourlong interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama made clear that forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of what he pledged would be a broad effort to stabilize Iraq as he executed a speedy timetable for the withdrawal of American combat troops.

Mr. Obama said that Iran had been “acting irresponsibly” by supporting Shiite militant groups in Iraq. He also emphasized that Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its support for “terrorist activities” were serious concerns.

  • HE WILL USE "AGGRESSIVE PERSONAL DIPLOMACY"!? WHAT THE EFF IS THAT!? IT'S PURE BS. BUSH HAS USED THE EU 3 AND THE IAEA FOR FOUR FREAKIN' YEARS - AND GOTTEN US NOWHERE AS IRAN HAS GOTTEN CLOSER TO A NUKE. THE TIME FOR TALKING IS DRAWING TO A CLOSE.

  • HE'S "SERIOUSLY CONCERNED" ABOUT IRAN'S NUKE PROGRAM!? THIS IS VERY VAGUE AND VAGUENESS HAS NEVER LED TO MORE STABILITY OR SECURITY.

  • SENATOR KERRY IS MORE QUALIFIED FOR THE PRESIDENCY THAN OBAMA, AND KERRY WAS UNFIT FOR COMMAND.

  • WHAT DOES THAT MAKE OBAMA? A JOKE.

WE WILL NOT BE SAFER WITH A PRESIDENT WHO WANTS TO TREAT THE ENEMY NICER.

THE UK: PRACTICING FOR A FUTURE OF DHIMMITUDE

Gordon Brown's regime appears to be feverishly preparing the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland for a future as dhimmi subjects of an Islamic Emirate.

The Labour Party's favorite think tank has proposed "downgrading Christmas" and expelling the Bishops from the House of Lords because Britain is no longer a Christian nation.

Non-Muslim students at the new Madani High School in Leicester will be forced to wear Muslim hijab head scarves -- and the school will be required to admit 10% non-Muslim students.

And in the West Midlands, all 257 students (mostly Christians) and all 41 teachers (all Christians) at the Rufford primary school were required to dress up as Muslims "to promote multi-culturalism."

And those three episodes in the decline & fall of the British nation all occurred in the month of October. What will happen in November?

HILLARY RETRUNS TO WELLESEY: HOMECOMING OR COMING-OUT?



WELLESLEY IS WHERE HILLARY WENT TO COLLEGE.

2) NYTIMES - ON THE "HOMECOMING":
Wellesley, Mass., Nov. 1—Hillary Clinton reached out to young women voters in an emotional return today to her alma mater, Wellesley College, where she said that “in so many ways, this all-women’s college prepared me to compete in the all-boys’ club of presidential politics.”
MAYBE IT SHOULD JUST READ: "REACHED OUT TO YOUNG WOMEN..."?

WHY DO I SAY THAT? BECAUSE OF STUFF LIKE THIS:

3) BIG HEAD DC HAS THE JPEGS AND THE LINKS TO SEVERAL STORIES/RUMORS ABOUT HILLARY AND HER OMNIPRESENT "TRAVELING CHIEF OF STAFF" HUMA ABEDIN. EXCERPT:
Hillary Lesbian Rumor Given Weight by DOJ Official

We’re still a bit incredulous on this one, but a top level U.S. Department of Justice official is telling Big Head DC that Michael Musto’s rumor about Hillary Clinton fooling around with one of her top female aides Huma Abedin is based in reality!

“I am close enough to Hillary and Huma to tell you that this ‘rumor’ is true,” the official says. “It is well known inside her campaign that Hillary and Huma are an item.

“If you call Hillary’s residence in DC first thing in the morning, Huma answers the phone,” the official continues. “Same thing late at night and on the road. It’s a closely guarded secret that Hillary’s inner circle guards at all costs.”

Make of that what you will, kids. But know this: The official is someone who has proven highly credible in the past.
MAYBE THIS IS THE STORY THAT RON ROSENBAUM SAYS THE LA TIMES IS COVERING UP?

THE BOSTON HERALD HAD A CLEVER TITLE FOR THEIR ARTICLE ON HILLARY'S VISIT:
Wellesley women line up for Clinton
WILL HUMA BE JEALOUS?

WHAT BIDEN SAID WAS WORSE

The drive-by media had a field day with Don Imus's stupid use of trashy epithets, and they are having a field day with Duane "Dog" Chapman's stupid, foul-mouthed trash-talking.

But what Joe Biden said to the Washington Post was worse:

After a lengthy critique of Bush administration education policies, Biden attempted to explain why some schools perform better than others -- for instance, in Iowa, as compared to Washington D.C.

"There's less than one percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with," said Biden.

"When you have children coming from dysfunctional homes, when you have children coming from homes where there's no books, where the mother from the time they're born doesn't talk to them -- as opposed to the mother in Iowa who's sitting out there and talks to them, the kid starts out with a 300 word larger vocabulary at age three. Half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom," Biden said.

Why is that worse? He didn't use the "N" word, did he? No. What he said was worse than that. Because instead of just using a trashy epithet, he went out of his way to explicitly opine that all black children come from dysfunctional homes without books and without mothers to talk to them. That's really far more vicious than merely using a trashy epithet that hip hop rappers use fifty times in a 2 minute video.

But he gets a complete pass from the drive-by media.

Without alternative internet media, like Newsbusters or Hot Air, the story would have disappeared. Did you hear anything about Al Sharpton denouncing him? Did a long line of Senators demand that he apologize from the pit of the Senate?

HAVE HASBRO AND PARAMOUNT LISTENED TO GI JOE FANS?

In a followup to this topic and this topic on this subject, here's a link to an announcement by Hasbro, the maker of the GI Joe toys, in which they speak to the audience and try to calm them down about how the movie adaptation will be made:
Hasbro’s G.I. Joe Team wanted to take this opportunity to clarify some of the facts regarding the G.I. Joe live-action movie that we are developing with Paramount Pictures.

First and foremost, we are not changing what the G.I. Joe brand is about. The name “G.I. Joe” will always be synonymous with bravery and heroism.

The G.I. Joe brand has enjoyed a successful 43-year history, spanning two key generations. The first was the line of 12-inch “realistic military” figures that were popular with kids in the 1960s and 1970s.

The second generation, was created in 1982, and is based on a cast of fictional heroes and villains that make up the “G.I. Joe vs. Cobra” fantasy. The premise of this fantasy is the story of the G.I. Joe team, led by Duke, and their “fight for freedom wherever there is trouble” against the evil Cobra Commander and his Cobra force. This storyline was an instant hit with kids in the early 1980s, spawning a highly popular 3-3/4-inch action figure line, comic book collection and animated series.

This movie will be a modern telling of the “G.I. Joe vs. Cobra” storyline and its compelling characters that Hasbro created 25 years ago. The G.I. Joe team will not be based in Brussels. Instead, they will be based out of the “Pit” as they were throughout the 1980s comic book series. And, in keeping with the G.I. Joe vs. Cobra fantasy, the movie will feature characters and locations from around the world. Duke, the lead character and head of the G.I. Joe team, will embody the values of bravery and heroism that the first generation of G.I. Joe figures established.

G.I. Joe is a very important property to Hasbro and we thank all of our fans for their enthusiasm. Without all of you, the brand would not be where it is today.

Thank you.
Okay, so they've responded to the controversy. That's admirable. But there's still one thing not entirely clear here - will the name be made into an acronym like "Global Integrated Joe", as was said to be the intention some time ago, instead of "Government Issued Joe"? And, while it may be set in the United States in the Joes' Pit base, still unanswered is the question of if they'll be providing any clearly American values without acting as though they're ashamed of it?

Until these questions can be answered, the controversy may not be over yet.

Prostate cancer in Britain and the USA

A comment from Britain's Financial Times:

Paul Krugman has attacked Rudy Giuliani for a dishonest ad on health care--or perhaps an ignorant one, as the case may be. This is a test for the media, as well as a scandal in its own right, Paul says. Will those feckless reporters and editors at The New York Times call Giuliani to account for this? Probably not, seems to be Paul's opinion:
OK, Rudy Giuliani has just released an ad claiming that the survival rate from prostate cancer is much higher in America than in Britain, thus proving the failure of socialized medicine.

The problem is that his claim is just plain false. In fact, mortality rates from prostate cancer are almost the same in America and Britain.

So, will this get as much attention as, say, the Edwards haircut or the Hillary laugh? Will it get any coverage at all? Bear in mind that health care is the central domestic issue of this election — and Rudy has just showed that he doesn’t know a thing about it.

Giuliani's claims in the ad are indeed misleading. First, prostate cancer is a very bad example. Worse, in my view, is the implication that his Democratic opponents are proposing "socialised medicine" remotely similar to  Britain's NHS. That can only be a deliberate deception.

To say that prostate cancer survival rates are much higher in the US than in England is not "just plain false", however. It is just plain true. Five-year survival rates are higher in both America and England than Giuliani said. In the United States they stand at close to 100 per cent. In England they are 25 points lower. Figures for prostate cancer are notoriously misleading, though, because early detection (at which the US excels) delivers little improvement in mortality.

Chiefly because of better diagnosis, America records a far higher incidence of prostate cancer--and nearly all of those early-detected cases survive five years. Men with prostate cancer, which develops slowly, often die of something else. If you are a man with prostate cancer, it may not matter very much whether your cancer is diagnosed early, or whether you live in Britain or America.

But does Paul therefore think that cancer survival rates, correctly measured, are similar for all cancers, including those for which early detection is important? If so, he is mistaken. See this report, entitled "Cancer Survival Rates Improving Across Europe, But Still Lagging Behind United States" (and remember that England's rates, not broken out, are among the worst in Europe).

Taking recent figures, female five-year cancer survival rates are 62.9 per cent on average in the US and 52.7 per cent in England. To compare America's privately insured with England's NHS patients, you'd need to bump up that American survival rate a bit (the uninsured most likely have lower survival rates--otherwise why worry about universal coverage) and bump down the English one (because some Brits have private insurance, and so buy better care).

Nationally, American cancer survival rates are significantly better. Certainly not by the 40-point margin Giuliani implied, but still. And the politically salient question is this: If you have cancer, would you rather be an American with insurance or an Englishman without? The answer is obvious.

Source


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

Bias Case at Columbia Goes Largely Ignored

A good comment:


"For an incident that occured last Thursday, you think there would have been a bit more attention. Considering the amount of coverage the purported noose hanging incident received at Columbia, it's curious why there's a virtual media blackout with this latest reported case.
"Police are looking into a new bias incident at Columbia University. The provost of Teachers College told students Friday that two faculty members received an anti-Semitic cartoon and anti-Zionist letters. School officials have not released the names of the two professors. Police say the hate crimes unit is aware of the incident.

Source

That both Columbia and the media are very Leftist and that the Left is very antisemitic these days does of course explain the indifference. They probably think that the letters were a good thing.

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

Forgotten history: The disasters of Australia's previous Labor government

The Leftists seem likely to win the forthcoming election. Would they if people remembered?

IF 38 per cent of people polled this week by The Daily Telegraph thought the Kyoto Protocol was the treaty which ended WWII, who do they think Bob Hawke [former Labor Party Prime Minister] is when they see the Silver Bodgie sashaying through the local RSL in his white slip-ons? An Antipodean Colonel Sanders? Mick Dundee's older brother? Or a Gold Coast real estate baron?

The gravel-voiced Hawke and his vaudevillian successor, former treasurer and prime minister Paul Keating, have emerged as a sideshow act in Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's travelling dog-and-pony show. But it's doubtful whether those in the adoring throng can remember or ever knew what actually took place during their reign.

While Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello have been careful to pay due attention to the reforms of the Hawke-Keating era, the ALP's ageing but resilient duo have been more reticent to pay tribute to the groundwork laid by Howard in his days as treasurer. They've also been less than flattering about the Howard-Costello team.

Last year, however, former Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane noted that the introduction of the tender system for the sale of Treasury notes and Treasury bonds "was second only in importance to the float of the Australian dollar in 1983". As columnist Gerard Henderson reminded readers recently, "these changes were introduced in 1979 and 1982 respectively, when Howard was treasurer". Readers young and old might also be unaware that Howard also called for the Campbell Commission report which recommended many of the reforms for which the ALP now claims credit, or that the Coalition supported the Hawke-Keating reforms when they were introduced into Parliament. The Howard Government proceeded with the reform process and Australia today has an economy which is the envy of the developed world. But its reforms were opposed every inch of the way by Labor's successors to Hawke-Keating.

Until recently, Rudd described himself as a Christian socialist. The socialist label has disappeared during Rudd's remake. His deputy Julia Gillard has told outright porkies [lies] about her socialist connections, claiming variously that she dabbled in left-wing politics as a student and that she later only helped with the typing.

Our old stagers however have left a paper trail which should be put before the Generation Y voters before they are permitted within 100m of a polling booth and distributed around the nursing homes targeted by the ALP's answers to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Flicking through the files, it is impossible not to be assaulted by the headlines which Hawke and Keating created, such as "Home rates may hit 18 per cent", above the byline of doughty Fairfax veteran Michelle Grattan, in The Age of May 29, 1989. What a cold winter that was.

Or "Apology on recession" from The Herald Sun, above a photograph featuring a smiling Hawke on March 6, 1998, when he admitted his government had misread the economic situation surrounding the 1987 which delivered Keating's recession "we had to have". The corrective action, said Hawke, was too late to avoid soaring interest rates, unemployment and inflation.

Speaking of unemployment, which under the Coalition is at record lows, what about this headline from The Financial Review of July 10, 1992: "Unemployment rate at highest level since 1930s". That was when youth unemployment reached 35.8 per cent. And how about this one, from The Sydney Morning Herald of November 11, 1992: "Worst job figures for 60 years". Unemployment had by then reached 11.3 per cent with a record 979,000 out of work. It got worse, of course, and a year later when the number of unemployed had climbed all the way to 1,017,600 the left-leaning Geoffrey Barker wrote in The Age: "Paul Keating will wear yesterday's unemployment figures like a crown of thorns."

Barker reminded his small audience that Keating had vowed seven years earlier that he would make Howard wear his Liberal leadership like a crown of thorns and do everything he could to obliterate him from leadership. Keating might need to be reminded of those numbers as he stumps around the backblocks now, occasionally emerging from relative obscurity to attend musicals about himself or rewrite history.

And if you thought shadow treasurer Wayne Swan's helpful hints to shoppers were a joke, how about Hawkie's advice to punters on November 9, 1985, in which he advised that the community would have to learn to live with higher interest rates. The overnight cash interest rate at the time was 16.5 per cent, with pressure on the banks to lift their prime rates to 19 or 19.5 per cent. Home mortgages were still capped at 13.5 per cent - but that was soon to change. By June 4, 1989, The Sun-Herald was able to run with "Home-loan rates highest in the world", a barbecue stopper if there ever was one.

The government responsible for this debacle blamed the problem on "the expectation that we who live in the Lucky Country should be able to own our homes". Silly people, silly people, wanting their own homes. But it got worse as The Daily Telegraph headline "18 per cent home loans soar again" announced on July 1, 1999. So, if you happen to see this Down Under version of the Glimmer Twins on one of their outings, remind them again how bad the good old days actually were and ask them how exactly their protege plans to do things differently.

Source


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