A
Zogby Poll finds that a majority of Americans think the
mass media is biased in favor of leftist causes. Of
interest is that even independents see that news outlets cover
events from a leftist perspective.
The vast majority of American voters detect the presence of
political bias in the mainstream news media, according to a
Zogby poll released yesterday in conjunction with the
George Washington University Institute for Politics,
Democracy and the Internet.
Sentiment is strong: 83 percent of likely voters think bias
is "alive and well." Of that number, 64 percent said the
press leans left, while slightly more than a quarter -- 28
percent -- said there was a conservative bias.
Naturally, there's a partisan divide, and a pronounced one.
Among Republican respondents, 97 percent said the press was
liberal. Two-thirds of political independents agreed with
them, with less than a quarter of the independents -- 23
percent -- saying there was a conservative bias.
Democratic respondents revealed a spectrum of perceptions.
"Democrats, while much more likely to perceive a
conservative bias than any other group, were not nearly as
sure the media was against them as were the Republicans,"
the survey said. "While Republicans were unified in their
perception of left-wing media, just two-thirds of Democrats
were certain the media skewed right -- and 17 percent said
the bias favored the left."
Of course if you are a liberal, Zogby must now be a member of
the vast right wing conspiracy. For the rest of us, this
only confirms why Limbaugh and his prodigy have been so
successful. There is only so much anti-Americanism and
immoralism that normal Americans can stand. As a result,
those media outlets which continue to push the leftist agenda
in the guise of impartiality, will continue to decline.
The socialist Prime Minister of Hungary is still having deal
with large opposition
protest. It seems, that part of the problem is that
as a socialist, he has had to cut spending to reign in
Hungary's large budget deficits.
Police officers and rioters clashed Thursday on the
streets of Budapest after about 100,000 people rallied to
demand that the Socialist prime minister resign.
The rally, held on the national holiday that celebrates the
uprising in 1848 against Hapsburg rule, was the biggest
since a campaign to oust the prime minister, Ferenc
Gyurcsany, began late last year, when he admitted that he
had lied about the budget to win the 2006 election.
Though the rally was largely peaceful, the police used
water cannons and tear gas to clear the streets of several
thousand mostly far-right radicals in the crowd who threw
stones at police officers. Fighting broke out when the
police were detaining a man they said had led the storming
of a state television building in September.
Since winning the elections last April, Mr. Gyurcsany’s
government has broken campaign promises by raising taxes
and cutting spending to rein in a budget deficit, which at
10 percent of gross domestic product is proportionately the
biggest in the European Union.
His policies have won the approval of investors, and he is
viewed by many as making the first real attempt to break
Hungary’s five years of surging budget deficits.
Both the European Union and Brazil and the United States signed
energy pacts this week. But if you look beyond
self-congratulatory, "we are saving the world from global
warming" that poured out from Europe, the Brazil-U.S. agreement
will probably be the more practical and more useful agreement.
President Bush and Lula of Brazil basically agreed
to create an OPEC like organization to develop and market
ethanol throughout the Americas.
Brazil and the US,
which together produce 70 percent of the world's ethanol,
sealed a major commitment to promote and produce the
biofuel which they said could change the
world.
US President George
W. Bush and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva donned white hardhats and coats to visit an ethanol
plant outside the Latin American country's commercial and
financial capital to celebrate the agreement signed Friday
- described as an 'OPEC' for biofuel.
The strategic
association would provide for cooperation in bio-fuels in
the private sector and aim to exploit third markets,
starting with those in Central America. The long-term goal
is to turn ethanol into a global commodity.
For both leaders,
the prospect of expanded ethanol use is politically
important - for Lula because of the leverage it would give
him over the growing hegemony of oil-rich Venezuela, and
for Bush as an image correction of his anti-Kyoto policies
and also a wedge against the anti-US leftist leader of
Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.
Chavez was not
sitting idly by during Bush's five-country visit to Latin
America, but rather was in Buenos Aires Friday sealing an
agreement with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner for
natural gas cooperation.
The US, which
produces mainly corn-based ethanol, just recently pulled
ahead of Brazil, which uses sugar cane, as the world's
largest producer of ethanol.
But Brazil led the
way in developing production methods and ethanol-burning
car motors, having spent 30 years building a system to
stave off a repeat of the fuel disaster of the 1970s.
That's when soaring fuel prices eroded Brazil's fledgling
economic gains and inspired the successful effort for
energy independence.
Earlier this week,
Japan companies signalled a $8 billion deal with Brazil's
state energy company Petrobras to boost ethanol production
and deliver much of it to Japan.
The deal
establishes bilateral cooperation for the production of
ethanol from cellulose, defines international guidelines to
turn the product into commodity and plans for a technology
transfer to Latin American and Caribbean countries that may
be interested in producing ethanol.
The bottom
line seems to be Bush has set the U.S. on a path to to using
ethanol rather than crude oil. The Europeans on the other
hand, generated some lofty goals this week in
Brussels. Among them are reducing CO2 emissions by 20% and increase
the use of renewable energy sources by 20%.
The role of nuclear power in Europe received an unexpected
boost yesterday as EU leaders hailed a landmark climate
change deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and switch
to renewable fuels.
Environmentalists complained that an ambitious headline
goal to cut Europe’s CO emissions by a fifth by 2020 had
been weakened by concessions to the main nuclear nations
and the biggest polluters in Eastern Europe.
Nonetheless, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, will use
the agreement struck at the spring EU summit in Brussels to
put pressure on world leaders to follow suit when she hosts
the G8 meeting in June.
China, India and Brazil will join that summit and, like the
US, be challenged to accept the principle of binding CO
cuts for the first time.
As well as agreeing in principle to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, EU leaders pledged to ensure that 20 per cent of
Europe’s energy will come from renewable sources by 2020.
The commitment of all 27 member nations is legally
enforceable by the European Court of Justice.
Months of haggling will follow as diplomats argue over
targets for individual countries. Each will contribute a
different amount, and diplomats made clear that less would
be expected of the heaviest-polluting former Communist
countries. The Czechs and Slovaks had both complained that
they had only just left decades of five-year plans behind
them.
In a sop to France and the Czech Republic, a country’s
nuclear power capability will be taken into account when
calculating national commitments to renewable energy.
France produces 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear
power stations and insisted that this “noncarbon” source of
fuel should be taken into consideration. French diplomats
believe this will lessen the EU demand for more renewable
sources such as wave, wind and solar power.
Jacques Chirac, the outgoing French President, welcomed the
deal as one of the top three achievements of the EU during
his 12 years in the Elysée Palace.
Tony Blair was also pleased with the concession towards the
nuclear powers. The outcome will give a boost to his plans
to rebuild Britain’s ageing nuclear power stations which
suffered a setback last month when the High Court ruled
that the consultation process was seriously flawed. Mr
Blair said: “There is then the 20 per cent target on
renewable energy. In setting that, there will be permission
to look at the energy mix that countries have . . .
including nuclear technology, which obviously helps the UK
as well.”
Environmentalists were less enthusiastic. Friends of the
Earth said the targets were timid. A spokesman said: “Heads
of States gave a modest boost to the uptake of renewable
energies, but agreed that the EU should aim low on cutting
greenhouse gases, and failed again to agree any concrete
commitment towards reducing Europe’s appalling waste of
energy.”
Mr Blair and Mr Chirac were full of praise for the handling
of the summit by Mrs Merkel, who faced strong opposition to
her climate change ambitions from several nations, not
least in eastern European countries such as Poland, which
still rely heavily on fossil fuels.
The smoke
and mirrors comes into play in how the EU counts reduced
emissions. Nations like Britain and France, which produce
large amounts of electricity by nuclear power will be credited
towards their national CO2 reduction goals for those
plants. So the onus will be put on nations like
Poland for instance, which generate power from coal. (You might
note that the Timesonline is confused between CO and
CO2). To me, it
sounds like the EU plan means job losses. The only way to
produce less CO2 is
to shudder coal fired plants and take gas burning cars off the
road. Do you really think Britain or France or Germany is
going to spend their national treasure to subsidize Poland,
Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, or Romania?
If One Enters the U.S. Illegally, They Are More Likely to
Commit Other Crimes
Or Committing Crimes
Americans Wouldn't Otherwise Do....
A study by
FAIR, concludes what most Americans already know. If
foreigners are willing to commit the crime of illegally
entering America, they are more than likely inclined to commit
other crimes. Federal crime statistics back that
thinking up. Illegals make up 2.94% of the U.S. adult
population, but represent 4.54% of the prison population in
America.
Introduction
Most Americans equate illegal aliens with a higher incidence of
crime. Some academic researchers have attempted to prove that
is a misimpression. But, in fact, data show that the American
public understands the facts better than the academics.
Adult illegal aliens represented 2.94 percent of the total
adult population of the country in 2003.1 By comparison, the
illegal alien prison population represented a bit more than
4.54 percent of the overall prison population. Therefore,
deportable criminal aliens were more than half again as likely
to be incarcerated as their share of the population.
Misleading Academic
Studies
The misleading data produced by academics and think tank
researchers that show a lower incidence of crime by aliens is
based upon a comparison of data that include all foreign born
residents with data for the native born population. Because
these data compare all foreign born residents to the native
born population, they are largely irrelevant to describing the
illegal alien crime incidence.2
A lower incidence of crime should be expected from a foreign
born population that is largely legal immigrants and long-term
nonimmigrants. This population includes persons who are
screened for any previous criminal activities before they can
get a green card, persons who are again screened for criminal
activity before they can become U.S. citizens, and persons such
as foreign students and professional workers who are at the
least required to state under oath whether they have any
criminal history before they can get a visa. In other words,
this is a population carefully screened to assure that they are
unlikely to engage in criminal activity. Something would be
very wrong with our visa screening process if research did not
reveal that the foreign-born were less likely to have committed
crimes in the United States than the native-born population.
The same cannot, of course, be said for the illegal alien
population. Their presence in the United States is based on
their either illegally entering the country or entering under
false pretenses. Those who sneak into the country undergo no
form of screening for criminality or any other grounds for
exclusion. Many in the illegal alien population end up
incarcerated as a result of criminal activity at the time of
their illegal entry, e.g., drug smuggling or alien smuggling.
Other illegal aliens owe alien smugglers for assisting their
illegal entry and end up being co-opted into criminal activity,
such as drug distribution or prostitution, to pay off the debt.
The apparent linkage between illegal alien status and a higher
incidence of crime was suggested in the data presented in a
recent study of the costs of illegal immigration in Arizona.3
That study noted that Arizona in 2000 had the highest per
capita rate of illegal aliens in the country and also ranked at
the top of a number of crime indexes. It had the nation’s
highest per capita rate of property crimes, the highest rate of
vehicle theft, and the 2nd highest rate in the country of
larceny theft. For burglaries, it ranked 5th, for murders 9th,
and for robberies and aggravated assaults it ranked 15th in the
country.4
There is nothing about the population in Arizona that would
appear to explain this pattern of crime incidence other than
the illegal alien population and the proximity to the border
with Mexico.
Findings Using SCAAP
Data
To obtain a valid view of the incidence of criminal activity by
illegal aliens in comparison to the general population, it is
necessary to focus just on that segment of the population. The
only data that directly identify criminal illegal aliens depend
on resources of the federal government. The federal State
Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) is administered by
the federal government to reimburse states and local
jurisdictions for costs incurred for the incarceration of
criminal aliens. It offers the only reliable data for a valid
assessment of the share of prisoners who are deportable aliens.
In that program, states and local jurisdictions may submit
names and records of persons known or believed to be illegal
aliens to the Department of Justice. Those records are vetted
to eliminate persons who are U.S. citizens and any aliens whose
incarceration does not make them deportable. Data reported in
the SCAAP reimbursements were used in this study to determine
the correlation between the size of the criminal alien
population and the non-criminal alien population.5
Methodology and
Findings
Data collected in the SCAAP reporting system were stated in
terms of incarceration days. This eliminates any distortion
based on length of sentence. Nationwide there were nearly 600
million incarceration days reported, and the number of those
days attributable to identified and suspected illegal aliens
were about 24.5 million incarceration days. That suggests that
one of every 22 prisoners is a deportable alien (4.54%).
The comparison of this prisoner population with the population
at large requires identifying a comparable population. Clearly
only adults or near adults are likely to be in this population.
To obtain an estimate of adult illegal aliens the INS estimates
can be used, even though they probably understate the size of
that population. To adjust those estimates to a population
comparable to an adult population the only available resource
is to reduce the INS estimate by an estimate of illegal alien
school-age population. The estimate of illegal alien school-age
children, done in an earlier study, provides a rough estimate
of the K-12 population by state.6 Because of the age profile of
this group, there will be some pre-K illegal aliens and
post-grade 12 illegal alien teenagers included in the resulting
estimate of a bit more than 7 million illegal aliens in 2000.
The comparable adult national population in 2000 is about 240.4
million persons, and the comparison of these two data sets
yields a 2.94 percent share of the adult national population
that is comprised of illegal aliens, i.e., one in every 34
residents in the country.
Thus the likelihood that an illegal alien will be among those
incarcerated (1 in 22) is significantly greater than the share
of adult illegal aliens in the country (1 in 34). It is this
greater likelihood of being incarcerated that clearly
demonstrates that illegal aliens are disproportionately
involved in criminal activity.
Imagine
that, people who break the law entering the United States tend
to keep breaking the law. What other undesirable traits
do illegal aliens bring to the table? Be honest and think
about it. They come from Third World countries, thus they
have lower levels of education, they have lower sets of
desirable skills, and they are less healthy.
The left
argues that illegals from the Third World add to our cultural
diversity. The right argues that these people perform tasks
normal Americans won't. To hell with both sides.
Our national identity and well-being is at stake. How can
people be willing to sell our nation down the river for the
sake of being politically correct or for making a buck?
Since when
is it desirable to bring in people with lower levels of
education, IQ (see here and
here),
work skills, and health to the U.S.? Shouldn't the U.S.
be recruiting immigrants who are educated and bring needed
skills to America? Bringing the Third World to America
can't be in our national interests.
It looks like Venezuela's Chavez has a quick learning pupil in
Correa.
Ecuador's Congress suspended its session on Thursday after
police surrounded it to enforce a court ruling to fire 57
lawmakers in a power struggle between President Rafael Correa
and the opposition.
Correa hopes to limit his rivals' influence with an April 15
referendum aimed at drafting constitutional reforms, but he
faces growing resistance inside Congress.
The feud highlights Correa's troubles governing a country where
three presidents have been ousted in a decade, but the
left-winger is highly popular after promising to take on
lawmakers who many blame for Ecuador's chronic instability.
"My countrymen, you have a true government that will not fail
you," Correa told a cheering crowd inside the presidential
palace. "There is no going back on the referendum."
Police carrying riot shields and batons greeted 28 of the 100
lawmakers who showed up before Congress' president canceled the
morning session because not enough members had shown up.
Local television showed protesters beating a lawmaker in a
hotel car park, and another sped away as demonstrators kicked
and banged his car. Neither was seriously hurt.
Congress initially approved Correa's plan for a reform
referendum, but opposition legislators now say he made changes
to its text without their approval.
On Tuesday, 52 lawmakers voted to fire the election court's
president, Jorge Acosta, in an apparent move to delay the
referendum and secure an opposition majority in the court.
The election court hit back on Wednesday, ruling the 52 and
five others had violated the constitution and would be stripped
of their political rights for one year.
'TOTALITARIAN'
"We will call local mayors and local officials to support our
front against this totalitarian government," opposition
lawmaker Carlos Larreategui said.
Putin, like all good communists, can't stand opposition.
Saturday in St. Petersburg, is a case in point:
Police
clubbed protesters and dragged them into waiting buses Saturday
in response to a demonstration against the Kremlin in the heart
of President Vladimir V. Putin's hometown.
Several
thousand members of liberal and leftist groups chanted "Shame!"
as they marched down St. Petersburg's main avenue to protest
what they said was Russia's rollback from democracy. The
demonstration, called the March of Those Who Disagree, was a
rare gathering of the country's often fractious
opposition.
It was at least the third time police have moved in to break up
an anti-Kremlin protest in recent months.
St. Petersburg authorities had prohibited the march, only
granting permission for a rally far from the city center, but
the activists defied the ban and marched down the Nevsky
Prospekt, the city's main street, blocking traffic.
Riot police beat dozens of protesters with truncheons, but
several thousand broke through police cordons. They marched
toward the city center and rallied for about 40 minutes until
police moved in again, detaining people and dragging them into
buses.
Several activists attacked an officer. Police said 20 to 30
people were detained, Itar-Tass reported.
Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion who helped organize
the event, said on Echo of Moscow radio that the participants
numbered up to 6,000, though the crowd appeared to be about
half that number. Among those detained were the head of the
radical National Bolshevik Party and an independent city
legislator.
"The authorities are destroying … the constitutional structure,
rights and freedoms," said former Prime Minister Mikhail M.
Kasyanov, who now heads an opposition movement.
The activists accused Putin's government of cracking down on
the opposition, stifling freedom of speech and eating away at
democratic institutions by abolishing direct elections of
provincial governors and creating an obedient parliament.
Russia's state-controlled television stations covered the
protest only briefly, portraying the demonstrators as hooligans
and extremists.
Didn't the
old Soviet Union describe dissenters as "hooligans and
extremists?"
I saw this the other day, (though I don't remember where) and
thought this comic is pure gold. Because Al Gorbal
warming would have you, the peasant, you the peon, you the
serf, live like this, while he and the intelligentsia of
the left continue to live the good life.
Of course, all of you have read about Al Gore's 10,000 sq. ft.
home which used more than 20 times the national average in
terms of electricity. ABC News has the facts
here. Gore claims he buys carbon offsets to counter
his gluttonous use of electricity.
So what do carbon offsets really mean? It means that the
wealthy left can continue to live in large houses, buy big
cars, fly in private jets, and live the good life because they
can afford to pay for their sins, while the rest of us, who
can't afford these "energy indulgences" are told by our
"betters" to live in the dark, take cold showers, and freeze
our asses off during the winter.
Wizbang also has some other interesting tidbits on this
story. For instance, did you know that George Bush's
Texas ranch is smaller and more energy efficient than Al
Gorbal's mansion?
We've found the inconvenient truth. The intelligentsia of
the left likes to live and play big. They are wasteful.
They like to tell the common folk how to live. And they
use their wealth to assuage their guilt for their excessive and
hypocritical behaviors. Of course, they don't change
their behavior, they continue to sin.
Japanese Prime Minister Denies Sex Slave Brothels in WWII
Or Open
Mouth
This is just one of those things that makes one
wonder, "What were they thinking?"
Japan's nationalist prime minister denied Thursday that
the country's military forced women into sexual slavery during
World War II, casting doubt on a past government apology and
jeopardizing a fragile detente with his Asian neighbors.
The comments by Shinzo Abe, a member of a group of lawmakers
pushing to roll back a 1993 apology to the sex slaves, were his
clearest statement as prime minister on military brothels known
in Japan as ''comfort stations.''
Historians say some 200,000 women -- mostly from Korea and
China -- served in the Japanese military brothels throughout
Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. Many victims say they were
kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops.
This will definitely cause some problems with its neighbors
that Japan cannot afford right now. China and South Korea
certainly will be offended and their support, that Japan needs
in countering North Korean missiles might suddenly
evaporate. The only question is, will enough people and
countries be able to persuade Abe that denying the past
probably isn't the best policy.
The following story is just another example of how the left
thinks. A Florida legislator wants to
ban the phrase "illegal alien" from state documents.
A state legislator whose district is home to thousands of
Caribbean immigrants wants to ban the term "illegal alien" from
the state's official documents.
"I personally find the word 'alien' offensive when applied to
individuals, especially to children," said Sen. Frederica
Wilson, D-Miami. "An alien to me is someone from out of space."
She has introduced a bill providing that: "A state agency or
official may not use the term 'illegal alien' in an official
document of the state." There would be no penalty for using the
words.
In Miami-Dade County, Wilson said, "we don't say 'alien,' we
say 'immigrant.'"
She said she encountered the situation when trying to pass a
bill allowing children of foreigners to get in-state tuition at
colleges and universities. Wilson, who directs a dropout
prevention and education program in Miami, said she politely
asks witnesses at public hearings on such issues not to use the
term.
"There are students in our schools whose parents are trying to
become citizens and we shouldn't label them," she said. "They
are immigrants, through no fault of their own, not aliens."
Wilson said the first word isn't as bad as the second.
"'Illegal,' I can live with, but I like 'undocumented' better,"
she said.
Asked if her bill (SB 2154) might run afoul of Gov. Charlie
Crist's "plain speaking" mandate for government agencies,
Wilson said, "I think getting rid of 'alien' would be plain
speaking."
This is part
of the cognitive dissonance of the left. Let's call
criminals something else. Here it is even better, because
it involves the "children." The left has lost its moral
compass. Everything, everyone, and every act is
okay. Well, the exception to that is Christianity,
Christians, and the United States. These, the left can
call evil and Nazi like.
This is why
the left yawns at Islamic terrorism. They can't bring
themselves to take a moral stand because morality requires a
judgement that some actions are good and others are bad.
Thus, people who break American law can't be called illegal
aliens. That is why the left can't show outrage about
anything except those who uphold the good and the
decent.
This might be a minor case, but it does highlight the problem
of the European Union. Who is sovereign? In France,
there is such as case that is raising that very
question.
France, which rejected the European Constitution in 2005, is
debating whether the French constitution trumps decisions of
the European Court of Justice.
The question was raised in a recent court case concerning
whether EU law challenges French sovereignty, the EU Observer
reports. France's highest administrative court, the Council of
State, earlier this month refused to rule on whether the French
steel company, Arcelor, was treated unfairly under the EU's
carbon trading plan to reduce global warming.
Arcelor claims the emission trading scheme -- which requires
steel firms to pay for CO2 emissions while exempting the
plastics industry -- violates the equality principle of the
French constitution. The French court sent the case to the
European Court of Justice.
French President Jacques Chirac received open letters from 40
scholars defending the authority of the French constitution,
and from 80 professors who said France was not threatened by EU
law.
The Observer said Germany's constitutional court will decide if
a revised EU constitution is compatible with the German
constitution once the text is formalized.
With his new powers to issue decrees at will, it seems Hugo
Chavez is setting the stage for the nationalization of
Venezuela's food distribution system. With price controls
in effect, supply and demand has been imbalanced, causing some
food shortages throughout Venezuela and it seems Chavez's
government is going to use this as an excuse to recreated
the disastrous Soviet system.
President Hugo Chavez's government is
preparing a decree that would let officials take control of
food distribution chains, possibly including supermarkets and
storage depots, if services are interrupted, officials said
Sunday.
Industry and Commerce Minister Maria Cristina Iglesias told a
news conference the decree would help curb supply problems that
have caused severe shortages of meats, milk and sugar in
Venezuela in recent weeks.
Industry officials blame the shortages on price controls that
oblige retailers to sell at a loss, while the government points
the finger at unscrupulous speculators, including supermarket
owners and distributors, who hoard food or boost prices.
Iglesias said the new legislation would give the government,
along with municipal authorities and "communal councils," or
neighborhood assemblies, authority over food distribution and
sales if private companies such as supermarket chains halt
their operations.
I saw
this at the
Captain's Quarters. At Davos,
Switzerland last week, George Soros, who spend $26 million of
his own money to defeat George Bush in 2004, must have
forgotten about the internet. Here is what theNew York
Postwrote:
After
asserting that the United States is recognizing the error it
made in Iraq, Soros said, "To what extent it recognizes the
mistake will determine its future." He went on to say that
Turkey and Japan are still hurt by a reluctance to admit to
dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to
Germany's rejection of its Nazi-era past. "America needs to
follow the policies it has introduced in Germany," Soros said.
"We have to go through a certain de-Nazification
process."
That's
right, about one-half the nation was slandered last week the
Democratic Party's poster boy. Basically, if you are
conservative, George Soros thinks your act like a Nazi.
If you don't have one, your irony meter ought to be going off
right now.
Did you know
the following about George Soros?
Soros,
aHungarianJew, helped
to loot property, from his less fortunate brethren.
When the
Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a
successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and
liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were
problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up.
He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government
official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he
was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price
tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being
shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his
phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property
from the Jews.
For someone
with skeletons in his closest, Soros likes to toss the word
Nazi around:
Update: Funny,
funny commetary at JulesCrittenden'sblog.
If Global Warming is Unstoppable, then Why Bother?
Or if We Can't do
Anything About, Party Like There is No Tomorrow
Scientistsfrom around
the world are pretty sure that man is the cause of global
warming.
The world's
leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is
"very likely" caused by man, and will be unstoppable for
centuries, according to a report obtained Friday by The
Associated Press.
The scientists — using their strongest language yet on the
issue — said now that world has begun to warm, hotter
temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for
centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution.
The report also linked the warming to the recent increase in
stronger hurricanes.
"The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean,
together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is
extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50
years can be explained without external forcing, and very
likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the
report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a
group of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113
governments.
The phrase "very likely" translates to a more than 90 percent
certainty that global warming is caused by man's burning of
fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making
it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.
What that means in simple language is "we have this nailed,"
said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated
the percentage system.
The report
claims that anything we do now will not have an effect on global
warming for centuries. So in other words, even if we stopped
producing greenhouse gases right now, global warming would continue
for several hundred years. So then, if that is the case, what
incentive does anyone have to change their behavior in the here and
now?
The supporters of left-leaning Ecuadorian President Correa
forced
Ecuador's Congress to flee. The Congress, ruled by
the elected opposition party, is looking at constitutional
reform legislation submitted by the Correa government.
Unfortunately, Correa and his party has seemingly taken a cue
from Chavez's communist playbook, and has started to use "the
angry mob" to intimidate opposition parties.
Crowds of protesters demanding support for leftist President
Rafael Correa's constitutional reforms stormed Ecuador's
opposition-controlled Congress on Tuesday and forced lawmakers
to evacuate.
Police fired tear gas at the protesters, who wielded sticks and
bottles as they entered the 100-member Congress. They briefly
penetrated the building before being removed by police.
Television images showed police escorting lawmakers out as
demonstrators, some clad in the bright green shirts of Correa's
movement, rallied outside.
If you have
any doubt as the political leanings of Correa and his
followers,
watch this video and count the communist inspired
shirts.
Today, Venezuela's
Congress gave Hugo Chavez unlimited powers for 18
months. Here is the heart of Chavez's new powers:
The law also allows Chavez to dictate unspecified measures to
transform state institutions; reform banking, tax, insurance
and financial regulations; decide on security and defense
matters such as gun regulations and military organization; and
"adapt" legislation to ensure "the equal distribution of
wealth" as part of a new "social and economic model."
Chavez plans to reorganize regional territories and carry out
reforms aimed at bringing "power to the people" through
thousands of newly formed Communal Councils, in which
Venezuelans will have a say on spending an increasing flow of
state money on neighborhood projects from public housing to
road repaving.
This time, the law will give Chavez a free hand to bring under
state control some oil and natural gas projects that are still
run by private companies — the latest in a series of
nationalist energy policies in Venezuela, a top oil supplier to
the United States and home to South America's largest gas
reserves.
Chavez has said oil companies upgrading heavy oil in the
Orinoco River basin — British Petroleum PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp.,
Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Total SA and Statoil ASA —
must submit to state-controlled joint ventures, as companies
have already done elsewhere in the country.
The law gives Chavez the authority to intervene and "regulate"
the transition to joint ventures if companies do not adapt to
the new framework within an unspecified "peremptory period."
Chavez
basically got everything he needed from his Congress to
establish a Communist dictatorship. Besides the power to
nationalize industry, did you notice he was given the right to
"reorganize the military" and the ability to "reorganize
regional territories?" The importance of these two powers
for profound. Regarding the military, he now has the
ability to remove commanders who might challenge him and
of course appoint generals who support him and his
policies. The ability to reorganize Venezuela's states is
also vitally important to Chavez's grasp on power. He can
now remove local leaders who are members of the
opposition.
More than
likely, say in a few months, as Chavez consolidates power, he
will probably start to repress speech and press rights and
opposition parties will be outlawed. Combine Chavez's
rise to power with the election of leftists in Ecuador,
Bolivia, and Nicaragua, and the penchant of communist leaders
to export their revolution to their neighbors, the Middle East
might have to be put on the back burner while the U.S. takes
care of its interests closer to home.
Addition of News Headlines and Streaming News Video
Or New Resources
for The Virtuous Republic Readers
For the news junkies out there, the Virtuous Republic has added
two new features. To make The Virtuous Republic
more of a one stop place to visit, I've added two new
features.
First, I have set up a separate page dedicated to
listing Reuters daily headlines for three topics:
U.S. general news, international news, and U.S. politics.
You can access that link in the right-hand column under
"Daily News from Reuters." Here is the direct link
if you want to check it out. You can scan the headlines
and then click on the links which leads to the entire story.
Second, I've added streaming video from Reuters. You can
watch the top 15 daily stories here. Once again, you can
find the link in the right hand column, under "Daily News from
Reuters." The direct link is here.
Also, I'd like to point out two other resources available at
The Virtuous Republic. In the left hand column, headlines
from the Jerusalem Post and the United Press are
provided. Simply click on the headline that interests you
and you will taken to the full story.
An interesting article in the L.A. Times has really made
the Lockean think. And we are embarrassed,
considering our philosophical tendencies, that we hadn't
seriously considered the harm caused to our Republic by
family dynasties.
James Burkee,
argues, from a historical perspective, that the
children of former presidents, who themselves assume the
office, never enjoy a popular mandate and as a result are
limited by extreme partisan politics. Let's look at
some of his most interesting points.
Speculating that Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in
2008, Burkee points out a grave problem for any vibrant
republic:
But if she secures
the Democratic nomination, wins and serves two terms, by
2017 the United States will have been governed by either a
Bush or a Clinton for 28 years. That's three decades
governed not just by the same two families but much of the
same supporting staff. As Dick Cheney is a name
familiar to both Bush presidencies (as George H.W. Bush's
secretary of Defense and his son's vice president), so too
may a Hillary Clinton presidency resuscitate familiar names
such as Harold Ickes, Paul Begala and James
Carville.
Is this a valid point? The Lockean thinks
so. James Madison, in The Federalist 37,
noted that the American Constitution addressed the
need:
that those
intrusted (with the power of the people) it should be kept
in dependence on the people, by a short duration of
their appointments; and that even during this short period
the trust should be placed in not a few, but a number of
hands. Stability, on the contrary, requires that the
hands in which power is lodged should continue for a length
of time the
same....
Would James Madison be comfortable knowing that same men
have been governing the executive branch for over twenty
years? While we believe that he would not dismiss
their service out of hand, he might well have questions
regarding the "energy" of their ideas, the inevitable
corruption of power, and whether they served the interest
of the people, or the powerful interests they deal with on
a day to day basis.
Next Burkee notes that there is a predisposition among
Americans not to vote for the son, or as the case might be,
the wife of a former president. As a result, he
argues that John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison, and
George W. Bush did not receive a majority of the popular
vote and thus were not able to strongly govern as the
result of a mandate as say, Ronald Reagan did.
Burkee's theory fits nicely with Jefferson's description of
aristocracy in America in a letter to John Adams in 1813:
....I agree
with you that there is a natural aristocracy among
men. The grounds of this are virtue and
talents.... There is also an artificial
aristocracy, found on wealth and birth, without either
virtue or talents.... The natural aristocracy I
consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the
instruction, the trusts, and government of society.
The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient
in government, and provision should be made to prevent its
ascendency....
Burkee brings to the front burner, what is very often
missing, a discussion of American politics based on our
liberal and republican political values. In this
case, what are the defects in creating a political
dynasty? Do we want the same faces in government for
decades at a time? We already have that in
our bureaucracies and the judiciary. Fresh ideas
require a changing of the guard on a regular basis.
The American people seem to have a Jeffersonian bias
against "the artificial aristocracy" as Burkee
suggests. Did they earn their position or did
they rise to power as a result of family wealth?
Does their "inherited" wealth make them less
virtuous? Lastly, the practical result of
this theoretical exercise, is that in electing the
known, the safe, the Kennedy, the Bush, and now a Clinton,
we sacrifice giving the new president a national mandate,
creating an atmosphere of sharp political divide. We
agree with Burkee, no more Bushes or Clintons in the White
House for the sake of the Republic.
A letter from the National Association of Muslim American Women
Or This is What Tolerance
Must have Looked Like in 9th Century Christendom
Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah sent a letter to the U.S.
Department of Justice on January 12, 2007. You can
download it here. You
really need to read this letter. To do so will give you
an insight into how members of mainstream Muslim groups really
think.
To give you a flavor of her mindset and her fundamental lack of
the concept of free speech in the United States, here are the
first few paragraphs:
This letter and its supporting
documentation is a complaint to the Department of Justice Civil
Rights Division, Criminal Division, and also the Executive Office
for United States Attorneys. This complaint alleges that
various organizations and individuals have provided misleading and
highly politicized information, and testimonies to US law
enforcement agencies, and also the US Congress that was, and is
aimed at creating a political, legal, social, and
financial environment that is hostile to Muslims and
Arab Americans, and that causes Muslim and Arab-Americans to
suffer discrimination, persecution, and the deprivation and denial
of Constitutional rights, and equal protection under the law.
Among these organizations and individuals are the
American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), better
known as the “Jewish lobby”, American Jewish Committee,
Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Congress B’Nai
B’rith, and also the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, along
with such individuals as Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Rita
Katz, Steven Schwartz, Evan Kohlman, and others who have
made public statements that have contributed to the creation of an
environment in the United States that is hostile to Arab
Americans and Muslims, leading to numerous acts of deprivation
and violation of civil liberties and also civil rights.
This complaint is based upon
statements made that may reach the level of hate speech
in some instances, and in other instances, such statements may
reach the level of perjury, carried out to mislead the US
Congress and US law enforcement into carrying out
overly
aggressive legislative and law
enforcement campaigns that result in legislation, raids and arrests
that deprive Muslims and Arab Americans of equal protection under
the law, and deprivation and denial of civil liberties and
rights guaranteed to all American equally in the US
Constitution, among these being the rights to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.
This complaint especially alleges
the following:
1. Jewish organizations and
activists have created an “enemies” list that
includes Muslims, Arabs and white nationalists’ organizations
here in the US. This list is compromised of individuals and
groups that are deemed threats or enemies of the State of
Israel.
2. These organizations have used
their financial resources and also their formidable political
influence to purposefully poison public opinion against Muslims,
Arabs, and Islam in an attempt to demonize and vilify the same
for political purposes, and to
create an environment conducive
to the deprivation of and denial of Muslim and
Arab constitutional rights and repression of religious
freedoms in respect to Islam.
Allow me to summarize her letter
and mindset. We don't like Jews. These Jews
said some things about Muslims I didn't like. The Jews
hurt my feelings. Therefore, I want the United States
government to use its powers to suppress the speech of the Jews
because I consider what they say hateful.
Did I miss
anything?
Dear Dr. Anisa Abd el
Fattah, you suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of the
U.S. Constitution's guarantee of free speech. This is not
Canada, nor Britain, nor Italy, or any nation of the Middle
East which place severe limits on the free exchange of ideas.
While these nations do limit speech rights, we do not
restrict speech because it is hateful, or because it offends.
The United States takes its right to free speech
very seriously.
To start with, the First
Amendment to the Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law...abridging
the freedom of speech, or of the press...." Next,
in the Supreme Court case, New York Times v.
Sullivan, 1964, the
court found that speech, when it dealt with public figures and
their actions was nearly "absolute." Justice Brennan
quoted John Stuart Mill, who said, "even a false statement may be deemed to
make a valuable contribution to public debate." In
otherwords, speech as applied to political figures is
protected. Even false facts are protected speech.
In 1967, these free speech
rights were enlarged, not only to protect debate applied to
political figures, but also to "public" figures. For
instance, members of CAIR are fair game. In Curtis Publishing Co. v.
Butts, public figures
were now subject to the same new rules which made proving libel
or slander against a critic almost
impossible.
In short, Dr. Anisa
Abd el Fattah, you can't use government to repress the free
speech rights of groups or individuals. To do so, is
simply un-American.
Here are some interesting
background details about
Dr. Anisa Abs el Fattah that are freely and easily
available on the web:
Dr. Anisa
Abd el Fattah is the President of the National Association of
Muslim American Women, and is associated with the International
Association for Muslim Women and Children, a UN accredited NGO
with the UN Habitat conference, and the Division on the
Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians. She is the past
President of the United Association for Studies and Research, a
northern Va. research institute and think tank. She is the
Assistant Director of the Islamic Political Action Council of
America, and a member of the Board of Directors for (
CAIR), Council on American Islamic Relations. She
co-authored with Dr. Ahmed Yousef, "The Agent: Truth Behind the
Anti-Muslim Campaign in America", and "Islam and America: A New
Reading." She is also the Editor of the Middle East Affairs
Journal (MEAJ) house of organ of UASR. She is a regular
contributor to the American Muslim, published by the Muslim
American Society. Sister Anisa also authored, "Justice and
Normative Law: Common Ground Underlying Christian-Muslim
Cooperation," and "Revolution, The People, Basic Rights, and
Social Order; The Institutionalization of the Islamic
Revolution in Iran."
Of course, her anti-Semitism and
anti-American stance (though to be honest, her
anti-American stance sounds much like that of the American
left, liberal Democrats like Jimmy Carter, or 95% of American
college professors) can be found in numerous articles across
the net, including this
one which blames Jews and Christians for Palestinian
oppression, unheard of slaughter in Iraq and the defamation and
repression of Muslims in America itself. Once again, read
the whole polemic, but this will give you a flavor:
"What
can we do about those people, who claim to be US patriots who
knowingly sought to use Muslims, and especially Muslim
Americans as scapegoats and decoys while they secretly carried
out the very crimes, and harbored in their hearts the very
obvious hatred for the US, our way of life and our
Constitution, that they had so passionately blamed on
Muslims?"
The
Jack Abramoff scandal is more than a scandal; it is a cause for
international shame. It is also the story of how religious
zealots, terrorists and fanatics took over the United States
government, undermined our foreign interests, ruined our
credibility, and cost us our prestige as a trustworthy world
leader, while leading more than 2000 US soldiers and Marines to
their deaths along with thousands of innocent Muslims and
others, in pursuit of a fantasy that they call Zion. We all
assumed that their Zionist dreamland was Israel; we now know
that it also obviously included the United States. The immense
shame that our Congress should be experiencing as a result of
its failure to protect our country and our children from these
zealots is not yet apparent, since our so-called “elected
representatives” in Washington, the best Congress that money
could buy, is busy discarding the evidence of their role in
undermining world peace, while destroying the United States
internationally, and their possibly criminal culpability in the
untimely deaths of American soldiers and Marines, and more than
30 thousand innocent civilians in Iraq, and hundreds of
thousands more in Palestine and Lebanon, in the process. No
doubt at some point, the international courts will take up
these issues.
Looking
back, it seems now that 1994 was a special year in US history.
It is the year that Jack Abramoff is said to have begun his
Congressional shopping spree, looking for US Congress people
for sale. It is also the year that Benjamin Netanyahu, Richard
Perle, Douglas Feith and other Zionist notables crafted the now
infamous “Clean Break” strategy that led the United States into
Iraq under the false pretense that Saddam Hussein had weapons
of mass destruction, a lie that was crafted by Judith Miller, a
Zionist ideologue and possible Israeli intelligence operative
who posed as a New York Times journalist, and who also played a
still unknown role in the outing of Valerie Plame, the CIA
officer whose husband was one of the first people to challenge
the lie that Hussein had attempted to purchase chemicals needed
for a nuclear weapons program in Africa. Abramoff seems to have
arrived in Washington around the same time that the Oklahoma
City bombing took place, which led to the first major
legislative attack on Muslim Americans, and US civil liberties
through the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act, which has now been
followed by two additional bombings, and two additional bodies
of anti-terrorism legislation including the so-called Patriot
Act. It was the year that PBS aired the now discredited
“shockumentary” Jihad in America, written and produced by
Judith Miller’s Zionist colleague Steven Emerson, a so-called
journalist, and the father of secret evidence in US courts,
that the Nation magazine reported had close ties to Israeli
military intelligence, and the Israeli Likud party. It was the
year of the first media and public “backlash” against Muslims
in the United States, which left in its wake a number of burned
mosques, deaths, and defamation. Muslims and Islam were these
Zionist terrorists’ targets, scapegoats and decoys in a Zionist
war against the world, which they have lost.
As
we await the results of the numerous FBI investigations of
those who took Abramoff money for favors, seeking to ascertain
how exactly that money was spent, we can perhaps begin to
connect the dots, hoping to see the big picture that will
probably never grace our television news shows or newspapers,
no matter what the results of those investigations might be.
Just as the AIPAC (American/Israeli Political Action Committee)
spy scandal went unreported, don’t expect to hear the real, and
very serious consequences of what Abramoff and his network have
done to our country, our Constitution and Muslims, here and
abroad. The price in loss of lives, US prestige, credibility,
and pride is uncountable. While the taxpayer money is
countable, we can never get it back. The good news is that God
has spared us the worst of it, if you can imagine that we were
in store for much worse, and much more, including perhaps
military attacks on Syria and Iran that would without doubt
lead us into another world war, and perhaps the Armageddon of
Jewish and Christian apocalyptic teachings, that they seem to
long for.
It
goes without saying that Abramoff’s money was spent for
Congressional favors, and media access. Such favors seem to
have included making Muslims the most hated people in the
United States, and Islam the most hated religion in the world.
Who can forget how the so-called Christian “right” went wrong,
when its leaders used the media in our country to launch an
unprecedented attack to defame Muslim citizens and our
religion, and to deny us our civil rights. Such attacks, if
they had been launched against Jews, African Americans, Native
Americans or women would have caused a country-wide uproar, yet
after Emerson’s fraudulent claim that all Muslims were involved
in an international plot to take over, or to destroy the US, it
was open target day on Islam and Muslims, and the Christian
right took every shot they could get, and the media saw to it
that they got plenty of them.
Wow, if this
is what passes for moderation, tolerance, and love of country
in mainstream Muslim organizations, the Republic has a problem
on its hand.
The World is Shocked at the Execution of Saddam Hussein's
Henchmen
Or the Effeminate
Left
The henchmen, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed
al-Bander hanged yesterday morning for their crimes. Both
were found guilty of killing 148 Shiites in 1982. Though
from this
biography, Barzan killed many more people in gruesome ways
as the head of Hussein's secret police.
As you probably know, Barzan was decapitated when he
reached the end of the gallows ropes. Of course that
brought outrage from the "
Arab" street, as exemplified by:
The president of
Morocco's Human Rights Center described the hangings as a
barbaric and vengeful act carried out under external pressure,
probably from Iran and the United States.
Not to be outdone, the
U.N. Human Rights chief seems to care a great deal about
these mass murders. His quote, is this gem:
The imposition of the death
penalty after a trial and appeal proceedings that do not
respect the principles of due process amounts to a violation of
the right to life....
Seems to me that he received more consideration of his right to
life than those he feed to the infamous meat grinder.
Of course, Europe had to match the "world" outrage.
Unable to grasp the concept that mass murdering thugs might
actually be executed as punishment, the
Vatican issued a statement that pretty much echoed what the
rest of the continent thinks:
After the execution of
Saddam, which in addition was turned into a spectacle in a way
that was clearly damaging to personal dignity, there were many
calls to move in the direction of dialogue and
reconciliation.... But at the moment it does not look like
such a change of tack has occurred.
They are
concerned about the personal dignity of mass murders?
Apparently so. These are the same people who remained
silent as Saddam Hussein killed hundreds of thousands of his
own people. These are the same people who did nothing about the
slaughter in their own sphere of influence in Bosnia and
Kosovo, and it required the Americans to intervene. These
are the same people who would abandon Iraq and allow it to
spiral into civil war. And lastly, these are the same
people who can't even be bothered about the growing use
of beheadings by Islamic militants as a military and
political weapon of fear. Take a look at this list of
beheadings and
ask yourself if the E.U. or the U.N. condemned the jihadists
behind them? Did these groups protest when Islamist
beheaded three girls in
Indonesia? Did they protest when they
beheaded Nick Berg? Did these same people
protest when American
soldiers were beheaded in Iraq?
Of course
the answer is no. The Arabs are upset because Shiites are
executing Sunnis. I can understand that. Usually it
is the other way around, and who likes change? But what
has happened to Europe? Somehow, their morality has been
warped that they can't accept the punishment of mass murders,
but at the same time, they lack the ability to muster the
courage to condemn the tool of choice of the advancing jihad.
I mean, the head falls off of a murder and Europe is
upset. Amazing. But when the Spanish were
bombed
by al-Qaeda, they cowered in fear, replacing their strong
Prime Minister with a weakling who immediately withdrew Spain's
troops from Iraq. Well, that showed the jihadists, didn't
it. Then the British subways
were attacked by homegrown Islamic terrorists. Yet Prime
Minister Tony Blair
prattles on about peaceful Islam.
A society
which has lost its ability to tell right from wrong is in
decline. The society which cries out at the death of
dictator and his henchmen, but remains silent when innocents
are butchered needs a rebirth. A society that can't get
mad and won't defend itself when it is attacked by its enemies
will end up like the Byzantine
Empire.
Update:
Gateway Pundit has a nice roundup with similar
sentiments. Also see the Anti-Idiotarian
Rottweiler. Now there is a guy who knows how to
celebrate the death of a sadist.
Editor's note: Some of the linked
stories contain urls to videos of these beheadings.
Caution is advised.
