| July 2007 | ||||||
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| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
The Pope's secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein, recently spoke to Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazine:
MUNICH, Germany (CNS) -- While Christians respect Islam and desire to dialogue with Muslims, they must act to protect the Christian identity of Europe, said Pope Benedict XVI's private secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein.
..."Attempts at the 'Islamification' of the West cannot be denied," he said. "And the associated danger for the identity of Europe cannot be ignored out of a wrongly understood sense of respect."
In an ill-considered, knee-jerk response to pressure put on it by CAIR, PACE University has called the police and had arrested, a student, for putting a Koran in a toilet. This, when flag-burning is protected free speech, and desecration of Christian religious symbols is called "art" and put in museums. The public outrage from Americans who love free speech is threatening to turn this into a firestorm of public outrage directed against PACE. The topic is red-hot on LGF and is looking like a gathering blogswarm, with Google showing 110 blog posts on the subject in the past 12 hours. It appears likely that this subject will dominate talk radio tomorrow.
Earlier today I emailed this to the President of PACE University, Stephen J. Friedman:
Dear Mr. Friedman,
PACE has called the police to prosecute Mr. Shmulevich in response to pressure put on PACE by CAIR. Please reconsider. PACE is about to be on the receiving end of a massive public outcry from Americans outraged that PACE has, in error and without specifically intending it, launched a legal attack on U.S. freedom of speech.
To see the depth of the passion of Americans who love our free speech and our way of life, I strongly advise you to read the comments on this post (link) on a site that has tens of thousands of visits a day. There are already over 500 comments as I compose this email.
You are unintentionally making PACE the center of a firestorm of public outrage. And PACE is on the wrong side - standing against freedom of speech, which should be the top priority of a great University such as yours.
Act now to prevent a debacle, and massive international damage to PACE's reputation. Stand up for Mr. Shmulevich's right to free speech. Drop the charges.
I included the first 460 comments from the second LGF post on the subject, including:
#1 pbird 7/29/2007 8:20:06 am PDT
You described it perfectly Charles. I am speechless. So frightening.
...#3 m 7/29/2007 8:20:30 am PDTAnd Mr. Shmulevich needs a paypal account. This is ########.
#4 BabbaZee 7/29/2007 8:20:56 am PDT
re: #3 m
Amen.
#5 newsjunkie_ky 7/29/2007 8:21:48 am PDT
This scares the sh*t out of me. What next?
#6 NinoBrown79 7/29/2007 8:22:08 am PDT
A koran in the toilet and the guy gets thrown in jail? Is this America or Iran?
#7 mrsoc 7/29/2007 8:22:44 am PDT
Well, are we going to help him, or not?
#8 albemarle 7/29/2007 8:22:46 am PDT
How long before he gets his own fatwa ?
#9 Cartman 7/29/2007 8:22:56 am PDT
This is gonna be really interesting.
#10 christheprofessor 7/29/2007 8:23:18 am PDT
I can't seem to find any instance of PU's (somehow, that abbreviation seems so appropriate) having arrested somebody for burning an American flag....
#11 Roger 7/29/2007 8:23:37 am PDT
Will do, Charles.
I can't find which campus?
If anyone knows a good timing and if they are going to go, let me know.
#12 m 7/29/2007 8:23:41 am PDT
Who the f' was he harassing? The plumbers? Aggrevated harassment at that!
#13 Armigerous 7/29/2007 8:23:55 am PDT
From what I understand about the case,the Koran in question belonged to the university and not to him personally....can anybody verify that?..that would seem to be the crux of the problem
#14 BabbaZee 7/29/2007 8:24:11 am PDT
re: #7 mrsoc
Absolutely we are going to help him.
Any way we can.
...#16 distwalker 7/29/2007 8:24:21 am PDTYou can burn an American flag and get police protection.
You can create an image of the Virgin Mary in elephant dung and get it in a New York museum.
You can create performance art in which you insert a crucifix in your anus on stage and get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
You can burn a pile of bibles and get an article in the New York Times.
One Koran in the toilet results in two felony charges?
People, this is the center of the god damned storm. This is where we make our stand. If we can't win this one for this man, we have lost the war.
Institutions like PACE respond to pressure from the public. So far, CAIR is pressuring them, and they are responding. If they start hearing directly from us, demanding the protection of free speech, and the destruction of nascent double standards for Islam, the situation will change.
From the Wall Street Journal (via Instapundit):
Coal's Doubters Block New Wave Of Power Plants
From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high.
If significant numbers of new coal plants don't get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation's electricity demand, which is expected to grow 1.8% this year. In a time of rising energy costs, officials also worry about the long-term consequences of their decisions, including higher prices or the potential for shortages.
As recently as May, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, which currently supplies about half the nation's electricity. One reason for the surge of interest in coal was concern over the higher price of natural gas, which has driven up electricity prices in many places. Coal appeared capable of softening the impact since the U.S. has deep coal reserves and prices are low.
But as plans for this fleet of new coal-powered plants move forward, an increasing number are being canceled or development slowed. Coal plants have come under fire because coal is a big source of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in a time when climate change has become a hot-button political issue.
Coal plants generate energy we desperately need so as to be free of price-gouging, terrorist-sponsoring nations. And plans for new coal plants are being discarded due to fears of so-called global warming. But proof of the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming is evaporating.
From Canadian Climatologist Timothy Ball:
Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.
What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?
Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.
From Investors.com:
Global Warming: A private firm's downgrade of its hurricane forecast raises an obvious question: If scientists can't get near-future projections in a limited area right, how can they predict the climate decades from now?
A reasonable response is: They can't. But the global warming climate of fear did not blow in on the soft breezes of reason, but by the storm winds of emotion.
Forecaster WSI Corp. said Tuesday that the season ending Nov. 30 will bring 14 named storms, six of which will grow into hurricanes, three of them major. WSI's initial forecast was for 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four majors.
Why the change? "Because," said WSI forecaster Todd Crawford, "ocean temperatures have not yet rebounded from the significant drop in late spring."
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny
...Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.
For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame." [Update 8-2-07: see this comment.]
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."
...Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."
...Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.
From Australian scientist David Evans:
I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened that case. I am now skeptical.
...There is now no observational evidence that global warming is caused by carbon emissions. You would think that in over 20 years of intense investigation we would have found something. For example, greenhouse warming due to carbon emissions should warm the upper atmosphere faster than the lower atmosphere - but until 2006 the data showed the opposite, and thus that the greenhouse effect was not occurring! In 2006 better data allowed that the effect might be occurring, except in the tropics.
The only current "evidence" for blaming carbon emissions are scientific models (and the fact that there are few contradictory observations). Historically, science has not progressed by calculations and models, but by repeatable observations. Some theories held by science authorities have turned out to be spectacularly wrong: heavier-than-air flight is impossible, the sun orbits the earth, etc. For excellent reasons, we have much more confidence in observations by several independent parties than in models produced by a small set of related parties!
From England's Channel 4:
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Earth's 4.5 billion year history is one long story of climate change. This fact is pretty much accepted by those who think global warming is a natural process, and those who think it's caused by man.
In more recent history there has been: a mini ice age in the seventeenth century when the Thames froze so solidly that fairs could regularly be held on the ice; a Medieval Warm Period, even balmier than today; and sunnier still was the so-called Holocene Maximum, which was the warmest period in the last 10,000 years.
...For some people, the final nail in the coffin of human-produced greenhouse gas theories is the fact that carbon dioxide is produced in far larger quantities by many natural means: human emissions are miniscule in comparison. Volcanic emissions and carbon dioxide from animals, bacteria, decaying vegetation and the ocean outweigh our own production several times over.
...New evidence shows that that as the radiation coming from the sun varies (and sun-spot activity is one way of monitoring this) the earth seems to heat up or cool down. Solar activity very precisely matches the plot of temperature change over the last 100 years. It correlates well with the anomalous post-war temperature dip, when global carbon dioxide levels were rising.
...In fact, what is known of solar activity over the last several hundred years correlates very well with temperature. This is what some scientists are beginning to believe causes climate change.
The global warming campaign is wrong on the facts, and is doing great harm to our nation's energy supply, at a time when that energy supply is key to national security.
Here's a list of recent events:
The Pentagon tells Hillary that she's 'reinforcing enemy propaganda.' Hillary had asked the Pentagon for a plan to withdraw all troops from Iraq - and the enemy has propaganda that tells those who are killing American troops that, if they just keep going, they will triumph and make the U.S. withdraw all troops from Iraq. The Pentagon warned her that she is 'reinforcing enemy propaganda.' Instead of letting the story be forgotten, Hillary is keeping it alive and trying to draw other Dem senators into it with her.
The Dems are now in a fight with Cindy Sheehan, their former heroine, who is trying to launch a run against Nancy Pelosi. On the Daily Kos, she's being called "arrogant" and accused of "believing her own hype."
Naked protesters who are against war - protested against Hillary Clinton. ("These protestors wouldn't exactly sway your vote.") This draws attention again to the bizarre craziness of the far Left.
The astonishing, nightmarish effort by the Dems to kill the King amendment. This amendment protects whistleblowers who see evidence of terrorists trying to blow us up - it protects those whistleblowers from being sued. CAIR has launched lawsuits against such whistleblowers, to intimidate them from coming forward with the kind of information that has already stopped major terrorist plots. And astonishingly, the Dems actually voted to kill the amendment. Not one Republican voted against the amendment. The resulting public outcry has just saved the King amendment.
Obama says he'd meet with dictators who are enemies of America:
The controversy springs from a question at the YouTube debate asking whether Obama would be willing to meet, without precondition, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
Obama, an Illinois senator, said he would and called it a break with the Bush administration's diplomatic policies.
Clinton, in the debate, said she would pursue vigorous diplomacy but she wouldn't make such a promise without knowing the other countries' intent.
"I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes," she said.
In a telephone interview today, the New York senator went further. Of Obama's comment, she said: "I thought that was irresponsible and frankly naive."
And of course, the low approval rating of Congress. In April, it was at a 12-year low, per Gallup.
The country gave the Dems a chance to show what they could do if they got control of Congress. Hopefully the voters are taking heed of the embarrassments and debacles that are resulting.
From StrategyPage:
July 24, 2007: The surge has basically been chasing the terrorist and criminal gangs around the suburbs of Baghdad, or even into northern or western Iraq. This has taken its toll. Time spent in flight cannot be spent planting IEDs or killing people. Putting all these guys on the road, also makes them more susceptible to capture. A lot of important terrorists have been captured this way. The chief liaison between al Qaeda headquarters and al Qaeda in Iraq was nabbed, as well as many mid-level terrorist cell leaders.
What most of the troops, and Iraqi civilians, notice is the lower level of violence. Since the surge offensive began four months ago, Iraqi (military and civilian) deaths have declined by more than 50 percent, and American casualties are down by over a third. U.S. troops are still taking the lead in moving into hostile areas, and being exposed to ambush and IEDs. But U.S. tactics and training have made enemy efforts much less lethal. This has helped demoralize an increasing number of terrorists. Many are tired of killing Iraqi civilians, and the increasing difficulty at getting at American troops. Look at this from the Iraqi perspective. In a very good month, Iraqis make a hundred or more attacks a day on American troops, and kill, on average, about four of them. While the terrorists make a big deal out of every American killed, they know that most of their attacks were not only failures, but got a lot of their buddies killed. On average, 10-20 terrorists die for every American killed. This has been going on for years, and an increasing number of Iraqi fighters are demoralized and quitting. Many either become informers, or surrender and speak freely. This is resulting in fresher intelligence, and raids that are catching terrorist cells preparing for operations, and in possession of weapons, bombs and incriminating documents.
The terrorists like us to think that it's impossible for an army to fight a force that can melt into a civilian population.
But maybe it's not impossible.
Maybe it's just a little more expensive.
If it were to be confirmed as official policy in Egypt, this would be historic:
Egypt's religious advisor says Muslims can choose own religion
CAIRO: Egypt's official religious advisor has ruled that Muslims are free to change their faith as it is a matter between an individual and God, in a move which could have far-reaching implications for the country's Christians.
"The essential question before us is can a person who is Muslim choose a religion other than Islam? The answer is yes, they can," Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said in a posting on a Washington Post-Newsweek forum picked up by the Egyptian press on Tuesday.
...In many Muslim societies, those who convert to another religion are considered apostates and can be subject to capital punishment.
..."Even though it is not a criminal offence in Egypt, they get detained under emergency laws or are put on trial for contempt of religion if they wish to convert," said Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
"This (ruling) is significant, especially coming from Gomaa," he added. "Between 2004 and now there have been many court cases involving Christian converts to Islam that want to convert back to Christianity who are unable to do so."
To underscore the importance of such an advance, here's a quote from Wafa Sultan, who last year was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
When Muslims say, there are 1.3 billion of them, it makes it sound like they are the whole world. But the rest of the world is 5 billion. Muslims are a minority and they have to act like it. Those Muslims have no choice of religion, they are forced to be Muslim. Give those 1.3 billion Muslims freedom of religion, and then see how many Muslims there are in the world!
You'd think Hillary would at least want the story to go away. You'd think she wouldn't want to remind people that the Pentagon had warned her she was 'reinforcing enemy propaganda.' For the record, here's the background info:
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon told Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda. In a stinging rebuke to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded to questions Clinton raised in May in which she urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.
A copy of Edelman's response, dated July 16, was obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman wrote.
He added that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."
But, on the contrary, she's working hard to keep the story alive - and even to drag other Democrat senators into it with her.
Hillary Seeks Support in Pentagon Fight
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday enlisted the help of other Democratic senators in her feud with the Pentagon over end-of-war planning in Iraq.
She wants to be commander-in-chief - but she's in a feud with the Pentagon. Hopefully many voters will remember that the Pentagon itself has warned her, that she's helping the enemy - the enemy that is killing American troops in Iraq.
As you may know, yesterday - astoundingly - the Democrats killed an amendment that would protect "John Doe" whistleblowers from being sued. This amendment is needed because CAIR is suing the whistleblowers in the flying imams case, so as to intimidate future whistleblowers from giving us advance warnings of terrorist plots. CAIR's action is shocking - and the Dems supporting it is almost beyond belief.
I really didn't think the Dems were capable of this. This is a new low for them.
No Republicans voted against the amendment. Not one.
I just called Nancy Pelosi's office, via the Congressional switchboard, at 202-224-3121. It was answered very politely. I said I had a comment on the Democrat's efforts to kill this bill, and I was sent to a tape recording. Here's the comment I left:
Hi. I'd like to make a comment on the Democrat's killing of the "John Doe" amendment that would protect our whistleblowers from lawsuits. At this time, when we are all in so much danger from terrorists trying to blow things up, to leave the whistleblowers, the people who are trying to protect us, open to lawsuits - this is too horrifying, too terrible. It will lead to many deaths if those people are intimidated and unwilling to come forward. And my friends are starting to say, has our government been bought and paid for by the Saudis? So I'm asking you, please, please, put that amendment back in, or put it in somewhere else, or pass a stand-alone bill to the same effect. Thank you.
I then looked up the phone numbers of my Senators - Senators Boxer and Feinstein - using this web site. I first called Boxer's office. There was a nice tape of Sen. Boxer saying that because of the high volume of calls, I would be put on hold, and listen to classical music, until someone could speak to me. It also gave the number of her San Francisco office. Then the line was disconnected!
At her San Francisco office, a very nice woman answered the phone, and politely listened to my comments, which I gave her in a concerned, polite manner.
I then tried the number for Sen. Feinstein's office. It rang - then became a busy signal. I then called the Congressional switchboard, at 202-224-3121 and asked for Feinstein's office, and was put through to a number that was answered quickly and politely. The man who answered said that the correct way to refer to this issue is as "the John Doe amendment," to distinguish it from corporate whistleblowers. After finding out that I was in favor of the amendment, he said he would pass along my comments, and tried to cut me off, but I asked him to wait and listen to a few brief words, which he politely did. My sense of it was that he would try to cut off everybody after finding out their position, pro or con, on the amendment; I didn't feel he was trying to avoid taking my comments because I was in favor of the amendment.
Call Nancy Pelosi and your Senators (via the Congressional switchboard, at 202-224-3121) and support the John Doe amendment. Per Frank Gaffney:
Every one of us who understands the indispensable role alert private citizens can - and must - play in protecting the American people from future terrorist attacks should immediately contact Speaker Pelosi's office (202-225-4965), their own congressional representatives and their favorite talk radio show hosts and bloggers. The message should be clear: Enact the King amendment - because our lives, literally, depend upon it.
From the Washington Times:
A Muslim civil rights group yesterday blamed the Bush administration for promoting "Islamophobia" and said the "war on terror" won't stop terrorists.
"The new perception is that the United States has entered a war with Islam itself," said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the national board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
"Terrorism is a tactic. You cannot eradicate it by declaring a war against it. The war on terror is causing us infinitely more harm than the terrorists could have ever imagined."
Mr. Ahmed, who spoke at a CAIR symposium at the National Press Club, said the war against terrorists is driven by an "irrational" fear that the Bush administration has inculcated in the American public. The chance of being killed in a terrorist attack, he said, is 1 in 80,000 over a lifetime.
There are about 300 million people in America. 1 in 80,000 means that Ahmed is predicting that 3,750 of them will be killed by terrorists - more than the number killed on 9-11. And he also says, in another implied threat, that the war on terror won't stop it. Yet there hasn't been another 9-11 since 2001, despite the efforts of the Islamists.
Ahmed knows that the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks are committed by his co-religionists in the name of their religion. Yet CAIR's opposition is directed against U.S. efforts to put an end to those attacks. CAIR itself makes little effort to put an end to those attacks. This recent Ramirez cartoon says it well:
Ahmed's implied threat of future attacks, and his organization's lack of actions to prevent such attacks, show what goals CAIR - an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding case - is pursuing.
In his book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark Steyn has shown that the birth rates of many Western nations are below replacement, meaning that the population shrinks with each generation, trending toward extinction. Per Steyn (in an article accompanying the launch of the book):
The single most important fact about the early 21st century is the rapid aging of almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe and Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been and faster than any has ever aged. A society ages when its birth rate falls and it finds itself with fewer children and more grandparents. For a stable population - ie, no growth, no decline; just a million folks in 1950, a million in 1980, a million in 2010 - you need a Total Fertility Rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That's what America has: 2.1, give or take. Canada has 1.48, an all-time low and a more revealing difference between the Great Satan and the Great White North than any of the stuff (socialized health care, fewer handguns, more UN peacekeepers, etc) that Canucks usually brag about. Europe as a whole has 1.38, Japan 1.32, Russia 1.14. These countries - or, more precisely, these people - are going out of business.
...In the 14th century, the Black Death wiped out a third of the Continent's population; in the 21st, a larger proportion will disappear - in effect, by choice. We are living through a rare moment: the self-extinction of the civilization which, for good or ill, shaped the age we live in. One can cite examples of remote backward tribes who expire upon contact with the modern world, but for the modern world to expire in favor of the backward tribes is a turn of events future anthropologists will ponder, as we do the fall of Rome.
...When my second child was born, a neighbor said, "Well, you've got two. You can stop now." She was being enlightened and responsible. After all, for her entire adult life, the progressive-minded have worried about "overpopulation". And this view became so pervasive that, in an age of hysteria about "dwindling resources", it became entirely normal to look on our greatest resource - us - as a liability. So today we're the dwindling resource, not the oil. We're the endangered species, not the spotted owl. The "population explosion" is a prop of the western progressive's bizarre death-cultism. We are so bad, so polluting, so exploitative, so violent, so destructive that we owe it to the world not to be born in the first place. Given the plummeting birth rates in Europe, Russia, Japan, etc, a large chunk of the world has evidently decided to take pre-emptive action on climate change and opt for societal suicide. The crisis we face today is the precise opposite of "overpopulation": the developed world's population is shrinking faster than any human society not in the grip of war or disease has ever shrunk.
Who would have thought that technologies such as birth control, and abortion, would threaten the end of many Western cultures? Yet this is the case.
But the Democrats are courting voters by promising that abortions will be paid for by the government:
Democrats pledge support for wide access to abortion
WASHINGTON -- Elizabeth Edwards said Tuesday that her husband's health-care plan would provide insurance coverage of abortion.
Speaking on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards before the family planning and abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Edwards lauded her husband's health-care proposal as "a true universal health-care plan" that would cover "all reproductive health services, including pregnancy termination," referring to abortion.
We're already at a zero population growth birth rate in America. We need to have more babies, not fewer. The Democrats' policies are those that are leading to the extinction of Western cultures in Europe.
As a blogger, from time to time you see what appear to be echoes of your views appearing in various public statements, and occasionally you wonder if you may have been one of many contributing to the expression of those views in those statements.
Yesterday there was a lot of public discussion of a dust-up that happened on Sunday between Senators Graham and Webb on the subject of Iraq. From Senator's Graham's remarks:
GRAHAM: If General Petraeus comes back, he will tell us these things. I want to leave. No American wants to occupy Iraq, but history will judge us, my friend, not when we left but what we left behind. Do we leave a resurgent Al-Qaeda that will kill every moderate who helped us? Do we empower Iran, do they control the south of Iraq? Nobody ever asks the consequences, polls the consequences of this idea, just wash your hands of Iraq. I'm going to listen to this general and I'm not going to let any politician take the place of the general.
Just a few days previously I had made precisely this point regarding a recent poll on Iraq, and provided evidence for it. The post was linked by Pajamas Media, as well.
DVDs from the Conference on the Collapse of Europe, which I blogged extensively, are now available for $15 each.
[This article is by guest poster, Shawn Steel. Steel is the former President of the California Republican Party, co-founder of the Davis Recall, and is currently Director of the Club for Growth. - VR.]
One of the most remarkable women today is former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her biography is an unrelenting page turner. Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali 2007, Free Press.
Ali is one courageous author, witness and political leader to confront the Cancer within Islam.
All great religions and ideologies always contain seeds of its own destruction. Islam is no exception. Given that America is one of the most tolerant societies is recorded history, many of our citizens still cannot understand the violent and extreme phenomena called Radical Islam.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells the story of the growth of the Radical Cancer in her homeland Somalia. Her father was a revolutionary working against the Marxists who seized Somalia in the early 80's. American's most unsuccessful President, the fall of Somalia was part of Carter's legacy when the last gasps of the Soviet conquests extended from Afghanistan, Angola, Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada and many more.
Her family was clan based with a heavy dependence on Islam. She learned early on that Islam considered women inherently inferior. Despite her education, academic success, multiple language skill [six] and courage, when she personally rescued many family members from war torn Somalia, the men in her family still considered Ayaan a lesser human.
Ultimately she was ordered to marry a Somali man who migrated to Canada, because too many Somali girls were "corrupted" there. Ayaan was ordered by her father to submit to Allah's will and marry a man she didn't know. Instead, while traveling to Canada via Europe, she escaped to Holland and claimed political refugee status. She learned Dutch and in no time was elected to Parliament.
But when she began to publicly debate the growing menace of Radical Islam in Dutch society she became quite famous and attracted serious murder threats.
After she helped write a film called Submission, directed by Theo van Gogh [ yes, the grandson], about the cruel lives of many woman forced to lived marginal lives in radical Islamic communities, Theo was murdered for his work.
The murder itself was an effective metaphor for the seriousness, the outrage and insanity of Radical Islam. Van Gogh while riding on his bicycle was shot eight times by Mohammad B. a well off Arab who benefited from Dutch society. Mohammad cut van Gogh's throat nearly decapitating Theo. Mohammad then plunged two knives into van Gogh's chest. A five page note was thrust into van Gogh's heart with a written pledge to kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ayaan's story is not to be missed. It timely, important and a brisk read. To learn more about Ayaan, who recently, moved to the US to continue the war against Radical Islam, her book is crucial.
With many Conservatives criticizing GWB these days, it's worth remembering his substantial successes to date:
Per William Kristol in the Washington Post:
Why Bush Will Be a Winner
...With the new counterinsurgency strategy announced on Jan. 10, backed up by the troop "surge," I think the odds are finally better than 50-50 that we will prevail. We are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias and we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population.If we sustain the surge for a year and continue to train Iraqi troops effectively, we can probably begin to draw down in mid- to late 2008. The fact is that military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected, and political progress is beginning to follow.
...What it comes down to is this: If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president.
I like the odds.
In many cases, even Conservatives have fallen for the never-ending drumbeat of biased reporting from MSM, and have come to the conclusion that he's a disappointment.
On the plus side, in this environment - in which MSM continuously feeds the public a biased view of the news - it may help the next Republican presidential candidate get elected, to distance himself from GWB.
But it appears to me that in 20 years, GWB's presidency will be held in very high regard.
This week various media outlets are noting the result of a Gallup Poll, reporting that:
A new USA Today/Gallup poll this week showed more than seven in 10 Americans favor withdrawing nearly all U.S. troops by April.
A visit to the Gallup site shows the text of the poll question:
37. (Asked of a half sample) Do you favor or oppose removing all U.S. troops from Iraq by April 1st of next year, except for a limited number that would be involved in counter-terrorism efforts?
BASED ON 505 NATIONAL ADULTS IN FORM A
Favor
Oppose
No opinion
2007 Jul 6-8
71%
26
4
To throw a little cold water on this, it is necessary to point out that the question asks interviewees to respond without regard to the consequences of a troop pullout. Iraqi and U.S. analysts believe that a troop pullout would be catastrophic for Iraqis and for the U.S. From AP:
BAGHDAD - Iraqi leaders warned Monday the country could collapse if American troops leave too quickly as pressure mounts in Washington to draw down U.S. combat forces. More threats to Iraqi stability could be looming to the north with Turkish forces gathering in a possible prelude to a cross-border attack against Kurdish rebels.
...The idea of a withdrawal drew a sharp response from Iraq's foreign minister, who warned that a speedy U.S. military withdrawal could lead to all-out civil war, the collapse of the government and spread conflict across the Middle East.
"We have held discussion with members of Congress and explained to them the dangers of a quick pullout and leaving a security vacuum," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters. "The dangers could be a civil war, dividing the country, regional wars and the collapse of the state."
That sentiment was echoed by leading political figures from the Sunni Arab community, the group that had been the least supportive of the U.S. presence following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government in 2003.
"A hasty withdrawal . . . would lead to a crisis that would obliterate all the positive aspects of the U.S. troop deployment," said Salim Abdullah, spokesman for the largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament.
Sunni legislator Adnan al-Dulaimi said a quick U.S. departure would "destroy Iraq" and that the American presence was necessary to "keep a balance between Iraqi sects" after the wave of Shiite-Sunni reprisal killings that plunged the country to the brink of all-out civil war last year.
From Victor Davis Hanson:
A Greek Tragedy in the Making
Vietnam has been evoked so many times for Iraq that most snore when they hear it.
But the real parallels are the images of an orphaned war (Vietnam circa 1972-5) when the public had given up, the politicians had begun getting most troops out, and after Watergate, begun to cut off funds in a series of Congressional actions.
Few cared then to hear that the South Vietnamese government, corrupt as it was, was far superior to the alternative, or was viable in a way that late 1950s South Korea had become (compare the modern state there to the present alternative to the north), or that Saigon could evolve in a way Hanoi could not.
Much less did anyone want to hear of possible consequences of defeat and flight. Indeed, talk of camps, executions, and refugees were written off as right-wing scare stories. The last five years of Vietnam before the fall were largely the work of a small dedicated group of military people and diplomats who finally figured out counter-insurgency, had trained and supplied the South Vietnamese effectively, and very slowly drew down while providing air and material support-until the cutoffs.
...And now the Vietnam parallel again. Are we going to read books in the next decade with titles like "Triumph Forsaken" and "Victory Lost", whose themes will be that the US had almost done the impossible by going into the worst place in the Middle East and, all at once, addressing Saddam's reign of terror, Islamic fundamentalism, ex-Baathism, religious sectarianism, Iranian and Syrian infiltration, and seeing something far better emerge-and then at the climax quit in recrimination and despair over the terrible loss in blood and treasure?
If the question had been followed up with something like this, there would likely have been a different result:
37 A. (Asked of a half sample) Do you favor or oppose removing all U.S. troops from Iraq by April 1st of next year, except for a limited number that would be involved in counter-terrorism efforts, if this would increase the risk of the collapse of the Iraqi state?
Hanson observed that in the Vietnam war, no one wanted "to hear of possible consequences of defeat and flight." The same thing is exemplified in this poll. The poll asks respondents whether they want troops out of Iraq, without regard to consequences. In fact, the poll merely asks respondents if they "favor or oppose removing all U.S. troops..." Of course everybody favors that. Consequences aside, of course everybody wants the troops out.
But the very next question of the Gallup poll - ignored by most of the MSM - does touch remotely on consequences - and does give a far different result. Again, from the Gallup site:
38. (Asked of a half sample) Which comes closer to your view about U.S. policy toward the situation in Iraq -- [ROTATED: Congress should act now to develop a new policy on Iraq, (or) Congress should not develop a new policy on Iraq until September when General Petraeus reports on the progress of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq]?
BASED ON 509 NATIONAL ADULTS IN FORM B
Act now to develop
new policy on IraqNot develop
new policy on Iraq
until September
No
opinion2007 Jul 6-8
40%
55
5
The majority opposes changing policy in Iraq until Petraeus reports. Sure, when asked without regard to consequences, 70% want our troops out. But when asked about what they want to do now, in the real world, where there are consequences - the majority favors maintaining GWB's policies until the September report comes in.
Yet MSM ignored this poll result. Too often, this is how MSM operates - selectively hiding key facts, in an effort to stampede the populace - and successfully stampeding some Congressmen, who should know better.
(Note that the question, #38, asks respondents to choose between changing
the policy now, or changing it later - leaving out a third option,
namely, to maintain current U.S. policy, if they like what Petraeus
reports.)
