Saturday, June 07, 2008

We Finish It

For all those who either hoped for, or feared, a stinging defeat for our side in Afghanistan, try this account of a battle between the Brits and the Taliban. The Taliban had several big advantages: position, surprise, they decided when and where to start it, etc. But after the fighting raged for a while, they ran. As Toby Keith once sang, they ran like rabbits, from a major firefight. "They start it, we finish it," as a British soldier put it.

Which is why the jihadis are having so much internal dissention. I am told that they are now using remote controlled vehicles for "suicide missions" in Iraq. Apparently it's harder and harder to find martyrs.

As I wrote in The War Against the Terror Masters before the battle of Iraq began, ideology is closely linked to reality; a messianic movement generally falls apart, and its ideology with it, when the messiah's fighters are defeated. So it was with communism; so it is with the jihadis. We should press our current advantage. Faster.

To The Very End?

Michael Ramirez, on Barack Obama's selective admiration for tenacity; click to enlarge:

Britney World: The Crazing

The trend towards “global crazing” was not always there, however. If we go back half a century, differences between Liberals and Conservatives up here, as between Democrats and Republicans down there, did not hinge on “ability to discern reality.” On the facts of life; on moral, legal, and religious principles; on the need to keep government out of our lives and resist tyranny in any other form, there was broad agreement. A “very liberal” voter from the 1950s would pass for a “rightwing dinosaur” today.

This has become a signal threat to democracy. For where we once had broad agreement on facts, and relatively mild disagreements on what should be done about them, we now have one-half of the electorate drifting off into Cloud Cuckooland.

I have attributed this to many things, but chiefly to the effects of mass urbanization.
And then you realize that the “experts” are people like Al Gore, and it is too late to panic.

The "Sore"

clipped from hotair.com

We have written on the network of radicals attached to Barack Obama’s political and public career, and perhaps none carry the impact of Rashid Khalidi. Barack Obama tried to shrug off Khalidi as a person he “knew” from Khalidi’s days at the University of Chicago, but the connections go much deeper than that. As Daniel Pipes explains in this clip to Sean Hannity, Khalidi and Obama have raised money for each other — and Khalidi’s connections to the PLO demonstrate just how radical Obama’s circle gets:

D Update

Ultraviolet B (UVB) exposure triggers photosynthesis of vitamin D3 in the skin. This form of vitamin D also is available through diet and supplements.

"This is the first study, to our knowledge, to show that higher serum levels of vitamin D are associated with reduced incidence rates of type 1 diabetes worldwide," said Cedric F. Garland, Dr. P.H., professor of Family and Preventive Medicine in the UCSD School of Medicine, and member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center.

The study is published June 5 in the online version of the scientific journal Diabetologia.


Do I even need to mention that that vitamin D seems to also cut the risk of the killer auto-immune disorder Multiple Sclerosis? Want to avoid auto-immune disorders, cut your risk of cancer, and probably reduce your incidence of infectious diseases? Vitamin D delivers many benefits.

Mitochondria And Telomerase

clipped from www.fightaging.org

So, poorly functioning mitochondria lead to telomere shortening, and telomerase somehow improves mitochondrial function to prevent that shortening. This is in place of the more expected path of undoing ongoing telomere shortening by adding extra repeat sequences to the end of the telomeres - that being the better understood function of telomerase.

Damaged mitochondria are a fundamental root cause of age-related degeneration far above and beyond the matter of telomeres. If telomerase acts to improve the state of mitochondria, this might explain why telomere length correlates so well with general measures of health in the old. It might even be the case that, setting aside cancer for one moment, telomere length really isn't that important in comparison to your mitochondrial health.

This all cries out for more research - the prospect of reducing two thorny problems down to one

Disappointed Traitors

clipped from chicagoboyz.net

Over at Reason, Steve Chapman rather sneeringly suggests that we should have the people of Iraq vote on whether to continue our military presence in their country.

I think this is a fantastic idea, because I know exactly how they will vote.

Having a plebiscite before the U.S. election would serve to protect the people of Iraq from the dreaded Cambodia scenario regardless of the outcome of the U.S. election. A positive vote might prevent Obama from winning in the first place, and even if it did not, it would make it difficult for him to throw the Iraqis to the wolves when he assumed office.

I agree with Lexington Green about Obama and his traitor pals. However, Unlike South Vietnam Iraq has significant income from oil exports.
It may well happen that by the time Obama gets around to stabbing them in the back the Iraqi government will be strong enough to last without US troops or support.

In other words, there might be a lot of disappointed traitors in Washington in 2009.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Maybe I Should Just Title All My Posts "Whoops"

Tim Carney had a nice piece in the Examiner this morning on Lieberman-Warner's early history — as Enron's favorite bill.

First, Enron was the leader in natural-gas pipelines. Greenhouse gas restrictions increase the price of coal and oil, driving up demand for natural gas and thus natural-gas pipelines. Also, Enron planned on becoming the leading broker in greenhouse gas allowances. Just as it had made riches trading natural gas contracts, Enron planned to become a carbon dioxide dealer — buying up allowances, lobbying to pocket free allowances from government, and then selling them off.

Also — and this shows how these environmental laws can do little or nothing for the environment, while hurting consumers and profiting the companies with the biggest bottom line — Enron was building coal-fired power plants in Third World countries not covered by Kyoto; if America’s and Europe’s coal-fired plants had to shut down under greenhouse gas constraints, Enron would pay less for its coal.

Whoops Part 2

June 6,
2008:  Periodically, usually on a slow
news day, the mass media will run stories of sexual harassment and assault in
the military. It does happen. Currently, about 210 per 100,000 members of the
military are victims of sexual assault each year. However, 60 percent of the
assaults were committed by non-military personnel. Moreover, the sexual assault
rate is more than five times higher among the U.S. college population. That
might be explained by the greater opportunity. About 55 percent of college students
are women, while only 15 percent of military personnel are female. Then again,
if you are in the military, you are trained to be far more disciplined than the
average college student.



 


As for
combat risk, that causes far less injury to military women each year than does
sexual assault. So college life has no edge there.

Whoops

June 6,
2008:  With things quieting down in Iraq
(U.S. casualties hit an all-time low in May, 2008), South Africa has regained
its position as the most violent country on the planet, with a murder rate of
65 per 100,000 population. The death rate is also high in some other African
countries (like Sudan, Somalia and Congo), but those placed don't keep records
as effectively as South Africa. The Iraqi rate is now running at about 48 per
100,000. The Afghanistan rate is about 15. India, another area with lots of
terrorism (and half of it is from communist and tribal rebels) the murder rate is
about four per 100,000.
An don't forget those shiny new Iraq style checkpoint in D.C.

Move along now. Nothing to see here.

O'blivious

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk
Americans have, of course, been here before:

From the moment he took office in January 1977, President Jimmy
Carter made it clear that he wanted to make a new start in America's relations
with the rest of the world. Gone was the hard-nosed Realpolitik of Henry
Kissinger. Mr Carter transformed US policy by insisting that human rights be
placed at the top of the agenda - with disastrous results.

The main reason the Shah of Iran, a key ally in Washington's
attempts to keep the Soviet Union at bay in the Gulf, had managed to survive was
the ruthless efficiency of his CIA-trained Savak security service. But after Mr
Carter hosted a state visit in Washington for the Shah and Empress of Iran in
November 1977, the Pahlavi dynasty was encouraged to release hundreds of
political prisoners, with the result that, two years later, the Shah was
overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. We are still trying to
come to terms with the consequences.

Undivided Cynicism


So Jerusalem would be "undivided," with part of it being the capital of
Israel and part being the capital of "Palestine." Sure, that makes perfect
sense. Nothing "divided" about that.

Obama isn't an idiot, so I may have to dissent from Scott's generous
suggestion that Obama "may not be an unusually cynical politician."

PAUL adds: I think Obama got into trouble here in part because of his cynical
desire to tell the AIPAC audience what it wanted to hear, but also in part
because he didn't really understand the issue.

Many Republicans are happy that Obama is the nominee because they see him as
a relatively weak candidate. They are probably correct in their assessment of
his candidacy. But they nonetheless should be dismayed that someone who is
simulataneously this unprincipled and this clueless finds himself within orating
distance of the presidency.

JOHN agrees: It's true; I wonder whether any major party has ever nominated a
candidate as ignorant of the major issues of the day as Obama.

O'Britney World (Part 92355)

We can infer from his statements that Obama is opposed to "saber-rattling,"
On Wednesday, however, the time for Obama to rattle the saber arrived. Or at
least the time had come to support the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist
organization, eight months after the Senate vote on the subject. The time
coincided with end of the primary season, and with Obama's appearance at the
AIPAC policy conference. At his href="http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/04/prepared-remarks-obama-at-aipac-policy-conference/">speech
to the AIPAC policy conference in Washington on Wednesday, Obama called for
"boycotting firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose Quds
force has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization."

By the standards of presidential politics, Obama may not be an unusually
cynical politician. But he is extraordinarily cynical, and he must believe that
included among his href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/06/020682.php">mystical
powers
is the power to make voters believe whatever he says, even when what
he says today contradicts what he said yesterday.

Why We Are Out Of Energy


Congressman Roy Blunt put together these data to highlight the differences
between House Republicans and House Democrats on energy policy:

ANWR Exploration House Republicans: 91% Supported House Democrats:
86% Opposed

Coal-to-Liquid
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 78%
Opposed

Oil Shale Exploration
House Republicans: 90% Supported
House Democrats:
86% Opposed

Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Exploration
House Republicans: 81%
Supported
House Democrats: 83% Opposed

Refinery Increased Capacity
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House
Democrats: 96% Opposed

SUMMARY

91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production
of American-made oil and gas.

86% of House Democrats have historically voted against increasing the
production of American-made oil and gas

PAUL adds: It's useful to keep this sort of thing in mind when we hear (on
something like a daily basis these days) that the Republicans have run out of
ideas or that Republican ideas didn't work.

Welcome To The O'Daley Machine


Gabe Malor, over at target=_blank>Ace of Spades, notices Obama is using the same "he's not the
man I once knew" line that he used with Jeremiah Wright.

Obama has returned href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/766605,CST-NWS-obama30.article"
target=_blank>$157,835
in campaign funds that Tony Rezko and his associates
donated in his career.

But will he return the land that he bought from Rezko?

I can hear it now. "But Jim, this isn't a donation from Rezko to Obama,"
because the senator bought the land for a lot href="http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/South.Side.Tony.2.333263.html"
target=_blank>more than it was worth
—  "an appraiser valued the slice
of land Rezko sold at $40,500, Obama decided it would be fair to pay Rezko
substantially more: one sixth of his original purchase price, or $104,000."

Precisely. Rezko "href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/766605,CST-NWS-obama30.article"
target=_blank>widely known to be under federal investigation at the time
."
Paying substantially more than the land was appraised creates the appearance of
a $64,000 payment to a person who, if found guilty, could discuss his longtime
association and business dealings with a U.S. senator with federal law
enforcement.

Hiding in plain sight.

Sowell Makes The Case For Foolishness


Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober — if not grim — assessment of where we are.

Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When Election Day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.

This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world — Iran — is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.

The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran’s nuclear bomb will be the terrorists’ nuclear bomb — and they can make 9/11 look like child’s play.

Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.
This reminds me of my recent clip including the Romanian proverb ("A change in leaders is the joy of fools.)

Actually, the author is actually about the only person on earth that I would gladly cast a vote for President.

And that's because he's way too smart to run of course.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

As Opposed To All Nuts, Half The Time

clipped from hotair.com

Barack Obama had to backtrack on foreign policy yet again today, this time on Jerusalem. He tried to outdo John McCain at AIPAC yesterday by insisting that Jerusalem remain the undivided capital of Israel. The Palestinians erupted in anger at that statement, and by the end of the day they had Obama backpedaling:

Facing criticism from Palestinians, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged today that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future peace talks, amending a statement earlier in the week that Jerusalem “must remain undivided.”

All Nuts, All The Time

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Japan’s prime minister Thursday that the world will soon not include the United States, Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

"The U.S. domination is on the fall. Iran and Japan as two civilized and influential nations should get ready for a world minus the U.S.," Ahmadinejad told Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the sidelines of the U.N. food summit in Rome on Tuesday, IRNA reported.

Welcome To O'uter Space

Barack Obama's friend, financier and political supporter Tony Rezko was convicted by a Chicago jury today on sixteen counts involving various forms of political corruption. Obama released this statement:

I’m saddened by today’s verdict. This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform. I encourage the General Assembly to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent these kinds of abuses in the future.

I don't doubt that Obama is saddened by his mentor's conviction, but the rest of his statement is from outer space. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew." Deja vu, anyone? I could swear I've heard it somewhere before. Sure enough--the racist, anti-American Rev. Wright whom we've all seen on video wasn't the Rev. Wright whom Obama knew for 20 years, either. And the outrageously bigoted Father Pfleger wasn't the Pfleger whom Obama assiduously supported with earmarks

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Man Of The "New Party" ... Same As The Daley Party...

And thus the Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of George McGovern, albeit without McGovern’s military and political record. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far-left candidate in the tradition of Michael Dukakis, albeit without Dukakis’s executive experience as governor. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of John Kerry, albeit without Kerry’s record of years of service in the Senate. The Democratic party is about to nominate an unvetted candidate in the tradition of Jimmy Carter, albeit without Jimmy Carter’s religious integrity as he spoke about it in 1976. Questions about all these attributes (from foreign policy expertise to executive experience to senatorial experience to judgment about foreign leaders to the instructors he has had in his cultural values) surround Barack Obama. And the Democratic party has chosen him.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Even The French Get It

Why doesn't Obama?

BAGHDAD (AFP) — French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday that the security situation in Iraq was improving and reaffirmed France's willingness to help rebuild the war-ravaged country.

The Tough One

As one of the early trailblazers for the Rev Wright put it, greater love hath no man than to lay down his friends for his life. In among all the usual presidential ditching of inconvenient associations, I can't think of anything to compare with Obama's dumping of Trinity. It's like Jimmy Carter renouncing his Baptist Church in Plains, Ga - although Carter never went so far as to title his campaign-launch promotional book after one of his preacher's sermons.

Will the media give it to him and continue the fawning iconography? Or will Bob Herbert, Joe Klein, Garry Wills and the other bobbysoxers resent being made to look like saps over their this-is-the-greatest-speech-since-Gettysburg hooey and confront the fraudulent nature of the image they've promoted so assiduously?

Gee, that's a tough one...  

O'Fusion: Rehnquist Was Two Years Too Late

clipped from redstate.com

Fusion is a pretty simple concept. A candidate could run as both a Democrat and a New Party member to signal the candidate was, in fact, a left-leaning candidate, or at least not a center-left DLC type candidate. If the candidate, let’s call him Barack Obama, received only 500 votes in the Democratic Party against another candidate who received 1000 votes, Obama would clearly not be the nominee. But, if Obama also received 600 votes from the New Party, Obama’s New Party votes and Democratic votes would be fused. He would be the Democratic nominee with 1100 votes.

Fusion, fortunately for the country, died in 1998. William Rehnquist, writing for a 6-3 Supreme Court, found the concept unconstitutional. It was two years too late to stop Obama.

The Chicago Democratic Socialists of America were quite pleased in 1996 with the New Party’s success including the election of “Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, [who] encouraged [New Party members] to join in his task forces
Run, don't walk and RTWT. Your jaw will drop.

The Failure Continues

You probably haven’t heard much of Solar Cycle 24, the current cycle that our sun has entered, and I hope you don’t. If Solar Cycle 24 becomes a household term, your lifestyle could be taking a dramatic turn for the worse. That of your children and their children could fare worse still, say some scientists, because Solar Cycle 24 could mark a time of profound long-term change in the climate. As put by geophysicist Philip Chapman, a former NASA astronaut-scientist and former president of the National Space Society, “It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age.”
Today’s spotlessness — what alarms Dr. Chapman and others — may be an anomaly of some kind, and the sun may soon revert to form. But if it doesn’t – and with each passing day, the speculation in the scientific community grows that it will not – we could be entering a new epoch that few would welcome.

Puzzles For Feeble Minded Greens

the New Zealand Herald is blunt: “How to meet the lofty target is a puzzle. Clean renewables are still in their infancy yet will be required to deliver gigawatts of power when many fossil-fuel and nuclear power stations are at the end of their operational life.”

 

In Sweden, of course, all nukes are at the end of their life thanks to the government’s nearly 30-year ban. In the face of this blunder, Sweden’s government has postponed its 2010 deadline as it scrambles to find a solution to its aging utility infrastructure and emissions ceiling.

 

Public opinion is also swinging back towards nukes as Swedes realize freezing in the dark is not an option. As Mechanical Engineering Magazine notes, for all of Scandinavia’s green preening, “per capita consumption of electricity in Sweden is 16,500 kilowatt-hours per year, among the highest in the world” — thanks to “its electricity-intensive industries, such as pulp and paper processing, mining, steel forging, and chemical formulation.”

O'Blarney And His Social Gospel

Now, I don't know enough about Obama's beliefs to know if he actually knows what the real Social Gospel movement was, or even if he really has that in mind when he uses the term. He may use the phrase Social Gospel the same way he (and so many others) uses the word "progressive," i.e. in near total ignorance or indifference to its actual historical connotations. For example, when Obama held a rally at the University of Wisconsin, Madison he proclaimed "where better to affirm our ideals than here in Wisconsin, where a century ago the Progressive movement was born?" Obama seemed not to know or to care that the University of Wisconsin Progressives were almost all racists and eugenicists who might have thought — at minimum — that his parents should have been barred from having children.

Cap And Tax: Corrupt Deception

The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade -- a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases -- is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it's not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it's promoted as a "free market" mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the system for different industries and localities. This would undermine whatever the system's abstract advantages.

A real shocka. RTWT.

The Dim And The Unknown

On page 173, McClellan first mentions my Plame leak, but he does not identify Armitage as the leaker until page 306 of the 323-page book -- then only in passing. Armitage, anti-war and anti-Cheney, cannot fit the conspiracy theory that McClellan now buys into. When Armitage after two years publicly admitted he was my source, the life went out of Wilson's campaign. In "What Happened," McClellan dwells on Rove's alleged deceptions as if the real leaker were still unknown.

McClellan at the White House podium never knew the facts about the CIA leak, and his memoir reads as though he has tried to maintain his ignorance. He omits Armitage's slipping Mrs. Wilson's identity to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward weeks before he talked to me. He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.

They Simply ARE Mad

The regime's reason for being — fostering and exporting the Khomeinist revolution, as stated in its constitution — is a cause that transcends even the old Soviet communist regimes. For while the Soviets did espouse the cause of spreading communism and dominating the globe, there was a bit of Western pragmatism to their thinking that separates them in terms of negotiability from the Iranian regime. For the Soviets, their human system was their religion.

It was this same dynamic that made Mutual Assured Destruction a plausible deterrent in the Cold War:  In the end, the Soviets could be relied upon to act rationally and value self-preservation. The same cannot be said of the Iranian mullah regime and their cause and messianic nature.

The Soviet Union acknowledged MAD. Conversely, we must acknowledge that there are at least enough members empowered within the Iranian mullah regime who simply are mad.

Except Those Invested In Defeat

clipped from hotair.com
This means that another meme in the American presidential election may soon get pre-empted. It has been an article of faith that the efforts in Iraq have “distracted” the US from the war in Afghanistan. However, this shows that the US and NATO can conduct operations successfully in multiple theaters.

In terms of the presidential election, it also puts to rest the offensive notion that America had no strategy other than “air-raiding villages” and killing civilians. Obama floated that notion last fall, which outraged CENTCOM and NATO. The aggressive strategy and tactics in both theaters instead became the basis of successful counterinsurgency operations, which indicates that Obama should have held a few meetings of his subcommittee before issuing his faulty analysis.

We now have encouraging news from both major theaters in the war on terror. That will make everyone happy except those invested in defeat.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

What Part Of "Erase" Don't You Understand?

clipped from www.newsmax.com

TEHRAN — Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called on the world's
Muslims on Sunday to work to "erase" Israel, in the latest verbal attack by
Tehran against the Jewish state.

"As the Imam Khomeini said, if each Muslim throws a bucket of water on
Israel, Israel will be erased," Mottaki told a conference in Tehran, recalling a
saying by Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sparked international outrage for his
repeated attacks against Israel, which he has predicted is doomed to disappear
and described as a "stinking corpse" and a "dead rat".

His most notorious attack was in 2005 when he repeated another saying from
Khomeini calling for Israel to be "wiped from the map".

Mottaki added: "More than ever, the Zionist regime is disintegrating from
within. Today, the Islamic resistance in this region has shattered the regime's
legend of invincibility."

The Joy Of Fools

clipped from online.wsj.com

Want more George W. Bush foreign policy? Elect John McCain – or
Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Regardless of who wins in November, the current
foreign policy will live on in the next White House.

None of the main candidates has disavowed the war on terror. Each
has called Mr. Bush tactically deficient. But the debate over the war on terror
is over how, where and when. The candidates have all argued that they would do a
better job of fighting it.

Certain aspects of anti-Americanism are essentially immune to what any president
does. The U.S. can bomb Christians to protect Muslims, as it did in Bosnia in
1994-1995 and Serbia in 1999, and still somehow augment the fury of radical
Islamists.
rising expectations in and outside America for rapid foreign-policy
transformation are likely to lead to disappointment. As a Romanian proverb
reminds us: "A change of leaders is the joy of fools."
Since O is actually the Manchurian Candidate, I question the belief that he will actually keep American interests in mind.

His budding walkback on Iraq -- if it survives the rigors of the dem nomination and the general election -- is no more to be counted on than anything else he says. Zip, zilch, nada.

His bus is already immobilized atop a pile of human flesh and will achieve low earth orbit based on numerous further victims by the election as far as I can tell.

"America Is The Greatest Sin Against God"

clipped from blogs.abcnews.com

"Racism is still America's greatest addiction," Pfleger says. "I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God."


Obama, of course, resigned from Trinity on Friday, saying he didn't want to
be held accountable for every word spoken from the pulpit at the church, and he
didn't want the church to continue to have the media disrupting its worship. The
last straw may have been Pfleger's href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/05/priest-and-obam.html">mocking
of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, from the pulpit in this same sermon.

But Obama's relationship with Pfleger -- who is the priest at a different,
Catholic, church -- spans decades.

In September, the Obama campaign brought Pfleger to Iowa to host one of
several interfaith forums for the campaign. Pfleger has given money to Obama's
campaigns and Obama as a state legislator directed at least $225,000 towards
social programs at St. Sabina's, according to the Chicago Tribune. Pfleger
appears to have been scrubbed from the Obama campaign's page

Move along now...

Retreating On Retreat

clipped from www.youtube.com
Oh Lord. Will Comrade Messiah actually stuff down the memory hole the pivotal reason he's winning the dem nomination?

And is everyone credulous enough to let him get away with it for the general? Lord help us if we are...

The Eurabian No Go Zone Proceeds Apace


From href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2058935/Police-advise-Christian-preachers-to-leave-Muslin-area-of-Birmingham.html">the
Telegraph


A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop
handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate
crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident
will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns
and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in
The Sunday Telegraph this year.

Buyer Beware

There are some facts that are so politically
incorrect, that people will be punished merely for mentioning them.

We
saw a particularly crisp example of this last week, when Advertising Standards
Canada ruled that a billboard advertisement by LifeCanada was
“deceptive.”

The billboard marked the 20th anniversary of the Supreme
Court of Canada’s Morgentaler decision, which removed all legal restrictions on
abortion in Canada. The ad stated, in full: “9 months. The length of time an
abortion is allowed in Canada. Abortion. Have we gone too far?
www.AbortioninCanada.ca.”
A fact becomes a lie when it is politically incorrect. A lie becomes a fact when
it is politically correct. When these become the prevailing advertising
standards, let the buyer beware.

NYeT: Keeping Our Options Open

One of the several reasons why the mainstream media have consistently
underestimated the significance of the Trinity/Wright/Pfleger story is that, to
a considerable degree, conventional reporters and editors tend to agree with
Rev. Wright's critique of America.
A good illustration of this was the href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/weekinreview/04powell.html?pagewanted=1">New
York Times's
article on black liberation theology in which the paper
endorsed as true Wright's claim that the United States has used biological
warfare against other nations.
What on earth could the Times reporter have had in mind?

In any event, this morning's Times href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html">corrects the
error
:

An article on May 4 about black liberation theology and the debate
surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr, Senator Barack Obama’s former
minister, erroneously confirmed a statement by Mr. Wright that the United States
has used biological weapons against other countries. There is no evidence that
the United States ever did so.

Note, though, that the paper is keeping its options open.