No Difference?

clipped from article.nationalreview.com But whether or not “blockade” is the right word for Israel’s actions, it’s not the same thing as an occupation. America had a blockade of sorts against Iraq for a decade. Then we occupied it. If there’s no difference between the blockade and the occupation, what has everyone been arguing about? So why does Israel scrutinize Gaza’s borders and ports? I’ll give you a hint. It has something to do with the fact that Gaza’s leadership keeps launching rockets into Israel as part of this overarching policy objective to destroy Israel.

Meet The Aldermen

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com People who need to believe Barack Obama can solve the world crisis by calling a Muslim summit must of necessity need to forget you can't clear corruption from Chicago by meeting with the aldermen of that great city. To believe in the Audacity of Hope you need to dis-remember the Chicago Way. Especially if you plan on voting for the man representing Hope who came from there.

More Time

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com And will the question, “Who do you trust as Commander-in-Chief?” -- a fair question for the electorate of the world’s pre-eminent superpower -- advance to the front burner? For that is a question that knocks Mr Obama out of consideration, and he can only hope to win as long as people can be persuaded not to think about it. If they persist in thinking, anyway, his own rhetoric could easily sink him, for on foreign policy he is incoherent. His official position now, towards America’s allies in the Middle East, is to divide them into two groups, abandoning some, such as Iraq, bombing others, such as Pakistan, with perhaps a mixture of abandonment and bombing in Afghanistan. Getting from there to somewhere credible will take more time than a presidential campaign provides.

Only Just Begun

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Jay Stewart of the Better Government Assn. in Chicago told the LA Times: "Everybody in this town knew that Tony Rezko was headed for trouble.  When he got indicted, there wasn't a single insider who was surprised.  It was viewed as a long time coming. . . . Why would you be having anything to do with Tony Rezko, particularly if you're planning to run for president?" At a March 3 news conference in San Antonio, Texas, Chicago-based reporters peppered Obama with some of the questions the national news corps has avoided for over a year Obama has refused to sit down at length with the Chicago reporters who have worked this story for years.  But as Milbank pointed out, "The questioning...has only just begun."  With old-time Chicago corruption now going international-and Presidential--finding those answers is more urgent than ever.

Less Abstract Now

clipped from www.nytimes.com “I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract. Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety. “Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

Cosmoclimatology Update

clipped from www.cosmosmagazine.com "Viewed from Earth, the rotating tail appears to be laid out on the sky in an almost perfect spiral. It could only appear like that if we are looking nearly exactly down on the axis of the binary system," said Tuthill. This means we are peering down the barrel of the gun, as when binary supernovae go off, all their energy is focussed into a narrow beam of wildly destructive gamma ray radiation that emanates (both up and down) from the poles of the system. "If such a gamma-ray burst happens, we really do not want Earth to be in the way," he said. "I used to appreciate this spiral just for its beautiful form, but now I can't help a twinge of feeling that it is uncannily like looking down a rifle barrel." Sterilising effect Though the risk may be remote, there is evidence that gamma ray bursts have swept over the planet at various points in Earth's history with a devastating effect on life.

And you need to read this to get the big picture.

Obama's Wretched Americans

clipped from www.americanthinker.com In a televised twelve-second campaign spot aired in Texas, Senator Obama gives a stirring speech to a standing ovation. It is the predictable litany of American faults he will miraculously correct: literacy, expensive prescription drugs and insufficient civil liberties. However, he seems particularly concerned for Arab-Americans. "If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties." This was an astonishing statement, an infuriating statement and a statement that speaks volumes to Obama's ideology. Arab-American families being rounded up would not only threaten all our civil liberties, it would raise such a universal outcry, it could not long endure. Senator Obama holds a wretched America in his heart, a country he has no pride in nor wishes to preserve. If his vision starts from failure, where will it end? There is no truth in his words, just as there is no substance. One may speak well, but still speak lies.

Horse Talk

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com For years now, the American left has been arguing that the war in Iraq is a distraction from the "real" war against al Qaeda and is counter-productive because it's "creating" new terrorists. Apparently, it never occurred to these deep-thinkers that inflicting a defeat on al-Qaeda in Iraq -- a defeat made possible because a previously sympathetic population turned with our help against al Qaeda -- might constitute a devastating blow to al Qaeda's standing in the Arab world. The idea that losing a war hurts one's standing may be a novel one for our sophisticated liberals. But Osama bin Laden has long grasped it, famously stating years ago that "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." Our amazing progress in Iraq is demonstrating that, for now, al Qaeda rather than the U.S. is the weak horse in the very country that al Qaeda has identified as the key battleground in its struggle against us.

Jesus Is Coming. Look Busy.

clipped from www.michaeltotten.com They like to fashion themselves as more bad ass than the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force. They do have a point. A Marine is much more likely to see combat than a service member in any of the other branches. The Marine Corps takes far more casualties per head than the others. But the Secretary of the Navy outranked the bejeezus out of every man at that station. They found Lieutenant Colonel Dowling a little intimidating, but the news of a visit from Donald C. Winter made me think of that famous bumper sticker: Jesus is Coming. Look Busy. Two hours later, he arrived. Lieutenant Colonel Dowling shook his hand, called him sir, and introduced him to the Marines. They stood and faced him like star struck teenagers and seemed terrified that he might find them inadequate. He did not. Instead he read a letter written by an Iraqi woman who wanted to thank the U.S. armed forces for freeing and protecting her country.

On Electing First Graders To Run The Country

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com Seems innocuous, but... But Mr. Rockefeller voted for the war. It was Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, now retired, who chaired the committee in 2002, urged colleagues to read the briefing paper and voted against the war. Obama spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki insisted that "there was nothing intentionally misleading" about Mr. Obama's statement. The core issue, she said, was whether Mrs. Clinton made a correct and informed decision. "I don't think the people in the audience care who Jay Rockefeller is," she said. The Dallas Morning News team used the word "Clintonian", but not to describe Hillary.  That said, Graham was famously hawkish, and objected to the war resolution as not going far enough against America's real enemies.

If Obama is a Graham sympathizer then now we can understand his threat to attack Pakistan. Yikes.

Searching For Reality

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Remember, Ignatieff wasn't talking about deploying "international peacekeepers," the context Power now suggests for her words. He specifically proposed United States troops, followed by anyone else who was "willing." Their job wouldn't be to keep the peace, but to "enforce the solution." Far better today for Power to have some kind of blackout, than to tell the truth about the "dramatic exercise" she and Ignatieff envisioned. Ignatieff seems to be more candid. Last year, he wrote: "As a former denizen of Harvard I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions." Unfortunately, Power remains a denizen of Harvard. So, while she may be able to disavow the "weird" reflexive anti-Israel sentiment that was all the rage in Cambridge in 2002, there's little reason to believe she's immune to the more current manifestations of the same impulse. In fact, her recent utterances make it pretty clear she is not.

The Rubes This Time

clipped from tigerhawk.blogspot.com He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing. As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!" Assume, for a moment, that Ali Abunimah had genuine insight into Barack Obama's opinions four years ago. Is his recently expressed strong support for Israel fabricated? Is it permanent, or will he in fact "be more up front" after he is elected? Or, has Barack Obama actually changed his mind? Who are the rubes to be fooled this time?

What Failure?

clipped from dailymail.com But I doubt that JFK would say about negotiating with Cuba, as Obama said in the Texas debate That clarified an earlier statement when Obama said he would meet with the leaders of North Korea, Iran and Cuba "without preconditions." Kennedy never availed himself of the opportunity of negotiating with Fidel Castro, with or without preconditions. I also doubt that Kennedy would say, as Obama said of our policy toward Cuba in the same debate: "I support the eventual normalization, and it's absolutely true that I think our policy has been a failure." The reason I say that  Kennedy would never call our policy a failure is because it was a success. The United States has flourished. Las Vegas has happily substituted for the casinos of Havana, and sugar seems to be in ample supply. Maybe Obama means that our policy has been a failure for Cuba.

Unrelated?

clipped from volokh.com [UPDATE: I just caught the transcript of Obama's meeting with Jewish community leaders in Cleveland last week. Unfortunately, Obama lies pretty blatantly, to wit (referring to the award his church's magazine gave to Farrakhan): "An award was given to Farrakhan for his work on behalf of ex-offenders completely unrelated to his controversial statements." As I've noted before, the honor for Farrakhan was for his dedication to "truth," with no mention of ex-offenders. Now, with his aides having had a month and a half to discover the easily verifiable truth, I have to conclude he is simply being disingenuous. Obama thus avoided addressing the real concern, which is that his church's magazine and his spiritual mentor state that they honoring and praising Farrakhan precisely because of his stated political and racial views, which they claim are "honest" and reflect "truth." Note that as Andrew Sullivan has pointed out, this is not something that concerns only Jews.]

Without Such Extras

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com He is therefore the cause of that so wonderfully characteristic Welsh phrase, “Do the little things.” For as I was taught, from a child, by the same old man mentioned above, “God is in the details.” Hope is in the details. And how often in the midst of large, the hope emerges from a small place, and the world turns on an Archimedean hinge. For those reading with the eyes of hope, history is full of such moments, and our lives are full, and nature herself emerged from a singularity. The cynical will never see this, for they have darkened that part of their vision, and put their hope in the wrong things: in wealth, and luxury, in sexual conquest, in control and power, in honours and fame, in sweet revenge and the myriad self-satisfactions. We have enough, without such extras. And against them we pose the mysterious instruction of St David and all other saints: “Be joyful.” For faith, hope, and charity are compassed in that joy.

Gnostic Mystery Cults

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com One of the historical myths of today is that such pseudo-sciences as astrology and alchemy preceded the emergence of true science, which overcame them by its superior predictive powers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the actual ancient world of the Mediterranean and Near East, it was the other way around. Astrology, alchemy, and various kinds of sorcery emerged from the decadence of Greek empiricism. The mystery cults that sustained them, began to flourish just as that Greek world was crumbling under the might of an expanding Roman power, in the centuries before Christ. The ancient degeneration of science was predicated not on the rise of an “irrational” religious force, that suppressed it, but on progressive loss of faith in, and growing cynicism towards, the ancient religious and cosmological order. And that is what I fear is happening today: the degeneration of science into gnostic mystery cults, as the unifying faith upon which science was built, is hollowed out.

RTWT. Pronto.

Well? What Do You Expect From A Chicago Daley Machine Politician?

clipped from campaignspot.nationalreview.com Obama, to an Ohio NBC affiliate, asked about the report on Canadian television that his adviser had assured the Canadian government that his comments were just campaign rhetoric: Obama: I don't have to clarify it, the Canadian Embassy already clarified it by saying that the story is not true. Our office has said the story is not true. If Goolsbee called up the Canadians without letting Obama or anyone else on the campaign know he was doing this, it doesn't speak well of him — or for Obama to surround himself with advisers who feel comfortable assuring other countries that the candidate doesn't mean what he says. (Clearly, Goolsbee got the idea that Obama didn't mean what he was saying from somewhere; doesn't it seem likely he came to this conclusion after discussions with Obama about trade policy?) If Obama did know that he was speaking to the Canadians, he just let out a blatant lie on par with, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

No doubt certain folks will start showing up cold in dumpsters next. All in the name of "change" of course...

And Daley's son is still mayor in case you're that out of touch with reality. No doubt that was spun as "change" also...

Usually They Don't Get It

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com 7. Dealing with information is hard. The bad people don’t play by the rules and they lie… a lot. One screw-up on our part and all the not so bad people get all upset because the bad people make a big deal about it. We need to spend a lot of time telling the not so bad people why we are different than the really bad people. Usually they don’t get it. Meanwhile the media people are busy trying to uncover the giant government conspiracy that we are supposed to be running. Also every hacker and pedophile out there is trying to screw up our computers and radios. This makes it really hard. Meanwhile the Air Force and Navy are wondering what’s wrong, since it’s not so hard for them. Once in a while, somebody on our side figures out what we should be doing. This is called “knowledge Management.”

Coming Next

clipped from instapundit.com OBAMA'S NAFTA DOUBLE-TALK confirmed. "After reporting on Barack Obama’s dance with the Canadians on NAFTA yesterday, Canadian broadcaster CTV got accused of perpetrating a smear against the Democratic front-runner. They insisted that Obama meant every word he said about overturning the free-trade treaty, and that no one had contacted the Canadian diplomatic corps to reassure them that it was mere demagoguery. CTV responded today by naming names — and suddenly the Obama campaign has grown quiet." More here from ABC News. At least we're learning which bunch of rubes is being fooled. Coming next -- an Obama adviser tells the Iraqi government not to pay attention to his troop-withdrawal talk?

The Steady Close Up

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com Last July in Slate Christopher Hitchens busted his colleagues. “I have actually seen some of these demonstrations,” he wrote, “most recently in Islamabad, and all I would do if I were a news editor is ask my camera team to take several steps back from the shot. We could then see a few dozen gesticulating men (very few women for some reason), their mustaches writhing as they scatter lighter fluid on a book or a flag or a hastily made effigy. Around them, a two-deep encirclement of camera crews. When the lights are turned off, the little gang disperses. And you may have noticed that the camera is always steady and in close-up on the flames, which it wouldn’t be if there was a big, surging mob involved.” Almost no mention is given to the Kurds of Iraq who are just as Islamic as the Arabs in that country, and who purged Islamists root and branch from every inch of their autonomous region. “We will shoot them or break their bones on sight,” one Kurdish government official told me.

The Unmentionable

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Surrend can now shut down an art gallery and and a Prime Minister will plead with a backbencher to prevent them from doing the most trivial things: displaying a poster or releasing a film about a book. Things you could do on a Saturday afternoon in former times without remarking on it yourself. It would be as if the President of the United States appeared at your front door one morning with the entire National Security Council in tow begging you not to mow your lawn. The Catch-22 is that explaining the situation is also a provocation in itself. The race to assume the onus for being offensive has already begun. Acts by Dutch citizens in the Netherlands are now subject to the veto of ... even that must remain unmentionable.

Misogyny Are Us

clipped from instapundit.com DISCRIMINATION IS TERRIBLE, unless there's money in it: "Cal Poly wants to open a male-only engineering program at a university in Saudi Arabia." Would they have opened a whites-only engineering school in the old South Africa?

That Arch Republican Gore

clipped from instapundit.com SMOOT-OBAMA-HAWLEY-CLINTON: "What a sad showing from candidates who are going around promising to repair the Bush administration's supposed alienation of our friends around the world. Is this how they plan to do it? By dealing with our neighbors and trading partners in Canada and Mexico with threats and ultimatums? . . . All because the environmental standards that arch Republican Vice President Gore negotiated into Nafta aren't strong enough for the Green extremists running for the Democratic nomination this time around — and because the candidates want to use the trade agreement, rather than the International Labor Organization, to dictate labor standards in neighboring countries. Something like 1,000 economists got together to warn Congress against a protectionist surge when Messrs. Smoot and Hawley were concocting the legislations that helped tip America, nay the world, into the Great Depression. One would have thought the Democrats would have learned."

The Enlightened And The Sharia

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com JG: Rousseau says the government is there, that our rights come from the government, that come from the collective. Locke says our rights come from God, and that we only create a government to protect our interests. The Rousseauian says you can make a religion out of society and politics, and the Lockean says no, religion is a separate sphere from politics. And that is the defining distinction between the two, and I think that distinction also runs through the human heart, that we all have a Rousseauian temptation in us. And it’s the job of conservatives to remind people that the Lockean in us needs to win. This exchange captures the link between the 20th century struggle against Communism and Fascism and the 21st century's epic battle against radical Islamism. Both liberal fascism and Islamic fundamentalism put God on earth In the first case the Deity takes the form of an enlightened vanguard; in the second case Allah rules through the Caliphate via Sharia law.

Just True

clipped from wmbriggs.com and Beck’s retort is There is indeed a lot of uncertainty in what the future will be, but this is not all because of an imperfect understanding of how the climate works. A large part of it is simply not knowing how the human race will react to this danger and/or how the world economy will develope. Since these factors control what emissions of CO2 will accumulate in the atmosphere, which in turn influences the temperature, there is really no way for a climate model to predict what the future will be. This is as lovely a non sequitur as you’re ever likely to find. What the believer in this statement is asking us to do, if it is not already apparent, is this: he wants you to believe that his prognostications are true because AGW is true, but he also wants you to believe that he should not be held accountable for his predictions should they fail because AGW is true. Thus, AGW is just true.

Hitler: The Great Anti-Nazi...

clipped from liberalfascism.nationalreview.com Keith Olbermann is, of course, not really worth taking seriously. But you've got to love the staggering ignorance behind his continued insistence that fascists weren't socialists because they beat other socialists to death. Golly. How many socialists did Stalin kill? Pretty much all of the show trial victims weren't mere socialists but hardcore Communists. I guess Stalin was anti-Communist.  Hitler's Night of the Long Knives involved the slaughter of Nazis, so I guess by Olbermann's logic Hitler was anti-Nazi.  Most lefties can't stand Joe Lieberman, I guess they're anti-Democrat.

Rescuing Kool-Aid From The Memory Hole

clipped from liberalfascism.nationalreview.com Reading your book has revived my suspicion of how the media treats the memory of Jim Jones and the People's Temple. The Peoples' Temple was a leftist project, but leftists dismiss it as a “cult.” Jones (and the Unibomber) is an aberration. Now I find that Jones: Called his theology – apostolic socialism. He ridiculed what he called “white Christianity.” Yet Left rants about the fascist threat from conservative Christians; Andrew Sullivan calls them “Christianists.” If a white Christian minister had duped, intimidated over 900 members of his congregation to literally “drink the Kool-Aid”, our media would still be talking about him. But Jim Jones was a non-white leader of a inter-racial, pseudo-Christian, leftist “temple”, who destroyed his followers because they failed to create heaven on earth. Sounds familiar.

The Meaning Of "Is" Today

clipped from pajamasmedia.com There is no evidence that in any of his dealings with Rezko that Obama broke any law. The question is one of ethics. And judgment, of course. And truthfulness. Obama’s relationship with Rezko is much more extensive than he has ever admitted. Their 17-year relationship went beyond “one fundraiser” as Obama claims, and a few social dates with the gals. Rezko was a patron, a valued supporter, and a business partner. And almost certainly a close friend as well. The significance of this relationship is that it proves that Barack Obama is not who he claims to be – a new kind of politician who will lead us all to the Promised Land. Obama can lie like any normal politician. He can do favors for his supporters who give him money. He can do business with scam artists like Rezko whose illegal activities authorities are still trying to unravel.

Welcome To Bezerkly

clipped from liberalfascism.nationalreview.com This same tendency manifests itself in what is generally thought of as one of Berkeley's bedrock, principled beliefs: the supremacy of free speech. What this dedication often boils down to is unswerving support for left-wing speech and indifference, at best, to any alternatives in the marketplace of ideas. When former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to town, his scheduled address had to be abruptly canceled when protesters—decrying, you guessed it, "fascism"—posed a "safety" risk. Then, an attempt to display the shell of an Israeli bus blown to smithereens by a jihadist suicide bomber encountered, first, stiff resistance from city permit officials and, then, a ferocious and bloodthirsty counter-protest, including such well-considered statements as "Get back to Germany!", thoughtful chants like "2, 4, 6, 8, we are martyrs, we can't wait," and informative posters accusing Jews of stealing organs from Arab children.

It would appear that psychological projection is a concept not taught about there. Otherwise, it might be noticed...

The Fasci(fist)nation

clipped from www.orwell.ru I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. But though not much interested in the ‘theory’ of pacifism, I am interested in the psychological processes by which pacifists who have started out with an alleged horror of violence end up with a marked tendency to be fascinated by the success and power of Nazism.

Shhhhh! Don't Let Anyone Know The Facts!

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com If you are the target of a crime, only one other person besides the criminal is sure to be on the scene: you. There is no good substitute for self-responsibility. How, then, does it make sense to create mandatory gun-free zones, which in reality are free-crime zones? The usual suspects keep calling for more gun control laws. But this idea that gun control is crime control is just a myth. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed dozens of studies and could not find a single gun regulation that clearly led to reduced violent crime or murder. When Washington, D.C., passed its tough handgun ban years ago, gun violence rose. The press ignores the fact that often guns save lives. It's what happened in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law. Hearing shots, two students went to their cars, got their guns and restrained the shooter until police arrested him.

How Many People Do You Think You Can Kill?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com It happens every day on the streets of Tehran: a police squad grabbed a young woman for dressing immodestly. But this time, the young woman fought back, and a crowd defended her and attacked the police. Thanks to cell phone video, the Internet, and brave Iranian citizen reporters, Ardeshir Arian is able to tell the story. The crowd continuously boos and heckles the police: “A revolution is happening” When a police vehicle approaches, there is a call: “Look this guy is entangled too” “He is going the wrong way”, “What the hell are you going to do?” “How many people do you think you can kill?” The story comes on the heels of reports of student uprisings. As with this story, the reports are nowhere to be seen in the official Iranian press or the Western media - but by those who are determined that stories of resistance are somehow told.

And you wonder why I consider our media to be corrupt and useless? They're too busy with Britney-world infantile sliming of McCain to give us actual news...

Fascist "Logic"

clipped from liberalfascism.nationalreview.com Subject: Cookie Monster Guy is Right!  You are mean, and fascists are mean. So you are a fascist. Liberals are good, and Wilson was bad. So Wilson is a conservative. I like pizza, and pizza is fattening. So you are fat. Deal with it.

The Vast Lie

clipped from liberalfascism.nationalreview.com Both Communism and Nazism/Fascism took the utopian ends as justifying any means, above all a towering supremacy of the collectivist state over the individual. One was totalitarian international socialism. The other was totalitarian national socialism. Both murdered millions of people. Both were essentially and intrinsically destructive and violent. For these reasons and more, neither can seriously be claimed to be part of an Enlightenment tradition, unless that tradition is defined as Un-Enlightened.. Zizek and his sly arguments are at least correct on one point. There is a form of 'European Identity based squarely on a profound Stalin-inspired 'law of the excluded middle' attempt to cast any objection to Communism as 'essentially' support for Fascism. This Vast Lie has been remarkably succesful down the decades, and still gives all sorts of cover to extremist collectivist viewpoints of different shapes and sizes.

Bingo

clipped from liberalfascism.nationalreview.com But I know they are wrong because I know many serious and important liberals who do not know that Progressivism was steeped in eugenics, that Progressives were imperialist jingoists, that the editors of The New Republic, the muckrakers, and vast swaths of American liberalism were pro-Mussolini, Lastly, Tomasky should ponder something. If, as he agreed when he wasn't playing hatchet man, that liberals are ignorant of their own intellectual history, does it make much sense to talk about real-world liberalism as anything more than a collection of passions and impulses? If you don't know where your ideas comes from, isn't possible that they aren't really ideas at all? Perhaps they are merely vague opinions, reflexes and prejudices? And if that's the case, if liberalism is merely an agglomeration of passions and knee-jerk popular frontism, dictated by a majority of the crowd, isn't it possible that there's something a bit fascistic to liberalism after all?

Welcome To The Balkans

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Harvard junior Nick Wells said he believes the women-only hours are inconvenient for the residents that live near the facility and discriminate against men. "It is unfair to impose a stringent policy that inhibits [students] from using their own facility in order to further a useless policy that doesn't have any real effect," he said. Students have a right to use common gym facilities at all the hours they are open. If the Islamic Society is uncomfortable using the gym facilities in the time-honored manner they can always raise money to build their own private, Muslim-only gym. Multiculturalism has become its parody, Balkanization.

Welcome To Your "Change" To The Daley-Saddam Machine

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com And how exactly did the Rezkos afford to buy the adjacent plot? It cost $625,000, and they needed to make a $125,000 down payment on the land. Yet at the time, Tony Rezko had "no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets, no unencumbered assets [and] is significantly in arrears on many of his obligations" -- according to a sworn court statement a year later. His wife had an income of $37,000 and assets of around $35,000. How could they qualify for a mortgage on the adjacent plot? Where did they get the money for the down payment? More importantly, why did Auchi lend so much money to Rezko, when Rezko had been in such financial straits? And why was Auchi so interested in Rezko in the first place? Let's take another look at Auchi: Auchi's brother was among the many Baathists killed by Saddam, but the execution did not inhibit Auchi's business dealings with Iraq which, he says, didn't stop until the Gulf war of 1991. There seems to be a lot more to Rezko than just slumlording.

Now we know why Obama opposed the war. Follow the money...

And With The Farrakhan Union Label...

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com The Associated Press carries Louis Farrakhan's glowing endorsement of Barack Obama. The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator. "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed." Farrakhan's fulsome praise is especially interesting because Barack Obama pointedly "distanced" himself both from Farrakhan and his pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr in the following statement "I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan.