What Global Warming Will Lead To…

Will it lead to this? —————->

<——— Or maybe more of these?

Of course not. What it will lead to is more taxes!

CONSUMERS could be hit by steep price rises for a range of goods from food to hotel breaks under plans to tackle climate change being considered by David Miliband.

Just what people need. More of their money taken away to battle something taxes won’t do a thing to help.

The Kerry Apologists begin because Kerry ain’t gonna!

Taylor Marsh is over at the PuffingTons Host telling us what Kerry meant to say.

She says it isn’t pretty, but it’s really a distraction. What’s really news? Macaca! George Allen is a racist! Kerry saying our military is a bunch of uneducated thugs? Why, that’s just something to be swept under the rug!

At least she posted Kerry’s tirade. And she was kind enough to post Kerry’s “angry” response. Notice I didn’t say “apology”. I’ll post it here for you all to read:

Statement of John Kerry Responding to Republican Distortions, Pathetic Tony Snow Diversions and Distractions

Washington - Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy. [Sen. Kerry, you did criticize them.] This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. [It's not my fault. They're the ones who are blowing it out of proportion!] It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. [So let's concentrate on real issues, like who George Allen's been slurring lately!] And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”

Notice that he never says US Troops are intelligent, well-trained, college-educated men and women. He just calls them “brave” and “heroes”. Of course, you don’t have to be smart to be brave and a hero. Or so Sen. Kerry would want you to believe.

Fair & Imbalanced on Oprah

I’m not a big fan of Bill O’Reilly. I think he’s a pompous blowhard. I think he’s a good journalist, and his cultural concerns are valid. I think the way he expresses himself could be improved, but let’s face it– he’s Irish. I’m Irish. We’re both stubborn.

But I want to compare O’Reilly’s appearance on Oprah to Frank Rich’s appearance on Oprah. In particular, I want to call attention to the questions from the audience.

(Requisite props to the YouTubers who posted the O’Reilly stuff, and to Ms. Underestimated who was gracious enough to post the entire Frank Rich interview on her server.)

First, watch both episodes. Or, do what I did: download the eps and then fast forward through the episodes. Watch for questions from the audience.

Here’s Frank Rich’s interview in parts: one two three four five six seven. (It’s in pieces, but I think it’s the entire show. Hopefully I’ve linked to it in order.)

Grr. The YouTube O’Reilly spots have been taken down. But fortunately I found a feed over at Foxnews-follies.com under “BizzarO’reilly on Oprah“. I hope this link works. If it doesn’t, you need to download the quicktime plugin. It worked for me, although I had to squint the entire time.

Notice that Frank Rich never has anyone screaming at him, apart from the woman who wants answers from the Bush Administration. And most of Oprah’s audience is women. Seems like a normal Oprah audience, right?

Now, look at O’Reilly’s audience. I’ve never seen so many men in an Oprah audience. Not to mention Mr. Hair (you’ll know who I’m talking about) taking on O’Reilly. He seems very well spoken and groomed.

I was actually surprised that both African American commenters (both male) from the audience were both pro-war. Certainly O’Reilly brought out the fire in so many people’s bellies.

But I began to wonder. How did Oprah’s audience get so stacked against O’Reilly? Why are so many men in Oprah’s audience? I’m thinking the producers got wind of Bill O’s appearance and loaded the deck against O’Reilly, who really performed well. He’s perfectly suited to the aggressive, no-holds-barred interview, and setting up this forum actually played to his strengths. Unfortunately, it seemed to degenerate to a shouting match.

I’ll also point out that Rich had a good deal of time to bloviate, whereas O’Reilly spent much of his time responding to audience questions, rants and accusations.

Still, props to Oprah who kept her cool during the entire show. And it seemed she actually read both books. Hats off to her. (I don’t think Oprah had the audience loaded for her show (that was her staff’s doing), but she certainly seemed to enjoy the heated discussions.)

Now if we can only get her to bring on Nobel Laureates.

October Surprise! John Kerry Drops the Bomb!

Democrats are great at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Here’s a prime example:

Why doesn’t he just say, “You dumbass ingrates are going to get shipped to Iraq. The rest of us will run the country, so don’t you worry that dumb little head of yours?”

It’s like he’s working for the RNC. Or maybe the Rovian Orbital Mind Control Lasers got to him.

H/t MM & HotAir.

Post Script: Maybe when they come back from Iraq, THEN they can go to college on the GI Bill. But they have to EARN it. Maybe with a Purple Heart. From grenadle shrapnel in your butt that you got from firing a grenade launcher at close range.

Sore Losers already making excuses

We haven’t even had the election yet. And guess what? The Dems are already crying “voter irregularity”. Well, unless that irregularity is reported by Republicans, at which point, it’s bogus.

Just ask James Boyce. I read his post today because he didn’t swear in the title. He actually is trying to “rally the troops”, so to speak. But he couldn’t resist adding this gem to his post, showing just how close the lighter is to his Aquanet-soaked locks:

Note: On Thursday November 2, HBO will show its new documentary “Hacking Democracy.” I haven’t seen it yet, but its basic premise is that 80% of votes in the United States are counted electronically. And that these systems can be easily hacked.

But Boyce isn’t the only one.

Steve Anderson blows the Diebold on a Republican Secretary of State candidate.

Trey Ellis thinks Hugo Chavez’s foray into electronic voting machines will be a good counter against Republicans. Always nice to have dictatorial megalomaniacs on your side.

Brad from the Brad Blog is all over it. Good thing he’s against Big Voting Machines like he is against Big Oil and Big Tobacco.

And I predicted it way back in September. If they lose, blame the machines.

Israel Irradiates Lebanon!

Robert Fisk is all over this like stink on a monkey.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure he knows what Israel used in Lebanon.

Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?

Sneaky Jooooz!

But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel’s weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed “elevated radiation signatures”

Sneaky, sneaky Jooooz! So, Robert, let ‘em have it. Talk about what the weapons used in Khiam and At-Tiri were!

Dr Busby’s initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. “The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash … The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium.”

What?! What the hell is Busby talking about? Small, nuclear fission device (nuclear bomb)? Certainly that would have alerted people when the device exploded, right? Even a 500T North Korean special registered a 4 on the seismographs, surely a similar explosion would have had people in Turkey on guard? Now, if it were just working off of the thermobaric properties of ignited DU (burning about 2000 C, enough to consume local oxygen at a frightening rate), then sure, I’ll buy it. But a little nuke? Come on.

As for the second, a uranium penetrator with an enriched uranium shell? What!? Let’s take a bomb and instead of using the material that will not irradiate our troops, let’s use the stuff that will and is 10,000 times more expensive than depleted uranium. What a good idea!

So, Fisk does what any good journalist does– he changes the subject of his article!

I saw two dead babies who, when taken from a mortuary drawer in West Beirut during the Israeli siege of the city, suddenly burst back into flames. Israel officially denied using phosphorous again in Lebanon during the summer - except for “marking” targets - even after civilians were photographed in Lebanese hospitals with burn wounds consistent with phosphorous munitions.

He brings this up because Israel wasn’t forthcoming about using weapons they’re allowed to use– phosphorus munitions. Sneaky Jooooz. And as for baby spontaneous combustion– I find that claim odd, to say the least.

Asked by The Independent if the Israeli army had been using uranium-based munitions in Lebanon this summer, Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: “Israel does not use any weaponry which is not authorised by international law or international conventions.”

But even if it’s perfectly OK for them to use it, it’s still wrong for them to use it. Because they are sneaky Joooooz. And Americans too.

American and British forces used hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the waste products of the nuclear industry - and five years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the south of Iraq.

Are the cancers DU related? Or perhaps related to poor conditions? Did Saddam poison them? Was it fuel leaking to their water?

No need for Fisk to investigate. Why bother? The Jooooz are sneaky that way!

Yet why would Israel use [depleted uranium] when its targets - in the case of Khiam, for example - were only two miles from the Israeli border? The dust ignited by DU munitions can be blown across international borders, just as the chlorine gas used in attacks by both sides in the First World War often blew back on its perpetrators.

This particular statement blew my mind. DU particles = chlorine gas? So, the sneaky Joooooz are using something like chlorine gas on the Lebanese? It’s a WMD!

While he has a point about aerosol particles of DU being produced when the shells hit a hardened target, the uranium is dispersed harmlessly over a wide area relatively quickly. An increase in DU concentration in the local area is so minor that the health effects are minimal, especially given that DU’s radioactivity falls well within safe exposure limits. What’s more worrisome is heavy-metal poisoning by uranium. But that fear is mitigated by dispersal and dilution.

But you can’t pass up an opportunity to say the Jooooz were using WMDs, can you?

The soil sample from Khiam - site of a notorious torture prison when Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000, and a frontline Hizbollah stronghold in the summer war - was a piece of impacted red earth from an explosion; the isotope ratio was 108, indicative of the presence of enriched uranium. “The health effects on local civilian populations following the use of large uranium penetrators and the large amounts of respirable uranium oxide particles in the atmosphere,” the Busby report says, “are likely to be significant … we recommend that the area is examined for further traces of these weapons with a view to clean up.”

Again, why would Israel use an enriched uranium weapon on such a small area? Could it be a nuclear bunker buster? I’ll have more on this at the end of the article.

This summer’s Lebanon war began after Hizbollah guerrillas crossed the Lebanese frontier into Israel, captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others, prompting Israel to unleash a massive bombardment of Lebanon’s villages, cities, bridges and civilian infrastructure. Human rights groups have said that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked civilians, but that Hizbollah was also guilty of such crimes because it fired missiles into Israel which were also filled with ball-bearings, turning their rockets into primitive one-time-only cluster bombs.

Fisk likes the term “cluster bomb”. I’m not sure he knows what it is. Globalsecurity.org is a great place to learn about such items. It’s much better than, say, a news desk at the Independent. As for rockets filled with ball-bearings, those aren’t cluster bombs. Technically, they’re rockets with an AP warhead (anti-personnel). A cluster bomb that would disperse mines would be a cluster-bomb, and those draw scrutiny from the international community because they kill far more civilians than military personnel. Fuse-based munitions detonate when they hit the ground or after a set amount of time after being released from a weapon. Sometimes they malfunction and leave “live” ammunition for civilians to pick up. That is also “bad”, and the use of those weapons have been limited by US aircraft.

But Hezbollah rockets? Not cluster bombs. Just rockets fired indiscriminately into civilian areas. At least the Israelis were targeting Hezbollah fighters inside of neighborhoods, as the Hezbollah “freedom fighters” used the local civilians as shields against Israeli “aggression“.

Back to Fisk:

Many Lebanese, however, long ago concluded that the latest Lebanon war was a weapons testing ground for the Americans and Iranians, who respectively supply Israel and Hizbollah with munitions.

Again– what? We are fighting a war in Iraq. You think we could find weapons to test there. Such an opinion just highlights the misinformation people in the Middle East get. I’m sure Fisk isn’t helping matters, either.

Second-class, but Oh! So Chic!

Sara Buys, the fashion editor at “The Independent”, has an enlightening piece about Muslim Women: Behind the Veil. It’s a hard-hitting expose’ about Muslim women, the oppression they face, the inequality in their society and how their place in society is relegated to less than that of men by wearing the hijab.

Well, a man can wish, can’t he?

There is a tendency, in the Western world, to assume that if a Muslim woman is observant of her faith - and covering her body, with varying degrees of extremism, is symbolic of that observance - that she is automatically excluded from being fashionable; she is, in some way, “outside” of fashion. There is also is a tendency to lump traditional Muslim dress into one dull generic pile of black cloth and to assume that one size fits all.

“Outside of fashion”. That’s not the first thing that pops into my mind. Especially when they are walking behind their men, covered head to toe to be “modest”.

So how do we begin to make sartorial sense of £500 cotton floral tops buried beneath layers of floor-length black robes? Why wear it, let alone pay for it, if no one sees it? “What you have to understand about the female Muslim culture is that everything happens indoors,” says Christina Estrada Juffali, the former American model who is married to royal Saudi sheik Walid Juffali. “The Western world can’t seem to get its head around the idea that affluent Middle Easterners are both modest, pious and mass consumers. Though the women might wear full hijab, when they get together behind closed doors and throw women-only parties, that’s when they get to show off.” As Estrada Juffali points out, women who are very respectful of the veil and come from the more closed communities, never “got their kicks” - as it were - from walking down the street and getting male attention. “It’s not even on their horizon,” she says.

So Muslim women are all about the bling– behind the scenes. Fine. It’s a form of modesty, right? Wear your diamonds at home so as not to flaunt your wealth.

Well, that’s hard to do when the Rolls drops you off at Harrods and you trot out in your hijab.

What’s worse is the stroking of the Muslim practice here as acceptable, as it’s the acceptance of fashion by the hoi-palloi of the Arab world. As for those who are brutalized when they wear no face covering, or those who are raped by men, then executed for dressing so provocatively that they prompted the men to act in such a way? Please.

Having spent a lot of her youth in Saudi Arabia, where her father has an office, Elbagir has witnessed, first hand, the Middle Eastern Muslim’s woman’s passion for fashion; and the irony - that it’s the more conservative female Muslims who really go to town when it comes to style - is not lost on her. “The girls I know from Saudi have an incredible love of fashion,” she says. “It’s precisely because they wear abayas that they can be so outlandish underneath. Because it all goes on beneath the veil and behind closed doors, they don’t feel inhibited. Sequins, miniskirts, pink hot pants - the more garish the better.”

This piece sounds like advice to the modern British female. “When sharia law comes, don’t worry. You can still wear your high-fashion outfits underneath the burqa! Your man will appreciate it, plus you can show his other wives just how to dress indoors!”

“What you need to understand about the hijab,” she continues, “is that it’s a personal thing between you and God - it’s about modesty of the soul and discretion and hiding your form so as not to tempt men but that doesn’t mean the symbols of those meanings can’t be interpreted in a personal way. My friend wears a full hijab and she is the most stylish person I know. When she comes to London, she’ll wear some Victoria Beckham VB jeans; a long-sleeved Dolce and Gabbana shirt that she’ll often buy two sizes too big so its not tight-fitting; and then she’ll tie a funky headscarf over her head. That’s hijab to her. Why does it have to be black and boring? As long as it does the job it’s meant to do, who cares what colour it is?”

I have to ask– doesn’t God see all? If you’re wearing $8,000 of designer clothes & perfume under your hajib, are you really being modest? Are you really a beacon of humility? Not to mention when you get back with your friends and you’re flaunting your designer wear, is that what God wants? I guess jealousy is a foreign concept to traditional Muslims.

Elbagir agrees. She also says that she finds it strange that Jack Straw should be concerned about what he has referred to as “a growing trend in the wearing of the full veil”. “It’s a trend among a tiny minority,” argues Elbagir. “Only about 3,000 Muslim women in Britain wear the full veil. How can that be a significant trend?” According to her, the future and the present is this: Muslim women, certainly in Britain, are increasingly adapting hijab and making it work for them. “Islamic dress is being appropriated so that it works within fashion’s perimeters,” says Elbagir. “Not against or outside it. It’s about individual expression - we are not choosing to demarcate our ‘otherness’, but rather we are choosing to express out individuality.” An Alexander McQueen skull-print niqab it is then.

So, remember– accepting the burqa is a perfectly OK. And the number of people who wear the full outfit are so small (but growing), there’s no concern there! Unless that number grows and grows, so that the MP representation in Parliament grows and grows. But you won’t notice, because of fluff pieces like this which rationalize the hijab as high fashion. What’s next? An article on how women really weren’t using all those rights Western nations were granting them? That only being considered half a man is liberating and women should be appreciative? What other articles will we read to help pave the way of dhimmitude?

Aquanet Moment: Hans Blix

Hans Blix is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. Well, today, we’ve found the chocolate-covered caramel:

Blix said the situation would have been better if the [Iraq] war had not taken place.

“Saddam would still have been sitting in office. Okay, that is negative and it would not have been joyful for the Iraqi people. But what we have gotten is undoubtedly worse,” he was quoted as saying.

So Hans Blix is telling the Iraqis “Hey, the Americans are worse for you than Saddam! Saddam was much better! At least you weren’t killing each other. He was just killing you all indiscriminately!”

Statements like this don’t help any volatile situation. They just exacerbate it. And Hans is adding fuel to the fire, igniting his hair at the same time. Hans, this Aquanet’s for you!

Sam Harris Always Appears at Halloween

Coincidence? Or diabolic conspiracy. Here’s the photo taken by the AP photog Johnathan Alcorn of Sam Harris standing outside of a church, one normal, and the other the negative which has been obtained by “The Autopsy”:

It’s uncanny! And just to prove authenticity, the negative print actually states “This was in no way altered by a Paint program owned by the facilitator of the Autopsy.”

So, Sam Harris is the Devil. It saves him on Halloween costumes. Does he even celebrate Halloween? How do you justify that? “I don’t believe in all of this religious nonsense. But I’ll be dressing up as Ben Stiller for All Hallow’s Eve.”

Well, I’m ripping on Sam Harris because he’s got his own little laudatory spot in the WaPo today as the “Atheist Evangelist“.

Harris’ first quote in the article is a doozy:

“There is this multicultural, apologetic machinery that keeps telling us that we can’t attack people’s religious sensibility,” Harris says in an interview. “That is so wrong and so suicidal.”

Nobody’s been attacking Christians at all, Sam. Or Jews.

And there’s more:

“If the Koran were exactly the same,” he said, toward the end of the night, “and there were just one line added to it, and the line said, ‘If you see a red-haired woman on your lawn at sunset, kill her,’ I can tell you what kind of world we’d live in. We’d live in a world where red-haired women would be killed often. We’d live in a world where people like yourself” — and here Harris gestures to his opponent, Oliver McTernan — “would say, ‘That’s not the true Islam.’ Twenty women in Baghdad would have their heads cut off and someone would come forward and say, ‘This has nothing to do with Islam. Some of them were strawberry blond. Some of them were strangled.”

Harris’ biggest flaw is his broad, sweeping generalizations. Everyone who believes in God is an idiot, he proclaims. It’s a great way to attract those way from the faith.

Another fun bit: Harris’ “revelation” came while doing what– trippin‘ on X.

What he’ll say is this: At age 19, he and a college friend tried MDMA, better known as ecstasy, and the experience altered his view of the role that love could play in the world. (”I realized that it was possible to be a human being who wished others well all the time, reflexively.”)

No degree, but he did have a fun-lovin‘ Ecstasy experience.

“I could have told you what is wrong with religious dogmatism on September 10th,” he says. “But after 9/11, I realized the role that religious moderation played in providing cover for fundamentalism.”

So a bunch of crazy Muslims attack the United States, and it becomes “every religion is wrong.” I can’t help but notice that Mr. Harris is adopting a fundamentalist turn towards atheism. Perhaps it is not unexpected after 9/11, that some people would become polarized. Mr. Harris is just polarized in a different directing than most.

And he wants you to give up your belief. You see, your religion is just like racism.

“Massive social change is clearly possible,” he says in an interview. “Look at the way we have transformed our attitudes about race. There’s still racism in this country, but it’s profoundly disreputable.”

Towards the end, we see Mr. Harris at his finest:

“We have to start seeing religion for what it is,” he says, “a failed science, a failed description of the world, a holdover of discourse by our ancestors, who had no basis to demand good evidence and good argument.”

Yep. No wisdom can be imparted from previous generations. What is fascinating about Mr. Harris is his ability to immediately contradict his statements and sound completely rational. Notice he says religion is a “failed science.” How does science progress? Through observation, experimentation and conclusion that is passed on throughout the ages. So by discarding the “holdover of discourse by our ancestors”, we would be ditching the entire history of scientific analysis. That only what we did today would have any impact on what happened today, and that what happened yesterday is antiquated.

I think it’s telling what one of Harris’ fawning fans says:

“For years, I thought there was something wrong with me,” he says. “I was always asking ‘Why don’t I get this? Why don’t I get this?’ And then last year I read ‘The End of Faith,’ and Sam basically explained it to me — there is nothing to get.”

To quote The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Overheard at Lunch

While I was in microwaving my ravioli (that sounds dirty!) I overheard two students talking about movies.

Student 1: Another good movie is ‘The Departed’. It’s directed by this guy Martin Scorcese. Have you heard of him?

Student 2: Yeah, I think I have heard of him.

Student 1: He directed this movie “Goodfellas”. Well, it’s like that. And you could bring your kids to it.

Nothing like having a seminal director from your era being referred to as “that guy”. Well, I’ll say this about Scorcese. He’s no Brukenheimer.