Skewering the Defeaticrats

These are my favorites, but you might like others. See more at Sparks from the Anvil

McCain-Feingold, where would we be without it?

Campaign Reform Finance's fiercest partisans fined for, wait for it ... campaign finance violations. Soros-linked group hit with huge fine

Do any of you people who praised this abominable violation of the First Amendment get it yet? Campaign Finance Reform was NOT about campaign financing. It was about George Soros making his money go farther by eliminating yours from the competition.

America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.

The group's big donors included George Soros, Progressive Corp. chairman Peter Lewis and the Service Employees International Union.

Meanwhile, in Daly City, California - which only sounds like it was named after Chicago's mayoral dynasty - we have the Paw family. There are six of them. Among them, they've donated $200,000 to Hillary Clinton's campaign since 2005.

It isn't obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year, according to a union representative. Alice Paw, also 64, is a homemaker. The couple's grown children have jobs ranging from account manager at a software company to "attendance liaison" at a local public high school. One is listed on campaign records as an executive at a mutual fund.

The Paws' political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events.

Mr. Hsu is also a convicted felon who is wanted by the State of California.

For the last 15 years, California authorities have been trying to figure out what happened to a businessman named Norman Hsu, who pleaded no contest to grand theft, agreed to serve up to three years in prison and then seemed to vanish.

"He is a fugitive," Ronald Smetana, who handled the case for the state attorney general, said in an interview. "Do you know where he is?"

Hsu, it seems, has been hiding in plain sight, at least for the last three years.

Since 2004, one Norman Hsu has been carving out a prominent place of honor among Democratic fundraisers. He has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions into party coffers, much of it earmarked for presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Well, we know where he was The Clinton campaign had this to say in Mr. Hsu's defense:

"Norman Hsu is a longtime and generous supporter of the Democratic Party and its candidates, including Sen. Clinton," Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the campaign, said Tuesday. "During Mr. Hsu's many years of active participation in the political process, there has been no question about his integrity or his commitment to playing by the rules, and we have absolutely no reason to call his contributions into question or to return them."

Felony convictions for grand theft apparently don't count against your integrity, even while they may demonstrate your commitment to the Clintons.

Update: 8:11PM Thanks for the reminder to Republican Michigander.

Unaccountably, I forgot to add this earlier, Fieger faces indictment over campaign funds. That's former Democrat Gubernatorial candidate and trial lawyer extraordinaire, Geoffrey Fieger. Jack Kevorkian could not be reached for comment.

Sharia?

If Dennis Miller had a British accent, and assistance from the Monty Python writers, he might have made this rant about creeping sharia in Euarabia. A sample transcription, but watch it all:

We don't want religious police patrolling our streets, nor anywhere, for anyone. We don't want legalized rape, amputation, stoning, beheading or any of the other niceties of Islamic jurisprudence, where a man's word is worth twice that of a woman's - As long as he doesn't let on that he's secretly gay, of course, that would be a fly in the ointment. And what a dilemma for the judge, he wouldn't know who to stone to death first.

More of Pat Condell here.

H/T SDA

The Once and Future Killing Fields

Christopher Hitchens is a leftist for whom I have respect. That is, he retains some principle and is intellectually honest: A rare thing among old Trotskyites. Here he gives many reasons why Iraq is not Vietnam, and why credit is due George Bush for getting rid of Saddam. To invoke Vietnam was a blunder too far for Bush.

... there is a very strong temptation for opponents of the war to invoke the lessons of Vietnam. I must have written thousands of words attempting to show that there is absolutely no analogy between the two conflicts.

Then, addressing the convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week, the President came thundering down the pike to announce that a defeat in Iraq would be - guess what? - another Vietnam. As my hand smacks my brow, and as I ask myself not for the first time if Mr Bush suffers from some sort of political death wish, I quickly restate the reasons why he is wrong to join with his most venomous and ignorant critics in making this case.

Very good reasons they are, too, which you may read at the link. Unfortunately, given the President's contention that the similarity is a defeatist, weak-kneed Congress ready to betray an ally when success could still be had, all these very good reasons are simply beside the point.

Mark Steyn has the right of it. They wait for us to run again

...As the New York Times put it, "In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies."

Anybody with the sense God gave a sack of hammers knows this "historical memory" is wrong, even if, like Senator Kerry, they discount the millions who died because of it; or even if, like Senator Kennedy, they're still bragging about it on the floor of the Senate.

... it had a "few negative repercussions" for America's allies in South Vietnam, who were promptly overrun by the North. And it had a "negative repercussion" for former Cambodian Prime Minister Sirik Matak, to whom the U.S. ambassador sportingly offered asylum. "I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion," Matak told him. "I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty … . I have committed this mistake of believing in you, the Americans." So Sirik Matak stayed in Phnom Penh and a month later was killed by the Khmer Rouge, along with about 2 million other people. If it's hard for individual names to linger in the New York Times' "historical memory," you'd think the general mound of corpses would resonate.

It's not just leaving our allies, like the "boat people" to sink (mostly) or swim on their own. The American malaise isn't gone because Dhimmi Carter is reduced to lurching around stage-left speaking sedition in foreign lands, nor because Bush 41 is no longer a Commander-in-Chief swayed by Gríma's whispers "don't go to Baghdad," after Bush encouraged an uprising that resulted in slaughter.

Banquo's ghost walks among us. That some of the same actors are reading the same lines is enough proof of that.

You should read all of Steyn's piece in order to get to his last sentence. This is what Hitchens' analysis totally disregards.

Two out of three ain't bad, Hillary. Even accidentally.

Rivals Slam Clinton For Terrorism Comments

One example supporting that headline is this comment by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT):

"Frankly, I find it tasteless to discuss political implications when talking about a potential terrorist attack on the United States."

Here's what Hillary said to attract Dodd's ire:

"There are circumstances beyond our control, and I think I am better able to handle things I have no control over," she said. "It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," she said. "So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that as well."

Putting aside the grammar and logic problems of "handling things I have no control over," Hillary's first point is that She's survived numerous things over which She has no control by making them invisible - "bimbo eruptions" not least. Her second point is that an attack on the United States would be nothing but a political statement by enemies who think such an attack would boost the prospects of the party most likely to appease. Hillary knows better, even if she has no idea how to handle such crises aside from ignoring them.

Her third point is that the Republicans would welcome an attack (that they could mishandle) because it would improve their political prospects (though this would be the the opposite of al-Qaeda's intention). That's two out of three, sort of, and therefore better than any other Democrat.

This third point seems to be a sort of Democrat reverse projection. We know from Senate Majority Leader Harry "The War is Lost" Reid that the Democrats see failure in Iraq as a given. Reid has said he won't believe anything General David Petraeus says next month about the situation in Iraq. We also know, from House Democrat Whip James Clyburn, that progress in Iraq would be "trouble for us." "Us" being Democrats.

In accord with this fecklessness, Senator Dodd proposes that we should wait to consider political implications until after we're attacked? Look at it this way, if the Japanese had realized the political consequences of attacking the United States in December of 1944, they may well not have.

It's one thing to whine about the fact that your political party is generally considered weak on national security issues, it's quite another to confirm that weakness by attacking your next leader when She points it out.

Why not Victory?

The war in Iraq is like Vietnam in terms of the reaction from the earmark-enamored capitulation baboons in our national legislature.

Max Boot describes it nicely:

Another Vietnam?
President Bush's analogy to Iraq is not inaccurate, just incomplete.

Read the whole thing, but here are excerpts describing two of Boot's telling points:

1- As mentioned yesterday: That which Ted Kennedy is so proud of having done, as a political statement, to the Vietnamese. And, to be fair, that which Bush 41 also did, as a failure of courage, to the Iraqis in the aftermath of Gulf War I:

...the costs of defeat were indeed heavy. More than a million people perished in the killing fields of Cambodia, while in Vietnam, those who worked with American forces were consigned, as Mr. Bush noted, to prison camps "where tens of thousands perished." Many more fled as "boat people," he continued, "many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea."

...• The danger of winning militarily and losing politically. In 1968, after Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam, he began to change the emphasis from the kind of big-unit search-and-destroy tactics that Gen. William Westmoreland had favored, to the sort of population-protection strategy more appropriate for a counterinsurgency. Over the next four years, even as the total number of American combat troops declined, the communists lost ground.

By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the U.S. had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived. It was no less viable than South Korea, another artificial state kept in existence by force of arms over many decades. But after the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, we all but cut off South Vietnam, even while its enemies across the borders continued to be resupplied by their patrons in Moscow and Beijing.

2- Also mentioned yesterday: The Will to Win:

• The danger of allowing enemy sanctuaries across the border. This a parallel that Mr. Bush might not be so eager to cite, because in many ways he is repeating the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson, who allowed communist forces to use safe rear areas in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam to stage attacks into South Vietnam. No matter how much success American and South Vietnamese forces had, there were always fresh troops and supplies being smuggled over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Recognition of this problem could make all the difference.

It's been 28 months since I sent a copy of Barry Goldwater's 1962 book Why not victory? A fresh look at American foreign policy to George Bush. It's only 141 small pages, and I'm sure he's had time to read at least the cover. Maybe I need to send another one, and so do you. Get one at Amazon and send it to:

President George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
United States

The book's two bucks or less, the shipping costs as much as a Starbuck's coffee.

Update: 8:55PM. H/T Opinion Journal.

In a WaPo article from 2003 Peter W. Galbraith recounts Bush 41's lack of cojones, and the consequences: The Ghosts of 1991

...the Shiite Muslims who constitute a majority in Iraq and in the city of Baghdad were betrayed by the United States -- an act that may have cost them as many as 100,000 lives. That recent history -- of which the Shiites are understandably a good deal less forgetful than we -- explains why the Shiites in the south initially greeted invading American and British forces with a good deal more reserve than expected. And as the continuing turmoil in southern towns and cities makes clear, building a democratic state in Iraq over the long term will depend to a large degree on how strong and lasting a trust we can build among these people.

... Many of the problems we face now and in the future with Shiites likely have to do with the way the first Bush administration responded to those appeals. On Feb. 15, 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on the Iraqi military and people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. On March 3, an Iraqi tank commander returning from Kuwait fired a shell through one of the portraits of Hussein in Basra's main square, igniting the southern uprising. A week later, Kurdish rebels ended Hussein's control over much of the north.

But although Bush had called for the rebellion, his administration was caught unprepared when it happened. The administration knew little about those in the Iraqi opposition because, as a matter of policy, it refused to talk to them. Policymakers tended to see Iraq's main ethnic groups in caricature: The Shiites were feared as pro-Iranian and the Kurds as anti-Turkish. Indeed, the U.S. administration seemed to prefer the continuation of the Baath regime (albeit without Hussein) to the success of the rebellion. As one National Security Council official told me at the time: "Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime."

The practical expression of this policy came in the decisions made by the military on the ground. U.S. commanders spurned the rebels' plea for help. The United States allowed Iraq to send Republican Guard units into southern cities and to fly helicopter gunships. (This in spite of a ban on flights, articulated by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf with considerable swagger: "You fly, you die.") The consequences were devastating. Hussein's forces leveled the historical centers of the Shiite towns, bombarded sacred Shiite shrines and executed thousands on the spot. By some estimates, 100,000 people died in reprisal killings between March and September. Many of these atrocities were committed in proximity to American troops, who were under orders not to intervene.

... The first Bush administration's decision to abandon the March uprising was a mistake of historic proportions. With U.S. help, or even neutrality, the March uprising could have succeeded, thus avoiding the need for a second costly war. (Bush's defenders insist the United States had no mandate to carry the war to Baghdad, but this is beside the point. The uprising started after the Gulf War ended, and the United States was positioned to easily down Iraqi helicopters and halt Iraqi tanks.)

The current President Bush cannot escape these ghosts. An American may understand what happened in 1991 as carelessness -- inexcusable but not malicious. An Iraqi Shiite saw a superpower that called for a rebellion and then ensured its failure. Naturally, he assumed this was intentional. In the months and years to come, many Shiites may take a lot of convincing about U.S. motives and reliability.

The Left has long contended that part of Bush 43's motivation for invading Iraq was the contract Saddam took out on his father; as if even a President possessed of visceral hatred for a predecessor should not find a way to retaliate for that brazen insult. If only for his own sake.

No, if there is any connection between Dubya's decision to invade Iraq and his father's Gulf War, my guess is it is more akin to atonement than revenge.

Vietnam legacy is where you find it

George Bush reminded us, in a speech Tuesday, of the history of US withdrawal from Vietnam. Neo-neocon has an excellent analysis of the arguments for and against Bush's view of this here: Whose Vietnam analogy is it, anyway?

Maybe the guilty memory of betrayal and failure, and the bloodbath that ensued in Vietnam and Cambodia, is actually a late and parsimonious dividend of the Democrats' undermining of South Vietnam. Maybe it will be much harder to do the same thing to the Iraqis because of that disgraceful decision. I hope so.

The Vietnam War may well have ended differently if a series of Commanders-in-Chief could have resisted micro-managing it. Lyndon Johnson even picked bombing targets.

I am sure it would have ended better if we had had the will to win, and, later, the common courtesy not to consign an ally to the knives. The South Vietnamese shouldn't have been surprised at this treachery, though, since JFK had earlier approved the coup resulting in the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem. Another legacy that maybe Carl Levin should read up on.

Maybe some of the people who voted to abandon South Vietnam feel secretly guilty. Not that this private angst can change Ted Kennedy's mind, but others might look at him and wonder when he's actually bragging about it on the Senate floor. This from Jan-2007:

During the Vietnam War, as successive presidents escalated the hostilities in defiance of mounting opposition, Congress finally responded. We repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the original authorization for using military force in Vietnam. We cut off appropriations to prevent the escalation of that war into Cambodia and Laos. And then we took the decisive step of capping the number of American troops in South Vietnam. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1974 mandated that the number of American civilian and armed forces could not exceed 4,000 within six months and 3,000 within one year of the bill’s enactment.

The debate is intense because it is about who writes what history. Why the history matters is well illustrated by BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2011. Starting with "What Berlin wall?"

"Free" health care is just another ward with nuthin' left to lose

Kate McMillan on how Canada's health care system treated her dying mother. JUST READ IT, Hillary.

Tommy Douglas: Zero Tier Health Care, Revisited

To paraphrase William Jefferson Blythe Clinton: "It depends on what the meaning of 'free' is."

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom National Health Service is refusing to pay for Aricept, an Alzheimer treatment approved by the FDA in 1996. The per patient cost? $5.00 a day. To paraphrase William Jefferson Blythe Clinton: "It depends on what the bureaucrats' definition of 'cost benefit' is."

72 virgins for you, my man

Darcey, over at Dust My Broom, has a video of a firearms accident. Quite short.

"Allahu Akbar" God is greater than everything

Human gestation period surprises Canadian health adminstrators

On these pages two years ago yesterday, I commented on my experience with Canadian health care in a post titled Ob-Gyns with 10 Month Waiting Lists. We now have an example.

Fortunately for Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia Jepp, the US still offers a safety valve for Canada's socialized health care system:

A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets.

The four girls were born at a US hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units.

Karen Jepp and her husband JP, of Calgary, were taken to a Montana hospital where the girls were delivered two months early by Caesarean section.

...A medical team and space for the babies had been organised for the Jepp family at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary but several other babies were born unexpectedly early, filling the neonatal intensive care unit.

Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada but none had space.

Emphasis mine.

Mark Steyn sums it up:

Well, you can't expect a G7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal ICU coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote rural Montana. And let's face it, there's nothing an expectant mom likes more than 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop over the Rockies.

When airlines overbook seats, so that customers who have already paid are "bumped," Americans get upset; yet we listen to Hillary Clinton advocating the same system for medical care?

Council on American-Islamic Relations - Un-unindicted un-co-conspirators?

Apparently the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, is unhappy about their billing as unindicted co-conspirators in United States versus Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (an alleged Hamas front/terrorist money-launderer). CAIR's fund raising, recruiting and retention are down, so they've conspired to petition the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to remove them from the co-conspiracy list, complaining they are being disparaged because they appear on it:

...the list of unindicted coconspirators has spread and gained notoriety through non-mainstream media, as well, including various 'anti-terrorism' weblogs. These weblogs are often extremely biased and inaccurate in their reporting, leading to even more severe damage to the reputation of the unindicted coconspirators.

The Counterterrorism Blog is mentioned specifically in this brief. I admit to some disappointment that The Other Club was not also mentioned, since we've certainly been critical of CAIR on many occasions. For example, CAIR's instigation and promotion of the "flying imams" lawsuit, and attempts to censor commentary on it, are based on a sharia flawed interpretation of the First Amendment.

In any case, this link provides access to CAIR's amicus curiae brief and to some of the commentary they would prefer did not exist. You decide.

If this post generates enough traffic, maybe CAIR will mention TOC the next time they ask a court for censorship.

Update: 19-Aug-2007 11:50AM from Counterterroism Blog - CAIR's Legal Gambit (and another Graph):

The move by CAIR and several other prominent Muslim organizations to have themselves de-listed as un-indicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trials is an interesting, albeit unprecedented, legal maneuver that – if successful – would have a profound impact on the HLF trial and criminal justice in the United States.

Read the rest here.

Morose by any other name

Alice the Camel reports on Quebecer Caroline Parent's challenge to a Provincial law that prohibits any woman from taking her husband's surname upon marriage.

I was living in Canada in 1981 when this law was passed, but I don't even remember it. There was no outrage over it at the time. It may have been buried by other arcane goings on in La belle province.

Quebec, for Americans unfamiliar, is the same Province that bans English-only signs and mandates some be French-only. I suppose Mrs. Ex-Parent is lucky they're not forcing her to change her maiden to Pèreoumère.

The feminist impulses that cemented this idiocy into statute presume women are too dumb and/or timid to keep their maiden names, as would a proper feminist, unless they're forced to do it. When gender feminists prattle about choice, they mean their choices and nobody else's. Lèse majesté.

I wonder if Caroline Parent can still change her name through a court procedure, as could a man? Can a man in Quebec legally take his wife's surname without such extraordinary legal effort?

Tell me again about how feminism has benefited women? Arret!

Close-up of damaged Tile on Endeavor

Neptec’s LCS data creates a 3D scan of the damage on Endeavor’s thermal protection system.

Click here to download more stills and a video of the damage to the space shuttle Endeavour’s damaged tiles.

The technology is from Neptec Design Group, based in Ottawa, Ontario.

H/T Slashdot and Roland Piquepaille at ZDNet.

It's for the lobbyists children and bribing voters seniors and corporate welfare social justice

...and the members cried, "Shame! Shame!"

Well, actually they didn't. Most of them lined up to line the pockets of their local fiefdoms and to pick yours. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-MI, among the first to the trough.

Pork and fake geography, a Democrat menu

The House legislation funnels money to favored hospitals by treating them as if they are in high wage areas even though they aren't. For example, two hospitals in Kingston, New York will be paid as if they were in New York City, which is 80 miles away, thanks to the efforts of Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchley. And, thanks to Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak, "any hospital co-located in Marinette, Wisconsin and Menominee, Michigan is deemed to be located in Chicago." Only one hospital, Bay Area Medical Center in Green Bay, fits that description. Yet wage rates in Green Bay bear little resemblance to those in Chicago.

This is the same government some people think will bring us better and cheaper health care. ...When pigs levitate over Galt's Gulch, maybe.

Here's 1991 commentary from a man who arguably did more to advance the cause of liberty than any other in the 20th Century.

Government has played an increasingly large role in medical care. For decades, total spending on medical care was about 3 to 5 percent of national income. It is now 12 or 13 percent, and the acceleration of spending dates from the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Some of you may have seen an article published in that excellent journal of opinion, the Wall Street Journal, in which I cited figures on hospital cost per patient day, adjusted for inflation. The cost was 26 times as high in 1989 as it had been in 1946; personnel per hospital bed was seven times as high, while the number of hospital beds had been cut in half. Great advances in medical care have certainly occurred, but they did so before 1965 as well as after. Those seven times as many people per hospital bed are clearly not people who are attending to patients; they are mostly people who are filling in forms to satisfy government requirements for payment.

Read the whole thing.

Al Gore Rhythms

Global warming has been delayed

Considering the recent news surrounding 1998 [more below] as the now not so hottest year on record in the U.S. check this article about a new study from British meteorologists:

… Natural weather variations influencing climate? OMG! We must revise our data.

For the record the creators of this report, the UK’s Met Office predicted last year that 2007 would be the warmest year on record and in the same report stated that 2006 was the warmest year on record in the U.K..

As Darcey implies, it isn’t just “natural weather variations, it’s also incompetence, or deliberate obfuscation. It seems that there is a computer glitch in the calculations showing we are experiencing Global Warming™

Y2K Bug Drastically Changes US Climate Data

…the NASA temperature data used to estimate the advance of global warming has been shown to be way off the mark, due to a Y2K bug in the graphing software—and the corrected charts tell a very different story:

Al Gore has a long history of hysteria on climate change, so it comes as no great surprise that NASA would once again be embroiled in a controversy on a topic related to major funding of a one of their Gore promoted projects.

Gore, when he was chairman of Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, said that:

the Mission to Planet Earth was America’s true priority in space.

What did that mean, you may well ask? At that time it was about the “ozone hole.”

NASA and The Environment: The Case of Ozone depletion

Senator Al Gore, chairman of NASA’s oversight committee, an environmentalist and an aspiring presidential candidate, saw a political opportunity. In November 1991 his legislation promoting an accelerated phaseout timetable for the Bush White House, operating through Republican lawmakers, was defeated. Now, he said, Bush had a “wake-up call” thanks to the “ozone hole. . . pointed to and predicted above Kennebunkport.” It was about time for President Bush “to think seriously about doing something,” Gore charged.86

Gore took the floor of the U. S. Senate to introduce a bill to halt CFC production by 1995. He termed the information in the NASA news conference “an immediate, acute, emergency threat.” Following the debate, the U.S. Senate called for a halt as soon as possible, not specifying a date, but voting 96-0 in favor of speed-up.

PRESIDENTIAL ACTION
On 11 February 1992, Bush announced that he was ordering American manufacturers to end, by 31 December 1995, virtually all production of chemicals that destroyed ozone.87 Under a provision of the Clean Air Act, Bush had the power to direct a change from the previously established year 2000 Montreal Protocol deadline, when circumstances merited such a move. Gore’s response was, “better late than never.” He again referred to the “ozone hole over Kennebunkport” as the reason for Bush’s change of heart.

MEDIA DRUMBEAT
The President’s decision and Gore’s continuing volley fanned the flames of media attention. The ozone hole was now big news, a crisis, and one announcement after another of dire consequences was made. On 8 February, the Washington Post reported that a new UN study had linked increased UV rays from the Sun to researchers’ “projections” of “300,000 new cases of skin cancer per year by the turn of the century,” as well as “an increase of infectious diseases, including AIDS.”88 On 17 February 1992 when Time magazine capped the media barrage with a cover headline entitled “Vanishing Ozone: The Danger Moves Closer to Home,” its lead article pointed to “overwhelming” evidence that the stratospheric ozone layer “is being eaten away by manmade chemicals far faster than any scientist had predicted.” The situation was dire; Time warned, “This unprecedented assault on the planet’s life support system could have more horrendous long-term effects on human health, animal life, the plants that support the food chain, and just about every other strand that makes up the delicate web of nature.”89

AN EMBARRASSED NASA
But in early March, the dreaded ozone hole over the Northern Hemisphere failed to materialize as predicted. Data from UARS showed that the concentrations of ozone-destroying chlorine monoxide within and around the polar vortex had declined significantly since the peak in January, according to NASA’s JPL scientist Joe Waters. In January, UARS detected concentrations of chlorine monoxide at 2 parts per billion (ppb) within the atmospheric vortex that swirled around the North Pole. In February, when the satellite’s orbit allowed it to look at the vortex again, chlorine monoxide levels had dropped to below 1 ppb and continued to fall. Arlin Krueger, the NASA scientist in charge of tracking data from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, acknowledged that TOMS had found absolutely no indication of an ozone hole opening over the Northern Hemisphere.90 He declared, “I can tell you categorically there is no ozone hole over Kennebunkport. There never has been an ozone hole over Kennebunkport, and I don’t really expect one.”91 NASA had never forecast an ozone hole over Kennebunkport—the Kennebunkport reference came from Gore and others. However, due to the intense media coverage, many people blamed NASA for being the source of the reference.

COMPLAINTS FROM NOAA SCIENTISTS
The flap over the arctic ozone hole brought to the surface tensions in the organizational alliance that NASA had carefully constructed. NASA was the de facto lead agency, and others did not necessarily appreciate how they were being led, especially those at NOAA. Melvyn Shapiro, a meteorological research scientist in NOAA’s Environmental Technology Laboratory in Boulder, took the occasion of a media visit to express his opinions. He harshly criticized those who downplayed natural ozone variations in favor of the CFC explanation. Implying that the arctic ozone affair was a case of “Chicken Little research,” he castigated those who exploited “a doomsday scenario” to “get a lot of money.” He charged, “Research organizations are in great competition with each other to get the politicians’ ears and obtain the necessary resources.” He did not mention NASA by name, but it was clear to which organization he was referring.

David Hofmann, senior scientist in the Ozone and Aerosols Group of NOAA’s Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, did name NASA and complained that the Agency had given too much attention at its news conference to a CFC explanation of arctic ozone depletion. “I couldn’t understand why NASA didn’t come out and say that this could be a very unusual year because of the volcanic eruptions,” he said, further commenting that “maybe what we’re seeing is something we’ll never see again. Instead, they [NASA] seemed to imply, you know, that this is the start of something really big. That really wasn’t very wise. If there’s major ozone depletion seen this year, it’s quite likely that it is related to the volcano.”92

Shapiro was more blunt, complaining that “this [ozone issue] is about money. If there were no dollars attached to this game, you’d see it played in a very different way. It would be played on intellect and integrity. When you say the ozone threat is a scam, you’re not only attacking people’s scientific integrity, you’re going after their pocketbook as well. It’s money, purely money.”

NASA had gotten a good deal of favorable media attention for its visible antarctic ozone role. Now it took the heat for its arctic experience. Writer Micah Morrison noted strains in NASA’s relationship with NOAA and NSF-NCAR because of the arctic false alarm. He noted that NOAA and NCAR were “the junior partners” in the program. “NASA is the 800-pound gorilla in the ring,” said another scientist involved in the expedition, who insisted on anonymity. “You either go along with the gorilla or you stay out of its way.”

...
NASA WITHDRAWS ITS WARNING
On 30 April 1992, the NASA arctic ozone team officially concluded the arctic project and announced its findings based upon the seven months of data collected. Team leaders declared that despite their earlier fears, an ozone hole had not formed over the Arctic during the previous winter. Nevertheless, they said the threat of an ozone hole would exist each year because of manmade pollutants in the upper atmosphere. They pointed out the record levels of chlorine and other ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere over parts of Europe, Russia, Canada, and the United States. Unusually warm winter air had prevented significant problems. Although there had been a real ozone loss, said Harvard chemist James Anderson, it did not constitute an ozone hole.95

The admission of error engendered criticism of NASA, particularly in conservative circles. On the editorial page, the Washington Times published a column entitled “NASA Cries Wolf on Ozone.” It specifically singled out Michael Kurylo, manager of the Upper Atmosphere Research Program at NASA, for criticism. The editor described Kurylo as having “breathlessly” sounded an alarm. The paper accused NASA of not performing “objective” science and commented, “This is the cry of the apocalyptic, laying the groundwork for a decidedly non-scientific end: public policy.” If public policy was its true purpose, the paper said, the strategy had “worked,” but it warned NASA against crying “wolf” again.96 The Wall Street Journal also took NASA to task, saying, “The turnaround is another blow to the credibility of the space agency.”97 Having earlier received praise for linking science to policy in the case of Antarctica, NASA now garnered ridicule for wrongly predicting significant depletion of the ozone layer over the Arctic.

It is only fair to point out that this long document concludes that NASA fulfilled its public policy role well:

The ozone-depletion case is almost universally seen as a success story in the link between science and policy. In the environmental field, such success stories are few. Hence, it is worth considering why science and policy worked together in this instance. The focus of the preceding narrative has been on NASA’s role in the overall link. There are probably 1,000 heroes in any successful public policy case, and that, no doubt, is true in this one. NOAA, NSF, environmentalists, and even industry can share in the credit. Nevertheless, a key factor in the ozone-depletion issue was that there had to be someone in charge from the science side of the science-policy equation. There was a de facto “lead” agency—NASA.

…though this conclusion is somewhat hard to reconcile with many parts of its content.

Thank Al Gore? No, I'll pass on that

There was never an "ozone hole over Kennebunkport" as Mr. Gore contended last spring in the course of ramming through an ac- celerated phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The infamous Feb. 3, 1992, NASA press briefing that spawned such stories was rife with misinformation and selective data. In fact, the NASA research team, headed by Robert Watson (who has secured his Clinton administration appointment) knew within two weeks of that briefing that stratospheric chlorine levels had dropped by 75 percent, and there would be no Arctic ozone hole. Yet the team withheld that information from a frightened public while the NASA budget was before Congress.

NASA's "public policy role" is to secure funding, and this leads us to charges that the Bush administration is suppressing scientific discussion, charges leveled by NASA honcho James Hansen. James Hansen, is, according to CBS 60 Minutes

...arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate.

...Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: "Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it."

What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.

Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?

"There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. "The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."

Doesn't seem too suppressed, does he? It’s Hansen who is responsible for the fact that calculations about temperature fell prey to the Y2K bug. Well, at least he hasn’t been fired for heresy, the consequence of “climate change” disagreement during Al Gore’s stint as Vice President.

Fired at DOE

Last spring physicist William Happer found out what happens to federal scientists who ask the wrong questions. He was fired.

Happer, director of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy for two years, was asked to leave at the end of May. Although he was a political appointee, he had expected to remain until his replacement was nominated, since the Clinton administration had asked him to stay on in January. But he was pushed out two months beforehand. "I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy," he says. Now the DOE's former chief scientist is back at Princeton.

Happer made the mistake of crossing Vice President Al Gore, the Clinton administration's ranking environmentalist. In April, Happer testified before the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee on Appropriations. "I think that there probably has been some exaggeration of the dangers of ozone and global climate change," he said. "One of the problems with ozone is that we don't understand how the UV-B is changing at ground level, and what fraction of the ultraviolet light really causes cancer."

Happer's cautious testimony was at odds with Gore's alarmist views. "Like an acid," Gore warns in his tome Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, chlorine from man-made refrigerants called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) "burns a hole in the ozone layer worldwide." Gore predicts that ozone depletion will damage crops and raise skin-cancer rates.

Gore's expectation is superficially plausible. Stratospheric ozone stops much of the sun's ultraviolet-B light from reaching the earth's surface, where excessive amounts can harm plants and animals. Sunburn is the type of UV damage with which most people are familiar. And recent satellite data indicate that ozone declined by 3 percent to 5 percent over the United States between 1979 and 1991.

But such a small decrease is hard to extract from the satellite data, since ozone levels vary widely depending upon seasons, latitude, and sunspot activity. (See "The Hole Story," June 1992) For example, the amount of UV naturally reaching the ground in Florida is twice as great as that in Minnesota. A 5-percent depletion of ozone would increase UV-B exposure by the same amount as moving a mere 60 miles south. Few people worry about moving from Philadelphia south to Baltimore because of the resulting increase in UV-B exposure.

Here’s what else Al Gore meant by “the Mission to Planet Earth:” POLITICS PUTS $100 MILLION SATELLITE ON ICE

Triana, a project born of politics, might be dying of politics. In its earliest incarnation, the satellite was the brainchild of Gore, who unveiled the idea during a speech in March 1998 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He challenged NASA to build and fly an inexpensive spacecraft that would make continuous, live pictures of the full, sunlit Earth from far out in space. Those pictures would be available to the world at all times via the Internet and television.

Other weather and scientific satellites constantly monitor Earth, but they monitor it so closely that they see only one portion of the planet at a time. None of these displays are returned instantly. And to see the entire sunlit face, several satellite images must be stitched together.

Triana would fill in those gaps.

Gore also gave the Earth-watching project its name, after Rodrigo de Triana, the lookout aboard Christopher Columbus' ship who first spotted the New World in 1492.

Gore hoped the images would inspire environmental consciousness and encourage new educational efforts.

Gore approached NASA Administrator Dan Goldin with the idea and asked whether it was feasible. The agency made a quick study of the proposal and concluded it could be completed for less than $50 million.

But after NASA took control, the Triana project grew from a simple camera to a satellite capable of making precise measurements of the Earth and sun.

Despite the added science, though, Triana became a political pinata as Republicans in Congress criticized it as Gore's pet science project and a waste of money.

It's a familiar story during presidential transitions: in with George W. Bush and out with NASA's most influential political supporter -- and his pet project, too.

"It's all the Supreme Court's fault," said John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.com policy-research organization. "If Gore would have had one more vote on the court, Triana would have been launched by now."

Mr. Pike pretty much sums up the separation of dispassionate science from money and politics. Unobservable. Maybe Mr. Pike thinks the SCOTUS 2000 election decision is actually the Y2K bug.

Decline and Fall

TOC has noted Theodore Dalrymple only once before: Mendacritocracy - Government by herds of accidental liars?. Obviously, this is not frequently enough.

Please see Cultural Confidence at David Thompson for more Dalrymple.

The following extract might be of interest. It’s from a speech given in May by Theodore Dalrymple, titled The Paradoxes of Cultural Confidence. Dalymple touches on a range of issues, including the absurd denial and fragility inherent to Islamist belief, and the denial within Islam more generally; but I’ve highlighted a few passages that relate to recent discussions here on contrarian posturing and misplaced rebellion.

SCHIP of Fools

As the Democrats creep incrementally toward socializing our health care system via new health care entitlements under SCHIP, they've invoked two treasured talking points; the all purpose "It's For The Children!" trope, and the obligatory praise of health care in Great Britain, France and especially Canada. It is, therefore, instructive to hear from a Canadian doctor on the subject:

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people.

My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.

Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.

I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic — with a three-year wait list; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.

Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province's population) can't find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who'd get a doctor's appointment.

These problems are not unique to Canada — they characterize all government-run health care systems.

The whole thing is recommended reading.

Part of the high cost of American health care has to do with the fact that uninsured people are typically treated more quickly in our emergency rooms than are many Canadians in their "free" hospitals. Uninsured Americans have not paid exorbitant taxes, and may never have paid health care insurance premiums. Their care actually is free, for them.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli's epiphany inspired a crusade which eventually persuaded Canada's Supreme Court to strike down a Quebec law banning private insurance for services covered under the government's health care system. Basically, Quebec's statist restriction of health services was judged "cruel and unusual."

In a 4-3 decision, the panel of seven justices said banning private insurance for a list of services ranging from MRI tests to cataract surgery was unconstitutional under the Quebec Charter of Rights, given that the public system has failed to guarantee patients access to those services in a timely way.

As a result of delays in receiving tests and surgeries, patients have suffered and even died in some cases, justices Beverley McLachlin, Jack Major, Michel Bastarache and Marie Deschamps found for the majority.

It isn't just Quebec, of course, as previous TOC posts regarding Canada's health care system (with which, FWIW, I had over 20 years experience) help demonstrate.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
...every other advanced country

Thursday, March 15, 2007
Waiting for Trudot

Saturday, December 23, 2006
Lessons from Canada

Friday, December 15, 200
Socialized health care choices

Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Previewing Hillarycare

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Socialist health care

Friday, May 05, 2006
Free health care

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The cost of free health care

Saturday, April 22, 2006
Universal Health Care Update

Thursday, April 20, 2006
Universal Health Care

Friday, January 13, 2006
Things we can learn from Canada

Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Social Change in the United States: A Canadian anal -ysis

Thursday, August 18, 2005
Ob-Gyns with 10 Month Waiting Lists

Thursday, July 14, 2005
You don't always get what you pay for

Monday, July 11, 2005
Brave New World meets Animal Farm

Thursday, June 30, 2005
Medicine Cabinet Minister

Friday, June 17, 2005
45 Million Myths Continued

Thursday, June 16, 2005
45 Million Myths

Monday, April 04, 2005
Canadian Health Care. You'll Get Old Just Waiting.

Schlock Whoops

Under the title "Shock Troops," a magazine publishes the "diaries" of a US soldier in Iraq. The intent is to illustrate the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of war."

The magazine was misled as to the veracity of what it printed, and if you can say "associate editor Stephen Glass," you know it isn't the first time. This time, however, it's slanderous fabrications about American troops at war.

The New Republic, publishers and erstwhile defenders of the feebly pseudonymous Scott Thomas' Kerryesque fantasies, (which have apparently been removed from TNR's website without comment) are a bit fuzzy on the word "moral." Emotionally? TNR merely pumped up the "we support the troops by detesting them" traffic at Kos, et. al.. The distorting part? TNR has raised "distorting" to an entirely new level.

Beauchamp Recants

According to the military source, [Scott Thomas] Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

The only out for TNR now is if Scott Thomas Beauchamp isn't this guy's real name. Or, maybe they can commission a series of articles on the "circulation destroying effects of amoral emotionalism."

A Rafflesia by any other name

... would smell as putrid.

Jonah Goldberg writes on the open secret that it's Liberals who ruined the "l" word, and their Orwellian attempt to rebrand statism. It's like calling failure "deferred success."

One might also ask, if [Hillary] Clinton laments how liberalism has become identified with big government, why it is she wants to revive the progressive label. After all, if liberal is a misnomer for statists, progressive represents a long-overdue return to truth in labeling. In Europe, after all, liberals are the free-market, small-government types. But in America, the same people came to be called conservatives in no small part because they were trying to conserve liberal ideas of limited government amid the riot of social engineering during the Progressive Era that Clinton is so nostalgic for.

Indeed, she's right that self-described liberals championed the sovereignty of the individual, which is why the authentic liberals were hated by progressives who believed that, in the words of progressive activist Jane Addams, "We must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in the connection with the activity of the many."

You can read the whole thing.

These "progressives," however, should probably read Galen De Young's Why Rebranding Often Fails (thanks for the reference to Cauvin):

• Lack of true change.
• Making too big a leap.
• Lack of Internal alignment.
• Failure of the CEO to champion rebranding
• Failure to clarify positioning

All of these, perhaps excepting the 4th, seem true of Hillary's signing on with the effort to change a sow's ear into a slick purse.

Code Pink-burqa

Video: Jihad the Musical

I laughed out loud. Loved the pink burqas with the face-grids looking like medieval armor. Bring it to Wharton Center, I'll attend.

The criticism from CAIR and its fellow-moessafiers should be at least as entertaining. here's the foreshadowing:

..a petition has been launched on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Downing Street website.

"We the undersigned petition the prime minister to condemn the tasteless portrayal of terrorism and its victims in 'Jihad The Musical,' says the online protest.

How, one wonders, would suicide bombing as a political strategy for world domination be satirized tastefully (is this not an oxymoron in the case)? What, for example, would be the "tasteful" portrayal of coercing your own children to blow themselves up?

The mention of victims is a mendacious afterthought, of course, since without the terrorists' "tasteless" murders there wouldn't be any victims. The petition signers are tasked to defend a bunch of religious-fundamentalist psychopaths against being "portrayed tastelessly." Apparently the originators of the petition are unfamiliar with the word "ridicule." But "condemn the ridicule of terrorism" would somewhat dash their hopes, wouldn't it?

Jihad the Musical is satire about the most evil butchers we've seen on the world stage in a century, "tasteless" is required for the challenge and necessary to the art. Sadly, those who should be most roundly defending the ridicule of terrorists, not to mention stupid petitions, are backtracking already:

Producer James Lawler sought to downplay the protest. "We have no intention of causing offence or insult with this show. It is simply a musical comedy," he said.

Disappointing, James. Disappointing. If you can't give 'em Hell, could you at least consider giving 'em Purgatory? Or even a good taunting? Oh, right, that's what you're apologizing for.

No books, Brits, Christians, cartoons, movies, Hindus, directors, Pakistanis, authors, Buddhists, politicians, Koreans, Jews, gays, Americans, innocent airline passengers, speakers who might mention CAIR's status as unindicted co-conspirator in a case involving funding terrorists, women or Iraqis were overtly threatened with desecration or beheading - whichever would be appropriate to the physical characteristics - in the making of this play.

The 72 virgins were not even mentioned however, and I consider that pretty tasteless.

When pigs fly

Muslims protest over pet food factory that could 'rain down' pork

Given that it is statistically a certainty that everyone has breathed a molecule that was exhaled by Julius Caesar as he died, it is dead certain that you've breathed many a molecule exhaled by millions of pigs, living and dead. So this NIMBY (Not In Muslim Back Yards) protest is as arrogant an attempt to advance sharia as any ignorant residential association has ever caved to. Burning pig waste is the least of Islamic concerns about contact with tiny bits of swine. This is a populist manifestation of the politics of establishing the World Caliphate.

Like every other being, these Muslims are already PERMEATED with pork effluvia. Idiots. Damned, too, from what they say.

When I suggested it would be the dust from the manufacture and transport of pork rinds causing this protest in the US, I wasn't serious. These UK Muslims apparently are serious. Worse, the local governing authority is all atwitter to appease:

[Coton Park Residential] Association spokesperson Grant Scott said: "Several families have complained because of the smell of the pork, and also if the factory is cooking with it, pork particles and odour could rain down on them from the chimney at some point.

...A group of Muslims have opposed plans for a pet food factory to be built as possible pork emissions will violate their religious rights.

Now, here is a slope we slipped right down all unawares. When did a religious obligation become a religious right enforced on others? The UK did not seem to accept any form of this argument in the time its troops spent in Northern Ireland.

Butchers Pet Care could shelve plans for a factory in Coton Park, near Rugby, because angry Asian families have complained to their residents' association about pork smells drifting into their garden.

Note: This is a group, if you believe UK polls, of whom a substantial number are quite comfortable with the "flash cook" suicide bomber recipe for toasting infidels. This raises two related points, 1) suicide bombings shower you in infidel chunks, bits and gasses, 2) humans are not AKA "long pig" for nothing - the savory odor of even a briefly roasted infidel is reminiscent of a luau.

Muslim residents in the area also claim the pork will effectively "rain down" on their homes and gardens after the factory's 100ft chimney has pumped the meat extracts into the atmosphere.

The Coton Park Residential Association said they have received complaints from Muslims - who are directed to not eat pork by the Qur'an - and are taking the matter very seriously.

One family who live less than 100 yards from the proposed factory, but who did not wish to be identified, said: "A significant proportion of meats used in the pet foods processes are pig meat.

"Our religion expressly forbids us to consume pig meat in any form.

"Because of the way in which this meat material will leave the factory and give that the area can be 'rained upon' we will be consuming pork via inhalation of this 'rain'.

"Not only that but our clothes will be contaminated by pork."

Mind contamination is obviously not at issue.

Another family from the Coton Park housing estate said: "The owners of the proposed factory do not dispute the claim that meat extracts of pork will be pumped into the atmosphere via a 100ft chimney.

"They have said there will not be any chemical treatment proposed to treat the meat extracts before they leave the factory."

"Chemically treated" pork is exempt from the strictures? Well, burning is a chemical reaction. Problem solved. Except burning animal parts doesn't seem to really have been a problem in the first place. Emphasis mine.

A statement from Butchers Pet Care said: "The majority of our natural products are beef and poultry.

"Pork ingredients account for less than 10% of our range.

"At Coton Park we plan to introduce state-of-the-art odour extraction through the chimney stack.

"An environmental impact report has already concluded that emissions at the proposed Coton Park site should not have an adverse impact on air quality and odour levels.

"We would like to reiterate that we do not burn any animal materials."

... [Association spokesperson Grant Scott said,] "It was something we hadn't taken on board before but it's definitely important and is a very delicate issue.

"If Muslims are unhappy about it, then Jews may complain for the same reason, and Hindus may complain because of their beliefs about cows being sacred animals."

And then we'd all be forced into vegetarianism. Sounds just like the University of Michigan defending the installation of Muslim footbaths as a public safety issue.

Politicians don't normally invite the next set of complaints, so here Coton Park is trying to obfuscate the fact that they are giving special attention to Muslim protests by dragging in other religions who have not protested. They forgot Rastafarians.

They can't even seem to gather the proper level of indifference in Britain anymore. Keep a quivering upper lip, Coton Park Residential Association. I will make one suggestion, however, change your name to Coton Residential Association Park.

Better he should have made a chintzy hotel commercial

One (almost) term Senator Barack Obama wants to invade Pakistan - a teetery and besieged US ally in the War on Islamofascism. An ally, moreover, with a nuclear arsenal.

Nicely done, sport. Hillary will have a ball with this one.

Have you ever even looked at map of the region and considered the logistics? Could you even find the Waziristan EconLodge with Travelocity? Did you even once consider the effect on Pakistani politics? Obama: Not Ready For Prime Time - Ever

It is a nice followup, though, to your idea that we should not be concerned about a new round of "killing fields" in Iraq. Genocide OK

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

And it fits right in with your commitment that as President of the United States you will meet with the most amoral thugs of our time to remind them they will have to take responsibility for Iraq when we bug out on your timetable.

Obama said one of his first orders of diplomacy in the Middle East would be to "send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they're going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses."

Barack, I don't think "responsibilities" means what you think it means, for foreign or domestic purposes. I don't think you understand the term "president," either.