Brutally Honest

Explaining Wright-ology

First up, the erudite and most good Doctor:

One of the more interesting angles to this controversy has been a question raised about whether Pastor Wright is in fact trying to undermine the presidential campaign Senator Obama. At first glance, such a turnabout is confusing, and the best rationale offered to date is that the good Pastor is a bit frosted about being straight-armed by his young protégé. While this may well be true, allow me to put forth another possibility, one which I believe to be far more plausible.

Jeremiah Wright cannot allow Obama to succeed.

Say what?

Yes, you heard me right. Consider this:

Jeremiah Wright lives, breathes, and exists to proclaim that Western civilization in general, and America specifically, are intractably racist and evil, and have been so ever since their foundation. We have all heard and read the sermons and the church bulletins, talking about how white men go to church on Sunday and lynch black men on Monday; how we are a terrorist nation bent on killing people of color and the poor; how the U. S. government created the AIDS virus for the purpose eradicating the black community. In Pastor Wright’s dark world, American society is incorrigibly racist, incapable of change, and the source of all problems in the black community and the world. The black man is a victim, oppressed, and the society in which he lives irredeemable.

Then along comes Obama.

This man, carefully mentored for 20 years under your tutelage, decides to run for President. And he starts winning — winning in part due to huge support from the black community, but winning in even larger part because of white voters. He becomes a rock star, the darling of the lily-white media, the heartthrob of the white intellectual elites, preaching a message of post-racial reconciliation and hope.

And he keeps on winning. In fact, he looks likely to be the democratic presidential nominee. And he looks highly competitive to become president of the United States.

By all measures, in a rational world, this should be a moment of enormous triumph for the black community, a testimony that America is finally beginning to move past race to the dream of Martin Luther King: to judge a man based on the content of this character rather than the color of his skin.

But if you are Jeremiah Wright, your world is falling apart.

There's more, all of it worthy.

And speaking of worthy, there's the streetwise wisdom of Black & White on the Grey Matters:

Religious Leftists: This one's for you

Cadillac Tight is toasting you Jeremiah Wright defending toadies (and you know who you are):

90% of Obama supporters had to have been hitting the sauce last night, however: If anyone was thrown under a bus during Obama’s hastily arranged press conference yesterday, it was them.

These poor folk have been arguing since early March that Obama was 100% correct in not disavowing Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s words were “speaking truth to power” after all, his love for America manifest due to his service in the Navy and Marine Corps, and his racism wasn’t racism, it was simply “the way the black church does things”.

Boy, Obama put the kibosh on their feeble attempts at rationalizing Wright, didn’t he? And in the process of doing so, made himself look like a fool. No one with half a brain could possibly believe that Obama saw anything different in Wright’s performance at the National Press Club than what we’ve all seen since the “God damn America” clips came to light, and certainly not anything different than what he’s seen during his twenty-year relationship with Wright.

Indeed.  I've been trying to say the same thing now for a day or two but Joe put it most articulately.

I'm asking, again, where are you Wright Apologists?

Hmm?

Revealing Jeremiah Wright's Pathology

Riehl World View pulls back the sheets:

... the saddest and perhaps most revealing truth of all for Wright and likely some in the Black community is buried within it. It's the last portion of this phrase.

"Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

Think about what that really means. Those aren't the words of a proud Black individual. They are the words of someone who is angry, primarily, ... because they are Black. They are the words of a racist - of the anti-Black variety; of someone who has come to view the Black race as inferior somehow.

Has Wright internalized White racism so deeply? Perhaps that explains his recent real estate choice, to retire in a gated, predominately White community.

I realize it may sound absurd and certainly isn't politically correct to point it out. But words mean things, as they say. And Wright's own words are revealing of a personal psychology as troubled as any of Obama's current political woes.

Jeremiah Wright simply doesn't like Black people. Why else would he be looking for someone to blame, or holding a grudge simply because he is Black?

What a shame Wright has apparently never come to face his own truth.

Baldilocks adds her own diagnosis:

The most infuriating thing about Wright is his attempt to cover himself using other black people, black Christians, by saying that attacks on him weren’t really about him but about the ‘black church.' And then he wants to fling around epithets like "Uncle Tom."

Let's be clear. Neither blackness, African, American or European origin, American nationality or American allegiance need a defense because such a defense would inherently be just as erroneously-focused as Jeremiah Wright's jeremiad. Ethnic origins aren’t things to be defended, denigrated or repudiated or sworn allegiance to--my own heritage stems from this continent and two other continents--these things simply are; these facts are existential. Nationality is special: it’s existential but can also be voluntarily retained or released. And allegiance to any entity is entirely voluntary, but no one has to prove his/her allegiance to this country as part and parcel of a repudiation of an ethnicity or heritage.  Those days went out with FDR.

Here’s what I do come to defend, to stand in defense of: Christianity and Christians who are black. Jeremiah Wright defames both and speaks for neither and little obscure me will not let him use either as fig leaf. Yes, our ancestors in this country and our kinsmen across the water fought to be just as Christian as other Christians—as Christian as our brothers who are white. And many of the latter stood for us and side-by-side with us—not because of us primarily but because of the One Who is Primary. Has that particular battle been won? I say yes, though the war continues. But Wright not only continues to fight the battle, he willfully misunderstands the nature of the War and identity of the Enemy. And by doing that, he becomes the tool of the Enemy. That’s his choice, but not mine and not that of those who focus on the Redemption offered by Christ instead of getting upon the Cross themselves.

To quote myself, there is no “black church.”  There is only the Church.

Amen.  Preach it sister.  And I do mean sister.

Lifelock.Com: An answer for the next time?

A few months ago, my oldest son began receiving mailings from credit card companies, each one seeking additional information to accompany a previously submitted application for credit.  The problem?  He hadn't applied for any of them. 

For the next several weeks, he spent countless hours on the phone with the credit card companies, with department store credit bureaus, with authorities and online as he attempted to straighten things out.  It was a nightmare and he continues even now to try to undo the damage.

So when I received an e-mail promoting the services of Lifelock.com, I was intrigued.  You may have seen the TV commercial with the CEO of the company blurting out his Social Security Number.  It does tend to grab you. 

LifeLock has their own blog, a promotional discount code for first time enrollers, and this page explains the value of the service being offered.

Given the crap that the oldest has had to go through, LifeLock seems to be an answer to the question of what one might attempt to do to fight the ID thieves that are lurking.

"can we also revist the 'Bush is inarticulate' canard again?"

Via Gerard, a classic:

So very sweet.

The chickens are coming home to roost

Amanda Carpenter brings us the blow by blow:

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama sought to temper news headlines in the aftermath of his longtime friend and former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial media tour by denouncing Wright’s recent remarks.

Obama called Wright's conspiracy theories about the U.S. government and praise of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan "ridiculous" and "offensive" in a hastily-organized news conference in North Carolina.

"When he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today."

Actually, not all Americans are offended by Wright's comments.  Some have defended them.  They've attempted to make the case that we critics are making mountains out of molehills. 

What do these sanctimonious leftists say now?  Can they continue to defend Wright while continuing to support Obama? 

And what of Obama?  What does this say about the man?  20 years of this bombastic bullshit from the pulpit and only now he decides that comments made by Wright are ridiculous and offensive?  Only now he believes that Americans are offended?  20 years of hatred from the pulpit, in the bulletins, 20 years of relationships with anti-semites like Farrakhan and only now is he outraged?  Only now does he see the man to be divisive?

What kind of person can believe anything Obama is saying at this point?  What amount of gullibility would be on display?

Here's just part of what he said that I find to stretch the bounds of credulity:

Yesterday we saw a very different vision of America. I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday. I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992. I’ve known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years. The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.

They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either.

Now, I’ve already denounced the comments that had appeared in these previous sermons. As I said, I had not heard them before. And I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church. He has built a wonderful congregation. The people of Trinity are wonderful people, and what attracted me has always been their ministries reach beyond the church walls.

But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st centuries, when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses.

They offend me. The rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.

Let me just close by saying this. We started this campaign with the idea that the problems that we face as a country are too great to continue to be divided, that in fact all across America people are hungry to get out of the old, divisive politics of the past.

I have spoken and written about the need for us to all recognize each other as Americans, regardless of race or religion or region of the country, that the only way we can deal with critical issues like energy and health care and education and the war on terrorism is if we are joined together.

And the reason our campaign has been so successful is because we have moved beyond these old arguments.

What we saw yesterday out of Reverend Wright was a resurfacing and, I believe, an exploitation of those old divisions. Whatever his intentions, that was the result. It is antithetical to our campaign. It is antithetical to what I am about. It is not what I think America stands for.

And I want to be very clear that, moving forward, Reverend Wright does not speak for me. He does not speak for our campaign. I cannot prevent him from continuing to make these outrageous remarks, but what I do want him to be very clear about, as well as all of you and the American people, is that when I say that I find these comments appalling, I mean it.

It contradicts everything that I am about and who I am. And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign is about, I think, will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country.

I'm afraid that 20 years of listening to the man, allowing him to baptize your children, writing a book where the title is inspired by the guy, talking in Philadelphia about how you can't disown him and so much more all add up to give you Obama a serious credibility problem, one that only the gullible, the shallow and the ignorant would buy into.

I close once again challenging the Religious Left, and you know who you are, to speak up and defend your defense of Jeremiah Wright, especially now that Obama has dumped him like he has.

You have free reign in the comments.  Let's hear it.  I can't wait (though I suspect I'll have to).

If Jeremiah Wright represents the Black Church...

... then Bill Cosby is the much needed Martin Luther.

Eric Scheie at PajamasMedia gives us cogent thoughts on today's very wrong Wright appearance before the National Press Club:

... it didn’t take me long to find the Wright event on video in six YouTube segments.

Er, now that I’ve watched them all, I should say, six sickening YouTube segments .

20 minutes in, I was just about ready to throw up. The more I watch this malignant man, the less I want to watch. For starters, I find myself unable to stand Jeremiah Wright’s smarmy, sing-songy voice. Now, lest I be accused of racism in the way some have been accused of sexism for not liking Hillary Clinton’s voice, let me say that one of the things I most like about Barack Obama is his voice. He has a pleasant speaking manner, in stark contrast to Hillary’s screechy braying.

I’m no Hillary fan, and I may regret saying this lest it sound favorable to her, but Wright makes Hillary Clinton’s screeching and braying sound almost pleasant.

His supercilious insincerity, and mocking, deriding tone — all while he spews hateful and vindictive far left claptrap — belongs on Berkeley’s Communist controlled KPFA radio, if it even belongs there.

Wright talks about events of hundreds of years ago as if they’re happening right now. His tripe is some of the vilest demagoguery I’ve heard.

As I watched him, it occurred to me that I’d rather be getting a colonoscopy. (Or maybe even watching Ann Coulter, assuming that’s a distinction with a difference.)

But then another sickening thought occurred to me.

What sort of person could watch this crap for 20 years?

Now now, Eric! To each his own. One man’s soothing words of healing are another man’s poisonous rhetoric.

Somehow, I don’t find anything soothing in statements like this:

Reconciliation, the years have taught me, is where the hardest work is found for those of us in the Christian faith, however, because it means some critical thinking and some re-examination of faulty assumptions when using the paradigm of Dr. William Augustus Jones. Dr. Jones, in his book, God in the ghetto, argues quite accurately that one’s theology, how I see God, determines one’s anthropology, how I see humans, and one’s anthropology then determines one’s sociology, how I order my society.

Now, the implications from the outside are obvious. If I see God as male, if I see God as white male, if I see God as superior, as God over us and not Immanuel, which means “God with us,” if I see God as mean, vengeful, authoritarian, sexist, or misogynist, then I see humans through that lens.

My theological lens shapes my anthropological lens. And as a result, white males are superior; all others are inferior.

And I order my society where I can worship God on Sunday morning wearing a black clergy robe and kill others on Sunday evening wearing a white Klan robe.

(More on Jones here; he called Giuliani a fascist, helped Tawana Brawley avoid testifying, mentored Al Sharpton, and provided a platform for anti-Semite Leonard Jeffries.)

This is apparently Wright’s view of American religion. The very worst and most bigoted aspects of the past are treated as if they’re alive today in the form of “the Christianity of the slaveholder.” What’s with the wild cheering he got for saying things like that? As I wondered, the announcer said “the applause and the comments you hear from the audience are not necessarily those of the working press.” Well that’s a relief.

If you can stand to listen, the above (and more) can be heard on Part 3 of the YouTube video. (The rest are here.)

It would be hard to imagine any Jew talking this way about Germans, and the Holocaust is still within recent memory. Wright not only never lived through the stuff he excoriates white America for, he grew up in middle class affluence, with a pastor father and a mother who was vice principal of Philadelphia High School for Girls.

There's much more at PJMedia and I think every word ought to be read.

And I end with a question.  Where are the Religious Left apologists for Jeremiah Wright now?  Do they still think he's worth defending? 

Seriously?  Someone ask the question.  Someone give the answer.

Tornadoes rip through area

Over 200 hurt in neighboring Suffolk, roughly 30 miles southeast of my home:

Two apparent tornadoes struck the city of Suffolk, city spokeswoman Dana Woodson said. Bob Spieldenner from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management said at least 200 people were injured there.

At least 18 more people were injured when the storm hit Colonial Heights, Spieldenner said. Three of those were taken to hospitals. Woodson initially said one person died in Suffolk but later said the death was not connected to the storm.

Sentara Obici Hospital in Suffolk was damaged, but remained operational, Spieldenner said. Another hospital in the city also was treating the injured, Woodson said.

Sentara spokesman Dale Gauding said about 60 people were being treated, and he expected most to be released.

"We have lots of cuts and bruises," plus leg and arm injuries, he said. Some of the hospital's windows were cracked, apparently by flying debris.

"Multiple buildings have been destroyed, homes have been destroyed," Woodson said. She said the areas around the hospital and in the community of Driver were hardest hit.

My brother John and his family live within 10 miles (as the crow flies) of where the tornadoes touched down, his neighborhood however was spared.  I talked to my sister-in-law roughly half an hour or so before the storm hit but within the warning window just to make sure she was aware and she was on top of it.

I then talked to my youngest brother when tornado warnings were issued for his neighborhood in Gloucester County (roughly 30 miles north of my location) and though things were rocky even as we spoke, there were no reports of tornadoes touching down.

Our immediate area was spared though it did get ugly for moments.   As I write this, storms continue in the area hampering recovery efforts in the hardest hit areas. 

Governor Kaine has declared a state of emergency for damaged locations and the Red Cross is on the scene.  The Disaster Action Team (DAT) I'm a member of has not at this time been activated.

If you're a praying type, prayers for those affected I'm sure are coveted.

Say what?

Kate is less than enthused about the latest Dowd-ism:

The inexplicably still-employed Maureen Dowd;

Hillary grows more and more glowy as Obama grows more and more wan.

Is she draining him of his precious bodily fluids?

I'll leave that one alone.

Obama distancing himself from the Black Church

This according to the right-brained Jeremiah Wright:

In a defiant appearance before the Washington media, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that criticism surrounding his fiery sermons is an attack on the black church and rejected those who have labeled him unpatriotic.

"I served six years in the military," Barack Obama's longtime pastor said. "Does that make me patriotic? How many years did (Vice President Dick) Cheney serve?"

Wright spoke at the National Press Club before the Washington media and a supportive audience of black church leaders beginning a two-day symposium.

He said the black church tradition is not bombastic or controversial, but different and misunderstood by the "dominant culture" in the United States.

So... according to that portion of Jeremiah's brain that is functioning, that part that is making Obama's brain hurt like hell, Obama's actions to put distance between himself and Wright's controversial statements must mean, according to the left side of my brain, that Obama is distancing himself from the Black Church. 

Hmm...  wouldn't that be problematic?  Or am I just thinking... differently...  speaking of which, Gerard has some left-brained related comments:

It would seem there is a profound difference between the black brain and other brains after all. At least according to Reverend Wright. According to this shining exemplar of Barack Obama and the deep scholarship of black liberation theology, black people are right-brained and white people are left-brained. Asian people don't make the discussion since that would be, well, unfortunate.

If you're like me you've probably been wandering about the world babbling something about racial equality in America that affirms, "There are no differences except differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference." You could also say, "All men are created equal." How left-brained of you.

Now comes Reverend James Wright to set us all straight. He notes in passing that the right-brain of black people is somehow descended from the griots of Africa. The griots were people who could remember long, very long, poems; proto-rappers if you will. White people had something like that too, but then they invented ... writing. Or was it the Asians? I forget since, alas, my griot genes are slim to none.

At any rate, being descended from griots seems to me to be a lucky win in genetic lotto if you get one of the 100 top rapper slots in the world. It will probably be a bit more problematic if you want to get a job that involves actual analytic skills.

In the mean-time, Wizbang had a caption contest for the following pic at their place over the weekend:

My vote would be something like:

"Umm... like... Obama... like... I'm just not getting your Pastor guy... like, Oh My God... totally... like right brain, left brain, as if?... ok, you know, I think he's good and everything... whatever... like... duh... ok, Betches, like let's go get some pizza... fer shur..."

Re-inventing Jeremiah Wright

I'm sitting here watching CNN's coverage of Jeremiah Wright's speech at the Detroit NAACP convention and am struck by what's being attempted here.

Defenders are quick to jump on his critics, basing that defense on the notion that snippets of his many words spoken (or written) over the years are being used to twist who he really is.

And so what are they now attempting?

The. Very. Same. Thing. 

They take snippets of words spoken most recently (today on CNN, the other day on PBS), words shaped by the knowledge that every syllable will be dissected and reviewed, words influenced by that knowledge, words purposed in taking advantage of that knowledge and they attempt to tell us that these words, and not those used by his critics, define the man.

Snippets that critique are wrong.  Snippets that defend are right.

We're watching the rehabilitation, the reconstruction, the rebuilding, the remaking of a man... from bigoted hate-monger to enlightened social critic. 

Old Media will defend despite his many words over the years because Old Media and Jeremiah Wright are ideologically entwined and connected.

It'll be up to New Media to counter that defense.  Not just because New Media is opposed ideologically though that can't be denied but because New Media remains enamored with truth-telling.

Old Media used to be.  Now they're into truth-creation. 

And now they're into creating a new truth about Jeremiah Wright, led by Jeremiah Wright himself.

How quaint.  How convenient.

How deceptive.

Jeremiah Wright can't go back now and re-tape the videos so many of us have seen.  He can't go back and erase the relationships he and his church have nourished.  He can't go back and rewrite the church bulletins that have been published and many of them still available on the church's website.

Neither can Old Media.

New Media won't allow it.

People are dying cuz Al Gore is lying...

... as are so many of his sycophantic co-religionists.  Mark Steyn has details:

Western governments listened to the ecowarriors and introduced some of the "wartime measures" they've been urging. The EU decreed that 5.75 percent of petrol and diesel must come from "biofuels" by 2010, rising to 10 percent by 2020. The United States added to its 51 cent-per-gallon ethanol subsidy by mandating a fivefold increase in "biofuels" production by 2022.

The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you've suddenly got less to eat? Or, to be more precise, it's not "you" who's got less to eat but those starving peasants in distant lands you claim to care so much about.

Heigh-ho. In the greater scheme of things, a few dead natives keeled over with distended bellies is a small price to pay for saving the planet, right? Except that turning food into fuel does nothing for the planet in the first place.

We hear so much from the left, especially the Religious Left, as to how the whole global warming climate change is a moral crisis.  Well, it's certainly one now... and it's past time for the Church of Chicken Little to stand up and take credit for what it is they've wrought.

They lie, people die. 

How much longer will this charade go on, how many more will die, before they make amends?

H/T to Mike@Cold Fury who adds brutally:

Truly astonishing numbers of incandescently stupid and smarmy lemmings have now managed to convince themselves that they’re smarter than…well, everybody. Al Gore, call your office, you unctuous ass. But then again, most of the global warming dolts don’t much mind mass starvation; in fact, their own statements would seem to indicate that they’re wholeheartedly in favor of it — for Gaia’s sake, of course.

But what an amusing conundrum it presents for saner progressivists (if any). After all, wouldn’t you say that being anti-human is kinda, ummm, racist?

Compassionate or gullible?

Needy or Greedy?  You be the judge:

A life lesson, one focusing on the need to go deeper, on the notion that all is not what it seems, on the idea that discernment means more than buying into what appears superficially to be true.

What you've just seen summarizes for me what is so wrong about liberalism.  Liberalism demands giving to this girl (and those like her) without any questions.  Liberalism would find it sinful to do nothing.  Liberalism would suggest that you'd be greedy not to give to her and her ilk when in reality, it's the young girl and people like her who are so obviously greedy.

The piece is indeed anecdotal evidence for so much that is wrong with today's leftists mantras. 

Listen and learn folks.  Listen and learn.

Robbery Victim’s Twins Don't Make It - Too Many Shrug With Apathy

This story brings to light a dilemma too many readily ignore:

A pregnant teller shot in a bank robbery in Indianapolis has lost the twins she was carrying, and the police continued to search for the gunman. The teller, Katherin Shuffield, who was five months pregnant, was critically wounded Tuesday when a masked gunman shot her in the abdomen. One twin was born dead and the other died after birth, the Marion County coroner’s office said.

So does the bank robber face murder charges? 

If so, why?  For is it not true that had he engaged in actions leading to the same result within the sterile confines of a Planned Parenthood clinic, it would've been seen to be a proper outcome?

When liberals take action...

... to combat an alleged global crisis, be warned, there are consequences:

And there are more and more who are seeing that a false crisis has created a real one:

With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

“I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.

Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.”

“We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”

Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle for America to cut back on foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way to fight climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for ethanol’s prospects.

“It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol,” Mr. Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. “It’s not going to be a very good diet but that’s roughly enough to keep an adult person alive for a year.”

Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming. “Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem. Whether Al Gore has caught up with that, somebody ought to ask him,” the professor said. “There are lots of solutions, real solutions to climate change. We need to get to those.”

We could start by having Al Gore and his sycophants exposed as the frauds that they truly are, preying on the gullible for their own personal gain.

That's the best solution I see to be available.

What makes good satire?

Scrappleface makes good satire:

NY Times in Crisis, Bush Offers Journalistic Stimulus Plan

by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace

(2008-04-25) — As New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller stands poised to clear 100 reporters and editors from the newsroom due to falling advertising revenue, President George Bush today said Congress should intervene to rescue “The Grey Lady” by quickly passing what he called a “journalistic stimulus package.”

Similar to the president’s economic stimulus package which rescued capitalism from itself, the journalistic stimulus package would protect New York Times readers from editorial instability, while ensuring full employment for reporters and editors whose product is no longer in demand.

Under the terms of the plan, New York Times readers and advertisers would each receive 50 percent rebates of any money they paid to the Times in 2007 that they could apply to the purchase of future subscriptions or ad space.

Meanwhile, New York Times reporters and editors would get the following incentives aimed at increasing the value of their product, to inspire more subscriptions and to boost ad rates.

• 90-percent reduction of cleverly-veiled bias in news stories
• 120-day moratorium on unnamed sources who disparage people who have names
• Immediate halt to public revelation of national security secrets
• Strict rationing of adjectives and adverbs
• Creation of an entirely new category of factual news story, to be called “good news”
• Quadrupling “positive” coverage of efforts by U.S. troops to bring security and comfort to former victims of tyranny. Such stories shall now comprise at least one percent of the daily “news budget”

Truth makes good satire and this piece contains much of it. 

Nicely done.  Very nicely done.

He's black, He preaches, He's controversial, He cusses

And yet, he's not Jeremiah Wright.  Long but worthy, the dude scores some major points:

Black & White on the Grey Matters 2 (War)

H/T to Baldilocks.

Barak Obama unites...

... the lame brained:

"He just seemed very firm about the change, and that’s, like, his motto."

... and the ordained:

"I love the vision and breath of fresh air Obama represents."

He's a uniter, not a divider and in this case, two people you'd think would have little in common are taken in.  The first, a hollywood ditz and the latter, a Religious Leftist, presumably with wits.  Both coming together to root for their pied piper, Barak Obama.

The man is enrapturing the shallow from sea to shining sea.

"He’s a politician, I’m a pastor, we speak to two different audiences."

So says the less then reverent Jeremiah Wright:

Mr. Wright, who has acted as Mr. Obama’s spiritual mentor and retired in February as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said that he has never heard Mr. Obama repeat any of his controversial statements.

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Wright said. “I don’t talk to him about politics. And so he had a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. I continue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of God about the things of God.”

Mr. Obama publicly denounced Mr. Wright’s remarks, a reaction Mr. Wright said “went down very simply.”

“He’s a politician, I’m a pastor,” he said. “We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they’re two different worlds.”

I find that dualist perspective fascinating coming from a man of God.  An alleged man of God I should say.  So there's the world he lives in which I'll assume he believes to be of God.  And there's the world Obama lives in which I'll assume he believes to be... well... not of God?

You know, it's come down to my salivating at the next Jeremiah utterance. 

He's become a caricature... of his own making.

No sun spots spotted

Which, it seems, suggests an ice age cometh:

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

I don't know... I guess I could buy a decent coat... maybe some gloves... a warm hat...  of course, if we could figure out how to use all that energy being expended by the scare-mongers, we'd have more than enough heat...

Sigh...

 

 

Bill Clinton: "I said they played the race card on me before I didn't say they played the race card on me."

He can't help it.  He is the king prevaricator:

Former president Bill Clinton was embroiled Tuesday in a new campaign flap after accusing his wife's White House rival Barack Obama of playing "the race card on me."

A day after making the race card remark in a radio interview, in a discussion about January's bruising South Carolina primary, Clinton told reporters in Pittsburgh: "No, no, no. That's not what I said.

"You always follow me around and play these little games, and I'm not going to play your games today. This is a day about election day," he said, as Pennsylvania Democrats decided between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

"You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today. Have a nice day," the former president added.

Interviewed Monday by a Philadelphia radio station, Clinton was asked whether it was a mistake by him in January to liken Obama's candidacy to the African-American Jesse Jackson's in 1988.

"No. I think that they (the Obama campaign) played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along," Clinton had told the WHYY station.

After the interview was over but with the microphone still on, Clinton was heard to growl: "I don't think I should take any s(expletive) from anybody on that, do you?"

No, you shouldn't take any s(expletive) from anybody because you're already so full of s(expletive) that should you take any more of it you might just blow up.

Sheez.  Hillary must be ready to deck him.

Wish I'd have said that.

You know, it may be hard to find a candidate who doesn’t belong to a church whose leader delivers eyebrow-singing speeches on the evils of America and also built a house Jim Bakker would approve, and it may be hard to find a candidate who doesn’t move with ease in the same social circles as some people who bombed the Pentagon, but it can’t be that hard to find one who doesn’t do both.

-James the Bleat Lileks.

Brilliant.

With props to Matteo.

Website of the Day

Gina Cobb's picked one.

How cool is that?

Reciprocity suggests I should do something about it and so I did.  She's on the blogroll.

Thanks Gina.

So which is it?

From MSNBC:

The leader of Hamas said Monday that his Palestinian militant group would offer Israel a 10-year "hudna," or truce, as implicit proof of recognition of Israel if it withdrew from all lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East War.

Khaled Mashaal told The Associated Press that he made the offer to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in talks on Saturday. "We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as a proof of recognition," Mashaal said.

In his comments Monday, Mashaal used the Arabic word "hudna," meaning truce, which is more concrete than "tahdiya" — a period of calm — which Hamas often uses to describe a simple cease-fire.

"Hudna" implies a recognition of the other party's existence.

From the BBC:

Palestinian militant group Hamas will not recognise Israel, its political leader Khaled Meshaal has insited.

He was responding to comments by former US President Jimmy Carter, following their talks in Syria at the weekend.

Mr Meshaal said Hamas agreed to a Palestinian state on the land in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza that Israel captured in the 1967 war.

Mr Carter had said Hamas was prepared to accept the right of Israel to "live as a neighbour next door in peace".

Speaking in Syria, where he lives in exile, Khaled Meshaal said the Palestinian state must have "Jerusalem as its capital, with genuine sovereignty, without settlements".

He added that this did not mean recognising Israel, but he said: "We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as an alternative to recognition."

Interesting isn't it?

MSNBC attempts perhaps to grant legitimacy to Carter's efforts by using the phrase 'proof of recognition' while the BBC reports the same quote using the phrase 'an alternative to recognition'.

Which is correct?

My money's on the BBC... and history.

I blame Jeremiah Wright...

... for this little guy's sickness.

In the end, he endorses Obama. 

Seems fitting.

He's filled with some of that hope Obama's selling.

Summing up Obama's Hope-a-Dope strategy

Via GM's Corner:

             The seven dwarfs always left to go work in the mine
             early each morning.

             As always, Snow White stayed home doing her domestic
            chores.  As lunchtime approached, she would prepare
             their lunch and carry it to the mine.
 
            One day as she arrived at the mine with the lunch, she
            saw that there had been a terrible cave-in.

             Fearing the worst, Snow White began
            calling out, hoping against hope that the dwarfs had
             somehow survived.
 
             'Hello, hello!'  she shouted. 'Can anyone hear me?

             Hello!' For a long while, there was no answer.  Losing
             hope, Snow White again shouted, 'Hello! Is anyone down
             there?'

             Just as she was about to give up all hope, there came
             A faint voice from deep within the mine,

             'Vote for Obama!'

             Snow White fell to her knees, and prayed,

            'Oh, thank You Lord!  At least Dopey is still alive.'

Heh.

"We have, it seems, entered the post-human age."

The Good Doctor is describing what ails us:

There was, at the first, the video: a teenage girl, lured into a trap, then brutally beaten by six other girls her age for thirty minutes continually, carefully recorded on video for upload to YouTube.

Then came the Yale “artist” who repeatedly impregnated herself by artificial insemination, then aborted the fetus with drugs, carefully saving the results for display wrapped in plastic and Vaseline for her senior art exhibit.

Then this morning, in the local paper: a man — a school bus driver — convicted for sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl left alone on his bus.

One could multiply such incidents, ad nauseum, on almost any given day, in any part of the world — beheadings and genocide, ghoulish scenes of body parts and bloodied walls from yet another heroic martyr seeking virgins through hyperviolence. Yet these events, small on such a savage scale, in some way troubled me more than most.

One wants to rail at a society gone mad, at a civilization which has lost its bearings and moral compass, at a decadence fed by materialism and secularism, force-fed with the rotgut wine of postmodern relativism, drunk with the notion that ideas have no consequence and idols worshiped bring no destruction.

Yet the time for such anguished mourning seems long past, its passing but a point in a pitiful past history. We have, it seems, entered the post-human age.

Our secular prophets have heralded the Good News: there is no God; we are but accidental apes. We have been liberated from the bondage of religion and morals; we are, at last, in this twenty-first century, at the pinnacle of human achievement and potential. The shackles of superstition are broken, the potential of man unbounded, his glory unlimited but by the constraints of his imagination.

Yet as we celebrate our exalted humanity, the technology we worship brings glimpses of a darker reality, flashed in some subliminal message quickly dismissed as aberration or sideshow.

We may reflexly think of those who partake in such ghastly exhibitionism to be but beasts– but to think thus insults the animal, whose nobility far exceeds our own. For the animal kingdom is violent, brutish, and predatory — but it is so with purpose, its violence constrained by the drive to survive, or mate, or protect its territory. It is only the human animal who ventures into the subhuman, in glorification and gleeful pursuit of perversion for pleasure, of violence as theater. It is this theatrics of barbarism so prevalent in our age which bespeaks something far darker, more sinister, more terrifying. For to be human is to share the beautiful and the good with the hideous and evil; it has been so since the dawn of history. But to celebrate perdition, to promulgate a pornography of barbarism, to cast it abroad over media and message seems the unique and chilling characteristic of our current reckless age.

Civilization has always withstood the barbarians with low walls lightly guarded. It has depended far less on strength of force than strength of character, a consensus among the civilized that certain behavior and unrestrained license threaten its very existence. Laws and the power of enforcement cannot long resist the dark demons of depravity unleashed from within; the power of Rome proved feeble when there became no difference between the citizens within and the barbarians without. The Dark Ages which thus ensued seem now long forgotten, even as we arrogate the privileges of freedom while destroying the self-control and restraint on which it depends.

There is more, written beautifully by someone who is so obviously touched by God's spirit and who manifests that touching in his posts. 

There's a prophetic warning in the message, akin to that put out by G. K. Chesterton when he spoke of our need to understand the purpose for fences before removing them.

We are in need of an awakening.  We are in need of those who would remind us, with substantiating integrity, that there's An Anchor out there, A Tether, who offers not the kind of freedom we have too much of today, a freedom that in reality is as binding, but A Freedom that frees us truly.

The holes in our soul, holes which lead us to every kind of barbarity, depravity and immorality while we search for an in-filling, are what I believe to be holes that can be filled only by the substance and person of Christ. 

Yet, as I believe I've learned in the last number of years, it's a hole filled full for only moments.  Somehow, that hole leaks, and our yearning for yet another filling returns once more and again we must seek not that substitutionary filling offered by the things of this world but the substitutionary filling offered by God the Father through Christ His Son.

How that infilling is proven to have taken place will be the source of much angst within Christendom and it has certainly driven me bonkers over the years.  I'm of a place now where I worry less about the how and more about the when.

My prayer is that The Fence too many have worked to dismantle will be mended and that you and I will be used, in small ways and bigger ways, to be His menders.

 

Would members of the Religious and secular Left...

... please turn their attention away from defending Jeremiah Wright and now begin defending the lunacy of Alicia Keys:

There's another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist.

The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. 'Gangsta rap' didn't exist."

Keys, 27, said she's read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck "to symbolize strength, power and killing 'em dead," according to an interview in the magazine's May issue, on newsstands Tuesday.

Another of her theories: The bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. was fueled "by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing."

Keys' AK-47 jewelry came as a surprise to her mother, who is quoted as telling Blender: "She wears what? That doesn't sound like Alicia." Keys' publicist, Theola Borden, said Keys was on vacation and unavailable for comment.

Though she's known for her romantic tunes, she told Blender that she wants to write more political songs. If black leaders such as the late Black Panther Huey Newton "had the outlets our musicians have today, it'd be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself," she said.

Yet another disciple, apparently, of the theology preached by the likes of Jeremiah Wright.  Anything negative occurring in the black  community  can be blamed on whitey. 

Period.

And should you disagree, you're part of the problem and a likely racist to boot.

I can't wait for progressives to make excuses for Ms. Keys as they've done Jeremiah... especially the Religious Left and you can bet there'll be defenders.

Count on it.

Did Obama flip Hillary off (UPDATED)?

Some are saying maybe?

We'll no doubt hear much more about this incident in coming days.

Right now, we'll just leave this video for Ticket readers to view and judge for themselves. It's Sen. Barack Obama, according to the caption on YouTube posted just minutes ago, speaking to a friendly crowd in Raleigh, N.C., today.

He's talking critically about his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, and the kind of distasteful gotcha politics that occur in Washington. And he says, "That's all right. Sen. Clinton looked in her element."

Watch the video right then. The presidential candidate raises his right hand to seemingly scratch his cheek.

He doesn't use his whole hand though. Just one finger. Briefly. A couple of strokes.

You be the judge.  Note the crowd's reaction and