Brutally Honest

Religion of Peace

Plank's Constant is chronicling how peaceful:

Since 9/11 there have been over 10,000 attacks by a "few" misguided extremists, so pardon me if I blame Islam for the actions of tens of thousands.

Islamists kill more people in one year than in all 356 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined.

More civilians were killed by Muslim extremists in two hours on September 11th than in the 26 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.

So yes, Ahmed, throw in my face the piddling death count of hundreds of years of the Spanish Inquisition or the thousands killed in decades of Irish Christian fighting, however the Spanish inquisition ended as did "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, but unfortunately Islam will be with us forever unless the West bans the practice of that faux religion or Muslims reform their religion.

I will stop blaming Islam for the savage and barbaric attacks by Muslims when dictionaries redefine 'few' to mean 'more than ten thousand'.

Here is a tiny List of Islamic Terror Attacks For the Past 2 Months committed by just a "few" Muslims.

Bernie goes on to list just those attacks that have occurred in the last two months... two months... I compiled them into a spreadsheet and then totaled the dead and injured.

1849 killed. 3460 injured.

In two months.

Your religion of peace.

H/T Kathy.

Chicken Little wears many cockscombs

If it ain't the heat that's gonna kill us all, it must be the cold:

Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera is a geophysics researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

At a recent conference Herrera argued the breakup of the the Argentine Perito Moreno in Argentina was not due to global warming, but rather

"The event was due, he said, to a natural process caused by temperature and precipitation of the river."
Herrera has been mildly scornful of the methods used to predict global warming due to the computer models which don't include solar activity as part of the data parameters. Solar activity is often thought to be a major factor in the formation of specific weather patterns on earth.

The models and forecasts of the IPCC "is incorrect because only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity," said the specialist also in image processing and signs and prevention of natural disasters.

The phenomenon of climate change, he added, should include other kinds of factors, both internal, such as volcanoes and the very human activity, and external, such as solar activity.

Herrera has indicted the most immediate result of the upcoming "little Ice Age" will be a global issue of drought, as even more of the planets fresh water is captured in frozen form.

Methinks that Chicken Little also pecks with many beaks.

Via Don Surber.

Roseanne Barr is clearly not Obasmic

In fact, she seems a little perturbed:

democrats want to lose

and therefore did not fully vet the candidate they shoved down everyone's throat. I am the first blogger to blog about Obama's abortion vote and how it would become the october surprise...they have michelle obama on tape defending live birth abortion, and raising money for it too...(they called this "the whitey" tape, but its far better than just that kind of a boring thing...she is on tape defending sucking the brains out of babies who live through late term abortions). This is the greatest gift pelosi and dean can give to the republicans they work for. It took alot of doing in order to throw this election to the republicans after iraq, katrina, and the economy, but pelosi and dean found a way!

Well Barack... you've blown the Obnoxious vote.

That's just sad... in a non-sad sort of way... Lord knows the Democratic Party is riddled with the Obnoxious.

Let's hope there's more of this sort of thing to be revealed in the coming days.

H/T Don Surber.

When is "Thank You Mr. President" really "F*** You Mr. President?"

When the words are spoken by Helen Thomas.

That's the only conclusion I can come to when I see the woman engage in what others call journalism and what I'd call symptomatic of one of the most serious cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

And I'm apparently not alone:

Multiple choice quiz: Helen Thomas has been covering the White House for 48 years. Which of the following stories did she break?

A. President Kennedy's plans to invade the Bay of Pigs.

B. President Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia.

C. The Pentagon Papers.

D. The Watergate scandal.

E. None of the above, or anything else, either.

The answer, of course, is E, though you might not guess it from the fawning HBO documentary Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas At The White House, the latest unfortunate example of the increasing tendency to confuse public temper tantrums with good journalism.

Though Thomas is routinely referred to these days as iconic, legendary and fearless, journalism has little to do with it. She's celebrated not for her work as a journeyman reporter at a second-rate wire service or as a virtually unread political columnist for the Hearst newspapers.

Her reputation really derives from scolding, tendentious speeches nominally delivered as ''questions'' like this one to George W. Bush, admiringly featured in Thank You, Mr. President: ''Why do you refuse to respect the wall between church and state? You know that the mixing of religion and government for centuries has led to slaughter.'' Just in case you thought that was intended to produce an actual answer -- the usual aim of reporters -- Thomas interrupted Bush before he could even complete a sentence. Perhaps that's because when presidents have gotten a chance to reply to Thomas' tirades, they've often made her look like a fool.

Making Helen Thomas look like a fool would be synonymous with making cotton look fluffy. There's no effort to it, it simply happens naturally.

How in hell HBO can dedicate anything to this journalistic joke is beyond me. Not having seen it, I can't help but wonder if it might be satirical. Perhaps something like an SNL skit.

One thing I do know. I won't be watching it.

I'd rather experience waterboarding.

With props to Michelle.

Obamalogic

We better hope for some change:

Pastor Rick Warren asked each Presidential candidate which Justices he would not have nominated. Mr. McCain said, "with all due respect" the four most liberal sitting Justices because of his different judicial philosophy.

Mr. Obama took a lower road, replying first that "that's a good one," and then adding that "I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he, I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution." The Democrat added that he also wouldn't have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.

So let's see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General's office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court. Since his "elevation" to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

Meanwhile, as he bids to be America's Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a "community organizer" and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas's judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama's Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas's rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama's story look like easy street.

Even more troubling is what the Illinois Democrat's answer betrays about his political habits of mind. Asked a question he didn't expect at a rare unscripted event, the rookie candidate didn't merely say he disagreed with Justice Thomas. Instead, he instinctively reverted to the leftwing cliché that the Court's black conservative isn't up to the job while his white conservative colleagues are.

So much for civility in politics and bringing people together.

Never was about civility and bringing people together.

Never is.

It's unadulterated liberalism.

It's about lying to gain power.

It always is with leftists.

Barack Obama: Abortion Extremist

Via Cartago Delenda Est who labels what follows aptly.

Effective:

Extremist indeed.

This just in...

... the sky is blue, water is wet, Harry Reid is a buffoon, Nancy Pelosi is incompetent and The Washington Post is biased:

Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain -- and therefore there's more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn't look good.

In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13, with three Page 1 references with photos to stories on inside pages. Fifteen stories featured both candidates and were about polls or issues such as terrorism, Social Security and the candidates' agreement on what should be done in Afghanistan.

This dovetails with Obama's dominance in photos, which I pointed out two weeks ago. At that time, it was 122 for Obama and 78 for McCain. Two weeks later, it's 143 to 100, almost the same gap, because editors have run almost the same number of photos -- 21 of Obama and 22 of McCain -- since they realized the disparity. McCain is almost even with Obama in Page 1 photos -- 10 to 9.

This is not just a Post phenomenon. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been monitoring campaign coverage at an assortment of large and medium-circulation newspapers, broadcast evening and morning news shows, five news Web sites, three major cable news networks, and public radio and other radio outlets. Its latest report, for the week of Aug. 4-10, shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain.

Surprise, surprise, surprise... for the brain-dead.

Barack Obama: "I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."

Only, Barack is the one that lied:

The presumptive Democratic nominee responded sharply in an interview Saturday night with the Christian Broadcast Network, saying anti-abortion groups were "lying" about his record.

"They have not been telling the truth," Mr. Obama said. "And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."

He added that it was "ridiculous" to suggest he had ever supported withholding lifesaving treatment for an infant. "It defies common sense and it defies imagination, and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive," he said in the CBN interview.

At issue is the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a bill in the Illinois state Senate that sought to protect against bungled abortions by requiring that a fetus that survived an abortion be defined as a person. Fearing that the legislation could be interpreted more broadly to protect fetuses that were not yet viable — thus threatening Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates pushed for an amendment that explicitly limited the scope of the bill to infants "born alive."

"Nothing in this section," the added sentence reads, "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this section." A federal version with that added clause passed Congress unanimously in 2002, with the support of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kennedy, among others. Mr. Obama said in 2004 and again on Saturday that he would have supported the federal version.

During the Democratic primary, Mrs. Clinton's campaign criticized Mr. Obama for voting "present" — instead of "no" — on the "Born Alive" bill in Illinois, which did not contain a provision protecting the Roe v. Wade decision.

The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, in 2003, voted against a "Born Alive" bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.

The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.

Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported "was not the bill that was presented at the state level."

His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate, and a spokesman, Hari Sevugan, said the senator and other lawmakers had concerns that even as worded, the legislation could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law. Those concerns did not exist for the federal bill, because there is no federal abortion law.

Kim, at her new blog Up North Mommy Talks Politics, weighs in pointedly:

The National Right to Life’s Douglas Johnson responded to these new excuses:
Told of the campaign’s explanation, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, Douglas Johnson, was dubious. “These are newly manufactured and highly implausible excuses,” he said. “There is no way that the bill would have had any effect on any method of abortion.” Mr. Johnson said the version Mr. Obama voted down clearly applied only to fetuses that emerged from the womb alive.
So why did the Obama camp finally fold on this issue? Yesterday, NRLC’s Douglas Johnson upped the ante called Obama’s bluff. From Jill Stanek:
Since 2004, Obama has been betting that the mainstream news media will lack the interest and attention span required to get a clear picture of his actual record regarding infants who are born alive during abortions, and so far that mostly has worked for him.

In his short interview with David Brody, Obama tripled his bet on that proposition by calling us liars. He also relied on diversionary verbal smokescreens, but without directly addressing the newly discovered 2003 documentation that proves the falsity of his account.

We now challenge Obama to either declare the two 2003 legislative documents to be forgeries and call for an official investigation, or else apologize for his four years of misrepresentation on the issue of babies who are born alive during abortions - and for calling us liars.
I’d say this is why he folded. He knows he voted against this bill and he couldn’t cover it up any longer.

Bottom line is that Obama willfully lied and then attempted to project that lying onto others on a Christian television program.

We're watching an empty suit fold here people... completely fold, this despite the best attempts of the Party machinery to continue to prop him up.

Like Nancy Pelosi:

A confident Barack Obama raised an extraordinary $7.8 million Sunday at three California fundraisers, most if it in large checks to a Democratic Party committee.

“I will win. Don’t worry about that,” he said to the crowd of about 1,300 at his third event of the evening, according to the pool report.

He was warmly received by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called him "a leader that God has blessed us with at this time."

Let there be little doubt folks that when Nancy Pelosi says blessed, she means cursed.

Beyond doubt.

McCain camp answers Andrea Mitchell smear

Via Politico.com, news that the McCain folks won't take media bias lightly.

Below is a copy of the letter written to NBC in the wake of Andrea Mitchell's charge on Meet The Press yesterday:

August 17, 2008
Mr. Steve Capus
President, NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112

Steve:

We are extremely disappointed to see that the level of objectivity at NBC News has fallen so low that reporters are now giving voice to unsubstantiated, partisan claims in order to undercut John McCain.

Nowhere was this more evident than with NBC chief correspondent Andrea Mitchell's comments on "Meet the Press" this morning. In analyzing last night's presidential forum at Saddleback Church, Mitchell expressed the Obama campaign spin that John McCain could only have done so well last night because he "may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama." Here are Andrea Mitchell's comments in full:

Mitchell: "The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because what they are putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well-prepared." (NBC's "Meet The Press," 8/17/08)

Make no mistake: This is a serious charge. Andrea Mitchell is repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated in last night's forum at Saddleback Church. Instead of trying to substantiate this blatant falsehood in any way, Andrea Mitchell felt that she needed to repeat it on air to millions of "Meet the Press" viewers with no indication that 1.) There's not one shred of evidence that it's true; 2.) In his official correspondence to both campaigns, Pastor Rick Warren provided both candidates with information regarding the topic areas to be covered, which Barack Obama acknowledged during the forum when asked about Pastor Warren's idea of an emergency plan for orphans and Obama said, "I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea;" 3.) John McCain actually requested that he and Barack Obama do the forum together on stage at the same time, making these kinds of after-the-fact complaints moot.

Indeed, instead of taking a critical journalistic approach to this spin, Andrea Mitchell did what has become a pattern for her of simply repeating Obama campaign talking points.

This is irresponsible journalism and sadly, indicative of the level of objectivity we have witnessed at NBC News this election cycle. Instead of examining the Obama campaign's spin for truth before reporting it to more than 3 million NBC News viewers, Andrea Mitchell simply passed along Obama campaign conspiracy theories. The fact is that during Senator Obama's segment at Saddleback last night, Senator McCain was in a motorcade to the event and then held in a green room with no broadcast feed. In the forum, John McCain clearly demonstrated to the American people that he is prepared to be our next President.....

We are concerned that your News Division is following MSNBC's lead in abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race. We would like to request a meeting with you as soon as possible to discuss our deep concerns about the news standards and level of objectivity at NBC.

Sincerely,

Rick Davis
Campaign Manager
John McCain 2008

You might be a liberal if

This one's making the rounds... as it ought:

You're sure the Constitution explicitly guarantees the right to abortion and gay marriage, but not the right to own a handgun.
You think Dan Quayle is the dumbest Vice-President we ever had because he believed a flash card that misspelled "potato," but think Obama is a genius despite the fact he believes we have more than 57
states.
You'd be more upset about your favorite candidate being endorsed by the NRA than the Communist Party.
You think the same criminals who use guns in the commission of a crime will just hand them over to comply with the law if guns are made illegal.
You know that 86% of all income taxes are paid by the top 25% of income earners and you still feel that the rich "aren't paying their fair share of the taxes."
You put a higher priority on oil pipelines possibly inconveniencing a few caribou than you do on lowering the price of gas for everyone in the country by drilling ANWR.
You're worried that Osama Bin Laden might not get a fair trial if we capture him, but want George Bush thrown in prison for being too zealous in protecting us from Al-Qaeda.
You get infuriated when you hear about the CEO of a Fortune 500 company making tens of millions of dollars, but don't see a problem with an actor, basketball player, or trial lawyer making the same amount.
You're constantly seeing subtle, coded racism in campaign ads, but see nothing racist about blacks being promoted over more qualified white applicants because of Affirmative Action.
You think it's obscene that oil companies are allowed to make 8.3 cents per gallon in profit with gas prices this high, but would never suggest cutting the 13 cents per gallon they pay on taxes to reduce the price of gas.
You think George Bush is a chickenhawk because he wanted to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan despite the fact that he only served in the National Guard, but you don't think the same about Barack Obama,
who has never served in the military and probably couldn't find either country on a map without help.
You think protesting outside of abortion clinics is extremism and should be illegal, but carrying around giant puppet heads while wearing a t-shirt that compares Bush to Hitler is just exercising your First Amendment rights.
You think the case for global warming is proven without a shadow of a doubt, but that we need another century or two worth of evidence to figure out if capitalism and free markets work better than socialism.
You believe the best way to fix the government screwing something up in the market is with...drumroll, please...more government intervention.
You think the first thing we should have done when Russia invaded Georgia was to take the matter to the United Nations, where Russia sits on the UN Security Council.
You spend your days criticizing the use of private jets, SUVS, and luxurious houses that consume enormous amounts of resources and then ride in an SUV to the airport, get on your private plane, and fly home to your luxurious house.
You have more nice things to say about countries like Cuba and France than you do about your own country.
You think the war in Iraq is unwinnable, but victory in the war on poverty is going to happen any day now if we can just get the Democrats back in charge.
You won't even support English as our national language, but can't seem to understand why people worry about tens of millions of illegal aliens changing our culture.
You think censorship is absolutely wrong; except when it's applied to conservatives on college campuses or on talk radio via the fairness doctrine.
You get more upset about an American soldier accidentally killing a civilian than you do about a terrorist deliberately blowing up a school bus full of kids.
You think Fox News is hopelessly biased to the right, but MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS call it right down the middle.
You think the real hero of the Cold War was Mikhail Gorbachev.
You couldn't care less about what Americans in states like Kansas or Virginia think of you, but you would be greatly upset if a Frenchman gave you a dirty look because you're an American.
You think kids in public schools should have to watch Earth in the Balance and read Heather Has Two Mommies, but no piece of literature with the word "Jesus" on it should be allowed within a hundred yards of a school.

Damned hard to argue with any of that.

Damned hard... and you know it's setting teeth on edge... especially Fuquod's.

Heh.

Andrea Mitchell: McCain must've cheated, he was so well prepared

From MSNBC:

(Videotape)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): Defeat it. Couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do it. I will get that done.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Andrea Mitchell, that's a pretty clear contrast.

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, there was the crisp, immediate, forceful response by John McCain, clearly in a comfort zone because he was with his base. And Barack Obama, taking a risk in going there but seeing an opportunity. And a much more nuanced approach. The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that--what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: He seemed so well prepared.

MR. GREGORY: Well, you talk about this issue and the crisis that's in Georgia, nuanced doesn't work for Democrats. And here, Obama's been criticized this week for the idea that there should be restraint on both sides when the administration, you hear this morning, is out with very tough language against Russia.

MS. MITCHELL: In the long run, though, if you look at the analysis and how this all started, nuanced may be a better approach than this get tough approach. But clearly, as a sound bite in a political campaign, going after Russia, going after Putin is a much more appealing approach. But when you, when you talk to people who really know the issue, Georgia did things and Ossetia is not a clear-cut case. I mean, there is a lot of, of depth here. But what Obama is trying to--how he's trying to frame it is not as easily sold on the campaign trail.

That'll be the spin then I guess... McCain kicks butt at Saddleback, Obama looks less than Presidential (and typically nuanced) and it all must be because McCain cheated.

Pretty amazing... but then again, not really. The MSM has to continue to prop up this empty suit and they're going to have to be pretty creative to do so. Accusing McCain of cheating is but one way. There'll be more ways unveiled between now and November, no doubt.

With props to Kim at Wizbang who's pretty pissed about the whole thing:

Unbelievable. Barack Obama got his ass handed to him last night because he is a light weight and that's it. There is no other reason, and for his camp to completely malign Senator McCain's honor and integrity is just plain offensive.

According to the Obama camp John McCain couldn't possibly have had a great night because he was able to call on his deep bench of knowledge that's a result of a lifetime of experience in government and military service and international relations. No. According to Obama, that couldn't possibly be the case. It has to be that he cheated.

How utterly pathetic.

But, you know, Obama can just up this charade that he's in the same league as McCain and then toss insults when he fails to measure up because it will illustrate even more that Obama is about as qualified to be President of the United States as Bozo the Clown.

It's the liberal way really. When they can't best your ideas, your thinking, your mindset, they attempt to tear you down with lies, innuendo, and blatant falsehoods.

I call it evil. You can call it what ever the hell you'd like.

Pakistani women burned by acid or fire - Los Angeles Times refuses to mention Islam

Imagine with me for just a moment what the gist of this article might be if some sect of radical Christian men were doing this to their wives:

Saira Liaqat squints through her one good eye as she brushes a woman's hair. Her face, most of which the acid melted years ago, occasionally lights up with a smile. Her hands, largely undamaged, deftly handle the dark brown locks.

A few steps away in this popular beauty salon, Urooj Akbar diligently trims, cleans and paints clients' fingernails. Her face, severely scarred from the blaze that burned about 70% of her body, is somber. It's hard to tell if she's sad or if it's just the way she now looks.

Liaqat and Akbar are among Pakistan's many female victims of arson and acid attacks. Such tales tend to involve a spurned or crazy lover and end in a life of despair and seclusion for the woman.

These two instead became beauticians.

The women can't escape the mirrors or pictures of glamorous models that surround them, but they consider the salon a second home and a good way to make a living. The two also serve as reminders of that age-old lesson on beauty -- a lesson that, needed or not, they learned the hard way.

"Every person wishes that he or she is beautiful," says Liaqat, 21. "But in my view, your face is not everything. Real beauty lies inside a person, not outside."

"They do it because the world demands it," Akbar, 28, says of clients. "For them, it's a necessity. For me, it isn't."

Liaqat and Akbar got into the beauty business in the eastern city of Lahore thanks to the Depilex Smileagain Foundation, an organization devoted to aiding women who have been burned in acid or other attacks.

About five years ago, Masarrat Misbah, head of Pakistan's well-known Depilex salon chain, was leaving work when a veiled woman approached and asked for her help. She was insistent, and soon, a flustered Misbah saw why.

When she removed her veil, Misbah felt faint. "I saw a girl who had no face."

The woman said her husband had thrown acid on her.

Misbah decided to place a small newspaper ad to see if others needed similar assistance.

Forty-two women and girls responded.

Misbah got in touch with Smileagain, an Italian nonprofit that has provided medical services to burn victims in other countries. She sought the help of Pakistani doctors. Perhaps the biggest challenge has been raising money for the cause, in particular to build a special hospital and refuge for burn victims in Pakistan.

You keep reading and you'll find not a single mention of Islam in the article. Nary one.

Amazing.

More amazing is that Religious Leftists, who are quick to pounce on anything resembling sexism or abuse by men against women (most especially if Christians are alleged to be doing the victimizing) are as quick to turn a blind eye to what's going on here, the horrendous objectifying of women that is the direct result of the thinking coming from the blind and evil embrace of the Koran.

Let there be little doubt about the bleating that comes from the left and the end game they have in mind when they see stories like this one.

While focusing on the women abused by men meme, they miss the elephant in the living room, radical Islam and the by-product of that wayward religion.

This Obama will fix if elected by mere talking.

Yea, right.

Snark

ScrappleFace, as only he can, drives home The Point:

Pastor Rick Warren’s Forum Unfair to Obama
by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace

(2008-08-17) — The Saddleback Civil Forum Saturday night, hosted by best-selling author Pastor Rick Warren, was “utterly and shamelessly biased” toward Republican presidential nominee John McCain, according to a spokesman for the ‘Obama for America’ campaign.

Sen. Barack Obama, one of the two front runners for the Democrat presidential nomination, often seemed to stumble through his answers to Pastor Warren’s questions, continually glancing down to his right, with his head cocked at a 45-degree angle for nearly the entire hour.

Sen. McCain, on the other hand, gave crisp answers, looked directly at the television audience most of the time, and delivered what many pundits acknowledged was his best performance to date.

Pastor Warren asked each candidate the same set of questions, including “At what point is a baby entitled to human rights.?”

Answering that question would be “above my pay grade,” said Sen. Obama, who reported $4.2 million in household income in 2007.

When he was asked the same question, Sen. McCain immediately said, “At the moment of conception.”

That interchange clearly demonstrates how the event was biased against Sen. Obama, according to his spokesman.

“Of course McCain looked good,” the anonymous Obama aide said. “He didn’t have to worry about how his answer would be perceived. He didn’t have to work to recall his talking points. He didn’t have to think, or even try to look like he was thinking. All he had to do was blurt out what he believed. Clearly, this gave him an unfair advantage, and we think the American people will see this for what it is…another Republican smear tactic.”

Heh.

Obama's abortion lie

At last night's Saddleback forum, Obama spoke to the issue of abortion:

So Obama's goal is to reduce the number of abortions, a goal he deems worthy of pursuing:

Because the fact is that although we’ve had a president who is opposed to abortions the last eight years, abortions have not gone down.

Really?

The number of abortions performed in the United States dropped to 1.2 million in 2005 -- the lowest level since 1976, according to a new report.

The number of abortions fell at least in part because the proportion of women ending their pregnancies with an abortion dropped 9 percent between 2000 and 2005, hitting the lowest level since 1975, according to a nationwide survey.

Well... I'm sure Barack simply made a mistake, after all there's nothing in his history that would suggest that he has anything in mind but to reduce the number of abortions.

Really?

Last week Doug Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee drew my attention to a previously unnoticed January 2008 article by Terence Jeffrey stating Barack Obama actually did vote against a version of the IL Born Alive Infants Protection Act that was identical to the federal version, contrary to multiple public statements Obama or his surrogates have made to rationalize his opposition to the IL bill for the past 4 years.

Since then we have found 2 separate documents proving Barack Obama has been misrepresenting facts.

In fact, Barack Obama is more liberal than any U.S. senator, voting against identical language of a bill that body passed unanimously, 98-0. In fact, Barack Obama condones infanticide if it would otherwise interfere with abortion.

Here is the statement with documentation released by NRLC this morning:

New documents just obtained by NRLC, and linked below, prove that Senator [Barack] Obama has for the past four years blatantly misrepresented his actions on the IL Born-Alive Infants Protection bill.

Summary and comment by NRLC spokesman Douglas Johnson:
Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an IL state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion - even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama's legislative actions in 2003 - denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions - were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose.

I'm sure the MSM will be bringing these inconsistencies to the attention of the American people any day now.

Any. Day. Now.

Obamasmarts

Coming to a White House near you... maybe:

Tip of the fedora to Five feet of fury.

"A political paradox of monumental proportion"

Locutisprime, at his place, on the Obama opinion expressed last night that Clarence Thomas wasn't qualified to sit on the Supreme Court:

Obama when asked who he would not have appointed to the Supreme Court, immediately targeted Clarence Thomas. And his reasoning was prescient IMO. "I don't think he was a strong enough jurist or a legal thinker at the time for that. I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of the Constitution"

Which IMO was a political paradox of monumental proportion. Coming from a man who has only the weakest political experience, yet represents himself as a seasoned leader. Obama went after Clarence Thomas as if his inexperience as a jurist was a justification of non-qualifier in Obama's mind. Obama was clearly playing to his race and to black America on that representation and by targeting Clarence Thomas.

Chutzpah points for Barack on this one. To knock a man's assent to power on the basis of his inexperience when you're barely qualified to run for city council is an exhibition of unparalleled chutzpah.

Or stupidity.

Your choice.

Compare and contrast

We've been talking about evil of late here at Brutally Honest and so did the candidates last night at the Saddleback Civil Forum:

I have bemoaned the candidacy of John McCain time and again on the pages of this blog and yet, as time passes, as I learn more about both Obama and McCain (but especially Obama), I am seeing the choice crystallize.

We live in perilous times. Unspeakable and unimaginable evil has been perpetrated on innocents throughout the world in the name of the false religion that is Islam. Too many have soft-pedaled it and though I can understand the necessity for politicians to do a two-step around the issue, at some point the dancing will have to end.

When that time comes, nuanced language and half-hearted dawdling should not be amongst the weapons of choice used to confront what will need to be confronted. Instead, we'll need the impetus birthed by the instinctual words McCain uttered about what to do with evil: "Defeat it!".

Victor Davis Hanson puts it this way:

One is struck by Obama’s postmodern worldview. There are no absolutes, just nuances and contexts that preclude certainty. Evil for Obama: “A lot of evil’s been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil.” Could he be specific where we have perpetrated “a lot of evil?”

Again, the gut instinct for Obama—whether talking about our “tragic history”, or the need for more “oppression studies” or evoking our sins in front of the Germans—is always to start out with the premise of a flawed America, rather than appreciation of the vast difference between us and the alternative. Never a word here about evil abroad, or bin Laden or Dr. Zawahiri. No, instead, we need humility about that “lot of evil” perpetrated by you know whom.

Somehow he is pro-choice, but anti-abortion, for man/woman marriage, but not in the legal sense, not for merit pay, but for rewarding good teachers—all this is in the manner he was against the Russians and for them while for and against the Georgians. His mushy responses were emblematic of the therapeutic style—empathy with everyone, judgment on no-one. We may soon be back to Jimmy Carter, paralyzed how to divvy up the White House Tennis Courts among feuding subordinates. He can’t say much pro or con on abortion, other than there is an ethical and moral element to the issue. And any of you who deny that, well are just darn wrong. He is against late-term abortion— but only if the mother’s life is in danger. And so on.

And so on. And so what drives Obama is this incessant urge to fence straddle, to seem erudite and scholarly and pensive and thoughtful. Unless, of course, he's talking about America's evil, the wrongness of the Iraq war, greedy oil executives, and whatever else is used as mantra by the leftists in this country.

It's true that McCain is less than appealing to me as a Presidential candidate. He has his flaws and some of them are rather large to me but when he stands next to Barack Obama and when he speaks to what I believe to be the quintessential issue of our day, there is no question in my mind as to who will get my vote.

No question.

H/T to Right Pundits for the video.

From the ridiculous...

... to the not so sublime, a politically wild deck of playing cards for the politically obsessed.

Not only are the decks adorned with the faces of recognizable politicians but they sit atop the bodies of a variety of animals, all to make you wonder exactly what the makers of politically wild cards are trying to tell you.

But that's not the half of it. Politically Wild Cards also has a blog and that blog is soliciting your help in captioning the cards appropriately:

This is your chance to get involved in a unique deck of "interactive" playing cards that have a little fun with all of the WILD! stuff that goes on during each election cycle. The deck is "interactive" because the comments in each limited edition come from YOU…the general public!

With the 2008 Election fast approaching, an ongoing war in Iraq, illegal immigration and many other issues are on the minds of Americans. What lies in their hearts? Americans are ready for their voice to be heard and what better way for them to express these ideas than through fun deck of playing cards. Odds are the politicians still won’t listen, but we can at least feel like we made an effort. The BEST way to make your voice heard is to GET OUT AND VOTE every November!

Some of the images consists of politicians and "political celebrities" with their face on the body of an animal while the court cards deal with specific issues which are hot political topics right now. There is a deck specifically for the Democrats and another one for the Republicans. So come on America, this is your chance to be heard. Who knows, your comments may be used in the next edition.

A sampling of the playing cards follows... enjoy!:

A coalescing of thought on good and evil

Interesting, most interesting.

Yesterday I put up some quick thoughts on good and evil:

Whether we believe it or not, whether it's tangible or it isn't, whether we embrace it or we keep it at arm's length, there is good and there is evil and the battle between the two is real and that battle is being fought before our very eyes.

This will be dismissed by many but it does, for me certainly, form the basis for which I can rationalize what seems to me to otherwise be so irrational.

At some gut level, if we face this with brute honesty and courage, we'll have to choose a side. We'll have to. And when we do, we better have thought this thing through.

There's lots at stake.

This morning, I stopped by Morgan's place to read:

I see we have a variation here that is newer than that other ancient one, and perhaps more dangerous: That is complete agnosticism about where evil is.

This is different from the guy who calls evil good, and good evil. He, at least, must make the concession that there is such a thing as evil. And much of the time, he’ll either place some value on human life, or pretend to do that much. Capital punishment is a great example. I say “Hey, admit it or not, there are some guys who will kill again if they’re allowed to live; you can’t hold them in the prisons, especially when you have liberal hippies running around, unleashed, struggling to come up with new excuses every year for releasing criminals from prison.” You come back at me and say “Waitaminnit, how can you say killing is wrong, and then prove it by killing someone?” And we debate back and forth. Me with the law-and-order argument, you with the Sean Penn Susan Sarandon argument.

At least we are both placing some value on human life; or pretending to.

Not so with the moral relativist who crusades on “weeeeelllllll…ya just gotta keep an open mind.” That is a new level of ignorance.

And it must, inevitably, metastasize into the darkest, purest form of evil. For it doesn’t place a value on human life, nor does it pretend to.

Then tonight, as I went back to a Doctor Bob post I had earmarked to read some time ago, there's this:

The gnostic hubris which is our modern foolishness boasts in what it knows, while knowing not what it does not know. Our ignorance of human nature cripples us; we believe that if we reason with evil, evil will change, charmed by the magic of our words and soothed by the sincerity of our childish desires. Like some love-maddened missionary, we sleep with the strumpet to save her soul, then find ourselves amazed when we become as lost as she.

There is, in truth, but two ways to unity: the way of inner submission, and the way of outer coercion. Within the limits of the frailty of our fallen nature, we achieve a measure of unity by common compliance to inner morals, arising from the recognition of a transcending set of absolutes which dictates such standards for both the individual and the common good. We acknowledge a standard of behavior and restraint which arises from the divine — though we often fall short of this standard, and may differ in some measure on its particulars. We become one — imperfectly to be sure — because we submit to and follow One, whose perfect moral standards and ethical precepts are held as the highest ideal and a noble pursuit.

When such an overarching absolute standard is rejected — as it has been by aggressive secularism, atheistic, reductionist, and materialistic to the core — we can only enforce a form of unity through coercion and power. Inner moral dictates must be subjugated to coerced conformity. It is “acceptable” to hold “values” which are at odds with the secular societal standard — as long as these “values” are never acted upon in speech or behavior. We may believe abortion to be morally abhorrent — but must never act to restrain it; we may hold homosexuality to be morally wrong and believe gay marriage to be a threat to a core foundational institution of society — but to verbalize thus is “hate speech”, and “intolerance”, and “ignorance.” Our unity is the unity of the gag, a multicultural muzzle which celebrates the superficial, elevates the insignificant, tolerates the intolerable — and punishes the moral. Our unity is the unity of relativism, a superficial solidarity where everything is acceptable but absolutes, where anything is tolerated but truth. Such unity strives for the lowest common denominator, maintaining its forced cohesion by the will to power, destroying in its enslaving solidarity the very soul of freedom and the heart of true human harmony.

It is no small irony that Obama proclaimed his utopian tome to the Hun — they of the fertile ground which brought forth Nietzsche and Hegel, and a National Socialism which crushed the dividing walls of Old Europe with an iron fist and a broken cross. Our modern nihilism is far more appealing, wrapped in soothing bromides of hope and change — but no less corrupt and empty at its core.

Beware the man who brings unity at the cost of individuality. Beneath the sheep’s clothing lies something far more ominous than smooth words and glib promises betray.

It seems plain enough to me.

You?

Quote of the day

I predicted the inevitability here... Iknow... it's akin to predicting the wetness of water or the blueness of the sky... nevertheless, from she who has become most quotable at Brutally Honest:

I also find it rather hypocritical for GW to call into question the invasion of Georgia on Russia's part, and yet it's somehow ok for us to invade Iraq? Do as I say, but not as I do!

Which makes bringing this back up all the more necessary:

This highlighted statement is an astonishing one. The clear implication is that what America did in going to war with Iraq is the moral equivalent of what Russia has done to Georgia.

...

In the situation in Georgia, a lawful, self-governing nation which respects human rights (and happens to be an ally of the United States) is under attack. In Iraq, we deposed one of the most wicked and cruel regimes of modern times. Saddam Hussein committed genocide against his own people; President Mikheil Saakashvili has not. As for the nature of the "invading" nations: one (the U.S.) was performing an act of liberation; the other (Russia) is attempting to crush a newly-liberated nation. As for the legal justification for the war: Russia has none; the United States, on the other hand, won unanimous approval in the United Nations for Resolution 1441, which stated that Iraq was in material breach of its obligations and warned Iraq of "serious consequences" (which all parties understood to mean war) for its continued violations. In addition, Iraq, unlike Georgia, had violated 16 U.N. Security Council Resolutions in the course of a dozen years.

The shallowness astounds.

Seriously.

Ranking of vehicle dependability

A Brutally Honest change of pace.

This I found interesting and is, I believe, an indication that American made cars have come a long way:

Lexus once again stands alone atop a closely watched ranking of vehicle dependability after Buick slipped from the No. 1 spot it shared with the Japanese luxury brand last year, J.D. Power and Associates says.

It's the 14th straight year Toyota Motor Corp.'s high-end brand has held the top position in the annual study, which measures problems experienced by the original owners of vehicles after three years. Lexus had 120 problems per 100 vehicles, down from 145 last year.

"That's a pretty good track record," said Dave Sargent, J.D. Power's vice president of automotive research. "They benefited to some degree ... where a couple of their very important models in their second year on the market — the ES and the RX, which together account for over two-thirds of lexus sales — both improved significantly."

Ford Motor Co.'s Mercury brand ranked second, followed by General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac. Toyota was fourth, and Honda Motor Co.'s Acura luxury brand was fifth. Land Rover, which Ford sold this year to India's Tata Motors Ltd., was the worst-performing brand, with 344 problems.

Fascinating... and I had thought that Land Rover was a Toyota made vehicle.

The article closes thusly:

Broken out by segment, Lexus took top honors in six categories for its IS 300, ES 300 and LS 300 sedans, the SC 430 coupe, and the GX 470 and LX 470 utility vehicles. Toyota led four categories and tied Honda for a fifth. Toyota's Prius hybrid was the top-ranked vehicle in the compact car segment.

Besides the Buick Century, one other GM vehicle was ranked the best in its segment: The Chevrolet Monte Carlo took the honor amid midsize sporty cars. Ford led three categories with the Crown Victoria large car, the Ford Ranger midsize pickup and the Mercury Monterey minivan.

Chrysler LLC was the only Detroit automaker with no brands ranked better than the industry average.

That' too bad about Chrysler, I think they make some fantastic looking vehicles.

Islam: The Religion of Obfuscation

Via GetReligion, a captivating look at the suppression of a historical novel chronicling the marriage of Muhammad and a 9 year old:

Earlier this month, former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani, penned a fascinating, newsbreaking op-ed for the paper:
Starting in 2002, Spokane, Wash., journalist Sherry Jones toiled weekends on a racy historical novel about Aisha, the young wife of the prophet Muhammad. Ms. Jones learned Arabic, studied scholarly works about Aisha’s life, and came to admire her protagonist as a woman of courage. When Random House bought her novel last year in a $100,000, two-book deal, she was ecstatic. This past spring, she began plans for an eight-city book tour after the Aug. 12 publication date of “The Jewel of Medina” — a tale of lust, love and intrigue in the prophet’s harem.

It’s not going to happen: In May, Random House abruptly called off publication of the book. The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.

Random House feared the book would become a new “Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book’s Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones’s novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it “disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now.” He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received “from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”
Though Aisha, who was married at age nine, was Muhammad’s favorite wife, very little has been written about her. Nomani writes that the saga upsets her as a Muslim. (She is the author of Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam, among other books.) She interviews Jones, who is devastated by what is happening to her novel. She also finds out exactly who the instigated the book’s demise — and it’s somewhat surprising. Random House sent out galleys of the book to writers and professors in the hope of getting favorable blurbs for marketing. One of the recipients was an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas at Austin and expert on Aisha named Denise Spellberg. Jones had read one of Spellberg’s books for research. Instead of an endorsement, she sent out warnings to Muslims about the book.

It's amazing to think of the efforts underway to reinvent what Islam is and to juxtapose that invention with what lengths those undertaking that effort will go to also reinvent Christianity.

The same people attempting to soft-pedal the backwardness that is the Muslim faith and her proponents are usually the same people hell bent on deconstructing the Christian faith and her followers and you can't help but wonder why that might be.

I'll go so far as to suggest that it centers on what is or isn't True and the reaction that comes with attempting to mask Truth while at the same time selling as truth that which isn't.

Whether we believe it or not, whether it's tangible or it isn't, whether we embrace it or we keep it at arm's length, there is good and there is evil and the battle between the two is real and that battle is being fought before our very eyes.

This will be dismissed by many but it does, for me certainly, form the basis for which I can rationalize what seems to me to otherwise be so irrational.

At some gut level, if we face this with brute honesty and courage, we'll have to choose a side. We'll have to. And when we do, we better have thought this thing through.

There's lots at stake.

Move on folks... nothing to see here...

I'm absolutely sure this had nothing to do with terrorism:

The Denver coroner said Thursday a man found dead in a downtown hotel room with a pound of highly toxic sodium cyanide nearby died from cyanide poisoning.However, the medical examiner's office could not say if 29-year-old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, of Ottawa, Canada killed himself.His body was found Monday inside Room 408 at The Burnsley Hotel, which is about four blocks from the state Capitol.

Police spokesman John White identified the white powder as sodium cyanide, the crystal form of cyanide. Fire officials say they found a bottle containing about a pound of the white powder, or between a pint and a quart by volume. An expert told the Denver Post that the amount of cyanide is enough to kill hundreds of people.White said Dirie had been dead for several days. Friends told The Ottawa Sun that he was dead six days before he was discovered.Foul play is not suspected and his death appears to be an isolated incident, White said.Dirie's sister told CanWest News Service that her brother had been on medication for the past three years to treat his schizophrenia, but that he was not a terrorist.The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is assisting in the investigation but FBI spokeswoman Kathy Wright said the incident has no apparent connection to terrorism.

"You have a suspicious substance that was found in a hotel room in conjunction with person being a foreign national, and we have a lot of questions and that is why we are assisting," Wright told the Post.An online threat posted in July by a man with a similar name warned of death. The blog discussed the killing of Christians in Somalia by Islamists. The person who posted on the blog was a Muslim who appeared to condemn Christians."Having the bible in one hand, and a bread in the other hand, is not a correct thing! Kill Them , Kill them, Kill them, that is my massage (sic),!" read the posting by Abdirahman Dirie on the 'Solmali's for Jesus' Blog.It was not clear if Abdirahman Dirie and Saleman Abdirahman Dirie are the same person.

Well... after all, the names are so common... just isn't clear.

Nowhere near as clear as Cheney's involvement in the Russian invasion of Georgia.

I'm just sayin'.

The 'truth' about Solzhenitsyn...

... as painted by pointy headed intellectuals with an agenda:

... under “classroom strategies” in the Norton instructor’s manual, teachers are told that they are likely to encounter the problem of students accepting the “truth” of what Solzhenitsyn has to say: “Because the story answers to most of the myths and preconceptions Westerners already have about Soviet life, the problem will be to make sure that students read it with the same degree of resistance with which they would normally confront any other piece of fiction.” Here we have the apologists for communism directing teachers: All that you’ve heard about the brutality of communism is merely part of our “myths and preconceptions.” Students must be reeducated to “resist” the testimony of Solzhenitsyn as dramatized in his fictional account.

No such “resistance,” however, is asked for the selections from Marxist authors, native American tribes, or the “colonized” writers like Wole Soyinka who extol the African tribal custom of having the king’s horseman commit suicide after the king’s death (a practice to which Christian “colonizers” insensitively object). Instructors are told to “Discuss the meaning of ritual suicide among the Yoruba as it is explained in Soyinka’s play,” and then ask students, “Under what circumstances may suicide be the right choice?”

It is this kind of sophistry that Solzhenitsyn had in mind when he said in his commencement speech at Harvard in 1978, “Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges.”

What is not fashionable today is a Judeo-Christian moral view, even if backed up by firsthand accounts and historical evidence. The hiring and editorial gatekeepers make sure that such a view does not make its way into the college classroom unaccompanied by tortured counterfactual explanations. Increasingly, such authors are “disappeared” to make way for fashionable writers, like the ubiquitous Castro-loving Alice Walker. On their own territory, Solzhenitsyn told the Harvard professors and graduates, “Many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism.” He traces the progression: “As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation at first by socialism and then by communism.”

Well... I'm sure Barack Obama will be hoping to change that... right?

This will resonate...

... in leftist circles:

Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to stop Barak Obama being elected president of the United States.

The line came on the main news of Vesti FM, a state radio station that — like the Government and much of Russia's media — has reverted to the old habits of Soviet years, in which a sinister American hand was held to lie behind every conflict, especially those embarrassing to Moscow. Modern Russia may be plugged into the internet and the global marketplace but in the battle for world opinion the Kremlin is replaying the old black-and-white movie.

The Obama angle is getting wide play. It was aired on Wednesday by Sergei Markov, a senior political scientist who is close to Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister and power behind President Medvedev.

“George Bush's Administration is promoting interests of candidate John McCain,” said Dr Markov. “Defeated by Barak Obama on all fronts, McCain has one last card to play yet - the creation of a virtual Cold War with Russia . . . Bush himself did not want a war in South Ossetia but his Republican Party did not leave him any choice.” The Americans were now engineering an armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Dr Markov added.

Expect progressives to pounce on this meme in 3... 2... 1...

What investigative journalism is not today

A one word answer.

Interested:

When the media refuse to look for something, whether that something be a high-profile bimbo or a low-yield nuclear bomb, the result will be the same: They won't find it.

The saga of Saddam's WMDs is chock-a-block with Rielle Hunter's, people with extraordinary stories to tell if only someone would bother asking. A sampling:

Richard Butler

In the year 2000, Richard Butler wrote a book called "The Greatest Threat." The subtitle of the book spells out its stark thesis: "Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Growing Crisis of Global Security."

Butler was not exactly a neocon. A leftist and an internationalist, the Australian arms-control expert had overseen UNSCOM, the unlovely acronym for the United Nation Special Commission on disarming Iraq.

After being booted from Iraq in late 1998, Butler considered Iraq's ongoing plea of innocence "the blackest lie."

"It would be foolish in the extreme," he writes of Saddam, "not to assume that he is developing long-range missile capabilities, at work again on building nuclear weapons, and adding to the chemical and biological warfare weapons he concealed during the UNSCOM inspection period."

The people who breakfast on the New York Times, snack on NPR and dine on the "CBS Evening News" know as little about Richard Butler as they did about Rielle Hunter a week ago, which was nothing at all.

Spencer Abraham

In July 2004, the BBC reported on a press conference in which U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham claimed that the U.S. had removed 1.77 tons of enriched uranium from Iraq the month before.

Abraham called the removal a "major achievement." Just as suddenly as the story appeared, however, it disappeared. Not a word was heard of it from the major American media.

Liberal bloggers, as expected, would labor to dismiss the importance of the find as they do all finds, but the mainstream media did not want to know about it at all.

The fear that the uranium find might have been as "major" as Abraham suggested kept them even from asking him why the story had been withdrawn.

Douglas Feith

In his exhaustively documented 2008 book, "War and Decision," former Undersecretary of Defense Feith provides the single best account of the role WMDs played in the planning for war.

The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, could not trouble themselves to review it. The Post gave two reporters a one-day deadline to cherry pick excerpts from an unedited manuscript of Feith's book and write something up. And that, the Post decided, was enough.

To keep its readers informed about WMDs, the Post did review Scott McClellan's comically mistitled, "What Happened." McClellan had not a clue as to what happened in Iraq. Feith did. Better to feature McClellan.

Gen. Georges Sada

I was able to question the former Iraqi air force general when he visited the Kansas City area. I came away totally convinced of his character and his credibility.

In his 2006 book, "Saddam's Secrets," Sada revealed that Saddam had many of Sada's pilot colleagues ferry WMDs to Syria in the run-up to the war – a strategy that would have made perfect sense.

The major media had no time for Sada and even less time to follow the trail to Syria.

More here for those interested.

And a tip of the fedora to Rocketsbrain, via e-mail.

VDH: Brave Old World

Victor Davis Hanson paints a bleak picture of what the world may look like in the near future. If there was ever a time I wished he was wrong, this would be one of them.

Unfortunately, I can’t argue with any of his points. What about you?

Russia invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at levels previously unimaginable. Gulf monarchies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch — all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing.

“Citizens of the world” were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new “Planet Earth,” which was to have followed from an interconnected system of free trade, instantaneous electronic communications, civilized diplomacy, and shared consumer capitalism.

But was that ever quite true?

(…)

But there have been a number of indications recently that globalization may soon lose its American parent, who is tiring, both materially and psychologically.

The United States may be the most free, stable, and meritocratic nation in the world, but its resources and patience are not unlimited. Currently, it pays more than a half trillion dollars per year to import $115-a-barrel oil that is often pumped at a cost of about $5.

The Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans hold trillions of dollars in U.S. bonds — the result of massive trade deficits. The American dollar is at historic lows. We are piling up staggering national debt. Over 12 million live here illegally and freely transfer more than $50 billion annually to Mexico and Latin America.

Our military, after deposing Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam, is tired. And Americans are increasingly becoming more sensitive to the cheap criticism of global moralists.

But as the United States turns ever so slightly inward, the new globalized world will revert to a far poorer — and more dangerous — place.

Read the rest, it isn’t pretty but the truth rarely is.

Georgian Journalist Shot By Sniper (UPDATED)

Via Breitbart:

Clearly the situation is deteriorating:

Meanwhile, Russia taunted the United States by blowing up its ally's military bases and boasting Georgia will never get back the rebel enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Kremlin's troops sabotaged airfields and depots in Georgia to cripple the battered state's U.S.-trained military.

And the former Red Army humiliated their beaten foes by one minute withdrawing from Georgian territory and then re-entering it, just to prove that they still could.

At least five explosions rocked Gori as Russian troops went about disabling Georgia's ability to fight a future conflict.

Again it was the innocents who suffered most as the few remaining citizens in the abandoned city were targeted.

A steady, dejected trickle of Georgian refugees fled the front line in overloaded cars, trucks and tractor-pulled wagons, heading to the capital Tbilisi.

One Soviet-era car carried eight people, including a mother and a baby in the front seat. The open back door of a small blue van revealed at least a dozen people crowded inside.

There was also a tense stand-off between frustrated Georgian special forces, desperate to hit back, and battle-hardened Russian troops from Chechnya at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city.

Around midday, Russian tanks sped towards the checkpoint and Georgian police quickly retreated behind their own forces.

Outside the town, hundreds of Georgian tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers massed on the main east-west highway.

Soldiers dozed in the sunshine by their vehicles awaiting the order to advance.

But in a throwback to darker Cold War times, Moscow seems intent on taking its time to withdraw its vastly superior forces, in a deliberate snub to President Bush's decision to raise the stakes by ordering U.S. forces to the region.

The era of glasnost is obviously over.

And still nothing from our leftist friends on the crisis... still no war protests... still no outcry...

Things that make ya go hmmm...

UPDATE: Mike is asking us all to send red cards to Mugabe though:

I just sent a red card to Mugabe and joined with thousands of marchers who will be asking Southern African leaders to take action now to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe. If Southern African leaders, who meet this weekend, reject Mugabe’s attempt to hold onto power, and stand by the will of the people of Zimbabwe – a political solution is possible. Click here to send your red card:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/red_card_for_mugabe/98.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

Hey Mike... how about at least a damned yellow card for Putin.

Ya think?

Sheez.