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Sex,Lies and Climategate

When Jon Stewart of Comedy Central gets involved, you know things are starting to unravel. Despite efforts by the unofficial party organs CBS, NBC and ABC together with the New York Times, BBC and Washington Post to ignore or bury "Climategate", Stewart, an ardent leftist and (former?) warming believer, has joined in mocking the "science" and the attempted cover-ups.

Stewart, as a comedian, is more respected (and watched) than our so-called "serious" media who are nothing more than operatives for the centre-left and long ago ceased to be news organizations, save for the Pravda type. The American people know who the real jokers are.

But how do climate alarmists and professional global warming "experts" react to the explosive posting on the internet of clear evidence of collusion, data twisting and fraud by the world's leading climnate alarmists, stretching back a decade or more in "Climategate"?

We are also talking in the UK case of possible criminal activity in scientists destroying information that was requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The University of East Anglia's "data" (all the source data has been destroyed, leaving only the "massaged" U of EA findings - how convenient) was the chief source of the nototrious UN IGPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that is universally relied upon by global warming alarmists to try and convice you, Mr. Working Taxpayer, to cough up trillions upon trillions of dollars and accept a lowered life standard for yourself and your children. All the while making global climate alarmists and allied politicians very much richer and more powerful.

Stephen Jones, one of the world's top "alarmists" and head of the University of East Anglias Climate Research Unit has honourably resigned.

Dr.Rajendra Pachauri, the promoted railway enginner who runs the massive UN IGPCC ( for those who do not know the UN, putting a railway enginner in charge of climate matters is far from abnormal) the real problem, he explained, was that climate change alarmists have to be more "discreet" in future with their emails and comments. He wondered why those who hacked the U of EA emails and posted them on the internet might not be criminally investigated.

Dr. Pachauri famously wanted  to ban ice in drinks to help stop global warming.

Over in the USA, Senator Barabara Boxer from California,the only place on earth where environmentalism is a religion and economics a superstition, has called for "ciminal probes" against the hackers who have exposed the lies, fraud and collusion by the world's top warming alarmists.

Unbelievable - those who have exposed the huge scientific fraud with perhaps the biggest implications for the world's economy of all time, should face criminal probes. The lying scientists who broke the law destroying data should be more "discreet". That tells you more that enough of what you need to know about the entire global warming "industry",

Notes On Global Warming

The following headline gave me the muse to jot these notes down to a dear friend and ardent global warming believer. He wonders why the Arctic is breaking up.

'Germany breaks record for 'lowest ever October temperature'

Of course that the Arctic has less ice could be due to global temperature distribution i.e. some colder parts getting warmer, some warmer parts getting colder etc.

In the Antarctic for example, one side of the continent has ice increasing, whilst the other side has ice shelves breaking up. However, there is no difference at all in the total quantity of ice

Or it could be, as in the Medieval Warming, we are going through a post-Little Ice Age uptake. There is evidence of that.

The Arctic cannot be ice free in 2010 be due to global warming. There is no global warming in the past decade. The sum total of world temperatures has stayed the same. Some areas have decreased. Some have increased. That is empirical data.

All the global warming scenario is computer modeling on future projections or past interpretations, lacking more than fragmentary data. For example, scientists can see via Greenland ice drilling exactly when the world heated and cooled ( often rapidly) back to 100,000 years. But they have no incontrovertible data of to why - we can be sure man made CO2 cannot be the cause.

In the case of these global cooling and heating cycles, the temperatures of the oceans and especially the distribution of deep hot and cold spots that shift ( and many of which are barely discovered) may turn out to be the greater influence.. It could be solar related. There are numerous hypotheses. Politicians will go for the one that gives them power,money and control, via fear.

There is no status quo of the world's climate, never has been and never will be.

To imagine that the pet scientists (90% of whose hypotheses are traditionally wrong and discarded or superseded) of politicians, who wish to tax and control us, and a United Nations desperate for a source of legitimacy for transnational power grabs, have the single answer is laughable. Rather than sleep walk to disaster as you put it by ignoring global warming, I would call it "nose led".

People are blown up every day, but politicians tell us there is no real Muslim terrorists. We are meant to believe them. The world gets cooler and warmer every age naturally or mysteriously, and we are not meant to believe it.That's not very relevant but I would imagine despotism, wars, bad governance, mad economics and mass cultural shifts will be far more responsible for people dying in the next hundred years that 2.5 degrees Celsius. Why can we imagine the Israelis surviving global warming easily, but not the Arabs? The answer lies outside the clouds and winds, my friend.

We should accept global warming (but not pollution or no dirty energy replacements) as basically inevitable and divert the many trillions of dollars (one estimate, the cost of both World Wars x 5) that are going to be vainly and corruptly spent by politicians trying to avert the unavoidable, into directly improving the lives, defenses and education of the poor - who will then take care of their own warming in their own national consensuses.

Ping Pyong Diplomacy

Today's announcement by Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetungula of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Kenya and North Korea, via a branch of the Norks full diplomatic mission in Kampala has raised a few eyebrows.

The Norks "embassies" are famous for dealing in drugs ( where they will find many of Kenya's elite to network with) and illicit wildlife products - hardly the stuff to put us on the tourist recovery path. Indeed the North Koreans routinely fund their foreign missions via crime, using the diplomatic pouch as their bagman.

Wetungula mentioned that Kenya was interested in nuclear power for electricity generation but could get that from a number of nations, not just North Korea. That would be a strange place to look for electricity technology since nearly all of the moonbat nation's nuclear effort goes into bombs and proliferation.

The Norks are flat broke and have nothing to sell Kenya. We have nothing they want either: our movie industry is not of the quality to attract Kim Il Jong. We lack uranium. Norks do not eat white maize and we are in a famine ourselves. Our local cognac is so vile it cannot be used for veterinary surgical spirit- so what gives?

As with recent visits to Kenya of similar thugs like Ahmoudinejead and a recent story that Kenya may get a "special" crude oil deal from Hugo Chavez, the North Korean announcement is perhaps a sign of the desperation felt by Kenyan leaders under extreme Western pressure over reform, crimes against humanity and an inability to stop stealing voter's and donor's money.

The Kenyan leadership perhaps hopes to fire a few shots across Western bows with a "look, we can be nice to your nasties" brand of diplomacy. Knowing that Iran, Venezuela and North Korea can do nothing at all for Kenya except cause it to garner isolation, it is likely the Western powers are not disturbed by Wetungula's bluster.

Obama, Health Care & Lies.

This BBC story by US Editor Mark Mardell is seriously uninformative. Mardell tells us thatRep. Joe Wilson (R) Wilson is a racist, that criticism of Obama is likewise and on the substantive issue of health care for illegal aliens, that "all experts" agree it is impossible in Obama's legislation.

It is true that Rep. Joe Wildon broke parliamentary decorum by shouting "You Lie" during an Obama health care speech but Mr. Mardell could have told us such indecorous behavior, including prolonged jeering, shouting and cat calling, happened from many Democratic party representatives when former President Bush spoke to Congress.

Secondly, Mr. Mardell picks up the "charge" (with no evidence), that Rep. Wilson can only have made such an outburst due to “racism”. Indeed Mardell highlights "mutterings" that are now "out there in the open" - opposition to President Obama at meetings and rallies across America is motivated by "racism". How convenient for Obama -to criticize his policy is to be racist. So we can ignore everything the protesters actually say, and get on with agreeing with his policies.

This is the exact line the Democrats are pushing in news dumps and PR releases - a cub reporter with a news nose might have noted accusations, getting shriller each day Obama sinks lower in polls, deflect attention away from issues. Vague charges of "racism" stifle debate – which helps the Democrats. That's what they want. Mr. Mardell delivers for them - but not to his readers.

The attribution of these "out in the open mutterings"? That vigorous endorser in 2007/8 of then Senator President Obama's campaign, The Washington Post.

Mr. Mardell says the Democratic congressmen vigorously voted to condemn Rep. Joe Wilson (R) for his t two word outburst, but not their refusal to censor Rep. Pete Stark (D) who called Bush a liar during a congressional speech , adding that Bush was sending US soldiers "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Lastly, the story ends by stating (unnamed) experts “all (my emphasis) concur that under the terms of Mr Obama's reform package undocumented immigrants would not be able to claim health care subsidies." Oh, that’s the end of that then.

One must conclude then Rep. Joe Wilson (R) is a clueless, manner-less, racist boor who unprecedentedly interrupted a President speaking to Congress. And this on an issue where all the 'experts’ agree Wilson is utterly wrong and Obama wholly right.

Yet Mr. Mardell does not tell us Democratic party drafters rejected the Republican "Heller amendment" to enforce non-provision of Obama health care to illegal immigrants, via the simple use of mandatory verification as already exists for many federal programs -the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE)/ Mr. Mardell’s “experts” strangely can’t Google.

It is plain to any fool that without verification, illegals will obtain citizen-funded "free" insurance or health care without limit.

Joe Wilson may be a boor and President Obama may be a liar. We will never know from reading Mr. Mardell. He shields us from knowing the true issues or facts. His story ends up another page in the daily media praise-singing litany for Mr. Obama. The Ministry of Truth needs journalists. Mr. Mardell should apply.

The Coackroaches and the Flashlight

Kofi Annan has been characterized as a well meaning but weak Unocrat. This has been more so since he brokered the 2008 Kenyan election accord that restored peace amongst ethnic riots and tribal cleansing that almost plunged the country into civil war. Annan was presented in mid-2008 with the Waki Report into the tribal violence that has never been made public and certainly implicates some of Kenya's highest politicians.

Part of the peace deal was that unless Kenya successfully prosecuted in open court the named suspects, Annan would hand the list over to the International Criminal Court for action. It seemed he never would as Annan patiently accepted one Kenyan delaying tactic after another. Naturally neither President Kibaki nor Prime Minister Odinga ever had, along with the entire ruling elite, the least intention of prosecuting anyone, as both their political parties' high rankers are undoubtedly involved.

 Absurd delaying suggestions emanated from Kenya's rulers over the last year, as they failed again and again to set up any prosecution mechanism. The best was a suggestion to Annan that the suspects would never be publicly named, even if prosecuted, until proven guilty in secret courts - an event as likely as wildebeeste growing wings. The Kenyan elite bickered, prevaricated, visited Annan over and again in Geneva and tried every trick in their ingenious battery of cover up, learned through 40 years of post-independence impunity.. All to no avail.

 Yesterday, Annan dropped a bombshell. In a letter made public, he literally told Kenya's ethnic leaders he was "calling your bluff" and handed the envelope containing the Waki list of names to the ICC's chief prosecutor. The absolute panic in the ranks of the Kenyan political elite has since been akin to the scurry of cockroaches when the lights are switched on.

Torture,Bush and the Facts

It turns out that thousands of US military members and NATO soldiers have been routinely waterboarded, kept in cramped conditions, subjected to sleep deprivation, kept in the cold, played loud music to endlessly and every other technique now widely being trumpeted in the world media is "torture", admittedly inflicted during Bush's time on some top Al Qaeda members, like 911 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, by the CIA in 2001-2006.


The reason is that all the methods that are so-called "Bush torture" are actually used to train US and NATO troops to resist interrogation when captured.

In light of these facts, should NATO and US officers, including many generals and others, who devised and ordered waterboarding and more of their own soldiers for the past 30 years, be investigated and tried for "torture"?

After all, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And if they should not be investigated, why should Bush or any of his officials be subject to retrospective prosecution for the same techniques applied to confessed terrorists and mass murderers- including those who killed the Kenyans in the 1998 embassy bombings?

If US and NATO officers are not to be prosecuted en masse for "waterborading", "sleep depriving" and so on thousands of troops, it can only be because (a) we would hold such techniques are not "real" torture but merely harshness (b) the techniques the US used on it's own soldiers really are torture, but were used in training for a "good end" -- i.e.not to cause pain for pain's sake.

If we argue (a): the techniques are "harmless" or merely "harsh interrogation", why is it called 'torture' when US citizens do it to non-Americans but not, as in the NATO/US Army training, to each other?

If hold to (b): why was the CIA "waterboarding" of Sheik Khalid Mohammed, which had him confessing to a plot to bomb Los Angeles and the arrest of the attack cell, not a "good end"?

Welcome To Hotel California

It sure is an odd place. Miss California, who was leading the Miss USA contest, lost last night because of a "controversial" (according to all the big media), "shocking" etc answer to a question. A pro gay activist and judge asked her what she thought of gay marriage. Her dignified answer was that some people believed in same sex and others opposite sex and whilst she meant no offense she believed in opposite sex marriage and that is how she was raised.

The gay activist judge later called her a "bitch" and a "c*nt" in public and said her remark cost her the title.

The fact that a judge at the contest is not considered "controversial" for ruining Miss California's title chances due to her polite remarks and calling her a "bitch" and "c*nt" after the TV programme is interesting.

The eventual winner was Miss North Carolina who was asked about the US financial bailouts for her question. She said she was opposed to the bailouts and the Federal and Presidential policy of bailout financially, even in a time of crisis. The media neither called this "controversial" nor remarked at all on it.

Most voters in California just rejected gay marriage in a referendum, most Americans do not approve it and neither (piblicly) does President Obama. Wheras most Americans voted for Democrats in the last election and for President Obama and he, the Senate and Congress have called financial bailouts vital and neccessery.

When you can figure out what Miss California said about gay marriage that was "controversial" or "shocking" and what Miss North Carolina said about bailouts that the media found non-controversial, you may figure out the immense bitterness social conservatives or the religious feel towards the big media in the USA that supposedly represents "unbiased" news.

America, Through A Glass, Darkly

Peggy Noonan's commentary in the Wall Street Journal on Obama's Domestic Agenda provoked much opinion and my reply was published in the Opinion letters, where it received many positive comments. Noonan seems surprised at the 'grandiosity' of what Obama is undertaking. Herewith what I wrote:


"The directions Obama's domestic agenda takes, and his grandiose ideas to fundamentally alter the American relation between citizen and government from a quasi-libertarian ( "classical liberal") to a European ( "social democratic") one, have always been crystal clear for many years to anyone who bothered to look beyond the celebrity style superficiality of his attractive persona. Or to those who delved behind Obama's disarming happy-talk during the primary and presidential campaigns.

Obama-ism is a simple three legged stool comprising Alternative Energy, Education and Healthcare. There is nothing to suggest he will abandon the first, even were a new Ice Age to emerge (as it might) because it is the revenue generator. By loading America with the omniscient tax-and-expense of costly, unproven alternative energy, Obama pays in large measure for the other two prongs of his plan.

The most basic lesson of economics, that it is wasteful to subsidize one thing to be cheap by making another dear, is something Obama, an otherwise attractive and clever man, shows no sign of swallowing.

In all of this new American social construction, the government will be the lumber provider, carpenter, store owner and salesman. In other words, energy, education and health are to be nationalized, in essence and de facto. That none of this is shown to work any better, or indeed worse in the long run, than risk-reward private enterprise seems not important to Obama.

For Obama is a social egalitarian. and was largely raised in the international anti-American gruppenthink of the extpatriate intelligensia. The collective "fairness" to all Americans (perhaps even non-Americans) and of groups and classes of citizens real of contrived, is more important to him than the classical rights of individuals - rights upon which the nation was found ed.

Did the American people want this? Probably not - but with a supine applauding media and a mood of economic despair to exploit, there is every chance they will get it. Obama seems unworried that his grandiosity will saddle Americans with more public debt in a few years than the Republic has accumulated since 1776. To be indebted to your government to Obama's mind one begins to darkly glimpse, is perhaps desirable.

That the opposite intention was in the minds of those who framed the Constitution is an inconvenience not to be discussed.

To the obvious calculation that Medicare and Social Security will be bankrupted in Obama's daughters prime or there will no money left to fund the Healthcare and Federal education without raising taxation to European levels, the President seems equally unruffled.

For Euramericans like Obama, the new social contract is basically this: the private person must be indebted, financially and morally, to government. Government's prime obligation in return to the citizen is continued displays of public virtue via engineered "egalitarianism". The debt is real, the egalitarianism is fake - but the public, like in 1984, never figure out this simple trick. Thus the Democrats are fated to slowly become Jacobins - indeed some already are.

Though China will be the world Superpower perhaps in 2050, as predicted, Obama-ism merely hastens America along the declining European path of "soft" power, with soft citizens taking neither risk nor reward nor responsibility.

It is hardly what the Founding fathers had in mind, but with a citizenry addicted to easiness and pleasure, all of de Tocqueville's warnings about the consequences of "beneficial" government may sadly come true."

Pissing About with Pirates

Despite hugely increased naval presence in the area, the Somali pirates continue to make a mockery of the world's sea powers as see today's BBC story.

Nothing will change until Obama takes the very unlikely step ( for him) of doing a "Barbary pirates" on the Somalis. In US history, when north African pirates caused havoc to US and other shipping around 1820, the navy invaded and sacked the home ports of the pirates. That shut down the notorious Barbary pirates pretty quick and one suspects it is the only medicine the Somalis will ever understand. Besides, it is the only sound military tactic - hit them at home.

Somali pirates seize more vessels

More than 130 pirates attacks were reported in 2008

Somali pirates have seized a British-owned cargo ship and a Taiwanese ship, maritime officials say, after capturing three other vessels over the weekend.

Obama the Obsequious

Are the people surrounding President Obama clueless, or could -not -care -less? Who is in charge of Obama's protocol? It would seem on his recent trip to Europe, Obama became the first American President in memory to bow to a potentate ,when he stooped before the autocrat, King Abdalla, despite it is a rigorous rule of protocol that American Presidents never bow to Kings or Queens. When Obama met the far more important Queen Elizabeth, a democratic monarch, he did not bow.

Obama never missed an opportunity to "apologize" for America's imagined wrongs as a preface to nearly every meeting he had on his recent European trip. In this he is following up his first TV interview after the Presidency, when he apologized to the Iranian theocrats on Al-Arabiya TV. Even when proposing the elimination of nuclear weapons in Prague, Obama had to apologize for America being the "only nation to have used" them, something which imposed a "moral duty "on the USA to lead in their elimination, he said.

 Did he know the historical facts? True, the US used two atomic bombs to end Word War 2. Yet recent historical research shows that Japan had prepared submarines with aircraft on board, and was awaiting from Germany the clandestine transfer of nuclear material (the Nazi submarine carrying it surrendered en route to Japan in May, but the Japanese never knew this) so that a "dirty bomb" attack could be conducted on San Francisco. The proposed date was just a few days after Japan actually surrendered!

The US and allies never knew the correct position of Germany's wartime research into atomic weapons, which Hitler fully intended to acquire. Therefore, as they saw it, they were in a deadly race, with the fate of the world in the balance - as indeed it was. Hitler already possessed in the V2 the means to deliver atomic weapons on London, and was working on the V4 ICBM which could have reached New York - again with a "dirty bomb" plutonium weapon. Had the war run another 6 months, the outcome might well have been ghastly.

The USA grasped the full need to develop atomic weapons rapidly in the face of deadly enemies who were looking for the same, and to use them to end the war with far less human loss of life (on both sides) than a mainland invasion of Japan. This also had the intended purpose of halting Stalin from annexing much of Northern China and possible Stalinist ground offensives in Europe. Obama has nothing to apologize for and his obsequiousness is unbecoming. However, reading his books, it is obvious Obama was an early and strong believer in 'conventional wisdom' anti-Americanism and blaming many of the ills of the world on the US.  

Barack's Baptism

Today Barack Obama is going to receive his first full secret briefing from US intelligence agencies on the threats his administration faces, as ABC News notes here. Many have said that within days of these briefings, past Presidents seem to have aged quite a few years.

President Obama is going to painfully discover that no matter even when the US has been right,just,fair and generous, there still exist a myriad of vicious enemies of freedom trying to destroy the USA.

The reaction from Iran today to his TV offer of "extending a hand" was calumny, bile, anger and insolent demands the US "apologise" for "past crimes", just one component of the hatred some regimes perpetually have for the USA - which Obama will find all his sweet words and charisma cannot change.

Obama will wake up to the painful realization that the USA cannot just be "liked", it also needs to be respected and fear of power is one ( vital) component of respect that he has never acknowledged.

Speak softly and carry a big stick, Barry as a former US President once said. You are going need it sooner rather than later.

After this briefing, Obama will change a lot of his mind about George W Bush, if he acknowledges it or not.

Summing It Up

I think summarizes the USA for the next four years better than one thousand words might!

Palin's Troopergate!

The just released Alaska probe is only damaging to Sarah Palin because the media, including the BBC, have been waiting to spin it against her. The BBC quotes investigator Blanchflower only in part, the first of only two "findings", one of which is negative to Palin and contradicted in the second.

Why was their report not headed "Palin acted lawfully and properly", instead of "Palin abused power"?

Blanchflower disagrees with himself in the same report, second finding, quote:

"Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads."

How can "lawful and proper" suddenly become "abuse"? Is it not Mr. Blanchflower that needs investigating over such contradiction?

The BBC has also chosen not to mention the investigation is not a criminal one, and has been conducted by partisan Alaskan Democrats who appointed Blanhflower and has as much low weight as any other inter party mud-slinging. Instead it will be spun into Watergate Two by the media.

If the BBC had read any of the report, how could they so fail to report the glaring contradiction of the second finding? Perhaps they will read it now.

And why is the BBC calling this item "Troopergate"? That itself is a spin. The trooper Palin wanted dismissed admitted he taser gunned her own 10 year old nephew, which was cruel, dangerous, even potentially fatal and could be prima facie child abuse, admitted he poached wildlife but denied being drunk on patrol or threatening to kill members of the Palin family. Quite a list.

How about "Tasergate", or would that raise questions that would not lead to anti-Palin conclusions?

Why I Hate Sarah Palin!

The second debate was awful and boring. I wonder who will watch the next? Obama remains a person I would like to believe in but with under two years in the Senate and a very nondescript (even buried) record, I tend to think of him as a celebrity media candidate with charm, looks , a good brain, fine articulation and great oratory...but as to who he really is and represents?

He remains a cypher , even to the British Ambassador in the US who briefed Gordon Brown. Unless you never grew up from 60's, Obama looks like a weirdly contemporary retro-radical, pushing for Main Street. I wish it were not so, for the guy has true talent aplenty to burn.

As the most left wing US candidate of all time ( not that this does not please some) I cannot see how the massive expansion of government/spending/entitlement his kind always invokes would help the USA, broke as it is, ..but politics goes in cycles and the Dems certainly have the pendulum.

Thatcher/Reagans's idea to deregulate prudently so the deserving and thrifty could better become house owners degenerated 10 years on into cajoling the undeserving, indigent and un-creditworthy into bad loans . Greed on Wall Street? Politicians passing the buck..after all this was not triggered by anything other than the artificial housing boom of the past 15+ years, fed by "politically correct credit" which Fannie and Freddie re-cycled in an act of fiscal criminality, all over the world. It was a scam, a house of cards - nothing more or less.

Is it reasonable that bankers, who depend upon their jobs by not losing money, would give away absurd loans from "greed"? Why were bankers in our father's time not similarly "greedy"? Or were they allowed back then to judge their loans on their merits? Those who swallow the "greed" red herring will get choked by the nasty bones that are the facts. For it is not Lehman Bros etc ( greedy though some in these businesses were) who caused this crisis. It was improvident lending, sanctioned by Congress and encouraged by them since 1977 but paced faster every year.

We are not in a "corporate salary crisis" or a "commodities boom crisis" and the only "greed crisis" exists in the minds of Congress trying to palm off their duplicity on frightened voters - the mother and father of our problem is real estate and "subprime" at that, and so it is named.

Of course, lending to everyone for political reasons ("affirmative lending" would be a good term) put huge pressure on the natural supply and demand chain of housing, forcing up prices even more in the 90's and current decade. In a phrase, it was a pyramid scheme that would collapse ( as was warned by some fiscal conservatives many times).

After a period of anti-American gloating so typical of the superior moral beings that are Europeans, I see the chickens have come home to roost there too.

Again, the problem is not one of deregulation but too much regulation in the critical housing market, replacing the decentralised prudence and decisions of the traditional banker with a command-style regulation from politicians/pressure groups to loan to any and everybody.

This was accompanied ,at least in the USA, by actual fines and penalties, all in the name of egalitarianism and helping social mascot groups ( the unemployed, illegal immigrants, racial minorities regardless of median income, drug addicts, people with bad credit rating, trailer trash etc). Why? It seems charitable on the surface, but in the end it was to buy votes. In the 1990's the process accelerated.

Indeed, by 2005 a full 19% of the massive loans backed by Fannie and Freddie that year were "subprime" ( i.e. loans a banker would not make without threats or cover from politicians, or both). Hence the absurdity of random tele-callers offering loans to every bum in Europe and the USA, to fullfil, like little communist workers, their "quotas" of "non-discriminatory" loans to please Congress and courts. I do not say there were no other factors to the current crisis outside of the sub-prime, and one cannot blame the uncreditworthy for taking the chance for what they saw as a better life. Yet only the sub-prime problem could have triggered the uncontrollable meltdown that started some months ago, as house prices steadily dropped for the first time in over a decade.

It was a huge bonfire of the vanities in which we are all burned. I agree with the 60% of Americans who would, as polled yesterday, not return a single member of Congress to power in Nov if it was their call. But it's not. Congress has rigged their choices as well.

All of this is why I hate Sarah Palin. She was in Alaska, has never spent a minute in Congress and is the only one of the four candidates who has zero blame for this mess. Indeed, while Washington was bankrupting the USA, she put Alaska into the black and got an 85% approval rating from both parties. Bi-partisanship in action, I suppose. She is the only candidate to have never accepted a dime from Fannie and Freddie. Obama grabbed $125 thousand and even McCain took a modest $15 thou. Sarah is the dimwit serial -breeding hick who is not fit to lead America, or so I am told.

Sarah Palin, Warmonger!

ABC's notoriously condescending interview with Sarah Palin by the Charlie Gibson has fuelled immense media spin when Palin pointed out, quite correctly, that were a country a member of NATO and it was invaded by Russia, the treaty obligates members to defend it, even if that "perhaps" meant war. This is the exact nature of the NATO treaty, but ABC would never have you think that.

Of course the interview was censored by ABC who cut important portions from it. The entire unedited interview is now available here. Listen to what ABC cut out of the interview, and make your own mind up about Palin-The-Warmonger the left and the Democrafts are frantically spinning this week:

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that’s a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

The treatment of Sarah Palin by the media must stand as the most despicable hit-job undertaken on a Presidential candidate by the mainstream media in recent times. The chances are it will backfire splendidly in their faces - the American people are not fools.

That Race Card - A Joker

Kelley’s misleading article “Race card could hurt Obama” and the comically vicious abuse of John McCain repeated by Mutuma Mathiu (Sunday Nation 14 Sept) goes beyond the understandable desire most Kenyans have to see Obama win the US Presidency. The media have a duty to inform but the blatant partisanship on display is likely to leave Kenyans none the wiser if Obama, whose campaign is faltering, does not make it.

There is no evidence whatsoever that McCain’s campaign has made any derogatory remarks about Obama’s race. Like him or not, McCain is acknowledged even by his enemies as a true American hero, and a veteran maverick politician of considerable personal honour.

Are all the voters in Central Province tribalists because they never voted for Mr. Odinga? Are the Germans racist because they have not a single non-white senior cabinet minister and the same for most Western European countries? Are the people of Nyanza ethnicists because they refused to vote for Mr. Kibaki? What nonsense – yet Americans are threatened with being branded “racists” if they do not elect Mr. Obama.

This is plain anti-American bigotry, holding Americans to standards that are not even asked of others. Perhaps Mr. Kelley can inform us if Kenyans vote, on the whole, for tribal personalities or for parties?

Mr. Kelly was better served informing Kenyans of various facts of American politics: that the USA historically votes for Republican presidents most of the time, that there are almost equal numbers of Republican and Democrat party members who vote for their party above all, that Obama made a huge blunder in not taking Hilary Clinton as his running mate and that he is, however brilliant, fresh and eloquent , the most inexperienced person to ever run for US President, against a veteran Republican who has cunningly chosen a woman running mate.

If Kenyans do not vote based upon whoever Ugandans or Chinamen might like to see in State House, why should Americans take the least notice of what foreigners want? Obama is not standing for President of the World, which he might win – first he has to convince US voters.

Some 87% of US voters are non-black. Obama could never have got where he is on their paltry votes. True as Mr. Kelley states, only a few black Republicans attended their convention – most vote Democratic since 1965 and they are free to have that choice. President Bush put more blacks into positions of power than any President to date, as see Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, to name two. The idea the Republicans are against blacks is a smear.

As for Mr. Mathiu gleeful reprinting of McCain’s convention speech as basically being delivered by a senile, out of touch old fool addressing a despicable bunch of cronies ( who only happen to represent about 50% of American voters!) he should keep it up if he wants Obama to lose. Americans reading it might feel so insulted as to vote for McCain.

Borking Sarah Palin

Oxford English Dictionary 2002 Edition: people who Bork others "usually [do so] with the aim of preventing [a person's] appointment to public office."

There is no doubt that the serially biased US mainstream media are determined to bork McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin. As is well known, the left's fierce devotion to free speech only applies to groupthinkers. Those who exhibit thoughtcrimes outside of the leftist narrative that the MSM obligingly controls and steers will be borked. The last person who suffered this shameful treatment was black Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Feminist Florynce Kennedy.....on the importance of defeating the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, said, "We're going to bork him. We're going to kill him politically. . . . This little creep, where did he come from?"

So far all the MSM have to run with is the idea that Palin is at fault for the attempted firing of her former brother-in-law from the Alaska police. What mileage the media hopes to get out of this is severly dented by the well documented facts: Palin's brother in law tastered an 11 year old boy, broke state hunting regulations and was caught driving drunk on duty. He also is on his fourth marriage.

Thus The Guardian runs the "investigation" smear in a recent edition, conveniently failing to note exactly just what sort of character Sarah Palin's former brother-in-law actually is. I doubt Mr and Mrs. Average American will do anything except pat Palin on the back.

More laughable is that the MSM, who play softball with regard to any investigations into their democratic pets (the John Edwards no-story being the most glaring latest example), have gone into a frenzied hits against Palin but simultaneously spread the lie that it is Republicans who are the "attack dog" party and the "smear artists".

So successful are the media in producing newspeak terminology that they have managed to get "swiftboating" into the language as "the false accusation of someone for political purposes". Yet the famous anti-Kerry "Swiftboat" political ads of 2004 were never challenged as to the facts they spoke of. If anything, the word should stand for "accurate accusation."

Will Palin survive the cloud of smears the left has inundated her with? I have my doubts. McCain is too well known as a war-hero and patriot to try that on him, but it's open season on moose hunting mamas and she will be lucky to survive. However the latest Rasmussen poll showing 51% of Americans think she is being picked on also indicate that blow back from a fed up electorate could easily scorch the Democrats.

Barack and Biden's Blood

Post Convention Update:

Blood on the floor and it's Barack and Biden's: more people watched Sarah Palin's speech than St. Barry's. More people watched the RNC convention than Mubarak's styrofoam faux-Nuremburg rally. In fact more people watched John McMelanoma on his final night than ever before in US convention history. MSM scrambling to spin these ratings.

People turning on the media generally for the cloud of smears and lies they emitted when their anointed Obamus the First suddenly faced the shock-gasp-horror of the Esquimo inbreeding, caribou eating, wilderness trash that is Sarah Palin.................and her genetically challenged family.

Obama will now trot out a lot of chisel faced wimmin and members of the US Female Welders and Hardhats Lesbian Coalition to counter the moose -murdering serial mama from Sticksville.

Media fuming: their breathless declaration that Britol Palin is pregnant actually backfired - they thought it would annoy Republicans and the religious. That's because the mean fire-and-brimstone image they have of such people is entirely the creature of their own liberal 0.5 child-per-couple fantasies. The right on the other hand loves babies (Baracky: an unwanted pregnancy would be "a punishment" any of his daughters should abort if it happened).

They especially love those who don't chuck 'em down the hospital chute - or in Baracky's case, he was the only member of the Illinois legislature to vote to allow born-alive late abortions to die without medical care. Media love, Palin 40.

The Reps have so much red meat between their teeth now that the Barracuda (Palin's nickname) can't digest it all. The next event in about 10 days is Sarah, the pitbull with lipstick vs. bloviating Joe Biden, one of the least accomplished hacks to occupy the Senate for the past 36 years and renowned for his large foot-in-mouth once he gets going. On the other hand as the eternal chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he knows where Canada is ( and probably Krygystan) whilst Sarah Stickshick is still looking up Washington DC on the map.

Key moment of that debate? When Biden runs into Sarah with the "experience" line and the Pitbull sweetly points out that The O-nointed One not only has less executive experience than her, but that Biden himself is on public record stating Obama is not qualified by experience to be President over John McCain. Ouch, ow...gasp...........

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

"Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President?... Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens?... Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial?... Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy…. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen.... Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?."

New York Times, 1984, on Geraldine Ferraro as Vice Presidential nominee

Three front page stories on the pregnant Bristol Palin.

New York Times, 2008

Never A Wiser Statement

"Government´s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it." - Ronald Reagan

For The Price of A Movie

Breathless post.......................

Half--Muslim mixed race child with zero experience knocks out America's biggest political family in primaries. Takes on on "tortured for two thousand days" war hero maverick/serial melanomist, who was written off 2 years ago, in a tight 2008 Presidential race.

After the Obamessiah takes an early lead, maverick John McMelanoma fires back at Democratic identity politics via a secret weapon: unknown 44 year old Alaskan beauty Queen VP pick Sarah Palin who hunts, fishes, flies planes, shoots bears and knows how to prepare a mean mooseburger.

Beauty Queen Sarah at once accused by lefty media of having faked her Down Syndrome 5 month old baby's birth and claims baby shown to media is her daughter's. Press holds breath as is soon revealed actually the Beauty Queen's 17 year old daughter is pregnant, by a schoolmate whose Facebook descrip reads "redneck" who "is not looking forward to having children".

Lefty media start piranha hunt and smell blood until St. Barracky (own mother at time of birth: 18 years) steps in and calls it off.

Meanwhile, Beauty Queen's husband revealed as a world class "snowmobile racer" who votes Democrat! Works in a "World Deadliest Catch"-type fishing boat. Lefty press dig hard and find he has a Driving-Under-Influence arrest 20 years ago. Bloggers point out St. Barracky also admitted in public to using cocaine 20 years ago. Public chuffles.

Obamessiah campaign, reeling from sneak Alaskan attack (McMelanoma was a Navy pilot in Vietnam days) blast Miss Alaska for "lack of experience", producing extreme hilarity as even the most dim witted voter notices that applies to the Obamessiah himself. Only he is running for Prez and she isn't!.

Meanwhile a hurricane bears down on New Orleans and will it be another Katrina? Is it an act of God to strike down the evil Republican Bushitler/McMelanoma cabal once and for all, during their convention? Or an act of the Devil to wipe the media focus from Emperor Obamus' temple gathering just 48 hours before?

Who cares? How much would you have to pay for this stuff in a movie theatre? Who could possibly make it up? How utterly boring the rest of world politics seems.

God I love America!

The Unseen Victory

One of the most significant events post-911 has passed almost without notice by US and world media: the roundup of 1000 Al Qaeda suspects in Mosul Iraq, representing the final annihilation of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

At least the UK's Times has an article on this pounding of what once looked like an unbeatable terrorist force. Of course the same leftist media who parroted that " one can never win against terrorism by military force" now have nothing to say: their anti-American mascot Bin Laden lives in a cave in Waziristan, two thirds of his cadre of leaders is dead or captured and the branch in Iraq, the standard bearers for what Bin Laden called the most important fight against America, has been totally routed and the leadership killed.

Rugby Tri-Nations Time!

Huge rugby weekend on Saturday when the world's premier rugby test, the Tri-Nations series, kicks off with a volcanic encounter between the Springboks and All Blacks in New Zealand's Dunedin "House of Pain" stadium.

Bok/Black match-ups have an intensity all of their own in world rugby and for nigh on 100 years and this one is no different with the World Champ South Africans desperate to prove their superiority against a New Zealand side that feels bitterly cheated of the same title in 2007. They are focused with X-ray intensity on penetrating and destroying the Boks 12 match unbeaten run. Bragging rights, the inside track to the Tri-Nations '08 trophy and the IRB No 1 ranking are all on the line.

SA's first non-white coach, Pieter de Villiers, has chosen a very good side with many excellent players of colour. The full set of new laws will be on display for the first time too, meaning each side will be stretched to the full limit of their speed and endurance in the machine-gun rapidity of the experimental rule changes. However, scrum advantage plays an enhanced role under the new laws and this is where de Villiers may have erred. The All Blacks have a powerful scrum and a very destructive front row that pulverized England in two recent Tests - yet de Villiers, who paired his best front row with BJ Botha and exciting new black prop Beast Mtwarira against Wales three weeks ago has inexplicably left Botha at home.

Perhaps there is politics at play here, with de Villers having to field, by some rumored unwritten agreement with the SA sports authorities, a high number of "coloured" players - or perhaps he has just made a mistake. You simply must get parity, if not go-forward, at scrum time under the new laws, since the defenders have to stand 5 yrads behind the scrum which gives the attackers a big advantage. I can't see de Villiers possible combinations of Steenkamp/Van Der Linde and young first-timers Mujati/Mtwarira doing this in Dunedin against the best, when they failed to manage the front-foot against lesser opposition in recent weeks.

The Boks best card will be the lineout combination of world class locks Victor Matfield and Bakkies "Pickup Truck" Botha whose work in this department is simply brilliant. Therefore, expect magical All Black no 10 Dan Carter to do everything to avoid lineouts while his classy backline of Nonu, Leon McDonald, Sivivatu and possibly Conrad Black (if chosen) try to run the Springboks ragged with fast play from side to side of the pitch.

With Captain Ritchie McCaw out of action, the Bok backrow should shade the All Blacks led by Rodney So'ialo but de Villiers may opt for Luke Watson instead of his hardest combo of Burger,Juan Smith and a resurgent Big Joe Van Niekerk at no 8. In fact, de Villers has so many quality backrowers he is probably spoiled to get this vital balance perfect. New Zealand may not match up here, giving the Boks a real chance at the vital breakdown ball - and a win.

He would be wise to suit up 5 forwards and only two backs on his bench, since in runners Pienaar and Steyn he has two backs who can cover every backline combination. Since two of his loose forward bench, Spies and Kankowski, are as explosive and fast as backs in their own right, this could give the real edge. But, as I write,one is unsure of who de Villers will actually pick.

Every Kiwi is dangerous, but Maa Nonu especially so at No 12 and with the clever Conrad Black at 13, the Boks likely pairing of John de Villers and Adi Jacobs are going to have their hands very full indeed, let alone with the brilliance of McDonald and Sivivatu. The new coach wants to play an expansive game but will the Bok no 12 and 13 get the space and time to deliver their clever touches? It must be in doubt. Again, the Boks will likely play JJ Pietersen on one wing, yet he is a shadow of his 2007 form when de Villers might have moved incumbent, on-form fullback Conrad Jantjes to the wing and played the always reliable Percy Montgomery at fullback, even given he is 34 years young but still playing near his very best. This mega-Test will come down to how clever each coach is with his final line-up and if amything de Villers has more options than Graham Henry for once - and more chances thus to get it wrong.

My head gives this match to the All Blacks on home soil and by about 7 points but it will be a close run affair and certainly is the most awaited clash for years. My heart goes to the Boks who can certainly win and have the best chance against New Zealand at home for many seasons - but certainly is a word that almost always comes undone against a fired up bunch of All Blacks on home winter soil. Have your smelling salts and blood pressure guage to hand when you switch this one on.

Court Of Fools

Reading the impassioned and often wrong comments following this link on the Supreme Court Boumedienne decision led me to the following response:

"It is sad to read here people speculating as to why the Bush admin neither wanted the captured terrorists to be treated as Prisoners of War under Geneva Conventions, not executed summarily as the laws of war and Geneva would have allowed. Many seem baffled by this. The answer is surely, that POWS cannot, under Geneva, be interrogated beyond "name,rank,serial number". And if they are summarily executed on or close to the battlefield they would neither be interrogated to give information. They would be dead. If the asymetrical war against international WMD seeking terrorists is not to be conducted by the shadows, the questioners, the isolation of the suspected, by harsh and secret methods, just who will conduct it? The San Francisco circuit of judges? The FBI? How about the UN? Wait, let's call on the ICC in the Hague.

The Bush admin did the world a huge service by trying to act on what waffling bodies like the UN have been paralysed over for decades - the treatment of terrorists and "unlawful combatants" or the new breed of mega-terrorists. It is indeed Bush's brilliance, not his detriment, that he realized the old Geneva Rules were useless in the face of a conspiracy so vast as Al Qaeda. If international terrorism had not been stopped cold by America's aggression post 911, the EU and others would probably be asking George Bush for the Gitmo blueprints long ago.

For those as naive as Obama,who trumpet how civilian courts dealt with the 1993 WT bombings, one has only to ask: just how effective were those civilian trials in stopping attacks on the USA and US citizens? Not at all, if we go by the Africa Embassy bombings, the USS Cole and of course the whole run in to 9/11.

Contrast the Bush approach when, with every fanatic in the world supposedly desperate to attack the American heartland, not a single attack has taken place. rather, the terrorists have been constrained, or sucked into killing fields like Iraq and slaughtered, so that Osama now hides in a Waziristan cave and most of his deputies are dead or in Gitmo. This, we are told ,is a failure. The blind sheik rotting in a New York jail after the 1993 attacks who gave us no information on the holocaust of Americans that was to come, is one learns, a success.

If America's standing in the world is low, it is largely because of the dismal and disloyal role of media, American included, in not explaining what is patently explainable: that WMD seeking mega-terrorists do not fall whatsoever under any of the protected categories of combatants under the Geneva Conventions and Rules and Conventions of War. According to the Geneva Conventions, they are war criminals and subject to summary justice.

With the terrifying possibilities of nuclear and bio-terrorism around us, which our enemies have assured us over and again they will use the minute they can obtain the weapons, to give foreign terrorists superior access to US justice than Nazi Werewolf partisans, foreign spy saboteurs in the Revolutionary War, German saboteurs on US soil in WW2 and a host of other examples including captured Barbary pirates if we go so far back, is an act of unbelievable stupidity and nothing more than a Supreme Court supremely out of touch with reality."

When Hydrogen Equals C02

Honda makes first hydrogen cars

The FCX Clarity emits none of the gases responsible for global warming

The Japanese car manufacturer Honda has begun the first ever commercial production of a hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.

The medium-sized four-seater, called the FCX Clarity, runs on hydrogen and electricity, emitting only water vapour.

Honda claims the vehicle offers three times better fuel efficiency than a traditional, gasoline-powered car.

As someone who totally supports the use of cleaner energy, regardless of global warming debates, this is good news. However the thorn in the rose, and what is not widely understood, is that hydrogen does not occur on earth in gas form. It can only be manufactured by using energy, and a lot of it at that. The cheapest and best way to crack hydrogen from water would be by using nuclear power, otherwise it would have to be done by fossil fuels, making the net saving in carbon emissions very minimal.

Once more, like so many "green products" this turns out to be a PR gimmick more than something we shall all be driving in 5 years, or perhapos even 50.

The Mainstreaming of Terror

Today I read excerpts of the worst decision I have ever seen from the US Supreme Court, the Boumedienne case which, under Justice Kennedy, gives enemy terrorists of the USA the rights to habeus corpus in domestic courts for the first time in our history, supposedly because (among other reasons) the war against terror has gone on a very long time!

This is unheard of in any Common Law jurisprudence and goes against well established earlier Supreme Court cases and precedent concerning aliens making war on the united States. It is a stunning blow against the US military and the safety of Americans, and a ghastly mainstreaming of terrorists , and by extension even foreign armed forces, into the heart of US civilian courts.

There is a far finer take on this terrible decision here at the NRO which makes sobering reading. My jaw dropped and my heart ached as I read this mystical extension of the US Constitution to cover those who have plotted and executed attacks upon us from foreign countries where they were captured. As Justice Scalia said in dissent, the decision, " sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner."

As has been said, no great power is ever defeated from without, without first defeating itself from within. As for Justice Kennedy, I never thought I would say this about a Supreme Court member, but the only remedy is his impeachment, which sadly will never happen.

Rugby Hots Up

Wales vs Springboks, 2nd Test: This should be a no-brainer. The Boks have players with names like "The Beast" (photo above) and "Pickup Truck". The Welsh are all called Jones and after their 43-17 hiding I expect them to be better than last week, for a while and then fade badly in the second half. When they see the Springbok bench they will start looking for their airline tickets - it's awesome. Moderate Bok win.

Oz vs Micks (in Australia): An interesting one, Robbie Dean's first match as Australia coach and he has already, as a good Canterbury Kiwi, been moaning at the soft Aussie forwards. Ireland's are anything but and this could be the best and most even match of the weekend, especially with the super pass of veteran Peter Stringer to serve Ronan O Gara who has got over his bout of RWC "going Irish" ( booze and women) that made him so pathetic in november. Oz to win but close?

All-Blacks v England (in NZ): I don't see the ABs at their best at the moment and they too are grappling with player turnover, but they could put out the coach's grandma and her dog and still beat this depleted and experimental English XV in their sleep. England hope to play an "expansive" game against the All Blacks but the only expansion will be to the Kiwis side of the scoreline. England cannot, by temperament, upbringing, bloodline, genes, training, tradition or ability play an "expansive" game so why don't they give up ttalking and just try to grind the Kiwis down as per ususal? A big score.

The Teflon Messiah

It is often said that Ronald Regan was able to ensure that no political problem or scandal ever stuck to him - hence the moniker of the "Teflon President". Barack Obama seems set to raise slipperyness to such heights that it will make Ronnie seem like the Velcro Prez. It helps to have the media running interference for you and consigning lots of otherwise juicy stories to the fabled MSM memory hole.

A short while after hiring James Johnson as the chief of his Veep vetting panel, suddenly Obama claims today that, he had never actually worked for him. This is in the vein of Pastor Wright and multiple fraudster Tony Rezko, who contrived to get Obama a $250,000 house for about a quarter of the value. In both cases, Saint Baracky claimed these, along with the ranting Rev. Pfhelger, "were not the people he knew" despite he knew one of them for 20 years.

There is also the case of the once fired Austan Goolsbee who "never really" worked for Obama either when he was caught lying about NAFTA briefings he had with Canadian officials, who has now just been re-instated to Obama's team as a top economic policy adviser. The MSM has adroitly dodged Obama's very friendly links to domestic left-wing terrorists Bill Ayers and the charming Bernadette Dorn, once on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted list.

Obama "never knew them very well" either, despite being neighbours and having cozy political parties with Bill, last seen in public a few years ago dancing on an American flag and stating his complete non repentance for attempting to bomb the Pentagon.

Obama has railed against the corporate greed of slippery sub-prime mortgage bankers. It seems then odd that on his Democratic fund raising staff he has people directly linked to banks like Continental Finance and many others of the worst type of subprime sharks.

Surely the real reason James Johnson, who never worked for Obama despite being appointed by him, suddenly resigned is the Wall Street Journal expose of how Johnson did not disclose the friendly loans he got from Countrywide ( another sub-prime shark) to Fannie Mae, of which Johnson was CEO. At the same time, Fannie Mae was buying Countrywide’s rotten sub-prime loans.

Presumably Obama would say, "This is not the story I read".

If Obama Was Republican

Hat Tip: Peoplescube.com

Eating Climate Propaganda

A good example of the unsubstantiated claims of global warming hysterics is found at the very well read BBC News. What looks like a straight news piece "Clashes at Nairobi Food Protest" includes at the end the mandatory, and totally unsubstantiated, "climate change" mantra so beloved of the soft-left social controllers that totally dominate the BBC.

"World population growth, increased food consumption in emerging economies such as China, climate change and increased land being given over for biofuel production are all having an impact on the price of food." says Aunty Beeb.

Of course,there is little evidence that "climate change" a.k.a. "weather" is responsible. The excellent page on Wikipedia here does note "climate change" as one of the debatable reasons for food shortages, but assigns it last on the list and in the follow up data, provides almost no evidence for the assertion, even in the exhaustive footnotes and quoted scientific papers.

The Beeb of course has it has as number 3 in their list, that also includes the beloved leftist Malthusianism , "world population growth" is the primary cause. Translation? Abort the little brown buggers and we will be fine.

What the Beeb does not have in their list are factors like: the effect of the anti-free market OPEC cartel on oil and fertilizer prices, the frantic resistance to GMO foods displayed by the grossly overweight European Union populations and their blackmail of developing countries that want to employ GMO crops, the anti-capitalist subsidizing of food prices in especially the EU but also the USA, the role of anti-democratic misgovernment in Asia ( North Korea) and Africa (Kenya included) in producing artificial famines and other factors.

Wikipedia notes quite correctly that "Systemic causes for the world-wide food price increase continue to be the subject of debate." but not amongst the leftists at the BBC, where the matter is cut and dried. Wikipedia experts say:

"Initial causes of the late 2006 price spikes included unseasonable droughts in grain producing nations and rising oil prices. Oil prices further heightened the costs of fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture. Other causes may be the increasing use of biofuels in developed countries (see also Food vs fuel),^[1] and an increasing demand for a more varied diet (especially meat) across the expanding middle-class populations of Asia.^[2][3] These factors, coupled with falling world food stockpiles have all contributed to the dramatic world-wide rise in food prices.^[4] Longterm causes remain a topic of debate. These may include structural changes in trade and agricultural production, agricultural price supports and subsidies in developed nations, diversions of food commodities to high input foods and fuel, commodity market speculation, and climate change."

One factor for sure is the lunatic insistence of the climate dogmatists on bio-fuel production. Whereas the production of bio-diesel in arid climates using the jojoba plant would, for example, be of enormous benefit to poor countries in Africa, instead we have the world's rain forests being cut down ( with a huge loss of bio-diversity) to plant palm oil or large food areas being put over to corn based ethanol, as just one example of the unintended effects of the climate control freaks agitprop.

A conservative perspective starts with the idea that perfect human socio-political or economic institutions are impossible, and that something like "global warming" will always involve trade-offs and systemic solutions, many of which will be imperfect and flawed, and always subject to continuous review and adjustment based on human priorities and freedoms. This is absolutly not what the Beeb wants to hear or broadcast.

The Pit Beckons

I often write with tongue firmly in cheek, with an eye to the satirical. After all, my childhood hero was Swift. Sometimes things are not a laughing matter, however.

Yet yesterdays decisions by the UK parliament to allow human-animal hybrid embryos, to allow the breeding of "saviour siblings" simply to provide donor matches, to do away with any "right to a father" by those who use insemination or fertility clinics and to stick with killing 6 month old babies in late abortions has made me deeply ashamed of my citizenship in that country.

The founder of the left, Rousseau, was the first to demand the destruction of the family - he even gave away his only child for adoption for "political reasons" and broke his wife's heart for life. He was a monster. The left has continued openly, quietly or even surreptitiously to believe in the next 250 years that we can only have "new humans" when the family, as we know it, is pulverised and remade in a political image.

We truly enter a brave new world of Frankenstein creations with Britain's new legislation.

Anyone who has worked with fatherless children would see that encouraging society to raise the same is utterly irresponsible and costly. Indeed it is the left's own social studies that show those with two stable parents do better in every measure than those from single parent families - social policy cannot guarantee that, but it should aim for it. Breakthroughs last year mean that any human cells can now be used for creating stem-cells and the need for using human embryos no longer exists. The idea of breeding simply to provide spare parts for another human needs no comment. Finally, advances in medicine mean premature children born at 6 months are quite viable and many thousands are today growing into healthy adults, making abortion at 6 months nothing less than infanticide, unless one wishes to argue a 6 month old is just a "fetus" which to me seems utterly unsupported by science or evidence.

Countries like Britain wonder why their core is rapidly being overwhelmed by brown immigrants with a strong sense of family life and spiritual belief and who detest the "values" of their hosts on many levels. Hurry up, is all one can say.

Obamamania Pt 4

A remarkable piece by respected veteran black political scientist and left wing activist Prof Adolf Reed Jr in The Progressive, which is hardly my normal reading, takes issue with the vacuous nature of Obamania and, from a leftist perspective, the shammery and hollowness of his aspirations. Excerpt:

I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.

Read the whole thing.

This is an extraordinarily prescient piece that, coming as it does from someone who is a black leftist, all the more likely to be true. It is fascinating that both right wing commentators and Mr. Reed seem to say almost the same things about the Obamessiah and therefore they are both right or both wrong. I happen to believe the former more likely.

Let Them Eat Strawberries

It's an odd time when millionaire greenies in the developed world hit out a semi-starving Africans in the name of climate change. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramasay wants his namesake, the Fat Controller, to arrange legislation to ban all out of season foods in UK, a move that would devastate hundreds of thousands of workers in developing countries.

"I don’t want to see asparagus on in the middle of December. I don’t want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home grown."

Perhaps in a few hundred square miles worth of ecologically friendly heated winter greenhouses?

A much better suggestion would be to close down British agriculture totally so that Ramsay and his fellow New Labour trendies can use the country for what they really want anyway: a vast picnic site where entertaining yokels will doff their hats and tug their forelocks as they watch Gordon and his pals rock up in his Ferrari ( great choice of green car, except it's red and has 12 cylinders) to eat Kiwi Fruit and Foie Gras canapes all washed down with a 1968 Le Mernot de Petites Villages.

"He says it would cut carbon emissions as less food would be imported and also lead to improved standards of cooking. "

Yes, the Brits can't wait to go back to a traditional winter dish of pureed parsnips with a slice of deep fried blood pudding. These people are simply hilarious.

Blogging Laos

A splendid day. First a trip to Laos across the immense, lazy Mekong River. Laos an expected and excellent time warp , with super cute Laoettes. all in their tribal costumes of black sarongs with silk borders, French colonial buildings and almost no ATMs. The local currency is the "kip", worth 1/270th of the Thai money and 1/8000th of a dollar. People accept it like you are offering them used toilet paper. Capitalism rocks.

I get to ride vile Tuk-Tuks that keep breaking down ( it took a relay to get me back to the bridge later on). Am interviwed by a Uni student on his "English Languarge" (as the check sheet says) practise assignment - complete amazement from this hardened travel warrior that there is no come-on or rip-off. His Task? " Interwiev One Forgneir in One Day".

Usual and expected Communist poverty - spot a Merc 230 SL obviously driven by the relative of a Politburo member. Who else could possibly afford one in Laos?

Stop in at the East-West Restaurant for lunch to discover Sri Lankan lady owner and her quasi-European partner ( all the white folks in this part of the world are so utterly wasted by Indo-China you can't tell their ages or nationalities - suffice to say they are always florid, perspiring, unkempt and more than a little mad) going through the wringer with a People's Workers Party of Laos grande dame. For a Lao she is enormous, well over 5 ft 8, with a beehive hairdo, pancake make-up and an assortment of Party insignia. Am not quite sure what a Sri Lankan is doing running a resto this far up the Mekong, but through the interpreter I can here her pleading ,
" But this man my husband he is not allowed to verking here", as she unfolds endless permits and documents.

The Laoettes are so utterly sweet. I fall in love every time I talk to one. I simply have not met any women like this in 20 years. They seem not from another planet but an entirely different galaxy.

Back to Nong Khai in the late afternoon of my final day. I attend the "Western Cowboy Club" where acres of Thaiboppers jump up and down to the bizarre strains of a Thai rock band, whilst waiters with bowties dump huge ice-cubes into your beer.

To Brendan's Place for the mandatory drunken local Irish publican's visit. I bump into Teak Pete, the pony-tailed ex Vietnam vet who has lived here since 1970. We have a great chat and afterwards I end up across the road (I should point out Nong Khai is a very conservative city with zero of Bangkok's glittering nightlife) at "Nongs Place." In this tiny pub I fall into animated conversation with a public school educated Burmese lad and Mark, a raving drunk who spent 6 years in the 4th Batallion, Kings African Rifles based in Jinja, Uganda.

Meanwhile Dao, a singularly worn out ladyboy, attaches herself to me with the subtltey of a giant squid in feeding mode. After a full discussion of the Greek influence on Afghan architecture, the U.S. Marine and Japanese army casualty rates on Saipan and if Speke the Nile explorer was undone by spending a month in the Queen Mother of Buganda's school for sex slaves, Dao unwinds herself to retire rebuffed and the rest of us stagger off to our hotels.

It's taken two weeks. This is why I came here, this is why I return. I honestly wonder if I should be leaving tomorrow and feel vaguely sad.

P R of China,perfect fascists?

An interesting debate kicked of by Far Eastern Economic Review where Michael Leeden asks if we are not witnessing a mature fascist state in existance?

Mr.Leeden is immediatly accused of heing brutally unfair, a hegemon and more. Furious reaction from Asiaphiles are all noted in the responses, but here is my own reaction to their mostly angry comments.

"This hurt response is mostly by people who think that "fascism" is a general insult and not a political situation with certain clear features.

These include hypernationalism (with or without various filters of racial purity), private enterprise rigidly controlled by the state (privatized socialism) and severe abscence of, and hostility to, democracy. One might also add the worship of a mythical and deeply "wronged" past which, if allowed to bloom anew, would prove the superiority that has always been inherent in the genius of the people in question. Looks like China, sounds like China, tastes like China, though of course I may be wrong.

Miss Nguyen needs to be asked, if China possessed democratic insitutions, would the Chinese people allow the forms of abuse they are hidden from at present in Tibet, in the Chinese non-response to the Burma cyclone, Dafur and other events where even the humanitarian instinct is masked in the obsessive need to make primary the national interest, as seen by the ruling clique?

If the answer is yes, they would allow these abuses, then we surely do not understand "Asians" ( whoever those are in that broad canvas) as Ms. Nguyen means them and I am not sure that, on those terms, one would want to.

However I believe that is not the case and giants like China, when they have broad access to denocratic rights, will be forced by their masses to act differently to the loud drum of their current nationalist frenzy."

Obamamania Continues

Four years ago, Evan Thomas of Newsweek famously said:

Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win… They’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there’s going to be this glow about them… that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.

The attempts to polish the absurd flawed rhinestone that was John Kerry famously failed, but the media is wetting itself at the prospect of helping Obama win the 2008 Presidential race. McCain, once their hero when he seemed to be the anti-Bush in the 2000 primaries, is already being recast as an old, out-of-touch warmonger who is clueless on the economy. Every point McCain tries to make will be relentlessly skewered whilst St.Barry is given a completely free pass. If Kerry and the lizard-like Edwards were given a "glow" in 2004, expect Obama to receive the 1 gigawatt halo effect.

The hidden subtext is already emerging: criticism of Obama is...whisper whisper....racism! Personally, I would have given a black candidate my vote all other things being equal. For their history, they need an extra shake of the dice and had Colin Powell run in 1992, he would have had mine, and everyone else's.

If Obama were a green man from the galaxy, he would never get my vote for many good reasons: he would be the most inexperienced US President in 100 years and is Jimmy Carter re-born, a quasi-religious figure who promises to talk to our enemies and ignore our friends. His international trade policies could set the world economy back "decades", and that is New Labour's Peter Mandelson talking over in Europe, no less. He firmly believes that judges should be left-wing and pre-empt democracy by making new laws from the bench, not interpreting the ones the people we elect actually draft and thinks anything that a citizen can do, government should tax you more to do it better themselves.

He has consorted with homegrown terrorists like Ayers and Dorn, the crackpot Rev Wright and the convicted racketeer Tony Rezko, for all his talk of "new politics" and his wife is an moaner who whines about how hard life is on $500,000 a year and thinks that "they" have always been out to get her and Obama. Who are "they"? Presumably the same typical Americans who arranged for her to get affirmed placements in Americaa's top universities as a black women from a modest background - the shamelessness of "them".

Obama would be the most left-wing President ever elected, a template of the radical "victimolgy" concept of modern identity politics. For all that he remains a supremely gifted and talented young man and perhaps the most perfect politician of the last 50 years - if oratory, sharpness and style over substance is everything, and maybe in 2008, it is.

He will probably win, for not only does he have the media breathlessly behind him (Oh, the new stories, the spins, the angles, the Big Narrative! How their sales will soar.) but Americans have come to believe that their economy is in a severe recession ( it isn't yet), everyone hates them ( they do, and that won't change unless the USA is prepared to give away the store and the keys to the safe) and that unconditional talks with our enemies will make everything fine again. In this, Obama resembles Chamberlain more than Churchill, Carter more than Reagan and blind wishful thinking over reality. Roll on 2012.