Examine The CO2 Coming Out of Gore's Mouth Before We're Sorry

All the carbon dioxide coming out of Al Gore's mouth has him poised to reap a windfall fortune as companies rev up and tool up to cash in on the Global Warming hysteria generated almost single handedly by this man, who by the way could have been our president!!! Is this his revenge for not winning back in 2000? What I want to know is this: If he's so convinced about his human caused global warming then why does he refuse to debate with the growing number of skeptical scientists that are challenging him? Very interesting...and how come we the citizenry don't demand that he participate in debates before we commit so much treasure to an unproven idea that is man-made global warming? Joseph Bast at Globalwarmingheartland.com has a very good article on Gore and his nefarious motivations for this hoax. (read)

On November 12, former vice president Al Gore announced he is joining a venture capital firm that seeks to cash in on global warming alarmism.

Gore resurrected his career by persuading millions of people that a 1 degree warming of the Earth’s temperature over the past century was man-made and portends a global catastrophe. Gore already has used global warming to become a very wealthy man, charging $200,000 and more to give speeches on global warming and steering investments to a firm he partly owns that sells worthless “carbon credits.” He stands to make millions of dollars more in his new position.
It all begs the question: Was Gore in it just for the money all along?

Gore surely knew from the outset that global warming brought together two extremely affluent sectors of American society -- professional environmentalists, who Chronicle of Philanthropy reports raised more than $6 billion in charitable gifts in 2006, and major corporations seeking government subsidies to produce energy from otherwise-unmarketable sources such as wind, solar, and ethanol.

Both sectors were quick to see in global warming a PR tool that could raise billions of dollars from gullible consumers and taxpayers. They filled Gore’s pockets with cash and underwrote, if the value of all the free “earned media” is included, a billion-dollar-a-year media campaign to rescue him from obscurity. Gore never shied away from enriching himself as the campaign went along, as vividly demonstrated by his energy-gorging homes and jet-setting lifestyle.

Being in it only for the money would also explain Gore’s remarkable immunity to criticism and doubt. Gore wasn’t afraid to debate his foes when he was a politician. But as the world’s leading advocate of global warming alarmism, Gore has refused to debate his critics, despite repeated public challenges from a long list of qualified critics and even a million-dollar ad campaign by my organization, The Heartland Institute, asking him to debate.

Apparently, no one inside the Gore camp -- a group that unfortunately includes many journalists -- finds this even the slightest bit odd. (continue reading here).

Go here for a list of excellent blogs and websites detailing how Global Warming IS NOT caused by humans and how it is greatest scam of the last two centuries.

A Life Dedicated To Exposing The Frauds and Educating The Gullible

Ever wondered about faith healers, parapsychologists, psychic surgeons, Extrasensory perception, and claims to have been abducted by UFO's? "James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but today he is best known as the world's most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudo scientific claims. He is a a detective of the incredible and a teacher to the gullible."

"Why people are so drawn to the irrational has always puzzled me. I want to, if I can,be as sure of the real world around me as is possible...I want the greatest degree of control. I've never involved myself in narcotics of any kind. I don't smoke. I don't drink because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality, fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers and I want to be aware as I possibly can. That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways but I'm willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world as close as I can get to it."

(YouTube)

Why Don't Prisoners Earn Their Upkeep?

The Intolerant Fox blog has a witty article on making our prisoners work.

"I have a brilliant, dare I say genius, solution to the poisonous crap coming out of China. Lots of us don't want to buy lead-laced toys for our kids to suck on, but can't afford to buy fancy-pants priced items made somewhere else. While listening to Michael Medved today, I had an epiphany. The big problem is that American companies have outsourced their manufacturing to China because the Chinese pay 8-year-olds .08 cents an hour to sew Elmos together and ship them here while American unions force companies to pay uneducated factory workers (with vocabularies of an average 8-year-old) upwards of $10-$15 an hour. This, of course, drives the prices way higher than the general public wants to pay."

"Enter my frabjastic idea. I can do better than .08 cents an hour. How about .00 cents an hour? Free labor. Right now, in prisons all over America, capable hands sit idly, lifting weights, making shivs, violating their roomates...and they're ours for the taking! I say we offer up the incarcerated population to all the toy companies as free labor! Why shouldn't they earn their keep? I'd rather my tax money go for training them how to build a lead-free Tickle-Me-Elmo than to their cable-porn habits, wouldn't you? Get them up in the morning, get them on a bus, take them to the factory, let them put in shifts around the clock and start pumping out those American-made toys for all of us to enjoy at Walmart!

"Not only will this solve the Chinese competition problem, but it will give inmates some real skills they can apply in the world (other than shooting up or shooting folks) and maybe deter some would-be criminals who would rather not work an assembly line for 10 to 20.
This may be the best idea anyone has ever had. (Besides electricity.)

"One thing is for sure. Our dependancy on China is as toxic as our dependancy on terrorist oil. They're both killing us. America is a great nation with untapped resources and the capability of being totally self-sufficient. Why don't we just do it?"

Sixty-three Years Ago and Today

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE by Raymond S. Kraft

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe. America’s only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland,Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the East, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after W.W.I and throughout the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW2, army units were training with broomsticks because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors because they didn’t have real tanks. And a huge chunk of our navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England, that was actually the property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact). Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later, and first turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.

Ironically, Russia saved America’s butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone… 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a MILLION soldiers.
Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis could possibly have won the war.

All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs — they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. And that all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East — for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win — the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC — not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. And we can’t do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing……..in Iraq. Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a “whimper” in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 — a 17 year war — and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again … a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP — adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. W.W.II cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning W.W.II would have been unimaginably greater — a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, conditioned by 30 second sound bites, 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an “England” in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them.

We have four options:
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran’s progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in, America.
4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

Remember, perspective is every thing, and America’s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.
The US has taken more than 2,000 killed in action in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In W.W.II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week — for four years. Most of the individual battles of W.W.II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.
But the stakes are at least as high … A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms … or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

It’s difficult to understand why the American left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.

“Peace Activists” always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it’s safe.
Why don’t we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern California. Please consider passing along copies of this article to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful today — history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven.

The United States Sky Is Not Falling

The news media sure likes to turn everything into "the sky is falling" scenario. Maybe shouldn't believe them and we shouldn't count the United States economy out yet. Gerard Baker's article at TimesOnline explains how we have been through these times before and have always come up smelling like roses. It won't be different this time.

THE DOLLAR'S IN DECLINE. GREAT NEWS! by Gerard Baker
"For the historically short-sighted, let's remember we have been here before. Between 1985 and 1995, the dollar declined by 43 per cent against the world's big currencies — somewhat more than it has in the past six years. That period was also marked by dire proclamations of the end of US economic power. But it turned out that in those years the foundations were laid for the strongest period of US economic growth in the past 35 years. (Emphasis mine)."

"If you're still sceptical, ask yourself this: is it probable that the shift in the relative value of the dollar and the euro represents a bet by the world's investors that Europe — strike-torn, productivity-challenged, demographically doomed Europe — is the world's economic future, rather than the US, or, let's say, China?..

"The first thing to be said is that the level of public sector borrowing in the US is very small. The fiscal deficit, at just over 1 per cent of national income, is smaller than in most major European countries. It's true that America faces a large long-term fiscal challenge from an ageing population. But it's a smaller challenge than that faced by most of Europe, Japan or even China.

"So if government borrowing isn't the problem, it must be the private sector that's neck-deep in debt, right? The general view is that Americans have irresponsibly fattened themselves up on widescreen televisions and gas-guzzling four-wheel drives, all paid for with easy credit.

"...The reality is this: why save when the value of the investments you own is increasing at rapid rates? The total value of mortgage and consumer debt is indeed up by a massive $5 trillion since 2001, according to the latest figures published by the Federal Reserve.

"But consider the increases in the wealth of Americans during that period. The aggregate value of houses alone is up $8 trillion. The increase in the value of stocks held either directly or through pension funds and other investment instruments is higher by another $8 trillion. That's an increase in net wealth of American households of $11 trillion in less than six years...

"All right, but isn't the US going into recession, you say? Maybe, but so what? The US is overdue a recession by the standards of the business cycle in the past 60 years. It's possible the housing market and related problems will tip America into another one. Provided the people responsible get policy right, it doesn't have to be a depression.

"So the dollar is falling for good, sound reasons that do not require a millenarian view of the global economy. It is yet another thing Americans should be thankful for."

The Greatest Scam of the 21st Century

Newsmax has an article describing how Al Gore is "Cashing in on $6T Energy Business".

I think posterity will come to view Al Gore as the man who was able to foist the biggest money making scam of the 21st century. This man not only successfully promoted a "documentary" starring Al Gore, called an Inconvenient Truth, winning an Academy award and based on half-truths, incorrect interpretation of the data and outright exaggeration but now he is poised to cash in on all the hyper-activity to control the so-called "Global Warming" scam.

"...Al Gore is joining forces with a venture capital company that’s seeking to profit from the move toward “clean technology” in the $6 trillion global energy business..."

"The Nobel Peace Prize winner’s move comes as the company “makes a risky move beyond information technology and healthcare investing into the fast-growing and increasingly competitive arena of ‘clean energy,’” Fortune magazine reports.

"...Among the companies the fund has already invested in are firms that make microbes to scrub old oil wells, build large-scale solar-power farms, develop solid-oxide fuel cells, and design equipment for use in electric car batteries...

"Gore, along with Doerr and Blood, insist that halting global warming will require “a makeover of the $6 trillion global energy business,” according to Fortune.

"“Coal plants, gas stations, the internal-combustion engine, petrochemicals, plastic bags, even bottled water will have to give way to clean, green, sustainable technologies.”

"Asked why he is combining his environmental advocacy work with a profit motives, Gore — who is already an advisor to Google and a director at Apple Inc. — told Fortune: “We all believe the market must play a central role.” "

Notice to Mr. Gore - If there really is such a thing as man-made global warming in reality then "The market" would have solved the problem after real scientists would have come to a realization that it is really occuring. The Market, indeed. This man is about as interested in the market as any statist is. What he is interested in first and foremost is making money off the backs of legitimate industry and backed by the power of government regulations.

© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Failed Policies Caused by Altruism

With politicians always trying to scheme how they can help the poor by increasing more aid to this group or that group, health care for children, etc. etc. the one thing they never do is think about the consequences of their policies over the long term and how individuals will react to handouts from the public trough.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about how we are recovering from moral bankruptcy. The article by BY PETER WEHNER AND YUVAL LEVIN states "Since 1960, there had been a more than 500% increase in violent crime; a more than 400% increase in out-of-wedlock births; almost a tripling in the percentage of children on welfare; a tripling of the teenage suicide rate; a doubling of the divorce rate; and a decline of more than 70 points in SAT scores."

"But the past 15 years has seen a turn for the better in all of the above statistics.
The most striking element of the overall picture continues to be the extraordinary turnaround in nearly every area apart from the family. The progress we have witnessed over the last 15 years is impressive, undeniable, and beyond what most people thought possible. There was, it is fair to say, essentially no one in the early 1990s who predicted it. How, then, did it happen?

"Obviously, no single explanation will suffice. Instead, long-overdue changes in government policy appear to have combined with a more or less simultaneous shift in public attitudes, with each sustaining and feeding the other. We may begin with the change in policy, for if the past 15 years demonstrate anything, it is the enduring power of policy, properly understood, to influence culture.

"The 1996 welfare-reform bill was the most dramatic and successful social innovation in decades, reversing 60 years of federal policy that had long since grown not just useless but positively counterproductive. In effect, the new law ended the legal entitlement to federally funded welfare benefits, imposing a five-year time limit on the receipt of such benefits and requiring a large percentage of current recipients to seek and obtain work.

"When the bill was passed, there were dire predictions, mostly emanating from liberals, of an explosion of poverty and hunger. They were just as quickly refuted. State welfare rolls plummeted--and poverty, instead of rising, decreased. Welfare reform sent a message in bright neon lights: Higher expectations will yield better results. Rather than giving up on the poor, the new policy assumed that the able-bodied were capable of working, expected them to work, and was rooted in a confident belief that, materially and otherwise, they would be better off for it. In each of these particulars, the policy makers proved correct. If, as the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote in the 1990s, our old social policy had "succeeded in 'demoralizing' . . . society itself," the new policy proved to be profoundly re-moralizing.

"Crime rates, too, benefited from something of a policy revolution over the course of the '90s... " (Read the full article here).

Ultimately, of course, government policies are the result of the philosophical ideas held by a culture. And until we don't discard the tired idea of altruism in favor of a philosophy of individualism and the principle of laissez faire in economics we will always be searching in the dark for the right policies to enact. This hit and miss approach causes a lot of heartache and loss of treasure.

The Law of the Sea Treaty is a Rip-OFF

"Thomas Bowden has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that crushes the rotten head of the "Law of the Sea Treaty" nail. He bases his arguments against this despicable treaty on the fact that Nations or organizations don't create wealth let alone in such a difficult place as the seabed floor. Individuals do. This is nothing more than another United Nations Scam to parasitize the work of able people or companies (Read)."

"The Law of the Sea Treaty, which awaits a ratification vote in the U.S. Senate, declares most of the earth's vast ocean floor to be "the common heritage of mankind" and places it under United Nations ownership "for the benefit of mankind as a whole."

"This treaty has been bobbing in the legislative ocean for the past 25 years. After President Ronald Reagan refused to sign it in 1982, repeated attempts at ratification have failed. Last month, however, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17-4 to send it to the full Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to ratify.

"What's at stake are trillions of tons of vital minerals such as manganese, nickel, copper, zinc, gold and silver -- enough to supply current needs for thousands of years -- spread over vast seabeds constituting 41% of the planet's area. Senate ratification would signify U.S. agreement that the International Seabed Authority, a U.N. agency based in Jamaica, should own these resources in perpetuity.

"Why should we agree to this?"

WHY INDEED! (Wall Street Jr.)

A Message Worth Listening To - Ron Paul (2of 2 on PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer)

Brief Overview of Congressman Paul’s Record from his website Ron Paul 2008 before you watch the second part of the PBS interview with Judy Woodruff.

He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.

He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.

He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.

Congressman Paul introduces numerous pieces of substantive legislation each year, probably more than any single member of Congress.

A Message Worth Listening To - Ron Paul (1of 2 on PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer)

I wanted to understand Ron Paul's amazing success recently at raising money via the internet. Watch this YouTube video and decide for yourself.

Environmentalists Don't Even Want You To Have WATER

A good example of the real face of environmentalism - every species comes before Man.

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

Environmentalists Are Muscling In on Atlanta's Water Supply November 7, 2007

Irvine, CA--With the Southeast suffering a prolonged drought, the city of Atlanta, Georgia, has only about a three month supply of readily accessible water. Nevertheless, in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, the Army Corps of Engineers continues to drain more than a billion gallons a day from Lake Lanier, Atlanta's main water source, to release it downstream for an endangered species of mussel.

"The Endangered Species Act is a danger to the human species," said Dr. Keith Lockitch, a resident fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute. "People find it hard to believe that environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act could really require the sacrifice of human beings to nature. But that is exactly what they have to mean in practice; they mean that in order to sustain some obscure mussel species, the people in Atlanta must go without water.
Environmentalists claim that blaming the mussels is unfair. They say it is just a way of diverting attention from the real causes of the water crisis, which, in their view, are a lack of strict water conservation mandates and the 'unbridled development' of metro Atlanta over the last few years."

But, says Lockitch, "this amounts to the bizarre claim that the problem is not a failure to build reservoirs and expand water capacity, but a 'failure' to obstruct economic progress and impose draconian water restrictions on Atlanta. In other words, the environmentalists' view is that Atlantans should sacrifice even more to nature.

"In fact, the opposite is the case. Solving the Southeast's water problems requires the rejection of the Endangered Species Act and environmentalist obstacles to development and growth. Indeed, the real solution is more profit-driven development. What is needed is a water management system that is entirely owned and operated by private individuals and companies, who would be driven by the profit motive to ensure a sufficient water capacity. A wholly private system would protect the rights of all users with a legitimate interest in the Chattahoochee River Basin--including metro Atlanta as well as the energy plants downstream and the Florida seafood industry in the Gulf--with no one requiring that human beings be sacrificed to mussels."
(Ayn Rand Institute)

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Contempt For Our Constitution By Our Congress

"There is one reward that nothing can deprive me of, and that is the consciousness of having done my duty with the strictest rectitude and most scrupulous exactness" (GW to Lund Washington, Morristown May 19, 1780).

Representative John Shadegg, Republican from Arizona, has for 12 years at each new Congress, introduced the "Enumerated Powers Act" which would require Congress to specify the basis of authority in the U.S. Constitution for the enactment of laws and other congressional actions (read Walter Williams column-CapMag)

Enumerated Powers Act Would Require Congress to Cite Constitutional Authority
Washington, May 19 -

The Enumerated Powers Act, requires that all bills introduced in the U.S. Congress include a statement setting forth the specific constitutional authority under which the law is being enacted. This measure will force a continual re-examination of the role of the national government, and will fundamentally alter the ever-expanding reach of the federal government. For too long, the federal government has operated without constitutional restraint. In doing so, it has created ineffective and costly programs, massive deficits year after year, and a national debt totaling nearly $7 trillion. The Enumerated Powers Act will help slow the flood of unconstitutional legislation and force Congress to reexamine the proper role of the federal government.

For these reasons, every Congress since the 104th Congress I have introduced the Enumerated Powers Act (H.R. 2270 - 104th, H.R. 292 - 105th, H.R. 1018 – 106th, H.R. 175 — 107th, H.R. 384 — 108th).

At the beginning of the 105th Congress, the House of Representatives took an important first step by incorporating the substantive requirement of the Enumerated Powers Act into the House rules. Today, the House must cite the constitutional authority for each bill in report language accompanying the legislation. However, the full effect of the Enumerated Powers Act will not be realized until it is incorporated into actual law.

Our Founding Fathers believed that granting only specific legislative power to the national government would be a powerful mechanism for protecting our freedoms, while allowing us to achieve the objectives best accomplished through a national government. Congress should honor and abide by the principles embodied in the Constitution – no more, no less. Respecting the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not granted to the national government to the states, or the people, will ensure that the Constitution continues to truly guide our nation.

This is what the Act says:

"Each Act of Congress shall contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of the that Act. The failure to comply with this section shall give rise to a point of order in either House of Congress. The availability of this point of order does not affect any other available relief."

It seems to me that if our Congressmen were honest about wanting to obey our Constitution and not wanting to spend our money frivolously then they would want to enact this law as proof that they understand our Constitution and what it forbids.

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

P. J. O'Rourke

More and more people are starting to understand what socialized medicine would mean if Hillary and her ilk get their way. Paul Hsieh has a good article at http://www.aynrand.org/ where he describes what the Canadian health care system really is like and how people are starting to understand that they commited a big mistake by allowing the government to control their healthcare dollars.

"To guarantee "free" health care, a government must force the individual to pay for everyone else's medical care and limit his freedom to pay voluntarily for his own. With bureaucrats deciding who receives what, the individual is therefore forbidden from spending his money according to his own rational judgment (and the advice of his doctors) as to what's best for his health. When a government forces people to act against their own interests, it's no surprise that the results are misery and death."

"Fortunately, Canadians are starting to recognize the problems inherent in "single-payer" health care and are taking very small steps towards limited private medicine. America must not repeat Canada's mistakes." (READ)

Our Lives, Liberty and Healthcare vs Hillarycare

There are few things truer than the fact that government managed anything is ruinous to our health and/or our pocketbooks. Examples abound all around us such as Public schools, Social Security, publicly funded highways and transport systems, bridges and government regulated airports just to name a few. Well with the Democrats spouting on about how they will socialize medicine to save us from the malevolent doctors who train for years to become the best at what they do it is urgent that we have a real discussion about what it would really mean to have bureaucrats in Washington dictating something as personal and vital as our health care decisions.

A series of very important short films (Free Market Cure Series) directed and produced by Stuart Browning and Blain Greenberg, examines this folly. Uninsured in America "examines the conventional wisdom that 45 million Americans cannot get health insurance and consequently do not have access to health care.” It explains how this 45 million uninsured figure is a canard to get us all up in a tizzy about the shamefulness of it all. But actually if one examines the number closer a different picture emerges. Mainly, that the number is closer to only 8 million people that slip through the cracks such as drug addicts and the homeless. These are the people who “refuse to participate in society”. Those people who appear at the emergency services get care regardless of whether they are insured even the illegal immigrants!

So if one can get something for free why should he bother to purchase health care? They even found out that among these “45 million” are the 18 to 35 year olds who choose to spend 500-800 dollars or more on eating out rather than purchasing health care insurance! I have to pay to cover these people? I think not!

In 1965 Lyndon Johnson signed medicare and Medicaid into law and this is what set the stage for Americans increasing dependency on the state to take care of them. But we forget that health care is not something that falls out of the sky. It has to be provided by other people – people who have decided to dedicate an extraordinary amount of blood, sweat and time to study the field. Why should doctors want to become employees of the government? Do you think the best and the brightest will choose to enter this field? You and I both know that the answer is probably not.

Why should health care be different from architecture or plumbers or veterinarians or scientists? What is it about health care that’s different from any other commodity that one has to purchase? Why do doctors qualify to become slaves at the whim of politicians? Are we to follow the model of Cuba and Canada (go here to see what Canadians think of their health care system and why they cross the border to stay alive).

As Americans living in the land of the free and the brave we must ask ourselves: Do we want to depend on the State to deliver vital life preserving health care to us and do we really want to ruin the medical profession by making doctors employees of the state? I hope the answer is no.

Just remember the Soviet Union, Cuba and Canada and let's learn from history.

Gary Kasparov and "Brilliant Theories"

The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger interviewed Gary Kasparov (November 1) the great master Chess player from Russia. He is running for president and fears for his life. Well, it appears Kasparov takes issue with Condoleezza Rice's dove-like attitude toward the dictatorial Putin.

"As to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's argument that the West needed Mr. Putin inside the G-7 structure so it could "influence" him, the former chess champion replies: "Occasionally you have to look at the results of your brilliant theories." Bringing Mr. Putin in as G No. 8, he says, "jeopardized the whole concept of this club, seven great industrial democracies." "

Brilliant theories indeed. Read the article by Caroline Glick over at World Jewish Review for an analysis of all the "Brilliant Theories" from our our Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher Hill to Joseph Cirincione, a former Congressional staffer who dealt with arms control issues to Ms. Rice (read). These officials are killing us softly...

Henninger sums up the interview as follows:

"Arguably these views make Mr. Kasparov a dissident even in the increasingly cynical, "pragmatic" West. To their credit, the West's political elites in the 1970s protected the Soviet Union's dreamers. Today Mr. Putin wants Russia to be seen again as dangerous. It is that. Garry Kasparov deserves protection. He stands for something important. A word from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be a start."

What Will It Be America? Modernity or Backwardness?

I listened to a very revealing interview with an environmentalist activist from India, Sunita Narain on the BBC (listen). The interviewer, while clearly sympathetic to the guest, tried several times to pin her down on several questions where she had seemed evasive. I thought she was clear as a bell.

She declared that climate change is very important particularly for India so government must take climate change seriously – because if glaciers melt as it seems to be the case then water will become an issue. She boldly made the claim that green house gases therefore economic growth, are directly linked to climate change, ignoring the fact that more and more scientists are questioning the so called facts behind rising CO2 emissions and it’s effect on climate (Gore’s Nobel Prize notwithstanding).

I’ll try to paraphrase some of her utterances but you’ll have to listen to the interview yourself to get the full idea of what she is really advocating.

She says that India must be allowed to emit CO2 in order to grow. She says “We have to share growth between the nations. Cooperation is not possible without justice and equity – this is not about coercion. We are definitely asking the rich countries to cut their emissions.”

Then the interviewer says: “Yes the rich are responsible for 70% of the emissions but in 25 years it’s the developing countries that will be responsible for 70%.”

Ms Narain exclaims: “Exactly the point. If you’re really talking about this one world let the rich decrease their emissions so the poor world can increase. But we don’t want to be as irresponsible as the rest of the world was.”

“But then don’t you need legally binding limits imposed on you?” (Interviewer)

“Absolutely! But for the rich! By 2050 we must reduce carbon emissions by 80% if we want half a chance to save this world…There is an over fascination that there is a technological fix for our problems – there isn’t.” (Ms. Narain)

“With what face and what morality can anyone in the rich world even speak about climate change today? We in India are emitting but we are also suffering for the problems we did not even initiate.”

Apparently, Ms. Narian’s vision of the proper model to emulate is the Himalayas. Why? “That lifestyle teaches us how you can live with so little…you can build a rural economy with resources from the environment. We can learn from the rationality and the frugality of the poor people.”

More and more pressure will be placed on the United States and other countries that have chosen reason as their means of climbing out of backwardness, to cut their emissions. Remember cutting carbon emissions means cutting production which means regressing to poverty. My question is – Are our leaders in Washington and state governments philosophically armed to be able to defend our way of life and do they have the backbone to prevent the ‘do-gooders’ from turning us into a third world country? I have very grave doubts indeed. What this woman appears to be advocating is one world rule.

So as the number of these self-appointed saviors of the world increase, it will be interesting to see which road we choose as a nation: progress, modernity and all the conveniences that applying reason and science to problems brings, or, decline, backwardness and all the drudgery that anti-reason brings to human life.

To quote Ayn Rand from her book "The Anti-Industrial Revolution" - published in 1971:

"The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of
capitalism in today's mixed economy, the establishment of a global
dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred-many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end."

Hillary’s “the meaning of is” Moments At the Debates

Trying to pin down Mrs. Clinton is like trying to catch a cat and turn him over belly up. He wiggles and scratches and meows. Such was the performance of the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States.

The Wall Street Journal “Review and Outlook” section had a very good analysis of the debates last night, particularly Mrs. Clinton’s performance.

“The junior Senator from New York seems increasingly to have adopted her husband's political methods, minus the savoir-faire. The result is that it's impossible to know what she believes about anything.”

But the question is: DOES SHE HAVE A SET OF PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE HER? I doubt it. I think she’s a pragmatist and her modus operandi is to go by the whim of the moment, i.e. she licks her pointer finger and puts it up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Is that any way to run a country?

“On Iran's nuclear ambitions, moderator Brian Williams asked a number of the candidates what their "red line" was. As he put it to Barack Obama, "What would make it crystal clear in your mind that" the U.S. "should attack Iran?" When he repeated the question to Senator Clinton, her answer was, in sum, "I think that what we're trying to do here is put pressure on the Bush Administration." She added, "we've got to rein him in." And, no, she didn't mean Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When pressed by Mr. Williams, she clarified, in a way. "We're not in my view, rushing to war. We should not be doing that. But we shouldn't be doing nothing."

Is this woman scary or what? She also was wishy washy on the question about taxes but did I expect anything else? It is most obvious that she will raise taxes if allowed to assume the presidency.

As the Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook writes: “The political strategy is clear enough. Mrs. Clinton wants to roll to her party's nomination on a tide of "inevitability" while disguising her real agenda as much as possible. But Democratic voters ought to consider whether they want to put all their hopes for retaking the White House on Mrs. Clinton's ability to obfuscate like her husband without his preternatural talent for it. Aside from lacking her husband's political gifts, Hillary's challenge is that we've all seen this movie before. And performances like Tuesday's might be enough to convince voters to opt for a candidate who is his own man.”

Exciting News

The Ayn Rand Lexicon

The ideas of the philosopher Ayn Rand i.e. the ideas of her philosophy of Objectivism can now be found on the internet through "The Ayn Rand Lexicon; Objectivism from A to Z". This book which was edited by Harry Binswanger has been available since around 1986. Now it will be instantaneously available to millions or billions of people around the world who are interested in ideas and are trying to understand our culture today and history in general.

"Through excerpts culled from Ayn Rand's many articles, lectures, and books, this work presents the Objectivist view on some 400 topics in philosophy, politics, art, economics, and psychology. The Lexicon thus serves as a mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism, complete with a conceptual index and extensive cross-references."

Many, many people have read her novels: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, We The Living and Anthem and have had their lives changed. Now, a deeper understanding of her revolutionary ideas can be delved into deeper with the Lexicon. (Ayn Rand Lexicon).

The Noble Prize for the Biggest Scam of the Ages

The seams in Gore's global warming scam are being ripped apart as more and more people have a closer look at what this man is spouting (Robert Tracinski at The Intellectual Activist does an excellent job of covering this issue).

"If you must declare a debate over, then maybe it's not. And if you have to gussy up your agenda as "our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level," then it deserves some skeptical examination." (John Stossel)

"Gore also says in the film that 2005 is the hottest year on record. But NASA data actually show that 1934 was the hottest year on record in the U.S. — 2005 is not even in the top 10."

"Perhaps worse than the film’s errors is their origin. The BBC reported that Gore knew the film presented incorrect information but took no corrective steps because he didn't want to spotlight any uncertainties in the scientific data that may fuel opponents of global warming alarmism.

"An Inconvenient Truth" grossed about $50 million at the box office and millions more in DVD and book sales. Gore charges as much as $175,000 for an in-person presentation of his slide show that forms the basis for the film.

"Considering that a key 25 percent of "An Inconvenient Truth" is not true — and perhaps intentionally so — it seems only fair that Gore offer a refund to moviegoers, DVD/book purchasers and speaking sponsors. Where are the class action lawyers when you need them?" (Steven Milloy).

Michael Asher reports on the fact that the foundation of the global warming scam-the Greenhouse Gas theory-is under serious attack from new research funded by the US National Science Foundation.

Gore's rants about global warming is part of the whole environmentalist movement that hates modern life and uses the cloak of science to legitimize their goals of dismantling all that humans have accomplished over the centuries. Global warming is a fantasy and a wish based on the desire of these environmentalists' to live in nature and their deep down hatred of man and progress. But even deeper they hate reason the foundation for man's rise from Neanderthal to Homo Sapiens. Remember the unabomber Ted Kaczynski? He openly stated "I wanted to live like a Neanderthal".

We used to live "in nature" but as man painstakingly rose from bare existence to a technologically advanced civilization they did one thing that environmentalists do not do - use reason to solve problems and create a life filled with rewarding challenges and benefits.

"Tax His Land, Tax His Bed, Tax His Table, Tractor and Mule"

Thought you'd want to see all the taxes we are paying. These are probably not all of them but should be enough to give you heartburn. I am quoting from a "Letter to the Editor" in the Battle Creek Enquirer of 16 October 2007. I doubt the Democrats accomplished all this looting all by themselves without Republican help along the way. I separated out the 7 telephone taxes so that they stand out for you. Have fun and try not to swallow too much bile.

Accounts receivable tax, Building permit tax, CDL license tax, Cigarette tax, Corporate incometax, Dog license tax, Excise taxes, Federal income tax, Federal unemployment tax, Fishing license tax, Food license tax, Fuel permit tax, Gasoline tax (42 cents/gallon), Gross receipts tax, Hunting license tax, Inheritance tax, Inventory tax, IRS interest charges, IRS penalties (tax on top of tax), Liquor tax, Luxury taxes, Marriage license tax, Medicare tax, Personal property tax, Property tax. Real estate tax, Service charge tax, Social Security tax, Road usage tax, Sales tax, Recreational vehicle tax, School tax, State income tax, State unemployment tax,

Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax
Telephone usage charge tax
Utility taxes, Vehicle license registration tax, Vehicle sales tax, Watercraft registration tax, Well permit tax,Worker’s compensation tax.

The writer concludes: "Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago; our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt; had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids. Do you know what happened? Can you spell "Democrat?"

Lying and Cheating in the Cause of Global Warming

The supposed scientific consensus of the Global Warming crowd appears to be coming apart. “Global Warming Delusions” is the title of a remarkable article by Daniel Botkin, a biologist and ecologist working on Global Warming (Wall Street Jr, 17 October 2007). It appears that some global warming scientists are scaremongering because they want us to change our ways. It’s so nice to have people so preoccupied with the earth that they are willing to do anything – lie, cheat and cause mayhem in order to achieve their irrational ends as evidenced in this article.

“Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.

"Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20%-30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming -- a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. …But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.

"We're also warned that tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics. But scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not...

"I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.

Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate…

"…Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality.

"A recent article in the well-respected journal American Scientist explained why the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro could not be melting from global warming… That it couldn't be global warming directly (i.e., the result of air around the glacier warming) was made clear by the fact that the air temperature at the altitude of the glacier is below freezing. This means that only direct radiant heat from sunlight could be warming and melting the glacier. The author also studied the shape of the glacier and deduced that its melting pattern was consistent with radiant heat but not air temperature. Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming.

"We are told that the melting of the arctic ice will be a disaster. But during the famous medieval warming period -- A.D. 750 to 1230 or so -- the Vikings found the warmer northern climate to their advantage. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie addressed this in his book "Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000," perhaps the greatest book about climate change before the onset of modern concerns with global warming. He wrote that Erik the Red "took advantage of a sea relatively free of ice to sail due west from Iceland to reach Greenland. . . . Two and a half centuries later, at the height of the climatic and demographic fortunes of the northern settlers, a bishopric of Greenland was founded at Gardar in 1126."

"Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves." (Read).

Democrats Plunder Michigan

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.”
Frederic Bastiat 1801-1851.

Is there any difference between the plunderers in Lansing and those of our history books? Today our politicians commit "legalized" plunder and the citizenry quietly and meekly takes it without so much as raising it's collective voice. At least the historical plunderers unabashedly knew what they were and what they were doing.

See if this makes sense. Michigan has a 1.75 billion dollar deficit caused by our politicians runaway spending. They just pass a "flurry of bills" that will bring in 1.35 billion dollars. So, 1.75 + 1.35 billion equals 3.1 billion dollars in taxes for Michigan citizens which will inevitably mean more job losses and emigration of the best and the brightest from our state.

"The House and Senate passed a flurry of bills in the hours before and after a midnight deadline, including an income tax increase, an expansion of the state’s sales tax and an emergency extension budget that would give lawmakers an extra month to eliminate the deficit." (Read)

"An 11.5 percent income tax increase and expansion of the 6 percent sales tax to a strange brew of services will close most of the $1.75 billion hole in the state budget year that began Monday.

"The tax on 23 new services -- which will generate $725 million over a full year -- means Michigan now taxes 49 services, according to the Treasury. The state already taxes some services, including storage and auto leasing. That puts the state at 27th in the country in the number of services taxes, up from 36th, Kleine said. "

"Another measure of tax burden is state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income, with the national average at about 11 percent. Kleine said the new tax boosts mean Michigan edges up from slightly below 11 percent to slightly above 11 percent.

"But the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., which tracks such data, takes a different view of Michigan's ranking. The combination of the sales and income tax hike puts Michigan's tax burden at 11th-highest in the nation, up from No. 14, the institute says...

" 'Republicans refused to put up votes for anything,' said House Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township. 'Basically, this entire package was delivered by Democrats.' "

This is downright corruption and ineptitude by our legislatures but especially the Democrats.

Another Idiotic Michigan tax - A Turtle Fence

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? Frederic Bastiat (1801-1851).

Michigan is in the sewer financially, our governor shut down the government recently (NY Times) and people are leaving our state by the droves because of poor job prospects for the young and incredibly high taxes so what are our legislatures wasting their time on this month?

"A congressman disputes the state's contention that it's worth $318,000 in federal money to keep turtles from becoming roadkill.

"Installation is expected to begin this week on a 2-mile-long fence along both sides of U.S. 31 in Muskegon, in west-central Michigan. It is intended to prevent hundreds of turtles, some of them protected species, from being killed as they migrate to nesting sites along the Muskegon River, which the highway crosses.

"Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., questions why the Michigan Department of Transportation did not consider using the money on other projects 'more related to the movement of people and products.'

"The 4-foot-high chain-link fence has been planned for two years. State officials consider it a relatively inexpensive solution to a problem that affects traffic safety and the environment of rare turtle species." (Read).

These politicians in Lansing should be held accountable for being idiotic and wasteful. No scheme for separating us from our money is too stupid.

A Crack in Aura of an Invincible Hillary Presidency

The Globe and Mail from Canada had a VERY interesting commentary by Camille Paglia a so called "firebrand writer" who teaches at the Philadelphia University of the Arts. She says that Clinton "has no vision" and "can't win the general election against any of the leading Republican presidential candidates".

"Hillary is having trouble with educated women of her generation. We seem to be the hardest sell for her right now because we've observed her, admired her, embraced her - and then become disillusioned. There's a sense that she doesn't possess core values. One feels she's uncentered in some odd way. And the chaos of her domestic life is not reassuring...

"She has tremendous powers of denial to block out what is going around her in her own family life. But she's also able to perceive herself as an ethical, God-fearing, Bible-reading Methodist who is quasi-saintly for her commitment to ethical causes. She will not admit a mistake. She has no power of self-analysis. She thinks all her problems are due to her enemies.
And we don't want a situation when Bill Clinton is acting as proxy president in the White House...

"There's something about Hillary that's anhedonic - the inability to take pleasure in the moment. Everything for her is this beady-eyed scheming for the future, combined with this mass of resentments for the past, the people who have done them wrong...

"We want to turn the page. We don't want to go backward into the Clinton years, which is what will happen if she's nominated...

Ms. Paglia's take on the inevitability of a democratic presidency is very interesting: "I don't know where people are getting the idea that the Democrats are a shoo-in. I don't see them gaining the White House unless there's a third-party spin off, like Ross Perot. I listen to conservative talk radio, because the callers really do give one a sense of where popular sentiment is at the moment. And I just don't see how any of the Democratic candidates is going to be able to present the national-security credentials that will be crucial in this election. The Republicans have [Mitt] Romney, [Rudolph] Giuliani, [Fred] Thompson, even [Mike] Huckabee - a series of candidates who would be way more credible than Hillary, if only because of the projection of strength they give." (Read)

Atlas Shrugged: The Movie (hopefully)

It looks like it just might happen - the stars are aligned in the skies for a movie production of a novel that totally influenced my life ATLAS SHRUGGED. For those of you who are not aware of this amazing novel written by Ayn Rand and published in 1957 there is a big hole in your life. This writer using the medium of a novel was able to explain philosophically and experientially how a society can go bankrupt financially and morally if the men of the mind, i.e., the thinkers and creators are not allowed to thrive. She explained how the intrusion of politics into the realm of economics and culture can stifle creativity and slowly rot a culture. Of course we have many examples of this occurring in the 20th century: The Soviet Union, China, Vietnam...the list is very long.

And guess who is playing Dagny Taggart? Angelina Jolie. The Director is Vadim Perlman (The House of Fog and Sand) and the script writer is Randall Wallace (Brave Heart). So there is hope that a decent job, at least, will be done (read and read).

It's hard to explain how absolutely eyeopening this novel was to me at a time in my life in my 20's when politics did not make sense, religion seemed to be a fraud and my question was why was Jimmy Carter wearing a sweater and telling us to do the same? Atlas Shrugged showed me that the arch enemy of the creators or the men of the mind throughout history have always been control freaks, power lusters and altruists. Their dominating way of controlling the able was to regulate and command them to sacrifice to those more needy.

The question that Ayn Rand raised in her novel was - why must the creators sacrifice on the altar of the needy? She caused a revolution in thinking that has and still is changing the way people view their lives on earth.

The Peace Prize for Al Gore???

It is now certifiable. The Noble Peace Prize is a farce and a joke because it was given to a lier. London's High Court scrutinized his film "An Inconvenient Truth" and found nine lies (Nine Untruths and Al Gore's Inconvenient Judgement). So many other deserving nominees out there and they give it to an environmentalist who is a wanna be President of the United States. How about Alvaro Uribe President of Colombia who has done a remarkable job of turning around this terrorist beleaguered nation. Mary Anastasia O'Grady at the Wall Street Journal does a good job of analyzing the immense problems President Uribe faces regarding drugs, terrorists and our democrats who do not want to sign the free trade agreement with Colombia but want to lift the trade embargo with Cuba headed by a dictator (Read).

Pretending by the Left

Multiculturalism is a philosophy built up of lies and self-deceits. And it is killing us as a nation both politically and socially. Andrew Claven (City-Journal.org) has a penetrating analysis of what the Left is willing to do in order to avoid the truth (Read "The Big White Lie").


The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to
lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to
declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to
say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions
are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is
a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that
depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and
hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their
gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility.
It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only
advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all.
From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and
multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family,
leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But
because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition
inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to
rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s
handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s
redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the
most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was
queen....

...And because we’ve allowed leftists to define the language of political
good manners—don’t say women are less scientific; don’t remark that black people
bear the same responsibility for their actions as whites; don’t point out that
the gunman was a Muslim, it’s not nice—the sort of person willing to speak the
truth isn’t always the sort of person you want to be seen with. It sometimes
takes, I mean, a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity to withstand the obloquy
attached to stating the facts of the matter. If these people in their public
personae seem harsh to more genteel conservatives, it may be because it requires
that extra dollop of aggression to shatter the silence created by the Left’s
increasingly elaborate sensitivities.

Still, mannerly as we would rather be, truth-telling continues to be
both compelling and ultimately satisfying. There is, after all, something
greater than courtesy. “Firmness in the right,” Lincoln called it, “as God gives
us to see the right.” We find ourselves at a precarious moment in an endeavor of
great importance: namely, the preservation of Western rationalism and liberty.
It does mankind no good to allow so magnificent an enterprise to slip away
merely for fear of saying the wrong thing.

Why Multiculturalism is Bad and Wrong

How did humanity survive without multiculturalism up until the late 20th century? And why does this dreadful idea-that all cultures are equally deserving of our respect and awe-linger in our colleges and news media when all can see how devastating it is when our soldiers have to fight "carefully" so as not to kill "innocent" Iraqis or target a mosque? I think this is the result of decades of neglect of American History and World History by our rotten public schools. Only history properly taught can give a people a sense of honor and pride in country. Do we deserve to honor the United States of America? You bet! Below is an article posted at Ciy-Journal.org by Bruce S. Thornton (READ).

Fighting at a Disadvantage
Bad cultural habits plague the West in the War on Terror.
Bruce S. Thornton 10 September 2007

...Let’s start with the ideology of multiculturalism, which has become pervasive, from university and grade-school curricula to Disney cartoons and the mainstream media. Don’t believe the spin that multiculturalism just recognizes the contributions of other cultures and ethnic minorities; the West has been doing that since Herodotus wrote admiringly about Egypt in 450 BC. In fact, multiculturalism attacks the West as uniquely oppressive and destructive, all the while idealizing the non-Western “Other” as more authentically human and humane, more in tune with nature, more communal, and less materialistic than all those repressed Westerners enslaved to technology and the “cash nexus.”

Even a cursory survey of world history explodes these romantic clichés and noble-savage fantasies. The West’s sins have been the sins of humanity everywhere. But the goods of the West—political freedom, consensual government, human rights, rationalism, and respect for the individual, to name a few—are unique to the West and account for its success. Just ask the millions of non-Western Others who every year risk their lives to migrate to Europe and America, even as virtually nobody goes in the other direction.

...In the post-9/11 context, and before it, multiculturalism predisposed many in the West to look on Muslims primarily as fascinating Others, victimized by Western racism, imperialism, and colonialism. We rationalize Islamic terror and place the blame for it elsewhere—on ourselves. We saw such self-flagellation in the days after 9/11, when numerous Western intellectuals, most notoriously ex–University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, blamed the terrorist attacks on American crimes and rationalized 9/11 as the “justice of roosting chickens,” as Churchill’s speech was titled.

The therapeutic sensibility that now dominates our public thinking reinforces this tendency to excuse Islamic terror. Unlike the old tragic vision of the classical West, which saw human suffering as the consequence of an imperfect human nature and our own bad choices, the therapeutic sensibility sees suffering as a temporary glitch caused by unjust social and economic structures. Evil is just a superstition, for people’s environments, not their own choices, cause destructive actions. The terrorists whom the unenlightened call “evil,” then, are themselves victims; we should assist them in reforming their unjust environments. Meanwhile, we ignore the numerous Islamists, from Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden, who tell us very plainly why they want to destroy us: because we are infidels who must convert to Islam, live in submission to it, or die.

Such hypersensitivity compromises our fight against Islamic radicalism in a thousand ways, ranging from self-censorship—for example, the Washington Post’s recent refusal to run an innocuous installment of Berke Breathed’s comic strip Opus for fear of offending Muslims—to politically correct warfare that refuses to accept the brutality, destruction, and death that have always been the cargo of war. We have seen such self-defeating behavior repeatedly in Iraq, where the Army’s rules of engagement have made U.S. forces hesitant to fire on mosques even though terrorists frequently use minarets as firing platforms. To the extent that we remain unable to recognize both the precious goods of our own culture and the destructive dysfunctions of the enemy’s, we will continue to fight at a disadvantage. And 9/11 will be not just a bad memory of our past, but also the harbinger of our future. (Read)

Bruce Thornton is the author of Greek Ways and the forthcoming Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow-Motion Suicide (Encounter Books).

Stop the Disaster of Socialized Medicine

Ayn Rand Institute Press Release

It's Time to Jump SCHIP October 05, 2007

Irvine, CA--President Bush vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was established to insure children whose parents did not qualify for Medicaid but who could not afford private health insurance. The expanded program would have covered an additional four million children from households that have yearly incomes as high as $83,000. Bush declared that while he "strongly supports reauthorization of SCHIP," he regards its expansion as a dangerous step toward socialized medicine.

"But by declaring his support for SCHIP," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, "Bush has already endorsed the perverse moral principle that is leading us toward socialized medicine.

"In trying to justify any government welfare program--whether social security, food stamps, or socialized medicine--advocates appeal to the fact that the intended recipients need the service but are unable to pay for it. Thus, the fact that some families 'need' health care but can't afford it entitles them to it--and so the government must institute programs like Medicaid and SCHIP to ensure that they get it. Such appeals count on the unstated principle that 'need' is the criterion of moral value and standard of just desserts.

"In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand exposes the viciousness of this moral principle, showing how it sacrifices the productive and successful to the incompetent and indolent. 'A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness--non-existence--as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defeat: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw--the zero. Who provides the account to pay these claims? Those who are cursed for being non-zeros, each to the extent of his distance from that ideal. Since all values are the product of virtues, the degree of your virtue is used as the measure of your penalty; the degree of your faults is used as the measure of your gain' (Atlas Shrugged).

"This moral inversion underlies the demand for socialized medicine, which says that some people's need of health care gives them the right to make slaves of doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals. If we are to avoid the destruction of our health care system promised by socialized medicine, we must reject the perverse moral principle at its root and restore freedom to America's health care system."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

"Lee Bollinger's Disease"

William Smith is a satirist who writes hilarious political commentary at TCS. But there is a serious note in this article concerning people who are willing enablers of evil by giving them a platform on which to sound "reasonable".


Psychiatric Association Releases Final Report on "Lee Bollinger's Disease"
By William S. Smith : 03 Oct 2007


(SATIRENEWSSERVICE) The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) today issued its long-awaited, massive study on Intelligentsia Derangement Disorder (IDD). Known popularly as Lee Bollinger's Disease, IDD is characterized by profound disruption in cognition involving the most fundamental human attributes: language, thought, perception and desire for self preservation.
The disease has been found in epidemic proportions on university campuses. The WPA study, which included extensive case histories of every single academic in the United States and Western Europe, reports that 99.99999% of all, non-economist social science professors are affected as are almost all tenured members of the "Arts" faculties of universities throughout the developed world.
According to the Report's main author, Dr. Edith Erwachsenenwelt, M.D., Ph.D., the cognitive development of most sufferers of IDD ends in early adolescence whereas non-sufferers experience continued development of their cognitive capacities throughout adulthood. "The cessation of the process of adult cognitive development," said Dr. Erwachsenenwelt, "produces the following symptoms, all of which are exhibited by each and every IDD sufferer":

• an inability to distinguish between real and false threats to personal, cultural and societal safety;


• irrational beliefs about the role of universities in a free society (the WPA Report cites as examples all volumes of The Journal of the American Indoctrination Association);
  


• an obsessive need to make self-congratulatory statements about the perceived brilliance and enlightenment of irrational personal beliefs and thoughts;


• an uncontainable compulsion to support extreme forms of violence so long as such violence is explained as the manifestation of colonialism, discrimination, socio-economic disparity or indigenous religious belief (the Report cites all editions of the now defunct Soviet Peace Quarterly published by The Harvard University Press and Wahhabi Weekly published by a consortium of two hundred Middle Eastern Studies Departments;


• A simplistic understanding of various sophisticated concepts such as freedom of speech (the study cites, among numerous examples, "Khmer Rouge, Peaceful, Pastoral, Progressive", Academic Monthly, March, 1975 Vol 15, pp 215-240; and "9/11: an Issue of Free Speech for Jihadis", The Smart Sociologist, October 2001, Vol 27, pp 1445-2002);


• the obsessive and compulsive misuse of metaphors involving Adolph Hitler;
  a specific paranoid delusion involving a mythical demon known as "Bush!" who is ascribed extraordinary, supernatural powers (the WPA Report cites approvingly, the pioneering work that uncovered "Bush Derangement Syndrome", Krauthammer, Charles, M.D., American Journal of Progressive Delusions, 2003, Vol 902, pp 1435-2742 and 2005, Vol 1245, pp 4351-6572);


• an inability to express gratitude toward those who protect and sustain IDD sufferers (the Report cites the U.S. military and U.S. taxpayers) during the long duration of their illness; and, recurring hallucinations about Jews (the WPA cites the work of actual members of the intelligentsia, Mearsheimer and Walt in The Protocols of the Journal of Anti-Semitic Advocacy, July 2006, Vol 102,345,776, pp 1-1245; and the numerous delusional books and articles about Jewish conspiracies by such self-proclaimed members of the intelligentsia as Carter, J.E. among many others). READ the rest here.

Imagine a Culture of Reason

There have been many articles commemorating the 50 year anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged. But one paragraph caught my attention and my hopes for the future. Written by Yaron Brook, Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute it describes beautifully what kind of future we could have if we would commit ourselves to a culture of reason.


Imagine a future America guided by the principles found in Atlas Shrugged--a culture of reason, where science is cherished and respected, not banished from biology classrooms and stem-cell research labs--a culture of individualism, in which government is the protector of individual rights, not its primary violator--a culture in which markets are not just regarded as the most effective option of an imperfect lot, but in which laissez-faire capitalism is recognized and venerated as the only moral social system--a culture in which business innovators understand that ambition, productive effort, and wealth creation are not just practical necessities, but moral virtues--a culture in which such innovators, proudly asserting their right to their work, are fully liberated and their productive genius fully applied to the generation of unimaginable economic progress. (READ)

Ahmadinejad Scares Even Khamenei

The Aussie News & Views of October 1 had an interesting article on Ahmadinejad, our favorite comedian (did you know that there are no comedians in the Middle East?) about the nature of thugs like him. The article is by Barry Rubin (Global Research in International Affairs).

Ahmadinejad’s goals, then, are his control over Iran , Iran ’s control over the Persian Gulf area (especially Iraq ), Israel ’s destruction, Iranian leadership over the Middle East , the expulsion of Western (and especially American) influence from the region, and even world domination, in roughly that order.

Basically, Ahmadinejad is not a unique phenomenon in modern Middle East history. The role to be filled is that of the leader of the Arabs and Muslims as well as prime enemy of America , Israel , and the West. In this respect, he is comparable to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s; Iran ’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1970s and 1980s; Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and 1990s; and Usama bin Ladin during the period before and especially after September 11, 2001. Yet Ahmadinejad has also become a symbol for the radical Islamist challenge to everyone else in the world

What makes Ahmadinejad different? The key element here, and one due to his own words and behavior, is that he seems not to be held back by caution, a rational calculation of the balance of forces, even if judged by the standard of his predecessors aside from bin Ladin of course. In other words, Ahmadinejad seems capable of anything and consequently far more dangerous. This conclusion is not just a matter of Western projection. I’ll bet that at times he scares even Khamenei. Read

John Bolton Speaks His Mind On Australian TV

I love John Bolton for his courage and his no nonsense approach to the truth. He doesn't get bogged down with fads. He says it like it is - he's a straight shooter - and he was the only voice of reason in that den of iniquity the United Nations.

Transcript
TONY JONES: Now to our guest. John Bolton is the former US ambassador to the United Nations. Before that he was a principal advisor to President Bush as Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, a position he held from 2001 to 2005. He's now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and he joins us in our Washington studio. John Bolton, thanks for being there.

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER US AMBASSADOR TO THE UN: Glad to be here.

TONY JONES: Now you would have heard the French Foreign Minister saying - warning, in fact - that the world should prepare for war to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons. Do you agree with him?

JOHN BOLTON: Absolutely. Life is about choices, and if the choice is between a nuclear capable Iran and the pre-emptive use of force - I might say a limited use of force - to break their control over the nuclear fuel cycle, I don't think there's any question that's what you have to look at.

TONY JONES: At the same time, the BBC is reporting there's a firm belief in Tehran that the US, enmeshed as it is in Iraq, is in no position to attack Iran. Now, you get the impression, at least many do, that Iran is ready to call America's bluff.

JOHN BOLTON: Well the Iranian statement obviously reflects no comprehension of what our global disposition of forces is or our capabilities. If that's what they think, they are sadly mistaken. Nobody's looking to call anybody's bluff here. Nobody thinks the use of force is an attractive option. But let's come down to the real question: is the use of force as an alternative preferable to Iran having nuclear weapons? No question about it, in my view.

TONY JONES: Could you imagine a war with Iran and what the consequences of that would be?

JOHN BOLTON: Let's get this straight one more time. We're not talking about a war such as we had in Iraq. We're talking about, quite likely, a limited air strike against, for example, the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, or the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, or the heavy water reactor at Arak, that would prevent Iran from getting from uranium in the ground to highly enriched uranium in a nuclear warhead. That is the kind of attack that we're talking about. TONY JONES: But John Bolton, that assumes it would stop there, that the Iranians wouldn't do anything in response, for example they wouldn't do anything to destabilise the position even further in Iraq or Afghanistan or Lebanon, that they wouldn't use international terrorism, that they wouldn't threaten the West's oil supply?

JOHN BOLTON: You mean as opposed to what they're doing now? Look, if this regime can intimidate us with oil at $80 a barrel but without nuclear weapons, imagine what will happen if Iran gets nuclear weapons. If they can see their way clear to this kind of bluster at this point, what will happen after they actually have the weapons? What's your answer to that?

TONY JONES: Well General John Abizaid your former commander in the Middle East has in a sense answered that on your side of the Atlantic overnight. He said the US could live with a nuclear-armed Iran and indeed the West is living already with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

JOHN BOLTON: Well, I'm not very happy about living with a nuclear-armed North Korea because of the threat they pose not only in East Asia but even in the Middle East as we've seen, and facts are not fully clear yet but the possibility of nuclear cooperation between Syria and North Korea. The notion that living under the threat of a possible use of Iranian nuclear weapons is acceptable may appeal to some people but it's not the kind of life I want to live and I don't think it's the kind of life that people in Israel, for example, or other American friends and allies in the region are happy to live with.

TONY JONES: Do you think the United States would countenance an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities?

JOHN BOLTON: Well, I think again, we're not entirely sure of the details of the recent Israeli strike against Syria, but I don't hear any loud objections coming out of the Administration here in Washington to that and if the Israelis were able to accomplish something similar to what they did against Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor the early 1980s I think the world would be a safer place.

TONY JONES: Yes, we've been reading and we've heard your response in the past few days to Israeli television about that story about the Israeli strike in Syria. Do you believe it is what unnamed US officials are saying? In other words do you believe it was a strike on a secret Syrian nuclear facility?

JOHN BOLTON: Let me just say for the third time, all of the details are not yet known. But I think it would be unlikely that Israel would risk the possibility of negative consequences from a strike inside Syria unless it was against a very high value target such as a facility involved with weapons of mass destruction. So simple logic points to the direction that this must have been considered an extraordinarily high threat by the Israelis for them to conduct such an operation.

Listen to the rest of the Video.