Secular Apostate

As many of the visitors to this ward of the loony bin well know, I’ve commented on the photogenicity and snob appeal of what might be kindly called “Serf Gawking” before. Our betters, like Madonna and the green eek!otourists, like to visit third world petting zoos and watch the charming natives dressed in tattered rags go about their traditional, back-breaking tasks from the back seat of open Range Rovers.

Occasionally, they even buy one to bring one home with them, facilitated by the good offices of the International Adopt-A-Serf program and bags of hard currency.

TimesOnline has an interesting article today explaining how the Carbon Footprint Coalition, formerly known as the “jet-set”, works diligently to preserve this fragile eek!osystem:

Western do-gooders are impoverishing Africa by promoting traditional farming at the expense of modern scientific agriculture, according to Britain’s former chief scientist.

Anti-science attitudes among aid agencies, poverty campaigners and green activists are denying the continent access to technology that could improve millions of lives, Professor Sir David King will say today.

I highly recommend a full reading of this piece. Link above, of course.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Months of attacks by unmanned US predator aircraft have caused carnage among the middle ranks of terrorist leaders in the lawless lands along the border with Afghanistan, where al-Qa’eda remains dangerous despite suffering a serious defeat in Iraq.

Their victims have included experienced Arab leaders and, it is now thought, Adam Gadahn, a former heavy-metal fan and so-called “killer computer nerd” originally from California. Nothing has been heard from him for months, leading intelligence experts to conclude that he may be dead. [emphasis added]

Mr Gadahn has been credited with helping transform al-Qa’eda’s al-Sahab propaganda wing into a slick operation which communicates in fluent English and produces professional quality DVDs, including one for Osama bin Laden last year.

But he may have fallen victim to an expanded programme of predator assassinations which in the last year has targeted and killed many of al-Qa’eda’s military commanders, terrorist trainers and facilitators…

Community organizing is not for the faint-hearted…

The magnificent Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion:

Have a blessed Sunday.

WASILLA, Alaska (AP) - The mother kneels in the snow, cheerfully posing beside her bundled up daughter, behind the bloody, dead caribou the mom just shot.

Horrifying. It’s actually the son, but it’s the AP and it’s the journosphere, right? At any rate, the child knows where meat comes from. Just think how he would be scarred and perverted if he lived on a farm!

Maybe not your typical family photo.

Not where you come from and your cramped lifestyle, I’m sure. Maybe you should get out more.

But that’s Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the disarming mom who’s not afraid to carry arms or use them.

You betcha. Nice shot, Sarah. Disarming? Get a life, lady.

If you decide to watch this video, watch the whole 1:55. I promise you you won’t be sorry.

Respectfully yours,

An American Hero

(H/T: Am. Thinker)

From the New York TImes:

Representative Charles B. Rangel has earned more than $75,000 in rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988, but never reported it on his federal or state tax returns, according to a lawyer for the congressman and documents from the resort.

Mr. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the federal tax code, bought the beachfront villa at the Punta Cana Yacht Club and has received twice-yearly payments from the resort, which rents the property for $500 or more per night…

Mr. Davis said the congressman did not realize he had to declare the money as income…

I recall Steve Martin setting the precedent on this:

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!”

The Daily Trojan (no, not that kind - be serious now) reports that:

Provost C. L. Max Nikias [UCLA] has approved the deletion of part of a Muslim student group website that hosted religious documents urging Muslims to kill Jewish people. The material was removed from a collection of scriptures known as hadiths, historical sayings of the Prophet Muhammad not included in the Quran. The hadith in question, along with thousands of others, are hosted in their entirety on a USC server as part of the now defunct Muslim Student Association’s website.

The Provost of UCLA is probably a raving right-winger, right?

But this is excusable restriction of campus speech. Think about it. If that material were allowed public dissemination, some budding neocon might think radical Muslims want to kill Jews.

(H/T: Maggie)

The “new” tactic by the Left is to paint Palin as a “book banner”.

In short, when Palin was elected mayor, she allegedly asked the town librarian if she would be OK with censoring some library books. The librarian said no. Beyond the fact that the mayor and the librarian in a small town don’t appear to like each other very much, that was pretty much the end of the story, according to the Anchorage Daily News and the Chairwoman of the Alaska Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Association.

Having grown up in a small town, and having been a library patron since the first grade, I’ve had a bit of experience with small-town public libraries. Here’s a small selection (the actual list is huge) of the books Palin allegedly “banned” in 1996:

• Confessions (Rousseau): that one must have been flyin’ off the shelves in Wasilla
• Decameron (Boccaccio): is that a photography book?
• Harry Potter and… etc. (Rowling): banned in ‘96, first volume published in ‘98.
• Lysistrata (Aristophanes): For the Greek Comedy scholars at Wasilla HS
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez) :often substituted for Ambien in cas…zzzzzzzzzz
• Prince of Tides (Conroy): New York Jewish psychiatrist warning!
• Silas Marner (Eliot): still in 10th grade literature texts?

Back to those small-town libraries. Small-town libraries are noted for their pinched funding. In every case I’m personally familiar with, funding largely, if not exclusively, comes from the state (not the town) and a few patrons who buy books they’ve never read - but have read about - to get their name (or dead Uncle Bill’s name) in a cheesy sticker pasted in the book for posterity. The Library of Alexandria probably had scrolls with stickers that read “Ex Libris Ptolemy II, dedicated in loving memory of my Dad.” But I digress. The point is, I’m betting the Lysistrata was not to be found in the Wasilla Public Library. Not because it was banned, but because Danielle Steele displaced it.

From STACLU:

I honestly think I was among the first, if not the very first, to figure out that the alleged list of books that Governor Palin is accused of trying to have banned. When I first saw “the list”, I wrote a comment at the site where I saw the claim. I “called BS” because it is just implausible on its face that any one single human being would want that broad a scope of subjects (pretty much every book you’ve ever heard of) banned. I very easily demonstrated that the list was a fake as applied to Governor Palin and wrote about it here at STACLU.

More over there. It appears the smear-averse Obama website has gotten in the act with their own embellishment. Check it out.

QUEBEC CITY — If you’re thinking more, you might also be eating more.

Intellectual work — such as reading, writing or working on a computer — prompts people to overeat and that might be a cause of obesity, a new study suggests.

“We have found that mental work represents a stress factor that stimulates food intake,” said study co-author and kinesiologist Angelo Tremblay.

The results are published in the latest edition of Psychosomatic Medicine Journal.

Obviously, the authors didn’t gain any weight while working on this priceless piece of poppycock.

(H/T: ConsumerFreedom.com)

(H/T: fmft)

Mark Steyn comes out of The Corner with a wicked left jab:

I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job this last week of lowering expectations by portraying Governor Palin - whoops, I mean Hick-Burg Mayor Palin - as a hillbilly know-nothing permapregnant ditz, half of whose 27 kids are the spawn of a stump-toothed uncle who hasn’t worked since he was an extra in Deliverance.

How’s that narrative holding up, geniuses? Almost as good as your “devoted husband John Edwards” routine?

Back when I was a boy and walking to school through ten feet of snow on an old dirt road that was uphill both ways, there was a politician and Presidential candidate named John Edwards. Most of you probably don’t remember him, but he was a truly remarkable man. He could telepathically connect with babies in the womb. He was the first authenticated legal psychic, able to report unborn babies’ very thoughts to juries in medical malpractice trials. Some swear to this day that he wore a pointy hat with stars and crescent moons attached thereto.

Edwards was well known for his visions. And he had a vision of Two Americas. One America was filled with huddling Tim Cratchits, clad in tattered rags, warming their tiny, shivering hands over guttering fires in streetside barrels and begging for alms. The Other America was filled with strutting plutocrats wearing silken cravats pinioned by 5-carat diamond stickpins. They exploited the sick and the poor, were carried high in sumptuous sedan chairs by trembling sharecroppers, and amassed obscene fortunes from global hedge funds.

This Revelation of St. John the Benign, as he was often called in those days, foresaw an economic Armageddon fueled by legions of the medically martyred and economically enslaved. St. John himself would lead them to the New Jerusalem, a land of milk and honey, fairness and economic equality, where college applicants would be judged by the color of their skin and the Scribes and Trial Lawyers would rule the land with wisdom and redistributionist justice.

I did not believe St. John. His apocalyptic visions were beyond my meager ken. Blinkered as I was, I could not see how money could be so thoroughly corrupting, because St. John himself was at the very pinnacle of American wealth and even participated in a hedge fund.

But in an astonishing work of interpretive scholarship, Victor Davis Hanson has enlightened me:

The Geraldine Ferraro Democratic Vice Presidential nominee appointment was an inspired stroke of genius that advanced the cause of feminism; Palin’s was tawdry tokenism.

[St. John himself] was a social reformer brought down by the tabloids; Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is white trash and fair game.

Insulting “small town mayors” and “good looking” women is funny; suggesting that “community organizing” is often a farce is a felony.

Obama’s violation of drug laws with a “little blow” was youthful exuberance; Palin’s husband’s DUI was more proof of a working-class messy family.

Joe Biden bravely continued as Senator after the tragic death of his wife and daughter left his injured young sons with a single parent; Sarah Palin selfishly shorted her children by running for VP and endangered her infants by flying while pregnant.

Criticizing Clinton’s engaging in sex in the oval office and lying about it to the American people were once “the politics of personal destruction”; lying that Sarah Palin might not have been the mother of her 5th child is the mere overreach of the blogs caused by the improper vetting of the McCain campaign.

Now I see how St. John and St. Bubba of Hope can be fabulously wealthy and morally superior. It is not mammon that corrupts, but the evil miasma of traditional values that seeps from the stinking fleshpits of flyover America.

Yes, Virginia, there are Two Americas

Here’s the column.

Community organizers are getting organized. They’re fighting back!

Click on over to organizersfightback.wordpress.com and take a peek. Help ‘em kick off their new blog!

The organizers demanded an apology from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her statement that community organizers have no “actual responsibilities” and launched a web site, http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com, to defend themselves against Republican attacks.

And don’t forget to check out the comment section. Here’s a few tasty morsels:

The Rebpulicans [sic] seem to find the democratic process, at work in community organization laughable.

No, no, no! It’s not laughable. It’s sweet, really. And you get to live with your Mom ’til you get your life organized.

Jesus Christ was a community organizer.

Ummmm, I don’t really think so, Kurt. That’s Barack Obama you’re thinking of. It’s OK. A lot of folks are confused about that.

They have just placed the first foot of many in they’re [sic] mouths.

Right, Chris. And you went to - no, don’t tell me… - Antioch College. Got stoned that day when they talked about contractions in English Comp, eh? Teaching ESL, are you?

Fear Smear Fear Smear.

And you must be Director of Street Chants, Sherman.

The next thing you know they will be attacking social workers.

I would never, ever do such a despicable thing. Besides, I don’t even know what they do. Work in welfare offices?

This has the making of a good rebuttal ad.

Indeed it does, Jill. I’m thinking you could put a couple of naked celebrity chicks in it. PeTA gets a lot of mileage that way. They say rebuttal ads are the next Big Thing.

This country is all about grassroots organizations that rise up and get things done. Without these people we would all be screwed.

Exactly, Mrs. Frank. In fact, the NRA is the largest grassroots organization in the world!!

Wha….???

Good Lord! I’m a community organizer!

SARAH PALIN is a community organizer!

Be a Community Organizer!

JOIN THE NRA!

$

RedState reports:

Halfway through Sarah Palin’s speech tonight at the RNC, people following the speech noticed she was deviating from the prepared text.

According to sources close to the McCain campaign, the teleprompter continued scrolling during applause breaks. As a result, half way through the speech, the speech had scrolled significantly from where Governor Palin was in the speech. The malfunction also occurred during Rudy Giuliani’s speech, explaining his significant deviations from his speech.

Unfazed, Governor Palin continued, from memory, to deliver her speech without the teleprompter cued to the appropriate point in her speech.

Contrast this to Barack Obama who, when last his teleprompter malfunctioned, was left stuttering before a crowd unable to advance his speech until the problem was resolved.

Sarah Palin. Winner.

With the Obama campaign, national health care is back on the agenda with a vengeance. If the government can get its political tentacles around your health care and your carbon consumption, there is nothing in your life they can’t control either directly or indirectly.

This story is very sad, but it has a adamantine logic that anyone who ever ran up against a bureaucratic stone wall can understand:

A cancer charity has today published research that shows doctors are keeping cancer patients in the dark about new treatments that could extend their lives.

Myeloma UK, which conducted the research, said a quarter of myeloma specialists questioned in a survey admitted hiding the facts about treatments that may be difficult to obtain on the NHS.

The main reason given was to avoid distressing or confusing patients.

Myeloma is a bone marrow cancer that affects around 3,800 people each year in the UK. Of these, 2,600 are likely to die from the disease.

The new poll was designed to take a snapshot of how the disease was being managed.

A total of 103 myeloma specialists in England, Wales and Scotland took part in the survey. The doctors candidly revealed how they struggled with NHS bureaucracy and cost-cutting to obtain the best treatments for their patients.

One in four said they avoided telling patients about licensed drugs still awaiting approval by the NHS watchdog body the National Institution for health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).

And who is NICE? They’re the guys who deny care to Alzheimer’s patients.

(H/T: Maggie’s Farm)

Avast, ye hearties! Come about and give a broadside to their port for God and country!

Even as the Obama camp ponders how best to handle John McCain’s veep pick of Sarah Palin, the high priests and priestesses of the media have marked her as an apostate.

Aye, them frilly pen-pushers and poofters at Ye Olde Neuw York Times have spied ye out, lassie! But a taste of the old grapeshot and cutlass’ll send ‘em straight to the arms o’ Davy Jones!

There’s a phrase for the ages.

Suann Maier pens “A Vote for Sarah Palin” in First Things. Whether you’re fer or agin Palin, this is an important piece. I couldn’t bear to to do it damage by excerpting it extensively, so here is one small teaser. Read it all.

I will vote for Sarah Palin because she has guts. We’ve never met, but I suspect I know something about her life, and so do a great many other women. I know what it means to have a son with Down syndrome. I know what it means to talk a good line about religious faith and then be asked to prove it. I know what it means to have a daughter pregnant and unmarried…

This is the stuff of real human love; this is the raw material of family life. And those who think that Palin’s beliefs and family struggles are funny or worth jeering at, simply reveal the venality of their own hearts.

In an effort to avoid the richly-deserved calumny that would otherwise be showered down on their heads, the left-wing chattering class has moved on from attacking Sarah Palin’s parenting and the Palin children to a new Uber-Narrative: The Vetting Process.

Watching some of FoxNews’ coverage of the Republican National Convention last night, I was amused by the indignant comments suggesting that the McCain Vetting Process had somehow failed the commentators’ exquisite sense of political and procedural adequacy and had further failed the American Electorate.

Here’s the odd thing. None of the individuals expressing this pious indignation have the slightest inclination to vote for John McCain, no matter who he selected. Their indignation is especially telling given the journospherical tendency to wring any McCain misstep or gaffe far beyond the last drop of juice (think: houses, number of) and utterly ignore the soiled laundry of Obama’s Quayleisms (e.g., 57 states) and policy gaffes (think: unilateral attack, unstable nuclear-armed Pakistan). So one naturally turns to an alternative explanation for this new-found zeal for Responsible Journalism.

No problem, actually. It’s obvious. This is their way of suggesting that Sarah Palin and her family are white trash without explicitly saying so. Governor Palin and the First Dude are so far removed, in a cultural sense, from the Democratic base that they simply sit back in slack-jawed awe and cannot understand how a successful female politician with an 80% approval rating could possibly have decided not to kill that defective baby! Why, it’s obviously irresponsible! Modern, properly acculturated women abort to avoid buying large jars of mayonnaise at Costco.

And, following the same reasoning, how could Governor Palin possibly have allowed her oldest daughter to be, in the words of Sen. Obama, “punished” with a child? One wonders what his daughters must have thought when they heard that. Perhaps the commentariat will be mollified if Bristol Palin elects to have a pair of scissors jammed in the child’s head immediately after birth. As we know, Sen. Obama fought very hard for that “choice”.

As a corollary to the Vetting Narrative, we naturally are obliged to listen to lugubrious repetitions of the “one heartbeat away from the Presidency” alarum. If one ignores the ironic fact that the original target of that dire warning was Teddy Roosevelt, winner of the Mount Rushmore Prize, the Heartbeat Corollary is Political Piety with free Ginsu knives. You get a six-month supply of Piety and, at no additional charge, the implication that McCain is on his deathbed.

So it’s going to be an interesting next few weeks. The left-wing journosphere is in a panic because, in my opinion, they fear that Sarah Palin is going to appeal to “What’s The Matter With Kansas” America. You can’t win elections without energizing your base, and that was McCain’s problem from the start. Think back to the primaries when these same commentators were noting that McCain was winning the independents and moderates, but the white trash, “dominionist” base was being divided between Romney and Huckabee. And I don’t know about the wilds of Vermont, but I can tell you first-hand that many Clinton Democrats in places like rural Tennessee and West Virginia love this Palin woman. If you love beer and a shot in a redneck bar, you might like Hillary Clinton in fullbore patronizing mode, but you’re gonna love gun-totin’ Sarah Barracuda.

And that has scared the hell out of intellectuals like Katie Couric (whose credentials have been burnished by years of reading teleprompters and televised colonoscopies).

Katie & Co. are just looking out for you, Mr and Mrs  Counterrevolutionary Lumpenproletariat. Can’t you see that Obama is the political equivalent of dragging a hundred-dollar bill through the trailer park? Why don’t you stop clinging to God and guns and go for the free money and government-subsidized infanticide?

Wake up, you stupid bastards (speaking in the literal sense)! If John McCain really loved his country, he’d piss on the flag and vet his running mate more thoroughly.