Predictions for 2007

Courtesy of Sigmund Carl and Alfred:

In the spirit of the season, we would like to offer up our insightful and correct predictions for 2007:

1) Sex will remain a popular pastime (that is, for everyone but you or your partner).

2) Arab scientists will not be awarded a Nobel Prize [or an olympic medal] in 2007, after losing by a hair to researchers and scientists from 180 other nations. The Arab League is petitioning Stockholm [and the olympic committee] for a new award, Jew Hating. That is the one field in which the Arab world has excelled for decades.

3) Arab world scholars will gather at a conference funded by Mohammed Fayed to declare that Saddam is indeed alive.

4) George Bush will resurrect a high school acting role and appear in a Shakespeare production of Hamlet, as a tree.

5) Not to be outdone, John Kerry will resurrect his high school acting role and appear in a Shakespeare production of Hamlet, reinterpreting the role of Claudius as that of a French, gay, well coiffed, oppressed man who [by the way] served in Vietnam. In this groundbreaking performance, Claudius is shown to love himself more than Gertrude (that bitch).

6) Barack Obama will question why there are so few acting roles written by Shaespeare in medieval times for African American actors. Jesse Jackson will sue.

7) Arnold will not be mistaken as speaking with a British accent.

8) James Brown will cease to ‘feel good.’ In fact, he will cease to feel anything.

9) Dick Cheney will go hunting with an air rifle. Secret Service agents will drop dead ducks from a helicopter.

10) In 2007 Al Gore will try a goatee and monocle. Notwithstanding his efforts, he will again be at a loss as to why he did not secure the Democrat party nomination.

11) Isabella Rossellini will make known her true love, the one dead psychiatrist she finds ‘electrifying.’

Insight and brilliance are wonderful things.

Meanwhile, keep your powder dry and don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

Adiós Saddam

It seems that Saddam has now joined the ranks of the "unliving". As evidence we see the image below left as his sentence is carried out by the Iraqi government. The image on the right is a collage containing the photos of a small number (148) of his victims from Dujail.

By Andrew Cochran

"Criminal Saddam was hanged to death" - Iraqi state TV. Saddam Hussein was executed around 10 pm ET (Al Arabiya reports the death at 10:05 ET). Two other Hussein-era officials, including his half-brother, have not yet been executed and remain in U.S. custody, according to Iraqi officials quoted by CNN (edited). The Associated Press has a summary of the convictions and sentences in the Hussein trial.

Saddam Hussein was a longtime state sponsor of terrorism, and during his reign, Iraq was listed by the State Department on the official list of "state sponsors." Iraq was added to that list in 1990 following its invasion of Kuwait and also for providing bases to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), and the Abu Nidal organization (ANO). Following the 2003 liberation of Iraq from Hussein's rule, U.S. sanctions applicable to state sponsors of terrorism against Iraq were suspended, and President Bush announced the removal of Iraq from the list on September 25, 2004.

More details of his ties to terrorists have been developed since the 2003 liberation. Saddam funded Palestinian suicide bombers through an account in Rafidain Bank in Jordan (see chart of the payments released by a U.S. House committee in January 2005 only to this site). He also funded the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines. I discussed other possible ties to Palestinian and other terrorist groups in numerous posts, which are best summarized in one post on November 3 and another on March 31.

The execution will have no impact on the current situation in Iraq, other than being cited as another excuse for more terrorism by Sunni insurgents. But Saddam was a mass murderer and a tyrant. To the best of my knowledge, he was the only ruler in the past 50 years who used chemical weapons on his own people and against another country. In a statement, President Bush noted that Saddam received the fair trial that he denied his victims. You can see a summary of his atrocities on the Fox News site, which reports, "Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of Saddam's actions." His death is a victory for the rule of law in Iraq and for the civilized world.

Saddam at the gallows (AFP) and compilation of pictures of 148 Iraqis in Dujail executed by Saddam Hussein (Sky News)

Saddam Hussein 1937 2006

Source

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

The New Theocracy

For the last several years (during the Bush Administration) we have been treated to a newly coined word in the political lexicon, to wit: Neoconservative (neocon). The word has been used to describe those in both the political arena and society as a whole who have previously adhered to a leftist (liberal?) oriented political philosophy but who have undergone an epiphany of sorts and now support a more conservative political philosophy. These would include ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ who emerged from the "academic" system as a dedicated Marxist but made the political journey through conservativism to libertarianism. Another wag defines "neocon" as a liberal who has been mugged by reality. Examples of this designation would include such bureaucrats as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle and academics such as David Horowitz and Victor Davis Hanson. With the recent capture of the legislative branch of the U.S. government and the distinct possibility of the capture as well of the executive branch in 2008 by the Democratic Party the likelihood of a new political animal assuming power must be addressed. The "Neocoms". They are already deeply entrenched in academia and thus the mainstream media due to the influence of the major journalism schools. It is described by David Horowitz as a religious movement.

The Neo-communist left opposes America’s commitment to freedom and capitalism domestically as well as supporting (sometimes “critically”) America’s declared external enemies not because of what America does, but because of what they think America is. The Neo-communist left is impervious to facts because it is a political messianism, in essence a religious movement. Its delusions of social redemption are fed on a rich diet of anti-American myths. These myths were once generated in institutions funded by the Communist Party and other marginal radical sects. But that has all changed with the long march of the left during the last thirty years through America’s institutions of higher learning. The Neo-communist left is now entrenched on the faculties of America’s elite universities, where it is a “hegemonic” force. It has converted America’s elite universities into a political base for its radical and anti-American agendas. In the present war with radical Islam,[which the Neocoms either ignore or tacitly support] this poses a problem Americans can continue to ignore only at their own peril, and which sooner or later they must address.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Bumper Sticker Insanity

The recently implemented McCain Feingold "campaign finance" law has resulted in several absurdities. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ would recommend that henceforth anyone with a vehicle used in his business refrain from placing any message thereon of a possible political nature.

It seems that perpetual NASCAR also-ran Kirk Shelmerdine used some unbought space on his race car to list the names of two political candidates in the late Summer of 2004, [hint: it was not Kerry Edwards] bringing the power of the Federal government crashing down on this unsuspecting non-voter.

"Notified by a Democratic activist of this nefarious, unreported political activity, and apparently concerned about the possibility that this might corrupt the Bush Administration, the Federal Election Commission went out investigating."

It's a humorous tale, though, albeit a bit of black humor - and also a telling story of where we are in mindless campaign finance regulation that a simple expression of political enthusiasm or business calculation should generate not only an admonishment from the United States Government to one of its citizens, but also four statements of reasons from 6 different commissioners. And it is worth noting that the Commission, in merely sending "admonishment letters," appears to have defied its General Counsel, who, it appears, favored fining these recalcitrants.

It just gets curiouser and curiouser how the First Amendment to the Constitution simply keeps circling the drain.

hat tip Brad Smith at Redstate

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

NUTS!!! 22 December 1944

62 years ago today the German National Socialist forces surrounding the American defenders of Bastogne in the Ardennes forest ordered the commander of the 101st airborne Division General McAuliff to surrender. General McAuliff's reply "Nuts" was puzzling to the German officers and was explained by Colonel Joseph Harper:

"If you don't understand what 'Nuts!' means," Colonel Joseph Harper explained to his mystified German interlocutors, "in plain English it is the same as 'Go to hell.' And I will tell you something else; if you continue to attack, we will kill every goddamn German that tries to break into this city."

Τhe rest is history. Until of course, it is revised by the defeatists of the 21st century.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Apartheid! Jimmy Carter Call Your Office!!

In his latest screed, the U.S.' (worst) and ex president castigates Israel for supposed "apartheid" policies toward the Arabs residing in the conquered former Jordanian territories of Samaria and Judea. Carter neglects however, to acknowledge true apartheid where it in fact exists.

Back to life from jaws of death in Saudi Arabia

Losing one’s way in Saudi Arabia could mean losing one’s life. Jojo Joseph, 31, a native of Mariyapuram, India stumbled on this great truth on Monday. What saved him from the sword was the timely intervention of the Indian Government.

Jojo, an employee of an electronic firm in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and who had gone to a place near Medina to see his wife Sheeba, a nurse, and their new-born child lost his way and ended up on the road to Medina.

Jojo, who did not know that the road was out of bounds for non muslims during the pilgrimage season, was arrested by the police at Al-Azeez, a place near Medina. The Saudi religious court ordered that Jojo be beheaded at noon (IST) on Tuesday ‘for trespassing into the area.’

Jojo conveyed the news to his family in India who contacted Indian Opposition Leader Oommen Chandy.


Chandy spoke to Jojo on his cellphone who gave him the name of the police station where he was lodged.

At the instance of the Prime Minister’s office, the External Affairs Secretary contacted the Saudi Government and convinced the authorities that Jojo had lost his way and that there was no ulterior motive in moving along the road.

Israel does not even execute convicted murderers and terrorists but is always cited as morally equivalent to adherents of the Religion of Peace™ who target Israeli civilians or execute lost motorists.

hat tip: Thomas Lifson

Your Papers Please

Recently Mrs. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ was suffering from a bout of the common cold; the symptoms of which included sinus congestion. In an attempt to be helpful, ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ volunteered to tool on down to the local pharmacy to replenish the supply of Sudafed™ which has heretofore been effective in relieving such symptoms. The aisle containing the cold remedies was emptied of the product, requiring a query of the pharmacist. At this time it was revealed that Sudafed™ is in fact stocked by most drug retailers but as of 30 September 2006 due to provisions of THE PATRIOT ACT is behind the drug counter. I advised the druggist that I wished to purchase a 24 tablet supply and was asked to produce a "drivers license". Somewhat puzzled by the relationship between driving and buying a heretofore mundane cold remedy and furthermore having left my vehicle without the wallet which contained it, I asked if other identification would suffice. The druggist replied: "Let me see what you have." At this time I produced identification supplied to retired law enforcement officers by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs' Department. The identification contains my photograph, physical description and an identifying number. It is accompanied by a badge indicating my rank at retirement. It remains the property of the LASD, must be renewed every 5 years and surrendered on demand. The identification further indicates that ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is authorized to carry a concealed firearm by the California Penal Code. In 2004 the authorization was extended by Federal Law to include all 50 states and U.S. Territories. The druggist who happened to be a native of Pakistan refused to accept the identification stating that it must be "a government issued document." At this time I walked out of the pharmacy and across the street to a supermarket which included a pharmacy. I made sure to enter the establishment with my driver's license and purchased a 24 tablet package of Sudafed™ after filling out a form containing multiple fields.

The "logic" underlying this nonsense is that the product can be used as one of the ingredients in meth-amphetamine, a recreational drug which our rulers have designated as unlawful. It seems that the U.S. has begun traveling down the same road as Venezuela where common acetone is unobtainable due to its role in producing cocaine. Also in that sad country due to the problem of motorcycles proceeding down the lines of stopped traffic in Caracas with two riders. The rider on the rear of the motorcycle would use a gun to rob the motorists. The government solution: outlaw 2 males riding on a motorcycle even in the countryside. One male, OK. One male one female OK. Two females OK. And people wonder what drove ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ to libertarianism.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Your Aid/Charity $ at Work

Most everyone agrees that charity and humanitarian aid are laudable. Cash is however fungible and can be diverted for other purposes. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ does on occasion give a modest amount to worthy causes but attempts to be assured that the entire amount is put to the intended use.

WHEN people [and governments] around the world sent millions to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public.

But militant Islamists have since imposed sharia law in Aceh and have cornered Indonesian government funds to organise a moral vigilante force that harasses women and stages frequent displays of humiliation and state-sanctioned violence.

Audiences throughout the Indonesian archipelago watched the televised flogging of a man convicted of drinking beer. He collapsed after seven of the 40 prescribed strokes and officials said he would receive the remaining 33 when he recovered.

Some say there are more “sharia police” than regular police on the local government payroll

The flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce sharia laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves.

This post could have as well been titled "The Road to Hell II".
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Going Going GONE?

Augusto Pinochet , former dictator of Chile died last week and we have been treated to considerable vilification of him in the so called mainstream media .
It seems that about three thousand individuals lost their lives or simply disappeared during and immediately following the Chilean Revolution of Sept 11, 1973. This includes the President, Salvador Allende who was most likely shot by his Cuban bodyguard when he decided to surrender during the attack on his palace on that date What is invariably omitted in the recent data is the fact that due to the actions of Allende in violating the Chilean Constitution and laws while attempting to establish a communist dictatorship in Chile the Chamber of Deputies ordered the Chilean military to remove Allende from office. Pinochet, who happened to be the commander of the armed forces was the one who carried out the order.

After some years as dictator and rescuing Chile's society and economy from socialism by among other things privatizing the government retirement system, he peacefully relinquished power. When Pinochet left office, Chile had the strongest economy in Latin America.

Contrast the above scenario with the history of the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro the Communist dictator for the past 47 years: "Within three months of his entry into Havana, Castro's firing squads had murdered an estimated 600-1,100 men and boys, and Cuba's jails held ten times the number of political prisoners as under Fulgencio Batista, who Castro overthrew with claims to "liberating" Cuba". Cuban citizens to this day require ration books to purchase scarce food while Cuba enjoys the most fertile soil on the planet.

Castro is expected to be joining the ranks of the departed in the not too distant future. It will be interesting to compare the media fawning accolades for this butcher to the treatment they have given to Pinochet.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Enron and the Left

The post-modern left claims that power is more important than reason, and alas, Enron was a power company. Its chairman, Ken Lay, sought political power in Washington rather than focusing on management of his firm. Post modernism claims that social construction defines our perception, and indeed, social perception defined Enron's success which was not real for at least several years before its public demise. Enron rejected reason, much as post-modernism rejects reason, and its managers believed that they could construct a perpetual pyramid scheme based on social belief rather than truth. They were wrong. Enron failed, just as any social scheme that the post-modern left advocates will fail.

Like the New Left, Enron fell because it had no empirical support. The belief in power is not the same as empirically-derived rules of law. Substantive truth will win out over popular delusion, and if popular delusion, the ideas of the left, prevail, then our society will die. Liberalism and the new left avoid rather than address reality.
source

A Modest Proposal?

The current Administration finds itself these days on the horns of a dilemma with regard to the global culture war as it applies to the middle east. One of the alternatives suggested by Diana West is worthy of consideration.

As a culture, the West is paralyzed by the specter of civilian casualties, massive or not, that accompanies modern (not high-tech) warfare, and fights accordingly. It may well have been massive civilian casualties in Germany (40,000 dead in Hamburg after one cataclysmic night of "fire-bombing" in 1943, for example) and Japan that helped end World War II in an Allied victory. But this is a price I doubt any Western power would pay for victory today.
So, the military solution — which isn't the same as boosting ROE (rules of engagement)-cuffed troop levels in Baghdad — is out, unless or until our desperation level rises to some unsupportably manic level. The great paradox of the "war on terror," of course, is that as our capacity and desire to protect civilians in warfare grows, our enemy's capacity and desire to kill civilians as a means of warfare grows also. Our fathers saved us from having to say, "Sieg Heil," but what's next — "Allahu akbar"?
Not necessarily. There's another Middle Eastern strategy to deter expansionist Islam: Get out of the way. Get out of the way of Sunnis and Shi'ites killing each other. As a sectarian conflict more than 1,000 years old, this is not only one fight we didn't start, but it's one we can't end. And why should we? If Iran, the jihad-supporting leader of the Shi'ite world, is being "strangled" by Saudi Arabia, the jihad-supporting leader of the Sunni world, isn't that good for the Sunni-and-Shiite-terrorized West?
With the two main sects of Islam preoccupied with an internecine battle of epic proportions, the non-Muslim world gets some breathing room. And we sure could use it — to plan for the next round.

The major problem with the implementation of such a strategy other than the public relations issue is the temporary dislocation in the distribution of the energy sources of the region. That dislocation, however is likely inevitable in any event.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Fear, Madness, Superstition, Religious Fervor, Hungry Gods

The global warmistas are anxious to transport western society back to 19th century technology (except for the "developing" world including heavy emitters such as China and India) by silencing the skeptics of man-caused climate change. They state that a "scientific "consensus" exists and the major cause of climate change is human technological activity. This "consensus" argument reminds ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ of the "consensus" existing several hundred years ago that the universe was geocentric and even threatening such "skeptics" as DaVinci, Copernicus and Galeleo with dire consequences. It will be interesting to observe the debates emerging over the recent discovery that contrary to Einstein, the speed of light (186,000 mi/sec) can be exceeded.

The argument that gravity must travel faster than light goes like this. If its speed limit is that of light, there must be an appreciable delay in its action. By the time the Sun’s “pull” reaches us, the Earth will have “moved on” for another 8.3 minutes (the time of light travel). But by then the Sun’s pull on the Earth will not be in the same straight line as the Earth’s pull on the Sun. The effect of these misaligned forces “would be to double the Earth’s distance from the Sun in 1200 years.” Obviously, this is not happening. The stability of planetary orbits tells us that gravity must propagate much faster than light. Accepting this reasoning, Isaac Newton assumed that the force of gravity must be instantaneous.

Astronomical data support this conclusion. We know, for example, that the Earth accelerates toward a point 20 arc-seconds in front of the visible Sun—that is, toward the true, instantaneous direction of the Sun. Its light comes to us from one direction, its “pull” from a slightly different direction. This implies different propagation speeds for light and gravity.

Wouldn't it be ironic if we reverted to the horse and buggy technology of the 19th century only to learn that the climate on the planet (as well as Mars, where warming is also occurring) is overwhelmingly influenced by the sun's cyclical activity? In other words: "I sacrificed my favorite goat (the technological ability to adapt to natural forces) to the warmista gods only to learn that it was all a scam by the witch doctors (politicians) to increase their power". Two U.S. Senators (Snowe (R) Maine Rockefeller (D) W. Virginia) have issued veiled threats to at least one of those who support the skeptics financially.

hat tip: Kim DuToit

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Kumbayah Always Works (Right)

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ hears many on the left clamoring for the U.S. to intervene in Sudan to end the genocide in the Darfur region. Most of these folks are screaming to high heaven protesting the action in Afghanistan to end the state sponsorship of the 9/11 perpetrators and the Iraq action to topple the Baathist government's failure to comply with the cease fire agreement of February 1991, both of which can be defended as legitimate pursuits of national interests. Ralph Peters has an interesting take on the Darfur situation where the U.S. would be hard put to cite having a national interest.

The killing will never stop until we stop pretending that every dictator or junta seizing power is entitled to claim sovereignty over the millions who never had a voice in choosing their government. After the oppression of women, the sovereignty con is the world's greatest human-rights abuse. And for all of its damnable incompetence, the Bush administration understood that one great truth.

Darfur deserves more than self-satisfied words. As does Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Zimbabwe. And Burma/Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and so many other "sovereign states."

But if we're ever going to stop the killing, we first have to stop the lying. Especially the lie we tell ourselves about the universal desire for peace: Try telling that one to the Janjaweed militaman raping your wife, burning your house, taking your children into slavery - and cutting your throat.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese government laughs at all of us. Khartoum is so confident that the world doesn't give a damn about black Africans that it's recently moved to destabilize neighboring Chad.

The hypocrisy of the intelligentsia, here and in Europe, stinks to the throne of God. No campus seminar ever provoked a cease-fire, and no demonstration ever halted a massacre. Those who are unwilling to fight injustice will ultimately face injustice and a fight.

Where are the European moralists in this tragic saga?

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Surprise Surprise...

...that the road to hell is paved with good intentions:

Despite an intensified campaign against poverty, World Bank programs have failed to lift incomes in many poor countries over the past decade, leaving tens of millions of people suffering stagnating and even declining living standards, according to a report released Thursday by the bank's autonomous assessment arm.

Just like much of Western foreign aid and charitable aid, the 'aid' the World Bank seeks to deliver is not having the desired effect because handouts or policies promoting government largeness do not address the root of the problem of poverty in the world. Poverty exists because poor countries are run by criminals and have large, expansive, and intrusive governments.

Overall, between 1990 and 2002 the percentage of the world's people who subsist on less than one dollar per day declined from 28 percent to 19 percent, according to World Bank research. But officials with the evaluation group noted that much of the advance was registered in China, which has rejected many of the tenets of the development model advocated by the West while relying hardly at all on the largesse of the World Bank.

Want to alleviate poverty? First step, kick the World Bank out of your country.
The second step: "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good.



hat tip Travis

Mommie May I...NO!!!

First they came for the guns and I was silent as I did not have guns. Next they came for the cigarettes and I was silent because I didn't smoke. When they came for my Big Mac and french fries it was too late.

The New York City' s Board of Health banning, last Tuesday [December 5, 2006], of the use of trans fats in restaurants is a second instance in which the Board shows that it has no compunctions about violating the sanctity of the human mind and its freedom to judge and to choose. What allegedly justifies this behavior by the Board is the mere fact that trans fats have supposedly been scientifically proven to be unhealthy. The freedom of choice of the citizen apparently means nothing to the Board. Like a curt parent controlling the choices of a child and expecting that his “No” will be sufficient, the Board has taken away the power of choice from adult citizens and told them they will no longer be able to obtain food in restaurants that is prepared with trans fats.
The meaning of this is that if something is shown to be bad, nothing else is required to put an end to its consumption: no cognition on the part of the individual consumer, no choice on his part. These count for nothing according to the New York City Board of Health and its alleged experts. They can simply be ignored and brushed aside.
source

They can have my fish and chips when they pry them "from my cold dead hands".

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

BOYCOTT CITGO PETROLEUM???

Those in the U.S. who decry the power of "big oil" ought to realize that the world's largest privately held corporation, EXXON MOBIL is a dwarf when compared to the government owned and operated oil enterprises. Among the most egregiously inefficient and corrupted such state enterprises is Petroleos De Venezuela S.A. When Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, he started squeezing even more money out of PDVSA than the previous socialist administrations. He ended its relative autonomy and appointed a number of hostile bosses to impose his authority. In order to purchase political alliances, Chavez' brother, Adan, was appointed to coordinate the company's subsidized oil sales (Venezuelan opponents refer to these transactions as "regaladeras" giveaways) around the Caribbean as ambassador to Cuba. At the strong man's behest CITGO, (the wholly owned subsidiary of PDVSA in the U.S.) allied with such leftist political figures as Robert Kennedy has been engaged in selling heating oil to the "disadvantaged" in the northeast of the United States at a rate well below the cost of production and distribution. This at a time when the "disadvantaged" 35% of the population living in poverty in his own country are suffering from an annual inflation rate of 16 to 34 per cent. Chavez doubtless sees that he can keep his own population under control by intimidation while diverting resources toward advancing socialist and anti yanqui attitudes in the hemisphere. He just this month (Dec 2006) won re election to a third term in an "election" process that could only be approved by Jimmy Carter who never met a collectivist dictator he didn't like. Clearly, Venezuela's oil company no longer operates at arm's length from the government and is becoming more secretive. It has de-registered its refining subsidiary, CITGO, at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and so no longer files any public reports to the organization. PDVSA ceo, Rafael Ramírez, is also the Venezuelan Minister of Energy and Oil.
With Congress routinely placing our own petroleum reserves in Alaska, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific offshore off limits, energy consumers can look forward to being placed further at the mercies of the world's Cleptators.
source

VooDoo "science"

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has made the point in previous posts that environmentalism and specifically those who adhere to the global warming alarmist (warmista) sect are essentially a religious movement for several reasons. Firstly the degree to which human activity contributes to climate change is only a theory and cannot be proved using the scientific method, notwithstanding the assertions of those on either side of the debate. Secondly, it appears that one side in the debate wishes to utilize the power of government duress to silence its opposition by use of the court system as demonstrated by the Attorney General of California considering filing legal action against scientists in that state for questioning that the major cause of climate change is anthropogenic while simultaneously suing US and Japanese auto makers for manufacturing vehicles which emit CO2 gas. This amounts to the establishment of a state religion and It would seem that the warming skeptics are to be treated as blasphemers, forcibly silenced or otherwise punished. Does this ridiculous situation remind anyone of the Islamic governments such as Iran and Saudi Arabia punishing those convicted of violating Koranic law?
Nigel Lawson of the CENTRE FOR POLICY STUDIES in the UK in his recent lecture on THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE sees three dangers to society of what he calls the new religion of eco-fundamentalism:

The first is that the governments of Europe, fired in many cases by anti-
Americanism (never underestimate the extent to which distaste for President
Bush has fueled the anti-global warming movement), may get so carried away
by their rhetoric as to impose measures which do serious harm to their
economies. That is a particular danger at the present time in the UK. No
doubt, when the people come to suffer the results they will insist on a change of
policy, or else vote the offending government out of office. But it would be
better to avoid the damage in the first place.

The second, and more fundamental, danger is that the global salvationist
movement is profoundly hostile to capitalism and the market economy. There
are already increasing calls for green protectionism – for the imposition of trade
restrictions against those countries which fail to agree to curb their carbon
dioxide emissions. Given the fact that the only way in which the world’s poor
will ever be able to escape from their poverty is by embracing capitalism and the
global market economy, this is not good news.

But the third danger is even more profound. Today we are very conscious of the
threat we face from the supreme intolerance of Islamic fundamentalism. It
could not be a worse time to abandon our own traditions of reason and
tolerance, and to embrace instead the irrationality and intolerance of ecofundamentalism, where reasoned questioning of its mantras is regarded as a
form of blasphemy. There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than
the retreat from reason we see all around us today.

As for the warmista movement, it shares the identical characteristic with religions in that its dogmas cannot be conclusively proven and thus must be accepted on the basis of FAITH. As it evolves in the US, ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ sees it as in flagrant violation of the Constitution by establishing a state religion.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Adiós Kofi...

...and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Saddam Nostalgia by James Taranto WSJ 12/04/06

In [a] BBC interview, [Kofi] Annan agreed when it was suggested that some Iraqis believe life is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein's regime.

"I think they are right in the sense of the average Iraqi's [read sunni baathist] life," Annan said. "If I were an average Iraqi [sunni baathist] obviously I would make the same comparison, that they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, 'Am I going to see my child again?' . . ."

Iraq today certainly has its problems, here, from the U.S. State Department, is a reminder of what is not going on in Iraq today:

Saddam Hussein is the first world leader in modern times to have brutally used chemical weapons against his own people. His goals were to systematically terrorize and exterminate the Kurdish population in northern Iraq, to silence his critics, and to test the effectiveness of his chemical and biological weapons. Hussein launched chemical attacks against 40 Kurdish villages and thousands of innocent civilians in 1987-88, using them as testing grounds. The worst of these attacks devastated the city of Halabja on March 16, 1988.

5,000 civilians, many of them women, children, and the elderly, died within hours of the attack. 10,000 more were blinded, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise severely and irreversibly debilitated.

And here's a report from PBS of how Saddam responded to the Shiite uprising in 1991:

Saddam's Republican Guard fought the resistance in Karbala. Civilians and rebels fled the city. On the roads leading out, Iraqi army helicopter crews poured kerosene on the refugees, then set them on fire. . . . There were mass executions of civilians, some of whom were tied to tanks and used as human shields. In Karbala, some of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines were destroyed. Others were used as centers for murder, torture and rape. In Najaf, residential areas were bombed, and hospital staff and patients were murdered.

Let's just repeat Annan's description of Iraq under Saddam:

They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, "Am I going to see my child again?"

Annan isn't just claiming that Saddam, though brutal, made the trains run on time. He is saying that Saddam actually looked out for the safety of the Iraqi people, the very people his regime was gassing, setting ablaze, tying to tanks, torturing and raping. Is Annan just ignorant, or is he depraved? We suppose it could be a little of both.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Health Insurance?

Thomas Szasz has recently written an illuminating article on the concept of "health insurance" here. The following is an excerpt but the entire article is worth reading.

“Health Insurance”: The Illusion of Equality

If health insurance is not insurance, what is it? It is a modern version of the illusion that all men are equal—or, when ill, ought to be treated as if they were equal. When religion was the dominant ideology, death was (supposed to be) the great equalizer: once they departed the living, prince and pauper were equal. Today, when medicine is the dominant ideology, health care is (supposed to be) the great equalizer: everyone’s life is “infinitely precious” and hence deserves the same protection from disease. Of course, prince and pauper did not receive the same burial services, and rich and poor do not receive the same medical services. But people prefer the illusion of equality to the recognition of inequality.

Actually, the ruled have always longed for “universal health care,” and the rulers have always supplied them with a policy that the masses accepted as such a service. In the Middle Ages, universal health care was called Catholicism. In the twentieth century, it was called Communism. In the 21st century, it is called Universal Health Insurance. What we choose to call “health insurance” is, in fact, a system of cost-shifting masquerading as a system of insurance. We treat a public, statist political system of health care as if it were a system of private health insurance purchased for the purpose of obtaining private medical care.

Everyone knows but no one admits that health insurance is not really insurance. In fact, Americans now view their health insurance as an open-ended entitlement for reimbursement for virtually any expense that may be categorized as “health care,” such as the cost of birth-control pills or Viagra. The cost of these services is covered on the same basis as the cost of medical catastrophes, such as treatment for the consequences of a brain tumor. Such distorted incentives produce the perverted outcomes with which we are all too familiar.

From a public-health point of view, the state of our health is partly, and often largely, in our own hands and is our own responsibility, even if we have a chronic illness, such as arthritis or diabetes. It is an immoral and impractical endeavor to try to reject that responsibility and place the burden for the consequences on others.

Thomas Szasz

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

The Unfolding Tragedy

The words of Thomas Paine come to mind when witnessing the tragedy that is unfolding in Venezuela: "These are the times that try men's souls". It is difficult to convey the sense of loss felt by Venezuelans as they see the last vestiges of democracy slipping from their grasp. Today, Saturday, the supermarkets in that country are packed with citizens who fear the chaos that may follow tomorrow's election. The following is a translation by Guillermo from Venepoetics of a recent article of Milagros Socorro from last Thursday. It was by the way quite a literary piece that was very hard to translate, and even harder to convey all the brilliant flavor and lyricism of the piece. At any rate, this is it, enjoy and reflect about the message that comes with this piece.

We Are Going to Write It. Milagros Socorro Out of habit, almost as a way to focus my mind on something that isn’t this knot in my chest, I ask myself what the international observers and foreign journalists might think when they hear Chavez vociferate in a public square that the results of December 3rd are already written. I give myself over to this exercise because anger is more bearable than the sensation that our destiny hangs from a thread, from the result of two candidacies that not only express opposite ways of leading the country, but which at this hour are perceived as equal in their chances of winning…or retaining power, to the disgrace of the Republic. I reread the account of Chavez’s speech on Bolivar Avenue and I strain to guess what interpretation the distinguished visitors might make of a declaration that draws such a precise portrait of the man who speaks and who so blatantly shows his determination to unravel the electoral ritual, to finish demolishing the scant confidence voters have in the CNE and of reinforcing his reputation as an autocrat skilled at the manipulation of the vote. These years have taught us a great deal. We have learned, for example, that the observer’s job consists in practicing only half of the definition of the verb observe; in other words, to “Examine attentively,” as the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy says, which adds: “To observe the symptoms of a sickness. To look with attention and caution, to watch.” But they are careful to stop themselves from applying the other half of the word’s meaning, which implies: “To guard and accomplish exactly what is told and ordered. To warn, to repair.” Duplicitously, they see of course, but they don’t speak out. And they become accomplices. AS FOR THE FOREIGN PRESS, WE’VE ALSO LEARNED THAT IN GOOD MEASURE IT’S MADE UP OF EXPEDITIONARIES searching for the route to the thrift shop of illusions that Venezuela has become. Many of the journalists who come here from other countries do so with the intention of confirming in this junk heap of utopias that there still exist heroes in the world midway between universal folklore and revolutionary insanity. And nothing else matters to them as long as they can take away a souvenir of the memory, with an article under their name that will draw a picture of the last dinosaur, an embalmed head for the museum of Third World-ism. If they haven’t had the sensibility and even compassion to see and name Cuba’s tragedy, what can we expect, we who in our oil profits have a safeguard that will protect us from exhibiting the shame of misery and slavery, like the island does. When we were thrown into this historical ditch I had many expectations about the international sense of responsibility and, even more, in the sensible nature of the foreign press, and what I took for granted, their disbelief in front of a lieutenant colonel who evidently intended to create the illusion of a revolution in order to camouflage a military and authoritarian regime so inefficient that we would have to make up another word to allude to its destructive botched job. It didn’t take long for me to understand Venezuela’s great solitude. Very soon, I would confirm that frivolity is the force that moves the world and that part of it is very contented with an action movie in which the dead, the backwardness and the demolition derby of democratic values are paid by others, preferably idiots of underdevelopment. IT’S NOT THAT IT DOESN’T HURT. IT HURTS, IT MAKES ONE DESPERATE AND IT ENRAGES ONE TO SEE THE LACK OF RECIPROCITY TOWARDS VENEZUELA, the democratic country that avoided so many deaths in Central America, that contributed so much to a democratic transition in Spain, that sheltered and gave work to so many exiles from the Southern Cone and, in the end, that received so many immigrants, so as to add them, like offspring which to our benefit they became, to the democratic aspiration the Republic has housed almost since its foundation. That gift we gave to the world—and which we are always proud of—has not been matched in the same measure, which degrades those who received it and who now look elsewhere so as to not see the terrible trials that flutter over us. If yesterday they took the treasure of peace and democratic coexistence, now they pretend to not notice, so as to not lose their portion of the contracts without bidding or dollar donations the autocrat hands out for the sole purpose of exchanging them for consciences, for silence, for connivance with his crimes, when not for applause and insults against Venezuela’s opposition and free press. Because we’ve had to swallow even that: the arrogant irruption of politicians and intellectuals of all sorts who come to our house to call us coup-plotters (a category that fits the satrap of ’92) and to put Venezuelan journalism, which has used words against weapons, ideas against all-encompassing power, journalists against soldiers, on trial; and whose excesses, which I don’t deny and which don’t cram the salon of my honors, have always obeyed the determination to stand up to a nefarious, authoritarian and thieving government, but never the mellifluous intention of adulating it or outlining versions to justify its abuses and its openly criminal actions. CHAVEZ’S SCANDALOUS VISION ANNOUNCING THAT THE RESULTS OF 3D ARE ALREADY WRITTEN WON’T MEAN ANYTHING TO OUR ILLUSTRIOUS GUESTS, as it’s safe to say neither will the devastating image of a woman nailed to a tree like a type of Christ in the age of Bill Gates, who arrives at martyrdom dragged by a promise of housing that hasn’t been honored and to see if that self immolation will improve the odds of her outcry in a country where words have been the object of hyperinflation and are no longer worth anything. Only the suffering body manages to babble any content. But it does have a great deal to say to us. Everything. Because any Venezuelan, no matter how young he might be, has enough of a civic tradition behind him to know that a true democrat would never express himself in that manner. A manner that carries in its belly the braggart who threatens us with fixing electoral results to his whim and convenience. We can’t turn a blind eye to Chavez’s announcement that if he wins the elections, there will be no room here for any project other than the Bolivarian revolution, which is the equivalent of saying there will be neither space nor Homeland for the millions of Venezuelans who are radically opposed to that project. What is he going to do with us? Will he drag us from our homes? Will he round us up into concentration camps? Will he kill us? That will be the only way to reduce us, because Chavez must know that we democratic Venezuelans are unbeatable. There is no threat or danger against our integrity and lives that will make us step back from our commitment to impeding the dismantling of the nation and the confiscation of our liberties. We know—and whoever doesn’t know by now should wake up—that 3D will be written by the democratic nation, the one that isn’t scared by the boasting of a loser who fears everything except ridiculousness. And that the calligraphy of 3D will be monumental because each opposition vote will be made for the good of Venezuela and, moreover, for the freedom of Cuba, which will move closer to democracy in the measure its regime loses the support of our backyard’s legal dictator; as well as the reinforcement of Mexican democracy and the peace of Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Facing that, there can’t be any fear but only a febrile, crazy, overflowing courage that will surprise the felon and disarm him with the irrefutable, roaring, liberating and replenishing gesture of Venezuelan civic-mindedness.

As usual, the tyrant has dissarmed the people except for the hundreds of thousands of new Kalishikov automatic rifles recently bought from Russia and Spain to be supplied to his followers and the Army. The references to 3D are for 03 December. Doubtless, Jimmy Carter will be attending the event to affix his seal of approval to his lengthening list of "fair" (but stolen) elections. I do not know if Milagros Socorro is a pen name. Translated it means: "Help! Miracles".

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

On Second Thought....

...cry for Venezuela! The following is a post of the executive summary of a research paper recently published by Gustavo Coronel for the Cato Institute. The title speaks for itself. The entire document is available here in PDF (292 kb).

Corruption, Mismanagement, and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela

Corruption has existed in Venezuela since at least 1821, when it gained independence. In the 19thand 20th centuries, the level of corruption fluctuated, depending on the government in power. During the government of President Hugo Chávez, however, corruption has exploded to unprecedented levels. Billions of dollars are being stolen or are otherwise unaccounted for, squandering Venezuelan resources and enriching high-level officials and their cronies.

The windfall of oil revenues has encouraged the rise in corruption. In the approximately eight years Chávez has been in power, his government has received between $175 billion and $225 billion from oil and new debt. Along with the increase in revenues has come a simultaneous reduction in transparency. For example, the state-owned oil company ceased publishing its consolidated annual financial statements in 2003, and Chávez has created new state-run financial institutions, whose operations are also opaque, that spend funds at the discretion of the executive.

Corruption now permeates all levels of Venezuelan society. Bureaucrats now rarely follow existing bidding regulations, and ordinary citizens must pay bribes to accomplish bureaucratic transactions and have to suffer rampant neglect of basic government services. All this has been encouraged by a general environment of impunity: officers implicated in major corruption scandals have sometimes been removed from their posts, but they have not otherwise been held legally accountable.

The dramatic rise in corruption under Chávez is ironic since he came to power largely on an anti-corruption campaign platform. To truly fight corruption, the government needs to increase the transparency of its institutions and reduce its extensive involvement in the economy, something that has placed Venezuela among the least economically free countries in the world.

After reading the document ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ would be willing to wager that the 03 December 2006 election in Venezuela will either be stolen or declared invalid by Hugo Chavez. What could follow may very well be a blood bath that the left will try to blame on George W. Bush. Stay tuned.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Brainwashing??

Leonidas and family had the pleasure of entertaining for the last few days family members from Sweden. Like most modern Swedes, their english is quite good but their preconceptions of the US and Americans torture the definition of "stereotyping". After visiting several museums and attractions in the local area they wanted to know the name of the "Minister of Culture". When they were advised that the US has no Minister of Culture they were aghast. "How does "art" get funded here without government support?" I advised them of the NEA (National endowment of the Arts) and they were somewhat mollified but at the same time chagrined at the pittance ponied up by the US taxpayers for such works of "art " as "Piss Christ". They were adamant that Denmark did not go far enough in assuaging Muslim angst over the "cartoon" flap. We wrote much of this off to the traditional rivalry between Sweden and Denmark.
Another shocker for them was the lack of a commitment to saving the "environment" on the part of most Americans. The Swedes are taught that their country's coastal areas will be submerged in the next 20 years due to George Bush not signing the Kyoto Treaty and dismissed any position which attributed part of climate change to natural forces.
Swedes, like most Americans are totally committed to the religion of "recycling" and charged Leonidas with heresy for questioning the economic returns on the practice.
It would appear that the gulf between the attitudes of most Europeans and Americans is enormous. Sweden has had a government of the Social Democratic (socialist) party for better part of the last 60 years. A discussion of the deteriorating health care system there (colonoscopies are conducted without benefit of anesthetic) must be left for a later post.
In sum, it appears that many Swedes view Americans as more or less barbarians in spite of the likelihood that were it not for us "barbarians" the official language in Stockholm today would be Russian.

Blogaversary!!

This humble blog is one year old today. Readers who have recently begun imbibing the ideas presented here may not have taken the trouble to investigate the esoteric nature of the title or the upper case Greek script used in the signature. The image at the right is a statue of what the Persian (Iranian) "Immortals" were to face on the morning of 11 August 480 BC upon approaching the Greek hoplites defending the narrow pass at Thermopylae.

The original posting on this blog of one year ago today is reposted below:

Fighting in the shade

In the year 480 BC the Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece with his army of more than 100,000 men. The Greeks determined to resist the invasion and sent a detachment of hoplites (heavy armed infantry) to resist at the pass of Thermopylae. The Greek force was led by the Spartan King ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ (Leonidas) and consisted of his 300 hoplite bodyguard and 1200 other infantryman from several Greek city states. Upon encountering the blocking force, the Persian king sent a herald to Leonidas stating "Deliver up your arms." Leonidas replied: "ΜΟΛΩΜ ΛΑΩΕ which romanized reads MOLON LABE" and translates: "Come and take them". After loosing several thousand of his best soldiers in the resulting next two days of fighting, the Persian king sent a further demand to the Greeks to surrender or he would have "the sun blocked out by the clouds of arrows" from his Persian archers. The Spartan reply: "Then we will fight in the shade"
Herodotus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

The final outcome of the battle, however was never in doubt and the Greeks were slain to a man.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

The Leftist's Paradox: Nanny State vs Choice

George Reisman:

Soon, in New York City, you won’t be able to buy a donut baked with trans fat, but you will be able choose your sex, irrespective of your anatomy.

If you think this is crazy, you’d better watch out and not say so. That’s because sooner or later, if there isn’t already, there will be a further regulation that bans such dissent as “antisocial,” “insensitive,” or “offensive.”

Even so, I can’t suppress the thought that if the hosts of, say, the Boston Tea Party, were alive, they might physically relocate New York City’s Board of Health to the streets below, perhaps with its office furniture wrapped around its members’ necks. A hostile response, I know. But then I’m feeling like that rattlesnake on a flag of my country’s Revolutionary War. His message to the world was, “Don’t Tread on Me.”

Comment:

I doubt the New Yorkers are smart enough to have figured out the implication of allowing people to name their own sex. This means you could have a business made up entirely of men, but half of them could change their sexual identity on their birth certificates and claim they are complying with EEOC regulations. :)
# posted by EdMcGon

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Don't Cry For Me Venezuela

On the way to the barber shop today I heard for the very first time an ad for Citgo petroleum. This tells me that the informal boycott of the wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan State oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) is beginning to impact the bottom line of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' socialist enterprise.

Sr. Chavez is locked in a very close reelection race with his opponent, Manuel Rosales. In the run up to the election which will occur on 03 December there have been 2.2 million new voters added to the rolls since January of this year. Additionally the voting rolls contain 39,000 voters who are over 100 years old and continue to vote for Chavez. The oldest registered voter, Sra Josefa Molina Lantz was born on 30 April 1831.

Chavez who styles himself as the heir to Fidel Castro as the hemisphere's yanqui basher has been shipping crude oil to the Communist controlled island for some time now to the tune of nearly 100,000 barrels per day. Castro has only been paying PDVSA for about half of the shipments. This is a very advantageous deal for Castro as the current market price for Venezuelan crude oil is close to US $49.00/ barrel. In effect Castro is paying what amounts to under US $25.00/barrel. This giveaway to Chavez' foreign political allies has become an election issue.
Since instituting his "Revolución Bolivarano Sr Chavez has fired all employees of PDVSA suspected of political opposition. The lists of persons to fire were easily obtained from those who signed a petition to recall el supremo in 2004. On the other hand Chavez rewarded his allies by using them as replacements for the fired oil workers and managers.

No wonder that these new millionaires are able to import new luxury cars (duty free) into the country and in some cases decorate them with images of the Supreme Leader.

Considering the huge crowds of Rosales supporters turning out for his rallies and marches, the theft of this election by Chavez could have bloody repercussions.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Sky Falls, World Ends...

... women and minorities hardest hit."

George Reisman :

In the last 500 million years, there have been two ice ages at the same time that vastly higher carbon dioxide levels prevailed in the earth's atomosphere—up to 16 times the present level.

This remarkable finding, along with others, was reported in the November 7, 2006 New York Times. For details, see the article by William Broad, “In Ancient Fossils, Seeds of a New Debate on Warming."

The article contains references to the work of a number of important scientists who aren’t supposed even to exist, according to the environmentalist [and warmista] propaganda machines, which brook no opposition. The article deserves to be required reading for everyone who is seriously interested in the subject of global warming.

George Reisman is a Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus.

The global warmistas advise: "In order to avert this catastrophe you must sacrifice your favorite goat".

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

What Did He Say?

"An ABC News reporter said the incident occurred Tuesday outside of the Old Senate Chamber as members of the new Democratic leadership, of which Kerry is not a part, left the chamber en route to the Ohio Clock Corridor to discuss leadership elections, the incoming majority's agenda and Iraq.

The ABC reporter said Kerry left the room behind Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Caucus Secretary Patty Murray, D-Wash.; and Caucus Vice-Chair Schumer, D-N.Y. However, when Schumer noticed Kerry, D-N.Y., walking behind him, he turned and said something to the Massachusetts
senator that caused him to stop.

Kerry waited for the Democratic leaders to walk ahead and then ducked between two statues. The ABC reporter speculated that Schumer may have told Kerry to stay clear of the leadership shot.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ would speculate Shumer said something along the lines of: "Go fetch 4 martinis."

Following the Rats

One of the reasons ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ abandoned his native state of Kalifornia.

According to the analysis of poverty rates in the U.S. from 1990-2000:

The 10 states with the highest state spending per capita (Alaska, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wyoming) saw an average increase of 7.3 percent of overall poverty rates and a 4.5 percent increase in childhood poverty.

The 10 states with the lowest spending (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas) saw overall poverty decline by 11.2 percent and childhood poverty fall 12.2 percent.

The two most populous states, California and Texas, could not have differed more; California's overall poverty rate increased 13.6 percent and childhood poverty rose 10 percent, while Texas' overall poverty rate declined 14.9 percent and its childhood poverty rate decreased by 17.3 percent.

Overall, according to the 2004 definition of red and blue states, red states saw an average decline of 11.7 percent in poverty rates, while blue states saw an average increase of 2.7 percent.



The dramatic declines in poverty in the "small government" states strongly confirms the hypothesis that reduced taxes and state spending encourages the emigration of people and businesses to areas where private-sector job growth is able to flourish and become a powerful and effective antipoverty program, says Ladner. And while taxes and business climate alone are not the only factors in reducing poverty rates, they certainly go a long way in helping fight the war on poverty.

ht/ dick McDonald

United Nations: The Sky is Falling!!

Josef Goebbels alleged that if a lie was repeated often enough that the masses would believe it. The United Nations seems determined to test that statement in order to further its agenda of a world government.

In 1988, James Hansen, a climatologist, told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch). The UN set up a transnational bureaucracy, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.
Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "
So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years.

Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Then, there were no glaciers in the tropical Andes: today they're there. There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.

The UN has even recently published a children's book replete with talking animals in order to scare them that the culprit in so called "climate change" is modern western industrialization while ignoring the sun's cycle of warming and cooling. This is further evidence that politicians with an agenda will not shrink from using the public treasury to subvert science in order to achieve their goals.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Update: 11/14/06 21:33
A Self-Correcting Problem

"Global warming" strikes again, Reuters reports from Toronto:

Aboriginal communities in Ontario's far north are becoming increasingly isolated as rising temperatures melt their winter route to the outside world and impede their access to supplies. . . .

During the coldest months between January and March, "winter roads" are cleared on the frozen network of rivers and lakes to let trucks deliver bulk supplies like fuel and building materials. . . .

About 20,000 people live in the remote reservations and rely on winter shipments of heating oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel to power generating stations.

Of course, if they can't get fuel, they can't burn it--which means they will no longer contribute to "global warming"! Isn't it nice how that works out?

ht/ James Taranto

Looking Forward to Shaira

Several years ago a group of environmentalist/animal rights activists rescued a number of sea otters that had been caught in an oil spill in Alaska (Exxon Valdez ring a bell?). When the otters had recovered sufficiently the rescue group transported them down to the shore of a nearby bay to conduct a "releasing" ceremony. When the furry little creatures were released among cheers and whoops of delight they began swimming and frolicking merrily out to sea whereupon a pod of orcas (as in the "save the whales" environmentalist slogan) swooped in, slaughtered and devoured all of the cuddly little otters before the very eyes of the shocked greenies. A similar occurrence recently transpired in Israel during a scheduled "gay pride" march. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

-- A group of gay Palestinian Americans canceled a planned pride march in East Jerusalem on Friday after one of them was beaten unconscious by a local man who said he was from the Waqf Muslim religious authority.

The beating incident occurred on the same day an Israeli gay pride rally went ahead as scheduled, though without a planned march through city streets. The march had been called off after threats by religious and right-wing opponents to mount huge counterdemonstrations. Only minor violence marred the event.

In the East Jerusalem beating, two men -- one wielding a knife -- came looking for the group of gay Palestinian Americans who were staying at the Faisal Hostel near the Damascus Gate of the Old City. One of the assailants identified himself as being from the Waqf, the clerical trust that administers Muslim religious sites in the city.

"I'm pretty terrified right now," said Daoud, an MBA student from Detroit who declined to give his full name. "We left the hostel immediately, but when my friend went back to collect some things, they were waiting for him. They asked if he was with 'the homos' and then started beating him."

He said the victim, from Chicago, was badly beaten, knocked down a flight of stairs and left unconscious. The man, whose name was withheld for his safety, was taken to the El-Mokassed Hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.

"It was very scary. These two guys came in and said they had heard we were planning to march. They drew a knife and said if we marched they would cut our heads off. They sounded like they meant it," he said.

Daoud said nine gay Palestinian Americans had come to Jerusalem to join the pride march. "Maybe I was just being naive. I heard about the pride rally, and I thought it would be nice for us to do something together as a gay community," he said. "We got a different kind of reception instead."

In America, he said, "you have some tolerance and appreciation and understanding of what it means to be gay and to be a Palestinian. We're discovering the hard way it's not so acceptable here."

Rotem Biran, 25, a hotel sales executive from Tel Aviv, said she was disappointed not to be able to march with the Palestinians from East Jerusalem. But by the time she arrived at the Faisal Hostel, Daoud and his friends had disappeared.

"Gay Palestinians are really afraid," she said. "It's not the same as being Jewish and gay. For them, it's dangerous. They can't really do anything openly in their own community because it's so strict, so they come all the way to Tel Aviv to be with other gay people."

Imagine that. One leftist victim group attacking another. Read the whole article. It's a real hoot.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

It's about Religion NOT Poverty!

"Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe"

* Dr. Tawfik Hamid is a medical doctor, author, and activist who once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos.



* He's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism. "Yes, 'imperialism,'" he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe."

* He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine. I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way."

* The extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia. * "We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme, and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed, and Jews called pigs and monkeys."

* "I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?"

* "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."

ht/ dick McDonald

Pacificism: The Bloodiest of all Utopian Philosophies

Pacifism, like all utopian philosophies, has always failed when implemented. Unfortunately, human nature unchangeable my mortal efforts, militates against the universal adoption of utopian ideas. Only one of the tragic examples of this is the Jesuits selling several tribes of the Huron Indians on the benefits of pacifism in the 17th century. The Huron people's traditional enemies, the Iroquois, were thus able to subsequently defeat them and disperse the survivors. The Jesuits, having the best of intentions, were complicit in the genocidal near annihilation of many of the Hurons .

How many times, in its history, has Europe gone 60 years without a major war, as it has since 1945? That peace has been due to American [nuclear/military] power, which was all that could deter the Red Army from marching right across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean.

Having overwhelming military force on your side, and letting your enemies know that you have the will to use it, is being genuinely anti-war. The Daladier/Chamberlain appeasement of 1938 brought on World War II whereas Reagan's military buildup ended the Cold War.

The famous Roman peace of ancient times did not come from negotiations, cease-fires, or pretty talk. It came from the Roman Empire's crushing defeat and annihilation of Carthage, which served as a warning to anyone else who might have had any foolish ideas about challenging Rome.

Only after the Roman Empire began to lose its own internal cohesion, patriotism and fighting spirit over the centuries did it begin to succumb to its external enemies and finally collapse.

That seems to be where western civilization is heading today.

source

ht/ ¡No Pasarán!

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

What it Means

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ will finally weigh in with his take on the results of the recent exercise in plebean muscle-flexing. Of all the opinions expressed on the reasons for the Republicans having their asses handed to them on 07 November, George Will , an avowed conservative, most closely expresses the views of the libertarian ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ:

Republicans sank beneath the weight of Iraq, the lesson of which is patent: Wars of choice should be won swiftly rather than lost protractedly. Of course the election-turning issue was...incontinent spending by a Republican-controlled Congress trying to purchase permanent power.

The Iraq War, like the Alaska bridge [to nowhere], pungently proclaims how Republicans earned their rebuke. They are guilty of apostasy from conservative principles at home (frugality, limited government) and embrace of anti-conservative principles abroad (nation-building grandiosity pursued incompetently).

The most left-wing speaker in U.S. history will return to being minority leader in 2009 unless she eschews an agenda that cannot be enacted without requiring the many Democrats elected from Republican-leaning districts to jeopardize their seats.

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Circling the Bowl in South America II

Having spent considerable time in Venezuela while cruising in the eastern Caribbean, ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has been following with interest the recent political situation there and has what one could describe as "bad vibes". Most Americans are aware that the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has no love for the United States even though he cloaks his vitriol in "anti Bush" rhetoric in order to gain legitimacy with the American left. He appears to see himself as the heir to the soon to be departed Fidel Castro as the hemisphere's "yanqui baiter". What most in the US are unaware of is the increasing heat of the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election which will take place on 03 December 2006. Since coming to power in 1998 Chavez and his political allies have fully socialized the huge Venezuelan oil and gas industry PDVSA which does business in the US as CITGO and fired most of the employees whom they regarded as opposing the further sovietization of the Venezuelan economy. Many of these former employees although well educated have suffered substantial economic hardship.
The opposition candidate who seems to be gaining public support is Manuel Rosales, a maracucho (from the western district near Lake Maracaibo) who drew huge crowds to his march/rally in Caracas on 04 November. The Chavez government's reaction to this support for Rosales appears to be thinly veiled threats which ring eerily of the political intimidation engaged in by the National Socialists under herr Hitler in Germany in the period 1928 1938. Recent speeches and comments by Chavez and his associates raise the specter of two possible outcomes of the 03 December polling: 1) massive election fraud resulting in an overwhelming Chavista victory or; 2) a declaration of a "state of emergency" following a Chavista defeat with its concomitant refusal to surrender power to a victorious Rosales.
For those in the nether parts of the western hemisphere, you should be aware that Venezuela sits atop the largest deposit of proven petroleum reserves in North and South America. An excellent source of reporting on the situation is here. Stay tuned.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Imagine That!

So, the New York Times reports on its front page [Nov 03] that Saddam Hussein had the necessary information and expertise to build nuclear weapons as far back as pre-1991, and that the information is so damning even now that posting it on a public website fifteen years later could assist other regimes, including Iran, in building such weapons.

The Times has just confirmed two things: 1. President Bush was right when he said that Hussein was a threat to the world because, among other things, he would continue to pursue weapons of mass destruction; and 2. congressional Republicans were right in demanding a more aggressive and thorough effort by the Pentagon to interpret the enormous number of documents captured from the Iraqi regime.

The Times's emphasis on "Republicans" demanding the release of these documents and the administration's posting them on a public website was an obvious attempt by the newspaper to cause some kind of eleventh-hour Republican embarrassment. The Times had hoped the weekend before the election would be spent debating the handling of this information rather than its existence and substance. But it was wrong. This is a stunning find that confirms a primary basis for the president ordering the military to remove Hussein from power. This finding also strikes a blow to the Democrat mantra that the president lied to get us into the war with Iraq.

The Democrats and their partners in the liberal media demand to know what the president plans to do to stop Iran and North Korea from securing nuclear weapons. Yet, when he did, in fact, stop Iraq from getting those same weapons, he is loudly denounced for it.

Thanks to the New York Times for disclosing this important information four days before a crucial election. Your November surprise has just backfired.

source

Ignore That Man Behind the Curtain

On Dec 5 2002 Trent Lott stated at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday celebration:

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Whereupon John Kerry stated:
"It saddens me greatly to suggest this, but in the interests of the Senate, his party, and the nation, I believe Trent Lott should step aside as majority leader," Kerry said. "I simply do not believe the country can today afford to have someone who has made these statements again and again be the leader of the United States Senate."

The non stop media feeding frenzy drove Lott from his leadership position in the U.S. Senate.

On October 30 2006 John Kerry stated:

"You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The mainstream media neglected to report this statement (as most of their reporters agree with it) until their darling, John McCain remarked on it and they were thus forced to address it.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is waiting for Howard Deane to attribute the Kerry remark to Rove induced hypnosis.

We are now exposed to the results of journalism students at the major "universities" responding to the query: "why have you chosen to major in journalism?" by the response "to save the world" instead of : "report the news".

Update: 11/02/06 08:52hrs EST

Francis Porretto:

[John] Kerry, whose brain is definitely not his finest organ, elected to counterattack, as if for anyone to call attention to the insulting implications of his remark was somehow beyond the pale -- "questioning his patriotism" redux. By doing so, he's demonstrated all the following:

* That his arrogance, expressed in his unwillingness ever to admit to a mistake, remains boundless;
* That his ability to foresee the consequences of his words and deeds approaches zero;
* That though his primary goal is power -- the presidency -- his secondary goal, and not far behind at all, is the exaltation of his own image and public profile;
* That his image/publicity obsession completely eclipses any sense of duty to his party or regard for its fortunes.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ