The bride and I are exhausted, physically and mentally, from our household move to Dallas. 

But we're trying to get in the groove again, and get life back to normal.

And for me that means a return from sparse blogging to sporadic blogging.

And only one thing can make me blog more than sparsely after this modern ordeal--

YOUTHS OF NO APPEARANCE.

I personally have no idea whether the rioting 'youths' discussed in this story are or are not Islamic in some way.  This story is the first I've heard of these riots in France.

But there is much in the way of anecdotal journalistic evidence to argue that they are Islamic youths. 

Because there have been way too many stories in the news lately which describe events like this but which offer the reader absolutely no clue as to who they are or why they are rioting.  If it were Basque youths or punkrockers or skinheads, dear reader, there would be some note to that effect in the story about the riots. 

But in this story, as you will see, there is simply nothing.   And to date, this is the sign that the violence is perpetrated by Islamic 'youths' and that the journalists and media outlets are simply frightened of pointing it out.  Either they fear for themselves physically, or they fear the wrath of their colleagues at the craven political incorrectness of actually saying 'Muslim youths'.  

Either way, the story about 'rioting youths' which includes no information about who they are or why they riot is similar to a photograph of a beauty queen posed in a swimsuit with flowers all around, but with her two front teeth out.  

There is SOMETHING missing here. 

Here is yet another distinguished and credentialed scientist who, in spite of his distinguishment and his credentials, can't possibly be a real scientist. 

He rejects the consensus, you see.

His argument is basically that weather is too complex for computer models to get right.

After all, as I've already written here, the current models on which the CONSENSUS is based do not even take CLOUDS into account! 

Seriously.  Clouds are too difficult to predict.  Computers can't do it.  And folks, clouds ARE the weather. 

We all know how hard it is for the best-equipped meteorologists to guess what will happen five days from now.  I would think that one would have slightly less confidence in an attempt to say what will happen 100 years from now.

But that darn consensus sure is tempting.  Funding for research, the admiration of your peers, fame, fortune, these aren't easy to turn away from.  And if you're a leftist searching for an opportunity to deal a real blow to those evil capitalists, well this one is just too juicy to pass up.

I don't mind the fact that there is a consensus.  I just wish they would stop calling it a scientific consensus.  Entirely too many scientists disagree.  This particular Dane says it's folly to speak of a global temperature, as the globe experiences hundreds of different temperatures in a single day and hosts dozens of weather systems both hot and cold at any given moment.

This winter just past has been "warmest on record" in some areas and "average" in others according to a recent report, but one thing I know--  it was much colder this year than last year where I live.   MUCH colder. 

And its snowing in Jordan.

My ever watchful pal Ixman sends me this story, knowing in advance what my reaction will be....

And here it is--

Darn global warming!  We're all gonna broil to death, I tell ya!

But seriously...    when conferences on global warming in Minnesota and in Washington DC were cancelled due to snow, I was laughing along with everyone else.   God has, I noted, a wonderful sense of humor. 

But snow on the desert plains of Jordan?  Snow on the banks of the river where Jesus was baptised? 

I'm an affirmed skeptic of apocalyptic omens and end-times guys waving "repent" signs, but this is a bit creepy.

UPDATE:  Okay, I had to research it a bit.  Snow in Jordan is rare but not impossible.  There was snow in Amman in 2002, over a foot.   Google "Middle east snow" and it comes up. 

SO I"m not creeped out anymore. 

But the global warming scammers still deserve a hard kick to the ribs over this.  :-)

From a Drudge flash which will probably be replaced too quickly to bother linking to it:

"When Life magazine asked Chris Rock if America is ready for an African American president, he said 'America is ready for a retarded president, why not an African American president?"

An unfortunate and unintentional comparison, in my view. 

I have lost interest in Bush insults, for the most part.  They are overdone and dated, and the liberal competition for most clever and cutting insult to Bush has lost quality over time.  Rock is a latecomer to the party and not the most skilled.

But he also said this:

"Maybe Barack will win, but I probably won't see a black president."  (um, Chris, that's politically incorrect.  The term is 'African American'.) 

And this:  "there's real equality when you don't notice race, you don't even talk about it.  I probably won't live to see that." 

To which the sensible person responds thusly--

NOT IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP ABOUT IT.  

He offers a full load of unintended irony, doesn't he?  

I cannot help but wonder how much better race relations in this country would be if people like Chris Rock would just stop saying things like this.  Nobody in my circles talks about race.  I work with black people, hispanic people and oriental people, as does my wife.  Race is decidedly not an issue with anyone I know.  The minorities I see and know in work circles are doing just as well as the white folks, and I've never had an employer who would even consider holding race against someone.  

IN other words, here in flyover country racism is dead or dying, and the best way to send it to hell is to STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. 

In closing, I can't help but look at my bank account and wish America had treated me as badly as it's treated Chris Rock.

.... that people like Al Gore are just fools who can be safely tolerated and ignored and won't do any real harm.

The truth is this:  Gore is a George Soros wannabe, enriching himself and his friends with the global warming scam, actively and perhaps feverishly working to hobble America's economy and radically diminish its influence.

Gore's "carbon offsets", which he very publicly bought after being called hypocritical for his own fatcat energy usage, are actually payments to a company he owns.  To himself, in other words.

But it's much worse.  Partners in this scam venture include a guy who Gore has helped in the past.  Helped, that is, to steal money from investors, stockholders and taxpayers by falsely inflating and publicizing the value and potential of new technologies which never materialised.

One name coming to the surface here is Maurice Strong, who not once but twice sold off shares in promising hitech recycling firms while stock prices were at all time highs, just before announcements were made that funding was drying up and progress was not being made.  The first company was launched in the 90s and attracted much attention and funding after a Gore appearance and speech which praised it.  Mr. Strong is also busy helping the Chinese in some sort of consultant role, and the article linked at top gives a bit more info.

Another name is Peter Knight (from memory, but I"m close if not exact,and I'll look it up when the lightning stops here), who is a past Gore aide and who also owned and cleverly sold shares in these scams companies.

Gore himself is the ultimate scammer, flying around in Gulfstream jets over millions of miles and spending $30.000 a year on electricity for his mansion while trying to tell us our greedy lifestyles are killing the earth.  One flight on Air Gore loads the atmosphere with more CO2 than my car emits in a year.  And my electric bills are not small, but nevertheless are a tenth of his. 

Did you watch the Great Global Warming Swindle as broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK?

Find it on Powerline if you haven't seen it yet.  It's a thorough and inarguable smackdown of Gore and of the proponents of Manmade Catastrophic Global Warming in general.  

Gore is an active and dangerous opponent of traditional American capitalism and freedom, and laughing him off could be costly.

The Brussels Journal is a great blog on general Euro news, and this week carries a story on a recent meeting of the finance minister types in the Euro Union.

Their conclusion, after discussing the current boom and the increase in corporate profits which are caused by it, is that--   (wait for it)  -- although profits are up, the wages aren't growing as fast as the profits, and so it's a "crisis".  

Believe it.  A crisis of legitimacy, in which the business community "illegitimately" keeps profits it should be giving its workers.  This is how the Euro business community is seen by its own EU finance nerds.

They are concerned (particularly the German guy) that companies are greedily keeping all the evil profits for themselves, and believe there should be some policy that makes it mandatory for companies to increase wages in line with increases in profits.  

I"m always amused by this when I see it.  It reminds me of the never-quite-dead windfall profits tax on oil.  Lee Raymond, late of Exxon's CEO chair, said memorably, "back in the 80's, when oil was $15 a barrel, I don't remember getting any phone calls from Washington asking what they can do to help."

As Mr. Raymond so ably pointed out, if there is to be a mandate on companies to share the wealth when it comes, it should go both ways.  When profits decrease, wages should be cut.  When companies go into the red, salaries should be eliminated and employees forced to withdraw money from their savings and give it to the companies, so they can "share the non-wealth" along with all that former wealth they were sharing.  

No politician will ever suggest this, of course.  But even an elementary school student can see that if this deal doesn't go both ways, it is clearly unfair.   It's a case of leftist nitwits seeing large amounts of money and immediately casting themselves in the role of the wise and all-knowing "good ones", the people of superior moral standing who should and will decide who gets how much of the evil profits.   And you wonder why the European economic growth rate is 1/4 that of the U.S. year after year....  :-)

It reminds me of my time in Europe, during which one of my favorite British clothing stores, Marks and Spencer, was shutting down some outlets in Belgium and France due to red ink.  After they left Paris, and the French government found itself having to fund the non-working lives of several hundred employees, that government actually passed a law which said that foreign businesses were not allowed to close stores in France without permission from the government. 

In other words, business is required by government to lose money.  

And don't say it can't happen here.  It wasn't very long ago when northern states, I believe Ohio but certainly Michigan, were ordering Ford motor company to keep its money-losing plants open so the employees wouldn't have to go on unemployment.   Paying thousands of relatively high salaries in return for NOTHING can really put a crimp in the flow of evil profits, don't you know.

But lucky for Ford they weren't a German company.  I heard from someone in international human resources work that the German government once forced a company to retain a useless employee on its books.  After a time, the government sent a counselor to make sure he was being treated right in his literally do-nothing job, and came back to government with a recommendation (quickly adopted by government, mind you) that the company pay for a recreation room for this employee, so he wouldn't be bored on the job.

That's a true story.

It is to me borderline mental illness to order a company to lose money indefinitely.  Gotta hurt the tax base in your county at the very least, right?  Unless you make your tax policy so ravenous that it takes money even from businesses which lose it hand over fist..... 

And don't think that won't happen here either.

My pal Ixman sends me a link to this UK broadcast on Channel 4 of a program called "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

******

Update:  just watched it all the way through, on this link, HT LGF.  Incredible!

******

The program is the best effort yet for public consumption at showing how the MCGW movement is playing fast and loose with the facts.

Although the first of the two videos on the linked page is already no longer available (hello, YouTube?  Removing controversial videos again?), the second would still play at the writing of this post, and it concerned the heart of AlGore's argument in "An Inconvenient Truth".  

That is, CO2 levels are linked to temperatures.  The higher the CO2, the higher the temperature during that period of earth's history.   While this is true, the linkage has actually shown to be inverse to what Gore claims.

Scientists have done their best to learn the average temperatures during these various periods going back millions of years, and what they've found is consistent throughout several different samplings and sample periods.  The global average temperature graphs about 800 years AHEAD of the global average CO2 level.

In other words, CO2 is a lagging indicator of increased temperatures, not the cause of them.

And this knowledge is easily had. 

But there's a reason that CO2 levels are the core of the argument made by MCGW proponents.
 
It's because CO2 is a product of an industrial society.  And that is the heart of the Manmade Catastrophic Global Warming movement, an attempt to gain complete control of industry, and through it, wealth and power.  The bleatings of the MCGW crowd are consistent; the evil military/industrial complex is poisoning the air and water and destroying the futures for millions of innocents.  If we are all to survive, the evil industries must be reined in and controlled.  

Note that the solution is pretty much the same as it was for the communists.

Substitute "workers of the world" for "innocent ordinary people trying to breathe air and drink water" and you have virtually identical arguments.  It's the inherent evil of capitalism that's to blame;  the industrial types grow fat and rich and the ordinary people suffer.  Capitalism isn't fair.  It's evil and destructive and the "good people" must somehow gain control of it so that wealth can be shared and the world preserved.

Limbaugh has said for almost 20 years now that the environmentalist movement is the refuge of the former communists who had to fade from sight when the Soviet Union broke up, due to embarrassment over the failure of their great experiment at building a "new man" and a new society.  Their beliefs are intact; capitalism is evil and rich people are evil and wealth must be seized and redistributed so things will be "fair".  The difference is, instead of excoriating capitalism because of its inherent unfairness, now they excoriate it because it ruins the environment.  

There is nothing new under the sun, folks.  No matter how many solar flares it's sending our way.

I rather enjoy Churchill's comment on capitalism, which I'll try to reproduce from memory--

"its the worst social system in the world, except for all the others".



 

 

Here's an amazing example of the great gulf between traditionalist Islamist-type worldviews and western ones.

It would be one thing if, as liberals argue, all worldviews are morally equivalent. 

Unfortunately, as happens all too often, the difference between worldviews is going to kill somebody.  In this case, it's a very beautiful young lady, a Druze from Israel who is the first Druze to enter a beauty contest.  She had a dream of a modeling contract, a new car, money.  That's all she wanted, a chance to help her family and rise above her humble origins. 

The Arab Druze are not muslim, strictly speaking, although they consider themselves to be a sect informed by Islam.  Other muslims don't call them islamic.  But they have the same sort of rigid medievalist approach to life, and the muslim culture is very strong among them on an everyday basis.   They won't be sending any suicide bombers, but an honor killing or two is right up their alley, apparently.

This young woman sits at home in the dark, afraid to answer the door or the phone.  She's been threatened into withdrawing from the contest, and her future is very much unknown.

All because, in some parts of the world, appearing in public in a swimsuit is a capital offense.

Any liberals want to try to explain how this isn't barbaric?  How that girl should know her place?  How it's her fault to begin with?

I still can't understand how the party of "women's lib" can work so diligently to undercut and hamper the business of bringing 21st century sunshine to these dreadful dark places. 

It makes me laugh and cry to see liberal reporterettes on television, reporting live from the middle east, wearing the hijab.

So much for the empowerment of women, eh?

ht Pam at Atlasshrugs.

HT to Powerline for linking to this  interview.

Dr. S. Fred Singer is an atmospheric physicist at George Mason University and the founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, which is a think tank on climate and environmental issues.

Oh, but he's not a REAL scientist.  Because he doesn't AGREE with the CONSENSUS.

Everyone knows that Manmade Catastrophic Global Warming has already been proven.  Al Gore said so.  And by Thor's Hammer if any scientist does NOT agree with the consensus, let him be STRIPPED of all scientific credentials, shamed and humiliated, and condemned to a life of bagging groceries at Kroger! 

These days, I'm having real trouble locating this so-called consensus.  It seems to me that every second scientist in the world has doubts about and difficulties with the MCGW theory.

But the MOST annoying thing about it all is mentioned yet again by Singer, that there is NOTHING that can be done to stop it.  Even its proponents agree.  If the world cut its energy use by 1/3, destroying the economies of every nation and hurting poor people the most, the best that can be hoped for is a .05 degree reduction in the rate of the increase of global temperatures. 

That is to say, if temperatures are rising at a rate of 1 degree C per decade, the result of the economically disastrous change in society would be-- 

a temperature rise per decade of .95 degrees, instead of 1 degree.  Whoopee.  Let's all put on the parkas and learn to love ice-fishing.

Singer reveals that, for all the weight being given these computer models of climate change, they do not even begin to factor in the making of and the actions of CLOUDS.

How in blue blazes can you forecast weather for the next hundred years without being able to talk about how clouds affect it?!?!?!

They leave that part out, simply because it's too complicated to address in computer models.  Not enough is known.

And folks, if they can't factor in the factors that factor, they can't make a reliable computer model.  PERIOD.  They just don't know enough.

But that doesn't matter, because they're a CONSENSUS.

First lets get the Townhall.com bashing done with.

This blog software is clunky, slow, prone to a variety of spectacular failures while blogging, and many friends and readers have told me commenting and participating is painful and sometimes impossible.

I am here because I believe in the idea that is Townhall.  I also believe it needs some fresh blood in the IT department, to put it mildly.

Git 'er done, boys.

On to the topic-- 

A friend writes after reading the post below, and tells of a family relationship in the not too distant past involving an Iranian.  He was by all accounts a fine man, representative of many like him, and during the late '70s this man wrote to his friends here with his concerns.  He was troubled by the mad mullahs, but even more so by the abandonment of Iran by the United States.  He could not believe we would walk away from a people who had been among our strongest allies for decades, let alone that we would do so much to help the new religious zealots who had made war against us on the American sovereign territory that was our Tehran embassy.

My friend reminds me to add it up. 

IN the early '70s, thanks to ruthless anti-war agitation by celebs and the media and the very young, we put the left into power in Congress and eventually abandoned our allies the South Vietnamese to the inhumanity of communism.  Two generations later they are still oppressed and poverty-stricken.  Thanks, Democrat party.

Then came the late '70s and the Carter era.  When Khomeini was asked what he expected from America after the embassy takeover, he said "lightning and thunder".  Then Jimmuh wrote him a letter asking what we had done to make him angry and was there anything we could do to atone for it......  

Khomeini laughed and shouted "we can do anything we want!"  And they have, ever since.  Including executing that fine man in the story my friend sent me.  Thanks to Jimmuh Carter and the revulsion of the left toward strong national defense and the use of military force in general.  Thanks, President Carter.  You gave us this current Iran problem, not Bush. 

Then the US tried to encourage revolt in the post-Gulfwar Iraq, hoping the citizens would overthrow Saddam so we would not be forced to deal with him.  But after the encouragement came nothing, no help, no money, no weapons, nothing.  The revolt fizzled and failed, and many thousands of good people were executed-- BECAUSE THEY HOPED AND BELIEVED IN HELP FROM AMERICA, which was never to come.   We were unwilling to take the logical next step of overthrowing Saddam ourselves, but our alternative failed miserably because we were unwilling to support the revolt either. 

Political concerns, mostly Clinton's but Bush 41 shares some of the blame, caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. 

I often wonder if part of Dubya's concern with Iraq is over his father's unfinished business; not, as the left says, because Saddam tried to kill his daddy, but because Dubya sees the awful consequences of his father's unwillingness to make the hardest decision of all, and feels a special responsibility to correct the matter.

************************************

Now, as my friend reminds me, ask yourself what is happening at this moment.

The left is taking power here.  Iraq is a pig that the lipstick doesn't help; still ugly.  

Will America do it again?  Abandon an entire nation of people to be murdered, oppressed, enslaved and brutalized, all because the American left cannot bear to be responsible for American military deployment?  Are they that morally vacuous?  

The last time we did not abandon an ally was in Korea.  And South Korea still flourishes today, democratic and economically vibrant, because we sacrificed many good men over many years to push back the communists permanently.  

But everything after that?  Put it in the negative column.  again and again, America goes home because the left clamors for withdrawal in defeat.  The people of the embattled nation in question are immediately swallowed up in the darkness of ideological enslavement.  Mass murder, as in the killing fields of Cambodia.  Prison camps, "vanishings", families torn apart, separated by exile and detention.  Poverty, starvation, death.  It happened in Vietnam.  It's happening in Iran even today.  It happened to thousands in Iraq 15 years ago.  And it would have happened in Korea, a point underlined by recent discoveries of North Korean prison camps and interviews with escaped guards and inmates.  It's one reason Bush put them on that "axis of evil".

Can the left do this again?  Are they that foolish, that vile, that wrong and determined to remain so?

I'm afraid they are, and they will.

Please don't think of American politics as silly conflict and entertainment.  Many many lives depend on it, and the real damage to America's reputation has not been done by George W. Bush but by the American leaders who have abandoned so many to such misery in the last 40 years.  America is no longer "the good guy", not because such things are now dated but because we truly haven't made that happen for a very long time.  It's been politics, pragmatism, shifting goals and concerns, and an overriding voice in the left ear saying "who do you think you are, calling yourself good, trying to do good in this world?  Don't you know how foolish you look?  Sophisticated people don't talk like that.  Are you some kind of comicbook superhero?  The world is shades of gray, so shut up about that black and white stuff.  Don't be such a Christian fool, you're making us all look bad!"

As I have said so many times before, I would rather have a good man leading me than a smart man.  It's easy to get advice from people who know their fields and have well-earned reputations for careful and capable thought.  But in politics, there are too few to turn to who can be depended upon to tell us what's right, and to do it.

Next time somebody says Bush is like Hitler, remind them who abandoned the Cambodians to the killing fields, and the Iraqis to their mass graves.  Remind them who stole hope from a nation of educated and world-wise and modern Iranians and consigned them to the oppression of an Islamic fundamentalist government.   Think secret police, women executed because they caused themselves to be raped, women expelled from universities and forced to cover themselves.   

The American left is the kiss of death for nations friendly to us.  No wonder Iraqis are worried.  

 

IN a day filled with errands, I found time to beetle into the local shopping center and peek through the windows of the GenericCut shop to see if there were any customers waiting.

I hate waiting for a haircut, and will give up immediately when I see other people.

Today there was nobody in line, so in I went.

I was attended by a lovely lady, mature, probably around my age (mid 40's).  She had the olive skin and dark eyebrows of a middle easterner, but not Arab.  I guessed either Lebanese or Iranian, and asked her where she was from. 

She said "guess".  :-)

I said Iran and she sat down in a chair, feigning shock or feeling it.  But shock became delight, and clearly it pleased her that an American could discern such a thing.  She told me she is regularly mistaken for a Mexican or a Brazilian or an Argentinian.  I am the first, she said, to guess correctly.

I gently steered her to her past, asking when she left and why, how it all happened.  With nobody else in the shop, she felt free to speak, but stopped short of explaining any specific personal detail.  The way she checked herself told me it was painful for her.  But I did learn that, along with many others, she left Iran two months after the Revolution in 1979, possessed of a now useless university education. 

I say that because, in the religious government of post-1979 Iran, women are oppressed and held back on almost every level of personal gain or achievement.  I mean other than joining the army and forming an elite female combat unit, of course, but I knew better than to inquire if she had considered that career path.  :-)

Yes, folks, there really is an elite female combat unit in the Iranian army.  They're covered head to toe in black, like skirted ninjas, for effect-- and because they would be executed if the male soldiers saw any part of them.  (I exaggerate here; they'd probably only be flogged.)

Women can't have careers, but exception is made for them if they will go and die for their country.  Charming.

I'm one of the few people I know who is growing less cynical about America every day.  The older I get, the more I recognize the real human value that is this country, the way that it offers life to those who cannot bear the life they have.  America saved this woman from oppression and misery and possibly torture and death.  Liberals would scoff at this, but I'm not sure Americans of any stripe really understand what totalitarian dictatorships are like for citizens.  Any of them is a horror; all of them make enemies disappear, and kill at the snap of a finger.  All of them have mass graves and prison camps and all of them have citizens whose neighbors and friends and family members have vanished in the night.

I'm privileged to have met this woman and learned a little of her story, because it reinforces my growing courage to speak for America and say what has become unfashionable or worse; that it is the best nation on earth, because it values human beings the most and gives them the best chance at the life they want.  Iv'e met other Iranians, in Texas and in Brussels also, and their stories are sadly similar.  One man who spoke little English or French explained everything to me by saying "religious government" and spitting on the sidewalk. 

The coldhearted cynicism of the left is a ghastly substitute for just one of these human stories of salvation, let alone the millions which have been told here in the past few decades alone.  America saves.  America revives those who were dead in their other lives.  America gives back dignity and humanity. 

Nobody's perfect.  America has its problems and has made its mistakes.  But there is nothing else like it, present or past.  When people want freedom, they come to America.  When they want justice, they call America.  It is not arrogant for an evangelical Christian to see, and say, that America is a nation with God's protective hand on it.  Try to imagine the world today without America, and you'll come up with nothing but fear and death and horror and destruction.  

If America can't or won't do it, there is nobody else on earth who can or will.  End of story.

But the postscript is amazing too, and a bit chilling. 

I came home and found my friend Ixman had sent me a link to this story, and told me to file it for future reference and use.  

I hope it's not too soon, amigo.

I don't think I'll ever get used to the new liberal campaign tactic of pretending to know something about Christianity.  John Kerry's biblical misquotes and out-of-context references were bad enough, but now Mr. Metrosexual, John Edwards, has outdone him in both ignorance and arrogance.

Edwards says Jesus would be appalled at the selfishness of Americans. 

I say Americans are personally and as a nation the most charitable people on the face of the earth, the fastest to respond to need, the most willing to give 'til it hurts, literally the best people the world has to offer.  And in America, the leader by example is the evangelical Christian, without doubt.  This is the one who actually knows and cares what Jesus said, and understands the context and why He said it. 

Do this for the least of these, and you have done it for Me.

Americans as individuals are statistically far more generous than anyone else in the world, including the wise and superior western Europeans.  And there aren't any TEN nations combined that can hope to come close to what America gives as aid in this world. 

It is not lack of American charitability, but corruption, in my view, which causes people to be poor and to suffer.  And Mr. Edwards knows something about that.  He specialized in turning gullible juries against good doctors by use of smart techniques like "channelling" the dead child, speaking to the jury as if he were the child, drawing tears from some people and rolled eyes from others, but in short order winning for himself a $50 million personal fortune.  His work causes insurance premiums to skyrocket and makes medical care more expensive for everyone, including those who can barely afford it.  And remember, we pay the bills for those who can't, and their costs go up too.

And if you watch Fox News, you've seen the aerial shots of the new Edwards mansion, a 30,000 square foot whopper with a full size basketball court among other amenities on the grounds.

This case is so clear it's painful.  Edwards is a rich American, one who didn't win his riches honestly but by gulling others and taking advantage of the dead.  And if we could see his own personal statements of charity, tax returns for example, we'd doubtless see that he gives far less than 1% of his income to charity.  Probably more like one tenth of one percent, if that.  And, like the famous used underwear claim (can't recall if it was Clinton or Gore, but one of them took tax deductions for giving away used underwear), I"m sure Edwards gets full tax benefits from whatever small amount he does give.

Meanwhile, he's out there calling his fellow citizens evil skinflints. 

Not because we are, and not because he believes we are, but because he wants poor people to vote for him. 

He's breaking a commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour) and in doing so claiming to speak for Jesus.

And I don't care if I'm wrong, if he actually does give 10 or 15% of his own income to charity.  It's a very low risk I take in disbelieving this, but it wouldn't overturn my main point, that Edwards is arrogant and hypocritical and far too quick to insult his fellow citizens on cynical grounds.

Dear reader, in the Christian church I know, we encourage charity by setting examples. 

I wish I could proofread this post and enjoy the skill with which I eviscerate the blowdried hypocrite, but honestly....   this episode was so darn easy to handle, a caveman could do it.

International skullduggery is alive and well.

When all is said and done, I think we'll be surprised by how many things in spy novels turn out to be true. 

Ann Coulter has finally managed to make me scratch my head and ask "what was she thinking?". 

Until now, nothing she's ever said has struck me as pointlessly rude and offensive.  She's offended many, don't get me wrong, but I have been able to see that, like Limbaugh, her humor and her bluster has a point, even if humorless libs don't get it. 

This week she lost me with her crack about John Edwards being a "faggot".  I realize she didn't mean it literally, but was taking the "metrosexual" jibe to the next level (and he is oh so metrosexual! :-)

But to use that abrasive and cruel word at a gathering of conservatives getting ready for a presidential race, to tar us all with her crudite, well that was a step too far in my view.  If she had tried to describe Barack Obama with the N word, she wouldn't have been much more offensive. 

She can write what she wants, say what she wants, but always she should be aware of who it affects and how.  Her own reputation is her business; the entire right wing movement, though, shouldn't have to take the grief she earns for herself.

That said, I continue to be wowed at the skill and dexterity with which she eviscerates libs and their causes; Coulter is a wit without parallel and a keen observer, and her column this week (linked on Drudge, scroll down to her name on the long list) is superb.

Over the top, yes.  But the direction she goes to get over that top is the exact right direction, spot-on.  Complain if you will about her rhetoric, but there is little she says in this column on environmentalist wackoes that is off the mark.

I re-read "Godless" this week and was again stunned at her accuracy, her research and the clarity of her thinking as she takes on the religion of the left.  The best bits are in the section on Darwinism and evolution; read the book and prepare for arguments with pseudo-intellectual lefties.  You will win. 

But it has.

Another conference on Manmade Catastrophic Global Warming cancelled because of blizzard conditions.  Irony is in abundance these days. 

Only Fox News covered the one in DC last week, but this one in Minnesota has escaped the notice of the media altogether--  except for El Rushbo, of course.

You'd think they'd wise up and reschedule these things for the summer.