A CHRISTIAN ISLAND IN A MOSLEM OCEAN
Dili, Timor-Leste. East of Bali, west of New Guinea, and north of Australia is an island called Timor. The western half belongs to Indonesia. The eastern half did too, but no longer. There are only two Christian countries in all of Asia. One is the Philippines. The other is here, the new nation, independent since 2002 after a horrific struggle, of Timor-Leste or East Timor. You might wonder how this place became Christian surrounded by the world's largest Moslem country - Indonesia. There are over 200 million Moslems in Indonesia which is almost three times the size of Texas, and only 1 million East Timorese on half an island the size of Connecticut. But it turns out that Christianity came to this part of the world before Islam. The Timorese had to suffer unimaginable horrors to achieve their sovereign Christian freedom. It's a heroic saga and ought to be inspirational for us. Here is their story.
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE PUT THE IPCC OUT OF ITS CORRUPT MISERY?
"Who you gonna believe? Us, or your lying eyes?" The UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in effect issued that challenge with its 5th Assessment Report Monday (9/30). A Summary for Policymakers was formally issued last Friday (9/27). But release of the report itself was delayed because revisions needed to be made to make the report proper comport with the Summary for Policymakers, the IPCC said. Since the report is written by scientists, while the summary is written by political representatives of UN member nations, this would seem to be bass-ackwards. In a rational world, the summary should be adjusted to reflect the current thinking of scientists. But the IPCC bureaucrats live in an irrational world of bottomless corruption.
AMERICA’S BANKRUPTCY WILL BE CAUSED BY INTELLECTUAL BANKRUPTCY OF DEMOCRATS
"There is nothing left to cut," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last week when referring to the federal budget. Again, she displayed a complete disconnect with reality -- a disconnect reinforced by all those other fantasyland souls who make her their leader. Outside of government, almost every good or service becomes better and less expensive in real terms each year. Government, though, is most heavily involved in education and health care. In both cases, costs have risen far faster than inflation for decades. With education, there has been almost no measurable improvement in quality as measured by what students know. The teachers unions love to talk about how much is being spent per pupil, while ignoring the fact that there are many high-spending school districts with lower achievement levels than many lower spending districts. The private sector -- unlike government -- constantly reduces costs and improves its products because of competitive pressures, and that creates real wealth. Those in the public sector measure success by the amount spent, not by what is accomplished.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/27/13
Four days after the Somali terror group al Shabaab attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, the Kenyan government claimed it had taken full control of the mall. They killed at least 72, injured about 175 more. The body count was so high in part because mall security weren't allowed to carry guns. It would have been higher had not a former Royal Marine had his with him. * * * * Obama's surrender to Putin on Syria is now complete. Assad is crowing about it. * * * * Zero was at the UN Tuesday, where he gave a lousy speech, and got snubbed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. * * * * Obamacare officially begins Tuesday. As evidence mounts that efforts by the Obamunists to implement it will be what those in the military call a cluster**** of monumental proportions, flop sweat is accumulating in gallons on the brows of Democrats. * * * * It's easy to see why Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, was a champion debater. Especially delicious is how - at an hour when most of us would have been groggy from lack of sleep -- Cruz lured the insufferable Dick Durbin, D-Ill, into a trap, and eviscerated him. * * * * The IPCC leaked advance copies of its report to the most friendly journalists Thursday, with disappointing results, because even these tools "quickly realized the IPCC Summary for Policymakers contained several embarrassing walk-backs from alarmist statements in prior IPCC reports," said James Taylor of the Heartland Institute.
CHINA IS A SERIOUS COUNTRY — AMERICA IS NOT
Shanghai. The loudest people on the planet are Chinese. The most obnoxious sound you've ever heard is that of a Chinese man spitting - which they do often and everywhere. The most evil mass murderer in human history is worshipped as a demi-god by countless Chinese. His picture is on every denomination of Chinese currency. The list of Chinese negatives is very long. And they are all irrelevant. They are all overridden by one single fact: that China is a serious country and the Chinese are a serious people - while America and Americans are not. There is almost no way to describe the massiveness and ubiquity of the construction going on in hundreds of cities. Gigantic apartment complexes are springing up everywhere. Bullet trains going 200mph with amazingly smooth rides over railroads that go everywhere. Superhighways are the same. There must be at least two or three dozen airlines that fly to hundreds of cities. Three of them just placed an order for 68 A320s worth $6.75 billion - European Airbuses instead of Boeings as a slap in Zero's face. This same massive, purposeful, determined energy is being channeled into China's military. The Chinese will have a full-on blue water navy within a few years. They are focused on aircraft carrier-sinking cruise missiles, communication satellite-destroying ballistic missiles, undersea cable-slicing deep water robots, and of course, incapacitating our entire computer-based economy and military via hacking. The Chinese are different from us in many ways. They operate under a different set of moral rules and proscriptions. But one thing the Chinese are not is stupid. Another thing they are not is apologetic and unconfident. China today is a competitor of America's unlike any we have ever faced. It is deadly - literally deadly - serious, and deadly smart. Really smart. China is becoming more serious, more confident, and more educated-smart by the day - while we are becoming the opposite of all three, by the day.
MODEL MELTDOWN: GOVERNMENT FUNDS THE FORECAST IT IS LOOKING FOR
This week, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is slated to release its fourth report since 1990. Leaked copies indicate an admission that there has been no global warming for the past 16 years, but the report will also increase its probability from 90 percent to 95 percent that global warming ? if it does occur ? is caused by man. Not one of the major climate models on which the panel bases its predictions forecast the lack of warming over the past 16 years, even though the models do vary widely as to how much warming they predicted. Not to be outdone, President Obama again is warning us that if the Republicans do not vote for more government spending in the budget battles that are now upon us, we will go back into a recession. You may have not noticed we had left the recession, since employment levels are still below where they were five years ago. The president, of course, does not make such statements off the top of his head, but on the basis of his economic-forecast models. You might ask: "How accurate have these models been in forecasting?" Please note the accompanying table for the answer...
HIS BRAVURA PERFORMANCE HELPS TED CRUZ A LOT; THE CAUSE NOT SO MUCH
THE REAL CULPRITS IN MASS SLAYINGS
When President Barack Obama said blame for the murders of 12 people at the Navy Yard Sep. 16 on "those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun," he was partly right. But the culprits aren't those he was trying to smear.
OBAMAS BLUFF
President Obama has adopted the unsustainable position that he will not negotiate with Congress over spending and the debt ceiling. He is betting he can get Republicans to fold without having to give up anything he wants. That's why we're hearing ridiculous claims from him like the one he made speaking to the Business Roundtable this week: "You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt." This is nonsense, of course. Moreover, the implication that Obamacare has "nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt" is simply dishonest. The law accounts for a large part of the budget and we now know that it will cost twice as much in the next ten years as President Obama promised before it was passed. The truth is the President may soon be forced to negotiate. Here's why.
THE IRANIANS ARE COMING!
Hasan Rouhani, Iran's new president, arrived in New York yesterday (9/23), and the dips and pundits are very excited. They think there's a chance for a breakthrough, maybe even two or three breakthroughs: Even a "chance encounter" between Rouhani and Obama will be treated as a major event, and you can expect to read language like "for the first time in decades, American and Iranian leaders met face to face." That language is false. There have been myriad face-to-face encounters, and other claims about Rouhani are also false. Typical is this fawning puff piece in the New York Times, portraying Rouhani as the Middle East's new Golden Boy: