Member Login

You are not currently logged in.








» Register
» Lost your Password?

Article Archives

A HILARIOUS INCONVENIENCE

It doesn't take much to be the funniest moment in an Academy Awards show that Washington Post television critic Tom Shales described as "alternately a bore and a horror."  But I thought it hilarious when Algore won the Oscar for best documentary for "An Inconvenient Truth." Documentaries ought to bear some relationship to reality.  "An Inconvenient Truth" is a cheesy propaganda film. Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, who is to climate science what Tom Brady is to football, has described it as "shrill alarmism." "You'd think that a science-based, call to action film from a guy who flunked out of divinity school...would be received with a certain amount of skepticism, but in officially atheist Hollywood, Albert Arnold Algore Jr. is the second coming of Moses, Maimonides, Martin Luther, all rolled into one," wrote "David Kahane," a nom de plume for a screenwriter in Hollywood.

Read more...

THE COMPULSION TO APOLOGIZE

I've written often, such as in Rejecting The Evil Eye, about liberals' fear of envy.  This fear is what makes them liberals.  Thus the key insight:

Liberalism is not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied. It is the politicalization of envy-appeasement.
Nothing more epitomizes liberals' fear of envy than their compulsion to apologize.  Apologize to the world for the existence of  exploitative America.  Apologize to the Earth for the existence of polluting humanity.  Last Sunday (2/25), the Democrat-controlled legislature of Virginia voted to "apologize" for the state's role in slavery. When you apologize for something that your great-great-great-great grandfather, at the latest, might have done (and most likely not, for the overwhelming majority of Virginia residents are not the descendants of slave owners), you require psychiatric counseling. Another example of how liberalism is a psychological affliction - a particularly dangerous one when it's the basis of foreign policy. Which brings us today to a Democrat Congressman from California, "Moonbat Mike" Honda.

Read more...

BUSH AND THE COPPERHEADS

What if we win in Iraq?  If the thought makes you break out in a cold sweat, you could be a Democrat candidate for president. American history has a grave lesson for the Democrats.  They need to be reminded that their Democrat Party clamored for a U.S. defeat during the Civil War.  Back then, the leaders of their party called themselves "Peace Democrats," who urged Union soldiers to desert and hated Abraham Lincoln as much as their political descendants hate George Bush today.  They were confident of capturing the White House in 1864. Then Sherman captured Atlanta two months before the 1864 elections.  The "Copperheads," as the Republicans called the Democrats after a venomous snake, got creamed by the voters who thought victory was nigh.  And it was: at Appomattox five months later (April 9, 1865). President Bush may have his Atlanta before the primaries begin.

Read more...

THANKS TO CHAIRMAN COX

When the DOW tanked on Tuesday (2/27), losing over 400 points, the comparison du jour was to the Black Monday crash of October 19, 1987 - which was of course silly, as the former was only a 3.3% loss in value, while the latter was 22.6%. Nonetheless, it prompts me to tell you a story, which starts in the Chang Tang Plateau of northern Tibet.  That's where I was at the time of '87 crash, leading an overland expedition from Beijing to Kathmandu across Tibet north to south.  We heard about the crash from BBC broadcasts on my short wave radio.  One expedition member, Big John Perrott, had a panic attack.  Having no way to reach his broker - northern Tibet is about as remote as you get - he thought he was bankrupt. By the time we got to Lhasa by the end of the month, and John could call his broker, the market - and his portfolio - were well into recovery.  He said he'll be forever grateful for being in the Chang Tang on Black Monday. But while I was in Tibet on Black Monday, a good friend of mine was in a meeting at the White House.

Read more...

BUTTERFLIES AND FREE INTERNATIONAL CALLS

Thanks to some "butterfly effects" caused by my local cable television operators here in Jerusalem, I've had to reevaluate my options for international phone calls.  I make a lot of them from here. I came up with some interesting solutions - all of them cheaper than $30 a month I've been paying (which, based on the package I had, came out to 6 cents per minute prepaid - i.e. whether I used all the allotted time or not). If you signed up for VoIP package a few years ago and haven't checked out the arena recently, you're in for a pleasant - and money-saving - surprise.  International calls have become a lot cheaper and easier to make.

Read more...

THE DEMENTED DEMAGOGIC DEMOCRAT DESTRUCTION DERBY

Last month, Sen. Barack Obama called for our troops to leave Iraq by March 2008. Last weekend, Sen. Hillary Clinton called for our troops to start leaving within 90 days. In this Demented Demagogic Democrat Destruction Derby (military status: 5F) of American national-security interests, I suppose former Sen. John Edwards, in an effort to hold on to his title of supremo anti-war candidate, will have to designate it a crime against humanity that the troops weren't pulled out a week ago last Friday. Mrs. Clinton's husband had a campaign war room in the election of 1992. Now she seems to have put up a quick prefabricated anti-war room for her campaign 2008. It seems almost pointless to engage in a serious policy debate with a party whose leading contenders for the presidency are willing to simply make up any preposterous national security policy in a contest of one-upmanship targeted at winning the hearts and minds (if that is the word for it) of their party's ready-for-institutionalizing edge of their lunatic fringe voters.

Read more...

DEMOCRATS AT DELPHI

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.  Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) spoke those words in the Roman Senate over two thousand years ago.  But his words could be addressed to Traitor John Murtha and the leadership of the Democrat Party today. They have bet on America's defeat in Iraq.  Somehow they believe that their country's defeat will bring them personal victory in 2008 - retaining and expanding their control of Congress and regaining the White House. It's not going to work out that way. It's going to turn out that the Democrat strategy will achieve defeat - theirs.  Root for defeat and you'll get it - yours.

Read more...

THE WORLDS RICHEST AND MOST DANGEROUS GANGSTER

Suppose there's a Mafia Don.  Not a benign and pro-American Marlon Brando Godfather, but a ruthless brutal gangster who hates America and holds a bottomless grudge against her. Let's suppose this Mafioso has amassed an enormous personal fortune of ill-gotten gains.  Stashed away in hidden bank accounts and assets all over the world, his net worth exceeds 20 billion dollars - billion with a ‘b'. But say that's just his personal stash.  Say the total amount of money his gang has accumulated is 300 billion - almost a third of a trillion dollars in cash.  Say he controls it. Let's finally suppose that this centibillionaire anti-American gangster has an arsenal of several thousand nuclear bombs, most of them in the nose cones of intercontinental missiles aimed at us. If there were such a man, shouldn't we be a bit more worried about him than a bankrupt midget in Persia without a single real nuke to his name? For there is indeed such a man.  His name is Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

Read more...

A KAFKA PROSECUTION

Scooter Libby must feel as if he were a character in a Seinfeld episode written by Franz Kafka. Seinfeld was the fabulously successful  1990s sitcom "about nothing."  In Kafka's novels, his protagonists are trapped in situations that are incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, or illogical. The fate of Mr. Libby, who used to be chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is now in the hands of the jury.  He is charged by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald with having lied about something that isn't a crime, because his memory of an event differs from that of journalists, whose memories also are faulty. Cross examination revealed that virtually every prosecution witness has serious memory problems.  But only Mr. Libby's memory is on trial.

Read more...

THE ANNA NICOLE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

The only TV news I watch is Fox.  CBS has that blonde airhead, ABC/NBC have nonentities, and CNN is the English translation of Al Jazeera.  But lately I can't even watch Fox, for the only news it seems to cover is the ersatz drama about a bimbo with giant mariachis. No doubt that giant mariachis are among the most wondrous creations in the known universe - but endless discussion of the deceased possessor of two of them is not news.  At least, not any longer.  Shouting, "Enough already!", I either click the off button on the remote, or go in search of a CSI rerun or John Wayne movie. Pretty soon, of course, viewers will get bored with the Anna Nicole story and move on to some other silliness.  So let's do a thought experiment.  Suppose, just suppose, that Fox doesn't let up, keeps featuring the story, dissecting every detail, comes up with new revelations, month after month after month after month. Now suppose all other news outlets do the same.  For months, stretching on into the interminable future.  Would you go (a) out of your mind, or (b) no longer pay attention to nor have any interest in the news altogether? Welcome to the Anna Nicole Presidential Campaign - with no giant mariachis.

Read more...