KICKING RUDY’S TIRES
Rudy Giuliani is casting a long shadow over the Democratic as well as the Republican presidential races. Opinion polls indicate the former New York mayor has a large lead not only among likely GOP voters, but in match ups with the leading Democratic contenders as well. It defies conventional wisdom that a candidate who is pro-choice on abortion and pro-gay rights could be a serious contender for the Republican nomination. But two events have stood the conventional wisdom on its head. For most conservatives, winning the war on terror is the paramount issue, because nothing else matters much if we lose. Mr. Giuliani arguably has the best credentials on the paramount issue.
UNIQUE IN THE UNIVERSE
I propose we take a break today from the current crop of absurdities. Liberals destroy respect for the rule of law by gloating over Scooter Libby's lunatic conviction. Conservatives anguish over Ann Coulter using an unacceptable equivalent of "girlieman" to describe John "Breck Boy" Edwards. Liberals see her comment far more immoral than Bill Maher's expressing his regret that the assassination attempt on Dick Cheney in Afghanistan wasn't successful. I could go on and on, for we seem surrounded by absurdities on every side and they are closing in. We need a break. Let's do so by discussing one of the deepest, most profound questions ever asked: Where is everybody? In other words, let's discuss the Fermi Paradox.
WHAT’S DHIMMITUDE IN RUSSIAN?
As I am writing this, a friend of mine for many years is fighting for his life in a hospital nearby, having been gunned down in his driveway for criticizing the leader of the world's most powerful mafia, Vladimir Putin. On nationally televised "Dateline NBC" February 25, intelligence expert Paul Joyal accused Putin's secret police of poisoning former KGB agent Aleksander Litvinenko with radioactive pollonium in London last November. Putin's message in so doing, Joyal explained, was a warning: "To anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you - in the most horrible way possible." Four days later on March 1st, Putin's thugs - right here in Washington - did just that. They silenced Paul Joyal in the most horrible way possible. They blew his balls off.
ISLAM AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM
Is there something inherent in Islam that has resulted in most Moslems living in poor countries, with the exception of the relatively few who live in the oil rich states? This was just one of the questions a group of American and Islamic scholars and experts were trying to answer in Doha, Qatar, last week. Qatar has the world's second largest gas reserves (after Russia) along with considerable oil, yet it only has about 200,000 citizens (and 600,000 foreign workers). The city of Doha, where roughly half of the population lives, gives the appearance of being the world's largest and most modern and luxurious conference center. The reality for most Moslems is radically different. There about 1.3 billion Moslems (21 percent of the world's population), contrasted with 2.1 billion Christians (about 33 percent of the world's population). While Christians are disproportionately rich, Moslems are disproportionately poor.
TESTING GLOBAL WARMING
Science works by means of prediction on the basis of testing a hypothesis. Once data is collected and evaluated, and a hypothesis formed, scientific method requires that certain predictions be made to act as tests of the overall theory. If the predictions work out, we can regard the hypothesis as proven. If not, we vow to do better next time. How, then, can the hypothesis of man-made ("anthropogenic") global warming be tested? Wouldn't one way be to have access to some natural example comparable to what's occurring now, so that we could analyze it and get some idea of what we're facing? It so happens that we have exactly that. This isn't the first time warming has occurred on earth - it's a commonplace and recurring phenomenon. One such episode took place in relatively recent historic time - the Medieval Warm Period. During the MWP, worldwide temperatures rose by 1 to 3 degrees centigrade for a roughly three-hundred-year period beginning in the 10th century and ending late in the 13th century. Warming advocates have made a series of predictions concerning climatic effects over the coming century. Do they pass the MWP test?
THE HOAX OF NEGOTIATIONS
A great hoax is being perpetrated on the world, the hoax of negotiations as an untried method to "solve" the "Iranian problem." In fact, we have been negotiating with the mullahs ever since-indeed even before-the 1979 revolution that deposed the Shah and brought to power the Islamic Fascist regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In the intervening 28 years, we have participated in countless face-to-face encounters, myriad "demarches" sent through diplomatic channels, and meetings-some on the fringes of international conferences-involving "unofficial" representatives of one government or the other. The lack of any tangible result is obvious, yet the chatterers, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, and cheered on by intellectuals, editorialists, and instant experts on Iran, act as if none of this ever happened.
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.
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.
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.
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.