COULTER AND THE BRECK BOY
Ann Coulter's famously calling Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" at the CPAC conference here in Washington earlier this month has scandalized a great many conservatives and every single Republican candidate. It was brilliant. That's a description, not approval. I winced when I heard the forbidden word, not because it's forbidden but because it's so hurtful. It's purposefully demeaning to homosexuals, especially to those who really can't help what they are. Yet Ann's use of the term was diabolically clever, for with it she accomplished her goal: demolishing Edwards' candidacy. With this one single word, she made sure John Edwards will never be elected President of the United States. She knew exactly what she was doing.
PRO-AMERICA LATIN AMERICA
As our president arrived in Brazil last week, our media made it sound as if Latin America had erupted in flames. TV news featured flying tear-gas canisters; a typical newspaper headline read, "Angry Crowds Rally Against President in Brazil." Message: Bush is hated. He's ruined our relations with the hemisphere. Nobody loves us anymore - and it's all his fault. If you bothered to read the reports below the headlines, you learned that 6,000 Brazilians had gathered in Sao Paulo to protest Bush's arrival in their country. Wait a minute - wasn't that 600,000? Or at least 60,000? Nope. Just 6,000 outraged citizens. In one of the world's largest cities, with a population close to 20 million. But no way were you going to see a headline that admits, "Anti-Bush Demonstrations Fizzle, Numbers Just Aren't There."
THE WHORES OF JAMA
Last week (2/28), JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, published a hit piece on antioxidant vitamins. JAMA's Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E concluded that taking supplements of them increases one's chances of death by 5%. The lamestream media gleefully ran stories on the study, with headlines like "Vitamins Can Kill You." It's the whores of JAMA and their media shills who can kill you, not vitamins. Note the "Meta" in the study's title. That means it's an analysis of other studies, not research itself. What these folks did is, out of the close to a thousand clinical antioxidant studies, they cherry picked 68 that showed what JAMA wanted. And they had to lie about many of those in order to force the data to fit their pre-ordained conclusion.
WHO CARES IF MOSLEMS KILL MOSLEMS?
Imagine the reaction if Western agents slaughtered a hundred Sunni pilgrims on their way to Mecca. The outrage would spark incendiary rhetoric, riots and revenge killings from Peshawar to Paris. But when Sunni suicide bombers murdered 118 Shia pilgrims (and wounded almost 200 more) on Tuesday (3/6), Sunnis around the globe looked away: Shias only count as Moslems when America can be blamed for their suffering. Human-rights groups were too busy applauding European requests for the extradition of CIA operatives (the real enemies of Western civilization, of course). Since this butchery wasn't the fault of Americans or Brits, the Europeans themselves took no interest. American leftists, who raved that Abu Ghraib was another Auschwitz, didn't offer a single word of pity for the Moslem victims of Moslems. All to be expected. But shouldn't Moslems have denounced the attacks on the pilgrims? How do you say "fugedaboutit" in Arabic?
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.