MoveOn.org’s Jewish Problem

First MoveOn.org tried to defeat Joe Lieberman for reelection. Now they are trying to censure Dianne Feinstein. Who’s next? I bet on Chuck Schumer.

Do you see the pattern? The über-liberal wing of the Democrats doesn’t seem to like moderate Jewish Democrat senators. Obviously MoveOn.org is not anti-Semitic. Their ranks are full of liberal Jews. So what is the connection?

Support of Israel, of course!

Some of the most vicious attacks on Israel come from liberal American Jews, who are also often virulent supporters of the Palestinians. It’s a whole new dimension in self-loathing.

Democrats, of course, have always made strange bedfellows. For an example, one of many, Liberal Jews and Blacks have never been moved to censure one-time Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Byrd, even when information came out that he had a very long association with the Klan.

In 1945, concerning integrating the military, Byrd wrote to segregationist Senator Theodore Bilbo, of Mississippi, vowing never to serve in an integrated military:

Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

Earlier he had written Bilbo "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side". Robert Byrd was true to his word, and never served in the military no matter who was at his side, finding it much more congenial to spend the war as a welder.

Although Byrd said he left the Klan in 1943, in 1946 or 1947, when he was 29 years old, he wrote a Klan Grand Wizard that: "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia" and "in every state in the nation.”

Along the way, now Senator, Byrd participated in the 83-day filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As an encore, he also voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

Robert Byrd has the distinction of being the only senator to vote against the Supreme Court confirmations of both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas.

A man true to his principles.

Unlike Senator Trent Lott, who lost his position as Majority Leader of Senate Republicans because of an innocuous remark at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, former Klansman Byrd served twice for a total of seven years as Democrat Senate Majority Leader, and six years as Minority Leader.

Of course, even as recently as 2001, in an interview with Tony Snow, Byrd talked about how people who hate won’t go to Heaven, that there are “white niggers.”

I am fascinated how MoveOn.org and liberal Democrats can be so virulently opposed to moderate Jewish senators who support Israel, and so accommodating of a “reformed” racist like Byrd. It reminds me of the old Communist appellation, a “fellow traveler,” or another, a “useful idiot.”

Now to try to figure out which one is the idiot.

And wait to see what they do to Chuck Schumer.

More United Nations Global Warming Propaganda

Panic! Chaos! Armageddon! Apocalypse! Gloom! Doom!

What happened?

The United Nations, in its continuing quest to be relevant and thereby gain control over the world’s resources and its peoples, has launched another attempt to panic mankind into submission.

The UN, already demonstrably morally and ethically bankrupt (remember their Oil For Food swindle, and how they sat out or are sitting out genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Sudan?), is playing the only card it holds for all it is worth – the “Man-Caused Global Warming” Joker. This time even their top guy, UN General Secretary Nan Ki-Poo (Sorry, I started to type Ban Ki-moon, but then thought his global warming pronouncements were so operatically overly dramatic that I couldn’t help poking a little low humor at him. For that I apologize, since in my heart of hearts I wish I could come up with something appropriately more humorous and worthy of this UN drama queen).

In the UN’s most recent attempt at relevance:

The United Nations says sea levels will rise 4.6 feet in the next 1,000 years. That’s 5.5 inches per century, slightly less than sea levels rose the past century, and the century before, and … well, you get the picture.

Maybe we should try to put the sea level increases in historical perspective. Have sea levels risen prior to the era of “man-caused” global warming?

Glad you asked.

Since the end of the last glacial period 18,000 years ago, sea levels have risen over 400 feet, or an average of over two feet per century. So now we’re in a panic because we think sea levels will rise less than half a foot per century? When the historical average is over two feet per century? For the past 180 centuries?

Memo to United Nations scientists – the Earth is in an interglacial period. There’s an easy way to tell if Earth is in a glacial or interglacial period. Is Chicago under a mile thick ice cap? If “no,” then we’re in an interglacial period.

If “yes,” then Earth is deep in a glacial period.

Check again in about 10,000 to 20,000 years. The odds are very good you’ll have to dig through a mile of ice to find Chicago again.

The United Nations says that “global warming is unequivocal.” It certainly took the UN a long time to arrive at the obvious. The fact is, global warming has been unequivocal since the early 1900’s, when it was clear that the Little Ice Age had ended in the mid-1800’s, and that a sustained warming period had begun.

Interestingly, this warming period became a cooling period from about 1945 to 1975, during the period of greatly increased production of carbon dioxide from human activities. According to the anthropogenic global warming crowd, it’s not supposed to happen like that. I have been waiting for them to provide a coherent explanation for this anomaly for a long time.

I have also been waiting for them to explain why there was a sustained warming period from 1910 to 1945 that saw an increase of 0.4° C, and that it took almost twice as long, from 1945 to 2005, to get another increase of 0.4° C.

The UN pronouncement is a model for cherry-picking information. It’s interesting when they announce that eleven of the twelve hottest days on record occurred since 1990. Left unsaid is that the record they are looking at only began in 1978, at the end of a prolonged cooling period. More appropriately, according to recently revised NASA weather statistics, five of the ten warmest years occurred before World War II, with 1934 the warmest, 1921 second, and 1998 third.

The UN also cites recent hurricane activity as proof of intensifying storm activity as a result of global warming. Oddly enough, hurricanes have been more numerous and more powerful, even during cooler periods.

During the warming period of 1970 to 1994, hurricane activity was extremely low, resulting in unprecedented coastal population growth and development. Prior to this period of low activity, hurricanes were numerous and strong from 1926 to 1970. Unlike the UN scientists, true experts in hurricanes have long recognized that there is a cycle for hurricane activity that is called the “tropical multi-decadal signal,” and that each cycle can last for 20 or 30 years, or longer.

Much has been made of Katrina and the hurricanes of 2005 by global warming alarmists. These same alarmists have nothing to say about the very benign hurricane seasons of 2006 and 2007. I suppose they will now shift their attention to the cyclone that just killed 15,000 Bangladeshi. However, they will probably not mention that in 1970 an estimated almost half a million Bangladeshi were killed by a cyclone.

Also sure to be overlooked, the over half a million Chinese and Indians killed by three powerful storms in the late 1800’s.

The UN of course notes that global warming will have its greatest impact on the poor. I suppose the UN experts won’t notice that during the past two centuries, more that 131 million perished from famine, or that in recent years famine has become more a result of bad government – China, Ethiopia, North Korea – than of climate change. In fact, only five million of the 131 million deaths from famine occurred after 1970, and almost all were in that paragon of world communism, North Korea.

Predictably, the UN even mentions that wildfires are a sign of out-of-control global warming. However, wildfire frequency has decreased during the past 200 years, while wildfire severity increased due to fire suppression causing fuel buildup in many areas, while population growth and development in fire-prone areas has increased dramatically.

To summarize, the United Nations continues their near-panicked quest to be relevant. They say mankind has caused the world to become abnormally warm, while ignoring much warmer periods like the Holocene Optimum, Roman warm period, and the Medieval Warm Period.

The UN says warming will cause the seas to rise half a foot per century, overlooking that past centuries on average had rates of sea level increase quadruple the current rate.

The UN says the current warming is the highest recorded, overlooking the warming that occurred during the first half of the 1900’s, or the ever greater warming one thousand, two thousand, and five thousand years ago.

The UN says warming will cause more powerful storms, maybe almost as bad as the ones before 1970, or even the horrific ones of the late 1800’s.

According to the UN, warming will also cause more famine, although the trend has been a dramatic reduction in famines during this warmer period, as long as you’re not living in a communist country.

Finally, as fresh as yesterday’s headlines, there are the wildfires, which have been decreasing for 200 years.

The UN's experts may be dumb, but they and Al Gore are dumb like a fox (although not as smart as an ox). The United Nations experts and Al are betting on ignorance of history and science on the part of the world’s peoples to get their message across.

From all indications, they’re betting on a sure thing.

Writers' Strike Could Save the World

The writers' strike could do far more towards saving civilization than vain and incredibly expensive attempts to stop natural climate change. (It's reported CBS News writers may strike. How will you know the difference?)

In fact, the writers’ strike is a wonderful thing that I wish would never end. For over fifty years I have watched television destroy social life, family life, and education of the poorest and most vulnerable, while cheapening our culture and values.

I was one of the hooked, often sitting in front of a television set passively watching while life, often the lives of my family and loved ones, became an almost ignored background to the flickering figures on the screen. I watched a transition in what was prized and respected in our culture. Parents on television shows went from being strong and thoughtful, even wise, to being slow-witted out-of-touch boobs, the butt of jokes played and voiced by their quicker witted, much more socially aware children.

Business owners and managers soon became the bane of civilization, and then the police profession and its activities which touch the lives of such a small percentage of our population grew to become the pervasive dramas on television. Along the way court room dramas created a fiction about judicial procedures most people soon though represented reality.

Ubiquitous celebrities with loud mouths and little education command headlines with their pronouncements on every issue, unfailingly dealing with things they scarcely understand.

Television news has reduced commentary and analyses of issues into sound bites, and in-depth analyses by true experts is ignored because it doesn’t fit TVs time constraints and isn't presented by attention grabbing celebrities. In turn, the time constraints of television are reflected in the brief attention spans of its devoted watchers.

Television producers learned years ago that the mind numbing entertainment they dished up had become more important to their audience than the events of the day. Nothing was guaranteed to cause more distress and anxiety amongst television watchers than an interruption of a favorite show to bring an urgent news report.

So count me in as a one hundred percent supporter of the writers’ strike. I only regret that some shows, like the game shows and “reality” programs may be able to go on without writers. For that I say, for shame any television performer or worker who crosses the writers’ picket lines.

In fact, television workers of the world, show your solidarity with each and every downtrodden and exploited worker of the world, and honor all their picket lines no matter what or where or why they’re striking.

It’s the greatest gift you could give your world.

San Francisco Screws Small Businesses

San Francisco not only screws small businesses, but their workers too.

“How could that be?” you Liberals ask. “Don’t you know that San Francisco is the nearest thing to Heaven that has ever graced this planet, and undoubtedly the Universe?”

“Muslims have Mecca. Liberals have San Francisco.”

The news of San Francisco’s callous regard for the small businessman and his key employees was uncovered by the unlikeliest of sources, the socialist welfare state’s most ardent supporter, the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Chronicle, which has the same relationship with news as Hillary has with candor (for example, in Iowa), John Kerry has with Christmas in Cambodia, or Al Gore has with world peace, in some way put ideology aside long enough to note that small San Francisco restaurants were put on a fast track to failure by the minimum wage and health insurance mandates the San Francisco Board of Stupidvisors laid on.

Of course, the San Francisco Supervisors are not the only economic illiterates in San Francisco, where most of the electorate firmly believe that there is such a thing as a free lunch, and take every chance offered them to destroy San Francisco’s job base while saving San Francisco workers. At the rate they’re going, the San Francisco worker will soon join the San Francisco businessperson on the Extinct Species List.

Liberal San Franciscans (please excuse the advertent redundancy) have never absorbed the simple truths that brought down Communism – that for every centrally planned and mandated assault on free market forces, there are unintended consequence that result in economic damages far outweighing conceived benefits.

A case in point. San Francisco is renowned for small, high quality restaurants, and these restaurants are high on the list of reasons that San Francisco is a Mecca for tourists. Good restaurants need good cooks. It would also help if they have good waitpersons too, but if the cooks are good, good wait staff will be abundantly available.

So what does San Francisco, one of the most tourist dependant cities in the world, do? It mandates minimum wage and health care benefits that drive up the cost of waitpersons while pulling money from the pot available to pay cooks. Unlike other more rational cities, which include all the other cities of the world except those run by Communist or Islamic ideologues, San Francisco does not allow a “tip credit” to the wait staff to offset a portion of the minimum wage.

Even New York, almost as beknighted by liberalism as San Francisco, allows a tip credit which reduces their minimum wage to $4.60 per hour, versus $9.14 per hour in San Francisco. That minimum wage differential, plus the San Francisco mandate to give paid time off and health care to employees working ten hours or more a week, means that a dining room staff of twelve costs $285,696 in San Francisco, and only $128,064 (45%) in New York.

Of course, San Francisco restaurants are not competing directly with New York restaurants. However, small San Francisco restaurants are competing directly with large San Francisco restaurants, many of which are owned and operated by large corporations. Because of economies of scale, buying clout, and such things as already existing corporation employee benefit plans, the corporate restaurants are not in the least inconvenienced by the minimum wage and health care mandates.

In fact, the corporate restaurants will be directly benefited by the mandates, because many of their competitors will be driven out of business, or will have to raise their prices precipitously

Wealthy San Franciscans and well-heeled tourists won’t mind, and won’t even notice.

The Middle Class, and the Poor, the ones Liberals are always caring about, will notice, and they’ll dine out less often, and have fewer medium priced and sized restaurants to choose among.

Many high priced restaurants, many fast food restaurants, but very few of the kinds of restaurants that have given San Francisco its reputation for quality and variety.

More Liberal unintended consequences.

The Spirit of Nick

Alice and I toured China for three weeks, and Nick was one of our several Chinese guides. After we toured a Buddhist pagoda, we got on the bus and Nick answered questions, some of which touched on Buddhism. Nick volunteered: “I celebrate all religious observances – Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim – I celebrate them all”

Muslims and Christians restoring the cross to the top of St. John's Church in Baghdad.
Nick went on to explain that he not only celebrates each of their holy days, he gets a special feeling of happiness and joy from each.

Then today this ecumenical moment photographed by Michael Yon popped up on several of my favorite blogs, e.g. Captain's Quarters.

To me it's "the spirit of Nick."

After all the years of Communism, Nick came up with a concept that is much richer and joyful than the one you get from any one religion.

In Baghdad, the feeling is the same.

Thanks, Nick.

In the spirit of ecumenicalism, the following is my photographic contribution, "China Dolls." Alice and her grandkids just look joyful.

Democrats break my Heart

Dennis “Aliens on the Brain” Kucinich (Rep-Dim, Ohio), darling of the dingbat wing of the Democrat party, thereby the Democrat intellectually and idealistically best suited to lead his party, tried to fulfill one of my fondest dreams, but other not-quite-as-nutty Democrats were spoil sports.

Actually, my dream was that Democrats try to impeach Bush/Cheney (see my Please Try to Impeach President Bush blog post back in January), but Democrats being natural and chronic underachievers, all Kucinich could do was to try to impeach Vice President Cheney.

Republicans, sensing a grand opportunity to let the Democrats showcase their huge lunatic element, voted along with Kucinich to bring his impeachment charges to the House floor. Democrat leaders, who long have promised their most ardent supporters just such an assault on Bush/Cheney, did a remarkable Keystone Cops imitation, stumbling all over each other in a mad rush to prevent an impeachment debate from reaching the House floor.

Thereby breaking their nutty supporters’ hearts, and mine too.

“Be careful what you wish for, because sometimes wishes come true.”

John Kerry's Christmas Gift to Republicans

John Kerry says he will be ready for the Swift Boaters next time.

I can't wait. I’m like a kid at Christmas waiting to open his present as soon as Kerry runs for president to find inside which version he trots out of where he was on Christmas, 1968.

Remember?

John Kerry certainly does:

I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon [sic] claimed there were no American troops was very real.

Years later he elaborated:

I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me.

Who was president on Christmas, 1968? Lyndon Baines Johnson, not Richard Nixon.

When was the Khmer Rouge in control of Cambodia? Not until 1973, and it didn’t even begin being significant until 1970.

To continue, in a 1992 article by the Associated Press:

But for Kerry, who spent six violent months [sic] commanding a patrol boat on the Mekong River, there's always been a ring of truth to allegations of abandoned Americans. By Christmas 1968, part of Kerry's patrol extended across the border of South Vietnam into Cambodia.

"We were told, `Just go up there and do your patrol. Everybody was over there (in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it," Kerry said. One of the missions, which Kerry, at the time, was ordered not to discuss, involved taking CIA operatives into Cambodia to search for enemy enclaves.

"I can remember wondering, `If you're going to go, what happens to you,"' Kerry said..

Well, Mr. Kerry, if you’re going to go, the first thing that happens is you get arrested by the United States Navy, which had the Mekong River blockaded at the Cambodia-Vietnam border.

The second thing that happens is you have your head examined for telling stories about clandestine missions on the Mekong using one of the noisiest ships in the US Navy, the notoriously loud Swift boats.

Another thing that happens is you get ratted out by your own crew members. Those who have spoken all agree that the Cambodian missions didn’t happen.

John Kerry’s own journal, in particular an entry he made on his final mission, also agrees that he never was in Cambodia. That’s bad when your own words confirm you are a liar.

That last day John Kerry wrote: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side."

At least now we know part of the answer. John Kerry lied about being on the other side, and nothing about his later false testimony of personal knowledge of atrocities committed by American soldiers in Vietnam would suggest he is a truth teller.

John Kerry, a Christmas gift to Republicans since he boxed and wrapped his memories in 1968.

I can’t wait to open his present again.

Man Bites Dog - Media Reports Media Bias

A shocking breakthrough has been reported in media coverage of media bias. Of course, it has long been known that the main stream media is heavily biased towards Democrats and against Republicans.

That is an example of a "dog bites man" story.

What is rare is that the media acknowledges their bias. Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased, in the Investors Business Daily, November 1, 2007, provides us one of those "man bites dog" moments.

Researchers at Harvard, not noted as a bastion of conservative ideals, found that the media, in particular newspapers, reported very favorably on Democrats, and in their much lighter coverage of Republicans, very unfavorably. It does not come as a revelation that the newspapers, television, and National Public Radio, are heavily biased for Democrats and against Republicans.

However, it is nothing short of shocking to have objective researchers not only find that is the case, but then to actually report it.

And then the greatest shock of all, that the media would report the study results.

Of course, the media reporting the study results reflects the political biases of the media. I've googled the Harvard report, and the main stream media newspapers and TV are deathly silent about it.

The main stream media motto is still: "We report all the news that we see fit."