Victory is Defeat, Success is Failure

Saner elements in the Democratic party seem to have prevailed over the Pelosi/Murtha wing, and the idea of slow-bleeding the troops in Iraq appears to have itself bled itself to death:

House Democrats have pulled back from efforts to link additional funding for the war to strict troop-readiness standards after the proposal came under withering fire from Republicans and from their party's own moderates. That strategy was championed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

"If you strictly limit a commander's ability to rotate troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could put some missions and some troops at risk," said Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), who personally lodged his concerns with Murtha.

The anti-war Democrats, however, are nothing if not determined to achieve failure in Iraq, and thus a couple of leading Democratic lights in the Senate, Joseph Biden and Carl Levin, are crafting legislation that would:

essentially overturn the 2002 resolution granting Mr. Bush the authority to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and limit the military to combating Al Qaeda in Iraq, keeping Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorists and training Iraqi forces. The proposal's goal, officials said, would be to allow combat forces not engaged in those duties to be removed from Iraq next year.

This is rich. Under the senators' proposal the American military will be limited to combat only against al Qaeda in Iraq. I wonder if the legislation will require the al Qaeda cadres to identify themselves to American troops so that our forces will know whether or not they can proceed to shoot them. I wonder, too, if august worthies like Joe "Obama's the cleanest black ever to run for president" Biden have considered that, in the unlikely event their legislation passes, al Qaeda will just change its name. What are our troops supposed to do then? I guess I'm too much of a worry wort. Surely Messers. Levin and Biden have it all figured out.

For the Democrats victory is defeat and success is failure. George Orwell must be smiling.

RLC

Fear Itself

Al Gore once famously accused President Bush of deceiving the American people by screaming these words: "He betrayed this country. He played on our fears."

Well, we are now well on our way to having a national panic attack over global warming due largely to the efforts of Mr. Gore and his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Even small children are reportedly being frightened into sleeplessness by fears of global warming and world-wide catastrophe.

One wonders whether Mr. Gore would agree that An Inconvenient Truth plays on our fears. Probably not. Only Republicans do that.

RLC

Behind the Contretemps

You've probably heard about the dust-up between the Clinton camp and the Obama people over remarks made by Hollywood producer David Geffen at a fund-raiser for Obama. What hasn't been speculated upon much in the media is why Geffen has turned away from the Clintons, with whom he was once very close, and thrown his Hollywood heft behind Obama.

Here's why:

One of Geffen's causes was the release of Leonard Peltier, a Native-American convicted of murdering two FBI agents back in the 80's. Geffen believes Peltier is innocent and had urged President Clinton to pardon him, but Clinton declined. Geffen, though disappointed, accepted this decision. Then came the last days of the Clinton presidency and a flurry of pardons were issued, among them were these:

Marc Rich was indicted on tax evasion, commodities fraud and other charges in 1983 and fled to Switzerland. After Clinton pardoned him, a House committee probing Clinton's pardons sought testimony from Rich's ex-wife Denise, who had been a major contributor to Democratic causes - including Hillary's Senate campaign and the Clinton Presidential Library. Denise Rich invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Almon Glenn Braswell was pardoned of his mail fraud and perjury convictions after paying about $200,000 to Hillary's brother, Hugh Rodham, to represent his case for clemency. He later returned the payments, but he too invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Congressional hearing.

In 2000, Clinton had pardoned Vonna Jo Gregory, owner of the carnival company United Shows International, and her husband Edgar for a 1982 bank fraud conviction. After the pardon, the company gave Hillary's brother Anthony Rodham $107,000 in "loans" that he has never repaid.

On his last day in office, Clinton pardoned his old friend Susan McDougal, who had already completed her sentence for her role in the Whitewater scandal.

Clinton also pardoned his brother Roger on drug charges, and former Housing secretary Henry Cisneros, who was convicted of lying to the FBI about payments to a mistress.

Clinton slashed the prison sentences of four men convicted of stealing millions in federal grants. The men were from a community of Hasidic Jews in New Square, N.Y., which voted 1,400 to 12 in favor of Hillary Clinton in her first Senate race.

Clinton also commuted the sentences - over the objections of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office - of 11 members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group that set off more than 100 bombs in the U.S. The large Puerto Rican community in New York City supports Democrats.

Geffen was apparently angered by the fact that a man he believed to be innocent of any crime was left unpardoned but this parade of corrupt and criminal cronies and others were released by the president. Especially galling was the pardon of Marc Rich whose beautiful wife apparently bought his release through political contributions of one sort or another. Geffen saw this as something of a betrayal by the Clintons and has consequently joined the swelling ranks of Democrats who've come to despise the Clintons for the cavalier way in which they use and discard people according to how useful they are to them.

It's beginning to look as though Hillary will have to fight hard for her party's nomination and, if she gets it, enthusiasm for her candidacy will be subdued among those Democrats who know her.

RLC

Unlocking the Mystery of Life

One of the finest videos on intelligent design is one titled Unlocking the Mystery of Life. It lays out some of the early history of the ID movement and addresses two major points of conflict with Darwinian naturalism: The origin of life and the origin of specified complexity. The theoretical stuff is interesting and the computer animations are breathtaking.

For a sample of the latter take a look at this clip which illustrates just a few of the processes involved in the cell's manufacture of proteins. It's nothing short of astounding.

RLC

Bribe Me Later

For those too young to remember the Abscam scandal that resulted in six Democrats and one Republican going to jail, Ann Coulter offers a quick summary. Her purpose, of course, is to highlight the venality of a young congressman named John Murtha, who was caught on tape discussing bribes with an undercover FBI agent.

This is the man who is leading the Democrats, and our nation, up Surrender Hill. It's ironic that the Democrats would feature a congressman with one of the most questionable ethical reputations in Washington as a key leader in what they purport to be a kind of moral quest, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Read Coulter's piece to learn a little bit about the kind of man it is who is scheming to deny the president the ability to reinforce the troops in Iraq.

RLC

Evil America

Randall Hoven at The American Thinker offers a salutary, and fairly brief, history lesson for those who wonder about the claim that the United States is a dangerous, perhaps evil, force on the world stage. Hoven shows that such a claim can only be made by those who either have no idea what has transpired around the world in the last seventy years or who are being deliberately dishonest.

Students who sit in classrooms where this meme is regularly trotted out by leftist instructors will especially benefit from reading the piece.

RLC

Why We Must Win

This is yet another illustration of why we must win the war against Islamo-fascism. If we lose heart, as some already have, what happened to Zilla Usman will eventually happen to women throughout the West.

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a "fanatic", who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said.

Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

The attack happened in Gujranwala, 120 miles southeast of Islamabad, where the minister's office is based. As Usman, 35, stepped out of her car - where she was greeted by her co-workers throwing rose petals - the attacker pulled out a pistol and fired a single shot at close range, hitting her in the head. She was airlifted to hospital in the provincial capital Lahore, but died soon afterwards.

The gunman, Mohammad Sarwar, was overpowered by the minister's driver and arrested by police. A stone mason in his mid 40s, he is not thought to belong to any radical group but is known for his fanaticism. He was previously held in 2002 in connection with the killing and mutilation of four prostitutes, but was never convicted due to lack of evidence.

Sarwar appeared relaxed and calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God's order to kill women who sinned. "I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah's commandment," he said, adding that Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. "I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again," he said.

"He is basically a fanatic," Raja Basharat, the Punjab Law Minister, said. "He is against the involvement of women in politics and government affairs." A police statement added: "He considers it contrary to the teachings of Allah for a woman to become a minister or a ruler. That's why he committed this action."

"He killed her because she was not observing the Islamic code of dress. She was also campaigning for emancipation of women," said Nazir Ahmad, a local officer.

Usman, a married mother of two sons, joined the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League after being elected in 2002. A strong supporter of the President's policy of "enlightened moderation" - designed to tackle extremism - she was appointed to her current post in December last year according to her government biography.

A culture which gives a slap on the wrist to rapists, which turns a blind eye to "honor" killings, which punishes children by driving automobiles over their arms,

which hangs teenagers for being homosexual,

and which produces people who believe they're doing God's will by killing women who don't "know their place", is not just retrograde and dysfunctional. It's diseased.

Yet it is just such a culture as this which the Islamo-fascists wish to impose on the whole world, and they are prepared to use whatever means necessary to do it.

RLC

Deep Impact

As if we didn't have enough to worry about:

An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.

If you like to worry about things you can do nothing about you can read the rest of the article here.

RLC

Pro/Con

This month's edition of First Things has a very interesting pair of essays by Joseph Bottum and Michael Novak, both of whom are conservative Republicans (I'm surmising), on the competency of George W. Bush. Bottum takes the view that W. is in over his head, Novak is much more lenient in his judgment.

FT is offering the article for free here, and it's well worth a read whether one is a supporter or a foe of the president.

RLC

ATP Synthase

In yet another tribute to the skill displayed by blind mechanistic processes in constructing what anyone but a Darwinian true-believer would recognize as an engineered machine, Telic Thoughts offers a simulation of the operation of the enzyme that synthesizes ATP in the body's cells.

RLC

If It Should Come to War

The BBC reports on the American plan of attack should Iran persist in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Here's part of the BBC story:

It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.

The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions. But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.

That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called "bunker-busting" bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground.

The BBC's Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says the news that there are now two possible triggers for an attack is a concern to Iranians.

It should be of concern to everyone. One of the interesting things about these plans is that they have been somehow made available to the BBC at the same time that the Bush administration is adamant in its denials that any attack on Iran is being planned. We appear to be playing mind games with the Iranians. Let's hope it works.

RLC

The Blasphemy Challenge

Something called the "Rational Response Squad" is soliciting people, mostly young people, to make a commitment to condemn themselves to eternal damnation by videotaping themselves denying the existence of the Holy Spirit.

Set aside the callowness of the project and the dubious theology that underlies their interpretation of blaspheming the Holy Spirit and explore for a moment the psychology of what these kids are doing. They are proclaiming that they don't believe that God exists, but for what purpose? Someone may believe that space aliens don't exist but most people would hardly bother to send in videos to You Tube declaring the fact. If one doesn't believe that God exists why go to the trouble of videotaping an affirmation of one's doubt? What is it about denying the existence of something that is a source of such pride in the denier?

For some of these kids, moreover, it seems that they're not so much denying God's existence but rather banishing the God they suspect exists from any role in their lives. In other words, it's not an intellectual or philosophical position they're voicing, but an act of defiance or rebellion against the concept of God that they've come to hold. In the very act of denying God's existence they seem to be admitting that they know He's there, but that they resent that He is.

If this is a correct interpretation of what at least some of these kids are doing, then, for all of their pretense at intellectual sophistication, they're making themselves look silly. It's foolish, after all, to deny the existence of what deep down you know to be real. It's foolish to despise what deep down you believe to be the source of all that's good and right in the world. In their attempt to be "rational" they make themselves irrational. In their attempt to be "cool" they make themselves dumb. It's very sad.

RLC

Supporting the Troops

Michael Ramirez sums up what the Democrats in congress mean when they say that they "support the troops":

RLC

They Mean No Harm

We're expecting Softball's Chris Matthews to feature this news report when next he blasts the Bush administration for allegedly hyping intelligence that points to Iran as the source of weapons being used in Iraq to kill Americans:

(2007-02-12) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today confirmed U.S. allegations that high-ranking Iranian officials provide Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing explosives, however, Iran's president said the devices are for peaceful purposes only.

"No one can deny the right of the Iranian people to develop technology that improves our lives," said Mr. Ahmadinejad. "Although we cannot control how our Iraqi customers use our products, we make these armor-piercing devices to generate energy."

The Iranian leader noted that the devices are "especially useful for bringing light to confined dark places, like the inside of an Abrams tank or Humvee, as well as for providing a plentiful source of instant heat."

Unconfirmed reports coming out of Washington indicate that Ahmadinejad's claims were well-received by congressional Democrats who considered them to be perfectly plausible.

RLC

Bird Brains

Go to Telic Thoughts and watch the video of a crow trying to get food out of a container with a wire. The bird can't manage it so it bends the wire into a hook. It's astonishing.

TT also links to a fascinating article at Neurophilosophy on how birds navigate. There are evidently at least two separate mechanisms employed, one for measuring the strength of the earth's magnetic field and one for assessing its direction. These mechanisms are incredibly "engineered" and certainly suggest intelligent input. But maybe not. Maybe they arose by blind forces acting by trial and error over millions of years, just like your computer might have if nobody had ever designed one.

RLC

Worst Country in the World

According to this report Britain is the worst place in the developed world for a child to grow up. Perhaps it's because of all that evangelical religion afflicting England.

RLC

Warming or Cooling?

NASA has a graphic which shows the global temperature deviations from seasonal averages for every month since 1979 through 2003. The most striking thing about the graphic is that although it seems like some places are consistently warmer than the seasonal average other places are consistently cooler. In other words, to the extent that warming is occuring it appears to be occuring locally or regionally and not uniformly around the globe.

Canada and the arctic seem to be warming while the southern states, Central, and South America seem to be cooling.

The bottom graph is the average global deviation from the long-term mean. You can select any month by moving the cursor across the graph. It appears that the average global temperature fluctuates around the mean spending as much time below it as above it (except for a bit of a spike in May of 1998).

So what's it all mean? I'm not sure, but it certainly suggests that the situation is more complex than the global warming people are letting on. The ambiguity of the data causes us to wonder what motivates those like The Weather Channel's Heidi Cullen who are so eager to have everyone believe that the earth is getting warmer that they want to forcibly silence all dissent from that opinion by having dissenters stripped of their scientific credentials.

HT: Uncommon Descent

RLC

Banning Hate Speech

WorldNet Daily has a very disturbing report on how hate speech legislation is being used in Australia and Europe to muzzle and intimidate anyone who would criticize minority individuals or groups:

Two Christians in Australia have been indicted for criticizing Islam, and another for criticizing Zionism. A filmmaker has been threatened with arrest for using the word "homosexual" rather than "gay." Now a German priest faces jail time for publicly criticizing abortionists, and in Holland, "fornicators" and "adulterers" are protected classes and cannot be criticized.

All courtesy of the concept of federal "hate crimes" legislation, which unless defeated soon could be mandatory in the United States, warns a rising chorus of critics.

There's much more on this proposed legislation at the link and all of it is frightening.

Here's a question: If the legislation passes and it becomes illegal to use any language that communicates hate or even mere disapproval, will we be putting liberals in jail for expressing their feelings about George Bush and Dick Cheney? Just wondering.

RLC

Comes the Dark Horse

The more astute political pundits are beginning to discern a dark horse in the Republican race that few in the media have been discussing. In fairness to the pundits they haven't been discussing him because he is not yet a declared candidate. Nevertheless, he polls consistently high in almost every survey of Republican voters and for good reason. He is probably the most conservative of the viable candidates and certainly the deepest thinker of any candidate of either major party.

Dick Morris has taken note and writes about him at The Hill.

RLC

Myth of Sisyphus

There's an ancient Greek myth about a man named Sisyphus who, having offended the gods, was punished by being condemned to push a heavy stone up a hill. When he finally reached the summit the boulder would roll back down to the bottom. Sisyphus would then have to push it back up again only to have the same thing happen every time he got to the top. This was this poor man's fate - to push that stone up the hill over and over again for eternity.

The Greeks thought this to be a wonderful metaphor for absolutely pointless, mind-numbing absurdity. If they were alive today they'd have an even better metaphor. Sisyphus, in the modern version, would be strapped into a chair in front of a television and given a remote, but no matter which of the 100 channels he selected there would be somebody talking about Anna Nicole Smith. Forever.

I can't imagine how empty must be the lives of those celebrities who live like Ms Smith lived, but even worse, I can't imagine how shallow must be the people who devote their days to reporting on the lives of such as Ms Smith. At the end of the day what exactly have they done to make the world a better place? What have they accomplished? How is going to their job in the morning any different than Sisyphus leaning his shoulder against the rock one more time?

Equally as inane, if not moreso, are the lives of those who actually find such talk to be interesting.

It's no wonder radical Muslims believe that our culture is corrupting the whole world. A lot of it is.

RLC