Assad's Predicament

As everyone knows by now Moammar Qaddafi has been killed by Libyan rebels. It is always good for murderous tyrants who have caused so much grief and death to get their earthly recompense, but, as I argued back when Mr. Obama first got us into this conflict, it seems to me that killing Mr. Qaddafi at the outset would have been far preferable to first killing several thousand Libyans, spending a billion or so dollars, and then killing Qaddafi.

Anyway, another Middle Eastern tyrant has died by the sword by which he had lived, and the world, at least for now, until we see what replaces him, is a better place.

The next murderous thug to face the wrath of his people appears to be Bashar Assad of Syria. Debkafile has some interesting news on developments in that country. After reporting the mysterious disappearance of three high ranking generals, one of which turned up dead in a Syrian hospital, debkafile says this:

The Syrian conflict is now dominated by four features:

1. The dwindling of the mass demonstrations plaguing the Assad regime for seven months since March 15 in the face of the army's ruthless onslaught by tanks and guns. This does not mean that the contest is over or that the Syrian ruler has come out of it with the upper hand.

2. Anti-Assad forces are instead marshaling in the northwestern triangle between Hama, Homs and Idlib in bands of well-armed guerilla fighters, often led by defecting soldiers or officers, for attacking individual army officers and small units.

3. Two of Syria's most important minorities, the Alawites and the Druzes, fear that this form of warfare will lead inexorably to widespread civil war. They are preparing themselves for the worst by barricading their villages and towns against interlopers and organizing armed militias to keep them out.

4. The Assad regime is going broke, ruined by the seven-month uprising. It can barely find the money to buy food and other essential commodities for keeping the economy and the military going or even pay salaries to government personnel. According to a recent report, the economic damage suffered by six "Arab spring" nations totals $56 billion. Syria is described as incurring the worst losses of them all to its GDP and public finances, totaling $27.3 billion.

Our Iranian sources disclose that since Syrian banks were frozen out of European banks by European Union sanctions, the Assad regime has been forced to start borrowing from Iranian banks, but it is hard to tell for how long the banks in Tehran will be willing to risk extending credit to bail out Bashar Assad.

Assad appears to be in serious trouble and is no doubt looking at those videos of Qaddafi being pulled bloody and dazed from his hiding place, soon to be shot in the head, and thinking that that's the fate that could well await him if he doesn't suppress the current insurrection.

Warning: This is disturbing and violent footage not for the squeamish:

It really is remarkable to reflect on the changes in the Arab world in the last seven years or so. In that time Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden (along with dozens of lesser luminaries in the al Qaeda firmament), and Moammar Qaddafi have all departed earth for their celestial reward, and Mullah Omar (Taliban), Zine ben Ali (Tunisia) and Hosni Mubarak have been deposed.

With luck Syria will soon rid itself of Assad and Iran will unburden itself of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well as the ayatollahs who keep their heels on the throats of the Iranian people. The world is changing so fast, but it's very hard to say whether in the long term the change will make the world a safer, more civilized place. It all depends on who manages to fill the power vacuums in these countries, and history has shown that usually it is the most ruthless who prevail in the struggle for control. That should concern us all.

Smart

The good news for those who think that part of the answer to our employment and energy problems is to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico is that drilling will soon begin. The bad news is that it's the Cubans who'll be doing the drilling:

The government is doing what it can to ensure that the first full-scale oil exploration in Cuba's part of the Gulf of Mexico will not endanger Florida's pristine beaches that lie only miles away, the top drilling regulator told lawmakers on Tuesday.

The Obama administration frets that domestic oil companies might have another accident and damage the Gulf's ecosystem so they've delayed drilling permits causing oil companies to send many of their rigs elsewhere and eliminating job opportunities for thousands of Americans.

That leaves the Gulf open to other countries who wish to profit from it's abundant oil resources. Of course, they can have accidents, too, and, being run by communists, probably will, so we'll have all of the potential liabilities of oil drilling and none of the real benefits. Moreover, we'll still be buying a lot of our oil from the Middle East.

During the campaign we were repeatedly reminded that an Obama White House would be one characterized by "smart" policies, but it's hard to see anything smart about this.

Eat the Rich

This is an interesting exchange that took place during a commercial break on Geraldo Rivera's show on FOX. The black man with the microphone is Charles Payne who is a FOX business analyst. The other black man is Russell Simmons, the very successful co-founder of hip-hop recording label Def Jam.

Simmons, the labor union guy, and the blonde woman want to say that nobody gets rich on their own, that the successful person like Payne uses infrastructure and institutions built and paid for by the people and that therefore successful people have an obligation to give back to the people. There are four things (at least) that puzzle me about this argument:

1. Almost half the people in the country don't pay federal income taxes and thus contributed next to nothing to that infrastructure and those institutions Payne benefited from so why does he owe them anything?

2. It's not as if Payne didn't contribute to the building of those things himself. As a taxpayer he paid as much as, if not more than, most people toward them so why should he now be expected to pay even more?

3. Even if the rich have an obligation to pay back to the people how much more should they pay? The top 1% of income earners (those making above $380,000) already pay 38% of all federal income taxes and the top 5% (those making above $160,000) pay almost 60%. How much more should they be expected to pay?

4. Even if we confiscated all the wealth of everyone in the country making over $250,000 per annum, which would, of course, be a one-time event because no one would produce anything after that, it would scarcely be enough to sustain current government spending levels for one year. Then what?

This video illustrates the problem:

The OWS folks and President Obama might think that taxing the rich is the solution to our problems, but they're either ignorant or mendacious. The solution to our problems, if there is one, is to cut government spending. Now.

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

Well, how's this for an example of the old saw that what goes around comes around? The OWS folks, the same ones who are shouting that the wealth of the haves be taken from them and redistributed to the have nots, are upset because some people are actually practicing what OWS preaches:

Occupy Wall Street protesters said yesterday that packs of brazen crooks within their ranks have been robbing their fellow demonstrators blind, making off with pricey cameras, phones and laptops -- and even a hefty bundle of donated cash and food.

“Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment,” said Nan Terrie, 18, a kitchen and legal-team volunteer from Fort Lauderdale.

“I had my Mac stolen -- that was like $5,500. Every night, something else is gone. Last night, our entire [kitchen] budget for the day was stolen, so the first thing I had to do was . . . get the message out to our supporters that we needed food!” Crafty cat burglars sneaked into the makeshift kitchen at Zuccotti Park overnight and swiped as much as $2,500 in donated greenbacks from right under the noses of volunteers who’d fallen asleep after a long day whipping up meals for the hundreds of hungry protesters, the volunteers said.

“The worst thing is there’s people sleeping in the kitchen when they come, and they don’t even know about it! There are some really smart and sneaky thieves here,” Terrie said. “I had umbrellas stolen, a fold-up bed I brought because my back is bad -- they took that, too!”

So, try to follow this. It's okay for the protestors to demand that those who have what they have taken from them, as long as the protestors aren't the ones who have. Or something like that. Redistribution of wealth is only supposed to be employed against other people, not them.

Security volunteer Harry Wyman, 22, of Brooklyn was furious about the thievery -- and vowed to get tough with the predatory perps.

“I’m not getting paid, but I’m not gonna stand for it. Why people got to come here and do stupid stuff? All it does is make people not wanna come here anymore,” Wyman fumed.

At one point yesterday, Wyman and other volunteers briefly scuffled with a man who was standing near a park entrance with a pail calling out: “Donations! Donations!” -- and pocketing the cash people tossed in the bucket.

Well, what's wrong with what bucket-man was doing? Don't these people understand that when they insist that the American taxpayers provide them with free college tuition, free medical care and free retirement they're calling for government to do exactly to us what the thieves in their camp are doing to them? At least the guy with the bucket isn't forcing anybody to put money in his pocket.

Have these people no sense of irony?

Meanwhile, like most left-wing movements, OWS is now bickering over the usual obsessions with race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity. Everybody is equal in the great progressive nirvana but evidently some among the 99% are more equal than others, and it's causing dissension in the ranks.

Someone could perhaps do a real public service by passing out a couple hundred copies of George Orwell's Animal Farm in Zuccotti Park. Maybe some of the kids there are sufficiently perspicuous to see themselves portrayed in the novel.

Who They Are

Democratic pollster Doug Schoen does some polling which pulls back the mask on the Occupy Wall Street protests and shows that the folks in the streets are either deluded or disingenuous when they claim to represent the 99% of people in the country who are not super-rich. The fact is, evidently, they represent the 1% who reside on the radical left of the ideological spectrum. Here's Schoen:

President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election. Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that "the protests you're seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don't seem to play by the same set of rules." Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.

Yet the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.

The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.

Schoen gives the data which support these conclusions in his column at the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Obama and Ms Pelosi have embraced OWS because they share the protestors' worldview. Most people in this country don't.

Paul Is Looking Better

I've not been a fan of Ron Paul, mostly because I think his foreign policy ideas are unrealistic, but his plans for getting us out of the financial morass we're in appear to be the most realistic of anyone's campaigning for the presidency, certainly more realistic than those of the incumbent, whatever they are this week. Politico has some nuts and bolts:

The Texas congressman laid out a budget blueprint for deep and far-reaching cuts to federal spending, including the elimination of five Cabinet-level departments and the drawdown of American troops fighting overseas.

There’s even a symbolic readjustment of the president’s salary to put it in line with the average American salary.

“Our debt is too big, our government is too big, and we have to recognize how serious the problem is,” Paul said during an afternoon speech in Las Vegas ahead of Tuesday’s GOP debate there.

The plan, Paul said, would cut $1 trillion in spending his first year in the White House and create a balanced federal budget by the third year of his presidency.

Many of the ideas in Paul’s 11-page Plan to Restore America are familiar from his staunch libertarianism, as well as tea party favorites, like eliminating the Education and Energy Departments. But Paul goes further, proposing an immediate freeze on spending by numerous government agencies at levels from 2006, the last time Republicans had complete control of the federal budget, and drastic reductions in spending elsewhere.

The Environmental Protection Agency would see a 30 percent cut; the Food and Drug Administration would see a 40 percent cut; and foreign aid would be zeroed out immediately. He’d also take an ax to Pentagon funding for wars.

Appearing on CNN ahead of the speech, Paul was pressed by Wolf Blitzer on how eliminating about 221,000 government jobs across five cabinet departments would boost the economy. He responded: “They’re not productive jobs,” he said.

“You cut government spending, that money goes back to you. You get to spend the money,” Paul said during his speech. “I am absolutely convinced it is the only road to prosperity.”

Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, family support programs and the children’s nutrition program would be block-granted to the states and removed from the mandatory spending column of the federal budget. Some functions of eliminated departments, such as Pell Grants, would be continued elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy.

And in a noticeable nod to seniors during an election year, when Social Security’s become an issue within the Republican presidential primaries, the campaign says that plan “honors our promise to our seniors and veterans, while allowing young workers to opt out.”

The federal workforce would be reduced by 10 percent, and the president’s pay would be cut from $400,000 to $39,336 — a level that the Paul document notes is “approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.”

Paul would also make far-reaching changes to federal tax policy, reducing the top corporate income tax rate to 15 percent, eliminating capital gains and dividends taxes and allowing for repatriation of overseas capital without tax penalties. All tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush would be extended.

And like the rest of his GOP rivals, Paul would repeal President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, along with the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law enacted last year. A longtime Federal Reserve critic, Paul would also push a full audit of the central bank, as well as legislation to “strengthen the dollar and stabilize inflation.”

Cuts like these, especially a premature military drawdown, would certainly be risky and painful in the short term, but the alternative of allowing deficit spending and debt to drive us into the abyss of insolvency is far worse. Sometimes painful, risky surgery is required in order to save a patient. If our children and grandchildren are to have any kind of future we have to stop our addiction to spending money we don't have and realize that we can't just do everything we'd like to do.

My biggest concern with Paul's proposal is what he means by cutting funding for wars. I'd like to know exactly what he means by that, and I'd like to know why no one is calling for oil-rich countries like Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E who want us to stay in the region as a shield against Iran aren't being required to foot the bill.

At any rate, I hope that someone in the field who stands a better chance of winning the nomination than Paul does will adopt and champion his ideas.

Science or Religion?

Any students out there who plan to do a paper on whether intelligent design qualifies as a scientific theory? If so, you might check out this post by Casey Luskin at Evolution News and Views. The following is excerpted from the opening section of his post:

[A]s I suggested above, there are many definitions of "theory" out there. How can we know if ID is a scientific theory? Take the definition of "theory" given by ID's most eminent scientific critics, and if ID meets that definition then there's a good bet ID may properly be considered a scientific theory.

Perhaps the most eminent scientific opponents of the theory of intelligent design can be found among the membership of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS).... the NAS defines "theory" as an idea that is well-tested and well-supported by the scientific evidence:

• "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, and tested hypotheses" (Science & Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences (National Academy Press, 1999).)
• "a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence" (Science, Evolution & Creationism (National Academy Press, 2008).)

Even if we accept the NAS's more stringent definition of theory, ID more than qualifies.

When we're confronted with multipart tests, it's often useful to break them down into their elements. If the subject meets all the "elements," then it passes the test. Let's use that method here to analyze whether ID is a theory.

Element 1: ID must be an "explanation of some aspect of the natural world" and a "comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature."

Element 2: ID must "incorporate many facts, laws and tested hypotheses."

Element 3: ID must be "well-substantiated" and "supported by a vast body of evidence."

The rest of Luskin's post discusses how well ID meets these three elements. One of the criticisms of ID, of course, is that it's religion and not science. Luskin makes a good case for rejecting this criticism as false.

Seeing Is Hearing

Here's an interesting piece from BBC that shows that what we see overrides what we hear. Or, to put it differently, what we hear often depends on what we see:

Thanks to Telic Thoughts for the video.

Do the Right Thing

During the Bush presidency I compared the Democrats' obsession with discrediting and tearing down Mr. Bush to Captain Ahab's obsession with the white whale Moby Dick, a comparison which was, in my view, completely merited. Today, I have to revisit that metaphor. I think that the current Ahabs are populating talk radio, and they're perfectly happy to destroy their own credibility, and make themselves fools, to insure that nothing President Obama does goes uncriticized.

I think if Obama forgot to cover a yawn Sean Hannity in particular would rant about it for 45 minutes. On their radio shows today both Hannity and Rush Limbaugh achieved almost unprecedented levels of fatuity (no mean feat for Hannity) criticizing Obama for sending 100 military advisors to Africa to help the Ugandan government wage war against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which they falsely asserted was a Christian militia.

In the world of conservative talk radio, some of which I generally regard as a blessing, if Obama does X then X must, by virtue of the fact that Obama did it, be an unmitigated screw-up and there's no need to check the facts. These guys could have saved themselves considerable embarrassment, however, if they'd have taken the trouble to check out the LRA instead of blithely assuming that whatever Obama does is ipso facto misguided and boneheaded.

To give readers a sense of who the LRA is here's an excerpt from a report on them at GlobalSecurity.org:

The LRA continued to kill, torture, maim, rape, and abduct large numbers of civilians, virtually enslaving numerous children. Although its levels of activity diminished somewhat compared with 1997, the area that the LRA targeted grew. The LRA sought to overthrow the Ugandan Government and inflicted brutal violence on the population in northern Uganda. LRA forces also targeted local government officials and employees. The LRA also targeted international humanitarian convoys and local NGO workers.

The LRA abducted large numbers of civilians for training as guerrillas. Most victims were children and young adults. The LRA abducted young girls as sex and labor slaves. Other children, mainly girls, were reported to have been sold, traded, or given as gifts by the LRA to arms dealers in Sudan. While some later escaped or were rescued, the whereabouts of many children remain unknown.

In particular, the LRA abducted numerous children and, at clandestine bases, terrorized them into virtual slavery as guards, concubines, and soldiers. In addition to being beaten, raped, and forced to march until exhausted, abducted children were forced to participate in the killing of other children who had attempted to escape. Amnesty International reported that without child abductions, the LRA would have few combatants. More than 6,000 children were abducted during 1998, although many of those abducted later escaped or were released. Most human rights NGOs placed the number of abducted children held captive by the LRA at around 3,000, although estimates varied substantially.

To see a dramatic depiction of what's happening to children in places like northern Uganda and elsewhere in Africa I recommend the movie Blood Diamond.

There's enough reason to criticize the current administration, heaven knows, without fabricating things, especially when the fabrication makes the fabricator look like an utter buffoon.

If American troops can eliminate these savages then why not send them? What's the political/moral case for standing by while children are being raped, murdered, and turned into cold-blooded killers if we can excise the evil and rescue these children? I seem to recall that President Clinton took a lot of heat from the right, as he should have, for allowing the Rwandan genocide to go unabated when we could have stopped it, and I'm sure that if George Bush had sent advisors to Africa there wouldn't have been a peep of protest out of either Hannity or Limbaugh.

Which brings me to what Mr. Obama should be criticized for. Throughout his entire 2008 campaign he condemned Bush's interventionism and the use of American power to liberate 25 million Iraqis from tyranny. He promised to end the wars in which we were engaged, close down Guantanamo, repent of the "Bush doctrine", and establish a nation at peace with the world.

Since being elected, however, he has done none of this. So far from being the UnBush he has been the UberBush. He was right, however, to do so. He was right to not only follow Bush's policy but to amplify it. He was right to prosecute the drone war against terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen, to go after bin Laden, to aid in toppling Qaddafi (even though he went about it in a way that caused needless bloodshed) and now to help eradicate the LRA.

Doing what's right after vehemently criticizing others for doing the same thing makes one a hypocrite, to be sure, and Obama certainly is guilty of that, but I applaud him for trying to protect African children from the horrors visited upon them by vermin like the LRA. When doing the right thing makes one a hypocrite one should still do the right thing.

Amazing Photo

Byron sends along an extraordinary photo in which the photographer captured the Milky Way, the aurora borealis, and a meteor in the same shot. I thought our readers might enjoy it:

You can read more about it here.

Bad Link

The link to the Wikipedia account of the crime (see here) committed by Steven Hayes and Joshua Komasarjevsky has been fixed.

OWS and the TP

Are the protestors comprising the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement a mirror image of the Tea Party (TP)? Not hardly says George Will in a column at the Union Leader:

The Tea Party’s splendid successes, which have altered the nation’s political vocabulary and agenda, have inspired a countermovement — Occupy Wall Street. Conservatives should rejoice and wish for it long life, abundant publicity and sufficient organization to endorse congressional candidates deemed worthy. All Democrats eager for OWS’ imprimatur, step forward.

In scale, OWS’ demonstrations-cum-encampments are to Tea Party events as Pittsburg, Kan., is to Pittsburgh, Pa. So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one Tea Party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009, on the Washington Mall. In comportment, OWS is to the Tea Party as Lady Gaga is to Lord Chesterfield: Blocking the Brooklyn Bridge was not persuasion modeled on Tea Party tactics.

Still, OWS’ defenders correctly say it represents progressivism’s spirit and intellect. Because it embraces spontaneity and deplores elitism, it eschews deliberation and leadership. Hence its agenda, beyond eliminating one of the seven deadly sins (avarice), is opaque. Its meta-theory is, however, clear: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.

There's more at the link. One vast difference between OWS and the TP, of course, is the media reaction to it. Despite the inchoate nature of the OWS demands, the disturbing expressions of anti-semitism, the law-breaking, debauchery, and general squalor, the media, like doting grandparents, smile at OWS's foibles and outbursts and act as deferential, patient enablers.

The TP, on the other hand, has demonstrated far more focus and political power, no hatred, no bigotry (Nancy Pelosi's ridiculous claims notwithstanding), nothing whatsoever untoward, and the media treats them like the neighborhood bully.

Perhaps the reason is that the OWS crowd reminds many in the media of their own youth, marinated as it was in the culture of Woodstock with no clear plan to accomplish anything they wanted to accomplish and no clarity at all about what it was they wanted to accomplish except ending the war in Vietnam. The TP, on the other hand, probably reminds the erstwhile flower children in the media of their parents - stolid, staid, responsible citizens calmly calling for rational solutions to our problems.

Perhaps that's not at all a fair comparison, but it occurred to me as I read recently a fawning letter to OWS from Sojourners editor Jim Wallis who wanted the youthful demonstrators to know that he, too, once walked in protest marches - as if any of today's denizens of Zuccotti Park would be impressed or should even care. Wallis seemed nostalgic for his own youthful infatuation with the sixties version of hope and change as he offered advice to the young progressives and seemed to be trying to recapture, if only vicariously, the thrill of being in solidarity with the vanguard on the barricades. That seemed to me to capture pretty well what I think is part of the progressive attitude toward coverage of this event.

There are, to be sure, grievances being aired in these protests that most Americans would endorse. To the extent the "occupiers" are incensed that too many bankers speculators, and politicians who are responsible for the collapse of our economy have been given a pass, I'm certainly with them, but unfocussed spasms of outrage, civil disobedience, and generalized spoiled brattery with no serious, rational plan to remedy the problems is just an exercise in silliness, futility, and juvenile exhibitionism.

The Demands of Justice

Joshua Komisarjevsky has been found guilty and will join his accomplice Steven Hayes on Connecticut's death row. I invite anyone who is opposed to the death penalty to read what these two men did to the Petit family in July of 2007 and explain to Viewpoint readers why it would be wrong to execute them.

If dissenters from the death penalty wish to argue that these men don't deserve to die (actually they deserve far worse), or that regardless of what they deserve the state should nevertheless refrain from taking their lives, then they're saying that the lives of these men are far more valuable and precious than the lives of Mrs. Petit and her two daughters and that no crime could ever be bad enough, no act could ever be evil enough, that a criminal should be executed for it.

Such a view is, in my opinion, dehumanizing. It devalues the victims and devalues innocent life.

Joshua Komisarjevsky (left),  Petit family (right)

Good luck trying to make the case. You can use the Contact Us button to send it to us.

Restraint

Trying to figure out Mr. Obama's reasoning can be vexing at times. This report presents an example:

President Obama has responded to the Egyptian military’s massacre of Coptic Christian protestors in Cairo Sunday with a pointedly even-handed statement that calls equally on Christians and the military to show restraint.

“The President is deeply concerned about the violence in Egypt that has led to a tragic loss of life among demonstrators and security forces,” Obama said in a statement released this week. ”Now is a time for restraint on all sides so that Egyptians can move forward together to forge a strong and united Egypt.”

Incredibly, Obama is not only equating the deaths of peaceful protestors and their killers, but he is suggesting that Egypt’s increasingly persecuted Christian minority should show as much “restraint” as their tormentors and refrain from vigorously objecting to the growing abuse.

More than two dozen people, most of them Copts, were killed as security forces attacked demonstrators protesting the burning of a church.

The Egyptian military has denied the killings, but news reports, eyewitness accounts, and videos posted to the Internet contradict the claims, with footage showing armed personnel carriers ramming through crowds of protestors and a soldier firing at them. The dead, according to forensic reports, were either crushed by being run over or were shot.

Three soldiers are also said to have died, but this appears to have occurred as protestors were fighting for their lives. There can be no mistaking that this was a slaughter of civilians.

Does Mr. Obama really think there's an equivalence between running over peaceful protestors with an armored vehicle and shooting at the people who are trying to run one over? Does Mr. Obama think the Copts should not protest the burning of their churches? Does he think that if they would just shut up when their leaders are arrested and their sons and daughters are killed in the streets Egypt would be able to "move forward and forge a strong and united" country? Why are the Copts advised to exercise restraint, but persecuted Libyans were supported with cruise missiles and drone strikes? Nothing about his response to this atrocity makes any sense.

This video shows some of the aftermath of the carnage:

Christians are being systematically eliminated in Somalia. There are no Christian churches left in Afghanistan. Christians are being arrested and driven out of Iraq, Iran and now Egypt, and Mr.Obama, from the comfort of the White House, tells them that they need to show restraint so that Egypt can be strong and united. Good grief.

Victimizing Them Twice?

President Obama has done some inexplicable things related to the needs of the poor and the genuinely victimized. For example, two years ago he cancelled a program that provided grants to poor children in Washington D.C. that allowed them to attend private schools just like his own daughters do. Why he did this, unless it was simply to ingratiate himself with the public schools teachers' union, is a mystery.

So is this latest decision. He has now rescinded support for a program that gave aid to people who were victimized by human traffickers. The program was run by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which has, perhaps not uncoincidentally, been critical of Mr. Obama, for a number of his positions on abortion and embryonic stem cell research:

President Obama failed to renew the $19 million grant awarded to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for providing assistance to human trafficking victims.

The grant from the Department of Health and Human Service was awarded to the bishops in 2006 by President George W. Bush and funded the Migration and Refugee Services.

The office helped 2,700 victims of human trafficking obtain food, clothing and access to medical care.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that she hoped the "position against abortion, sterilization and artificial contraception has not entered into this decision."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families gave no reason to the Catholic Bishops for refusing to renew the grant.

There's more at the link about what may lay at the root of this decision, but, in essence, it seems that the Obama administration is not going to assist organizations that are not on board with his policies, and if that means that human trafficking victims are victimized yet again, well, that's too bad.

Vindictiveness is not an attractive trait, especially in a president. Maybe Mr. Obama had a good reason for stopping this grant. I wish he'd tell us what it is.

Mingling With the Crowd

Some intrepid young conservatives choose to mingle with the Occupy D.C. crowd where they're greeted with all of the kind, gentle tolerance and respect for differing opinions that we've come to expect from liberals.

Well, sorta:

Thanks to The Blaze for the video.

The Keystone XL Pipeline

The standard left/liberal position on the Keystone XL pipeline that will carry tar sands petroleum from Alberta to the Gulf coast for refining is to oppose it's construction. That's why it was a bit of a surprise to see this commentary from the editors of the liberal Washington Post. The paper's editors argue that opposition to the pipeline is misplaced. It's good enough and short enough to warrant repeating their argument in full:

A Canadian company's application to build an oil pipeline between Alberta and the Gulf of Mexico has become the symbol of the fight against fossil fuels in America. In a public hearing last week, activists, some weeping, begged the State Department to oppose the plan.

In the balance, they claimed, was nothing less than the global climate, America’s economy, even sensitive racial divisions. Mainstream environmental groups have enthusiastically embraced the cause. Passions can hardly be overstated: Twelve hundred people were arrested for protesting the pipeline in Washington over the summer.

True, the petroleum that comes from Alberta’s “tar sands” isn’t very clean; it produces more carbon emissions than light sweet crude. And, true, pipelines can leak, as recent ruptures in Michigan and under the Yellowstone River demonstrate.

But rejecting the pipeline won’t reduce global carbon emissions or the risk of environmentally destructive spills.

Canada’s government — and rising world petroleum prices — guarantee that the country will extract the oil from its tar sands, and that Asia will take it if America doesn’t. That means using pipelines to transport Canada’s heavy crude hundreds of miles to the West Coast and then shipping it abroad, burning fossil fuels and risking ocean spills along the way. China already has a large stake in Canadian oil production. Plans are already in the works to build the necessary pipelines.

Critics fall back on the allegation that petroleum companies want to export much of the Canadian oil abroad after refining it in Gulf Coast facilities. With access to the world oil market, they can and should have that option. But if export markets are that attractive, Canadian crude will reach them without transiting the United States, and American refineries will get their low-grade crude from somewhere else.

The bottom line remains: The more American refineries source their low-grade crude via pipeline from Canada and not from tankers out of the Middle East or Venezuela, the better, even if not every refined barrel stays in the country.

Producing energy is a dirty business, and it will remain so for a long time, even with the right policies. Part of facing this reality is admitting that how the world produces energy must change over time. But another part is accepting that oil production will continue for decades and clear-headedly managing the risks — not pretending we can wish them away.

Amen.

Who's the Moron?

Dallas Pastor and Rick Perry supporter Robert Jeffress has created a bit of a storm by wading into waters he probably should have stayed clear of. The pastor made several claims that have gotten him into some serious turbulence but they distill to this:

Mormonism is not a Christian religion, it's a cult, and therefore Christians should not vote for Mitt Romney because Christians have an obligation to vote for Christians.

I disagree with Pastor Jeffress that Christians are obligated to vote for Christians just as I disagree with those who say that blacks are duty-bound to vote for blacks. I agree with Martin Luther who said that he'd rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.

If a man is clearly the most competent candidate, reveres the constitution, is virtuous and otherwise qualified, then his religion doesn't matter much as far as being my president is concerned.

Even so, I don't think a man is a moron for saying that Christians should vote for a Christian candidate anymore than I think a member of any other group is a moron who urges his fellows to vote for one of their own. Did the people who today criticize Pastor Jeffress also criticize blacks who argued in 2008 that African-Americans had a duty to vote for Barack Obama because he was black?

And I especially don't think the pastor is a moron for saying that Mormonism is not Christian and is, in fact, a cult. This is, despite what the august theologians on MSNBC's Morning Joe show think, the mainstream view among Evangelical Christians. It's not my view, as it happens, but plenty of very intelligent people hold it, and their reasons for doing so are not trivial.

Thus, I thought John Huntsman, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough embarrassed themselves (again) this morning by gratuitously insulting the pastor for stating clearly what is widely accepted among conservative religious thinkers. They can sniff, if they wish, that the pastor and millions of other Christians are theologically mistaken, but to call Jeffress a moron for articulating this belief shows that they are not only arrogant and unkind, but also that they simply don't know what they're talking about.

It makes one wonder who is the real moron:

I suppose this sort of ad hominem is what passes among liberals and faux conservatives like Scarborough as the new tone in our political discourse that President Obama called for in the wake of the Gabriel Giffords shooting.

By the way, did anyone at MSNBC ever call Jeremiah Wright a moron? Just asking.

Religion and Science in Conflict?

Sociologist John H. Evans of the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences writes an editorial in the LA Times in which he calls for greater understanding between people working in science and religion. Evans means well and offers some helpful advice, but some of what he says reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what the conflict is all about. Here are some examples:

There are, of course, a few fact claims in which conservative Protestant theology and science differ, such as the origins of humans and the universe. Here we find that typical conservative Protestants are likely to believe the teaching of their religion on the issue and not the scientific claim. < br />
We could complain that they are being inconsistent in believing the scientific method some of the time but not always. Yet social science research has long shown that people typically are not very consistent.

I don't think anyone "believes the scientific method" or disbelieves it. The scientific method, if there even is such a thing, is not something which one believes or not, as one does a proposition. Nor is there any significant disagreement over the empirical facts scientists have discovered.

What is at issue between many religious people and many people who work in the scientific disciplines is which metaphysical view of the world, naturalism or theism, best explains and interprets those facts. In other words, the conflict Evans writes about is not between science and religion but between two competing sets of philosophical assumptions.

This is evident in the next excerpt where Evans talks about unobservable abstractions.

Besides, conservative Protestants don't think of their own views as inconsistent, and they have a long-standing way, going back to at least the mid-19th century, of dividing the scientific findings they believe and don't believe. They tend to accept scientists' claims that are based on direct observation and common sense and to reject those based on what might be called unobservable abstractions. Since nobody was around for the Big Bang and for human evolution from lower primates, these unobservable claims are treated with more skepticism than measurements of the effect of airborne carbon on planetary temperature.

An unobservable abstraction is not something scientists should be dogmatic about. The unobservable may be heuristically useful, but if someone finds that it is incompatible with other metaphysical beliefs that they hold the scientist is ill-positioned to argue about it. Scientists can only argue about what can be empirically demonstrated and tested. Unobservable abstractions are usually neither of these.

Once scientists start talking about unobservables, unless they can devise a way to test the unobservable, they're no longer doing science they're doing metaphysics.

Understanding what concerns the "other side" would help. Those wishing to affect public policy on issues such as climate change, for example, need to make it clear to conservative Protestants that the science of global warming is based more on direct observations than on analytic abstractions, that it is more like determining the average body temperature of a human than where humans came from.

Again Evans seems to misunderstand. Those Protestants who are climate change skeptics are not skeptics for religious reasons. Religion, indeed, has nothing to do with it. They remain dubious because they're not convinced that the science supports the claims of those who believe climate change is going to be catastrophic, costly, and that it's man-made.

Conservative Protestants, in turn, should make distinctions between scientific areas where in which they are in moral conflict with science, such as embryonic stem cell research, and those areas where they are not.

But there are no areas where conservative Protestants are in moral conflict with science. There's no dispute about the science involved in stem cell research. The dispute is about whether human embryos should be killed in order to harvest their cells. That's a moral conflict between people who believe it's wrong to take the life of a human, potential or otherwise, and those who believe it's not wrong to take a human life in the early stages of development.

To move forward, we, as a country, need to lower the political conflict. Yes, the views found in fundamentalist churches are not exactly the same as those at the National Science Foundation. But we would see less of the polarizing "we real Americans" rhetoric from the religious right if its members were not ridiculed as know-nothings. Conservative Protestants are not fundamentally opposed to all science.

One can appreciate Professor Evan's intent here while nevertheless wincing at his claim that "Conservative Protestants are not fundamentally opposed to all science." The fact is that conservative Protestants are not fundamentally opposed to science at all. What they oppose is the insistence that only naturalistic, materialistic explanations be permitted to interpret the data collected in the course of scientific investigation. They see this rule as intellectually limiting and metaphysically prejudicial.

To put it differently, conservatives agree with the dictum of philosopher and psychologist William James who wrote that "Any rule of thinking that would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth, if these kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule."

Now They Tell Us

Mark Steyn brings his razor sharp wit to bear in a column for Investors Business Daily in which he skewers the media and academic elites for how they gushed over Barack Obama in 2008 and are now realizing how naive and gullible they were. Their expressions of remorse and regret at having been blinded by the "crease in his pants" and seduced by the "thrill up their legs" are little comfort to those who accepted their judgment and voted for a man with no real record and about whom they knew almost nothing:

"The way I think about it," Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, "is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft."

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53% of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation.

One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow him to seize it on the basis of such flaccid generalities as "hope" and "change": That's more than "a little" soft.

"He's probably the smartest guy ever to become president," declared presidential historian Michael Beschloss the day after the 2008 election. But you don't have to be that smart to put one over on all the smart guys.

"I'm a sap, a specific kind of sap. I'm an Obama Sap," admits David Brooks, the softest touch at the New York Times. Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek, now says of the president: "He wasn't ready, it turns out, really."

If you're a tenured columnist at the Times, you can just about afford the consequences of your sappiness. But among the hundreds of thousands of your readers who didn't know you were a sap until you told them three years later, soft choices have hard consequences.

Steyn goes on in this vein for the rest of the column. He's relentless in taking the celebrity media to task for assuring us in 2008 that we could put a community organizer in charge of a multitrillion dollar economy and have it turn out well. It was like being assured that giving the keys for a Ferrari to a ten year old is what any wise, sophisticated Ferrari owner should do.

During the campaign it was a common occurrence for someone in the audience of Mr. Obama's speeches to faint from ecstasy at the sound of his voice and the splendor of his words. Now, as we teeter on the brink of economic collapse, as millions of college grads leave school up to their eyeballs in debt with no job prospects suitable for their level of education, as unemployment in the black community hits historic highs, no one swoons anymore when he speaks.

The Nanny State

A while ago I made the comment that there lurks in the heart of many liberals a predilection for totalitarianism. Not that these folks are themselves totalitarians, necessarily, but that the policies they often support push us further down the road toward that end. The comment was not universally well-received by liberal readers, but I stand by it and offer as further evidence of my claim this story out of Brussels by the Telegraph's Bruno Waterfield. His lede reads:

Children are to be banned from taking part in traditional Christmas games, from blowing up balloons to blowing on party whistles, because of new EU safety rules that have just entered into force.

It sounds like a story out of The Onion but apparently it's genuine: The EU toy safety directive, agreed and implemented by Government, states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke.

Despite having been popular favourites for generations of children, party games including whistles and magnetic fishing games are to be banned because their small parts or chemicals used in making them are decreed to be too risky.

Apparently harmless toys that children have enjoyed for decades are now regarded by EU regulators as posing an unacceptable safety risk.

Whistle blowers, that scroll out into a a long coloured paper tongue when sounded – a party favourite at family Christmas meals – are now classed as unsafe for all children under 14.

The new rules are designed to protect children from the chance that a piece of the whistle could be swallowed and cause choking.

There's more at the link. One wonders what the EU regulators will think to ban next. Perhaps children under 14 will be prohibited from eating chicken for fear that the tykes will choke on a bone.

The problem is that bureaucrats have the job of writing regulations. That's what they do, it's what they get paid for and what makes their lives meaningful. So write them they must, no matter how stupid, intrusive, and tyrannical they may be. The last two sentences in the article shed light on the bureaucratic mindset:

Another EU official admitted that the new regulations could be difficult to understand but insisted that safety experts knew best. "You might say that small children have been blowing up balloons for generations, but not anymore and they will be safer for it," said an official.

That's precisely the kind of thinking that leads to Animal Farm.

Reciprocity

Muslim hostility toward Christians continues in Egypt where 19 people were killed and 150 injured as police opened fire on Coptic Christians who were protesting the increasing attacks on Christians and churches throughout Egypt. Here's an excerpt from the story:

“The protest was peaceful. We wanted to hold a sit-in, as usual,” said Essam Khalili, a protester wearing a white shirt with a cross drawn on it. “Thugs attacked us and a military vehicle jumped over a sidewalk and ran over at least 10 people. I saw them.”

Wael Roufail, another protester, corroborated the account.

“I saw the vehicle running over the protesters. Then they opened fired at us,” he said.

Khalili said protesters set fire to army vehicles when they saw them hitting the protesters.

Television footage of the riots showed some of the Coptic protesters attacking a soldier, while a priest tried to protect him. One soldier collapsed in tears as ambulances rushed to the scene to take away the injured.

Throughout much of the Muslim world being a Christian means being treated as a second-class citizen. It could be worse. If you were a Muslim who converted to Christianity you can expect to be murdered.

These paragraphs contain an especial irony:

In the past weeks, riots have broken out at two churches in southern Egypt, prompted by Muslim crowds angry over church construction. One riot broke out near the city of Aswan, even after church officials agreed to a demand by local ultraconservative Muslims, called Salafis, that a cross and bells be removed from the building.

Aswan’s governor, Gen. Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, further raised tensions by telling the media that the church was being built on the site of a guesthouse, suggesting it was illegal.

Protesters said the Copts are demanding the ouster of the governor, reconstruction of the church, compensation for people whose houses were set on fire and prosecution of those behind the riots and attacks on the church.

Americans fight for the right of Muslims to build a mosque within a stone's throw of the site where Muslims perpetrated the most horrific attack on American soil in our history, but in Egypt the attempt to build a simple church results in riots.

Muslims demand that their religion be respected, but for many of them respect is a one-way street. We respect them, and they reciprocate by burning down churches and murdering Christians. I wonder what the Koran says about such atrocities.

Northern Wheatear

One of these birds, a Northern Wheatear, a close relative of the American Robin, is seen in Pennsylvania about once every ten or fifteen years. They're common in the arctic and occasionally an adventurous individual will wander down along the east coast from Greenland.

Northern Wheatear (photo by Geoff Malosh)

This one was found this week behind a Days Inn hotel in northern Lebanon county in Pennsylvania. A local resident said it'd been hanging around for several weeks, but until a birder from South Carolina who was staying at the hotel happened to spot it in the parking lot no one but the locals knew about it. Since the word got out, though, people have been coming from all over in a steady stream to see it.

It doesn't look particularly special because it's a juvenile and not yet in adult plumage. It's noteworthy because it's so rare.

Winds of War

According to debkafile, Iran is planning a massive retaliation on American-owned oil facilities in the Caspian Sea region in the event of an American or Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities:

France's U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud warned on Sept. 28 that Iran runs a high risk of a military strike if it continues on the path to nuclear proliferation. "Some countries won't accept the prospect of Tehran reaching the threshold of nuclear armament," he said. "Personally I am convinced that it would be a very complicated operation...with disastrous consequences in the region."

Ambassador Araud's comment confirmed reports from debkafile's military sources in recent months that US and European sanctions against Iran had been ineffectual and the ayatollahs had no intention of slowing down on their drive for a nuclear weapon. The French diplomat was not the only one to raise the alarm this week about regional war clouds circling over Iran.

Sept. 9-26, the Russian army, joined by Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, deployed 12,000 troops in a huge combined military exercise code-named Center-2011 which simulated an Iranian attack on Caspian oil fields operated by American firms in reprisal for a US strike against Iranian nuclear sites.

Russian intelligence postulated an instantaneous Iranian reprisal for this strike and based the war game staged by Russian-led Collective Rapid Force and the Collective Rapid Deployment Forces of the Central Asian Region –CSTO – on this assumption.

Our military sources disclose that the forces taking part in the exercise were briefed for a two-stage scenario:

Stage One: An naval attack on the Caspian Sea coast coming from the south (Iran).

Stage Two: A large-scale air and ground attack from the south by 70 F-4 and F-5 fighter-bombers, namely, the bulk of Iran's air force, along with armored divisions, marine battalions and infantry brigades landing on the northern and eastern shores of the Caspian Sea.

The Russian briefing conjectured that the Iranian offensive would single out the Kazakh oil field at Mangustan on the Caspian coast, a field which debkafile reports Exxon Mobile is operating.

Moscow clearly attached the highest importance to the exercise and extreme credibility to the hypothetical scenario. Russian chief of staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov personally commanded the drills and on Monday, Sept. 26, President Dmitry Medvedev toured the field commands and units.

Tehran was not idle: Tuesday, the day before the war game ended, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian Navy, stated that Iranian warships would be deployed "close to US territorial waters," since the Islamic Republic of Iran considers the US presence in the Persian Gulf "illegitimate and makes no sense."

After Tehran rejected a recent US request to establish a "red phone" link between the countries to avoid unwanted confrontation between their armed forces in the Gulf region, Ali Fadavi, Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Navy chief, commented enigmatically: "When we are in the Gulf of Mexico, we will establish direct contact with the United States."

It wasn't clear from the debkafile piece whether the Russians would deploy against the Iranians or in concert with them.

At any rate, how much of this is bluster and how much is serious I certainly can't say, but it seems to me that an attack on an American-owned oil facility while the Iranian fleet sits in the Gulf of Mexico would be a fine way to relieve oneself of the financial burden of one's navy. I'm sure that the Iranians know this, which is why I'm also sure that they would not telegraph their punch.

Those Devious Tea-Partiers

You might not know it, given the absence of media interest, but there's been an amazing development on the nation's political scene. The racist, bigoted GOP, a party populated by racist tea-partiers and their ilk, have catapulted Florida businessman Herman Cain to a 20 point lead over his next closest competitor for the Republican nomination for president.

How can such a thing be explained? How can it be comprehended? It contradicts every narrative promoted by the left for the last four decades. Herman Cain, for those who may not follow these things (shame on you) is a black man, the son of a poor black father and mother, which makes him, in the liberal way of thinking, blacker than Barack Obama whose ancestors, unlike Cain's, never endured slavery, or Jim Crow, or even lived through the Civil Rights era.

I don't know how long the enthusiasm for Cain will last, but it certainly does give the lie to the progressive narrative about tea-party Republicans. How does a staunch liberal cope with the collapse of a major pillar in his worldview, how does he hold together (to paraphrase Marx) when all that is solid in his noetic structure melts into air? How does one keep one's sanity when every entrenched dogma about one's enemy to which one has unquestioningly clung throughout one's life is shown to be an illusion? How will liberals like Samuel L. Jackson and Morgan Freeman ever reconcile these two facts: Republican conservatives are inveterately racist, and Herman Cain is, at least for the moment, their champion.

And what about anti-semitism? Surely conservatives are by nature anti-semitic. But then how are we to explain the strong Jewish vote for the conservative GOP congressional candidate rather than the Jewish Democratic candidate in New York's 9th district special election to replace Anthony Weiner?

"But," we can hear our progressive friends insist, "look at the tea-party. There's real anti-Jewish bigotry there. Just listen, for instance, to this man at a tea-party rally spewing his anti-semitic contempt onto an elderly Jew":

Oops. Wrong video. That was recorded at the Occupy Wall Street protest and the young man was no tea-partier. "Oh well," our liberal interlocutors will say, "we're sure there are anti-semites in the tea party, and the fact that they haven't shown themselves is just proof of how devious they are."

I wonder, if someone at a tea party rally had acted the way this guy behaved toward that man, how the media would have reacted? What conclusions would the folks at MSNBC have drawn about the dark evil lurking in tea-party hearts from such a squalid exhibition of bigotry and incivility?

Never mind. It's a silly question.

Missing Something

According to an article in The Guardian religion is losing its cachet in both England and America, much to the delight of atheists who believe that secularization is good for the world, and that humankind will be far better off once liberated from the stifling shackles of belief in God.

The article goes on to find proof of religion's waning influence in the marked increase in the number of divorces and the growing numbers of children born out of wedlock.

These people seem to have themselves been born bereft of a sense of irony.

God and Extra-Terrestrials

Kris forwards an article for MSNBC.com by Clara Moskowitz which raises an interesting question. The article is titled If Extraterrestrials Exist What About God?, and in it Moskowitz wonders how Christianity could reconcile the discovery with their doctrines of the incarnation and atonement:

The discovery of intelligent aliens would be mind-blowing in many respects, but it could present a special dilemma for the world's religions, theologians pondering interstellar travel concepts said Saturday.

Christians, in particular, might take the news hardest, because the Christian belief system does not easily allow for other intelligent beings in the universe, Christian thinkers said at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to discuss issues surrounding traveling to other stars.

In other words, "Did Jesus die for Klingons too?" as philosophy professor Christian Weidemann of Germany's Ruhr-University Bochum titled his talk at a panel on the philosophical and religious considerations of visiting other worlds.

According to Christianity, an historic event some 2,000 years ago was supposed to save the whole of creation," Weidemann said. "You can grasp the conflict."

Here's how the debate goes: If the whole of creation includes 125 billion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each, as astronomers think, then what if some of these stars have planets with advanced civilizations, too? Why would Jesus Christ have come to Earth, of all the inhabited planets in the universe, to save Earthlings and abandon the rest of God's creatures?

There are several things which might be said about this. First, despite the column's title the article itself has nothing to do with how the discovery of ETs would affect belief in the existence of God.

The article is really an attempt to show that the discovery of life, especially intelligent life, on other planets would be a serious problem not for theism but for Christian theism, but I don't know why it would.

Christians believe that God took on human flesh in order to save sinners on earth. What he chose to do about other beings in other worlds, or whether they even needed redemption, we have no way of knowing. All that matters to Christians is that he came to save us.

Perhaps, the New Testament image of the shepherd leaving the flock to seek out the one lost sheep has some significance here. It could be that the flock is comprised of beings throughout the universe (personally, I have my doubts about life forms elsewhere in the cosmos) and that mankind on earth is the one lost sheep. Who knows?

Weidemann doesn't think this very likely, however:

The principle of mediocrity — the idea that [our world] is most likely typical unless you have evidence to the contrary — casts doubt on this, he pointed out. "If there are extraterrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too," Weidemann said. "If so, did Jesus save them too? My position is no. If so, our position among intelligent beings in the universe would be very exceptional."

On what does he base his doubt? Apparently, he thinks it improbable that God would have done what He did on earth more than once:

Another possibility is that God incarnated multiple times, sending a version of Himself down to save each inhabited planet separately. However, based on the best guesses of how many civilizations we might expect to exist in the universe, and how long planets and civilizations are expected to survive, God's incarnations would have had to be in about 250 places simultaneously at any given time, assuming each incarnation took about 30 years, Weidemann calculated.

If God truly became corporeal and took human form when Jesus Christ was born, this wouldn't have been possible, Weidemann said.

I don't know why Weidemann thinks that an omnipresent, omnipotent Being, unbounded by space and time, couldn't manifest himself simultaneously in more than one place. If quantum particles can do it why couldn't the Creator of those particles do it?

Moreover, why could it not be, as Christians have traditionally believed, that the atonement of Christ in Jerusalem 2000 years ago redeemed the entire creation, not just earth?

If ETs are ever discovered, I don't think it would be a problem for Christianity, much less a dilemma. Rather it'd be a stunning revelation, one that would have great potential for helping us understand more about how the Creator acts in his creation.

So Far, So Fast

If you're interested in politics and/or you're curious as to how Barack Obama could have fallen so far so fast from the lofty heights he commanded in 2008 to the low estate he occupies today in the public's esteem I commend to you an excellent essay in the Weekly Standard by Noemie Emery. This essay is not a partisan hit job. It's an objective, dispassionate assessment of where Mr. Obama's weaknesses lie and how they conspired to bring him and his party to the brink of a generation of political exile.

Emery opens with this:

For a success, Barack Obama is a very bad politician, the worst politician to win the presidency by an electoral landslide, to never lose a major election, or to rise to the presidency from a state legislature in little more than four years. He has gone from sterling campaigner to put-upon leader; from the new FDR to the next Jimmy Carter; from being the orator who could hold millions spellbound to the man who moves no one at all. The man who promised everything is delivering nothing. Journalists who wept when he won the election now grind their teeth in despair. Maureen Dowd admits he isn’t the one for whom even he had been waiting. The gap between sizzle and steak never seemed so large or alarming, and inquiring minds want to know what went wrong.

Did the prince (assuming he was one) turn into a frog? Did he use all his luck up in winning his office? Did he, once in power, see his governing skills fade away? The answers to these things are no, yes, and no. The record suggests that he was never a prince (merely a fantasy); that his luck went away once his free ride had ended; and that he had few political, that is, governing, skills to begin with, a fact that is now more than clear. In three areas at least, he appears to be lacking. Let us walk back and see what they are.

I think that Mr. Obama's current predicament is not so much a result of a lack of political skill, although Emery makes a strong case for that, but more a result of the fact that many Americans are becoming aware that Mr. Obama is much further to the left on the ideological spectrum than they realized he was when they voted for him in 2008.

At any rate, Emery's essay is an excellent piece of political analysis. Give it a read.

There's Probably No Dawkins

Last year a British atheist organization placed signs on the sides of buses in London saying: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

William Lane Craig, an American philosopher issued a challenge to debate that claim with one of the world's foremost atheists, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, when he tours England this month, but Dawkins haughtily declined, saying that he only wanted to debate bishops and priests. On his website Dawkins called Craig a “ponderous buffoon” who uses logic to “bamboozle his faith-head audience,” but he has notably failed to respond to any of the "buffoon's" criticisms of The God Delusion.

His demurral elicited a letter from fellow atheist and Oxford don Dr. Daniel Came suggesting that Dawkins' refusal was "cowardly".

Meanwhile, two other prominent atheists backed out of their previous agreements to cross swords with Craig. The President of the British Humanist Association, Guardian columnist and prominent critic of religion, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of her agreement to debate Craig at London’s Westminster Central Hall. She had eagerly agreed to spar with Craig on the Existence of God and tickets had been sold for the event. She withdrew recently saying, “I hadn’t realized the nature of Mr Lane Craig’s debating style, and having now looked at his previous performances, this is not my kind of forum”.

I.e. She realizes that Craig would clean her clock, as it were, and she'd rather not suffer the humiliation.

Additionally, A.C.Grayling, who this year published a humanist ‘Bible’ called The Good Book, also refused to debate Craig about the basis of morality, stating that he would rather debate “the existence of fairies and water-nymphs”.

Perhaps this means that Grayling recognizes that on atheism morality has no more reality than fairies and water-nymphs, but he doesn't want to be put in the position of being pressed on the point publicly since that'd be a public relations disaster for atheism.

At any rate, Craig will still be giving a lecture at the Sheldonian Theater in Oxford on the evening he would have been debating Dawkins. There'll be an empty chair on the stage to highlight Dawkins' absence and, by implication, that he lacked the confidence to defend his book against someone who actually understands the issues rather than some parish clergyman who might have proved to be an easier foil.

Given that Dawkins is expected to be a no-show at the Sheldonian signs are being placed on the side of Oxford buses this week which say, "There’s Probably No Dawkins. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Oct 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre."

Pretty clever.

HT: Uncommon Descent

Perfidious Perjury or Incredible Incompetence

It appears that our chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric Holder, may have been fibbing to Congress about what he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' ill-conceived "Fast and Furious" program and particularly about when he knew it. If so, he committed perjury which is an impeachable offense. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith is requesting that President Obama instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Counsel to get to the bottom of the matter.

On May 3 Attorney General Eric Holder testified to Congress under oath that he first heard about F&F in April of 2011:

"I'm not sure of the exact date," Holder asserted, "but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Unfortunately for Mr. Holder's credibility, and perhaps for his career, newly discovered memos suggest that that claim is at variance with the truth:

One memo dated July 2010 shows that Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center "beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010," Smith wrote.

"These updates mentioned, not only the name of the operation, but also specific details about guns being trafficked to Mexico," Smith wrote in the letter to Obama.

"Allegations that senior Justice Department officials may have intentionally misled members of Congress are extremely troubling and must be addressed by an independent and objective special counsel. I urge you to appoint a special counsel who will investigate these allegations as soon as possible," Smith wrote.

The Justice Department is claiming that Mr. Holder never read these memoranda. If not, he should be impeached for incompetence and dereliction of duty. On the other hand, if he did read them and lied to Congress about it he should be impeached for perjury.

And whoever on his staff came up with the lame excuse that he didn't read the memos should be impeached for stupidity.

In any case, if he did commit perjury and is impeached and removed from office I would imagine that he would also be in jeopardy of disbarment from the practice of law just as President Clinton was for lying under oath. It's amazing how trying to cover up a scandal so often produces worse ramifications than would have resulted from admitting up front that you were the one who originally authorized the boneheaded scheme and accepting responsibility for it. UPDATE: It may be even worse for Mr. Holder than I thought. This is from The Daily Caller:

Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that Obama administration officials responsible for Operation Fast and Furious might be accessories to murder.

“We’re talking about consequences of criminal activity, where we actually allowed guns to walk into the hands of criminals, where our livelihoods are at risk,” Gosar said in a phone interview. “When you facilitate that and a murder or a felony occurs, you’re called an accessory. That means that there’s criminal activity.”

Gosar said the government should be held to the same standard as everyone else. Fast and Furious weapons were used to kill U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, as well as scores of Mexican citizens, and he thinks administration officials should be held accountable.

“We impugn the private sector, we impugn main street America, and the bureaucracy cannot be held to any different standard whatsoever,” Gosar told TheDC, insisting that Justice Department and ATF officials “intentionally — intentionally — violated the law.”

Any day now the mainstream media will wake up and realize that this story isn't going to go away and then maybe they'll start reporting on it.

Bowing to Them Didn't Help

Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank, has some strong words for the worldview of his fellow liberals in a column at The New Republic, a liberal opinion journal. He notes that in the Arab world the U.S. is actually more unpopular and less respected under President Obama, who made it a point to be the unBush, than it was under President Bush.

In an article titled What Obama and American Liberals Don’t Understand About the Arab Spring Hamid writes:

It is worth noting that Bush’s short-lived embrace of Mideast democratic reform—despite his deep personal unpopularity throughout the region—did not appear to hurt the Arab reform movement, and, if anything, did the opposite. This is something that reformers themselves reluctantly admit.

In 2005, at the height of the first Arab spring, the liberal Egyptian publisher and activist Hisham Kassem said, “Eighty percent of political freedom in this country is the result of U.S. pressure.” And it isn’t just liberals who felt this way. Referring to the Bush administration’s efforts, the prominent Muslim Brotherhood figure Abdel Moneim Abul Futouh told me in August 2006, “Everyone knows it....We benefited, everyone benefited, and the Egyptian people benefited.”

Liberals had often told the world—and, perhaps more importantly, themselves—that the Bush administration’s destructive policies were a historic anomaly. When a Democrat was elected, America would undo the damage. For many liberals, including myself, this was what Obama could offer that no one else could—a president with a Muslim name, who had grown up in a Muslim country, who seemed to have an intuitive understanding of the place of grievance in Arab public life.

But, after President Obama’s brief honeymoon period, the familiar disappointments returned. In a span of just one year, the number of Arabs who said they were “discouraged” by the Obama administration’s Middle East policies shot up from 15 percent to 63 percent, according to a University of Maryland/Zogby poll.

By the time the protests began in December 2010, attitudes toward the U.S. had hit rock bottom. In several Arab countries, including Egypt, U.S. favorability ratings were lower under Obama than they were under Bush. Indeed, an odd current of “Bush nostalgia” had been very much evident in Arab opposition circles. In May 2010, a prominent Brotherhood member complained to me: “For Obama, the issue of democracy is fifteenth on his list of priorities....There’s no moment of change like there was under Bush.”

Liberals want Arabs to like us. Conservatives want Arabs to respect us. The former will never happen no matter what we do. The latter will happen to the extent that we remain strong and adhere to our principles of encouraging freedom and democracy around the world. In the Arab world as elsewhere, the people will always follow the strong horse and despise the weak one, but strength is not a virtue among liberals. It is to many of them a symptom of imperialism, hegemony, and inegalitarianism.

Thus the current administration has chosen to "lead from behind," to give the world the impression that we see ourselves as a nation in decline and that the last thing we want to do is promote and push our values onto other cultures. It's feared by our leadership that such would be taken as an insult, but to those who have given or risked their lives in Tahrir Square American political values are, as they were for the Chinese at Tiananmen Square, a source of hope and inspiration.

Arabs don't like us, the call us kafir (infidel), but it is to us - not Russia, not China, not other Arab countries - they turn when they yearn for freedom and need help.

Read Hamid's column. It really is insightful.

Tempest in a Teapot?

My good friend Byron writes to chastise me for posting the story of Governor Beverly Purdue of North Carolina who recently suggested that we suspend elections so that politicians could concentrate on solving our problems without having to worry about what the voters would think. Byron thinks that I go too far in averring that Ms Purdue's comment is symptomatic of an inclination toward totalitarianism in the heart of many progressives. Here's the gravamen of his complaint:

Really, why even write about this? You say that there is a totalitarian impulse deep in the heart of many a liberal. Maybe that is a quote that someone ought to distance themselves from, for that matter, as it strikes me as remarkably rude to accuse nearly half of your fellow citizens of such nefarious impulses. And, frankly, unfounded, I'd say. I'm glad, Dick, that you did say you were not accusing anyone of really planning such a move (to cancel elections) as some fellow conservative bloggers do imply (yes, I've seen them, alarmist, conspiratorial blogs suggesting this is really what Obama has in mind.)

So, if you admit this isn't really any plan of anybody, and is just a dumb comment, why try to make a point out of it, as if it stands for something significant? You've joined the chorus of those making undue political, partisan hay out of this tepid tempest in a teapot. I have a limited amount of time to read on-line each day and I turn to Viewpoint for important insights about important stuff. You have better things to write about. Please stop wasting our time by exposing goof-ball stuff that is said here and there as if it matters. If ten more influential people agree with her, if she shows no remorse, if you even show reasonably that this is some significant trend, I'll eat my words.

For now, though, it seems to me that you've needlessly dignified her comments and you ... have offered just more Hot Air over something that will be forgotten next week. (I suspect you will think I am unfair for saying you are wasting time writing about this kind of nonsense, that your bigger point is that liberals have these tendencies.

You have made that point before, but you should know that drawing this implication from a statement that, if asked, nearly every other elected Democrat would disagree with, is a stretch. No, they may not think it necessary to renounce her---why bother, it's crazy talk, and we all know it! But if you polled other leaders if they, too, want to cancel elections, you won't find many, I'm sure. Which is to say this lurking desire for totalitarianism you accuse your neighbors and friends of is not as dangerous or maybe not as real as you alleged.)

In my defense I offer the following points:

It's manifestly true that there's a penchant on the left for controlling people's lives and that the further left along the ideological spectrum one travels the greater is the desire for control. This seems to me to be inarguable. The yearning to regulate what we can say, what we can eat, what kind of light bulbs we use, what our thermostats should be set at, what kind of car we drive, where we can pray, where we can send our kids to school, and much else emanates from the left. Each of these represents a chipping away of human freedom and each is a step, if only a tiny step, in the direction of total government control of our lives.

Secondly, if a particular post is a "waste" of one's time then the obvious course is simply to move on to something else. To write a lengthy email saying how a post was a waste of one's time seems itself to be rather a waste of one's time. No one is going to find every post on any blog worth reading.

Oddly, Byron himself has a fine blog on which he writes, sometimes at great length, about books. I think it would be very peculiar if a reader who found one of his posts to be of little interest to complain that an essay about a certain genre of books wasted his time. I'm sure Byron would advise his correspondent to just not read it.

Thirdly, Bev Purdue is not a nobody in the Democrat party. She is the governor of a major state. What she says is just as important, and just as revealing of the sorts of ideas circulating among her peers as are the thoughts of, say, Arizona's governor. Jan Brewer. Anyone that high up in the party hierarchy represents, and gives voice to, the ideas of a constituency of millions.

Fourthly, even if it's true that no other party leader would admit to sharing her views, as Byron alleges, that doesn't mean much. What people think and what they will admit to are often two different things. It's an article of faith among liberals, for example, that the number of racists in this country is far greater than the number of people who'll admit to being racist. Of course people won't admit to wanting to suspend elections, just like they won't admit to being racist, even if they'd like to see it done. They realize that they'd look like kooks if they did.

Finally, I write about things that interest me. That's what a blog is for. I don't write about what I think would interest somebody else. If a reader thinks that calling attention to the thinking of a major politician in this country is not important, that's up to them, but I think it is important, and, as President Bush once said, I'm the decider.

Raptor Cuisinart

The American Bird Conservancy highlights what certainly appears to be a double standard in the enforcement of our wildlife laws. According to a Conservancy press release:

The United States Attorney in North Dakota has charged seven oil companies in seven separate cases with violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for the illegal killing of 28 migratory birds. Yet, American Bird Conservancy – the nation’s leading bird conservation organization – reports that the wind industry, despite killing more than 400,000 birds annually, has yet to face a single charge.

The oil-related bird deaths, which included members of twelve different species, occurred between May 4 and June 20, 2011. The statutory maximum sentence for violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in federal prison and a $15,000 fine. The date for the initial appearances for the seven companies is set for September 22, 2011, in United States District Court, Bismarck, North Dakota.

“I commend the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Justice Department for enforcing the law in these cases. Oil pits are a known hazard to birds and the solutions to prevent these bird deaths are straightforward to implement,” said American Bird Conservancy President George Fenwick. “It is perplexing that similar prosecutions have yet to be brought against the operators of wind farms. Every year wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds, including eagles, hawks, and songbirds, but the operators are being allowed to get away with it. It looks like a double standard.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) estimated in 2009 that about 440,000 birds were being killed by wind turbines. With an anticipated twelve-fold wind energy build-out by the year 2030, bird mortality is expected to dramatically increase in the coming years, absent significant changes in the way wind farms are sited and operated. Based on studies, one wind farm in California is estimated to have killed more than 2,000 eagles, plus thousands of other birds, yet no prosecution has been initiated for violations of federal laws protecting birds.

Wind turbine blades kill big birds by whacking them. They also kill thousands of bats by creating sudden low pressure which causes the bats' lungs to explode, but wind turbines are "green" energy producers so apparently they get a pass. Meanwhile, those nasty oil companies responsible for the demise of a couple dozen ducks must be punished to the full extent of the law. The bureaucratic mindset really is a thing to behold.

Here's a video showing how large, soaring birds like raptors are especially vulnerable to the turbine's blades:

There are many threats to birds in the modern landscape: Cell phone and radio towers, tall buildings, feral cats, cars, toxins etc. but few things threaten the large birds like wind turbines.

At any rate, the question is why single out oil companies for stiff fines for the harm they cause, which is relatively minor, and give every other source of harm, many of them far more serious, a shrug?

Reservations Concerning the Death of Awlaki

It's not often that I find myself agreeing with people like Dennis Kucinich and the ACLU, but when Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen last week by a U.S. military missile strike I think we created a problem and those who brought the problem to our attention have a legitimate point.

First, though, I give credit to President Obama for green-lighting the CIA's and the U.S. military's war on terror and for targeting terrorists wherever they're found around the world. I don't think anyone on the right or the left foresaw in 2008 that he would pursue such an aggressive policy. Terrorists are a cancerous tumor in the body of civilization and their eternal reward, whatever it is, needs to be expedited.

Second, I give the military credit for finding and killing Anwar al-Awlaki. He was a particularly virulent form of cancer, and I admire the skill and effort made to track him and bring an end to his lethal activities against the American people.

But that brings me to the problem. Awlaki and a companion who was also killed in the attack were American citizens, and I have serious misgivings about handing the president, any president, the power to simply execute, without some form of due process, any American citizen deemed to be a threat to the country.

Frankly, I'm surprised that neither the progressive left nor the tea party right seems overly concerned about this since the former was extremely upset about mistreatment of non-citizen enemy combatants at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and the latter has a very deep commitment and fidelity to the Constitution.

Nevertheless, people on both sides of the ideological divide seem to be averting their eyes from the camel's nose insinuating itself into the tent of our constitutional protections and creating an opening for real executive abuse by some future president.

By all means the Awlakis of the world should be put out of business, but we need some sort of standard or procedure, involving all three branches of government, not just administration lawyers, that would insure that such operations do not create a precedent for the erosion of constitutional safeguards, particularly the Fifth Amendment which guarantees that no American citizen will be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

The enemy today may be a terrorist, but tomorrow it could be anyone who opposes a president or his policy, whether foreign or domestic. It could be the rich, or the religious, the Wall Street protestor or the abortion clinic demonstrator. We must not allow our government to start us down the road that leads us there.

I'm not a constitutional lawyer so I don't know exactly what provisions can be put in place to prevent this, or how they may be established, but Washington is full of such experts, including one in the Oval Office. We should be demanding that they get about the business of building a firewall around the protections guaranteed to American citizens in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. There is bipartisan consensus that the death of Awlaki was necessary. There should also be bipartisan consensus on the need to find a way to insure that such measures don't become a habit.