President of the World pt II

There really is a divide in this country.   You only have to read the rough transcript of Chris Wallace's interview of Bill Clinton and THEN read the comments.

It is, of course, a "progressive" site, i.e.- lefty liberal.   Even so, the disconnect from reality is disconcerting.   Especially weird is 103 - who asserts that he is not American but noticed "the rest of the world dislikes America but loves your ex-president."   Considering that the "rest of the world" applauds and cheers the likes of Hugo Chavez as he appeared at the United Nations, endorses Marxist Robert Mugabe's killing rages in Zimbabwe, embraces Fidel Castro's murderous regime in Cuba, and finds no fault with China nor North Korea, not to mention, the President of Bolivia, a coca grower, a United Nations where Libya is honored by the Human Rights Commission, isn't horrified by civilian deaths by homocide bombings, wants to save our whole climate and yet isn't moved to stop genocide in Darfur -- considering who and what the "rest of the world" finds perfectly acceptable -- their embrace of Bill Clinton isn't exactly something Democrats ought to be proud of or cheering over.

It is, of course, something to actually be cheered about when you consider just how low the Liberals have to go to find support in this world.  

Hmmmmmmm

Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal was writing about Islam, but he could have made the same observation about the Clinton interview with Chris Wallace.

If a person is incapable of tolerating criticism, including mild criticism, and especially if he perceives criticism where there is none, this is often a sign of this person's deep psychological insecurity.   Rude aggression and wild rage, too, are usually not the normal behaviour of a self-confident person, but rather of someone who knows that he will lose an argument unless he can bully others into silence.

Interesting.

Read the whole thing.   Some important thoughts about the decline of Islam and the street theatre intended to intimidate other muslims.

Clinton, President of the World

Along with Boobs Babs invited to the Clinton Global Initiative, there was another goof nut invitee - Bolivian President Evo Morales.  

Morales is described by Bloomberg news as an "an Aymara Indian activist and coca growers' advocate."   And like Putin, he's busy trying to nationalize oil and gas companies.   Like Putin, it's in the guise of "redefining contracts."   He also advocates coca that Green Left Weekly reminds us that "long before coca was used to make cocaine, the indigenous people of the Andean region, the Aymara and Quechua, chewed coca leaves as a dietary supplement."   Who knew coca was so healthy?

His election was miraculous.   He won 53.7% of the vote in which an unprecedented 84% of the electorate participated.   (Which, oddly enough, sounds like the voting pattern of blacks in Harlem and New Orleans.)

Nationalization of the oil and gas will not affect the U.S. as we have no investments in Bolivian oil, but Brazil who does rely on Bolivian oil and has invested heavily in the industry is about to learn the same lesson as those investing in the Soviet Union.   As to coca production, Brazil is the third largest coca grower.

Having a cocaine grower in Clinton's camp probably isn't new.   Certainly embracing International Socialists isn't.   It's a reprise of the 1960s Radical Chic embrace of "indigenous movements."   Too bad no one ever asks what the Clinton and his Socialist friends ever did for indigenous people when they had the White House for all those years.   But hey- it's the revolution that counts, not the results.

And doesn't that sound familiar?

The Value of Life

If you think the current War on Terrorism is a new thing, it's probably because you don't remember the daily acts of violence in the mid to late 1960s through the 1980s.   They included plane hijackings, explosive devices at airports, and systematic kidnappings, mutilations and murders, bank robbery to finance the endeavors and widespread terrorism, mostly in Europe.

Christian Klar was a member of the terrorist Red Army Faction (RAF) who was convicted in 1985 for nine killings and 11 counts of attempted murder.   He was sentenced to life imprisonment that apparently only means 21 years because Germany will be pardoning him soon.

Twenty-one years for nine murders and 11 attempted counts of murder.   Such is the accomodation of Germany with terrorists.   In all, the RAF killed 30 people (not counting bodyguards, bystanders or others) in what Deutsche Welle calls an "armed struggle against the Western German state."   Eight other RAF members have been released from prison, a move strangely similar to the Labour release of hundreds of IRA terrorists and the pardoning of Puerto Rican terrorists by Bill Clinton.  

What is there about terrorism that Liberals and the Left do not understand?   The answer is: nothing.   They understand very well that terrorism is a proxy war against the West.   It is a war that Liberals and the Left condone.   How else do you explain the embrace of Yassir Arafat, a man who systematically murdered every single opponent to his leadership?   How else do you explain the release of murderers like Christian Klar?

Liberals will be aghast and appalled to be accused of being soft on terrorism, let alone beind accused of condoning it.   But their actions make a lie of their words.

For background on the Red Army Faction, see link.

Ewwwww

The "Clinton Global Initiative" has the, ah, firm support of Barbra Streisand. She forgot the support, however, as the Daily Mail noticed.  (Make sure to click on the image for the full effect.)


















If you think that was deflating, take a look at Babs minus her makeup.



Not in a million years would the driveby media reveal their favorite Lefty in such an unflattering display.   They reserve their chortling for pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The New Colonialism

Just what the world needs: a disgraced, impeached former U.S. president with a foundation that will negotiate coerce discounts with drug companies to funnel money to yet another UN boondoggle organization. All this based on unlegislated taxes on airline tickets.

You might think cheap AIDS drugs sounds like a lofty goal. What it really does is reward French generic drug companies who violate patents held by legitimate drug companies who have invested billions into drug research.

If Clinton OR the UN OR Brazil, Britain, Chile, France and Norway cared anything about AIDS in Africa, they would attack the root causes of the disease - dirty needles spreading the infection, poor sanitation, and lack of education coupled with poor nutrition and even basic health care. But that wouldn't enrich the "generic" drug companies formed by the French using cheap drugs imported from India and Brazil and their own generic drug companies sold to the Third World. In a speech, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, From the American Enterprise Institute explains the role of generic drugs in Europe.

Sanofi Aventis is one of the largest sellers of generic drugs in France, and the government helps the company protect that lucrative franchise by making it hard for other generic makers to enter the market.

European countries are overpaying for generic drugs to subsidize their local generic drug businesses, while underpaying for branded drugs, which are increasingly produced by American and Japanese companies.

In other words, American and Japanese drug companies bear the cost of development and testing and the French merely copy the drugs and then overcharge for the generic.

In Italy, for example, a study revealed that generic drugs cost almost twice as much as those in the U.S. Other data from a study commissioned by the U.S. Commerce Department shows that prices of U.S. generic drugs range from a third lower in France to almost half as much in both Italy and Germany.

Such, however, is the role of government when they determine what health care means. It is also clear that it is so profitable to the French government that extending the game to the so-called Third World would prove to be a real money maker.

Because, at bottom line, does anyone actually believe that with the poor health care delivery systems in Africa that AIDS treatment with even generic drugs would be possible? These are people who do not even receive vaccinations or even checkups in a lifetime.   And we expect there to be a strict regimen of diet and drugs delivered precisely on time?   What it will be, you can almost guarantee, would be another scam without accountability because who in Africa, after all, bothers to even count the populations, let alone fully document the existence of AIDS except as fantasty numbers embraced by the United Nations?

Yesterday the UN said there would be 50 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa by 2010, of whom 18.4million would have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Yet it was a crisis that had been ignored. A report from Unicef, the children's fund, revealed that from 2001 to 2003 the number of children worldwide orphaned by AIDS rose from 11.5 million to 15 million. Most of the AIDS orphans were in Africa, which has been hardest hit by the pandemic.

Poverty, lack of sanitation, lack of health care delivery systems, inadequate food, civil wars, murder, and the occasional genocide are, of course, not real revenue-generators for the French and their allies because they would actually have to spend money to improve the quality of life in Africa something you can bet the farm they aren't doing anytime in anyone's lifetime.

It is just a replay of French colonialism, folks. And it has the same taint of cynical exploitation for profit. The lack of accountability afforded through the Clinton Foundation and the U.N., however, make it even better this time around.

BBC Idiocy

Hypercritical as only the BBC can be when they want to skewer someone, the Blairs are obviously out of favor.  

The headline screams, "Cherie Blair in boy 'slap' probe."   The subhead: "Cherie Blair has been investigated by police over claims that she motioned to slap a 17-year-old boy."   The story, however, is absurd.   Six detectives were sent to investigate after "officials from the child Protection in Sport Unit complained to police."

A teenage kid made rabbit ears behind her head and Cherie Blair took a playful swipe at him.   Only with the collusion of the rabid BBC could something so stupid be made an issue.   What any respectable news outlet should do is sneer at the officials from the Child Protection Unit who complained.  

No wonder we block BBC America.

Journalism keeps getting worse

If you thought newspapers would be trying to lure readers with snappy writing, you haven't seen the latest example of sob story journalism.   I defy you to find the facts in this article written by "the AP's Western regional writer, based in Las Vegas."  

Why the Editor chose to identify Angie Wagner as "the AP's Western regional writer" is also a mystery.   My guess is he didn't want anyone to think that someone who wrote that bad actually worked for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Amnesty Rally a No Show

The latest immigration rally in Los Angeles demanding amnesty was a dud.   Some 200 people attended.   That seems to be the trend, too, with voter registration figures in major cities after large rallies.

This is either because, A) the attendees are union thugs who are already registered to vote, or B) the few illegals who do show up are smart enough to know it's illegal to register to vote despite what A) tells them.  

The union thugs who organize these rallies have a lot to answer for, but, trust me, the drive by media won't question them closely about this.

Creepy

See if this quote doesn't creep you out.

I am not proud of myself for even considering the notion that another terror attack that costs even one American life could ever be considered anything else but evil and hurtful.

BUT BUT,

What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?

I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has "kept us safe," and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.

If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this "Bush has kept us safe" thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under.

If 5% of the "he's kept us safe" revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate and be in a position to:

Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;

Be in a position to elevate the party's chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:

Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;

Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;

More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;

Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;

Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;

Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;

Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers' lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.

Russell Shaw, writing in the Huffington Post.  Praying for a teeny tiny terror attack, please, -- maybe 100 or so -- so that his party can win.

Kinda makes you sick, doesn't it?   It's for the greater good, you know.   Now WHERE have we heard those words before?

Mediacrity: A UN Hack's 'Tribute' to Rachel Corrie

From Mediacrity, news of a UN hack tribue to Rachel Corrie.

Rachel Corrie, you might remember, was the twit peace activist who fell under a tractor while climbing rubble ostensibly to "protect a Palestinian home."   Her parents later sued Caterpillar.   A memorial to her inadvertently shows how utterly unwise she was.   Make sure to scroll down to her screaming hate-filled pose with Palestinian children as she holds aloft a picture of a burning American flag.  

You can do a google image search and come up with 10 pages of images of Corrie.

Fake Photojournalism, Fake News Stories

First we have fake photojournalism by Reuters and the AP.   Now there is news of fake journalism - video news releases masquerading as stories, although the Washington Post made sure to smear the White House in their article on the subject.

Most of us have seen the fine hand of the press release handout in news stories for decades.   Mailed to an editor by an activist group, or, more probably, given to an editor by another newspapaper's editor and handed over to a "journalist", the press release is only superficially re-written as a news story.   It's a little harder to do now that the activist groups post their press releases on line, but, nonetheless, the habit is hard to break.   For decades, however, the video news release has been used in television news, sometimes without any rewriting at all.

How widespread is the use of video news releases?   Nielsen studies indicated that 100 percent of the stations surveyed aired VNRs.

In 2004, a survey by the major VNR producer D S Simon Productions found that more than 80 percent of television stations were airing the same number or more VNRs on medical topics, compared to 2003.

And to help it along, the VNR supplier buys spots, virtually assuring the play of the video as a news item.   They call it "branded journalism" when they buy time on broadcast networks and cable networks, guaranteeing that for $10,000 to $50,000 that the video news release would be aired.

Freepress.com is campaigning to crack down on fake news and the FCC is responding by issuing letters of inquiry to some 42 TV stations.   Failure to identify can result in a fine of up to $32,500 for each violation, something that might take out the economic incentive for stations to make use of the VNR. 

Too bad we don't have a similar agency to investigate the press.  

Love This

Slublog reports on The Passion of the Toys.   Heh

Crackpots

Putz.

born in New York City in 1940, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern history, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in Chinese History where he earned a Ph.D (Abd). He has worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and traveled widely in China.

He is also a contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Granta, Wired, Newsweek, Mother Jones, The China Quarterly, and The New York Review of Books."

AND,

The author of fourteen books, nine of them about China, and the contributor to numerous edited volumes, his most recent books are "Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangrila From the Himalayas To Hollywood," "The China Reader: The Reform Years," and "Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China's Leaders."

He has also served as a television commentator for several network news programs, has worked both as correspondent and consultant for a number PBS "Frontline" documentaries and has been the correspondent for an Emmy award-winning program on the CBS program "60 minutes."

AND,

serves on the boards of Human Rights Watch, the Sundance Documentary Fund jury, and the Social Science Research Council. He is also a member of the Pacific Council, the Council on Foreign Relations and a regular participant in the World Economic Forum at Davos, in Switzerland.

AND, he is:

Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley

Orville Schell thinks citizens are "incapable of making intelligent decisions" (about who to vote for, naturally) because they " don't listen, they don't read or they don't wanna accept the results of scientists, of journalists, of historians, whomever..."

And you wonder why journalists are so far Left they think China is a friendly nation and the U.S.is a danger to democracy.   Why all of us are dangers to democracy because we are just too stupid to listen to crackpots like Orville Schell.

Israeli-Hezbollah war

It's bizarre but it's how the Left thinks.   Ian Williams writing in Asia Times on the Israeli-Hezbollah war that makes absolutely no mention of the terrorist group.

Then there is Ralph Nader acting for democracynow.com who wants to hold the U.S. responsible for Israeli "war crimes." without once mentioning Hezbollah or terrorism.  

It makes you wonder how divorced from reality you have to be to write your own history.

Of course, Williams, it was revealed by Accuracy in Media, has been taking money from the UN while covering the UN for The Nation and other media.   This former British labor union official and speech writer for Neil Kinnock has a sideline in training UN representatives "in media handling" and

The UN's training section also called upon him to help with training senior officials at HQ.

Appararently he also produces booklets for UN agencies.

Impartial, huh?