Timothy Birdnow

Congress, in an act of unbelievable Chutzpah, is giving itself a pay raise while demanding that automakers and bankers take pay cuts.

This from The Daily Grind:

Raising The Roof On Outrage
By Howie Rich

With trillions of taxpayer dollars being poured into an outright socialist invasion of our nation's founding free market philosophy - you might think that the paltry sum of $2.5 million would be incapable of generating much outrage.

You've heard the expression "a drop in the bucket?"

Well, compared with the scarcely-fathomable increases in our national debt over the past few months, $2.5 million is barely a "molecule in the bucket."

But this $2.5 million is different, not because of how much money it represents, but because of what it represents - failure, greed, hypocrisy and a culture of evading responsibility for one's actions.

Simply put, while the amount of taxpayer debt our politicians are pouring into a failed philosophy of governance soars to an all-time high, America's faith in its failed government institutions is drooping to an all-time low.

And while millions of Americans are bearing the bitter fruit of this cataclysmic institutional failure in the form of lost jobs, vanished savings, depressed income levels and higher tax burdens, the architects of the fiscal Armageddon currently consuming our nation are giving themselves a pay raise?

That's right. Such is the "Bizarro World" of Washington's backward bailout culture, where it seems the most effective method of securing a limitless stream of taxpayer revenue is to practice incompetence on an unprecedented fiscal scale.

That at least appears to be the logic behind the $4,700 pay increase each lawmaker will be receiving this coming year (raising their salaries to $174,000 a year). And in keeping with "Bizarro Rules," legislative leaders and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi get even bigger raises, presumably for playing larger roles in this unfolding national disaster.

But what's perhaps most galling is that there isn't even a "pay raise vote" for anyone to criticize, because years ago Congress rigged the process so that a majority of members would have to vote against the raises in order to keep them from taking effect.

Thirty-four brave members actually tried to do that earlier this year, but Speaker Pelosi shoved their bill that would have done away with the automatic increases into a desk drawer where it remains to this day.

Ironically, earlier last week Congress told credit card companies they couldn't raise your interest rates without telling you beforehand. Funny how the rules are selectively applied, isn't it?

It's also ironic that the Senate's ranking Democrat, Harry Reid, blasted this very practice two years ago as "unconscionable" when it was Republicans who controlled Congress.

Where's Reid's outrage today? Nowhere to be found.

So flagrant, so egregious, so impossible to spin are these pay raises that the magazine Advertising Age is actually seeking suggestions from PR professionals as to how they would navigate this impossible communications conundrum.

No wonder partisan angst is becoming a thing of the past - giving way to a universal angst, one that knows no political boundaries.

In fact, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll, the approval rating for the current Democratic Congress stands at 14 percent - among Democrats.

It's at 9 percent among all registered voters, the lowest mark ever recorded.

Amazingly, that number isn't likely to go up anytime soon as the American recession drags on.
And with Medicare and Social Security insolvencies looming on the horizon - to say nothing of the bigger federal bailouts President-elect Barack Obama is proposing for 2009 - our well-compensated Congress will no doubt be back up to its old tricks again, taking our taxpayer debt to heights never before imagined.

At some point, though, the bubble has to burst. And while $2.5 million is indeed a "molecule in the bucket" next to the untold trillions Congress is spending, it could very well be the molecule that breaks the dam of deception and sets our nation on a course - at long last - toward some semblance of fiscal sanity.

We can certainly hope so, at least.

The author is Chairman of Americans for Limited Government.

http://alg31blog.timberlakepublishing.com/default.asp?Display=839

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jack Kemp

Tim, an interesting last section of an article about the Rosenblat's Holocaust hoax.

Jack

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Story?id=6543206&page=3

Do Publishers Fact Check Memoirs?
Contrary to what some might expect, Nelsen said that fact-checking memoirs for accuracy is not common practice in the publishing industry.

"Historically, books are not so much fact-checked as they are run by lawyers for libel," Nelson said. "So, specific facts don't necessarily get checked.

"What's surprising about [Rosenblat's book] is that, in light of the books that have come out recently that were hoaxes you'd think that people would be paying a little bit closer attention," she said.

But hiring a staff of fact checkers, said Nelson, has never happened in publishing houses; nor is it likely to -- especially during a time when the industry, like many others, is suffering in the poor economy.

"There's not enough manpower to check these books and at no point will there be a battalion of fact checkers hired," she said. "It's wildly expensive."
How Rosenblat's memoir was checked is not known; calls made to the publisher, Berkley Books, were not immediately returned.

Gutierrez said that reference books and how-to guides are really the only books that get heavily scrutinized by fact checkers.

And with memoirs, Gutierrez added, fact-checking would hardly help prove that the way an author remembers his life is actually the way it unfolded in reality.

"No amount of fact-checking can bolster how truthful a story is," Gutierrez said. "Fact-checking just isn't set up to check how accurately a person recalls certain events."

But even without a staff dedicated to ensuring the memoir was not a fraud, Nelson says the manuscript had to have gone through the hands of at least a dozen editors and assistants before it was approved for publishing.

"A lot of people could have stopped it from being published," Nelson said.

Future of the Memoir
Neither Nelson or Gutierrez are certain how to prevent future falsified memoirs from getting published, but both say more emphasis must be put on the importance of telling the truth.

Gutierrez said that while he'd hate to see stringent protocols established at publishing houses that would discourage others from writing memoirs, he does think that the importance of telling the truth should be emphasized throughout the publishing process.

"It's not enough that the author seems nice or that they have a compelling story -- this type of vetting obviously isn't working," Gutierrez said. "The importance of truth-telling needs to be in the foreground of contracts between authors and publishers."

Nelson suggests that publishers say that the book was "adapted from a true story" or "based on a true story" to avoid future stories from being erroneously labeled as memoirs.

"It hurts the industry if people feel betrayed by the books that they buy," Nelson said.

"But publishers are always anxious to produce best-sellers and I think more care needs to be taken in every step of the publishing process," she said. "It would behoove publishers to be less in a rush to sign the next best thing."

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here is the piece from American Thinker by our very own Jack Kemp that has caused such a splash. Jack quotes an International Herald Tribune article:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/12/dutch_left_rethinking_multicul.html
 
December 30, 2008
Dutch left rethinking multiculturalism?
Jack Kemp

How long have we been told by the left that we should adopt the European ideas of tolerance and multiculturalism? It seems the left in Holland, after the deaths of Pimm Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh, are rethinking the left's views. From the International Herald Tribune, here is the view of Lilianne Ploumen, the Dutch Labor Party's chairperson:

'Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of "loss and estrangement" felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.

Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid "self-designated victimization."

She asserted, "the grip of the homeland has to disappear" for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.

Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be "bringing our values into confrontation with people who think otherwise."

There was more: punishment for trouble-making young people has to become so effective such that when they emerge from jail they are not automatically big shots, Ploumen said.' 

Jack Kemp is not the politician of the same name.

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Dana Mathewson

Former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney tried to "do her thing" in Gaza, found out it's a dangerous place indeed when her boat was damaged by the Israeli Navy.  Guess they didn't care that she's "hot stuff."

http://tinyurl.com/9pgq3h

My, my!  This is from Lucianne Goldberg's website.

My favorite paragraph from the article:

``A U.S. State Department spokesman said Tuesday that U.S. diplomats had issued no protests to Israeli authorities. “When you enter a zone of conflict, then you have to realize that it’s very, very dangerous, the spokesman told reporters.``

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Craig Willms

So, I am sitting here racking my brains about what can be done to get
the economy going again. By the way, I hope greater minds than mine are
also being racked... Anyway, I think, or at least hope it is becoming
clear that the way we pawns have been manipulated into spending our
limited resources on things we really don't need for all these years is
not only fool hardy but ultimately destructive. Time to move on from
the conspicuous consumption model.

Yet it's consumers buying things and businesses investing and selling
things that keeps us all employed and well fed. This is basic structure
of the world we live in, this is reality and it's not going change
anytime soon. We really do not want a world where the government
essentially tells us what we need and then supplies it for us. Nothing
good will come of a socialized marketplace and economic model. So, we
need to remake the world with what we already have - because so much of
it is good - we wouldn't tear down a sturdy house just to remodel it.

We have all by now heard the term "pay it forward". It was popularized
most recently by a book of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde and a
movie staring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt. The concept is not so new as
this. In 1951 Sci-fi legend Robert A. Heinlein in his book 'Between
Planets' popularized the term and personally lived this doctrine.

Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Benjamin Webb dated April 22, 1784:

Quote
I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you
[...] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me
by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a
like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another
opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro' many hands, before it meets
with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for
doing a deal of good with a little money.
End quote

So the concept is not so alien to the human condition as there have
always been people in need and those with good hearts able to help
without demanding recompense. With this in mind I began fleshing out
something I would call "Buy It Forward".

Buy It Forward

Doing a good turn by helping someone out with a favor or paying a debt
is all well and good but to revive the economy things need to be bought
and sold. As mentioned buying things we really don't need and drowning
ourselves in conspicuous consumption is pointless and ultimately
unsatisfying. Why not buy something for someone else? Something they
really need...

What I envisioned is a 'CraigsList' sort of thing. While I have not
fleshed out any details I see an all voluntary system national in scope
but local in practice like CraigsList. Those in need could post up
requests including compelling details and those with means could
voluntarily fulfill the requests with new "store bought" items after
judging for themselves the veracity of the requester. Obviously fraud
and abuse would be the major problems with something like this. Fraud
and abuse would probably doom an unsophisticated deployment. The last
thing I want is crimes being committed and lawyers getting involved.

A second thought would be to try to establish local "Buy It Forward
Chapters" through places like Churches and community organizations .
The chapters would be loosely bound by standard concepts and completely
voluntary for any member of said organization. Again, I don't have
specific details - I'm just trying to come up with a concept.

The basic point is there are a lot of people out there who need things
and there are a lot of people out there with money and good hearts that
really don't need more things cluttering their lives. What Buy It
Forward would hope to do is get them together and also drive the
economy forward which will be good for all people.

The truth is that the best solution for poverty is prosperity. Strong
and rational economic growth is the key, but buying "stuff" just to
spend, spend, spend is more destructive than good. However, buying
stuff to help someone in need is downright righteous!

I would love to hear some thoughts on this idea - crazy? misguided?
brilliant? wonderful?

If it is something that could be done - for all the right reasons - then we should put it out there and maybe it will snowball into something fantastic.

Please forward this if you find the idea compelling...

Craig Willms

 http://protohuman.blogspot.com/2008/12/buy-it-forward.html

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here is an exchange between myself and a defender of Russia who was responding to my blogpost Russian Aggression against Ukraine Appears Imminent

Seraphiel | sebzar@jabberlive.org | artemis.ws | IP: 80.213.115.174

A typical american view on Russia. You have watched to many holloywood movies my friend. Learn about Russia before writing about it. As long as no ‘democratic’ country is undertaking genocide on some minority in the Ukraine Russia will not invade. Why on earth would it do that? Russia has no interest in the Ukraine what so ever. It just stops the gas-supply to the Ukraine when it won’t fulfill its duty to pay back debt to Russia. Also their agreement on the Russian navy docking at Ukrainian ports is not that important anymore now finally the poor people of Abkhazia are freed from the Georgian terror regime. Abkhazia has already promised to let Russian ships dock at their ports.

The Ukrainian problem with weapon delivery to a number of countries will be solved by the Ukrainian citizens when a new election will come. All ukrainians are known with the fact that their government is getting more and more corrupt now they found out that it is selling weapon systems not only to Georgia but also to some african countries that stand on the FN international list not to receive weapons. Remember the news that urkainian freight was being captured by pirates before the coast of Africa? And that it turned out the freight was a shitload of Ukrainian weapons. Made quite a stir in political Ukraine that news. But probably was withheld in the US-media.

So just sit back and relax my friend. Russia is not the cold war Russia anymore. It will never invade a country without a good reason. And Ukraine has no good reasons to invade. It’s you americans being paranoid and afraid of everything that has weapons.

Hi Seraphiel; thanks for visiting.

I would like to preface my reply by saying that I am a great Russofile, but the government of Russia has too frequently been repressive-including the current cabal. Also, I am not exactly an expert on Russia but it was my field in College. I have a Certificate in Eastern Area Studies and Russian Scientific Translation, and would have had a Major in Russian Language but fell short by 3 credit hours (the class I needed wasn`t going to be offered for a year due to the instructor`s leave of abscence.) I have a degree in history with an emphasis on Russia, so I am not exactly a neophyte. Mine is an informed albeit somewhat rusty opinion.

That said, I ask one question; why has Russia modernized her nuclear arsenal? The U.S. arsenal is twenty years old or better, going back to the Reagan buildup in the 1980`s. WE have done nothing save work on missile defense, while Russia has labored to build advanced nuclear weapons. Why? If Russia`s intentions were peaceful, they wouldn`t need an arsenal as large as the Cold War era stockpile.

Missile Defense takes away first strike capabilities. Why does the Russian government fear that loss, if the intentions are peaceful?

I`ve written a rather lengthy piece that articulates why I believe the current Russian government believes there is a Cold War with America now. http://www.timothybirdnow.com/?p=1486 I outline the actions taken by Putin and Medvedev, and it should be obvious that the current Russian government wants to use the nuclear weapons to bully neighbors. It should be pointed out that those weapons existe because 1.the U.S. funded the Nuclear Cities Initiative, helping to keep the enrichment machines working and 2.the U.S. paid to decommission the old Soviet stockpile, freeing money for Putin to build a new generation stockpile. The intention of both programs was to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in Russia, yet had the opposite effect. Where are those weapons pointing, might I ask?

I would further suggest you read this article http://www.iran.org/tib/krt/cities.htm from 1999; the Russian government, despite economic woes on a grand scale, continued to build nuclear submarines and the like. That was before Bush and his ``interventionist`` policies.

Do you remember the threat by Russia to launch a nuclear attack on Poland? http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Russia_threatens_to_launch_nuke_attack_on_Poland/articleshow/3370457.cms

Ukrainian weapons smuggling? Oh, really?

Here is the story you are refering to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26901780/

The Russians are trying to pin their own weapons smuggling on Ukraine based on the fact that many of the crewmen were Ukrainian. Sorry, but the ship is Russian owned. Yes, the ship came out of Odessa, but as you undoubtedly know, Odessa is a free port, not under the direct control of Ukraine.

According to the story, U.S. Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell justified Russia sending military vessels:

``"But this involves Russian cargo, as I understand it, so I don't think that we have a particular issue with the Russians coming on the scene, as well. And we will obviously work hard to coordinate, once they are on scene," he added.``

For that matter, who has been selling arms around the world-Iran, Syria, Venezuela, etc. to rogue nations?

I would require more evidence of corruption than the word of the Russian government and journalist apologists. This sounds just like the claims made against Georgia before the invasion, Seraphiel.

I would love to believe your assertion that Russia and the U.S. aren`t in a new Cold War, but the evidence of my senses tells me otherwise. The Putin government (and now Medvedev-the same thing) has labored to thwart U.S. efforts to end terrorism around the world, and has done so in a most dishonest fashion. They have aided and abetted our enemies in a time of war, which is an act of war itself. Russia has been selling arms to Iran, who have been giving them to the ``insurgents`` in Iraq. They have also supplied arms to Syria http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11775031&Itemid=0

You will note that my blogpost was based on Itar-Tass stories and not U.S. media yawns at such stories, I might add.

At any rate, I wish it were otherwise, but the reality is that the ex-KGB Putin has renewed the Cold War, and we have no choice but to respond.

Thanks for a good comment, and please visit again, Seraphiel!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here is a piece by Robert Romano I found at Get Liberty`s the Daily Grind:

The Hidden Costs of Capping Emissions
By Robert Romano

``Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for ‘emissions trading’, ‘carbon capture’, building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to ‘biofuels’ are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.``

From 2008 was the year that man made global warming disproved itself by Christopher Booker in the U.K. Telegraph 12/29/2008

If 2008 was the year global warming was disproved, 2009 may be the year that the agenda of radical environmentalism is laid to waste.

As ALG News has reported, the scientific ``consensus`` around man-made global warming has unraveled like an old ribbon. And now, the economic ``consensus`` around it may be starting to unwind as well.

With the economy in a clear downturn, the people are questioning the costs of going green. Suddenly it is not so fashionable to save the planet. It may become more important to restore economic growth than to strangle energy output.

It’s simple, really. If financial capital was the lifeblood of the economy, energy is its food. And without it, or if it costs too much, nations the world over would be unable to sustain their peoples. The American people were given a powerful lesson on what energy price shocks can feel like this past summer, and they will not be eager to pay that price again.

By constraining the use not for conservation but out of ideological imperative, the economic consequences are negative: an additional price is attached to the use of energy. That additional cost is not the product of a supply shortage, but of regulation that constrains the use of that supply.

And it is a cost that the economy simply cannot afford right now.

Carbon cap-and-trade, or other like restrictions on emissions, could cost the global economy trillions in excessive taxes, increased prices and restrictions. These costs are deliberate, the product of a policy that is designed to change people’s behavior to use less carbon-based energy.

That is the basic argument in favor of reducing carbon emissions: By increasing costs, the consumer will only be able to consume less.

But it’s more like a dirty secret that advocates of reducing carbon emissions do not wish to be emphasized. And it is one that opponents of capping carbon emissions who wish to save the energy industries must point out: The costs of wasting precious capital in the midst of a global economic meltdown are unbearable.

In the end, there is a cap on how much the greens will be able to accomplish, and that will be directly proportional to how well the opponents of radical environmentalism capitalize upon the fissures in the scientific ``consensus`` on ``man-made`` climate change, and how well they promote the true costs of capping carbon emissions to the American people.

Robert Romano is the Editor of ALG News Bureau.

http://alg31blog.timberlakepublishing.com/default.asp?Display=835

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Timothy Birdnow

Reading Russian newspapers can be quite instructive; Russia generally telegraphs what the ruling Plutocrats are planning to do in advance. Prior to the invasion of Georgia, for example, Russian papers were full of accusations of atrocities committed against South Ossetians and Abkhazians, and it was apparent that some sort of move by Putin and Medvedev was immanent.

Well, the old bear is on the move again, and this time it appears they will take action against their favorite geopolitical piñata, Ukraine.

Three stories in Itar-Tass suggest Moscow is planning some aggressive moves against the Ukrainians:

First, Russia is set to suffer with 13% inflation. The Russian economy has been floundering ever since oil prices began dropping (that started with the rescinding of the offshore drilling ban and the subsequent drop in worldwide demand resulting from America`s financial difficulties) and Russia`s non-diversified economy has found the lure of oil and gas less profitable. Also, the rise in value of the U.S. dollar has depressed the value of the ruble, triggering inflationary pressure. Russian stocks are down, having fallen 17 percent earlier in the year, and the Georgian war was terribly expensive.

Vladimir Putin and the rest of his cadre are dependent on their control of wealth to survive politically, and the economic crisis has them in danger. What do thugs do when the economy is hurting? Often they turn to foreign adventurism.

Speaking of foreign adventurism, it has been pointed out that Russia`s invasion of Georgia was as much about closing the BTC pipeline and shutting off the flow of natural gas to Europe as anything. Putin wants to hold an energy monopoly, and to use that monopoly to force Europe under his will. Well...

According to this piece in Itar-Tass, the Ukrainian government has promised to keep natural gas flowing to Europe this winter.

According to the article:

_{``Ukraine has given guarantees to the European Commission leadership that no matter how its relations develop with Russia's gas giant Gazprom next year, this will not affect the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine, an official representative of the European Commission told Tass on Wednesday``}

Which illustrates that Ukraine and the Russian owned Gazprom are having problems, and that the Ukrainians may have an ace up their sleeves.

But what really catches my attention is this piece, also in Itar-Tass:

_{``MOSCOW, December 25 (Itar-Tass) - There is irrefutable evidence of Ukrainian citizens participating as members of anti-aircraft crews during combat operations in South Ossetia. Those anti-aircraft systems were supplied by Ukraine to Georgia, Itar-Tass learnt on Thursday from chief of Russian anti-aircraft troops of the Russian Armed Forces Major-General Mikhail Krush.}

_{``There is irrefutable evidence that Ukrainian citizens were members of crews of anti-aircraft systems which had been delivered by Ukraine and which participated in combat``, the general said.} 

_{Krush admitted that most Russian planes were downed in South Ossetia precisely by the Buk-M1 systems.``}

Hmmm. Considering the hysterical reaction from Moscow to the U.S. deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missile technology in Poland, coupled with the fear that Ukraine will be admitted to full membership in NATO, one gets the distinct impression that the Comrade Putin and his dancing teeth may be planning aggression against their former satellite.

This is the same sort of saber-rattling that occurs before any tyrant moves against a peaceful neighbor. They are alleging vast corruption in Ukraine which they may use to justify an ``emergency intervention``.

What form this ``intervention`` might take is unclear; it could be anything from another gas boycott to airstrikes to actual invasion. It seems likely that something is afoot, and that Russia intends to punish Ukraine in some manner.

Keep a sharp eye, folks!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jack Kemp

Today's New York Post had a story about a relatively new phenomenon, a Holocaust survivor writing what appears to be a sham story with low plausibility, but still getting a major book contract, two appearances on Oprah Winfrey's show, and a movie about to be produced, as well.http://www.nypost.com/seven/12282008/news/regionalnews/manhattan/holocaust_sham_slam_146172.htm
 
The author, 79 year old Herman Rosenblat, was interred in a work camp in Germany, part of the "Schlieben concentration camp, part of the Buchenwald death camp in Germany." There he claims a nine year old Jewish girl, hiding with a German family as an Aryan outside the camp, came up near the fence every day and "threw him apples." He later met and married this supposed savior after the war in New York.
 
Others who knew both members of this couple seperately during World War II have denied thier claims, the article states. That the armed camp guards would allow someone to approach the fence daily, launching an object into the camp that could easily be mistaken for an underground fighter's homemade grenade or message from outside, is inconceivable. If the light was strong enough for them to see each other, then it was strong enough for the guards on the watchtowers to take notice of this activity. That a family taking the risk of hiding such a Jewish girl would allow her to roam free in the countryside, risking her death and the family's investigation by the Gestapo (and with this, all their deaths), was even more an unlikely event. Mr. Rosenblat also claims he never learned her name in all that time she brought him food.
 
The major publisher Berkeley Books (who is being asked to withdraw the book before its February publication date) and Oprah Winfrey somehow choose to believe such a story reminds of what businesses they are in. And it is not the History Channel.
 
I recently purchased a movie called "Resurrecting the Champ," based loosely on a true story of a journalist who was only briefly fooled by a homeless man claiming to be a  famous old time boxer. In the movie, however, the journalist is fooled long enough to publish a heartwarming story which gets him nationwide recognition and an on-the-air tryout with Showtime's boxing division. But late arriving facts at his desk cause him some doubts after the television tryout, causing the booking agent for Showtime, played by Teri Hatcher, to make an emphatic contrasting statement about what the journalists' job has now become, as far as she and the station are concerned:
 
"Because in the end, absolutely everything is about entertaining the audience. There is no journalism anymore. There is no news.
 
The people who cling to the hopes that they can inform the world are only slightly less naive than the people who think they can pray their way out of a tsunami.
 
And you know the one thing that people don't want is the truth."
 
SECTION OMITTED
 
"Men want to see to see triumph and women, well..." In the next moment, Hatcher's character tries to seduce the journalist up to her hotel room, giving indication of the unfinished sentence. I'll just call it "romance."
END OF QUOTES
 
Although truth and integrity make comebacks by the end of the movie (aided by a threatened lawsuit by the real son of the old-time boxer), this is a perfect example of what media - and their audience - have become today. In fact, another example of this is that fact that the serious movie, despite its' fine performances by well know actors, was a total financial flop at the box office. The general media - print as well as television - operates on the basis that if the story tugs at the heartstrings, it must represent a "greater truth," whatever the facts are. Recall Dan Rather's statement about his expose of Airman George W. Bush and the Typewriter as a story having documents that were false while the story itself was "still" true.
 
Years ago, the book publishing world put out a story about the "Beardstown Ladies," an investment club of seniors who supposedly outperformed the stock market pros in the "roaring 1990s." When they were later found to doctor their calculations of profits by equating new money invested with general assets, i.e., treating new money as profits from their older stock trades, they did not suffer any criminal charges. Unlike Mr. Madoff, the Beardstown Ladies did not start an investment fund with outsider, non-member contributions. But the Beardstown Ladies were disgraced nationally. The fact that few can remember the name of their publisher (Hyperion Books) can lead one to assume the publisher didn't suffer any significant penalties for not closely reviewing the invest club's accounts beforehand.
 
Mr. Rosenblat, despite the New York Post article's telling of a current contradiction by a man who actually worked at his side in the WWII labor camp, appears to not be bothered by journalistic fact-checking considerations. He states, "This is my personal story as I remember it. I was a young child at the time my family was caught up in the Holocaust, and I saw things through a young child's eyes. But I know what I saw."
 
Considering that Rosenblat was fifteen during the war, his recollection of repeated daily events were not those of a "child," a phrase used to characterize someone much younger. It appears that Mr. Rosenblat, despite his advanced age (or perhaps because of it), has caught the tenor of the times. The New York Times of Howell Raines, that is.
 
There is a saying I first heard in the 1980s concerning people benefiting after the fact from the Holocaust (or "Shoah," in Hebrew). This phrase has been used to criticize both honest attempts of people to tell their story for a fee, but more so those whose loosely told stories exaggerate their degree of suffering for financial and emotional gains. The second meaning appears to fit the Rosenblat-Oprah example. Either way, that saying goes, "There's no business like Shoah Business." 

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:08 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This was from University of California Santa Barbara Veritas Forum website courtesy of Uncommon Descent:

ON DARWIN'S BICENTENNIAL
TEN THOUGHTS DARWINIST'S NEED TO PONDER BEFORE BREAKFAST

1. Evolution by natural selection is more plausible in a theistic world than an atheistic world.

Evolution in a theistic world is possible if God pre-programmed the universe and infused Nature with information (the ultimate fine-tuning argument).

Evolution in an atheistic world is absurd. It's "random turtles all the way down" - all the way down to the random origin of Nature itself and its ability to naturally select anything. A filter (e.g. natural selection) which was formed by chance and selects random events may best be described as garbage in - garbage out. It doesn't describe the universe we find ourselves in, hasn't got a chance of surviving the rigors of scientific and skeptical inquiry, cannot sustain scientific reasoning, and would certainly never have inspired science in the first place. It is simply unfit for rational thought and must naturally be selected against. Constantly evoking a god-of-chance is neither scientific nor rational.

2. Darwin never accounted for the arrival of the fittest. Naturalism's god-of-chance is always called upon to do the job.

"Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped."

Grasse, Pierre-Paul (1977), p. 177
Evolution of Living Organisms
Academic Press, New York, N.Y.
Pierre-Paul Grasse is the past President of the French Academie des Sciences and editor of the 35 volume "Traite de Zoologie" published by Masson, Paris.

3. Science rules out the possibility that natural processes might prevent major evolutionary change simply by definition because biological stability and conservation would imply that creation events had taken place since the creation of the universe.

If no data is required to eliminate real possibilities, why do we call this science? It clearly isn't. Given that the origin of Nature itself constitued a singularity (or natural discontinuity), it is certainly possible that other natural discontinuties exist in the history of life (e.g. the origin of life itself). The goal of science ought to be to most accurately describe how nature functions, even if so doing would discover natural processes that prevented spontaneous generation (abiogenesis) or inhibited major evolutionary change (macrostasis).

4. Creation preceded Evolution anyway.

Evolution points back to a beginning - initially to the origin of the first species and then back to the origin of everything else including space and time. Nature is finite in time and space (whether referring to our universe or a potential multiverse) and obviously required a Law Giver.

"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." - Sir Fred Hoyle

"For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." - Robert Jastrow, "God and the Astronomers"

5. Edward Blyth described the process of natural selection well before Darwin and Wallace. He concluded that it acted as a force of conservation eliminating deterimental variations from populations.

A Theory of Conservation based upon Blythian selection would better describe how nature actually functions than Darwin's interpretation of natural selection.

Edward Blyth wrote three articles on variation, describing the process of natural selection as restoring organisms in the wild to their archetype (rather than forming new species). These articles were published in The Magazine of Natural History between 1835 and 1837. There can be no doubt of Darwin's regard for Edward Blyth: in the first chapter of The Origin of Species he writes "...Mr Blyth, whose opinion, from his large and varied stores of knowledge, I should value more than that of almost any one..."

Loren Eiseley claimed that "the leading tenets of Darwin's work – the struggle for existence, variation, natural selection and sexual selection – are all fully expressed in Blyth's paper of 1835". He also cites a number of rare words, similarities of phrasing, and the use of similar examples, which he regards as evidence of Darwin's debt to Blyth.

Ernst Mayr objected to this interpretation by stating, "Blyth's theory was clearly one of elimination rather than selection. His principal concern is the maintenance of the perfection of the type. Blyth's thinking is decidedly that of a natural theologian..." (Mayr E. 1984, The Growth of Biological Thought.)

"What was the work of Blyth?... Blyth attempts to show how [selection and the struggle for existence] can be used to explain, not the change of species (which he was anxious to discredit) but the stability of species in which he ardently believed." (Darlington C.D., 1959, Darwin's Place in History)

But Mayr's onjection fails because natural selection cannot select anything that doesn't already exist. All it can do is eliminate the "unfit." However one wishes to describe the "fit" and "unfit," natural selection clearly cannot account for the arrival of the fittest and the change in species in which Mayr ardently believed.

6. Darwin admitted that based upon the data published in his Origin of Species, one could come to "directly opposite" conclusions. For example, natural selection can prevent major evolutionary change from occurring on a gradual step-by-step basis by eliminating useless transitional stages thus explaining the lack of transitional sequences leading to all of the major body plans (phyla) in the fossil record.

"I am well aware that there is scarcely a single point discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts on both sides of each question, and this cannot possibly be done here."

Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species
1859

7. Natural selection better describes biology's "ordinary rules of stability" than major evolutionary change.

"To know the reasons for infrequent change, one must understand the ordinary rules of stability. The Burgess Shale teaches us that, for the history of basic anatomical designs, almost everything happened in the geological moment just before, and almost nothing in more than 500 million years since."

Gould, S. J. (1988),
A Web of Tales"
Natural History, October, pp. 16-23

8. Darwinian theory predicts a pervasive pattern of natural history that is upside-down from the pattern found in the fossil record.

Darwin's theory predicts that as species diversity can ultimately be extrapolated to account for the disparity (major differences) among the higher taxa (e.g. phyla). New species should cluster to initially form new genera. As more and more species evolve their morphological differences should accumulate to justify classifying them into new families. As more and more species diversify, new classes and orders should appear filling out morphological space. Ultimately the disparity of the phyla would be produced. Species diversity should precede disparity of the major body plans.

The only problem with this major prediction of Darwin's theory is that it is exacty backwards: the disparity of the higher taxa preceded species diversity (see Stephen Jay Gould's discussion in Wonderful Life on the iconography of the cone).

"The fossil record suggests that the major pulse of diversification of phyla occurs before that of classes, classes before that of orders, and orders before families. This is not to say that each higher taxon originated before species (each phylum, class, or order contained at least one species, genus, family, etc. upon appearance), but the higher taxa do not seem to have diverged through an accumulation of lower taxa."

Erwin, D., Valentine, J., and Sepkoski, J. (1988)
"A Comparative Study of Diversification Events"
Evolution, vol. 41, p. 1183

Described recently as "the most important evolutionary event during the entire history of the Metazoa," the Cambrian explosion established virtually all the major animal body forms -- Bauplane or phyla -- that would exist thereafter, including many that were 'weeded out' and became extinct. Compared with the 30 or so extant phyla, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100. The evolutionary innovation of the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary had clearly been extremely broad: "unprecedented and unsurpassed," as James Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara, recently put it.

Lewin then asked the all important question:

"Why, in subsequent periods of great evolutionary activity when countless species, genera, and families arose, have there been no new animal body plans produced, no new phyla?"

Lewin, R. (1988)
Science, vol. 241, 15 July, p. 29

9. Natural history is more compatible with progressive creation than Darwinian evolution.

Given that all of major groups of life appear suddenly in the fossil record and the "ordinary rules of stability" act in such a way as to inhibit major evolutionary change, it is rational to conclude that they were the result of progressive creation - the progression of variations in time on a common pre-existing theme. If the major themes were the result of direct (primary rather than secondary) acts of creation, scientists would be able to discover natural discontinuties beyond the origin of the universe and the irreducible complexity of life. While we would no longer have an adequate materialistic creation story (not that we have one now), we would undoubtedly have a more accurate description of nature and how it actually functions.

10. The ultimate origin of Nature itself cannot be natural. Either Nature or a Natural Law Giver has always existed. Nature has not always existed. What do you conclude?

When scientists tell you that the origin of everything natural must be explained purely in terms of natural processes, we need to remind them that no natural processes existed before Nature came into existence. We hold this truth to be self-evident, don't we?

Creation preceded evolution.

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Jack Kemp (the unpolitician) cranks out yet another top 40 hit:

DEFEAT CAROLINE
 to the tune of "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond
 
Where it began, I can't begin to know when
But then I know she's growing strong
Oh, was it the spring?
And Hill's primaries' bummer
Who'd believe she'd come along?

Hands, touching hands, screeching clout
Leaching me, and you too
Oh, defeat Caroline
Idol worship so Hollywood
Libs are inclined to live a second childhood

And now I, I look at the sight,
And it seems oh so phoney
Libs fill Hill's seat like a coup,
When the press blurts
Letting the Senate molder
Election needs a re-do

Caroline - and Al Franken-stein, reaching out
Leaching me, and you too
Oh, defeat Caroline
Idol worship so Hollywood
Libs are inclined to live a second childhood

Defeat Caroline, of if we only could

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William D. Zeranski

Christmas is here and the Christmas season will continue on into January.  Of course, many say Christmas is too commercial, whatever that means.  I suspect it's a statement made by those who don't celebrate the Birth of the Christ, having found some 'reason' to 'not like' Christianity by finding some . . . hypocrisy, willing ignoring the fallen state of the Man found in the Bible, which was why Jesus Christ came to save the world from sin to begin with. 

Or they're atheists.  Or rather militant atheists, because it must be kept in mind that there are atheists who, while not believers, do understand that without Christianity there would be no Western culture.  I have no quarrel with atheists or any non-believers. 

But Militant atheism is not a winner, because militant atheists try to convert others through insult and suppression.  That is suppressing the beliefs of others, just like their other atheistic kin:  Marxists and the associated 'isms'.   Militant atheists forget that Atheism has much blood on its hands and that red river flows from Siberia to Southeast Asia and on into Africa.

I'm always reading how an atheist is asking a religious person 'questions' but never gets 'answers.'  How come one never asks me?   I've met all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs from Orthodox Christian to Hindu to Buddhists and Muslim.  Wicca and Satanists as well (I'm not pairing these two up.  It was part of the flow of writing.)  That last atheist I met was over twenty years ago, and he was trying to do nothing more than what every Christian was doing then as well as now.  That is working, paying taxes and loving his family. 

I do like quoting G.K. Chesterton: 

"Without God there'd be no Atheists."

I read an atheist's quote once, which went something like this:

"It is said that there are no atheist in foxhole, but with atheists there's no need for foxholes." 

Having read more than my share of Twentieth century history, I do believe that it's true and I say: 

"Atheists don't dig foxholes because so many of them are too busy building the camps using slave labor."  

But!  Enough of that for the time being, it is Christmas and time for great and wondrous revelations.  Merry Christmas.   

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Timothy Birdnow

Here is what the Global Warming scare is really all about:

``The good news about today's bad economic news is
that we're being forced to curb our material
consumption. If we do it in the right way, it
will help limit global warming and may even force
the realization that a truly high standard of
living might entail more leisure, not just more
material goods.`` 

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel
laureate, is a professor of economics at Columbia University.
Published in Mother
Jones: http://www.alternet.org/story/113093/

End Excerpt from Mo Jo

Global Warming is a tool to fundamentally restructure human civilization, to build the ``worker`s paradise`` by other means. In that it is grossly dishonest, although there are many people who really believe the fishtale told them-and many scientists have been seduced by the elegant models and reality-challenged assertions, largely because ``all the cool kids are doing it`` and it means prestige to join the ``majority``.  This is an old tactic, one employed for decades by the Left. Consider ``Comprehensive Immigration Reform`` and notice how Republicans jumped on board this terrible speedwagon despite every reason to believe it would increase illegal immigration; all the cool kids were doing it. This same technique has given us the welfare state, prohibition, Direct election of Senators, etc. etc.  The environmentalist movement applied it to science, enticing the early pioneers with kudos and money, and now many are on board because of groupthink. No one wants to be called a fool.

But the purpose isn`t to explain the blistering 1* temperature rise, but to change our civilization into the green vision of paradise. That vision is the color of Christmas; Green for some, red for others. It is a way to backdoor Socialism by strengthening international institutions and empowering big government to dominate industry and personal actions. Control of energy means control of society-including the individual. How much power is given governments that can force people to ride mass transit? Restricting your freedom of movement is despotic, but it can be sold as ``saving the planet``.

Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz has let the cat out of the bag (and given a great reason not to send your kid off to Columbia); we want less consuming and more idle time. Idle hands are the devil`s playground, as the old saying goes, and I have little doubt that Stiglitz would love to occupy those hands in his own fashion.

That the Left could openly advocate for poverty and still trick people into accepting their viewpoint is staggering.

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The ever-incisive Ann Coulter proclaims Sarah Palin Conservative of the Year at Human Events:

Sarah Palin: Conservative of the Year
by Ann Coulter

Sarah Palin wins HUMAN EVENTS’ prestigious ``Conservative of the Year`` Award for 2008 for her genius at annoying all the right people. The last woman to get liberals this hot under the collar would have been, let's see now, oh, yeah: Me!

The entire presidential election year was kind of a downer for conservatives. Once the ``maverick`` John McCain won the nomination, the rest of the year was like watching a slow motion car crash. Except at least a slow-motion car crash is occasionally entertaining. So it was going to be a long year.

Until Palin.

When McCain chose our beauteous Sarah as his running mate, the maverick was finally acting like a real maverick -- as opposed to the media’s definition of a ``maverick`` which is: ``agreeing with the editorial positions of the New York Times.``

Pre-Palin it had been one race -- boring old ``You kids get off my lawn!`` John McCain versus the exciting, new politician Barack Obama, who threw caution to the wind and bravely ran as the Pro-Hope candidate. And then our heroic Sarah bounded out of the Alaska tundra and it became a completely different race. This left the press completely discombobulated and upset. They didn't know whether to attack Sarah for not having an abortion or go after her husband for not being a sissy.

I assume Palin was chosen because McCain had heard that she was a real conservative and he had always wanted to meet one -- no, actually because he needed a conservative on the ticket, but that he had no idea that picking her would send the left into a tailspin of wanton despair.

But if anyone on the McCain campaign chose Palin because she would drive liberals crazy, my hat is off to him!

True, Palin made some embarrassing gaffes.

She complained that we didn’t have enough ``Arabic translators`` in Afghanistan -- not realizing the natives don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan, but rather a variety of regional dialects, the most common of which is Pashtun.

Speaking to military veterans one time, Palin said, ``Our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today.``

She bragged about passing a law regulating the nuclear industry that it turned out never became a law at all.

Some days Palin said Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez should suffer "regional isolation" -- but then on others she’d say she supported the president’s meeting with Chavez.

She told one audience about recent tornados in Kansas that had killed 10,000 people. In fact, a dozen people were killed in the tornados.

She referred to the ``57 states`` that make up the U.S.

Speaking of her eldest daughter’s pregnancy, she said Bristol was being ``punished`` with a baby.

As you probably know -- or guessed by now -- none of these gaffes were uttered by Palin. They are all Obama gaffes. Luckily, he made them to a star-struck press that managed not to ask him a difficult question for two years.

It seemed like the media would introduce an all-new double standard each day throughout the two glorious months of Palin’s candidacy.

I don’t remember, for example, zealous inquiries into the supposedly peculiar religious practices of any candidates in past elections. No one in the press touched on Sen. Joe Lieberman’s religious beliefs when he was Gore’s running mate. (Nor, while we’re on the subject, was the media particularly interested in the beliefs of the religion that inspired the 9/11 attacks on America.)

But the press snapped right back into their anti-religious hysteria for a candidate who was a Pentecostal! The same media that couldn’t be bothered to investigate Obama’s ties to former Weathermen or Syrian Nationalist Tony Rezko was soon hot on the trail of a rumor that Palin’s church had a speaker 30 years ago who spoke in tongues!

Let me think now: Were there ever any unusual or otherwise noteworthy speeches or sermons given in churches where Obama worshipped? Hmmm … it's on the tip of my tongue.

Liberals also suddenly decided that a woman with children could not handle the stress of higher office. Until Palin reared her beautiful head, this is precisely the sort of thinking liberals would have denounced as the Neanderthal, backwards, good old boy network attitude that had created a ``glass ceilin``.

Let’s consider the facts: Palin’s oldest son was about to be under the tender care of Gen. David Petraeus after being shipped off to Iraq. Her next oldest child was about to be married and probably would prefer that her parents butt out. That left three children under the age of 15, which was almost the same as Obama had.

So Palin had one more child -- and a lot more executive experience -- than the guy at the top of the Democrats’ ticket. (I suspect what liberals were really mad about was that if Palin became Vice President, she probably would have hired a nanny who was a U.S. citizen.)

Having indignantly rejected experience as a presidential qualification in the case of Obama, liberals had to raise questions about Palin’s experience gingerly. But, in short order, they threw caution to the wind and began energetically criticizing Palin for her lack of experience. I call that two, two, two standards in one!

Like most Democrats, both Obama and Biden boasted of their humble beginnings, while having fully adopted the attitudes, pomposity and style of the elites.

Meanwhile, Palin is the sort of genuine American that brings out the worst, most egregious pomposity of liberals. For weeks, Carl Bernstein was showing up on TV to announce: ``We still don’t have the date of first issuance of her passport.`` Members of the establishment would be astonished to learn that more Americans have guns than passports.

Palin had a husband in the Steelworkers Union, a sister and brother-in-law who owned a gas station, and five attractive children -- one headed for Iraq, one a Down’s syndrome baby and one the cutest little girl anyone had ever seen.

In a nutshell, Palin was everything Democrats are always pretending to be, but never are.

She didn’t have to conjure up implausible images of herself duck hunting as Hillary Clinton did. Nor was Palin the typical Democratic elected female official who went straight from college into politics, like Nita Lowey.

Despite their phony championing of ``women’s issues`` (i.e. abortion) there was not one Democrat woman who could win a head-to-head contest with Palin. Especially not if we got to see their faces. Democrats may have a fleet of women politicians, but they don’t have a deep bench of attractive ones. You don’t even think of most Democratic woman as women: Rosa Delauro, Nita Lowey, Patty Murray, Janet Napolitano -- and the list goes on. Oh, sure, there are the odd female Democrat sex kittens -- your Janet Renos, your Donna Shalalas -- but they're the exception to the rule.

After Palin gave her barnburner of a speech at the Republican National Convention, a friend of mine in a liberal industry told me his friends were aggressively confronting him demanding to know if Palin was raised by a secret cult of Christians that taught children nothing but Creationism and public speaking.

Oh, how I wish he had said ``yes``. Imagine the aneurisms! I think what liberals were trying to say was: Gosh, she’s an exceptionally attractive mother of five!

The Obama campaign was so alarmed by Palin’s speech, it loudly dismissed the speech saying she didn’t write it. At least that’s what a press release written by an Obama campaign staffer said.

Indeed, the first words out of every Palin critic's mouth were: "Good speech, but she didn't write it." So I guess all liberals were reading the same talking points written for them by the Obama campaign. At least Palin pays her speechwriters. Neil Kinnock is still waiting for his check.

Speaking of Joe Biden, he said that Palin’s speech had a lot of style but little substance. Inasmuch as Biden was Obama's running mate, I think that meant he liked it!

A newspaper in Boston responded to Palin’s speech by interviewing hairdressers who criticized Sarah's hairstyle. (Where were these people after Joe Biden's speech?)

Trendy dinner party opinion soon demanded that all liberals take up the cry that Palin must let the press have a whack at her. Almost immediately after she was introduced to the nation, the cry went up: “When are we going to be allowed to ask Palin questions?”

Palin’s refusal to meet with the press for one week after being chosen as McCain’s running mate was evidently more maddening than Obama's refusal to appear on Fox News for almost the entirety of his campaign.

Everyone acted as if Obama’s feat of running for President for two years constituted a complete and thorough vetting.

It might have been, except that the entire media had apparently agreed: “OK, none of us will ask Obama about Tony Rezko, William Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright.”

Hillary was hissed by the audience for mentioning Rezko at a Democratic debate and George Stephanopoulos nearly lost his career for asking Obama one William Ayers question at another.

Osama bin Laden was more upset about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than liberals were -- especially after "Jeremiah Wright videos" passed "al Qaeda videos" for most total viewings on Youtube. (He was kicking himself for not coming up with that “God Damn America” line first!)

Who cares if Palin was qualified to be President? She was running with John McCain! There was no chance that ticket was going to place her anywhere near the presidency. In fact, I can’t think of a better place to put someone you wanted to keep away from the White House than on a ticket with McCain.

Palin was a kick in the pants, she energized conservatives, and she made liberal heads explode. Other than his brave military service, introducing Sarah Palin to Americans is the greatest thing John McCain ever did for his country.

But unless Palin is going to be the perpetual running mate of “moderate” Republicans who need conservative bona fides, she will need to become wiser and better read. Even Reagan didn’t run for President in his 40s. (True Obama is in his 40s, but we are not Democrats.)

Perhaps Palin’s year is 2012, but I would recommend that she take a little more time to become older and wiser. She ought to spend the next decade being a good governor, tending to her children so none of them turn out like Ron Reagan Jr., and reading everything Phyllis Schlafly, Thomas Sowell, Ronald Reagan and `Publius` have ever written. (She also might keep in mind that HUMAN EVENTS was Ronald Reagan’s favorite newspaper!)

In time, HUMAN EVENTS’ 2008 Conservative of the Year will be ready to be our President and someday can sweep into office and dismantle all the heinous government programs Obama and the Democrats are about to foist on the nation. Who knows? She might even be able to run as the candidate of "hope" and "change

End

Many thanks to Brian, me bro!

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Timothy Birdnow

Mary Grabar discusses political correctness and the likely appointment of the inexperienced Caroline Kennedy at Pajamas Media.

Those who called Sarah Palin unqualified to be veep are strangely silent on the far less qualified Mrs. Schlossberg, who is still called Kennedy for reasons more public than anything else. That includes the ever so brilliant Peggy Noonans and Kathleen Parkers, who have destroyed their reputations among Conservatives by trashing the Alaska Governor.

America has become a land ruled by a self-selected elite, and those on the outside of that elite are reviled.  Sarah Palin is one such, and the elites of both parties hate her for failing to go through the insider channels.  Dr. Grabar discusses a collegue who is being eased out of a University teaching job for women who publish cookbooks or write tomes about female masturbation; is it any wonder most college kids would vote for Obama? Elites maintain their power by keeping any would-be challengers ignorant.

America has become a land of ignoramouses, and it will pay the price of stupidity. Call it evolution in action! (With apologies to Larry Niven and Steve Barnes.) Everyone wonders where their 401K`s disappeared to and why they cannot get a home loan; they brought this on themselves-but never knew it, because it was more comfortable to let the elites run things. If you let others run your life you will find they can also take it.

Great piece by Dr. Grabar-don`t miss it!

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Timothy Birdnow

Even caffeine is discriminatory, according to this story from Yahoo News.

Looks like the entire Universe is designed to priveledge the evil white men!

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Timothy Birdnow

On the Feast of Stephen in 1776 the hand of Almighty God moved upon the American continent.

Earlier in the year, the rebellious Continental Congress, that unbelievable confluence of genius guided by the Hand of the Lord, assembled in Philadelphia and proclaimed America`s independence from Britain and His Royal Majesty King George III on July 4. The Declaration of Independence was a lofty document, written largely by that amazing scholar Thomas Jefferson, and the appeal to Natural Law i.e. the Law of God contrasted sharply with the will of George III and his parliament. But documents alone do not stop the force of arms, and that force had been going against the army appointed by Congress to win America her independence.

The Supreme Commander of the Continental Army was a modest Virginia planter named George Washington. Washington was a fascinating character; he fired the first shot in the French-and-Indian War, having stumbled upon a French peace delegation and mistakenly believing they were invaders. Washington had been sent to deliver an ultimatum to the French from his commander Robert Dinwiddie, and the French-after consuming considerable quantities of wine with Washington`s delegation-confided to him that France was determined to take the Ohio territory. Washington returned home to report this, and the inexperienced young man was sent to scout for invading Frenchmen. Having heard rumors that the French had overrun a British garrison on the Monongahela, Washington dispatched Iroquois scouts. (The Iroquois had been British allies for a century.) His native ally was a man named Tanacharison-called the Half-King, and his scout Silverheels brought word of an invading French party. Washington and Half-King decided to make a surprise attack on the French, and struck at 7 a.m. on May 28, 1754.

But it turns out that Washington`s intelligence was faulty, and the party of French were wending their way to Virginia to make peace. Washington ordered the first shot in the French-and-Indian War. Furthermore, his atrocious handling of the battle convinced Half King that they would be better served allied to the French, and the Iroquois Confederacy abandoned the incompetent Washington for what would be the losing side.

That failure aside, Washington continued with his life, prospering as a planter. A merry man outside of military work (where he appeared quite dour so as to impress the men with the seriousness of their endeavor) Washington loved to dance and attend parties. He was hopelessly in love with Sarah (Carey) Fairfax, wife of his good friend and Mentor George Fairfax. Sarah was the love of his life, and although George married Martha, he pined for the lovely and vivacious Sarah all of his days. That is not to say he didn`t love and enjoy his wife; he just wasn`t in love with her as he was with the wife of another.

When Washington was appointed to command the Continental Army, he accepted the post with such modesty that the entire body of Congress was most impressed. Washington warned that the going was going to be quite difficult; a ragtag bunch of militia were going against the most skillful military machine in the entire world, armed largely with squirrel guns. Washington was not the equal of the fine British officers, and he freely admitted it. His candor bought him enormous goodwill, and Washington enjoyed nearly unanimous support from all of the Colonies.

But Washington had problems-many of them. One was the short-term enlistments of the men, who were farmers and not soldiers, after all. Most signed on for 6 months. Washington would find ways to extend those enlistments, but he could rarely offer bonuses for men to stay on. Money was always tight.

Washington was met with little military success from the moment he assumed command, and the Continental Army struggled with a series of embarrassing defeats. New York, Long Island, White Plains, Fort Washington all ended in defeat for the Continental Army and retreat. Washington`s men had to run like rabbits, being driven out of New York and across New Jersey. Fortunately, Washington`s greatest ability was to run away. More precisely, he was a master of tactical retreat, and on many occasions his army simply vanished in the night, leaving the attacking British befuddled.

By December the situation had grown desperate, and it appeared the Revolution was going to fail. Most of the enlistments were up on December 31, and, given the way the war was going, Washington doubted he would have many men left. It was wintertime during the Little Ice Age, and armies rarely grappled in the snow, preferring winter quarters to await the nice weather of spring.

Certainly the British commander wanted to wait for the gentler weather; General William Howe had been notoriously lethargic in his prosecution of the war and his pursuit of Washington. It was likely tied to his dalliance with the lovely Elizabeth Loring, wife of Boston Loyalist Joshua Loring, who graciously consented to lend his wife in return for being named head of the Boston prison system. Howe snuggled comfortably into a nice warm bed with a nice, warm lass, and hoped to remain there all winter.

There was a famous poem about Howe`s torpidity:

``Sir William, he, snug as a flea,

Lay all this time a-snoring

Nor dreamed of harm as he lay warm

In bed with Mrs.__``

Washington`s men camped across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, far enough away to retreat from Howe`s troops who occupied Trenton but positioned to defend Philadelphia and the Continental Congress. Howe himself, having heard that he a cornucopia of men and supplies coming from England, returned to his comfortable Boston bed with the lovely Elizabeth, and left his Hessian mercenaries to defend the town.

On December 11 the Continental Congress in Philadelphia issued a proclamation for a day of fasting and penance.

The British were in the habit of hiring Germans to fight for them. Many of the early mercenaries came from Hesse-Cassel, so the Americans dubbed any German soldiers as Hessians. These men were conscriptees, sold by their Burghermeisters, usually for around four shillings fourpence each. They had been forced from their homes to fight for their noblemen, and as a result, were poorly motivated, to put it mildly. On the other hand, they were lead by some of the best officers in the world, and their training and discipline were excellent.

Germany was a kingdom ruled by the Hapsburgs at this time, but the individual German states were largely autonomous (Napoleon would dissolve this First Reich and create a German Confederacy that would last until the Prussians reunited the German states under the Hohenzollerns.)

On a Christmas 976 years prior the fate of these Hessians was set. The original German Empire was created by the Franks with the coronation on Christmas Day of Charlemagne, and the Holy Roman Emperor divided his holdings among his three sons upon his death through the treaty of Verdun in 843. Charles II the Bald was given France, Lothair was given the ``Middle Kingdom`` including parts of Saxony, and Louis II ``the German`` was given the east. Frankish control eventually ended with the foundation of the Kingdom of France, and a string of German emperors ruled the Holy Roman Empire. In 1273 Rudolf I of Hapsburg was elected Holy Roman Emperor, and he took control of Austria, making a true German Reich. The Hapsburgs would rule until 1806.

The weakness of the Hapsburg rule meant that the individual states had a great deal of autonomy, and they were always wrangling for position. The British paid good money for trained soldiers, and the petty nobles enjoyed living well at the expense of their poor. Trenton was full of men who just wished they could spend Christmas at home with their families.

With the approach of Christmas, Washington found his options dwindling. Once the Delaware froze, Howe would be in a position to march into Pennsylvania and take Philadelphia. He had until December 31 to find a way to save the day, or independence was finished and he would likely have an appointment with a rope. His men were poorly equipped, many of them barefoot since their shoes had worn out from the repeated long marches. It would be folly to do anything but send the men home.

Washington attacked.

It was a foolish thing, a freezing rain delayed the Continental Army, a rain which turned to ice and snow. His men, poorly shod, left a red trail in the snow as their feet bled from frostbite on the march to the Delaware River. The river was swift and treacherous, with dangerous ice flows, and Washington had to leave two groups behind, diminishing his manpower to just 2,400 weary, frost-bitten men. They had 9 more miles to march to reach the sleepy New Jersey town, 9 miles through open country which should have been swarming with British pickets.

But the British were not there; the Hessians had scant 1400 men under the command of a loud and pompous colonel named Johanne Rall. Rall was a seasoned Hessian soldier, and held the Continental Army in contempt.

Washington faced another most regrettable circumstance; he was being supported by Charles Lee, a fellow Virginian and former British officer who had been having greater success than his commander. Lee had been quietly lobbying for command of the Continental Army, and he had written to Washington`s Adjutant General Joseph Reed (rightly) complaining about Washington`s strategy at Fort Washington and in the New York Campaigns. With the fall of the Fort and Washington`s hurried retreat across New Jersey, Reed encouraged the brash Lee seek to replace Washington. (It should be noted that Lee demanded Congress pay his sizable debts to Britain for his services.)

In November Washington sent for Lee to join him, and Lee tarried, hoping that Congress would see Washington`s incompetence and replace him. Washington, ever a man of mild temperament, once accidentally opened a letter from Lee to his adjutant, and he returned it to Lee with a note of apology, despite the likely expression of no confidence by Lee. By early December Washington was forced to beg Lee for help, or Philadelphia would likely fall. Still Lee tarried. Slowly he began to move, making fifty miles before stopping at Morristown to rest. His letter to Washington illustrated his contempt for his commander;

``I am told you have gondolas from Philadelphia with you; for Heaven`s sake, what use can they be of?``

Small boats could be of profound use, as the World would learn later.

Now, Lee had been a British officer, and Banastre Tarleton, a young Oxford gentleman and member of the 16th Regiment of the Light Dragoons, hated traitors. Tarleton wanted more than anything the head of one Charles Lee, former British officer and now General in the Continental Army. Tarleton had caught the scent of Lee, and picked up two of Lee`s sentries. He followed the trail back to the tavern of a Mrs. White, where Lee was quartered, and captured the would-be Supreme Commander.

Thus, deprived of his best relief, Washington found himself forced into an attack he would have preferred to avoid without adequate support.

Meanwhile, William Howe decided to quarter his troops for the winter rather than take Philadelphia, and, although he thought Trenton vulnerable, was convinced by the hard drinking, glory seeking Hessian Rall to leave three regiments in the New Jersey town. Rall was so confident that he did not bother to dig in or set up artillery, boasting;

``Let them come! We want no trenches! We`ll at them with the bayonette!``

Rall kept one regiment per night on alert, and sent out patrols to look for enemies.

Having received intelligence that Washington`s men were about shot, Rall planned to make quite merry at Christmas with ample food and even more ample drink. He had little to worry about, or so he thought.

Meanwhile, Joseph Reed received orders from Washington while away in Philadelphia that an attack was planned for Christmas night, and that he should make all haste with reinforcements. Reed answered that Philadelphia would spare a scant 500 men, but Washington decided to go ahead anyway. Washington ordered John Cadwalader of Pennyslvania to move his 1800 man militia across the Delaware, and sent Brigadier Gen. James Ewing to do likewise with his 800. Both failed to make the crossing due to icy conditions, so Washington was forced to attack only with the men he could ferry with those wretched gondolas himself.

As he prepared to set off, he received word from General Gates that reinforcements would not be coming.

This did not deter the iron-spined Washington. He issued the countersign to his troops ``Victory or Death!`` and he meant it.

His men began ferrying across the ice-choked river, ever in danger of swamping the boats. Sleet was falling from the sky, and few of the men were dressed for such inclement weather. The crossing took 9 hours, and by three a.m. Washington`s troops were ready to commence the march on Trenton. Washington received word that some of the men`s powder had been dampened, but he would not be deterred, ordering them to fix bayonets and commence.

They were making poor time, and they actually lost two men who froze to death. It became apparent to Washington that he was not going to surprise the Hessians in the night, and he would never get back fast enough to avoid fighting, so there was little to do but press on, leaving trails in the snow and ice like a massive army of snails.

Then a security breech occurred; General Adam Stephen III sent scouts out as ordered, and his men encountered the Germans. They fought it out with the sentinels, against orders, and the gunshots had been heard. The reports reached Colonel Rall, who was drinking and playing checkers at the time. Rall decided it was nothing more than harassing brigands, and decided to ignore the whole matter and return to his Christmas celebration.

In the wee hours of the morning a loyalist farmer pounded on the door of the house of Abraham Hunt, a wealthy Trenton merchant and host to the carousing Rall that Christmas night. The party was in full swing, and Rall ordered that the man not be allowed inside, so the farmer scribbled a note telling the Hessian that the Americans were coming. Rall, enjoying himself immensely with a game of cards, was handed the note and promptly stuck it in his pocket without reading it. His men, tired from Christmas rations and most of them drunk, were lazing about on guard duty or asleep-or partying in the manner of their commander.

By 4 a.m. Rall was nestled snugly in his bed, and the duty officer cancelled the morning patrol due to the bad weather.

Washington struck at 7:45. Shouts of ``der feind, der feind`` (the enemy! the enemy!) awakened the drunken and exhausted revelers as Washington`s men marched into the town.

As the battle raged, Some of the Americans were shouting ``these are the times that try men`s souls!`` and the battle was going against the Hessians. With the overrun of the German forces immanent, a major suggested to the drunken but now awake Rall that they retreat with the cannon. Rall, still not comprehending that he was about to lose the battle, refused, believing that he would be able to push the Continentals back. He mustered his men and advanced with bayonets, but the Americans were firing into them through the blizzard, and Rall lost 15 men in a matter of minutes while failing to hit a single American. It was decided to retreat over the bridge at Assumpkin Creek, but the Americans had already taken the bridge and began firing cannon at Rall`s men. Rall then decided to retreat along Third and Fourth streets, but as soon as he gave the order was shot, two gaping holes. His men helped him move to the local Methodist church on Fourth and Queens.

Inside the church, an argument ensued over whether to surrender or try another retreat. With the Americans a scant sixty yards away, the order was given to lay down arms. Two of Rall`s regiments had surrendered to Washington`s ragged army.

As Rall lay dying, he opened the note given to him at Mr. Hunt`s house. In despair he proclaimed ``If I had read this at Mr. Hunt`s, I would not be here!`` Within thirty hours Rall was dead.

Before he died, Rall pleaded with General Washington for good treatment of his men-a request Washington honored. Unfortunately for Washington, his men decided to celebrate their victory by raiding the stores of cider, madeira, and porter, and Washington was unable to take any further advantage; the Continental Army was drunk.

This was a momentous victory for the Americans; Washington suffered but six casualties; two officers (one was future president James Monroe) and two enlisted men, plus the two who died of exposure. (Alexander Hamilton also fought-with distinction-at Trenton.) He defeated a well-equipped, seasoned army and, more importantly, made it clear that the Continental Army could defeat the enemy in battle-something that was seriously doubted by most. Had Washington failed here, he would likely have been replaced, and the new commander would likely not have been able to prosecute the war as effectively. Furthermore, Washington`s character shaped the future of the United States, and his absence would have had a profound influence on the future country.

The Continental Army had future vicissitudes to endure, including the agonizing winter the next year at Valley Forge. The Battle of Trenton was hard, and times would grow harder, but it was now apparent that America COULD win her independence. Without the gift of victory that God in His beneficence provided the Revolution would have faltered, and the great gifts America has given to the world would never have come.

So, we should all give thanks for this outstanding victory on this day, the Feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr. Had these brave and determined men not prevailed America would never have come, and the world would have been the worse for it.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Unto Us a Child is Born

Lo, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the Day of the Lord comes, the great and terrible Day.

To turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers,

Lest I come and strike the land with doom.
(Malachi3:24-25)

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

(And this taxing was first made when Cy-re`-ni-us was governor of Syria.)

And all went to be taxed, everyone to his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilea, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David)

To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the Angel said unto them Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you: ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
(Luke2:1-14)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we behelt his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
(John1:1-2 and 14-15)

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Then Joseph her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.

But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,

behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Em-man`-u-el, which being interpreted is, God is with us.

Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife.

And knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.
(Matthew1: 18-25)

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:43 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Thomas Sowell discusses the mistakes that caused the Great Depression-and how we are preparing to repeat them!:

With both Barack Obama's supporters and the media looking forward to the new administration's policies being similar to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies during the 1930s depression, it may be useful to look at just what those policies were and-- more important-- what their consequences were.

The prevailing view in many quarters is that the stock market crash of 1929 was a failure of the free market that led to massive unemployment in the 1930s-- and that it was intervention of Roosevelt's New Deal policies that rescued the economy.

It is such a good story that it seems a pity to spoil it with facts. Yet there is something to be said for not repeating the catastrophes of the past.

Let's start at square one, with the stock market crash in October 1929. Was this what led to massive unemployment?

Official government statistics suggest otherwise. So do new statistics on unemployment by two current scholars, Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, in their book "Out of Work."

The Vedder and Gallaway statistics allow us to follow unemployment month by month. They put the unemployment rate at 5 percent in November 1929, a month after the stock market crash. It hit 9 percent in December-- but then began a generally downward trend, subsiding to 6.3 percent in June 1930.

That was when the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were passed, against the advice of economists across the country, who warned of dire consequences.

Five months after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the unemployment rate hit double digits for the first time in the 1930s.

This was more than a year after the stock market crash. Moreover, the unemployment rate rose to even higher levels under both Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom intervened in the economy on an unprecedented scale.

Before the Great Depression, it was not considered to be the business of the federal government to try to get the economy out of a depression. But the Smoot-Hawley tariff-- designed to save American jobs by restricting imports-- was one of Hoover's interventions, followed by even bigger interventions by FDR.

The rise in unemployment after the stock market crash of 1929 was a blip on the screen compared to the soaring unemployment rates reached later, after a series of government interventions.

For nearly three consecutive years, beginning in February 1932, the unemployment rate never fell below 20 percent for any month before January 1935, when it fell to 19.3 percent, according to the Vedder and Gallaway statistics.

In other words, the evidence suggests that it was not the "problem" of the financial crisis in 1929 that caused massive unemployment but politicians' attempted "solutions." Is that the history that we seem to be ready to repeat?

The stock market crash, which has been blamed for the widespread suffering during the Great Depression of the 1930s, created no unemployment rate that was even half of what was created in the wake of the government interventions of Hoover and FDR.

Politically, however, Franklin D. Roosevelt could not have been more successful. After all, he was the only President of the United States elected four times in a row. He was a master of political rhetoric.

If Barack Obama wants political success, following in the footsteps of FDR looks like the way to go. But people who are concerned about the economy need to take a closer look at history. We deserve something better than repeating the 1930s disasters.

There is yet another factor that provides a parallel to what happened during the Great Depression. No matter how much worse things got after government intervention under Roosevelt's New Deal policies, the party line was that he had to "do something" to get us out of the disaster created by the failure of the unregulated market and Hoover's "do nothing" policies.

Today, increasing numbers of scholars recognize that FDR's own policies were a further extension of interventions begun under Hoover. Moreover, the temporary rise in unemployment after the stock market crash was nowhere near the massive and long-lasting unemployment after government interventions.

Barack Obama already has his Herbert Hoover to blame for any and all disasters that his policies create: George W. Bush.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Wil Wirtanen sends this our way:

Twas the month before Christmas*
When all through our land,

Not a Christian was praying

Nor taking a stand.

See the PC Police had taken away,

The reason for Christmas - no one could say.

The children were told by their schools not to sing,

About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.

It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say

December 25th is just a ' Holiday '.

Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit

Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!

CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod

Something was changing, something quite odd!

Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa

In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.

As Targets were hanging their trees upside down

At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.

At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears

You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.

Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty

Are words that were used to intimidate me.

Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen

On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton !

At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter

To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.

And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith

Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace

The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded

The reason for the season, stopped before it started.

So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'

Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.

Choose your words carefully, choose what you say

Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS ,

not Happy Holiday !

Please, all Christians join together and

wish everyone you meet

 MERRY CHRISTMAS
Christ is "The Reason" for the Christ-mas Season!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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