B. Hussein Obama has awakened a sleeping giant

And filled him with a terrible resolve.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Former Florida legislator Marco Rubio has closed the gap in the race for the state's Republican U.S. Senate nomination and is in a virtual dead heat with Gov. Charlie Crist, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Rubio, a lawyer who served as Speaker of the House, was once considered a long shot against Crist, who has widespread name recognition and a significant fundraising lead. But with Florida's primary seven months away, Rubio was favored by 47 percent compared with 44 percent who preferred Crist — statistically a tie in the Quinnipiac University poll that has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

The random telephone survey, which included 673 GOP voters, was conducted Jan. 20-24.

"The horse race numbers are not a fluke," said Peter Brown, assistant polling director for Quinnipiac in Connecticut. "Rubio's grassroots campaigning among Republican activists around the state clearly has paid off."

The latest survey marks a stunning turnaround for the 38-year-old Rubio, a conservative who trailed Crist by 31 points in a Quinnipiac survey taken in June.

Yet more evidence that the era when the establishment RINO would automatically be nominated is over.

Conservatives have awakened and are taking control of the GOP once again.

Very soon the Boston to DC corridor Republican establishment is going to have to make a hard choice. Either go ahead and admit that they are really Democrats, like Arlen Specter, or reinvent themselves as genuine conservative Republicans.

Dirty Bomb Diaries, episode 15

About damn time

PHOENIX (AP) - Former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth says he's planning to run against John McCain for his U.S. Senate seat.

Hayworth told The Associated Press late Friday that he stepped down as host of his radio program on KFYI-AM, a conservative radio talk show in Phoenix. Legally, he wouldn't be able to host the program and be an active candidate.

Hayworth was ousted from his Congressional seat in 2007 after 12 years in office by Democrat Harry Mitchell, and has hosted the radio show for the past few years.

Hayworth says he's not formally announcing a run for the Senate seat, but that "we're moving forward to challenge John McCain."

He added that he's had a wonderful time at KFYI, but "it's time to enter public life again."

This story dovetails well with two postings on American Thinker, one in the articles section from yesterday and one in the blog from today:

John McCain: Palin's Political Bridge to Nowhere

Sarah Palin's decision to campaign for John McCain's reelection bid is dismaying some of her staunchest allies and defenders on the web.

This serves as a much-uninvited buzz-kill to conservatives, who finally had the beam of hope shone on them Tuesday night. Grassroots conservatism made a historic comeback with Scott Brown, who defeated Martha Coakley for Edward Kennedy's Senate seat in the very liberal state of Massachusetts.

Aside from her personal allegiance to John McCain, it is incomprehensible what Palin thinks this will do for the country or her political career, which has made her one of the main inspirations of grassroots enthusiasm.

Why has Sarah Palin agreed to campaign for McCain?

Go figure. Why would Sarah Palin agree to stump for McCain in Arizona? She must have learned through hellfire that loyalty in politics is an oxymoron, yet, she can't let it go. She is the real deal. An honest Sarah bemuses the political elites, but at the same time plays right into their power grabbing hands.

Here's the deal on why Mrs. Palin is supporting John McCain in his (hopefully unsuccessful) bid for reelection.

Sarah Palin is a gracious lady who will not turn her back on a friend no matter what the cost.

She recognizes that if it were not John McCain choosing her to be his running mate that the average American's response to hearing her mentioned as a possible presidential candidate would be, "Sarah who?".

When her autobiography was attacked by former members of the McCain campaign John stepped up and pronounced it a "very accurate" account.

I'm sure that Governor Palin also understands that if she does not honor Senator McCain's request that she campaign for him that she will be attacked by her detractors as disloyal and ungrateful and the attacks will have enough of a ring of truth about them to stick.

I agree with those who say that it is time for Mr. McCain to return home to Arizona and enjoy what I hope will be a long and healthy retirement. I look forward to being able to look at him and see only a war hero and not a RINO lose cannon.

I really doubt that this will harm Mrs. Palin in any way.

A good laugh for a Sunday night

If you want a really good laugh go here where you can read things like this:
There are many stories like yours, I have personally saved the ass-virginity of several young boys in my days. But there are many brave men like myself out there who risk their lives daily, so that boys like yourself can live a normal heterosexual life.

Another America hating Euro loon.

It is a sad thing when someone you've admired and even considered a genius based on his comedic performances proves himself to be an abject fool.

First off Cleese's embrace of the myth of the stolen election. Need I remind anyone that after the inauguration of George W Bush that a coalition of left-wing newspapers, led by the New York Times, went to Florida and examined every ballot using the standards that the Gore campaign wanted applied and found that Bush actually did get more votes?

It is important that conservatives and Republicans correct this error whenever they encounter it, even if doing so becomes tedious. Myth can have a powerful hold on the human imagination and can exercise a profound influence upon behavior. Remember how the myth of the "stab in the back" poisoned the German mindset and helped pave the way for the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

Then came his denigration of Sarah Palin as stupid. A point he attempted to prove by comparing her to JOE BIDEN!

[I wall pause here to let the laughter subside]

Joe Biden is a man who has been wrong on virtually every position he has taken during his entire political career.

Biden, you will remember, in an attempt to present himself as the best educated man in the room at a town hall meeting invented an educational background for himself which his own office had to admit to reporters contained very little truth.

What we have to remember about Cleese is that he is an Englishman and to an Englishman one's accent reveals everything you need to know about that person. Britin has the most class conscious society in the world and in Britain class is something you are born into not something you can aspire to.

When the Cambridge educated Cleese hears Palin's rural Alaskan speech patterns he is incapable of thinking of her as anything but a low class peasant bumpkin who has no business intruding into the affairs of her betters. When Palin actually manages to win her debate with Biden well then it must be because she learned her lines like a good parrot.

Which brings us to Fox News. Yes Fox has shows like Hannity and Glen Beck which deal in the opinions of their hosts. This is no different than a newspaper having an editorial page in which columnists and guests express their opinions on the issues of the day. However unlike the other cable news channels and the broadcast network news programs Fox makes a sincere (and usually successful) attempt to be balanced and fair in its presentation of straight news programming.

The fact that Chris Wallace and Britt Hume will ask the same kind of hard questions, with hard follow-ups, of liberals and Democrats as they will of conservatives and Republicans makes them appear "right-wing" only when compared to characters like Dan Rather, Katie Couric and Charles Gibson (we won't even mention Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow).

What was George W Bush's great sin in the eyes of the world?

Well for some snobs like Cleese it was that Mr. Bush didn't talk like the Ivy League educated man that he in fact was. But for far more of both the elite and the teeming masses of Old Europe it was what George W Bush represented.

You see Old Europe is dying from a profound lack of faith.

They lack faith in God, they lack faith in their culture and they lack faith in themselves. This is why their birthrate is falling and for some time has been below the replacement level. This is why they have allowed their various military services to fall far below the level actually needed to defend their nations from any serious threat. This is why they are unable to develop any effective response to fact that their nations will soon be majority Muslim - unassimilated fundamentalist Muslims desiring sharia law.

For people who have essentially given up and decided to lay down and die the presence of living, vibrant growing and self-confidant America is intolerable.

To dying Old Europe George W Bush's certitude that Western culture was good and worth defending and that the terrorist enemy was evil and worth defeating, that it was both possible and positive to liberate the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq - and that those people would want to be liberated - was the bitterest and most stinging kind of rebuke.

To dying Old Europe Barack Obama offered a vision of America much less wealthy, much less powerful and not at all self confident. Barack Obama would never send the American military into another nation to free its enslaved population. To the contrary he would meekly bow before the dictators and tyrants of the world and apologize for America and beg their forgiveness.

And all this while reading a teleprompter more beautifully than any other man alive.

Americans should take a lesson from this. Letting people who think the world would be better off if we weren't in it pick our leaders is a very bad idea.

Dirty Bomb Diaries, episode 14

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

THAT OLD OBAMA MAGIC IS BACK
by Ann Coulter
January 20, 2010

Once again, the people have spoken, and this time they quoted what Dick Cheney said to Pat Leahy.

Less than two weeks ago, The New York Times said that so much as a "tighter-than-expected" victory for Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley would incite "soul-searching among Democrats nationally," which sent Times readers scurrying to their dictionaries to look up this strange new word, "soul."

A close win for Coakley, the Times said, would constitute "the first real barometer of whether problems facing the party" will affect the 2010 elections.

But when Coakley actually lost the election by an astounding 5 points, the Chicago boys in the White House decided it was the chick's fault.

Democratic candidate Martha Coakley may be a moral monster, but it's ridiculous to blame her for losing the election. She lost because of the Democrats' obsession with forcing national health care down the nation's throat.

Coakley campaigned exactly the way she should have.

As a Democrat running in a special election for a seat that had been held by a Democratic icon (and another moral monster) for the past 46 years in a state with only 12 percent registered Republicans, Coakley's objective was to have voters reading the paper on Friday, saying: "Hey, honey, did you know there was a special election four days ago? Yeah, apparently Coakley won, though it was a pretty low turnout."

Ideally, no one except members of government unions and Coakley's immediate family would have even been aware of the election.

And until Matt Drudge began covering it like a presidential election a week ago, it might have turned out that way.

Coakley had already won two statewide elections, while her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, had only won elections in his district. She had endorsements from the Kennedy family and the current appointed Democratic senator, Paul Kirk -- as well as endless glowing profiles in The Boston Globe.

And by the way, as of Jan. 1, Brown had spent $642,000 on the race, while Coakley had spent $2 million.

On Jan. 8, just 11 days before the election, The New York Times reported: "A Brown win remains improbable, given that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3 to 1 in the state and that Ms. Coakley, the state's attorney general, has far more name recognition, money and organizational support."

It was in that article that the Times said a narrow Coakley win would be an augury for the entire Democratic Party. But now she's being hung out to dry so that Democrats don't have to face the possibility that Obama's left-wing policies are to blame.

Alternatively, Democrats are trying to write off Brown's colossal victory as the standard seesawing of public sentiment that hits both Republicans and Democrats from time to time. As MSNBC's Chris Matthews explained, it was just the voters saying "no" generally, but not to anything in particular.

Except when Republicans win political power, they hold onto it long enough to govern. The Democrats keep being smacked down by the voters immediately after being elected and revealing their heinous agenda.

As a result, for the past four decades, American politics has consisted of Republicans controlling Washington for eight to 14 years -- either from the White House or Capitol Hill -- thus allowing Americans to forget what it was they didn't like about Democrats, whom they then carelessly vote back in. The Democrats immediately remind Americans what they didn't like about Democrats, and their power is revoked at the voters' first possible opportunity.

Obama has cut the remembering-what-we-don't-like-about-Democrats stage of this process down from two to four years to about 10 months. Folks, I'm convinced that if we all work really hard, we can get it down to three months.

Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides, peace and prosperity for eight blessed years -- and even a third term for his feckless vice president, George H.W. Bush.

Two years of Bill Clinton gave us a historic Republican sweep of Congress, which killed the entire Clinton agenda (with the exception of partial-birth abortion and felony obstruction of justice) -- and also gave us two terms for George W. Bush.

And now, merely one year of Obama and a Democratic Congress has given us the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 31 years.

In other recent news, last November, New Jersey voters, who haven't voted for a Republican for president since 1988, threw out their incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine. In Virginia, which Obama carried by 6 points a year earlier, a religious-right Republican won the governor's office by 17 points.

Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, won his last election in 2006 by 28 points -- the largest margin for a Democratic Senate candidate in that state in a quarter-century.

Since voting for the Senate health care bill last Christmas, the once-bulletproof Sen. Nelson not only gets booed out of Omaha pizzerias, but he has also seen his job approval rating fall to 42 percent and his disapproval rating soar to 48 percent. (Meanwhile, the junior senator from Nebraska, Mike Johanns, who voted against the bill, has a job approval rating of 63 percent.)

The Democrats have no natural majority because they have no fundamental principles -- at least none that they are willing to state out loud. They are like a drunken vagrant who emerges from the alley to cause havoc every few years. They are the perpetual toothache of American politics.

To be sure, the fact that 52 percent of Massachusetts voters are racist, sexist tea-baggers -- i.e., voted for a Republican -- means only that the Democrats just went from having the largest congressional majority in a generation to the second largest. But this was "Teddy Kennedy's seat." And it was in Massachusetts.

Now, no Democrat is safe.

But the country just got a lot safer.

COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

The Coakley/Brown race was summed up perfectly in comments on election day by two Massachusetts voters. One, a Coakley supporter, said she was "voting for Obama" and the other, a Brown supporter, said he was "voting to save the country".

That really is all you need to know.

More fun with Hitler

Have to admit this one rings a bit truer than most.

What the GOP needs to do

Steve McCann offers some good advice to conservatives going forward to November and then 2012:

The only way to defeat the Left is to stop playing by their rules.

First, it must be understood that the enemy we are fighting, the Liberals or the Left, makes up 20% of the country's population. Moderates are 36%, and conservatives are more than 40%. Based on that breakdown, one might assume that something like 67% of moderates lean to the conservative view. Thus, 64% of the citizenry are potential voters against what is happening in Congress and the White House.

Why does the conservative coalition allow 20% of the people to dictate how or why campaigns are conducted? Why do conservatives still curry favor from the once-mainstream media, who in a marketing death wish choose to appeal to this same 20%? Why, within this alliance, is there so much suspicion among each faction? And lastly, why is it not understood that only by the in-place organization of the Republican Party, under conservative control, can the current tide in Washington be reversed?

Conservatives must discipline themselves to stop being so thin-skinned about what the media, bloggers, and pundits on the Left say about them. These immature and self-righteous blowhards must be ignored and allowed to talk among themselves without any response from anyone on the right. The only response necessary is to correct or rebut immediately and firmly the mistakes and misrepresentations of the once-mainstream media.

The Tea Party Movement, instead of reveling in its declared independence, should immediately either join forces with or take over the local Republican Party establishment in its respective county or state.

Each person has one political or social issue that is of the highest importance to him. Regardless of what it is, everyone must now realize that without individual freedom and liberty, plus a limited government -- all of which are now under massive assault by the Obama administration -- it matters little what that issue is.

In order to overcome the Democrats' misuse of "community organizations" and biased election laws and officials to skew close elections, the members of the conservative coalition must turn out in massive numbers to vote and support one political party.

Everyone must stop the absurd belief that one should vote for the person and not the party. The lesson of the passage of the Health Care Reform Act in Congress should never be forgotten: There is no such thing as a "conservative Democrat" once installed in Congress. There is a major difference between the parties. Conservatives can influence what happens in the Republican Party; they cannot do so in the Democratic Party.

Above all, everyone in the current coalition opposing what is happening in Washington, D.C. must unite behind one theme and put all differences aside. That cause should be this: For future generations, the United States must remain the dominant global economic force able to underwrite being the unrivaled military power in the world. The destructive path the current government in Washington has chosen will relegate our country to long-term economic stagnation and secondary world status.

The upcoming midterm election is one of the most pivotal in history. Despite the current optimism surrounding the outcome of the November 2010 election, the conservative movement will not triumph unless it unites, remains disciplined, and above all, understands and learns from its adversaries.

The overwhelming and unexpected victory in Massachusetts should not be allowed to lead to complacency or overconfidence. The Democrats and the Obama administration will be more determined than ever to hold on to the power necessary to transform the United States into their image.

I have added emphasis to what I consider to be the key elements of Mr. McCann's argument.

First we must stop playing by the left's rules. Conservatives are the majority and should begin acting like it.

Consider this. Rush Limbaugh has more listeners on Manhattan island than MSNBS has viewers in the entire nation. Look at the ratings for the nightly network news broadcasts and look at sales figures for your average daily broadsheet newspaper.

Then look at the ratings of Fox News and conservative talk radio.

What we have been calling the "Mainstream Media" is not, not any longer. What was once the mainstream media has become a niche product serving the left-wing 20% of the population and using its rapidly dwindling reservoir of credibility to make that small minority look far larger than it is and giving them a vastly exaggerated influence on the nation's politics.

The media which is truly "mainstream", that is reflecting the beliefs and values of the majority of the people is now the "alternative media" of talk radio the internet and Fox News.

Conservatives need to internalize this truth and begin to live by it. This doesn't mean shutting out the Old Media the way Obama tried to freeze out Fox. What it means is that when being interviewed by someone from network news or the New York Times you are for all intents and purposes talking to someone from your opponent's campaign and act accordingly.

Then to get your message out you rely on Sean Hannity or Chris Wallace to interview you fairly.

The Tea Party movement does need to explicitly join with the Republican party however that cuts both ways. If the polls in a state or district show that in a three way race the Republican candidate would both get fewer votes than a hypothetical Tea Party candidate then the Republicans need to understand that when the Tea Party folks have been fully brought on board then it is them who will be in charge.

This is so important that I'm going to say it again. In those places (and they are many) where the Tea Party had more credibility than the GOP it needs to be understood by everyone that when the Tea Party has been brought under the GOP umbrella it is for the explicit purpose of putting the Tea Party people in the driver's seat - not to bring the Tea Party under the control of the GOP establishment!

The statement about voting for the party not the man may seem controversial. It goes against what many have always believed was the height of political wisdom. However it is the absolute truth. The parties are so different that the worst Republican will almost always be better than the best Democrat. The only exception to this would be getting rid of a Republican whose voting record makes them hard to tell apart from a Democrat.

Consider this. If the two parties really were the same then Obama's socialized medicine plan would have already sailed through both houses with broad bipartisan support and have already been signed into law. The same would be true of Cap and Trade. And amnesty for illegal aliens. And a great many other things which have not happened because of united opposition from the GOP.

I would also add this point that Mr. McCann did not cover. The GOP needs new leadership. While I am proud of the way Republicans in the House and Senate have held the line against Obama's radical agenda it is not enough to be the party of opposition. We must also present a program for people to vote for in the affirmative sense and the GOP is not doing that in any coherent way.

Right now he leadership of the party seems to be thinking that all they need to do to win in November is sit back and let the Democrats continue to destroy themselves. This may work in the short term to regain the House in 2010 and even the Senate and White House in 2012 but it will not serve to form the foundation of a long term Republican dominance.

When you get right down to it the central theme of Barack Obama's campaign was that he was not George W Bush. Since taking office Obama has governed in a way which is inexplicable unless you understand that the central theme of his government also is that he is not George W Bush.

We see how well that is working out for him.

The GOP must avoid the situation of being elected but without a clear mandate by developing a clear set of goals, publicizing those goals and then running our House, Senate and presidential races on the promise to fulfill those goals.

My advice on exactly what goals we should set would be to concentrate on restoring economic prosperity, securing America's energy independence and defeating the Islamofascist enemy.

We have until November to make the case for a return to Republican dominance in Washington. Please let us not screw it up.

Dirty Bomb Diaries, episode 13

closing thoughts on the day America didn't die

Mark Steyn on the Miracle in Massachusetts:

On Sunday, the line from Obama, Kerry, and everyone else to the voters of Massachusetts was:

"We understand why you're angry. But don't let your anger with George W. Bush allow you to get tricked into voting for a Republican who'll obstruct the reform agenda you're crying out for."

Presumably even Patrick Kennedy isn't stupid enough to believe this. Even as elite condescension to the boob masses, it barely passes muster. But I wonder if they really understand what took place today. Until a few days ago, conventional wisdom in Massachusetts had it that the GOP had a motivated base but nothing more. Under any normal model, high turnout should have favored the Dems. Instead, significant numbers of people who voted for Obama crossed over to the Republicans. It was as explicit a repudiation of the last year as could be devised.

The course the "post-partisan healer" chose to set on January 20, 2009, led directly to his debacle on January 19, 2010. As a woman who managed to hold at least a couple of Kennedy seats once sang: Happy Birthday, Mister President!

Yuval Levin adds this in a piece called The Self-Inflicted Wound:

It is a mark of the degree of political malpractice the Democrats have been guilty of over the past year, of the degree of their overreach and recklessness, that being left with 59 senators — a huge majority by any measure, and the same majority they had when Obama was inaugurated a year ago — is now somehow enough to make it seem as though they are powerless and is likely to kill the core (and almost the entirety) of their domestic agenda, and leave them rudderless and reeling.

They are of course not in fact powerless at all. But they have adopted an agenda that only a supermajority could pass (if that, even a supermajority couldn’t pass cap and trade), and with every indication of public opposition have only intensified their determination to pursue it, putting themselves on the wrong side of independent voters while persuading themselves that people would come around because this health-care bill is something liberals have wanted for three generations. They have made it impossible for themselves to change course without a massive loss of face and of political capital. But however costly, that change will now need to come. You have to wonder if the people responsible for setting this course — and especially Rahm Emanuel and the House and Senate leadership — will still be standing when it’s all done with.

I agree with Mr. Levin. When the dust settles the House and Senate will have different leadership. In fact I believe that even now Nancy Pelosi is Speaker in name only.

And, yes, there could even be a major shakeup in the White House. Barack Obama was repudiated on Tuesday and no one realizes that more keenly than the preening narcissist himself.

Obama has been wounded and since he is congenitally incapable of accepting responsibility himself and this time George W Bush will not serve as an acceptable scapegoat.

Whose head will roll?

Tonight's Music

We've fought a hard battle and won a great victory.

So here's something smooth and relaxing to help decompress.

Enjoy.

The "former nude model" that saved America

BOSTON – In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to win the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy for nearly half a century, leaving President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in doubt and marring the end of his first year in office.

Addressing an exuberant victory celebration Tuesday night, Brown declared he was "ready to go to Washington without delay" as the crowd chanted, "Seat him now." Democrats indicated they would, deflating a budding controversy over whether they would try to block Brown long enough to complete congressional passage of the health care plan he has promised to oppose.

"The people of Massachusetts have spoken. We welcome Scott Brown to the Senate and will move to seat him as soon as the proper paperwork has been received," said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said he would notify the Senate on Wednesday that Brown had been elected.

The loss by the once-favored Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold was a stunning embarrassment for the White House after Obama rushed to Boston on Sunday to try to save the foundering candidate. Her defeat on Tuesday signaled big political problems for the president's party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

So it seems that Democrats are literate enough to read handwriting on the wall.

The lead Democrat lawyer in Al Franken's theft of his Senate seat flew to Boston but it seems that there will be no effort to tie the race up in the courts until every bus station men's room in the state can be searched for bags of uncounted ballots, which would all just happen to be cast for Coakley.

They won't even try to stall Mr. Brown's certification until Pelosi can twist enough House Democrat arms to vote for the Senate bill as-is.

Jim Webb, indicating that he really wants to be reelected, called on his fellow Democrats to hold any vote until Brown was seated and other Dems are calling for starting over on the whole process.

In other words the Democrats are pulling in their horns and starting to act like they actually believe that they owe some deference to the people who put them in office.

Gone is the talk of passing a health care bill no matter what the voters want. Gone is the talk of doubling down on the Obama administration's ultra left-wing agenda.

This change in tone is not coming from the White House. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall there tonight and tomorrow as the preening narcissist in chief has to deal with the fact that the entire earth doesn't revolve around him.

Dirty Bomb Diaries, episode 12

The culture of poverty, and those who need it

I saw this story referenced on a blog post yesterday:

Angry Haitians block roads with corpses: witness

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Angry Haitians set up roadblocks with corpses in Port-au-Prince to protest at the delay in emergency aid reaching them after a devastating earthquake, an eyewitness said,

Shaul Schwarz, a photographer for TIME magazine, said he saw at least two downtown roadblocks formed with bodies of earthquake victims and rocks.

"They are starting to block the roads with bodies, it's getting ugly out there, people are fed up with getting no help," he told Reuters.

The other blogger asked if it might not be more productive to clear the roads if the problem is aid not arriving fast enough.

That sentiment is echoed, only more strongly, by this comment on the Reuters site:
Makes perfect sense to me. Supplies are not being delivered fast enough, just block the roads?

This might some insight into the mindset of why haiti is such a properous and self sustaining nation.

We have conditioned them to stand with their hands out instead of being self sufficient(work).

Now the natives riot because we do not respond quickly enough with more handouts.

Then I heard Rush Limbaugh read this article in the New York Times by David Brooks and thought how well it dovetailed with the story about Haitians blocking the roads to protest the slow arrival of relief supplies.

The Underlying Tragedy

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”

The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.

Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

[The same is true for Israel and the Arab/Muslim nations which surround it. The "Green Line" got its name from the fact that on the Arab side of the border you have desert and on the Israeli side you have thriving agriculture. - LC]

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.

The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.

The problem is that the Obama administration will never allow anything but more of the "same old, same old".

Obama and the people around him would never allow a new paradigm of foreign aid focused on transforming the culture of Haiti. Not because they fear that it would fail but because they are terrified that it would succeed.

Remember the old saying "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"?

The left-liberal (Like Obama and his closest friends and advisers) hears that and wonders, "if he knows that he won't starve to death unless he gets a fish from me every day then how will I control him?". To the left charity is never about simply helping people. Charity is about creating dependence. Dependence which is then forged into chains of slavery.

You may now be wondering if I am saying that Obama wants to enslave the Haitian people by making them dependent on American handouts.

The answer is no. Or at least not anytime soon. It's just that if a "tough love" approach to ending poverty were to be demonstrated to work in Haiti (when literally everything else has failed) it would be impossible to resist calls to begin applying it across the board in America.

What would happen to the Democrat party if the black population began to see themselves as free and self sufficient individuals rather than as members of an endangered minority group surrounded on all sides by hostile forces and depending completely on big government handouts and protection for its very survival?

The answer is that if blacks stopped voting in a 90% block for Democrats that party would never win a presidential election and would hold fewer than 40 seats in the Senate and would never manage to control the House of Representatives - at least not as long as it remained a party of the left.

This, by the way, is why the Democrats are so keen to grant amnesty to illegal aliens and create a legal means for virtually limitless numbers of Mexicans to enter the US legally. They want to increase their margin of victory by importing another minority group which can be wrapped in chains of dependency and turned into a reliable left-wing voting block.

Of course the Democrat party would not cease to exist if blacks were to be elevated out of poverty and dependence but that party would not continue to be a party of the left. The left would no longer have a significant voice in mainstream American politics and would have to retreat further into the margins.

The leftists who control the Democrat party at the national level understand that a sufficient number of Americans have to be kept poor, ignorant and dependent. To further that end they will oppose every poverty fighting philosophy or program which threatens to actually work. Whether in Africa, Haiti or anywhere else on the globe in order to keep that philosophy or program from ever taking root in America.

Helping the Haitians

If any of you are looking for a reputable charity to donate to in order to help the earthquake victims of Haiti I highly recommend Samaritan's Purse.

They have people on the ground who are already helping and every dollar given to them is put to good use.

Tonight's Music

This was recommended by a couple of readers and I heartily endorse their opinion. This is Blue Man Group's tribute to the murdered innocents of 9/11.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

HARRY REID'S NEGRO PROBLEM
by Ann Coulter
January 13, 2010

The recently released book "Game Change" reports that Sen. Harry Reid said America would vote for Barack Obama because he was a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

The book also says Bill Clinton called Sen. Ted Kennedy to ask for his endorsement of Hillary over Obama, saying of Obama: "A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee."

And we already knew that Obama's own vice president, Joe Biden, called Obama "articulate" and "clean" during the campaign. (So you can see why Biden got the vice presidential nod over Reid.)

Democrats regularly say things that would end the career of any conservative who said them. And still, blacks give 90 percent of their votes to the Democrats.

Reid apologized to President Obama, and Obama accepted the apology using his "white voice." So now all is forgiven.

Clinton also called Obama to apologize, but ended up asking him to bring everybody some coffee.

Now the only people waiting for an apology are the American people who want an apology from Nevada for giving us Harry Reid.

Reid will be the guest of honor at a luncheon in Las Vegas this week hosted by a group called "African-Americans for Harry Reid." That's if you can call two people a "group."

They used to be called "African-Americans for David Duke," but that was mostly a social thing. Now they're doing real political organizing.

If this gets off the ground, "African-Americans for Harry Reid" will be a political juggernaut that cannot be denied. Their motto: "We Will Be Heard -- As Soon As I Get This Gentleman's Coffee."

Reid has also picked up an endorsement from the United Light-Skinned Negro College Fund. And Tiger Woods is considering endorsing him. He is the one light-skinned half-black guy right now who's thrilled with Reid's comments.

Reid's defenders don't have much to work with. Their best idea so far is that at least he said "Negro" and not "Nigra."

Liberals are saying that since Reid was pointing out Obama's pale hue in support of his run for the presidency, it was OK to praise his skin color and non-Negro dialect. (Reid is denying reports that in 2007 he said to Obama: "You should run. You people are good at that.")

In fact, Reid didn't endorse Obama until after Hillary dropped out of the race. It turns out, he also admired Hillary for her light skin and the fact that she only uses a Negro dialect when she wants to.

In the alternative, liberals are defending Reid by claiming he said nothing that wasn't true, though he may have used "an unusual set" of words -- as light-skinned Reid-defender Harold Ford Jr. put it.

As long as we're mulling the real meaning of Reid's words and not just gasping in awe at the sorts of things Democrats get away with saying, I think Reid owes America an apology for accusing the entire country of racism. A country, let us note, that just elected a manifestly unqualified, at least partially black man president.

On the other hand, Reid couldn't have been expecting Republicans to vote for a Democrat, so I gather Reid was accusing only Democratic voters of being racists.

I don't disagree with that, but I'd like to get it in writing.

I think the Democratic platform should include a statement that the Democrats will not vote for dark-skinned blacks with a Negro dialect. Check with Harry Reid on the precise wording, but something along the lines of "no one darker than Deepak Chopra."

The "whereas" clauses can include the Democrats' history of supporting slavery, segregation, racial preferences, George Wallace and Bull Connor -- and also a precis of their treatment of dark-skinned Clarence Thomas.

BREAKING NEWS: Hoping to curry favor with the African-American community, Sen. Reid was arrested late this afternoon after breaking into his own home.

Democrats couldn't win an election without the black vote, but the Democratic Party keeps treating blacks like stage props, wheeling them out for photo-ops and marches now and then but almost never putting them in charge of anything important.

President Bush appointed the first black secretary of state and then the first black female secretary of state. Meanwhile, the closest black woman to Bill Clinton was his secretary, Betty Currie.

The one sitting black Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, was appointed by a Republican.

The head of the Republican National Committee is black -- medium-skinned, but liberals treated Michael Steele like a dark-skinned black when they threw Oreo cookies at him during the Maryland gubernatorial campaign in 2002.

After the 2000 election, Democrats had a chance to make one of the rare smart Democrats, Donna Brazile, head of the Democratic National Committee. Brazile had just run a perfectly respectable campaign on behalf of that bumbling buffoon Al Gore.

She also happens to be black. Again, blacks give 90 percent of their votes to the Democrats.

But the Democrats skipped over Brazile and handed the DNC chairmanship to the goofy white guy in lime green pants, Howard Dean.

UPDATE: Harry Reid has just apologized to the light-skinned people of Haiti for the 7.0 earthquake that hit them Tuesday afternoon.

The single most insulting remark made about blacks in my lifetime was Bill Clinton's announcement -- after being caught in the most humiliating sex scandal in world history -- that he was "the first black president."

He did not call himself "the first black president" when liberals were dancing and singing to Fleetwood Mac at his inauguration. He did not call himself "the first black president" when he was feeling our pain and being lionized by the media. He did not call himself "the first black president" when he was trying to socialize health care or passing welfare reform.

Not until he became a national embarrassment did Clinton recognize that he was "the first black president."

At least he could finally get his own coffee.

COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

All this is just too much fun.

In listening to callers to talk radio it seems that many liberal blacks want to say that what Reid said was true, if badly phrased.

I disagree. Withing the black community there is a pecking order based on skin color with the lighter skinned occupying the highest place. This was why it was common not too long ago for upscale black parents to tell their children who were departing for college not to date anyone "darker than a paper bag".

Of course white America never cared about such things. To the average white person the lightest skinned blacks are just as likely to vote Democrat (anywhere from 85-95%) as the darkest. That fact places "African-Americans" solidly in the enemy camp in the great ideologial divide which defines the current civil cold war which is tearing the United States apart.

I hope Reid survives the current firestorm so that he can be soundly defeated next November in his reelection bid. It would serve the conservative cause much better for him to lose as the Senate Majority Leader than as a has-been back bencher or worse (from our perspective) for him to drop out of the race in favor of a Democrat who might have a chance of winning.

Dirty Bomb Diaries, episode 11

An angry squeak from the elite

Stuart Schwartz has a bit of fun with the mincing little pseudo-conservative David Brooks.

David Brooks is upset.

And when the New York Times columnist, this Obama-designated conservative intellectual, the National Public Radio/MS-NBC-anointed voice for America's conservative masses, is upset, he does what comes naturally to those who regard themselves as born and educated to lead the rest of us.

He screams. A trendy, effeminate, New York Times scream. A spotlight-hugging, power-seeking, northeast corridor scream. The high-pitched kind that bounces off the glass-paneled bar at Le Cirque and shakes the Wedgewood water goblets. It's not fair, whines Brooks -- we "should have the power to implement programs to solve the country's problems" by virtue of "intellect" and "expertise."

"We" are "big government, big business, big media, and the affluent professionals" who comprise the "educated class." Obama and his Ivy League appointees, The New York Times and legacy media elites, the newly progressive Democratic Party -- a regular Intellectuals
Я Us.

Brooks rages at the "fringe" Americans who are so stupid as to deny the wonder of a nation run by its elite, "educated" betters. "Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year," he laments, tears dripping onto his University of Chicago diploma.

Educated? Does that mean that Sarah Palin, with her University of Idaho degree and best-selling book, is a member of the "educated class"? Or the millions of Tea Party sympathizers who can count to twenty without using their toes? No, Brooks says, Sarah Palin is "a joke," a "fatal cancer," and the Tea Party movement is simply an ugly fourth for the Three Stooges: Moe, Larry, Curly...and Adolf.

Brooks views Palin and Americans opposed to the Obama remake of "Government Gone Wild" as "crude, sloganeering, lemming-like, heartland Bible-Beltists who don't understand policy or David Brooks' subtleties." This is the way one New York University professor puts it for the Daily Beast. He makes this point: Brooks's "educated class" is more of an aesthetic expression, a way to describe those who are...well, better than others.

And so David Brooks is upset. And he screams the view from Manhattan, from expense-account Georgetown and 90210, the White House and Harvard Square, from the New York Times, and from General Electric Headquarters in Connecticut's "Gold Coast."

How dare they? These bozos, these ingrates, these rabble whose only job is to allow themselves to be governed by an "educated class"...and they can't even accomplish that, choosing instead to do something so inane as think for themselves. Brooks's comrade-in-brains, HBO's Bill Maher -- with the soaring, insightful rhetoric one expects from Brooks's "educated class" -- agrees: America is a " stupid country".

Oh, the shame. It's enough to make you weep -- which Brooks does regularly on behalf of The New York Times and political elites. For Brooks and brethren, the "educated class" is the repository of wisdom, the purveyor of all the thinking that America needs...or should want.

How dare they reject draconian taxes on energy consumption, taxpayer-subsidized abortions on demand, gun control, and surrendering sovereignty to the United Nations? Don't these people understand that the "educated class" knows what's best for them? That our knowledge comes from a superior ability to think, to empathize, and be jes' folks when we need to?

Jes' folks. Brooks prides himself on his New York Times-like understanding of ordinary life. Why, only last week he moderated a symposium on global warming sponsored, in part, by the National Hockey League. Hockey -- you can't get any more common than that! He looked around him and was "infected by their passion."

The hockey players' passion? Uh, no -- the "academics, business leaders[, and] activists" on the panel. He didn't actually go to a game or meet any players; that's something Sarah Palin does, after all. But he did have a piercing "educated class" insight for Times readers: "Hockey players like ice."

He understands jes' folks. Just this Sunday, Brooks congratulated himself, saying that "I feel a frisson of pleasure" when unexpectedly feeling empathy for the average American who is pushing back. It was one of those "aha" moments that sometimes intrudes upon the pages of the newspaper of record for Manhattan's Upper West Side and inside-the-beltway Washington: The non-educated class is restless.

But "frisson"? "Frisson"?! Now, outside the Times building and congressional corridors, rare is the American who freely feels a frisson of anything -- or anyone, outside of a committed relationship. All that messy middle-class morality, you know.

But Brooks's "educated class" is another matter: Witness Harvard graduate Barney Frank (D-MA)'s affair with a male prostitute, or Brooks's frisson of affection for President Obama's pant leg ("I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant and I'm thinking...he'll be a very good president."), or the vast array of scandals resulting from the pursuit of frissons by our ruling class.

So Brooks starts the New Year with anger, upset that Americans are digging in their heels -- that the ruled class does "not have faith" in its superiors, "the political class generally." And when he's upset, he gets analytical. His insight for Times readers: You have all these "fringe" people, those not belonging to the "educated class" "from states like Indiana who feel that they are fighting against a bunch of rich toffs ..."

"Toffs"? "Frissons"? "Toffs"?!

In Brooksworld, in Timesworld, in a world where "hockey players like ice" is a Pulitzer-worthy insight, people may refer to "toffs," which is British for a member of the wealthy elite. But in "mediocre" -- his word -- America, very few jokes start with "a rabbi, a priest, and a toff walked into a bar..."

Brooks is upset, and when he is upset, he talks "toff." The "educated class" must stop these very average Americans who are pulling the nation in an "angry direction." Otherwise, they may throw out the most educated and enlightened leadership the nation has ever had.

Brooks asks, in a mixture of anger and wonder, What is happening to our "educated class"?

And we the people answer: Simple -- you're in for some toff times.

So hands off our frissons.

You know a serious question is raised by all of this.

Look at the leftists who run the government at present. Then look at the leftists who run television news (other than FOX). Then look at the leftists who inhabit most of the dead-tree media like the New York Times and Washington Post.

Nancy Pelosi. . . Katie Couric. . . Harry Reid. . . Keith Olbermann. . . Jimmy Carter. . . Mary Landreiu. . . Al Sharpton. . . Barny Frank. . . John Kerry. . . I could go on, and on, and on, and on. But you get the point.

And let's not forget the emptiest of all empty suits - Barrack Hussein Obama. A man of absolutely no accomplishment - other than being a light skinned negro who could talk like a white man when he wanted to (that's what Reid actually meant).

A bigger collection of idiots you could not ask for.

Transparently stupid people.

The question is how did such a confederacy of dunces get so much power? How did people who are such obvious morons come to dominate the mainstream media, the educational establishment - including the most elite universities, and the United States government?

Dirty Bomb Diaries, episode 10

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

IF YOU CAN FIND A BETTER DEAL, TAKE IT!
by Ann Coulter
January 6, 2010

Someone mentioned Christianity on television recently and liberals reacted with their usual howls of rage and blinking incomprehension.

On a Fox News panel discussing Tiger Woods, Brit Hume said, perfectly accurately:

"The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

Hume's words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals' copious ignorance of Christianity. (Also illustrating the words of the Bible: "How is it you do not understand me when I speak? It is because you cannot bear to listen to my words." John 8:43.)

In The Washington Post, Tom Shales demanded that Hume apologize, saying he had "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."

Is Buddhism about forgiveness? Because, if so, Buddhists had better start demanding corrections from every book, magazine article and blog posting ever written on the subject, which claims Buddhists don't believe in God, but try to become their own gods.

I can't imagine that anyone thinks Tiger's problem was that he didn't sufficiently think of himself as a god, especially after that final putt in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last year.

In light of Shales' warning Hume about "what people are saying" about him, I hope Hume's a Christian, but that's not apparent from his inarguable description of Christianity. Of course, given the reaction to his remarks, apparently one has to be a regular New Testament scholar to have so much as a passing familiarity with the basic concept of Christianity.

On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the "separation of church and television" (a phrase that also doesn't appear in the Constitution), bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity "out-of-the-blue" on "a political talk show."

Why on earth would Hume mention religion while discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!

What religion -- what topic -- induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him his own show on MSNBC.)

Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage's indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity "offers the best deal -- it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just can't."

In fact, that's exactly what Christianity does. It's the best deal in the universe. (I know it seems strange that a self-described atheist and "radical sex advice columnist faggot" like Savage would miss the central point of Christianity, but there it is.)

God sent his only son to get the crap beaten out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you're in. Your sins are washed away from you -- sins even worse than adultery! -- because of the cross.

"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." Colossians 2:14.

Surely you remember the cross, liberals -- the symbol banned by ACLU lawsuits from public property throughout the land?

Christianity is simultaneously the easiest religion in the world and the hardest religion in the world.

In the no-frills, economy-class version, you don't need a church, a teacher, candles, incense, special food or clothing; you don't need to pass a test or prove yourself in any way. All you'll need is a Bible (in order to grasp the amazing deal you're getting) and probably a water baptism, though even that's disputed.

You can be washing the dishes or walking your dog or just sitting there minding your business hating Susan Sarandon and accept that God sent his only son to die for your sins and rise from the dead ... and you're in!

"Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9.

If you do that, every rotten, sinful thing you've ever done is gone from you. You're every bit as much a Christian as the pope or Billy Graham.

No fine print, no "your mileage may vary," no blackout dates. God ought to do a TV spot: "I'm God Almighty, and if you can find a better deal than the one I'm offering, take it."

The Gospel makes this point approximately 1,000 times. Here are a few examples at random:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." Ephesians 2:8.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23.

In a boiling rage, liberals constantly accuse Christians of being "judgmental." No, we're relieved.

Christianity is also the hardest religion in the world because, if you believe Christ died for your sins and rose from the dead, you have no choice but to give your life entirely over to Him. No more sexual promiscuity, no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no killing inconvenient old people or unborn babies -- no doing what all the other kids do.

And no more caring what the world thinks of you -- because, as Jesus warned in a prophecy constantly fulfilled by liberals: The world will hate you.

With Christianity, your sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean and your eternal life is guaranteed through nothing you did yourself, even though you don't deserve it. It's the best deal in the universe.

COPYRIGHT 2009 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

One of the best measures of the sincerity of a professing Christians faith is found in their ability to clearly and forcefully articulate basic Gospel truth.

How's that global warming working out for you?

From American Thinker:

This past week, I was having lunch at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan when my colleague noticed Al and Tipper Gore dining across the room with another couple. It was a frigid day, with record-breaking temperatures keeping most people indoors, and we were the last two tables in the restaurant.

As the Gore party started walking out of the room, my colleague called out, "Hey, Al, how's all that global warming working out for you?" Gore turned around and stared at us with a completely dumbfounded look on his face. He was speechless. With a smile, my colleague repeated the question, again to a hapless look of dismay.

Finally, Gore mumbled under his breath, "Wow, you sound awfully angry." I responded with a thank you, explaining to him that we were actually extremely amused. The encounter concluded with Gore's friend mouthing a very animated "f--- you" at us, and they skulked away. My only regret is that no one at the table asked Gore, "What's the matter? The polar bear's got your tongue?"

What struck me the most about this meeting was Gore's complete inability to utter a sentence addressing his life's work. The former Vice President, Nobel Prize laureate, and Academy Award-winning producer standing before us was a moron, unable to articulate a simple comeback to address all that he has stood for since leaving office. He could have simply ignored us and kept walking, as he does with reporters, but by stopping and standing there dumbstruck, he looked like a fool.

Go read the rest.

Al Gore is a fool and a moron.

And he is a liar and the biggest victim of his lies is himself.

Gore went into his climate alarmism as a true believer but when facts began to contradict his human-caused global warming worldview he found himself too deeply embedded in the climate change hoax to easily extricate himself without acute embarrassment.

That and the fact that his carbon trading company is worth billions in a world which regards man-caused global warming to be a real as serious crisis and nothing in a world that realizes that all climate change is driven by factors totally outside man's control (like the sun).

When presented with two ideas is is human nature to want to believe the one which best serves one's self interest. It takes intelligence, courage and a commitment to the truth to be able to recognize when the idea which harms you is the correct one and to still champion that truth despite its negative affects upon your personal situation.

Al Gore's radical overnight transformation from conservative Southern Democrat when he was a Senator from Tennessee to left-wing activist when asked to be Bill Clinton's running-mate shows that he has no commitment to the truth.

Was he always a left-wing nutjob who was only pretending to be conservative because that it what is necessary to be elected in Tennessee or is he still a conservative Southern Democrat at heart who only parrots the leftist shtick because that's where the money is?

Gore's swallowing of the human-caused global warming junk science hook, line and sinker shows he is not possessed of any particular intelligence.

We must transport ourselves back in time to the very infancy of the global warming hoax. Back to a time before avowing belief in global warming was required to gain employment in the scientific community and before research supporting global warming was the key to almost limitless grant money.

Back in those early days the prevailing theory on climate was that the earth was on the verge of entering a new ice age and the idea that man was causing the planet to burn up by driving cars was correctly seen as the crackpot ravings of the new generation of Immanuel Velikovsky or Trofim Lysenko- style pseudo-scientists.

As for courage, or Gore's absolute lack of it, we need only remember the incident in Gore's first vice-presidential campaign in which he made his wife grovel before a collection of record compayn executives and apologize for her book in which she attacked the entertainment industry for the cultural degradation it was fostering on our society.

Al Gore is a man who finds himself totally identified and financially dependent upon an ideology which is crumbling around him. As each new revelation about the gigantic fraud which global warming has always been surfaces as more and more members of the scientific community attempt to get out in front of the crisis by jumping off the climate change bandwagon Gore just sinks deeper and deeper into denial.

Clinical psychologists tell us that when a person retreats this far from reality that the moment in which they can no longer avoid admitting the truth can be extraordinarily traumatic with outbursts of violence, suicidal behavior or a complete collapse into catatonia as the person simply refuses to deal with reality on any level.

If Gore is ever to face such a "moment of truth" it will probably only come when his carbon-trading business ventures have failed and he is besieged with shareholder suits alleging that he had known that global warming was a fraud before he began these businesses (if you want to pin down the exact moment Gore came to the realization that global warming theory couldn't hold water it would probably be when he started refusing to debate the issue).

It will be interesting to see how Mr. Gore reacts when reality comes knocking too loudly to ignore.

Dirty Bomb Diaries, Episode 9