Go Nuclear

I found this on Frontpage Magazine:

The ongoing energy crisis – with skyrocketing prices, short supplies and growing environmental concerns – has again brought to the fore the advantages of nuclear power. With zero carbon footprint and abundant fuel supply, nuclear energy is not only relatively inexpensive but also the most environmentally friendly means of electricity generation.

Many advanced countries have long structured their energy policy around this fact. Leading the way is France which derives nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. It is followed by Lithuania (72%), Belgium (54%) and Sweden (52%). Other developed nations that get a substantial portion of their electricity from this source include Switzerland (40%), Germany (32%), Czech Republic (31%), Japan (30%), Finland (27%) and North Korea (26%).

Not content to lag behind, many developing nations are now also taking the atomic road to address their energy needs. New reactors are being constructed in China, Russia, India, Brazil, Romania, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan among others.

But while the world is increasingly going nuclear, the United States is falling behind. Today nuclear energy accounts for only 18% of our electricity production, a decline from the early 1990s when the figure was well over 20%. The explanation is simple: No new reactor has been built in this country in nearly 30 years.

For many years now it has been impossible to build a nuclear plant in America, as every such project is opposed – often hysterically – on safety grounds. Not surprisingly, since after many years of relentless propaganda many people believe that a nuclear reactor is a ticking bomb which can potentially set off a disaster of catastrophic proportions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular perception, nuclear power is the safest method of electricity generation. And even though the possibility of disaster is routinely given as the reason for not building, accidents are extremely rare. In fact, there have been only two notable ones since the inception of the atomic age. Their impact, however, has been enormous, for they have been passed off as “evidence” of nuclear power’s unsafeness. This is truly unfortunate, since any honest evaluation leads to the opposite conclusion.

The most serious accident on record took place in the nuclear facility near the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, then part of the former Soviet Union. On April 26, 1986 an explosion took place in the plant’s number four reactor and was followed by a massive release of radioactive material. The initial flare-up claimed 54 lives. Four thousand more died in subsequent years as a result of exposure, mostly from thyroid cancer.

Though Chernobyl is often given as evidence of dangers of nuclear energy, there is virtually no chance that a similar event could take place in the western context. Built in what was essentially an impoverished third-world country which had little respect for human life, the reactor was designed with scant regard for safety and most rudimentary safeguards were omitted in order to save money and meet deadlines. During construction, paperwork was falsified to show that non-existent safety devices were in place. To give an idea of the carelessness involved, bitumen – a combustible material – was used in the construction of the reactor building and the turbine hall.

To make things worse, in the mid-eighties the Soviet Union was teetering on the brink of collapse and lacked the financial resources to conduct proper maintenance. Finally, the unsafe situation was further exacerbated by the kind of overt negligence that is endemic in state-run enterprises.

Contrary to what most people think, the Chernobyl disaster was not caused by an explosion of nuclear material. The initial event was a steam explosion which tore the roof from the reactor and exposed its nuclear core. Because of the gross heedlessness in design and construction, the reactor had no containment vessels to capture the escaping radioactivity. Containment vessels have always been a standard feature of reactor designs, but the cash-strapped Soviet regime did not consider them necessary. Had they been in place, the amount of radioactive material released would have been significantly smaller.

Of the subsequent 4000 deaths most could have been prevented had the Soviet government promptly evacuated the nearby communities. The communist leadership, however, refused to notify its citizens of the danger and for days denied that anything happened at all. It thus needlessly and criminally exposed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to excessive levels of radiation.

Rather than an indictment of nuclear power, Chernobyl was from beginning to end a classic case of communist incompetence and malfeasance. As such this event is irrelevant to safety considerations in a western setting.

The only serious accident in a western nuclear facility occurred in the United States. In March 1979, one of two reactors at the Three Mile Island Generation Station in Pennsylvania experienced a partial core meltdown. The chain of events began so inconspicuously that it took operators many hours before they realized that anything had gone amiss, but once the incident became known the coverage bordered on hysteria.

A number of “experts” came forth evoking cataclysmic scenarios. Environmental and peace activists joined hands to demonize nuclear power as dangerous and destructive. The frenzied coverage combined with fantastic claims made a deep impression. In the months and years that followed books, movies and songs were written about the incident. Bruce Springsteen put out a tune called “Roulette” and Jimmy Buffett sang "I don't want to land on no Three Mile Island/Don't want to see my skin a-glow."

But amidst all the hysteria and alarmism, one important fact seemed to escape general notice: No one was killed as a result of this supposedly catastrophic event. Not only there were zero fatalities, there was not one injury. Jimmy Buffet’s reference to glowing skin notwithstanding, not a single person was exposed to a dangerous degree of radiation. Among some 25,000 people who lived in the close vicinity of the site no one was harmed in any way. A government study found that “there will either be no case of cancer or the number of cases will be so small that it will never be possible to detect them. The same conclusion applies to the other possible health effects.”

The absence of injuries should not surprise given the limited extent of the initial explosion and the fact that only a small amount of dangerous radioactive substances escaped. Because of this, the damage was almost wholly confined to the plant site.

It is a lasting testament to the mendacity of foes of atomic energy that the frenzy they whipped up was a major factor in stopping its development in the United States. Thanks to their hysterical claims public support for nuclear power dropped from 70% before the accident to 50% afterwards.

The World Nuclear Association describes the devastating impact this event had on America’s nuclear industry:

Nuclear developments in the USA suffered a major setback after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, though that actually validated the very conservative design principles of western reactors, and no one was injured or exposed to harmful radiation. Many orders and projects were cancelled or suspended, and the nuclear construction industry went into the doldrums for two decades.

That even with no fatalities, no injuries and no great environmental damage the Three Miles Island accident is the most serious event involving a nuclear plant in the West is a powerful testimony to the extraordinary safeness of atomic power. In the course of more than 40 years of civilian nuclear power generation by more than 400 western-built reactors no one was ever killed or even injured by a radiation leak. Those isolated casualties that did take place were invariably a result of general occupational hazards common to all industries.

Statistics and studies consistently show that nuclear power is the safest method of electricity generation both for those directly involved and the general public. One of the most in-depth and comprehensive surveys on this subject was conducted by the University of East Anglia in the early 90s. It studied fatalities in the United States and Great Britain which occurred as a result of primary energy production in the period between 1970 and 1992. The record shows that fatalities were highest in the coal industry (6400) followed by hydro power (4000) and natural gas (1200). At 31 deaths the nuclear industry posted the lowest figure by far. The number was in fact 40 times lower than that of the next safest method. All 31 were workers on facilities and – it bears repeating – not one died as a result of radiation. This means that not a single member of the general public was ever killed or harmed by civilian nuclear energy.

This phenomenal safety record is due to the extreme care with which nuclear plants are constructed and operated. Western type reactors are built to the highest standards based on stringent safety requirements, advanced designs, careful workmanship and best materials. They invariably incorporate multiple levels of safety redundancies and utilize diverse systems for fault detection. Each safety system usually has more than one backup and is designed to accommodate human errors. Today’s reactors are built in such a way that even the most serious type of accident – the meltdown of the nuclear core – is to be contained wholly within the plant site without the need for evacuating nearby residents. Such is the care exercised in the construction of an average nuclear reactor that safety systems account for about one quarter of its capital cost.

Despite the industry’s superb record, nuclear power is still seen by many people as inherently dangerous. This perception runs completely contrary to reality and is a result of the lies and distortions that have been spread about this subject.

It is one of the great ironies of our time as well as a masterstroke of political demagoguery that safety concerns have been used to stop the development of the safest source of energy in the United States. It is time to rationally assess the facts and reverse this situation. It is time to resume the development of nuclear energy in this country.

I couldn't agree more. I cannot see why America is generating so much as one volt of electric power by any means other than nuclear. Oil, natural gas and coal are needed for motor fuel. There is no reason to waste them in electric power production.

Once again we find that a bad situation is the fault of the left. The hysteria the environmentalists and their bought dogs in the Jackass party have created has set the United States back decades.

Is this the best they have?!?

ST. PAUL: A series of disclosures about Governor Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain's choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state's public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990 of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Todd Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

Taking these in order:

A 17-year-old girl gets pregnant. As the lovely and gracious Pamela Geller noted on her blog Atlas Shrugs:

"What can the left say? That Palin's daughter was loose? ha! Does anyone have a clue how difficult it is to raise children, daughters, in this cultural cesspool that the left (Hollywood and the music industry) has wrought? Spin through the channels. It is impossible to find G or PG13 fare. Every show has its "alternative" message that not only must be tolerated, it should be celebrated! Drug dealing mothers, glam lesbians, teenage sex, all of it all the time. And it's not just the content, its the commercials. Have you seen those condom ads on MTV? Everything the left produces has a porn, drug, morally bankrupt message."

Would the left prefer that the young woman go to an abortion mill and have the child chopped to pieces and sucked into a jar?

Yes, they would. I almost forgot it was the left we were talking about.

If the Jackass party really wants to talk moral failures lets remember that Barney Frank was running a gay prostitution ring out of his Washington apartment.

Palin has a lawyer because her enemies have trumped up an investigation about her conduct. Only an idiot thinks that just because you are innocent that you don't need council. The left had no problem with Bill Clinton not only having a lawyer but raising millions for his legal defense fund.

Remember that Palin is a reform governor who took on a corrupt establishment (a consistent theme of her entire political career). Corrupt establishments do not go down without a fight.

[S]he was a member for two years in the 1990 of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede. Good for her!

There isn't a damn word in the Constitution about secession and since the powers not expressly granted to the federal government are reserved to the people and the states it ought to be possible for states to leave the Union. Think about how much less of our freedom and wealth Washington would steal if they knew that entire states could vote with their feet.

Todd Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge. Wow, only 22 years ago! Ted Kennedy gets drunk and runs his car off of a bridge with a young woman inside. He abandons her even though she was still alive and swims to shore. He sneaks home and spends hours trying to line up an alibi by attempting to convince someone to claim that they were driving the car instead of him. After several hours he finally calls the cops. When they find the car the police divers see that the young woman's body is contorted in a position that indicates that she was pushing her face into the last remaining air pocket in the car. This means that she was alive and aware for possibly the better part of an hour. Time she spent hoping that the monster who put her into this position would have enough honor and decency - enough of a human soul - to come back or send someone back to save her.

And this "man" gets to be the "liberal lion of the Senate".

Notice how utterly tone-deaf the left is. I mean talk about people in glass houses throwing stones!

This is like Obama (the man with 143 days in the Senate who has never chaired even one meeting of the committee he is supposed to be heading) saying that Palin is inexperienced - even though she has more executive experience that Obama and Biden put together.


UPDATE: I want to be clear that I'm not playing the "everybody does it" game. That is Democrat territory and I won't soil myself by going there.

What I am doing is pointing out the Mickey Mouse nature of the left's case against Palin and their hypocrisy and double standard. Bristol Palin and her finance made a common moral error and the party which was willing to fight to the death to defend Bill Clinton after he was caught committing adultery with a woman young enough to be his daughter in the Oval Office wants to make an issue of it. See, both irrelevancy and hypocrisy in one package - how efficient.

The same is true as you go down the list. The candidate's spouse has a DUI more than two decades ago and the party which allows Ted Kennedy to be a leader wants to draw attention to it. If Todd Palin had a record of multiple DUI's it would indicate that he was an out of control alcoholic who could be a potential security risk. But one incident decades in the past indicates a man who screwed up once and learned his lesson. Again the left combines massive hypocrisy with the desperation of bringing up a non-issue.

As for Palin's membership in a political party which advocated secession note the fact that she left the party after just two years. Democrats allow Robert Byrd to occupy a leadership position in their party even though he was involved with the Ku Klux Klan for at least five years. Again they raise a non-issue and couple it with the rankest hypocrisy. You'd think these dimwits would learn when to keep their mouths shut.

The ethics investigation sounds less Mickey Mouse than the other issues, but it isn't. Palin fired someone whom she had every legal right to fire. And she didn't even attempt to frame him for felonies and have him sent to federal prison! Again, the party which formed a protective ring around the Clintons during the Travel Office scandal has eternally lost the moral right to even comment about this kind of issue.

I say again that if this is the worst the Jackass party can find about Palin I think we are seeing the woman who will become the nations first female president.

New York to recognize homosexual "marriages"

From The New York Times:

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

In a directive issued on May 14, the governor’s legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere “should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union.”

The revisions are most likely to involve as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses.

In a videotaped message given to gay community leaders at a dinner on May 17, Mr. Paterson described the move as “a strong step toward marriage equality.” And people on both sides of the issue said it moved the state closer to fully legalizing same-sex unions in this state.

What will be interesting to see is how the people of New York state receive this bit of news. Legalized homosexual "marriage" is the harbinger of the death of the institution of true marriage. It is not that the sight of two men or two women standing at the alter will cause a heterosexual couple to divorce, or not marry in the first place. Rather it is that when a culture's moral values degenerate to the point where it is willing to redefine marriage in that way it is an infallible signal that marriage is no longer truly valued.

Society is nothing more than a complex network of human relationships. Since marriage is the foundational relationship weakening it serves to weaken the entire society. Imagine if the reinforced concrete which makes up the foundation of the Empire State Building were to be replaced with sandstone. The results would look like the aftermath of 9/11.

In every case in the US in which a state has legalized homosexual marriage, or in this case recognized same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, it has not come as a result of a referendum in which the people were allowed to vote on the issue directly. Nor has it come about because a state legislature, composed of the elected representatives of the people, has voted on the issue.

In every case it is the judiciary which has imposed homosexual marriage on an unwilling population. In every state where the people have had the opportunity to speak directly on the issue they have rejected homosexual marriage by large margins. This indicates that the moral rot has not spread so far that our culture is beyond repair. However effective steps must be taken to rein in these out of control judges.

I want the TRUTH!

I demand an investigation into the symbiotic relationship which BIG OIL has with left-wing politicians and environmental activists!

Even a child can understand the effect that the law of supply and demand has upon price. If demand rises without an accompanying rise in supply price will rise. If demand falls without an accompanying reduction in supply the price will fall.

What has happened in the oil market is that the developed world has continued to grow, increasing their demand for oil, while the economies of China and India have exploded. Those two nations are busy building a massive industrial infrastructure with the accompanying need for electrification.

This has resulted in a sharp increase in the demand for petroleum. However the world supply of petroleum has not increased to match that increased demand. Therefore consumers are bidding up the price of the now scarce commodity.

Marginal reductions in demand are possible through conservation however marginal reductions in demand only yield marginal reductions in price and are overwhelmed by the ever increasing demand from Asia.

The obvious answer to the problem of high oil prices, and the high gasoline and diesel and heating oil prices that go with higher per-barrel prices for crude oil, is a dramatic increase in supply. Since most OPEC nations' only export is petroleum it is not in their interest to do anything to reduce the price of oil, at least not by much.

The best way for the American consumer to get relief at the pump would be for America to increase its own oil production. This can be easily accomplished by removing the legal restrictions on drilling in Alaska and on the continental shelf in the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. Removing the legal obstacles to the mining of oil shale and coal would give the confidence they need to invest the billions which would be required to bring coal liquefaction technology to the US and begin exploring the most efficient way of extracting the oil from shale.

I have heard that coal liquefaction and oil shale extraction both require a per-barrel price of $75.00 to be profitable. The price of crude is currently over $130.00 per barrel. The time to begin drilling and mining would seem to be now since within 10 to 15 years the US could more than double the world's supplies of oil. However the domestic oil companies are currently reaping massive profits from the increased world price of crude and if we began exploiting our domestic resources that would reduce the world price of crude to $75.00 per barrel and lock it in until advances in technology brought the price down even more.

Right now BIG OIL is making money hand over fist and the only downside for them is bad will from consumers, which they cannot do anything about, and the prospect of a "windfall profits tax" being imposed on them by politicians. However any kind of tax is simply a cost of doing business which they will happily pass on to the consumer.

So it is not in BIG OIL's interest to increase supply and who is providing them with a ready-made excuse not to develop our domestic reserves? No one but the left-wing Democrats in the United States congress (and some turncoat Republicans like John McCain)!

THAT'S RIGHT! The lunatic fringe environmentalists and their bought and paid for Democrat lapdogs in congress are IN BED WITH BIG OIL in a conspiracy to fleece the American consumer in order to line the pockets of the DNC, The Sierra Club and DICK CHENEY'S BUDDIES IN THE OIL BUSINESS!!!!!!!!

I demand that politicans like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer be put UNDER OATH and forced to explain why they are doing the bidding of BIG OIL and helping BIG OIL steal from their constituents in order to increase the already obscene profits of DICK CHENEY'S BUDDIES IN THE OIL BUSINESS!!!!!!!

When did the Democrat party and the environmental lobby go on BIG OIL's payroll? How much are DICK CHENEY'S BUDDIES IN THE OIL BUSINESS paying Al Gore to spread his global warming alarmism?

The American people have a right to know!

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

You always know you've struck gold when liberals react with hysteria and rage to something you've said. So I knew President Bush's speech at the Knesset last week was a barn burner before even I read it. Liberals haven't been this worked up since Rev. Jerry Falwell criticized a cartoon sponge.

Calling the fight against terrorism "the defining challenge of our time" -- which already confused liberals who think the defining struggle of our time is against Wal-Mart -- Bush said:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The way liberals squealed, you'd think someone had mentioned Obama's ears. Summoning all their womanly anger, today's Neville Chamberlains denounced Bush, saying this was an unjustified attack on Obambi and, furthermore, that it's absurd to compare B. Hussein Obama's willingness to "talk" to Ahmadinejad to Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler.

Unlike liberals, I will honestly report their point before I attack it.

The New York Times editorialized: "Sen. Obama has called for talking with Iran and Syria," but has not "suggested surrendering to these countries' demands, which is, after all, what appeasement is."

"Hardball's" Chris Matthews gloated all week about nailing a conservative talk radio host with this brilliant riposte: "You don't understand there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Neville Chamberlain did wrong ... is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia."

Liberals think all real tyrants ended with Hitler and act as if they would have known all along not to appease him. Next time is always different for people who refuse to learn from history. As Air America's Mark Green said: "Look, Hitler was Hitler." (Which, I admit, threw me for a loop: I thought Air America's position is that Bush is Hitler.)

This is nonsense. Ahmadinejad looks a lot like Hitler did when Chamberlain agreed to meet with him at Munich, except that Hitler didn't buy his suits from ratty thrift shops. Much of England reacted just as today's Democrats would because, like today's Democrats, they feared nothing more than another war. (Lloyd George lied, kids died!)

Lots of Britons cheered when Chamberlain returned from Munich and announced "peace in our time." Without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, what on earth makes Chris Matthews think he would not be among them?

As Bush said at the Knesset, "There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words." That was Chamberlain. And that is today's Democratic Party.

What Matthews and the Times are saying is this: We can have a Munich, but we promise to be tougher than Chamberlain was. Therein lies the flaw in their logic. Yes, in the abstract, it is technically possible to "talk" without giving up Czechoslovakia (or in today's case, Iraq or Israel).

But in reality, when talking to a lunatic without having first bombed him into submission, the only possible result is appeasement. Any talk with Hitler, or a McHitler like Ahmadinejad, that does not include handing over Czechoslovakia or Israel, like a game show parting gift, is going to be a relatively brief chat.

Churchill knew that before Chamberlain went to Munich. But a lot of Britons then, like a lot of Americans today, refused to see that blindingly obvious point.

Liberals think the way to deal with dangerous tyrants is to send in a sensitive president who will make Ahmadinejad fall in love with him. They imagine Obama becoming Ahmadinejad's psychotherapist, like Barbra Streisand in "The Prince of Tides."

President Bush described such people perfectly with his reference to Sen. William Edgar Borah, the one who said World War II could have been avoided if only he could have talked to Hitler.

Liberals refuse to learn from history because they put their hands over their ears and tell themselves over and over again: "Hitler was different."

Miss Ann really nails this one. If you speak the truth about left-liberals they scream that you are unfairly attacking them in the most mean-spirited and hateful way possible. The louder they scream the more truthful you know you've been.

Of course leftists love to appease tyrants. Chamberlain gave away half of Czechoslovakia at Munich, FDR gave away Eastern Europe at Yalta and Carter handed all of Iran over to the Ayatollah Khomeini and then gave Nicaragua to the Sandinistas (who were Soviet puppets).

It is the nature of the leftist to grovel before the tyrant because the leftist secretly envies the tyrant his unbridled exercise of power.

Congress wants to sue OPEC

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

What wretched and detestable hypocrites these politicians are and how utterly contemptibly stupid they are.

Hypocrites because they have no one to blame for the current price of a barrel of oil or a gallon of gasoline but themselves. By becoming the lapdogs of the lunatic fringe environmentalists they have locked up America's domestic oil reserves where the oil companies can't get to them. They have given in to the stupid fears of a pig-ignorant public who allowed themselves to be panicked by a bad movie into fearing nuclear power.

Stupid because they think that they can pass laws in Washington which will bind sovereign nations. Or perhaps they merely think that the general public is dumb enough to think that just because the US government passes a law that OPEC nations will be somehow required to obey it.

Either way they have once again proven how totally and completely worthless they are for any good purpose.

I'm beginning to think that the only thing that can save this nation is a military coup.

Sweetheart, all you have to do is look pretty and say your lines

And leave the thinking to folks with brains.

Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard was facing embarrasment with her new American public last night after it emerged that she doubted the official account of the September 11 attacks.

The 32-year-old French star has swept this year’s best actress awards, also receiving a Bafta, Golden Globe and a César for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.

Miss Cotillard, who earned under £1 million in 2007, could expect her Oscar success to significantly increase her earning power. She is due to start filming Public Enemies with Johnny Depp.

But the actress faces a potential backlash in the US over comments she made in an interview in France. Footage which surfaced on the internet showed her questioning the New York terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the 1969 moon landing.

"I think we’re lied to about a number of things," she said, singling out September 11.

Referring to the two passenger jets flown into the World Trade Centre, Miss Cotillard said: "We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours.

It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."

Miss Cotillard suggested that the towers, planned in the early 1960s, were an outdated "money sucker" which would have cost so much to modernise that it was easier to destroy them.

Turning to America’s space programme, she said: "Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure."

Miss Cotillard, who was born and brought up in Paris, made the comments on Paris Première – Paris Dernière (Paris First – Paris Last), a programme first broadcast a year ago.

They were largely ignored at the time, but appeared yesterday on a French website. Miss Cotillard’s film career began in Luc Besson’s 1998 film Taxi. She is an environmental activist, who once worked as a spokeswoman for Greenpeace.

News of Miss Cotillard’s comments comes at a time when Franco-American relations appear to be thawing, following Paris’s refusal to support the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

President Nicolas Sarkozy insists that he is pro-American, supporting so-called Anglo-Saxon economic reforms and going on holiday to America.

An environmental activist who worked for Greenpeace. That explains a great deal.

Old man cleared of thought-crime charges

From The Scotsman:

AN ELDERLY taxi driver held in a police cell for 12 hours after he used racist words in front of his white passengers has told of his relief at being cleared of criminal charges.

James Young, 71, was arrested at his home after his passengers reported him to the police, claiming they had been enraged at his insistence on describing Pakistanis in a derogatory way.

The accusations, by the wife and daughter of a former Labour MP, sent the great-grandfather, who has an unblemished record, into a spiral of depression. But yesterday, he walked free from Dundee Sheriff Court after a sheriff threw out the charges, ruling he had no case to answer.

Sheriff Maxwell Hendry said Mr Young's comments had been "undoubtedly embarrassing, annoying and inappropriate", but they did not constitute an offence.

Last night, politicians and campaigners welcomed the decision, describing the determination to prosecute in the first place as "crazy".

However much I love my Scots heritage I am so damn glad my great great great grandparents got on that boat for America.

The fact that the charges were thrown out means that sanity ultimately won the day, but it shouldn't have even had a fight on its hands. The fact that the cops were even willing to go to this guy's house and arrest him because the wife and daughter of some former moonbat (in other words Labor) MP said they heard him say something mean about one of the Muslim immigrants who are destroying Scotland boggles the fraking mind!

Listen up America. If we elect someone like Mrs. Bill Clinton or B. Hussein Obama or the Breck Girl and return San Fran Nan to the Speaker's chair in the House we'll be pushing our own country toward this kind of lunacy.

What a miserable, pathetic, whiny, wretched little turd

From The Buffalo News:

I am 24, live with my parents, can’t find work and am floundering in a sea of debt five figures high. I think of myself as ambitious, independent and hardworking. Now I’m dependent, unemployed and sleeping under the same Super Mario ceiling fan that I did when I was 7.

How did this happen? I did what every upstanding citizen is supposed to do. I went to college. I took out loans so I could enroll at Alfred University, a pricey private school. The next year, I transferred to the more finance-friendly University at Buffalo, where I could commute from home and push carts part-time at Home Depot.

I related my forthcoming debt to puberty or a midlife crisis — each an unavoidable nuisance; tickets required upon admission to the next stage of adulthood. But as interest rates climbed and the cost of tuition, books and daily living mounted to galactic proportions,

I realized this was more than some paltry inconvenience.

Upon graduating, I was helplessly launched headfirst into the “real world,” equipped with a degree in history and $32,000 in student loans. Before ricocheting back home, I would learn two important lessons: 1) There are no well-paying — let alone paying — jobs for history majors. 2) The real world is really tough.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I had no intention of living in a society that was as unfair as this one. To seek a haven devoid of the ruthless 9-to-5 ebb and flow of contemporary America, I moved to Alaska. [He does know that Alaska is a part of the United States, doesn't he? n- LC]

As a liberal arts major, I dreamed of making a profound difference in people’s lives. Instead, for a year, I lived in Coldfoot, a town north of the Arctic Circle that resembles a Soviet Gulag camp. My job as a tour guide for visitors temporarily alleviated my money woes because it provided room and board, but when the season ended and I moved back home, I was again confronted with the grim realities of debt.

Desperate, I browsed through insurance and bank job descriptions. I had hit an all-time low. Could I surrender my soul for health coverage and a steady income? Could I sacrifice my ideals by falling into line?

Suddenly, living at home didn’t seem nearly as degrading as selling out. But sadly, other graduates don’t have any choice but to work for temp agencies and retail stores to eke by.

That’s the tragedy of student debt: it doesn’t just limit what we do, but who we become. Forget volunteering. Forget traveling. Forget trying to improve your country, or yourself. You’ve got bills to pay, young man.

Unfortunately, the recent passage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act doesn’t portend that times are a-changin’. The act reduces interest rates on Stafford Loans and increases Pell Grant awards. Whoopty-do.

There’s no question that this is a step forward. But we’re still talking pennies and nickels when we need to completely revolutionize the government’s role in financing post-secondary education.

College is a wonderful experience and something every young citizen should pursue. But without help, a college education is becoming an unaffordable rite of passage and a privilege of the affluent.

My loan payments can’t wait much longer, and soon I must leave home to find work that doesn’t compromise my integrity. Although I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I had declared as an accounting major and got a cushy job punching numbers somewhere, I’ll take my history major, my debt and my mom’s cooking any day of the week.

Cry me a fraking river you worthless sack of feces. Of course what it all comes down to is that this stick of shit wants everybody else to pay for his education so that he can "volunteer", "travel" and try to "improve the country" (translation: have lots of time off to engage in left-wing activism and go to all the trendy protests). I'll bet it really burned him up to have to be working for a living in Alaska during the glory days at Camp Casey.

There are few things in this world that enrage me more than a sense of entitlement. What has this pointless little smear of snot wiped on the bottom of a theater seat done to deserve the right to stick his snout in the public swill-bucket? What has this putrid urine stain on the tiles of a bus station men's room done to give him the right to stick his hand in my wallet to finance his life of ease?

Listen up Mr. Ilgunas if you want my money then either produce something I want to buy or have the balls to come to my house and try to take it from me by force PERSONALLY rather than having the government to send goons out to do it for you.

H/T: KisP

Moral Leprosy

I found this over on Knowledge is Power:

Seventy years before this week’s invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Columbia rolled out the red carpet for a senior official of Adolf Hitler’s regime. The invitation to Iran’s leader may seem less surprising, but no less disturbing, when one recalls that in 1933, Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler invited Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, to speak on campus, and also hosted a reception for him. Luther represented “the government of a friendly people,” Butler insisted. He was “entitled to be received ... with the greatest courtesy and respect.” Ambassador Luther’s speech focused on what he characterized as Hitler’s peaceful intentions. Students who criticized the Luther invitation were derided as “ill-mannered children” by the director of Columbia’s Institute of Arts and Sciences.

Columbia also insisted on maintaining friendly relations with Nazi-controlled German universities. While Williams College terminated its program of student exchanges with Nazi Germany, Columbia and other universities declined to do likewise. Columbia refused to pull out even after a German official candidly asserted that his country’s students were being sent abroad to serve as “political soldiers of the Reich.”

In 1936, the Columbia administration announced it would send a delegate to Nazi Germany to take part in the 550th anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg. This, despite the fact that Heidelberg already had been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum, and hosted a burning of books by Jewish authors. Prof. Arthur Remy, who served as Columbia’s delegate to the Heidelberg event, later remarked that the reception at which chief book-burner Josef Goebbels presided was “very enjoyable.”

I guess the more things change the more they stay the same. The question is why would any parent spend a dime to send their children to that cesspit?

But you expect cravenness from a movie studio

Say it ain't so, G.I. Joe.

The popular all-American comic-book military man and action figure dating back to the 1940s is undergoing a significant transformation for the Paramount Pictures-distributed "G.I. Joe" film, which begins production in February and is scheduled for release in summer 2009.

No longer will G.I. Joe be a U.S. Special Forces soldier, the "Real American Hero" who, in his glory days, single-handedly won World War II.

In the politically correct new millennium, G.I. Joe bears no resemblance to the original.

Paramount has confirmed that in the movie, the name G.I. Joe will become an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity" — an international, coed task force charged with defeating bad guys. It will no longer stand for government issued, as in issued by the American government.

The studio won't elaborate, saying filming hasn't begun and details are still in the works, but the behind-the-scenes rumblings are that the producers have decided to change the nature of G.I. Joe in order to appeal to a wider, more international audience.

The word is that in the current political climate, they're afraid that a heroic U.S. soldier won't fly.


The people that they are worried about offending can't be American leftists because they wouldn't let their children play with any kind of military toy no matter what nation it was associated with. The market they must be trying to reach is Western Europe.


The very same Western Europe that would this very day be clicking its heels and saluting the Swastika if it weren't for the real life GI Joes.

Hillbilly White Trash is honored

To be in some damn fine company!

It seems that a website run by a certain Christian minister has compiled a list of Internet sites which spread various types of "hate speech". These sites have been banned by various nations such as (but not limited to) Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Red China, Iran, North Korea, Palestinian Territories, Sudan, Vietnam, Yemen.

Of course there are also nations on the list which are not evil but have simply signed the cultural suicide pact of political correctness, however the fact that the good reverend proudly lists North Korea (which seeks to keep its people from learning the truth about life outside North Korea) alongside Israel (which bans neo-Nazi and antisemitic websites) and apparently sees no difference between them informs us that the gentleman suffers from what has to be the worst case of malfunctioning spiritual discernment since some members of the German Protestant clergy endorsed Hitler.

Let me go on record as being proud as peaches to be included alongside websites like:

The Family Research Council

Regnery Publishing, publishers of Laura Ingrham, Jed Babbin, Robert Spencer, Rowan Scarborough, G. Gordon Liddy, John R. Lott, Jr., Russell Kirk, Mark R. Levin, David Limbaugh, Mark Steyn, Haley Barbour, Michael Barone, Bill Gertz, Bernard Goldberg, David Horowitz, Oliver L. North, Dinesh D’Souza, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Steve Forbes and many others.

Discover the Networks

Jihad Watch

Gathering of Eagles

Front Page Magazine

Heritage Foundation

NewsBusters

Washington Times

WorldNetDaily

Ann Coulter

DC Protest Warrior Home Page

Michael Medved

Hot Air

National Review

Michelle Malkin

Hugh Hewitt

Atlas Shrugs

AND

Hillbilly White Trash

As you can see someone thinks damned highly of me.

The good reverend warns me and the others listed that:

Hate mongers are going to have to accept, sooner or later, that the world is tired of them, the world has realized how such hatred leads to violence, extremism and terrorism, the world has seen through the motivation of the more prolific haters, and the world is changing to deal with this - previously ignored or seldom-enforced laws and regulations are now being aggressively enforced, new laws are going into effect, and international pressure is being brought to bear on various entities that offer forms of Internet access.

Dude, my advice to you is to go back to telling your congregation how Jesus being THE way, THE truth and THE light is just a load of dogmatic crap. If I changed this blog to make it acceptable to the Stalinists of North Korea or the Whabbi friutcakes of Saudi Arabia or the Shiite nutjobs of Iran I would certainly burn in hell. But I doubt that you believe in hell as anything but the final destination of Republicans so I don't think you'll get my meaning.

ROFLMAO

From al Reuters:

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

The images were reproduced around the world - including by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited - alongside the story of Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Thursday last week.

But it has now emerged that the footage actually showed two Finnish-made Mir submersibles that were employed on location filming at the scene of the wreck of the RMS Titanic ship in the north Atlantic some 10 years ago.

This footage was used in sequences in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster about the 1912 disaster.

The mistake was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.

What this story doesn't reveal is that on the day before the Titanic was due to set sail every Jooo who had booked passage received a phone call warning him/her not to embark on the liner!

H/T: SondraK

Cheney will be in control

From The Washington Post:

Vice President Cheney will assume the presidency on an acting basis today when President Bush undergoes general anesthesia for a routine colon examination, the White House said yesterday.

Bush will transfer powers under the 25th Amendment, which permits the president to voluntarily hand over authority when he is unable to perform his duties. The White House said Cheney will probably be in charge for about 2 1/2 hours while Bush recovers from the effects of the sedative.

Remember the other day when I pointed out that to be a good Muslim you have to simultaneously believe that bin Laden is a hero for bringing down the WTC and that it was an inside job or the work of the Joooos?

Well to be a good left-wing moonbat you must simultaneously believe that the best thing that could happen for the nation is for George W Bush to have a reaction to the anesthesia and die on the table and that the worst thing that could happen to the nation would be for Bush to die and make the satanically evil Dick Cheney the president.