Dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism

If we think the global warming stuff is hype, Gore suggests we're like the Nazis. And now this via James Taranto:

Before they held the White House and Congress, Democrats were constantly complaining that Republicans were "questioning" their "patriotism." ....

But now that Democrats are in power, they are doing what they falsely accused Republicans of doing back then. Politico reports on the latest example:

Henry Waxman, who has had an eventful couple of weeks to say the least, is slamming the House GOP—saying their opposition to climate change legislation and the stimulus indicates they're cheering against the good 'ol U S of A. . . .

"It appears that the Republican party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success—which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country as well," the powerful House Energy and Commerce chairman told WAMU-NPR host Diane Rehm this morning in an hourlong appearance promoting his new book, The Waxman Report.

It is a stretch, to say the least, to equate the president's success in enacting his domestic agenda with "the country." It's a lot less persuasive to charge Republicans with lacking patriotism now than it would have been, say, to make the same charge against Democrats who were openly rooting for American military defeat in Iraq. [more]

Best of the Web Today: Wait 20 Years. Erupt. - WSJ.com

"Like a mighty river..."

Whatever the value of an Ivy League education may be, our president has repeatedly demonstrated that he didn't profit from whatever history he studied. Another example:

Yesterday President Obama spoke at the New Economic School in Moscow. .... In part the speech reiterates themes sounded in his Cairo speech. In part Obama flatters Russia and Russian history, omitting any mention of Soviet tyranny and terror.

The twenty million victims of Stalin's Great Terror are tossed down the memory hole. Instead Obama vaguely alludes to the "old political and economic restrictions" of the Communist past. One is tempted to laugh at the conclusion of his speech: "Russia has cut its way through time like a mighty river through a canyon, leaving an indelible mark on human history as it goes." Is this some kind of a joke? It is really a remarkable performance. ....

Russia certainly did "cut its way through time" — and people — in the last century:

When Obama says prefaces an observation with "make no mistake," a whopper is sure to follow. Here is Obama on the end of the Cold War:

[W]ithin a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: this change did not come from any one nation alone. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.

In his interview with Obama after the speech, Major Garrett asked: "In your speech this morning, you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years. Mr. President, are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say the Cold War was won? The West won it? And it was led by a combination of Democratic and Republican American presidents?"

Obama responded:

Well, listen, the — I think that you just cut out Lech Walesa and the Poles. You just cut out Havel and the Czechs. There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage.

And I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. I'm very proud of the traditions of Democratic and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtain.

But, you know, we don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.

Walesa himself has a somewhat different perspective. In his comments on the death of Ronald Reagan, Walesa wrote: "When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989."

Power Line - Obama's Great Torpor

He'll save the day

JibJab:

Repenting for the acts of others

Rick Moore comments on the unanimous Senate vote apologizing for slavery:

So, a group of people who never owned slaves has apologized to a group of people who never were slaves. Your government in action.

HolyCoast.com: Senate Apologizes for Slavery

Global warming?

Christopher Booker at the Telegraph notices something that appears to escape the attention of many:

For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.

There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people. ....

Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.

It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat. .... [more]

Crops under stress as temperatures fall - Telegraph

Restoring our moral authority?

James Taranto comments on the President's inadequate response to the tyranny in Iran:

A sworn enemy of the United States holds an election that is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham, and the Associated Press reports on President Obama's strongest statement about it to date:

Obama says he believes supreme leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei has deep concerns about the civil unrest that has followed the hotly contested presidential election there.

Obama repeated Tuesday at a news conference his "deep concerns" about the disputed balloting. He said he believes the ayatollah's decision to order an investigation "indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns."

But at the same time, Obama said it would not be helpful if the United States was seen by the world as "meddling" in the issue.

The president did say, however, that he worries "when I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful protest being suppressed."

Wow, he's worried and concerned! It's a good thing he promised not to meddle, or he might have made the ayatollahs cross, even uncomfortable! ....

Even Roger Cohen, until a few hours ago one of the ayatollahs' most loyal shills, thinks the administration's response is unacceptably wimpy--although he tries to blame the vice president and let Obama off the hook:

The United States should also, with its European allies, find stronger means to register repugnance at [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's use of violence and demand some credible accounting of the election result, including an answer to the question of where the ballots are now. Having Vice President Joe Biden say "There is real doubt" about the result is not quite enough.

Calibrating a response that does not give ammunition to the regime by suggesting American interference is delicate--and President Obama has been suitably restrained. But the air of business as usual at the White House is off-key. Millions of defrauded Iranians are thirsting for a little more.

It is very well to choose one's words carefully, but Obama's timidity is shameful. One of the central arguments for electing him president was that he would restore America's "moral authority," supposedly squandered by George W. Bush. But of what use is moral authority to a nation led by a man who is either too indifferent or too frightened to say a word on behalf of what is right?

Best of the Web Today: Silence Me Before I Kill Again - WSJ.com

Where is the United States?

From The Guardian:

.... Witnesses saw at least one person dead and several injured.

Precise figures were not available, but some estimates suggested more than half a million people were involved in the protest against the election "theft". Such large-scale protest has not seen in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"Mousavi we support you! We will die but regain our votes!" shouted supporters, many wearing the green of the moderate's election campaign.

Unconfirmed reports suggested that up to 12 people had also been killed in confrontations between riot police and students in Tehran and the city of Shiraz.

Gunfire was also reported from three areas of north Tehran, although no casualties were confirmed.

The presence of huge crowds on the streets – and reports of other fatalities – appeared to dash earlier hopes that the sporadic unrest of the past three days would fade away in the face of determined action by security forces. ....

Iran uprising turns bloody | World news | The Guardian

Shephard Smith is an idiot

More often than not I watch Fox for national news. I particularly valued Brit Hume's program and have continued to watch it since he retired. If I'm preoccupied I sometimes forget to change channels before Shephard Smith gets started. I also avoid Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly is egotistical and very annoying, but Smith is an idiot. One has the sense that he just doesn't pay much attention to the world, probably doesn't read books or newspapers, and that reading from his teleprompter is often the first time he has seen the words or heard of the story. When he improvises, he comes up with stuff like this, described by Big Hollywood blogger, Dave Konig:

Shephard Smith was doing a report on the Octogenarian Neo Nazi (OctoNazi?) who opened fire at the Holocaust Museum. In a breathtakingly oddball blizzard of profundity Shephard:

1. Cited the OctoNazi attack as yet another example of “intolerance and bigotry” by “a certain segment of the population” who simply cannot “accept that a black man has been elected president”!
2. Held this bizarro incident up as proof that - I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP! - Homeland Defense Secretary Napolitano was right when she issued the report that claimed returning veterans posed a threat of right-wing terrorism in our country. Because OctoNazi was a returning veteran (granted, he returned six and a half decades ago…).

Maybe Shephard is right? OctoNazi was a World War Two vet, so he had over sixty years to stew over his craziness. Lurking out there somewhere there’s got to be a 130 year old veteran of the Spanish American War, filled with over a century of brooding and plotting, ready to launch a domestic terrorist attack to proove that Napolitano and Shephard are on to something!

Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Shephard Smith and Janet Napolitano Sitting in a Tree

Light at the end of the tunnel?

We were told that if the "stimulus" spending did not occur, disaster would strike. The blue portions of the chart were prepared by Obama's economic advisers. Trillions of dollars later the maroon dots chart the actual unemployment.

click on the image for a larger version.

Bacon butter

From Sleeper:

Dr. Melik: (listing items Miles had requested for breakfast) "... wheat germ, organic honey, and... Tiger's Milk."
Dr. Aragon: "Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties."
Dr. Melik: "You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?"
Dr. Aragon: "Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true."
Dr. Melik: "Incredible!"

Regina Schrambling at Slate - "Lard: After decades of trying, its moment is finally here.":

Wait long enough and everything bad for you is good again. Sugar? Naturally better than high-fructose corn syrup. Chocolate? A bar a day keeps the doctor away. Caffeine? Bring it on.

Lard, however, has always been a ridiculously hard sell. Over at least the last 15 years, it's repeatedly been given a clean bill of health, and good cooks regularly point out how superior this totally natural fat is for frying and pastries. But that hasn't been enough to keep Americans from recoiling—lard's negative connotations of flowing flesh and vats of grease and epithets like lardass and tub of lard have been absurd hurdles. But no longer. I'm convinced that the redemption of lard is finally at hand because we live in a world where trendiness is next to godliness. And lard hits all the right notes, especially if you euphemize it as rendered pork fat—bacon butter.

Lard has clearly won the health debate. Shortening, the synthetic substitute foisted on this country over the last century, has proven to be a much bigger health hazard because it contains trans fats, the bugaboo du jour. .... [more]

Lard: After decades of trying, its moment is finally here. - By Regina Schrambling - Slate Magazine