Radical Bill Ayers Desecrates Ol’ GloryAfter perusing around the Blogosphere this am a couple of questions have come to mind about good ol’ Barack Obama and his highly opinionated missus. Questions like . . .

1) Who is supporting Barack Obama? Actually, are any nefarious, undesirable or downright dangerous groups or individuals firmly in his camp? Well, you didn’t think we’d ask if the question were “no”, now did you? See Dubya over at Michelle Malkin’s stompin’ grounds links to Nice Deb’s Reds Who Support Obama, and from there you can get to her Radicals, Terrorists And Tyrants Of The World Root For Obama where the answer might shock, if not actually surprise you at the depth of support from the Reds, Radicals and Political Loonies of our fine world.

So this is as good a time as any to present my companion piece to Radicals, Terrorists, and Tyrants of the World Root for Obama. This time, I thought we’d take a look at all of the known communists/Socialists/Marxists who have supported, endorsed, or influenced Obama. Some communists can be found on the Radicals, Terrorists, and Tyrants list, as well, because let’s face it, radicals and tyrants tend to be commies, (Fidel Castro for instance), but in the interest of keeping this post down to a manageable size, I’m going to try to avoid duplications.

What some might call, “guilt by association” I call Obama’s ‘calling card’.

Way to go, Deb! And then the second question:

2) What does Michelle Obama believe about America? Never one to be called overly nuanced, the ol’ Okie says “Not very damn much!” At least, if you believe the bitterness and hate she’s spewing in her stump speeches. Like this part from Michelle’s last Friday’s No. Carolina speech:

What happens in that nation is that people do become isolated, they do live in a level of division, because see when you’re that busy struggling all the time, which most people that you know and I know are, see you don’t have time to get to know your neighbors, you don’t have time to reach out and have conversations to share stories, in fact you feel very alone in your struggle because you feel somehow it must be your fault that you’re struggling that hard, everybody else must be doing ok, I must be doing something wrong, so you hide…What happens in that kind of nation is that people are afraid. Because when your world’s not right no matter how hard you work, then you become afraid of everyone and everything, because you don’t know whose fault it is, why you can’t get a handle on life, why you can’t secure a better future for your kids.

To which Yuval Levin at NRO reacts:

By her husband’s logic, Michelle Obama must be a heavily armed xenophobic religious zealot, because boy is she bitter. This C-SPAN video of a speech delivered by Mrs. Obama in North Carolina last Friday is characteristic of her peculiar recent performances on the stump. It is an hour-long talk to supporters who just want something to cheer about, and who get some opportunities at the outset, but then find themselves treated to a profoundly and relentlessly negative vision of American life.

{…}

In Michelle Obama’s America, everybody’s suffering, no one has time to make any friends, no one earns enough to eke out a living anymore, and the bar of success is always being moved just out of reach. “Folks are struggling like never before,” she says, and in a nation struggling like never before, society cannot stand the strain.

{…}

Her husband, of course, manages a peppier and more upbeat stump speech, but in fact the same dark view of American life permeates his rhetoric too. Both Obamas seem to think the country is deeply depressed, and in need of a spiritual, economic, and political savior. [There’s that Messianic message again — Okie]

{…}

The candidate of hope, it seems, draws much of his energy from a sense that America is hopeless; and the progressive in the race yearns for the America of his childhood.

Didn’t we all go to college with folks like these and often wondered if they would ever grow up?

Christopher Hitchens isn’t very much taken by her 1985 Princeton University graduate thesis either.

I direct your attention to Mrs. Obama’s 1985 thesis at Princeton University. Its title (rather limited in scope, given the author and the campus) is “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.” To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be “read” at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn’t written in any known language. Anyway, at quite an early stage in the text, Michelle Obama announces that she’s much influenced by the definition of black “separationism” offered by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 screed Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. I remember poor Stokely Carmichael quite well. After a hideous series of political and personal fiascos, he fled to Africa, renamed himself Kwame Toure after two of West Africa’s most repellently failed dictators, and then came briefly back to the United States before electing to die in exile. I last saw him as the warm-up speaker for Louis Farrakhan in Madison Square Garden in 1985, on the evening when Farrakhan made himself famous by warning Jews, “You can’t say ‘Never Again’ to God, because when he puts you in the ovens, you’re there forever.” I have the distinct feeling that the Obama campaign can’t go on much longer without an answer to the question: “Are we getting two for one?” And don’t be giving me any grief about asking this. Black Americans used to think that the Clinton twosome was their best friend, too. This time we should find out before it’s too late to ask.

“Who Supports Barack Obama? What Does Michelle Obama Believe About America?” — Asked and answered. Heh!

Technorati Tags: Bill Ayers, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama

As you watch the YouTube video of Barack Obama on a plane with a bunch of female “journalists” keep Michelle Malkin’s comment in mind:

You know, when I read about this CNN video via Allahpundit yesterday, I threw up a little in my mouth. The clip of female journalists on a plane moaning as they watch Barack Obama talking on a cell phone was actually filed under “breaking news video” on the CNN website with the caption, “Obama in jeans: Sen. Barack Obama surprises the press corps by wearing jeans.”

Of course, this is nothing new for Democrat presidents and candidates, as Nina Burleigh, “the Time contributor and former Time reporter who recounted in Mirabella magazine her encounter with Clinton on Air Force One and how much she wished to be ‘ravished’ by him”, goes on to state that all American women should line up, put on their “presidential” kneepads and give ol’ Slick Willy a hum job in gratitude for his support of American women’s right to kill their unborn.

And to think it used to be the John Birchers that were all worried about their precious bodily fluids . . . yecch!

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama

The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 is said to have killed over 300,000 people from Sri Lanka to Sumatra. Lat week’s Cyclone Nargis, that sent tidal surges estimated at 20 feet in height pounding into the lowlands of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta, may end up topping that number by 200,000 or more, according to the UK’s The Sun.

Last night’s warning came as it emerged that 17 Britons, including ex-pats and backpackers, were still missing.

Sources said 200,000 people were already dead or dying.

But the figure could rise to HALF A MILLION through disease and hunger if the nation’s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta.

Unlike the devastation and resulting aftermath caused by the Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, and its series of tidal surges, the military junta of Burma, known as Myanmar to the politically correct crowd, is standing fast in its refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the country. The military rulers are allowing mass casualties to continue, with many more to come from disease from the rotting corpses, tainted water supplies, lack of food distribution, because they are afraid of losing control of the country they have ruled for decades. So much so that the UN has now suspended food aid, but hopes to resume tomorrow.

In 2004 and early 2005 the World responded to the tsunami disaster in mass, with our military rushing in supplies, medical aid and cleanup help, along with aid from the UN plus many other countries and disaster aid groups. Many of us gave money to organizations like World Vision which got in there early and made the most of each dollar sent to the cause. Not this time.

This time, we watch, helpless, as another set of xenophobic amoral thugs, having no sense of human worth and fearing the outside world, allow those in their charge to die in gross numbers. Even the AP seems to have this one figured out.

“The military regime is extraordinarily xenophobic. They are afraid of everything,” said Sean Turnell, a Myanmar expert at Australia’s Macquarie University.

Among the junta’s fears are internal uprisings, a U.S. invasion, globalization and its capacity to dilute traditional Burmese culture. In the aftermath of Saturday’s cyclone, the junta appears to be afraid of losing face with its people.

“If they can’t handle the situation and they let Westerners come in with helicopters, this will demonstrate to their own people the shortcomings of the military,” Turnell said. “They are more concerned with control and maintaining an omniscience in front of their people than saving lives.”

Regardless of what Michelle Obama believes, we live in a great country. As events like those of last week make so very clear, most of the rest of the world is not nearly as fortunate.

Technorati Tags: Boxing Day tsunami, Cyclone Nargis

A bit over three weeks ago, as I sat bedside with my mother-in-law who was battling her end days with cancer, emphysema and heart failure, I was asking these questions:

It’s in times like these that one’s beliefs are challenged. Why must she suffer so? Why does God allow this to happen? Why not allow assisted suicide to folks that have no hope of survival, not much time left, and are in agony? Good questions all, and I am at a loss for any good answers, except for the belief that our Lord has a purpose for his children, and that there are lessons for us to learn[.]

I can hear that heavenly reprimand echoing in my mind, “Oh ye of little faith,” especially after reading through Elizabeth Scalia’s A Tsunami Cannot Be Drawn in Pastels: On Dignity and Suffering posted at InsideCatholic.com. I had read her posts in real time that first half year of my blogging, as she and her family watched and dealt with the loss of her dear brother to cancer. I thought that I was moved at the time, having lost my own mother just two years before, however nothing I felt then prepared me for what I encountered during this reading, having lost my wife’s mother just a few short weeks ago.

She harpoons my question, “Why does God allow this to happen?”, by explaining that without sorrow there is no joy, without loss, there is no appreciation, without extreme hardship, there is no personal growth — it is as it ever was. How foolish the collective “we” have all become; “We” only want to live our lives from cradle to grave with as little challenge and impediments as possible, constantly in a state of middling euphoria, with never a pain or a loss seemingly too great to bear — can’t have ourselves being put to that test, mind you . . .

It would do no justice to excerpt this important read, so just go and read it all. If you would like to read more from her, then do so here.

As if Western societies in Europe didn’t have enough to be concerned about, — with falling birth rates, ever increasing immigration from Muslim countries and the inevitable resulting Islamization from such as well as the continual decline in Judeo-Christian beliefs — along come the Swiss bringing to the world the concept of “plant rights”. [h/t: See Dubya] The Weekly Standard article, The Silent Scream of the Asparagus by Wesley J. Smith — senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture — gives us a preview look at just how stupid and insane our European brethern have become as their culture spirals into ever increasing moral irrelevance.

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

{…}

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

{…}

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland’s enshrining of “plant dignity” is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Once you loose sight of or reject the religious concept of “primacy” of the human species, the inherent worth of the human being as God’s greatest creation, what is left to allow the thought that Mankind has the right to use the planet, its land, its animals and its plants, for Mankind’s own benefit? Nothin’, Nyet, NADA! Lose God, and you lose everything. This is what is so scary about the secularists’ movement — they are so in love with Gaia, Mother Earth, or so loathsome of themselves, that they view eradication of humanity a good thing.

Eschewing humans as the pinnacle of “creation” (to borrow the term used in the Swiss constitution) has caused environmentalism to mutate from conservationism–a concern to properly steward resources and protect pristine environs and endangered species–into a willingness to thwart human flourishing to “save the planet.” Indeed, the most radical “deep ecologists” have grown so virulently misanthropic that Paul Watson, the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, called humans “the AIDS of the earth,” requiring “radical invasive therapy” in order to reduce the population of the earth to under a billion.

Paul Watson, meet “90% of Humans Must Die” Erik R. Pianka. You guys could really “party on, dudes”! I know I wouldn’t want to be on the guest list . . . But, back to this Swiss thing — giving “rights” to plants. There’s a funny sequence in the movie Notting Hill where the main character is being set up on a series of dates, with one being a vegetarian, one a pescetarian, only eats fish, and one a fruitarian, only eats products that actually fall off plants, like fruits and berries. “Yes”, she says to him as he passes her a platter, “Those carrots have been murdered!” Get the picture?

Smith wraps it up with this:

One Swiss scientist quoted in the editorial worried that “plant dignity” provides “another tool for opponents to argue against any form of plant biotechnology” despite the hope it offers to improve crop yields and plant nutrition.

What folly. We live in a time of cornucopian abundance and plenty, yet countless human beings are malnourished, even starving. In the face of this cruel paradox, worry about the purported rights of plants is the true immorality.

Without God, there is no “morality”! We’re gettin’ in big trouble here folks . . .

Technorati Tags: Wesley J. Smith, Paul Watson, Erik R. Pianka, plant dignity

When I looked at the page-one above-the-fold with “color graphs” LA Times article yesterday on Consumer Spending, the picture painted was bleak beyond all hope. As consumers step on the brakes, will the economy hit the wall? begins with:

For a generation, Americans snapped up clothes tailored to every demographic, bought the latest sport utility vehicles and piled on the wide-screen TVs.

No more. The nation’s long buying binge appears to be over. And that’s probably bad news for the economy.

Today, when the government issues its first snapshot of growth in 2008, the role played by U.S. consumers will appear smaller and faded compared with the past, when, year after year, their spending became ever more important to the economy.

“We’re at a watershed moment,” said Jay P. Feldman, an economist with Credit Suisse in New York. “The era of consumers living beyond their incomes is at an end.”

Wow! Sounds really bad. Then, this am I read in the Wall Street Journal this one: Consumer Spending Picks Up But Key Inflation Gauge Accelerates

Economic reports Thursday including a solid rise in consumer spending suggest the economy continues to avoid a severe downturn despite an eroding labor market and soaring food and gasoline prices.

How long it can withstand those headwinds remains under doubt, though, as a separate report showed a big jump in both new and continuing claims for unemployment benefits that signal another bleak employment report in April.

Meanwhile, a key inflation gauge for Federal Reserve policymakers also rose, further cementing the view that officials will hold interest rates steady in coming months.

Personal consumption increased by 0.4% in March compared with the month before, the Commerce Department said Thursday, double economists’ forecasts and up sharply from February’s gain. Spending slightly outpaced income growth, leading a dip in the saving rate.

Strong services spending offset a decline in spending on big-ticket durable items.

Consumer spending makes up about two-thirds of U.S. gross domestic product. So even small gains in spending can offset steep declines in other sectors like housing and business spending to keep the economy afloat.

OK, I’m no financial rocket scientist, far from it. But hey guys, which is it? I know what the LAT wants us to believe, and it’s no coincidence that viewpoint would be good for Obama or Clinton, and bad for McCain.

Hmmmmmm . . . what category to post this in? Yeah. That’s the one.

Technorati Tags: LA Times, Consumer spending

A typical “Global Warming Scientist”Hey! Whatsamatteryou? You gots a problem with the idear that just because it’s getting colder that we still gots to live in fear from Global Warming? Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

From Bloomberg: Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming, Researchers Say

Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany’s Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

“Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,” Wood said in an interview. “Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there’s no global warming going on.”

The Leibniz study, co-written by Noel Keenlyside, a research scientist at the institute, will be published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature.

“If we don’t experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn’t mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,” Keenlyside said in an interview.

OK, let me get this straight — It’s gonna get cooler, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not gonna get hotter after it gets cooler? Can anyone say rhythmic cycles?

Ya know, it’s gonna be fun to watch all those Global Warming hystertics try and spin their way out of the next “Little Ice Age”. Sunspots dude . . . sunspots. And, while you’re freezin’ your keester off in your Miami igloo, just keep tellin’ yourself that eventually it’ll get warmer — ’cause it will.

Rhythmic cycles! Gotta love these guys . . . Sheesh!

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Global Warming hystertics

Go and read the article snippets that Captain Ed presents in his Hot Air piece on the Left’s reaction to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s weekend SNAFU in Washington where, with passion and vigor, he threw Barack Obama under the bus. In response Ed writes:

Not one of these columnists mentions his defense of Louis Farrakhan as misunderstood and his anti-Semitism as misreported. Not one of them mentions his strange views on neurology and the supposed synaptic differences between white and black brains. None of them offer even a questioning sentence on Wright’s theories on “tonality” or on the purportedly racial differences between marching bands, let alone his silly and offensive demonstrations of them on stage. Only the Post mentions his repeated assertion that the American government created AIDS as a means for genocide against people of color.

Why not? Because to point these out would be to confirm Wright’s status as a racial demagogue and borderline lunatic, which would really damage Obama.

We’ll be waiting with dead-fish breath today to see if Wright doubles down after Obama’s little tirade from yesterday, where he returned the favor and tossed the Rev. under his own personal bus.

To top it all off, there is talk that Hillary’s campaign is behind all this Rev. Wright exposure. Could that be true? As Hugh Hewitt likes to say, “Nobody cheats better than the Clintons!”

Technorati Tags: Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, Hillary, Clintons

[H/t: Glenn Speck, Mustang, OK]

An editorial in The Oklahoman pretty much says it all:

NEW numbers show that the person Gov. Brad Henry and OU President David Boren say should be Oklahoma’s choice for president will lose to John McCain by 10 percentage points. And that’s just among Democrats in the state!

Barack Obama is so unpopular here that McCain has the support of 62 percent of all Oklahomans, while Obama is liked by only 33 percent of registered Democrats.

Too bad there aren’t more down-the-ticket races in OK this fall . . .

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Barack Obama