What Obama's Gaffe Reveals

How would one miss 10,000 deaths in one Kansas town?

Barack Obama's gaffe here, stating 10,000 people died in Kansas tornando's this past week, is astounding because of his lack of comprehension of what that figure means. The number is higher than deaths from the 9/11 attacks, Hurrican Katrina, and U.S. Iraq war casulties combined. When my high school son heard me play the video his first reaction was "did he say 10,000?!" Such a number of deaths in a single American tragedy would bring this country to a standstill; and yet it didn't phase the Senator when he spoke it, as it did my son listening from across the room.

The gaffe reveals a lack of awareness or "feel" for the scope of disasters in America. The kind of stuff the average person becomes familiar with as they read the paper, watch the news, and discuss events with friends at the water cooler. The Senator is from Illinois, which happens to be in the North end of Tornado Alley (I lived pretty close to the Illinois state line, in Indiana, and recall the tornado watches and warnings) - certainly the Chicago papers provided damage reports from the interior of the state. Does he read them? If he does, is he able to analyze and compare/contrast information?

I've remarked before of the ignorance displayed by Senator Obama. This extended campaign season doesn't seem to working in his favor but it does appear to be working in America's.

Al Sharpton - God's Gift to Republicans

If Democrats really believe in God, why is the Mormon, Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader? At least if one is to follow the logic of Al Sharpton who says:

"As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation," Sharpton said Monday during a debate with Hitchens at the New York Public
Library's Beaux-Arts headquarters.

One knows Al Sharpton is saying something outlandish or outrageous when his lips are moving, so there is not much need for comment here. I would point out that once again, the attack against Mitt Romney’s faith comes from the left – not the right.

My point about Democrats and God, while mostly in jest is not far from the mark. The truth is the Republican primaries will be the challenge for the Mormon candidate, not the general election. Democrat’s just don’t have the religious credibility to mount an effective Jihad against a Mormon or any other candidate’s religion.

If the Reverend Sharpton wishes to marshal such a jihad of believers, he is going to have to rely on Republicans not Democrats. So far such Republicans would probably have more concern over the faith of Al Sharpton then the faith of Mitt Romney.

Secret Guilt?

I’ve regarded Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) as a function of the left’s desire for power. Wretchard, however, provides an interesting thesis I find more in line with human nature:

…secret guilt may stand at the center of the inexplicable hysteria with which the Left regard the neocons and President Bush in particular. Recently a Ramussen poll showed that "only four in ten Democrats will commit to the idea that George Bush did not know of the 9/11 attack in advance. Sixty-one percent of them either believe he did or are unsure." What could account for such a widespread belief in a bizarre conspiracy theory? Why do otherwise intelligent people insist, in the face of incontrovertible evidence that "fire does not melt steel" and embrace all kinds of ridiculous fantasies? I think the extreme demonization of George W. Bush and the neocons is psychologically necessary in order to restore a feeling of moral superiority to the Leftist universe. They would be guilt stricken without it. The more intelligent Leftists must be subconsciously aware of how monstrous the enemy is and secretly cognizant of how great is the betrayal of their own ideals. They can't confront this fact; cannot accept that they are delivering children, as Caroline Glick's example above shows, to cruel murderers. And in order to obtain some kind of solace and to have the effrontery to march in support of "freedom fighters" who are nothing but sadistic thugs, it is necessary for them to invent something worse; to make a caricature devil of GWB to place them once again, if not upon the side of angels, at least in the camp of the lesser evil. George Bush must be made nothing less than the moral equivalent of Hitler or else their ethical universe would collapse.

But George Bush is not Hitler. And one day the better men among the Left will face up to the fact that they have failed a huge moral and historical test. And from that memory, there will be no redemption.

Ironically, such guilt from the Left would parallel post-war Germany’s guilt over going along with Hitler.

The challenge for Demo Presidential candidates is daunting. They are going to have to appeal to the majority of their party who are off their rockers concerning 9/11. And the Republican video cameras will be running. After the primaries, the Demo candidates will need to do a little more than tacking to the right; they will have to demonstrate a restored sanity to be credible to the rest of the nation. If the Dem candidate wins, reality really sets in - the world is what it is despite their professed fantasies. Do you think a Hillary Clinton is going to pull troops out of Iraq knowing full well the calamity that will ensue? Hardly.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good

For hard core adherents to all things green, environmentalism is a religion. Brit Hume reports the appropriately named “Gaia Napa Valley Hotel & Spa” is replacing Gideon provided Bibles:

The Gaia Napa Valley Hotel & Spa wants to become California's first certified "green" hotel — meaning it is friendly to the environment. Bloomberg reports the facility is equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper.

It also is doing away with one staple of hotel rooms all across the world — the Gideon Bible. It seems that the effort to be green has led the hotel to move the Bible out of the nightstand drawer — replacing it on the bureau will be a copy of Al Gore's global warming book — "An Inconvenient Truth."

It is the hotel’s prerogative to furnish or not furnish whatever religious texts they desire, whether it is the Bible, Mao’s Little Red Book, or the prophet Al’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (an appropriate title for the Bible too). The point is a lot of what passes for environmentalism must be taken on faith – such as not changing incandescent light bulbs for fluorescents will have the seas lapping at my doorstep in fifty years.

As in Galileo’s day when ill-informed doctors of religion regarded the heavens and all things in them rotating around their world, the environmentalists have put the human at the center of their universe. After all a primary doctrine of their faith is humans cause global warming. Like Galileo, those that don’t conform to their beliefs are heretics who must be made to conform.

Other than fertilizer, the religion of environmentalism, however, doesn’t offer much of an afterlife. This is its fatal flaw. If life doesn’t go on, does it really matter what happens when you are gone? Here is where the environmentalist might want to take a page from the Bible.

Tibetians and Darfuris Make the Rounds Again

Mark Steyn picks up the Deseret News guest opinion on Darfur and recognizes what he has been saying all along:

...Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.

Of course I had the advantage over him this time since I subscribe to the Deseret News (just for the pictures mind you).

Defining Hitler Up

A while back I was pulling crud out of one of my drains when a little one asked what I was doing.

“I’m cleaning junk out of the drain.”

She smiled and said “I like junk.”

Not a big surprise if she only hears the word “junk” as a description for her favorite diet.

I checked Google once to see how many hits I could get with the words “Bush” and “Hitler”. At the time I got 1.48 Million hits. I compared other names with Hitler, the closest contender to Bush was Stalin with half the hits. The Bush-Hitler crowd is quite prolific.

Now consider: When more than half our high school seniors picked Germany, Japan, or Italy as one of our World War II allies do you think they are up to speed on Hitler and his atrocities? I’m sure from context they’ve picked up that Hitler wasn’t a good person. But what type of person was he? Well if Bush = Hitler then the reverse must also be true Hitler=Bush. I can see some of the next generation thinking that Hitler’s biggest atrocity was being in the wrong party (ironic when anti-Semitism runs rampant in the "correct" party).

For the uninformed, the Bush Derangement Syndrome folks are defining Hitler up; for the informed, when BDS sufferers equate Bush with Hitler they only demonstrate their detachment from reality.

P.S. If you're one of the ones who didn't know we fought against Germany, Japan, and Italy in WWII, you might want to read up on Hitler to understand this post.

When Manners Rule over Morals

Just wanted to point out this piece by Andrew Klavan if you missed it:

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

You'll want to read the whole thing.

H/T Powerline

Further AP Discredits

Note the bolded aside when reading this AP dispatch:

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

The administration’s claim was discredited? Only if the AP is using Joe Wilson’s discredited NY Times commentary and is ignoring what he actually told the CIA. From the Senate Intelligence Report on pre Iraq war intelligence, the CIA's reports officer had the opposite take on Joe Wilson’s debrief:

…he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerian officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerian Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting. (see page 46).

The British would probably be one of those foreign government services the CIA had in mind. As far as I know the British still stand by their claim, which was validated by Joe Wilson. Not really a claim the AP can discount as discredited without citing an unimpeachable source.

How discredited was Joe Wilson when caught in the lie? Enough to be dropped like a hot potato from the campaign of the man discredited for the claim of having served in Cambodia, during Christmas, during President Nixon’s term, seared in his memory (see Guinness Book of World Records – most lies in one sentence).

As with the Jamal Hussein debacle, AP editors have a world view not hindered by reality. When stories hit their desk confirming their views, fact checking is deemed unnecessary

Darfur: The Lefts New Tibet

Mark Steyn wrote once about people who sport “Free Tibet” stickers on their car bumpers:

[They’re] advertising [their] moral virtue, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld
were to say, “Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division
go in on Thursday”, the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast.’

I thought of such moral vacuousness after reading a local group’s call to “Help end genocide in Darfur”. They would “honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe”

I would think a bake sale to raise funds to arm the oppressed Darfuris would be more effective.
Helping Darfuris defend themselves, however, seems out of the question since the “Save Darfur” group wants to discuss how to put United Nations peacekeepers in place – you know the same folks who didn’t lift a finger to stop the killing in Rwanda, Bosnia, Timor, etc. One would have to think a call for U.N. peacekeepers would only be made by the Sudanese oppressors. Who is “Save Darfur” really working for?

Meanwhile, in the 48th year of the campaign to free Tibet I found this 2007 merchandise sale at the Free Tibet website where “All proceeds from our merchandise range go towards our campaigns to help bring about an end to the occupation of Tibet.” Maybe the plan is to keep collecting money for the next two centuries, let the interest compound and then buy Tibet back from China – assuming there are any Tibetians left.

In his opinion piece on Darfur, Chuck Bruder calculates:

In the time that it has taken to read this, another Darfuri man or woman or baby
has perished.

I wonder if he has calculated how many will die in 48 years of
films, discussions and dance?

Freemen Shall Stand

I attended an Eagle Court of Honor (Boy Scouts of America) and we sung three of the four verses of the National Anthem, skipping the third verse. We don't get many opportunities to sing more than the first verse. I was struck at the appropriateness of the fourth verse:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation!Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto—“In God is our trust.”And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.