Guns and God? Hell, yes

Sen. Obama's remarks about poor dumb, bitter rural losers "clinging to" guns and God certainly testify to the instinctive snobbery of a big segment of the political class. But we shouldn't let it go by merely deploring coastal condescension toward the knuckledraggers. It's an attack on two of the critical advantages the United States holds over most of the rest of the Western world.

In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God 'n' guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion.

How's that working out? Compared with America, France and Germany have been more or less economically stagnant for the past quarter-century, living permanently with unemployment rates significantly higher than in the United States. Has it made them any less "bitter," as Obama characterizes those Pennsylvanian crackers? No.

In my book "America Alone," I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. [snip]

I think a healthy society needs both God and guns: It benefits from a belief in some kind of higher purpose to life on Earth, and it requires a self-reliant citizenry. If you lack either of those twin props, you wind up with today's Europe – a present-tense Eutopia mired in fatalism...

[as usual, Mr. Steyn combines sophisticated insights with plain-talk translations, entertaining & Recommended > ]

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Heroes: Soldiers Bring Gifts to Iraqi School Children

“I just like seeing them smile,” he said. “That’s my thing. I love kids. We try to bring out snacks and toys and sometimes pens, we’re in an area where the kids don’t have access to the things they need. I think they truly appreciate it.”

While the soldiers will work on finding a way to supply the school with the services, they know it cannot be done overnight. “There is no quick fix,” the lieutenant said, “but we want (the villagers) to know that we are here to help.”

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Two Myths About Afghanistan

As Western leaders and Congress debate NATO's responsibilities in Afghanistan, it's time to dissolve two great American illusions about Afghanistan. The first is that Hamid Karzai is a good president who looks after American interests. The second is that the situation in Afghanistan is going from bad to worse. Both of these unchallenged "facts" are dangerous errors. [snip]

Karzai manages by panic, with massive corruption and an absence of vision. Karzai has sought to derail grass-roots efforts at building democracy and to stifle Afghanistan's nascent civil society, repeatedly siding with fundamentalists against progressives. [snip]

Today, most Afghans are living in the best conditions they have ever known, slowly growing their country out of poverty. Most of the north and west is peaceful. Much of the east is, too, except some areas that are very undeveloped and very remote or directly border Pakistan's lawless tribal belt. [snip]

Considering where it started, Afghanistan isn't doing too badly. It would be doing much better with a courageous, inspired president committed to honest and transparent government.

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Dots...

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British Muslims 'planned to kill thousands by bombing seven transatlantic airliners in one go'

A British terror gang plotted to use liquid explosives to blow up transatlantic passenger jets in mid-flight, a court heard today. Eight men planned to smuggle bombs disguised as soft drinks on to flights from Heathrow to the United States and Canada and detonate them on board, Woolwich crown court was told. It would have caused a civilian death toll on an "almost unprecedented scale" and a "global impact".

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Sanity has lost out to legal dogma [UK]

At the last roll of the dice, sanity has lost out to legal dogma. The Government's long-drawn-out battle to deport suspected foreign terrorists is effectively over. Yesterday's two judgments by the Court of Appeal make it extremely unlikely that Britain will ever manage to deport Abu Qatada and other foreign terror suspects, a point tacitly acknowledged by the Home Office's decision to drop its attempts to deport a further ten Libyans in addition to the two whose appeals were successful yesterday.

Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric described as al-Qaeda's “ambassador in Europe”, is wanted in Jordan, where he has already been convicted of terrorism offences.

These people came in through Britain's leaky borders and were allowed to stay, in some cases, because of wilful sloppiness by the immigration authorities. Now our human rights laws mean that we are stuck with them. We cannot keep them under arrest much longer after these rulings. So they will soon be free to wreak what havoc they will...

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Darfur peacekeeping force at risk of failing, already

Abu Surouj, Sudan - As Darfur smolders in the aftermath of a new government offensive, a long-sought peacekeeping force, expected to be the world's largest, is in danger of failing even before it begins its mission because of bureaucratic delays, stonewalling by the Sudanese government and reluctance from troop-contributing countries to send peacekeeping forces into an active conflict...

[as usual, the 'peace keepers' only 'work' where it's peacful...]

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The Virtues of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

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George Washington was at Valley Forge during the coldest period in 1,500 years, with Earth average temperatures dipping as low as 1 degree centigrade below the 3,000-year average. Since then, temperatures have gradually recovered. If the current rate of increase continues, about two centuries from now the temperature of the Earth will be back to that of the medieval period 1,000 years ago -- when Greenland was green and warmer weather brought increased growing seasons and general rises in comfort and prosperity in many cooler climates.

Meanwhile, in the United States, rainfall is increasing, tornados are becoming less frequent, glaciers have been receding for 200 years -- back to their more normal average lengths, and hurricane frequency and severity has been unchanged for the past century.

Standing timber in U.S. forests has, however, increased by 40% since 1950*; 2,000-year-old pine trees are growing faster; and animal and plant quantity and diversity are sharply increasing. This is truly alarming! If current trends continue, we will be overrun by squirrels, deer, and foxes and fighting for our lives against aggressively growing orange and apple trees. A dire prediction was even published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- I am not making this up -- warning that poison ivy is also growing faster.

[* the US's massive reforestation program means it has literally done more to 'offset' carbon emissions than any other nation, and why North America is a net CO2 sink. Kyoto requires ignoring that fact in computing America's 'carbon footprint'. Why?]

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New Australian Prime Minister Flip-flops on Climate Change Pledge

American media gleefully reported Kevin Rudd's November 24 victory over Australian Prime Minister John Howard as a huge defeat for President Bush.


Stateside press representatives have also been enamored with Rudd's views concerning global warming, and his proposed deep cuts to Australia's carbon dioxide emissions.

In a truly stunning twist of fate, according to Friday's Herald Sun, Rudd, armed with new information from the electricity industry, has done a very serious greenhouse gas u-turn that will likely be met with silence from America's green press...

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May sun set on global warming frenzy

If you've wondered why there is increasing opposition to the popular notion of global warming, simply examine the actions being proposed and actually taken to "prevent global warming." Consider what those actions really have become and how effective they might be in actually achieving the intended change. (Snip) technological improvements in coal-fired power plants are rejected in favor of wishful thinking about forthcoming renewable energy sources, while here and now power needs are increasingly ignored.

[such as our recently passed 'comprehensive' energy bill containing nothing to develop our own vast petroleum deposits {you know, like the ones China is developing off Cuba}...]

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COMBINING GROCERY SHOPPING WITH DOCTORS' APPOINTMENTS

Some Britons can add a visit to the doctor to their shopping lists. J Sainsbury, one of Britain's largest supermarket chains, is to become the first in the country to offer a visit to a family doctor in one of its stores. To start, they will work in the evenings and on Saturdays in a fully equipped consultation room in one store in Manchester.

Overall, the supermarket doctors are expected not only to help patients but also the government. British authorities have struggled to improve their taxpayer-financed national health service and to make doctors more readily available to patients.

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BAD MEDICINE

The presidential candidates are grappling over the plight of the uninsured, yet you're five times more likely to die from visiting a hospital than from not having health insurance, according to the not-for-profit Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths:

• One in 200 patients who spends a night or more in a hospital will die from medical error.
• One in 16 will pick up an infection.
• Deaths from preventable hospital infections each year exceed 100,000, more than those from AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined.

Hospitals are still the heart of the health care industry, consuming a third of the $2 trillion U.S. health care bill. Because the hospital industry does all it can to thwart competition, many communities are stuck with the hospitals they have...

[go Wal-Mart]

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THE REAL STORY ON WORKER COMPENSATION

The next time you hear a U.S. politician or pundit lament that "average real hourly wages" have declined, don't be misled. The average real wage is a fundamentally flawed measure of the well-being and progress of American workers for three reasons:

• The real wage does not include benefits.
• It relies on cost-of-living estimates that have tended to systematically overstate inflation in recent decades and thus understate gains in real earnings.
• Real wage numbers are often compared to previous peak years, a practice that tends to minimize longer-term upward trends.

Although the average real hourly wage paid to American workers is lower today than in the 1970s, says Griswold, average real hourly compensation, which includes benefits such as health care and 401(k) contributions, has gone up. Since 1973, average real hourly compensation for American workers has increased 45 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[this is the perennial canard of 'wage stagnation' - the reason paycheck increases stagnate is because every year government adds to the cost of employing anyone, be it mandated benefits or an ever-growing host of regulations that must be paid for]

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Twofer...

U.S. mayors chide Washington for failing to tackle immigration issue

At a press conference, the visibly frustrated mayors of Albuquerque, Phoenix, Denver, and Richmond told of the immigration-related problems rending their cities. Public schools and medical services strained by unlawful residents who don't pay taxes. A serial rapist in the country illegally who was deported twice only to walk right back over the border to continue his crimes.

The mayors met recently with members of Congress and President Bush to make the case for swift action, but were told the issue was unlikely to come up again until 2009 or 2010.

``We can't wait another year,'' said Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. ``We can't wait another day.''

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Palomas police chief requests U.S. asylum

DEMING, N.M. - The police chief of Palomas, Mexico, has requested political asylum in the United States. The Luna County Sheriff's Department and the U.S. Border Patrol say Emilio Perez came to the port of entry at Columbus late Tuesday night. He told authorities his two officers have fled and he does not know their whereabouts. The agent-in-charge of the Border Patrol station in Deming, Rick Moody, says Perez is in the protection of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

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Will MSM Cover U. of Maine U.S. Flag Desecration?

We have another incident of empty showboating by a college kid who imagines herself to be making "art" and a "statement" by placing American flags on the floor in hopes that people would disrespect them enough to walk upon them.

Here is a perfect example of what I am talking about. UMF's president, Theo Kalikow, issued a completely empty statement after word got out about this unpatriotic display of hate.

"Art in all its forms is important. The anger that was experienced today. Students push the boundary of what learning is. First Amendment rights, freedom of expression. We share in a state of expression."

Kalikow's empty moralizing shows that this display of hatred was meaningless in the end. It resulted in nothing but anger even as the unpatriotic president of UMF tries to see some good, ANY good, in it. (You can email president Kalikow with this address: kalikow@maine.edu.)

[we need universal vouchers]

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