CNN: Media Deserve 'Shame' for 'Complicity' w/ Dems Ignoring Immigration

On Tuesday's Lou Dobbs Tonight, which was repeated on Sunday, CNN host Dobbs chided the media for not including illegal immigration in exit polls of Democratic voters simply because Democratic candidates have avoided discussing the issue. Dobbs:

"Would it surprise you if I were to tell you right here in front of God and everybody I had to convince CNN a couple of years ago to include illegal immigration in a poll because we didn't even in this organization believe it was an important issue, some of us didn't?"

He even got Schneider to agree with his contention that the media's "complicity with that motive" of the Democratic candidates in ignoring the issue should "bring a sense of shame to these [media] organizations."

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Firefighters fined for speeding to blazes

Firefighters are being issued speeding tickets by the NSW Government for rushing to life-threatening emergencies in fire engines. In an astounding case of bureaucracy gone mad, the Government is sending infringement notices to the homes of individual fire truck drivers. It is then left up to the officers to sign statutory declarations or take the matter to court to avoid paying fines.

[this is government, eventually, any country. Healthcare anyone?]

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Bullies

Our legal system invites lawyers to act like bullies. Only in America can I sue you for dubious reasons, force you to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers (not to mention the psychic costs -- the anxiety and lost sleep that lawsuits create), and when a judge rules that my claim is bunk, I don't even have to say "sorry." I can blithely move on to sue someone else. In other countries, I would have to pay your legal fees to at least compensate you for some of the financial damage I caused. "Loser pays," it's called.

The trial lawyers have even gamed the language. They call "loser pays" the "English Rule," as if it's some weird British law. But it's not. It's really the Rest of the World Rule. America is the odd man out because we rarely punish litigators who misuse force.

America needs judges willing to say no to the lawyer bullies. America also needs "loser pays." Otherwise, the parasites will bully away your money and your choices.

[we also need a law that requires lawyers who sue on their own behalf to also hire attorneys to do so - and so remove the nearly-free cost to them of perpetrating such legal extortion]

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The Washington Monument Strategy...

California

The Washington Monument Strategy is so named for a predictable bureaucratic reaction to any suggestion that a government budget should be reduced. Whenever a Congressman suggested that the National Parks Service budget could be trimmed, the standard bureaucratic response was always, “Well, then we’ll just have to close the Washington Monument.” [aka; 'fire house strategy' at the local level][snip]

“Across-the-board” cuts are the most stupid conceivable way to make budget reductions, because they treat the highest of state priorities the same as the lowest. Thus, instead of making 100 percent cuts in utterly indefensible expenditures like tuition subsidies for illegal aliens and a vast array of duplicative or obsolete state programs, the governor proposes throwing the prison doors open. The governor is obviously employing the Washington Monument Strategy when he proposes releasing 20,000 dangerous felons – including burglars – onto California streets and closing the most popular beaches in Southern California.

Yet he refuses even to consider the obvious question: why should it cost California $42,000 per year to house a prisoner when Florida does it for just $18,000? (When we recalled Davis, California’s cost was $32,000 per year). Last year, the governor had the opportunity to save $7 billion in construction costs and $1 billion in annual operating expenses by contracting out 50,000 prison beds – as many states already do. Instead, he approved a law that makes it impossible to do so. (Click here for my speech to the Senate last April)

So who does he think he’s kidding?

[A: all those who get their news from TV, which undoubtedly will focus on the pain and suffering such uncompassionate across-the-board-cuts will cause... [more, recommended >]

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THE HAZARDS OF TELLING THE TRUTH

Afrocentrism began on college campuses in the 1980s and gained astonishing momentum with the publication of Martin Bernal's "Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization" (1989). Though the arguments were contradictory and scattered, the point was that Western civilization had been founded on materials and discoveries borrowed or stolen from black Egyptians.

During this whirlwind of dubious scholarship, the academic world mostly remained silent, hiding behind the curtain of academic freedom and withholding its criticism lest a statement of simple truth be branded "racist". The scholar who did the most to break this silence was Mary Lefkowitz, a classicist at Wellesley College. Outraged by the nonscholarly approach of Afrocentric writers, she somewhat naïvely imagined that facts would put their extreme theories to rest. She noted, for instance:

• Socrates couldn't have been black, as alleged, because his parents were Athenian citizens and blacks, in classical Athens, were not eligible for citizenship.
• Aristotle would have had a tough time stealing his philosophy from the library at Alexandria, since he died before the library was built.

Such arguments went nowhere, Lefkowitz writes, with those who saw Greek philosophy "as yet another case of a colonialist European plundering of Africa."

[after universal vouchers for K-12 we need internet-based college to take professors as much out of the loop as possible]

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New class of campus police is bigger and better-armed

University police departments are bigger and more likely to arm their officers than a decade ago, according to a recent study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. In Texas, law enforcement departments on college campuses seem to be ahead of this trend, with nearly 94 percent
of surveyed universities arming their police and just as many employing sworn officers. "Texas is Texas: We are a state that has firearms," said Bill Taylor, chief of police at Rice University, which has sworn and armed officers.

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Gore's Alarmism Failing: Concern for Global Warming Same as 19 Years Ago!

Want to talk about really inconvenient truths?

Well, despite Nobel Laureate Al Gore's massive campaign to scare the world into thinking the planet is facing imminent doom at the hands of global warming, Americans don't seem to be buying it.

In fact, a new Gallup poll released moments ago revealed, "a little more than a third say they worry about [global warming] a great deal, a percentage that is roughly the same as the one Gallup measured 19 years ago."

[don't break out champagne yet: 300M$ a fair chunk of change to sound-bite American TV watchers...]

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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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