Political Digest November 26, 2009

I post articles because I believe they will be of interest, not because I agree with every—or even any—opinion in them.

Much to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving:

• I was born in the United States, which, regardless of your family’s status, is equivalent to winning the lottery.

• At age 18, I earned the title “Marine.” I can think of no higher honor.

• My doc ran a CT scan Tuesday and my lungs are stable. So I cough, but my health isn’t getting worse at this time.

• My job is going very well. The folks I work for are terrific, very mission-focused, and the mission is helping the members help people.

• I have a loving wife and my granddaughter continues to be a joy.

• And there is increasing resistance to the President’s efforts to turn America into East Germany through a healthcare takeover, cap and trade, Zimbabwe economics and weakness overseas.

The criminal conspiracy of global warming
http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3873/87/
Excerpt: This is what they did - these climate "scientists" on whose unsupported word the world's classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen. An unelected global government with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights. The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the "global warming" fraud - for fraud is what we now know it to be - tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures. One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world's four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant "global warming" for 15 years - and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Afraid to Kill http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/afraid_to_kill_CzGsPbHtyjNSdib4rBnt5H
Excerpt: But political correctness has possessed Washington. It's so bad that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who's done a great job in many other respects, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this." Well, folks, there's no other way out of this all-or-nothing struggle with fanatics. Three thousand years of history teach that there's no alternative -- none -- to killing fanatics in large numbers when your enemies are ablaze with religious zeal. What Gates and countless others really mean is that we're unwilling to kill our way out of this assault on our civilization. So the terrorists keep on killing us. We tell ourselves that one more charm offensive, one more inept aid program, one more surge of troops who aren't allowed to fight will persuade terrorists on a murderous mission from their god to lay down their arms and run for alderman…. The laws of war provide for the battlefield execution of illegal combatants -- those who refuse to wear uniforms or identifying insignia or who commit atrocities. Instead, we give them flu shots before American citizens can get them. When a madcap ideologue such as Attorney General Eric Holder tells Congress we mustn't be afraid to try terrorists in our judicial system, he gets it exactly wrong. The terrorists believe we're afraid to kill them. And they're right.

Holder tells Senate committee Justice Department supports more 'gun control'
http://www.examiner.com/x-1417-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d21-Holder-tells-Senate-committee-Justice-Department-supports-more-gun-control?cid=email-this-article
No surprise here. Wouldn’t want anyone armed when the next Hasan barges in.

Welfare recipients face drug tests http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/11/25/20091125urinetesting1125.html
But do they have to be citizens?

Heroes of Our Dark Age: Marcel Efroimski, a Defiant, 13-year-old Israeli Chess Prodigy http://newsrealblog.com/2009/11/24/heroes-of-our-dark-age-marcel-efroimski-a-defiant-13-year-old-israeli-chess-prodigy/
Excerpt: …during the awards ceremony, the malignant (if not turban’d) and increasingly Islamic supremacist Turkish authorities refused to play the Israeli National Anthem, as is required at such ceremonies. However, young Marcel would not play the dhimmi. She stood on the podium and raised her trophy with an expression of defiance…

A Survivor’s Battle Against Female Genital Mutilation
http://frontpagemag.com/2009/11/25/a-survivor%e2%80%99s-battle-against-female-genital-mutilation-by-jamie-glazov/
Excerpt: One chilly morning in a group of 29 girls, we were mutilated. I was tied with a rope because I was screaming and begging them to stop. Some girls were considered brave for not crying aloud. But I know their heart cried out loud. I could hear their cry and still do. It is so hard for me to talk about this. It’s so fresh. I am still so traumatized. They used the same knife on us, not caring about any infections. These are tradition mutilators and midwives that perform this savagery. My mom could not watch this. Up to now, I am scared of any human blood. I scream when I accidentally cut myself. A few days ago I passed out when I cut my finger and I hurt my back as I live by myself. No one could help me. I have nightmares. I have never coped. I have very painful PMS. I have extra glands growing so I need surgery. I have scar tissues. That’s why my vagina muscles hurt. I will live with this for the rest of my life. I will never cope but one thing for sure I will never stop voicing out against FGM. One day I will reach the World Court and criminalize globally FGM. I swear I am going to reach there. I am now building a very big network of very committed people. I aspire even to be a human rights movie documentary producer. I am going to get words out there and catch the attention of all kinds of good people. I will kick FGM ass out off this planet. And that makes me smile.

Modern, moderate, secular Turkey: 42% of women targets of violence http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/11/modern-moderate-secular-turkey-42-of-women-targets-of-violence.html
Excerpt: Forty-two percent of women in Turkey become targets of physical or sexual violence, a staggering statistic which along with others will be the focus of events held on the occasion of tomorrow's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Free Speech Silenced at Columbia and Princeton
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=6673
Excerpt: Nonie Darwish, the executive director of Former Muslims United and author of Cruel And Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law, was scheduled to speak at Columbia and Princeton Universities last week, but both events were canceled under pressure from Muslim groups on campus. Remember, we are talking about Columbia University, where Ahmadinejad was welcomed like a returning king. Just hours before Darwish was scheduled to speak at Columbia, the groups that had invited her to both universities, the Whig-Clio Student Debate Society and Tigers for Israel, succumbed to demands from student Muslim groups and canceled her speaking event. Tigers for Israel, my eye. Their name mocks them. The Whig-Clio Society is the oldest debating society in the U.S., founded by James Madison in 1765. These are the students who are supposed to be the leaders of the future. What a joke. Look how the cancellation went down at Princeton. Look at the systematic bullying. This is the state of freedom of speech in the age of jihad. Arab Society president Sami Yabroudi and former president Sarah Mousa issued a joint statement, claiming: “Nonie Darwish is to Arabs and Muslims what Ku Klux Klan members, skinheads, and neo-Nazis are to other minorities, and we decided that the role of her talk in the logical, intellectual discourse espoused by Princeton University needed to be questioned.” KKK? Neo-Nazi? Nonie Darwish was scheduled to speak about Sharia law and Israel, about standing up for human rights against jihad.

When the house runs out of chips: Tribes teeter on financial brink
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=6665
It’s always been clear to me that there had to be a saturation point on gambling. Apparently expansion met the declining economy at that point. Excerpt: After making and spending billions over the last decade, the Mohegans and their nearby neighbors, the Mashantucket Pequot Indians, are teetering on the brink of a financial meltdown. Expansion plans have been canceled, employees have been laid off, credit ratings are in free fall, and bankers and bond holders are knocking on the door. In a sign of just how bad it has become, the Pequots last week defaulted on a Wall Street bond, signaling to creditors the tribe cannot meet its obligations.

Global warming industry becomes too big to fail
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Global-warming-industry-becomes-too-big-to-fail-8581165-72824992.html
Excerpt: "I'm in the process of trying to persuade Siemens Corp. (a company with half a million employees in 190 countries!) to donate me a little cash to do some CO2 measur[e]ments here in the UK -- looking promising," wrote Andrew Manning, a climate-science research fellow at the University of East Anglia, "so the last thing I need is news articles calling into question (again) observed temperature increases." Manning's e-mail, written in October to a colleague at East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit, was one of the thousands of private communiques exposed to public view by a whistleblower or a hacker. The note and others like it reveal the intriguing relationship between industry giants like Siemens and the scientists driving climate change fears. More importantly, though, Manning's e-mail shows the incentives of climate scientists: Convince people there is a climate disaster coming, get more money.

Damn the deficit: Full speed ahead on health care
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Damn-the-deficit_-Full-speed-ahead-on-health-care-8583120-73022217.html
Excerpt: Double-digit. That hyphenated adjective has been used most often recently to describe October's 10.2 percent unemployment rate. But it can also be used to describe the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product. That precise number is not yet known, but it may turn out to have a more dire effect on our national life than October's unemployment rate. In the fiscal year just ended, federal spending was nearly 25 percent of GDP while federal revenues slipped below 15 percent because of the financial crisis and recession. We have not seen a budget deficit of this magnitude since World War II, which surely was a greater challenge than recent economic troubles.

Hide the Decline
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEiLgbBGKVk&feature=player_embedded
Cold Comfort humor