For the record, Mark Steyn, best-selling author of one of the best books in a decade, America Alone, has a broader view of the world and more intelligence in his illusive bunker’s door knob than Dan Gardner has ever even pretended to have in his fearless noggin. 

And on the other side of the intelligence coin, Dan Gardner was the tolerant lover of diversity who wrote recently in another column that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was so intelligent that maybe he was ”too intelligent”.  And, fully anguished, lamented on Ignatieff’s failure to get elected, “Perhaps the political culture has changed so much that someone who loves ideas, who thinks, and writes, and questions, cannot succeed in politics.”  Boo-hoo-hoo (in that case).

But it takes more than a pretense of intelligence and more than simple arrogance and a trollish need to be obtuse and to offend and ridicule Christians as best you can, to come up with lines like this, interspersed between repeated use of the words “bigots”, “kooks”, and “racists”.  It takes a special kind of hypocrisy, and/or a near-total lack of the real meaning of bigotry:

White folks: It’s time to chill out

... Well, I happen to care deeply about the anguish suffered by cranks and bigots and so, as a public service, I am here to offer reassurance.

Calm down, my Caucasian comrades. I’ve read the report. It’s not true that everything is going to change. In 2031, there will still be pale people worshipping a dead Jew. Lots of them. Life as we know it will go on. ...

—Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen and Canwest columnist, March 2010

Pale people worshipping a dead Jew.  Huh. 

But please remember:  You are the “bigot”.  The “kook”.  The “crank” who should, just to be good-natured, or something, be more like Dan Gardner, and show your great respect for all the diverse people and their beliefs and their religions, by zipping it; and “chilling”.  I mean as long as you agree with them and they aren’t Christians.  At which point you can insult the crap out of them and display abject hate. In blogs or newspaper chains.

Data from RealClearPolitics

UPDATE (2:40 PM PDT)

In light of the news that Democrats are now so desperate they’re gaming the system and sneaking around and threatening to not bother voting on the “health care” bill and just “deeming” it to have passed (etc)...

Fox News Poll: 55% Oppose Health Care Reform

- FOXNews.com

As Americans wait for Congress to act on health care, a Fox News poll released Thursday finds 55 percent oppose the reforms being considered, while 35 percent favor them.

[...]

By two-to-one people think the quality of their family’s health care would be worse, rather than better, if the bill passed. In addition, majorities think the reforms would cost them money (66 percent), and increase their taxes (75 percent). ...

Purhaps the jewlery wuz frum Izreeyal.

It’s a one-page bill creating a free market in health insurance. Let’s all pause here for a moment so liberals can Google the term “free market.”

Nearly every problem with health care in this country—apart from trial lawyers and out-of-date magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms—would be solved by my plan.

In the first sentence, Congress will amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act to allow interstate competition in health insurance.

We can’t have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they’d make insurers compete.

The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company’s home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today.

That’s the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week.

President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn’t afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she’s got cancer.

Much as I admire Obama’s use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio’s state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited OB/GYN visits, among other things.

It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics—you know, things like cancer.

The third sentence of my bill would prohibit the federal government from regulating insurance companies, except for normal laws and regulations that apply to all companies.

Freed from onerous state and federal mandates turning insurance companies into public utilities, insurers would be allowed to offer a whole smorgasbord of insurance plans, finally giving consumers a choice.

Instead of Harry Reid deciding whether your insurance plan covers Viagra, this decision would be made by you, the consumer. (I apologize for using the terms “Harry Reid” and “Viagra” in the same sentence. I promise that won’t happen again.)

Instead of insurance companies jumping to the tune of politicians bought by health-care lobbyists, they would jump to tune of hundreds of millions of Americans buying health insurance on the free market.

Hypochondriac liberals could still buy the aromatherapy plan and normal people would be able to buy plans that only cover things such as major illness, accidents and disease. (Again—things like Natoma Canfield’s cancer.)

This would, in effect, transform medical insurance into ... a form of insurance!

My bill will solve nearly every problem allegedly addressed by ObamaCare—and mine entails zero cost to the taxpayer. Indeed, a free market in health insurance would produce major tax savings as layers of government bureaucrats, unnecessary to medical service in America, get fired.

For example, in a free market, the government wouldn’t need to prohibit insurance companies from excluding “pre-existing conditions.”

Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse NEW customers with “pre-existing conditions.” Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick to buy insurance. It’s the same reason you can’t buy fire insurance on a house that’s already on fire.

That isn’t an “insurance company”; it’s what’s known as a “Christian charity.”

What Democrats are insinuating when they denounce exclusions of “pre-existing conditions” is an insurance company using the “pre-existing condition” ruse to deny coverage to a current policy holder—someone who’s been paying into the plan, year after year.

Any insurance company operating in the free market that pulled that trick wouldn’t stay in business long.

If hotels were as heavily regulated as health insurance is, right now I’d be explaining to you why the government doesn’t need to mandate that hotels offer rooms with beds. If they didn’t, they’d go out of business.

I’m sure people who lived in the old Soviet Union thought it was crazy to leave groceries to the free market. (“But what if they don’t stock the food we want?”)

The market is a more powerful enforcement mechanism than indolent government bureaucrats. If you don’t believe me, ask Toyota about six months from now.

Right now, insurance companies are protected by government regulations from having to honor their contracts. Violating contracts isn’t so easy when competitors are lurking, ready to steal your customers.

In addition to saving taxpayer money and providing better health insurance, my plan also saves trees by being 2,199 pages shorter than the Democrats’ plan.

Feel free to steal it, Republicans!

His expense report didn’t include any receipts for condoms, thank Gaia, but he did bill the city for loads of taxi receipts.  Stupid, because the liberal-left media would have easily overlooked receipts charged to the city for condoms, but taxis?  Nuh uh.  That ain’t liberal.  (Well it is actually, as this proves, but it’s not supposed to be like public and everything!)

Meanwhile, as I was writing this up, the precious left-wing CBC was broadcasting an important story on their news channel not about this, naturally, but rather about another lefty anti-missile “artist”-slash-protester putting a giant 24-foot condom on an even bigger upright missile, in Euroliberal Norway.  No doubt that “artist” was reimbursed for every last cent of the cash required for that condom, and the costs associated with that political protest badly disguised as “artwork”. 

While I was struggling to figure out how that CBC story was relevant and germane to my life, I almost neglected to mention that Adam Giambrone has very close ties to the federal you’ve got to be kidding party!  The NDP.  The abject socialists.  I really should mention it because while the media division of the liberal-left have been forced by necessity to report on Giambrone’s philandering, and, apparently, on “artists” placing a giant condom on missiles in another asinine left-wing protest, no news media ever mentions that extremely intimate NDP tie for some reason.  Which is weird because it’s all about politics. 

So let’s make it clear:  Aside from being a rampant philanderer (thereby also showing that great respect for women for which all liberals are famous);  and another left-wing city councillor always blathering on about not taking cars and instead taking the wonderful public transit;  and aside from actually being the head of the transit commission;  he is also the former National President of the New Democratic Party of Canada from 2001 - 2006.  They are the self-anointed and self-described Canadian “moral conscience” of all-get-out, on green, enviro, and “environmental justice”, not to mention “woman-feminist-equality justice” and “social justice” and “sexual justice” and “everyone’s equal to everyone else and we’ll make sure of it, um, justice” and every other “justice” that is actually code for socialism and progressivism. 

Read more about the scandal-tainted Adam Giambrone in my blog entry here.  Because you won’t read it anywhere else.

YO!  TAXI!  (snap snap)

Reviewing his expenses, it turns out he’s a totally typical liberal-left elitist who thinks public transportation is fine for you, the lowly citizens, all the time.  But not for him.  At least not half the time.  Just some of the time.  You know, when it looks good, I guess.  That’s because, he wrote in an email to the Toronto Star this week, “there are, however, sometimes when taxis are needed due to time constraints or what I am carrying with me (i.e. files).”  (And sometime in the future, elected officials earning huge stacks of taxpayer cash, should learn to write English properly too.  In fact, there are some times.  Not “sometimes”, which suggests some indefinite time in the future.  All the time.  Not sometimes.)

(It should be noted that the phrase “Ride the Rocket” in the Toronto Star story below refers to a transit commission slogan, not an intimate instruction from Adam Giambrone’s to his women.)

TTC chair spent $3,000 on taxis last year

David Rider
Urban Affairs Bureau Chief [Toronto Star]

Toronto Transit Commission chair Adam Giambrone may champion public transit but he has nothing against taxis, records of city councillors’ 2009 office expenses show.

Giambrone expensed more than $3,000 in cabs last year, including a trip home after taping an episode of his Ride the Rocket TV show on a streetcar.

About $2,400 came from his office budget, with the rest billed to the TTC.

Giambrone, like other councillors, has a city-provided Metropass.

The lowest spender was, as always in recent years, Rob Ford, who billed taxpayers for nothing, merely notifying city officials he spent $708.78 of his own money on council business.

On Wednesday morning, Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) called Giambrone’s cab expenses “ridiculous.”

“I’ve taken two cabs in 10 years of politics and I think they were for fundraising dinners after council,” said Ford, who is rumoured to be set to launch a mayoral campaign. ...

And by the way, the next story on the CBC news channel, which is mentioning none of this Giambrone story, was on a joint-rolling competition.

But first, the CBC anchor Carole MacNeil called Fox News Channel the “Fox Television Network”, which even most people not remotely connected to news and media know are two completely different things.  And only then did she glibly refer to it, in that newsy Fox News Channel-hating CBC way, as “unfriendly territory”.  No explanation provided. Self evident.

Fantastic reporting.  Now the irony:  Other news channels including the left-wing CBC are indeed “friendly territory” for Obama, which is of course something that should be the furthest thing from true with regard to news outfits.  But with their obvious pro-Obama bias and helpful agenda-driving, it is what makes them so absolutely terrible and untrustworthy and ratings losers.  So she’s spot on about Fox (by which I mean the Fox News Channel).  Being “unfriendly territory” is a good thing, inasmuch as news channels shouldn’t be friendly, or unfriendly, or any such thing, any more than you should be “best friends” with your kids. 

But in case she meant “unfriendly” from the viewer’s standpoint, well she’s wrong there too.  Fox News Channel is by far the most watched cable news channel, usually doubling CNN viewership and sometimes doubling all of the competition combined, and is in fact watched by far more “friendlies”  —i.e., independents and Democrats and liberals who elected him — than any other channel.  This has been proven by all manner of viewer statistics time and again, including here at PTBC countless times.  So how FNC can be called “unfriendly territory” by anyone but rather ignorant leftists and liberals, and especially by news anchors for national news media, is beyond my comprehension.  As usual, Fox News Channel critics betray themselves as people who never even watch it, and know utterly nothing about it, but pretend to know everything.

The CBC reporter on the scene, Susan Bonner, then quotes an Obama staffer as describing Obama’s interview on Fox News Channel — only his second such foray into “unfriendly territory” with the first being just prior to his election — as “going back to the scene of the crime”, this time in order to gain desperately needed support for his Obamacare plans. 

Fox News Channel is the best channel available in Canada.  You should contact your cable or satellite service to get it.  It’s completely different.  For example, you don’t just see and hear a left-wing point of view and then for “balance”, a further left-wing point of view from experts and analysts on stories.  You actually see and hear from conservatives too! And this is of course why liberals and leftists call it biased and unfair.  I see their points.  When you allow conservatives to say things, it blows their idiocy up and exposes them.  So they’re right.  It’s a pretty unfair fight.  It’s really quite astonishing to most Canadians who have never seen anything like it, most not knowing prior to watching Fox News Channel that there was such a thing as a non-left-wing point of view on anything. 

In the same year truly courageous Moscow academic Yuri Glazov signed the famous “letter of the twelve,” protesting illegal arrests and trials of dissidents, knowing full well that this real act of revolution would result in a suspension of his human rights.

Glazov was predictably fired, meaning he was henceforth unemployable and deemed a “parasite” on the state. Warned by a friend, he narrowly avoided imprisonment on a trumped-up narcotics-dealing charge. Finally, through a stroke of luck, Glazov came with his family to the West, and in 1975 took up residence in Halifax as chair of the Russian Studies department at Dalhousie University, a position he held until shortly before his death in 1998.

An outstanding Canadian, Glazov deserves recognition, and so do many other brave dissidents for whom Canada has been a refuge. Nine million Canadians — that’s almost a third of us according to the 2006 census — came to these shores from communist-ruled countries. Many are now dead or very old. Their descendants deserve to see their sacrifices acknowledged and Canadians exposed to the full panoply of communist atrocities.

Prospects for educating Canadians about the human toll exacted by communism through their stories will brighten when a long-sought Ottawa Memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism is completed, a project singled out for endorsement in the recent Throne Speech.

This memorial isn’t just a good idea, like an also-promised national Holocaust memorial, it is a necessary idea.

The exhaustively researched Holocaust is in no danger of being forgotten. The highest term of opprobrium in Western culture, whether from leftists or rightists (rightly or wrongly) is “Nazi,” not “communist.” That’s not because Nazis and communists have been compared and Nazis found to be worse. It’s because people don’t know how bad communism was and is.

In 2006 the Swedish Ministry of Education initiated programs teaching the crimes of communism because a poll had revealed only 10% of Swedish youth could identify the Gulag. Canadian youth would not fare better. All educated Canadians associate the word “Auschwitz” with “genocide.” The equally horrific “Holodomor” is more likely to draw a blank stare.

Why has communism escaped the moral condemnation Naziism attracts in such exuberant degree? In recent years several scholars have addressed the question and provided a litany of reasons, amongst them:

•  Stalin was a war ally and therefore escaped the postwar censure he deserved;

•  Only since the fall of the Berlin Wall has the most damaging data emerged; by then witnesses were aging and focused on economic priorities;

•  There was no Nuremburg, no Truth and Reconciliation moment for communism as there was for other genocidal regimes;

•  Communist propaganda machines are extremely efficient at positive branding (Trudeau bought in; his fawning patronage of Fidel Castro was beyond contemptible).

But all reasons pale beside the glaring failure of left-wing intellectuals to admit — and to teach — that communism isn’t simply an unfortunate contingency of socialist passion but an ideology as immoral and implacably ruthless and dramatically consequential as Naziism.

Actually it is more than intellectuals’ failure, which suggests passivity; it was, and is, active avoidance. Yuri Glazov was proud to become a Canadian citizen, but was shocked and chagrined at the ignorance and even denial of communism’s crimes he found amongst his fellow academics. As his son Jamie Glazov noted in his 2009 book, United in Hate: the Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror, “[W]hile we were cherishing our newfound freedom, we encountered ... intellectuals in the universities who hated my parents for the story they had to tell ...” Left-wing intellectuals’ laundering of the truth about communism has translated into a vast lacuna in the teaching of 20th century history in our schools — one we can only hope the new memorial will help to fill.

The word “memorial” is somewhat misleading, though, suggesting that communism is a closed historical chapter. The fall of the Berlin Wall notwithstanding, communism in one guise or another still determines the fate of millions of hapless people around the globe. Victims in communist regimes are still starved, imprisoned, tortured and denied the most basic of human rights.

“Centre”? “Testament”? It is not too late to find a word to remind communism’s ongoing victims that right-thinking Canadians know the truth and will not abandon them.

To learn more about Yuri Glazov and the Yuri Glazov memorial fund at Dalhousie University, go here

“Hospital green” may have been discarded by our medical institutions, but while it served, it was a constant reminder of the universality of pain. Various other puce greens have been used institutionally over the years, out of a will that I frankly associate with sadism. But these greens, I hasten to add, are nothing like the rich emerald greens we associate with Ireland, and which can acquit themselves well in small doses.

Green is of course the colour of foliage, and nature vegetated is an extraordinary orchestra in that range—the symphonic background for floral solos in distinct contrasting colours. For green in a contrast is often gorgeous. But green against another green in a field of greens is something only God can pull off. I do not recommend it to artists, except the most skilled botanical illustrators.

As a (very) amateur Sunday painter, in the watercolour line, I have found that greens are the surest way to ruin a landscape composition, and that with the possible exception of viridian, there is no green pigment in a paintbox that isn’t offering to unmake my day.

Only mixed greens seem to work (let some capable painter correct me). And the two traditional green “mixers” among the artist’s tubes—“sap green” and “Hooker’s green,” themselves artificially contrived—must never ever be used alone. Indeed, they operate out of a part of the spectrum so ill-served by durable pigments from nature, we must reasonably conclude that God never wanted us to go there.

Green is associated today with two fanatical ideological movements: leftist environmentalism, and Islamism. We thus see it everywhere, making in-your-face propaganda, so that we can almost hope they’ll run out of the dye, as I understand the Maoists once did with red in China. This was during the (anti-) Cultural Revolution, when they turned with a vengeance instead to that grim static blue for the slave workers’ pyjamas. And the cognate mid-range green for the People’s Army—that Paul Hellyer also made our military wear, when the Liberals “unified” our armed forces in the 1960s—a truly inhuman colour.

I mentioned Ireland somewhere above, and I often think had the colour of Saint Patrick been blue—as it once was, before the glib modern mind changed it to coincide with the shamrock—I’d have shown more sympathy to the Irish.

Between my natural chlorophobia, and horror of Danny-Boy sentimentality, Scotch Presbyterian ancestry, British fustian pomp, and the “Orange” heritage of my native Ontario (now there’s a vile colour for you)—I harboured a snooty prejudice against most Irish things. In particular, March 17 seemed a good day to stay off the streets, and as far from pubs as possible. (The idea of beer dyed kelly green still unnerves me.)

It was only when I crossed the Tiber a few years ago, that the whole idea of Irish began growing on me, and I embraced Saint Patrick as a relative of some kind. Indeed I, who have no known Irish forebears more recent than the settlement of Scotland’s Western Isles, now find myself deeply moved by a history both tragic and redemptive—of a people who stuck by their religion through centuries of persecution, preferring poverty to apostasy.

Likewise, I have finally grasped how the dogged qualities of the Irish served them, and served others, in the settlement of this Canadian wilderness—the laying down of civilization in our remote and inhospitable places.

Too, I find myself reading the deeper history of Ireland, with a new appreciation for God’s mysterious ways. There is a sense in which the light of western Christendom began shining in an Hibernian candelabrum, itself lit from afar, out of Egypt. For it was the learned, poetical, charitable spirit of an intensely catholic and evangelical Ireland, that lighted the most savage corners in Europe’s Dark Age.

We are falling back into paganism and barbarity again. It is not that lump of earth called Ireland, but the grace that came to her through men like Patrick, that is worth celebrating. We only grease the slide when we take “Lá Fhéile Pádraig” instead, as a day to cavort with the arse-braying, idiot green leprechauns.

On this level, my chlorophobia survives. For I think we must invoke not the cartoon, but the living Saint Patrick, to help us repair what he once builded; to explain once more the Trinity to us, as once he did by means of the shamrock.

Born a Roman citizen on the west coast of Scotland around 400 A.D., Patrick was kidnapped from his home at age 16 by kinsmen of Niall of the Nine Hostages, Ireland’s most powerful ruler, and held as a slave for six years. It was a brutal time, but one for which the Saint would eventually thank God. Only through the misery of bondage, and his miraculous escape, did Patrick find his true calling.

He missed the major portion of his formal schooling and this made him insecure his whole life, causing him to write very little. When he did take up his quill in later years, Patrick apologized profusely for the quality of his prose: “Anyone can see from the style of my writing how little training in the use of words I got.”

What an irony that the Patron Saint of Ireland, a nation of outsized authors, was not, in fact, Irish, and lamented his own lack of skill for the written word. But Patrick was a gifted speaker, able to find the natural tone that resonates with listeners, whether they are learned or not. As scholar Donnchadh O’ Flionn opined of Patrick’s oratory, “How his unbookish common sense must have baffled those suave and contriving learned opponents of his!”

And opponents, he certainly had. Both within the Church and without, Patrick was surrounded by those who doubted his credentials, his motives, his character and his message. Despite his lifelong knowledge of Christianity (his father had been a church deacon), Patrick did not appreciate the value of faith until he lost his freedom. After escaping to England on a ship that was transporting dogs, Patrick embarked on a lightning clerical career that saw him elevated to the rank of Bishop. Over the course of years, he had visions and dreams of his former captors in Ireland, calling him back to teach them about Christ. He knew that his mission would be hard and folks would doubt him. Yet Patrick persevered, stating, “I came to the Irish heathens to preach the Good News and to put up with insults from unbelievers.”

Patrick understood that, through him and others, God would embrace a new country. In his Confession, he quoted Romans 9:25: “I shall say to a people that was not mine, ‘You are my people,’ and to a nation I never pitied, ‘I pity you.’” To be sure, Patrick believed he was helping to fulfill this prophesy in Ireland.

But discard any idea that Patrick strode onto the Emerald Isle, plucked up a shamrock (derived from the Irish word seamrog, meaning “summer plant”), explained the Holy Trinity to the pagans using its three leaves, then everyone settled into a chorus of Danny Boy (the non-Irish derivations of that song being another discussion entirely). It was a far harder slog. Patrick was imprisoned and robbed repeatedly, attacked, vilified, and he lived in constant expectation of murder.

Gradually, throughout his eventful life, Patrick became aware of his place, if not in history, in God’s plan. He did not think of himself as special; rather, he took pains to point out that his faith, mission, and even his suffering were gifts from God and, perhaps to prove a point, the Almighty had chosen an unlearned former slave, rather than a brilliant scholar, to spread His message.

It is often observed that Patrick led the only bloodless revolution in the whole troubled history of Ireland. Author and Irish Bishop Joseph Duffy notes, “The later compilers of saints’ lives, who were by no means given to understatement, tell of only one martyr in his entire missionary career.” The pen may be mightier than the sword, but Patrick used neither. Instead, his simple faith and plain speaking changed the course of his adopted country.

Writers largely ignored Patrick for more than 100 years after his death around 480, but he was rediscovered in the 7th Century. It was not until 1681 that we find the first reference to wearing the shamrock on St. Patrick’s Day, and this was the same century wherein “Patrick” became the most common Christian name in Ireland. Like any number of ancient tales, the facts of Patrick’s life are disputable but the larger point remains. To wit, a selfless life is worth living.

Patrick had a special relationship with young people, and some suppose he strove to give them a hope and happiness his own childhood had lacked. But were it not for his early suffering, could Patrick have become such a seminal figure of faith? How many people, afflicted as Patrick was, might decide they deserve a comfortable dotage? What, then, urged him on? As he put it, “Surely it was not without God or for worldly purposes that I came to Ireland. Who compelled me?...I sold my birthright without shame or regret for the benefit of others…Thus I am a servant of Christ in a far-off nation on account of the indescribable glory of eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

From: Matthew B
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 7:01 PM
To: Joel Johannesen
Subject: City of Ottawa - Earth Hour

Joel,

This is fast becoming one of my favourite events of the year. Unfortunately, like last year, I forgot it was coming up for some reason. The downside is that I now have less than two weeks to encourage as many people as I can to CRANK every light in their house and BLAST every electronic device they have for one hour on March 27th.

Earth Hour article from “Ottawa.ca”

I like where they encourage you to visit the WWF website for materials to educate your friends, neighbours, and co-workers…

Matt B.
Kanata ON

From: ProudToBeCanadian.ca
To: Matthew B
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:39 AM
Subject: Re: City of Ottawa - Earth Hour

Can’t we rename it “Festive ’n Inclusive Moon Hour” or something?  Or “Spring solstice”.  And hang some big-ass colorful lights instead?... And decorate a tree!....

Joel

Electricity-Consuming UPDATE:
This seems like a fitting time to award one of our famous awards:

Palestinian Authority honours terrorist; White House mute

March 16, 2010, 12:00 PM
By Tom Gross

The papers are full of reports about the startling criticism of Israel by the Obama administration — a criticism of a type not used by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton against many human rights abusing-governments the world over during the past year. (Who cares, for example, that 50,000 Muslim Burmese refugees are on the verge of starvation in Bangladesh, when you can bash Israel day after day, as the Obama administration did last week?)

The Los Angeles Times noted that “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s harsh words stunned Israel.”

[...]

Even the Anti-Defamation League, one of America’s largest liberal organizations, with close ties to the Democratic Party, says it is “shocked and stunned by the Obama Administration’s public dressing down of Israel.”

At the same time as rebuking Israel, neither the White House nor State Department had anything to say about the fact that the U.S.-financed Palestinian Authority, led by “moderate” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, renamed a central public square in Ramallah on Thursday in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, the woman who in 1978 helped carry out the deadliest single terrorist attack in Israel’s history.

Mughrabi was the leader of a Fatah PLO terror squad armed with Kalashnikov rifles, RPG light mortars and high explosives, that sailed from Lebanon and landed on a beach between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They first killed a renowned American photojournalist (who was incidentally the niece of U.S. Democratic party Senator Abraham Ribicoff) who was taking nature photos, then hijacked a bus and commandeered another, embarking on a bloody rampage that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, 13 of them children.

Fatah representatives at the ceremony on Thursday described Mughrabi as “a courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history.”

“We are all Dalal Mughrabi,” declared Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of the Fatah Central Committee.

An official PA ceremony was postponed due to the visit to the region by Vice President Joe Biden. The square, planted with greenery and flowers, is outside the Palestinian Authority’s National Political Guidance headquarters. Political guidance chief Gen. Adnan Damiri said a statue of Mughrabi would be erected in the square.

[... read more ...]

Hat tip to Jean for the heads up.

I am in receipt of your recent email asking for my help in urging Representative Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.) to vote to “move health reform forward as early as next week.” I am stunned you would choose to end the first paragraph of your email with the following gross misrepresentation:

“Your representative, Rep. Mike McIntyre, stood with the President to create as many as 3.9 million jobs with the Recovery Act, and deserves our thanks. Now, it’s important to make it clear that the voters back home stand with President Obama and want health reform.”

That statement is stunning for two reasons.

First, as we now know, Representative McIntyre supported a bill that did not bring about a net increase in jobs. We were promised that the unemployment rate would not rise above 8% if the bill passed. Instead, it went up to 10%. As you know, 10% is higher than 8%. And, just last month, as a direct result of the spending, we saw a one-month deficit of nearly 225 billion dollars. I think it can be fairly stated that Representative McIntyre’s support of Obama hurt young constituents in the short term and in the long term.

Second, we (the “voters back home”) simply do not stand with the President on health care. We have responded to public opinion polls in ways that make this perfectly clear. But President Obama simply does not support democracy – not in Iraq, nor in America. He is asking Representative McIntyre to be an accessory to legislative rape. And by emailing me today you are asking that I become an accessory to legislative rape, too.

Mitch, your records are correct – I do live in North Carolina’s 7th congressional district. I want to thank you for letting me know I can reach Representative McIntyre at 910.815.4959. I just called to let his people know that he will be ousted from office if he decides to support the president on health care. I also used your link to let BarackObama.com know the President’s defeat is imminent.

I noted with great interest that in the closing lines of your email you spoke of “reining in costs that are bankrupting families and crushing businesses.” But you utterly fail to understand that it is government, not the private sector, that is bankrupting the American family and crushing, not just jobs, but entire businesses and industries.

Nancy Pelosi says that health reform is a moral issue. It is. And I am glad to hear her lecture on moral issues. I haven’t heard a decent moral lecture from Pelosi since the fall of 2006. Then, she lectured my party on its failure to rein in Representative Mark Foley of Florida. She said then that the GOP “just doesn’t get it” and that we are completely “out of touch” for an alleged failure to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment – or in this case hisassment.

But as I turn the channel I see former Representative Eric Massa confessing to groping staffers in a drunken stupor – in public no less. I’m not exactly tickled blue as I recall Nancy Pelosi saying (of Foley) that members of Congress should be held to a higher moral standard. But I must confess that I’m looking forward to Massa’s new book – “The Audacity of Grope” – which, hopefully, will outsell Pelosi’s most recent moral treatise.

It hardly comes as a surprise that just after Massa confessed his homoerotic drunken “tousle” on national television we learn this little gem: Numerous servicemen have accused Massa of groping them while serving in the U.S. Navy.

In all likelihood, Nancy Pelosi has known about Massa’s behavior for quite some time. But she could not comment on such conduct at a time when liberals are trying to convince us there’s nothing wrong with letting gays serve openly in the military. Nancy knows when it’s time to push legislation, regardless of public support - especially when it represents an “important moral issue.”

I found myself flipping through the channels to get away from all the madness after the obviously gay ex-congressman Massa starting suggesting that his political opponent Rahm Emanuel is gay – and somehow guilty of touching people inappropriately in a state of total nudity. But all I found was a rant from an obviously mentally unstable and intoxicated Patrick Kennedy.

Listening to Patrick Kennedy lecture the press on its failure to cover important issues – instead of the Massa groping controversy – does not inspire confidence in the potential of Democrats to pass “moral” health care legislation. But I must admit that Kennedy had a point about Eric Massa. There’s no evidence he drove anyone off a bridge after he finished fondling his staff.

At any rate, the best thing Mike McIntyre can do is to leave the party of slavery, segregation, and affirmative action for a party that offers true moral guidance. The ballgame is over and the Democrats are finished. It’s time to come home and take a long cold shower.

The liberal Vancouver Sun misleads either by accident or on purpose (I suspect the latter) with this headline today:
“Canada has competitive advantage in health care, Finance Minister Flaherty tells NYC audience”
...which insinuates that because of Canada’s current socialist and anti-competitive and government-run monopoly “health care” system, Canada has a competitive advantage over the U.S. which is itself hindered by its currently privately-run, and competitive health care system.  Which is of course preposterous on several levels.

For a better understanding of what the Canadian finance minister actually said, the National Post and its Financial Post sub-section headlines read:
“Flaherty weighs in on U.S. health-care debate: Keep it competitive”
and
“Flaherty urges U.S. to ensure health care competition”

• The far-left Toronto Star, one of the most left-wing papers in North American, writes a long article today and fails to mention the word Democrat or liberal or progressive even once in the entire story of the despicable POLITICIAN, John Edwards (DEMOCRAT).  This is an incredible editorial achievement in misleading readers by an omission of facts, which I suspect they do on purpose because you have to actually apply an effort to not mention his political affiliation. 

• Even the normally mute-on-affiliation-when-it-comes-to-leftists (unless they’re helping them advance their political agenda), the far-left state-owned socialism-reliant CBC, mentions DEMOCRAT (just once).  Of course they used a Canadian Press article — not one they wrote themselves, which might explain that.

• The liberal-loving Globe and Mail also fails to use the word Democrat even once, in their AP article.

• The liberal-loving CNEWS.canoe.com article, using a remixed version of the same AP article that the G&M used (well one of them remixed it), fails to mention DEMOCRAT even once. 

• The liberalvision channel, CTV, in its online account of the story, uses the same AP article used by others, and it fails to mention DEMOCRAT even once.  An amazing editorial effort.

• The plain liberal Vancouver Sun (and its sister the National Post and presumably all the other Canwest papers) use a Canwest-written article which mentions DEMOCRAT three times, which is approximately eight fewer than Republican would be mentioned if he were thus.