"______ Should Be Taken Over" - Jesse Jackson

"...The need for peace should be taken over!"............Huh...??

True Love On American Idol

30-Year-Old Economic Debate

Oil Myths

The 6 Myths About Oil-Every American consumes an average of three gallons of oil a day. Republicans and Democrats call this reliance on oil an “addiction”—an irrational, self-destructive habit that must be broken as soon as possible. This year's BP oil spill disaster is only making the chorus to “end our addiction to oil” louder. But if we examine the most common arguments for this idea, we see that they are myths. Oil is a vital, viable, and desirable part of our energy future.
Myth #1: America’s reliance on oil is an “addiction”—an irrational, self-destructive habit. “America is addicted to oil.” –George W. Bush, 2006 [snip]

"The Reality: America’s use of oil brings indispensible value to our lives.“Addiction” implies an intense desire for something harmful, such as heroin. But we do not desire oil irrationally; we consume it because it is a beneficial, life-sustaining product. Oil is unmatched as a concentrated, safe, and affordable source of portable energy. And our lives depend on such a source of energy.

"- Oil powers the industrial farm equipment that brings us abundant food; oil powers the mobile machinery that we need to extract the raw materials like iron, lumber, uranium, or natural gas from the earth.

"- Oil powers the construction equipment we need to build new buildings, dams, levees, factories, and homes.

"- Oil powers the hundreds of millions of vehicles that move people, materials, and products around the world to make possible the efficiency of our integrated, global economy.

"- Oil is also the vital raw material for thousands of different petroleum products: from the carpet on your floor to the insulation inside your walls; from the synthetic rubber of your tires to the asphalt of the roads; from the pesticides and fertilizers that magnify crop yields and make food affordable to billions, to the pharmaceuticals that save millions of lives.

"We are not "addicted" to oil any more than we are addicted to the myriad values it makes possible, like fresh food, imported electronics, going to work, or visiting loved ones.

"Without oil, or something just as potent, abundant, and affordable, life as we know it would be impossible.
"
[other myths addressed]:
"Myth #2: There are “green” technologies that are just as good, or better, than oil." [snip]
"Myth #3: Because oil is finite, it will inevitably run out." [snip]
"Myth #4: Because oil is mostly in other countries, they can cut us off at will and create an economic catastrophe. "[snip]
"Myth #5: Because oil money funds hostile dictatorships (Iran, Saudi Arabia) by using less oil we can make them poorer and make ourselves more secure." [snip]
"Myth #6: Because the burning of oil produces CO2, oil is a deadly pollutant that must be severely capped." [snip] (full editorial from Alex Epstein here)

U.S. Gets Slapped at Dinner

"It isn't really that strange that the Chinese pianist who played at the White House state dinner for President Hu would slap America in the face by playing a blatantly anti-American song well known in China.

"What's also not very surprising to me is that our State Department must also have known about the significance of the tune and chose to accept the insult by not saying anything. The Epoch Times:

"At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie "Battle on Shangganling Mountain."

"The film depicts a group of "People's Volunteer Army" soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military "jackals."

"The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades.

"How insulting is it?
"The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, "When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle." The "jackal" in the song is the United States.

"This was no unintentional diplomatic faux pas. This was crudely obvious, deliberate effort to smack down the United States and elevate China, as Mr. Lang makes crystal clear:

"Playing this song praising China to heads of state from around the world seems to tell them that our China is formidable, that our Chinese people are united; I feel deeply honored and proud."

"Reports also indicate the selection went over very well in China.[...] "(read entire article)

Opinions Tempt Reality

"Politico featured a story this week headlined "Muslim groups nervous about King hearings." It went on to discuss Muslim apprehension regarding upcoming congressional hearings led by Rep. Peter King, R-NY, "on the threat posed by radical Islam in America."

 That phrase -- "radical Islam" -- is truly a marvel: a 14-karat, bulletproof, titanium shield for Islam itself, which, sorry guys and gals, is the source of all things we deem "radical" in Islam. "Islam is Islam and that's it," as Turkey's Erdogan so memorably put it. But since we don't want Islam to be "it," we pretend and operate and make policy and even war based on some mythic radicalism of "twisted" or "hijacked" or "perverted" Islam.

If these King hearings turn out to be about the threat posed by "radical Islam" -- and not about the threat posed by what is radical about Islam -- "nervous" Muslim groups have nothing to worry about, and anti-jihad, anti-Shariah citizens have nothing to gain.

 Hope I'm wrong, but it looks like any rational analysis of jihad or of Shariah is already off the table. Politico writes: "In a move that will come as a relief to Muslim leaders, King told Politico that he's not planning to call as witnesses such Muslim community critics as the Investigative Project on Terrorism's Steve Emerson and Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer, who have large followings among conservatives but are viewed as antagonists by many Muslims."

Let's break this revelation down. It may be smoothly packaged, but it is utterly mind-boggling.[...]
(read entire article here by Diana West)

Writer Pamela Geller adds this in her piece : [snip] "Based on this, it appears that this will be a show trial. Between Emerson and Spencer, the whole of it is covered. Emerson knows who all the players are and what groups and cells they are affiliated with. He knows who everyone is and what he's doing. For King to acquiesce in his marginalization is almost criminal. In Spencer's case, it's just as bad. Why wouldn't King discuss the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and make recruits?

"For King not to avail himself of Emerson's knowledge and Spencer's scholarship is an astounding case of willful blindness"[snip] (read entire article here)

Check out what's growing in our universities: Observations from an Informant at the Muslim Student Association Western Conference

"Dependence Day"

Stumbled upon (via Belgian blogger and freedom fighter Michael's Downeastblog) this remarkable yet troubling essay by Mark Steyn at The New Criterion:

On the erosion of personal liberty...

"If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff.

In the days when I used to write for Fleet Street, a lot of readers and several of my editors accused me of being anti-British. I’m not. I’m extremely pro-British and, for that very reason, the present state of the United Kingdom is bound to cause distress. So, before I get to the bad stuff, let me just lay out the good. Insofar as the world functions at all, it’s due to the Britannic inheritance. Three-sevenths of the G7 economies are nations of British descent. Two-fifths of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are—and, by the way, it should be three-fifths: The rap against the Security Council is that it’s the Second World War victory parade preserved in aspic, but, if it were, Canada would have a greater claim to be there than either France or China. The reason Canada isn’t is because a third Anglosphere nation and a second realm of King George VI would have made too obvious a truth usually left unstated—that the Anglosphere was the all but lone defender of civilization and of liberty. In broader geopolitical terms, the key regional powers in almost every corner of the globe are British-derived—from Australia to South Africa to India—and, even among the lesser players, as a general rule you’re better off for having been exposed to British rule than not: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados?

And of course the pre-eminent power of the age derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go. In his sequel to Churchill’s great work, The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Andrew Roberts writes:

Just as we do not today differentiate between the Roman Republic and the imperial period of the Julio-Claudians when we think of the Roman Empire, so in the future no-one will bother to make a distinction between the British Empire–led and the American Republic–led periods of English-speaking dominance between the late-eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It will be recognized that in the majestic sweep of history they had so much in common—and enough that separated them from everyone else—that they ought to be regarded as a single historical entity, which only scholars and pedants will try to describe separately.

If you step back for a moment, this seems obvious. There is a distinction between the “English-speaking peoples” and the rest of “the West,” and at key moments in human history that distinction has proved critical.

Continental Europe has given us plenty of nice paintings and agreeable symphonies, French wine and Italian actresses and whatnot, but, for all our fetishization of multiculturalism, you can’t help noticing that when it comes to the notion of a political West—one with a sustained commitment to liberty and democracy—the historical record looks a lot more unicultural and, indeed (given that most of these liberal democracies other than America share the same head of state), uniregal. The entire political class of Portugal, Spain, and Greece spent their childhoods living under dictatorships. So did Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel. We forget how rare on this earth is peaceful constitutional evolution, and rarer still outside the Anglosphere.

Decline starts with the money. It always does. As Jonathan Swift put it:
A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
’Tis like the writing on the wall.

Today the people who have America’s bonds are not the people one would wish to have one’s soul. As Madhav Nalapat has suggested, Beijing believes a half-millennium Western interregnum is about to come to an end, and the world will return to Chinese dominance. I think they’re wrong on the latter, but right on the former. Within a decade, the United States will be spending more of the federal budget on its interest payments than on its military.

According to the cbo’s 2010 long-term budget outlook, by 2020 the U.S. government will be paying between 15 and 20 percent of its revenues in debt interest—whereas defense spending will be down to between 14 and 16 percent. America will be spending more on debt interest than China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel spend on their militaries combined. The superpower will have advanced from a nation of aircraft carriers to a nation of debt carriers.

What does that mean? In 2009, the United States spent about $665 billion on its military, the Chinese about $99 billion. If Beijing continues to buy American debt at the rate it has in recent years, then within a half-decade or so U.S. interest payments on that debt will be covering the entire cost of the Chinese military. This year, the Pentagon issued an alarming report to Congress on Beijing’s massive military build-up, including new missiles, upgraded bombers, and an aircraft-carrier R&D program intended to challenge American dominance in the Pacific. What the report didn’t mention is who’s paying for it. Answer: Mr. and Mrs. America. (the entire 'must read' essay here)