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April 30, 2006

Stomach Test

Want to test the strength of your stomach? Check out Hot Air's video of Helen Thomas making a sexy and glamorous entrance to last night's White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

If you make it past Helen, a little over half way through the clip you'll see that Cowardly Central comedian Stephen Colbert can actually be even less funny than he was in those idiotic Mr. Goodwrench commercials. Naturally, the MSM praised his lead balloon performance. When the subject is W, jokes don't have to be funny or competently delivered, so long as they're nasty.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:44 PM | Comments (6)

Required Viewing: United 93

If you haven't seen United 93 yet, please do so at your earliest convenience. This sober depiction of the events of 9/11 is a fitting tribute to the heroes who brought United Airlines Flight 93 down in a Pennsylvania field before the Muslims who had hijacked it could crash it into the Capitol. Without injecting any opinionating, the movie makes it crystal clear why we must aggressively confront Islamic terrorism.

We used to be able to expect that Hollywood would help our country in time of war. Famous actors actually fought for the flag, including Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Charles Bronson, Gene Autry, George C. Scott, Kirk Douglas, and many others. But now, instead of turning out films to rally the country, Hollywood actually propagandizes on behalf of the enemy (e.g., Fahrenheit 911, Syriana). Imagine useless pretty boys like George Clooney or Tom Cruise or the obese obscenity Michael Moore putting on flak jackets and facing down terrorists.

Fortunately there's nothing Hollywood about United 93. There are no smirking fops, no self-worshiping Julia Roberts types tossing their hair. Key figures play themselves and perform admirably. There are also no "nuanced" suggestions that the terrorists might have a point, or that fighting terrorism is somehow comparable to terrorism itself (as in Munich), let alone tinfoil hat notions that the whole atrocity was an American conspiracy (as we will presumably be getting from Oliver Stone). The movie is not entertainment but a historical reenactment, which the no-frills style never lets you forget.

However, antiwar types who want to continue to forget why we're fighting in the Middle East are warned to stay away.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:43 AM | Comments (2)

Islamothug Attacks Repelled

Good news: Aaron's cc is back online. It appears to have been the target of a pair of denial of service attacks on Friday that originated in Saudi Arabia. The attacks temporarily took down some behemoths of the blogosphere, including Little Green Footballs, Power Line, Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, Captain's Quarters, and The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler; Moonbattery was also affected (sorry about the downtime).

Not that we needed it, but this is yet another reminder that civilization is at war with Islam, has been for centuries, and will continue to be until one or the other is destroyed. Whether by Internet sabotage, terrorism, developing nuclear weapons, or simply exploiting the willful dhimmitude of the politically correct weenies who infest the State Department, the United Nations, and the European Union, Muslims will stifle us any way they can.

If there's one thing Western Civilization stands for, it's intellectual freedom, which means freedom of expression. When we let the followers of the evil death cult known as Islam bully us into giving it up, the war will be over and we will have lost.

All the same, I wouldn't want to offend any Saudis, since they are our "allies" in the War on Terror and since — due to moonbats having suppressed drilling in our own country — we need to keep pouring money into their pockets in exchange for their oil. So I'll be very sure not to post any of inflammatory pictures like the ones Aaron has been putting up. Like this one:

Or this one:

Okay, so they're juvenile. But as Aaron quotes Sun Tzu:

If your opponent is quick to anger, seek to irritate him.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:03 AM | Comments (6)

April 29, 2006

Moonbats Crusade to Raise Your Power Bill

Are your energy bills too low? Not to worry — New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer — evidently the state's next governor — is on the case, leading a moonbat crusade to force the federal government to smother power plants with even more draconian regulations in the name of combating global warming.

Other progressive states that have chirped in with "me too" include the usual suspects: California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Vermont, etc. Also participating in the suit are the cities of New York and Washington, and some of the powerful environmental groups that we can thank for high gas prices, namely Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club.

The EPA argues that the law does not authorize it to regulate emissions to reduce global warming. It also points out that there is insufficient data to support such regulation. In other words, why cripple the economy when we don't even know that global warming is real, much less that CO2 emissions have any effect on it?

However, that sort of reasoning is unlikely to sway a fellow like Spitzer, who may hope to ride his left-wing crusades all the way to the White House.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:32 AM | Comments (1)

April 28, 2006

Climate Change: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose

Today is the 31-year anniversary of a Newsweek piece that announced that we are all doomed because incipient global cooling will soon lead to a "drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth." But the new ice age failed to materialize.

The same problem has come up again with global warming. Evidence that carbon emissions effect temperature just isn't there, forcing some to twist themselves into knots with bizarre "warming causes cooling" explanations.

Twice burned, the Chicken Little industry is starting to learn. Although no one knows whether it will be warmer or colder in the future, the one thing we can bank on is that the temperature will change, because it always has. Dr. Chris de Freitas, a climatologist, geographer, and environmentalist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, explains how the fear-mongers are now covering their bets:

Recently, media and politicians have virtually stopped talking about global warming and are now referring to climate change instead. That's because predictions of doom and gloom from warming just aren't coming true. But with "climate change," Kyoto advocates can now cite any change or phenomenon as proof that CO2 emissions have upset the global apple cart.

Unless weather suddenly stops happening altogether, research dollars will continue to flow, and left-leaning politicians will continue to demand ever more suffocating regulation, because there will always be evidence that cataclysmic "climate change" is upon us.

This clever approach will even allow Time Magazine to repurpose the heart-wrenching oppressed polar bear photo they recently put on their cover:

If the weather cools off, as it did during the massive industrialization between 1940 and 1979, they might use this picture with a story on the danger of ice floe–riding polar bears attacking Florida beachgoers.

Too bad the energy the science community puts into political spin doesn't go into pure research instead. We would probably have a cheap alternative to gasoline by now. But of course, pure research doesn't generate grant money the way PC hysteria can do.

Hat tip: Bergbikr

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:51 AM | Comments (5)

April 27, 2006

Campus Cowards Bully Christians

We still haven't heard the last of the vapid Danish cartoons that Islamic extremists used as a pretext to bully the West ever farther into dhimmitude. The Insurgent, an alternative (i.e., moonbat) student paper published on the campus of University of Oregon and financed with student fees, has now used them as a pretext to indulge in their own brand of bullying: obscenely blaspheming Christ.

According to The Insurgent, their 12 obscene Jesus cartoons were published in response to a rival paper publishing the bland Mohammad cartoons that had been exploited to generate such a contrived fuss. The idea was purportedly to "provoke dialogue."

Actually, the idea was to provoke Christians — and anyone else with even a rudimentary sense of decency. You don't have to be the Church Lady to see the difference between these:

and these:

The uncensored originals feature cartoon erections. If anyone published pictures like this of Mohammad, in a Muslim country, Muslims would have every right to be annoyed. Christians on the other hand have no right to be annoyed about anything ever, as far as the liberal elite running our media and universities are concerned, making them an ideal target for schoolyard bullies.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:53 PM | Comments (12)

$1.2 Million Spanking

Nobly refraining from indulging in greed, Janet Orlando is asking for only $1.2 million to compensate her for the discrimination and emotional distress she allegedly endured when she was spanked as part of a voluntary camaraderie-building exercise at her job.

Sales teams at her Anaheim-based home security company competed against each other, with winners throwing pies at the losers, feeding them baby food, making them wear diapers, and even slapping their backsides.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:30 PM | Comments (8)

Academia: Beyond Ridicule

Even the Gray Lady is starting to notice that you need tall boots to wade through the hallowed halls of academia these days. NY Times op-ed contributor Stephen Budiansky laments that college satire just isn't possible anymore, since nothing you could make up would be more ludicrous than reality.

For example, Case — formerly less dashingly known as Case Western Reserve University — features a new showcase undergraduate seminar program called SAGES (the justification for this catchy acronym is Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship), integral to which is an upscale cafe promised to be "staffed by baristas whose expertise in preparing espresso is matched only by their authoritative knowledge of all things SAGES."

A 92-page guide for teachers participating in SAGES highlights the futility of trying to make fun of Case's self-ridiculing educrats. When students are disruptive in class, instructors are to explore underlying causes, rather than attempting to "manage" the behavior. The rigid objectivity of grading scales is to be avoided. If students fail to participate in discussions, teachers should "make space for silence." As Budiansky puts it:

Instructors must remember that to such characteristically American cultural beliefs as the importance of morality, rationality and personal responsibility, there are equally valid alternatives that must be respected.

If only it weren't just the allegedly valid alternatives but morality, rationality, and personal responsibility themselves that were offered respect on college campuses, it might be easier to take academia seriously.

Hat tip: Harry

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:10 PM | Comments (3)

April 26, 2006

Let's Learn From Brazil

If we really are sick of high oil prices, maybe it's time to stop indulging in moonbattery and do something rational about the problem. If food prices were getting high, what would we do:

1. Chastise ourselves for being addicted to food?
2. Chew on bark and twigs instead of eating?
3. Accuse farmers of profiteering and drive them out of business with punitive taxes?
4. Increase the supply of food?

Brazil has opted for the equivalent of (d), and consequently has achieved the security of energy independence. Part of their approach involves ethanol, but as Investor's Business Daily points out, "the heavy lifting came from aggressive oil drilling offshore." When their newest deep-water rig is up to full output later this year, it will produce more than Brazil's entire ethanol program. Offshore drilling supplies 80% of the country's oil supply.

The USA has similar resources, but tragically is prevented by left-wing foolishness from taking advantage of them. Thanks to the undue influence of environmental extremists on bureaucrats, drilling for oil up to 200 miles off our shores has all but stopped.

Meanwhile, Fidel Castro is drilling 35 miles off the Florida Keys. Communist dictators are allowed to do this; American oil companies are not. Too bad Castro doesn't have access to ANWR; at least then its massive oil reserves wouldn't go to waste.

Letting government thugs loot the corporations that get oil from out of the ground into our gas tanks won't lower prices. Only two things will: reduced demand and increased supply. Reduced demand would entail increased unemployment and poverty. But the only downside of increased supply is that the oil companies that supply us with our lifeblood would continue to make an honest profit, to the chagrin of our socialist media.

Hat tips: Byron, The American Thinker

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:28 PM | Comments (6)

Iranian Terrorist Massoumeh Ebtekar Gets U.N. Award

As reported on NRO, the U.N. Environment Programme has given out its 2006 Champion of the Earth awards, which honor people "for their creativity, vision and leadership, and the potential of their work and ideas for replication across the globe." Among the winners was Massoumeh Ebtekar, Vice President of Iran and formerly head of its Department of the Environment. Her accomplishments also include a prominent role in the 1979 embassy crisis, during which Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held hostages for well over a year, until the glorious day Dhimmi Carter was dislodged from the White House.

Ebtekar became the mouthpiece of the Islamist kidnappers because she spoke fluent English with an American accent, having lived in the USA. As The Atlantic Monthly reports:

Known as "Mother Mary" and "Screaming Mary," she was especially disliked by many of the hostages, in part because her accent made her seem like a turncoat, a "Tokyo Rose," in part because of her endless propagandizing. She would saunter through the captured embassy with a camera crew in tow, urging the hostages to describe their ordeal in upbeat terms. "You have been treated well, haven't you?" was her constant refrain. During one such filming session, in the final days of captivity, Army Sergeant Regis Regan got so fed up with Ebtekar that he let loose with a stream of invective and was dragged into a hallway for a beating. Another former hostage, Michael Metrinko, one of the embassy's political officers, summed up his feelings about Ebtekar this way: "If she were on fire on the street, I wouldn't piss on her to put it out."

Ebtekar is on the record as being willing to shoot hostages herself, and as having no regrets about the embassy seizure.

In short, Massoumeh Ebtekar is exactly the sort of character that would be granted an award by the perverted fools who run the U.N. Unsurprisingly, she used her acceptance speech as an opportunity to propagandize on behalf of Iran's psychotic theocracy.

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" is the one and only reasonable argument I have ever heard in favor of the USA remaining in the United Nations. But as for why we should continue to bankroll this vile organization — there could be no reasonable arguments.

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:32 PM | Comments (5)

Iranians Object to Women in Stadiums

While Keith Hernandez hangs his head in shame for suggesting that women don't belong in MLB dugouts, the medieval militants running Iran have taken a breather from nuclear saber-rattling to denounce the presence of women anywhere in a stadium.

A 25-year ban on women in stadiums was recently lifted by Iran's fun-loving President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But MP Mohammad-Taghi Rahbar (among others) isn't happy about it:

We call on the president to annul the order to allow women into stadiums. ... The presence of women in stadiums is against moral, social and Islamic values.

Yet when push finally comes to shove between the USA and Iran, feminists will no doubt find some way to justify siding with the mullahs. After backing serial female-molester and probable rapist Bill Clinton, they ought to find it easy.

Hat tip: William

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:43 AM | Comments (2)

April 25, 2006

Honoring Rick Monday

Thirty years ago today Chicago Cubs centerfielder Rick Monday saw a moonbat and his 11-year-old son preparing to set fire to an American flag at Dodger Stadium. He charged the pair and rescued Old Glory. Monday explained:

This was a flag that people looked at with respect. We have a lot of rights and freedoms — not to sound corny — but we all have the option if we don't like something to make it better. Or you also have the option, if you don't like it, [to] pack up and leave. But don't come onto the field and burn an American flag.

A veteran of 19 years in the majors and 6 in the Marine Corps Reserves, Monday currently works as a Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster. He grew up in Santa Monica.

In honor of the anniversary, Monday is to be honored tonight with a video tribute at Minute Maid Park in Houston, where the Astros play the Dodgers. Grainy videotape will be played of the freak and his kid jumping over the railing onto left field to lay out the flag and douse it with lighter fluid, and of Monday running in from center to snatch it away. The reaction of the crowd was stunned silence, followed by standing up to cheer and sing God Bless America.

The Dodgers provided a similar tribute on Sunday, with Monday throwing out the first pitch.

He still has the flag. Although it was never in great shape, he was once offered $1 million for it. "But the flag is not for sale," said Monday. "What this flag represents, you can't buy."

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:04 PM | Comments (4)

Iran Promises to Spread Nukes

Today Iranian Supreme Pooh-Bah Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proclaimed that Iran will transfer its nuclear technologies to other countries, and I don't think he had in mind Canada and Sweden. He told Omar al-Bashir, President of the chaotic terrorist-haven hellhole known as the Sudan:

Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. ... The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani threatened to put an end to what passes for its "cooperation" with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency if the Security Council so much as imposes sanctions. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently suggested that Iran might withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

But not to worry — I'm sure the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei has the situation well in hand. After all, the guy is so effective at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, he won a Nobel Prize.

Posted by Van Helsing at 4:16 PM | Comments (1)

Greenpeace Showdown With the Chappaquiddick Kid

Politics makes for strange bedfellows — and unlikely enemies too. Despite his relentless and irresponsible opposition to drilling for oil domestically so that we might lower gas prices and be less dependent on hostile Muslims for our lifeblood, and despite his bloviations to the effect that renewable energy is vital to national security, Ted Kennedy has been blocking an offshore wind farm project because he might be able to see the windmills from his yacht, or on clear days even from his mansion six miles away.

This has earned Senator Pumpkinhead the ire of his fellow progressives at Greenpeace, who have produced a fun commercial urging voters to let their Senators know that our energy policy should not be about the view from Kennedy's porch.

Hat tip: Nick at GreenpeaceUSA

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:52 PM | Comments (4)

Mets Broadcaster Commits Thought Crime

The San Diego Padres' massage therapist Kelly Calabrese was reportedly "flabbergasted" to hear that New York Mets broadcaster and former star Keith Hernandez responded to seeing her high-fiving a player in the dugout by remarking that women "don't belong in the dugout."

When confronted, Hernandez compounded his crime. "I won't say that women belong in the kitchen, but they don't belong in the dugout," he said, then laughed and continued, "You know I am only teasing. I love you gals out there — always have."

Unamused, SportsNet New York issued a statement:

Keith Hernandez made inappropriate comments regarding the presence of a female massage therapist of the San Diego Padres who was in the dugout. We immediately addressed the issue with Keith and reprimanded him, and he publicly apologized during Sunday's game.

Others lined up to express their self-righteous horror at Hernandez's incorrectness, including Calabrese herself and Padres chief executive officer Sandy Alderson. But since Hernandez apologized, a burning at the stake will not be necessary.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:17 PM | Comments (2)

McCarthy Case Makes It Official: MSM Sides With Terrorists Against USA

If you're appalled that former CIA officer Mary McCarthy isn't in prison for impeding the struggle against Islamic terrorism with her politically motivated leaks of classified information, just be glad her fate isn't in the hands of the fifth-column media to which she whispered the secrets that were subsequently broadcast. The MSM quite openly wishes this disgraced traitor were still on the job.

McCarthy has acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter — namely Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who was sickeningly rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize for making it public. The information regards secret prisons run by the CIA in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, specifically to deal with international terrorists. If the CIA kept certain facilities secret, there is probably a reason. Disclosing such information would obviously undermine the War on Terror, as well as relations with our allies, on whose cooperation we depend for our safety.

Sam Donaldson of ABC bizarrely characterized McCarthy's treachery as "a victory for the American people" and managed to compare it to 1960s lunch counters. NPR's embarrassingly dim-witted Juan Williams called it an "act of conscience." Bob Schieffer of the apparently unreformed CBS News claimed that McCarthy was fired just for "hanging out with news reporters" and called her termination "dubious."

Hanoi John Kerry, who has some experience with treason, thinks McCarthy's crime is mitigated because she was "leaking to tell the truth," and Kerry is "glad she told the truth." Putting in a good word for her was the least he could do; after all, she contributed $2,000 to his 2004 campaign, as did her apparent husband (that year the two gave $9,500 to Democrats overall).

But was McCarthy telling the truth? Even the New York Times, which also picked up a Pulitzer by publishing secret information at the expense of our security, has cast doubt on the story. Just because the information is classified doesn't mean it's true. Sometimes false information is created to draw our country's enemies out of the woodwork — and they sure are crawling out.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:05 AM | Comments (8)

April 24, 2006

Cynthia Being Cynthia

Cynthia McKinney has lost none of the imperial obnoxiousness that landed her in hot water when she punched a U.S. Capitol Police officer. During an interview with a local Atlanta station, Rep. McKinney became annoyed when CBS 46 reporter Renee Starzyk kept asking about the assault, for which the Georgia Democrat may yet face criminal charges. She walked out of the interview without telling Starzyk it was over or even allowing a technician to remove her microphone, which caught her denouncing a member of her staff as a fool.

Realizing that the mic was still on, McKinney returned to the interview room and laid down the law:

Anything that is captured by your audio, that is captured while I'm not seated in this chair, is off the record and is not permissible to be used. Is that understood?

Apparently not — here's the video.

Hat tip: Jason

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:13 PM | Comments (4)

Levin, Specter: Lower Prices by Raising Taxes

Never mind the uncontested fact that demand is rising faster than supply. Any moonbat can tell you that rising oil prices are the result of insidious schemes hatched by price-gouging oil executives. By pandering to this paranoid and childish notion, Senators Carl Levin (D, MI) and Arlen Specter (RINO, PA) have made it crystal clear that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Their ingenious response to rising gas prices? Attack oil companies with new taxes and still more excessive regulation.

Biting the hand that feeds us oil certainly isn't going to bring down prices. But if lower prices were really the objective, the government would lower taxes, not raise them. It would also allow a sufficient number of refineries to be built. Easing restrictions on off-shore drilling would bring down prices, as would lightening up with expensive regulations, including those that require pricey additives. Obviously, no sane government concerned about high gas prices would continue to forbid drilling in the otherwise useless frozen wasteland known as ANWR.

But taking constructive measures to increase supply and thereby lower prices would entail confronting the powerful environmental lobby, not to mention our leftist media. This in turn would require a spine, a body part not to be found amid the slimy invertebrates that dominate the Senate.

So irresponsible demagogues like Specter and Levin blame the oil companies that labor against a tide of thuggish government intrusion to provide us with the energy we need for our civilization to function. This sort of behavior should help explain why these two clowns were listed among Time's 10 best Senators, right up there with Ted Kennedy and Dick Durbin.

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:09 PM | Comments (3)

Dhimmitude Imposed at Penn State

Penn State art student Josh Stulman worked for years to create a 10-piece art exhibit Portraits of Terror that has been canceled on the grounds that his artwork "did not promote cultural diversity" or "opportunities for democratic dialogue" — in other words, it was deemed unsympathetic to Islamic terrorists.

The exhibit deals with such forbidden subjects as the destruction of Jewish shrines, anti-Semitic propaganda in the Palestinian media, disregard for rules of engagement, and the indoctrination of youth into the cult of terrorism.

The bureaucratic devices employed to quash it were Penn State's "Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment" and "Zero Tolerance Policy for Hate" — policies that when creatively applied can be used to ban any form of expression leftist administrators regard as politically incorrect. It appears that anyone critical of Islamic terror is racist and must be silenced.

Said Stulman:

It's not about hate. I don't hate Muslims. This is not about Islam. This is about terrorism impacting the Palestinian way of life and Israel way of life.

But if you want to prove you're not a racist in the upside-down world of academia, you have to take the side of terrorists who have been driven unreachably insane by their race hate of Jews.

An advertisement for the Jewish Stulman's canceled exhibit was defaced with a swastika. I guess that's what he gets for being a racist.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:39 AM | Comments (1)

April 23, 2006

Taking to the Streets Against Illegal Immigration

We're used to protesters staging demonstrations in attempts to impose moonbattery on the rest of us. But others take to the streets to show their displeasure with the moonbattery that has already been imposed — or that soon will be, if the government puts through an amnesty bill for illegal aliens.

Texans for Immigration Reform, U.S. Border Watch, and Texas Minutemen teamed up to organize a rally in Houston yesterday that was scheduled to fall between San Jacinto Day and the Senate's expected resumption of its misguided amnesty deliberations tomorrow.

Curtis Collier, president of U.S. Border Watch, took the opportunity to voice some sensible views:

It is a sad day in this nation when people here illegally can storm the streets of our cities and demand U.S. taxpayers continue to provide them welfare, social service programs, free health care and the education of their children. If elected officials cannot fulfill their oath of office to defend this country and the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, I demand they resign.

Today Crispus Attucks Brigade and American Black Citizens Opposed to Illegal Immigration Invasion held a rally in Los Angeles against illegal immigration. The Minutemen were reported to be involved.

Regarding the supposedly racist Minutemen, black activist Ted Hayes of the Crispus Attucks Brigade had this to say:

I've been down to the border with them. They're not racist. They don't care what color you are.

Illegal immigration is not a matter of race, but of sovereignty and rule of law. As it bloats into a grotesque monstrosity that would have horrified the Founding Fathers, the federal government has lost the ability to perform the most basic functions that justify its existence. If the people running our government can't or won't defend the border, they must be replaced by others who can and will.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:07 PM | Comments (3)

Invest in Counter-Moonbattery With the Free Enterprise Action Fund

Moonbats relentlessly demonize the corporate world, which they will never forgive for providing us with the high standard of living that makes economic freedom so obviously preferable to socialist slavery. Yet despite this unyielding hostility, corporations often pander to liberal ideology.

As always, the cancer of moonbattery attacks from within. Just as foundations whose wealth was generated by capitalism are hijacked by militant kooks who use them to attack capitalism (e.g., the Ford Foundation), corporations are manipulated into becoming instruments with which liberals advance goals that are hostile to the free enterprise system.

The Free Enterprise Action Fund has found a way to fight back. Its core principle is summed up in the wise words of Milton Friedman:

The social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits.

By investing in top corporations, the FEAF has put itself in a position to raise awkward questions at shareholders' meetings. Hank Pauls of Goldman Sachs was taken to task for blowing $144,000 of company funds on environmental activism. PepsiCo was questioned over annual gifts of $71.9 million to so-called "charities" that include the flagrantly corrupt Jesse Jackson's lunatic-left Rainbow/PUSH coalition. General Electric is being called onto the carpet for pandering to global warming hysteria.

"We want to do what the Left has been doing for the past 25 years," explains FEAF's Steve Milloy. "We realize that business has become politicized. We're fighting fire with fire."

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:44 AM | Comments (2)

April 22, 2006

Unruly Passenger Awarded Massive Fortune for Being Iranian

You'd better have an air sickness bag on hand before you read this one:

In 2003 Samantha Carrington, a U.S. citizen born in Iran, caused enough of a disturbance aboard a Southwest Airlines flight that she was arrested. Although charges against her were dropped the next day, Carrington smelled money and hired a lawyer. The idea, of course, was to claim she was being put upon for looking Middle Eastern in the tense period following September 11.

A jury awarded her $27.5 million.

If your airline ticket seems a little pricey, and if people who come from a part of the world that exports a great deal of terrorism get extra special treatment and less scrutiny than they should, thank trial lawyers and the vicious, irresponsible juries they persuade to do their bidding — and don't forget the Democratic Party, which in exchange for massive contributions prevents our utterly insane tort system from being reformed.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:29 PM | Comments (2)

Hanoi Jane Calls Objection to Her Treason "Pathetic"

If you have a foot fetish, I hope you didn't miss Jane Fonda's appearance on the taxpayer-subsidized PBS talk show "Charlie Rose" last week, during which guest host Barbara Walters adoringly sucked and nibbled on Hanoi Jane's toes. As the two cuddled, Baba Wawa set a softball on a tee:

It amazes me that I still get letters about you...what has it been since Vietnam? Forty years?...The anger. "Traitor to her country. Honoring her would be traitorous, stupid," and so on. It goes on and on and on.

Hanoi Jane was quick to take a whack with this paranoid rant:

Well, partly it's organized. It's not spontaneous. Some of it is probably spontaneous. But it's sad, and in a way, it's pathetic, that lo, these many years later, these people have not (pause) made sense of the war. They're off base in terms of where the anger needs to be placed. And I'm made a lightning rod, and the right wing has been very assiduous in fanning the flame of the myth of Hanoi Jane. You know, they've spread lies on the Internet about things I supposedly did that aren't true. And they've kept it alive because it suits their interests.

Apparently a little refresher is in order to help nitwits like Baba grasp why people are still angry that someone as loathsome as Fonda would be regarded as "an American icon."

The soapbox Jane Fonda inherited by being born into the Hollywood elite was not just used to question government policy. She energetically strove to undermine our country's struggle with totalitarianism any way she could, and actively assisted the enemy, with which she openly identified. Like the likeminded and equally contemptible John Kerry, she characterized American soldiers as "war criminals."

Here's what Jane had to say about the totalitarian ideology that killed 100 million people in the course of the 20th Century, and that American soldiers were fighting to prevent from enslaving the entire world:

If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist. . . . I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism.

When Fonda and fellow anti-American moonbat Tom Hayden had an illegitimate son, they named him Troy after Nguyen Van Troi, a member of the Viet Cong who was executed by the South Vietnamese for attempting to assassinate Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1963.

In 1970 Fonda teamed up with another militant kook, Donald Sutherland, to form a sort of anti-USO called FTA (F*CK the Army), which toured military towns along the West Coast and throughout the Pacific, with the objective of demoralizing the troops.

Two years later, when over 50,000 Americans had been killed in the war, Fonda traveled to North Vietnam, where she posed for photos on an anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down American planes. She made radio broadcasts from Hanoi, again with the intention of destroying the morale of American soldiers. She compared the USA to fascist Germany and imperial Japan, accused it of war crimes, called the President a "new-type Hitler," and urged South Vietnamese soldiers to desert — all from behind enemy lines during wartime.

For reasons utterly beyond my comprehension, Fonda was not executed for her Hanoi activities on her return to the United States, but instead continues to live like royalty, and of course continues to propagandize against her own country to this day, earning her the warm admiration of the liberal media.

Update

Thank you Number 2 for pointing out that the picture of Hanoi Jane and Hanoi John together that originally appeared with this post was a fake. It has been replaced with a real one.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:49 AM | Comments (9)

April 21, 2006

Fifth Column at Work in Arizona High Schools

While the Mexican invasion pours across the border to swamp Arizona, thanks in part to the assistance of Governor Janet Napolitano, fifth-columnists in the educational system eat away at whatever will to defend our civilization might still exist. At a hearing yesterday, state lawmakers investigated the extent to which education has been abandoned in favor of hard-left indoctrination in high schools.

Left-wing activist Dolores Huerta was invited to speak at Tucson High Magnet School earlier this month, a few days before massive demonstrations in Phoenix and elsewhere in favor of illegal immigration. Huerta took advantage of the opportunity to scream at the kids that "Republicans hate Latinos," presumably because some Republicans believe that our borders and laws need to be respected.

A board member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the USA, Dolores "Dragon Lady" Huerta is a strange pick to help educate our young, considering how she raised — or failed to raise — her own 11 children. From Discover the Networks:

Although Huerta has won awards for her left-wing agitation, she will never win an award for her parenting skills. When she was recently given the $100,000 Nation/Puffin award for Creative Citizenship, she admitted that her choices over the years had affected her children. She often left the older children in charge of their younger siblings while she spent long hours in the fields unionizing farmworkers. Her children's lives were filled with hardship, sacrifice and deprivation for "the cause." Her children have watched their mother land in jail more than 20 times as a protestor, and even suffer life-threatening injuries during a 1988 protest against George H.W. Bush in San Francisco. Whether or not they harbor regrets about the way they were raised, Huerta was an absentee mother who let her kids raise each other, ignoring her parental responsibilities while she pursued Marxist causes. And this abandonment has won her the adulation of the Left. She is often praised in feminist circles for her defiance of the traditional roles of mother and wife (she lives unmarried with Richard Chavez), and for her support for abortion in opposition to her Catholicism.

Huerta's speech was followed a week later by state representative Raul Grijalva, a Democrat up for reelection whom Huerta had endorsed in her own appearance.

The school's principal Abel Morado adopted the usual free speech pose. "I do not check their speech at the door," he sniffed. However, this noble devotion to freedom of expression did not apply when students put up a sign reading "Be a good American. Join the Teen-age Republican Club" — Morado made them take it down.

At the hearing, Republicans, questioned whether schools should be used to promote political views. Democrats, aware that moonbats control the schools, in effect argued that they should. In the end the hearing went nowhere, resulting in no immediate recommendations.

Hat tip: Varla

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:53 PM | Comments (2)

When Clowns Prioritize

Ever wonder where all the money soaked up by the Department of Homeland Security goes, considering that not much of it seems to be applied to securing the borders of our homeland? Here are a few of the creative uses government kleptocrats have found for our DHS dollars:

• Gym equipment;
• Instructing first responders on how to become fitness trainers;
• Nutritional counseling;
• An "educational robot";
• Puppet and clown shows.

The government's largess is quite impressive; for example, one of the puppet and clown show grants was for $69,000.

Meanwhile, private citizens rely on donations to finance their attempts to defend the border. They don't have the luxury of being able to take whatever they want out of your paycheck by force.

Displaying a remarkable gift for understatement, Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste observes that Congress and DHS officials are "having trouble prioritizing."

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

Swiss Leftists Kidnap Snowman

Progressive militants smashed through a window to steal a giant cotton snowman known as the Böögg that was to appear in Zurich's annual spring parade next Monday. In its place they left a chocolate Easter bunny and a communist hammer and sickle emblem.

Traditionally the Böögg's head is stuffed with explosives and set alight at the culmination a Sechseläuten, a spring festival run by Zurich's guilds. Its head being blown off smoothly portends a favorable summer to come. Fortunately the moonbats were not able to cart away the main charge, and there is a spare Böögg to take its place.

Left-wing nuts calling themselves "1. Mai — Strasse Frei" took responsibility for the theft, claiming that the snowman "had had enough of putting its head on the line for capitalists."

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:45 AM | Comments (1)

April 20, 2006

Taxpayers' Money Down the Toilet of Dhimmitude

Proving yet again that there is no limit to the extremes of obsequiousness to which politically correct authorities will have us stoop when it comes to dealing with Muslim terrorists and criminals, British taxpayers will be picking up the tab for rebuilding prison toilets so that Muslim inmates don't have to sit sideways to avoid facing Mecca while using them.

As a Brixton jail officer who clearly is not cut out for higher office was impolitic enough to observe:

If they didn't get locked up for committing crimes they would not have this problem.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:37 PM | Comments (3)

A Little More Gray Lady Schadenfreude

Investors holding 28% of the shares of The New York Times Company withheld their votes for directors at the annual meeting Tuesday. Hassan Elmasry — Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the Gray Lady's fourth-largest shareholder and the only dissenting shareholder identified — said the objective was to improve management and share performance.

Both management and financial performance certainly could stand some improvement. As noted here previously with warm satisfaction, the NY Times' fourth-quarter earnings fell 41% from the same period the year before, following a 52% decline in third-quarter profit. Wall Street has been getting antsy about the company's high financial leverage, deteriorating operating margins, and weak free cash flow available for debt reduction. All this is combined with the fact that ever fewer people regard the left-wing paper as a credible news source.

Unfortunately for the Times, reform can occur only with the say-so of the Ochs-Sulzburger family. Only four of 13 board members are elected by primarily public Class A shares. The other nine are elected by Class B shares, 90% of which are held by the Ochs-Sulzburger clan, which is led by Publisher, Chairman, and confirmed moonbat Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (aka Pinch, The Prince of Political Correctness).

"Little Arthur," as Sulzberger is also called, is a spoilt limousine leftist who never matured beyond a junior high level. His policy of bending over backwards to discriminate against Caucasians and heterosexuals created the environment that brought about the Jayson Blair scandal, which was one of the last nails in the coffin of the Times' credibility. According to a 2003 Rasmussen poll, only 46% of Americans regarded the Times as a reliable news source (as opposed to 72% for Fox News). By now Pinch would probably kill to see that 46% again — though the Times still seems to set the agenda for network news.

The Times' two ownership classes result in a "a lack of accountability to all of the company's shareholders," according to Elmasry, who notes that "Despite significant underperformance, management's total compensation is substantial and has increased considerably over this period."

Remember that, if you happen to hear the Gray Lady yelping that gas prices are high because of greedy executives.

Oh, and did I mention that the NY Times website was down for four hours yesterday evening? Bwahahahaha!

Posted by Van Helsing at 5:11 PM | Comments (1)

Minutemen Stand Up to Federal Moonbattery

Since the government apparently did not vacuum up enough of our money on tax day to finance frivolous projects like defending our country from invasion, it looks like private citizens will have to do the job themselves. Fortunately there are volunteers who take the future and security of this country more seriously than do the useless tax collectors clogging up Washington.

Chris Simcox of the Minutemen is sending an ultimatum to the President (through the media, of course; it's the only way he can be reached): deploy military reserves and the National Guard to the overrun Arizona border by May 25 or the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps will start erecting a private fence.

Private landowners have agreed to the project. But there's a snag: The federal government has been buying up land along the border. This territory can only be defended when the irresponsible short-sighted fools who run our government decide it's politically expedient — which probably means never, despite the laudable efforts of the Minutemen to light a fire under their flabby chair-shaped posteriors.

As usual, as Ronald Reagan observed, government isn't the solution — it's the problem. Nine times out of ten, all government needs to do is get out of the way. Unfortunately, this is the tenth time.

One of the most basic reasons we even have a government is to defend our borders from invasion. A government that refuses to do this is no government at all. It is just a bloated parasitical bureaucracy taking up the space where a government would be if we had one.

The ongoing Mexican invasion is the most serious crisis to face America since the Civil War. Unless it is stopped and the Mexicans already here are assimilated or expelled, this country will be torn apart within two generations.

Although the Minutemen can't defend our country alone, their efforts certainly deserve our support. If all they do is prove that an effective fence can be affordably erected, it will be well worth stopping by the Minuteman Border Fence Project to make a donation.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:22 PM | Comments (3)

Never Too Young for the Gay Agenda

Democrats shouldn't feel too bad about having lost the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. At least they're winning the culture war — and unfortunately that may prove to have far more lasting effects. In Lexington, Massachusetts, second-grade children are being subjected to a book entitled "King and King." The plot involves a prince that doesn't want to marry a princess, but develops a homosexual relationship with her brother instead. In the end the two gay princes kiss and tie the knot in a big palace wedding.

Needless to say, some parents would like to have input on whether this sort of material is fed to their six-year-old children. But that's too bad. Since gay "marriage" is legal in the land of Hanoi John and the Cape Cod Orca, parents have no say in the matter; kids cannot be opted out. Parents are not even entitled to be informed.

Before you roll you eyes and mutter, "Only in Massachusetts," a first-grader brought the same book home from her school library in North Carolina. "What might be inappropriate for one family, in another family is a totally acceptable thing," the principal explained.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:40 AM | Comments (3)

April 19, 2006

"Nice Tool"

If the pain of Tax Day still hasn't receded enough for you to stop wondering just where all that money goes, this should help clarify how some is being spent:

Planned Parenthood reportedly raked in over $265 million in tax loot in the last fiscal year. In addition to lobbying in favor of abortion, the organization's activities have included producing this video, intended to run on the teen-oriented venues MTV and MySpace.com.

Considering the target audience, the ad is salacious in the extreme, encouraging children to have sex. The crude sexual innuendos based on power tools would make an adult audience groan.

Maybe the government should flush more money down the United Nations — if that would mean less for feeding kids stuff like this.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:51 PM

Just Because It's Obvious Is No Reason to Stop Saying It

William S. Lind, in French Riot Lessons:

Invasion by immigrants who do not acculturate is more dangerous than invasion by the army of a foreign state.

Posted by Van Helsing at 3:37 PM

How Moonbattery Caused the Illegal Immigration Crisis

Rabbi Aryeh Spero explains:

What makes citizens of a country submit to the demands of people who are not even citizens? What is it that makes people here for decades and centuries cower in front of those here illegally, arriving only yesterday? What is it that makes people unwilling to lay claim to their own land and country?

It is guilt. It is fear. It is a brainwashing that has convinced so many that every member of the world is entitled to U.S. constitutional and welfare "rights." It is a society that no longer believes in itself as a specific culture or even a sovereign country. Worse, it is a society so emotionally weak that it will accept disease, terrorism, crime, bankruptcy and the disintegration of its own chosen laws rather than being called racist, even though such charges are false.

Forty years of sick liberalism has created a public so unsure of its own legitimacy yet so sure of every other culture's and nation's goodness that it cannot say "no" to anyone perceived outside the mainstream. Being an outsider proffers today a nobility and entitlement to "rights" that is beyond the scope and hope of those viewed as merely regular Americans.

Implications for the War on Terror go beyond the fact that you can sneak whatever you like across our undefended border:

Watching America fold to La Rasa and other race mongers, how afraid of America can the jihadist enemy be, knowing that Americans will not protect themselves if by so doing they are accused of "Islamophobia," the latest concocted form of "racism." To think, a great and powerful nation brought to its knees not by a power stronger militarily but simply because it was afraid of being called a name, simply because it craved its enemy's validation over its own security.

The illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism crises are making it ever harder to avoid a question that every culture has to answer affirmatively in order to survive: Do we believe we deserve to exist?

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:41 PM | Comments (3)

Moonbat Pinup

The bumper sticker across the She-hag's backside reads "Texas Is Cindy Country." Your average Texan might beg to differ.

As Sweetness & Light notes, "Some jokes just write themselves."

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:24 PM | Comments (9)

Medical Moonbattery

Tanya Bainbridge, a 57-year-old former British sailor who used to be named Brian, was treated at taxpayer's expense to a £20,000 sex-change operation in 2001. Now he/she has been approved for a £2,500 procedure to have his/her tattoos removed because they make him/her feel "unladylike."

Miss Bainbridge has fathered 9 children by several different mothers, but now he/she lives with his/her boyfriend, both of whom are unemployed.

Meanwhile thousands of British nurses and doctors are losing their jobs in cuts due to the financial unworkability of socialized medicine, and Claire McDonnell, a 33-year-old mother of three, has been refused Herceptin to treat her breast cancer because it's too pricey. The cost would be £2,500 — the same amount taxpayers will be shelling out to make Bainbridge feel more ladylike.

If that's not enough insanity, here's more:

The USA, with the best healthcare in the world, is deliberately moving toward the dysfunctional socialist model. Crazier yet, Republicans are largely to blame. What Amity Shlaes calls "Canada Creep" has led Governor Mitt Romney to sow malignant seeds of socialism in the receptive soil of Massachusetts. Voters want all the "free" health care goodies Canadians supposedly have, not realizing that, in the words of Edwin Coffey, former president of the Quebec Medical Association, "access to a waiting list is not the same as access to health care."

As Shlaes observes:

Every year the Fraser Institute, a free-market think tank in Vancouver, British Columbia, produces "Waiting Your Turn," a survey of the wait times for various medical procedures. Romney might find it worth perusing. The average is 17 weeks, almost double what it was a decade ago. In Saskatchewan, the wait is 25 weeks.

The result is the flipside of Canada Creep: Canadians crossing the border to get timely health care. When our own health care system has been socialized to the point of uselessness, where will we go to get through the bureaucrats to a doctor?

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:01 PM | Comments (6)

Librarian Charged With "Sexual Harassment" for Recommending Conservative Books

The concept of "sexual harassment" is a highly useful tool for the totalitarian Left. Like their conception of "racism," it means everything and nothing, and can be used to stigmatize and silence anyone who fails to conform to their deformed ideology. At Ohio State University's Mansfield campus, a peaceful Quaker librarian named Scott Savage is to be brought before the Inquisition on charges of sexual harassment for recommending some conservative books in his capacity as a member of the "First Year Reading Experience Committee."

The books that leftist educrats could not bear even the suggestion of students reading were:

• The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian
• The Professors by David Horowitz
• Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye'or
• It Takes a Family by Senator Rick Santorum

Militant gay professors seized on Kupelian's book in particular, squealing that the very idea that students might be asked to read it made them feel "threatened" — thus justifying the faculty vote to investigate Savage on the absurd sexual harassment charge. The book is devoted to illuminating the marketing techniques used by the Left to brainwash Americans into accepting the previously unacceptable. Horowitz's book, which exposes some of the lunatic-left professors that infest higher education, must have also hit a nerve.

The feral hostility of liberal academia to the concepts of free speech and free inquiry couldn't be more starkly illustrated. A suitable response would be to follow the links above and put all four books in your shopping cart at Amazon.

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:42 AM | Comments (2)

April 18, 2006

Militant Moonbatmobile Funded As Art

Anarchist Aaron Gach has used an art grant to fund a Tactical Ice Cream Unit, a rolling joke that is both an ice cream truck and an urban assault vehicle. In addition to offering ice cream in such flavors as hibiscus and chili mango, the truck is equipped with gas masks, police uniforms, video surveillance equipment, and military-grade armor. The front end features a built-in battering ram that can be used to penetrate police barricades and locked fences.

The current purpose of the vehicle is to tour art galleries and universities, distributing radical propaganda for extremely unsavory organizations such as the Black Panther Party, PROMO, the terrorist-assisting International Solidarity Movement, ISM's friends at the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Council on American-Islamic Relations (censors of the show 24 and a front group for Hamas), and the ecoterrorist group Earth First!. Included in this mobile library is a document in Arabic instructing Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI.

Gach's moonbatmobile is being funded as "performance art" by the Margaret Hall Silva Foundation. Margaret Hall Silva is an heir to the Hallmark Card fortune. Whether she personally selected the project, or her foundation is being hijacked by hostile lunatics as happened with the Ford Foundation, could not be determined. At least it wasn't paid for by the NEA.

Posted by Van Helsing at 4:34 PM | Comments (1)

Neil Young Reverts to Moonbattery

To judge by a desperate attempt by aging has-been Neil Young to lay claim to some sort of relevance, September 11 and its aftermath are officially over.

Young's pandering to the moonbattery of his tie-dyed fan base led him to be immortalized by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the classic "Sweet Home Alabama," in which Young's PC put-downs of the South were dismissed with the lines:

Well I heard Mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A southern man don't need him around anyhow

Yet after 9/11, Young turned into a regular Republican, recording the song "Let's Roll" in tribute to the heroic passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 and even attempting to explain to the kooks at People for the American Way why the Patriot Act is necessary.

But now he apparently perceives the winds to be blowing the other way. He has recorded a 60s-style protest album entitled "Living with War," featuring flowery peacenik tunes. One song has the title "Let's Impeach the President" — a possible flashback to the days when impeaching the Republican President was a credible concept. Young's only number one hit was "Heart of Gold," which came out in 1972.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:13 PM | Comments (11)

Zacarias Moussaoui, the Put-Upon Terrorist

Zacarias Moussaoui, the boastful al Qaeda terrorist who obscenely exults in the death and destruction of September 11, which his lies to authorities enabled to take place, stands a good chance of being put out of the world's misery.

He certainly has it coming. Moussaoui has testified that it was his "pleasure" to accept a suicide mission from Osama bin Laden, and that his only regret on September 11 was that more Americans didn't die. He called the sobbing survivors and family members of victims who testified "disgusting," and characterized the testimony of a man who crawled out of his burning Pentagon office as "pathetic." He affirmed that his goals are to "exterminate" Jews and to destroy the United States to the best of his ability.

The only defense possible for a man admittedly guilty and almost cartoonishly evil is of course moonbattery. Inevitably, prosecutors are trying to generate sympathy for this demon, producing witnesses to snivel that he came from a broken home, that his mother was frequently beaten (not exactly unusual among Arabs), that he had to spend time in orphanages, that someone called him a "dirty Arab," etc.

Can't you see that 9/11 was just a cry for help?

If sympathy doesn't work, there's the tried and true insanity defense, by which even shooting the President is permissible, so long as experts will testify that you're troubled. One defense witness has asserted that Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic who suffers from delusions. He certainly behaves like one. But then, so does every other Islamic terrorist on the planet.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:40 AM | Comments (8)

April 17, 2006

The Duke Lacrosse Debacle — Who Cares Who's Innocent?

The Duke lacrosse rape scandal — in which well-to-do white athletes stand accused of raping a black stripper, despite a curious lack of evidence — is starting to smell a little like a Tawana Brawley reprise. It was only a matter of time until Jesse Jackson and/or Al Sharpton appeared on the scene.

Brawley, who now calls herself Maryam Muhammad, launched Al Sharpton's career by smearing herself with dog crap and claiming that police officers raped her and scribbled nasty racial epithets on her skin. While the hoax destroyed the careers of decent men, Sharpton was able to exploit it to set off on his quest to surpass Jackson as the nation's premier race hustler.

Now the tables have turned, with Jackson reduced to playing catch-up. He has announced that his Rainbow/PUSH money machine will pay the tuition of the alleged rape victim — even if her story proves false.

If this woman is telling the truth, whoever raped her certainly deserves the full punishment of the law, and kudos to anyone who steps forward to pay her tuition. But if not, she is willing to destroy innocent men's lives, as well as the credibility of every woman who cries rape, including of course women who really are raped.

You would think it would make a great deal of difference even to Jesse Jackson whether or not she is telling the truth. But then, Jackson did serve as the spiritual adviser to Bill "You'd Better Put Some Ice on That" Clinton.

Hat tip: William

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:14 PM | Comments (6)

Happy Tax Day

Tax day is a good time to ask ourselves just where all that money goes. Billions of dollars go to the United Nations, helping to fund entities like the U.N. Disarmament Commission, to which Iran has just been elected to the vice-chair position.

As you might expect, the Disarmament Commission's mission features preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to countries like Iran, which is currently under threat of sanctions from the U.N. Security Council because of its rush to acquire nuclear weapons.

Dr. Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., observes the obvious:

Clearly the Iranians have an interest in establishing disarmament rules that protect their clandestine nuclear weapons program. ... The U.N. has long ago forfeited its role as an international body safeguarding international peace and security and this is just the latest proof of why the U.N. doesn't work.

Here's a better use for the fortune we flush down the United Nations every year: Why don't we just gather the money in great bales and burn it at power plants? Or if environmentalists wouldn't like that, maybe we could have the bills recycled as heavy duty toilet paper. It would be nice to get some sort of use out of it.

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:13 PM

Welcome to the Jungle

The four New York City hooligans who recently chased an NYU student into the path of an oncoming car laughed as he lay in the street dying — and why shouldn't they? Their murder of this young man will have no significant consequences for them; if it were likely to, it probably wouldn't have happened in the first place. Our ultraliberal legal system is there to protect criminals, not their victims.

Prosecutor Joel Seidemann describes the killers:

They didn't call for an ambulance. They didn't call for help. Rather, they stood on the street corner and laughed.

Four days after their little joke, Broderick John Hehman died of the massive head injuries they caused him by chasing him into the street while trying to steal his cell phone. They face a maximum of 5 years in "restrictive placement." It's possible they will get off with no more than 18 months in juvenile detention — even if our loony-tunes courts manage to find them guilty. There were only 14 witnesses, so the case might be a tough one.

I had a pair of similar experiences in the same city 15 years or so ago, except I was luckier — both times I came away with only a concussion. It didn't even occur to me to call the police. My attitude at the time was that if you venture out into a jungle, it's to be expected that you might be set upon by wild beasts.

Too many people still have this attitude. We accept that the streets of our cities are no longer part of the civilized world. Mayhem thrives because it is tolerated, excused, even glorified. As a result, this young man is dead, and his four murderers can look forward to long lives of generous welfare payments and underpunished crimes.

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:47 AM

April 16, 2006

Ludwig Minelli, the Swiss Doctor Death

Apparently some feel that Europeans are not killing themselves off rapidly enough through abortion and failure to reproduce. Swiss lawyer Ludwig Minelli wants to open a chain of "suicide clinics" that will help speed things along.

Minelli's current Dignitas clinic strives to lift the taboo against suicide; after all, why should people think that killing themselves is a bad thing? Another goal is to alert people to the risks of attempting suicide incompetently, hard as it is to imagine anything riskier than attempting suicide competently. But Dignitas clinics aren't just for talking about suicide; they're for providing assistance in committing it.

Minelli already has 450 corpses to his credit. His clinic specializes in rather expensive cocktails — a sodium pentobarbital and water will run you $3,500. But why complain? You can't take it with you.

Part of Minelli's business plan is to extend his clientele to the mentally ill. A manic-depressive is currently fighting in Switzerland's Supreme Court for the right to avail himself of Minelli's services. Minelli also wants to offer his special treatment to Alzheimer patients.

"We never say no," says Switzerland's Dr. Death.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:02 PM | Comments (5)

Ahmadinejad Can't Take a Joke (or a Hint)

A sense of humor apparently ranks even lower than personal hygiene on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's list of priorities. He might have responded to an anonymous text message suggesting that he doesn't wash often enough by taking a long hot shower. Instead, as WorldNetDaily reports,

He fired the president of the phone company, had four people arrested, took other legal action and accused those involved of conspiring with the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad, according to the Iranian opposition website Rooz Online.

This is par for the course in Iran, where bloggers routinely face harassment or imprisonment, text message traffic is monitored by the government, and several people have reportedly received court summonses for making jokes about Ahmadinejad's quest for nuclear weapons with which to blow up Jews and other infidels.

Speaking of jokes, there's a bright side to the Iranian regime — Bill Clinton considers it more democratic than America.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:37 PM | Comments (1)

BDS Case Study: Maryscott O'Connor

Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) might sound like a joke to some, but it's no laughing matter to blogger Maryscott O'Connor, who has come down with a case so severe as to attract the attention of the Washington Post.

O'Connor's emotional problems clearly do not begin or end with BDS. Like most on the Left, she is being eaten alive by an ulcerous hatred that she projects at anyone who does not share her deranged point of view.

She describes her blog, My Left Wing, as "one long, sustained scream." Her style makes heavy use of all caps, as well as the obscene language without which lefties would be unable to express themselves. Unsurprisingly, she started her blogging career by posting to the Angry Left bughouse Daily Kos.

Like many progressives, O'Connor isn't about ideas; she's about feelings — or rather, one feeling: psychotic hatred. In the dark and frightening recesses of her dysfunctional mind, President Bush is "the Antichrist"; Vice President Cheney is "Satan"; Karl Rove is "the devil." As for the Catholic Church, she has this to say:

I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned.

A "burning, sizzling, putrescent place" — that does pretty well describe a moonbat's heart.

But according to O'Connor, she wasn't always so bitter and morally diseased. She was a "classic bleeding-heart liberal," filled with empathy for the suffering. As WaPo describes her:

She signed petitions. She boycotted veal. She canvassed for Greenpeace. She donated to Planned Parenthood. She read the Nation, the New Yorker, the Utne Reader and Mother Jones. She agonized over low wages for overseas workers every time she bought a $40 leather purse.

But then W was elected, and her sanctimonious silliness degenerated into something morbid and obscene. At least she still has some self-awareness:

I have become one of those people with all the bumper stickers on their car. I am this close to being one of those muttering people pushing a cart. I'm insane with rage and grief. But I also feel more connected than I ever have.

Connected — because she has found her way into an online cave full of mouth-frothing moonbats who continually goad each other toward new extremes of paranoia and hyperbole.

Thank you WaPo, for a disturbing but enlightening peek into this hellish cave — and thank you V the K for the tip.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:30 AM | Comments (3)

April 15, 2006

Moonbat Prof Sally Jacobsen Encourages Students to Vandalize

Last weekend a student group called Northern Right to Life, with the permission of Northern Kentucky University officials, erected 400 crosses in a display representing a cemetery for babies aborted by their mothers. Educrats at public universities might like to ban such displays, but the First Amendment prevents them.

This provided an opportunity for Sally Jacobsen, a tenured professor in the literature and language department, to egg on her graduate students to engage in some extracurricular moonbattery. On her invitation, nine or so of her students ripped out the crosses and threw them in the garbage, which may be fitting, considering where aborted fetuses end up.

Asked whether she helped pull up the crosses herself, Professor Jacobsen had no comment. The important thing, from her point of view, is that she didn't like the display:

Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it.

With appalling hypocrisy, she compared her actions, which might be described as using thug tactics to suppress free speech that opposes a genocidal political agenda, to citizens taking down Nazi displays — as if it were not Jacobsen and her ilk but pro-lifers who resemble Nazis.

Students have retrieved the crosses, and have put up a new sign explaining their significance (the old one was stolen). Some were planning to camp out overnight to guard the display from moonbats.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:37 AM | Comments (5)

April 14, 2006

Comedy Central Dhimmitude Meets South Park Blasphemy

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker wanted to do an episode that would editorialize on the contrived controversy Islamic extremists whipped up over the inoffensive if infamous Danish cartoons. Unfortunately the weasels at Comedy Central don't have the belly for controversy, unless by controversy you mean spitting on the values of normal Americans — a practice that obviously does not take much nerve in today's media culture. Stone and Parker were told that no images of Mohammad would be allowed, clearly because some Muslims might choose to take offense.

So the South Park episode will instead feature, according to Fox News, "an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag."

The episode will run during Holy Week.

Despite taking bad taste and disrespectfulness to new extremes, Stone and Parker do get their point across. Anything goes so long as it only insults Christians, Republicans, and America. As of September 11, nothing goes if Muslims might not like it.

But William Donohue of the Catholic League would be more impressed by the South Park pair's devotion to free speech if they resigned on principle for being censored. According to Donohue:

The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central — that's their decision not to show the image of Muhammad or not — it's Parker and Stone. Like little whores, they'll sit there and grab the bucks. They'll sit there and they'll whine and they'll take their shot at Jesus. That's their stock in trade.

Hat tip: Varla

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:21 PM | Comments (9)

The Ultimate Man Bites Dog Story

A man named Reggie Paul Fountain stands accused of eating his pit bull puppy alive. According to Shelby County Texas District Attorney Linda Kay Russell:

He chewed that and ate it, he had blood all over his face, he had blood on his chest, he was in his underwear walking down the street talking to himself and the dog.

But at least Fountain had an excuse for his behavior. He was on PCP and cocaine at the time.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:36 PM | Comments (1)

We're Importing More Than Cheap Labor

Francisco Javier Serrano, a homeless illegal immigrant from Mexico, used to live in a Minnesota high school, foraging in the cafeteria and taking showers in the locker room. When his story was publicized, he struck it rich on the outpouring of sympathy. A developer with more dollars than sense provided him with money, an immigration attorney, and a free apartment overlooking downtown Minneapolis.

But the party ended last January, when immigration officials ordered Serrrano to go back to his own country. Three months later, he showed up with a knife in somebody's kitchen in Boston.

He was arrested for home invasion, but the charge will probably be downgraded to breaking and entering. He'll serve a year or two, then he'll be ordered deported again. A few months after that, he might show up in your kitchen, if you don't keep your windows locked.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:09 AM | Comments (1)

No-Brainer

The mark of incompetence is the ability to make a simple problem complex. As Arnold Ahlert notes in the New York Post, the first step in dealing with the illegal alien crisis is a no-brainer.

SECURE THE BORDER. Only after that's done is there any point trying to address the illegals who are already here.

Hat tip: Byron

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:06 AM

April 13, 2006

Skittering Within the Walls of K-12 Education

It would be nice to think that deranged misfits like Jay Bennish and Steve White, who use their K-12 teaching positions to force obnoxious moonbattery down the throats of their captive and highly impressionable audiences, are freak exceptions to the rule. If only it were true.

Sol Stern at Frontpage Magazine argues that moonbattery is an even greater threat to the future in K-12 than it is in universities, because in the world of higher education, authorities will at least pay lip service to the ideal of teaching unbiased reality, as opposed to engaging in ideological indoctrination. At least in theory, their own hypocrisy can be used to shame them into responsible behavior.

In K-12 there is less hypocrisy, and still less responsible behavior. The education establishment is dominated by immature moonbats who are drawn to the field by the opportunity to infect developing minds with their pernicious ideology.

William Ayers personifies the degeneration of our educational system. During the flower power days, Ayers was a left-wing terrorist involved in acts like planting a bomb in the Pentagon. Then he found a more effective means of undermining American civilization. He took a doctorate in early childhood education from Columbia University's prestigious Teachers College. Now he is a Distinguished Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His objective is to infuse the K-12 curriculum with the depraved dogma liberals bizarrely call "social justice" — a race-based ideology in which merit and individual accomplishment count for nothing, and in which an all-powerful government divvies up wealth and opportunity based on "victim" status.

Ayers has managed to convince Teachers College Press to launch a book series on social justice curriculums. They do not limit their propaganda to soft subjects like sociology. Their goal is to completely replace education with indoctrination. Here's the Teachers College approach to teaching science:

Science education for social justice is transformative for all participants. Science pedagogy framed around social justice concerns can become a medium to transform individuals, schools, communities, the environment, and science itself, in ways that promote equity and social justice. Creating a science education that is transformative implies not only how science is a political activity, but also the ways in which students might see and use science and science education in ways transformative of the institutional and interpersonal power structures that play a role in their lives.

One of the authors of this wacky gobbledygook is Maria S. Rivera Maulucci of the New York City Department of Education. She supervises science instruction for over 100 schools.

When considering the horror of cockroaches like Bennish and White left to shape the outlook of developing minds, it's best not to forget that the same rule applies to them as to their six-legged soul mates: for every one you see, there are a thousand more inside the walls.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:03 PM | Comments (2)

Arizona Lawmakers Attempt to Fill the Void

Kudos to state lawmakers who voted yesterday to allow the arrest and prosecution of illegal aliens under Arizona's trespassing laws. Among the key provisions:

• Make it a Class 1 misdemeanor for immigrants to enter Arizona illegally. After the first offense, undocumented immigrants could be charged with felonies.
• Empower local law enforcement officials to question the immigration status of anyone they have lawfully detained.
• Establish a fingerprint database for those charged under the new law, which supporters say would help in tracking human smugglers and drug dealers.

Originally, invasion would have been made a felony on the first offense, but the bill was watered down to ensure support. Nonetheless, Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano will probably veto it.

Even if it gets through, activists will use courts to thwart the majority's will. A similar measure in New Hampshire was killed by a state judge who ruled that immigration enforcement is the sole domain of the Federal Government — which appears to be too cynical and corrupt to perform its most essential duty by defending the country from invasion.

At least the Arizona bill will expose Napolitano's unwillingness to support meaningful measures to prevent the state from being overrun. And as Rep. Mark Anderson (R-Mesa) points out:

This continues to send an important message to Congress that we want something done.

That message needs to be repeated loudly and clearly, so that those who would place race-based election strategies ahead of the country's well-being understand that those strategies stand a very good chance of blowing up in their faces.

Hat tip: Varla

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:25 PM

Crack Babies and Global Warming

John Stossel provides some insight into the frightening phenomenon of global warming — or rather, into people's belief in it. The problem just might be too much government:

If you're a scientist working for private industry, it helps to invent something useful. But if you're a scientist trying to get funding from the government, you're better off telling the world how horrible things are.

For government to grow, it needs crises that make us willing to sacrifice our money and freedom in exchange for solutions from the State. Hungry for ratings and ideologically committed to ever bigger government, the MSM is only too happy to help hype absurdly exaggerated or even fabricated threats.

Remember Y2K? SARS? Mad cow disease? Three Mile Island? The ice age that was bearing down on us back in the 1970s? None of these impending catastrophes quite lived up to its billing. But when one disaster fails to materialize, there's always another to take its place.

During the War on Drugs days, studies screamed that cocaine-addicted mothers were giving birth to babies that would grow up to form legions of sociopathic zombies. But in reality, the kids turned out better than the children of alcoholic mothers.

Emory University's Claire Coles endured politically motivated abuse for helping debunk earlier crack baby studies. Here's how she explains them:

If you go to an agency and say, "I don't think there's a big problem here, I'd like you to give me $1 million," the probability for getting the money is very low.

Stossel offers some excellent advice:

Next time you hear dire "scientific" warnings — and demands to surrender more control over your life to the government in order to avert disaster — remember the crack babies. The only disaster coming may be an activist-induced panic.

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:43 AM | Comments (12)

April 12, 2006

Tiger Woods: A Hero Falls

Are there no heroes left? His mastery of golf and classy demeanor have earned Tiger Woods millions of fans and made him an excellent role model — until he said this:

I was so in control from tee to green, the best I've played for years... But as soon as I got on the green I was a spaz.

Little did Tiger know that when he said "spaz," he was callously insulting people who suffer from cerebral palsy, according to Nancy Salandra of the disability rights organization ADAPT, who chides:

It's part of the language now, like retard, but it doesn't make it right.

Mr. Woods, have you no shame?

Hat tip: Wiggins

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:25 PM | Comments (5)

Colorado Lawmakers Call on Bush to Defend the Border

Eight Colorado Republicans have sent a letter to President Bush pleading with him to do his job by declaring a national state of emergency to secure our borders. Horrified by the recent demonstrations on behalf of illegal aliens, they ask that the National Guard be used to secure the border, "until effective barriers are in place to stop all illegal infiltration."

The letter makes some good points. Here's one:

Every month, more illegal aliens infiltrate our borders than the entire three-division U.S. Marine force that assaulted Iwo Jima during World War II.

Here's another:

Many illegal aliens now arrogantly oppose our American culture, our Constitutional process of citizenship, the Rule of Law, and the national sovereignty of the Southwestern United States.

The Governors of Arizona and New Mexico have already officially acknowledged that the border situation is an emergency. Kudos to the Colorado 8 for insisting that Bush follow suit.

If the Federal Government won't defend our borders from invasion, exactly what is it good for?

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:03 PM | Comments (6)

Basil Dalack, Petulant Moonbat

Basil Dalack, a lawyer just elected to the village council of Tequesta, Florida refuses to take his oath of office. What's more, he's suing his own town in federal court to have the oath declared unconstitutional.

Here's what Dalack can't bear to say:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, protect and defend the Constitution and government of the United States and of the state of Florida.

The words he has a problem with are "and government." Dalack doesn't support the United States government. You see, he disagrees with the President's foreign policy.

Posted by Van Helsing at 6:57 AM | Comments (9)

Dead Man Running

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ought t