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May 31, 2007

Murtha Boondoggle

Not even CNN can fail to notice that Abscam Jack Murtha is one sleazy SOB:

Hat tip: The Jawa Report.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:03 PM | Comments (3)

NPR Rewrites Kyoto History

Your tax dollar is hard at work at NPR, rewriting history to suit the liberal storyline. Look how bad old Republican Bush nixed the Kyoto Protocol:

The protocol, which expires in 2012, was never submitted to Congress for ratification. President Bush objected to it because it exempts China and India, two of the world's fastest-growing economies, from the tough standards.

Actually, it was the Senate that killed Kyoto — four years before W took office. With characteristic disregard for the country's well-being, Clinton gave in to Al Gore's nagging and signed Kyoto in 1997. The accord would have spelled doom for the American economy, so the Senate passed a resolution 95-0 stating plainly that it would not ratify this suicide pact, which is why it was not submitted to Congress. Even committed leftists like Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted against Kyoto.

AP has spun the same false history of the Kyoto Protocol. But at least they didn't do it on the taxpayer's dime.

Hat tip: Captain's Quarters.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:44 PM | Comments (3)

Ventanillas de Enfermedad

The invasion and colonization of American territory by Mexicans who cross our border illegally is not entirely spontaneous. It has been systematically aided and abetted by the Mexican government — and by our own.

The latest outrage is a program called Ventanillas de Salud, by which Mexican consulates are seeing to it that illegal aliens know they have access to free American healthcare — free for them that is; we pick up the tab.

Observes Ira Mehlman of Federation for American Immigration Reform:

The county [Los Angeles County] is broke, they are cutting back on services, they are closing emergency rooms, yet they are dreaming up new ways to provide benefits to illegal aliens. It's lunacy.

Lunacy — the word sums up our own government's appalling collusion in our country's invasion, occupation, and exploitation nicely. Astoundingly, federal law requires state Medicaid programs to cover illegal aliens. The treasonous fools running our country do everything but send out engraved invitations to invade.

Illegal immigrants already cost Medi-Cal (i.e., California taxpayers) over $1.1 billion last year. That's not a typo: BILLION. But you can expect the number to skyrocket, unless by some miracle we can establish a government capable of grasping that its primary responsibility is to protect America from foreign attack.

On a tip from Byron.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:01 PM | Comments (1)

Money Talks

Money talks, but is the Republican Party listening?

The RNC has axed all 65 of its telephone solicitors, effective immediately — possibly because small donor contributions are down 40%.

It seems no one wants to give money in light of the amnesty crime being perpetrated against our country with the complicity of turncoat Jon Kyl and enthusiastic support of RINOs Lettuce McCain and GWB. One terminated RNC employee reports that potential donors in all 50 states are angry,

and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue.

The RNC denies there has been a decline in contributions. But then, the Republican establishment has also been denying that the party will disintegrate if it doesn't take a stand against the illegal alien invasion.

As the 2006 elections should have made clear, the Republican Party is in trouble, largely due to W's refusal to govern responsibly regarding spending and the border. Firing phone solicitors isn't going to fix it.

Hat tip: Jack Patriot.

Posted by Van Helsing at 4:05 PM | Comments (6)

"An Astounding, Staggering Tax Increase"

If Americans are actually foolish enough to elect Hillary Clinton President, we won't be able to say Rudy Giuliani didn't warn us of the consequences. A recent Chavezesque speech — in which Shrillary shrieked about the return of "robber barons" (presumably referring to the visionary capitalists who built this country) and ominously promised to provide "shared prosperity" by looting anyone who makes a decent living — inspired Rudy to comment on her plans to jack up taxes by killing W's tax cuts:

This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase. […] It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area [Silicon Valley] dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology.

Turning Shrillary's alarming socialist rhetoric on its head, America's Mayor went on:

Mrs. Clinton, when she was in San Francisco a few years ago, was quoted as saying about the tax cuts, "We're going to have to take more from you to give it to the common good." My philosophy is to give you a little more back for the common good.

For good measure, he also laid into Osama Obama's vague plans to destroy our healthcare system and replace it with socialized medicine, to be paid for with loot expropriated from "the wealthy."

On a tip from Byron.

Posted by Van Helsing at 3:38 PM

NASA Scientist Denounces "Arrogant" Global Warming Hoax

NASA administrator Michael Griffin has joined the long and growing list of scientists brave enough to risk the political and economic consequences of refusing to drink the global warming Kool-Aid. NPR was in for a jolt when it asked Griffin if he is concerned about global warming and got this response:

I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.

To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Creepy fellow NASA scientist James Hansen — who was prominently featured in Al Gore's pseudo-scientific propaganda film A Convenient Lie, and has been making a fortune by politically exploiting the global warming hoax — once again could only sputter in incoherent rage:

It's unbelievable. I thought he had been misquoted. It's so unbelievable.

Sorry Hansen. Too many people are wise. The jig is up for the anthropogenic climate change swindle.

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:38 PM | Comments (8)

Tax Breaks For Moonbats

Ingrid Newkirk, founder of PETA and speaker of the immortal words "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy," wants Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to extend to vegetarians the tax breaks you can now get for driving around in an overpriced hybrid. Her justification? Eating rabbit food instead of proper meals helps fight the imaginary global warming menace.

Newkirk cites a University of Chicago report finding that a vegetarian diet would do more to counter global warming than switching from a normal American car to a Prius. No doubt it wouldn't do any less. But then, neither would standing on your head while reciting French poetry. By the way, a Hummer causes less damage to the environment than a Prius.

On a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:22 AM | Comments (11)

Amnesty International Undermines Human Rights

Amnesty International, the tasteless joke once known as the world's preeminent human rights organization, is still taking moral equivalency, hatred of Western Civilization, and what Andrew Bolt calls "anti-racist racism" to new extremes of depravity.

Last week secretary-general Irene Khan released AI's 2007 report, in which she listed four leaders who gravely threaten human rights. First was John Howard, for not allowing his country to be overrun by Third-World immigrants to the point of turning Australia itself into a Third-World country. Second was George Bush, for defending the USA from Islamic terrorists. By contrast, numbers three and four actually belong on the list: Omar al-Bashir of Sudan (the Islamist responsible for genocide in Darfur) and Robert Mugabe (the communist responsible for reducing Zimbabwe to an economic basket case).

Bolt explains how two democratic leaders belong on the same list as a pair of genocidal maniacs:

Two whites were "balanced" by two dark-skins. Two Westerners by two Third-Worlders. Two Christians by a Muslim and an old Communist. What could be fairer?

In another example of this depraved "balance," Khan squeals:

The politics of fear has been made more complex by the emergence of armed groups and big business that commit or condone human rights abuses.

That is, al-Qaeda is bad, but then so is Coca-Cola.

Here she tries to whip out her moral equivalence once again, but veers off into total insanity:

If unregulated migration is the fear of the rich, then unbridled capitalism, driven by globalization, is the fear of the poor.

Okay, the demographic conquest by the Third World of the West is comparable to making a profit by creating wealth. That probably makes sense to a liberal. But if the poor fear capitalism, why are they invading the capitalist West by the millions? Even lunatic extremists should impose some semblance of internal logic on their ravings.

When liberal fools characterize the mild interrogation tactics at Club Gitmo as torture, while ignoring the actual torture carried out by al-Qaeda, they enable real torturers. Similarly, kooks like Khan undermine their own alleged cause by muddling horrific abuses with the legitimate self-defense measures of the democracies that are solely responsible for upholding human rights.

If Khan really had any interest in promoting human rights, the most effective course of action would be for her to shut up and go away.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:45 AM | Comments (3)

Church Organist, Choir Director, Sex Toy Saleswoman

Linette Servais, 50, lost her position as organist and choir director at St. Joseph Catholic Parish in New Franken, Wisconsin, when she refused to stop selling sex toys at the X-rated equivalents of Tupperware parties.

Like most everyone nowadays, Servais is a victim. She only started selling "marital aids" for the company Pure Romance after a brain tumor left her "sexually dysfunctional." She says that sleazy doohickeys empower women and help them strengthen their marriages, proudly asserting:

I feel that Pure Romance is my ministry.

But she can't have her ministry and also be the choir director and organist. She might want to try the Episcopalians or the UMC.

On a tip from Bill.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:35 AM | Comments (6)

May 30, 2007

Al Gore, Brainiac

It's never easy to tell if Dana Milbank is serious, but he seems to mean it when he suggests in WaPo today that Al Gore is too smart to be President of a dumb country like America:

Imagine the Iowa hog farmer cracking open "Assault on Reason," and meeting Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippmann, Johannes Gutenberg, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson and Marshall McLuhan — all before finishing the introduction.

Or maybe Milbank is just making fun of the Goracle's intellectual pretentiousness and the fawning idiocy of his servile fans. One is described as wearing a t-shirt depicting W as the "Worst President Ever" and quoted as slobbering,

I want the smartest guy around to be president. [… But] how do you convince people it's okay to feel inferior to their leaders?

A little background on Gore's intellectual achievements:

Gore's undergraduate transcript from Harvard is riddled with C's, including a C-minus in introductory economics, a D in one science course, and a C-plus in another. "In his sophomore year at Harvard," the Post reported, "Gore's grades were lower than any semester recorded on Bush's transcript from Yale." Moreover, Gore's graduate school record — consistently glossed over by the press — is nothing short of shameful. In 1971, Gore enrolled in Vanderbilt Divinity School where, according to Bill Turque, author of "Inventing Al Gore," he received F's in five of the eight classes he took over the course of three semesters. Not surprisingly, Gore did not receive a degree from the divinity school. Nor did Gore graduate from Vanderbilt Law School, where he enrolled for a brief time and received his fair share of C's. (Bush went on to earn an MBA from Harvard).

Historical name-dropping and $5 words dug out of a thesaurus do not make Gore intelligent — though he is certainly smarter than those he has suckered with the global warming hoax.

Hat tip: Blogmeister USA.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:04 PM | Comments (73)

Loco Ono Eats a Dog

Yoko Ono, useless moonbat and widow of John "Imagine" Lenin Lennon, has taken a righteous stand against fox hunting by eating a dog.

On the menu was a cute Corgi minced with apple and onion. Loco didn't eat much before looking "a bit strange," according to fellow moonbat Mark McGowan, who once ate a swan in protest against the British monarchy.

Hat tip: BelchSpeak.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:59 AM | Comments (19)

Crazy As a Loon

Moonbats have chosen the emblematic loon as an excuse to weaken the US economy and increase our dependence on enemies for our energy supply by preventing drilling in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve.

A petition seeking Endangered Species Act protection for yellow-billed loons has been accepted by the irresponsible bureauweenies at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Since some obscure bird takes priority over the interests of human beings in our insane system, all the ecokooks have to prove is that drilling might decrease the loons' numbers, and up go oil prices (and Middle Eastern terrorist revenues) — even though only a minority of the birds breed in Alaska.

The National Petroleum Reserve that would be sacrificed to the yellow-billed loon was set up by President Warren Harding in 1923, back when the essential needs of humans came before the convenience of loons and caribou.

According to Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity, yellow-billed loons are also threatened by global warming, so look for enterprising moonbats to sue automakers on its behalf.

At least when liberals finally succeed at destroying America, whoever ends up with Alaska (probably the communist Chinese) will allow themselves to get the oil out so people can use it.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:29 AM | Comments (7)

John Conyers Still Wants to Impeach

Thanks to our national sanity lapse last November, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is the corrupt and pro-terrorist buffoon John Conyers, who continues to squawk about seizing the White House by force, instead of just waiting for the next election as is the tradition in democracies.

On impeachment of both the President and Vice President, putting the botoxed Bolshevik Nancy Pelosi in charge of the Executive Branch:

I've been supportive of that movement. I encourage that nationwide.

If they wanted to impeach Bush for neglecting fundamental duties by refusing to defend the border, they would have a very strong case. But the grounds for impeachment would be going to war in Iraq.

Since the majority of Congressmen and Senators voted to authorize the war, we would presumably have to impeach them too.

Conyers' impeachment plans may be going nowhere nationally, but in the Third-World hellhole that elected him, an impeachment resolution sponsored by his wife passed the Detroit City Council unanimously.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:34 AM | Comments (4)

Kindergartners Would Do Better on Illegal Immigration

As Rep. Steve King (R-IA) notes, a kindergartner could see that the illegal amnesty for aliens being shoved down our throats by Bush, McCain, Kennedy, et al. is flat out wrong:

Kindergarten teachers know the chaos that ensues if their charges don't wait their turn and line up in an orderly manner. If an aggressive child barges ahead of the rest to grab a treat, good teachers immediately send them to the back of the line.

If not, the entire classroom erupts with charges of, "That's not fair!" […]

Who would respect a teacher who claimed to have rules but rewarded the rule-breakers? The classroom environment would deteriorate into anarchy. The same is true when it comes to immigration policy.

The Senate amnesty proposal amounts to letting every line-cutter walk away with his cupcake. Even a kindergartner can understand the injustice of the Senate amnesty bill. No amount of political spin could convince them because, "That's not fair!"

But fairness isn't a priority for Bush or the Senate:

Over the next few weeks, the beneficiaries of cheap votes and cheap labor will raise their voices to a crescendo. The message will climax in an all-out effort to convince you that America can suspend the rule of law without descending into Third World status. Proponents will offer alternative definitions for everyday English words like amnesty and justice.

The Senate amnesty bill must be stopped. If we hope to preserve the firm foundation of law and order that has produced the most successful nation in the history of the world, we must enforce the law. It is a concept so simple, 6-year-olds could teach it.

If 6-year-olds were running the country, they might at least attempt to fulfill the government's most primary responsibility: providing for the common defense against foreign invasion.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:05 AM | Comments (2)

Hollyweird Ken Doll Calls Kettle Black

Plastic pretty-boy Ben Affleck, who compensates for his conspicuous lack of acting ability by shouting standard Tinseltown-issue moonbattery, has provided another amusing example of the Left's habit of projection by condemning Mitt Romney because "he's all clean-cut and he looks like a Ken doll."

Affleck made his foolish comment on the gut-wrenchingly vile Real Time With Bill Maher. Then, taking a clue from Mother Moonbat, he turned his low-caliber guns on his own Democrat Party for finally agreeing to fund our troops as they fight al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists in Iraq.

These (bleeping) people. This is the (bleeping) problem with that. Democrats live in fear of basically being called cowards.

In an earlier generation, actors were over there fighting the enemy. Now we have garbage like Affleck, using gutter language to snipe at his own country from the safety of the sidelines. But he would make a handsome Ken doll.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:26 AM | Comments (11)

May 29, 2007

Venezuelans Scramble to Escape Socialist Utopia

Not all Venezuelans are waiting for Hugo Chavez to finish suffocating his country's last remnants of freedom. From The Times:

At the US Embassy, citizenship claims and visa enquiries have doubled since January. A Canadian job fair, with a capacity of 500, was swamped by a crowd of 1,500. Every morning snaking queues form outside the embassies of Australia, Spain and Portugal to inquire about emigration there.

Agrochemical engineer Maria Conquita Rodriguez, never active in the opposition, nonetheless is getting spooked:

He [Chavez] is becoming more and more extreme and everything that he says becomes a law. We are looking at a dictatorship. You realize you have to have your papers in order in case you have to leave.

Some find themselves unemployable after having signed La Lista, a petition calling for a referendum on removing Chavez in 2002. La Lista was posted on the Internet, making anyone who signed it persona non grata. Says law student Andrea Teran:

I want to work in the Supreme Court but it's always the first question: did you sign the list? You can't get a government job if you signed, and the way nationalization is going, soon all the jobs will be with the Government.

That's the whole point of socialism: to make everyone totally dependent on the government, so that no one dares think about liberty. Even now Chavez has his supporters among the poor, who appreciate all the freebies he gives them, paid for by the wealth he's expropriated.

Of course, the freebies aren't really free. The poor pay for them with their freedom, their dignity, and their souls. Anyone with any wealth, skills, or initiative will escape or be robbed blind by the government, until the entire population consists of soulless peasants sucking on the teat of Chavez's evil kleptocracy.

Fortunately there are still free countries to which Venezuelans can escape. There won't always be, if moonbats have their way.

Hat tip: Rantburg.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:38 PM | Comments (7)

Ward Churchill May Finally Get Canned

Years after it came to light that Colorado University ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill has habitually indulged in fraud and plagiarism in addition to hyperbolic anti-American rhetoric, CU President Hank Brown has recommended that he be fired.

Churchill was made chairman of the ethnic studies department despite having no academic qualifications on the strength of his claim to be an Indian, which turns out not to be true. His scholarship consists of plagiarism and lies defaming the USA.

No doubt Mental Ward would have been shown the door as soon as this became public knowledge, if not for the accomplishment that made him famous: proving himself vile enough to denounce those who perished at the World Trade Center on 9/11 as "Little Eichmanns" who deserved to die. Now any attempt to discipline him for plagiarism and fraud is met with liberal screeching about silencing dissent.

But as Brown has finally gathered the courage to announce:

The university cannot disregard allegations of serious research misconduct simply because the allegations were made against a professor whose comments have attracted a high degree of public attention.

Since Churchill has tenure, Brown still has to go through a bureaucratic labyrinth to get rid of him. Too bad no one has heard him say "nappy-headed"; he'd be out on his ear in a week.

Like a true leftist parasite, Churchill says he will sue when they finally fire him.

Hat tip: Pirate Ballerina.

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:57 PM | Comments (8)

Worth 2,000 Words

Like they say, a picture's worth 1,000 words. Via Blue Star Chronicles, here are a couple taken after a terrorist bomb went off in Iraq yesterday:

Now why would a child seek protection by hiding behind an American soldier? Rep. John Murtha says our troops are cold-blooded killers. Senator John Kerry says they burst "into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children."

Kids on the streets of Iraq know who the good guys are. Unfortunately, American voters sometimes don't. Consequently the good guys no longer hold Congress, so the kid in the pictures may soon be on his own.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:49 PM | Comments (8)

India Rejects Global Warming Hoax

Kudos to India, which rejects climate change hysteria in favor of lifting its people out of poverty.

India has nixed proposals to limit "greenhouse gas" emissions, evidently aware that while the agony of poverty is most definitely real, the global warming hoax is not. Says environment ministry secretary Pradipto Ghosh:

Legally mandated measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have significant adverse impacts on GDP growth of developing countries, including India. This in turn will have serious implications for our poverty alleviation programs.

Although this apparently hasn't occurred to many Western environmentalists, most people would rather have food in their bellies than starve.

Meanwhile, Germany demands that the worldwide temperature increase be limited to 2°C over the next century. The Earth's climate has been fluctuating for 4.5 billion years, but that was before moonbat bureauweenies took jurisdiction over it.

Even liberals might admit that emissions caps will have no effect if the biggest emitters — the USA, China, India, Brazil — are too sensible to drink the Kool-Aid. But then, the caps wouldn't have any perceptible effect anyway, except to lower our standard of living and increase the power of bureaucrats.

Hat tip: NewsBusters.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:08 PM | Comments (2)

Releasing Terrorists

Don't hold your breath waiting for this to be mentioned on the evening news:

The Jerusalem Public Prosecutor has issued an indictment of Nadwa Dirbas, a young Arab woman, resident in east Jerusalem. She has been accused of having tried, on leaving prison, to push her sister to carry out a suicide attack. When her sister refused, she tried to bring suicide terrorists into Israel, using her own Israeli ID card. Her plans were foiled by the Israeli security services who arrested her.

I wonder what Ms. Dirbas was doing in prison in the first place, if not cooling her heels on terrorism charges. Letting a terrorist loose in society is like letting a rattlesnake loose in a nursery school. But what can you do? In Israel, the death penalty is only allowed for Nazis. Apparently the bureaucrats there exist in a time warp in which Nazis are still a threat, but Muslim terrorists aren't.

Via Something… and Half of Something, here are some Jews murdered by terrorists who had been released from Israeli prisons:

When it comes to terrorism, the death penalty isn't just justice — it's self-preservation.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:20 AM | Comments (1)

Venezuela Still Putting Up a Fight

Protests against Hugo Chavez tightening his totalitarian grip by closing down Venezuela's oldest television station RCTV continue to widen.

Apparently not everyone agrees with Danny Glover than Venezuela should be reduced to a hand-to-mouth socialist police state to gratify Chavez's lust for ultimate power. Police have been using tear gas and rubber bullets, suggesting that Chavez still feels himself too vulnerable to resort to the traditional communist tools for stifling public dissent, machine guns and tanks.

Nonetheless, he continues to tighten his grip, gradually strangling freedom in Venezuela like a boa constrictor slowly squeezing the life from its prey. The last remaining television station willing to challenge Chavez, Globovision, has been charged with encouraging the assassination of Chavez by airing footage of the 1981 attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II.

As for RCTV, it has been replaced with TVes, Chavez's answer to PBS, a state-backed socialist station.

For now it is still possible to speak out in Venezuela without being dragged in front of a firing squad, as has happened to so many in Cuba. Baltasar Porras Cardoso, Archbishop of Merida, aptly compared Chavez to Hitler, Mussolini, and Chavez's friend and role model Fidel Castro.

RCTV's former owner Marcel Granier noted that Chavez is driven by "a megalomaniacal desire to establish a totalitarian dictatorship."

If he succeeds, voices of protest will soon be silenced, as property continues to be confiscated by the state, leaving Venezuela to sink into the poverty and hopelessness of socialism.

In related news, Hillary Clinton denounced our "ownership society" as really being an "on your own" society. Displaying her contempt for economic freedom, Shrillary screeched:

Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies.

Actually, under capitalism fairness does just happen, just as goods and services are distributed to where they are most needed like water automatically seeking its level, without any need for authoritarian bureaucracy. But this only occurs if we have the character to stop leftists from preventing it.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:57 AM | Comments (13)

"Drew Phoenix," Sex Change Minister

Even the increasingly decadent United Methodist Church still has a ban on actively gay clergy, in acknowledgment of the Bible's repeated condemnation of homosexual perversion. But a loophole has been discovered: just get a sex change!

Minister Ann Gordon has been reappointed to lead his/her Baltimore congregation, after undergoing a sex change operation and becoming "Drew Phoenix." Rev. Phoenix will guide his/her flock along the thorny path to surgically deformed polysexual enlightenment, or as he/she puts it:

It is my intention and hope that by sharing my story that we commit ourselves as Christians and as United Methodists to become educated about the complexity of gender.

So much for 1 Timothy 3.

On tips from V the K and David.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:43 AM | Comments (8)

Moonbats Desecrate Veterans' Graves

Moonbats acknowledged this past Memorial Day weekend as you might expect — by desecrating the memories of soldiers who died to defend their freedom.

On Sunday, in a cemetery on Orcas Island, Washington, enlightened progressives gathered up the flags honoring veterans' graves, threw them in a pile, and set them on fire. After patriots from the American Legion replaced the flags, the vandals snuck back yesterday and replaced them with hand-drawn swastika flags.

This is the thanks moonbats offer to those who lay down their lives. Given this underlying hostility from the Left, it should come as no surprise that Congressional Dems and the liberal MSM have been working assiduously to cause our troops' defeat in Iraq.

Hat tip: LGF, on a tip from White Cane.

Update:

More of the same in the Philly area.

Posted by Van Helsing at 7:57 AM | Comments (5)

May 28, 2007

Swedish Prisoners: Bikinis Are a Human Right

Female prisoners are demanding their "human right" to wear bikinis so they can get a good tan while they serve time in a Swedish jail.

Sex discrimination is involved, since men can get a tan just by taking their shirts off, whereas women have to sunbathe in shorts and a sports top, which they consider unacceptable.

Whined one prisoner:

We are treated differently because we are in an institution and we are discriminated against because of our gender.

Good thing the convicts aren't Muslims, or Jimmy Carter would accuse the jail of torture and John McCain would promise to close it down.

On a tip from The Panday.

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

Antiwar Moonbats to Crash July 4 Parade in the Hamptons

Not everyone honors or even ignores this great country on patriotic holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Some take these occasions to protest against it.

Thanks to a judge's ruling and the assistance of the New York Civil Liberties Union, moonbat antiwar activists will thumb their nose at America by marching in the Southampton Village Fourth of July parade.

Village officials argued in vain that political signs are not allowed in the parade. No doubt the courts will allow that rule to be upheld if any pro-American slogans turn up.

On a tip from Bob.

Posted by Van Helsing at 2:44 PM | Comments (3)

American Legion Hat Forbidden

Proud of his service in the Navy and to be an American, Georgia bus driver Gary Rolley honored Veterans Day a little early by wearing his American Legion hat to work on Friday, since he has the day off today. Unfortunately, his bosses at the Gwinnett County Transit Authority were having none of it.

Santa hats are still allowed at Christmastime, but Rolley's patriotic hat apparently crosses the line. After one supervisor told him he couldn't wear it, another checked up on him by radio.

Rolley ended up driving back to headquarters and announcing that he was taking the day off because he was sick to his stomach. Moonbattery can have that effect on you.

On tips from Planet Rock and NudeGayWhalesForJesus.

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:26 PM | Comments (3)

Hippy Stains Haven't Washed Out

The hideous pustule on the face of Western history known as the 1960s has left a scar that still won't heal, according to a recent survey evaluating the lasting influence among the British of the vermin called hippies. Some of the findings:

• One in ten had taken part in an anti-war (i.e., pro-surrender) demonstration.
• Over one in three thinks there is never a reason to fight a war.
• 82% believe in saving the planet (i.e., from humans).
• Almost half would consider trying to produce their own food.
• 43% claimed they would live solely with alternative (i.e., politically correct but grossly inefficient) energy sources.
• Two thirds think sex before marriage is a good idea.
• One in ten would have multiple sexual partners.
• A quarter believe in astrology.
• One in five men would wear their hair long.
• Almost half enjoy going around barefoot.

The persistence of the hippy creed of sloth, degeneracy, shiftlessness, self-indulgence, irresponsibility, poor hygiene, disloyalty, immorality, childishness, and all around vileness does a lot to explain the current prevalence of moonbattery.

On a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:32 AM | Comments (14)

Venezuelans Protest Tightening of Chavez's Totalitarian Grip

Not everyone is as happy to see Venezuela degenerate into a socialist police state as certain Democrat politicians. This weekend tens of thousands took to the streets in Caracas to protest the closing of Venezuela's most popular television station, RCTV, for not falling in line with Hugo Chavez's thuggish left-wing regime.

On Friday the order came down for the military to seize control of the RCTV's installations and equipment. After 53 years on the air, its license is not being renewed for explicitly political reasons.

Meanwhile Chavez's goons spray-painted the headquarters of Globovision, the last Venezuelan station that is still offering resistance to Chavez. It won't be around for long.

But it's not as if Venezuela is a dictatorship. Chavez was democratically elected. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

On a tip from Jeff.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:38 AM | Comments (6)

Grievance-Seeking Indians Mad at Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart is so fond of her home in Katonah, New York that she has named a line of furniture after the Westchester hamlet. Inspired by her 1925 farmhouse and stable, the Katonah Collection is available at Macy's. The problem is, Katonah is named after a 17th-century Indian, Chief Katonah, who migrated into the area from New Jersey and is said to be buried somewhere in the town. Modern day Indians consider this excuse enough to be noisily aggrieved.

Whines Steven Burton, member of the Deer Clan Council of the Ramapough Lenape Nation:

Martha Stewart is only using the name to make money. I just don't think he (Katonah) should be exploited that way.

No one alleges that Stewart means any disrespect. But if Indians waited for someone to show them disrespect, they would never have a chance to be indignant. Some are so desperate for something to be offended about that they will even make a fuss when they are honored by having sports teams named after them.

One day all references to anything Indian will be banned in the interests of political correctness, and Indians will vanish from American culture. When they file lawsuits complaining that no sports teams or furniture lines are named after them, people will shrug and ask, "Indians? What are Indians?"

On a tip from Wiggins.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:05 AM | Comments (4)

Google on Memorial Day

Nice to see Google finally acknowledged Memorial Day and the supreme sacrifice so many American soldiers have made to defend their right to wallow in their corporate culture of childish moonbattery:

Just kidding. This design is by Jetpacks. Google doesn't run a special logo for Memorial Day, which just doesn't rank up there with holidays they do mark, like Persian New Year and Percival Lowell's birthday.

The official explanation is, they don't want to be "lighthearted." Of course, lightheartedness doesn't stop them from honoring the Zeus of their religion, MLK:

The "Don't Be Evil" folks at Google don't acknowledge Veterans Day or September 11 either.

On a tip from Dave.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:15 AM | Comments (3)

Rachel Carson Tribute Nixed

Kudos to Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), for putting the kibosh on a highly inappropriate tribute to envirokook Rachel Carson, whose diatribe Silent Spring resulted in the death by malaria of millions of people.

DDT, acknowledged even by the World Health Organization as the most beneficial substance ever devised, was the ultimate weapon against humanity's number one enemy after moonbattery, the mosquito. By killing off the mosquitoes that spread the disease, malaria was at last brought under control. In 1970, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT had prevented 500 million deaths.

But then Carson wrote her book, which is now widely regarded as the inspiration for the cancer known as the modern environmental movement. She claimed DDT was bad for birds and even people. Bans followed, and to this day sanctimonious bureauweenies lean on Africa not to save its own people by using the precious chemical.

A moonbat's moonbat, Carson believed humans should submit to the wilderness:

The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

Her shrill claims that DDT was making robins go extinct were demonstrably false. As for DDT being harmful to humans, entomologist J. Gordon Edwards ridiculed the notion by eating a spoonful of it to introduce lectures on the subject.

Ironically, environmental extremists now claim that if we don't do their bidding, it will result in the spread of malaria. The link they attempt to draw between global warming and malaria is laughable. But the link between banning DDT and the rise in deaths by malaria is undeniable.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:37 AM | Comments (1)

Memorial Day

Here's hoping that today and every day, we can rise above the moonbattery and be worthy of those who have sacrificed on our behalf.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:13 AM | Comments (2)

May 27, 2007

Dim-Witted Gas Station Owner Sticks It to Big Oil

Despite the thin profit margin oil companies make in the risky business of providing us with the gasoline we need to survive, moonbats choose to blame rising oil prices not on government taxes, not on extravagantly expensive environmental regulations, not on boutique blends mandated by various states for various times of the year, not on the red tape that prevents the expansion of refining capacity, not on Dems who pander to envirokooks by refusing to allow drilling in places like the ANWR wasteland, not on Middle Eastern turmoil, not on Hugo Chavez's disastrous nationalization policies, not on shrinking supply, not on rising demand, but on the very people least to blame — the oil companies themselves.

Utterly illogical one-day boycotts have been called to teach oil companies a lesson. This has been so effective at increasing the supply of oil and thereby lowering the price that Wisconsin gas station owner Harvey Pollack is trying the same tactic.

Pollack estimates that shutting his pumps down for 24 hours will cost him $1,500. Since there are plenty of other stations around to pick up the slack, the cost to oil companies will be zero. Moonbats applauded Pollack for "making a statement."

Some people are so stupid, they don't deserve gasoline.

On a tip from MoleOnABull.

Posted by Van Helsing at 1:56 PM | Comments (7)

Westchester Police Sued For Escorting Drunken Caveman Out of Town

One of the countless unpleasant consequences of our government's unacceptable refusal to defend the border is that the woods of Westchester County, just north of New York City, are thoroughly infested with drunken Guatemalans who keep turning up dead. The cost to society has already been substantial, considering their public drunkenness, intrusive Stone Age lifestyle, and extravagant medical expenses. Now Mount Kisco, Bedford, and police officer George Bubaris are being sued for dumping one of these troublemaking alcoholic illegal alien cavemen out of town.

The caveman in question — Rene Perez — had been indulging in the usual disorderly conduct in a Bedford department store. A few hours later he called 911 from a laundry in Mount Kisco, requesting free medical care because he had a bellyache, though video showed him eating Chinese food and exhibiting no sign of pain. Later he was found back in Bedford, dead.

The suit claims Bedford and Mount Kisco police were dumping him back and forth just to be racist, and that this cost Perez his life. Apparently political correctness requires police to watch passively as illegal alien derelicts stagger around drunk, turning Westchester into a Third World country.

Adding to the hassle, zillionaire Hispanic activist and irredeemable lowlife Fernando Mateo wants the deaths of other Guatemalan derelicts reinvestigated. Although some of them literally drank themselves to death (e.g., choking on their own vomit), a few were apparently killed, most likely a result of beating each other over the head with rocks in arguments over who pays for the next bottle of cheap vodka.

As absurd as the whole incident sounds, the police involved could find themselves in serious trouble just for trying to keep the peace. Too bad the federal government can't be bothered to spend a few of the trillions of dollars it sucks out of our veins every year on defending the border, so that local police throughout the country aren't forced to deal with hordes of invading primitives.

Fernando Mateo, Hispanic Al Sharpton wannabe.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Posted by Van Helsing at 12:54 PM | Comments (3)

Jimmy Carter, Worst President in History

In light of Jimmy Carter's recent juvenile assertion that our current president is the worst in our history, Investor's Business Daily reminds us just how badly Carter had to screw up to be the one who actually deserves that appellation.

Carter's missteps and shortcomings are too numerous even to summarize, so let's focus on the single worst: his midwifery of the Islamic Republican of Iran and the Muslim terror that has subsequently spread across the world.

Iran used to be a bulwark against communist expansion, and Shah Reza Pahlavi a crucial American ally. But being a liberal, Carter instinctively betrays our friends, just as Pelousy et al. are doing now with Alvaro Uribe in Colombia.

As with Uribe, Pahlavi was accused of human rights violations. Carter — who asserts that the pampered guests at Club Gitmo are being tortured — claimed that Pahlavi was torturing 3,000 political prisoners (mainly Soviet agents and their collaborators).

When Carter withdrew American support from the Shah during his hour of need, his government fell, and one of our most valuable friends was replaced by our bitterest enemy. Once the Ayatollah Khomeini had taken control, the 3,000 communists Carter had been whimpering over were promptly shot, along with 20,000 pro-Western Iranians. Khomeini executed more people in his first year in power than the Shah had been alleged to have killed in the last quarter century. So much for human rights, as if leftists like Carter had any genuine interest in them anyway.

Then Khomeini's thugs — who included current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — invaded sovereign US territory and took everyone at our embassy hostage. Americans remained in custody for 444 days, until the blessed day Ronald Reagan was sworn in, ending the bleak and humiliating Carter era.

We were 154 days into the crisis before Carter even responded to the act of war by breaking off diplomatic relations. When he hinted meekly at an armed response, Khomeini sneered that Jimmy the Dhimmi didn't "have the guts for military action." The closest Carter could come was a botched hostage rescue mission that only compounded the humiliation.

Muslims learned a lesson.

As Khomeini was rewarded with one propaganda coup after another for poking America in the eye, Pahlavi continued to be punished for having been our friend. The humanitarian Carter's response to our old ally's request for asylum was, and I quote, "F*ck the shah."

Muslims learned another lesson.

The establishment of an Islamic terrorist regime in Iran that demonstrated to the world its ability to attack the US with impunity — Carter's main legacy — set in motion disastrous chains of events that include 9/11 and are still playing out.

When Democrat Eugene McCarthy was asked why he voted for Reagan in 1980, he explained that Carter had

quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was quite simply the worst president we ever had.

W could certainly be called a lousy president, for refusing to defend the border, for allowing entitlement spending to go completely out of control, and for conducting the war in Iraq in a half-assed fashion instead of fighting to win. But in comparison with Carter, he comes off looking like George Washington.

Khomeini easily got the better of our worst president, and we're not done paying the price.

On a tip from Bergbikr.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:45 AM | Comments (5)

May 26, 2007

Global Warming Hoax Versus Recreation

Enjoy yourself while you can this Memorial Day weekend — because if envirowackos have their way, outdoor recreation won't always be so easy to come by. Here are some highlights from an opening statement by Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) regarding the effects of climate change hysteria on the recreation industry:

The recreation industry's true threats come not from climate change — which has always changed and will always change — but from the so-called global warming 'solutions' being proposed by government policymakers. Misguided efforts to 'solve' global warming threaten to damage the travel and recreation industry. In short, it is a direct threat to America's way of life. If we cannot fly to remote locations, and if few automobiles are capable of pulling boats, jet skies, and campers, and if RVs become a thing of the past as environmentalists would like, then minor climate fluctuations will have little impact on recreation because Americans will not have the means to recreate.

Neurotic guilt — the stock and trade of moonbats — is enough by itself to adversely affect the recreation industry:

The chilling effect of guilt that the climate alarmists are attempting to instill in Americans for owning four wheel drive vehicles, flying in an airplane and enjoying travel is enough to harm the industry. For examples of this promotion of misguided policies and guilt, you need look no further than a proposal in April by the UK-based Institute for Public Policy Research, which called for tobacco-style health warnings on airplanes to warn passengers that the plane flight may be contributing to a global warming crisis. The group proposed posting signs on airplanes which read "flying causes climate change."

Wondering how long until moonbats start crippling the economy with tobacco-style $multizillion lawsuits? They are already laying the groundwork.

As Inhofe notes, the threat to us is not the weather; it is those who would exploit natural phenomena to hype the pernicious global warming cult.

On a tip from Bergbikr.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:23 AM | Comments (6)

Liberal Elitist Schickel Denounces Bloggers For Being Judgmental Commoners

If you could use a good laugh, check out Richard Schickel's pompous denunciation of bloggers from atop his crumbling throne at La Times. As far as I can tell, Schickel is completely on the level as he writes:

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). […]

Next we commoners will be using Grey Poupon! Like many liberal elitists who are so full of "nuance" it has turned their eyes brown, Schickel condemns us for being judgmental:

Very often, in the best reviews, opinion is conveyed without a judgmental word being spoken, because the review's highest business is to initiate intelligent dialogue about the work in question, beginning a discussion that, in some cases, will persist down the years, even down the centuries.

But it doesn't take centuries for Schickel to get back to judging us commoners as unfit to form our own opinions, sticking his pointy nose in the air as he sniffs that a lot of reviewing is "hack work," consisting of "spray-painted opinions," "already democratic enough, thanks much" and "more than ready for the guy from car parts" — a dig at a blogger who used to work for a car parts manufacturer.

Soon he is claiming that blogging "doesn't take much time" (I wish) and comparing it to finger-painting. The opinions of those outside the establishment citadel are "mere yammering," and a "democratic literary landscape" is "truly a wasteland, without standards, without maps, without oases of intelligence or delight."

Where elitist snoots see an oasis of intelligence or delight, others see that a horse has been by, and it's time to get out the shovel.

On a tip from Nanc.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:27 AM | Comments (6)

May 25, 2007

No More Rosie on "The View"?

In a striking display of liberal sophistication, barking moonbat Rosie O'Donnell's old friend and chief writer Janette Barber was reportedly escorted out of the building after being caught drawing moustaches on photos of Rosie's conservative adversary Elizabeth Hasselbeck in the studios of "The View."

ABC confirms that the photos were defaced, and that "ABC Legal and Human Resources are investigating the matter."

But ABC denies rumors that Rosie threw a violent tantrum during which she trashed her dressing room after her recent televised blowup with Hasselbeck. Although the erstwhile "Queen of Nice" is officially expected to return to work on Tuesday, it appears likely that she's made an obnoxious fool of herself on "The View" for the last time.

On tips from Nanc, Wiggins, and V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:50 AM | Comments (9)

Ghoulish Breck Girl Exploits Dead Son

Just how phony — and slimy — is John Edwards? Enough to creep out even John "Botched Joke" Kerry, who in comparison with the Breck Girl is a paragon of integrity.

Famed Democrat consultant Bob Shrum relates that Kerry had qualms about Silky Pony as a running mate and grew "even queasier" after Edwards shared with him a story about climbing onto a slab at the funeral home to hug his son Wade's body, promising the corpse he would do everything he could to make life better for people. The creepy part is that Edwards prefaced the tale by saying he had never told this to anyone else. According to Shrum:

Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before — and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling[…]

Apparently Edwards tells the story so often, he can't remember who he's already told it to.

On a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:50 AM | Comments (3)

Father Suing Restaurant For Serving Josh Hancock Drinks

One of the many perverse symptoms of moonbattery is the tendency to displace blame from whomever clearly warrants it to someone else, then to use that blame as an excuse to lawyer up and go looting.

Mediocre St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock recently got himself killed — and could easily have gotten others killed — by drinking too much, then driving too fast while yapping into a cell phone. Marijuana was found in his vehicle.

Can Hancock be blamed for this behavior? Of course not — precisely because the incident resulted from his own criminally irresponsible recklessness. Consequently his father Dean is suing the restaurant who served him drinks.

The restaurant is owned by Mike Shannon, a longtime Cardinals broadcaster who starred on three World Series teams. Also named in the suit is Eddie's Towing, owner of the truck into which Hancock's drunken son drove his SUV. In case they have any money, Dean Hancock is also suing the guy driving the truck, and the stranded motorist he was trying to help. Others might be added to the suit, possibly including the Cardinals and Major League Baseball, not because they were even conceivably responsible but simply because they have money to be stolen.

If anyone should be sued, it's Hancock's estate. Too bad the greedy Dean Hancock can't be sued for exploiting his son's death and wasting everyone's time. But this sort of farce is to be expected under a tort system apparently designed to enrich unscrupulous John Edwards types and their something-for-nothing lowlife clients.

Fortunately Josh Hancock killed only himself.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:55 AM | Comments (12)

Sarko Raising France From Tu to Vous

In a symbolic gesture of what his election could mean for France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is asking French students to show a little respect by using the formal "vous" instead of "tu" when speaking to teachers. Teachers are to use "vous" when speaking to older students.

All this is as it should be, since "tu" is traditionally used only when speaking to relatives, close friends, children, and animals. "Vous" is used to show respect when speaking to anyone else — or at least it was until French culture became so debased by moonbattery that everyone started to regard everyone else as a child or an animal.

It may be too late to save France from the cultural tailspin it's been in for the last 100 years. But hats off to Sarko for trying. It would be great to see similar efforts made over here.

On a tip from Byron.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:22 AM | Comments (3)

Dems Alienating Vital Ally Colombia

The USA has bitter enemies in Latin America, namely the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela, but also good friends. Our best is Colombia — but Congressional Dems are souring the relationship.

Colombia has lost 2,658 troops fighting Marxist narcoterrorists, which has been critical in reducing the flow of drugs into the USA. The know-how acquired in this struggle was passed along to American troops fighting to prevent drug cultivation from destabilizing Afghanistan. As Venezuela systematically destroys its oil industry in the name of communism, Colombia has been stepping up to fill the gap, doubling its production on the year. After Katrina, Colombia was the first country on the scene to help, providing swamp and jungle rescue teams.

A particularly good friend and leader is President Alvaro Uribe, who has been winning the war against the narcoterrorists despite the support they now receive from Venezuela, and who in stark contrast with his neighbor Hugo Chavez honors property rights and has cut taxes, eased regulations, and decreased lawlessness on the streets. Consequently Colombia's annual growth rate is a third higher than the Latin American average at a healthy 6.8%.

Democrats will never Uribe for all this.

A free-trade pact, already negotiated, has been shelved by our new Democrat Congress. Ignoring the extraordinary progress that has been made despite the 44-year civil war, Nancy Pelosi screeches about Colombia's human rights record — as if Dems could care less about human rights, so long as they are only violated by regimes hostile to the USA.

As Pelousy essentially nixed the idea of free trade with Colombia, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) pulled the rug out from under Uribe by suspending the $55 million aid we give him to fight off leftist drug lords who very directly threaten American interests.

Uribe has let it be known he doesn't appreciate being treated "like a pariah." There is no reason to expect Colombia to fight drug lords on our behalf if it doesn't even receive decent treatment in return. But then, illegal drugs pouring onto our streets feed social disintegration, which feeds poverty, which broadens the Democrat base, so Pelousy and Leaky Leahy may have less motive than some to want to keep the drugs out.

Meanwhile Pelousy praises hostile Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, and Dems like Rep. Bill Delahunt openly support Colombia's enemy and ours, Hugo Chavez. As for another crucial democratic ally, Iraq — Dems openly assert that if they take the White House, they will feed Iraq to Islamic terrorists.

An America run by the Democrat Party will be the opposite of a Marine — no worse friend, no better enemy.

On a tip from Byron.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:31 AM

May 24, 2007

A Convenient Lie Part II

Apparently calibrating its timing to the 2008 election, Hollywood has begun planning a sequel to Al Gore's sci-fi horror epic An Inconvenient Truth.

More accurately referred to as A Convenient Lie, the movie was so outlandish in its apocalyptic global warming predictions that the Goracle et al. will have their work cut out for them to top it in Part II. Maybe they'll scientifically prove that CO2 causes hemorrhoids to mutate into sentient beings, or that our skin will burst into flame if we don't do penance for being human by lighting votive compact fluorescent bulbs.

Another Oscar for best documentary is assured. But Gore's Tinseltown acolytes might want to be careful. Jimmy Carter's publisher just got in trouble for passing off his propaganda as nonfiction.

On a tip from Pat.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:41 PM | Comments (3)

Berkeley After Measure G: Totalitarian Envirohell

Just how far will the currently fashionable envirolunacy go before sanity reasserts itself? No one knows, but Berkeley offers a clue, having overwhelmingly passed Measure G, an absurd initiative mandating an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Now power-drunk bureauweenies are spelling out how this will be achieved.

The "good" news is that inmates of the asylum known as Berkeley will get "free" bus passes. Landlords will be compelled to buy them for tenants. The command-and-control socialists who dictate rent will generously allow the landlords to raise their rates $7 per month to defray the cost.

The bad news is that the militant hippies who run this freak show have successfully exploited the global warming hoax to extend their micromanagement to every last aspect of human existence.

Table scraps are to be composted. Normal light bulbs that don't turn your house into a toxic waste site if they break are banned, as are Wedgewood stoves and gas-powered water heaters. Builders will be allowed to use only recycled and "green" materials — even for small residential projects.

Energy will be created with inefficient solar panels. Property tax hikes will cover the outlandish costs.

Older appliances must be replaced. Insulation and windows must be upgraded. Garages must be equipped with outlets for electric cars. Can't afford it? Too bad.

Bureaucrats will track exactly how many "carbon units" individual citizens generate by keeping tabs on details not even Big Brother would have bothered with — what kind of car you drive, how far you drive it, how much waste you generate, how much energy you consume, etc., etc.

Don't like living under a magnifying glass? That's too bad too. Because it's not as if this escalating lunacy is limited to Berkeley.

A Berkeley activist named Redwood Mary holds aloft her polar bear totem at a community event promoting the draconian greenhouse gas plan. Her fellow moonbats are beginning to achieve a level of totalitarian control over our lives that Stalin and Hitler never even imagined.

On a tip from Mike.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:00 PM | Comments (18)

Real Torture

We have been asked to believe that having the AC turned up too high, having to listen Christina Aguilera, underinflated balls in the rec room, etc. qualify as torture because Americans have allegedly inflicted these atrocities to acquire information to protect ourselves from future 9/11s. When no minor inconveniences can be found to blow out of proportion, the media is happy to propagate lies and pass them off as psychological torture, as when Newsweek set off riots by announcing that Club Gitmo attendants were flushing Korans down toilets.

Formerly responsible human rights organizations like Shamnesty International pretend that Americans are at the forefront when it comes to human rights violations. We even have prominent Democrat Senator Dick Durbin comparing our troops to the thugs of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.

Pretty soon we're going to forget what the word "torture" actually means. Unfortunately, the same al-Qaeda on whose behalf our media and liberal politicians relentlessly propagandize is still there to remind us.

The Smoking Gun has gotten hold of some drawings recovered from an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, depicting their own alternatives to playing Christina Aguilera. Those American troops who so remind Senator Durbin of communists and Nazis also seized torture implements including electric drills, whips, wire cutters, pliers, handcuffs, etc. At one al-Qaeda torture chamber, which very possibly did not even have a rec room so the victims could unwind, Coalition forces found some poor guy hanging from the ceiling by a chain.

Here are a couple of the drawings:

Some of the recovered torture implements:

A guy Michael Moore's "Minutemen" kidnapped and tortured:

Kind of places some rogue low-level Army reservist putting a pair of panties on a terrorist's head into perspective, doesn't it?

It also helps reminds us of the nature of the enemy to whom Democrats insist we abandon democratic Iraq — an enemy that only a fool wouldn't realize will follow us home.

On a tip from Nanc.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:02 AM | Comments (18)

Misery Loves Company

What is the true point of the endless prohibitions and regulations heaped upon us by nanny state bureaucrats like NYC's Mayor Mike and their PC amen corner, the mainstream media? The global warming hoax and our own health are thin pretexts. Jens Jessen suggests that the real motive could be to make life less pleasant:

Alcohol and tobacco, dogs and fast cars, flights and computer games, television and fast food — everything that is fun, that promises a bit of warmth or distraction and comfort, that bolsters self-confidence or aids in escaping the every-day, even the modest pleasures of the working man are to be limited, regimented, taxed or simply made impossible. The process is disconcerting and almost grotesque in its systematization.

Why don't moonbats want us to have any fun? Possibly because, due to their neurotic, guilty-ridden ideology, they won't let themselves have any:

Anyone who prohibits himself something, for whatever reason or neurosis, doesn't like to see someone else indulging in it. […] That's the most dangerous thing about the spirit of prohibition; once it's out of the bottle, it spreads like an infection whose first casualty is tolerance. Where much is being prohibited, it's easy to prohibit more because the unprohibited is so conspicuous; in the end, the tolerated takes the form of the explicitly permitted. It's wrong, by the way, to see the state or frustrated politicians as the sole cause; the state is no more than the agent of a society living out its dark, censoring, egalitarian basic instincts.

At least the puritans of old prevented society from sliding into decadence. Today's puritans actively seek the decline of Western Civilization, hemming it in so that it can't grow, knowing that when a society stops growing, it starts dying.

On a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:01 AM | Comments (6)

A Peek at NYC's Near Future Under Mayor Mike

Maggie's Farm has a look at next year's New York Times, and sees where Mike Bloomberg has been taking the Big Apple with his endless barrage of intrusive nanny-state regulations. A new program called "A City That Really Cares" will ban the following for the sake of our safety:

• Women's heels over 2" high.
• Sunbathing.
• Asking employees to spend more than three hours a day at a computer, due to the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome and eye strain (Bloomberg employees exempted).
• Smoking in vehicles other than golf carts, limos, private jets, and helicopters.

These things are good, so they will be required:

• Warm scarves and wool hats when the temperature drops below 40°F.
• Sturdy rubbers when it rains, lined boots when it snows.
• Hats on sunny days.
• A serving of broccoli and carrots with every restaurant meal.

The initiative will be enforced by the NYPD's new 1,000-man Public Health Unit, which will have rights to enter people's homes to make sure they aren't smoking or eating trans fats.

Phase Two of the program will address other public health menaces, such as eggs, meat, cheese, and overly tight lingerie.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:27 AM | Comments (6)

May 23, 2007

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Gives Rosie Both Barrels

A decent human being can sit on the same stage as Rosie O'Donnell for only so long before something snaps. Watch Elisabeth Hasselbeck explode:

Hat tip: Vince Aut Morire.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:45 PM | Comments (13)

Amnesty International Now At Grade School Level

Amnesty International was once a legitimate human rights organization that strove to advance freedom and decency. Now, it is a festering nest of moonbattery devoted to denouncing the United States and Israel.

A current online poll gives an idea of the prevalent mentality at AI. Visiting moonbats are invited to vote on "Who's got the worst human rights record?" The options:

Vote for Darth Vader
Torture, enslavement of Wookiees, decimation of the Alderaanian civilization.

Vote for Hobgoblin
Attacks on Spiderman, gassing civilian populations, using innocents as human shields.

Vote for Dick Cheney
Torture, black sites, "disappearances," kangaroo courts, indefinite detention, and more!

Yet these people expect us to listen to them as if they were adults when they shake their little fists and scream about the evils of America.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:27 PM | Comments (6)

John Edwards Reveals There Is No War on Terror

What a relief: Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards says there is no global war on terror, and that it's all just a "bumper sticker" slogan. That means I must have been having some terrible dream when I looked out the office window in New York a few years ago and saw the World Trade Center burning. The plane full of Americans crashed into the Pentagon, the USS Cole, the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Daniel Pearl's beheading, the Bali bombing, London's 7/7 terror attacks — all just dreams, cruelly exploited on Republican bumper stickers to justify the invasion of Iraq (which Edwards voted in favor of) and the frat boy pranks at Abu Ghraib.

According to the Breck Girl, pretending we are at war with Islamic terrorists actually emboldens the nonexistent terrorists.

All of the leading Democrat candidates call for us to surrender to the terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11. Silky Pony joins a select subgroup (along with Joe Biden and Dennis Kucinich) so nutty that they want us to lose a war they won't even admit we're fighting.

But Edwards isn't really a nut. He is just pandering to nuts to get what he wants, as when he pretended to channel the spirits of brain-damaged children in front of credulous juries so that they would help him steal his fortune from the doctors who earned it.

If there is a lower life form than John Edwards, science has yet to discover it.

Hat tip: Ace of Spades, on a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:05 PM | Comments (6)

US Senate Surpasses France in Moonbattery

Having traveled down the road of moonbattery farther than we have, the French have at least learned some lessons. When it comes to illegal immigration, they are showing wisdom where our own politicians indulge in irresponsible foolishness.

The Senate is haggling over a bill to grant amnesty to the innumerable illegal aliens who have invaded the country, setting the stage for them to go on welfare and vote for Democrats, while making a joke of our national sovereignty and inviting the deluge of illegals to increase, just as it did after the last amnesty bill in 1986.

But in France, newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy wisely rules out mass legalization of "undocumented" invaders. Illegal immigrants will continue to be deported. Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux promises to throw out 25,000 of the criminals this year.

If France can do it, so can we.

Hat tip: Lone Star Times, on a tip from Byron.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:14 PM | Comments (2)

Simon & Schuster in Hot Water For Publishing Jimmy Carter's Lies

Even after Dan Rather, CBS feels it has a reputation to uphold. That's why its subsidiary Simon & Schuster is expected to be pilloried at today's CBS stockholders annual meeting in NYC, in light of it having published Jimmy Carter's pro-terrorist diatribe Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Carol Greenwald is treasurer of the CBS shareholder Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. She has noticed that Carter's book is "error-filled," and is expected to ask that a fact-checking system be set up to prevent work like Carter's from being passed off as nonfiction. Also, she wants a code of ethics for the publishing division, which would be bad news for authors like Jimmy the Dhimmi.

Fourteen advisory board members have resigned from the Carter Center to protest the atrocious book, which relies heavily on factual errors, aka lies, to prop up Carter's contention that the terrorists are the good guys.

Even liberals like Alan Dershowitz have been appalled by Carter's willingness to rewrite history on behalf of his Arab benefactors. Dershowitz has helpfully listed a few of the book's untruths.

Other recent Carter lies include his irresponsible assertion that our current president "has been the worst in history" — a dishonor Carter himself holds.

Posted by Van Helsing at 10:54 AM | Comments (8)

John McCain Joins Dems in Advocating Cap and Trade

How much left-wing Kool-Aid can you guzzle and still pass yourself off as a Republican? John McCain attempted to find out by sending representative John Raidt to a climate change panel discussion at the left-wing Brookings Institution yesterday. There Raidt agreed with all the major Dem candidates that the US economy ought to be crippled with a cap-and-trade scheme in deference to the cult of global warming.

The Congressional Budget Office recently found that such a scheme would have disastrous effects on the economy, particularly on the poor, while having no noticeable impact on the climate. Nonetheless, pandering to the global warming hoax always plays well in the media, so Raidt declared that his boss McLame is a "foremost proponent of carbon cap-and-trade."

Speaking of the poor, their zillionaire spokesman John Edwards took the opportunity to reinforce his position on the left-most flank of the Democrat Party. His rep announced that the Breck Girl opposes building nuclear power plants to replace the fossil fuel we won't be allowed to burn. It looks like we might be asked to hook our appliances up to stationary bicycles like Ed "The Sped" Begley's environmentally correct toaster.

Romney and Giuliani, to their credit, did not send representatives.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:57 AM | Comments (3)

Cosmetic Abortion

We're picking up momentum as we slip-slide down the slimy slope of abortion. In England they are now killing babies, I mean aborting fetuses, for not being pretty enough.

England's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority has licensed a fertility clinic to screen embryos for a gene defect that would cause them to squint.

The license was granted to one Gedis Grudzinskas, who says he would also like to execute babies for having the wrong hair color, on the grounds that this "can be a cause of bullying, which can lead to suicide."

Aborting a baby because it might squint may not be any more monstrous than killing it for coming along at an inconvenient time. But it does emphasize how callous we inevitably become, once we accept the idea of killing our own children.

If it flunks its beauty test, just have it killed.

On a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:07 AM | Comments (2)

One Thing Going For Al Franken: Money

Why would the obnoxious left-wing comedian Al Franken think he has a snowball's chance in hell of defeating Norm Coleman for a Senate seat? Maybe because, like most prominent leftists, Franken has something Coleman doesn't — mountains of money.

Although he won't be any more specific than he's forced to be, Franken admits to having a net worth of as much as $9.9 million. The clown profession can pay quite well, especially when you invest in mutual funds and municipal bonds.

For his part, Coleman voluntary provided the exact market value of his assets, which comes to a little over half a million. But Coleman has the advantages of being qualified for the job, and of not being a kook.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:32 AM | Comments (14)

Hollyweird May Not Need Us Anymore

If there's any brake at all on Hollywood's left-wing extremism, it's that movie people still need to persuade the normal Americans they despise to lay down money to sit through the crap they churn out. That's how they finance their private jets, stretch limos, and large donations to the Democrat Party. But this might change, now that barking moonbat Danny Glover has found a new source of revenue: socialist dictator Hugo Chavez.

While Venezuelans search grocery stores looking for food, Chavez is handing Glover $20 million dollars to make propaganda films dealing with historical revolutionaries Simon Bolivar and Toussaint Louverture. Like other authoritarian leftists, Chavez wants to be seen as a historical revolutionary himself, and would like to construct a mythology to justify his power grab and feed his ravenous ego. Eager to help is the useful idiot Glover, who is also a slavish fan of another rabidly hostile enemy of the United States, Fidel Castro.

In other Hugo Chavez developments, the tactic of seizing farmers' land and turning it over to squatters and hooligans was so effective at reducing the population to half-starved helplessness for Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Chavez is trying it himself.

On a tip from Freedom Now.

Posted by Van Helsing at 8:05 AM | Comments (4)

May 22, 2007

Mayor Mike Mandates Hybrid Taxis

The heavy-handed regime of NYC's left-wing "Republican" mayor Mike Bloomberg is going to lay even heavier on cab drivers, who will be compelled to drive environmentally ruinous and excessively expensive but very politically correct hybrids by the year 2012.

Ford Crown Victorias will be forcibly phased out of the fleet, making Mayor's Mike's latest authoritarian decree bad news for Detroit as well (unless the taxis are replaced with Ford Escapes).

In only two years all new vehicles will be required to be hybrids. Taxi businesses that don't go bankrupt can pass the expense on to their fares. Others can take advantage of New York's generous welfare programs.

On a tip from Dave.

Posted by Van Helsing at 9:31 PM | Comments (5)

German Police to Track Moonbats by Smell

German authorities have discovered the obvious when it comes to fighting moonbats: tracking them by smell.

The tactic will be used to keep track of the odoriferous left-wing types likely to use next month's Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm as a pretext to riot in protest against economic freedom. Scent samples will allow police dogs to zero in on the likely instigators if violence breaks out.

Moonbat scent samples might also have chemical warfare applications.

Posted by Van Helsing at 11:50 AM | Comments (11)

NBC's "ER" Degenerates Into Hyperbolic Jihadist Propaganda

Ever wonder what kind of over-the-top anti-American propaganda people watch on TV over in the Arab world? My guess is it's a lot like the season finale of NBC's "ER" — the same show that launched the career of the insufferably smug barking moonbat George Clooney.

In one scene, characters ridicule DHS's successful efforts to defend us from the next 9/11 as election year tactics. In another, it's implied that right-wingers shoot up a peaceful anti-war protest. But here's the part that would really make Osama bin Laden smile:

A character named Kyle served in Iraq as an interpreter. He eats a whole bottle of pain pills in an apparent suicide attempt. CNS News takes it from there:

While Kyle was having his stomach pumped, Dr. Archie Morris heard him repeating a phrase in Arabic. When the patient was more coherent, the doctor asked him what he had been saying.

Kyle responded in Arabic, and then translated: "'Please don't hurt me. I've done nothing wrong. God have mercy.' I must have translated that a million times in Iraq, man. It didn't matter. They didn't listen to me any more than they listened to prisoners."

"Who didn't listen to you?" Morris asked.

"The interrogators," Kyle said. "The interrogators, they didn't--." At that point, Kyle broke down, crying and shaking.

A nurse asked: "You saw them beat the prisoners?"

"Beat, burn, other things," Kyle replied.

"You mean torture?" Morris said.

"Most of them that we questioned didn't even know anything," Kyle responded. "They were