A Sensible Shade of Red

Alexander Cockburn might, under ordinary circumstances, be the sort of crypto-communist who I'd like to have exiled to an Alaskan work-camp but even a stopped clock can be right once a day.

Cockburn joins the long list of people who've said perfectly sensible things about the hysteria over Climate Change and resultantly been subjected to a level of abuse ordinarily encountered only by someone wearing a yarmulke in Mecca.

Here in the West, the so-called ‘war on global warming’ is reminiscent of medieval madness. You can now buy Indulgences to offset your carbon guilt. If you fly, you give an extra 10 quid to British Airways; BA hands it on to some non-profit carbon-offsetting company which sticks the money in its pocket and goes off for lunch. This kind of behaviour is demented.

Of course, other people have said this all the time - but it's refreshing to hear an out-and-out red say it.  At least the whole world hasn't gone crazy.

Since I started writing essays challenging the global warming consensus, and seeking to put forward critical alternative arguments, I have felt almost witch-hunted. There has been an hysterical reaction. One individual, who was once on the board of the Sierra Club, has suggested I should be criminally prosecuted.

Indeed, if he could step back a step further, he might observe that this sort of derangement is a central part of the modern left.  Indeed, that the basic character of a good portion of his side is totalitarian at heart.

Just for the record - and in the interest of averting comments about my first comment in relation to my remarks about the left, my opening remark was a joke.  Cockburn's niece is way to hot for me to wish him any specific harm.

Liberal Fascism Finally Arrives in Canada

Chapters-Indigo's site is down at the moment, but - as of a few hours ago - Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism, has finally hit Canadian shelves. There were five copies listed as in-stock at the Coles store at Lougheed Mall in Coquitlam, BC. I'm guessing that stock at the rest will arrive and be set up tomorrow or the day after, since books tend to arrive company-wide when ordered.

Perhaps someone might ask our nation's monopoly bookseller why it took the better part of a month for them to get a New York Times-bestselling book onto their shelves. They don't seem to have any trouble stocking the other side's books. But, as I recall, they did have some difficulties with Mark Steyn's last opus. For that matter, they had their issues with the print version of this magazine.

Now, I'm a long-time Chapters customer (well, I'd pretty much have to be, wouldn't I?) - but I don't think that it can be denied that there's always a certian liberal bias in which books they stock, which they discount, and which they display. As a private business, of course, that's their right. However, one has to wonder if such behaviour is appropriate for a company which holds an effective monopoly on book retailing in this country (at least, a bookstore monopoly). I'm not free to just go to the local Barnes and Noble, after all (though, it should be said, that the Barnes and Noble in Bellingham didn't have it in stock last night either - said they were sold out - and that the girl at the counter gave me a real look when I asked after it).

Made-in-China: It Might be Expensive, But It's Still Junk

One of the downsides of made-in-China stuff is that, while it might be cheap, it's still junk. It's just that, ten years ago, in general you only got junk if you were buying the same.

In the past week, I've had the following items die on me:

a) My iPhone headset.

b) An adapter plug to use a conventional headset with my iPhone.

c) A Logitech wireless mouse.

d) A wireless router.

None of these items were cheap off-brand knock-offs. They were all either relatively high-end products or accessories. None of them was much more than a year old (the router, I believe, was the oldest item at thirteen months).

The interesting thing is that, for the most part, I replaced these with more or less identical items. Indeed - I drove literally minutes ahead of the snowstorm which blanketed the Lower Mainland in order to replace my iPhone headset at the AT&T store in Bellingham, WA (yes, I realize that this is probably further evidence that I'm deranged, but I'm cool with that). The mouse, I bought another Logitech mouse - but actually went up to one of their VX Revolution models.

But, for the most part, that was because of a lack of a reasonable alternative.

My point isn't just to whine - it's that there's a market opening here. If someone were to manufacture products of a deliberately superior quality - and to advertise touting their relaibility at fairly reasonable prices - I would pay a premium.

Indeed, I'm in the market to consolidate my mess of computers (three in use at present) into a single unit, for reasons of portability. I'm looking at either getting one of the current-generation MacBook Pro's refurbished from Apple, or waiting for the Penryn-based Pro's to ship. But, frankly, as an avid reader of Apple forums, I'm a little concerned about the generation-after-generation reliability problems that we've seen in the Pro's (everything in the first gen, and all sorts of LED-related fun in the present gen). The result is that I'm thinking of a T62 ThinkPad as an alternative which, despite also being Chinese-made, seems to have a much better track record so far as reliability is concerned.

Though, I don't think that will happen - since I'm kind of in love with the MacBook Pro. More than kind-of, actually. I want a brand-new one as badly as... Well, I'll just leave it at that.

Of course, the biggest part of the manufacturing problem is that the Chinese are able to work unbelievably cheaply becuase they've replicated in an economic sense their traditional approach to warfare - the human wave. When you have a lot of people and don't care too much about their living conditions (don't have to care, for that matter) you can simply throw people into producing notebook computers - or at machine gun nests - and eventually numbers will tell, unless technology offsets mass.

And there's where the West's real chance lies. Human waves aren't terribly effective against people with fully automatic weapons. "For we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not," said the British a century ago. That's the real secret to beating back the Chinese economic threat - we need the economic equivilant of a Maxim gun.

It's Over - McCain is the Republican Nominee

McCain won Florida.  It looks like he's going to win bigger than indicated by polling.  Seven or eight points is my guess.

Now comes word that Giuliani will endorse him tomorrow in California.<

John McCain is, without a miracle for Romney on a bigger scale than McCain's own comeback (and in a single week) going to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States and, given how well he polls - and how ugly the Democratic race is getting - I'd say that McCain is now the odds-on favourite to be the 44th President of the United States.

New World Bank Chief Economist Defected TO Communist China

The World Bank appointed Justin Lin, a Chinese academic, as its new Chief Economist the other day.

What's interesting about Lin is that he actually defected from Taiwan to Communist China by swimming across the Formosa strait, abandoning his wife and young child in the process.  Odd.

The Monorail Song

MARGE: But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken!
BART: Sorry Mom, the mob has spoken!

“A town with money is a lot like a mule with a spinning wheel,” smooth-talking conman Lyle Lanley tells the people of Springfield. I don’t know why, but that makes a lot of sense to me at the moment. It’s easy to see how the people of our fair province could benefit from learning the story of how the people of Springfield were suckered into buying a Monorail system they had no real use for. Oh, and before any wags write in – yes, I’m aware that the Skytrain isn’t actually a monorail.

My response, on hearing of the B.C. government’s $14 Billion plan for the expansion of public transit over the next dozen years consisted of two words and seven letters (I’ll leave you to sort out the configuration). “Transit Plan to Help B.C. Reach Greenhouse Gas targets” read the press release that crossed my iPhone – you do that if you want, but leave me the hell out of it. What we have here is the worst of all possible outcomes – a government that I voted for (and whose campaigns I donated to) promising to spend thousands (and probably tens of thousands, before all is said and done) of my money on something that I don’t want in order to further a cause that I don’t believe in.

My position on public transit is that I’m against it. If you want to get around on wheels, go and buy your own damn car – or patronize the private transit services which would spring up in the aftermath of a round of transit privatization. Indeed, were it not for excessive government regulation and taxation I could have bought something newer than three years old (which is now five years old) and I could have bought a more expensive car. The choice between me buying a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee and some shmuck getting to drive the bus really isn’t a choice at all, so far as I’m concerned.

There’s a rational argument in here somewhere. It isn’t all just fun and fulmination. The truth is that, for the most part, public transit isn’t an economical form of transportation. Even now, to get from my home to Vancouver and back would cost me $11.75 during the day and take me around two hours. By way of comparison for me, a single individual, to drive from my home to Vancouver and back would cost around $5 in gas plus a combined $11ish in car and insurance payments – and, depending upon the traffic, could be done in half the time.

Now, that might sound like a win for transit (setting aside the intangibles) until you read the fine print. Total revenue from transit fares totalled roughly $310 Million in 2006. The total cost of transit operations for the same year was over $545 (these figures both come from the 2006 Translink annual report). The rest was paid for through taxes, notably fuel taxes and, for some bizarre reason, a tax on BC Hydro bills.

In other words, the actual cost of that transit trip is hidden by taxpayer subsidies and the real cost of the car trip is inflated by taxation. Using a back-of-the-envelope calculation (not 100% accurate, but a useful thought experiment), we discover that the real cost of that bus trip would be $20.66 and the cost of the car trip lower trip, minus gas taxes for transit, probably would be somewhere in the fifteen dollar range. And even that’s a false accounting for the car – since it assumes that the car is using only for the purpose of commuting to and from Coquitlam to Vancouver. If you, on the other hand, calculated that the car was used for commuting, say, 2/3’s of the time and otherwise for other purposes, the cost of that trip becomes $12.26.

Frankly, it boggles the mind as to how it costs Translink as much as it does to carry passengers around. Of course, where there’s a will, there’s always a way – and no one is better than government when it comes to wasting our money.

Of course, even If this was to work, it would depend upon the project being completed in a form at least somewhat on-time and on-budget. Count me as sceptical on both counts. I grew up in the area where the planned Evergreen line is supposed to end. I recall my parents taking me and showing me where the Skytrain was supposed to go in two decades ago. Knowing how these things work, I think that we can expect that the transit system will be completed by a garrison of People’s Liberation Army engineers just in time to inaugurate the Canada Two-Two-Five celebrations of their fraternal allies in Ottawa.

Alas, we’re well beyond the point where these is anyone left other than myself to speak for me on this issue. For some strange reason, we’ve all just blithely accepted that it’s your and my responsibility to pay for the grotesquely expensive wet dreams of transportation central planners without complaint and with perfect good cheer. Perhaps that’s not the most public spirited of sentiments – but I, for one, would be of much better cheer if I were the proud owner of a $50,000 car, rather than the proud wage-slave of some concrete monstrosity that I will ride a maximum of fifteen times during my lifetime and then only while in such a state of heavy intoxication that I will only fleetingly recall the experience. And, given that I’m already twenty-four and this isn’t supposed to be completed until I’m thirty-something, I doubt I’ll even get that much use out of the system.

Seriously, folks, $14 Billion (and really $20 Billion or $30 Billion or whatever by the time all is said and done) is a lot of money. We could find plenty of better things to do with it. While I admit that burning it all in a giant bonfire might marginally contribute the global warming-induced end of the human race, at least it would be kind of pretty and cause fewer traffic headaches. Or, we could get really creative. For that kind of money would could buy some little country in Africa and get its people to give us all piggy-back rides to work. Or, we could dispense with work altogether – for that kind of money we could buy ourselves a nice-sized army and use it to conquer a few small and resource-rich areas and subsequently live off of them. Or we could build a nuclear arsenal and get rich by demanding that assorted countries pay us not to kill them all.

I can only hope and pray that this is the only folly the people of British Columbia ever embark upon. Except for the popsicle-stick skyscraper. And the 50-foot magnifying glass. And that escalator to nowhere…

A Tale of Two Cities

In Surrey, British Columbia, the mob rules. Laibar Singh, an admitted criminal hides behind the walls of a temple, confident that the authorities will not bring him – or his lawless defenders – to account. In Calgary, Alberta the state demands that Ezra Levant, a free-born citizen of the West provide them with an account of his thoughts and opinions and threatens to punish him if they deem them to be unacceptable. Two cities, two stories – but one tale. For some it is the best of times but or free men and women they are the worst of times.

The best of times: For race hustlers. For grievance pimps. For politicians dependent upon votes from ethnic blocs. For foreign fascists. For guilty white liberals. For the idle and the useless. For bureaucrats. For meddlers.

The worst of times: For the productive. For the righteous. For the spirited. For those who want this country to survive. For those who want our civilization to prosper.

This is a tale of how we lost our country. My Grandfather fought ’39-’45 to defend freedom and to uphold the rule of law. We – or more accurately those older than myself – have tossed it away. I shouldn’t dodge the blame myself. I’ve talked and voted, debated and donated – but that’s all. If I were half the man my Grandfather was, I’d take a flamethrower to this place.

What happened in Surrey – and what’s happening in Caledonia – is the most grotesque manifestation of how liberalism is a disease of civilization. In the past I have said that liberalism – and by that I mean left-liberalism as it is practiced in the West – is like AIDS. It does not, by itself, attack the body or kill the carrier. Instead, it destroys the ability of the infected person’s body to defend itself against other contagions – both mild and major. Thus do humans with AIDS die from colds. Thus do civilizations with liberalism find themselves dying from minor complaints.

We all know the story of Laibar Singh. He’s a criminal who entered this country illegally, who made an abusive refugee claim, and who was rejected. He was ordered deported from this country. After that happened, he suffered a stroke. Now his supporters make the absurd argument that we ought to let him stay now that he’s going to be an even-greater burden upon taxpayers and honest citizens. When the government rightly rejected this claim and sought to proceed with a removal already delayed for too long, a mob assembled at the airport and stopped the execution of the law. The authorities, rather than uphold the law, meekly accepted the will of the mob. We used to know how to handle such things. The phrase “read the riot act” passed into everyday speech for a reason. But, with other mobs howling over the accidental death of an out-of-control man, the government was hardly ready to use force to defend the law. Any threat of force would, in any case, not be terribly credible. The mob knows this. We don’t have the Indian Army of British India. They knew how to deal with mobs.

So, this man allowed to retreat behind the walls of a Surrey temple. When the authorities made another attempt to deport him, again they were obstructed by a mob – this time one howling about the supposed sanctity of their temple. The government, rather than offend the sensibilities of these people, backed down again – and seems disinclined to act further. Most people think that they’ll find some way of backing down. I agree – there’s not an Indira Gandhi among our leaders. Just like in Caledonia, they will opt for the path of ease rather than that of right. The mob wins – we lose.

When the government kow-tows to mobs, we no longer have a government to call our own. When our government does not defend us – and we fail to defend ourselves – we cease to be a nation and instead become little more than an accumulation of people warily sharing accommodations.

I wish I could say that the mere breakdown of the rule of law was all that we had to deal with.

It is not enough for some that our government has ceased to defend us. Now it is conspiring with petty grievance-mongers across the land to actually attack us.

Watching Ezra Levant’s breathtaking performance before the drone-like human rights bureaucrat, I was reminded of something that the journalist Michael White wrote about Labour’s campaign in the 1983 general election: there was something magnificently brave about it – but it was like the Battle of the Somme. This is a show trial – the result is all but pre-ordained and, even if it isn’t, the process is a punishment in and of itself.

What is his crime? His magazine published the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed – which were the subject of an international uproar in which Islamists committed many murders and other acts of violence. He is not accused of slander. He is not accused of inciting people to riot. He is not accused of anything more than telling truths which hurt the feelings of some random jackass.

Like Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant is on trial for telling the truth. They are being attacked for defending our civilization. Honest men – men prepared to risk to tell the truth – are the lynchpin of our defense and the disease is coming for them.

Mobs protect criminals from justice while truthful men are threatened for their honesty. That is Canada.

We are besieged. Our most sacred rights are under attack. Enemies wish to deprive us of our liberty – indeed, have already deprived us of many liberties by declaring certain thoughts to be proscribed and declaring arbitrary punishments for them. They attack our very lives by bowing to the rule of the mob, when the mob is made up of the right sort of people. Today the mobs want criminal aliens allowed to stay at my and your expense and want to seize out-of-the-way public lands. What of tomorrow, when they want other crimes excused and when they want other lands? Will we resist then, or will a public long-acclimatized to tyranny meekly accept their fate?

I am reminded of Robert Graves’ book, Claudius the God. In it the Emperor Claudius wishes to restore the ancient freedoms of the Roman people, only to find that a people long-accustomed to the monotony of dull tyranny are incapable of liberty. In keeping with the ambitions of Orwell’s Oceania, our governments and our cultural masters have left most of us unable to resist by depriving us of the ideas necessary for resistance and rebellion.

What is to be done? There are, perhaps, options open to us still. But, frankly, I don’t believe that most of you care enough to listen. Most people – even most so-called conservatives – are content enough to hold onto whatever they can for as long as they can as we slide into the abyss.

I am filled with despair. Whatever tactical victories we might achieve – we are losing the war. Anti-retroviral treatment might extend our lives by many years but the disease is still going to get us in the end unless we find a cure – or unless something else gets us first.

For the Record...

Since I've gotten several e-mails on the subject, the U.S. flag in my picture is actually hung in the correct fashion - the problem is that the picture in question was taken with the iSight camera on my MacBook Pro, which mirrors the images. I'll correct it in the near future.

As for why a U.S. flag, I would note that my pictures also show me with the Red Ensign, which actually holds pride of place in my living room. I also have, displayed proudly, the Union Jack and the Israeli Flag as well.

Of course, the issue of my many-fold loyalties is too long for a quick blog post. To put it simply - if such a thing is possible - I would simply say that I consider my highest loyalty as being to the English-speaking peoples and am confident that any issue of division will never seriously come up, insofar as I never again expect any of the English-speaking nations to war with eachother (or, really, be anything but allies) again. In an ideal world, I would take out citizenships in all of the Anglo-American world. In my own lifetime, I aspire to take on at least two.

The Crying Game

Well, I’m surprised. It looks like Hillary might actually win in New Hampshire. I guess her campaign in the last few days worked.

Of course, I guess it should be no surprise that crying like a little girl is a key qualification to be Commander-in-Chief, so far as Democrats are concerned. These aren’t the blue-collar Democrats of yesteryear. The Democrats are now the party of the pink collar.

This is a dream come true for the GOP. The Democrats have a fertile playing field and, instead, the two weakest plausible Democratic nominees for President are going to spend at least a month tearing eachother apart now. Absolutely magnificent.

And, of course, now the field of plausible Republican nominees is reduced to McCain, Giuliani (barely), and Huckabee with McCain becoming, I think, the overwhelming favourite to be the Republican nominee for President. McCain is probably the GOP’s strongest candidate.

Oh – and, of course, the Messiah is behind Giuliani, fighting for fifth place.

Like I said, a good night.

Iranian Aggression At Sea

As Ralph Peters says in the New York Post this is disgusting.

These Iranian ships approached and provoked the U.S. Navy in an extremely bold and aggressive fashion and were allowed to get away with it.

The only proper response to this sort of provocation would have been to open fire on these ships and blow them - and all of their occupants - straight to hell.  That the Americans failed to do so is a worrying sign, and doubtlessly a result of the caution bred by the slowly metastasizing treason cancer which, because of how aggressive and widespread it is, forces retreat and restraint when the opposite is called for

Character and Leadership

Discussing McCain’s debate performance last night over at the Corner, Rich Lowry hits upon something – but I think rather misses the point (at least from my point of view):

But he was nasty toward Romney, letting his hatred—and I used that word advisedly—show. Of course, he tried to cover it with an occasional forced grin, but it was clear where he was coming from. I find this aspect of McCain's character very unattractive, and it’s not a great quality to have in a president.

I absolutely disagree with this – the flash of anger that McCain displayed, the bubbling inner hatred of his enemies – is an eminently desirable quality in a national leader. It’s exactly why I support John McCain: he’s a strong man who isn’t going to let anyone mess around with him and who, when he fights, will always go right for the jugular.

It is this question – the question of character – which has always left me with my deepest reservations about President Bush and which, in my view, makes Mike Huckabee eminently unsuitable (though, still better than any Democrat) for the Presidency. Simply put: there’s such a thing as being “too Christian” or “too good” (“Christian” in this case being a synonym for “good”) to be in charge. This is a killing fight: do we really want a leader who is going to want to take time out in the middle of a meeting to pray on whether it’s right to kill one or many of these (expletives deleted) under the present circumstances? I know that I don’t.

Remember: if John McCain becomes the Commander-in-Chief, that anger is going to be directed at America’s enemies. When we remember this, I think that the question of whether McCain would have attacked Iraq as Bush did becomes academic – the question isn’t whether McCain would have attacked Iraq, it’s one of how much faster he would have done it and who else he would have attacked along the way.

That’s the core of the case for John McCain. He’s a proven leader – and we know that he won’t chicken out under fire. He isn’t going to need a year or more to grow into the job.

All of this is worth remembering, especially when we consider the chances that President Bush missed after September 11th because, I think, both of his temperament and his inexperience. Bush, for all of his virtues, behaved on September 11th like, how shall I say, a normal human being in this age. That is to say, he seems to have reverted into the 1990’s-style of grief and, in those first critical hours, reverted to the Clintonian role of mourner-in-chief. More than that, in the year and a half that followed, up until the invasion of Iraq, he remained excessively solicitous of the thoughts and feelings of others -Moslems, Europeans, Democrats, etc. Because of this, he missed a real chance to “spin the wheel.”

Think of politics as a locked wheel. It can be spun slightly only one way or another and it wants to tug itself back to the centre. However, when the wheel comes loose, it can be swung one way or another with wild abandon and, when locked again, it will start from the new position that it was locked into. Because he was too concerned with pleasing various groups, Bush pushed the wheel to the right – but not nearly so far as he might have. Instead, he allowed his various friends and opponents to delay events until the wheel locked back into place again and he was open to a renewed assault.

President McCain, on the other hand, would – I believe – have responded to September 11th with his characteristic anger. In so doing, he could have dispensed with cloud of sepia-toned Oprah-derived toxins which entered the American bloodstream with regard to 9-11. A better initial response – one which identified the enemies and promised not “justice” but revenge against them might have stirred the blood of the American people to a lasting anger.

No one talks about the real lost opportunities of the opening months of the present war. That’s largely because they have nothing to do with Iraq, for which the President’s enemies are so eager to blame for all of our ills. Instead, they are all sins of moderation.

It was a mistake to not immediately begin a large expansion in the actual size of the Armed Forces right after September 11th. Indeed, many of the subsequent problems of manpower could have been avoided by treating the event as a total war from day one – when most people believed that it would be one – and calling up all of the reserves and the National Guard for the duration.

Also in error – you may have forgotten but it was discussed in mainstream publications at the time – was the failure to use tactical nuclear weapons against al-Qaeda during its retreat from Afghanistan. The idea, popularized by Democrats, that throwing tens of thousands of troops into those mountain passes would have been a sure-thing is much nonsense. But, on the other hand, the use of a significant number of battlefield nuclear weapons at Tora Bora would almost certainly have killed Bin Laden and would, in any case, have served as an intimidating gesture to the whole world. While I, personally, would have preferred a strategic nuclear response to September 11th, I recognize that the chances of someone in power attempting such a thing are pretty much nil.

“Character” does matter in Presidents – just not in the way it does for average people. Mike Huckabee might remind you more of your co-worker than your boss – and Mitt Romney might be the most morally upstanding and virtuous family man in the whole world, but those things don’t make them qualified to be a war leader.

Obama 2008 = McGovern 1972

Man, I hope that Barak Obama is the Democratic nominee for President. Not because I like him – in fact, I hate him on a personal level. Rarely has history delivered up at such a critical moment such an inconsequential figure with such hopes invested in him. Every time I see his face – pale and strangely off-putting like that of a transsexual – my blood boils. But, still, I pray that God is kind enough to deliver us such an opponent: as annoying as the man is, tearing apart the Coke-snorting, criminal-coddling, terrorist-appeasing, possibly-Mohammadean Democratic nominee is going to be a lot of fun.

The pundits are right when they say that this election should be an easy win for the Democrats. After all – there’s been a decade of unremitting political-cultural attacks against the President and the Republican Party, the global situation remains unsettled, and the economy is slowing. If the Democrats had any sense about them at all they would duplicate the formula followed the two times they’ve elected a President in the last forty years: they would nominate a Southern Governor with a moderate reputation. If Brad Henry, Mike Easley, or Phil Bredesen were set to be their nominee the Democrats would be looking at something like a five to ten point win right about now.

The human race is fortunate, then, that the Democratic base is – in brief – composed largely of stupid and delusional people. In my experience, devoted Democrats fall into one of two camps:

1) They are unkempt and confused, like the woman who voted for Lyndon Johnson because she thought that Barry Goldwater wanted to take away her TV.

Or;

2) They’re long-term sufferers from what I call “The American President” syndrome. I’m talking about the Aaron Sorkin movie here. In it, the good-hearted liberal President is assailed by Evil Republicans™ who, for some bizarre reason, are violently opposed to the widowed President dating a demure lobbyist played by Annette Benning. At the end, the President decides to reject compromise and moderation and instead gives a speech where he proclaims that the symbol of America should be equally the flag and someone burning the flag and then subsequently promises to “go door to door and get all of the guns.” Thereafter, the President delivers the State of the Union to rapturous applause and, presumably, goes on to be overwhelmingly re-elected by an American electorate full of deeply closeted ACLU members.

Of course, in reality, any President who went off his rocker like that would be lucky to live out the rest of their term, let alone re-elected. The delusion is excusable in the writer, who reportedly wrote the script, “holed up in the Four Seasons Hotel with the curtains drawn … while smoking endless amounts of crack.” However, it is less understandable in (mostly) sober individuals.

For all of the rhetoric about change – for all of the excitement and auto-erotic heavy breathing coming from the media – the truth is that Barak Hussein Obama is on the far left and, when that fact is explained to the American people, he will lose the forthcoming election: badly. The only caveat that I’ll make in that statement is that it’s null and void if the Republicans as a whole are so stupid as to respond to the present crisis by nominating for President the former Governor of a nowhere state whose primary qualification for office is that he seems like he’d make a good substitute host of the “700 Club.”

This is 1972 all over again. The Democratic base has, as it did all of those years ago, become progressively unhinged from reality and is determined to have its way come what may. In 1972 they wanted McGovern – acid, amnesty, abortion, and all. They’d been radicalized by the anti-Vietnam movement, by the 1968 convention, and all of that and they were determined to take charge and, in so doing, they led their party off an electoral cliff that it has really never fully recovered from.

Frankly, Obama is a Republican’s dream. All of us were already tried of Hillary Clinton. The GOP has already torn that woman down and apart – an election with her as the nominee would have been spent refighting old battles – fighting for yard after yard of shattered ground like the poor bloody infantry in the Great War. With Obama, on the other hand, we get a whole new – and hitherto unexplored – life to exploit.

In particular, I’m quite eager to see how the Moslem issue works out. Yes, I know that the Senator’s official position is that he’s a “Christian” and he even belongs to some far-left black “Church” which, among other things, holds denouncing “middleclassness” as one of its core beliefs – but, really, how much is the word of a Democrat worth?

Both Obama’s father and his step-father were Moslems. That’s a fact. He also went to Islamic schools as a child. Really, at the moment, we know very little about what he believed and professed in the years between then and when he was first getting into public life in the mid-1990’s. Is it really all that implausible that a young black man - especially one with as intense an interest in his family background as Obama professes – wouldn’t have flirted with the faith of his fathers at some point during his young adult years?

Indeed, we know – thanks to Hillary Clinton’s discovery of a youthful ‘essay’ – that Obama had political ambitions from a very early age. Islam has a specific doctrine, known as “al-Taqiyya”, which permits the followers of Allah to conceal their true faith when among unbelievers. Now, let’s be very clear – I’m not saying that Obama is a concealed Moslem, a Manchurian candidate, waiting to seize the office of the Presidency in the service of sinister interests. But, on the other hand, it’s impossible to rule it out. These things are, after all, unfalsifiable by their very nature.

Is Barak Hussein Obama secretly a Moslem, pretending otherwise under the cover of a goofy Black Nationalist church? I can’t prove it and I, personally, don’t believe it – but neither I nor anyone who isn’t a telepath can disprove it either. Unfalsifiable.

Yes, I’m enjoying this.

In any case, we don’t need anything so dark in order to work towards destroying Obama. While, admittedly, I’d take a “What Should I Do, Imam?” letter signed by Obama over a weekend in bed with Jenna Fischer, we can make do with substantially less. Indeed, the facts that Obama fully admits to – his parentage and religious education – are, within the broader context of his views, a serious issue.

Obviously, no one can choose their parents. We can’t fault Obama for that. Someone could be born a red diaper baby and later become a staunch and reliable anti-communist. But Obama shows no sign of such a transformation. If we take him at face value – that he was born and raised by a vacuous mother with a thing for Moslem men, that he was seemingly raised as a Moslem to some degree, and later became irreligious before eventually joining some frivolous fringe “church” there still remains the very serious issue that his background and upbringing – which he has never denounced or discarded – will make him excessively sympathetic towards the West’s enemies. Such notions might not sit well with pious multicultural sensibilities but are nonetheless real. It takes a strong man to overcome early bonds of affection and accept that it might be necessary, in the interests of our civilization, to kill people one was raised with – maybe even to kill one’s own relatives, if that is what is required. Does the candidate of Oprah seem likely to be the one to dispense with that sort of sentimentality?

Forget the notion – bandied about by Shelby Steele – that part of Obama’s draw comes from the fact that he’s a “nonthreatening black man.” The deeper truth is that a large part of Obama’s appeal comes from the fact that he’s a nonthreatening man, period. For all of the jokes about John Edwards as the “metrosexual candidate” (a label his 2008 campaign persona seems designed to shake) no one deserves the label more than the effete and gaunt Obama. There’s a reason why Obama draws the woman’s vote more than Hillary Clinton: he’s a limp-wristed weakling whose appearance and attitudes are perfectly in keeping with the cultural mores of the day. His appeal – particularly to the young and to single women – can be traced to his girlishly sensitive countenance and character.

No, Obama doesn’t cry in public or claim that he can “feel our pain” like Bill Clinton. Obama’s appeal in this regard is more subtle (and quite possibly genuine). For his occasional calculated statement about foreign policy, his mush-brained homilies about the “audacity of hope” are perfectly positioned to win over the lavender and lace set.

This, of course, is only the beginning. My confidence that we’ll beat Obama isn’t nearly enough for me to quit – especially not when I transparently hate the man with such passion. My hope is that no one else will quit either and that we can spend a whole year administering a truly epic beat-down to the Democrat.

Profiting With Ron Paul

Someone - I'm going to guess foolish Ron Paul supporters are the culprits, given the circumstances, has managed to bid up the "field" option on Intrade (an events preduction market) for the New Hampshire Republican Primary to the point where the asking price has reached 7.8.  In order to borrow a significant number of options you'd have to probably short them at around ten or so, though.  In any case, you'd end up with about a 10% return by next Tuesday night.

Two declarations - first of all, obviously, I don't recommend betting to anyone who disapproves of such things and, second that, in the interests of full disclosure, I have taken a small (sub-$100) short position on this particular option.