RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE SET AT KENNEDY

Meanwhile, the U.N. is preparing the release of its shocking climate change report detailing startling new evidence that man is warming the planet.

That evil menace, responsible for all things bad in the world, has struck again. Global warming is back!

Global warming could exacerbate the world’s rich-poor divide and help to radicalize populations and fan terrorism in the countries worst affected, security and climate experts said on Wednesday.

“We have to reckon with the human propensity for violence,” Sir Crispin Tickell, Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations, told a London conference on “Climate Change: the Global Security Impact.”

“Violence within and between communities and between nation states, we must accept, could possibly increase, because the precedents are all around.”

You thought terrorism was a result of radical Islamic jihad, didn’t you? Silly goose, how neanderthalicly right wing of you. Clearly, the real cause of the terrorists’ fury is our imperialist and capitalistic system that destroys the environment and lays waste to all it touches. Bin Laden (and Noam Chomsky) said so!

John Mitchell, chief scientist at Britain’s Met Office, noted al Qaeda had already listed environmental damage among its litany of grievances against the United States.

“You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries,” al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wrote in a 2002 “letter to the American people.”

Bin Laden understands these people better than they seem to understand science, that’s for sure. He knows exactly what they are: useful idiots; and he’ll make maximum use of their environmental fanaticism if it can serve his ends.

TCSDaily offers a good look at the contrast between Bush and Webb the other night on the issue of poverty.

Last night, President Bush’s State of the Union address and Senator James Webb’s Democratic response provided a useful juxtaposition of views. Among other things, it showed how the parties’ positions on poverty have changed.

To wit, President Bush’s proposals tend to target various aspects of what might be called absolute poverty. By contrast, Sen. Webb is interested in relative poverty.

. . .While the president is interested in dealing with specific aspects of poverty and deprivation, he is not interested in the position of poor people relative to others. Senator Webb is. “When I graduated from college,” remarks Senator Webb, “the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it?s nearly 400 times.” Or again, “Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth.” In each case, the statistic he cites is a ratio: the average worker’s wages compared to those of the CEO; wages and salaries compared to national wealth. That the average worker is much wealthier in absolute terms than he was thirty years ago does not seem to interest Webb much: what matters is that his relative wealth has decreased.

. . .The irony is that Sen. Webb calls for “measure[ing] the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street.” Quite right. But President Bush said not a word about Wall Street. He is interested in job creation, health care, and foreign aid. It is Sen. Webb who thinks the state of the nation depends on how the elite are faring.

To those who know and follow the Democrats class warfare agenda, this is nothing new. Why one citizen should be concerned about the income of another citizen is not something Democrats ever bother to explain, but they operate under the assumption that it is so. The reason they can’t explain it is because there is no explaination, only a hope to play off peoples envy to gain votes.

A 2008 election site, Race42008 often carries various primary polling data. At the end of one such post they pointed out this fascinating poll question and its results:

When making your selection for a presidential candidate, what are you looking for most in the candidate, charisma, experience, or ideology? (Democrats Only)
Charisma 29%
Ideology 21%
Experience 16%
Undecided 34%

It is abolutely amazing to me that 30% of Democrat voters really think charisma is how they should measure presidential candidates. But it’s no surprise, really, given the top two spots in the Iowa poll:

Democrats,
John Edwards 25%
Barack Obama 17%
Tom Vilsack 16%
Hillary Clinton 15%

Is this an election for President of the United States or a high school senior class? I honestly can’t tell sometimes.

First, read this excerpt from the speech:

For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective. Chaos is the greatest ally — their greatest ally in this struggle. And out of chaos in Iraq would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens, new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to harm America. To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and invite tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East, to succeed in Iraq and to spare the American people from this danger. (Applause.)

This is where matters stand tonight, in the here and now. I have spoken with many of you in person. I respect you and the arguments you’ve made. We went into this largely united, in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field, and those on their way. (Applause.)

Something important, however, is lost in the translation. You would think that succeeding in the Middle East and Iraq in order to “spare the American people from this danger” would be something all Americans could agree to, even if they had serious issues over the methodology for achieving this goal. Sadly, you’d be wrong.

Nancy Pelosi kept her butt in the chair and refused to applaud this very simple pro-American statement. Most of the Democrats followed suit. Sure, she jumped right out at the next paragraph to “support our troops”, but how does she think she can do one without the other? Failing does not support our troops, or anyone for that matter.

How can any true American refuse to believe that America must win? How can we not question their patriotism in this situation?

Global terrorist organization Hezbollah - idolized over the summer by leftwing Europeans who ran around screaming “We are Hezbollah” - is attempting to intimidate the people of Lebanon into submission, reports Michael J. Totten.

While I was in Lebanon gathering the material I’ve been publishing, Hezbollah kept threatening to strangle the country by seizing major roads, including the one that leads to the airport. I was worried I might get stuck there, but I didn’t. Today, though, they finally make good on their threat. Palestinian guerillas are reportedly helping.

Future TV and LBC say there are clashes between rioters and commuters. Cars, as well as tires, are burning.

Hezbollah’s attempt to justify their actions with leftwing “workers” rhetoric is a red herring. They want power so they can be free to wage Jihad against Israel, which is why they are being assisted by Palestinian terrorists.

The inherent fault of excessive multiculturalism is its complete refusal to make judgements on behaviors deemed to be culturally or religiously protected. In practice, this results in a police force where an officer refuses to protect a recognized foreign embassy because of his religiously indoctrinated Jewish hatred and another who thinks she can do her duties without ever touching a strange man.

In London a Muslim policewoman refused to shake hands with Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police Service. She claimed it was against her religious beliefs. Three months ago another Muslim police officer, Alexander Basha, asked to be transferred to another section of the police so he would not have to guard the Israeli embassy in London.

The policewoman says that since she is a woman and Sir Ian Blair is neither close family nor her husband they cannot touch. In order not to spoil the ceremony for others, the policewoman was granted her request, though Sir Ian Blair questioned whether it could be valid at all. The other question that pops up is how she will be able to carry out her duties if she doesn’t allow herself to have any physical contact with men.

A spokeswoman for the police has already said that the woman, described as a “non-Asian Muslim” and wearing a hijab-uniform on the ceremony, will have to do her job properly if she wants to stay with the force. Furthermore, the Metropolitan Police Service has started an inquiry into what really happened and what the consequences will be. It is clear though that this sets yet another precedent, but perhaps next time the police authorities will be better prepared when they are confronted again with multicultural society during a ceremony.

How did she even pass her training? Are officers not forced to learn some basic hand to hand techniques? How did she accomplish this? They should have answered their questions before she was made an officer. That these issues were never addressed suggests to me someone was too afraid to bring them up, for fear of being labelled with one of those nasty, debate ending ‘-ism’s.

Ban Ki Moon’s tenure as U.N. Secretary-General is already proving to be much more promising to those hoping for serious organizational reform. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole concept abandoned. Organizations formed with the premise of giving two-bit dictators as much voice as civilized nations are doomed for failure. Nevertheless, if we must put up with a United Nations, having one that isn’t corrupt and funneling money to dictators would be a huge improvement.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has been on the job for less than a month, but with a 26-word announcement Friday he did more to reform that international body than anything ever attempted by predecessor Kofi Annan.

“The Secretary-General will call for an urgent, system wide and external inquiry into all activities done around the globe by the U.N. funds and programs.” So said Mr. Ban’s spokesman after the Secretary-General met with Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the United Nations Development Program. The key word here is “external.” Concerns about corruption in the U.N.’s Oil for Food program bubbled for years before Mr. Annan finally agreed to set up the independent Volcker Commission.

The proximate cause for Friday’s meeting between Messrs. Ban and Melkert, and for Mr. Ban’s clean-house announcement, was Melanie Kirkpatrick’s op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal on Friday detailing irregularities in the UNDP’s programs in North Korea and citing U.S. concerns that tens of millions of dollars in hard currency have been funneled to dictator Kim Jong Il.

…your own flag is called “gang colors”.

THE Australian flag has been banned from this year’s Big Day Out in Sydney after organisers branded it a “gang colour” and symbol of hate.

Organisers of the Aussie rock festival at Homebush will confiscate any flag or bandana bearing the national symbol at the gate.

Labelling Sydney a hot bed of racism, producers of the Sydney Showground event said it will be the only city in the nationwide event to be subject to the draconian action.

Promoters have already moved the event from the traditional Australia Day gig to a day earlier to avoid nationalistic overtones.

Leftwing self-flagellation knows no bounds.

. . .Premier Morris Iemma reacted angrily to the ban, claiming the promotors should “reverse their decision immediately”.

“If they pulled this on Independence Day in the US, imagine what would happen. It’s just ridiculous,” he said.

Oh, I think we all know what would happen if they pulled this in the U.S. Aside from the obvious outrage from patriots, there would be a measurable rise in liberal smugness:

Hat tip: Moonbattery

Perhaps there is hope after all that basic freedoms of expression will be returned to the people.

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to revisit the landmark 2002 legislation overhauling the nation’s campaign finance laws, moving to settle the role of campaign spending by corporations, unions and special interest groups in time for the 2008 presidential primaries.

It would be the first time the court has reviewed the McCain-Feingold law of 2002 since justices ruled 5 to 4 three years ago that the act was constitutional. Since then, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was in the majority, has been replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

At issue in the case is the question of whether so-called issue advocacy ads paid for by the general funds of special interest groups and broadcast in the period before a federal election may mention specific candidates. A three-judge panel in Washington last month overturned that prohibition, which is one of the key provisions of the law known formally as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

“The stakes are enormous,” said Michael E. Toner, a Federal Election Commission member who served on President Bush’s campaign in 2000. “We’re watching this case very closely.”

The entire law should be thrown out as unconstitutional. The question of whether or not an ad attempts to “influence” elections should be irrelevent, though that’s exactly the question the courts are addressing. In practice, expression of all opinions “influences” elections for the simple fact that votes are cast based on opinions, and though opinions are formed based on a great many factors, one of those certainly is the expression of free ideas made by fellow citizens.

You cannot make a logical differentiation between campaigning and freedom of expression; the two are inseverably linked. Rather, if the Constitution is to have any meaning, they should be so linked.

. . .Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the Supreme Court challenge is “going to be a prime opportunity for opponents of campaign regulations to make some headway in watering down the standards.”

. . .What could make the outcome different this time, he said, is “simply the replacement of Justice O’Connor with Justice Alito.”

Here’s hoping.

Hat tip: Club for Growth