Hello Mr. President...Usama calling

In one of the more comical stories of the week, Usama bin Laden, or someone who sounds enough like him, issued an audio recording. In it, he offered a "truce" with the US if we agreed to leave Afghanistan and Iraq. Excuse me, but that's kind of like Custer offering a truce to Sitting Bull if he'd just stop killing all his troops.

But the most striking thing about the recording was that it sounded like it was written by the Democratic National Committee. It covered just about every DNC talking point from "Bush lied" to "America's no safer" to "huge financial cost". The only thing UBL failed to mention was Halliburton.

Hey, Howard Dean...are any of your staffers missing?

Stupid terrorists, stupid journalists

Jill Carroll, freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, was abducted by terrorists in Iraq. Her abductors are demanding the release of female prisoners held by Iraqi authorities and coalition forces. The terrorists' deadline came and went yesterday with no word on the fate of Ms. Carroll. It goes without saying that any person with the slightest bit of humanity prays for Ms. Carroll's safe release and that she doesn't suffer the same fate as other abductees.

But the story is just another example of the brainlessness of some people. On the one hand, we have a journalist who views the terrorists as heroes fighting against oppression, and on the other we have terrorists threatening to kill one of their best spokespersons. It's not that Ms. Carroll's reporting is dishonest, but rather one-sided. A reading of samples of her writing on the CSM's web site shows that like many other reporters, she focuses on everything negative in Iraq and none of the positives.

Journalists such as Ms. Carroll are the best friends the "insurgency" has. Their constant negative reporting turns public support away from the effort, as I believe it's intended to do, the goal being to force a withdrawal. Which, of course, is exactly what the poor, oppressed terrorists want, so that they can do some oppressing of their own.

Meanwhile, back on the plantation...

On the same day Mr. Nagin was spewing his racist nonsense (see previous post), the esteemed Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), had this to say: "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about."

In making the statement before a mostly black audience at a church in Harlem, Ms. Clinton was apparently comparing the misery of a plantation slave to that of a house Democrat. Somehow, I don't think a Republican would have gotten away with that had the roles been reversed. But like Nagin, Clinton will get a pass.

Chocolate City

On Monday, Martin Luther King day, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said "I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

Of course, he later tried to mollify his critics by saying "How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he said. "New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina. It is going to be a chocolate city after. How is that divisive? It is white and black working together, coming together and making something special."

There was much coverage in the media, naturally, but Nagin largely got a pass on his racist comments. I wonder what the result would have been had he been white and said New Orleans will be a vanilla city.

Gorgeous George and Big Brother

George Galloway, British MP, has been the darling of the left and the pinata of the right ever since he appeared before Congress here in the US. Love him or hate him, the man is a great orator and possibly the best self promoter since P.T. Barnum.

All niceties aside, the man is an utter douchebag. Not content to fuck his own constituents, he feels compelled to engage in public masturbation by abandoning them for a few months so that he can appear on the British version of Big Brother, a so-called reality TV show. Can you imagine Ted Kennedy abdicating his duties in the Senate to appear on The Bachelor? OK...bad example, but you get the idea.

While reading a column online today in The First Post, I came to the conclusion that the poor, misguided residents of Mr. Galloway's district of Bethnal Green and Bow deserve his representation. With any kind of luck (and wisdom) on their part, they'll vote his silly ass out of office.

Illiberal Liberals

When is a liberal not a liberal? All the time, I guess. A Washington Post article this morning validates my theory that today's conservatives are the real liberals, while the liberals of today are really just fascists with a socialist veneer.

The article covers the forced politeness of the residents of Seattle, Washington in the context of the upcoming playoff game between the Washington Redskins and Seattle Seahawks. This line, to me, really says it all:

To Raban, the city's eagerness to legislate nice behavior suggests what he calls "the deep authoritarianism of the liberal mind." He added: "Liberals like to think they are on the side of liberty, but actually they are on the side of authority."

It's pretty ironic, when you think about it. Today's lefties constantly hurl epithets like "fascist" and "Nazi" at conservatives, when in reality, it's the left constantly cramming new legislation down our throats regulating every aspect of our lives.

To be sure, there are religious conservatives on the right who advocate over-reaching legislation on morality issues. But it's generally not the right devising things like hate-crime (read; thought-crime) legislation or college campus rules muzzling non-PC speech.

Today's conservative (I refuse to use the "neo-con" label, but I'm willing to entertain the use of "neo-lib"), believes in free trade, limited government and equal opportunity (and responsibility) for all. We recognize there's no constitutional protection against being offended, and just want everyone to quit whining and assume responsibility for their own well-being. We believe the constitution guarantees us the freedom to pursue happiness, but that the attainment of it is our problem to solve, and not that of the government.

So tonight at happy hour, raise a glass and toast the dawning of the age of neo-liberalism.

The Jewish-Christian Alliance

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post this morning discussing a "kinship" between Jews and evangelical Christians. The article probes the burgeoning support of evangelicals for Jewish and Israeli causes.

Much is made in the article of "philo-Semitism", which is described as the flip side of the anti-Semitism coin. In attempting to explain the phenomenon, the Post provides the most cynical Jewish viewpoint in these paragraphs:

Julie Galambush, a former American Baptist minister who converted to Judaism 11 years ago, has seen both sides of the divide. She said many Jews suspect that evangelicals' support for Israel is rooted in a belief that the return of Jews to the promised land will trigger the Second Coming of Jesus, the battle of Armageddon and mass conversion.

"That hope is felt and expressed by Christians as a kind, benevolent hope," said Galambush, author of "The Reluctant Parting," a new book on the Jewish roots of Christianity. "But believing that someday Jews will stop being Jews and become Christians is still a form of hoping that someday there will be no more Jews."

The Post's article centers on the Rev. Lamarr Mooneyham, whose church in Danville, Virginia raised $25,000 for a Jewish cause. Nothing in the article suggests that Mooneyham's motives, or that of his congregation, are anything but altruistic, and fortunately, I don't believe most Jews feel the same way as Ms. Galambush.

But the article gives only passing notice to what I believe is the biggest contributor to philo-Semitism, which is the threat of militant Islam. Since evangelicals tend to the conservative side (how's that for an understatement?), and conservatives have long viewed militant Islam as the global threat that it is, I believe evangelicals regard Israel as a close ally in the fight against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

Now, if only the left would wake up and recognize the threat of Islamofascism. But I'm not holding my breath.