DEAR READERS
THE BLACK KETTLE
http://blackkettle.wordpress.com/
* There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD * Proverbs 21:30
*ANNO DOMINI 2009*
*THE DOMINION RESISTANCE: FAITH ✧ FAMILY ✧ FREEDOM*
*PLEASE PRAY FOR OUR MILITARY PERSONNEL*
*Psalms 83:2-8, Joel 3:2*
* "THE SON OF GOD BECAME A MAN TO ENABLE MEN TO BECOME SONS OF GOD. - C.S. LEWIS *
THE BLACK KETTLE
http://blackkettle.wordpress.com/
In the liberal-progressive-socialist religion, evidence (or lack of evidence) that calls into question any of its tenets is to be dismissed as non-scientific.MORE
Liberal-progressive-socialism and its handmaiden, the Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis, claim the mantle of science. But, as there is exactly zero proof of their doctrine, and judging from the intense, irrational passion with which their believers attack all questioners, we can conclude that liberal-progressive-socialism and Darwinism are not science, but aspects of a religion.
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Ed Stelmach, Alberta's weak premier, shows he's still strong when it comes to pushing his MLAs around. Today he put that uppity cabinet minister Lindsay Blackett (at left) back in his place.Catastrophe. How much more of the Stelmach Advantage can we stomach? I am seriously considering moving to B.C.
For months, Blackett had been musing about reforming Alberta's out-of-control human rights commission -- the one that put me through a 900-day prosecution for publishing some cartoons, and the one that sentenced an Alberta pastor to a lifetime speech ban about gay marriage, even banning him from giving church sermons or writing private e-mails about it.
Here are Blackett's bold comments in the Calgary Sun, just two months ago:
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Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their "moral compass," a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as "moral cowards." Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?MORE
Before enthroning Obama's personal morality as U.S. defense policy, of course, some dirty work had to be done. Last Sunday, Obama's hit man and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel led the charge by telling the American people that the interrogation techniques are a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and its Islamist partners. Well, no, Mr. Emanuel, that is not at all the case. The techniques surely are not popular with our foes and their supporters -- should that be a concern in any event? -- but they do not even make the Islamists' hit parade of anti-U.S. recruiting tools. That list is headed by Washington's support for Arab tyrannies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its presence on the Arabian Peninsula and its unqualified support for Israel. Still, Emanuel's statement surely sounded plausible to Americans who have received no education about our Islamist enemy's true motivation from Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton or George H.W. Bush.
Next, the president used his personal popularity and the stature of his office to implicitly identify as liars those former senior U.S. officials who know -- not "argue" or "contend" or "assert" but know -- that the interrogation techniques have yielded intelligence essential to the nation's defense. The integrity, intellect and reputations of Judge Michael Mukasey, Gen. Michael V. Hayden and others have now been besmirched by Obama because their realistic worldview and firsthand experience do not mesh with the president's desire to install his personal "moral compass" as the core of U.S. foreign and defense policy. And after visiting CIA headquarters last week, the president made it clear that he rejected statements surely made by CIA officers who risked their careers to tell him how many successful covert operations against al-Qaeda have flowed from interrogation information. As with all Jacobins, Obama cannot allow a hard and often brutal reality -- call it an inconvenient truth -- to impinge on his view of how the world should and must be made to work.
And so as the Justice Department memos farce plays out over the coming weeks, Americans can be confident that both parties will play politics to the hilt while letting the nation's safety take the hindmost. Obama and his team will "reluctantly" agree to a congressional investigation of former Bush officials and serving CIA officers, politically targeted indictments from Holder's minions and perhaps even a truth commission to prove that even the United States can aspire to be a half-baked Third World country.
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As Taliban control hits pockets of Pakistan and threatens the nation’s stability, Christians worry their province could be the next to fall under Islamic law.MORE
Violence on Tuesday night and Wednesday (April 21-22) near the port city of Karachi – some 1,000 kilometers (nearly 700 miles) from the Swat Valley, where the government officially allowed the Taliban to establish Islamic law this month – heightened fears. Christians in Taiser town, near Karachi, noticed on the walls of their church graffiti that read, “Long Live the Taliban” and calls for Christians to either convert to Islam or pay the jizye, a poll tax under sharia (Islamic law) paid by non-Muslims for protection if they decline to convert.
As members of the congregation erased the graffiti, armed men intervened to stop them. Soon 30-40 others arrived as support and began to fire indiscriminately at the crowd, leaving several injured. Among those seriously injured were three Christians, including a child, according to a report by advocacy group Minorities Concern of Pakistan: Emrah Masih, 35, Qudoos Masih, 30, and Irfan Masih, 11. A Pashtun named Rozi Khan was also among the injured.
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We Canadians are often too polite to say, “I told you so.” But 16 months after we told the world that the Durban “anti-racism” conference was anything but, we have been vindicated. Canada was the first nation to pull out of the Durban II conference and to cut off funds for NGO participation. Countries like Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Israel and the United States of America followed us. Many other nations later walked out of the conference when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad poured verbal acid all over Israel, the United States and Europe.MORE
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Gibbs defended his actions later in the press conference, saying, “I think the president took swift action to change our image in the world.”
That he has. Upon taking office, Barack Obama promptly signed three executive orders closing Guantanamo Bay within one year, shuttering rendition "black sites," and binding interrogators to the Army Field Manual for high value detainees. He stepped away from the maximum, and exceedingly rare, interrogation techniques his predecessor allowed. Instead, what Bush authorized, Obama publicized, releasing memos describing less-than-shocking “torture” tactics. In the process, he gave our enemies vital information, not only on how far we were willing to go, but how far we are no longer willing to go. He has opened the door to prosecuting legal advisers in the previous administration and led the CIA to believe they will no longer “get top cover if something goes wrong.” He has now refused to stand his ground in the U.S. court system against the Legal Left – the same forces fighting to invest Guantanamo Bay detainees with the rights of a jury trial and charge Bush administration officials with war crimes. Under President Bush, the United States enjoyed a reputation as a nation that vigorously prosecutes captured terrorists and defends those who stand on its front lines. In three months, President Obama has reversed that. Quite a 100-day accomplishment.
Taken together, it becomes clear Obama seeks to elevate his image by turning the Bush administration into a moral pariah. However, his decisions are undoing the edifice that protected this nation for seven years – and even his administration publicly fears his latest move alone will supercharge al-Qaeda recruitment. As a whole, his Homeland Security policy is either a stunning series of unmitigated naivete, megalomania, spite for President Bush, or hatred of his own country.
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“Insanity,” Albert Einstein advised us, “is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Rarely has this quote been more apt than now, as Barack Obama attempts to do what his predecessor, George Bush, attempted to do and could not, following the failed attempts of his predecessor, Bill Clinton.MORE
To wit: his attempts to achieve a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a “two state solution” that would establish a Jewish state and a Palestinian state “living side by side in peace and security,” bringing stability to the area and joy to all concerned parties. Obama is going to fall on his face with regard to this effort, but he has the potential to cause a certain amount of damage before he does.
Of course, as Obama’s level of self-certainty reaches unprecedented heights, he is not going to be deterred by the failures of previous presidents. That is why last Tuesday he made an announcement about needing to see the involved parties take “concrete steps” under his watch. But it is not for lack of effort that the “two-state solution” has failed to date.
The reason there has not been a “two state solution” is clearly understood by those ready to see it: The Palestinians haven’t wanted it.
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When the decline of Britain comes to be properly recorded by some future Edward Gibbon, the name of Jack Jones will feature prominently. He has just died at the age of 96, In his heyday in the 1960s and 1970s he was General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union with its 2 million members, and a representative, almost a caricature, of intransigence, selfishness and militancy in the name of the workers. How he loved class warfare! And how he laid down the law to Prime Ministers Wilson and Heath, both of them apparently defenseless to deal with so rigid, so Stalinist, a figure. He obliged them to agree to a social contract in spite of the contradiction in it, namely that money was evil but it still had to be taken from everyone else and given to workers. He was one of the master-minds of the British economic disaster of those decades. Paul Johnson nicknamed him “Emperor Jones.”MORE
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President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years.MORE
According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969. The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86. Mr. Obama's current approval rating of 56 percent is only one tick higher than the 55-percent approval Mr. Clinton had during those crises.
As the attached chart shows, five presidents rated higher than Mr. Obama after 100 days in office. Ronald Reagan topped the charts in April 1981 with 67 percent approval. Following the Gipper, in order of popularity, were: Jimmy Carter with 63 percent in 1977; George W. Bush with 62 percent in 2001; Richard Nixon with 61 percent in 1969; and George H.W. Bush with 58 percent in 1989.
It's no surprise the liberal media aren't anxious to point out that their darling is less popular than George W. Bush.
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The most famous atheist in the world, biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, poses as the arch-apostle of reason, a scientist who stands for empirical truth in opposition to obscurantism and lies. What follows suggests that in fact he is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.MORE
I previously wrote about the remarkable debate (which can be seen at this website) between Dawkins and John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow in the Philosophy of Science at Oxford. Lennox is the author of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? which demolishes Dawkins by showing not only that there is no inherent conflict between science and faith but that the argument for faith is now being bolstered enormously by the remarkable developments in science. Dawkins was on the back foot because Lennox was attacking him from his own platform of science. He was on safer ground only when, in a further debate between the two at Oxford’s Natural History Museum last October, he attacked Lennox for his Christian faith which he could more easily ridicule. But to Lennox’s core arguments, he seemed to me to have no convincing response.
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She was a small, pretty woman with chintzy blouses and a nervous habit of clearing her throat. A stiff leather handbag hung like a weapon over her arm; if a wisp of hair escaped from the helmet of her coiffure, she fiddled with it anxiously. In mid-campaign, she was given a grubby calf to hold and didn't know what to do with it. Our first views of Margaret Thatcher weren't reassuring.MORE
Yet it was la différence that underwrote her astonishing success. The unthinkable – a woman prime minister – had been made flesh. Suddenly anything seemed possible. I was a city councillor in Birmingham with two small children. I knew, with total certainty, that if she could do it, then so could I.
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Aaron Klein’s new book, The Late Great State of Israel: How Enemies Within and Without Threaten the Jewish Nation’s Survival, gets its official release today, and I’ll be speaking with the WorldNet Daily correspondent live today on the Ed Morrissey Show this afternoon about it. Aaron gave Hot Air readers a couple of exclusive excerpts from the book to whet your appetites for both the book and the interview:MOREIsraeli policies and follies the past few years have actually been strengthening Iran and emboldening it to surround the Jewish state with Tehran’s proxies, according to a new book released today.[...]
“Of all the grave security threats facing Israel today, Iran is by far the single greatest. Controlled by a fanatical regime of Shi’ite Muslim revolutionaries, Iran today is a semi-fascistic country of more than 65 million whose leaders routinely threaten to annihilate the Jewish state. Its nuclear program, on the brink of weaponization, is clearly intended for hostile purposes. Among global political analysts, no one doubts that a nuclear Iran would be a game changer. It would irrevocably alter the balance of power in the Middle East, placing Tehran and all of its proxies (Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas) under the protection of a nuclear umbrella, and would give Iran the technical option of wiping Israel off the map….
The so-called Commission on Accountability which mysteriously appeared on the political scene a few days ago to push for show trials related to War on Terror interrogation policies is a PR hoax created by liberal philanthropist George Soros and political operatives sympathetic to the Obama administration.MORE
The push is part of a vindictive campaign to pay back the architects of the War on Terror for making a good faith effort to defend America.
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Human Events is reporting that Arlen Specter will announce today he's switching to the Democrat Party.MORE
While Republicans may believe he left their party long ago, Specter has now found a way around the primary voters who want him out.
Four days ago, Real Clear Politics reported the following:Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R) finds himself down 21 points to former Rep. Pat Toomey in a potential 2010 Republican primary, according to a new Rasmussen poll. Specter now has a 42%/55% favorability rating, while Toomey enjoys a 66%/19% rating.A large, early gap in the polls is common an unpopular incumbent. Such polls generally tighten as the election approaches. Specter, however, must think he's in real danger of losing the Republican primary.
Toomey 51
Specter 30
Someone else 9
Und 10
His answer: avoid the Republican primary.
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As public-health officials across Canada braced for more cases of a new swine flu virus and the World Health Organization ramped up its pandemic alert, some experts suggested on Monday the bug might not be the deadly menace it first appeared to be.MORE
Most patients outside of Mexico have suffered only mild illness, infectious-disease specialists noted. And it is quite possible that tens of thousands of similarly slight cases have occurred, unnoticed, in Mexico itself, making the death rate from the virus there much less ominous, they said.
It is too early to rule out a disastrous global pandemic, but it is also not clear that the novel and "weird" flu that emerged in recent weeks will be more lethal than the regular, seasonal influenza, said some doctors.
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It’s nice to know that Quebec is being well taken care of by the rest of Canada. After all, we wouldn’t want to let it do something foolish like, for instance, take care of itself. Never mind the fact that it receives $8 billion of the $14 billion in annual equalization funding. They’re worth it.MORE
They’re so worth it, in fact, that they got 85% of the funds available for committees organizing "Celebrate Canada" festivities in 2008. Quebec received $3.2 million last year for events such as National Aboriginal Day on June 21, Canada Day on July 1 and Quebec’s Fete nationale holiday on June 24, while Ontario got $100,000, and British Columbia $55,000. The funding comes from Heritage Canada, a sublimely wasteful federal department that manages to blow $3.78 billion each year by finding creative ways to tell ourselves how great we are.
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Having spent this morning catching up on my weekend reading, I came across this Page 4 article from Friday's New York Times. Here's the lead paragraph: "BAGHDAD — At least 80 people died and 120 others were injured Thursday in three bombings, one by a female suicide bomber in Baghdad who, Iraqi officials said, held a young child’s hand as she set off her explosives among a group of women and children receiving emergency food aid."MORE
Even putting aside our baseline revulsion at terrorism, there are three especially hideous things that jumo out from this:
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Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.MORE
FP: Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
What report card would you give the Obama administration in terms of foreign policy right now? Why?
Hanson: An Incomplete that at the present rate will turn into a D/F if he is not careful.
Obama has confused a number of issues: intractable problems like North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Islamic terrorism, etc. both pre- and post-dated George Bush; they present only bad and worse choices, and are predicated on different agendas of authoritarians that hinge on whether the United States can or cannot deter their regional megalomaniac dreams.
In the long-term, Obama's nontraditional heritage and charisma make little difference; on the other hand, serial apologies, "Bush did it", the "reset button" ad nauseam, trumpeting the "I was only (fill in the blank) when that happened" etc. have a brief shelf life, and achieve only a transitory buzz, similar to a Bono-celebrity tour.
He needs to cut out the messianic style, and realize that millions of brave souls, who invest at great danger in democracy, freedom, open markets, etc. around the world, count on an American President for moral support and guidance against a bullying Russia, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Chavez's thugs, Castro jailers, et al.
When they see Obama's moral equivalence, they realize they are on their own and must cut their own deals to survive--understanding that multicultural trendiness is now a cynical cover for moral laxity and 'can't we all get along?' appeasement.
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A Molotov cocktail and gunshots targeted the car of Bethlehem's Christian mayor yesterday, as local leaders there quietly fingered Islamists for attempting to intimidate Christians in one of the most important cities for Christianity.MORE
"It's in retaliation for the Passover festivities we held two weeks ago," claimed one Bethlehem Christian leader, speaking to WND on condition of anonymity out of fear for his life.
"We had very loud and public Christian displays," he said. "Now they (Islamists) want to send us a message not to get too comfortable."
Mayor Victor Batarsa's car was hit while it was parked in front of his home in the central shopping area of Bethlehem. Batarsa said he was not home at the time of the attack.
A security source in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization, speaking to WND, blamed Islamists in Bethlehem connected to Fatah's rival, the Hamas terrorist organization.
Christians previously comprised the vast majority of the city, but most fled after PA Leader Yasser Arafat took control of the territory.
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The nonpartisan research group Center for Media and Public Affairs along with California's Chapman University released a study that found the nightly newscasts devoted 27 hours, 44 minutes to Pres. Obama's presidency in his first 50 days. That compares to 7 hours, 42 minutes for Pres. George W. Bush and 15 hours, 2 minutes for Pres. Bill Clinton during the first 50 days of their first terms.That's because Obama is sooooo wonderful ...
Not only has Obama gotten more coverage, but that coverage has been more positive than his predecessors.
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It is a strange situation when Egypt and Jordan feel it necessary to defend Israel against American criticism. But this is the situation in which we find ourselves today.MORE
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Where Do Human Rights Come From?MORE
As I’ve said before on BreakPoint, the Obama administration is planning to revoke the Bush-era “conscience clause” that protects health-care workers from having to perform procedures that violate their conscience—procedures like abortion.
A leading post-modern scholar, Professor Stanley Fish, defended Obama’s stance recently in the New York Times. Fish’s reasoning should disturb anyone who believes that human rights come from a higher source than government.
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The saga of the Miss USA pageant continues to get more and more ridiculous. After organizer Donald Trump inexplicably invited Perez Hilton to judge the beauty contest and the blogger wound up using it as a PR stunt with a politically loaded question, Carrie Prejean has garnered more attention for her runner-up status than the winner got. (Quick: without Googling, can you name her?) Now, after Miss California has become a media darling by speaking her own mind, she reveals that the Miss California pageant organizers wanted her to remember her proper place — by renouncing her religious beliefs and apologizing:MOREMiss California Carrie Prejean, who became the bombshell of the Miss USA pageant by saying gay couples should not be allowed to marry, said Sunday that her state sponsors urged her to apologize afterward but she rejected the advice.[...]
Chávez, a former paratrooper, has now been in office for a decade. As Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports, two hallmarks of the Chávez presidency have been political discrimination and “an open disregard for the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the 1999 constitution — and, specifically, the notion that an independent judiciary is indispensable for protecting fundamental rights.” (Implementing a new constitution in 1999 — to replace the 1961 constitution — represented Chávez’s “first major achievement.”)MORE
Chávez has also “undermined freedom of expression through a variety of measures aimed at reshaping media content and control,” HRW notes. Some of his tactics have been indirect. For example, Arria tells me, the Chávez regime has taken over many private companies that were advertising in opposition newspapers. Other companies have refrained from buying ad space in these same papers, fearing the repercussions.
Besides choking Venezuela’s democratic institutions and crippling its independent media, Chávez has also compiled a record of economic malpractice, which he dubs “Bolivarian socialism.” Venezuela is now dealing with food scarcities and severe double-digit inflation. According to some estimates, the annual inflation rate may reach 40 percent this year. As the Wall Street Journal reported in early March, private food companies in Venezuela “are straining under strict price controls aimed at slowing down high inflation set off by Mr. Chávez’s non-stop spending. The controls have led to shortages of staples like milk and rice.” These food shortages have also been driven by government land seizures. Chávez recently expropriated a rice-processing facility owned by Cargill, the U.S.-based multinational.
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Geert Wilders’ rousing speech at the Florida Free Speech Summit on April 26, 2009, in three parts:h/t: five feet of fury
“From error to error one discovers the entire truth.” Sigmund Freud.MORE
The US Congress is currently discussing the Obama climate change strategy and Cap and Trade. One part of the plan says, “Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.”
The term “greenhouse gas emissions” is either deliberately misleading or indicates complete ignorance of the science, or both. What they really mean is CO2, yet it is less than 4% of greenhouse gases and the human portion a fraction of that. Why do they want it reduced? It is not a pollutant and not causing global warming or climate change. Reducing it is completely unnecessary and harmful for the plants and will cost trillions. They propose energy alternatives that are potentially more dangerous because they don’t work and can replace only a fraction of existing energy sources. This pattern of identifying the wrong agent of change, blaming humans, and proposing inadequate replacements at great cost is not new. We saw very similar events and sequences with claims that Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) was destroying the ozone layer.
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Outright Obama worship, sacreligious and offensive to many Christians, will be on display in New York's Union Square, to mark the breathtaking, world shaking 100th day in office of Barack Obama. Artist Michael D'Antuono worshipfully depicts the President of the United States. The modest title: "The Truth" (Hat tip: PR Newswire)
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As Obama's 100th day approaches, the dangers looming on the economic front are clear: neither on monetary, fiscal nor banking policy is there a tangibly successful programme in place. Meanwhile, the economic pain is getting worse, encouraging his opponents to chip away at his credibility.
The bank bail-out will transfer large amounts of taxpayers' money to the bankers, while at least some of the fiscal stimulus money will be redistributed to the poor and to the welfare system. Middle America, already mad at both policies at the gut level of economic principles, will get even madder if they don't work.