FOXNews.com - World Bank Anticorruption Drive Blunted as China Threatens to Halt Loans

"Making loans to developing countries is central to the bank’s very reason for existence — so the threat to quit borrowing is a blow at its mission, and to the job security of some 26,000 World Bank bureaucrats, staffers and consultants around the world."

Pope: Europe Losing Faith in Its Future

"'One must unfortunately note that Europe seems to be going down a road which could lead it to take its leave from history,' the pontiff told bishops in Rome for ceremonies to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, a major step toward the creation of today's European Union."

Pajamas Media: The Gospel of John & Yoko: The Origins of Mad Morality

"If you believe the Gospel of John and Yoko represents a higher morality, you will naturally begin to resent such obstacles in the way of “progress” as reason, the rule of law, common sense, the need to be a master of your own life, and the responsibility for your own well-being. And since the United States of America was built on such values and remains their most dedicated proponent, any honest and consistent “progressive” is bound to develop a seething hatred towards this country.

In the “progressive” book of virtues, American values are the quintessence of evil. So if you are a “progressive” and you aren’t mad at this country, that just means you’re neither honest nor consistent. But then again, because living by this dead-end moral code is logically impossible, one has to resort to hypocrisy and seek compromises, forever balancing on the edge of madness."

indirectly, from the web site linked below. A good one.

The People's Cube - Correct Opinions for Progressive Liberals - Political Humor & Satire

Tom DeLay.com - Home - A Clog in the Democrat's 'Swamp Drain'

"the spirit of this earmark rule is about openness. It is about allowing the public the ability to scrutinize the use of their tax dollars during the lawmaking process. A constituent has every right to know where their money is going and which members are spending it. Yet, the Democrats have decided that the public is better served by Democrat staffers removing all their parties’ earmark request letters and hiding them away in some closet until the 11th hour. So much for transparency – but then again, Democrat rules were made to be broken."

In Washinton, It's Always the Year of the Rat

"To the contrary, the problems at Walter Reed are further proof of the Democrats' failed domestic policies -- to wit, the civil service rules that prevent government employees from ever being fired. (A policy that also may account for Robert Byrd's longevity as a U.S. senator.)

Thanks to the Democrats, government employees have the world's most complicated set of job protection rules outside of the old East Germany. Oddly enough, this has not led to a dynamic workforce in the nation's capital."

American Thinker: I Call for Justice

"Sordid the episode is, but not because of anything Libby did. And "a troubling picture" of Washington it is-but not of this Administration. The Bush crowd is guilty only of terminal naiveté and the foolish idea that high standards of probity will ever beat the opposition's utter unscrupulousness and willingness to misuse the legal system to their own partisan ends, even if it means the ruination of an innocent and capable man and enormous hardship to his family."

Good luck in calling for justice from the mainstream media. After all they are "unbiased" right? That word seems to have a different meaning in their lexicon though. Even mentioning that there might be another angle to a story seems to qualify.

I even found nuggets of truth in the Washington Post, but I had to look real hard:

washingtonpost.com

"Fitzgerald was overzealous," Zelnick says, and "the effect is serious and adverse. It's going to take a long time for reporters and their sources to figure out how to deal with each other in a way that doesn't risk contempt citations and imprisonment."

and...

blog.washingtonpost.com

"The reality that Armitage was the original leaker doesn't change the fact that Libby subsequently dined and whined with reporters to push the bosses' agenda. But Armitage is not a Cheney guy, and his revealed role does question the presumption of White House conspiracy and Cheney guilt.

The truth is that everyone at the top gossips. I hate to say leak for that suggests a piece of information of greater importance. Gossip fuels Washington, and the relationship between the top reporters and the top officials shape the news and fuels the ship of state.

Saying everyone gossips also isn't meant to excuse Libby or the government cesspool: My attitude is always that it is a great day for America when a government official is led away in handcuffs. These people are not above the law.

But they are above it all. "

An editorial gets it right. How did THIS slip through:

washingtonpost.com

"Mr. Libby's conviction should send a message to this and future administrations about the dangers of attempting to block official investigations.

The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance."

But then, when you think about previous administrations, this is small potatoes. We can't be sure what goes on in other people's minds, only what they actually do. This man will go to jail for what hist intentions MIGHT have been, while others will get book deals and speaking engagements even though we KNOW they did wrong. How is this a good thing again? Because it will warn future administrations not to get caught?

From the same editorial:

"Mr. Wilson's case has besmirched nearly everyone it touched. The former ambassador will be remembered as a blowhard. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were overbearing in their zeal to rebut Mr. Wilson and careless in their handling of classified information. Mr. Libby's subsequent false statements were reprehensible. And Mr. Fitzgerald has shown again why handing a Washington political case to a federal special prosecutor is a prescription for excess.

Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq."

Much less difficult to get this other angle from bloggers:

powerlineblog.com

"The whole Libby affair remains something of a mystery. President Bush ordered all executive branch personnel to cooperate with the Fitzgerald investigation. Other people, apparently including Dick Cheney, told investigators that they had discussed Wilson and Plame with Libby. It's hard to understand why Libby's testimony was so out of step with that of the other Executive Branch witnesses. At the end of the day, imperfect memory seemed as good an explanation as any. But the jury didn't see it that way."

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Speaks

First Justice Thomas refers to media inaccuracies caused by forcing all news into a false model of their own making, and then as if to demonstrate, the next question is:

Father Brooks made a point of trying to recruit a lot more African Americans to campus in the months before you came. Do you think that recruitment drive helped you?

Oh no. I was going to go home to Savannah when a nun suggested Holy Cross. That's how I wound up there. Your industry has suggested that we were all recruited. That's a lie. Really, it's a lie. I don't mean a mistake. It's a lie.

I had always been an honors student. I was the only black kid in my high school in Savannah and one of two or three blacks in my class during my first year of college in the seminary. I just transferred. I had always had really high grades so that was never a problem. It was the only school I applied to. It was totally fortuitous.…The thing that has astounded me over the years is that there has been such an effort to roll that class into people's notion of affirmative action. It was never really looked at. It was just painted over. Things were much more nuanced than that….You hear this junk. It's just not consistent with what really happened.

Touchy, Ain't She? by Jed Babbin - HUMAN EVENTS

"In a display of courage equal to proclaiming undying support for Mother's Day, the Virginia legislature has voted to apologize for the state’s role in slavery. According to one report, “This session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20 years hence I suspect one of those things will be the fact that we came together and passed this resolution,' said Delegate A. Donald McEachin, a Democrat who sponsored the bill. No, Mr. McEachin. This session of the Virginia legislature will be remembered in the same way that the 109th Congress will be remembered: for doing what is expedient instead of what is necessary."

Hillary Clinton's hidden thesis - Hillary Clinton News - MSNBC.com

"Hillary Rodham (who wasn't the valedictorian of the Wellesley class of '69, no matter what Wikipedia has said since July 9, 2005) was indeed an honors student and received an A on the thesis after her oral defense of it that May, recalls professor Schechter, who was one of the three graders."

One good thing about Hillary, she actually finished college, she actually made good grades, she actually took challenging classes. The left won't have to make things up or leave things out as they did (and still do) with Al Gore. But how will her young conservatism play? Will is be an asset or a liability?

'In her paper, she accepted Alinsky's view that the problem of the poor isn't so much a lack of money as a lack of power, as well as his view of federal anti-poverty programs as ineffective. (To Alinsky, the War on Poverty was a “prize piece of political pornography,” even though some of its funds flowed through his organizations.) “A cycle of dependency has been created,” she wrote, “which ensnares its victims into resignation and apathy.” '

One has to ask then: What happened to HRC's common sense view of the world?

Left and Right wing partisans should take to heart this notion from the comments section:

"You can't have both, either what they did in the past influences who they are now or it doesn't. You can't insult Bush for actions at 21, and then say what Hillary did at 21 doesn't matter because she was young. They're both accountable or neither are accountable."

Greenhouse sceptics to congregate - National - theage.com.au

"'Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States,' Mr Evans says in the publication.

'It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth,' he says.

'The global warming scam has been, arguably, the most extraordinary example of scientific fraud in the postwar period.'"

Group says Gore's home overuses electricity - USATODAY.com

"Utility records show the Gore family paid an average monthly electric bill of about $1,200 last year for its 10,000-square-foot home.

The Gores used about 191,000 kilowatt hours in 2006, according to bills reviewed by The Associated Press spanning the period from Feb. 3, 2006, to Jan. 5. That is far more than the typical Nashville household, which uses about 15,600 kilowatt-hours per year."

Patriot Files, Links to Motivational Materials

From site (linked in title), a variation on the several guys go to a restaurant analogy:

Tax Cuts - As Explained By A Democrat

If you don't understand the Democrats' version of tax cuts (and you are not alone), maybe this will help explain it:

50,000 people go to a baseball game, but the game was rained out. A refund was then due.

The team was about to mail refunds when the Congressional Democrats stopped them and suggested that they send out refund amounts based on the Democrat National Committee's interpretation of fairness.

After all, if the refunds were made based on the price each person paid for the tickets, most of the money would go to the ticket holders of the most expensive tickets. That would be unfair and unconscionable.

People in the $10 seats will get back $15, because they have less money to spend. Call it an "Earned Income Ticket Credit." Persons "earn" it by demonstrating little ambition, few skills and poor work habits, thus keeping them at entry-level wages.

People in the $25 seats will get back $25, because that's only fair.

People in the $50 seats will get back $1, because they already make a lot of money and don't need a refund. After all, if they can afford a $50 ticket, then they must not be paying enough taxes.

People in the $75 luxury seats will have to pay another $50, because they have way too much to spend.

The people driving (or walking) by the stadium who couldn't afford to watch the game will get $10 each, even though they didn't pay anything in, because they need the most help (sometimes known as Affirmative Action!).

Now do you understand?

If not, contact Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator Ted Kennedy or Senator Hillary Clinton for assistance.

Some quite powerful presentations on the War on Terrorism too.

Woodward, Novak Say Libby Wasn't Leak - WSJ.com

Mr. Woodward's testimony provided Libby's attorneys a victory in making that argument. They persuaded a judge to let them play a one-minute excerpt of Mr. Woodward's taped interview with Mr. Armitage. In it, Mr. Woodward asks about a CIA fact-finding mission that Mr. Wilson says helped him debunk prewar intelligence on Iraq.

"Why would they send him?" Mr. Woodward asked.

"Because his wife's a (expletive) analyst at the agency," Mr. Armitage replied.

"It's still weird," Mr. Woodward said.

"It's perfect. That's what she does. She is a WMD analyst," Mr. Armitage said.

(expletive) this whole sham process.

Penn and Teller: Bullsh*t! Recycling

Not new, but new to me. Handy resource for those tired of trying to get this message across to, those certain people in your lives.

(Of course they won't believe it anyway)...



Good news there about recycling aluminum at least.

Will Al Gore Melt?

"But if we are to follow Mr. Gore's suggestions of radically changing our way of life, the costs are not trivial. If we slowly change our greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, the U.N. actually estimates that we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world. However, the U.N. Climate Panel suggests that if we follow Al Gore's path down toward an environmentally obsessed society, it will have big consequences for the world, not least its poor. In the year 2100, Mr. Gore will have left the average person 30% poorer, and thus less able to handle many of the problems we will face, climate change or no climate change."

Mark Steyn : What's so hot about fickle science?

"The question is whether what's happening now is just the natural give and take of the planet, as Erik the Red and my town's early settlers understood it. Or whether it's something so unprecedented that we need to divert vast resources to a transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can do their best to cripple the global economy and deny much of the developing world access to the healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings. To the eco-chondriacs that's a no-brainer."

See below.

Great Series from Canada.com on Global Warming Junk Science

"One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. 'I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school.' As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.

While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the 'science is settled' camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion."

Free the Fitzgerald One! by Ann Coulter - HUMAN EVENTS

"The exact same people who are now demanding prison for Libby for not remembering who told him about Plame are the ones who told us it was perfectly plausible for Bill Clinton to forget that Monica Lewinsky repeatedly performed oral sex on him in the Oval Office. Even if chubby Jewish brunettes aren't your type, be honest: Which of the two events would stand out more in your memory? "

Duke Case: The Larger Tragedy

"Moreover, a virtually identical pattern of self-destructive attitudes and behavior has been found among British lower-class whites, where none of this can be blamed on racism or a legacy of slavery. (See 'Life at the Bottom' by Theodore Dalrymple.)

What the two self-destructive communities on opposite sides of the Atlantic have in common is hearing a steady diet of propaganda blaming all their problems on others, and depicting 'society' as determined to keep them down, regardless of anything they might do to try to lift themselves up."