This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Columbia U; Ahmadinejad’s just an idea guy

    Well, we’ve just watched political correctness jump the shark. Columbia University’s President, this Bollinger guy, through the vocal chords of this Dean John Coatsworth fellow has declared that Columbia would have given a forum to a 1939 Adolph Hitler. But the difference between a 1939 Hitler and a 2007 Ahmadinejad is that the 2007 Ahmadinejad has already been responsible for American deaths – would Columbia University lend a forum to a 1944 Hitler? That is the appropriate comparison.

    Regardless, the little knucklehead from that backwards sandpit will speak, if he doesn’t show up at Columbia, he’ll teleconference to a National Press Club luncheon. Whatever will that accomplish? Who in the National Press Club thinks that anything newsworthy will come out of the opportunity for the Iranian President and former kidnapping terrorist to speak to members of the National Press Club?

    In fact, what will be accomplished, what will be newsworthy or beneficial to any student at Columbia University from listening to the half-pint soccer star wannabe? Even when Columbia University allows a new opinion, a legitimate opinion, a US opinion contrary to what students might hear in their sequestered university surroundings, is presented, they reject it outright because of their tiny closed minds and they won’t allow others to hear the opposing opinion.

    So why would Columbia University allow Ahmadinejad speak? To stick their finger in the eye of the Estabishment. The Man. The Bush Administration. Whyelse? It’s fashionable…New York City, Columbia University fashionable.

    In today’s Washington Times, Robert Stacy McCain writes;

    At Columbia, more than 800 students have joined an online group organizing a protest against the appearance by the Iranian president, who has called for the destruction of Israel.

    University President Lee Bollinger has said the Ahmadinejad invitation is in keeping with “Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.”

    Well, unless it’s the Minute Men or John McCain, of course. The Times’ McCain reminds us of the hypocrisy;

    While Columbia is going ahead with its plans to host Mr. Ahmadinejad, the University of California rescinded its invitation to another prominent figure — former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

    Mr. Summers, who drew worldwide attention for his comments that biological differences may partly explain the dearth of women among the very highest achieving scientists, was supposed to speak about pursuing academic excellence to university chancellors and the UC system’s board of regents at an informal dinner last week. But the invitation angered some faculty at UC’s Davis campus, who circulated a petition opposing Mr. Summers’ visit and collected more than 300 signatures.

    “Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the University community and to the people of California,” the petition reads.

    But Ahmadinejad is strong defender of women’s rights, isn’t he? Well, as long as they wear the clothes he approves and they don’t mind being stoned for their own rape. Seems to me that the NOW gals would have something to say about allowing this goofball to have a forum.

    And what could he possibly say that has value? We already know he has an ignorant world view;

    Ahmadinejad said the American people have been denied “correct information,” and his visit will give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.

    “The United States is a big and important country with a population of 300 million. Due to certain issues, the American people in the past years have been denied correct and clear information about global developments and are eager to hear different opinions,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by IRNA as saying.

    And what “incorrect information” have we been given?

    Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust “a myth,” encouraged the destruction of Israel and supported terrorists in Iraq….

    If I met a guy on the street and he expressed those views, I’d dismiss him as a crackpot and walk away – but we give foreigners a special forum when they express those views;

    Ahmadinejad is using America with his visit as a propaganda tool, Brad Blakeman of Freedom’s Watch told FOX News.

    “He’s using America, he’s using our democracy as a tool against us,” Blakeman said.

    Exactly – and that’s why Columbia is giving him a forum in which to propagate this basura. It’s how northeast liberals assuage their guilt over their own wealth and padded stations in life.

    Northeast liberals like the “Columbia Coalition Against the War” (h/t Hot Air) who honestly fear Ahmadinejad because refusing him a forum might cause a war;

    We fear the demonization of Ahmadinejad, because we think this demonization contributes to the likelihood of war.  In the current climate, with many on the political right in the U.S. and Israel pushing for air strikes, a campaign against Ahmadinejad is dangerous, regardless of the intentions of most involved.  A call to action, unless it prominently rules out war, implies military action.

    A rally where each speaker denounces Ahmadinejad’s reactionary policies and just a few call explicitly for military action will still be perceived, on campus and around the U.S., as pro-war.

    Pro-war? As opposed to “pro-peace at any cost”? I wonder how these “students” (who apparently think they know everything already – not realizing that students are idiots who have much to learn simply by being students in the first place) would feel about Hamid Karzai or Pervez Musharraf speaking at Columbia about the students’ misperceptions about their respective countries.

    I guess they don’t realize Ahmadinejad’s penchant for being a bloody dictator as told by Amil Imani;

    The 7th century barbaric rule of Sharia has caused millions of Iranians to flee their country. Those remaining have been subject to mass slaughtering, thousands upon thousands of fabricated arrests and thousands more torn away from their homes and their families. They have been subjected to tortures, made to confess to crimes they never committed, and then been either exterminated or sent back to medieval Islamic torture chambers where they simply faded away. It is difficult for many people to even talk about these horrible tragedies and genocides, which continue to exist to this date in Iran.

    Similar to the Nazis who possessed a vast and destructive power apparatus, its new rival, the Islamic Republic, is on the same path of destroying the civilized world. Why the world “looks the other way” about the homicidal, genocidal actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a very good question many Iranians would like to have answered.

    Even northeast liberal Michael Bloomberg shows a little bit of common sense;

    Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that the university was free to invite Ahmadinejad to speak, but “personally, I wouldn’t go to listen to him—I don’t care about what he says.”

    A White House spokesman challenged Ahmadinejad to allow the same free speech he emands from us in his own country;

    This is a country where people can come and speak their minds,” [Tony Fratto] said, adding, “It would be wonderful if some of the countries that take advantage of that here allowed it for their own citizens there.”

    It’s not a free speech issue – everyone in this country has the right to say what they want, anywhere they want. What they don’t have guarenteed is an audience. Nearly every blogger has learned that. My condemnation of Columbia University is that they take some third world goat roping murdering terrorist off of the street and present him as if he has something of value to offer the world, knowing in advance that he certainly does not. He has no ideas worth discussing – and we all know that no one at Columbia has the huevos to discuss anything with him beyond, as Robin from Chickenhawk Express said in her comment here earlier this weekend “Boxers or briefs?”

    Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs says “Sue the Bastards” (she means CU) and finds the planet’s tallest dwarf at the Ritz-Carlton and wonders if the 12th Imam has an adjoining suite. Pam Meister says it’s just another reason to withdraw from the UN. Boker Tov, Boulder! says the midget wannabe mullah will be on ’60 Minutes’ tonight, too. Curt at Flopping Aces reports that the hypocrisy is pretty blatant. Gateway Pundit finds Muslims against the little fella’s forum. Little Green Footballs speculates on the type of people who’ll show up seriously interested in what the dwarf has to say. Michele Malkin says he also plans to meet “9-11 families and war critics”. My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’s Beth says they really did invite Hitler to speak – imagine my surprise. Wild Thing at PC Free Zone wraps Ahmadinejad in bacon and claims Reagan would have stopped him from visiting New York. Right Voices has the details on the National Press Club tele-luncheon (Note to NPC members, the deli down stairs is much better than the luncheon fare at NPC – trust me. And in this case, the entertainment will be much better). Rick Moran at the Right Wing Nut House writes “The Devil Went Down to Columbia” Patterico says that maybe using Hitler as an example isn’t the best way to convince Americans that Columbia made a good choice. And I’m sure Hatemonger’s Quarterly would have something to say about Ahmadinejad, except that the “crack young staff” has a government mandate to discuss OJ Simpson.

    Update: LGF reports that Ahmadinejad (I’m so proud that I can spell that without looking it up anymore) is converting DailyKos lesbians.

    By the way, today is my birthday so please give me the gift I crave most – the gift of traffic and comments.

  • A nation of criminals

    The purpose of government is to create an environment in which the citizens can prosper and live in relative security. James Madison explained, in the Federalist Papers that governments exist because “men are not angels”. Governments make rules to protect the many from the few by taking a certain measure of rights from the many – everytime government makes a rule, someone losses rights and choices.

    Until recently, the rules made sense, and were generally accepted by all except the sociopaths who pray on the unsuspecting innocent. But lately, our law makers reach has exceeded the grasp we intended for them to exercise. We can all remember the stories of Prohibition when our grandparents (well, my grandfather, anyway) decided that government had exceeded it’s authority when it banned alcohol and began brewing their own concoctions in their bathtubs until government realized it’s folly and repealed the faulty amendment.

    But it continues on today. More recently, the most liberal Republican President ever, Richard Nixon, forced States to lower their speed limits to 55 miles per hour, ostensibly to lower fuel consumption. Hardly anyone obeyed the new speed limit. When I returned from four years in Germany, I took particular care to drive 55 on the New York State Thruway – with my German-built auto designed for the limit-free Autobahn. I was the slowest driver on the road – 80 year-old ladies were zipping by me in their ancient Buicks. 

    Now , cell phone bans, smoking-free areas and buildings, traffic cameras, even government-sponsored health care programs are reducing our choices and while creating an aura of safety and security, do not. We pay ghastly sums of money in taxes to pay for volumes of new legislation that pours out of our local, State and Federal legislatures at a staggering pace everyday that regulates everything from the width of theater seats (yes, there’s a Federal regulation for that) to the recent proposal in New York State to ban smoking in cars.

    No one obeys these laws, and no one enforces these laws. The laws are written to make us feel good about ourselves and our willingness to do the right thing – even though we have no intention of actually doing the right thing. The law is there, it’s on the books and we approve of it, but we’re not going to restrict ourselves by complying with it.

    Writing laws is a business, now. Government agencies, despite the fact that they each have a huge staff of lawyers and technical writers, hire contractors to write the laws for them. Legislators, with huge staffs, research and receive lobbyists on a given subject, churn out volumes of background and facts, and emotional appeals spend hours debating one side or the other. The end result is always someone losing their rights to a particular degree.

    The actual result is a law that no one will obey because no one will enforce it. Writing laws is a big business – one we can do without. There are laws that restrict nearly everything we do – and it’s turned us into a nation of criminals, to varying degrees.

  • It’s nice to have friends again

    The Washington Times reports that France is preparing to join the US in tougher sanctions against Iran;

    France and the U.S. are in strong agreement on the need for more sanctions against Iran if it does not halt its drive to obtain nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.

    Miss Rice and visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said they would keep pushing the U.N. Security Council to approve a third round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programs, and Mr. Kouchner said this week he also favored new European Union action against Tehran.

    “I think that there is essentially no difference [between the U.S. and France] in the way that we see the situation in Iran and what the international community must do,” Miss Rice said after a working lunch at the State Department with her French counterpart.

    But that’s not all;

    Bloomberg News reported yesterday that Germany may soon follow France’s lead in backing tougher U.N. action if Iran fails to cooperate.

    Ruprecht Polenz, head of the German parliament’s foreign-affairs committee and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told the news service in an interview “it now seems legitimate to consider raising the stakes” for Iran.

    Germany has recently tightened controls on some sensitive military and high-tech exports to Iran.

    So, apparently, President Bush is a visionary and a man ahead of his time – Old Europe is just catching up to him. That must really torque off the Left – well, as soon as they figure out what this week’s events mean. 

    Oh, and the other day, Saudi Arabia joined the UN’s IAEA board;

     Saudi Arabia and other US allies were among 11 countries named to the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors on Thursday.
     
    US allies like Ireland and the Philippines were among the incoming 11 while US adversaries Cuba and Syria were among the outgoing states, part of a regular rotation of board members.

    This could make things easier for the United States on the IAEA board, which rules on Iranian compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), diplomats said.

    So, I guess this why Ahmadinejad wants to make a spectacle of himself in New York next week, to show the world how the US persecutes his barborous ass.

  • Caving, Democrat-style

    The other day when half of the Democrats in the Senate failed to condemn the MoveOn.org ad disparaging General Petraeus, the President condemned those weak-kneed idiots;

    “That leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org — are more afraid of irritating them than they are of irritating the United States military,” [President Bush] said.

    Susan Ferrichio of the Washington Examiner reports the three failures of Democrats to push troop withdrawal that would have been acceptable to MoveOn.org Democrats;

    Senate Democrats, who hold a one-vote majority over Republicans, have little choice but to compromise with the GOP if they ever hope to pass a bill that aims to bring an end to the war.

    The failure of the Levin amendment Friday marked the third time this week that Republicans blocked harder anti-war legislation. On Thursday, the Senate defeated 70-28 an amendment by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., that would have required troops to be sent home by June 2008, at which time funding for the war would be cut off. Earlier in the week, senators narrowly rejected an amendment by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would have lengthened rest times for troops.

    Well, in a rush to prove the President wrong, Senate Democrats tried, and failed to put a bill through requiring that the troops be pulled out of Iraq in 9 months – certain to anger the anti-war crowd who want the troops pulled out yesterday. So, just to pass something, anything about the war, the Democrats are working on a watered down version (Washington Post);

    “We didn’t make it today, but we’re going to keep trying,” Levin said. “The stakes are just simply too high to stop what we’re doing, which is putting pressure on President Bush to change course and on [Iraqi] Prime Minister [Nouri al-]Maliki to change course.”

    From S.A.Miller of the Washington Times;

    [Levin] said he would begin this weekend to court Republican support for a bill setting a goal rather than a deadline to complete a pullout. That tactic was abandoned recently by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, because it risked alienating the party’s antiwar base.

    Even Lamar Alexander can see that it’s been a useless exercise without the Democrats making room at the table for Republicans (Miller/Times);

    Republicans criticized Mr. Reid for staging repeated votes for a pullout knowing the measures would fail.

    This week the Senate already rejected Democratic bills that would have limited troop-deployment schedules and that would have cut off funding for combat in Iraq.

    “Instead of posturing for political gain, it’s time for the Senate’s leaders to sit down with those of us trying to find a consensus,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican.

    And Harry Reid regrets the dead trees (Post);

    “Countless words, reams of paper, and oh-so-much ink have been spent on the Iraq debate here in the Senate,” Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor before the vote, as he urged Republicans to cross over. “This amendment is a reasonable and responsible way forward.”

    But Alexander doesn’t get it either (Miller/Times);

    “The fact is, Senator Reid spent last week talking to many Republicans about ways to force a change in administration policy,” he said. “Unfortunately, in the end Republican senators decided they would rather protect the president than do what is right for the country and the troops, and that is bring them home as quickly as possible.”

    What’s right for the country, Mr. Alexander, you boneheaded old coot, is to bring our troops home when the job is done – the job’ll be done if Congress get muster it’s dusty ass behind the troops instead of trying to convince our enemies that they still can win.

    The Washington Times’ Miller reports that Lindsey Graham found his huevos;

    “To substitute the Congress’ judgment for Gen. [David] Petraeus’ judgment is ill advised,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, referring to the U.S. military commander in Iraq.

    He may have been wrong about stuff before, but he got that one exactly right. If the Democrats want to salvage their reputations, if they want to win in 2008, they’d better figure out where the American people are instead of just listening to their echo chamber crowd. Check the latest Gallup poll (Post);

    GOP Senate offices circulated the results of a Gallup poll released this week that showed 54 percent of those surveyed think Petraeus’s plan for removing troops is the right pace, or even too quick. One-third of those surveyed viewed the withdrawal as moving too slowly.

  • Head jihadist at Columbia U. – finally we’ll hear him speak

    Yesterday I wrote that Ahmadinejad scrapped plans to visit Ground Zero and that now instead, he’ll poison young minds at Columbia University. First, I should warn him that it’s not a target-rich environment – for young minds, that is.

    Watching the evening news, I heard comments from CU students like “I think it’s cool!” I’m sure the young airhead’s parents were excited to hear such an analysis coming from the mouth attached to the brain that they’re spending tens-of-thousands of dollars to fertilize.

    Michele Malkin tells us that there’s a protest planned for the little buckethead at CU. Bill Kristol recommends a boycott.

    But the protesters needn’t worry – apparently the university president has promised that he’ll ask the Iranian president hard-hitting questions and not allow him a free rein of the ideas in the room.

    I’m sure we’ll hear the answer to all of the questions we’ve been wondering – like “Does your beard ever get real itchy?” and “I’ll bet you’re real comfortable not having to wear a tie like we infidels must, aren’t you?”

  • So how’s that appeasement working out for you, Zapatero?

    With a hat tip to Lady Vorzheva, the Spanish Pundit, I see Spain has terrorist problems despite the fact that El Presidente Zapatero won his election by promising to appease al Qaeda and leave Iraq (AP);

    Spanish police and the FBI arrested two Pakistani nationals in a joint operation in Madrid and Barcelona on suspicion of being involved in financing international terrorism, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
     
    The men, identified as Anar Muhammad Shan and Preces Mehmood Sandhu, were also held on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization, a ministry statement said.

    But, according to the AP story, this isn’t the first time;

    Eleven Pakistanis were acquitted in May of plotting to blow up buildings in Barcelona, although five were found guilty of lesser charges.

    The 11 were arrested in September 2004 and prosecutors maintained the defendants had been planning to attack high-rise buildings and a shopping center in Barcelona. The National Court acquitted them for lack of evidence, but convicted three of sending sent money to Muslim extremists and two of forging documents.

    Lady V asks;

    Zapatero says that “the menacing message from Al-Qaeda is not new“. Yeah, that’s true. But you assured every Spanish citizen that Al-Qaeda was interested in attacking Spain because we were in Iraq. Now we aren’t. So what are we going to do now? What and who are we going to cave in this time….

    She also quotes from an anonomous Frenchman in le Figaro;

    Till now, the menaces were adressed mainly to the Americans. How can we explain that Al-Qaida targets now the Franch and Spanish in the Maghreb?

    How indeed?

    The arrests in Spain seem to have been coordinated with the US, according to this AP article in the Washington Times that announced there were 39 arrests worldwide;

    Raids were conducted yesterday in Maryland, the District, New Jersey and Spain, authorities said.

    Thirty-two of the 39 indicted had been arrested as of yesterday afternoon, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The U.S. District Court clerk’s office said it did not have records of lawyers being assigned to the defendants.

    Maybe Spain should take a lesson from Pakistan;

    Osama bin Laden on Thursday called on Pakistanis to wage holy war on their President, saying in a new recording that it was their religious duty to overthrow General Pervez Musharraf for his alliance with the US against Islamic militants.

    But Pakistan dismissed the same, taking a vow instead to cleanse its soil of extremists and terrorists like the al-Qaeda.

    “If someone is hurling threats at us, that is their view. The whole nation is behind us and the Pakistan army is a national institution,” Pakistan military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said.

    ”We are already committed to fighting extremists and terrorists — there is no change in our policy,” he added.

    They’re coming anyway, ya might as well go down fighting. Emiliano Zapata said “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees”.

  • This is news; it’s hard to sell a house in a warzone

    I guess it’s hard to find bad news about the war in Iraq, but that doesn’t stop the hardworking reporters at the Washington Post from finding it. Reporters like Megan Greenwell;

    With hundreds of thousands of Baghdad residents having fled their homes for the relative safety of segregated neighborhoods or foreign countries, a clandestine system of buying and selling property off the books has supplanted more traditional real estate practices. If families being pushed out are lucky, they are able to sell their homes for some small price, as Ismael did. Wait too long, and their houses might be seized at gunpoint.

    Real estate agent Mahir al-Sultani said business has all but dried up — ironic, he admits, considering how many people are moving in and out. Without exception, half a dozen real estate agents said that houses are still being bought and sold, but that licensed agents have been largely cut out of the equation.

    Even APF and has to admit that things are getting better in Iraq;

    “Attacks nationwide have fallen to the lowest level since before the Golden Mosque bombing,” he said, referring to a bombing which destroyed the revered shrine in Samarra and unleashed a relentless wave of reprisals and counter-reprisals across Iraq that has already killed thousands of Iraqis.

    “Car bombs and suicide attacks have dropped to their lowest level in a year,” Odierno said. “Attacks in Baghdad have reached the lowest level this year and the trend continues to be down.”

    Civilian casualties had dropped from a high of about 32 per day to 12 per day, the US commander said.

    “Al-Qaeda in Iraq is increasingly being pushed out of Baghdad and the surrounding areas,” he said. “We are starting to see a normalisation of life across Iraq and also in Baghdad.”

    But Megan and the Washington Post are having a hard time coming to grips with reality;

    …as the war dragged on and insurgent groups gained power, property values began a free fall that real estate agents say has not yet hit bottom. The wealthy families who had returned to fancy homes in Baghdad left again for the stability of Jordan or Syria, in many cases leaving their houses empty. Lower- and middle-class people, desperate to afford the high cost of emigrating, rushed to sell their homes for any price.

    Maybe Hillary and John Edwards can come up with a way to install price supports in Iraq’s housing market – that’ll keep al Qaeda away and make us safer.

  • Drudge leaves radio

     

    I just got an email from my local radio station (WMAL 630AM) that Matt Drudge will broadcast his last show September 30th. They claim it’s completely his choice to leave radio and focus on the Drudge Report. Since I have a job that isn’t conducive to listening to talk radio, it’s the only show I’ve listened to these last few years.

    I guess there’s nothing left for me to do on Sunday nights except sleep now.