HILLARY vs. RON PAUL

Hillary cannot get over 48% of the vote in a run against Ron Paul according to a poll! The focus was not so much on how strong a candidate Ron Paul is, but the fact that Hillary cannot get over the 48% hump. However, I am not sure this means that she cannot win. A candidate can get 48% of the vote and win by a substantial electoral margin. The Democrats will certainly carry some of the large electoral states like California and New York. If Hillary can take these states, the rust belt, and maybe Florida she can win.

CHURCH TIRED OF POLITICAL ACTIVISIM

A conservative Baptist preacher is released from his church for too much stress on social and political issues.

OBAMA, A NON-PATRIOT

I have been getting hit with a number of emails regarding Obama's treatment of the playing of the national anthem.

INSIDE THE DALLAS HOLY LAND FOUNDATION TRIAL

The jury was "hung," but it looks like there were problems in the jury. What the Dallas Morning News published is not describing the real views of at least one juror.

HUCKABEE

Social conservatism vs. economic liberalism????

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN ROME

Tacitus and political correctness.

LAURA BUSH VISITS SAUDI ARABIA

Amazing.

EVANGELICAL LEADER FOR ROMNEY

I thought Dr. Wayne Grudem presented a carefully thought-out rationale for why is supporting Romney, a Mormon, for president. It will be interesting to see how other leaders on the Christian Right react to his decision.

HILLARY FUNDRAISING

Very strange. . .and from the LA Times. Poor people giving thousands of dollars to her campaign. Looks like some campaign money laundering is going on. . .but I thought Hsu was in jail?

And this is from the Nation, hardly a right-wing screed.

SHORT PEOPLE

People who are short have poorer physical and mental health!

Short men and women apparently complain of poorer mental and physical health than those of an average height.

Researchers examined more than 14,000 responses to the 2003 Health Survey for England.

HITLER'S LEGACY

Very interesting (and controversial) lecture by a German scholar on Hitler's impact on contemporary Middle Eastern thinking with regard to Jews.

Today I will be laying special emphasis on the antisemitism of the ancestor of all forms of Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because it seems to me that this organization has a particularly strong presence in Britain. Because – as far as I can tell - only in Britain has it succeeded in forging an alliance with certain sections of the left – the Socialist Workers Party and Ken Livingstone spring to mind here. This alliance might also partly explain why one hears proposals being voiced in Britain that leave us in Germany, mindful of what happened in 1933, simply stunned. I am referring here to proposals for a boycott of Israel and I appreciate the British government’s response to the “Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism” which states that “such selective boycotts … are anti-Jewish in practice” and are “an assult on academic freedom and intellectual exchange.”

Islamic antisemitism is a taboo subject even in some parts of academia: a story of intellectual betrayal and the corrupting influence of political commitment. Professor Pieter von der Horst from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands found this out when he proposed to give a lecture on the topic of the anti-Jewish blood libel. The head of the university asked him to excise the section of his lecture dealing with Islamic antisemitism. When he refused to do so, he was invited to appear before a panel of four professors who insisted he remove these passages. A lecture on Islamic antisemitism, so the argument went, might lead to violent reactions from well-organized Muslim student groups.

CHE!

The Economist had a good article on Che Guevara, who has become somewhat of an icon for the radical left.

The wider the cult spreads, the further it strays from the man. Rather than a Christian romantic, Guevara was a ruthless and dogmatic Marxist, who stood not for liberation but for a new tyranny. In the Sierra Maestra, he shot those suspected of treachery; in victory, Mr Castro placed him in charge of the firing squads that executed “counter-revolutionaries”; as minister of industries, Guevara advocated expropriation down to the last farm and shop. His exhortation to guerrilla warfare, irrespective of political circumstance, lured thousands of idealistic Latin Americans to their deaths, helped to create brutal dictatorships and delayed the achievement of democracy.

HILLARY ADVISER MARK PENN

Dick Morris analyzes Hillary's chief adviser's lobbying background.

“Running a presidential campaign is good for business.” Mark Penn, Hillary’s chief campaign strategist and CEO of mega public relations/lobbying firm Burson Marsteller, wrote those telling words in an internal corporate blog.

Penn has good reason to believe it. His business is booming from hefty fees it's collecting from a "Who's Who" of corporate, foreign governments and special interests — many of whom oppose Hillary Clinton and many Democrats on key policy issues.

Given the breadth of his company’s special interest clients, Penn appears to be collecting from parties that are lining up early to influence the next administration, betting, as they are, that Hillary Clinton will be our next president.

DEMOCRAT FATCATS

It is hard to believe the amount of money raised by Democrat candidates compared to the years before the 2004 election. Who is giving all this money??? It is also hard to believe the Democrats are representing the "little" people.

BUSH INTELLIGENCE FAILURE

A disturbing account of how someone prematurely leaked an al-Qaeda video and destroyed a valuable intelligence source. Also see this news item.

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

ANOTHER US INTELLIGENCE FAILURE?

Condi Rice supposedly delayed a recent Israeli attack on Syrian nuclear installations, because the Bush administration wanted more proof. The Israelis came back with more proof and Washington gave the go-ahead to attack. What caught my eye was the following comment:

The official defined the information as "jaw dropping," and said it raised serious questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not uncovered the facility.

If true, this is not encouraging news about US intelligence and reinforces the image, especially since 9/11 that the CIA has no idea what is happening in the Middle East.

GLOBAL WARMING: THE MIDDLE GROUND?

I sort of like this fellow. I am not sure he qualifies as an expert or not, but he seems to deal with global warming in a less hysterical way than Al Gore.

Curiously, something that's rarely mentioned is that temperatures in Greenland were higher in 1941 than they are today. Or that melt rates around Ilulissat were faster in the early part of the past century, according to a new study. And while the delegations first fly into Kangerlussuaq, about 100 miles to the south, they all change planes to go straight to Ilulissat -- perhaps because the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing.

I point this out not to challenge the reality of global warming or the fact that it's caused in large part by humans, but because the discussion about climate change has turned into a nasty dustup, with one side arguing that we're headed for catastrophe and the other maintaining that it's all a hoax. I say that neither is right. It's wrong to deny the obvious: The Earth is warming, and we're causing it. But that's not the whole story, and predictions of impending disaster just don't stack up.

CANDIDATE CALCULATOR

Answer a number of questions and see which presidential candidate or candidates you identify with -- I was surprised. I am not sure I even like him, but I guess I am a Romneyite. Bill Richardson was my top Democrat pick -- no surprise.

SPUTNIK IN SONG

I happened to hear part of an NPR report on "Sputnik in Space and Song." You have to listen to the "Sputnik Dance" by the Equadors! Or maybe "Beep, Beep" by Louis Prima!

REPUBLICANS IN DEEP TROUBLE

It should be no surprise, but the Republicans are going to face tough times in 2008. On top of this the Christian Right is considering a third party.