Events

Many think they know the script for this Fall: Petraeus will report on the Surge, and Congress and the MSM will spin it in a negative light calling for redeployment no matter what is said.

That ignores the impact of unforseen events.

For example, a multi-country region-wide war could be in full swing by then, and discussing redeployment would sound rather silly.

For example, Iran suddenly started rationing gasoline unexpectedly, causing widespread riots. What were they up to? Pre-empting the impact of sanctions? I doubt it. More likely diverting fuel to their army for an expected war. Building up a Strategic Reserve.

I had meant to mention this for some time, but for YEARS now Bush has been building up the US Strategic Oil Reserve, in spite of high prices. Just buying and buying, even when some academics were calling for releasing oil from the reserve to squelch the price to help the economy. Wasn't interested.

Kept buying and buying.

And at last January's State of the Union Address, in a point that nobody remarked on buth which I thought extraordinary, Bush also called for further dramatic increases in the size of the Oil Reserve!

Last week, Debka reported the following news about a third, and perhaps a fourth, carrier strike group arriving in the Gulf. The fourth could mean all is in place:

DEBKAfile: A third US carrier, the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise Strike Group is speeding towards the Persian Gulf

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the US naval build-up off the shores of Iran marks rising military tensions in the region, accentuated by last week’s Hamas victory which has endowed Iran with a military foothold on Israel’s southwestern border.

The USS Enterprise CVN 65-Big E Strike Group will join the USS Stennis and the USS Nimitz carriers, building up the largest sea, air, marine concentration the United States has ever deployed opposite Iran. This goes towards making good on the assurances of four carriers US Vice President Dick Cheney offered the Gulf and Middle East nations during his May tour of the region.

The “Big E” leads a strike group consisting of the guided-missile destroyers USS Arleigh Burke DDG 51, USS Stout DDG 55, Forrest Sherman DDG 98 and USS James E. Williams DDG 95, as well as the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg CG 64, the SS Philadelphia SSN 690 nuclear submarine and the USNS Supply T-AOE 6.
...
DEBKAfile’s military sources report Washington is considering deploying the fourth US carrier for the region in the Red Sea opposite Saudi Arabian western coast to secure the three US carriers in the Gulf from the rear as well as the Gulf of Aqaba and Suez Canal.

Carrier battle groups usually also are accompanied by an Expeditionary Unit of Marines.

And of this previous unconfirmed report of Iranian infiltration into Iraq, Debka offers this analysis (though at this point it is customary to mention that Debka's analysis is often wrong):

DEBKAfile reports: Iranian Revolutionary Guards suicide unit’s incursion of S. Iraq is another step in undeclared war

Early this week, Tehran deployed in southern Iraq and southern Iran contingents of Revolutionary Guards Corps of suicide fighters in anticipation of an American attack on Iranian soil.

Those units were posted to fight off a possible US Marines landing in southern Iran. Tehran believes the American force will be assigned with destroying RG bases and infrastructure in the south and sabotaging the oil wells and installations of Iranian province of Khuzestan.

The RG fighters were dropped by helicopter in southern Iraq on June 24 and 25. Their task will be to launch suicide attacks on US and British bases and command posts in the region the moment Iran comes under American attack.

Also in anticipation of a showdown, Tehran announced Tuesday at only two hours notice the rationing of gas for Iran’s private motorists to 100 liters per month. Protesters started torching gas stations Wednesday.

For lack of refining capacity, the oil-rich country imports 40% of its gasoline needs and oil products. Tehran sharply reined in private consumption to free up reserves for the armed forces in case of war and keep power stations and water supplies running in an emergency.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that these two steps in three days attest to the certainty of Iran’s government and military that a military confrontation with the US is around the corner.

We could see Hamas and Hezbollah as well as Syria warring openly with Israel, as well as Hezbollah and Syria and AQ against Lebanon, and Iran and AQ against Iraq, Kurds, and the US, with Turkey even maybe seeing a chance to get involved. Then Sunni regimes such as Egypt and the Bandit Kingdom may help either Iraq vs Iran, and/or "palestinians" vs Israel!

Some keen observers are now seeing the "Surge" as actually a cover story of policing Baghdad for what is now unfolding as a multi-pronged, coordinated corps-level operation in wide-ranging belts far from Baghdad to deny AQ any sanctuaries to run to.

Was it also cover to confront an expected surge by Iranian forces in response to strikes on their nuclear program?

A calm discussion of troop redeployment may be the least-likely scenario for this Fall!

Anything can happen between now and year's end.

Events, my dear boy; events!

The Awkward Truth

Researcher Publicly Leaves IPCC Due to Tainted Science

This is an open letter to the community from Chris Landsea.

Dear colleagues,

After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

With this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process. The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be altered in the future due to manmade global warming.
...
As I had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important, and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.
...
It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.

My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns.
...
I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.

Sincerely, Chris Landsea

Ooo, that's going to leave a mark.

And on a related note,

In a remarkable contribution to Nature magazine's Climate Feedback blog, Trenberth concedes GCMs cannot predict future climate and claims the IPCC is not in the business of climate prediction. This might be news to some people.

Among other things, Trenberth asserts ". . . there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been". Instead, there are only "what if" projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios.

You do remember that the IPCC has been leading the charge with Al Gore on the whole "scientific consensus" on man-made global warming.

Carter also relates that in a paper to be presented at the 27th International Symposium on Forecasting in New York this week, Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green find other discrepancies within the relevant chapter in the IPCC's latest report. They conclude:

"because the forecasting processes . . . overlook scientific evidence on forecasting, the IPCC forecasts of climate change are not scientific."

Ouch!

Go To Bed, Old Man

Tutu calls for better media reporting of religion

LONDON (Reuters) - Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on the media on Wednesday to be more careful in their choice of words when reporting on religious conflict.

In other words, all that tiptoeing around about islamic jihad is still shedding too much light on an uncomfortable subject.

"I would hope that you in the media would be passionate about letting people judge for themselves, that you would be careful about some of the language that you do actually use," he said.

"'Muslim terrorism' - have you ever read anywhere 'Christian terrorism'? - as if Islam propagates violence...

Yeah, as if!

"We Christians ought to get off our high horse and learn to be a great deal more humble, when you look at our history, the bloody things that we did in the name of religion," he said.

Anyone can do anything in the name of anything; who cares? The point should be whether such behavior is actually justified by the ideology.

We know people can be bad. Duh.

In judging belief systems, the real question is does it tend to bring out the best or worst of human tendencies?

Oh, I guess I forgot about all that "strike off the head of the unbeliever until they submit to dhimmi status and agree to pay the jizya" and "rape is the god-sanctioned reward to the jihad warrior" that Jesus personally preached -- never mind, Tutu is right.

Oh, sorry, that wasn't Jesus, that was mo-ham-mud.

Tutu: Go to bed old man!

Crybaby Culture

Read it, for it is good.

Insensitivity Training: Facing the Crybaby Culture

Some of the middle:

Every once in a while, there are collisions between various aggrieved peoples, which make the suffering they must endure all the more terrible. For instance, a few years ago Native Americans in Washington State (members of one of the highest-ranking Approved Victim Groups) decided they wanted to revive the ancient sacred mystical ancestral tradition of going out in a power boat with echo locators and lots of high-tech gear to kill a whale.

This presented the sensitive people in western Washington with an apparently insoluble conundrum: If the local media complained about the murder of our cetacean brethren suckling at the breast of Gaia, they would be imposing their Dead White European Male Cultural Hegemony on the bleeding wounds of suffering Native Americans! The depths of pain that could well up in the Native American community made strong editorial writers and TV pundits blanch with terror. But if the Manufacturers of Culture in Seattle media didn’t complain, they would be letting Free Willy die at the hands of evil predatory Homo sapiens who have been raping Gaia for eons. The high-pitched cry of pain from the Green Community would be audible to our mammalian animal companions for miles. We would once again have failed to act while our Mother Earth was taken one step closer to extinction by the defiling disease that is humanity!

At last, after much deliberation in closed-door sessions, the hierarchy of values was clarified by the arbiters of correct sensitivity: Native Americans trump Euro-Americans, but whales trump all humans. Accordingly, media reports were filled with cries of anguish from the Green Community on behalf of outraged whales, but there was a moratorium on reports about Native Americans outraged over chardonnay-sipping Euro-American TV pundits telling Native Americans how to run their lives. Instead, Euro-American critics of Native American environmental destruction would only be reviled for their cultural imperialism and insensitivity when they were white sports fishermen complaining that Indian gill netters were indiscriminately denuding the rivers of all fish. For as everyone knows, people who hunt and fish for sport are a form of life lower than Neanderthals, murdering Mother Earth for the sheer pleasure of killing. No one cares what they think. Problem solved.

The conclusion, describing the Three Kinds of Idiots:

1. Ask yourself, “Am I an idiot?” There are three basic kinds of idiots: intellectual, emotional, and moral. An intellectual idiot is too stupid to know or find out what a word means. An emotional idiot is too stupid to care what a word means if it stands between him and a good temper tantrum. A moral idiot may be intellectually and emotionally sound, yet still be willing to sacrifice the happiness of others simply to file a lawsuit on behalf of intellectual or emotional idiots who don’t know what, say, “picnic” or “niggardly” mean. If you are any of these kinds of idiot, proceed immediately to step two.

2. Consider the possibility that you just need to get a life. Signs of this need include spending all day in a sweat of irritation because religious people exist, hallucinations that you are being raped by classical music, constant convulsive outrage over words like “history” and “master/slave” or “outing,” and a gasping sense of oppression at the thought of urinals. Wigging out over leprechauns and tomahawk chops is another “get a life” indicator. Still other signs include loss of sleep and anger-management issues over presidential greeting cards, cartoons, ice cream lids, and books with pigs in them. If these symptoms persist, proceed to step three.

We Should Be So Lucky

Is it soup yet?

Iranian forces crossed Iraqi border: report

Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces have been spotted by British troops crossing the border into southern Iraq, The Sun tabloid reported on Tuesday.

Britain's defence ministry would not confirm or deny the report, with a spokesman declining to comment on "intelligence matters".

An unidentified intelligence source told the tabloid: "It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably. In effect, it means we are in a full on war with Iran -- but nobody has officially declared it."

"We have hard proof that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have crossed the border to attack us. It is very hard for us to strike back. All we can do is try to defend ourselves. We are badly on the back foot."

The Sun said that radar sightings of Iranian helicopters crossing into the Iraqi desert were confirmed to it by very senior military sources.

Maybe the fiction of no war with Iran can be maintained if everyone just curls up in a little ball and dies for their new masters.

Or maybe events will finally end this phoney war sitzkrieg.

British SBS

A few weeks ago, we were all cheered to hear Mullah Dadullah was Dead-ullah.

He was the feared Taliban commander, set to lead the dreaded Spring Offensive which has gotten hammered by NATO, with the Canadians and Brits doing fantastic work.

He was the Taliban's most senior military commander and reported to have been one of Mullah Omar's most trusted advisers. Dadullah joined forces with the Taliban at its formation in 1994, but fell out of favor "after he was accused for a bloody genocide in the central Bamyan province."

"Largely known for his brutality on the battlefield, he is labeled a blood-thirsty sadist who enjoys killing and torturing by military analysts," said Dupee. "Hazara residents in the central highlands who endured mass killings and a scorched earth campaign by Dadullah and his men in the late 1990's agree; referring to him as the 'Black Mullah,' a term signifying his dark heart."

Two interesting items, however, came to light a little later that made the story so-much-more satisfying, which didn't get much attention.

The first item was the curious report that Dadullah had been dispatched not by, say, an unexpected bombstrike like Zarqawi, or by a hail of bullet and missile fire like the Hussein boys.

No, he got his 72 raisins from two precise bullet shots to the gut, followed by a third to the back of the head.

That immediately got my attention, for the "double tap to center of mass" followed by a headshot coup-de-grace is the hallmark of the professional warrior, particularly the special forces.

And it meant someone got to rather close range as well, meaning Dadullah knew exactly what was happening, and that his guards had been overwhelmed in a precise well-planned operation.

And the detail about the "back of the head" means nobody bothered to try to take him prisoner -- thanks to the human rights people who would agitate for his release.

Ha ha.

So of course I thought to myself, hmm, who did this?

Was it our Delta Force?

Was it the British SAS?

Surprisingly, it was neither, but I was close!

Turns out, the SAS (Special Air Service) is operating mainly in Iraq.

But in Afghanistan, it's the British SBS (Special Boat Service) -- which I had never heard of. They are the Royal Navy's special forces, and their motto is, appropriately (as will be seen below),

By Strength and Guile.

And it was their operation, jointly with the U.S. Task Force Orange.

And the second interesting thing, is the whole thing was a devious set-up!

Like many others, I had been dismayed when a few months back, a top terrorist was released in Afghanistan in exchange for an Italian hostage. This seemed like a bad precedent.

But the terrorist released was Dadullah's brother -- and he was tracked as bait by the signals experts of Task Force Orange to see if he'd lead to Dadullah.

And he did:

THE one-legged Taliban commander whose death was hailed as a coup for coalition forces in Afghanistan was killed in an attack by British troops rather than Americans and Afghans as previously claimed.

Mullah Dadullah, the bearded warlord who lost his leg fighting the invasion of Soviet “infidels” in the 1980s, was cornered by a squadron from Britain’s Special Boat Service (SBS), after a remarkable surveillance operation mounted against his brother. The SBS has been charged with carrying out special operations in Afghanistan while the SAS concentrates on Iraq.

Until now, the killing had been attributed to a joint American-Afghan force of special operation troops but defence sources revealed last week that the US contribution, although a key to success, was limited to intelligence from a secret unit called Task Force Orange, which was monitoring a satellite phone used by Dadullah.

How the task force came to be tracking the powerful mullah’s movements is a story of military cunning and opportunism. It began with an exchange of prisoners which, at the time, had all the appearance of a humiliating setback for coalition forces.

The release of Daniele Mastro-giacomo, an Italian journalist kidnapped by Taliban militants in March, in exchange for five Taliban fighters – including Mullah Shah Mansoor, Dadullah’s brother – raised eyebrows throughout the region.

It was a doubly controversial deal. First, it did not include Mastrogiacomo’s Afghan translator – and to calm dissent in government ranks President Hamid Karzai was obliged to promise that it was a “one-off”. At the same time, the release of such a high-ranking Taliban leader as Dadullah’s brother appeared to go against coalition policy.

Task Force Orange took advantage of the situation by using sophisticated signals technology to monitor Mansoor’s movements. In this way he was followed back to a Taliban training base in Quetta, Pakistan. [The jihad won't end until Pakistan is dealt with. --ed.]

A satellite phone used by Dadullah’s men then came under surveillance and the signal was followed when the group set off two weeks ago from Quetta to Afghanistan. The convoy led by Dadullah – and believed to include Mansoor – was tracked to Brahmcha in the southern Helmand province close to the border with Pakistan.

On the basis of such intelligence, Task Force Orange would normally have summoned Delta Force, the American special operations group, to launch a strike on the mudwalled compound in which the fighters were hiding. Delta was occupied elsewhere, however, and it fell to crack British troops – SBS’s C squadron – to finish the job.

A reconnaissance team in a Supacat 6x6 all-terrain vehicle moved in to watch the compound and work out how best to attack it. It was decided that an airstrike by itself would not be certain of killing Dadullah so the rest of the squadron, in two Chinook helicopters, was called in.

A four-hour battle ensued, of about 50 SBS commandos against 20 jihadists. Facing lightly armed attackers, defenders in a fortified compound can usually expect to hold out against at least 3:1 odds -- but not against the SBS!

“It was traditional infantry tactics,” said a defence source. “Give fire and run, give fire and run, constantly manoeuvring for the best position.”

Dadullah appeared to have been killed by one of the US-trained Afghan soldiers. The two wounds to his chest and one to the back of his head had all the hallmarks of a classic US special operations shooting – a so-called “double tap” to the chest and a “finisher” shot to the head.

Also among the dead were suspected members of Al-Qaeda, said the sources. The dead were believed to have included Mansoor but this was denied by the Taliban who have named him as their new military leader.
...
Dadullah’s death was a significant triumph for coalition forces. As a senior Taliban commander, he won a reputation for ruthless-ness after ordering the massacre of thousands of Hazaras in the northern Bamiyan region. More recently he had appeared to try to mimic the actions of hardline Iraqi insurgents such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by putting a video of a 12-year-old boy beheading an American spy on the internet. Zarqawi was also tracked down and killed as a result of a Task Force Orange intelligence operation.

Four of the 50 British commandos who took part in the battle were wounded but only one had to be brought back to Britain.

SBS 20, Taliban ZERO.

Scratch One Flattop

At the end of 2003, pundit Rick Brookhiser at an NRO symposium predicted,

Bush's second term will be awful (all have been, except Monroe's).

And it seems he was absolutely correct.

However, let us not overlook the major successes, in spite of the many disappointments.

Remember the Axis of Evil? Iraq, North Korea, and Iran? The great danger was that any of them would become a nuclear power.

If the secret strategic goal of the Bush administration had been to decide that no matter what, for the security of the US and the world, those nuclear ambitions of the Axis would be terminated, we see that they are steadily making progress.

Recall that Saddam Hussein will now definitely never have an atomic bomb.

Recall that we also got Libya's secret atomic program shut down as a bonus.

And now by diplomatic means -- made credible by the use of regime-changing force elsewhere -- another dramatic result is in the works.

It isn't shut down until it's shut down, but:

US, N.Korea set timeline to shut reactor

TOKYO - The top U.S. nuclear negotiator arrived in Japan Saturday to discuss his surprise visit to North Korea, which he said yielded an agreement that could lead to a shutdown of the communist state's plutonium-producing reactor in July.
...
The trip — the first by a high-ranking U.S. official since October 2002 — came amid growing optimism that North Korea may finally be ready to take concrete steps toward fulfilling a promise to dismantle its nuclear programs.

Meanwhile, the North's state media reported that the country held "comprehensive and productive" discussions with Hill.
...
North Korean officials told Hill during his visit that Pyongyang was prepared to shut down the Yongbyon facility as called for in the disarmament agreement reached this past February, under which the North pledged to close the reactor and allow U.N. inspectors in exchange for energy aid.

Pyongyang was to have done that by mid-April, but missed the deadline over a delay in resolving a separate financial dispute involving North Korean funds frozen at a Macau bank.

The bank was blacklisted by the U.S. for allegedly aiding North Korea in money laundering and counterfeiting, leading to the freezing of some $25 million of North Korean money.

The money was freed earlier this year, but it was only last week that it began to be transferred to a North Korean account at a Russian bank.

Imagine that, we essentially forced their hand over a measly $25 million. When it's the little dictator's own money, it get's his attention! It's such an incongruously small sum, really, for the stakes involved, that it's almost funny.

Hand it to those Whispering Bankers...and the Evil Bush Patriot Act!

As I reported nearly four months ago,

Because all the circuits of the global financial system are inter-wired, the U.S. quarantine effectively extends to all major banks around the world. As Levey observed in a recent speech, the impact of this little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act "has been more powerful than many thought possible."

Treasury applied the new tools to North Korea in September 2005, when it put a bank in Macao called Banco Delta Asia on the blacklist. There was no legal proceeding -- just a notice in the Federal Register summarizing the evidence: Banco Delta Asia had been providing illicit financial services to North Korean government agencies and front companies for more than 20 years, according to the Treasury notice. The little Macao bank had helped the North Koreans feed counterfeit $100 bills into circulation, had laundered money from drug deals and had financed cigarette smuggling. North Korea "pays a fee to Banco Delta Asia for financial access to the banking system with little oversight or control," Treasury alleged.

Wham! The international payments window shut almost instantly on Pyongyang's pet bank. Transactions with U.S. entities stopped, but the Treasury announcement also put other countries on notice to beware of Banco Delta Asia. The Macao banking authorities, realizing that they needed the oxygen of the international financial system to survive, took regulatory action on their own and froze the bank's roughly $24 million in North Korean assets. And around Asia, banks began looking for possible links to North Korean front companies -- and shutting them down.

With Iraq and North Korea out of the way, that leaves only Iran, and Iran is being squeezed similarly.

Though the media portrays the Iranians as Supermen, simultaneously bankrolling Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, and Iraqi terrorists with hampered access to the world financial system has got to be difficult.

If the administration really made a long-term strategy decision (I bet Cheney was instrumental) to the effect, Iran has to be next on the "list."

That would leave dealing with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- required to really squelch the global jihad -- for any following administration, but at least the budding not-yet-but-almost-nuclear rogue states would have been neutered!

A fantastic legacy, all things considered, if pulled off.

When the reactor shuts down, for some reason I can only think of the immortal words, Scratch One Flattop!

Admiral Dixon was a lieutenant commander in charge of dive bombers on the carrier Lexington in the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea. He planted one of a dozen bombs that, with seven torpedoes, sank the Japanese carrier Shosho [the first Jap carrier sunk during WW2].

Stanley Johnston, war correspondent for The Chicago Tribune, was aboard the Lexington at the time of the attack on the Japanese ship and reported:

"All the tension on the carrier exploded the moment we heard Comdr. Dixon's voice come in strong and clear: 'Scratch one flattop! Dixon to carrier: Scratch one flattop.' "

And it was the first of many to be scratched.

Scratch one reactor!

Remember, after the Coral Sea, came Midway...

Keep Up Pressure

The "No Amnesty" pressure is working, keep it up!

The vote on cloture has now been delayed until Tuesday, and more Senators are wavering. Facts on the bill's provisions are here (the old number was S 1348, now it is S 1639).

But a few more have to be shown the light. Contact info for your Senator is here or here.

Talking points are here.

I just sent the following e-mails to my CT Senators:

Dear Sen. Lieberman,

I urge you to vote NO for cloture on S 1639, the flawed immigration bill.

While this is clearly a complex problem requiring careful solutions, the current bill is a mistake in that it does not first require border security and a demonstration of effective enforcement before contemplating the status of the illegal population -- this is simply unacceptable to most legal American citizens.

Because in the real world, we know that otherwise enforcement will remain the same old sham it is today. Fix that first, and then we are willing to discuss the terms of legalization, which are already too broad and generous in the current bill.

From the aptly named We Need A Fence,

The foundation of support for reconsideration of the Senate immigration
bill is crumbling. Just in the last two days, three major shifts have
occurred:

1. Senator Mitch McConnell, who had led the Republican effort to bring the bill back for reconsideration, announced that he was not personally committed to supporting it.

2. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who had been expected to support the bill in return for her amendment being added to the list of permitted amendments once the resurrected bill is back on the floor, announced that she would now oppose the bill, even if it includes her amendment.

3. Several unnamed Democrat Senators appear to have begged their leader, Senator Reid, to delay the cloture vote on the “motion to proceed” to consider S 1639, the new number for the Senate immigration bill, because they were feeling the heat from constituents opposing it.

As a result of these three developments, it now appears that the first vote in the reconsideration process will not occur until Tuesday, when just a few days ago it looked like it would occur today, Friday. We don’t think that delaying will work; each day, as the pressure builds, more and more Senators realize that supporting this bill will cost them votes the next time that they run.

THIS IS ALL THE DIRECT RESULT OF GRASSROOTS PRESSURE FROM YOU, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. KEEP IT UP! CALL YOUR SENATORS, AND KEEP CALLING.

Go to We Need A Fence Contact for a list of each Senator’s Washington and State telephone numbers and website links.

The tide is turning in our favor, and you are the reason why. You are awesome!!

And NumbersUSA reports,

We need 41 Senators to vote NO on cloture next Tuesday or to not show up for the vote.

Sen. Johnson (D-S.D.) is still seriously ill and expected to be a no-show.

We believe we have solid commitments from 32 other Senators that they will vote NO on cloture that would allow the Kennedy/Bush amnesty (S. 1639) to come to the Senate floor for debate.

That would give us 33 of the 41 we need.

Congratulations to all of you who have elected Senators solidly in our camp or who have persuaded Senators to move to the anti-amnesty side -- those Senators in this list:

32 DEFINITE 'NO' ON AMNESTY CLOTURE
Many of you will find ways to express tremendous appreciation and to help solidify them so that no offer from the White House or party leadership can turn them at the last moment.

Alexander (R-Tenn.)
Allard (R-Colo.)
Baucus (D-Mont.)
Byrd (D-W.Va.)
Bunning (R-Ky.)
Chambliss (R-Ga.)
Coburn (R-Okla.)
Corker (R-Tenn.)
Cornyn (R-Texas)
Crapo (R-Idaho)
DeMint (R-S.C.)
Dole (R-N.C.)
Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Enzi (R-Wyo.)
Grassley (R-Iowa)
Hutchison (R-Texas)
Inhofe (R-Okla.)
Isakson (R-Ga.)
Landrieu (D-La.)
McCaskill (D-Mo.)
Pryor (D-Ark.)
Roberts (R-Kan.)
Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sessions (R-Ala.)
Shelby (R-Ala.)
Smith (R-Ore.)
Stabenow (D-Mich.)
Sununu (R-N.H.)
Tester (D-Mont.)
Thune (R-S.D.)
Vitter (R-La.)

12 SENATORS LEANING NO ON FINAL PASSAGE BUT PROBABLY LEANING YES ON CLOTURE (when it counts)
Please do everything you can to get to these Senators and help them understand what is at stake and where the citizens of your state stand.

Bond (R-Mo.)
Bingaman (D-N.M.)
Burr (R-N.C.)
Boxer (D-Calif.)
Cochran (R-Miss.)
Conrad (D-N.D.)
Ensign (R-Nev.)
Levin (D-Mich.)
Gregg (R-N.H.)
Nelson (D-Neb.)
Hatch (R-Utah)
Webb (D-Va.)

ALL OTHER SENATORS APPEAR TO BE PLANNING TO VOTE TO HELP PASS A BILL THAT WOULD BE:

largest amnesty for illegal aliens in history
largest increase in foreign labor in history
largest expansion of social welfare programs in history (to handle the 35-40 million -- mostly low-educated, low-skilled -- foreigners who would get Green Cards over the next 20 years alone

All those Senators need your constant phoning, as well. A few could still be brought to the side of American workers, students and communities and vote NO on the amnesty. And the rest need to be shown full wrath to help the others decide to stay on the side of the voters.

To head off accusations of xenophobia, NumbersUSA is careful to explain,

Nothing about this website should be construed as advocating hostile actions or feelings toward immigrant Americans. (Even illegal aliens deserve humane treatment as they are detected, detained and deported.)

Unfortunately, to write about problems of immigration is to risk seeming to attack immigrants themselves. Even worse is the risk of inadvertently encouraging somebody else to show hostility toward the foreign-born as a group.
...

To talk about changing immigration numbers is to say nothing against the individual immigrants in this country. Rather, it is about deciding how many foreign citizens living in their own countries right now should be allowed to immigrate in the future.

None of this is to suggest that no immigrants are scoundrels or contribute to problems of immigration because of their bad personal behavior. It is not unfair, nor does it constitute immigrant bashing, to criticize the behavior of specific immigrants who violate our laws or otherwise behave in a manner unworthy of guests who have been invited into this country.

It IS immigrant bashing, however, to ascribe those bad characteristics to whole groups of people based on their ethnicity or foreign-born status. All of us should be careful of the language we use so as not to inadvertently appear to be making such negative generalizations.

Not only is it ethically wrong to engage in such stereotyping, it is tactically short-sighted. There is much to suggest that most immigrants already among us would support reductions in immigration numbers. The reasons are not surprising. Virtually any reduction designed to help native-born Americans would be even more beneficial to foreign-born Americans. That is why so many immigrants are supporters of NumbersUSA.com.

Perhaps the greatest "immigrant bashers" are those Members of Congress who refuse to look at the abysmal conditions of so many immigrant Americans and who every year insist on adding more than a million more immigrants into their occupations, schools and communities.

Build the fence first!

Keep Gitmo Open

This is just unbelievable, if it is to be believed:

White House near decision to close Gitmo

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move its terror suspects to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.

Senior administration officials said Thursday a consensus is building for a proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where they could face trial.

President Bush's national security and legal advisers had been scheduled to discuss the move at a meeting Friday, the officials said, but after news of it broke, the White House said the meeting would not take place that day and no decision on Guantanamo Bay's status is imminent.

This is madness!

Maybe it's just a trial balloon.

Maybe the "consensus" is in the head of the AP reporter.

But we cannot allow our government to capitulate like this!

Ordinary prisoners of war have always been held indefinitely in detainment camps, with no prospet of release until hostilities end (which has no time limit), and without "charges" filed and without access to lawyers. Why? Because it's not a criminal matter!

And these illegal combatants don't even rise to that status level of ordinary prisoners of war -- historically they could be summarily executed, and ought to be.

And how is keeping them in other prisons going to "solve" anything and end the criticisms, unless they're planning to give up the whole warfighting idea and treat them all as common criminals -- which will result in many if not all of them being freed, most likely, as they weren't Mirandized, where they? Might as well just shut it down and let them all go. Give them green cards!

The basic problem is much of the legal establishment refuses to believe we are fighting a real war. One wonders why the lawyers and judges somehow feel they don't have a stake in the outcome of this war. As post-modern "citizens of the world", perhaps they feel above it all.

But, We the People still ultimately control the government, and my vote counts just as much as any lawyer's does, and there's more of us than them.

So let your political servants know Guantanamo must stay open.

its closure will NOT result in any beam of light from Heaven in which the world suddenly loves us for regaining the "moral high ground", but will instead be treated as an admission of guilt and a sign of weakness and capitulation, upon which more and more demands will be made until we completely surrender and shut down our counterattacks against the jihad.

Send the lawyers to Gitmo if they want to visit the inmates -- and keep them there!

I sent the following e-mail to the President, and a similar one to the Vice President:

Dear Mr. President,

Recent news reports say your administration is "close to a decision to close the Guantanamo prison" for terrorsts.

I strongly oppose such a closing! It will be perceived as a capitulation and will be followed by more demands designed to turn the War on Islamic Terror into an impotent police matter.

The "moral high ground" is an illusion that our enemies will never grant to us no matter how much we surrender to their will in a futile attempt to appease them.

Don't just sit there reading a blog, do something!

You can contact the White House here, or e-mail directly to the President and Vice President.

Sun Power

With China now generating more CO2 than the USA, the whole Human Global Warming/Kyoto boondoggle is crumbling:

China has surpassed the US as the world's largest producer of CO2, the chief "greenhouse gas" said responsible for Global Warming. What will environmentalists say? Barking Moonbat Early Warning System thinks they will say nothing because the real goal of "climate change" activism was to hamstring America.

As a further blow, real scientists are speaking out more and more about the real causes of the recent warming: sun cycles, cosmic rays, and clouds.

The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.

It could hardly be otherwise! Look, I was for many years as a physicist working with the heat absorption coefficients of atmospheric constituents -- such as CO2 -- in the infrared spectrum.

My application was the transmission of high energy laser beams for missile defense.

That is generally the same part of the spectrum, however, as the heat re-radiated from the earth.

And guess what, CO2 is a rather weak contributor to heat absorption in the atmosphere!

Why?

Because most of the heat that exists to be absorbed, is already being absorbed quite handily by that very strong absorber, water vapor!

The amount of heat to be trapped is finite; once it's all absorbed, you can pump out CO2 to whatever level you like and it won't make a bit of extra difference. The planet cannot get arbitrarily hot due to extra greenhouse gases; that requires more energy input. The available heat energy is supplied by the Sun.

And sometimes the Sun is hotter, and sometimes cooler.

Yet, I see news article after news article blithely refer to CO2 as "the major greenhouse gas" or something like that.

That of course is a lie. What they mean is, CO2 is the only heat-absorbing constituent of the atmosphere that humans can appreciably affect.

It doesn't follow, however, that our changing this relatively minor absorber has much impact on overal heat trapping. It is at worst a minor second-order effect. Maybe it changes the moisture content of the air and/or affects clouds, but such models are dubious. And yes, CO2 will have more of an impact where the air is already cold and dry (because water vapor isn't trapping as much heat), which is near the poles -- but the poles are in such a deep freeze, that warming them from, say, -30 degrees to -20 degrees isn't going to make a "meltdown"! If the poles were hovering near the melting point of water, then I'd worry, but they aren't.

Here is a fascinating example of the new scientific consensus that is emerging among the young discipline of atmospheric science, none of which is a surprise to hard-science physicists:

Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.
...
In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

The author is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.

Lots of links to copious data at that above-linked National Post story.

Three Percent

I usually give little weight to polls, as they are easily manipulated and pure democracy (i.e. "mob rule") is a bad system.

And typically preferences break by rather small margins either way.

But this result is just astounding:

The Zogby Interactive poll of 8,300 adults nationwide finds just 3 percent of Americans viewing Congress's handling of the immigration issue in favorable terms, while 9 percent say the same of the president - even as respondents in the survey rated it the second most important issue facing the country, after the war in Iraq.

Three percent!

Since when did 97% of Americans agree on anything political?

This is such an outlier of a result that it must have real significance.

That's just astonishing!

Take note, Congress!

Keep up the pressure, people -- even the special interests only get one vote per person, just like you!

The media's power to shape opinion by making silent majorities feel they are hopelessly outnumbered, out of the mainstream and inevitably headed to defeat, is broken.

No Amnesty

Received the following Action Alert E-Mail from NumbersUSA which opposes the amnesty immigration bill.

Facts about the bill are summarized here.

You can send free faxes to your Senators here.

Or call!

Don't just sit there reading a blog, do something!

This action e-mail summarizes 14 talking points that are critical flaws in the bill for talking with Senator staffers:

ACTION No. 1: Phone both of your Senators again today.

Choose one or two of the flaws to talk about in your call.

You can reach the D.C. office of ALL Senators at:

202-224-3121

Tell them it will not be enough to vote NO on the final passage. If they want credit for opposing amnesty, they have to vote NO on all clotures and other procedural votes that would allow the bill back on the floor in the first place.
...
In prefacing the list, Sen. Sessions indicated that he is “deeply concerned about the numerous loopholes…found in this legislation,” which he sees as “more than technical errors, but rather symptoms of a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that stands no chance of actually fixing our broken immigration system.” Furthermore, Sen. Sessions said, “Many of the loopholes are indicative of a desire not to have the system work.”

Flaw No. 1: Sen. Sessions pointed to perhaps the biggest flaw by noting that the “‘enforcement trigger’ fails to require the U.S. VISIT system – the biometric border check-in/check-out system established by Congress in 1996, but never implemented – to be fully functioning before new worker or amnesty programs begin. Without the system in place, the U.S. has no method of ensuring that workers and their families do not overstay their visas.”

Flaw No. 2: While most Americans tell pollsters they want less immigration, this bill dramatically increases overall immigration. It TRIPLES chain migration through the year 2016 – all the while sanctioning a mass importation of low-skill foreign workers and, by extension, a mass importation of poverty into this country.

Flaw No. 3: Illegal aliens get “legal status before enforcement” begins;

Flaw No. 4: The “triggers” require “no more agents, beds, or fencing than current law” mandates;

Flaw No. 5: The completion of background checks, including checks against criminal and terrorist databases, is “not required for” the granting of amnesty (in this bill, it is referred to as “probationary status”).

Flaw No. 6: Criminals of all kinds – including gang members, some child molesters, and absconders (i.e., “aliens who have already had their day in court and who are now subject to…removal” [covering “more than 636,000 fugitives”) are eligible for the bill’s mass amnesty;

Flaw No. 7: “Illegal aliens with terrorism connections are not barred from getting amnesty. An illegal alien seeking most immigration benefits must merely show ‘good moral character.’”

Flaw No. 8: Illegal aliens granted amnesty or guestworkers imported via the new “Y” “temporary worker” program can claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, which “will cost taxpayers billions in just 10 years”;

Flaw No. 9: “Affidavits from friends” are acceptable as evidence of satisfying requirements for amnesty, thus “invit fraud and more illegal immigration”;

Flaw No. 10: “In-state tuition and other higher education benefits…will be made available to current illegal aliens that are granted [amnesty>, even if the same instate tuition rates are not offered to all U.S. citizens,” a violation of current Federal law, which “mandates that educational institutions give citizens the same postsecondary education benefits they offer to illegal aliens”;

Flaw No. 11: New visas are created for individuals who are prone to overstaying their period of authorized admission – namely, the new “parent” visa, which allows parents of citizens, and the spouses and children of new temporary workers, to visit a worker in the United States. Not only is this term “a misnomer, but also an invitation for high rates of visa overstays” because it “specifically allows the spouse and children of new temporary workers who intend to abandon their residence in a foreign country, to qualify to come to the U.S. to ‘visit.’” To obtain the visa, one must only post a $1,000 bond, “which will be forfeited when, not if, family members of new temporary workers decide to overstay their 30 day visit. Workers should travel to their home countries to visit their families, not the other way around”;

Flaw No. 12: To be granted amnesty, illegal aliens need not pay back income taxes;

Flaw No. 13: Social Security credits for work done while in the United States illegally will be granted to “[a>liens who came to the U.S. on legal visas, but overstayed their visas and have been working in the U.S. for years, as well as illegal aliens who apply for Z visa status but do not qualify”; and

Flaw No. 14: “The criminal fines an illegal alien is required to pay to receive amnesty are less than the bill’s criminal fines for paperwork violations committed by U.S. citizens, and can be paid by installment,” which means that “the fine for illegally entering, using false documents to work, one-tenth the fine for a paperwork violation committed by a government official.”

NumbersUSA has compiled the following helpful list of where various Senators stand:

THESE SENATORS VOTED 'NO' TWO WEEKS AGO BUT NEED A LOT MORE PUSH TO VOTE 'NO' THIS WEEK

Our coalition of advocacy and Senate allies say they are very hopeful to win these Senators over but that they also could easily vote YES at this point.

If we defeat the amnesty this week, it will be because you did a fantastic job in getting nearly all of these to vote NO.

Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-Calif.)
Burr (R-N.C.)
Chambliss (R-Ga.)
Cochran (R-Miss.)
Ensign (R-Nev.)
Gregg (R-N.H.)
Hatch (R-Utah)
Hutchison (R-Texas)
Isakson (R-Ga.)
Smith (R-Oregon)
Sununu (R-N.H.)
Sanders (I-Vt.)
Webb (D-Va.)

Thank these Senators for their NO vote and then read a couple of FLAWS to help them understand why they should keep voting NO.


VOTED 'YES' ON AMNESTY 2 WEEKS AGO BUT CONSIDERED GOOD POSSIBILITIES TO SWITCH TO 'NO' THIS WEEK IF THEIR CONSTITUENTS PROVIDE THEM ENOUGH REASON

Conrad (D-N.D.)
Levin (D-Mich.)
Nelson (D-Neb.)
Stabenow (D-Mich.)


CONSIDERED LONG-SHOTS FOR VOTING 'NO' THIS WEEK EVEN THOUGH THEY VOTED 'NO' ON AMNESTY 2 WEEKS AGO

These folks need a whole lot of help. Please give it to them. Tell them they were right to vote NO two weeks ago and that no amendment that has been proposed for this round will make the bill enough better to deserve a YES vote this week. Thus, they should vote NO on all attempts to even bring this bill to a floor and vote NO on any attempt to try to bring up a package of amendments.

Bennett (R-Utah)
Brownback (R-Kan.) -- didn't vote 2 weeks ago but generally pro-amnesty
Coleman (R-Minn.)
Collins (R-Maine)
Domenici (R-N.M.)
McConnell (R-Ky.)
Murkowski (R-Alaska)
Snowe (R-Maine)
Stevens (R-Alaska)
Warner (R-Va.)


PRO-AMNESTY SENATORS WITH A SLIGHT POSSIBILITY OF BEING SWITCHED

Because of opposition from labor unions to the guest worker provisions, a few of these Democrats might switch if they felt enough heat from their constituents.

You should not give up on these Senators. At the very least, make them feel nervous about casting a YES vote. Several of these are presidential candidates who have to be thinking how this will affect them in the general election.

Bayh (D-Ind.)
Biden (D-Del.)
Brown (D-Ohio)
Casey (D-Pa.)
Clinton (D-N.Y.)
Craig (R-Idaho)
Durbin (D-Ill.)
Dodd (D-Conn.)
Feingold (D-Wis.)
Harkin (D-Iowa)
Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Kohl (D-Wis.)
Kyl (R-Ariz.)
Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Leahy (D-Vt.)
Lincoln (D-Ark.)
Lott (R-Miss.)
Murray (D-Wash.)
Nelson (D-Fla.)
Obama (D-Ill.)
Reed (D-R.I.)
Schumer (D-N.Y.)
Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
Wyden (D-Oregon)


SENATORS WHO APPEAR TO BE 'LOST CAUSES' BUT WHO SHOULD FEEL THE WRATH FOR THEIR ABSOLUTE CALLOUSNESS TOWARD AMERICAN WORKERS AND COMMUNITIES

Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Cantwell (D-Wash.)
Cardin (D-Md.)
Carper (D-Del.)
Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Graham (R-S.C.)
Hagel (R-Neb.)
Kennedy (D-Mass.)
Kerry (D-Mass.)
Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
Lieberman (I-Conn.)
Lugar (R-Ind.)
Martinez (R-Fla.)
McCain (R-Ariz.)
Menendez (D-N.J.)
Mikulski (D-Md.)
Reid (D-Nev.)
Salazar (D-Colo.)
Specter (R-Pa.)
Voinovich (R-Ohio)


THESE SENATORS ARE OUR CHAMPIONS AND DON'T NEED PHONE CALLS RIGHT NOW

Bunning (R-Ky.)
Byrd (D-W.Va.)
Coburn (R-Okla.)
DeMint (R-S.C.)
Dole (R-N.C.)
Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Enzi (R-Wyo.)
Inhofe (R-Okla.)
McCaskill (D-Mo.)
Roberts (R-Kan.)
Sessions (R-Ala.)
Shelby (R-Ala.)
Tester (D-Mont.)
Vitter (R-La.)


PROBABLY VOTING 'NO' BUT MAY NEED SOME EXTRA CALLS FROM YOU

Alexander (R-Tenn.)
Allard (R-Colo.)
Baucus (D-Mont.)
Bond (R-Mo.)
Corker (R-Tenn.)
Cornyn (R-Texas)
Crapo (R-Idaho)
Grassley (R-Iowa)
Landrieu (D-La.)
Pryor (D-Ark.)
Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Thune (R-S.D.)

Don't just sit there reading a blog, do something!

Rally the Republic

One would hardly realize conservative governments have swept to power in former strongholds of leftism around the world, given the media's framing of current events.

Germany, Australia, Canada...and now France, the previous leader of anti-US intellectual opinion.

They're trying to make a big deal about how the conservative victory isn't as big as it might have been, but it's still a decisive majority for Sarkozy:

Sarkozy's UMP party will face little resistance to the rash of measures he plans to introduce within weeks to make France's sluggish economy more competitive and less protective.

But Sunday's legislative runoff suggests that voters in France, long driven by leftist ideals, wanted to send the hard-driving and U.S.-friendly president a message that his powers are not absolute, and to keep their concerns in mind.

That's the fantasy of the writer coming through. The majority is still decisive and still a mandate with about 60% of the seats.

Some have even predicted mass street protests — like those that stymied former President Jacques Chirac's efforts to free up the economy — or an eruption of violence in France's housing projects if Sarkozy goes too far, too fast.

So much for democratic ideals, eh? The will of the majority should yield to the demands of the violent thugs in the streets?

I say, give them a whiff of grape, as another Frenchman once ordered, putting down a Paris mob in 1795.

Despite the UMP's weaker than predicted performance, the result still marked a milestone: It was the first time in nearly three decades that voters returned an outgoing parliamentary majority to power.

Well how about that!

"We don't want to wait any longer to launch the renovation that the French are calling for," he said. "We will reform, we will renovate, we will experiment with new ideas. ... We will get rid of the defeatism that is suffocating the republic."

If France can shake off defeatism, it bodes well for the Continent. We should do the same, by running Sen. Reid and his allies out of town on a rail.

Join Rudy

Rudy's 12-point plan:

Mayor Giuliani will travel the country this summer to detail each of his Twelve Commitments.

The Twelve Commitments:

1. I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists’ War on Us.

2. I will end illegal immigration, secure our borders, and identify every non-citizen in our nation.

3. I will restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful Washington spending.

4. I will cut taxes and reform the tax code.

5. I will impose accountability on Washington.

6. I will lead America towards energy independence.

7. I will give Americans more control over, and access to, healthcare with affordable and portable free-market solutions.

8. I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children.

9. I will reform the legal system and appoint strict constructionist judges.

10. I will ensure that every community in America is prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

11. I will provide access to a quality education to every child in America by giving real school choice to parents.

12. I will expand America’s involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world.

Sure some of those are kind of vague, but that's to be expected. And some of those things aren't really within the President's power, other than to provide moral support.

I particularly like, however, the new phrase, "Terrorist's War on Us", which clearly shows an understanding that we can't just run away from it by withdrawal.

But Presidents do appoint judges, and if he's putting in strict constructionists, that's all I need to know!

Join Rudy!

Divest Now!

Lefties and celebrities were all into "divesting" from South Africa.

What about divesting from Iran, which is the spider at the center of the worldwide web of islamic terror?

You'd think they were some kind of superpower the way everyone trembles at the very thought of opposing them. But they're hurting.

And more hurt is on the way:

Over the past year, one state, Missouri, has opted to do just that, while several others, including New Jersey, have also begun to write or to consider legislation to divest.

But the nascent movement took on decidedly more weight last week with the preliminary success of a bill in the California Legislature. The measure would force two of the nation’s largest pension funds — devoted to the state’s public employees and its teachers, with combined holdings of nearly $400 billion — to remove their money from any foreign company doing business in Iran. American companies are already barred from such dealings.

California pension funds are the 800-pound gorillas of the institutional investment world. As they go, so will the rest of the herd. Everyone wants CalPERS business and thus will make their funds Iran-free to be compliant.

Also,

Gov. Charlie Crist said from Israel today that he will send letters to the nation's 49 other governors and urge them to follow Florida's lead and divest their holdings in companies that do business in Iran and Sudan. When Crist returns from Israel next week, he plans to sign a bill passed during the 2007 session that requires Florida to divest its holdings.

"Florida will not stand idly by and allow businesses that operate in Iran and the Sudan to foster terror,'' Crist wrote in his letter. (Full text is available in comments section.)

Crist also said he will discuss the divestiture issue with his fellow governors during a July meeting of the National Governors Association that will be held in Michigan.

And more:

Terror-free investing is an idea whose time has come. Already last summer, the Securities and Exchange Commission wrote officially to Ford Motor Company, warning them that they had failed to mention business operations in Iran, Sudan and Syria by their subsidiary, Mazda.

The SEC letter asked Ford to address “qualitative factors that a reasonable investor would deem important in making an investment decision, and the potential impact of corporate activities [in Iran and other terrorist states] upon a corporation’s reputation and share value.”

The SEC pointed out that “Arizona and Louisiana have adopted legislation requiring their state retirement systems to prepare reports regarding state pension fund assets invested in,…companies that conduct business with countries identified as state sponsors of terrorism.” Pennsylvania had followed suit, while Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, and Oregon had all adopted similar measures regarding Sudan.

In Ohio, state legislators Rep. Josh Mandel, a 29-year old Marine sergeant who served in Iraq with DePhillips, and his co-sponsor Rep. Shannon Jones, deserve special praise for introducing this legislation and braving the irresponsibility lobby.

Contact your State Government NOW, and demand divestment from Iran.

Divest Now!

Era of Justice

Hamas has seized control of Gaza, apparently implementing the Will of the People -- remember this is the government the Palestinians democratically elected if any shred of sympathy should try to develop:

A witness, who identified himself only as Amjad, said men were killed as their wives and children watched.

“They are executing them one by one,” said Amjad, who lives in a building that overlooks the Preventive Security complex. “They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting,” he said by telephone.

The killers ignored appeals from residents to spare the men’s lives, said Amjad, who declined to give his full name, fearing reprisal. ...

“We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return,” Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas’ militia, told Hamas radio. “The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived.”

Have fun!

Now, Iran will be able to launch a two-front war against Israel, using its proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hizb'allah (Party of God!) in Lebanon, both of which are openly dedicated to Israel's destruction and armed with thousands of rockets to indiscriminately attempt to murder Jewish women and children.

As chaos grows in Gaza, it's a toss-up as to who moves first: will Egypt invade to push the savages into Israel and/or the sea, or will Israel invade to push the savages into Egypt and/or the sea? Or will Hizb'allah take UN observers hostage and start a Northern attack first, drawing in Syria?

Meanwhile at LGF, some amusing comments:

mich-again 6/14/2007 8:13:44 pm PDT

The Islamic Republic of Gaza. Like, whats the plan Stan?. A Nation with no job, and no welfare check that relies on their enemy for water and electricity and well pretty much everything else too. Its a prison riot and the prisoners won. I guess. But c'mon there is no good end here for Hamas. They are the dog that finally caught the car. What next dummy? You got nothing. You just found yourself in checkmate.

All they will eventually be able to do is use Fatah remnants for hostages and trade them for food. You know, Allah willing and all.

WrathofG-d 6/14/2007 8:21:38 pm PDT

135 Krager:
Finally a point in my life where I would actually encourage the ISM to go to "Palestine" and be human shields for the protection of the "palestinian" people against those wishing to do them harm.

Funny how the ISM, HRW, AI, etc., aren't out in Gaza this week (or Lebanon for that matter) acting as "men on the street", or human shields, or confronting the violent forces...

slotgun 6/14/2007 8:21:43 pm PDT

Time to change the theme of this thread to . . . POETRY SLAM! Here's a quickie for starters:

I didn’t think I’d ever pine
For violence in Palestine
The way this day I truly do,
-- and not a single murdered Jew!

Hamas is knockin’ at the door,
Abbas’s knees? Even more.
Keffiyah-clad, the bodies pile
A half-click high, perhaps a mile.

So gratifying is the sight
Of tracers in the Gaza night,
Gosh, I think, if only we
Could give these loons their own country!

Northpaw 6/14/2007 8:24:14 pm PDT

Interestingly, Iran has declared 3000 spinning centrifuges as "rotating minarets" in the Holy Mosque of the Heavy Atomic Nuclei.

The Apocalypse is coming.

Perhaps as early as this summer.

Following Orders

Two news items seen on the same webpage, providing an interesting juxtaposition:

First,

radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for three days of mourning to mark the destruction of the minarets, according to a statement.

"...the only enemy of Iraq is the occupation and therefore everyone must demand its departure or a timetable of its occupation."

Thus Mookie speaks, and his loyal minions quickly respond:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Democrats will once again try to impose timetables for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday.

Democrats: representing the will of the enemy.

Whose side are they on?

Discrediting Communism

It is clear that to make any progress in saving our civilization, the left-wing commie sympathizers have to be thoroughly discredited and expunged from our institutions such as universities and the media-entertainment complex.

Admirers of Marx must be shamed into repudiating that doctrine.

They must recognize the 100 million corpses sacrificed to their futile utopian vision.

I am amazed today to see a permanent public memorializing of this slaughter being made! This is wonderful news!

Memorial to communism's victims to be unveiled in US

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A statue modeled on the "Goddess of Democracy" paraded during the bloody Tiananmen Square protests 18 years ago will be unveiled here Tuesday as a memorial to victims of communism worldwide.

The memorial, located near the Capitol Hill site of the US Congress, will pay homage to the "more than 100 million people" who have died under communism since Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
...
Bush is due to speak at the dedication of the memorial, which evokes the papier-mache statue raised by pro-democracy demonstrators on Beijing's Tiananmen Square before they were brutally silenced by Chinese troops in 1989.

Accusing the West of having a "moral blind spot" to communism, backers of the Washington memorial said: "We cannot allow the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro to fade into the background of history."

The non-profit Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was created by an act of Congress in 1993 with the aim of emulating memorials to victims of Nazi totalitarian rule.

"While the horrors of Nazism are well known, who knows that the Soviet Union murdered 20 million people? Who knows that China's dictators have slaughtered an estimated 60 million?" the foundation says.

"Who knows that the communist holocaust has exacted a death toll surpassing that of all of the wars of the 20th century combined?"
...
Ukraine's government hopes that by the 75th anniversary of the 1932-33 famine in 2007-2008, the United Nations will recognize the disaster as a "genocide" against the Ukrainian nation. [the New York Times still proudly displays its Pulitzer for deliberately fraudulent reporting at the time about how marvelous things were under Stalin as millions were starved to death for the sake of forced "collectivization." --ed.]

Mao Zedong "murdered tens of millions of Chinese peasants during his 'land reforms'" while Ho Chi Minh "sent 850,000 Vietnamese to their graves in 'education camps'," the foundation said.

"And yet the United States, communism's greatest challenger and a symbol of freedom to the world, has no memorial to commemorate these victims," it said.

"This memorial will assure that they are, instead, remembered forever and that the history of communist tyranny will be taught to future generations."
...
Conservative commentators say that history is not buried for those still living under communist rule.

"To even contemplate inscribing the names of the victims on a wall or a pillar is incomprehensible," Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote in an opinion piece last week.

"How much room should be left on such a monument for the future generations of victims in Cuba, North Korea and China, where communism still exists, or in Russia, where it has not completely been eradicated?"

Wow, this sure came in under the radar!

News is getting out!

People are waking up, even if Congress remains clueless. Where the People lead, our government must eventually follow.

Combined with CAIR being officially branded an "unindicted co-conspirator" in terror support by the Feds and revelations of its 90%+ evaporation of membership since 9/11, it's been a one-two punch this week against the commies and their fellow-traveler islamists!

Democrat Plan

Lieberman, one of the few sane voices in the Senate, said this recently:

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said over the weekend the United States should be prepared to use military force to stop Iran from training and equipping Iraqi militants blamed for the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Demcratic Senate leader Reid countered with this brilliant analysis:

Reid says U.S. strike on Iran would be destabilizing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected on Monday another prominent senator's call for a military strike against Iran, saying a U.S. attack would destabilize the Middle East.

Right.

Because Iran working feverishly to support terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan contributes so much to stability.

And because Iran becoming a nuclear power would make the Middle East so much safer and more stable.

Reid puts Iranian interests ahead of America's.

And they say Bush is the chimp...

Marriage Debate

Great comments at Belmont Club about gay marriage. One poster said very eloquently, in response to a staunch proponent of the idea for notions of "fairness",

what gives the state the right to define and delimit marriage is that the state is an organ of the society which it represents, defends and promotes. It is not some uber entity with powers and duties unconnected to the people of a particular place and time. The agents of the state can be few or many, but the nature of man (understood here in the universal sense) demands leadership and specialization.

Whereas it is true that marriage has had and continues to be lived out in many different ways, yet three things at least persist: it is the union between male and female, it is the font from which new generations spring and are acculturated into society, and it is hedged about with rules as to who may marry whom, under what circumstances, when and how. Along with strong positive rules, it is also in like manner walled about with taboos.

Your easy dismissal of the past as mere *history* which can be dismissed in this enlightened age is pathetically naive. It partakes of the quintessential leftist notion that man is a construct molded by forces of which we were ignorant in former ages but which we now, in our wisdom, can understand, grasp and force to our wills, with no adverse consequences. I say naive because the events of the last century have certainly shown us the terrible effects of man seizing his destiny in his own hands and hammering his fellow man into the image of a new humanity by dint of fire, blood and a pure, transcendent and catastrophic ideology. Human nature will not be expunged by fiat. Not to say that human nature is immutable, but it is intrinsically conservative, containing within itself an inchoate wisdom distilled from the struggle of survival. The homosexual marriage movement is another in a series of moves which tend to erode and attenuate Western civilization. In thoughtlessly meddling with primordial anthropological mechanisms these anti-social fads destabilize the carefully balanced inner workings of civilization, and will inevitably produce the same kinds of cultural disasters with which recent history is littered.

That is why it is in society's best interest to strengthen rather than weaken marriage. Extending cultural approbation to homosexual marriage will have exactly that effect, a weakened marriage. And it will not stop there. Others in this discussion have pointed out that soon it will extend to multiple partners. Soon after that (you watch!) it will include non-humans. At that point it will have lost all meaning. Everything will have lost all meaning, for the very things that define us as persons, societies, civilizations, will have lost all meaning. We will have ceased to be human, devolved beyond all recognition into a masa damnata infesting the earth.

Though I left two long comments myself, I couldn't have said it better!

My original arguments are here, and recent slippery-slope events of great relevance are here.

Can of Worms

Saw an interesting "true medical mystery" show on TLC the other night. It was about an actual case that CDC doctors had to unravel.

Seems that somewhere in the Southwest, in a community of affluent orthodox Jews, a teenager had developed weird seizures.

Baffled, eventually a brainscan was performed.

Revealing, to everyone's surprise, a mass of parisitic worms in his brain!

Luckily it was treatable.

But the worms were unusual.

They were pork parasites, and inspections had largely eliminated them from American pork.

And, these orthodox Jews weren't supposed to eat pork!

Did the teen "cheat" on his religious duties?

That was sort of the working assumption.

Then two more members of the community were found with the same worms!

Was someone targetting Jews for infection?

No.

What a mystery!

Then, the CDC investigator had a revelation: most of these families had "immigrant" housekeepers!

"Immigrants" mostly from Mexico and "other third world countries."

That their status might be illegal was hinted at by the show, but not stated.

Doing blood tests for worm antigens, it was found that this parasitic infection was epidemic in the immigrant servants, at a rate of 2-3%. Several dozen were infected out of a few thousand!

And because they didn't wash their hands very well after using the toilet, through oral-fecal contamination (lovely), they passed the microscopic parasitic worm eggs into the food they prepared for their employers.

But didn't show signs of infection themselves.

Well, the researchers came back, intending to cure these people.

Unfortunately, being illegal and all, many had "moved on" by then.

Nobody knows where they are.

But the CDC knows where they've been.

Yes, they are tracking new cases of parasitic worms spreading all throughout the country in the wake of these disease carriers: North into Colorado, and in a band through the South to Georgia, and up the coast to New York City. This program was made in 2007.

Yay!

Multiculturalism at its best!

Celebrate third world cultures and their third world diseases!

Let's encourage more to to come here with their infections!

Doing the jobs Americans won't do!

Infecting Americans with diseases we didn't have!

Excuse me, is that a worm in your brain?

Carnage

Have you heard the tragic news?

35 young Americans, in the prime of their lives, under the age of 25, were violently killed today, unexpectedly and without warning!

What, was a patrol ambushed in Iraq? That quagmire of death and defeat?

No, sorry, only about 2-3 such deaths happen in Iraq each day.

That's in an active warzone.

What, was there another random mass shooting by a madman like at Virginia Tech where 32 young Americans lost their lives?

No, sorry, such shootings happen only once ever several years.

What I'm talking about not only killed 35 young Americans today, but it will again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that...

Just like it did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that...

Yes, day after day, every day, it continues. That's about 13,000 every year!

Did you hear about it?

No?

Why not?

Clearly, automobile accidents take a toll that vastly dwarfs anything out of Iraq or the lurid headlines of tragic shootings.

But it serves no political purpose to report the name of every victim every day to you.

Imagine if the news showed photos and names, to weepy music, of every single one of those 35 killed each and every day, without stopping or ever letting up.

Superimposed on shocking photos of the wreckage.

Keeping a grim tally of the total, and charting its growth through the year.

Maybe they don't do that because it would be debilitating and pointless?

But when you want to oppose a war we're fighting, then by all means, trumpet every single death even though it's one-tenth of the toll.

Why not rage against the blood on the streets?

No blood for transportation!

Cars are a conspiracy of the rubber tire companies!

Why not?

Because they're moral dwarves and hypocritical idiots.

Their objective is to break your fighting spirit.

Pay it as much mind as you do the daily deaths from car crashes.

And remember, if you count all "unintentional motor vehicle traffic" deaths from the CDC data, not just those of people under the age of 25 (which I chose to be similar to that of the soldiers), the carnage rockets up to over 100 violently killed each and every day.

Yet somehow our effort in Iraq, by comparison, is unsustainable.

Must be "new math."

Slippery Slope

Channel surfing the other day, I came across a tv news/documentary show on the Women's Entertainment channel.

It was featuring interviews with "plural wives" in and around Utah, with them all talking about how horribly society treats them, with all the whispering and nasty names as they walk down the street.

Oh, how awful to not be accepted as open polygamists!

The show was truly sympathetic.

Making me even more ill was the jaunty upbeat folk-guitar riff they had playing as background music. It was so homey and earthy and wholesome!

They're also coming out in force in the news now:
Fundamental Mormons seek recognition for polygamy

Polygamy, once hidden in the shadows of Utah and Arizona, is breaking into the open as fundamentalist Mormons push to decriminalize it on religious grounds, while at the same time stamping out abuses such as forced marriages of underage brides.

I wonder how much effort they are really putting into "stamping out abuses."

Reuters put that in there to sugar-coat it.

The growing confidence of polygamists and their willingness to go public come at an awkward moment for mainstream Mormons, who are now in the spotlight as Republican Mitt Romney, a prominent Mormon, seeks the U.S. presidency.

...

Her husband likened the struggle for acceptance with the civil rights movement. "It's like the work Martin Luther King did in relation with African Americans," he said, holding year-old Ava, one of his eight children, in the living room of his three-story home in Centennial Park, a dry, dusty Arizona town run by polygamists near the Utah border.

Oh, go to Hell! It's NOTHING LIKE the civil rights movement!

The attorneys general of Utah and Arizona said in separate interviews they had no intention of prosecuting polygamists unless they commit other crimes such as taking underage brides -- a practice authorities said was rampant in a Utah-Arizona border community run by Warren Jeffs before his arrest in August.

...

A turning point for polygamists came in August 2003 when dozens made a public stand by showing up en masse at a "polygamy summit" in St. George, Utah, organized by the Utah and Arizona attorneys general. "Before then, we discussed all these things in private," said Hammon.

Many warned of this slippery slope of other counter-civilizational practices such as polygamy gaining ground if gay marriage were accepted.

Yes, this is partly due to the push for gay marriage.

What, think that's a stretch? How about this piece of evidence:

Many are finding they have an unlikely ally in Hollywood, since the start of "Big Love," HBO's series about a fictional polygamous family.

Unlikely ally? Hardly!

Who is behind Big Love, a calculated piece of propaganda to undermine traditional marriage? And what are their stated motives?

Gay monogamous couple are brains behind polygamy show

Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, the screenwriting team that created "Big Love," don't have a personal interest in Mormonism or polygamy, but they do know something about family lifestyles outside the American mainstream. That's because, offscreen, they're a gay couple celebrating the 16th year of their own monogamous relationship. In an interview in May, they talked about the ideas behind "Big Love" and some of the changes they've made in the second season.

...

Q: Has researching and writing "Big Love" changed your ideas about polygamy?

Scheffer: I have definitely reversed some of my initial "yuck" reaction. We don't really take a pro or con stand on polygamy, but I have to say that I have begun to imagine it as a valid lifestyle and am sympathetic to polygamists in adult relationships with each other. I think it should be decriminalized.

Q: What about those who say polygamy inherently exploits or abuses women?

Olsen: Some feminists argued back in the '60s and '70s that marriage was inherently abusive and patriarchal -- that it was not a good deal for women. As the feminist movement has matured, there has been an evolution in that thinking. Polygamy can grow into a healthier model for some women.

There you have it: gay men telling straight women that polygamy may be healthy for them.

Think gay marriage is just about fairness? I wrote why it isn't here.

But here's a clear example how it's about power, and tearing down our civilization: the Federal 9th Circuit Court has now held that the words "marriage" and "natural family" and "a union of a man and a women" constitute hatespeech in the workplace because a lesbian felt "excluded" -- but "National Coming Out Day" is just fine in the workplace!

The story is that a few employees for the city of Oakland, Calif., grew tired of having liberalism rammed down their throats. They formed the “Good News Employee Association” in response to an e-mail that encouraged employees to participate in “National Coming-Out Day.”

In response, the Good News employees posted an introductory flier on the employee bulletin board Jan. 3.

It said: “Preserve Our Workplace With Integrity: Good News Employee Association is a forum for people of faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day.” It said it opposed “all views which seek to redefine the natural family and marriage,” which it defined as “a union of a man and a woman, according to California state law.”

A lesbian co-worker, Judith Jennings, spotted the flier and complained to the city attorney’s office that it made her feel “targeted” and “excluded,” according to a deposition. The flier was removed by a supervisor because it violated the city’s anti-discrimination rules.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said employees’ freedom of speech takes a back seat to employers’ “legitimate administrative interests.” They were allowed to submit a new flier, subject to “certain editorial constraints.”

This led one blogger to note,

The city of Oakland seems to be creating a workplace that is hostile to strait-laced Christians.

I have to wonder why I am supporting gay marriage when one group of gays and one federal circuit court contend that “marriage” is a profanity that should not be uttered at work.

Only the naive thought they were supporting fairness and "equal rights" in supporting gays in this farce of "gay marriage"! It was and is always about destroying traditional marriage and by extension, mainstream society.

I have one word for those who are destroying our culture: die.