The generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.

– from the famous Memorial Day address delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes for Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, at Keene, NH, before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic.

Here is another extract from it:

When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right – in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek to know the secrets of philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs? I cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.

But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.

The word “sacred” is, strictly speaking, inseparable from religious belief. But anything that is revered may be called sacred by analogy. If we hold liberty to be sacred in this way, then to us, atheists and secularists who revere those who died fighting for liberty, this Memorial Day is sacred too.

To the conservative right (which is to say, us “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals”), the nation-state is a Very Good Thing.

To the collectivist left (if you’ll pardon the tautology) it is an abomination from which in their imaginations they have long since moved on (“Forward!” their slogan commands) to International Collectivism under all-powerful, wealth-redistributing, environment-preserving, energy-rationing, contraceptive-distributing, abortion-enforcing, euthanasia-practicing, dissident-eliminating, (Obama-headed?) global governance.

Don’t say “world government”, even though it means the same as “global governance”.

John Bolton, who should be Secretary of State, explains (in a book review* to be found here):

Global governance, the next new thing in trendy international thought, has been typically portrayed as the nearly inevitable evolution upward from the primitive nation-state and its antiquated notions of constitutionalism and popular sovereignty. Not “world government,” wildly unpopular among knuckle-draggers in America, but a rebranded alternative, more nuanced and sophisticated, would creep in on little cat feet before the Neanderthals knew what was up.

American exceptionalism was on its way to the ash heap. Terms like shared and pooled sovereignty were bandied about like new types of cell phones rather than fundamental shifts in the relationship between citizens and state. Multilateral treaties on an astounding array of issues were in prospect — not just the usual subjects of international relations, but matters heretofore quintessentially decided by nation-states: gun control, abortion, the death penalty, among others. …

Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration was surely the high point of global governance’s advance. Here was a president who saw global warming as the threat it was, promising to stop the seas from rising. This self-proclaimed “citizen of the world” rejected U.S. unilateralism, took the United Nations seriously, and understood that European Union-style institutions were the real future. Not only would America have social democracy domestically, but it would join its like-minded confreres worldwide to celebrate global governance’s emerging transcendence. What could go wrong? …

The United States is the main threat to global governance, with its antiquated attachment to its Constitution rather than to multilateral human rights treaties and institutions. …

For Americans, sovereignty is not an abstract concept of international law and politics, nor was it ever rooted in an actual “sovereign” as head of state. … Americans see themselves as personally vested with sovereignty, an ineluctable attribute of citizenship, and they therefore react with appropriate concern when globalistas insist that “pooled” or “shared” sovereignty will actually benefit them. Since most Americans already believe they have too little control over government, the notion of giving up any authority to unfamiliar peoples and governments whose tangible interests likely bear little relation to our own is decidedly unappealing. …

In considering traditional foreign affairs issues, the laws of war, the ICC [International Criminal Court], and the isolation of Israel are all excellent examples of the globalist approach. They seek to exploit both international law and domestic U.S. law to limit, constrain, and intimidate the United States and its political and military leaders from robustly defending our national interests abroad.

One should begin … with skepticism for the very idea of international law ….

Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the proponents of “lawfare” have used this strategy successfully against Israel, and increasingly against the United States. By threatening U.S. officials with prosecution for alleged war crimes or human rights abuses, asserting jurisdiction over them when they travel abroad, for example, the globalistas seek to impose their version of international law over our own constitutional authorities. The American response should be that we recognize no higher earthly authority than the Constitution, which no valid treaty can supersede or diminish. And we certainly do not accept that “customary international law” which we do not voluntarily follow can bind us, especially today’s variety, formed not by actual custom but by leftist academics who hardly have our best interests at heart. …

He concludes with a warning that “the struggle to preserve our constitutional system of liberty and representative government is a great unfolding political war, and the outcome is far from certain.”

First, the political battle over the future of America, by which will be decided whether it will be a thriving capitalist nation or a stagnant socialist region, has to be won by us Neanderthals this coming November. (Likely.)

Then the United States should withdraw from the UN and send it packing from Turtle Bay – to the Antarctic, for instance.  (Unlikely.)

But the UN must be destroyed.

* Sovereignty or Submission:Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be Ruled by Others? by John Fonte, Encounter Books, New York, 2011

Munir Muhammad’s Coalition for the Remembrance of The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is one of the fragmented organizations squabbling over the vicious legacy of the Nation of Islam … one of the country’s oldest hate groups. [It] has an ugly fratricidal history. Along with its violent attacks on those outside its circle of race and religion, fueled by a belief that white people are subhumans created by a black mad scientist, it has carried on an equally violent campaign against its own. The list of Nation of Islam dissidents murdered or assaulted by their own people stretches back nearly eighty years. …

Daniel Greenfield writes about Munir Muhammad, the Nation of Islam, and the Coalition for the Remembrance of The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and how they stand in high favor with powerful Democrats in Illinois, at Front Page:

The difference between the Nation of Islam and most hate groups is that NOI members and groups can receive government contracts and plum posts from the Democratic Party.

Munir Muhammad … has spent the last nine years sitting on the Illinois Human Rights Commission, with a nearly fifty thousand dollar salary …

How does the business manager for a hate group get appointed by two Illinois governors to a human rights commission? It’s surprisingly easy. It’s just a matter of knowing the right people. …

CROE-TV, the Coalition for the Remembrance of The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s broadcasting arm …  puts out several television shows featuring Munir Muhammad. … Guests  include Valerie Jarrett [senior advisor and assistant to President Obama], Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Barack Obama. …  former Chicago mayor and brother of the former Chief of Staff, Richard M Daley, .. Senator Dick Durbin, … Louis Farrakhan …

When Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan wanted to get rid of one of his critics, he just swapped him out with Munir Muhammad, who became Vice-Chairman of the Board of Corrections, not to mention also serving on the Cook County Sheriff’s Committee on Religious Tolerance …

Ponder that: a man notorious for his intolerance serves on a County Sheriff’s Committee on Religious Tolerance …

… and the Chicago Police Department’s Multicultural Forum.

Illinois politicians didn’t just give Munir Muhammad lucrative policy gigs, they donated thousands of dollars directly to his organization. An organization whose reason for existence is promoting the ideas of a bigot, whose views, aside from skin color, have little to distinguish them from those of Aryan Identity groups.

Governor Blagojevich had doled out some 50,000 dollars in state money to Munir’s hate group and even proclaimed February 12, 2006 to be “Coalition for the Remembrance of Elijah Muhammad Day” and encouraged citizens of the state to recognize the organization for its “ongoing commitment to ensuring the legacy of this influential African-American leader”—an influential leader who had described white people as devils and “born murderers”.

Similar proclamations from the governor’s office in 2004 and 2005 described the Coalition as “an important voice in both the African-American community and the general public”. …

After Blagojevich was gone, Governor Pat Quinn renominated Munir Muhammad to the Illinois Human Rights Commission.

But this time – confusingly to observers like us, resigned to the extreme cynicism of most politicians – there was a sudden astonishing upsurge of decency, or conscience, or revulsion, or something we don’t know about, in the minds of some Democrats, and this notorious racist was voted down:

The result was a brief debate and a close vote with the Illinois Senate splitting mostly down party lines. Twenty senators voted to reappoint Munir Muhammad and thirty voted against—with only seven Democrats crossing party lines to vote against him. … The Illinois State Senate transcript for Munir Muhammad’s original appointment shows that it was carried without a single opposing vote. Obama appeared to be present at the session, which means that he voted to confirm Munir Muhammad.

In 2001, 75,000 dollars was allotted to the Coalition for the purchase of television cameras for its production studios, courtesy of Illinois State Senator Donne E. Trotter. When Gilad Atzmon, a figure so repulsive that even Anti-Israel groups have deemed him too Anti-Semitic to be associated with, appeared on Munir Muhammad’s show, the cameras filming the whole thing may well have been the ones paid for by taxpayer dollars. At the time Barack Obama was a member of the Illinois State Senate and his funding requests appear next to those of Trotter.

But wait, there’s more:

It would be nice to think that Munir Muhammad’s success was an individual blind spot in the system, but it wasn’t. Claudette Marie Muhammad, Chief of Protocol in the Nation of Islam, had been appointed to the Illinois Anti-Discrimination Panel.

And there was Willie Barrow, the Chairwoman of the Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes, an enthusiastic admirer of Farrakhan and one of Obama’s Faith Endorsers. A woman whom Michelle Obama described as “our friend”.

Munir Muhammad has lost his position and his fifty thousand dollar salary, but there is little doubt that Illinois politicians will continue trooping down to the studio to chat with the bigot …

Corruption is the way things are done in Chicago and that includes turning a blind eye to black racist groups who may believe that white people are the devil, but can be counted on to deliver the votes from Elijah Muhammad’s mothership.

Chicago’s dirt is no longer just the property of that city; it belongs to all of us. And Munir Muhammad also belongs to all of us. The men and women he sat across from are no longer just big wheels in state politics — they run the country. And the Chicago Way has become the American Way.

Only for a little while longer, we hope.

The forthcoming presidential election in the US is about socialism versus capitalism.

“Capitalism” was Karl Marx’s word for what Adam Smith called “the natural order of liberty”. To be for capitalism is to be for individual freedom. 

Obama, whether he admits it or not, is a socialist, and his agenda is to change America into a socialist welfare state. As the collapse of one after another of such states in Europe demonstrates, that is the road to economic ruin.

Romney is a capitalist. He would keep America the free market country it has always been. The free market is the only road to general prosperity.

Here’s Milton Friedman on Socialism versus Capitalism – as the short video clip is titled – in a 1979 Phil Donahue show:

The Obama administration will go to any length to prevent America developing its own mineral resources.

Why?

This is from Townhall Finance, by Lincoln Brown, writing on May 24, 2012:

The news came out today that the administration imposed its 20 year ban on uranium mining on federal land in Arizona with no scientific basis to support the move. In fact, an email from a National Park Service hydrologist states that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement fails to establish links between impacts on water and uranium mining. The leaked email states in part:

This is obviously a touchy case where the hard science doesn’t strongly support a policy position. Probably the best way to ‘finesse’ this would be fall back on the ‘precautionary principle’ and take the position that in absence of even more complete certainty that there is no connection between uranium mines and regional ground water, we need to be cautious.

One thousand jobs and $29 million in revenue are on the block in this situation.

Utah Congressman Rob Bishop who is the chairman of the House, National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee released this statement [which he quotes in part and we have shortened further]:

I am concerned and troubled by the Department of Interior’s decision to proceed with the ban despite the fact their own experts cautioned that scientific evidence was lacking. It is now increasingly apparent that the decision was motivated by politics rather than science as the Administration would have us believe. … These emails illustrate that  Secretary Salazar blatantly ignored the scientific analysis in order to advance the Administration’s narrow-minded political agenda.

It’s one thing to oppose nuclear energy. It is another thing to curtail it without scientific evidence.

Lincoln Brown obviously reckons as we do that the “progressive” Left’s objection to the mining of uranium has nothing to do with any threat to water, but because it is used to produce nuclear energy.

Its hatred of nuclear energy derives irrationally from a hatred of nuclear weapons (if owned by the United States, that is – not necessarily if owned by Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, or Iran).

Uranium is not the only mineral that the Left-in-Power is against extracting from American soil.

This is from American Resources Policy Network:

Sounding the alarm on the possible impact of hypothetical mining — in spite of the fact that no permit application or specific plans have been submitted — the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a cursory review of the Bristol Bay Watershed in Alaska.

The EPA is the main instrument of Obama’s dictatorship.

The EPA’s unprecedented early action is part of the agency’s effort to derail the development of one of the largest domestic deposits of key strategic mineral resources (Copper, Molybdenum, Gold, Silver and Rhenium) – the so-called Pebble Deposit in Southwestern Alaska.

While the project has not even entered the permitting process, EPA seems ready to hit the kill switch — preemptively vetoing the project before any application has been filed. Here are some key facts:

· While the U.S. is the world’s third-largest Copper producer, the related risk exposure to possible supply disruption is disproportionately greater than it is for any other mineral. On the national security front, the Pentagon has already reported a “significant delay” to a major weapons program due to inadequate copper supply.

· The unilateral expansion of EPA powers under section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act would effectively give the agency ultimate authority to derail any project in the United States that touches on water — with potential impact for projects in every sector of the US economy, from mining to farming, manufacturing, building, energy, and water treatment.

· The EPA has asserted this preemptive power before, and it has been rebuffed in Federal Court. In April, a District Court judge ruled that the EPA’s previous unilateral expansion of its authority to revoke permits already granted for a coal mining project in West Virginia was illegal. In issuing the ruling, the judge termed EPA’s argument for such an expansive power a case of “magical thinking.”

American Resources principal Dan McGroarty’s statement on the issue:

The EPA’s decision to conduct a premature watershed study on a mining
project that has yet to enter the established permitting process is a 
dramatic expansion of the agency’s authority. When it comes to critical
metals and minerals, the US is heavily dependent on foreign sources of
 supply. The EPA’s actions will have a chilling effect on domestic resource
 development, which will impact our national security, manufacturing
 competiveness, and ability to innovate.

(See also our post Elements of future conflict, February 18, 2012)

“This photo was taken at La Bastille Plaza in Paris, during the election celebration for the comrade socialist president Hollande. See any French flags? Anywhere? Actually, there is ONE towards the bottom right. The other flags are in order of appurtenance, Palestinian (2 flags top right+1 center left), Algerian, Turkish (towards center), Syrian (towards left of pic + below Palestinian flag), Moroccan (w. star in center), and European Union flag. The other flags I can’t recognize, there are also Syndicates or Unions’ flags. That’s France in a nutshell.”

This is from Townhall, by Bob Beauprez:

In the recent French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy was narrowly defeated by Francois Hollande. Faced with a similar financial crisis as much of Europe and raging unemployment …

Caused by decades of redistributive socialism …

… Sarkozy had championed cutbacks in government spending, but Hollande had promised even more government largesse, “Austerity can no longer be inevitable!” he declared in his Sunday night victory speech. …

Cure for the disease? More of the disease!

But did the French electorate really vote for bankruptcy?

No – a majority of French voters did not. Hollande was voted in by Muslims:

The challenges created by the large foreign Muslim population have been evident on many occasions including the Paris riots in 2005, 2007, 2009, and again in 2011. [A] chilling, ominous analysis of the election results [see below] suggests that it was just manifested again. And, the French experience is far from unique in Europe.

He goes on to quote this:

Hello to my American friends,

As you know, the Socialist François Hollande won the presidential elections in France, last Sunday. It is a catastrophe for France.

Hollande was elected by the Muslims:

A survey (of 10,000 Muslims) shows that 93% of the Muslims voted for him.

As 2 million Muslims participated in this election, Hollande got 1,720,000 Muslim votes more than Sarkozy did: (0.93-0.07) x 2,000,000 = 1,720,000. But at the end, from the entire population, he got only 1,139,316 votes more than Sarkozy. So, without the Muslims’ votes, Sarkozy would have been re-elected.

All the Muslim criminals feel now empowered. Criminality is already on the rise (1,700 cars were burnt in France for the first night). Muslims are screaming anti-French and anti-Jews watchwords in our streets.

Veiled women, wearing the illegal burqa, are strolling in our streets.

And, as if this wasn’t enough, Hollande wants to give to all the [as yet unenfranchised] foreigners the right to vote in our elections!!

France will face a very hard situation. We are heading for civil war in a few years.

That’s the last news from occupied France.

Maxime Lépante.

That great injustice has been done by a court in Pakistan cannot come as a surprise, but it must be angrily deplored. A brave man, Dr. Shakil Afridi, who should receive honor and reward for carrying out an act beneficial to the whole world, including his own country, is instead to be punished for it, by imprisonment for 33 years.

AP reports:

A Pakistani doctor who helped the U.S. track down Osama bin Laden was convicted of high treason Wednesday [today] and sentenced to 33 years in prison, officials said, a verdict that is likely to further strain the country’s relationship with Washington.

Could any strain be great enough to persuade the Obama administration that Pakistan is not an ally of the US?

[Dr. Shakil] Afridi was also ordered to pay a fine of about $3,500 and will spend an additional three and half years in prison if he does not …

Afridi was tried under the Frontier Crimes Regulations, or FCR, the set of laws that govern Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal region. Human rights organizations have criticized the FCR for not providing suspects due process of law. There is no right to legal representation, to present material evidence or cross-examine witnesses. Verdicts are normally handed down by a Khyber government official in consultation with a council of government elders.

Dr Shakil Afridi, at personal risk, helped to identify bin Laden.

Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the al-Qaida chief last May.

The operation outraged Pakistani officials because they were not told about it beforehand.

Considering that bin Laden was sheltering under the wing of the Pakistani government, and that their secret services are buddies of the Taliban, it was not only sensible but essential to keep them ignorant of the plan.

Indeed the verdict, which treats Dr. Afridi’s courageous act as treasonous, proves that the Pakistani authorities are on the side of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

What is the US government going to do to help the man who, at his own peril, did such vitally important work for it?

Senior U.S. officials have called for Afridi to be released, saying his work served Pakistani and American interests. His conviction comes at a sensitive time because the U.S. is already frustrated by Pakistan’s refusal to reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The supply routes were closed six months ago in retaliation for American airstrikes [with helicopters]  that [mistakenly] killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

It is morally imperative that the US government bring all the pressure it can to bear on the Pakistani authorities to reverse the conviction of Dr. Shakil Afridi. But will the Obama administration do any such thing? To judge by its past form, the Obama administration is more likely to increase the aid it gives to Pakistan than to threaten it with punitive action.

(Hat-tip to reader and commenter Frank)

Pentti Linkola

Look at this man. His is the face of genocidal eco-fascism, says John Aziz in an article  at Zero Hedge. And he proves it with Linkola’s own words.

This is Finnish writer Pentti Linkola — a man who demands that the human population reduce its size to around 500 million and abandon modern technology and the pursuit of economic growth …

He likens Earth today to an overflowing lifeboat:

“What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.”

The earth is not overcrowded. Back in the 1980s someone worked out that the entire population of the world could stand on the Isle of Wight – 148 square miles. Maybe it would take a slightly bigger island now to hold everyone, but the greater part of the earth is still uninhabited or sparsely populated. Linkola and the rest of the little green men just simply hate humankind.

We have dealt quite often with environmentalism lately because we see it as one of two destructive cults each posing a serious threat to civilization, prosperity, and even survival. The other is  Islam. Environmentalism must be classed with Islam, Nazism, and Communism as a totalitarian creed, cruel, oppressive, arrogant.

It is a death cult.

Linkola is one of many environmentalists who, far from loving and respecting life, declare loudly that they want to kill vast numbers of people.

Linkola glories in brutality, suffering and mass-murder. … [He]  advocates … genocide [and]  forced abortion …

 He wants the tyranny to be total, world-wide, inescapable:

[He]  has called for “some trans-national body like the UN” to reduce the population “via nuclear weapons” or with “bacteriological and chemical attacks”. …

He is just another freedom-hating authoritarian — like the Nazis and Stalinists he so admires — who desires control over his fellow humans. Ecology … is window-dressing….

Yes. Saving the planet is his pretext for controlling and killing people.

Linkola and similar thinkers … [care] less about the environment and more about exerting control over the rest of humanity.

He embodies the key characteristic of the environmental movement:  the belief that human beings are a threat to their environment, and in order for that threat to be neutralised, governments must take away our rights to make our own decisions and implement some form of central planning. …

He unapologetically advocates bloodthirsty dictatorship:

“Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economical [sic] growth. We will have to learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades [an Italian Communist terrorist organization]— and forget our narcissistic selves. A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organized on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her.”

As is often the way with extremist central planners …

Environmentalists, socialists, and others possessed by a religious conviction …

Linkola believes he knows what is best for each and every individual, as well as society as a whole:

“Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole. … In democratic countries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most. Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.”

Obviously Linkola would loathe America, loathe its ideal of individual freedom. “He  sees America as the root of the problem,” John Aziz confirms.

“The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom.”

By “growth” is meant prosperity, economic success. They want us to be poor,  and enslaved to them, the little green men.

Jillian Becker was interviewed by Sergio Politics. Certain questions were put to her, but only her answers were posted. (See here).

We reproduce the interview with both questions and answers so that our readers can give their own answers if they wish to:

Sergio: What are your thoughts about Mitt Romney as a GOP candidate?

JB: I think Romney should be supported as the GOP candidate. He should have been the candidate in the last presidential election rather than McCain. He’s an experienced businessman, and economic know-how is more desperately needed in government than ever. He doesn’t make heavy weather of his religion. Only thing that bothers me is that – like McCain – he won’t use his opportunities to tell the voters what the media hide about Obama, all the disreputable facts. I have no doubt that if they were repeatedly stressed Obama would be not just discredited but disgraced. If Romney cares more for his gentlemanly image than for getting into the White House, he will be helping Obama to victory.

Sergio: What do you think about Obama and his chances for re-election?

JB: It would be terrible for America and the world if Obama is given a second term. He has done enough harm in his first term. Four more years of his redistributionist, pro-world government, pro “green” energy, pro-Islam policies would be disastrous. I think he will be defeated, but perhaps less because of what the polls indicate (though at present they are encouraging) than because I so strongly wish it.

Sergio: What do you think will be the main issue in November election?

JB: I think the economy will be the main issue in the presidential election. It should be.

Sergio: How do you think Social Media will play a role in this campaign? And can you compare it to Obama’s campaign of 2008?

JB: It’s good that millions of people now get information and opinion from sources other than the mainstream media, which are blatantly left-slanted and Democrat-supporting. Obama was hugely helped by the MSM in 2008. They will support him again this year of course, but they have a lot more competition.

Sergio: What is your opinion of Super PACs and its influence in this race?

JB: If Obama is exposed and hammered by Super PAC ads, they could make up for Romney’s restraint. Let them bring on Jeremiah Wright ranting at his worst, and all the others – communists, terrorists and America-haters – who constitute Obama’s circle of friends and supporters.

Sergio: If you have some other thought you would like to share please feel free.

JB: The electorate made a terrible mistake raising this incompetent, ignorant, weak, vain man, stuffed with leftist ideology and lacking any understanding or experience of leadership, to the most powerful position in the world – and in a time of conflict, threat, and economic distress, when a strong and prosperous America is so desperately needed. The mistake must not be repeated.

It has been reliably estimated by many researchers into the subject of “Global Warming” (or any of the other sobriquets by which it is known) that in fulfilling the draconian prescriptions of the Kyoto Accord or its successors, such as the United Nations IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, millions of jobs will be lost in the developed world, the quality of life in the industrialized nations will sink to substandard levels, and the inhabitants of the Third World will be deprived of the minimal immunities, comforts, and amenities to which they aspire.

Are the warmists aware  of that? Do they want to spread poverty?

Seems so. But they are not succeeding.

This is from PJ Media, by David Solway:

Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, has vehemently denounced the attempt to impose energy restrictions on African nations in the name of fighting global warming. “These policies kill,” she writes. As for the combustible Al Gore, he “uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year.” Her conclusion: “Telling Africans they can’t have electricity — except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels — is immoral. It is a crime against humanity” . …

H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the nonprofit National Center for Policy Analysis, would clearly agree. He correctly argues that recommendations based on “flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles” should be taken “into account before enacting laws to counter global warming — which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.” Such consequences are already in evidence. Benny Peiser, editor of CCNet science network, speaking at the Heartland Institute’s 2009 climate conference in New York, sounded the death knell of the green movement in Europe owing to huge costs and minimal results …  Environmentalist Lawrence Solomon quotes Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada, whose studies show that “every green job created ploughs under 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy” and that green jobs are proving to be unsustainable since the creation of even one such job costs $1 million in government subsidies …

These are costs that may be suffered in other, frankly ludicrous, ways as well. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in its 2008 Annual Report, published in 2009, jubilates over the replacement of motorized vehicles by “bicycle rickshaws”—which, it must be admitted, will certainly help to decongest metropolitan traffic. That it would reduce America and the West to Third World Status does not trouble UNEP overmuch. Perhaps that is the plan.

The much-ballyhooed T. Boone Pickens strategy of introducing large-scale windmill technology is now proving to be a similarly quixotic project, unsightly, land-consuming, bird-killing, neurosis-inducing, expensive and totally inadequate to its declared purpose of meeting even a fraction of our electricity needs. Alex Alexiev of the Hudson Institute has laid the cards on the table for all to read: green electricity bills are rising exponentially; Europe is gradually abandoning many of its green energy programs as cost-ineffective and injurious to both wildlife and human health; and, as of the end of 2008, American solar and wind-power stocks had lost 80% of their value …  Rhode Island’s Public Utilities Commission has rejected a deal to build an offshore wind farm that would have entailed “hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs…”  New Zealand has repealed its carbon tax scheme and Australia’s opposition party is vowing to follow suit.

The writing is on the wall in majuscule. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has closed shop, putting an end to its estimated $10 trillion carbon trading scheme. In August 2011, President Obama’s pet green project, the California-based Solyndra solar plant, filed for bankruptcy, costing the U.S. $535 million in wasted stimulus funds and 1,100 jobs …  Other such futilities are impending. The Beacon Power Corp, recipient of a $43 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, has filed for bankruptcy after being delisted by the NASDAQ …  The solar cell company Spectrawatt, recipient of a federal stimulus boost, and Nevada Geothermal, which profited from Federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies, are on the brink of failure …  Ener 1, which received a $118 million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop lithium storage batteries for electric cars, has filed for bankruptcy protection … This is bad news for the plug-in Chevy Volt, the president’s car of choice, which is beset with problems anyway; GM had to suspend production to cut inventory owing to anemic sales …  Abound Solar, which makes cadmium telluride solar modules to the tune of a $400 million federal loan guarantee, has laid off 300 workers, amounting to 70% of its workforce … And now the electric vehicle battery company A123 Systems, beneficiary of $300 million in Obama’s Recovery Act funds and $135 million in state tax credits and subsidies, courtesy of Michigan’s former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, is about to go belly up …

The reason for many of these failures in green energy-production companies is simple. … As author Rich Trzupek explains, the energy density of convertible wind and solar is risibly low and dispersed, which renders electricity-generating power plants, whether large or small, “the most inefficient, least reliable, and expensive form of power we have” …  As happened in Spain, Europe’s bellwether country for climatophrenic ruination, Obama’s “solar alchemy,” which demonizes traditional forms of energy extraction and application, has become a recipe for an American economic debacle.

Finnish professor Jarl Ahlbeck, a former Greenpeace member and author of over 200 scientific publications, points out that “real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” Contrary to common belief, he continues, “there has been no or little global warming since 1995” …  His findings have been supported by many other studies. To adduce just a few instances: geophysicist Phil Chapman, basing his results on careful analyses from major weather-tracking agencies, reports that global temperature is “falling precipitously” ;  …  geologist Don Easterbrook, associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Professor Emeritus at Western Washington University and former U.S. representative to UNESCO, is also convinced that recent solar changes suggest the advent of a new cooling cycle which could be “fairly severe” ; … and a new study conducted by three Norwegian scientists, Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum, indicates that the next solar cycle, which is imminent, will see a “significant temperature decrease” over and above the current decline …

Moreover, as Robert Zubrin has decisively shown in his recent Merchants of Despair, there exists robust scientific proof derived from ice core data and isotopic ratios in marine organism remains that Earth’s climate is a stable system, that CO2 emissions create surplus plant growth that in turn absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, thus restoring climate equilibrium over the long haul, and that under cyclical conditions of global warming agricultural productivity naturally increases and human life immensely improves.

In a brilliant article for the Financial Post …  analyzing the eleven logical fallacies on which the argument for man-made climate change rests, Lord Christopher Monckton, known for tracking and exposing scientific hoaxes, has effectively proven that the anthropogenic thesis has absolutely no basis, neither in fact nor in theory. So-called climate skeptics need nerves of steel to oppose the reigning ideology. It takes no less courage and perhaps even more for a climate “Warmist” to buck the trend, as culture-hero James Lovelock has recently done. Lovelock, who in his 2006 The Revenge of Gaia prophesied the charring of the planet, now admits he had been “extrapolating too far.” Despite predictably hedging his bets and deferring catastrophe into the indefinite future, he avers that “we don’t know what the climate is doing” and disparages his previous work, including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers, as “alarmist” (MSNBC.com, April 30, 2012).

Nevertheless, the Global Warming meme continues to circulate in defiance of the accumulating evidence, which leads one to wonder who the real “deniers” are. In my own country of Canada, “Warmist” foundations are determined to continue issuing environmental fatwas, in particular to tie up state-of-the-art, economically productive oil pipelines in endless litigation. That such a move would impact national revenues and cost thousands of potential jobs is a matter of no concern.

But the cost of environmentalism is becoming of ever greater concern. Must do.

If the deceit and self-righteousness of Big Green don’t rouse voters and tax-payers to vocal opposition, the cost will surely do it.