Make up your own title.

Three things that can be brought from Psychoanalysis to the situation:

1) When there is a denied, unconscious motivation for behavior, the hidden impulse will continue to press for expression. If the AP (or any MSM outlet) has a need to facilitate enemy propaganda, this will be more and more apparent as time goes on and as attention is paid to those occasions when the impulse breaks through in unmistakable ways. Rathergate and Pallywood are the rules, not the exceptions.

2) When patients use such transparent maneuvers, it is because more effective defenses are no longer working. In the case of my patient, our work together had brought him close to the point where he would be unable to continue to deny and minimize his barely unconscious rage against me. Once brought into the open, it becomes available for therapeutic work and is a precondition for him changing his behavior. The AP's transparent and ineffective defense suggests they are having difficulty maintaining their denial and minimization.

3) If Michelle, et al, can avoid polemics, and avoid engaging in arguments over the minor error, it will allow the facts to speak for themselves. This will deny the AP the opportunity to use an argument over minutia to deflect attention away from the most important questions. In this specific case, maintaining the focus on Bilal Hussein and the AP's overt behavior is the best approach to getting at the facts.

Defensive Denial: The Focus on the Minor Error --- ShrinkWrapped

Stephen_m, commenting on Terrye's "oil conspiracy" post previous, said something I like so much I wanted it up front:

They didn't reason their way into that paper bag so they aren't gonna reason their way out of it.

Oil prices rigged?

I was asking Gale about what he was hearing about the election here in southern Indiana. He says he thinks Hostettler will win because the Democrats put up a weak candidate.

But....he also says most of the people he has talked to think Hostettler took money from oil companies and that the price of gas will go right back up after the election. It is all a conspiracy. The prices are only down to help them win and then watch out! BAck up they will go.

I think that is nonsense, after all Americans do not control the world price of oil...pity that...but he says it is firmly in people's minds. If those prices stay down will that change minds or are these kinds of views so firmly planted in the psyche of the public that there is no changing them?

Pope Provoked Muslim Rage To Help Bush and Republicans

Pope Provoked Muslim Rage To Help Bush and Republicans: "Ratzinger is not stupid. Including the reference to the passage that has incited Muslim anger was no accident. It was a calculated, intentional strategy designed to help George Bush and the Republicans in the 2006 elections, just like the Catholic church systematically helped Bush and the Republicans in the 2004 elections, through Cardinals and Bishops who attacked Kerry.

The Vatican has become a partner with the republicans, so they coordinate, come the final stretch of election time, to make things happen, make statements, take positions that help the Republicans. "

Signs

I was in Jefferson County, Washington for a bit last month and political yard signs looked to be a genuine cash crop from their numbers. I've never seen so many and I found the sight rather odd, considering that Jefferson has a population of less than 26,000 badly scattered over a rather large chunk of real estate. Another thing which I found odd is that the signs were for candidates for local office. The biggest advertisers seemed to be contenders for the offices of prosecuting attorney and sheriff. There were a few Cantwell signs up and quite a few McGavick signs but those were the only names I recognized.

It really took longer than it should have for the advertising component of my marketing training to kick in - the lawn signs leaned heavily toward Bierbaum (the challenger), while Dalzell (the incumbent) seemed content to rely upon her incumbency to carry the day. Birnbaum spent the little that she had available on the most effective method of gaining name recognition that she could afford. It almost carried the day as she received 48.6% of the vote yesterday. Almost.

Thinking about those signs led me to pay a bit more attention to signage on the fourteen hour drive back down to the Bay Area. More than fifty years of exposure to signage in all its humdrum diversity has numbed its ability to make much of an impact upon me and I found that paying attention to signs wasn't really a worthwhile endeavor. Except for the gas price signs, of course. They were telling a cheering story for they foretold a trip home which would cost less than the trip up. That in itself is an indication that I am no model for the economist's "rational man" because the total 'savings' involved in that 14 hour drive (the equivalent of three weeks worth of commuting, according to the census bureau) was less than $5. Apparently some practitioners of the social sciences are very upset with the irrationality shown by people like me who cheer up at very modest signs of improvement in our economic well being. What rational being would reward the President for an occurrence over which he exercised no authority or control? Perhaps those practitioners need to sit down and chat with some people within the Mediacracy and explain the irrationality of the Mediacrats conspiracy theories - perhaps with crayons and butcher paper stick figure drawings, so that the attention of the typical Mediocrat might be held long enough for the concept of a disjunct between correlation and causation to take hold.

Returning to yard signs and the effectiveness of advertising in relationship to incumbency, Brown's lead over DeWine in Ohio has disappeared. The RNC has put about $1.5M into advertising in Ohio since the 1st of September and they're getting their money's worth. In the House races, the Republicans are on offense in only four districts, GA-08, IA-03, IL-08 and VT so far. The Republican's national groups have pumped a total of $716K into those districts since September 1st and the Democrat's national groups have replied by spending $0. Extraordinary confidence or lack of resources? I'll put up a hypothesis within a few days in a Shifting Sands piece.

Gimme a break

It seems that not only liberals can make a point of mischaracterizing an opponent's position: From John at Power Line

Liberals keep telling us that polls show that most Americans want a comprehensive solution to the immigration problem that includes some form of amnesty and a guest worker program. Maybe so. But somehow, it's hard to find a Congressman or Senator who thinks that his own constituents see the issue that way. Today, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist filed cloture on a motion to vote on the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which provides for construction of 700 miles of fence along the Mexican border.

Oh Puhleaze.

I have to admit I am so sick of this issue that I really do not give a damn, but it should be remembered that Karl Rove was one of the liberals making this point. When he is not busy being an evil fascist genius he is a liberal. Fancy that.

Only the most fanatical believe that a guest worker program and a wall are somehow mutually exclusive. In fact when Bush spoke to the nation on this issue, he made a point of saying that the border must be secured. That is the easy part. The fact that certain people chose to ignore that part of his speech is no one's fault but their own.

A wall is easy compared to dealing with the approximate 50% of illegals who came into the country legally {and for whom that wall would have offered no deterrent}, not to mention the people already here. The hard part is the detention centers, and the law enforcement people and the courts etc that will be required to process more people more quickly. Then there is the increased efforts to catch the people hiring illegals not to mention the very real fact that certain parts of the economy need the labor. That is the point of the guest worker program. Dealing with these realities rather than creating a crisis where there need not be one is not a liberal thing to do, it is just common sense. And most Americans know that.

Maybe after this vote the Buchanan wing of the party will be satisfied enough to back off for the rest of the election season and stop giving aid and comfort to Nancy Pelosi.

Sharia through the back door

It seems to me our Flare, Terrye, is wise when it comes to American character. So, when in the course of a couple of days I both read Terrye say she has doubts this is going to be a very long war because

Americans like their way of life, whatever their politics when push comes to shove they will not give up the booze, the gambling, and the Constitution.

and also read that Muslim taxi drivers in Minnesota are now refusing fares carrying (presumably duty-free) alcohol, I figure something in this nation of Whiskey Rebellions is about to break.

Via Dhimmi Watch:

Minneapolis-St. Paul is concerned that its taxi service is deteriorating. Citing their religious beliefs, some Muslim taxi drivers from Somalia are refusing to transport customers carrying or suspected of carrying alcohol. It started with one driver a few years ago, but the average number of fare refusals has grown to about three a day, says airport spokesman Patrick Hogan. "Travelers often feel surprised and insulted," he says. "Sometimes, several drivers in a row refuse carriage."
[...]
The airport is expected to propose today that drivers who wish to avoid alcohol-toting passengers change the light on their car roofs, possibly to a different color. Hogan says the move will help let airport employees and customers know which taxis serve alcohol-carrying passengers. Drivers refusing a fare won't have to go to the end of the line. "Airport authorities are not in the business of interpreting sacred texts or dictating anyone's religious choices. ... Our goal is simply to ensure travelers at (the airport) are well served."

Well, aside from the fact that liberal airport authorities are interpreting sacred texts whether they know it or not (where do they think their ideas about freedom, equality, service and reciprocity ultimately come from?) didn't you always think that when Sharia made its first steps into America there would be some nice official to make it all sound completely reasonable? "Sure it's an important service you're being refused, Mr. Bottle, but it will only be a minute before a non-Sharia cab comes along..."

What, however, if most taxis go Sharia, or there is only one cab available when you are out and about warming up on a Minnesota January night? What if you're a single mom dressed for July and trying to get a cab when ladened with non-Halal meat? Would the liberal compromise seem workable then?

Might you then ask yourself, is postmodern liberal relativism anything more than a refusal to make a clear choice between one system for relating to the sacred and another? And what is the price we pay for refused choices and half measures imposed by a liberal authority no longer aware of the sacred sources of its authority? After all, Islam cannot be fully lived without Sharia, just as Western civilization could not be what it has always been if put under the rule of Sharia.

I say this by way of introducing a quote from the redoubtable Fjordman:

Centre Democrat Ben Haddou, a member of Copenhagen’s City Council, has stated: “It’s impossible to condemn sharia. And any secular Muslim who claims he can is lying. Sharia also encompasses lifestyle, inheritance law, fasting and bathing. Demanding that Muslims swear off sharia is a form of warfare against them.”

Read that statement again, and read it carefully. Muslims in the West consider it “a form of warfare against them” if they have to live by our secular laws, not their religious laws. Will they then also react in violent ways to this “warfare” if they don’t get their will? Moreover, since sharia laws ultimately require the subjugation of non-Muslims, doesn’t “freedom of religion” for Muslims essentially entail the freedom to make non-Muslims second-rate citizens in their own countries?

We are entering a brave new world where many such questions are just now in the air. Yet is it already time such musings depart the blogosphere and enter the wider public debate? People are scared of such questions for they portend the unveiling or apocalypse of the long-reigning ideology of liberalism. And many fear what might come next. However, it is only when we are honest with our questions that we can hope to discern the first signs of the new and greater order of reciprocity that will replace the present impasse. It is only when we are honest and courageous in insisting our politics focus directly on the fundamental questions posed by our conflicts that we can hope to engage parties in a serious exchange that will allow us to substitute this ongoing exchange for final answers. As Scenic Politics puts it in response to the recent abuse of the Pope:

The emerging question among those serious about our enemy (i.e., not liberals and leftists) is whether the view that we are fighting “extremists” who have “distorted” an otherwise “peaceful” or at least “reformable” religion remains sustainable, even as a polite fiction–or, are we simply at war with Islam? My view has been, and remains, that we should defer this question for as long as possible, and meanwhile craft policies which will be effective regardless of what the answer turns out to be; and policies that, furthermore, will supply us with data that will ultimately enable us to answer, when we have no choice. For this very reason we need to take actions that let us see whether your average Imam who screams “Death to America” every Friday does so because he knows there is no price to be paid and a cheaply won popularity to be gained, or whether he indeed wishes to “engage” us. We must begin to force the question, in other words, even as we continue to defer any definitive answer.

Babbin on Armitage

The American Spectator: "Armitage's leak was not innocent, idle chatter. And worse, much worse, was his cravenness in not telling the truth to the president he supposedly served. Armitage told Powell on October 1, 2003. If he felt his loyalty to Powell required him to call his boss on that date, he had a greater loyalty to tell the president before the sun set that day. The facts that neither he nor Powell told the president, that both allowed the Democrats and the media to damage the Bush administration for almost three years afterward and let Scooter Libby's life to be ruined, disqualifies both Armitage and Powell from ever holding public office again. Let them retire in the ignominy they deserve."

UPDATE: [Rick Ballard] Clarice Feldman adds perspective to Babbin's outrage in this American Thinker piece. After the election it's my hope that Sensenbrenner convenes hearings to look into Comey's decision to appoint Fitzgerald. Nobody elected these mandarins to make US policy and a few of them could stand some time in stony lonesome to drive that point home.

I forgive

These were Sister Leonella Sgorbati's dying words. Maher and Rosie might think there is no difference between religions, they are all bad, but I do not believe that and I don't know how any rational person can.

What's Your Excuse?

Don Surber has an interesting post up on whether the President can top FDR with regard to picking up seats in his second midterm. In closing, Don posited a rhetorical speculation:

"Still, as I watch Democrats complain about Bush politicizing terrorism, I cannot help but wonder if they are preparing their excuses for the day after the election."

I decided to take a look around and came up with this article in the SF Chronicle which makes the demographic case fairly well (but only in part) and this article at the WaPo, which provides more ammo for the "stolen election" meme so dearly loved by those who truly know how to steal elections.

I found another 'meme seed' this morning from CNN. Bushco's big oil allies have conspired to once again push down the price of gas just ahead of the elections! Boy, that's never happened before. The other factor which leads me to believe that a "we would have done much better except for" narrative is being developed is the current dearth of "Democrat wave" stories. Toss in the stories about contention between Emanuel and Dean and you have a nice broth stock to which various items will be added over the next six weeks so that the loser's soup which will be served on November 8th will be yummy and filling.

Returning to the SF Chronicle article - the author makes a decent case for the birth side of the demographic equation but neglects to mention that the primary cause was the Roe v Wade 'victory' so ardently fought for and won by the Democrats themselves. Nor does she mention the death side of the equation, which as fate would have it, also favors the Republicans in this cycle as it has since 2000 and will continue to do until 2012.

I'm not at all sanguine about the possibility of Republican pickups in this election. The opportunities just aren't there due to the efficiency of many state legislatures in bullet proofing districts. I am rather certain that the Republicans will hold the House, both because of the small number of districts which are actually in play and because the Republican logistical machine is humming along very nicely.

Too Sentimental?

Mark Steyn complains about the lack of anger and rage over 9/11 and wonders if we are wimps?

Passivity is far slyer and more lethal than rabid Bush hatred. Say what you like about the left-wing kooks but they can still get a good hate on. Sure, they hate Bush and Cheney and Rummy and Halliburton and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh rather than Saddam and the jihadists, but at least they can still muster primal emotions. Every morning I wake up to a gazillion e-mails from fellows wishing me ill, usually beginning by calling me a "chicken hawk" followed by a generous smattering of words I can only print here peppered with asterisks, and usually ending with pledges to come round and shove various items in a particular part of my anatomy. There's so much shipping scheduled to go up there I ought to get Dubai Ports World in to run it.

The foaming leftie routine seems to be a tough sell to a general audience. I see that, a mere three weeks after I guest-hosted for Rush, the widely acclaimed and even more widely unlistened-to Air America is going belly up. Coincidence? You be the judge. But I doubt the "liberal" radio network would be kaput if anti-Bush fever were about to sweep the Democrats to power this November. I think I said a few months back that the Dems would be waking up to their usual biennial Wednesday morning after the Tuesday night before, and I'll stick with that.

But there's more to the national discourse than party politics. And, whoever wins or loses, the cult of feebly tasteful passivity rolls on regardless. As part of National Review's fifth anniversary observances, James Lileks wrote the following:

"If 9/11 had really changed us, there'd be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there's a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don't. And we don't seem interested in asking why."

I don't think that is really true. I grew up a baby boomer. And there were no ceremonies for Pearl Harbor..angry or otherwise, just a declaration of war. We scarcely acknowledge the dead in Korea even though thousands of our troops stand vigil there today. I think the idea that a less genteel America always ran headlong into war before and that rage was what drove us is in and of itself another kind of sentimentality. I loved John Wayne, but the Duke was an actor...he was not the real thing. Most of the men of his generation did not hate, or nurture anger...they just did what they had to and then went home to their families. Often as not, they did not speak of the things they saw and did. Their baby boomer children did not even bother to build them a memorial until most of them were dead. So perhaps this reflective reaction is not that unusual after all.

What do people expect?

Glenn Reynolds :

AUSTIN BAY writes on fiddling and twiddling with Iran. The loss of momentum in the war reminds me of something that I believe Napoleon (or maybe it was Talleyrand) said: "You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them." Much of the problem in Iraq comes from Iran, and we seem curiously unwilling to do much about it. I wonder -- does Iran already have nuclear weapons, and are we being successfully blackmailed?

I know Reynolds is way smarter than me, no contest...but it might just be that there is more going on here than Glenn knows about. Believe it or not George Bush might not feel the need to keep him up to speed on all the latest developments in regards to Iran. Add to that the fact that the American people do not want another war, a military strike...maybe...if they believed it would be successful, but the will is not there for another military conflict right now. I have no doubt that Iran is causing trouble in Iraq, just like they did in Lebanon, but I doubt if the Bushies need anyone telling them that.

Which kind of leads me to wonder, just what do people expect?

Sweden Turns Right?

I don't think "right" has quite the same connotation regarding Sweden that it does here. It's kind of like Merkel being on the right - only works if the comparison is to a wet socialist.

Nevertheless, the socialist paradise of Sweden has booted out a party whose main election promise was even more "something for nothing".

Baron Boddissey at Gates of Vienna has a very long piece up (posted prior to the election) which provides a wealth of detail concerning what socialism hath wrought for the Swedes.

It appears that a winning plurality want to try something a little different. Who can blame them?

These are times that try men's souls

Victor Hanson has a thought provoking post up on this sad age.

And what are we to make of poor Benedict XVI, the scholastic, who, in a disastrous display of public sensitivity, makes the telling point, that Christianity, in its long evolution to the present, has learned to forsake violence, and to defend its faith through appeals to reason—and thus can offer its own experience in the current crisis of Islam. And by quoting from the emperor rhetorician Manuel Paleologus—whose desperate efforts at strengthening the Morea and the Isthmus at Corinth a generation before that awful Tuesday, May 29, 1453 all came to naught—the Pope failed to grasp that under the tenets of radical Islam of the modern age, context means little, intent nothing, learning less than zero. If a sentence, indeed a mere phrase can be taken out of context, twisted, manipulated to show an absence of deference to Islam, furor ensues, death threats follow, assassins load their belts—even as the New York Times or the Guardian issues its sanctimonious apologies in the hope that the crocodile will eat them last.

We learned the now familiar rage with the Danish cartoons, Theo Van Gogh, the false flushed Koran story, the forced change of “Operation Infinite Justice” to “Enduring Freedom”, the constant charges of “Islamaphobia”, and a horde of other false grievances that so shook the West, traumatized in fear of having its skyscrapers, planes, trains, buses, nightclubs, and synagogues blown apart or its oil cut off.

So, yes, we know the asymmetrical rules: a state run-paper in Cairo or the West Bank, a lunatic Iranian mullah, a grand mufti from this or that mosque, can all rail about infidels, “pigs and apes”, in language reminiscent of the Third Reich—and meet with approval in the Middle East and silence in the West. But for a Westerner, a Tony Blair, George Bush, or Pope Benedict to even hint that something has gone terribly wrong with modern Islam, is to endure immediate furor and worse. In short, no modern ideology, no religious sect of the present age demands so much of others, so little of itself.

In matters of the present war, I have given up on most of the neoconservatives, many of whom, following the perceived pulse of the battlefield, have either renounced their decade-long, pre-September11 rants to remove Saddam (despite the 140,000 brave souls still on the field of battle who took them at their word), or turned on the President on grounds that he is not waging the perfect fight and thus is not pursuing the good war. The Paleo-right is as frightening as is the lunatic Left. My old Democratic party is long dead, their jackals trying to tear apart the solitary and stumbling noble stag Joe Liebermann, the old center taken over by the Kerry and Soros billionaires, and the guilt-ridden academic, celebrity and media cadres.

The photos are that of the Hagi Sofia in Istanbul and its last Emporer Constantine XI. Once upon a time it was the Church of the Divine Wisdom in a long dead city named Constantinople. Like the forgotten Emporer of that forgotten city, are we prepared to die fighting at the gates?

Saturday Mini-Review: Say Anything

"She's gone. She gave me a pen. I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen."



One of the string of wonderful high-school movies from the Eighties which started maybe with writer/director Cameron Crowe's Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and ended with Heathers (1989), Crowe's effort here (1989) is not quite up to the classic standard of those two movies but remains worth watching. John Cusack—still cast at this point as a generic high-school student—gives us his John Cusack character, and his John Cusack character is usually quirky and interesting and human enough to make the experience very enjoyable indeed.
A romantic comedy investigating the possibilities of love conquering class distinction, the twist here is to investigate the natural conflict between girl-father and girl-boyfriend ties. In 1980's Seattle, that entails an overachieving but isolated and lonely girl's love for her divorced and controlling and vicariously ambitious father, versus her newfound love for mediocre non-achieving but dedicated and sincere boyfriend Cusack, who is assisted at a critical moment by Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes".

Brava, Clarice

Clarice Feldman provides a comprehensive review of the Plame matter in an article for the Weekly Standard. I know that many are bored with this seemingly unending story but I strongly suggest reading this account in order to understand how the Presse Ancienne manufactured (with Democratic help and sustenance) Mt. Everest from not even a mole hill.

The saga begins with a witting attempt by Armitage to undermine Wilson's fantastic tale, not through standing up in opposition but by the anonymous use of the 'unnamed source' stiletto. His motive for doing so was to protect the overgilded reputation of Powell, who, as Clarice clarifies, was a knowing participant in the decision to maintain silence and allow the press to continue in their nasty work. If Powell or Armitage had, either together or separately, a shred of courage or honor, they could have stopped this fable at inception. The low quality of their characters allowed them to think that they could sit in silence, protected by a prosecutor so bent on a malicious prosecution that he would never bring their scurrilous acts into public view.

They were also counting on their lapdogs in the press to provide public cover for their malfeasance in the same manner in which the press studiously ignores the same type of character defects in Senators McCain and Graham. Any nominal Republican willing to disparage the head of his party gets a free pass and pat on the back from the press whores.

It is not serendipity which caused McCain to name both Powell and Armitage as campaign advisors. It was the appeal of a common low character which raises personal advancement and self-glorification to the level of the highest goals to which a human being might aspire.

Honorable men know the right path to take when they find themselves in opposition to an elected leader. They present their case and if overruled search their convictions to see if they can continue to serve with honor and dignity. If they cannot, they resign and if they truly felt that their elected leader is in error they make their feelings known by public opposition. Honorable men do not reach for the stiletto of the 'anonymous source' as their first and primary tool. Honorable men do not watch in silence as innocents are persecuted in their stead. They do not sit on their hands as the press mounts a very damaging attack on an administration in which they have agreed to serve.

It is fitting that McCain and Graham have selected Powell and Armitage as advisors. They are well matched. It will also be fitting to remind the public of the manner in which they are matched whenever the opportunity arrises.

In Today's News

Allahu Akbar!!!

Democrat Response

Republican Response

Seen one riot, seen em all.

“the West does live in fear. People are afraid to speak against the Islamic world. Afraid to offend, and to be punished for offending, the sons of Allah. You can insult the Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jews. You can slander the Catholics, you can spit on the Madonna and Jesus Christ. But, woe betide the citizen who pronounces a word against the Islamic religion.”
- Oriana Fallaci, A Sermon for the West (H/T Fausta)

The Anchoress:

I am not especially saddened to see the brouhaha that is gaining strength over Benedict’s speech. Whether he is “media savvy” or not, Benedict has managed - in his very scholarly fashion - to apply a very hot drawing poultice to the enormous and festing boils of both radical Islamism and rampant secularism. At the very least, it will cause some Muslims to insist that distinctions be made between them and their more extreme co-religionists, and it may rouse the West to examine how cavalierly it has tossed off the “shackles” of Christianity only to open itself up to the scimitar. Perhaps some will look at the spires of their great cathedrals and wonder if they really want to see them replaced with minarets.


Well another day, another violent protest. It seems the Pope upset some folks. The interesting thing is that not so long ago there was a plot on the part of Islamic fanatics to kill the previous Pope, but that's ok. No big thing. Just a little murder and mayhem.

Pelosi Unveils NewD irection for Democrats

Tom Maguire is having fun over at JOM with Never To Be Speaker Pelosi's declamation that; "I hope you all received 'A NewD irection for America,' "...

The Democrats have sure got a flare for marketing. I would have thought they would encourage us to forget about Bubba....

Who dunnit? And why black?

One of these, painted black, is what fired the missile that hit the Pentagon on 9/11/2001. JR Dunn at American Thinker has the details.

...papers, web sites, and magazines have mentioned the mystery A-3 over the past few weeks, and not a single one has blown the whistle.

Reporters who would travel beyond the wide world’s end to track down... Dick Cheney’s shotgun shells can’t see their way to looking into it. They have no idea there’s anything to look into. And people wonder why the legacy media are sliding into irrelevance?

JR's onto something. Read the whole thing.

ADDITION: Our friends at American Thinker are on a roll today. Marc Sheppard brings us How do you solve a problem like Sharia? Just one thing Marc... it is "cloud", not "shroud"! My females love to sing and while they were young you have no idea - it is beyond the comprehension of those who haven't lived through it - how many times I've heard the song (and all the others). Cloud. There's nothing difficult about pinning shrouds. Cloud. Otherwise, Bubba, loved the article. Really.

A nice point

The Corner on National Review Online: "How much warmer was that Summer? 0.23 degrees Centigrade. Missed it by a whisker, eh? Well, remember that all the warming over the twentieth century amount to 0.6 degrees C and that, as I point out in my article today, even a fully implemented and enforced Kyoto Protocol would avert just 0.07 degrees C in warming by 2050. In other words, this Summer was colder than 1936 by three Kyotos."