In a sweeping mulit-culti gesture, Virginia gov. Tom Kaine appointed a diverse mix of citizensto a state commission on the benefits and costs of immigration and the effects on federal immigration policies on the state. Included was Muslim American Society president Dr. Esam S. Omesh.

Well, it appears that one of the costs of immigration is that you get an anti-Semitic, holocaust-supporting, jihad-loving Islamofascist on state commissions:

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine examined online videos Thursday that show a man he appointed to the state Commission on Immigration condemning Israel and advocating “the jihad way,” his spokesman said.

In a video that appears on YouTube, Muslim American Society president Dr. Esam S. Omesh is shown at an August 2006 rally in Washington denouncing an invasion of Lebanon by the “Israeli war machine.”

Omesh … also accused Israel of genocide and massacres against Palestinians and said the “Israeli agenda” controls Congress.

In a separate, undated video, Omesh tells a crowd of Washington-area Muslims: “…you have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”

That video was credited to Investigative Project, a Washington-based organization that investigates radical Islamic organizations. (Breitbart/AP)

You can find YouTube’s Omesh videos here. The man has beliefs as vile of those of the KKK, and those beliefs should preclude him of holding a position of influence in an American state.

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It’s a funny political world we live in when one of the nation’s top timber processors newspapers leads off the day’s coverage with:

Director Rob Reiner, one of liberal Hollywood’s most courted presidential fence-sitters, said Wednesday that he has decided to endorse New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. (LA Times)

Yes, Meathead is even going to throw Bill’s gal a 60th birthday party/Hollywood fundraiser, the equivalent of giving her his ring. And it’s big, big news from Malibu all the way to the Hollywood Hills.

The article is a hoot — and a piece of one-sided Hillary boosterism — that’s a fun read. We learn of the other Hollywood fence sitters and their response to the news of the Meathead endorsement. You can almost hear paparazzi jostling in the background.

Reiner began telling his friends about his decision last week. He ran into [former studio exec Sherry] Lansing on Friday evening in the valet line at Morton’s restaurant, a film industry favorite, where he sprang the news.

“He said, ‘Have you made up your mind yet?’ ” Lansing said. She told him that she was still busy fundraising for all the Democrats and she didn’t plan to make a decision until after she holds her own event for Edwards. “He said, ‘Well, I’m coming out for Hillary.’ I told him that I think it’s great. I think she’s wonderful,” Lansing said in an interview Wednesday.

Reiner also informed [irritating has-been Norman] Lear, considered by many as political Hollywood’s elder statesman, about his decision. Lear was supportive, although he said he was not yet ready to pick a candidate.

Brace yourselves Breck Boy fans, because the next paragraph contains some bad, bad news for your boy.

“I certainly support Hillary,” Lear said. “I certainly support Obama, and I support Edwards. It will take me a little more time.”

Lear, man of nuance.

What’s interesting in this Hillaryfest is that the LATimes — self-professed chronicler of “The Biz” — failed to mention anywhere in the story of David Geffen’s early endorsement of Obama, his bitter comments about the unusually finely honed lying ability of the Clintons, and Hil’s subsequent hissy fit.

How can you write about self-effacing, society-debasing Hollywood luminaries and not write about Geffen? You can’t, unless you’re pretty sharply focused on promoting Hil for prez.

BTW, the story contained this gem:

[Reiner] said Wednesday that he found it “deplorable” that MoveOn.org recently characterized Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, as “General Betray Us” in a controversial New York Times ad. “This is a guy who is a military officer who is working hard to do his job,” said Reiner, who has made ads for MoveOn.org in the past but is not sure if he will in the future.

Kudos, man. What a blessed relief to find at least one icon of the Left that is ready to stand up to the despicable anti-Americanism of MoveOn.org. As we all know, Clinton couldn’t find it in her to criticize the hardcore left of the party about the ad.

Which goes to show that Rob is a better man than Hillary.

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I wrote about UC Davis’ decision to un-invite former Harvard prez Larry Summers from a campus speaking engagement. I’ve written about Columbia’s decision to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak there (here, for example).

But I didn’t draw the two together and contrast them as they so juicily need contrasting — but Victor Davis Hanson did in RCP, where he also wrote this:

Along with a general lack of common sense — and decency — the powers that be at Columbia, for all their erudition, don’t seem to understand the line between responsible debate and crass propaganda.

Hanson faced collegiate intolerance at Stanford, where his employer, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, invited Donald Rumsfeld to serve on a task force — only to be met with a petition signed by 2,000 theoretically liberal profs and students. The Institution persevered, and Rummie’s in.

I went to college at a pretty radical time — the late 60s and early 70s — and I’m trying to think what would have happened if a controversial speaker had been invited to our campus. Sorry to say, I think the students I hung out with would have welcomed Ho Chi Minh, but would have protested an invitation to Dean Rusk or Gen. Westmoreland. However, I can’t imagine the administrators of the day inviting Ho or dis-inviting Rusk or Westmoreland.

The ones among my collegiate peers who never grew up, never tasted the real world, and opted instead to stay in academia, are the faculty and administrators of today, and they haven’t gotten any more tolerant with time.

Now they’re inviting the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on their campuses, are fighting to stop the firing of the likes of Ward Churchill, and are protesting whenever someone like Donald Rumsfeld threatens to walk past their ivory towers.

It’s times like these that remind us of the foul stench the 60s left behind, a stench that will take some generations to eradicate.

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Disencouragement sounds like a Bushism, but it’s actually what you’ll feel upon viewing Despair, Inc.‘s Demotivator line of spoofs on those horrible motivational business posters managers put up in DMV offices, insurance processing centers and other places without a spark of motivation. Disencouragement and a few good belly laughs, actually.

Here’s an example of a great Demotivator. I do a lot of work trying to overcome the ill effects of the efforts of NIMBYs, tree-huggers and radical anti-progress-ites. This Demotivator made me laugh, sure, but gosh … why even bother ….

Incredible Daughter #1 turned me onto the line by sending me this one, which is near and dear to my heart as a consultant:

And just one more before I violate every copyright law on the books. (Did I mention you could buy their stuff on-line?) This one‘s just for you, because I remember how much you ranted against France, especially in the pre-Sarkozy era:

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Yesterday at the U.N., President Bush reminded that fallen body that it once stood for freedom and human rights, and it should again. He focused on countries that have taken steps toward freedom, and those that continue in darkness, including Myanmar … er, Burma.

Bush used “Burma”, and the CIA World Fact Book tells us:

… since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the US Government did not adopt the name, which is a derivative of the Burmese short-form name Myanma Naingngandaw

Good enough for me (although not the UN or the MSM, which use Myanmar). Here’s what Bush had to say about Burma:

Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear. Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common. The regime is holding more than 1,000 political prisoners — including Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party was elected overwhelmingly by the Burmese people in 1990.

The ruling junta remains unyielding, yet the people’s desire for freedom is unmistakable. This morning, I’m announcing a series of steps to help bring peaceful change to Burma. The United States will tighten economic sanctions on the leaders of the regime and their financial backers. We will impose an expanded visa ban on those responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights, as well as their family members. We’ll continue to support the efforts of humanitarian groups working to alleviate suffering in Burma. And I urge the United Nations and all nations to use their diplomatic and economic leverage to help the Burmese people reclaim their freedom.

It is obvious that it’ll take more than mere words to force Burma out of the grip of the Socialist junta that rules it, as the Chinese-supported regime paid no heed and moved virtually as Bush spoke to try to crush the latest popular uprising there:

YANGON, Myanmar – Security forces shot and wounded three people, and beat and dragged away dozens of Buddhist monks Wednesday in the most violent crackdown against the protests that began last month, witnesses said. About 300 monks and activists were arrested, dissidents said.

Reports from exiled Myanmar journalists and activists in Thailand said security forces had shot and killed as many as five people in Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon [Rangoon]. The reports could not be independently confirmed by The Associated Press.

Witnesses in Yangon known to the AP said they had seen two women and one young man with gunshot wounds in the chaotic confrontations.

Zin Linn, information minister for the Washington-based National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, which is Myanmar’s self-styled government-in-exile, said at least five monks were killed, while an organization of exiled political activists in Thailand, the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area said three monks had been confirmed dead, and about 17 wounded.

It seems like beating Buddhist monks is not a good strategy for gaining popular support in a nation where nearly 90 percent of the people are Buddhist. Of course, it would also seem that refusing to relinquish power after a popular election, as the junta did in 1990 after Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in a popular election.

So, how about an International League for Democracy to snuff out the brutes that are denying a nation its freedom? Bush reminded the U.N. that in theory we have such an organization headquartered in NYC, but that the theory and the practice have become woefully disjointed.

President Bush concluded his speech:

With the commitment and courage of this chamber, we can build a world where people are free to speak, assemble, and worship as they wish; a world where children in every nation grow up healthy, get a decent education, and look to the future with hope; a world where opportunity crosses every border. America will lead toward this vision where all are created equal, and free to pursue their dreams. This is the founding conviction of my country. It is the promise that established this body. And with our determination, it can be the future of our world.

Inspiring words to some, but let’s face it: They’re threatening words to a significant number of the world leaders who sat before him, whose sheer numbers drive the U.N., whose influence is too strong for the likes of Ban-ki Moon to stand up to.

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So much good stuff to read, so little time. The Watcher has posted the Watcher’s Council‘s selections of this week’s best blogwriting. Winners will be posted Friday morning.

Council links:

1. “Jena 6″ Update
   The Colossus of Rhodey
2. A Big Hole in the Desert (and in the story)
   Soccer Dad
3. What Do Wahhabis Want?
   Done With Mirrors
4. Point of Inflection
   The Glittering Eye
5. Columbia Dhimmis Get Ahmedinejad Earful! Some Applaud, Some Laugh — We All Should Just Cry…
   ‘Okie’ on the Lam
6. Cosmic Ironies
   Bookworm Room
7. How The Arab Lobby Works
   Joshuapundit
8. Krugman Spews Race-Baiting Bile
   Rhymes With Right
9. Gates’ Iraq Agenda Short On Democracy
   Cheat Seeking Missiles
10. The Free-Radical Approach To EduReform
    The Education Wonks
11. The Human Touch
    Big Lizards
12. The World Is Still Here
    Right Wing Nut House

Non-council links:

1. There’s Slanting a Story, Then There’s This Doozy.
   The Sundries Shack
2. Abourezk, Part 3
   Elder of Ziyon
3. An Apology Is In Order!
   The Moderate Voice
4. Review of ‘The Kingdom’
   Crossroads Arabia
5. Columbia’s Disgrace, Part 9
   Power Line
6. Acting On Principle Rather Than On Policy
   The Paragraph Farmer
7. Rafael Medoff: Columbia “Invites Hitler to Campus” — As it Did in 1933
   History News Network
8. Musharraf Will Resign From Army
   Captain’s Quarters
9. The Next Iranian Revolution
   Reason Magazine
10. Gays, Haircuts, Nooses. Some Denial Required.
    Classical Values
11. The Ugly Side of Bob Herbert
    The QandO Blog
12. Islam and Marxism — A Marriage Made In Allah’s Socialist Paradise
    Dr. Sanity
13. Collectivism vs Individuality
    Logosphilia
14. ISP Bullying
    Dodgeblogium

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Mr. Whipple, the strange man with the fixation to squeeze toilet paper rolls, proved the old advertising adage that you can’t just tell somebody to buy something. Instead, you have to bludgeon them into it. Or, as they say in ad school, repetition builds recognition, and recognition builds sales.

So year after year, Mr. Whipple got caught in the aisle white-handed, squeezing his beloved Charmin. And people bought it, and life was good at P&G or whatever corporate demon foisted this heinous campaign on us.

Mr. Whipple, metaphorically speaking, is whispering in my ear, telling me this is quite simply the most amazingly unbelievable chart ever produced:

We have BBC to thank for it, because they stuck it on the bottom of a story about low recognition of global warming in Russia. Scan over to the right, to the green “don’t know” numbers and you’ll see that absolutely everyone in Brazil, Australia and France has heard of global warming.

Yup, there’s not one up-Amazon indigenous tribe member walking about with a bone through his nose who has not heard of global warming. Way out in the Outback where people know a thing or two about heat, there’s not even one Fosters-swilling town drunk who couldn’t tell you why the appropriate term is “climate change.” And all the epicures and snobs in Paris, not to mention every single French sheep herder down in the Pyrenees, can sit down over a croissant and discuss the finer points of urban heat islands and polar ice cycles with you.

Why, even in dumb ol’ America, where we’re all too fat and sassy in our SUVs to ever actually learn anything, a full-blown 99% of us know about global warming. That 14-year-old gal Warren Jeffs wed up maybe didn’t get a chance to find out about it yet, I guess.

To cover up the sheer audacity of making such claims as these, BBC tells us:

The survey was conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Pipa) at the University of Maryland. GlobeScan co-ordinated fieldwork between 29 May and 26 July 2007.

The question itself is straightforward enough on the survey instrument:

M1. How much have you heard or read about global warming or climate change?

The methodology section of the survey is suspiciously unrevealing, just giving the number of people surveyed per country, when they were asked and a few sketchy details. There are no clear reasons in the information available that would give us a hint at why such improbable results were posted. I see two possible reasons:

1. The data are true. We may indeed have reached a point where the media have such compelling reach that if they all get singing from the same page, people will hear about it. I find this impossible to believe. There are just too many people how are too remote, too unplugged or too stupid for the data to be true.
2. The countries were selected carefully. I don’t see Senegal there, or Peru, or Myanmar, or Yemen. Instead, countries with better than average education and communications systems were selected. Still, the data for the 20 countries selected is simply not believable.

Neither idea really pans out. But a second look at the methodology tells the tale: In virtually every country, a phone survey was conducted. Phone ownership biases surveys heavily. Phone owners have dwelling places, money, connections, technology. And (surprise!) when face-to-face interviews were used, they were conducted in urban markets. Guess what? Urban residency biases surveys heavily. Urban dwellers — especially the ones who will stop and talk to someone on a busy downtown street — have money, connections and technology.

So what we’ve learned is that a lot of people know about global warming and there are a lot of ways to bias a survey.

Oh, we also learned that in Russia, they really don’t care all that much about the negative effects of global warming. As one meteorologist in the frozen town of Arkhangelsk told the BBC, “I know global warming is a problem, but I would welcome a bit of warmth up here. Then I could grow my own tomatoes.”

He was standing in the middle of a frozen river, with the temperature hovering at -25C.

hat-tip: Jim

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If I could nominate one news article this week as the one most likely to drive MoveOn.org and the Kos-sac into a fine dither, it would be the second excerpt from Bill Sammon’s The Evangelical President that ran in the SF Chronicle.

In Sammon’s piece, we see a president that is supposedly too stupid to articulate his way to the end of a sentence, and too partisan to ever look beyond the hateful blinders of his GOP cohorts, actually planning for the possible transition of the Iraq war to a Democratic president.

(Not that he thinks that will happen. In the first part of the two-parter, Bush predicts that Clinton will win the primary but lose the general, a statement that’s obsessed the leftyblogs.)

Sammon reveals that Bush is “quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.”

Chief of Staff Josh Bolten told Sammon:

“He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

The Left will think the Bush is taking recreational breaks with Marion Barry when they read the president’s remarks to Sammon:

The Examiner asked Bush why Democratic candidates such as Clinton and Barack Obama, who routinely lambaste his handling of Iraq, should take his advice.

“First of all, I expect them to criticize me. That’s one way you get elected in the Democratic primary, is to criticize the president,” Bush replied. “I don’t expect them to necessarily take advice from me. I would expect their insiders to at least get a perspective about how we see things.”

He added: “We have an obligation to make sure that whoever is interested, they get our point of view, because you want somebody running for president to at least understand all perspectives, apart from the politics.”

Besides, Bush suggested that Clinton and Obama just might benefit from his advice.

“If I were a candidate running for president in a complex world that we’re in, I would be asking my national security team to touch base with the White House just to at least listen about plans, thoughts,” he said.

And apparently the Clinton campaign, and possibly others, are doing just that — listening to the thoughts of a man MoveOn et. al. would have us believe is incapable of thinking. Why shouldn’t they? Unlike most of us, they’ve seen Bush up close and bluster as they will in public, they know he’s a smart man with a clear, long-term vision.

Of course, his long-term vision could become a short-term vision in the hands of a Dem president, but it looks more and more like we will be able to wrap up Iraq much more successfully than appeared would be the case earlier this year.

Part of the reason for optimism is that Bush has done such a good job of making that possible. He’s taken the hits on surveillance and Guantanamo so others won’t have to. He’s changed tactics and leadership. He’s cobbled together his shattered party to stand up to Dem white-flag bullying. And, we now learn, he’s reaching out to anyone who may take his chair to help them form a viable ongoing policy for Iraq.

There must be no joy in Kosville.

hat-tip: Jim

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If you’ve seen 300 – or if immigration is an issue that interests you — you’ll want to see this.

(Incredible Daughter #3, who knows these things, just tried to paste the YouTube start screen into here and even she was powerless against the obstinance of Blogger. Some day I’ll figure it out, promise!)

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President Bush is warming up his pipes for his U.N. speech as I write this and I’ll be in my weekly meeting with a bunch of church guys when he gives it, but I like the leak on the speech’s topic: No new spotlight for the crackpot despot handpuppet from Tehran, but instead a bright, glaring light on the UN’s failure to live up to its charter’s ideals of human rights and freedom.

Bush reportedly will focus on Myanmar, where 100,000 protested this week in a cry for freedom, and where the UN has done absolutely nothing to put a ray of hope behind that cry. Instead, the UN turns the other way as the power-hungry cabal that oppresses an entire nation, murders its Christian minority, supports the nation’s opium-growing drug lords … and gets a helping hand in keeping the whole, sick mess from collapsing from China.

Amidst this horror, the UN straight-facedly tells us that the poverty rate in Myanmar is just two percent, and presents data on the nation’s health in deaths per thousand while admitting it doesn’t even know what the nation’s population is.

There is not even a place in the UN’s “Country at a Glance” window that addresses human rights.

Why bother? What difference would it make to the thieves, liars, rapists and torturers who sit with Myanmar in the General Assembly?

Meanwhile, at the White House, planning goes on for the President’s reception for world leaders this evening. Not invited: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

When asked what happened to Ahmadinejad’s invitation, Dana Perrino told AP:

Now if we could just entrust Ahmadinejad to the US Postal Service ….

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