Who’s To Blame For Mexico Drug Wars? Us!

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iberals’ knees are still jerking. It’s not enough that they blame America for the jihadists’ war on the West and for persistent poverty in post-colonial countries (not even our colonies, mind you!) but now it’s our fault that 6,000 Mexicans have died in the last year in the Mexican drug wars. So says LA Times columnist Tim Rutten:

America’s political decisions to treat drug addiction as a crime rather than a public health problem, and to legalize AK-47s but not pot, fuel an incipient civil war in Mexico. …

Mexico’s drug war could escalate into widespread civil strife with incalculable consequences for the U.S. — and, particularly, the Southwest. And we’re kidding ourselves if we insist that this is a problem that can be wholly solved south of the border, or quarantined there if events spiral out of control. It’s impossible to know how close either the United States or Mexico is to God, but geographically, culturally and economically, they’ve never been closer to one another.

If Americans really are concerned about the horrific toll inflicted by Mexico’s narco-gangsters, we need to ask some tough questions about our own cultural and political delusions.

The “close to God” reference is a reference to the corrupt Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, who famously said Mexico suffered because it was located “so far from God and so near the United States,” and Rutten foolishly chooses to believe the blood-soaked despot than rational thought.

Canada is located just as close to the U.S. as Mexico, yet we don’t see poverty, corruption, a human flood across our border or drug wars on the northern fronteir – so why to we have to assume the mantle of guilt.  The same drug and gun laws exist in Detroit and Minneapolis as exist in San Diego and El Paso.

Does Rutten really think that if we legalized pot tomorrow and banned whatever guns he wants stripped from law-abiding citizens that the violence in Mexico would stop?  Of course not.  But neither does he care. Like other liberals, he is only interested in using whatever excuse he can come up with to recast America in his vision.

Hariri – Justice Soon?  Maybe.

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ebanese premier Rafik Hariri was blown to smithereens on Valentine’s Day 2005. In the four years and 15 days since then, the U.N. has been plodding through an investigation of the crime – and Syria’s evident involvement, with bumbling and delay that has been the target of barbs from C-SM and countless others.

This week, the U.N. investigation wrapped up in Lebanon and packed off to the Netherlands to begin the process of prosecuting the perps, including, presumably, four high-ranking Lebanese military leaders, Intelligence head Raymond Azar, Mustafa Hamdan of the Presidential Guard, Internal Security Forces director Ali Hajj and Jamil al-Sayyed from General Security. Charges also appear imminent against individuals in Syria according to Lebanon’s Daily Star:

The newspaper [An-Nahar] also quoted an unidentified European source as saying Western countries had advised Damascus to form a team of lawyers to defend Syrian officials who could be accused of involvement in Hariri’s killing. “The Syrians should defend themselves, because no country is ready to be charged” with that role, the source told An-Nahar.

One teeny snag remains:

Meanwhile on Thursday, a Cabinet decision to sign a memorandum of understanding with the tribunal was postponed to grant ministers of the Hizbullah-led March 8 coalition more time to study the proposal. The memorandum calls for organized relations between [UN investigator Daniel] Bellemare and the Lebanese judiciary and will be discussed by the Cabinet next week, An-Nahar said on Friday.

Since the Hariri assassination was designed to strengthen Hezbullah, that MOU might not be forthcoming, which could delay Hariri’s justice even longer.

“Peaceful” Iran Has Enough U For A Bomb

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen officially disagreed – in the worst way possible – with those who think Iran is still five years or more from having enough enriched Uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. BBC:

Iran has enough nuclear material to build a bomb, the United States’ most senior military commander has said.

“We think they do, quite frankly,” Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN.

“And Iran having a nuclear weapon, I’ve believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world,” he said.

Defense Sec. Robert Gates disagreed, telling NBC today, “They’re not close to a stockpile. They’re not close to a weapon at this point.” But even the UN’s atomic energy watchdogs report that Iran has over 2,200 pounds of low-enriched Uranium, which many physicians believe is enough to produce one pretty darn good nuke. And since the challenge of uranium enrichment is more in setting up the system than maintaining it, you can expect production to arch upwards.

Why the rosy picture from Gates?  Maybe he didn’t want to cross up the possibly Obama backed Hollywood mission to Tehran, which features Annette Benning as the lead “negotiator” – Annette Benning, who would be stoned to death by any sharia-abiding mullah worth his prayer rug.

Yes, indeedy, Hollywood stars, fresh from giving Sean Penn the best actor nod for the gay paen Milk, are off to Tehran, where they hang homosexuals, seeking peace.  Iran, where they shut down magazines for covering “immoral  Hollywood.”  In pointed irony, Atlas Shrugged says:

Willful stupidity knows no bounds — only thing is it’s coming directly from the White House. Annette Bening is dialoguing with the poison pygmy regime on behalf of President B. Hussein? Does Bening have a clue about Islam? Does she sanction the stoning, hangings, the repression and murder of reformers? Does she think she can disarm the mullahs with a screening of The Grifters? This is embarrassing. And very dangerous.

It certainly is, but it’s oh, so Hollywood.

CO2 Alert! It’s Too LOW!

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here was some interesting testimony this week at an Environment and Public Works Full Committee Hearing. Speaking was Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer – you know, another one of those know-nothing global warming skeptics … just 200+ peer-reviewed scientific papers to his name.

Dr. Happer began be comparing the current global warming hysteria with prohibition:

Deeply sincere people thought they were saving humanity from the evils of alcohol, just as many people now sincerely think they are saving humanity from the evils of CO2.

He went on to talk about the heroic Dr. Benjamin Rush, who bravely stayed in Philadephia in the think of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, so he could bleed patients – the prevailing scientific consensus at the time – even though it turns out he did more harm than good.

A few cautious observers noticed that you were more likely to survive the yellow fever without the services of the great man. But Dr. Rush had plenty of high level-friends and he was backed up by the self-evident consensus, so he went ahead with his ministrations. In summary, a consensus is often wrong. …

I personally certainly don’t believe we are facing a crisis unless we create one for ourselves, as Benjamin Rush did by bleeding his patients.

Good speechifying, but here’s the scientific stunner from his testimony:

Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million – ppm) – that’s unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it’s been quite higher than that.

Yet we – all of us, including the Warmie hysterics – are here on a planet that most definitely did not become devoid of life because of too much CO2 in the atmosphere.

Forecast Cold For Global Warming March

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inety environmental groups are converging on Washington tomorrow for a big demonstration against global warming at Congress’ coal fired power plant.  Coal, in their view and the view of Obama’s energy and climate czars and secretaries, is causing the planet to heat up, putting all human existance in imminent peril.

But Mother Nature is not participating in the fun, as snowstorms spread from New England all the way down to Alabama.  Alabama!  Here’s the forecast for DC:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Baltimore/Washington, MD
11:06 am EST, Sun., Mar. 1, 2009

… WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 2 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 2 PM EST MONDAY…

A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 2 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 2 PM EST MONDAY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA… AND AREAS OF MARYLAND AND NORTHERN VIRGINIA EAST OF THE BLUE RIDGE.

AN UPPER-LEVEL DISTURBANCE ACROSS THE DEEP SOUTH WILL MOVE EAST TODAY. A SURFACE LOW HAS FORMED OVER SOUTH CAROLINA THIS MORNING… AND WILL PUSH UP THE EASTERN SEABOARD THROUGH THE AFTERNOON AND EVENING HOURS… WITH A TIGHT GRADIENT OF ACCUMULATING SNOWFALL AHEAD OF THE LOW. ACCUMULATING SNOWS WILL BEGIN TO AFFECT PORTIONS AREAS OF NORTH CENTRAL VIRGINIA AND SOUTHERN MARYLAND BY MID TO LATE AFTERNOON.

Every year, the Warmies schedule big demonstrations in the Northern Hemisphere for early March, and just about every year, God plays a trick on them, dumping snow on their heads and forcing them to wear thick parkas over their “Save the Planet” T-shirts.

They don’t get it, of course … they’re so locked into their belief system that to them it’s all just climate change. Too bad Congress is just as stupid.

Sensationalism alert: The photo is indeed of snow that fell today – but in Colorado, not on the East Coast. Several inches of snow are expected in DC by tomorrow.

And About That Demonstration …

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he 90 groups organizing tomorrows demonstration at the Congressional power plant are working hard to turn out 2,500 demonstrators, according to a news release from the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity.   Not exactly a stellar turnout, 28 demonstrators per group, eh?  Ah, but they’re fired up about fighting the coal-fired plant.  As the Center’s news release says fabricates:

Leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has warned that we need to reduce our atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to below 350 parts per million in order to avoid climate catastrophe, and that the U.S. and the world must begin phasing out coal immediately in order to reach that target. Already species from the polar bear in the Arctic to the emperor penguin in Antarctica to corals in the Caribbean are declining due to global warming. A stunning 70 percent of the Earth’s plants and animals could be at risk of extinction by the end of the century if greenhouse emissions continue unabated.

Never mind that polar bear populations are expanding, not declining.  Never mind that the extinction stat is based entirely on highly suspect computer modes – just like global warming hysteria itself.

Actually, if anyone should be demonstrating outside the Capitol power plant it should be citizens who are concerned about a spending-crazed Obama administration that wants to put more power into a federal government that is clearly unable to manage itself, let alone the nation.  Congress has tried to clean up the power plant in recent years, but has been paralyzed by cost and controversy. Says AP:

The plant’s story is one that is likely to play out across the United States as Congress looks to limit greenhouse gases and require more of the country’s energy to come from wind, solar and other renewable sources.

The issues hampering the cleanup – politics, cost and technological barriers – could trip up similar efforts elsewhere. The U.S. counts on coal-fired power plants for about half of its electricity; the plants are also the biggest source of heat-trapping gases.

So if Congress cannot act locally, as the environmental slogan goes, how can it begin to think globally? …

While carbon dioxide from the facility could be reduced 60 percent using carbon sequestration technology, the Energy Department in April 2008 ruled that out. The $112 million cost was too high. There is no place nearby to dispose of the gas and the extra coal burned to run the carbon-trapping equipment would increase other types of air pollution.

Recognizing this dead end, just last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote the Architect of the Capitol with another recycled idea: convert the plant entirely to natural gas.

While four times more expensive than coal, natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide.

That doesn’t seem like much of a positive cost-benefit ratio, does it?  But they just might do it.  After all, they’re not spending their money; they’re spending ours.  They don’t have public utility commissions and ratepayers to worry about; they can just put us deeper and deeper in debt so they look good to the Warmie lobby … while their actions will not move the global greenhouse gas needle one tenth of an iota. 

Posted in Drugs, Global warming, Gun Control, Hollyweird, Iran, Lebanon, Mexico, U.N. | 3 Comments » | |