A lot of stuff is going on again, so instead of taking an in-depth look at just one item in this post, I'm going to hit the highlights of several things that I think are important for you to at least hear about.
Hit #1: More Clinton Wiretapping? In a previous blog I mentioned how the Clinton war room frequently used illegal wiretapping to gain the upper hand on political adversaries and infidelity accusers back in the '90s. Now, AP reports that Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, is being accused of illegal eavesdropping a former associate who started a rival company. Granted, Penn has yet to be found guilty, but at the least there seems to be a Clinton trend here...
Hit #2: Racial Diversity is Devastating! Whoa, baby, this one could cause some friction! Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist (and no right-winger), is very nervous about releasing a new five-year study of his. It basically shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term effect on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. In fact, he was so worried about it that he delayed the publishing of his results for months until he could come up with some "proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity." I'm really not sure what conclusions to draw from this, but it's certainly not something you hear every day. At the very least, it's thought-provoking...
Hit #3:Job Growth Better Than Expected. Forbes.com reports that the month of June saw 132,000 jobs added, keeping national unemployment at an incredibly low 4.5%. It also said workers saw solid gains in wages. This is a little strange given that the vast majority of economic news is doom and gloom, but who are you going to believe: Forbes, or the admittedly biased mainstream media? I also have to admit being a little perplexed at how these so-called 'experts' are constantly surprised by anything positive...
Hit #4: Live Earth Flops. The Al Gore-organized series of concerts around the world intending to promote environmental responsibility has proved to be quite a flop. Not only was the mostly-small-time cast of artists disappointing (barely getting the crowds really pumped up), but they seem to have done just the opposite of their intention. The only major performer, Madonna, has nine houses, a fleet of cars (including a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, an Audi A8 and a Mini Cooper S), and a private jet, prompting Britain's largest-selling newspaper, The News of the World, to call her a "climate-change catastrophe". For her latest tour, she used that private jet to haul 100 technicians and dancers around the globe. For all the performers of all the concerts, a conservative estimate is that they'll be flying almost 223,000 miles combined; add in the 'carbon footprint' of all the people traveling to attend the concerts and that of the television audience, and you'll have a staggering 74,500 estimated tons of carbon emissions generated by the affair. By comparison, the average British citizen (these estimates were done by a British firm) produces 10 tons of emissions per year. Oh, and don't forget about the estimated 1,025 tons of garbage left behind from the live audiences which will go straight to landfills. In the words of one commentator, Live Earth is "a massive, hypocritical fraud". And it doesn't sound like the concerts were any good, either...
Hit #5:Sicko is Doctored. I'm sure this comes as a shock to pretty much everyone, but Michael Moore's latest 'documentary' is in serious need of facts. Kurt Loder of MTV writes that although Moore's movie points out some legitimate problems with our health care system, he conveniently leaves out the negatives of the universal health care systems he trumpets as alternatives. Loder says that "[H]is cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18,000* people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools." I think Moore has created a new category of movie: the mock-umentary.
I'll bet you haven't heard about any of these in the MSM; that's why I wanted to at least mention them. I'll have some more single-topic posts coming up soon.
There's my two cents.
***UPDATE:
I accidentally left this interesting tidbit out of my original post...
Hit #6: Wildfires. As you've probably seen, there are wildfires raging all over the western half of the United States. What you probably haven't seen is this article indicating the real cause of such huge forest fires: environmentalists. Basically, since the environmentalist lobby has prevented anyone from clearing out the old dead brush and wood (thus 'destroying' the delicate balance of nature), there is so much dry fuel laying around that any fire at all has the potential to become a huge out-of-control blaze.
Thank you, environmentalists.
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