Do as we say, not as we eat!
Six years ago, at another Food and Agriculture Organisation summit in Rome, The Times got hold of the menu for the sumptuous opening day lunch. Its publication caused a scandal.
The 2002 summit had set itself the target of halving the number of hungry people in the world by 2015. It began by feeding the heads of state lobster and foie gras and letting them wash it all down with an array of fine wines.
Of the world's wealthier nations, only Italy, the host, and Spain, the holder of the EU presidency, sent heads of state or government. The British sent Alun Michael, then Minister for Rural Affairs.
By contrast, dozens of presidents, prime ministers and even monarchs arrived from the developing world. They included President Mbeki of South Africa and, of course, Robert Mugabe.
Perhaps mindful of accusations of hypocrisy levelled at them six years ago, world leaders tightened their belts this year and were offered a far more modest menu of pasta, mozzarella, spinach and sweetcorn at the equivalent fixture.
"It does not look good if leaders discussing global starvation are seen to be dining lavishly," an FAO official said. "At the last summit in 2002 we did not give enough thought to the menu and were open - unfairly, in our view - to the charge of hypocrisy."
Did you notice that even when the press slams them for being hypocritical, they don't get it?! Another great example of how there's one set of rules for the liberal elites and a different set of rules for the peons like you and me. Liberalism at its finest.
Congressional call for socialism
It's a bad sign when a member of Congress gets up and advocates openly for socialism. Watch here. It's no wonder they're the worst Congress in the history of Congressional approval ratings.
Global whining vs. the truth
"105° tomorrow? We'll be sending you out live," the television producer informed me.
Like most TV Meteorologists, I loathed the heat wave live-remotes. I would much rather work in a controlled environment, complete with air conditioning and a green Chroma-key screen. And during extreme weather events, the studio lent itself to professionalism rather than playing on emotion.
"Let me guess, the bank in Walnut Creek?" I said sarcastically. I had been through this drill many times.
"Perfect location. Plus, a lot of viewers with ratings meters out there."
Walnut Creek is an upscale town 30 miles east of San Francisco. It is sheltered from the cooling influences of the coast and the Bay by a modest mountain range. As a result, in the summer that region can bake. The bank not only referenced the name of the town, but had a thermometer that was several degrees off, thanks to the heat absorbing black asphalt on the adjacent multi-lane street and the pavement of the nearby parking lot. The producer knew 105° would easily read 110°. On air, I always quickly explained the reason for the soaring temperature reading for our audience, but it was not enough. The misleading visual message was absolutely clear: 110° in Walnut Creek-another sign of climate doom! No doubt about it, the climate was under assault. It had to be global warming.
You've got to read this entire first-hand report from a TV meteorologist about the false premises and deceits the media uses to support the myth of global warming. This is the environmentalist flavor of liberalism.
Blaming America for everything
The source of the liberal, far-left mindset, blame America, counsels isolationism in the face of threats, standing down instead of standing up for people in distress who labor under dictatorial rule. This is not a policy that John F. Kennedy would follow. He promised "America would bear any burden, meet any hardship. oppose any foe, in order to assure the surviavl and success of liberty"After all , Barack Obama himself blamed Iranian attacks on US soldiers in Iraq on America being in Iran's neighborhood ; has counseled listening to the grievances of Muslim tyrants via a Muslim nation summit should he become President; has talked of the legitimate grievances of Hezbollah and Hamas.
Now the Los Angeles Times blamese America for Hugo Chavez's dictatorship.
You know, once upon a time Americans -- even the media -- were actually proud of America. This is perhaps one of the most vile results of liberalism that has creeped up on us. When it becomes 'patriotic' to blame America using the very right of free speech that America guarantees (which most of the rest of the world does not tolerate), there is a serious, serious problem.
America's racist Left
The sad irony is that the perception of racism is squarely on the Right, which is dead wrong. If you look at history and fact, racism clearly resides on the Left. Here are some excerpts from a good article about the racist flavor of liberalism:
If Barack Obama becomes America's first black president, he will fit nicely into a radical narrative that places leftists always and everywhere combating bigotry, shattering stereotypes, and advancing race relations. Indeed, merely to oppose him, as the Clintons, Geraldine Ferraro, and the voters of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana have discovered, is to invite charges of "racism" from his enthusiastic supporters — a trend that is sure to increase now that the contest has ceased to be an intramural one.
But history rarely conforms to the scripts that ideologues write. Racism, as important to understanding the American past as class divisions are to understanding European history, stains the history of homegrown radicals just as it stains the history of the nation which those radicals sought to change so radically. The American history that the Left lambastes is the American Left's history, too.
Seeing themselves not only apart from but above America, leftists imagine their ideological ancestors as immune from America's historical stains. The Left has its own version of American Exceptionalism, one that sees radicals and progressives always at war with their nation's sins — sins they so vocally rail against even after they have largely abated. Such a historiography tells us more about the present than the past. History is not as malleable to the wishes of today as today wishes it to be.
A Barack Obama presidency would not be a continuation of any long and noble crusade by the political Left against racism. If anything, it would atone for the Left's history of participation in the distant travesties that it now, in such cowardly fashion, blames on others.
Read the whole thing. It's very illuminating, especially if you're one of those that sees racism on the Right. It never ceases to amaze me that the Democrat party -- the home of modern liberalism -- is the party perceived as the one doing the most for minorities. The backwardness of it is simply astounding. Then again, liberals never trifle with things like fact and history.
Culture of death
Efforts to keep 84 year-old Canadian Samuel Golubchuk alive are "grotesque", an "abomination", "immoral" and "tantamount to torture", according to a doctor who has been trying to have Golubchuk's treatment ended so as to "allow him to die".
Dr. Kumar was the physician who originally made the decision to remove Mr. Golubchuk's life support against the strong wishes of Golubchuk's family.
"Given that I believe that continued support of this patient is tantamount to torture, I cannot ethically follow the mandates of the court order governing his care," Dr. Kumar wrote.
When the hospital tried to halt his food, hydration and ventilator, Samuel's family filed an injunction against the hospital and have produced medical witnesses who have said there is no evidence Mr. Golubchuk is brain dead. The family's lawyer, Neil Kravetsky said, "He's still living, breathing. His condition isn't as bad as it was then, when we filed the injunction."
The family maintains that to kill him by withdrawing food and hydration would violate his beliefs as an Orthodox Jew. Samuel Golubchuk suffered some brain damage in a fall in 2003, but is still responsive and capable of communication [emphasis mine].
The liberal Left has firmly embraced the culture of death, whether it be on abortion, the elderly, genocide, or any other form. I have warned before that this ideology of death will lead to horrifying instances of people being killed simply because they are inconvenient. This, then, is the real world result. This is the result of the liberal mindset.
You can't win with the left
One of the main precepts of liberalism is blind hatred. First Lady Laura Bush -- a woman who I think totally embodies class and dignity -- is sadly a great example of how you can't win with the hate-filled Left. She gets bashed for taking on only 'safe' issues like children's literacy, but when she travels to Afghanistan to meet with foreign leaders (especially women in positions of authority), she is bashed for 'wasting' jet fuel. Once the Left hates you, they hate you no matter what you do. How's that for the tolerance they supposedly believe in?
You can't say 'rape' at a rape trial
It's the only way Tory Bowen knows to honestly describe what happened to her.This is what happens when liberals are allowed to redefine words for the sake of political correctness. One wonders if the judge would have ruled the same way if the rape victim had been his wife or daughter. I'm guessing yes...remember, there are two sets of rules...She was raped.
But a judge prohibited her from uttering the word "rape" in front of a jury. The term "sexual assault" also was taboo, and Bowen could not refer to herself as a victim or use the word "assailant" to describe the man who allegedly raped her.
The defendant's presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial trumps Bowen's right of free speech, said the Lincoln, Neb., judge who issued the order.
All that AIDS fear for nothing
Remember all that fear-mongering about how AIDS was a disease that was going to spread from the homosexual community into the heterosexual community? The idea was that it was not just a homosexual thing, so we needed to indoctrinate all children about the use of condoms and other such wonderful ideas. Opponents who had the gall to suggest focusing on the homosexual community (because that's where the main problem was) were mercilessly bashed for being evil bigots. But...
This could also be filed under unintended consequences. By ignoring the true nature of the threat (and those threatened) and spreading panic among populations that weren't really at risk, how many homosexuals had to die from AIDS because the proper focus was not put on them? Hey, look at the bright side. At least our kids now know how to put a condom on a cucumber. It's a valuable life skill (to liberals).A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.
In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.
Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.
Beach homeowners sue for devalued land
A group of real estate developers and property owners in La Manga del Mar Menor - a spit of sandy, low-lying coastal land and Murcia's premier beach resort - are threatening to take Greenpeace to court over its graphic predictions of what global warming may do to the area, which they say have caused house prices to plummet.
The lawsuit, which the plaintiffs plan to present unless Greenpeace agrees to an out of court settlement of almost EUR 30 million in damages, comes more than six months after La Manga featured prominently in a photo book published by the environmental organisation that was intended to shock Spain into action on climate change.
The photographs certainly caused alarm in La Manga. According to José Ángel Abad, a lawyer who has taken up the case of the area's aggrieved developers and home owners, prices have plunged by "50 percent" in recent months - a dramatic fall even in light of the end of a nationwide house price boom.
Of course, liberal environmentalists probably like the thought of driving humanity away from highly desirable locations. Sometimes I think that if it were up to them, we'd all be living in grass huts or in caves. If that's what they want, I propose they do it first for a decade or so, then tell us how it worked out for them. In any case, this is yet another prime example of how ridiculous environmental concerns (based on hype rather than actual evidence) are harming real people.
Victimhood with a capital 'V'
If you want to understand the negative impact of feminism on women (and men) and, by extension, the destructive effects of liberal teachers, Democratic politics and liberal news media on African-Americans, here is Katie Couric last week on the CBS Evening News:
"A new study on teens and sexual harassment should give every parent pause. Most teenage girls report they've been sexually harassed. ... In a study that appeared in the journal Child Development, 90 percent of teen girls say they've been harassed at least once."
Millions of American parents and their daughters were told on one of the most widely watched evening news reports that nine out of
every 10 American girls aged 12 to 18 are sexually harassed. Suspicious that the feminist and liberal I-am-a-victim ideology was at play here far more than some real plague of sexual harassment, I decided to look into the report cited by Ms. Couric.
I therefore went to a leading feminist magazine's website, Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com), and found this summary of the report:"A study released this month reports that 90 percent of girls between the ages of 12 and 18 reported experiencing sexual harassment. The study found that girls who had a better understanding of feminism from the media, their parents, or teachers were more likely to recognize sexual harassment.
"Campbell Leaper, professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the authors of the study, said in a press release, 'Sexism remains pervasive in the lives of adolescent girls. Most girls have experienced all three types of sexism -- sexual harassment, sexist comments about their academic abilities, and sexist comments about their athletic abilities.'
"Science Daily reports that the study found Latina and Asian American girls reported less sexual harassment than the other girls who participated in the study. The most commonly reported forms of sexual harassment were unwanted romantic attention, demeaning gender-related comments, teasing based on their appearance, and unwanted physical contact."
This confirmed my suspicions.
First, "The study found that girls who had a better understanding of feminism were more likely to recognize sexual harassment." There is no question that this is true. Girls subjected to feminist indoctrination are undoubtedly more likely to interpret innocuous behavior as sexual harassment. Almost the entire liberal-left Weltanschauung is predicated on portraying every group in America except white, male, heterosexual Christians as oppressed. Women are oppressed by men. Blacks and Hispanics are oppressed by whites. Gays are oppressed by straights. Non-Christians are oppressed by Christians.
Of course, the fact is that American women have more opportunity and more equality than just about any women in the world today and certainly in history. Moreover, if either sex is "oppressed" today, it is far more likely to be males. If women were incarcerated, let alone murdered, as disproportionately as men are; if only 40 percent of those getting a bachelor's degree were female; if girls dropped out of high school at the rate males do, there would be a national outcry. It is men who are, in fact, suffering. But for feminists, academics and CBS News, it is women who are still oppressed. And that is what they are taught in high school and college by feminist-oriented teachers.
Second, "sexual harassment" is so all-inclusive as to be largely meaningless: "sexist comments about their academic abilities, sexist comments about their athletic abilities unwanted romantic attention, demeaning gender-related comments, teasing based on their appearance, and unwanted physical contact." If a girls bra is snapped in elementary or high school; if a girl is told she should learn to throw a ball "like a guy does"; if a boy pursues a girl and fails in his pursuit -- these are all instances of sexism and sexual harassment. What this thinking leads to is girls and women seeing themselves as victims, and almost as often to the emasculation of boys. (And then women looking to marry a man wonder where all the masculine men are).
And third, "Latina and Asian American girls reported less sexual harassment than the other girls who participated in the study." One wonders whether this is one reason increasing numbers of American men seek Latina and Asian American women for marriage. Women who have been less influenced by feminism probably appreciate men more.
To an ever greater extent, schools and the news media do the same thing to African-Americans -- tell them over and over that they are oppressed. And the effects have been even more corrosive. Just think of the wildly enthusiastic receptions the NAACP gave to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the black members of Trinity United Church of Christ gave to Father Michael Pfleger when he spoke of America being "the greatest sin against God" because it is so racist.
The number of blacks who perceive of their lives as oppressed by whites can only lead to estrangement from the greater American society, not to mention anger toward and resentment of it. Those are two of the lasting legacies of the modern-day left. You heard them again last week on the CBS Evening News.
This sort of insanity is the direct result of liberal indoctrination (this flavor is feminism) in our schools.
People, here you have liberalism in all its many forms. Regardless of which form it takes, there are common threads. Liberalism is a cancer that is slowly spreading throughout this great nation, eating away at productivity, security, safety, health and happiness, religion, and even plain old common sense. It seeks to control everything and everyone, placing power in the hands of an all-powerful set of elites who think they know better than you do how you should live your life. It values nothing other than its own selfish whims, which can (and do) change as quickly and as often as the wind. It is not based on a morally sound set of foundational and unchanging principles, but rather on the cause of the moment, and everything else be damned. If we do not stop the spread of this cancer, America as we know it today will cease to exist.
But we can stop it.
Be educated. Understand which economic and social policies work, and understand which ones don't work. Learn why. Be confident in defending what you know is the right thing to do. Be bold when people around you spew filth and deceit, and point out the shortcomings and failures of liberalism. It is possible to disagree with someone and remain friends!
We are in a war, and the stakes are high: the soul of America itself. Don't think you're not involved, because you are whether you like it or not. By sitting back quietly and just accepting the slow creep of liberalism, you are effectively taking its side. Edmund Burke is often attributed as saying, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Such words have never been more true than when they are applied to this context.
What will you do? Stand up, or do nothing?
There's my two cents.
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