Sunday Scan

Who You Gonna Mourn To?

China, an atheist regime that forces "religion" into a state-run box and prosecutes practitioners of serious religion, has called for three days of mourning for the tens of thousands of victims of last week's devastating earthquake.

Who will the country mourn to? A vacuum? The spirit of Mao, who, decomposed as he is, does not offer much eternal hope?

The answer is in the heart of those that suffer, as this AP story reveals:

Dozens of students were buried in new graves dotting a green hillside overlooking the rubble, the small mounds of dirt failing to block the pungent smell of decay wafting from the ground. Most graves were unmarked, though several had wooden markers with names scribbled on them.

Zhou Bencen, 36, said he raced to the town's middle school after the earthquake, where relatives who arrived earlier had dug out the body of his 13-year-old daughter, Zhou Xiao, crushed on the first floor.

Zhou cradled his wife in his arms, holding her hand and stroking her back while she sobbed hysterically. "Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter?"

Oh God, give them comfort. The state certainly can't.

Moral Relativism Alert!

Before straying too far from AP, let's turn our attention to a story filed by Terence Hunt earlier this morning about Prez Bush's address to assembled Arab leaders in Egypt. Hunt tells us:

Winding up a five-day trip to the region, Bush took a strikingly tougher tone with Arab nations than he did with Israel in a speech Thursday to the Knesset. Israel received effusive praise from the president while Arab nations heard a litany of U.S. criticisms mixed with some compliments.

Gosh. I wonder why the tone would be different.

One of the rules of thumb I teach my employees is that when your opposition is lying, distorting or just being ignorant, use their own words against them. That would apply with Hunt's story. Let's look at Hunt's reporting on what Bush said to the Arab leaders and see if there's a reason for the contrasting tones, shall we?

"Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," Bush said ...

Israeli Arabs have the right to vote and are represented in government. On the other side, there's Mubarik, Assad and a host of other power-barons who have jailed or suppressed their opposition, and not one functioning democracy save the nascent one in Iraq and the crumbling one in Lebanon. Point Bush.

"America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down and dissidents whose voices are stifled ..."

Israel's' "political prisoners" are people who have carried out or planned violent attacks with real weapons against Israel. In the rest of the region, jails are full of people whose only weapon is the pen or the tongue. Freedom of speech in Israel, repression in all the Arab lands leads to point Bush.

"I call on all nations in this region to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate and trust their people to chart their future ..."

Israel has no prisoners of conscience, just prisoners of action. It has an open political debate, and it trusts its future to its people. Anyone want to speak from the Arab side? Anyone? Anyone?

Point, game and match Bush.

On The Wrong Foot

The EU asked Interpol to look into the state of Islamist terror in Europe. Interpol found that it's bad and getting worse ... and it blamed England.

Britain's controversial foreign and military policy has made UK the hub of Islamic terrorism across Europe, and turned the country into a fertile ground for jihadist recruiters, a report by the EU warned.

The EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report revealed that British foreign policy presented critical dangers for all Europe: "The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have a large impact on the security environment of the EU." (Source)

So the problem isn't the EU's policy of appeasing radical Islamists who promote race hatred under the protection of the EU's tolerance laws? And it's not Islam itself and its long history of violent jihad, sharpened in recent years by the phenomena of international migration, the Internet and Saudi-funded radical education?

The EU study may be worlds off in its finger-pointing, but it's probably right about this: It predicts more terror attacks in Europe from a "rejuvenated" al-Qaeda.

Where are we fighting al-Qaeda? Well, we and the Brits are fighting them in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where aren't we fighting them? Europe.

Big News From The Nanosphere

Advances in nanotechnology appear poised to dramatically increase the efficiency of thin film solar cells. As in from a theoretical cap of 31% efficiency all the way up to 45% efficiency.

Put on your techie hat and read about it here.

Anthropomorphic Hucksterism

More indications that the global warming debate is anything but over:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce [Monday] that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM’s Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. (source, via ICECAP)

The OISM list doesn't focus on climatologists, so the Warmies will discount the announcement. But all have university degrees in science and over 9,000 of them have PhD's so we can postulate that they know the difference between good and bad research methods, and the difference between evidence and proof.

Meanwhile, as we look at ten years of global cooling having no effect whatsoever on the prognostications and pontifications of our electeds, Richard Rahn writes in WashTimes that global warming constitutes the greatest intelligence failure of our era, concluding:

You may wonder — if the data from the last decade show the Earth is not getting warmer, and the climate models have been making incorrect predictions — why are so many in the political and media classes continuing to shout about the dangers of global warming and insisting the "science" is settled when the opposite is true. (You may recall that Copernicus and Galileo had certain problems going against the conventional wisdom of their time.)

The reason people like Al Gore and many others are in denial is explained by cognitive dissonance. This occurs when evidence increasingly contradicts a strongly held belief. Rather than accept the new evidence and change their minds, some people will become even more insistent on the "truth" of the discredited belief, and attack those who present the new evidence — again an "intelligence" failure.

Finally, many people directly benefit from government funding global warming programs and care more about their own pocketbooks than the plight of the world's poor who are paying more for food. This is not an "intelligence" but an "integrity" failure.

This One's A Stand-Alone


SF Readies For Big Gay Bucks

While the 60-plus percent of us in CA who voted that marriage in our state is between a man and a woman are unhappy with this week's CA supreme court decision overturning our will, tourism officials in San Francisco are decidedly ... uh, gayer.

San Francisco's tourist industry is betting that gay marriage will lead to a boon in same-sex wedding and honeymoon packages.

Nationally, gay tourism amounts to a $60 billion-a-year industry. Thanks to Thursday's ruling by the state Supreme Court striking down the ban on same-sex marriage, California stands to become a destination spot for gay and lesbian couples from around the world who want to get hitched.

And San Francisco is hoping for the biggest slice of the wedding cake.

No sooner did the court decision come down than the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau fired off a release to the gay press, inviting couples to get married in the city where "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history continues to be made." (source)

If the ruling stands, gays from any state will be able to wed in California, unlike Massachusetts, which only lets its own gays marry.

Cue up quickly, my friends. A constitutional amendment is likely to cut your fun short soon enough. Had gays gone the legislative route, they very well might have secured the right to marry in California, but as long as they rely on courts stripping the majority of the sanctity of their vote, the majority will stand together against gay marriage -- because they support the sanctity of a democratic, free vote, not necessarily because they support the sanctity of marriage.

Almost Back

At about 11 this morning, my life will return to normal.

Last week was Coastal Commission. This week I've actually had to wear a tie three times, and that always portends little time for blogging. Monday it was a major new biz presentation. Thursday, I taught a five hour class on community outreach to a client's new project managers, and I'm leaving in a minute to participate in a panel on global warming and housing regulation. Eech.

Then, finally, I'll get my life back. I've missed not being able to comment on so much -- Myanmar, China, the Obama team's telling huffiness over Bush's right-on remarks in Israel, the California Supreme Court's decision on homosexuality ...

OK, maybe I'll be late to my talk, but I have to get this out. The NYT headlines email this a.m. had as its quote of the day some CA gay saying how he finally felt like a first-class citizen, not a second-class one.

How nice. I, and about 80 percent of CA feel like second-class citizens today. We voted against gay marriage and now we're told that our vote doesn't matter. How much more second class can you get?

Gotta run.

Sexual Hysteria Over Huckabee

My readers know that even though I'm a conservative Christian, I'm no Huckabee huckster. Even so, I found this charge at TPM Election Central utterly (udderly?) ridiculous:

Huck, in elaborating on his views that the Constitution should be subjected to Biblical standards, had just wrapped up a discussion of the fact that marriage has meant "a man and a woman in a relationship for life." With this context firmly established, this exchange followed:

QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.

HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

That's pretty clear cut. Changing the definition of marriage so it can mean "two men" or "two women" is equivalent to changing it to mean "a man and an animal." No ambiguity here whatsoever.

Based on this, TPM trumpets that Huckabee "directly equated homosexuality with bestiality."

You would think that the writer, Greg Sargent, has never heard of the concept of "slippery slope."

Huckabee's statement is one oft used by marriage defenders, who worry that once you allow two men or two women to marry, it won't be long until one man and two women or one man and one boy start pushing the courts for the same coverage. Given American courts' propensity to write new liberal law, the argument can easily go to bestiality without too extreme a rhetorical leap.

Well, in fact Sargent has heard of the "slippery slope," since he ends the post with:

Separately, it's worth pointing out that Huck's quote above doesn't even use the tried-and-true "slippery slope" argument to couch his view that homosexuality is akin to bestiality. It's a direct equivalence.

Must every candidate statement be footnoted and parenthesis-ized to present all relevant background? That seems too tall a test by a factor of a bunch of numbers. besides, Sargent analysis is utterly oblique. Here's Huck again:

I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again.

Note the logical progression, coincidentally exactly as I laid it out above (other than the polygamist gets three women instead of two), and I wasn't cross-checking. As if that did not define a slippery slope well enough, Huck added that the law would "open the door to change [the definition] again." That is what we mean when we say slippery slope.

You open the door, and there before you is a slippery slope.

Sargent is showing the common anti-Born Again prejudice in his extreme and inflammatory interpretation of Huckabee's position. So here's a slippery slope argument for him: If we allow you to open your door to redefining marriage, the next move will be to accept the Left's opening the door to banning un-multicultural thought and speech.

But if that happens, it will be the Right that is prosecuted for their thoughts, not the Left, so Sargent feels free to fling the door open to his hearts content, because he has no fear of the slope he will slide down.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Anglican Leader Between A Rock And A Gay Place

Bad days are ahead for the Anglican church, I'd say, as its Archbishop panders to the country's most wealthy, liberal ... and morally questionable ... believers. Reports the Times of London:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to hold a secret Communion service for gay clergy and their partners in London.

Williams will celebrate the Communion at the unfortunately named St Peter’s cathedral at tony Eaton Square, comparable to dishing up the wine and wafer in Cambridge or Nob Hill.

What's really interesting about this article is how it shows the duplicitous, double standard ways of the liberals when it comes to homosexuality. There's nothing wrong with gays, they say, but by all means, keep someone's gayness a big secret ... unless they're conservatives, of course.

The event has been organised under Chatham House rules, which prevent any disclosure of the discussions. The event will take place at 10am on November 29. A list of the names of those who will be present will be seen only by Dr Williams. It will be shredded afterwards.

Shredded?!

Look, my dear old Archbishop chap, you're either OK with gays or you're not. They're either just like us, or they're not, so if you're not shredding the names of clergy who attend your routine Communions, don't shred the names of the folks attending the gay ones. And if you're not offering a straight Lord's Supper, don't offer a gay one.

In this matter I am unusually in accord with the Rev Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement who blasted the Archie for trying to pull off the ceremony in secret. I'm no fan of secrecy, if for no reason than it's rarely a successful strategy. Kirker's got some other problems:

“I don’t think it is a good thing in many ways. The conditions of secrecy are quite at variance with the openness of his meetings with a panoply of antigay church leaders. We are astonished at the attempts to make the meeting clandestine when it would be far better to have this in the open. The fact that he wants to go there without anyone knowing he’s going there makes it quite clear that he has an attitude towards the event that he doesn’t have at any other meetings.”

All and all, it's trouble Williams doesn't need in a church that's barely holding together, pulled one way by those who believe the Bible is there for a living purpose and the other way by those who think the Book is a nice, but quaint and disposable, collection of literary imagery.

Left Wing Gay-Bating

The Left has it so hard. They have to keep their wretched belief systems intact no matter how violently the logic bull bucks them.

Bush hates gays! Yeah! We hate Bush!

Bush's closest confidants are gay! Yeah, we hate Bush!

[Insert retro sound of needle scratching on vinyl.]

Here's the latest, from the blog The Gist in which the author is discussing a Condi Rice hit book by author Glenn Kessler:

There have long been questions about Rice's sexual orientation and her personal life in general. As Kessler notes, "She has built a wall of privacy around her that is never breached." But Kessler had access to Rice's closest friends and to Rice herself, and he reveals some eyebrow-raising information that hasn't been out there before.

In the book and on the show, Kessler described how Rice's "closest male friend" is openly gay, a man by the name of Coit D. Blacker, a Stanford professor (Rice served as the provost as Stanford in the late 1990s for six years) and a Democrat who served in the Clinton administration. Blacker, whose partner is also mentioned, advised Al Gore's campaign in 2000, while his close friend Rice served as a chief confidante for a president who has tried to make gays into second class citizens in the U.S. Constitution. But wait, it gets better.

Rice's "closest female friend" is a woman named Randy Bean (pictured here), who is unmarried and whose sexual orientation is not stated. She is described as a "liberal progressive;" she's a documentary filmmaker who works at Standford University and once worked for Bill Moyers. She and Rice and Blacker (again, who has a partner) are discussed as a "second family," a term Bean uses, also saying that, "on friends, [Rice] goes narrow and deep."

According to newly revealed information in the book (which Kessler found through real estate records), the two women, Rice and Bean (yes, hilarious), own a home together and have a line of credit together.

"for a president who has tried to make gays into second class citizens in the U.S. Constitution" -- Lie, lie, lie. The movement to force gay marriage into the law of the land through the courts, which typically is opposed to 70 percent or so of Americans, and the Prez is merely acting to thwart their assault on our laws and our sensibilities.

But onto what I''m really writing about here ...

It's just too ironic. First they were convinced Karl Rove -- wife, kids and all -- was gay, never realizing the irony of having the man who hated gays the most having a gay as the man he trusted the most.

Now Karl's gone and rather walk away from their untenable, disconnected position, they have to find a replacement gay that's a Bush confidant. Cheney's daughter's not close enough to the Prez, so they fire up the Condi Rice rumor machine.

It's clear that Bush has the same view of most Christians when it comes to homosexuals -- they're guilty of a sinful behavior, sure, but who isn't? We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. There's no reason for hatred, in fact, there's no reason not to be friends or trusted advisors.

That the "tolerant" Left doesn't get this says a lot, doesn't it?