BigT’s Roundup - (9-16-07)

Teachers
are definitely paid less than they deserve. They should be paid at
least $100,000. Not by any of us mind you but by liberals whose
socialist agenda is promoted by those wonderful educators. Echoing
liberal lies and half truths a teacher sent home a letter, to spark discussion, asking parents to sign a letter renouncing their citizenship. The reason for this? Illegal wiretaps, taking innocent people to Cuba to torture, and the like.

Don’t overreact though because the principal ensures us that the
teacher was not making any ideological statements but was trying to
teach in a new way what it was like to sign the Declaration of
Independence. And here I thought the Declaration of Independence listed
a bunch of grievances that had to deal with usurpation of colonial
self-government, not geopolitical misgivings. Liberals are crazy and they just might go off the deep end. Good job News Busters for unearthing this story that should be heard.

Hugh Hewitt is probably the best guy to listen to on the radio if
you want to know what really smart people are saying about really
complex issues. He recently interviewed Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and he had this to say:

Well, it’s a mixed report. You know, al Qaeda central
has been, to some extent, reduced, isolated. It’s been unable to
accomplish many of its major goals, especially capturing a Muslim
country, and restoring the caliphate, and creating a kind of theocratic
law. That it’s failed to do. But on the other hand, essentially after
November, December, 2001, after the Tora Bora battle, al Qaeda was
pretty much a zombie. It was over. The war on terror was at an end, and
it’s been amazing to see how that organization has been able to
reconstitute itself. It’s now deeply rooted in a lot of countries where
it wasn’t present before. The banner of al Qaeda has been taken up by a
lot of disaffected young Muslims around the world who hadn’t been
interested in it before. So on balance, I think it’s as dangerous as it
was before 9/11, but in different ways.

Definitely not a good thing. Does this mean that fighting in Iraq
created this situation? I don’t see how since Saddam, we are told by
our liberal friends, was hated by the Islamofascists because he was a
secular ruler in a Muslim land. So either he was loved and his deposing
sparked this suicidal rage in a bunch of Muslim youths or there is no
forced assimilation of immigrants in most (any?) Western countries and
Islamic extremism is a welcomed home for these middle class Muslims.

Hugh also directs us to this article from the (UK) Times.
Probably the biggest non-story that should have been a big story of the week was Israel bombing Syria. We
cannot be sure exactly why they did this but the general consensus is
that they bombed underground facilities holding nuclear material.
Israel cannot wait around and place their faith in diplomacy when the
weapon that could destroy their people sits comfortably miles away.

Something that is also telling about this situation is that Syria
did not bitch a fit after it happened. Obviously they were guilty of
something really bad (the only option I can think of is nukes). But
where did they get these nukes? Using AQ Khan’s
network as a liaison with the North Koreans the Syrians were able to
smuggle in the nukes under the guise of a shipment of cement from the
communist country. Another possibility, I think, is that the nuclear
arsenal could have come from Iraq pre-invasion. Just a thought,
throwing it out there.

And I personally want to thank a writer at DailyKOS, Devilstower,
for making concrete predictions about how the Earth will look in 2040.
Most won’t do this because, well, they’ve been burned in the past with
predictions of global famine and drought and death and disease. But
someone must not have gotten the memo:

For months, I’ve been putting together the pieces of a
book on what the world will be like in 2040. I’ve been weighing the
effects of climate change, contemplating Appalachians stripped of their
forests and exposed as layers of limestone and shale, marble and
schist, interrupted by scars of mining and the weedy beds of dry
rivers. Crumbling mountains that rise above a dusty southeast, where
the drought-baked topsoil blows past the wave washed ruins of coastal
vacation homes to fall far out at sea.

And I’ve been thinking of ice. Ice on land and ice on water. Ice
that slips, slides, fractures and melts. Ice that vanishes, carrying
away ecosystems and changing the map of the world.

Of course he says he will not be around to see this devastation:

Even now, with the evidence for global warming more
clear each day, there’s still something comforting in the way most
predictions are framed as “by the end of the century.” It seems so far
away. Even 2040 seems far away. In fact it’s a year that I, personally,
am unlikely to see.

So, once again, a soothsayer will not be able to be called out
because he is six feet under. Well, unless global floods cause his
coffin to float….

And whoever said Venezuela can’t do anything right? Well, they can make a big pot of soup, that’s for sure.

Ingrid was downgraded to a tropical depression
meaning that media outlets hot after certifiable proof that global
warming is causing wacky weather go deeper into their own depression.

And for you finance wonks the fed is probably going to cut rates. BigT




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