Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water? Well, do you know what it is?... Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?... Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridated water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake. Children's ice cream?... You know when fluoridation first began?... Nineteen hundred and forty six. Nineteen fortysix, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your postwar commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice.
Starvation was the punishment of first resort. As report after report shows, food was distributed by the spoonful according to merit and used to force people to obey the party...Via Instapundit, who writes:
As the catastrophe unfolded, people were forced to resort to previously unthinkable acts to survive. As the moral fabric of society unraveled, they abused one another, stole from one another and poisoned one another....
One police investigation from Feb. 25, 1960, details some 50 cases in Yaohejia village in Gansu: “Name of culprit: Yang Zhongsheng. Name of victim: Yang Ecshun. Relationship with Culprit: Younger Brother. Manner of Crime: Killed and Eaten. Reason: Livelihood Issues.”
The term “famine” tends to support the widespread view that the deaths were largely the result of half-baked and poorly executed economic programs. But the archives show that coercion, terror and violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward.
Socialism starves. Capitalism enriches. It’s been proven over and over again. But remember: Communism is about “human dignity.”...
By presenting it uncritically, the Vienna museum is subtly legitimizing the world’s cruelest regime....What about a Viennese gallery? You'd think Austria would be more sensitive.... about its own reputation.
Like most socialist realism, this “art” is devoid of complexity. Whatever talents the North Korean painters may possess are tragically subordinated to Stalinist politics and stultifying adulation of the Dear Leader. The descriptions of the artwork underline its utterly bland, primitive, and unenlightening character: “The leaders’ closeness to the people is repeatedly emphasized,” reads the press release. “Red, internationally recognized as being symbolic of socialism, is employed most frequently.” My tour guide’s attempt to distinguish the works from those produced in other Communist societies by labeling it “Idealistic Realism” only underscored the lengths to which the MAK has had to go in order to justify the exhibition....
Could one imagine, in the 1930s, an English gallery featuring Nazi art in such undiscerning fashion?...
The Texas state school board gave final approval Friday to controversial social studies standards....The students are required to "describe how McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the arms race, and the space race increased Cold War tensions and how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government..." The word "vindicated" is inflammatory and unfair. What is the Washington Post saying historians deny? One can be informed of the reality of what the Venona Papers revealed about communist infiltration into the U.S. government and still understand and deplore the excesses of "McCarthyism."
The new standards say that the McCarthyism of the 1950s was later vindicated -- something most historians deny --...
...draw an equivalency between Jefferson Davis's and Abraham Lincoln's inaugural addresses...Students are required to "analyze the ideas contained in Jefferson Davis' inaugural address and Abraham Lincoln's ideas about liberty, equality, union, and government as contained in his first and second inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address." The word "equivalency" is uncalled for. The requirement is to analyze, not to be indoctrinated that the ideas are the same.
... say that international institutions such as the United Nations imperil American sovereignty...What I'm seeing is "explain the significance of the League of Nations and the United Nations" and "analyze the human and physical factors that influence the power to control territory, create conflict/war, and impact international political relations such as the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), or the control of resources." Where is the language that can be paraphrased "imperil American sovereignty"?
.... and include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn.Students are required to "explain the roles played by significant individuals and heroes during the Civil War, including Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and congressional Medal of Honor recipients William Carney and Philip Bazaar." Only Davis and Lee were Confederate officials! There is also this: "describe the role of individuals such as governors George Wallace, Orval Faubus, and Lester Maddox and groups, including the Congressional bloc of southern Democrats, that sought to maintain the status quo [in the Civil Rights Era]." That's obviously not from the Civil War, but I can see why it's annoying to Democrats.
They also removed references to capitalism and replaced them with the term "free-enterprise system."The document on economics does use the term "free enterprise system" throughout, but students are required to "understand that the terms free enterprise, free market, and capitalism are synonymous terms to describe the U.S. economic system," so what is the problem?
Students will now study "efforts by global organizations to undermine U.S. sovereignty," an addition late Thursday evening encouraged by board member Don McLeroy (R), who has put forward many of the most contentious changes....This provides support for Birnbaum's statement that the standards "include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn." And it answers my question "Where is the language that can be paraphrased 'imperil American sovereignty'?" My criticisms about "vindicating" McCarthyism, "the equivalency between Jefferson Davis's and Abraham Lincoln's inaugural addresses," and the term "free-enterprise system" remain.
Another one of the seven conservative board members, David Bradley (R), added a list of Confederate generals and officials to the list of topics that students must study. ...
With luck, this student won’t have her career ruined, or even much affected. I’ve seen a public call for her to be expelled.... but I doubt that this will happen. And even if some of the best future jobs are closed off to her, at least for a while, a Harvard Law diploma will get you to plenty of places. She doesn’t have to worry, I suspect, about not being able to feed herself or her future family.Isn't this a teaching moment for Harvard Law School? Dean Minow's memo dated April 29th said:
Yet the public revelation of a private conversation; the public condemnation by management; the obvious danger of serious career ramifications; the apology, which I take it came out of a fear of those ramifications — all for daring to say to friends something that simply represents a basic scientific principle (the need to be open to the possibility that there are racial differences in intelligence, as one is open to other possibilities on other scientific questions) — that just sounded a little too familiar to me.
It’s a pale echo, but of something so bad that we should be wary even of pale echoes.
A troubling event and its reverberations can offer an opportunity to increase awareness, and to foster dialogue and understanding. The BLSA leadership brought this view to our meeting yesterday, and I share their wish to turn this moment into one that helps us make progress in a community dedicated to fairness and justice.So the original "troubling event" was something Minow chose to use as a teaching moment to increase awareness, and to foster dialogue and understanding. She embraced the practice of turning the difficult material into an occasion to make progress in a community dedicated to fairness and justice.
President Obama is declaring his stake in the November midterm elections, as his Democratic Party prepares to announce an ambitious strategy to appeal to independent voters in its quest to maintain control of Congress.Declare! Ambitious! Strategy! Appeal! Independent! Quest! Control!
Obama plans to issue a call-to-action video message to his supporters on Monday. Democratic officials called the video the first in a series of personal efforts designed to rekindle the grass-roots momentum that propelled Obama to the presidency -- this time, in a way that will benefit his party's congressional and gubernatorial candidates.Let me try to understand. The Washington Post, which aspires to prestige in journalism, is front-paging the news that the President of the United States is going to release a campaign video and that he wants his party to win in the November elections? And it presents this non-news in cheesy PR language? Do the editors have no shame?
I see the analogy between global warming and the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the Iraq war. Those who planned the war believed there were other good reasons to go to war with Iraq, but they made a decision to use weapons of mass destruction as the reason to go to war, because they thought people could understand this reason and unite behind the war effort. But then, when the WMD were not found, the war looked like a big mistake.Now, here comes big Al Gore with a huge op-ed in the NYT that begins with a fat juicy piece of evidence that I was right:
... [P]eople [who] support the policies that are supposed to deal with global warming [may have] other reasons they have for wanting those policies [but may] rely on the global warming prediction rather than those other reasons....
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.He wants the policies that are sold under the name "global warming" whether the prediction of global warming is right or wrong.
Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.
[T]he crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer....The "pollution" is carbon dioxide, which is what flows out of our noses and mouths when we exhale. Do you think of your breathing passages as spewing shit? There's nothing dirty or toxic about carbon dioxide. The problem has only to do with the greenhouse effect. But isn't it so much more effective — i.e., scarier — to make people think we're still talking about filth?
The decisive victory of democratic capitalism over communism in the 1990s led to a period of philosophical dominance for market economics worldwide and the illusion of a unipolar world. It also led, in the United States, to a hubristic “bubble” of market fundamentalism that encouraged opponents of regulatory constraints to mount an aggressive effort to shift the internal boundary between the democracy sphere and the market sphere.When someone writes like that, I get suspicious. I want to rewrite it in plain English: After the fall of communism, people placed more trust in the market and were wary of government-dictated solutions.
Over time, markets would most efficiently solve most problems, they argued. Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carried a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated.Yeah, that's what was already in my translation of your previous windbaggage. Maybe this piece is just padded. Maybe it's a devious plot to bore us into submission.
This period of market triumphalism coincided with confirmation by scientists that earlier fears about global warming had been grossly understated.Oh? Just a coincidence? Al Gore has unwittingly tweaked my suspicion that the scientists are politicos.
Simultaneously, changes in America’s political system — including the replacement of newspapers and magazines by television as the dominant medium of communication — conferred powerful advantages on wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets and weakened advocates of legal and regulatory reforms. Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment.Quick: Name a showman masquerading as political thinker. You said "Al Gore," right?
And as in times past, that has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic. Their most consistent theme is to label as “socialist” any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace.As in what "times past"? Is the lively public debate of today somehow akin to the racial bigotry that stalled civil rights legislation? Because worrying about socialism isn't expressed as hatred. Really, Gore seems to expect people to lie back and accept whatever the government decides is good for us.
From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.What?! I knew this was religion! We're supposed to believe. And please don't use "rule of law" as a synonym for government regulation.
Later this week, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are expected to present for consideration similar cap-and-trade legislation.And we should just lie back and take it.
Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.The mouth, is, as noted, a sewer.
Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.
Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.
“Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?” Mr. Gore said. “I am proud of it. I am proud of it.”So the market is great... when it's making you a billionaire.
Keeping up with Jones: Republicans are accusing one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers of being a communist and calling for his resignation....Whether the Bush administration allowed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to happen as a pretext for war? The petition — read it — "calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war." (Boldface added.)
Mr. Jones was caught on tape using an unprintable word to describe Republicans and allowed his name to be put on a letter requesting an investigation of whether the Bush administration allowed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to happen as a pretext for war....
Conservatives are abuzz over the mainstream media’s oversight of the story. According to the Washington Examiner, as of 11:30 a.m. Friday, none of the major news outlets, including The Times, had mentioned the controversy.
Controversy over Mr. Jones’s past comments and affiliations has slowly escalated over several weeks, erupting on Friday with calls for his resignation.Not just knowingly, but deliberately. Please quote to the petition. And link to it.
Appointed as a special adviser for “green jobs” by President Obama, Mr. Jones did not go through the traditional vetting process for administration officials who must be confirmed by the Senate. So it was not until recently that some of Mr. Jones’s past actions received broad airing, including his derogatory statements about Republicans in February and his signature on a 2004 letter suggesting that former President George W. Bush might have knowingly allowed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to occur in order to use them as a “pre-text to war.”
Mr. Jones’s involvement in the 1990s with a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement prompted recent accusations by conservative critics that he associated with Communists. The group, according to a post-mortem written by some of its founders, was an anti-capitalist, antiwar organization committed to achieving “solidarity among all oppressed peoples” with “direct militant action.”"Involvement," "statements," "associations" — what did Jones do exactly? The NYT should serve its readers by putting us in a position to think about the trustworthiness of the Obama administration and its selection of "czars." This isn't just another occasion to note that "Republican blogs" and "conservative talk show hosts" attack the administration. It's interesting that the opposition won a "victory," but more important than the endless partisan battles is the question whether we can trust the administration.
Republican blogs and conservative talk show hosts, notably Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel, seized upon Mr. Jones’s statements and associations.
Mr. Jones apologized on Wednesday...Does that mean the NYT will not go into the matter of what Jones did and said and what the Obama administration knew about it? He's gone now. Go back to looking away, like good little Obamites.
“I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past,” Mr. Jones said in a statement announcing his resignation that was released early Sunday morning....
One woman said there were four known communists in the government and that she'd researched it on the internet. When I asked her afterwards, she said environmental adviser Van Jones, legal advisor Cass Sunstein (who was last spotted being excoriated by the left for supporting the FISA revisions), someone named Lloyd and she didn't remember the fourth. And wasn't it suspicious that Obama had all these czars working for him--that was a Russkie commie term, wasn't it? When I asked, the woman admitted that, among other things, she occasionally listened to William Bennett's conservative radio show. I pointed out that Bennett had once been the Drug Czar, appointed by Ronald Reagan. Life sure can be complicated sometimes.Wow. Joe got a lot out of one woman in Nebraska! But remember, what he asserts is "astonishing" is "the number" of people who think there are communists in the government. I certainly agree that the number one is astonishing. You'd think, by now, a lot more would be plunging ahead and using the inflammatory word.
I was later told by a local observer that many of these vomitous, disgraceful notions were the fruit of Glenn Beck's fruitful imagination. "We are living Glenn Beck's fantasy life," said this audience member. The amazing thing remains not only the unwillingness of responsible Republicans--a term that is in danger of becoming an oxymoron--to call bull-- on this, but also the willingness of many prominent Republicans to join in the slinging of garbage.Astonishing... amazing... poor Joe is continually surprised by ordinary things. What's amazing? Blech... I have to reread: not only the unwillingness of responsible Republicans... to call bullshit on this, but also the willingness of many prominent Republicans to join in the slinging of garbage. So what's amazing — to plow through Klein's verbiage — is that Republicans use and put up with inflammatory rhetoric.
Michelle Cottle reports that there are Republican-sanctioned efforts afoot to have parents not send their children to school on September 8 because the President is scheduled to address the nation's school-children that day and they are afraid that he will fill their little heads with socialist propaganda. That is somewhere well beyond disgraceful.No, Joe. Because they are disgusted at the melding of partisan political power and education and the prospect of a child made to accept compulsory school in the form of gazing upon the face of our leader. Imagine if Bush had proposed such an exercise for all of the children on the first day of school. Well, Bush would never have proposed such a thing because: 1. He didn't have the fawning approval of the vast majority of teachers, and 2. He never acquired the idea that his countenance and voice could inspire the masses. But if he did you know very well, Joe, that you'd have been disgusted at Bush, not the people who objected to his absurd display.
Could I just say that the intensity of this getting pretty scary...and dangerous?Could I just say... may I be so bold... timid little me... can I please just say something... I'm scared! It's dangerous!!!1!!111!
We are heading toward a cliff and the usual brakes of civil discourse are not working.Get a grip, Joe, you timorous mouse of a man. But that's just a joke. I know you're not really concerned about "civil discourse" in the abstract. You're annoyed that the people have started paying attention and are not sitting back in awed reverence like the most confused and cowed first grader watching that nice man on TV. You thought that when the Democrats won — "I won!" — they'd be able to roll up their preferences into 1000-page bundles and there wouldn't be anything people could do about it. But — lo and behold! — they used speech, free speech, they spoke their minds, sometimes harshly and with hot emotion, but they got themselves heard. If you think that is "heading toward a cliff" without "the usual brakes," then I say you don't believe in a free democratic society.
Indeed, the Republicans have the pedal to the metal--rushing us toward a tragedy far greater than the California health care forum finger-biting Karen describes below.What tragedy? Not passing a sprawling, amorphous, unproven rearrangement of the way health care is paid for? Who is plying overheated, irrational rhetoric? That lady in Nebraska? Glenn Beck? Or Joe Klein?
