I have never been a big fan of news polls. It’s just too easy to sway the results by selecting the sample group. Besides, who really cares? The real reason most polls are taken is to try and sway the opinion of folks who where not polled. C’mon, you know it and I know it.

Well, with that said, I read about a poll today. I won’t give you the specifics because of what I just said. (But if you want to read it for yourself, clicky clicky.) What I will tell you is that 100% of Americans who write the posts on this blog agree that the MSM and desperate democrats in Congress are dead wrong about the “Wire Tap” issue.

I find it very interesting that while Ted Kennedy and CBS News are screaming for Bush’s crucifixion, average Joes like me are glad to hear that Bush and the NSA are doing everything they can to catch terrorists before they strike. Personally, I could care less if the government listened in on my telephone calls. My only concern would be that they are wasting my tax dollars to listen to my wife remind me what to pick up at the grocery store. But I know good and well, that that is not what the NSA is doing. They are listening in on phone calls of people with known terrorist connections. Can I get a “Amen”?!

Since spineless liberals live and die by poll numbers, don’t be surprised if this issue suddenly vanishes from the news.

I love to race. I’ve raced remote controlled cars and full sized cars. I’ve raced in the water and on foot. I love to watch others race too, from NASCAR to the Olympics. But that does not make me a racist!

I grew up in a mid-sized, mid-western town. I attended a small, country school with all 13 grades on one campus. There were twenty-something kids in my senior class, which means there were around 300-350 students in the entire school. Out of those, there were right about three black kids.

A few members of my family were (and are) blatant bigots. I heard more “nigger jokes” than I care to admit. If my life had been this way all along, I might also be a bigot. But God had other plans.

When I was in second grade (at the tender age of eight), my dad got a job with the Reagan administration and we spent two years living in Northern Virginia. I was bussed to school. No, I don’t mean that I lived so far from a suitable campus that I had to ride a bus to get there. I mean fell victim to the ridiculous 1960’s civil rights scam in which a small number of white kids are hauled across town to attend a black school and vice versa. This was some how supposed to even out the segregated school system. What a stupid idea. However, it did have an effect on civil rights, at least as far as one white eight year old from Texas was concerned. It revealed to me the truth behind racism. And here it is:

Racism is not about the struggle of the black man under the boot of the white man. Racism is not about minorities clamoring for undeserved “entitlements”. Racism is about hate, pure and simple.

Here was an innocent little boy from Texas (well, mostly innocent) who had probably not seen more than a dozen blacks in his whole life. Suddenly, I found myself in a large, inner-city elementary school with two, count ’em, two other white kids. There was one white teacher, who, in hind sight, I’m pretty sure was gay. The rest were bitter, angry, frustrated, black women. In my first week of class, my English teacher said I was stupid and that “those schools down in Texas must not teach nuthin’.” My third grade teacher refused to accept a paper that was wrinkled because she said I had tried to throw it away. (That logic still eludes me.) When I protested, I was given an after school detention. This was the worst punishment available, as it meant my father would have to drive an hour through Washington D.C. traffic to pick me up. I remember my mom sitting me down and asking me if I knew what “honky” meant, just in case.

I’m not trying to garner sympathy here. I’m simply trying to explain that I have learned what it is to be discriminated against for no other reason than the color of my skin. When those teachers saw me, they didn’t see a boy, they saw a white boy and thus their own little chance to avenge their own sufferings. How could that be any different than the racism they may well have faced growing up?

God taught me a valuable lesson. All people really are equal in this one thing. They are all fallen creatures capable of hate. But they all have the opportunity to rise above that. Through the grace of God we can choose to look beyond the surface because the surface is nothing.

This logic goes both ways, mind you. Every white man and woman can (and should) ignore the ignorant indoctrination they’ve heard about “those” black people and refuse to assume the worst when they meet one. If you don’t clutch your purse or lock your car door when you see a white guy, why would you when you see a black guy? (Trust me, there are plenty of white guy’s out there for whom you should lock your doors.)

By the same token, black men and women can (and should) ignore the ignorant indoctrination they’ve heard about white people. The government is not out to get you and if a white person gets a job for which you applied, don’t assume it’s because “da Man” is keeping you down.

Now that I have that off my chest, here are the articles I was going to blog about when I started this sermon. (Sorry. I got carried away.)

I really like Morgan Freeman. I’m certain there are issues on which we would not see eye to eye, but every time I see him speak publicly, I like him even more. He is very intelligent and articulate (proving that Ebonics is a scam). I recently read part of an interview he did in which Mike Wallace (the crown prince of liberal media pukage) asked him about racism. Why, oh why, must the media insist on saddling every successful black man or woman with this same question? Well, Morgan had a brilliant answer:

“How can we get rid of racism?

“Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man,” Freeman says to Wallace. “And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You wouldn’t say, ‘Well, I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.’ You know what I’m sayin’?”

You may have read about Mayor Ray Nagin’s “chocolate city” comment. (If not, you can learn about it here and here.) Today I read the most intelligent comment on the matter I’ve heard so far.

If we’re talking about making a conscious effort to repopulate New Orleans with a high percentage of African-Americans, let’s be clear about why anyone would even really worry about this in the first place: Louisiana Democrats running in statewide campaigns cannot win, cannot even come close, without a concentrated base of political support in New Orleans.

In other words, the black Democratic political leaders in Louisiana (like the disgraced Mr. Nagin) need their “huddled masses” of poor blacks back. They’ve spent the last three decades or so conditioning those people to believe that their only hope is the Democratic party and it’s government hand-outs when, in fact, Republicans, white or black, would do what those same huddled masses really need: Stop giving them hand-outs and help them help themselves out of the disgusting poverty of the 9th ward. These are people, after all, not just votes.

In relation to my previous post about the French riots…

Here’s an insightful blog post from someone who lived in one of the “suburbs” (read: slums) were “youths” (read: Muslim terrorists) are causing “civil unrest” (read: war).

Please don’t think that I’m some kind of anti-Muslim bigot. I’m not. I’m not anti-Islam any more than I’m anti-Hindu or anti-Mormon which is to say, I think they are on the wrong path, but through the love of Christ, I yearn for their salvation. I don’t think we (meaning America) should spray paint slurs on the houses of our Muslim neighbors. I just think we (meaning the media) should stop trying to cover up the truth about militant Islam and the “religion of peace”.

It took me a while to figure out the riots that are tearing France apart. I read a few news blurbs trying to discover the reason behind the civil unrest, but all that was reported was that a couple of “youths” were “accidentally” killed by police. That just didn’t register with me.

That was until I finally found this piece which gives us a peak at the truth behind the riots. The “poor suburbs of Paris were set ablaze” by North African Muslim immigrants.

France has long been courting the Islamic community and welcoming any immigration that might “diversify” France. Now, according to Paris’ police union, the mostly Muslim “ghettos” around Paris are in a state of “civil war”. I am not making this up! The violence has spread to other cities with large Muslim populations and, if you can believe what you read on the internet (yeah, I know), there is currently an influx of illicit money and guns into France with the purpose of arming this “unrest”.

Why is it that mainstream media continues to call this “civil unrest” and the perpetrators “youths”? How can they continue to insist that all this “unrest” was caused when “two youths jumped over the wall of an electrical substation and died, thinking they were being pursued by the police”?! Can someone explain to me the difference between the “unrest” in Paris and the “war” in Chechnya? Could some on clear up the distinction between French “youths” and Iraqi “terrorists”? Yyyeah. That’d be great.

This should come as no surprise to anyone level headed enough to see the modern democratic party for what it is. Still, the hypocrisy of the left has reached new lows in recent weeks.

Maryland’s first black lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, has fallen under increasingly ugly attacks from the black democrats in his state. Steele is running for the US Senate and he represents an increasing trend in conservative Republican minorities. This trend is stealing minority votes from the liberal Democratic party, something Democrats can ill afford. Desperate times… so they say.

Lt. Gov. Steele has been pelted with Oreo cookies (implying that he is “white on the inside”). He has been caricatured as black singing minstrel on liberal web sites, and even faced gross racial slurs that, if uttered by a WASP like me, would result in riots in the streets.

But, what-ho? Do you mean it was not some calloused white hate-monger hurling these opprobrious epithets? Nope. It was members of his own race such as former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume. In justifying his bigotry, Mr. Mfume said, “There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names.” By that argument I could say that Kweisi Mfume, by virtue of his African name, is obviously a nigger. But I wouldn’t say something like that because I’m better than that. (Apparently, Mr. Mfume is not.)

According to Maryland State Senator Lisa Glidden, also a… person of African descent, “Party trumps race.” Frankly that’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a very long time. (Well, no, it’s not. Keep reading. It gets worse.)

Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said, “Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community. His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people.”

So that must been that Ted Kennedy, the whitest cracker in the Democratic party, knows more about what blacks need than the quite black Mr. Steele. And according to Mr. Kennedy and his Democratic party, blacks need more handouts from the government to make sure they don’t get a real education, leading to a real job, leading to real housing and real opportunity for advancement. Forcing blacks to rely on federal welfare keeps them in federal slave camps… oops! I mean federal housing projects… where they can continue to attend the worst schools in the nation and be taught by the most underpaid and bitter teachers the important lessons in life, which are, of course, vote Democrat and use condoms. Why just think how the world would fall apart if those kids found out the truth and became Republicans!!

The following link is rated R for foul language. I don’t generally post such gratuitous linguistic crimes, but this one is worth it.

Penn and Teller have a show called… well… Bull[Poop], on which they expose the lies behind some of our societies odd behaviors. They’ve covered topics from alien abduction to recycling programs. Penn uses lots of foul language, but makes very valid points (although I don’t agree with every topic they’ve covered).

They did a scathing expose on PETA which you can view here. (This is the rated R link I talked about.)

If you’d rather protect your virgin ears, I’ll sum up the finer points of the video.

Simply put, PETA thinks animals are more valuable than people.

• They’ve run campaigns comparing chicken and beef processing to the Holocaust. So chickens are at least as valuable as Jews.
• They espouse and financially support terrorist who firebomb medical facilities that use lab animals for testing. So mice are more valuable that the millions of humans who benefit from modern medicine.
• They insist on “total animal liberation” including the abolition of pet ownership, which they call “slavery”. So gerbils deserve the same rights as African Americans.

What this video does best is expose the wild hypocrisy of the militant animal rights movement.

• The vast majority of PETA’s contributions come from animal lovers who own pets. PETA would make it illegal to own pets.
• PETA holds protests at animal shelters where sick, injured, and stray animals are euthanized. PETA’s own shelters euthanize two thirds of the animals they receive.
• PETA would outlaw medical testing on animals and the use of animals to produce medicine. The vice president of PETA is a diabetic who uses insulin that was developed through animal testing (on dogs) and was produced with the use of animals (probably pigs).

Ahh, I love the smell of bacon in the morning. That and the sound of “activists” eating their own words.

Through a link of a link of a link, I came across an article written back in 2000 by the founder and former director of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore. Moore does a great job debunking the current enviro-nazi rhetoric and defacing 21st century environmentalist movement.

I now look at the mainstream environmental movement that I loved and can barely recognize it. Why? Because it has abandoned science to follow agendas that have little to do with saving the earth.
…
We have an environmental movement that is run by people who want to fight – not to win.

Please read the complete article here.

(via TenNapel)

Once again, I find myself five posts behind and several days late on the latest news. Jeez, this information age keeps burying me in information!

So, today, I am forced to do another bulk post to get myself caught up. I now present this week’s Non-News Update! <Big Fanfare />

The pundits that be continue to butt heads regarding the tragedy du jour, Hurricane Katrina. In one of the saddest displays of unbrained journalism I’ve ever read, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Bruce Babbitt in which Mr. Babbitt insists that Congress must determine whether or not to rebuild New Orleans. He states, “New Orleans will survive only as an island surrounded by miles of open water.” I don’t even know where to begin debunking this pile of monkey hurlage.

First, Congress (as in the legislative branch of the federal government) should have absolutely no say in the future of New Orleans. New Orleans has its own city and county governments, not to mention the State of Louisiana, all of which are rightly in charge of their own jurisdiction. You would think Mr. Babbitt, who did time on President Clinton’s cabinet, would understand that we live in a federal republic where state’s rights are held sacred… most of the time.

Second, New Orleans is still there. Yes, there is much damage and muck to be dealt with, but Mr. Babbitt makes it sound as if the city had been scraped into the sea.

Third, Mr. Babbitt bases his hypothesis on the scare-tactic rhetoric of tree-hugging, global warming, fear mongers (of which he is a shining example) who have been proven wrong scientifically over and over again. The theory that “sea levels are likely to rise two to three feet in this century.” is based entirely on the fuzzy math of ice cap depletion.

None of this should come as any surprise given Mr. Babbitt’s track record (which you can see more of here). This guy is an A-1 eco-nazi nut-job.

Now, allow your gaze to drift to the right were the other end of the political spectrum has discovered some striking evidence in defense of our good Mr. Bush.

As you may know, President Gee-Dub, speaking the press, accepted responsibility for the quality of the response to victims of Katrina. What you may not know is that the quality of the response was, in fact, better than that of previous hurricanes. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an opinion piece which includes a remarkable quote from an Army National Guardsman who has been deployed in many similar disaster relief efforts:

“The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”

The article goes on to point out that, after Hurricane Andrew, it took five days for the National Guard to organize and arrive on the scene in Florida. In Louisiana, however, the guard was there in only three days. So, if the government was racist in its Katrina recover effort, then the 2002 government must have really had it in for all those poor, elderly, caucasian retirees in Florida!

A former Air Force logistics officer is also quoted with regard to the MSM‘s false charges:

“We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on ‘star Trek’ in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree… You cannot just snap your fingers and make the military appear somewhere.

Strangely, the media has not made much of the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans which were not utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck.

The Mexican Army is on American soil for the first time 150 years, but this time it has nothing to do with the Alamo.

45 trucks crossed the border last Friday carrying about 200 military personel (and about 800 “undocumented volunteers”… Juuuust kidding!). Fifteen trucks are loaded with water, which, of course, hurricane victims have been warned not to drink. (Pah-dum-tshh) Click here to see exclusive pictures of the convoy just before crossing the border.

The Mexican government also announced that it had dispatched a Mexican Navy cruiser to the Mississippi coast, pictured here.

In a follow-up to several previous posts, the woman who claimed to have found a human finger in her Wendy’s chili, along with her co-conspirator husband, pled guilty to attempted grand theft and other charges relating to her false claim.

David Boyd, from the District Attorney’s office, said, “Thankfully, law enforcement thwarted their successful efforts at theft.” Uhhhh, right. I think he means that the cops discovered the plot before it succeeded. Anyway…

Anna Ayala faces up to ten years in prison for her failed fast food finger finding fraud. (Oooh! Impressive alliteration!) Several employees of the San Jose Wendy’s franchise were laid off after sales dropped 70% in the wake of Ayala’s false claim.

Her attorney voiced her remorse. “There are a lot of people that work for Wendy’s that were harmed. She always felt a lot of remorse about that.” Umm… “She always felt a lot…” Googly moogly, don’t you have to take a couple of English classes to get a law degree?

While things at work have been very hectic the last few days (Honest, they have!), I have been falling further and further behind on my usual daily reading and even further behind on my blogging. I did manage to pick up on a couple of articles yesterday and wanted to pass them along.

The hurricane has been dominating the news lately. (While I really enjoy Fox News’ political and war coverage, I truely hate their habitual sensationalism.) We’ve seen everyone from Rev. Jesse Jackson to the average Joe sleeping under an over-pass pointing fingers this way and that over Katrina and the resulting devistation. News flash!! George Bush didn’t create this hurricane. I’m not even comfortable calling it an “act of God”. If you know much about theology than you should know that all natural disasters are the result of a sin cursed earth, but I digress.

My hero, Ben Stein, wrote a short column (which you can read here) clearing up the muck of passing the buck for Katrina.

In other non-news, a friend sent me a great article on “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan. I know she’s been out of the public eye for a week or so. (Thank God Almighty!) But this was just too good to pass up. Mark Steyn’s piece on the “Peace Mom” is really well written and makes tons of sense. (He fails to mention the rumors I’ve heard about Sheehan calling Bush a “Zionist” and the fact that her sit-in is inspired more by anti-semitism than by pacifism, but, like I said, that’s only a rumor… for now.)

There is a gas station by the highway where I live. I’m sure you have a similar one in your neighborhood. It’s the gas station that no one ever goes to because the prices are ridiculously high, sometimes nine cents a gallon more than the station just up the road. That gas station, this weekend, posted a price of $2.69 a gallon for regular unleaded (87 octane). Great googly moogly! What is going on here.

I remember the big price scare after 9/11/01. The economy was tanking fast and everyone thought that the rag heads were going to turn off the taps and starve the U.S. of oil. Gas shot up from around $1.15 up to $1.85 in Colorado Springs (as I remember it). I made a pact with myself, that I would not buy gas for more that $1.80, and I pulled it off. I only had to ride my bicycle a couple of times and I managed to hold out until gas came back down. It only took about a week for folks to realize that the oil wasn’t going anywhere and that there was no need to stock pile the stuff.

So, what the heck is going on now? The war in Iraq? Nope. Oil has been flowing freely from Iraq for over a year now. Besides, Iraq isn’t that big of a supplier on the global scale. Terror threats? C’mon, how many times can we cry out for that wolf? The news occasionally blames labor strikes here or there. Rubbish! Even if one entire refining company stopped producing, the others would just step in and make all that money for themselves.

Okay, well, then it must be simple economics, supply and demand, right? That’s what I thought until today. I’d heard that Asian countries were growing fast economically, and that they were starting to buy more cars and drink oil as fast as they could ship it in. That may be true, but that’s no why oil is over $65 a barrel. You may say, “It’s the economy, stupid!” to which I would replay, “Hey, that’s not very nice, and besides, it’s wrong, stupid.”

I submit the following news blurbs:
From rfcnet.org, a Washington based lobby group:

“The economy is continuing to grow, but not as fast as the cost of gasoline. Consumer confidence is down because people are spending money on gasoline they would rather spend on everything from better steaks to new furniture … Oil experts say that the fundamentals indicate the price of oil should be at $38 to $40 a barrel, yet oil futures are trading in the mid $60 range … There is so much oil the refineries can’t even keep up with it and we are running out of storage space. Tankers are sitting offshore unable to unload because storage facilities are full.” ¹

From mosler.org, an economics think-tank:

In the past few months, Morgan Stanley has been accumulating warehouse space in the Netherlands to store its hottest new property: oil … With the stock market proving lackluster, the oil market has been a godsend for the banks, which describe it as the new Nasdaq … Speculators have helped to drive oil prices to near record levels … Oil is the talk of the City with many millions of pounds being made every day … [The oil futures market] acts as a benchmark for the price of oil … If prices on the futures market rise too far above the so-called physical market [mentioned above to be around $40 a barrel], oil users such as airlines and petrol dealers pull out, so prices fall … However, this traditional equilibrium has been rocked by short-term speculators dipping in and out of the futures market. This has led to sharp rises in the price and far more volatility. Meanwhile, banks such as Morgan Stanley are also beginning to move into the physical market to buy oil or even entire oilfields. ²

So, who is driving up the price of oil? Are those dern camel drivers pocketing all your hard earned money? Well, to some degree yes, but not any more than usual. A small group of investors and banks are making hundreds of millions of dollars off of schleps like me and you by artificially inflating the price of oil. Mohamed is not ripping you off, Morgan Stanley (and their peers) are!!

The problem is that oil investments (called “hedge funds”) are out of control.

The International Energy Authority recently criticized the role of speculators. They have also been attacked by French and American government ministers. Alan Greenspan, chairman of America s Federal Reserve Board, said that speculators had caused oil prices to surge … A senior executive at one oil firm said, “This is the hottest oil market I have ever seen. There has been a massive increase in hedge-fund activity … [investments] have doubled recently.” … Hedge-fund insiders therefore say that oil is an excellent short-term bet. ²

Yes, the world is using more oil, but it’s interesting to me that the people making the most noise about a possible shortage are the same people who are raking in millions on oil investments.

Now, before you storm the bank with torches and pitchforks, let’s talk about what can really be done to save our economy from the same folks who orchestrated the big crash in the 1920’s (and the great depression that followed). I don’t have a hundred million dollars to spend on oil futures and even if I did, no one investor could restore the market. In fact, even the President of the United States does not wield enough power to correct the market (even though he is taking most of the heat for it).

The oil market will crash. Any artificially inflated market does (ex. margin stock in the 1920’s and dot-com ventures in 2000). However, I’m not sure that our current growing economy can wait for the market to correct itself.

Governments world wide could do a lot to cut this trend short, by being honest with people about the real cause of the price hike. I don’t believe this would instantly return us to $1/gallon nirvana as some do:

This could all be stopped in one day and the price of oil could drip $20 a barrel … if Treasury Secretary John Snow would hold a news conference and simply tell the truth about the oil reserves on hand and how the hedge funds are manipulating the markets. ¹

Would it help? Sure. Some investors would see that oil prices are artificially high and pull their money out of funds which are heavily invested in oil to avoid losing money on the inevitable crash.

Consumers, believe it or not, probably have the best chance of breaking this market. I know we can’t all ride our bicycles to work. Nor can we effectively boycott gasoline. There are some movements out there to stop buying from the biggest producers (ExxonMobile). That may have some impact, but probably not enough. The consumers that can impact the market are the big consumers: Airlines, utilities, shipping companies, etc.; the folks that buy gas by the millions of gallons. If the airline industry alone were to band together and demand lower priced contracts, it would put a strain on the market bubble.

Maybe, just maybe, between industry demands, intelligent investors, and government exposure, this bubble will burst and we can all get back to the great American past-time guzzling gas at reasonable prices.

So what can you do today? Do what you can to buy less gas: drive smart, car pool, travel as little as possible. Let the big consumers know that want to see lower prices. Contact major airlines and other big fuel consumers and let them know that you will support companies that fight for lower fuel prices and that you will withhold your buying power from companies that don’t. Contact your government representatives (House, Senate, White House, Treasury Dept., and Energy Dept.). Ask them to expose the truth about oil reserves and real cause of these painful prices. You may not have a loud voice, but a chorus of thousands of quiet voices will be heard.