(Jimmy) Carter Could Do Some Learning

is that title of an article in the NH Union Leader:

“President George W. Bush was not known for his class. He wore cowboy boots, slapped people on the back and called others by nicknames he made up. Yet tomorrow Americans will see how classy W. can be.

Last week Bush taped an episode of “Oprah” that will air tomorrow. In it, Oprah tries to get Bush to criticize, or at least comment on, President Obama’s performance. Bush refuses.

“I don’t think it’s good for a former President to be out there opining on every darned issue,” Bush said. “He’s got a plenty tough job. Trust me. And there’s gonna be plenty of critics, and he doesn’t need me criticizing him. And I don’t think it’s good for the presidency. Other people have a different point of view.”

That used to be the accepted view. Former Presidents didn’t criticize sitting ones. Jimmy Carter, however, thought himself above such petty traditionalism. In his pursuit of relevance and attention, he publicly thumped Bush early and often. He even wrote an entire column in The New York Times criticizing Bush on the Iraq War.

President Obama is blundering along like a toddler on a sugar high. But Bush keeps his counsel. As he should. Criticizing one’s successors diminishes the office of the President, not to mention the one doing the criticizing.”

Comment:  Some people are far more sour than others….and that includes presidents.  That Jimmy Carter was an incompetent president besides being sour,  is a given……..so , in his fantasy, he continues his presidency decades after he was fired.   He stuck his nose into Bill Clinton’s State Department affairs on a couple occasions, so I am not so certain he cares about who he means to bump. 

Most Leftists have little sense of propriety when it comes to their politics, anyway.  Shouldn’t  they  be adulated simply by being alive, for such outstanding feelings  they possess about  helping people they believe are needy……the ones who vote for them.

Sour and disagreeable and totally without personality, that’s our Jimmy.

British Beginning to Admit the Sins of the Greens

The following article, “What the green movement got wrong”, written by Charles Moore, was found at Telegraph.co.uk:

“Perhaps the most interesting thing about this programme is that it was made at all. It shows how the Green monolith has cracked. For many years, Channel 4 would not have dared devote an hour to the errors of environmentalism; or, if it had done so, it would have wrapped it in the cordon sanitaire always put round anything considered Right-wing, stating that this was a “provocative” and “personal” view.

This was no such programme. Instead, it was a platform for every sinner that repenteth. Former hippy Greens, directors of Greenpeace, the chairmen of the Copenhagen Climate Council and the like, queued up to admit error. Their reasons for doing so were interesting. None of them repudiated all their previous ideas. All continue to believe that there are serious environmental threats to the welfare of life on earth and most seem to be devoting their lives to addressing them. But, as one put it, environmentalists over the past 40 years have “failed to achieve Job One, which was to protect the planet”.

At least three central reasons were identified.

Misanthropy. According to a veteran American Green, Stewart Brand, too many Greens believe “Nature good – humans not so good”. This approach is ultimately unpersuasive, since it is human beings you are trying to persuade. A policy focused on preventing human activity is one which defies human nature. Mark Lynas, one of the repenters, was shown in his younger days stuffing a custard pie into the face of the environmental sceptic Bjorn Lomborg. Now, he admits with shame, he was ”motivated by a sense of righteousness” which was self-regarding.

Exaggeration. If you say that the end of the world is nigh all the time, people start to disbelieve you. Paul Ehrlich talked utter rubbish about how the world would starve in the 1970s. A glorious clip showed a young but authoritative Magnus Magnusson explaining against a backdrop of artificial snow that “the new Ice Age” was upon us. Green activists give out the figure of 93,000 for deaths attributable to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. The figure favoured by the recent UN investigation is 65. The idea that there are only a few months or years left to save the planet is both so discouraging and so untrue that it disables the cause it is supposed to galvanise. “We have got some time,” said Tim Flannery of the Copenhagen Climate Council, with heretical courage.

Damage. The most powerful part of the programme was that arguing that the Green obsession with banning and preventing things has done actual harm. The refusal to contemplate nuclear power has encouraged more use of fossil fuels and therefore – if you believe the warmist theories – more adverse climate change. The banning of pesticides has led to the deaths of millions of Africans from malaria. The obsessive hatred of GM crops led, in 2002, to the Zambian government refusing US supplies of GM food sent to relieve its people’s starvation.

The “precautionary principle”, upon which environmentalists say we should operate when considering scientific innovation, turns out to be one which would deny to countries like China, India or Kenya the chance to escape the poverty which the West has put behind it for more than half a century. These nations, anxious to feed themselves better, resent Green lectures. Developing countries such as these form 80 per cent of the world’s population, so Green arguments are least accepted in the places where, environmentalists say, they are most needed.

Another aspect of the damage done is the effect of fear. After Chernobyl, local people, told that their children would be deformed, had huge numbers of abortions. Their levels of alcoholism and stress rose appallingly. Even in Britain, we all know people whose lives are blighted by unnecessary anxiety about the world boiling, flooding, melting down etc. It is a terrible thing to frighten people for no good reason.

Out of all this breast-beating came hope. The rueful campaigners of yesteryear now see science and technology as their friend. We can produce nuclear power much more safely than in the past. In California, “geo-engineering” is being developed so that humans will be able to change the weather one way to correct it if they have already changed it too far the other. We might be able to blow up a volcano ”on purpose” to slow down global warming. We are already perfecting GM rice which can ”hold its breath” under water for two weeks, and so survive flooding.

Natural conservatives are always suspicious of the phrase “win-win” (so many situations turn out to be “lose-lose”), so I was not persuaded that all will be well. There is surely a conflict between economic growth and the environment which will never go away. It was in the interests of the ex-radicals, many of whom now work for businesses in the energy field, to be cheerful. But their views seemed infinitely more realistic than the orthodoxies they once espoused.

If the drift of this programme is correct, the consequences for politics will be large. All the main political parties have chosen to put their eggs in the frail, Fairtrade, hand-weaved basket of Greenery, imposing rising levies to develop “renewable” sources of power which cannot do the job demanded of them. The basket is starting to break. There will be a political prize, I suspect, for the first party which dares to put its eggs elsewhere.”

Comparing Nancy P. with Winston C. Claimed by Mara L.!

Mara Liasson is in the news for comparing Nancy Pelosi courage, leadership  and stealth with that of Winston Churchill.   For those who don’t know who Mara is, she is, of course, a Lefty……has been at National Public Radio for centuries and appears on Fox News regularly to represent the Obama Left.

She is, by far, not the worst of the NPR lot, but what can one say about any Lefty these days?  What else can the offer now that they are sold on Obama Marxism.

Here are a few quotes of, I think, hundreds which begin to separate the differences between the glassy features of Madam Speaker and the classy mind of Sir Winston Churchill:

“Capitalism is the uneven distribution of wealth, socialsim is the even distribution of poverty, and communism is socialism with a gun at your back.

Democracy is the worst form of goverrnment except for all of the rest.

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with a voter.”

Filed under: Arts and Entertainment, Education, Marxism

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Child Sex Ring Run By Minneapolis Somali Gangs

Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports the following regarding Somali gang child sex trafficking ring:

“Twenty-nine people were facing charges related to trafficking Somali and American girls for sex, US officials announced.

Authorities were in the process of arresting the defendants in Minnesota and Tennessee for allegedly sending girls, some younger than 13, from the Minneapolis area to Nashville, Tennessee for sex between 2000 and 2010. Authorities also said one 18-year-old was sexually assaulted.

“Trafficking children for sex is intolerable and the Department of Justice will aggressively enforce trafficking and other laws to eliminate these types of deplorable acts,” said US Attorney Jerry Martin.

“As shown here today, law enforcement agencies at every level will come together to bring the full force of justice to bear on individuals who choose to profit by victimizing innocent children.”

The defendants are all alleged to be associated with interconnected Somali-American gangs: the Somali Outlaws, the Somali Mafia and the Lady Outlaws.

The sex trafficking offenses carry a penalty of not less than 15 years to life in prison.

The defendants are also charged with obstructing the investigation, lying to a federal grand jury, stealing a car and making 231,000 dollars in false credit card charges over one year.

“Human traffickers abuse innocent people, undermine our public safety, and often use their illicit proceeds to fund sophisticated criminal organizations,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton.

“ICE is committed to bringing these criminals to justice and rescuing their victims from a life in the shadows. We will continue to fight the battle to end human trafficking both here in the United States and around the globe.”

US officials have rescued 69 child prostitutes following a massive three-day operation spanning dozens of US cities, federal law enforcement authorities said Monday.

In a 72-hour time span, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), working along state and local police, also arrested 885 people including nearly 100 alleged pimps, the US Justice Department said in a statement.

“Child prostitution continues to be a significant problem in our country, as evidenced by the number of children rescued through the continued efforts of our crimes against children task forces,” said Shawn Henry, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch.

“There is no work more important than protecting America’s children and freeing them from the cycle of victimization,” Henry said.

The nationwide operation, dubbed the Innocence Lost National Initiative, was carried out in 40 cities across the United States, targeting such places truck stops, casinos and websites, among other venues, in a bid to combat child prostitution.

Over the years, the Innocence Lost task force has reclaimed some 1,200 children from the streets, US officials said, and led to some 625 criminal convictions with lengthy prison sentences.

“This is 21st century slavery,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, in a statement to the press.

“We are proud to be a part of this extraordinary partnership to rescue children, save lives, and bring the pimps and operators to justice.”

Comment:  I notice that immigration  authorities who have allowed these Somalis into this country pretend these are refugees yearning to take advantage of freedoms in the Good Old USA.  More votes for Democrats.