Bob Barr Chiseling into McCain Voter Base

Bob Barr's Libertarian presidential campaign is poised to play a serious role in this year's elections, with early polls showing him taking away enough votes from Sen. John McCain to give Democrats a chance to win states that should be safely Republican.

Polls in Georgia and North Carolina over the last two weeks show Mr. Barr winning 8 percent and 6 percent respectively of the presidential vote, and in both cases helping keep likely Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama within striking distance of Mr. McCain in those states — which, taken together, account for more electoral votes than Florida, Pennsylvania or Ohio.

"Barr does throw a monkeywrench in Republican plans in states people otherwise take for granted as Republican states," said Matt Towery, a former political adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and CEO of InsiderAdvantage, an Atlanta-based polling and political analysis firm that conducted the Georgia poll.

Mr. Towery said North Carolina and Georgia are exactly the places that Mr. Barr could put in play: both have high African-American populations that Mr. Obama can tap to boost his turnout numbers, and have conservative-leaning voters whose dissatisfaction with President Bush could lead them to a third-party candidate.

The Georgia poll, taken just before Mr. Barr secured the Libertarian nomination, gave Mr. McCain 45 percent support, Mr. Obama 35 percent and Mr. Barr 8 percent. In North Carolina a Public Policy Polling survey released Monday found Mr. McCain at 43 percent, Mr. Obama at 40 percent and Mr. Barr at 6 percent. The poll's authors said Mr. Barr's support appeared to come particularly from independents who previously had broken for Mr. McCain.

"It's a long way until the election but the early indication is that Bob Barr's presence on the ballot could be a good sign for whoever ends up as the Democratic nominee," said Dean Debnam, president of the poll. "He's likely to siphon off more voters who would otherwise be inclined to vote for McCain than he is from Clinton or Obama."

Mr. Barr is a former Republican congressman from Georgia who switched to the Libertarian Party in 2006. He collected his new party's presidential nomination on the sixth ballot on May 25.

The Observer

P.C. (Fascism) Run Amuck!

Image of toy banned by British Airways

'What was I going to do, use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?'

Optimus Prime, the hero of the series of kids toys, movies and comic books, is the "largest, strongest, and wisest of all Autobots," protects life on Earth and defeats the Decepticons. He also can create havoc at Heathrow Airport's high-security Terminal 5.

That's because he was pictured on a T-shirt worn by Brad Jayakody, 30, who was trying to board a British Airways jet to Dusseldorf, Germany, with four work colleagues.

The character's right arm is a gun, and Jayakody was ordered to change his shirt, or miss his flight, because of the threat from the image, according to a report in the Telegraph.

"My mate set off the alarms and was searched. But then the guy told me to stop and said, 'You cannot get on the plane because there is a gun on your T-shirt,'" he told the newspaper.

Jayakody, who lives in the London area, then reports he was threatened with arrest for asking to see a security manager.

"It's a cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. What was I going to do, use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?" he said. ""I was flabbergasted. I thought the supervisor would come over and see sense, but he didn't. After I changed he said if I changed back I would be arrested."

A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA told the newspaper: "If a T-shirt had a rude word or a bomb on it for example, a passenger may be asked to remove it.

"We are investigating what happened to see if it came under this category."

In Canada, a passenger wearing a gun-shaped charm necklace was the reason alarms were raised at an airport several weeks ago. WND also has reported a school district's decision to ban a T-shirt because it contained a silk-screened image of a handgun silhouette.

In other cases, a student got in trouble over a drawing of a gun on a piece of paper, and a school banned a ballpoint pen because it displayed the name of a gun maker.

Optimus Prime, a toy that converts from a truck to a justice-seeking robot, is "a heroic, brave and compassionate character" who battles foes to pursue his "strong sense of justice, " according to advertisements.

The Observer

The other "Whore of Babylon"

The World Council of Churches and the Zionist Catastrophe

By Mark D. Tooley
FrontPageMagazine.com

The Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC), seemingly having preferred not to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel, is instead in June convening a global week-long commemoration of the 1967 war. This remembrance will mournfully lament Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, without specifically recalling that the occupation only began after Israel defeated several Arab armies poised for attack. “It’s Time for Palestine!” is the theme for the joint advocacy initiative involving church events around the world.

But from the WCC’s perspective, is it ever a Time for Israel? Apparently not, as the WCC mostly echoes Palestinian verbiage about the Jewish nation’s founding as a “catastrophe.” In a brief news release earlier this month, the WCC frowningly noted that “just as 2008 marks 60 years of aspirations dedicated to securing a homeland for Israelis, 2008 also marks 60 years of the disintegration of Palestinian society and dispersal of some 750,000 Palestinians as refugees.” In other words, not much to celebrate!

... read the entire article here.

The Observer

Oh Baby, Baby It’s a Cold World!

By Peter Ferrara, NRO

"Global warming has nothing to do with climate or science. What it is all about is the great, historic class struggle between working people and the ruling classes.

Global warming is a great excuse for a massive expansion of government power. "

... Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy adviser to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was recently referenced by senior climate-science authority Fred Singer as saying: “Global warming stopped ten years ago; it hasn't gotten warmer since 1998. . . . . And in fact in the last seven years, there has been a downturn in global temperatures equivalent on average to about [or] very close to one degree Fahrenheit per decade. We're actually in a period . . . of global cooling.

This is what the temperature data shows. Indeed, even global-warming advocates are now saying there won’t be any actual global warming for the next ten years or so. You can interpret that to mean the budding cooling trend will continue.

So what is all the hysteria about? The answer is very simple, and very obvious once pointed out.

Global warming has nothing to do with climate or science. What it is all about is the great, historic class struggle between working people and the ruling classes.

Global warming is a great excuse for a massive expansion of government power. That, not science, is why the overlords, from the New York Times to the United Nations to Al Gore, so heartily embrace it.

The U.N. thinks global warming is a perfect reason for the U.N. to be transformed into a world government. So how long do you think it took for the world-class bureaucrats at Turtle Bay to conclude that global warming was real and caused by humans?

Which is why it was always so foolish to leave study of the problem to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scientists on the panel actually keep writing reports that say maybe yes and maybe no. But the U.N. press office keeps issuing summaries of the reports that say “submit or die.”

Which is why a real American leader would act to save American sovereignty, prosperity, and freedom by calling for an American government project to distill the real science out of all the Soviet-style agitprop, and, to the extent there is any real problem, propose a crash program sufficient to save us all from frying. Believe it or not, there is no constituency, even among Republicans, for snuffing out all life on the planet.

Such a project, run by real scientists rather than by politician-bureaucrats, would find the following. Carbon dioxide is not “pollution.” (Bill O’Reilly, call your office.) It is a natural substance that is actually essential to continued life on earth. Humans and all other animal life breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.

Plant life takes in carbon dioxide, and emits oxygen. No carbon dioxide would mean no plants, which would mean no oxygen, which would mean no humans, or any other animals.

The first-order effect of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be a flowering of plant life. Agricultural output would soar, food prices would decline.

Despite the theory, moreover, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide does not seem to increase global temperatures. The record actually shows no significant warming to date. There were a couple of ten-to-20-year periods of slight warming in the 20th century. If the budding cooling trend does become well-established, it won’t take long for all of this warming to be offset.

Here is another little secret your big-government enthusiasts don’t want you to know.

A slight warming trend would have enormously beneficial effects for humans and the planet. Agriculture would flourish even more. Disease would decline. (Disease among humans spreads more in cold.) Vast stretches of land in northern Asia, North America, and Europe would become much more inhabitable. The tropics, including the rain forest, would boom.

But none of this is an excuse for expanding the power of government. So don’t expect to hear about it from our mainstream media, which slavishly supports whatever is in the government’s institutional interest.

Moreover, none of this real science justifies the nervous breakdown going on this week in the U.S. Senate. The Senate is presently considering a global-warming bill that would establish a “cap and trade” system for the U.S. economy. The bill would require drastic reductions in projected carbon emissions, with American businesses required to get a license for all such emissions. What this translates into is a dramatic assault on the standard of living in America, particularly for the middle class, working people, and the poor. Businesses would ultimately have to pay huge sums to get licenses to emit carbon while producing essential products and services for the American people.

This means, for example, that the price of gas is not going to come down. Rather, it will rise farther as a sharp new cost is added to the production of gasoline. Senators who vote for this bill are voting for still higher gas prices in the future.

Moreover, under the bill, consumers will see their utility bills soar. Utilities ultimately will have to pay huge new costs to produce electricity, which will be passed on to consumers.

The price of food will continue to increase as well, as farmers will have to pay higher costs for fertilizer, and for fuel for their tractors and trucks.The bill will also effectively shut down heavy manufacturing in America. Manufacturing companies cannot compete while laboring under high energy costs. So good bye to all those well paying blue collar jobs, again slamming the middle class and working people.

This is the class struggle. The American standard of living will decline so that government power can prosper. The Senate cap-and-trade bill will raise government revenues by a trillion dollars over the next decade, supporting a massive increase in new spending.The attitude is reflected in something Barack Obama recently said:

"We can’t just keep eating whatever we want, driving our SUVs
wherever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of
whether we live in the desert or the tundra, and keep consuming 25 percent of
the world’s resources with just 3 percent of the world’s population, and expect
the rest of the world to say you just go ahead. We’ll be fine. That’s not
leadership. That’s not going to happen."

In other words, fairness and equality require the American middle class and working people to fall down to a third-world standard of living. The Senate’s bill is just the first slip down this slide. If that is what you support for America, you just keep voting for the liberal extremists. Meanwhile, after all this pain and suffering for the American people, the cap and trade bill would not solve the problem of global warming even if there was a problem. It would have only a tiny negligible effect on temperatures. Even the global warming advocates will admit that. This is because all humans on the planet, let alone just Americans, only produce four percent of worldwide global-warming gases.

So, you see, the global warming issue really is not about climate or science. It is about government power, and the struggle for freedom and prosperity.

— Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union.

... are you listening Newt "Greengrich" ? - probably not! - Tiger
... Iceberg Photo By: National Geographic

The Observer

Always A Blast!

The Tigress and I never grow tired of watching the launches. We're very lucky, in that we can walk out in our back yard and see it! Follow the title link to see videos and other pics on the NASA website.

The Observer