With global prices for basic food commodities -- rice, wheat, and corn -- rising rapidly during the last few months, the hammer has finally dropped on the biofuels industry. People are starting to (rightly) question why we are growing crops and then burning them in internal combustion engines. Also, the confiscation of farmland from peasants, and then the conversion of that land to large-scale corporate farming of biofuels and other cash crops, is one of the leading causes of poverty in third world nations.
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In Jimmy Carter's world: "When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."
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This rocks -- Last week, House Republicans sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Leadership. The letter read in part, “Two years ago this week, you stated that House Democrats had a
‘commonsense plan’ to ‘lower gas prices.’ In light
of the skyrocketing gasoline prices affecting working families and
every sector of our struggling economy, we are writing today to
respectfully request that you reveal this ‘commonsense plan’ so we can
begin work on responsible solutions to help ease this strain.”
In a typically Democrat response, Pelosi passed the buck to President Bush:
In a letter today, the California Democrat asks Bush to direct the Justice Department to investigate oil cartel price-fixing, authorize the Federal Trade Commission to pursue and punish “price gougers,” end tax breaks for oil companies and invest the savings in renewable energy.
Then she made a complete ass out of herself on Larry King Live while trying to defend the Democrats' non-existent response to the current gas price crisis. It seems our Grandmother Superior has no idea what the price of gas is these days. Michelle Malkin suggests, "Ask your government driver to let you know the next [time] he/she makes a stop at that thing called a gas station."
One can only hope that the Democrats' secret plan to lower gas prices is not as idiotic as candidate John Kerry's 2004 "secret plan" to end the Iraq War. One should hope, but not get their hopes up too high.
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The chummy relationship between Barack Obama and Weather Underground founding member William Ayres has received a lot of attention from conservatives. Indeed Ayres is an interesting figure. He was a leading 60's anarchist and radical, and was involved with the Weather Underground during the time that its members planted a number of bombs as part of a series of deliberate domestic terror attacks. Ayres was never criminally charged in any of these bombings, and today he is a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He is still a very powerful member of the political left in Chicago, which is why Obama sought his endorsement and participated in various endeavors with him, including giving a $75,000 grant to a Palestinian activist with known ties to terrorism.
Democrats want the probing of Ayres' past and his association with Barack Obama to end. It's irrelevant, they say, and besides, Ayres committed no crimes. But there is an inconvenient double standard at work in such a request. Captain Ed Morrisey writes, "What would the Left say if [John] McCain had sat on nonprofit foundation boards with David Duke and sent money to Holocaust deniers? ... If he had, Democrats would have a field day with it — and rightly so ... The difference apparently is in the target of one’s hatreds; as long as the hatred was directed at the American government, the Left believes it to be irrelevant."
Right now I am at an interesting crossroad with respect to politics. I am sick of tit-for-tat and example/counter-example arguments. I am sick of reading lists of incidents compiled for the sole purpose of "proving" that one side or the other is right. I am even more sick of "arguments" consisting of "facts" plucked totally out of context with regard to relevant timelines or events. But on the other hand, I believe that everyone should be held to the same standards. And it is impossible to highlight blatant examples of hypocrisy without showing that different standards have been applied to different people. And you can't do that without a solid list of examples. *Sigh* What to do?
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Poor Jimmy Carter. He thought he had brokered a "peace" agreement with Hamas. It was simple: Israel would have to completely give up all claims to the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Jerusalem (thus returning to its 1967 borders) and at such a time, Hamas would conduct a referendum of all "Palestinians" (even those who have been living elsewhere for decades) and if the referendum came out in favor of ending terrorism against Israel, then Hamas would think about it. Or maybe not. After Carter announced his brilliant plan, Hamas officially responded, "We agree on the [Palestinian] state with the borders of June 4, 1967, Jerusalem as its capital, fully sovereign without settlements, the right of return, but without the recognition of Israel." And just to drive the point home, they launched seven rockets into Negev, wounding a 4 year old boy. So Carter got bupkis for all his valiant efforts. But he did get to meet with some awfully nice terrorists and dictators.
And speaking of the Middle East, the CIA has officially confirmed that Israel's raid on Syria last fall destroyed a plutonium-based nuclear reactor being built by the North Koreans. The reactor was destroyed because 1) it was being built in secret, and 2) it could have produced weapons-grade enriched plutonium. Poor Bashar Assad. All the Dorktator had to do was show the world he was building a nuclear reactor, then claim that the purpose for building it was entirely 100% peaceful, and then invite the UN to inspect it. But nooooo .. he had to do it all in secret. Don't these guys ever learn? Now all he has is a smoking hole in the ground.
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According to the Daily Mail, 6 million Britons live in a home where no one works. The paper profiles one family, the McFaddens, that has ten people sharing a 3 bedroom council house. Three generations live there, and no one works.
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Danica Patrick has become the first female driver to win a pro Indy-series auto race. She won the Indy Japan 300 Sunday, finishing nearly six seconds ahead of second-place driver, Helio Castroneves. Patrick has been a celebrity of sorts for some time now, as she is remarkably attractive and a serious competitor on the racetrack. Now she is a champion -- something that Anna Kournikova never quite managed to achieve.
PS - If you think I am blogging about Danica Patrick primarily as an excuse to post a picture of a really hot babe on my blog ... well, you're probably right.
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