She grew up on Islam and hatred of the Jews – now she’s in the West, is a Christian and has this to say:

…Islam has been moderate from time to time, I point out. Voltaire put it best in describing it as a violent sect that had become “benign and tolerant”.

“I tell you why Islam was becoming moderate, and that was because Islam was weak. Then they discovered oil and a lot of Muslims looked on Saudi’s oil as a blessing from God.”

But it is also, perhaps, because the West does not believe in itself.

“The West is no longer proud of the Judeo-Christian culture and democracy. It does not believe in its own beliefs. Tolerating intolerance is not a sign of virtue, but gross negligence. The West hates itself and it’s very sad.”

She shakes her head at the thought that elements of Sharia law are recognised in England.

“We look to the European democracies as our escape to freedom. As a former Muslim and someone who lived under Islamic law, one of the major reasons I went to America was to escape my second-class citizen status.

“There are forces of reform in the Middle East. People are sticking their heads on blacklists, whether they are journalists, intellectuals or simply people who want change. When we see the West treat groups like Hamas as a legitimate government, and allowing something like Sharia law to be practised, it really weakens their position. And the radicals see that violence works!”

That last bit is very important, because it bears strongly on our new policy of “engagement” with the Islamists. Given that they are corrupt tyrants, the only thing they are likely to take away from Obama’s glad-handing is “hey, America is weak; let’s attack some more!”. We can’t win by tolerating – we can only win by insisting upon truth and justice.

What we need to do:

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. – Abraham Lincoln

There is Krauthammer’s excellent essay, Decline is a Choice; there is also Pat Austin’s excellent build off the essay, Where Will We Be in a Year?. All very good stuff – but, also, all very gloom-and-doom. I went to get the antidote for such things – a bit of prayer in the chapel devoted to the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and out it came: the answer to, what are we to do?

Be just, be merciful, keep love in our hearts as we take the measure of events and people – and have so much faith in God that we’d be willing to walk blindfold, as He has our hand in His. Everything really is under control – we’re just having to pass through our troubles, as each generation has since Man was created. This, too, shall pass and out of it will come good – there is no other way for it to come out, even if we have to deal with quite a lot of evil along the way. It would be helpful, I think, to consider the why of it all – why is Obama, why are leftists, doing what they do?

They think they are doing good – bringing freedom, justice, prosperity and equity to a word wounded in body and soul by the evil, rapacious people of the right. Why do they think this? Because they don’t know what freedom is. They also don’t know what justice is. Most emphatically, they don’t understand what wealth is. It might be rather odd to think that people can be ignorant of these things even as they use the words all the time – but, ignorant they are…and thus they are hurtling down a path of destruction and all they see at the end is the bright, sunlit uplands of a Utopia. That it is a slave pen and a grave is something they just can’t recognize.

Liberals like Obama think that freedom is the freedom to be weird – to be tattoo’d; to be dressed freakishly; to have sex without consequences; to be free from any moral scruples and have, instead, “values”. They think that Justice is punishment – if there is injustice, the only way to set it right is to pay out the identified unjust in their own coin; its not enough that, say, a discriminatory law be repealed…those who allegedly benefited from the law must be made to pay. The think that wealth is money, and thus their whole concept is to divvy up piles of paper dollars and call that “wealth redistribution” or “spreading the wealth around”.

That freedom is the ability to freely choose to do the right thing is beyond their comprehension. They don’t understand that justice is the absence of injustice – you either have justice, or you don’t; you can’t force justice, you can only force injustice. They don’t realize that wealth is land, materials, labor and the ability of people to freely use their own to the best of their ability. Not knowing what is what, it is not surprise that they get everything wrong – and that they keep right at it no matter how many times we demonstrate their ideas to be idiocy. Unless we can impart to them understanding of true freedom, true justice and true wealth, we’ll never get anywhere with them.

Where does this leave us? To go back to square one – to be kind in our views. Forgive them, as they know not what they do…they are deceived. In an age of lies, they have swallowed them; hook, line and sinker.

Obama is not the doom of the United States; Pelosi and Reid only think they are epoch-making political leaders. They are the result of historical accidents, and these accidents will soon be set right – by an aroused electorate which does know what freedom is, what justice is, and what wealth is. An aroused electorate which has merely been awakened to its peril by the rise of Obama and his ignorant, foolish, pathetic fellow leftists.

So, sorry about that, Italian-Americans. Just for the record:

Christopher Columbus was a heroic, Christian gentleman who showed great enterprise and determination in bringing to general knowledge the New World. A whole string of good things for humanity issued from Columbus’ great voyage – not least of which was Cortez’ later destruction of the inhuman Aztec Empire.

We can use more of Columbus’ courage in this sad, weak modern age.

O’Reilly calls her one of the most compelling women in American politics – he’s right. I think she’s also a lot more savvy than anyone suspects:

For two years as a candidate, Senator Obama called for more resources for the war in Afghanistan and warned about the consequences of failure. As President, he announced a comprehensive new counterinsurgency strategy and handpicked the right general to execute it. Now General McChrystal is asking for additional troops to implement the strategy announced by President Obama in March. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers in harm’s way in Afghanistan right now. We owe it to all those brave Americans serving in uniform to give them the tools they need to complete their mission.

We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan, and if we are not successful there, al Qaeda will once again find a safe haven, the Taliban will impose its cruelty on the Afghan people, and Pakistan will be less stable.

Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan. I recently joined a group of Americans in urging President Obama to devote the resources necessary in Afghanistan and pledged to support him if he made the right decision. Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision — it is the time to act as commander-in-chief and approve the troops so clearly needed in Afghanistan.

Its unanswerable: As far as it concerns Obama, Palin is only calling on him to honor his pledged word. In the military sphere, she’s only asserting the Bush-era liberal position – listen to the generals. And she’s reminding all of us of the sons and daughters of America who are in harm’s way and deserve our unstinting support.

We clearly made a couple wrong choices last year – nominating McCain, and electing Obama. We could have done a lot better.

And the death of civilization continues:

Transsexual in court appeal for breast enlargement

A transsexual refused breast enlargement surgery on the NHS is to take her case to the High Court, at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds to the hospital’s budget.

The legally aided gender dysphoria sufferer, who has been living as a woman for over 10 years, says breast augmentation is essential to her female identity and emotional well-being and the refusal to give her the op amounts to sex discrimination.

Her unique test case against the West Berkire Primary Care Trust (PCT), in which the the Equality and Human Rights Commission will also be playing a part, is now set for hearing at the High Court on October 20.

This is what we get by developing an absurd idea of what a “right” is. If health care is a right and if a person has a right to alter their gender, then it naturally follows that you have a right to big old honkin’ tits. Where did we go wrong? When we said that health care is a right – its not; its a privilege. A right is something we can, at least in theory, exercise in our capacity as our selves. I can speak, so I have a right to speak; I can fight, so I have a right to self defense; I can work, so I have a right to the fruits of my labor. I can’t do breast augmentation on myself, and thus I have no right to same. Our liberties erode as our rights increase – we’re busy fighting for sex change surgery so we don’t have time to notice that our right to speak and to assemble is being progressively restricted.

And the worst thing about it: all these screwball liberals who fight out these insane issues would be the first to kneel before an Islamist master, come to conquer. They’d accept slavery so fast it’d make your head spin…given the large of amount of secret homosexuality in the upper classes of the Moslem world, someone like the plaintiff in this case might fetch a high price at auction; and we’d get not a peep out of them…except, perhaps, a demand that Christians and Jews shed their blood to liberate the twits.

And we would – and we will defend them…but a time of reckoning is coming; we can’t forever allow asinine things like this to interfere with a rational society.

And we GOPers better pay attention:

While the energy of the anti-tax and anti-Big Government tea party movement may yet haunt Democrats in 2010, the first order of business appears to be remaking the Republican Party.

Whether it’s the loose confederation of Washington-oriented groups that have played an organizational role or the state-level activists who are channeling grass-roots anger into action back home, tea party forces are confronting the Republican establishment by backing insurgent conservatives and generating their own candidates — even if it means taking on GOP incumbents.

“We will be a headache for anyone who believes the Constitution of the United States … isn’t to be protected,” said Dick Armey, chairman of the anti-tax and limited government advocacy group FreedomWorks, which helped plan and promote the tea parties, town hall protests and the September ‘Taxpayer March’ in Washington. “If you can’t take it seriously, we will look for places of other employment for you.”

“We’re not a partisan organization, and I think many Republicans are disappointed we are not,” added Armey, a former GOP congressman.

I’m not – I want the TEA Party and the GOP to remain separate – though, of course, I want my GOP to bid strongly for TEA Party support. It is what I intend to do – and I warn all my fellow GOPers that if we spurn these people and/or take them for granted, then we’ll pay a high price. But more important than the sheer political battle, the TEA Party offers us a chance for real reform.

P. J. O’Rourke wrote – only half-jokingly – after the 2008 election that we conservatives had blown it for good and all. We had the world at our feet, and we threw it all away. In a very real sense, we did – we forgot what we’re here for. Its not for tinkering around the edges of Big Government; its not to be a kind face for Big Corporation idiocy; its not to merely harp upon one-issue themes…it is to rescue our Republic from the leftists who seek our destruction. We are the party of Life; we are the party of Family; we are the party of Faith…but in order for us to defend Life, Family and Faith our first task is to bring government back under control. Our first task is to restore the Constitutional order…after that, the rest will fall our way of its own accord. If we can’t do this, then all our arguments against abortion, against gay marriage, in favor of family and faith are pointless…the left will just roll over us and take us down along with the economic conservatives. Divided we really do fall.

The TEA Party wants just this – government under control, out of the way and reduced to its proper functions. If we can demonstrate to the TEA Party people that we are serious about this, they’ll come out and vote for us in droves, and provide all the enthusiasm we need to sweep this nation. So far, I only see a few Republicans who are picking up on this – Sarah Palin is the most prominent, but most GOPers either are shying away, or are foolishly thinking of ways to get the support without carrying out the promise.

Barack Obama and his leftist Democrats have concentrated our mind – it is now time for us to put together the winning coalition; it can be done, it must be done. All it takes is a willingness to listen and then the courage to act.

Seek not what people say, but what people do. You can pay attention to the talk of a recovery, or you can take note of the fact that corporate insiders are bailing out of the stock market at a record pace. You can pay attention to the talk of recovery, or you can take note of the fact that vast numbers of merchant ships lay idle. You can pay attention to the talk of recovery, or you can run through Mish’s list of State after State suffering steep drops in revenue from income and sales taxes.

Its getting worse out there, not better – no matter what fool stats Obama and Co provide us for the third quarter.

From the BBC, of all places:

…For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming…

…Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject…

…So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Seems that denying anthropogenic global warming isn’t the province of kooks on par with Holocaust deniers, after all. Any of you AGW zealots want to apologize?

To me, its pretty clear that the AGW theory was a hoax – not just a mistaken theory, but a slapped together set of false premises backed up by twisted data designed to force a course of action which otherwise would not have been followed. The people who propagated it should be charged with fraud – and forced to pay back all the money we’ve wasted on it. Of course, I could be wrong – if temps rise very fast over the next five years, then there might be something to AGW…but I’m not at all concerned that I’ll be proved wrong. All the science – hard science based on observed data rather than hocus-pocus climate models – indicates a period of cooling.

The lesson here is that we can’t trust anything asserted by anyone left of center – for two decades now they have been attempting to force us to modify our entire way of life based upon a fraud…and something which has been demonstrably a fraud for about five years now, and which was clearly questionable within a few years of it being advanced. This is the MO of the left – lie, lie and then lie some more. Whatever it takes to win – its all good, to the left, because they are trying to remake the world in to a better place, and if a few lies have to be told, the left is ok with it.

Time for some truth – time to end this Age of Lies.

Couldn’t say it better, myself:

President Obama’s decision is extremely difficult. Today, less than 50% of Americans support the war. No doubt even fewer Americans would be on the side of doing what Gen. Stanley McChrystal wants to do: temporarily increase the number of troops and dramatically change our strategy.

The way we have provided development assistance to the government in Afghanistan hasn’t improved the lives of the Afghan people. A cloud of illegitimacy hangs over President Hamid Karzai because of the recent election. Even friends of the Karzai administration have reported cronyism and corruption.

Yet despite these setbacks, our leaders must remain focused on the fact that success in Afghanistan bolsters our national security and yes, our moral reputation. This war is not Vietnam. The Taliban are not popular and have very little support other than what they secure through terror.

Afghanistan is also not Iraq. No serious leader in Kabul is asking us to leave. Instead we are being asked to withdraw by American leaders who begin their analysis with the presumption that victory is not possible. They seem to want to ensure defeat by leaving at the very moment when our military leader on the ground has laid out a coherent and compelling strategy for victory.

When it comes to foreign policy, almost nothing matters more then your friends and your enemies knowing you will keep your word and follow through on your commitments. This is the real test of presidential leadership. I hope that President Obama—soon to be a Nobel laureate—passes with flying colors. – Bob Kerrey

That is my hope, too – and what I’ll be praying for. I don’t envy Obama’s position. It is a difficult task. No matter what course he chooses, men will die. No matter what course he chooses, some people will dissent from it. No matter what course he chooses, friends and enemies will have negative things to say about it. But, also, if he chooses correctly then the men will die fighting for a better future. The dissidents will be proven wrong. Friends and enemies will, once again, know that America stands by her commitments.

I hope Obama chooses well.