Definitions from the Mainstream Media Dictionary

Some definitions, if you believe thte mainstream media:

Leak - The release of any information, classified or not, from any government agency that may benefit or in any way be even neutral towards a Republican.

Whistleblowing - The release of vital United States secrets that may in any way be injurious to a Republican.

If you can't read between the lines, Valerie Plame was not a covert agent at the time of the so-called "leak," so by definition she could not have been "outed." Despite this, the MSM can't wait (as usual) to hang Karl Rove.

On the other hand, Mary McCarthy did release United States secrets to the press during a war, but she gets a pass because she was just "following her conscience."

Is there anyone to the right of Hillary who thinks the mainstream press has any remaining credibility whatsoever?

Economics 101, for both parties…

OK, as Republicans (including President Bush, whom I had hoped knew better) have fallen into the "Let's investigate Big Oil" trap, how about a little Econ 101 refresher course?

Farmer Ted plants his crop of barley, expecting to make his usual small profit at the end of the season should everything go well.

Well, sometime during the summer, miraculous new uses are found for barley, and suddenly the price of barley skyrockets. He's being offered four, even five times what it cost him to grow and harvest his crop when he takes it to the local grain elevator.

Is Farmer Ted guilty of price gouging?

I think not. Not unless you're the mainstream media. Or as of today, the President.

It costs roughly the same amount of money to produce a barrel of crude today that it did a year, or even two ago.

Yet paranoid traders have bid the price they're willing to pay for that barrel so far up that the price no longer has any correspondence to market reality.

So the oil companies are being paid huge premiums over their cost of production for the oil.

What should they do? Refuse to accept the money? ("Oh no, please, you're being much too generous. Just give us $50/barrel and we'll call it a deal.") Would any other business be forced to deal with this nonsense? Will the government next investigate as price gougers the sellers on eBay who let idiots pay way too much for their items?

As far as not purchasing any oil for deposit into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, does the President actually think this will work? Sounds like it will just make more oil available on the world market, and that's not really going to affect the prices U.S. consumers pay, not as long as China and other developing countries have an ever growing appetite for oil themselves. I'd be surprised if China alone doesn't buy the oil no longer being deposited in the reserve, keeping the net oil price pretty much where it is.

You want to reduce the price of gas? Build more refineries. Eliminate the need to deliver different blends of gasoline on an, in many states, literally county-by-county basis. Drill for more crude. ANWR, the west coast, etc. Vicente Fox certainly will be happy to pump oil from the Pacific, and he'll be able to do whatever he wants just because his wells will be a few feet south of the border and he really doesn't give a damn what Greenpeace has to say on the subject. Watch Hollywood liberals continue to ride in limos while refusing to allow any off-California drilling to provide gas for said limos. It would almost be humorous if it weren't all so sad.

Seeing the President get sucked into this is more than a bit disconcerting. Perhaps if he went on TV with a flip chart and explained the "Farmer Ted" example some good could come of all this; instead I expect to see him explaining how we're all in this together in a modern update of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech.

Illegal immigrants seem to understand economic principles well enough to supply labor to meet demand the Federal Government isn't willing to do anything to step in and curb.

I guess understanding basic economics must be another one of those jobs that "Americans aren't willing to do."

This says it all…

A wonderful opinion piece from the UK's Telgraph

(Once again, this comes to you courtesy of the excellent Sweetness and Light.)

The key section:

Last year, it was after another khalvat that Ahmadinejad announced his intention to stand for president. Now, he boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a "clash of civilisations" in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the "infidel" West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.

In Ahmadinejad’s analysis, the rising Islamic "superpower" has decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim "ghazis" (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has four-fifths of the world’s oil reserves, and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. More importantly, the US, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by most other nations.

According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad’s strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the "Dr Kissinger of Islam", President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have "run away". Iran’s current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by "divine coincidence", corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.

Some short comments on immigration

Watching the recent immigration protests has been disquieting to say the least.

Here's a few simple bullet points in response to various items:

• "We're not criminals.'
  
  Uh, yeah, if you're in the U.S. without appropriate documents, yeah, you are. Helpful hint: If you're actively afraid of being "found out" by someone in law enforcement, you're probably violating the law and worse yet, know it.


• San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom restated San Francisco is a "city of refuge" and as such, it is illegal for city employees to aid federal officials investigating someone's immigration status.
  
  Between this and their blatant disregard for the Second Amendment to the Constitution (hey everyone, it's actually there in the Bill of Rights, right between Amendments I and III.) I honestly can't figure out why San Francisco's allotment of Federal funds hasn't been cut to $0. You know, "play by our rules or you don't get our money?" This isn't a (there it is again!) Freedom of Speech issue, it's blatantly violating Federal law.


• John McCain
  
  When reading his comments to, of all groups, the AFL-CIO, can anyone doubt he's lost all touch with sanity and anything even remotely resembling Republican principles?
  

  
  [...]But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.
  
  McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.
  
  Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.
  
  “I’ll take it!” one man shouted.
  
  McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”

Numerous thanks to Tammy Bruce for originally making a point of publicizing the McCain comment…