Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter simply cannot be sound of mind anymore, assuming of course he ever was. I have serious concerns about Carter’s mental health, and in no way do my concerns stem from his rather questionable tenure as head of this nation. Sure, we can quibble with the role Carter played in deposing the Shah of Iran giving way to the Iranian Revolution that has largely contributed to the rise of 21st Century radical Islam and a maniacal nation-state in pursuit of nuclear tipped missiles, however at least in that respect it’s easy to conclude Carter simply sold out.

But that raises an interesting point. If Carter was willing to sell out, literally, a U.S. ally in favor of an Islamist government, why can’t we conclude the below comments were made through the prism of bank accounts rather than rationality?

The United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements, former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday . . .

“This effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples now is a step in the wrong direction,” he said. “All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there’s no effort from the outside to bring the two together.”

Carter was pessimistic this would happen soon. I don’t see at this point any possibility that public officials in the United States, or in Israel, or the European Union are going to take action to bring about reconciliation,” he said. (source)

Newsflash: Hamas and Fatah have waged war against each other since Hamas won the election. Actually, they have warred against each other longer than that but let us focus on the recent past.

In Carter’s utopia world where “there’s a good chance” Hamas will embrace peace and be willing to coexist peacefully with Israel, he neglected to mention Hamas can’t figure out how to coexist peacefully with anyone.

After Hamas staged its coup, it did the only thing the group knows how to do well. Hamas members dragged out Fatah leaders who had surrendered or were wounded and executed them in the streets in front of cheering men, women and children who seemingly know no better joy in life than watching blood spill on the streets. Quite a peaceful people you see, both Hamas and the death-fetished gathering of misfits.

Irregardless of the omission of the culture in which Hamas operates within and perpetuates to gain power, Carter somehow feels the United States and Israel should try to be some sort of moderator between Hamas and Fatah. If there is a country who has less credibility to moderate anything with Hamas it would be Israel, a state the terrorist group has pledged to vanquish and continues to maintain Israel should not exist despite Carter’s mind-boggling refusal to read the group’s own charter or any statements to that effect.

The solution to the problem is just so easy, Carter must believe.  Based upon his numerous comments, he must believe the only rock that lies within the smoothly paved highway between a militant Hamas and a peaceful Hamas is international involvement. However, it has always been perfectly clear that rock threatening to derail Carter’s motorbike is not international involvement, but rather the existence of one tiny Jewish state. How dare that rock be Jewish, but at least we know the Israeli rock is not the one that is expected to come alive to smite the Jews under Allah’s Final Solution to the ‘problem’ of the Jewish state.

Therefore the only rational conclusion to Carter’s constant lunacy is that he is either not sound of mind or there are cash transactions made to sway his beliefs.  There has to be a good reason for Hamas leaders to smuggle in suitcases filled with cash rather than simply deposit funds or launder them through the group’s paymasters in Damascus and Tehran.

Hamas overtook Gaza, though the fighting between two elected governments in the form of Hamas and Fatah have waged numerous battles over the past year alone.  The fighting escalated in recent weeks, thus one major question has been posed.  Is there a civil war in the Palestinian territories?

A civil war is loosely defined as a war between two groups with a right to govern.  In the case of Palestine, both Hamas and Fatah can and do claim a right to govern.

For the purposes of debate, let us look at another conflict which is called a civil war by politicians and journalists.  Yes, that conflict is inside Iraq.  There are numerous sides to the conflict, but only one of those sides is represented in the Iraqi government.  That side affiliated with the current elected Iraqi government is aligned with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr.  Sadr’s military wing, known as the Mahdi Army, chooses to war against Sunnis.  Now those Sunnis the Mahdi Army has declared war upon are not affiliated with the Iraqi government, nor for the most part are they affiliated with the umbrella Sunni insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq, who, by the way, has no affiliation with the Iraqi government nor any legitimate claim to govern the nation of Iraq.

The conflict in Iraq, however, was declared a civil war by NBC News despite not carrying the main characteristic of what a civil war entails.  Calling Iraq a nation engulfed in a civil war has also been hoisted by leading Democratic politicians, apparently without regard to what the term actually means.

Meanwhile back in Palestine, it strikes me as completely odd none of the ‘purveyors of truth’ within the media elite or Democratic Party’s stronghold of Iraq naysayers have concluded there is actually a civil war ongoing.  Perhaps it’s already over after Hamas overtook Gaza and posed for pictured in Mahmoud Abbas’ presidential palace, fully hiding their true identities for whatever reason.  Regardless, what would make Iraq a civil war and Palestine not?  By the pure definition of what a civil war is, the opposite is true.

Earlier today I flipped to Fox News just at the right time to catch the Reverend Jesse Jackson who stated there was an insurgency in Chicago.  He went on to call handguns weapons of mass destruction and asked if the United States wished to engage insurgencies why the U.S. government has not taken action in Chicago.

Good question Rev. Jackson.  Should Americans conclude because there are people murdered in Chicago there is in fact an insurgency, and should Americans conclude that if we as a nation wish to curtail the use of WMDs we should vote in favor of gun control?  Jackson argued in favor of both stances.

But perhaps the good reverend should take a look around at the party he’s adopted during his runs for office and call for an immediate withdrawal of Chicago.  Nope, instead Jackson argued for more federal involvement and helped lead a protest against violence, I suppose deciding to place himself within a theater of war as he put it.

Don’t get me wrong here.  Just like the vast majority of people across the globe, I abhor violence.  I prefer to make jokes as opposed to lash out physically, but the solution to crime in Chicago isn’t to classify criminals as insurgents or to confuse the GWOT with gang wars that have gripped Chicago for decades.

I love Chicago and hope to get back there some day, though hopefully I’ll wait until after the insurgency is ended and after all WMDs are secured.  Until then, however, I am eagerly awaiting Rev. Jackson to explain why the United States should engage one insurgency while withdrawing from another.

Posted from Right Truth

From John E. Carey at Peace and Freedom, posted at his request. Highly recommended:

I came to Washington DC the first time in 1972 to work in the office of a liberal Democrat Ohio Congressman. I took away from that experience my first taste of the unwritten rules governing good conduct and decorum that most groups stick to, from your local Elks Club to the U.S. Senate.Most call it the culture or the ethos the organization lives by.

Unwritten rules exist to help an organization or team function harmoniously despite severe difference. For decades, even at the lowest moments of despair and disharmony, the Senate and in fact the United States of America, operated smoothly and got business completed. If two lawmakers wanted to lock horns, they were encouraged by the leadership to “take it outside.” Of course there are historically significant altercations on Capitol Hill but they served only to reinforce the rules.

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Originally posted at Right Truth

Bon Appetit, a food services company, has gone “green”, serving only “low carbon” foods. That’s NOT low carbohydrates, that low CARBON. They won’t serve pineapple because it has to be shipped to the United States. I wonder if they serve coffee or tea with the meal? Both must be shipped to the US. Forget about bananas, forget about anything that is out of season, like tomatoes.

Carbon Neutral Journal:

Promoting Food Services for a Sustainable Future, Bon Appétit will be introducing a new low-carbon diet to its clients in celebration of Earth Day 2007. But Bon Appétit’s newest initiative isn’t just jumping on the latest bandwagon. The food service provider’s online pressroom is chock full of stories about sustainable food projects–like their recent Eat Local Challenge, which showed 200,000 diners at 400 Bon Appétit cafés across the U.S. what a meal made entirely of food grown within 150 miles of a restaurant looks and tastes like.

Agriculture accounts for one-third of greenhouse gases. In many ways, food choices are more important than car choice. It was clear we had to do something. In St. Louis, you can’t get tomatoes year-round locally. We might stop serving tomatoes with every hamburger in winter…The overarching message is that conscious food choices reduce climate change.

Livestock production accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions…If you currently have a hamburger four times a week, could you cut back to three and reduce carbon emissions by 25 percent?

Bananas are a very high-carbon item. They are grown far away and must be brought rapidly back so that they don’t spoil…do you have to have a banana every day, or can you eat dried cranberries?

These aren’t major trade-offs but are small things that can have a really big impact. (Student Life Newspaper)

Last year in the UK, via TreeHugger:

Hot on the heels of the imminent arrival of Green Green Tea, the first carbon neutral food product, we have news of Britain’s first carbon neutral restaurant. The Independent newspaper recently reported on Barny Haughton’s newest project in Bristol. Haughton, one of the UK’s most respected organic chefs, is working on Bordeaux Quay which will be a restaurant, bar, bistro, shop, bakery and cookery school that aims to reduce it’s impact on the environment.Bordeaux Quay aims to be zero-waste and carbon-neutral and to source the vast majority of its produce from within 50 miles. “Overall, we aim to be carbon neutral – in both the construction and the running of the restaurant.

TreeHugger reports that Terroir Restaurant on the North Norfolk coast has been Carbon Neutral for three years. Everyone’s jumping on the global warming bandwagon. There are carbon neutral hotels, too.

How to get a never ending happy ending, Planck’s Constant

Fred Thompson was the must see TV this week, not the latest Republican candidates debating. Even using the word debate is a joke. Too many candidates, lousy moderators and even worse questions. Fox News Channel set the bar so high with their debate, it makes these others look very sad and unprofessional. Raise your hand if …. you’re supporting Fred Thompson!

A.C. at Fore-Left has a nice article on the latest Republican Presidential debate and compares that with the Sean Hannity interview with Fred Thompson last night. A.C. concludes:

One of the things that draws me to Fred is his basic horse sense and the no nonsense manner in which he speaks of America at a crossroads. It definitely is. He’s not very telegenic and he’s not particularly slick in speech–I don’t even care much for his acting abilities–but he’s saying the things the others aren’t but should be.In some ways he comes across as the wise uncle or grandfather among a bunch of children, perhaps oversimplified but perhaps who we need now. If he runs.

I agree completely. Rastaman wonders if “saying the right things” is all that Thompson is doing. I don’t think that’s the case. Thompson is not a career politician and he is running because he truly believes things need changing.

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“The core of this presidency has been a political doctrine that George Bush calls the ‘Global War on Terror,’ ” said Democratic Party presidential candidate John Edwards at a campaign rally at the Council on Foreign Relations.  “He has used this doctrine like a sledgehammer to justify the worst abuses and biggest mistakes of his administration, from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, to the war in Iraq.”

Now wait a minute.  I have no qualms with Edwards believing the GWOT is nothing more than a bumber sticker as he said later, however Edwards is saying the Bush Administration wanted Abu Ghraib and that there’s something wrong with Guantanamo.  In fact the only thing wrong with Guantanamo is that people like Edwards, that is to say the $400 a hair cut types, criticize the detention center without even knowing any of the facts involved or offering an alternative to keep those detained within.

“We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”

Should Bush instead of called the conflict the ‘discussion with those who want to kill us?’  What really gets me is that Edwards considers the many theaters of the GWOT as ideological wars, which they actually are, but Edwards considers them Bush ideological wars as opposed to, say, Islamism versus the so-called West.

And there’s the Democratic Party’s leading candidate in Iowa.

Modest or not, Carter’s comments over the weekend were rather dimwitted and ironic. To argue the war in Iraq is the first pre-emptive war in U.S. history shows a clear lack of knowledge on the history of this nation. But that’s Jimmy.

Carter’s presidential legacy is sealed, however you’ve got to wonder if his senility over the past decade has somehow influenced the way history will judge this man. He has tried in earnest to change his past with something, anything to put his accomplishments in greater light, but all I see is Ahmadinejad.

One of the more interesting reactions I read over the weekend related to comments given in response by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Reporting on Snow’s rebuke indicated current administrations don’t speak ill of former presidents, thus presenting the Bush Administration to look bad for breaking tradition. There’s also a tradtion of former presidents not bashing current ones, a tradition Jimmy Carter broke many moons ago and continues to do so because he’s above all of that that.

Strangely, the John McCain for President campaign worker that feels it’s best to send six or seven emails on one single debate hasn’t bothered sending out praise to the Arizona senator today. I wonder why.

It’s not just McCain, of course, but his fingerprints are firmly on the document.

In the interest of compromise, what exactly were the positions where compromise needed to be met?

One extreme: Deport all illegals, fence the border and imprison any illegals who refuse to leave.

The other extreme: Open all borders and ask anyone and everyone to stream into this nation.

So the compromise was to, in essense, grant amnesty to anyone who already broke the law of the land and construct a fence of some kind. What exactly did the open-border advocates give up other than a fence? A fence for 12 million plus granted amnesty, plus the additional millions who hear this news and decide now is the time to cross the Rio Grande? It is, and they will and I don’t blame them at all.

However based on numerous polls, the American people fall much closer to the deport all extreme than the open border extreme, and that assumes, of course, those who are polled are actually legal residents anyways. So who exactly are the open-border advocates in Congress who simply fleeced the other side? It’s bound to be a very small minority who have now given right to run the government as they see fit.

McCain though, loves the bill that will most likely be pushed through before the American people can take a gander at it. He’s toast, but he was toast long before anyways.

On the national security front, the U.S. immigration service cannot even figure out how to ensure the current law is enforced.  Three of the Fort Dix Six were here illegally, yet INS couldn’t figure it out.  Now they’ve got at least 12 million more people on their rolls to hash through, so in the addition to every other illegal immigrant that will be flooding over in the next six months, this would be a prime time for any terrorist group to make the same journey.  Why not?  The INS’s hands are full.

Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Oz) has already stated he’s all for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine which would in fact end all political debate on talk radio both liberal and conservative, but it appears that when Kucinich is not trying to find out if the Bush Administration blew up the World Trade Center in an effort to start a war with Iraq (even though Afghanistan was first you loons) he’s drumming up support with Democratic Party higher-ups.

The American Spectator reports none other than Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Steny Hoyer (D-MD), you might remember those two for presenting an “alternative democratic foreign policy” to the leadership of Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood, are on the path towards trying to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine over this summer.

“First, [Democrats] failed on the radio airwaves with Air America, no one wanted to listen,” says a senior adviser to Pelosi. “Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it. Second, it looks like the Republicans are going to have someone in the presidential race who has access to media in ways our folks don’t want, so we want to make sure the GOP has no advantages going into 2008.”

Allow that quote from a senior advisor to Rep. Pelosi sink in for a minute.  Pelosi’s advisor is essentially saying the American consumer doesn’t deserve to have a choice when it comes to talk radio, because when we do we make the wrong decisions based upon Pelosi’s own ideology.

Air America has largely failed while conservative talk radio continues to steam on.  Why is that?  Judging by the only valid polls available, elections, it’s more than safe to conclude a liberal talk radio show would have a large audience if such a station or show was given the opportunity to succeed.  Therefore, aren’t we really just concluding Air America had no chance to succeed?  The money poured into the network and the incredible press the station achieved before even being launched though suggests otherwise.  It was therefore an issue of content; content the American consumer quite obviously didn’t want to hear.

But Pelosi, through the words of a senior advisor for, has decided for the American consumer the the U.S. government should expand into the airwaves and further regulate the industry, as if regulations already in place are not stringent enough, because we aren’t hearing what she wants us to.

It strikes me as completely ironic that it is the left-fringe of the Democratic Party, who has tried to remake fascism into a right-wing totalitarian government forgetting the very founding philosophies of fascism as an intolerant socialist system with an emphasis on government regulation laid out by Benito Mussolini, is now doing their best to do, well, just what Mussolini’s fascist dream did in Italy circa 1930.

You see, Pelosi isn’t concerned with candidates from both of the major United States political parties having access to media, and there’s little question which party is held in higher regard in most publications and television studios across this great nation, rather Pelosi is concerned a Republican candidate for the Office of the President will have “access to media in ways our folks don’t want.”

The correct way to counter that is to present an alternative viewpoint and debate the issues, not to silence that outlet with government regulation.  Instead Pelosi just seeks to silence all her critics, leaving behind the entire idea of being ‘liberal.’  It’s a good thing the American Left has decided a rebranding was in order to ‘progressives.’  While there’s nothing exactly progressive about government regulation, it is also far from liberal.  True liberals would be outraged.

Local politics are so boring, normally, except when they have national waves. Two votes here in Dallas over the weekend had such extensions; a vote in Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas, that would outlaw renting apartments to illegal aliens and a vote in University Park, where SMU resides, where the George W. Bush Presidential Library may be planted.

The vote in Farmers Branch was particularly interesting because after the city council approved the measure, lawsuits were thrown at the city. Normally cities would back down in the face of such lawsuits, including one from the ACLU who stated the measure would place in “discriminatory housing practices,” but Farmers Branch held firm and put it up for a vote.

Over the past four or so months since the city council brought the issue up, we’ve been treated to illegal alien protests, charges of racism (are illegal immigrants just of one race?) and the other overheard phrases used to describe voters whom want to end illegal immigration. It has been a symbol of the larger national debate and wouldn’t you know it, when the people speak the measure is approved 68 percent to 32 percent. The insipid calls of racism only inspired 32 percent of Farmers Branch voters to vote in favor of circumventing U.S. law.

The lawsuits are still on the table and the ACLU is still fighting for the ‘rights’ of illegals, apparently taking a break from supporting detainees held at Guantanamo Bay because they too represent American citizens somehow. But with the vote, Farmers Branch has turned the corner and the city will most likely continue to stand firm in their decision.

In Universtiy Park, voters “overwhelmingly” supported a land sale for the George W. Bush Presidential Library, a measure which would have been seen as trivial without the political games played by Leftist professors and special interest groups. Again in local news in the recent months, we’ve been treated to how this one library would bring the dreaded neo-cons to Dallas, as if there aren’t any here in the first place.

A coalition of SMU professors wrote letters (read the deranged comments if you have the stomach for it), staged protests encouraging students to attend (in one case the local ABC affiliate WFAA reported students were given extra credit to attend a rally) and virtually cried foul at what should be an honor to host a presidential library. Heck, I’d be thrilled if my alma mater, Texas Tech University, hosted the Jimmy Carter library, and I am certainly no fan of the man nor the president.

But you see, this news was publicized nationally and in came Liberal groups who were outraged at the alleged turning of SMU over the conservatism, as if the sheer number of professors who protested against the library was not proof enough of the campus’ left-leaning tilt.

While I have yet to see actual poll numbers, according to The Dallas Morning News, the turnout for this vote was the “highest in University Park history.”

President Bush still hasn’t decided on the location for the library named in his honor, and he may not choose SMU, but University Park residents voted in favor of building the library if the President chooses Dallas is where his library should be built.