The Lawyer's Party

This is from an article by Bruce Walker, from The American Thinker. at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/the_lawyers_party.html

The Lawyer's Party

The Democrat Party has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer and so is his wife Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate.) Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Benson, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.

The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.

Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office thirty-one years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work. The Democratic Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.

The Lawyers' Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And so we have seen the procession of official enemies in the eyes of the Lawyers' Party grow.

Against whom do Hillary and Obama rant and rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.

Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become "adverse parties" of our very government.

We are not all litigants in some vast social class action suit. We are citizens of a republic which promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.

Read the rest at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/the_lawyers_party.html.

(Hat Tip to Robert Martin)

So THAT'S Why the Muslims Hate the Jews So!

Recently Spengler wrote something that opened up for me a new possibility that could explain the rabid, inexplicable hatred of Muslims for Israel and the Jews. Here is the quote:

Islamic governments cannot accept the return of the Jews to Zion according to Biblical prophecy, for this would question the Koran's claim to be a final revelation to supplant the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

That is, if ancient Jewish prophecy were being fulfilled now, the Koran - which came after those old prophecies and contradicted them - could not possibly be what it claims to be: the last word on prophecy.

That could also explain why Muslims deny that there was ever any Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock Mosque stands now - to the point that they go to great lengths to thwart any tunneling beneath the Mount by archeologists looking for artifacts from the three previous Jewish temples ( Solomon's Temple, the smaller temple built by the returning Jewish exiles 70 years after Solomon's Temple was destroyed, and Herod's temple of the time of Jesus, later destroyed by the Romans.)

There are other reasons they hate the Jews, even if they are not as basic as undermining the very foundation of Islam.

One is that the nation of Israel is so successful, while Muslim nations are mostly unsuccessful. It is also that they are so unsuccessful in comparison with so many other countries and cultures. In fact, Spengler has written that

The Arabs are a failing people, I have argued in earlier studies (see Crisis of faith in the Muslim world Asia Times Online, October 31 and November 5, 2005).

It is not only the triumph of globalized Western culture over traditional society that threatens them, but the ascendancy of Asia. Last week's food riots in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East bring the point home. Arabs are hungry because Chinese are rich enough to eat meat, and buy vast quantities of grain to feed to pigs and chickens.

If the rise in Asian protein consumption portends a permanently higher plateau of food prices, the consequences are dire for populations living on state subsidies, from Morocco to Algeria to Cairo to Gaza. A people that have no hope also have nothing to lose.

Spengler quotes Anwar Sadat, former President of Egypt,

...who famously said that Egypt was the only state in the Middle East, calling the others "tribes with flags". They are more like hotels that rent rooms to a varied clientele, including some who abet terrorism.

But while there are so many other causes of feelings of humiliation and resentment from apparent backwardness in comparison to other nations, that would not compare to the potential of the return of the Jews to Israel to undermins the very foundations of belief in Islam. That would call out the most determined resistance and fury of all.

What Took the Environmentalists So Long?

Environmentalists are objecting to biofuels? Just what is going on? Well, exactly what was predicted.

The hand-wringing is getting frantic. Yesterday Simon Jenkins wrote in "The Cost of Green Tinkering is in Famine and Starvation" in The Guardian, that "Biofuels threaten food supplies, rain forest and climate - yet our leaders push them in the name of the environment"

Jenkins begins:

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so.

Jenkins is not a lone voice. The day before in The Guardian, environmentalist George Monbiot wrote about biofuels causing world hunger, with humane anguish and alarm. Already, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and the World Bank have all joined the hue and cry against the wicked biofuels that are causing world hunger.

What a change! Only two or three short years ago, they supported the very enviromentalists who were demonstrating, lobbying, pressuring and hounding governments to use alternative fuels to avoid global warming. Finally, most governments caved in and started such programs. Naturally, it took awhile for these new programs - mostly for biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel - to come online.

But also at the very same time, a few years back, hundreds of scientists who opposed the concept of global warming warned about the many problems of biofuels.. They pointed to the self-evident fact that using crops for fuel, not food, would lead to increased world hunger. They were dismissed, including by all the above-named media.

Now after just two years, those predictions have come true. Already 37 countries are in a "hunger crisis," which is expected to get worse. Oddly, that also happens to be just two short years after U.S. ethanol subsidies started. About that time, the Brits also planned their program to force biofuels to be added to all fuels. That program finally came online 3 days ago.

Now the leftist Guardian, environmentalist to its toes, has been running articles that practically scream out against the same buifuels they once thought were so necessary, because, just as predicted, they are causuig world hunger.

Excuse me, but what took the environmentalists and their media supporters so long?. Shouldn't they be publicly repenting their previous arrogance and eating a little crow?

It might help people's heads to stop spinning.

Biofuels Are A Crime Against Humanity

So writes award-winning environmentalist and professor, George Monbiot, in Britain's The Guardian yesterday, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/15/food.biofuels .

His headline says: A food recession is underway. Biofuels are a crime against humanity. But - take it from a flesh-eater - eating meat is worse.

He writes:

Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch... the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices.

But the most telling statistic? World grain production also broke all records, 5% bigger than all previous years. So it is not lack of increasing production! But...

Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn...will feed people.

Remarking on the new UK law which yesterday required all transport fuel to be mixed with biofuels, he notes that:

The World Bank points out that "the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol ... could feed one person for a year".

This year global stockpiles of cereals will decline by around 53m tonnes...The production of biofuels will consume almost 100m tonnes.

This indicates that biofuels "are directly responsible for the current crisis."

In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity, in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate.

He sees, however, an even bigger cause of world hunger than biofuels.

While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals - which could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat.

The U.S. eats about 2 kg. (4.4 lbs) of meat a week per person, the UK about 1kg, which is about 40% above the global average. Cows eat 8 kg of grain per pound of beef produced, but chickens only 2 kg of grain per pound ofmeat.

He cites figures to show that a vegan UK could feed itself using only half of its farmland..

But I cannot advocate a diet that I am incapable of following. I tried it for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that I was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans, and I admire them immensely. But after almost every talk that I give, I am pestered by swarms of vegans demanding that I adopt their lifestyle. I cannot help noticing that in most cases their skin has turned a fascinating pearl grey.

But "...some livestock is raised on pasture, so it doesn't contribute to the grain deficit. Simon Fairlie estimates that if animals were kept only on land that is unsuitable for arable farming, and given scraps and waste from food processing, the world could produce between a third and two-thirds of its current milk and meat supply...The only reasonable answer to the question of how much meat we should eat is as little as possible. Let's reserve it - as most societies have done until recently - for special occasions."

Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it. While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all...our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the global food crisis dimly, if at all.

(George Montiot's website is www.monbiot.com.)

Pope Benedict XVI Will Make History

So writes George Weigel in the April 21, 2008 Newsweek, at http://www.newsweek.com/id/131774?GT1=43002.

This Pope is not a superstar like John Paul II, but a master teacher. People came to see John Paul. They come to hear Benedict XVI.

John Paul helped bring the USSR down by his purely religious, non-political visit to Poland in 1979. The USSR took him so seriously that they attempted to assassinate him, but he survived the bullets and lived to see the demise of the USSR.

Now Benedict XVI has opened the issue with the Muslim world. Cries of fear and alarm followed his remarks at Regensburg in 2006, where he merely quoted an historical criticism of Islam during a lecture. But after the turmoil, important parts of the Muslim world began to respond. A year later Muslim religious leaders wrote him.

Now Muslim and Catholic scholars have opened a dialogue on basic issues of conscience, human rights and separation of religion and state authority. They will meet twice yearly, in Amman, Jordan and in Rome.

Recently King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited him in October 2007. Now he has helped him open the first catholic church in Doha, Qatar, and they are discussing building another one in the Saudi Kingdom.

Now in his visit to the U.S., he is expected to open a new era of relations between the Catholic church and its congregations. Even though there are many difficult issues to be addressed, underestimating him would probably be a to miss an understanding of a moment in history.

Gore Admits Financial Stake in Global Warming

Al Gore's estimated fortune is over $100 million. His speaking fees are around $175,000. He also owns a big bundle of Google stock acquired at a very low price. His estimated wealth was only $2 million, partly inherited, when he left office in January 2001. That means his earnings have averaged around $14 million a year for each of the last 7 years.

Now he stands to profit still more from environmental stocks that he owns - stocks that are profitable because of his advocacy against global warming. He is about to get richer still, directly from the global warming mania he helped to foster.



On March 1, while speaking at the TED Conference in Monterey, California, Gore said:

There are a lot of great investments you can make. If you are investing in tar sands, or shale oil, then you have a portfolio that is crammed with sub-prime carbon assets. And it is based on an old model. Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and their legs collapse. Developing tar sands and coal shale is the equivalent. Here are just a few of the investments I personally think make sense. I have a stake in these so I'll have a disclaimer there. But geo-thermal, concentrating solar, advanced photovoltaics, efficiency and conservation.

While Gore was speaking,

...pictures of electric cars, windmills and solar panels appeared in multiple slides on the screen with company names at the bottom such as Amyris (biofuels), Altra (biofuels), Bloom Energy (solid oxide fuel cells), Mascoma (cellulosic biofuels), GreatPoint Energy (catalytic gasification), Miasole (solar cells), Ausra (utility scale solar panels), GEM (battery operated cars), Smart (electric cars), and AltaRock Energy (geothermal power).

That is, he was actively recommending people put money in companies in which he already has a financial stake.

...as he tours the world demanding nations stop burning fossil fuels, he will financially benefit if they follow his advice and move to technologies that he has already invested in.

Will the media be all over this? Or will we hear little about it? What do you think?

World Bank Says Biofuels Starving World's Poor

The following report, based on the World Bank report below, is from outsidethebeltway.com yesterday at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2008/04/biofuels_starving_worlds_poor/

The drastic rise in prices for corn, rice, and other staples that is wreaking havoc in parts of the developing world is due in large part to Western investment in biofuels, according to a recent report of the World Bank.

The rising trend in international food prices continued, and even accelerated, in 2008.

U.S. wheat export prices rose from $375/ton in January to $440/ton in March, and Thai rice export prices increased from $365/ton to $562/ton. This came on top of a 181 percent increase in global wheat prices over the 36 months leading up to February 2008, and a 83 percent increase in overall global food prices over the same period.

Increased bio-fuel production has contributed to the rise in food prices.

Concerns over oil prices, energy security and climate change have prompted governments to take a more
proactive stance towards encouraging production and use of bio-fuels. This has led to increased demand for bio-fuel raw materials, such as wheat, soy, maize (corn) and palm oil, and increased competition for cropland.

Almost all of the increase in global maize (corn) production from 2004 to 2007 (the period
when grain prices rose sharply) went for bio-fuels production in the U.S..

The observed increase in food prices is not a temporary phenomenon, but likely to persist in the medium term. .., they are likely to remain well above the 2004 levels through 2015 for most food crops.

Forecasts of other major organizations (FAO, OECD, and USDA) that regularly monitor and project commodity prices are broadly consistent with these projections. Predictions of high food price...are further strengthened when we factor in the impact of policies aimed at achieving energy security and reduced carbon dioxide emissions, which may present strong trade-offs with food security objectives.

More details are available in the backgrounder, “Rising food prices: policy options and World Bank response” [PDF].

World Bank President Bob Zoellick was on NPR this morning talking about this.

Demand for ethanol and other biofuels is a “significant contributor” to soaring food prices around the world.. helped create “a perfect storm” that has boosted those prices, he says.

The soaring costs of food and fuel led to riots in Haiti and Egypt and a general strike in Burkina Faso this week. Skyrocketing food prices are topping the agenda this weekend of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual spring meetings in Washington.

Zoellick held up a bag of rice during a news conference Thursday to illustrate the severity of the food crisis. “In Bangladesh a two-kilogram bag of rice … now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family,” he said. “The price of a loaf of bread … has more than doubled. Poor people in Yemen are now spending more than a quarter of their incomes just on bread.”

And Zoellick says prices for basic staples will remain high for an extended period of time...As the Indian commerce minister said to me, going from one meal a day to two meals a day for 300 million people increases demand a lot.

"It has long struck me as wrongheaded, if not immoral, to take cheap, efficient sources of nutrition to turn them into expensive, inefficient fuels. "

A gallon of ethanol produces roughly two-thirds the energy of a gallon of gasoline and is far more expensive. And, while farmers and, especially, processors make more money by the increased demand for biofuels, it means that food is now out of reach for millions.

Where to draw the line on these things is unclear. It’s inefficient to feed grain to livestock in order to produce meat — another trend highlighted by Zoellick and the report. But at least that’s turning food into a more desirable (if not necessarily more healthy) food.

NY Times Agrees - Biofuels Cause of Soaring World Food Prices

This editorial from the NY Times today, "The World Food Crisis" 4-10-08, at ://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10thu1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin .

Most Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.

Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation. Corn doubled in price over the last two years. Wheat reached its highest price in 28 years. The increases are already sparking unrest from Haiti to Egypt. Many countries have imposed price controls on food or taxes on agricultural exports.

What is causing these increases in food prices?

The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain.

But the rich world is exacerbating these effects by supporting the production of biofuels. The International Monetary Fund estimates that corn ethanol production in the United States accounted for at least half the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three years. This elevated corn prices. Feed prices rose. So did prices of other crops — mainly soybeans — as farmers switched their fields to corn, according to the Agriculture Department. (Emphasis added)

Is ethanol the solution to our energy problems? The Times says:

At best, corn ethanol delivers only a small reduction in greenhouse gases compared with gasoline. And it could make things far worse if it leads to more farming in forests and grasslands. Rising food prices provide an urgent argument to nix ethanol’s supports.

The rich world needs to act quickly, because it caused the problem:

Last month, the World Food Program said rising grain costs blew a hole of more than $500 million in its budget for helping millions of victims of hunger around the world...Rich countries’ energy policies helped create the problem. Now those countries should help solve it.

Forget the Poor?

We talk about the poor a lot. We arrange our politics around the poor. Our religion points us toward the poor. There have been revolutions about helping the poor. But when it comes down to it, many of us are ready to throw the poor overboard.


Food prices are soaring all over the world. Three billion people subsist mostly on rice. Yet the price of rice has soared again, rising by 10% this time. Corn is the basic food of much of Latin America, and also the basic feed for meat-producing animals. Yet the price of corn keeps soaring, up to $6 a bushel this week. Two years ago it was at about $2 a bushel. The poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America are suffering because their groceries cost so much more now. Their suffering will only get worse as food prices continue to rise.


Why are food prices rising? Two main reasons. One is biofuels. The other is rising oil prices.


As for the effect of biofuels, corn and soybeans are being substituted for other food crops for use as biofuels, not food. This is happening all over the world. So not only are biofuels driving up the cost of corn and soybeans, but of other basic foods too. Because of environmentalism, essentially we have decided to use more and more of our topsoil to produce fuel, not food. Obviously, that will mean less food produced, and bring higher food prices to us all. We middle-class people will struggle, but survive. But the burden on the world's poor will be crushing.


Then higher oil prices are causing food prices to rise as well. Farmers need petroleum-based fertilizers and fuel for their farm machinery. Truckers and ships need fuel. Refrigerated trucks, warehouses and grocery-store displays of cold and frozen foods take fuel too. Rising oil prices make all these cost more, so that all food costs more, not just the basic grains.


Why are oil prices higher? Actually, it has nothing to do with American oil giants. The market really, truly, determines the price. But there are two principal causes of rising oil prices. One is rising demand, as some of the poor countries become more prosperous. The other is the success of environmentalists in the U.S.


Environmentalists have succeeded in suppressing oil production in the U.S., a country that was once the major producer of oil in the world. Because of environmentalists, there have been no new refineries in the U.S. for 30 years. Because of them, we do not drill in ANWAR, where we could access one of the largest oil deposits in the world with almost no pollution. We do not drill offshore, when the Gulf of Mexico is filling up with foreign oil rigs, including those of China and Cuba. So not drilling offshore does not mean there is no drilling there - only that our own offshore oil will go to other countries, not us.


The increased prices of oil, and of food, are likely to be permanent, probably going even higher. Why? Because environmentalism has won politically over concern about the poor. Soaring food prices and the growing suffering of the poor, which has already begun worldwide, are happening principally because of one thing: environmentalism.


We have a choice to make. Will we choose to help the poor? Or environmentalism? It appears we cannot do both.


(For documentation, see: http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=213343. World Food Stocks Dwindling Rapicly, UN, http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/europe/food.php. Wheat rises to all-time high, Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aP6EBENKxOLk. Rush LImbaugh Comment, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_032508/content/01125104.guest.html. On Increased Food Prices around world, Food costs worldwide spiked 23 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to the FAO. Grains went up 42 percent, oils 50 percent and dairy 80 percent. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/25/business/LA-FEA-FIN-Mexico-Fighting-for-Food.php. rudge: price of rice up 10%, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4813b3c4-0250-11dd-9388-000077b07658.html?.nclick_check=1 Corn up to $6 a bushel, http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080403/corn_at_6.html?.v=6)

Hillary To Drop Out Of Race

No she's not! April Fool's! Gotcha, didn't I?

Over the years, there have been millions of April Fool's Day Hoaxes. Rubel Shelley brings us some of the best efforts, below, from the last 150 years.

Today is a day to be on your toes. It's April Fools' Day - or April Fool's Day or April Fools Day, depending on your choice of spelling. Believe me, I'll be especially careful. I work with a guy who celebrates if 365 days a year. And on this "official day" of pranksterism, he stands to be at his rascally worst.

One of the most famous of all April 1 hoaxes was pulled off in stiff-upper-lip England, no less. A respected newscaster, Richard Dimbleby, reported on the TV news program Panorama that an early spaghetti harvest was under way in Switzerland. He explained about an early spring and rambled on about the dangers of the spaghetti weevil. The story was accompanied by photographs of happy Swiss villagers pulling the delicate strands off trees.

Think nobody could take such things seriously? Think that no one gets fooled by hoaxers? The BBC switchboard was jammed on that day in 1957 with hundreds of callers wanting to know more. Many wanted information on where to buy plants so they could grow their own spaghetti. "Many British enthusiasts," producer Michael Peacock is reported to have told them, "have had admirable results from planting a small tin of spaghetti in tomato sauce."

Just reading about some of the classic pranks pulled on a gullible public - not all of which were April Fools' Day events - generates giggles.

-Showman P.T. Barnum used to pack people in to see the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington.

=The New York Sun published articles back in 1835 about the discovery of life on the moon - describing bixon, unicorns and other creatures

-Orson Wells' "War of the Worlds" caused panic across America in 1938 when CBS broadcast his story of an invasion from Mars.

-You can still find photos and occasional offers to sell jackalopes - a cross between killer rabbits and pygmy deer.

-Physicist Alan Sokal wrote a jargon-heavy piece of sheer nonsense in 1996 arguing that gravity was a fiction created for social-linguistic purposes - and actually got it published in a Duke University journal.

Yep, it all makes you wonder about our critical thinking skills. It also has to make all of us wonder how much drivel we are being fed about our climate, political prospects, human origina, and/or cures for sale. And we haven't even raised the matter of the hoaxes perpetrated in the name of religion.

So be on your toes today. But spend a little time trying to get ahead of the curve in your workplace. "A cheerful heart brings a smile to your face; a sad heart makes it hard to get through the day." (Proverbs 15:13 MSG)(

For back issues of "The FAX of Life, visit www.RubelShelly.com)