[Guest post by DRJ]

Vicki McClure Davidson at the Frugal Cafe Blog Zone has a fascinating retrospective of Thanksgiving art culminating with Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving Day masterpiece “Freedom from Want.” And here is a link to a slideshow of Rockwell’s famous “Four Freedoms.”

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

A former liberal looks at the Left’s Wilding of Sarah Palin:

“What finally woke me up were the utterances of “bitch,” “witch,” and “monster” toward Hillary Clinton and her supporters early last year. I was shocked into reality: the trash-talk wasn’t coming from conservatives, but from male and female liberals.

I finally beheld what my eyes had refused to see: that leftists are Mr. and Ms. Misogyny. Neither the males nor the females care a whit about women.

Women are continually sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. If under radical Islam women are enshrouded and stoned and beheaded, so be it.

My other epiphanies: those ponytailed guys were marching for abortion rights not because they cherished women’s reproductive freedom, but to keep women available for free and easy sex.

And the eagerness for women to make good money? If women work hard, leftist men don’t have to.

Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women, but it’s far worse: many are perpetuators.

The Left’s behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser-focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.

They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House.

The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Liberals need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote Democrat.”

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Thursday’s announcement that Dubai’s state-owned corporation Dubai World is seeking an extension in its interest payments has shocked the financial world:

“Fears of a dangerous new phase in the economic crisis swept around the globe yesterday as traders responded to the shock announcement that a debt-laden Dubai state corporation was unable to meet its interest bill.

Shares plunged, weak currencies were battered and more than £14 billion was wiped from the value of British banks on fears that they would be left nursing new losses.

Nervous traders transferred the focus of their anxieties from the risk of companies failing to the risk of nation states defaulting. Investors owed money by Mexico, Russia and Greece saw the price of insuring themselves against default rocket.”

Tomorrow could be Black Friday in more ways than one.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

In the wake of the East Anglia email scandal, investigative journalist and climate change activist George Monbiot notes the irony of his fellow environmentalists’ denials of the East Anglia email scandal:

“I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We’ll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.
***
There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific.”

Monbiot is not doing an about-face on global warming — in fact, he’s so concerned about it that he’s one of the few green activists willing to accept nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions.

— DRJ

UPDATE: The White House has some explaining to do, too:

“Canada Free Press editor Judi McLeod and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball reveal the involvement of White House Science Czar John Holdren (photo) in the Climategate Scandal. The picture presented of Holdren is not a pretty one:

Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding as “Climategate”.

Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”.

Examples are provided at the link, and it concludes with this summary of John Holdren: “Holdren was blinded by his political views, which as his record shows are frightening. One web site synthesizes his position on over-population as follows, “Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.”

Presumably, as Science Czar, John Holdren has direct access to President Obama when it comes to global warming and science issues.

UPDATE 2 — The Obama Administration isn’t taking Monbiot’s advice:

“Skeptics of global warming science, meanwhile, criticized Obama for pushing a climate deal amid a scandal in Britain, where computer hackers obtained and posted online e-mails and other documents from leading climate scientists.

The skeptics say documents show that scientists have overstated the case for global warming. Obama administration officials said that they had seen the stolen e-mails and dismissed the arguments.”

H/T Kevin Murphy.

[Guest post by DRJ]

From Naked Emperor News, the audio of Howard Dean on The Bill Press Show, November 24, 2009:

Here’s my transcript of the text:

Dean: “I will not vote for a bill … [laughs] I don’t have a vote … but I would not vote for a bill that does not have a public option. Period. Plain and simple.”

Press: “Well, that’s what Bernie Sanders says as well.”

Dean: “Yeah, he’s doing the right thing and I’m hoping there’s going to be 4 or 5 other Senators that will join him.

Look, there is something worse than passing no bill. This bill isn’t very strong. In fact, the only piece of reform left in it is the public option. The insurance reform is gone, essentially, because what they did was they have guaranteed issue — that is, you have to … the insurance company has to insure you — the problem is they don’t have community rating anymore. They … in the Senate bill I think you can charge three or four times as much for sick people as you do for healthy people and in the House bill it’s twice as much.

You know, we did this 15 years ago in Vermont and you can charge 20% more for your most expensive plan as you can for your cheapest plans, and that’s it. Now, you can afford to buy health insurance if it’s only 20% above the bottom price but you can’t afford to buy health insurance if it’s twice as much or three times as much. So guaranteed issue doesn’t do you any good unless you have a real community rating, and real community rating doesn’t exist in either the House or the Senate bills.

So the old argument which I used to make was that we ought to pass this thing just to get the insurance reform. There isn’t any insurance reform left in this bill to speak of.

You know, what this is is a giant bailout. This is a bailout that makes AIG look cheap. Sixty billion dollars a year goes to the insurance companies under this bill. Now if we can get a public option, I think that’s okay. But if you don’t have a public option, why would we want to stick the taxpayers with yet another bailout? They bailed out the banks, they bailed out AIG. This is a trillion dollar bailout.

I would vote with Bernie Sanders. I would vote to kill this bill if it does not have a public option because that is doing harm to the nation. It’s not just “Well, there’s going to be some of this …”. This is a harmful bill to the nation without a public option because it’s going to take trillions of dollars, billions … well, trillions over several decades from our kids.

So Republicans are right about the rhetoric of the bill but if you get reform, you can fix it. If you don’t get reform, you got a system that we have today — you’re gradually going to start un-insuring people because we’re not going to have the money to maintain the system. It does nothing to control costs.”

H/T Hot Air.

— DRJ

Happy “Don’t Take Things for Granted” Day. Here’s a trick to help you along.

And enjoy the turkey.

I was in trial on November 20 and didn’t get to mark that day as the day that the Lockerbie bomber was supposed to be dead. He still isn’t.

It’s a miracle!

Harry Shearer on his radio show says maybe we need Libyan health care.

Swiss officials will not contest a Swiss court’s decision to allow Roman Polanski to be confined in the following Gstaad hellhole:

Laurie Levenson has a good quote:

“It is very rare to get bail in an extradition case and especially in cases where the person’s fled,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and Loyola law professor. “This is a little like giving bail to O.J. after the Bronco chase.”

There’s a moment in the documentary “Wanted and Desired” (I can’t find a clip of it) when a reporter is asking Polanski whether he will come back — and he laughs and says something like: “Don’t worry about it.”

So, you know. Don’t worry about it.

*

P.S. Meanwhile, reader Josh W. tilts at the AP windmill with this letter seeking a correction to the nearly 5 gazillion stories they have written misrepresenting the nature of Polanski’s plea bargain. Per my pledge to publish any such letter, here we go:

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