The Media’s Top 10 Economic Myths of 2007

10. Airlines are solely to blame for the unfriendly skies.
Media myth: Blame the airlines for all those flight delays; never mind the obsolete government-run agency creating the gridlock.

9. Consumer spending is the be-all, end-all of the economy.
Media myth: Without excessive consumer spending – especially at Christmastime – the U.S. economy will collapse.

8. The stock market is trouble, whether it goes up or down.
Media myth: One day the stock market can’t sustain growth; the next, we’re just one drop away from another crash.

7. Anyone who ‘denies’ global warming shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Media myth: Global warming could cause a ‘century of fires,’ just as it has created allergies and ended winter fashion. If we don’t do something now (i.e. spend hundreds of billions of dollars), it’s only going to get worse.

6. You’d better not eat/drink that!
Media myth: Forget the right to eat as you please; the nanny-state knows better.

5. Most Americans are losing their homes.
Media myth: Americans everywhere are losing their homes to foreclosure, and the housing bust is going to ruin the economy.

4. “Going Green” is good for America and business.
Media myth: Businesses are much better off if they go green, and that’s what people really want anyway.

3. Lenders are responsible for everyone’s debts.
Media myth: Drowning in red ink isn’t your fault; blame the guy who loaned you the money.

2. Free health care would be great!
Media myth: To save our children and the 47 million uninsured Americans, and to keep up with the rest of the world, we must have government-run health care.

1. The U.S. Economy is in recession.
Media myth: The U.S. economy is nearly in, or is in, a recession.

See The Truths:
Read The Full Article From the BMI

Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern

A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama's admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate.

Obama's campaign said the Clinton people were getting desperate. Clinton's campaign tried to distance itself from the remarks, and the adviser said later he regretted making them.
Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman of Clinton's front-runner campaign, raised the issue during an interview with The Washington Post, posted on washingtonpost.com.

Shaheen, an attorney and veteran organizer, said much of Obama's background is unknown and could be a problem in November 2008 if he is the Democratic nominee. He said Republicans would work hard to discover new aspects of Obama's admittedly spotty youth.

"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" said Shaheen, whose wife, Jeanne, is the state's former governor and is running for the U.S. Senate next year.

"There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome," Shaheen said.
Clinton's campaign said it had nothing to do with his comments, and Shaheen said later he regretted them.

"I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way," Bill Shaheen said in an e-mail released by the campaign.

A campaign spokeswoman, Kathleen Strand, earlier had said "Senator Clinton is out every day talking about the issues that matter to the American people. These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way."

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in response to Shaheen's remarks:
"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."

Obama wrote about his teenage drug use in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." His rivals have largely remained silent on the subject.

"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote. Mostly he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, he wrote, but occasionally he would snort cocaine when he could afford it.

Speaking to Manchester high school students earlier this month, Obama said he was hardly a model student and had experimented with drugs and alcohol.

"You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs," he said. "There was a whole stretch of time that I didn't really apply myself a lot. It wasn't until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, 'Man, I wasted a lot of time.'"

New polling shows Clinton and Obama basically tied in New Hampshire. A CNN-WMUR-TV poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows Clinton at 31 percent support, Obama at 30. The same poll had Obama trailing by 20 points in September.

Clinton's campaign has distributed its first flier that criticizes Obama's health care plan for leaving 15 million people without insurance. TV ads following the same theme also have been prepared.

"This is not the time to go back to the same old politics of, 'now I'm going to smack you over the head with a baseball bat and call into question your character,'" Obama co-chairman Ned Helms told reporters in a conference call earlier Wednesday, decrying what he said was Clinton's negative campaign.

In Iowa, Democratic presidential rival John Edwards said of the comments: "I reject it. I reject it, and I want nothing to do with that kind of politics."

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer
Posted on Yahoo News

Revisit the Clinton Record?

One of the Man from Hope's consistently amazing lines is that the press doesn't offer the Clintons enough credit for all their good works. The latest example came on the trail in Keene, N.H., where the Associated Press found him whining about how the press hasn't underlined the vast chasm in experience between his wife and Barack Obama. "Bill Clinton said Tuesday that if reporters covered the candidates' public records better, his wife's presidential bid would be far ahead of her rivals," reported the AP.

Clinton obviously believes his presidency was a Golden Era, a time when peace and prosperity graced America. The Clintons want the press to replay a sort of glowing Harry and Linda Thomason propaganda movie about The Way They Were, with a soundtrack by Barbra Streisand.

Oh, baloney. The last thing Bill or his wife want is for the press to scrutinize their public records. The media have been absolutely AWOL on this front for 15 years. He knows it, just as he knows that his bellyaching about the press will also succeed in keeping them at bay.

How easy it would be to make a list of all the things the press could do to clear the cobwebs with thorough investigations (as opposed to the infrequent and incomplete spurt of a few negative stories). Reporters could draw up a quick list of "old news" about Hillary Clinton's record of public malfeasance that Bill knows full well have never been resolved:

1. Hillary ordering around the White House staff to fire seven workers in the White House Travel Office for financial mismanagement, with Billy Dale accused of embezzlement. Hillary then lied to a grand jury about how she was not really involved in the firing scheme, even though staffers were writing there would be "hell to pay" if they didn't do Hillary's bidding. Billy Dale's life was ruined. Two years later, it took a jury two hours to acquit him of all charges. Why did she do that? What would voters think, Mr. President?

2. Hillary making a mysterious $100,000 profit off a $1,000 investment in cattle futures with Tyson Foods lawyer Jim Blair making her trades. Was this a bribe for the governor's wife? It certainly didn't fit Hillary's first fairytale explanation: that she made the trades just reading the Wall Street Journal. Would more focus on this still-unresolved scandal help Hillary's campaign, Mr. President?

3. Hillary's staffers rifling through Vince Foster's office for documents in the hours after Foster's death in Fort Marcy Park. One man seen leaving the scene with documents was White House aide and Hillary protege Craig Livingstone. What was he taking away? Why won't anyone in your administration give an honest answer, Mr. President?

4. Hillary's Rose Law Firm records "disappeared," only to reappear in the White House residence after years of requests for documents from the independent counsel investigating her lawyering for her corrupt business partner Jim McDougal. What were they doing right outside Hillary's private office, Mr. President?

5. Hillary demanding the need for a White House database of friends and enemies. The Clinton White House was found to be in possession of over 1,000 FBI files of Republican White House employees. At the center of the controversy again: Craig Livingstone, who told friends he was Hillary's hire. Why were they there? How were they used?

In each of these cases -- and so many more! -- the Clinton-adoring media pulled a collective hamstring and retired before the scandal was ever resolved.

According to the AP, Clinton also said "his wife's bipartisan work in the Senate proves she can accomplish her campaign's message of change, and that records matter more than rhetoric." But Hillary couldn't even get her massive health-care plan through a Democratic House and Senate. In Carl Bernstein's biography, he reported Hillary made enemies among Senate Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan by threatening to "demonize" them if they didn't swallow her health plan whole. Does that sound like a formula for bipartisan rule in 2009?

Looking at Hillary's public record would also mean taking a serious look at her very liberal Senate voting record. She has a perfect 100 pro-abortion score with NARAL Pro-Choice America. Except for "gay marriage," she's pretty much perfect with the gay Human Rights Campaign lobby. She gets an F from the National Rifle Association. On fiscal issues, she gets an F from the National Taxpayers Union, a 14-percent score from Citizens Against Government Waste, and only a 6.7 percent score from Americans for Tax Reform. Her lifetime American Conservative Union rating is 9 percent.

At every turn, whether it is scandalous behavior or a scandalously liberal voting record, Bill Clinton knows full well that if the press were really focusing "like a laser beam" on Hillary's past, her poll ratings would be dropping, not skyrocketing.

By Brent Bozell III
Townhall.com

American Girl Dolls Made In China

They're marketed as the all-American girls, each representing a different period in American history. But CBS 11 found the American Girl dolls that teach our heritage aren't really American.

Susan Mobley has purchased several American Girl dolls over the years for her daughter, Heather. But the Mobleys recently discovered these dolls are only American in name. If you look closely, you'll see a tag on the box that says "Made in China."

"To have an American Girl doll made in China sounds like a contradiction, does it not?" said Dr. Daniel Howard, professor of Marketing at the SMU Cox School of Business.

He says it's all about cost. It's more expensive to manufacture the dolls in the U.S., which means the price of the $87 dolls would be even higher.

"I believe that there are many American consumers who would pay it simply for the knowledge, simply for the comfort of knowing that this doll was made in the good ol' U.S. of A," Dr. Howard said.

Nan Moon owns Plano-based American Joe Apparel. It's a product which is American in name and in it country of manufacture. Every supplier and every manufacturer is American.
"The cotton is being grown in either Texas or Georgia," she says. "The yarn is being made in South Carolina, and the fabric is made in Missouri."

Moon says it does cost more, but the quality is better. She says using the word "American" in a product but manufacturing it in another country can give consumers the wrong idea.
"I think it's misleading the public, but then again, we all have the capability to look and see where that product was made," she says.

Some moms we talked to outside the American Girl Boutique and Bistro at the Galleria were surprised about the dolls' true origin. But others we spoke to weren't surprised at all, and say they'll still buy American Girl dolls.

"It doesn't bother me as long as they continue to provide the kind of quality items my girls will enjoy," said shopper Wendy Bates.

Susan Mobley and her daughter say they're disappointed the dolls aren't American-made, but say the message the dolls represent should still be celebrated.

"I'm not pleased with where they're made, but I'm not going to stop buying them... I have to admit," Mobley said.

American Girl sent us this statement regarding the dolls' origin:
"Like the majority of the world's toys, American Girl products are manufactured in China, in addition to 18 other countries. All the design and conception work is done at the company's headquarters in Wisconsin."

And by the way, in case you're wondering, we did have a doll and its accessories tested for lead. Experts say the doll and its toys are perfectly safe.

By Ginger Allen
Dallas CBS 11 News

Huckabee, Romney, Church and State

By David Limbaugh

The surfacing of the "religion question" in the Republican presidential primary campaigns of both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee has raised important issues and exposed much public confusion about the intersection of religion and politics.

Secularists feign sympathy with Romney for having to address the Mormon question in response to alleged anti-Mormon bigots but condemn him for failing in his speech to expressly include nonbelievers among those whose religious liberty he would safeguard.

This particular attack on Romney by the secularist bigot patrol reveals their own religious bigotry, their ignorance or their disingenuousness. It goes without saying that robust religious liberty includes the freedom to believe in any religion or not to believe at all.

But the secularists' attacks on Huckabee are more serious. They have taken him to task for identifying himself as a "Christian leader" in Iowa, with some saying he was exploiting Romney's Mormonism and also violating the spirit of the constitutional prohibition on requiring religious tests for public office.

In a campaign ad, Huckabee says, "Faith doesn't just influence me. It really defines me," and he identifies himself as a "Christian leader."

It's one thing to read the First Amendment Establishment Clause as prohibiting the slightest government endorsement of the Christian religion (while not demonstrating similar angst over government promotion of secular humanism, New Age-ism, Islam or Native American spirituality). But it's taking it to an entirely new level to say that it precludes public officeholders from allowing their Christian worldview to influence their policy preferences or governance.
Public officials cannot separate their worldview from their governance without gutting themselves into ciphers. Their policy agenda will necessarily reflect their value system. Voters in turn properly base their decisions on candidates in part on their respective values and how closely they resemble their own.

Cont... Townhall.com

ANOTHER CASE OF GUNS SAVING LIVES

OK - We have all just been made aware via the news media that several church goers were killed recently by a gun wielding teenager. The bigger story from my perspective as the "PA Citizen" is the story of lives saved because the church had the uncanny foresight to have an armed "Security Team" that took quick action and killed the mentally unbalanced gunman. How many lives were saved will never be known, but when you measure it against other similar occurrences when unarmed, helpless victims waited for assistance from law enforcement the difference may be drastic. Since response time by our boys in blue is sometimes hampered by distance, procedures they must follow once on the scene, and a fear of making a bad situation worse, another alternative must be considered. In my opinion, that alternative is "the right to carry a concealed weapon". Someone on the "inside" seeing what is going on, can save lives. This is the real story that is being ignored regarding the church shootings and the Heroes on the Church Security Team. Hats off to some real americans.

PA Citizen is a Blogger for In Defense of America

A Year Later, Signs of Progress Around the World

The world looks safer, friendlier, more hopeful than it did as we approached Christmastime last year.

Then, we were on the defensive, perhaps on the verge of defeat, in Iraq. The Europeans' attempts to persuade Iran to renounce nuclear weapons seemed to have failed. Hugo Chavez was using his near-dictatorial powers and the oil wealth of Venezuela to secure the election of opponents of the American "empire" in Latin America.

Today, things look different. And they suggest, to me at least, that the policies of the Bush administration, pilloried as bankrupt by the Democrats after their victory in congressional elections in November, have served American interests better than most Americans then thought.

Start with Iraq. The surge strategy, opposed by almost all Democrats in Congress and the party's presidential candidates, has clearly worked. Violence has sharply decreased; Iraqi Sunnis have turned against al-Qaida and toward the Shiite-dominated government; bottom-up reconciliation has gone forward in apparently all areas of the country. Polls show that despite minimal coverage in the mainstream media for many months, most Americans are coming to understand that the surge is working.

True, majorities still say that we should not have gone into Iraq in the first place. And George W. Bush's job rating has rebounded only a little, if at all. There is room for criticism of his record: If the surge has been so successful, why didn't he order it some months or even years earlier? But the prospect of a non-dictatorial Iraq, friendly to the United States, growing economically and peaceful enough to nurture civil society, is now within sight -- as it wasn't a year ago.

Then go to Iran. The National Intelligence Estimate unveiled Dec. 3 stated that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. But it also noted, though this didn't make the headlines, that the mullahs' regime is continuing its enrichment of uranium. Uranium enrichment is the single hardest part of making a deliverable nuclear weapon, and the NIE also stated that the mullahs could resume their nuclear weapons program anytime soon.

In the short run, the NIE will probably make it harder for us to persuade Russia and China, and perhaps the Europeans, to impose tougher sanctions on Iran. And it forecloses any possibility of a U.S. military attack, although my own not totally uninformed opinion is that there was no prospect of George W. Bush ordering one in any case. But note the date on which Iran allegedly stopped the weapons program: What happened in 2003? Is it possible that the major military action in Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein, which motivated Muammar Qaddafi to cancel Libya's nuclear weapons program, had the same effect on Iran's mullahs? If so, it was not as much of a blunder as so many Americans thought a year ago.

And then there's Venezuela. Hugo Chavez asked voters to make him president for life and give him the power to seize all private property. They declined by a 51 percent to 49 percent margin. The brave students who monitored voting sites might have prevented him from stealing this referendum.

We can be reasonably sure that Chavez will make more mischief in Latin America and undermine the vibrant democracy of next-door Colombia, and it's possible that by rejecting the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, congressional Democrats will do the latter, as well. But the rejection of Chavez's plan by the people in whose name he claims to speak is a shattering blow to his prestige that will resonate all across Latin America. It will amplify the words King Juan Carlos I, who has done more than anyone else to advance freedom and democracy in Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, addressed to him at a recent conference: "Why don't you just shut up?"

Not all these favorable events are the work of George W. Bush and the United States. Iraqi Sunnis started turning against al-Qaida even before the surge began, the mullahs (assuming the NIE is correct) may have moved partly out of fear that their own people would rise up against them, and the Venezuelans who rejected Chavez's referendum acted without much encouragement from the United States. So if the world does seem safer, American voters might forget that we still have many vicious enemies determined to inflict great harm on us and install a president who believes we can resume the holiday from history we seemed to be enjoying in the 1990s. But as Christmas approaches, we have more to be thankful for than we did this time last year.

By Michael Barone
Townhall.com
Photo by Caspar inc.

The Mortgage Mess

Like obnoxious relatives, the mortgage mess won’t go away. Some two million adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) will reset over the next two years, and analysts say that within the coming year alone, $362 billion in subprime home mortgages will experience rising interest rates. This will lead to ever more payment defaults and foreclosures, a horrible state of affairs not only for the affected homeowners and lenders, but also for the financial markets in general.

As is their wont, officials from both parties are rushing to offer “solutions.” The Bush administration is urging lenders to maintain the low teaser rates on ARMs, while Hillary Clinton recently advocated a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures. Although casting themselves as knights rescuing beleaguered citizens from greedy corporations, in truth these politicians will only make matters worse.

In his classic Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt said that the good economist looks not only at the obvious, immediate beneficiaries of a government policy, but also considers the long run, hidden costs. We should do the same with the latest mortgage proposals. Although particular homeowners may benefit in the short run, such government tinkering will ultimately harm average Americans by distorting the mortgage industry.

To understand the downside of the recent proposals, we need to step back and ask ourselves why ARMs and foreclosure clauses exist in the first place. They are obviously advantageous to the lender, so it’s no surprise that banks favor them. But why do the borrowers agree to these terms? Why doesn’t everybody simply take out a conventional fixed rate loan, and moreover one that is unsecured—so that the bank can’t seize one’s house in the event of default? Is every borrower just plain stupid for failing to insist on loans of this nature?

Of course not. The reason borrowers agree to adjustable rates (which have the possibility of skyrocketing) and to pledging their home or other assets as collateral, is that this allows them to receive concessions from the bank—in particular, it allows them to borrow a great deal more money than would otherwise be possible. Very few people would persuade a bank to lend them money to buy a house, if the bank didn’t ultimately have the right to take ownership of the house in the event that the borrower couldn’t make the mortgage payments. Yes, borrowers would prefer that they get a $300,000 mortgage with no strings attached, but lenders wouldn’t be too happy with this arrangement. The beauty of a capitalist system is that property owners must compromise to reach mutually beneficial arrangements, since private transactions are voluntary.

Now after individuals enter into these voluntary arrangements, what happens if the government swoops in and invalidates them? There will be short term winners and losers, naturally. And most Americans have no problem with this, because it seems fair to help struggling homeowners at the expense of Wall Street fat cats.

Yet this conclusion is very superficial. Lenders will learn the lesson that their contracts aren’t safe; contrary to popular belief, the government will not serve to enforce the law. (Or rather, the “law” can change on a dime, depending on the public’s mood.) Lenders won’t simply shrug their shoulders, say “aww shucks,” and continue with business as usual.

No, lenders will rationally respond to the new environment, by being much pickier in giving new loans. After all, it becomes much riskier to grant a mortgage to a young couple with little job experience, if the government will shield them from the consequences of default on the loan. Many people say that “the American dream” involves homeownership, yet this will be harder to achieve if the government introduces yet another uncertainty for lenders.

I am aware that the real world process of home buying and financing has its share of shysters and shady practices; every human enterprise does. But the recent proposals aren’t merely about prosecuting outright fraud; no, the politicians want to grant a mulligan to hundreds of thousands who bought homes they couldn’t afford.

Such a move seems generous and noble, but in practice it will prevent true reform of the mortgage industry. Especially in light of the artificially low interest rates in the early 2000s that fueled the housing boom, politicians are the last people we should trust to restore integrity and soundness to the mortgage industry.

By Robert Murphy
Townhall.com

14 Questions I'd Ask Hillary After I Hooked Her Up to a Lie Detector

Few politicians in America have as much scandal, sleaze, and controversy surrounding them as Hillary Clinton and perhaps none of them, with the exception of her husband, has been given a bigger free pass.

As Peggy Noonanonce said, "People have pointed out (Hillary's) ethical lapses for so long that they seem boring, or impossible to believe. ‘That couldn't be true or she wouldn't be running for president.’ This thought collides with ‘And we already know all this anyway.’ Her campaign uses the latter to squash the latest: ‘old news,’ ‘cash for rehash.’

That is indeed how it works with Hillary Clinton's campaign, but nobody who is running for the presidency in the era of the blogosphere and YouTube should be allowed to skate on the controversial issues.

With that in mind, here are 14 yes or no questions I'd like to ask Hillary after I hooked her up to a polygraph machine, assuming that she hasn't gotten so good at lying that she could beat the machine.

A Culture Of Corruption

1) Your former friend and business partner, James McDougal, claimed that "he and a longtime businessman at McDougal's S&L, Henry Hamilton, 'developed a system to pass money to Clinton.' Did you or your husband ever take payoffs from your friend James McDougal?

2) While you were with the Rose Law Firm, you personally worked on a document that was used to "obfuscate and hide the fraudulent nature" of a piece of the Whitewater land swindle. Did you know that the document you were working on was going to be used for illegal purposes?

3) Your Rose Law Firm billing records were removed from Vince Foster's office after his death. Those records were "(m)issing and under subpoena for two years (and) they turned up in January 1996 in the Clintons' private quarters at the White House." Whoever took those records committed a crime by obstructing justice. Despite the fact that your records were taken and eventually turned up in your private quarters, you have denied taking the records or having anyone take them for you. Is that true?

4) Clinton supporter David Hale claimed that your husband pressured him into making a "fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan to Susan McDougal, some of which went into Whitewater Development Corp." Did your husband pressure David Hale into making that fraudulent loan?

5) You once turned $1,000 into $100,000 in less than a year in the cattle futures market. The odds that this was done legitimately have been put, in some estimates, as high as 250 million to 1. It has been alleged, and seems likely, that the $100,000 was actually bribe money that was paid to you while the cattle futures market was merely used as cover for the payout. With that in mind, were your cattle futures winnings actually bribe money?

6) During the Clinton Administration, Craig Livingstone, the Director of the White House Office of Personnel Security, improperly looked through the FBI files of hundreds of your political enemies. There are allegations that you got Livingstone hired, that he went through those files on your orders, and that you also read some of those files. Are any of those allegations true?

7) In his report on the Travelgate firings, Independent Counsel Robert Ray said your testimony was "factually false," and said that he didn't go after you for perjury because there was "insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Clinton's statements to this Office or to Congress were knowingly false." Did you commit perjury in your testimony about Travelgate?

8) Your brother, Hugh Rodham, pocketed $400,000 (which was returned) from people who later received pardons from your husband. At the time, you claimed that you had not discussed those pardons with your brother or your husband beforehand. Is that true?

9) You have been tied to a surprising number of shady fundraisers including Peter Paul, Norman Hsu, John Huang, Johnny Chung, and Charlie Trie just to name a few. Were you ever aware that any of these men were engaged in illegal activities that benefited you and your husband before it was brought to your attention by law enforcement authorities or the press?

No Wonder She Kissed Arafat's Wife

10) Former Clinton consultant Dick Morris said that in a dispute over money, you said to him, "That's all you people care about is money." He took that to be a slap at him because he is a Jew. Did you say that to Dick Morris?

11) Former Clinton adviser, Paul Fray, claims that you called him a "Jew B*stard" after Bill lost his congressional bid in 1974. Is that true?

12) Larry Patterson, an Arkansas state trooper who also acted as your bodyguard says that he heard you, "use the term 'Jew B*stard' and call (your) husband a 'Jew Boy' and a 'M-----rF--king Jew.'" Is that true?

Are You "Experienced?"

13) You've been portrayed as an extremely talented lawyer, but isn't it true that you flunked your D.C. Bar Exam, that James McDougal said that he only hired you as a lawyer "because Bill came in whimpering (that) they needed help," and that you only were able to become a partner at the Rose Law Firm because your husband was the Governor of Arkansas?

14) According to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who's certainly no conservative, "Hillary negotiated nothing and was present at no major meetings on foreign policy and national security after 1994. ...On domestic policy, Hillary was essentially sidelined after her disastrous 1994 health-care plan." Is that true?

John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.

Christianity and Islam: How Common is the Ground?

As this column goes to press, hundreds of presumably Muslim protestors in Sudan are shouting for the execution of a British school teacher. Her offense? Insulting Islam because her class of 7-year-olds named a teddy bear Muhammed. According to the New York Times report:

The protesters, some carrying swords, screamed, “Shame, shame on the U.K.!” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad.” They were calling for the death of Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was sentenced on Thursday to 15 days in jail. Under Sudanese law, she could have spent 6 months behind bars and received 40 lashes.

It’s events like this—and similar ones around the globe—that add to my skepticism about the value of a recent exchange pleading for peace between Muslim and Christian leaders.

Last September, 138 of the world’s most prominent Muslim theologians, scholars and leaders sent an “open letter” addressed to Christians worldwide. The document titled, “A Common Word Between Us And You” is an extraordinary communication from the Muslim world. In it the Muslim leaders plead with Christians to recognize in two of the world’s great monotheistic religions their essential “common ground” namely, love to God and neighbor. Only by recognizing this common ground, the letter submits, will Muslims and Christians learn to live in peace. (Of course, by the very existence of this letter, these Muslim leaders are assuming Christians are not at peace with Islam.)

Ecumenicists around the world have undoubtedly leapt for joy at the offering of this “olive branch” to Christianity from Islam. As expected, there were quick and positive responses from the Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury and several mainline American denominations.

In response to the “Common Word” document, Yale Divinity School drafted its own “open letter” to Muslims on behalf of Christians everywhere. (While most of the signatories of the Yale letter are a “who ’s who” of today’s theological left, there are a number of evangelicals on board.) The letter titled, “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to ‘A Common Word Between Us and You,’” heaps praise on the representative Muslim scholars for their efforts to bring about peace among Muslims and Christians. In addition, the letter agrees that the essential “common ground” between Islam and Christianity is love to God and neighbor. A closer analysis of both documents, however, should give Christians pause.

The Yale-drafted response begins by begging for forgiveness from the Muslim community for the evils of the Crusades and the “excesses of the war on terror.” Can someone explain why American Christians are responsible for the Crusades? And as far as the “excesses of the war on terror”—when did the Christian world get together and vote to kill a bunch of Muslims in the name of the war on terror? (It is naïve at best to think that a group of Christians “admitting” that the war on terror has been at all motivated by hatred toward Muslims will somehow help pacify the hard-liners within Islam.)

This blatant political statement is followed by paragraph after paragraph of ecumenical jargon about “our common ground,” “your courageous letter” and “our common good.” Most concerning, however, is the following theologically unsound statement:

It is therefore no exaggeration to say, as you have in “A Common Word Between Us and You,” that “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians” … The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. If we fail to make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony you correctly remind us that “our eternal souls” are at stake as well.

The future of the world and our eternal souls depends not on interfaith dialogue, but on the sovereign plan of God (cf. Psalm 115:3, Isaiah 46:8-11; Ephesians 1:11). Our confidence is not in our ecumenical efforts, but in the finished work of Christ.

In addition, while the Muslim document is filled with quotations from the Qur’an proudly proclaiming that their god is the one, true god and indirectly attacking the deity of Jesus Christ, the Yale document uses almost no Scripture and omits a clear proclamation of the deity of Christ.

Finally, in the light of recent global events, it seems reasonable to question whether or not the heart of Islam really is love to god and neighbor in the same sense that Christianity teaches love to God and neighbor. True, the Muslim document does say that “Muslims, Christians and Jews should be free to each follow what God commanded them” and that justice and freedom of religion are a “crucial part” of love to neighbor. However, whether or not this sentiment is pervasive in the global Muslim community is vigorously debated today.

No true Christian desires conflict between Christians and Muslims. A Christian who follows the directives of the Bible will love Muslims and respect them—and seek to tell them about the saving love of God in Christ. They will not, however, compromise the truth of Scripture to start a dialogue, for to do so would not demonstrate love to God or love to our Muslim neighbors.

Bob Burney
Townhall.com

Is Iran Irrational?

The most interesting point in the new National Intelligence Estimate, which reports that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, is not about what Iran did or did not do in developing nuclear weapons. It is about how Iran makes decisions about such things.

The U.S. intelligence community does not believe Iran is a madman.

"Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political economic and military costs," says the NIE. "This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige and goals for regional influence in other ways, might -- if perceived by Iran's leaders as credible -- prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program."

Whether American politicians accept or reject the assumption that Iran acts rationally will have tremendous consequences for the fate of the Middle East and for our security.

The case for believing that Iran is an irrational actor largely rests on the shoulders of its current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is because Ahmadinejad routinely says irrational things, especially when it comes to Israel.

In 2005, Ahmadinejad convened a conference called "The World Without Zionism." Here, he laid out an Apocalyptic vision in which Israel -- or the "Zionist regime," as he invariably calls it -- becomes the final battleground in a long struggle between Islam and the West.

"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," he said. "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcomes of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land."

"Israel must be wiped off the map," Ahmadinejad said.

A Congressional Research Service report published in August referenced reports that contend "Ahmadinejad believes his mission is to prepare for the return of the 12th 'Hidden' Imam, whose return from occultation would, according to Twelver Shiite doctrine, be accompanied by the establishment of Islam as the global religion."

"I have a connection to God," Ahmadinejad said at a Tehran mosque last October. He added that President Bush "also receives inspiration -- but from Satan."

All this inevitably suggests a chain of thought: A leader who believes it is his job to usher in an Apocalyptic age, where Israel is destroyed and Islam becomes the global religion, cannot be deterred from constructing, or using, a nuclear weapon. Therefore, an Ahmadinejad-led Iran must be pre-empted from obtaining one.

This chain of thought draws us toward another pre-emptive Middle Eastern war and counsels that we risk all the horrendous unintended consequences that could flow from such a war.

But is Ahmadinejad really Iran's decider? If he had personally driven Iran's nuclear-weapons policy, the NIE released this week would make no sense. Admadinejad was elected president of Iran on June 24, 2005. The NIE says Iran halted its nuclear-weapons program in the fall of 2003 and had not restarted it by the middle of this year. During the whole time Ahmadinejad has been president, in other words, Iran's nuclear-weapons program has been halted.

Apparently, the madman did not call the shots.

His predecessor, Mohammad Khatemi, could have warned him of that. Khatemi, a moderate "reformer" (by Iranian standards) was elected and re-elected Iran's president by super-majorities of the popular vote. For four of his eight years in office, his supporters controlled a super-majority in parliament. They never enacted their reform agenda, however, because it was vetoed by the Council of Guardians, which is comprised of six clergymen appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and six secular lawyers appointed by the Iranian judiciary.

"In January 2007," the Congressional Research Service reported, "an Iranian newspaper owned by Khamenei admonished Ahmadinejad to remove himself from the nuclear issue."

The intelligence community assumes a certain long-term stability among Iran's real deciders. "This Estimate does assume that the strategic goals and basic structure of Iran's senior leadership and government will remain similar to those that have endured since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989," says the NIE.

President Bush seems to agree. "The NIE talks about how a carrot-and-stick approach can work," said Bush at his Tuesday press conference. "And it was working until Ahmadinejad came in. And our hope is that the Iranians will get diplomacy back on track."

Bush's bet is simply this: The ayatollahs may be immoderate, but they are not irrational.

Terence Jeffrey
Wednesday, December 5, 2007 CNSNews

Where every label reads, 'Made in USA'

Buying American can be tough.

The mass recalls of tainted toys from China have been a reminder of how much we buy that's made overseas.

A month ago, Manhattan native George Hanos made buying American products easier through usab2c.com, a Web site that sells products made only in the good ol' USA.

"I felt that because jobs were quickly evaporating from the manufacturing base in the U.S., what we're losing is that know-how," said Hanos, 53, who retired as an accountant from Pfizer in 2004.

Hanos, who grew up in Washington Heights and now lives in New City, N.Y., launched his site, America's Business to Consumers, to sell more than 6,000 American-made products ranging from sunglasses to wooden toy trains.

To make it onto the Web site, an item needs to be comprised of at least 80% of U.S.-produced materials, including its packaging. It also needs to be manufactured in the U.S. by Americans or documented workers, and the company that makes the product needs to be at least 51% American owned.

Hanos, whose father was a Greek immigrant and restaurateur, said that he's not against globalization, but wants to see traditions of American craftsmanship endure.

Being American-made doesn't eliminate the possibility an item could have safety issues. Still, But Hanos believes U.S.-produced products, while often more expensive because of higher labor costs, are of better quality.

Through his Web site, "you as a consumer can make a difference and vote with your paycheck," Hanos said. "The trickle-down effect of that spending will hopefully provide the incentive for manufacturers to reemploy people for goods that could be made here so that we can stop that exodus of know-how."

ELIZABETH LAZAROWITZ
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER