LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

As a fan of Bill O'Reilly's, I'm not shy about "letting him have it," when I disagree with him. In that spirit, I sent him the following email: Bill, you're a pinhead for calling Adam Lambert "this gay guy." There's much more to him, so stop defining him by one "over the top" performance. The fascinating thing about "this guy" is the thousands of older women who turn into screaming "teeny-boppers" when they see him perform! I think Ms. Walters is secretly a "Glambert," as they call themselves. I kept it pithy, and tried to avoid bloviating, as any fan of "the Factor" knows to do, when emailing the show. However, I've been wanting to write about Adam for some time, well before the current AMA "controversy." O'Reilly's disparaging comments about him, while interviewing Barbara Walters last Wednesday night, seems to have given me the final bit of motivation I needed to actually ...

Well, this is an interesting story. The Swiss people, the ones who reflexively think of Americans as "bigots" or "racists," have just voted to ban "minarets" from being constructed on Mosques in Switzerland. Quel surprise! The polls said it only had 37% support, but it appears that people lied to the pollsters. We've been here before, and to see Switzerland going through this is dismaying. In a free society, any religion can build any place of worship they like, subject to secular/cultural legal codes. The cultural aspect is the most chafing, because people are attached to the architecture of their habitat. Some may see minarets as a physical threat to that part of their culture. Here in the US, there is no law against minarets. Muslims are free to build Mosques in any way they want, and they have. They have also adapted other buildings to this use, as all religions have done in this country. I understand that the Swiss don't have as diverse a popu...

Did anyone else hear about the scientists caught planting Bobcat/Lynx fur, to fudge results determining it's range area? I doubt it, but it happened , a few years back. They said they were actually "testing" the lab that they sent the fur to, because "biologists were skeptical that the lab would produce accurate results; they were suspicious of test results, ironically enough, because another lab had found more lynx than the biologists thought was likely." Really . A similar problem is happening in the global warming community. Apparently, the evidence has indicated that temperatures aren't predictable by any of the "global warming" models. Perhaps they were doing an "unauthorized" data entry to check that other "scientists" weren't cheating on their results. "What is he talking about?" you might ask. I'm referring to the recently leaked emails between researchers from the University Of East Anglia’s Climat...

Some enterprising GOP media type ought to resurrect those commercials against Bush's Social Security reform. If you don't remember, they had a construction crew showing up at a woman's house, saying they were there to fix the sink. As she protests, they start tearing her house down, with big machines. All that has to be done is switch the tagline to "health care reform." Since " Harry and Louise " have "switched sides," in ads supporting the current health care bill, why can't it's opponents steal an idea from the people who opposed Bush's Soc Sec reforms? All's fair in the political ad wars, and in this case, the message fits perfectly. Maybe they can add a guy giving the woman the bill, at the end. Just a quick thought...

UPDATED 11/01: " Republican Endorses Democrat in NY 's 23rd CD Race " It looks like Dede Scozzafava took LEAVWORLD's advice , and dropped out of the special election in NY's 23rd Congressional District. She did the right thing, and deserves credit for doing so. I'm sure it was political pressure that did it, and not anything I wrote. Palin was the first "big name" to endorse the Conservative candidate, Hoffman, and several high-level GOP pols followed her lead. Now, it's a two-way race, with liberal against conservative policies. I can already hear the libs citing this as "the triumph of the Neanderthals" if Hoffman wins. Nothing could br further from the truth. Conservatives are often thoughtful, and principled. The problem all along is that the GOP has drifted away from conservative principles, though the drift could be described as "thoughtful." It looks as if the "tea party" movement has some legs. What does one ...

Crossposted from Stop The ACLU : by Hans Bader Today, President Obama signed into law a bill that will dramatically expand the federal hate crimes law, enabling prosecutors to bring federal charges against people who were previously found innocent of hate crimes in state court . The hate-crimes provisions were added to a defense appropriations bill, which the President signed in a White House signing ceremony this afternoon at around 2:30 p.m. The new law dramatically expands the reach of the existing federal hate-crimes law that was already on the books, by getting rid of the requirement that a hate crime affect federally-protected activities to be prosecuted in federal court . It also adds sexual orientation, gender, disability, and transgender characteristics to a law that was originally designed to protect racial minorities. The hate-crimes bill was opposed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for allowing the reprosecution in federal court of people found innocent in state ...

Newt Gingrich should know better (l ink ), but it's not surprising that some national and NY State Republicans have chosen Dede Scozzafava as the GOP candidate in NY's 23rd Congressional District, forcing a three-way race with a strong showing from the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman. Ms.Scozzafava is an embarassment. She supports "card check" legislation, and was endorsed by the Working Families Party, the political arm of ACORN. Maybe this election could be decided by who can go out and get the most people to sign cards, instead of voting. Interestingly enough, ACORN's political partner, the Service Employees International Union, has endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens. While it looks like the lefties are "hedging their bets," there's also this Politico story ( link ): "'Chairman Steele hasn’t put up a cent, not even the obligatory $5,000,' said a New York-based GOP operative. 'There’s been no support from the RNC. Democra...