Desultory Thoughts

My Pal Rocky’s at it again, bravely leading the charge to impeach President Bush, and Tyler and I were there to snap some pictures. The crowd was notably smaller than at Rocky’s last protest and it seemed not quite as peppy as last year’s party. But it was amusing nonetheless. We recognized the troubled youth bucket brigade from last time, but no sign of the paper mache Bush. There was a nice flag-draped homemade coffin that really impressed. And what would a good left-wing protest be without an abundance of Mercedes Benz peace signs? Enjoy.

al Quaida?

Not to mention the many mixed messages that were shared through various conflicting or misspelled signs; some beautifully decorated (such as another Mercedes Benz peace sign), others a mere scribbling.

I’ve said before that I think protests are just plain stupid. I wonder what a protest rally would be like, sans the press. It seems the only people there are the speakers, the sign-holders, and people like Tyler and I who are simply there for the entertainment value. Then there are the press, who seem to flock to the City-County Building like paparazzi every time Rocky passes gas. Today’s rally will be followed up with a silent candlelight march this evening. Won’t that be special!

UPDATE:  Couldn’t resist popping over for the candlelight march.  There were maybe 50 people in all marching from the Federal Building to City Creek Park.  A lot less yelling, but more colorful protestors.  I snapped a few shots with my phone.

See also: Death to Israel Rally in Salt Lake City, Let’s Talk Some Smack, Shall We?

I’ve been very amused by the recent popularity of “carbon offsets,” the newest idea from the Global Warming we’re-all-going-to-die crowd. Actually, whoever invented the carbon offset is a genius. What, you don’t know what a carbon offset is? You stone-aged ignorant freak! Let me enlighten you.

Al Gore, Forrest Gump turned international rock star, says the earth is warming, and Man is to blame. The theory goes that increased greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) are increasing the earth’s average temperature. Though the greater scientific community agrees that some climate change is occurring, there is significant debate over the scope, cause, and results. While the theory has been tossed around for a couple decades now, only recently has it become chic. “Going green” is the new thing now. Many activist websites feature a carbon footprint calculator, which allows you to calculate just how much you are contributing to the destruction of the planet. The goal is to live a “carbon neutral lifestyle.”

While Al Gore didn’t invent global warming (he hung up his inventor’s cap after the Internet), he has ridden the hype to international fame and fortune. “The debate is over,” says Al. If sale numbers for his book and the success of his movie are any proof, his message has been well received.

At this year’s Academy Awards, Gore’s crowning moment finally came. I wanted to puke. But much to my delight, the backlash has begun. Shortly after the Al Gore Worship Hour aired, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research released a report revealing the Climate Messiah’s personal energy use. Turns out Gore is quite the energy burner:

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

But wait! Gore is no hypocrite! How, you ask? Carbon offsets, my friend. Gore buys carbon offsets.

Some ingenius capitalist a few years ago came up with this brilliant idea. Here’s how it works-You want to go green, but just can’t bear to give up that private jet, the 10,000 square foot house, and the SUV. No worries! Simply pay a third party who balances your carbon emissions by being carbon neutral themselves. Cool, huh?

That way enlightened environmentalists can continue living their lavish, earth ravaging lifestyles and still go to bed at night. One problem- there is no way to make sure these companies are making good on their word. The customer is no longer accountable for his carbon footprint, and the offset company isn’t accountable to the customer. Customer is happy, offset provider is happy. Mother Earth sheds tears of joy.

I think the Greens are on to something here. I’d like to buy a few sin offsets, please. Being LDS these days is just too tough. I want to live my religion, but I’m just too darn busy. How great would it be to pay somebody else to live righteous for you? Too busy to go to church on Sunday? No problem. Just pay the sin offset company to send somebody for you! Didn’t get that home teaching done again? Grab your checkbook! Tired of resisting that urge to hit on your smokin’ hot secretary? Relax. Just pay an offset volunteer to not cheat on his wife.

Just when I thought leftist greenies couldn’t any shallower, they prove me wrong again. At least Gore is balancing out his energy consumption, right? That’s better than nothing, isn’t it? Heck yeah. Especially when you consider this gem from the blogger Bill Hobbs, via WSJ’s James Taranto:

But how Gore buys his “carbon offsets,” as revealed by The Tennessean raises serious questions. According to the newspaper’s report, Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management:

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe . . .

Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he “buys” his “carbon offsets” from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management–he buys stocks. . . .

Seems Gore is much smarter than I thought he was!

Let me give a little disclaimer right out of the chute. My rantings on this blog do not by any means reflect the political and/or philosophical views of this blog’s owner. The title of this blog is Desultory Thoughts (thoughts jumping from one subject to another without any logical connection to each other). Reading through the recent post list, it’s obvious that Tyler and I discuss a myriad of topics- some light-hearted, some very heavy. Unfortunately, my thoughts lately have been anything but desultory as my mind has turned almost indivertibly to the very real threat of radical Islam. It is not my intention to turn this mostly light-hearted forum solely into a discussion about that subject. To those of you aren’t interested into this, I apologize. Second only to my hate for radicalism is my disgust for political correctness.

I’m absolutely amazed at the Utah media’s reaction to Monday’s shooting rampage. To be fair, there have appropriately been many tributes to the off-duty Ogden police officer who led the charge that ended the violence. I believe he was inspired 1) to be there that night, and 2) to have brought his firearm, which he didn’t originally plan to do. Perhaps if Officer Hammond had not been the soul person in that complex with a gun, the fatality count might have even been lower, but that’s a rant for a different post.

In the days following, Utah and national media have attempted to whitewash the incident by ignoring the Muslim connection and painting Sulejman Talovic as a victim.

The LDS-owned Deseret News leads today’s paper with an arguably sympathetic article:

The atrocities of war and “ethnic cleansing,” and the pressures of daily life in a new country after he immigrated to the United States, could have created immense pressure on Talovic, according to Greg Jurkovic, a psychology professor at Georgia State University who has studied Bosnian teenagers in both Atlanta and Sarajevo.

“What we’re finding is that so many of these kids are suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder),” he said. “What seems to be most important is what they were exposed to, their war exposure.” Jurkovic said it is not being a victim of violence that automatically causes some people to perpetrate it. Instead, he said it is the constant “everyday stressors” — including poverty and the effects of losing ties to family back home in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Now I’m all about getting to the roots of a problem, and I don’t doubt Malovic’s traumatic childhood played a role in his actions Monday. What bothers me about the Deseret News’ reporting is that it borders on rationalizing the rampage. The News follows this article with an editorial (formatted as a news article) decrying anybody even daring to wonder if Malovic’s religion was a factor.

On ultraconservative Web sites like littlegreenfootballs.com, the story of Monday’s shooting rampage at Trolley Square has been reduced to one fact: “Salt Lake City Killer Was a Muslim.”

There is no record that Talovic attended any of the mosques in the Salt Lake area, according to both Tarek Nosseir, a spokesman for the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake, or Bobby Darvish of Muslim Forum. Nosseir noted that many Bosnian Muslims are more secular than religious.

The authors of the article then utterly destroy their credibility by quoting CAIR, Islamofacism’s PR arm here in the U.S.

“Welcome to my world,” said Ibrahim Hopper (sic), communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., about the angry e-mails. “I get tons of it every day.”

Had the Deseret News not been so eager to dismiss any religious influence on Malovic’s killing spree, they might have discovered that Mr. Hooper is no stranger to radical Islam. They might have also spelled his name correctly in the article.

While I’m sure many reasonable people sent reasonably-worded emails scolding the News for avoiding reporting Malovic’s religion, the authors focus only on the most vitriolic. Nobody reasonable is outright accusing Malovic of killing people under the banner of Islam. But what floors me is the widespread effort to unequivocally deny that his Muslim faith played any role in the motive.

All week, SLPD has claimed they know very little about Malovic. And if SLPD knows very little about him, rest assured the public knows even less. Yet KSL, the Deseret News, and Rocky Anderson know without doubt that Malovic’s religion had nothing to do with it.

To use a Glenn Beckism, blood’s about ready to shoot out of my eyes.

What’s worse is a staggering effort to turn any discussion of Islam into a racist issue. Keith Roderick has an excellent piece in Tuesday’s American Thinker that addresses this point:

“Islamophobia,” coined as a term to describe prejudice and fear against Muslims and Islam, has gained institutional legitimacy. It is now used to fend off criticism of anything negative arising from Muslims or Islam. Less a psychological state of irrational fear, it creates a pseudo-racial classification for Muslims and Islam that allows criticism of, or opposition to it, to be defined as racist.

Understandably, Salt Lake City officials are looking to avoid a backlash against the estimated 10,000 Bosnians living here. But SLPD Chief Chris Burbank’s comments this morning on KNRS AM make Roderick’s point precisely:

“I really hate to see some of the rhetoric that’s going around and the bias and the prejudice and really, outright hatred towards another race, towards another group of people, based solely on an individual’s actions.”

Ok, hold it right there, Chief. I eat, sleep, and breathe Salt Lake City and I haven’t heard so much as a word against Bosnians or their race. But let’s assume for a moment that you really don’t mean to equate suspicions about Malovic’s religion with discrimination against Bosnians. If you are detecting an anti-Muslim prejudice, it’s not based solely on one individual’s actions, sir. Who’s responsible for most mass slayings these days? Sure, “every religion has its extremists.” But then again you don’t read a lot of news stories about scientologists mowing down innocents in crowded marketplaces these days, do you?

Of course it must be noted that Chief Burbank was personally chosen for his position by uber-liberal Mayor Rocky Anderson. While Burbank (and Rocky for that matter) should be praised for SLPD’s flawless response to the incident, the man is drunk with Rocky’s PC Kool-Aid. It’s a bit alarming when the chief of police rules out any religious connection before the evidence comes in.

So who is more unreasonable here- those of us who refuse to rule Islam out as a potential factor until the evidence is in, or those who are already just certain it wasn’t?

I’ll reiterate what I say on a daily basis- the road to America’s downfall is paved with political correctness. Especially as it relates to radical Islam. Political correctness originates in the former Soviet Union, where citizens who dared voice a disagreement with communism were sent away to re-education camps until those views were corrected. In an America where anybody who questions Islam’s “peaceful” role in the world is condemned as a racist bigot, one wonders if our collective ideology is closer to that of Washington’s or Lenin’s.

UPDATE: One more thing about the media’s hypocrisy in not mentioning Malovic’s religion. Newsbusters’ Warner Todd Huston remembers:

Remember how Timothy McVeigh was immediately called a Christian, a White Separatist, or that he was part of a militia, etc.? There was little waiting for facts to emerge with McVeigh.

Yep, but Christianity and Judaism have always been exempt from the graces afforded by political correctness. Sucks to be us, huh?

I was walking downtown Monday evening when a police cruiser waiting to turn into the SLPD HQ parking lot on 200 South suddenly turned on its lights and sirens and sped eastbound.  Within seconds, at least ten more cruisers pulled out of the station following the first, joined by a fleet of ambulances and fire trucks along the way.  I knew whatever happened must have been big, but I had no idea it would be the bloodiest day in this sleepy city’s history.

A teenage gunman opens fire in a crowded mall full of families buying Valentine gifts and enjoying Family Night.  It hits close to home.  Literally.  Reports started streaming in as soon as I got home, and I’ve been glued to the TV/Internet/AM radio waiting to find out how this could have happened here.

So far, nobody seems to have a clue what the killer’s motive was.  Not a clue.  But of the 24+ hours of continuous coverage so far, there is one minor detail absent in any of the reports- the fact that Sulejmen Talovic is a Muslim.  KNRS AM’s Bob Lonsberry opines in his daily column (emphasis mine):

He was an 18-year-old Muslim. A high school dropout who lived with his mother and brought two guns, a bandoleer and a backpack full of ammo. He got up and went to work on Monday, completely normal, and then he drove over to the mall and killed two people before he was 10 feet from his car.

Is it relevant that he is Muslim? Absolutely. Is it a factor in his crime? It’s too early to tell. But in this day and age, when a young man named for a Muslim sultan who delighted in killing Christians ends up killing some Christians of his own, it’s not out of line to ask.

Why is his religion relevant?  First, had he been a Mormon, the headlines would have read “Mormon Madmen on Killing Spree,” or “Mormon Shoots Nine- More Trouble for Mitt Romney?”  If he were LDS, his religion would have been front and center.  And since his religion has been conveniently ignored, the rest of the nation who saw the headline on Drudge last night probably assumed it was ”just another crazy Mormon.”

But young Sulejmen was a Muslim.  Which means the news media walks on eggshells.  Just like the reports of “youths” torching cars in France and the UNC “student” gone wild, no mention has yet been made about his religion.  It’s just too politically dangerous to do so.  The PC media won’t touch the M-word with a 40 foot pole.  I’m not saying his religion played a role in the terror he wrought in my backyard last night.  But I’ll go ahead and stick my neck out and say what everybody else is thinking-

You have to wonder, don’t you?

“They’re very effective if people don’t wear masks.”

“You mean they will kill thousands?”

“Yes, they will kill thousands,”

No, this is not Michael Moore bragging to Al Franken about his flatulence.

“If you arrest any of them, cut off their heads. Show no mercy. They only joined the security to avoid having to join the army and fight Iran.”

The voice is Saddam Hussein’s. It’s an excerpt from several recently revealed recordings of the former dictator in conversation with his subordinates, in this case telling them to execute internal security officials for “incompetance.”

Oh, there’s more.

“Some commanders who abandoned their positions when they found themselves in an awkward situation, who deserved to have their necks cut, and did.”

The most disturbing dialogue discusses the effectiveness of chemical weapons (from Tuesday’s NY Times):

On one recording, Mr. Hussein presses the merits of chemical weapons on Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his vice-president, and now, the Americans believe, the fugitive leader of the Sunni insurgency that has tied down thousands of American troops. Mr. Douri, a notorious hard-liner, asks whether chemical attacks will be effective against civilian populations, and suggests that they might stir an international outcry.

“Yes, they’re very effective if people don’t wear masks,” Mr. Hussein replies.

“You mean they will kill thousands?” Mr. Douri asks.

“Yes, they will kill thousands,” Mr. Hussein says.

Mr. Hussein sounds matter of fact as he describes what chemical weapons will do. “They will prevent people eating and drinking the local water, and they won’t be able to sleep in their beds,” he says. “They will force people to leave their homes and make them uninhabitable until they have been decontaminated.”

As for the concern about international reaction, he assures Mr. Douri that only he will order the attacks. “I don’t know if you know this, Comrade Izzat, but chemical weapons are not used unless I personally give the orders,” he says.

The tapes, made a decade ago and played at the continuing trials of his cohorts, reveal Saddam as the calculating, evil incarnate rat bastard that we knew he was.

Well, not all of us, I guess. CNN censored their own reporting of Saddam’s terrors in order to retain access in Baghdad. Leading up to the coalition’s 2003 invasion, foreign media painted Saddam as an enlightened moderate. The UN (including Kofi Anon’s own son) privately sucked millions from the Oil For Food program while publicly turning a blind eye to Saddam’s tyranny. Russia and France were dead set against taking any action against Saddam’s regime that amounted to anything more than empty rhetoric. The Angry Left defended Saddam and and sent human shields to Baghdad to protect him. Jaded politicos still bark that Iraq was better off under Saddam’s rule.

The New York Times, until Tuesday’s article, seemed convinced of Saddam’s innocence, accusing Iran of gassing the Kurds.

In reality, Saddam was a devil that murdered millions of his own people. There were the Kurds (the victims of Saddam’s “very effective” gas), the mass executions following the Shi’ite uprising, the revenge killings, and the random beheadings of his own security forces. I could go on and on.

Say what you want about the Bush. Say what you want about the war. But I admire a country and an administration with the juevos to actually look evil in the eye and send it to hell.