Apparently, for years the Israelis have been claiming that the UN and/or the Red Cross is complicit in acts of terror against the Israelis. They claim that the terrorists use the cover of UN ambulances for attacks.
It's a pretty good idea if you can get away with it, actually. Everyone piles into an ambulance and takes off. The Israelis probably wouldn't look too hard at ambulances, and if they did shoot the ambulance, then the Palestinians would raise a clamor about Israelis shooting at unarmed, defenseless ambulances. Then one day maybe you'll get lucky and the Israelis will shoot at an ambulance that isn't full of Palestinian terrorists, and you'll have a field day with America's idiot press.
In other words, it's exactly what you'd expect from Arab terrorists. Of course the ever-anti-Israeli UN spit and coughed in rage when the Israelis asked them to stop letting terrorists use their ambulances, and demanded an apology - from the Israelis.
Well, it turns out that this is exactly what they're doing, and now we have it on film. Palestinian terrorists piling into the back of the UN ambulance and taking off after an attack. The ambulance hadn't been reported stolen.
Then, of course, when the video surfaced, the driver suddenly remembered that he had been forced to do this. "Oh yea,' he may have said. "Come to think of it, I was kidnapped last Sunday."
"Man Falls To Death From Helicopter Over Grand Canyon
POSTED: 9:43 am EDT June 11, 2004
PHOENIX -- A helicopter tour company said a man took off his seat belt, opened a door and intentionally fell to his death during a sightseeing flight over the Grand Canyon National Park Thursday.
Authorities say the investigation of the man's death continues. They've offered few details on what led up to his exit from the helicopter about 90 miles northwest of Flagstaff, Ariz.
The man fell about 4,000 feet.
Authorities say the cause of death won't be determined until the body is recovered from White's Butte."
Um, I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure the cause of death is going to be impacting the ground at 200 miles an hour.
In short: A bill under consideration in California would require home builders to build solar systems into a certain percentage of homes. This is supposed to reduce our energy dependency and help pollution.
Let me admit one thing up front: It would do both of those things.
Here's the problem I have with the way California government works, though. They dictate everything. They don't just give you the option of doing something, they tell you that you HAVE to do it, even if you wouldn't normally do it yourself.
People don't like being told what to do, and they might vote against you if you push them too much. So California tells corporations what to do instead. Of course, it still costs you as much as it ever would, but you feel happier because they're not telling you what to do directly.
This was demonstrated a few years ago with California's preposterous [url=http://www.freerepublic.com/f...]Electric Vehicle mandate[/url] . This bill, by people who are looking out for you and have only your best interests at heart, dictated that ten percent of all new cars sold in California in 2003 would be electric - which is to say, 10 percent of new car buyers would have to buy electric cars. Not gas-electric hybrids or really fuel efficient cars, or really low emission cars, but full-bore 100% electric cars.
[i]"The plan, which calls for automakers to sell a limited number of so-called "zero-emission vehicles" by 2003, sent an unmistakable signal to car manufacturers that there will be no eleventh-hour reprieve from the task of designing, building and selling electric cars."[/i]
Notice that nothing in the law says it has to reduce pollution efficiently or cost-effectively. Also notice that they intended to force the auto makers to sell (and you to buy) electric vehicles whether the technology to do so was available or not. In essence, California dictated that car companies come up with new technologies - call it the CARB Invent-It-or-Take-It-In-T he-Shorts Bill.
In California's charming way of avoiding direct dictatorial control, they didn't mandate that you [i]buy[/i] them, they mandated that the car companies [i]sell [/i]them. What's the difference? There isn't one, except that one appeals to the leftist urge to jack corporations as much as possible, while the other is seen as tyranny. In fact, the law was both.
The law wasn't only tyrannical and impossible to do, but it wasn't even a good way to reduce pollution. [url=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...]GM sued [/url] California over the law, rightly pointing out that pollution could be reduced by other, less expensive means. But when you're a liberal, money isn't important, and what things cost shouldn't enter into the equation. What's more important is those warm feelings you get by passing laws to make the world a beautiful place, preferably with big, shiny things mounted on rooftops for everyone to see.
And this all despite the fact that everyone who knew anything about electric cars told California that their law was ridiculous. The technology to economically produce electric vehicles did not exist then, and does not exist now. But the California Air Resources Board wouldn't listen to any of it. They had corporations to screw, and by God, they were going to do it.
There are shadows of that in this new solar energy order. California is ordering a percentage of Californians to buy solar-equipped houses. That's the reality of the law.
Couldn't California just give you the option? No. The fact is, you have the option now. You could go buy and install as big or as small a solar system as you want for your house, but most people don't. Why? Because solar power is way more expensive than your ordinary stuff off the electric grid.
They also appeal to your sense of economics by saying that you can sell your excess power back to the power companies. This makes it sound like a great deal, but in fact, you'll lose money on every kilowatt you sell to the grid. The cost to install and maintain a solar system is much higher than you can get selling the energy from it at current market rates. This is why there aren't massive solar plants now, and why people aren't rushing to Home Depot to buy solar panels.
Also note that there are much more cost-efficient ways to reduce your power usage. Caulk and dual-paned windows are apparently just not flashy enough for California lawmakers, though. So Californians may be forced to buy a house that is solar-equipped and will cost you a lot more to own than a regular house.
Again, people are telling the psychos in Sacramento that their ideas are stupid, and again, Sacramento is ignoring them.
From [url=http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...]We Are All Souad[/url] . --- I suddenly felt a cold liquid running over my head and instantly I was on fire. . .I start to run in the garden, barefoot. I slap my hair, I scream. . . .I smell the gasoline and I run, the hem of my long dress getting in the way. My terror leads me instinctively away from the courtyard. I run toward the garden as the only way out. . .How did I get away? Did he run after me? Was he waiting for me to fall so he could watch me go up in flames? [1]
These are the chilling words of a Palestinian woman recalling her attempted “honor” killing in her remote West Bank village twenty five years ago. She calls herself “Souad” and she tells us her frightening personal story in her new memoir, Burned Alive: A Victim of the Law of Men. It is the first account of the practice of honor killings given by a survivor. --- These Arab Tribalists sicken me, and I have no respect for the Modern Islamic world that will not stand up against this sickness. Read the rest of this article - it will turn your blood cold.
This is the religion of peace? Sometimes, it's better to fight for what is right.
"I read with interest Cristopher Hitchens' hate-filled diatribe against a dead man who suffered from Alzheimer's disease for the last 10 years of his life. Next week, look for Hitchens column in which he will point at disabled people and laugh, and then tell us what an ignorant ass Chandra Levy was while interviewing her parents.
But enough of me pointing out what a hateful person Hitchens is. I actually wanted to post this to correct a mistake Mr. Hitchens made. During his rant about how stupid Reagan was, he said, with authority, that there are no "non-ballistic" missiles. Aha, but indeed there are, Mr. Hitchens, and I'm surprised that a man of your stellar intellect could have made such a stupid mistake. In fact, most missiles are non-ballistic. Ballistic refers to the trajectory that the missile takes when flying toward its target. Ballistic missiles go up, curve over in an arc and fall back down, with no guidance from the ground. However, most missiles are guided and non-ballistic, like the Tomahawk, all air-to-air missiles, all air-to-ground missiles, and all ship-to-ship missiles. Please try to keep that in mind before you write a whole column about what an idiot a dead man is."
Also, I'm calling on Slate to fire Hitchens for his insensitive and offensive column.
Since ending his stint on the successful 1960's sitcom "The Addams Family", John Kerry gave up the Frankenstein look and instead married a really rich woman and ran for senate.
