"all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator"

At American Digest, a line-up or reactions to Ahmadinejad's speech and Columbia University President Bolliger's surprisingly critical introduction.
I thought it was typical American leftward university PC'ism to have invited the Iranian hustler. The line that all the world's problems are either America's (Mcbushitler) fault or made worse by her intervention (though we saw during the 90's how well NON-intervention worked out). I was actually surprised that the political right made such a stink, it's so expected of this part of the contemporary culture. I felt that if it is opposed by the political right, then that made inviting Ahmadinejad all the more righteous to a left leaning institution. It looked to me that after the invite was delivered, it became apparent that perhaps it wasn't the wisest move. There could have been one big reason, there could have been several smaller reasons.
Maybe the realization that the U S Military is still looked at with respect by the students, even if they hate the commander-in-chief. Maybe the wealth of their parents found the economically foolish attitude that favors enemies of the nation to be beyond stupid.
It was a Columbia U student group that invited the Minutemen to speak several months ago, and then the rest of the student body violently trashed their "right" to speak freely without much administration concern. It is righteous if it is anti-right. Unless it's just not right.
Whatever the reason, Columbia extended an invitation to speak. But when the invitee arrived, Columbia Chancellor Bollinger gave the Iranian leader a verbal thrashing that was just plain rude. I would have no problem if the president were allowed to speak and then in the q & a was completely toasted with the questions. It's not that difficult to reveal a lying hypocrite and bully.
Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch , quoting an AP story, thinks Bollinger looks good and Ahmadinejad looks ignorant and wimpish. Gateway Pundit , live blogging the speech, thinks the Columbia audience took a hit, looking like typical collegiate, immature morons.

"SO FAR... Not a peep from the audience. Not one peep!
The audience is his to lose. He has them in the palm of his hand.
They are cheering him on now!
Good Lord!
* * * * *

They are cheering the genocide promoter again.
This country is in worse shape than we realized.
Now, Ahmadinejad is lying about the treatment of non-Muslims in Iran.
(More applause)
...
Mahmoud is explaining that the Iranian nation is a victim of terrorism.
Mahmoud says his government was the first to fight terrorism.
How sad... He is shifting the blame for terrorism on the US and the audience is eating this crap with serving spoons.
How very sad.
The schools in this country are failing miserably.

Mahmoud is pushing for more research on the Holocaust and the audience is not saying a word- not a peep.

"Serendip concentrates more on his comments about gays and women.

"In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you that we have it."
...
But as for women, maybe you think that maybe being a woman is a crime. It’s not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran."

We in the U S set ourselves up for this kind of circus by trying to continue the charade of being "fair to all." You can't on the one hand try to perpetuate that concept (whether it's actually possible or not) and on the other derogate Ahmadinejad's position as President of a major Middle Eastern power. If one invite's another to one's house, one shant insult the other once the other arrives. Now, whether you SHOULD have invited him in the first place is an entirely different matter.

Finally, Someone Gets A Grip!!

It's alternatively frightening and hilarious to watch the "global warming" debate. (Don't you love that word - debate? As if two sides have actually been presented!!!) Frightening for two reasons: if the gloomy side is right - we might actually be in for a pretty wild ride!! -- if the gloomers are wrong, we are naked in our own eyes at how pitifully vulnerable we are to repetitious propaganda ... and hilarious because they are so cute in their childish fears ... they are absolutely hysterical!! "Who's On First " bows to their comedic brilliance!!
Meet another target of leftist repudiation, Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shariv. First he describes the steps to becoming a gloomer:

Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.
Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.
Step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

There are many links called "the deniers" numbered #1 thru #10. All are excellent reading. But one more paragraph...

In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.

espresso beans to drudge

Why Don't They Analyze Liberalism?

Another study that tries to answer for liberals -"Are conservatives crazy, and if so, why?" has been published and given some press. We've seen it before, but I find it curious that the question is never asked of liberalism...I guess it's because they see themselves as the normal and enlightened ones. Iron Shrink simply demolishes the study. It was pitifully easy to do.
First he looks at how the study defines "Conservative." They used a 1958 Websters dictionary to affirm a common liberal propaganda point that conservatives "resist change," and accept as gospel the Marxist dogma that "equality" must refer to outcomes, not opportunity, as conservatives see it. Since the good doctors are clearly liberal, they have no problem seeing a fundamental ideological difference as evidence of a pathology!

The authors’ dictionary states that conservatism “stresses the disposition and tendency to preserve what is established” and “the disposition in politics to maintain the existing order” (p. 342). That’s the first of their two-part definition of conservatism.
The second part concerns equality. Turning to the sentiments of others who have written about conservatives, the authors endorse opinions such as, “the left favours greater equality, while the right sees society as inevitably hierarchical” (p. 342).
Resistance to change and acceptance of inequality. That’s the study’s definition of conservatism. It provides the foundation for the research they sought out and the hypotheses they sought to confirm. Let’s look at each of “the two core aspects of conservatism” (p. 343).

Do liberals NEED examples of what conservatives would like to CHANGE?

One example of change favored by conservatives is the Fair Tax initiative. American conservatives tend to support the abolition of the IRS in favor of a system that would change the face of federal funding. It is perhaps the most profound change initiative in the public arena, and it is liberals who resist it.
It’s a complex world and sometimes we all want to rearrange the furniture.
Another example is public school vouchers. Conservatives would like to upend the administration of public education. Liberals vehemently resist this change.

And then of course, who are the subject populations?

Nevertheless, they say, “we have made a special effort to seek out and incorporate results obtained in 12 different countries, including those with historical influences of socialism or communism,” including Sweden, Poland, East Germany, West Germany, Italy, England, Canada, and Israel. All of these, despite their “historical influences” are currently pleasant, peaceful, productive countries. If you are an American liberal, this is your comparison group.
In their search for examples of right-leaning populations, the authors turn to Hitler’s Germany [4], Stalin’s Russia, and Pinochet’s Chile. If you are an American conservative, your comparison group contains the likes of Dr. Mengele. In a separate article, Jost (2006, p. 658) painted what most people consider to be mainstream, thoughtful conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, and Barry Goldwater as right-wing “fringe activists.”

If you're nice and peaceful, you're a leftie. If you are not nice, you are a right winger.

Let’s review the ideological assumptions that underlie the study’s sample selection: left wing societies are best represented by contemporary Sweden, while right-wing societies are exemplified by Nazi Germany. Joseph Stalin – the same Stalin who murdered tens of thousands under the banner of Karl Marx – is a conservative, while Milton Friedman – who earned the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on consumption analysis – is a right-wing fringe activist. Meanwhile, authoritarianism does not exist on the left, or at least it can’t be located because there are no records of such things. Mao? Castro? Lenin? Guevara? Chávaz? Pol Pot? Never heard of ‘em.

This is how the language of psychological academia gets called "psycho-babble." Iron Shrink goes on and on in an interesting but lengthy article...

Take the example of Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) theory, which figures prominently in the study and is held up as an unquestioned explanation for conservative ideology. RWA theory was advanced by the Frankfurt School and seeks to explain the development of fascist cultures. According to RWA theory,

Any real scientist would be embarrassed.

Beneath such rhetorical excess is a thinly veiled contempt for those who hold conservative beliefs. In a discussion concerning System Justification Theory (one of the lead author’s pet projects), the authors note that the theory is “especially well suited to address relatively puzzling cases of conservatism and right-wing allegiance among members of low-status groups, such as women and members of the working class” (p. 350).
The authors are “puzzled” as to why a woman or someone with a job (both of whom they consider low-status) would disagree with their viewpoint. Could it be that the woman or the worker weighed the evidence and simply arrived at a different conclusion than the authors? Impossible. Commoners can’t be trusted with such things.
I won’t take it upon myself to apologize to conservatives on behalf of my industry (that seems presumptuous), but I am embarrassed by the methodology in this study and I am deeply troubled by the response from the psychology community. This study is being held up as exemplary when it is better suited to the editorial pages of Mother Jones than a peer-reviewed journal.

S H O W N

espresso beans to Michelle Malkin