Here’s the site Gravel’s quoting.

The Democrats. Let’s give them a country to run!

(Hat tip: LGF readers.)

Tuesday was Africa Malaria Day, and Michigan Representative John Conyers marked the event by inviting something called the Pesticide Action Network to Capitol Hill to denounce DDT as an unsafe malaria intervention. What was he thinking?

Malaria, which is spread through mosquito bites, kills about a million people annually, mostly children and pregnant women in Africa. We're not sure where the House Judiciary Chairman got his medical expertise, but he won't reduce that death toll by promoting disinformation about DDT and malaria prevention. And at taxpayers' expense, no less.

PAN and a shrinking band of other activist know-nothings insist that employing DDT against malaria is "especially dangerous for developing infants and children," but there is no scientific basis to the claim. Zip.

..... The World Health Organization, the Global Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development have overcome this hostility and endorsed DDT as a safe and effective tool for fighting malaria. Even environmentalist groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, that once deplored DDT have piped down.

But not John Conyers, who is lost in a time warp.

Hey John: It's 2007, not 1967. DDT is A-OK.

The web site of Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) has a "Truth Sheet" (PDF) dated April 23 that is largely a comical exercise in non-science. But it also crosses the line by not so subtly portraying those who wish to have DDT used to fight malaria as race traitors. It's not easy to get a reinforcement of that offensive point, the names of George Bush and Karl Rove, an unnamed reference to Valerie Plame, and the war in Iraq all into one sentence, but PANNA's Truth Sheet pulls it off:

CORE’s 2005 Martin Luther King celebration honored “Green Revolution” scientist Norman Borlaug and Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s election strategist, recently under criminal investigation for his role in “outing” a CIA agent whose husband disagreed with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Google News searches on "Conyers Pesticide Action Network" and "Conyers Africa Malaria Day" (both searches done without quote marks) confirm that the Wall Street Journal's editorial is the only coverage anywhere of Conyers' craziness, and his association with a group that is on the fringe even by environmentalist standards.

It must be nice to have the Formerly Mainstream Media ignore you when you jump the shark.

So, according to the L.A.Times, the US is unfairly hurting Mexican families because of a downturn in new home building in the USA. Why are we Americans so darn mean to those innocent illegals, anyway? For shame you selfish Americans!

MEXICO CITY — When California's housing market was booming, Lucretia Diaz could feel the good vibrations 2,200 miles away in her rural hamlet in southern Mexico.

Her husband, Carlos Romero, an illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, wired her $600 a month from his labors hanging drywall and pounding roof nails. The remittances bought meat for the tacos, new sneakers for the kids and a few extras for the family's home in tiny Juquila, Oaxaca.

No more. With U.S. homebuilding in the dumps, Romero is working sporadically and sending little money. Diaz and her three young boys are eating rice and beans. She is watching every centavo.

So are economists who track this crucial southward flow of currency. They are worried by what they see.

Why these purported economists aren’t “worried” that this flow of US dollars exists in the first place is anybody’s guess.

Remittances are the financial lifeblood for millions of Mexican families and a critical source of foreign exchange for their government. The $23 billion that maids, cooks and gardeners sent home last year — almost all from the U.S. — topped the amount that multinationals invested in Mexico. But fallout from the U.S. construction industry, which employs one in five Hispanic immigrants, is now rippling south of the border. Growth in remittances to Mexico has slowed to a trickle.

Nice euphemism they have there; “remittances”. It SHOULD be theft, but the L.A.Times dresses it up by calling the flow of US dollars over the border with a benign sounding “remittances”.

So, are we supposed to read this article and feel bad for these Mexicans who are receiving illegal monies from the USA? Are we supposed to damn ourselves for how horrible we are for stopping these oh so helpful “remittances” with our selfish desire not to build new homes?

Gosh we evil Americans are just dastardly, aren’t we?

The entire report is written as if it is all a common market analysis, as if the discussion here is a downturn in business related issues. But, it isn’t. We are talking about illegal aliens making money against the law that is then bled out of the country, harming our own economy.

Catch this paragraph:

After increasing an average of just more than 23 percent a year since 2000, remittances for the first two months of 2007 were just 5.5 percent ahead of the same period last year, according to Mexico's central bank. The figure peaked in May 2006 at $2.3 billion and has drifted downward ever since.

It’s as if we are talking new cars stats, or purchases of washing machines and the so-called "Big ticket items" taking a downturn here. The Times is couching this discussion as if this illegal activity is a legitimate market analysis instead of an illegal leeching of cash out of our own economy.

Again, this is money basically stolen by illegal immigrants flowing out of our country and into a foreign nation.

And, it isn’t just Mexico “feeling the effect” says the Times.

Mexico isn't the only country feeling the effect. Growth in money wired to Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and other Latin American nations has followed the housing market down.

But the L.A.Times didn’t stop with our meanness with the construction industry. We are also harming Mexico’s “remittances” with our intensified attention to border security.

But with more U.S. agents patrolling the border and fewer construction jobs waiting on the other side, Newman said, Mexico may be in for a bumpier landing this time. He projects 3.3 percent economic growth for Mexico this year, down from 4.8 percent in 2006.

It is infuriating that the L.A.Times acts as if this illegal flow of US dollars south is a legitimate part of Mexico’s economy.

Obviously the Times feels we Americans should feel shame that Mexicans and other nationalities cannot come here illegally as easily as they once did. Why, our increased interest in our own national security and upholding our laws is frightening those poor, poor, innocent people.

Analyst Gwenn Bezard, who follows the money-transfer industry, said he believes that tougher border enforcement is crimping the flow of new arrivals to the U.S. while employment raids and deportations have spooked undocumented workers living there. He said some are avoiding places where immigrants congregate, such as major money-wiring chains.

"A lot of people are just staying home because they are afraid of being caught," said Bezard, research director at Aite Group, a Boston-based financial services consulting business. "The political climate has a lot to do with it."

This L.A.Times piece is a perfect example of the open borders type of thinking that is popular with the extreme left. With this thinking we should not be “allowed” to secure our border, we are mean to enforce our labor laws, and we have no right to impose any requirements for foreign nationals to become citizens of the USA.

The most ridiculous part of this report is that not once in the piece does the L.A.Times scold the Mexican government for the failed policies that causes it to rely on these “remittances” to float its economy. Nowhere is the onus for the solvency of the Mexican economy placed on Mexicans back in Mexico. No, it’s all the USA’s fault.

I have news for you L.A.Times. Mexico’s economic woe is NOT the fault of fewer construction projects in California.

It’s because Mexico is a corrupt, third world nation and the USA has NO responsibility to assure that these "remittances" help float them.

Via The Telegraph: Smoke from the ambush they had just sprung on American special forces still hung in the air, but their attention was fixed on the two helicopter gunships that had appeared above them as their leader, the tallest man in the group, struggled to pull what appeared to be a burqa over his head...

...By the time the gunships had finished, 21 minutes later, military officials say 14 Taliban were confirmed dead, including one of their key commanders in Helmand...

"Some of them were trying to get the heavy machine-gun up a small hill to engage us," Lt Denton said. "Capt Staley used the 30mm gun to take out the two guys who had taken off, and then we fixed on the ones with the heavy machine-gun. They were huddled around a large boulder and we shot them. We put as many rounds around it as we could, because if they got to it they could cause us trouble. But they never had a chance to set it up."

Using its cannon and then its rockets, the Apache finished off all the Taliban fighters it could find, then launched nail-filled rockets and dropped white phosphorous to destroy the motorcycles and the machine guns. After the shooting stopped, 12 Taliban were confirmed dead...

.....for now, the American airmen are not losing any sleep over it. "When you are on top of the enemy you look, shoot and it's, 'You die, you die, you die..."

If you are a Taliban fighter, get your affairs in order post haste.

Also see See-Dubya at Hot Air, Blue Crab Boulevard and Reihl World View.

1) the fire: Jet fuel burns at a max of 1300f in open fire.. the jetfuel burned up in about 15 mins.. Steel doesn't soften until it reaches 600c. the fire never averaged over 800f considering it was oxygen starved due to all the black smoke.

The fire was never very large considering it never went beyond its point of origin.

According to physics.. It's impossible for that fire to have done any structure damage at all..muchless melt steel or iron that doesn't melt until 2800f. Thats 2000 degrees above the average temp. Even if the fires burned at 1300f for 3 hours it would not have done any damage to the steel structure muchless the core of the towers.

2)No failing structure can crush or pulverize its self into 60micron dust particles.. The building was in a free fall..Free fall means Zero resistance from the structure below the failure.. With zero resistance there is no resistance or force great enough to create the conditions for the pulverizing of 80percent of the steel reinforced concrete within those towers..

You would need massive lower structure resistance with equal or greater down force to create the pressure needed to pulverize the buidling to dust.. Since the buildings gave at free fall speeds..this means the lower structure gave before the down force of the structure above could make contact.. Knowing the laws of physics..The buildings could only have been professionally demolitioned.. Only explosive charges set to take out the lower structure before the above structure could make contact could have made the buildings fall at free or near free fall speeds.. You can't argue physics.. the pancake theory is BS! the Fire Theory is BS!

also note.. For a building to come straight down into its foot print would mean that all 4 sides of the structure would have to give all at the the exact time and rate of speed on every floor.. Otherwise the building topples over..

There is no way in hell that Two 110 story buildings with drastically different structure damage due to un-identical impacts of two different planes could both come down in the exact same way while defying physics..

The pancake theory also leads you to believe the fires burned at a constant 1300f or more exactly evenly over the entire massive structure on all 4 sides..

BS!Steel and iron conduct heat very well and disperse it through out the entire frame.. steel temps were no more than 430f max at the hottest point.. and the entire steel frame would have much cooler areas..Meaning there is no way in hell the towers gave ghost exactly on all 4 sides and the exact same time and speed. Vertical load.. You could have put tower 1 on top of tower 2 and not have had a collapse.. The core of each building had a max veritical load of twice the actual structures vertical weight. Each floor can hold up to 10x's its load.. Simple facts that are left out of the pancake theory.. and the fact that you are pulverizing steel reinforced concrete would require 10x the kinetic vertical energy with equal or greater resistance from the lower structure.. Which is impossible even if you dropped tower 1 on tower 2 without explosives..

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) — Iranian police have warned barbers against offering Western-style hair cuts or plucking the eyebrows of their male customers, Iranian media said Sunday.

The report by a reformist daily, later confirmed by an Iranian news agency, appeared to be another sign of authorities cracking down on clothing and other fashion deemed to be against Islamic values. “Western hairstyles ... have been banned,” the newspaper Etemad said in a front-page headline.

It came a week after police launched a crackdown against the growing number of young women testing the limits of the law with shorter, brighter and skimpier clothing ahead of the summer months. Under Iran’s Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obligated to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures. Violators can receive lashes, fines and imprisonment.

The student news agency ISNA quoted a police statement as saying: “In an official order to barbershops, they have been warned to avoid using Western hair styles and doing men’s eyebrows.”

A cable company is offering the Al-Jazeera network in its cable package, one of only a few in the nation to do so. Burlington Telecom, a city-owned cable company that serves 1,200 households in Vermont’s largest city, began offering the Arab-operated network about six months ago. “We were certainly squeamish about it at first, given its reputation in the United States,” said Tim Nulty, director of Burlington Telecom. “But if you look at it, it looks like BBC. I think it’s more mainstream and more objective than CNN.”

Carpundit has more details, including contact information for Burlington Telecom: Burlington, Vermont Welcomes America’s Enemies.

According to the Boston Globe, the city of Burlington, Vermont owns a cable system. It has a whopping 1200 subscribers, so it’s scarcely worth mentioning -as the Globe obviously decided, burying the item here- that it added a new channel to the lineup. That channel is Al-Jazeera. I believe Al-Jazeera is a propaganda machine for the terror-sponsoring states of the Middle East. It is the “respectable” public face of the Islamist movement.

Before:



After:





Or, you know, just read the following.  Posted from Hot Air:

This story will absolutely rock your world. It suggests that Rosie O’Donnell, noted pundit, comedienne and physicist, may be wrong about that whole fire-can’t-melt-steel thing, which in turn means that she just might be wrong about the collapse of WTC 7 on 9-11. There’s video at the link.

The upper deck of Interstate Highway 580 at Interstate Highway 80, located near Emeryville, collapsed Sunday morning after an explosion and fire.

Heat from the tanker explosion on the westbound 580 melted the upper roadway of the MacArthur Maze. The fire was intense enough to cause the tanker truck to basically melt away, according to crews on the scene.

The Rotund Oracle, wrong? Who’dathunkit?

(h/t Clayton)

Update: Ah, it was a controlled demolition, only using a tanker truck instead of airplanes. I get it now. The governator must be one of them.

Bushreich is going to have to do better. We’re all on to them now.

One more thing, shouldn't we be glad our "poor" aren't walking around starving to death as the "real poor" do in some third world crap hole?  How "poor" are the "poor" if they are eating so well as to be obese?  Libs can't look at the positive side of anything.

On Saturday afternoon, CNN Newsroom ran a report by Sanjay Gupta in which the CNN medical correspondent plugged a proposal for the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program to begin supplying vouchers for fruits and vegetables to its recipients to combat obesity in the poor, and fretted that budget cuts by President Bush could "threaten" a proposed plan to do so. Recounting that the problem for WIC recipients when the program was created 30 ago was "malnutrition, not obesity," Gupta relayed plans by the Agriculture Department to supply vouchers for fruits and vegetables. But Gupta cautioned that because Bush is planning to put WIC on the "chopping block," the plan may be endangered. Gupta: "But some say that might not happen because WIC is on the chopping block, slated for a $145 million cut in President Bush's 2008 budget. ... Nutritionists say that's not good because the WIC produce vouchers could help control obesity." (Transcript follows)

At about 5:43 p.m., the report began with Gupta introducing a mother who receives food vouchers from WIC who "needs help when it comes to feeding and taking care of her year-old baby." He then informed viewers that because at the time of the program's creation malnutrition was the major problem, there are plans to reform the program now that obesity has become the major problem. Gupta: "Since WIC was founded over 30 years ago, thoughts on nutrition have changed. You see, the problem then was malnutrition, not obesity. So most WIC vouchers are for cereal, breads, crackers, milk products. Checks for fresh fruits and vegetables don't exist. So last August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to add produce to the voucher system to give clients a more balanced diet."

The CNN correspondent then warned viewers that President Bush's proposed cuts could hold up the proposed changes for WIC, and played a soundbite of Reverend Douglas Greenaway of the National WIC Association, who warned that Bush's proposal to make budget cuts "threatens the availability of fresh frozen fruits and vegetables" that could reduce obesity in the poor.

Gupta: "They're expected to be available next year, but some say that might not happen because WIC is on the chopping block, slated for a $145 million cut in President Bush's 2008 budget."

Reverend Douglas Greenaway, National WIC Association: "It really threatens the availability of fresh frozen fruits and vegetables, the culturally diverse foods, the changes that are needed to reduce the incidence of obesity and overweight that we're finding amongst WIC mothers and children."

Gupta: "Nutritionists say that's not good because the WIC produce vouchers could help control obesity."

After a soundbite of a nutritionist informing viewers of the potential health benefits of reforming the program, Gupta concluded that until Congress decides how to fund the proposed changes, "mothers like Corina Alvarez will have to continue waiting for produce checks to become available."

Below is a complete transcript of Gupta's story from the Saturday April 28 CNN Newsroom, which ran about 5:43 p.m.:

Sanjay Gupta: "Although her husband works, Corina Alvarez still needs help when it comes to feeding and taking care of her year-old baby."

Corina Alvarez, WIC recipient: "I like for them to give me ideas and I'm a new mom."

Gupta: "So every month Alvarez receives checks for food from WIC. Now, this is a federal grant program, and it's designed to improve the health of low-income women and their children by providing food and counseling on good eating and health care."

Reverend Douglas Greenaway, National WIC Association: "The foods that WIC provides are really the tools that reinforce that nutrition education message that's delivered in 10,000 WIC clinics around the country."

Gupta: "Since WIC was founded over 30 years ago, thoughts on nutrition have changed. You see, the problem then was malnutrition, not obesity. So most WIC vouchers are for cereal, breads, crackers, milk products. Checks for fresh fruits and vegetables don't exist. So last August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to add produce to the voucher system to give clients a more balanced diet. They're expected to be available next year, but some say that might not happen because WIC is on the chopping block, slated for a $145 million cut in President Bush's 2008 budget."

Greenaway: "It really threatens the availability of fresh frozen fruits and vegetables, the culturally diverse foods, the changes that are needed to reduce the incidence of obesity and overweight that we're finding amongst WIC mothers and children."

Gupta: "Nutritionists say that's not good because the WIC produce vouchers could help control obesity."

Katherine Tallmadge, American Dietetic Association: "Studies have shown that women and children and infants who participate in the program have improved nutrition, mothers give birth to fewer low-birthweight babies, which saves medical costs."

Gupta: "Congress is now debating the finances for WIC. The final decision will likely come in the fall. Until then, mothers like Corina Alvarez will have to continue waiting for produce checks to become available. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting."

Update/Related Posts:

CNN's Gupta Prescribes Democratic Talking Point (Michael M. Bates, NewsBusters)

CNN Doc: We Need More Handouts for the Obese (Julia Seymour, BMI)

Posted from LGF:  Here’s some good news to start off a Sunday morning, as more than a million people took to the streets of Istanbul to protest against Islamic rule of Turkey.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - At least 300,000 Turks waving the red national flag flooded central Istanbul on Sunday to demand the resignation of the government, saying the Islamic roots of Turkey’s leaders threatened to destroy the country’s modern foundations.

Like the protesters — who gathered for the second large anti-government demonstration in two weeks — Turkey’s powerful secular military has accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of tolerating radical Islamic circles.

“They want to drag Turkey to the dark ages,” said 63-year-old Ahmet Yurdakul, a retired government employee who attended the protest.

Exactly right. The protesters are saying the same things we’ve been saying at LGF for years (and getting slammed by the left for it).

The military said Friday night that it was gravely concerned and indicated it was willing to become more openly involved in the process — a statement some interpreted as an ultimatum to the government to rein in officials who promote Islamic initiatives.

Sunday’s crowd chanted that the presidential palace was “closed to imams.” Some said Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc was an enemy of the secular system, because he said the next president should be “pious.”

In the 1920s, with the Ottoman Empire in ruins, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk imposed Western laws, replaced Arabic script with the Latin alphabet, banned Islamic dress and granted women the right to vote.

The ruling party, however, has supported religious schools and tried to lift the ban on Islamic head scarves in public offices and schools. Secularists are also uncomfortable with the idea of Gul’s wife, Hayrunisa, being in the presidential palace because she wears the traditional Muslim head scarf.

“We don’t want a covered woman in Ataturk’s presidential palace,” said Ayse Bari, a 67-year-old housewife. “We want civilized, modern people there.”

A protester holds a placard showing a bulb, the symbol of the ruling AK Party, wrapped with a black chador during a rally to oppose the AK Party’s presidential candidate in Istanbul April 29, 2007. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul refused on Sunday to withdraw from Turkey’s presidential vote, ignoring pressure from the army and calls from tens of thousands of demonstrators worried about his Islamist past. Placard reads “We are aware of danger”. REUTERS/Osman Orsal (TURKEY)

UPDATE at 4/29/07 8:41:45 am:

The article above seriously understates the attendance at this rally; there were more than a million people.

ISTANBUL (AFP) - More than one million people took part in a mass rally here Sunday in support of secularism and democracy amid a tense stand-off between the Islamist-rooted government and the army over presidential elections.

The crowd, carrying red-and-white Turkish flags and portraits of founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, filled Istanbul’s sprawling Caglayan square in a demonstration organized by some 600 non-governmental organizations.

“Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” “Neither Sharia, nor coup d’etat, democratic Turkey,” they chanted.