Larry Johnson puts his hand on a stack of bibles, swears he is telling the truth about the “Whitey tape,” and then issues a warning to democrats.

I now appreciate somewhat how Cofer Black, the head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, must have felt as he tried to warn Condaleeza Rice and the Bush White House about a brewing terrorist attack in the days leading up to September 11th.

John Cole responds with a link to a mocking YouTube spoof video, which is unfortunately lame. Lots of left-side blogs are linking it and pretending that it is terribly amusing.

Hillary won the popular vote in the democrat primaries by a margin of 300,000. She was behind only 130 votes of “pledged delegates,” but Obama was awarded 29 and a half Michgan votes from a primary in which he did not run by the DNC Rules Committee. Hillary had plenty of time before the August Convention to challenge that arbitrary allocation of votes, voiding the will of Michigan’s actual voters, in court.

If she won, Obama loses 29 and and a half and she gains 29 and a half for a total difference of 59. Now, Obama’s up by 71 pledged delegates, and Hillary and Bill need to move only 36 votes to her column.

Is it possible to believe there weren’t 36 superdelegates that a smooth talking guy like Bill Clinton couldn’t persuade, or induce with promised appointments to ambassadorships in sunny resort locations, federal pardons, or other considerations?

It strikes me that Bill would never have given up. When he lost Congress, when they had him dead to rights for perjury, whenever his political situation looked hopeless, you have to give Bill Clinton credit, he just picked himself up, dusted himself off, and counterattacked brilliantly. Bill understood a key fact of any conflict: you’re never beaten until you give up.

It was still in Hillary’s power to fight for the nomination, but she allowed democrat political leaders to persuade her to abandon the fight “for the good of the party.” Rush Limbaugh and I are certainly disappointed in her. We wanted to see Hillary and Obama slugging it out right through the convention.

But, even from a democrat perspective, I don’t think it’s at all clear that Hillary bowing to will of the media, and declining to fight really is good for her party. Obama is a moonbat from the extreme leftist fringe of that party. Sure, he’s as popular as a new pair of Calvin Klein blue jeans in the community of fashion, but he is never going to win the support of the blue collar democrats essential to that party’s ever winning.

Obama is a mostly unknown quantity, highly liable to destruction under intense scrutiny. He has no record of political accomplishment (beyond getting elected to the Senate by a fluke) whatsoever. Ideologically, Tom Delay was perfectly correct, Obama seems to be downright Marxist. He’ll do great in Berkeley and Brookline, and he’ll get slaughtered in the heartland.

Didn’t Hillary have an obligation to fight on, not only for herself, but to save her party from dashing over the cliff all over again? I think she did.

Hillary gave up when she didn’t have to, because she was too conventional, too conformist, too lacking in independent judgment to keep fighting.

Peter Schweizer, whose written a new book, titled Makers and Takers, about all this, contends that liberals are the kind of people who do not put their money where their mouth is.

Samuel Johnson once reported on a man who was privately stingy but publicly touted the merits of sharing. Dr. Johnson said sarcastically that the man was a “friend of goodness.” What he meant was that flesh-and-blood goodness is very different from supporting “Goodness” in the abstract.

Many modern liberals like to openly discuss their altruism. Garrison Keillor explains that “I am liberal and liberalism is the politics of kindness.” But it rarely seems to turn into acts of kindness, especially when it comes to making charitable donations.

Consider the case of Andrew Cuomo, current New York Attorney General and advocate for the homeless. He has, according to his website, “compassion toward the most vulnerable of us.” And this is how the New York Times described the courtship of Kerry Kennedy (of guess which family): “Ms. Kennedy-Cuomo, 43, said she fell in love with Mr. Cuomo, 45, when he took her on a tour of a homeless shelter on their first date and agreed to fast for the labor leader Cesar Chavez.”

But that advocacy should not be confused with actually giving to the less fortunate. Cuomo was a homeless advocate throughout the 1990s, but according to his own tax returns he made no charitable contributions between 1996 and 1999. In 2000 he donated a whopping $2,750. In 2004 and 2005, Cuomo had more than $1.5 million in adjusted gross income but gave a paltry $2,000 to charity.

Cuomo made no charitable contributions in 2003, when his income was a bit less than $300,000.

Cuomo IS NOT alone in this Scroogery of course. Barack Obama has a rather poor track record when it comes to charitable contributions. He consistently gave 1 percent of his income to charity. In his most charitable year, 2005, he earned $1.7 million (two and a half times what George W. Bush earned) but gave about the same dollar amount as the President.

The last two Democratic Party nominees for President have come up short on the charity scale. Al Gore has been famously stingy when it comes to actually giving his own money to charities. In 1998 he was embarrassed when his tax returns revealed that he gave just $353 to charity. …

According to his tax returns, Reagan donated more than four times more to charity — both in terms of actual money and on a percentage basis — than Senator Ted Kennedy. And he gave more to charities with less income than FDR did. In 1985, for example, he gave away 6 percent of his income.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have continued this Reagan record. During the early 1990s, George W. Bush regularly gave away more than 10 percent of his income. In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney gave away 77 percent of his income to charity. He was actually criticized by some liberal bloggers for this, who claimed he was getting too much of a tax deduction.

The main point of liberal compassion appears to be making liberals feel good about their superior virtue. Such are the rewards of being a “friend of goodness.”

Michelle Malkin is starting a D-Day tradition of repeating a link to last year’s video satire imagining today’s media covering the landings in Normandy. Not a pretty picture.

We, too, linked the same 7:33 video last year.

Mark Steyn, who is currently facing charges in Canada for politically incorrect speech, admires his humility (and his chutzpah).

Sen. Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton’s: If you behave like a star, you’ll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his “victory” speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way:

“I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … . This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation.”

It’s a good thing he’s facing it with “profound humility,” isn’t it? Because otherwise who knows what he’d be saying. But mark it in your calendars: June 3, 2008 – the long-awaited day, after 232 years, that America began to provide care for the sick. Just a small test program: 47 attendees of the Obama speech were taken to hospital and treated for nausea. Everyone else came away thrilled that the Obamessiah was going to heal the planet and reverse the rise of the oceans.

The East London Advertiser story recounts some moments of excitement for the British Army bomb disposal team.

A loud triple bang was heard and vibration felt in a wide area of East London tonight as ‘Hermann the stubborn German’ Second World War bomb was detonated by the British Army.

The massive 2,200lb (1000 kg.) unexploded wartime device discovered by marine engineers dredging the River Lea at Bromley-by-Bow on Monday was finally defused tonight and the explosives packed inside burned off with a controlled explosion.

But the amount of explosives the 6ft by 2ft ‘Hermann’ was packing surprised most experienced Army engineers.

It would have torn a hole in the East End up to a-quarter-of-a-mile wide if it had exploded—64 years to the day after Allied Forces landed at Normandy on D-Day 1944. This was Big Hermann’s revenge.

There was still half-a-ton of high explosives left burning at 7pm, an hour after it was detonated.

Bob disposal experts have been describing ‘Hermann’ as “proven to be very stubborn” and having developed “a personality of its own, almost like a petulant child.”

‘Hermann’ was stubborn from the outset, booby-trapped to thwart any daring Army sapper.

It had remained dormant for 67 years, buried in the muddy riverbed until it was unearthed at low tide by a mechanical digger.

But it didn’t remain silent for long. It started ticking again on Wednesday, after nearly seven decades, following four failed attempts to defuse it by Army experts.

Tonight’s controlled explosion displaced 400 tonnes of sand which had formed a protective ‘igloo’ around the bomb.

The officer in charge, Major Matt Davies, told the East London Advertiser: “We were not exactly sure what to expect. The sand managed to contain the blast, which is what we wanted it to do.

“There are so many different ways these bombs were made in the 1940s that you can never tell exactly how long it would take.”

He added: “If it had gone off in wartime there would have been large fragments up to a mile away which could have destroyed buildings and sewers.

“This is the biggest unexploded bomb we have found in central London.”

The sappers used a laser-guided water jet to cut two circles in the thick metal casing to run steam hoses to liquefy the high explosives packed tightly inside.

One Army engineer was sent back repeatedly to the ticking device to pour a salt solution into it, then used a powerful magnet to stop the timer.

Police Commander Simon O’Brien said: “The engineer is a hero and has done Londoners a great service. It was a serious situation.” …

Pol Supt Phil Morgan said: “They spent 12 hours neutralising the fuse which was booby trapped and had ‘tamper’ devices fitted.

“If it had gone off, the blast would have reached more than 40,000ft in all directions, from Bow as far as Stratford.”

The bomb was just a few hundred yards from the huge Bromley gasworks, a prime target for the Luftwaffe when Britain was at war.

It was a team of marine engineers widening the riverbank to take barges for London’s 2012 Olympics construction who unwittingly found ‘Hermann.’

“Our mechanical digger suddenly hit this large metal object about 6ft long on the riverbed,” engineer Andrew Cowie told the Advertiser on Monday, less than an hour after the discovery.

“We had waited for the tide to go out and were working against time. We couldn’t believe what we found. It was massive.

“We called the foreman over and he quickly evacuated the site. We were taking no chances.”

2:05 video

Hat tip to Bird Dog and Meaningless Hot Air.

Barack Obama:

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in a desert, or living in the tundra, and then just expect that every other country’s going to say okay, you guys just go ahead and keep on using 25% of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3% of the population.

2:33 video

Hat tip to Nicola Karras.

Today’s news featured a demand from an international agency for large-scale sacrifice.

AP:

The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution” that would greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

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That headline reminded me of a passage in the New Testament, used a subject for a painting by Raphael.

The painting by Raphael, titled The Sacrifice at Lystra, was done 1515-1516, and is part of the Royal Collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

It depicts an incident described in the Acts of the Apostles 14:8-18.

And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked:

The same heard Paul speak: who steadfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed,

Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked.

And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.

And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker.

Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.

Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out,

And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:

Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.

Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

And with these sayings scarce restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them.

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Modern liberals, like those Lystrians, have a habit of confusing men with gods.

Though in the modern case, that confusion always involves the first person. Contemporary scientists who cannot reliably predict the weather more than a week or so in advance, and who do not in fact understand the causes or normal patterns of the planet’s periodic cycles of warming and cooling, pretend to able to predict imminent catastrophe related to human activity. Political pundits and economists, who cannot reliably predict high or low prices or good times and bad, and who actually produce nothing but merely manipulate words and ideas, claim they can revolutionize available forms of energy.

Today’s sophisters, calculators, and economists pretend to knowledge they do not possess, based on data outside human reach, and by so pretending to possess superhuman powers, they are really pretending that they are gods. Member of the modern intellectual clerisy habitually think themselves the gods Jupiter and Mercurius. But the sacrifices they propose, of course, are considerably greater than a single ox.

Just like the Lystrians, their demand is for sacrifices to an idol, the idol of Leviathan the State. “Progressives” have really gone far backward, into a barbarous and pagan past, one preceding both the Enlightenment and Christian Europe, whose faith rested upon a newer kind of thinking which respects the freedom and dignity of the human individual, which values spontaneous order and the voluntary interactions of human beings, and which does not view man and Nature as separate, distinct, and intrinsically at war.

Violence in Iraq has dropped to pre-Insurgency levels. General Petraeus’s tactics have clearly worked at killing off terrorists on the ground in Iraq, but more is going on. Reinforcement by new jihadis seeking martyrdom has also plummeted, so insurgent casualties are no longer being replaced.

Two recent articles explain how US military success is being supplemented by an ideological counter-offensive within the Islamic World.

Stratfor’s George Friedman explains that Saudi money is being used very actively to purchase peace and the right kind of theology.

At current oil prices, the Saudis are absolutely loaded with cash. In the Arabian Peninsula as elsewhere, money buys friends. In Arabia, the rulers have traditionally bound tribes and sects to them through money. At present, the Saudis can overwhelm theological doubts with very large grants and gifts. The Saudi government did not enjoy 2004 and does not want a repeat. It is therefore carefully strengthening its ties inside Saudi Arabia and throughout the Sunni world using money as a bonding agent. …

With crude prices in the range of $130 a barrel, the Saudis are now making more money on oil than they could have imagined five years ago when the price was below $40 a barrel. The Saudis don’t know how long these prices will last. Endless debates are raging over whether high oil prices are the result of speculation, the policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve, conspiracy by the oil companies and so on. The single fact the Saudis can be certain of is that the price of oil is high, they don’t know how long it will remain high, and they don’t want anything interfering with their amassing vast financial reserves that might have to sustain them in lean times should they come.

In short, the Saudis are trying to reduce the threat of war in the region. War is at this moment the single greatest threat to their interests. In particular, they are afraid of any war that would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large portion of the oil they sell flows. The only real threat to the strait is a war between the United States and Iran in which the Iranians countered an American attack or blockade by mining the strait. It is assumed that the United States could readily deal with any Iranian countermove, but the Saudis have watched the Americans in Iraq and they are not impressed. From the Saudi point of view, not having a war is the far better option.

The Saudis are engaged in a massive maneuver to try to pacify the region, if not forever, then for at least as long as oil prices are high. The Saudis are quietly encouraging the Syrian-Israeli peace talks along with the Turks, and one of the reasons for Syrian participation is undoubtedly assurances of Saudi investments in Syria and Lebanon from which Damascus can benefit. The Saudis also are encouraging Israeli-Palestinian talks, and there is, we suspect, Saudi pressure on Hamas to be more cooperative in those talks. The Saudis have no interest in an Israeli-Syrian or Israeli-Hezbollah conflict right now that might destabilize the region.

Finally, the Saudis have had enough of the war in Iraq. They do not want increased Iranian power in Iraq. They do not want to see the Sunnis marginalized. They do not want to see al Qaeda dominating the Iraqi Sunnis. They have influence with the Iraqi Sunnis, and money buys even more. Ever since 2003, with the exception of the Kurdish region, the development of Iraqi oil has been stalled. Iraqis of all factions are aware of how much money they’ve lost because of their civil war. This is a lever that the Saudis can use in encouraging some sort of peace in Iraq.

It is not that Saudi Arabia has become pacifist by any means. Nor are they expecting (or, frankly, interested in) lasting peace. They are interested in assuring sufficient stability over the coming months and years so they can concentrate on making money from oil.

Meanwhile, as Lawrence Wright describes in the New Yorker, the Islamic theologian who wrote the books inspiring al Qaeda’s jihadist movement last year published a new book, “Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World,” featuring a major change of heart.

The premise that opens “Rationalizing Jihad” is “There is nothing that invokes the anger of God and His wrath like the unwarranted spilling of blood and wrecking of property.” Fadl then establishes a new set of rules for jihad, which essentially define most forms of terrorism as illegal under Islamic law and restrict the possibility of holy war to extremely rare circumstances. His argument may seem arcane, even to most Muslims, but to men who had risked their lives in order to carry out what they saw as the authentic precepts of their religion, every word assaulted their world view and brought into question their own chances for salvation.

In order to declare jihad, Fadl writes, certain requirements must be observed. One must have a place of refuge. There should be adequate financial resources to wage the campaign. Fadl castigates Muslims who resort to theft or kidnapping to finance jihad: “There is no such thing in Islam as ends justifying the means.” Family members must be provided for. “There are those who strike and then escape, leaving their families, dependents, and other Muslims to suffer the consequences,” Fadl points out. “This is in no way religion or jihad. It is not manliness.” Finally, the enemy should be properly identified in order to prevent harm to innocents. “Those who have not followed these principles have committed the gravest of sins,” Fadl writes. …

To Muslims living in non-Islamic countries, Fadl sternly writes, “I say it is not honorable to reside with people—even if they were nonbelievers and not part of a treaty, if they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum with a decent life and other acts of kindness—and then betray them, through killing and destruction. This was not in the manners and practices of the Prophet.”

It is to this recent book by Dr. Fadl that Ayman Zawahiri has been responding indignantly in his taped messages.

Ben Smith (who’s obviously in the tank for Obama) credits the candidate with successfully dismissing the question, and links a Reason piece by David Weigel, wittily titled Everything’s Gonna Be All White, which pooh pooh’s it.

Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday batted down rumors circulating on the Internet and mentioned on some cable news shows of the existence of a video of his wife using a derogatory term for white people, and criticized a reporter for asking him about the rumor, which has not a shred of evidence to support it.

“We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it,” Obama said to the McClatchy reporter during a press conference aboard his campaign plane. “That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it.”

Asked whether he knew it not to be true, Obama said he had answered the question.

But the rumor’s chief source, leftwing retired-Spook and Plamegame team member Larry Johnson retorts:

When a politician tap dances on nuance–Baby it is true. My sources have not backed off. They maintain they have a tape and will drop it on the Dems in the fall. Now if Barack said, “No, and hell no” I would be wondering about my sources. But he punted. He went for the weasel word. The non-denial denial.

Time will tell.

—————————————-

All postings on this story.

What little evenhandedness exists in the mainstream media is found in the willingness of the press to report the substance of Republican attacks on democrat presidential candidates in the interested manner of an old-time radio broadcaster describing a heavyweight boxing match. “The Swift Boat Veterans just delivered a powerful right to John Kerry’s jaw, and he’s on the canvas!”

Conservatives like myself are always surprised, what with all the favoritism in coverage they get, that the left continually expresses outrage and indignation that the mainstream media is only 99% on their side. They know that they deserve 1000% support.

Well, the left is mad at the media, and they’re not going to take it anymore. From now on, you journalists mess with their candidate, and they are going to mess with you.

Media Matters reports.

The Associated Press last week got a preview of how this presidential season is going to unfold, and how online liberal activists aren’t going to stand down when the press takes cheap shots at Democratic front-runners.

After AP reporter Nedra Pickler wrote a news story highlighting how some fringe Republican operatives were raising questions about Sen. Barack Obama’s patriotism, angry readers dispatched nearly 15,000 electronic letters protesting the piece. Why? Because instead of providing balance and context, which is what good journalism does, the article simply offered a platform for Obama’s opponents to roll out their smears, to broadcast their dark doubts about the senator’s character.

That kind of media shortcoming has become predictable; reporters love to quote partisan Republicans about how deficient Democrats are. And in the past it would have likely produced angry denunciations online within the liberal blogosphere — a blog swarm, perhaps. …

But nearly 15,000 letters sent in just a matter of days in response to a single news wire article? That’s something else entirely and could mark the dawn of a new era in progressive media activism. The phenomenon has received very little mainstream media attention (journalists probably don’t want to encourage this sort of thing), but make no mistake: It was a very big deal.

Hat tip to LGF.