THE "BIKE-PATH LEFT"



Mark Steyn appears in today's Wall Street Journal, where he evicerates the looney left:

Vermonters marked the end of the Dean era by electing a Republican governor and a Republican House. Even Vermont isn't as liberal as liberals assume. What's liberal is the idea of Vermont as it's understood across America: a bucolic playground of quaint dairy farms punctuated by the occasional boutique business that's managed to wiggle through the Dean approval process. A lot of those dairy barns are empty and belong to weekending flatlanders, the rest are adorned with angry "Take Back Vermont" signs, and the quintessential Green Mountain boutique business, Ben and Jerry's, wound up selling out to the European multinational Unilever. But these dreary details are irrelevant. To Democratic primary voters across the land, Vermont is a shining, rigorously zoned, mandatory-recycling city on a hill. And the only way up the hill is by the bike path.

The column is also available at OpinionJournal.com, where you can read it with a free registration.

THE "BIKE PATH LEFT"



Mark Steyn appears in today's Wall Street Journal, where he evicerates the looney left:

Vermonters marked the end of the Dean era by electing a Republican governor and a Republican House. Even Vermont isn't as liberal as liberals assume. What's liberal is the idea of Vermont as it's understood across America: a bucolic playground of quaint dairy farms punctuated by the occasional boutique business that's managed to wiggle through the Dean approval process. A lot of those dairy barns are empty and belong to weekending flatlanders, the rest are adorned with angry "Take Back Vermont" signs, and the quintessential Green Mountain boutique business, Ben and Jerry's, wound up selling out to the European multinational Unilever. But these dreary details are irrelevant. To Democratic primary voters across the land, Vermont is a shining, rigorously zoned, mandatory-recycling city on a hill. And the only way up the hill is by the bike path.

The column is also available at OpinionJournal.com, where you can read it with a free registration.

THE "ME" GENERATION...



At the web site called the Democratic Underground [emphasis added below]:

There really do seem to be a lot of us here who are genuinely happy that Saddam is captured. This suprises me. I'm not happy they captured him. That's not to say that I'm sad. I just think today's news doesn't stir any emotion in me at all. Saddam was never a threat to me. He never did anything to me personally. I doubt he ever did anything to you. In fact, Saddam, over the course of his life and rule of Iraq, probably did more to help America than any other world leader.

No relief that the rape rooms are gone? No celebration of the destruction of facism in Iraq? What a fruitcake.

A LITANY OF BAD NEWS FOR DEMOCRATS AND LOONEY LEFTISTS



From the Wall Street Journal:

• Underlying inflation plunged to a 40-year low of 1.1% in November as slack in the economy continued to put downward pressure on prices.



• The current-account deficit, the broadest gauge of the nation's global trade, narrowed to $135.04 billion in the third quarter from $139.39 in the second quarter.



• More U.S. employers expect to boost hiring than to reduce jobs in the first quarter of 2004, according to a bellwether survey by staffing agency Manpower.



• Bush reaped a quick political benefit from Hussein's capture as a new poll showed increased approval of the president's leadership and the nation's direction overall.

More to come...

THE RELIGION OF ENVIROMENTALISM



Author Michael Crichton delivered a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last September. His assignment? Identify and discuss the most important challenge presently facing mankind. His answer?

The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

So far so good. I'm sure the San Francisco audience was in rapt agreement, particularly because that evil President Bush has "misled" our national into an "unjust" war.



But it gets better. Crichton's example of this challenge is... environmentalism!

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists...



Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.



Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die.

You need to read the entire speech to get the full effect. It can be found here (thanks to The Corner at NRO for the pointer).

LEFT-WING GRANOLA SEATTLE ANTI-WORLD TRADE VANDAL IDIOCY STARRING REP. JIM McDERMOTT (D-WASH.)



The uber-liberal McDermott had this to say (via FoxNews, via AP):

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., told a Seattle radio station Monday the U.S. military could have found Saddam "a long time ago if they wanted." Asked if he thought the weekend capture was timed to help Bush, McDermott chuckled and said: "Yeah. Oh, yeah."



The Democratic congressman went on to say, "There's too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing."



When interviewer Dave Ross asked again if he meant to imply the Bush administration timed the capture for political reasons, McDermott said: "I don't know that it was definitely planned on this weekend, but I know they've been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they'd find him.



"It's funny," McDermott added, "when they're having all this trouble, suddenly they have to roll out something."

Ha ha. Very funny.

GOD AND W



David Frum, on his National Review Online blog, opines that God has a vested interest in the outcome of the next election:

For now, let�s say that while the President�s opponents have made much sport of the idea that God called George Bush to the presidency, it�s becoming increasingy difficult to doubt that God wants President Bush re-elected.

I'm smiling, even if Frum's statement is over the top.