Ted Kennedy: Polluter

He'll just buy...oil in the water...offsets. Or something.

Ted Kennedy has called Nantucket Sound near his Massachusetts estate “a national treasure” — but that didn’t stop the senator from having oil dumped from his yacht into its waters.


A local photographer spotted an oil slick coming from Kennedy’s yacht Mya as Kennedy and his guests left the vessel in a launch following a race that ended in Hyannis, the Cape Cod Today newspaper reported.


The lensman was so shocked that he rowed his dinghy out to question the crew member left aboard the yacht.


He asked the crewman, “What the hell are you doing?”


The crewman said that diesel fuel had gotten into the bilge and he was told to dump it.


When the photographer pointed out that the yacht was moored in coastal waters near shellfish beds and people swimming, the crewman replied, “Whatever.”

It's hard to take people seriously who rant and rave about pollution, then are caught doing it themselves. And what's even worse is that the average American sees something like a Ted Kennedy shrugging off polluting the water, or an Al Gore doing the equivalent to the air...and write off pollution as a non-issue. That's always helpful.

No Criticism of Barack Obama Allowed!

As even Democratic commentators are finding out, criticism of Obama gets one branded a filthy racist.


From CNN:

(CNN) -- Geraldine Ferraro defended her controversial comment that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign was successful because he was black, telling an interviewer Tuesday that she was being attacked because she was white.
"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says, 'Let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world,' you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, California. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Her criticism may seem unfair, but it's not like the "Vote for Obama because he's black" crowd doesn't exist. Some of the comments from Black Enterprise:

it is that the majority in this country has brainwashed us. every race gender or creed through out the world would pull together to support their own except us. we try to find every reason not to just to sound intelligent for the other manif there was a native american running there would be no devide among them or asian jewish only us we will countinue to be lower class until we decide we can lead to. and for all those who want to vote for the other man or woman keep on being a slave and tell your kids and grandkids why they are still slaves to the other man

Obama is black. He is christian. He is highly educated and is supported by lots of educated people of USA. He is the most capable to deal with our friends and enemies alike. He is honest, fairand is electable. yes, America is ready for a black president, the problem is not USA not being ready, but some black people not being ready for a black president themselves. AAH. 12/19/07

This is a great time for the African American Community and all Americans I live in the Detroit, Michigan area and would like to work with the, Obama for president Campaign.

And the racial component of his campaign has been recognized by even black critics:

To white people, Obama positions himself as a singular solution to the nuisance of Black people's irksome complaints about ongoing racism. His appeal to Blacks is rooted in a lingering Jim Crow mentality that uncritically celebrates the prospect of Black faces in high places. ... Supposedly, the missing ten percent of Black progress that he says is required to achieve equality will be provided by his own ascension to the presidency. Then, all will be right with the African American world[.]

So the general unspoken Democratic assumption was that Barack Obama's blackness was an asset in the election, and that he was assumed to garner a large portion of the black vote. And even a few black Democrats have criticized him for relying on his race and ignoring policy.


Yet when a white woman brings up what multiple black analysts have said many many times...she's branded decisive, told she has no place in politics. Is Obama prepared to say this about Roland Martin, who told him not to assume a majority of the black vote...just because he was black? How about Debra J. Dickerson who asked whether race or gender would win out? So the idea of Hillary and Obama making it so far because of their minority status has been out in the open for some time. Only now that it's being used as criticism instead of praise or just comment...only now is it taboo.

Though it takes the wind out of his sails when his critic admits shes was only relevant because she was a woman.

The Silent Plight of Muslim Girls

If there is any area on which modern day liberalism is not willing to compromise its beliefs in order to appease the worst excesses of radical Islam, I have yet to find it. The staunchest defenders of human rights are oddly silent about the most eggregious human rights violations facing Muslims, mainly women and children. To the extent that ANY of them speak about barbaric practices such as female genital mutilation...it is usually to defend such practices.


One of the most grissly recent stories to fit this model is the tale of Yasser Abdul Said who murdered his daughters Amina and Sarah for offending his honor. No stories on DailyKos or DemocraticUnderground. And in a search on yahoo, google, and even ask.com, the first 40 stories are all from right wing blogs, usually linking either to JihadWatch and Robert Spencer, or to Phyllis Chesler. This is a case of TRUE theocratic religious zealots murdering their daughters for impure sexuality (real or imagined) and for religious reasons...yet, there is silence.


As Chesler reports:

[B]ased on extensive interviews that I have done with the female relatives of the murdered Texas teenagers, it is clear that:


a) Amina and Sarah were expected to wear headscarves. Their failure to do so, their “hidden” lives as normal American teenagers, doomed them.


b) Amina and Sarah were expected to enter into arranged marriages against their will to much older Egyptian men whom they had never met. Their refusal to do so doomed them.


c) Amina and Sarah were expected to keep quiet about the horrific sexual, physical, and psychological abuse which was heaped upon them by their father, mother, and brother. Their failure to do so doomed them.


d) Amina and Sarah were not supposed to have “boyfriends.” At the very least, their friends, both male and female, were not supposed to be Christians. The fact that they were friendly with Christian male teenagers doomed them.


e) Amina and Sarah were supposed to learn to hate America and to choose Shari’a law. Their failure to do so doomed them.


These are only some of the “rules” that Amina and Sarah were expected to obey. One of my informants has quoted their brother Islam, who often stalked his sisters, as saying: “They knew the rules. They broke them.” Islam is saying that it is their fault that his father had to kill them.


Thus, whenever you see a woman in a face veil, headscarf, or burqa, it is very likely that these rules also apply to her.

Western feminists, who leap to defend the poor and downtrodden female from having to unfairly look at ultrasounds of their unborn fetus, report to their parents that they need to travel across state lines to have an abortion at the age of 12, or have a 15 cent an hour wage difference from their male counterparts...are shockingly silent about the execution of two beautiful young women by their zealot father for not conforming to his expectations of their lives.


The charge of racism to anyone who brings up such issues is not only irresponsible...it is silly. How is it racist to try and defend women and children of color or minority faith? All those who would defend "the Muslim community against such slander" is defend behaviors that lead to the deaths of young women the world over in such "honor killings". It's just a shame that some would rather play victim politics than save lives. That those who would defend western women from the rather minor inconvenience of a wage disparity would not stand up for their sisters who are being executed by a very real patriarchy is a terrible dereliction of duty. And that some would actually defend a patriarchy responsible for such attrocities is disgusting and pathetic.