World Affairs - Politics & Opinions, page 7.

Now that the dust has settled, it's time to weigh in on the Jim Bunning "controversy". Bunning was alone in blocking a $10 billion spending bill that included extension of unemployment benefits. Now let's get the obvious out of the way. Bunning is a hypocrite to end all hypocrites. None of George W. Bush's wars were paid for yet Bunning voted time and again to fund them. He also voted to give tax breaks to the wealthy without worrying about finding another source for that revenue. The left went berserk with outrage. A few brave souls defended his fiscal courage, like the Wall Street Journal (should we be surprised?). And of course there was the occasional dumbass like John Kyl who suggested that unemployment benefits discourage people from going out and finding work. (More on that at the bottom of the page.)

But we need to swim over to the deep end of the hypocrisy pool. You see except for a few Republicans, virtually everyone either publicly or privately condemned Bunning's actions. So what we really witnessed was a GOP who less than a week after opposing health care reform on the grounds of financial irresponsibility, jump on Bunning for holding up this legislation. True, they were not as vocal as the Democrats but they still felt Bunning had gone off the deep end. (Bunning actually has an interesting history of being a loon.) Senator Susan Collins of Maine urged the Kentucky Senator to back down.

The Holy Qur’an has vividly described them in this verse:

March 3, 2010 - Tomorrow morning, the latest job numbers are due to be released by the federal government. They are expected to be bleak and the White House is now in full-on finger pointing mode. But they aren't pointing the finger where you might think. They're not blaming those pesky Republicans or tea baggers. They're not singling out individual members of Congress that they consider to be obstructionist. No, they are blaming the weather; specifically the snow fall that has blanketed much of the country. Who would have thought that with global warming being such a big problem that snow could possibly result in an additional 100,000 or so job losses? Maybe we should track down Al Gore to explain how this all works!

All kidding aside, the White House is running as fast as it can to distance itself from the latest job numbers and they are blaming the weather. Larry Summers, an economic advisor to the President told CNBC that, "The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics."

This week's post does not include references and ideas for kids' activities, as usual; rather, I wish to activate you - the parents - into thinking about the attitude you develop in your kids towards ideas of freedom, equality, racism and prejudice, without even sensing it.

Several events occured in the history of this week:

In March 1st, 1692, the first three women were accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem.

On the same date in 1780, on the other hand, Pennsilvania was the first US state to pass a legislative act against slavery (though "gradual" and pertaining to newborns only).

Again on the same date, in 1912 this time, Isabella Goodwin was the first US woman detective appointed.

How are all these incidents - and many others - connected? They all reflect some of the thinking, in their time and place, about equal rights, freedom and prejudice.

The left is wary of India for the same reasons it remains wary of Israel: both democracies are fiercely nationalistic and unapologetically defend themselves against the “downtrodden” “other,” i.e., Islamic lunatics.

The American left simply prefers to play hardball with allies than with adversaries. Recall President Carter’s handling of Iran: the allied shah was condemned as an autocrat; the enemy Khomeini, a “holy man.” For Carter, our anticommunist allies were violators of human rights first, second, and third; the Soviets, murderers of tens of millions, were benign enough for Carter to proclaim Americans had an “inordinate fear of communism.”