Forward Biased (Less-than-current Events)

Why they hate us

Since there seems to be so much confusion amongst the people of this great nation concerning the reasons we are at war and whether they are valid (even whether we are really at war), I thought I might boil it all down to its basics and post a little primer for everyone.

Everybody wants to "understand" our enemy in order to better "address" his concerns, descriptions of them, and the situation that led us into war, and as a result, the explanations of the reasons for the Islamic world's hatred of the West have waxed both eloquent and complex.

Therefore, I've got a nice little shortcut to understanding them—and the war—for you.  Ready?  Good.  Here it is.

They want everyone in the world to submit to Islamic Sharia law.  Anyone who refuses to do so is to be summarily killed.  The net result is that the whole world will eventually be composed of folks who were faced with a choice between the five pillars and the killers, and chose to remain alive and submit to Islam (which literally means "submission" in Arabic).

Is that the world in which you want to live?  A world with no freedoms at all?  A world where every single civil right people have fought and died for in this country is denied out-of-hand?  I'm not gratuitously using Dr. Martin Luther King's name here, but do consider him, along with all the others who have fought, and often died, for freedom in this country, such as Susan B. Anthony, and even the rag-tag army under Gen. Washinton that managed to defeat the world's greatest army, the British—shall we just lay down the freedoms they so courageously fought for and simply "submit" to Islam?

Heh.  I didn't think you would like that very much.  That's good, that's good.  Now get ready, because this is all boiling down to one issue: it's either us or them.  And, not to make light of it, but just so you know ahead of time, some of us are going to die in the fight.  Perhaps a lot of us if they set off a nuke somewhere.  You may as well get ready for that now.  But Americans have never been slow or loathe to die when their freedom was at stake.  The few vocal ones who rail against this war today are, thankfully, very much a minority.

Shhh—everybody, I think I heard someone asking a question.  Uh—yes, you over there!  Your question is:  shouldn't we give diplomacy an opportunity to work before resorting to violence?  Why not try to reason with these people and come to some sort of reasonable compromise like civilized people are supposed to do?  I mean, come on, let's give peace a chance!  Right?

Very good question, and it deserves a very good answer, which is this:  these nice folks are not reasonable and civilized as we understand those words.  They don't want to "reason" with us and they care not for pretty, civilized things like "dialog." They want to conquer us, plain and simple, because to them, there is no room for compromise, no issue on which they are willing to "give."  Unfortunately, in order to try to satisfy the UN crowd, we're determined to try to reason with them anyway. 

And, the trouble is that they know this and they take advantage of it right under our noses.  They patiently listen to us diplomatically speaking the diplomatically important diplomatic words we speak so diplomatically, but in which they are interested not one whit except as it buys them time to do the really important stuff behind our backs.  Giving diplomacy time to work, in this case, actually grants precious time to the enemy to develop more and deadlier ways to foist terror on us infidels who refuse to submit to Islam.

Diplomacy has never worked with these kinds of people, and has rarely really ever worked at all, for that matter (the modern very incarnation of diplomacy, the UN, has never actually solved a problem anywhere in the world of which I'm aware).  The downside to letting diplomacy have its day, of course, is that we waste time that we could be using to do the one thing that does work with these kinds of "people" (loosely speaking, of course):  showing power.  Demonstrating strength.  Killing people.  Like it or not, that's what they respect.  And that's the only response from us that will gain their respect.  Period.  Everything else we do causes them to laugh, laugh at our weakness.  And they've been laughing a lot lately.

I know that killing people isn't what we think is a valid, civilized perspective, but we're not being given a choice here.  They're the ones who not only started but are continuing and prolonging this.  They hate us, but not because of some nonsensical, concocted idea of "poverty" and "disenfranchisement" (cue flower petals and long-haired, weeping guitar strummer) that we have imagined, invented from the whole cloth of our presuppositions.  You fool—look at their own words to define who they are, who they hate, and why they hate them (us).

It's because we, by our very existence, mock Islam.  It's not merely our newspaper cartoons, it's our very lives!  What else explains their years-long attempt to strike us that culminated in 9-11?  Did they fly planes into Danish buildings because of those cartoons?  No, in that case they settled for mere rioting and small-scale murder.

The USA shouldn't be allowed to exist, you see.  Allah is displeased with all these infidels possessing so much economic and political power which should, by all rights, belong to the faithful followers of Islam's "the way," or Sharia law, and Mohammad's disciples must do something about that, namely, cut us unbelieving rascals down to size, and then either convert us or kill us.

On 9-11 they thought they cut us unbelieving rascals down a notch or two, for sure.

But what they really did was similar to what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's prophetic words came true: "I fear all we have done is to wake a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve."

These words came true in WWII.  America stood together and defeated their enemies.  Now, will these words come true in WWIV (the so-called "War on Terror")?  That's the six-gazillion-dollar question.  No, wait—it's the six-billion LIVES question.  If this isn't a world war, then nothing else ever has been.

And now you basically understand the Islamic world and why it hates us so.  You also understand what our only response to them must be.  Easy, right?  Why does everyone hafta make everything so dang complicated?

(Thanks to Greyhawk for the Open Post!)

Speaking of irony...

You know, I almost feel sorry for the Danish people.

Almost.

I can't put it any better than did Ralph Bristol:

The good people of Denmark never knew what hit them, and they still don’t know why. They keep mumbling to themselves, "Why us? We’re tolerant, understanding, liberal, reasonable people. Why do they hate us? I thought they only hated pushy, arrogant, empirical [sic] power-mongers. We’re none of those things."

Certainly not like those pushy, arrogant, imperialistic Americans, right?

"Yeah, but you ran a cartoon they didn’t like."

"Well sure, but it was only a cartoon.  I mean, we do believe in freedom of expression. But we’re liberal, reasonable, tolerant, non-judgmental people."

"Yeah, but you ran a cartoon they didn’t like."

"I know, but it was only a cartoon. We didn’t try to restrict any of their freedoms or put them in jail, or take away any of their privileges or deny them anything we have. We’re reasonable and liberal and tolerant and non-violent."

"Yeah, but you ran a cartoon they didn’t like."

"Why do you keep repeating that?  Haven’t I already told you that it’s just a cartoon? It doesn’t hurt them or repress them or anything.  It’s just one man’s opinion, expressed by a cartoon in a newspaper!"

"Yeah, but you ran a cartoon they didn’t like."

"Will you stop saying that! I know that.  How in the name of sanity does that justify burning our flags, setting our embassies on fire and threaten our lives?"

Sanity?  What does sanity have to do with this?  We're talking about violently fanatical people here.

"Well, my good liberal Danish friend, it is no more complicated than this. These are people who address every grievance with violence and terror. It is what they have been taught to do. It is what they do, and you cannot reason with them. Watch this."

"We don’t want apologies. We will not accept apologies. We want war. We want his hands cut off."

Well, now.  That's sanity for you.

"Who was that? Was that one of Bin Laden’s guys?"

"No, that was a Muslim cleric in your country, a leader of the ‘regular folks’ as Bill O’Reilly would call them."

"Who?"

"Never mind."

"So what are you telling me – that there’s nothing we can do to stop this violence?"

"Don’t look at me. You started it."

"What? We started it? How did we start it?"

"You ran a cartoon they didn’t like."

Perhaps they never will get it.

Let's play Jeopardy!

Mudville Gazette is playing a game of "Who said it?"

Here are three quotes from three different speakers/writers.  See if you can guess who said what.

The first:

So you can imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts a soldier as he gathers the remains of his colleagues after they stepped on land mines that tore them apart. After this situation, the soldier is caught between two hard options. He either refuses to leave his military camp on patrols and is therefore dogged by ruthless punishments enacted by the Vietnam butcher or he gets destroyed by the mines. This puts him under psychological pressure, fear and humiliation while his nation is ignorant of that.

The soldier has no solution except to commit suicide. That is a strong message to you, written by his soul, blood and pain, to save what can be saved from this hell. The solution is in your hands if you care about them.

The second:

And about Bill Clinton . . . . You know, I really think he should have been impeached, but not for a blow job. His policies are responsible for killing more Iraqis that George Bush. I don't understand why to rise to the level of being president of my country one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it's been held by a long line of monsters.

And the third:

Let's not forget that ultimately, Osama's vision for the Arab world is far more akin to the Right's vision of America. Remember these old posts? On homosexuality, on militarism, on women's rights, on religion in school, on capital punishment, on free speech, on curtailment of civil liberties, and on a million different other issues Islamic fundamentalists don't share many disagreements with the ideologues running our country.

Want the answers?  You'll have to go to Greyhawk's original post to find out.

Evil and treason

Email and comments are going to have to wait a few minutes today.  I just can't stand this any more.

Just in case there was ever any question, there are evil people in the world.  They choose to be evil for ther own reasons, and I therefore cannot excuse them for "difficult childhoods" or any other such folderol.  The vast majority of people who grow up under deplorable circumstances choose, rather, to overcome the temptation to turn evil.  I'm not saying it's easy—I am saying it's possible, even the normal thing to do.  It certainly is the civilized thing.

Some evil people are easy to recognize.  Sadaam, for example.  Feeding your suspected enemies feet-first into a shredder isn't likely to win you a nomination for 2001 "Beloved Dictator of the Year." 

No, I take that back—he had elections all figured out, having won with a 99% vote last time.  (Iran's "Mad Mullahs" have done similarly.)

Anyway, evil.  There's always the quintessential and over-utilized Hitler, Stalin, Caligula, people of their ilk.  They're the ones people mention when asked to name evil people, because they're easy.  Crib question, right?

Not at all.  Many, if not most, evil people are not as easy to spot, as they masquerade as people who are out for our best interests.  Public servants, you know.  Leaders of public institutions that have existed for years, often with historically admirable roots.  People who still can gather thousands of "votes" for themselves, whether literal votes (for a politician) or economic votes for, say, a newspaper.

They typify the most dangerous kind of evil because it's the most deceptive—and seductive.  Very seductive.  And while they might not be the same kind of evil as, say, Hitler, they can be much more destructive.  They're more destructive and dangerous because, for one thing, they live and work among us—and, worse, they govern us.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not one normally given to schadenfreude, but in the case of the Legacy Media I make a well-deserved exception.  I also make room for politicians who make their country's interests, even the lives of her citizens and defenders, subordinate to their own political careers.

The first has been typified lately by the LATimes (among many other papers), the second by Rep. John Murtha (D-Traitorous Scuzzbucket) and all who support him, on both sides of the political aisle.

Just so that I'm clear and confuse no one with any incorrect implications, I'm not questioning anyone's patriotism, least of all the Times or the good Rep. Murtha.  No, no.  I'm unequivocally denying their patriotism.  I'm also stating that, having the approximate morals of the average cockroach, they are outright traitors to their country along with everything she represents.

Not being able to politely use stronger terms than those, I think I am actually understating the case.

Murtha, who has stated that "our troops have become the enemy," is a "hawk" and "a respected 37-year Marine veteran," we are told over and over—even more frequently than we were informed a year ago that John Kerry, incidentally, "served in Vietnam."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Principled Leader), on the other hand, who actually visited Iraq four times in the last 18 months to assess the situation and came to an opposite conclusion from Murtha, has been virtually ignored.  Evidently, this is one of those times when only a veteran has any "credibility" when commenting on an issue which just happens to be politically polarized.  Eyewitness accounts and qualified advice don't count for squat next to the "politically correct" opinion.

Sen. Lieberman is reminding me of this year's Zell Miller—someone whose convictions are so strong that he's willing to dissent from the party line when he believes that the party line is wrong for the country.  Would that we had more conscientious politicians like them!

Actually, Miller went much further than mere dissent: he publicly acknowledged the depths to which most of his party had sunk in explaining why he had to support the other guy for president.  We'll see whether Lieberman does anything similar.

Let's be clear.  Anyone who calls for a troop withdrawal "timetable" to be made public is calling for aid to the enemy.  In past wars there was such thing as "classified" information, kept secret from enemy planners using complex codes with keys that people guarded with their lives.

Now we have politicians, particularly Democrats, insisting that the "the public" must be consulted on each major war policy, thus informing the enemy of our intentions.

Make no mistake about this newfound "concern" for the public's sensibilities and wisdom.  These politicians are hardly concerned about doing the right thing—they're concerned only with covering their backsides with a dense, protective coating of public opinion data.  They've already seen a principled decision, namely, a vote to use force against Sadaam, come back to bite them popularity-wise, and, not having the courage of their convictions to deal with the tide of public opinion turning against them (well, at least according to some polls), they want to make dang sure that it never happens again.  These men are not only evil, they're cowards.

Murtha has also said:

We cannot win this militarily.

Demoralizing our troops while simultaneously encouraging the enemy is treason, as far as I'm concerned.  In a war with terrorists, both sides are particularly sensitive to the state of morale, and when any leader uses the occasion of dissent to pierce the hearts of our own soldiers, he does not deserve their protection.  Propaganda has always been a vital tool of war because it works.  Both ways.

The soldiers can't speak for themselves.

Oh no?  Seems to me the ones coming back are doing a pretty good job of it, and they say they can't even recognize Iraq in the news they're getting from Legacy outlets.

And his most infamous comment to date:

[T]he Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth."

Listen up, sir.  You may be broken and worn out, you pusillanimous, pus-filled, festering boil on the backside of Humanity, but our armies are not.  Just ask them.  You should summarily be propped firmly against a wall and shot, along with any of your Congressional colleagues who have made so much as a whimper in support of your vile statements.  And I request the honor of personally being on the firing squad.

If you aren't a traitor, sir, then there is no such thing as treason.

UPDATE:  Is it a felony to make such statements (two paragraphs up) against a member of Congress?  If so, this is one of those times that it's actually good to be an obscure little blog...

Just what is a war, anyway?

Steel doesn't often up and write whole essays himself, but he just wrote two good ones.  I would be proud to have written either one.

Here's part of one of them.

WAR is when everybody is rooting for you to win.

A war is something that happens and everybody wishes it would just go away.

WAR is fought to survive.

A war is waged for some reason nobody is quite sure of.

...WAR unites. A war divides.

WAR results in a win or you lose.

A war has no winners and we all lose.

...WAR is seldom fought, lasts long and is never forgotten.

A war is 'conducted', budgeted', 'discussed' and 'recriminated'.

WAR is what anyone would do.

A war is something no one should try.

Pogo was right. 

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

(Now go read the other one.)

Yet another reason...

...to maintain some degree of anonymity on the internet.

Via Bill Quick, we find that blogger Hossein Derakhshan was googled by customs officers as he tried to enter the US at the Buffalo border.

I've literally become homeless. My new home is now hoder.com and I'm not joking.

You might have seen a small change in my little biography on the right hand side. I had said that I was in New York and that's what had actually changed my life. But I'm now out of the states and can't go back at least for six months.

It was actually my blog that got me into trouble after a month of staying in my friend's flat in lower-Manhattan, NYC. It's a sad but real story.

...When I wanted to come back to NYC, I was obviously stopped and interviewed by US Customs and Border Security people at the Buffalo border, like everyone else on the bus.

But when they realized I was going to the States to speak at a blog-related conference (ConvergeSouth) they googled my name right in front of me. Two of them, actually.

They carefully scanned the results and found this English blog. One of them, a very sharp guy in fact, started to read every single post on my blog. And it didn't take long until he shocked me: "So you live in New York, right? That's what you've written in your on blog."

...He was ecstatic. My blog made his day, or in this case, his night. He kept reading my posts and asking questions about a lot of them: Why did I go to Iran, what are my feelings about Bush administration, why I separated from my wife, what did think about Iranian politics, etc.

The guy was so in love with his job he wanted to get me into deep trouble so ultimately I could never go back to his lovely country, apparently. So he started to look for evidence that I'd also worked in the States and were paid by them. Until he found, in my archive, a post I'd written before leaving for Iran, to ask for the blogging community's attention and support, especially if something happened to me in Iran and about how they could help in that case.

Now, if you follow the link, you'll see that this guy's words and behavior weren't exactly smart under the circumstances.  Discretion would have been advisable.  But the point remains:  anything you and I write that makes it onto the web, even indirectly, is available to be used against us by any idiotic customs officer—or anyone else who is in a position of authority and can use a computer.

I don't exactly enjoy using a pseudonym online.  Some have even called those who blog under an assumed name "cowards."  Although my real name is, well, pretty lame-sounding with no "zing" or any other kind of phonetic desirability, it is my name, after all, and I'd much rather be posting as myself than some obviously fictitious character.  (Actually, if you tried just a bit, you could probably find out what my real name is.)  And I admire those who openly use their real names online all the more because of the courage required to do so.

But this is the sort of thing that keeps me behind a "protective curtain" of at least partial anonymity for now, even in these "free" United States.

Searchlight Crusade linked with Links and Minifeatures 11 27 Sunday

UPDATE:  After reading Searchlight Crusade's comments on this post, I need to reemphasize what was and what was not my point, because Dan Melson is mostly right about this.

It was not my point to say that anyone had been prevented from entering this country wrongly.  Melson argues that Derakhshan was correctly kept out of the country, being an illegal resident.

It was my point to emphasize that anything we write that ends up on the internet may well come back to bite us in ways we did not foresee, not, as Dan inferred, only the illegal things.   If I believed I could trust all customs officers, police with an axe to grind, etc., then I wouldn't have written this simply because "I don't want to be bothered."  That's all, and yes, I should have been clearer about that.

Franken's "not quite ready for prime time"

Heh.  This is funny.

So it seems SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia was participating in a Q & A session called Conversations in a Circle.  When the moderator opened the floor to questions...

...Franken stood up in the back row and began talking about "judicial demeanor," the New York Post's Page Six column reported, despite Pearlstine's request that the event be off-the-record.

Page Six said Franken, who hosts a program on the liberal Air America network, "found out the hard way not to mess with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who chided Franken as if he were a delinquent schoolboy … ."

Franken asked "hypothetically" whether a judge should recuse himself if he had gone duck-hunting or flown in a private jet with a party in a case before his court, the Post reported.

The reference was to Scalia's flying and hunting trip with Vice President Dick Cheney in January 2003, three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a White House appeal in a case involving private meetings of Cheney's energy task force.

Scalia lectured Franken, "Demeanor is the wrong word. You mean ethics."

The justice explained a judge does not have to recuse himself from a case if his friend, in an official capacity, was a nominal party in the dispute, according to Opinion Journal Editor James Taranto, who witnessed the exchange.

Evaluating Franken's performance, Time Warner chairman Dick Parsons later told the Post: "Al was not quite ready for prime time," an allusion to the comedian's stint with NBC's "Saturday Night Live."

These guys forget what intellectual powerhouses SCOTUS Justices are (and should be).  Franken fancies himself to be an "intellectual," of course, but he looks pretty silly when he takes on a real one.

Later, Franken seemed to try to keep up "appearances," saying "I think I got under his skin a little."  Maybe like a chigger gets under your skin just to cause itching and irritation, Al.  I doubt the esteemed Justice Scalia will exactly lay awake nights worrying about how he will respond to your challenges.

(Via Ralph Bristol.)

More evidence that BDS is a real mental disorder

It's not enough any more to merely hate President Bush.  I mean, that's just so yesterday.  And it's never been enough—not even nearly—to merely dissent from his policies as Civilized Human Beings Who Think They Have a Better Idea (which idea rarely seems to surface, or even matter) might do.  No, in order to be counted among the nouveau élite nowadays one must befriend—no, praise, almost worship—anyone whom the president calls an enemy.  And, of course, it's neither unfashionable nor uncommon to completely lose your mind in the process. 

The truth, actually, is that losing your mind is a prerequisite.  Kinda helps you to deal with that pesky cognitive dissonance that normally gives people with healthy minds pause to reconsider.

Lastango at Daily Pundit (via LGF) points us to a Weekend Australian article by David Nason in which Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is first called "one of the greatest living US writers," then is indulged to wax eloquent anent the virtues of being a terrorist, especially a suicide bomber.

Now, I think it's a safe assumption, though an assumption nonetheless, that Vonnegut's mind may once have been capable of rational, critical, even moral thinking.  He served in the 106th Infantry Division in WWII.  His short story "Harrison Bergeron" made quite an impact on me as a teenager, and still today is a valuable allegory illustrating the dangers and evils of forced egalitarianism.  This does seem genuinely odd coming from someone who was "deeply influenced by early socialist labor leaders" (cf. his Wikipedia link), but I can't claim that cognitive dissonance might not have been a lifelong handicap for him.

A few gems from the Weekend Australian story:

Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.

That is, unless you're dying for America, in which case you're a baby-killing, torture-loving stormtrooper.  And the religious beliefs that motivate terrorists are hardly twisted—they're perfectly straightforward and easily understood by anyone, right?  Kill the infidels!

"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Riiiiight.

If our enemies are "nothing," it's hardly us who made them so.  Their own culture has done a commendable job of doing that.  (Yes, I am making the shocking claim that some cultures are indeed better than others.)  Self-respect can neither be given nor taken away by others;  it must be earned, by oneself, for oneself, and no one can deprive you of it without your consent.  Not even us.

Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."

As one DP commenter mentions, there were very brave soldiers in the Nazi and Imperial Japanese armies, too.

He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

That one truly baffles me.

On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back."

He got that one exactly backwards;  it was bin Laden and his gang who didn't realize that we would fight back.

Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."

He was a darling of the intellectual left since writing Slaughterhouse Five in 1969, so why do I associate BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) with him, you ask?

[S]ince Mr Bush was elected, Vonnegut's criticisms of US policy have become more and more impassioned.

In 2002, he was widely criticised for saying there was too much talk about the 9/11 attacks and not enough about "the crooks on Wall Street and in big corporations", whose conduct had been more destructive.

The following year he wrote that the US was hated around the world "because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".

But Vonnegut's latest comments are likely to make many people wonder if old age has finally caught up with a grand old man of American letters.

The reasons for our hatred "around the world" are, of course, much simpler than Elite Intellectuals can generally comprehend, namely 1) base envy and 2) simply being non-Muslims.  But such reasons, easily supported by knowledge of human nature and the words and actions of Islamists themselves, must be discarded in favor of "our corporations," which "have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".

You know, that actually sounds a lot like plain old envy to me.

"Fun game of the day" dept.

Hey, girls and boys!  It's time to play Name that Liberal Hypocrite!

A few examples from the .pdf file by Peter Schweizer:

• Who says that conservatives are racist because they don’t support affirmative action but has an abysmal record of hiring blacks?
  a. Barbra Streisand
  b. Michael Moore
  c. Al Franken
  d. All of the above
  Answer: D. All of the above. Of the 112 people Franken has hired to work on his books, television projects and radio program, only one was black. Of the 135 individuals Michael Moore hired, only three were black. Barbra Streisand has hired 53 senior people to work on her film projects and only one was black.
• Who says that corporations are “terrorists” and has said “I don’t own a single share of stock” but secretly owns shares in Pentagon contractors like Boeing, pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, and even Halliburton?
  a. Barney Frank
  b. Gloria Steinem
  c. Michael Moore
  Answer: C. Michael Moore. According to IRS records, Moore owns at least several hundred thousands of dollars in stock and has a broker, even though he has repeatedly claimed he doesn’t “own a single share of stock.”
• Who says the rich need to pay their fair share and favors the estate tax, but hides his own assets in numerous trusts, including one in the faraway Pacific island of Fiji?
  a. George Soros
  b. John Edwards
  c. Ted Kennedy
  Answer: C. Ted Kennedy. The Kennedys have transferred more than half a billion in money from generation to generation but according to their own records paid only $34,000 in estate taxes. Their largest asset, the Merchandise Mart real estate company, was in a trust domiciled in Fiji.

And one of my favorites:

• Who has proclaimed themselves a corporate activist but has made money by investing in companies they were protesting against?
  a. REM’s Michael Stipe
  b. Ralph Nader
  c. Alec Baldwin
  Answer: B. Ralph Nader. When Nader went after Firestone in the 1970s he made stock investments in Goodyear, their main competitor. When he campaigned for the breakup of Microsoft in 2000, he invested hundreds of thousands in other high-tech companies that stood to benefit.

The question for that last one was mis-worded, as Nader made money by investing in the competitors of companies he protested against, since he set them up to benefit from his protests. 

There's several more of these in the .pdf file.

This is all via Mike at Cold Fury, who adds:

God, what a revolting passel of leeches.  [Peter Schweizer's] book, which ought to be a best-seller, can be had here. I got almost all of them right, but still managed to miss one or two. It all only goes to show that it’s simply not possible to exaggerate the staggering plenitude of self-righteous hypocrisy these worthless crumbums are only too happy to inflict on the rest of us. Marie Antoinette, call your office, please.

And commenter xj (of Chasing Waterfalls) adds this about Mr. Nader:

Nader’s actions were not merely despicable hypocrisy; they were a felony. It’s called “insider trading”, and Martha Stewart recently won a six-month stay at Club Fed as a prize for getting involved in it.

So when will we see Eliott Spitzer go after Nader?

(Sound effects: crickets chirp, wind whistles, tumbleweed blows across set…)

Oh that’s right, I forgot. Nader’s “one of us”, so he gets a free pass…

Thanks and good work, Mike.  Oh, and thanks for being kind enough to blogroll me, too.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Greyhawk At Mudville Gazette for the Open Post!