Friday digest

- Today, we have a two-way tie for the loony left play of the day. You know it had to happen sometime.

First, we have loudmouth NDPer Robert McClelland dismissing the death threats against liberal Muslim Tarek Fatah, which I blogged about in yesterday's Digest, with the following (found here in the comments section on Adam Daifallah's post titled "Tarek Fatah quits"):

Death threats...yawn. If you haven't gotten a few death threats in your lifetime it just means you're a nobody. Of course since Muslims are involved though, it's screeching time from the racist right.

I imagine that to McClelland, the measure of success in public life is how many people want to off you. No wonder the leader of McClelland's party never stops talking ... maybe Jack Layton is hoping that one day, he'll need RCMP protection and then he'll know he's hit the big time. After all, it's not like he's ever going to even come close to being Prime Minister.

Secondly, we have Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's Marxist dictator, who, in recalling his ambassador to Israel, cited the apparent "genocide" that is being perpetuated against Lebanon, calling it a "fascist outrage". (See here.) If Chavez considers this to be a genocide, I wonder what he'd call the death of millions under Communism, or did those deaths not really happen in Hugo's world? (H/T: GnR.)

Who do the good people of Hammerhead Nation think deserves today's loony left play of the day between these two very strong contenders? Vote by writing me at road__hammer@hotmail.com, I'll tally the votes and post the results tomorrow morning.

- It looks like Tony Blair is staking his career on the pipe dream of a two-state solution in the Middle East during peace negotiations that are to take place next month. I think he's been sucked in. A two-state solution is only going to be possible if and when the Hezbollah and Hamas terror networks are destroyed so as to be rendered absolutely useless, and not a minute sooner because they're not interested in one. This has been shown over and over and over again. With the politically correct war Israel is fighting now, which is marked by half-measures despite leaders such as Blair referring to Israel's efforts as "unacceptable", I think it's going to take longer than a few weeks to do that, if they even have the guts to really do what's necessary. Why can't the world quit with the appeasement routine, take the foolish notion of a ceasefire off the table, take terrorists at their word when they say they want to destroy Israel, and do what needs to be done to end this scourge?

- Some are suggesting that this past weekend's civilian casualties were arranged by Hezbollah. Even Israel bashers have to admit that this is not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

- Indigo CEO and longtime Liberal Heather Reisman is now a Tory because she's can't stand Trudeaupian moral equivalency. Hopefully this means that the current events table at Chapters is going to carry "Londonistan" along all the Chomsky titles they seem to love so much.

- Over one-third of respondents to this poll agree with Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean and think that the White House may have had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks. I think it's important that this poll be looked at as not a third of Americans overall, but a third of respondents to this particular poll. Concrete conclusions about representative public opinion for the entire United States cannot be drawn from a sample size of 1,000 people.

- Much more statistically significant would be this poll of 1,200 academic social scientists where 80% of them identified themselves as Democrats with less than 10% identifying themselves as Republicans.

- At home, the deaths of four Canadian soldiers have once again led to calls from some quarters that we need to give Afghanistan back to the Taliban. It annoys me that we have to go over this time and time again. It should be obvious why depriving al-Qaeda of a base for their operations is in Canada's national security interest, and if it's not, you ought to click here for a gentle reminder.

- And finally, this just in: Women prefer real men to feminized wimps. There are too many money passages to quote from the article, so everyone should read it themselves because it carries a lot of truth!