Maggie's Farm

 "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."

That was the famous marketing quote for the sale of Papal indulgences to which Martin Luther took strong exception in 1517.

Ever wonder how Al Gore with his three houses and SUVs, and Suzuki with his mega-bus, and Hollywood, etc. claim to be "carbon neutral"?

Exactly the same way indulgences worked. Here's how. One quote:

Example: a mid-sized 30 mpg car driving 12,000 miles/year will create about 3.55 tons of CO2/year. Using Carbonfund.org's calculator we figured this would cost only about $19.50 or $1.63/month to be offset! This means that for a very small amount of money you can drive the equivalent of a zero-CO2-emission car!

As quoted by Gore's office yesterday:

What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s (sic) do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

Another alternative for no footprints: Make yourself a helium-brained airhead and just float over the landscape without your feet touching.

Instapundit found this Stalinist-sounding defence of Gore's hypocrisy, which truly gives me the creeps:

Al Gore lives a life different from most folks. I'm not one to defend elitism, not as a matter of practice, but some elitism is inevitable. There must be a leadership class. There always has been and there always will be. Even societies organized around the principle of the equality and preeminence of the proletariat have had an elite class. It is the natural order of things. The key for a society is to create a responsible, responsive and fluid elite.

With him in it, no doubt. Would somebody remind this hideous un-American creep that, when searching for elites, the last place anyone would search is amongst politicians. They are the least-respected profession in America, and should be.

You want an American Elite, Mr. Smarty-Pants who probably thinks he is elite himself? Try my plumbing, heating, and A/C guy Greg. He is honest, direct, gives sound advice; is smart, skilled, takes my calls, is overly-humble, and efficient - and has never overcharged me. More often, undercharges me, I think. Is God-fearing and God-loving, with  a charming young family who understand that he needs to make house calls on Sunday night. And who quotes Shakespeare, and sometimes Milton. That is the American elite, my poor misguided friend: the people, and the government is our servant. Servant. Don't misunderestimate the wisdom of the regular folks, because being in real life can be worth a million-dollar education, especially if you have a curious mind and can learn from experience.

Image: Al Gore owns three homes. This is a recent photo of his carbon-neutral home, in the Belle Mead neighborhood of Nashville.

1. Mexico: Remember our post about an American trying to get a job in Mexico? With this border story, it seems worth remembering now. No, you are not welcome in Mexico unless you are on vacation.

2. Hillary and the Black Panthers: Remember this one? We posted it, but I can't find it in the archives:

Back in 1969 a group of Black Panthers decided that a fellow black panther named Alex Rackley needed to die.

Rackley was suspected of disloyalty. Rackley was first tied to a chair.  Once safely immobilized, his friends tortured him for hours by, among other things, pouring boiling water on him.  When they got tired of torturing Rackley, Black Panther member, Warren Kimbo took Rackley outside and put a bullet in his head. Rackley's body was later found floating in a river about 25 miles north of New Haven, Conn.

Perhaps at this point you're curious as to what happened to these Black Panthers.

In 1977, that's only eight years later, only one of the killers was still in jail. The shooter, Warren Kimbro, managed to get a scholarship to Harvard and became good friends with none other than Al Gore. He later became an assistant dean at Eastern Connecticut State College. Isn't that something?  As a '60s radical you can pump a bullet into someone's head, and a few years later, in the same state, you can become an assistant college dean! Only in America

Erica Huggins was the lady who served the Panthers by boiling the water for Mr. Rackley's torture. Some years later Ms. Huggins was elected to a California School Board. How in the world do you think these killers got off so easy?

Maybe it was in some part due to the efforts of two people who came to the defense of the Panthers. These two people actually went so far as to shut down Yale University with demonstrations in defense of the accused Black Panthers during their trial.  One of these people was none other than Bill Lann Lee. Mr. Lee isn't a college dean. He isn't a member of a California School Board. He was the head of the US Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, appointed by Bill Clinton.

So who was the other Panther defender?  Is this other notable Panther defender now a school board member?  Is this other Panther apologist now an assistant college dean?  No, neither!  The other Panther defender was, like Lee, a radical law student at Yale University.  She is now running for the Presidency.
.TruthOrFiction.com reviewed this report in 2001 and found that it was TRUTH.

John Elvin of Insight magazine looked into the Hillary-Panthers eRumor as well as how it was handled by some urban legends sites and wrote his findings in an article that appeared in July of 2000.  He quotes former sixties radical David Horowitz as saying that both Hillary Rodham and Bill Lann Lee organized demonstrations at Yale against the Panther trial.  Elvin also says, "Insight reviewed biographies of Hillary Clinton by Milton, Brock and Roger Morris for this story and lengthy selections from such other biographies as Barbara Olson’s Hell to Pay. Together, relying on primary and other firsthand sources, they unquestionably back Horowitz’s contention that Hillary was a campus leader during the Panther protests."