Reading Comprehension Is Beautiful
Here at godlessharlotnet, we think Steven Waldman the editor-in-chief behind Beliefnet, needs to work on his reading comprehension (also, it's disturbing to see his personal editorial standards in action).
I'm guessing he's one of those who drank the feminist Kool-Aid about how horrible it is that women would make an effort to look attractive for men -- instead of letting their armpit hair grow until it can be corn-rowed and otherwise letting the "real" them hang out.
Here's his post, "Vogue's Visual Lying" (ignore his contention that Miller's head was stuck on somebody else's body and read on below):
Waldman writes:
Fashion magazines lie every time they manipulate photographs to make people seem something they're not.Apparently, Vogue took Siena Miller's head and stuck it on someone else's body (presumably because Miller's actual body was so grotesque)
We're now at the point that even the most beautiful women in the world are deemed not quite perfect enough.
Is this a victimless crime? I don't think so. Each girl or woman who models themselves after ever-more unrealistic notions of beauty -- and dislike themselves when they don't reach that standard -- suffer from these lies. And each boy or man who thinks that that's what women are supposed to look like, and back themselves into loneliness through their own warped notions of female beauty, suffer from these lies.
The guy's entire blog item is based on an error -- probably based on feminism-driven, knee-jerk hatred of Vogue. I left a comment there, that's essentially this:
Here's the actual quote from the article in his link: "They then took one photo of her face and super-imposed it on a separate picture of her body." Her body, not somebody else's body.I just did something like this for a comp which incorporates a shot of me. Why? Because the body looked better in one photo and the head looked better in another. Thanks to Photoshop, you can mix and match. This isn't sinister or horrible, it's pretty cool.
Also, what's with posting the bit about Miller's actual body being "grotesque." Famous people have feelings, too.
Also, what's wrong with "visual lying"? You're a man, so presumably you like attractive women. Any time a woman wears a slimming color, or red lipstick, or dyes her hair, she's "visually lying." Frankly, deodorant is a lie, but I hope many people continue to embrace olfactory dishonesty as well...don't you?
There are plenty of "unrealistic notions" in our lives -- like the notion promoted by chick flicks that the most implausible guy for a woman will ditch her (highly plausibly) and then come back at the end to get on his knees, apologize, and ask her to marry him. Take "Pretty Woman," for example. How many really rich industrialists decide to track down the hooker and marry her? Do you see or hear anybody mewling about the "unrealistic picture of human relationships" they're portraying?
As for "unrealistic notions of beauty," I'm taking a wild guess that those who succumb to an unhealthy extent of them are those with low self-esteem. What I see more of in this culture are unrealistic notions of ugly -- the notion, promoted by feminism, that looks don't matter, and shouldn't matter. Which is fine if you're dating the blind. If you're a woman who wants a boyfriend, you'd better take care of yourself, and wear clothes that reveal a waist (men like that).
I'm reminded of a woman I knew a little who once came up to me in a café and lamented, "Why don't I have a boyfriend?" I looked at her. She was dressed, as she always dressed, in big schlumpy clothes, with disheveled hair (and not in a sexy, bed-head way), looking like she was about to spend the day cleaning out the garage. "Um, you could wear a dress sometimes," I told her.
As I wrote in a column a while back, "If you want to trap a bear, don't go off into the woods with a Tupperware container of salad."
Don't Sweat The Details, Dudes!
Jacob Sullum writes at reason about the President's suggested approach to legislation for members of Congress:
Even as President Obama promises that the federal government will spend the $1 trillion or so contemplated in the stimulus legislation in a utterly open, totally transparent, and absolutely accountable way, he demands that members of Congress vote for the 647-page monstrosity before they can possibly have time to read and digest it. "We don't have a moment to spare," he says, eliciting praise from Honeywell CEO David Cote, who raves, "Thank God you are not a timid man."
I suspect some or many of them don't need any encouragement to skip sounding out the words, uh, reading the legislation they're voting on. After all, isn't a wet finger in the voters', or better yet, the lobbyists' direction, enough to decide which way to cast one's vote?
Highway Robbery
As Ronald Reagan pointed out, government is not your friend. (Well, not unless you number among your friends the likes of mafia extortionists.)
The California legislature was short on the money to renovate court buildings across the state, so they invented a new form of lotto; well, really a reverse lotto -- drive in front of a police car and hope they don't notice anything wrong with your car.
Gary Richards writes for the San Jose Mercury News:
Got a broken blinker? You'd better get it fixed.Under a little-noted law that took effect Jan. 1, the cost of a fix-it ticket has nearly tripled, and drivers who are tardy taking care of a burned-out headlight or another mechanical problem could pay as much as $100 for an offense that a few years ago didn't cost a penny.
Lacking the funds to renovate nearly 400 court buildings across California, the state Legislature approved a boost in fix-it fines from $10 to $25 under a bill written by state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland.
The bill also raised surcharges on regular traffic tickets by $35, parking tickets by $3 and the court cost to attend traffic school by $25.
The increase in the fine for fix-it tickets -- citations issued for a vehicular problem in need of repair -- might not seem like much, but other changes in state law have made it potentially much more expensive. Where one such ticket used to cover several violations, the new regulations make each separate violation a $25 fine. So if a cop cites a driver for having a burned-out brake light and broken mirror, the penalty jumps to $50.
Tack on other fees that can be assessed for prior tickets, night court, security and other reasons, and the total bill can easily exceed $100. And if a driver is late in taking care of the problem, you're talking a bill approaching $200.
Think about the kind of person, in general, who has a car with a broken tail light. I have a 2004 Honda Insight. The thing never has anything go wrong with it. It's people with unpredictable old clunker cars, who probably don't have much money, who are going to be socked with these fines.
That's right -- the economy's tanking and people are living on toaster leavings, but we're going to nail the poorest people on automotive technicalities. The geniuses behind this bill were smart enough to persuade people to vote for them, yet they can't see the unintended side-effects (or are just uninterested): people, at least some struggling people, are liable to get their cars impounded and lose them, thanks to this bill.
Who knows, perhaps at some point, this will lead them to an appearance in one of those sparklingly renovated court buildings.
Oh, and by the way, we can't just blame our legislaturds for all the fiscal dimwittery. California is so debt-laden it's about to break off and fall into the Pacific, yet, in the last election, voters passed numerous ginormously expensive ballot measures with reckless abandon. High-speed train from LA to San Francisco, anyone? (Aww, put it on the credit card. What's another few billion?)
Nobody Cares When Arabs Kill Arab Babies
Israelis try very hard to avoid killing children. Clearly, if they wanted to, they could bomb Gaza flat. But, they don't. In fact, they lament the loss of life -- even Arab and Muslim lives; it's an essential part of Judaism, the value for human life. I'm an atheist, but I can appreciate the difference -- the one Israel's critics cover their ears and shout real loud (something about Jews back into the ovens, I'm guessing) to drown out. Cleveland Indy Media Center points out the obvious:
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims have been butchered, most of them by Arabs and Muslims. Israel's "contribution," including all the wars and the two Intifadas has been quite small -- in proportion to Arab deaths -- yet it disproportionately fires up the media and the "human rights" establishment.In Iraq, on average, scores of Arabs are killed, assassinated daily. Every week one reads how a Sunni blew herself up and killed 40 or 60 Shiites. Babies included. Guess what: This is not headline news. Nobody makes posters of these dead Arab babies. CNN cameramen don't get excited over this particular carnage.
Algeria: In 1992, civil war broke out. Psychopathic Islamists with machetes hacked to death 110,000 Algerian civilians. No tears flowed down the cheeks of Western "rights activists." No pictures of these dead Arabs -- babies, children, women and men -- appeared on posters in European or American streets. No marches to protest on behalf of these murdered Arabs. Maybe it would be seen as Politically Incorrect to show a non-Western culture as barbarian. Can that possibly outweigh the souls of the dead Algerians? To "rights groups" -- yes it does.
The Syrian dictatorship killed 10-20,000 civilians in the town of Hama, in 1982. No photographers were allowed of course, but there were images of the dead on the internet. Yet you never saw any of that on a "human rights" poster.
In Darfur, the jihadis are slaughtering and enslaving African Muslims. Darfuris do get some notice, but only because the PC "Save Darfur" movement bends over backwards to hide the war's cause: age-old Arab imperialism. But guess what: the hard anti-Israeli left, with its Islamist allies, defends Khartoum and calls the Save Darfur movement a Zionist plot. (A Zionist plot to cover up Arab imperialism in Africa?)
All this does not begin to account for the millions of non-Arabs and non-Muslims murdered, enslaved, subjugated and/or dispossessed by jihadis -- in this century alone. Christians in Iraq, Sudan, and Egypt murdered and enslaved. Somehow their dead children don't evoke pain in the hearts of the anti-Israel crowd.
This is a fraud: These folks are not deeply concerned about Arab deaths. Their tears flow only when Jews (fighting back) cause these deaths. It's not about human rights. It's not about dead children. It's Western guilt, now focused on Jews.
Dr. Thomas Frieden Wants To Be Your Mommy
Kim Severson writes in the IHT about the latest loonytunes attempt by Frieden to control what New Yorkers put in their mouths:
Frieden, the commissioner of New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is waging a new campaign: to lower the amount of sodium America eats.But don't go hiding your saltshakers. The city isn't going after the seasoning people add at the table or in the kitchen. That makes up only about 11 percent of the salt people eat, Frieden says.
His targets are packaged foods and mass-produced restaurant meals, which contribute 80 percent of the sodium in the average American diet.
When the food company executives had finished lunch, Frieden made his pitch: Over the next five years, identify the foods that are contributing the most sodium to people's diets and cut the level of salt by 25 percent. In a decade, cut it by another 25 percent. And do it in unison with your competitors.
If they refuse?
"If there's not progress in a few years, we'll have to consider other options, like legislation," he said in an interview last week.
...This war, however, is likely to be more difficult for Frieden, both practically and politically, than were his efforts to get restaurant chains to post calorie counts on menus and stop cooking with trans fat.
First, salt is harder to scrub from the food supply, and its connection to cardiovascular disease is less understood. Besides, the food industry says it's already dealing with sodium levels. And then there is the scope of Frieden's plan. He wants to get most of the major food and restaurant companies to do the same thing at the same time.
Lowering salt consumption, along with stopping smoking, are two areas in which a broad public health effort can have the most impact on the most people, Frieden said.
Of course, there's also pointing a gun at a person and tell him to jog or die.
Personally, I see salt as a vegetable. Love the stuff. I have a big shaker of sea salt that I throw liberally on everything but dessert.
But, before you start praying that I'll make it through the week, you should take a peek at a 1998 piece about salt that investigative science journalist Gary Taubes wrote for Science, republished over at junkscience.com:
After decades of intensive research, the apparent benefits of avoiding salt have only diminished. This suggests either that the true benefit has now been revealed and is indeed small, or that it is nonexistent, and researchers believing they have detected such benefits have been deluded by the confounding influences of other variables. (These might include genetic variability; socioeconomic status; obesity; level of physical exercise; intake of alcohol, fruits and vegetables, or dairy products; or any number of other factors.)The controversy itself remains potent because even a small benefit--one clinically meaningless to any single patient--might have a major public health impact. This is a principal tenet of public health: Small effects can have important consequences over entire populations. If by eating less salt, the world's population reduced its average blood pressure by a single millimeter of mercury, says Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto, that would prevent several hundred thousand deaths a year: "It would do more for worldwide deaths than the abolition of breast cancer." But even that presupposes the 1-millimeter drop can be achieved by avoiding salt. "We have to be sure that 1- or 2-millimeter effect is real," says John Swales, former director of research and development for Britain's National Health Service and a clinician at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. "And we have to be sure we won't have equal and opposite harmful effects."
And a bit more on that piece, and how it led to his meticulously researched and revolutionary book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, debunking widely held dietary myths, in this interview here, by Seth Roberts. (There's more updated research and thinking on salt in the book -- which suggests that refined carbohydrates could be the real culprit behind hypertension.)
Hamas Is Lucky It's Israel Against Them
Time and time again, I'm stunned by the Israeli restraint -- and the response, by so many on the left, who pretend that Israel is anything but restrained. Meanwhile, what country at war picks up the phone to tell those they're about to bomb that they need to leave their home (which doubles as a rocket storage center) so they won't die in the raid? David Bernstein makes some very good points about all this on Volokh:
One thing that's clear from the recent Gaza conflict is that to many leftists, "violations of international law" is simply shorthand for "a country is engaging in military action that I don't approve of."A case in point is a statement, via Brian Leiter, by self-styled "American Jewish progressives" (some of whom, I note, seem to assert their Jewish identity only when its useful for bashing Israel) on Gaza. The statement claims that Israel acted "with little or no consideration for human rights or the laws of war."
As usual with such statements, not a single documented violation of the laws of war is mentioned. Say what you will about the wisdom, or even morality, about the IDF's actions in Gaza, the idea that it acts "with little or no consideration for the law of war" is absurd. Not only does the IDF have strict internal rules promulgated by its version of the JAG, but it knows it has the entire international left breathing over its shoulder, looking for any violations of rules that could be exploited for propaganda purposes.
We could review for many paragraphs the various actions Israel took to limit civilian casualties, such as calling people living in Hamas weapons depots (also serving as apartment buildings) to warn them that a bombing raid was imminent, even though this also allowed the "bad guys" time to escape. And I can once again refer to the retired British army colonel who remarked that there has bee "no time in the history of warfare when an army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and the deaths of innocent people than the IDF."
But the argument against such broad indictments of Israel is even simpler. Even Israel's harshest critics claim no more than 1,400 or so deaths in Gaza, with a significant fraction of those Hamas fighters. If Israel truly "little or no consideration for human rights or the laws of war," why were the casualty figures that low? Surely Israel could have unleashed far greater devastation, while also achieving more of its military objectives. Israel could have, for example, demolished Shifra Hospital, which has underground bunkers that served as a command center for the Hamas leadership. That leadership survived the war because Israel wouldn't demolish a working hospital to get at them.
Hamas, on the other hand, is hijacking ambulances -- those on their own side. Jason Koutsoukis writes for the Sydney Morning Herald:
Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.His first day of work in the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war. "Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected," Mr Shriteh told the Herald. "We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names, and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us."
Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety.
"After the first week, at night time, there was a call for a house in Jabaliya. I got to the house and there was lots of shooting and explosions all around," he said.
Because of the urgency of the call, Mr Shriteh said there was no time to arrange his movements with the IDF.
"I knew the Israelis were watching me because I could see the red laser beam in the ambulance and on me, on my body," he said.
Getting out of the ambulance and entering the house, he saw there were three Hamas fighters taking cover inside. One half of the building had already been destroyed.
"They were very scared, and very nervous ... They dropped their weapons and ordered me to get them out, to put them in the ambulance and take them away. I refused, because if the IDF sees me doing this I am finished, I cannot pick up any more wounded people.
"And then one of the fighters picked up a gun and held it to my head, to force me. I still refused, and then they allowed me to leave."
Killing Daddy
A woman finally gets a little something from a judge for alienating her children from their father. Tracy Tyler writes in the Toronto Star:
In a stunning and unusual family law decision, a Toronto judge has stripped a mother of custody of her three children after the woman spent more than a decade trying to alienate them from their father.The mother's "consistent and overwhelming" campaign to brainwash the children into thinking their father was a bad person was nothing short of emotional abuse, Justice Faye McWatt of the Superior Court of Justice wrote in her decision.
The three girls, ages 9 to 14, were brought to a downtown courthouse last Friday and turned over to their father, a vascular surgeon identified only as A.L.
Their mother, a chiropodist identified as K.D., was ordered to stay away from the building during the transfer and to have her daughters' clothing and possessions sent to their father's house.
McWatt stipulated that K.D. is to have no access to the children except in conjunction with counselling, including a special intensive therapy program for children affected by "parental alienation syndrome." The mother must bear the costs.
Harold Niman, the father's lawyer, said the decision serves as a wake-up call to parents who, "for bitterness, anger or whatever reason," decide to use their children to punish their former partners.
"Maybe if they realize the courts will actually step in and do something and there is a risk of not only losing custody, but having no contact with their children, they'll think twice about it," Niman said in an interview.
...The judge said awarding A.L. sole custody was the children's only hope for having a relationship with their father, given their mother's long-running transgressions.
These include ignoring court orders, shutting the door in A.L.'s face when he came to collect the children and refusing to answer the phone when he called to say goodnight. (He was granted telephone access to say good night on Monday, Wednesday and Friday). At times, she also arranged for police to show up when her daughters had overnight visits with their father.
Eventually, K.D. cut off contact altogether, refusing to allow A.L. to see or speak with his daughters. He was reduced to shouting goodnight to them through the door of their home, often not knowing whether they were there.
"It is remarkable that A.L. has not given in to the respondent's persistence in keeping his children from him over the last fourteen years and simply gone on with his life without the children as, no doubt many other parents in the same situation would have and, indeed, have done," McWatt said.
The mother squandered several chances to change her behaviour and is unable to accept it is in her children's best interests to have a relationship with their father, the judge said.
How tragic that it took 14 years for this guy -- and these children to get justice. Maybe this judgement will set a precedent for change. Let's hope.
Well, Here's Some Genius
Obama thinks Israel should open the borders of Gaza. Sorry I'm a bit late in posting this, but here, from the Financial Times, is a story by Daniel Dombey in Washington and Tobias Buck in Jerusalem:
President Barack Obama urged Israel on Thursday to open its borders with Gaza.The plea came in a speech that signalled the new US administration's shift from Bush-era policy on the Middle East and the world as a whole. In a high-profile address on his second day in office, just hours after he signed an executive order to close the centre at Guantánamo Bay, Mr Obama proclaimed that the US would "actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians" in the wake of this month's Gaza war.
"The outline for a durable ceasefire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire: Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza: the US and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot re-arm," the US president said.
A tad naive, don'tcha think?
The story continues:
Although Condoleezza Rice, who finished her tenure as secretary of state this week, brokered a 2005 deal to allow open border crossings to Gaza, access was often shut down, with Israel citing security concerns and Hamas launching rocket attacks. The issue is set to test the authority of the new administration as it begins to grapple with the Middle East conflict.Before Mr Obama gave his speech, an Israeli official said there would be tough conditions for any lifting of the blockade, which he linked with the release of Gilad Shalit, a soldier held captive by Hamas since 2006.
"If the opening of the passages strengthens Hamas we will not do it," the official said.
"We will make sure that all the [humanitarian] needs of the population will be met. But we will not be able to deal with Hamas on the other side. We will not do things that give legitimacy to Hamas."
Under its ceasefire, Hamas has given Israel until Sunday to open the borders. Much of Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been destroyed during the three-week Israeli offensive and, without building materials and other supplies, there is little hope of rebuilding the water, sewage and power networks as well as private homes and key government buildings. But many foreign donors share Israel's concerns that the reconstruction efforts should not be led by Hamas, or enhance the group's legitimacy.
"Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security and we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats," Mr Obama said.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah...
Handmade Quilt, $58, Um, Make That $3,530
Walter Olson, over at the excellent site, Overlawyered, shouts out that today is CPSIA blogging day -- a day to make blognoise (and, he hopes, incite noise in the offices of our Congressturds and Senaturds) in hopes of repealing the dumbass Consumer Product Safety Act of 2008, which mandates, well, here's an excerpt from a post from Overlawyered:
Sold as a measure to protect children from the perils of Chinese and other foreign-made toys which may contain lead paint, the law was written with good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions sometimes produce bad consequences. While this law may never save a child, it will certainly have consequences for small businesses which produce toys, as well as other products intended primarily for children under 12.As always, the devil is in the details, and Publius Endures has given the details careful scrutiny. Among other little details, this law may require toy manufacturers and importers to perform costly outside testing, at a cost of over $4000, on each lot of toys shipped. If the law is so interpreted by the people who draft its enabling regulations, that will simply put small manufacturers out of business, leaving the American toy market to giants such as Mattel or driving more of the business to overseas competitors who produce on a larger scale and can absorb the cost. The result, probably not intended at all by lawmakers, may be monopoly or oligopoly in the American toy market, accomplished through regulation rather than market forces.
Please contact the elected idiot who represents you (unless you're one of the rare few represented by somebody smart -- and please contact that person as well), and tell them you want them to work to repeal this disastrous act.
In a time when our economy is so far down the crapper, and people are turning to any means (toymaking, prostitution, whatever) to make ends meet -- it's hard to think of a stupider and more destructive law they could pass to "protect" the children.
Bad News For The "All Cultures Are Equal!" Crew
The BBC reports on life in Nigeria:
Police in Nigeria are holding a goat handed to them by a vigilante group, which said it was a car thief who had used witchcraft to change shape.A police spokesman in Kwara State has been quoted as saying that the "armed robbery suspect" would remain in custody until investigations were over.
But another police spokesman told the BBC the goat was being held in case its owner claimed it.
The belief in witchcraft and the power to change shapes is common in Nigeria.
Police reform activists have condemned the "arrest", saying it highlights the low education levels of many Nigerian police officers.
Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper has a picture of the goat and reports that police paraded it in front of journalists in the Kwara state capital Ilorin on Thursday.
But this was denied by national police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu.
"The vigilante group arrested the goat and took it to the police, then they told the media."
The next morning journalists turned up demanding to see the goat, he said.
"But of course goats can't commit crime."
God Is In The Details
Bill Maher on the tax-free real estate empire also known as the church, as I referred to it the other day (whoops -- actually forgot to post; will post below):
"New Rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry, Reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for; you can pray for rain."
Okay, you can't really pick and choose who gets fire services, but should the likes of these people really get to duck taxes if the rest of us have to pay?
Is Your Little Girl Okay With Her Little Head?
From The Onion, "Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size" -- on BDD (Bratz Dysmorphic Disorder):
Brigitte Gabriel Sounds The Alarm
Here's an e-mail she wrote about the threat to our lives and the Western way of life from Islam, posted on The Voice:
During this first month of the New Year 2009, we have seen some stunning developments that, considered together, should leave absolutely no doubt about the rising radical Islamic threat on our doorsteps in America.I have been warning Americans since 2002 about this threat, and that the threat is not just confined to terrorism. This is not a "war on terror." Terror is a tactic, one of many in the arsenal of radical Islamists.
I have been declaring, to anyone who would listen, that Islamists are well on their way to subverting and transforming Europe, and they are riding that wave here to America.
I have told my personal story, of how Islamists, step by step, took over my country of Lebanon. How they used our freedoms and commitment to tolerance and multiculturalism against us to further their ultimate ends. And how they are using the same strategies and tactics against us in the West.
In just the past three weeks we have seen:
A violent Islamic protest in Britain, where an angry mob shouting "Allahu Akbar" chased - yes, chased - dozens of British policemen for blocks. You must see this video to believe it!The Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordering the prosecution of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders because he has made statements deemed "insulting" and harmful to "the religious esteem" of Muslims.
Austrian parliamentarian Susanne Winter convicted of "incitement," because of public statements she has made, including the claim that the prophet Mohammed was a pedophile.
Muslim protest marches in Italy that ended with the protestors, in an obvious act of intimidation, conducting mass prayer vigils directly in front of Catholic places of worship.
The release of an official U.S. government report stating that Hezbollah is forming terrorist cells here in the U.S. that could become operational.
The UN continuing to move ahead with the "Durban II" conference and its document that is little more than an anti-Israel rant that calls for suppressing public "defamation" of religion - notably Islam. This has run parallel to an effort by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to get the UN Human Rights Commission to pass a resolution condemning public "defamation" of Islam.
Brigitte continues:
My friends, the handwriting is clearly on the wall. Radical Islam is on the march, and it is growing stronger and bolder with every passing day.*
Maybe They Actually Gave Them Bubble Baths
The head of the tax-free real estate empire otherwise known as the Catholic church has welcomed a Holocaust-denying bishop back into the fold. Hugs! From CNN:JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Jewish officials in Israel and abroad are outraged that Pope Benedict XVI has decided to lift the excommunication of a British bishop who denies that Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers....The church's decision to lift the excommunication comes a few days after a Swedish television aired an interview with Williamson in which the 68-year-old claimed the Nazis did not use gas chambers.
"I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against -- is hugely against -- 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler," he said in the interview, which appeared on various Web sites since its broadcast. What do you think?
"I believe there were no gas chambers," he added.
He added: "I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers."
Those Zyklon B canisters were just for decoration, huh?
P.S. The Jews didn't "perish," like green peppers left in the bin too long; they were mass-murdered.
*
Criminally Free Speech
The Netherlands is about to prosecute one of their elected officials, the courageous Geert Wilders, who's under 24-hour guard to protect him from attack by violent Muslims -- while in danger of being jailed for 16 months and fined almost $13,000 for having the temerity to criticize Islam. Pat Condell lets the Dutch and "the multicultural mafia" have it:
A few quotes from the video, from a transcription on Jihadwatch:
"If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I'd be arrested for hate speech""You're not allowed to insult anyone's beliefs in the Netherlands, even if those beliefs insult you and everything you stand for."
"Whenever we heard the words 'human rights' in connection with Islam, we're about to be confronted with another piece of ugly opportunism that spits in the face of genuine human rights and insults everyone's intelligence."
"What kind of justice system is it where the truth is inadmissible as evidence?"
"You're being chewed up and spat out, is what's happening to you people. Look at what you're doing: you're prosecuting a man who is under twenty-four hour protection from attack by violent Muslim, yet he's the criminal for expressing an opinion. Lewis Carroll couldn't have written this one any better."
"Nobody should be compelled to respect an ideology that doesn't respect them. And Islam respects nobody. It claims dominion. Respect doesn't come into it. You submit. That's the deal."
"This is a dark hour for the Netherlands. There's no doubt about that. And it's also kind of a watershed moment for the rest of Europe. We'll all be watching now to see how this turns out. If these charges succeed, we'll know the dike has been breached, and it's the beginning of the end of justice as we know it in Europe, and the beginning of creeping Sharia, or, injustice as we know it."
"The truth is sometimes offensive. There's no doubt about that. But that doesn't make it any less true."
There's a good piece in Forbes on L'Affaire Wilders by Dutchman Diederik van Hoogstraten:
...It may turn out that Wilders' constitutional freedom of speech is only guaranteed when he makes sure not to hurt the feelings of certain minorities. The right not to be offended may well overrule the right to speak.To be sure, it is problematic that he has called for a ban of the Quran. But his stupid idea does not condone the equally bad plan to silence him by law. The question is not, and should not be, whether Wilders is right. It does not matter whether his ideas are crude, offensive, ridiculous or brilliant (Wilders has a huge base of support in Holland).
The Wall Street Journal put it well, the day after the court order. "Limiting the Dutch debate of Islam to standards acceptable in, say, Saudi Arabia, will only shore up support for Mr. Wilders's argument that Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties."
The ruling was, to some, stunning in its admission of obedience to the professed offendedness of the few. But it fits into a trend. The big-mouthed politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated in 2002. The boisterous film maker Theo van Gogh was slaughtered by a Dutch-born Islamist on an Amsterdam street in 2004. The soft-spoken but clear-eyed member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali was endlessly threatened, lived behind bulletproof glass and was essentially driven out of the country in 2006; she ended up in the United States. Now Wilders will be prosecuted for speaking his mind.
It does not take a conspiracy theorist (or an "islamophobe") to see the pattern. All were, or still are, fervent critics of Islam. Two are dead, one fled when she could and the fourth--Wilders--lives with round-the-clock protection and the turned backs of most of his colleagues in Parliament.
It is not altogether clear whether most Dutch understand the dire predicament they will be in if they get into the habit of prosecuting critics of Islam. There is enough courage to go around. The writer and law professor Afshin Ellian, the novelists Leon de Winter and Joost Zwagerman, the columnist Nausicaa Marbe, and many others: They speak their minds honestly, often eloquently. Their critics routinely compare them to Nazis and fascists, which does not amount to a terribly strong argument, but so be it. They have thick skin; they should be able to take the heat.
It is crucial that they feel free and secure to speak their minds, regardless of the feelings of one group or another--free of the fear of prosecution for their ideas.
Is it hateful for me to say that if Muslims can't stand The Enlightenment, they should get on a plane back to the Dark Ages? They'll find them just over the pike in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and so many other Muslim countries, where women have the rights of dogs, gays and lesbians are put to death in most horrifying ways, and using Western technology to blow oneself and a lot of other people up is preached as a virtue.
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Vive (Or Rather, Avivah) La Difference
Reformed leftist Roger L. Simon flags a Jerusalem Post column by Northern Ireland-born Denis MacEoin for getting to the nut of the difference between Israel and Hamas:Israel guarantees civil liberties to all its citizens, Jew or Arab alike, but it is dubbed "an apartheid state"; Hamas, ever the bully, kills its opponents and denies the rest the most basic rights, but we march on behalf of Hamas. The Left prefers the bully because the bully represents a finger in the face of the establishment? Almost no one on the Left has any understanding of militant Islam. Their politics is a politics of gesture, where wearing a keffiyeh is cool but understanding its symbolism is too much effort even for intellectuals.MacEoin is right on target about a whole lot:
Hamas is a bully aided by a bigger bully, Iran. And, just as strident and threatening human bullies get away with their aggression so long as no one calls their bluff, so Hamas has been getting away with murder and torture because the UN and many states won't call its two-faced self-portrayal as the victim in the piece. In the struggle to take over Gaza from Fatah, it went on a rampage that killed hundreds of Palestinians. Even during this most recent assault, in early January, it executed Fatah members for violating their house arrest. A few weeks ago, Hamas determined to hurt yet more of its compatriots by introducing Islamic hudud punishments to the Strip, from amputations and stonings, to crucifixions and hangings.Like all bullies, it likes to taunt its victims. It did just that for years after Israel left Gaza, firing rockets every day into towns like Sderot or Netivot. No one who has dismissed these rockets as harmless homemade toys has ever had the guts to spend a few weeks in Sderot, scurrying from shelter to shelter. And, oh yes, it also built up an arsenal (supplied by Iran) of Grad missiles that certainly aren't anybody's toys.
Like all bullies, Hamas likes to make boastful threats. Its 1988 Covenant is replete with them. It threatens to destroy the State of Israel by violence and violence alone. It says it will never accept the work of conferences or peacemakers, and only jihad will solve its problems. Meanwhile, the Palestinians see their lives drained away in a culture that embraces death and martyrdom, their children exposed to a steady diet of military training and preparation for violent death as suicide bombers.
Even if the Palestinians want peace, Hamas won't let them have it, because Hamas knows best, and jihad "is the only solution." Don't believe me, read the Covenant. It likes nothing better than killing Jews, and the bigger bully in Teheran thinks that's a damn fine thing too. No one says a word, because the UN is dominated by the Islamic states, and the Western governments know where the oil comes from, and nobody likes the Jews much anyway. The people calling for the end of Israel while they march on the streets of London and Dublin aren't all Muslims by any means.
There can be no greater indication of this boastfulness than what has happened in recent days. Having taken a heavy battering from Israel, Hamas now proclaims a "great victory," and its supporters dance in the ruined streets of Gaza, drunk on their own demagoguery. For all its bluster, Hamas, like all bullies, is a coward at heart. Watch those films of Hamas gunmen dragging screaming children along with them to act as human shields, watch how they fire from behind the little ones, knowing no Israeli soldier will fire back. And even as they put their own children's lives at risk, they shout to high heaven that the Israelis are Nazis and the Jews are child-killers. This blatant pornography spreads through the Western media, and people never once ask "what does this look like from the other side," because they are addicted to the comforting news that the Yids are baby-killers as they'd always known, that they do poison wells, that no Christian child is safe come Passover.
Too many on the left a big part of the problem, accenting their Che shirts with kuffiyas to show their solidarity with the murderers they like to dub heroes. I just mailed a letter to Bernard Henri-Lévy in France. I don't know him, but he's still a hero of sorts to the left, and thus, one of the few very slim chances of shaking some sense into them and maybe getting them to see the danger of the totalitarian system in religion's clothes known as Islam. It's a very, very slim chance, I have to admit, but we have to try whatever we can. What, if anything, do you think it'll take to wake those on the left?
To understand the civilization-wide takeover in progress, check out Jihadwatch's Robert Spencer's new book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs
, or his older ones, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
and The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion
.
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How To Make Your Customers Hate You, By Dish TV
My French TV5 will go kaput if they don't do some fiddly stuff with the antenna on my house. Unfortunately, no matter how much I insist otherwise, the guy Dish employs in Calcutta to answer their phones insists that I live in the small metal box at 171 Pier where I get my mail. I'm now on hold to talk to an Amerkin. Here's hoping...!Why are so many companies so idiotic about their customer service, trusting it to cheap labor in Calcutta? I don't know about you, but there's a certain point at which they stupid-and-frustrating me into switching my service to their competition. In their favor, of course, is the fact that so many companies cheap out on their customer service phone reps, too.
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Wide Load
Thirty years ago, Susie Orbach published Fat Is a Feminist Issue, writes Janice Turner in the Times of London. What Turner doesn't write is that Orbach has spent 30 years missing the point -- and now appears to continue missing it with a new book, Bodies. An excerpt from Turner's piece:
Bodies, her latest work, is a timely counterblast against our harsh new visual culture, obsessed with the perfection of the physical self. "Our bodies no longer make things," she writes. "Our bodies... have become a form of work." They are not given to us by simple biology, but are something we manufacture - through the gym, fad diets or, increasingly, surgery - into an outer form which, we are led to believe, will make us feel better about ourselves.Oh, boo hoo. I work to stay in shape physically, just as I work to stay in shape mentally. Life is work, dear. And actually, if we're counting, I spent twelve and a half hours straight today writing and thinking, but only 23 minutes on my exercise bike. Oh, the horror, the horror!
Orbach continues:
"When I wrote FIFI [her pet name for Fat Is a Feminist Issue] I was writing about people with particular body issues. Now these are so commonplace that someone who is a compulsive eater is in the normal range. There are kids who don't eat during the week, only with their boyfriends at weekends. Or diet and binge. It's become normalised." Part of the female condition? "At this moment in history, yes. Also, I'm not sure we were into perfection back then. There was just slimness as an ideal. Now there is this expectation to copy celebrities, the images are digitally enhanced, prefabricated, ubiquitous. I think the critical feature is there is no way not to be infected."Food deprivation diets do seem to cause binging and weight gain. If you want to lose weight and get your head straightened out about how to eat and why, read Diets Don't Work, by Bob Schwartz. To see what bullshit you've been fed by the medical establishment about fat, cholesterol, heart disease, and how to eat, read Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes.
What Orbach seems to have missed is that physical appearance has always -- like, for centuries upon centuries upon centuries -- been of primary importance to women, and for very good reason. Research by David Buss and other evolutionary psychologists shows that men prioritize physical appearance in a woman (and features we find beautiful are really indicators that a woman is fertile). Men, on the other hand, are valued by women for their ability to provide, so, per a study by Townsend, women prefered an ugly guy with a Rolex to a handsome guy in a Burger King uniform.
Note that you don't often see guys in low-wage jobs like nursery school teaching (and that isn't just because men are in danger of being accused of being pedophiles if they're around children). A guy who wants a woman has got to bring home a living, and a woman who wants a man had better do the very best with what she's got, lookswise. Don't like it? Emigrate to another planet, and join the one-eyed, green-faced whateveritis race.
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A Pakistani Girl And Her Shame About The Truth About Islam
"Ashamed of Ever Being a Muslim," a letter from Komal, apparently a Pakistani girl, is up at Islamwatch:Mr. Sina (editor FFI)I never thought I would be writing this ever in my life. The first time I read your discussion was with some lady over the rights of women in Islam.
When I was in my 6th grade, I was unhappy at certain things that I got to know about the way women are treated in Islam. This included the property rights and divorce procedures. But never in my entire life had I known that Muslims actually used to rape prisoners of wars and this was sanctioned by the Prophet. All, in my entire life, I read in my Islamic books that Muslims treated prisoners with kindness and this and that. I don't find any sort of kindness in raping women who were captured. The only kindness was when they invaded Mecca. Maybe they did not mistreat the Meccans because it was the city in which our so called prophet was born and his relatives and the relatives of his followers were living there.
Well I do know one thing; maulvis in Pakistan tell us strange things like when we look into the mirror we should recite this; when we enter the house should say that; when we travel we should recite that dau, etc. These are the things they teach us. But, why do they hide such a BIG THING such as Muslims used to rape women captured in their raids? Yes it can only be called RAPE. How can a girl allow a person to have sex with her when they have killed her brother or father or husband? I cannot imagine myself or my mother or my sister in such a condition. It makes me sick to the stomach. You opened my eyes. I used to think so badly of the soldiers who raped women in Iraq. But the point is, are Muslims any better? They raped women when they could. Now, according to the logic of Islam, Iraq was in a state of war; therefore, based on Islamic reasoning, it was perfectly justifiable for the conquering army to raped the women.
Again based on Islamic logic, Iraq lost, so basically all the people in Iraq should become slaves of Americans including their women and children. But the thing is, only a handful of women in Iraq were raped and their rapists are prosecuted and sent to jail. Had it been the other way round and Muslims were the conquerors of a non-Muslim country, all the women would have become booty of Muslim soldiers and all of the pretty ones would have been raped.
I feel disgusted! I cannot imagine my six year old, or any six year old girl to be married to a 52 year old guy NO matter how religious that person is.
I am a woman and I don't have a "short memory," as Muhammad said. I am not "deficient in intelligence" either. I have outsmarted many guys in my life. All my life I have studied on scholarship and right now I am perusing a degree again on scholarship. Then how can our prophet say we women have short memory and deficient in intelligence? This is scientifically wrong.
Now considering that a girl is raped, where in the world can she find 4 eyewitness men to testify in her case? Rape is not a circus that people will be invited to watch. It's usually done in an isolated place where no one can see. Say a girl was raped and gets pregnant. She needs 4 witnesses to prove that she was raped and usually there isn't even one. But the proof that she had sex out of the wedlock is there in her womb. Then what will happen according to Islamic law? She can't provide any proof of rape. So she will be accused of adultery and stoned to death. Does this sound just or logical? No it doesn't, at least, to those, who have a heart and a brain.
Your conversation with that lady, Julia Roach, shook me to the core. It made me feel ashamed, sad, and mad! What have I been following all my life? They tell you only the good parts, but never these truths.
We in Pakistan never bothered to read the Quran in detail. We only knew what we were taught in our schools. The rest, we just depended on the scholars (who obviously lied to us, told us the good things, nothing about slaves and their rape was ever mentioned).
I tried to tell the things that I have learned to my family, but they have started calling me Kafir and stuff. When I was in Pakistan I used to be the same. I just wouldn't listen to anything that was against Islam. I would close my eyes and my ears. I cannot denounce Islam publicly because my parents would be ashamed of me. I do not follow it anymore; and if I get a chance anywhere, I point to the fallacies of Islam to my friends as well. If I tell them that I have denounced Islam, they will never listen to me. I want them to listen to me and think logically just the way I did.
Kind regards.
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Violence Against Men, Hah, Hah, Hah...
I can laugh at a hell of a lot, but I find this chillingly, nauseatingly awful. In fact, I don't think I've ever felt so sick seeing a commercial, and (of course) I'm not talking about the sexy part, but the ending. Here it is, a commercial for Agent Provocateur lingerie:
Imagine the outcry if they'd showed it from the other side -- say, a man punching a woman because she burned dinner. Violence against one's partner needs to be unacceptable no matter what sex your partner is.Here's a quick story in the Times of London. And here's a column I wrote about violence against men:
If your husband tossed an ashtray at your head, do you think he'd be describing himself as "Still So Angry Inside" or "Still In Court Trying To Get The Charges Reduced"?It doesn't take much for domestic violence against men to be taken seriously...usually, just a chalk outline where a man's body used to be. The rest of the time, people tend to shrug it off or even find it cute: "Well, well, well, she's quite the firecracker!" Granted, male abusers can do much more damage with their fists, but put a heavy object in a woman's hands, and good morning brain damage! (Just wondering...has your husband gotten the ashtray out of his skull, or does he have to hang around smoking areas with his head bent down so people have someplace to flick their ash?)
Oh, and ladies, should you be in the mood to burn a bra, please make it Agent Provocateur.
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Bigger, Badder Government
What was wrong with George Bush, by my pal Nick Gillespie, reason.tv editor, in the WSJ. In short, "Bush was a big-government disaster":In a way that was inconceivable when he took office, Mr. Bush -- the advance man for the "ownership society," smaller and more trustworthy government, and a humble foreign policy -- increased the size and scope of the federal government to unprecedented levels. At the same time, he constantly flashed signs of secrecy, duplicity, ineffectiveness and outright incompetence.Think for a moment about the thousands of Transportation Security Administration screeners -- newly minted government employees all -- who continue to confiscate contact-lens solution and nail clippers while, according to nearly every field test, somehow failing to notice simulated bombs in passenger luggage.
The Opinion Journal WidgetOr schoolchildren struggling under No Child Left Behind, which federalized K-12 education to an unprecedented degree with nothing to show for it other than greater spending tabs. Or the bizarrely structured Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the largest entitlement program created since LBJ. Or the simple reality that taxpayers now guarantee some $8 trillion in inscrutable loans to a financial sector that collapsed from inscrutable loans.
Such programs were not in any way foisted on Mr. Bush, the way that welfare reform had been on Bill Clinton; they were signature projects, designed to create a legacy every bit as monumental and inspiring as Laura Bush's global literacy campaign.
The most basic Bush numbers are damning. If increases in government spending matter, then Mr. Bush is worse than any president in recent history. During his first four years in office -- a period during which his party controlled Congress -- he added a whopping $345 billion (in constant dollars) to the federal budget. The only other presidential term that comes close? Mr. Bush's second term. As of November 2008, he had added at least an additional $287 billion on top of that (and the months since then will add significantly to the bill). To put that in perspective, consider that the spendthrift LBJ added a mere $223 billion in total additional outlays in his one full term.
...Mr. Bush's legacy is thus a bizarro version of Ronald Reagan's. Reagan entered office declaring that government was not the solution to our problems, it was the problem. Ironically, he demonstrated that government could do some important things right -- he helped tame inflation and masterfully drew the Cold War to a nonviolent triumph for the Free World. By contrast, Mr. Bush has massively expanded the government along with the sense that government is incompetent.
That is no small accomplishment -- and its pernicious effects will last long after Mr. Bush has moved back to Texas, and President Obama has announced that his stimulus package, originally tagged at $750 billion and already up to $825 billion, will cost $1 trillion or more. Mr. Bush has cleared the way for President Obama to intervene more and more in the economy and every other aspect of American life.
Here's Nick on the stimulus plan -- uh, as a hole:
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The Best Person For The Job
(...As long as that person isn't white or a man.) Shockingly, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is coming out against hiring white male construction workers. He writes on his blog a blog item charmingly titled "The Stimulus: How to Create Jobs Without Them All Going to Skilled Professionals and White Male Construction Workers." An excerpt:And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed -- will be shut out.While I'm against government stimulus packages, and for government getting out of the way of business to kick-start our economy, if our tax dollars are going for a stimulus package and I don't have a choice in the matter, I'd really like to see the hiring done based on who's the best person for the job.
And, I don't know about you, but *I* sure don't hire the person who needs the job the most, and I sure don't want to patronize businesses that do.
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Wag The Frog
Only in France would a dog be described as "clinically depressed." In this case, the dog happens to belong to former president Jacques Chirac, who was also described as being "mauled" by his dog in a story by Ian Sparks in the Daily Mail.Okay, I'm sorry if the guy's been hurt...but I can't help but find the wording a bit...well...hilarious, since the dog happens to be...no, not some massive Rottweiler...no, not some fierce German Shepherd...but a fluffy white Maltese:
The animal, named Sumo, had become increasingly violent over the past years and was prone to making 'vicious, unprovoked attacks', Chirac's wife Bernadette said.The former president, who ruled France for 12 years until 2007, was taken to hospital in Paris where he was treated as an outpatient and sent home, VSD magazine reported.
Mrs Chirac said: 'The dog went for him for no apparent reason.
'We were already aware the animal was unpredictable and is actually being treated with pills for depression.
'My husband was bitten quite badly, but he is certain to make a full recovery over the coming weeks.'
The former French First Lady did not reveal where on his body Chirac was bitten.
The pet, named after the Japanese form of wrestling, was a gift to the Chiracs from their grandson Martin.
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Amy On Mark Germain
I was a fan when he was Mr. KABC, and now he's doing an Internet radio show, and I just taped one with him last week. Here's the link.*
Gangsta Manilow
As somebody who lives near a bar where the yahoo customers park right near our houses and then blast their thumpa-thumpa bass into the wee hours, I want to just reach out and hug this judge. DeeDee Correll writes in the LA Times of a judge who literally makes the rude asshats face the music:The guiding principle in Municipal Judge Paul Sacco's courtroom is an eye for an eye. Or rather, an ear for an ear.So when teenagers land in front of him for blasting their car stereos or otherwise disturbing the peace in this small northern Colorado city, Sacco informs them that they will spend a Friday evening in his courtroom listening to music -- of his choosing.
No, they can't pay a fine instead, he tells them. So, he adds with a snicker, ever heard of Barry Manilow?
For the last decade, Sacco, 55, has administered a brand of justice somewhere between "cruel" and "unusual."
Young people in Fort Lupton know that if they're caught, they're in for a night that could begin with the "Barney" theme song, move on to an opera selection and end with Boy George's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me."
Sacco's answer to that last question: Yes, he does.
Or rather, he wants a little payback to the scofflaws blaring their tunes without regard for their neighbors -- a vexing habit in this blue-collar community of about 8,000, said Police Chief Ron Grannis.
For a while, Sacco -- a part-time judge who also has a law practice -- issued tickets, $95 apiece, to the noise violators. But one day, as he ordered a teenager to pay a fine, he realized the kid's parents, flanking him, would probably just pay it for him.
"It just seemed I was a rubber-stamper," he said. "I hate that."
What he really wanted to do, Sacco thought, was give the kid a dose of his own medicine. And the "music immersion" sentence was born.
The concept was simple: Stick the kids in a room -- on a night they'd rather be out socializing -- and turn up the volume.
Manilow immediately came to Sacco's mind. Not because he disliked Manilow, but because he knew they would. But the playlist also features other artists, mostly selected for their ability to annoy the younger set.
I understand that prisoners had to listen to Barney at Guantanamo.
UPDATE: A commenter disputes the music/Barney claim (below -- see mlah), but while I didn't find anything on Barney (I believe I'd read about it in the past), I did find this from the FBI.
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When In The Netherlands, Do As The Saudis Do
Free speech has become dangerous speech in the Netherlands -- both because you could be murdered for it by Muslims, as Theo Van Gogh was, and because you could be prosecuted for criticizing Muslims, as the courageous Dutch PM Geert Wilders, producer of the film "Fitna," is about to be. From the WSJ, a piece on how they're going after Wilders, "Silencing Islam's Critics - A Dutch court imports Saudi blasphemy norms to Europe":Some Muslims say they are outraged by his statements. But if freedom of speech means anything, it means the freedom of controversial speech. Consensus views need no protection.This is exactly what Dutch prosecutors said in June when they rejected the complaints against Mr. Wilders. "That comments are hurtful and offensive for a large number of Muslims does not mean that they are punishable," the prosecutors said in a statement. "Freedom of expression fulfills an essential role in public debate in a democratic society. That means that offensive comments can be made in a political debate."
The court yesterday overruled this decision, arguing that the lawmaker should be prosecuted for "inciting hatred and discrimination" and also "for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism." This is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside. But the successful integration of Muslims in Europe will require that immigrants adapt to Western norms, not vice versa. Limiting the Dutch debate of Islam to standards acceptable in, say, Saudi Arabia, will only shore up support for Mr. Wilders's argument that Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties.
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Amy On Ask Dr. Helen TV
Dr. Helen, who I agree with on a whole lot of issues, interviewed me a couple weeks ago. I look a little tired (they shot it the morning after my deadline days), and I was a little rusty on remembering to look at the camera instead of into space or the monitor, but I hope you'll enjoy it. Here's the link.*
Get Your Share ($78) Of The Bank Of America Overdraft Settlement
Details at Consumerist. For customers from 2000 to 2007.*
Look! Something For Everyone!
Obama gives the nod to us heathens:For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.Then there's this bit of propaganda for the terror-producing world:
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.Note to Obama: In order to have mutual respect, respect has to actually be mutual. I certainly don't respect the Muslim world -- a world that's anti-science, reportedly 80 percent illiterate, and commanded by the Quran to convert or kill the infidel (that would be most of us)...with far too many Muslims answering the call, and far too few "moderate Muslims" speaking up against them.
Moreover, these largely illiterate (and thus powerless) people will not judge their brutal dictators of anything -- as they're likely to be jailed, stoned, hung, or beheaded in response. P.S. Hope is okay when it isn't utterly unfounded.
The whole thing, in pre-inaugural form, is here. Your thoughts?
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BHL Goes To Gaza
The HuffPo published a fascinating account by BHL, as Bernard-Henri Lévy is known in France. The whole thing is worth reading, especially if you'd like to get a good sense of the difference between the Israeli mindset and that of those who'd like to run them all into the sea. (Pay special notice to the words of the Cobra helicopter pilot, Ashaf, and what he does when he spots children in the firing line.) Here's an excerpt from BHL's piece:Yovan Diskin is the head of Shin Bet, Israel's storied and formidable Security Agency. He has, to my knowledge, never spoken. Not since the beginning of this war, at any rate. He is about forty years old. He is tall. Massive. A military man belied by jeans, tennis shoes and a t-shirt. He welcomes me at dawn in his office north of Tel Aviv, which, with its widened embrasures, looks like a bunker. "All of this for Sderot?," I started. This flood of fire, these victims, to stop the Qassam missiles in Sderot and the other cities and kibbutzes in the south of the country? "Yes, of course," he answers me, quite irritated. "There is no other State in the world that would tolerate seeing shells fall on the heads of its citizens every day." Then, as I tell him that I know this, as I tell him that, every time I go to Israel, I go to Sderot out of principle and solidarity, and as I also tell him that there were perhaps means, in negotiating, to avoid arriving at this juncture, he interrupts himself, oddly shrugs his shoulders, and, in the tone of someone about to get into technical details, continues."You must understand, in this case, who the members of Hamas are. We know them here, better than anyone. Sometimes I have the impression that I can know in real time, sometimes even predict, what their most minor decisions are. We have now become aware of three things." Someone brings him a cup of coffee that he swallows in one gulp. "Their strategy, which is also that of the Muslim Brothers, of whom they are scions and who, over the course of time, plan to take power in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Israel..." I signal to him that I know what he's talking about. "Anyway. Then there is the alliance with Iran, which can seem counterintuitive because of how serious contentions between the Sunnis and Shiites are, but whose entire history we have seen." The date: 1993. The theater: a council of Syrian, Saudi, West Bank, and Gazan ulema. The inspirer: the Egyptian El Khardaoui, importer of the Shiite suicide attempt strategy into Sunni terrain. "And then, finally, the essential: the network of three hundred tunnels, dug under the Egyptian border with the tacit approval of Moubarak who, every time we talked to him about it, swore that he was going to see to the problem, but who unfortunately did nothing because he was too afraid to go against his national Muslim Brothers..." We could, as Israeli pacifists do, tell ourselves that the destruction of these tunnels would have been sufficient. As is the case with me, we could gather that, this war having already exposed the existence of these tunnels to the world, and thus having put the Egyptians up against the wall, Israel could stop there and, today, cease fire. What we can't ignore is this fact -- this context: Gaza which, evacuated, is becoming not the embryo of the so-desired Palestinian State, but the advance base of a total war against the Jewish State.
Continued at the link above...
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What Better Time To Put Small, Home-Based Entrepreneurs Out Of Business!
Yes, just as people everywhere are losing their jobs and turning to homemade crafts to make ends meet. Overlawyered's Walter Olsen has a terrific piece in Forbes about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the ridiculous law passed mandating testing for lead and phthalates of all children's products -- even those made out of materials like organic cotton:Barbed with penalties that include felony prison time and fines of $100,000, the law goes into effect in stages; one key deadline is Feb. 10, when it becomes unlawful to ship goods for sale that have not been tested. Eventually, new kids' goods will all have to be subjected to more stringent "third-party" testing, and it will be unlawful to give away untested inventory even for free....Again with relatively few exceptions, makers of these goods can't rely only on materials known to be unproblematic (natural dyed yarn, local wood) or that come from reputable local suppliers, or even ones that are certified organic.
Instead they must put a sample item from each lot of goods through testing after complete assembly, and the testing must be applied to each component. For a given hand-knitted sweater, for example, one might have to pay not just, say, $150 for the first test, but added-on charges for each component beyond the first: a button or snap, yarn of a second color, a care label, maybe a ribbon or stitching--with each color of stitching thread having to be tested separately.
Suddenly the bill is more like $1,000--and that's just to test the one style and size. The same sweater in a larger size, or with a different button or clasp, would need a new round of tests--not just on the button or clasp, but on the whole garment. The maker of a kids' telescope (with no suspected problems) was quoted a $24,000 testing estimate, on a product with only $32,000 in annual sales.
Could it get worse? Yes, it could. Contrary to some reports, thrift and secondhand stores are not exempt from the law. Although (unlike creators of new goods) they aren't obliged to test the items they stock, they are exposed to liability and fines if any goods on their shelves (or a component button, bolt, binding, etc.) are found to test above the (very low) thresholds being phased in.
...Thrift store managers, often volunteers themselves, have no way to guess whether every grommet or zipper on a kids' jacket or ink on an old jigsaw puzzle box or some plastic component of Mom's old roller skates would pass muster.
"The reality is that all this stuff will be dumped in the landfill," predicted Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. Among the biggest losers if that happens: poorer parents who might start having to buy kids' winter coats new at $30 rather than used at $5 or $10.
And even worse: Since the law does not exempt books, children's' sections at libraries and bookstores will, at minimum, face price hikes on newly acquired titles and, at worse, may have to rethink older holdings.
Write to your Senaturd or Congressloser to see if they might extract their heads from their intestinal area and repeal this thing. Olson writes that this piece of dimwittery passed the Senate 89 to three and the House by 424 to one, with Ron Paul the lone dissenter there.
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Skanks For The Memories
Don't miss the Advice Goddess column I just posted, about a guy who's really being sold a bill of goods by his girlfriend. The essential lines from his e-mail:...She finally stopped calling her guy friends stuff like "my hot beef injection," but only after I threatened to walk. Am I justified in thinking her behavior shows a lack of respect for me and our relationship?The rest, plus comments, is here.
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Modern Medical Care Or High-Tech Torture?
Just because we can keep people technically alive...should we? Internist Craig Bowron writes for The Washington Post on "The Drawn-Out Indignities of The American Way of Death."Take one of my patients. She started dialysis six months ago at the tender age of 85, and the diabetic vascular problems that put her kidneys in the tank persist. One leg has been amputated above the knee, and several toes on her remaining foot have succumbed to gangrene. Robbed of blood, they appear dry, black and tenuously connected, like an ash dangling off a cigarette.This patient was brought in for a decreased level of consciousness and low blood pressure, but she has been having periods of nausea, and her appetite seems to have died with her kidneys. The initial workup revealed little, perhaps a low-grade bladder infection, but treating it and her low blood pressure doesn't seem to make much of a difference. She is withdrawn; food goes into her mouth, but she won't chew and swallow unless her children instruct her to. She intermittently refuses pills. There's a language barrier, but her children are there to interpret for her. Translation: She feels exhausted and weak, and she feels that way most of the time.
This woman is suffering from what we call "the dwindles," characterized by advancing age and illness. Although dialysis is a miraculous technology -- she'd be dead without it -- it exacts a heavy toll from someone her age or with her medical problems. Three days a week are spent in dialysis, and the other four are spent recovering. It is extending her life, but she's miserable.
Her family has designated her "full code," meaning that if her heart stopped or she were to cease breathing, we would do CPR to revive her, even though there would be a very slim chance of success -- and even though it would be God's or the universe's way of giving her an easy way out.
...Among the patient-care team -- nurses, physicians, nursing assistants, physical and occupational therapists, etc. -- there is often a palpable sense of "What in the world are we doing to this patient?" That's "to" and not "for." We all stagger under the weight of feeling complicit in a patient's torture, but often it's the nurses who bear most of that burden, physically and emotionally. As a nurse on a dialysis floor told me, "They'll tell us things that they won't tell the family or their physician. They'll say, 'I don't want to have any more dialysis. I'm tired of it,' but they won't admit that to anyone else."
This sense of complicity is what makes taking care of these kinds of patients the toughest thing I do. A fellow physician told me, "I feel like I am participating in something immoral." Another asked, "Whatever happened to that 'do no harm' business?"
...At some point in life, the only thing worse than dying is being kept alive.
What should the alternatives be? What alternative do you want? And how do you plan to make it happen?
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PETA Is About Taking Away Your Pets
The whack-jobs at PETA are asking the USA Network to stop broadcasting the Westminster Dog Show. There was some video I saw, purporting to be abuse of dogs being prepped for the dog show. My own very happy little Yorkshire terrier goes through similar "abuse." We call it "having a bath." She's not real fond of the soap and water part, but she loves being blow-dried. Just for the record.The ultimate goal of Ingrid Newkirk and Co. is to stop humans from having pets altogether. And all use of animals by humans. For now, however, they're focusing on the purported horrors of purebreeding. The LA Times blogged the issue, and there was a wise statement by "Debz" in the comments, quoting a vet, and then going on with more. I've pasted it in below:
Thank you Libbye Miller DVM for stating: "'Adorable mixed breeds' get cancer, epilepsy, allergies, heart disease, and orthopedic problems just like purebreds. I see it every day in my veterinary practice but mixed breed dogs aren't tracked like the purebreds so they have a reputation as "healthier" that is actually undeserved in many cases."It is so sad that a lot of folks, including young veterinarians these days, buy into the "hybrid vigor" baloney. The vet schools have been infiltrated by the Animal Rights Extremists, who are teaching them this junk science in order to push their agenda.
All animals have a certain amount of genetic load, which is to say there is absolutely no animal without some genetic problem of some sort of another. Know anyone who wears glasses? Has allergies? Thyroid problems? Weak knees? Flat feet? A skin condition? Arthritis? A gap between their front teeth? These are all genetic imperfections.
No human is genetically "clean." Neither is any individual of any species on earth. So this idea that dogs should not be bred because they might have a genetic problem, and that breeders are somehow "evil" for breeding them, is ridiculous. Every single individual of every single species has at least a few genetic conditions.
To use PeTA's logic, all breeding of all kinds (including having human babies) should halt immediately. And to be honest, Ingrid Newkirk (the woman who founded PeTA) does believe exactly that. She thinks that humans should become extinct, along with dogs, cats, etc. This ridiculous scenario is precisely what she would like to see happen.
So folks, if that is what you want...if you agree with Ingrid Newkirk's whacky views, send your hard earned money to PeTA. They will help to ensure you are not able to own a dog or cat or hamster or any other pet in the future. They will see to it that you can't eat meat or fish or eggs or any type of animal-based nutrition. They will work to shut down places like Sea World, the zoos, etc. so you cannot observe the many wonderful animals on the Earth. Eventually, once they accomplish these things, they may turn their efforts to making it illegal for humans to procreate.
If you don't agree with their extremist views, wise up and start supporting those who truly do love, care for and enjoy interaction with other species here on our little blue planet.
The fanciers of the breeds, those you see exhibiting their dogs at Westminster and other dog shows, work very hard to eliminate serious genetic conditions. They screen their breeding stock with every available test. They research pedigrees before breeding into other lines, to check for similar clearances in those animals. They contribute money to research organizations to further the work being done to track down genetic problems. They contribute blood, cell samples, etc. from their own animals to help with DNA and genome studies. They have made great progress so far, and they continue to work hard at it.
Are there unethical breeders? Certainly, there are. Just as in any group of humans, you will find the good and the bad. United States VP Elect Joe Biden, for example, managed to find a not so good one when he got his new German Shepherd puppy. I don't know who did his research for him, but they obviously didn't do their homework if they were looking for a responsible breeder. Joe has the right to get his dog from whomever he wishes, but if he was trying to set an example of purchasing from a responsible hobby breeder he went off the track this time. That's too bad, but it was his choice.
Unfortunately, breeders like that may be a lot easier to find because of their high volume and high profile. If you are looking for a nice family pet from a breeder who will be there for you forever, you need to do due diligence. You won't get that from a pet store. You won't get that from the guy selling dogs out of his pickup truck in the WalMart parking lot. You won't get that support from a high-volume breeder, either. Yes, it takes a little more time and effort to find someone who really cares and does all the work to breed the healthiest, happiest puppies possible and then stands behind those puppies.
This is a living being that will be part of your family, hopefully, for many years. Isn't it worth a bit of effort to find a breeder who will be there for you and that puppy forever?
And guess what? Shows like Westminster are a very valuable resource for finding breeders who do care and who use the best possible practices, as well as for learning more about the various breeds.
Bravo to USA Network for broadcasting the Westminster Kennel Club show all these years. May they enjoy continued success through the ongoing inclusion of such programs. I will be eagerly watching this year's show!
Posted by: Debz | January 08, 2009 at 03:21 PM*
Believing In Death Santa
Western children do believe in childish things like Santa -- until they're, oh, seven or so, I guess. Quite a few Muslim adults, however, keep on believing -- and not that a fat guy in a red suit will drop down their chimney and leave them a Nintendo. Nope, they believe that blowing themselves while murdering other people who don't believe in their particular brand of Imaginary Friend will get them some really good lovin' up there in the land of 72 virgins.Live Leak asks the question: "Do muslim suicide bombers actually believe that they will get 72 virgins or is this just western propaganda to make them look stupid?" Well, see for yourself right here.
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Sarko Kisses Muslim Butt
I understand the guy has a huge problem, with all the immigrants they let into France and the way laïcité (secularism) will eventually be replaced with Sharia law. (I believe the Mona Lisa's face will be painted over by Islamist nutwads in my lifetime.)But, from The Brussels Journal, what French president Sarkozy said at in The French National Assembly earlier this month, at the first Conference on the Teaching of Arabic Language and Culture, is just laughable in the sickest way:
In his message to the participants, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Arabic the "language of the future, of science and of modernity," ("langue d'avenir, de progrès, de sciences et de modernité") and expressed the hope that "more French people share in the language that expresses great civilizational and spiritual values.""We must invest in the Arabic language (because) to teach it symbolizes a moment of exchange, of openness and of tolerance, (and it) brings with it one of the oldest and most prestigious civilizations of the world. It is in France that we have the greatest number of persons of Arabic and Muslim origin. Islam is the second religion of France," Sarkozy reminded his listeners.
The language of the future, maybe so, since Muslims are breeding like rabbits -- all the better to take over the West, and convert or kill all of us (per the Quran, which is meant to be taken literally, as the word of god).
The language of science and modernity? I mean, how can the guy even say that with a straight face? Here, via thereligionofpeace, is a piece on the remarkable disinterest in reading and books in the Muslim world. Sami Airabaa writes at amislam.com:
We Arabs, the majority of us, at least, rarely read. Hassan, a Syrian graduate, said, "What do you want me to read? State-controlled newspapers? Cooking books? Horoscope and dream interpreting books? That is all you can get in almost all Arab countries in terms of books."Most Arabs watch TV or listen to the radio. What do they watch and listen to? They listen to music and watch movies and soap opera serials. Politically-interested Arabs watch Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya for news and political discussions. Most Arabs distrust news on state-controlled radios and TVs. Viewers of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the majority of whom are anti-Western and anti-American, enjoy the black and white picture depicted by these channels.
Very few political Muslims, the so-called Islamists, have read the Koran and Hadeeth. The majority have not, but dream of paradise on earth ruled by Al Shari'a.
Arab leaders and their affiliates do not read either. The Saudi despot, Abdullah, for example, is almost illiterate. He reads his speeches like a child who has just learned reading. No Arab leader is capable of speaking Standard Arabic fluently which all Arabs learn as a second language. To avoid using broken Arabic, lack of knowledge, and embarrassing questions, Arab leaders shy away from meeting the local and international media. At most, they prefer written questions whose answers are prepared by their aides.
A former interpreter of an Arab leader told me that he used to wrap his boss's incoherent statements in beautiful presentable English.
Censorship is common in most Arab countries. Critical publications are forbidden, even the "One Thousand and One Night" is unavailable in many Arab bookshops. A former student of mine who works at the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information told me, "When we hear of a book that is suspicious we ban it immediately before even seeing it, let alone reading it."
Sociologists believe that people who are poorly informed, are easier to rule and gear in the direction delineated by the regime.
The lack of interest in reading and books begins at an early age, at school. Schools and universities do not encourage reading extracurricular publications. By and large, students plagiarize when asked to prepare term papers. In the Arab Gulf region, there are offices specialized in selling these papers for a price ranging between $ 30 and $ 100. Ads to this effect can be found in almost every local newspaper.
...According to the UNESCO report (2006) "No more than 10.000 books were translated into Arabic over the entire past millennium, equivalent to the number translated into Spanish each year."
Oh, and as for Arabic being the language of the future, all the better for Muslims to call for violence against Jews, and firebombings and other violence against Jewish businesses (watch the barbarians trash a London Starbucks), and the murder of Jews.
Oh yeah, and it isn't just the Jews they're after. All "infidels" are in deep shit, or will eventually be. And while Muslims screech about the attacks on Gaza in response to Hamas' attacks on Israel (despite the ceasefire), mass genocide of Muslims in Darfur brings yawns, if anything. (It really is about hating the Jews. At the moment, other "infidels" are still of secondary interest to this totalitarian death cult masquerading as a religion.)
Thanks, Crid
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The Toxic Waste Of Modern Feminism
A woman in her early 20s just wrote to me, complaining that men care about her looks, and that these horrid louts dare to ask for her picture after making contact with her online (on a dumb site where people use avatars to represent themselves).She contends that a guy's looks don't matter to her (I don't believe her) and that her looks shouldn't matter to them.
Well, a woman's looks do matter very much to men (obviously), and it seems that men are hard-wired to prefer the qualities and features that advertise that a woman is a healthy, fertile candidate to pass on their genes (youth, clear skin, shiny hair, and an hourglass figure).
Lamenting that is just stupid. Better to try to do the best with what you have, and suss out whether the guy is dating your tits or the whole package. (Hilariously, it seems the woman complaining is rather pretty). As I wrote in a column long ago, "If you want to trap a bear, don't wander off into the woods with a Tupperware container of salad."
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They Say It's The Package In The Back Of Your Pants, Boys
Men with big bucks give women a better bang, according to some recent research. Jonathan Leake, Science and Environment Editor of the Times of London writes of a study that links the frequency of a woman's orgasm's to a man's bank balance. Hmmm...does that include really repellant to pretty-much unfuckable wealthy men, or is there no cutoff for the physically undersexy and perhaps underbathed?"Women's orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner," said Dr Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research.He believes the phenomenon is an "evolutionary adaptation" that is hard-wired into women, driving them to select men on the basis of their perceived quality.
However, it fits into a wider body of research known as evolutionary psychology which suggests that both men and women are genetically predisposed to ruthlessly exploit each other to achieve the best chances of survival for their genes.
The female orgasm is the focus of much research because it appears to have no reproductive purpose. Women can become pregnant whatever their pleasure levels.
Pollet, and Professor Daniel Nettle, his co-author, believed, however, that the female orgasm is an evolutionary adaptation that drives women to choose and retain high-quality partners.
He and Nettle tested that idea using data gathered in one of the world's biggest lifestyle studies. The Chinese Health and Family Life Survey targeted 5,000 people across China for in-depth interviews about their personal lives, including questions about their sex lives, income and other factors. Among these were 1,534 women with male partners whose data was the basis for the study.
They found that 121 of these women always had orgasms during sex, while 408 more had them "often". Another 762 "sometimes" orgasmed while 243 had them rarely or never. Such figures are similar to those for western countries.
And yes, in case you're wondering, I'm guessing the figures for "number of Chinese people lying on sex surveys" may be similar as well.
But, let's say the study is right: Two possibilities -- first, that people who aren't as stressed out about making ends meet can relax and have more fun in bed, and second, that the men become sexier to the women because they're rich (per the way men evolved to seek beautiful women and women evolved to go for providers).
Interestingly, there's a lot of feminist hue and cry about "lookism," but little or none about girls who are golddiggers. Or grls. Or wimyn. Etcetera.
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Predatory Towing At A Portland Starbucks
"Help, Starbucks Towed My Car While I Was Sipping A Latte!" is the title of the story over at one of my favorite sites, Consumerist.com.What kind of dimwits do business like this? How do you not know that sooner or later, a customer's going to be on headphones or in the bathroom (or deaf) when the license plates get called by the tow truck company?
Consumerist posted this letter from a guy who had his car towed at a Portland Starbucks -- allegedly while he was sitting inside the place drinking coffee (he says he has a receipt [time-stamped, I'd imagine] and witnesses):
To Whom it Will Concern:I am writing to share with you an unfavorable experience I had not while inside a Starbucks location, but rather, outside of one: At approximately 2:45 pm on Saturday, the 10th of January, I found that my car had been towed from a Portland Starbucks parking lot by Retriever Towing.
You see, I was under the impression that I was going to be able to enjoy my Starbucks experience. I was not aware that my car would be towed from the Starbucks parking lot if I didn't keep a watchful eye out for a marauding tow truck driver and let him know "yes, I am here, and no, you do not have permission to tow my car." I reserved the right to enjoy my drink and ignore my surroundings, as a Starbucks customer. In fact, the parking lot sign stated that parking was for customers only, and as my receipt or bank statement and witnesses will attest, I most certainly was a customer.
It is the practice of Retriever Towing to record license plate numbers from cars in the parking lot, then check inside the business for those cars' owners. Customers and partners alike will agree that this practice is detrimental to the Starbucks experience. In fact, a partner who was there when I returned to the store after I realized my car had been towed called the practice in general "vicious." It has become (un)popularly known as "Predatory Towing", and for Starbucks customers like myself, it comes down to this: if a customer is listening to music, reading, on an important phone call, otherwise indisposed while drinking their beverage, or unable or unwilling to be disturbed by a tow truck driver, they run the risk of having their car towed from the Starbucks parking lot. This does not take into account customers with handicaps or who are otherwise impaired and not able to be disturbed by a tow truck driver.
It is my request that Starbucks contact the owner of Retriever Towing, Gary Coe, or the General Manager, Charles White (chuck@retrievertowing.com) and urge them to cease or modify this regrettable behavior. It has affected me (to the tune of $210.50 for the tow), and I'm sure it has affected countless other Starbucks customers. Starbucks should refuse to do business with such a company, at the risk of tarnishing its own image, as well as giving implied consent to this gruesome tactic by standing by without formal consternation.
If you, the reader, are unable to personally contact the owner or general manager or Retriever Towing, I request that you escalate this message to someone who is able to take effective action. I have already addressed my concern to Mr. White, and also to the City of Portland's Towing Commission and the local police department. I will press on with emails to the Consumerist and the BBB, as well as other businesses that share the parking lot where this unfortunate incident occurred, and other businesses in the area who utilize the services of Retriever Towing. Again, I urge Starbucks to not do business with a "predatory towing" company such as this, for fear of sending the wrong message:
"Welcome to Starbucks, have a drink, sit down, and feel right at home... but keep a weather eye on your car outside in the parking lot."
Respectfully,
Andrew
One more reason to visit (or, at least mail-order your Portland's coffee from Din Johnson's and Nancy Rommelmann's Ristretto Roasters). I get the Sumatra Mandheling, ground fine for espresso. As I've said before: "It's like drinking velvet."
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Rinse And Repeat
I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- your kid shouldn't die because you're cheap. And yes, this is a note to all the parents who save a few bucks by flying with their baby in their lap. Like this one, "midnight dream," in the comments on Salon's "Ask The Pilot," by Patrick SmithWhat about babies and kids?So I'm reading this coverage and all I can think is that the last time I flew, I had my 5-month-old son on my lap. How would I "brace for impact" in that event? They didn't let me keep him in the Baby Bjorn; the flight attendant said that babies are actually safer sitting in their parents' laps. I doubted it then and I doubt it now. If I had been on that plane today, how would I have been able to hold on to him when the plane hit the water? Can anyone offer any information?
"MWise," who is wise, responds:
Babies and KidsPer your question, midnightdream. Most baby safety guides will tell you that for the best protection your baby or child should have his own seat and when under a certain age he should be in his car carrier strapped into the plane's seat. I'm also pretty sure that Patrick in this column has mentioned that babies in laps are very unsafe when something bad happens.
Bill McGee, over at USA Today, seconds and thirds the idea that you should NEVER fly with your kid on your lap:
I know what you may be thinking. You're the child's caregiver. You love that little one more than anything in the world. You'd stand in front of an onrushing locomotive or walk through fire for that child. So of course you would hold on for dear life in an airborne emergency.Well, unless you're from the planet Krypton, the simple fact is you can't.
The NTSB stated as much in its 2004 analysis: "Both laboratory testing and real-world accidents have proven that under high load force events when restraint is most important, arm strength is not sufficient to protect even a small child." That's because commercial aircraft are designed to withstand tremendous g-forces, but humans are not. And therefore a 25-pound baby could easily weigh three or four times that amount when you're struggling to hold onto it during an emergency, let alone dealing with impact, smoke or fire. You wouldn't climb the side of a sheer mountain with your baby in one arm and a pick ax in the other, yet the G-forces in that situation are many times less than in a pressurized airplane moving at .82 mach, or four-fifths the speed of sound. In addition, a baby strapped inside your own seat belt can easily be crushed by your weight during an emergency.
Unfortunately, these laws of physics have been proven time and again, in the most heartbreaking of circumstances. In several cases, lap children have been seriously injured and killed in accidents that were survivable. There also are documented cases--including a flight near Puerto Rico in 1990--in which lap children were the only serious injuries when a commercial aircraft encountered severe turbulence. These are sobering findings that can make any parent's chest constrict. But the stakes couldn't be higher, so it's critical that all those who are traveling with small children understand the gravity of their decisions.
The 1989 crash landing of United Airlines Flight 232 near Sioux City, Iowa was particularly illuminating. The NTSB's accident report noted there were four lap children on the airplane (one of whom was 26 months old), and as per procedure, when the passengers were instructed to brace for impact, the cabin crew told the parents to place those four babies on the floor. The report stated: "The mothers of the infants in seats 11F and 22E were unable to hold onto their infants and were unable to find them after the airplane impacted the ground." Tragically, the boy who had been held in seat 22E died of asphyxia secondary to smoke inhalation. That accident report included a recommendation from the NTSB that the FAA make child restraint systems mandatory.
In 2004, the chief flight attendant from Flight 232 testified at an NTSB Advocacy Briefing and described how she issued the instructions about placing those babies on the cabin floor. Jan Lohr stated: "We are required to secure all items from carry-on bags to galley items, including coffee pots, to comply with regulations aimed at ensuring safety onboard the aircraft. We do this because we are trained that in an emergency loose items can become missiles flying through the cabin. A lap child is one of those 'loose items' in the cabin that may not only suffer serious injury themselves but also injure others. Is this allowable exception truly creating a safe cabin environment? ... When preparing the cabin for an emergency, flight attendants should not have to look a parent in the eye and instruct them to continue to hold the lap child when we know there is a very real possibility that child may not survive without proper restraints."
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How Bush Messed Up
I'm waiting for a president I'd actually feel good about voting for -- fiscally conservative and socially libertarian, for starters. The one we've had for the past two terms was, among other things, religiously pandering, scientifically backward, nation-building instead of defensive, and, fiscally...well, as I like to say, the bigggest Big Democrat we've had in office since FDR. Steve Chapman catalogs the Bush years in reason (in short, "eight years of arrogance, power lust, and incompetence"):Iraq. Bush insisted on fighting a war that didn't need to be fought, on the assumption it would be easy, for purposes that could have been achieved without getting more than 4,200 Americans killed and 30,000 wounded, not to mention squandering upward of a trillion dollars.The problem is not that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (as UN weapons inspectors in Iraq were on their way to confirming before the war began). It's that even if he did, they would have been militarily worthless, because using them would have guaranteed his immediate annihilation--which explains why Hussein didn't use chemical weapons in the first Gulf War. WMD or not, he was a danger we could easily contain.
Afghanistan. The president was right to go after the Taliban. But the Iraq invasion meant shortchanging the war we had to fight. "We're simply in a world of limited resources, and those resources are in Iraq," a senior administration official attests in David Sanger's new book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power--acknowledging an obvious truth the administration has always denied.
Results: Last year was our bloodiest yet in Afghanistan; Hamid Karzai's government controls only a third of the country; we are being forced to increase our troop presence; and al-Qaida is thriving just over the Pakistan border. Oh, one more thing: Osama bin Laden has yet to be taken, dead or alive.
The Budget. Bush represented the alleged party of small government, yet under him, federal outlays exploded. During his presidency, spending was up by 70 percent, more than double the increase under Bill Clinton. When Bush arrived, the federal government was running surpluses. Since then--not counting the horrendously expensive financial bailout--the national debt has nearly doubled. You can't blame Congress for all this: Bush was the first president in 176 years to go an entire term without vetoing a single piece of legislation.
Executive power. Conservatives are supposed to believe in strict limits on government power, but Bush pushed incessantly to expand the prerogatives of the president. He asserted the right to ignore laws banning torture and restricting wiretapping. The Supreme Court found that his imprisonment of captives at Guantanamo Bay violated the Constitution by denying them the right to challenge their detention in court.
Jack Goldsmith, a conservative legal scholar who held high positions in Bush's Justice and Defense departments, has faulted Bush for "his administration's strange and unattractive views of presidential power." What is needed, he wrote in The Terror Presidency, are leaders "with a commitment to the consent of the governed, who have checks and balances stitched into their breasts." Which Bush was not.
...Bush leaves us with the rule of law in shreds, the budget out of control, two interminable wars, and the public yearning for change. But to him, it's all good.
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How To Understand The Stimulus Package
This little vid pretty much explains it:
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Um, They Call It "Skill" Here In The Land Of Reason
I had always laughed to myself on planes when the flight attendant started in "In case of a water landing..." because, I know, in those landings you're usually toast. Wet toast, but toast nonetheless.I was reminded of this when reading an irritating comment by New York's governor Paterson about the US Airways pilot's water landing, and then, later, when reading an observation about Paterson's comment LAObserved. The pilot, the LAT piece made clear, is an incredibly skilled guy, and was able to do something few pilots have done before.
Yet, Paterson blurts out the heaven opened up! explanation -- that it was "a miracle." No, it wasn't. It was a case of a guy doing his job so well that he saved almost 150 people, and only one was injured in any substantive way -- one guy with two broken legs.
Here's the account from the LAT, by Matea Gold and Jennifer Oldham and Peter Pae:
It was just a few minutes after takeoff. The voice that came over the intercom was urgent but calm."Brace for impact," Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, 57, told the 150 passengers of US Airways Flight 1549.
A veteran commercial pilot who flew fighter jets for the Air Force, Sullenberger pulled off a feat Thursday that drew grateful kudos from high-ranking government officials and the passengers aboard the Airbus A320: safely bringing his plane down onto the icy, 65-foot-deep waters of the Hudson River.
By all early accounts, Sullenberger's deft maneuvering helped turn a potentially catastrophic situation into one remarkable for its lack of casualties.
After setting the aircraft down in one piece, the captain made two passes up and down the aisle to ensure that all of the passengers were off, then allowed rescuers to pluck him off the sinking plane.
Aviation experts said they could not recall another successful controlled water landing by a commercial airliner in the U.S.
...It would be difficult to find a pilot who had better credentials to handle the unusual emergency that faced Flight 1549, which apparently hit a flock of Canada geese shortly after taking off from New York's LaGuardia Airport.
Sullenberger, who lives in Danville, Calif., has more than 40 years of flying experience, the last 29 as a captain with US Airways.
He has served as a local safety chairman and accident investigator for the Air Line Pilots Assn., International, according to his resume.
He also is a certified glider pilot, CNN reported, which may have helped him bring the Airbus down gently onto the river.
Before his work as a commercial pilot, Sullenberger had a short but distinguished military career.
He flew an F-4 fighter, a Vietnam-era jet that is notoriously difficult to handle compared with modern aircraft. He was also a mission commander for Red Flag combat training exercises, a coveted position usually assigned to the top pilots.
"He is the consummate pilot," his wife, Lorraine, told the New York Post.
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Who Loses In Identity Theft
If you happen to catch it in time, the bank gives you back your money, but the hell goes on and on and on from there. And, if the bank is the one who laid you open for identity theft, as I have reason to believe happened in my case (I write checks only to a trusted handful like my landlord and assistant, and don't pay with an ATM card), who compensates you for that?The always-excellent Katherine Mangu-Ward makes a good point via Bruce Schneier in interviewing him for reason:
Reason: One theme that comes up in your book and some of the interviews you've done recently is the idea that when money/profit is involved, security operations tend to be tighter and more efficient. Explain to Reason.com readers--or at least speculate on--why that's the case.Schneier: The person or organization who is subject to the risk needs to be responsible for risk mitigation. In banking, for example, the banks need to be responsible for their own risk. They lose money if the bank is robbed, so they're in the best position to weigh the cost of security measures against the risk of robbery. Customers don't lose money when there's a bank robbery, so they can't balance the risks and costs. Conversely, it makes no sense for bank customers to be penalized for identity theft losses. They're in no position to mitigate the risks--whereas the banks are--so customers shouldn't be responsible for the losses.
This doesn't mean there's no place for government to be responsible for risks. In airline security, the risks are far greater than any one airline. It makes no sense for airlines to hire security screeners--they can't do a proper risk analysis--and a lot of sense for the government to step in to fill that role.
Banks like the incredibly negligent Bank of America, which allowed me to be a victim of identity theft through their spectacular negligence, don't pick up the cost of your time in sweeping up the mess afterward. They don't pay you back for loss of peace of mind that goes on for years afterward. And if you're one of the few who gets picked up on criminal charges for a crime committed by the person running around with your identity, just try not to be murdered in jail, 'kay?
Banks are notoriously hard to sue, and attorney and identity theft expert Mari Frank told me that a bank will bury you in paperwork, costing you megabucks. And because the bank pays you back the money the thief took from your account, the law makes them the victim, and you're left rather toothless in terms of an ability to take corrective action. The law needs to be changed to give the real victim rights.
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Ego City
The site, not somebody's bloated one, is what I'm looking for information on. It's a social networking site, Ego-City.com, and I'm wondering if anybody who is a member there comes here, and can talk about their experience. For research I'm doing. You can remain anonymous.For the uninitiated, it's basically a chatroom with cartoon avatars.
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Kiddie Porn Or Adult Idiocy?
The teen years are not known as the judgment years for a reason. In fact, the development of the reasoning center of the brain can lag pretty far behind the current technological advances to get kids in serious but seriously stupid trouble.As I pointed out last month in a column: "Recent research by child and adolescent psychiatrist Jay N. Giedd suggests the prefrontal cortex, the judgment department of the brain, is still developing through the early-to-mid 20s." Yet, MSNBC's Mike Brunker writes of yet another story where some teens are facing child porn charges after sharing nude photos via cell phones:
In an unusual legal case arising from the increasingly popular practice known as "sexting," six Pennsylvania high school students are facing child pornography charges after three teenage girls allegedly took nude or semi-nude photos of themselves and shared them with male classmates via their cell phones.The female students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., all 14- or 15-years-old, face charges of manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys, who are 16 and 17, face charges of possession, according to WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh, which published the story on its Web site on Tuesday.
Police told the station that the photos were discovered in October, after school officials seized a cell phone from a male student who was using it in violation of school rules and found a nude photo of a classmate on it. Police were called in and their investigation led them to other phones containing more photos, it said.
Police Capt. George Seranko was quoted as saying that the first photograph was "a self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude."
The school district issued a statement Tuesday saying that the investigation turned up "no evidence of inappropriate activity on school grounds ... other than the violation of the electronic devices policy." The statement also said that school officials didn't learn of the charges against the students until Monday.
In the WPXI story, which included contributions from the Associated Press, Saranko indicated that authorities decided to file the child pornography charges to send a strong message to other minors who might consider sending such photos to friends.
"It's very dangerous," he said. "Once it's on a cell phone, that cell phone can be put on the Internet where everyone in the world can get access to that juvenile picture. You don't realize what you are doing until it's already done."
This is what parents are for, asshat. And frankly, if there's a nude photo of you floating around on the Internet, it's not the end of the world. It is, however, the end of a lot of things if you have to register as a sex offender for the rest of your days, and have a criminal record because you were kind of an immature idiot as a teen. Or, in the case of the boys, if you know a girl who got the bright idea to send you a picture of her titties, and you didn't erase it immediately, thinking your life might be ruined by the mere act of receiving it.
On the bright side, it doesn't seem to have occurred to the Greensburg cops to start jailing teens for arson for lighting their farts on fire.
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When Canada Came To Harlem
Harlem educator Geoffrey Canada seems to be of the mind that I am, that the black-white achievement gap is less about money than about culture. Last year, I started doing talks at an inner-city school to try to help give the kids a sense of what's possible if you're willing to work your ass off (and not knock girls up or get knocked up and perpetuate the single motherhood and daddylessness that perpetuates the cycle of poverty, hopelessness, and crime as a career choice).I just got an e-mail from the teacher who's been scheduling me in. It sounds like I can start again in February and maybe start bringing other speakers. If you live in Los Angeles, and are self-made (not from a rich family) and do something cool for a living (especially if it's something like being a chef that doesn't take a college education), maybe you would be a candidate. A few details follow at the bottom of this blog item. If you think you'd fit the bill, e-mail me and tell me why.
Back to Geoffrey Canada, Kay Hymowitz writes on City Journal that he's trying to educate young pregnant women in how to parent and trying to change cultural attitudes toward education:
His staff pounded the pavement in a 24-block zone searching for pregnant young women to enroll in a workshop called Baby College. (Over time, the Zone would grow to 97 blocks.) There, they would learn the sorts of behaviors that middle-class parents seem to adopt intuitively: reading to their young children, teaching them to observe and think, stimulating them, and using soft power--in other words, distraction and negotiation--rather than resorting to "Beat Ass Early," as Tough describes one couple's preferred method of discipline.Early in HCZ's evolution, Canada discovered that he had to get to poor kids as early in their lives as possible; when he first opened Promise Academy, a charter middle school, almost 60 percent of the sixth-graders arrived with third-grade reading skills or lower, and he never could bring them up to a level that satisfied his funders. He also had to contend with the notorious "fade-out" effect--the tendency of the immediate gains of early childhood education for disadvantaged kids to vanish by third grade. His solution was what he called a "conveyor belt," a series of self-reinforcing programs, beginning with Baby College and continuing with a school for three-year-olds, prekindergarten, kindergarten, a K-12 extended-day-and-year charter school, and afterschool programs. What he imagined was less like the conventional piecemeal social welfare programs that had been tried--and tried again--in the past, and more akin to a religious revival that would imbue its followers with middle-class aspirations and the skills needed to realize them.
It's easy enough to share Tough's sympathy for Canada and his project. The Harlem Children's Zone, which costs $60 million per year, is research-based and accountable to its funders. Canada is devoted, savvy, and ambitious. Some might say too ambitious. The HCZ is predicated on the idea that educators can, in Tough's words, "compensate for any kind of childhood" on a mass scale; indeed, that they can "heal" the culture of an entire community. But at this point, while some elementary-school test scores look promising, there isn't much evidence for such hopes' becoming reality. By 2007, only a small group of third-graders had spent five years on Canada's conveyor belt. It will be over a decade before we know whether they're going to college, not to mention graduating.
And the question remains whether Canada's template can be imitated across the country. The list of seemingly successful initiatives that have foundered on the journey to replication is endless, and the HCZ's interwoven tapestry of programs is more complex than most. Canada, his staff, and his generous funders also bring a sense of urgency, devotion, and flexibility to their cause that will inevitably be sapped by the bureaucratic planning required to reproduce the programs in 20 faraway cities.
It's an old story, really: everyone thinks they've found The Policy Answer when what they've really spotted is brilliant local leadership. It's a story the Obama administration would be wise to remember.
By the way, I'll find out in a few days whether this speaker program, which I proposed for a big grant, will be in the running to get funding. The funding would not go to the speakers (who, like me, will be volunteers) but to an excellent national organization that helps "at-risk youth." The organization would execute and administer the program on a national level, with speakers going in to talk to kids every three months during the school year, from the youngest grades on up. An excerpt from my write-up:
Inner-city kids see only hopelessness around them. Kids who could do something with their lives -- have a career, a business, make a difference -- needlessly end up in dead-end, minimum-wage jobs; in part, because they see no reason it makes sense to hope for anything more.This program sends these kids living, breathing role models -- self-made successes with cool jobs who deconstruct their path, showing that their success wasn't magic, and they aren't geniuses, but ordinary people who made it through perseverance and hard work.
Speakers present their life history and career history, warts and all. They explain ways they chose poorly along the way, and embrace their failures as part of succeeding.
Speakers take questions -- talking openly on life and careers -- and respond to kids' fears. They address kids of all aptitudes -- advising kids (college-bound or not) to seek jobs where they can learn and a boss or other successful person to mentor them. The program is secular, but includes a message about how teen pregnancy derails the opportunities discussed by the speaker, and likely leads to lives of poverty for teen mothers and their children.
...People talk about providing poor kids with equal opportunity. This takes much more than simply giving kids in South Central L.A. the same textbooks that they use in Beverly Hills. We need to show at-risk kids, starting in the earliest elementary school grades on up, that it isn't ridiculous for them to believe they can do something with their lives. And we do that by bringing in role models -- ordinary people who've built a business, made a difference, done something with their lives -- to show the kids that it makes sense for them to dream of having a better life, and to break down the steps to get there.
Please feel free to "steal" this program and start it in a school near you.
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Bank of America's Negligence Pays Off Yet Again!
Bank of America, I discovered through personal experience and subsequent investigation, is exceptionally lax in verifying the identity of people going to teller windows to get money out. For those who haven't been around here for long, Bank of America, on SEVEN separate occasions, gave a total of $12,000 of my money to thieves with ONLY a fake driver's license in my name and the wrong expiration date.No bankcard was demanded, no PIN was required, no signature was checked? Why not? Probably because, as I learned in my investigation, many of these banks they bought and merged with are not connected by one computer system. It seems they don't check...because, most appallingly, they can't check. As for why this is their practice, I spoke to yet another IT guy last night who told me what the other IT guys have: That it's exceptionally expensive to connect bank computer systems, and cheaper to just cross one's fingers that the thieves don't know that it's impossible to actually verify customer identity.
Perhaps B of A's computer's been connected since my investigation -- in Summer and Fall of 2009 -- an extremely expensive proposition, but one I believe they owe their customers, considering how they brag about their "multiple layers of security." Hah.
Ken Lewis, the head of B of A, and his enablers, customer "service" VP Nereida Claudius and spokepiece Betty Reiss, know very well about what I went through at the bank, and the substantial danger B of A customers seem to be in for identity theft thanks to what appears to be the bank's spectacular laxness in doing their fiduciary duty to guard their customers' money and identity. Yet, their response: to fire me as a customer for complaining a little too bitterly that they advertise substantial security but do not provide it, allowing thieves with one of the most counterfeitable items, a driver's license, to walk out with thousands of my dollars, in cash, totally off-pattern for me (I almost never take out more than a few hundred dollars, and almost always from the same ATMs within miles of my house, not in places in Texas or the middle of California that I've never been.)
Meanwhile, more of the the banks disgusting sloppiness -- this time, in investing in Merrill Lynch -- is now on center stage. And true to pattern, you and I are again paying the price.
I have a complaint in at the Comptroller of the Currency. A complaint they've been really tardy in addressing. I wanted to see the bank fined (of course, that would now be us being fined) and I want them to either change their business practices or advertise honestly the actual level of their "security" and let their customers decide for themselves whether they want to bank at an establishment that shows so little care in verifying customer identity.
Meanwhile, here from CNN is the latest on how we're all paying for B of A's laxness, in a story by David Goldman, Tami Luhby and Grace Wong:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Bank of America has received another $20 billion from the federal government's bailout fund, along with guarantees on $118 billion of assets at the bank, to absorb its recent purchase of the ailing Merrill Lynch....The bailout deal also provides a $118 billion backstop from the Fed in case of "unusually large losses" on assets backed by real-estate loans, most of which are being absorbed by Bank of America in its buyout of brokerage house Merrill Lynch. Bank of America will pay 3.7% of those assets as a fee for the backstop, and is responsible for the first $10 billion of losses and 10% of the remaining losses.
According to Ken Lewis, Bank of America's chief executive, Bank of America realized soon after its merger deal with Merrill Lynch in mid-September that Merrill's losses were accelerating beyond expectations. In December, the bank discovered Merrill's asset deterioration was "much, much higher" than anyone had forecast.
But when the bank considered renegotiating the deal, the Treasury Department intervened.
"As we saw the anticipated loss accelerating, we reevaluated our rights under the deal," Lewis said on a conference call with investors. "The government was under the view that walking away would cause significant concerns and serious systemic harm to the financial markets."
Lewis said the government's response led to considerable uncertainty about its next steps, but in the end, he concluded that sticking with the deal would best benefit the national economy.
"We did think we were doing the right thing for the country," Lewis said.
Oh, did you? Like you were doing "the right thing" for customers like me by cheaping out on security? Like you're doing "the right thing" by taxpayers like those commenting on this blog by sucking us dry for your bad business decisions? I live very frugally, and I'm hurting (papers have gone out of business right and left) because of the actions of speculating scumbags like you and your high-living cronies, Ken Lewis. You're a rich man. How about apologizing for the bad business decisions at Bank of America by putting your money where your mouth is?
Is there one financial "whiz" out there who has responded to his business failings by taking any sort of personal responsibility for them? I see only the French guy, who felt so terrible that he killed himself. I don't like to see that happen, but at least he seemed to have a sense of honor.
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Pole Dancing
An ev. psych friend in Detroit writes, "It is 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer at the North Pole right now than in Detroit, and they only get 2 minutes of sun today at the North Pole":CURRENT CONDITIONS Detroit -11° Few Clouds
Wind: SW at 10 mph
Humidity: 66%
Dewpoint: -18°
Pressure: 30.55"
Heat Index: -11°
Wind Chill: -30°
Sunrise: 7:59 am
Sunset: 5:28 pm
NORTH POLE WEATHER
Right Now Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:00:12 GMT -8° Overcast
Wind: SW at 13 mph
Humidity: 65%
Dewpoint: -15°
Pressure: 29.80"
Heat Index: -8°
Wind Chill: -28°
Sunrise: 11:59 pm
Sunset: 12:01 amNot to be mean, but it's 52 here, going to 82 today. It went to 86 yesterday. It's a little cold in my house now, so Lucy's wearing a sweater and so am I. A little cold, like 66 or something, I'd guess. So sorry, hate to gloat. Well, not enough to stop doing it.
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Why I Want To Hug John Tierney
The NYT's Tierney wonders why kids in science class are spending their time on recycling:If we want our children to be scientifically literate and get good jobs in the future, why are we spending precious hours in school teaching them to be garbage collectors?That's the question that occurred to me after reading about the second-graders in West Virginia who fought for the right to keep recycling trash even after it became so uneconomical that public officials tried to stop the program. As my colleague Kate Galbraith reports, their teacher was proud of them for all the time they spent campaigning to keep the recycling program alive.
My colleague Andy Revkin suggests that the West Virginia students might be learning something useful about the interplay of economics and ecology, but I fear they and their teacher have missed the lesson. The reason that public officials cut back the program, as Matt Richtel and Kate reported, is the market for recyclables has collapsed because the supply vastly exceeds the demand. This could be a valuable learning experience for the students about markets and about the long-term tendency of prices of natural resources to fall while the cost of people's time rises.
Instead, the students are being taught that saving resources is more important than saving human time, and that recycling is such a righteous activity that it deserves to continue even when it costs money and time to do it. That may be a popular belief, but that's all it is, a belief. I've always thought of recycling as essentially a religious sacrament - a fine activity if pursued voluntarily, but not something that should be mandated or taught in public schools.
Julian Simon from The Ultimate Resource II: Peoples And Materials on Will Our Consumer Wastes Bury Us? An excerpt:
These are some basic facts about the dimensions of our waste output:1. An American produces about 4 pounds of solid wastes per day, on average, with estimates varying from a pound less to a few pounds more.
2. The growth in the quantity of household waste has slowed in recent years; it is less than the growth of GNP, and not much more than the growth in population. Waste per person in New York City at the beginning of this century (excluding ash) was greater than the national average today.
3. The quantity of coal ash generated by homes was almost 4 pounds per day at the turn of the century. So total waste has declined sharply. (As a young boy I shoveled out the furnace and carried to the curb our house's coal-ash waste. I can testify that the onset of modern fuels such as natural gas not only reduced urban waste but removed an onerous household burden.)
4. The U.S. is not an extravagant producer of waste. "The average household in Mexico City produces one third more garbage a day than does the average American household."
5. If all the U.S. solid waste were put in a landfill dug 100 yards deep or piled 100 yards high - less than the height of the landfill on Staten Island within the boundaries of New York City - the output for the entire 21st century would require a square landfill only 9 miles on a side. Compaction would halve the space required. Compare this 81 square miles to the 3.5 million square miles of U.S. territory. The area of the U.S. is about 40,000 times larger than the required space for the waste. Nine miles square is a bit less than the area of Abilene, Texas, the first city in the alphabetical list, and a bit more than the area of Akron, Ohio, the second city alphabetically.
If each state had its own landfill, the average state would require only about 1.5 square miles to handle its next century's entire waste. I chose the period of a hundred years because that is ample time for scientists to develop ways of compacting and converting the wastes into smaller volumes and products of commercial value - twice as long as the time since we got rid of household coal ash.
6. The cost of urban recycling programs is typically about twice the cost of landfill disposal, even without including the cost to consumers of separating various kinds of materials (a cost that can be very high to an individual whose time has a high market or personal value. In New York City the cost of recycling in 1991 dollars "appears to be $400 to $500 per ton," and "in one Midwest city reached $800 per ton," compared to the $25 to $40 per ton costs for landfill disposal.
The cost of recycling tends to rise as more recycling is done, because recycling increases the supply of recycled materials, especially newspaper. This decreases the prices paid for recycled paper. Indeed, the price may fall below zero, and recycling programs then either must pay the recycling facility to accept the paper, or put the paper in a landfill. For example, in 1988, Barberton, Ohio received $30 per ton for its waste paper, but by 1989, the town had to pay $10 per ton to the recycler. Hence Barberton shut down its recycling program and sold off its equipment.
Julian Simon's bet with eco-doomsayer Paul Ehrlich here. Ehrlich lost. The details:
Simon offered Ehrlich a bet centered on the market price of metals. Ehrlich would pick a quantity of any five metals he liked worth $1,000 in 1980. If the 1990 price of the metals, after adjusting for inflation, was more than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became more scarce), Ehrlich would win. If, however, the value of the metals after inflation was less than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became less scare), Simon would win. The loser would mail the winner a check for the change in price.Ehrlich agreed to the bet, and chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten.
By 1990, all five metal were below their inflation-adjusted price level in 1980. Ehrlich lost the bet and sent Simon a check for $576.07. Prices of the metals chosen by Ehrlich fell so much that Simon would have won the bet even if the prices hadn't been adjusted for inflation.
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What's Next, Dr. Kevorkian Martini Mix?
Gregg was just in Kroger, a Detroit grocery store, and couldn't believe what he saw. Here, from the Kroger press release for "Old Yeller" dog food:Inspired by one of the most beloved movie classics of all time, The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) today introduced Disney's Old Yeller, a chunk style dog food now available at more than 2,500 stores around the country (photo here).Disney's Old Yeller is a 100% complete and balanced product for dogs of all sizes. It is available in 50 lb. bags priced at $9.99-$11.99, depending on the geographic market. Two additional bag sizes will be introduced in June. Kroger plans to support the brand with an aggressive advertising and marketing campaign.
Released in 1957, Walt Disney's Old Yeller was the quintessential tale of a boy's love for his dog. Set amid the landscape of 1860s Texas, a young boy named Travis wants nothing to do with the lop-eared stray. But Old Yeller quickly proves himself a loyal friend, protecting the family and saving Travis' life. They soon become inseparable pals, sharing joyous experiences and learning valuable lessons about growing up.
"The movie is a timeless classic that transcends generations, and we believe this brand will appeal not only to original fans, but to the millions of Americans who share the same kind of special bond with their beloved dogs," said Barry Vance, Kroger senior corporate category manager.
The same kind of special bond? The dog dies in the end, dipshits. He gets rabies and the kid has to shoot him.
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Barbarian Goes Hollywood -- For Now
Borzou Daragahi writes for the LA Times of the ambitions of a nice Muslim teenage girl in "Martyrdom beckons Lebanese teen, but she really wants to direct":
Reporting from Tyre, Lebanon -- Hiba Qassir dreams of making movies. She's ambitious and precocious enough. At 18, she's taught herself how to edit video and sound on a computer, and has her sights set on directing gripping social and psychological dramas.But if the movie business doesn't work out, that's OK. She has other dreams: perhaps to become a cop or a pilot. Or maybe a suicide bomber.
"Martyrdom is the shortest way to heaven, and the history of martyrdom is not like any history," Hiba says. "It made victory. We wouldn't have achieved victory without these martyrdoms."
Islam -- the religion of pieces (infidel body parts everywhere!)
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Why They Call Her "A Backlasher, A Traitor, Anti-Woman, And A Female Impersonator"
I don't call myself a feminist. I say I'm a humanist, for fair treatment for all people, not special treatment under the guise of equal treatment, which modern feminism too often is. Accordingly, Christina Hoff Sommers calls herself an equity feminist. More on this in an excerpt from Hoff Sommers' talk linked by the American Enterprise Institute, in which she explains why she's so hated:What I am is a philosophy professor with a respect for logic, clear thinking, rules of evidence and -- I hope -- a strong sense of fairness. In fact, I think it's my bias toward logic, reason, and fairness that has put me at odds with the feminist establishment.I am not here to urge you to reject old-fashioned classical feminism of the sort that won women the vote, educational opportunity and many other freedoms. I am a passionate supporter of that style of feminism, which I call equity feminism. An equity feminist wants for women what she wants for everyone---fair treatment, respect, and dignity. Equity feminism promotes harmony and good will between the sexes and it can lead to a much saner, happier and more ethical world.
Equity feminism is not new. It is rooted in the classically liberal political tradition that had its beginnings in the European Enlightenment. It was classical liberalism that inspired the First Wave of feminism in the 19th century, which secured women the vote; it also informed the Second Wave in the sixties and seventies that further enhanced women's freedoms and opportunities. By any reasonable measure, equity feminism is a great American success story. American women are flourishing. To give just a few examples from higher education: Women today earn 57 percent of bachelor's degrees, 59 percent of master's degrees, and, 50 percent of doctorate degrees. In every racial and ethnic groups studied by the U.S. Department of Education, young women are outperforming their male counterparts.3Are things perfect for women? Certainly not. But they are not perfect for men either. The fact is the major battles of American women for equal treatment and opportunity have been fought and won. Yes, women are still struggling with how to balance family and work; yes, we need to find ways to get more young women interested in running for public office and entering fields like math, computer science and engineering. But for the most part the hard work of equity feminism in the 21st century now lies outside this country, in countries where women are truly oppressed. There are many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East and Africa, where women have not yet seen so much as a ripple of freedom, let alone two major waves of liberation. I believe that the liberation of women in the developing world will be the greatest human rights struggle of our time.
Why then, you may be wondering, does my position and that of other equity feminist scholars such as Camille Paglia, Daphne Patai, or the late Elizabeth Fox-Genovese arouse so much opposition? I will explain. If you have had a feminist speaker at your school, taken an introductory women's studies class, or visited the website of one or more of our national women's groups, you will not find the successes of equity feminism celebrated; you will not find expressions of happiness for the freedoms and opportunities American women now enjoy. The dominant philosophy of today's women's movement is not equity feminism--but "victim feminism." "Victim" feminists don't want to hear about the ways in which women have succeeded. They want to focus on and often invent new ways and perspectives in which women can be regarded as oppressed and subordinated to men.
If you have yet to read Hoff Sommers' terrific book, Who Stole Feminism?, pick up a copy here. Her latest book, which I have yet to read: One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance
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via ifeminist
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Homeopathy Is For Dipshits
Terrific piece by Mark Crislip on Science-Based Medicine, slapping down the nitwitty claims from homeopath Louise McClean in her piece giving 50 "facts" about homeopathy. An excerpt from Crislip:
Fact 12 - Homeopathic remedies are cheap.Logical Fallacy: none.
Error: Yes, water is inexpensive. However, think for a moment what it takes to make a homeopathic preparation. Take a 25 ml (1.7 tablespoons) bottle of 200C homeopathic preparation. To make such a product you need 495 liters (about 130 gallons, or 1040 pints) of water to make the required dilutions for one bottle (4). That is an amazing waste of water. Environmentally maybe not so cheap.
Fact 13 - Pharmaceutical medicines are expensive.Logical Fallacy: strawman, non sequitur. false dichotomy, which I like to call the, 'oh yeah, well you are fat' fallacy.
Error: some real medications are expensive , some are not. Unlike homeopathy, pharmaceutical medicines are proven to work. Whatever the failings of science based medicine, those failings do not validate homeopathy. Homeopathy has to stand or fall on its own, not on the perceived failings of others. It is like declaring you are thin, because I am fat.
Fact 14 - There are more than 4,000 homeopathic medicines.Logical Fallacy: strawman.
Error: Homeopathy is one 'medication': water.
Fact 15 - Homeopathic medicines have no toxic side-effects.Logical Fallacy: none
Error: tell that to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Medications can only have side effects if first they have an effect. No effect, no side effect. I wonder. Do homeopaths ever misdiagnose? If so, what is the effect of giving the wrong homeopathic treatment?
Fact 16 - Homeopathic medicines are non-addictive.Logical Fallacy: none.
Error: you try going without water.
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When Benefits Become Deficits
Boy, do I feel smart now. I worked for a big company for a few years right out of college, and took my retirement money in dollars rather than stock. Jon Entine writes at reason that pension funds are soon to implode:If the stock market remains in a funk for even a few more months, corporations that oversee union pension funds and state and municipal leaders responsible for public retirement pools may be faced with difficult choices. First on the docket might be postponing cost-of-living increases and reducing health care coverage for retirees. Over the longer term, benefits for new employees will have to be shaved and everyone is likely to see an increase in personal payroll contributions. Corporations will have to resort to more cost cutting and layoffs of their own just to guarantee the solvency of their pension funds. And things could go from bad to terrible if the managers of those funds do not quickly revise their investment practices.During melting markets, all pension funds come under siege. If you're covered by a "defined contribution" plan, contributions are invested, usually by your employer and usually in the stock market, and the returns are credited to the employee's account. Your retirement savings grow if the market rises or, as is the case now, bleed when it crashes. You carry the risk on your shoulders.
The risk shifts to the employer under "defined benefit" plans, in which future outlays are guaranteed. That seemed like a great idea for business as recently as 2007, when the market was rising and the pension funds of America's 500 largest companies held a surplus of $60 billion. Now they're at a deficit of $200 billion, with fund assets dropping like a lodestone.
The Pension Protection Act of 2006 requires that companies keep the accounts fully funded over time, meaning that they have to have enough money to pay all of their retirees should they decide to withdraw their funds. Yet more than 200 of the 500 big-company plans are nowhere close to meeting that standard, and those dire numbers are increasing.
Whoops, maybe it's a little soon to feel smart. Also, as Entine writes, maybe those companies should have been a little more interested in the fiscal welfare of those enrolled in their funds, instead of social causes:
Many union funds and larger state pension plans screen stocks and investment opportunities based on what are known as "socially responsible investing," or SRI, principles. Instead of focusing solely on maximizing value, fund managers have used the economic clout of concentrated stock holdings to make a statement by divesting from companies that don't make it through certain "sin screens." These included companies involved with weapons, nuclear energy, tobacco, alcohol, natural resources, and genetic modifications on agriculture, many of which did well over the past decade. Stocks of public companies deemed to have poor records on labor, environmental issues, women's rights, and gay rights are also frequently screened out, as are corporations that do business with regimes that activists consider unsavory. In some cases, investments have been withheld altogether from some of the markets expected to best weather the current financial storm, including China and India, because of perceived transgressions.Socially responsible investing now claims a market of more than $2 trillion, according to the Social Investment Forum, the trade group for social investors. There are dozens of mutual funds and investment advisory companies that incorporate ideological screens. Most of them are liberal, although there are now a few conservative funds and some based on religious principles, such as Islamic law. Activist treasurers and pension fund managers in numerous states and municipalities, most notably in California, New York, and Connecticut, have incorporated social screens into their investment strategies.
Many of these funds prospered in the 1990s, when the basic material stocks that they frowned upon swooned, while the favored sectors--mostly technology and financial stocks, which were considered "clean investments"--did great. But the technology and communications bust of 2000-02 knocked out one of SRI's pillars, and now the crash in financial stocks has destroyed the other. Despite much hype to the contrary, socially responsible stocks, as measured by major broad-based SRI stock funds, have significantly underperformed the market this decade, and some of the most aggressive pension funds that use "responsible" screens--such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System--have taken some of the largest hits.
"Investing in socially responsible stocks just because they are socially responsible is not--underline not--a valid investment thesis," says Steven Pines, a senior investment consultant for Northern Trust. Many of the largest socially responsible mutual funds, including a leading benchmark, the Domini Social Index, have been laggards for years. The Sierra Club's high-profile social fund, which had regularly trailed the benchmark S&P 500 index by about 6 percent a year, liquidated in December, a victim of its poor performance record. As recently as last November, 76 out of the 91 socially responsible stock funds were underperforming the Dow, according to the investment research company Morningstar.
Thanks, but I'll send money to social causes of my own choice.
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i-Holes
A-holes on the Internet, that is. Assholes, in case any of you were worried I'm losing my pottymouth.What is it about people that makes them feel free to blurt out things on the Internet that they'd surely never say in person?
Can you imagine a guy in the grocery store walking up to some woman he thinks is single and childless and telling her she'd better find a man to marry her and get knocked up fast?
"Benjamin Cole" left this remark in the comments on the entry, Would You Marry, And If So, Why?
Amy in her late 20s? That's my point. From her photo and bio, probably into her 40s -- but still stuck on the marriage question, and publicly wallowing in self-appraisal, and her world, and her feelings etc etc etc.If Amy is still reading (I assume she took sleeping pills after reading the line "she did the right thing for the life of the child she didn't have" ), I have no hard feeling towards you, I never even met you. I wandered into this site, as it was linked to a libertairan site.
But crickey, Amy, get married and have some kids, and have some fun. Time to eat at the adult's table. Don't you feel trapped in some sort of 20-something world? Who are dating now? Are you getting to that next oh-so-important stage of your career? Were you snubbed at a party etc etc etc.
No, I am not saying kids are the only thing. If you have them, they should be almost the only thing, while they live with you. When they are grown, then fine, back to the wine and classic music in the evening, and (if affordable) vacations sans kids. If you are lucky, you will have time in your life for the full-cycle.
Good luck to everybody. I just worry some singles are out there, so concerned with their petty problems, they don't realize they are missing the real stuff. They are going to miss one of the best stages in life, as I almost did.
Like I said, find someone who loves kids, and have them. Every penny invested yields a dollar, and I am not talking about money.
My reponse:
I'm 44, thanks, with very flat abs. I also find it incredibly rude to offer unsolicited advice, especially to strangers. Apparently, you do not. Perhaps try that in the grocery store -- walk up to women you don't know in the slightest and suggest they get knocked up and have babies already. For all you know, I've spent the last 10 years crying in fertility clinics and adoption agencies (I actually haven't.) But, why is it that people find it appropriate to behave on the Internet in a way they'd probably never dream of behaving in real life?And thanks, Gregg and I are very happy after six years together, and wouldn't muck it up by getting married. I don't deify tenure like so many people do, so I don't believe in pledging to be together forever. If it lasts "forever," great. If not, you go your separate ways.
I have kids in my life, nine of them, all of whom I'm very fond of and probably even love. Luckily, because I'm too impatient, self-involved, and uninterested in being a parent, they all came out of other women's vaginas, and I just hang out with them (the kids, not the vaginas). I must brag that I'm quite popular with all of them, but especially for the notes from the elephants I mail to 4-year-old Sebastian. (He's autistic, but reads at what's probably a sixth-grade level.)
And last week, when 15-year-old Ollie and his family were in town, he wanted to see Hollywood. And while, typically, I'd rather grow 11th and 12th toes than drive from the beach to Hollywood, except in 3 a.m. traffic, I hopped in the tiny hybrid, buzzed over and picked Ollie up, and took him to Hollywood and then out for a burger. He's really smart, and fun, and reminds me of me a little, and I love hanging out with him. And I'll go over and sometimes play a little indoor soccer or foosball with Dinosaur boy and his sister, my neighbor's kids, or come look at what projects they're making. But, this stuff is about all I'm good for.
So...why would an impatient, self-involved person who's utterly uninterested in being a parent, and who loves working seven days a week, dawn till dusk, as a writer, make a good mother? Just wondering!
P.S. Have I mentioned that I'm not really a kid person? The kids in my life I happen to like as people. In general, I find kids loud, smelly, and expensive. Yeah, baby, fire up that womb!
Oh, and regarding "publicly wallowing in self-appraisal" -- as Crid pointed out, it's a living, and, for the most part, it's usually other-appraisal. Clue number one: job description under blog masthead. Ya know, for a guy who seems to be under the impression he knows it all...
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He Blames HGTV
An ad exec named Jim Sollisch points the finger in the WSJ:The cable network HGTV is the real villain of the economic meltdown. As the viewership reached a critical mass over the past decade -- HGTV is now broadcast into 91 million homes -- homeowners began experiencing deep angst. Suddenly no one but the most slovenly and unambitious were satisfied with their houses. It didn't matter if you lived in an apartment or a gated community, one episode of "House Hunters" or "What's My House Worth?" and you were convinced you needed more. More square feet. More granite. More stainless steel appliances. More landscaping. More media rooms. More style. You deserved it.If you had any doubts about your ability to afford such luxuries, all you had to do was look at the 20-something couple in the latest episode choosing between three houses. Should they go for the fixer-upper, priced at $425,000? Or the one with the pool for $550,000? What about the one with room to grow for $675,000?
"How much money can these people possibly make?" I shout at my wife before wrestling the remote from her house-hungry little hand and switching it to the nearest sports program. "The guy can barely string together two sentences!"
And yet on episode after episode for this entire irrational decade, HGTV pumped up the housing bubble by parading the most mediocre, unworthy-looking homeowners into our living rooms to watch while they put their tacky, run-of-the-mill tract homes on the market for twice what they paid and then went out and bought houses with price tags too obscene to repeat. You couldn't watch these shows without concluding that you must be an idiot and a loser if you lived in a house you could actually afford.
I blame lack of personal responsibility. I saw all the people getting these crazy loans. I could've gotten one, and so could my neighbors. I didn't even consider buying a house in the nutso L.A. market. I know I can't afford it.
My neighbors told me a few weeks ago that they'd considered it, but realized there was something wrong with all these banks and mortgage companies giving nothing down or almost nothing down loans for $600,000 and million-dollar homes to people who didn't make enough to pay for them.
How do all these other people end up thinking this would end well for them? Or that living off their credit cards to buy a huge TV and lease a fancy car was a good idea? And I know there are legitimate problems for people with pre-existing conditions getting health insurance -- especially thanks to the way health insurance is still tied to employment, when we've become a society that changes jobs all the time instead of sitting in one desk chair for life until we get the gold watch. But, I'm wondering, are these high livers on high interest rates some or many of the people we're talking about who can't afford health insurance?
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Who, Actually, Has Hijacked Islam?
If you know anything about the horrible stuff between the pages of the Quran, you know that this guy, a commenter over at American Thinker who calls himself "antisocialist," gets it just right:George in Melbourne wrote: "The Author of the tragedy is Islamist Radicalism which has hijacked the Muslim faith."I very much disagree.
It is the "peaceful" Muslims who have hijacked the Mulim faith. The faithful are the ones who wage jihad.
Even if Islam were to somehow enter into a time of peace, the way the Koran is written, jihad will ALWAYS return.
The Koran is an unstable, radioactive book of death. Until every copy of it is burned, and those who have memorized it die off, the Koran will always have the capability of causing those who read it bring war and disaster on the world.
Nobody hijacked the Koran. It is an evil, deadly tome.
Oh, and in case you didn't know, the Quran is supposed to be taken literally by Muslims, as the direct word of god.
In the words of Ibn Warraq, "There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate."
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Canadian Christians Stand Behind Israel
And against hate. Canadian Jews are mum. And the Europeans are also saying and doing nothing. Ezra Levant on "The Christians are going to save the Jews."via Robert W
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Would You Marry, And If So, Why?
I read this book excerpt in the Times of London, from a woman whose husband asked for a divorce, and the question occurred to me.Personally, I'm in a happy relationship, and I feel no need to marry, and, in fact, have no interest in getting married -- to anyone, ever. Of course, I don't have or want kids, which makes a difference. Also, I have always believed that the only person responsible for supporting adult me is me. My definition of a great relationship (which describes my relationship with Gregg) is pretty simple: "Two people who are better together and have more fun together than they do alone." If that ever stops being the case, we'll break up.
So...if you aren't married, or if you are married and could go back and decide whether to be married again...would you marry and why?
And for the first comment, here's a brief bit from the ToL excerpt of Split: A Memoir of Love, Betrayal and Divorce, by Suzanne Finnamore:
The snag about marriage is, it isn't worth the divorce. My new doctrine is, never marry. I won't ever again. It is absolute swill. It's not just my marriage. It's all marriages except a handful.Marriage is a conspiracy from Tiffany's, florists, the diamond industry and Christian fundamentalists. The only good things about it are the diamond ring, the wedding gifts and the honeymoonamp.
Today the call came from the loan company, officially approving my buyout loan. I feel momentarily victorious.
The final settlement, I imagine, will also be very fair. I'll keep everything beginning with consonants (house, baby, dining room set, jewellery, dishes, dresser, bed) and N will keep everything beginning with vowels (armoire, umbrellas) because he is basically a good man and riddled with guilt.
This is turning out to be more and more of a comfort. We are a far cry from when I wept and said, I don't care, take everything. We are in a whole other state.
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Civil Wrongs Law May Change
I've always been against laws that give racial preferences in hiring and other areas. They're discriminatory -- and most ironically, racially discriminatory -- and insulting to people with actual ability who happen to be of whatever skin color or ethnicity that's being given special rights. David G. Savage writes in the LA Times that the Supreme Court may knock down long-standing special preferences for minorities:The justices, after meeting privately, announced they had voted to hear two cases that concern the lingering role of race in American life. The cases could put the court on a collision course with the incoming Obama administration.One of them arose when a Connecticut city, seeking to maintain diversity in its fire department, scrapped a civil-service test after it became clear the white firefighters had the best scores. This would have meant nearly all the promotions would have gone to whites, not blacks.
The white firefighters sued and said they had been victims of "race politics" in the New Haven city government. They urged the justices to rule that the Constitution and federal civil rights law require employers to use a "race neutral selection process."
In ruling against the white applicants, lower-court judges said employers had a duty to avoid tests or standards that would leave minorities at a disadvantage.
"We are not unsympathetic to the plaintiffs' expression of frustration," the U.S. appeals court said last year when it ruled against the white firefighters. The judges noted that Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff, is dyslexic and worked long hours to score well on the civil-service exam that was later discarded. But the appeals court ruled that the city was "simply trying to fulfill its obligations under [the Civil Rights Act] when confronted with test results that had a disproportionate racial impact."
At the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has spoken out against "racial balancing" as a legal policy and said civil rights laws call for a strict equal-treatment rule without regard to race.
Two years ago, Roberts spoke for a 5-4 majority that struck down voluntary integration policies in public schools because they relied on racial balancing.
The court said it would hear the case of the New Haven firefighters in April. It could give the Roberts court a chance to rule that civil rights laws require employers to follow an equal-treatment rule in hiring and promotions. Such a ruling could affect private employers and public agencies nationwide, and it could make it harder for minorities to obtain jobs or promotions.
People should obtain jobs or promotions because they are the best qualified for them. There will always be discrimination -- hiring somebody because they're Jewish, black, Catholic, Episcopalian, like dogs, hate dogs, or went to Yale -- but let's not continue to institutionalize it, shall we?
UPDATE: Meanwhile, their are complaints that there aren't enough black faces in the White House Press corps. Howard Kurtz writes for The Washington Post:
In private conversations, says White House correspondent April Ryan, President Bush has told her that "there need to be more minorities in the press corps.""The numbers dropped not because of a lack of minority correspondents, but because of the ownership of many papers and networks, at a time when diversity is very important," says Ryan, who reports for American Urban Radio Networks. "Imagine you're president, at the lectern, looking out at those faces -- is this a representation of America?"
Eight days before Barack Obama is sworn in, the relative paucity of black journalists at the White House is striking. A mostly white press corps at 1600 Pennsylvania would be cause for concern no matter what the color of the Oval Office occupant. But the advent of the Obama administration seems to underscore that racial progress has been uneven in a business that chronicles that very subject.
While there are some exceptions, most major news outlets that regularly chronicle the White House do not have a minority reporter on this, Washington's most visible beat.
...Mark Whitaker, NBC's Washington bureau chief, says that race is "a factor we look at, but we want to make sure we have the strongest team at the White House. If it's an issue, it should have been an issue before Obama."
Whitaker, who had been Newsweek's first African American editor, says he has tried to lure NBC anchor Lester Holt to Washington, without success. Diversity, he says, "is definitely something on my agenda long term."
On the newspaper side, the percentage of minority journalists is near its historic high, at 13.5 percent, but a huge wave of layoffs and buyouts has shrunk the overall pool.
"The problem is there are so few of us in the pipeline," says William Douglas, congressional reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, who last year found himself the only black print reporter regularly covering the White House. "Even before the economic downturn, there were only a handful of black reporters covering Capitol Hill or state legislatures."
And this, despite all the racist minority journalist programs, awarding fellowships, internships, and other awards to people based, not "on the content of their character" and their ability, but on how much melanin they have in their skin. Great. There's progress.
By the way, I once sat next to Whitaker's dad on a plane. I'm under the impression that he got his jobs before people started hiring people based on skin color. Like, on ability.
That's what I look for when I watch a reporter on TV or read somebody in print. Trust me, I'm not reading Thomas Sowell for his skin color.
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Ayn Rand Was Right
I'm not one of the slavering Ayn Rand worshippers. I think the lady was a little unhinged, and certainly, a hypocrite. But, on some things -- like her definition of love, and the currect economic situation, she was dead-on. And yes, I meant that: the current economic situation -- which she wrote about 52 years ago in Atlas Shrugged. Steven Moore, a senior economics writer for the WSJ's editorial page, writes in the WSJ:
The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to "Atlas," a Wall Street Journal headline blared: "Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices."
In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in "the public good." The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.
The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest."
Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.
One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:
Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"
Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"
"And you'll obey any order I give?"
"Implicitly!"
"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."
"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"
"Fire your government employees."
"Oh, no!"
Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.
David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas, explains that "the older the book gets, the more timely its message." He tells me that there are plans to make "Atlas Shrugged" into a major motion picture -- it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. "We don't need to make a movie out of the book," Mr. Kelley jokes. "We are living it right now."
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Bureaucracy Now
When's the last time you thought to yourself about how grateful you are for the way the government does things? Well, we're in store for more government than ever in the Obama administration. Peter Nicholas reports in the LA Times, quoting Allan Lichtman, an expert on the presidency:"Reagan famously said government is not the solution, it's the problem," Lichtman said. "Obama is saying government is the solution and, in fact, the only real solution to the crisis we're experiencing today. It's not just a matter of fixing the economy. It's a matter of fundamentally moving the economy in a new direction. And government, not private enterprise, has to take the lead."Prepare for the 600,000 new government jobs Obama wants to create in his administration.
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Do Muslims Really Care About Other Muslims?
Or do they just hate the Jews? The death toll of Muslims in Darfur has risen over 300,000, yet all the outcry is for the Palestinians (who claim 800 of their population have been killed). From the Sudan Tribune:January 4, 2009 (PARIS) -- Abdel Wahid Al-Nur, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, condemned the killing of civilians in both Gaza and Israel, and appealed to the warring parties to take into account the security of civilians, and the observance of international humanitarian laws.However, Al-Nur denounced the double standards of the League of Arab States and Organization of the Islamic Conference in this regard. He said if the Arab and Islamic countries mobilized 10% of what they are doing now for Gaza they could have prevented the "genocide" committed by Khartoum in Darfur against innocent and unarmed citizens.
He also underscored that Darfur people had and still have been subjected to the killing and oppression. "Khartoum deserves to be condemned for the genocide and war crimes committed" in the troubled western Sudan region, he said.
He also said that the number of people killed in Darfur -- death toll rose past 300.000 according to the UN -- exceeds the number of populations of certain states member of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Darfur rebels have been angered and disappointed by the blind support of Arab states to the Sudanese government about the conflict of Darfur.
There's something to note here: Palestinians are white. The Muslims in Darfur are black. Despite all the idiots in prisons converting to Islam, especially those who are black, the thing is, Muslims around the world largely look down on blacks, including black Muslims.
Two very illuminating articles on Islam's view on and treatment of blacks -- here and here.
While I posted the 800 figure above (as the most unconservative estimate), note that it comes from a Palestinian official, not an objective source. Why aren't more Israelis killed? Perhaps because Israelis hold and protect their children, and run them down into bomb shelters; they don't use them as human shields.
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When Islam Breaks Down
In case you didn't see the link Jon posted in the comments, another must-read piece by Dalrymple on City Journal, written in 2004. An excerpt:People grow angry when faced with an intractable dilemma; they lash out. Whenever I have described in print the cruelties my young Muslim patients endure, I receive angry replies: I am either denounced outright as a liar, or the writer acknowledges that such cruelties take place but are attributable to a local culture, in this case Punjabi, not to Islam, and that I am ignorant not to know it.But Punjabi Sikhs also arrange marriages: they do not, however, force consanguineous marriages of the kind that take place from Madras to Morocco. Moreover--and not, I believe, coincidentally--Sikh immigrants from the Punjab, of no higher original social status than their Muslim confrères from the same provinces, integrate far better into the local society once they have immigrated. Precisely because their religion is a more modest one, with fewer universalist pretensions, they find the duality of their new identity more easily navigable. On the 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's reign, for example, the Sikh temples were festooned with perfectly genuine protestations of congratulations and loyalty. No such protestations on the part of Muslims would be thinkable.
But the anger of Muslims, their demand that their sensibilities should be accorded a more than normal respect, is a sign not of the strength but of the weakness--or rather, the brittleness--of Islam in the modern world, the desperation its adherents feel that it could so easily fall to pieces. The control that Islam has over its populations in an era of globalization reminds me of the hold that the Ceausescus appeared to have over the Rumanians: an absolute hold, until Ceausescu appeared one day on the balcony and was jeered by the crowd that had lost its fear. The game was over, as far as Ceausescu was concerned, even if there had been no preexisting conspiracy to oust him.
One sign of the increasing weakness of Islam's hold over its nominal adherents in Britain--of which militancy is itself but another sign--is the throng of young Muslim men in prison. They will soon overtake the young men of Jamaican origin in their numbers and in the extent of their criminality. By contrast, young Sikhs and Hindus are almost completely absent from prison, so racism is not the explanation for such Muslim overrepresentation.
Confounding expectations, these prisoners display no interest in Islam whatsoever; they are entirely secularized. True, they still adhere to Muslim marriage customs, but only for the obvious personal advantage of having a domestic slave at home. Many of them also dot the city with their concubines--sluttish white working-class girls or exploitable young Muslims who have fled forced marriages and do not know that their young men are married. This is not religion, but having one's cake and eating it.
The young Muslim men in prison do not pray; they do not demand halal meat. They do not read the Qu'ran. They do not ask to see the visiting imam. They wear no visible signs of piety: their main badge of allegiance is a gold front tooth, which proclaims them members of the city's criminal subculture--a badge (of honor, they think) that they share with young Jamaicans, though their relations with the Jamaicans are otherwise fraught with hostility. The young Muslim men want wives at home to cook and clean for them, concubines elsewhere, and drugs and rock 'n' roll. As for Muslim proselytism in the prison--and Muslim literature has been insinuated into nooks and crannies there far more thoroughly than any Christian literature--it is directed mainly at the Jamaican prisoners. It answers their need for an excuse to go straight, while not at the same time surrendering to the morality of a society they believe has wronged them deeply. Indeed, conversion to Islam is their revenge upon that society, for they sense that their newfound religion is fundamentally opposed to it. By conversion, therefore, they kill two birds with one stone.
But Islam has no improving or inhibiting effect upon the behavior of my city's young Muslim men, who, in astonishing numbers, have taken to heroin, a habit almost unknown among their Sikh and Hindu contemporaries. The young Muslims not only take heroin but deal in it, and have adopted all the criminality attendant on the trade.
...Islam in the modern world is weak and brittle, not strong: that accounts for its so frequent shrillness. The Shah will, sooner or later, triumph over the Ayatollah in Iran, because human nature decrees it, though meanwhile millions of lives will have been ruined and impoverished. The Iranian refugees who have flooded into the West are fleeing Islam, not seeking to extend its dominion, as I know from speaking to many in my city. To be sure, fundamentalist Islam will be very dangerous for some time to come, and all of us, after all, live only in the short term; but ultimately the fate of the Church of England awaits it. Its melancholy, withdrawing roar may well (unlike that of the Church of England) be not just long but bloody, but withdraw it will. The fanatics and the bombers do not represent a resurgence of unreformed, fundamentalist Islam, but its death rattle.
I hope he's right. I suspect and fear he's not.
Dalrymple's latest book: Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline
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A Great Lesson, Off The Books
Instead of passively putting out his own money to make ends meet in the classroom, a teacher gives students a valuable lesson in free-market capitalism and creative problem solving. In fact, you could say he's one of those rare teachers these days who actually teaches students to think. From the LA Times editorial board:Education groups say the typical teacher spends between $400 and $500 of his or her own money to make ends meet in the classroom.To that tradition now comes a new entry: paid advertising. Tom Farber, a calculus teacher in suburban San Diego, raised money for photocopying expenses by selling ads at the bottom of his tests. Most were inspirational quotes underwritten by parents ("Do your best. That's what matters.") and several were from local businesses.
We can imagine a bad end to this idea -- beer ads, say, or coupons for the local head shop. But Farber's modest and creative solution has given his students both the resources they need and a real-life lesson on California's budget crisis. The state's public school students might as well learn now that Sacramento lawmakers, especially when facing a $41-billion budget shortfall, are not the ones most dedicated to protecting them from cuts.
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Nonie Darwish On Islamic Law
Renee Taylor interviews Muslim apostate Darwish, author of Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law:
Renee Taylor for FSM: What are some of the implications for Western civilizations of accepting Shariah law into their societies?
Nonie Darwish: Today, Muslims have moved to Europe, America, Australia and Canada. They argued for Shariah law and got it. In England now, they are practicing marriage and inheritance laws. It is important for the West to realize and understand that Islamic law does not give equal rights to all. It discriminates between men and women. There are laws for Muslims, laws for non-Muslims. Women and non-Muslims have much more oppressive laws, giving Muslim men authority over them. If we allow such laws, we will find ourselves approving discrimination in our society between people. That is totally against Western democracy and values, especially the U.S. Constitution. I wrote this book because it is very important for the West to understand what they allow. Shariah law itself was not part of Islam when Mohammed died. It was created by the Muslim heads of state because Islam was moving very fast to conquer many countries. They needed Islamic law to rule over all these lands. It is inspired by the Koran and by the Hadith sayings of Mohammed. All areas of Islamic society are rooted in Islamic law, which is tyrannical law. Slavery, for example, has never been abolished by Islam. If you read Muslim Shariah law, it is full of regulation of slaves. Sexual slavery of women captured in war is allowed, which was practiced by Mohammed. Even today, sexual slaves are accepted and all over the Middle East. Honor killings are rooted in Islamic law. For example, the murders for which a Muslim will never have punishment: to kill an apostate, to kill an adulterer - which is usually a woman, and honor killings. If you allow the killings of an apostate or an adulteress woman in the form of vigilante justice under Islamic law, you are endorsing honor killing. There are so many laws you cannot imagine that are brutal and unfair. A woman, for example, cannot divorce her husband, only a man can divorce her. I have an entire chapter in my book about the Muslim marriage contract. All of this is to open the eyes of the West to something totally against their own value system and democracy....RT: How can the average citizen get involved in understanding Islamic Law and how it is going to affect them and their way of life?
ND: It is very important that we separate the law of Islam from the religion of Islam. You see, a religion is private. When a minority comes to a country, they have a relationship with their god. The minute they begin to enforce a law on that country, that act goes into the realm of politics. It goes into the realm of the law of the land. That also violates our separation of church and state, the separation of mosque and state. The West doesn't understand that under Shariah law, there is no separation of mosque and state. The mosque is the state and the state is the mosque. The West which prides itself on freedom and democracy, freedom of speech, equal rights for women and minorities, they have to understand that this is not a religious right. Muslims will say you are depriving them of their religious rights. No, you are not. This is political Islam. It has nothing to do with a personal relationship with God. It is about trying to control the country which they have immigrated to. America has fought so hard for women's rights - are we going to start honor killings? There was an honor killing of two beautiful young girls in Texas by their father who was from Egypt, a taxi driver. He was not caught because he left the country. There are so many horrible laws. We must never think this is a religion because the duty of a religion is to protect you with rights. A religion doesn't discriminate and torture and that is a violation of your rights, a violation of church and state.
A majority of Muslims are much like everyone else. What I am talking about is not the people - the problem is the law which discriminates and oppresses. There are so many oppressed people in the Muslim world. Look at the eyes of the people in the West Bank of Gaza or in Iraq or Egypt. The bottom line in every society is the law. Under Islamic Shariah law, the testimony of a woman is half that of a man. If a man and a woman go to court, guess who wins? This is what I am talking about - I'm not talking about the people, I'm talking about the law. If people don't have justice under the law, they are living in a jungle. There are stocks and bonds sold from Islamic countries in American called Shariah finance. The profits from such financial deals go in the pockets of those Muslim countries. They use these profits to enforce Shariah law across Africa and other poor countries.
RT: Do most Muslims outside the political hierarchy understand and support Shariah law? Or would they like to see an end to it?
ND: There are some movements against Shariah, but they are calling them apostates and killing them. Unfortunately, under Islamic law, in all the books of Shariah, to deny Shariah is equal to denying Islam. The penalty is death. That is why there is no feminist movement in the Muslim world. I know two feminists in the Middle East, one in Egypt and one in Baharain. The one in Baharain was advocating divorce. She is now prevented from speaking or writing. The one in Egypt has a fatwah against her and had to leave the country because she could not protect herself.The message at the top of one of Darwish's websites, ArabsForIsrael:
To Muslims and Arabs across the globe: Reject hate, embrace love. Bring out the best in Islam by showing your compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. Make the holy land truly holy by giving Israel and the Jewish people the respect they deserve in their tiny little country. This is not a crisis over land. It is a crisis of the soul; a crisis in our faith, judgement and self confidence. Israel should not be regarded as an enemy, but as a blessing to our neighborhood. We need not fear peace, but embrace it.Darwish's first book: Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror
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Poking Holes In Acupuncture
Great piece by SkepDoc Harriet Hall, M.D., in Skeptic magazine. Go read the whole thing at the link. Here's an excerpt:BY DEFINITION, "ALTERNATIVE" MEDICINE CONSISTS OF TREATMENTS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN and that have not been accepted into mainstream medicine. The question I keep hearing is, "But what about acupuncture? It's been proven to work, it's supported by lots of good research, more and more doctors are using it, and insurance companies even pay for it." It's time the acupuncture myth was punctured -- preferably with an acupuncture needle. Almost everything you've heard about acupuncture is wrong.To start with, this ancient Chinese treatment is not so ancient and may not even be Chinese! From studying the earliest documents, Chinese scholar Paul Unschuld suspects the idea may have originated with the Greek Hippocrates of Cos and later spread to China. It's definitely not 3000 years old. The earliest Chinese medical texts, from the 3rd century BCE, do not mention it.
...Does acupuncture work? Which type of acupuncture? And what do you mean by "work"? There are various different Chinese systems, plus Japanese, Thai, Korean and Indian modalities, most of which have been invented over the last few decades: whole body or limited to the scalp, hand, ear, foot, or cheek and chin; deep or superficial; with electrified needles; with dermal pad electrodes and no skin penetration.
Acupuncture works in the same manner that placebos work. It has been shown to "work" to relieve pain, nausea, and other subjective symptoms, but it has never been shown to alter the natural history or course of any disease. Today it's mostly used for pain, but early Chinese acupuncturists maintained that it was not for the treatment of manifest disease, that it was so subtle that it should only be employed at the very beginning of a disease process, and that it was only likely to work if the patient believed it would work. Now there's a bit of ancient wisdom!
Studies have shown that acupuncture releases natural opioid pain relievers in the brain: endorphins. Veterinarians have pointed out that loading a horse into a trailer or throwing a stick for a dog also releases endorphins. Probably hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer would release endorphins too, and it would take your mind off your headache.
Psychologists can list plenty of other things that could explain the apparent response to acupuncture. Diverting attention from original symptoms to the sensation of needling, expectation, suggestion, mutual consensus and compliance demand, causality error, classic conditioning, reciprocal conditioning, operant conditioning, operator conditioning, reinforcement, group consensus, economic and emotional investment, social and political disaffection, social rewards for believing, variable course of disease, regression to the mean -- there are many ways human psychology can fool us into thinking ineffective treatments are effective. Then there's the fact that all placebos are not equal -- an elaborate system involving lying down, relaxing, and spending time with a caring authority can be expected to produce a much greater placebo effect than simply taking a sugar pill.
There are plenty of studies showing that acupuncture works for subjective symptoms like pain and nausea. But there are several things that throw serious doubt on their findings. The results are inconsistent, with some studies finding an effect and others not. The higher quality studies are less likely to find an effect. Most of the studies are done by believers in acupuncture. Many subjects would not volunteer for an acupuncture trial unless they had a bias towards believing it might work. The acupuncture studies coming from China and other oriental countries are all positive -- but then nearly everything coming out of China is positive. It's not culturally acceptable to publish negative results because researchers would lose face and their jobs.
Part of Hall's piece was adapted from a presentation by Robert Imrie, which you can find here. Meanwhile, here's Orac over at Respectful Insolence showing what crap studies about acupuncture can be:
I find it very telling that many of the studies using sham needling showed no difference in headache frequency and intensity, which is what sufferers of chronic headache really care most about. Once again, this appears to be the same as the usual case in CAM modalities: The better the study design and the better the controls, the less likely there is to find any significant treatment effect. Indeed, one wonders if the alleged treatment effect is even clinically significant (namely, that patients and their doctors notice it an consider it worth the trouble it takes to achieve it). Once again, this meta-analysis seems to be consistent with the hypothesis that acupuncture for headaches is unlikely to be more than an elaborate placebo....The needles did not have to penetrate the skin for patients to feel better and believe that acupuncture helped them with their nausea. I can't wait for this work to be published in the peer-reviewed medical literature, because I would like to see what the methodology was and the detailed findings. The good news is that, unlike the writers of the meta-analysis, the investigator in this trial understands its results:
The effects therefore seem not be due to the traditional acupuncture method, as was previously thought, but rather a result of the increased care the treatment entails. Patients could converse with the physiotherapists, they were touched, and they had extra time for rest and relaxation.And that's why patients undergoing acupuncture think that it helped them. It's the placebo effect, combined with the human touch that is all too often missing in modern medicine. Instead of rationalizing this result to claim that acupuncture really does do something after all, which is sometimes taken to amusing extremes in studies where sham acupuncture ends up producing apparently better results than acupuncture (as happens not too infrequently these days), the explanation is clear cut. Acupuncture is an elaborate placebo, only with a small but real risk of complications, such as infection or even occasionally pneumothorax, that can occur when needles are stuck into the body. Placebos shouldn't carry risk, even risk that small.
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Muslim Murderers After Winehouse
The barbarians have reportedly targeted Amy Winehouse:Reports have emerged today (January 7) claiming that Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson have been included on a "terror target" hit list made in reaction to the current conflict in the Gaza region.The Sun said comments were made on the forum of Ummah.com.
A post on the forum apparently called for users to compile "a list of top Jews we can target," which included both Winehouse and Ronson's names.
British anti-terror expert Glen Jenvey told The Sun that the comments should be taken seriously.
"The Ummah website has been used by extremists," he said. "Those listed should treat it very seriously. Expect a hate campaign and intimidation by 20 or 30 thugs."
The Islamists should forget about murdering Winehouse and go back to school and learn something. Over there at Ummah.com, they list a few Muslim scientist biographies. Note the dates:
Muslim Scientists: Al-Idrisi (1099 C.E.)
Muslim Scientists: Abu Marwan Ibn Zuhr (1091 C.E.)
Muslim Scientists: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058 C.E.)And, no I'm not linking to their site. Offend a Christian, they might huff and puff at you for being "bigoted." The Muslims put out death lists.
UPDATE -- Norman posted this comment:
There is some doubt as to the authenticity of this claim: The admin of the forum has demonstrated that the person posing as "abuislam" was a journalist by the name of Richard Tims and he has documentary proof. --http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3000845And then there's this: http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/01/glen_jenvey_has.asp
Again, I'm not linking to this Ummah site, because, whether this one's a hoax or not...the Muslims do put out fatwas on people who criticize Islam. To name a few examples:
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 pronounced a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses....Indian Muslim scholars issued a fatwa of death against Taslima Nasreen, an exiled controversial Bangladeshi writer. Majidulla Khan Farhad of Hyderabad-based Majlis Bachao Tehriq issued the fatwa at the Tipu Sultan mosque in Kolkata after Juma prayers as saying Taslima has defamed Islam and announced "unlimited financial reward" to anybody who would kill her. [6]
In 1998, Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq, issued a fatwa prohibiting University of Virginia professor Abdulaziz Sachedina from ever again teaching Islam due in part to Sachedina's writings encouraging acceptance of religious pluralism in the Muslim world[7].
Osama bin Laden issued two fatwas--in 1996 and then again in 1998--that Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw support for Israel and withdraw military forces from Islamic countries.[8][9]
And my favorite one is this one:
In 2008, a Pakistani religious leader issued a fatwa on President Asif Ali Zardari for "indecent gestures" toward Sarah Palin, U.S. Vice Presidential candidate.[15]What'd the guy do, attempt rape-murder? Um...no...seems he just told her she's "gorgeous."
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Who Loses Here?
It's the kids. The wife filed for divorce, after she allegedly cheated, and the husband's now (publicly) asking for his kidney back. And it's been a nearly four-year battle.I'm extremely sympathetic to the people -- usually men -- who earn big, and get bled dry in a divorce after their partner cheats on them and then leaves them. But again, it can't be good for kids to be on the sidelines in a four-year, now-public battle.
You ask parents if they'd do anything to save the life of their kid (or the lives of their kids), and they tell you they will. How come making it work -- really making it work, in a nice, loving family environnment -- until the kids go to college doesn't count?
If that doesn't work for you, well, don't have kids, and then you can leave on a moment's notice and I won't have a problem with it -- unless you try to leave with half that the other person has earned and built, just by virtue of being with them. Here it is from WABC:
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (WABC) -- A Long Island surgeon embroiled in a nearly four-year divorce proceeding wants his estranged wife to return the kidney he donated to her, although he says he'll settle for $1.5 million in compensation.Dr. Richard Batista, a surgeon at Nassau University Medical Center, told reporters at his lawyer's Long Island office Wednesday that he decided to go public with his demand for kidney compensation because he has grown frustrated with the negotiations with his estranged wife.
Dr. Batista fought back tears after talking about a bitter divorce battle he's embroiled in with his wife of 15 years.
"There's no deeper pain or betrayal from somebody you loved and devoted your whole life to," he said.
Batista's a full-time surgeon, who married Dawnell in 1990. They would later have three children and eventually he saved her life by donating his kidney to her in 2001.
She filed for divorce in July 2005, although he claims she began having an extramarital affair 18 months to two years after receiving the kidney transplant, his attorney, Dominick Barbara said.
Batista says she had an affair.
"I felt humiliated betrayed as a person, a man, a husband and father," adds Dr. Batista.
Now as part of the divorce settlement Dr. Batista isn't asking for the million dollar home they shared in Massappequa, he's asking for his kidney back, or to get paid for it.
Douglas Rothkopf, the attorney representing Dawnell Batista, told Eyewitness News, "The facts aren't as represented by Dr. Batista. We will be addressing the issues before the judge within the next few days."
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Cuba: A Thug Story
Minette Marrin writes for the Times of London on the American suckups for Cuba, who "share with the rest of us a love of the wonderful Cuban band the Buena Vista Social Club":Perhaps they are not aware that the band had been silenced nearly 40 years earlier. When, soon after the revolution in 1959, the new government decided to close down cultural and social centres and put countless musicians and artists out of work, the Buena Vista Social Club band was closed down too, until brought back together again in the musicians' old age - by westerners.It is a rule of thumb that anyone given to praising Cuba under Castro is a person of poor judgment. This has nothing to do with how much or how little Castro achieved; it has to do with what is necessary for good judgment. An essential part of good judgment is a respect for facts and, in the absence of many facts, a willingness to suspend judgment. It is an intellectual and a moral mistake to become cheerleaders in ignorance. It is the mark of a useful idiot, like those famous western cheerleaders for the communist USSR who were secretly despised by the Soviet leaders.
Useful idiots have always been a mystery to me. When I was an undergraduate in the late 1960s, student radicals would always proudly announce that although socialism might have failed in the USSR - it was never properly tried, they claimed - it worked in the People's Republic of China. Then I went to live for several years in Hong Kong, off the coast of mainland China, and began to learn a few facts. It wasn't easy to learn much, as China was a closed and paranoid society, difficult to visit and almost impossible for the Chinese to leave. But I couldn't help noticing that almost every day bodies were washed up, mauled by sharks, of people who were prepared to brave the shark-infested waters, tied to air beds because they could not swim, in their desperate longing to escape the repression of communist China. This was in the early 1970s in the years following the horrors of the cultural revolution.
None of this stopped useful idiots, such as Jane Fonda and many even more distinguished western commentators, from coming through Hong Kong, on their way to cheerleaders' tours of China, and announcing that China was a light unto the nations. They were absolutely deaf to any argument, including the knockdown and objective argument that the People's Republic made it difficult to know any facts. There wasn't any information.
When I went to China in 1974 we were spied on and saw nothing that was not planned, and this surveillance continued for years. When Mao Tse-tung died in 1976, large numbers of professional western "China-watchers" in Hong Kong admitted privately that they had no idea who Deng Xiaoping (his successor) was. The Chinese government's statistics - and I edited for a while something called the China Trade Report - were a joke.
Yet these unquantifiable triumphs of Maoist China were solemnly quoted by people who should have known better. China's economic triumphs were boasted among the bien pensants; they refused to discuss why other cultures in Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand, had done much better without communism. And why didn't the cheerleaders listen to the stories of the hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong who had escaped from China? Coming home for holidays I found my former student friends - now in television and academe - deaf to all evidence against Maoism.
Why are people so wilfully credulous? It is one of life's many mysteries but it's clearly deeply rooted in human nature. Even Gordon Brown, even now, has his supporters, who still believe in his masterful handling of our economy. Some people seem to need heroes and fantasies so badly that they are prepared to disregard not just the evidence but also the lack of it. My new year's resolution for myself and for everybody else is to keep asking what the evidence is. And the retort to people who can't or won't produce any is: Cuba.
Speaking of "useful idiots," here's one from Humberto Fontova, going out to all you Che-lovers out there: Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him
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Here's a review of the book by a Chinese guy named Joe on Amazon:
Dear Humberto,Sorry I didn't buy your new book. Yesterday I read about half of of it sitting in the coffee shop of my local bookstore. Cheapness was instilled in me during my formative years by my chinese parents. Fortunately, their political leanings were not and I learned to read, think, and analyze for myself.
Thank You for writing the book! Even though it's about Che and Cuba, it means a lot to me as well--a Chinese-American. Any book against one dictator is a book against ALL dictators. I imagine you must feel the same rage seeing a Che T-shirt as I do seeing a Mao T-shirt. It bothers me that many people do not think twice about wearing either T shirt, but if somebody wore a T-shirt with the visage of Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden, or that Virginia Tech guy it'd be all over the news.
I don't want to be a "woe is me I'm a minority/person of color", but unfortunately part of me does feel when it's whites killing whites (ie Hitler, Stalin) then those dictators are evil. When it comes to "minority" dictators, those guys are suave, cute, cuddly, or part of "other people's" cultures. What? Dictators are dictators regardless of country, race, culture, or faith.
Keep up the good work! You've given me courage now to voice my opinion. When I see someone wearing a Mao (and Che) T-shirt I'll be sure to set them straight. Those images are just as offensive as the Confederate flag or a Nazi symbol.
I think the guy's onto something about people romancing the "exotic."
And a question for all of you: What do you think should be the U.S. position on the Cuban embargo? Here's Cato's take on it (much more at the link):
Economic sanctions have not been responsible for the region-wide shift toward liberalization, however. They have, in fact, failed to bring about democratic regimes anywhere in the hemisphere, and Cuba has been no exception. Indeed, Cuba is the one country in the hemisphere against which the U.S. government has persistently and actively used a full economic embargo as its main policy tool in an attempt to compel a democratic transformation.The failure of sanctions against Cuba should come as no surprise since sanctions, however politically popular, are notorious for their unintended consequences--harming those they are meant to help. In Cuba, Fidel Castro is the last person to feel the pain caused by the U.S. measures. If sanctions failed to dislodge the military regime in Haiti, the poorest and most vulnerable country in the region, it is difficult to believe that they could be successful in Cuba.
UPDATE: Matt Welch (editor-in-chief of reason mag) is nothing if not responsive. When I e-mailed him after Crid mentioned in the comments below that we could use a piece by Welch on Cuba, Matt wrote back:
Hi Amy!Here's a recent roundup of Cuba-related stuff we've done, including an interview w/ Jeff Flake about why the embargo must end: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/130815.html
I've written a few that touch on parts of the issue:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28439.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/33141.htmlcan't find the rest, but they're there somewhere...
And now he has my heads up that we'd like a piece by him on the blockade specifically. Here's hopin'...
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What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Panetta?
In the New York Post, Ralph Peters, a career intelligence officer in the Army, has a pretty good idea:The director's job at the CIA isn't a party favor. This is potentially a matter of life and death for thousands of Americans. But the choice of Panetta tells us all that Barack Obama doesn't take intelligence seriously.Mark my words: It'll bite him in the butt.
After the military, the intel community is the most complex arm of government. You can't do on-the-job training at the top. While a CIA boss needn't be a career intelligence professional, he or she does need a deep familiarity with the purposes, capabilities, limitations and intricacies of intelligence.
Oh, and you'd better understand the intelligence bureaucracy.
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), who was blindsided - and appalled - by the Obama mafia's choice, has the essential knowledge of how the system works. She, or a similar expert, should have gotten this nod. But the president-elect wanted a clean-slate yes-man, not a person of knowledge and integrity.
We're witnessing the initial costs of Obama's career-long lack of interest in foreign policy, the military and intelligence. He doesn't think the top job at the CIA's important and just wants political cover on that flank. (Guess we got Panetta because Caroline Kennedy has another engagement.)
Forget a "team of rivals." Obama's creating a campaign staff for 2012.
Of course, he's reeling from the shrill rage of the Moveon.org crowd over his nomination of grown-ups to be his national-security adviser, director of national intelligence, administrator of veterans' affairs and, yes, secretary of state. (By the way, how could Hillary be dumb enough to accept a job where success is impossible?)
Panetta's appointment is a sop to the hard left, a signal that intelligence will be emasculated for the next four - or eight - years.
Think morale's been bad at the CIA? Just wait.
Conservatives played into this scenario by insisting that any CIA analysis that didn't match the Bush administration's positions perfectly amounted to an attack on the White House. Well, sorry. The intelligence community's job isn't to make anybody feel good - its core mission is to provide nonpartisan analysis to our leaders.
To be a qualified D-CIA, a man or woman needs a sophisticated grasp of three things: The intel system, foreign-policy challenges and the Pentagon (which owns most of our intelligence personnel and hardware). Panetta has no background - none - in any of these areas. He was never interested.
If you handed Leon Panetta a blank map of Asia, I'd bet my life he couldn't plot Baghdad, Kabul or Beijing within 500 miles of their actual locations. (Maybe he can see China from his California think tank?)
This shameless hack appointment is the first action by the incoming administration that seriously worries me. Get intelligence wrong and you get dead Americans.
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There's A Difference
And, once again, it comes down to the Golda Meir quote, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." Alan Dershowitz writes on FrontPage about the value of children for the Palestinians:The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who love death and democracies that love life. The terrorists have learned how to exploit the morality of democracies against those who do not want to kill civilians, even enemy civilians. In one recent incident, Israeli intelligence learned that a particular house was being used to manufacture and store rockets. It was a clear military target since their rockets were being fired at Israeli civilians. But the house was also being lived in by a family. So the Israeli military phoned the house, informed the owner that it was a military target, and gave him thirty minutes to leave with his family before the house was attacked. The owner called Hamas, which immediately sent dozens of mothers carrying babies to stand on the roof of the house. Hamas knew that Israel would never fire at a home with civilians in it. They also knew that if, by some fluke, the Israeli authorities did not learn that there were civilians in the house, and fired on it, Hamas would win a public relations victory by displaying the dead civilians to the media. In this case, Israel did learn of the civilians and withheld its fire. The rockets that were spared destruction by the human shields were then used against Israeli civilians.This, in a nutshell, is the dilemma faced by democracies with a high level of morality. The Hamas tactic would not have worked against the Russians in Chechnya. When the Russians were fired upon, they fired against civilians without hesitation. Nor would it work in Darfur, where janjaweed militias have killed thousands of civilians and displaced 2.5 million in order to get the rebels who were hiding among them. Certain tactics work only against moral enemies who care deeply about minimizing civilian casualties.
Over the past months, a shaky cease-fire, organized by Egypt was in effect. Hamas agreed to stop the rockets and Israel agreed to stop taking military action against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. The cease-fire itself was morally dubious and legally asymmetrical.
Israel, in effect, was saying to Hamas: if you stop engaging in the war crime of targeting our innocent civilians, we will stop engaging in the entirely lawful military acts of targeting your terrorists. Under the cease-fire, Israel reserved the right to engage in self-defense actions such as attacking terrorists who were in the course of firing rockets at its civilians.
...There are some who claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality by killing so many more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets. That is an absurd misapplication of the concept of proportionality for at least two reasons. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian. Second, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk of civilian death and the intentions of those targeting civilians. Hamas seeks to kill as many civilians as it can. It aims its rockets in the general direction of schools, hospitals, playgrounds and other entirely civilian targets. The fact that it has not killed as many civilians as it would have liked to is a tribute to Israel's enormous devotion of resources to the building of shelters and to the construction of early warning systems. Hamas, on the other hand, refuses to build shelters, precisely because it wants to maximize the number of Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed by Israel's military actions. It knows, from experience, that when it forces Israel to take military actions that result in the deaths of even a small number of innocent Palestinian civilians, many in the international community will condemn Israel. Israel understands this sad reality as well, and goes to enormous lengths to reduce the number of civilian casualties, even to the point of foregoing legitimate targets that are too close to civilian areas. Accordingly, Israel's actions satisfy the principle of proportionality as well as the principle of self-defense against armed attack.
Until and unless the United Nations and the rest of the international community recognize that Hamas is committing three war crimes--targetting Israeli civilians, using their own civilians as human shields and seeking the destruction of a member state of the United Nations--and that Israel is acting in self-defense and out of military necessity, the conflict will continue and perhaps escalate. If Israel succeeds in destroying the terrorist organization Hamas, it may well lay the foundation for a real peace between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. But if Hamas persists in its capacity to target increasing numbers of Israeli citizens, Israel will have no choice but to persist in its self-defense efforts. No democracy would do otherwise.
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Famously Stupid
The 40 dumbest quotes of 2008, by John Hawkins. A few samples:5) "White people shouldn't be allowed to vote. It's for the good of the country and for those who're bitter for a reason and armed because they're scared." -- Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jonathan Valania26) "We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals." -- Ted Turner
I typically don't post on climate change because climatology is very complicated, and I don't understand it. I guarantee you that Ted Turner and the girl in my French class who does flower arrangments don't understand it, either, but somehow, that doesn't stop them from mouthing off about it.
38) "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."
--Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings on Sarah Palin40) "Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security." -- Obama foreign policy adviser Richard Danzig
36) "Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul." -- Mark Morford
33) "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." -- George Bush
Um, you were the biggest big Democrat this country's had in office since FDR.
28) "(Sarah Palin's) greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." -- Wendy Doniger at the Washington PostI didn't think she was qualified to be vice-president, but she's quite the woman, and, I'm guessing, a lot hotter than you are, Wendy. (Sadly, it seems the bikini pictures were a hoax.)
22) "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. 'Gangsta rap' didn't exist." -- Alicia Keys11) "Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state."
--Naomi Wolf*
Just Say No To Post-Nasal Drip
Geniuses in Jacksonville bust a 9-year-old girl for passing around Halls Defense Vitamin C cough drops. From News4Jax, via reason:Khalin said two of her friends at school asked her for cough drops and she gave them out, but the friends, she said, insisted on giving her a dollar in exchange for the drops."She felt guilty taking the cough drop or whatever, so she gave me a dollar. I didn't want to accept it, but she had me take it," Khalin said.
According to the student handbook for Clay County Schools, "If a student must take a prescription or over-the-counter medication during school hours, it must be received and stored in the original container, and be labeled with the student's name, current date, prescription dosage, frequency of administration and physician's name."
The question remains whether Halls Defense qualifies as an over-the-counter drug. Although many cough drops contain menthol as an active ingredient, the brand that Khalin had did not contain menthol.
After examining the ingredients in the drops Khalin had, Channel 4 reporter Diane Cho said the ingredients in the cough drops were near exactly the same as what's in a Lifesafers (sic) candy.
The girl's father, Andy Rivenbark, said he didn't get a note or call from school administrators about the incident. He said he just wants answers.
"It's definitely detrimental to somebody who we teach the whole time growing up, 'don't use drugs because drugs are bad.' To accuse her, it's unnecessary to make a comment like that," Rivenbark said.
Khalin has not been punished yet. She said her teacher and her principal would meet again Wednesday morning to discuss things further.
Sometimes the schools do a really great job in educating the students -- just not in the way they'd intended: "The question remains whether Halls Defense qualifies as an over-the-counter drug"? Hey, assholes -- it's candy. At most, if you suck down hundreds, you might get the beginnings of a cavity. Which is how I'd describe the space where the teacher's brain is supposed to be, and the principal's, too.
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Duck And Cover-Up
Netanyahu in the WSJ on what it's like living in the shadow of Hamas in "Militant Islam Threatens Us All":Imagine a siren that gives you 30 seconds to find shelter before a Kassam rocket falls from the sky and explodes, spraying its lethal shrapnel in all directions. Now imagine this happens day after day, month after month, year after year.If you can imagine that, you can begin to understand the terror to which hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been subjected. Three years ago Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza. And since that withdrawal, our civilians have been targeted by more than 6,000 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza. In the face of this relentless bombardment, Israel has acted with a restraint that other countries, faced with a similar threat, would find hard to fathom. Israel's government has finally decided to respond.
For this action to succeed, we must first have moral clarity. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy which seeks peace and targets the terrorists, and Hamas, an Iranian-backed terror organization that seeks Israel's destruction and targets the innocent.
In launching precision strikes against Hamas rocket launchers, headquarters, weapons depots, smuggling tunnels and training camps, Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties. But Hamas deliberately attacks Israeli civilians and deliberately hides behind Palestinian civilians -- a double war crime. Responsible governments do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties, but they do not grant immunity to terrorists who use civilians as human shields.
The international community may occasionally condemn Hamas for putting Palestinian civilians in harm's way, but if it ultimately holds Israel responsible for the casualties that ensue, then Hamas and other terror organizations will employ this abominable tactic again and again.
...If our enemies assumed that the Israeli public would be divided on the eve of an election, they were wrong. When it comes to exercising our most basic right of self-defense, there is no opposition and no coalition. We stand united against Hamas because we know that only by defeating Hamas can we provide security for our people and hope for a future peace.
We fight to defend ourselves, but in so doing we are also fighting a fanatical ideology that seeks to reverse the course of history and throw the civilized world back into a new dark age. The struggle between militant Islam and modernity -- whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, India or Gaza -- will decide our common future. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose.
Here's a fascinating video, "What Really Happened In The Middle East." Worth watching.
And finally, here's another reality check from the Times of London's Daniel Finkelstein, whose mother and aunt knew Anne and Margot Frank:
The poverty and the death and the despair among the Palestinians in Gaza moves me to tears. How can it not? Who can see pictures of children in a war zone or a slum street and not be angry and bewildered and driven to protest? And what is so appalling is that it is so unnecessary. For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.Yet they will not say it. And they will not mean it. For they do not want the Jews. Again and again - again and again - the Palestinians have been offered a nation state in a divided Palestine. And again and again they have turned the offer down, for it has always been more important to drive out the Jews than to have a Palestinian state. It is difficult sometimes to avoid the feeling that Hamas and Hezbollah don't want to kill Jews because they hate Israel. They hate Israel because they want to kill Jews.
There cannot be peace until this changes. For Israel will not rely on airy guarantees and international gestures to defend it. At its very core, it will not. It will lay down its arms when the Jews are safe, but it will not do it until they are.
And if you reflect on it, doesn't recent experience bear this out? Just as Herzl was borne out? A year or so back I met a teacher while I was on holiday and fell to talking with him about Israel. He was a nice man and all he wanted was for fighting to stop and to end the suffering of children. And he had a question for me.
Why, he asked, doesn't Israel offer to give back the West Bank and Gaza? Why doesn't it just let the Palestinians have a state there? If the Palestinians turned it down, he said, then at least liberal opinion would be on Israel's side and would rally to its assistance.
So I patiently explained to this kind, good man that Israel had, at Camp David in 2000, made precisely this offer and that it had been rejected out of hand by Yassir Arafat, not even used as the basis for negotiation. I told him that Israel was no longer in Gaza, having withdrawn unilaterally and taken the settlers with it. The Palestinians had greeted this movement with suicide bombs and rockets. Yet the teacher, with all his compassion, wasn't even aware of all this. And liberal opinion? Sad to relate, my new friend's faith in it was misplaced. It has turned strongly against Israel.
Israel has made many mistakes. It has acted too aggressively on some occasions, has been too defensive on others. The country hasn't always respected the human rights of its enemies as it should have done. What nation under such a threat would have avoided all errors?
But you know what? As Iran gets a nuclear weapon and so the potential for another Holocaust against the Jews and world opinion does nothing, I am not so sure that the errors of world opinion are so much to be preferred to the errors of Israel.
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What Happened, Martha Stewart Wasn't Available?
Leon Panetta for head of the CIA? Leon Panetta? His main qualification seems to be that he isn't John Brennan, which is about all that seems to matter to the leftosphere. Meanwhile, beyond his lack of experience in the spook business, the guy looks like you could chase him off with a good shake of flea powder.Laura Rozen writes at Foreign Policy:
A former senior CIA manager said the message of the Panetta appointment was clear: "The message is, 'I don't want to hear anything out of the CIA. Make it go away. No scandals. Keep it quiet,'" the former officer told me. "They put over there a guy who is a political loyalist, who will keep everything nice and quiet, but who won't know a good piece of intelligence from a shitty piece of intelligence, and wouldn't know a good intelligence officer" from a bad one.But former intelligence analyst Greg Treverton, now with the Rand Corporation, said Panetta's experience as a former White House chief of staff might give him a unique understanding of the presidency and its needs for intelligence. "One of my experiences with people like Panetta who have been chief of staff is that they have a clear sense of what is helpful to the president that most senior officials don't," Treverton told me. "They get it. What he could do and couldn't do. And that's an interesting advantage Panetta brings. Knowledge of what the presidential stakes are like, how issues arise, and what they need to be protected from, for better or worse."
Retired CIA deputy director for the East Europe division Milt Bearden said Panetta is a "brilliant" choice. "It is not problematic that Panetta lacks experience in intelligence," Bearden e-mailed. "Intel experience is overrated. Good judgement, common sense, and an understanding of Washington is a far better mix to take to Langley than the presumption of experience in intelligence matters. Having a civilian in the intelligence community mix is, likewise, a useful balance. Why not DNI?"
The Panetta choice also makes sense to him, said Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (and Foreign Policy writer). "The issues of presidential trust and clean hands are, at this moment in history, most important," Zelikow said by e-mail. "And even an 'intelligence professional' would have to rely on others in many ways. ... So Obama and his team have made a certain kind of tradeoff."
Initial Hill reaction was one of puzzlement, and consternation by at least one key senator that she had not been consulted on the choice. "I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director," incoming chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was cited by the Los Angeles Times. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time." Confirmation prep teams, take note.
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Schwarzenegger For President!*
(*Of the cigar club.) That, it seems, is about the only office he's qualified for. I voted for him, lapping up his message of fiscal conservatism. Matt Welch, in reason, shows how I -- and we all -- have been had by the Milton Freedman-quoting spendthrift:Schwarzenegger blew into office decrying California's bloated budget, vowing to "blow up the boxes" of Sacramento's bureaucracy, and promising to never again let the Golden State go near Gray Davis' record-setting $38 billion deficit. Five years into the Schwarzenegger era, the budget has ballooned from $100 billion to $145 billion, and the state's legislative analyst announced in November that California was facing a deficit of $28 billion. Bond market ratings assess the state as a bigger lending risk than Slovakia. And those bureaucratic boxes have remained largely intact.How does Schwarzenegger defend this sorry record? In part, by blaming Republicans. "I think the important thing for the Republican Party is now to also look at other issues that are very important for this country and not to get stuck in ideology," he said on CNN five days after the election. "Let's go and talk about health care reform. Let's go and...fund programs if they're necessary programs and not get stuck just on the fiscal responsibility."
What are some of these "necessary programs"? How about a $9.9 billion bond for a long-dreamed-of high-speed rail project between Los Angeles and San Francisco that is expected to cost at least $45 billion, which even supporters such as the Los Angeles Times editorial board think will require "many billions more" in subsidies? Then there's the $3 billion bond from 2004 to put California bureaucrats in the stem cell research business, mostly as a poke in the eye of George W. Bush.
How to pay for all this during what the governor has declared a "financial emergency"? Partly by rattling the tin cup outside the White House. Schwarzenegger was one of the first governors to hit up Washington for some of that fat bailout money gushing from the Oval Office.
But the spending splurge also requires new taxes, according to the governor: a "temporary" 1.5-percentage-point increase in the 7.25 percent sales tax, an increase in the number of services covered by the sales tax, higher taxes for alcohol and oil production, and so on. Many analysts believe that the governor who quickly fulfilled his recall-campaign promise to cut the state's vehicle license fees will soon resort to restoring those charges to at least Gray Davis levels.
Even on social issues, where Schwarzenegger's more libertarian approach was supposed to avoid the Republican trap of freedom constricting politics, the governor instead has embraced the freedom-constricting policies of the left. To cite one particularly ironic example, in 2004 he signed a law requiring every California employer with more than 50 workers to force upon its managers state-approved sexual harassment training.
Republicans in 2009 are in a mess of their own making. If they interpret the Democrats' sweeping victory as a clarion call to foray further into religiously inspired, Terry Schiavo-style politics that uses government as a lever to manipulate and control other people's lives, then they will deserve their exile from power.
But it will take more than just eschewing cultural conservatism and adopting the Democrats' interventionist economic approach to refresh the Republican brand. There is room right now for an opposition party that emphasizes what the governing party does not: freedom, as both the ultimate goal and the means to achieve it.
Back when he was taping testimonials for Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, Arnold Schwarzenegger looked like the kind of person who would indeed choose freedom if given a chance to govern. Instead, he punted on the radical, government-reducing reforms offered to him by his own box-exploding California Performance Review and learned to love--or at least perpetuate--the very bureaucracy he was elected to confront. That's not a blueprint for 21st-century Republicanism. It's just George W. Bush's big-government conservatism with a Hollywood face.
Anybody seen any actual fiscal conservatives out there? Jeff Flake spoke at reason's 40th. He sounds pretty good. Other than that...?
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Pictures From Gaza
Save the poor, starving Gazans. Actual video of Gazans from December, 2008:
Here's the interior of a supermarket in Gaza. Note the empty shelves!
Oh, and get this, from Israel National News, by Baruch Gordon -- the Gazans are attacking the crossings through which the Israelis send them food and medicine.
via JihadWatch
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Hitchens On The Hamas Gang
And how "disgusting and squalid" is their behavior. From Slate:It knows very well that sanctions are injuring every Palestinian citizen, but--just like Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq--it declines to cease the indiscriminate violence and the racist and religious demagogy that led to the sanctions in the first place. Palestine is a common home for several religious and national groups, but Hamas dogmatically insists that the whole territory is instead an exclusively Muslim part of a future Islamic empire. At a time when democratic and reformist trends are observable in the region, from Lebanon to the Gulf, Hamas' leadership is physically and economically a part of the clientele of two of the area's worst dictatorships. (Should you ever be in need of a free laugh, look up those Western "intellectuals" who believe that a vote for an Islamist party and an Islamic state is a way to vote against corruption! They have not lately studied Iran and Saudi Arabia.) Gaza could have been a prefiguration of a future self-determined Palestinian state. Instead, it has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and made into a place of repression for its inhabitants and aggression for its neighbors. Once again, the Party of God has the whip hand. To read Benny Morris is to be quite able--and quite free--to doubt that there should ever have been an Israeli state to begin with. But to see Hamas at work is to resolve that whatever replaces or follows Zionism, it must not be the wasteland of Islamic theocracy.*
Will The Children Be Safer Naked?
Alana Semuels writes for the LA Times about new "safety" regulations set to take effect next month that could force thousands of retailers and thrift stores to throw away piles and piles of children's clothing:The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger -- including clothing -- be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven't been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead."They'll all have to go to the landfill," said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.
The new regulations take effect Feb. 10 under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was passed by Congress last year in response to widespread recalls of products that posed a threat to children, including toys made with lead or lead-based paint.
Supporters say the measure is sorely needed. One health advocacy group said it found high levels of lead in dozens of products purchased around the country, including children's jewelry, backpacks and ponchos.
Lead can also be found in buttons or charms on clothing and on appliques that have been added to fabric, said Charles Margulis, communications director for the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland. A child in Minnesota died a few years ago after swallowing a lead charm on his sneaker, he said.
...There is the possibility of a partial reprieve. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the law, on Monday will consider exempting clothing and toys made of natural materials such as wool or wood. The commission does not have the authority to change the law but can decide how to interpret it.
But exempting natural materials does not go far enough, said Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel and Footwear Assn. Clothes made of cotton but with dyes or non-cotton yarn, for example, might still have to be tested, as would clothes that are cotton-polyester blends, he said.
"The law introduces an extraordinarily large number of testing requirements for products for which everyone knows there's no lead," he said.
How about we leave it to parents to actually...parent? When I was growing up, there was some problem with the milk in Michigan, so my mom paid extra for Alta-Dena milk from California from the health food store. Parents should educate themselves about which toys potentially contain lead, and make the decision about what to buy, same as they decide what age their kid gets to cross the street without them and all the rest. Manufacturers can choose to put their products up for testing, same as manufacturers do with the UL listing. Otherwise, just when the economy is particularly terrible and people need to shop at thrift stores for kids' clothes and keep their businesses going, a lot of people are going to be in a lot of trouble.
Take my neighbor's toy company, for example. She makes board games out of organic cotton with vegetable dyes. The pieces are wood. Wood that doesn't come from the lead tree. Hers is yet another small business that will be out of business if these regulations aren't drop-kicked. Tammy Vigil writes for Fox about toys needing to be tested for lead:
For the first time, toymakers and those who create goods for children, will have to pay an independent third party to test for chemicals in their products. The change spurred after scares from tainted toys made in China.A group called Handmade Toy Alliance is coming out against these new regulations. They have members all over the country, including at least three in Colorado.
Jennifer vanVorst of Denver owns Turtle Park Tots. She makes and sells baby and toddler accessories, like bibs, blankets and changing pads, out of her basement.
She supports new stringent testing for lead, but not for everyone--and not at the huge expense.
"As of February 10, everything I make has to be certified its been tested for lead," she says.
But she only uses fabrics--some organic--and none which contain lead or one of six banned chemicals called phthalates.
"The sense I get from the law is a knee jerk reaction to Mattel and the testing going on and finding so much lead," says vanVorst.
She sees it as a one-size-fits-all solution after recalls of thousands of imported toys with lead paint in 2007.
It's testing that will cost vanVorst $600-$700 per $10 bib to test. "For a company like me. I can't take a hit like that. I'm not making a huge profit."
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A Few Common Fabrications About The Situation In Gaza
Here, from The Israel Project:1) Fiction: There's no food in Gaza and people are starving. News reports, including one produced by TV station France 2 on Dec. 29, showed a Gaza resident in a food store saying:"Apparently, there is nothing, as you can see. There are no natural products for the kids. There is no milk. There is nothing here."[1]
Fact: Warehouses in Gaza are filled to capacity, according to international aid groups.
In the same France 2 TV clip referenced above, upon closer inspection, shelves filled with food can be seen in the reflection of a refrigerated door in the store. To see clip: click on http://jt.france2.fr/20h/; click on "Lundi 29" - below the small screen; to the right of the new screen, click "Vie dans la bande de Gaza" The World Food Program informed Israel that it would cease shipment of food to Gaza because the warehouses there are at full capacity, with enough food to last two weeks.[2]
During a one-day period alone - Dec. 31- Israel facilitated the transport of 29 truckloads of food, including 15 truckloads of flour, into Gaza.[3] And even as Hamas was firing rockets and mortars during Israel during the ceasefire, Israel facilitated the delivery of 2,500 tons (delivered on 93 trucks) of humanitarian aid, medical supplies and medication through the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal.[4]
Since the beginning of the operation, about 6,500 tons of aid have been transferred into Gaza at the request of the international organizations, the Palestinian Authority and various governments. Preparations are underway to facilitate further shipments.[5]
2) Fiction: Gaza has no medical and other aid supplies to help the injured.
Fact: During the first 5 days alone of Operation Cast Lead, Israel has facilitated the delivery of 6,500 tons of aid - 179 truckoads -- into Gaza at the request of international organizations, the Palestinian Authority and various governments.
The deliveries include basic food commodities, medication, medical supplies and blood units. Another 106 truckloads of humanitarian aid are expected to arrive in Gaza on Jan. 31.[6] [7] The crossings to Gaza are open for the transfer of humanitarian aid from all international organizations, in full cooperation with the Israeli authorities and without restriction.[8] In a one-day period - Dec. 31 - Israel enabled the transport of 9 truckloads of medicine and medical supplies, along with 10 ambulances, into Gaza.[9]
3) Fiction: Israel is refusing to allow injured Gazans into Israeli and Egyptian hospitals for treatment.
Fact: Israel has allowed a number of Palestinians into Israel for medical treatment they couldn't receive in Gaza.
On Dec. 31, for example, 12 Palestinians accessed Israel for medical treatment in Israeli hospitals. Two of those evacuated were injured children; the remaining were chronically sick people, and their escorts, who were allowed into Israel for treatment not available in Gaza.[10]
Further, Hamas - in an effort to exploit the suffering of innocent civilians - has refused to allow injured Palestinians to leave Gaza to go to Egypt for treatment.[11] Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit said earlier this week that Hamas was not allowing wounded Palestinians to cross the border into Egypt for treatment: "We are waiting for the wounded Palestinians to cross. They are not being allowed to cross." Asked who was to blame, he referred to Gaza by saying, "Ask the party in control on the ground in Gaza."[12]
4) Fiction: Israel is purposely targeting civilians.
Fact: While Israel goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, Hamas actually places civilians in harm's way and uses them as shields.
Because Hamas is known to use civilian residences to hide their weapons, on Dec. 27, the Israeli military - before launching an attack on such storehouses - called thousands of civilians in Gaza on their cell phones and left Arabic-language messages urging them to leave homes being used for weapons storage.[13]
On Dec. 30, a reformist Iranian newspaper published a statement by a student organization that criticized Hamas for risking civilian lives, including children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The Iranian Culture Ministry shut down the newspaper after it printed the statements.[14]
Israel has publicly stated time and again that it regrets the loss of any civilian life and considers each one a tragedy. However, both Iran-backed Hamas and Iran-backed Hezbollah have a history of faking deaths and funerals. For example, in Spring 2002, Palestinians were filmed as they attempted to stage a fake funeral as part of a gross exaggeration of the number of people killed in Jenin. The film shows Palestinians wrapping, then carrying a 'corpse' on a funeral pier; the 'corpse' falls off several times and gets back on - including in front of a large and surprised crowd.[15] Click here for video of faked funeral. Although some reports say a quarter of the deaths during "Operation Cast Lead" have been civilians, Palestinian terrorists' history of deceptions and false claims require reporters to work to verify such information.
During Israel's defensive war against Hezbollah two years ago, the phenomenon was so common that it became known as "Hezbollywood."[16] One of the best-known instances was when a man purporting to be a rescue worker at the site of a bombed village appeared in various photos in the international media, repeatedly displaying the same child's dead body at different times - and in different poses - throughout the day. The man, identified as Salam Daher, wore a green helmet in all of the photos, earning himself the nickname "green helmet guy." Daher was also found to have directed a camera shooting the scene.[17]
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What's The One Question?
If you could ask one question of the romantic partner you're with -- or could've asked the one you were with -- what would that question be?*
Habitat For The Cockroaches
Some of those Habitat for Humanity homes aren't faring so well, writes John Harlow for the Times of London about one of Jimmy Carter's pet projects:Fairway Oaks was built on northern Florida wasteland by 10,000 volunteers, including Carter, in a record 17-day "blitz" organised by the charity Habitat for Humanity.Eight years later it is better known for cockroaches, mildew and mysterious skin rashes.
A forthcoming legal battle over Fairway Oaks threatens the reputation of a charity envied for the calibre of its celebrity supporters, who range from Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt to Colin Firth, Christian Bale and Helena Bonham Carter.
The case could challenge the bedrock philosophy behind Habitat for Humanity, claiming that using volunteers, rather than professional builders, is causing as many problems as it solves.
April Charney, a lawyer representing many of the 85 homeowners in Fairway Oaks, said she had no problems taking on Habitat for Humanity, despite its status as a "darling of liberal social activists". She said the charity should have told people that part of the estate had been built on a rubbish dump.
One man pulled up his floorboards to find rubbish 5ft deep under his kitchen. Other complaints include cracking walls and rotting door frames that let in rats and ants. Many residents have complained of mildew and mysterious skin rashes.
Now, is this just recipients of charity looking for a quick buck in a lawsuit? Perhaps. But, check this out in the comments on the Times of London piece:
This is not a typical Habitat project. This was a photo-op for the worst President who is also the worst former President the US. has ever had. I am on the board of a local Habitat and we do great work. We only build about three houses a year but they are made well and last if maintained.lulu bert, columbus,ms, usa
Is Lulu Bert real -- and for real? I found a couple of comments in that name on articles. But, here's a bit about the Columbus-Lowndes, Mississippi Habitat for Humanity. And it looks like Lulu has it right: they're about to start construction on just two homes; one for a woman and her disabled son and one for parents with six children who've just adopted eight more out of foster care.
Here's a counterpoint from another guy who's apparently worked on Habitat houses, the blogger at The Ripley Porch:
For years...I've sat and watched Jimmy Carter's Habitat for Humanity charity do its work. In my mind, there were always negatives mixed with the positives. Everytime they did a video piece....they interviewed people who were real carpenters, and then you came to the majority of the group...who were regular people like myself, with no construction background whatsoever. I usually got the impression that a good sixty to seventy percent of the participants had no background in construction. It was a charity support thing...which I can apprciate but then I kept thinking...would I want a house from these guys?Ummm...somebody who's homeless without one? Ripley continues:
Carter's charity might have great intentions but the truth of the matter is that people have come to expect a house with no issues. And when you rush in with thirty people...of which only four are professionals...you are getting questionable workmanship. I'm thinking this is going to be a tough sale in the future as people began to realize what you are getting. In some ways...you might be better off just spending $30k and buying a RV trailer....or $60k to get a house trailer...rather than accept charity at your front door.Getting back to realism again, I don't think the people living in Fairway Oaks had the money to get a trailer. They got real sweetheart deals on their housing (from the NYT: $500 down, 300 hours of sweat equity, and no-interest mortgages of around $45,000 to $61,000. Monthly payments, including insurance, are generally less than $300). Without those deals, many would very likely be in some very dire straits now.
And yes, the NYT piece has the EPA reporting the Fairway Oaks land safe -- just like they did my old neighborhood around the WTC after 9/11. Hilarious! (Unless, of course, you were breathing the air.)
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Leader Monkeys For The Blind
It's a zoo out there -- of the various kinds of service animals (and "service animals"), writes Rebecca Skloot for The New York Times. One blind woman has a tiny pony leading her around. Another woman, Rose, has a monkey:(Rose) has agoraphobia and severe anxiety disorder with debilitating panic attacks. Until getting Richard four years ago, she required heavy doses of anti-anxiety drugs just to go out in public. "I couldn't have come in this store before Richard, let alone handled all these people talking to me," she said. "Now I like it."Rose adopted Richard in 2004; he was badly neglected and near death. She and two of her six children -- whom she raised as a single mother -- run an exotic-animal shelter. Rose says she believes that Richard was trained as a service animal for his previous owner, an elderly woman whose son gave Richard away when she died. He had been neutered, and his tail had been surgically removed. He'd also had his large and potentially dangerous canine teeth pulled, a procedure commonly done with service monkeys for safety (and often cited as one of several ethical concerns with using wild instead of domesticated species for such jobs).
As Richard returned to health, Rose realized that he had begun to recognize her panic attacks before she did. Her doctor suggested that she train him to help with her disorder, then wrote a letter approving of him as a service animal, saying that Richard was "a constructive way to avoid use of unnecessary medications." Rose took that letter to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, got permission for Richard to accompany her in public and has been drug-free ever since. She ordered a service-animal ID certificate online; she even got a restriction on her driver's license saying that she can't operate a car without a monkey present. Now he sits in her lap with a hand on the wheel while she drives, and she never leaves home without him.
But the number of places Rose and Richard can go is decreasing. In September 2006, after receiving complaints that Richard was sitting in highchairs in restaurants, touching silverware and going through a buffet line with Rose, the Health Department sent a letter to all local restaurants announcing that Richard was a risk to public health and not a legitimate service animal. It instructed businesses to refuse him access and to call the police if Rose protested. Businesses posted the letter on their doors and in their bathrooms; soon Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences, where Rose was attending nursing school, refused Richard access, too. Stories started appearing about Rose and her monkey in the newspaper and on TV. "Suddenly," she told me, "everyone knew I had a mental disorder."
Rose dropped out of school and filed a lawsuit against her local Health Department, the nursing school, Wal-Mart and several other local businesses that had forbidden Richard access, saying that they violated the A.D.A. Kevin Gipson, director of the local Health Department, told me that he had asked Rose to show him what "tasks" Richard performed that would qualify him. "She couldn't," he said.
Defining "task" is often a point of contention in these cases, especially with psychiatric service animals, whose work generally can't be demonstrated on command. Before going to T. J. Maxx, I saw Rose begin to panic while sitting in her lawyer's office talking about her case. Her face flushed; her voice quivered. Richard, who had been dozing in the chair beside her, leapt onto her arm and began stroking her hair. He hugged her, rubbed her ear and cooed while she talked. She immediately calmed down. "He snaps me out of it before the attacks happen," she said. "If they start at night, he'll turn on the light and get me a bottle of water."
For Gipson, that's really beside the point. "Even if Richard is a legitimate service animal," he told me, "if he poses a public-health risk, the A.D.A. says he can be excluded. And we believe primates pose a significant health risk."
Rose says that Richard is perfectly safe and immaculately clean. She showers and blow-dries him every day and uses hand sanitizer on him regularly, and he always wears diapers. But that doesn't impress the Health Department. Monkeys can carry viruses, like herpes B, which are essentially harmless to them but usually deadly to humans. Those viruses can be transmitted through saliva and other bodily fluids. In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study titled "B-Viruses From Pet Macaque Monkeys: An Emerging Threat in the United States?" saying that 80 to 90 percent of adult macaques like Richard carry herpes B. It's possible to test them for viruses, which Rose does every year with Richard, but those tests often give false negatives. Plus, Gipson told me, "he could catch it any time from contact with other monkeys, which we know he's had." Five days before the Health Department banned Richard, a local newspaper ran pictures of him and several other monkeys hanging out at Rose's family's sanctuary.
Lex Frieden, a professor of health-information science at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and a former director of the National Council on Disability, says:
"People shouldn't be able to carry their pets on a plane or into a restaurant claiming they're service animals when they're not," he says. "But that has nothing to do with what species a service animal is." The appropriate response in those situations isn't a species ban, he says, but rather strict punishments for people who pose as disabled. "It's fraud," he points out, "and it results in increased scrutiny of people with legitimate disabilities."...We've now said, by law, that regardless of their disability, people must have equal opportunity, and we can't discriminate. In order to seek the opportunities and benefits they have as citizens, if a person needs a cane, they should be able to use one. If they need a wheelchair, a dog, a miniature horse or any other device or animal, society has to accept that, because those things are, in fact, part of that person."
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How Islam Deals With Criticism
It's the religion of people with the self-esteem of bullied eight-year-olds. Criticize Judaism or Christianity and Jews or Christians will call you "mean" or "rude." Criticize Islam and you might just end up dead. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz says Bernard-Henri Levy, who wrote a book on Daniel Pearl's murder at the hands of Islamists, is on the death list:The planned assassination was apparently thwarted after group leader Abdelkader Belliraj, a Belgian of Moroccan ascent, was arrested last February in Morocco, the newspaper reported.Belgian authorities found the list during a raid on homes of local Muslim community members last November, according to the report.
The hit list mentioned the names of five other well-know Jewish figures in Belgium and France: Josy Eisenberg, producer of the A Bible ouverte (Open Bible) television program on FR2; Simone Susskind, a leader of Belgium's secular Jewish community; attorney Markus Pardes, president of the International Association of Jewish lawyers and jurists; Belgian writer Jean-Claude Bologne and La Derniere Heure reporter Edmond Blattche.
I'm waiting for the big outcry from "moderate Muslims."
Meanwhile, recently, on this very site, when I made remarks critical of Islam, a propagandist for Islam who calls herself "Jenny," with an IP from suburban Detroit, left this in the comments:
"Let's just say you continue to post shit like this and shit will happen to you."The earlier Jennyganda is here. My favorite comment on that entry was this Gog reality check to Jenny:
(JENNY)"Jesus was a man of peace. Muslims actually uphold his values and ideals a lot more than any of you do."(GOG): Jenny, that's why Christians appear on tv holding severed heads and threatening the nonbelievers...
Apostasy (leaving the religion) is kind of a problem, too. Islamic apostasy = death. Here's the long and the short of it (the long of it is at the link), from Answering Islam:
We have examined the theological foundation of Islam and found that Islam's established ruling is that apostates are to be killed wherever they are. The Quran implies this while the Hadith, Sira, and works of jurisprudence state it clearly. When the breadth and depth of Islam are examined this is the only conclusion that can be drawn.Islam brings a knife to the throat of all that is non-Muslim, be they Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, or apostates
"Religion of peace"? No, religion of pieces! Body parts of all the people murdered in the name of Islam!
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Three Good Questions About Israel
Robert asks them over at Pelalusa, echoing one I always ask people who complain about Israel defending itself.My usual question: If the Canadians were sending rockets over the river into Detroit, or if Mexicans were planting bombs under cars on Wilshire Boulevard, do you think we'd just shrug our shoulders and say "Whatever"?
Robert puts it like this, with "three simple questions" for people who condemn Israel for fighting back against Hamas' rocket attacks:
1. Do you truly and honestly think the current Palestinian leadership wants peace with Israel?
2. Do you believe that Israel has the right to exist?
3. If missiles were being sent into your neighborhood from a nearby independent Indian Reserve, would you just sit back and say, "That's alright"?Personally, I think Israel should get out of the Middle East and do as Ken Layne suggests, and buy and relocate to a chunk of Baja. The Muslims have been murdering each other for centuries. The Jews over there are just an excuse and a distraction from business as usual.
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Protecting Kids From An Education
The problem is, the guy who wanted to pay for it, for inner-city kids, is white, and his plan would eliminate the stranglehold the teacher's union has on the schools (the severely failing Detroit Public Schools). Nolan Finley writes in The Detroit News:With the Detroit Public Schools near disintegration, it ought to be noted that it's been five years since Plymouth philanthropist Bob Thompson was told to take his $200 million and get back to the suburbs.Thompson, a retired road builder obsessed with spending his fortune to get urban children a high-quality education, ran into a political buzz saw when he offered to open 15 charter high schools in the city that would guarantee to graduate 90 percent of their students and send 90 percent of those graduates on to college.
Community activists denounced Thompson as a white meddler out to steal their children. They were joined in their absurdity by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who threw their lot in with the teacher union.
The rejection of Thompson's millions became a national story of a city so seized by racial divisions it couldn't set them aside even to save its children.
So instead of a network of alternative schools that would have rescued roughly 5,000 students from the sinking DPS, look what Detroit has today:
A school district that fails to graduate 70 percent of its students; a school board that's fired two superintendents and an interim superintendent in four years; 18 of its 19 high schools on the failure list; and a fiscal meltdown.
Five years after Thompson was given the boot, Detroit is officially the worst big city school district in the nation and still sends more children to welfare and prison than it does to college.
Think about how different things might have been. Had the Thompson schools been built, they would be preparing to graduate their first class in the spring. Two thousand Detroit seniors would be making college plans. And Detroit's fast-fleeing middle class would have a reason to stay.
Yet no one has dialed up Thompson to apologize, to say they were wrong, to beg him for a second chance.
In fact, the governor and Democratic lawmakers are stubbornly blocking other Bob Thompsons from saving Detroit's children.
Idiotically, Michigan governor Granholm is refusing to lift a cap on charter schools.
And the teacher's union was, apparently, a big part of keeping him out. Here, from 2005:
Thompson, of Plymouth, Mich., originally offered the money in 2003, but was rebuffed by the Detroit Federation of Teachers and others. Despite passage of a new state law that year allowing for the creation of up to 15 new charter high schools in Detroit, none were built. The Detroit Federation of Teachers held a rally in Lansing, which was followed by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Gov. Jennifer Granholm deciding to withdraw support for Thompson.The incident shed a negative light on Detroit both statewide and nationally. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein said the DFT "led a furious, and scurrilous, campaign against (Thompson's) generosity." The Metro Times, a weekly paper, said Thompson's offer was "amazingly generous," especially "in a city where the schools, like the government, are a stunning failure."
...The Detroit Federation of Teachers, however, remains staunchly opposed to the plan.
"We believe Mr. Thompson earnestly wants to make a positive difference in the lives of the children in Detroit," Janna Garrison, DFT president, told Michigan Education Report. "But we think he's going about it the wrong way."
Of course you do. Because he's exposing and will continue to expose how teachers' unions ruin it for the kids they're supposed to be educating. If teachers truly cared about educating the kids, they'd weep with gratitude for Thompson and his money. Greed and the promotion of failure in the service of it are especially ugly where kids' welfare is concerned.
Here's another story, from The Weekly Standard, by Henry Payne:
For thirty years, Detroit has been hemorrhaging population as a result of high crime, high taxes, soaring insurance rates--and a crumbling system of public education, which has left Detroit's adult population with a staggering rate of functional illiteracy (47 percent, according to the federal government's National Center for Education Statistics). This leaves a shallow employment pool for any enterprise looking to locate in the city.Seeking educational alternatives, state Republicans--against fierce opposition from teacher unions and Democrats--succeeded in passing legislation in the 1990s authorizing charter schools. These public schools are governed independently of local school boards; each is sponsored by a city or a university, and most are nonunion and have a distinctive educational approach. Since then, 39 charter schools have opened in Detroit, yet the number of Detroit families on charter waiting lists is estimated in the thousands. Moreover, most charter schools serve grades K through 6 (elementary schools are the cheapest to build), which leaves a crying demand for high schools.
In 2002, Republican governor John Engler answered parents' pleas for aid with a push to bring 15 more charters to Detroit. Enter Robert Thompson.
A Michigan farm boy who later taught school in Detroit, Thompson went on to found the state's biggest asphalt paving company, working out of the Detroit suburb of Plymouth. When he sold his company in 1999 for $461 million, he and his wife, Ellen, created the Thompson Foundation, dedicated to helping Detroit's poor. They first funded University Preparatory Academy, a successful K-12 charter school with a 90/90 system that is the model for the high schools Thompson now wants to build.
Thompson credits his own success to the education he received, and he is determined to give Detroit's poor the same opportunities. "The only way to get those kids out of there is through education," says the soft-spoken Thompson.
IN DETROIT, officials reacted to Thompson's proffered $200 million not with gratitude but with rage. The Michigan Federation of Teachers urged a walkout, declaring a school holiday so that union members could march on the state capitol in protest of charter schools. State Democrats cowered before the union, while Detroit's politicians bristled at a white suburbanite's "meddling" in the city's affairs. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick--whose own children attended a charter school--responded to Thompson's offer by saying, with a dismissive wave of the hand, "Let us make the rules, and if he can't abide by the rules . . . "
Says Thompson, "We thought if we tried to do good things, people would appreciate it. I guess we were naive."
You have to laugh at the Kwame quote. Kwame's now abiding by the warden's rules, after failing to abide by society's.
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Sex Sells
Dennis Prager is often an annoying and irrational blowhard, but he's right about this -- smart women put out for their husbands and boyfriends. (And vice-versa -- but men and women are different, and he illustrates one difference here, in how not putting out is viewed by a man.) An excerpt from his essay, "When A Woman Isn't In The Mood, Part I":It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think men's natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a woman's nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.
This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.
And here's Prager's Part II:
1. If most women wait until they are in the mood before making love with their husband, many women will be waiting a month or more until they next have sex. When most women are young, and for some older women, spontaneously getting in the mood to have sex with the man they love can easily occur. But for most women, for myriad reasons -- female nature, childhood trauma, not feeling sexy, being preoccupied with some problem, fatigue after a day with the children and/or other work, just not being interested -- there is little comparable to a man's "out of nowhere," and seemingly constant, desire for sex.2. Why would a loving, wise woman allow mood to determine whether or not she will give her husband one of the most important expressions of love she can show him? What else in life, of such significance, do we allow to be governed by mood?
What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex? Most women would gradually stop respecting and therefore eventually stop loving such a man.
What woman would love a man who was so governed by feelings and moods that he allowed them to determine whether he would do something as important as go to work? Why do we assume that it is terribly irresponsible for a man to refuse to go to work because he is not in the mood, but a woman can -- indeed, ought to -- refuse sex because she is not in the mood? Why?
And no, I'm not suggesting anything remotely close to rape. This is just Prager's rather long-winded restatement of what I said in my Advice Goddess column, "A Tale Of Naked Whoa," from May of 2007:
Relationships are filled with little tasks that don't exactly bring a person to screaming orgasm. A man, for example, doesn't wake up in the middle of the night with some primal longing to bring his girlfriend flowers, rehang her back door, or clean the trap in her sink. Like sex, these things can be expressions of love, but if a guy's going to lock himself in the bathroom, it's not going to be with "Bob Vila's Complete Guide to Remodeling Your Home."So, couldn't putting out when you aren't in the mood be seen as just another expression of love? Joan Sewell, author of I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido, told The Atlantic Monthly, "If you have sex when you don't desire it, physically desire it, you are going to feel used." Well, okay, perhaps. But, if a guy rotates a woman's tires when he doesn't desire it, physically desire it, does he feel used?
Actually, we all do plenty of things with our bodies that we don't really feel like; for instance, taking our bodies to work when we have a hangover instead of putting our bodies in front of some greasy hash browns, and then to bed. For women, however, sexual things are supposed to be out of the question. I think the subtext here is not doing things we really don't feel like if it GIVES A MAN PLEASURE. And no, I'm not advocating rape or anything remotely close to it. And, of course, if you find sex with your husband or boyfriend a horrible chore, you're in the wrong place. Otherwise, if you're with a man, and he's nice to you, and works hard to please you, would it kill you to throw him a quickie?
The real problem for many couples is the notion that "the mood" is something they're supposed to wait around for like Halley's Comet -- probably due to the assumption that desire works the same in men and women. The truth is, just because a woman isn't in the mood doesn't mean she can't get in the mood. According to breakthrough work by sexual medicine specialist Rosemary Basson, women in long-term relationships tend not to have the same "spontaneous sexual neediness" men do, but they can be arousable, or "triggerable." In other words, forget trying to have sex. Tell your girlfriend about Basson's findings, and ask her to try an experiment: making out three times a week (without sex being the presumed outcome) and seeing if "the mood" happens to strike her. You just might find the member getting admitted to the club a little more often.
Sexperts will tell you "a sexual mismatch needn't mean the end of a relationship" -- which sounds good but tends to play out like being hungry for three meals a day and being expected to make do with a handful of pretzels. Expressway to Resentsville, anyone? If it comes to that, breakup sex is a better idea. You're always going to have issues in a relationship, but for a relationship to work for you, the biggie'll have to be something like your falling asleep after sex, not her falling asleep before.
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