Wednesday, March 8. 2006
What is the Dem agenda? They cannot decide. More socialism, plus defeat? Politics is disgusting. Is "Not Bush" enough? Balloon. Popular Mechanics is becoming a hot magazine. They deal with Katrina myths, via here. Why do newspapers pretend they have no political agendas? What do they have to lose? With housing values rising, property taxes rise too. And politicians get to use the $ to buy votes. Then the regular folks feel exploited, and get mad. India is within the Circle of Fire - the Jihad. The latest. Dem-minded Lefties declare victory! Meaning defeat! University of South Alabama stands tall. So much for the elite colleges. The Admin. is so out to lunch on immigration that it isn't funny. Who are they talking to? Are they really idiots on this subject? Hey, GW - it's our country. The Trevor Green story captures all of the unreported nuance that is needed about Moslem blood-lust. Normblog. The problem with the French economy. Teach people to be children, and they will act like children. Reconstructing American Indian languages. Useless, but interesting. Barry Bonds and steroids. A sad, bad, story.
Tuesday, March 7. 2006
Davidson College. It's a hot school, but can you get a date there? New campus speech code prevents "inquiries about dating." How about inquires about raw, uncommitted, transgender, gay, or lesbian sex? Is heterosexual dating the big evil? How will this be enforced? Santorum. No idea why he has been in trouble. He has a tough fight, but he's a nice guy. Not your father's Britain. Submission in the UK. I ask again - Why does the Left always welcome submission? And even worse: The Nanny State of the UK will now provide Nannies. We are rapidly losing respect, cousins. What happened to noble Self-Reliance? Is it now a Brit thing to have other people pay your bills? Where is the honor in that? Yet another good blogger burns out. The blog voice of Tennessee: One Hand Clapping. If the pay were better...like about $700,000 with good benefits and equity, it would be a pretty decent gig, assuming you don't live on the coasts.
Our mighty editor asked me to post this one separately: Most out-of-control school in the US? Why doesn't somebody call the cops? The thought of good kids in that school, who want to learn, breaks my heart. It is too damn bad that the kids who want to be left behind, can't be, nowadays. In the good old days, it worked out fine. There was tons of industrial work and good hard farm work. All work deserves respect. Is there not enough unskilled and semi-skilled work and skilled work nowadays - or do the Guatemalan illegals do all of it for peanuts? Stoneworkers get $30/hr; gunsmiths make $100/hr. There's lots of work out there for kids who hate school. My local camera/TV/VCR etc repair guy gets $175/hr. Most folks aren't avid scholars. Despite No Child Left Behind BS, lots of kids just aren't into it. There is plenty of work out there - good honest work - with a good life, for kids who don't like school. Plus America already has enough kids with college "degrees" which mean about as much as a High School diploma used to mean. If you hate it, get out of school, and learn how to do something useful. You can have a fine life that way, and most college degrees these days are scams anyway. That's why we call it the Education Industry.
The Right to Ridicule. Ridicule is a cruel, humorous, necessary, often clever, and time-honored form of discourse. Dworkin in the NY Review of Books discusses why we must preserve and protect it. Porsche: Made in Finland with VW parts. Outsourcing in the Auto industry. Why the Dems refuse to acknowledge Saddam-Al Quaida links. Duh. We hardly need Barone's talents to explain this. Iran came out of the closet over the weekend and revealed that it has played the EU for suckers. Yesterday, Hamas did the same. I think these guys know they have civilization on the run. LGF. And now we find that Iran is participating in the war in Iraq. Surely they know that the US is not up for one more war in the middle east. Most out-of-control school in the US? Why doesn't somebody call the cops? The thought of good kids in that school, who want to learn, breaks my heart. It is too damn bad that the kids who want to be left behind, can't be, nowadays. Not enough unskilled and semi-skilled work and skilled workers - or the Guatemalan illegals do all of it for peanuts. Stoneworkers get $30/hr; gunsmiths make $100/hr. There's lots of work out there for kids who hate school. My local camera/TV/VCR etc repair guy gets $175/hr. Blogger Ed Driscoll reviews Instapundit's new book about future trends, An Army of Davids. Quote from the book: "I think the way that you make it in the 21st century is going to be figuring out a way to help a lot of people do what they want, rather than as in the 20th century, trying to figure out a way to make them do what you want."
Schwartz at TCS on New Visions for European Islam. Wow. One quote: Western Europeans are, I fear, spiritually exhausted; and they express their "Christian" loyalties only as a means of declaring they are not Muslims. They are afraid of Muslims, but mainly because they are insecure about their own religious legacies. The peoples of New Europe -- Poles, Hungarians, Slovenes, Romanians, and even some other citizens of former Yugoslavia -- survived Communism thanks to their spiritual commitments, often to traditional Catholicism. They are stronger in their Christian belief and are in a better position to view Islam without fear. With these thoughts in mind, as executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, I went to Slovenia and Croatia in February for university and think-tank conferences on European Islam and the "Balkan Muslim model."
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? Abraham Lincoln
Monday, March 6. 2006
He was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. A conniving pretty-boy rascal and the lover boy of both James l of England and the Queen of France.
Hillary can't remember Bill's Dubai ties. OK. Gotta believe her. I am concerned that her memory problem may be getting worse. Cyberthieves. This is creepy. (H/T, Part-time Pundit) Yet another poll demonstrating that illegal immigration bothers people. Getting your kid into school in NYC: It's all about me. Shrinkwrapped. A guy who loves stray dogs. This is great. CSM Murtha terms Gen. Pace a Liar. Taliban at Yale. Jeez. John Fund stays on the story. From Ace: Little rule(s) I've learned: Anyone who says looks don't matter is probably not very attractive. Anyone who says book-smarts aren't the measure of intelligence probably has trouble getting through a comic book. And anyone who says that political labels mean nothing at all, especially the label "liberal," is probably slightly to the left of Pol Pot's junior economic advisor, the one Pol Pot ignored as "too utopian and impractical."
Crocodile Tears and Censorship. Moonbattery. Whatever happened to "s ticks and stones'''? Was there something on TV last night? I didn't watch it. Will Bush's major diplomatic success in India get the credit it deserves? IPTV - Internet Protocol TV. It's the newest rage. What is it? Blogcritics. Art Buchwald is dying, by choice - slowly but relatively happily. via Drudge Iran admits playing Europe for fools.Capt'n Ed Three Blind Mice? They run about $250. Was the Halimi story blacked out? Bird of Paradise Police Chiefs on access to firearms. They approve. How to Win your Own Oscar. Cracked. Strunk and White, 4th Edition. On sale. We love it but we don't obey it. Recoil. Mr. Free Market takes on the pressing subject. Some thoughts about writing new laws when existing laws "don't work." We have all thought about this, but Classical Values wrote it down.
Saturday, March 4. 2006
Thought Crime in England. This is bad. We are permitted bad thoughts legally, although the sin thing is another matter. Broken penis. Ouch is right. Hey, girl - go easy on me. I am not a machine. Kevin, MD Chavez, his new army (should help with his unemployment), and his delightful links with Iran. What a nice guy. College newspaper editors fired for running Moslem cartoons. WTF? We'd do it in a second. Sometimes publishers need to be ill-mannered, if only to mark the right of freedom. Manners are good, but they aren't the law.
Friday, March 3. 2006
Unbelievable. Video at BKP. We need to "work harder to understand" these people. What country does Jimmy Carter live in? LGF Everybody is talking about this Bennish teacher character. Sounds like standard Dem boilerplate to me. If Colorado weren't paying him to teach geography, it would be no biggie. Normal stuck-in-the-1960s. Wow - I am cool - I have radical ideas!!! Yup, very advanced in 1905. Comments from Classical Values. Lent, from David Warren. One quote: It is not a simple joy. Abstaining from customary pleasures is hard, can be very hard, and so can be the shame one feels each time one falls off the wagon -- which happens to everyone who tries to ride against the grain of his habits through forty days and nights. Lenten resolutions are not made to oneself, but to God. Part of the discipline is to get clear in my head that when I fail, I am not merely failing myself. For in the Christian view, I am letting down my sinless Lord, who for his own penance, nailed the sins of the world with Himself to the Cross. Take each failure as the crowing of a cock to Peter; then rise, and return manfully to the struggle. Now, this is not likely the sort of thing you are used to reading in a newspaper. I am immensely grateful to have editors who do not demand that I conceal my “Christian content”; I hope they will continue. At the worst, it is not a dangerous activity. We are not proposing to kill anybody. The “mortification of the flesh” that is proposed can have no meaning unless it is voluntary; just as Christian belief is deprived of meaning when it is compelled. We may proselytize, however, as we have been doing wherever there is freedom, for two thousand years.
Thursday, March 2. 2006
 Does everyone know by now that Bill Clinton helped with the Dubai deal? I think the entire ports thing is a non-issue.
The dark side of China's economic rise: Pei on corruption, cronyism, and neo-Leninism. Arthur J. Dahlgren, Jr to Strike Fla. Panhandle? National Weather Service to give hurricanes full names next year. Borders wars. What is going on down there? Hey, GW??? Wash. Times Anger at AOL for its plan to charge for email. Why shouldn't they charge for it? Give me one good reason. Are there too many people on the earth? Earth's population has doubled since 1960. Is it a problem? Of course it is. Can you have Bible study at the Univ. of Wisconsin? Now you can. But wait... one student felt "uncomfortable" about it. Have we raised a nation of infants? Happiness, Jeremy Bentham, and high taxes to reduce envy! Good piece by Wilkinson at Reason. (H/T, Samizdata) Whither Conservatism? The goal of a smaller federal govt is as elusive as ever. Rick Moran proposes "good govt" rather than smaller govt. Minneapolis blacks love their charter schools. From a piece titled "Black Flight" in Opinion Journal: According to the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, Minneapolis charter school enrollment is 91% minority and 84% low-income, while district enrollment is 72% minority and 67% low-income. Joe Nathan, the center's director, says that parents want strong academic programs, but also seek smaller schools and a stable teaching staff highly responsive to student needs. Charter schools offer many options. Some cater to particular ethnic communities like the Hmong or Somali; others offer "back to basics" instruction or specialize in arts or career preparation. At Harvest Preparatory School, a K-6 school that is 99% black and two-thirds low income, students wear uniforms, focus on character, and achieve substantially higher test scores than district schools with similar demographics.
The Cotillion gals are carrying. Do not mess with them. They quote Colt: "Have no fear of any man no matter what his size. When danger threatens call on me, and I shall equalize." Good sounds from the Supremes. They sound skeptical about campaign finance regulation - which means maybe they support free political speech. Gee, that's a good idea. Captain Ed Ann Coulter's Oscar predictions. (I haven't seen a single one of these movies, and haven't heard of most of them.) Can you write negative blog posts about your employer? No, not if you want to keep your job. WaPo. Duh? is right. The French Quarter Festival this year - including Dylan. Dylan loves New Orleans. "Because they hate." Brigitte Gabriel at the Intelligence Summit. A Marine. This will make you feel GOOD.
Wednesday, March 1. 2006
Is Science all it's cracked up to be? Be careful. John at P'line. Scientists play games, too...political ones. Shame on them. Speciesism. This used to be a joke. Well, still is, really - even for those who love animals, whether alive in the woods or steaming on the stove. A major and fascinating piece on the subject by Appleton at Spiked. Is the true purpose of the EU to bring Socialist Totalitarianism? Could be. They certainly seem to want to control everything, including whether you cut your toenails straight or on a curve. A fresh and objective look at Jacques Derrida, the enfant terrible of the complacent. What about his relationship with God? Caputo at Crosscurrents. Los Angelinos freak out when it rains. Good grief. No wonder they are such babies out there. Hey, Southern Californians - skin is waterproof. Mindless cant on assimilation of Moslems, covered by Driscoll If you think politics and religion don't mix - try politics and government medicine. Canadian hospital bans more hip replacements - too efficient?!?!?! The Left always blames the victims. So says Prager. What did we evil ones do to piss them off? If something pisses me off, how come I don't receive the same consideration? I guess it's complicated...
Pathetic. CT accepts Chavez' oil "gift." It's a bribe,
not a gift. Shame on a Yankee state for this. It is infra dig. Visualizing Infinity. Yes, it is way cool. We know of two apocalyptic extinctions on earth: the Cretacious Extinction 60 million years ago, which wiped out the dinosaurs, and the great Permian Extinction 250 million years ago, which almost entirely eliminated life. We believe that the former was caused by the big, bad meteor that created the Gulf of Mexico. What about the latter? Looking deeper into the Evangelicals and Global Warming story. They don't get it, but they mean well. Always remember - the road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions. And always remember that The Law of Unintended Consequences never quits, like gravity. These nice folks are in over their heads, and I think their good intentions are being exploited. A New, Improved college ranking system, from the Carnegie Foundation. It does seem better than the ones from Fiske and US News. Site has link to the actual list. Also from the Carnegie Foundation, a piece by Thomas Ehrlich on how Harvard has failed to strenthen its core curriculum. That is a serious failure. The Cape Wind story. We all understand that the oh-so-green Kerrys and Kennedys and their limousine liberal ilk will try any trick to prevent their Nantucket Sound views being despoiled by a wind farm. It is hypocritical in the extreme, and disgusting. However, here at Maggie's we are opposed to wind turbines in general, and see no "necessity" for them. It's a 13th Century energy source. What we do need is a nuke plant - on Nantucket - safely distant from the regular folks. Until then, Oil is Our Friend. What did the Reagan Revolution do for the US economy over the past 25 years? Pete DuPont at Opinion Journal. And, for the 100th time, he notes what is now well-known: tax cuts increase government tax revenue. Thus the only conceivable reason to raise income taxes is to take money away from people who are fortunate enough to have it. Envy, anger and resentment. Very unproductive, un-Yankee and probably sinful emotions - and discouraging to hard work, too.
Tuesday, February 28. 2006
The pup had a great morning with John's venison bones in the snow. Happy dog. Catholicism Rocks. Am. Princess. Good eats for Mardi Gras. Were the Founding Fathers Christians? I always thought of them as Deists mostly, children of the recent Enlightenment, but deeply imbued with a Christian culture and view of the world. Here's the case for that, albeit delivered in an irritable, if not hostile, manner. Prep. Heard lots of good comments about this coming-of-age book. Ordered it. 54 years old and perfect. Dinocrat. Makes the idea of turning 30 seem almost appealing. Canadian medicine going private. Despite the law. It's about time. There's no way Harper will fight this movement of doctors seeking freedom to practice medicine. This is a big deal - the first step in the unraveling of socialism for our comrades from the north. Robert Scott dies. Who? A guy who has done more for this country than any of us will every do. Washington seized by Moslems in 1977. Remember? Tim Blair does.
Earth's human population reaches 6.5 billion. 3.25 billion gals - so how come I can't get a date? Bill Clinton still looking for interns. Would you let your daughter? Admin. wants to sell off public lands. I disagree. Hope congress does too. It belongs to all of us, and we want to keep it. Taxes and Income. Who pays how much, and what has changed during Bush? AlphaPatriot goes over the FACTS. City Lights Bookstore shows its true colors - bans Fallaci. The home of Ferlinghetti, Corso, Ginsberg, etc. - but only Leftist speech please. Except for Kerouac? Class. Values. More from Moonbattery. Will Cheney retire? He might. A great guy in the wrong job. Atlas asks where the investigative reporters are? Moslem training camps in the US? Totally blanked on the crocodile thing. Haha. Ace Austistic kid sets hoop record. Neat. Calling all Moonbats. You won't believe this - unless you saw it on the blogs yesterday. The big protest in DC to overthrow the US Govt., supported by Theresa Kerry? In Canada, just like in the USA. SDA on their press' sense of entitlement. 184 Proof? Might want to add a little water to this Scotch whiskey.
Monday, February 27. 2006
Bloggers world-wide have already posted Steyn's latest on anti-Semitism. Sometimes I wonder whether 50% of the worth of blogs is to disseminate Steyn's pieces. Needing to wake up, West closes its eyes. I know some Neanderthals. So I am not sure I believe this report that there was little interbreeding with homo sapiens. And, on a related topic, proof that blond cavegirls had more fun - and why: Cave-Gentlemen Prefer Blonds. The Conservative Imagination. George Will reviews two new books on the modern conservative movement, in the NYT. Why does the Left enjoy submission? We refuse to get into the depth psychology of this, so let's just say that, while they may be closet sitzpinklers, in effect they are nihilistic and welcome anything that harms the US. Captain Ed notes that, in addition to submission, the Islamists want the Jews gone from the world. You won't read this in the New York Times. The West Point CTC report on Al Quaida's deterioration and internal dissent. Am. Thinker. And why won't you read it there? Because the NYT has already decided that the neocons are wrong about extending freedom. And they have already judged that effort, In Iraq, as a failure. Why? I don't know. It's too soon to judge, in mid-game. Fukayaama has already decided though. Will his much-quoted piece in the NYT go down in history as prescient, or blind? February 19, 2006: After Neoconservatism,By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA - a few quotes: As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point. and The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document. and But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naďve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. and More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends. How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals? The Bush administration's first-term foreign policy did not flow ineluctably from the views of earlier generations of people who considered themselves neoconservatives, since those views were themselves complex and subject to differing interpretations. Four common principles or threads ran through much of this thought up through the end of the cold war: a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends. The problem was that two of these principles were in potential collision. The skeptical stance toward ambitious social engineering — which in earlier years had been applied mostly to domestic policies like affirmative action, busing and welfare — suggested a cautious approach toward remaking the world and an awareness that ambitious initiatives always have unanticipated consequences. The belief in the potential moral uses of American power, on the other hand, implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics. By the time of the Iraq war, the belief in the transformational uses of power had prevailed over the doubts about social engineering. Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.
Saturday, February 25. 2006
 What are your House Guns? MassBackwards shows you his. I prefer a short-barreled pump 12 ga. The ominous "ka-chunk" of a pump gun chambering a cartridge in the dark ought to be sufficient for all but the most crazed bad guys to run for the hills.
Bremer wanted more troops in Iraq, says Gen. Sanchez did too: Review of Bremer's new book. The White House mess: Podhoretz echoes our complaints. The Harriet Myers thing was the first sign of big problems. Burchill in Haaretz on Brits being paralyzed by manners and suicidal political correctness (H/T, LGF). A quote: Anyway, from now on I think I'll get just a few less accusations of racism when I point out that Muslims can be a bit, well, narrow-minded. Mind you, it's a long hard struggle trying to make bleeding-heart liberals see sense. Especially when you live in a country where a sizable part of the print and broadcasting media are such guilt-ridden cretins when it comes to Islam that if they saw Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein sexually sharing their own grandmother, they'd swear the poor old lady asked for it.
Read entire.
Friday, February 24. 2006
Backlash at Harvard: Let's hope so. Dershowitz slams the PC Cops: NE Repub. Also, Ruth Wisse of Harvard, in the WSJ, as passed on via Protein Wisdom. Dhimmitude on Parade. In Malaysia - a prohibition on comments about the cartoon issue. The curtain of silence falls. Did they learn this from the American press? Michelle. How about prohibiting comments on the prohibition of comments on the cartoons? Sitzpinkler. Captain Ed would like us all to take up this word. Will take it under serious consideration. ... OK, we'll use it. Sitzpinklers in the American press. We have noted several times that the press seems to have no fear of the demonic Dick Cheney, but acts terrified of the peaceful and cuddly but misunderstood Jihadists. Daily Pundit addresses the craven press. Our hero, VDH, is back from Iraq. Quote from his piece in NRO: It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy.
 The Vatican Speaks on reciprocity: Excellent point from the Vatican. Dinocrat, Democracy Project, and LGF got on that report right away.
China's media censorship on the rise. CSM Why the Left should hate Chavez: Vargas Llosa at RCP Al Quaida's benefits package: Austin Bay at TCS.
"What's their co-pay?" Which Ad won the Superbowl? Using functional MRI to observe brain response. Very cool and very creepy. Edge. Includes link to the ads, if you missed them. Not Lincoln-Douglas: Lieberman and Dodd debate Iraq. Calif. Yank.
Thursday, February 23. 2006
If you didn't read it, yesterday's post on Dem. Strategy is a must-read. Scroll down a tad. A normal female (if a blogger can be normal) happily straightens it out for you: the looniness of sexual harassment extremism. One quote from And Rightly So: It seems to me that women who file these charges have an ISSUE with themselves; they have little self confidence and take that out on others. They use their “status” of being a woman to punish men. For being men. Men look. They like to be around us. They are social creatures too, who thrive on attention and conversation. If a man is paying attention to a woman she should take that as the ultimate compliment and accept it for what it is: Human nature. Not turn it into something unnatural and negative and phoney. Women should be proud of what and who they are, the power they do indeed have over men, instead of using it against them.
Quit or Stay?, from Orson Card: Well, dumb-guy Bush and his team have been leading us in the best-run war in American history -- not a flawless war, but one with far fewer and less costly mistakes than the norm. (Dear Furious Letter Writers: Don't even bother arguing this point with me until you've studied the mistakes made in all our other wars so you have some kind of perspective.)
I agree with everything he says. Saved us a lot of writing by doing it for us. A Hitchen rant on why the world isn't lining up with the Danes. Via Daily Pundit The sane go to jail. Mr. Momani and Mr. Assadi - true journalistic heroes. Captain's Quarters. Boston has a long and proud history of corruption, once you get outside Chestnut Hill and Cambridge. But the Bulgar Brother's story is hard to believe. Wizbang has a nice summary, and link to the new book. Not just a slick news/blog update, but the pictures are amazing. Cotillion.
Wednesday, February 22. 2006
Jesus cartoons all over, but no riots. And has Google blocked searches for Mohammed cartoons? (No, reports a careful reader) Blogcritics "Hands are OK" - US grammar school art class bans kids drawing human images. LGF. WFT? Summary of the Ilan Halimi horror story in France: NY Sun
The Port Operations story: The Admin. wants to positively engage a moderate Islamic nation - friends and allies - for a task which has nothing to do with port security. The UAE are not Jihadists. What's the issue? Fear-mongering Repubs, and Dems grabbing any opportunity to erase their image as weak-kneed appeasers. Ridiculous. YARGB discusses. Confed. Yank also. Bush is right with this one: Don't smear all of Islam with the same brush for demagogic purposes. Amazing rock and roll stuff found in Bill Graham's basement: Synthstuff The Press Corps wants to bring Bush down. Good piece by Buchanan at RCP. (H/t, Soxblog and Anchoress). I am deeply offended by this: Larry Summers goes down for thought crime. Comments from Driscoll. Comment summary at New England Repub. These academics are as bad as the Jihadists. Or the Inquisition. Is this America??? SISU addresses the fascism of the Left - a favorite topic here at Maggie's. This is one serious black eye for Harvard, and one more confirmation of everything Horowitz has been saying. Harvard alums should let the Corporation know that they have gone off the deep end. New Zealand Christians offended by free speech. Of course they're offended. RTLC. Everybody should be offended occasionally by free speech. Since when is hurting someone's feelings a crime? Or am I old-fashioned? Lots of speech is rude, crude, unkind and insensitive. Too bad. I can take it. Come to think of it, if you really want to see Hate Speech On Parade, try the Daily Kos.
An "alternative" Ann Arbor, MI newspaper, The True Voice of the People, issued a front page editorial yesterday entitled "Dump The Jihadists." The centrist-Marxist newspaper, which is influential among liberal-arts students and faculty at the University of Michigan, stunned this academic town with its revolutionary strategic u-turn, along with a kind of cultural insensitivity normally reserved only for Christians, employers, landlords, car dealerships, Capitalist Pigs, Republicans, Walmart, the NRA, FOX News, the military, guys who play sports, beer-drinkers, non-vegans, housewives, cops, whites, and Israel. This was their editorial yesterday, which we fearlessly reprint: Dump the Jihadists It is time for us in The Movement to reconsider our support for Jihad. I know that this editorial will rankle many of our readers who seek World Peace and Justice, but let's try to be rational for a minute. Extreme Islam is opposed to women's rights. They jail and hang gays. They hate blacks. They kill Jews. They have absolutely zero class consciousness. They are so religious Marx would cry, and we cannot wean them off Mohammed and onto Marxism-Leninism. They treat criminals worse than our fascist USA or fascist France or fascist China. Their Sharia Law is in total contradiction to what we aspire to. They have an unsavory, oil-based, capitalistic tendency which is abominable. They are as multiculturally enlightened as a rattlesnake. And "Green"? They don't know from green. Let's be honest with ourselves. We only love the Jihadists because they are anti-US and anti-West, and because of our wish to see Bush damaged. And for no other reasons. It's our nihilistic, adventurous streak which causes us to glamorize these people, but they are not heroic Lenins or Stalins or Fidels or Maos. Our emotion derives purely from the old "The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend." But where would these Jihadists take us? We'd be the first to lose our heads in a nation run by them. These people are exposing themselves to be semi-civilized religious fanatics, and they would carry us in the wrong direction - not towards the Revolution we all seek, but towards the Theocratic Fascism we have valiantly fought for so many generations. We hereby pronounce the Jihadists to be Counter-Revolutionaries. We did not come to this weighty decision lightly, but our Editorial Board concludes that it's time the Left said "Dump the Jihadists. " It's time for us to move forward towards better, saner, and more progressive allies, like Chavez and Fidel and Sanders and Hillary. If we do not eliminate Jihad, The People's Revolution will never have a chance in the world. Yes, we all wish to see the US humiliated and weakened in the world, but let's not forget why: our goal is to advance the People's Revolution. And Bourgeois Freedom is the only medium in which we can effectively work for our goal. A successful Jihad could set Our Cause back 1000 years, as it is doing in Europe right now. Politics makes strange bedfellows. We might not like the demonic Bushitler, but it's time for the Left to get on board with the so-called "War on Terror" for the moment, tactically, or our dream of Universal Justice, provided by a Benevolent State, could have no future at all. It's time to be smart, and not blinded by our anger. (And yes, this is satire.)
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