Thursday, January 22. 2015
Wednesday, January 21. 2015
Tuesday, January 20. 2015
I believe "New York isn't as great as it once was" (in case you were wondering, the sarcasm is thick).
A number of people, mostly born-and-bred New Yawkers, have recently been suggesting to me that New York is in decline. With Mayor Bill, I have a hard time refuting this. On the other hand, their 'evidence' is a host of articles and commentary about the closing of this deli or that dry cleaner, some other diner, or the changing cultural makeup of some community which they'd prefer never change.
"That deli was iconic, how horrible!" "Landlords forced them out by raising rents!" Oh the horror! To me, New York is cool because it doesn't stay the same.
Face it, who wants it to stay the same? Sure I love Carnegie Deli and Katz'. If they closed tomorrow, sad as I'd be, something else would come along. Jack Dempsey's was gone long before I arrived in 1985, should I regret it's passing (I'm sure many did)? Though I haven't been in McSorley's since our hike last fall, and only to use their restroom, I admit I'd fight tooth and nail to keep it open...though probably not. Better to have one last beer and let the past go, if I must.
Bond's is a great example of the idea that New York is improving rather than getting worse. I've eaten at Bond 45 a few times. The food is good, though I consider it comfort food. Still, for a business or friendly lunch in the heart of Times Square it's good to know there is a reliable and reasonable place to eat.
Even so, isn't it lamentable that Bond's is gone? Sort've. I mean, the clothing store and "international casino" are long gone. So is the concert venue, which was iconic because of The Clash in 1981. Well, really iconic because those 'greedy' concert promoters sought to fill overwhelming demand to see a red-hot band (everyone won in that transaction, if I remember correctly...fans like my brother-in-law got to say they 'were there', promoters made some good coin, Bond's made a pretty penny, and The Clash got their cut and made a name for themselves - wait, where was the "greed" again?)
Still....Bond's is GONE. Gone forever in the most reliable way you can imagine - it's not at all like those glorious summer days of 1981. And NYC is WORSE because of it. Sort've, but not really...because Bond's is a pretty good place to eat now.
I am reminded of a fellow at a recent event I attended for my alma mater, Syracuse University. This schmuck, after hearing of all the very positive changes the university was implementing, stood up and asked "But what are you doing to preserve traditions, places, and buildings from my past?" The chancellor gave a good, pat answer. As we walked out, I commented to my wife "I don't think that question has any meaning to me. I wonder how someone who graduated in 1880 would feel if he walked the campus today? Would he wish it looked and felt exactly the way it did in 1880, or are students better having things which suit them in this day and age?"
I love standing on campus, making note of the changes, and then commenting about what I did in that building, or how I used to sled down that hill, or how we once sneaked chickens into Bird Library (a feat unlikely to ever be duplicated). The past is the past, and keeping a building around simply because it's always been there isn't a winning idea anymore than it is for me to continue to wish I could still be on the Quad throwing a football.
Progress is painful, especially on our emotional ties to the past. But progress is a net positive, and we shouldn't simply let the past get in the way of progress. Even if it is because of some 'greedy' landlord in a city that epitomizes (or used to) progress. I like the fact I saw several games in the old Yankee Stadium or even Shea Stadium. But the new stadiums are still a great place to see a game, regardless of their limited history.
 5 things Steve Jobs said Apple would never do - and Apple is doing
How Do Sea Turtles Find the Exact Beach Where They Were Born?
An Actual Letter Ayn Rand Wrote To An Actual Teenage Girl
Why Feminists Hate Male Sexuality
A book (not new): A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
This just in: cakes, cookies, doughnuts and pizza popular with kids
Should Tackling Hotcoldwetdry Trump Real Environmental Concerns?
Related, at Powerline:
How about if we put 100,000 people on treadmills hooked up to a generator? How many jobs would that “create”? 100,000! Well, sure, the government would have to make someone pay for them…
Mitt the Insurgent
What Makes Hillary Clinton So Darn Likable?
A few conundrums about America
Obama loves trolling the GOP, even if it hurts the Democrats
Obama trolls, talks trash with a purpose
Sweden: From "Humanitarian Superpower" to Failed State
Marine Le Pen: France Was Attacked by Islamic Fundamentalism
Why Obama Can't Say 'Radical Islam'
From VDH's Untrue Truisms in the War on Terror
The Muslim community has been constructed in the West as a special entity deserving of politically correct sensitivity, in the manner of privileged groups on campus that continuously suffer from psychodramatic “micro-aggressions.” That Muslims abroad and in the West practice gender separation at religious services or are intolerant of homosexuals wins greater exemption from the Left than a Tea Party rally. If the West were to treat satire, parody and caricature of Islam in the fashion of other religions, then eventually the terrorists would learn there is no advantage in killing those with whom they disagree. Once Westerners treat Islam as they do any other religion, then the Islamist provocateurs will be overwhelmed with perceived slights to the point that they are no longer slights. The Muslim world needs to learn reciprocity: that building a mosque at Ground Zero or in Florence, Italy, is no more or no less provocative than building a cathedral in Istanbul, Riyadh, or Teheran.
Monday, January 19. 2015
From Steyn's A Judenrein Europe:
Over the last decade, the Continent seems to have developed a certain psychological ease with the routine murder of Jews. What remains of Jewish communal life in Europe now takes place behind reinforced doors and barbed wire, and the actual extinction of an entire identity group's presence is discussed as calmly as the long-range weather. Forty-five per cent of British Jews say Jews have no future in Britain, and 58 per cent says Jews have no future in Europe.
Sunday, January 18. 2015
Good art opens vistas to the viewer that he or she wouldn’t ordinarily see or know are there. The new film American Sniper is great art, and we have Clint Eastwood to thank for it. For a nation in which so very, very few serve in the military and in combat, there is huge ignorance of the simple and essentially heroic motivations of our defenders and their sacrifices unimaginable to a civilian. Each and every serviceman experiences war in their own way, and each has a story that is unique. Most do not share that story with anyone or with more than a trusted few. I’ve probably seen as many “war movies” as anyone, and it is rare that the connections to a man’s service is served up so realistically to the audience. There are no John Waynes. There are individuals who stand tall when needed and meet their responsibilities at any cost. The theater was packed and entirely silent, not a person stirring in their seat. We filed out in silence, each person experiencing the film in their own way and thinking. How rare for a film to take the audience’s breath away. That’s art.
Saturday, January 17. 2015
 Toon stolen from Am. Digest
Why fewer skyscrapers are a GOOD Sign for the United States
Colorized old photos
On Loving Literature
AI Has Arrived, and That Really Worries the World’s Brightest Minds
A dark, dark, day in American history
The Metaphorical War - Conceptual metaphors determine how we view the
world, and what we think is even possible. It’s time for conservatives
to upgrade theirs.
Why the Republicans are finding it hard to reform Obamacare
Why
the Republicans are finding it hard to reform Obamacare - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/why-the-republicans-are-finding-it-hard-to-reform-obamacare.html#sthash.m6bq3f0P.dpuf
This is what the new U.S.-Cuba travel rules mean for Americans hoping to visit Cuba
Lessons For Winning Liberty In A World Of Statism
View from the left: Tea Party’s Constitution fraud: Why the
movement’s “devotion” is a situational sham
Why less than half of adults in WV work.
Senator’s husband stands to profit big from government deal
Obama to Senate Dems: ‘I’m going to play offense’
Hitchens explains Islam and why it is so STUPID.
Cuba Is Hoping To Replace Venezuelan Oil With American Tourists
Sultan: The Importance of Blasphemy
Friday, January 16. 2015
Stolen from Hit and Run
Thursday, January 15. 2015
23 Hollywood Moms With Same Sperm Donor Go on Vacation
Alfred Fuller's brush with history
My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward
The Real Reasons We Don't Invite Friends to Church
Personal Trainer Impressed By Man’s Improved Excuses
The bias against guns: What the media isn't telling you
AMERICA'S MILITARY: A conservative institution's uneasy cultural evolution
A ‘Gentle Mob’ Pushes UVA to the Irrational
Oxford University Press bans sausages and pigs from
children’s books in effort 'to avoid offence': Bizarre clampdown branded
'nonsensical political correctness'
ObamaCare Opt-Out Act: Let all Americans make their own health care decisions
Martin Luther King Jr. enlisted to fight illegal immigration, Obama amnesty
Elitism driving “free” college proposal by Obama?
The Problem with Romney Nostalgia - Romney’s 2012 campaign was premised on dissatisfaction with Obama, not enthusiasm for Mitt.
Mitt is a superb fellow. If I were elected, I'd put him in charge of something big
Scott Walker, the un-academic?
Cruz:
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that Republicans should take advantage of their control of Congress to abolish the Internal Revenue Service.
“We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler, flatter, fairer,” he said Monday at Heritage Action’s 2015 conservative policy summit. ”And I’ll tell you, the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS.”
Friends of the Earth are the Enemies of Mankind
1 million tons of pressurised CO2 stored beneath Decatur, Illinois. It was a tenth of that, 100,000 tons, that caused the Lake Nyos disaster
Top MIT Climate Scientist: ‘Senate’s Climate Change Vote Is Ludicrous’
Bernie Sanders: Keystone XL Pipeline Would Leave Planet ‘Significantly Less Habitable’
What Terrorism? Kerry Still Obsessing Over 'Climate Change'
$Billions Pledged to Haiti After Earthquake Have Vanished
Why Iraqi army can't fight, despite $25 billion in U.S. aid, training
France Arrests Comedian Dieudonné for Condoning Acts of Terrorism on Facebook - 54 arrested in crackdown; Interior Minister promises ‘total severity’ against free speech the government doesn’t like
WaPo: French Muslims 'Deeply Torn' by ‘I Am Charlie’ Slogan - 'Many are viewing the tragedy in starkly different terms from their non-Muslim compatriots.
Sky News Really Doesn't Want to Show the New Charlie Hebdo Cover - Self-censorship in action
Free Speech Can Get You Killed? Support It Anyway.
McInnes:
This isn’t an ethereal threat with complicated roots that we need to “open a conversation” about. It’s a religious war based on irreconcilable differences. How many attacks do we have to endure before we realize this? It seems like the only people who truly understand how violent Islam is have been beheaded. All skinheads had to do was wear a swastika. By fretting about nonexistent backlashes and demanding that everyone be civil, we are putting our entire civilization at risk.
It is Time for a “backlash” in Europe
What Carlebach Wrote, And Ma'ariv Published
West's anti-Israel propaganda encourages terror
The Existential Necessity of Zionism After Paris: A COMMENTARY Editorial
Drawing While the Hand Trembles - A view of "Charlie Hebdo" from the world of Arab cartoonists, where the risks loom large and the humor is black.
Below via Front Page
Wednesday, January 14. 2015
Tuesday, January 13. 2015
Monday, January 12. 2015
Caldwell in New York Magazine
Obama’s legacy is one of means, not ends. He has laid the groundwork for a political order less answerable to voters. His delay of the Obamacare employer mandate by fiat, his provision of working papers to immigrants by executive order — these are not applications of old tricks but dangerous constitutional innovations. After last fall’s electoral rout, the president claimed to have “heard” (presumably to speak on behalf of) the two-thirds of people who didn’t vote. And he has forged a partnership with the country’s rich — not the high-earning professionals calumniated in populist oratory (including his own) but the really existing Silicon Valley and Wall Street plutocracy.
Photo above from Old Trees
How Brazilians Fish For Piranhas
Science: Your Kid’s Not Special
In Praise of Marriage
More: Study Finds More Reasons to Get and Stay Married
Can the Government Force Medical Treatment?
Kerry Gets It totally Wrong on Climate’s Impact on New Zealand’s Dairy Farmers
Repeat After Tweety: Ted Cruz = Joe McCarthy
Wounded Warrior Project Wasting Donations?
Obama Will Hold Summit on 'Countering Violent Extremism'--Not Radical Muslim Terrorism
6 TIMES THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SAID ITS JOB WAS TO PROMOTE ISLAM
Eugene Robinson: France attack might have been worse here, because guns
Moderate Muslims Criticize the Charlie Hebdo Attacks
Afghanistan rally hails Charlie Hebdo attackers as 'heroes'
Feel Good Story: Muslim African American Hid the Thirty Jews in the Freezer at the Hyper Casher, Saved Their Lives
Joyce Carol Oates: “It is delicate matter to adjudicate, even to
oneself, where a literary/political sort of satire ends & something
like ‘hate crime’ begins…”
Sultan: Let's Laugh at Islam
Rupert Murdoch Tweets About "Jihadist Cancer"
Powerline: Terrorism as Rorschach Test
Williamson:
Some forgotten early homo sapiens, the first great moral philosopher of our species, forever lost in the shadows of prehistory, took note of the fact that while wolves kill because they are hungry and bears kill because they are threatened, the human animal kills toward unknowable ends, from motives far more complex than biological necessity. Eventually, that first moral philosopher or one of his intellectual descendants came up with a word for that, for this inexplicable inclination that is not known to any wild animals, no matter how ravenous — but which is present only in men.
If only we could remember that word, and remember what it means.
It's called the sinfulness of fallen mankind
Re Gwynnie's post on Saturday: Saturday´s suicide bombing elicited little coverage...
Sunday, January 11. 2015
A critic of police shoots first
Comply with the Law, whatever. You can argue later.
“I’m now retired, so I have no scientific career to protect by spreading lies.”
He said he thinks dire global warming predictions are really all about lassoing federal research funding and votes.
Saturday, January 10. 2015
The MSM are in a twit about 16 Frenchmen. Well and good, but thanks to The List of Islamic Terror Attacks from 2014 you can see that, in 2014, they killed 32,004 people, or 88 a day. I copied it to a spreadsheet and there are 3,000 incidents.
Why no fuss? It is brown people killing other brown people. The killers "don't know any better" because they are brown and therefore judged under a different, lower standard. The victims don't count because they too are brown and the MSM can't pronounce their names.
Remember how we ignored the Cambodian holocaust? Brown vs. brown. I thought when Jews spoke of their Holocaust and said "never again" that they meant no more holocausts. Nope - the media in NYC were silent about killing 3,000,000 Cambodians; I guess "never again" meant no more killing Jews. Good idea for certain, but a far smaller scope.
Now THAT is racism!!
 Today's image from People's Cube
Poor teeth - If you have a mouthful of teeth shaped by a childhood in poverty, don’t go knocking on the door of American privilege
My own teeth are a disaster, and I was never really poor except temporarily. Just bad luck and bad genes
This isn’t a culture anymore. It is a freak show.
The New Sneaky Tactic Gun Control Advocates Are Embracing
A Conservative case for New Urbanism: Conservatism for the City - Beauty, streetcars, and dual codes are the right ideas for urban policy.
Nikon 1200-1700mm Helps French Photogs Capture Hostage Situation from a Safe Distance
Mankind Tired Of Having To Remind Itself Of Good In World
We Don’t Need No (Free) Education - Ultimately, Obama's plan is a bad deal for America, because it will hurt people’s employment opportunities and cost too much.
Dalrymple:
Among the many thousands of my patients, I do not recall one who demanded to know the source of the good aspects of his character. This might be because virtue does not know, or at least proclaim, itself. And, indeed, if someone were to ask the origins of his own good character, we should suspect him of being a Tartuffe or a Pecksniff.
This is not all there is to it, however. We are not inclined to demand an explanation of other people’s goodness, either. For every such enquiry, we ask a thousand times about the origins of other people’s malignity. Our enquiries about the origins of our own malignity are perhaps less frequent, but they are incomparably more frequent, even infinitely more so, than our enquiries about the origins of our own goodness.
On population growth and decline (a reader found this somewhere) - correction, it is from Alan Macfarlane, ‘The Invention of the Modern World’ -
Alan
Macfarlane, ‘The Invention of the Modern World’ - See more at:
http://www.joannejacobs.com/2014/08/dumb-and-dumber-2/#sthash.WvW1G8Hh.dpuf:
Putting it simply, in an embedded peasant economy, when the unit of production and consumption is the family household, it is sensible to have as large a family as possible, to work the land and to protect against risk in sickness and old age. To increase reproduction is to increase production. Yet as Jack Caldwell and others have shown, when the individual becomes integrated into the market, when wealth flows down the generations, when the cost of education and leaving for an independent economic existence on an open market occurs, children become a burden rather than an asset. In other words, capitalistic relations combined with individualism knocks away the basis of high fertility, and if this is combined with a political and legal security so that one does not have to protect oneself with a layer of cousin, the sensible strategy is to have a few children and to educate them well.
A low-pressure demography means that a society avoids the situation where extra resources are automatically absorbed by population expansion. As Malthus argued, the only force strong enough to stand against the biological desire to mate and have children, was the even stronger social desire to live comfortably and avoid poverty.
Some people are surprised that Raùl Castro would act to precipitately in cracking down on Cuban freedom advocates. But why the surprise?
House passes 40-hour workweek for Obamacare; Dems buck Obama veto threat
The U.S. Marines' 5 Most Lethal Weapons of War
We Are Not All Charlie - It is easy to express solidarity with murdered cartoonists, but it is difficult to live as bravely as they did
Not so difficult if you are armed
Boko Haram massacres 2,000 in Nigeria
The Examiner on The NYT:
Elsewhere, in separate statement to Politico, Baquet explained that the New York Times is also trying to avoid offending its Muslim readers: “[L]et's not forget the Muslim family in Brooklyn who read us and is offended by any depiction of what he sees as his prophet.”
“I don't give a damn about the head of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] but I do care about that family and it is arrogant to ignore them,” he said
In 1999, the New York Times republished an image of Chris Ofili's “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a painting “with a clump of elephant dung on one breast and cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines in the background,” Politico reported.
Nobody is afraid of Christians
Friday, January 9. 2015
 Rush said today: "Just two Muslims with guns dominated the world news, and scared the media out of their minds, for almost a week. That, my friends, is called power."
It is amazing how fearful the American MSM is of, of Muslims. The New York Times males have their panties messed up. Man up, pussies. I advise 12 ga. shotgun, not rifle or handgun. When lunatics in the vicinity, steady aim is difficult except for the pros.
He went on to explain that those two are not the real news, that the real news is the millions of Muslims all around the world who remain silent, support, or applaud their war on Western civilization. Not to mention their apologists and the scaredy-cats in the West.
Has any Muslim organization in the world condemned these sorts of evil ones yet? Not one.
 Unlike some hysterics, I have no big fear of the batshit lunatics. Unlike the French, we regular Americans are well-armed. Unlike past free-world threats, these are snakes, not formidable armies. Slippery, though, because Islam advises them to lie to nonbelievers so, if in the wrong place at the wrong time, these snakes can bite. They need killing, same as a rattlesnake in the barn.
This idiotic war has been going on for a long time, since around 600 AD. We are on the side of the crusaders, defending the foundations of Judeo-Christian civ. It ain't perfect, but it's OK. The French may need a Charles Martel, but most of the West just needs a St. Patrick to eliminate the snakes. Send them packing back to whence they came along with their loony cult and their hopeless, ignorant, pedophile, goat-f-ing, wife-beating, bloody, desert culture where their fun was in killing eachother and nobody really cared what they did until WW1.
My only problem with all of this is that I have some Muslim friends and colleagues who I respect - and vice-versa - and whose company I enjoy a great deal. They have zero interest in killing me for my Christian faith and I believe it because we've talked over (many) beers in NYC pubs. In fact, in my heart I would rather bring them to Christ than they are interested in bringing me to their Mohammed prophet.
For me, live and let live - but if you want to harm me, I will kill you and I have the means and the heart to do so with no remorse.
Metamorphosis is disgusting
How Exercise Keeps Us Young
Why daughters might be better than sons
Some of each is best
The First Jew Scalped for America
Why white dudes often don't make the NBA (quick vid)
Kevin Williamson: The New Royals - Princesses, peas, and the emotional needs of chickens:
As in the case of the princess in Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 story, so sensitive that she could feel the pea under 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds, acute dissatisfaction with the tiniest, most ridiculous little details of life is how 21st-century progressives communicate to the world that they are indeed the new royalty, with sensibilities finer than those known to mere commoners. No normal, mentally healthy adult human being actually gives a good and sincere goddamn about the “emotional needs of chickens.” But that sort of posing, along with such daft enthusiasms as foie-gras horror, wetting oneself liberally over the fact that Bradley Manning’s Wikipedia page identified him as “Bradley Manning” for a full eleven minutes after he declared that he wants to be called “Chelsea,” sneering at SUVs and roomy suburban homes, insisting that Melissa McCarthy is a comic genius, using the word “mansplaining,” being terrorized by “thigh gaps” in advertisements, fretting about “micro-aggressions” — all of it is a way of saying, “Look at me! I went to a good school! (Or am truly at heart the sort of person who might have!)” There is a term for this that is uncharitable but cannot be improved upon: status-whoring. The old status symbols may have been shallow; the new ones are shallow, destructive, and a great deal less fun to drive.
And they don’t even require you to work particularly hard in school.
Williamson keeps getting better, doesn't he?
Gobble Down Those Goose Guts, Californians! Judge Strikes Down Foie Gras Ban
Yum. Really.
High speed rail in CA: "It's not that expensive. We can afford it. In fact, we cannot NOT afford it."
I can't NOT afford a Ferrari. Don't they have airplanes in California?
The slow death of the precious gem jewelry business
Diamonds are a scam and everybody knows it now
Brutal Cold Does Not Factor Into Man's Decision To Stay Inside For Two Days Straight
A diverse group of social psychologists calls for more diversity in their field
UVA Still Punishing Fraternities Over Debunked Story
Sowell: The Dogma of Multiculturalism - The fallacy of “equally valid” cultures polarizes society.
Obama to propose two free years of community college for students
If it doesn't cost you, you don't value it
17 Brilliant Insights From Legendary Marine General James Mattis
Christians in the Holy Land: Don’t Call Us Arabs
Where's the Coverage? Majority of Israeli Arabs Proud to Be Israeli
As the Purge Intensifies, Xi Shifts to the Left
East Asia's Population 'Death Spiral'
What's wrong with population decrease? Seems like a good thing to me.
Dalrymple: Equating Prudence with Cowardice - France must continue to mock, bait, and needle its Muslims.
Muslims segregated from French society in growing Islamist mini-states
Nobody segregated them.
Don’t Blame the Charlie Hebdo Mass Murder on ‘Extremism’ - Intolerance for free expression is rooted in classical Islam.
Saudi Blogger To Be Publicly Flogged Outside Mosque For “Insulting Islam”…
French policewoman killed in shoot-out, hunt broadens for militant killers
New York Times Reports On Muslim Proselytizing During Charlie Hebdo Attack, Then Deletes It
Chickenshit weenies
Thursday, January 8. 2015
Will a Cheap Engagement Ring and Wedding Help Your Marriage?
Contents of Paul Revere’s time capsule unveiled in Boston
Jeffrey Epstein's Society Friends
Living the Hugh Hefner life style. Those aren't "sex slaves," - they are concubines, courtesans
Just Because It Sucks Is No Reason to Leave New Jersey - Why would anyone leave New Jersey?
Naomi Oreskes and Post-Modern Science
Frontiers of microaggression
Why ‘Manspreading’ Is Definitely a Serious Issue, as Explained by the Feminist Internet - The government should maybe do even more.
This Is Not Your Grandma's Humane Society
Hating Whitey’s Brunch
Solving the Police Problem - If They Don't Want to be Policed, Don't Police Them
The Overcriminalization of America - How to reduce poverty and improve race relations by rethinking our justice system:
Congress creates, on average, more than 50 new criminal laws each year. Over time, this has translated into more than 4,500 federal criminal laws spread across 27,000 pages of the United States federal code. (This number does not include the thousands of criminal penalties in federal regulations.) As a result, the United States is the world’s largest jailer — first in the world for total number imprisoned and first among industrialized nations in the rate of incarceration. The United States represents about 5 percent of the world's population, but houses around 25 percent of the world's prisoners.
Why academics can't write:
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
Le Pen Plays Islamist Card Linking Attacks to Immigration
No - it's the Islamists playing their Islam card. She's France's Paul Revere
Via Reuters:
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Wednesday the attack in Paris had nothing to do with Islam. "Islamic extremists and Islamic terror are something entirely different from Islam," he said. "It is immensely important to underscore that difference on a day like today."
Howard Dean: Don’t Call Paris Terrorists ‘Muslim’
We call them Lutherans
Lutheran cleric: ‘Freedom of Expression Does Not Extend to Insulting’ Muhammad
Mark Steyn To Media: 'Man Up' Before You 'Retreat Even Further Into Self-Censorship'
New York Times: With A Dozen Parisians Dead, MUSLIMS Hit Hardest
The lefty New Yorker:
A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique. Charlie Hebdo had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too—but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism. For some believers, the violence serves a will to absolute power in the name of God, which is a form of totalitarianism called Islamism—politics as religion, religion as politics. “Allahu Akbar!” the killers shouted in the street outside Charlie Hebdo. They, at any rate, know what they’re about.
And even The Atlantic:
The Islamist terror campaign in Europe has focused on Jews and cartoonists, but it will not end with Jews and cartoonists.
My question for the day: Why do the euro elites want all these Muslim immigrants?
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Archaeologists May Have Found the Oldest Copy of One of the Gospels - A mummy's mask contained a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that dates back to the first century.
Inside a Porsche 