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Baby Boomers
Kindergarten graduation ceremony at the Islamic Association in Gaza, from Hamas TV. (Video at link).
Via Darcey.
Victimhood Poker
Not just a card game.
It’s a teaching device!
Have you ever wondered why the left never screams bloody murder over the way muslims treat women, yet whines about the way Islamic terrorists are acting in Darfur? Ever wonder why the left never lodges the same complaints about the terrorists who massacre innocents in Iraq?
A quick look at the deck and it all makes sense! A woman is worth 8 points and thus muslims outrank women on the victimhood scale. Clearly, complaints about muslim brutality towards women are unwarranted, since muslims are 4 points more valuable than women.
On the other hand, blacks outrank muslims by two and thus a military intervention to save Africans from muslim attacks in Darfur is not another imperilaist Western oil war, but is entirely justified in the leftist mind.
Finally, muslim attacks on innocent muslims in Iraq leaves us with the sum of zero since the muslims cancel out. Thus, the Iraq War has no value in the leftist mind and hence there are no complaints about terrorist attocities in connection with it.
See? It’s math.
h/t.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post;
More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.
My series set out to profile the dissenters — those who deny that the science is settled on climate change — and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world’s premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop — the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series.
Of course, none of this is news unless you limit your media consumption to the rock hard stupid coverage provided by CTV[1][2] which – as much as it pains me to say this – is inferior to even the propoganda laden fare provided by the CBC.
Footnotes:
[1] CTV National News – “Canada’s #1 source for Florida weather.”
[2] David Akin – “Climate reporting for the under 7 set”. Please, Mr. Akin – science is not your forte. Statements like “even if we reduced C02 levels to zero, temperatures would continue to rise for the next 100 years” (from an on-air report last month) are an insult to the intelligence of viewers – and raise serious questions about your own.
The Morally Superior Vacation Choice
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(Photo taken in Victoria, BC., courtesy reader “Ron”.)
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Gulfstream Environmentalists, Limousine Liberals
And Michael Moore documentaries;
[H]e clearly doesn’t believe what he’s saying, and, in the words of Ned Flanders on the Bible, believing in him requires believing lots of stuff that contradicts the other stuff. […]
Despite the message of the new film, in which Moore apparently stages a stunt visit to a Cuban hospital to show us how much better things are for Cuba’s sick, if Moore has a health crisis the words on his lips are going to be “Mount Sinai,” not “Havana.” Hasn’t the Moore/MoveOn.org nexus–the MooreOn crowd–been arguing for 40 years that our heartless capitalist embargo on peace-loving Cuba is starving their babies and old folks, crippling their hospitals, ruining their lives? (In the 90s, they said the same things about Saddam’s Iraq; then “F 9/11″ did a pirouette, portraying sanctions-lashed Iraq as a merry playground of twittering birds and happy children.) Similarly, “Bowling for Columbine” unfavorably compared Clinton’s America (years into a prolonged period of plummeting crime rates) with Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR–but also argued that South Central L.A., Ground Zero of the gun epidemic, was totally safe. Don’t forget the concluding argument of “Bowling for Columbine”: Moore, after ridiculing the ideas that video games or Marilyn Manson videos were the root cause, wound up blaming the massacre on the presence of a Defense Department factory in the town. In other words, the bombing of Slobodan Milosevic inspired the kids to massacre their classmates.
The Real Buzz
Looking up at the swarm buzzing my ornamental crab last week, I considered going back to the house to get my camera.
“Hey, guys – I think I found those bees you were looking for.”
There are some 20,000 species of bees in the world, and many thousands more types of pollinating insects. What you’re hearing about, “colony collapse disorder,” affects one species of bee – the European honey bee. […] The “significant percentage” of failing hives is still a drop in the bucket when viewed against the global population of honey bees, and there are lots of beekeepers (even in the U.S., which appears hardest hit) who have not had, and may never have, significant losses of colonies. Plenty of honey bees remain to replace the ones that have died. It’s not yet time to scream that the sky is falling.
And, oh boy – where have we heard this before?
Sixth, it’s never a good idea to trust what the media are telling you. At least once in the present case the media got something completely wrong and created a huge mess: The story about cell phones was basically a misrepresentation of what one pair of reporters wrote about a study that they misinterpreted. In a nutshell, the original research didn’t involve cell phones, and the researchers never said their research was related to honey bee colony die-offs. Even details like the alleged Einstein quote are dubious. No one has yet found proof that Einstein said anything about bees dying off – the earliest documented appearance of the “quote” is 1994 and, yes, Albert was dead at the time.
As I’ve said in the past – if you believe everything you read in the newspaper, try getting interviewed sometime.
h/t
Terror Attack At Kennedy Averted
According to NewsChannel4’s Jonathan Dienst, sources said federal investigators have made arrests in an alleged terror plot on Kennedy Airport. Four people have been charged. One is in custody in New York. Three suspects in total are in custody. One is still at large.
According to sources, the suspects have been identified as: Russell Defreitas, Abdul Nur, Kareem Ibrihim and Abdul Kadir.
[…]
Sources said the plot involved a plan to blow up a jet-fuel pipeline at JFK setting off a potential massive explosion.
A related development –
A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 […] a background check in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database, which was performed June 18 as part of a visa-extension application, produced “positive hits” for past criminal records or suspicious behavior for eight of the 12 Syrians, who were traveling in the U.S. as a musical group.
In addition, the band’s promoter was listed in a separate FBI database on case investigations for acting suspiciously aboard a flight months earlier.
(Background here for those not familiar with the incident.)
Canadian Press Vs Stockwell Day: Malpractice or Malice?
At 4:38pm (the time I accessed the story) on Friday, June 1, 2007, this story, carried at the Toronto Star website, reads (in part) as follows:
The federal Conservative government has rejected Ontario’s call for a ban on handguns. … [Stockwell] Day argued that other countries where handguns have been banned have seen the numbers of gun crimes increase. “In jurisdictions that have eliminated or tried to eliminate, to ban handguns – the United Kingdom, Ireland, other jurisdictions – in fact crime with guns has unfortunately gone up,” Day said.
Here comes the torque:
Day’s statements, however, don’t appear to match with the facts.
Interesting. And, dear Canadian Press, what evidence do you marshall to maintain this assertion?
There was a 16 per cent drop in the number of firearms offences in the United Kingdom in 2006 compared with the previous year, according to figures from Britain’s Home Office.
I know this particular blogging tic is increasingly frowned upon, but permit me to indulge: You. Absolute. Morons.
Read the whole thing. Terry Pedwell doesn’t get the stats a “little” wrong. He gets them deceptively wrong.
For further proof of the correctness of Day’s statement, and the absolute mendacity of the Canadian Press, let’s look at this Home Office report. Here’s what it reveals: there was a sixty percent (60%) increase in firearms crime from 1999/00 to 2004/05 (page 72). Also see Figure 3.4 – although it is a bit difficult to tell because the gradations are not provided, firearms crimes involving handguns more than doubled from 1998/99 to 2001/02, before declining somewhat until 2004/05, though finishing at a number approximately 50% higher than in 1998/99.
As of 7:39pm, there’s been at least one edit. The sentence now reads “Day’s statements, however, don’t appear to match with recent facts.”
Related;
“A few years back, Los Angeles gave 1.5 million in grants to a group known as “No Guns.” ATF just arrested its founder for sale of a machine gun, two silencers, and other toys.
Note to LA government: be cautious about trusting a million bucks to a guy who goes by “Big Weasel.”
What’s that saying? “As California goes, so goes…”
Pershmergrrrls
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Via Gateway Pundit;
7 of 18 Iraqi Provinces now control the security and governmental operations in their region.
How many Americans do you suppose know that?
Hit, Anbar Province, Iraq
Arresting an Iraqi “general” takes a delicate touch. Michael Yon begins;
The city of Hit (pronounced “heat”) is a spot of green in the desert on the western bank of the Euphrates. The temperature is steadily rising here as the weeks melt into the mirage of summer; the haze shimmering at about 115°F now. The air was blowing hot and dry through the city Tuesday morning 29 May, when I accompanied LTC Doug Crissman for another day of meetings with local leaders in Hit and surrounding towns in Anbar Province. Crissman and the soldiers of Task Force 2-7 Infantry under his command have been welcomed in the area of Hit for about the last one hundred days. Prior to February, Hit was one of the hottest little battlegrounds of the war, with almost daily gun battles crackling through the air, mortars exploding on the bases, and bombs cratering the roads.
But none of that noise punctuated a visit last Saturday, when LTC Crissman and I walked through the downtown portion of the city. Our several-mile stroll through the market—a veritable shopping mall for the area—was filled with men, women, and children of all ages, including one rotund boy furiously slurping an ice cream before it could drip away.
Hit could have swallowed us whole that day. Although there were vehicles nearby in radio contact, we had only two soldiers as guards during our stroll. But the people mostly just waved and smiled, or wanted to talk with Crissman, who stopped now and then to engage in conversations, all while the steam building inside the pressure cookers of our helmets soaked the pads in sweat.
Welfare State Republicanism
On those rare occasions that political types ask my advice on how to blend party messaging with the internet and blogging, I recommend they spend time in the archives of Patrick Ruffini, eCampaign Director at the RNC and webmaster for the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign. (bio).
No kinsellan pretender, Ruffini’s one of the rare birds who combines exceptional political instincts with an exceptional understanding of how the digital organism functions, and where to press one’s ear.
From an exchange with Ross Douthat of The Atlantic and Reihan Salam, American Scene;
Douthat and Salam are believers in Big Government Conservatism, but argue that it’s been botched in its execution. Their vision of “Sam’s Club Republicanism” is that of a lower-middle class majority held in place by government largesse with a conservative face.
I’m here to break the news to them that it won’t work. Republican voters are not motivated by a sense of entitlement. (That might be why they’re Republicans.) Whenever we’ve tried to give away the goodies (Medicare Part D, NCLB, etc.), we have not succeeded in creating loyal new Republican constituencies. The activist base that listens to Rush and dials Congress is up in arms about a bridge in Alaska and the 2% of the budget that is education spending. They won’t take kindly to a beefed-up version of Big Government Conservatism.
People vote their values (writ large) not a narrow Thomas Frankian sense of economic interest. And it cuts both ways. That’s why the church attendance gap does more to explain voting patterns than income. It’s why the toniest, most cosmopolitan parts of big cities vote 80% Democratic, while their French counterparts earlier this month voted 80% for Sarkozy. We aren’t Europe, where our politics revolves around class, and we shouldn’t try to be.
What the welfare state Republicanism that Douthat and Salam advocate (in the name of the “base” no less) most resembles are the economic policies of Richard Nixon and the One Nation Conservatism of Ted Heath in the U.K. Which is precisely what the New Right in America and Thatcherism in Britain rose in opposition to. The revolt against Country Club Republicanism and its accommodation with government is one of the few reasons why we can speak of a “movement” and a “base” today.
That’s why I write that when the movement is strong, the GOP becomes more conservative and government gets smaller. When we govern without reference to what our voters want, the brand is diluted, government gets bigger, and voters are confused about what we really stand for.
Emphasis mine.
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It Takes A Villuge
A Nation Lobotomized
As Kevin Jaeger has previouslynoted, Tony Blair’s Britain is getting creepier every day, taking on traits generally reserved for post-apocalyptic fiction writing;
Secret plans to encourage the nation to give up eating meat are being examined by the Government.
A leaked e-mail expresses sympathy for the environmental benefits of a mass switch to a vegan diet – a strict form of vegetarianism which bans milk, dairy products and fish.
[…]
The e-mail, sent to a vegetarian campaign group, comes from an official at the Environment Agency, a Government advisory body. It states: “The potential benefit of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant.”
However, it does recognise that it would be very difficult to win public support for such a move. Consequently, it says the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is looking to encourage a gradual change that would be more palatable to the general public.
The e-mail states: “It will be a case of introducing this gently as there is a risk of alienating the public majority.”
In almost any other context, one could regard a leak of this type as an idiotic toss-off by some irrelevant government employee. But given the Blair government’s pathological obsession to videotape, monitor, track, regulate and manipulate every facet of British society, it’s hard to imagine there remains an idea so outrageous it may be safely consigned to the implausible.
DNA kits to trace spitting bus passengers.
The “spit kits” are already supplied at all 275 Tube stations and are expected to be rolled out this summer across London’s 7,000-strong bus fleet.
It is the latest initiative against anti-social behaviour on buses and has coincided with the Mayor’s introduction of free bus travel for under-16s.
It’s a fortunate thing for Cleese and Co. that they made their Monty Python fortunes when they did. In today’s Britain, the market on absurdity has been so tightly cornered, it’s hard to imagine how they could have carved out a niche for their own brand.
The real mystery remaining is why the British public continues to tolerate the smothering encroachment of this uber-nannystate into every aspect of their lives.
Have they added something to their water?
SOCK! BAM! BOOM!
The Blameless
No word on what might have happened at Ipperwash in 1995 if the natives didn’t set up blockades, occupy a provincial park, firebomb buildings, assault people, drive a native school bus into the Canadian military’s drill hall, then take possession of the base after defence staff fled, then later drive a speeding bus toward police, followed by a speeding car which actually rams right over four police officers, and generally stage militant mayhem in the community, before shots rang out by police.
2011
Click to enlarge. (now fixed)
Via the usual depressing bastard.