It is the purpose of government to protect its citizens in their life, liberty and property from the predations of others, both foreign and domestic, so that civilization may flourish.
Apparently Earth Hour was a rousing success, in the sense that cities in civilized nations around the globe voluntarily plunged themselves into darkness, temporarily undoing 50,000 years of human civilization in the process.
A proud moment, to be sure.
Read the whole thing. It gets better. And remember:
The story of human history has been the drive to improve the human condition. Today's environmentalists want to worsen the human condition.
What? Did you think I was talking about myself? I'm guessing my talk of miniskirts and pantyhose has removed me from the potential "baddest" lists of most people, though in my opinion any guy who talks about that is the personification of toughness.
No, I am talking about my beloved Yamato and her wonderful but less-appreciated sister ship Musashi. Not Shinano, unfortunately, but you gotta feel for her. It's not her fault Imperial General Headquarters decided to send her out across submarine-infested waters without her watertight doors and fittings. Brrrrrilliant!!!
Anyway, today I tracked down a web site today dedicated to the Yamato, where I found what appears to be a colorized version of one of the view remaining Japanese pics of this famous battleship:
What a crime that the Japanese sent this work of art and triumph of human achievement on a suicide mission. What a crime that the Japanese destroyed all of their workplans and blueprints and almost all of her pictures. The Yamato may have been a simple warship (big, but simple), but she was of such an astounding magnitude that she belonged to all of us.
The Yamato has taken on a special stature in Japan, one of almost mythical proportions. But even though Yamato and Musashi were the enemy, they can be appreciated the same way Hannibal, Lee, Rommel and von Manstein were. We should all be able to admire the marvel that was Yamato.
So, pay the site a visit and show Yamato some love.
From the Sydney Opera House to Rome's Colosseum to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.
The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were.
The campaign began last year in Australia, and traveled this year from the South Pacific to Europe to North America in cadence with the setting of the sun.
"What's amazing is that it's transcending political boundaries and happening in places like China, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea," said Andy Ridley, executive director of Earth Hour. "It really seems to have resonated with anybody and everybody."
Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change.
Landmarks such as San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Chicago's Sears Tower went dark in the closing hours of Saturday's round-the-world event.
"It is not just about turning off the lights, it is about raising awareness," San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said. "Energy efficiency is low-hanging fruit. Energy efficiency is the easiest thing we can do" to reduce global warming.
In Chicago, lights on more than 200 downtown buildings were dimmed Saturday night, including the stripe of white light around the top of the John Hancock Center. The red-and-white marquee outside Wrigley Field also went dark.
"There's a widespread belief that somehow people in the United States don't understand that this is a problem that we're lazy and wedded to our lifestyles. (Earth Hour) demonstrates that that is wrong," Richard Moss, a member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the climate change vice president for WWF, said in Chicago on Saturday.
Please forgive my brief, blunt and colorful language here, but I have a message for Mr. Moss and his ilk: Fuck you.
Welcome to the fantasy of anthropogenic climate-change true believers. Their aspirations to make the world a little darker and colder came to life during Earth Hour, even while evidence mounts that their scientific hypotheses and models have serious flaws. Instead of handling legitimate scientific criticism as scientists, they have instead responded with obloquy and charges of heresy.
They do not want to find alternative energy sources that will fully replace what we have now. They want to reverse industrialization entirely, and they want top-down management of energy production to get it. They want a darker world, one in which candles replace light bulbs and the energy that runs the global economy — and has produced the best living standards in human history — gets rationed to satisfy the whims of statists and earth-worshipers.
With each passing day I become more convinced that the 'green' movement is actually a millenarian psychosis; a mental and spiritual sickness borne, perhaps, from some degree of civilisational exhaustion. Not just a belief that the end of the world is nigh, but an active desire to bring it about. And soon. Ours is not the first age to witness such pandemics of madness but, in the Middle Ages at least, there was the excuse of a near-universal poverty. In such a state of interminable plight, despair may not be the wisest response but it is at least an understandable one.
But now we live in an age of near-universal prosperity and progress. Never before has our species enjoyed such security and such freedom from want. Yet this is clearly no defence against a recurrance of this psychological plague.
Some pubs are spending the evening without the lights on while many Australians are marking the occasion quietly in the darkness at home.
Life, laughter, love, food, drink, warmth, travel, communication, progress, a world full of unprecedented wonders and it's all too much for them. Better to sit in the darkness and curse the lighting of even a single candle.
'Stop the world, I want to get off' was the plaintive refrain of some Broadway comedy show I think. It could also be the motto for the greens, except that they want everybody off. Is that what they aspire to as they sit at home quietly in that seductive, undemanding cloak of blackness? To switch off civilisation and shuffle away into the perpetual tenebrosity dragging everyone else behind them?
The conditions are ripe for the spread of this insanity. Indeed, it is spreading now. How long will it be, I wonder, before some official body somewhere floats the idea of mandatory blackouts and curfews? "The voluntary approach" they will proclaim, "has not worked".
And what do we do in response? Laugh at them? Ignore them? Rage against them? What would work to innoculate the rest of our species? What combination or words or phrases could we use to dissipate and lay low a viral madness? I am, of course, familiar with the customary rebuttals. "We will win because we have MTV and Coca-Cola". But without the light there is no MTV, there is no Coca-Cola. What do we have then?
The lights are not yet going out all over the world. But I fear that I will see them do so in our lifetime.
Like I said earlier, these enviro-nazis deserve a rousing, "Fuck you."
Is such a phrase disrespectful? Absolutely. That is the point. Enviro-nazis have gotten so ridiculous that their every suggestion should be viewed with suspicion. it did not used to be that way. Environmentalists used to perform a valuable and necessary service, but they have become unreasonable, ridiculous and thuggish. All in the name of ...
Religion. That's right. Religion. That is what environmentalism has become. it is no longer based on science, but on faith.
Think of the "crisis" of anthropogenic global warming. Never mind that the Earth has been warming and colling in cycles for millions of years, and has even been tracked throughout human history. Remember how Norway was so warm and overpopulated that the Vikings had to invade England? How about the "Little Ice Age" that struck shortly thereafter in the 1100's or so.
And never mind that the sun is burning hotter, as it does, again in cycles. Or that other planets in the solar system, such as Mars, are showing evidence of warming, as Earth supposedly is.
It's warming, except when it's cooling. Hurricanes, lack of hurricanes. Icebergs getting smaller. Or bigger. It doesn't matter. It's all the fault of global warming.This is man's fault. One hundred years of industrialization as ruined the Earth. So we must do something about it:
The story of human history has been the drive to improve the human condition. Today's environmentalists want to worsen the human condition.
Energy prices are sky high right now because enviro-nazis fight every single attempt to increase that supply. Every. Single. Attempt. Can't drill for oil in the US. Can't build a new refinery. Can't mine for coal. Can get oil from oil sands, but enviro-nazis want that stopped, too, and fight efforts to retool refineries to handle the oil sands. Can't build new power plants, either. Ever.
And now they're even advocating an end to the use of electric lights. Go back to candles, they say. Brilliant. We have a safe and clean method of lighting and powering our life essentials and enviro-nazis want to take that away and replace it with individual fire hazards that take a lot of maintenance just to keep going.
Like I said earlier, my message to these people consists of two words: Fuck you.
It has gotten to the point with me that whenever they advocate something, I call for precisely the opposite, and generally I do precisely what they don't want me to do when I can. I have a stupid "Kno-Zone Action Day" in Indy? I do what I can to fill my gas tank and go to the drive-thru of a fast food place, all in the afternoon.
Want me to abide by "Earth Hour?" I'll try to use even more lights, even if I don't need to. Apparently, many in Australia have done exactly the same thing, so I bet I'm not alone.
Oil prices have skyrocketed because of these people. Natural gas prices have skyrocketed because of these people. The price of electricity has skyrocketed because of these people. It is hurting you and they don't care. In fact, they're happy about it.
The story of human history has been the drive to improve the human condition. Today's environmentalists want to worsen the human condition.
They want to impose their "religion" on you every bit as much as Usama bin Laden and the Islamists do.
Fight them. By thought. By word. By deed. Any legal way you can.
Victor Davis Hanson gives some voice to suspicions I have had since the whole Obama/Wright deal started:
Watching the parade of apologists for Rev. Wright’s hatred—“garlic noses”; “KKK of A;” “God Damn America;” “Condamnesia;” the U.S. deserved 9/11; America is no different from al-Qaeda; we caused the AIDs virus; Israel is a “dirty word” and sought an Arab and black ethnic bomb, etc—is, well, depressing. Instead of offering distance from Wright, far too many African-American professors and pastors interviewed on the cable stations the last few nights instead praised his brilliance and inspiration.
At best, there was a feeble ‘you just don’t get it’ about the venting and wink-and-nod culture of the black church. But the net message from the African-American liberal establishment, at least I fear, seems to be something like the following: ‘Wright is not going to offer an apology and we aren’t embarrassed about his ranting, which is not ranting at all, but rather historical and biblical exegesis which we endorse. And the problem is yours, not ours, since we expect exemption—given the history of race in this country—from your so-called norms of public discourse.’
This is what the triangulation of Obama has helped to unleash: most Americans will now doubt the moral authority of the African-American intellectual and religious community not just to question the questionable racial remarks of a Bill Clinton, Ed Rendell, or Geraldine Ferraro, but also the Wright-like crudity of a Don Imus or a Michael Richards. Context is now king.
This disastrous regression in race relations is the natural dividend of liberal identity politics, most recently brought to the fore by the wife of the first “black President”, the first “transracial” black Presidential candidate, and the “prophet” and “healer” Reverend Wright.
If anything, Hanson understates the magnitude of the disaster and its dimension.
Wright's statements are every bit as irrational, loathsome and racist as anything out of the Ku Klux Klan or, come to think of it, the Nazis. Those outside the black community generally hold this view, as do a goo many of those within the black community. Obama's longstanding, intimate ties to this ... thing and his refusal to denounce those statements has doomed his candidacy. If the Dems figured that cannot win without the "black vote," an Obama nomination gives them the chance to see if they can win without the "white vote." For that is what it will come down to. Obama's negatives have skyrocketed since the Wright revelations. Whites in general will not vote for someone who is so blatantly racist against them. There are not nearly enough guilt-ridden, bleeding heart white liberals to help him in the general election. Should the Dems nominate Obama, he will be defeated in the general election, and he may take the Dems with him, tarnishing them as a party with his racism.
But it gets worse. Far worse.
The reaction to the Wright revelations within the black community suggests that statements such as Wright's are not at all uncommon in inner city black churches. Wright and his successor preacher are teaching their congregation to "hate whitey" and hate America.
Multiply that by ... how many churches? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? And how many blacks would be hearing and believing this message? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? We don't know.
But this very frightening and very real possibility is now apparent outside the black community. And how do you think those outside the black community feel about that?
Wright claims that "his people" have been hurt by racism. That he is helping to perpetuate the racism that he says hurts his people either hasn't occurred to him or simply is not as important to him as maintaining his power over his congregation.
But that is irrelevant to those outside the black community, both from a practical and a philosophical standpoint. Philosophically, whites may feel that after all the efforts they have made to make up for past wrongs, to meet the black community halfway, this is the result? That sucking sound you heard was the Well of Understanding drying up.
And what about practicalities? I have suggested elsewhere that the vast majority of anti-black racism today is not latent or irrational but rational and reactive as a result of the disparate crime rate among blacks and the general rejection by the black community in most inner cities of efforts to bring that crime rate under control. Far, far too many times, black thugs commit horrificcrimes and the inner city black community often rallies around them and rips the victims, particularly if those victims are white. These days, when police shoot a black thug in commission of a crime, it is now expected to have protests or even riots in support of the criminal.
How do you think those outside the black community view this state of affairs? Non-blacks seeing a young, black male on a street wearing baggy pants that reveal his buttcrack, massive gold chains, gold teeth and a ballcap at an odd angle already fear such individuals -- and are called "racists" for doing so by the black community and white liberals. Now, you add on top of that pretty mental image the thought that such an individual has been taught to "hate whitey" and views himself at war with your race. What do you think the reaction will be?
About the only thing good that has come out of this affair is that the subject of black racism, so often taboo, is now open for discussion, because Wright has so visibly demonstrated it, and has provided evidence that it is far, far more prevalent than white racism.
Aside from that -- and that it has poisoned the presidential candidacy of a charismatic figure who would make an even worse president than Jimmy Carter, which I didn't even know was possible -- the Wright affair has been a disaster.
"I've got a fever, and the only prescription ... is more cowbell!"-- Bruce Dickinson (Christopher Walken)
Yes, I know I've used this one before, but I only saw the Blue Oyster Cult sketch from Saturday Night Live for the first time yesterday. Hilarious. And not just hilarious, but with a significant impact on our society. Just imagine its effect on Star Trek:
What Chris Webber and the Golden State Warriors hoped would be a storybook comeback will instead be remembered as a very short comeback story.
After playing just nine games back in the Bay Area, Webber is retiring.
New problems with the surgically repaired left knee that has plagued him for the past half-decade have prompted Webber to leave the game, not even two months after he returned to the team and city where the most famous face from Michigan's famed Fab Five began his NBA career.
"I really didn't want to rehab and come back this season because I don't think that was possible," Webber said. "Plus, because the way the team is playing, the chemistry is great with these guys, they're on a roll. I feel like they're going to win, they have a great chance to go very far in the playoffs. I just felt it was time to let the game go and be able to be happy about what I accomplished without trying to keep coming back."
The 35-year-old will exit as one of the sport's most polarizing personalities but also as one of just six players in history -- along with Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Larry Bird and Billy Cunningham and the still active Kevin Garnett -- to average at least 20 points, nine rebounds and four assists.
"One of the best power forwards to ever play in the NBA," Pistons president Joe Dumars said. "Chris was always a class act and someone we're all proud of in Detroit."
Isn't an endorsement of your personality from Joe Dumars like an endorsement of your presidential candidacy by Hugo Chavez? This line from ESPN made me gag:
Webber entered this season with career averages of 20.9 points, 9.8 rebounds and 4.3 assists after enduring similar championship frustrations at Michigan. Joining Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, Ray Jackson and ESPN's own Jalen Rose in comprising the revolutionary, trash-talking Fab Five -- who were known for bringing a Showtime feel to college basketball with their unmistakable baggy shorts, black socks and playground flair -- Webber led Michigan to back-to-back NCAA title games but lost both.
"Playground flair?" How 'bout "street thug flair?" Between the thugs of the Fab Five and the thugs of Joe Dumars' Bad Boys Detroit Pistons teams (the real reason behind the collapse of the skill level of the NBA in the 1990's), basketball in this country was probably irreparably damaged.
A couple of weeks ago, the Vatican denounced "experiments [and] genetic manipulation" as "violations of certain fundamental rights of human nature." Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and absolutions, told the London Times, "You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour's wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos." So what kinds of genetic manipulation might earn researchers consignment to the flames of Hell should they die unshriven?
why my proudest accomplishment in life is not somehow surviving law school and the bar exam to become a lawyer, but rather is for five years making the Ohio State University Marching Band:
While seasons and careers hinge on the outcome of the Michigan game, each and every Buckeyes home game starts the same. Over one hundred thousand fans rise to their feet to greet the drum major and The Best Damn Band in the Land.
Most of us can remember back to our high school days and think back to our own marching bands. In general the band was not “cool.” This is not to say that members of the band were losers, that was decided on a case-by-case basis, but being a member of your high school marching band probably did not command the respect of your peers.
That is not the case at Ohio State. Marching band prodigies from across the country flock to Columbus each and every year to participate in a grueling, boot camp-style audition, complete with senior band members yelling in their faces. In spite of the stigmas, heat, and hardship, these kids persevere. They drive on to represent their school and to be a member of the best marching band in the nation.
The band was originally organized in 1878 as a twelve piece fife and bugle corps. The band would not take on its more modern form until the influence of Gustav Bruder, a professional military musician. Bruder brought his fusion of military experience and professional expertise to mold the band into its current form. The uniforms worn by the band represent this proud heritage.
Currently, the Ohio State Marching Band is considered the world’s largest all brass band. In a standard home football game, the band will consist of 192 members and 33 understudies.
The trademark of the Ohio State University Marching Band, “Script Ohio,” is one of the most recognized traditions in college sports. Most first time observers marvel at the precision of the movements and the remarkable timing and coordination of the band members as they pass through the intersection points. If you have never seen “Script Ohio,” I highly recommend it regardless of your feelings about Ohio State football or marching bands in general.
Aside from the part about 33 "understudies" -- they are actually called "alternates" and they challenge for one of the 192 starting spots ever week -- everything Mike Furlan said is the honest-to-God truth.
People who don't appreciate college football (as in, who prefer college basketball, for instance) or fans of the SEC (the IQ's of whom are on average at least 20 points lower than those of most other schools in the country, save for maybe Cincinnati and Indiana State) have trouble appreciating college marching bands. The forementioned disdain for high school marching bands also plays a role here (probably brought on in part by people like my idiot high school band director, who made band about as much fun as an IRS audit and practically started a revolt that would make the Praetorian Guard proud.) These can't fathom that none of those factors are in play at Ohio State.
First, you have the tryouts. They don't just take all comers, like many bands. there are 192 starters and 33 alternates and that's how many they have. You're either one of those 225 or you're not. To weed out those who are not to be among the 225, you have tryouts that come straight from Hell. Calling them boot camp is no exaggeration. Even veterans are not guaranteed a spot and must go through tryouts every season. You are tested physically, musically and mentally. Like an NFL squad, there are off-season workouts just to prepare for tryout week, where you practice your marching fundamentals.
And the marching fundamentals are not exactly cake. For instance, while most bands do the wimpy "corps" style of marching, which is basically walking, OSUMB steadfastly adheres to a particular high-stepping style known as the chair step, which is much more physically gruelling. Your step size must be perfect, your horn angle perfect -- always parallel, again, none of this corps "face the pressbox" deal. You don't want to know about "Sloopy" (always murder on my chronically dislocated knees), horn flashes or step kicks. In short, you have to be an athlete to get in.
I've taken multiple bar exams, normally thought of as the most pressurized test you can get, but they have never scared me as much as OSUMB tryouts. Not even close. I don't get the age-old nightmare about coming in for a final exam after not having studied or attended class all year; I have nightmares about going to tryout week after not having practiced all summer.
Maybe it is because the bar exams in my view play to my strengths, while OSUMB involved my weaknesses much more. In retrospect, it is still amazing that I made OSU Marching Band at all. I was never athletic, was a very late bloomer physically, and even now I am hardly physically imposing, looking more like Ah-nuld's "girly man" with not-infrequent comments that I look like I belong in a skirt (to which I take no offense whatsoever). My coordination was never there, and only years of running and ballet has come anywhere close to fixing it. Plus, my idiot high school band director (that is his offical title) insisted on teaching the corps style, which was a detriment for tryouts at Ohio State.
Oh, by the way, that's just tryouts. During the season, practice is at least 2 hours a day, not counting the time you spend memorizing your music (yes, we do that, too; no flip folders), which can easily double the time. And how about getting your British military-style uniform ready for inspections (we have those, too).
As for the the actual half-time shows, let's just say that the OSUMB motto of "Pick up your feet, turn your corners square and drive, drive, drive," chanted before every performance, is not so much an aspiration as a necessity. Even when I was in school, the drills were complicated. Probably in 2000 or so, OSUMB Director Dr. Jon Woods, who has tried to keep OSUMB's traditions alive while updating the band's look (and whom you might remember, unfortunately, from several years ago for being forced to show his amazing fortitude nationwide while enduring a parent's worst nightmare), hired a drill writer who is marching band's Leonardo da Vinci. I used to know all of OSUMB's tricks, but much of the stuff they do anymore even I can't figure out. The show for the 2002 Fiesta Bowl against Miami still stands out in my mind as the best drill ever, and I'm still not even sure what they did.
But all of angst and exertion is worth it for what I consider the Best Moment in Sports, Period. Not the Script Ohio, OSUMB's trademark, as Furlan notes, and its most famous one at that, during one of which I chipped several teeth. But the Ramp Entrance, when the band takes to field at Ohio Stadium for pre-game:
Notice there is no running or dancing onto the field here. Just marching into position, like an army setting up for war. Notice the crowd, too. Not an empty seat. And the noise. Like the band, the crowd is setting up for war. OSUMB is an integral part of the football tradition at Ohio State.
My parents, both of whom got both their undergrad and graduate degrees at Ohio State, taught me at a very early age that no one misses pre-game or halftime at Ohio Stadium. And it is true.
Like I said, no one understands marching band like Ohio State. The Big Ten is pretty good about bands, though. Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State and Illinois all have great marching bands. Purdue helped itself by grabbing former OSU grad assistant Dave Leppla in 1989, and while he has since left, his legacy of improvement in the band has remained. Purdue's improvement has challenged Indiana's Marching Hundred, which as of late has risen to the occasion, but still is held back by a school that views football as a sidebar to basketball.
Outside the Big Ten across the country, there are some very good marching bands. Texas, for instance. But the only one who comes anywhere close to Ohio State in having a truly special band is USC, with its Spirit of Troy Marching Band. Not surprisingly, they have always been my second favorite school.
(Yes, I'm a ROMAN Catholic living in Indiana and I hate Notre Dame and love USC. When the Irish play the Trojans, I have fun by singing "Fight on USC" and "Tribute to Troy" and wearing my USC gear. For a week this September, though, I will definitely not be singing it.)
But having by the Grace of God somehow successfully survived five hellish tryout weeks and performed complicated routines in front of 95,000 people to be part of a special nationally-recognized tradition somehow makes sitting for a few bar exams or arguing in front of an angry judge not so bad. "Pick up your feet, turn your corners square and drive, drive, drive" works on more than a football field.
Knock the national Dems all you want (and I frequently do) for taking politics beyond water's edge when it comes to foreign policy, but W certainly hasn't been doing nearly enough about China or its general belligerence in East Asia, of which its actions in Tibet are a part. Pelosi is right on this one. She is just doing the job Bush should be doing.
We can be proud of our House Speaker on this one. Perhaps she should be making us more proud than she has been, but we should acknowledge her when she does. Hats off to you, Speaker Pelosi.
[Pope Benedict XVI has] been willing to take on Islam. Recall his 2006 speech that quoted “14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, who said the Prophet Mohammed’s teachings had brought “things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’” This Easter weekend, despite Osama bin Laden’s latest message singling the Pope out for leading a Crusade, the Pope personally baptised Magdi Allam, “Italy’s most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel.” Given reports that “Iran is considering the death penalty for apostates,” this was an act of great courage on the part of Allam, but it was also yet more evidence that Benedict is willing to defend his faith even at the risk of giving offense.
Candidly, I find this trait admirable, even if I don’t always agree with specific manifestations.
So, Benedict and Chrstian Allam have made a response to Osama bin Laden and the response is: you love death; we love life. You deal in death, which is a conquered trade, for the One we follow has overcome death. Death, your idol, has no power over us, because we are alive in Christ, who was slain and who rose, and is Alpha and Omega and with us even now. We eat his Flesh and drink his Blood; he remains in us and we in him.
I will criticize my Roman Catholic Church when appropriate, like I did when they invoked those commandments that Moses allegedly dropped, but events like this one are the reason why I proudly stay a Roman Catholic.
(That's ROMAN, baby!!! All the way back to the ROMAN EMPIRE!!! Julius Caesar, baby!!! ...)
I am reminded of the South Park episode with the Island of Misfit Mascots, the exile home of mascots who had stupid or nonsensical messages, or whose identity bore no rational relationship to their message. Would an Island of Misfit Protests be appropriate for these people? Where the substance of the protest bore no rational relationship to the subject being protested?
These goons are charged with felonies with bonds set between $25,000 and $35,000. That's the legal response to these thugs. But I think my Roman Catholic Church has its own way of dealing with such people ...
Write the kind of haiku for my legions of clone troopers ... er, supporters, that murderous dictatorial Cragmite Emperor Percival Tachyon wrote for his troops in Ratchet and Crank Future: Tools of Destruction:
A Lombax shall die A fiery, awful death. Cupcakes are yummy.
That game is friggin' hilarious.
And yes, I know it's not a true haiku, but that's part of the hilarity, particularly since his "troops" are actually fish in bowls on top of mechanical warbot bodies.
Like many who heard it, I was powerfully impressed by Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia this week. But I found the speech unsatisfying, because it all but ignores the issue that is central to racial division in twenty-first-century America: crime and criminal punishment.
Stuntz points out that the "racism" of the criminal justice system is not the result of white racism, at least not intentionally and probably not actually. Rather, it is shown in disparate treatments of black defendants.
There is very interesting discussion in the comments, where Stuntz's argument as to the anti-black racism of the criminal justice system is very heavily critiqued, and justifiably so, in my opinion. There are four major, major issues, all of which are interrelated, that Stuntz fails to address altogether in his otherwise excellent piece.
1. The "Don't Snitch" mentality in a good portion of the black community, particularly in inner cities, that heavily discourages or even prevents cooperation with police on criminal matters.
2. The hostility to police in many black communities, of which "Don't Snitch" is a part, that make police protection dangerous not only to a police officer's life but to his career or even his freedom. The constant stream of complaints of "racism" or "excessive force" after some black thug is shot by police while committing a crime is the most visible manifestation of this attitude.
3. The police response to this attitude. If you are risking your life on a daily basis for people who, as far as you can tell, don't care about you or even hate you, make it difficult to do your job and want you gone, chances are you're going to have a negative opinion of those people. I suspect much of whatever racism exists in current law enforcement is, for this reason, responsive rather than inherent.
4. The foregoing factors of lack of cooperation with police, hostility to police and police hostility in return combine to protect and even encourage criminal conduct in many black communities across the country.
The extreme example of this phenomenon would be the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, where after constant complaints about police conduct and police shootings, police have largely withdrawn from that poor, black and very rough neighborhood.
How to resolve this dilemma? I can't say I have any precise answers. However, the purpose of government is to protect its citizens in their life, liberty and property from the predations of others, foreign and domestic, so that civilization may flourish. Without it, civilization cannot stand. For that reason, it is probably up to the black community to end any irrational resistance to this protection.
A woman in Colombia found found an African lion who was badly hurt and near death. (Leave aside for the moment the question of what the hell an African lion was doing in South America.) She took him home, cared for him and nursed him back to health. After he recovered she called the local zoo and he went to live there. That is where she later visited him. The first time he saw her, this was his reaction.
Scenes like this are the reason cats are the best animals on earth.
Let's say you're a group that holds a major international sporting event.
OK, "You're a group that holds a major international sporting event."
And let's say you're looking for a place to host that major international sporting event.
OK, "You're looking for a place to host that major international sporting event."
(Oh, come on, people. Didn't any of you watch Police Squad?)
So, of all the nice, beautiful and qualified venues around the world begging to host your major international sporting event, you choose a thuggish totalitarian dictatorship with a pattern of bullying its neighbors and belligerent conduct, including the invasion of at least two of its neighbors, one of which resulted in the permanent occupation of that neighbor and the systematic murder of its population.
Oh, this country also has air dirtier than Centralia, Pennsylvania on an August afternoon.
Gosh, it sure sounds logical. What could possiblygo wrong?
Allahpundit's takedown of Barack Obama. Money graf:
Partisanship aside, as much as I loathe his politics, I always liked Obama the man and believed that his devotion to racial reconciliation was sincere. I don’t anymore. He exploited Trinity politically to establish his black “authenticity” and then demagogued Clinton for challenging his image as the post-racial candidate, and now the two have bumped up against each other so suddenly it’s time for a circle-squaring conversation that can really only end in electing him president. Typical politician, just a bit smarter than the rest. Shows you how naive I am that I’m surprised.
But there has been plenty of other good commentary, too.
The nagging questions remain. [Jeremiah Wright]'s not merely "an occasionally fierce critic of US foreign policy." He's a man who believes that the US government was behind 911. He didn't merely say things that were "controversial." He accused the US government of deliberately creating AIDS and importing cocaine, in order to kill and injure black people. He didn't merely have political views with which one might "disagree." He held (and as far as we know, continues to hold) views that are vile, hateful, and by most lights, insane. I find this minimization and mischaracterization of the remarks to be utterly disingenuous.
[...]
[E]ven if I were a church goer, there are no amounts of good works that would allow me to hold down a pew in the presence of someone who spewed such lunacy from the pulpit. There is simply some bad that cannot be balanced against the good, when it comes to being a member of and donor to a church, and exposing children (of all ages, apparently, to judge by audience reaction) to such bigotry, hatred and idiocy. It's like praising Castro because Cuba has universal health care (ignoring the issue of how good the health care actually is in Cuba--I don't see many people flocking down there for the clinics). But then, many of the people who get funny feelings up their legs listening to Obama are exactly the sort of people who do that, so maybe I'm not the target audience here.
I understand that it's not the whole speech, and I understand that I'm only reacting to the actual words, and not his golden delivery with the halo above his head. (This latter "argument," such as it is, reminds me of people who, to my great amusement, told me that I couldn't and shouldn't judge or criticize Michael Moore's "masterpiece," Farenheit 911 by the screenplay that I read, but that I should instead watch it, as though that would somehow render nonsense sane.)
I doubt it would make a difference. The question for me remains: what was he thinking? And if this is a reliable guide to his judgment, then my judgment is that he would be a disastrous president, probably Carter-like, and an eager coddler and appeaser of dictators.
[A]s things stand, Obama is damaged. If, as some folks are arguing, hanging with Uncle Jeremiah is simply the price of doing politics in black Chicago, that makes the Senator not the change you can believe in but just the same-old-same-old. And at least a sliver of the electorate will find it hard to accept that even the political realities of Illinois require a man to raise his daughters in a church led by a vulgar kook who makes humping motions from the pulpit when he discusses Bill and Monica. Jeremiah Wright is not most Americans' idea of a pastor, and the longer he's in the spotlight the more he distances Obama from the electorate. Accepting (as everyone assures us) that the candidate himself is not an Afrocentric liberation theologist who believes every crackpot conspiracy of the last 70 years, every other explanation as to why Barack Obama spent two decades in the company of a profane race-baiter leaves the Senator looking either weak or weird. If he can wriggle out of this tonight, he's some kind of genius.
[I]n the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin.
But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."
Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").
How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?
What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?
But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.
Obama did not "in no uncertain terms" renounce and denounce Wright. He engaged in apologism for a racist. He equated his grandmother's alleged occasional, private racial slurs with Wright's cynical career of constant, public racial arson. Further, he claimed that just as he cannot give up on Nana Obama, he wishes he could quite Rev. Wright, but Brokeback Style, cannot. It would be selling out a "friend" to do so.
Well, we do not choose our family but we do choose our friends, or pastors, and our close and key political allies. Can anyone think of a case where a politician has had a 20 year history with a racial arsonist but claimed it was excused because, on balance, he's just a capital chap?
I am also unimpressed by his "denouncements." Will he specifically denounce the statements in question? Will he tell black conspiracy-theorizing haters that No, the CIA did not create HIV to kill you? He permits such conspiracy theorists to believe he's still on their side by refusing to specifically deny the lie and affirm the truth.
If some blacks are being told by figures of respect (ahem) that the government created AIDS to murder them and that the CIA stocks black communities with crack and guns to murder them, um, isn't that a rather large impediment to true racial reconciliation? I have to tell you, I know some Muslim terrorists really do want to murder me and I'm afraid reconciling with them is quite out of the question.
So is his message "Yes, white people are murdering you, but you need to get past that"? Really? One can get past conspiracy to commit genocide?
Obama, and his liberal media spirit squad, speak of having an "open, honest" dialog on race and racial resentments, hatreds, and paranoias. But Obama has had twenty years to have an open dialog -- but a private one, which is far easier -- with his "friend" Rev. Wright.
Did he have this dialog? He says he disagrees strongly with some of Wright's "controversial political positions." Did he, you know, actually raise these points with Wright?
If he did, his putative skills at "reconciliation" and "healing" seem woefully deficient. This bastard has gone on spreading his noxious racism and hatred of America until his retirement... and then beyond a bit. Obama's going to heal the racial "wounds" of 300 million but he can't get through to his very good "friend"? He can't even get him to tone down his hateful rhetoric, even if he continues to give hatred a safe harbor in his heart?
[...][T]his was [...] a lecture, not a "dialogue." Futhermore it was a lecture for white people only. Whites were told that legitimate grievances over black criminality -- oh, by the way, the real and enduring source of racial tension -- and Affirmative Action were "exploited" by politicians and media to stoke "fear" for personal gain. Hence, not really legitimate at all.
Meanwhile, as regards Wright and black hatred and borderline insane paranoia, he counseled "understanding" by whites -- but no call for blacks to give up such retrograde and hateful fantasies and scapegoatings.
My idea of a truly groundbreaking speech would involve a Cosbyesque riff on some of the real causes of white resentment, starting first and foremost with rampant black criminality and anti-social behavior, and blacks' acceptance of this as not only acceptable but justified -- perhaps even obligatory -- given past and current racial discrimination.
He did not touch on this. He's still pandering to Wright's flock. And it's not just pandering of course; he is required to excuse the black racist, not just out of ideological fervor, but out of personal circumstantial necessity. After all, he was caught in bed with a black racist and anti-American radical, not a white racist. So of course he demands that we "understand" and "forgive" the black racist. He needs us to. His personal fortunes depend on that.
But imagine if he were white and had been caught in a 20 year cynical political alliance with a white racist -- would his calls for "forgiveness" and "understanding," and his maudlin Checkers-style "I cannot renounce him, he's my favorite dog" self-justification carry any weight whatsoever with liberals, the media, or good-hearted conservatives?
No, it would not. But in Obama's case, we are lectured that we must forgive this particular racist and understand this particular brand of racism. The other sorts of racism are of course unforgivable and no proper person would ever befriend such malefactors, and certainly not intertwine their political fates so closely; but here, of course, we -- those who are a bit alarmed by virulent black racism -- must "understand."
[...]
My takeaway: White racism is pernicious and bad and we must correct it. We must learn.
Black racism, on the other hand, is perfectly understandable, justified even, and blacks get to keep on hatin' for as long as they might like.
Obama, of course, will one day change all this.
But he didn't change the heart of Wright when he had the chance. Nor even is there any evidence whatsoever he even attempted such an undertaking.
My own take was similar to Ace's, and I found myself asking, if this were a white candidate talking about his 20-year association with the Ku Klux Klan, would he be given the opportunity to explain it away the way Obama is?
Because that is what Jeremiah Wright represents.
I had actually given Obama a look-see before I concluded his policies on defense and foreign affairs were to the left of Jimmy Carter and were therefore unacceptable and dangerous (Obama basically advocates unilateral disarmament). But I had always thought he was a nice and honorable guy who was simply misguided about his policies. At this point I am really questioning the part about his being "nice and honorable."
We spend millions of dollars cleaning up the Downtown Canal because the water in it had turned green, so after it is newly-reopened, we almost immediately turn the water green.
The lack of offers to Barry Bonds will be examined by the baseball players' association as part of its annual review of the free-agent market.
Less than two weeks before Opening Day, the 43-year-old home run king remains unsigned.
"He's in playing shape right now. He just hasn't hit off live pitching," Bonds' agent, Jeff Borris, said Tuesday. "I've had conversations with Barry. It would probably take him about two weeks to get ready."
Bonds was indicted in November on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice -- charges stemming from 2003 grand jury testimony in which he denied knowingly using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. The seven-time NL MVP pleaded not guilty.
Tampa Bay acknowledged last month that it had internal discussions about the prospect of pursuing Bonds. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa had interest in Bonds, but Cardinals management decided against opening talks.
Borris said Bonds was working out in the Los Angeles area. He wouldn't comment on the status of any negotiations.
"He wants to play," Borris said.
After speaking with the Los Angeles Angels during his annual tour of spring-training camps, union head Donald Fehr said his staff will examine possible collusion against Bonds and others.
"We always look at the free-agent markets every year and make judgments about them, and if we come to the conclusion with respect to any player that there's a matter worth pursuing, we'll pursue it," he said. "But I'm not going to make any suggestions or accusations unless and until we come to that conclusion."
Fehr wouldn't say whether he found it troublesome that no team has publicly said it wants Bonds.
"I haven't talked to him about it or his agents and I don't want to comment personally about it since I haven't had the opportunity to do that," he said.
Bonds hit .276 last year with 28 homers, 66 RBIs and a major league-leading 132 walks. He made $19.3 million, and the San Francisco Giants decided to let him go after 15 seasons in San Francisco.
While he has slowed in the outfield during recent seasons, Bonds could make a potent designated hitter for an American League team. He has 762 homers -- seven more than Hank Aaron's previous mark -- and would be a box-office draw for a team with slow ticket sales.
Oh, really?
The Indiana Pacers have not always had a great record, but they have usually drawn well because this is a basketball town (and an auto racing town, but not a football town, as I have said ad nauseum). This year, they have the worst attendance in the NBA, in large part because their players are justifiably considered thugs and jerks. IU ran out a very good coach in Kelvin Sampson -- with the full support of its alumni, to their credit -- because he was a cheat.
How would Fehr and the anonymous AP reporter (who actually inserted the last paragraph) explain these occurrences?
Let's get the deal straight on Barry Bonds:
1. Barry Bonds is a jerk;
2. Barry Bonds is a cheat; and
3. Barry Bonds is a liar.
Now, is it really so surprising that no one wants him?
Normally when I buy CDs, I buy them for just one or two songs and don't listen to the whole thing. That was the case when in 1992 I bought the Cover Girls CD Here It Is, the first CD with Evelyn Escalera as lead singer, replacing Louise "Angel" Sabater (later Angel Clivilles). Even back then I noticed that Escalera was simply gorgeous; she has simply improved with age. Anyway, I loaded the CD onto my iPod's main music list, just to see what if any songs struck me out of the main list.
So today was the first time I heard the sixteen-year old song "Still Miss You." It's like unwrapping an old gift you didn't know you had because it was tucked in back of the closet. "Still Miss You" is one kickass song.
Just as six months ago I heard for the first time another sixteen-year old song, "Don't Stop Now," which oddly is not available on any of the Cover Girls' CDs. "Don't Stop Now" was so kickass that it quickly became my favorite Cover Girls song, even better than Angel Clivilles' classics, but "Still Miss You" is giving "Don't Stop Now" a run for its money.
[Insert my usual rant abut how Indianapolis radio sucks, how they traditionally never play dance music and seem to insist on only white guys with guitars.]
With "Don't Stop Now" and "Still Miss You," the Cover Girls are now entering the Sweet Sensation zone where just about every single one of their songs is so kickass they simply have to be cranked in the T/A.
The record companies went after Tanya Andersen for the file sharing by her daughter Kylee. Oops! Now Andersen has filed a class action lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of America and the major record producers in Andersen v. Atlantic, et al.:
The 109-page document provides a detailed description of some of the RIAA abuses, and contains 18 claims for relief, including Federal and State RICO claims, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, abuse of process, and fraud.
Civil RICO is an interesting theory, one that is underutilized. The problem is that courts tend to disfavor use of civil RICO. However, the record here indicates that after the court dismissed Andersen's claim, they wanted her to refile it and sort of told her how to do it, possibly out of disgust with the record companies and their tactics. Maybe this case could be the start of a new trend.
The complaint is available online. This could be a fun one to watch.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the Democratic Party, its two remaining presidential candidates and their campaigns for the important lessons in sensitivity and political correctness they have offered in recent weeks.
Political correctness is not simply the denial and dispute of facts or subject matter, but more practically the denial of the right to speak them, due to their objectionable or politically inconvenient nature. It’s generally wielded as a weapon against opponents. But it is more fascinating to watch it swung as a cudgel against allies. And in a campaign in which the strongest points … hope, change, experience … have tended to be a little vague or tenuous at best, the most memorable moments turn out to be about what must not be said, when we’ve seen that cudgel come down.
Of course they have platforms. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have attempted to outbid each other with your money. There are subsidies for universal healthcare, giveaways to newborns, that kind of thing. It theoretically gets paid for by taking from the rich, but stopping the war. Though that of course depends on what your definition of rich is, and whether the war can stopped, a question highlighted last week by ousted Obama advisor Samantha Power’s revelation that there is no plan to stop it.
[...]
[W]hat is squelched or denied is not simply some inconvenient utterances, but the massive icebergs they are represent. In the case of Power, the simple fact that politics and campaigning is a tough, not particularly noble business. The fact that racial issues are far more complex, cut across party lines, and for the most superficial of reasons … race itself … work both for and against candidates. In the case of Steinem and Wright, the pervasive sense on the far left that the United States military and that America is a force of greater evil than good in the world. Though both Clinton and Obama have expressed foreign policy views that more diplomatically support those positions, that naked an exposition is not in their interest.
The PC lesson of the day: The truth hurts. That’s why it must be avoided at all costs.
Cleopatra had several palaces in Alexandria. The one with which I am the most familiar is the one on the Lochias Promontory, which used to form a barrier to Alexandria's Great Harbor (now the East Harbor). The BBC story references a palace on Antirhodos. I'm not sure if there was a full palace there, but there definitely was a residence of some sort: it is aid that after his defeat at Actium to Octavius Caesar (Octavian, later Caesar Augustus). Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) went to Antirhodos and brooded there in isolation for some time.
Mainland Alexandria is on the African plate, while the offshore island of Pharos (once home to the famous Alexandria Lighthouse, which was replaced by some stupid medieval fort), permanently connected to the Egyptian mainland by a causeway called the Hepstadion (Hepstadium), is on the Mediterranean plate. The African plate is sliding underneath the Mediterranean plate, so mainland Alexandria is slowly sinking into the Mediterranean. If you compare a map of ancient Alexandria with a current map, you will notice that Antirhodos is gone and the Lochias Promontory is now just a sliver of land. Meanwhile, Pharos is largely the same.
I have ripped the Muslim world for barbarity many, many times, and justifiably so. part of that barbarity includes attempting to destroy its pre-Islamic history, like the Bamiyan Buddhas. Egypt has certainly had its share of what might best be termed missteps in this regard, but both the leadership and the people of post-independence Egypt seem to have a great pride in their pre-Islamic history and have gone to considerable lengths to both preserve and promote that history. The East Harbor in Alexandria is home to an Egyptian naval base (to the extent that they actually have a navy) about which the Egyptians have traditionally been very secretive.
Now the Egyptians are insistent on leaving the underwater artifacts where they are in the East Harbor and are talking about turning Cleopatra's palace into an underwater museum for visitors. Kudos to them. Humanity can only benefit from their efforts.
I had previously wanted to learn to scuba dive so I could visit the wrecks of the US heavy cruiser Houston and the Japanese battleships Yamashiro, Fuso and Musashi. Now, I'll need to add Cleopatra's palace to that list.
A man accused of using a camera to take pictures under the skirt of an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl at a Tulsa store did not commit a crime, a state appeals court has ruled.
The state Court of Criminal Appeals voted 4-1 in favor of Riccardo Gino Ferrante, who was arrested in 2006 for situating a camera underneath the girl's skirt at a Target store and taking photographs.
Ferrante, now 34, was charged under a "Peeping Tom" statute that requires the victim to be "in a place where there is a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy." Testimony indicated he followed the girl, knelt down behind her and placed the camera under her skirt.
In January 2007, Tulsa County District Judge Tom Gillert ordered Ferrante's felony charge dismissed. That was based upon a determination that "the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy," according to the appellate ruling issued last week.
The District Attorney's Office had appealed Gillert's ruling to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
"We agree with the district court's analysis," stated the opinion written by Appeals Judge Charles Johnson, with Judges Charles Chapel, David Lewis and Arlene Johnson concurring.
In a dissent, Appeals Judge Gary Lumpkin wrote that "what this decision does is state to women who desire to wear dresses that there is no expectation of privacy as to what they have covered with their dress."
"In other words, it is open season for peeping Toms in public places who want to look under a woman's dress," Lumpkin wrote.
He said he found the majority's finding of no reasonable expectation of privacy "interesting and disturbing."
Um, yeah.
I haven't seen the decision, so I can't comment fully, but from whatthe news articles have stated this decision looks ludicrous and idiotic on its face. Can't they have, like, someone on the court staff review each draft opinion for common sense? Is that too much to ask of our imperial judiciary?
Tomorrow is the Ides of March, the anniversary of the murder of a real leader, Gaius Julius Caesar, by the Senate. The Senate, almost by definition, sucks (just look at today's presidential candidates). Julius Caesar was the epitome of coolness, a great general, ruler and politician who, if you placed him in the US today, would have been our greatest POTUS ever by far. Plus, he was Roman, and as we all know, everything Roman is cool.
So I and many others will be wearing black tomorrow to mourn Julius Caesar. To Cassius, Brutus and everyone in the Senate, you suck.
The price of a gallon of regular grade unleaded gasoline just topped $3.45 a gallon here in Indianapolis. For me, it's a bit higher, since I take only the premium stuff. Even with adjustment for inflation, this is is the highest cost for gasoline ever in the United States.
Clearly, this situation is unacceptable. However, our ability to extricate ourselves may be severely limited by our inability to identify the true causes of this problem, at least if the various blogs and message boards I am reading are any indication. too much politically correct green nonsense and not enough practical truths. Some points of interest:
1. Most of the oil in the world comes from politically unstable countries. This is true. In fact, most of these countries suck so much they probably shouldn't even be counties at all, but should be taken over, preferably by us.
2. We have oilfields in US territory, but we are not allowed to drill them. True. we could increase our available oil from a stable country like our own, but eco-nazis have used Congress and the courts to block drilling for potential sources of oil in ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico and off the California coast. While the people of California and Florida generally do not want drilling off their coastline, the people of Alaska do in fact want drilling in ANWR. Drilling has been blocked by eco-nazis to protect the porcupine caribou, who don't seem to be bothered by drilling anywhere else. Not drilling in ANWR is inexcusable.
3. The world has reached its "peak oil" production and is now running out of oil. False. As the price of oil has skyrocketed, new sources of oil have become more economically viable for production, such as the "oil sands" of Canada and the US. Except eco-nazis won't let us exploit that avenue of production, either. The Gulf of Mexico oil fields, long thought to have been close to depletion, are now apparently refilling for reasons geologists have not yet figured out. But we can't drill for it. China can, but we can't.
4. We cannot build new refineries in the US. True. Thanks to the envirotards, we haven't built a new refinery in the US in over 30 years because any attempt is met with fierce opposition and litigation. But it's actually far worse than that. They won't let us expand or modify the ones we have now, including to refine the new oil sands.
The enemy here is not "Big Oil." It is the eco-nazis who seek to run our lives through imposition of hairshirt environmentalism. They must be fought at every turn.
Roger Simon explains why the Eliot Spitzer saga is a "nightmare for Hillary." She has been silent so far, but she will have to say something eventually. This could be fun to watch.
The only tragedy I see in this is for Spitzer's wife Silda. Harvard-trained corporate lawyer who gave up her career to devote herself to Spitzer and give him three beautiful daughters. More than one commentator has described the 50-year old Silda as "smoking hot," and she most definitely is.
I have always suspected that one of the reasons Bill Clinton was able to survive the Monica Lewinski scandal was that it did not involve just cheating on a wife per se, but cheating on Hillary, who many found even back then to be generally unlikable. While those people found cheating on a spouse wrong, they found cheating on Hillary still wrong but more understandable. As P.J. O'Rourke put it, the problem was not so much that Bill Clinton had a affairs with other women as it was his taste in women.
There is no indication of such an issue with Silda Spitzer. Accomplished lawyer, beautiful woman, generally well-liked as far as I can tell. Hillary she is not. Eliot Spitzer's treatment of her will be seen as the moral crime that it is. Personally speaking, why anyone would cheat on such a woman as Silda Spitzer at all, let alone pay to cheat with a hooker, is unfathomable to me.
And, yes, the title is taken from the New York Post. How could I resist recycling such a great headline?
I am a proud Roman Catholic (that's ROMAN, baby! All the way back to the ROMAN EMPIRE!!! etc., etc., etc.), but while I find peace, comfort and pride in being a Roman Catholic faith (particularly the "Roman" part of it), the Roman Catholic Church as an institution has its human element, and like any institution with a human element, it has its imperfections.
As it showed today. One day after I excoriate the head of the Church of England for stupidity and intellectual cowardice in the face of danger, the Vatican Curiae tries to out do him. Unsuccessfully, I believe, but not for lack of trying:
If you want to avoid an afterlife of hellfire and damnation you will now have to do more than obey the Ten Commandments.
The Vatican has extended its list of mortal sins to include 21st century issues such as genetic experimentation, pollution, social injustice, drug abuse and excessive wealth.
Published in the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano the extended list was revealed at the end of a week long refresher course for priests on the sacrament of confession.
According to the Roman Catholic faith a mortal sin must be confessed to a priest and if not absolved or forgiven, will lead to a person's soul being condemned to Hell after death.
Traditionally mortal sins are those which are a breach of the Commandments - murder, adultery, stealing and lying to name but a few.
The new sins were revealed by Gianfranco Girotti, bishop in charge of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican Department which deals with the forgiveness of sins.
Monsignor Girotti, 70, said: ''The reference for sin is the violation of Man's relationship with God and his fellow Man.
''Today there are various new sins which concern the rights of the individual and society and above all these are in the field of bioethics.
''Within this there are several fundamental violations of nature taking place - experiments, genetic manipulation, which are very difficult to control.
''Socially there is the field of drugs which weaken both intelligence and physically, leaving many youngsters outside the ecclesiastical (church) circuit.
''Then elsewhere socially we have inequality of wealth with the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer, this in turns feeds an ever growing social injustice.''
Ooooh-kay.
One of the good things about the Ten Commandments was the objective nature of the crimes. Thou shalt not kill, with certain limited exceptions like self-defense, which the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges by interpreting that particular commandment as "Thou shalt not murder." Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not lie, unless it's about sex. OK, I got that last exception from Bill Clinton.
There are objective standards to these commandments. Easily definable.
But "excessive wealth?" What is it? Who defines it? People with wealth often create jobs for those who don't (George Soros being the exception that proves the rule) so that they may earn their own wealth. How is that a bad thing?
Genetic experimentation? I can see the Vatican's point on so-called embryonic stem cell research, though I disagree with it. But genetic experimentation on food has made our food supply the safest and most plentiful it has ever been, keeping hundreds of millions of people from starving and keeping millions of others with jobs and wealth of their own. How is that a bad thing?
Pollution? basically, any human activity pollutes in some fashion. We cannot nor have we ever been "carbon-neutral." Has the Vatican been infested with Goremegons (with acknowledgement to Bones and the lovely Emily Deschanel)?
And what the hell is "social injustice?"
The point is that these are subjective determinations, not objective ones. Whether a "sin" has been committed here is a matter of opinion, not of fact. This serves to weaken the moral authority of religion in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular.
This is yet another in a long line of pronouncements from the Vatican that are at best questionable and more accurately termed indefensible. Now the death penalty is effectively a no-no? After the Church was OK with it for 2,000 years? Jesus never had a problem with it -- if He disagreed with executions by the State, don't you think He would have said so when He was being executed by the State? But, no, if anything Jesus implicitly endorsed the idea. Who knew that Jesus' own Church could overrule Him?
The Vatican opposed the Iraq War. Almost as if St. Augustine's concept of "Just War" went down the memory hole.
And how about the American Catholic bishops supporting illegal immigration and opposing tougher enforcement measures? In fact, when combined with their opposition to the death penalty, it's almost as if they oppose any punishment to criminals whatsoever.
In short, it is opinions like these based more on politics and personal opinion than faith or scripture that have people like me proudly calling ourselves Catholics but ignoring these pronouncements by the institutional Church.
"She is a monster," Barack Obama adviser Samantha Power told a reporter from The Scotsman – and not a monster in a cute Loch Ness blurry, long-distance kind of way. "You just look at her and think, 'Ergh,'" continued Ms. Power, who subsequently resigned from the campaign.
The New York Times took a different line. The monster is you – yes, you, the American people. Surveying the Hillary-Barack death match, Maureen Dowd wrote: "People will have to choose which of America's sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?"
Do even Democrats really talk like this? Apparently so. As Ali Gallagher, a white female (sorry, this identity-politics labeling is contagious) from Texas, told the Washington Post: "A friend of mine, a black man, said to me, 'My ancestors came to this country in chains; I'm voting for Barack.' I told him, 'Well, my sisters came here in chains and on their periods; I'm voting for Hillary.'"
When everybody's a victim, nobody's a victim. Poor Ms. Gallagher can't appreciate the distinction between purely metaphorical chains and real ones, or even how offensive it might be to assume blithely that there's no difference whatsoever.
On the other hand, Barack's ancestors didn't come here in chains, either: His mother was a white Kansan, so was presumably undergoing menstrual hell with the Gallagher gals, and his dad was a black man a long way away in colonial Kenya. Indeed, Obama would be the first son of a British subject to serve as president since those slaveholding types elected in the early days of the republic. As some aggrieved black activist sniffed snootily on TV, Barack isn't really an "African American" – unless by "African American," you mean somebody whose parentage is half-American and half-African, and let's face it, no one would come up with so cockamamie a definition as that.
Michelle Malkin traces the far left's war (literally in some cases) againt military recruiters in an ongoing attempt to hamstring the US military. That war may have included last week's bombing of a recruitment office in Times Square.
It seems that before the bombing, eight Democrat Congressional Representatives from New York City all received a copy of a picture of the targeted office. This picture would suggest a deliberate premeditated intent to target the recruiting center. They also received a letter, that contained a massive anti-war, anti-military rant, but no explicit threat.
And yet, somehow, law enforcement considers the letter unrelated to the bombing. This letter mailed before the bombing with pictures of the recruitment office is unreleated to the bombing. Just a coincidence.
Nothing to see here. Move along. That's right, return to your simple lives, just forget this ever happened. Forget... FOR-GET...
The last days of the Eastern Roman Empire -- I will not use the historical term "Byzantine Empire" for reasons that will be the subject of another blog post -- were, not surprisingly, far from happy ones. Stabbed in the back by vicious Venetians, selfish Serbs and several members of the imperial house, the remnants of Rome had now dwindled to a few pockets of Greece proper and Constantinople, to which the Greek population referred as "the city," in Greek "i polis" or "i stan polis," from which comes the Turkish name "Istanbul" I suspect that "i stan polis" was a play on words of a sort to the Greeks, since it sounds like a shortened form of Constantinopolis, never an easy word to say with all those syllables. But I digress.
With the Ottoman Turks breathing down their throats and the Serbs all too eager to help them -- an alliance the Serbs would later regret, to this day, in fact -- the Romans were in desperate straits. They tried their hand at appeasement -- creating a Muslim quarter in the greatest city of Christendom, and demolishing many of their fortifications.
Maybe they just didn't know any better; after all, no one had given away the Sudetenland just yet. Winston Churchill had not yet uttered his famous phrase, "An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last."
Or maybe they just couldn't stomach needing the Latin West. The Fourth Crusade had left the Eastern Romans bitter, the West was demanding a high price for any help, and throughout I stan polis could be heard the phrase "better the sultan's turban than the pope's mitre." I wouldn't necessarily place the debacle that followed on the pope, however.
Or maybe the leadership of Constantinople was out of touch with their people, who by and large opposed these appeasement measures.
Be that as it may, the Eastern Roman Empire, the bulwark against Islamic expansion for 800 years, stood alone. As the walls of Constantinople were stormed on May 29, 1453 by anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 Ottoman troops, they were defended by only some 7,000 troops. And not even very good troops. The elite cataphracts were no longer available after the defeat at Manzikert; the Varangian Guard had long been disbanded.
But even after the appeasement measures of their leaders had failed, the Greek people had fought. Not successfully enough to defeat the Ottomans, not successfully enough to overcome the appeasement and betrayal by their leaders, but they had fought.
The crocodile had indeed eaten the Eastern Romans, and the Serbs soon followed.
I could not help but think of this chain of events leading up to the fall of Constantinople after hearing last month of the comments of the Head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Williams called for implementing certain elements of shari'a law in Britain:
The adoption of some aspects of Islamic Sharia law in Britain "seems unavoidable", the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
Dr Rowan Williams said other religions enjoyed tolerance of their own laws, and called for "constructive accommodation" with Muslim practice in areas such as marital disputes.
But he stressed that it could never be allowed to take precedence over an individual's rights as a citizen.
Asked if the adoption of Sharia law was necessary for community cohesion, Dr Williams told the BBC: "It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of Sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are bringing in an alien and rival system.
"We already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land as justifying conscientious objections in certain circumstances."
He added: "There is a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law as we already do with aspects of other kinds of religious law.
"It would be quite wrong to say that we could ever license a system of law for some community which gave people no right of appeal, no way of exercising the rights that are guaranteed to them as citizens in general.
"But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them.
"In some cultural and religious settings they would seem more appropriate."
It must be stated that, based on my read of his comments, Williams call was more narrow than later media reports made then out to be, and never called for imposition of shari'a law over non-Muslims. But his comments were bad enough, and made a mockery of the Western legal tradition of "equal justice under the law." The negative effect was magnified by his position as the head of a major Western religious denomination, the Church of England.
And he was called out on it. The Anglican Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali:
It was said that he could not believe the fury of the reaction. The most damaging attack came from the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali.
He said it would be "simply impossible" to bring sharia law into British law "without fundamentally affecting its integrity".
Sharia "would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence.
"This is not to mention the relation of freedom of belief and of expression to provisions for blasphemy and apostasy."
The Archbishop's controversial stance has received widespread criticism from Christian and secular groups, the head of the equality watchdog, several high-profile Muslims and MPs from all parties.
Amid the storm of protest, Downing Street moved quickly to distance itself from the Archbishop's remarks, insisting that British law would and should remain based on British values.
A spokesman for Mr Brown said: "Our general position is that sharia law cannot be used as a justification for committing breaches of English law, nor should the principles of sharia law be included in a civil court for resolving contractual disputes.
"If there are specific instances like stamp duty, where changes can be made in a way that's consistent with British law and British values, in a way to accommodate the values of fundamental Muslims, that is something the Government would look at.
"But the Prime Minister believes British law should apply in this country, based on British values."
Former Labour home secretary David Blunkett said that sharia law would be "catastrophic" for social cohesion in Britain.
"I think this is very dangerous because the Archbishop used the term affiliations," he said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"We have affiliations to football clubs, to cricket teams, to all sorts of things that aren't central to our citizenship and the acceptance of that in terms of a common society.
"We don't have affiliations when it comes to the question of the law. And when it comes to equality under the law, we have to be rigorous in terms of making sure people do not find themselves excluded from it because of cultural or faith reasons."
Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, agreed that Dr Williams was "wrong" to advocate the adoption of elements of sharia law.
"This isn't a path down which we should go. The system, the British legal system, should apply to everybody equally. You cannot run two systems of law along side each other. That in my view would be a recipe for chaos, social chaos," he said on BBC1's Question Time.
"British law has to be based on British values. If people choose to live in this country, they choose to abide by that law and that law alone. It has got to be fundamental and a cornerstone of our country and our democracy that everybody is equal before that one system of British law."
The problem lies, rather, in the status of the messenger and the timing of his intervention. If there is a case for the creation of sharia courts, it would be better made by a joint group representing the three Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Coming from the senior bishop in the Church of England, it is vulnerable to interpretation as appeasement of Islamic extremism prompted by fear of social unrest.
As for timing, the lecture was given shortly after threats had been made against one of Dr Williams's fellow bishops, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, for writing in the Sunday Telegraph that Islamic extremism had turned some communities into no-go areas for non-Muslims. Add to this the growing recognition of the failures of multiculturalism, and you have on the part of the archbishop a classic example of political ineptitude.
Even with more convincing advocacy, the creation of sharia courts in this country faces an uphill battle. In the public mind, sharia is associated with brutal punishment, whether the amputation of hands for theft or stoning for adultery and apostasy.
It is also seen as repressive to women; a journalist in Afghanistan is facing the death penalty for having distributed a report taken off the internet which questions the practice of polygamy. A further obstacle is the opposition to a dual legal system of the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation not always associated with moderation.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is the head of the Church of England and as such, is still - amazingly - considered to be a person of some eminence. Unfortunately, he does not lend weight to that institution. Although the Anglican Church is far less powerful than it used to be - and for good reasons, such as the removal of 19th century electoral discrimination against Jews, Catholics and dissenters - it is still regarded with affection by many of us, even atheists, agnostics or lukewarm Christians. It has given us great thinkers; its liturgy and music are among the great adornments of western civilisation. Alas, Dr Williams is not a great thinker, although he is no doubt a kindly man.
Dr Williams believes that aspects of sharia law - which aspects he does not explictly say - should be allowed to form part of the law of this country. He does not explain what tests should be used to decide what bits of sharia law are acceptable and what are not. For example, in some of the most conservative muslim lands, the death penalty is used for offences far less serious than murder, such as adultery. We are not told what the Archbishop thinks about this; or whether he thinks things such as arranged marriage, etc, are acceptable. But he needs to be clear about what he thinks is acceptable, otherwise, all we can assume is that the fellow is mouthing vacuous platitudes, nothing more.
I do not believe you can operate a polycentric legal order in Britain, at least not in ways that would allow one legal code to allow coerced marriages, sitting alongside the English Common law. How, for example, could one avoid westernised Muslims wanting to be treated under the ordinary law of the land and not to be ruled over by their co-religionists? Without the active support of the State, I suspect, and hope, that many Muslims, particularly women, will revolt and choose to live under the Common Law tradition of this country. I hope so.
Dr Williams means well; a lot of such people do. But frankly, he gives lapsed Christians such as yours truly plenty of reason for wanting the Church to be shorn of its state privileges.
Where is Santayana when you need him? What, I wonder, would he have had to say about Archbishop Williams’s declaration earlier today that the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in Britain is “unavoidable.” In a widely reported lecture on BBC radio 4 the Archbishop called for a “constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law” and said that Britons must “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not “relate” to the British legal system. “Constructive accommodation”: let’s see, I guess that is British English for “spineless capitulation”?
And what is all this about Muslim Brits not “relating” to the law? The rule of law is is not a lifestyle choice: it is not something you can opt out of if you happen to have alternative inclinations. “Gee, in my religion, we stone adulteresses to death, so would you mind stepping aside and handing me that pile of rocks?”
The proper answer to such gambits was formulated in the 19th century by General Charles Napier when dealing with sutte, the Indian custom of burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
Remember this next time someone tells you Christian values are the best defense against the spread of Islamism: the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the head of the Anglican church, believes that the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK “seems unavoidable”.
Williams isn’t of course referring to the Islamist-imperialist dream of the entire U.K being placed under Sharia law, but rather he’s backing the idea, promoted by some in the UK Muslim community, of allowing Muslims to settle some aspects of family and “personal status” laws in Sharia courts.
Williams says Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty” (he doesn’t say why not) and rejects an approach to law where “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts — I think that’s a bit of a danger.” He doesn’t say what is “dangerous” about the idea of the law applying equally to all.
It's not the first time a member of the clergy has suggested appeasement and surrender for a strategy against expansion of radical Islam. The endorsement of these strategies by the leader of the Anglican Church is especially disheartening, however. That the leader of a worldwide sect of Christianity thinks of shari'a as "inevitable" should prompt questions about his fitness for that office.
And one could argue that Christendom's clergy at least put up a fight in North Africa in the 5th and 6th centuries before being overwhelmed, and that there were priests on the walls of Constantinople on that terrible day May 29, 1453 — but Archbishop Rowan Williams seems to be welcoming in the end of the Church and the Enlightenment all at once in a sort of 'if you can't beat them, join them.'
Is the Archbishop of Canterbury unaware of the history of the Church he has been chosen to lead? Coming from Wales is no excuse, as until the early years of the last century, Wales was part of the Church of England as well. The Church of England was born out of an express desire to rid Britain of a foreign, ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Article 37 of the 39 says: 'The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.' Queen Elizabeth I early in her reign decreed that the Crown had restored to it 'the ancient jurisdiction over the state ecclesiastical and spiritual, abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same'.
And now Queen Elizabeth II's very own Archbishop - and let's not forget she is his Church's Supreme Governor - wants to introduce a new 'jurisdiction into this realm of England.' And an Islamic one at that!
It is one thing for judges to take Sharia into account, as has happened in Germany. It is quite another to follow the line the Archbishop is suggesting. It led to near disaster in Ontario, Canada two years ago and would created untold and unnecessary distress here were it to be implemented here.
The Archbishop has staked everything on trying to maintain unity in his own Anglican Communion. At the same time, he is advocating a policy that could only fragment the society around him.
[...]
A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a woman who works in an advocacy role for Muslim women in an area that, quite independently of the Bishop of Rochester, she described as a 'no-go area' for non-Muslims. Her clients were women in the process of being sectioned into mental health units in the NHS. This woman, who for obvious reasons begged not to be identified, told me: 'The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing western clothes.There can be many reasons. The women are sent for asssessment to a hospital. The GP referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned. She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?'
My interlocuter went very red and almost started to cry. Instead, she began shouting at me. I was a member of the press. 'You must write about this,' she begged.
'I can't,' I said. 'Not unless you become a whistle-blower. Or give me some evidence. Or something.'
She shook her head. 'I can't be identified,' she said. 'I would be killed. And so would the women.'
So there you have it. After weeks of wondering what to do, inspired by the Archbishop, I've taken her word that she is telling the truth, respected her anonymity, and written it anyway.
And this, I imagine, is what the Archbishop wants for the whole of England. As they used to say in my father's country parish: 'Heaven preserve us!' I wonder what they're saying there today. Expressions somewhat shorter and sweeter, I fear.
Islam has a new convert. Some will be surprised, but I am not. The newest convert to the religion of the unshaven face is Archbishop Rowan Williams. Dr. Williams has been the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church in the UK. However, after his February 7 interview on the BBC I think we can all agree that he is not so much a spiritual leader as a spiritual capitulator.
In his wonderfully wooly-headed interview, derived from a public lecture delivered by him at the Royal Courts of Justice, Dr. Williams called on his countrymen to arrive at "constructive accommodation" with Islamic sharia law. According to his calculations, the inclusion of sharia law into the British code of law is "unavoidable." Thus if you are visiting London in the future and you appear in a British court, do not be surprised if it is presided over by a smiling mullah. Actually, it is not clear what Dr. Williams knows about sharia law, and in his BBC interview he admitted, "I'm no expert on this." Nonetheless, he is calling for the institutionalization of Islam into at least some areas of his country's legal code. Doubtless soon the forward-looking archbishop will be seen lugging a prayer rug over to his local mosque at the appointed hours -- his wife, veiled and obedient, in tow. Sharia law can be pretty demanding.
In some countries where this legal code -- first formulated sometime in the seventh century -- is followed, it enjoins, among other atrocities, the stoning of adulterers, the amputation of body parts, and a kind of female subjugation unimaginable to even the most ardent Western male chauvinist pig. By the way, sharia law even takes into consideration pigs, as well as mortgages, couture, and the care of household pets, which are discouraged. As for pigs, they are considered "unclean." In most countries where sharia law rules, a ham on rye is malum prohibitum -- pardon my Latin. As I say, sharia law can be pretty demanding.
This brings me to a matter that Islam's most recent celebrity convert seems not to understand. Sharia law is socially, politically, and legally, all-embracing. It is not simply a religious faith, as various forms of Christianity are. It is a polity. As Peter G. Riddell, a theologian at the Kairos Journal, wrote in response to Dr. Williams here, sharia law "is a system that insists on society's compliance in every sector of human activity: legal, religious, economic, political, and social. Although Muslims may disagree on how to implement Islam as the total package, they do not disagree that Islam is much more than just a private expression of religious belief." So Dr. Williams, you have had your last ham sandwich and forget the pigs' knuckles. They are completely off the menu.
Could someone persuade this fellow to read a little history? Britain has one law common to all because that is the fairest and most enlightened way to operate. British Christians purchased with their lives the principle that no one is above or beyond Common Law, and that everyone must abide by its rules of fairness and equity. Grounded in individual rights and due process, Common Law protects the vulnerable, including women who have been abused by Sharia laws that treat them as having less rights than men and that inflict barbaric punishments on men and women.
The archbishop has lectured on St Benedict’s Rule, but he does not realize the importance of refraining from speech - “Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Keep a guard on your mouth.” Instead he feels compelled to foster controversy and confusion. Where is his Socratic humility, his acknowledgement that he knows very little?
Fortunately his idea has been met in Britain with an almost universal and appalled NO.
Williams' comments provoked calls for his resignation:
The Archbishop of Canterbury was facing demands to quit last night as the row over sharia law intensified.
Lord George Carey, Dr Williams' predecessor, criticised his comments on sharia law and said that accepting the Islamic code would be a disaster for Britain.
Other leading bishops publicly contradicted Dr Rowan Williams's call for Islamic law to be brought into the British legal system.
With the Church of England plunged into crisis, senior figures were said to be discussing the archbishop's future.
One member of the church's "Cabinet", the Archbishop's Council, was reported as saying: "There have been a lot of calls for him to resign. I don't suppose he will take any notice, but, yes, he should resign."
And yet for all that, one month after the row, he is still head of the Church if England. He refuses to resign. Williams sees nothing wrong with his comments.
Let me clarify two things. First, any call to adopt any part of shari'a -- any call -- must be met with condemnation in the harshest terms possible. The shari'a is codified barbarism inapposite for any civilized country and more in line with ancient Carthage, who sacrificed their own children to the god Baal. Any god who would demand his followers adhere to such a code is a false god.
Second, why do we in the United States care what a British religious figure thinks? Because Britain is where US law starts. US law is formed on the foundation of the British common law. And US courts will periodically look to British common law for guidance where there is no US law on point. This is the one instance where it is acceptable for US courts to look to foriegn law for guidance (which does not serve to bail out SCOTUS Justice Ruth bader Ginsburg for her ridiculous comments on that issue).
Further, as head of a major western religious order, Williams' opinion carries some weight. Perhaps not with westerners in this instance, but with Islamists who do see this as a war and see WIlliams' comments as another sign that they are winning.
And Williams' comments amounting to creating an Islamic quarter of Constantinople suggest that perhaps they are.
That quarter is getting larger, as a Western Civilization weakened by decades of "multiculturalism" finds the general populace but not the leadeship who actually matter willing to man the battlements. British children are disappearing from schools, amid fears that they may have been forced into arranged marriages. Muslim medical students are refusing to wash up before surgery because it is against Islamic law. Islamic polygamy is already recognizedde facto in Britain. The camel's nose is thus already in the common law tent.
Meanwhile, back in the US, we have Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis attempting to force shari'a on their passengers. We have honor killings in Texas. We also have Stanford and Cal using Saudi money to help set up a university in Saudi Arabia, one which the Saudis probably could not set up themselves because their own practice of shari'a, shall we say?, discourages the intellectual vigor and critical thinking necessary for such and endeavor.
And we have Harvard banning men from their campus gym during certain hours for Muslim women uncomfortable working out with men around.
When a columnist asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”
By banning all men from the facility, right?
“It’s not ‘banning,’ ” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”
Accommodating. The age-old buzz word of multiculturalism.
The hordes are getting closer. The hour of Constantinople is coming.
It took me a whole two minutes to adjust every clock in my house for Eastern Daylight Time. I mean, my finger got sore from pushing all the buttons on my clocks and everything.
No, it's not the same finger I use for anyone who opposes Eastern Daylight Time. There is no logical reason -- none -- for opposing Eastern Daylight Time in Indiana.
With a dearth of decent new games coming out in the near future -- only Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is coming out before June -- I decided to try my hand at Halo. When I finally looked over at the clock, it was four hours later.
I guess there is a reason Halo is the top rated first person shooter of all time.
Onceagain, the Snowpocalypse is approaching Indianapolis. Now, the normal media coverage you would get in these situations would suggest only one thing:
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
So, go out and make the obligatory panic purchases of bread, milk, eggs, pantyhose, toilet paper and potable water.
I figure if I keep saying this, the media's recent record of predicting nine of the last two snowstorms will hold. They've been pretty quiet about this one, though. I wonder why ...
Is there any particular reason why Kodak EasyShare software insists on loading itself everytime my computer boots in Windows XP? And will not allow me to turn this "feature" off, necessitating an increased boot time and having to manually turn it off?
I'd like to the option of choosing what to spend my RAM on, thank you, Kodak.
While it's not the crime of Microsoft Wiondows Vista or Sony dumping PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility to keep the damn Blu-ray, but it is annoying.
Actually, it's the same Rome: Total War game I was playing earlier. I just got away from it for a while and now I'm back to conquering the known world. It hasn't gone as planned, though. Just as I'm about to finish off the Julii, the Britons jump in to help them. Just as I'm about to finish off the Ptolemies, the Carthaginians jump in to help them. So I have two two-front wars instead of none against four enemies instead of two. But that's what Roman legions are for. I just wish that Activsion had not made the chariots so powerful. In real life, they actually kind of sucked.
Once I'm done with this, I can't decide if I should jump into Barbarian Invasion or Medieval 2: Total War. if it's the latter, I only know I'll want to play as a Roman empire; I just can't decide if I want it to be Holy (Catholic but not actually Roman) or Eastern (legally Roman but Orthodox). And, no, I won't use the term "Byzantine" or "Byzantium" in reference to the Eastern Roman Empire for reasons that will be the topic of another blog post.
I'm also trying to play the Half-Life 2 part of The Orange Box. Great visuals straight out of Orwell's Oceania with its decay, poverty and collapse of human civilization in the face of totalitarianism, with aliens thrown in to boot. The only problem is that I get motion sickness every time I play it.
Tonight my Ohio State Buckeyes managed to win a basketball game, for once. This has not been the season Thad Matta had hoped for, as the team has been genrally underperforming until tonight. We are a long shot to make the NCAA Torunament as an at-large bid, meaning our best bet is to win the Big Ten Tournament. But that itself is a problem, made moreso bythe Big Ten itelf.
Now, I while I have no love for the Big Ten Network, sports are the product of the Big Ten. The athletic departments are not supported by public tax dollars, as Big Ten athletic departments are generally self-supporting and dependent on donations, and revenue streams. Consequently, they have every right to market it as they see fit.
However, I do have a problem with the Big Ten putting its thumb on the supposedly neutral scales of its basketball tournament. By having the tournament in Indianapolis, the Big Ten has decided that the tournament will be a series of home games for Indiana and, to a much lesser extent, Purdue. So, if you're Wisconsin, Michigan State, Illinois or Ohio State and need to go far in the Big Ten Tournament to increase your chances of an NCAA bid, tough luck.
Indiana may be the self-styled "Basketball Capital of the World" (New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles might dispute that contention), but that in no way justifies the Big Ten placing its basketball tournament here. Indianapolis is "neutral" territory like Hugo Chavez is "neutral" in the Colombian civil war. This is blatantly IU country, and they will flood the tournamnet with their supporters.
So if you're anyone but IU, you're basically screwed. IU gets home games, you get a hostile crowd.
The Big Ten AD's should be screaming mad about this. Chicago's United Center was a far superior location for the tournament than Indianapolis. Northwestern may be located in suburban Chicago, but it is far too small a school to have much of a presence in flooding the tournament with its supporters. Milwaukee's Bradley Center and the Palace of Auburn Hills in suburban Detroit would have also been superior selections to Indianapolis. Neither has the presence for Wisconsin or Michigan and Michigan State, respectively, that Indianapolis has for IU. Even Minneapolis' Target Center or Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena would have been superior to Indianapolis.
But, no. We effectively have to play games at IU to make the NCAA.
Can you please end this recent phenomenon of using the phrase "wintry mix" to describe a mix of snow, sleet and/or freezing rain? I'm sick of hearing this dangerous weather condition made to sound like something you'd find in a bowl at an office Christmas party.
Bob: This sure is a great party we're having, Sherri. And I can't stop eating this snack mix. What is it?
Sherri: Why, it's the new Chex "Wintry Mix." All your favorite Chex flavors, covered in icing.
Michelle Malkin reports that a group of Muslim "scholars" wants to implement "an international law that criminalizes religious insults and enforces mutual respect of religions." Of course, the only effect of this law would be to criminalize "blasphemy" against Islam.
Why should my non-Muslim government enforce Muslim laws on non-Muslims?
I find many things insulting to me on any given day.
I tend to ignore them, because I am a mature adult and have better things to do than go hunting for things to outrage me.
Why can't you folks do the same?
I simply don't care what others say about me or what I believe in. I know in my heart what is true, and the words of those who disagree and seek to discourage me are as nothing.
Is your faith so weak that even the tiniest slight from thousands of miles away demands you avenge it?
That's certainly how I look at it. I myself am a Roman Catholic. Let me be more blunt, a ROMAN Catholic, baby!!! We go back all the way to the ROMAN Empire, with Julius Caesar and his ROMAN legions!!!
(By contrast, the best Islam can do is Saladin, which invokes images of iceberg lettuce mixed with shredded carrots and red cabbage, bacon bits, croutons, and fat-free Ranch dressing.)
We get veiled anti-Catholic slurs in Indiana (as a Bible Belt state) all the time. Doesn't really matter to us. We don't riot or make death threats. Take your laughable "family values," which usually include no drinking or gambling. I'll take the Inqusition and Legio X.
Come to think of it, it would be fun to invoke the Inquisition. They'd never expect it. But I digress.
How 'bout one last true money graf from Wizbang:
If this is true Islam, if this is a fair representation of The Religion Of Peace (tm), then fuck Islam and fuck everyone and anyone who pushes it. And if the United Nations even thinks about trying to pass this, then we need not only to bulldoze the whole building right into the East River, we need to think very strongly about invoking the Coulter Doctrine: "we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Having been gone in La-La-Land for a week (literally) I've been cut off from most news. I completely missed the Pittsburgh Penguins trade for Marian Houssa and the collapse of the Ohio State men's basketball team (of course. it's only basketball; it's only a game, it's not like it's a matter of life or death ... like football ...) I only heard about the big Cleveland Browns acquisitions (Corey Williams, Shaun Rogers and Donte Stallworth) after the fact.
However, I did hear about one unfortunate news item purely by accident. I had to run around Ontario looking for a wireless card for my laptop. I did not have one, and as it turned out it came in extremely useful.
But I stopped in at a Best Buy, and, since I had some time, decided to look at the PlayStation 3.
It was then and there that I found out that Sony had killed off the 80 gig model PlayStation 3. Only the 40 gig is left, which has no backwards compatibility with PlayStation 2 games. Sure enough, the official PlayStation web site only shows the 40 gig model.
So, it didn't take long after the Blu-ray victory for Sony to show its true colors. Gamers are screwed. Your PlayStation 2 libraries (thousands and thousands of games) are about to be bricked (there are new rumors that Sony is going to kill off the PlayStation 2).
The salesman there made a game effort at selling me a PlayStation 3. He told me that the 40 gig PS3's were flying off the shelves. I told him that literally every game store I had visited had stacks and stacks of the stuff they couldn't sell. He pointed out that people are buying the PS3 because of the Blu-ray, and that it was never intended to play games but to play Blu-ray. I responded that if that was the case they shouldn't calling it a friggin' game console.
As it stands now, i will never buy a PlayStation 3 and will continue to rail against Sony for using this platform for abuse of its loyal customers. However, I strongly suspect (hope?) that the 40 gig PlayStation 3 model is not the end of the story. The following is just speculation on my part.
My big issue with the PlayStation 3 has been the lack of backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 2 titles. The initial 60 gig model had the Emotion chip, which allowed that backwards compatibility with no problems whatsoever. My plan had been to wait until the PS3 had come down in price and then purchase that model.
Except Sony killed off that model before I could do that. They replaced it with the 80 gig model that uses software emulation for backwards compatibility (the 40 gig model has no such backwards compatibility). As anyone who uses the Xbox 360 can attest, software emulation is not always effective. Sony, in fact, had used its backwards compatibility as compared to Xbox's software emulation as a marketing tool before killing it off. The problem is that the PS3's software emulation is largely considered a failure, not nearly as effective as Microsoft's, which is what one might expect given Microsoft's experience with software.
So while some movie buffs are buying the 40 gig PS 3, gamers continue to largely avoid it. The 40 gig model will attract non-gamers, but they won't buy the games. No matter what Sony does, without backwards compatibility of some kind, the PS 3 will always have a tiny game library compared with the Xbox 360. The game library will be too small to sustain it. And right now, no PS3 model on the market has it. Factor in the continued rumors of a PlayStation 2 demise.
So, assuming Sony has some kind of plan (not evident by their performance with the PlayStation 3 so far), when you out all of these factors together, it would suggest that there is a missing piece of the puzzle, and that the missing piece may involve the backwards compatibility that gamers want. What could it be? Here are my some guesses on my part?
1. Putting software emulation into the 40 gig model. I do not know how they would do this from a technical standpoint. The 40 gig models currently available do not have it. It could be downloaded, but that may not be technically feasible. They could put it in new 40 gig models, but that would cause confusion with the old 40 gig models.
2. A new model PlayStation 3 with backwards compatibility. It may be that economies of scale have developed to the point where Sony can now produce the PS3 more cheaply than in the past. Could they put the Emotion chip back in? We don't know. There are rumors of a new, 100 gig PlayStation 3 model in the works, and Sony is not commenting. Simply, an upgraded model with the Emotion chip would allay my concerns and allow me to put the PlayStation 3 back on my wish list. It would also allow Sony to kill off the PlayStation 2 and focus on the PlayStation 3. I believe this scenario is more likely.
I think one of the above two scenarios will occur, but I do not know. So, until and unless Sony can address my concerns about preserving my PlayStation 2 library, you still suck because of your continued abuse of gamers like me.
In honor of one of the greatest broadcasters in the history of football, and perhaps the absolute greatest, longtime Pittsburgh Steelers radio color commentator Myron Cope.
I'm a lawyer with a bachelor's degree in National Security Policy Studies from The Ohio State University. I live in Indianapolis, where I follow foreign affairs, defense policy, history, archaeology, sports and dance. My dream in life is to rule the world, watch the Cleveland Browns win the Super Bowl, have a San Diego Chargers jacket with big lightning bolts on the shoulders and take Emmanuelle Vaugier out to dinner at a 5-star restaurant.
