The Silence of the Lambs

Oh, the streets of Europe raged, seethed when Chimpy W. Hitlerburton was on the verge of sending the US and it's coalition into Iraq to liberate it from the tyranny of a murderous, rape-happy dictator. But when it comes to saving themselves from the coming tyranny of Islamism, they're like frogs in a pot of water atop a stove, asleep to the fact they are being cooked.

This make sense to you?

This may seem fantastic to people in Britain. But the story of Holland — which I have been charting for some years — should be noted by her allies. Where Holland has gone, Britain and the rest of Europe are following. The silencing happens bit by bit. A student paper in Britain that ran the Danish cartoons got pulped. A London magazine withdrew the cartoons from its website after the British police informed the editor they could not protect him, his staff, or his offices from attack. This happened only days before the police provided 500 officers to protect a “peaceful” Muslim protest in Trafalgar Square.

The governments and people of Europe have forgotten what their purposes are. Eurabia is on the rise, World War III is fought at the lowest intensity level, the only level at which the Islamofascists can win, and yet the "thinkers" and political classes of Europe and America think Shrub W. Flightsuitliar is the greatest threat to world peace. Witness:

Europe is shuffling into darkness. It is proving incapable of standing up to its enemies, and in an effort to accommodate the peripheral rights of a minority is failing to protect the most basic rights of its own people.

The governments of Europe have been tricked into believing that criticism of a belief is the same thing as criticism of a race. And so it is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous to criticise a growing and powerful ideology within our midst. It may soon, in addition, be made illegal.

When your enemy convinces your legal system it is illegal to confront him in the field of combat/philosphical debate, you lose the war without firing a shot, ultimately turning over your high tech weapons and highly skilled military to the very enemy it should have been fighting. You think a nuclear Iran is a threat? Imagine an Islamified Britain with a second-class navy, second-rate army, and jet airplanes and missile systems capable of delivering nukes anywhere across the globe.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Some things are just unbelievable on any level:

Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico Jr. told the AP, "Even if his version is true, to be holding someone out a 23rd-story window is beyond ridiculous. It's as reckless an act as I can imagine, if not malicious."

Oh, yeah, it's another story about the state's gaming commission, which is turning out to be full of incompetents and crooks. Only, in this story, it's about how some arsehole thinks there is even one snowball's chance in hell that anyone would believe his version of what happened in the above paragraph. Horseplay? Drunken horseplay? You have to be kidding me.

But where in America is there still a 23rd story apartment with windows that open all the way? Or, even, open enough for you to drunkenly dangle your girlfriend out the window for gags? And then drop her to her death? You have to be kidding me.

Numbers

As I recall from my learnin', your social security number is supposed to be used only for your social security account. It's not supposed to be a national identification number, which it is slowly morphing into. So, this legal decision is a blow against tyranny. Or something.

But don't you just hate how every frackin' application you fill out asks for your damn social security number?

You know, I understand the implicit desires of most Americans to remain anonymous to society at large, considering our source material as a culture/civilization, but biometrics are coming. In the future, nobody will be anonymous to the computers. The question to be figured out is: will the computers be allowed to tell?

Readers of Varley and Heinlein will already be prejudiced.

Reality Bites

Okay. Sigh. This person is 71-years-old. Does it matter? No. But at least the right thing was done in the end, despite the apparent flurry of idiocy:

71-year-old Lily McBeth is ready to return to substitute teaching in the Ocean County school district. And despite criticism from leery parents, the Board of Education last night stood by its decision to let her.

Oh, right, forgot the controversial bit about this story:

To the students at Eagleswood Elementary School, she used to be Mr. McBeth.

Now, after a sex change,

And now go read the first graf I quoted. There's a squabble? And why, exactly?

The Other Way of Civil War

Charlie Munn at The Officers Club has a nice little analysis of what a civil war in Iraq would look like, though what he describes seems more like a short, bloody multi-nation war pitting the religious types versus the secular types. So long as the secular types win, I'm happy. How this affects World War III, now in it's fourth decade, I'm not so sure.

The Awful Truth

More proof that nationalizing the health care system in the US is a woefully bad idea. First Instapundit links to a blog that notes The NYT is actually telling the truth about the awful state of the Canadian health care delivery system [think: need hospital care=death]. I cross-reference this with a lefty written-and-directed movie which details the national health system of the Great White North reviewed by Mark Steyn, a Canadian himself. The state of Canadian health care:

Like most Quebecois medical practitioners, he's now working in America, at a hospital in Baltimore that could help with the diagnosis if the chaps in Montreal were able to email them a scan. Unfortunately, the only machine in the province that can do the scan is 90 minutes away in Sherbrooke and there's a six-to-twelve month waiting list, by which time they'll have to dig Remy up to do it.

Or he can have it done tomorrow, if he drives an hour south to Burlington, Vermont and pays $2,000. Unlike Britain but like North Korea, in Her Majesty's northern Dominion the public-health system is such an article of faith that no private hospitals are permitted: Canada's private health-care system is called 'America'.

See that? The system sucks so bad people pay to come to America for treatment. They pay. On top of being taxed for a system that sucks and doesn't work. And there are actual Americans who think we should have a system like Canada's. Idiots.

Idiots Rule

On the one hand, I don't know why anybody cares if Roe v. Wade is overturned, seeing as how most states already have legalized abortion. Overturn the precedent and, well, the details change in some places. In South Dakota, they're trying to ban most abortion -- maybe, who knows, judging by the lack of details in the article -- and I have to say I'm a bit stunned, though not so much. Personally, I'm one of those "safe, legal, rare" people when it comes to abortion and I acknowledge with a dejected sigh that I think women should be allowed to have an abortion out of personal vanity and not medical necessity. I think demograpics will make that choice increasingly rare over the next 20 years, but...

Anyway, the pro-abortion types have injected hysteria into the debate already, too. Witness:

The legislation was decried by opponents who said it would particularly impact rape victims and poor women. Currently, a clinic in Sioux Falls is the only place where abortions are provided in South Dakota. The closest alternative is a Planned Parenthood location in Sioux City, Iowa, about 90 miles away.

"It's a sad state of affairs that we have only one choice (for abortion) right now," said Charon Asetoyer of the Native American Women's Health Care Education Resource Center in Lake Andes. "But if you have to go out of state, the cost of making that trip will be prohibitive."

If a rape victim becomes pregnant and bears a child, the rapist could have the same parental rights as the mother, said Krista Heeren-Graber, executive director of the South Dakota Network Against Family Violence and Sexual Assault.

Well, first off, having to drive a long way is what we like to call tough luck. Deal with it. However, this whole "rape victim" stuff is crap of the first order, since almost no women become pregnant as a result of rape, and just about everybody would be in favor of allowing a woman who was raped to get an abortion. What, I'm supposed to let Krista Heeren-Graber [make fun of the name elsewhere] try to pretend to convince me there's a large element of abortions coming from the raped-and-got-pregnant contingent? Not. Going. To. Work. Rape is rare, getting pregnant as a consequence, rarer still.

But get this stunner of non-sensical idiocy:

"The idea the rapist could be in the child's life ... makes the woman very, very fearful. Sometimes they need to have choice," Heeren-Graber said.

Yep. There you have it: rapists have rights! Let's see, dude rapes woman, knocks her up, then sues for parental rights. From jail, maybe? This idea pushed forward by this idiot Heeren-Graber is so stupid she should be fired from her job and forced to work in as a cashier in a supermarket. This is the kind of illogical nonsense that pro-abortion people push to make pinheads who read the newspaper rarely fearful of their potential loss of their "right to choose."

I mean, there's absolutely not a single, solitary woman anywhere in the world who after getting raped, peeing on a stick, seeing the postive symbol, who thinks, "Oh, shit, I'm pregnant. I hope the rapist doesn't find out, he might demand to be involved in my baby's life." Not one. Nowhere on the globe does this scenario exist but in the tortured, fevered imaginations of those who will go to any length to preserve "a woman's right to choose."

The Enemy Within

James Lileks gets it exactly wrong with his denunciation of the Bush Administration's decision to allow the transfer of port operations from a British company to a Dubai company. Oh, sure, he makes polite acknowledgement of the problems with denouncing the decision, but he then refuses to realize that you don't denounce something just because it seems like it doesn't make sense for so many reasons. In thinking that this deal opens us up to more avenues of potential terrorism and secret-nuke-filled containers vaporizing a city, Lileks hasn't thought this one through.

That is: anybody thinking that turning the port operations of Philadelphia over to a Dubai company does not mean that 30,000 longshoremen of British citizenship are flying home to be replaced with 30,000 Arabs, some with potential Islamofascist tendencies. It just means that the 30,000 longshoremen from greater Philadelphia will be drawing paychecks from a different parent company every other week. I'm making that number up, too. It's probably 3,000 or 300. The transfer of operations does not in any way increase the actual risk to American ports in any way, although denouncing it on these grounds allows the denouncer to exhibit his hidden prejudices about certain types of people being the source material for terrorists. Which they are, of course, but not 100%.

As this fellow notes, too, this whole deal reflects poorly on Bush's ability to discern the zeitgeist of the populace, which is that while we yokels won't call Arabs the enemy because they're Arabs and they're religion is being coopted by radicalized murderers, there's an element of that in all of us when it comes to trusting the region. Ideally, Bush would've said to his aides, "Yeah, it's the best deal, but it has the word 'Arab' in it, so we better wait a couple more years before going that path. Let's try a Danish company." It's no surprise that Democrats are against it, although it is a surprise that multiculturalists that they claim to be, they're against it. I mean, you don't tar all Arabs with the claim that they are complicit with the Islamofascists by merit of sharing the same source religion.

Will Collier at VodkaPundit has a good take on the issue, noting the actual closeness of relations between the US and Dubai, not that that will get them down the road too far with folks who are simply offended at the root core of their being that we would turn to Arabs to run our ports. As I've noted before here and here, taking this line is indefensible because there's no logic to it other than racism.

All that said, if the deal does mean the firing of 30,000 dockworkers and the immigration of 30,000 Arabs to run American ports, well, then, in that case I'm against it.

Freedom Costs Too Much

One of the wondeful things about the blogosphere is the fact that as an information distribution system, it is also a nuclear bomb of information. As time goes by, professional journalists have seen there credibility erode in the dead tree format and newspapers have responded by not merely creating online versions of their papers, but by frogmarching unwitting journalists into the blogosphere and forcing them to "blog."

What you get are newspaper columns online at dot blogspot or dot typepad URLs. The Phinqy has a few such writers, the latest being political analyst Dick Polman, whose blog bio contains a lengthy list of reasons why he's a good, smart, honest, fellow. A long list likely drawn up by some editor who doesn't have enough time to read enough of the blogosphere to know this description is shameful, which is further proof Polman is tone deaf to his audience, since he didn't undo the excessive laudatory.

Anyway, Polman ventures gamely into the storm and actually writes that there are some people in the world who do not deserve freedom and liberty and democracy:

As evidenced here and here, it has become clear that the cleansing virtues of free elections are often overrated.

I challenged him in his comments section, but doubt I'll get a response. But it really is instructive about the inner thoughts of the modern mainstream media political journalist that one would doubt the efficacy of installing democracies where dictatorships once stood. Murderous, rape-happy dictatorships, at that. Polman clearly thinks that it would have been better for the world for Saddam Hussein to continue murdering and raping tens of thousands of Iraqis every year rather than the US and its allies removing him from power.

You know, as an American, there are lots of democracies around the globe with which I do not agree when it comes to their internal politics, namely the EU countries and their social welfare statism decisions. At home, I oppose all that excessive governmental control, reject the idea that the state is better situated to provide healthcare and retirement, and think the average citizen should be empowered to make his own decisions on most things and the government should stay the hell out of the way. But you know what, these people in those countries voted themselves bread and circus, and while I disagree, let 'em have it. They'll figure it out in the end, or go quietly into the night when they get overrun by the future version of the Visigoths. It's one or the other: democracy is a messy thing.

But, as someone once said, it's a terrible form of government, but it's the best one we've come up with.

And Polman thinks some people shouldn't have it.

Yellow Bellies and ... Ham

Dr. Seuss drew more than just kids books, he drew political cartoons for a NY newspaper during World War II, where he called out appeasers and hectored anti-war types for their cowardice. Nice.

Foreign Ports

So, it turns out the Brits used to mange the US ports in question in this story about whether or not it's a good idea to let Dubai run them. It seems the issue behind opposing this is simply that the new company is run by Arabs, and suddenly politicians and the like aren't so sure you can trust Arabs. I don't know that this is a valid argument, but the politics behind it seem likely to scuttle the deal.

The issue isn't about port security, either, since that is taken care of by other agencies, notably the Coast Guard. A lot of nonsensical talking about the low percentage of cargo containers physically checked, but that's just nonsense. You're never going to get a large percentage of them checked because it would gum up the system and force the cost of everything up way too much, and nobody wants that.

But here's a gut-check idea for you: in the midst of the anti-Denmark cartoon war, give a Danish company the contract to run the ports. Just to see what happens is why. But, then, that would mean you think we're at war with Arabs, not a radical Islamic ideology, and you don't have any beefs with Arabs, now, do you, Mr. Multiculturalist?

You Are Who You Say You Are

Another reason Gov. Ed Rendell won't get my vote come November, he's going to veto election reform that would require wanna-be voters to show they're the voter they say they are. Why? Who knows, but Rendell claims that it will make it harder for some people to vote:

Rendell said that the bill, which passed the legislature last week on largely parti-line votes, would have the effect of disenfranchising those without easy access to identification, including nursing-home residents, displaced families, the very poor and those without a driver's license.

That's just lame. "Without easy access to identification?" Otherwise, Rendell is just lying and planning on vetoing the bill just to ensure the voting misbehaviors currently in place stay in place because he must figure they help his party in the long run.

The Arab Conundrum

I understand why there are people out there who feel there is something shady/sneaky/wrong about letting an Arab company run the US port system, but I'm not so sure there's anything to it. The US is in an unconventional war with an extremist Islamic ideoology, not Arabs. Talk all you want about "infilitration" and the like, but our terrorist enemies recruit from all ethnicities, not merely Arabs. Remember John Lindh? He's a white dude from California, which, come to think of it, seems the perfect breeding ground for Caucasian anti-American al-Qaeda recruits. Think that Dubai company would hire him over Mohammed Atta?

This anti-Arab country posturing by some is just that, a phony pose to look serious about being suspicious of Arab countries because they're comprised of Muslims, and Muslims represent the religion of the enemy. Ergo, they're the enemy ... maybe. So vote Democrat. It's disheartening that everything done by one side in Washington is challenged politically by the other side. If only both sides thought that we were at war and realized we need a united front against our enemies and kept the backstabbing and second-guessing behind closed doors.

The Bin Laden Tapes

Okay, I'll be brief: the only reason Osama Bin Laden keeps releasing audio tapes and not video tapes is because he's dead, a smear on a cave wall in Tora Bora. The only reason the CIA keeps authenticating the tapes as sounding like the voice of OBL is because, hell, the CIA sucks and has no choice but to play along. I.e., we've got a crappy foreign intelligence agency and, to boot, just in case he's really alive hanging on to life by a thread or riding donkeys through the mountain valleys of Pakistan, the agency doesn't want to conclusively say he's dead because that would further expose point A, that the US has a lousy spying agency.

But notice the talking point in the latest tape:

"The jihad (holy war) is ongoing, thank God, despite all the oppressive measures adopted by the U.S. Army and its agents (which has reached) a point where there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality."

Un-hunh.

The hell. What I wouldn't do for a real James Bond. Or Sam Fisher.

The Muslim Street

Now, an attack on a US embassy is technically an attack on the US, but I'm going to bet we let this slide while the leaders of the western world try to figure out what the heck to do with all these fanatical Muslims protesting the publishing of some cartoons. More publishing should be done, to drive these loons even battier and maybe make them question their belief system's rules. This is, however, impotent rage: they don't have the physical ability to do anything, nor do any of their governments possess the military ability to do anything about this.

But something must be done. By the US and the West.

The New Baby Boom

Mark Steyn again on the self-extinction of western Europe:

given that today's wee bairns are tomorrow's funders of otherwise unsustainable social programs, all responsible governments should be seriously natalist. The reason Europe, Russia and Japan are doomed boils down to a big lack of babies. Abortion isn't solely responsible for that but it's certainly part of the problem.

He notes this while commenting on an Australian politician's sudden realization that the annual aborting of 5 million would-be Aussies means there will be 5 million fewer (non-Muslim) Australians in the future, which leads to this from Steyn:

Can a society become more Muslim in its demographic character without also becoming more Muslim in its political and civil character?

Just take a look at Eurabia.

Media Manipulation

Stephen Green of VodkaPundit fame provides links to adequately suss out the truth about the media, namely, they're telling you what they want you to believe, not necessarily what you need to know to make up your mind about what to believe. The average Joe on the street has no idea how badly he's being manipulated by the lefty hacks of journalism, which is the number one reason the mainstream media works so hard to minimize the effect of the blogosphere and the "believability" of the Internet. They don't want you to know this, but the blogopshere is the red pill. The New York Times is the blue pill.

Which one are you going to take?

Another Reason Against Socialized Health Care

Need a further bit of explanation why you don't want the government administering the health system in the United States? Here's one:

A breast cancer patient lost a groundbreaking court battle yesterday which could have opened the way for hundreds more women to receive the life-prolonging drug Herceptin on the NHS.

Yep, the government fights you to keep you from accessing medical care you and your doctor think you need, but the bureacrats find too expensive:

At the high court in London Mr Justice Bean refused to overturn Swindon primary care trust's refusal to pay for Ann Marie Rogers to have the drug, which costs more than £26,000 for a course.

And this is exactly what would happen here if the socialists and "progressives" and Democrats got what they wanted, control of the health care system. Suddenly, the government determines what you need, not you. Now, how many government agencies do you think do their job even kinda well and on budget?

Anti-Intellectual Anti-Military Thought Process

Of course, the real question about this whole mess is: who the eff is Jill Edwards and why would anybody with any sense in their head care what the hell she thought about anything, not especially the Marine Corps? This just illustrates the anti-intellectual nature of certain types of anti-military douchebags:

her comment that she "didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."

Uh-hunh. That's a well-thought-out position to argue from right there. Clearly, she has an understanding of the subject matter and history of the topic. Just ask her what happened on Iwo Jima.

What'd You *Really* Expect?

I have been opposed to taxpayer-funded stadia since the day I first heard the proposition for one. When the Steelers and Pirates started squawking that Three Rivers Stadium was no longer a financially viable site and they wanted new stadia - one for each team, exclusive to the sport, not a multi-purpose stadium - I said in response to their threats to leave Pittsburgh: well, then leave.

When a grocery store chain wants to build a new location, it doesn't coerce the local municipality into building a new store for it, it just builds a store. Now, the NFL [et. al] is the store. Get my point?

But politicians want what politicians want, and Philly Mayor John Street lied years ago to get what he wanted:

FIVE YEARS AGO, when City Council debated a $394 million investment of taxpayer dollars in new stadiums for the Phillies and Eagles, Mayor Street said not to worry.

"This is what I refer to as a deal that doesn't cost, but pays," Street testified. "This deal will allow us to have an additional $159 million to spend in the city's General Fund after it pays for itself."

Anybody who believed that then is an idiot, but I doubt there were many people complaining inside the offices of any of the newspapers around here. When it comes to spending taxpayer money, newspapers seem to be complicit in the spending, rarely denouncing the routine mis-appropriationg of taxes to fund vanity projects.

But this is what you get, just like what Pittsburgh got when it tore down Three Rivers to build Heinz Field and PNC Park:

Now we have hard numbers for 2004, the first year both the Linc and Citizens Bank Park were operating - and guess what? Taxpayers didn't break even. We actually lost about $73,000

Pittsburgh ended up not having paid one single penny of the loan on Three Rivers when it demolished it. That's right. Thirty years after building it, and the city still owed exactly the same amount of money on the loan as it did the day the stadium was finished. The city held a referendum on building new stadia, we taxpayers rejected the plan by almost 2-1, and the city went ahead and built them anyway. Effing Democratic Party didn't want to be seen as losing two sports teams to the suburbs, so, like everywhere, they just rejected the voters' rejection and did what they wanted with the taxpayers' money. Typical.

I think that's when I stopped voting in city elections. Voting, apparently, didn't count.

And now Philadelphia gets to see the windfall of its political class' decision-making skills. Street proves himself to be an utter and total incompetent, but if he runs again, he'll get elected. He's a Democrat who wants to spend your money for you. Just shut up and listen already.

Gambling Addiction

Well, you know somebody is lying to you when they claim to want to generate more taxes for government, and all these clowns in this story are claiming they'll create more tax money for the local and state governments involved in the taxing. This is also a clear indication that there are a lot of people who think forking over this amount of cash to the state government is okay because of the profits also involved. Normally, businesses don't want to come to an area unless they get tax breaks; here, they're all hyper-inflating the amount of tax revenue they'll generate:

[Brian Ratner] said the $512 million casino would generate $347.1 million in state gaming taxes and city, county and school property taxes. That compares with $229.5 million for the North Shore casino proposed by Detroit businessman Don Barden and $227.3 million for Isle of Capri's proposed casino near Mellon Arena.

Of course, when slot machines become ubiquitous, will they really generate interest? Aside from the scratch-off game gamblers and the like, that is, who are sure to spend more of their money on chances they'll get rich. It's just a tax on stupid, is all.

First, Get It Right

Okay, now I'm normally a big fan of Mark Steyn, but this article misses the point so entirely that I'm starting to tire of having to point this stuff out to people: SARS didn't do nothing to nobody. It was less deadly than the world's yearly bout with influenza. It only coulda-maybe-woulda-kinda been dangerous, and in the end, it wasn't. Stop selling the notion that SARS was a deadly disease stopped by luck. It wasn't.

Just like all this bird flu nonsense. H5N1, they call it, the deadly disease that hasn't yet killed, what, 100 people worldwide but which the press would have you believe could possibly kill hundreds of millions of people. Why believe that from such a tame flu? Who's it killing now? Who's it infecting now? Why just simply believe it will jump from bird to man and become super-deadly? Why not worry about errant meteorites striking the earth? About the same chance of happening.

There is no pandemic. There never might be. And there's a greater chance of "there never might be" than "there might be." But if you want to worry yourself silly needlessly, just click here for the Wall Street Journal's sober Avian Flu Tracker.

It's [Still] Alive!

Uhh, this is still a story? I wonder what the MSM is trying to tell me by telling me -- again -- that VP Cheney accidentally shot a dude he was hunting with. The funnier thing, though, is how the media sells this story. It keeps trying to make people think Cheney was attempting to murder somebody. Just by the way the stories are written/headlined. Look:

Hunter has heart attack
Cheney still hasn't discussed accident
A shotgun pellet traveled to the heart of the the man the vice president shot while quail hunting. Above, Cheney on a 2002 hunting trip.

Got that? First, Cheney shoots the bastard. Then, the poor hapless ninny has a heart attack trying to recover. Only, of course, he really has a "heart attack." Idiot MSM. What, they think none of us read to the bottom of the story? Of course they do: inverted paragraph and all.

I don't know why the MSM hates Cheney so much. I really don't. And I've been watching them hate him for five years, now. It makes me wish he'd do something mean, like personally drill the first hole in ANWAR, dunk a cup into the hole and drink actual crude oil while some environmentalists fell to their knees and cried bitter tears of defeat.

UPDATE: Howard Kurtz tries to analyze the situation and fails. This is purely media driven, totally partisan, and totally meaningless. Why anybody thinks Cheney owes the public an apology is mystifying. Presumably, he apologized to the guy he peppered with buck shot. Other than that, he owes no explanation to anybody, especially the faux outrage press corps. You've got to be kidding me.

Asia? Asia's Not Ready for Primetime

An interesting analysis of the current situation in Europe, and it's inevitable decline if it remains locked into current policies, which it almost assuredly will. Once you've voted yourself bread and circus, you don't unvote it; instead, revolution or decline takes it. And by decline, I mean war and permanent change of government. Something will happen in Europe if nothing changes in Europe, and most Europeans seem unwilling to change anything, so, something will happen. Something bad which will cause more Americans not to vacation there in the near-term.

But Fareed Zakaria and his commentariat ilk keep getting one thing consistently wrong, in my opinion, and that's that Asia is anywhere close to standing up and taking the place of Europe:

These days we all talk about the rise of Asia and the challenge to America, but it may well turn out that the most consequential trend of the next decade will be the economic decline of Europe.

Japan is in decline. India is in disarray and nearly at war with Pakistan over some useless mountain terrain. China is still decades behind, and it's the leading racer in the struggle to catch up. Everywhere else, Asia is still third world. So, why worry about Asia being a challenge to America anytime soon? It won't be. It can't be. It has to sort out its problems, first, and that's going to mean it's going to have a great political upheaval, or a bunch of wars.

But China? It's going to have a couple of wars and a political upheaval before things sort out there, and then we'll be left with three or four "Chinas." But we'll all call the one with Beijing/Peking the "original China."

Asia's not on the rise so much as Europe is on the decline. But it's easy to see how professional analyzers would get that view mixed up and think Asia is on the rise and Europe is on the decline.

Disorder in the Ranks

You know, it must really suck to be a Democrat when you force an anti-Iraq-war Iraq War veteran to cancel his bid for a seat in the U.S. senate after you convinced him to run:

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."

Yet another sign that the Democrats stand for nothing other than partisan opposition to the Republicans. The Anti-Party. Soon, they'll be lucky to be a party. Then I'll have to choose between the Republicans and the ... Greens? Nah. That'll never happen. The Democrats fold, the Republicans split into two, with the fiscal conservative/social moderate branch of the party forming a new party and sucking in the non-radical clear-air-breathing Democrats.

And then just watch the internal fighting in the defunct Democratic Party as the members try to decide whether they are the Socialist Democratic Party or the Democratic Socialist Party.

But still Democrats.

Conspiracy Theory, Evolved

You have to be kidding me. Day three of the Dick Cheney Shooting Conspiracy:

Gun-safety advocates say there are very few gun "accidents" - spontaneous discharges of firearms. Rather, they say, most unintentional shootings involve negligence or carelessness, and are anything but blameless.

Right. Got it. Cheney must resign the vice presidency, be prosecuted and serve time in jail. Because of an accident. Sheesh. Somebody ask Phinqy writer Andrew Maykuth why this is a story. Oh, right, he'll say "Cheney conspiracy theory possibility."

But why doesn't the MSM write about the Gore Conspiracy Theory possibility?

Okay, sure, the VP shoots a guy while hunting equals a story. But it does not equal more than one day's worth of news coverage in a fair-and-balanced-and-unbiased news environment. It does not require follow-ups and analysis. At this point, any story about the shooting is spin to keep the bad news of the shooting in the mind of the public, and therefore reflects poorly on any and all news outlets that keep propping this story up and pumping blood into it.

Now, just try to find news of Al Gore's theoretically treasonous speech in Philly.com's search enginge results. Just type in Gore. Nothing. It's almost like there are two universes operating in parallel here: the real one, and the one the MSM lives in. Oh, right, that's the "reality based" world based in the surreal.

The Odds

Now, it takes a certain kind of cojones to show up at a protest march dressed like this. Click the video for a better sense of the anti-cartoon march in Paris and the protesters disbelief that anybody would show up to protest the protest.

Does two against a thousand set the odds, or defy them?

Home Front Pain Available

One of the things you hear from a certain element of complainers is that this so-called "War on Terror" doesn't feel "like a war" because back here at home, nobody has to make any "sacrifices." So, ergo, it's not really a "war," so much as a ... illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation, I guess. So, finally, there is a way to feel some home-front pain to make the average American feel like they're doing their bit to help the war effort: pick up the tab.

...do what an editor here did last year when he was introduced to a young Marine and his fianc‚e [sic] who were dining next to him at a restaurant - he picked up their tab.

A newspaper editor did this!!! Wow. So, there you have your answer to how you can help in the war effort, being a troop-supporter and all despite maybe being against the "war," the next time you see a soldier/marine/airman/sailor in a bar/restaurant, pick up his/her tab. Now, that takes courage: what if he ordered the filet mignon meal and a pair Bombay Sapphire martinis beforehand. Stand strong, courage, take the pain.

Cover-Up Foiled!!!

Ahem. Need anyone say more?

The accident was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after it was reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on its Web site Sunday.

Now, this has been the top story on the Phinqy website for two days now. I wonder why?

Pictures Speak Louder Than Words?

Well, the Cartoon War trudges on, and you have to wonder how tolerant a society you have to be to put up with the protest featured in the photos on this blog. Holy freakin' wow. I mean, c'mon, if you're out in a turban covering your face with a sign that says "freedom go to hell," well, you should expect the locals to pop you one, for starters. I mean, this isn't "protesting," this is war fighting, and the locals -- locally born and bred -- need to start fighting back. Right there the protesters say they're coming for your life. They say it. Do the Europeans believe it? Time will tell.

The Numbers

Normally, I wouldn't write about polls, because I think polls are largely meaningless. They represent the opinions of those interviewed and no one else, if you were to ask me. Maybe they can be pushed out as a reflection of society at large, but I'll leave that to the marketing departments of the polling agencies to sell. But, somedays, what the hell. It looks like former Steelers WR Lynn Swann has a shot at going all the way against incumbant Gov. Ed Rendell:

Rendell was the choice of 45 percent, compared to 42 percent for Swann, with 13 percent undecided.

Rendell's biggest blunder, in my opinion, during his four years of uninspired governing was his decision, when told how much money X amount of slot machines could generate for the state in taxes, he doubled the amount of slot machines authorized for the upcoming state casinos. Idiot. And everything about slot machines is a total guesstimate. I say can the failure before he can do anymore harm.

And this is instructive in the editing-out of all the other results connected to the question. Media bias, nah, can't be:

Pennsylvanians still don't like President Bush very much (only 36 percent think he's doing a good or excellent job), but the majority agreed with him on two controversial issues.

You know, I don't like Bush most of the time, either. But it all depends on the issue, and I don't dislike just because he's a Republican. But the media/Democrat issue du jour is clearly a failure:

Asked whether they thought government wiretapping without court approval is an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, 39 percent strongly agreed and 15 percent somewhat agreed. Thirty-two percent strongly disagreed and 10 percent somewhat disagreed.

So, clearly, we average citizens think it's okay for the government to be spying on terrorists and suspected terrorists operating within US borders. Idiot media.

And I can only guess that the average person doesn't think recently approved Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito wasn't out of the so-called mainstream:

Asked whether they believed Samuel Alito should have been confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, 58 percent said "Yes."

Looks like the media and the Democrats need a new game plan.

The Cartoon War

Evan Kirchoff over at 101-280 posts a brilliant analysis of the current Mohammed cartoons hyper-kerfuffle. His argument is that the so-called liberals and progressives in America are arguing the wrong side of the issue in the wrong way, clearly violating their own theoretical inner values:

No, no, a hundred thousand times no, you undergraduate driveller. This is not about people (and especially not about people organized by the identity politics the word "otherness" is gesturing at), this is about ideas. Religions are bundles of ideas: moral premises wrapped in metaphysical theories and cultural practices. A bedrock liberal value is that people and ideas are different things and that we get to criticize ideas, even in impolite ways. This is non-negotiable, and to the extent that mainstream Islam is incompatible with this, it needs to back down completely. The value of the cartoons is that they have come to embody this demand.

As I have said before, I think, this war on terror is a war of ideas. And inasmuch as it is, our so-called front line of idea-makers - journalists and novelists and filmmakers - are performing much like the French army in 1940. Fortunately, there's a paramilitary organization out there to do the heavy lifting: yeah, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, aka the Chickenhawks.

God Creates New Solar Systems

NASA finds evidence of God at work on a new "first day" in a new "creation theory." You know, when it comes to this kind of stuff, I never believe the accepted science, because the accepted science -- historically speaking -- is always proved wrong. Why couldn't a star 30-70 times larger than Sol create life-bearing planets 30-70 times the distance from it that Earth is from Sol? That's just for starters.

Swann is GOP Contender for Pa. Governor

Former Steelers super star wide receiver Lynn Swann will be the Republican rival to D Gov. Ed Rendell in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Well, we'll have to see what Swann's platform is before weighing in on him, although we're already certain we won't vote for Rendell based on his past performance and his inability to get any property tax reform movement while simultaneously shoving corporate gambling down our throats.

The real question for the upcoming campaign is going to be how the media and black leadership of the state are going to paint Swann, a Hall of Fame football player with multiple Super Bowl rings and a generally good public esteem. Is he going to be one of those non-authentic blacks because he's a Republican, or will the Democrats and black leadership not make an issue of his black skin?

That's a tough question for his opposition to figure an answer to: do you slime a black hero because he's "out of the mainstream" of black political consensus? It could make for an intersting election season.

Bring. It. On. NOW!!!

Oh. My. God. The iron grip of local cable may be coming to an end. Freedom may be at hand. With a third option, the Rule of Three comes in to play, meaning true competition in your non-airwave television consumption. If this works, cable TV won't cost $69 a month just because it costs $69 a month. And, soon after that, it won't cost $49 a month for cable Internet just because it costs $49 a month for cable Internet.

Freedom is just over the horizon.

The Personal is the Public

Okay, so on the one hand, I almost agree with this assessment of teen blogging:

"We have to try to educate our parents on what their kids are putting out there," he said. "Predators are a concern because people would know so much about them."

But, on the other hand, there are so many billions of blogs out there, and it so hard to search for anyone specific who isn't already popular and well-known, that it's either happenstance or bad luck if a predator-type uses a kid's blog entries to entrap him/her.

I mean: look. I'm nowhere.

Now, on the other other hand, heh. Kids busting themselves with their blogs is just plain funny. Kids is so stupid.

Publish or Perish

The Phinqy publishes an image of the prophet Muhammad and gets picketed. Well, the online version carries a link to the image, so you have to take their word they "discreetly" published the image in the paper on Saturday, which I'm willing to accept since there was a tiny protest as a result. Must have made the editors and staff feel vital again. I wonder how they would've felt if the protestors had shown up pledging death to the staff and such. Anyway, the Phinqy does the right thing and has an acceptable justification that doesn't come out like the Boston Globe's reaction to the images.

Terrorists Escape Yemeni Prison

You know, the one thing you can be sure about when America imprisons convicted terrorists is that they'll stay in jail. If the internees at Gitmo managed to escape, a doubtful prospect at best, they'd have nowhere to go, even if they managed to get into Cuba proper. But it's bad news when 13 al Qaeda terrorists are part of a huge escape from a Yemeni prison. What kind of clown operation are those guys running? Makes you think there's somebody complicit on the inside, it does.

Public = Private

Own a bar or restaurant? Are you a private citizen? Is your bar owned by you, or a local or state government. Haw: a bar or restaurant owned by a local or state government, that's ridiculous! Bars and restaurants are businesses owned by private citizens. They're private property. They're entrepeneurial ventures launched by individuals, not entitlement progrtams run by a government.

But the City of Philadelphia thinks that private businesses of certain types and descriptions ought to be required to forbid cigarette, cigar and pipe smoking within them because ... well, who knows. Same old, same old, I guess. And the Phinqy carries the water in this article that doesn't question anything about the decades old smoking debate. But, seriously, why does Philadelphia want to ban smoking on private property? It's a legal activity the state makes money on through taxes, for starters, and the owners of the bars and restaurants are perfectly able to ban smoking voluntarily if they think their customer base would prefer to visit a non-smoking establishment.

That there are none/few non-smoking bars and restaurants in Philadelphia is testament to the fact that there is little/no demand for such establishments. Why politicians and newspaper reporters want to enact such legislation restricting the private property rights of bar and restaurant owners is a mystery of the highest order. Perhaps Michael Currie Schaffer would like to respond to the question of why he didn't quote anybody on the whys behind a ban, and why he didn't bother to gather any facts at all on the debate over second-hand smoke.

I mean: we already know that second-hand smoke is harmless. That is a scientific fact. So you have to ask, why does the City of Philadelphia want to ban a harmless, legal activity from private businesses?

Reporters Just Don't Understand

I'm going to just assume two things: one, that the recently passed federal budget measure enacted by the US House of Representatives included smaller-than-requested increases in certain line items and, two, Bucks County Courier Times reporter Brian Scheid is incapable of recognizing this fact and has bought into the national media meme that the mean Republicans are cutting much-needed funding from the budget, screwing people everywhere. He probably doesn't realize his mistake. Or maybe he does, who knows?

But you have to question his ability to think independently when he starts a "news" article thusly:

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick, R-8, voted Wednesday night for a contentious five-year, $39 billion budget cut measure that narrowly passed the House by a vote of 216-214.

"It is a plan of reform which will yield savings to the American taxpayers," Fitzpatrick said Wednesday night in a phone interview.

Critics of the bill, including student groups, the AARP, unions, social service advocates and religious leaders, had encouraged Fitzpatrick to vote against the bill since it slashed billions from the student loan program, aid to states to enforce child support payments and Medicaid.

"It's a sad day," said Michael Leone, communications director for the state council of the Service Employees International Union. The union represents 60,000 healthcare, building service and public service employees in Pennsylvania. Leone said by voting for the bill Fitzpatrick was going against the interests of working families, low-income seniors and students.

"Instead of supporting the needs of families we're actually planning on making it harder for them," Leone said.

Holy crap. The reporter has so fully bought into the notion that restraining budgetary growth is a bad thing that he starts off his article by acting like the budget is actually going to be spending less money this year than last. He quotes activists who lament the fact they won't be getting more money than the more money they're going to get as if the activists are going to get less money.

Why was the bill "contentious?" Because the national media said it was, that's why, and that's the cue this reporter takes for his story, and that's how the local news consumer will have to get it, as if something bad happened in DC because local politician Mike Fitzpatrick voted for a smaller increase in the size of various and sundry appropriations. Oh, sure, the reporter eventually gets to the bit about mentioning this fact with this:

Fitzpatrick said the idea that the bill would be cutting funding to mandatory spending programs was "a myth."

"We need to control the growth of these mandatory spending programs," Fitzpatrick said. "The fact is that these programs are going to grow and grow at a healthy rate but they aren't going to grow as large and as quickly as some members of Congress would like."

But by including this as a disclaimer fact later in the article rather than using neutral facts at the beginning of the story that show the actual state of being, the reporter is assuming and propagating the notion that the federal government is intentionally screwing the little guy. And this isn't accidental, as can be seen here, where the reporter chooses his words to describe the situation at large:

Republicans said the measure is a necessary first step to reining in the burgeoning growth of so-called mandatory spending programs such as Medicare, which threatens to swamp the budget as the baby boom generation starts retiring.

Emph. mine

So-called? By whom? They are mandatory spending programs by statute, moron. You have to wonder if this reporter actually understands the way the US government works. I don't think so, given his reporting of the "public reaction" to the vote:

"This vote hurts families not just now, but Americans will be forced to pay the price for today's vote years into the future," Schwartz said in a statement.

"I'm disappointed," said Lauren Townsend after Wednesday's vote. She's executive director of Citizens for Consumer Justice, a nonprofit, Pennsylvania-based consumer advocacy group and one of the organizers of a vigil Tuesday night outside Fitzpatrick's Middletown office aimed at encouraging the freshman Congressman to vote against the bill.

"I thought [Fitzpatrick] had more courage than this," she said. "This vote will hurt people in his district, throughout Pennsylvania and nationwide."

In the real world, this vote doesn't hurt anybody that isn't looking to make money off the federal government. But you have to wonder how much this reporter hates Republicans to craft a story designed to malign a Republican in this way. I'm not a Republican, but this kind of crap is ridiculous propaganda masquerading as journalism, and this reporter ought to be ashamed. But, then, so should all of the people involved in the layers of fact-checking and editing of the piece: somebody should have realized this piece was desperately short on facts and awfully full of opinions.

But, then, maybe the people involved don't understand how the system works. Either system: journalism and government.

First, You Have to Admit Yout Have a Problem

Pennsylvania has an odd relationship with alcohol, and by that I mean the state government. First off, I find it odd that the state owns and operates all of the liquor/wine selling establishments in the state, once called State Stores and now called Wine & Spirits stores. I wonder this ever time I buy a bottle at a store: why does the state own the store and charge sales tax - doesn't it earn a normal profit on each bottle? Wouldn't that be like charging tax on auto registrations?

When I was in college, there were still "counter stores" in operation, stores where you walked up to a counter and told the clerk what you wanted and he went and got it from the stock room. Why? Who knows. A holdover from the post-prohibition era. Why can I only buy beer from specially designated distributors, and why only in cases or larger? Why can bars only sell take-out beer in six-packs, limit two?

Until two years ago, you couldn't buy booze on Sundays except in a bar that had a special Sunday license. FUBAR, that. The hell? But, now, at special store locations, between noon and five, you can find a state store open for business. Yay. Modern times have arrived, almost in time for 19-when-did-prohibition-end?

The eye opener happened three years ago with the move from Pittsburgh to New Jersey, a brief stay in a state that just absolutely sucks but has cheap liquor and plentiful liquor stores. Living close to the border with NJ now means I make frequent journeys over the border for booze because of the savings. Pennsylvania charges about $5 a bottle more for some of the liquor I like, more on a couple of flavors, but in every case charges more than NJ independent stores charge.

For a while now, there's been talk of the state giving up the business of booze and privatizing it, which always brings howls of protests from the state government employees who work for the PLCB, the governmental body that sells and oversees the sale of liquor. Of course. Because of the pension and bennies, is why. Plus, the starting wage is good.

But aren't we now living in the post-post-modern era, the time where anything can be had thanks to the Internet? And yet my state government gets in the way of alcohol sales from out-of-state because ... because it's alcohol? Sheesh. As in so many other ways, why can't the state just get out of the way?

Surprise! More Winter on the Way

Punxsutawny Phil popped out of his hole, saw his shadow and thus predicted six more weeks of winter. Well, sure, according to my calendar, there are six more weeks of winter to go. Yay, winter. Now, if only winter would show up. Though, seeing as it's been in the 40s and 50s for the past few weeks, I'm willing to FF right to spring weather now, no questions asked.

Why this is news is a mystery.

Though, going to Punxy for the day is fun. I went in '96 for the paper I worked for and covered the event and must say it's a party. A beer and spirits party, held outdoors, in the cold. Go. Figure. Fun day. And, no, I was working.

Throw the Bums Out ... Anyway

Oh, yay, they're all giving the illegal pay raise back. Oh, joy, they're doing the right thing. But you know what, they gave themselves an illegal pay raise in the middle of the night, tried to cover it up, then tried to make it seem like it was justifiable and non-reversible, and now it's clear that all of the bums spent the money as quickly as they got it. These chumps are paying it back in installments? You've got to be kidding me. These assclowns should be headed to jail, or at least fined, for this kind of behavior.

Needless to say, no incumbant will get my vote. Ever. This kind of egregious behavior is inexcusable and evidence of moral corruption, much less political corruption. You see, these ignominious pols think they deserve it. They think they earn it. They think it's a job. It's none of the above.

And none of the above should be returned to office.

Keeping Pesky Spin Out of It

Hey, the Phinqy "political analyst" [coff, coff] thinks Bush's speech was a bit sunny and riddled with inaccuracies! Well, whatev. Sounded like an ordinary SOTU to me, regardless of presidential party affiliation. What, you think a Clinton SOTU sounded significantly different? My take: yawn. Bush isn't my kind of president, though he stands on the right side of the issues that really matter to me right now, so I'll tolerate the rest. But this is just silliness by Phinqy writer Dick Polman, desperately trying to spin for his audience:

Awash in approbation, a president always looks imposing on such a night; Bill Clinton, in the teeth of a sex scandal, rocked the room in 1998. And last night, one would not have guessed that Bush is posting the lowest popularity numbers since Richard Nixon - 39 percent support, in the new bipartisan survey conducted by Republican pollster Bill McInturff and Democratic pollster Peter Hart. As conservative analyst Tod Lindberg quipped yesterday, Bush in recent months "has fought his way back - from a catastrophic collapse of job approval all the way up to historic lows of job approval."

This is called "choose your pollster." Elsewhere, Bush's approval rating is at or above 50%. The hope with a graf like this is to reinforce the notion that "nobody likes Bush." I'll take it as read.

But the familiar Bush formula is to cede no ground, regardless of the facts that might undercut his arguments. Consider last night's speech:

Bush defended his warrantless-surveillance program, contending that "appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed." But a legal analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has faulted Bush for not seeking to inform the full membership of the House and Senate intelligence committees - thereby acting in a manner "inconsistent with the law."

So many non-MSM types have already conclusively shown how this program is legal and uncontroversial that it was with a wry smile I noted that Bush called it a "terrorist surveillance program" in his speech. Note that Polman refuses to acknowledge who is being surveilled.

On the domestic front, Bush said that his tax cuts should be made permanent, to ensure the nation's economic health. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has concluded that if those cuts aren't allowed to expire on schedule, we will have massive budget deficits for the next 10 years.

Well, why would anyone want taxes to go back up? Bueller ... Bueller? We can avoid those "massive budget deficits" by cutting spending. If Polman and his pro-tax-hike ilk want to pay more taxes, the IRS isn't going to refuse the money. Please, send them the money you want the government to forcibly take from you. Tell all your friends to mail it in, too. What, your money isn't where your mouth is? You don't have the courage of your convictions? You want somebody else to be taxed in your stead? Why, Dick Polman, do you want higher taxes?

Bush lauded his reconstruction program for New Orleans ("a hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens") but didn't mention that the White House response to Katrina was facing multiple probes. A House Republican investigator has already cited "a disturbing inability by the White House to de-conflict and analyze information - and that had consequences." Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office today is releasing a report that faults Bush's team for a failed leadership, one which "serves to underscore the immaturity of and weaknesses relating to the current national response framework."

Now, why does anybody think it's George W. Bush's responsibility to fix New Orleans? Why does Bush think it's his respnsibility? These questions beg to be answered. Also, anybody who's honest would know that the Katrina response was perfectly average for FEMA and the federal government, so the peddling of the disaster response as inefficient and slow is just plain lying. But by this point in this column, don't you find it cute that Polman keeps quoting these "independent" and "bipartisan" commissions and panels, as if they were inherently capable of cutting to the neutral truth? It's almost as if he knows he's spinning the facts and needs a smoke screen for cover.

Bush lauded his efforts to provide health care for the elderly ("we are meeting that responsibility"). But he avoided any reference to the new Medicare drug-prescription plan, which is being assailed even by Republicans (Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota: "The implementation of the new program by the federal government has been awful"), and by other critics who don't like the fact that feds are barred by law from negotiating with the drug companies for lower prices.

I say get rid of the program altogether.

Those dang pesky facts ... if only they were facts.