The Urban Grind

Robert Reich is actually sorry that Wal-Mart won't be coming to New York:

After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there.

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To claim that people shouldn't have access to Wal-Mart or to cut-rate airfares or services from India or to Internet shopping, because these somehow reduce their quality of life, is paternalistic tripe.

I expressed a similar view in my earlier Wal-Mart post, which fellow NYC blogger Dawn disagreed with.

First, there was a beauty pageant held in China for women whose beauty was "mad made." Now in Africa, there's a "Miss HIV" beauty pageant.

Part of the aim of the pageant funded by a local charity backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and drug giant Merck as well as by major local investors such as mineral giant De Beers and British bank Barclays was to show that AIDS drugs work.

"That is at the heart of it,” Brad Ryder, spokesman for the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership, said. “Botswana was the first country in Africa to provide publicly funded ARVs. People in Washington and Geneva said it couldn’t be done. Botswana has proved them wrong."

It's great that there are anti-viral drugs that work. Still I just think that things like beauty pageants will only serve to lull people into a false sense of security. They'll think, "it's ok to sleep around. I'll use a condom. If I get HIV, I'll just take anti-viral drugs for it."

No doubt, that's probably what that gay man in Manhattan thought as he took meth and had unprotected intercourse with hundreds of men. Unfortunately, he caught a drug resistant form of the HIV virus that quickly morphed into AIDS.

On another note, MSNBC.com reports that the HIV rate among U.S. blacks has doubled. The cause, according to researchers, is drug addiction, poverty, and lack of access to health care. They're right about drug addiction. Sharing infected needles is great way to catch HIV. But in terns of poverty/lack of access to health care, they're dead wrong. I don't think poverty automatically makes people unable to keep their pants zipped up, or their knees together.

Now, if there was a beauty pageant that would encourage that type of behavior...

As if people don't know already of the dangers of smoking, a global tobacco treaty came into being today.

The treaty, known as the FCTC, requires its ratifiers to restrict tobacco advertising and sponsorship, put tougher health warnings on cigarettes and limit use of language such as “low-tar” and “light.” They are to enact price and tax hikes, create controls on secondhand smoke and sales of cigarettes to youngsters, and clamp down on smuggling.

Fortunately, this treaty has not been ratified by the U.S. (and China).

So what about free will and personal responsibility? We’ve know for ages that cigarette smoking is a health hazard. And who is grabbing children off the playground and forcing them, at gunpoint to smoke cigarettes?

Also, after tobacco, what’s next? Beef and dairy? Then dark meat chicken? I wouldn’t be surprised. After all, the dietollahs have been going on for ages that saturated fat is the mother of all dietary bogeymen.

In the chronically Blue state of New York, there are some chi chi residents of Manhattan who lament that a $100K salary is insufficient.

It's just not enough to buy a condo on the Upper West Side, wear fancy designer clothing, eat out at fancy restaurants, and have $4.00 lattes from Starbucks.

According this New York Times article, the new Holy Grail is $200K per year.

As I see it, these "chi chi" types would have more money in their hands if their asses weren't being taxed so heavily. But this being The New York Times, no mention is made of taxes. And somehow, I have the gut feeling these people are all liberals. I mean, all they seem to do is whine. They don't mention how much of their money they save (if anything). It's all about spending.

Sound familiar?

Apparently being vegan is not a health panacea for children.

Continue reading...

Yet this is not the first time I've read about vegetarian diets being unhealthy. In the politically incorrect diet/cookbook "Nourishing Traditions" Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and nutritionist Dr. Mary Enig, write about the importance of animal fats and protein for human beings. It's a book I strongly recommend.

That's what I thought to myself when I read this.

For those who will continue to insist that there are no differences in the aptitudes of women vs. men, check this out.

Personally, I'm inclined to agree with this since I stink at reading maps. And as far as I know, so do my sisters. I also agree about the gay men. I have known many gay men over the course of going to school and living in Manhattan for twenty years. In fact, it was my gay friends at college that nicknamed me "Zelda." But getting back to cartographical skills, from my experience, most of my gay friends couldn't and wouldn't be bothered with maps.

But the larger question in all of this is, so what? We are all different. I don't think this makes one group stupid and another one smart.

The U.S. economy has grown at a rate of 3.8 percent for the final quarter of 2004.

Continue reading...

Lawyers for the Schindler family say Florida's social services agency is seeking a 60 day delay in the removal of Terri's feeding tube while allegations of abuse are investigated.

Click here to continue reading...

Now there are those who will say, "Terri is brain damaged, what kind of life can she lead?" Or they may say, "put the poor woman out of her misery" or "brain cells can't be rehabilitated."

But what everybody conveniently ignores is that there is no written evidence of Terri saying she wouldn't want to be kept alive by "artificial means." And I really don't understand how any judge can take the word of that husband, after all he's done. Granted, he is her legal guardian. But that still shouldn't give him the right to have his wife killed without any written evidence of a will on her part. What kind of society are we, that our judges won't give an innocent person the benefit of the doubt?

A few months ago, I went to a right wing event and ended up speaking with a young man. He was conservative, intelligent, gracious, articulate, and pro-life, except for the case of Terri Schiavo. When I asked him about her, he grew VERY angry and shouted "you can't rehabilitate brain cells." When others in the group reminded him of the husbands shady activities, he was still adamant saying that Terri chose him as her guardian, and that this is her fate. He saw absolutely no contradiction between being pro-life on the one hand, and being for Terri's death.

You know, it's one thing when liberals are all pro-euthanasia -- What else would you expect of people who view their fellow human beings as nothing more than sophisticated animals? But coming from a conservative pro-lifer...I just don't understand.

Yet I wonder what the pro-euthanasia crowd has to say about a woman who ended up speaking after being in a coma for twenty years.

It's hard to believe, but Terri Schiavo may just have only another day to live. I'm just so schocked and appalled that it's gotten this far. I mean, since when is being brain disabled or being in a "persistent vegetative state" a capital crime? And what kind of society are we that we would even think of euthanizing a defenseless woman solely on the hearsay evidence of her adulterous husband? If Terri left no written will, wouldn't it make sense to err on the side of caution? And I repeat, being brain disabled is no reason to euthanize someone.

All I can say is that if this poor woman dies, then our government is fast on its way to becoming like that of Nazi Germany.

But in order to prevent that from happening, let's all make our voices heard:

Email President Bush -- president@whitehouse.gov

Email Jeb Bush -- jeb.bush@myflorida.com

Sign the petition to impeach Judge George Greer (Hat Tip: Myopic Zeal)

Donate what you can to Terri's parents

Thanks!

I've been reading a lot about the partial privatization of Social Security. And frankly, I think that those who want to leave the system as it is just don't have a leg to stand on.

Take, for example, the AARP who is rabidly opposed to any type of privatization even though it would not apply to people fifty five and older. Naturally they think any problems in the system would be fixed by just eliminating the 90,000 yearly cap. Yup, make those EEEVIL rich people cough up their ill-begotten gains...so their members can keep getting their checks each month.

AARP runs ads saying that if people want to gamble they'll play the slot machines. Yet Techcentralstation.com reports that through its AARP Services division, they make lots of money selling their members Scudder mutual funds:

But the AARP is talking out of both sides of its mouth. It says that stock and bond investing is like playing a slot machine at the same time it promotes stock and bond investing by selling 38 mutual funds to its members and taking a cut from each sale.

Among the AARP funds are far riskier choices than advocates of Social Security reform would ever offer to American workers: for example, a Latin American stock fund, a junk-bond fund, and a fund that holds shares of companies based in such highly volatile markets as Indonesia and Russia.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. AARP's website carries solid information about how to invest wisely, but the organization's anti-Social Security ads make investing - even under the tough restrictions advocated by reformers -- look like a game for dumb suckers and out-of-control gamblers

Walter Wiliams does an excellent job of debunking the conception that Social Security is a form of insurance, and that people have a right to their benefits:

In Helvering v. Davis (1937), the court held that Social Security was not an insurance program, saying, "The proceeds of both (employee and employer) taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way."

In a later decision, Flemming v. Nestor (1960), the court said, "To engraft upon Social Security system a concept of 'accrued property rights' would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands ... " That flexibility and boldness mean Congress can constitutionally cut benefits, raise retirement age, raise Social Security taxes and do anything it wishes, including eliminating payments.

Yet the main argument liberals have these days is altruism. "What about all the poor people" they cry. Well what about them? The premise of liberals, in asking this question is that the "needs" of some people should trump the abilities and desires of productive, intelligent, law abiding, tax paying citizens to do with their money as they see fit. In the liberal view, the ambition, foresight and creativity of productive citizens should be throttled because someone else "needs" that money.

Actually, there's another commentary on Techcentralstation.com called "Moron-Proofing Social Security" which sums it up quite comically:

In a free society, risk = the potential for wealth. If you seriously believe that some people are too stupid to be trusted with any risk, then you've effectively excluded those people from any significant form of wealth accrual. And while some people might indeed be that foolish, why should the remaining 99% of us be held hostage to their incompetence? If the idiots of America can't be trusted to memorize and recite the words "I want an index fund," how can we trust them with somewhat more complex chores, like buying a car? Or getting a mortgage? Or, for that matter, taking a spouse? A free citizenry that can't be trusted with even modestly difficult tasks is a citizenry that won't stay free for long.

Hey everyone,

I've recently added the following sites to my blogroll:

A Man in the American Northeast is a new-ish blog written by a young conservative man living in upstate New York. He knows where he stands, and certainly doesn't mince words, which I find quite refreshing.

Garfield Ridge was a fellow co-guest blogger at Ace of Spades HQ. Dave has a great blog where he writes entertaining posts on many different topics. I feel like I could learn a lot from him about being entertaining in print, as he knows his stuff. But then again, I digress.

Mover Mike writes about some of the same things that I do. His background is in political science and economics. His reading list is also quite impressive.

Placid Pundit covers current events from a conservative perspective. And his perspective is very interesting.

Sweet Spirits of Ammonia is written by a former New Yorker now living out West. He has an excellent way with words.

Wuzzadem is another co-guest blogger from my stint at Ace of Spades HQ. John is an excellent writer whose specialty is comedy.

Have fun checking out these blogs!

In my previous Social Security Hysteria post, I wrote about how I doubted that Jonathan Alter and others who are so opposed to the idea of ordinary people being able to invest their hard-earned money in stocks and bonds, rely soley on our current government backed ponzi scheme to finance *their* retirements.

I must have really struck a sensitive nerve with Jonathan Alter, who left the following response to my previous post:

you bet I have my money in stocks, bonds and 401ks. So what? I'm talking about the safety net--the money for those who have not saved like you and me. They depend on social security. Their personal accounts would probably go up. And if they went down? Would you be willing to bail them out? Probably not. Then we'd have a return to poverty among seniors--which social security all but eliminated. Do you want it back??

Lovely!

I'd just like to understand a few things. If stocks and bonds and 401k's are good enough for Jonathan Alter, then why not for everyone else? The fact that he asks what should be done if people's accounts go down in value is quite telling. I suppose they would do what he would do -- monitor their money and make adjustments accordingly. But judging by the nature and tone of his questions, he seems to believe that ordinary people are not capable of making such judgments, and that he is superior to the masses in that regard.

So I will set him straight. (Many thanks to Barking Moonbat Early Warning System for their excellent Social Security posts.)

Here are some stats from the 2004 Annual Report of the Social Security Trustees (via BMEWS):

Social Security is heading toward bankruptcy. According to the Social Security Trustees, thirteen years from now, in 2018, Social Security will be paying out more than it takes in and every year afterward will bring a new shortfall, bigger than the year before. And, when today's young workers begin to retire in 2042, the system will be exhausted and bankrupt. (Summary of the 2004 Annual Report of the Social Security Trustees, p. 1)

Payroll taxes have been increased more than 20 times since 1935, and we still have not fixed the problem. The Social Security payroll tax, which was once 2%, is now 12.4%. To meet the needs of the 21st century, payroll taxes would have to be raised over and over and over again on American workers, stifling economic growth and job creation. Economists predict that payroll tax would have to rise to more than 18% if our children and grandchildren are to receive their scheduled benefits. (2004 Report of the Social Security Trustees, p. 165).

So I'd like to know why I and other younger workers should be forced to subsidize the retirement of well off seniors, or in Alter's case, people who didn't bother to save for their own retirement.

Now here is where I will probably be called a cold hearted hater of poor people. No doubt there will be those that say to just make the higher-income workers pay Social Security taxes on their entire incomes (rather than on just the first $87,900 they earn). Right! Just soak those EEEVIL rich people, and everything will be all better! Yet here's why the Heritage Foundation says that won't really work:

However, this relatively sub­stantial increase on targeted workers tax burden would only delay Social Security's annual deficits by approximately six years. More money would initially come into Social Security's coffers, but the program would ultimately pay greater benefits to retirees who had higher incomes. Although the government could collect higher taxes from certain citizens without offering higher benefits, such a move would be the first step in transforming Social Security into a welfare program.

Moreover, such a tax increase would seriously harm the nation's economy. While those who support this tax increase may envision it as a tax on the rich, it would also affect millions of mid­dle-income families. Combined with federal and state income taxes, it would raise their overall taxes to 50 percent, or even 60 percent of income, discouraging people from working, sav­ing, and investing. To make matters worse, such an increase in taxation would affect entrepre­neurs and business owners, resulting in job losses as businesses downsized to make up for the greater tax burden.

But getting back to the private accounts, from what I've read, people would have the option to put their money into a range of broad-based investment funds, where they could check on, and adjust their allocations. However, once a person chooses the private retirement account option, they won't be able to go back to the traditional system. What they CAN do is put their money into government bonds, like the ones the current system invests in. In addition, the following safeguards would be put into place:

Personal retirement accounts would be protected from sudden market swings on the eve of retirement. To protect near-retirees from sudden market swings on the eve of retirement, personal retirement accounts would be automatically invested in the 'life cycle portfolio' when a worker reaches age 47, unless the worker and his or her spouse specifically opted out by signing a waiver form stating they are aware of the risks involved. The waiver form would explain in clear, easily understandable terms the benefits of the life cycle portfolio and the risks of opting out. By shifting investment allocations from high growth funds to secure bonds as the individual nears retirement, the life cycle portfolio would provide greater protections from sudden market swings.

What is so horrific about this? I thought liberals were supposed to be PRO-CHOICE! I guess not.

And rightly so.

This is the action of a man with nothing to hide (unlike Eason Jordan and CNN). Granted, some people object to his hypothesis of innate differences in the mathematical and scientific abilities of women vs. men. But why should be it be blasphemy to point out there may be some innate differences? After all, these abilities vary, I'm sure from man to man, and from woman to woman.

Personally speaking, I have never ever had a strong aptitude for math, and that's putting it mildly. Yet I don't think that makes me a moron either. I also have no ability or interest in assembling things like tables, shelves or desks. But from my experience, it seems like men do. So what. From the exerps I've read of Summers' speech, it didn't seem to me like he said anything terrible.

Jonathan Alter, in his "Between The Lines" column laments that President Bush's desire to "fix" Social Security is really a ruse to repeal the ideas behind the New Deal.

And all I have to say to him is "so what?"

Why should the whole concept of a welfare state (which is how I see this whole "New Deal") be sacrosanct? Because FDR said so? For people who are so petrified about the partial privatization of Social Security, who on earth is *forcing* you to put your money in the stock market? This is all voluntary! If you're so content with the measly rate of return that our current system provides, then you're free to leave things as they are. But don't deny others the opportunity to let their money grow on account of your pusillanimity.

Another thing that gets me about this commentary is Alter denying that our current Social Security system is a ponzi scheme. Yet I'm sure that if he, or any other private citizen were to engage in such a transaction, they would be in big trouble with the law, precisely because such ponzi schemes are illegal.

Finally, I will say once more that I seriously doubt that Alter and other Social Security cheerleaders are just relying on our current system to fund *their* retirements. I think it would be safe to say that these folks have their money in 401k's and IRA's consisting of mutual funds made up of, gasp, STOCKS AND BONDS!

Update: Here's a working link to the article on the judge blocking license denials for illegals

I say, impeach the bitch!

Via Newsmax.com

PHOENIX -- A bill that would have the state seek proposals to build a private prison in Mexico to house illegal immigrants cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday.

Nice thought, but I don't think this will ever happen.

First off, how much money, if any, would be saved by the U.S. building and administering a prison in Mexico for illegals, as opposed to just imprisoning them in the States? Somehow, I don't think it would be that much. I mean, what about the cost of getting prison personnel, and their families to relocate to Mexico? And needless to say, Mexico won't back it up one bit. After all, that government gets a lot of money when its citizens come here illegally and do grunt work. So if they're thinking of staffing this prison with Mexicans, what would be the point?

Today we're helping reform Social Security by signing the petition at
http://www.preservingsocialsecurity.com

To view Polipundit's post, click here.

The New York Observer reports that the three CBS executives who were asked to resign over the fake memo scandal -- Josh Howard, Mary Murphy and Betsy West, have not done so. They are suing CBS for breech of contract. Howard also believes that the Thornburgh Report excluded evidence which would have implicated the top brass -- Les Moonves, CBS News President Andrew Heyward and CBS Executive Vice President of Communications Gil Schwartz, in the scandal.

While I don't believe that these three executives were exactly innocent in the fake memo scandal, I'll be very interested to see what, if anything happens to Moonves, Howard and Schwartz.

Worldnetdaily.com offers more information regarding Ilario Pantano. According to the article, one witness said that when Pantano ordered the two Iraqis to stop, in Arabic, they moved *away* from him, whereas Pantano, through his lawyer, said the men moved towards him. (Many thanks to the Riding Sun blog who commented on my earlier post.)

But still, the men were told to stop, and they ignored Pantano.

The article also further goes on about how the original accuser says Pantano sent the other guards away, uncuffed the Iraqis, shot them in the back of the head, then put a mocking note as a warning on their bodies.

Yet this still does not make any sense to me, as I told fellow NYC blogger Experimental Insanity who also commented on my earlier post. If Pantano was so blood thirsty, why did he shoot the tires of the SUV the Iraqis used to escape rather than just lobbing a grenade and blowing the inhabitants to bits? Yet, Pantano is also being charged or may be charged with destruction of private property for ordering the Iraqi men to take apart the back seat of the SUV to search for weapons. How strange is that?

Also keep in mind that Pantano went on to serve very well for an additional three months.

Now earlier this afternoon, I placed a call to the Marine Corps press office. The captain I spoke with said they're just in the investigation phase now, and that Pantano has *not* been formally charged...and that reporters should keep that in mind.

I'll continue to keep you all posted.

A group of Austrian and German tsunami victims has filed a lawsuit against U.S. Thailand and the French hotel chain Accor.

The targets are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Washington and its Hawaii-based tsunami warning centre; the Accor group of hotels where some of the victims stayed; and the Thai government.

The NOAA is accused of having registered the earthquake but failed to alert Indian Ocean countries of the impending tsunamis as the Hawaii centre covered only the Pacific.

The lawyers said that if the NOAA and Thai authorities, which had their own information, had passed on their alerts in time, it would have enabled people on shorelines to flee inland. 'We have evidence they did not warn us, even though they knew a quarter of an hour later about the strength and location of the quake, and although there is supposed to be a tsunami warning' from 6.5 on the Richter scale, Hasslacher said. The quake measured 9.0.

Accor is named in the lawsuit because the plaintiffs say the chain did not properly inform relatives of the victims after the disaster and had built its Sofitel hotel on the island of Phuket on a quake fracture line.

Wow! If all else fails, then sue sue sue! Never mind the magnitude of this natural disaster, it's always the fault of government and big business.

The earthquake occurred on the interface of the India and Burma plates, which is in one of the most tectonically complex regions in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The India plate is plunging underneath the Burma plate, creating a so-called megathrust fault at the plates' boundaries. The quake and its aftershocks were distributed along much of that fault, with a total movement of about 1,000 kilometers (about 600 miles).

Now please tell me if I'm missing something here, but couldn't the governments of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Somalia, Bangladesh, Maldives and Cocos Islands, have set up their own warning system for the Indian Ocean? Why is it always the eeevil U.S's fault?

Via Powerline and Michelle Malkin

Here we go again, second guessing our military and trying to make sacrificial animals out of our heroic troops for the sake of political correctness.

2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano, a veteran of the first Gulf War who re-enlisted after 9/11, turning down a $100,000 yearly salary as a Manhattan stockbroker to serve his country -- is now being charged with murder for killing two Iraqis on April 15, 2004. He could face the death penalty.

Here's his lawyer's explanation of what happened:

On April 15, commanders dispatched Lt. Pantano's men to a house believed to hold insurgents and weapons. The Marines found bomb-making equipment and were removing it when two Iraqis tried to speed away in a sport utility vehicle, according to Lt. Pantano's account.

The Marines stopped the SUV by shooting out the tires, apprehended the two and placed them in flexible handcuffs. After setting up a security perimeter, Lt. Pantano took off the cuffs and had the two search the vehicle as he supervised. If it was booby-trapped, the Iraqis, not Marines, would pay the price. It was at this point that the Iraqis stopped searching and moved quickly toward Lt. Pantano.

"They start talking in Arabic and turn toward him as if they are going to rush him," Mr. Gittins said. "He says, 'stop.' They don't stop and he kills them. He didn't know what they were doing but they weren't listening to him. He was in fear of his life and he killed them."

Pantano's superiors call this premeditated murder, as if this brave marine should have waited until the men started detonating themselves before taking action. I just don't understand where these superiors are coming from. They seem to have forgotten that the objective of war is to kill as many of the enemy as possible, while doing one's best to stay alive. I mean what would *they* do if those Iraqi men had approached them after being warned to stop, in Arabic?

Continue reading the whole article here.

Hopefully this will inspire some of you to take action by calling or writing your elected officials and telling them to stop this travesty of justice. You may want to start with the following:

President Bush -- president@whitehouse.gov
Vice President -- vice.president@whitehouse.gov
White House Comments -- 202-456-1111
White House Switchboard -- 202-456-1414

Pantano's mother has a website with additional information which is currently down:

www.defendthedefenders.org

Via Drudge

"Abortion, it's beautiful, it's beautiful abortion is legal. I love going to an abortion rally to pick up women, cause you know they are f**king," Rock said during his club routine.

Of course such a man would feel that way. I've read that Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione and Howard Stern are also pro choice. It's much easier for these men to whore around if women are able to simply remove (or kill off, if you will) the consequences of their actions.

Whatever happened to good, old fashioned shame? Never mind modesty.

Hugh Hewitt reports that the author of this morning's snotty anonymous commentary piece The Jordan Kerfuffle was Brett Stephens.

What is with this man who won't even use his own name to attempt to defend himself (by lashing out at bloggers)? At least James Taranto signed his name to his Best of the Web column, which he started by defending Stephens.

Still Taranto does conclude with a good point:

In any case, the broader theme is clear: Those on the right are helping improve institutions like the media and academia by casting light on their most irresponsibly leftist elements, while those on the left are trying to excommunicate responsible center-left figures like Tim Roemer and Larry Summers. Or to put it another way, the right is increasingly influencing the mainstream, while the left is increasingly alienated from it.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Namely, a drug resistant form of HIV that quickly morphs into AIDS.

City health officials announced on Friday that they had detected the rare strain of H.I.V. in one man whose case they described as particularly worrisome because it merged two unusual features: resistance to nearly all anti-retroviral drugs used to treat the infection, and stunningly swift progression from infection to full-fledged AIDS.

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The infected man, gay and in his 40's, tested negative for H.I.V. in May 2003, then tested positive last December, health officials said. Investigators believe he may have contracted the virus in October when he engaged in unprotected anal sex with multiple partners while using crystal methamphetamine.

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AIDS experts and public health officials have long maintained that since the development of anti-retroviral drugs in the 1990's, people have developed a false sense that AIDS no longer poses a significant threat, leading to a rise in unprotected sex.

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...and 40 percent said that they had not used condoms the last time they had sex. At the time, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner, attributed the results to "H.I.V. precaution burnout."

Sounds more like plain immaturity and stupidity to me. Now I don't care if you're a man, woman, straight, gay, bi, black, white or purple, sleeping around has always had consequences, some obviously worse than others. Drugs or no drugs, how can risking your life for a "fun" night on the town be worth it?

At the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, Hillary Clinton praised the U.N. and criticized President Bush (a reflexive action on the part of liberals).

She said the Bush administration and "its conservative allies" had been wrong to denounce the United Nations "in violent terms," since the decisions to deny authority for military action in Iraq were made by the member countries themselves.

These "other nations" along with the U.N. were being paid off quite nicely under the corrupt Oil For Food program.

In fact the head of that program, Benon Sevan has blocked audits of his office around the same time he was accused of soliciting lucrative oil deals from Iraq, according to investigators.

Yet none of this seems to bother Clinton. Also, for someone who has portrayed herself as being for the rights of women and children, Clinton doesn't have anything bad to say about U.N. "peacekeepers" raping young women and girls in the Congo.

As far as I'm concerned, President Bush is way too *soft* on the U.N. If it were up to me, I'd throw the U.N. out and sell all that Manhattan real estate to Donald Trump so he could build apartments there.

Today's Featured Article attempts to defend Brett Stephens' late and dismissive coverage of the Eason Jordan/WEF scandal. Their justification is that Jordan's comment and his subsequent backpedaling were indeed lame, but not a journalistic felony. So to the Opinion Journal, it was not an especially newsworthy event. Yet they had to get in a few digs at bloggers:

It has been a particular satisfaction to the right wing of the so-called "blogosphere," the community of writers on the Web that has pushed the Eason story relentlessly and sees it as the natural sequel to the Dan Rather fiasco of last year.

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In commenting about Jordan's "resignation" the writer takes another potshot at bloggers:

That may be old-fashioned damage control. But it does not speak well of CNN that it apparently allowed itself to be stampeded by this Internet and talk-show crew. Of course the network must be responsive to its audience and ratings. But it has other obligations, too, chief among them to show the good judgment and sense of proportion that distinguishes professional journalism from the enthusiasms and vendettas of amateurs.

So this moron writer, who didn't even bother to sign his name to this piece of written diarrhea feels that asking a prominent news executive to back up his slanderous, anti-American claims during a war when American lives are in danger, constitutes a vendetta.

The moron finally declares his real allegiance:

No doubt this point of view will get us described as part of the "mainstream media." But we'll take that as a compliment since we've long believed that these columns do in fact represent the American mainstream. We hope readers buy our newspaper because we make grown-up decisions about what is newsworthy, and what isn't.

Not if I, or any of the other right-wing bloggers can help it.

Hat Tip: Barking Moonbat Early Warning System

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is negotiating to allow women working at Toyota to receive an extra twelve days a year of "menstural leave."

AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron says the leave would be additional to the sick leave they are already entitled to.

"Our members tell us that they have to take their sick leave, some of them on a regular basis, because they've got chronic problems with their period," Mr Cameron said.

Now let me tell you all something. In this day and age, there's no reason or excuse for chronic menstrual problems. Any woman with half a brain in her head would get herself checked out. Barring Endometriosis, menstrual discomfort can be alleviated by taking either Tylenol, Advil, the prescription drugs Anaprox or Naprosen.

But getting back to Toyota, is something like this supposed to get men to see and treat women as their equals? I seriously doubt it. I mean, can you imagine a woman having to call in sick to a male supervisor explaining that she has menstrual cramps? And to top it off, when colleagues inquire about a female co-worker's whereabouts they would be told that she's on menstrual leave. What kind of woman wants every Tom, Dick and Harry co-worker to know that status of her menstrual cycle?

And what about women faking menstrual discomfort in order to get extra days off? I see a huge potential for abuse.

On another note, I just now remember a whacky former co-worker from a job I had a long time ago. To make a long story short, the girl was a screw-up who ended up getting fired. One time she snapped at me for some stupid reason. When she apologized later, she blamed it on her PMS. If I was that girl's boss, I would have fired her right there and then.

If women want to be taken seriously, they have to start acting like rational human beings, as opposed to giant blobs of hormones.

And I thought Jews were the only group of people to exhibit suicidal, lemming like behavior.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Party activists, recovering from a stinging November election loss and a fresh round of soul-searching, rallied around Howard Dean (news - web sites) on Friday and promised a grass-roots drive to make the party competitive in the South, Midwest and Mountain states.

More power to them!

CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan has resigned.

I'm sure he'd do very well at the BBC or Al Jazeera.

Walmart is looking to expand to the New York metro area with a store in Rego Park, Queens.
Yet the so-called "little people" are aghast.

The fight seems likely to become the biggest battle against a single store in the city's history, because the labor movement sees Wal-Mart as Public Enemy No. 1 since it is so anti-union, and because many small businesses fear that tens of thousands of Wal-Mart-loving consumers will flock to the store, taking millions of dollars in business with them.

"There will never be a more diverse and comprehensive coalition than this effort against Wal-Mart," said Richard Lipsky, spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, an anti-Wal-Mart coalition in New York. "It will include small-business people, labor people, environmental groups, women's groups, immigrant groups and community groups."

Good grief!

So in other words, the wishes of consumers to get a wide array of goods for the best prices, along with the creativity, drive and ambition of the Walmart people should be throttled because some small businesses and labor unions don't want any competition. Never mind all the jobs that would be created. And never mind all that sales tax revenue that would be coming in.

This is what Nathaniel Branden referred to as the "divine right of stagnation" in Ayn Rand's book "The Virtue of Selfishness."

As Branden wrote:

The denunciation of capitalism for such "iniquities" as allowing an old corner grocer to be driven out of business by a big chain store, the denunciation implying that the economic well being and progress of the old grocer's customers and of the chain store owners should be throttled to protect the limitations of the old grocer's initiative or skill -- this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.

And the people doing the denunciation are quite rabid:

"Wal-Mart has come to represent the lowest common denominator in the treatment of working people," said Brian M. McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the umbrella group of more than one million union members. "Wal-Mart didn't build its empire on bargains. They built it on the backs of working people here and abroad."

Once again you have that common meme about wealth being created only at the expense of poor people. This moron is impervious to the fact that people shop at Wal-Mart of their own free will because they like the merchandise and the prices, and they no doubt like the service they receive there as well. Furthermore, Wal-Mart's employees work there of their own free will -- they're not indentured servants.

Go Wal-Mart!

A married woman has written the following to Today Show contributor Dr. Gail Saltz:

My husband is the most unromantic man on earth. If he remembers Valentine’s Day at all, he gets me something like a flashlight. How can I make him understand that a household tool is not a suitable gift?

Personally, I have a very hard time understanding women who whine about their husbands/boyfriends being unromantic or cheap. I mean, these men just don't get that way overnight.

In the case of this moonbat, I'd like to know a few things. First off, how long has the husband's unromanticness been going on. Was it since they were first dating? If so, did this ditz think she could just change the guy once she bamboozled him into proposing marriage? Silly woman! You can't change people. You either accept them as they are or move on.

Or if the man's unromanticness had been evident from the start, did the woman just ignore it until now? If so, then why? What else is going on that such a thing would only now become an issue?

Now I'm of the opinion that romantic gestures are very important, for both men and women. Call me old fashioned, but if a man I'm dating forgets my birthday and/or buys me something like a toaster for Valentines Day, that would be a dealbreaker for me. And with men, unlike with women, what you see is what you get, never mind what you'll be getting in the future if you stay with them.

So getting back to this nitwit who's written to Dr. Saltz, if her husband is normally the romantic type but has suddenly changed, then THAT would be a problem.

In terms of Dr. Saltz, her final bit of advice is quite lame:

Dr. Gail’s Bottom Line: An unromantic man can learn to be romantic. But he can’t do it on his own — he needs you to both tell and show him.

Silly shrink!

Putting people in shredders, or beating them within an inch of their lives is.

But this seems more like good old fashioned humiliation to me:

And Mamdouh Habib, an Australian man released from Guantanamo Bay last month, said he was strapped down while a woman told him she was "menstruating" on his face.

And to think that some idiots are comparing such treatment of terrorists to Nazis forcing religious Jews to shave their beards! But that's to be expected of moral relativist liberals. They *would* compare an innocent Jew, who has hurt no one to a terrorist caught in the battlefield trying to kill Americans.

Continue reading...

I just don't understand...

Via Al Reuters

Unfortunately, Eason Jordan's hostility to the military of Western democracies is nothing new.

Michelle Malkin writes the following in her Townhall.com column:

In the fall of 2002, he reportedly accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting CNN personnel "on numerous occasions." He was in the middle of the infamous Tailwind scandal, in which CNN was forced to retract a Peter Arnett report that the American military used sarin gas against its own troops in Laos. And in 1999, Jordan declared: "We are a global network, and we take global interest[s] first, not U.S. interests first."

Some people say that Eason Jordan should be fired. But on the other hand, his likely successor and current chief lieutenant Chris Cramer, managing editor of CNN's International news division is no different. Cramer has made similar allegations to those of his boss.

Via the Frontpagemag.com blog, it turns out that Cramer, then a BBC reporter, and his partner soundman Sim Harris were taken hostage on April 11, 1980 when a group of Iranians opposed to the rule of Ayatollah Khomenei invaded the Iranian embassy of London.

Speaking before a group of media editors at the Crimes of War Project in 2002, Cramer told the audience how he escaped the embassy by faking a heart attack, and how in his view, the real terrorists were the British SAS commandos, who rescued the hostages and killed almost all of the *real* terrorists.

I won't roll out the victim syndrome for you at all -- well, maybe I will for two or three minutes. My own humbling experience was 20 years ago last week. Not, of course, as I remember it. It was actually last Wednesday at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Not, of course, that I remember it because it has no affect on me. Tomorrow I fly to London for a reunion, the first in 20 years. And I'll come back to you and let you know how that feels next year, if you like.
My experience was very brief. I was stupid enough to apply for a visa inside the Iranian Embassy in London in April 1980. I was stupid enough to be there when Iraqi terrorists stormed it. I was there for a very, very short time. I was there for precisely 28 hours. Not that I remember it, because I'm a member of your profession. We don't do PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].

I was fortunate enough to have a slightly troubling stomach condition, having been in Zimbabwe, which manifested itself in a very short space of time. It's a most incredible heart attack. And I do fantastic heart attacks. I do great heart attacks. So convincing with my heart attack that the people there were embarrassed and threw me out.

And I was released after 27 hours into the hands of the Metropolitan Police in London and two days later into a dreadful bunch of terrorists called the SAS, who were probably worse than the terrorists inside the Iranian embassy.

And four and a half days later, Maggie Thatcher, in one of her rare moments of triumph, deployed the SAS in broad daylight to storm the embassy and they rescued all but maybe one or two of the hostages. Two were murdered. The SAS conveniently took out five members of the terrorist group and forgot to take out the sixth. So that was my brief, humbling experience.

What is this love affair that CNN has going with the terrorists and rogue regimes of the world? The way these people snicker at civilized governments who respect the rule of law is amazing. What they conveniently ignore is that they would never have such freedoms in any of the rogue states they favor over Western democracies. So I hate to say it but even firing Cramer along with Jordan (which they richly deserve) would still not accomplish much. A good start would be these two men, their bosses, and the national and international news divisions. After that, CNN's advertisers need to be told that Americans will no longer buy their products if they advertise on a network that is so rabidly against Western interests.

Today we're helping Rick Santorum (R-PA) by donating at
https://www.rapiddonor.com/Santorum2006/

Polipundit's post can be viewed here.

Dennis Prager has a very interesting commentary piece on the case for Judeo-Christian values as opposed to secular humanism.

He writes that in the secular humananist world view, human beings have no greater value than animals, which I totally agree with.

First, the secular denial that human beings are created in God's image has led to humans increasingly being equated with animals. That is why over the course of 30 years of asking high-school seniors if they would first try to save their dog or a stranger, two-thirds have voted against the person. They either don't know what they would do or actually vote for their dog. Many adults now vote similarly.

I think that people who probably don't even consider themselves atheists have this world view. To me, it's why people will hold candle-light vigils over the removal of a hawk nest. I also see it in the environmentalists and California Coastal Commission's opposition to building a landfill to fortify three and a half miles of border between California and Mexico. on the grounds that it could harm a fragile Pacific estuary.

And don't even get me started on PETA. Mercedes-Benz is now offering cars with fabric or synthetic leather seats as a result of complaints by PETA's German chapter.

On a more personal note, I think that some dog owners in Manhattan fall into this wacko category as well. I remember once jogging in Central Park when a German Shepherd came up to me out of nowhere and started angrily barking at me. It's owner was standing about twelve feet away obliviously staring into space. So I said to the woman, "do you mind?" And what did she have to say? I scared her dog! Poor dog being harassed by big-bad Zelda! And there was another time when I was taking the elevator downstairs in my old apartment building. In walked a young man and his large unleashed dog who proceeded to invade my personal space. When I said something to the man, he acted as if I had just cursed him out. Now I will say that my sisters all have dogs and I enjoy playing with them. But otherwise, I'm not a pet person. Yet this man in the elevator seemed to assume that everybody and their grandmothers would want to be slobbered over by his dog.

Another time, my cousin was sitting on a bench in Central Park next to an old woman who went on and on about how children shouldn't be allowed into the park because they bother the dogs. I told my sister about this and she agreed with the old woman.

Not good.

The U.N. has put Zimbawe and Cuba on its so-called Working Group on Situations panel. This panel will decide on the agenda for a meeting of the U.N Human Rights Commission next month.

On another note, the U.N. is saying that governments have given only a fraction of the money that they have pledged for Tsunami aid.

Nations have pledged $977 million, but only $360 million has reached the world body’s coffers, said Margareta Wahlstrom, special envoy of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

But in Sri Lanka, corruption was hampering aid operations. Officials have been accused of plundering relief supplies, demanding bribes from tsunami victims, and being drunk on duty.

Several people were suspended last week, with others under investigation.

The U.N. World Food Program will soon dispatch more food aid monitors to try to “abolish any corruption within the government system,” coordinator Dawit Getachew said.

Abolish corruption, my foot!

How on earth the U.N. is still taken seriously, I just don't understand.

Via Al-Reuters

Hat Tip: Ron

The Nation reports that single women were the one bright spot for the Democrats in the 2004 election. A study commissioned by women's' Voices/women's Vote shows marital status to be a significant determine factor in terms of how women tend to vote:

the new research shows that unmarried women, who voted overwhelmingly for Kerry, "are social and economic progressives advancing a tolerant set of values."

In many ways, this doesn't come as a surprise to me at all, as I've heard this many times before. I remember once watching Pat Robertson on TV ask this very question. All his guests could surmise was that some single women tend to view Uncle Sam as a husband/father figure.

BUT, I will have to disagree here on several points. I think that people, at least in the big cities like New York, have been brainwashed into equating right leaning politicians with religious fanatic war mongers who hate poor people and minorities. That's especially true of affluent Jews. For example, I have two older sisters, both of whom are married with two girls. Both my sisters sent their girls to Yeshivas (Jewish day schools). Yet both voted for Kerry as they dislike President Bush. The biggest fear of my oldest sister is that President Bush will appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court. (Now how the right to abort babies has become so sacrosanct among Jews, I fail to understand, but I digress.) When I pointed out to my sisters that keeping one's legs closed would be a good idea, they both let me have it.

Furthermore, I have another liberal friend from college whom I love to death. She is married now with three small children. She has always been liberal and I don't see that changing one bit. The again, she's also Jewish, and Jews tend to be very liberal.

But getting back to single women almost invariably voting Democrat, I think that's slowly changing.

In the September 27 2004 issue of New York Magazine, Naomi Wolf wrote about how Karen Hughes and Laura Bush were winning the election for "W" by winning over women.

So they devised a deliberate strategy that went unnoticed by Democratic strategists, most of whom are white guys over 50: to showcase a moderate, mainstream feminist makeover for the Bush brand. Everyone fell for it, including the press. Bush’s speeches are routinely cast before the eye, I am convinced, of Karen Hughes, who spins tax cuts as a boon to women entrepreneurs, like the one Laura Bush mentioned in her convention speech (Carmella Chaifos, “the only woman to own a tow-truck company in all of Iowa”). The fallen heroes of Iraq are “moms and dads.” Afghanistan was the first time U.S. troops were deployed for a feminist goal, “so Afghan girls could go to school.”

Abortion is an issue not of Ms. Magazine–style fanaticism or suicidal Republican religious reaction, but a complex issue on which “good people can disagree.” (W. mimicked his father’s trick of catering to his religious base while leaking the fact that his wife is pro-choice.)

A key tactic is wife deployment. Is Dick Cheney a scary, old-guard, male-dinosaur guy? Send out Lynne to talk about how he whips up brunch. Karl Rove makes eggs with bacon for Mary Matalin! Laura Bush speaks eloquently about the young George W. changing the twins’ diapers. Why worry about abortion rights when you have Alan Alda in the White House? The Bush team sends out brilliant imagery of women vis-à-vis the president: carefully staging scenes in which a seated W. is listening attentively to a standing Condoleezza Rice. That image counts far more than a thousand words by John Kerry about child care.

While Bush Inc. is flooding women’s magazines with features in which Laura Bush gets out a family-friendly feminist message, Kerry et al. remain obsessed with sending white men out onto the Sunday talk shows—which women don’t watch.

And speaking of wives, Wolf doesn't go easy on Teresa Heinz-Kerry:

Unfortunately, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s speech, which all but ignored her husband, did more to emasculate him than the opposition ever could. By publicly shining the light on herself rather than her husband, she opened a symbolic breach in Kerry’s archetypal armor. Listen to what the Republicans are hitting Kerry with: Indecisive. Effete. French. They are all but calling this tall, accomplished war hero gay.

The charges are sticking because of Teresa Heinz Kerry. Let’s start with “Heinz.” By retaining her dead husband’s name—there is no genteel way to put this—she is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of another man—a dead Republican man, at that. Add to that the fact that her first husband was (as she is herself now) vastly more wealthy than her second husband. Throw into all of this her penchant for black, a color that no woman wears in the heartland, and you have a recipe for just what Kerry is struggling with now: charges of elitism, unstable family relationships, and an unmanned candidate.

Liberal pundit Susan Estrich has also critiqued Teresa Heinz Kerry:

But certainly, one would have expected Mrs. Heinz Kerry to do what she had done on other occasions – to talk about how her husband had played a strong role in the lives of her sons, who had lost their own father; to talk about what he was like as a father to his own daughters; to talk about what he was like as a husband. At least that.

But she also called voters "idiots," when they didn't agree with her health plan, and is remembered for questioning whether Laura Bush, former teacher and librarian and full-time mother, had ever had a real job.

I remember a woman turning to me, after that remark, and asking: What did she do, but marry two guys, one of whom died and left her a billion dollars?

Still, I think Republicans have their work cut out for them in terms of reaching more women. Yet it's not impossible either. I mean, if you think about it, what woman really wants high payroll taxes, dividend taxes, capital gains taxes, death taxes, open borders, and a weak military post 9/11?

Nothing is ever your fault if you can blame it on a mental disorder. Thus, people who make stupid mistakes now make "bad choices" So says author John Winokur of the Encyclopedia Neurotica:

Welcome to the new Age of Anxiety where Western culture is beset by so much dread that "bad habits have been turned into diseases, foibles are afflictions and sins are syndromes," says writer Jon Winokur.

Now I'm no paragon of perfection, but this man has a point. I'm sick of hearing about how bullies are just insecure people with self esteem issues. Whether or not that's true, the fact is, they are ill-mannered brats sorely lacking in discipline who feel they have a right to harrass other people who have done nothing to them. Yet I never read or hear about the lack of civility in children and adults. It seems like every act of rudeness or abuse is explained away by some root cause. It's usually "poor self-esteem" or sometimes it's attributed to stress. And both are non-issues in my view.

The fact is, you have children and adults who feel that whatever issues they have GIVES THEM THE RIGHT to act out against other people. That's the core issue.

Yet still, the conventional wisdom has it that people who are truly secure, with good self-esteem would not feel the need to act out the way they do. That's partly true. But to that I would still respond that poor self esteem or stress is still no excuse for treating others badly. In other words, these spoiled, self absorbed people should just fake it till they feel it.

Two men in New York were diagnosed with a rare new STD:

The disease, lymphogranuloma venereum, known as LGV, is a rare form of chlamydia that can cause acute illness, lifelong disability and disfigurement as well as fuel the spread of H.I.V./AIDS through open sores. A majority of those infected, both in Europe and the United States, have been gay men who engage in anal intercourse.

----

Once the disease is diagnosed, a three-week course of antibiotics is usually effective treatment, Dr. Frieden said.

Oy! Maybe there IS something to be said after all about being uptight (as I was once called by a former male client).

Hundreds of volunteers for a group called The Minuteman Project will spend the month of April patrolling the Arizona/Mexico border in order to apprehend illegal aliens coming to the U.S.

Federal agents and local officials have expressed concern:

"We worry about any person or private group that takes the immigration laws into their own hands," said Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector. "This is a violent area. We deal with drug smugglers every day. We don't want to say we don't want the public's help; we just don't want it in this format."

Adame said it was fine for civilians to report illegal immigrants, but detaining them would raise legal problems.

"These people need to be aware that we will forward any violations of the law to local prosecutors," he said.

Well maybe if there were more border patrol agents and if they were at all serious about apprehending illegal aliens, this wouldn't be an issue.

Mayor Ray Borane of Douglas, AZ, a small city that's 86% Latino is crying "racism:"

"You are going to get every misfit, everyone with a warrant out for their arrest, everyone who needs new scenery or climate out here," he said. "If they come into this community, it could lead to an international incident."

Oh, so now people who want to protect their communities, their property, their culture, their tax money, and their very lives are racists?

Call me ignorant or not nuanced, but isn't it the job of an elected official to uphold the country's Constitution and laws, along with protecting citizens from the initiation of physical force? And how about their property rights while we're at it?

Via Free Republic:

Borane said having a private organization come in to do the work the federal government should be doing is ridiculous.

"The (federal) government should be embarrassed that such a group is coming to help enforce federal immigration laws," he said.

Why is it ridiculous? Usually, the private sector, which has to worry about free market competition, unlike government monopolies, does a better job of almost everything. So yes, I agree, the federal government should be embarrassed at the shoddy job it's doing of protecting our borders.

Yet the only thing this so-called Mayor seems to care about are international incidents.

Unfortunately for the Bush haters, our economy seems to be on an upswing:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If forecasts can be believed, job growth in January will finally return U.S. employment to where it was before the 2001 recession and erase the jobs lost during President Bush's first term.

Economists say 190,000 jobs were created last month, according to the median estimate from a Reuters survey, boosting the working population to 132.5 million -- just above where it was when President Bill Clinton left office four years ago.

If achieved, the rise in payrolls will be the 17th straight month of growth and, together with an expected upward revision to employment through March 2004, should restore all the jobs erased during and after the 2001 recession.

Not bad for a "stupid" President who supposedly hates poor people, women and minorities, and is in bed with big bad Big Business.

The Democrats are understandably getting hysterical. In all of the State of Union addresses I've watched, I have never EVER heard a President getting booed, as was the case when President Bush was talking about overhauling Social Security last night.

Via the World Economic Forum blog, CNN's Eason Jordan clarfies the comments he made in Davos, Switzerland

Now I just have this to say. The killing of a journalist or other civilian is unfortunate. But this is war, and the job of the soldiers is to kill the enemy combatants, not to shelter journalists. And if Jordan wants to call it a case of "mistaken identity" as opposed to "collateral damage" then fine. But it's not the same as the U.S. military deliberately going after journalists solely for the purpose of killing them.

Also notice how Jordan goes on about how CNN is not an American news organization even though they are based in the U.S.

In Jordan's defense, all I can say is that perhaps he was caught up in the excitement of the moment -- so much Arab tukhas to kiss, so little time.

In response to the hoopla over his essay "Some People Push Back:
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" Churchill has issued a press release. Here are some excerps:

In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been.

Nice try, but you've done a pretty darn good job of defaming your own character, and blaming the victims for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"I am not a 'defender'of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people 'should' engage in armed attacks on the United States , but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy." As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."

You certainly are, as you made plain in your original essay, and you hate your country as well:

Whatever else can be said of them, the men who struck on September 11 manifested the courage of their convictions, willingly expending their own lives in attaining their objectives.

Were this the intent of those who've entered the US to wage war against it, it would remain no less true that America and Americans were only receiving the bill for what they'd already done. Payback, as they say, can be a real motherfucker (ask the Germans).

In sum one can discern a certain optimism it might even be called humanitarianism imbedded in the thinking of those who presided over the very limited actions conducted on September 11.

Dunghill continues to try and backpedal in his press release:

In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that 'we' had decided it was 'worth the cost.' I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths.

It's time for Churchill to be seriously whacked with some logic, which I'll be happy to do.

First off, why is it America's fault when the rogue state of Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, then was pushed back by a broad coalition of countries, and after that, refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire agreement, thus bringing on the sanctions.

And why is it America's fault that Saddam, France, Russia and the U.N. were making billions off the oil for food scandal, when that money could have gone to help the Iraqi people?

Finally Dunghill does NOT mourn the victims of the 9/11 attacks. That much is clear by reading his original screed:

More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

Rather, he criticizes them for their capitalist work ethic. In the typical leftist/statist/collectivist fashion, he equates the financial success of one group with the victimization of another. The idea of wealth being produced by man's rational thinking and creative ability never crosses this man's mind. It's no wonder then that he also criticizes the US for its actions in Grenada and other places.

Finally, regarding "collateral damage" or "innocent civilians," if you will, I will quote Ayn Rand's intellectual and legal heir Leonard Peikoff:

These innocents suffer and die because of the action of their own government in sponsoring the initiation of force against America. Their fate, therefore, is their government's moral responsibility.

In other words, American soldiers don't purposefully blow up innocent civilians going about their daily lives. If there are exceptions, like in Abu Ghraib, then they get punished. On the other hand, the Islamo-fanatics that Churchill describes as "humane" deliberately hide amongst women and children in order to perpetrate their terrorist acts.

So what I would like to understand is what the story is, if anything with our sedition laws. Because it certainly sounds like sedition to me.

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was born 100 years ago in Russia. She escaped to the U.S. where she wrote several works of fiction and non-fiction. I have read The Fountainhead, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: An Unknown Ideal, and Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. In all her writings, she puts forth the concept of objectivitism, of man as a rational being with rational selfishness being the moral code by which he should live.

The book that had the most profound effect on my life was her Magnum Opus Atlas Shrugged.



If you haven't read any of her books yet, I strongly recommend doing so.

What is CNN News Chief Eason Jordan's problem?

And why does he have any credibility left whatsoever?

This is the man who, in April 2003 admitted that CNN routinely covered up atrocities of Saddam Hussein's regime, for the purpose of keeping their Baghdad bureau open.

And recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Eason claimed that the U.S. military targeted, and killed at least a dozen journalists:

This fiery topic became a real nightmare today for the Chief News Executive of CNN at what was an initially very mild discussion at the World Economic Forum titled “Will Democracy Survive the Media?”

----

During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.

----
When pressed for more specific evidence by U.S. Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, the following happened:

Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real “sh—storm”. What intensified the problem was the fact that the session was a public forum being taped on camera, in front of an international crowd. The other looming shadow on what was going on was the presence of a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator in the middle of some very serious accusations about the U.S. military.

To be fair (and balanced), Eason did backpedal and make a number of statements claiming that he really did not know if what he said was true, and that he did not himself believe it. But when pressed by others, he seemed to waver back and forth between what might have been his beliefs and the realization that he had created a kind of public mess.

Gay Patriot via Political Diary (subscription based) provides a more detailed look at Jordan's "backpedaling."

He even "offered the story of an Al-Jazeera journalist who had been 'tortured for weeks' at Abu Ghraib, made to eat his shoes, and called "Al Jazeera boy" by his American captors."

And then, this liberal Democrat pressed Mr. Jordan to be more specific, putting the CNN Executive on the spot. The newsman rambled on a bit and mumbled some sort of response about how "'There are people who believe there are people in the military who have it out' for journalists." He could provide no evidence to buttress his claims, then "offered another anecdote: A reporter who'd been standing in a long line to get through a checkpoint at Baghdad's Green Zone had been turned back by the GI on duty. Apparently the soldier had been displeased with the reporter's dispatches, and sent him to the back of the line."

I guess Jordan is getting desperate, since CNN is losing viewers left and right.

Or perhaps, in a bid to capture more far left viewers, he's looking to open up a CNN bureau in yet another rogue state.

So for those of you who would like to make your displeasure known to CNN, you can write them here or call them up:

404.827.1500

Thank you to Kevin McCullough for providing the contact info.

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Here's Polipundit's post for today:

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A study detailed in the Winter issue of the quarterly journal Human Factors shows that the use of cell phones among young people causes slower reaction times and larger error rates in detecting changes. In other words, it causes twenty-somethings to drive like seventy year olds.

Drivers talking on cell phones were 18 percent slower to react to brake lights, the new study found. In a minor bright note, they kept a 12 percent greater following distance. But they also took 17 percent longer to regain the speed they lost when they braked. That frustrates everyone.

"Once drivers on cell phones hit the brakes, it takes them longer to get back into the normal flow of traffic," Strayer said. "The net result is they are impeding the overall flow of traffic."

Apparently, the same of true of hands free cell phone users:

In 2003 they revealed a reason: Drivers look but don't see, because they're distracted by the conversation. The scientists also found previously that chatty motorists are less adept than drunken drivers with blood alcohol levels exceeding 0.08.

Now I have also experienced this idiocy first hand when driving with other people. I remember once in my old job, my sales manager and I were going on sales calls, and he was the one driving. One day, we were smack in the middle of a highway when he decided to check his voice mail. And let me tell you, not only did he check his voicemail, he then proceeded to whip out a paper and pen and write down his messages!

Of course when I politely said that he should really focus on the road, he went on and on about how he knew what he was doing and how his eyes were not off the road.

Baloney!

You know, I just wonder what on earth is so important that people see fit to yap on their cell phones while driving (or as I stated in my previous post on obnoxious cell phone users, while they are topless in the women's locker room wildly gesticulating and pacing back and forth). I mean, can't the drivers just pull over some place if it's an urgent call?

What it all boils down to is wanting to look "busy" and important. Among New Yorkers, at least, being busy with work has always been a status symbol. It's as if these people are saying "look how important I am that I have to take business calls while driving on a highway or topless in the women's locker room of my chi chi gym."

Colorado Governor Bill Owens has called for the resignation of University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill for comparing the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks "little Eichmanns." Governor Owens believes the state is not compelled to accept pro-terrorist views at the expense of taxpayers.

This controversy stems from an essay Churchill wrote titled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens."

Just this Monday, Churchill stepped down from the position of Chairman of the Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies.

Now I'm sure that liberals all over the place will go on about how Churchill's free speech is being violated...and how the fact that we're "censoring" this man makes us no better that the terrorists, etc.

I beg to differ.

As I understand it, free speech means that the government can't come and throw a person in jail for his or her unpopular political views. It does not mean that taxpayers should be forced to provide a forum for a person whose views they find repugnant.

Or to put in another way, let's say a person were to mouth off to his or her boss one day. He/she would obviously get fired, regardless of any "free speech" rights.

What do you all think?

Hat tip: Ron

If you think that being unemployed and living in Manhattan is hard, just be grateful you're not living in Germany.

If you're on unemployment there, and you're offered a job at a brothel (prostitution was legalized in Germany about two years ago), you have to take it, or risk losing your unemployment benefits.

That's what happend to a twenty five year old IT professional:

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

Now I'm wondering if this law will apply to men as well. What happens if a straight man is unemployed. Would he be forced to take a job in a gay brothel?

But most importantly, I wonder if the kooky liberal Jews who were thinking of moving to Germany on account of President Bush's re-election will still want to move there now.