Some Good Thoughts

Where we went wrong in Iraq.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Lew Rockwell.

Joe Guzzardi on blacks seeing the light on immigration.

That is all.

Bush Anilingus Syndrome

What is it? It's the opposite of so-called "Bush Derangement Syndrome."

Bush Anilingus Syndrome occurs every time someone French-kisses Bush's rear end and assumes he can do no wrong, or who assumes that any criticism of Bush that they do not share must mean that someone is crazy.

That is all.

Less than Meets the Eye

I'm working on a review of the new Transformers movie.

Preview: I didn't like it.

That is all.

Sully Doesn't Get It

In all of his outrage about the sentence commutation for Scooter Libby, Andrew seems to think that the issue here is that Libby is an elite and a friend of Bush and so Bush is doing him a favor. I have heard others talk about it on the news networks as well, and bemoan the "two-tier" justice system, where the rich and powerful get away with it.

That's not the issue, though, and it's stupid that so many think it is.

Libby wasn't convicted for a DUI or some other personal peccadillo. What Scooter Libby was convicted of was LYING IN ORDER TO ADVANCE THE INTERESTS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. What he was convicted of was protecting the administration by obstructing the investigation. (Whether this charge was justified or not is, I suppose, debatable, but I am rather agnosic on the issue, as there appear to be two sets of facts, one for each side, and I don't have the time or desire to go through them with a fine-tooth comb).

So if his commutation is in inappropriate, it is because Bush is commuting the sentences for crimes committed on behalf of his administration; that is, he is working to avoid accountability. That is, he commuted Libby's sentence for his own benefit, not as a favor to Libby as a person.

That is all.

Ron Paul 2008

I recently made a $200.00 donation to the Ron Paul campaign.

I encourage my readers to support him and to donate whatever they can spare.

That is all.

Amanda Marcotte Thinks White People Should Have No Objection to Dying Out

That's the message I get from this post.

That is all.

What Ails the American Health Care System

Well, the state, for one thing. The cartels, for another.

Lew Rockwell is always so much more interesting that Michael Moore could ever hope to be.

That is all.

What We Need

We need a PAC or something that will make certain that there are immigration restrictionist candidates running in every district, similar to what Emily's List does for pro-choice women. For example, we need someone to put up a challenge to Susan Collins in the GOP primary.

Pleae, please, if you read this and blog about political issues, make this point in your blog. Once we get this talked about, maybe we'll find someone who can do it.

Because we need such candidates to exist, both in order to be able to vote for them, and to be able to threaten wayward Senators with electoral loss should they vote the wrong way.

That is all.

Three Cheers for Derek Copold

For arguing against a more open border in the comments at Unqualified Offerings.

That is all.

Separation of Church and State Is a Two-Way Street

But not, apparently, in Europe.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Lawrence Auster.

That is all.

Some Things Need to be Ridiculed

Like this.

I AM ASHAMED TO ADMIT THAT I AM NOT ALWAYS IN DENIAL

I am a bigot. I have not yet learned to ignore differences in crime rates between blacks and Latinos on one hand and Asians and whites on the other. For example, when I see a young black man dressed up like a gangmember, I do not always suppress my survival instincts. Not only do I try to correct these assumptions when later data contradicts them, I also correct them even when they are spot-on accurate.

My whiteness has many benefits, including the fact that I cannot be considered property, as people of other races can. Oh, if only someone had outlawed slavery in this country!

Also, because of my white privilege, people take me seriously as an intellectual, even though most of my intellectual output consists of navel-gazing self-flagellation, where I pat myself on the back for how much I cirticized myself for being a privileged white person. I am used to be taken seriously, despite my bet attempts to make an ass of myself.

I am anti-racist because I believe that race is a social construction. It has absolutely nothing to do with biology or with the obvious physical differences between human human populations. Despite the fact that race is nothing but a social construct, and despite the fact I want to abolish it, I still think we should maintian the construct when figuring out how much people who are not constructed to be white ought to take from those who are socially constructed to be white.

I am an evil, evil person from an evil, evil race (albeit a race that does not exist in an objective sense, as it is a social construction). I am proud of myself for admitting this.

As an evil racist person, I need to realize that anyone who is not white is automatically morally superior to me, and that whenever they criticize me, I must grovel at their feet.

I also believe that by labelling everyone a bigot of some sort, particularly myself, and I enjoy writing long pieces bemoaning the universal bigotry of people. I do this because it makes it seem as if I have some special knowledge not shared by the majority of humanity, which it makes me feel morally superior. I also enjoy it because a bunch of other people who like to feel morally superior will pat me on the back in a mutual admiration society.

That is all.

Thought for the Day

What bothers me about secular liberals is not their commitment to the separation of church and state; what bothers me is that they see it as a one-way street.

That is all.

I Must Admit

"Homophobic" as I may be, I found this article to be extremely funny, if only because I love seeing people say what's on their mind to self-absorbed annoying people.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Sully.

That is all.

H.R. 2755

Apparently, Ron Paul has proposed a bill to abolish the Fed.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to the Lew Rockwell Blog.

I encourage all of you calling your Senators about the Bush-Kennedy amnesty to also call your Congressman and tell them that you'd like to see a floor vote on H.R. 2755.

That is all.

Excellent Article on the "Foreign Fighters in Iraq" Claim

In Chronicles magazine.

That is all.

Some Thoughts out of the Lew Rockwell Blog

This comment by Mike Tennant about Joseph Farah's column against Ron Paul for President says a lot of the things that I think.

Two things, though, that I would point out to Mr. Farah:

Paul did certainly say that we were "scapegoating" illegal immigrants. Yes, he did say that eliminating the welfare state would make it easier to allow people in. However, he, unlike many other libertarians, is smart enough to realize that until you get rid of the welfare state, you don't open your borders (many libertarians seem to think that if you can deregulate immigration first, then do so, and you'll get rid of the welfare state when all of those poor, illiterate, uneducated minorities with a chip on their shoulder against the "gringos" that they should support the free market rather than use the government to get as much money out of the wealthy whitefolk as possible.

Paul also believes that we ought to be more stingy with citizenship, which I would hazard to guess to mean that those who are not here on a permanent basis do not get to be citizens merely by being born here. This would reduce a lot of the problems associated with illegal immigration if enacted.

For myself, I also cannot help but notice that Farah does not really address the issue of the resentment that the Iranians have at us for overthrowing their democratically elected leader in 1953 and replacing him with the Shah. He indicates that he thinks the Iranian revolution could have been prevented had we not "undermined" the Shah in the 1970s, but he never really addresses the issue of whether or not we had the right to depose Mossadeq in the first place, or whether or not this produced negative effects. Farah does imply that if we had just kept imposing the Shah on Iran, everything would have been fine.

This is in keeping with previous writings, where he asserts that under the Shah there was a level of freedom in Iran (although it is not clear whether he is asserting this just in juxtaposition to the current regime or whether he is saying that putting the Shah in power and keeping him there gave them more freedom than they would have had if their democratically elected leader had been kept at the helm) and that the Iranians are nostalgic for it (no mention of whether old Iranians are nostalgic for Mossadeq).

But, c'mon, what do you expect from Osama bin Farah?

There's also a link to a sympathetic article by Brian Doherty in Reason

Also, some much-needed bad-mouthing of Establishment Man Joe Klein, and a really funny statement about why 9/11 could not have been an inside job.

That is all.

I Hate Dubya (Language Warning)

That type of thing gets conservatives like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh asking: "how come on immigration, Busdh doesn't get it?"

The answer is simple.

BUSH IS AN ASSHOLE.

(Actually, that applies to him on a whole lot of issues).

That is all.

Wow.

According to this article,

The US is considering introducing a limited military draft if it is to keep its present force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon advisers have warned British colleagues.

If this is true, it is scary. The only good news (if the story is true) is that it is unlikely that the Congress would pass any draft legislation until at least Bush is out of office.

Unless, of course, Bush insists that as commander-in-chief, he has absolute power to start a draft - but that would likely mean impeachment, or failing that, draft age kids shutting down the country with protests.

Still, most of the article is not about a potential future draft, so this claim is not exactly well-supported (plus I know nothing about The First Post or its track record).

So I wouldn't bet that there will be a draft in the near future. Although, of course, if we get both a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, knowing the Democrats they would be fully capable of arguing against the Iraq War and for a draft to support the war (or a different war in, say, Darfur) at the same time. (If we get a GOP Congress and a GOP President - other than Ron Paul, that is - there would be less chance of a draft, but a greater chance of a tactical nuclear strike against Iran, so anything other than a divided government (or Ron Paul) could be risky.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Lew Rockwell.

That is all.

Racism?

While normally I am skeptical of claims of "institutional racism" and "white privilege," the Genarlow Wilson case does seem to me to be an example, unless there are some important facts that I am missing.

Not that this could not happen to a white person, but I would not be surprised if his race were a factor in the apparent fanaticism to keep him behind bars.

(I would also concede this in the Cory Maye case, which I have previously blogged about).

That is all.

Conventional Wisdom

Andrew Sullivan posts a letter from a reader that is full of the usual B.S..

According to the reader, the illegal aliens are "the cream of the crop" because they are "adapting as best possible to their environment." The assumptiuon here is, of course, that those who do not immigrate do not do so because they are not ambitious, not because they have found ways to succeed in Mexico.

Certainly the statistics do not assert that the Mexican immigrants, or more importantly their descendants, are more particularly successful. Indeed, they have more problems than the composite average of Americans (look at Ed Rubenstein's many articles on the subjext).

The next statement, "If Hispanics were listening in on these shows, they are hardly likely to vote Republican for years to come," ignores the fact that the people we are importing are likely to vote overwhelmingly Democratic anyway.

Certainly California seems to show that increasing the Latino population makes a state more Democratic, despite the attempts to blame this on Proposition 187.

That is all.

McElroy on Ron Paul

Note: My goal in posting this is (a) to explain why I do not think that the points brought up on Wendy McElroy's blog would make me hesitate to vote for Ron Paul, and (b) to acknowledge that Ron Paul has flaws in order to neutralize his flaws as issues (I don't want any Paul supporters to create such a perfect picture of him and to expect such perfection that any mistake he makes causes them to desert him). So please do not think that I am nitpicking Mr. Paul. I support him for President 100%.

Wendy McElroy questions Ron Paul's libertarian "purity" linking to this discussion on her bulletin board.

While some of the facts presented seem a little disturbing, some of them do not bother me at all. For example, I am not an advocate of open borders, so voting for building a fence is in my opinion a point in his favor.

Other things, like the partial-birth abortion issue, are somewhat disconcerting, in that if Paul voted for regulating it, it would go against his commitment to the enumerated powers of the federal government, unless he was using some fourteenth amendment argument for equal rights for the fetus - but that seems unlikely, as he has publicly said that abortion should be a state issue.

His vote for the price controls ("negotiation") on the Medicare bill is less disturbing in my opinion when you hear his explanation, which was "if we're going to spend it, we might as well get a good price"). It is also possible that he hoped that this would lead to large nunmbers of prescription drugs not being funded under Medicare (as the pharmaceutical companies might refuse to offer their drugs under the Medicare program if they couldn't get a good price) and thus weaken the program.

Remember, without the "price negotiations" the bill is largely a way for the drug makers to pocket huge profits from the federal government. Letting a private company take more taxpayer money is not inherently more libertarian than regulating its participation in a government handout program (assuming that the program itself is going to exist whatever you do).

The one thing that really disturbed me, of course, was Paul's comments that:

Bush ran on a platform of a humble foreign policy, no nation-building, not policing the world. Instead we’re spending a trillion dollars a year to maintain the power of our empire around the world. We need that money for education and medical care here. (Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Austro-Athenian Empire for the transcript).

Unlike this Freeper, I am certain that he did not intend to say that the government should be spending money on education and health care (although in regards to health care, Paul has said that Medicare would have to be transitioned out, it could not just be ended instantly). Previously in the debate, he alluded to the fact that publicly-funded health care and education were one of the problems in regards to illegal immigration:

We subsidise illegal immigration with amnesty, birthright citizenship, and publicly-fund education and health care. We do need immigrant workers, but if we had a genuine free market they wouldn’t be the scapegoat.

Presumably he meant that the taxpayers needed the money to pay for their own education and health care. In previous debates, he has often misspoken (in the famous remark at the Fox debates about our policy being part of what motivated the 9/11 hijackers he said "Non-intervention was a major contributing factor" when he clearly meant to say that intervention was a major contributing factor). In any case, I really think that he ought to clarify himself on the "education and healthcare" statement quickly.

That is all.

Attrition, not Amnesty

What to do with the 12 million illegal aliens already in this country.

That is all.

Thoughts on the G.O.P. Debate

I think that it went quite well in some ways.

The one highlight of the evening was when Tom Tancredo said that there would be no place for Dubya in a Tancredo administration. In that statement he spoke for all of the beleaguered cnservatives who are fed up with El Presidente.

As with most of the debates, Ron Paul's performance improves in hindsight. The secret of Paul is that he brings up topics that no one else will deal with. But he got shafted with little attention and with bad questions. On the Iraq War, Blitzer simply asked him more or less does he want us to get out (allowing him to state a position he has stated many times before), rather than asking a far more interesting question such as what does he think of the fact that Rudy Giuliani has never before heard of "blowback," or something else that could have really gotten the ball rolling or could have allowed him more elaboration.

It was good, though, to hear Paul bring up the issue of birthright citizenship, so that Tancredo didn't have to do all of the heavt lifting on the immigration issue.

The one big error Paul made is when he said something toward the end about the money for Medicare and education coming from the Iraq War. Presumably he meant that the taxpayers would have more money to pay for these things himself (although in the case of Medicare he could be talking about the transitional costs as he phased it out), but it sounded as if he supported these as federal government programs, which he does not.

Here are the Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo official sites. I encourage my readers to visit both and to consider making donations to one or both of these candidates.

That is all.

Good Articles

Lawrence Auster on Bush the liberal.

There are some good comments (including one by me) at this post at Creative Destruction.

That is all.

Interesting Piece on Ron Paul

Here.

That is all.

I Need to Argue Against This

Nathan Newman argues that letting in indigent, unskilled foreigners because they happen to be related to someone who is here is a good thing! That is, he wants family reunification without skill testing.

This strikes me as ridiculous, but I'll need time to work up an argument.

A few ideas:

(1) The built-in support system that the families supposedly give (safety net and loans) requires that someone in the family actually has capital.

(2) The networks he so lovingly praises also serve to keep the immigrants foreign. That is, to obviate the need for assimilation.

If anyone else would like to chime in on why Nathan Newman is wrong, please feel free to do so.

That is all.

A Question for Pandagonians

If you want to blame immigration restrictionists for crimes like this, when will you and your "anti-white-privilege" crowd take responsibility for the vast number of black-on-white prison rapes or the Knoxville atrocity?

I commented on the thread, but it got moderated out, which proves that Pandagon isn't anti-racist, it's just anti-white.

That is all.

No, We Don't All Have the Same Values

Fatwa in Egypt allows, or perhaps even encourages, women to breast-feed their male colleagues at work. Apparently it is supposed to de-sexualize the relationship.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Evil HR Lady and to whomever I got the link to her from (I forget who it was, but I thought it was a feminist blog of some sort).

That is all.

Meanwhile, in Iraq...

Hostile coalition deaths are more than 100 for the second month in a row - a first since this war began.

That is all.

Daniel Larison on Presidential Code-Phrases

Not much I can add.

That is all.

Andrew Sullivan's Theory on the Leak on Covert Operations Against Iran

Perhaps Cheney or his people did it to try and scuttle the attempt so that they could force a more - er - aggressive policy.

Which is similar to some of my own thoughts regarding the leak, at least in brinigng up the possibility that the goal of the leak was to produce bad will against the U.S. by Iran and force a more aggressive policy.

That is all.

Euphemisms (Updated!)

Is anyone else tired of the way that Sean Hannity and his ilk always talk about "funding the troops" but never about "funding the war," as if the funding was all about being nice to our servicemen and servicewomen rather than about prolonging the Iraqi occupation?

Update: more on this at Unqualified Offerings.

That is all.

D'OH!

And another comforting myth about Mexican immigration dies screaming.

That is all.

"Mandolin" is Being Quite Disingenuous

Over at Alas, a writer called "Mandolin" points out that "words are not weapons."

In this context, she is arguing against the metaphorical comparison of criticism to physical attacks. That is, when someone refers to a person criticizing their ideas as "attacking them."

In this case, she is specifically referring to people who disagree with feminism or "anti-racism" who get thin-skinned whenever someone calls them racist or sexist.

Fair enough.

But if she is really concerned about people blowing statements and words out of porportion, she should look in the mirror.

In a previous thread, there was a debate about whether or not anti-discrimination laws harmed people. Unless there were some nasty comments posted that were deleted (and if ther were, please someone tell me and I will revise this post), all of the responses by those who were against (or at least not entirely in favor of) anti-discrimination laws were polite, well-thought-out, and contained no derision or criticism of the groups in question.

And yet, Mandolin implies that anyone who doesn't think that the government should force people to rent to gay people or to employ them do not believe that gay people are human. Moreover, she and other posters call even the discussion of this "hateful."

"Hateful?" Debating whether or not landlords and business owners should have the right to determine who they hire, fire, or rent to is hateful?

And she is criticizing other people for being overly sensitive?

What a hypocrite!

(Oh, and by the way, don't comment on the first thread I mentioned. It has Alas's traditional "losers only" comment rules).

That is all.

Thought for the Day

Laura Ingaham was upset earlier today that someone from intelligence had leaked this story about covert efforts by the U.S. to destabilize the Iranian regime. She said that the leaker should be caught, or something ot that effect, with the implication that he or she would be prosecuted.

My thoughts:

How do we know that the leaker is someone who is against the policy? This leak could be an attempt to destroy any possibility of diplomacy with Iran, by saying "we'll be coming for you whatever we tell you, so you can't trust us, so don't bother talking with us." In fact, this leak could have been authorized by the administration exactly for this purpose.

That is all.

The Essence of McCain

Lawrence Auster on the man who was touted in 2000 as having so much "integrity:"

McCain wants to abolish politics, so that the elite who know what’s best for us can administer our society and our lives for us.

Of course, we already knew all that about McCain. What is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, but a major step toward turning America into a Europe-type country where democratic elections are a mere formality administered by the state, and unaccountable bureaucratic elites are the real rulers?

I think that sums it up nicely.

That is all.

Cloture Happens

Rats.

Well, on to the barricades, then. Call your Senator and tell him or her to vote against the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill!

That is all. For now.

Fox News' Priorities

We are facing an immigration amnesty that could fundamentally change or destroy our country, and it is not one of the top three stories on Fox News' website. But "Dems Waving White Flag" (i.e. Democrats willing to give in more to Bush to fund Iraq War) is right up there.

Lower down, still no mention.

Oh, but they do mention that Israel celebrates its 59th birthday.

It's nice to know how highly those who run the Fox News website prioritize the direct interests of the U.S.

That is all.

A Plea

Please call your Senators and tell them to oppose S. 1348, the Kennedy-Bush immigration plan (aka "the Kennedy-Bush amnesty plan").

The number for the Senate switchboard is 202-224-3121.

You can also find the numbers of your Senators and Congressmen by clicking on this link (listed alphabetically by last name).

It doesn't hurt to pre-emptively call your (House of Representatives) Congressmen as well, and tell them to oppose whatever the House version of the bill is if S. 1348 passes.

That is all.

Nicholas Stix on the Knoxville Murders

The crime and the cover-up.

Thoughts:

I heard on Michael Savage's show yesterday that some professor of journalism had said that the Knoxville case was not newsworthy because it had "no catch" (or something to that effect). He admitted that a similar white-on-black crime would, because it would be so rare.

Actually, that is fair enough, in my opinion. I don't mind white-on-black crime getting more media attention, just as female statutory rapist teachers get more attention than male ones.

The problem, however, is that this is not how the disproportionate coverage is played in the media. Whenever there is a report of a white-on-black crime, we are told to believe that it typifies race relations in the U.S. and that "white privilege" and racism are to blame. The Duke Rape Accusations were not portrayed as "man bites dog." At least with the ephebophilic female teachers, there was some acknowledgment that these don't look like typical victimizers.


Also, Rachel S., at that bastion of everything dedicated to bringing down western society, Alas, says that:

It is also ridiculous to assume that this makes “homosexuals have more rights than others.” Why? Because the legislation targets all crimes motivated by gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Crimes against heterosexuals (and men), however rare they are, would also be covered. The identity of the perpetrator is also irrelevant. LGBT folks could commite hate crimes against other LGBT folks and be prosecuted for hate crimes, and the same could be said for men and heterosexuals.

Well, it appears in the Knowville case that there is a strong prejudice against charging blacks with racial hate crimes. So whatever the law says in theory, want to bet that a gay-on-straight hate crime will be similarly "de-hatified?"

That is all.

Ron Paul Climbing in New Hampshire Polls

He's not doing too well, but he is doing better:

In January he was at 1%, in April 2%, and now he is at 3%.

That is all.

Glaivester Endorses Ron Paul

For the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination.

That is all for now.

Daniel Larison Gets It.

Interventionism, Islam and jihad.

That is all.

We Shouldn't Stop Polluting

I mean, the real issue is what to do about the pollutants that are already in our air, water, and soil. Any plan for reducing current and future pollution (i.e. reducing auto emissions, reducing industrial waste) that does not explain what to do about pollutants that are already here is worthless and should be rejected. We cannot worry about reducing our current and future pollution unless we simultaneously deal with the pollutants that are already in the air, water and soil.

Sounds silly, right? Then why do we accept this argument when it comes to illegal immigration?

That is all.

Thoughts on Immigration

The immigration issue really comes down to three elements:

(1) Objectives. Whom do we want to let into in our country and whom do we want to keep out? For those already here but without permanent status (i.e. permanent resident alien or citizen), whom do we want to let stay in our country and whom do we want to keep out?

(2) Enforcement. How do we enforce this? That is, how do we keep the people out whom we want to keep out and how do we get rid of them if they get in anyway (or are already in).

(3) Documentation. For those whom we want to let in, how do we keep track of them and their status? This is important for making certain that those who are here temporarily leave when their time is up, for making certain that there is a clear path for permanent residence and/or citizenship for those whom we wish to add to our country, and for making certain that those who are here temporarily but indefinitely (e.g. those who need to get their status renewed) get processed in a timely manner.

The problem with guest-worker programs and the like is that they are based mainly on the notion that documentation is the only problem. That is also why "undocumented worker" is not an appropriate term for an illegal alien. It implies that they simply did not obey the technicalities of coming here. It ignores the fact that there are reasons why we don't let everyone in who wants to come in.

Enforcement is a necessity. Unless you want to let absolutely everyone who wants to come in in, you have to be able to stop people from coming in using non-official channels. If someone wants to come in for nefarious reasons (drug runners or terrorists or other assorted criminals), a guest-worker program designed to get people who would otherwise come in illegally "in the system" will not get them into the system, because their interests in coming here are themselves outside the system. Without some way to keep them out, they will come in illegally, guest-worker program or no.

But really, the primary issue (and the one no one wants to discuss) is objectives.

Whom do we let in (let stay) and whom do we keep out (kick out)? Until we address that issue, we cannot have true immigration reform.

That is all.

Liberal "Tolerance"

According to the tolerant feminists at Feministe, Jerry Falwell should burn in Hell, presumably for the mortal sin of not celebrating whenever a man b---f---s his boyfriend.

That is all.

More From Penraker

Tancredo - Find someone who is hard on immigration and back them. You are a legitimate single issue candidate. Immigration is not being talked about enough. But a single issue candidate is a sideshow, not a serious candidate.

But is there such a candidate among those who "have a chanve to win?" Or do you just want to forget this issue so you can concentrate entirely on killing as many Arabs as possible?

That is all.

Penraker the Moron

The old neocon on Ron Paul:

[Ron Paul should] go to his real home, the Democrat nutball wing.

Paul is obviously not a Democrat. If Penrkaer wants to call him an extemist libertarian, fine. But the fact he dislikes the war and thinks that our foreign policies in part aggravated the situation in the Mideast does not make him a liberal.

No Democrat would have argued for abolishing the IRS, as Paul has done. Nor would he argue to eliminate the Departments of Education of Energy.

AmConMag understands Penraker's ilk.

That is all.

Sorry About Light Posting

Lots of work, and then a four-day vacation without computer access.

I'll try to get something up tomorrow (technically today, as it is now 1 in the morning).

That is all.

Spider-Man 3

Eh, not terrible, but the movie didn't really work in terms of providing a complete story.

If you read the novelization, it will make more sense, but there are a ton of major unanswered questions.

The major problem, of course, was trying to tie in 3 or 4 separate plots.

The Sandman role was made too sympathetic as well.

On the other hand, I think it was well-acted. Whatever problems were there were due to the script, not to the actors.

That is all.

Thoughts on the Debate

I saw part of it, and will see the rest of it later as I have videotaped it.

I think that in many ways, Ron Paul probably got the most out of the debate, for two reasons:

(1) He is a virtual unknown, so publicity automatically is a good thing for him. Everyone (at least everyone likely to vote in the primary) knows McCAin and Giuliani, and to a lesser extent Romney, so seeing their face and discovering that they exist is not a benefit for them. Paul on the other hand is going to get some recognition from the debate, which can only be a good thing for him.

(2) As the only anti-war Republican candidate, he can probably get most of the protest vote by GOP voters unsatisfied with the war. If someone who was perceived as anti-war (whether being so or not) but who was better known and considered more moderate - like Chuck Hagel - were running, Paul would probably be stuck at 1-2% with most antiwar GOPers voting for the "more moderate" candidate. But as it is, if you are GOP, wish to vote in the primary, and don't like the war, you have one option. Granted, this may only be 10-30% of the vote, but it's enough to keep him in the race and to get him some notoriety.

Tom Tancredo may have gotten a boost - I will have to listen more carefully to the immigration questions asked. But as at least some of the other candidates want to appear to be tough on immigration, he will have a harder time standing out, at least for now.

The best answers of the debate were when Tancredo pointed out that mandatory spending (entitlements) rather than discretionary spending was the elephant in the room, and when Paul pointed out that inflation was a tax. Both of them touched on things that otherwise would not have been mentioned.

That is all.

Linda Chavez Gets it Wrong

One has to wonder whether or not Linda Chavez even understands what she is talking about in this article about Iraq.

Her essential question is a fair one in some ways: how to "hasten the war's end without also undermining American troops."

But here is where she begins to go astray:

If Democrats insist on tying the military's hands in executing the war — even if they drop actual pull-out timetables — they will undermine the troops' safety.

Now, if she were talking about the idea that we ought to be more brutal, like those who wished to flatten Fallujah the minute they burned our mercenaries, well, that may be a morally bad idea, but at least it would make sense. But the idea that timetables or benchmarks should be thought of as "tying our troops hands," is ridiculous.

This reminds me of Mike Gallagher bitterly telling some Congressman or Senator that if he didn't want to see more deaths of U.S. troops, he should give them the funding they need. Considering the actual issue at stake here - continuing vs. not continuing the war - and considering that there is scant evidence that previous massive funding has reduced the danger for the soldiers or caused them to get what they need, it didn't make a lot of sense.

Then she starts insisting that the civil war in Iraq is actually a proxy war between Al Qaeda and Iran. I don't agree with the implication of this that if we got rid of Iran and Al Qaeda that the Shiites and Sunnis would calm down, but at least she does acknowledge later on that the Iraqis themselves are part of the problem on this front.

This statement, of course, reveals the true heart of the war party:

If the Democrats want to be effective in changing conditions on the ground in Iraq, they should explore ways to pressure the Iraqi government to resolve its internal differences — and punish others, including Iran, if they continue to interfere.

Ah, we ought to expand the conflict. So the Democrats should act like the more extreme elements of the Republican Party. Good to know.

So what does she think we can do to punish Iraq if its leaders don't get along the way we want and start solving problems?

f Iraqis, for example, cannot come up with a way to share their oil wealth among different regions and sectarian groups, we shouldn't continue to pour money into rebuilding their infrastructure. If they can't rein in corruption and graft, why should we foot the bill?

Yes, this would be a threat. Because as everyone knows, American-funded Iraqi reconstruction has been so successful that withdrawing it is our biggest card to play. And if things do getworse, the Iraqis will blame the politicians, causing the politicians to do what we want to get the funding - there is no way the Iraqis will blame us and redouble the effort to kill our troops.

That is all.

Thoughts on Gays and the Military

Whenever people bring up the stock concerns about allowing homosexuals to actively serve in the military, the usual response is "they said similar things about racisl integration, and look how wrong they were!"

On the other hand, people also expressed concerns about the integration of females into the military (a much more comparable situation), and they were largely correct.

Of course, most people would assume that the fears there were irrational and that like the fears of racial integration, proved to be wildly overblown.

Of course, that is largely because the media mostly ignored stories that put sexual integration into a bad light, or at least ignored the sexual integration aspect of it, as noted by Steve Sailer:

However, democracy requires an active press. When the news media self-censors news stories about the downsides to lowering standards to accommodate women, we have less democracy and more mediacracy. The power of working women in newsrooms lead to a major coverup of news stories about, say, the problems caused by the sexual integration of the military: e.g., plane crashes, kinder-gentler boot camps, rampant pregnancies, the state of naval wives whose husbands come back from long cruises on co-ed ships the father of some seawoman's new baby, etc.

For at least the first half of the 90's these kind of stories were only regularly available in the Moonie-funded Washington Times.

That is all.

Sexy Filipino Cheerleader

A new post up on Rankine 911 linking to a video of a hot Filipino cheerleader jumping around and cheering.

That is all.

The Inflation Tax

Ron Paul's candidacy was worth it if all we got out of it was that statement from him at the debate that inflation is a tax created by the government printing money (or the electronic banking equivalent).

For someone to actually say that outside of a discussion at an obscure and fringe internet site is a major forward in our discourse.

That is all.

Republican Presidential Debates

I know they will be tomorrow (Thursday May 3) but I can't find anything telling me what time.

Does anyone know what time they will be on, and why doesn't MSNBC have it posted on their front page? What kinbd of morons are they?

(Update: Wikipedia says 8-9:30 pm)

That is all.

Thoughts on Ethnic Tensions

This post by Daniel Larison got me thinking.

I recall there eing some concern about Iraq's ethnic fractiousness prior to the invasion. It may not have been a big concern by a lkot of people, but it worried me.

So any claims that Iraq's ethnic diversity has not contributed to the civil warrish aspects of the current conflict are, in my opinion, rather suspect. Likewise, claims that the ethnic conflict is a non-factor that pro-warriors made up as an excuse for why the war was going badly I find similarly unpersuasive. Finally, any claim that the intra-Iraqi conflict in Iraq is simple two-sided, whether it be terrorists against freedom-loving Iraqis, or patriotic Iraqis against collaborators is, in my opinion, simply an attempt to overdmplify for the sake of the appearance of moral clarity.

Nonetheless, I do not think that Sunnis and Shiites, even in Iraq, are necessarily destined to be at each others' throats and in an eternal struggle against one another.

Rather, the issue simply is that you have three major factions (Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds) and a host of smaller ones, all of whom have different goals and all of whom view their sectarian allegiances as more important than their allegiance to the central government - not just in an abstract moral sense, but in a political sense as well (as a counterexample, most Americans would probably not feel so much loyalty to a church that was actively trying to overthrow the government that they would not report the church to the authorities).

?This makes it difficult to get the people to govern themselves as a single unit. A dictator can impose order, but without some form of strong central authority keeping things together, the different factions get violent with one another simply because they have competing ideas that are incompatible. (And of course in the last twenty years at least there has been a lot of ethnic tension developed because of the political arrangements, with an ethnically Sunni Arab dictator lording it over everyone).

Merging Canada with the U.S., for example, would cause a lot of conflict due to very different ideas of government between the two nations. It's not that we are in conflict with one another; it's that our goals as nations are different. For the most obvious examples, look at gun control and state-provided health care.

So in my minds ethnic strife was inevitable the minute a power vacuum in Iraq occurred, whetehr or not the ethnicities had a long history of conflict.

That is all.

David Gaubatz and the Magical Vanishing WMDs

Melanie Phillips recently posted an article repeating claims by Dave Gaubatz that he had found uranium enrichment sites in Iraq. Supposedly Bush let these sites be looted by mistake, which is why he is covering it up, although it would vindicate the WMD case for war.

Phillips blogs about it here.

Unqualified Offerings has posts here and here about it, as do a handful of others, including Julian Sanchez and Lawrence Auster.

There are a lot of reasons to doubt this story and to think that Gaubatz is loony (click on the first link to an Unqualified Offerings post and they provide a bunch of links showing this), but on the whole the most notable thing about this claim, in my opinion, is that it isn't really new. Three years ago, Michael Ledeen claimed that he had contacts who had discovered Saddam's WMDs and could confirm that they had been moved to Iran and that the CIA refused to investigate.

So this isn't even a new conspiracy theory.

(To be fair, I have not seen this mentioned much in the mainstream media, nor have I found more than a smattering of commentary on this topic by pro-war pundits, so it would be unfair to assume that this elaborate conspiracy theory represents the beliefs of the majority of pro-warriors).

That is all.

Why Libertarian Open-Bordersism Makes No Sense

I think that ReticentMan, a commenter on the ISteve archives, explains it best:

I think that no government interference is default the best option for the welfare of US citizens, unless there are compelling reasons otherwise. Not importing massive amounts of communist poor to ruin one of the only countries in the world that is even within a shouting distance of a libertarian ideal is quite a compelling reason.

That is all.

Scary News for Gun Owners

Chicago's corrupt Mayor Daley is attmpting to register guns nationwide. And to use registration to confiscate guns in Chicago.

This is why it is bad for the government to require that records be kept of gun purchases. It leads to registration, which leads to confiscation.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Sondra, Protein Wisdom, and Ilkka.

That is all.

More on Abortion

Apropos of my previous post, this article (thanx and a tip o' the hat to Penraker, although I won't bother to find the specific post right now) states that it is getting harder in Britain to find doctors willing to perform abortions.

How long will it be, I wonder, before someone starts passing laws requiring docotrs (or at least OB-GYNs) to perform abortions if they want to keep their medical license? And if they do, which side do you think that the "pro-choicers" at Pandagon, Feministe, and Alas will come down on?

And if they come down on the side of requiring doctors to provide abortion, will they refer to the position of allowing doctors to opt out as "anti-choice" and abortion mandates as "pro-choice?"

Time will tell.

That is all.

Pro-Abortion, not Pro-Choice

Isn't it interesting how the people who call themselves "pro-choice" in the end want to restrict everyone else's choices to get their way?

In this post at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte celebrates a Mexico City abortion law that, among other things, requires all public and private hospitals to perform abortions.

So if you don't want to provide abortions, you can't open a hospital.

How many Catholic church-run hospitals are in Mexico City? If there are any, how long until this mandate causes some of them to shut down?

But of course, that's what "choice" is all about for the Pandagon/Feministe/Alas crowd - not simply about not having others interfere with your decision to have an abortion, forcing everyone else to provide you with one. (Not that all pro-choicers or all feminists feel that way, mind you).

That is all.

Did Anti-Gun Bigotry Prevent the Police from Warning the Virginia Tech Campus?

Lawrence Auster on the failures of the Virginia Tech leadership.

That is all.

All News is Good News from Iraq

Penraker introducing a long quote from Bill Roggio, says:

One major takeaway is that we are back to Al Qaeda bombings being the principal threat - not the sectarian violence. That still occurs, but is much diminished. This is, of course a great stride forward.

Who wants to bet that if the violence continues or gets worse, next he will be telling us that some other entity is responsible for it, and that that is the really good news? He might even suggest that it is sectarian violence, but at least we stopped Al Qaeda!

That is all.

An Unorthodox Thought on Gonzalez v. Carhart

The best (and likely only legitimate) reason for a Supreme Court justice who wanted to strike down the federal partial-birth/intact dilation and extraction abortion ban in Gonzalez v. Carhart to do so would have been to have pointed out, as Dan Tarrant did, that it is a federal law and the federal government is not authorized to regulate abortion (even if abortion is murder, murder is still an issue for the states).

Of course, I don't think anyone did that because none of the people who voted to strike it down believe that the states have any business regulating abortion, and indeed probably do not believei n the separation of powers doctrine anyway. To strike down the ruling on that basis would open a can of worms in regards to federal law.

One might, of course, wonder why none of the conservative justices voted against it on that basis. The answer, of course, is that they have also been raised on the ethic of federal omnipotence.

Do I think it should have been struck down on that basis? Or does the 14th amendment equal protection clause mean that it would be unconscionable discrimination not to protect the unborn?

I probably would strike it down on that - and only that basis - and send the matter to the states, but I would have to think more about it to be certain.

That is all.

More Hypocrisy

I'd be more inclined to take these worries about atheists being persecuted seriously if the commenters weren't essentially agitating that religious people ought to be persecuted.

That is all.

Feminists Can Be Such Hypocrites

Jill over at Feministe is whining about how, in the recent decision on partial-birth abortion/intact dilation and extraction, the Supreme Court Judges let their personal religious beliefs, rather than the Constitution and judicial precedent, decide the case.

This would impress me if I thought that the folks at Feministe gave a flying fig about the constitution or precedent.

But let's be honest, what is really upsetting poor Jill is that case was decided against the way she wanted it decided. If she really cared about judges letting their personal beliefs get in the way, shouldn't she consider for a moment the fact tha Roe v. Wade was decided largely not on the merits of the law but based on the fact that the judges wanted to make abortion legal? If she cared about precedent, shouldn't she also be decrying Brown v. Board of Education, which upset the precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson?

Shouldn't she write about how upset she is that campaign finance reform was considered constitutional by the Supreme Court or that it validated lots of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's projects which are nowhere in the Constitution authorized?

If she thinks the decision is a bad one, fine. If she believes that this procedure should not be prohibited, fine. If she thinks that the judges would have been right to have struck down the law, fine.

But please don't pretend that you have a problem with judges making decisions based on their personal beliefs when that is how abortion got legalized (and how half of the left-winger's agenda got passed since the 1930s*) in the first place.

That is all.

*Either from the Court imposing its own views (e.g. Roe v. Wade), or from the Court validating unconstitutionl policies (e.g. Roosevelt).

Don't Forget the Fairy Dust if You Want to Fly...

Mark Levin thinks that Harry Reid should resign because he doesn't think enough happy thoughts about Iraq.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Andrew Sullivan.

That is all.

Implications are Everything

Does anyone else notice that in this post about a woman being arrested for the mere suspicion of an attempted abortion, no one seems to consider the possibility that the reason that the polcie went so far overboard may be because this incident (presumably) didn't happen in the U.S. with people who have U.S. ideas of justice and probable cause?

The woman is reported to be Indian, and the newspaper report is from a Bahrainian newspaper. Whether this happened in India or to an Indian alein in Bahrain, or happened elsewhere is not clear. But there is precious little evidence here to support the idea that something like this will happen here.

That is all.

Udolpho has the Best Footnotes

On Obama:
Does Obama have all his facts there? WHO THE HELL CARES, HE HEALS MY SOUL WITH WORDS OF HOPE!

No, it was the audacity of his hope that healed me.

That is all.

Auster and Wardlow on Race

Mean Mr. Mustard and one of Lawrence Auster's commentors make an excellent point.

When we get to the point where "racism," a term that used to refer to hatred or violent hatred of other races, is used to refer to anyone who doesn't want the white race (by which I mean people of European ancestry - the actual color of one's skin is not the issue here) to disappear, then eventually you end up making white extremism more popular, because when you force people to choose between extremist hatred of others and hating their own, they will naturally hate others first.

Or, as one of Mustard's commenters said:

If normal, healthy impulses are held to be synonymous with extremism, then people will come to think of extremism as normal and healthy.

This is why I was so "snarky" in this post. Of course, people like Betacandy can qualify the term "racism" all they want, but unless they declare racism (as long as it is not hatred) to be morally neutral, they are still saying that morally, white people should be indifferent to the survival of their race. I dislike the idea that a concern for European-American survival is termed the same way that a desire to, e.g., deny freedom to African-Americans is.

"Racism" is a loaded term, so using it to refer to any preference towards one's own, or simply to the act of wanting one's own to survive, ultimately denigrates the morality of such an impulse, regardless of how unjudgmental or morally neutral to try to make the term seem. (So, by the way, does referring to such an impulse as "narcissism").

(Also by the way note that this has nothing to do with one race being better than the other - one can want one's own to survive merely because they are his own - he neither need feel animosity toward others nor superiority toward them.

That is all.

Another Thought on Iraq

Another problem with Charles Krauthamer's appraisal of the Iraq situation (see my first post here), and one that seems to occur regularly with Iraq War pundits, is the assumption that the Iraqi insurgency is equivalent to, or largely overlaps with, Al Qaeda.

Why? Because, as Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, has written, 14 of the 18 tribal leaders in Anbar have turned against al Qaeda. As a result, thousands of Sunni recruits are turning up at police stations where none could be seen before. For the first time, former insurgent strongholds such as Ramadi have a Sunni police force fighting essentially on our side.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a major critic of the Bush war policy, now reports that in Anbar, al Qaeda is facing “a real and growing groundswell of Sunni tribal opposition.” And that “this is a crucial struggle and it is going our way—for now.”

Amongst pro-war pundits, there often seem to be statements that the Iraqis are rejecting Al Qaeda or something to that effect, with the implication that doing so puts them either on our side or at least away from being violently opposed to us.

This doesn't seem to make sense to me, as Al Qaeda, even if it is the greatest threat to the U.S. of any of the terrorist organizations, is not, as far as I can tell, the major contributor towards violence in Iraq. While people turning away from Al Qaeda is a good thing, I don't think that it should be seen as a sign of any major success in the mission of Iraqi pacification.

As for the increased Sunni police recruitment, this could be a mixed blessing, depending on whether the they wish to fight on our side as Krauthammer suggests, or just to have a police force to try and keep up with the Shiites.

That is all.

Krauthammer and Reality

Charles Krauthammer is insisting that we are (for a change) making progress and that this is the worst time for people to pull us out of Iraq, when we are actually finally winning.

As nice a claim as this is, one has to remember that it has been repeated throughout the war, with it never actually coming true. If, a year from now, we are worse off than we are now, doubtless some hawk (maybe even Krauthammer himself) will be pushing the line that "this time we really mean it" and insist that we just need to hold on a little longer.

But of course, are his claims accurate?

Well, coalition hostile death rates in Iraq have been fairly high since about October of 2006, with the least bloody month being November (67 hostile deaths). Currently, we are on our way toward a >100 death toll for this month.

Unfortunately, this is not as good a metric for success or failure right now, due to the surge, as it was for much of the war. It is highly likely that the increased death toll is at least partly from our more aggressive tactics in confronting the insurgents, which would mean that it does not necessarily indicate a strengthening of the insurgency. Of course, unless the death toll goes down within, say, three or four months, it will begin to indicate something less than success, as the agressive confrontation with the enemy will be shown not to have significantly weakened him.

Media-reported civilian deaths have also remained high since July of 2006, although this may be a function of better reporting rather than increased violence.

Nonetheless, Krauthammer's optimism seems long on secondhand claims and short on specifics. He largely deals with contradictory evidence by mentioning it but dismissing it (Thursday’s bridge and Green Zone attacks show the insurgents’ ability to bomb sensitive sites. On the other hand, pacification is proceeding. , by acknowledging the possibility of failure but then saying, essentially, "but let's not talk about that" ([Terry McCarthy] concluded that “nobody knows if this small safe zone will expand or get swallowed up again by violence. For the time being though, people here are happy to enjoy a life that looks almost normal.”), or by simply ignoring it, as Daniel Larison points out.

Obviously, the recent explosion in the parliament building puts our ability to provide security in very serious question.

Is it possible for us to pacify Iraq? Certainly. But it would take many more troops, a much more dismissive attitude toward Iraqis (if they don't do exactly as we want, we can kill them or imprison them with impunity, including those in charge of the government), and a much larger and harder commitment in general, not just a 10% or 20% increase in troops.

Of course, that brings up the question, would what it would take to win be worth it?

That is all.

Why Ann Coulter is Despicable

Because she called John Edwards (by implication) a "faggot," when "ambulance chaser" would have been so much more accurate and appropriate.

That is all.

Thoughts on Duke

(1) I believe that the boys who were accused of raping the alleged victim were innocent.

(2) I have no idea whether the alleged victim was attacked by someone else, weasn't attacked but is mentally unstable and thinks she was, or was lying out of malice.

(3) I am >90% certain that MikeNifong acted out of malice and/or self-aggrandizement.

(4) It would not surprise me if I were to find out later that the alleged victim had second thoughts about going ahead with the accusations at some point and was threatened by Nifong (e.g. he'd prosecute her for making a false charge or perhaps find some peccadillo out of her past to prosecute her on) if she didn't keep to her story.

That is all.

Imus Encourages Black Dysfunction

I'm not particularly inclined toward Imus in the recent controversy.

While I think that Jackson and Sharpton should shut the Hell up for once and not try to get in on a piece of the action this time, what Imus said was pretty bad.

No, not the "nappy-headed" part. Black people have curlier, kinkier hair than whites or Asians. Get over it.

The "ho" part.

In essence, he called the basketball players whores, or prostitutes.

Granted, a lot of black people refer to women this way, and it permeates a lot of rap and hip-hop music.

On the other hand, popular black culture in the U.S. has become rather a cesspool.

Think I sound racist? Go to Hell. When a large segment of black culture is dedicated to the notion that "pimpin'" should be an aspiration, it is a cesspool.

The idea that women are collectively "hos" or that they should be thought of as such is an idea that should be discouraged. If the black community in the U.S. won't do it itself, then it's time for whites to stand up and yell them that it is not acceptable. And if some people call us racist, we should tell tehm to go to Hell.

The last thing that blacks need from whites is for the whites to encourage and emulate black dysfunctionality.

Because whites usually have the resources to be able to step away from the dysfunction before it engulfs is. Blacks usually don't. So they suffer the consequences of a breakdown in civility and civilization far more than we do.

And that is one area where "white privilege" really is an issue.

That is all.

Run 'Em Over!

John Goes discusses a stupid way to protest.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Jeremy Sapienza.

That is all.

"If Our Country is like to Die, Let it Die"

Lawrence Auster on a despicable aspect of modern liberalism.

That is all.

BMI and Socialized Healthcare

Liberals are constantly stating that the U.S.'s high rates of health problems, higher infant mortality rates, and high rates of health spending are entirely due to thge fact that we do not have a completely socialized health care system.

I wonder, though, how much of it is due to things like the fact that we have the highest body-mass index in the world (at least in the developed world).

That is all.

For Those Who Are Interested

What is the significance of the resurrection, you ask?

Well, as an evangelical Christian, here is my answer:

Well, the short form of the gospel is this:

No one is perfect. No one is holy. Our falling short of this is called "sin."

God demands holiness. Therefore, our sin separates us from Him. In the current world, sin permeates the world, so there is sickness and death and rebellion.

God, in His physical presence aspect (God the Son) dealt with sin by becoming a man - Jesus of Nazareth (the Messiah, or Christ). As a man, he lived a perfect life. He eventually was crucified, and in dying on the cross, he paid the penalty for mankind's [by which I mean all humans'] sins. Being infinite God, he was able to pay the sin penalty in a finite amount of time (as opposed to being separated from God for all eternity, which is the penalty for any other human), and being human he was able to pay the penalty for humans at all.

As sin is the root cause of death, and as Jesus took all sin upon Himself, he would have to remain dead as long as any of that sin remained unpaid for. Therefore, raising Himself from the dead proved that he had taken care of sin once and for all.

(Of course, there is a catch. For his payment to be effective for a person, it has to be accepted. Which is why one must believe in Jesus to be saved).

That is all for this post.

HE IS RISEN!

Happy Easter to all.

That is all.

Propaganda and the Control of Information

Interesting thoughts by Wendy McElroy.

That is all.

"Tolerance"

"Tolerance" is what liberal groups claim they want when they are not winning. When they see themselves as winning, however, they suddenly have no interest in tolerating those who believe differently than they do and no problem with imposing their moral beliefs on others.

Case in point.

That is all.

Was the Death of One of Our Beloved Film Directors and His Son at the Wheels of an Illegal Alien?

Nicholas Stix writes about the death of Bob Clark and Ariel Hanrath-Clark and the unwillingness to divulge legal status of the alleged drunk driver who allegedly killed them.

That is all.

Some Thoughts on those Sailors

While I am not in favor of going to war with Iran, and am not as anti-Iranian as most, I nevertheless am more inclined to trust the UK's account of things than the Iranians', and also think that some commentators (including Sailer and Raimondo) are being a little too trusting of Iran's statements on the issue.

That is all.

Good, I Was Wrong

pparently the captured and released British sailors are recanting their claims that they had strayed into Iranian waters. So this is no longer accurate. Good.

That is all.

Illegal Aliens are "Cheap" Labor

No, they are not.

That is all.

More on McCain

Wendy McElroy has a good post about McCain's mendacity.

That is all.

The British Captured/Abducted/Kidnaped/Etc. Sailors

Update: This post is no longer correct. The sailors have recanted.

(edited for conciseness)

I am not as upset as some are by the fact that these people spoke against their own country while captured. I am, however, upset that now that they have been released, they are not going on television and saying "Iran? Screw You! Remember those things I said? Lies! You're a bunch of S.O.B.s!" recanting.

Or something to that effect.

That is all.

Macro and Micro-Evo Psych

One of the complaints that I have heard about evolutionary psychology is that it is hogwash because you can come up with an explanation for almost any behavior; that is, given practically indistinguishable environments, you can explain why someone always does (a) or never does (a). It doesn't lend itself to falsifiable predictions.

The problem here is that this is confusing micro-evo psych and macro-psych. Miro-evo psych is the attempt to find "natural selection" explanations for specific behaviors or to come up with general rules for what behaviors different circumstances will produce.

Macro-evo psych, on the other hand, is the simple statement of these four principles:

(1) Much of human behavior is geared toward the natural drive to reproduce one's genes.

(2) Much of human behavior is influenced by one's genes, and therefore genes that influence behavior that leads toward reproductive success tend to predominate. It is through this mechanism that survival/reproductive strategies become partially hardwired into us.

(3) Successful survival/reproductive strategies are partly consciously chosen and reasoned out. They are partly influenced by society. But they are partly driven by instinct that is largely genetic.

(4) The genetic/heritable components of behavior will persist despite changes in culture and environment for as long as the genes do.

Although it is not a principle of evo-psych per se, the major policy implication of evo-psych is that any social policy aimed at changing behavior needs t take into account how much of that behavior is hardwired and then figure out the best way to deal with the fact of this hardwiring. Moreover, any social policy at all must take this hardwiring into account when one is trying to work out the policy's implications.

That is all.

Speaking the Unspeakable

Heather MacDonald provides some context for all of the hysteria over suposedly racist policing.

Until we are willing to address directly the fact that African-Americans commit far more criminal acts per capita than European- or Asian-Americans (Latinos almost certainly commit more crime per capita than the European- or Asian-Americans too, although the government dopesn't keep direct statistics of it) we will never really deal with the problem.

The current way of dealing with the issue is to try to avoid saying anything directly about black crime rates, while acting surprised at how many black men are in jail or prison. In other words, tacitly approving of the liberal explanation for the discrepancy (institutional racism) while never trying to correct the supposed flaws causing it.

I think honesty would be a better policy. We can argue about why there are so many more criminals per capita in the black community, but let's at least discuss the fact that there are.

That is all.

A Good Point

Lawrence Auster posted an old Sam Francis quote recently:

If the only problem with illegal immigration is that it’s illegal, if you’re not willing to say mass immigration by itself is a problem, then why should we have any laws against it at all?

This is a more succinct way of saying what I said here.

That is all.

John McCain, Liar

All of those radio talk show hosts (I can't find links right now, but I remember hearing one of them talk about it) and bloggers link link linkmaking fun of Michael Ware and Wolf Blitzer for their incredulity at John McCain's statements that Baghdad was getting so much safer (see transcript), are, once again, all wet.

Of course Baghdad is realtively safe to walk through if you have the entourage that McCain has.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Mona from Unqualified Offerings.

That is all.

More White Privilege and Institutional Racism

Can you believe how badly our country oppresses blacks?

That is all.

Dennis Prager is an Idiot

Bush cannot be blamed for the problems in Iraq, because they were unforeseeable, says Mr. Prager.

Apparently the idea that Iraqi would be willing to kill other Iraqis as part of the insurgency is too much for his widdle bwain to take in.

There are respectable arguments to be made against America's initially going into Iraq. But intellectually honest opponents of the war have to acknowledge that no one could anticipate an "insurgency" that included people leaving children in a car and then blowing them up.

No one could anticipate that civilians would be used to carry bombs to kill the enemy? Or that Iraqis who allied themselves with the occupying army would be killed as "collaborators?" Or that maybe a lot of the Iraqis don't see it as killing their own people when the people they ar killing are from a rival tribe or sect?

Give me a break, Dennis.

That is all.

NBC and USA Network Stupidity

You know, some people would like to have quick summaries of every episode of a show at their disposal.

So why do the idiots at NBC not have these for every episode of Law & Order: SVU? And why do the idiots at USA not have their own episode guide?

And why does everyone use Macromedia Flash Player for EVERYTHING? Couldn't at least the links be in html format of something, so you can see what they are to without having to click them, or so that you can choose how to open the links in using right-click?

Why does everyone in media (i.e. TV, movies, singers) use technology to make their websites more complicated rather than trying to make them accessible?

That is all.

Slip of the Tongue

Via Daniel Larison:

This article in the Weekly Standard is mostly unobjectionable, although this one point is rather odd:

For the fact is that Dicker, like Alan Dershowitz, and like most American Jews, is more committed to the liberal Democratic political agenda than she is to Israel. Unlike evangelicals, these Jews didn't see Israel's security trumping everything else. They can't bring themselves to make common cause with conservative Zionist Christians because they hate the conservative agenda more than they love Israel.

The implication is pretty much that it is appropriate for American Jews to put Israel first, and to be more loyal to Israel than they are to whatever principles they wish to see uphelkd in this country.

Now don't get me wrong, I think it is great for my fellow evangelicals and Jews to be geting along, and I have no problem with someone supporting Israel and believing that our policy in the Middle East should reflect the fact that we are allies. Nonetheless, the implication that someone who is an American citizen should be more concerned with the "mother country" (as it were) than in the nation that they belong to is rather bizarre, and makes it difficult to honestly defend against charges that the neoconservatives (at least those neocons who consider the Weekly Standard their newsletter) have dual loyalties.

That is all.

Interesting Look into the Mind of an Anarchist Who is Taking a Liberal Position

Let me put this question more directly. Is it racist for white people not to want to die out?

Apparently so.

That is all.

The Toronto Vampire Scene

I recently found seasons one and two of Forever Knight on DVD for only $20 apiece, which is why I haven't had much time to blog.

That is all.

Bastards

The "Flying Imams" should be deported immediately, citizenship or no.

These half-dozen despicable people ought to be thrown out of our country.

That is all.