Iranians Plea for Civilization

A good many college students in Iran are protesting to civilize this very backward nation. Fight on, brothers and sisters!

Hate Beating on NYC Subway

A group of 10 white retards on an NYC subway severely beat a white Jew for answering, "Happy Hanuka", when they shouted "Merry Christmas." A non-white Muslim immigrant helped the victim, and for his trouble also received a severe beating. One got a broken nose and the other two extremely blackened eyes. The ten savages got arrested at the next stop. Two have prior arrests for hate crimes against blacks. This article presents myspace photos of all the savages: they are young, attractive, and disposed to black thug culture; one with Jesus tatoo. Ironically, two of the savages claim to be Jews, including one whose home displays a Star of David and Hanuka decorations.

The Jew and the Muslim have becom friends, and the Muslim subsequently attended a Hanuka party at the Jew's house. Thank god that's a much more normal state of affairs for humans residing in contemporary US. I'm also happy to report from many late-night NYC subway rides and sidewalk strolls that NYC is amazingly safe, including for honkeys walking solo in black neighborhoods.



Article, article, More video

Another Case of AIDS Caused by "Anti-HIV" Drugs

Here's a woman who got mis-diagnosed as "HIV-positive". Naturally, physicians who believe that "HIV tests" indicate HIV infections, and that HIV infections cause AIDS, prescribed her "anti-HIV" drugs. And just as naturally, those drugs started causing at least one official "AIDS" condition, in this case: drastic weight loss. I assume that these AIDS doctors attributed the weight loss to the presumed "HIV infection", and labeled this symptom "AIDS". Now we discover that the original HIV diagnosis was wrong.

So if these "anti-HIV" drugs caused this case of "AIDS" in an "HIV-neg" woman, can't those same drugs cause "AIDS" even in the "HIV-positive" patients?

Noose Fraud

At least one of the many shocking Noose hangings has been exposed as a fraud, perpetuated by a black person attempting to create the illusion of a white-on-black "hate crime". In this case, the perpetrator was a Baltimore firefighter who had flunked a certification test after an effort to crackdown on test cheating. The note he displayed with the noose attempted to characterize the anti-cheating effort as an anti-black racism effort. Previously in the same fire department a media maelstrom erupted when a moose head got decorated with an afro, gold chain, and gold teeth. Local NAACP & municipal leaders naturally declared this an example of persistent anti-black racism in the fire department. That stunt also got traced back to non-honkeys, in this case, some black firefighters having some fun.

Let's Shutter the CIA...

...for incompetence, treason, and mutiny. So says Christopher Hitchens. Makes sense to me. The conduct of Esquire covergirl Valerie Plame, its incorrect predictions about the Soviet fall and Hussein's designs on Kuwait, and now its preposterous exoneration of Iran's nuclear status all contribute to this assessment.

Detroit's Grocery Vacuum

As much as devoted Detroit boosters plea to the contrary (see attached article from "Model D", my favorite Detroit booster site), Detroit lacks even a single grocery store that would satisfy anybody with even a modicum of food sophistication. Much hoopla attended the openings of clean new grocery stores recently, Mexicantown's "Honey Bee", and Mike's Fresh Market near Palmer Woods. These places are new and clean, but they are very inferior grocery stores... unless you want a big bag of Doritos and a liter of Coke. Food sophisticates in Detroit cry out.

Medicaid Fraud Bodes Poorly for Natl Health Care

These are the people that lefties want in charge of the entire US medical industry? Sixty billion bucks annually tax payers now pay in Medicaid fraud. Dirty rotten profit mongers never tolerate such inefficiency.

Courage to Ignore Global Warming Hysteria

BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.

Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday. "Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants. "The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added. (LINK)

Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists. "UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.

"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN's climate claims. "This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences," Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: "Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year." - LINK)

Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK) "We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog. Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." (LINK)

Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK) "Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.

[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds 'Solar changes significantly alter climate' (11-3-07) (LINK) & "New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 - 2002" (LINK) & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period '0.3C Warmer than 20th Century' (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" LINK ]

Con'd...

Plame - Wilson Sham Continues

I still don't understand how anybody can earnestly and honestly believe that Valarie Plame got "outed". If she and husband Joe Wilson was earnestly and honestly devoted to protecting her employment status, would he really have penned an NYT op-ed loudly proclaiming his own assignment obtained literally through her offices? What transparent rubbish. Here's a fresh update on the seemingly endless benefits attending the Wilcon-Plames as a result of the "outing" that so riled them.

Denmark's High Tax Rates Scare Away Tax Rev

Denmark's income tax rate is so high that productive people flee or spend time devising and implementing tax dodges. Meanwhile govt coffers shrivel. Paradoxically, many of the fleeing workers are peddling (in other countries) their superb education provided by Denmark's "free" universities. In order to continue providing this universal "free" academic training, Denmark's lefty politicos keep elevating the tax rates, which... You get the idea.

Another Black-on-White "Hate Crime"

Nowadays, most racial "hate crimes" committed in the US comprise black retards attacking white victims, as in this new case where some black teens in Baltimore gang-beat a white woman. Expect it to get no attention in the corporate media. Even in this local news article, racial assignments don't get made until the very end of the article.

Of course, when white retards beat a black victim, the media sets up shop, headlines announce the racial assignments of the players, and massive angry protests erupt, proclaiming this to be a racist nation. In reality, few people f any "race" ever experience this today in the US, though when it does happen, it's usually some black idiots attacking a white person.

And now yet a second case of retarded black teens attacking white folks on Baltimore's bus. Notice the tiny size of this local report, and the absence of any consideration from the national press, or those who earn their livings crying racism. Imagine the press attention if white retards were attacking black folks on the bus.

Here's an update on the second attack. We learn now that the driver refused to help at all, not even calling police, telling the pleading victims that he couldn't because it would result in him "getting in trouble."

College Sports a Sham

This NYT article documents how people attending universities on "sports scholarships" hardly qualify as students. Why do universities even have "sports scholarships"?, some brain-active profs want to know.

Paul v. Mike: Vouchers, Socialism, Capitalism,

Over the weekend Mike visited me from Chicago, where he works on his MBA from U-Chi, the bastion of free-market, "supply side" economics. At a party we had in Detroit, Mike railed against vouchers, the "problem" of people accumulating wealth and passing it to their kids, and the "unfairness" (which he wants to correct via govt actions) of people with more money having more access to resources such as better schools.

I argued that: the biggest problem that poor people have today in the US is themselves: they fail to make the best choices, and to seize the best opportunities, available to them. The best role for govt, I said, was to get out of the way, and to permit these people to benefit from such choices as:

- Living a crime-free life, in which they refrain from: assaulting, burgling, raping, shop-lifting, and vandalizing.
- Respecting the homes and neighborhoods that they have, no matter how modest, keeping them as clean and as well-maintained as they can, throwing their trash in designated garbage cans, and even dispatching the litter of others.
- Finding spouses and refraining from pregnancy until they have done so.
- Dressing and conducting themselves in accordance with the standards of self-sufficient, productive people. This means pleasant dispositions and polite behavior in public.
- Reading books, obeying teachers, completing school assignments, graduating from high school.
- Seeking, accepting, and holding the best job that they can find, with no "standards" against any type of work, such as "being too good" to work at McDonalds.

I further argued that as long as the productive, self-sufficient portion of society is going to fund some resources for "poor" people, the best sources for taking those dollars and providing resources to these "poor" people are private enterprises making a profit. I pointed out that where this happens -- such as in the case of the food and housing paid for by taxes -- these "poor" beneficiaries get much higher quality goods and services than where tax spending is restricted to government sources, such as for schooling. Thus I claim that govt education dollars should take the form of free-market vouchers, just as govt dollars do for other programs, such as food stamps, WIC cards, and Section 8 vouchers.

Here are some articles that I want Mike to read, in addition to my comments:

Poor getting richer, rich getting less rich (Tom Sowell)

Old Americans are rich, not poor (Tom Sowell)

Stop Making a Difference (Tom Sowell)

Health care: Govt vs Private (Walter Williams)

Economics & Property Rights (Walter Williams)

Creating Effective Incentives (Walter Williams)

Also, the link embedded in the title of this post, shows that from 1996 through 2005, that "the poor" are "getting less poor" and "the rich" are getting "less rich", exploding the claims that "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. To the contrary, the poorest people in 1996 had their income increase nearly 100% by 2005; the richest people in 1996 were the only income strata of Americans to have their income dip during this time. Claims to the contrary involve comparing poor people today with poor people of ten years back, without accounting for people moving from one group to the other during this time.

And this:

Walter Williams has another reason to embrace vouchers: they will enable the individuals who compose the market to decide such controversial topics as school prayer and sex ed. For people bound by finances to the govt education option K-12, they must all get the same decision in these matters. With vouchers, po' black parents can send their kids to whatever school has the policies that they like, such as prayer with sex ed.

Democrats: Party of the Rich

The richer you are, the more like you are to vote democrat. I wonder if this is because voting democrat is a luxury, and that the less wealthy you are the more likely you are to realize that low taxes, vouchers, and other advertised republican principals will increase your chances of receiving rewards for smart choices. I also wonder how these stats apply to black folks, who are 90% devoted to the tax-and-spend party.

NYC Murder: Low Numbers, Mostly Black

Murder in NYC will fall below 500 this year, a remarkably low number for such a huge city (8 million). As with the rest of the country, most of the killers are black men (61%), though black men compose only a minority of the residents (NYC is about 25%, and thus about 12.5% black male).

Naturally the race stats fall at the end of the article, because they contradict claims of a racist USA where black folks face a dastardly white enemy. Only about 7% of the killers (and murder victims) in NYC come from the horribly racist and vile honkey population, cops attribute only a tiny 35 murders to strangers, and blacks compose 66% of the murder victims.

These stats prove that:

- NYC is a very, very safe city for everyone;
- In NYC, you have nearly no murder risk from strangers;
- Black men are about 5 times more likely to commit murder than white folks
- Black men are committing very, very few murders. NYC contains about 2 million black folks, and these people committed only about 300 murders. Compare that to Detroit, with about 750,000 black folks committing about 1,000 annual murders.

All We Are Saying, is Give Guns a Chance

These students at Tx State U at San Marcos want to see if students and profs packing heat will deter or squash violence on campus. I support giving this a try, but campus violence is so rare that resulting stats could not confirm a benefit, only at best demonstrate a lack of calamity. I suppose that even that would prove something useful...

Debunking "Soul Food"

An 1800s cookbook by a black woman proves that black folks all along have been cooking and eating foods of complexity and variety, not merely "Southern poverty cooking."

From today's NYT:
The black liberation movement of the 1960’s had celebrated “soul food”: dishes with a debt to Africa, like black-eyed peas, greens, gumbo and fried chicken. Neither the activists nor the scholars who later devoted themselves to black studies intended those dishes to be seen as the food on the stove of every black cook in America. But that is exactly what happened, historians say.

Who's Fighting Today's KKK?

Amen, Bill Cosby: People who admire those who gave their lives fighting the KKK in begone days today cower rather than confront those who now terrorize black folks. Today's terrorists, of course, and the neighbor's kids, killing, stealing, robbing, vandalizing, intimidating, and disrupting classrooms and school hallways and lunch rooms.

McCarthy Vindicated?

Looks liks eSen. Eugen McCarthy was correct, and his opponents over the years incorrect, about Soviet spies and secret communists working in the US federal government.

Global Warming A Scam: Weather Chanel Founder

If this meteorologist had endorsed Al Gore's view, his view would add to the "overwhelming" scientific vote in favor of human-caused climate catastrophes. Instead, it will get ignored.

Driving While Black, A Critical Look

Thomas Sowell finds no problem driving around the US, which makes him no different than any of the other millions of productive black people around the nation.

Detroit Voters Angry About Photo ID Requirement?

Why would any voters respond with anger when denied the ability to register a vote against their name on a ballot ledger? Does it anger them that they can't withdraw cash from a checking account bearing their name without an ID? Should they not be glad at this protection against somebody stealing their vote?

Racism In Mortgage Rates? Hardly

This NYT article attributes racism to explaining higher interest rates for an all-black neighborhood in Detroit than for an all-white neighborhood in the Detroit suburb of Plymouth, despite similar average income levels. But interest rates also are affected profoundly by:

1. Crime rates, which drive up monthly expenses for home and auto insurance. Plymouth is approximately crime-free, and Detroit is the opposite.
2. Property taxes, which also drive up monthly expenses. Detroit has double the metro average.
3. Consumer credit scores.
4. Resale expectations. If the writer of this article were loaning money for mortgages, where would he rather have to deal with resale? The answer is not even close.

One does not have to look for racism to explain the differences in mortgage rates here.

Michael Medved's Open Letter to Rep. Ron Paul

Since Paul Hue is such an avid supporter of Congressman Paul, I can't help but wonder what his (and Ron Paul's) response would be to this:

Dear Congressman Paul:

Your Presidential campaign has drawn the enthusiastic support of an imposing collection of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 “Truthers” and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists.

Do you welcome- or repudiate – the support of such factions?

More specifically, your columns have been featured for several years in the American Free Press –a publication of the nation’s leading Holocaust Denier and anti-Semitic agitator, Willis Carto. His book club even recommends works that glorify the Nazi SS, and glowingly describe the “comforts and amenities” provided for inmates of Auschwitz.

Have your columns appeared in the American Free Press with your knowledge and approval? As a Presidential candidate, will you now disassociate yourself, clearly and publicly, from the poisonous propaganda promoted in such publications?

As a guest on my syndicated radio show, you answered my questions directly and fearlessly. Will you now answer these pressing questions, and eliminate all associations between your campaign and some of the most loathsome fringe groups in American society?

Along with my listeners (and many of your own supporters), I eagerly await your response.

Respectfully, Michael Medved

If all of these assertions Medved makes here are true, which as far as I've been able to discern they are, it's beyond me how anyone could support this loon as a legitimate presidential candidate. But hey, that's just me.

US Poor Gain Wealth... If They Behave

From the essay:

For the most part, long-term poverty today is self-inflicted. To see this, let's examine some numbers from the Census Bureau's 2004 Current Population Survey. There's one segment of the black population that suffers only a 9.9 percent poverty rate, and only 13.7 percent of their under-5-year-olds are poor. There's another segment of the black population that suffers a 39.5 percent poverty rate, and 58.1 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.

Among whites, one population segment suffers a 6 percent poverty rate, and only 9.9 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. Another segment of the white population suffers a 26.4 percent poverty rate, and 52 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.

What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? The only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage.

Halloween Candy Ban Wrongheaded

Leaders of a Syracuse, NY school district think they're helping kids by banning candy and cakes. Instead they are exposing their ignorance of perfectly healthful candy and cakes, made from fine natural ingredients, loaded with nutrients and tasting even better than the much more popular junk versions which have given treats a bad name. Why not mandate ingredients, rather than the final products? Instead of banning cupcake, why not merely mandate the following ingredients:

Unrefined sugar substances (evaporated cane juice, grade B maple syrup, agave syrup).
Unhydrogenated oils
Organic butter
Whole grain flours
Organic brown eggs

And ban the following:
Refined white sugar
Margarine and other hydrogenated oils
White flour

Three Years Prison for Dog Toss

Those blaming racism for Michael Vick 2-year prison term must explain this this 3-year term for a guy (I assume he's white) who tossed a dog out a three-story window.

CA Wildfires v. Katrina: Aircraft Boondogle

People who blame poor govt response to Katrina on racism must explain poor govt response to the wildfires threatening the lives and property of rich honkies in California. Surely these people would blame racism for idle firefighting aircraft in the midst of these fires, if the threatened people were black.

Protesting Nooses, Ignoring Murders

Stanley Crouch supports the rage against white folks hanging nooses in Jena, LA and the resulting criminal prosecutions only of black folks in the resulting conflicts. He wonders if this organized response to the Jena injustice will translate into (finally) an equally unified and loud response to the even greater problem of black monsters in black communities ruining life for everybody. We wonders as well about the lack of such a volunteer effort to teach the black kids who are goofing off during the school day.

Here he revisits the theme, comparing the rage by blacks at Columbia over a noose hung at a black prof's door, to the silence resulting from black thugs executing three black teens a few days later in nearby Newark.

In this column, Crouch reveals how Phily's Nation of Islam chapter fronted for a hard core black mafia family of cold-blooded killers, and how Heuy Newton -- so proudly cheered on the t-shirts of rigteous "community activists" -- took transformed Black Panthers into a street gang.

Bravo for Crouch's campaign to get people interested in addressing the "national issue of excessive urban murder."

Top Climate Scientst Boos Gore's Nobel

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realize how foolish it was," Dr Gray said of human-caused global warming. "The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures. It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

We'll see.

Nat'l Healthcare in UK: Pull Your Own Teeth!

Thanks to socialized ("national") dental care in Britain, dentists are fleeing the country, potential dentists are finding something else to study in school, and citizens needing treatment wait so long for "free" services that they just pull their own damn teeth. Maybe if these people had to pay for their own dental care, they would take care of their teeth in the first place.

Racism in Fashion Industry

Only racism can explain the absence of non-whites from today's fashion scene, since so many non-whites aspire to these all-white jobs. But the people who do the hiring here (white people), whom do they vote for in the elections? The same people advocating affirmative action. Very strange.

Racist Insurance Companies?

Insurance companies are responding to the Hurricane Katrina mess by canceling policies all over the country, including the policies of affluent white folks 12 miles from the coast, like this couple in Long Island. If this happens to any black folks, count on it getting declared, "Racist!"

The Real Clarence Thomas

Whenever people inform me, as many do regularly, that Clarence Thomas is either stupid or unknowledgeable, I know that these people have never sat still and listened to his speaches on C-SPAN. Whenever such people inform me that CT has "sold-out", I know that they must be unaware of the millionaire bank rolls of CT's adversaries like Jesse Jackson and his sons, Ron Dellums, Al Sharpton, the Clintons, Kwame Kilpatrick and his mom, John Conyers, etc., compared to the net worth of Thomas at the time that he got nominated.

Gore Nobel Perplexes Czech Prez

It perplexes me, too, except when I realize what the Nobel Peace Prize now constitutes: leftist applause. It surely has nothing to do with the promotion of "peace", though I am unsure how it is that anybody can "promote peace" anyway. But surely hypocritically demanding the end of modern commerce doesn't count.

I agree with this guy:=========================

"The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace."

Klaus said in a recent speech that environmentalists' efforts to halt global warming "fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity." The Czech president publicly expresses doubt on what scientists, including those participating in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, deem very likely - that global warming is caused by humans.

He also said that rising temperatures may not matter enough for governments to throw funds at halting the process. In a newspaper interview earlier this year, Klaus said that only Al Gore, and not a sane person, would say that mankind is ruining the planet.

High Schools w/ 1,000 Students... Eating on Floor

Why have 1,000 students in one school? Is there any what that this helps their education? All that travel time, the great distance away from home, with so many neighborhoods feeding the same school. Speaking of feeding, here's a school that in order to accomidate so many students, at lunch time some have to eat on the floor.

Only two reasons justify having high schools larger than elementary schools:

1. After learning basic reading, writing, and math in elementary school, now what to do with teenagers? Teaching them advanced writing, reading, and math would require educated and hard-working teachers. Lazy and uneducated teachers prefer teaching easy elective classes, like business and career awareness. You need lots of students to fill lots of stupid classes.

2. The more students, the better the sports teams! And the better you want those students to perform, the less time you need them working on advanced intellectual courses. Instead, fill their schedules with "electives".

Peace, US Support in Iraq's Sunni Anbar Province

The residents there first fled, then fought -- successfully -- the retarded Al Qaidas who made this hell on earth for two years, 2004 - 5. My friend Vassar working there for KBR / Haliburton credits the US Marines, who, he says, differ from US GIs in the following way: Marines preemptively kill anybody that they feel threatens them, whereas US Army troops won't even return fire without receiving radio permission from a central command.

From the London Telegraph article: =================

Mr Kareem and other Husaybah residents claim that the peace that followed the expulsion of al-Qa'eda has triggered an economic revival and restoration of favourite pastimes. Ghanim Mirdie Waleed, coach of the local football team, who celebrated a recent victory with cigarettes, paid tribute to the American role in Husaybah.

"The conflict here was all caused by al-Qa'eda," he said. "We work and play as we like under the coalition security. There are jobs for people, shops are opened and we are very happy."

With al-Qa'eda pushed out, Anbaris are even rallying to a new shared cause with America - a fight to secure the country against Iranian infiltration.

Why Not Move Isreal to Alaska?

Iran's despotic front man has some pretty good ideas. One is for Israel to move to some landmass where the inhabitants won't react with murderous zeal if Jews massively migrate there and declare a democracy that affords special privileges to Jews. Sure, the non-Jews in Israel and surrounding areas could all live prosperously and freely if they accepted this, but they aren't. So why not just move Israel elsewhere? The retarded people in and around Israel today fighting for its destruction will remain retarded, and surely will just find some other excuse for destructive behavior. Meanwhile the productive Israelis -- including many thousands of non-retarded muslims -- will remain productive and sensible in their new location, and won't have maniacs destroying property and murdering.

Lotteries Fund Themselves, Not Schools

State officials advocate state-sponsored lotteries to "fund school", but of the millions incoming from ticket sales, most goes out as jackpots, marketing, and salaries, with participating states only getting about 1% of their education budget from this source. What business has government in the business of gambling host and promoter? None, I say. I wonder how the govt income compares between state-owned lotteries and private-run casinos.

Bush Screws Soldiers Again

One of the reasons the Republicans will lose my vote to the Libertarians next election, and why I'll vote Ron Paul in the primary: Bush has never supported the troops that he sends to battle. Here these guys return from 22 months in Iraq, but earn the paltry benefits of troops who serve no more that 729 days. The 730th day of battle service qualifies vets for a little more, but these guys' order was written for just 729, and their extra days resulted from multiple "extensions", which do not count for these benefits.

More Plame / Wilson Phoniness

Robert Novak now reveals that prior to publishing his column exposing Joe Wilson has having a wife, Valarie Plame, employed by the agency -- the CIA -- that sent him to Niger, Novak explained this fact to Wilson, who did *NOT* cry bloody murder. Instead, the huge phony Wilson haggled over Valarie's surname (Wilson or Plame) and lobbied for a bloated description of himself.

Low Taxes, Malpractice Caps, Free Markets Solve MD Shortage in Texas

The NYT reports: "Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas. The influx, raising the state’s abysmally low ranking in physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board’s offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to 2,500 at last count."

The article also cites lack of a Texas income tax as contributing, but of course that was true as well before malpractice caps. I wonder why physicians don't flock to Cuba or Canada?

Chris Mathews vs. Jon Stewart

I like Mathews better than most of the news talk hosts, but I like that he got blasted by Jon Stewart for writing a book about how lessons from politics can help you in life.

Black Kids Can't Make it Without Affirmative Action?

This NYT article hits it pretty hard: "Ten or 20 years ago, Frances Harris almost certainly would have been admitted. Her excellent grades might not have even been necessary, because Berkeley and U.C.L.A. — the jewels in the U.C. system — accepted almost all of the African-Americans who met the basic application requirements. To an admissions officer, Harris would have seemed like gold: diversity and achievement, wrapped up in a single kid."

But is it fair or helpful that if Frances was Asian she would have had no chance 20 years ago, much less today? The article describes all sorts of problems that Frances has dealt with in amassing her "A-" GPA from a school that's not very good. But what about Asians in the same boat? Sounds like her academic background has prepared her not for an elite university, but rather a non-elite one, where she can continue her hard work and smart choice, and still build for herself a very successful life.

The do-gooders in this article want to do every thing in the world to boost the numbers of black kids in elite schools except what matters most: convincing more black people to make smart choices, including parents providing a stable household for their kids, and kids not going to school and ruining the environment for themselves and others. And of course the do-gooders here have nothing to say about black kids getting to college and selecting worthwhile majors. Surely if these factors turned around, people would stop taking a negative view of "black-sounding names", a factor presented here as a reason to lower the academic standard for applicants who "check the black box."

Handgun Rescues Carjack Victim in Detroit

A suburbanite returning to his car from a very safe and heavily populated entertainment district of downtown Detroit gets carjacked by four monsters. His response: shoot the bastards. One of them dies, the other three get apprehended by cops... oh, yeah: he parked across the street from police HQ. I guarantee that 90% of the decent residents of Detroit are cheering, including many people related to these monsters.

Update: An off-duty Detroit cop gets car-jacked at his own house, upon parking on his way home, in his driveway. He responded by shooting the bastard. Don't know if these summary killings will deter others suffering from similar retardation, but at least these dead guys won't do this again.

Hillary: Govt Give Each Baby $5k?

"I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that downpayment on their first home," she said.

So, why not make Social Security work the same way? Oh, wait, that would be evil and irresponsible. Remember how Hillary and the lefties reacted to Bush's proposal for just that.

"Clinton said such an account program would help people get back to the tradition of savings that she remembers as a child." How does giving a person money encourage saving?

Dan Rather Stands By His Story

I think that Dan Rather is correct: George Bush II dodged the Vietnam draft, did it by scoring via his connections a cushy and fun fighter pilot job in a safe place, and violated even those obligations. However, Dan got suckered into accepting a bogus document supporting that contention without authenticating it.

I also believe that John Kerry behaved dishonorably while serving in Vietnam, which while there he attempted to save his skin and feather his resume... sort of like how JFK did.

More Jena Six info

This article provides new info that mostly tempers the racism charges, though it also omits many other claims which support the racism charges. Included in this new info:

1. The disputed high school shade tree was always used by both blacks and whites, according to a the two black teachers at the school. But if this is true, why did the black kid ask at an assembly if he could sit there? And why did the nooses get hung?

2. About the nooses: there were only two, not three. And both black and white kids were playing with them.

3. The noose-hangers got expelled for an entire month, confined to an off-campus facility.

4. The Jena Six guy in prison got reported to police by a black neighbor for scratching cars, breaking car windows, and graffiti. The neighbor complains now that police did not respond adequatly to this report (or was it reports?), "but as soon as he had a run-in with a white boy, they came down on him like a hammer."

5. The knocked-out white boy had a concussion.

Omissions in this article:

1. The two incidents wherein white segregationists jump on one of the Jena Sixers prior to the white boy knockout. These two incidents get alluded to, without any details.

2. The knocked-out white boy's relationship to the noose-hangers, and charges that prior to getting attacked he harassed the Jena Sixer who got jumped twice.

Racist Site: Lynch Jena Six

A white racist website urges a lynching of the Jena Six. The above article (and this) reports that the site "essentially called for their lynching," while this article has the site explicitly proclaiming "Lynch the Jena 6." Both articles agree that the site lists phone numbers and addresses for some of the Jena Sixers "in case anybody wants to deliver justice." FBI agents are are deciding if the site violates any federal crimes. It seems to me that either it does, or laws ought to criminalize calls for murder, especially murder that qualifies as terrorism, as is the case here.

Dress Codes Help Students, Rile Parents

The same parents who demand better performance from schools spend time resisting new dress codes in Detroit's struggling school system. Says one administrator: "It has had a strong effect on their behavior, especially in the cafeteria. They're much more relaxed and the noise level is much lower."

But some parents can't see the connection between dress and academic performance, and are taking time to fight the new codes. One father laments: "How can teachers be teaching her anything if they're sitting and watching what she has on? As long as she's decent, that's all I ask."

Hey, dad, your schools are failing. Support this new idea; give it a chance to work. The parents paying several thousands of dollars per year for private schools mostly face this same dress code, which seems to work. I would turn your question on you: "How can your student learn when you are assisting her resistance to a new rule that works so well in more successful schools?"

Dumber Than Bush: His Student Critics

The Rocky Mountain Collegian's seven student editors spent "several hours" trying to articulate how they felt about George Bush II, and the best they could come up with was: "Taser This: Fuck Bush". A caption below said, "this column represents the views of the Collegian's Editorial Board."

And apparently the Editorial Board's intellectual capability. The paper's editors told a local newscast reporter, "I think we could write 250words and ramble on and I don't think anyone would pay attention." That's quite an admission: He and his fellow editors lack the intellectual capacity to articulate and defend an anti-Bush position that rises above "rambling", and the paper lacks an audience interested in reading an editorial comprising a thesis, facts, and logic.

"We felt it illustrated our point about freedom of speech," he said. Well, it certainly did that.

No Relation Between Nooses & White Boy Beat Down?

That's the conclusion of severely retarded Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana "who reviewed investigations into the incidents." OK, we have his name; let's target him to prove this to us, in the face of the facts, summarized here:

1. Black kids at Jena's only high school ask for, and receive, permission to sit under the whites-only tree.
2. Three do.
3. The next day: three nooses hang from the tree.
4. The white principal identifies three white boys, gets them to confess, and expels them.
5. The school board the same day overturns his decision and assign a three-day in-school suspension.
6. Black kids make a point of sitting under the whites-only tree every day.
7. White boys attack one of the black protesters as he attempts to attend a whites-only party, beating him with beer bottles. Police make no arrest, but eventually charge one of the attackers with simple battery (as a juvenile), and the guy gets probation.
8. The next day this beaten protester runs into one of his attackers, who now pulls a pistol on him. When he wrests-away the pistol, white cops arrive and arrest *HIM*... for stealing a gun.
9. This same beaten protester a few days later at school gets taunted by a proud friend of one of the noose-hangers. A few minutes later this white boy finds himself knocked out, the first white and only white person to pay any price in this Jena Six affair.

This article, of course, omits steps 6 & 7, and that the beaten white boy was a proud friend of the noose-hangers, but does address charges that he said something provocative just before getting decked, though without linking that alleged taunt to the black kid who had already been assaulted twice.

Somebody please explain to me how (9) above is "unrelated" to (1). As much as the Duke 3 case, this one cries out for national intervention; the local white folks have proven that they cannot and will not manage justice in Jena, LA. The cops, prosecutors, and judges here are even worse than those involved with the Duke affair, because here they are picking on people who lack the resources (at least until this point) to mount an effective defense. A teenager today is losing his youth to prison, a teen who at worst knocked out some dangerously racist cracker. And if you examine the conflicting facts attending to that seconds-long incident, you cannot even conclude he did that "beyond a reasonable doubt."

More Nooses in Jena

White boys from Jena, LA drove around dangling nooses from the backs of two pickup trucks, taunting home-bound participants in the first (of what I hope will be many) Jena Six rally which had occurred the day before. On this day-after the rally, justice had already received another setback when some obviously criminally racist cracker judge denied bail for the lone (so far) imprisoned Jena Sixer. The noose-dangling white boys pulled their stunt about 40 miles from Jena, in the larger town of Alexandria, which many protesters used as a bus depot and staging area. Local police apprehended one of the pickups, driven by an 18-year-0ld, with a 16-year-old passenger. Both were drunk, and the older boy got arrested for DWI, instigating a riot, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, with these charges expected to get upgraded to hate crimes.

One of the boys has a "KKK" tattoo and proclaims that his entire family belongs to that outfit. Let's hope that the white folks of Alexandria show the world something good: try the younger boy as an adult, deny them both bail, and charge them with attempted murder. I can only imagine the restraint showed by the presumably hundreds of protesters -- who had just learned that the judge had denied bail -- in not dragging these dangerous trachledytes of their trucks and stomping them; they're restraint represents one of what must be many more victories. Imagine how this would have turned out had some provided the reaction sought by the white racists. We need to get that boy out of prison, and protect the other five at all costs, even the cost of letting some nose-breathers escape a much-deserved beatdown. Instead, they are arrested, and provide our side some new ammo.

Jena Six'er Denied Bail, Justice

This gets worse and worse. The day after the big protest, the bail hearing appeared, with a denial. Amazing. Maybe this would have taken the righteous turn had more white people taken a stand; and maybe more whites would have stood up in the absence of all the phony cries of racism (Duke, Imus). We'll never know. But we know for certain: white-on-black racism flourishes in and about Jena, LA; and no presidential candidate from either party gives a damn.

I hope that the ACLU now finally steps in, after carefully (I assume) monitoring this atrocious matter for months. And I hope that the arrested kids get a Duke rape-like civil damages award in the end.

And what now of those who refused to speak out for the Duke 3? Who refused to form an opinion, who were content to "let the legal system" work its course? What now, Nadir? What moral authority may you now join me in calling for federal intervention to seize these proceedings from the clearly racist white judges and prosecutors handling this case? Well, the loud support for INjustice of Jesse and Al vis a vis the Duke 3, and then their eventual loud quite hasn't stopped them from piping up here. But imagine how effective they might be today for the Jena Six had they joined with, instead of against, the Duke Three.

Tyrant to Speak at Columbia

FREE SPEECH ALERT! Here we go again. A university has invited as speaker a person that many people consider to be horrible. In this case, the medieval islamic theocrat, Iranian president with the impossible-to-pronounce name, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As expected:

1. The people on campus who want him banned are the same people who had previously demanded "free speech" for the founder of the Minute Men, when student protests a while back killed that scheduled event.

2. The people on campus who demand "free speech" for Ahmadinejad are the same people who previously (and successfully) demanded a zipped lip for scheduled Minute Men founder.

Am I the USA's only advocate of free speech? Let both these guys speak. And don't interrupt them, even with long-winded diatribes during the Q and A. Just let 'em speak, ask some real questions, then decide for yourself. And remember: the guy speaking today that you detest makes it possible tomorrow for a speaker that others detest.

Jena Six Horrible Press Coverage

These articles constantly miss the point; they constantly compare the arrest of the Jena Six black kids for assaulting a white boy, to the failure of police to arrest the three white boys who hung the three nooses. As best I can tell, no supporters of the Jena Six are mad because the three white noose hangers didn't get arrested. The are mad that:

1. The noose hanging white boys got only suspended, rather than expelled. The white school principal expelled them, but the white (all-white?) school board overturned that.

2. White boys beat one of the future Jena Six guys simply for attempting to attend a white house party; they beat him with beer bottles. Only one of those white boys got charged, and only with simple assault, resulting in only probation.

3. That same future Jena Six guy got assaulted a second time by another white boy, one wielding a pistol. The Jena Six guy wrested away the gun. The police response? The Jena Six dude got arrested for stealing a gun.

4. Now comes the Jena Six incident. The press accounts constantly omit the two previous white-on-black assaults, and the fact that the white boy who got attacked here is (1) a self-described friend of the three noose-hangers, and (2) he (according to the black kids) had minutes before taunted the Jena Six dude who had already been assaulted twice.

This is some of the worst reporting I've ever seen, much worse even than the usual reporting. All sorts of obvious questions never addressed (what role had the attacked white boy previously play?), and preposterous claims made (black kids demanding arrest of white kids for hanging nooses).

Here the LA Times also screws it up. This article jumps from the three white boys hanging nooses to the six black guys beating the white boy without provokation. The article skips the two white-on-black assaults on the future Jena Six guy, and the white boy's affiliation with the three who hung the noose, and his taunting (allegedly) of the Jena Six guy who had been previously assaulted.

The reporting is a disgrace.

Jena Six Chronology of Events Proves Racism

Why haven't any major news outlets posted a chronology? Here I present one, taken from a News week article (I will update as new data and insights occur). Only severe white-on-black racism can explain this, and no black kids here deserve to be arrested for anything. If local Jena officials had acted properly, the Jena Six violence would never have occurred.

1. At a back-to-school assembly in Sept 2006, a black junior, Kenneth Purvis, asks the white vice-principal on stage taking questions if he (Purvis) and other blacks can sit under the school shade tree during lunch, issuing an open challenge to the known unwritten rule that only white kids can do so. "Sit wherever you like", the white vice-principal answered.

2. A few days later this kid and some black friends sat there during lunch, commiserating with some of their white friends.

3. The next day three nooses appeared hanging from the tree.

4. The white principal responded diligently, got three white boys to confess, and he expelled them for the rest of the year.

5. Days later (still Sept 2006) the (all-white?) school board overturned the expulsion, and the three white boys returned to school, having served merely a suspension.

6. Black kids start making a point of hanging out under the forbidden tree. "We didn't call it a protest," says Robert Bailey Jr., a student who participated in this, and who would become one of the Jena Six.

7. Tensions mount at the school to the point where the principal in early Sept (only a few days have passed since the nooses) convenes an assembly of the entire school, and gets the local DA, a white man named Reed Walters -- flanked by cops (all white?) -- to address the students: "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy," he told students, warning them to settle down. "With a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear." Does he mean this warning to all students, or just the black students? The answer will become clear.

8. Over Thanksgiving break 2006, arson erupts at the school, destroying an entire wing. No data so far indicates who did this or why.

9. The day after the Thanksgiving arson, Bailey (black guy who'll become a Jena 6 dude) arrives at a white high school house party (he apparently has some white friends). He was "punched and beaten with beer bottles when he tried to enter... The white kid who threw the first punch was later charged with simple battery and given probation." Lesson to the black kids: the DA Reed Walters considers it "simple assault" unworthy of jail time for assailants who use fists and beer bottles. So much for "making your life disappear with pen" if you behave violently in this matter, at least when it comes to white kids assaulting black kids.

10. The day after Baily got beaten by fists and beer bottles, he "ran into a young white man who was at the party. Bailey and parents of the Jena Six say that when the man pulled a gun on him, he tangled with him and stripped it away. He was later charged with theft of a firearm." Lesson to the black kids: even if the white segregationists attack you, if you defend yourself, DA Reed Walters and the police will charge you with a crime -- specifically, a preposterous crime (disarming a gunman about to shoot you = gun theft) -- just like back in the Jim Crow days. Again DA Walters fails to make good on his promise to "make your life disappear" for those who escalate this situations... at least white kids who do so.

11. Finally we get to the the white boy, Justin Barker, who got sucker-punched in the Jena Six incident: "The tension culminated back at school the following Monday. Justin Barker, a white student who says he is friends with the kids who hung the nooses, reportedly taunted Bailey at lunch (Barker denies this). A while later, an African-American student allegedly punched Barker from behind, knocking him unconscious. Then, say white witnesses, a group of black students that included Bailey continued to assault Barker, kicking and stomping on him. (Jena High student Justin Purvis and other black witnesses dispute this.) Barker, who was treated for injuries at a nearby hospital, was released later that day, apparently in strong enough shape to attend a class-ring ceremony that evening." The charges here -- from white DA Reed Walters -- include the use of tennis shoes (from kicking) as "deadly weapons."

So, the same "justice system", including the DA Walters, that regards white-on-black beating with beer bottles as worthy only of assault with no jail time, the same "justice system" that arrested for Bailey for "stealing a gun" from a white kid who pulled it on him unprovoked, now wants to imprison Bailey and five others -- to make good on his threat to "make their lives disappear" -- for beating one of those white bastards who actively worked to keep black kids away from the school shade tree.

Shame on the Duke lacrosse team -- and specifically those falsely accused -- for not making this trip to support the the Jena 6. Shame on any presidential candidate who has not taken as much interest as me in digesting this story, and any who have who are not down there today at the protest.

Jena, LA Racial Injustice Gains National Reaction

I support those black teens in Jena, LA who are getting severely prosecuted for fist-fights resulting from a nasty act of white-on-black racism at that city's (only?) high school, which is integrated, as reported here before. Too bad that so many previous cries of racism have undermined this needs here, either from phoney racism (the Dukesbobo Boys) or from meaningless racism (the Imus affair).

And where in the hell are the Dukesboro Boys? I thought that those rich crackers were going to help non-rich people, in particular po' black folks, unjustly prosecuted? On the one hand I blame them outright for not jumping in here and leading their supporters into helping the Jena 6. But I also wonder how much more likely they would help here had the leaders of the Jena 6 (Jesse, Al, black college students, etc.) not acted against them, and then failed to reverse their course. In any case, I ultimately fault the Duke 3 for not stepping forward here and being bigger than Jesse, Al, and those screaming in-dignitaries at NC Central, which would have a good chance of bringing all these people together, reducing perhaps the chance of future false cries of racism, by working here on a real one.

Michigan to Learn Very Taxing Lesson

Michigan lawmakers, including Republicans, seem poised to attempt a tax revenue boost by boosting their state's already high taxes. Prediction: tax revenues will further erode. Michigan business owners will now fear this tax increase, and worse: a state government that addresses budget problems with tax increases. Outside businesses considering Michigan now have a new reason to stay away.

Michigan legislators should all read some economics textbooks and learn how highly taxed localities can increase tax revenue: cut tax rates! Get the interstate commerce boosted, attract new businesses, hang-on to home businesses considering a move to lower taxed states.

White Cops Abuse White Student at Kerry Speech

I agree that the cops abused this guy (and that the guy was disruptive to the event, and uncooperative with the cops who wanted to remove him so that the event could continue). But if this victim of police brutality had been black we would today have a much more huge protest, all insisting that this only happened because the guy was black, and that no white guy in a similar situation would get treated this way.

The only good thing I can say about cops in the US is that they are much less cruel and brutal than those in just about every other nation on earth (and any nation outside of functioning modern civilizations), and better today than in previous generations.

Bush Right to Dismantle Hussein's Army

Of all the mistakes Bush made with his Iraqi adventure, I never counted on this list his dismantling of the awful army constructed by Saddam Hussein. I agree with Hitchens here that Bush's devoted critics who claim 100% certainty that this was an obvious mistake would have just as certainly claimed the same had Bush kept together that crew of brutes. To this I would add that these critics did not raise their objections to the dismantling of that gangster outfit until things started going wrong; only then did they state as obvious (the wrong-headedness of sending home the Iraqi soldiers) what they had at the time of the decision kept mum about. I doubt that these critics at the time had any view at all on that topic.

Large Schools a "Disaster"

Public school officials in England are finally realizing that not only does reducing class sizes help boost academic performance, so does (and perhaps more so) reducing school size. Here one admin labels large schools a "disaster". I find only the following advantages for having large schools:

1. A larger pool of recruits from which to draw interscholastic school teams.
2. More students available to divide into more "elective" courses, which almost always means courses of far less rigor and intellectual heft than the core basics of scholarship.
3. More power for school admins; many super-sized schools have "vice-principles" working under the principle, who also gets to boast of managing a vast corps of teachers.

Small schools undermine the quality of sports teams, the capacity to field multiple electives, and the bragging rights of admins who value quantity over quality. Meanwhile, small schools only assist principals content to boast of just a few teachers and students who produce high test scores.

US Healthcare System Good, Needs Less Govt

As usual, John Stossel produces a lucid critique of a popular belief, in this case Michael Moore's diagnosis of the US medical system as "Sicko", and his prescription of improving it via more government regulations.

Anti-Black, Pro-White Bias On Death Row

Blacks who murder whites have a much higher chance of getting death row than whites who murder blacks, according to a study discussed in this article. But what are the data? The article is available only for a fee, and the data themselves I can find now where.

Do we have 1,000 whites murdering blacks, compared to 50 blacks murdering whites? Or are these groups similar in size?

Do both groups have have similar types of situations? Or do the white murderers tend to be premeditated, and the black murderers tend to be heat-of-the-moment?

I do not doubt that the US is unwashed of anti-black bias, but without more info, we cannot know to what extent this study's reported results accurately reflect the bias on death row.

New Zealand Ends Subsidies; Farmers Flourish

Lefties in New Zealand axed the silly farm subsidies there. Read how amazed the farmers are by how much more money they make and more sensibly and proudly operate now that that they earn bucks only for what consumers by. Emboldens my enthusiasm for school vouchers, which amounts to about the same thing.

Innocent White Guy

Here's an expose on an innocent white guy who got wrongly convicted of killing another white guy.

Wait Your Turn! Michael Moore's Healthcare Proposal

Good luck trying to get "free" healthcare in Canada, France, Cuba, and the other nation's hailed by Michael Moore in his "Sicko" documentary. From Walter Williams' essay:
=============================================

Do we want the government employees who run the troubled Walter Reed Army Medical Center to be in charge of our entire health care system? Or, would you like the people who deliver our mail to also deliver health care services? How would you like the people who run the motor vehicles department, the government education system, foreign intelligence and other government agencies to also run our health care system? After all, they are not motivated by the quest for profits, and that might mean they're truly wonderful, selfless, caring people.

As for me, I'd choose profit-driven people to provide my health care services, people with motives like those who deliver goods to my supermarket, deliver my overnight mail, produce my computer and software programs, assemble my car and produce a host of other goods and services that I use...

...The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute annually publishes "Waiting Your Turn." Its 2006 edition gives waiting times, by treatments, from a person's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist. The shortest waiting time was for oncology (4.9 weeks). The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery (40.3 weeks), followed by plastic surgery (35.4 weeks) and neurosurgery (31.7 weeks).

A War We Just Might Win

These anti-neocon lefties write in the NYT that their recent re-visit to Iraq finds lots of progress. It reminds me that of the various fighting parties -- the US troops, vs. what Michael Moore and other lefties call "freedom fighters" -- only the US troops have the goal of peace and prosperity. Here's how it works: when you read that 10 civilians have died either from a suicide bomb or from US bombs, that makes the US look bad, emboldens the "insurgents", and causes US peaceniks to pen fresh condemnations of Bush ; when you read that some area is safe and prosperous, we have the opposite effect, on all counts. Thus only one group has peace and prosperity as its goal.

A Logical Reason Why Men Earn More

This study shows that just because a survey finds that men earn more money, that does not indicate the existence of anti-female sexism. It may indicate different average choices among men and women. This study found that men on average ask for more money.

Baghdad Fabulust

We learn now that a lefty anti-war writer, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, married to a New Republic staffer, enlisted so that he could go to Iraq and write with authority about what he already knew to be true before going over there: US soldiers are rampaging beasts, fighting to enrich a US empire by massacring innocent Iraqis and destroying their civilian infrastructure. Lefties have been championing his obviously (to them) accurate NR-published columns, "Baghdad Diarist", written under a nom de guerre. While war opponents lapped up such claims as a US soldier wearing a child's skull atop his helmet as a war-crime trophy, righties (both opponents and supporters of the war), as well as serving soldiers, applied skepticism to these sensational accounts, finding credibility similar to that of the physics-defying Gitmo toilets that could suck down Korans.

I assume that the various anti-US tyrant groups in Iraq -- comprised of real beasts -- have been using these NR dispatches to advance their retarded efforts. Imagine his success had he invented only plausible lies. My friend Vassar, who's lived and worked in Iraq at US military bases for the past three years, tells a very different story about US troops: they love the Iraqi people, except for those trying to kill them, and want to help build a democracy.

Question: Did critics "out" Beauchamp's wife, by revealing her identity, in exposing how he came to obtain his position as the New Republic's insider war critic? Did critics reveal her identity in order to "punish" her for her husband's courageous truth-telling?

Now comes word of a recant. He is either a good journalist who told the truth, and a criminal soldier, or he is a lyingly poor journalist who invented tales when he and his comrades actually observe US military codes of conduct. Or maybe he told the truth and is now lying to avoid prosecution.

Hey, let's arm Saudi Arabia to the teeth!

And Israel, too! It will be really cool.

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years.

Funny that to sell $20 billion in arms to the Saudis, they have to pledge $30 billion in weapons to Israel.

Racism Against Interracial Football Marriage

Last football season a black running back scored a winning touch down in an important bowl, then ran over to the sidelines and successfully proposed marriage to his white cheerleader girlfriend, on national TV. Now comes word that some white retards are threatening the couple; not surprising, given the recent studies posted here by Steve. However, I prediction: unlike 30 or 20 years ago, 99.9% acceptance from white people, and this couple will go on to have a very prosperous life, living and working where they please.

Photo ID Voting Requirement in Michigan

Michigan's Supreme Court has approved a law requiring photo IDs at polling stations. Bravo. Opponents imagine that this will "disenfranchise" people who somehow can't muster the effort to obtain a photo ID; supporters cannot imagine ensuring against election fraud without voters providing this minimal evidence of their identity. My prediction: voter participation will not fall for any identified group of eligible voters.

Wait To Hear From Vick

Some people want Atlanta Quaterback Mike Vick's head already, based on the gruesome indictment of dogfighting. But as we have seen too often before, cops and prosecutors can make a big something out of nothing. We have not heard from Vick, and with these prosecutors seeming to be playing by the books so far, we might have to wait for trial to hear his side.

I think that nobody should lose a job over an arrest, especially if that person has done nothing in public to disgrace himself with regard to the charges against him. And let's also remember that every step along the road to justice risks a misstep: innocent people get convicted (Genarlow Wilson), and guilty people get found "not guilty" (OJ, Robert Blake). When the accused's story comes to light, we all have to make our decision about the person, not just the judge and the jury. This study concludes that judges and juries "get it wrong" over 10% of the time.

When Vick's story materializes, we might find that he really did know nothing about what his friends and relations did in the house he bought them. He could be a guy like me who loves animals and abhors dogfighting, but has some friends and relations from childhood who -- unbeknown to him -- have developed into severely retarded brutes. In this context, even if he gets convicted of some technicality, I will judge him favorably and support no sanctions against him. On the other hand, an examination by us in the public may show that he supports dogfighting. In this context, even if his fancy lawyers win all "not guilty" verdicts, I will consider him scum and cheer the most extreme sanctions against him.

Only one NFL player so far has exposed himself having a retarded brain and a cruel heart in this matter, Washington Redskins' Clinton Portis who said, ''I don't know if he was fighting dogs or not, but it's his property, it's his dog. If that's what he wants to do, do it. I think people should mind their own business.''

Meat Eating Worse Than Car Driving

This Japanese study concludes that eating two steaks produces as much "greenhouse gasses" and consumes as much energy as driving 50 mi/hr for 150 miles, or three hours. I would love if Al Gore, Michael Moore, and Bill Clinton would join me in becoming vegetarians! If all this global warming hysteria leads to a drastic increase in vegetarianism, then at least I'll find some benefit in this madness.

Imus Return... With Black Castmember?

My fears did not materialize that MSNBC would replace its morning Imus show with something I liked less; the replacement show has more news discussion and less comedy, which is what I wanted. Also, the replacement show has a black castmate, which is a plus. Now come reports that Imus will return (somewhere), and with a black castmate, which he should have had to begin with. So I am glad with the outcome.

More Bush Regret: Pol Control of Surgeon General

What a disgrace that a president would control the Surgeon General like this. In conferring with previous SG's Bush's recently departed one concludes that he suffered more than they did in this regard. Another reason I'll vote libertarian: maybe we need to just eliminate this office, and thus the temptation of presidents to abuse it.

Critical Review of Michael Moore's Sicko

I believe that the US healthcare system is a mess. However, making it more socialistic will surely make the problems worse. I do not believe that the systems of France, Canada, and Cuba are better, especially within the contexts that enable their systems.

Gore Links Hussein's Iraq to Terrorism... in 1992

In 1992 Al Gore was certain that Iraq's Saddam Hussein dictatorship was a major sponsor of terror against the US, as well as a hider of banned WMD. Did all that change by 2001?

Warren Buffett Favors Tax Hikes, Democrats

I don't understand Warren Buffett's support for democratic candidates and their efforts to overturn Bush's tax cuts. If Buffett believes that government officials can better achieve his goal of "income redistribution", then why did he donate those billions to the private Gates Foundation, rather than straight to federal treasury? Does he employ accountants and attorneys to minimize his tax obligation? If so, why? How does he explain that Bush's tax cuts preceded a massive increase in tax revenues, uninterrupted economic growth, and low unemployment? Does he not believe that revoking that tax break would reverse these trends? How could that help facilitate "income redistribution"?

If government officials can better achieve "income redistribution" than can the private efforts of individuals (either by people helping those of meager means, or by those of meager means using their intelligence and effort to increase their income and wealth), then why not turn over to government officials other desired goals, such as building cars and investing capital?

I can understand Buffett voting democrat because he views the Iraq war as a disaster that harms the economy, but I cannot understand how he desires democratic tax policies, rather than regarding them as an unfortunate trade-off in electing a president most likely to end the Iraq war.

Here's an excellent analysis of Buffet's claim.

Flat Tax Reform We Can All Support?

Under Wyden's plan, all Americans—and all corporations—would use a one-page form. There would be three rates (15, 25 and 35 percent) instead of today's six (10, 15, 25, 28, 33 and 35) for individuals, and a single rate for corporations. The alternative minimum tax, which this year will ensnare 23 million taxpayers, would be abolished. The standard deductions (currently $5,000 for single filers, $10,000 for married couples) would be tripled. No fool he, Wyden flinches from severe flatness that would end the most popular deductions, for mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Simplification would confiscate the intellectual capital of K Street, the habitat of Washington lobbyists, who toil to put complexities into the tax code for the benefit of clients.

Berry Bonds' Fraud; Not a Black Thing

From the essay:

Anyone who honestly thinks that Aaron is the bad guy and Bonds is the tragic victim either has absolutely no sense of American history, or is a complete idiot... I know exactly where this is about to lead. It’s leading to a barrage of “sellout” and “Uncle Tom” nonsense from folks who are anxious to misuse America’s most lethal weapon of mass distraction: race...

Are we so cockeyed by race in this country that they’d prefer to embrace lying, cheating frauds simply because they fit neatly into our own racial demographic?

“Remember how it used to be growing up in the black community?” said Cornwell. “Growing up, you didn’t have to just worry about your parents catching you if you were doing something wrong. It was all their friends and all the neighbors. If they caught you, sometimes it was handled right there and then. We don’t have that anymore and we need to get back to that. You don’t excuse bad behavior. You don’t look the other way at bad behavior just because they’re part of your community. You confront it and make them understand that will not be allowed in our community.

“Well we need to get back to that way of thinking again,” said Cornwell. “This goes from ‘Pacman’ Jones all the way to Barry Bonds. We can no longer excuse their bad behavior because they’re black. We can’t defend them by saying, ‘Well the white guy did it, too. What about him?’ That’s not how we were raised. That’s not how our parents and their generation handled their responsibilities of raising all the young men and women in the community.”

... ignoring the simple truth that he is guilty of cheating. This is not a court of law. This is the court of common sense. He admitted to a grand jury that he “unknowingly” used designer steroids. He had achieved a ridiculous muscle mass increase at too late an age. His career home run explosion magically coincided with his association with BALCO. But Bonds tells us he did nothing wrong, so who are we’re supposed to believe, him or our lyin’ eyes?

Fed Tax Revs Continue Slashing Deficit

I have in these pages repeatedly admitted to many mistakes committed by Bush II, the president that I voted for in each of his elections. But in one area I challenge my leftist adversaries to admit where he was correct: cutting tax rates for capital gains and some other areas as a way of stimulating economic growth and increasing federal revenues. At the time his tax cuts passed, lefty opponents insisted that this would lead to a massive ballooning of the federal budget deficit. Proponents like me of this economic policy predicted the opposite, and the facts sure seem to have confirmed our model: this latest report shows that the deficit has continued to shrink since its peak in 2004, and now sits at half that level, with fed revenues simultaneously climbing and both trends expected to continue.

New Bio of Clarence Thomas

The Washington Post reporter-authors of a new CT bio are lefties, as is this NYT reviewer of the book. However, the book and even the review present enough facts for an objective reader to reach independent interpretations of these facts. Objective lefties of course will likely reach interpretations similar to those of these lefty journalists. For their part, these journalists perform no hatchet job on CT, and offer him some much deserved respect.

But they see a contradiction in factors that do not contradict each other. For example, it perplexes them that CT would advocate fiscally and legally conservative views, yet in his personal life exhibit a great deal of compassion and afford enormous assistance to others. Yet that is the essence of CT's brand of conservatism: assistance to others should be provided not by The State taking money from all citizens and building big programs, but rather by fellow citizens helping their fellows.

Another 911 Defeat: Tourism

We libertarian supporters of Bush's war against Islamic imperialism always hated the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts. Aside from costing the US treasury zillions of dollars without benefit, while providing the Islamic tyrants the victory of having Americans inconvenience themselves mercilessly in the process of wasting all this money, we see now that these mindless overreactions are costing annual billions in lost international tourist dollars.

Bush II v. Clinton on Pardons

In this new essay by Bill Clinton, he explains why he pardoned so many people, including two of the pardons which have angered righties. Clinton's explanation seems reasonable to me, and until I read any convincing critique of it, I accept it. He wrote this in response to the recent explosion of outrage over Bush II's clemency for Scooter Libby, and the prospect of a full pardon to follow. This has triggered Bush supporters to point to Clinton's pardon-o-rama at the end of his final term.

I heartily support the presidential pardon as an executive check on a criminal justice system that we know unjustly convicts many, many people. According to Clinton, he pardoned about 400 people, whereas Bush II has so far pardoned only about 70. These figures both seem low to me compared to all the people languishing in prison who should not be. Clinton and Bush II both in their younger years engaged in activities that harmed no other people (cocaine consumption) but that could have landed them in the clink, with records banning them from many opportunities.

Bush's clemency of Libby does not disgust me, nor would a subsequent pardon, because I think that Libby did nothing wrong or illegal, and the facts against him in court fell far below the "reasonable doubt" standard. But it does disgust me that Bush has failed to use this power to help hundreds or even thousands of even more deserving people with far fewer resources. And as a two-time Bush voter, I am further embarrassed that simply as a matter of political coverage he has not pardoned hundreds of deserving people before and after Libby, just to quell his political opponents.

Just one of a growing number of reasons why I will vote for Ron Paul in the repo primaries, and then the Libertarian candidate in the general election.

Against Recycling

If people knew the facts about recycling, I think many fewer people would advocate it. Most materials earmarked for recycling ultimately get the same treatment as trash, but just at a much higher cost to city coffers.

Phoney "It's a Black Thing" Cracker Study

"It's a black thing. Crackers only understand if they buy a bag of misrepresented facts." (*)

A study shows that white folks would give up TV only for a million bucks, but would change their "race" to "black" for merely $1,000. You would think that this shows that white people are not very racist. But then, if you concluded that, you wouldn't be one of those people who sees racism every where. Of course if white people required $100 million to become "black", these "RACISM!" criers would interpret that as racist as well. But instead they're left with an opposite fact: whites don't much care if they got transformed into black folks. This leaves the RACISM! criers to figure out a way to interpret this finding as demonstrating what they already know: honkies are a bunch of racists.

Here's how they interpret the findings showing white ambivalence (read: non-racism) :"white folks don’t understand the Black experience." In other words, if these all-knowing black folks can just fill the heads of these ignorant white folks with a bunch of well-spun facts, those crackers will want more than just a measly $1,000 to turn black! For example, black folks earn less money than whites! They die at younger ages! They make less money! They pay more for insurance! So these data-spinners devise a hypothetical nation, one divided into two groups, one that makes less money, dies earlier, pays more for insurance, etc., and viola! The same crackers when ignorant of "the facts" who would require only $1,000 to become black now, with their heads filled with "the truth", want $1 million! And not only that, this new figure represents white support for "slavery reparations." (**)

Of course black folks in the US die younger on average than white folks; on average they make poorer health choices, regarding diet and exercise. Of course black folks in the US on average make less money than white folks; on average they make poorer economic choices, in terms of decisions to study and stay in school, whether to attend college and what majors to choose, etc. And of course blacks on average pay more for car and house insurance than whites in the US; blacks on average are choosing at a much higher rate than whites to commit the crimes covered by insurance, and thus more likely to reside in areas with elevated rates of these crimes. Black and white folks who make the same health and financial choices reap the same results, and who live in neighborhoods with similar crime rates pay similar insurance rates. This is why so many blacks immigrate here, and so few ever leave.

(*) Plenty of black folks reject this nonsense ("uncle toms", "sellouts"), and plenty of whites embrace it (the nearly half the white population who votes democrat). I am raising my negro daughter to be one of those sell-out aunt jermimas. Her grades in school in the 6th grade were a very high 3.9; in the 7th grade they dropped to 2.1. The white teachers didn't suddenly discover that she was black and start unfairly treating her. Instead, she changed her behavior, in a way that will lead to low income in addition to low grades.

(**) No word on reparations from black African groups whose ancestors enslaved and sold the black ancestors of today's black Americans, or on reparations from Italy, France, and Norway for the successive conquests by their ancestors of the ancestors of today's Britain, or on reparations from Morocco's government for their ancestors' conquest of Spain and Italy, or of reparations from Egpyt for conquering Ethiopia and Nubia some generations ago. Nadir should surely expect reparatrions from Britain for its historical conquest and subjugation of his Irish ancestors as well... though some of Nadir's Irish ancestors enslaved some of his African ancestors... and some of his African ancestors enslaved and otherwise conquered other black Africans... I don't know how all of this will work out. Will my daughter get just half reparations for her African ancestors?

Ex-Fanatic Blames Islam, Not Western Policies

"When I was still a member of the British Jihadi Network, we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror was Western foreign policy. Those who blamed the Government for our actions did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology." HASSAN BUTT, writing in London's Daily Mail

Yet More Science Refutes Gore's Hysteria

I don't understand why liberals and leftists reject Al Gore as a poor presidential candidate (he got a higher fraction of the vote than ever did Clinton, who received help from a rightist third party candidate, whereas Gore had votes taken from lefty Nader), yet embrace his global warming hysteria. From a new article:
===============================

For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.

Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.

Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."

Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.

Juries, Judges Gettin' It Wrong

This new Northwester University study claims to have identified the erroneous judgment rates of US juries (17%) and judges (12%) . The rates are higher for convicting an innocent person than for acquitting a guilty person. The article does not explain how the researchers evaluated the judgments, but the figures seem about right to me.

The article also fails to compare these rates to those in other countries, or to previous times in the US. My sense is that these rates are much better today than in years past, and better today in the US than in any non-democracy / civilized nation.

Defending Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter is getting criticism for making the following four comments, which, when discussed in most articles (like the attached) never explain the context in which she made these comments.

1. "The 911 widows are enjoying their widowhood." Well, if they don't want to receive partisan criticism, they shouldn't use their widowhood to make political points.

2. "John Edwards is a fag." Well, if he doesn't want to get called a fag, he should stop posing as a folksy populist while getting busted for paying $1,000 for a haircut, which is what inspired Coulter's comment here."

3. "I wish John Edwards would get killed by terrorists." She made this comment because Bill Mahr received zero outcry when he stated the same about Dick Cheney, whereas Coulter received a great outcry for calling Edwards a fag. So rhetorically she said, instead of calling him a fag I'll just wish the terrorists would kill him.

4. "John Edwards has a bumper sticker that reads, 'ask me about my dead son.'" This comment was inspired by the revelation of the Kerry-Edwards campaign manager that Edwards goes around using a canned story about his son's death in order to ingratiate himself to people both privately, and in $100,000 speeches given to poverty groups. Her full comment, rarely quoted when condemning the shocking part: "If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those 'Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident' bumper stickers?"

If you simply read the attached article you would think that Coulter was insane, simply blurting out ugly comments about Edwards and one group of wealthy 911 widows. But of course that is not the case. This reminds me of the phony bluster of Joe Wilson reacted with shock and indignation when his wife Valarie Plame's name got dragged into the debate over his trip to Niger; well, if you didn't want her name in the debate, then why in the hell did you start the debate, using a job that she got for you?

What About the Other Nifongs?

This NYT articles describes prosecutors besides Mike Nifong who have behaved like he did in the Duke case, pressing obviously false charges, withholding exculpatory evidence, etc., and asks: why has only Nifong been disbarred?

Ignore Islamic Hysterics?

Christopher Hitchens concludes that media reports sensationalize and over-emphasize the murderously crazed Islamic tyrants who hyperventilate over demands that this or that expresser of some idea offensive to them get an execution that would make Mohammad proud. When some brave Dutch free-thinker publishes a cartoon of said cult leader, pull the cameras back and, Hitchey says, the rabid protesters burning US flags and hanging effigies are outnumbered by reporters; turn off the cameras and the retards dry their chins, pop their eyeballs back into their sockets, and join the background denizens going about their normal affairs. In such a context, paternalistic western liberals would stop appeasing these nutcases and could reserve all their energies for the religious nuts whom they won't appease: western christians who advocate laws to imprison Americans who burn their own USA flags, and deny tax funds and public spaces for art comprising statues of white Jesuses and Maries bathed in urine.

White Cops Brutalize White Skateboarders

I wonder if Revs. Jesse & Al will take notice.

Louissiana High School Noose Case Update

Update to story about integrated high school in Louisiana where racist white guys displayed nooses where some black kids had broken an unofficial color line: The unrest sparked by the nooses led to some fistfights, wherein some black guys beat up a white guy. The black kids got charged by a white prosecutor, and charged big time, with attempted murder, as adults. I consider this a genuine act of white-on-black racism, and I support all efforts to exonerate these accused black guys. As far as I can tell, prior to this incident these black guys were not thugs terrorizing the school. Instead, they are just some teens who got rightfully upset about an act of racism. Considering all the high school fights that occur with no charges brought, these guys within the context of this situation should have received no criminal charges, or only the most minor ones. Meanwhile, any kids involved with placing nooses should surely get expelled, whereas in this case those kids only got a suspension.

[Update to the linked story posted above: The article fails to mention that the knocked-out white guy is a proud friend of the white guys who admitted to hanging the nooses, that prior to his beating one of the arrested black guys had been attacked twice by white boys objecting to him sitting under the honkey tree and attempting to attend a honkey party, and that the beatup white guy had moments before his beating taunted that twice-jumped black guy. For more see all postings marked "jena6". 2007-09]

Previous post.

Free Genarlow Wilson

I don't know if racism or just idiocy by the prosecutor explains why black Genarlow Wilson sits in prison for receiving consensual filetio from a fellow teenager, a white girl. But:

1. A white appellite judge has ruled in his favor, with a statement from the bench labeling his prosecution and conviction "a miscarriage of justice."
2. His white classmates made him homecoming king.
3. A group of rich white guys have raised $1 million to get him out on bail during the white prosecutor's appeal of the above appellate judge's ruling.

I hope that the Duke guys will rally around Wilson, and I regret that prosecutor seems to have covered himself much better than Nifong, protecting himself from ethics charges.

"Cultures and religions are not equal"

"The Koran is not a great book,"Ayaan Hirsi Ali told the national press club a few days ago. "The obsession with subjugating women is one of the things that makes Islam so low. And the agents of Islam know that any improvement in the lives of women will lead to the demise of Islam."

I caught her presentation, and she blew me away. Here below is most of her prepared remarks. I regret not finding the text of the Q&A that followed, which was equally excellent.

Why are Westerners so insecure about everything that is so wonderful about the West: political freedom, free press, freedom of expression, equal rights for women and men, gays and heterosexuals, critical thinking, and the great strength of scrutinizing ideas--and especially faith?

It is not the end of history. The 21st century began with a battle of ideas, and this battle is about the values of the West versus those of Islam. Tony Blair and the Pope should not be embarrassed in saying it, and you should stop self-censoring. Islam and liberal democracy are incompatible; cultures and religions are not equal. And perhaps most important of all, Muslims are not half-wits who can respond only in violence. The Koran is not a great book; it is reactionary and full of misogyny. The Byzantine emperor's analysis of Muhammad was correct: he spread his faith by the sword.

From this perspective journalists like all the rest of us face the unpleasant reality of taking sides or getting lost in the incoherence of the so-called middle ground. The role of journalists serving the West, who understand what this particular battle is about, will be to inform their audiences accordingly.

As I travel from country to country to testify from experience and observation that Islamic dogma creates a cult of death, a cage for women, and a curse against knowledge, I get both support and opposition. Europeans and Americans ask:

But what about the good Muslim living next to me? What about the different schools of thought in Islam? Is there no difference between the Muslims of Indonesia and the ones in Somalia, or the Muslims in Saudi Arabia and those in Turkey? Can we really generalize? What about the women who voluntarily wear the headscarf and the burqa and are happy to relinquish their freedom as their faith requires? If we give Catholics and Protestants and Jews their schools and their universities, isn't it only fair to give Muslims theirs, too? If generations of Jews, Italians, and Irish have assimilated, is it unreasonable to think that Muslims will assimilate too, eventually?" Isn't it more fruitful to engage in debate with your opponent and convince him through dialogue to take back his declaration of war than to attack him? Isn't it obvious that military attacks, such as those in Afghanistan after 9/11 and in Iraq, create more terrorists, and therefore more people who are determined to destroy the West than there would be if we had dialogue with them?

These questions are legitimate and deserve serious answers. Let's make a moral distinction between Islam and Muslims. Muslims are diverse. Some, like Irshad Manji and Tawfiq Hamid, want to reform their faith. Others want to spread their beliefs through persuasion, violence or both. Others are apathetic and do not care much for politics. Others want to leave it and convert to Christianity, like Nonie Darwish, or become atheist, like me.

Islam unreformed, as a set of beliefs, is hostile to everything Western.

In a free society, if Jews, Protestants, and Catholics have their own schools, then Muslims should have theirs, too. But how long should we ignore that in Muslim schools in the West, kids are taught to believe that Jews are pigs and dogs? Or that they should distance themselves from unbelievers and jihad is a virtue? Isn't it odd that everywhere in Europe with large Muslim organizations, demands are made not to teach kids about the Holocaust, while in mosques and Muslim bookshops The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is distributed?

And what about in Muslim lands, where Jews, Catholics, and Protestants cannot have their own schools, or churches, or graveyards? If Muslims can proselytize in Vatican City, why can't Christians proselytize in Mecca? Why do we find this acceptable? If Christians, Jews, and Atheists take to the streets in large numbers to protest against their own elected governments in objection to the war in Iraq, to the war against terror, why don't Muslims march in equally large number against the beheadings of Western aid workers? Why don't Muslims stand up for their own? Why are Jews and Christians and Atheists in the West the ones fighting genocide in Darfur? Why does it pass unnoticed in Muslim lands when Shias kill Sunnis and Sunnis, Shias by the thousands? It doesn't add up, does it? If you ask me, "What is the role of journalism today?" I would urge you to look into these questions.

As a woman in the West I have access to education. I have a job, and I can change jobs as I wish. I can marry the man of my choice, or I can choose not to marry at all. If nature allows it, I can have any number of children I want. I can manipulate nature and freeze my eggs. I can have an abortion. I can own property. I can travel wherever I want. I can read whichever book, newspaper, or magazine I wish. I can watch any movie I want or go to the museum of my choice. I can have an opinion on the moral choices of others and express my opinion, even publish it. And I can change my mind as time goes by. I can establish a political party or join an existing one; I am free to change parties or give up my membership. I can vote. I can choose not to vote. I can stand for election to office or go into business. This is what makes the West so great.

In Muslim lands, except for a very lucky few, women are denied education, have no job, and are forced into marriage with strangers. In the name of Islam, women are denied the right to their bodies; they cannot choose whether to have children or how many to have. They have no rights to abortion, and often they die trying to get one. They cannot own property, trade, or travel without the risk of robbery or rape. Most women (and men) live in state and religious censorship on what to read (if they can read at all) and what films to watch, and they have hardly any museums or art they can enjoy. Of the 57 Muslim nations that are members of the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference), only two are democracies. Both are frail and corrupt, and both face the risk of being overtaken by the agents of pure Islam. Turkey has a safety check in the shape of the army and Indonesia none. In none of these countries--except for the usual show-pieces to delude the West--are women allowed to establish their own political parties, play a meaningful role in one, vote, or run for office.

This obsession with subjugating women is one of the things that makes Islam so low. And the agents of Islam--from Riyadh to Tehran, from Islamabad to Cairo--know that any improvement in the lives of women will lead to the demise of Islam and a disappearance of their power. This is why, among other things, they are so desperate to cage in women. This is why they also hate the West.

Please don't be fooled by the few shrill voices--in or out of the veil--that enjoy the status quo and betray their fellow women.

If we do not understand the differences between Islam and the West--why one is so great and the other so low--and we don't fight back and win this battle of ideas in order to preserve our civilization, in my view there is no point to your profession or mine.