Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires

But why would you want to?

Actually years ago I came up with a simple foolproof way to keep myself from setting forest fires. I rarely if ever go to the forest. Because of this I have not set a forest fire since 1987.

Yeah me.

Assimilation

I gave up on that last skin quick, didn't I?

Henry Edmonson has just written an article entitled "It's all about assimilation." Apparently these Borg chaps have a plan that will make things better for all of us. No actually it's about . . . well a few things. It starts out being about how we should teach those Mexicans to learn English, but then shifts gears and complains about how college students aren't as well informed as they should be.

Thus we have the bizarre situation today in which students are today coached to think "critically" - in the absence of civic and historical knowledge. This means that they have little to think critically about. Anyone who doubts that this is the case need only listen to students-high school or college-debate important current events. They demonstrate plenty of passion, but a dearth of information.

It's fun to be lectured about passion without information by Conservatives. I mean these are the folks who brought us such nuggets as;

We will be greeted as liberators in Iraq.

We can't wait for the smoking gun to appear in the form of a mushroom cloud.

The Social Security Trust Fund doesn't exist.

And so on and so forth. Perhaps it's cynical to assume that Mr. Edmonson only wants a certain type of information taught to America's children, but frankly I'm pretty cynical these days.

Hmmmmmm

This one has no titles either - I guess for certain types of blogs they aren't really necessary - like if this blog were just a review of my life, I suspect I wouldn't bother with them. Every post would be about me and everyone would have about the same point of view. The words might change but the content of the words wouldn't - reading one post of my runon sentance life would be about the same as any of the other posts. Which is why I write about politics and not my life.

This one is less girly, but not by too much.

Cruel and Unusual

Cal Thomas's latest article is about cruel and unusual punishment. Essentially he feels that we should be a little less strict in defining what cruel and unusual means. He references a recent case in California in which it more than 30 minutes for a person to die after receiving a lethal injection. Apparently he's just fine with that. After all who should we as society worry about, murderers or victims?

Cal Thomas does not properly under the concept of spheres of influence. We might wish to prevent all murders and save all victims (I certainly would) but we lack the power to do so (or, to be more specific, in order to accomplish this we would have to abandon most of our ideals, such as they are). We do, on the other hand, have control over how humanely or cruelly we execute those we have decided to put to death. That is within our sphere of influence as a society. And things within our sphere of influence take priority over things that our outside of it. We must tend to our gardens.

Channeling Rush Limbaugh

The current set up won't last long because there are not titles. Anyway I just read an article at Salon about an organization being set up to push for a more nuanced relationship with Israel. In brief, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is the current big dog representing Israel's interests in Washington. And when I say Israel's interests I mean the interests of Israel Right Wing who are not keen on any compromise (but are fine with blowing the hell out of the Palestinians). However, recent electoral events have shown that American Jews are not as keen on the blow them all up approach. So a new organization is forming to push a more moderate path.

Levy, the former Barak advisor, explained that the movement is "coming from a place where inside the mainstream Jewish community, people are increasingly confused about something that describes itself as pro-Israel, but is so out of sync with what they believe are good politics for the U.S. or Israel."

"The right-wing orientation in the community is losing people by the droves, particularly young people," M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, one of the main groups involved, added. "Most U.S. Jews support peace in the Middle East, and don't want to shoot down doves anytime they appear."

This is all well and good. Frankly it seems pretty sensible. But even if I didn't agree, I wouldn't criticize people who want to fight for what they think is best for Israel.

I'd leave that to Rush Limbaugh.

I can hear him now. "My fellow Americans, George Soros is organizing a new group of mushy-headed intellectuals an soft headed liberals to push America away from our support of Israel. I'd like to suggest a name for this group. Jews against Israel. Cause that's what they are. They are a bunch of people, most of them Jewish, who want to see Israel wiped off the map. I know that's not what they are saying they want; but that's what the result of them pushing Israel to be kinder and gentler will be. When will people learn that you don't win wars by talking by negotiating. You win wars by winning wars. You get peace by defeating your enemies. If Israel is going to have peace with the Palestinians it needs to defeat them."

Thank goodness Rush's power is pretty much confined to his mind and the poor shlubs who work for him.

Girl Power

I note that most of the templates I am trying out tend to be girly. This is not done intentionally but is presumably symptomatic of deep seated and barely understood psychological conditions.

Or it just so happens that a lot of blog creators at the site I am using are of the female persuasion.

The Road is Where you Are 7

Seventh in this series, here is the latest iteration.

When She Was Happy - Pluto
Bat Macumba - Os Mutantes
Naseau - Beck
Uncle John's Band - The Grateful Dead

When The Beatles Hit America - John Wesley Harding
Ventura Highway - America
Talking about a Revolution - Tracy Chapman
Bring on the Dancing Horses - Echo and the Bunnyman

Deep - Pearl Jam
First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey
Yin and Yang and the Flower Pot Man - Love and Rockets
The Rip Off Train - The Pretty Things

Leaving New York - R.E.M.
For the Price of a Cup of Tea - Belle and Sebastian
Jane Says - Jane's Addiction
Long View - Green Day

One of Us - Joan Osbourne
Don't Go Away - Oasis
King Apathy III - The Byrds
Lodi - Credence Clearwater Revival

Racism

Star Parker takes on racism in her latest article. Apparently over racism is boring to her.

Somehow, I couldn't keep from looking at my watch and thinking about my laundry, despite the revelation of such bombshells as: there are still white-supremacist Ku Klux Klanners in America; there's a little town in Texas with a racist past where those feelings may still be harbored; in association tests, psychologists show that people tend to be more positively disposed toward white faces than black faces; real estate agents can sometimes tell a black voice on the phone and decline to show a property.

I should note at this point that Parker is black, lest you get the wrong idea.

So if whites screwing blacks over is boring, what kind of racism does Parker find interesting and troubling? Whites trying to help blacks.

. . . there is indeed racism under the surface in our country today that we're neither really aware of nor willing to admit.

It's a racism of diminished expectations. A racism that says blacks still need special treatment in education and job placement, that we can't give black parents freedom to choose where to send their kids to school, that we can't let low-income black workers build wealth through a personal retirement account, instead of paying Social Security taxes, because they won't know what to do.

This is the racism that will keep this community disproportionately in trouble.

These are three different issues; affirmative action, school vouchers, and Social Security "reform." The first one is directly related to race, the later two do not. It's nice to note that Ms. Parkers position on affirmative action is more or less the same as those Ku Klux Klanners, albeit for different reasons.

Star Parker may be sincere on how school vouchers will help Black Americans - but on Social Security she is being a bit disingenuous. She's on record as being opposed to social security entirely - so this talk about personal retirement accounts is, at best, Parker settling for half a loaf.

Don't get too Comfortable

This too shall pass away. After lunch.

In the meantime check out this article by Joe Conason on Joe Lieberman's potential future position.

With a single stroke, he could restore control of the Senate to the Republicans, fill an embarrassing vacancy in his administration and score bipartisan points -- by appointing Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Should Lieberman be nominated and accept that position, Connecticut's Republican Gov. Jodi Rell has the constitutional authority to name a new senator.

There's a pretty strong and disturbing logic to this idea, actually. It's at Salon which means you must sit through an ad before reading it.

Church be manly! Or Else!

This is from Doug Giles latest article.

Here’s the veneer-stripped-away answer: going to church has become very dainty. That’s right. Church, for most men, has not only become irrelevant, it has also become effeminate. Hanging out in church for most Y-chromosomes seems unmanly, and most men—more than anything (at least for now)—want to be masculine!

The current lack of strong men within the Church, both in the numeric and leadership sense, has crippled our cathedrals and has helped devastate our nation ethically.

The masculine spirit being absent from the pulpit, the pew (and subsequently the public square) has not only slowed down the forward progress of the Church, it has also weakened our nation’s morality, increased our country’s secularity, done nothing for national security and has assisted (owing to our absence) the lascivious Left’s re-definition of life, sex, marriage and law.

I don't really have anything to add to this. I always believed religion could be a civilizing, a refining institution - but I guess if Giles wants church to take us back to a caveman mentality, who am I to argue?

The Hardest Fall of All

When sex is free it's so hard to sell / Bat Macumba /Now I'm a priest teenager on a tower of dust / It's the same story the crow told me; it's the only one he knows. / This is my dream I bought it. I bought the product. / Thanks a lot son just the same / Finally the tables are starting to turn / Bring on the new messiah / Can't touch the bottom / the first lost lad to go under the sod / Alcohol is your yoga baby / He was just a lonely boy, a very well known clown / You might have hidden the frown / Soul black vinyl to stop your tears / She only knows if someone wants her / I sure as hell can't do it by myself / Damn my education I can't find the words to say / Bearing looks of frenzied blankness / I guess you will know the tune.

Should Businesses be Ethical?

The surprising answer is yes, businesses should behave in an ethical manner. Because if they don't, according to Carrie Lukas, Congress might be inspired to pass new regulations.

Businesses can help themselves by examining their own practices to ensure that they meet high ethical standards. If they don’t and Congress moves toward to new regulations, it could be our economy that pays the price.

This conclusion is surprising, but her title ("Self Discipline, Not Regulation, Needed for Ethical Business") suggests that whether or not businesses exercise self discipline, Congress should still refrain from passing regulations.

We are back

After a brief burst of insanity, here's some more insanity.

This is not permanent. But then, what is?

This blog is over

For the time being. There's just no point to it until Blogger fixes my archives.

George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln

Two peas in a pod, according to Tony Blankley's latest article. You see President Lincoln was fighting to defend the union during a Civil War even though people disagreed with him, and President Bush is fighting to defend Iraq during a civil war (that he caused) even though people disagree with him.

But there are some differences as well. President Lincoln saved the union through his actions and earned the honor and love of his countrymen. President Bush has embarassed the union through his invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, and has earned the derision of his countrymen. It's important not to let the similarities blind you to the very real differences.

Farewell to the Last Golden Age

Blogger is in the process of stealing my past.

Maybe they will give it back, but I am looking forward to being informed that it wasn't really my past to begin with.

Anyway on to Ben Shapiro Boy Prognosticator. This week he's reviewing Mel Gibson's new movie, which he finds offensive. Not because of the excessive violence and gore, but because it implies that American Civilization might not last forever. Even worse it claims that our fears might undermine the things that make this society great. He's offended at this suggestion because, of course, that's what actually happening, and with Shapiros full support. We pissed away Habeas Corpus, our Privacy, our national honor, the Geneva Convention in the pursuit of safety in the face of al-Qaeda. We were told by the Bush Administration that giving up these things was necessary to protect us.

So naturally Shapiro is looking for a different culprit for the decline of civilization. And he's found one - Mel Gibson!

"Apocalypto" opens with a quotation from historian Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it destroys itself from within." Durant is correct -- but the film's exposition of dreamt is utterly wrong. If American (and Western) civilization falls, it will not be because our fears drove us to "ma'am barbarities," but because, like Gibson, we failed to distinguish good from evil.

. . . It is the violence Gibson does to morality that should worry us. It is that violence that contributes to the internal destruction of Western civilization. If Western civilization is doomed to failure, it will not be despite Mel gibbousness best efforts, it will be because of them.

I have noticed that we as a nation do have a hard time telling good from evil. For example at one point if you had asked if jamming flashlights up civilians butts was good or bad, you would have had most people saying that it was bad. These days people compare that to a fraternity prank.

In the old days if you had asked if starting a war on false premises was a good or bad thing, most people would have answered bad. Now people create huge billows of smoke to keep us from answering that question.

Yeah young Ben is right there do seem to be a lot of people who don't know right from wrong, and it's not despite Ben shapers best efforts that we are this way, it's, in small part, because of them.

War on Christmas

Just going to point out a humorous article over at Media Matters on the War on Christmas. Not the world's greatest article, but certainly good enough.

Being Keith Ellison Pt. 2

Mary Grabar presents an article today that would surely earn her a lot of notoriety if Dennis Prager hadn't written essentially the same article a few weeks ago. But she makes up for lost time by pouring on the insanity.

. . . the one who takes office with his hand on the Koran, as Congressman-elect Keith Ellison proposes to do, makes a profound statement. By rejecting the Bible, he rejects its and our country's principles of reason and free will. He rejects a book written and confirmed by many over thousands of years for a book based on the revelation of one man who claims to be a prophet.

Yes because if there are two words that describes Modern American Christians, particularly the Dominionists or others of their ilk, they are reason and free will. I mean they've reasoned that Americans don't need free will.

I also like how the Bible has been confirmed by many over the years, but the Koran apparently still has only the testimony of Mohammed to confirm it. Ms. Grabar is aware that there are plenty of Muslims who believe in the Koran out there, right?

But what really makes this argument stand out is how Grabar reveals the real origin of that hated political correctness.

There is a reason that after their own acts of murder, terrorism, and intimidation, the Nation of Islam radicals and their white supporters set out to destroy the curriculum. They were training the next generation. The multiculturalists presented reason and truth as notions of a Western imperialistic culture; as a result, now reigning in our educational institutions is the unquestioned dogma of multiculturalism that dismisses debate about the dangers of Keith Ellison as merely "intolerance."

Oh why oh why oh why did we listen to the Islamic Terrorists when they suggested we try being intolerant? Intolerance is what makes America great, apparently.

So maybe Grabar will get a little notoriety of her own.

Don't Be a Jerk! At least not in public!

That's my advice, particularly if you are a manager of a store. You see customers aren't stupid. So if one of your "associates" (and a what a beautifully patronizing term that is) calls you up to the front to see about opening a second register when she has six people in line, maybe you shouldn't act like a prick about her cutting into your phone time. Because your customers might pick up on the fact that you are a jerk.

I'm just saying.

Ghetto Magic

Harry R. Jackson, Jr. has written an article over at Townhall on how the Liberal Media will lose in 2008. He focuses on how Liberal Candidates will lose in 2008, but I guess Liberal Candidates and Liberal Media are really the same thing, except of course that they aren't.

He posits areas where the Liberals are apparently going to fail people the media tricked into voting for them in 2006. One group? The ghetto.

Hispanics and blacks were told repeatedly in different ways that Republicans and conservatives do not care about them. For example, a great deal of hoopla has been shared around raising the minimum wage as a symbol of democratic commitment to the average guy. The right message from the democrats is teamed with the wrong action plan. The minimum wage helps people just beginning to work or those with the least skills.

Unfortunately, a “tip” given to people on the lowest end of the economic spectrum will not change black or Hispanic ghettos. Ghettos will be changed by large scale economic development which creates new, middle class jobs in viable industries. On a “micro level” an individual will appreciate any raise in pay he is given.

Two years from now, neither blacks nor Hispanics will be able to see any lasting effect of this unimaginative approach to a major problem. These groups will be screaming the slogan of a Wendy’s commercial of twenty years ago: “Where’s the Beef?”

This assumes a couple of things. It assumes that Democrats are going to accomplish one thing (raising the minimum wage) and then ignore them. It also assumes that these poor Blacks and Hispanics are going buy the logic of "Hey helping the wealthy is the same as helping you really" Republicans are selling.

I have to think that if it's a choice between a raise in the minimum wage and a mystery box containing nothing, Blacks and Hispanics are smart enough not to take the mystery box.