Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

…but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to be afraid of

Posted: February 19, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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I haven’t quoted Jay Nordlinger in a while but today’s Impromptus should be required reading to remind us just what we are dealing with in Islam:

More from MEMRI, more from Arab TV—this time not so funny. Listen to a Kuwaiti professor appearing on al-Jazeera:

Four pounds of anthrax . . . carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S., are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour, if it is properly spread in population centers there.

What a horrifying idea. 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings, and so on.

One person, with the courage to carry four pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this ‘confetti’ all over them, and then will do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real ‘celebration.’

(For the full report, go here.) I don’t watch much al-Jazeera, but it must be a cauldron of poison. And, all those years ago, when we liberated Kuwait—did we have to liberate that professor?

I look at this and then think of the comments at Tim Blair’s blog worrying that the beheading (that apparently nobody is blogging about) will hurt the image of Islam.

From what I’ve been seeing the thing that hurts the image of Islam the most is Islam. I’m reminded of the old saying from the civil war: All Democrats are not confederates but all confederates were democrats.

Don’t attribute to cowardice what can be explained by greed

Posted: February 19, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Mark Steyn points to this article by Lars Hedegaard that I am ashamed to say didn’t hit me until I read it:

We know that the broad Left – which in Europe would include various shades of the hard, Communist or Marxist Left, the New Left, which has now transformed itself into tree huggers, and the traditional Social Democratic parties – has vacated its traditional ideological positions in order to preach ideologies that used to be hallmarks of the far right. Positions such as the need for censorship, kissing up to demands that “religions” (i.e. Islam) must not be criticized or ridiculed, the institution of ethnic or tribal special privileges and inequality before the law – depending on what ethnic, tribal or clan chief or holy man can ingratiate himself to the top of the totem pole as most aggrieved victim.

This new weltanschauung takes us back to a legal order – or rather lack of order – the like of which we haven’t seen in the civilized world since – when? The democratic revolutions of the 19th century, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, England’s Glorious Revolution, John Milton’s Areopagitica, Magna Carta?

Take your pick. Any one of the above is true.

The road chosen by the parties on the Left permits no return. Having alienated – not to say discarded – large chunks of their traditional working class voters,
they are now increasingly dependent on the Muslim vote, which they hope will guarantee them a perpetual foothold at least in the major populations centers. emphasis mine

It’s all about money and power. These pols of the left primary principle is to keep both. It it means appeasing Islam, then so be it. After all when you don’t have a next generation of your own to worry about or a belief system that looks beyond today’s comfort who cares?

Morning Joe Universal Health Care

Posted: February 19, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Oh joy the death doc is on and it’s all universal health care

6:35 a.m. She now comments on how 90% of the health budget goes for the last year of life, she doesn’t come out and say kill em, she says “ration” translated, let em die.

6:45 a.m. We are apparently idiots for not having the lousy Canadian or British health care system.

6:50 a.m. These people are really anxious to spend my money. If Scarborough wants to run for the senate in Florida, his primary opponent just had his ad made for him.

6:52 a.m. Apparently since we can’t make fun of Obama we now go back to Clinton.

had to take a kid to school no vacation due to the storms in December.

7:41 a.m. What congress has inherited? How many years has Cummings been in congress?

7:55 a.m. Winslet apparently has a normal life. That speaks well for her.

8:08 a.m. Joe on Roland Burris: “When they talk like that, they’re gone”.

8:10 a.m. Joe & Pat: It’s going to be a tough year for Dem’s in 2010. That didn’t take long.

8:13 a.m. Assume that everything you put up is seen by everyone. That is good advice.

8:15 a.m. All about the get a life brigade

8:36 a.m. Better advice has never been given PAY DOWN THE MORTGAGE!

8:38 a.m. You don’t have any money you can’t invest in the stock market.

8:41 a.m. Suzie Orman always annoyed me but on credit cards etc she is dead on today. Keep her on finance and off of social issues and she is pretty good.

Some risks are more worthy than others

Posted: February 18, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Liz Fairley comments on Australians who choose to live in areas vulnerable to fire:

…to inhabit the bush, especially as climate change takes hold, is to make yourself fuel.

Certainly, we should feel compassion. And certainly, there should be regulations. Quite probably there should be more assiduous back-burning. But to blame green policies – to cull already endangered shark species, to reduce tree cover – is to blame nature for human folly.

Liam Sheahan might disagree she goes on:

Some have to live in bush, or swim at dusk. But bush suburbs and forested hamlets are voluntary, designed for the illusion of paradise on earth. It works, too, like any bubble, until it doesn’t.

Tim Blair contrasts her suggestion to avoid one voluntary life threatening risk to the numbers on a different one:

So they should live elsewhere; make different “lifestyle choices”. Farrelly is dismissive of tactics (“Cut the trees! Burn the undergrowth!”) that would reduce the risk of living in the country, preferring that people simply live elsewhere, contrary to their preferences.

Yet more than 6700 people died of AIDS in Australia from the beginning of the epidemic until mid-2007 – a far greater number than were killed in bushfires during the same period. Imagine if Farrelly had written in 1989 that those at risk of AIDS should stop being gay (“To inhabit the bath houses, especially as AIDS takes hold, is to make yourself HIV positive”). Instead, sensibly, medical and social solutions were sought (“Kill the virus! Use the condoms!”) in order to preserve human freedom and human lives.

Funny how numbers can put some things in perspective.

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