May 19, 2004 by s.z.

World O' Links Before I attend to my cat nursing duties, here are some things you might like: 1.  Pete M., whom you might remember from the comments section of such blogs as this one, has started his own blog, DarkWindow.  He promises it will be required reading in all major univesities that Ben Shapiro may Google.  And it has a cute mugshot of somebody who may be Pete. 2.  Commenter Mary (not the other one) has a new blog too: Hollywood Happens.  Her latest post is about that TV show that one of you tried to report to the FCC -- yes, the "Dick Van Dyke Show." 3.  The latest edition of Washing the Blog features a Special Report by Jim the Cartoonist regarding the festivities in honor of the historic Brown Vs. the Board of Education decision.  Jim not only provided a "you are there!" account of the events and speeches, he also has photos of the Presidential SWAT team (probably to swat potential assasins, not Bush), Air Force One, and his pick for our next President. 4.  General J.C. Christian wrote a nice letter asking for Courting Advice from Mr. Crank (whom you'll remember as the father of the groom in Crank/Beaver nuptials).   I hope Mr. Crank helps the General to find a wife for young master Christian (aged four) before it's too late. (Oh, and the General found a photo of the whole Crank clan  -- you'll want to check out the matching frumpy dresses that the women are apparently required to wear.  You know, if you ever think that your life sucks.).  5.  Wile looking through the Crank family magazine, I found this link to a Christian Courtship site which will teach you everything you need to know to start arranging marriages for your kiddies.  Interestingly enough, the info is from the Patriach site, which you may recall (I can never forget) gave us that advice on the who-what-when-where-how hard-what size wooden dowel of spanking.  Here's a little info to get you started (with the arranged marriages, not the physical child abuse): First, regarding giving your daughters somthing to symbolize the covenent into which they've entered to only marry only the guy you choose for them: The Courtship Connection (www.CourtshipConnection.com. Phone: 734-847-5210) offers a Heart Necklace with Key designed for this very purpose. This is a meaningful symbol of a daughter giving her dad the key to her heart until he gives it to her future spouse at the time of betrothal. The inscription on the heart is He who holds the key can unlock my heart.  With our own three daughters (who happen to prefer rings over necklaces) we chose three matching rings since in Scripture the ring was a sign of authority and protection (see Esther 8:2). And we termed them covenant rings to symbolize our mutual agreement that their hearts are under the authority and protection of their father until he betroths them to a young man  And, about the price you should get for your daughter: It appears to this writer that the purposes of the bride price - sincerity, self-discipline and security - are not merely a matter of cultural tradition but rather an issue of biblical ethics. So whatever modern practices replace the mohar must still meet these three goals of ascertaining the groom's sincerity, demonstrating his ability to provide and securing the wife's economic future. A pre-paid life insurance and disability policy would ensure economic protection in case of death or disability, but not in case of divorce or desertion. Better (or in addition) would be an irrevocable living trust (the bride being the beneficiary and her parents the trustees) with a contractual obligation for the groom to put, say, ten percent of his earnings into the trust each year in addition to whatever lump sum he can provide at the time of betrothal. And remember, if her father finds out you've kissed her before marriage, he gets to keep the money as repairations for damage you've inflicted on his goods. Anyway, enjoy!   8:50:54 AM

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World O' Townhall I've got cat ear poultices to apply, so let's just start, won't we? Thomas Sowell Thomas uses economic principles to assess the Agu Ghraib scandal. Two questions would destroy at least half the agenda of the political left: "Compared to what?" and "At what cost?" A third question would wipe out most of the rest of the left's agenda and demolish the vision behind that agenda: "What hard evidence do you have?"   Per Thomas, since the abuse of prisoners committed by our people wasn't as bad as that committed by Saddam, then it wasn't all that bad, comparatively speaking (just like Saddam wasn't all that bad compared to Pol Pot).  And since it would cost too much to have some kind of accountability program in the military, we should just accept that there will always be some bad apples in any group.  It would also cost too much to get a competent Secretary of Defense, so we should just make do with Rumsfeld.  And lastly, since there is no "hard evidence" of "higher ups" giving orders leading to the abuse (and no photos -- that you know of -- showing George Bush conducting his own Skull and Bones-style initiations of cabinet members), then you have to believe that the abuse stopped at the people charged by the military, or else Thomas gets one of your kidneys. Linda Chavez The newspapers are so unfair!  They don't catastrophize about evil foreigners like they should.  Instead, they keep publishing stories that show the Bush administration being inept and dishonest.  And that means the media is biased. For instance, you know that story about the sarin bomb found in Iraq?  (Well, the bomb that contained the chemicals to make sarin, but which wasn't rigged so they could mix and produce sarin.)  The one which, at the time of the first reports, Rumsfeld cautioned had only been subjected to a field test?  Well, Linda doesn't like how the Post handled it. So how did the major dailies treat this story? They buried it. The Washington Post carried a story on page 14, with a subtitle that dismissed its significance, "Weapon Probably Not Part of a Stockpile, Experts Say." Of course, the Post's TITLE was "Deadly Nerve Agent Sarin Is Found in Roadside Bomb."  You know, to dismiss its significance.  But despite the headline [she means subtitle, folks] , the story said nothing of the sort. The Post reported that David Kay, the man previously in charge of the Pentagon's search for WMD, "said the discovery did not conclusively prove the existence of stockpiles of concealed chemical and biological weapons," which is very different than saying somehow it proved the contrary.   Okay, the subtitle was "weapon probably not part of a stockpile."  How does Linda make that say "Experts say this bomb proves there are no stockpiles"?  And, of course, Kay did say that the shell "likely" predated the Gulf War, meaning that it probably didn't indicate that Saddam was rearming himself by stockpiling new WMDs, which was the pre-invasion claim from the Bush administration.  Also, Kay told the A.P. "He doubted the shell or the nerve agent came from a hidden stockpile, although he didn't rule out that possibility."  So, yeah, Kay said it probably didn't prove that there were WMDs stockpiles.  Especially since we've been looking for over a year and HAVEN'T FOUND ANY OF THE DAMNED THINGS! On the same day the Times put the WMD story on page 11, it ran a front-page piece breathlessly reporting that "M.P.s Received Orders to Strip Iraqi Detainees." Since "strip-searches" are a routine fact of life in most U.S. jails and prisons, and these detainees are arguably more dangerous than common criminals, this "revelation" seems a little overblown. Um, Linda, honey, the Iraqi detainees who were stripped were not given their clothes back.  They were shackled, naked, to await interrogation.  This is NOT a routine fact of life in most U.S. jails and prisons.  Didn't you even read the story before complaining about it?  Can you even read? Sadly, probably not! (to coin a phrase).  It appears that Linda Chavez, former employee of the United Federation of Teachers, was one of those people for whom No Child Left Behind came too late -- we blame the soft bigotry of low expectations for her gig at Townhall.  And we also think those low expecations  had something to do with her nomination for Secretary of Labor, but that's another story. Brent Bozell  Brent's topic (the media isn't fair, since it isn't covering anything positive like Saddam's mass graves or the Berg decapitation) is basically the same as Linda's -- but since he's a professional whiner and a known illiterate, we didn't expect anything better from him.  But there's more to this double-standard story. While NBC aired 58 stories on U.S. prison abuse in the first few weeks of that story, NBC aired only five stories over 16 months on the discovery of Saddam's mass graves. Abu Ghraib holds 1,500 prisoners, a fraction of whom were abused. Saddam's graves held as many as 300,000 people, all of whom were murdered. How is Abu Ghraib 10 times more important than that?  And up to ten million people died in Nazi concentration camps.  I can't find where Brent has ever written about this.  Is Brent claiming that Saddam's regime was ten million times worse than Hitler's?  Are Saddam's graves ten million times more important that the victims of the concentration camps?  (And that is how we play "Moral Newsworthy Equivilence Factor!") The Berg story was not a slam-dunk pro-Bush angle, as anyone who saw Berg's Bush-blaming father could attest. But it did show that somewhere in the world, there is someone morally lower than the Americans. Apparently that's a truth that our news media somehow cannot stomach.  Yeah, the fact that terrorists are "morally lower" than American soldiers is big news, folks -- and the fact that the media didn't push that angle proves that they are all America-hating traitors.    Michelle Malkin Immigrants are all stupid, rude, lazy jerks.  We never should have let any of them into our country. Who hasn't had an exasperating experience like Schaefer's? In my neighborhood, I've run into English-challenged McDonald's workers who can barely muster a "Hi," a "Welcome" or even a grunt acknowledging my existence while they fiddle with their dumbed-down cash registers. I expect my order to be wrong when I pick it up at the drive-through window, and I never bother going back to get it fixed. At a Michael's craft store last week, I asked an employee (loitering listlessly in the scrapbooking aisle) where the fabrics were. "Fah-brics?" I repeated slowly and gestured fruitlessly, drawing a rectangle in the air with my index fingers. She shook her head in horror and mumbled: "No understand." Oh, silly me. At my local Wal-Mart, nationwide employer of workers of dubious immigration status, I listened as a checkout lady from Africa blabbed endlessly in her native language to two visitors hanging out by her station. She didn't bother greeting me or looking at me. When I asked for a bag of items that she had forgotten to put in my cart, she ignored me. "Pardon me, can I have my bag?" I asked. "WAH?!" she finally said with a snarl, offended that I had interrupted her conversation. Whatever happened to "Thank you, please come again"? Michelle, they only say that to people they want to come again. You know, by and large, service workers treat me just fine.  And the immigrants among them have been, as a group, just as competent  -- and even more polite -- than the natives.  But then, I don't mock their speech, or make cracks about their dumbed-down cash registers or dubious immigration status.  So, Michelle, did it ever occur to you that maybe these people could be responding to YOUR attitude?  Or maybe they read your columns and pretend not to speak English just to mess with you.  Yeah, that's probably it; they are all out to get you -- foreigners are devious that way.  I bet they spit on your McDonalds orders before they give them to you. And it [the English language] is under increasing assault. In the classroom. At the ATM machine. And on the phone (pet peeve: "For English, please press '1'").   American telephone systems that handle other languages!  Man, that goes against everything that our nation stands for.  Michelle should probably just move to another country in protest.  Jonah Goldberg Jonah also deals with the "elite media," but his point is that while Tim Russert is a jerk, he, Jonah Goldberg, used to be a TV producer.  You probably remember him from all those popular TV shows he produced -- he was huge! This combination of power, permanence and arrogance -not liberal bias - is often the real secret behind many of the elite media's problems. Because conventional wisdom flows from the top down, many rank-and-file journalists are afraid to question it. But I never appreciated this dynamic sufficiently until the recent kerfuffle over Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" interview with Colin Powell.  Jonah's been getting into the James Taranto again!  I used to be a television producer. I know lots of television producers. And I can tell you flat-out: The suggestion that there's something unusual, never mind ominously un-American, about cutting off a taped, satellite interview when it's run too long is such nonsense it doesn't pass the giggle test. And I am a television watcher.  I know lots of television watchers.  And I can tell you flat out: nobody cares what you think, Jonah. All that's unusual here is that it happened to Russert. Indeed, he says, "It was my first time in 13 years of doing 'Meet the Press' that a press aide has actually tried to pull the plug on an interview." I'm sure that's true.  I could forgive Russert for not knowing how unremarkable all this is, since he basically started at the top at NBC. A former aide to former Governor Mario Cuomo and the late, great, Pat Moynihan, he didn't learn the TV ropes from the bottom up. Yeah, Russert started at the top, unlike Jonah, who was born a poor black child, and worked his way up from the ghetto into his current position as an editor at National Review through sheer ability. Kathleen Parker These troubled times are making people go crazy and say nutty stuff, like that we should get out of Iraq.  Stop the madness, people!  Just shut the hell up about bad stuff! When I was a kid, we were taught a few rules, among which was never talk about religion or politics in polite company. A rule which the ladylike Kathleen has always followed. Rarely have such quaint rules felt more timely. The heat of recent months amid increasingly bad news from Iraq has divided Americans as never before. At a recent meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, one speaker cited a poll that posed this question: Do you think George W. Bush has united or divided America? Responses were split right down the middle, 50/50. These days I'd rather spend a night in Abu Ghraib, preferably absent Lynndie England, than talk politics at a dinner party. Decent people don't consider torture, sexual abuse, and the mistreatment of powerless people to be funny.  I guess that's one of the rules that Kathleen was never taught as a kid. Keeping perspective is especially tricky in the digital age. Combine 24/7 punditry from media hairdos, instant replay with Internet beheadings, and insta-photos from Interrogation Central, and you've got a recipe for weak wills. Suddenly, we're all on a girly house party, going, "ewwww," and looking for the remote control and a better story.   Yes, if only we were tougher, like Kathleen, we'd exult in Internet beheadings and photos of prisoners being bitten by dogs.  They'd stoke our bloodlust even further, and we'd want to kill even more people in Iraq.  You know, instead of squealing "ewww, gross" like some girlies at a slumber party.  Which is apparently the only other reaction that Kathleen can imagine people might have to scenes of man's inhumanity to man. Rebecca Hagelin Rebecca goes through all the (lame, old) arguments against gay marriage again, and then concludes they don't matter, as such unions are wrong because God said so -- that's why! Advocates of preserving traditional marriage, myself included, have argued that the fundamental building-block of every single civil society in the world throughout history has been marriage defined as a union between one man and one woman – all societies that have veered from this definition eventually vanished. And all of the societies that defined marriage as a man-woman relationship are still around today!  Amazing, but TRUE! Social-science data proves men, women and children are healthier, safer, better educated, more economically sound, more emotionally stable and happier when they live within the bonds of traditional families that include one mother and one father. Social science data gathered by the Heritage Foundation -- so you know it's good! To change the basic building block of society would result in radical changes in every other aspect of our lives. For example, consider the exercise of free speech and the freedom of religion in Canada, where same-sex marriage was legalized in 2003. On April 28, 2004, Bill C-250 passed the Canadian Senate making it a criminal offense to criticize homosexuality. The government has already started banning radio programs containing criticisms of the lifestyle. Depending on how the Canadian courts rule in specific cases, pastors could be thrown in jail by simply preaching sermons against homosexuality. Well, the statutes previous on the books made it illegal to "incite hatred against an identifiable group based on colour, race, religion or ethnicity" -- and now sexual orientation in included in this hate crimes protection too.  If it causes your pastor to be thrown in jail, well, he's probably Fred Phelps, and a nice stay in the pokey might do him some good.  And while Rebecca blames same-sex marriage for Bill C-250, I think she should start blaming interracial marriage and mixed marriage for making it illegal for Canadians to incite hatred against blacks or Jews.  Evidence from the Netherlands illustrates that when the definition of marriage is altered, people begin to shrug their shoulders at the concept of marriage altogether and see it as unnecessary – since same-sex marriages became legal in Norway, for example, 80 out of 100 babies in some areas of the country are now born to single mothers. And we've only had legal same-sex marriage for a couple of days here in the U.S., and already 80 out of 100 babies born to women under the age of 20 are born to single mothers. Next, Rebecca explains that the costs of extending benefits, such as health care, insurance, and social security, to married homosexuals "could break the federal treasury."  Okay, I agree that if federal law makes same-sex marriage legal, it will cost the federal government some extra money in social security benefits.  (But since I thought that the Heritage Foundation et al. claims that homosexuals make up less than 3% of the population -- and surely not every homosexual will want to marry -- I am awed at their power to break the government.)  But the costs of extending insurance benefits won't come out of the federal treasury, so that doesn't track with her claim.  And why is health care more expensive for married homosexuals than it is for single ones?  Is it those maternity costs Rebecca is worrying about? And then she brings up the old "What if a man wants to marry his father, or his dog, or his TV.  What if he wants to marry the entire state of Idaho?  Then what?" argument.   And then she says it all doesn't matter, because God said gays can't get married.  Seriously, God said it just last week at one of those secret White House/Evangelicals meetings.  Our opposition tells us that we can't bring religion or God into the picture, that to do so would be to force our moral beliefs on others. Yet, the only argument that the same-sex marriage crowd makes is couched in moral terms – "It is immoral," they say, "to deny two people who love each other the right to marry." It's the only argument they have, and it is entirely based on their view of right and wrong. That's the only argument they have?  Wow, that new book edited by Andrew Sullivan must be awfully short. Ben Shapiro Young Ben Shapiro uses cutting-edge Google technology to prove that he is just as good at research as his hero, Ann Coulter . Michael Moore is at it again. The fat, fraudulent filmmaker's latest hit piece, "Fahrenheit 911," apparently focuses on how the Bush administration has botched the war on terror.   Hey, I'd watch who you're calling "fraudulent," Factual Error boy. Moore's books also find nice, comfortable spots in student backpacks. The google.com search for syllabus plus "Stupid White Men" plus "Michael Moore" returns 134 hits.   Moore cohort Al Franken receives wide play in the classroom as well, but that shouldn't come as a surprise, considering that Franken was given a Harvard academic fellowship to research his massive tome, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." Where are the conservative books? Nowhere to be found. A google.com search of the terms syllabus plus "Slander" plus Ann Coulter returns a mere 31 hits. A search for syllabus plus David Limbaugh plus "Absolute Power" garners five hits, none of them actually class assignments. Even Bernard Goldberg's "Bias" returns only 70 hits in a similar google.com search. But Ben, if the conservative books are "nowhere to be found," how can professors list them in their syllabi, or sneak them into student backbacks?  And while it's true that a search for syllabus + "Michael Moore" + "Stupid White Men" does produce 134 hits, Ben doesn't tell you how many of those hits are actually instances of "Angry White Men" being listed on a syllabus.  But he does know that if there are more listings for a word combination mentioning Michael Moore, then it proves something about campus bias.  Mainly, that he wrote a book about it. I also did some Google searches of my own: Syllabus + "Rush Limbaugh" =  621 hits "Ann Coulter" + naked = 12,3000 hits "Michael Moore" + naked = 57,5000 hits Ben Shapiro" + naked = 468 hits. What does this prove?  That the more popular (interest-wise) a person is, the more hits you will get that contain their name and any other random word.  Also, that WAY more people want to see Michael Moore naked than they do Ben Shapiro naked. So, "Townhall.com: Conservative Columnists" + "hot sex" = 2 hits.  Horrifyingly, they feature Brent Bozell and Maggie Gallegher!   Like Kathleen said, "Ewwww!  7:46:45 AM