Bunch of Liars

You might have to register for PJTV to watch this video, but it's worth it. They demonstrate how Hamas is purposefully keeping medical aid out of Gaza to keep the manufactured crisis going. It's very sad that people would hurt people in the hospital just to make Israel look bad. It is also sad that mainstream media does not cover this. Unfortunately, the fact that Hamas promotes lies and propaganda is a dog bites man story.

Prez Kiggs Azz on Eggzpertz

Mark Steyn on Hirsi Ali's effect on the left: "Multiculturalism Trumps Feminism"

Mark Steyn is dead-on in his analysis. The left wishes that women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali would just go away. Why does a modernistic, atheistic, liberated woman seem to adopt the attitude of a fundamentalist American Christian when it comes to radical Islam? Excerpt:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s great cause is women’s liberation. Unfortunately for her, the women she wants to liberate are Muslim, so she gets minimal support and indeed a ton of hostility from Western feminists who have reconciled themselves, consciously or otherwise, to the two-tier sisterhood: when it comes to clitoridectomies, forced marriages, honour killings, etc., multiculturalism trumps feminism. Liberal men are, if anything, even more opposed. She long ago got used to the hectoring TV interviewer, from Avi Lewis on the CBC a while back to Tavis Smiley on PBS just the other day, insisting that say what you like about Islam but everyone knows that Christians are just as backward and violent, if not more so. The media left spends endless hours and most of its interminable awards ceremonies congratulating itself on its courage, on “speaking truth to power,” the bravery of dissent and all the rest, but faced with a pro-gay secular black feminist who actually lives it they frost up in nothing flat.

Then... I can't believe Nicholas Kristof is this ignorant and stupid:

But Kristof decides to up the condescension. Of the author’s estrangement from her Somali relatives, he writes: “I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps Hirsi Ali’s family is dysfunctional simply because its members never learned to bite their tongues and just say to one another: ‘I love you.’ ”

I call that "Christian projection." What would make someone really believe that Islam valued this sort of behavior as virtuous just because Christianity does? And as a sidelight, can you imagine if, say, Brit Hume, stated that perhaps John and Elizabeth Edwards's family is dysfunctional simply because its members never learned to say "I love you"? Steyn responds:

This isn’t a family where they bite their tongues but where they puncture their clitorises. At the age of five, Ayaan was forced to undergo “FGM” (female genital mutilation), or, in the new non-judgmental PC euphemism, “cutting.” When she had her first period, her mother beat her. When she was 22, her father arranged for her to marry a cousin in Canada. While in Germany awaiting the visa for her wedded bliss in Her Majesty’s multicultural utopia, she decided to skip out, and fled to the Netherlands.

All she wanted was a chance to do what Nicholas Kristof takes for granted—to live her own life. What difference would saying “I love you” in a Lifestyle Channel soft-focus blur accompanied by saccharine strings make? As they see it, the perpetrators of “honour killings” love their daughters: that’s why they kill ’em. Would Kristof wish to swap his options for the set menu served up to Muslim women? How would he like it if, just as he was getting ready to head to Oxford on his Rhodes Scholarship, his dad had announced that he’d arranged for him to marry a cousin? Oh, and in Canada.

I urge everybody to read books by Robert Spencer about the teachings of Islam. People in our culture have been marinating in the stupid and wrong idea that all religions teach the same thing for far too long

"The future's uncertain and the end is always near"

Here's a skillfully produced mash-up of a Doors live performance of Roadhouse Blues with John Lee Hooker vocals flown in for flavor.

This video just mesmerizes me. Back in my band days it seemed like every time I turned around in a club dressing room I ran into a lead singer who thought he was Jim Morrison. It's easy to see why. He epitomized the charismatic rock shaman.

Best not to drink beer in the morning. It won't really make you a better poet.

Can-candolin

Offenbach's famous Can-Can from his Orpheus thingy.

OK, enough with the extended applause at the end. It was good, OK?

Steyn on what Free Speech is not

Mark Steyn points out that no one is denying Helen Thomas the right to free speech. She's just losing her podium, that's all. Most of us don't have podiums that big, so it's not a big deal. She's still absolutely free to say anything she wants to her family, her friends and those cute little magical fairy people she often sees floating above her flower garden.

Steyn quotes a lot of recent nonsense from a wide range of people who still have podiums, including at least surprising one―Charles Krauthammer―who should know better. So Steyn has to meticulously explain that a right to free speech doesn't guarantee freedom from consequences the way one might explain to a 21-year-old that a right to imbibe alcoholic beverages makes one immune from intoxication.

Here's the meat of the article where Steyn explains from his own personal experience "what the First Amendment prevents."

“Free speech” doesn’t mean speech has no consequences – for in that case why say anything at all? What it means is that the government does not determine those consequences. Had Maclean’s magazine been found guilty at our trial in Vancouver of publishing “Islamophobic” content, the statutory penalty under British Columbia law would have made it illegal for them to publish anything by me on Islam, Europe, demography and related subjects ever again. I would have been the subject, in effect, of a lifetime publication ban in Canada – and that ban, under the relevant section of the BC “human rights” code, is deemed to have the force of a Supreme Court decision. In other words, unlike Hearst or the Nine Speakers Agency, Maclean’s would not be free to choose for itself whether it wished to continue its association with a particular writer. In Canada, that decision is made by the state. That’s what the First Amendment prevents.

These posing privileged journalists need to take a lesson from a man mugged by reality.

Have I just about had it with Blogger.com?

I'm going to gave to answer that question Sarah Palin-style with a big "YOU BETCHA!" It was just completely unavailable and there was nothing to indicate why on the status page.

So I've made up my mind to move finally. It looks like I'll be moving to Wordpress soon. I'll be giving everybody lots of advance warning and attempting to make the transition as smooth and transparent as possible.

Hell-in, Hell-out

Blogger was down earlier, and I was busting to post all this great Helen Thomas stuff. First the viral video:

Thank you RabbiLive.com for giving us the unvarnished truth, not that any amount of varnish would help in Helen's case. Here are some more tasty factoids posted on the RabbiLive site:

Helen Thomas has been dropped by her speaker’s agency, Nine Speakers, Inc for her comments posted on RabbiLIVE.com.

Craig Crawford also refuses to work with Helen on any future book projects.

Additionally, Helen has been dropped from a High School graduation key note speaker position.

Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary, and Lanny Davis, former White House counsel, both are calling for Hearst Corporation to fire Helen immediately.

Of course, this was before she was retired.

Someone set up a Twitter page to channel the old gal's thoughts. Too funny. My favorite:

You call them terrorists, but some people call them freedom fighters. I call them all Achmed because I'm bad with names. What's a twitter?

Jonah's piece is good. Like this line: "Suddenly, all of these people and groups are stunned to discover that Helen Thomas is . . . Helen Thomas."



Did the President leave out the "...and many more" on purpose?