Forward Biased (Less-than-current Events)

And speaking of Denmark...

About a week ago the hosts of the morning show on our local talk radio station discussed the situation in Denmark and the rioting going on in response to a cartoon published in a Danish newspaper.  Since people would be undoubtedly curious about thie cartoon that riled up the Islamic world, they posted it on their website.

This curiosity, of course, is partly because those champions of free speech, the American Legacy Media, have refused to print said cartoon.  They say it's out of "sensitivity."  It's more likely that they're simply afraid of a plane being sent crashing into their buildings.  I'm truly impressed with how they stand up for principle.

As you might expect, it didn't take long for a Muslim reader to call the station with a death threat.  This was serious enough that our local sheriff, not to mention the FBI, has become involved in attempting to track down the perpetrator.

So if you haven't yet reached your Recommended Daily Allowance of free speech today, surf on over to Steel's place.  He's posted, not just that one offending cartoon, but all 13 of them that have appeared in Danish papers.

(Note:  I'm in no way claiming to support the perspective of all these cartoons.  Some of them are quite tasteless.  But tastelessness hardly justifies hurting--even killing--other people in response.)

But the best part is that there's a truly amazing comment thread there--actually two of them--including far more unique commenters than I have ever seen in response to one of his posts.  Certainly more than I've ever had.  Well over 200 of them.

(Reader is strongly cautioned--this is Steel's place, and many of these comments are rude, crude and quite profane.  Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

Included are no fewer than four or five (apparently) Muslim commenters, saying intelligent, civilized things such as (wording left just as they were written):

You have to ashame yourselves.PLEASE respect to people who is muslims.I curse you all...

God bless you,May ALLAH forgive you all one day....

Somehow "I curse you all" and "God bless you" don't quite seem to go together.

And:

You know what? you are bast[-]rd
you and your nation who need to be annihilated because of your messiness.
you are a real duny

Lovely.  This is certainly a civilized response.

Somehow they fail to catch the hypocrisy in the Arab world's failure to "respect to people" who are NOT Muslims.

In addition, one (apparently) non-Muslim commenter said

These people are not true Muslims. They have somehow been brainwashed into doing all the things they do...or else they are demon-possessed. There is nothing in the Islamic religion that condones any of these things.

...which is utter nonsense (well, except maybe for the "brainwashed" part).  While in Mohammed's early life he did indeed preach and practice a peaceful lifestyle, this all changed in his later years, when he began to advocate violence--including the killing of anyone who refused to convert to Islam.  In addition, the Koran states that, in the end times, Muslims will be commanded to kill all "infidels" in order to "purify" the earth.  Violence and revenge are integral parts of Arab culture, not to mention the Islamic religion itself.  Yes, Virginia, not all cultures are equally deserving of respect.  Some are simply better than others.  If you're looking for a politically-correct perspective, you're reading the wrong blog.

By the way, here's a great illustration of the fact that not all Arabs are insane.  It seems that

The son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi says he agrees with US President George W. Bush that the Middle East needs democracy.

A sensible Arab, advocating culture change!  Who'da thunk it?

Anyway, check it out.  And while I have no particular love for the Danish people or their government, and I can't completely support them, they certainly don't deserve the economic boycott that's being perpetrated against them.  Maybe you could go buy some Danish wedding cookies or something.

Unfortunately, of course, the Danes are completely missing the reason that this is happening, and I have no idea whether they'll ever figure it out.  Same goes for the left in this country, who had the same response after 9/11, namely, "why do they hate us so?"  It's incomprehensible to some folks that someother cultures despise freedom of speech, not to mention anyone who disagrees with them.  There's another example of hypocrisy:  as a group, no one is more intolerant of disagreement than the American left.  Not even the Arab world.

UPDATE:  Rob reminded me of the quintessential Danish product, Legos.  Buy Legos!  And if you don't need any, send them to Rob...

UPDATE AGAIN:  The rioting in the Muslim world has been called a "firestorm" of protest.  Steel illustrates for us why this is not exactly true. 

Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Via The Jawa Report we find a cartoon that illustrates precisely where the Legacy Media's "sensitivity" to Islamists comes from.  Heh, indeed, and ouch.

Let's play Jeopardy!

Mudville Gazette is playing a game of "Who said it?"

Here are three quotes from three different speakers/writers.  See if you can guess who said what.

The first:

So you can imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts a soldier as he gathers the remains of his colleagues after they stepped on land mines that tore them apart. After this situation, the soldier is caught between two hard options. He either refuses to leave his military camp on patrols and is therefore dogged by ruthless punishments enacted by the Vietnam butcher or he gets destroyed by the mines. This puts him under psychological pressure, fear and humiliation while his nation is ignorant of that.

The soldier has no solution except to commit suicide. That is a strong message to you, written by his soul, blood and pain, to save what can be saved from this hell. The solution is in your hands if you care about them.

The second:

And about Bill Clinton . . . . You know, I really think he should have been impeached, but not for a blow job. His policies are responsible for killing more Iraqis that George Bush. I don't understand why to rise to the level of being president of my country one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it's been held by a long line of monsters.

And the third:

Let's not forget that ultimately, Osama's vision for the Arab world is far more akin to the Right's vision of America. Remember these old posts? On homosexuality, on militarism, on women's rights, on religion in school, on capital punishment, on free speech, on curtailment of civil liberties, and on a million different other issues Islamic fundamentalists don't share many disagreements with the ideologues running our country.

Want the answers?  You'll have to go to Greyhawk's original post to find out.

Those crazy Canadians

Well, at least we aren't the only country that has problems with former leaders that shoot their mouths off in embarrassing ways.  (Via a commenter on Daily Pundit.)

A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with “ETs.”

If we ever do meet extraterrestrials, the last thing we need is to drag politics into our relationship.  Whatever that relationship is.

By “ETs,” Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth.

They're ethical?  I'm sure glad he knows this, although one wonders just what little green men may have been whispering in his ear to tell him so.  Will Smith, call your office...

Actually, any ETs we may one day meet no doubt are ethical.  It's just that their idea of ethical behavior and ours may not be exactly similar.  Maybe invasion and conquest is the highest moral guidepost in their society.  I guess they could be Vulcans, but what if they're Romulans?  Maybe they're on a mission from their god, they're the Israelites, Earth is the Promised Land, and we're the evil Canaanites, to be killed down to the last man, woman, and child.

No, this isn't satire, although it should be.

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech...

I'll bet.

...at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Although this doubtless wasn't what he meant, that statement is actually undeniably true.  UFOs are real.   UFO stands for "Unidentified Flying Object," and whenever we see an object that is flying and we don't know for sure what it is, it's a UFO by definition.  That doesn't mean that it's extraterrestrial in origin.

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

He evidently didn't learn the difference between "inter-" and "intra-" in high school.  Either that, or he seriously thinks that some UFOs are extra-galactic in origin, too.

Hellyer revealed, "The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop."

Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

You were just waiting to find out the real purpose of this speech, weren't you?  Well, here it is:  those warmongering Americans are not only spreading destruction and ill-will around Earth, they're planning to turn their weapons on E.T. as well!  Shoot first, ask those pesky questions later!  Kill, kill, kill!

I keep having to remind myself that this guy was serious.  Really.  And it wasn't just him, since "Hellyer’s speech ended with a standing ovation."  At the University of Toronto.

Steel Turman linked with The Real Illegal Alien Problem

UPDATE:  Via Steel, here's the original PRWeb story.

More evidence that BDS is a real mental disorder

It's not enough any more to merely hate President Bush.  I mean, that's just so yesterday.  And it's never been enough—not even nearly—to merely dissent from his policies as Civilized Human Beings Who Think They Have a Better Idea (which idea rarely seems to surface, or even matter) might do.  No, in order to be counted among the nouveau élite nowadays one must befriend—no, praise, almost worship—anyone whom the president calls an enemy.  And, of course, it's neither unfashionable nor uncommon to completely lose your mind in the process. 

The truth, actually, is that losing your mind is a prerequisite.  Kinda helps you to deal with that pesky cognitive dissonance that normally gives people with healthy minds pause to reconsider.

Lastango at Daily Pundit (via LGF) points us to a Weekend Australian article by David Nason in which Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is first called "one of the greatest living US writers," then is indulged to wax eloquent anent the virtues of being a terrorist, especially a suicide bomber.

Now, I think it's a safe assumption, though an assumption nonetheless, that Vonnegut's mind may once have been capable of rational, critical, even moral thinking.  He served in the 106th Infantry Division in WWII.  His short story "Harrison Bergeron" made quite an impact on me as a teenager, and still today is a valuable allegory illustrating the dangers and evils of forced egalitarianism.  This does seem genuinely odd coming from someone who was "deeply influenced by early socialist labor leaders" (cf. his Wikipedia link), but I can't claim that cognitive dissonance might not have been a lifelong handicap for him.

A few gems from the Weekend Australian story:

Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.

That is, unless you're dying for America, in which case you're a baby-killing, torture-loving stormtrooper.  And the religious beliefs that motivate terrorists are hardly twisted—they're perfectly straightforward and easily understood by anyone, right?  Kill the infidels!

"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Riiiiight.

If our enemies are "nothing," it's hardly us who made them so.  Their own culture has done a commendable job of doing that.  (Yes, I am making the shocking claim that some cultures are indeed better than others.)  Self-respect can neither be given nor taken away by others;  it must be earned, by oneself, for oneself, and no one can deprive you of it without your consent.  Not even us.

Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."

As one DP commenter mentions, there were very brave soldiers in the Nazi and Imperial Japanese armies, too.

He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

That one truly baffles me.

On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back."

He got that one exactly backwards;  it was bin Laden and his gang who didn't realize that we would fight back.

Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."

He was a darling of the intellectual left since writing Slaughterhouse Five in 1969, so why do I associate BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) with him, you ask?

[S]ince Mr Bush was elected, Vonnegut's criticisms of US policy have become more and more impassioned.

In 2002, he was widely criticised for saying there was too much talk about the 9/11 attacks and not enough about "the crooks on Wall Street and in big corporations", whose conduct had been more destructive.

The following year he wrote that the US was hated around the world "because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".

But Vonnegut's latest comments are likely to make many people wonder if old age has finally caught up with a grand old man of American letters.

The reasons for our hatred "around the world" are, of course, much simpler than Elite Intellectuals can generally comprehend, namely 1) base envy and 2) simply being non-Muslims.  But such reasons, easily supported by knowledge of human nature and the words and actions of Islamists themselves, must be discarded in favor of "our corporations," which "have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".

You know, that actually sounds a lot like plain old envy to me.

Nominate them for the Nobel Peace Prize

Forget international terrorism.  Forget Social Security reform, poverty, crime, Global Storming, etc.  The most pressing problem facing civilized society today is...a squawking chicken toy.

SYDNEY, Australia --A chicken toy that squawks and flaps its wings when strangled is "grossly irresponsible" and sends the wrong message to young children, a spokesman for a leading animal welfare group said Tuesday.

The toy is manufactured by a Taiwanese company and is widely available in toy and electronics stores across Australia. It is marketed for children over 3.

A product description on the Web site of Jaycar Electronics, a major Australian importer of toy, says: "Grab him by the neck and he will squawk and cluck like mad, flapping his wings and feet wildly as if he is really being choked."

But Michael Beatty, a spokesman for the Queensland state branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said the toy was "grossly irresponsible" and sent the wrong message to young children.

"What's next? Burn a cat? Shoot a dog?" Beatty said. "Children of that age are likely to turn around and try the same thing on their pet bird or even the cat or dog. Then they're going to wonder why the animal fights back."

Jaycar's Managing Director Gary Johnstone said he was "amused and mystified" by the RSPCA's response.

"I would have thought they would have better things to do like saving real animals from cruelty," Johnstone said. "This is a toy that is used to relieve stress, it's meant to be a bit of a giggle."

They don't have "Beavis and Butthead" to blame any more when kids do stupid things, so I guess they had to find someone.

"Do it again.  Hehehehe.  That's cool, Butthead."  "Let me choke it!"  "No, it's my turn!  Hehehehe..."  (Sqwaaaaawwwk!)

I didn't realize they needed a landing strip

I mean, I thought they had VTOL and all.  Up and down.

Via The Steel Deal we discover that the Puerto Rican town of Lajas wants to build a landing strip to "welcome" visitors from outer space.  (No link to the story yet.)

(UPDATE:  Here's the link to the story.)

LAJAS, Puerto Rico (AP) - People in this sleepy hamlet are so sure they have been receiving other-worldly visitors, they want to build a UFO landing strip to welcome them.

A bright green sign along a lonely country road in southwestern Puerto Rico proudly displays a silhouette of a flying saucer and two words: "Extraterrestrial Route."

Most Puerto Ricans laughed when a horse farmer installed the sign on his property at the request of Reynaldo Rios, a local elementary school teacher who says he's been communicating with alien visitors to this U.S. territory since he was a child.

Rios, a 39-year-old with a goatee and a shock of dark hair, won't be ignored. With the blessing of a local government desperate for tourist dollars, he's dedicated himself to building the UFO landing strip.

And this guy's a teacher.  Of young children.

Steel says, "I am willing to bet hard currency that this WILL involve U.S. tax payer dollars." 

What do you think?

Slapdown at the Kos Korral

Via Michelle Malkin we find this fascinating thread in the comments at Daily Kos.

It seems that Mother Sheehan was feeling a tad put-upon by recent news that took some of the spotlight off of her grandstanding grief, and posted thusly:

i am watching cnn and it is 100 percent rita...even though it is a little wind and a little rain...it is bad, but there are other things going on in this country today...and in the world!!!!

by CindySheehan on Sat Sep 24th, 2005 at 06:29:15 PDT

In case you missed the news, Hurricane Rita was just "a little wind and a little rain," and it was monopolizing CNN for a little while.  Poor, neglected Cindy.

There you go, folks.  That's Mother Sheehan in all her grief-stricken glory.  I can't add a thing.

But what's truly remarkable is the response she gets from her fellow Kossacks:

it is 100 percent rita...even though it is a little wind and a little rain

I'm in Southeast Texas with family on the coast and in Lake Jackson, LA.

I'd like you to tell us it's just a little wind and rain. They've lost their homes, jobs and businesses and gone through fear and panic while you bask in your fan's adulation, party with your celebrity friends and play the star.

Shame on you, you're jealous of media coverage of other's suffering. You've become a caricature and I no longer support you. I'm ashamed I ever did.

Incredible.  She receives a smackdown worthy of the WWF.  It goes on and on, if you care to read it.

Real common sense from the left!  Will wonders never cease?  There may be hope for the Democratic Party yet.

Or not.  We'll see.

Some local idiocy

Lest we forget who they really are, the president of the SC chapter of the ACLU has reminded us again of why they're so widely scorned as part of the moonbat left.  People of a libertarian mindset would have no better friends than an association dedicated to civil liberties--and if the ACLU were indeed so dedicated, it would be an admirable organization.

But alas, all too often that doesn't seem to be the case.

The leader of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says assumptions that led to South Carolina's criminal background checks of Hurricane Katrina evacuees are racially motivated.

"The assumption that when you go out to rescue a bunch of poor, black people, that they are going to be criminals, is racist," said Kevin Gray, president of the South Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The only plan they ever seem to have for poor people is a jail plan."

In other words, we checked these folks out only because they were poor and black.  If they were not, everyone would smile and open their arms, welcoming a bunch of total strangers into their homes without a second thought--just because they are white.

Sure.  What say we let them room with your daughter?  Sound good?  Thought you'd like that idea.

Of course, some of the evacuees checked out were white.  This fact, being unhelpful to their case, is ignored.

Sometimes race-baiting is merely a nuisance.  In cases like this it's downright asinine.  Would they have us not perform background checks?  Or maybe only on the white evacuees?

Here's a clue, guys:  out of 547 evacuees screened by SLED, 301--over half--had criminal records.  Another "unhelpful" fact ignored by these the steadfast defenders of our civil rights.  And this was only a fraction of the over 6000 evacuees from the Gulf Coast currently staying in my state.

Good lord.  Some people make "stuck on stupid" a cliché already.  How about "stuck on dangerous?"

Birds of a feather

This is one of a couple of humorous items on Daily Pundit today.

It's just begging for a caption contest, no?

Something like "Cindy discovers what side her bread is buttered on..."

Post update

Considerable updates have been performed on this post, "'What the heck were they thinking' dept." concerning JetBlue Flight 292 and the issue of post-postmodernism, so if you haven't seen them or you read this blog via RSS feed, you may want to check it out again.