:: PROLEGOMENA ::

:: Thursday, March 31 ::

READING THE LINES

If you think, you will recognize an amazing decription of what goes on inside Israel's borders:
Headline:

Clerics of 3 Faiths Protest Gay Festival Planned for Jerusalem

Clerics, not the Knesset. Hmm... This report should remind the anti-Israelites that such are the freedoms in Israel. Women march there, too. Before President Bush's decisions, where else in the Middle East or Persia?

International gay leaders are planning a 10-day WorldPride festival and parade in Jerusalem in August, saying they want to make a statement about tolerance and diversity in the Holy City, home to three great religious traditions.

But we have a lot of trouble in the first sentence. "Religious traditions"? - who wrote this, Al Gore? "Religions would have been the accurate word, but ! -

- How is Jerusalem "home" to that third religion, Islam, when the name of Jerusalem does not once appear in the Qu'ran?

Further, what's with this "pride" thing? Will they simply march with dignity and remind the people of the importance of certain inalienable rights, or will they march and dance naked in an extended public sex show in the face of millenia-old "religious traditions" while demanding tolerance? They marched here in Asheville, the parade led by Candace Gingrich, followed by dancing nude "mud men." and a flamboyant, multi-float freak show that gave thousands of ordinary onlookers the impression that the gay agenda was this vision of decadence without discretion or dignity.

The article does end, though, with another positive reminder of civil liberties and civilized behavior in Israel:

Annual marches by homosexuals have become routine in Tel Aviv, a secular coastal city. For the past three years, gay parades have also been staged in Jerusalem. Religious groups have complained, but the police have issued permits for the events, which have been held without any serious incidents.

Will NYT readers understand it before they think again of sporting a "We are all Palestinians" tee-shirt?
:: michael Thursday, March 31, 2005 [+] ::
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BUSH WON'T CARE

Polls Show Drop for Bush's Job Approval

NEITHER WILL BLAIR

(Boy George) relishes the vitriolic soundbite. 'I won't be voting for Tony Blair again,' he announces.

:: michael Thursday, March 31, 2005 [+] ::
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IT'S A WHOLE NEW WORD!

Go to urbandictionary.com and vote on this word:

1. mashy
An overly aggressive panhandlin bum.
From the phrase "let me ask you a question," but when asked by a southern derelict or bum who is severely intoxicated sounds like "Mashyaquestion."

:: michael Thursday, March 31, 2005 [+] ::
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TV MEDIA HARD AT WORK
to keep you stupid

There are only four news events in the world, according to TV news this morning.
1) Earthquake and tsunami fears.
2) Terri Schiavo
3) Michael Jackson
4) What Madonna wore to a party.

And Jesse Jackson is involved in half of them.

:: michael Tuesday, March 29, 2005 [+] ::
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PERSONAL

I got this funny request yesterday via e-mail:

Michael,

My buddy Jason Thinks He might need some surgery for his snoring. I told him what I knew about yours.
Could you send him an email and let him know what procedure you had done and if it worked.

If the info is useful... I had a deviated septum corrected in my nose in 1996 after yet another sinus infection. I haven't had such an illness since. With breathing passages opened, snoring gets very much reduced, but snoring also depends on alcohol and exposure to smoke.

My dad always snored. It led to severe sleep apnea, which became truly miserable and put him on a road to premature death.

:: michael Tuesday, March 29, 2005 [+] ::
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DISCUSSION = STRENGTH

On last week's Republican antics, someone already wrote almost exactly as I would have, in an e-mail to Andrew Sullivan:

Why not consider the current debate within conservatism on the Shavio case as an indication of vitality rather than imminent demise? Conservatism has been "cracking up" for years now, along the libertarian/conservative divide, along the paleo/neo divide, along the religious/secular divide. Look at The Corner: reasoned arguments on either side of a topic that I think we can all admit is at least morally difficult. Do you see the same thing going on at DU? Or at The Nation?

I consider this a strength of American conservatism: we tend to be much more accommodating of ideological differences than the left. I know that statement will draw scoffs from many of your readers, and possibly from you. But consider: abortion. Who has a more diverse spectrum of opinions? Similarly Affirmative Action. Immigration? As counter-intuitive as it seems, I think conservatives in America can claim to be more accepting of diversity of opinions on each of these topics. Hell, even gay marriage. Some are for, some are against. It's all a glorious mess, and hopefully we'll muddle through and do some good along the way.

:: michael Monday, March 28, 2005 [+] ::
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ANNAN GOING DOWN

Rwanda. Bosnia. Darfur. Iraq.
Sad, isn't it? -that it takes a financial scandal involving his son, not standing by while genocides -plural- go unprevented and unchecked, to make this worthless secretary-general step down from his worthless organization. And while someone peddles a device to block FOX news from your TV, aren't they the only network who really seems to be following that story? Oh. He's sad, too:

Depressed Annan close to quitting over UN scandals

KOFI ANNAN, the United Nations secretary-general, is said to be struggling with depression and considering his future. Colleagues have reported concerns about Annan ahead of an official report this week that will examine his son Kojo’s connection to the controversial Iraqi oil for food scheme.

Depending on the findings of the report, by a team led by the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, Annan may have to choose between the secretary-generalship and loyalty to his son.

Oh, boo f*****g hoo. Bad legacy for you.

Something else to consider: what the hell is someone from a thrid world country doing in that leadership position, anyway?

:: michael Sunday, March 27, 2005 [+] ::
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NOBLE

After Defeats, Schiavo Parents Tell Supporters to Go Home

Bob and Mary Schindler, both practicing Catholics, urged dozens of supporters gathered outside the Florida hospice where Schiavo is being cared for to go home for Easter.

"The family would request that everyone go home, be with your children, hold them close and share every moment you have with them," said Brother Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk who is a spiritual adviser to the Schindlers.

I look forward to knowing what reward they reap for their good work.

I insist this case boils down to a simple element: witness credibility. Her husband is not credible. Her parents are. The judges are siding with a witness who is not credible.


IGNOBLE

And stupid.

Device lets you out-Fox your TV

It's not that Sam Kimery objects to the views expressed on Fox News Channel. The creator of the "Fox Blocker" contends the network is not news at all.

Kimery says he has sold about 100 of the little silver bits of metal that screw into the back of most televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from their sets. The Tulsa, Okla., resident also has received thousands of e-mails, both angry and complimentary, as well as a few death threats since the device debuted in August.

He may just be capitalizing on blue-state America, especially since liberal magazine subscriptions have gone way up since the election. Maybe this article will help him sell more than the 100 he's sold. (This means he has not even passed $1000 in sales. Liberals will laugh at his idea, but will they be conservative enough to choose the cost-free option of simply choosing to not tune in to that channel?)

But he is lying about Fox News at the same time. Yes, there are lots of opinion shows on that channel, but so what? They report news, too, and haven't been caught up in forged document scandals like CBS and, now, ABC. Likening a purchase of the device to burning a draft card is stupid, but will attract buyers who also do not know the meaning of "unilateral," "tyranny," "Nazi," and, suddenly in this instance, "choice."

:: michael Sunday, March 27, 2005 [+] ::
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SORRY FOR THE POPE?

Why? He's done a good job. He's old and sick, will die, and go to heaven. That's worth rejoicing over.

He forgave his would-be assassin, traveled more than any other Pope, and did not bend from his principals concerning the sanctity of life. I had to respect his opposition to the Iraq war, and while I struggle with his message against contraception in the third world, his message was one of faith. I didn't like the message, but his consistency is admirable.

The only necessary concern for Christians worldwide is, WWNPD? What will the next Pope do?

:: michael Sunday, March 27, 2005 [+] ::
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SANTA CONVICTED OF CHILD ABUSE

And the President of Columbia University said this:

We should not elevate our autonomy as individual faculty members above every other value. ... (Professors have an obligation) to resist the allure of certitude, the temptation to use the podium as an ideological platform, to indoctrinate a captive audience, to play favorites with the like-minded and silence the others.

Do you think we will read of his mysterious disappearance later this weekend?

:: michael Friday, March 25, 2005 [+] ::
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HUYGENS'S LENS

At Astronomy Photo of the Day, the lens used to discover Titan 350 years ago today. Very Cool. There's an anagram etched on the thing.

:: michael Friday, March 25, 2005 [+] ::
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AN ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE TO FORGERY?

So this artist sneaks his work into major art museums. Cool.

A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed. The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day.

The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was a 2 foot by 1.5 foot (61cm by 46 cm) oil painting of a colonial-era admiral, to which the artist had added a can of spray paint in his hand and anti-war graffiti in the background.

The other two targets were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, where he hung a glass-encased beetle with fighter jet wings and missiles attached to its body -- another comment on war, Banksy told Reuters on Thursday.

The story gets funnier:

Last year he smuggled work into the Louvre in Paris and London's Tate, attracting attention in the British media.

"My sister inspired me to do it. She was throwing away loads of my pictures one day and I asked her why. She said 'It's not like they're going to be hanging in the Louvre.'" He took that as a challenge. "I thought why wait until I'm dead," he said.

I suppose security in museums just cannot break the boredom of their jobs. I often feel sorry for them. It is certain there has been a lot of yelling in the security offices.

This threw my memory back to a richly informative article about a different thing, forgery in the art world. My local museum's director shuddered at the level of entertainment I got out of the story. You have to pay to read it, but it is worth the money if you have an interest in art history.

The Forger and the Spy, by Igor Golomstock
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Summaries/V107I5P39-1.htm

But no, while funny at first, it was not acceptable behavior, not even at the Brooklyn Museum. He used glue and damaged the walls, he's gotten people with already bad jobs under more scrutiny at work, and his work is cliché, just more turd-on-a-stick anti-war statement art.

Just three years ago, he would have been sent to the torture chamber if he did this at the Iraq Museum. So this is another reminder that so many in the art world do not understand how free they are, and despite the creative ability so many of them possess, they are incapable of visualizing the societal consequences, big and small, of their vision.

:: michael Friday, March 25, 2005 [+] ::
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AVOIDING JAIL IN THEIR PAJAMAS

While liberals here continue to hallucinate about the freedoms eroded away by the cowboy President, blogging is the only way for journalists to avoid being jailed by the censors in Nepal:

Blogs rise above the Nepal information coup
In the face of an information meltdown, readers turn to blogs for news from Nepal, reports Annie Besant

In the fight against the King Gyanendra's media censorship, the Internet is playing a vital and unexpected role. Bloggers are becoming Nepal's new watchdogs. In the face of strict rules restricting print, television and radio communications, Nepali journalists have begun using web logs, or blogs, to communicate their opinions and news to the outside world.

Tom Brokaw and those other arrogant-ass news anchors should be forced to go there and live it.

:: michael Thursday, March 24, 2005 [+] ::
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REPUBLICAN TALKING POINTS MEMO?

Liberal talk radio went nuts about this on Monday. But ABC is backing off from claiming where the memo actually originated, and there are those pesky errors, such as the spelling of Schiavo's name and the incorrect Senate bill number. Hmm... Back to liberal talk radio, which will now accuse ABC of being run by conservatives and may still find a way to blame it on Rove. At Powerline, a senate staffer explains why it smells even more like fraud.

:: michael Thursday, March 24, 2005 [+] ::
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Today in History, 230 years ago:

Give me liberty, or give me death!

:: michael Wednesday, March 23, 2005 [+] ::
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MORE SCHIAVO

So there's this quote from a very smart James Pinkerton column:

...whenever the Democrats retake power and resume their own ambitious national agenda, they will happily trample on "states' rights," citing the Schiavo legislation as their precedent. But maybe by then Republicans won't care as much, because the traditional conservative belief system, which grounded its politics in the original intent of the Founding Fathers, has been superseded - the Constitutional Right now being the Religious Right.

So many people are blaming this on the looming religious right, the "rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth Christians," (as my barista said yesterday), the fundamentalists, as liberal talk radio says endlessly. It should alarm no one that this case gives many irreligious people the creeps. (However, it should be asked, again, loudly, even though we know the answer: Where are the outraged feminists, outraged at the ownership this cheatin' husband has over her, who would surely blame him at least in part for her bulimia?)

The big point: states do not have the right to run amok just because Conservatives usually favor states' rights. Federal law is a tool that , when necessary to address matters of right and wrong, is rightly used. Civil rights, anyone? Hello?

This from the majority opinion of the Eleventh Circuit:

There is no denying the absolute tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo. We all have our own family, our own loved ones, and our own children. However, we are called upon to make a collective, objective decision concerning a question of law. In the end, and no matter how much we wish Mrs. Schiavo had never suffered such a horrible accident, we are a nation of laws, and if we are to continue to be so, the pre-existing and well-established federal law governing injunctions as well as Pub. L. No. 109-3 must be applied to her case. While the position of our dissenting colleague has emotional appeal, we as judges must decide this case on the law.

That's a bit refreshing, actually. Now let the elected lawmakers do their thing, and let the judges go by the rule of law.

:: michael Wednesday, March 23, 2005 [+] ::
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DOCUMENTING THE OBVIOUS

Document: Bin Laden Evaded U.S. Forces

Why must we continue to pay people to fill the "no shit" file with such documents?

:: michael Tuesday, March 22, 2005 [+] ::
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THE SCHIAVO THING

It had better get resolved quickly before the public gets sick of the whole thing, now that everybody is trying to get involved. The President did sum it up nicely, that it is better to err on the side of life.

I decided to tune in to liberal talk radio as I worked yesterday. I noticed, more than the routine dismissal of every church-going American as "fundamentalist," the frequency of the word "tyranny" being used to describe the Congress... that's the body of hundreds of people recently elected to limited terms, known on left radio as tyrants. Well, maybe they can vote those tyrants out next election and get someone in there more like Castro.

Health insurance! they cried. National health care! "I don't have insurance!" cried a man who sounded like he was around 30 years old. Did the all-knowing hosts ask why? Was the caller dealt bad cards in life? ..or was he spending the money on something else, maybe something else which lessens his health? No, of course the hosts did not ask.

Then there is this rampant use and misuse of the word, "politics" and it's various forms. Not all politics is bad politics. Using your legislative power to fight something you truly believe is wrong and behaving in a way your constituents would like you to behave may be labeled 'political," but it isn't bad.

:: michael Tuesday, March 22, 2005 [+] ::
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WHACK!

Is it the trap, or is it the gorgonzola?

:: michael Tuesday, March 22, 2005 [+] ::
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ROVE ON TOP?

Dear liberal friends,
You've been telling me Karl Rove is really the man on top all along, and I didn't believe you:

http://www.nationalvanguard.org/printer.php?id=4711
(I found this link via an angry LGF ranting about the standards at Google News.)

Such an extremely high-profile person letting himself be seen around DuPont Circle during Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend suggests he may not be as smart as the theorists have been saying. Perhaps the President really is the smart one after all.


UPDATE:
Oh , I guess he wasn't on top:

A Barnes reporter told Storch that "Karl greatly enjoyed the supervision of a certain hairy 350-lb. Leather Dominator who had won the Miss Virginia Daddy Bear title at the MAL festivities."

UPDATE 2:
Oh.
The Daily Kos blogged this 3 weeks ago. Of course he did.

:: michael Monday, March 21, 2005 [+] ::
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NEW WEBSTER WORDS

Alarming News points to a specific new word in Webster's new World College Dictionary: partial-birth abortion. She caught it from a longer list posted at The Club for Growth.

Al Qaeda
wedgie
blog
cargo pants
irritable bowel syndrome
partial-birth abortion
Botox
digital camera
chad
e-commerce
identity theft
Megan’s Law
paintball
sheesh
street cred
touch screen
webcast
Wi-Fi
WMD

First question: how in Sam Hill did it take so long for many of these words to get into the dictionary?

Second: Since every year it is a news story when new words get added, what news organizations reported the new words but left out partial-birth abortion?
NBC's WKYC.com didn't mention it.
Neither did NBC's KING5.
Via Google News Search... the new words aren't news.

:: michael Monday, March 21, 2005 [+] ::
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NEVER ENOUGH

While researching ex-President Bill Clinton's "apology" - his stupid remark about the Crusades and Native American displacement bringing on the 9-11 attacks, this is found via Google News:

Sheikh Fawzi Zafzaf, President of the Interfaith Dialogue Committee of Al-Azhar, said during a press conference that his committee has sent a request to the Pope last February, demanding an official apology on Christian crusades against the Muslim world, following the example of the Jews.

This, of course, reflects the ongoing Muslim view that all land once possessed by Islam still belongs to Islam. But this apology is perhaps the best they think they can get for now, since the only war Muslims ever won against the west was against France.

"...following the example of the Jews?" - do what? The Jews apologised for the Crusades? I am missing something here.

This news, especially being from Egypt, threw me back to a lawsuit filed by Egyptians in 2003 against all the world's Jews. Click this text for an informative, amusing read on that attempted suit:

(The) lawsuit is ostensibly being filed against "all the Jews of the world" for recovery of property allegedly stolen during the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt approximately 3300 years ago.

Citing the Torah, Dr. Hilmi is demanding, presumably on Egypt's behalf, the return of "gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing and more," not to mention interest thereon, taken by the ancestors of today's Jews "in the middle of the night" -- a "clear theft of a host country's resources and treasure, something that fits the morals and character of the Jews."

Read the whole thing, it's amusing because it sites a similar suit in ancient times, and the writer fires back with the same ammo used by the plaintiff.

I also stumbled on this very good essay on the Crusades. Click the text for the whole thing:

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword.

And have a nice weekend.

:: michael Friday, March 18, 2005 [+] ::
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UPDATE: CHINA DISTORTED MR.BENNETT'S REMARKS
via Michelle Malkin via Hugh Hewitt

I know enough about China and should have suspected this as a possibility.
Mr. Bennett should have, too. One point made below still stands... that a big wig in American media making such a comment was and still is believable. The free press is in a sad state when we cannot read a report like the Chinese interview and immediately think that such a remark is out of character.


:: michael Wednesday, March 16, 2005 [+] ::
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