Month: January 2006

  • Lost campaign opportunity!

    I’m watching President Bush’s State of the Union speech (no liveblogging here, just a comment), and I can’t believe that Cindy Sheehan (just back from visiting Hugo Chavez) was so stupid as to lose a golden opportunity to mug for the camera. WASHINGTON – Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq who…

  • Leaving innocence behind

    Is the phenomenon of pedestrians attacking vehicles becoming a fad? Not long ago, I wrote a post about a group of “at least 15” Milwaukee kids who dragged a man from his car and beat him nearly to death. Today I find a similar story out of Illinois: (CBS) BELLWOOD, Ill. A UPS driver was…

  • Identity politics seek same!

    A book called “The New Gay Teenager” is causing a fuss among North Carolina parents because it was used in a school seminar and is believed to be promoting the so-called “gay agenda.” It is one thing to maintain that kids shouldn’t be exposed to any discussions of homosexuality. But the gay agenda? From what…

  • SWAT Moros, not optometrists!

    I don’t know how many readers remember the history of SWAT Teams, but I can remember when they started. “SWAT” is an acronym for “Special Weapons And Tactics.” They are to police as Special Forces are to regular army, and they were formed in response to the various urban insurrections and guerrilla movements of the…

  • Cartoons your newspaper won’t let you see

    With all the fuss over the Danish cartoons, it occurred to me that readers of this blog might want to see them. And thanks to Right on the Left Coast, you can! Here’s a web site which has all of them. By American standards, they’re quite mild. Here’s an example: Hmmm…. I’m already feeling guilty.…

  • Hamas honors women!

    Philadelphians (especially feminists) can relax a little. Hamas is not so bad after all. Why, the Hamas victory can even be said to be the result of a gender gap: JABALIYA, Gaza Strip – The girls and women who came to congratulate Hamas’ top female candidate, Jamila Shanti, after her party’s landslide victory in last…

  • Is free speech a crusade too?

    Probably aglow in contemplation of the recent election, the Palestinians now want the Danes out of their territory: Dozens of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades members held a demonstration against Denmark Sunday at the main square in the West Bank town of Nablus, shouted anti-Danish slogans and threatened to harm Danish targets located in the West Bank…

  • Bridge over troubled oil?

    Sometimes, I am not cynical enough. When I wrote about Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s publicity stunt (supplying discount oil to “help America’s poor”) earlier, I wasn’t quite getting the entire picture, and I overlooked a key player. Today’s Inquirer, however, was nice enough to supply a clear picture — showing five faces beaming in “celebration”…

  • Lie down and learn about suffering!

    Aurelia Blake is a teacher who does more than merely teach. A story in today’s Inquirer features a photo (not available online) of middle school children lying next to each other head to head and shoulder to shoulder in a “reenactment” of a slave ship. Underneath the picture is the following caption: Mario Cosey keeps…

  • nuclear values coming soon?

    According to both ABC News and WorldNetDaily, Hamas seeks to impose Sharia (Islamic Law) on territory held by the Palestinian Authority. Here’s what a Hamas spokesman told WND: “We are holding emergency meetings to decide our next course of action,” chief Palestinian negotiation minister Saeb Erekat told WND. “I don’t think Fatah is going to…

  • Evita “la loca” thinks globally, acts locally

    I honestly don’t know what to make of the decision by Venezuela’s quasi dictator Hugo Chavez to intervene in Philadelphia’s domestic affairs, but he has, under the auspices of “helping the poor“: Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez, who has been a persistent antagonist to President Bush, is providing relief to some poor families in the…

  • Hamas wins. (Quick, someone call the Nobel Prize Committee!)

    It appears that the terrorist group Hamas has won the Palestian Authority election in a landslide: Hamas won 76 seats in the 132-member parliament, while Fatah, which controlled Palestinian politics for four decades, won 43 seats, said Hanna Nasser, head of the Central Election commission. The 13 remaining seats went to several smaller parties and…

  • The unbearable whiteness of being

    Last night, I was put in an awful mood after being told about something being called an “academic discipline,” but which makes very little sense. That is a thing called “whiteness theory.” I guess the attachment of the word “theory” means it’s no more proven than evolution or intelligent design, but the idea that there…

  • Well, shift my tranny!

    Speaking of news, damned if I’m not a Mazda RX-8. That’s news to me. Why am I always the last to know? I’m a Mazda RX-8! You’re sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when…

  • Weathering the news

    Increasingly, there seem to be two different “news worlds” for lack of a better term. There’s online news, and “regular” news. Right there I’m realizing that I’m running out of terms, and resorting to improvising on-the-spot euphemisms of my own. What, in the name of God, is “regular” news? The stuff that manages to find…

  • anatomy of an inhibition

    The stuff people say is priceless to behold sometimes. During a Washington Post panel discussion with Glenn Reynolds, Jeff Jarvis, Jane Hamsher (NOTE: Because there’s some controversy over the proper location of Jane Hamsher’s blog, I deferred to her celebrity URL), and Jay Rosen, an anonymous New York commenter leveled the following charge at Glenn…

  • A new “Dress” code?

    In another ridiculous dress code dispute, a boy (apparently no transsexual), got the ACLU to help him win the “right” to wear a skirt to school: HASBROUCK HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP) – A male high school student can wear a skirt to school after the American Civil Liberties Union reached an agreement with school officials. The…

  • Toilets and other Windows of opportunity

    An economist I am not. But my earlier toilet post caused me to stumble upon something that challenges my libertarian (Misian) view that government intervention is always a force of economic stagnation, and therefore never a force for economic growth. On to my unsettling discovery. Initially, I found that, yes, the 1994 law mandating 1.6…

  • A study in contrast

    In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, local citizen Kathy Stevenson (who I think it’s fair to say is speaking for many women, and probably many men if the truth were told) writes very eloquently about fear: Whereas one kind of fear wore the face of the bogeyman (Bundy, Charles Manson, various other psychos), suddenly the bad guy…

  • Swimming with RINOs

    I’m running late today so I don’t have time to review the posts, but everyone be sure to check out this week’s RINO sightings Carnival, hosted at phin’s blog! Great blog, great graphics, and nice job, phin!