Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Terrorism and Islam are not race!!

So how come the TSA refuses to profile passengers based on their religious affiliation or ties to terrorist groups? I don't recall hearing about any Baptists committing any terrorist acts. I'm sorry but there is a strong correlation between a person's religion and their likelihood to commit terrorist acts. I know you have all read the e-mail where it lists all the terrorist attacks from Munich, 1972, to Beirut, 1983, to New York, 2001, and how they were all committed by Muslim males between the ages of 16-60.

So, why are we ignoring the obvious? I plan on writing Senators Allen and Warner and Representative Moran and asking why. Now, that the ineffectual and pathetic Norman Mineta has resigned as the Secretary of Transportation, whose whole policy towards securing our airlines was clouded by his experience as a Japanese-American internee during WWII, surely we can do better.

I fly - a lot. And I am mad as a hornet that I can't bring toothpaste or cologne or Cherry Coke on the damn plane. Before every trip, I stop at the same newsstand and buy four magazines (Computer Gaming World, PC Gamer, Maximum PC, and The Atlantic monthly), a king-size Kit Kat and 2 Cherry Cokes (one for the plane ride because stupid United "features" Pepsi - yecch! - and one for after I arrive at my destination).

Only now I can't do that because some of some malcontent, British-Pakistani Muslims. Great!

Before I sign off, I ask you to consider a larger question: do Muslims, as a group, get along with anyone? I mean, is there one country where Muslims co-exist as part of a multi-cultural society? Look at the US after 9/11. Muslims make up about 2-3% of the Muslim population. And yet after America was attacked, they were bleating about a backlash (which never materialized) against Arabs in America. That's chutzpah, folks!

Sunday, August 27, 2006

The parallels are obvious

Check out this article from Oregon Live. It's an article about a 36 year-old mother of two who is about to lose her job as a classroom aide because of a silly law that says that people who commit certain crimes can't work in Oregon's school systems.

The article starts out by relating a story from 1963 about a 17 year-old who ran a stop sign, hit another car and accidentally killed a high school classmate. The driver of the vehicle was none other than our First Lady, Laura Bush. The article tells the reader that although Ms. Bush could have been charged with vehicular manslaughter, she wasn't, and hence was able to go on and lead a productive life.

The article is trying to draw a parallel between the case of Mrs. Bush and that of the subject of the article, Kieya Walker. When Walker was 17 she shot and killed her boyfriend while he was sleeping. She was subsequently charged with and convicted of murder.

Of course! I mean, the parallels are obvious and huge.

Now, one is perfectly free to argue that a law that says that people convicted of certain crimes can't work in the school system is unjust and should be changed. And the fact that Walker has truly changed her life and become an upstanding citizen is certainly laudable. But to suggest there is a parallel between an auto accident that results in a death and murder is specious, if not subversive, logic.

Then again, isn't that the kind of reporting we've come to expect from the media?

Pet Peeve #147

This has nothing to do with any of the normal stuff that I usually write about. It's just one of the many things that pisses me off.

Like people that try to get on the elevator before letting others get off. Or people that stand in doorways. Or people that won't get the hell out of the left lane.

So, what I want to know is, when did lemons in my soda become mandatory? Now, every time I'm in a restaurant - and this includes the restaurants here in Maputo - I have to fish out a damn lemon out of my Diet Coke. A lemon that I didn't want in the first place and now is going to waste.

Now I have to remember to ask the waiter to hold the damn lemon. Great!

How's this for gratitude?

I ran across this item on the Internet.

Sooooo. The United States goes into a war zone and evacuates a bunch of U.S. citizens (most of whom were "dual-citizens"). Then, eschewing normal procedure, the Department of State waived the fees that they charge for evacuating U.S. citizen.

Why? To pander to the mythical "Arab street", of course.

Now, I would argue that one could have reasonably predicted that some form of military violence was likely to occur in Lebanon (considering that the country has been experiencing some form of conflict for approximately the last 32 years). In other words, those Americans were there by their own choice, mired in a situation that was totally predictable. Yet we didn't charge them for the evacuation. This is unlike the situation last year in Asia when we evacuated U.S. citizens from areas that were hit by the tsunami - a phenomenon that is much less predictable than the Hezbollah-provoked destruction that rained down on Lebanon.

And what do we get for this effort? A lawsuit.

That's right, folks. The American-Arab Discrimination Committee is suing Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, charging that they mismanaged the evacuation efforts.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Nina Chahine, 19, who with her family was among the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said her wedding in the southern city of Tyre was set for July 13.

The wedding had to be postponed as family members fled the outbreak of the war, she said.

"We were on the road and the first bridge was bombed and we drove home and all the other bridges were bombed and there was absolutely no way for us to get home," Chahine told reporters outside federal court in Detroit.

"We were all American citizens and there was no way that anybody helped us. No communications nothing. I was on my way to my wedding fearing death, basically."

Chahine said her immediate family spent about $20,000 to return to Detroit via Syria and Jordan.

Dear Nina,

Here's a tip: Don't get married in countries that house illegal militias that attack other countries and hence are likely to come under counter-attack!

Crap like this sure makes me want to rush right out and rescue people from dilemmas of their own making.

Friday, August 25, 2006

PLEASE don't tell Ma!

I know I mostly use this space to vent my spleen on how Democrats and liberals are screwing up the world, but I DO have a sense of humor (honest!). Here's an item I found VERY funny.

(Once again I am cribbing from my hero, James Taranto. But he gets paid to find these things, while I have to catch-as-catch-can in between NIV training sessions and server migrations.)


Prosecutors say a 29-year-old man traveling with his mother desperately did not want her to know he had packed a sexual aid for their trip to Turkey.

So he told security it was a bomb, officials said.

Madin Azad Amin was stopped by officials on Aug. 16 after guards found an object in his baggage that resembled a grenade, prosecutors said.

When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto.

He later told officials he lied about the item because his mother was nearby and he did not want her to hear that it was part of a penis pump, Scaduto said.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Write your Congressman today!

Today I was reading online about the illegal immigration cause celebre: Elvira Arellano. A quick Google search will tell you that Ms. Arellano is an illegal immigrant who is currently holed up in the Aldalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, Illinois. She has been granted "sanctuary" by the congregation's pastor, Walter Coleman.

The pro-illegal immigration lobby is hoping that her case will attract national attention and sympathy for the [self-imposed] "plight" of illegal aliens. Really, though, there is nothing special about her case. She entered the U.S. illegally in 1997 and was deported shortly thereafter. Within days of being deported, she again entered the U.S. illegally. In 2002, she was convicted of working under a false Social Security number and ordered to attend a second deportation hearing. Shock of all shockers, Ms. Arellano failed to appear at her hearing. Of course, like many other illegals she had a child in the United States.

This brings me to the point of this post - PLEASE WRITE YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES AND URGE THEM TO CLOSE THE EGREGIOUS LOOPHOLE THAT GIVES CITIZENSHIP TO THE CHILDREN OF PEOPLE IN THE U.S. ILLEGALLY!!! This loophole is an affront to our respect for the law.

In Arellano's case, she is using the fact that her son is an American citizen as leverage to gain sympathy so that she can be rewarded for breaking the law. First, there is no law that says that she can't take her son and raise him in Mexico. Second, she is claiming that her son has health problems that require him to stay in the United States. What are these "health problems"? She claims that her son has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and severe separation anxiety. So, let me see if I understand this: her son is a normal, rambunctious 7 year-old who misses his Mommy.

This is just offensive to me. I wrote Senator George Allen, Senator John Warner and Representative Jim Moran and urged them to introduce or support legislation that closes this loophole.

If you want to be my friend, you start by knocking on my door - not breaking into my house!

Friday, August 04, 2006

A picture is worth a thousand words


This picture pretty much sums up the difference between the IDF and Hezbollah.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Qana, a.k.a. Jenin Redux

Remember the "Jenin massacre"? In April 2002 Israel was accused of wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank town of Jenin. Breathless news accounts reported hundreds dead ("martryed") at the hands of the IDF.

However, as it turns out the Jenin massacre wasn't exactly a massacre. A United Nations investigation of the "massacre" reported that the actual number of Palestinians killed was 52. Of those, 22 were civilians. On the other side, 23 Israeli soldiers were killed.

The IDF suffered a relatively high number of casualties because they ordered house-to-house clearing of the neighborhoods where Palestinian fighters were hiding. And, the Palestinians likely wouldn't have suffered 22 civilian casualties if their "soldiers" didn't insist on using civilians as human shields.

Fast-forward to 2006 and replace the name "Jenin" with the name "Qana". It's the same incident all over again. The Arabs triumphantly proclaim, "Massacre!!" It's a "Gotcha" moment - almost as if the Arabs are glad the Israelis killed their civilians. And, yet, rather than take a few days and investigate, the usual suspects (Reuters, BBC, The New York Times) parrot the
Arab claims.

I'm sorry but this sort of one-sided treatment only hurts Israel. The Arab groups that are trying to destroy Israel don't care about human life. This should hardly be a sensational claim given that the Arabs resort to human shields and suicide bombers.

It's the soft bigotry of low expectations. We don't really expect civilized behavior from Arab terrorists, but our media scream like bloody murder when our side mistakenly kills even one innocent civilian. Not a peep when some terrorist bombs innocent civilians and tortures and kills our soldiers. It doesn't really hurt Hezbollah, Iran or Syria to get this kind of negative press - and it's rarely truly negative. It's usually more like "bending-over-backwards- to-be-neutral". It helps them and hurts Israel to have page one, above-the-fold headlines screaming, "Israeli Massacre". And the average news consumer can be forgiven for missing the three-line, page 28 "Correction" that says, "Ooops. Sorry. There was no massacre."

I urge you to do some more reading on Qana. It already looks as if there may have been hours difference between the Israeli strike and the explosion that brought down the building. And, surprise, surprise, the body count is actually turning out to be lower than was initially claimed.

There's a great example of this behavior in the excellent Spielberg film, "Munich". In one scene, an Israeli cabinet minister proclaims that the post-Munich hit teams are un-necessary because the Israeli Air Force had already hit back by bombing the Palestinian camps in the Bekaa Valley. "At least 60 dead," he says. Later, when one of the assassins is "interviewing" the Fatah representative in Paris, he claims that the Israelis bombed refugee camps, killing "at least 200".

Why do we continue to give the benefit of the doubt to the enemy?