Speech laws turn scumbags into martyrs

From David Irving to Red Ken, speech laws always backfire. They give a wider audience and moral authority to people who really, really don't deserve it.

Inchoate offenses, of which speech is a part, are one thing. Punishing speech itself is always abused for political reasons, if one accepts any benefits to doing it in the first place, which I don't. The UK and Belgium are poster nations in this regard.

He accused the Board of Deputies of British Jews of making the original complaint only to try to “hush” him up over his views on the Middle East. They want him to “tone down” his views on the Israeli Government, he claimed, adding: “For decades the charge of anti-Semitism has been used to try to suppress any meaningful debate about the policies of the Israeli Government.”

What calling a Jewish reporter a prison camp guard has to do with criticizing the Israeli government, I have no idea. Red Ken gets another free shot for the price of one, this time as a "martyr."

Latest Wank Poll

David Gregory, Eric Alterman, and Keith Olberman need more lotion.

Why should I care about the latest opinion poll of a lame-duck president?

Just wondering. Cuz, Bush isn't running again, and it's nearly impossible for congressional incumbents to lose.

If the Democrats thought jihadists were more of a threat than Republicans, hell, I might vote for one. It wouldn't be the first time.

If you read my blog regularly - hey, it's like a membership at Augusta National in terms of exclusivity - you'll know I think polls are not worth the calories used to create them.

Shocka (/sarc), the most basic rule of political polling was broken (hat tip: PJM) AGAIN.

Total Respondents 1018

Total Republicans 272 27%

Total Democrats 409 40%

Total Independents 337 33%

WEIGHTED

Total Respondents 1018

Total Republicans 289 28%

Total Democrats 381 37%

Total Independents 348 34%

Part of me hopes the Democrats continue to believe their push polling, but the other part of me wants a healthy two-party system.

Polling no longer has anything to do with MEASURING opinion.

Arabs upset - also, sun predicted to rise in East

Arabs see phobia behind uproar over ports deal

"Islamophobia is rising and has become like an infectious disease that spreads... in the West," wrote columnist Rashid Saleh al-Oraimy in the UAE daily Gulf News this week.

Maybe if you didn't issue fatwas over cartoons, kill civilians, blow up hospitals, and behead innocent people, etc., etc. Have you considered that?

There are consequences to not policing your own.

Finally, a term for me: "crunchy con"

Meet Rod Dreher, a conservative who is critical of capitalism.

One area which particularly bugs me is protection of Florida wildlife.

I was listening to talk radio one day and the obviously-northern caller referred to manatees as...

speedbumps on the water.

Now I don't mean to sound feral Floridian, but that's not funny. There's a good chance someone will pull a scimitar and split you ear-to-ear for saying something like that down here.

No, sorry, that's cartoons in Denmark.

Anyway, many of us don't cotton to your Yankee "jokes" about killing off our native animals. Honestly, if the alligator eats you, most of us will excuse the alligator. You have NO right to swim in our lakes. Anyone raised here would agree. So don't run over our manatees, kill our gators, or poison our birds.

M'kay?

In Mr. Dreher's view, consumer-crazed capitalism makes a fetish of individual choice and, if left unchecked, "tends to pull families and communities apart." Thus consumerism and conservatism are, for him, incompatible, a fact that mainstream conservatives, he says, simply do not grasp. He warns that capitalism must be reined in by "the moral and spiritual energies of the people." It is not politics and economics that will save us, he declares. It is adherence to the "eternal moral norms" known as the Permanent Things.

Much of the world does not think you are what you spend. Understanding this fact, and putting consumerism in perspective, is critical to understanding and living happily in the world.

Rod's world sounds livable even if you don't agree with everything he argues.

Mr. Dreher sees "Crunchy Cons," in part, as "a handbook of the resistance." He advocates homeschooling. He applauds community-supported agriculture, small businesses, simple living, historic preservation and much else that promotes a "sacramental" (non-utilitarian) sense of life. You cannot be truly conservative today, he avers, without being countercultural.

Left shows ass: not pretty

I've avoided much comment on the UAE taking over New York's port security.

On the face of it, the UAE seems like a lousy candidate. Why "on the face of it"? Do I really need to spell it out? Second letter, starts with "a."

Thing is, I don't know that much about the UAE. Compared to the Saudis, Syrians, Iranians, or "Palestinians" they don't seem particularly dangerous.

If you don't already see the rank hypocrisy on the Left, let me make it clearer.

Where is the Left on the PATRIOT Act, terrorist surveillance, or fighting jihadists overseas?

No-show, or opposed, that's where. Now we're supposed to hang out a perfectly good (as far as I know) UAE company because the Left sees a threat to itself?

Sorry, but New York only deserves the same PC-protection we get here in Rube Land.

To be clear, yes, I am saying any Democrat who suddenly finds him or herself heavily involved in besmirching the perfectly good name of this fine, upstanding UAE company is Islamophobic, anti-Arab, racist, and should be punished under the applicable hate speech ordinance.

How does it feel, hypocrites?

Religion of overwrought metaphors

PJ Media: Peaktalk

The order makes the astonishing comparison between not wanting (another) big box store on their doorstep and the expulsion of the Israelites from Egypt.

[I did not make that up. This is not one of my fake news stories or headlines.]

There was once a time when religion had some of the BEST thinkers.

LOL!

This month, as Wal-Mart finally began clearing ground on the site, Gillespie introduced a new group, this time including Jesuits, Catholics, Baptists, Buddhists, Daoists, Lutherans and Anglicans, among others, to front the argument that Wal-Mart will blight the practise of religion in Guelph. This time the target is the constitutionality of the local bylaw that permits the Wal-Mart on the site. "The by-law is illegal -- in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- in that major commercial activity will directly and substantially interfere with the religious beliefs and practices of individuals of many faiths," reads a release from the group. But is the intent of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms really to permit religious groups to dictate what others may do?

Mixing the oh-so-"tolerant" Left with medieval religious logic is a fascinating milestone of our times. Cartoons of Blasphemy, meet the Wal-Mart of Idolatry.

Rumsfeld states obvious, mildly, but mainstream media seethes

Wretchard

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we — our country, our government — has not adapted," he said.

(Rumsfeld)

One more time, for posterity.

The modern mainstream media knows four or five basic stories.

1. Vietnam War

2. Protesting the Vietnam War

3. Watergate/presidential scandal

4. Hurricane smashes coast, minorities hardest hit

5. Crap which isn't Earth-shaking national/international news like movie stars, divorces, the latest pretty white woman murder, hunting accidents... The MSM Looney Tunes bias in reporting other issues relates to their star-****ing, IMO.

MSM terrorist coverage would slot into numbers two-four. They basically support anti-American forces, no matter how retrograde or bloody. See, NVA, KJI, Stalin, Che, Saddam, Ahmadinejad, The Dread Cartoons of Blasphemy, HAMAS, or Al-Sadr.

Sandmonkey observes roosting chickens

The chickens are roosting

I have told you before that the people who started this whole cartoon mess were the arab governments, all with their own agendas and goals. Now it seems that they will regret ever instigating this crisis, because it now seems to be out of control. They have unleashed the forces of chaos and now it's backfiring in their faces.

(link in original)

Diana West: Cartoon network

Cartoon network
By Diana West
February 17, 2006



Everything is at stake in the information business, which is now everything else as well. What a perfect backdoor to UN control of the Internet.

Maybe there's some rarified irony about the fact that in a society increasingly dependent on imagery, not words, to convey information, it is imagery that the media have denied us in conveying the story of the Danish Mohammed cartoons. But with a Gallup Poll reporting that 61 percent of US respondents believe that Europeans who printed the caricatures of Mohammed acted irresponsibly, it's nothing to shrug off.
The rationale goes something like this: "Not all self-censorship is a bad thing."
"Even if all the world had the right of free speech, I still believe there are things that should not be said."
"It's some weird presumption of modernity that says because something can be done it must be done."
The above statements came out of my e-mail bag after last week's column "Cartoon Rage 2006," or, "How a Proud Press Bowed Its Head and Submitted to an Islamic Law against Depictions of Mohammed." These letter-writers, representing a small but noticeable contingent, rejected the submission argument as a point of pride, reading into their own contentment to "see no evil" — that is, see no Muhammad cartoons — an elevated sensibility: good manners, good taste, and self-restraint. This may be highly commendable — the good manners, taste and self-restraint part — but it is entirely beside the point.
Which is what draws me back to this freak show of a story one more time before its narrative-memory is set, and before the beginning of the end of press freedom is permanently attributed to kindly, responsible behavior, not incipient dhimmitude.
In another context, I wouldn't disagree with the reader-comments I quoted above. Indeed, I've been known to make similar arguments against all manner of fetid cultural excess, from lurid children's fiction to the notorious Sensation Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in which Dung Virgin first came to fame. Or was that infamy? It's easy to get them confused.
The topic of Dung Virgin, not to mention its companion piece in shock value, Piss Christ, strikes the Good-Mannerists as an important marker in their personal guides to press etiquette. Not grooving to such "artistic" attacks on Christianity, the Good-Mannerists say they can understand the consternation of the Cartoon Ragers — at least to some point shy of death threats, arson and murder — and see media self-censorship as a matter of common decency.
Is the comparison valid? And is the politeness deserved? Absolutely not, and here's one big reason why. Christianity and Islam are not interchangeable belief systems inspired by a generic divinity. One relevant distinction is the way they operate in relation to their societies. Christianity abides by the separation of church and state; Islam knows no separation whatsoever. As a result, the theological teachings of Islam as revealed by Muhammad, which form the basis of the Islamic law (sharia) that drives Islamic societies, necessarily belong to the political sphere in a way that Christianity does not.
This is not to say that Christianity should be, or has been off the table. Indeed, all the ink (not blood) spilled over assorted Excrement Icons only enhanced their value, not to mention the reputations of their artists (using the word loosely). But the all-encompassing nature of Islam underscores a special need for open, critical examination of the Koran and Muhammad as political, and politically violent, forces that roil our times.
Let's take what are considered the most inflammatory of the Danish Dozen: Bomb-head Muhammad; and Muhammad in the clouds, telling arriving suicide bombers that Islamic paradise is plumb out of virgins. What Denmark's cartoonists did in these caricatures is something few writers have dared to do in words: They made visual reference to the copious, historical and contemporary theological underpinnings of holy war (jihad) and suicide bombings. What is offensive here, then, is not the extremely mild caricature, but rather those theological underpinnings of holy war and suicide bombings. When the widely influential Sheik Yusef al-Qaradawi can praise Muhammad as "an epitome for religious warriors [mujahideen]," Muhammad, a jihad model, shouldn't be a taboo subject in the West, either in caricature or commentary, and certainly shouldn't be super-sacralized, in effect, by a fearfully polite censorship. The subject should be laid out for all to see.
The valiant Dutch parliamentarian and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it this way: "You cannot liberalize Islam without criticizing the Prophet and the Koran... You cannot redecorate a house without entering inside." And especially when you're not allowed to see what it looks like.

Surrender of caricature and illustration rights are just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps more craven appeasement and groveling will work.

So far, so good, dhimmi mainstream media scum. Diana West is one of the only op-ed columnists to mention dhimmitude regularly. Watching my fellow citizens cringe like shy or abused animals is sad.

The media lied about the religious arguments related to depicting the human form in Islam, mostly ignored the plot of the Danish imams and several governments, overstated the nature of the cartoons, used prior restraint on itself, while pushing the AP French hog-calling photo and two other fakes as real, and running old Abu Ghraib photos with vigor.

I welcome comments from those with apocalyptic viewpoints. Most of the media could not be more self-righteous or cowardly.

Diana West's dhimmified readers who wrote wish we could go back to a simpler, more modern time without any effort.

"Prophet" Law Snags Human Rights Body

A drive by a bloc of Islamic nations for a global ban on "defamation of religions and prophets" has thrown a major kink into U.S. hopes for an overhaul of the leading U.N. human rights body.

"defamation of religions and prophets"

Yes, Virginia, it is 2006, and we're debating blasphemy laws in the context of human rights and defamation.

Subtract a thousand: February 17th, 1006. Now it makes sense.

Private human rights groups say the most problematic part of the amendment is a call for the new U.N. council to "prevent instances of intolerance, discrimination, incitement of hatred and violence arising from any actions against religions, prophets and beliefs which threaten the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
Jennifer L. Windsor, executive director of the human rights group Freedom Watch, said the OIC effort was one of a number of attempts by nations and blocs at the United Nations to "dumb down the human rights standards."
Freedom Watch has opposed anti-blasphemy laws both in Europe and the Islamic world as an infringement on free speech, she said. "It is never a good idea to protect one human right by repressing another."

Freedom of conscience, expression, and religion are on the chopping block.

"What a beautiful world we live in, a sweet romantic place. Beautiful people everywhere...."

-- Devo

Gumbel bumbles

No blacks in Winter Olympics
I saw Real Sports and did a spit take. First off, there are black people at the Republican Convention. Second, being white relates to less sun, causing frozen water. Right?

Helen at Caribpundit (PJM) had the same reaction I guess.

Florida to sink or explode?

Simply put, Florida is full. Chock full of every urban ill you can think of with more on the way.

(PJM)

Some might contest the absolutist nature of the opinion, but the coastline is hammered from development. On the other hand, we're supposedly entering a long cycle of increased tropical storm activity.

Charting your course through the surridiculous

Cheney

and the magic pellets theory

(PJM)

UN Tables Iran Nukes, Debates Cheney Threat

(Scrappleface)

Bush authorizes deadly force against domestic attorney

President Satisfied With Cheney's Account

WASHINGTON - President Bush was satisfied with Vice President Dick Cheney's account of his Texas hunting accident, but Bush's spokesman declined to say Thursday whether the president felt it should have been revealed earlier.

"I think that the vice president clearly explained the rationale behind that," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, avoiding a direct response to questions about whether Bush felt the shooting accident was publicly disclosed in a timely manner.

The accident happened on Saturday but was not publicly revealed until the next day.

Sometimes speech is governed by one's opinion as to when, or even whether, it should come out.

See, a certain caricature controversy.

But see, old Abu Ghraib photos.

Cheney reveals super power

Very much like Dr. Xavier of the X-Men,

Vice President Dick Cheney disclosed Wednesday that he has the power to declassify sensitive government information, authority that could set up a criminal defense for his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Who is a mutant. "Scooter"?

Rash of VP shootings concerns lawmakers

Cheney Could Face Charges in Shooting

In the only other case of someone being shot by a vice president, Aaron Burr was indicted on murder charges in New York and New Jersey for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, but he was never tried and finished out his term in office.

Cheney COULD face charges, when monkeys fly out of my butt.

Brit Hume and Cheney

Cheney admitted fault for bad trigger discipline. Good call and should settle things.

Hard to spin that against him.

UPDATE: Apparently it's easy to spin an admission against him.

Some people think he should be charged with a crime.

And nothing is settled.

In other news, there is no other news.

Vice-Presidential Control Lacking?

Vice President Dick Cheney is the most recent in a long line of violent vice presidents of the United States. From Theodore Roosevelt to combat photographer Al Gore, vice presidents are noted for hot tempers and violent outbursts. Some allege Thomas Jefferson was the spiritual leader of an anti-Anglican insurgency some centuries ago.

Dan Quayle, IMO, is by far the best golfer to hold the office of vice president, or president for that matter.

This raises some interesting statuary possibilities.

No-Fun Range Rules Police Backslapping

OH, GOOD GRIEF, YOURSELF YOURSELF [Mark Steyn]

I'm not saying I'm entirely on board with the line that real men shoot each other all the time without whining like a bunch of ninnies about what's no more than a healthy American male bonding experience. But on balance this is one of those no-scandal scandals where Democrat/media hysteria only underlines their estrangement from the average red-state male.

I'm not "on board" with it at all. But shooting tiny pellets all over your surrounding biosphere has been known to cause some small problems. I've never had a similar problem shooting clay birds, but don't bounce shot off metal objects.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

WNMCWJD?

What new muscle car would Jesus drive?

The only old one remaining, retro-mod-redone, is the Mustang.

GTO
Challenger
Charger
Camaro/Firebird

To be fair, foreign cars are getting quite muscle car, ah, ey. Some candidates might include the...

Impreza WRX
Evo
350 Z

And so on.

Feel free to be symbolic.

Commuter Cars

The Tango T600 shows one wave of the future.

The Tango is a glimpse into the future of commuting. Lane doubling, lane splitting, and perpendicular parking will become commonplace. Traffic-induced headaches and lost time will fade into the past. No more worries about safety as you're ballasted for flat-out cornering stability and protected by a racing-certified roll cage designed to protect you and your passenger. Park in places you wouldn't even dream of in a Mini Cooper. Emission-free and exciting, the electric Tango T600 is designed to beat most sports cars in the quarter mile with acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in just 4 seconds and a top speed of 150 mph!