Why Israel needs to exist

Lift the "blockade", let Iran ship in some serious surface-to-surface missiles, have Hamas range all of Israel with them, and wreak some serious death and destruction. Would that change the minds of BDS types a little? Do you doubt that's what would happen if Israel didn't fight back against Hamas' death mission towards the Jews?

Much of humanity longs to massacre Jews, and much of the rest of humanity is content to sit and watch it happen, be it with a shrug, a smirk or a fistpump. So of course the Jews need a state in which and with which to defend themselves. When we talk as if their present state is a mistake—a rectifiable mistake—then that is just shark chum in the water for would-be pogromists.

Or you can listen to Pat Condell explain it, much more tartly than I could:

Mary Poppins Quits: The Rebuttal (w/ Remy)

If only the minimum wage had been a "living wage" when I was a kid, I could have bought my house and raised my family without all that stressful education and career building.  That's sarcasm, if you can't tell.

On Driving By Dead Churches

It's rather melancholy, driving through some formerly middle class areas and seeing how the church "landscape" has changed. Many of the old red brick suburban churches are shuttered now, their still-tended cemeteries the only signs of their former congregations. Or else the buildings have been gifted or sold to immigrant churches. In their place are storefront churches, as transient as their congregants, nestled among the liquor stores and check cashing establishments. "Permanence is the illusion of every age", as Mark Steyn once said. It may be that the fading of the mainline Protestant denominations will be no more than the falling of an oak after its acorns have sown a forest--much of middle America's thrift, generosity, resilience, optimism and perhaps most importantly sense of stability comes from that tradition. But once there are no more formal institutions actively transmitting it to the next generations, who knows what will happen?

Georgia hot car death deliberate?

The local police think so. I thought the father of the late Cooper Harris in Cobb County Georgia might be just another weapons-grade idiot, like so many parents in these incidents are. But this is a whole other order of ugliness, if the charges are true.

Meanwhile, there's a support group for parents who lost their children's lives in hot cars:

"I always tell them, you're not a bad parent," Balfour said. "No one is going to judge you more than you do yourself. I know that I did not leave my son in the car intentionally when I left that day. People tell me I need to forgive myself -- I don't feel like I have anything to forgive. I made a mistake and it cost me my son's life. But I certainly didn't leave him in the car to go bowling or to get my nails done."

So, what constitutes being a bad or good parent in these cases? Should we judge by past history, by intentions, or by outcomes? Does one fatal mistake make you as bad a parent as someone who is habitually negligent but whose child nevertheless beats the odds? People have to make their own peace with themselves, and I hope I never have to face myself in the mirror after a tragedy like this. But if I did, and I asked myself if I was a good or bad parent, I would have to answer:


You are
What you do
When it counts
-- John Steakley

Deport the surge of Central American illegals, children or not

I once again decline to regard the illegals as victims. The appeals to family are specious, as there are always more cousins of cousins of cousins of cousins to be "reunited" with illegals already in the country.

As I've said before, here is the problem in miniature: There is in my town a football complex, next to which are apartment buildings full of illegals. The local leagues pay registration fees to use the fields, and of course only use them when the fields are open. Not so the illegals! They hop the fences at night or out of season, tear up the fields having their own tournaments, todo gratis, por supuesto. Now expand that attitude of su casa es mi casa to include schools, hospitals, all other social services, and scale it up into the millions. This trend needs to be reversed, not sentimentalized.

I wonder if my kids will be able to have summer jobs, as the illegals have taken the low-skill entry jobs (hard times have put retirees into that labor market too, to be fair). If you are not in competition with cheap illegal labor for your livelihood, if you are not having social services you depend on eroded because of illegals' free overuse of them, if you are unlikely to fall victim to crimes that some of them commit, then your "compassion" is very cheap indeed.

Shadow boxing in Pakistan

Pakistan Vows to Eliminate Terrorist Sanctuaries. snort! Watching Pakistan fight terrorists is like watching someone leg wrestle with their own other leg.

via The Jawa Report