More Amy Bishop nonsense

I just read that idiotic Jonathan Curiel column at TrueSlant, where he builds a fence around America in order to put Amy Bishop and the Tea Party in the same corral.

Behney’s remarks don’t reflect the sentiments on all Tea Party members. Nor does Bishop’s shooting spree mean that race is a factor whenever a white professor gets disgruntled by a tenure process overseen by minority administrators.

"But that's what I just spent my allotted column inches insinuating, so oopsie if you got that impression."

Amy Bishop rampage...why should politics matter?

The dextrosphere is airing out accused killer Amy Bishop's political leanings. She's alleged to be left-leaning, like 10 out of every 10 Harvard educated professors seem to be. A partisan though fair-enough roundup is here, at American Power blog.

So, so what? Is there any indication that her alleged crime was motivated by her political beliefs? Or that the police bungled her previous cases in deference to those beliefs? Can't people with advanced degrees succumb to workplace character flaws and frustrations that have nothing to do with religion or politics, same as we've sadly seen at any number of offices and yes post offices over the years? Where is the proof that she was channelling her inner Stalin?

People are dead and hurting because of this wicked woman, dropping the "allegedly" now. Information is still coming out, and will continue to come out, I hope. I seriously doubt that there is going to be any underlying political manisfesto in her motives, unlike Major Nidal or Timothy McVeigh. Anyone who's familiar with me knows I don't have the time of day for socialism. So let's not cheapen and invalidate the good fight against socialism by playing silly guilt-by-association games.

Love, personalized

Heard this in church today: Take the passage from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7--

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Now replace "love" with "I":

I am patient, I am kind. I do not envy, I do not boast, I am not proud. I am not rude, I am not self-seeking, I am not easily angered, I keep no record of wrongs. I do not delight in evil but rejoice with the truth. I always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere.

Gives one pause, eh?

The Who at the Super Bowl

Pete was understanding of their subdued reception:

Backstage after their show, Townshend laughed and said: "You know, you could kind of tell from the stage the crowd is really here for the game."

"It was nice for that reason. It was nice to feel a part of something and not having it all to be about us," he added. When it was mentioned that most rock stars want everything to revolve around them, he joked and said: "We're too far gone to care I think."

They looked so faded. They were my favorite band in high school & college, though I never saw them live. It's hard to listen to Daltrey sing anymore. The only hard rock vocalist from his era who's kept his pipes intact, IMO, is Paul Rodgers:

Random Rock Bloggage

Four views of The Sugarfoot Rag:

Punniest headline of the week goes to...

MSNBC: Boosters flare in space debate

On the value of a free press

Journalists perform on an invisible stage. A broadsheet proscenium. We can't see the audience but we know they're there. Millions of them. Every Sunday I'm read by more people than will pick up a Booker Prize-nominated novel in a year. That's not a comparison of quality, it's a statement of impact. Almost every other bit of the culture may have more value but none has more importance. Without poetry, fiction, drama, music, art, dance and origami, we'd be immeasurably poorer, but we'd get on. Without news, without information we'd be back in the Dark Ages. There's no democracy without a free press. It's an absolute prerequisite for a free market. There is no global anything, just rumour and speculation based on ignorance. Freedom of speech is what all the other human rights and freedoms balance on. That may sound like unspeakable arrogance when applied to restaurant reviews or gossip columns. But that's not the point. Journalism isn't an individual sport like books and plays; it's a team effort. The power of the press is cumulative. It has a conscious humming momentum. You can - and probable do - pick up bits of it and sneer or sigh or fling them with great force at the dog. But together they make up the most precious thing we own.
-- A. A. Gill, Sunday Times, 2003

"It's very well for him, '' I hear you say, ''on his high horse about freedom, but just look at the papers. They're full of lies and gossip and laziness. The theory's fine, the practice is disgusting," Well, let's just look at that, I don't know what it is you do, what you make or sell, but consider this. Consider starting each morning with three or so dozen blank sheets of broadsheet paper. And then having to fill them with columns of facts, opinions based on facts and predictions extrapolated from facts. I don't know how many facts a newspaper has in it. Thousands. Tens of thousands, Millions. From the Stock Market to TV listings by way of court-rooms, parliaments, disasters, wars, celebrity denials, births, deaths, horoscopes and the pictures to go with them. Now tell me, how long did your last annual general report take? Days? Weeks? And you had all that information to hand. How long did the last letter you wrote take? You just made that up. Newspapers are the size of long novels. They're put together from around the globe from sources who lie, manipulate, want to sell things, hide things, spin things. Despite threats, injunctions, bullets, jails and non-returned phone calls, journalists do it every single day, from scratch. What's amazing, what's utterly staggering, is not the things papers get wrong, it's just how much they get right. Your business, no other business, could guarantee the percentage of accuracy that a newspaper does. And what's more, if you live in Britain, you don't get just one, you have the choice of a dozen national papers. Oh, and a small boy will come and put it through your letter box before you've even got out of bed. Nothing, but nothing, makes me prouder than being a hack.
-- ibid

Twitter saves baby's life

Well, if the Iranian resistance wasn't enough of a reason to quit sneering at Twitter, here's another one. A sick baby with a rare blood type got a suitable blood donor thanks to Twitter.

RIP Howard Zinn

Glad I was never assigned his tome when I was college, though I got fed other leftist takes on American history. I much prefer Paul Johnson's A History of the American People, because it is more about the actual people over the years, and not about academic radicals' projections of oppression & revolution onto history. America is more than the sum of her sins, and always has been.

Obama state of the union address

I let the kiddiwinks stay up and watch about 30 minutes of it for their education. When he mentioned how he had averted a second great depression, my oldest said, in her sulky 4th grade girly voice: "I don't want a second great depression!"

Legalize drugs?

I know that there's not 100% overlap between liberals and people who want to legalize drugs. But still, it's weird, those that do overlap. On one hand they say that the government is bought & paid for by big business interests, that corporations are running the show. One the other, they offer smiley-face fantasies about "tightly regulating" drug cartels once drugs become legal. the cartels are exponentially richer and more ruthless than any hedge fund manager you'd care to name--pluse they have guns. Just who is going to bring them to heel, and how?

Georgia Work Ready Certification

In 2006, Georgia Work Ready Certification was launched. It is now being more heavily advertised in response to the economic downturn. The idea is that prospective employees can take some tests, get "certified" that they will become good employees, and thus get a leg up in their hunt for a job.

Well, good luck to all concerned. But I just think it's a shame that a Georgia high school diploma doesn't perform the same "certification" function.

Don't forget Haiti

The story will begin slipping from the headlines in a few days, maybe weeks. But the hardhips from this disaster are going to last for years. Do your due diligence, find a charity or investment vehicle that really helps the Haitians, and give what you can.

Amazing Computer Generated film

Everything and everyone in here looks so real, but the description says it's all computer generated. Play it in full screen, on an HD monitor if you have one.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Via Foreign Dispatches

In Memoriam, Richard John Neuhaus

It's been one year since Fr. Richard John Neuhaus was suddenly summoned home. Too early, too early...

I admired him since I first encountered him, in the pages of The Wittenburg Door in the mid 80s. He recounted his journey from Sixties activist to conservative Catholic priest. He kept up his insistence for justice in Vietnam after the communists won, but was told by his fellow activists that the communists were on the correct side of the world revolution and were not to be criticized. Later on, I discovered First Things, don't remember how. Much of the contents resonated with me (though I continue to deplore their toleration of Intelligent Design charlatanry in their pages), and became part of my inner furniture.

In fact, I used to theme this blog as a running appreciation of FT. After a while I drifted out of schtick--I didn't have the intellectual firepower to do more than just link, it turned out. But I still resonate...

By chance, his memorial mass is just now starting, in New York City. Insert moment of silence here.

More. And more.

Tim Wilson

Just discovered the novelty country music artist Tim Wilson. See what you think: LiveLeak's crappy code doesn't seem to let the embed work, but it you double-click on it, it'll take you to the hosting site. It's worth it!

Random Rock Bloggage

The Youngbloods' "Get Together", from the late 70s No Nukes concert:

The Jihad--enemy of the civilized world

I find it fruitful to consider who do terrorists consider to be their enemies? RW militias in the U.S. hate the federal government. The IRA hates Britain. The Tamil Tigers hate the Sri Lankan government. The ETA hates the Spanish national government.

But Islamic jihadists attack everyone. Chechen jihadists attack Muscovites. Thai and Filipinio jihadists attack their nominal co-nationalists. Arab jihadists take it as a religious duty to attack non-dhimmified Jews. French “youths” burn cars, among less visible mischief. British jihadists are only the most visible part of the stealth jihad in that land. “Islam has bloody borders”, as someone once said.

That doesn’t include all Muslims, certainly. But it includes enough of them to constitute a serious problem for the peace of the world. There’s nothing directly comparable to the omni-fronted Jihad in any other militant movement in the world, not since the fall of expansive communism.

The Decade in Apologies

The Decade in Apologies

2000
Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker apologizes for dissing New Yorkers.

2001
George Bush kinda sorta apologizes to China, in the wake of China’s interceptor colliding with an American spy plane.

2002
Trent Lott apologizes for praising Strom Thurmond’s 1948 Presidential run.
Saddam Hussein apologizes for invading Kuwait.
Cardinal Bernard Law apologizes to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.

2003
Ahnuld preemptively apologizes to any women who might claim he sexually harassed them.
Symbionese Liberation Army radicals apologize to family of slaying victim Myrna Opsahl at their sentencing.

2004
Justin Timberlake apologizes for causing Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction.
George W. Bush apologizes for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

2005
U. S. Senate apologizes for historical inaction on lynching.
Prince Harry apologizes for wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party.

2006
Seinfeld star Michael Richards apologizes for racial rant during standup comedy show.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney apologizes for scuffling with a Capitol Hill security officer.
Senator John Kerry apologizes for “botched joke”, that soldiers in Iraq are uneducated.

2007
Mattell apologizes to China over lead-based paint in imported toys.
Japanese Prime Minister apologizes to WWII sex slaves.

2008
Roger Clemens apologizes for “mistakes” in personal life.
AMA apologizes to black doctors for past racism.

2009
Singer Chris Brown apologizes to fans for assaulting girlfriend Rihanna.
U. S. Senate adopts resolution apologizing for slavery.
Kanye West apologizes for interrupting Taylor Swift’s award acceptance speech.
Tiger Woods apologizes to fans for “transgressions.”

Some milestones of the decade

* The ascension of Google from a new search engine to a near-complete internet experience in itself. Does anyone even think about about alta vista, dogpile, and lycos anymore, let alone use them?

* Wikipedia, which harnessed the aggregate power of public knowledge, for good and ill. By decade's end, its best articles were on a par with those from the Encyclopedia Britannica--because that's where many of them were originally cut 'n' pasted from. And where else could you lose an afternoon's work time, by sorting out the set lists of the Rolling Stones' 1981 tour?

* YouTube. From on-the-spot reportage in faraway places to deep archival footage which hadn't been seen in decades, YouTube was tele-democracy incarnate.

* The ouster of Cynthia McKinney. Yay! Gwinnett County voters no longer had to suffer the stigma of being represented by the cutest li'l communist in the House of Representatives.

* And the rise of the personal blog, and the challenge the best of them presented to the traditional media.