Krauthammer 12/19/08

The US House of Lords?

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: While we always had some unqualified people in the U.S. Senate, the trend is getting worse. The problem with Caroline Kennedy's candidacy is not her lack of qualifications; it is her sense of entitlement. The campaign finance laws, favoring the rich, are partly to blame.

Quote:

Yes, the Founders were not democrats. They believed in aristocracy. But their idea was government by natural -- not inherited -- aristocracy, an aristocracy of "virtue and talents," as Jefferson put it.

My Views: Rich people can spend gobs of money while normal people have to scrounge for contributions in approved amounts. This is why Corzines, Rockefellers, and Kohls can just plop into office from nowhere. But this is just part of the problem.

Others parachute into office just using their celebrity or name recognition. Family connections, wealth, or celebrity may have been the path to political office in the past but this has become a trend in our time. It is a trend we should not encourage.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachussets General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

Kennedy and Palin

So Caroline Kennedy is gunning for US Senate? Why is nobody asking her about her qualifications? Never been elected to anything; never had to be responsible for any policy issue - ever. Should be a shoe-in for the Sarah Palin treatment, right?

Q. And what are your views on the Obama Doctrine, Ms. Kennedy? You don't know of any Obama Doctrine? Ah, ha! Gotcha!

But of course there are differences.

1. Ms. K is a Democrat.
2. She's connected with the establishment elite. Heck! She's in the inner circle of the EE!
3. Daddy was JFK.

As for Ms. Palin?

1. She's a Republican.
2. She's just a peasant woman from Alaska. The boonies.
3. She's one of those Christians. Those kind. Reads the Bible; believes it; devout. That kind.

So of course Caroline is going to get treated much differently that Sarah was. - The Royal Treatment.

Krauthammer 12/14/08

Obama Means Big Change

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Obama appears to be a centrist because on Foreign and on Economic Policies he will hold pat so that he can pursue radical expansion on Social Policies.

Quote:

A functioning financial system is a necessary condition for a successful Obama presidency. As in foreign policy, Obama wants experts and veterans to manage and pacify universes in which he has little experience and less personal commitment. Their job is to keep credit flowing and the world at bay so that Obama can address his real ambition: to effect a domestic transformation as grand and ambitious as Franklin Roosevelt's.

My Views: So what area is he going to concentrate on? Dr. K mentions Health Care. The other area Obama's talked about is hitting and hurting conservative talk radio. Partly what's so reasuring right now is that people don't really know what he's going to change.

One other problem with Dr. K's thesis in this essay is that his assertion of the Inside the Beltway belief that there's a mandate for dramatic government expansion. Yet, remember that before the crash in late September, McCain had actually pulled AHEAD of Obama in the polls. The dominent news was how Obama was unable to seal the deal. Then the financial industry crashed. A crash does not a mandate make.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair.

Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured to the right.

Don’t Overlook This! 12/13/08

Editorial Judgements To Drive Google Searches

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Summary: Google executive this week announced that editorial decisions will be a major factor in determining search engine results. The computer algorithims will continue but adjustments will be made by Google staff.

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Source: The A Register.

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Why this is significant: What is the political bias of the staffers that will decide which sites top the searches? The world already has had reasons to question the bias of Google.

1. The contracts with Red China blocking sites the Communist Government wanted blocked.
2. The take-down of anti-Obama sites this year.
3. The political contributions made by the majority of Google executives and staff.

The public already has seen the effects of media bias in the old media. New media bias may just be transferring the 20th. century problems of filtered news to the 21st. century. New media, same problem. Only, with the power that new media has at its disposal, the problem of media bias affecting public opinion may be even worse in this new century than in the last.

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"Don't Overlook This!" are stories in the news that deserve more attention than they’ve received. These stories should have been the leading news items of their day. Their significance extends beyond just a particular geographical area and beyond just a particular news cycle.

Will 12/8/08

A Case Where "Fairness" IS Unfair

My take on George Will's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Left wingers want to limit free speech on radio because it is too conservative and too influential.

Quote:

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine.

My Views: Ah, yes! That Fairness Doctrine. aka "The Hush Rush Bill". What has always really got me was the unprincipled hypocracy of it. Like Obama's tirade against Fox while ignoring the media's treatment of the Republicans. The most noteworthy thing about the upcoming fight is the proponent's utter lack of any philosophical view, just a partisan desire to censor conservative speech.

For the left, this is a partisan issue only; for the right, this is a national issue.

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George Will almost didn't make it as a syndicated columnist. His style was considered too erudite for a general audience.

Whatever one thinks of his views, read his work for use of language and for how he marshals facts and uses logic.

Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is at the right.

Krauthammer 12/5/08

Milestone in Bagdad
Map is from the CIA World Factbook.
My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: This week the Iraqi Parliament approved a military and strategic cooperation agreement with the United States.

Quote:

For the United States, this represents the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally.

My Views: This is the biggest, most important Middle East development since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt into a U.S. ally. Things could still go wrong in Iraq. Obama could pull out too soon. But Iraq now seems to become another Turkey: a beacon of democracy and moderation for the Muslim world.

The significant thing is not just the agreement itself, but how it was reached: the democratic means used by the Parliament.

For the left in the U.S., there is now a huge challenge. They've reacted emotionally and reflexively to Bush's Iraqi policy. Just stating an anti-Bush view has been enough to avoid the stigma to ignorance or stupidity. Now they will need more: their views must contain thinking.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.
He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair.
Here's" his Wiki bio.

Will 12/4/07

Markets, Not Economists Will Help the Economy

My take on George Will's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Government intervention in the economy has not had the results that liberals claim and such results as can be verified have often not been positive.

Quote:

Because the economy's job-creation is not quite as predictable as a solar eclipse, Obama, by promising 2.5 million jobs by 2011, is a bit more audacious than was Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, who astonished King Arthur's court by commanding an eclipse that he knew was due. Still, because scores of millions of today's jobs will exist two years from now, who will be able to dispute a presidential claim that administration policies "saved" some portion of them?

My Views: If the nation's economists were so smart, then why did the September crash take everyone by surprise? Neither Obama, Bush, or McCain warned the nation in advance. The test of knowledge is prediction. A mathametician can predice that if you add 2 of something to 3 of something, you will end up with 5 somethings. A chemist can predict that if you combine the stuff in this beaker with the stuff in that beaker, you will have a blue liquid. You do, and that's what you get. This shows you that those guys know something. When do economists ever predict anything - especially something as major as what hit the country a few months ago?

Will's most telling point is the historical one that Reagan inherited an economy in 1981 that was worse than the one that Obama inherits today. With a philosophy that in opposite to that of Obama's today, the economy grew 6.3 million jobs in his first term. This is in line with the 1.5 million jobs per year the economy has grown since Eisenhower's first term began in 1953.

The private free enterprise system, not government control has historically grown the economy.

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George Will almost didn't make it as a syndicated columnist. His style was considered too erudite for a general audience.

Whatever one thinks of his views, read his work for use of language and for how he marshals facts and uses logic.

Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is at the right.

Will 11/30/08

Same Old New Deal?

My take on George Will's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Barack Obama is poised to apply the New Deal thinking of the 1930's to this 21st. century economy. Guess what? The New Deal wasn't so great even when it was new.

Quote:

By acting without rhyme or reason, politicians have destroyed the rules of the game. There is no reason to invest, no reason to take risk, no reason to be prudent, no reason to look for buyers if your firm is failing. Everything is up in the air and as a result, the only prudent policy is to wait and see what the government will do next. The frenetic efforts of FDR had the same impact: Net investment was negative through much of the 1930s.

- Russell Roberts, George Mason University

My Views: Yes, George, New Deal history has been lost in the mythology of the left. The biggest industrial crash occured not in 1929 but 8 years later in 1937. The New Deal was 5 years old. By 1938 the economy was down by every significant measurement from the time FDR took office. This is a point of the highest significance.

Now, Obama wants to step into the FDR myth and rerun the New Deal. This is what all this stimulus spending amounts to. The most serious questions about the overall strategy exist.

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George Will almost didn't make it as a syndicated columnist. His style was considered too erudite for a general audience.

Whatever one thinks of his views, read his work for use of language and for how he marshals facts and uses logic.

Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is at the right.

Steyn 11/28/08

World Terrorism Drives Local Terrorism

My take on Mark Steyn's latest. His column was published in the Orange County Register

Summary: The attacks in India were ostensibly against Westerners. However, Indian hotels, not Western hotels were attacked. These terror attacks are a part of a larger struggle and until we realize that and treat it realistically, human suffering will be more than it should.

The AP summarized the facts of the India attack.

Quote:

This isn't law enforcement but an ideological assault – and we're fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology's advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population's demographic advance among everybody else.

My Views: The terror thing is not just a George Bush thing. It never was. In fact, GWB won't even be President anymore. I don't understand why Muslims can demand and get special religeous privilidges while Christians can't. Prayer rooms in the workplace, prayer times, things like that.

So many people seem blind to the dangers that face 21st. century society. Not all Muslims are terrorists but most all terrorists are Muslims. Pretty much. We ought not be anti-Muslim; we should be realistic about what is happening in the world about us.

The very best thing would be for the responsible Muslim leaders to lend a hand and speak out more against the terrorists. Since so very much of world terrorism is from Muslims, the onus is really on them. They're in the best position to do the most good.

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Mark Steyn is a syndicated columnist from Canada. Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is on the right. This is the book that got several Human Rights Commissions in Canada hot and bothered. With free speech under unprecidented attack, Mark Steyn managed to pull out a badly needed victory. This was the first time a Canadian Human Rights Commission found a defendent innocent.

Coulter 11/26/08

What Do We Do With the Terrorists We Captured?

My take on Ann Coulter's latest. Her essay was published on her website.

Summary: A terrorist was released from GW Bush's prison at Guantanamo after receiving from the Americans an artificial leg. Upon release, he immediately went back to Pakistan and back to killing. The world press reported on his exceptional devotion in continuing the fight against America even though he had only one leg. No one reported where he got his prosthetic leg.

So has America been cruel to the prisoners at Guantanamo or has America been humane? Ann wants in on this guys HMO plan.

Quote:

I thought the rest of the world was going to love us if we elected B. Hussein Obama! Somebody better tell the Indian Muslims.

My Views: America as torturer has been one of the most regretable developments of recent years. Even such a hawk as John McCain has been against the torture. There is another side, however, to the detainee story. These people are terrorists. When they are released, they kill people. They kill people no matter how kind the Americans have been.

I think that the torture stories have been exagerated. The European courts have released a large number of terrorist defendants. The problem of convictions is enormous. Society has to face up to the practical consequences of letting the terrorists go.

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Anybody who is as hated as Ann Coulter is must be doing something right. She is very right-wing but every left-wing blogger would love to write like her. I hate rants; opinion pieces must argue from the facts. Pay attention to how she uses facts and draws politically incorrect connections among them. People would do well to think and not just be outraged.

Here's her Wiki bio. Her latest book is at the right.

Krauthammer 11/7/08

The Campaign Autopsy

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: It was the economy that did the Republicans in. Palin was a mistake, too.

Quote:

In my previous life, I witnessed far more difficult postmortems. This one is easy. The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 -- caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Brothers, according to the police report) -- although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4.

My Views:I agree that it was a crash that spelt doom for the R's this year. Nine consecutive months of job losses. On election day, the market was down by the greatest number of points since 1937. This was a fall of a high magnitude. And it was unprecedented. Never has there been a crash just before an election. Even Reagan couldn't have pulled this one out.

But wait! What's all this about Sarah Palin? Mr. K says that her nomination undercut the R's case against Barak Obama's lack of experience. The campaign became about her inexperience instead of Obama's. Okay, I'll agree with that.

But it wasn't the nomination that was wrong; it was the follow through. There could have been more interviews. She could not have blown two big ones. The R's could have compared her resume to Obama's. There did not have to be the staff back-stabbing. And what was with the $150,000 shopping spree?

At the time of the nomination, all this lay in the future. And all of this was not preordained. They could have made other choices.

The thing is that on the day of the crash, McCain was actually ahead!! This is what did him in.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. He used to be an MD and a psychiatrist.

Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is at the right.

Sarah's Speech

Sarah Palin

Now this is change. Does this even look like a left-wing feminist? Does this look like a rightwing bare-foot and pregnant submissive?

Her best line in last night's speech was an Alaskan joke: What is the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom? Lipstick.

I like her tone; I like her look; I like her attitude. This may be the next conservative leader for the first half of the 21st. century.

Novak 7/28/08

These are professional pundits who usually say things that are significant. Robert Novak’s policy is to have something nobody knows in each column. In his memoir at the left he writes of the 50 years he’s covered the news in Washington.

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McCain Is Closer Than He Should Be

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Summary: Obama’s campaign has been brilliant while McCain’s has been lackluster. Yet Obama is only a few points ahead. Despite the electioneering aspects of Obama’s campaign, the substantive aspects hinder him. Can McCain back into the general election the way he backed into the Republican nomination?

Quote:

The toughest interrogation of Obama came from CBS anchor Katie Couric in Jordan last Tuesday. She asked four times whether the troop surge he had opposed was instrumental in reducing violence in Iraq. Obama answered straight from talking points by citing "the great effort of our young men and women in uniform." That sounded like the old politics. He would have sounded more like a new politician if he had simply said, "Yes, the strategy did work." That would have infuriated antiwar activists but not enough for them to drop Obama.

My Views: Obama doesn’t bug me so much as the obvious media bias. This also occurred in the Clinton campaigns. While the press did give him a hard time, too, that was not in 1992 or 1996. In the run-up to the elections, they always seem to give the Democrat candidates an easy ride.

None of this can explain why Republicans have such a hard time getting their act together.

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Here’s Novak’s essay.

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Disclaimer: The book pictured is Novak's memoir. This gives you a picture of the book, of him, and an idea of what it costs. The fact that I will be compensated if you click on the link and buy the book turns this post into a semi-advertisement. I only will link to Amazon.com for books I actually liked.

Don’t Overlook This! 7/15/08

These are stories in the news that have much more significance than they’ve received. These stories should have been the leading news items of their day. Their significance extends beyond just a particular area and beyond just a particular news cycle.

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Foreign Courts Take Aim at Our Free SpeechSenators Retaliate

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Libel suits in America are limited by the First Amendment of the US Constitution so people have taken to suing writers in foreign courts. These courts have been used a variety of odius techniques to enforce their judgements on US authors. One is to block all sales of the author's publisher in their country.

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Here is the story in The Wall Street Journal.

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Why this is significant:

Anti-U.S. feeling is being expressed in a variety of ways. This corresponds to a decline in Western values in Europe and elsewhere. To put it succinctly, freedom of speech is not as important to some anymore as it used to be. It all depends on who the aggressor is.

At least someone in a position of responsibility in the U.S. government recognizes that these lawsuits are a threat to the American way of life.

Incredibly Stupid Game

Yes, this game is incredibly stupid! So, can you beat it?

The Stupid Test

This is an online game with really dumb questions. So, you can get them all correct, right?

Don’t Overlook This! 7/8/08

These are stories in the news that have much more significance than they’ve received. These stories should have been the leading news items of their day. Their significance extends beyond just a particular area and beyond just a particular news cycle.

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Ireland Rejects Treaty but European Union Will Grows in Power Anyway

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The European Union has already assumed many of the functions of a nation state. It has a capital, Brussels, it has a President, and it has a Parliament. It has a currency, the Euro. Like the Euro, its laws are supplanting the laws of most of the nations of Europe.

It still lacks a Constitution. The Original Constitution was turned down by voters in France, Holland and other countries. The statesmen of Europe decided to get around the voters by getting the same thing done by Treaty instead of a formal Constitution.

The trouble this scenario is that Ireland has a requirement it it's own Constitution that any treaty that would change it's government would require a vote by the people. So the Treaty was put to a vote and then defeated.

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Here is the story in The American Spectator.

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Why this is significant:

First, Europe is rapidly coalescing into one big super-state to rival the United States.

Second, it is based upon elitism and bureaucracy and not democracy. This is a milestone in the path.

Is Obama for Real?

Is Barack Obama just another politician - albeit with a flair for the oratorical arts?

Charles Krauthammer writes about Obama's growing list of flip-flops.

Over at ABC News, here's today's Obama's flip on the gun control issue.

He had made the most definite statements about campaign finance reform; he had even promised to meet with John McCain before he made any decisions. Now he's decided to go with the money.

So, we've seen the Primary Campaign Obama. Now we're seeing the General Campaign Obama. His supporters no doubt expect that that the GC Obama is not real, it is to just fool centrist voters into voting for him. Then he'll go back to being PC Obama.

But who will be fooled in the end? When we go from PC Obama to GC Obama to President Obama? What will he be like?

Novak 6/4/08

These are professional pundits who usually say things that are significant. Robert Novak’s policy is to have something nobody knows in each column. In his memoir at the left he writes of the 50 years he’s covered the news in Washington.

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McCain's Camp Believes Obama Weaker Than Clinton

McCain went on the attack today. He’s spent the last few months trying to unite his party but without success. He distanced himself from George W. Bush to such an extent that his Republican audience yesterday was shocked.

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Quote

That Sen. Barack Obama limped through the final Democratic primaries,
unexpectedly losing to Sen. Hillary Clinton in South Dakota Tuesday after being
trounced in Puerto Rico Sunday, is reason for hope by dispirited
Republicans.

Reversing their earlier judgment, Sen. John McCain's strategists now
feel that Obama is a weaker Democratic nominee than Clinton would have been.
McCain's tactics change now that Obama is his opponent.

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My Views

These are two flawed candidates.

Obama: says he wants a serious discussion on race but then he only wants to talk about White racism against Blacks. (Why did Black audiences across America welcome Rev. Wright after knowing about his racist, anti-America speeches? Also, why did the Black audience react so positively to the Rev. Pfleger’s racist rant?) Blacks and Whites are equal. Black racism is just as bad as White racism. Obama wants a frank discussion but not too frank. White racism is politically correct; Black racism is politically incorrect.

McCain: Tends to attack people for purely political gain. His past attacks on Republican leaders (e.g. religious right) were almost McCarthyism in their venom. His targets were unpopular. Hence the falseness and the opportunism. This played well with Media and others who were against Republicans, especially Conservatives, but is a big reason he’s having so much trouble uniting his base now.

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Here’s Novak’s essay.

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Disclaimer: This gives you a picture of the book and an idea of what it costs. The fact that I will be compensated if you click on the link and buy the book turns this post into a semi-advertisement. I only will link to Amazon.com for books I actually liked.

Don’t Overlook This! 6/3/08

These are stories in the news that have much more significance than they’ve received. These stories should have been the leading news items of their day. Their significance extends beyond just a particular area and beyond just a particular news cycle.

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Brigitte Bardot Convicted in Speech Case

The former movie actress was convicted for writing an open letter to the President of France regarding immigration policies. Her major concern has been Muslim practices regarding ritual killing of animals. (She has been an animal rights activist for decades.) Her secondary concern has been the changing culture in the wake of large scale immigration from mainly Muslim countries.

Bardot was known for her steamy performances in the 60’s and 70’s. Her views and her writings reflect the attitudes of that era. Since the Danish cartoon controversy highlighted the changing and diminishing freedom of speech rights, many artists and writers have scaled back their views of artistic freedoms, especially as regards Muslims.

This has not held true for anti-Christian speech. The movie “The Da Vinci Code” offended many (if not most) Christians but nobody was ever prosecuted in the West for it. The movie and the book it was based on went much farther in criticizing Christianity than Bardot did in criticizing Islam.

This is the latest in a trend of attacks on freedom of speech in the western world involving Muslims. In Canada, Mark Steyn and Macleans Magazine is being prosecuted for publishing excerpts from his book regarding the effects on Muslim emigration on Western societies. Like Bardot’s case, the writings would not have been objectionable (legally) a decade ago.

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Here is the Bardot story from the AP. And here is the Steyn story on Wikipedia.

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Why This Is Significant:

This marks a trend in the lowering of free speech rights in order to accommodate Muslim concerns. There has been a steady stream of news stories in recent years about a tightening legal climate on writers, artists and others.

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Related Story

In Britain today, two Christian missionaries have been warned not to proselytize in a Muslim neighborhood. The police told the Christians that trying to convert Muslims to Christians is now a hate crime. They also told the Christians that if they came back they would be beaten although they did not specify who would do the beating, the Muslim residents or the police.

The interesting part of this story is the muted reaction of the British government to the police action. Their public attitude towards this story is consistent with their past public statements on these kinds of incidents.

Much of Britain is now considered “no go” areas for anybody but Muslims. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has called for replacing British law with Muslim law in Muslim areas of Britain.

The story can be found here. There is a backlash as reported here.

One More Time

The Clintonistas are finally (!) coming to terms with excessive lying. Here is Frank Rich of the NY Times. Here is Jonathan Alter of Newsweek. For me, there is some relief that justice is finally happening. The thing that I kept thinking all during the Clinton scandals was that sometime the universe would balance and justice would be done.

Sure some justice was done. Clinton was disbarred from the practice of law - the only President in history - but then he was still treated as a hero and the disbarment became no big deal. And on and on and on.

I don't particularly want Obama to beat Clinton. It's just that politicians should not lie as bad as badly as the Clintons have done and continue to do. Finally, they're going to have to pay in some meaningful way. Finally!

More on Clinton

I don't want to beat this topic to death but this does seem to be an end of an era. There is a limit to the amount of lies that people are going to stomach - and this is a good thing for our country. Mind you, I'm not talking about political issues here. Lying ought to be bad without regard to whether the pol doing the lying is on your side or not.

The Clinton case is bad because their lying has been so bad and so common. Every day on every topic. I especially hated their "Everybody does it" line during the period of their White House scandals - especially the sex scandals.

Today's essay underscores the point. Was Hillary named for Sir Edmond Hillary as she claimed? Bill even put this whopper in his autobiography. How could this have been? Sir Edmond did not do anything famous (climbing Mt. Everest) until 6 years AFTER HRC was born!

The trouble with this stuff is that the lies just went on and on. Little things, big things - on and on and on.

Picture from Wikipedia article on Hillary Clinton. The Wiki caption reads, "Re-enactment of Hillary Rodham Clinton being sworn in as a United States Senator by Vice President Al Gore in the Old Senate Chamber, as President Clinton and daughter Chelsea look on. January 3, 2001."

Hillary Clinton and the Lies

Here is an article that sums up the problem that the public has had with Hillary all along. People may be left or right wing and may like her or hate her for that but the main reason for her difficulties is the sense that she's just not very honest. I mean not honest to a degree worse than other politicians.


As the article says, by this time each individual either gets this or does not.