Thoughts on idiotic and ignorant things people say about them.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Criminalizing Dissent
Why the Left wants to repeal the First Amendment.
Free speech for me, not for thee.
Free Speech At Berkeley
Eugene Volokh rewrites Chancellor Dirks’s email for him.
[Via Ken White, who notes that Dirks has clarified his position, no doubt in response to the justifiable criticism]
The Headchopper Next Door
Some uncomfortable truths about Islam:
Mohammed was quite clear about what he wanted. For all the abrogations, the Koran is reasonably clear on what it expects its followers to do. Mohammed’s history was that of a man who tried to convince the Arabs that he had seen an angel by telling them and failed, and who succeeded only when he killed enough of them, not to mention the Jews and any other infidels hanging around the place.
That is the history of Islam.
Germany was not a nation of monsters. It was a nation that behaved monstrously. The average German would not stick his neighbor in an oven in his basement or chain him up as a slave. He would however do these things in Poland because he was contextually contaminated by a monstrous ideology.
As an individual he was a nice man who loved his children, petted his dog and enjoyed street fairs. As a loyal member of a system run by the Nazi Party, he would do monstrous things. And then when the Nazi machine was switched off, he would go home to his wife and children without ever killing anyone else.
He was not a good man. Good men don’t do the things he did. But he wasn’t a budding serial killer. He was just doing what a death cult told him to do.
As I noted over the weekend…
@Vote4Wallace The parallels between the Nazis and the Islamists are more numerous and much closer than many want to concede. @instapundit
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 15, 2014
Also, Barack Obama and John Kerry lecturing Muslims on what is and is not the nature of Islam is a theater of the absurd.
Cooking In College
When I read things like this, I weep for a generation. Where were their parents?
Once, when a niece was a fresh(wo)man at USC, we had her over for dinner. She was a little shocked when I told her that the chicken I’d just roasted cost about three bucks, and would easily last her a week. She’s since become quite the homemaker, though.
Atlas Shrugged III
The story has become a torrid romance.
“This Is A Religious War”
Thoughts from Andrew Sullivan. Almost thirteen years ago.
My views have changed very little since. Have his?
The Latest Gallup Poll
This has to be a nightmare if you’re a Democrat, less than two months before the election.
I used to say that the best thing that Bill Clinton did for the country was to end the Democrats’ grip on Congress. Barack Obama has done the same thing, and it may be longer lasting.
Hockey Sticks And “Fraud”
Some reflections from Judith Curry on Professor Mann’s latest court filing.
[Update early afternoon]
After being caught out claiming he was a “Nobel Prize recipient” in his original complaint (then having to retract it), it seems Mann and his lawyers just don’t have the good sense to know when to stop. In this case Mann has been “hoisted by his own petard”. His very own words condemn him. Again.
No comment.
Public School As Child Abuse
Example #43,675,219:
Stuarts Draft fifth-grader Grace Karaffa appeared before the school board Thursday night, saying she had requested the substance while on the playground after suffering chapped lips.
“I was told I couldn’t use it. Then later that day they (lips) started to bleed so I asked for Chapstick again and I was told that it was against the school policy for elementary kids to have Chapstick,” Grace said.
Grace asked the school board to change its policy. “Chapstick allows the human body to heal the lips themselves and protects them in any weather from drying out,” she said. She concluded her speech by saying, “Please school board, allow us to have Chapstick.”
I don’t know if you have to be a moron to be a school-board member, but it certainly seems to help.