Boyd

Kelly:

Geniophobia - Fear of chins


Oh, but this... I like this. This just goes to show, you know, that for every... Look, I'm going to write a love story. This could be the feelgood romantic comedy of next summer.

Say there's a man with absolutely no chin at all, I mean none whatsoever. And he's all sad and afflicted and, 'Cruel fate...born without a chin...my face goes straight into my neck... I would hang myself but there would be nothing for the noose to grab onto, I would just slip right through...'

And he doesn't think any woman will ever look at him and he hates his life. But next door, or in the next street, or at the end of many journeys, there is a girl whose life has been blighted by Geniophobia, the Fear of Chins. And she visited many psychiatrists for this terrible affliction, forcing them to crouch down behind the desk while they talked to her so she could only see their eyes and nose peeking over, but they were unable to help her, and so she went through life lonely and afraid, and dreaming, dreaming of a man without a chin, or at least a man who would keep his chin decently hidden... 'Dick Turpin, there was a man... WG Grace... Wilf from the Bash Street Kids, all men should dress that way...'

And, you know, when literary or artistic posers have their photographs in the papers with their hands cupping their chins while they peer thoughtfully into the middle-distance, she cuts them out and puts them in a scrapbook and kisses them. 'If we met I would superglue him like that.'

And her friends wonder why she never has a boyfriend and set her up on blind dates, but they're uniformly disastrous, it always turns out to be, you know, Jimmy Hill, Senator Kerry, Desperate Dan, Judge Dredd.

But then one day she meets the man with no chin, and they fall in love and (expletive deleted, you can probably guess which one) like deranged rabbits, and live happily ever after.

Or maybe they don't. Maybe it ends tragically. Maybe he misunderstands and spoils everything by having an operation to give him a prosthetic chin. Or maybe, just before she summons up the courage to tell him how she feels, he accidentally cuts his throat while shaving, because he has no chin. That would be really shitty. That's a good ending, though. Perhaps if it happened the day before they were due to get married, if he slit his windpipe while shaving because he was so happy he forgot he had no chin. Jesus. A film like that could haunt you for the rest of your life.

WFB:

In four years we marched from Pearl Harbor to the heart of what was left of Tokyo and Berlin. In three years we can't yet take a cab from Baghdad to its airport without an armed guard.

Althouse:

What women should want is very different from what we do want, but what we do want is inevitably shaped by what we've come to think we should want, which is affected by what we're hearing we should want. Try disaggregating what you do want from what you think you should want, after first disaggregating what you think you should want from what other people seem to be saying you should want. It's damned hard! And it's not necessarily the way to happiness, but then, if you do manage to do all that, your skills at assessing your own happiness will be quite different from the skills of other people reporting to sociologists about whether they are happy.

Hmmm. Do you think she's serious? Is she being funny and I don't get the joke? Because I think she's serious. And if she's serious, she pretty much summed up the whole problem - I am too stupid to understand women because while I can slog through Roch's 90 page report about the state of the military, I have no idea what Althouse is trying to say. It's like they have their own code. Sometimes they are happy and good things happen to me and sometimes they are unhappy and bad things happen to me. I have been unable so far to assign causality to either phenomenon.

Samuel:

At best it is a tale of rank political opportunism on the part of both Republicans and Democrats; at worst it is a monumental instance of racial profiling. Both sides are calculating that American voters are going to react poorly to the idea of Dubai Ports World operating in American shipping terminals. Even if they are right, it is a cynical calculation.

I'm against Islamic extremists. I want Muslims in general to be more secular and more tolerant. I am not against Arabs or countries that are predominantly Muslim unless they behave badly.

Shouldn't this be the default position of liberals? I thought this is what you guys are all about. A UAE company operating American ports is an excellent example of multi-culturalism. It's OK with you that Chinese firms operate ports in the US, but it's not OK for a company from the Middle East to be involved? What the heck happened?

From my position, it's looking pretty clear - for all your talk, you don't mean much of it. First, you're anti-Bush. Whatever Bush is for, you'll oppose. You don't take the time to examine the merits of a particular situation. Second, you're primarily political opportunists. You saw a rare opportunity to get to the right of Republicans on a national security issue and you took it even if it meant playing to the worst anti-Arab instincts of some Americans.

Update: Zogby:

Instead of a real debate, we're given scapegoating. Instead of making us more secure, politicians engage in the exercise of isolating us more from the world and damaging our relationship with an important ally in the Middle East. They ought to be ashamed. They owe an apology not only to the UAE but also to the American people.

Update II: Limbaugh (David):

But there is a method to the Democrats' madness. Whatever principles the Democrats have, even those most unattractive ones leading to their appeasement orientation, they're always for sale if the price -– the reacquisition of political power -– is right.

Funk:

"In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates," (Myrick) wrote, "not just NO, but HELL NO!"

Her quote showed up in front-page stories in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the San Francisco Chronicle.

CNN put her photo and a copy of the letter on-screen.

North Carolina's media ran with it, too -- a good thing for Myrick, who's looking to boost her name recognition for a possible run for governor in 2008.

Being ignorant really ought not be viewed as an asset. Celebrating that ignorance probably ought to disqualify you from being governor.

Kristol:

Demagogues to the right of them, appeasers to the left of them, media in front of them, volleying and thundering. Can the Bush administration continue to charge ahead? Does it have the will--and the competence--to lead the nation for the next three years toward victory in the long war against radical Islamism?

Maybe it's just coincidence, but the Buckley article may have unleashed a lot of pent up conservative frustration. The strategy of letting things get bad and then trotting out Bush to rally the troops for a few weeks in between fundraisers is getting tiresome.

Thornton:

The problem with Islam, however, is not a lack of self-esteem but too damned much. This is a faith fanatically certain of its truth and righteousness, the culminating vision of God’s relations with humanity, the ultimate meaning of human existence on every level, including the social and political. As such, its destiny is to spread over the whole world until the benefits, both in this life and the next, of submission to God are bestowed on all humans, and the dysfunctional man-made values–– including democracy, materialism, “equal rights,” and freedom–– are swept away. For however alluring, these do not deliver true happiness or true freedom, but mere hedonism and license that create misery and degradation in this world, and put the soul at risk in the next.

Howley:

There is a delicious anti-boomer screed to be written, slamming the generation that has so greedily helped itself to its children's future earnings.

Now I know what my purpose is. It won't be pretty.

Suck:

...given the boomers' penchant for sucking up all the shrimp and steak in the buffet line of life - they are setting up the rest of us not merely to fork over ever more generous portions of our wages to fund their Social Security and Medicare (hey, why shouldn't face lifts and Viagra prescriptions be covered?)but to deny us any last crumb of joy that comes simply from being younger than them?

Nordlinger:

(Dionne) said that Bush critics are arguing that Health Savings Accounts "would offer a lot of money to the most well-off among our fellow citizens without increasing health coverage."

Hmm — offering a lot of money to those citizens? You mean, it wouldn't be their own money? They would be given someone else's money?

Buckley didn't say what he said without serious consideration. If the White House loses the intellectual conservatives, they will be lost themselves and we will have two years of treading water - a dangerous prospect.

Babbin:

Regardless of whether civil war erupts, we cannot abandon Iraq now, for to do so would be a strategic defeat in the larger war. William F. Buckley, Jr. cannot be blamed for concluding that "Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans." It is President Bush's fault, because he has not performed as a wartime president must, to define the mission, chart clearly the course to its completion, and lead us to it. That brief flare of leadership that burst over us last fall has fizzled and died in the darkness of silence. At this moment, the president should be on our screens and in our ears to explain, again, what the mission in Iraq is, how he means to prosecute the global war on terror, and how we can unravel the mess that Iraq has become. The fact that he is not is cause for alarm.

Via Instapundit. John Fund:

Never has an article made me blink with astonishment as much as when I read in yesterday's New York Times magazine that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former ambassador-at-large for the Taliban, is now studying at Yale on a U.S. student visa. This is taking the obsession that U.S. universities have with promoting diversity a bit too far.

"In some ways," Mr. Rahmatullah told the New York Times. "I'm the luckiest person in the world. I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale." One of the courses he has taken is called Terrorism-Past, Present and Future.

I bet the discussions in his Women's Studies classes are lively.

I posted my intentions here. I'm a fourth of the way through. I really, really like Rhett. Why haven't I read this book before?

In a discussion this afternoon about the how and why of the Iraq war at Cone's blog, Roch said in attempting to explain the why:

It's an ideological view of the world that drove their decisions. A view that, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it was now the role of the United States to establish a "Pax Americana," and ironic name for a notion that the US was in a position to use its military to have its way in the world without serious consequences. It is a view shaped and signed on to by many of those "smart" people you mention above before Bush even took office — and one which was specific in its designs on Iraq, Iran and North Korea. It championed the idea of extending America's influence as far as possible through military means and acknowledged that such a radical shift in American policy would happen very slowly, at best, "absent some catastrophic and cataclysmic event — like a new Pearl Harbor."

The Pearl Harbor quote that's of importance here comes from the paper Rebuilding America's Defenses published in September of 2000 by Project for the New American Century.

Here's the actual quote from the paper (p. 63 on Acrobat, p. 51 of the paper):

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions.

Sounds fairly damning, right? Sounds like someone wants to transform the world and needs a Pearl Harbor to do it. Enter September 11 and poof - the paper is our smoking gun.

Unfortunately for this most conspiratorial of scenarios, everything hinges on the definition of transformation. The paper is essentially a review of the state of the military. Its position is for increased defense spending in light of declining attention (as a percentage of GDP) during the Clinton years. The paper also argues for a reprioritization of spending. This is the transformation referenced above. Take a look at the opening paragraphs of the chapter containing the quote:

To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs. Information technologies, in particular, are becoming more prevalent and significant components of modern military systems. These information technologies are having the same kind of transforming effects on military affairs as they are having in the larger world. The effects of this military transformation will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons will dominate the battlefield and, inevitably, which nations enjoy military preeminence.

The United States enjoys every prospect of leading this transformation. Indeed, it was the improvements in capabilities acquired during the American defense buildup of the 1980s that hinted at and then confirmed, during Operation Desert Storm, that a revolution in military affairs was at hand. At the same time, the process of military transformation will present opportunities for America’s adversaries to develop new capabilities that in turn will create new challenges for U.S. military preeminence.

The argument leading up to the Pearl Harbor reference is essentially urging the military to adopt the latest technologies, particularly information technologies, and to invest more in R&D. Now, we all know what a challenge implementing the latest IT is in large organizations, correct? The Pearl Harbor reference is simply to say that the process is going to take a long time unless some disaster happens that makes us 'transform,' by utilizing existing and inventing new technology, more quickly than we have been. Read the quote again including the rest of the paragraph:

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval. Likewise, systems entering production today – the F-22 fighter, for example – will be in service inventories for decades to come. Wise management of this process will consist in large measure of figuring out the right moments to halt production of current-paradigm weapons and shift to radically new designs. The expense associated with some programs can make them roadblocks to the larger process of transformation – the Joint Strike Fighter program, at a total of approximately $200 billion, seems an unwise investment. Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change – transition and transformation – over the coming decades.

The transformation being advocated is changing old technologies for new. It is no more sinister than canceling an out of date carrier program or more closely evaluating a new program like the F-22 that will be with us for several decades. The transformation is treated with such gravity and given a consultant-like term, 'transformation,' because of the great expense and difficulty involved in making these sorts of changes - you may be putting people out of work or getting rid of an admiral's pet project or upsetting a member of Congress in whose district the carrier is built. But transformation, in the confines of this paper, is most certainly not a plot to remake the world in the image of Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz.

Melloan:

Milton Friedman saw the problem. To the extent that authorities curtail supplies of marijuana, cocaine and heroin coming into the rich U.S. market, the retail price of these substances goes up, making the trade immensely profitable--tax-free, of course. The more the U.S. spends on interdiction, the more incentive it creates for taking the risk of running drugs.

Damn pesky supply and demand law.

Aljazeera:

Question:

But who would benefit if Iraq fell into a deadly civil war?

Answer:

In 1982, Oded Yinon, an official from the Israeli Foreign Affairs office, wrote: "To dissolve Iraq is even more important for us than dissolving Syria. In the short term, it's Iraqi power that constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. The Iran-Iraq war tore Iraq apart and provoked its downfall. All manner of inter-Arab conflict help us and accelerate our goal of breaking up Iraq into small, diverse pieces."

Here's my question. Has Aljazeera ever rejected a Jewish conspiracy theory as just being too far out?

Update: The above title to this post is mockery.

Update II: It is mockery of Aljazeera.

Friedman:

As a country, we must not go down this road of global ethnic profiling, looking for Arabs under our beds the way we once looked for commies. If we do, if America, the world's beacon of pluralism and tolerance, goes down that road, we will take the rest of the world with us.

We will sow the wind and we will reap the whirlwind.

If there were a real security issue here, I'd join the critics. But the security argument is bogus and, I would add, borderline racist. Many U.S. ports are run today by foreign companies, but the U.S. Coast Guard still controls all aspects of port security, entry and exits; the U.S. Customs Service is still in charge of inspecting the containers; and U.S. longshore- men still handle the cargos.

The port operator simply oversees the coming and going of ships, making sure they are properly loaded and offloaded in the most cost-effective manner.

Here is Instapundit from a few weeks ago:

To win this war, we need to kill the people who want to kill us. But we need to win over the rest.

We can't kill everyone in the whole world. We can't control everyone either. Yeah, it's a little scary becoming more interconnected, but as paradoxical to security as it may seem, the more we interact the better off we'll be in the long run. To paraphrase another Friedman (Milton), economics is the language that allows us to communicate across cultures.

Sometimes we're worse than the French.

I've been looking at these two posts. How could two of my favorite people be so far apart? However, there's nothing to reconcile. Buckley's article is about the strategic. Hanson's article is about the tactical. Buckley revisits the original thinking on one of the two major reasons for the war. Hanson deals with the reality on the ground.

I don't follow half of what the Sex Pistols are saying in this hand scrawled note turning down an invitation to attend their hall of fame induction, but it's cool.

Sam Wharton put together a rally for the Danes this morning. Payne and I showed our support. Pics and commentary here, here and here.

Update: Glenn Jordan put up a link as well. The pleasure was mine.

Sam's traffic ought to increase by about 10,000% because of this.

Myrick:

Dear Mr. President:

In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO—but HELL NO!

Sincerely,

Sue Myrick

Henninger:

This is a member of Congress?

WFB:

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The worst mistake we made (even greater than our intelligence failures on WMD) was assuming the people would welcome us as liberators (and many have, just not nearly enough). How did we miscalculate? Wishful thinking - the common liberal mistake? We saw the world as we wanted it to be?

Update: Part of the equation is the prospect of nuclear terrorism. We think that folks living in free, democratic societies are less likely to be motivated to attempt to kill large numbers of us and at the same time free, democratic governments will police themselves instead of winking and nodding at rogue elements. This forced our hand and made us more agreeable to taking a chance.

CNN:

Saudi security forces have thwarted an attempted suicide attack at an oil processing facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, Saudi security sources told CNN.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, in a message posted on a Islamist Web site that has previously carried al Qaeda messages.

Fine. Al Qaeda attacked. Didn't work. But why claim responsibility when the attack was such an utter failure?

Saudi security consultant Nawaf Obaid said the cars breached the outer security perimeter after opening fire on security guards, killing three and wounding 10, before being stopped at a second security perimeter, where they set off the explosives.

You made it through one of three gates before being killed. Very nice. Your tactics are awesome. Maybe I give you guys too much credit. If you were to acquire a nuclear device, what are the odds you'd set the thing off in your hut?

I'll probably stop by for the Denmark rally tomorrow between 11 and 1.

Part of the beauty of being conservative is that you don't normally have to stand around in large groups of annoying people holding signs and chanting. On the other hand, it is for the most worthwhile of causes. It's also one last chance for the N&R to print the cartoons now that they can tie the decision to local interest.

It's getting ready to change. They just can't help themselves.

ESPN:

NFL Players' Association executive director Gene Upshaw told a seminar of agents on Friday to prepare for a 2006 season without an extension to the collective bargaining agreement, setting up an uncapped year in 2007.

No cap will be a complete and utter disaster.

VDH:

It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or by blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy.

The Iraqi military goes out now on about half the American patrols, as well as on thousands of their own. It is not the Fallujah brigade of early 2004 — rather, it is developing into the best trained and disciplined armed force in the Middle East.

Kelly:

So, in the end, what we are telling Arab moderates in no uncertain terms is that it doesn't matter what they do; what matters is what they are. After all our posturing about the hypocrisy of Arab and Muslim moderates who haven't stood up to Middle East extremists, it turns out our only reward for the people who do take a stand is a mix of distrust and contempt.

First, there is no problem with taking a closer look at this port deal. Second, Bush's initial belligerence didn't help matters. But this whole rush to judgment is making Congress, the MSM and many blogs look ridiculous. I have never seen so many people so quick to rush to judgment with a total disregard for the facts. It's as if the opportunity is so great that reality is irrelevant. The opportunists are making the bet that their momentum will steamroll the deal, crushing truth before it gets to a microphone.

Before there was Jeff and Bill and Larry, there was Jerry.

Dispatcher on cell phone talking to delivery driver: You know where Poteat Road is?

Driver: No.

Secretary: You know, where that guy got ran over by the train.

Driver: Oh, you mean by the railroad tracks.

Only in the South.

Sexton:

The more people you have keeping an eye on government, the better off we all are.

Cone is right. This week's Rhino (unposted as of now, probably will be up sometime in the next two weeks) is a must-read. It's the best Rhino I can remember. Both John Hammer's and Willy Hammer's columns about the cartoons and the decision to publish were moving and persuasive, they gave front page space for a Muslim rebuttal and Yost's column was masterful. Awesome twist, my man. I never saw it coming. In fact, I thought you were going the other way. Just tremendous. If a Generals cheerleader shows up at your door with a bow on and a penguin on a leash, you'll know who to think.

Now, let's move forward in time. How will my friends JR and Allen feel a year from now having decided to follow the crowd and not publish? How will it feel to have punted on printing the most famous and most important cartoons in the history of the world? How will it feel reading lame excuses about declining to publish - excuses that include no local interest, we've declined to publish other offensive cartoons, descriptions of the cartoons are just as good as looking at them, anyone who's interested can see them online and no one has offered compelling enough reasons to publish? Will any of these justifications stand up to news value and importance a year from now? And, last question, how is self-censorship, for whatever noble reason, in the face of obvious newsworthiness any different than any other kind of censorship?

Contact Music:

Morrissey explains, "The FBI and the Special Branch have investigated me and I've been interviewed and taped and so forth.

"They were trying to determine if I was a threat to the government, and similarly in England. But it didn't take them very long to realise that I'm not."

I guess the Feds weren't concentrating on the possibility of his music boring Western civilization to death.

I'm missing the party ripping Isiah. Maybe Hardin will get back in form (he's been kind of normal lately) and write something fun (somebody at the N&R take him out drinking before his next deadline). If it happens soon, I'm going to take out all this pent up Isiah mockery on you EH.

TSG:

"My friend Ryan and I were talking about the Stevie Francis trade and we're pretty sure that some day we are going to find out how Isiah Thomas and the team owners are profiting from this, and it's going to retroactively become the great sports scandal in history. Our current theory is that it all comes back to MJ somehow. It all stems from the gambling ring Gretsky and Jordan started when they were doing voices for the "Superstars" cartoon show in the '80s. Miffed at the physical beating he would take in the playoffs from the Knicks, MJ set a diabolical plan in motion which has spanned decades. Each of his retirements somehow furthered this plan, but we're not sure how. Although the conspiracy was originally formulated for revenge the ring now has one ultimate result: the return of Bo Jackson. I mean, it sounds crazy, but not as crazy as actually wanting the most expensive worst team in the league. Bo knows conspiracies. Do you have any theories?"
Patrick McGuire, Washington, DC

Will:

A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that conservatives are happier than liberals -- in all income groups. While 34 percent of all Americans call themselves "very happy," only 28 percent of liberal Democrats (and 31 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats) do, compared to 47 percent of conservative Republicans. This finding is niftily self-reinforcing: It depresses liberals.

On the bright side, happiness is one voter registration change away.

I understand music snobbery as well as anyone (I was a DJ for a time at QFS), but I don't care, I like Legend. A bunch.

Maloney:

But Marley didn't really become a mainstream fixture—a singer instantly recognizable to anyone who's lingered over a fajita at Chili's or wandered through a freshman quad in the springtime—until after his death, and after Legend. Greatest-hits collections are notoriously bad showcases, but Legend was a doozy—a defanged and overproduced selection of Marley's music. Listening to Legend to understand Marley is like reading Bridget Jones's Diary to get Jane Austen.

Update: I was a DJ for a time at QFS. Where snobbery was required and the less people who had heard of your favorite band, the higher on the pecking order you were. People would ask me my favorite band and I'd make up a name. "Where can we hear that," they'd say. "You can't," I'd reply. "They haven't formed yet. They're still in the conceptual stage."

Summers:

I have notified the Harvard Corporation that I will resign as President of the University as of June 30, 2006. Working closely with all parts of the Harvard community, and especially with our remarkable students, has been one of the great joys of my professional life. However, I have reluctantly concluded that the rifts between me and segments of the Arts and Sciences faculty make it infeasible for me to advance the agenda of renewal that I see as crucial to Harvard's future. I believe, therefore, that it is best for the University to have new leadership.

I know I'm late to the party, but can I just say that if a Democrat former US Treasury Secretary with a bachelor's from MIT and a PhD from Harvard itself is not acceptable to some of the faculty of the Harvard Arts and Sciences department and can be forced to resign so easily, what type of person does Harvard think makes an acceptable president?

Nordlinger:

"Either they will succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs." That was Rumsfeld...

Stein:

So here's where we are: we have a first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and separation of church and state. That means so-called artists can make art of a crucifix soaking in urine and of holy Christian images made of animal dung and no one can stop them. That means bookstores of brick and on-line can sell Mein Kampf and the vilest writings of Hitler's lackeys. These horrible excrescences are protected and the media screams bloody murder if anyone tries to protect the sacred in Christianity and Judaism from the most putrid attacks.

But the media censors itself about the cartoons mocking the prophet of a religion many of whose adherents want to destroy our country and our way of life. We will fight to the death to protect the artists who create Piss Christ, but we'll also fight to the death to protect the feelings of the people who hate us and kill our children. We have surrendered our free expression to people who are at war with us. They kill us in the name of a religion and we bow and scrape to that religion while letting people dump on Christianity and Judaism.

There's a word for this, beyond the words Stockholm Syndrome and the words Political Correctness. The word is cowardice. Or maybe an even shorter word: defeat. Wake up, America. This is serious.

Bennett and Dershowitz:

So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.

Chris! Bucky! Ace! Taylor! McLeansville! Skynyrd! George Michael! Gray hair and harmonica!

Been reading Gone With the Wind. It's a pretty good book. Who knew?

WSJ:

Yes, some of the 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens. But then the London subway bombings last year were perpetrated by citizens of Britain, home to the company (P&O) that currently manages the ports that Dubai Ports World would take over.

Meyer:

The United Arab Emirates is not an Axis of Evil kind of place, it will not own U.S. ports, it will not control security at U.S. ports and there is nothing new about foreigners owning U.S. ports. Odds are higher that you'll be wounded interfering with a congressman providing soundbites than by something smuggled into a port terminal leased by Dubai Ports World.

Update: Step back. Take a breath. We don't have all the facts. Don't harm your cause by going overboard. Keep in mind that some day you'll have to square this hysteria with being anti-profiling. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin says welcome.

They didn't just reprint, they drew their own Muhammed cartoon.

AP:

More than a dozen students protested at the campus newspaper office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill against an editorial cartoon of the prophet Muhammad.

The Daily Tar Heel:

The updated compass courtesy of PotatoStew. Difficult to believe that so many bright people in and around Greensboro could be so misguided. Guess it's true what they say about local schools.

The first veto of the Bush presidency, heading into the second half of his second term, better not be over this port deal.

CNN:

President Bush on Tuesday strongly defended a deal that would let a United Arab Emirates-based company run six major U.S. seaports, telling reporters that he would veto any bill to hold up the agreement.

There have been so many worthy veto candidates and you've hardly ever even threatened to use the tool. And now it's over this and so quickly? What the hell is going on?

"I don't understand why it's OK for a British company to operate our ports but not a company from the Middle East when we've already determined security is not an issue," Bush said.

Y'all just don't have any credibility anymore. At the very least, Bush, you've got to say why security is not an issue. You don't just get to dismiss this sort of thing. Let's have the compelling reasons this deal should happen. Otherwise your first veto is getting overturned and you may as well go on vacation for the next two years.

Hitchens:

The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability!

The folks rioting believe killing and destroying are just retribution for a paper and pencil drawing that causes offense. This is utterly and completely wrong. There is no shame in saying so. It is evident on its face. You are not being clever by taking the other side on this. You are a fool.

Found this at Sun's site:

The Koran describes a lush garden-like heaven in which each man can be married to a bevy of beautiful, dark-eyed females called houri. The passage is open to interpretation, but scholars say these are not earthly girls who died but heavenly creatures, and, it would appear, they can be deflowered and then automatically reflower.

Look, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth - I'll be happy with most any form of eternal life, but it seems to me that Christians might want to sweeten the pot a little.

If you oppose the sale of the ports to a company from the UAE, aren't you engaged in profiling?

CNN:

On Sunday, Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, held a news conference with relatives of some of those killed in the terrorist attacks, and denounced the takeover.

"Outsourcing the operation of our largest ports to a country with long involvement in terrorism is a homeland security accident waiting to happen," he said.

TSG:

Best Random Celebrity Moment Ever

So I'm leaving FanFest on Saturday afternoon when Sully gives me the "Come to the Four Seasons, we're hanging out in the hotel bar drinking Bloody Marys" phone call. Well, I can't turn down that offer. Not ever. Within 10 minutes, I'm sitting right there with them. And we're hanging out and talking hoops, debating whether to stay for a second drink, when none other than Charles Oakley saunters into the bar with three lady friends, eventually settling at the table right next to us. As soon as Oakley orders a round of shots for his table, as well as a martini for himself, we decide to order a second round of drinks for ourselves. I mean, where else can you drink 5 feet away from the real-life Shaft?

Twenty minutes later? MJ shows up with two friends and stops the room cold. (That's right, two brushes with MJ in 36 hours.) At first, it seems like he's just saying hello, but then we realize he's sitting down. Eventually, they move him into the inside booth, then block him with chairs on both sides so nobody can bother him. (I like to call this the Chair Armada, since it's the exact same strategy that guys use in strip joints when they don't want to be continually approached by below-average strippers trying to pull the "Maybe if I sit right on his lap, he'll feel bad for me and get a lap dance" routine. The Chair Armada never fails.) When Oakley ordered more drinks, we ended up ordering food and drinks for our table. For all we knew, we were staying all afternoon.

(And we did: Our bar bill ended up being like $400. Back to the story.)

Things kept rolling along. People kept walking over to say hello to MJ, pay tribute to him, kiss his ring ... it's almost like he's the real-life Michael Corleone (with Oakley as his Luca Brasi). At one point, his longtime agent David Falk sat about 30 feet away, waiting for an invite, finally giving up and coming over to say hello. (Falk asked MJ, "How late did you stay out last night?" followed by MJ casually saying "7:30," as we nodded admiringly.) And the drinks kept coming and coming and, occasionally, Oakley would get up and saunter around just to stretch his legs and look cool as I made comments like, "I wish you could rent Oak for parties." At one point, he was thinking about ordering food, stood up, looked over at all of us eating, noticed Rich's cheeseburger, asked if it was a cheeseburger, asked if it was good, kept glancing at it, kept glancing at it ... and I swear, we were all waiting for Oak to say the words, "Oak wants your cheeseburger, and he wants it now." But he didn't. He ended up ordering one himself. Too bad.

Well, two hours pass. Everyone finishes eating. The cigars come out. And I'm sitting there saying, "There's no way that the cards aren't coming out soon. It's impossible. MJ has never sat this long in one place without the cards coming out."

While we were waiting for that moment, just to make a strange afternoon stranger, I walked over to Elgin Baylor's table and talked about the Clips with him for 10 minutes (we're getting along these days — that's a whole other story). And when I returned, the cards emerged, just as I predicted — they started playing a game called "Bid Wist," a form of spades that's popular among NBA players, with Oakley and MJ teaming up against two of their friends. We got to see MJ's legendary competitive streak in action. He was trash-talking nonstop, snickering sarcastically, cackling with every good card, badgering his opponents to the point that I actually thought one of them would start crying. This wasn't Corporate MJ, the one you and I know. This was Urban MJ, the one that comes out for the black Super Bowl. We never get to see this one.

And I'm sitting there dying. For one thing, I love cards and have a gambling problem. Also, what would be a greater story than Sully and me getting winners against Oak and MJ? Sure, there wasn't a chance in hell, but it was fun to imagine. Meanwhile, the day kept getting stranger and stranger. Around 6, Shaquille O'Neal showed up with his posse, wearing a four-piece suit that caused MJ to joke, "I'm glad you're living up to the responsibility of the dress code." A little bit later, Bucks assistant Lester Conner showed up wearing a red sweatshirt with a giant Jordan logo on it .... when do you run into someone when you're randomly wearing their clothes? And MJ kept getting louder and louder, and he and Oakley were cleaning up, and we're all watching them while pretending not to watch, and then suddenly ...

MJ's wife shows up.

Uh-oh.

Everyone makes room for her. She sneaks in and sits down right next to him. And poor MJ looks like somebody who took a no-hitter into the ninth, then gave up a triple off the left-field wall. The trash-talking stops. He slumps in his seat like a little kid. The cigar goes out. No more hangin' with the boys. Time to be a husband again. Watching the whole thing unfold, I lean over to Sully just to say, "Look at that, he's just like us."

And he was. Just your average guy getting derailed by his wife. For once in my life, I didn't want to be like Mike.

VDH:

If the most liberal and tolerant states in Europe such as Holland and Denmark have the most problems with Islamic radicals, then what does that say about the continent as a whole? Why were not the calculating jihadists singling out a more unapologetic Catholic Poland that has larger contingents in Iraq and is far prouder of its Christian roots?

Do the Europeans sense that the more open, free-wheeling and non-judgmental the culture, the more it is hated by the jihadists? If Europe as a whole is more pro-Palestinian than the U. S., disapproved of Iraq, and yet is still hated as much, is magnanimity at last exposed as appeasement — earning only contempt from an emboldened enemy?

Althouse:

A religion is a set of ideas. The belief in religion may be deep and sensitive, and it may be arrived at through a path that is not reason and is therefore not amenable to ordinary argument and debate, but it is nevertheless a matter of ideas. You cannot immunize ideas from criticism and still have free speech. In fact, it is most important to be able to criticize the ideas people take most seriously and cling to most intransigently.

Volokh posts this Dr. Seuss political cartoon.

Potato Stew has built a graphic showing where local folks fall in the political spectrum. You can take the quiz here.

It took an 'alternative' paper to give the real reasons for not publishing the cartoons.

The Phoenix:

Out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. This is, frankly, our primary reason for not publishing any of the images in question. Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year publishing history.

The mainstream press in the US has lost it. I know their demise has been reported since the beginning of time, but this is it. Hear me now, listen to me later.

The Cheney story is nothing. Let me repeat - NOTHING. It is unimportant. It doesn't matter to anyone except the press. It doesn't prove anything or give any insight into Cheney or the administration. It is a simple story with no sinister angle. Accidents happen and sometimes they involve important people. There was no cover-up. No one is being scandalized. Cheney is sorry. Whittington is forgiving. The ranch owner handled the situation like I would have or anyone else with any sense would have. That's it.

Mainstream press, by hammering this story, you make yourselves look like total fools. What are you mad about? Your police scanner was turned off so you waited fifteen hours before being told what had happened? The Corpus Christi paper got the scoop instead of The New York Times? If the White House treats you as irrelevant, it's because you are and it's your fault. Lashing out now like a spoiled child will not hurt the White House and will not regain you your 'rightful' place. And yet the Time cover story this week:

Editor's note: The following is a summary of this week's Time magazine cover story:

(Time.com) -- For an entire week, the Bush administration has been tangled in the aftermath of the Cheney hunting accident.

What else is happening in the world? Hmmmm. Let me see. Ah, yes. The cartoon story. The story that you so badly want to go away, mainstream press. While David Gregory goes mano y mano with Scott McClellan to show what a big, tough guy he is (and to justify his quarter million dollar salary), the cartoon thing festers in the rest of the world. Not only is it the biggest story because it's one more potential step toward a civilization war, it's the biggest free speech story since Larry Flynt vs. Jerry Falwell with monster implications involving Western values. Now, why would the US press not want to deal with the cartoons? Maybe it's because they know that in any other situation, with any other group, they'd be printing the cartoons as fast as they could jam paper in the printer. Offended? Oh, sorry. Look away. So what's different? They're scared out of their minds. There is no other explanation.

Jacoby:

...the refusal of the US media to show the images at the heart of one of the most urgent stories of the day is not about restraint and good taste. It's about fear. Editors and publishers are afraid the thugs will target them as they targeted Danny Pearl and Theo van Gogh; afraid the mob will firebomb their newsrooms as it has firebombed Danish embassies. ''We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," an imam in Gaza preaches. ''Whoever insults a prophet, kill him," reads the sign carried by a demonstrator in London. Those are not figures of speech but deadly threats, and American newspapers and networks are intimidated.

If you're not scared of what happened to Danny Pearl and Theo van Gogh and you really don't want to offend Muslims by publishing images of the prophet, where are the investigations into why this offends in the first place? Where's the reporting on where this tradition came from? What authority is telling you that they're offended? If something offends half of all Muslims, can it be published? If something offends Muslims, but they don't destroy embassies, is it OK to publish? Are we going to have one standard for offending Muslims and one for everybody else?

Let me tell you how this is working in the newsrooms of America. The conversation inevitably goes to risk/reward. Publishing the cartoons is high risk/low reward. It's high risk because you might get killed, blew up, boycotted or picketed. Additionally, your corporate bosses might be mad that you strayed from the New York Times reservation. Publishing the cartoons is low reward because you're standing up for vague principles. When you do this, you have to be self-confident. You have to be tough. You have to be ready to be criticized even more than you are by not publishing. It is the more difficult road. However, publishing forestalls the irrelevancy evident in the Cheney debacle. Every time you tell me how important the Cheney story is, I think, to the press maybe, but not to me. Every time you tell me to go find the cartoons on the Internet, I wonder why I don't just find everything else on the Internet too.

An article on page H1 of the News & Record today (unposted as far as I can tell) by Shahnz Khawaja attempts to explain why Muslims are outraged by the cartoons. According to her, the outrage isn't based on anything in the Koran, but on a tradition that since you can't know what a prophet looked like, you shouldn't make assumptions.

It's also a tradition of some Muslims that women not appear in public without burkas, yet none is evident in Khawaja's photo that accompanies the article. So what traditions are worth killing over? Who decides? On what authority? And what traditions (free speech, free press, mockery) do you get to intimidate out of existence in cultures not created by Muslims?

However, as interesting as this apparent contradiction is, here are the sentences that caught my attention:

Former President Bill Clinton displayed a rare understanding of the issue when he criticized the cartoons. Had the Danish government taken a similar stance, much violence and turmoil could have been avoided.

and...

Intolerance, misrepresentation and stereotyping were evident in the act of publishing those cartoons. All of the above are best avoided. Especially today.

Are these threats? Violence and turmoil are not the fault of offended Muslims - they are unable to control themselves having seen or heard about cartoon depictions of Muhammad? The Western press better avoid misrepresenting and stereotyping these days, or who knows what will happen? What exactly is being said here?

She follows with this:

What sort of freedom of the press is demonstrated by a cartoon depicting Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb? Does the press have the freedom to slander Muslims by running a cartoon that insinuates that Islam and its prophet teach and condone terror?

It's the veiled threats from moderate Muslims outlined above that are the problem of the age. Khawaja says that Muslims are slandered by insinuating that Islam condones and teaches terror, yet moderate Muslims mount far more vigorous defenses of riots, bombings and killings in response to cartoons than they do of innocent victims of suicide bombs. Seems to me that if terror slanders Islam, the first thing you'd do is eradicate from the religion those who commit terror in its name.

Fleming Rose, culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten:

I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.

But the cartoon story is different.

Those examples have to do with exercising restraint because of ethical standards and taste; call it editing. By contrast, I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn't to provoke gratuitously -- and we certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.

Reuters:

Deadly protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad spread in Africa, killing 16 people in Nigeria on Saturday a day after claiming 11 lives in Libya.

Many of those who died in northern Nigeria were Christians, killed after a Muslim protest over the cartoons turned violent and rioters torched churches, shops and vehicles, police and local officials said.

Anybody get the feeling that a certain percentage of Muslims would be happy to start a culture war? When is it OK to start being intolerant? And how do you go about it? If you don't become intolerant, do you risk tolerating yourself right out of a way of life?

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

This invitation assumes that those accepting embrace the values that make the invitation possible in the first place.

The other side:

In case you can’t make it out, the sign says:

We don’t need your apologies
Hell with your freedom of speech
Hell with your freedom of expression
We will stand for our values with
our blood and body!
– Islamic Thinkers

Instapundit on newspaper editors and the cartoon decisioning process:

They keep forgetting that it's their job to tell us stuff, not to decide what we shouldn't be told.

What did we do before the Internet? How much was hid and how much was misrepresented and no way to know how ignorant we were?

FROM: MRS.FAITH THOMPSON
ATTENTION:
RE: TRANSFER OF (US$67.5m}
I know you will be surprise to receive this letter from me, since you do not know me personally, I am Mrs. Faith THOMPSON, the wife of Mr. Isaac THOMPSON who was recently murdered in a land dispute in Zimbabwe. I was furnished with viable information about you, from the international trade center here in Nigeria, and in support with the chamber of commerce. Hence I decided to contact you.

Before the death of my husband, he had taken me to Nigeria to deposit the sum of (US$67.5m} as if he foresaw the looming danger in Zimbabwe. The money was deposited in one strong metal box as gemstone in one of the top security and finance company here in Nigeria, this money he intended to use in purchasing new machines for the farms and establishment of a new farm in Switzerland.

This land problem started when the president of Zimbabwe Mr. Robert Mugabe, introduced a new land act, which wholly affected the rich white farmers and some few black farmers. This resulted in the killing and mob action by the Zimbabwean war veterans and some lunatic in the society, in fact a lot of people have been killed because of this land reform act, of which my husband was one of the victims. Currently, my family and I are staying in Nigeria as asylum seeker (Refugees) but our problem is that as a refugees, we do not enjoy some certain right, because the Nigeria foreign exchange policy does not allow asylum seekers to own an investment, I decided to transfer this money out of Nigeria, I am seeking a reliable and honest person who will be capable to do this transaction with me promise that he/her will never let me down.As someone whom I am going to entrust my future and that of my family in his hand, I must let you know that this transaction is risk free.

I have two options for you, would you like to have some percentage of this money, I have mapped out 25% for your assistance 5% for any expenses incurred in this transaction and the rest I intend it invest in your country. The second option is to go into partnership with me in any investment I would have in your country. Please contact my son Mr.David thompson on the above Email address; th0mpsonfamily@myway.com for more information’s regards to this transaction. Please also Send your Tel number so my Son David can call you.
Yours Truly
Mrs. Faith thompson
(For the family)

How could he get mixed up in something like this? I'll contact the athletic department at State on Monday to see if there's anything they can do.

Walter Rucker wants to keep JP in Greensboro. This is how he wants to do it:

At least 80 percent of shareholders must approve the sale of a company to a buyer not based in North Carolina. Rucker says the current rule of simple majority unfairly favors big institutional shareholders, who hold 55 percent of JP's stock.

Assuming this is the extent of the proposal, if it passed and you were the CEO of a publicly traded company, what would you do? First, if you were thinking of relocating, you wouldn't consider NC. Second, if you were already in NC, you'd be planning to leave.

This whole thing is the most preposterously bad idea possible. It's amazing that his response to these obvious downsides isn't on record somewhere. What's more amazing is that any of this is being taken seriously and he was able to get fifty people to waste their time listening to it. More here.

Also, institutional shareholders are mainly mutual funds and pension plans. In other words, the enemy, he is us.

Where might you have seen this protest sign yesterday?



How about NY. I don't think many of us in the US have any idea how much we have invested in secularism and how important that concept is. More here.

Love. More here.

A little Wharton is better than no Wharton at all.

If I had a newspaper, those were the two I'd have picked as well.

Update: Will someone please tell the fanatics that the story is over. We've lost interest. Tell them that they were replaced by Cheney shooting that guy in the face. The newspaper editors of America would like to move on now, please.

CNN:

Eleven people were killed and an Italian consulate was burned in Libya on Friday night during protests to denounce the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, sources in Libya said.

I'm doubtful they'd respond like this:

Harry Whittington said Friday he was sorry for what Dick Cheney and his family have "had to go through" after the vice president shot him in a weekend hunting accident.

Now that is a friend right there. And it's my new litmus test. Want to be my friend? Answer this question: If I shot you in the face would you apologize to me for being in the way?

TSG:

Q: Come on, we're all waiting. Where do you stand on this whole J.J. Redick thing? -- Frank, Charlotte, N.C.

SG: Glad you asked. I have a few thoughts on this one ...

1. If his name was "Joe Redick" or "Jimmy Redick," he wouldn't take nearly as much crap from anyone. Nobody wants to like a white kid named "J.J." It's one of those "I'm sorry, I have to hate you just out of principle" white sports names along the lines of "Chipper," "B.J." and "Christian."

2. If he went anywhere else but Duke, he wouldn't take 9/10th's as much crap from anyone. Switch him with Mike Nardi and stick Redick on the bombs-away Villanova team and you know what would happen? Everyone would be raving about how much fun Redick is to watch. Unfortunately for J.J., everyone hates Duke and he's the quintessential Zabka-like kid Coach K always recruits, so we're already biased against him. We want him to blow out an ACL or break something crashing into a scorer's table. This isn't his fault.

3. I don't care whether it's a lousy college hoops season or whether he's playing for a stacked Duke team: He's such a deadly shooter that (A) it's shocking when he misses a wide-open 3, and (B) he's one of those rare guys who can sink open 3s in any situation (even a 1-on-2 fast break), from any angle, anywhere on the court. There aren't five NBA players who have more confidence than Redick from 25 feet. I know it's practically sacrilegious to say, but I think he's immensely entertaining to watch. How often do you see a college kid with Cassell-like balls?

4. Anyone who thinks that Redick -- on the right team, in the right offense, with shot blockers to protect him on defense -- cannot end up being an asset in the NBA is insane. Repeat: Insane. He's a better shooter than Steve Kerr, John Paxson, Jerry Sichting, Trent Tucker or Craig Hodges, all of whom had similar games and played roles for championship teams. I would actually compare his ceiling to Rip Hamilton's ceiling (who is almost as bad defensively, by the way); you could craft a decent offense from running Redick off multiple picks and getting him open shots.

I look at it this way: If you're an A-plus in any category, you're going to crack a 9-man rotation in the NBA, regardless of whether you have any other skills or not. Desagana Diop blocks shots, and that's all he does; Eddie House makes jumpers, and that's all he does; Carlos Delfino plays defense, and that's all he does; and all of those guys are contributing to 60-win teams right now. Redick is going to find the right team (maybe not right away), and he's going to make open 3s, and even if that's all he does, he'll be one of the best eight guys on the team. It's going to happen. The funny thing is, NBA scouts are always more enamored with multi-tool guys like Dunleavy and Darko who end up not being able to do anything that well. So those guys get drafted above guys like Redick, and then everyone is amazed when Redick turns out to be a better pro.

By not publishing the cartoons, these folks win and their methods, philosophies and actions unchallenged, are assumed correct.



I feel your pain, newspaper editors of the world. I know you don't want to offend for the sake of offending. I don't either. But your job is to inform and hopefully enlighten. You are taking the easy way out by heeding the will of the mob and passing it off as being respectful of religion.

AP:

A Pakistani cleric announced Friday a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew Prophet Muhammad...

Reckon he's got a mil? If you're going to take the Pakistani cleric up on this offer, might want to get half down.

I'm coaching a tee ball team this spring for three to five year olds. Practices and games will be at the Mt. Hope ballfields. We'll practice one night a week and play games on Saturday mornings. It's for boys and girls and is low stress, non-competitive. There are no outs. All the kids bat on each team which makes up an inning. Games last from 45 minutes to an hour.

Email me for more info or if you have a child who might like to participate.

Baseball is better than soccer. Start them right.

On the second page of the News & Record today there are two pictures from three years ago with little explanation showing prisoners at Abu Ghraib in what look to be stressful positions.

I wonder why it is necessary to print these pictures. They couldn't describe them for us? Wonder what the strong civic purpose is in running these old pictures?

Update: Look, I'm fine with these pictures being in the N&R. They should be seen. We aspire to be more than this. The military ought to explain publicly over and over how this happened. But how can you not print the cartoons or at least some of them? It is exactly the same thing. The picture is the story. Being afraid (for your life or of controversy or of not being properly politically correct) is not a valid excuse.

Update II: JR, N&R Editor, had a second post on the cartoon deal where he listed several other newspapers that had decided not to run the cartoons. I was unmoved. It is no great surprise that there are more sheep than not. Only the best of us get to be sheepdogs.

Whittle:

We know that the sheep live in denial; that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools. But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are dozens of times more likely to be killed, and thousands of times more likely to be seriously injured, by school violence than by school fires, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their children is just too hard, so they choose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog that intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa." Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

Update: JR's post about The Rhino's decision to print the cartoons.

All these years I thought the anchors and reporters of local news were the best and brightest the industry had to offer. After all, they're the ones who are smart, charming, articulate and beautiful. The folks holding the camera? Who can't do that job?

Anyway, thanks to Lenslinger for blowing my preconceived notions out of the water. All that's standing between Slinger and Neill McNeill's chair is unfortunate hair.

Here's his latest on the local folks on American Idol. I really like Chris and Kelly, but I've seen them the most. I also like Becky. She's striking, but can she sing? She doesn't care. She's got it made. And my favorite? Taylor, the gray haired guy. I love that dude. The harmonica did it last night. That was awesome. I'm with you baby. I'll have my wife vote for you since I don't do that part of the show.

Potato Stew is going to work on a graphic charting local folks scores on The Political Compass. Seems that there are about 11 or 12 who've done it already. If you haven't and would like to play, take the quiz and post your score somewhere. It only takes about five minutes.

Very upset. I refuse to let someone professional do it because in this country you ought to be able to figure it yourself. I am an idiot.

More here.

Want to know why they're upset that the White House didn't give them the story rather than a local paper? Someone might get the idea the Washington press corps is not all that indispensable.

Blankley:

...the bylaws refer to Article XXIII of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly designates that White House reporters with a minimum annual income of $375,000 (plus minimum stock options equal to not less than two-thirds their yearly salary, plus use of driver and long sedan during business hours, of which hours must include post-deadline dinner engagements of a semi-social nature) are the exclusive recipients of all government information.

If information isn't hand-delivered in gilt-edged paper to them while they are reclined on their chaise lounges, it hasn't been released to the public. And if they don't report a fact, it hasn't happened. This provision is vital to a vigorous and independent free press.

Althouse posts about it having been inspired by a WP article.

Y'all know when you like Lloyd Dobler? When you're feeling all sappy and wanting your current guy to be a little more attentive. Cause when you're not feeling sappy anymore and the bills are piling up and the car is broke down, this ain't cutting it:

Lloyd sits at Diane's family dinner table and explains his career goals, or lack thereof:

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought or processed. You know, as a career — I don't want to do that."

If you were married to Lloyd and he just bounced his third check this month and got fired this morning for being late again, you know what you'd tell him to do with that boombox.

Samuelson:

A puzzle of our time is why the economy has become increasingly stable while individual industries have become increasingly unstable.

and...

The answer is competition. An intensely competitive economy enhances overall stability by holding down inflation (which is itself destabilizing) and spreading economic disruptions throughout the business cycle (rather than letting them accumulate for periodic, massive downturns).

Look at it this way, the good old days weren't really the good old days. Sure if you had a job at GM in the fifties, you had it made. But most of us didn't.

Even though it's a little bit scary for all of us to live in a deregulated, competitive world, it's better than a safe, cozy world for a few and very scary world for the rest.