Instapundit: Canadian Censorship

No longer unbelievable: liberals censoring satire. Because they have NO SENSE OF HUMOR! (Oh, and they are wrong all the time and that is tiring, too. And losing elections sucks….)

Glenn says: “That’s been their pattern, I believe. It only makes the satirist’s point, of course.”

This is the site troubling their delicate sensibilities. Funny as heck, enjoy!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Welcome to the Nuclear Club, Iran, You Widdle Fuzzballs You

Yer soooo cute! We’d like to invite you into our clubhouse, but don’t give out the secret password. Or the handshake either. And, don’t blow up the clubhouse, even though that’s what you’ve said you want to do. We don’t really believe you, ‘cuz you have, like, the totally hottest hair!!!!! Plus, you totally hate Satan, Bushchimpy, as much as we do, which makes you like super-double-special cool!! We lurve you!

**************************

Robert Baer writing an Op-Ed for the New York Daily News writes:

This leads to an unavoidable conclusion: if Iran stalls instead of dealing – and all indications are that this is exactly what they are going to do – the world is wasting time with anything short of a military strike aimed at Iran’s growing nuclear infrastructure.

Otherwise, we will be complicit in welcoming Ahmadinejad’s regime into the nuclear club. Exactly how soon that will happen, no one knows – but no one who cares about the region’s security should be content to wait and find out.

Why? Because a nuclear Iran would pose a genuinely apocalyptic hazard to the world. In Washington today, it is fashionable to pay this notion lip service – but few people seem to genuinely believe it.

Deterrence worked during the Cold War because both the United States and the Soviet Union were governed by common assumptions of rationality. Iran, to the contrary, flatly calls for “wiping Israel off the map” – a call that itself is a violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948. Given Iran’s recent actions – arming Hezbollah and fomenting sectarian murder in Iraq – we can only imagine how they would throw their weight around the region with a nuclear weapon in their arsenal.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Iran must be stopped immediately from acquiring atomic arms, and this can only be accomplished through what international law calls “anticipatory self-defense.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Getting Fired: The Best Way to Advance Your Career

Tom Cruise is finding out what many others have to: that the courage it takes to leave a less-than-great-but-okay gig sometimes eludes us and a kick in the butt can help. The hook needs to pull us off-stage to find a better one down the road. Looks like he found a better stage.

Readers of my blog know that I’m no Cruise fanatatic. But I don’t hate the guy either. He’s just another weird Hollywood actor. More than the couch-jumping episode (definitely weird), I think his derision for antidepressants pissed off the 50% of brain-addled Americans using them to make it through the day thus his declining popularity.

Give me a break. He’s young and still cute. He has a good long career ahead of him. Same with Mel Gibson. He is so NOT done. A good shave, some rehab, a better attitude and old Mel will ride the success train again. As far as he goes, I think that Hollywood was irritated/alarmed more at the fact that he made a crap-load of money outside of their inbred, old-school system with an avante-guard movie that was more documentary than special effects. The anti-semitism was secondary. Hollywood, as we have seen over the past few years, hasn’t seemed particularly concerned with anti-semitism–at least when its delivered by Muslims who hate Bush as much as they do.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Stuart Taylor Jr.: (New York Times) Witness for the (Duke Rape) Prosecution?

The Slate tagline is “How the New York Times is still victimizing innocent Dukies.” I was enraged by the same NYT piece and posted on it. This Slate article is more articulate and comprehensive than what I wrote, but covers the same territory.

The Wilson-Glater piece highlights every superficially incriminating piece of evidence in the case, selectively omits important exculpatory evidence, and reports hotly disputed statements by not-very-credible police officers and the mentally unstable accuser as if they were established facts. With comical credulity, it features as its centerpiece a leaked, transparently contrived, 33-page police sergeant’s memo that seeks to paper over some of the most obvious holes in the prosecution’s evidence.

He goes on to say why this is so. Very much worth reading. Or, just read KC Johnson or Liestoppers who had the news first and were so kind as to link to my post.

H/T Instapundit

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Jeff Goldstein: How Useful Idiots are Made

Could a lost propaganda war force Israel into conceding to a cease-fire that is bad for them? And did they lose the propaganda war because the press is so biased they cannot even see the truth in front of them?

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

SF Car Rampage Terrorism?

It could be.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Ford: Idealized Mediocrity in Advertising

The number one marketing tool is a smiling face. People respond positively to happy, shiny people which is why so many ads feature shiny, happy, (and often semi-naked) people. Sex sells too.

Why would the Ford Motor Company defy this marketing rule and create a sad-sack advertisement featuring a divorced couple and their children? Slate (where I first saw this travesty of advertising) calls it: The Divorcemobile. Please go to this link, watch it, and tell me what you think. Here’s the set-up:

The Spot: A family drives through some gorgeous hills and along a pretty coastline, making picturesque stops at a roadside farm stand and a beach. “The Ford Freestyle crossover,” says the voiceover. “More than 500 miles on a tank of gas.” Then the SUV pulls to a stop in front of a housing complex, where the dad gets out with his luggage. “Thanks for inviting me this weekend,” he says to the mom. He hugs his kids, they say their goodbyes (“See you next week”), and the SUV drives off—leaving Dad by his lonesome. “Bold moves. They happen every day,” concludes the announcer.

This is perhaps the weirdest commercial I’ve covered in this column. It is a freakish mash-up, blending a classically boring car ad with a bizarre stab at social commentary. I can’t for the life of me see what Ford hopes to achieve here.

A couple things occurred to me with this ad:

1. A woman’s standard of living goes down after divorce, not up. The person likely living in what Slate article writer Seth Stevenson calls the “Recent Divorcé Condo Complex” would be the woman, not the man.
2. Likewise, what recently divorced woman goes out and buys a new vehicle? She might buy a used minivan, but a hot new SUV? Puhleeeze. Unless she’s divorcing Donald Trump, her immediate worry is getting her job skills polished because she either needs to move up professionally or prepare to enter the work world for the first time after many years out of it.
3. The guy character is written completely pathetic. He mouths the words “thank you” to his teary wife. Alone and forlorn, he waves good-bye to his cherubic children. While this characterization might be accurate about the devastation divorce brings to families, is this devastation going to sell Fords? My association with the Ford Freestyle is misery. I don’t need to buy that, there’s enough misery in life as is, thank you very much.
4. If there is that much love between these two people, why are they divorced? Along this lines, Stevenson says:
   

   The wife invites her estranged husband along for a weekend with their kids? Won’t that make the poor kids hope for a reconciliation? You’d better know what you’re doing here, Mom! And while we see Dad’s overnight bag, we don’t see the inevitable argument over whether he and Mom will share a motel room. (“I can’t even afford my own room with these alimony payments!”; “I told you this was about the kids, not us!”; “Emasculating witch!”; “Quiet, the children!” This is the sort of thing the ad leaves out.)

Here is the meta-message though: don’t hope for an ideal, settle for average. You’re not a bad person just because you couldn’t make it work. You’re trying your best. Don’t worry, everyone is like you. No one else is happy either.

It might be annoying to see all the happy couples portrayed in ads, but the advertisments are idealized versions of ourself. People don’t like buying reality. They are living reality. Just like they don’t like buying reality at the movie theater. People like happy endings.

Along the same lines, morbidly obese women don’t sell clothing. Now, a healthy size 12 woman who is six feet tall might be considered a “plus-size model”, but in real life she just looks normal. What I’m saying is that you don’t put average, ugly, fat people in ads because people are buying an ideal. It’s what they want. Most likely, it’s what they want, because it is not what they have.

So, people buy a new car, home, clothes to redefine and glamorize their mediocre, average life. No one wants to buy a vehicle because it’s “the vehicle of sad sack divorced people”, do they? No one wants to buy a vehicle because it’s what fat people, stupid people, ugly people buy, either.

They want to “Be Like Mike“. (See if you can spot even one unhappy person in the ad. You just feel good watching it.) People want fun, like “It’s more fun in a Mini.” People what to be “it”–as in “Coke is It“.

Sadness. Separation. Insecurity. Not the words I’d want associated with my product.

This Ford Ad reflects the morose grasping at survival that has set in at this struggling company. I can assure them, that where they see a socially cutting-edge contribution to the modern psyche, I see a company trying to portray divorce as some idealized “life choice” that is anything but to anyone involved.

I hope this isn’t where advertising is going. It won’t matter all that much to me. I rarely watch TV anymore anyway.

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

"I have a right to be Muslim, and I don’t have to assimilate."

American Muslims assimilating? Don’t be so sure:

Ismahan recalled similar experiences. In elementary school, she had tried to fit in. As an adult, though, “I know I don’t have to fit in,” she said. “I don’t think Muslims have to assimilate. We are not treated like Americans. At work, I get up from my desk and go to pray. I thought I would face opposition from my boss. Even before I realized he didn’t mind, I thought, ‘I have a right to be a Muslim, and I don’t have to assimilate.’ “

Via Instapundit

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

JonBenet "Killer" Demonstrates "Press Caution" A Non-Sequiter

Press Caution is hilarious……Unless of course, the object of the investigation is Bill Clinton. Remember, it was Drudge who broke that story. The press decided to be cautious because the allegations were against a “sitting” (Democrat) President. Press Caution is laughable, unless of course, the object of the investigation is anyone Muslim killing Israelis and Americans. Remember, it was LGF that broke the whole doctoring photos, making news story.

Regular peeps? Regular creeps? No caution necessary. Rush in for ratings! Wham, bam, but no apologies to fellow Americans left hanging. In fact, the Press turns around to blame anyone they can because they were misled. You have got to be kidding.

Meanwhile, after a few hours of thinking about it, most bloggers I read were suspicious and very cautious. Hardly any outrageous coverage. I am probably more excitable than most and here were my three posts over the last two weeks:

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

JonBenet Ramsey Murder Suspect Arrested
So it wasn’t the Ramseys. Can you imagine the grief of losing your child and being falsely accused of murder. How do you ever get your life back? Her mom didn’t. posted by Dr. Melissa @ 5:26 PM

Thursday, August 17, 2006

JonBenet’s Killer…..Maybe?

Holy crap! Look at his resume via Jeff Goldstein (h/t SarahW, via Ace)

-Private Teacher / Caregiver (2002-03 in Western Europe) as follows:

Germany: Three girls – 7, 11, and 12: I taught English to the girls through conversational and instructional methods.
I gave computer instruction to the girls via their laptop PC’s. I drove the girls to their activities: ballet, riding,
handball, etc. I assisted the girls with their homework.

Germany: Two girls – 5 and 8; boy 10: I taught English to the children through conversational and instructional
methods. I awoke the children in the morning and gave them breakfast. I helped the children get ready for school
and escorted them to the school bus. I helped the 8 year old girl with her homework each day. I took the children
outside for play. At days end, I made sure the children had their evening bath, then put them to bed and read to
them before they went to sleep.

Netherlands: Baby girl 9 months, boy 3, and girl 4: I taught English to the three year old boy and four year old girl,
through conversational and instructional methods. I was very attentive to needs of the baby which included
changing, feeding, and bathing her. I helped the baby when she learned to walk at 10 and a half months. I fostered
independence in the children’s activities.

How many children did this psycho harm? Look at the ages of the children.

posted by Dr. Melissa @ 11:39 AM

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

"Katrina Probably Saved 50,000 Lives"

Via Gateway Pundit, over at Wizbang, read about how faulty engineering of NOLA’s levee caused the breech. He has great video and commentary.

Here is what Wizbang says:

The bottom line is, Katrina’s storm surge did not wash the wall away. As you may remember, water had been seeping under the floodwall at the break location for about a year before Katrina. The ground under the levee was soaked and ready to give at any moment…

New Orleans was doomed with or without Katrina, we just didn’t know it. A good high tide puts more water in the canal than this. As the video shows, the water was barely higher than normal levels. The walls could have failed on a decent high tide.

From the looks of the video the fact the wall failed when Katrina was approaching was really coincidence. Yes, Katrina was the “final straw” but so could any winds from the southeast. Or any given winter storm. (we often get winds out the south that “stack” the lake far higher than this.) Indeed these same walls held much higher surges in the past; that is, before they were undermined by seeping water for a year.

Ironically the same flawed walls are incrementally safer now. We’ll never have water seeping under them for a year and nobody doing anything. The flaw(s) is still there but now we can compensate for it more effectively. The right answer, of course, is to replace them.

What I will say next will probably completely throw you. Katrina saved probably over 50,000 lives.

That levee was doomed. If it had failed without notice, the death toll would have been measured in tens of thousands. There would be no evacuation, no preparation, no Feds at all. (such that they were anyway) no Coast Guard in choppers etc. Tens of thousands of people would have been dead in hours and tens of thousands more would have died on 120 degree rooftops waiting for rescue. It would have been unimaginable. – More unimaginable.

“Luckily” -and I groan when I say that- Katrina allowed the city to be evacuated.

As an outsider, though, I look at the above picture of New Orleans, and I still believe it is insanity to rebuild New Orleans. Certifiable. I’m not alone in this opinion. Not that it matters.

We do need New Orleans as a port-city, but do we need 100,000 people living below sea level? And if scientists are to be believed (which I’m not sure they should be) hurricanes will continue to increase.

Here’s what Brendan Loy says about that, too:

I have to put a caveat here. Ironically, the strucutral weakness of the levees means that the true “worst-scase scenario” wasn’t actually realistic, since it involved — in my words — “not a levee breach equalizing the water level in Lake Ponchartrain and ‘Lake New Orleans,’ but rather a storm surge over-topping the levees and causing the water level in ‘Lake New Orleans,’ hemmed in by the still-intact levees, to rise substantially higher than the water level in the lake.” Given what we know now, I think it’s safe to say that there’s no way would the levees have remained intact, so even if Katrina had hit New Orleans directly as a major hurricane, the water wouldn’t have been “hemmed in.” Just as an inadequately secured cockpit door would become an asset if the pilots were terrorists, New Orleans’s inadequately built levees would have become an asset if overtopping had occurred.

Wizbang’s Paul thinks we should cut Nagin more slack. I’m not so sure about that, either. The man continues to dither when clear strategy and moving forward needs to happen. And yes, Nagin points at New York as a failure five years later, but the comparison is stupid. 250,000 people weren’t displaced by 9/11. And he has already demonstrated a problem with misspending taxpayer dollars.

I have posted over and over during 2005-06 about Katrina, and Rita, too. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the whole thing but there is one you should take home and keep in your heart and spur you to action:

You cannot count on the government in case of severe emergency. You must be prepared yourself, to the best of your ability.

Glenn Reynolds took a lot of crap the yesterday for saying just this. What about the poor and sick? Even they must have one contact person. At least that, to make sure they have someone to help them. If they don’t/can’t do even that, hopefully they are in a hospital or care facility where they are being taken care of by someone else

All I know is this: a hell of a lot of cars got destroyed in New Orleans while 80,000 (stupid) people remained. The people who had to remain, who were stuck, did meander down to the Dome. What about the rest? The fact is, a lot of stay-behind people engaged in “magical thinking” and believed the city would be spared. The results of this magical thinking, unfortunately could be death. My brother calls that Darwinism.

Don’t move back to New Orleans. Don’t live in a city buried by water, save for a few government workers. It’s folly. It’s like living on the edge of an active volcano that may erupt any time. And then it erupts and then we rebuild?

Insanity.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »