SO I GUESS WE’RE STILL IN THE WAR ON TERROR, IT’S JUST THAT OBAMA HAS SWITCHED SIDES: US-Backed Free Syrian Army Operating Openly With ISIS, Al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra.
Archive for 2014
September 3, 2014
SO IF SO, THIS WOULD BE INTERSTATE WIRE FRAUD, RIGHT? Did Sundance Vacations Forge A Court Order To Suppress Online Criticism?
EDWARD LAZEAR: Climate Change Agenda Needs To Adapt To Reality.
COMBINING TWO OF MY FAVORITE SUBJECTS: “Sex Coffee” Is Actually A Thing.
FIRST UBER, NOW THIS: The Mathematics of Cab-Sharing. “It may be anathema to New Yorkers. But a team of mathematicians and engineers has calculated that if taxi riders were willing to share a cab, New York City could reduce the current fleet of 13,500 taxis up to 40 percent, in that way unclogging traffic, conserving fuel and fighting air pollution.” Or, you know, you could just keep the cabs and they’d be easier to get.
I WONDER WHY WE AREN’T DOING THAT ALREADY. WELL, NO I DON’T. Why We Should Encrypt Everyone’s Email.
THIS IS SOUNDING MORE AND MORE LIKE BILL QUICK’S LIGHTNING FALL OR SOMETHING: New ISIS threat: America’s electric grid. “Inadequate grid security, a porous U.S.-Mexico border, and fragile transmission systems make the electric grid a target for ISIS.”
I don’t want to live in that book.
YOU KNOW, THAT’S PROBABLY RIGHT: Nothing can prepare you for driving a Porsche 918 at Laguna Seca.
GERMANS COMPARE UBER TO “LOCUSTS,” ban it.
WELL, THIS DOESN’T ADVANCE THE NARRATIVE: Study: People Faster to Shoot White Suspects than Black Suspects. “This behavioral ‘counter-bias’ might be rooted in people’s concerns about the social and legal consequences of shooting a member of a historically oppressed racial or ethnic group.”
Makes sense, at least for non-blacks. Shoot a white guy and the question is whether you were in reasonable fear of death or great bodily injury. Shoot a black guy and the questions is whether you’re a racist who targets innocent black kids for kicks.
BIGOTED FEMINISM’S FANTASIES OF GENDER APARTHEID: What If Men Weren’t Allowed on Facebook?
Women in the 21st Century seem to be so delicate that they should be kept at home and only allowed to meet with the opposite sex under careful chaperonage. Also, doesn’t a women-only site constitute illegal sex discrimination?
RICHARD EPSTEIN: Rand Paul’s Fatal Pacifism.
Related: Wacko Isolationist Rand Paul Would Seek Congressional Approval to ‘Destroy ISIS.’
IN THE MAIL: From Don Watkins, Rooseveltcare: How Social Security is Sabotaging the Land of Self-Reliance.
Plus, today only at Amazon: 20% or More Off Select Belkin, WeMo, and Linksys Home-Automation Products.
And, also today only: $29.99 Deer Stags Dress Shoes.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 482.
MICKEY KAUS: The Mystery of the Shutdown Scenario has seemingly been solved. “Why would Dems publicize their secret troll plan in such a self-defeating way so far in advance? It now appears the Shutdown Scenario was a desperate late gambit by advocates of pre-November executive action who were losing the internal White House debate. After all, it was never really logical for Obama to amnesty millions of illegals (and give them work permits) before the election — 2014′s key Senate races are mainly in states with low Hispanic populations but lingering job and wage insecurity.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: Are Liberals The Real Authoritarians?
In the ultra-liberal enclave I grew up in, the liberals were at least as fiercely tribal as any small-town Republican, though to be sure, the targets were different. Many of them knew no more about the nuts and bolts of evolution and other hot-button issues than your average creationist; they believed it on authority. And when it threatened to conflict with some sacred value, such as their beliefs about gender differences, many found evolutionary principles as easy to ignore as those creationists did. It is clearly true that liberals profess a moral code that excludes concerns about loyalty, honor, purity and obedience — but over the millennia, man has professed many ideals that are mostly honored in the breach. . . .
Jeremy Frimer, the author of the piece, noticed that socialists seemed unable to tolerate even mild questioning of Che Guevara’s eminently questionable legacy. Frimer is a researcher at the University of Winnipeg, and he decided to investigate. What he found is that liberals are actually very comfortable with authority and obedience — as long as the authorities are liberals (“should you obey an environmentalist?”).
This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention.
IS YOUR ALMOND MILK destroying the environment?
STRATEGYPAGE: Counter-Terrorism: The Saudi Solution Will Never Fly In The West. “For the last few years the Saudis have arrested thousands of suspected Islamic terrorists, often because of tips by family or neighbors, and prosecuted hundreds (and tried to reform the others). There have been dozens of beheadings for terrorism. The trials and executions are public. The Saudi approach may be as medieval as al Qaeda tactics, but it has worked in Saudi Arabia and Saudis wishing to carry out Islamic terror activities are generally smart enough to leave the country to do it. With the new laws, returning home, which thousands of Saudi Islamic terrorists have done, is now less of an option.”
Plus: “Saudi Arabia was saved from worse trouble with local terrorists by the growing (after 2003) violence in Iraq between the Sunni Arab minority, and the Shia majority. This attracted many Saudi fanatics, most of whom died in Iraq. This greatly depleted the number of al Qaeda backers inside Saudi Arabia.”
HOMELAND SECURITY: ISIS fighter worked at Minneapolis airport. “He was the second known American killed while fighting for ISIS in Syria, and the second from Minnesota — and a Fox 9 exclusive uncovering his employment history is raising a few eyebrows. An airport is probably the last place anyone would want a suspected terrorist to work, but before he died overseas, that’s exactly what Abdirahmaan Muhumed did in the Twin Cities. In fact, he may have cleaned your plane at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.”
Obama spin: See, this ISIS thing is making America safer by luring domestic terrorists overseas and killing them! It’s like flypaper for terrorists!
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Grey Lady on Rotherham: Your Bias is Showing.
Ever since the story about the horrific and widespread sex abuse in Rotherham broke, pundits have scrambled for an explanation as to how crimes on that scale could continue unchecked for so long. Yesterday the NYT released a story on Rotherham that at least reached for an explanation. But though the NYT notes both the ethnicity of the abusers and British officials’ “fear of being accused of racism,” as Dawn Eden points out on the Get Religion site, the article conspicuously fails to mention religion. . . .
To understand how crazy this is, think about how the NYT would have covered this story if a ring of Catholic priests had been responsible—or even Catholics otherwise involved in the church. Not only would the story mention the religious angle, but we would see a slew of op-eds condemning Christian theology itself for creating the abuse and calling for changes to that theology. This is a clear sign of bias, albeit not necessarily conscious or malicious, at work. The NYT is so wrapped in its own ideology that its readers don’t get the straight story.
This story points to the problem of Muslim integration in Europe (and elsewhere). Policy elites have authorized mass immigration without much public discussion or consent, and the cultures and values aren’t mixing well (exacerbated by horrible economic problems in much of Europe, thanks also to the elite’s euro fiasco). These factors combine to create a potentially explosive situation on the ground. Readers of the Times won’t understand this very well and will miss one of the key issues driving European, and therefore world, politics.
Well, if they understood the issue properly, they might have improper thoughts.