Toothpaste art on passed-out people:

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Another chapter in the “lies, damn lies and statistics” is the repeated claim from proponents of European-style socialized medicine that the US has the highest infant mortality rate of any first world country.  This is a scathing indictment, implicating American poverty, racism, prenatal and post-natal care.  The only problem is that it’s completely false, and is based on the fact that Europe, when it does its infant mortality statistics, ignores fragile infants that were doomed from their live births:

Infant mortality rates are often cited as a reason socialized medicine and a single-payer system is supposed to be better than what we have here. But according to Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser in the California State Senate, these comparisons are bogus.

As she points out, in the U.S., low birth-weight babies are still babies. In Canada, Germany and Austria, a premature baby weighing less than 500 grams is not considered a living child and is not counted in such statistics. They’re considered “unsalvageable” and therefore never alive.

Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world — until you factor in weight at birth, and then its rate is no better than in the U.S.

In other countries babies that survive less than 24 hours are also excluded and are classified as “stillborn.” In the U.S. any infant that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth.

A child born in Hong Kong or Japan that lives less than a day is reported as a “miscarriage” and not counted. In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby is not counted as a baby if it is less than 30 centimeters in length.

Tags: Infant Mortality, Socialized Medicine, Universal Healthcare

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I have been remiss in bringing you up to date on the winning Watcher’s Council posts last week, so I’ll fold them into this week’s post.  Since it makes for a long list, I’ll put the winners under the fold here. Continue Reading »

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One of the things I like about Neo’s posts is that she develops them so meticulously.  In one her latest posts, she takes on the growing disenchantment with Obama, not just from conservatives, who were primed to be disenchanted, but from liberals who nevertheless were not prepared for someone as extreme as he has proven to be.

These liberals’ lack of preparedness, of course, was their own fault, because they live in the liberal bubble (NY Times, NPR, Washington Pimp).  The problem now is that, having sinned once, their denial is creating a type of cognitive dissonance that may see them sinning all over again in 2010 and 2012, rather than admitting their mistake (emphasis mine):

The problem we face is the same one I faced with my friends back in October/November of 2008. In some ways it’s worse, because there’s more to say. But in some ways it’s better, because I sense some doubt in all but the most extreme Obama supporters.

However, they are still not paying attention, and attention is required. They’re not reading about this in the mainstream media. So, what is my role? I need time and a receptive willing audience to make an argument that could be persuasive, and if people aren’t willing to give the issues the energy necessary, then I run the risk of sounding to them like a raving maniac if I do bring it up, someone easy to put in the category of 9/11-truthers or Holocaust deniers. And now that Obama is in office until 2012, it has also become even more threatening for people who once supported him to even consider that what I’m trying to say may in fact be true: there’s the guilt, plus the fear that the hand on the tiller is purposely steering us in the wrong direction.

Between ignorance and denial, how do we reach people while there is still time.  Neo notes that we can’t endlessly flood people’s email boxes, because they tune us out.  Nor can we forceably rip them away from the mainstream media, which they trust despite its increasingly manifest failures.  As for our blogs, neo and I recognize that most people come to find comfortable, like-minded people.  They don’t come to be converted.  (And indeed, the only liberals who find their way here try to be saboteurs, not intellectual debaters.)

Sadly, despite being one of the most perceptive people out there when it comes to human nature, Neo doesn’t have an answer for the all-important question of how we reach people who are being propagandized into dangerous stupidity:

How can we reach the greater community? Do you speak to Obama supporters you know? What is the response if you try to explain what you think has been happening?

Churchill was thought to be crazy during the 30s, obsessed with his warnings about Hitler, who didn’t appear to most of the rest of Parliament to be such an awful fellow. Maybe the nature of the beast is that such warnings cannot be heard, that they seem excessive until the most dire things actually occur. Most people almost instinctively reject what seems like an extreme point of view unless they’ve arrived at it themselves through personal awareness, step by painful step, or through a dramatic and possibly life-shattering single event.

We’ve had experience with incompetent presidents and/or deceptive presidents before. But I submit that we’ve never before had a president with such malignant and radical designs who also was so deceptive in such a profound way. Nixon, for example, was deceptive about many things as well as malignant towards his “enemies,” but he was still well within the mainstream of American political thought regarding defending freedom around the globe, keeping America strong, and the economy. Also, Tricky Dick seemed tricky; we knew about this characteristic of his even before he was elected.

Obama does not seem deceptive on the surface—at least, he doesn’t to many people, and that’s what’s important. And yet he has been deceptive about something far more basic than Nixon ever was: who he is, and his underlying vision for America.

I think you should read Neo’s entire post. Then we all, every concerned, thoughtful, intelligent person in the conservative blogosphere, needs to start thinking about ways to get out of our conservative ghetto and sound the tocsin of freedom for all Americans.

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You all know by now that Palin is abruptly quitting her job as Alaska’s governor.  Speculation is rife as to her motives.  Many see her as planning for her next political office.  I don’t believe that.  Nobody’s going to want a quitter in the White House.  There’s got to be something more going on here.

I hope it’s not ill health on anyone’s part.  It may just be that the attacks on her family have gotten too vicious.  While I suspect she can take it, maybe they can’t.  Or maybe she can’t take it either.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such vicious personal attack in my entire life.  It would be sad, though, if the politics of personal destruction — a tactic that’s entirely unrelated to her politics or competence — proved so spectacularly successful.

Tags: Sarah Palin

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For all the hue and cry surrounding the 8 years of Bush/Cheney and the absence of WMD’s, the real WMD story broke this week:

WMD’s FOUND in D.C.

The heretofore unknown weapon’s grade is Weymouth, Medicine, Democrats/Denial

Katherine Weymouth, owner of the Washington Post, denied promoting the immediate destruction of the USA by selling access to what was once known as the free press and blamed subordinates for not properly “vetting” an invitation.

Incredibly, once upon a time, reporters vetted the government, not invitations.  Under the current administration, however, this tactic is no longer needed because the concept formerly known as “independent reporting” and the White House have merged and become one entity.

To further bolster her defense, Weymouth stated that the $19.5 million that the Washington Post lost during the first quarter of 2009 justifies plans to “bring together Washington figures as a future revenue source”.

Unsurprisingly, the White House has remained silent while Americans gather and ready themselves for July 4th, a day for celebrating our independence.  It seems unconcerned by the fact that, 233 years after the fact that our forefathers brought forth a new nation conceived in liberty, we have now become prisoners of our own system.

This new revolution (or un-revolution?) took place without a single gun fired or army marching.  All we saw was the silence of too many who wanted change and followed their leader blindly.

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I posted a Bee Gees video here a couple of weeks ago, as the beginning of my ongoing tribute to singing siblings.  It turns out that the Bee Gees are useful for more than just rockin’ out.  They can keep you alive:

Debra Bader was taking a walk in the woods with her 53-year-old husband one morning when suddenly he collapsed. At first she thought the situation was hopeless.

Debra Bader was prompted to perform CRP on her husband, Christopher, after recalling a public service ad.

“I looked at him and said, ‘He’s dead,’ because he wasn’t moving or making any sounds at all,” Bader remembers. “But I pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and called 911, and then a public service announcement I’d heard on the radio popped into my head.”

The one-minute PSA from the American Heart Association instructed listeners, in the event of cardiac arrest, to perform chest compressions very hard to the beat of the 1970s Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive.” When someone suffers cardiac arrest, as pop singer Michael Jackson did last week, the heart stops functioning completely, and brain death begins within four to six minutes if the victim doesn’t receive help.

“I sang the song and gave directions to the EMTs at the same time. It was like, ‘Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive — take a right here, take a left here — Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive — take this path down here — Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive,’ ” Bader remembers.

For 15 minutes Bader, who had never taken a CPR class, pumped her husband’s chest until the ambulance arrived and the EMTs delivered a shock to his heart with a defibrillator. Christopher Bader survived, but 95 percent of people who go into cardiac arrest die before they get to the hospital.

[snip]

For a quick, crash course on how to perform CPR, the University of Washington has a short video. You can find a CPR class in your area on the Web sites of the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association.

The heart association started the “Hands-Only CPR” campaign last year, encouraging people to deliver chest compressions 100 times per minute. The song “Stayin’ Alive” has about that many beats per minute.

To help you get that song in your head:

(By the way, if you’re a fan of old movies, you’ll recognize that the video was shot on the old MGM back lot.)

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A US soldier (or Marine) was captured in Afghanistan.  We know what that means, and it’s not the Geneva convention.  I don’t know whether thoughts and prayers and wishes can help, but I do know that they can’t hurt.

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“The war on terror is definitely looking more and more positive by the month.”

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From the 1930s, the Brown Sisters:

From the 1940s, the King Sisters:

From the 1950s, the Mills Brothers:

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One of the hallmarks of a modern totalitarian government is stagecraft.  Leni Riefenstahl made a whole movie dedicated to glorifying a totalitarian government’s meticulously staged extravaganza.  As a child in the 1960s and 1970s, I vividly remember footage of marches in the Soviet Union, with soldiers in perfect goosestep order.  China and North Korea are also much given to elaborate shows and parades, none of which originate with the people, and all of which are aimed at demonstrating the people’s alleged love for their leaders (and for the latter’s policies).

Would you be surprised to learn that Obama’s White House is carefully inching in that direction?  Obama is not doing anything as blatant as mass rallies or inhumanly perfect parades, of course.  In a way, he’s doing something much worse, which is co-opting a fundamentally American democratic institution and, without letting people see, turning it into a carefully staged political show.

The latest example of this propaganda impulse is the President’s “townhall” regarding healthcare.  Americans think of a townhall as a free exchange between a political leader and “ordinary” people.  We’ve learned over the last few years that audience members are more likely than not to be friendly to the candidate or president than not, but we believe that the questions are freely asked and unknown to the politician.  Obama’s changing this game and, worse, hiding that fact from the public.  His upcoming townhall, during which he plans to “sell” his government-controlled health care plan he will take only pre-scripted questions.  This is entirely new and it’s bad — so bad that even Helen Thomas, the liberal doyenne of the White House press corps and the one who never met a Republican she liked, is up in arms.

Obama’s reluctance to expose himself to unscripted moments isn’t surprising, of course.  It was when he went off script that he revealed his belief that the federal government’s purpose is to redistribute wealth.  And even when he’s not redefining the American dream to bring it closer in line with the Soviet dream, his teleprompter-free moments reveal him to be a man of few words, most of which are “uh.”

Thanks to an outraged press corp and the blogosphere, Americans are now learning about the perversion of the traditional townhall concept.  The new administration’s control over content, however, is even worse than staging completely fake question-and-answer sessions with “ordinary” members of the public.  In a move that more closely aligns it with North Korea than with North America, the Obama administration is forcing people to listen to his message, whether they want to or not.  This is the antithesis of the marketplace of ideas.

I have it on very good authority (an employee at US embassy in a major NATO country) that this year, in order to celebrate America’s (not Obama’s, but America’s) Independence day, all embassies have been ordered to install a big screen TV in a prominent location in order to play an endlessly looped Hillary Clinton speech for the duration of the festivities.

My employee contact notes that, at his particular embassy, people are appalled by this requirement.  They see it as “tacky.”  I see it as profoundly un-American.  Indeed, I can think of only two precedents for this kind of thing.  One is found in George Orwell’s 1984. In that book, as you may recall, all party members have in their living quarters TVs that may never go off and that sprout endless party propaganda (not to mention have cameras that watch everyone perpetually).

And lest any readers think to themselves “well, 1984 is just fiction,” think of North Korea’s struggles to ensure that its citizens hear only government-approved propaganda:

Until the mid-1990s, it didn’t make sense to broadcast to North Korea. Authorities since the 1960s had dealt with the “foreign broadcast problem”, which created so much trouble for other communist regimes, by outlawing all radios with free tuning. Radios sold in North Korea had fixed tuning and thus could receive only three or four official channels.

If North Korean citizens purchased a radio in one of the country’s hard-currency shops, which accepted foreign cash and had a wider variety of items, or when overseas, it had to be submitted to police where technicians would “fix” (disable) it, making sure its owners could only listen to ideologically wholesome programs about the deeds of their Dear Leader - Kim Jong-il.

This ban was enforced with remarkable efficiency. It was largely entrusted to the heads of the “people’s groups” or inminban, to which all North Koreans belong. Typically, such group consists of 30 to 50 families living in the same block, and is headed by an official. These low-level officials were required to regularly check all radios in their neighborhoods, making sure that they could not be used to listen to foreign or, more likely, South Korean broadcasts.

The punishment could be harsh. One official said in the 1980s she discovered that a family in the neighborhood under her supervision had a radio that could tune into foreign broadcasts. She duly reported her discovery, and the family was immediately exiled to the countryside.

Ironically, even as that situation has improved slightly in North Korea, Obama’s working on putting it into effect in North America.

I recognize, of course, that an endless loop of Hillary blathering away in the background is not the same as the total content control in either Orwell’s fictional Oceania or Kim Jong Il’s horribly real North Korea.  Nevertheless, the impulse is always the same:  force people to listen to a government message without the opportunity either to avoid the message or to hear alternatives.

Obama’s impulses are totalitarian in nature.  In a fight, although he affects an Olympian detachment, laboring always to position himself in the middle, the straw men he places on either side of himself ensure that his Solomonic cogitations always bring him down on the side of the antidemocratic group, be that Hamas, Chavez, Saudi Arabia, Ahmadinejad, or the American people’s right to tune out from government controlled propaganda.  And on the home front, true to these totalitarian impulses, Obama and his team will constantly search for ways to make his the only voice the American people can hear.

Tags: Barack Obama, North Korea, Propaganda

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Actually, this column isn’t really a must-read for you guys, who already understand that the Left is deeply antisemitic and that its poison is spreading.  Instead, this article is a must-read for those of you who find yourselves surrounded (as I do) by people who insist that the Democratic party is a Jewish haven, as opposed to the Jew-hating Republicans.  That line might have worked back in the years from 1880 to about 1940, when Jews flocked to Communism and white shoe Republicans barred Jews from their clubs, but those days are dead and gone.  In the here and now, it’s the Progressives that should leave Jews running scared.

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I wrote this in an email to some friends, but feel like broadcasting it more widely:

Oh, for a brain and a heart in the White House.  It’s bad enough that the American people, by electing Obama and a monolithic Dem majority, have damned America.  It’s the fallout in other nations that’s so awful.  Should Israel really have to suffer for our stupidity?  Or the people in the streets of Iran?  Or the Honduran citizens struggling to maintain their Constitution?  America is no longer a bulwark against totalitarianism, but an enabler.  (And even during the worst of realpolitik, we were merely dead weight, not enablers.)

UPDATE:  At Noisy Room, Terresa has some perfect quotations about the man who is our President.

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“They just harnessed me up and dipped me down in the water and I grabbed her and the crane drug her to the boat and that’s it,” Oglesbee said. “What are you going to do if she’s like that? It’s no big deal. The whole crew did it.”

So spoke Jason Oglesbee after being the last man in the chain of the daring rescue of a woman who got swept into a dam.  The story says so much about the ingenuity and courage that we see — most of the time — in the average American.  I hope that the nanny state doesn’t leech us of those qualities.  We know that it can, because that’s what has happened in England, where dependency on the government has rendered people helpless.

(P.S.  Check out the photo that goes with the story.  It’s a great picture.)

UPDATE:  More incredible pictures here.  In fact, here’s one:

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Seraphic Secret got it from JoshuaPundit, who found it at the source — PoliticalMath.  Watch this video, and then make a mental note of where to find it the next time a liberal counters criticism of Obama’s spending by pointing to Bush’s spending.  While it’s true that latter (shame on him) took us for a fast ride; the former is taking us on a rocket trip to debtor Hell:

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I understand that some of you are having problems coming to grips with the fact that I included Donny and Marie in my sibling line-up.  Just be grateful that I didn’t do a Jackson 5 post.  (It seemed inappropriate this week.)  To help get the bad taste out of your mouths, let me present the Isley Brothers:

And be sure really to watch (not just listen to) this video.  It’s wonderful.

Oh, and one of my favorites from the Pointer Sisters:

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Israel stopped a contingent of Hamas supporters who tried to run a blockade bringing money and supplies into Gaza.  Cynthia McKinney figures prominently in their number:

The Israeli navy intercepted a ship carrying foreign peace activists - including a San Rafael woman - trying to break a blockade of Gaza on Tuesday and forced it to sail to an Israeli port, the military said.

A statement said the Greek-registered freighter Arion ignored a radio message from the Israeli military saying it would not be allowed to enter Gaza waters and ordering it to turn back.

[snip]

Also on board (in addition to a Marin County resident) is former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and other activists from Britain, Ireland, Bahrain and Jamaica.

[snip]

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel was planning to free the crew and passengers. “Nobody wants to keep them here,” he said. “They will be released as soon as they are checked.”

The Free Gaza Movement has organized five boat trips to Gaza since August 2008, defying a blockade imposed by Israel when the militant group Hamas seized control of the territory from its Palestinian rivals in June 2007.

This blockade running is a stunt, of course.  Unlike sieges of old, Israel is not imposing a blockade in order to cause the citizens of Gaza to experience famine and disease.  The amount of government-sanctioned money flowing into Gaza from all points of the world is staggering.   In 2009 alone, Saudi Arabia promised $58.9 million; President Obama (bless his little Leftist heart) promised a staggering $900 million; and, ‘tho I can’t find 2009 figures, as little as two years ago, Europe was giving annual aid at the 500 million Euro level.  None of this, of course, is chump change.  If the Palestinians had spent it wisely, they could have had a true Utopia.  As it is, because they are a mix of corruption and murderous hatred, they’ve created a foul dystopia.

But I digress.  Given the money that pours into Gaza, and given that Israel allows food, water and electricity to flow into that hate-filled territory, why the Israeli blockade?  Only useful idiots would fail to see that the blockade is a desperate effort to prevent arms from flowing into Gaza.  As it is, despite the blockade, Israel deals with thousands of rocket attacks annually.  One only shudders to think what would happen without a blockade.

I’m willing to believe that the useful idiots on that ship have nothing to do with arms smuggling.  Frankly, they’re too dumb to be trusted with what is, after all, a delicate task.  They are cover, pure and simple.  Hamas has discovered that there’s no better way simultaneously to hide and support their murderous agenda than to encourage the belief on the part of the credulous on the Left that Palestinians are victims of a genocidal Israel plot.  One of the hallmarks of Leftists, both those who are informed and committed, and those who are merely stupid, is the inability to realize that not all Goliaths (that is, all big guys) are bad, and not all Davids (that would be the little guys) are good.

As I’ve said time and again in this blog, it’s not enough to be little.  You have to stand for something good to be deserving of the David appellation and the world’s assistance.  Right now, there are Davids in the world, but they are the Iranian citizens facing the guns and axes of their own government in an effort to bring some small measure of freedom to their totalitarian corner of the world.

Somehow, though,  I don’t think I’ll see Cynthia McKinney and her fellow-travelers making a stand for Iranian citizens any time soon.  She takes her cue from our President, who seemingly has never met a totalitarian government he hasn’t liked.

Tags: Barack Obama, Cynthia McKinney, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Leftists, Palestinians

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Donny and Marie were a genuinely talented and personable duo, but I never liked their songs.  Nevertheless, they have a place in the panetheon of sibling singers, so here they are — Donny and Marie Osmond:

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Al Franken is entering the Senate, and I’m trying to figure out a procedural way around a Labor Commissioners unbearably stupid ruling.

My wonderful, scintillating email group is arguing like crazy over peripheral matters because central matters all seem to have been sucked irrevocably into the black hole of Obama politics.

The brilliant, but absolutely lacking in charisma, Mitt Romney is the only well-known voice speaking out against the insanity but no one is listening — maybe because he’s absolutely lacking in charisma.

Add all this to yesterday’s blechs (Obama siding again with dictators, crap and trade, health care “reform,” the administration’s sustained attack against Israel, planes crashing) and, to copy Taranto (who in turn feel in love with a foolish AP headline), “Everything is seemingly spinning out of control.”

Sigh.

Sigh.

I’m reading the news today, but still struggling for something to add beyond the obvious.  What’s sustaining me right now is your comments to my recent open threads.

So, let me extend again an offer I made some time ago.  Send me a proposed post and, if I think it will work for my blog, I’ll publish it.  Bookwormroom *at* gmail.com

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A lovely Civil War song, sung by Kate & Anna McGarrigle:

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I’ve finally gotten around to reading the news, and have nothing to say.  Obama is staying true to form and backing a dictatorship, this one in Honduras.  The Supreme Court is poised on a knife’s edge, with four justices thinking it’s perfectly okay to discriminate against people based upon their lack of color.  Iranians are dying in the street and our president says nothing.  Crap and Trade is set to destroy the American economy.  Health care “reform” is set to destroy the current American health system.  And the media is still clucking about the death of an anorexic drug addict whose heyday passed 20 years ago.

If you have something to say today, please say it.  I am retiring temporarily (24 hours or less) in disgust.  I need to kick some butt at the dojo tonight and then, maybe, I’ll feel more sanguine about everything.

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I haven’t even read the news this morning. Even now, I’m on the road tapping on my iPhone. I promise I’ll catch up later.

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I’m beginning to believe that PETA has been taken over by saboteurs who are trying to destroy the organization by making it look unbelievably stupid:

“Hali-BUT! Hali-BUT! Heyyyyyy!” six men scream in unison. “Goin’ right home! Goin’ right home!” The counterman catches the hurtling fish neatly between the head and tail fin and slaps it onto a wrapping sheet.

The Pike Place Fish Market is the legendary home of the flying fish: Halibut as big as a wrestler’s thigh, spiky medallions of crab, the smooth, rainbow flesh of Chinook salmon, all become rapid-fire marine rockets in the hands of Seattle’s fishmongers — who are as famous for the speed of their fish as for its freshness.

But did anyone ever think of the fish?

Asserting that the practice of lobbing fish above the heads of patrons and tourists at the market and other venues is disrespectful to creatures that already have gone through a lot, an animal rights group is protesting plans to stage a flying-fish exhibition at an upcoming national veterinarians conference in Seattle.

Ultimately, they would like to see the practice banned at the fish market too. They argue that tourists would not be nearly so eager to snap photos if dead kittens or gutted lambs were sailing over their heads.

“Killing animals so you can toss their bodies around for amusement is just twisted,” said Ashley Byrne, senior campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Washington, D.C.

The fish are caught at Pike’s Place are caught, not for tossing, but so that we can eat them.  The fish were originally tossed for efficient transport from one location to another.  People were charmed, so now it’s a bit of a show.  The fish would be dead anyway.

More important, fish are not puppies or kittens.  The latter are cute, the former are not.  The emotional resonance is different.  Allow me to demonstrate:

Puppy

Kitten

Fish

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My husband was in the City for a conference, so he caught part of the SF Gay Pride Parade.  He said that there was an enormous group of gay Jews in the parade.  The last part of this group had huge signs proclaiming anti-Zionist Jews for Palestine.  They got incredible applause from the crowd.

And now for a series of rhetorical questions:  How dumb can these people be?  Don’t they understand that in nations that have sharia law, homosexuals are routinely tortured and executed?  Don’t they appreciate that the one safe haven for Palestinian gays is Israel?

This kind of ideologically motiviated stupidity drives me nuts.

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A very bright Marin professional told me she’s incredibly excited about the proposed Obama health care plan, because the government is certain to be more efficient than the market.  When I suggested that the market might be more efficient if we took away the thousands of regulations that impeded it, allowing it to function more cheaply, she brushed that off:  “The insurance companies are raking in the money.  The government should take over.”  This is what 30 years of anti-capitalistic, Marxist education has created.  People who think they can stay rich in a government run economy — because it’s not fair that others make money.

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