Quick picks for Monday
I’m still happil figuring out all the bells and whistles on my new iPhone, so I’ll start off this Monday with a few quick picks:
No wonder Putin still dreams of the old Empire: it turns out that, if the Soviet Union still existed, it would have left all the other countries int he dust when it came to medals. (H/t: SJ)
Looking at the two candidates purely as marketable products, consumer testing is not going too well for Obama.
Daniel Pipes explains that, no matter how often Obama (honestly) protests that he is not now a Muslim, Muslims worldwide nevertheless view him as one. This fact is a wash, though. While it may make some feel fonder of the US, it may make others even more hostile as an apostate leads Islam’s greatest enemy.
Speaking of Islam, yet another country turns into a Sharia experiment — which was immediately bad news for the 3,000 formerly upstanding non-Muslim citizens who became non-citizens at the stroke of a pen. Dhimmitude is never a good thing for those in Dhimmi position.
Turns out that, all his protestations of “new politics” and “change” to the contrary, Obama is just another Chicago pol, handing out loose change — lots of it — to his friends. In other words, his style of politics is as old as the hills.
Who knew that I’d find myself agreeing with Stanley Fish? He’s right this time, noting that, as a technical matter, Random House’s decision to withdraw from publishing a book about Mohammed’s nine year old wife is not technically censorship. Censorship comes from government. However, Fish is wrong to strike such a strident tone on the point, since it allows him to avoid the obvious fact, which is that, while free speech around the Western world isn’t being governmentally censored into oblivion, it is nevertheless being terrorized into oblivion. Perhaps it’s time to come up with a new phrase, that doesn’t allow people to hide behind legalisms to excuse what’s obviously happening at the hands of radical Islam worldwide: “Terror Induced Silence?” “The Sharia Shut-up?” I don’t know. Maybe you can think of something.
The National Review editors give a neat, one-paragraph rundown explaining why the Democratic party is one that either Truman or Kennedy would be unlikely to recognize.
