Why have a lot of little posts, when you can have one really big one?
I’ve been coming across so much interesting stuff this morning that I’m going to do another flotsam and jetsam post.
One of the things we’ve long known is that the Left lies about statistics. Examples of this are “1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted” canard and the “women earn 76 cents for every dollar men earn” lie which is (a) factually inaccurate and (b) misleading because it ignores the fact that women’s commitment to their children means many of them voluntarily take a different career track. (The only place this is factually true, I think, is the Obama White House, where he definitely pays women less.) Tom Elia therefore suggests that, before blindly accepting Texas Democrats’ charge that the proposed abortion law would close all but 5 of Texas’s 42 abortion clinics (because of the requirement that the clinic be within 30 miles of a hospital), we might want to check whether this is actually true.
Before you get your knickers in a twist about the revelation that the EU has been colluding with the US to hand over European data to the NSA program, remember that the source is a virulent anti-American, antisemitic truther. This may explain why The Guardian, after touting the story, then pulled it. Having said that, it’s not hard to believe Edward Epstein’s theory that this was never a whistleblower case but was, instead, a carefully thought out plan of espionage.
You’re my readers, so I know all of you are already aware that we’re on the verge of the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg. Nevertheless, I thought I’d still mention it, along with the fact that at least some Americans are aware of how significant that battle was. World War I saw bigger battles, with more deaths (Ypres, the Somme, etc.), but I’m not sure that any Civil War ever saw such ferocious days as the Civil War did at Antietam or Gettysburg, or any of the other sites where Americans clashed against each other. I believe it’s very useful to remind some people (and I’m not naming names) that America is the only country in the world that has ever shed so much blood to fight slavery.
Just a moment to mourn Andrew Pochter, the idealistic American Jewish kid who went to Egypt to help raise up the poor Arabs and died in a welter of blood during an anti-Morsi protest.
I think things in Egypt are about to get much worse. Twenty-two million Egyptians signed a petition demanding Morsi’s ouster. Do they really think the Muslim Brotherhood is going to walk away? If Egypt does fall into a Civil War, it will make what’s happening in Syria look like a Sunday school picnic.
Naive people think a mosque is just a House of Worship. While it is definitely a House of Worship, it’s also something more: a symbol of conquest. That’s why it has to be higher than the surrounding buildings. And that’s why, in Germany, the air is being filled with the amplified sounds of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer five times a day.
Charlie Martin, one of my favorite PJ Media writers, is at it again, writing smart stuff, this time about climate change and a really important question: is there any evidence that humans matter?
And while we’re on the subject of climate, Robert Zubrin explains in simple terms why Obama’s recently announced climate plans will impoverish America. With Obama focusing on climate change (despite more and more data that the entire theory is wrong), even as the economy stagnates, national secrets go walking, and the Middle East is aflame, my first thought was that he was like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Reading Zubrin’s analysis though of the devastating Obama’s plans will bring to the economy, the better analogy would be Nero pouring accelerant on the flames licking at Rome. If you doubt that, check out Obama’s recent appointees, all of whom have drunk full of the climate change Kool-Aid.
Republicans are saying that this time, really, for good and for true, their eyes are open. That whole Gang of Eight thing made them realize that the Democrats are not their friends in Congress and they promise, never, never, never again to ever again, really ever, let the Democrats play them like that. How dumb do Republicans think we are? Republicans are Charlie Brown, Democrats are Lucy, and Americans are a poor, kicked-around, deflated football.
A New Jersey teachers union leader said that the rich send their children to public school so that they don’t have to have contact with the poor. I know of at least one case where this is true. Back in 1971, busing came to San Francisco. I was bussed from one middle class school near my home to another slightly less middle class school far from my home. It made friendships difficult (none of my friends were near), and there were a few more black kids, but otherwise it was no big deal. My friend, however, was bussed from her middle class school to a school in Bayview-Hunter’s Point, one of the worst slums in San Francisco. She could beaten up every day for the first two weeks of school. Her parents, fortunately, had the money to pull her out of the public school system and they put her in Brandeis. So yes, they didn’t want her to have contact with the poor — because the poor wanted to have a bit too much contact with her.
If you’re wondering what’s going on in Turkey, Claire Berlinsky will explain it to you.
This is an Open Thread, so please feel free to add to it.