Friday Afternoon Roundup - A Pinch of Salt

A PINCH OF SALT

There are reports that Mayor Bloomberg received letters that tested positive for Ricin. I'm sure his butler and his butler's butler and his butler's butler's assistant are all very worried about their health.

Not Bloomberg though who is immune to Ricin, the Ebola virus, cholera, nerve gas, u-238, foxglove, typhoid fever and a plague of rabid bats.

Sending Bloomberg barrels of Ricin is absolutely useless. But farmers out on Staten Island say that putting a pinch of salt in front of their doorsteps will keep him away for a week. The salt has to be replaced every time it rains and they say that sea salt works best. Bloomberg hasn't shown his face there in a while so the salt is probably doing its job.

Reports that Bloomberg can be kept away by wearing cloves of garlic are untrue. Bloomberg can stand exposure to garlic and sunlight. However anything with a lot of calories will send him fleeing into the night. If you walk down the street wearing a string of ketchup packets around your neck, no Bloomberg can harm you. If you light up a cigarette while doing it and swig from an open bottle of liquor, you can hear his thin keening cries of pain drifting up or down all the way from 77th Street.

If you find yourself being chased by Bloomberg late at night, instead of trying to run, bend down and erase a bicycle lane. Bloomberg will compulsively redraw it, leaving you free to enjoy your evening.

You can also distract Bloomberg by picking up a soda can and exclaiming, "I bet this is good for me."

If you find yourself backed into a corner, grab a restaurant menu without any calorie information next to the servings and recite over and over again, "It's only a tiny little steak. How many calories could it have." If you truly believe it, then Bloomberg will vanish in a puff of smoke and be reborn as an ashtray.

Other charms and unguents efficacious for deterring Bloomberg include, NRA decals, a dash of water from the Gowanus canal, cars that aren't energy efficient, two ostrich feathers tied together, a photo of Rudy Giuliani, a rare Madagascar blue chicken born at midnight and the United States Constitution.

If your demesne is haunted by Bloomberg, try and lure him into a private jet with a trail of urban reform studies, fly him to Shanghai and hope he adapts to his native habitat in the Communist Party. 




THE FLOWERS OF COPLEY SQUARE

 On John Wilson Street, the flowers lie thick. Men and women walk by leaving bouquets and cards. If not for the balloons and teddy bears with British flags on them, it might be Copley Square near the finish line of the Boston Marathon where the same bouquets lie limply against steel barriers. But there the teddy bears and balloons wear the stars and stripes.

In the middle of May, Prime Minister David Cameron was at Copley Square saying that we will never give in to the terrorists while praising the values of diversity and then two weeks later he was outside 10 Downing Street declaring that we will never give in to the terrorists and praising Islam. The places had changed but the script hadn’t.

Listen long enough and you realize that every politician is working from the same script.

A Memorial Day for Islamic Terror




THE MORAL HIGH GROUND

The trip cost a mere $42.8 million, which would have been enough to feed a sizable chunk of Africa, and featured an entourage that would have shamed Alexander the Great or Jay-Z. It took 1,300 people to make Clinton’s Great African Getaway possible including 205 personnel from the Office of the President, 60 from the State Department, 9 from the Department of Transportation and 1 from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Somehow Fish and Wildlife stayed at home.

In Uganda, Clinton made history by apologizing for the slave trade. Uganda, however, was in East Africa and no slaves had gone to America from there. It was a case of, “I did not engage in slave trade with that part of the continent.”

None of the 1,300 people involved in the Great Apology Safari had bothered to research where the slaves came from because it didn’t matter. Bill Clinton was using Africa as a morality prop, the way that liberals so often use black people as props in their morality plays. In the little picture, he might be immoral for cheating on his wife, but in the big picture he was morally superior because he apologized for slavery.

The Great Race Card Getaway




THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SENATOR AND A BOILED CABBAGE

Senator McCain claimed, “We can identify who these people are. We can help the right people.” And who does he think the right people are?

McCain said he was escorted during his visit on Monday by General Salem Idris, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and that he had a long meeting with Idris and a group of his battalion commanders.

Salem Idris, whom he just met with, is on the record as defending the Al Nusra Front. “They are not terrorists,” he said of the Nusra Front.

McCain Knows Less About the Syrian Civil War than You Do





KENTUCKY DEMOCRATS CONTEMPLATE GIVING UP ON THE SENATE THING

Three years after becoming Miss America and marrying the Lt. Governor, Heather French Henry while driving her Lincoln Navigator SUV struck and killed a mother of four riding a bicycle, Karola Stede. Heather French Henry wasn’t injured. Stede’s youngest child was 8.

And that might have been that. Fatal accidents happen all the time. The creepy part came when Heather French Henry, not satisfied with having killed a woman, used her corpse to promote herself by going on Oprah to talk about how badly running over a woman made her feel.

Afterward Heather French Henry became an AAA spokesman, since I guess running someone over qualifies you for the job, and now wants a spot in the United States Senate.

Kentucky Dems to Replace Ashley Judd with Miss America Murderer




KEEPING THE RELIGION OF PEACE

After two Muslim terrorists beheading a British soldier in London, cops arrested an 85-year-old woman for shouting “Go back to your own country” at mosquegoers. Not only did they arrest her, but they even handcuffed her.

Now the police division has responded to criticism of their outrageous behavior with a defensive email, stating, “I am disappointed to read your views of the police response to the tragic event in Woolwich… our officers are trained to respond to any incident they are called to and regularly put themselves at risk to protect the public and keep the peace.”

UK Cops Explain Why they Handcuffed 85-Year-Old British Woman for Offending Muslims




ONE LAND, TWO LAWS

The sponsor of the event is the American Muslim Advisory Council of Tennessee. Special speaker for the event will be Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee who will provide input on how civil rights can be violated by those who post inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media.

Killian said Internet postings that violate civil rights are subject to federal jurisdiction. “That’s what everybody needs to understand,” he said.

Tellingly there are never any threats to prosecute Muslims for blatant incitement to violence. The Tsarnaev Boston bombers never had to worry that their enthusiasm for Al Qaeda would land them in front of a Federal judge.

Just as in the UK, the people being seized for incitement, including an 85-year-old British woman who shouted “Go back to your country” at Muslims near a mosque, are British, not Muslim.

The London beheaders never had to worry about being locked up for shouting their venom at rally after rally. It’s only the EDL that’s a threat to the nation.

Federal Prosecutor Warns Anti-Muslim Internet Postings are Subject to Federal Jurisdiction




HE REALLY DOES CARE

You know there are people out there who think that Obama doesn’t care. But that’s not true. Sure Obama doesn’t care whether Americans have jobs or whether Iran gets a nuke.

But Obama does care if Iranians don’t have the latest iPhone.

Obama Loosens Iran Sanctions so Ahmadinejad Can Buy an iPhone




A TRUE PARTNERSHIP

Hussein Fayyad, one of the commanders of the terror group that carried out the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, revealed on Tuesday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had appointed him as one of his advisers.

The attack, which led to the killing of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, was planned and carried out by Abbas’s Fatah faction.

The coastal massacre began with the murder of an American photographer, Gail Rubin. One of the youngest victims was Ilan Hochman, a 3-year-old boy.

Ilan died along with his older brother, 6-year-old Roi and his mother, Rebecca Hochman. Their father lost his legs trying to stop the terrorists on the bus.

The dead included a 2-year-old girl, five year olds and six year olds. They also included Mathilda Askenazy-Daniel, a 68-year-old woman who died in the hospital after being burned over 90 percent of her body.

Obama said that Israel has a “true partner” in President Abbas.

Murderer of 13 Children Appointed Top Adviser to Palestinian Authority President




THE DEVIL WANTS HIS JURY BACK

Hillary Clinton’s new SuperPAC, created while she transitions to “private life” is called Ready for Hillary. That’s supposed to be a nod to two terms of Obama during which the country was ready for a corrupt junior senator with a history of cocaine abuse, but not for Bill Clinton’s wife.

So who is Ready for Hillary anyway?

Susie Tompkins Buell was a sweatshop owner and radical environmentalist. And then there’s Steve Mostyn, a Texas lawyer who cashes in on storm victims, who is also the man behind the Giffords anti-gun campaign.

Hillary SuperPAC Headed by Radical Environmentalist Sweatshop Owner and Hurricane Chasing Giffords Lawyer




CREEPING UP ON YOU

The Forward has spent years frenziedly attacking Orthodox Jews. But now, in its latest issue, Jay Michaelson gets to the point warning of “The Creeping Jewish Fundamentalism in Our Midst.”

“American Jews are actively supporting a demographic trend that threatens the fabric of American Jewish life,” Jay Michaelson writes, apparently going through some kind of rehearsal for a production of Philip Roth’s Eli the Fanatic.

Orthodox Jews are also American Jews. Or perhaps they’re Unamerican Jews? Lefties may mock Dr. Strangelove, but they quickly end up sounding like him when confronting the threat of the creeping Jewish fundamentalist, creeping now down your chimney.

The Forward Warns of the Great Jewish Threat




HITLER IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN GEORGIA

Alice Walker is a really overrated writer. But she’s overrated in all the right circles. Those are the same circles which consider David Icke, a loon who claims that we’re ruled over by space aliens and that we’re living in a hologram which is controlled from an inter-dimensional portal on the moon.

What attracts her to this idea that some people are not really human?

"Earlier I wrote that David Icke reminded me of Malcolm X... What I was remembering was how he called our oppressors “blue eyed devils.” Now who could that have been? Well, we see them here in David Icke’s book as the descendants of the reptilian race that landed on our sweet planet."

Walker gives it away by comparing David Icke to Malcolm X. Malcolm X was originally a member of the Nation of Islam, which believes that white people were artificially created and are inherently evil. 

Alice Walker Claims Planet is Controlled by “Blue-Eyed” Reptilian Space Aliens on the Moon




AND ALSO PARTS OF DETROIT

You can sympathize with John Conyers, the longest serving member of the House of Representatives and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, who came to hear some inspirational words of wisdom from notoriously inspiring figure Louis Farrakhan, only to discover,  a week later, to his shock and surprise, that the speech he was approvingly nodding to was really racist.

But it’s only natural that Congressman John Conyers would be utterly shocked that Louis Farrakhan would say horrible bigoted things in an appearance that was preceded by him saying on the radio of white people, “Genetically, you are inferior. … We can wipe you off the Earth just cohabiting with you and that’s why your population is going down.”

Congressional Black Caucus Member Shocked to Discover Farrakhan Speech He Was Nodding to was Anti-Semitic and Racist




CLASSROOM, ATE, WOLVES

The Globe and Mail conducts an interview with UKIP’s Nigel Farage as if it can’t quite believe that a man who opposed wolves, still opposes wolves… even after wolves mauled an entire classroom full of children.

“Yes, but you still oppose wolves?”

“Yes.”

“Even after all the children that the wolves ate?”

“Especially.”

“But why?”

“Because wolves… children… classroom… ate.”

From the tone of the interview, you would think that a Muslim immigrant had just cured cancer, instead of two second-generation immigrants who converted to Islam hacking a British soldier to death in broad daylight.

Media Baffled that Anti-Immigration UK Party is Still Anti-Immigration Despite London Murder




MUHAMMAD IBN BATES PBUH

Psycho is the great-grandfather of scores of copycat films of diminishing quality over the decades. It presents Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who runs an out-of-the-way motel and apparently has little contact with the outside world. His alternate persona is governed by his dead mother. "She" comes to life when temptation crosses his path. The voyeuristic sight of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in semi-undress in one of his motel rooms triggers in Norman an urge to kill and eliminate the temptation. A cross-dressed Bates stabs her to death in the shower, then disposes of her body and car in a neighboring swamp. A detective, Arbogast (Martin Balsam), investigating Crane's disappearance is also murdered by Bates-as-Mother, to protect Norman from the consequences of his actions.

The parallels with Islam here are fairly obvious. The Bates Motel is Islamic culture. Islam is Norman Bates who is compelled to kill whatever doesn’t comport with Islam's death-worshipping doctrine (because Allah commands it). Marion Crane is the temptation, the uncovered infidel female. Detective Arbogast is the truth-seeker and truth-teller who criticizes Islam. Call him Salman Rushdie or Kurt Westergaard or Geert Wilders. Or filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was actually stabbed to death on the streets of Amsterdam in 2004.

Islam fosters a special kind of mental illness that can lay latent and fester in any Muslim until it erupts in criminally insane behavior. Like Norman Bates, who on the outside is a nice, congenial, harmless guy, the average Muslim is someone you can't really know.

From Edward Cline's Islam on My Mind. Edward also has a pamphlet on Islam from Voltaire Press coming out this month.




THE DEATH OF COMMON SENSE

Stuart Brown has described younger engineers at advanced research facilities who are "good at filling in bubbles" but don't seem to be able to make a machine work. Senior engineers lament that the next generation overvalues its high test scores and undervalues the things that get the job done. Fine arts teachers tailor assignments to students who want to express simpler ideas with easier tools rather than acquire more open-ended and sophisticated skills.

College instructors in general find they assign less work in both quantity and difficulty than a generation ago, and students do a poorer job on it. If they're getting smarter, why don't they seem smart?

Flynn himself, and other scholars, now think that the first mystery -- higher scores for less capable people -- might actually explain the second mystery of why the Flynn Effect happens. Flynn argues that IQ tests favor abstract categorization over practical application, and that the world has come to rely on abstraction more and application less. For example, if an IQ test asks, "What do dogs have in common with rabbits?" answering with, "They are both animals" will score higher than, "People use dogs to hunt rabbits." Flynn points out that this favors minds that categorize reality over those who work with it.

Flynn's hypothesis fits well with the common perception that academically proficient people can lack common sense.

That's from an article by John Barnes.I do question his conclusion however that gamification can reverse the trend. Isn't gamification basically a more ADD friendly form of test taking in which an abstract set of rules is mastered, rather than finding real world solutions to problems through experience?




REALITY HAS A NOTORIOUS CONSERVATIVE BIAS

Those who were able to stay awake during this confusing, meandering mess were rewarded by a confirmation of what we have known all along. Let me state it simply. Liberals still just don’t get it. They don’t understand the difference between 9/11, as in an existential war against an extremely determined enemy with millions of lunatics willing to die for the cause, and 7/11, as in using law enforcement to find and punish the perp who knocked over the convenience market. Whether it’s Eric “I Recused Myself in My Mind But It Still Counts” Holder, who wanted to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a New York City court room, or Barack Hussein Obama himself choosing to treat Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a criminal rather than an enemy combatant, the dangerous and naîve mentality is the same.

We’ve tried this approach before, during the 1990’s. Six people were murdered in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The mastermind and ring leader of the first World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison plus 240 years in January 1998, just 7 months before Islamic fanatics would set off bombs at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We were at war. We just didn’t know it. Eventually, reality would smack us out of our blissful ignorance when two huge airliners slammed into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth in a Pennsylvania field.

From Teri O'Brien... Not 9/11. 7/11. The Obama Administration Still Doesn’t Get It. We Are at War.




J.E. Dyer of the Optimistic Conservative will be appearing at a Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors event in LA.

Critical G who does readings of some of my articles is auctioning off readings of choice on eBay

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna discusses what he does and why he does it




ONE COUNTRY, TWO STANDARDS

A rich, liberal Democrat in favor of more taxation has bought yet another Virginia newspaper, but we’re not hearing anyone complain about how his opinions are going to change the face of journalism in Virginia. Why is that, I wonder? Oh, that’s right. Because he’s a liberal. That’s an acceptable bias, unlike being a conservative.

Buffett has said he will not try to influence editorial policies at the newspapers the company owns. Kroeger, the BH Media CEO, reiterated that message on Thursday.

“We value independently run newspapers,” he said. “Content decisions and editorial decisions are made locally.”

Mm-hm.

via Meryl Yourish's Friday briefs




THE WHITE FLAG OF THE SOUL

To have even a hundredth of those cemeteries in the United States now would be more than we, as a nation, could bear. It would not be so much the dead within it, but the truth that made it happen that would be unbearable. This is, of course, what we are as a nation fiddling about with on this Memorial Day. We count our war dead daily now, but we count mostly on the fingers of one hand, at times on two. Never in numbers now beyond our ability to imagine. This is not because we cannot die daily in large numbers in a war. September 11th proved to us that we still die in the thousands, but many among us cannot now hold that number as a reality, but only as a "tragic" exception that need not have happened and will -- most likely -- never happen again.

That, at least, is the mind set that I assume when I read how the "War on Terror" is but a bumper strip. In a way, that's preferable to the the mind set that now, in increasing numbers among us, prefers to take refuge in the unbalanced belief that 9/11 was actually something planned and executed by the American government. Why many of my fellow Americans prefer this "explanation" is something that I once felt was beyond comprehension. Now I see it is just another comfortable position taken up by those for whom the habits of automatic treason have become just another fashionable denigration of the country that has made their liberty to believe the worst of it not only possible but popular.

Like the graves in my local cemetery, these souls too bear within them a small flag, but that flag -- unlike their souls -- is white and, in its increasing rootedness in our body politic signals not sacrifice for the advancement of the American experiment, but the abject surrender of their lives to small spites and the tiny victories of lifestyle liberation.

That's a great essay on Memorial Day and its implications at American Digest.