Ideologies Of Force

clipped from rayharvey.org Communism is a species of the genus socialism; it is one of the many variations on that tired theme. Communism explicitly calls for the violent overthrow of government. In theory, it is an anarchist ideology, believing that the state will one day magically “wither away,” as Karl Marx famously phrased it, though only after an unspecified period of gigantic bureaucratic control. Of course, in the long and blood-soaked history of communism, the state has never withered away Democratic socialism, on the other hand, doesn’t advocate the violent overthrow of government but intends to use force peacefully. By definition, by its very nature, socialism must resort to force because it must expropriate people’s money and other property in order to redistribute it. That is the distinguishing characteristic of any and all forms of socialism: government control of property and the means of production (which is one of the reasons so-called corporatism is another variation on socialism).

Slender Distinctions

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, "immigrant communities" were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo "female genital mutilation." So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They're not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a "ritual nick" to young girls. A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at "FGM." After all, it's a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don't demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Now That's A Picture

clipped from www.lucianne.com HELP IS ON THE WAY!

Kagan Coddles

clipped from www.moonbattery.com But Kagan, acting as President Obama's Solicitor General, argued that the case should not be heard even if evidence proved that the Saudis helped underwrite al Qaeda, because it would interfere with US foreign policy with the oil-rich nation. She posited "that the princes are immune from petitioners' claims" because of "the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit." In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer published Tuesday, the mother of a man who was killed on United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania said he didn't know why Kagan argued that the case not even be heard. By keeping the case off the dockets, the Saudis were spared scrutiny of their finances. Even Benedict Arlen Specter was enraged, proposing an amendment to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that would prevent the ultra-Left's answer to Harriet Miers from hiding behind it. "She wants to coddle the Saudis," he said. The bad guys control our government.

Crumble

clipped from pajamasmedia.com PEW POLL: “Fully 73% say they approve of requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them.” Ann Althouse asks: “I wonder what those percentages would be if the President and the political elite had not pressured us to think the Arizona law was outrageously racist.” From the comments: “We’re seeing a crumbling of the left’s dogma and an end to the average person’s fear of an inquisition. This as a result of how ridiculous the left has become.”

Consequences

clipped from www.qando.net Some job applicants are asking to be paid in cash so they can collect unemployment illegally, said Gayle Younglove, vice president at Outdoor Experts Inc. in Romulus. “Unfortunately, we feel the economy is promoting more and more people and companies to play the system and get paid or collect cash money so they don’t have to pay taxes,” Younglove said. Heh … ya think?! Michigan offers unemployment benefits for up to 26 weeks (6 months). When those benefits run out, unemployed can apply for extended federal benefits up to a maximum of 99 additional weeks. The federal jobless benefits extension “is the most generous safety net we’ve ever offered nationally,” said David Littmann, senior economist of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market-oriented research group in Midland. The extra protection reduces the incentive to find work, he said.

QOTD: Sowell Again

clipped from www.redstate.com Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Thomas Sowell

All Of A Sudden

clipped from pajamasmedia.com REPORT: Mullah Omar captured. So would this explain the Administration’s sudden interest in broader interrogation tactics?

If Only It Were Bizarre

clipped from pajamasmedia.com BIZARRE FACT OF THE DAY: Media Take Note: In Arizona County, Of 64 Highway Chases Last Month, Not One Perp a U.S. Citizen.

Chinese Racists Or Something

clipped from pajamasmedia.com WHAT’S NEXT? A CHINESE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT? In front of a roomful of government officials, businessman Zhou Jusheng took the mic and made a simple demand: finish paving and landscaping the industrial park that houses his drill-bit factory. His request at a public hearing was modest by Western standards. But in China, where the communist government muscularly guards its political monopoly and where people mostly defer to authority, Zhou’s assertiveness points to a telling change. “You could say that I was just wasting my breath,” he said later at his factory. “But as a citizen, I should speak out.” “Ordinary people have the right to ask, how are you spending my money? Are you spending it on me? What are you doing with it?” said Li Fan, who runs a private think tank in Beijing that promotes political reform and is advising Wenling officials. Obviously, they must be racists or something.

O Budget

clipped from www.qando.net A few days after Freddie Mac requested $10.6 billion, Fannie Mae has asked for $8.4 billion: Fannie Mae requested another $8.4 billion from the federal government on Monday, saying that due to trends in the housing and financial markets, the company expects its deficits to continue. The government-controlled mortgage giant announced Monday that it lost $13.1 billion applicable to common shareholders in the first quarter of 2010. The request cames just four days after Fannie’s twin Freddie Mac also asked for a handout – to the tune of $10.6 billion – after posting an $8 billion quarterly loss. Don’t forget, this is off budget money – even though it adds to the deficit, its not counted – yeah, you figure it out. Also remember that while Democrats rail against Wall Street and it’s culpability in the financial collapse, it was Freddie and Fannie which were implementing the policy of the US Government

Do You Know Who This Is?

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That's right. This "racist" would be Clarence Thomas' wife. LOL

Choices

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Rise Up

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Jeremy Hoop made this contribution to the soundtrack:

Pinned By Pr*cks

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Due to their officiousness and profound need to boss everyone else around, moonbats usually end up controlling professional associations. Consequently, the American Academy of Pediatrics now advocates genital mutilation for little girls, otherwise known as the quaint Islamic world practice of clitoridectomy. The spin is that performing "pinprick" clitoridectomies could prevent Muslim parents from going back to the enlightened lands of Allah to have the whole thing chopped out. As Backyard Conservative points out, this is reminiscent of the policy of advising Muslim men to beat their wives "lightly," in the spirit of multicultural compromise. Pinprick or not, the door is now open to officially sanctioned sexual mutilation of children, compliments of political correctness. On tips from Brian and Vanessa. Hat tip: Monkey in the Middle.

Bracing For Impact

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Another eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland, another round of air traffic closures. As Joe D’Aleo at ICECAP notes, a major eruption in Iceland, especially from Eyjafjallajokull’s larger neighbor, Katla, could impact the climate in the Northern Hemisphere. “ICECAP NOTE: It is true that tropical volcanism has more global impact as the ash and aerosols travel north and south and affect most of the globe while high latitude volcanoes find ash and gases limited more to the higher latitudes and tend to have effects that don’t last as long. But research by Oman (2005) showed northern hemispheric high latitude volcanoes influence the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations which can have a profound effect on the climate In the polar regions a 30,000-40,000 foot ash and aerosol cloud can have impact. Some of the biggest eruptions in April and again May 6th reached above 30,000 feet.

President Braniac

clipped from www.moonbattery.com In the course of throwing a hissy-fit over how the new media criticize him, our super-genius president admits he's too dumb to work an iPod or other electronic devices routinely mastered by ten-year-olds. "With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said. One of our trolls asserted a few weeks ago that "Obama is smarter than you." Evidence is still wanting. I can work all of those things, *and* program a TiVo. Also, I know how many states there are, how to pronounce "corpsman," and that there is no such language as "Austrian."

The Humble #2

clipped from hplusmagazine.com All of these properties make graphene a very important material for the future of electronics. It has already been used to create field effect transistors, the primary component of a computer processor. When you combine this with the other features above, you have a single material that could be used for the majority of the components in every electronic device we currently have… with one major difference: speed. Current silicon based chips have a limited speed at which they can run at room temperature without overheating and malfunctioning. Go much over 3GHz without some major cooling and chips melt down. But replace those chips with graphene equivalents — without having made any other changes to the circuits -—and you can raise that limit much higher. Potentially 100 to 1000 times higher.    Let’s think about that for a moment. That’s 300GHz to 3000GHz or 3Terahertz.

Hey Rube! (Part 89,493)

clipped from pajamasmedia.com THEY TOLD ME THAT IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN, we’d get an Attorney General who’d want to curtail Miranda rights. And they were right! Attorney General Eric Holder said that Congress should “give serious consideration” to updating the Miranda warning which requires law enforcement officials to inform suspects of their rights – including the right to remain silent. In an interview on “This Week,” Holder said that the U.S. needs to exam whether the current rules regarding Miranda warnings give law enforcement agents the “necessary flexibility” when dealing with terrorism cases. Ah, remember all that talk about the “lawless Bush Administration” trampling civil rights, and the fierce moral urgency of change? Well, if you believed that stuff when they were peddling it. . . hey, rube! Meanwhile, Christopher Fountain writes: “If only we had elected Obama, we wouldn’t have this travesty of justice.”