Yet another reason to be a Republican

Forgive me. The ladies can post that pic of Cheney. You know which one I'm talking about.

Homeland Security: Giving Schumer & Steve Israel Their Due

We may be inching a step closer to having all of out commercial airliners able to defend themselves against missile attack, and its a good thing at that. As the New York Times reports today (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/national/29missiles.html?hp&ex=1117339200&en=be0104f77fcd1777&ei=5094&partner=homepage), the Department of Homeland Security will now be testing the devices on three aircraft. Both Northrop Grumman and Boeing have been developing competing models for these systems, and they seem to be making good progress. Most surprising for me, though, was that the push through Congress to get these devices installed has been led by, among others, Senator Schumer (D-NY) and Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY). Well, Congressman Israel is no surprise -- he's my local Congressman and I've voted for him twice because of his positions on National Security among other things. As far as Schumer, though, I must say I'm pleasantly surprised.

I'm often incredibly cynical of Democrats Schumer, but I think its important to point out also when they do well. Here, he has.

"The Gulag of Our Times," Or, How Amnesty International Perverts the History of Human Rights Part I

Amnesty International has recently "labeled the United States detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, where more than 500 prisoners from about 40 countries are being held, as 'the gulag of our times'" as the NY Times reports below. As the NY Times continues later on, "The focus on what Dr. Schulz called "the failure of global leadership" was a shift from times when Amnesty International concentrated on issues like the death penalty, which it opposes, in countries like China, and the plight of refugees."

Its sort of ironic that the NY Times points this out, especially when combined with a recent article published by the NY Times on May 9 entitled "Issue in China: Many in Jails Without Trial." As the piece's abstract reads, "China is being pressured to abolish or change its vast system of re-education camps that operate outside court system; estimated 300,000 prostitutes, drug users, petty criminals, members of Falun Gong and other political prisoners have been stripped of any legal rights and locked inside vast penal system that is separate from judicial system; system, relic of Mao era, is major tool Communist Party uses to maintain hold on power and social order; it allows police to sweep up masses of people without time and complications of court trials" (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30811FD39540C7A8CDDAC0894DD404482&incamp=archive:search ). Now where is the Gulag of our times again?

There is nothing more damaging to international human rights standards than ignoring such abuses in China and labeling Guantanamo Bay as the Gulag of our times. Such language merely cheapens the entire meaning and history of terms like gulags, and are a slap in the face and insult to the victims of both the Soviet gulags of the past and, more importantly, the Chinese prisoners suffering in the present. Amnesty International should be ashamed of itself.

------------------

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/international/europe/26amnesty.html

NY Times, May 26, 2005
U.S. 'Thumbs Its Nose' at Rights, Amnesty Says
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, May 25 - In coordinated broadsides from London and Washington, Amnesty International accused the Bush administration on Wednesday of condoning "atrocious" human rights violations, thereby diminishing its moral authority and setting a global example encouraging abuse by other nations.

In a string of accusations introducing the organization's annual report in London, Irene Khan, Amnesty's secretary general, listed the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the so-called rendition of prisoners to countries known to practice torture as evidence that the United States "thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights."

Defending its human rights record as "leading the way," the White House dismissed the accusations as ridiculous and unfounded.

Ms. Khan labeled the United States detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, where more than 500 prisoners from about 40 countries are being held, as "the gulag of our times."
In Washington, William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, urged President Bush to press for a full investigation of what he called the "atrocious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers."

"When the U.S. government calls upon foreign leaders to bring to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen?" Dr. Schulz said. "And if the U.S. government does not abide by the same standards of justice, what shred of moral authority will we retain to pressure other governments to diminish abuses?

"It's far past time for President Bush to prove that he is not covering up the misdeeds of senior officials and political cronies who designed and authorized these nefarious interrogation policies," he said. "So Congress must appoint a truly impartial and independent commission to investigate the masterminds of the atrocious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers, and President Bush should use the power of his office to press Congress to do so."

In response, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said: "I think the allegations are ridiculous, and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity. We have liberated 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have worked to advance freedom and democracy in the world so that people are governed under a rule of law, that there are protections in place for minority rights, that women's rights are advanced so that women can fully participate in societies where now they cannot."

"We've also - are leading the way when it comes to spreading compassion," Mr. McClellan said. "The United States leads the way when it comes to providing resources to combat the scourge of AIDS." Amnesty's language was among the strongest it has used and represented a sense in human rights groups that the treatment by the United States of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay had diminished its standing.

"It's not because the United States is the worst human rights abuser in the world but because it's the most influential," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, via phone from New York. "United States disregard for international human rights standards is damaging those standards," he said, referring to some governments with poor human rights records "citing the U.S. record to justify their own."

In a separate telephone interview, Dr. Schulz of Amnesty International USA acknowledged his organization had used "strong language" because it felt that "the United States has betrayed a very fundamental principle that this country stands for."

The focus on what Dr. Schulz called "the failure of global leadership" was a shift from times when Amnesty International concentrated on issues like the death penalty, which it opposes, in countries like China, and the plight of refugees.

Chris' Favorite Speeches: #1

Charlton Heston's
"Winning The Cultural War"
Harvard Law School Forum
February 16, 1999

I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. "My Daddy," he said, "pretends to be people."

There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French cardinal and two geniuses, including Michelangelo. If you want the ceiling re-painted I'll do my best. There always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I'm never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I'm the guy.

As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: If my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty ... your own freedom of thought ... your own compass for what is right.


Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, "We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." Those words are true again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what lives in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you ... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.

Let me back up a little. About a year ago I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms of American citizens. I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve ... I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a "brain-injured, senile, crazy old man." I know ... I'm pretty old ... but I sure Lord ain't senile.

As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No…no… it's much, much bigger than that.

I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain affected thoughts and speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 – long before Hollywood found it fashionable I might say. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist.

I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life throughout my whole career. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.

I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution I am talking about, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind. You are using language not authorized for public consumption!"

But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys-subjects bound to the British crown.

In his book, "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross writes that "blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name is undermining the nation, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it."

Let me read you a few examples.

At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process from kissing to petting to final - at last - copulation ... all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive.

In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who had been infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDs --- the state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not... need not ... tell their patients that they are infected.

At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team "The Tribe" because it was supposedly insulting the local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs really liked the name "The Tribe".

In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery.

In New York City, kids who don't speak a word of Spanish have been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish solely because their own names sound Hispanic.

At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students. Yeah, I know ... that's out of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negroes." Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said "black." But it's a no-no now.

For me, hyphenated identities are awkward ... particularly "Native-American." I'm a Native American, for God's sake. I also happen to be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife's side, my grandson is a twelfth generation native American ... with a capital letter on "American."

Finally, just last month ... David Howard, head of the Washington D.C. Office of Public Advocate, used the word "niggardly" while talking to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course, "niggardly" means stingy or scanty. But within days Howard was forced to publicly apologize and then resign.

As columnist Tony Snow wrote: "David Howard got fired because some people in public employ were morons who

didn't know the meaning of niggardly,
didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and
actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance."

What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say , so telling us what to do can't be far behind.

Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?

Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? Uh-huh…there’s a few…

Now that scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.

You are the best and the brightest. You! here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that ... and abide it ... you are - by your grandfathers' standards - cowards.

Here's another example. Right now at more than one major university, Second Amendment scholars and researchers are being told to shut up about their findings or they'll lose their jobs. Why? Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayor's pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers.

Now I don't care what you think about guns. But if you are not shocked at that, I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Democracy is dialog! Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, "Don't shoot me."

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.

Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism. That’s what it is: New McCarthyism.

But, what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? The answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.

You simply ... disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.

I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr.King ... who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.

Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Viet Nam.

In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom. But be careful ... it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies.

You must be willing to be humiliated ... to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. Now I'm not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have left their mark on me.

Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called "Cop Killer" celebrating ambushing and murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the counrty - in the world.

Police across the country were outraged. rightfully so - at least one had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black.

I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares of Time/Warner at the time, so I decided to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my family and colleagues I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop Killer" - every vicious, vulgar, instructional word.

"I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF
I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF
I'M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF
I'M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF..."BR>

It got worse, a lot worse. I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces.

The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that.

Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore.

"SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY ...."No…no, I won't do to you here what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in stunned silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of them said "We can't print that." "I know," I replied, "but Time/Warner is still selling it."

Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warners, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you have to be willing to act, not just talk.

When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself ... jam the switchboard of the district attorney's office.

When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80% of the students graduate with honors ... choke the halls of the board of regents.

When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl's cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment ... march on that school and block its doorways.

When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you ... petition them, oust them, banish them.

When Time magazine's cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month ... boycott their magazine and the products it advertises.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country.

If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree. I Thank you.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rrago/hestonspeech.htm

More people that need to get a life

No apologies for sexy Paris Hilton ad
Burger chain Carl's Jr. tells watchdog group infuriated over scantily clad soap-up to 'get a life.'
May 24, 2005: 6:24 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNN) - Hamburger chain Carl's Jr. is making no apologies for its new Spicy Burger television commercial, which features Hilton hotel heiress and reality TV star Paris Hilton in a skin-tight swimsuit soaping up a Bentley and crawling all over it before taking a big bite out of the burger. ...



But what gets me is this quote:
"Caldwell[research director for the Parents Television Council] says that because the ad is airing during sports programs, and FOX's "OC", which are heavily watched by teens, it promotes sexuality to an audience that might not be ready for it. "It's difficult to gauge how children are going to react to this," Caldwell said."

The "OC"?!? She thinks viewers of the "OC" may not be ready for sexuality? What could she possibly think the primetime soap is about?

Columbia Biz School describes America as a middle finger

Man, we can't avoid controversy even at a simple thing like commencement.

Full Story

Short version: Indra Nooyi, president of PepsiCo, in addressing CBS '05, compared America to the middle finger of the world and urged us to move in unison with the rest of the world.

My response? Good analogy. I like it. That's the way it's going to remain, if I have any say over it.

Besides, Pepsi sucks (apologies to Steve).

Rebuild the Towers

Donald Trump offers to rebuild World Trade Center twin towers

Now Donald Trump is an egoist of the highest degree, but he's right. Libeskind's artsy freedom tower is a weak tribute to what was:

The terrorists who took down the towers aimed to change our skyline. That spindly little tower will not have the same presence those twin towers had.

Rebuild the towers and restore the skyline. Let the monument to the dead lie in the plaza below, not as a hole in the sky above.

Counter Recruiting

This shit has gone too far.



Rift over recruiting at public high schools
A Seattle high school bars military solicitation, touching off debate over Iraq war and free speech.

Choice Quote:
""Planned Parenthood, as far as I know, does not advocate or perform illegal acts. The US military does," Mr. Ludwig continued. The soft-spoken carpenter said he would not object if Army representatives came to Garfield to debate their ideas on torture or aggressive war. "What I object to is their coming here to recruit students to perform those acts," he said. "It's not about free speech.""

What a dickhead.

In further news, the ACLU of Johns Hopkins is working to have their ROTC detachment tossed off campus. How......inclusive of them.

I say extend Solomon to cover high schools. If you want to disavow yourselves from the actions of our government, feel free to disavaw yourself from its money as well.

Not a retraction... but a correction?

Well, Newsweek can still spin the story in a direction that helps the U.S. in the region. Sure, the reports of the Koran being flushed down the toilet weren't verified or true. But will people really believe a half-hearted retraction?

I think Newsweek people should just come clean that the interrogators actually flushed a Torah down the toilet. It might not help us in Israel, but I suspect it would make us infinitely more popular across the Middle East.

~Testing~

What do Ted Kennedy and Newsweek have in common?



Both have killed more people than Halliburton