Mark Steyn chews on the political news before a wheat combine chews on Mark Steyn.

http://hughhewitt.com/transcripts.aspx?id=27a8ab32-6be3-4548-ad15-2c9f28e63fbf

Thursday, October 29, 2009

HH: Joined by Mark Steyn, Columnist To the World, www.steynonline.com is 
where you can find everything from Mark. Mark, this afternoon, Nancy 
Pelosi dropped a 1,990 page bill on America. The cost is estimated at $200 
billion dollars in more red ink over what we’ve already spent ourselves 
into a hole. It is a nightmare, and she wants to pass it next week. Your 
reaction?

MS: Yeah, this is just the way it is now. I mean basically, the solution 
seems to be not to grow the pie, which is the old-fashioned capitalist 
theory, but to grow the hole. And it’s some sort of perverse, economic 
theory that at some point, the hole will be big enough that we can stop 
digging, and prosperity will somehow emerge from this hole, and efficient 
government and health care and a clean environment will all emerge from 
this hole, this swamp of unsustainable debt, that I think is actually in 
danger of killing the United States dollar as the global currency. I mean, 
the dollar, I think that could well be the next penny to drop, as it were, 
the dollar. And this is irresponsible government on a scale that has not 
been seen before in this country.

HH: Mark Steyn, incredibly, the American Medical Association, which really 
doesn’t deserve the name anymore, said it was withholding judgment on 
the bill. How can you withhold a judgment on a bill they want passed by 
November 11th, when it’s 1,900 pages that nobody’s read? That’s 
obviously, by definition, an abandonment of democracy.

MS: Yes, and I think what you have to understand about the Obama approach 

Sharia Can Wait

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGM0YzQzYWZmYzQ3MGMxMWYwNWNhODhlMWY1NTg4MTk=

by Mark Steyn

I'm in London this weekend and was rather looking forward to today's big 
rally calling for the introduction of Sharia in the UK. Alas, when I 
strolled by Trafalgar Square this afternoon, no jolly cries of "Allahu 
akbar!" rent the air. It seems the big march has been "relocated":

    Unfortunately, in the run up to the planned event, it had also become 
apparent that certain right-wing/anti-Islamic organisations had become 
intent on preventing the march from going ahead, using threats of physical 
violence, including bomb and death threats to any member of the Muslim 
community who happened to attend the march.

    In light of this, organisers of the March4Shariah campaign, after 
careful consultation, have decided to relocate the march in favour of 
securing the safety of the hundreds of Muslims who may have attended the 
march to voice their support for the Deen of Haq (Truth).

"Right-wing" organizations? Well, don't look at me. There seems to be some 
confusion as to precisely why Anjem Choudary, Principal Lecturer at the 
London School of Shariah, called off the big event. There was some thought 
that he didn't want to risk the humiliation of a low turnout. In any 
event, when I swung by, there were only a few counter-protestors, 
including one chap who'd reworked Choudary's "Islam Will Dominate The 
World" slogan into "Free Speech Will Dominate The World". Nevertheless, 
the dream will never die:

    Finally, we would like to say that indeed we will never stop calling 

"Cultural Values"

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjI4MGY3NWEyZGEwZGVjY2U2MjRjYjJhNGQxMjI2NjA=

by Mark Steyn

Another attempted "honor" killing, this time in Arizona. Two women in 
hospital, one with life-threatening injuries. Their crime? According to 
the younger girl's father, she was becoming too "westernized".

I was struck by this passage:

    Peter-Ali Almaleki said he loves his sister and that should she not 
have to be suffering her injuries. But he added that the family lives by 
different cultural values.

    “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” 
he added.

This would be a less ludicrous argument if Mr Almaleki hadn't run down his 
daughter in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. It's all a bit culture à la carte, 
isn't it? Infidel motor vehicles, fine. Infidel guarantees on individual 
rights, no way. Maybe when you're such a sorry excuse of a believer that 
you're incapable of pulling off your lousy "honor killing" without 
resorting to a Grand Cherokee, you're the one who's becoming "too 
westernized".

10/31 03:46 PM

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i've seen these stats elsewhere before ...

... but hadn't passed them on, yet.  Discuss.  (Says the full-time 
stay-at-home dad.)

- - -

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/we_re_the_most_pathetic_men_in_history_CXZ6co8qvuRrRVkcOtAhaL

[ snip ]

Next year, demographers say, there will be more women than men in the US 
workforce for the first time ever. This year, more women than men 
graduated college for the first time ever.

[ snip ]

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Saving the CHRC through amputation

http://www.georgejonas.ca/recent_writing.cfm?id=814

by George Jonas
National Post
October 31, 2009

Richard Moon is the law professor retained last year by the Canadian Human 
Rights Commission to write a report about the regulation of "hate speech" 
on the Internet. He didn't strike people as a libertarian when he got his 
commission, so he surprised many when he recommended the repeal of Section 
13, the controversial "hate speech" provision, from the Canadian Human 
Rights Act.

The other day, Moon outlined in the Saskatchewan Law Review Annual Lecture 
how he arrived at his recommendation, leaving little doubt he threw the 
dead ballast of s. 13 overboard to save the leaky vessel of the CHRC. He 
reasoned, he said, that speech should be prohibited only if it advocated, 
threatened or justified violence against an identifiable group, not if it 
merely defamed or stereotyped it, and that prohibition against preaching 
violence should come under the Criminal Code, not the Human Rights Act.

"I argued," the professor explained, "that a narrowly drawn ban on hate 
speech that focuses on expression that is tied to violence does not fit 
easily or simply into a human rights law that takes an expansive view of 
discrimination, emphasizes the effect of the action on the victim rather 
than the intention or misconduct of the actor and employs a process that 
is designed to engage the parties and facilitate a non-adjudicative 
resolution of the 'dispute' between them."

Professor Moon mentioned this almost in passing, to get it out of the way, 

Re: i've seen these stats elsewhere before ...

We've got guns.  Which is a glib way of saying that our technological advances have made most, if not all, of
the physical deficiencies, as compared to our ancestors, irrelevant.  

This article, and the one I also saw previously, (I believe they were both referencing the same
archaeological findings), came across a bit as if being written by a self hating male.    

Mike F.

----- Original Message ----
From: Peter T. Chattaway <petert@...>
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver <dadl-ot@...>
Sent: Sun, November 1, 2009 9:57:51 AM
Subject: [DADL-OT] i've seen these stats elsewhere before ...

... but hadn't passed them on, yet.  Discuss.  (Says the full-time stay-at-home dad.)

- - -

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/we_re_the_most_pathetic_men_in_history_CXZ6co8qvuRrRVkcOtAhaL

[ snip ]

Next year, demographers say, there will be more women than men in the US workforce for the first time ever.
This year, more women than men graduated college for the first time ever.

[ snip ]

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the top ten movies in north america

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- Following are ticket sales for the top 10 movies 
at the North American box office for the October 30-November 1 weekend, 
according to studio estimates issued Sunday. Final data will be issued 
Monday.

[***] 1  (+) Michael Jackson's This Is It ... $21.3 million   32.5 million
       2  (1) Paranormal Activity ............ $16.5 million   84.8 million
[***] 3  (4) Law Abiding Citizen ............. $7.3 million   51.4 million
[***] 4  (5) Couples Retreat ................. $6.1 million   86.7 million
       5  (2) Saw VI .......................... $5.6 million   22.8 million
[***] 6  (3) Where the Wild Things Are ....... $5.1 million   61.8 million
[***] 7  (8) The Stepfather .................. $3.4 million   24.7 million
[***] 8- (6) Astro Boy ....................... $3.0 million   10.9 million
[***] 8-(11) Amelia .......................... $3.0 million    8.3 million
       10 (7) Cirque du Freak: The ... ........ $2.8 million   10.5 million

NOTE: Last weekend's position in parenthesis. + indicates a new release.
Figures are rounded.

- - -

FWIW, after just five days, Michael Jackson's This Is It is already the 
2nd-highest-grossing concert movie of all time domestically (after Hannah 
Montana/Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, 2008, $65.3 million 
-- a figure boosted by 3-D ticket premiums) and the 3rd-highest-grossing 
documentary of all time domestically (after Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004, $119.2 
million and March of the Penguins, 2005, $77.4 million).

What we need is a vaccine against pseudo-science

I've had a chiropractor for a few months now, and a few times he has 
mentioned his belief that vaccines are the driving force behind various 
ills (like my son's autism).  I thought at first that he was just offering 
a personal opinion, but after reading the blog post below, I'm beginning 
to think his stated opinions are part of a much larger trend ...

- - -

http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/katzenjammer/archive/2009/10/30/what-we-need-is-a-vaccine-against-pseudo-science.aspx

By dangardner
Fri, Oct 30 2009

Imagine a man named Smith who believes incense and chanting are a 
sure-fire cure for a wide array of serious ailments even though no serious 
scientific review has ever supported that conclusion. Smith goes to a 
"college" where he learns all about incense and chanting. The college 
gives Smith a diploma and grandly declares that he is now a "doctor" of 
incense and chanting. Smith then rents an office, has "Dr. Smith" painted 
in large letters on the front window, and proceeds to charge people large 
fees to cure them by means of incense and chanting.

Is "Dr." Smith a fraud? That's probably too strong a word. He is sincere, 
after all. He genuinely believes his cure works. It's more precise to say 
"Dr." Smith is a quack.

But now imagine "Dr." Smith starts telling people worried about the H1N1 
flu they should be wary of the vaccine. It may be harmful, he says. And 
there isn't any good scientific evidence that it works. The better way to 
protect yourself is to boost the immune system. And what's the best way to 

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1

     * By Amy Wallace Email Author
     * October 19, 2009  |
     * 3:00 pm  |
     * Wired Nov 2009

To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man 
in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a 
rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. 
Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams Offit as a 
“biostitute” who whores for the pharmaceutical industry. Actor Jim 
Carrey calls him a profiteer and distills the doctor’s attitude toward 
childhood vaccination down to this chilling mantra: “Grab ‘em and stab 
‘em.” Recently, Carrey and his girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, went on 
CNN’s Larry King Live and singled out Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, as one 
of many unnecessary vaccines, all administered, they said, for just one 
reason: “Greed.”

Thousands of people revile Offit publicly at rallies, on Web sites, and in 
books. Type pauloffit.com into your browser and you’ll find not 
Offit’s official site but an anti-Offit screed “dedicated to exposing 
the truth about the vaccine industry’s most well-paid spokesperson.” 
Go to Wikipedia to read his bio and, as often as not, someone will have 
tampered with the page. The section on Offit’s education was once 
altered to say that he’d studied on a pig farm in Toad Suck, Arkansas. 
(He’s a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Maryland 
School of Medicine).

Then there are the threats. Offit once got an email from a Seattle man 

Capitalism is dead. Long live good-ism

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2156677

William Watson, National Post
Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009

TV Ontario has asked me to go on a panel to discuss whether capitalism 
needs to be rebranded. I assume they don't actually want us to talk about 
branding. Anyone sensible loathes the whole idea of branding. Branding is 
just PR. Not what your product actually does, but how you get people to 
get a warm feeling inside about what you can persuade them to believe it 
does.

Political parties used to worry about which public policies would be best 
for the country. Now they worry about how they can manage their brand so 
as to get people to like and empathize with them no matter what they do.

If I were into branding, I'd suggest we change capitalism's name. 
"Progressivism" is taken -- by regressive thinkers, in the main. So we 
should go for something like "good-ism." Or "better-ism." Or maybe 
"improvement-ism."

Why the self-congratulation? Because until last year's trauma in the 
financial markets, capitalism was doing astoundingly well in Canada. If 
you don't think so, just scroll through the 143 pages of the latest 
edition of Income in Canada, a book of tables and charts that StatCan 
publishes every June.

Take virtually any demographic group. You'll find that its real after-tax 
income has risen in the past 10 years, often by a lot.