World Famous Beatings

I was listening to a discussion of the scandal at Abu Ghraib. A Black caller claimed that this scandal was no different that many of the scandals that have rocked domestic police forces. He listed Rodney King, Timothy Thomas (of Cincinnati), Abner Louima, Amadu Dialo to support his point that Abu Ghraib was merely the extention of white brutality of people of color.

Whatever.

But it got me thinking.

Name 4 white people beaten by the police? I can't do it. Can you? How about 4 of anyone besides black people. Latinos, Asians, Australians, Inuit?

Man, the NAACP does some good advertising.

Abstinence-Only Held to a Higher Standard

There have been a lot of stories in the media recently about abstinence-only policies. Over and over the charge of "no proof of efficacy" is repeated. Fascinating.

Since when do we put a requirement of efficacy on any government policy? This is especially suspicious from the Left. Not that they push ineffective more frequently than the Right, but rather because they believe in Government solution to most problems.

Does spending more money on government-run schools correllate to better educated students? Should these schools be asked/required to present evidence? Not in the minds of most Democrats.

How about the local Believe campaign? The 90% Democrat City of Baltimore has spent millions of dollars on the program and to what measurable benefit. Mind you, the city has discovered a ~$80 million deficit in the city's school system. Was there any requirement before spending the money, creating city policy, that there be a proof of efficacy?

Which policy has been based on demonsterable efficacy? Social Security, Medicare, Taxes, Immigration, Drug interdiction, Prohibition, Gun Control? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for demonstrations of efficiency and efficacy but those things are almost the antithesis of government. There is nothing about government which moves it toward efficiency or efficacy especially when it comes to public policy. This is one of the key reasons Libertarians want to move the Government out of these policies.

Back to the topic... is it better to teach only-abstinence and deny kids the potentially life-saving information about condoms or is it ok for teachers to pull a condom over a banana giving kids the message that sex is an acceptible activity so long as you have a raincoat? How about this, why don't we get the government out of this decision and leave it up to parents. Can we not allow for the possibility that both of these two alternatives have appropriate applications and that there is, more than likely, a continuum between these two extremes which can only be fine tuned to the maturity level and social development of a child by his or her parents? Like most debates which are described in one dimensional terms of Left and Right there is a totally unmentioned dimension which is completely ignored by the media.

Missing men get no Respect.

Women (mainly the FemiNazis) whine and moan, "we don't make the same pay", "we pay more for haircuts and drycleaning". You don't see them turning down free admission and free drinks at Ladies Nights. You don't see them asking judges to give sole custody to their husbands to make sure there's a 50/50 balance of such awards. And in this article we find yet another example of bias in our world. The Feminist have an attitude well summed by Freddie Mercury, "I want it all, and I want it now."

Find me the document that says life would be fair.

Brokaw must have studied under Bluto

Not Popeye's nemesis but rather the eminent scholar John Blutarsky. I’ll return to this momentarily.

This morning on Meet the Press, Mr Brokaw had this to say:

The president has been talking a lot about the comparison between World War II and now saying that the choices are the same between tyranny and liberty. In the Air Force Academy speech, he said we were the subject of a ruthless, treacherous attack. I pointed out to him that that attack came from al-Qaeda, not from Iraq, but he plainly believes that the choices are the same in terms tyrannical behavior.

His voice carried with it overtones of superiority while revealing he corrected the President.

Of course in Brokaw's zeal to show up the President, he demonstrated his own ignorance. It's just a shame that Bush isn't as quick-witted as Reagan or Clinton, or Brokaw would have been given his comeuppance.

To set the stage, the interview took place on the escarpment above the beaches at Normandy where American, British, Australian, and other Allied forces were killed or maimed fighting the... wait for it... Germans. That's right, the celebration you were attending was the Allied victory over the Germans. So Tom, when President Bush was comparing 9/11 (committed by Al-Qaeda) to "a ruthless, treacherous attack" from WWII, which German attack was he referring to? You see, Tom watched Animal House a bit too often and began believing that the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. Bush should have pointed out that Tom was right that it wasn't Iraq that attacked the US Homeland. Then with a thoughtful pause, followed up with, "It wasn't the Germans either."

From a State Department webpage,

Soon after the United States entered the war, the western Allies decided that their essential military effort was to be concentrated in Europe, where the core of enemy power lay, while the Pacific theater was to be secondary.

We were hit hard by the Japanese. We not only had to deal with them, but had to save the rest of Western Europe as well. Pearl Harbor got us into a war which had already been raging all around us. We took on and beat all comers - Germany, Italy, and Japan. It did not matter that neither the Germans nor the Italians attacked American soil. There was evil afoot in many places and we stopped it. September 11th may have been 19 individuals with coordination from a cave in Afghanistan, but it doesn't mean the core of enemy power starts and ends there.

Abortion bias in the media

The title of this NPR piece is Abortion Study Could Shift Debate over Ban. This is absolutely fascinating.

The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology has published the first peer-reviewed study of an abortion procedure Congress banned last year. The study has the potential to shift the debate over the law. Contrary to claims by opponents in Congress, the study finds the procedure is no more dangerous than others used in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Dangerous to whom? The mother? I think it's the danger to a baby that is the issue. There is a Constitutional requirement, as determined in SCOTUS after they overturned the previous law, the health of the mother must be protected. I've written a letter to NARAL asking to provide examples of when partial-birth abortion is medically necessary. Not surprisingly, they were unable to provide such. Congress didn't pass the ban to eliminate a dangerous procedure to the mother; they did it to eliminate a dangerous procedure to the baby. This strawman is so obvious, NPR must be counting on the overwhelming Leftist tendancies of their audience to see this fallacy as a well constructed argument.