Sunday Scan

Triple Crown

Jockey Kent Desormeaux summed up yesterday's Belmont Stakes pretty well, saying of Triple Crown contender Big Brown, "I had no horse." Big Brown finished a distant, distant last, and another year goes by without a Triple Crown winner.

I didn't even watch the race because I've soured on all forms of gambling, but it reminded me of 1977 and Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, who I saw very up-close at the Kentucky Derby.

The not so incredible ex-wife was a photographer at the Louisville Courier Journal and I was her Derby photo assistant. She buried an auto-drive Nikon so the lens was at dirt level under the rail about 10 yards past the finish line. She focused it on the finish line, and handed me a cable remote.

"Push it when they reach the last pole before the finish and hold it down until the last horse is past you," she said. And that's what I did.

As the pack tore past me, I heard the jockeys yelling and the leather creaking and the whips slapping, I felt a hot rush of air, and was spattered with horse sweat. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life. After they blew past, I let the shutter button go and remembered to start breathing again.

In the process, I took an image of Seattle Slew crossing the finish line, all four feet in the air. It became somewhat famous; in fact, when a commemorative plate company selected one image of Seattle Slew for a series of plates on Triple Crown winners, they selected my Derby picture. Here it is:

I can't claim it as mine; it's credited to my ex-wife. But it's a heck of a lot better than the crummy one of the Belmont at the top of the post, isn't it?

Those Racist Clintons

"Sometimes your opponent just runs a good campaign," lamented Hillary's campaign chief Mark Penn in an NYT op/ed today.

I thought you paid geniuses like Penn millions of dollars, as Hillary did, so that your candidate would run a better campaign.

Penn raises many excuses for Hillary's failure, boiling it down mostly to money -- another responsibility of the campaign chief -- but the most interesting paragraph in the piece is this one:

The Clintons have spent their lives fighting as much as any leaders in their generation for greater equality across racial and gender lines. I believe nothing they said was ever intended to divide the country by race. Any suggestion to the contrary was perhaps the greatest injustice done to them in this campaign.

All in all, I have to agree with him, even though I can't stand it, and even with the famous Bill-ism about the only reason why Obama is running a fairy-tale campaign is because he's black, and the famously misinterpreted Hil-ism about Bobby Kennedy's assassination.

Back in February, I wrote a post titled In A PC Nation, How Will The GOP Run? that raised the issue of hyper-sensitivity on race issues:

Even if there were a line fine enough to appease the keepers of political correctness in the black, feminist and media communities, and there's not, the GOP will be charged with crossing it. There is no way the GOP can get to November without being called every "ist" in the book.

Still true, more true, today. As it turns out, even the Clintons couldn't pass this test in the face of the Obamaniacs who are found in high positions in the media and the DNC. The challenge for that old white guy with his blond cutie-pie of a wife has not gotten any easier.

China, The Nation That Keeps On Giving

Toys with lead paint, tainted dog food, and of course who can forget bird flu? China is such a generous nation! So giving! And since bird flu was such a hit last time around, it's now time for bird flu redux:

HONG KONG (WSJ) -- Hong Kong authorities slaughtered 2,700 birds and banned live poultry imports from mainland China for up to 21 days, after a routine inspection Saturday found chickens in one of the city's poultry markets infected with the dangerous H5N1 bird-flu virus.

While there's little immediate threat to humans from the infected birds, the discovery revives fears that the disease could still be a problem with poultry flocks in southern China -- although it isn't yet clear whether the infected birds came from local or mainland Chinese farms."

And what does the generous, giving People's Republic have to say about all this? Ever the humble gift-giver, they deferred:

An official with the General Administration of Quality, Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said the agency needed to consider questions about the matter before responding.

Can you say "chicken?"

Those Pesky Thermometers

Yesterday I wrote about NASA cooking the books on its US temperature data, a story Warmie cultists would no doubt reject as tales of denial by Warmie heretics. Well, if they had pipes and if they burned those little bowls of carbon-based plant material, I'd tell them to put this in their pipes and smoke it:

A perfect illustration is found when comparing the USHCN (U.S. Historical Climatology Network) temperature records from Central Park in New York City to those taken a mere 55 miles away at West Point. Readings in Central Park have been regularly measured since 1835 when the city's population had just surpassed 200,000. Today, surrounded by a metropolis of eight million people filled with some of the world's tallest buildings, a massive underground subway system, an extensive sewer system, power generation facilities, and millions of cars, buses, and taxis, the Central Park temperatures have been greatly altered by urbanization. And, as one might expect, the Central Park historical temperature plot illustrates an incredible warming increase of nearly 4øF.

The West Point readings have also been meticulously maintained since 1835, but the environment surrounding the thermometer shelter has experienced significantly less manmade interference then the one in Central Park. The West Point readings illustrate a significantly lower warming increase of only about 0.6øF over the same 170-year period. This is remarkable given that the year 1835 is considered to be the last gasp of the Little Ice Age -- a significant period of global cooling that stretched back several hundred years.

Cries of out of control global warming become more dubious when one looks at the hottest decade in modern history, the 1930s. The summer of 1930 marked the beginning of the longest drought of the 20th Century. From June 1 to August 3, Washington, D.C. experienced twenty-one days of high temperatures of at least 100ø. During that record-shattering heat wave, there were maximum temperatures set on nine different days that remain unbroken more than three-quarters-of-a-century later. (emphasis added; source)

How long can the global warming myth stand up to the temperature facts? It's an unanswerable question because global warming is the science of hysterics and hypnotism, and is therefore outside the realm of rational deduction.

hat-tip: Greenie Watch

Forever Reuters

No one can slip subjectivity into journalistic objectivity like Reuters. Here they are again, reporting on the meeting of G8 energy chiefs in Japan:

Japan, the United States, China, India and South Korea -- who together guzzle nearly half the world's oil -- said that they had agreed on the need for greater transparency in energy markets and more investment by consumers and producers both, while stopping short of calling on OPEC to pump more crude today. (source)

"Guzzle" is defined as "to drink especially liquor greedily, continually, or habitually." The U.S. and Japan should not be included with the guzzlers; we are more and more merely consumers. Greed simply isn't a part of our oil consumption; efficient output is. We consume ever more efficiently, investing billions in ways to make our automotive fleet, our homes and our industrial operations more efficient.

An objective Reuters (oxymoron) would have used the word consume. If it wants to look for oil-guzzling whipping boys, it should have stopped the list at China and Inda, which have put economic growth far ahead of environmental protection, and have put the acquisition of oil ahead of the efficient consumption of oil. In fact, both countries still subsidize the price of fuel to their populations, and refused reasoned calls to stop the practice in the name of greater fuel conservation.

Excitable Electrons

Confession time: I never understood this Mohamed ElBardei guy, and could no see the top UN nuke monitoring guy as a Nobel Prize winner than ... say ... Al Gore.

His mini-interview in Spiegel (the full interview publishes on Tuesday) gives me no further insights.

On Iran:

"The readiness on Iran's side to cooperate leaves a lot to be desired," he said. "We have pressing questions." Iran's leadership, he said, is sending "a message to the entire world: We can build a bomb in relatively short time."

On Syria:

But the general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency also said he expected "absolute transparency" from Syria.

On stopping proliferation by military action:

"With unilateral military actions, countries are undermining international agreements, and we are at a historic turning point."

What's difference between Iran and Syria might explain why ElBardei expects complete transparency from Syria, but not Iran? The only thing that comes to my mind is that there's been military action against Syria's nukes but not Iran's.

Hyper-Hysteria

Fear is rising with a bullet on the list of global motivators. Plastic baby bottles, genetically engineered food, cell phones ... all feed the hysteria machine, ultimately producing stories like this:

South Korean politics are on the brink of meltdown after spiralling public hysteria over “mad cow” disease in American beef unleashed a weekend of mass protests and pitched battles between demonstrators and riot police.

Police vehicles were today attacked by angry mobs armed with sticks and police lines were reportedly charged after the 40,000-strong crowd of peaceful protesters thinned-out to leave a smaller group of activists.

With the violence threatening to continue for another week, and the calls for his resignation being screamed by students on the streets of Seoul, President Lee Myung Bak now faces a series of potentially crippling departures from his immediate circle of allies. (Times of London)

How many recent cases of BSE have there been in the US? One.

How many recent cases of BSE in the US were discovered before the cow was slaughtered for beef? One.

How many humans have been infected from BSE in US beef? None.

Frankly, being in that crowd of angry Koreans looks far more dangerous to one's health than eating U.S. beef.

Brit Muslims Effectively Ban Christians From Their Towns

Last month an Asian priest from the Church of England became the target of a lot of hate speech when he said Muslims in Britain have effectively created no-go zones where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims -- especially overt Christians -- to enter.

It turns out (Big surprise! not) he was right, and that the PC-crazed British establishment is as much behind this deplorable situation as jihad-crazed mullahs:

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year. (source)

One of the evangelicals said of the police officer:

"He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

The pastors are pursuing legal action, which could make things worse, the way things are going in England.

Here's a swell idea that just needs one brave British cop: Arrest some Muslims in a non-Muslim neighborhood, charging them with the hate crime of making nice non-jihadist folks nervous.

Have Yourself A PC Little Christmas

Courtesy of Miss Beth, who found it at Snooper, we get this wonderfully PC Nativity, which includes the following measures to make sure no one, except traditional Christians (and who cares about them?) is offended:

1. Recycling bins outside stable.
2. A sheep plugging veganism - and muzzled in case it bites - plus another sheep advertising British Meat in fairness to non-vegetables
3. Banner proclaims: "Atheism is OK too".
4. Fathers 4 justice protester in Batman outfit.
5. Solar panels on stable roof.
6. Wise man in a wheelchair.
7. "Safety in the stable" poster.
8. Fire extinguisher next to poster.
9. Angel in high-visibility jacket.
10. Wheelchair ramp to stable.
11. Statues from other religions surround the manger.
12. Joseph wears hard hat - as does Mary.
13. Mothers for justice demonstrator in Wonder Woman outfit.
14. Hand washing facility.
15. Essential first aid kit.
16. Figure in T-shirt with slogan: "Scientology rocks!"
17. Airport-style metal detector.

That just about does it ... all we need now is an official from the Federal Stable Regulatory Commission.

Unhappy Thanksgiving Wishes

Happy Thanksgiving ... unless, of course, you're one of those grumpy PC types who just can't stand the fact that the Eurocentric, patriarchal American civilization kicks global butt ... folks who feel it's important to subject American children to re-education, as the Seattle school district did to mark this Thanksgiving.

A letter sent to teachers encouraged them to myth-bust Thanksgiving and helpfully provided tips like this:

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

Heaven forbid that white Americans should every be happy. But according to Fox, the author assumes the worst -- as we see manifested continually by the negative world view of the PC-ites:

[O]ne Seattle-area tribe says Thanksgiving is not somber on the reservation but a time to see friends and family, as it is for other Americans.

Native Americans in the Northwest celebrate the holiday with turkey and salmon, said Daryl Williams of the Tulalip Tribes. Before the period of bitter and violent relationships between natives and their culturally European counterparts, they worked together to survive, he said.

"The spirit of Thanksgiving, of people working together to help each other, is the spirit I think that needs to grow in this country, because this country has gotten very divisive," he said.

And yes, Virginia, there are ten preceding "myths" in this dose of Thanksgiving nastiness, which the Seattle school district felt compelled to share with its students. Imagine how the Christian kids felt about this one:

Myth #3: The colonists came seeking freedom of religion in a new land.

Fact: The colonists were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. By 1620, hundreds of Native people had already been to England and back, most as captives; so the Plimoth colonists knew full well that the land they were settling on was inhabited. Nevertheless, their belief system taught them that any land that was “unimproved” was “wild” and theirs for the taking; that the people who lived there were roving heathens with no right to the land. Both the Separatists and Puritans were rigid fundamentalists who came here fully intending to take the land away from its Native inhabitants and establish a new nation, their “Holy Kingdom.” The Plimoth colonists were never concerned with “freedom of religion” for anyone but themselves.

"Rigid fundamentalists,"' as opposed to "rigid politically correct doctrinaire grumps," I guess.

Shame on me for thinking the way I do. So I'd best re-visit my salutation. Happy Unhappy Thanksgiving to you all.

Quote Of The Day: Uncensored Edition

"It's not about whether you like what you heard or not. I find censorship to be far more offensive than anything that was said."
-- Debbie Wolf, president of People Against Censorship

I can't say that I agree all the time with Ms. Wolf, whose organization, I suspect, is secretly funded by the satellite radio industry, perhaps with a contribution or two from the pornographers as well. It's a little hard to tell who's behind the group, since this is the full text of the "About" section of its Web site:

About

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There's more stuff out there that deserve censorship than ever before, and I'm a fan of censorship when it's obviously right. But the reactionary hand of the media -- drawing back with a loud OW! after the Imus affair -- is getting laughable.

Imus was a nasty man who got a long-deserved comeuppance. I won't waste an electron defending him.

Then came two even scuzzier than Imus, Opie and Anthony, who allowed a guest to muse about raping Secretary of State Rice, First Lady Laura Bush and Queen Elizabeth. The Rev. Sharpton appears to be standing up for Condi this time -- or is he defending those two white chicks? -- because he's calling for their dismissal, and CBS is considering it.

Now along comes two other CBS losers, Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay of "The Dog House with JV and Elvis" who just got shown the door after an on-air prank call three weeks ago ordered "slimp flied lice" from a Chinese restaurant. (source)


Slimp flied lice. That's pretty darn tame, don't you think? Hardly the f-word that ends in "aggot." But an NYC councilman named Liu took offense, making a sound point in saying that allowing JV and Elvis to stay on the air while forcing Imus out shows discrimination against Asians.

But it's an odd kind of discrimination, isn't it? Must we now have equal opportunity censorship? And it's a remarkably easy and unforgiving kind of censorship. Can anyone be fired for one slip-up, one off-hand Macaca-like slip? Is there some unspoken standard of a history of verbal stupidity that makes the shock-jocks vulnerable? If so, let's state it before I worry that Hugh might get canned for mentioning the orthodontic challenges faced by Brits, or Rush canned for foolishly referring to himself someday as a fat, balding white guy -- a phrase that offends many.

Censoring pornography makes sense, as does, in the proper situation, censoring speech that could lead to violence against others ... you know, the sort of speech one might hear in a mosque on any given Friday.

But censoring "slimp flied lice?" We're reaching the point of zero tolerance, the realm of people with zero brains.

It's Easter, Time To Bash The Christians!

Play this scenario in your head: A hotel in trendy New York decides to attract customers, so it opens the Kwanza season with some new art in its gallary: A statue of a lynched black farm work, sculpted out of marshmallow.

Or maybe on the eve of Ramadan, they showcase in the gallery a statue of Mohammed finely crafted in lamb kabobs.

Not a chance. That would take some guts, but the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan has no guts; it just has the routine disregard for Christians that's so prevalent among the PC set. The hotel "boldly" launched a big pre-Easter publicity push hyping a major new piece in its gallery: Christ, nude, crucified, made out of 200 pounds of chocolate.

The "artist," Cosimo Cavallara, thinks himself a great wit; he named the work, "My Sweet Lord." How bold. How avant guard. How publicity-mongering. How juvenile.

Christians were not amused, says Catholic News Service:

"The media have reported that a so-called 'work of art,' manifestly intended to offend the Christians of our community, will be displayed during Holy Week in the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan," Cardinal Edward Egan, archbishop of New York, said in a statement.

"It is a scandalous carving of Jesus Christ allegedly made out of chocolate. What the Roger Smith Hotel would hope to achieve by this sickening display, no one seems to know. The Catholic community is alerted to this offense of our faith and sensitivities. This is something we will not forget," Egan added.

New Yorkers, beware. Stay safely clear of the Roger Smith Hotel unless you want to risk being caught up in the rioting mob of Christians who will no doubt be forming soon, throwing rocks, chanting anti-anti-Christian slogans and demanding the decapitation of the hotel and gallery operators.

Not.

Nothing will happen, and PC artists, thinking themselves so very bold, will continue to offend Christians in the name of art. They will get the praise of critics, the adulation of their artsy friends, and take no risk whatsoever ... at least on this mortal plane.

Violent Social Meltdown In England

Immigration, diversity, tolerance and gun control are failing again -- this time in South London and in a very shocking way. How shocking? This shocking:

Scores of worried parents are buying body armour for their children in a desperate attempt to keep them safe as street violence escalates.

A firm that supplies stab- and bullet-proof vests to government agencies around the world has sold 60 jackets, at a cost of between £300 to £425, to concerned parents who have flooded the company with inquiries after several murders of teenagers on London streets.

The company has received more than 100 calls from parents in the capital over the past few weeks. The company, VestGuard UK, usually gets one or two calls of this type per year.

The fatal stabbings of Adam Regis, killed three days after 16-year-old Kodjo Yenga, are the latest in a series of violent incidents involving teenagers in recent months. (Times of London)

The violence isn't limited to the capitol:

Mike Todd, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, said: "We have got 14 and 15-year-old kids walking around in body armour. And we have 13-year-olds where, when we do house searches, we find Section 1 firearms in their houses because they are being used to hold them"

South London is poor London, immigrant London, housing project London. One of its schools was recognized recently as being the country's most diverse -- with 71 languages spoken there.
It's been tough for longer than any current resident has been alive -- South London's streets once were littered with the bodies of Jack the Ripper's victims.

But today's kids are more violent, more likely to punch a kid down, then stomp on his head. Gangs and graffiti and guns rule the streets, and the Labor government is hamstrung with PC platitudes and an unwillingness to give police the numbers and authority needed to clamp down on the situation.

The comments to the Times tell a lot about why this is happening:

What do we expect? In a society that is too politically correct to allow schools to discipline pupils and insists they are adults by droning on about their rights and exposing them to adult material...of course they think they can do whatever they want. The police always advise "Don't get involved" does anone really want to live in a society like that? Get Involved... Tom, London

This is a direct result of an open borders policy that has fundamentally changed British society - as it's changing industrialized societies around the globe. The flow of cheap Third World labor is wonderful for Big Business. They profit as their nations balkanize into competing ethnic zones. Stories such as this are typical of an area where competing ethnic groups live. This is not in the interest of Western people. Michael, Spain

As a labour supporter it pains me to say the following, it is now time for labour to go, it's not that people are putting body armour on their children, it's the fact people are thinking about it that says this country is becoming, like America, an unsafe place to live. That is so easily down the the capitalistic animal survival approach, what happened to socialism Blair? Mikey, Birmingham

Summing it up nicely is Mike Jones from Hampshire:

What on earth is happening to this country!!! It comes to something when you have to dress your children in body armour to go to school. All these liberal minded idiots who control the country with their human rights this and that have an awful lot to answer for but then again, they are up in their ivory towers a world away from crime and violence so why should they care?

Sadly, the violence that's wracking England and causing parents to buy body armor for their children is a small blood spatter compared to what goes on in America -- the legacy of a seed planted by FDR, fertilized by LBJ and nurtured today by the Dem leadership, abetted by a GOP that's too weak-kneed to stand up to them.