The common ground: Wingnut Right and Moonbat Left; Hypocrisy and us chickens....

Jonah Goldberg at NRO has written the ultimate thinkpiece on political hypocrisy: The Secret Files of the Anti-Hypocrite Squad

Michael Moore, the biggest mouthpiece of the anti-hypocrite Left, constantly denounces Republicans as racists for opposing affirmative action. Schweizer reports that Moore almost never hires black people. Moore insists, "I don't own a single share of stock." He denounces clever Enron style schemes to conceal wealth and rails against Haliburton as the Mother of All Evils. He told C-Span's Brian Lamb in his best prolier-than-thou voice that he wanted nothing to do with the stock market. "That's the rich man's game."

Well, it turns out Moore's got another game going. As Schweizer reports, Moore told the IRS his home is the headquarters of his tax-free foundation, to which he contributes some of his millions for the write-off. The foundation, in turn, not only bought stock — its holdings are a Who's Who of "greedy" corporations, including Halliburton.

Some of us Republicans marveled at Nixon opening the doors to China...but the press was beside itself. Thinly veiled hints of Nixon hypocrisy permeated the pages of NY Times and other bastions of progressive thought. Which, of course, was the point. It took Nixon to do that... otherwise imagine if Hubert Humphrey had been elected and sought to do the same!
Currently, one only has to look at the recent days' events to see more examples... Fitzgerald lionized; seen as the "Anti-Starr" by all the Moonbats. While attacked by shallow-thinkers like Hannity.
Well, Starr just did his job... get into a debate with a moonbat, get past the point of impeached for sex, which is difficult.. and the argument from the left comes up empty. But that doesnt matter, they'll continue to howl at the moon about the famous 16 words being a lie while Clinton's foibles were a 'misunderstanding'.

As Ann Landers once replied to a writer who said she doesnt go to church "because of all the Hypocrites, there"... where else would you have them?

Well, I'd rather NOT have them in politics.. but those beltway idiots are people too, so I guess there's no helping it.

Libby indicted for losing at 'Telephone'?

The report isnt in yet, but most sources say Libby will be indicted for giving false statements in testimony during Fitzgerald's investigation.
{No links because that's everywhere}

Which causes one to think about how often we can recall exactly what went on in a conversation occuring months or years before.
While we must assume that there's evidence pointing to Libby KNOWINGLY making those statements, that won't be totally clear until trial, if there is one.

But there's a bigger issue at play... the Bush Administration has taken heat from the left, since day one, about it's 'secrecy and gamesmanship'.. and where will the charges come from? From Bush Administration talking to the press.

How much easier to just adopt a strict 'no comment' rule. On ANYTHING... cause you never know what's gonna come back and bite yer ass.

Summary: You can't look silly playing 'Telephone' if you refuse to play in the first place.

Miers withdraws; Neocons "give Left a sword"

I cant put it better than Hugh Hewitt

"I gave them a sword.": The consequences of the anti-Miers movement.

In his interviews with David Frost, Richard Nixon declared:

"I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish."

I was on the fence on Miers... she might have been alright.. or she might have been another 'Souter'... influenced by her 'Senior Partners'' sense of compassion and purpose.
I sincerely hope that the repair for this fiasco will be the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown.
When the left on the judiciary panel brings up her supposed 'anti-minority' decisions, anyone with half a brain will be able to trump that with another of her decisions which are irrefutable as to 'minority rights'.

Condi strikes fear into the hearts of mortals...

Evidently 2008 is just around the corner.

The subtleties of media and SIG spin, are starting to hit home like a ton of bricks:

As seen in USAToday

From ThePen has an interesting finding on just how easy it is for a file photo to accidently fall into the Photoshop tank at USA Today.
Before the 'slip-up'


This is a good followup to a Wash Post article taking Condi to task for not being militant and bitter about her childhood in Birmingham... almost stating, flatly, that MS Rice was in denial.. nevermind she has publicly spoken of her father guarding his church with a rifle and of the loss of her playmate in the bombing.What Rice Can't See

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A21

Rice's parents tried their best to shelter their only daughter from Jim Crow racism, and they succeeded. Forty years later, Rice shows no bitterness when she recalls her childhood in a town whose streets were ruled by the segregationist police chief Bull Connor. "I've always said about Birmingham that because race was everything, race was nothing," she said in an interview on the flight home.

When she reminisces, she talks of piano lessons and her brief attempt at ballet -- not of Connor setting his dogs loose on brave men, women and children marching for freedom, which is the Birmingham that other residents I met still remember. A friend of Rice's, Denise McNair, was one of the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. That would have left a deep scar on me, but Rice can speak of that atrocity without visible emotion.

Perhaps Ms Rice has let the examples of her childhood motivate... rather than define.. her life? Don't we ALL wish we could do that?

One MIGHT suspect that the writer REALLY feels that Rice is corrupt... else how could she possibly be a conservative. And part of this administration.

What do we call someone, on the other hand, who constantly brings up the torturous events of childhood as the modus agendi for their current beliefs and actions?

What do we call someone who uses a platform of striving for "equal rights" and acceptance... yet constantly points out that their constituency has special needs and deserves special recognition?

In benign cases, we might call them neurotic...

Omen Update:

USAToday installed the original phot, with an apology.

Editor's note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY's editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.

Uh..okay. Now lets look at those two again... I'm sorry but I dont see how it could have been anything but intentional.
Anyone who's messed with image altering software knows it can be tricky, BUT that's why you look at it after the edit... to make sure it didnt do something unintended.

Birmingham Church bombings, Iraq 'insurgency' and the media.

A Powerline post reminds us of the Church bombings of 42 years ago, and points to:
NT TImes: Rice Pays Homage to Victims of Church Bombing

"As God would have it, they were at Sunday school when America experienced homegrown terrorists of the worst sort," Ms. Rice said in an emotional ceremony at a park across the street from the church, which was bombed in 1963. In her speech, she sought to connect her childhood in the segregated South to her work as the first African-American woman to be the nation's top diplomat.

"It was meant to shatter our spirit," she said of the bombing. "It was meant to say that we shouldn't rise up. Just a few weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King said, 'I have a dream,' it was meant to tell us that, no, we didn't have a dream, and that dream was going to be denied."

Then as now in Iraq, the atrocities of killing innocents are meant to dispirit and bring fear. Now as then, these will fail.

But there is a vast difference.

Then, there were no excuses made for the bombers in the media. There was no attempt to blame the government for 'inspiring' these bombings by means of the Civil Rights Act of 64. No calls to roll back forced integration as in Little Rock... Or for nationalizing the Guard....no Hollywood and Entertainmment apologists for Maddox, Faubus and George Wallace.

Imagine our outrage were it so.

And imagine if just a few papers and magazines and public figures were have to come out in support of the Klan and Segregationists... can you imagine that they might be emboldened to repeat such cowardly acts? I can.

Naturally these media and celebrities would couch their outrageous views in terms of "cultural" and "religious" differences from the rest of America. Would, at the least, view with sympathy these acts in relation to the old south seeing the end of a "way of Life".
Of course, if some did that, they would have to overlook the various lynchings and assassinations that came before and were yet to come.

But in the end reason and freedom won... as it will in Iraq. But this time, for Iraqi's, it will come at a much higher price.

And the irony of just who it was that made it so difficult and bloody by encouraging the terror killers will not be lost in the lessons of history.

Miers hearing: Roe v Wade opinion troubling

Powerline links to OpinionJounal: Did Christian conservatives receive assurances that Miers would oppose Roe v. Wade?

This is a problem.

The hard stand taken by the Dems that Roe v Wade is inviolate is only buttressed by the context of this 'conference call'.

Roe v Wade was bad law, based on a non-existant Constitutional right, only available through a stretch of the imagination as to what the Framers might do when confronted with need for "Privacy of Action".

But there comes a time when we must move on. Revisiting this, over and over, serves no good purpose and puts Conservatives in the ridiculous position of advocating legislation through the courts.

On the Conservative side, we have to recognize that the insistance on abortion rights is only the bell-sheep of the Privacy tenet which serves MORE purposes than just the right to abort. It implies that other private actions are bound by the tenet. "Right to marry whoever and however many you please" being the next obvious application.

But it's possible to take a stand and be firm without overturning Roe. And without the fallout that would result.

Miers had better frame the best argument she's ever done to avoid the trap.

Bush to Blair: Going 'beyond Iraq', "Secret conversations" Revealed!!!!

Much ado about nothing, as usual.

The October 16 UK Independent has an editorial about 'secret conversations in which;

The US President told Tony Blair, in a secret telephone conversation in January 2003 that he "wanted to go beyond Iraq".

He implied that the military action against Saddam Hussein was only a first step in the battle against WMD proliferation in a series of countries.

Mr Bush said he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation", says the letter on Downing Street paper, marked secret and personal.

It goes on to name Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as examples..

This is germane to ANYTHING, how?

Could it be that the Independent staff had this waiting in the wings in case the Iraqi constitutional referendum went off with minimal troubles to report?

When you READ it, there is no new news there, though I assume that the readership of the Galloway-apologist rag will claim otherwise.
When the left trumpeted far and wide, on the event of the Iraqi invasion, that Bush was a 'hypocrite' as he had close ties with the Saud's who in turn funded Wahabism and, thus indirectly -if not DIRECTLY-, the education and suppport of Al Quaida 'volunteers', I dont think any of us dismissed that fact.. most of us had read of and known that for years, and I'm pretty sure that Bush knew that too.
And Pakistan being a hotbed of world-order-anarchists isnt news, to anyone who pays attention, either.

And are we to believe that this was a revelation to Tony Blair? So what was the intent of the conversation? We don't know for sure. I would assume under linear thought processes that Bush thought a regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan would pressure changes within Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But the published ARTICLE seems to IMPLY that Bush might have considered military options against the two. Though the paper is clever enough to not come out and say it.

They leave the reader to make the connection. And, of course, anyone sho might read the Independent to find out what's really going on in the world, and who the bad actors are, will drink the kool-aid.

Miers, McCain, Buckley, Limbaugh, Kerry, LBJ and Frum

and NE Corridor Elitism = Bad News, all around!

Yeah, I know... all that makes little sense in the point of the current discussion. And yet it does.

I dont know WHAT Bush and Rove were thinking in this nomination but it SURE HAS BROADENED The political discourse.

No longer can Conservatives point to Liberals' Harvard Yard populism with disdain and derision. We have that in our own!
Our own National Review elitists have weighed in and found this 'common girl' wanting! Beltway 'high-church Conservatives' want her withdrawn! The nerve of that Texas oaf who was on their fringes, by dint of "Skull&Bones" and Harvard Attendance to bring in a commoner to the most prestigious stage of governance!
Note what
Beldar's blog has to say about it!
The view that Harriet Miers lacks the proper 'Credentials' because of her law school and/or lack of bench experience seems credible on the face of it, but when you get DOWN to the goal of putting an associate on the panel who will consider more than primae facie legal precedent as applied to modern society, does it REALLY matter all that much?

The idea that Bush nominates yet another 'crony' in the aftermath of Katrina where Michael Brown performed dismally is at the root of a lot of this carping. But there's a difference. Brown excelled at bureaucracy, and his credentials in that arena, to say nothing of his acting the bureaucrat to the bitter end is also his failing.

The difference is Bush KNOWS Miers. and Dubya may be dyslexic and inarticulate but he aint stupid.
And what is WRONG with a justice who KNOWS what it takes to run a law firm.. and what it takes to manage a state bar. And what, therefore, is BEHIND a lot of the legal wranglings that go on backstage in any litigation.

If Miers had come out of Harvard, Yale or Stanford.. I suspect we wouldnt be having this discussion, never mind she never sat bench.

Even Rush Limbaugh is torn, and an example, as well... his hero was William F Buckley, but anyone would have to admit that Limbaugh's presentation of the same points as Buckley would make is like night and day
While Buckley was often the subject of parody for his learned demeanor and dry ivy-league cynical wit, Limbaugh takes it to the level of the common guy. Both can poke holes in the Liberal stream of thought, both employ a cynical approach but, in Rush's case, to 'get it', you dont have to be upperclass educated elite.

Suppose you had to have 'credentials' to be a political satirist/pundit.. and the model was Buckley? Rush would still be doing PR for Sports teams.

Hell... for that matter, Randi Rhodes would be doing "Homemaker's Corner" for some local radio station. While I would prefer the latter case, look at what we'd have missed in the former example.

And then there's McCain... he is relatively silent on this. The problem with McCain is that he is between a rock and a hard place. Harry Reid already stole his thunder with his advocacy, so McCain cant be the 'building bridges' leader. PLUS he knows that he'll be left high and dry when Reid invokes the "I was for her before I voted against her" parlor trick.
Let's face it, McCain KNOWS he screwed the pooch with Campaign Finance Reform, which ended up making things worse rather than better. And McCain knows that his 'cred' stems from elitism, in his case back through his Dad, plus his POW experience, never mind his work on the Senate floor; suspect at the least.

So I suspect that McCain is waiting to see how the hearings go... and I am for that. In fact, I wish everyone would have waited.

Because, nerve-racking as this is, I suspect that Rove and Bush have dreamed up yet another "Rope-a-Dope" and will prove - yet again - just how incompetent our elected officials become once they're marinated in the beltway sauce.

And, as enjoyable as that is, it isnt good for the American Voter's opinion of our system.

****

The other names? Ah, I just threw those in there ....
UPDATE:
Someone sent an EMAIL to Hugh Hewitt, wherein he coined the term for this beltway elitism "EVIAN Flu"

A Little on the Side

A little common sense, that is.

If you dont like wading through a huge stack of 'favorites' or 'bookmarks' depending on what your browser calls them, you tend to discover 'GEM' sites over and over again.
Such a one is The Post Chronicle

And one of my favorite political commenter/observers, Thomas Sowell, writes for it.

Here's excerpts of two of his latest:
Spoiled Brat Politics

An editorial in a recent issue of the National Geographic's "Traveler" magazine complained that kayakers in Maine found "residential development" near national parks and urged its readers to use their "influence" to prevent such things.

"You are the stakeholders in our national parks," it said.

Really? What stake do kayakers and others of like mind have that is not also a stake held by people who build the vacation homes whose presence offends the kayak set? Homeowners are just as much citizens and taxpayers as kayakers are, and they are even entitled to equal treatment under the 14th Amendment.

The essence of bigotry is denying others the same rights you claim for yourself. Green bigots are a classic example.

And Spoiled Brat Politics: Part II

The idea that what I want overrides what you want has increasingly become part of our thinking, our policies and even our laws. There is literally a federal case before the Supreme Court over the fact that many colleges and universities refuse to allow military recruiters on campus.

Why? Because, as the academics will tell you, they are opposed to the military, either in general or because they think the military are discriminating against homosexuals or for whatever other reasons they have.

These academics have every right to be against the military, for any reason or for no reason.

If they don't like the military, they can stay away from the military, since there is no draft. But what they want is to keep other people away from the military, by preventing students from hearing what the military recruiters have to say, as students hear what recruiters from all sorts of other institutions and movements have to say on campus.

The reason there is a legal issue is that a federal law has been passed, saying that colleges and universities that forbid military recruiters from coming on campus are no longer eligible to receive federal money.

Academics are outraged. They see this law as a violation of their freedom -- including their right to violate their students' freedom. It is classic spoiled brat politics, based on the idea that what I want overrides what you want.

See the connection?
It's nothing more than common sense... you cant reasonably expect, in a free society, to be excepted from the rules governing the use of commonly held resources or commonly provided protections and services.
In the one case, you have no more say, as a visitor, than one who invests in the locale. .. and to say there should be no private investment in the locale makes the whole determination of what IS an investment quite subjective.

In the case of the kayaker, should he succeed in blocking housing along the pristine riverway, will he THEN turn his attention to eliminating walking trails?
After THAT how about invoking rules that one cant set foot on the banks for fear of disturbing flora and fauna?

And we must note that there are those who advocate closing certain wilderness areas against ALL human encroachment.. no matter the reason or motive for being there.

In the case of Academia vs Military, it simply boggles the mind. They have the right to shun the military all they want.
But they should have to go the extra mile and disturb their little comfort zone to do that.
They DONT have the right to disallow freedom of speech and movement to an arm of the same government that feeds them.. at the same time as they are celebrating their OWN freedom of dissent.

But, as Sowell points out.. there's an underlying factor at work, too. That is the litigation industry. If it wasnt for all this foo-foo, what would all the lawyers do?

And note the line ads for class action suits on that site!
Ironic, wot? Ah,well...

The Delphi Automotive Parts Crisis - why did it happen?
Delphi is the amalgamation of former GM parts disions: Delco, Harrison, Inland and quite a few others, including the former Frigidaire Automotive line.
It recently filed for reorganization under bankruptcy... leading many to fear tens of thousands of high wage jobs lost.

This may seem to some a little bit of a surprise but, to those of us with close ties, it's been forewarned a long time.

* If GM hadnt started the benefits package to attract scarce labor after WWII, in order to meet pent-up consuner demand we wouldnt be having a lot of these problems


* If GM and Ford hadnt been shortsighted and knuckled under too easily to easily to the unions, they wouldnt be going slowly bankrupt... it's not a matter of 'if' but 'when'

* if Unions had tended to their knitting and acted more like a guild than a labor agent, we wouldnt have a lot of this mess.
The charter of any union should be to protect their interests, thus the membership, by providing a quality product at a reasonable price. Doing so involves weeding out rejects.

My whole family is GM/Harrison/Delphi... my dad and brothers retired from Dayton plants; fortunately they saw this coming and, having a choice during the spin-off, opted for GM retirement over Delphi.
- A no-brainer, you say? Uh, no... strangely some likened the spin-off to the forced divestiture of ATT. They thought that, freed of the GM shackles, like the Baby Bells - Delphi would take off and fly. Not EVEN close!

EVERY family dinner involved a 'preaching to the choir' litany about the waste and corruption in the assembly lines. The unions were self-centered and corrupt when I worked there in the sixties and it only got worse.
Just from MY experience:
- Had two grievances filed on me when I was on the line for attempting to streamline my job, incidently increasing quality
- On overtime assignments, I was repeatedly bumped into the worst job on the line by a union committeeman, who had a total on 1.5 years on the job, 1 less than me. That stopped when my foreman suggested I file a grievance against the committeeman.

My Father in Law, OTOH, was ALSO a retired 30 year GM employee, but he was notorious for complaining that auto prices were too high for him to afford a new car (he'd have had to cut down on his VFW bar tab) and, in the same breath, brag about how he didnt do anything the whole shift.

The locals in Dayton were, and presumably are, more concerned with appealing the cases of their members caught dealing drugs than helping Delphi find a way to keep the plants open.

And NO, my family WASNT management they were line workers.. and my brothers both were foremen at one time then gave it up because upper plant management didnt care about trying to eliminate waste and low productivity, only about 'making the shift quota'... much of which ended up in the rework bin, because it couldnt pass the final quality check.

Now all that doesnt seem remarkable on the face of it... but do we remember WHY Japanese cars got their market in the US?

Bottom Line for Unions: They would rather have permanent layoffs, and protect the high wages and benefits of the remaining workers

Bottom Line for automotive middle management: "Dont rock the boat, all that matters is short term numbers"

Bottom line for US corporations? "Pay it now AND pay it later."

Summary for ALL of us: The shift from corporate pension to independent retirement funds, IRA and 401K, came 30 years too late.

Al Gore on 'freedom' of Press

TPMCafe:Gore on the Threat to American Democracy

on the face of it, seems to be reasoned speech on the value of the free press.

But there are subtle hints, here, that he thinks it is TOO free.

It would appear to the dispassionate reader that he lauds the 'net as allowing the citizen discourse on the issues of the moment... but then:

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.

Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.")

In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.

Noted: Gore's reference to 'fabricated' sources, is what got Rather busted.

So in context, while we cant dispute the paid actors or paid columnists... though we might differ on how really EFFECTIVE they were, it seems to be the thought that counts.

And, Schizo Al ignores the fact that the 'digital brownshirts' (hows THAT for cloaked invective!) seem to be, on the whole, nipping at Dubya's heels or outright biting at him for some of his current policy decisions!

- Cronyism for appointments to SCOTUS and FEMA

- Immigration Policy (or lack of it)

- Spending and National Debt

What rankles here is that Gore implies that criticism by either the press or citizen journalist/bloggers is dangerous... he lauds Tom Paine, now, but neglects to note that Paine was regarded by the elite establishment, THEN, as seditious and fear-mongering.

So which is it, Al? Is the 'net - which you godfathered {that part IS TRUE, BTW}- a force for good or evil?

And you lament the 'scandalization' of the news.. are you saying that started lately... like say, ummmm, with Fox News?

I dont think it did... I think you are blowing smoke.

Yellow Journalism got it's moniker LONG before TV or even radio... and for that matter, existed before Tom Paine.
Of course, that's inconvenient for the point you are trying to make.

What I THINK is, that you are distressed that YOUR informed message isnt being accepted without quam by the idiots in the "Red States"

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.

The clarity and focus, he neglects to mention, were clarity and focus on "reporting facts" later found to be NOT TRUE! So.... tell me again how that emotional disparagement of the supposed actions of a minority 'our finest hour'?!!!!

The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

Are you SURE, AL?!!!!

And who WOULD those forces be... Google? Umm...look AGAIN, Al! They are bona fide "enlightened Liberals"! Or maybe you're concerned that they'll turn to the dark side.

Or are you pointing to advocacy of the UN taking control of Domain Name Services?
Fighting over America's control of the Internet

Since the UN already arbitrates rights to URL names.. such as "fatalbert" {which it awarded to Bill Cosby, against a squatter's claim} ... one has to wonder WHY it's important for the UN to have control over DNS.

Could it be that it needs control over access to sites which dont follow "informed" speech or ideas?

So anyone who reads this, just MIGHT want to read that speech again.. and figure out for themselves just WHAT Gore advocates as a remedy.

To help you out, questionaires for journalism students and current journalists point to 85% identifying themselves as Democrat or Liberal.. and taking up journalism so as "to make a difference".

So I guess you'd have to wonder if Gore REALLY wants the press to be objective.. and report facts without bias.
Isn't it REALLY that he longs for the press that was extant during the Carter Administration, for example... where the only conservative viewpoints might be found in High-Literacy magazines like "National Review"?

Or do we have reason to rejoice in the fact that, even given Dubya's mistakes and inability to articulate, that THIS man is NOT President!

For Service, speak English

...stuck in a window of your bar or customer service establishment is likely to get you hauled up before your state civil rights commission.

That's what happened to a bar owner in a Cincinnati suburb, whose hispanic population has grown to 5000.

No.. he didnt refuse service to anyone. No, he didnt refuse to hire a hispanic.. at least that's not noted by any evidence collected by the Ohio commission.

Someone saw the poster, decided it was bigoted in content and complained to big brother.

Presumably, it made the passer-by feel "uncomfortable".

Bar's 'Speak English' Sign Discriminatory, Commission Rules

"I thought, 'Oh my God, It's 2005 and people are still living in the past," neighbor Loraine Robertson said. "It's really embarrassing where I live. I've got kids and they ask me all the time how somebody can put up a sign that's so racist toward other people."

"Racist?" - I wonder.

I wonder if a Parisian who came to town to sample Cincinnati culture would ALSO be asked to order in English.

I wonder if someone from Bavaria who was seeking out long-lost emigre family in the heavily German populated region would ALSO be asked to order in English?

I wonder that a suburban mom doesnt teach her kids the difference between 'racism' and bigotry, or maybe just 'bias'. Or maybe I know already. Racism has a connotation of 'hate'. I wonder if that neighbor would admit to any of her OWN biases?

Because the basis of the complaint is that it made the reader feel 'uncomfortable'. Thus anyone who feels 'uncomfortable' is obviously biased against those whose words or actions.. or even presence.. makes them feel 'uncomfortable'.

I suggest that Loraine Robertson pack her kids into her car at 10PM and cruise Vine Street in Cincy and see how 'uncomfortable' REALLY feels.

I doubt that will happen... as it's well known that Vine street at night is pimp and pusher territory.

The Cincy paper has an opinion, of course, and it sure doesnt come down on the side of free speech or 'right to refuse service to anyone': 'Speak English' a sign of bigotry

People should denounce bigotry - or the perception of bigotry - as soon as it raises its head because of the ugly stain it leaves on a community.

We expect no less from the progressive citizens of Mason and elsewhere concerning Tom Ullum's sign in the front window of the Pleasure Inn on U.S. 42. In block letters, it reads: "FOR SERVICE SPEAK ENGLISH." Can non-English-speaking people even understand what they're reading?

"or the perception of bigotry" - Oh my! Seems to me that's mighty subjective. How do you QUALIFY bigotry, then? If the perceiver has a degree in social sciences? Or just if they understand the difference between bigotry and racism? Or maybe if some panel finds they dont have a "biased" thought, themselves?

I wonder if it occurs to that writer that every human being has his biases.

I wonder if he'd admit it in writing. Presumably not... if he knows what's good for him, anyway. He might be hauled up on a count of fomenting 'hate-speech'.

You who come down on the side of PC'ness will be happy to note that Al Gore and a host of other progressive minded folks plan on doing something about that!

...more on that to come.

Keep Reminding ourselves

One of my favorite sites which I visit to note how things are REALLY going in Iraq, is IRAQ THE MODEL The authors dont sugarcoat things but they present what must be a pretty accurate picture of how things are going for the majority of Iraqis.
From that site you can surf to any number of Iraqi and middle eastern blogs with varying points of view... some pretty critical of US policy, but worth reading for the real views nonetheless.
Recently he linked to a post in Friends of Democracy

..... That was how we abused our freedom given to us for the first time in our lives, thanks to the boots of Marines which crushed Saddam's Fedayeen and Baathists.

I truly believe that our salvation as a nation depends on our being completely honest with the United States; to prove to her that we are Iraqis first and that we do not conspire against her with Iran or Syria or anyone; to thank and to acknowledge her role in liberating us, otherwise we will be heading to disaster.

The United States is the sole player in Iraq today. A new Marshall plan in Iraq would contribute greatly to our economic development. We should learn from the Japanese, the Koreans and the Germans. We should ask them how they dealt with America, how they reassured her that her interests were secure and how they were reconstructed by her to become among the world's greatest economic superpowers. Perhaps the secret is that none of these countries were neighboring Iran or Syria? Nevertheless, we should learn to overcome our geographical fate because, unfortunately, it can never be changed.

That could be done by even more Iraqis refusing to submit to the natural urge to react to foreigners showing their power, turning that emotion, instead, against foreigners and anarchists who demonstrate their power by killing innocents.

Truly, no army can defeat a terror campaign... it takes the will of the society under attack to do that.