Thursday, February 09, 2006

Place your bids now

Someone could have a lot of fun with this if they have deep pockets. From eBay:

You are bidding on a speaking engagement with Cindy Sheehan. Cindy will come speak to a group of your choice (within the continental US)*, and any speaking fees and transportation costs will be waived (your group will only need to provide lodging for the night).

This is a wonderful opportunity to treat your group to an evening of motivation, inspiration, truth, and the indomitable power of a mother's love... and you get to help out the progressive cause, to boot! How great is that?

And in other moonbat news:

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is set to hold an 11 a.m. press conference Thursday in San Francisco regarding her potential run for the Senate.

Sheehan has considered running against current California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is up for re-election in November.

Today's total waste of newscopy

Just when you thought there the wire wasn't going to produce some politically correct bitching disguised as news, well....
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Male characters outnumbered females 3-to-1 overall in top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2004, according to a study whose sponsors say the disparity diminishes the importance of women in children's eyes.

"We're showing kids a world that's very scantly populated with women and female characters," said actress Geena Davis, founder of See Jane, a program of the advocacy group Dads & Daughters that encourages balanced gender representation in entertainment for children.

In the 101 animated and live-action films examined, 28 percent of speaking characters were female, and just 17 percent of people in crowd scenes were female, researchers found in the study released Thursday by See Jane.

"It's important for what kids watch that as far as possible, they see the real world reflected, to see men and women, boys and girls, sharing the space," said Davis, co-star of the female-empowerment film "Thelma & Louise" and star of TV's "Commander in Chief" in which she plays the U.S. president. "They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do."

"Thelma & Louise"... that was the movie where you played a uplifting example of womanhood, right Geena? Packing a gun and running from the law is a real good example for our kids. A true, positive roll model for young girls.

Joe Kelly, co-founder of Dads & Daughters, said as much as he loves "Toy Story," the study made him think about the movie differently. The movie has a positive message about two characters - Tom Hanks' Woody and Tim Allen's Buzz Lightyear - overcoming their differences and working together, but it does have a flaw, Kelly said.

"It wasn't until the study that I went back and realized there's only one toy that's a female character, and it's Bo-Peep. She's standing at the window going, 'Oh, Woody, don't hurt yourself,'" Kelly said. "Not that I want 'Toy Story' to be changed. I don't think there should be any sort of gender formula. But there are other movies to be made with powerful messages featuring female characters."

Uhhh...maybe because the story takes place in a boy's bedroom?

Myself, I vote for more anime from Japan...they really know how to represent women.

Wacky fun with the Religion of Peace

You know, I try to be understanding of other cultures...really I do. But stuff like this (WARNING-BLOODY AND GRAPHIC) is what leads me to think that a large portion of the earth's population needs to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the 7th century. According to the BBC:

Falling on the 10th of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar, Shia Muslims mark the death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson at Karbala with mourning rituals and plays re-enacting the martyrdom.

Men and women dress in black and parade through the streets slapping their chests and chanting.

Some Shia orders flagellate themselves with chains and blades to emulate Hussein's suffering - though this is frowned upon by others.

Also, take a look at this thread from Free Republic to get an idea how sick and weird this is.

Matheny update

Vorticity has an update about the current flap regarding State Rep. Judd Matheny.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Google's not stopping with China

There's been plenty written about Google agreeing to censor content to Chinese Internet users...but what's disturbing is this:
Looks like one blogsite, The Study of Revenge, had Google pre-emptively (i.e. without warning) placed a warning label prior to entering this "hateful" website using big bold letters:

===========================================
CONTENT WARNING
Some readers of this blog have contacted Google because they believe this blog's content is hateful. In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any blog. For more information about this message, please consult our FAQ
===========================================
The site apparently gets the warning due to it's criticism of Islam and liberalism in general.

Like I said, disturbing.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Wellstone memorial - Part 2

I saw some of this cross the wires at work a while ago and it's a total shame that people take the opportunity to use the funeral of Coretta Scott King to hurl abuse at the president. Bush just had to sit there and take it. Of course, had he not attended, they would have slammed him even harder. Damned if you do...

LOWERY: We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there were weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance, poverty abound, for war billions more, but no more for the poor.

Jimmy Carter was at it too.

The Democratic Party: Every political rally a funeral. Every funeral a political rally.

Rock The Casbah

Let's party like it's 622 AD!

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy Casbah sound
But the Bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail

CHORUS:
The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah
The shareef don't like it
Rockin' the Casbah
Rock the Casbah...

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Latest column

Almost forgot to post a link to my latest column, where I deal with the repercussions of just reporting what happened during my trip to cover the president

Fake cartoons?

This puts a new twist into the riots over the Danish cartoons:
Last Friday the CT Blog revealed how a delegation of Danish Muslims, led by Copenhagen imam Abu Laban, toured the Middle East in December and showed fabricated cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a very offensive fashion, even though the pictures had never appeared on Jyllands Posten.
Plus, here's a little of the double standard that's being seen across the pond about this.

"What if" journalism

"I'm smellin' a lotta 'ifs' comin' off this plan..." Jayne Cobb, public relations officer of the cargo ship Serenity

Feb. 13, 2006 issue - In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.

Current and former government officials said they could think of several scenarios in which a president might consider ordering the killing of a terror suspect inside the United States. One former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C. What if the president had strong evidence that a Qaeda suspect was holed up with a dirty bomb and was about to attack? University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein says the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Al Qaeda empowered the president to kill 9/11 perpetrators, or people who assisted their plot, whether they were overseas or inside the United States. On the other hand, Sunstein says, the president would be on less solid legal ground were he to order the killing of a terror suspect in the United States who was not actively preparing an attack.

More of those crazy Muslims...and the people who enable them

Flags and buildings burn as members of the Religion of Peace continue their objections to Danish cartoons that supposedly satirize Mohammed. But what's worse is that some are actually enabling these enraged primates.

For example:

In London, a crowd of 1,000 Muslims clutching orange placards demonstrated outside the Danish embassy. Two dressed as suicide bombers were allowed to stand next to a police van while officers - who had made no arrests the previous day - tried to prevent photographers from taking pictures of them.

The protesters chanted Allah Aqbar (God Is Great), and their placards bore slogans including: "Free Speech Equals Cheap Insults"; "Rudeness, Slander, Disrespect: Is This Freedom Of Speech?"; "Leave Muslims alone" and "Freedom is hypocrisy".

But was is really shocking is this:

The Vatican, while deploring violence, said that certain forms of criticism represented an "unacceptable" provocation. "The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers," a statement said.

What? You mean like this?

Some over at Fox News are tucking their tail between their legs too.

Also Mark Steyn comments on this, which should be read in full:

NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.