Digitus Impudicus

Um, Don't Tell Me I'm Going To Have To Apologize For The Whole "Bigfoot" Thing

Seriously. I've made fun of "those people." UFOs riders, Sasquatch aficionados, believers in pyramids, tarot cards and crystals.

My "spirituality" rating is zero. Maximum.

So, I don't want to hear that "they" found some kind of "foot" in a Virginia landfill. A "foot" that exhibits non-human qualities. Something that's been characterized as having belonged to some kind of "apelike species."

I'm sorry. But when I'm looking for word from the zoological "experts," "apelike species" is really not the slam-dunk answer I'm looking for.

So, until something else happens, I'm sticking to my skepticism. My guess is an orangutan.

Otherwise it's time to break out the Tinfoil Hats and Space Alien Anal Probes. And you know how much I hate that.


Oh, check the byline on that story. This ain't the National Enquirer reporting this.
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Somebody Explain to Me Why Egypt Still Ranks High On Our Aid List

Oh, that's right. They're a Muslim country, and this is the Bush Administration. What was I thinking?

Sadly, Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman's family has denounced him for insulting Islam, Egypt and the fucking Easter Bunny - or something like that. Michelle Malkin details the info better than I'm going to bother with - not because I don't care, but because I know how hopeless it is for him to expect any kind of action from Bush's State Department.

Point of perspective here: how loudly would conservatives and Republicans be screaming were it not Bush, but instead Clinton, who had his FBI intentionally ignore domestic Islamist terrorism, and be so completely in bed with with Arab Islamist regimes?

I'm really done with supporting people with the surname Bush. I honestly hope Jeb doesn't run because I'd choke on my intestines were I forced to punch a hole in my ballot with that damn name one more friggin time. I'd vote for Jeb over any of the running (dog) Democrats... I'd even vote for GW or GHW over any of them (and then promptly slice off my right hand). But where do we find a true warfighter? Where do we find somebody who is not beholding to some Arab Emirate? Where do we go to find somebody who is willing to fight the entrenched interests of the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency - both of which have been captured by the weak-kneed Left? Who will struggle against a decrepit and degenerate Europe?

Right now I'm thinking Rudy. As much as I disagree with him on so very many things. At least one thing about him I do know: because of his personal experiences I know he does not forget the nature of the enemy we face. I get the feeling from him that in those quiet moments of reflection, when a choice has to be made, what will come before his eyes again - an unbidden but irresistible memory - will be that 90 minutes when he personally watched buildings fall and people smashed on sidewalks.

al-Qaeda is rebuilding. Our weakness - Somalia like - in the eyes of our enemies, will bring them to us again. I certainly don't fault the average American for inviting this - most of us only have the time to skim through the daily news and what our leaders tell us. But since what our leaders have been telling us has been 90% Democrat/al-Qaeda propaganda, and only 10% Bush's paltry efforts at leadership, how could we not have come to the conclusion that Islamofascism is not a major concern?

Bush has been so weak on the subject, it looks like a damn campaign prop. Think back to the November elections. Where was the "Bear In The Woods" campaign commercial? Where were the broad strokes? The clear dividing lines?

Where was the choice presented?

Those with the most ability are burdened with the most responsibility. Bush has failed not because he was worse than other presidents, but because he could have been so much more than other presidents.

"I hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon."

Oh really.
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Hear No Terrorism, See No Terrorism, Speak No Terrorism

Taking their lead from the president, the FBI continues to willfully blind itself to domestic Islamist terrorism – all in the name of sensitivity, no doubt. Unfortunately, the same level of sensitivity is not practiced when it comes to informing the American people about the real dangers they face.

FBI agent Patrick Kiernan declared to reporters Wednesday he had no reason to believe the random, dispassionately executed murder of five people by 18-year-old Bosnian Muslim immigrant Sulejman Talovic Monday night had anything to do with Islamic terrorism, calling it "just unexplainable."

No reason to believe that... except for the fact that he was a Muslim man between the ages of 16 and 40, and murdered five Americans.

JHC, even his father thinks that his son was trained to do this.

Will somebody please explain to me how this asinine policy of talking down verifiable and obvious instances of terrorism (I’m sorry, there is no domestic terrorism, right?) is supposed to help us understand the dangers that exist? I honestly cannot deconstruct the logic here. Bush wants us to make decisions based on the fact that we’re at war with militant Islam, but every time we get hit domestically by that very same militant Islam his government tells us, “nothing to see here. Move along.”?

Ach! It’s enough to make you pine for John McCain – and how drastic is that?!
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Cabbie Runs Down Students

Religious Argument Leaves One Hospitalized

WSMV News:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A local cab driver allegedly tried to run over two customers after a fight over religion became heated.

The incident happened early Sunday morning on the Vanderbilt campus and left one man hospitalized and a cab driver arrested, said police

Two students visiting from Ohio were coming from a bar downtown when they got into an argument with their driver over religion, said police. After they paid the driver he allegedly ran them down in a parking lot.

Ibrihim Ahmned...

Well, you know the rest.


(hat tip LGF)
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks at AEI

For all those amateur "experts" on Islam in the West, and those who clearly misunderstand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's message (or worse, attempt to hijack her intent for their own perfidious reasons), you might want to check out her recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute. (see "video" link under "Event Materials" at top right of page).

(pay special attention to her extemporaneous remarks during the question and answer session)


(hat tip LGF)
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Anybody Want To Guess the Religion of The Salt Lake City Mall Shooter?

Well, let's review...

The attack on the students at University of North Carolina
The El-Al shooting at LAX
The shooting up of the Seattle Jewish community center

and now...

Shooting spree at a Salt Lake City shopping mall

Oh, and I had to go to desertnews.com to find the answer to my question above. AP (no doubt accidentally) missed that little tidbit of info. But not to worry, no doubt George W. Bush and Michael Chertoff will tell us that there is no terrorism within the United States.

Well, actually, I've noticed that there's a subtle caveat that they always include in their pronouncements about this. What they usually say is something to the effect of, "there have been no major terrorist attacks" in the US since 9/11.

So I guess that makes it okay.
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Don't Piss Off The Krauts

Well, at least not Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the publisher Axel Springer. In 2004 he apparently had had enough of the sniveling EuroTrash running (and I mean running) rampant throughout the halls of power in European officialdom.

The original was in German, naturally, but Snopes. com has kindly translated it as confirmation that the article was actually written (it had become a bit of an urban legend over the last two plus years). I don't normally repost an entire article, but I'm not going to paraphrase this focused and articulate defender of Western Culture. It'd be disrespectful IMO.

Europe, thy name is Cowardice.

A few days ago, Henryk M. Broder wrote in the Welt am Sonntag, "Europe — thy name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so painfully true.

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and Gentiles their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated far too long before realizing that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized the Communist Soviet Union and the former East Germany, those parts of Eastern Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideological alternative. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and we debated and debated and were still debating when the Americans finally came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting the only democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," relativizes the fundamentalist Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to condone the 300,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery in Iraq and condemn the actions of George Bush in the self-righteousness of the peace movement. And in the end it is also appeasement at its most grotesque when Germany reacts to the escalating violence of Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere by proposing a national Muslim holiday.

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership realize that there is a form of crusade underway, an especially perfidious one of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims targeting civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies. This is a conflict that will likely last longer than any of the great military conflicts of the last century, waged by an adversary who cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation but is instead spurred on by such gestures, mistaking them as signs of weakness.

Two recent American presidents had the courage needed for staunch anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, and Bush — supported only by the persuasive Social Democrat politician Tony Blair — recognized the danger in the Islamic war against democracy. His place in history will need to be evaluated a number of years down the road.

In the meantime, Europe snuggles into its multicultural niche instead of defending the values of a liberal society with charismatic certitude and acting as a positive center of power in a delicate balance between the true global powers, America and China. We instead present ourselves as the world champions of tolerance against the intolerants, which even Otto Schily [Germany's former Federal Minister of the Interior] justifiably criticizes. And why, actually? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic.

For his policies, Bush risks the devaluation of the dollar, huge amounts of added national debt, and a massive and lasting strain on the American economy — because everything is at stake.

Yet while America's so allegedly materialistic robber baron capitalists know their priorities, we timidly defend the benefice of our social affluence. Just stay out of it; it could get expensive. We'd rather discuss our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage or listen to televangelists preach about the need to "Reach out to murderers." These days, it sometimes seems that Europe is like a little old lady who cups her shaking hands around her last pieces of jewelry as a thief breaks in right next door. Europe, thy name is Cowardice.

So, next time you hear some Euroweenie carping about how badly Americans dis on Europeans, just point his cheese-snorting nose in this direction. After all, "Digitus Impudicus, thy name is Education."

Heh.
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Why The Left Is Unfit To Lead America (Part XVIII)

Charlize Theron, actress, hottie, theoretical physicist and intellectual heavyweight of the Left (okay, I was kidding about the physicist part) has made herself a little “documentary,” entitled East of Havana, about rappers in the Workers’ Paradise of Cuba.

CNN’s Rick Sanchez (that’s right, CNN!??) interviewed Ms Theron recently, and plunged the depths of her intellect and got a little compare & contrast (US/Cuba) action.

Short answer: Difference between the US and Cuba? What difference?

Here's the transcript - but you'll want to check the video. Too good to miss. And forgive the emphasis I've added. I don't want my Lefty readers missing the delicious parts.

Sanchez: “There’s still a lack of freedom in Cuba, obviously...and you may have experienced this.”

Theron: ”Well, I would argue that there’s a lack of freedom in America...”

“Yah, but you don’t have Democrats being arrested or thrown in jail. And you can have a meeting in hour house and a... “

“No, but I do remember not too long ago um some people getting fired from their jobs on television because they spoke up on how they felt about the war.”

[voiceover] “Okay, fair enough, but does that mean that Cuban and US freedoms, or lack thereof, are parallel? I wanted her to explain, so I asked. And then it got a little testy.”

“Do you think the lack of freedoms in Cuba are parallel to the lack of freedoms in the United States?”

“Well I would, I would compare those two. Yah, definitely. I mean the fact that these, these rappers have to show their lyrics to government officials before they perform. Um and that they have to get the okay from that, to somebody on a television show speaking up on the war in Iraq and losing their job.”

Well, I don't know of any "television" people losing their jobs for speaking out against the war in Iraq. In fact, it seems more like a solid career enhancer to do anything from spinning the news in Iraq against the Bush administration, to hyping the casualty count to make a Leftist political point, to leaking classified information to the enemy. And as to rappers in the US having to submit their lyrics to some faceless government minion for approval - anybody want to take a stab at what the hell she's talking about?

I'd sure like to find out where the money came from for this "documentary." Maybe some intrepid reporter will... ah, never mind. I know it ain't gonna happen.

But between this rotting piece of anti-American, pro-Communist Cuba propaganda, and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 - another train wreck (plane crash?) of a "documentary," it's yet again very clear that the Left has to lie to people to convince them to agree with their point of view. Leave your intellectual honesty at the door, comrade.

Of course, like Moore, Sheehan, the Dixie Chicks, and countless other Leftist America-haters, where do they choose to actually live? Given the choice of over 200 nations around the world, each with its own form of government - no two alike, where do they make their home?

Sanchez: “It sounds like, it sounds like you don’t have a very high opinion of the United States if you think that the freedoms in the United States are really, are as bad as the freedoms in Cuba.”

Theron: “Oh my god, no you’re so wrong. I absolutely love... why, why do you think I live in the United States?”

Uh, because it's so like Cuba? I dunno. You tell us.
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The Grammies To Fly-Over Country: "In Your Face, Bitches"

In one of the bitchiest of bitch-slaps ever delivered by the Elitist Left to the rubes, hicks and hayseeds in Fly-over Country, the Grammy Awards gave the Best Country Album of the Year award to ... wait for it ... The Dixie Chicks.

That's right, the former Country Music trio, who some time ago walked away from country music after pissing off most of their fans with their Left-wing politics, received the most prestigious country music-genre award the Grammy people had to offer.

Enjoying the shocking irony of the award, and displaying the same level of "class" we've learned to expect from this crew, lead singer Natalie Maines said, "That's interesting. Well, to quote the great 'Simpsons' _ 'Heh-Heh.'"

Nothing like rubbing it in, eh Nat?

Of course, awards are one thing. Butts in auditorium seats are something else, and those numbers have been going down faster than Al Frankin on a hot date with Michael Moore. But as we've seen often before with musicians on the downhill side of their careers, Maines seems to be a bit confused about the conventional meaning of "success."

As Maines accepted the album of the year, she joked: "I'm ready to make nice!" She then added: "I think people are using their freedom of speech with all these awards. We get the message."

Well, okay Natalie. You keep the message and the awards, and the real country music artists will keep the fans, the success, and the money.

Fair trade?
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Gray Lady Going Down



(Note: New York Times links may require registration)


A few years back the New York Times hired what they called a "Public Editor" in response to a series of journalistic mishaps they experienced. This person was to provide an outside check of journalistic standards, as practiced by the Times, and provide such analysis in his NYT-based column. More or less an ombudsman.

Currently, the person holding that position is Byron Calame. Also currently, the Times has made (maybe) the decision to close down that position as soon as Calame's contract runs out in May. Unfortunately (for the Times), having a "Public Editor" with access to the inner workings of the NYT, and the ability to question the reporters and editors on their practices and policies, has not done particularly well for the public image of the Times. Thus the termination of the "Public Editor" position.

This doesn't come as a complete surprise, of course. It's easy to make the noises of a credible newspaper that respects and adheres to journalistic standards. it's much more difficult to put that into practice on a regular basis. Especially if those standards come into conflict with the Times' higher priority of twitching the news around to elect Democrats, pandering to Islamist sympathizers and Arab dictators, and leaking classified information to Americas enemies whenever the opportunity arises - especially if they can spin it to make Bush look bad.

So Calame's most recent analysis was related to a front page, explosive, exclusive, surprising, amazing and revolutionary story - also completely misleading - that said a majority of women in the US lived without a spouse.

What kind of got lost in the mix is that the survey the story was based on included, well, young women who are legally barred from living with a "spouse" in most states in the US. Namely, 15-year-old girls. What's fun is that Calame saw a draft version of the story, and saw that this "interesting" little tidbit (the 15-year-olds) wasn't mentioned until the 10th paragraph of the story. But by the time the editors got done with the story, and published it, the 15-year-old girls found themselves buried somewhere in the 21st paragraph. Not to worry, though. They were still included in the survey numbers (along with the 16 and 17-year-olds).

Calame also had to deal with a reporter (the author of the story), veteran Times reporter Sam Roberts, who was a little inconsistent in how he answered Calame's questions about how the story was put together. In fact, that's what Calame ended his own column with.

After dealing with three weeks of questions from readers and from me, Mr. Roberts on Monday expressed a little less certainty about the new majority trumpeted in the first paragraph of his article. He wrote to me: “I think the essence of the article remains accurate: that, depending on how one adjusts the census’s definition, about half — maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less, depending on the age group — of American women are living without a spouse at any given time.”

Readers deserved this kind of more tempered perspective back on Jan. 16 — and a more tempered story, displayed on an inside page.

So with journalistic standards heading for Flatline Villa, Pinch ready to duck out the back door, and the Times abandoning even the pretense of self-critical objectivity (by ditching the Public Editor position), I'd have to say that their reporting a 4th Quarter loss of $648 Million a few weeks ago came as no surprise.

Yah, I said million. With an M. In one quarter.

So, we'll have to see what kind of party I'll have to have when the Gray Lady finally slips beneath the publishing waves. It's not like I'm going to glory in the loss of a news source - it hasn't been one for many years now. But I hope the wreckage of a once-standards-defining paper will provide an object lesson to other papers (are you paying attention, LA Times?) that if you consistently fail your readership, and engage in the same disastrously biased reporting lying that has caused many other such news outlets to suffer losses, then even you (LA Times) can find yourself on Skid Row.

Even George Soros could only save Air America for only so long.
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“Global Warming” Fanatics Now Reaching Hysterical Levels

“Global Warming,” the new article of faith amongst the Left, has already reached the level where if you’re a climatologist who disagrees with the Faith you could well lose your job – or your credentials. There’s nothing more exciting than a trendy new “talking point” – such as the Kyoto “treaty” that John Kerry recently highlighted as one of the reasons the United States is now a “pariah” around the world (even though he voted against Kyoto).

But calling your own country a pariah is no longer enough, apparently. Neither, it would seem, is losing your job or facing professional ostracization. Now it appears that people who question the hyperventilating over “Global Warming” are the equivalent of those who claim that Nazi Germany never slaughtered 6 million Jews and roughly 6 Million Slavs, handicapped, gays and others. In other words, "Global Warming" skeptics are now the equivalent of “Holocaust Deniers.”

Long-time Boston Globe columnist, Ellen Goodman, is leading the way with this new level of political strong-arming with her February 9 column.

By every measure, the U N 's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises the level of alarm. The fact of global warming is "unequivocal." The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get.

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m still in the “undecided” category on the “global warming” issue – I find it curious (for example) why one of the fastest growing economies on the planet (China), and the most populous nation on the planet (China) was exempted from the Kyoto treaty. And I’d rather be pretty certain before obliterating the US economy. But since I do show some level of skepticism, or at least a “prove it to me” attitude, I now find myself in the same category as racist hate-mongering neo-Nazis and believers in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This got me thinking. I always get a little uncomfortable when people without a scientific background presume to lecture the rest of us on the scientific method, and what qualifies as a scientific fact. I become even more worried when they back that up with the passionate zealotry of the newly converted, including charges that sound a lot like “Blasphemy! Heretic!” I mean, if the science is so compelling, then why the over-the-top rhetoric?

But what concerns me even more is when one of the High Priests of popular weather forecasting, the lead climatologist for the Weather Channel, calls for the excommunication of those unbelievers who question Doctrine, as with Heidi Cullen’s proposal that meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they happen to be skeptical about the theory of human-generated global warming. Human-generated global warming may, or may not, be a reality. But there should always be room in the scientific community for the outsider skeptic who is willing to buck the trend and challenge the current understanding of the general scientific community.

After all, from such sources occasionally come insights that prove eventually to be true. It wasn’t all that long ago that mainstream Science disbelieved the idea that the Earth had been struck by meteors large enough to make craters. At least until an outsider (Shoemaker) forwarded the idea, defended it against personal and professional attacks, and persisted and proved his case. There are many such examples, another one being the idea of plate tectonics.

Without these mavericks we may not have come to these new understandings for many decades – or worse. But with Global Warming there seems to be a willingness to try to shove out these theoretical lepers – silencing them by threats to their livelihood and reputation. And now, accusing them of being the equivalent of Klansmen.

There’s something fishy going on here, some reason why the push for Global Warming is generating such intense and oppressive intellectual thuggery. Whenever something generates so much unreasoned passion, to the point of making threats, I have to wonder about the motives behind it. I mean, they’re lecturing us on the scientific method, while at the same time threatening those who question.

Questioning is the very heart of science. And there is never a time or place when it is inappropriate to question the current scientific paradigm.
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Fun With 72 Virgins

First, everybody who found this post through Google, thinking you were in for some pre-teen hijinks, go here.

Now for the rest of us who walk upright, I found this on YouTube. It's a short vid of a comic commenting on the reaction of Islamic girls to becoming one of the Virgins (a reward for Islamic terrorists).


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