Congratulations to Michelle Obama for another success in her campaign to browbeat private business into complying with her vision of what our children should eat.  These stories always make me cringe on a number of levels, including: (1) As a believer in limited government and as-unlimited-as-possible liberty and freedom of choice, I hate the idea of the federal government dictating what private businesses can offer and what consumers can choose to consume.  The market (read: parents), not the First Lady, should determine whether fries or fruit should be the “default side order” in a kid’s meal; (2) As a believer in personal responsibility, I loathe the idea that it’s the fast food, chain restaurant and grocery stores’ fault that children are obese in America.  It’s not.  It’s the fault of the parents and the children; and (3) As a proponent of exercise, outdoor activity and risk-taking, I despise the culture of gadgetry, sloth and “vulgar pleasures” (to quote Tocqueville) that has consumed our kids and turned them into out of shape, intolerable brats.

I don’t have any evidence except for a lot of anecdotes from my family and my friends who grew up in the same era, but ask yourself this: do you really believe that kids today eat more junk food and fast food than kids who grew up in the 1970s and 80s?  I submit that they do not.  Assuming a similar socioeconomic level, do the children of today’s 30-50 year-olds eat fast food more frequently than their parents did as children?  Again, I don’t think so.  Taking my childhood as an admittedly random but possibly representative example, I ate far more junk than my children do!  My mother’s house was constantly stocked with dessert foods like Twinkies and Yodels.  We were intimately familiar with every kind of cookie, from Oreos to their red-headed stepbrother Hydrox, from the various and delightful Pepperidge Farm varieties (I was partial to Gingerbread Men; others preferred the delicious Milanos or Chesapeakes).  We ate every kind of Girl Scout cookie, back when they had politically incorrect names like Samoas and Tagalongs.  My mother would stock up on Tastycakes, the Philadelphia equivalent of Hostess, who made decadent individual pies and lots of Twinkie-like treats with names like Butterscotch Krimpets and Candy Cakes.  We went to the convenience store on the way home from the bus stop, played pinball and drank Orange Crush and Mister Pibb.  We ate wax bottle candy full of pure sugary syrup, Pixie Stix, Sweet Tarts, and chocolate bars.  

Worse, our parents cooked us dinners with massive calorie counts.  The only meals I remember my mother making were spaghetti and meat sauce, lasagna, veal parmesan, pork chops with Shake-n-Bake coating, and steak.  We ate a lot of baked potatoes with butter.  Before school, we ate horrible cereals like Sugar Smacks and Alpha Bits and Crunchberries.  My favorite lunch sandwich was cream cheese and grape jelly, and I usually ate Cheetos or Fritos.  On weekends, we had bacon or sausage and pancakes, French toast or waffles.  There was plenty of fruit around if you wanted it, and I am sure someone ate some vegetables, but I didn’t.  I know my mother wanted me to eat more vegetables, but I never ate a salad until I went to college.  No one ever told me I couldn’t have dessert, or a snack (Twinkie, cookies, etc.) when I got home from school — after I ate some candy on the way home.  And when my family went out to eat, it was often to Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonald’s or Red Lobster.  Even when we went to a nicer restaurant, I would order something like “chopped beef steak” – an enormous hamburger on a skillet and covered with melted cheese.  While I am not sure my childhood was typical, I know for certain it was no outlier because my friends had similar experiences.  How is it possible, then, that my friends and I were rail thin throughout childhood and adolescence (even late in high school, when we were drinking tons of beer every weekend)?  

The answer, without the slightest whiff of doubt, is that we spent a lot of time outside.  Any male who grew up in suburban America during the Carter and Reagan years spent his time playing games like cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, “war”, “kill the carrier”, etc.  Little kids went to the playground, and playgrounds had fun (and somewhat dangerous!) stuff like merry-go-rounds, swings, seesaws and monkey bars.  Older kids built bike jumps or skateboard ramps; every kid had a bike or skateboard and most of us rode ours for hours every week (and NO ONE wore a helmet).  We explored our neighborhoods and surrounding wooded areas or parks.  We built forts and climbed trees.  We explored half-built houses and skateboarded empty pools.  Warm weather was for non-stop swimming and water sports.  Colder days meant football games in the field at the end of the street.  Kids had basketball hoops in their driveways, and they used them!   Kids got hurt, they broke bones, they learned about danger and risk, they overcame fears, they developed confidence and strength.  But most of all, they burned off lots and lots of calories, every single day.

Today’s children have so much going against them: all of the best developments for entertainment and enjoyment are indoor pursuits (video game consoles, smartphones, the internet, cable and satellite TV, social media, etc. etc.).  Meanwhile, parents – terrified of highly publicized but still extremely rare attacks by predatory adults – want their children in their sight at all times when they are home from school.  At the same time, plaintiffs’ lawyers and pusillanimous, broke local governments and schools have made playgrounds incredibly boring, and have banned risky but fun activities like sledding, diving, and even games like tag or running during recess, in some cases.    No wonder kids stay inside: there are tons of cool things to do in the house, and either mom or the nannystate doesn’t want them doing anything “unsafe”, like exploring, contact sports, or playing on a spinning piece of playground equipment or a pool slide.  

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville paused in his fervent admiration of America and its people to issue a warning that if Americans failed to remain vigilant and allowed a creeping, paternalistic federal government to intrude on America’s traditions of vigorous self-reliance, meritocracy and liberty, we would face a new form of tyranny.  This new, well-meaning despotism of the nannystate would eventually crush the human spirit, and create an America of “an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.”

My blood curdles a little each time I read that phrase and think of our children and teenagers, obsessed with talentless celebrities (the Kardashians, Kei$ha), Twitter and Facebook, Xbox and Playstation, hundreds of digital quality TV channels, games on phones, ipods on phones, video cameras on phones, and so on and so on.  As adults, they may graduate to free internet porn on demand and fantasy football, but their lives may still revolve around indoor amusements and gadgetry.  If these pursuits aren’t “vulgar pleasures”, I don’t know what are.  The slow death of outdoor play and actual human interaction has implications for the human spirit, as Tocqueville warned, but it clearly has more immediate and obvious implications for the human body. 

Our parents’ mothers screamed from apartment windows for their kids to come inside for dinner.  Our parents told us to get out of the house but be back before dark.  Our children spend hours staring at screens of various sizes, barely moving.  Take away the TV and the gadgets for a few hours every day, push the kids out the back door for some outdoor play, and we can all stop talking about whether the government should force McDonald’s to stop giving kids toys in Happy Meals.  The only part Tocqueville got wrong was the unfortunate phrase “without repose” – it’s all repose now!   The comfort of indoors calls like a siren; many of today’s kids have no appetite or stamina for vigorous physical activity.  It’s up to the parents to right this wrong, and we need to stop blaming the people who market to our children the same crap they marketed and sold to us when we were children.  Kids should play, explore, run, fall, wrestle, get dirty, and play games.  And celebrate with the occasional Yodel and a cool glass of milk.

Given the huge dislocation in Europe lead by massive over-indebtedness, we should take a step back and try to understand why the US is different and what the market implications of those differences are.

The Eurozone was a bold attempt at fiscal and monetary union which the original architects knew had HUGE risk if political union wasn’t also achieved in a timely fashion.  Unfortunately, the huge risk arrived before the political union!  The primary challenge of the monetary union happens to also be its biggest strength: constraint.  In theory, the Eurozone is constrained from rampant money creation – which would result in a loss of purchasing power – by the European central bank’s (ECB) single mandate of price stability.  Herein lies the heart of the EU debt crisis.  In all countries using a fiat currency, there are only two ways to pay the bills: tax or print.  Throughout history, when given choice, politicians ALWAYS choose print because it’s the easiest politically, even though it is typically the more painful option for the people.  This problem was thought to be solved in the Eurozone by creating the ECB as the only central bank in Europe, thus removing the ability of the political class to hurt the currency through unconstrained money creation.  It sounds great in theory, but addresses the symptoms instead of the cure.  

The reason why politicians have to choose between ‘tax’ or ‘print’ in the first place is because they can’t control SPENDING!  The EU attempted to fix this problem as well by forbidding deficits in excess of 3% of GDP. But that went out the window with first whiff of the financial crisis in 2008, and it is now also clear many had lied or manipulated debt figures to begin with.  

As a result, now we’re back to the original problem of the political class spending recklessly.  But in the Eurozone, they’ve handcuffed themselves from the preferred exit strategy of PRINTING the problem away.  Without the ability to print, and with an economy too weak to tax, the prospects of sovereign debt default become front and center.  The Eurozone is faced with either defaults or significant austerity that NO ONE wants to deal with.  Both are highly deflationary events and are currently shaping the investment landscape. 

Here’s why it’s different in the good old USA: unlike the Europeans, we haven’t handcuffed ourselves with a restrictive central bank, nor a hard currency.  This allows the political class to spend away with the complete safety of knowing the Fed can print dollars if need be.  The Fed claims to want price stability, but in reality they’ve done a remarkable job of wiping out the dollar’s value during their near 100 year existence.  So what lessons does the European debt problem highlight here in the US?  We’re spending money at an alarming pace combined with NO attempt to slow the ever expanding debt burden. 

 The crisis Europe is currently going through will be very similar here but, unlike Europe, our debt bomb will be met with unfettered money creation.  This isn’t conjecture or wild speculation — this is how EVERY government throughout history has chosen to deal with over-indebtedness and would be the preferred mechanism in the Eurozone if they hadn’t constrained themselves.  Don’t let the deflationary fears coming out of Europe scare you into thinking the same thing will happen here; it won’t.  Our debt bomb will end in a money printing deluge that will destroy our currency.  As usual, fade any deflation trade and protect your wealth with hard assets, especially gold.

Ever been at the DMV or the courthouse, or some other place where you get to interact with a true cross section of the local community, and wonder why it seems like everyone — regardless of their apparent socioeconomic status — seems to have a cellphone?  Could everyone, including the working poor, the long-term unemployed and welfare recipients, really think that a cellphone is such a necessity that they would divert the necessary amount of their (very limited to nonexistent) discretionary income to purchasing one?  Apparently, the answer is ‘no.’   Many low-income people simply get their cellphones free of charge.

The Federal Communication Commission website provides the following description of something called the “Universal Service Charge”:

• The Universal Service Fund (USF) provides support to promote access to telecommunications services at reasonable rates for those living in rural and high-cost areas, income-eligible consumers, rural health care facilities, and schools and libraries.
• All telecommunications service providers and certain other providers of telecommunications must contribute to the federal USF based on a percentage of their interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues. These companies include wireline phone companies, wireless phone companies, paging service companies, and certain Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers.
• Some consumers may notice a “Universal Service” line item on their telephone bills. This line item appears when a company chooses to recover its USF contributions directly from its customers by billing them this charge. The FCC does not require this charge to be passed on to customers. Each company makes a business decision about whether and how to assess charges to recover its Universal Service costs. These charges usually appear as a percentage of the consumer’s phone bill. Companies that choose to collect Universal Service fees from their customers cannot collect an amount that exceeds their contribution to the USF. They also cannot collect any fees from a Lifeline program participant.

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/understanding-your-telephone-bill

What does this mean?  Well, several states have programs called “Lifeline Programs” (there may be other labels) that allow lower-income folks to receive cellphones and service absolutely free.  In states that participate, all you normally need to do to qualify is fill out a one page application and certify EITHER that you receive Medicaid, Food Stamps/SNAP, Temporary Cash Assistance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Indian Affairs Programs, Section 8 housing assistance, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) or receive free school lunch; OR that you earn less than $16,335 (single), $22,065 (two person household) or $27,795 (three person household). 

This “Lifeline Program” in effect equates cellphones with food, housing and home heat as necessities critical to America’s welfare state, the so-called “social safety net”.  It is paid for by levying the cellular phone providers, who in turn add that cost directly to our cellphone bills and call it a “Universal Service Charge” (which is because the government funds the cellphone handouts out of the Universal Service Fund, so we shouldn’t blame AT&T and Verizon for the creepy euphemisms in play here).

Do the American people know that paying cellphone customers are funding free cellphones for lower-income Americans?  I doubt it.  Could this be a game-changer for an American public fed up with bloated government programs, waste and wealth redistribution?  Possibly.  There are some signs within the culture that people are starting to realize how vast, pervasive and overreaching the entitlements regimes have become.  A friend sent me this clip from the daytime courtroom show Judge Judy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7XA2UUpXRk

This self-described college student receives free tuition, cash stipends, and cash for rent which he doesn’t use for rent, ever.  Ironically, his roommate didn’t pay much rent either, so there’s no one to root for among the litigants, but that’s beside the point.  What’s noteworthy and worth rooting for is the sense that Judge Judy, her bailiff and a lot of the people watching are disgusted and fed up with the parasitic class which, far from struggling in abject poverty, seems able to lead a very comfortable existence in many cases by simply drawing on government programs funded by hard-working people like Judge Judy’s bailiff.  You can see the disgust in his eyes.

I wonder how many people in America are working hard at entry level service jobs, apprenticeships or low-paying blue collar work — paying the price to work their way up from the bottom the right way — and are unqualified for any government assistance, but can’t afford housing and do without non-necessities like cellphone service?  How many people do you know who live with their parents, or who started out in cheap apartments with multiple roommates until they could afford a decent place of their own?  What happens to a society when a person can do as well or better than the low-paid worker by not working and going on the dole?  What’s the incentive to bust one’s ass in sweaty, dangerous or menial work when the guy down the block collects a similar amount in gov’t housing, “energy assistance”, food stamps, “Lifeline” program benefits, etc. — and he spends his day playing Xbox and smoking blunts?

I think most Americans are comfortable with some form of welfare state.  It’s a sign of strength and a sign of the conscience of the people that Americans are perfectly willing to fund a social safety net that prevents people from starving to death, becoming homeless or freezing to death in the winter.  Most people think it’s fair and reasonable to have an unemployment insurance system that gives people a small income while they are between jobs.  But when the system creates people like the student in the Judge Judy clip, when the system is giving free cellphones for 10 years at a clip to people who in many cases are making no effort to work or lead productive lives, when the system can provide an enterprising person with a package of benefits for not working that meets or exceeds what he could make at an entry level job, then the system is broken.  And most people in the productive class, if they knew the full details of our present system, would say “that wasn’t what we agreed to.”  It’s time for people to become fully informed about what an out-of-control hydra the welfare state has become. 

Eliminating the Universal Access Fund would be a simple way to release millions of dollars in spending power back to the working population, and would remove yet another incentive for people on welfare to remain there instead of joining the productive class and contributing to society.

***

- Vice President Joe Biden, during a private meeting with Democratic House members, reportedly said that Republicans had “acted like terrorists.”

- The New York Times, PBS and Politico, to name a few, ran opinion pieces that used the “terrorist” meme. In fact, the Times published four articles calling opponents to raising the limit the t-word. And Joe Nocera wrote that the tea party could finally “put aside their suicide vests” now that the problem seemed to be resolved.

- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who served under President Bush, called those who opposed the debt limit increase “our version of al Qaeda terrorists.” “Really,” he added for good measure.

- Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn called President Obama a “tar baby.” “Now I don’t want to even have to be associated with him,” Lamborn said, when asked if the president would be to blame for the debt crisis. “It is like touching a tar baby and you get it—you’re stuck, and you’re part of the problem now.” He later apologized and said he meant to use the word “quagmire.”

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/debt-ceiling-debate-official-end-tone-era-171625113.html

Got that?  Several prominent Democrats (including the Vice President and former Speaker of the House), top “progressive” columnists, commentators and writers with the NYTimes, PBS, Politico and other left-leaning outlets call the GOP and tea party “terrorists” and Al Qaeda-like (Tom Friedman compared the Tea Party to Hezbollah, specifically), but that’s totally balanced out by a single, obscure Red State representative using the old-timey term “tar baby” when referring to Obama’s association with the debt crisis (clearly referring to the stickiness of the issue, not to anything racial).  While it was stupid of Lamborn to use a term that had already tripped up McCain, Kerry and others on the slippery skids of political correctness (some people view the term as a slur toward African-Americans, which seems like a valid charge, even if it has a formerly-commonplace, benign connotation), does his comment provide any meaningful counterweight to the numerous, angry, vituperative and sometimes unhinged comments of the various liberal pundits and politicians listed above?

This tracks one of my favorite debating tactics of my leftist friends.  They’ll say something like “There are plenty of Christian terrorists as well as Muslim ones.”  So you ask who they are referring to, and they cite McVeigh, abortion clinic bombers, and now Breivik.  Never mind that none of the examples they cite were acting on an call to violence actually found in Christianity or taught by clergy, etc.  Never mind that neither McVeigh and Breivik were practicing Christians.  Just on the basis of sheer numerical heft, there is simply no rational comparison between Islamic terrorism and “Infidel terrorism.”  There’s no non-Muslim analog to www.thereligionofpeace.com, which catalogs atrocities committed by Muslims worldwide, and currently lists over 17,500 documented, fatal acts of terror by Muslims since 9/11 (I am not sure what their exact definition is or how they calculate their figures, but even if they are off by a factor of 10, they have a point: radical Muslims kill a lot of people in the name of Islam.  No other religion/ideology is in the terrorism body count conversation these days.)  Nonetheless, the occasional act of terrorism or senseless violence by lone wolf white males provides a complete counterbalance to the thousands of acts of terror and tens of thousands of deaths caused by committed jihadists, to the liberal apologist/appeaser.

That mentality is the exact mentality that allows a reporter, with a straight face, to say that the recent spate of verbal attacks and lack of civility has been “bi-partisan.”

by Mortimer Duke (June 2011)

Most people are surprised to hear that the word promiscuous has no sexual connotation on its own.  The word means “indiscriminate”, but through the repeated use of the term “sexually promiscuous”, the word promiscuous itself seemed to morph into the previous paired term and became synonymous with sexual indiscretion.  Why is this relevant to a blog focused on the financial markets and economics?  Because the same hijacking of perfectly good word and deliberately changing the meaning is taking place with much more serious consequences than an STD.

The word I’d like to discuss is “inflation”.  Current market participants have come to understand this word as simply rising prices.  This is a perversion of the word in order to obfuscate the real definition and misdirect attention from the real inflation problem.  Inflation is correctly defined as an increase in the supply of money and credit.  The symptom of inflation is in increase in prices.  You can’t have “food inflation” or “housing inflation” or any other kind of inflation…..you simply have inflation or you do not.   The reason people need to understand this is that if you don’t properly define the problem, you will ultimately fail to treat it properly.  If you define the problem of inflation as “rising prices”, then to implement price controls at some point makes sense. The flawed thinking would be if we stop “rising prices” then we will no longer have inflation, according to the skewed definition.  This type of thinking will be coming to a developed country near you as the pressure on governments to ‘do something’ will mount when prices start to rise.

In reality, the problem is properly diagnosed as the deliberate increase in the supply of money and credit, then the cure takes on a very different course of action.  The Fed would shrink the balance sheet, stop the overly accommodative stance and allow the system to adjust to a lower level of economic activity.  When only the symptoms of inflation are treated, then the inflation doesn’t actually abate, only the symptoms are masked.  When price controls come into the system, continually rising prices will create massive shortages, bare shelves and massive lines for the most basic essentials.  Don’t fall for this trap, recognize the problem for what it really is and take the steps to protect yourself.

By Stelios

I tolerate HBO because I like Curb Your Enthusiasm and a handful of other HBO programs (Entourage is a douchey, guilty pleasure), but for years it’s been clear to me that HBO’s politics are disgracefully extreme.  HBO’s favorite genres include post-colonialism/anti-Americanism, anything that elevates Islam and perpetuates the “Islam is a religion of peace” meme, and films about courageous plaintiff lawyers taking on evil corporations (Mann vs. Ford in the latest of many).  After the fantastic, gritty and inspiring series Band of Brothers (“BofB”) made HBO’s programming execs feel guilty for committing the crime of patriotism, they took their cues from Tom Hanks (one of the creators of the series), who described the Pacific war in World War II as a war “of racism and terror.”  The result was The Pacific, a series that can only be described as anti-American, anti-war pornography.  Whereas the Americans in BofB fought with honor, dignity and resolve, the Americans in The Pacific were largely cowardly, back-stabbing, virulent racists who pried gold teeth from dying Japanese, routinely betrayed and tormented one another, and who went AWOL, were driven mad or killed themselves in epic numbers.

Whereas BofB was released during a brief post-9/11 blooming of American unity and sense of self, The Pacific reflected the retrenchment of the Left in the US as they expressed their disgust for President Bush and the Mission Accomplished, “with us or with the terrorists” mentality of the Bush Administration, conservatives and much of Red State America.  Clearly, Hanks felt The Pacific was an allegory for the Bush War on Terror.  As he stated in March of 2010: “They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Now that the disgraceful second act of the World War II mini-series is behind us, HBO must look for other ways to spread the word that the US is root of all evil, as well as the parallel position that the Islamic world is an oppressed victim of western aggression, and that Islam is a beautiful and poetic religion of peace.  Anti-Americanism and the US military as oppressor, conspirator and murderer is a frequent theme of mainstream films like The Green Zone and Body of Lies that are assured of tons of airtime when they reach HBO, and of course you can check in with Bill Maher any week should you need a dose of “America as fascist, racist oppressor” propaganda.  HBO is particularly fond of films like The Visitor that portray Muslims as victims of an unjust American society and portray Islamic culture as a complete non-threat that can only add to the multi-cultural tapestry of Western societies.  However, nothing I have seen on HBO can compare to this month’s The Koran by Heart, a documentary love song from its makers to the beautiful poetry of the Koran and the young Muslims who memorize it “by heart”.

The film covers a contest for young Muslim students from around the world who gather in Egypt to see who has best memorized the words of the Koran.  The film is well made and professional, and I admired many of the competitors, who are of course largely blameless and lack choices about their lives at this stage (my main reaction to them is sadness as I wonder what these clearly bright and talented kids could accomplish if given a 21st century education that permits critical thinking, followed by unfettered and real career/life opportunities, etc.).  My criticism is directed wholly at the parents and “educators” involved in their upbringing, and at the filmmakers and executives who put this film on HBO, in primetime, in yet another attempt to portray Islam as an ideology of beauty, innocence, truth and spirituality.

Among the questions lightly examined or totally ignored by the film are: (1) is it a good idea to “educate” young people by having them memorize a religious book over several YEARS of their lives?  Note that for many students in madrassas, koranic memorization constitutes the majority (and often the vast majority) of their studies; and  (2) what exactly are these young people reciting?  What are the words and commands of this book, and how have those words been interpreted?  The reaction amongst film buffs and reviewers to the film focused not on these questions but on the film as a “contest movie”, on the emotional impact of the film and on the apparent beauty of the poetic verses memorized by the eager and often touching students.  This review is relatively illustrative: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/summer-doc-series-koran-by-heart.php  The reviewer notes:

There’s a sense in this film of a world community which continues to disagree with itself, but all of those debates are silenced at the sound of a young child’s voice singing its most holy scripture.

That glorious recitation punctuates the movie with soul-cradling excerpts from the children in the competition. One child brings tears to the judges’ eyes, and it’s easy to see why. At the heart of the story is an incredible art.

While I understand the urge to be non-judgmental and to receive the film on its terms, I don’t see how it’s possible to evaluate this film with addressing the two questions I ask above.  Would reviewers get misty-eyed and find “glorious” these recitations if they knew what they meant?  Is there glory, or great art, in reciting things like:

• Qur’an (2:191-193) – “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]…and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”

• Qur’an (3:56) – “As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help.”

• Qur’an (3:151) – “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority”. 

Would a gay filmmaker struggle at all with glorifying the recitation of koranic admonitions against homosexuality, such as this verse (which is the scriptural basis for stoning as punishment for homosexuality in the strictest sharia law countries)? –

• Qur’an (7:80-84) – “…For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds…. And we rained down on them a shower (of brimstone)”

Would the reviewer find himself mesmerized by an 8 year old girl reciting these passages? –

• Qur’an (2:282) -  “And call to witness, from among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not found then a man and two women.” 

• Qur’an (2:228) – “and the men are a degree above them [women]“

• Qur’an (2:223) – “Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will…”

• Qur’an (4:34) – “Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.”

• Qur’an (38:44) – “And take in your hand a green branch and beat her with it, and do not break your oath…” 

Christian and Jewish HBO executives, members of the filmmaking team and movie reviewers are sure to get choked up with emotion when hearing the children recite this verse –

• Qur’an (5:51) “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

It’s too bad the children did not also memorize the Hadiths (holy books that purport to collect reports of statements of actions of Muhammad), or the Jewish folks involved in the project and its promotion might have enjoyed the chance to hear passages like this one –

• “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (see, e.g., Sahih Muslim, 41:6985).

While it will never happen, HBO should produce a documentary that explores the question of whether it is child abuse to force children to memorize the Koran, and/or whether the adult that emerges from this form of “education” could ever really embrace core Western values like gender equality, tolerance for gays, and separation of church/mosque and state.  But why would anyone make a film like that when one can simply extol the “beauty” and “poetry” of the Islamic texts, and be assured a featured slot on HBO’s programming line-up?  The world needs fair but critical examination of what Islam teaches its children and how that affects them (and eventually, us).  What the world does not need is to foster the illusion that the source material of Islam is benign, and that its innate peaceful message is distorted by a few radical extremists.  That illusion is critical to the cosmology of the left, and specifically, the cosmology of HBO.

***

In September 2008, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a heartfelt article in the LA Times asserting that as a direct result of anthropogenic Global Warming ™ (“AGW™”), snowy winters in the DC area were a thing of the past.  “Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled,” Kennedy wrote.  In light of the transparent, blindingly obvious fact that Global Warming™ had caused perpetual “anemic winters” in the DC area, Kennedy fumed that oil companies were still funding “think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing global warming is a fantasy.”

Nature has a sense of humor, however, and the winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11 were among the most brutally cold and snowy in recorded history.  AGW skeptics like me were shocked – shocked I tell you! – to discover that not only were die-hard alarmists like RFK not moved by the inconvenient truth that Mother Nature doesn’t give a shit what RFK thinks, but that the acolytes of Gore actually were willing to double down.  Thus, mainstream publications like the NYTimes and Time magazine actually published articles claiming that the blizzards experienced by the eastern US during the past two winters were the result of… wait for it….  Anthropogenic Global Warming™!  Example: “There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm.” (Bryan Walsh, “Another Blizzard: What Happened to Global Warming?”, Time Magazine, Feb 2010; see also http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html “[T]he overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes.”).  Got that?  “Anemic winters” are caused by AGW™, and very cold, snowy, extreme winters are caused by…. AGW™.

If these contortions by the enviro-left leave you with the impression that these people will say anything to advance their cosmology, that’s probably because these people will say anything to advance their cosmology.  The truth is subordinate to the simple question of whether the assertion, the article, the position taken will advance The Cause.  In this case, The Cause is environmentalism, an elastic term with adherents whose goals vary from the sincere and straightforward (clean air, less pollution, protecting green spaces, etc.) to the terrifying (PETA, eco-terrorists, extreme anti-capitalists, etc.).  I bring all this up not to address the debate about AGW™ and its impact, but to point out how the Left is willing to take completely incoherent or contradictory positions when it suits them; that is, when it advances The Cause.  Whatever your feelings about AGW, you have zero credibility if you believe that both RFK and Bryan Walsh are sincere and correct.  At least one of them has to be wrong.  Or, quite plausibly, they could both simply be full of shit and willing to say anything they believe will help the Cause.

That brings me to the Norway terror attack.  It’s still not clear what the killer’s motives were – Breivik’s writings are not coherent, and while he clearly had issues with multi-culturalism and the Islamification of Norway and Europe in general, literally NONE of the conservative bloggers and writers (Mark Steyn, Melanie Philips, Daniel Pipes, etc.) mentioned in his ramblings advocate the use of any violent means to counteract or combat the spread of Islamism in the West.  Further, Breivik cites Gandhi, Orwell, Jefferson, Churchill, Twain and many other writers and thinkers, and apparently he plagiarized a great deal directly from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.  He was also an avid New York Times reader, apparently.  So the first critical fact here is that Breivik seems to be very disturbed, and while he clearly had anti-jihadist leanings, he was not part of a meaningful anti-jihadist movement or organization, and the conservative writers he cites do not and have never advocated any form of violence.

Next, what actually happened was that several dozen mostly ethnic Norwegians were killed by an ethnic Norwegian – a white Scandinavian killed a lot of white Scandinavians.  Nonetheless, the mainstream media has decided that this horrific act of violence was specifically an act of “Islamophobia”.   USA Today stated that “Islamophobia has reached a mass murder level in Norway as the confessed killer claims he sought to combat encroachment by Muslims into his country and Europe.” (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/07/norway-christian-killings-muslim-/1)  The AP added that this is an attack that “exposed the failure to root out Islamophobia that has bled into the European mainstream.”  (The title of this article was “Security beefed up at UK mosques after Norway massacre”.  Also of interest are the frequent attempts to label Breivik a “Christian” killer, even though his writings specify a desire for a “secular European society”, and he frequently condemns religious Christians for various things including being soft-hearted.  By contrast, the NYTimes never mentioned the fact that Major Nidal Hasan – the Fort Hood killer – was a Muslim in any of six major articles written about the attack in the days and weeks after it.  In case you were unaware, Hasan was a devotee of hardcore jihadist clerics and yelled “allahu akbar!” throughout the massacre, but the Times thought it would be improper to suggest Islam has anything to do with his motives.  No such hesitation in the case of Breivik’s hazy “Christianity”…)

Just so we are clear, these publications have asserted that the murder of dozens of blonde, blue-eyed Norwegians is irrefutable proof of rampant, dangerous “Islamophobia” in Europe.  Let’s agree that Breivik may well have been an Islamophobe, and put aside whether he had good reason to be one.  The point here is that the MSM eagerly identifies an Islamophobic wave of violence from the acts of one seriously disturbed, lone wolf killer, and yet after literally hundreds of acts of jihad in dozens of countries, most committed by men who are actually attached to jihadist organizations and were animated by a specific Islamist call to violent jihad, we are continuously told that there is nothing to fear from radical Islam, and that we should never “rush to judgment” when a Muslim murders innocents in the West.  Thus, when jihadist Faisal Shahzad was identified in the Times Square bombing attempt, a CNN anchor noted that his house was in foreclosure, and added, “One would have to imagine that that brought a lot of pressure and a lot of heartache on that family.”  Mayor Bloomberg told Katie Couric that perhaps the would-be terrorist was “a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the healthcare bill or something.”  Riiiiiight.

I don’t have enough information to prove that Breivik was “just a lunatic” or even that Shahzad or Hasan was clearly a jihadist; the facts that are available, however, speak for themselves.  What has been proven, however, is that for the MSM and their ideological supporters, covering events means taking whatever evidence has been presented and, to the greatest extent possible, trying to make it fit the narrative they support and have invested in.  Given the left’s view that Islam is a “religion of peace”, that there is no clash of civilizations between the West and radical Islam, that jihadists distort “true Islam” and are tiny in number (or are themselves deranged), no act of terrorism will be equated with the jihad or connected to anything ideological (except perhaps opposition to healthcare reform).  Jihadist terrorists will be presumed to have other motives (derangement, foreclosure, Obama-care) and will be presumed to have acted alone.  (Jihadist attacks and attempted attacks are so frequent, I could not even finish this post without a new one being uncovered: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/28/exclusive-us-military-serviceman-arrested-in-second-alleged-attack-on-ft-hood/).  By contrast, any white males who commit atrocities will be presumed part of a right wing and/or Islamophobic “movement” or “wave”, even if the perpetrator appears clearly deranged and the evidence is dubious/ambiguous (Breivik) or non-existent (Jared Loughner, whose senseless violence was attributed to Sarah Palin by the MSM, until it became apparent that there was exactly zero evidence of a Palin connection).

As bad and as dangerous as this phenomenon is, at least we have the internet and other alternative news sources to provide truth and counter-weight.  That’s the only good news that emerges from the sea of lies and delusions in which the MSM swims these days.  Journalism — true journalism — to the extent it still exists, exists despite the MSM, not within it.