Category: Uncategorized

I don’t care much about the NBA. I like KG and I generally wish the Timberwolves well and the Lakers ill, but that’s about as far as it goes for me. I don’t blame the Pacers’ players who went into the stands after fans who were hurling bottles, beer and other trash at them; it’s pretty easy to be a jerk if you don’t think you’ll have to answer for it.

There will surely be plenty of lamentations about the incident, but they will be beside the point. The truth is that the NBA is simply a lousy team sport. Basketball players are excellent athletes but the Jordan Rules have destroyed a game that is more fun to play than watch. As a lifelong NFL and soccer fan – two sports that are careful not to tinker too much with the basic rules – I can only marvel at the way in which the NBA regularly makes huge changes that still fail to address the real problem. Until the basket is raised to the point that players are forced to shoot the ball instead of just jamming it in there, the game will remain one of little finesse or teamwork.

Robert Novak notes:

DUPLICITOUS SENATORS

Shortly after Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina was elected Senate Republican campaign chairman with support from 28 senators, she was approached by 29 senators saying they had voted for her in the secret ballot. The Senate Republican Conference elected Dole, 28 to 27, over Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Just one week before the vote, Coleman had 32 senators personally committed to him. Coleman thought Dole’s late-starting campaign had 19 votes at the most.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican Senate! Boy, did Chuck D ever have that one right. If they can’t walk the straight and narrow even in the small things, what do you think they’re doing with regards to the big ones, like selling out national security?

From Slate (via Insty):

Ricardo had me watch a short film as part of my gun-safety training, and in it the narrator explained that guns are simply machines. Machines can’t hurt you, he said; the danger lies in the person operating the machine. OK, I thought, but if I am inept in the handling of my blow-dryer, I am unlikely to vaporize anyone’s kidney. As he went through his safety lectures, Ricardo emphasized which firearms would be best for my “personal protection,” even though as a District resident this was virtually out of the question, and even though I assured him that no one was after me. Undeterred, his top recommendation was a pump-action shotgun. “Nothing else makes that sound,” he said, and even I could conjure up that ka-chung. “Hearing that sound alone can negate the need to fire. It makes such a sweet song.”

Space Bunny will dig this. We took one of her very liberal friends to shoot, who very much enjoyed the experience. I’ve taught a few girls how to shoot, and it’s always amusing to see the wild-eyed, vaguely turned-on expression that they get afterwards. With one exception, Chilliette was crying her eyes out the entire time; she was scared to death of this .50 caliber Desert Eagle a guy three lanes down was shooting. Echoing off the concret, the thing sounded like large-bore artillery fire.

From NRO’s Corner:

Yesterday the national soccer teams of England and Spain met in Madrid. England has several black players. Throughout the match the Spanish fans in, full voice and in vast numbers, made monkey noises every time a black player on the English team touched the ball. To those not familiar with European soccer this is a shock but the conduct is quite common in many cities in Europe during matches. It is so common that the European Football Association has a campaign in place to try and stop the practice. If you take a look at today’s Guardian it has several accounts of the racist conduct during the match.

How tiresome is it to hear the constant refrain that the Euros are so much more enlightened than us Americans on issue such as race etc.? In practice we know the truth is far different. Can you imagine the conduct I described above taking place at an American sporting event? Can you imagine the mentality of thousands of people in a European capital city that they felt so free to express their racism so overtly? Next time you hear a Euro begin a lecture hit him or her (figuratively, of course) with the facts surrounding racist behavior of Euros on any given Sat. or Sun. in their capital cities. The “red state rubes” they love to malign would never tolerate the racism that is a common part of their national pastimes.

Excellent point, one I should have made long ago. Arsenal is commonly a victim of this when playing away games in the Champions League, with captain Patrick Viera (a black Frenchman), top scorer Thierry Henry (also a black Frenchman) and defensive stalwarts Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole (both black Englishmen). It is less of a problem in England and Italy (other than Lazio, but that’s a different issue altogether), than it used to be, but it is still a big problem in Spain, Turkey, Germany and other European countries.

From the Akron Beacon Journal: (reg required)

For all she knows, it may be an isolated incident, but a guide at an Ohio state park is still troubled by an interaction with a home-schooling family. One day, as an African-American child entered a park classroom, a home-schooled child said, “ `I don’t want no n—— sitting next to me,’ ” the guide recounted. “That was the worst,” she said. She is cautious and doesn’t want her name used because home schoolers frequently visit the park….

Home schooling has a strain of racism running through it that may reflect similar ideas held by others in the broader society. There are no studies or numbers to put racism and home schooling in perspective, but home-schooling laws that ensure that parents have the freedom to make socialization choices for their children also allow some families to completely withdraw from society….

A public educator said many home schoolers are reclusive and want to control their children’s ideas. “I think those are the ones that fall under the radar,” the educator said.

Right, because I NEVER heard the word “nigger” when I was in public school. Or when I was runnning the 100 meters in the regional championships against sprinters from Minneapolis North, Minneapolis South, Roosevelt, Washburn and Southwest, those notoriously Caucasian schools.

The educrats must be scared indeed if they’re already giving such prominence to the race card. And isn’t it ironic that the paper warns racism might be taught in homeschools when we know it is taught in public schools.

Mike Adams finds himself in an alternate reality:

Here’s where the case gets really bizarre. The Victory Fund removed its derogatory statements about Boseman’s opponent after he fought back. Then Boseman’s supporters flooded the local paper and radio stations with complaints about the “hate speech” included in the Republican ad.

The quote that the homosexual community complained about was taken directly from the Victory Fund website. With straight faces (pun intended), the gay community then accused the Republicans of “hate speech” for quoting their own speech. Are you following this?

Then the local New York Times affiliate decided to jump in and rescue Boseman from the “hate crime” of accurately quoting a true statement made by gay lobbyists. They did this by retracting their previous endorsement of the Republican. They even accused him of “div(ing) in the gutter” for accurately quoting the gay lobby.

The truly bizarre thing is that the people of North Carolina elected the lesbian lunatic to their state senate. But one good thing has come out of this, as it should settle the question of whether homosexuals are self-hating or not once and for all. If they are now openly regarding their own words as hate speech, the prosecution can safely rest.

From the Boston Globe:

In the first week after the Supreme Judicial Court decision took effect on May 17, 2,500 gay and lesbian couples applied for licenses; 1,700 have done so in the six months since then, according to unofficial tallies by the Globe and state officials. In all, the state’s Registry of Vital Records has received an estimated 4,266 marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples, a spokeswoman said yesterday.

The City of Boston has experienced a significant slowdown. In the week after May 17, Boston reported 146 same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses, but in the six months since, 345 gay and lesbian couples have applied, an average of 14 a week, according to the Globe’s survey.

The story is similar in Cambridge, which opened City Hall doors after midnight May 17 to accept license applicants. During that first week, 310 same-sex couples applied for licenses in Cambridge, the most in the state. But in the months since, only 267 same-sex couples have applied, an average of about 11 a week.

Applying Occam’s Razor, this leaves one of two possibilities. Either homosexuals – as I have always suspected – are rather less interested in their so-called civil rights than was portrayed by a pro-lavender media, or there are simply fewer than homosexual activists would have us believe.

If one leaves out the obvious statistical outlier of the first week, that leaves 1766 “marriage” licenses. Multiplied by two, that’s an expected 3,532 homosexual couples joined in unholy “matrimony” representing 6.6 percent of the number of total marriages based on the national average. That’s about halfway between the 2 percent I would have expected, and the 10 percent that the lavendar lobby claims.

Different reasons could explain the current numbers, of course. The number rises to 8.7 percent if one compares it to the total number of marriages in Massachusetts, but then, I do nont know how many of these couples are actually residents of Massachusetts. If Massachusetts has become the gay Las Vegas, these numbers are incredibly low, otherwise, if Massachusetts is an unusually gay state, they might explain Massachusetts’ historically low marriage rate. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but it’s a statistic which should provide some interesting information in the years ahead.

JC can’t quite follow the plot:

Actually, I have as of yet to see any reliable evidence to support that, except for higher standardized test scores for wealthy people,which almost certainly reflects the fact that, the wealthier one is,the better education one gets. Schools in poor parts of the country are underfunded (for obvious reasons). So, any correlation between intellegence and income seems imply a problem in the education system.

That’s probably because JC hasn’t looked very hard. “In general, there is a disparity between the public perception of IQ testing and the opinion of intelligence researchers. Some proponents of IQ have pointed to a number of studies showing a fairly close correlation between IQ and various life outcomes, particularly income. Research in Scotland has shown that a 15-point lower IQ meant people had a fifth less chance of seeing their 76th birthday, while those with a 30-point disadvantage were 37% less likely than those with a higher IQ to live that long. Research by Charles Murray on siblings has shown that there is a strong correlation between IQ and earned income. The controversial study IQ and the Wealth of Nations claims to show that the wealth of a nation correlates closely to its IQ score.”

In general, the studies I’ve seen read shown correlations range from as low as .33 all the way up to .81. The broader and more crosscultural the study, the stronger the correlation has proven to be. Unsurprisingly, JC is too parochial to even consider the world outside the United States.

so the fact that John Kerry’s support was strongest – 63 percent – among those earning under $15,000 should give even the most left-inclined Mensan pause. In fact, as incomes rose, support for Kerry reliably declined,reaching its nadir at 35 percent of the $200,000-plus crowd.

See, this is particularly misleading. First of all, it’s widely accepted that Bush’s economic policies favor the wealthy more than John Kerry’s did. Thus, it stands to reason that, acting in their own self-interest, a wealthy person would vote for George Bush. On the other hand, Kerry’s policies seemed to be more focused on lower-income Americans.

Key words, seem to be…. and which group is more likely to be able to accurately ascertain their self-interest, the plus-200k crowd or the sub-8k crowd? Does JC seriously want to base his case on the notion that those making $8k are as intelligent as those making 25 times more?

to be continued….

Joseph Farah hits the president hard:

If John Kerry had been elected president, I suspect there would be much more concern being expressed about a Council on Foreign Relations effort to destroy U.S. sovereignty with an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement that analysts agree would effectively eliminate U.S. national borders.

In other words, radical plans are afoot. Radical actions are being taken by the Bush administration. And these insidious plots are progressing almost without criticism under the cover of the Bush administration.

I’m still of the opinion, however, that the time to warn people of the danger’s posed by George Bush is BEFORE the election, not after. Kerry is and was a bad man, but bad men cause good men to react. Those perceived as good men don’t. Based on the Nixon-to-China principle, it’s entirely possible that Bush will prove to be a worse president in his second term than he was in his first. I hope not, but it would be silly to suggest that this is impossible.

“Fannie Mae has already said it will not file its third-quarter financial results report [on time] because its independent auditor has refused to approve it,” the Associated Press reports. “And the company says it’s not requesting a five-day extension allowed under SEC rules because it can’t meet that deadline, either.”

Normally, I’d say that buying gold is a good idea, but I’d hold off at the moment. This is one of those times when my contrarian instincts tells me that because everyone is running one way, a change in direction is nigh.