Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I feel like a roundup,

having been running 'round in circles too much to do anything noteworthy of my own.

Q and O notes a slight problem with the Goreacle's "The ice caps are MELTING!!!" line:
Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature.

It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming.

But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back.

Ice levels which had shrunk from 13million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.
Etc. Gee, you'd think the climate does what it does without any concern for us humans. Not even the Enlightened Onces who say they know what it'll do.

Q&O also notes another slight difficulty in the marvelous British National Health System:
Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.

The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.

Doctors warned last night that the practice of "patient-stacking" was putting patients' health at risk.

Gee, you think maybe? But, of course, it'll all magically work once they try it here. They keep telling us.

If you haven't heard about castro 'retiring', you're even more out of the loop than I am. Babalu Blog dug up this from CNN about how the talking heads should speak of castro:
Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:

* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.

* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.

Any questions, please call the international desk.

Considering what I've read of how black Cubans are treated by the government, the 'racial integration' crap is amazing; but this is CNN, after all. What's really surprising to me in this is the accurate note of the SU collapse and castro's own policies being what really screwed up the economy; kind of amazing they'd actually make note of that, considering all the past slobbering over him and blaming of the US for all problems. They never seemed before to note that since, as they kept noting 'the rest of the world trades with Cuba', how can our embargo be the cause of all the damn trouble?

Next, Mark Steyn has a question: what would it take to alarm you?
The question then arises: fair enough, guys, what would it take to alarm you? The other day, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of sharia — Islamic law — to the United Kingdom was "inevitable." No alarm bells going off yet? Can't say I blame you. After all, de facto creeping sharia is well established in the Western world. Last week, the British and Ontario governments confirmed within days of each other that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions receive welfare payments for each of their wives. Still no alarm bells? I see female Muslim medical students in British hospitals are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Would it be alarmist to bring that up — say, the day before your operation?
and
The other night at dinner, I found myself sitting next to a Middle Eastern Muslim lady of a certain age. And the conversation went as it often does when you're with Muslim women who were at college in the sixties, seventies or eighties. In this case, my dining companion had just been at a conference on "women's issues," of which there are many in the Muslim world, and she was struck by the phrase used by the "moderate Muslim" chair of the meeting: "authentic women" — by which she meant women wearing hijabs. And my friend pointed out that when she and her unveiled pals had been in their 20s they were the "authentic women": the covering routine was for old village biddies, the Islamic equivalent of gnarled Russian babushkas. It would never have occurred to her that the assumptions of her generation would prove to be off by 180 degrees — that in middle age she would see young Muslim women wearing a garb largely alien to their tradition not just in the Middle East but in Brussels and London and Montreal. If you had said to her in 1968 that Westernized Muslim women working in British hospitals in the early 21st century would reject modern hygiene because it required them to bare their arms, she would have scoffed with the certainty of one who assumes that history moves in only one direction.

Michelle Malkin notes the Iranian and Palistinian version of multiculturalism:
“We, representatives of the honorable Iranian nation, condemn this devil measure. We ask the president … to seriously review Iran’s political and trade ties with these countries,” the lawmakers said in the letter.

In the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, a leader of a militants’ umbrella group called on Muslim faithful to attack Danish embassies and diplomats.

“Blow up the Danish embassies and kill the ambassadors,” Abu Abir, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), said at an open-air news conference in a Gaza square, where PRC members burnt a Danish flag.

“We urge (Islamist fighters) to track down those who printed the cartoons, those who drew them and those who published them and slaughter them immediately,” he said.

Danish police arrested two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan descent last Tuesday, accusing them of planning to kill a cartoonist who drew one of the images.

Multi-culti in these places meaning "Kill anyone who says or writes or does anything that upsets up. And be sure to say it makes us a victim!"

The EU decides "Fireworks bad. Unless we control everything, of course."
Firework displays from the largest Guy Fawkes Night spectacle to the smallest back-garden show are under threat from European legislation.

A directive already approved by MEPs and EU ministers will force Britain and other member nations to tear up their own safety standards and adopt new regulations by 2010.

Health and safety bureaucrats in Brussels also want to make manufacturers pay for the retesting of tens of thousands of fireworks already considered safe in Britain.


The Line is Here notes PSH stupidity and the return fire here.
Uncle and others have noted the projection of these people, the "I can't be trusted and neither can you!" attitude. Fully in evidence here.

Speaking of Uncle, he notes a goblin-whacking with a happy ending:
Ingram, carrying a .40-caliber handgun, ran to the house and found Fleming attacking the other woman, officials said.

When Fleming tried to attack Ingram, Dunavant said Ingram shot Fleming once.

Tipton County Sheriff’s deputies and Brighton Police officers found Fleming dead on the front porch of the home.


Also noted by Unc is the usual level of 'do it again, but harder!' GFW activity:
After joining the mayor for his annual gun control news conference at police headquarters, State Sen. John Cullerton (D-Chicago) acknowledged that none of the bills would have prevented Steve Kazmierczak from opening fire on Valentine’s Day afternoon in a crowded NIU lecture hall.

Different point, there's generally only so much crap someone can stand having fall on their head day after day before they either get nasty themselves or give up. Take a look at this example of what Michelle Malkin gets:
subject Bitch, you’re retarded and your thoughts on Madame President Obama doesn’t count
...
Look at what you job is : “MAKING STUPID RACIST COMMENTS ABOUT A WOMAN OF COLOR, WHEN YOU CLAIM YOU’RE A WOMAN OF COLOR.”
Those are about the most 'presentable' parts of this mess, the rest is WAY worse. And she has to put up with garbage like this coming in all the time. Damn, she's got a tolerance for hatred and stupidity.

Ok, roundup done for now.

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