Links and Minifeatures 2009 02 04 Wednesday

Obama Should Channel Harding, Not FDR

Nah. That would make too much sense.

As a result, the recession that started in 1920 ended before 1923. Lower taxes and reduced regulation helped America's economy quickly adjust after the war as entrepreneurs and capital were freed to create jobs and push the economy to recover. Harding's free market policies lead to the Roaring Twenties, known for technological advances, women's rights, the explosion of the middle class, and some of the most rapid economic growth in American history.

Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

Encourage terror by treating with it, by responding positively to it, and you will get more terror. The Gods of the Copybook Headings strike again.

This is what a hellhole looks like: Yemeni Central Security Forces' Outright Theft of Land Without Compensation

The state comes, knocks down your house and sells your land for a park, and there's nothing to do about it because the authorities you would appeal to are the ones driving the backhoe.

A list of some of the pork in Obama's "stimulus" bill at Michelle Malkin

The Hollywood Stimulus

Oh, wow!

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

I've got them. So should you. Monty Python is funniest in the original context. The Bridge of Fate is nowhere near as funny without the earlier Coconuts sequence. Ditto Robin's Minstrels, "Not being seen", and many others. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, that proves my point.

Without further adieu, I present The Monty Python Channel

And if you watch, for crying out loud, order their DVDs! It's a fair bargain to keep some of the greatest material known to man in front of the eyes of another generation or two! You wouldn't want to impoverish future generations, would you?

A Lobbyist A Day

Torture is still torture. Rendition is still rendition

Liberals condemned rendition during the Bush administration because it lacked judicial oversight, did not afford individuals access to counsel, and because it often subjected persons to torture and longterm detention. Because Obama has ordered governmental interrogators not to engage in torture and has ordered the CIA to close its longterm detention centers, liberals now say that rendition does not raise any problems. Apparently, snatching people without a court order, not giving them a lawyer, and then placing them in a remote country were never too much of a problem after all.

government distortions of sanity, part infinity plus one

Yes, I'm aware of the mathematics of the aleph null set. My point is this: Does anyone want to argue with me that the sane thing to do is fire these nitwits for cause, after which they should never work in the industry again? Instead of "We're going to let you have a salary of up to ten times the national median", which is extremely likely to make it far more difficult to attract competent replacements?

The idiotic politics of class jealousy strike again.

Which do you think would end up better for everyone except the idiots who ran the banks into the ground? Their salaries are limited to $500k per year, or they get fired for cause and are essentially unemployable in the industry forevermore? That would have been the situation before Roosevelt got the government so thoroughly involved. Do you think this new situation, where their jobs are saved despite malfeasance, inadequate oversight, policy failures and manipulating company results for their own benefit?

Of course, Obama's new Treasury Secretary feels sorry for them. After all, he was one of them a month ago.

Rape as a recruitment tool for jihad

Toxic Gases Caused World's Worst Extinction

An ancient killer is hiding in the remote forests of Siberia. Walled off from western eyes during the Soviet era and forgotten among the endless expanse of wilderness, scientists are starting to uncover the remnants of a supervolcano that rained Hell on Earth 250 million years ago and killed 90 percent of all life.