Assorted Links: July 25, 2005

Beyond Help

When even Johnny Carson can't make you funnier then you know something is wrong.

The idea, Mr. Gore said, was that he would be wheeled onto the dais on a hand truck, ramrod straight, and would slowly be cranked to his feet by "two guys in Acme delivery costumes."

"I told Johnny about it, and he said, 'Oh that's great,' " Mr. Gore recalled. "He said, 'When you do it, make sure to wait till they stop laughing.' "

To his delight, Mr. Gore said, the bit killed.

"Part of the shtick on me in those days was that I was stiff," Mr. Gore added, laughing. "I like to think it's passed, but it's not."

More Health Care Fascism

This proposed bill, just introduced into the New Jersey State Assembly, would ban smoking inside private cars, even if the driver is alone.  Nominally its intent is to improve "highway safety."  A prediction for our statist friends: Prohibition by regulatory baby steps will be no more successful than prohibition by Constitutional Amendment. 

Assemblyman John McKeon, a tobacco opponent whose father died of emphysema, sponsored the legislation. He cites a AAA-sponsored study on driver distractions in which the automobile association found that of 32,000 accidents linked to distraction, 1 percent were related to smoking.

The measure, co-sponsored by Assemblywoman Lorretta Weinberg, a fellow Democrat, was introduced last month just before lawmakers' summer break. It faces some improbable odds for passing.

We've heard that before too.

How do you say Atheist in Ojibway?

Blandly called Camp Quest this summer camp for the Godless promises all the bother, discomfort and expense of a traditional camp without having to believe in a supernatural being.  They say there are no atheists on a battlefield - a highly debatable point since I've met atheist vets - but I wonder if the same might also be said of people in a leaky canoe in the middle of a mosquito infested lake.

Camp Quest is a secular camp operated in Butler County, Ohio, by a group incorporated in Kentucky. It is for kids who come from families who are atheist or agnostic. For these kids, Camp Quest provides a refuge from a society where God feels omnipresent.

"I sometimes get pressured at my school, like why do I not believe in God?" said Molly Silverman, a camper. "But here, they never pressure me or anything

Instead, Silverman is accepted without criticism for not bowing her head before each meal.

Dulce et Decorum

Andrew has another post on his soldier ancestor, Thomas Edward Clare Peterkin.  Definitely not a battlefield atheist.

Back home his family had to find what comfort they could to help them get past the (all too common) twist of fate that stole a brother/son/grandson from them. The Peterkins were deeply religious, that much is obvious by reading the letters they wrote, and so the Church service that was held to remember Thomas Edward Clare Peterkin probably helped them accept what had happened, and move on with life.

Muscling the Competition

First Nations University goes into slow motion collapse.  One of its first victims is a leader of the Poundmaker Working Group.  HT Darcey.

Documents obtained by CBC News show the First Nations University in Regina is almost three million dollars in debt. Its grants from federal and provincial governments are frozen, and staff say aboriginal politicians are hijacking their institution. Jennifer Quesnell reports…

First Nations University staff say they have had relatively balanced budgets over the past decade, but this winter first nations politicians swept in, suspending three administrators, and replacing them with friends and relatives. English professor Randy Lundy says that is when the bills started to pile up.

What On Earth is That Man Thinking

Sometimes Paul Tuns says things that are just plain incomprehensible.  Such as the below:

Top 15 favourite TV shows of all-time*

1. Dallas
2. Dynasty
3. Family Guy
4. Oz
5. All in the Family
6. The Simpsons
7. Homocide: Life on the Street
8. Seinfeld
9. Law and Order
10. Bonanza
11. Monty Python's Flying Circus
12. Anamaniacs
13. The Big Valley
14. The Colbys
15. Night Court

* not including sports or current affairs programs

Explain to me, if anyone can, how on earth Family Guy outranks The Simpsons?  I'm a big fan of Family Guy.  The epic battles between Peter and the Giant Yellow Chicken, revived in the new season, are mini-comic masterpieces.  Anything with Stewie is brilliant.  The scene where he sings Elton John's "It's Goin' Be A Long, Long Time" is one of those transcendent moments in recent television.  Still, not better than The Simpsons in its prime.  Better than the first few seasons yes, though perhaps not as "deep." 

Certainly better than anything in the last few Simpsons' seasons.  But at the shows' peak it passed itself into another level, the level of Monty Python, which is bizarrely at 11.  Eleven, Paul?  Eleven!  And what's with Dallas and Dynasty at one and two?  The Colbys was a spin-off and shouldn't have a separate ranking.  You're double counting.  Night Court is an intriguing choice.  Definitely one of my all time favourites.  Making it in the top fifteen is a bit tight though.  The Big Valley is a good choice.  I've always liked Barbara Stanwyck, which I guess in part explains The Colbys.  That and Joan Collins' occasional appearances.  You could cut glass not only on that woman's cheeks but on her tongue as well.

"Nixonian Socialism"

The legendary Murray Rothbard calls Richard Nixon a fascist in this January 1971 piece.  Unlike the hippies of the time he knows what he's talking about. 

Neither has any note been taken of the Nixon Administration's plan for tidying up the construction industry. Many people have scoffed at the revisionist view (held by such New Left historians as Ronald Radosh) that the pro-union legislation of the twentieth century has been put in at the behest of big business itself, which seeks a large, unified , if tamed labor union junior partnership in corporate state rule over the nation's economy. And yet the Railway Labor Act of 1926, which in effect compulsorily unionized the railroad industry in exchange for compulsory arbitration and a no-strike policy, was put in at the behest of the rail industry, anticipating the later labor policy of the New Deal.

And now the construction industry has gotten the Nixon Administration behind a similar plan; all the members of the present small but pesky and powerful construction unions are to be dragooned into one big, area-wide industrial union, and then to be subject to massive compulsory arbitration. The fascization of America proceeds apace.

Root Causes

Debris Trail's take:

But, what if an honest search for root causes does yield a tangible, concrete, and undeniable root cause? What if, that root cause does not conform with contemporary Liberal Socialist thinking, which is that all cultures, religions, and doctrines have equal merit? What if , just maybe, the search for a root cause to terrorism discovers a religion and culture so wrapped in medieval thinking that it is trapped in a millennia old time warp? What if the root cause is a perceptible hate toward the West, built not on historical grievances, but on a sense of religious superiority, pre-eminence, and bigotry? What if, just maybe, the root cause is a religion rooted in arcane hatres, perspectives, chauvinism, and ignorance?

Ontario Paternalism:  Then & Now

From Quot'd:

From 1927 to 1962 the LCBO limited those who were legally allowed to drink by requiring a permit to purchase liquor. These permits required an application to the liquor board who would then grant or deny a request based on "fitness" to drink and "character."

The permit book resembled a passport in size and shape and was individually identifiable through a unique six-digit number. The pages inside consisted of a small section related to the individual, including name, address and employment, and another for records of purchases, including the date, liquor type, volume and cost. This tracking of every Ontarian's liquor purchases allowed the LCBO to live up to Ferguson's original mandate of "knowing exactly who is buying and how much."

Between 1929 and 1933 these permits, along with investigations by the LCBO and OPP, allowed the board to generate more than 154,000 detailed files on Ontario residents that included financial, employment and family data that was used to gauge the "fitness" of drinkers. It was also shared with other state and police institutions.

The LCBO even had the controversial right to grant police search warrants and the ability to convert private property such as homes or places of business into public spaces under the Liquor Control Act.

Go Ahead, Make My Day

What Anne McLellan should have said in response to this bit of sabre rattling.

A controversial Toronto imam warned Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan at a closed-door meeting to stop "terrorizing" Canadian Muslims.

"If you try to cross the line I can't guarantee what is going to happen. Our young people, we can't control," Aly Hindy, the head of Scarborough's Salaheddin Islamic Centre, recalls telling the minister at the May meeting she held in Toronto with dozens of Muslim leaders.

The meeting was part of an effort by Ms. McLellan to reach out to Canadian Muslims amid complaints that the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service are engaging in racial profiling.

The minister and her officials have been meeting community leaders to explain they are not targeting Muslims generally, only individuals with possible terrorist links.

Deterrence

Is there no problem the Russians don't try to solve with blood and violence?

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

Kushnir, 35, headed the English learning centers the Center for American English, the New York English Centre and the Centre for Spoken English, all known to have aggressive Internet advertising policies in which millions of e-mails were sent every day.