Don Singleton

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The Jewish Street Explodes

In a satirical look at the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons, Jonah Goldberg wrote on The Corner April 1, 2006.

Note the date. April 1 is April Fools Day

New York -- In response to a series of offensive cartoons published in an Iranian newspaper and subsequently printed in every newspaper around the globe, including many which had refused to publish the now-forgotten "anti-Muslim" cartoons last winter, the "Jewish street" erupted. At Brandeis University, a course on Lesbian motifs in Yiddish literature was briefly interrupted as students asked their professor what he thought about the controversy. In Washington D.C. a flurry of letters to the editor and press releases poured out of Jewish organizations. In New York, Commentary magazine -- a leading organ of the "neoconservative" Jewish Right -- announced it would run three articles on Iran in its next issue as well as an extensive letters section.

Oh, what an extreme response <grin>

"This is outrageous but expected," thundered a furious Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League on a longer-than-normal appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews."

Elsewhere Jewish tempers weren't running so hot. At Artie's Delicatessen on the Upper West Side of New York, Josh Greenberg ate a pastrami sandwich with a friend, Abe Kolman, hoping to avoid all the furor in the Jewish street. "Zabar's is a mad house today," Greenberg observed. When asked about the Iranian newspaper controversy, Greenberg said "What are you going to do?" Kolman, an orthodontist, added "I'd stop eating Iranian pistachios, I guess." The White House continued to plead with Jews across America to stay calm.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Lobbyists in the gym

The Hill reported Former Rep. Tom Bliley (R-Va.), a powerful gavel-swinger at the Commerce Committee in the late 1990s, is no fan of new House rules that prevent lobbyists who were lawmakers from stalking the floor during votes or using the chamber’s gym.

That is too bad. The rule changes are certainly not enough, they need to eliminate earmarks. bit tje ri;es ,ale semse/

The new rule looks more favorably on former members who are convicted felons, such as Jim Traficant (D-Ohio), than former members who are registered lobbyists, Bliley complained in a hallway outside the House chamber last week. Bliley, who often visits the House floor, said he used to use the gym frequently and attends events of the Chowder and Marching Club — the House Republican “secret society” — near the Speaker’s suite of offices. “To show you how stupid it is, when he gets out of prison Traficant ... will be able to use the gym as a former member because he’s not a lobbyist,” Bliley said.

There is a good solution to that. Ban former members with criminal records. Or why not just bad all former members.

Indeed, said one House source familiar with the situation, Traficant’s privileges remain intact, as do those of former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.), who just resigned amid a graft scandal. “I don’t believe it was really raised as an issue,” given the lengthy prison terms both men face, said the source.

Soldier had to pay for armor

The Charleston Gazette reported The last time 1st Lt. William “Eddie” Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood. A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again. But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago. He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries. He turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was informed there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle. He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks, perhaps months.

This is just not right!!!!!

Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday. “I last saw the [body armor] when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter,” Rebrook said. “They took it off me and burned it.” But no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during battle, he said. No one wrote down that armor had apparently been incinerated as a biohazard.

Obama and McCain Dueling Memos

Barack Obama and John McCain exchange dueling memos

Obama
Senator Harry Reid and others in the Democratic Caucus have taken an important step by introducing S. 2180, the Honest Leadership Act, which imposes many of the same disclosure requirements for lobbyists that you have proposed,

But as Democrats we feel that since we are in the minority, you should join us on our proposal, rather than pushing your alternative proposal S.1495, which would prohibit Federal agencies from obligating funds for appropriations earmarks included only in congressional reports.

while also strengthening enforcement, eliminating "pay to play" schemes, and imposing more restrictive rules on meals, gifts, and travel that Members and their staff can receive from special interests that advocate before Congress.... I know you have expressed an interest in creating a task force to further study and discuss these matters, but I and others in the Democratic Caucus believe the more effective and timely course is to allow the committees of jurisdiction to roll up their sleeves and get to work on writing ethics and lobbying reform legislation that a majority of the Senate can support....

McCain
Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions.... As you know, the Majority Leader has asked Chairman Collins to hold hearings and mark up a bill for floor consideration in early March. I fully support such timely action and I am confident that, together with Senator Lieberman, the Committee on Governmental Affairs will report out a meaningful, bipartisan bill. You commented in your letter about my "interest in creating a task force to further study" this issue, as if to suggest I support delaying the consideration of much-needed reforms rather than allowing the committees of jurisdiction to hold hearings on the matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. The timely findings of a bipartisan working group could be very helpful to the committee in formulating legislation that will be reported to the full Senate.... The bill Senators Joe Lieberman and Bill Nelson and I have introduced is evidence of that commitment as is my insistence that members of both parties be included in meetings

In other words, we are in the majority, and have some Democrats that are willing to join us, and I thought you were as well, but you insist on pushing the Democratic solution S.2179

to develop the legislation that will ultimately be considered on the Senate floor.

Obama
As you will recall, I told everyone present at the meeting that my caucus insisted that the consideration of any ethics reform proposal go through the regular committee process. You didn't indicate any opposition to this position at the time, and I wrote the letter to reiterate this point, as well as the fact that I thought S. 2180 should be the basis

You just don't understand Democrats. We want everything to be done our way, even though we are in the minority.

for a bipartisan solution.

Introducing the Troll cap

Signal vs. Noise blogged We’ve been experimenting with various ways to keep abusive comments in check. We’ve tried simply deleting those comments, banning those commenters from SvN, and even turning off comments all together for a limited time. We’ve learned a few things from each experiment. Here’s another one we’re going to try: The Troll Cap. troll capWe’ve all seen the dunce cap. Now it’s time for some people to put on the Troll cap. Comments posted on SvN that are off-topic, blatantly inflammatory, or otherwise inappropriate or vapid may either be removed or be slapped with the Troll cap. This icon is free for anyone to use on their own blog.

I am not sure how to implement it, but this sounds like an interesting idea.

BMW given Google 'death penalty'

BBC reported Search giant Google has "blacklisted" German car manufacturer BMW for breaching its guidelines. Investigations by Google found that BMW's German website influenced search results to ensure top ranking when users searched for "used car."

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

It's not wise to try to fool Google.

Google has now reduced BMW's page rank to zero, ensuring the company no longer appears at the top. BMW admitted using so-called "doorway pages" to boost search rankings, but denied any attempt to mislead users.

They just wanted to screw other car manufacturers.

BMW's activities were revealed in a blog by Google software engineer Matt Cutts. If Google says all doorway pages are illegal we have to take this into consideration BMW spokesman BMW's German website, which is heavily reliant on javascript code unsearchable by Google, used text-heavy pages liberally sprinkled with key words to attract the attention of Google's indexing system. However, once a user clicked on the link displayed in Google's results window, they were redirected to a regular BMW Germany page, which contained far fewer of the key words.

Google has a special program where BMW can buy a top rating. It is called a "Sponsored Link"

End to Google's 'Free Lunch'

WaPo reports A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.

Google does not access people's homes. People who live in those homes use lines and cables they pay their local phone company or their local cable company for, to access Google's servers and other servers on the internet. Google pays backbone ISP's for lines to connect's servers to the internet.

The comments by John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, came as lawmakers prepared to debate legislation that could let phone and cable companies charge Internet firms additional fees for using their high-speed lines. "The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."

If Verizon provides service to Google, go ahead and increase your charges, and let's see if they can find a less expensive provider to provide it's servers with internet connectivity.

Verizon is spending billions of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the country for delivering high-speed Internet and cable TV services.

I presume they are doing that because they feel it is a good business decision.

Executives at other telecom companies, such as AT Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., have suggested that Google, Yahoo Inc. and other such Internet services should have to pay fees for preferred access to consumers over such lines.

Iran to publish Holocaust cartoons

News.com.au reports Iran's largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. "It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," said Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper - which is published by Teheran's conservative municipality.

At least it is not violence, and if they think that Jews or Europeans will react violently, and burn embassies, they will be disappointed.

He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

There are already plenty of anti-Jewish cartoons printed in arab newspapers daily.

"The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he said.

Don't hold your breath. No, I retract that. Go ahead and hold your breath. I would like to see what you look like in blue.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Democrats 'Recalibrating' Message Strategy

Rollcall reports National Democratic leaders remain engaged in strategic talks over how and when to unveil their 2006 campaign platform, with recent discussions focused on laying out the party agenda in installments rather than all at once.

That seems like a very good idea. If you don't have any ideas, it is best not to put all of that on the table at once. There is always the remote chance that they will come up with an idea sometime.

Amazon-Sense?

SitePoint blogged Amazon is apparently looking into the feasibility of starting their own ad network like Adsense.... When I first heard about this I thought it’d be Amazon product listings displayed in an Adsense-like way and I figured it’d analyze your content for for products to serve, but they’d be Amazon products. Turns out I was wrong, they want their own contextual advertising network.....

This is interesting. I can't check it out, because I am a member of the Pajamas Media blogs, and cannot host any ads other than theirs, but other blogs that are not a part of Pajamas Media might want to check it out.

The fact is that while Amazon has a high gross revenue, they have really thin profit margins, whereas Google and even eBay have much better profit margins. So I think there is probably a little bit of business jealousy at work here, and rightly so. Amazon realizes that if they want to compete as a major Internet destination, not just an ecommerce site, they need to capture a larger chunk of the online advertising revenue. It’s kinda funny, 5 years ago people were speaking about the death of online advertising, and now its huge.

So anyways, if they go through with this, then once MSN’s AdCenter program is launched, and Yahoo’s Publisher Network goes out of beta, that’ll give us publishers 4 choices in this area and choice is never a bad thing.

Muslims tell Yard to charge protesters

Times Online Britain’s leading Islamic body yesterday called on Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, to press charges against the extremists behind last week’s inflammatory protests in London over the “blasphemous” cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

This is the first intelligent thing I have heard the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) say

Self-harmers to be given clean blades

Times Online reported Nurses want patients who are intent on harming themselves to be provided with clean blades so that they can cut themselves more safely.

This is insane.

They say people determined to harm themselves should be helped to minimise the risk of infection from dirty blades, in the same way as drug addicts are issued with clean needles.

A good example of the "slippery slope" argument.

This could include giving the “self-harm” patients sterile blades and clean packets of bandages or ensuring that they keep their own blades clean. Nurses would also give patients advice about which parts of the body it is safer to cut.

What makes you think that a patient with a desire to harm himself wants to know a safe way to do it?

The proposal for “safe” self-harm — which is to be debated at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Congress in April — is likely to provoke controversy.

Really?????

At present nurses are expected to stop anyone doing physical harm to themselves and to confiscate any sharp objects ranging from razor blades to broken glass and tin cans.

A reasonable policy.

However, Ian Hulatt, mental health adviser for the RCN, said: “There is a clear comparison with giving clean needles to reduce HIV. We will be debating introducing a similar harm-reduction approach. This may well include the provision of clean dressing packs and it may mean providing clean ‘sharps’.

If a patient wants to shoot himself, will they provide the gun, and make recommendations of where to shoot?

“Nurses who encounter individuals who self-harm on a regular basis face a dilemma. Do they go for prohibition? Or do we allow this to occur in a way that minimises harm?” Hulatt admitted there would be significant opposition: “Some nurses will not support this because our code of practice says we should not do patients any harm.

Dutch Islamists post cartoons

Haaretz reported
Dutch Islamists post cartoons depicting Anne Frank, Hitler in bed. A Belgian-Dutch Islamic political organization posted anti-Jewish cartoons on its Web site in response to the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that appeared in Danish papers last year and offended many Muslims. The cartoons were posted on the Arab European League's site on Saturday. It was not working Sunday morning because of exceeded bandwidth. The Islamic site carried a disclaimer saying the images were being shown as part of an exercise in free speech rather than to endorse their content - just as European newspapers have reprinted the Danish cartoons.

And you will NOT see Jews rioting in the streets, and no embassies from Islamic countries will be burned. Will the Muslims see the difference?

One of the AEL cartoons displayed an image of Dutch Holocaust victim Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, and another questioned whether the Holocaust actually occurred.

Michelle Malkin blogged Um, hello? Arab newspapers run this kind of sick propaganda all the time. And nobody riots. Nobody burns down Arab nations' embassies. Nobody threatens to behead and massacre and annihilate the Muslim cartoonists.

Thanks for making the point.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Muslim Excesses

A Danish newspaper printed 12 cartoons that upset Muslims

They certainly are not complimentary to the Muslim faith, but Denmark is not a Muslim country, and in my opinion they are not as insulting to the Muslim faith as the cartoons Muslim newspapers run daily about the Jewish faith, nor are they as insulting as it is for newspapers in the US (an 80 to 90% Christian country) to print praise of artwork with Christ in urine, and the Virgin Mary covered in dung, mocking images of Jesus Christ, or Bin Laden as Christ, Rolling Stones prints a cover with Kanye West-as-Christ, and we have a network that plans to feature Britney Spears as the host of a fictional cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's" in an upcoming "Will & Grace" epsiode, and a network plans an epsiode that makes a mockery out of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and many others too numerous to name, yet while it makes Christians sad, and even angry, we are not rioting in the streets.

As Gateway Pundit reported This whole Danish cartoon controversy was made up by the "Islamic Society of Denmark" who spread three fake cartoons, that never were printed in the Danish newspapers

These additional three were certainly more insulting: showing Muhammed with a pig snout (a pig is considered unclean in the Muslim faith), showing Muhammad as a pedophile demon, and showing a praying Muslim being raped by a dog, but they were never printed by the Danish or any other newspaper.

Michelle Malkin points out that the international newspapers and television stations are doing their best to downplay the global conflagration over the Cartoon Jihad by calling it a "Cartoon row" for the Danish embassy in several countries to be burned, while other European papers are reprinting the cartoons to show they have the power to do so. As Michelle indicated, this is not a "row".

Michelle Malkin put together a very cute movie (click here to view the wmv file)

Tim Blair quoted a Sydney news report which said

As more European newspapers reprinted the cartoons, what started off as a row between Denmark’s press and its Muslim population has grown into a full-blown “clash of civilisations”.

and he responded

No; that would require two civilisations.

There is absolutely no excuse for all of this violence.

As La Shawn Barber said Liberal editors are a lot smarter than they look. If Rolling Stone had put Kanye West posing as Muhammad on the cover, they’d be in hiding, too. Instead, they chose the safer route: West, a rapper and contributor to the cultural toilet, posing with a crown of thorns on his head.

Christ is fair game, isn’t he? Unbelievers, liberals, and other secularists make fun of him, mock him, scorn him, and curse him, yet they steer clear of doing the same with Muslims’ god. They know offended Muslims, unlike offended Christians, issue death threats.

Crash and burn, Islamofascists! It’s in your nature. Killing is all you know how to do. You are gutless and psychotic. A religion of peace, indeed.

Ed Driscoll nails it:
Remember all the riots, looting and torching when Dogma and The Last Temptation of Christ played at your local multiplex?

Me neither.
Well, The Da Vinci Code movie will premiere in May. Let’s storm the embassies and multiplexes (multiplexi?), brothers and sisters!

Clearly she is being sarcastic, because Christians know that that Christ would not approve of violence. But I would not mind seeing a boycott.

Email Tax

Boing Boing blogged AOL/Yahoo say: our email tax will make the net as good as the post office!

That bad? Email has already killed Western Union Telegrams, and is making a good shot at eliminating the Post Office (I get more junk mail than I do mail I want each day).

AOL/Yahoo: our email tax will make the net as good as the post office! AOL and Yahoo have proposed a system to charge senders a quarter of a cent for guaranteed delivery on each email sent to their customers. They justify this as an anti-spam measure, but of course it could make them billions, is unlikely to eliminate spam, and will undermine the ability of activist groups like MoveOn and others to correspond with their supporters.

Well if it is going to hurt MoveOn.org maybe there is some good to it.

The justification AOL offers for this is that it could make email just as good as postal mail.

Or perhaps as bad.

Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail

NYT reported
Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered.

Hopefully this will encourage users to avoid using AoL and Yahoo as email providers.

The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely. The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services.

Actually it will increase the junk email to AoL and Yahoo customers since the sender will know that by paying a small fee it will be guaranteed to be delivered.

They also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.

Which is the main reason they are doing it. It has nothing to do with helping their customers.

AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users' main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a junk-mail folder or strip them of images and Web links. As is the case now, mail arriving from addresses that users have added to their AOL address books will not be treated as spam.

So they can send all of the spam they want, they just have to pay a small fee to do it.

Yahoo and AOL say the new system is a way to restore some order to e-mail, which, because of spam and worries about online scams, has become an increasingly unreliable way for companies to reach their customers, even as online transactions are becoming a crucial part of their businesses.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Offending Religion

Muslims all over the world are upset because a Danish newspaper printed 12 cartoons they say are offensive to Muslims, and they are threatening an International Day of Anger, because Islamists faked some additional cartoons and attributed them to the Danes to inflame the Arab world.

News alert to Muslims: Denmark is NOT a Muslim country. And newspapers in Muslim countries regularly run cartoons offensive to Jews.

I've got news for them. America is a (80 to 90%) Christian country, and our own newspapers praise artwork with Christ in urine, and the Virgin Mary covered in dung, mocking images of Jesus Christ, or Bin Laden as Christ, Rolling Stones prints a cover with Kanye West-as-Christ, and we have a network that plans to feature Britney Spears as the host of a fictional cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's" in an upcoming "Will & Grace" epsiode, and a network plans an epsiode that makes a mockery out of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and many others too numerous to name, yet while it makes Christians sad, and even angry, we are not rioting in the streets.

Check out the new Faces of Muhammad blog.

Daryl Cagle, of the professional cartoonists index, has been following this story on his blog, and also prints lots of cartoons arguing for and against these depictions of Mohammad.

Jews against Boehner

David Harris on NJDC blogged What Every American Jew Should Know About John Boehner

For School Prayer and Amending the Constitution: Rep. Boehner supported a school prayer amendment to the United States Constitution in 1997; voted to permit school prayer "during this time of struggle against the forces of international terrorism"; and voted to only allow federal aid to schools that allow prayer.
Why should a Jew oppose prayer? Don't Jews pray? There is nothing that Boehner has said that would restrict prayers to Christian Prayers.
For Forced Religion in Anti-Poverty Programs: Rep. Boehner voted to permit taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs to require aid recipients to join in religious activities.
Actually what he supported was allowing faith-based organizations, including Jewish organizations to participate on an equal footing with secular organizations.
100% Against a Woman's Right to Choose: Rep. Boehner received a "0%" pro-choice score from NARAL Pro-Choice America in 2005.
Jewish babies are being aborted every day.
For Religious Employment Discrimination: Rep. Boehner voted to permit taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs to engage in federally-funded employment discrimination.
As indicated above, he favors allowing Faith Based organizations to participate on an equal footing, and if a Jewish organization decides to participate, it would be able to require its employees to be Jews
Against the Rule of Law in Ten Commandments Case: Rep. Boehner voted to prevent the Justice Department from enforcing a court order to remove a 5,000 pound Ten Commandments monument from Alabama's state supreme court.
The 10 commandments come from the Torah.
Against Common-Sense Environmental Safeguards: Rep. Boehner voted for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Environmental risks are minimized, and it would make us less dependent on Muslem controlled sources of oil.
voted to gut the Endangered Species Act; and voted to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act.
For More Religious Employment Discrimination: Rep. Boehner voted to permit taxpayer-funded job training programs to engage in religious discrimination when hiring and firing employees with federal funds.
As discused twice above, Faith Based Jewish groups would be as eligible as Christian groups to bid to participate.
Against Confronting Proselytizing at the Air Force Academy: Rep. Boehner voted against an amendment to squarely address religious coercion and proselytizing at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.
They may have gone overboard at the AF Academy, but the amendment to "address" it went overboard the other direction.
Led the Effort to Inject Religious Employment Discrimination into Head Start: Rep. Boehner added a controversial amendment in September to a previously bipartisan School Readiness Act which would "allow federally funded early-child-care providers to discriminate on religious grounds"
This is the 4th (of 10) objections to allowing Faith Based organizations to participate on an equal footing with secular groups.
Pushed Ohio Schools to Embrace "Intelligent Design:"
Genesis is a part of the Torah.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Carter Lost His Mind

CNN reported Hamas deserves to be recognized by the international community, and despite the group's militant history, there is a chance the soon-to-be Palestinian leaders could turn away from violence, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.

Carter also said: Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

Carter, who monitored last week's Palestinian elections in which Hamas handily toppled the ruling Fatah, added that the United States should not cut off aid to the Palestinian people, but rather funnel it through third parties like the U.N.

Oh, that's a brilliant idea. The UN can certainly be trusted, can't it. Maybe they will set up another Oil for Food Program.

"If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think that all the governments should recognize that administration and let them form their government," Carter said.

I don't believe anyone is suggesting not letting them form their government, or even withholding recognition of that government (assuming an area that is not a "state" can have a government). Now negotating with such a "government" or providing it with money are entirely different matters.

"If there are prohibitions -- like, for instance, in the United States, against giving any money to a government that is controlled by Hamas -- then the United States could channel the same amount of money to the Palestinian people through the United Nations, through the refugee fund, through UNICEF, things of that kind," he added.

Even if US Law would permit it (and I am not sure it would), I am not sure which of those funds is the least dishonest.

CQ blogged If people use democracy to elect hate-filled bigots and murderous terrorists into power, then they should suffer the consequences of that choice, not get a free pass from the world. Hamas explicitly calls for the destruction on Israel in its charter and has refused to change its position, even after its electoral victory. It has conducted attacks on Israeli citizens, both suicide bombings and quasi-military rocket attacks. It gets its funding from Iran due to its Islamofascist goals and activities, and some evidence exists that it partners with al-Qaeda.

None of this matters to Carter, the fool who first allowed Islamofascism into power with his refusal to support the Shah and his subsequent inaction after Iranians sacked our embassy in Teheran. He continues his decades-long effort to follow in the footsteps of Neville Chamberlain, only he refuses to share in Chamberlain's epiphany about appeasement after Munich. Carter also insisted that Yasser Arafat was ready to make peace, and instead we got stiffed at Oslo and at Wye and wound up with two intifadas as a result.

Carter remains America's most embarrassing and dangerous ex-President. With his apologetics for terrorists, one hopes that his credibility will finally dissipate and his advice will be recognized for the foolishness it is.

Tigerhawk blogged Before we get to the really stupid part, haven't we learned that "channeling" money through the United Nations -- which quite obviously has worse internal controls than Jeff Skilling's Enron -- is a profoundly bad idea? The left, which thinks that every nickel the Pentagon loses is a totem to financial mismanagement, suddenly gets all "billion here, billion there" when the United Nations is involved. The great American center knows that it would be asinine to recruit Kofi Annan's friends and relatives to launder our money so that we can skirt federal law and continue to fund the Palestinian Authority.

The people of Palestine elected a government that is expressly at war with America's most stalwart ally outside of the Anglosphere, and Jimmy Carter declares that notwithstanding this they have a right "to pay their school teachers, policemen, welfare workers, health workers and provide food for people."

Wrong. The Palestinians have a right -- finally -- to elect their own leadership. They have exercised that right. They have a responsibility to pay their school teachers, policemen, welfare workers, health workers and provide food for people. That Palestinian Arabs have exercised their rights in a way that makes it very difficult for them to perform their responsibilities reflects on their immaturity -- or even incompetence -- as a society.

It is this kind of thinking that is killing the Democrats.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams

LiveScience reports After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams. On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible: "Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative."

The end of an era. Now all we need is for McDonalds to stop selling hamburgers.

The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn't help. Email could be counted as the final nail in the coffin. Western Union has not failed. It long ago refocused its main business to make money transfers for consumers and businesses. Revenues are now $3 billion annually. It's now called Western Union Financial Services, Inc. and is a subsidiary of First Data Corp. The world's first telegram was sent on May 24, 1844 by inventor Samuel Morse. The message, "What hath God wrought," was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. In a crude way, the telegraph was a precursor to the Internet in that it allowed rapid communication, for the first time, across great distances. Western Union goes back to 1851 as the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. In 1856 it became the Western Union Telegraph Company after acquisition of competing telegraph systems. By 1861, during the Civil War, it had created a coast-to-coast network of lines.

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