Interesting New Blog

A reader and occasional commenter here at Unreligious Right, Pat, has a blog called Shades of Grey. Instead of being written from a single ideological perspective, like most blogs, it often uses a point/counterpoint approach that offers differing views on the same issue. Check it out. It is also now linked on my blogroll.

HOT5 Daily 9/15/2010

1. "Ten Questions You're Not Supposed to Ask About Islam" But which need to be asked repeatedly.

Representative Sample: When you refuse to talk about important topics because they make people uncomfortable, animus, distrust, and anxiety inevitably spread. On the other hand, when you have an open and honest dialogue about the real issues people debate privately, you can build comfort and trust and start to reach solutions that would never be possible in an environment where people are attacked and demonized simply for asking basic questions that most people have, but are afraid to speak out about.

2. "Violent crime continues to plummet as gun ownership skyrockets" Because unlike what gun-haters believe, guns are merely tools.

Representative Sample: This all occurred in the same year that Americans purchased 14 million firearms—more than the combined active armies of the top 21 countries in the world. We also purchased an estimated 14+ billion rounds of ammunition during that same time period.

3. "Will the GOP make the right play or take their ball and go home?" I'm not a tea party candidate supporter. But the GOP leadership needs to get behind the candidates that its members elect, whether they like them or not.

Representative Sample: If the Republican Party wants folks to believe that what they want from the Party matters to the Party, they need to now get behind the choice of the people of the Party.

4. "Supreme Injustice" The idiocy of Justice Stephen Breyer.

Representative Sample: we had as proponents such high-ranking figures as General David Petraeus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Obama all saying "forget about your Constitutional rights; it's more important that you not piss off the crazy dangerous people." At that point, you'd find yourself saying "well, it couldn't get any worse. Yes, it could.

5. "Must Read: How Gov’t Unions Are Stealing From You and Your Kids" Links to a good article.

Representative Sample: This is a great piece that details financial folly of governments allowing their employees (teachers, cops, firemen, transit workers, bureaucrats, administrators, etc, etc, etc) to unionize, apparently to protect them from their oppressive bosses in…government?

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

Man Fired for Making a Political Statement

Derek Fenton, who burned a few pages from the Koran in a 9/11 protest was abruptly fired by New Jersey Transit after working there 11 years. NJ Transit claims he somehow violated their code of ethics. It sounds more like a combination of political correctness and fear of Muslim reaction. What does taking part in a political protest, and harmlessly burning a few pages of paper have to do with the ethics of working for a transit company?

There's no right to hold a job, and companies have all sorts of reasons for firing people, but firing people for making political statements, or for harmless acts religious people find offensive should disturb everyone. I'm not sure, but Fenton may have a first amendment case, since NJ Transit is a state agency. This appears to be a case of a government employer firing someone for taking part in a political protest and exercising his right to free expression.

The Huge Saudi Arms Deal

I have mixed feelings about the proposed major arm deal with Saudi Arabia. On the one hand Saudi Arabia does function as a U.S. ally in the region, and as such we would prefer it to be a strong ally, with significant military capability.

A senior Defense Department official said the administration is prepared to authorize the sale of as many as 84 F-15 fighter jets and three types of helicopters: 70 upgraded F-15s, 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds to the Saudis. ... Another deal, the senior Pentagon official said, could include selling the Saudis naval and ballistic missile-defense weapons systems that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more.

If those reports are correct, that's a huge arms purchase. But despite our alliance with Saudi Arabia, I'm not thrilled with the sort of reasoning excerpted below.

Defense industry analysts said the sale of the aircraft is a key to U.S. efforts to boost support from Arab allies against Iran.

"The U.S. is trying to create the strongest effort to deter and contain Iran," said Anthony Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you look at all of these sales, the U.S. is working to create a Saudi Air Force that is far more capable than Iran. These sales help give Saudi Arabia the capability to convince Iran that it can't use missiles or air power against Saudi Arabia or its neighbors."

I'm all for containing Iran, but I think Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are weak reeds to rely on. And we already have a far stronger ally in the Middle East. It's called Israel, a country with proven advanced military capabilities. I see Saudi Arabia as a hollow shell, with a high-tech force that has little staying power. And there is another factor as well.

Saudi Arabia, and most of our other Arab allies are one Islamic revolution away from turning into enemies. If we are prepared to make this sort of strategic investment in Saudi Arabia, we also need to be willing to do whatever it takes to maintain the House of Saud in power. What that means is committing the U.S. to propping up an autocratic regime, and acting to assist it in the event that it faces a popular revolution. I have no confidence that the U.S. government is willing to do that. It is much more likely that we would do what we did with Iran, where we abandoned our ally the Shah to his fate, and let Iran turn into an enemy. The more advanced U.S. weaponry Saudi Arabia has if & when that happens, the worse it will be.

HOT5 Daily 9/14/2010

1. "TIS BETTER TO HAVE LOST AND LOST AGAIN THAN HAVE WON ANYTHING AT ALL" One of the better articles on the current fight within the GOP. 

Representative Sample: I didn’t think it possible to cheer up those gloomy Gus Democrats about their election chances in November but by God, leave it to the the true conservatives out there to accomplish the damn near impossible; they may guarantee Democrats remain in control of the senate next year.

2. "Newt Is Nuts!" Newt embraces the latest idiotic conspiracy theory about Obama. 

Representative Sample:  After the premiere of his documentary America at Risk, Gingrich mused about the brilliance of D'Souza's Forbes magazine cover story about the "roots of Obama's rage," based on his upcoming book with that title. The roots, according to D'Souza, were in mid-1960s, Marxist-inspired, Kenyan anti-colonialism. Gingrich repeated those words—"Kenyan, anti-colonial"—and called the article "brilliant."

3. "You Cannot Make Deals With The Real Extremists" Contrary to the Wishful Thinking School of American foreign policy.  

Representative Sample: It's a cartoon.

4. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" I heard this piece on NPR while working over the weekend. 

Representative Sample: a series of revelations about police activities that are illegal (quotas) or violate the civil rights of citizens (arrests that are later voided that are made simply to pump up numbers) or manipulation of crime statistics in order to improve numbers in the CompStat system.

5. "Conflicted" Good points.

Representative Sample: a trial for an American citizen by a jury of his peers is being considered as a fallback plan to his targeted, extrajudicial assassination. This from the same bunch that just a few years ago got their panties in a twist about extending habeus corpus to non-citizen terrorists detained by the US military in Cuba.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

HOT5 Daily 9/13/2010

1. "Willful Ignorance" Obama and the economy. 

Representative Sample: With 15 million workers unemployed and another 11 million underemployed, President Obama recently decided that the answer was to hit the road and throw some anti-rich red meat to some friendly stadium audiences.

2. "Offend the religious and you may lose your job." And depending on which religion it is, your life. 

Representative Sample: Alex Stewart rolled two fake joints using the pages of a Koran and a Bible and then smoked them – it was a tongue in cheek comment on the furore surrounding the Koran burning affair in the States. It should be noted that both the Koran and the Bible were owned by Alex, oh and Alex was anonymous until someone outed him to the papers.

3. "Spetsnaz Are Born Again" The rebuilding of Russian special forces.  

Representative Sample: After the Beslan incident, Spetsnaz apparently decided to get its act together, and it's shown in recent years. A big part of the current Russian military reforms appears to be a major improvement in the equipment and training of Russian elite forces, primarily paratroopers and special forces. For the foreseeable future, the Russians know that their elites are the most effective, reliable troops they have and can't afford to have them spread thinly across the military different formations.

4. "Koran burning, wrong though it is, is the price we pay for a free society. Let’s move on." Some good points. 

Representative Sample: One of the core principles of Western culture is “criticism.” From the ancient Greeks forward, it’s been the lawful and moral right to criticize that has made our culture progress and improve. And nothing is spared either. Take Christianity. It has passed through centuries of attacks and criticism, especially in the West! Yes, this may seem profane to the holy, but it’s the price you pay for a civilized society. 

5. "Afghanistan: US Trying To Track Missing Weapons Issued To Afghan Police" Good luck.

Representative Sample: Of course these weapons were sold by Afghan government officials. What else could have happened to them? Like they magically disappeared into thin air or Afghan gremlins took them from armories or from sleeping soldiers? Ha! I guarantee that these weapons are in the hands of the Taliban or PSC’s, because we actually trusted that the Afghans could be responsible with this stuff. It also makes me sick to think that US and Coalition forces have probably been killed by these weapons.

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

HOT5 Daily 9/12/2010

1. "The Myths of 9/11" A good post from Frum. 

Representative Sample: as has been minutely documented since 2001, terrorists disproportionately come from the elite of their native societies. (The underwear bomber was the son of one of the richest men in Nigeria.) The societies that produce terrorists are likewise not poor, not the way Burma is poor or Congo is poor. Whatever it is, terrorism is not a cry of anguish from the dispossessed.

2. "Why do we cringe and cower" Good question. 

Representative Sample :Not in the face of Nazis. Or the gulags–in those cases people were moved to anger and to speak up. But islamism has become the disease that none dare name, the unmentionable, the almost-unthinkable core of an ideology that’s reflexively referred to as “the religion of peace”.

3. "When Criminal Defendants Face Conservative Judges" Not what you might think. Links to another more detailed article. 

Representative Sample: The opinions in these cases demonstrate why Scalia and Roberts, both "textualist" judges, so often side with criminal defendants. Scalia and Roberts take the same literal approach to interpreting federal statutes that they take to interpreting constitutional provisions. In neither case are they inclined to expand the meaning of a provision beyond its clear terms in order to effectuate some overarching policy goal.

4. "Muslims in the Middle East cheered the Attacks of 9/11" Particularly our enemies the Palestinians -- something many have chosen to forget, as we hand them money and train their military forces. 

Representative Sample: It's a video.

5. "Barack Obama: Leadership Under Whelming" Definitely.

Representative Sample: Imagine: It's Poland, 1939. Obama's message to the Poles is: Sure, you've been invaded by Nazi Germany. But, consider how much satisfaction can be had by reaching out to others in your community! Reaffirm your ideals – in defiance of those who would do you grave harm. Think of what that would say about you as a people!

To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.