HOT5 Daily 10/9/2010

1. "Obama: Nothing to Offer But Fear Itself" That's pretty much it, along with a big dose of incompetence.

Representative Sample: Barack Obama is now hiding behind the children. You can virtually guarantee next week's screed with be aimed at seasoned citizens and how those mean old Republicans will be taking away their Social Security.

2. "Goodbye, Mr. Jones" And good riddance 

Representative Sample: Gen. Jim Jones will go down in history as the least successful national security advisor since Adm. John Poindexter was forced out of office during the Reagan administration. This fact alone illuminates just one of the many miscalculations that were made in hiring Jones.

3. "Donilon’s the Wrong Man for the Job" Can Obama  hire someone even worse than Jones as national security advisor? Yes he can. 

Representative Sample: Donilon may not know much, but he possesses the surefire cockiness of a lifelong pol; and he is determined to set policymaking in a far-left direction.

4. "They shoot migrants, don't they?" The UN continues to be a joke. 

Representative Sample: Egypt, a state that over the past four years has allegedly shot and killed more than 80 African migrants trying to cross into Israel over the Sinai Desert border, became chair on Friday of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees executive committee

5. "Fluffy Finds God?" Animal spirituality?

Representative Sample: A neurologist and other scientists argue animals are capable of having spiritual experiences

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

Spreading a False Religion

I just saw a news story that caught my attention. It's only a snippet so the actual situation is unclear. An Australian citizen, Safaa Al Awadi, took part in some sort of religious debate on television. Whatever happened caused him to be arrested by Egyptian authorities, who accused him of being a terrorist and "spreading a false religion."

This is pure speculation, but I wonder if he was advocating violence/terrorism in the name of Islam, and that's what the "false religion" charge is all about. If so, he'll probably be sorry that he attracted the attention of the Egyptian state.

HOT5 Daily 10/8/2010

1. "Was TARP Good for the Taxpayers?" No. A must-read analysis for anyone wondering about that question.

Representative Sample: even if we put aside all the above complications and concede that the TARP injections into the banks "made money," it was for the politicians, not the taxpayers. I certainly don't remember getting a dividend check in the mail for my share of the $7 billion profit

2. "Muslim Brotherhood Declares War on America; Will America Notice?" It might get in the way of pandering to Islam.

Representative Sample: This is one of those obscure Middle East events of the utmost significance that is ignored by the Western mass media, especially because they happen in Arabic, not English; by Western governments, because they don't fit their policies; and by experts, because they don't mesh with their preconceptions.

3. "The ObamaCare Tumble….Obama Can Now Pick & Choose Who Must Play By The Rules" Only the little people have to follow the rules.

Representative Sample: David Whelan asks the obvious question. If all it takes for these companies to get out from under the ObamaCare monstrosity is to ask…can individuals ask and receive the same kind of generosity from our Socialist leaders?

4. "Think Again: The Afghan Surge" Just in case you aren't pessimistic enough about Afghanistan.

Representative Sample: the Afghan Army continues to suffer from high turnover rates and will not be ready to face the Taliban without support anytime soon. The Afghan Army's disastrous offensive in the northeastern Laghman province in August, which left dozens of Afghan soldiers dead or captured after a Taliban ambush, was a stern reminder of the military's lack of trained officers and fighting spirit.

5. "Democrats Stimulating Dead People" Government efficiency in action.

Representative Sample: Here’s a thought: Maybe instead of collecting taxes from us and then redistributing those tax dollars back to us in a clumsily-administrated mailing of checks…they should just let us keep more of our own tax dollars to begin with. Saving us not just the price of the taxes but the price of administering their collection and redistribution as well.

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

Chris Christie Continues to Make Me Glad I Voted for Him

As I've mentioned before, when I voted for Chris Christie it was just a typical lesser of two evils vote. I had no idea he'd actually keep campaign promises and be a governor I'd be glad to have voted for. Today he killed the bloated, wildly over-budget Hudson River tunnel project.

“I have made a pledge to the people of New Jersey that on my watch I will not allow taxpayers to fund projects that run over budget with no clear way of how these costs will be paid for,” said the governor. “Considering the unprecedented fiscal and economic climate our State is facing, it is completely unthinkable to borrow more money and leave taxpayers responsible for billions in cost overruns.

That's not the kind of statement you hear from too many major politicians -- unless they are just making campaign promises.

HOT5 Daily 10/7/2010

1. "Free Speech on Trial, Continued" In Russia & the Netherlands. 

Representative Sample: as always, as people's freedom slips away, the churches are there working hand-in-hand with the powerful, ordering the masses to obey and gladly trading their alleged spiritual authority for temporal rewards.

2. "Civilian Terrorism Trials... What Could Go Wrong?" The obvious as expected. 

Representative Sample:Unlawful enemy combatants held "for the duration" in executive, Article II detention should not be subject to ordinary judicial rules, just as enemy soldiers in wartime have no "right to life."

3. "Would Pakistan Shoot Down NATO Helos?" I wouldn't put it past them, especially since we've been utterly spineless in dealing with them.  

Representative Sample: There are reports emerging from Pakistan that the country has bolstered its air defense equipment along the border with Afghanistan in the wake of an incursion of NATO helos into its territory.

4. "#32: Implant Memory Chips in Our Brains" I won't be surprised to see such cyborg-type enhancements available at some point. 

Representative Sample: Dr. Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University, tells Big Think that we should develop a "Google-like" chip to implant in our brains that would use our neurons like a search engine and enhance human memory.

5. "God’s Cure for Leprosy" For anyone who wonders why atheists make fun of religion and don't take the Bible seriously as a guide to much of anything.

Representative Sample: It's a biblical excerpt.

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

Being Against Illegal Immigration is Not the Same as Being Anti-Immigrant

In the last HOT5 I linked a post on intellectual honesty. Today I read several pieces written in response to a new ad by Sharon Angle in Nevada. The usual suspects are accusing her of racism -- there's a big surprise, leftists making racism accusations -- but the responses also provide examples of one of my pet peeves: the blatant intellectual dishonesty of most illegal immigration supporters. Liberal hack Alex Pareene at Salon helpfully offers the most striking example, right in the title: "Sharron Angle's ridiculous new anti-immigrant ad." If you look at the ad you will find that there is nothing about it that is in any way "anti-immigrant." Being opposed to illegal immigration, no matter how stridently it is opposed, has nothing to do with being opposed to all immigration, or to legal immigrants.

It is of course possible to be opposed to all immigration, legal & illegal, and to be against it on racist, nativist or other grounds. But the vast majority of people opposed to illegal immigration are opposed to having people illegally enter the country, not to legal immigration, which is a different matter. Even someone that thinks we should have stricter controls on legal immigration doesn't necessarily qualify as anti-immigrant. There is no question that writers like Alex Pareene understand the distinction between opposing illegal vs all immigration, or that there are various positions that can be taken on immigration in general. Pareene and others like him, are simply intellectually dishonest propagandists, deliberately conflating opposition to illegal immigration not just with immigration as a whole, but even with racial animus to immigrants. It's just another variant of the common left-wing smear tactic of false accusations of racism, which is deployed regularly against political opponents. Like much of what is found at Salon, there's simply no reason to take it seriously as any sort of rational analysis. When you engage in such obvious intellectual dishonesty as Pareene, you immediately identify yourself as a ideological hack whose writings should be taken with a big grain of salt.

HOT5 Daily 10/6/2010

1. "Why Corporate Executives Get the Big Bucks" A simple, easy-to-understand explanation. Should be read by all class-warfare promoters.

Representative Sample: The reason that American executives continue to pull down so much dough relative to the rest of the world is that in America you can walk out the door, start your own business and rise to the top of an industry. You can’t do that in corporatist systems like those in Europe, because the state protects large corporations from internal and external competition. It is much, much more difficult to grow a business into a giant in Europe than in American. That lack of freedom reduces the choices of executives and keeps executive compensation down.

2. "Taxes to Rise, Unless..." Bad things that will happen unless the Bush tax cuts are extended/made permanent. 

Representative Sample: When combined with inaction on the Bush tax cuts affecting marginal rates, taxpayers would be hit with a tax increase that easily tops $4 trillion over the decade if all the tax issues are untouched. Next year’s increase alone would amount to over $200 billion

3. "Michael Kinsley on intellectual honesty" Something many people could benefit from reading.

Representative Sample:  the media — the supposed watchdog — is unequipped, unable, and unwilling to live up to its duties and defined purposes. This isn’t necessarily the result of a diabolical scheme, its the result of market forces. We’ve demanded and approved of intellectual dishonesty so long as its “our” guy being dishonest. This type of behavior has become deeply entrenched in government and mass media and now permeates throughout public life.

4. "100% of the 25 most crime-infested neighborhoods in the USA are longtime Democrat controlled districts" Not a bit surprising. Links to the list of most dangerous neighborhoods. 

Representative Sample: THE BITTER HARVEST OF DEMOCRAT POLICIES: CRIME.

5. "Tolerance? Not so much in the Muslim world" Based on a new study in Indonesia.

Representative Sample: Recent surveys indicate that Indonesian Muslims are increasingly intolerant of other religions, this according to a report published by the Jakarta-based Islamic National University (UIN). This has taken the form of non-acceptance by Muslims of non-Muslim teachers in public schools and opposition to new churches or non-Muslim places of worship.

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