HOT5 Daily 10/14/2009

1. "Liberals' Violence Warning Comes a Year Late" Violence and violent rhetoric aimed at Republicans -- not a problem.

Representative Sample: While incitement and violence from right and left are equally evil, the latter has been rewarded with mainstream acceptance, an apparent result of two years of the media shrugging off Obama's extremist ties. One revealing recent example was the Baltimore Book Festival's promotion of terrorist Bill Ayers and genocide-espousing poet Amiri Baraka

2. "There Is No Common Ground Anymore" The most ideologically divided Congress in a 100 years?

Representative Sample: as William Galston at the Brookings Institute put it, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate is still well to the left of the most liberal Republican.

3. "Ban the Fat" The food police.

Representative Sample: Every age has its fetish. The Victorians obsessed over sex and alcohol. The current age is fixated on race and health. The statist tendencies, the perhaps primordial desire to control the actions of others, are nearly universal in cultures across the globe. It varies by degree.

4. ""Heads The Banks Win, Tails The Taxpayer Loses"" No one paid attention to Peter Schiff before. Most will probably ignore him now.

Representative Sample:  it's a video. 

5. "Murdering, raping cop protects students by beating them." Disturbing story.

Representative Sample: Here is a special ed student who was beaten violently by a police officer for not having his shirt tucked in—that's it. If you think that's bad, wait until you hear the rest.

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

Naked Scanners

The UK has deployed a new type of airport security scanner in trial runs. The scanner removes the need to take off articles of clothing or submit to a pat-down search. But instead, along with detecting weapons

the full body scans will also show up breast enlargements, body piercings and a clear black-and-white outline of passengers' genitals.

The article has a picture that demonstrates what a scan looks like.

According to the report, such scanners have already undergone trials in New York and Los Angeles, and are "being gradually rolled out at airports across the US." I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the scans are pretty intrusive. But then, so are body searches. Given those two options, I'll take the scan. 

The Liberal Quiz

Just for amusement I took the "How Liberal Are You?" Quiz at Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal activist organization that rates members of Congress on their voting records. The quiz has you vote "yea" or "nay" on actual bills, and then scores your votes as if you were a congressman or senator. My score was 15 out of 100, not a big surprise.

UN Peacekeeping Forces Still a Bad Joke in Congo

The latest report from Congo, this time the eastern region, says that over 1,000 people have been killed since January, 7,000 women & girls have been raped, ,6000 homes burned down, and over 900,000 people "displaced." According to the article, a UN peacekeeping force has backed government operations in the region, targeting Hutu militiamen from Rwanda who are targeting civilians. But what is the government actually doing?

Congolese government soldiers also have targeted civilians through killings and widespread rape, looting, forced labor, and arbitrary arrests, the report said.

So the UN is supporting one side, even though that side is little better than the alternative. How is this in any way a "peacekeeping" operation?

Naturally the UN refused to comment. But the article notes that it has previously used the excuse that it just doesn't have enough troops. It will never have enough troops, let alone enough effective troops, to successfully intervene in a multi-faceted civil war. So what is it actually doing there? Why support the corrupt Congolese government and give them cover for slaughtering and otherwise abusing civilians?

HOT5 Daily 10/13/2009

1. "Get Nasty or Go Home" Michael Scheuer argues for facing reality.

Representative Sample: We do not have enough troops, and U.S. political leaders, many U.S. generals, and the anti-American academy and media do not think "military victory" is an appropriate or moral goal; their mantra is: "Better dead Americans at home and abroad than criticism from Europe, the media, and the academy."

2. "We Can Still Say “Columbus Day” (I think)" Polling data about views of Columbus Day.

Representative Sample: Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to think Columbus should not be honored [no surprise there].

3. "The Nobel Prize: If Obama Hadn’t Won. . ." People who were overlooked.

Representative Sample: Saad Ibrahim, a renowned human rights activist and professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo. Ibrahim is best-known leader of the Egyptian human rights movement and has helped inspire human rights movements throughout the Arab world.

4. "It has been determined that these books are not for you" Maps book censorship & attempted censorship in the U.S.

Representative Sample:  It's a graphic.

5. "We are shocked – shocked – to find that ObamaCare will cost more money!" Yeah, big surprise.

Representative Sample: Government estimates of almost a trillion dollars – and you know what government estimates are worth once the ink on the bill is dry. That’s increased costs. ObamaCare will mean significant increases in demand for health care services. That right there is going to mean higher costs. The surprise would be if it didn’t increase costs.

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

In Defense of Columbus Day

Every year at this time we have to listen to people whining about the horrors of the Age of Discovery, and the plight of indigenous peoples, wiped out by the evil Europeans like Columbus. There are always attacks on Columbus Day, mostly by those who see only the negative impact of Columbus' voyages, missing the fact that his discoveries helped set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to the creation of this country. It is impossible to say what would have happened without Columbus, but it's likely that the world would be very different, and there's no good reason to think it would be any better.

Those of us that actually like the United States, and believe it is the greatest country in the world, would rather not have the past altered so that the U.S. never appeared. There's no need to gloss over or minimize the magnitude of the disaster that the Spanish & other European conquests brought to native American peoples. But that's not what Columbus Day is about, or it shouldn't be. We aren't Tainos or Arawaks, we are Americans. That includes those of native American heritage who identify as Americans. We are part of the modern United States which has a its own historical heritage, a history that includes both good and bad. Without Columbus and his remarkable achievements, our heritage and country might not even exist. That is why we celebrate Columbus Day, and should do so without apology. 

International Driving Quiz

I stumbled across this quiz in the Canadian National Post. Most of the questions are obvious, but some aren't.