Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Hip Hop Retreat

It looks like at least one leader in the hip hop community has decided to step up to the call to restrict language in the songs.

Prominent U.S. hip-hop executive Russell Simmons Monday recommended eliminating the words “bitch,” “ho” and “nigger” from the recording industry, considering them “extreme curse words.”

The call comes less than two weeks after radio personality Don Imus’ nationally syndicated and televised radio show was canceled amid public outcry over Imus calling a women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”

Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam label and a driving force behind hip-hop’s huge commercial success, called for voluntary restrictions on the words and setting up an industry watchdog to recommend guidelines for lyrical and visual standards.

“We recommend that the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/delete the misogynistic words ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ and the racially offensive word ‘nigger,’ “ Simmons and Benjamin Chavis, co-chairmen of the advocacy group Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, said in a statement.

“These three words should be considered with the same objections to obscenity as ‘extreme curse words,’ “ it said

Personally, I am not against banning any language. Self censorship is the only acceptable form of censorship. But that whole gangster rap thing is played out and it looks like the tide of public opinion may be turning against it. Let’s hope it’ll fade away like other lame trends of the past. 

Monday, April 23, 2007

Swiss Misfire

Switzerland has an extremely low crime rate. One of the reasons, some people have surmised, is because every make above a certain age is required to keep a military rifle and ammo in their home in case of National Defense. From 18 to 52, men are on reserve.

Now, anti-gun types want tto change that.

A survey shows a majority of the Swiss want to ban army weapons from homes – scrapping a long-standing tradition of the country’s militia army.

Centre-left political parties and pacifist groups are preparing a plan to force a nationwide vote on the issue as parliament considers alternative options.

Nearly two thirds of the people interviewed came out against storing personal assault rifles and guns in private households.

Under Swiss law all able-bodied men are issued with a rifle and 50 rounds of ammunition which they can keep after completing their compulsory military service.

An estimated 1.6 million firearms are in circulation in Switzerland and about 300 people are killed every year by standard issue weapons.

The latest survey, carried out by the Isopublic research institute last week, found that 65.6 per cent of citizens would vote for a ban. Among women it was 75 per cent.

A proposal to limit the ban to ammunition did not appeal to the majority, according to the survey among more than 1,200 citizens.

But more than two out of three are in favour of setting up a national gun register.

The poll sounds bogus to me, as most polls are. It’s easy to manipulate the results of a poll to reach any conclusion. What you have to watch is how the crime rate changes once guns are removed from people’s homes. When guns were removed from people’s homes in Australia and Britain, home invasions shot up dramatically. When criminals have nothing to fear anymore, they get bolder. 

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Imbecile DuJour

I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming. Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

Sheryl Crow

This global warming madness really needs to be stopped before people like this are taken seriously. This is what happens when cranks are taken seriously. People die. 

New Harry Potter Trailer

Saturday, April 21, 2007

That’ll Stop Them

This is the kind of brilliant ideas bureaucrats come up with in the wake of the VT tragedy.

In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions.

Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Whenever someone does something bad, the suits always come up with absurd rules like this. And all it does is ruin things for everyone else, who isn’t a threat. The crazy people will still do their thing. These clowns never learn. 

Windsurfing in Beautiful Iraq

Gun Laws Don’t Work

Another triumph for gun control.

Under federal law, the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from purchasing a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a government official and several legal experts said Friday.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from purchasing a gun.

A special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also said if that if found mentally defective by a court, Mr. Cho should have been denied a gun.

They’re Back

The Soviet Union is back, apparently.

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.

How would they know what constituted positive news?

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

This is what it was like during the Soviet days. They only reported positive news, which masked the severe problems that existed in Russia at the time. Putin is ex-KGB, so while they pretend to be capitalists, the old Communist ways must be hard for him to shake. As he becomes a total dictator, he is slowly turning the media into a propaganda machine.

Portraying the U.S. as an enemy is a stupid decision, but it’s done to keep the Russian people focused. Enemies are often a creation of leaders to give the people someone to hate, so that they will acquiesce to the governments orders which are “designed to protect them” from the enemy. This is just a ruse.

The same can be said about things our government does. But our society is a lot more transparent and unlike Russia, dissidents aren’t killed. Those lefties who are so convinced our government is evil should look honestly at what happens in other countries, to see how good they have it here. Which of course, they won’t. In the 50s a lot of lefties were Stalinists, even though Stalin murdered more people, by far, than Hitler. You still see ignorant college professors praising Communism, even though Communists killed more people in the 20th century than all the wars of the 20th century combined.

The crushing of dissent is what fascists (or communists) do when they take over. Hugo Chavez has done this in Venezuela. Castro did it in Cuba. Putin is doing it in Russia.

It’s sad to see freedom die in a place. It should be a lesson to those who question the value of our society. 

Friday, April 20, 2007

A Good Question

Was psycho-killer Cho taught to hate at VA Tech? An interesting and worthy question. PC teachers at these schools today fill students minds with unrelenting anathema for America and our society. Maybe we should take a serious look at what some teachers are doing.

And then there is the big Marxist website from Professor Brizee, all in fiery red against pitch black, showing old, mass-murder-inspiring Karl flanked by two raised fists. It celebrates revolutionary violence and hate for capitalist America (which is paying for Cho’s education). “Critical Social Theory” --- the euphemism for PoMo (Post Modern) Marxism --- is a big part of English teaching at VT.  The Marxist page links prominently to the British Socialist Worker’s Party, which is currently leading the charge for Islamic fascism through such creatures as George Galloway.

And, talking about Islamist ideas, there is Professor Carter-Tod, who wrote a report about “ “Treatment of Arab American, Muslums and Seiks (sic) Post 911,” for the US Civil Rights Commission.  The racial grievance industry is alive and growing at VT.

Post-modernism and its hatred for reason is another big theme at the VT English Department. Professor James Collier boasts about his book, Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge: A New Beginning for Science and Technology Studies, But “the end of knowledge” is the beginning of ignorance.

And of course there is the “diversity” crowd, diversity being a very well-funded program at ole’ guilt-tripping VT. There’s Professor Carlos Evia, who describes himself as “...soy director de la Comisión de Igualdad y Diversidad en Virginia Tech.” Or in English, “I am also chair of the Virginia Tech Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity.” There’s “research” in “Feminist science fiction” and “The comic strip” from Professor Susan C. Allender-Hagedorn. Scratching racial and gender wounds until they bleed is a big preoccupation at VT. What’s a kid from South Korea to think?

Colleges are full of these America-loathing poseurs who want to tear down society, but offer nothing positive to replace it with. Not only do they teach ignorance and hate, people are forced to take a lot of these PC courses and pay insane tuition costs in the process.

Before anyone blames movies and video games, they should look into this subject.

UPDATE: More disgusting academics.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Psycho Dad of the Day

Alec Baldwin screams at his 11 year old (or is it 12? Alec doesn’t seem to know) daughter in a voice message because she turned off her cell phone when he wanted to call her. So he’s going to fly over to where she is to “straighten her out”.

Why is he mad? Becauxe she’s a thoughtless pig, apparently--According to Alec. Well, if she is raised by that dufus, what do you expect?

[Via TMZ]

UPDATE: Alec takes a vow of silence. Is this like his promise to move to Canada if Bush won?