For a third night the city of London has been ravaged by rioting youths. Progressives attribute this to joblessness and the lessening of social services. I attribute it to thuggery!

We saw this happen out here in LA in the early 90s after the Rodney King verdict, when South Central erupted into chaos beginning with the severe, near fatal beating of Reginald Denny — who would have guessed it, but the man convicted of mayhem in the Denny beating (one of the “L.A. Four”) was arrested a few weeks ago on suspicion of murder.

I bring that to mind so as to say, it could happen here . . . again.

We saw near chaos conditions in Wisconsin over the Governor signing the bill ending collective bargaining by state workers, and now there are recall elections going on today as Progressives try to undue what the newly-GOP-controlled legislature has wrought in their efforts to bring fiscal sanity to their state government.

The civility of the Progressive movement and its members in Congress has also been on full display recently with the painting of the “Tea Party” folks as the “American Taliban”. Yes Virginia, those mostly white, middle to older aged protesters who gather in mass, make patriotic statements and promote fiscal responsibility, and then clean up after themselves before leaving are a force to be deathly afraid of — according to the main-stream media and Progressive commentators everywhere. Those nice, family-lovin’ SEIU members and New Black Panthers who shut down state government buildings with their protest and intimidate voters at the polls are folks to be revered and honored for standing up for the “little people”.

To fully understand what Progressives want for our country, just mosey over and read their proposed “Contract for the American Dream”, which is a total nightmare for anyone with any sense of fiscal responsibility. Regardless, good Lefties just can’t ever get enough of someone elses money, as witnessed by today’s Michael Hiltzik LA Times piece, “Political leaders unwilling to address economic fix: stimulus”:

A new economic stimulus package is needed to put people to work for state and local governments and on public initiatives that improve education, transportation and quality of life. Without it, Washington will be ignoring the lessons of the 1930s.
{…}
In short, although the private sector had not yet stepped up hiring and the Federal Reserve was tightening credit, the government stopped priming the fiscal pump and instead took water out of the bucket.

The result of the new austerity was the severe recession of 1937-38 — the double-dip sequel to the Great Depression. Congress and the Roosevelt White House responded with the most aggressive stimulus program of the New Deal period — stepped up public works construction and housing assistance, and a $3.75-billion relief program.

The new spending evoked shrieks of dismay from conservatives — Democratic Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia condemned the “present orgy of spending” and demanded a balanced budget and a ruthless purge of relief rolls. But it halted the recession in its tracks.

I thought that the position that Roosevelt’s spending was not what caused the end of the Great Depression, but for WW2 things would have remained pretty dour for a lot longer . . . might even have been the end of this great experiment. Hell of a way to clean up an economic mess, though — and not an option in this day and time of weapons of mass destruction.

Take another look at the photo above, and then think about the incidents at the Wisconsin State Fair over the weekend.

It’s obvious, for some out there among us, we’re only a gnat’s eyelash away from barbarism at any given moment in time. They don’t really need a reason . . . they just have to be in the mood.

OK, I’ve been a bit too quiet lately — lots to do workwise, lots to do — but my goodness, what a week it’s been and today is only Thursday and it’s only the AM at that!

Just in case you were wondering what our wonderful President Barack Obama was going to do about the missile defense system that the Bush administration got started in Poland and other Eastern European countries, all that got cleared up today.

“After an extensive process, I have approved the unanimous recommendations of my secretary of defense and my joint chiefs of staff to strengthen America’s defenses against ballistic-missile attack,” President Barack Obama said in an address Thursday morning.

Wow, you say. Sounds like full steam ahead doesn’t it? Well, not quite. The plans for long-range missile defense installations to protect Europe from attack by Iran has been shelved.

The White House is scrapping a Bush-era plan for an Eastern European missile-defense shield, saying a redesigned defensive system would be cheaper, quicker and more effective against the threat from Iranian missiles.

Anyone that believes this administration can deliver European missile defense that is “cheaper, quicker and more effective” believes in unicorns. The best guess is that this was done to curry favor with Russia’s Putin in order to persuade him to help with the nuclear-weapons “negotiations” with Iran. The Czechs seem fine with this new suicidal direction for their country. The NATO chief likes it, too. Wonder if he’ll look to the East or the West the next time NATO’s tit gets caught in the wringer?

Uncle Jimbo at Ace nails it:

You can say one thing about President Obama, he is consistent on foreign affairs. Kick our allies in the teeth and kiss our enemies on the ass. I guess weakness is the new strength.

Guess the Prez is just following the advice of his “Vice”, Joe Biden. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air brings us the words of wisdom of good ol’ Slow Joe:

Joe Biden says that a missile-defense system in Europe isn’t really necessary, because Iran isn’t much of a threat.

Ya know — this would be the stuff of a real laugh riot if it weren’t so damned important. We’ve got at least 3-1/2 years more of this. God help us!

Technorati Tags: Eastern European missile-defense shield, President Obama

Let’s hop into the ol’ mental hot rod and take a quick spin around and through today’s Web headlines:

Supreme Court:

S.C.O.T.U.S. is in full-active mode and today they ruled on two issues: Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the 5-4 majority opinion that overturned a Louisiana law that provided the death penalty for child rape; “[T]he death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child.”

The Supreme Court declared Wednesday that executions are too severe a punishment for raping children, despite the “years of long anguish” for victims, in a ruling that restricts the death penalty to murder and crimes against the state.

The court’s 5-4 decision struck down a Louisiana law that allows capital punishment for people convicted of raping children under 12. It spares the only people in the U.S. under sentence of death for that crime — two Louisiana men convicted of raping girls 5 and 8.

The ruling also invalidates laws on the books in five other states that allowed executions for child rape that does not result in the death of the victim.

I don’t know where you come from, but where I come from raping a child under 12 deserves a penalty much harsher than some plea bargain, some pathetic sentence that allows parole — ’cause we all know that the recidivism rate for child molesters is close to 100%! As usual, this was from the Libs on the court with the swing justice siding with them — more of the same, actually all of the same from a court populated by a President Obama. And, another in a long line of states’ rights slammed down by activists justices.

The Court did cut the punitive damages from the Exxon Valdiz incident from obscenely huge to just hell-of-a-lot. Tomorrow they will rule on whether we actually have the right to own guns . . .

In the crazy Europeans category we have the following little ditty: The Spanish Parliament has advocated bestowing rights upon the lowly ape — rights, yeah right!

Spain’s parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament’s environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,” said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

If only this madness would stay on its own side of the pond, but we all know that our very own home-grown animal-lovin’ activists will latch onto this like a rabid pit bull and try to get our own Dem lemmings to follow suit. I’ll give ya only one guess as to where a President Obama would be on this one. See a pattern yet?

Speaking of Dem wits in Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the terror from San Francisco, is desirous of bringing back the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” — you know, there’s just too much free speech for some of the unwashed, like yours truly. So, the Dems want to gut the 1st Amendment, like the Court did to the 8th today, and who knows what will happen to the 2nd tomorrow.

Hey, let’s all vote for the Monkey God Presidential candidate!

With Democrat senator Barack Obama busy in the run-up to the US presidential polls, a group of well-wishers in the capital have decided to send him a symbol of his lucky charm, Lord Hanuman, to help him emerge victorious.

Obama’s representative Carolyn Sauvage-Mar on Tuesday received a gold-plated two-feet-high idol which she will pass it on to the Obama after it is sanctified.

The idol is being presented to Obama as he is reported to be a Lord Hanuman devotee and carries with him a locket of the monkey god along with other good luck charms.

An hour-long prayer meeting to sanctify the idol was earlier organised at Sankat Mochan Dham and by Congress leader Brijmohan Bhama, Balmiki Samaj and the temple’s priests.

“Obama has deep faith in Lord Hanuman and that is why we are presenting an idol of Hanuman to him,” said Bhama.

Folks — I’m just not talented enough to make this stuff up! Keep your powder dry and you aim steady! They’re coming for us . . .

Technorati Tags: Supreme Court, Great Apes Project, Fairness Doctrine, Monkey God, Lord Hanuman

As if Western societies in Europe didn’t have enough to be concerned about, — with falling birth rates, ever increasing immigration from Muslim countries and the inevitable resulting Islamization from such as well as the continual decline in Judeo-Christian beliefs — along come the Swiss bringing to the world the concept of “plant rights”. [h/t: See Dubya] The Weekly Standard article, The Silent Scream of the Asparagus by Wesley J. Smith — senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture — gives us a preview look at just how stupid and insane our European brethern have become as their culture spirals into ever increasing moral irrelevance.

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

{…}

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

{…}

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland’s enshrining of “plant dignity” is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Once you loose sight of or reject the religious concept of “primacy” of the human species, the inherent worth of the human being as God’s greatest creation, what is left to allow the thought that Mankind has the right to use the planet, its land, its animals and its plants, for Mankind’s own benefit? Nothin’, Nyet, NADA! Lose God, and you lose everything. This is what is so scary about the secularists’ movement — they are so in love with Gaia, Mother Earth, or so loathsome of themselves, that they view eradication of humanity a good thing.

Eschewing humans as the pinnacle of “creation” (to borrow the term used in the Swiss constitution) has caused environmentalism to mutate from conservationism–a concern to properly steward resources and protect pristine environs and endangered species–into a willingness to thwart human flourishing to “save the planet.” Indeed, the most radical “deep ecologists” have grown so virulently misanthropic that Paul Watson, the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, called humans “the AIDS of the earth,” requiring “radical invasive therapy” in order to reduce the population of the earth to under a billion.

Paul Watson, meet “90% of Humans Must Die” Erik R. Pianka. You guys could really “party on, dudes”! I know I wouldn’t want to be on the guest list . . . But, back to this Swiss thing — giving “rights” to plants. There’s a funny sequence in the movie Notting Hill where the main character is being set up on a series of dates, with one being a vegetarian, one a pescetarian, only eats fish, and one a fruitarian, only eats products that actually fall off plants, like fruits and berries. “Yes”, she says to him as he passes her a platter, “Those carrots have been murdered!” Get the picture?

Smith wraps it up with this:

One Swiss scientist quoted in the editorial worried that “plant dignity” provides “another tool for opponents to argue against any form of plant biotechnology” despite the hope it offers to improve crop yields and plant nutrition.

What folly. We live in a time of cornucopian abundance and plenty, yet countless human beings are malnourished, even starving. In the face of this cruel paradox, worry about the purported rights of plants is the true immorality.

Without God, there is no “morality”! We’re gettin’ in big trouble here folks . . .

Technorati Tags: Wesley J. Smith, Paul Watson, Erik R. Pianka, plant dignity

I’m feeling a tinge of disconnect at the moment after having read the Citroën Traction Avant section of Automobile Magazine’s “25 Best Cars of All Time” article in the current (Sept.) issue. Developed in cooperation with the Budd Company in 1934, this vehicle introduced to the world the unibody structure, an arc-welded monocoque frame, where all automobiles before had been built using body-on-frame designs. With this much-lighter weight, much-stiffer type of construction, front-wheel drive, an overhead-valve engine, torsion bar and wishbone front suspension and hydraulic brakes, as the Automobile magazine writer states, it was the first “modern” car — the precursor to almost all passenger cars built today. So Okie, that’s interestin’ an all, but what’s up with whining on about some sort of cognitive disconnect?

The reason for that is this. Only minutes before reading about this giant technology & manufacturing leap forward in 1934-Europe I had stumbled across this disturbing bit o’ information via a link in the comments at Gateway Pundit leading to TheReligionOfPeace.com and on to this Gates of Vienna post: Stop the Islamisation of Brussels.

Here’s a list of the ruling Socialist Party (PS) members of the Brussels city council headed by Mayor Freddy Thielemans.

Of the eighteen PS members, no fewer than ten have obvious Muslim names. It’s possible others may be ‘reverts’.

Thielemans is just a buffoonish front man. Muslims now control the key city at the heart of the European Union.

There is much more information available in the comments to this post. To me, the rapid decline in European western-self-awareness and seeming resignation to societal and cultural destruction is heartbreaking. To watch a continent, who’s intellectuals and craftsmen can create and develop something like this:

Devolve into some malignant society that believes and behaves like this . . .

Is that not pathetic? Is that not gut-wrenching? Is that not — frightening?

It’s definitely a wake up call to us in this country to identify and out the Dhimmis in our midst, to keep an ever watchful eye on those that promote jihad, to stop those that want to force public funding for madrassa, as Frank Gaffney noted last month:

Even more alarming is accumulating evidence we are also failing to appreciate the inroads being made by those promoting a similar agenda on this war’s homefront — here in the United States. In fact, Islamists have been assiduously waging the war of ideas for decades, in American mosques and prisons, on military bases and college campuses across the country and, increasingly, in the public square. The infrastructure that has made possible such ideological inroads has largely been built by various Saudi institutions, charities, princes and businesses. The Islamofascists’ success in these areas owes as much to our indifference, political correctness and cognitive dissonance as to their zeal.

As the American Left dilly-dallies through its presidential-candidate-selection process obsessing over the right to kill the unborn, the right to tax us all into poverty for the funding of ever more comprehensive entitlements, as they focus on fear mongering to convince us all that we must change our lifestyles, drive smaller, less-safe vehicles and shackle what’s left of American industry all in the name of stopping mankind-caused Global Warming — we on the Right had better make sure to ask our candidates how they are going to cope with an EU that easily could fall under Islamist-control much sooner than later — perhaps within the time of our next administration.

And on top of that, there’s this going on in Indonesia: Hardline group rallies for world Islamic rule — I know, I know. It’s only 70,000 out of a billion plus. Still, that’s a lot to put on the watch list, and we sure don’t seem to be doing a bang-up job there now, do we?

Geez — maybe I should have just kept reading the car mag! Where’s my Xanax?

Technorati Tags: Brussels city council, Mayor Freddy Thielemans, public funding for madrassa, Frank Gaffney, Islamists

[Welcome Anchoress readers -- h/t: the Anchoress]

Telegraph writer Andrew Gimson has a piece where he presents his views of America and Americans that is not the quintessential European take on things:

The Americans are prepared to use force in pursuit of what they regard as noble aims. It is yet another respect in which they are rather old-fashioned. They are patriots who venerate their nation and their flag.
(…)
But when the Americans speak of freedom, we should not imagine, in our cynical and worldly-wise way, that they are merely using that word as a cloak for realpolitik. They are not above realpolitik, but they also mean what they say.

These formidable people think freedom is so valuable that it is worth dying for.

Best to read it all . . . (db)

Check out my thoughts on the Olmert agreement to the UN Cease Fire, Cynthia McKinney’s less than graceful election loss and Robert Spencer’s comments on Iran, Ahmadinejad and August 22nd — Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Americans, Andrew Gimson, Telegraph.CO.UK

[h/t: Hedgehog]

In his April 8th column for the Jerusalem Post, Mark Steyn reviews two new books — “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within by Bruce Bawer, and Menace In Europe: Why The Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too by Claire Berlinski” and comments on what they reveal about the continuing decline of European civilization. Steyn has pointed commentary on what the differences are between those Americans that dislike European folly and the Europeans that revile Americans and our way of life.

The difference between “anti-Americanism” and “anti-Europeanism” is obvious. In, say, 2025, America will be much as it is today – big, powerful, albeit (to sophisticated Continentals) absurdly vulgar and provincial. But in 20 years’ time Europe will be an economically moribund demographic basket case: Seventeen Continental nations have what’s known as “lowest-low” fertility – below 1.3 live births per woman – from which no population has ever recovered.

For those want to keeping score, don’t bet on Europe without getting a ton of points!

The only question about Europe is whether it’s going to be (a) catastrophically bad or (b) apocalyptically bad, as in head for the hills, here come the Four Horsemen: Death (the self-extinction of European races too self-absorbed to breed), Famine (the withering of unaffordable social programs), War (civil strife as the disaffected decide to move beyond mere Citroen-torching) and Conquest (the inevitable victory of the Muslim successor population already in place).

The only “salvation” that I can foresee for Europe is Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy joining with and backing the United States in stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power. To do so would force them to somehow “deal” with their un-assimilated Muslim populations sooner rather than later. In the process, they might even have to back away from their inefficient, crumbling social-welfare societal structure — maybe even procreating once in a blue-moon or so? Lot’s o’ hot, nasty sex goin’ on over there — how about a few “European” babies coming out of the deal?

Unfortunately, Mr. Steyn’s analysis is probably way to much on-the-mark:

I’d say Option (b) looks the better bet, for a few if not all Continental nations: United they’ll fall, but divided a handful might stand a chance.
(…)
[Quoting Charles Murray] . . . even if it were affordable, the European social democratic state would still be fatal. “Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor,” he writes. “When life becomes an extended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant.” If Bawer’s book is a wake-up call, Murray reminds us that western Europe long ago threw away the alarm clock and decided to sleep in.

When Europe does finally wake up and call for room service, what it will find knocking on the door is the stoning pit and a rusty-serrated knife! (db)

Technorati Tags: Mark Steyn, Decline of Europe

Over at Real Clear Politics, a column titled What Will Europe Really Do? has Victor Davis Hanson looking at what could be a newly-refocused and more Western-centric Europe — if a LOT of things begin to change.

Because of slated troop withdrawals from European bases, and a new American weariness with the old anti-Americanism, some Europeans are beginning to recoil at the idea that they might well be on their own—and in a war against fanatical enemies that they have appeased and without rational friends that they have estranged.

In response, we may see less of the anti-American rhetoric and a return to the Cold War slogans of a “strong Atlantic Alliance” and “an essential Nato,” as nuclear jihadists replace the fear of 300 Soviet divisions.

Let’s hope that he’s right — and that Europe doesn’t take too long to figure all this out! (db)
[tags]Victor Davis Hanson, Europe