Different River

”You can never step in the same river twice.” –Heraclitus

In all the uproar over Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his “God D–n America!” speeches, everyone seems to missing the obvious solution this gives us to the immigration issue.

It’s really simply: Everybody in America who hates America that much should go live somewhere else, and give up their spot in America two one of the millions of people who want to live here, but can’t do so (legally).

Obviously, Wright is not the only candidate for this “nationality swap.” Clearly, it should include whichever of his parishioners agree with him, and all other likeminded people elsewhere — such as Alec Baldwin, who threatened (promised?) to leave the country if George W. Bush were elected in 2000.

See, now we can solve two problems at once, and make everybody happier.

Right?

I have eczema. It’s annoying, and sometimes painful, and hard to treat. But it is not nearly this bad.

An inspiring passage from Barack Obama’s speech on March 4, commemorating the Selma march and crediting it for his very existence:

What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, “You know, we’re battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we’re not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.” So the Kennedys decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.

This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.

Only one problem:

The first Selma march took place on March 7, 1965. Barack Obama Jr. was born on August 4, 1961. Do the math.

Hat tip: Ed Morrissey

In the interest of equal treatment of candidates, note that Hillary Clinton claimed she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the who climbed Mt. Everest — a few years after she was born and named.

I normally don’t quote Ann Coulter, since she’s way to strident even for me, but she makes some good points here:

Imagine a white pastor saying: “Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. … We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God.”

Imagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, “Condoskeezza Rice.”

Imagine a white pastor saying: “No, no, no, God damn America — that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human! God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!”

… Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist “old uncle,” Rev. Wright.
…
Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama’s grandmother — who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school — has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.

Unlike his “old uncle” — who is not his uncle — Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama’s grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn’t get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she’s white. Denounce the racist!

Obama’s white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, is still alive — and still lives in the same high-rise apartment in Honolulu where she raised Obama (then called “Barry”) from the age of 10. They campaign “declines to make her available for interviews.”

Incidentally, the racial opposition to his parents’ marriage came from the black side of the family. From the Chicago Tribune:

The Dunhams weren’t happy. Stanley Ann’s prospective father-in-law [in Kenya] was furious. He wrote the Dunhams “this long, nasty letter saying that he didn’t approve of the marriage,” Obama recounted his mother telling him in [his book] “Dreams.” “He didn’t want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman.”

This is from a very interesting profile of Obama’s mother.

Greg Pierce reported in The Washington Times:

Nationally, a quarter of those who back Clinton say they’d vote for John McCain if Obama won the nomination (while just 10 percent of Obama supporters would do the if he lost).

(Note that this was published March 17, and thus reflects polling from BEFORE the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Also, hat tip to Clayton Cramer.)

Now, since Clinton and Obama’s policy proposals are nearly identical — and even if different, are far closer to each other’s than either is to McCain’s — what possible reason could 25% of Clinton’s supporters switch to McCain if Obama is the nominee?

In other words, what is the only thing that McCain has, that 25% of Clinton voters might care prefer, that Obama doesn’t have?

Well, it can’t be McCain’s support of the Iraq War, oppositition to tax increases, or anything like that — if that were the case, these people wouldn’t be Clinton voters in the first place.

It can only be one thing: One-fourth of Clinton voters just don’t want to vote for the black guy.

From the BBC:

Eight people have been killed an nine wounded by a Palestinian gunman who infiltrated a Jewish seminary in West [sic] Jerusalem, Israeli officials say [sic].
…
The Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, praised the attack, calling it “heroic”, but did not claim responsibility. There was also celebratory gunfire in Gaza.

In the world of diplomacy, this is called the “peace process.”

The Jerusalem Post has more details, and some background on the seminary, Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav.

Arutz-7 has more, and provocative pictures.

From the Jewish point of view, this is the equivalent of someone shooting up the library at Princeton University, killing many students, and being praised for it.

Beyond that insufficient statement, words fail me.

One term you will not hear from the diplomatic community, politicians, or the mainstream media: “hate crime.”

Kathryn Jean Lopez writes:

I’m devastated to report that our dear friend, mentor, leader, and founder William F. Buckley Jr., died this morning in his study in Stamford, Connecticut.

He died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.

As you might expect, we’ll have much more to say here and in NR in the coming days and weeks and months. For now: Thank you, Bill. God bless you, now with your dear Pat. Our deepest condolences to Christopher and the rest of the Buckley family. And our fervent prayer that we continue to do WFB’s life’s work justice.

Buckley was one of the intellecutal giants of 20th-century America. He once said is proudest achievement was to run everything that was “antisemitic or kooky” out of the conservative movement.

As he always closed the obituaries he wrote: RIP.

Of course, the New York Times, which has no doubt been awaiting this moment for forty years or more, had its obituary online within moments of Mr. Buckley’s death.

Seems like they jumped the gun a bit — as of this writing, their obituary refers to two of Buckley’s books “scheduled to be published in 2007.”

Less than 24 hours after Fidel Castro’s resignation was announced, Hillary Clinton won the Havana primary with 98.65% of the vote.

You’ve probably heard the news of the shooting at Northern Illinois University, in which a former student got up on the stage of a lecture hall with a shotgun and two or three handguns, and shot 22 people, five fatally, then killed himself.

The question is, how could that possibly have happened? In Illinois, it’s illegal to carry a gun on campus — or pretty much anywhere for that matter. Didn’t that guy know he could have gotten into a lot of trouble if he’d been caught carrying those guns?

Normally in these situations people call for stricter gun laws. But in Illinois, the gun laws are already pretty much as strict as they can be. Obviously, the message is not getting through to the right people. Clearly, they need a large-scale ad campaign informing the public that’s illegal to carry guns. Better education would have prevented this tragedy … right?

The Crusades, and Chmielnicki. Rabbi Yonason Goldson writes in “This Week in Jewish History”:

n 1096, a mere three months into the First Crusade, the ragtag army of Urban II obliterated Jewish communities up and down Germany’s Rhine River, communities guilty of nothing other than lying in the path of Crusaders who sought distraction from the tedium of the road. Two centuries of Crusading, undertaken to free the Holy Land from heretical Moslems, inflicted a steady fallout of collateral damage upon Jews from Paris to Jerusalem.

In the 14th Century, the Black Plague that wiped out over a third of Europe struck Jews less than half as often as gentiles, ostensibly because of Jewish dietary standards and hygiene. Knowing nothing of germ theory, however, superstitious Europeans assumed that the Jews had poisoned or cursed their well water and responded, predictably, with violence. Blood libels, pogroms, and expulsions left tens of thousands of Jews dead, with the survivors emotionally and spiritually traumatized.
…
In 1648, a leader rose up among the Cossacks in the person of Bogdan Chmielnicki, who unified a band of former serfs, robbers, and escaped criminals into a devastating military force. Assuming the title of Hetman, or Captain, Chmielnicki allied himself with his former adversaries, the Tartars, then launched a revolt against the Polish nobility, routing 8000 soldiers of the Polish army.
…
A wave of massacres broke across Poland as the Cossacks drove the uprising from town to town and subjected their victims to almost unimaginable brutality. The historian Nathan Nata Hanover in Yeven Metzula records: “Some were skinned alive and their flesh thrown to the dogs. The hands and feet of others were chopped off and their bodies flung into he roadway where wagons ran them over and they were trampled by horses… Children were slaughtered at their mothers’ breasts, and they were sliced open like fish… no form of unnatural death in the world was not inflicted upon them.” And although Jews were the primary target of violence, the rebels ravaged and beheaded Roman Catholic clergy, while churches were pillaged and set aflame.

In what has become known as the Gezeiras Tach V’Tat (the evil decree of the Jewish years 5408 — 5409, but which continued for an additional three years), an estimated hundred thousand Jews lost their lives, and hundreds of communities disappeared. But amidst the long travail of savagery, one day stands outs beyond all the rest.

On the twentieth day of the month of Sivan, 1649, the rebels fell upon the Polish town of Nemirov. In a single day, Chmielnicki’s Cossacks slaughtered 6000 Jews until the Bug River turned red with Jewish blood. The following year, the Council of the Four Lands, an autonomous Jewish governmental body over Eastern Europe, established the date as a day of fasting and lamentation. In some communities, the mournful Selichos prayers are still recited in commemoration of the massacres.

And Chmielnicki is, to this day, considered a national hero of the Ukraine. There is a memorial with a big statute of him in Kiev.

… Not to live in New York City. Especially — and I really mean this — if you have a child who is over the age of 5, likes to read everything, and is inquisitive. At least, if you intend to ride the subway or drive or walk on the streets with said child.

New Yorkers Encouraged to Get Busy with Free Condoms
Health Department Unveils Ad Campaign, New Condom Design

Your tax dollars at work!

Alex Tabarrok argues that if you look at long-term data, there was not. As one who correctly predicted the timing of the current downturn (but made no prediction about the magnitude), I find this quite interesting, and quite likely correct.

Full story here.

From the AP, via David Williams’ Health Business Blog:

Turns out installing alcohol-based handwashing gel dispensers in hospitals and encouraging staff to use them isn’t enough to prevent infections. … The issue was studied at a hospital in Nebraska, where gel use doubled but infection rates didn’t budge. It’s not surprising to learn that one tactic isn’t sufficient to control infections. Still, whenever I read about the poor record of hospital safety and quality it makes me mad. From the Associated Press:

More gel dispensers were put in the units, and usage rose from 37 percent to 68 percent in one unit and from 38 percent to 69 percent in the other. Compliance for hand washing of any kind in most hospitals is estimated to be about 40 percent, according to experts, although some hospitals do better.

Can you imagine a 40 percent compliance rate in any other business besides health care?

• Pilots going through their pre-flight checklists completely 40 percent of the time?
• Accountants calculating profit and loss correctly 40 percent of the time?
• Hamburger flippers putting all the ingredients on a Whopper 40 percent of the time?

No way. We shouldn’t tolerate it in health care either.

(Boldface added.)

News from the (British) National Health Service (NHS), which is the UK’s universal health care system:

Don’t treat the old and unhealthy, say doctors

By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:09am GMT 28/01/2008

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.

Fertility treatment and “social” abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as “out­rageous” and “disgraceful”.

About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt.

Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

Nice to see that in a universal health care system, everyone has equal access to care, and no one is denied care just so the insurance companies can save money.

I’d like to see the presidential candidates comment on this!

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

That Amendment was passed in 1865.

Now, look what happened in Greely, Colorado, in 2008:

Court plucks people off street to serve on juries

he Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 01/16/2008 09:38:39 PM MST

GREELEY, Colo.—With only 39 out of 200 people summonsed for jury duty showing up Wednesday, court officials with emergency jury duty subpoenas headed to the street to randomly pick 50 people to serve on juries.

Witnesses told television stations that administrators approached people walking on the sidewalk, at a grocery store and even a nearby gym, where people in their workout clothes headed to court under a threat of a contempt of court citation.

“This is not right,” Karen McMillan told administrators. She was approached while in a grocery story and ordered to serve.
…

Doesn’t that sound like “involtunary servitude”? And it was certainly not for the conviction of a crime — anyone convicted of a crime would probably be let off due to potential bias!

A judge in Massachusetts is suing his own court for a knee injury sustained when he tripped on the courthouse steps.

Courthouses must have really high insurance rates, since there are lawyers hanging around them all the time.

It might be worth noting, in this context, that while in the U.S. judges are virtually always (former) lawyers, this is not true everywhere. In some countries, “lawyer” and “judge” are separate career tracks.

Ben Smith at Politico.com relates:

Edwards responded sharply to a Clinton aide’s criticism today, intensifying a back-and-forth that began at last night’s debate, after Clinton said Nataline Sarkisyan could be alive if the patients bill of rights, which he’d boasted of championing, had passed.

“The Clinton campaign has no conscience,” Edwards said, after Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said Edwards does no more than “read articles about people who need help and talk about them.”

Well, if that isn’t the clearest case ever of the pot calling the kettle African-American, I don’t know what is. Recall this incident from the 2004 campaign, when Edwards said that the recently-deceased Christopher Reeve could be brought back to life if Bush had supported federal funding for stem cell research!

As CNN reported on October 12, 2004:

Edwards said Reeve, who died Sunday, “was a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him.

“If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again,” Edwards said.

Now I understand there is a lot of controversy about what, if any, benefits might result from stem cell research, and how long it might take for those benefits to be realized. But nobody — nobody except John Edwards — ever claimed it would result in resurrections.

But when former heart surgeon and then-Senator Bill Frist called him on it,

Edwards campaign spokesman Mark Kornblau hit back, “Yes, breakthrough research often takes time, but that’s never been a reason to not even try — until George Bush.”

So to summarize: John Edwards blames someone’s death on a policy of his political opponent’s. Hillary Clinton blames someone’s death on a policy of John Edwards. John Edwards claims, based on this fact, that Hillary Clinton “has no conscience.”

Therefore, by John Edwards’ own standard, John Edwards has no conscience.

Either that, or John Edwards is a hypocrite. Which is the more charitable conclusion?

He had a good run….

Sacha Baron Cohen to shed Borat persona for good

Friday December 21 5:54 PM ET

British actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen says the time has come to shed forever his persona as Borat, the boorish, oversexed, TV journalist from Kazakhstan who became a surprise box office sensation last year.

In a rare interview as himself, Cohen told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper he found it painful to abandon his Borat character, and another of his oddball alter egos, Ali G, but felt both had become too familiar to the public.
…

(Emphasis added.)

See, it wouldn’t work if too many people knew about it.

From the article in the Telegraph:

The intensely private comic actor readily admits he is more comfortable talking in the guise of the characters he has created, but unfortunately for him, both Ali G and Borat have had their day. Too many people know them and he reluctantly acknowledges that he can no longer retreat behind their personas.

“When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing,” he said. “It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it’s fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I ‘get’ with Borat again, so it’s a kind of self-defeating form, really.

This is “method acting” in the extreme.

New guidelines from British prosecutors:

Motorists caught using a hand-held mobile phone while driving could be jailed for two years under tough new guidelines issued today by prosecutors.

At least they’re not being completely inconsistent:

Drivers who adjust sat-navs, tinker with MP3 music players such as iPods or send text messages at the wheel could also face prison sentences.

Or capricious:

Prosecutions will be brought if by using the equipment a motorist is judged to have posed a danger to other drivers, such as causing another car to swerve.

On the other hand, if you pose a danger to other drives by being stupid or incompetent or daydreaming, that’s perfectly OK. It’s only if you use a device to accomplish the distreaction that you risk jail.

But don’t worry, at least they won’t print your picture:

When a murderer escaped from a New Brunswick [Canada] prison on Thursday, officials refused to release his photograph, citing departmental privacy policy. … Under its privacy rules, a photo of a convict cannot be released unless the inmate gives permission and signs a release form …

Next time, make him sign the form before he escapes!

The second most common name for new baby boys in Britain is “Mohammed.”

Just don’t try that with a teddy bear!