Marvel Madness

First, Thor became a woman.  Next, Captain America was a member of Hydra all along.  Now, Iron Man is a teenaged black girl.  I haven't read a comic book in years  and, as far as I know, this may be absolutely brilliant story-telling in each case.  However, with the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), why do this to clearly popular characters?  If I am entranced by Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man to the point that I want to start reading the comic, won't I be upset to discover Iron Man is now a teenaged girl?  I am reminded of some sci-fi series I had loved but were canceled when they tried to fix what wasn't broken.  Space: 1999 was absolutely awesome when I was kid.  But the second season 'fixed' the show by writing out characters and changing the format.  It was promptly canceled.  Buck Rogers, a campy sci-fi show, turned into a bad copy of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek in its second season.  It was canceled.  Since I mention Battlestar Galactica (the 70s version, not the reboot crap), it too suffered a complete format change when it was revived as Galactica 1980.  Why doesn't anyone get the message to not mess with success?  The MCU is having hit after hit in films but the comic universe is undermining or replacing these popular characters.  I don't get it.  Do the comic books not want to attract the movie fans?  I don't know why I bother to rant on this as I don't read the comics and have no intention of doing so.

 

End of rant.

Above the Law

FBI Director Comey's announcement this morning can be broken down to say essentially this: Yeah, Hillary Clinton was extremely careless (synonymous with grossly negligent, which is the language in the applicable law) in handling sensitive intelligence on an unsecured server.  If she were anyone else, I would recommend indictment - because she's pretty clearly guilty - but, as she could be my boss in a few months, I advise against it.  Also, no reasonable prosecutor who cares about career prospects would take this case.

 

As Glenn Reynolds often notes: Laws are for little people.  He has a column on this today. 

 

It is interesting that Bill Clinton 'coincidentally' met with Attorney General Lynch and, less than a week later, Hillary is 'cleared' by the FBI.

 

Here is Austin Bay's take on Comey, which is the harshest assessment I have encountered.

 

All of this does feed into Trump's constant refrain of 'Crooked Hillary' and Bernie's 'Rigged System' talk.  As I mentioned during the primaries, of the 4 remaining contenders, Hillary was the most establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year.  Though she has dodged the indictment, Director Comey has provided a very unfriendly bunch of sound bites that most Republicans (e.g. Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney) would never lower themselves to use in attack ads during the coming campaign.  Donald Trump is not that kind of Republican.

No Progress beyond Equality

 Found on Instapundit today:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

 

Calvin Coolidge on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

 

Silent Cal could pack a heck of a wallop in a single paragraph.  Self-government reached its apogee with the Declaration and can only fall from that point.  It is great how he tosses out that line about totalitarian regimes that clothe themselves in the language of democracy [oops, I didn't copy that part]; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, People's Republic of China, Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, Republic of Cuba, Islamic Republic of Iran, and so on.  It is a telling point that this practice persists 90 years later.

 

Interestingly, Coolidge was a contemporary with the original Progressive Movement that morphed into Liberalism and has now reclaimed the Progressive label (cf . Hillary Clinton).  Progressives want more power for government and therefore less to the people.  They want to progress back to the good old days when these pesky voters didn't demand Brexit, upend immigration (i.e. voter importation) laws, oppose Amnesty, or grouse about spending.  Government could get so much important stuff done if the rubes in flyover country would just shut up and realize it was for their own good.  Ah, the arrogance of power.

Killing Terrorism

Seen on Facebook:

With guns, you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.

Malala Yousafzai

 

Wow, that sounds deep.  For those not in the know, Malala is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.  She had been outspoken in favor of education rights in 2008, which she was only 11.  By the time she was 15, she had become famous among Westerners but infamous among Taliban-supporters.  Living in Pakistan made her a target.  She was shot in the face in 2012 but survived to continue to call for education rights.  She is a truly extraordinary person and I wish her well.  However, her claim is demonstrably false.

Khalid Sheik Muhammad - one of the major figures in the 9/11 attack - has a BS in Mechanical Engineering (earned in North Carolina!).  Osama Bin Laden had at least a couple years of college where he studied civil engineering or public administration.  Muhammad Atta - who flew into the twin towers - had a degree in architecture.  Ayman al-Zawahiri - current leader of al-Qaeda - is a surgeon. Omar Abdel Rahman (the blind sheikh who instigated the 1993 bombing of the twin towers) is a Doctor of Theology. Nidal Hasan - the Fort Hood Shooter - has a BS in Biochemistry and an MD.  Syed Farook - the San Bernadino shooter - had a bachelor's degree in environmental health.  His wife, Tashfeen Malik, had a pharmacology degree.  Omar Mateen - the Orlando shooter - had an associates degree in Criminal Justice, of all things.

 

These are not uneducated bumpkins with no better options than to kill themselves and others in the name of Allah.  Each could have had a bright future by Western standards.  Maybe they didn't get the education that Malala thinks would kill terrorism.  The only education that is going to do that is to teach them that Islam is an evil religion.  Indeed, every Islamic terrorist can give a solid argument for their actions by quoting the Koran or the Hadith.  It should be noted that the Koran is the word of Allah while the Hadith is Muhammad's interpretation of the Koran.  Of course, it is utterly unthinkable that one could teach against Islam in Muslim countries.  To do so is to court imprisonment or death.

 

The Religion of Peace website has an instructive graphic: Ramadan Bombathon 2016.  It shows how many people have been killed in the name of religion or by Islamaphobes.  So far, Islam is in the lead with 220 attacks and 1573 deaths.  All other religions combined come in a distant second of 0 attacks and 0 deaths.  Islamophobes also had 0 attacks for 0 deaths.  Huh.

 

All right, so we've tossed education as a way to stop terrorism.  What other alternatives might we have?  Sadly, the only way to stop people willing to detonate themselves is to kill them before they get the chance.  Oh, but that is SO politically incorrect as to be hate speech.  Terrorism must become so counterproductive that the terrorists abandon it.  But it is part of their religion.  That's a really tough nut to crack.  First, much like we did with Communism, we should contain Islam.  Where it spreads, rape, murder, and explosions follow.  Yes, containment.  Conversion.  Oh, that is really, really politically incorrect!  Unlike Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and other evil ideologies, Islam is integrated into a religion.  This makes it a particularly nasty ideology when coming against Western tolerance of religious belief.  Abridge the 1st Amendment freedom of religion or suffer more Fort Hoods, Orlandos, and San Bernardinos?  There are many reasons why the War on Terror has been so hard to win.

 

Of course, my prescriptions are irrelevant.  No Western nation will implement them.  Islam is most likely going to find Russia or China as their main foe.  These countries are not constrained by Western values and will pulverize Muslim countries when given enough cause to do so.  Whether Clinton or Trump wins, the US is going to mostly leave the Middle East to stew, perhaps offering some bombing to satisfy the hawks.

Here is David Wood also blasting the "Education prevents terrorism" myth.  He provides excellent sourcing for why Islam is the cause of terrorism.

Kate Steinle Redux

On July 1st of last year, Kate Steinle was out with her parents on Pier 14 in San Francisco when she was shot and killed by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez.  Sanchez was illegally in the United States, a chronic 'undocumented worker' who had been deported 5 times.  You know, the border has never been more secure, so the administration has said on multiple occasions.  To make matters worse, San Francisco had declined to transfer Sanchez to ICE in March 2015 because San Francisco is a sanctuary city.  Sanchez only had 7 felony convictions.  No big deal, right?  And one wonders why Trump gets support for his border wall.

The Steinle story got a lot of press but the Woodburn triple homicide is getting a lot less press.  Yes, now it is Bonifacio Oseguera-Gonzalez who killed three and wounded one in Woodburn, Oregon.  Where Sanchez had been deported 5 times since 1994, Gonzalez had been deported 6 times since 2003!  You know, the border has never been more secure.

 

Why has the press been relatively quiet on this 'mass shooting?'  Simple.  It isn't easily converted into a call for gun control.  If it can't fit into the gun control narrative, the press is only too happy to ignore it.  That it plays into Trump's calls for more border security and deporting illegals doesn't help either.

Brexit

Why is the Brexit bad?  I have heard a lot about the British people being stupider than Republican primary voters who chose Trump as the nominee.  Gee, let's insult vast swathes of people.  But if one opposes Brexit, shouldn't one also have preferred for the United States not to declare independence from England back in 1776?  The UK has morphed into a client state of a legalistic European empire based in various parts of the continent.  A once powerful nation, the guarantor of the Pax Britannica, had been reduced to an administrative district in the European Union.  It's like being demoted from CEO to middle management.  Who wants that?

 

Unlike many continental powers, the UK has lots of options for trading partners in the Anglosphere, many of whom are part of the British Commonwealth.  Moreover, much as the EU may be miffed by this mini-rebellion, it needs access to the British markets.  As Daniel Hannan has said, the UK has merely repatriated sovereignty to the UK.  Rather than merely have a representation in the European Empire, the UK assumes captaincy of its fate.  Nelson and Wellington would approve.

 

I admit some bias here.  As a big fan of Federalism, I have a default position against all centralization of authority and almost always favor more power for localities.  If the city can't do it, then look to the county.  If the county can't do it, look to the state.  If the state can't do it, then - and only then - look to the national government.  Will that result in a variety of standards?  Yes, but they will be standards that the local peoples have chosen for themselves rather than had imposed upon them from a distant potentate.  The Brexit is a move toward more local control, which is a good thing.

News on the Gender Wars

This was entirely predictable.  If two students were caught filming girls showering in the 'gender-neutral' bathroom, how many weren't caught?  I did like the sarcasm when describing those who want gender specific bathrooms as bigots.  Yes, what was normal behavior yesterday is now bigotry.  It is hard to keep up with the social justice warriors.

 

With the rare exception of maybe 1 in 1500 people who, according to Wikipedia (take with a grain of salt), are born intersex (possessing physical or genetic characteristics of both sexes), there are only two sexes.  Bruce "Caitlyn" Jenner is a man with psychological issues that are currently in fashion.  There is something called body integrity identity disorder (BIID), sometimes called amputee identity disorder, in which a person wants to amputate a healthy limb.  Note how it is a disorder?  However, if a man wants to amputate his penis, that's laudable and he should start using the ladies room.  Heck, Caitlyn managed to be woman of the year!  There should be some cognitive dissonance in this.

 

One of my favorite memes of the gender wars is this: JFK put a man on the moon.  Barack Obama put a man in the ladies room.  It says something about the seriousness of our times.  Transgenders account for a fraction of 1% of the population - vastly less than homosexuals - and yet this is the civil right of the era.  The vast majority must conform to the desires of a barely there minority.  In so doing, we get the inevitable Peeping Tom antics and probably worse to come.  Yes, this is so much better.