Right Wing Nation

Since NYCeducator has taken offense at my saying I’d patronize Pizza Hut if there were one here (and that there isn’t much difference between Pizza Hut and NY pizza in general), I figured I might as well point out another way New Yorkers are confused about food. Never let it be said that I don’t help people.

Go to NYC, and there are sausage stands on the streets — run and patronized by confused (possibly mentally unstable) folks who think Italian sausage was meant to be eaten on a bun. Look, sausage stands in normal areas not populated with nuts serve bratwurst on a bun with sauerkraut and mustard.

Italian sausage on a bun? That’s perverse. “Forgive them, Father . . .” comes to mind, though that’s perilously close to blasphemy.

But pizza? This and this — that’s pizza.

Thanks to (who else?) Jonah Goldberg, I found this list of rules for robots, inspired by the Japanese rules for robots. A few of my favorites:

Rule #10 - Any robot who begins to behave illogically shall be immediately employed by the government.

Rule #85 - Robots are not allowed to appear on American Idol as contestants, because their ability to modulate their audio processors to sound like Bono gives them an unfair advantage.

Rule #89 - Robots may at no time play the bagpipes.

Rule #111 - Robots who become evil due to conflicted programming, ultra high doses of radiation, or warped artificial intelligence are considered automatically qualified to head programming at one of the major television networks in the U.S. or Britain.

Tim Blair:

One of Al Gore’s climate zombies has produced a version of An Inconvenient Truth for kids. Broadway, interpretive dance, and X-rated versions will presumably follow.

The Liberty Film Festival on 300:

After forty years of liberal rule in Hollywood it is nihilism that’s old-fashioned. It is moral relativism that is tired. It is political correctness, the always-noble people of color, the always-evil white guy, and the metrosexual that is cliched. A film with a clear divide between good and evil is something new. A film that celebrates patriotism, heroism, sacrifice, freedom, and honor is something revolutionary. In 1955 300 would be old-fashioned. In 2007 it makes a counter-culture statement as strong as Easy Rider in its day.

Read the whole thing.

From the Wall Street Journal:

I’m thinking of a country. America’s trade deficit with this country just reached an all-time high. This country holds more U.S. Treasuries than any other foreign country. It’s one of the world’s largest economies. And the name of that country is?

Japan.

Japan? Yes. Remember when Japan was a big threat to the American economy? You have to go back to the late 1980s. Back then, every politician in the mood for pandering to economic ignorance could scare a bunch of folks with worries about how the Japanese were stealing our jobs. How our trade deficit with Japan was going to destroy the American economy. How the Japanese economy was soon going to pass America’s. How the Japanese auto industry was part of a sinister strategy to destroy our core competencies.

[ . . . ]

But still. Why isn’t Japan scary?

One answer is that the doom-and-gloomers already tried, but nothing happened. They told us that Japan was going to destroy our economy. They told us we needed a plan to cope with brilliant Japanese economic strategies. But then the Japanese economy hiccupped and played Rip Van Winkle for a decade, while America kept growing.

The real reason Japan isn’t scary is because it wasn’t and isn’t a threat to our standard of living. Trade makes both parties better off, remember? But when Japan slumps and the U.S. surges, it’s too hard to fool people with bad economics.

So when the sky didn’t fall, a new candidate had to be found. Mexico and Nafta fit the bill. Not Canada, even though Canada was part of Nafta. Evidently, politicians and some voters find Mexicans more scary than Canadians. So it was Mexico. When that great “sucking sound” was never heard, a new sinister foreign nation had to be found. And so it’s the turn of the Chinese.

[ . . . ]

The next time you find yourself losing sleep over China, remember that you were worried about Japan and Mexico and everything turned out OK. Then ask yourself if America would be a richer country if China cut itself off from the rest of the world.

As the author says, protectionists never learn.

From the Florida Sun-Sentinel:

The Polk County deputies who fatally shot a man who gunned down a deputy and wounded another in September were justified in their actions, a State Attorney’s Office review found.

Based on reports submitted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Assistant State Attorney Cass Castillo said the use of deadly force against Angilo Freeland was “legally justified.”

Yee-frakkin-haw. And the best thing is taxes won’t be wasted keeping the scumbag alive waiting to be executed, or pay for any worthless appeals.

On Saturday, March 10th, a DC news site posted an online poll. The poll question was “Do you agree with the decision to overturn the DC gun ban?” I clicked view results, and decided to grab a screenshot, since this is the kind of poll results these news sites bury at first opportunity.

Oh, the results. Sorry.

Yes: 88%
No: 12%

Clearly, the results weren’t what the news site wanted, since the headline of the day was, “Officials, residents sound off against gun ban ruling.”

Oops.

The news site buried the poll, as they always do when the people don’t vote the way the elite liberal journalists think they should, but here’s the screenshot for posterity:

Hat tip to ¡No Pasaran! for this article:

What an exquisitely painful hook for Euro-lefties to wriggle on.

The hero of their student days, Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader who defied Ronald Reagan and who was finally elected as president of Nicaragua three months ago, has adopted one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world.

The EU has ordered him to reconsider, and is threatening to cut off aid if the ban remains in force.

[ . . . ]

It’s odd, really. During the Iraq war, Euro-sophists kept telling us that it was not for the US to impose its values on the world and that it was up to Iraqis to decide their own future. Fair enough. So why is it that, when it comes to hectoring Africans about the death penalty, or ordering South Americans to form a supra-national bloc in mimicry of the EU, or insisting that abortion be made easier, Brussels suddenly comes over all colonialist?

If abortion is a fundamental human right, why isn’t parliamentary democracy? If the EU can demand the former in Nicaragua, why can’t the US demand the latter in Cuba?

Perhaps the answer is that Brussels has never been all that keen on democracy. So what if Nicaraguans are against abortion? The French and Dutch were against the constitution. The Danes were against Maastricht. Eurocrats see it as part of their function to temper the will of the electorate, to act as a check on what they call “populism” – which, when you think about it, is what the rest of us call “democracy”. Having ignored their own voters for 50 years, they’re hardly going to start fretting about Nicaragua’s.

Indeed.

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