Los Angeles Pawn Shop
Photo by: javazetti

My father used to tell me this story: Jake came up to my father and asked, "Herschel, how much do I owe you?" My father answered, "Twenty zloties, Yacov, why?" To which Jake responded, "Lend me ten more and I'll owe you thirty."

The next week the scenario repeated itself, Jake: "Herschel, how much do I owe you?" My father would say thirty zloties and Jake would ask to borrow another ten.

The issue of lending money to relatives is very neuralgic to the average person. There is nothing more uncomfortable than having a cousin, niece, nephew or sibling ask you for a loan. While I find no problem with loans to businesses or strangers, lending money to relatives is a lose-lose proposition.

President George W. Bush speaking during
a special session of the Israeli Parliament
in Jerusalem
Photo Credit: Ariel Schalit

If George Bush had said, "There are some people in this country that seem to enjoy eating chocolate-covered cockroaches," would Obama have thrown a hissy fit over the statement? Would he have thought that he was the object of the attack? Obviously not, unless Obama actually enjoys eating chocolate-covered cockroaches. An innocent person would have laughed off the comment by saying it couldn't possibly be referring to him. In fact a truly innocent person wouldn't have responded at all.

So why is everyone protesting too much? All the Liberals and Leftists have suddenly suffered a collective apoplexy over the appeasement remark; here's Joe Biden [a tip of the turban to Americablog]: "This is bullsh**t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous."

But what's so outrageous? Here's the text:

The Wall Street Journal, Bush Charges ‘Appeasement’ in Knesset Speech

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Photo: Skeptical Monkey

Your first reaction upon reading that headline should be, "Wow, Great! Finally the Brits are wising up and getting rid of Muslims in their country." Sadly, it is only about psychics and mediums. Muslims will still be able to pretend that the militant political ideology known as Islam is a religion. By the end of this month the Brits are set to pass a series of regulations consistent with those of the EU intended to protect consumers from commercial scams that we in the states are all too familiar with.

Here's the gist of it:

Digital Journal, British Government Set To Crack Down On Psychic Community

As reported in the Guardian: "If the Consumer Protection Regulations are approved by Parliament, as is likely...the regulations will come into force on 26 May. They will ban 31 types of unfair sales practice outright, including bogus closing-down sales, prize-draw scams and aggressive doorstep selling, and will for the first time establish a catch-all duty not to trade unfairly, closing loopholes that rogue traders have been able to exploit".

By lumping spiritualism in as a consumer service, mediums assert they are prone to a spike in lawsuits if customers are somehow dissatisfied with the information they receive. The solution, according to legal experts is to provide a disclaimer up front, making it clear that any communication with the other side is undertaken strictly for 'entertainment purposes' or as a 'scientific experiment'.

Spiritualists claim that such measures discriminate against their practices which they believe are religious in nature.

Who called me chicken?
Photo by: mselderhuis

Arthur Neville Chamberlain was 68 years old when he became Prime Minister of Britain in 1937. Like many who had lived through the horrific years of the Great War, Chamberlain would do anything to avoid going to war again which explains why he bent over backwards for Hitler and took it up the wazoo. In his defense, I should mention that I am now beginning to think that conciliatory cowardice is a mental illness that afflicts old men who have lived through a previous war.

This may explain why John Murtha is a cowardly defeatist. Anyone who wants us out of Iraq precisely because he thinks that negotiation and appeasement will work better against our Muslim enemies than a whack over the head has to be mentally ill.

What is it about these old farts that turns them into drooling, sniveling, servile knee-bucklers?

ethanol powered car
Photo by: homedad33

Contrary to all the hype we now know that Ethanol is not the liquid filling the cup of the Holy Grail: it requires massive subsidies (In 2005 alone corn subsidies totaled $9.4 billion); it will never displace any significant amount of imported oil; it has a deleterious effect on air quality; and it's the major cause of the rise in food prices [George Edward Loper].

The subsidy process, aside from money, requires tremendous legislative efforts: acording to Global Subsidies Initiative [PDF] there are now in place hundreds of programs to subsidize nearly every stage of the ethanol and biodiesel supply chains. The National Biodiesel Board, for example, notes that it is tracking more than 160 pieces of legislation at the state level for biodiesel alone.

It is not only air quality that suffers:

Madville Times, 7 Dec 2007, Ethanol Pros and Cons: Energy Independence, But Poison Burgers

One of the great side-benefits of turning corn into ethanol is that the ethanol plants also produce distiller's grain, which makes good cattle feed. Feed your car, feed your cows. Heck of a deal!

But then along come those darn scientists, having to point out the downside: AP reports that Kansas State University researchers have found cattle fed distiller's grain are twice as likely to carry deadly E. coli 0157. E coli -- that's that bacteria that causes 73,000 infections and 61 deaths each year.

Now comes visual proof from reader and photo-blogger Edward Cropper from his article Such A Drink I've Never Tasted whose work I reproduce below with his kind permission.

Hate them Jews!
Photo by: Great Beyond

It happens all the time. I'll write, "Muslims are a threat to civilization," or "We should deport all Muslims," and some intellectual giant will comment, "Just substitute Jews in place of Muslims and you'll see how your remarks are no different than those of anti-Semites."

I suppose when I swap the words I am expected to admit that the sentiments expressed are no different than Hitler's. There is a difference. A big difference. Hitler knew Jews were not dangerous when he said that Jews were a threat and so all Jews should be deported. His purpose in making those allegations was to create a bogeyman in order to establish, consolidate, and increase his political power in Germany. If the number of Chinese in Germany were as large as the number of Jews he would have said exactly the same thing about the Chinese. He was no more anti-Semitic than I am.

Jews did not attack German citizens, did not plot to create a world Rabbinate, and could care less if anyone converted to Judaism. In fact if you go to a Rabbi today and say you want to be a Jew, most likely you'll get talked out of it: "Are you meshugah, you wanna be a Jew, vat for? You know vat kind of trouble your asking for? Such a headache being a Jew! Ehhh! Better you should go be a Baptist."

You will never see Jews capturing Journalists and promising to let them go if only they become Jews. It is to laugh. But OK, let me take the challenge: here is what I have written hundreds of times: "Muslims want to convert the whole World to Islam at the point of a sword." There are hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who believe that. But let's see how it sounds with the swap: "Jews want to convert the whole World to Judaism at the point of a sword." It's not only patently untrue, there is not a single, sane person who would believe it - not even Muslims.

Maybe if Our National Anthem
was "America the Beautiful..."
Photo by: TW Collins

In nature, the entity that supplies most of the benefit to a community gets most of the resources. Let's take the example of the Queen Bee. A queen develops from the same egg or larva as any other bee; the only difference is that she gets vastly greater amounts of royal jelly than the average worker honey bee. Because of this the queen develops into a sexually mature female.

It is the Queen Bee that ensures the survival of the hive and despite the communist misconception that it is the workers that contribute the most to society, nature itself makes the value judgment by allocating the greatest resources to whom she considers the most important. Of course, worker bees never complain that her Highness is only one bee yet consumes a greater proportion of resources than the rest of the hive. They know she deserves it.

Since I was a child I have heard, read, and seen reports about how much of the world's resources we few greedy Americans consume. Here's one:

Solar Energy International, Energy Consumption

• Though accounting for only 5 percent of the world's population, Americans consume 26 percent of the world's energy.


• In 1997, U.S. residents consumed an average of 12,133 kilowatt-hours of electricity each, almost nine times greater than the average for the rest of the world.


• America uses about 15 times more energy per person than does the typical developing country.

I would like to report the following news to you, my dear readers, using the new protocol suggested by our government in referring to terror groups. That is, to avoid referring to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups as Islamic or Muslim, and not to use terms like jihad or mujaheddin. Basically, we should avoid using terms that we in the West consider to have negative connotations when they, the , consider those terms in a positive light.

Normally, I view censor bars as silly devices that attempt to mask the truth but end up in fact revealing more than they hide. In the following case we may in fact see the truth more plainly through their use. So here is an article from Reuters that might interest those of you that follow the activities of UNRWA in Israel:

First let me give you the Zionist lie, the cover story that even Wikipedia repeats for general consumption as to how Pepsi Cola started: Before Pepsi was Pepsi it was called "Brad's drink" and was first made in New Bern, North Carolina, in the United States in 1893 by pharmacist Caleb Bradham.

A few years later, a soft drink competitor from Newark, New Jersey marketed a drink called "Pep Cola" but went bankrupt in 1898 at which time Caleb bought the trade name for $100 and renamed his drink "Pepsi Cola."

That's the official story. Now I will reveal to you the truth as discovered by Islamic scientists. I know what you are going to say, Islam with over 1.5 billion adherents has only produced 2 scientists who are Nobel Laureates, so why are Muslims wasting time looking for the secret origins of Pepsi?

I'll tell you why: because Pepsi is in actual fact a Zionist front. If you don't believe me, listen to Salem Salamah, a HAMAS Member of Parliament who, without revealing the names of those who discovered the sinister truth [Israeli agents would murder them immediately), explains the hidden meaning behind the letters forming the name PEPSI.

Poster: Paramount Pictures

The trouble with American kids and here I speak of 20 and 30 year olds, is that the moment they graduate high school, get a job, or meet their 'true love,' they want to flee the nest. On this forum the question was asked, "What is the average age to move out?" and 66% responded with 20 years old or less with many posters suggesting that even 17 or 18 is a good age to leave home.

In Italy, eight out of 10 Italians aged under 30 still live at home, and the average age for moving out is 36:

Annotico Report, 7 Oct 2007, Italy's Mamma's Boys Given Cash to Fly Nest

"Let's get these big babies out of the house," said Mr Padoa-Schioppa, who left home himself at the age of 19 to work in Germany.

"If young people stay with their parents, they do not get married or have any independence," he added.

Italian men make up the bulk of those staying at home, at around 67 per cent, and a mocking phrase has even been coined to describe them: "Mammoni" or "Big Mummy's boys".

Next year's budget will offer almost £700 [~$1400] in tax relief to Italians under 30 earning less than £10,500 [~$21,000] a year, and half that to those earning more.

In addition, the government will pay 19 per cent towards the cost of renting accommodation for university students if they study at least 65 miles away from their home.

The Queen of Hearts
Photo by: Halloween Scene

The year was 1951 and I was only a few months past my 6th birthday when I fell in love with Disney's animated feature Alice in Wonderland. The previous year I had seen my first Disney film, Cinderella, and I thought that was the best thing I had ever seen in my 6 years of life, but now this Alice - this was mesmerizing.

The lunacy of Wonderland was intoxicating with characters and scenes popping up here and there with no sense or reason; I shivered as Alice struggled through the menacing forest; I couldn't take my ears off the mentholated purring of the Cheshire Cat; I strained to decipher the gibble-gabble of the Mad Hatter and his friends; I was a thrall to my seat throughout the film.

One thing that children are most sensitive to is the unfairness of adults. We want to stay up all night but mom says no. We want to eat ice cream and push away the broccoli but dad says we can only get to enjoy ice cream after we clean the plate. We want to run with scissors and swing wooden swords at our little brother but nanny takes away our weapons. So what I remember most starkly and what has remained riveted in my mind to this day was the ridiculously unfair trial of Alice by the tyrannical Queen of Hearts.

If you recall, the Queen summons the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse as witnesses against Alice and they end up holding an absurd, unbirthday party for her.

So now, whenever the UN demands, "Off with her head," in regard to Israel, no matter who's at fault, I am reminded of Alice in Wonderland.

Two years ago I noted that hundreds of blogs and websites mistakenly offer up the statistic that there are 10 or 11 Muslim Nobel Prize Laureates. Excluding the Nobel Peace Prize which does not reward intellectual achievement (after all, Yasser Arafat got one) I wrote that there were only three Muslims (out of 1.5 billion) who have won Nobel Prizes. Two in Science (Abdus Salam, and Ahmed Zewail) and one in Literature (Naguib Mahfouz).

Seven months after I wrote that article I should have updated the total to 4. So please add Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. Pamuk, it should be mentioned, is hardly a Muslim having been brought up in a secular, westernized family. He is what I call a MINO, a Muslim in Name only.

Another MINO is Ahmed Zewail, a most busy scientist to whom many Muslim websites like to proudly point as an example that a Muslim can indeed achieve scientific success. However, Zewail himself has written that one of the barriers to scientific and technological success in backward Islamic developing countries is the mixing of Shariah state laws and Muslim religious beliefs. That certain cultures, nations, religions (without naming them) lack appreciation for science and technology. There is more detail in his commentary given to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, "Science for the Have-nots" [PDF].

Of course, anyone who reads blogs other than The Daily Kos knows that women under Islamic law only have half the equality of men. A women who is raped needs 8 female witnesses to 4 male witnesses.

A reader left a comment calling me "a biased fool." Perhaps he's right; perhaps I have overlooked discrimination of women in my own backyard. So I searched the Internet to see if there are public places in America, infidel places, that do indeed treat women differently than men. What is more non-Muslim than a pub, I thought to myself; what I found was quite disturbing:

Suppose we lived in a world where there was a religion that required the faithful to carry an AK-47 in public similar to the Sikh wearing of daggers (known as kirpans); would we bend over backwards to accommodate that religion even at the peril of our lives? It happens with Islam. The weapon: a mask to thwart identification and evade capture. In Islam the masks are called niqab and burqa.

Yesterday, the Gateway Pundit told us that Burka-Clad Bank Robbers Killed a Policeman in Philadelphia. We so cower before Muslim intimidation that we allow women, or it could be men, to cover themselves from head to toe in disguise.

Muslim apologists will argue that allowing someone to wear a Burqa is not the same as allowing them to carry an AK-47. Actually it is, since one would have no problem entering a bank with an AK-47 hidden under that garment. One of the disadvantages from openly carrying a weapon into a bank is that one can be spotted from the outside and the police can be alerted or that one is spotted as he or she enters with the weapon and an alarm is either given or the guard on duty can draw his weapon in response.