Bydio

First, the fun, from the Advice Goddess Blog:

The U.S. abortion rate remains among the highest of all industrialized nations—more than twice as high, for example, as the Netherlands (nine per 1,000 women of reproductive age).

In the parenthesis above, also in bold [my emphasis], we’re talking about abortion.  Now this isn’t an abortion rant, so take it easy.  This is just about the words used in those parenthesis.  If you look at that, basically everything after “1,000″ should be gone.  I mean c’mon!  Using “women” in there is pointless, because men don’t have abortions.  But then to add “of reproductive age”?!  What the fuck?  What other women would have abortions?  Where are the statistics for abortion rates in non-reproductive age groups?  You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Now, the birthrates.

From the same article that I quoted above, she’s basically talking about how hung up on sex are the people in the U.S.  And we are, no doubt.  But from JihadWatch.org, we find out that American birthrates (2.2/couple) are higher than European birthrates (averaging less than 2 per couple), and Muslim birthrates are monstrous compared to us (averaging between 6 and 8 children per couple).

Fertility rates in the Muslim world look like this: Niger (7.46 children per woman), Mali (7.42), Somalia (6.76), Afghanistan (6.69), and Yemen (6.58). The Palestinian woman in Gaza who – at age 64 – just became the world’s oldest suicide bomber was the mother of nine and (at last count) the grandmother of 41.

[...]

Compared to the rest of the industrialized world, the United States is experiencing a veritable population explosion – with a birth rate of 2.11, just about replacement level. From there, it’s demographic winter as far as the eye can see: Canada (1.5), Germany (1.3), Russia and Italy (1.2) and not-so-sunny Spain (1.1). The latter three nations could cease to exist, as they are currently constituted, within the next 50 years.

So this gets me to thinking, and you know that’s just downright scary, but sexual repression seems to cause higher birthrates.  Without the taboos, and with all the social baggage, sex may become less enticing.

Of course there are other ways to look at it.  From Western career women who don’t want to have children, to much more availability of birth control compared to Muslim women, a lot can be said for why our birthrates are low while Muslim birthrates are high.

But I still say the social structure plus the lack of taboo has an effect.

This does not mean I want the prudes to win.  Just the opposite.  But I am with Cartman on this one.

Cartman says:

I want to speak with the youthful left.  I want your eyes, your attention, for just a few moments.  Doesn’t hurt to read, right?  Might as well hear what I have to say, it can’t hurt.

Just think about your home.  Whether it’s in a suburb or a city, a rural or urban setting, just think about home.  Feels good, doesn’t it?  It does for me, too.  Home is a place where you can let your guard down, relax, not worry about anything.  That’s what it should be.  That’s why we have homes.

Now think about your neighborhood.  It’s probably a good neighborhood, even if it’s not the ritziest area.  You’ve got friends who grew up there, people you know, the nice lady down the street, the old man who you stay away from because he’s kind of a dick, and the regular people all around.  Decent place, right?  Could be better, could be worse, but it’s probably not all that bad.

What about your town or your city?  The mall you went to when you hooked up with your friends, the place where you could hang out and maybe grab a few beers where the cops didn’t come around much, even the makeout spot that you could drive your car to and get a little action if things were going good that night.  The grocery store, the drug store, maybe a concert venue or a stadium nearby for music and sports.

I had all that, and you probably do, too.  I grew up in a good town, some of my friends grew up in a decent city, sure there were problems, but it was all manageable.  It felt good to know that home was home, that you knew the place and there were few, if any, worries about being safe.  It’s home, and if you take some minor precautions, nothing gets stolen and no one bugs you.

Y’know, it’s the same in most every town and city in the United States of America.  Wherever you go, there are some basic things you can take for granted.  One of those things is safety.  Yes, bad things happen every day, but for 99.9% of the time, everything is A-OK.  From Bangor, Maine to San Diego, California; Seattle, Washington to Miami, Florida, and everything inbetween; you can expect a certain amount of fair play wherever you go.  It’s a pretty good nation, if I do say so myself.

No, I’m not appealing to your sense of patriotism.  We both know that’s rather gauche.  All the rah-rah stuff just isn’t for us.  But even though there are some rough bits here and there, it’s a good country.  You’ve gotta admit that.

Have you ever traveled outside the U.S. of A.?  Maybe you went to Canada for vacation, or Mexico.  Toronto and Cancun are nice.  You may’ve gone to some of the Caribbean islands.  I’ve never been to them, but I hear they’re nice.  Ever try Japan?  I hear it’s quite a culture shock, but well worth the time.  Maybe you’ve been to Europe; England, France, Germany.  So much to see, so much history, so much old-world culture in which to bask.  Hell, I could skinny-dip in European culture, just wash myself in it, and doing it nude would probably be legal!

One thing you might notice about all the places I’ve mentioned is they’re Westernized.  Kinda like the U.S., when you go to those places, you can expect a certain comfortable culture.  You might be a little on your guard in most of those places — new environment, new people, don’t want to misstep and get in trouble even if you do feel a sense of giddy euphoria one can only get by traveling abroad — but for the most part you can expect a certain level of civility, a certain level of security, a certain level of freedom.

Now I’m not saying that only these Westernized countries have civility, security and freedom.  All countries to some degree or another have this.  I point these countries out as familiar sources of what we, as Americans, are used to.  Even if you get shitfaced, go on a tear, steal a car and wreck it, in any of those countries the worst you’ll get is some prison time.  As long as you don’t maim or kill someone, you’ll be punished with a fine and/or jail time, but you’ll survive the punishment, and you’ll probably learn from your mistake.  You fucked up, you got caught, you pay your due, learn your lesson, go home and move on to a better life.

But it’s not so cut-and-dried anymore, really.  Let’s compare a few things that we take for granted.

If you saw someone with a French flag sewn into their backpack here in the States, what would happen to that person?  Right, absolutely nothing.  German flag?  Nothing.  Mexican flag?  Nothing.  Venezuelan flag?  Nothing.  Iranian flag?  Nothing.  Really, you can throw almost any old flag you want onto a backpack or shirt or pants, whatever, and no one will give you shit.  You can proclaim to the wind, at the top of your lungs, in any street in America that you love Communism, and you know what will happen?  Not a damned thing.  People may look at you funny, may even yell something back to you, but life would go on.

Tell me this: what would happen if you wore an American flag in any of those countries I mentioned above?  N… well… you may fear for your safety.

From bushtheidiot.com:

Along with some kind words, Katie left this in the comments:

“Traveling this summer in Africa I was stunned at the deep level
of alienation of those on the continent from the U.S. South Africa, an
ally of the U.S., was unequivocally critical of Israel’s little war,
our support of it, and of course of Iraq. I was constantly being asked
what the American people were thinking electing W, and did we believe,
as he did, that God led him to invade Iraq. I was, needless to say, ashamed as an American. . . .”

You can certainly take from this a surface understanding that we should blame Bush and Israel for our bad image.  But this has been going on for a while now.  Americans have worn Canadian flags since the 70s (if I recall correctly) when traveling abroad just to avoid trouble.

That’s quite a contrast, don’t you think?  Just about anyone can come to America and display their flag of choice and nothing happens to them, but if Americans do the same, they could be accosted, beaten, even killed if the mood strikes an angry mob.

You can see the latest travel warnings for Americans at the Bureau of Consular Affairs website (travel.state.gov).

This is not just for Americans, either.  Any citizen of a Westernized country can be in danger if they go to certain places in the world.  But if citizens of those countries came to us, they wouldn’t have to worry.

Why is that?

I think I heard someone say we’re bullies, and they’re angry at us, so of course they’ll lash out.

Possible.  We can be heavy-handed in our politics, but we’re also the first people they’ll call if their country is in trouble.  No one expects Russia, Venezuela or Pakistan to right a wrong on an international scale; everyone expects America to do that.  Seems rather odd, doesn’t it?

Did I hear someone say sanctions?  Or was that subjugation?  Either way, it’s a good point, both relying on money.

We don’t physically subjugate people anymore.  Hold on, hold on, Iraq is not subjugation because we aren’t enslaving the populace.  We’re fighting against a portion of the populace and trying to protect the other, larger portion of the populace that doesn’t want to kill us.  Iraq is a big can of worms, but you can’t honestly call it subjugation by the U.S. unless you do some serious verbal contortions and acrobatics.

As I was saying, we don’t physically subjugate people anymore, but it is in our power to monetarily subjugate them… but not really.  We ask for other countries to do what’s in our best interests if they want our money.  If they don’t do for us, we won’t do for them.  To me, that sounds rather fair.  Not only does that sound fair, we often keep giving out the money when people don’t keep their promises to us (oil for food).  We give ourselves the shaft.

In 2005 the U.S. alone gave 27.457 BILLION dollars away.  We just gave it out.  And it doesn’t even take into account the 21 other Westernized countries who gave out money.  Just think, that’s $91.52 from each and every American citizen… all 300 million of us.  Imagine if we put that into a program to help fellow Americans having tough times.  If we estimate 10 million Americans are down on their luck in one year, that’s $2,745.70 for each person; a decent chunk of change to help an individual person get back on his or her feet.  If it’s a mother and two children, that’s $8,237.10 for that family.  So I think that we’re pretty damn charitable to the rest of the world, seeing as we don’t have to give them one penny if we don’t want to.  And further, we gave out 34 BILLION DOLLARS of our own money to foreign sources on top of what our government gave out.  Nice!

We like to help, and I don’t think it’s wrong to ask that people who receive our help should consider our concerns in the global arena.  We’re being nice to you, so be nice to us, please.

Am I right?

So basically what I’m saying is, we aren’t all that bad to the world.  Can we do better?  Sure.  But we’re doing pretty good for the most part.

What worries me is when I see Americans who are disgusted with America and think we deserve whatever befalls us.  The thinking goes that we’ve done bad things, so we should be punished.  Our embassies get bombed, but we deserve it.  Our ships are bombed, but we deserve it.  Three thousand people are killed on September 11, 2001, but we brought it on ourselves.  Our troops are killed in Afghanistan while we help to restabilize the country after taking out the government that helped to kill those three thousand people, but they deserve it.  More troops are killed trying to restabilize a country after we take out a murderous dictator, but they deserve it because we’re being aggressive.

Really, are we THAT bad?  Do we deserve to be killed because we try to keep people from hurting us at home and abroad?  I mean, if we were THAT bad, wouldn’t they not take our money?  If we were THAT bad, wouldn’t they stop calling us for help when things got really bad in their own countries?  Maybe if we’re THAT bad, we can stop putting our young soldiers in harms way for their fights.  Maybe, if we’re THAT bad, we should stop giving them money?

So do me a favor… take a look around you and tell me if we’re all really THAT bad.  Is our tolerance for people of other cultures so wrong?  Is our charity to the world so wrong?

Are we wrong?!

Is our home so vile that you could give it up and move away from it and be sure to find something better over the horizon?  Should we maybe give in to those people who want to hurt us because we don’t think like them and therefore consider us evil?

Would you move to Iran right this minute?  Would you move to Venezuela right this minute?  Would you move to North Korea right this second?

If you think about it, our home really isn’t that bad.  In fact, I can honestly say it’s worth fighting for.  Our basic ideology is what has made us a great country: our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our Republic; and the people within, no matter how much we disagree with each other, can be proud to stand as one and proclaim themselves Americans.

We’ve made a good home.  I think you can agree with me on that.

(Thanks to Jonathan McClendon and his grandfather for inspiring me write this)

From ynetnews.com (the source is Palestinian, so I question its veracity, but if true…):

The Palestinian news agency Maan, quoting a senior member of the Palestinian government, reported Wednesday that “ministers of the Hamas-led government recently held talks with European countries and with a delegation of the American Democratic Party.

The Palestinian official said that Hamas representatives held meeting in European countries and even succeeded in convincing the Europeans to accept the movement’s stance (click for their stance).

The Palestinian official expressed his hope that the recent talks would lead to positive developments, especially in light of “Hamas’ flexibility in its diplomatic stances.”

He refused to elaborate on the meeting and where it took place, claiming that Hamas is not interested in harming the Democrats’ chances to win the 2008 elections.

If this is true (and it’s not verified yet), then if you vote Democrat, you get “leaders” who work with Hamas.  Never.

I know, I know, I put too much Jewish stuff on here.  It’s not meant to be a Jewish blog thing, and it’s not because I’m Jewish myself, it’s just that Israel is a major part of the Middle East situation, and that situation affects us here in the U.S.  It’s my understanding that what’s good for Israel is good for the United States.  So, when I see some Jewey goodness out there, I like to post on it.

For example, Atlas Shrugs notes…

“This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” pp. 234-235. -Martin Luther King

You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely ‘anti-Zionist.’ And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God’s green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–this is God’s own truth.

Anti-Semitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so.

Why? Because Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land.

The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.

The Negro people, my friend, know what it is to suffer the torment of tyranny under rulers not of our choosing. Our brothers in Africa have begged, pleaded, requested–DEMANDED the recognition and realization of our inborn right to live in peace under our own sovereignty in our own country.

How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfillment of God’s promise, that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.

This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.

If you believe the Jewish people deserve to have an independent state, then you are a Zionist. It’s that easy.

So if you get some black person throwing “Israel/Jews are bad” in your face, throw this right back at them.  They can’t ever go against what Martin Luther King Jr. said.

American Thinker reports, Transatlantic Intelligencer translates, World Politics Watch publishes:

Do you mean
to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy
in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, that the public
clinics in Jordan would function better?

I think so.

In the end, is it a matter of feelings of self-esteem?

Exactly. It’s because we always lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people
in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about
7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million.
That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this. [emphasis added]

So if we let Israel crush this preposterous land-for-peace myth and integrate the Palestinian Arabs, can we finally end this shit once and for all?  Please?

I just put Adsense on the blog here.  Click the links, I’m a broke mofo. (They only show up on the individual pages, not on the main page)

B.B. King - Paying The Cost To Be The Boss

I used a sweet plugin from biggnuts.com (fuckin’ sweet name) Called “Adsense Injection!“  Muy Sweeto.

While this wench takes the stance that all divorced dads are being completely shafted — which is bullshit, but I do agree some serious male shafting is going on in the court system — she does raise an interesting point:

The main benefactor is the child support agency who takes a 2% cut out of every child support check for as long as the child is in the system.

Oh, they didn’t tell you about that?

Follow the money.  Always follow the money.

From The Volokh Conspiracy Blog:

As I said, my libertarian sympathies lie with the school, and given relevant Hawaiian history, I don’t have any particular distaste for the Schools spending money left by a Hawaiian princess for Native Hawaiian education on Native Hawaiians. But I think it’s too clever by half for courts to hold that minorities are protected from discrimination by a law that grants them the same rights as “white citizens”, if “white citizens” (among others) do not have these rights to begin with. Put another way, it’s hard to read the language of the 1866 Act as doing anything other than creating legal parity between whites and others. Any interpretation of the Act that disrupts that parity with regard to any right that is perceived to come within the protections of the Act lapses into incoherence.

I agree with Mr. Volokh’s libertarian leanings, the school should be able to do what it wants with the money, but the courts are fucking around, making sure that whitey gets the shaft.  That ain’t cool.

Did you know that oil is traded in U.S. dollars and no other currency?  I didn’t until a few months ago.  I was reminded of it from this article at lindasog.com.

I found that oil was only traded in U.S. dollars kinda odd.  Why is it only traded in dollars, not euros or shekels or rupees?  My brain couldn’t comprehend, so I let it slide.  It became more trivia in my addled brain.

Come to find out Iran is planning to trade oil for euros now.  Okay, so what’s the big deal?

Well, it seems the dollar is propped up by oil.  I don’t think this is some conspiracy thing, but please correct me if I’m wrong.  We went off the gold standard in 1972, but oil backed the dollar, basically keeping our monetary system stable and prosperous.  After all, if you can only buy oil in dollars, then you have to have dollars to buy oil.  Every country on earth would need U.S. dollars to buy their oil.  In 1972 they may’ve been thinking, “It’s highly unlikely people won’t need oil anytime soon, so there’s plenty of time to figure out another way to back the dollar and keep it strong.”

Well, no one was going to fuck with the U.S. in any major way back in the 70s.  Viet Nam, the Cold War, re-election of Tricky Dick… shiiiit, we looked like we were militarily ready and willing to fuck with anyone.

But now, we’re kinda looking like the big dude who cries when we get into a real fight.  Yes, we look like pussies.

What better time to undermine the big pussies, right?  The E.U. can get Iran to trade oil in euros in exchange for allowing Iran to do some heinous shit, but then THEIR currency is backed by oil, making it much stronger and propped up by the most-used energy source in the world.  Iran gets a pass at the U.N. if the U.S. starts to get crabby, and the E.U. becomes more secure with oil backing its fiat currency.  Win-win, right?

We all know the capricious nature of international politics, and I’m betting the E.U. is selling its soul for this deal, but now maybe you can see why the E.U. fucks with us at the U.N.

The full implications range much farther than this, but this was a question I’d asked myself before, and now I think this is the answer.  Either that or I’m on crack.  You decide.

This is all just a guess, mind you, but it seems to fit.  I’m no economist.

Update 20061212: More on how Oil Producing Countries own dollars, and how they’re getting rid of them.