Ain't Complicated

Bush Bits

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

The Anchoress wrote an interesting article about President Bush.

President Bush’s motorcade made an unscheduled U-turn and stop – at a lemonade stand – while speeding to the airport after Friday’s fund-raiser in Ohio for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine.

After all, how could the president pass by a young girl sporting pink sunglasses and a sign that reads: “Lemonade, 50 cents. Bush Free.”

Without at all intending any cynicism toward Mr. Bush personally, I often wonder if an elected person is acting as a politician or as who he really is.

Whatever the case, God bless Mr. Bush.

And me too. I need it just as much.

Amen.

What’s a Palestinian Worth?

Is this their own answer?

Palestinian militant factions who captured an Israeli soldier demanded on Saturday that Israel free 1,000 prisoners from its jails and end an assault on Gaza launched to win the soldier’s release.

According to their own figures, one Palestinian is worth less than one one-thousandth of an Israeli.

Amazing.

No, tragic.

In the wife-carrying competition, men physically transport their spouses over a grueling 831-foot obstacle course that includes log hurdles, hairpin curves, changing terrain, and a four-foot-deep pool of cold water. Husbands can haul their brides any way they wish–piggyback, fireman’s carry, over-the-transom style–but they are severely penalized if they drop their wives at any point.

Or when will it come to the Americas?

How Muslims Think?

I’m suspicious of surveys. But maybe I should cut this one some slack:

How do Muslims worldwide think?

To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain).

Once upon a time I also heard that one out of every ten people I meet is homosexual.

Maybe I give the Muslim survey more creditibility.

What do you make of it?

Clowning With a Nuke

Did Al-Qaeda read this?

A peace activist group says a Roman Catholic priest and two military veterans infiltrated a Minuteman III missile silo site in northwestern North Dakota, using sledgehammers and hammers to gain access.

The Wisconsin-based group Nukewatch, in a statement, said the men were able to break a lock and enter the silo site Tuesday morning, paint the word “disarm” on the silo lid and pour some of their blood on the lid.

Minot Air Force Base confirmed that three people “unlawfully entered” the missile site west of Garrison but said they were quickly detained by Air Force security and turned over to local law enforcement officers, who took them to the McLean County jail.

The clowns had time to do all that, yet they were “quickly detained”? It doesn’t add up to me.

And I wonder if any terrorists figure they can do better.

Oh wow.

“Restraint.” Blah Blah Blah.

So once again it is up to the Israelis to show restraint: The international community urged restraint as thousands of Israeli troops massed on the Gaza border poised for an offensive over the kidnapping of a teenage soldier.

Maybe they should.

But I wonder what the US would do if they suffered an attack on US soil in which a proportionate number of American troops were killed and kidnapped.

I have no idea how the American and Israeli militaries compare in size. Would the ratio be anywhere near 100:1?

If so, how much restraint would the Americans show?

Besides, I don’t think the kidnapping is the sole catalyst here.

(Am I urging bloodshed? Of course not. I’m just commenting on further evidence of an already-obvious anti-Israel bias all around.)

I Don’t Believe It

Not for a bit.

Not this:

All Palestinian factions except Islamic Jihad have reached an agreement on a statehood initiative that implicitly recognises Israel’s right to exist, sources in Fatah and Hamas said.

And even more certainly, not this:

A man’s sexual orientation appears to be determined in the womb, a new study suggests.

(By the way, on that last item, contrast how the sentence ends with the headline that precedes it — “Sexual orientation of men determined before birth.)