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'Plutoed' Chosen As '06 Word of the Year
"Plutoed" was chosen 2006's Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting Friday.
To "pluto" is "to demote or devalue someone or something," much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn't meet its definition of a planet.
"Alan Dershowitz: World obsessed with Israel:"
Harvard professor says six million additional people have died since WWII because of obsessive focus on Israel.
The international community's obsessive focus on the State of Israel caused it to miss out on genocides all around the world, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz told a rally in a Toronto synagogue last week, according to a report in the Canadian Jewish News .
"Six million additional people have died since the end of the Second World War because of this obsessive focus on Israel," Dershowitz was quoted as saying, citing global inaction over the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and the slaughter currently taking place in Darfur.
He added that Iran 's denial of the Holocaust was aimed at de-legitimizing Israel, demonizing Jews and, legitimatizing attacks on Israel and attacks on Jews.
The rally was organized by Canadian Jewish community organizations, and included Holocaust survivors, a Catholic priest, and the Canadian minister of intergovernmental affairs, who received an ovation after blasting anti-Israel bias among Canadian members of parliament.
Last Friday, in a post titled "Maybe This will get the MSM to Stop Giving Chavez a Free Ride," I speculated that the love-fest between mainstream media and Hugo Chavez would come to an abrupt halt now that Chavez had attacked MSM by shutting down his country's second-largest TV station as a result of that station's opposition to him.
I documented the pre-existing lovefest MSM had shown for Chavez via listing the most recent Google News headlines for him - which came out before the news that he was shutting down that station. As I said last week of those headlines:
Can you believe how favorable all these headlines are? "Create unified party" ... "popular origin" ... "backs Ecuador" ... "demands apology from US ambassador" (those rotten US ambassadors! how dare they assert drug traffic is up in Venezuela!) ... "person of the year poll" ... "Archbishop" ... even, "Let's now make friends with Venezuela!"
(Click here for a saved copy of last week's search.)
Yes, last week there was a headline, "Archbishop Hugo Chavez?" Now it's a week later. Has the tenor of the headlines changed? Let's look at today's most recent headlines, which came after the news that Chavez was shutting down that opposition TV station.
(Click here for a saved copy of this week's search.)
You'd think they were writing about an entirely different person! Look how pejorative the headlines are now: "selection of a political newcomer as his new vice president" ... "abruptly fires his vice president" ... "plans one grand socialist party, led by him" ... "double-digit inflation" ... "turning stomachs" ... "Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela under Hugo Chavez" ... and now, all of a sudden, Chavez is associated with GWB: "The shared political stylings of George W. Bush and Hugo Chavez"! Since MSM now dislikes Chavez, they can at least use him to tar GWB.
This documents that MSM's slant on the topics they cover can turn around on a dime. Once they saw themselves being threatened, all of a sudden the headlines changed. All of a sudden now, Chavez is a bad leader, someone who should be opposed, as opposed to last week, when Chavez was someone who should be supported by all right-thinking people who have been brainwashed by drinking the MSM cool-aid.
I saw this on YouTube and thought it might be a hoax. But I confirmed its authenticity, via the Memri.org site.
Here's the transcript, from Memri.org:
Bahraini Cleric Abdullah Latif Aal Mahmoud on the Rules of Wife Beatings in Islam
The following are excerpts from a lecture by Bahraini cleric Abdullah Latif Aal Mahmoud. Bahrain TV aired this lecture on [J]une 20, 2005
Sheik Aal Mahmoud: If the husband wants to use beatings to treat his wife, he must never ever do it in front of the children. It must remain between him and her. It must be done according to the following conditions: He must not cause bleeding or bruise her body. He should avoid her face and other sensitive parts of her body. As we've said, the limitations on beating are: They must not cause bleeding, they should not break any bones, they should not be on the face, and they should not bruise her. If the husband violates these rules, he violates the rules of Allah. If she has been hurt, the husband is held liable for what he has done, because the woman is not his merchandise. He cannot do to her whatever he wants. Even if the wife forgives the husband, it does not mean Allah will do the same on Judgment Day.
There's your religion of peace. What kind of "religion" is this? Almost everybody in America thinks that all widely-followed religions are about peace and love and understanding. Islam does not appear to be like that. Islam is a religion in which they have official rules about how to beat your wife.
How can it be that the women's organizations of America don't speak up about such things?
You can't even take this cleric's pathetic word at face value. He says you can beat your wife all you want, as long as you don't bruise her. Riiiiiiiight.
Of course, in the Sharia law of the Koran, a woman's testimony in court is worth only one-half that of a man's, so the wife has no legal recourse anyway. Come to think of it, maybe that's why this cleric says that the beatings aren't to be done in front of any witnesses.
Maybe we should ask Representative Ellison what he has to say about this.
Since wife-beating is illegal in America, Islamists here must avoid some practices sanctioned by Islam, or break U.S. law. They must accept that in America the laws of Islam are replaced by the laws of the U.S.
What I want to know is, once they take all the oppressive political ideology out of Islam, and take the Sharia law out, and take out evil practices such as clerically-sanctioned wife-beating, what's going to be left for the reformed Islamists to practice?
I've never yet heard any imam preaching anything publicly except for violence, death and murder. If anyone has seen any video of any imam publicly preaching something about love and kindness, please post a link in the comments section.
When Instapundit and NZ Bear first launched the Porkbusters campaign, to cut fat from the federal budget, it seemed daring and audacious. Could bloggers really have a beneficial effect on government spending, via investigating, calling their representatives, and blogging about it?
The answer turns out to be "yes." The Porkbusters campaign was launched on September 18, 2005. Wikipedia states that in its first six weeks of operation it secured "$84,000,000 in specific budget cut commitments out of various Representatives and non-specific agreements out of many more."
Even more importantly, the campaign appears to be responsible for making the topic of earmarks, a matter of national debate. A Google News search for "earmark OR earmarks" for the year prior to the start of the campaign, shows 6,000 links ... versus 14,900 links for the year following the start of the campaign.
And today GWB made the subject a key part of his 2007 economic initiatives:
Bush Urges Democrats on ‘Earmarks’
Mr. Bush asked the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress today to make good on campaign promises by shining light on the previously clandestine expenditures known as “earmarks,” through legislation to require disclosure of their sponsors and other details.
Speaking in the White House’s rose garden after the Cabinet meeting, Mr. Bush noted that the soon-to-be chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees had agreed on a temporary moratorium on earmarks, which are parochial spending measures slipped into larger, often unrelated bills at the behest of one or a few members.
“But we need to do more,” Mr. Bush said. “Congress needs to adopt real reform that requires full disclosure of the sponsors, the costs, the recipients and the justification for every earmark.”
And he said Congress “needs to cut the number and cost of earmarks next year by half.”
The blogosphere makes Democracy more powerful and more efficient.
Update 1-12-07: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
