Just because. I would have had a great shot of Meowza but I was too busy rubbing his belly to get the camera.

So how do you quarantine a bird? This from CNN is unbelievable, Bush wants to use the military to quarantine what? Even if the virus mutates, and that’s a big if, not a good idea to let one person, the President, use the military in a manner not used in the U.S…. ever.

“I’m concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world,” he told reporters during a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday.

“One option is the use of a military that’s able to plan and move,” he said. “So that’s why I put it on the table. I think it’s an important debate for Congress to have.”

Take it off the table. It’s not going to happen. If the bird flu comes here, the most likely effect is a spike in the price of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It kills birds and, yes, a few people too, more birds than people. Best to stay away from birds, don’t eat bird droppings or goobers. Certainly not enough to give the President the right to declare martial law.

But Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told The Associated Press the president’s suggestion was dangerous.

Giving the military a law enforcement role would be an “extraordinarily Draconian measure” that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.

Having enough antivirals is nice, the pharmaceutical industry will make a handy profit from that irregardless. Reminds me of the big push last year to get flu vaccine and it didn’t even vaccinate against the strain going around. A lot of hype and profit but this is different, messing with the role of the military is not to be taken lightly.

Can’t tell a person by the service they give in church. Michelle notes the use of the coffee and donuts defense in support of Harriet Miers.

Miers has been a member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas for 25 years, where Hecht has been an elder. He calls it a “conservative evangelical church… in the vernacular, fundamentalist, but the media have used that word to tar us.” He says she was on the missions committee for ten years, taught children in Sunday School, made coffee, brought donuts: “Nothing she’s asked to do in church is beneath her.” On abortion, choosing his words carefully for an on-the-record statement, he says “her personal views are consistent with that of evangelical Christians… You can tell a lot about her from her decade of service in a conservative church.”

Compare this to the spaghetti sauce and salad defense. (more…)

The ICRC isn’t exactly neutral here. From the Jerusalem Post is this bit of history.

In the first case, British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the suggestion of senior advisers that he scrap England’s Holocaust Day, on the grounds that the annual commemoration of the Shoah offends the country’s Muslims.

In the second case, the International Committee of the Red Cross drafted a proposition according to which Israel’s Magen David Adom would assimilate its logo into a more “neutral” crystal shape that wouldn’t offend Muslim countries as much as its red Star of David does now.

That’s one good point for England, one dhimmi point for the ICRC. Mind you, they won’t admit Magen David Adom into the ICRC. And for sure they won’t make the Red Crescent change.

Magen David Adom has been fighting for decades for recognition as a full member of the Swiss-based humanitarian movement over the objection of Arab member countries. Again, it is their Muslim sensitivities that must be appeased.

They refuse to accord the Jewish state’s medics, operating under a Jewish symbol, the same privileges and immunity that they enjoy as members of the ICRC. This, despite the fact that Muslim member countries’ organizations won the right to use a red crescent as their symbol instead of a cross.

Over the past five years, while the ICRC was stubbornly denying official status to the MDA, the Red Cross was pumping dozens of millions of dollars each year into the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

Not that giving money to a humanitarian organization is a bad thing except for this little detail.

Of course there is nothing essentially wrong with the PRCS except for one small breach of humanitarian principles: PRCS ambulances were used to smuggle weapons and bomb belts to terrorists and to transport gunmen to their targets, including at least one person (Waffa Idris) who blew herself up in a suicide attack inside Israel. The MDA, meanwhile, was providing blood to the PRCS at its request, and ferrying Palestinians to Israel for urgent medical treatment.

This should surprise no one as the international community, including the U.S., pours millions, nay billions, into the Palestinian government (or lack thereof). The article brings up a good point.

It is obvious that values the West holds dear, such as fairness, equality, and cultural pluralism are simply thrown out the window when resisting the intolerance of a billion Muslims is weighed against offending a few million Jews. Further, it is assumed that compromising Western values at the Jews’ expense is simply that - a Jewish problem.

It is not. The intolerance shown toward Jews can be and is shown toward Christians, such as the recent rampage against Palestinian Muslims against Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem. The massacres of Christians in Sudan is another example, as is the destruction by the Taliban of the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001.

Wonder when we will wake up, if we will wake up before it is too late. Or if we care, anti-Semitism is alive in the West and tolerance of Christianity is slim to none.

Offensive to Muslims so it will be banned. I quote from WND who got the info from CNN.

Prison officials in Britain are concerned that tie pins worn by officers featuring the St. George’s Cross - the symbol on England’s flag - could offend Muslims who might associate it with the Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.

…English soldiers adopted the symbol during the military expeditions by European powers to recapture the Holy Land from Muslims. It later became the national flag of England.

Owers’ report said her staff was concerned to see a number of prison officers wearing the pin.

“While we were told that these had been bought in support of a cancer charity there was clear scope for misinterpretation, and Prison Service Orders made clear that unauthorized badges and pins should not be worn,” she said, according to CNN.

Tie pins, get that. Tiny tie pins. No red crosses, guess the ICRC will have to change their logo. Looks like that’s already in progress. Article is in The Spectator, credit Dhimmi Watch.

Red Cross officials have been meeting in Switzerland to decide upon a new logo - and presumably, by implication, name - for their fine organisation. The logo in question is the red cross. And the problem with the cross is that it enrages Muslims.

…It is wholly understandable, given this profusion of competing icons, that the Red Cross, or whatever they will henceforth call themselves, should seek a symbol which is not immediately redolent of either an oppressive infidel religion or the Zionist cockroaches of Israel.

Nice, real nice. Idiot dhimmis. Rod Liddle does have a flair for sarcasm. There’s more.

We are rather less inclined, these days, to wish hell upon an entire people. The totalitarian flavour of Islam - the unshakeable belief in its own rectitude and a terrible paranoia directed towards serried ranks of enemies, real and imagined - makes the thought of firing on an ambulance carrying wounded infidel soldiers at least permissible and quite possibly, according to Islam’s more rigorous disciples, a beholden duty.

Wait isn’t this the same Britain that was the victim of not one but two terrorist attacks? How soon they forget. The Brits are effing nuts if they continue in dhimmitude. He uses the term “nutters,” fits.

Hey, if the Brits submit to Islam, they will cease being amorally superior to the U.S.. The same goes for France.

Maybe they will go for a twofer, banning Christianity next since 1. being amoral leads to a superior culture (see previous post), and 2. it offends Muslims. Of course the Crown’s association with the Church of England becomes highly suspect. Wonder what they will do with that?

Hope this insanity doesn’t catch on here. Well, it has among the barking moonbats. For myself, I will not submit to either secularism or Islam. And I support Israel.

At least that’s the conclusion in this study by Gregory S. Paul in the Journal of Religion and Society. I quote:

In the twentieth century extensive secularization occurred in western nations, the United States being the only significant exception (Bishop; Bruce; Gill et al.; Sommerville). If religion has receded in some western nations, what is the impact of this unprecedented transformation upon their populations?

The study examined a variety of data and came to these conclusions.

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

…The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly.

…Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards.

Let me get this correct, the less religions societies in Europe and Canada are healthier, less dysfunctional than the US? Oh and this is interesting, France is one of the most successful. Wait til the Muslims take over and they will, it’s a birth rate thing, when they outnumber the French, sharia will become the law of the land. Anyway, back to the U.S..

There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002).

The author was featured on FoxNews meaning this got wide play. I can only imagine what the Liberals will do with this. I guess if you live in a homogeneous society where you pass out condoms and teach the kiddies how to have sex would reduce the STD and youth pregnancy rates. Likewise, less stringent demands on marriage and fidelity would lead to fewer problems with creative arrangements. Don’t know about the homicides. Morality wasn’t tested. Imagine the legislation that will result.