In case you thought it was just the ASUO who were complete idiots:

Students at an Ottawa university are pulling out of a Canada-wide fundraiser that provides close to $1 million a year for cystic fibrosis research and treatment, arguing that the disease “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men” — something experts say is untrue.

[…]

The student council motion stated that orientation week “strives to be inclusive” and “all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve their diverse communities.”

I have trouble believing this is real and not some sort of bad parable constructed by an Ayn Rand zombie.

Thanks to OC alum Michael for the tip.

Just when you thought the enemies of the free market couldn’t possibly get any more crass in their efforts to make piles of money selling communist chic garbage to complete idiots comes the Che Guevara candle! Yes! For only $75.00 (!), you too can buy a piece of revolutionary ambiance:

In a hotel of Havana, sizzling under the stubborn sun of the Revolution, fierce overtones of leather and tobacco meddle with waxy silence of wood. Breaking out of the cool dimness, sly grimaces emerge, framed by the smoke of cigars and the barrels of guns.

I’m not entirely sure what “the waxy silence of wood” and “sly grimaces” are supposed to smell like, but I’m sure it’s fucking awful.

I guess the complaints of Che’s offspring have gone thus far unheeded.

In other news, Karl Marx’s (in)famous tome Das Kapital has been turned into a comic book by a Japanese publisher:

The ambitious comic rendering of Das Kapital is designed to parcel the complex economic theories of Marx’s hefty original in a format which Japanese adore digesting their information from; it will also be compressed into a size that can be slipped discretely into a Chanel evening bag…

What kind of communist totes a Chanel evening bag?

(H/T: Radley Balko & Norm Geras)

Courtesy of Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings comes this warm and uplifting story about the power of Tequila:

A team of Mexican scientists found that the heated vapor from 80-proof (40% alcohol) tequila blanco, when deposited on a silicon or stainless steel substrate, can form diamond films.

That’s right, bitches, you can make diamonds from Tequila. The good stuff anyway. Sounds like CJ needs to get busy writing an over realized request for some Patron and sheet metal. I smell alternate income stream.

I was in the Knight Library today looking for some research material and I discovered, stuffed in between books about Hitler and the Holocaust, dozens of copies of “David Irving’s Action Report” and issues of “American Free Press“. David Irving is, of course, a notorious Holocaust denier who was brought to campus by the lovely people at the Pacifica Forum last year. The “American Free Press” is a publication descended from conspiracy-minded periodical “The Spotlight“, which has ceased publication since 2001. Both papers are associated with noted anti-Semite and David Duke associate Willis Carto.

Sadly, the addressee of the issue of the American Free Press had the forethought to tear off the address label before distributing this garbage. The only good thing about finding this crap is that the AFP issue is dated from 2006 and the “Action Report” was published in 1998. Since it seems fairly unlikely that dozens of copies of Holocaust denial literature printed on bright yellow paper stuffed in between books across an entire section in the library have been totally overlooked by library staff for the last decade, I suppose we can rest assured that Eugene’s neo-Nazi scum aren’t spending a lot of time keeping up-to-date with their own “literature”.

 FIRE has just released a report on one of the most overt and chilling thought-reform program I have ever heard of at an American university. The University of Delaware’s office of Residence Life forced students to attend its ResLife program, which sought to turn them into little social justice shock troops. From the report:

Mandatory group sessions singled out and shamed non-minority students because of their “privilege” in American society. Staff members kept individual files on students and their beliefs - which were to be archived after graduation. RAs were trained in the zero-tolerance policy against anything “oppressive” - an untoward word would trigger immediate notification of the campus police. RAs were required to report their “best” and “worst” one-on-one sessions to their superiors, including students’ names and room numbers. Posters and door decorations provided the ResLife messages everywhere; one could not escape them. One administrator of the program, Sendy Guerrier, wrote that students “should be confronted with this information at every turn.” Students with “traditional” beliefs had to become “allies” and “change agents” by their senior year.

There’s so much outrageous material I don’t even know where to start. For example, these are two definitions that were taught to RA’s during training sessions:

A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination…

REVERSE RACISM: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies, which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as “reverse racism.”

What’s more disturbing is the University of Delaware shopped its cutting-edge “curricular approach” to resident education to other universities in annual “Residential Curriculum Institutes.” You can see how organized and entrenched the social justice crowd is on college campuses. They all use the same buzzwords and methods, whether at the University of Oregon or the University of Delaware, and they use their positions in student and university government to force their twisted worldview on students.

Please read the full report, as I can’t really do it justice. If you like going to college without having to be “re-educated,” you should check out FIRE anyways. (FIRE once defended the Commentator’s First Amendment rights when the ASUO tried to defund us.)

According to a new survey, the Oregon Senate race has Gordon Smith and Jeff Merkley, who’ve been running two of the most disgusting campaigns I’ve ever seen, running neck and neck (41% and 46%, respectively), “undecided” pulling in 6% of the vote and… David Brownlow of the Constitution Party (?!) polling at 7%.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Constitution Party, whose Presidential candidate won the endorsement of gnomish kingmaker Ron Paul, their motto is “Life. Liberty. Limited Government.” So far, so good. Then you read their platform.

(more…)

Coming on the heels of news that there might be a re-make of “Red Dawn”, some tosser in Slate thinks the movie should be seen as an allegory for the invasion of Iraq. Really:

In my memory, Red Dawn celebrated America and its virtues. But its guiding ideology is actually fascism…

[W]hat’s most unsettling about Red Dawn today is not its infatuation with the warrior death cult. It’s that the movie’s historical parallels have been turned upside down. In 1984, the Soviets of Red Dawn represented, well, the Soviets, and the Wolverines represented both the Americans and also the plucky Afghan mujahideen then defeating the Red Army in a guerilla war.  But on re-viewing, Red Dawn isn’t a stark reminder of Cold War fears. Rather, it’s a pretty good movie about Iraq, with the United States in the role of the Soviets and the insurgents in the role of the Wolverines. [emphasis added]

I guess you could see it that way… if you were totally committed to brutally torturing common sense to construct a mountain out of a molehill of superficial similarities for the purpose of weaving together some sort of shallow anti-American narrative “insightful and instructive commentary” about a 1980’s action film.

Notice, too, the subtle swipe at “Conan the Barbarian”. Inexcusable all around.

Just a quick update to a  story posted here back in August. At that time, Random House refused to publish a potentially controversial novel about the life Aisha, wife of Muslim figurehead Mohammad. Random House dropped the book due to concerns voiced by an American academic who recommended that the novel not be published because of the potential to offend Muslims and instigate violence.

I wrote at the time:

I just think it’s a sad testament to how culturally spineless we in the West have become, essentially letting thugs with knives, bombs, and AK-47’s dictate what will be published and what will not. It’s espeicially disgusting that a member of the academy would rather prevent a book from being published than to write a critique of it after the novel had come out, especially since said academic would almost certainly never stand for a similar treatment of her own work.

I’m gratified to see that the novel has finally been published in the United States by Beaufort Books. Unfortunately, the British publisher, Gibson Square Books has been the target of arson and as a result may not end up releasing the book in the U.K. after all. Both publishers should both be applauded for ignoring the “advice” of academics more concerned with avoiding offense than with protecting free speech and standing up to violent religious nihilists. In a free society, publishers should never have to be concerned about violent retaliation for publishing “offensive” literature.

For all I know, The Jewel of Medina could be the worst book ever penned, full of slander and lies about Mohammad; it doesn’t matter. As Eric Kampmann, president of Beaufort said, “[I]t was better for everybody… to let the conversation switch from a conversation about terrorists and fearful publishers to a conversation about the merits of the book itself.”

That sounds about right. If The Jewel of Medina is crap, then critics will savage it. If it’s full of lies about Mohammad, then knowledgeable Muslims can educate people about what’s wrong with it. If it turns out to be a modern classic, then people will go buy it. What’s important is that they have the opportunity.

Seriously. You can’t make this shit up.

Eternal thanks to OC alum Ian Spencer for bringing this to my attention.

New details have emerged on how the government came up with the $700,000,000,000 bailout figure:

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”  

They arrived at a figure of 700 billion of our tax dollars because they wanted a big number. Glad we have such consummate professionals working on our behalf out there in Washington.

(hat tip: Radley Balko)

[UPDATE 09/29/08]

The bailout has failed in the House. The Spectator opines:

One of the things the market seems to fear about a bailout is inflation due to the staggering price tag. Even if the government recoups some of its purchases when the market stabilizes, as bailout proponents argue, the spending outlays will be done immediately, requiring a huge increase in the debt limit that’s in the current plan.

…

So a substantial indirect effect of the bailout will be higher prices for food and gasoline, and this will probably hit ordinary households sooner than many politicians expect. When speculators expect the dollar to fall or be volatile, they immediately try to hedge an unstable currency through buying commodity futures. Thus, last week saw a big spike in oil prices, which had been steadily declining over the last few months. Other commodities, notably gold, also shot up. Corn and wheat prices, already boosted because of ethanol mandates, will also likely shoot up in response to a falling dollar.

I’m still pessimistic about the prospects of avoiding a bailout entirely.

You have found a Wand of Hope and Change, +3 to Overblown Rhetoric:

Clearly, if the next US president were to be Barack Obama, the colour of his skin would do a great deal to change radically the image of America in the world. 

…

Suddenly America would move from a culture dominated by fear to a culture dominated by hope, at a time when Europeans would still be deeply immersed in a culture of fear.

What the hell does stuff like that even mean?

Someone’s been reading a little too much of Naomi Wolf’s paranoid ramblings about fascism, methinks:

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

“What they do” with them? Words have meaning. So, you just think that through.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what a tantrum looks like:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

…

I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election.

I can tell you one thing, if electing Obama means we won’t be subjected to another four years of tiresome faux-antifa screeds and “Save the Republic!” posturing, I might consider voting for him.*

To be fair to Ms. Wolf, though, she’s been playing at this little game of hers for awhile now, so maybe she actually believes it.

* Not really.

There’s a fairly hilarious kerfuffle going on right now between two Oregon bloggers, Jack Bog and “Oregon Reality.” Mr. Bog became so outraged by the other blogger’s attacks on him that he “outed” the anonymous blogger, revealing his true identity for all to see. (As we all know, that is the ultimate disgrace for anonymous bloggers, much like masked luchadores). And it was none other than … Troutdale City Councilor Rob Canfield.

Normally I wouldn’t be writing about such an Internet wank-fest, but I happened to notice this little tidbit in Jack Bog’s post:

Canfield also posts on other internet sites as himself, as “Oregon Reality,” and apparently as “wob” or “wobboh,” using a Verizon account.

Could it be? Is Canfield the same “wubba wubba” who instigated one of the most ridiculous comment threads in Oregon Commentator history? For shame, Troutdale. For shame.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Some students at the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education are fuming over a decision announced by their chancellor last week. On Wednesday, the day before a state law that prohibits smoking in any public place in Pennsylvania took effect, Chancellor John Cavanaugh informed them that the ban would be enforced everywhere on the system’s campuses, even outdoors.

I’m sure all the nannies in the Oregon State Board of Higher Education are stroking their chins thoughtfully.