Weekend roundup

Meet the mayor of Arlington, Oregon: Carmen Kontur-Gronquist (see last item below)

Once again, the stuff that I not-so-humbly feel you need to know from around the world this week:

USA: Double Take. It turns out that a voter who was cited as an example by opponents of voter ID laws (in a case currently before the US Supreme Court) was registered to vote in two states at the same time! Oops... (link currently broken, copy can be read here).


CHINA: Censor the censors. We already know that the People's Republic of China censors the crap out of it's newspapers and television. But what to do when you have to report the assassination of Bhutto in Pakistan, but can't mention the possibility of terrorism? Walk a very, very fine line...


PAKISTAN: Not a civil war? And speaking of Pakistan, a suicide blast there killed 23 people on Thursday. This is only a short while after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto (with 20 others killed) and the Eid bombing that killed 54 in NW Pakistan last month. But the US doesn't have any soldiers in Pakistan. So where are the critics who claim that the US is fueling terrorism with its War on Terror? Maybe it's time to face the music and realize that Al-Qaeda is to blame after all...


WORLD: Be prepared. "100 items to disappear first", a survivalist list in case of war or national disaster. Mostly the list is very solid, although the exact ranking of these items would depend on what type of environment you live in and your particular situation. Still, I believe that #7 (Guns) would rank as #1, no matter when or where you happen to be.


MALDIVES: Speaking of "be prepared"... A Boy Scout (from a Maldives chapter) stops a knife wielding assassin from killing the island's president. His hand was cut in the struggle. Wow!


USA: No hablo American. "We speak Spanish" is commonly seen on business advertisements in the Southwest USA. So when someone advertises "we speak English", the nation's very language, there should be no problem, right? Wrong. What follows are harassment, allegations of discrimination, and threats of a lawsuit!


DUBAI: Don't go. Top 20 reasons not to move there. Incredibly, lots and lots of wealthy foreigners decide it's the place to be. The author apparently disagrees. I have seen many of these same things in Iraq and Kuwait, and I sympathize.


EU: We need more multi-culturalism, not less. The EU's culture commissioner, Jan Figel, says that "cultural tolerance is not enough" and that we need to create an "inter-cultural society". This is another blueprint from the same game plan that brought us everything from Paris riots to "honor killings" in the first place. from the . Here is an uncomfortable truth: the real problem is not the Europeans. The problem is, the EU gets too many of its immigrants from nations that are not culturally tolerant. Rather than attempting to shape the culture to fit the immigrant, why not concentrate of shaping the immigrant to fit the culture? (Or simply be more selective toward immigrants).


GERMANY: Wurde der gar nicht gebrieft vorher? Doch! "Wasn't he briefed beforehand? On the contrary, yes!" Speaking of the above, a wonderful illustration of how politicians in Europe are manipulating the media to serve their own multicultural PC nonsense, is unintentionally caught on TV, with very embarassing results. Translation and explanation can be found at Gates of Vienna.


USA: Soldiers vs. lawyers. A prominent Chicago lawyer, who is unhappy with the US military, takes it out on a Marine by keying his car (scratching the paint with his car keys). And since the Marine was about to deploy, tries to delay the legal process to get off the hook. Classy. (Via Blackfive).


WORLD: Ethics on the Internet? Interesting article: "8 Unethical ways to improve traffic to your blog", and the answer is NO, I have never used any of them. It's tempting, but people reeled in by cheap methods like these are unlikely to ever visit your site again.


USA: Church of Barack. Ezra Klein might claim to be an atheist, but I have my doubts after reading his article on Barack Hussein Obama:

[Obama's speeches] elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves

. For more nonsense from Ezra Klein, look here.


UK: Rare admission. An Anglican bishop creates a storm by publicly admitting that there are now "no-go" areas in the UK where non-Muslims are not welcome. Of course, his remarks infuriated Muslim groups, but its hard for them to use their standard accusation of "racism", since this Bishop, Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, is himself originally from Pakistan.


CZECH REPUBLIC: New kind of reality show. The world's oldest profession is going live online right now on "Big Sister" in Prague. And boy does this scheme have the potential to make its owners incredibly wealthy...


CANADA: You must give out free tickets. Or else. A Canadian court has ruled that airlines must offer a free extra seat (i.e. a free ticket) to passengers who are so obese that they cannot sit in one seat. I'm having a hard time understanding this. If the Canadian government wants to be so generous, they should pay for the extra ticket, not the airline. Why is the airline responsible for people's medical needs? They are supposed to be a transportation business, not a hospital, charity, or social welfare organization.

You also have the ridiculous situation where the airline is rewarding people for overeating and not exercising. We should be rewarding them for just the opposite. (found via JamieWearingFool)


USA: The people's mayor. The photo above is Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, from Arlington, Oregon, a short time before she took office. The photo is part of a set she put on her MySpace page (now closed to visitors) and upset some people in the town enough to demand her resignation. Holy cow, people need to get a life: 1) The photos were taken before her job as Mayor, and have nothing to do with her job; 2) These aren't nude photos anyway (you can see the same amount of skin at the beach), and 3) she looks great! You don't see too many town mayors with that kind of muscle tone and flat stomach. Wow! She should be proud. It's actually the kind of example in physical fitness that America needs more of, not less.





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