Useful Fools

After having its blatantly racist admissions scheme ruled out by the Supreme Court, the University of Michigan has come up with a another way of discriminating by race. Applicants will be forced to write an essay responding to one of the following
(from The LA Times,free registration required):

At the University of Michigan, we are committed to building an academically superb and widely diverse educational community. What would you as an individual bring to our campus community?” Or, “Describe an experience you’ve had where cultural diversity — or a lack thereof — has made a difference to you

Let me guess… An essay that says just “I’m black.” or “My last name is Hernandez.” will count more than one’s SAT score or grades.

Alternatively, one can proclaim obeisance to the gods of diversity, turn in a perfect SAT score, and hope.

Or, a smart person would try to find a University that isn’t so perversely focused on race.

Thanks to Gene Expression for finding this.

A few days ago I noticed the press trumpeting the “fact” that more Americans had been killed in Iraq since the end of major combat than during the war. The obvious implication was that things are going quite badly and that Bush lied about the state of the war. In fact, sometimes it was reported that he had announced “the end of combat” when in fact he said “the end of major combat.”

Having followed the situation fairly closely, I was rather surprised at reaching this macabre milestone, since I knew that over 100 had died in combat during the earlier period, and the later numbers had been well under 100.

It turns out that the press, almost as one, suddenly decided to add accidental deaths to the combat deaths. So of course the numbers went way up, and Americans were once again mislead.

Actual combat death numbers:

• Major Combat Period - 112
• Later Period - 63

Putting this into even more perspective - combat deaths per day:

• Vietnam War - 15
• Korean War - 30
• WW-II - 214

Thus the total number of combat deaths in Iraq - during both phases, is less than one day’s deaths in World War II.

Of course, every death is tragic, combat or accidental, wartime or peacetime.

See here for details.

After this terrifying article by VodkaPundit, it is my duty to reveal the following information:

WARNING: Californians, DON’T MOVE TO ARIZONA unless you like the following:

• We have lots of guns and allow open carry or licensed concealed carry.
• We have plenty of conservatives.
• We have the country’s largest nuclear power plant.
• We allow and have plenty of evil-looking assault rifles&#153, and we keep them pointed west.
• We don’t have Hollywood stars to tell us how to think.
• We don’t label everything that has a .00000000000001 chance of causing cancer.
• We used to have lots of trees to hug, but the environmentalists let many of them burn. The rest are for us, not you.
• We don’t have a coastal commission.
• We don’t have any nude beaches.
• We have annual hunting seasons, including one on tree-huggers and another on animal-rights extremists.
• Barry Goldwater was from here.
• Dan Quayle and Gordon Liddy live here.
• It gets warm here, although today it is only 107F.
• Every wild bee in Arizona is a KILLER BEE!
• We also have lots of these (picture from my street a couple of days ago - Tiger Rattlesnake):
  

Trust me… if you don’t like this, don’t come!

We all knew that the California Governor recall race would provide some comedy, but who expected it to come from Lt. Gov. Gray Cruz Bustamonte? We thought that his primary claim to fame is his membership in the Mexican KKK.

But no… he’s deeper than we thought! Apparently wanting to out-do Gray Davis’ electrical blackouts, Bustamante is calling for gas shortages in California. Something in the water in Sacramento seems to lead to meddling with energy.
Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Gertz is one of my favorite national security reporters. Working for the conservative Washington Times, he has outstanding sources in the national security establishment.

Hence I was shocked to read an article by Gertz and Scarborough containing (emphasis added):

Israel has ready a plan to bomb Iran’s Bushehr nuclear-power plant should the Persian Gulf coast facility, now under construction, begin producing weapons-grade material, an insider tells us.

This source says Israel has mapped out a route its jet fighters would take to destroy what is designed to be a two-reactor plant. A successful strike would ensure that the radical Tehran regime does not develop nuclear weapons.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Ray points out that a big influence on political orientation is genetic (the Useful Fools gene, known to geneticists as Fool1):

There has been a recent claim that birth-order determines whether or not you are conservative or liberal. The evidence on birth-order effects has always shown them to be very slight however. The big influence on political orientation is genetic. The twin studies show that your politics are even more strongly inherited than how tall you are. You are either born with the personality needs that make you a Leftist or you are not. That is why arguing with Leftists is generally so futile. Only aging makes them more conservative, usually.

I had long suspected that “progressive” thinking is a result of a cognitive disorder. Now I have proof!

First we had the amazing pictures of US Special Forces operators charging into combat on the horseback, ready to direct high tech weapons from their low tech mounts.

Now we have an Israeli helicopter defeating a donkey cart!

“Modern” warfare is weird when you are fighting barbarians!

The good news: The Hamas terrorist monster on the donkey cart was killed.

The bad news: So was the donkey.

Read the rest of this entry »

So North Korea plans to test a nuke (probably on a national holiday on Sept. 9).

Well, if I were Osama, I’d want to verify that the merchandise worked. And plutonium-based nukes, which is what they probably have, are tricky to make, which is why the US had to test one before using it in WW-II.

Once tested, then the market is open. The Chechens or Al Quaeda or other affiliated terrorist group can start their bidding!

Time to make a very public warning to North Korea about all of this.

You wouldn’t know it from the domain name, but this blog has elevated flaming and fisking to a high art. The job is outstanding and well worth reading (unless you are the target, but if you are, you deserve to suffer).

The only comparison I can think of is chewings out by Navy Chief Petty Officers - a breed of humans (sort of) who practice the most creative and effective cursing ever heard.

Oh, btw, the blog name is “The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.”

Sharp Knife gets it pretty much right about The Patriot Act in my humble opinion.

Which is to say that, apart from its inflammatory name, it is needed.