Nov 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
More Signs That Taxes Are Oppressive:The number of Americans who believe it's OK to cheat "a little here and there" on their taxes has risen 50 percent in the past four years, a government survey says -- a trend that new IRS Commissioner Mark Everson promises to reverse by going after scofflaws at all income levels.... The percentage of people who agreed with the statement that it was every American's civic duty to pay his fair share of taxes decreased from 81 percent in 1999 to 68 percent in 2003. [Yahoo News]
Nov 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The incomparable Mark Steyn:Last month mass hysteria apparently swept the [Sudanese] capital city, Khartoum, after reports that foreigners were shaking hands with Sudanese men and causing their penises to disappear....
"Another victim, who refused to give his name, said that while he was at the market, a man approached him, gave him a comb, and asked him to comb his hair. When he did so, within seconds, he said, he felt a strange sensation and discovered that he had lost his penis."
Tales of the vanishing penises ran rampant round the city, spread by cell phones and text messages...
...it's useful to be reminded that the International Jewish Conspiracy is comparatively one of the less loopy conspiracies in the Islamic world. That said, they'll probably figure out a way to pin the disappearing penises on some or other agent of Zionism. After all, according to reports in Middle East newspapers, Israel laces Arab chewing gum with secret hormones to make Muslim men hot for Jewish babes who turn out to be Mossad agents....
It is, in that sense, the perfect emblematic tale of Islamic victimhood: The foreigners have made us impotent! It doesn't matter that the foreigners didn't do anything except shake hands. It doesn't matter whether you are, in fact, impotent. You feel impotent, just as -- so we're told -- millions of Muslims from Algerian Islamists to the Bali bombers feel "humiliated" by the Palestinian situation. Whether or not there is a rational basis for their sense of humiliation is irrelevant.
...There's something pathetic about a culture so ignorant even its pathologies have to be imported. But what do you expect? The telling detail of the vanishing penis hysteria is that it was spread by text messaging. You can own a cell phone, yet still believe that foreigners are able with a mere handshake to cause your penis to melt away. [SunTimes]
Nov 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Washington Post:Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton launched a blistering attack on Howard Dean yesterday, accusing his rival of promoting an "anti-black agenda."
"Howard Dean's opposition to affirmative action, his current support for the death penalty and historic support of the NRA's [National Rifle Association's] agenda amounts to an anti-black agenda that will not sell in communities of color in this country," Sharpton said in a statement. He said his comments were in response to a news report yesterday that Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) plans to endorse Dean....
Nov 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
On the power grab in Russia:The arrest of Russia's richest man has prompted warnings from politicians and commentators that President Vladimir Putin's old comrades in the KGB are staging a creeping takeover of the Kremlin....Mr Khodorkovsky's error, analysts say, was to renege on an informal pact sealed by Mr Putin and Russia's tycoons in 2000, under which he agreed not to investigate the murky sources of their wealth as long as they steered clear of big-time politics....But Mr Khodorkovsky, head of Russia's biggest oil firm, Yukos, has openly financed opposition parties campaigning for December's parliamentary elections, and even hinted at a possible run for the presidency in 2008. [UK Telegraph]
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed an order relieving chief of staff Alexander Voloshin from duty.... Voloshin reportedly tendered his resignation after Saturday's arrest and jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the Russian oil giant Yukos. [Yahoo News]
Nov 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From an interesting article by Michelle Goldberg about the impotence of the antiwar movement:Allan Johnson, a high school English teacher and debate coach from Fairfax, Va., held a sign saying "U.S. Troops Out of Iraq. Bring Them Home Now!" at Saturday's "End the Occupation" rally in Washington. In fact, though, Johnson isn't sure he wants to bring the troops home now, or to end the American occupation of Iraq. At least, not yet.
"We've made a giant mess," said Johnson, a handsome man who wore his long snowy hair in a ponytail and had a sparkling stud in one ear. "I would hate for the Bush administration to halfway fix things and then leave, and then blame the Iraqis if things go wrong. Once you go to somebody's house and break all the windows, don't you owe them new windows?"
Why, then, was he marching at an End the Occupation rally? "I don't agree with all the people here, believe you me," he said. But his own sign? He glanced at it, startled, and explained that someone had handed it to him. "I didn't even look at it," he said. "I was just waving it."
...According to an ANSWER pamphlet, "Counter-revolution & Resistance in Iraq," "The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance." [Salon, Hat Tip: Taranto]
Nov 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Hillary Clinton adduces the Founding Fathers in her defense of second-handedness:"Our Declaration of Independence calls for a deepened respect for the opinions of mankind, but this administration simply doesn't listen. From our most important allies in Europe to our relations with neighbors in this hemisphere this administration has spanned the range of emotions from dismissive to indifferent," [Sen. Clinton] added. [NYSun]
