Monday - September 22, 2008

Yankee Stadium hosts last baseball game.  (strictly speaking, this isn’t exactly the same house)

Okay guys.  Correct me here, and oh boy I’m sure someone will.

Back in the early 1970’s I attended (with our station’s sports guy) what was the last game played at Yankee Stadium before the renovation.
There were these posts, I guess that’s what they were, that dated from the original and if your seat was behind one, you were always on the mover left,right,left,right, trying to see around the thing.  (fortunately, we were in a media section) Anyway, in a strict sense this isn’t the same house Ruth built because that one was ripped apart to make possible the stadium they are now taking down.
Yeah .... pick,picky,picky.

I don’t generally post stuff from the USA because I always assume you ppl already know even before I do here.
But ... gee.  What the heck.  I haven’t followed baseball in so many years I can no longer count em.
I recall the days at KFI in LA, which was a Dodger station.  But I also remember the old Bums in Brooklyn and the move west. Now you wanna talk about sad.
Hey .. is anyone playing today that has the flash of Pete Rose of yor?  I really don’t know.

Something nasty happened to baseball over the years. Don’t mean to start any arguments among friends but ... both owners and players somehow lost somethin’ called loyalty.  I don’t know exactly how to put it. Maybe you do.  Hey, does anyone else remember The Boston Braves?  Don’t know what suddenly made me think of them.
Warren Spahn ......  He once showed a small group of us kids how to throw a baseball.

Ah, wait.  I think this was supposed to be about Yankee Stadium.  Did you know that the word ‘stadium’ originally was a unit of measure. Yeah, it was.
But I can’t remember if it was Roman or Greek. ??  No, I think it was a Roman measure of distance. 
Just an old goat’s musings ..... ignore me.

I think I was very lucky in the ppl I met, even if I only met em once in passing.
For example ... at that last Yankee game I told you about, after the game there was a small reception and I met and shook hands with this guy.

Phil Rizzuto.  He was already an older guy and retired from playing when I met him.  But I remembered his grip after we shook hands for a very long time.
Man was that guy strong.  A grip like steel. And a nice guy too I do remember. No airs and no ego role playing. Just a hell of a nice man. 

Yankee Stadium hosts last baseball game
The Yankee Stadium has hosted its last baseball game, closing an illustrious chapter in American sporting history with all the razmataz of a Broadway show.
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 7:31AM BST 22 Sep 2008

America’s most famous sports venue, the so-called House That Ruth Built in the Bronx, New York, was graced on Sunday night with a pre-game parade of veteran players and actors in replica costumes portraying such famous Yankees as Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig.

The 57,545-seat stadium has been the home to the New York Yankees since it opened in 1923, but it is to be demolished and replaced with a new $1.3 billion ballpark across the road.

“I’m sorry to see it over, I’ll tell you that,” the Yankee veteran Yogi Berra told the capacity crowd as the 83-year-old joined the celebrations wearing a vintage baseball outfit.

The venue has also hosted Masses celebrated by three Popes, various landmark boxing matches and a rally for Nelson Mandela after he was released from prison.

“This place has been part of our history. Not just baseball but our country,” said Joe Girardi, the Yankees manager.

Derek Jeter, the team’s captain, said playing at the stadium was “kind of like performing on Broadway — the lights are a little brighter.” The Yankees won their final match at the stadium 7-3 against the Baltimore Orioles but both teams are languishing in the league so it was really a night to celebrate past glories instead.

An extra 2,000 security staff were drafted in for the final game to prevent fans tearing up the stadium and make off with souvenirs such chairs and cupholders. Guards had to repeatedly warn fans not to rip up handfuls of grass.

Fans began pouring into the stadium seven hours before the game, some of them welcoming the move to a more comfortable ground but others bemoaning the new ballpark’s emphasis on luxury treatment for high paying ticketholders.

The stadium earned its nickname after Babe Ruth, the baseball superstar who inaugurated the stadium.

On Sunday, Julia Ruth Stevens, his 92-year-old daughter, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

“I’m very, very sad to think that the Yankee Stadium is not going to be in existence any longer,” she said.

“I wish it could have remained as a New York landmark, but I guess like all things it has come to its final days as we all do.”

Her bittersweet emotions were shared by the players and fans. “I am going to miss Yankee Stadium. I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t,” said Derek Jeter, the team’s captain.

Lou Giordano, a fan from Brooklyn, said he had been going to watch games there since he was a child and recently took his grandfather, another Yankees fan, back there.

“It’s not distinctive in size or architecture and the amenities are terrible,” he said. “There’s nothing great about it other than the aura and history that surrounds it.”

“The Yankees have been an integral part of New York. Just as the city is larger than life, so are they in baseball.”

Jim Garthwaite, a 15-year-old Yankee fan, was one of the first people to get into the stadium on Sunday.

“I’m sure there will be tears for everybody,” he said. “But I’ve been to a lot of ballparks and I understand why they’re doing it. It’s motivated by money. It’s just a little sad to see it go.”

Next April, the Yankees will open the new stadium. Envisioned as a luxury hotel with a ball field in the middle, it will include luxury corporate boxes, a martini bar and art gallery.

The stadium was not only used for baseball — three Popes have appeared there, including Pope John Paul II in 1979 and, in April this year, Pope Benedict XVI.

Muhammad Ali famous beat Ken Norton at the stadium in 1976 over a 15 gruelling round boxing fight. In 1938, another black boxer, Joe Louis, famously defeated the German Max Schmeling in a fight that attracted the attentions of Hitler and was hailed as a blow against Nazism.

(uh huh but ... Max Schmeling won the first fight. This was the second fight.)

Nelson Mandela made his first international stop there for a celebration rally in 1990 after being released from prison.

(Yeah well I wouldn’t brag about that.  He belonged in prison. He was a freedom fighter like OBL is a peacenik)

In September 2001, thousands of New Yorkers gathered there for Prayer for America, a post 9/11 prayer service.

Ruth memorably returned to the stadium in 1947 to say farewell to fans.

Stricken with throat cancer, the Yankee player told sobbing fans: “The only real game, I think, in the world is baseball.” Just over a year later, he died and 100,000 fans paid their respects as his body was laid out at the stadium’s entrance.

http://tinyurl.com/3hndj6

Posted by Drew458     on 09/22/2008 at 08:20 AM   
Filed Under: • History • Miscellaneous •  
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JUST THOUGHT IT’D BE A GOOD WAY TO START MONDAY MORNING AND REMIND FOLKS.

BTW ........... as long as it’s early and in a not unhappy frame of mind, which means I haven’t seen the all the papers yet,
be sure and check out this weeks addition of;

http://www.unclejayexplainsthenews.com

Cheers for now ...

Posted by Drew458     on 09/22/2008 at 03:31 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Miscellaneous •  
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   Sunday - September 21, 2008

CARBON CREDIT SCAM and OUR WEEKLY LOOK AT ENVIRO-WACKOS & FIBS

Financial crisis: Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/09/2008

What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers and the likelihood that in four years’ time our electricity bills will jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal and gas prices)?

The answer is that, before its collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to “fight climate change” by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide.

The biggest money-spinners will be the schemes whereby industry will pay for permits to emit CO2 at so much a ton, either directly to governments or by buying them on an international market.

This market, soon to be worth trillions of pounds, was where Lehman hoped to be “the prime brokerage for emissions permits”, as it set out in two hefty reports on “The Business of Climate Change”.

Advised by some of the world’s leading global warming activists, such as Dr James Hansen and Al Gore (a close friend of the firm’s erstwhile managing director Theodore Roosevelt IV), Lehman bought their message wholesale. GIM, the company set up by Gore to sell “carbon offsets” in return for planting trees, was a prized Lehman client.

The particular market that Lehman hoped to dominate is centred on the buying and selling of carbon permits, through the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) set up in 2005, the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the “cap and trade” system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama.

This may still seem abstract but it will affect all our lives, because ultimately we will all be paying for it, through the colossal costs it will impose on industry, not least electricity.

The EU scheme already adds more than a billion pounds a year to our electricity bills. In four years’ time it will become much more obvious when, under phase two of the ETS, permits will be auctioned, at a projected initial figure of £35 per ton of CO2.

On the basis of current wholesale prices, the annual cost of electricity used in the UK alone is around £32 billion. Adding £35 for every ton of CO2 emitted in producing it will mean that our electricity supply companies will have to pay £8 billion for their permits, adding 25 per cent to the total cost. Under EU rules, this must be passed on to all of us in our bills.

The idea is that, to reduce carbon emissions by an eventual 60 per cent, the number of permits auctioned will reduce year by year, leaving an ever larger shortfall which firms will have to account for either by reducing emissions or by buying additional permits - not least from the developing world under the UN’s CDM.

Everything about this grandiose scheme betokens the economics of the madhouse.

The new costs it will impose are so colossal that whole industries, including aluminium, steel and Germany’s chemical companies, threaten to move their operations outside the EU unless they are given free allocations. It has not even been agreed who - whether national governments or the EU itself - will run the auctions or keep the hundreds of billions of euros a year the scheme will raise.

China, by virtue of having built giant dams to produce electricity, will be a net “carbon creditor”, able to sell permits to the EU worth billions more, despite continuing to build a new coal-fired power station every four days.

So will Russia, thanks to it having closed down so much of its polluting industry after the fall of Communism. There is not the slightest indication that the scheme itself will result in any lowering of global CO2 emissions.

What is certain is that it will pile astronomic costs onto everyone in the EU, inevitably impacting most severely on poorer householders that will face bills they cannot afford. The only other certainty - perhaps a consolation - is that those sharing in this bonanza will not include Lehman Brothers, now excluded from cashing in on what threatens to become the maddest scam the world has ever seen.

BBC series stitches up sceptics in counter-attack over climate change

As informed questioning of the global warming orthodoxy rises on all sides, the BBC’s three-part series Climate Wars, ending tonight, bears all the marks of a carefully planned counter-attack.

BBC science producers were apoplectic at the attention given last year to Martin Durkin’s Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, featuring a galaxy of the world’s more sceptical climate scientists. This is their riposte.

Last week, against a range of far-flung locations from Greenland to California, the presenter, Dr Iain Stewart, tackled three of the main arguments of Durkin’s film.

In each case the technique was the same. After caricaturing the sceptics’ point, with soundbite clips that did not allow them to develop their scientific argument, he then asserted that they had somehow been discredited.

For example, doubts had been raised over the reliability of satellite temperature records which do not show the same degree of warming as surface readings. Dr Roy Spencer, who designed Nasa’s satellite system for measuring temperatures, was allowed to admit that a flaw had been found in the system.

But his interview ended before he could explain that, when the flaw was discovered in 1998, it was immediately corrected (although it made little difference to the results).

Likewise, there is a growing case for a correlation between global temperatures and solar activity. Dr Stewart accused Durkin’s programme of cutting off a graph which illustrated this at a point when the data failed to support the thesis. Then he did exactly the same himself, not extending his own graph to 2008 in a way that would reinforce the thesis.

Most hilarious of all, however, was a long sequence in which Stewart defended the notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show that temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level on record.

The BBC had a huge blow-up of this “iconic” graph carted triumphantly round London, from Big Ben to Buckingham Palace, as if it were proof that the warming alarmists are right.

There was no hint that the “hockey stick” is among the most completely discredited artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to the devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph’s creators had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a hockey-stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

There was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or obscure some vital fact. Yet the “impartial” BBC is sending out this farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the “march of the lie” continues.

http://tinyurl.com/4kcqkv

Posted by Drew458     on 09/21/2008 at 08:04 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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HOW FREE IS ANY SOCIETY THAT MUST LIVE WITH THIS?  MY GUESS IS NOT MUCH.

Mere illegal possession of a knife is not counted in the totals; if it was, the figures would be much higher .

I was looking for something else when I ran across this.
So it raises a question re. guns.

If guns were as easy to get here as they are in the states, might the violent crime figures be even higher as the scum who do these things would think nothing of randomly firing on whim.  Or into crowds. And keep in mind the terrorist threat here.  Or maybe the violence is of a different yet same nature as home (USA). Hard to explain different but same.

Brits and others on this side see us as a violent prone society.  I suppose the movies and TV provide gist for that mill as violence in both, (in the extreme) has become .... ‘entertainment?’ But what I have seen here over the last four and counting years is very far from an orderly society.

Knife crime worse than thought, new figures show
The true scale of the knife epidemic is much worse than Government statistics show, a Sunday Telegraph investigation has found.

By Ben Leach
Last Updated: 1:15AM BST 21 Sep 2008

Police figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that forces in England and Wales are on course to record a total of 38,000 serious knife crimes this year – more than 100 a day.

The figure is at least two-thirds higher than last year’s total of 22,151 offences, announced by the Home Office in July when it unveiled its first annual count of knife crimes.

The sharp rise has come about because ministers have changed the counting rules, in response to complaints that key categories of crime were excluded from last year’s total.

As a result, this year’s statistics will not be directly comparable with last year’s. Critics said this defeated the purpose of introducing the knife crime count, which was intended to allow police to monitor year-on-year trends.

Ian Johnston, president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said: “Knife crime is a major challenge for the police service.

“In order to address this challenge we need to have credible and meaningful statistics relating to the number of offences where a knife has been used.

“It is of serious concern that the count introduced by the Home Office to record year-on-year changes has been changed after one year, and it questions whether ministers consulted widely enough before introducing the categories.”

The Sunday Telegraph has obtained data from 29 of the 43 police forces, covering more than half the population. Across those force areas, the knife crime count from April to June—the first three-month period under the new counting rules—was 71 per cent higher than the average quarterly total in the previous year.

Allowing for forces that did not provide figures, this year’s nationwide total is on course to rise by around 15,000 offences.

The reason for the increase is that knife offences categorised as actual bodily harm, rape, sexual assault or threats to kill, which were all excluded from last year’s knife crime count, are all included this year.

Cases of wounding, grievous bodily harm and knifepoint robbery, which made up the bulk of last year’s figures, will continue to be included this year. Mere illegal possession of a knife is not counted in the totals; if it was, the figures would be much higher.

The figures published in July showed that England’s big urban areas—London, Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Merseyside—suffer most from knife crime. However, there were also hundreds of offences comitted in shire force areas including Devon and Cornwall, Avon and Somerset, Hampshire, Suffolk, Humberside, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Northumbria.

Until last year, police counted crimes by the offence - such as assault, robbery or burglary - rather than by the kind of weapon used. In recent years, annual totals have included around 100,000 robberies, 20,000 serious woundings and 800 murders.

A leaked Scotland Yard memo this month revealed that there are “serious concerns” among officers about changes to recording practices for knife crime, gun crime and GBH, which could lead to increases in the published headline figures for all three crime categories.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We have made it clear that tackling knife crime is a top priority and is not just about statistics.

“We are particularly concerned about young people carrying knives and the age of victims and offenders, and we want to make sure we get a full and accurate picture of what is happening to improve our understanding about crime on our streets.”

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said it was alarming that the Government was underestimating the scale of knife crime.

He said: “Knife crime is a scourge that is harming and all too often destroying young lives up and down the country. You cannot begin to combat a problem if you cannot even measure it accurately.”

http://tinyurl.com/4gq8ut

Posted by Drew458     on 09/21/2008 at 03:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • UK •  
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R U L E … BRIT-TANN-IA, BRI-TANNIA RULES THE WAVES ….

"Once there was a brave slogan “Rule, Britannia”.  The modern take (and far more accurate to my mind) is “Rue, Britannia!”
(Valgerd, comments Sept.20)

credit:  http://www.ruebritannia.co.uk
Gordon Brown isn’t alone in making such grand annunciations and he’ll not be the last.

Keep a watchful eye out for the next politician attempting to woo us with promises of a bright and untroubled future… whoever it’s going to be will be prey to the same deluded arrogance all too many politicians suffer and is probably penning their speeches even as we speak, so I doubt we’ll be long waiting.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/21/2008 at 02:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • UK •  
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   Saturday - September 20, 2008

How the PC brigade are killing off chivalry.

How the PC brigade are killing off chivalry, according to the bible of etiquette

By Liz Thomas

Online etiquette: Young people have been given advice on how to use social network sites politely

These days, it’s difficult for a gentleman to know whether holding a door for a lady is a polite gesture...or a real insult.

But if you struggle daily with such dilemmas, at least be reassured that you’re not alone.

According to Debrett’s, the bible of etiquette, political correctness is slowly strangling chivalry.

Those little gestures, once considered old-fashioned good manners, have become confused with sexism.

And as a result, many men worry about appearing overtly polite to women.

Jo Bryant, who edited the A-Z Of Modern Manners, said: ‘I think people are afraid to be chivalrous because they don’t want to appear sexist.

‘Society has changed a lot in the past ten years and people genuinely aren’t sure what is appropriate and what is not.

‘Of course women don’t need men to open doors. But at the same time, a little bit of chivalry is nice - and people need help knowing how to strike the balance, because the boundaries have become blurred.’

(Some years ago without even thinking about it, I held the car door open for a lady who promptly informed me that she wasn’t helpless and could do that for herself.  Gee, I never thought she was helpless.  It was simply 2nd nature to me but then, I guess I’m of that generation raised to get up when your mom came to the table.  Things like that. Just little courtesies.  Now ya never know if some little thing you think is helpful is seen as sexist.)

‘In the past we were stricter about the right and wrong way of doing things. People grew up knowing about table manners, knowing the correct way to address people and the correct way to respond to a member of the opposite sex,’ she added.

And the internet doesn’t help. Without face-to-face contact it’s easier for us to forget our manners.

‘It has created a whole new level of social uncertainty.’

The £11.99 guide tackles 350 dilemmas including drunkenness, cutlery, and dating. And Debrett’s, founded in 1769, believes there’s still a little room for old-world courtesy.

‘Help a woman with her heavy bags, offer her a seat on the train if she is elderly or pregnant, stand when she enters the room. These are good manners and should come out instinctively rather than contrived gestures that feel outdated and oppressive.’

http://tinyurl.com/4l4f9s

Posted by Drew458     on 09/20/2008 at 01:38 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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IF THERE’S A WAY OUT OF A MESS, AMERICANS CAN FIND IT. A BRIT REPORT ON USA.

Crisis schmisis - there’s money to be made

By Tom Leonard
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 20/09/2008

The sight of jobless Lehman Brothers staff leaving their Manhattan headquarters clutching cardboard boxes, like a line of leaf-bearing ants, was an arresting one.

But far more startling was the crowd of people waiting to greet them last Tuesday morning. When Americans say - and they often do - that one man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity, they aren’t joking. A pair of bankers from a small - still solvent - Connecticut firm were dressed in pyjamas and dressing gowns waving “Brokers Wanted” placards and shouting, “Tired of the big boys? Get into bed with us”.

A few of the downcast Lehman people even managed to smile. The air was thick with flashing business cards. Recruitment consultants shoved theirs into the hands of anyone in a suit.

The entrepreneurial spirit in action outside Lehman Brothers’ New York offices.

A man seeking staff for a new internet company was doing the same and, although the news of Lehman’s collapse was only a day old, he had already printed a “Wanted For Hire: 7,000 Brothers of Lehman” T-shirt.

“I really want to get into the building and have a good chat with them,” he told me. Didn’t he think he was being a little insensitive? He smiled. Perhaps only a Brit would waste time asking such a question. Yes, he obviously did think that, but frankly so what?

It has been a miserable week in New York and it could get even worse. The bankers and brokers are inconsolable and there is a lot of talk of 1929. In a city so reliant on the financial sector, it is hard to find people who aren’t worried that the banking crisis will trickle down and hit the “little guy” like them; if not taking their job, at least shattering the value of their home. And yet, as the entrepreneurial bunch outside Lehmans illustrated far better than the platitudes coming from John McCain and Barack Obama, Americans are not ones to see a glass half empty.

They don’t tend to stay on the floor too long after they’ve had a kicking. It’s a gritty, ruthlessly pragmatic, sometimes - like the man in the Lehman T-shirt - purely self-interested resilience that is rooted in the country’s can-do psyche and centuries-old belief in self-help. And rooted, too, in America’s belief in itself. Those philosophical ideas of American exceptionalism and the United States’s Manifest Destiny - as the Puritans were first to outline it, that God created America as a “city on the hill” to provide an example to others - smack of chauvinism. But they certainly don’t hurt when a country needs to pull through a gloomy patch.

Of course, that sunny, ingrained optimism that America’s detractors like to dismiss as simple naivety has particular benefits in a crisis that is largely about confidence. Americans just cannot stay downhearted for long; it’s not in their DNA. A CNN presenter summed up that positive spirit yesterday as she introduced a segment on “the financial challenges out there and what folks are doing to meet them”. Weaned on generations of Hollywood disaster movies, in which over-dressed Americans run screaming and helpless from every crisis, foreigners tend to dismiss the real ones as pampered and complacent - missing the gene that governs coping with adversity. It might be true that Americans have grown too attached to an easy lifestyle, but they certainly don’t shrink from a challenge.

Many have written off the US car industry as doomed to extinction because of its reliance on big, gas-guzzling vehicles at a time of soaring petrol prices. And yet, to huge applause, General Motors failed to live down to expectations this week when it unveiled the Volt, a radical new type of electric car that can do 40 miles on one battery charge. Just like in the world wars, Americans have come rather late to the “green revolution”, but - as in 1942, when Sherman tanks rolled off the supply ships in their thousands - they tend to make a difference when they set their minds to something.

(well now hang on there. the sherman tank wasn’t a match for the tiger tank as I’ve read history. but we had the fuel to run ours and the numbers.)

Every week, some West Coast technology company or East Coast laboratory comes up with an ingenious energy-efficient, planet-saving idea that no one in Europe - with its head start - seemed to have thought of. And, it being America, and the green economy being one of the country’s fastest-growing sectors, you can be fairly sure that the bright idea will make it on to the market. Academics have talked in the past of America’s “Promethean creativity” and you can see it now in the way that the country’s creative juices are being channelled into getting through this financial mess. Where there’s a buck to be made, the average American won’t hesitate to make it. This creed may have helped get the country into its current financial problems, but one cannot help feeling it may help get it out of it too.

“If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” sang Sinatra in New York, New York. The supreme self-confidence - the sheer puffed-out chestiness of a conviction no doubt shared by the rest of the city - always made me cringe. But it doesn’t stop it being largely true and, as New Yorkers take the vanguard in an American economic fightback on which we all depend, it’s also oddly reassuring.

http://tinyurl.com/3z2t4p

Posted by Drew458     on 09/20/2008 at 01:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Big Business • Economics • Editorials •  
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‘Muslims have ‘victim mentality’ (so says a muslim member of parliament)

Well, here’s one lonely voice in the crowd.  I hope he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder now.
Thing is however, no matter how unfair it may be or seem to be, muslims don’t often help themselves.  If there’s a stereotype it’s because they painted themselves that way. They have lived that way.

Bottom line ... and no, it doesn’t help promote love and understanding.  Bottom line is I have little faith in them and frankly do not trust them as a group.

British Muslims have ‘victim mentality’, says Labour MP
Assistant whip Sadiq Khan names string of issues which British Muslims need to confront to better integrate with the rest of society

British Muslims have a “victim mentality” and need to take greater responsibility for their lives, a Muslim MP said today.

Assistant whip Sadiq Khan said Muslims were wrongly concerned more with foreign policy than with bread-and-butter political issues.

The Tooting MP, in a report for the Fabian Society, named a string of issues which British Muslims needed to confront to better integrate with the rest of society.

He said:

• All mosques should consider allowing women in and should tackle sexism

• Muslims who don’t speak English should learn

• The Muslim community should condemn forced marriages and honour killings.

“We need to take responsibility for our own lives. We need to take more responsibility for our own families, ignore those who propagate conspiracy theories, and above all we need to leave behind our victim mentality,” he said.

“We must all agree that honour killings are murder and forced marriages are kidnapping. These traditions have no place here or anywhere.”

He added: “Muslims need to recognise childcare is as important as Kashmir.”

In his report, Fairness, not Favours, Labour MP Khan criticises “liberal anxiety” about encouraging Muslims to learn English, which he says is a “passport to participation”.

“The requirement to learn English is not colonial. English is a passport to participation in mainstream society - jobs, education and even being able to use health services.”

“Having poor English creates multiple barriers to work; it decreases your confidence, makes it harder to gain other skills and qualifications, and increases the likelihood of unemployment and of your withdrawal from the labour market.”

He also urged ministers to help Muslims integrate. Government needed to tackle faith discrimination, to pay for English classes for Muslims and to improve education standards among Muslim boys.

(Hang on there. pay for what?  Who asked them here to begin with? if they don’t speak the lingo, why’d they come? Nobody PAID my grandparents to learn English. They damn well knew they HAD to speak the native tongue or sink. And so they did and quite well too.)

Khan said the government needed to “reconnect” with British Muslims and accused Labour of having a “fleeting but never committed” relationship with Muslim groups.

And he claimed London 2012 organisers were guilty of projecting an “idealised” version of an inclusive Britain.

Urging Muslims to “step up to the plate”, Khan, whose parents were Pakistani immigrants, also criticised the barriers Muslims face in society.

As a group they are disproportionately affected by poverty, inequality and discrimination, he said.

He said businesses should have a “positive duty” to crack down on religious discrimination. And he said schools should be as mixed as possible to “break the cycle of accidental segregation”.

Only a quarter of the 1.6 million British Muslims are “economically active”.

Khan said discrimination, language skills, lack of childcare and cultural attitudes to work were to blame.

(Sure but ... discrimination comes when one culture is FORCED upon another. Many Brits no longer feel as this country even belongs to them.)

He said there should be better training for teachers and changes to the curriculum to improve education standards for Muslim boys and he attacked extremist ideology.

“A failure to deal with the inequalities of British Muslim women flies in the face of any attempts to build a socially just and fair society.

“But it also has serious consequences for preventing extremism, given that the majority of the extremist and radical ideologies that lead young men to turn themselves into human bombs are also deeply misogynist.”

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, said the government and Khan were out of touch with grassroots Muslims.

“He should be pushing the government to deal with real issues like poverty, crime, racism and Islamophobia,” Shafiq said.

“We do not have a victim mentality but are victims of this government’s failure to deal with real issues, issues around poverty, tackling the underlying causes of why there is terrorism in this country, issues around exclusion of certain communities.”

Shafiq said his organisation had long campaigned against forced marriages and so-called “honour” killings, but added that the government needed to engage with Muslims and not be taken in by stereotypes.

There was no conflict between a concern for foreign policy and awareness of domestic issues, he said.

“To suggest we are obsessed with foreign policy, when Muslims are being killed around the world, when over a million people have been killed in Iraq - human life is sacred, that’s an obsession I’m proud of and I think any Muslim would be proud of it too,” he said.

“It’s time for the government and ministers like Mr Khan to really address the real failure of 10 years of missed opportunity.”

http://tinyurl.com/4a2hnp

Posted by Drew458     on 09/20/2008 at 12:41 PM   
Filed Under: • RoPMA • UK •  
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Watchdog criticises police chief for sending officers to every crime. (we by gosh can’t have that)

I guess I missed something again. I always seem to miss something right under my nose.

I just don’t get it.  OK, I understand financial concern.  (of course the gument has 20 or so billion for 2012 Olympics)
I kinda thought it was important if not a matter of course, to have cops at the scene. Perhaps some crimes don’t require an officer.
Could that be so? 

Watchdog criticises police chief for sending officers to every crime.

A police chief has been criticised by a government watchdog for sending officers out to every crime.

By Nick Allen
Last Updated: 10:40PM BST 19 Sep 2008

Essex chief constable Roger Baker was censured for his conscientious approach to crime fighting because it was said to put an unnecessary strain on police resources.

The bizarre rebuke came in a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary which said Mr Baker’s insistence on sending officers to see every victim of a crime, and taking a statement, took up too much time.

The report said: “While attending every crime is a highly effective method of engagement, it is felt by a number of staff interviewed that taking a statement at each crime is not always necessary and can be time-consuming.”

Mr Baker defended his methods which he believes are what the public want.

Sending an officer to every crime is part of increasing the visibility of officers and making them more accessible to the public.

Mr Baker said: “We will continue with our policing style which includes attending all crime, increasing police visibility, opening more police stations, tackling crime robustly and bringing offenders to justice.

“The public are our biggest partner and we will continue to listen to them and work with them to provide the service they ask for.”

Local politicians threw their weight behind the Essex chief constable and said a visit from police was the least a tax-paying victim of crime could expect.

John Baron, the Conservative MP for Billericay, said: “What else are we paying for? We want reassurance from the police that they are dealing with criminals and doing their best to fight crime.

“I hear too many complaints from constituents that they do not hear from police when reporting a crime.

“What Roger Baker introduced was a breath of fresh air and for civil service bureaucrats to criticise it is very wrong.”

Bob Spink, the UKIP MP for Castle Point, said: “This shows how out of touch Westminster is with real people. I very warmly congratulate Roger Baker on his policy, which is bearing fruit.”

Mr Baker joined the Essex force in 2005 and has introducing policies to bolster front line policing, focusing on making officers a more visible presence on the streets and targeting low-level crime like vandalism and criminal damage. On his first day in the job he demanded that his officers make 600 extra arrests within a week

He recently unveiled plans to get an extra 110 officers on the streets by March and 600 over the next five years.

The Essex chief constable has been a thorn in the side of the Home Office, criticising the lack of officers on the streets and the fact that victims are given crime numbers instead of being visited personally.

He recently warned that beat officers could disappear within a decade as traditional police constables are replaced by police community support officers (PCSOs) who do not have powers to arrest and are restricted to handing out fines for minor misdemeanours.

Earlier this month it emerged that Mr Baker has also ordered his beat officers to remove their sunglasses when they make contact with the public because they can intimidate people.

The sunglasses ban is based on a similar theory to that employed by British armed forces as they tried to win the “hearts and minds” of Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion.

An Essex Police spokesman said: “We aim to reduce crime and the fear of crime and bring offenders to justice.”

In the past two years the style of policing in Essex had contributed to there being 13,000 fewer victims of crime, the spokesman said.

http://tinyurl.com/4j529a

Posted by Drew458     on 09/20/2008 at 12:27 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • UK •  
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The phrase Old Masters is sexist, authors and students are told.  (Here We Go Again)

About a month or so ago I posted something similar and asked, what next? How far is this gonna go?

Well, my answer appeared in today’s paper. These folks really need to find a job that involves an 8 hour day at the minimum.

I had originally intended to highlight just some lines to stand out, but this is so overly stupid and so overly bizarre, I’ve made bold the entire article.

My Moonbat Award for the week past ...  And it really is NOT funny.

The phrase Old Masters is sexist, authors and students are told
Students and academics are being banned from using the term “Old Masters” and “seminal” because of claims they are sexist.

By Martin Beckford, Social Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:40AM BST 20 Sep 20

Publishers and universities are outlawing dozens of seemingly innocuous words in case they cause offence.

Banned phrases on the list, which was originally drawn up by sociologists, include Old Masters, which has been used for centuries to refer to great painters - almost all of whom were in fact male.

It is claimed that the term discriminates against women and should be replaced by “classic artists”.

The list of banned words was written by the British Sociological Association, whose members include dozens of professors, lecturers and researchers.

The list of allegedly racist words includes immigrants, developing nations and black, while so-called “disablist” terms include patient, the elderly and special needs.

It comes after one council outlawed the allegedly sexist phrase “man on the street”, and another banned staff from saying “brainstorm” in case it offended people with epilepsy.

However the list of “sensitive” language is said by critics to amount to unwarranted censorship and wrongly assume that people are offended by words that have been in use for years.

Prof Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent, said he was shocked when he saw the extent of the list and how readily academics had accepted it.

“I was genuinely taken aback when I discovered that the term ‘Chinese Whisper’ was offensive because of its apparently racist connotations. I was moved to despair when I found out that one of my favourite words, ‘civilised’, ought not be used by a culturally sensitive author because of its alleged racist implications.”

Prof Furedi said that censorship is about the “policing of moral behaviour” by an army of campaign groups, teachers and media organisations who are on a “crusade” to ban certain words and promote their own politically correct alternatives.

He said people should see the efforts to ban certain words as the “coercive regulation” of everyday language and the “closing down of discussions” rather than positive attempts to protect vulnerable groups from offence.

The list of banned words is now sent out to prospective authors by Policy Press, a publisher of social science books and journals based at the University of Bristol, but is also used in many academic institutions.

The University of Bristol’s School for Policy Studies recommends the guidelines to help students “challenge heterosexist assumptions”, and they are included in a “toolkit” to combat institutional racism included on the University of Leeds’ website.

King’s College London says they “may provide a good starting point” and Liverpool John Moores University provides a link to them in its students’ guide. The Open University said they are an “appropriate source of reference and advice” for students.

Napier University in Edinburgh says the list is “well worth looking at” while the University of East London advises its students they should “attempt to incorporate” it.

Even a secondary school in Norwich includes a link to the list on its website, with the statement: “Students may care to consider how far we inadvertently reproduce inaccurate sexist assumptions in the language we use, both written and spoken.”

The list of racist terms features black, which “can be used in a racist sense” and should be changed to “black peoples” or “black communities”.

Immigrants is said to have “racist overtones” because of its association with “immigration legislation”, while developing nations - intended as a more sensitive replacement for Third World - is “prejudical” because it implies a comparison with developed countries.

Although not included on the Policy Press list, the BSA warns authors against using civilisation because of its “racist overtones that derive from a colonialist perception of the world”.

Among the “sexist” terms to be avoided are “seminal” and “disseminate” because they are derived from the word semen and supposedly imply a male-dominated view of the world.

Authors are also told to “avoid using medical labels” when writing about disabled people as this “may promote a view of them as patients”.

In addition, the list says “special needs” should be changed to “additional needs”, “patient” to “person” and “the elderly” to “older people”.

“Able-bodied person” should be replaced with “non-disabled person”, it is claimed.

http://tinyurl.com/4xymh5

Posted by Drew458     on 09/20/2008 at 09:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Awards • Education • Insanity • Stoopid-People • UK •  
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   Friday - September 19, 2008

Voices From The Left

I’ve mentioned before that I get daily emails from some lefty who’s trying to convert me? Talk about willful blindness. Or extraordinary projection. What we say about them is exactly what they say about us. Or worse. The media is controlled by the right wing machine in their opinion. There is no foul deed the GOP hasn’t already stooped to, to win this election. It’s frightening. Today’s screed was all about some journalist who got arrested at the GOP convention (Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!). Terrible! But gosh, finally, charges were dropped. Because of concerted efforts of all good thinking Dems you know. That was followed by this ( I added the underline ):

Subject: Republican police state: Stunning video footage
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/99433/?type=blog

This is stunning footage of a mass of people being arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota with NO Probable Cause, in clear violation of the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution, on the first day of the Republican convention.  I do not see how it could be any clearer.  The videographer had buried this video to prevent its confiscation.  The Republicans had protected Minneapolis against liability by providing insurance to allow police to act illegally without fear of legal consequences. I have no idea whether or not St. Paul was similarly protected.  I just hope that for the sake of our country the lawyers for those kids can cost both the Republican Party, the police agencies, and the individual police officers all a LOT of money.  THIS IS AMERICA, NOT SOME PISS-ANT DICTATORSHIP! THEY SHOULD PAY!!!

Note that the video has a full screen mode button.

“LI”

Now, I’ll leave it up to our intrepid readers to fully Google up what actually happened that day, but even this far left leaning blog can’t hide all of truth:

Perched above the Mississippi, the boulevard played host to tear gas clouds and a handful of arrests. The provocateurs weren’t all innocent: I witnessed bottles thrown. (I hope the shots I heard were only rubber bullets fired over the river.)

The goal, apparently, was to block delegates from traveling to the convention. I doubt the clash produced this result, but it did temporarily stop guests staying in hotels along the boulevard from going anywhere. (It also made a bogus convention day genuinely interesting.)
...
UPDATE: I wrongly assumed the group of protesters clashing with police along Kellogg Boulevard was connected to the RNC Welcoming Committee. In fact, the demonstrators toting boom-boxes on wheels were members of DC Students for a Democratic Society,

Funny thing ... the news media didn’t exactly see things the same way our resident lefty did. Nor did they see the same thing the really well edited “secret video” that “had to be buried” (which is why it’s all over the internet. Try Googling “labor day arrests St Paul”, you’ll see). The way the news media (that fully owned whore of the GOP) put it, WITH VIDEO:

Anarchists who had threatened to “crash the convention” wreaked havoc Monday in downtown St. Paul as the Republican National Convention opened, shattering windows, throwing rocks, slashing tires and blocking traffic. Their violence on the first day of the convention overshadowed an anti-war march that drew a fraction of the number expected. The march, which sparked at least three free-speech court challenges, came off without a hitch. But breakaway groups of anarchists — some clad in black and others dressed as colorfully as clowns — kept police busy. Nearly 300 people had been arrested as of late Monday night.

Spasms of violence erupted throughout downtown as tear gas was fired and protesters — some angry, some insistent on dancing amid the chaos — played a game of cat-and-mouse as police, backed up by 150 Minnesota National Guard soldiers, alternately accommodated, confronted and chased roving bands intent on disrupting the convention.

I think Captain Video has been doing Moore than a good job with the editing, what what?

Posted by Drew458     on 09/19/2008 at 10:59 PM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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The Obama Singalong

found online in some blog comments somewhere, and then modified a bit






Chocolate Jesus

I don’t care if it rains or freezes
‘long as I got my Chocolate Jesus
tellin’ me everything’s gonna change
Barack, he is the Black Messiah
he ain’t like no redneck pariah
the Reverend Wright, he tells me that is true


Chorus:
Chocolate Jesus! Chocolate Jesus,
We’re now told to get up in your face!
You’ll be afraid to just vote NO
Against this assclown rodeo
An empty suite who’s nothing more than race.


I won’t be clingin’ to my guns and ‘ligion
don’t need ‘em now, not even a smidgeon
Barry’s going to show me the righteous way
I can’t be makin’ any dumb errors
I listen to his pal, Ol’ Bill Ayers
Baracky is the best man for the job


(Chorus)


So, don’t you diss my sweet Obama
he’s the one who’ll get Osama
right out of that cave in downtown Pocky-stahn
Yeah, I don’t care if it’s rain and cloud
Me and and Michelle, we’re so damn proud
Our Barack’s got some change in mind for us.


(Chorus)

Posted by Drew458     on 09/19/2008 at 02:43 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Humor •  
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Well darn it, here I am again and on the same darn subject. But I predicted it and no surprise.

Yeah I’m still ranting about that knife attack on the young lady yesterday.

And didn’t I say the excuses would be made or if not excuses reasons why the poor sick wack job did it.

The mother of the guy who did it says that her son was sick and wasn’t taking his meds.  I said that’d happen huh? Not because I’m some rocket scientist but because I’ve heard that line sooooooooo many times it’s sickening.  She is in no way justifying what he did, but she is saying that it’s the fault of the Dept. of Health for not monitoring her son and seeing if he was taking his medication.  Meanwhile, doctors say the lady may never walk again if she survives.
The mother of the attacker says also that the Health Service “let her son down.” NO THEY DIDN’T YOU DAMN FOOL.  They let the public down. They let an innocent young woman down.

Get this .... it ranks right up there with the Twinkie defense.  He was frightened of females because when he was a kid, he was bullied by a gang of girls.
Oh well then, it’s all understandable isn’t it?  Please do not think that this is the first time some nut case has been out in the public and then hurt or killed someone.  It isn’t.  I have a headache just thinking about it.

I recall vividly the story about a year after I got here, about some wanker released from a nut house who chased some poor guy down a city street in broad daylight, carrying an ax.  And he used it. Ah nuts! 

Mother of ‘schizophrenic’ who ‘stabbed girl 17 times’ blames doctors for not monitoring his medication

By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 7:29 AM on 19th September 2008

The mother of a mental health outpatient who stabbed a girl 17 times said last night that doctors should have checked he was taking his medication.

(and how about you, mom? where were you? out of harms way.)

Angela Reid-Wentworth, 51, said her son Samuel was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed girls were likely to attack him.

But he was not being monitored sufficiently by health officials.

She called for new laws, including blood or urine tests, to make sure patients like her 21-year-old son kept taking their medication.
Lucy Yates

Mrs Reid-Wentworth said she shared the agony of the family of Lucy Yates, 20, the target of a frenzied and unprovoked attack at a supermarket in Littlehampton, West Sussex, on Tuesday.

(she shares the agony. ok. but never to the same degree as the victim and family. and that girl will never ever be the same.)

Last night she had regained consciousness but doctors fear she may never walk again.

Her family and boyfriend were at her bedside. Relatives described her attacker as a ‘monster’.

Her mother Deborah said: ‘Lucy is the most gentle, sweet, kind and loving girl anyone could ever meet. There are so many wires and tubes coming out of her. It’s so painful.

‘We know she will pull through, but it’s too early to tell what effect it will have on her movement. We are praying she makes a complete recovery.’

Miss Yates, an upholstery shop worker, was attacked as she waited at a check-out at the Somerfield store.

The onslaught ended only when store manager Duncan Todd and a security guard moved in to rescue her.

Mrs Yates, from Pulborough, West Sussex, said her daughter had ‘only popped out to get something for tea’.

‘This could have happened to any family,’ she said. ‘Why did it have to be ours? I can’t even bear to think about what happened.’

Miss Yates’s sister Sharon said: ‘She’s doing really well. She has been speaking and her memory is all there.

‘Her injuries are mostly around her chest and neck, with only one slash across her cheek - so in that respect, it could have been worse.

‘Her boyfriend Peter was due to start a new job on Wednesday, but he’s been by her bedside since the attack.

‘She’s so strong, the first thing she said to him when she came round was, “What are you doing here? You should be at work”.’

Friends said the couple, who have been together for six years, had moved to Littlehampton from Worthing just three days before the attack.

Mrs Reid-Wentworth, from Bognor Regis, West Sussex, said she ‘feels very deeply’ for the Yates family.

But she insisted: ‘My son would never have been in a state of mind where he would do something like that if he had been taking his medication. I’m not seeking to make excuses for what he has done, but the system has undoubtedly failed him.’

Mrs Reid-Wentworth said there should be a legal requirement for severely mentally-ill patients to be tested to ensure they are taking their medication.

She added: ‘If the medication cannot be detected in blood or urine samples, the companies that make it should be forced to add ingredients that make it detectable.’

Her son was being treated as an outpatient at Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation mental health trust.

Mrs Reid-Wentworth said his illness could be traced back to his schooldays and years of ‘severe, relentless bullying by gangs of girls’.

‘He never told anyone about it because he was told that if he did, his family would be killed,’ she said.

‘When he eventually did pluck up the courage to tell me, I took the matter to the headmaster - who didn’t handle it at all.

‘In the end, I had to transfer Samuel to another school, where he was much happier. But by then the damage had been done.’

The case will reignite the debate over the care in the community policy, under which mentally-ill people are treated as outpatients rather than in secure hospitals.

It has been blamed for a string of violent, random attacks.

Earlier this month, another Sussex Partnership NHS Trust outpatient was convicted of murder.

Benjamin Frankum had also stopped taking his medication before he broke into 33-year-old Daniel Quelch’s home and stabbed him 82 times in August last year.

He later claimed MI5 had told him to kill Mr Quelch, who he had never met before.

Samuel Reid-Wentworth appeared at Worthing Magistrates Court yesterday, charged with attempted murder, and was remanded in custody.

http://tinyurl.com/3uvrrr

Posted by Drew458     on 09/19/2008 at 12:23 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Give This Kid an “F”

Read all about it at Gateway Pundit and at Knox News. Also at Skirts Not Pantsuits. And everywhere else in a few hours.

Daddy is very actively campaigning for Obama. I would venture a guess that this might just end his political career. Either right this second as he gets thrown under the bus with maximum velocity or at the next election.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/19/2008 at 11:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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