Sidebar stories

A couple dry political points before I get to the good stuff:

I am sick of looking at Hillary's mug. Hillary shouldn't even be considered for president because two families controlling the White House for close to 30 years just isn't right.

Also, from the Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris offers a fawning, though interesting, book review, but here's the quote I'm concerned with:

Recall what the nation felt like immediately after 9/11. For a few brief months, we were more united than at any point in my lifetime. Had President Bush wanted to, he could have called for rescinding his tax cuts, a crash program of mandatory national service, and major reforms of NATO and the United Nations in the service of a united war on terror. The country and the world, I think, would have responded positively. It was his choice to take us in a different direction.

Every couple months I stumble across a quote like this, and it reminds me of why I will always have contempt for George W. Bush. He was, in an awkward sense, blessed with the greatest political opportunity in decades, and he decided to use it to pursue a partisan agenda. The patriotic glow was bound to wear off, but what have we got to show for it?

All right, sorry that went on so long. Now for some lighthearted idiocy.

Mickey Kaus: "Does welfare cause terrorism?" Honestly, I thought this was satire.

Without government subsidies, (Islamists collecting welfare in Western states) would have to overcome the prejudice against them and integrate into the mainstream working culture. Work, in this sense, is anti-terrorist medicine. (And if you work all day, there's less time to dream up ways and reasons to kill infidels.)

Or, since they are already criminals taking advantage of the state while planning such criminal activites as mass murder, just maybe they would commit other crimes instead of working a nice 9-to-5. Or maybe they would, after overcoming prejudice with a little pluck, whistle their fanaticism away in their cubicle. Because that sounds plausible.

Ah, but that wasn't the dumbest thing I read in even the last hour. The AEI, which also wins the award for most awkward word choice of the week, in their article asking if maybe it's polygamy causing terrorism:

Polygamy is still practiced widely in West Africa, where leading men sometimes take as many as 30-50 wives. This leaves a huge residue of unattached men.

That's gross. The paragraph concludes, "It is probably the principle reason why so many African countries are beset by 'revolutionary armies' living in the bush and raiding rural villages to steal women."

Which, as if you read Clare's blog from Senegal, you'll see happens approximately never.

Psst, fellas, the real cause of terrorism is pretty obvious: it's religion fanaticism.

And on that note, I close, although it is especially great that Danny randomly e-mailed me this picture as I typed all this: