18 July 2008 @ 9:10AM >> With the cult-like hype around all things “green” these days, it seems like everyone is hopping on the bandwagon.

Sensing a marketing opportunity, companies are embracing the new culture of conspicuous planet-saving.

This week, a gift from a relative arrived in which Macy’s placed a postcard-sized note explaining that the package was shipped with “Earth-loving packing material” designed to “protect our environment.” Aside from the small matter of unnecessarily using the Earth’s resources to explain to me how Macy’s is saving the Earth’s resources, there was something rather comedic about the company’s presentation.

The gift arrived in a box over 2 feet tall. Width and length-wise, the box was 19 inches. It was a pretty big box, so when I picked it up, I expected something heavy. I was a bit surprised to discover how light it was, at least until I opened it up.

You see, the self-congratulatorily eco-friendly Macy’s filled this huge box with an item that was only one inch tall, 10 inches wide, and 15 inches deep. This wasn’t exactly a fragile item, either; it was essentially a block of wood. Macy’s could have put a stamp right on the item itself with no packaging and sent it out without much chance of damage.

So, the one inch tall item had 25x as much vertical space as necessary, along with an extra 9 inches of padding in one dimension and an extra 4 inches in another. Several dozen more of the shipped item could have fit in the box comfortably.

But after realizing the extent of the wasted space, I was quite relieved to pull the card out of the box telling me how environmentally friendly it all was.

14 July 2008 @ 8:50AM >> In Canada, there is no such thing as free speech. Say something someone doesn’t like, and you can end up in front of a “Human Rights Commission,” which has the power to punish you and even restrict what you might say in the future. These courts also have no rules of evidence, and the truth of what you’ve said is not a defense. The only thing that matters is whether someone from a group higher up in the Multicultural Hierarchy is willing to stand up and accuse you. Perhaps that explains why these commissions have a 100% conviction rate.

Ezra Levant is a journalist currently on trial in Canada. Recently, he spoke before a congressional caucus in Washington:

My expertise in the subject matter of today’s session was not acquired voluntarily, but by unhappy experience: I have been the subject of government persecution for my political and religious views for nearly 900 days. Unfortunately, stories like mine are not uncommon in the world. But they’re not supposed to happen in Canada, one of the freest countries.

In February of 2006, I was the publisher of a Canadian magazine called the Western Standard. We published a news story about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and the riots in the Muslim world that followed. To illustrate what all the fuss was about, we accompanied the story with pictures of several of those cartoons. It was a news story in a news magazine.

Before our magazine even hit the streets, a radical imam named Syed Soharwardy asked the police to arrest me - for blaspheming against Islam. The police didn’t, of course. But the Alberta “human rights commission”, a government agency, accepted Soharwardy’s complaint, and then an identical one from the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities. The government has been investigating me ever since, including summoning me to a 90-minute interrogation. According to access to information documents, no fewer than 15 bureaucrats are working on my case. I’m a major crime scene!

Since then, Canada’s largest news magazine, called Maclean’s - our equivalent to Time magazine - was sued in three different human rights commissions for writing about the demographic growth of Islam in the West. And the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the largest newspaper in Atlantic Canada, is being pursued by Nova Scotia’s human rights commission for printing an editorial cartoon depicting a local Muslim activist in a niqab - even though that is how she dresses.

In other words, Canadian human rights commissions — secular government organizations — are prosecuting religious fatwas. It’s a soft jihad against any criticism of radical Islam. It’s called “lawfare”, and it’s a greater danger to our western values of freedom, religious pluralism and the separation of church and state than the hard jihad of terrorism is. Even if targets like Maclean’s eventually “win”, they lose; the process is the punishment - and the chill affects everyone else.

Canadian human rights commissions, however, are not respectful of the sensitivities of all religions. Less politically correct faiths are regularly prosecuted by them. This May, an Alberta pastor named Stephen Boissoin was given a lifetime gag order, never to say anything critical of homosexuality - not in a church sermon, not even in private e-mails. As well, in what can only be called a Maoist verdict, he has been ordered to renounce his religious beliefs, and to publish a self-denunciation in the local newspaper.

This is Canada we’re talking about. Not Iran, not China, not Cuba.

[...]

The actual wording of the laws is to ban anything that is quote, “likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt”. Note the word “likely” - you don’t actually have to do anything wrong. You can be convicted for a “pre-crime”, something that hasn’t happened yet. And look at what’s illegal: causing emotions. Not real harm or damages. Just exposing someone to feelings. By the way, the truth of what you say is not a defence. And at the Maclean’s magazine trial last month, half a day was spent determining whether their jokes were funny. They even had a joke expert.

Don’t laugh - literally. Just three weeks ago, a comedian was ordered to stand trial for telling off-colour jokes in a night club. Warning to Chris Rock: don’t bother coming to Canada.

If the government of Canada doesn’t allow freedom of thought or speech, then Canada effectively allows no freedom at all.

10 July 2008 @ 9:53AM >> Interesting data on taxes from The Wall Street Journal:

New data from the IRS will be out in a few weeks on who pays how much in taxes. My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will have paid just 3%.

Every time I hear someone claim that “the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share,” I wonder, how much tax would “the rich” have to pay before it becomes fair?

9 July 2008 @ 9:19AM >> If you’re a pop culture junkie who doesn’t share the politics of Hollywood, you may enjoy Yeah Right, a new blog started by some fellow Bucknell alums I met while filming Indoctrinate U. Current topics range from The Office to the latest Weezer album, Che Guevara t-shirts, and the new 90210.

8 July 2008 @ 12:42AM >> The Economist noticed something interesting about Senator Barack Obama’s website. Most of the pages on the site—like this one—display a navigation bar showing the main sections of the site:

As The Economist reports:

The “people” section on [Obama’s] website divides Americans into 17 categories: Latinos, women, First Americans, environmentalists, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, Americans with disabilities, Asian-Americans and Pacific islanders and so on. There is no mention of whites, or men.

According to the Obama campaign, this is the exhaustive list of people that matter:

In the inclusive world of the post-racial messiah, heterosexual white males have been ethnically cyber-cleansed, and I’m probably a bigot for mentioning it.

7 July 2008 @ 8:18PM >> According to London’s Telegraph, British “[t]oddlers who turn their noses up at spicy food from overseas could be branded racists by a Government-sponsored agency.”

The paper’s political correspondent Rosa Prince reports:

The National Children’s Bureau, which receives lb12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

[...]

The 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, warns: “Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships.”

It advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as: “blackie”, “Pakis”, “those people” or “they smell”.

The guide goes on to warn that children might also “react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying ‘yuk’”.

Staff are told: “No racist incident should be ignored. When there is a clear racist incident, it is necessary to be specific in condemning the action.”

3 July 2008 @ 8:53AM >> From the “why it’s a bad idea to have software do what humans should be doing” file, Washington Post columnist Al Kamen reports on a funny technoblooper that recently affected an automated news website run by the American Family Association:

There were certain words that would pop up from time to time in the Associated Press stories that moved onto the site that were a bit salacious, or unacceptable to post.

“We don’t have the staff to monitor all the Hollywood stories,” news director Fred Jackson said yesterday, “so we wanted an automated function.” He said they put up the filter about a month or so ago.

One word they wanted to filter was “gay.” The site felt that the term put the matter of homosexuality “in a positive light,” Jackson said, when the evangelical Christian organization was much opposed. So when a wire story referred to gay marriage, for example, the phrase would automatically appear as “homosexual marriage.”

Worked fine until Sunday, when the AP reported that “Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.” The story was headlined “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.”

“On Saturday,” the story said, “Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat...”

That’s world champion sprinter Tyson Gay, of course.

9 April 2008 @ 8:16AM >> I’m happy to announce that the DVD of Indoctrinate U is now available for purchase.

If you’d like to buy a copy of the DVD, head on over to the Indoctrinate U Store and you can have one in your hands in just a few days.

Unlike the downloadable Virtual DVD (which is also available at the store), the physical DVD comes with bonus DVD extras.

Reminder: This upcoming Monday (April 14th) is the New York City premiere of Indoctrinate U. Because this is a sponsored event, tickets are free. Seats are available, but you must RSVP in order to reserve your spot.

26 November 2007 @ 11:21PM >> “The dogma of multiculturalism holds that all cultures are equal, except Western culture, which (unlike every other society on the planet) has a history of oppression and war is therefore worse. All religions are equal, except Christianity, which informed the beliefs of the capitalist bloodsuckers who founded America and is therefore worse. All races are equal, except Caucasians, who long ago went into business with black slave traders in Africa, and therefore they are worse. The genders, too, are equal, except for those paternalistic males, who with their testosterone and aggression have made this planet a polluted living hell, and therefore they are worse.” More >>

27 October 2007 @ 6:58AM >> Matthew Sheffield of NewsBusters recently interviewed me on a wide range of topics. His extensive interview, the first in what will soon be a series on the website, has now been posted.

It is quite apparent from reading the transcript that I must have spoken with Sheffield after a few cups of coffee.

19 October 2007 @ 8:49AM >> The latest deleted scene from Indoctrinate U is now available over at the film’s website.

31 July 2007 @ 12:01PM >> Over at the Indoctrinate U film website, we are starting to post some of the scenes we loved but ended up having to cut from the film.

The first deleted scene is called “Columbia Quiz.”

This less-than-five-minute video may prove embarrassing to the administration of Columbia University, which very clearly did not want me filming—unless I could convince them that my film would paper over the truth and make the university look good.

Sorry, Columbia!

11 January 2007 @ 9:26PM >> There’s something about our psyche which seems to make self-criticism the new national pastime. Naturally, our political leaders know this. They know that when hundreds of newspapers and television stations align in a daily tearing-down of the war effort, the American people will eventually lose their nerve and want to give up. Others know this, too, which is why al Qaeda distributed copies of Black Hawk Down as a means to understand how the media can be used to amplify a relatively minor military failure and drive the United States from the field of battle. If terrorists provide enough negative footage to our media, they know we’ll turn and run. But if we fight too vigorously, that will be held up by our own media as evidence of our inherent evilness. More >>

8 November 2006 @ 10:53AM >> “I need some help. I need some mental help is what I need.” More >>

5 September 2006 >> On a remarkably clear morning five years ago, New York City came under attack. This video memorial, taken from footage shot by eyewitness David Vogler, shows New Yorkers waking up to that grim reality. Crystal Morning tells the story of September 11th, 2001 through fire and ambulance radio calls, the 911 call of a trapped World Trade Center worker, and the lens of local resident who saw an explosion while walking to work. More >>

30 June 2006 @ 2:36AM >> If you as a private citizen came into the exact same information that the Times eventually published, but instead of publishing it, you passed it along to an al Qaeda operative in a dark alley somewhere, you would be guilty of treason and could be executed. Yet, Bill Keller seems to think that “freedom of the press” amounts to one huge legal exemption—the espionage laws do not apply to him!—and by being chosen by a handful of old-money New Yorkers to edit a newspaper, he is somehow in better position to decide what is in the public interest than the government officials that we the people elected to act on our behalf. More >>

23 May 2006 @ 3:10AM >> First, let’s define “they.” For the purposes of this article, “they” refers to Jihadists: a radical subset of Muslims who believe it is their duty to kill anyone who refuses to abide by their religious law. Coincidentally, “they” are responsible for a disproportionate share of the terrorist attacks around the world, as un-politically-correct as this might be to recognize.

Now that we know who “they” are, who’s “us”? Even though the “us” that “they” hate pretty much amounts to all of Western society, I will take “us” to mean the United States, since in the eyes of many in the non-Western world, the U.S. symbolizes Western society. But as the ongoing terrorist attacks worldwide prove, people are grossly misinformed if they believe the United States is the only country the Jihadists wish to destroy. More >>

17 March 2006 @ 11:40AM >> One of the reasons the nation is so divided politically is that we can’t even agree on the exact nature of the War on Terror. Some people recognize it as a war, others see it as a law enforcement matter, and some believe the whole thing is a sham. More >>

9 January 2006 @ 1:35PM >> The Republicans campaigned to bring their philosophy of limited government to Washington and pledged to clean House, literally. And they did, for a while, but over time, certain principles seemed to disappear. (Whatever happened to the idea of term limits? Oh yeah, bad for incumbents, so let’s forget about that.) Now that the Republican Party has controlled Congress for over a decade, it seems that they have morphed from the party of limited government into the party of, simply, government. More >>

16 September 2005 @ 12:00PM >> The Times of London’s Higher Education Supplement profiles Evan Coyne Maloney: “You need to leave or you’re going to jail,” intones the policeman. The camera pans down to a holstered gun at the officer’s waist. Evan Coyne Maloney, scourge of the Establishment, is clearly not welcome.” More >>

15 August 2005 @ 4:09PM >> The Daily Telegraph of London profiles Evan Coyne Maloney: “Undercover film-maker Evan Coyne Maloney is making a name for himself as the fresh-faced tormentor of the American Left. He tells Damian Thompson about his new documentary, in which he exposes the tyranny of political correctness on US Campuses.” More >>

8 July 2005 @ 2:42PM >> There’s a real war going on out there, and the enemy isn’t each other. If we can just stop assuming we’re the problem, we might actually stand a chance of victory. But if we waste time navel-gazing in a world that contains wealthy terrorists and starving nuclear powers, we will ultimately be killed in our own streets in a way that’ll make September 11th look like a verbal reprimand. And if you don’t think that’s a possibility, then you really don’t know the enemy. More >>

11 April 2005 @ 10:06AM >> Many colleges and universities have permanent political offices staffed by paid university employees. These offices exist to push their views on students, and if you’re a student, parent, alumnus or taxpayer, you’re paying for it. More >>

26 January 2005 >> President Bush’s re-election left some Americans distraught and depressed. And with Inauguration Day set to rub salt in those still-healing wounds, I decided to act in the interest of national unity and extend an olive branch across the great Red/Blue divide. The election may not have gone the way the Inaugural protesters wanted, but at least I could make sure they didn’t leave Washington empty-handed; thanks to the folks at HeroBuilders.com, I had some nice consolation prizes to give away. Would my overtures of peace be rebuffed? Can simple kindness stave off the revolution that some disgrunted Democrats predict? More >>

24 January 2005 >> The New York Sun profiles Evan Coyne Maloney. More >>

13 December 2004 >> Any tech junkie who travels extensively is undoubtedly familiar with the pangs of withdrawal suffered when decent Internet access is nowhere to be found. There are many folks like me whose work depends on frequent, reliable access to e-mail and the web. Most of my business communication, in fact, is done by e-mail. Even the voicemail from my home phone gets sent to my e-mail inbox, freeing me from having to constantly call in and check for messages. More >>

23 November 2004 >> What if, instead of paying taxes in money, the government forced you to work on a chain gang in order to pay taxes? If you have to work until 5PM every day, but everyone else gets to go home at noon, would that be fair? More >>

29 June 2004 >> Bill Clinton’s latest attempt to define his legacy is a 957-page book called My Life. Though panned by the New York Times as “sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull,” thousands of people still stood on line for eight hours or more to have the former president sign their copies. As the line snaked around the corner of Broadway and Wall Street in lower Manhattan, I asked the autograph-seekers for their thoughts on Bill, his book, and his legacy. More >>

13 May 2004 >> For us to achieve a just victory, it is important to hold ourselves to a higher morality. And when we fall short, the rest of the world should see that we can confront our own mistakes. If airing the Abu Ghraib prison pictures helps us do that, all the better. But we must not let terrorists take it as a sign that we don’t have the stomach for war. That’s why it’s important to show the rest of the world that we’re not afraid to kick some ass. And if seeing the gruesome images of Nick Berg’s beheading gives us the mettle required to win this war, then he will not have died in vain. More >>

8 April 2004 >> Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission made for riveting listening. The political fireworks were on full display when the Democrats on the panel pressed Rice, asking why President Bush had not developed a pre-September 11th plan to preemptively attack Afghanistan and disrupt al Qaeda. These questions, of course, come from the same folks who criticize Bush administration for acting preemptively against Iraq.
The inconsistencies of the Democratic arguments against the Bush Administration make it impossible for them to put forth any alternate vision, because anything they propose will conflict with some of their previous criticisms. Even that they’ll deny, though; they’ll sweeten their waffles with the syrup of nuance, the word they use to cover up the fact that they’re holding several completely contradictory stances simultaneously.
According to principles of quantum mechanics, it is possible for a subatomic particle to occupy multiple positions at the same time. Perhaps the Democrats hope to become the quantum party. If so, it explains why John Kerry, the consummate Quantum Candidate, is the perfect person to head the Democratic ticket this fall. More >>

24 March 2004 >> Some people would like you to think President Bush lied when he talked about Saddam Hussein’s weapons. The funny thing is, many of the president’s current critics are politicians who made strikingly similar claims about Iraq in the not-too-distant past. When Bill Clinton was in office, his fellow Democrats had much to say about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But if you listen to them now, you might conclude that the entire party suffers from collective amnesia. Democrats used to talk tough about Iraq. They did when one of their own was in the White House. And they did when polls showed it was politically helpful to support President Bush. But now, it’s campaign season, and they’ve changed their tune. To find out if the spin was sticking, I impersonated a game show host and quizzed a few protesters about some particularly hawkish quotes from notable Democrats. More >>

17 February 2004 >> United Press International recently reported the discovery of documents from Saddam Hussein’s oil ministry that show the Iraqi dictator “used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.” And according to ABC News, allies of Saddam Hussein profited by pocketing the difference between the price of oil under the U.N.’s “Oil for Food” program and the price of oil on the open market. Some of these allies included “a close political associate and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac”, “Russian political figures” including “the Russian ambassador to Baghdad” and “officials in the office of President Vladimir Putin”, “George Galloway, a British member of Parliament”, and even some—gasp!—”prominent journalists”. So why haven’t you heard about this story yet? More >>

19 January 2004 >> On January 15th, New Yorkers awoke to single-digit temperatures and a few inches of new snowfall. Al Gore chose the day to give a speech on global warming. The speech—delivered at the Beacon Theatre on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—was sponsored by MoveOn.org, a website-turned-political-action-committee that recently gained notoriety by hosting two political ads equating President Bush with Adolf Hitler. Although such comparisons were common at anti-war rallies, I still wasn’t sure whether this mindset was now infecting the Democratic base—the sort of folks who’d brave the cold to hear Al Gore speak. To find out, I spent a few shivering hours outside the Beacon. More >>

17 December 2003 >> At some point, changing babies where people are eating food and drinking coffee became acceptable. For some reason, I was not notified. More >>

20 October 2003 >> This video is the follow-up to last week’s posting about the pro-Palestinian conference and rally at Rutgers University:

I was now completely encircled. When I tried to escape, the protesters then started smacking the camera with their signs, while others were shoving me from different directions. I started retreating, pushing my way back from the loudspeaker, all the while leaving the camera running and asking the protesters why they weren’t letting me film. Just when the scuffle between me and the protesters seemed like it was about to take a turn for the worse, I remembered that there were some cameras present from a few mainstream media outlets. I started yelling, “Why are you trying to censor me?” The idea was to attract the other cameras, thinking that the protesters would back off if their actions were captured by the news media. The gambit worked: we were soon surrounded by cameras.

More >>

19 September 2003 >> While Michael Moore was delivering his infamous speech at the Academy Awards, every single documentary filmmaker nominated for an Oscar stood behind him in solidarity. The fact that liberals dominate the industry is even more significant given the recent changes in campaign finance laws. Moore and his fellow filmmakers are free to embed their opinions in movies, but citizens who want to finance political ads will discover new limits to their freedom of speech. What would Mr. Moore have to say about this? To find out, I staked him out over the course of four days. More >>

27 August 2003 >> “Stop the presses! Decades after retirement, Walter Cronkite can still break a major story. Saying he believes ‘most of us reporters are liberal,’ Cronkite is admitting what many on the left have denied fervently for years: that there is a bias in the news media, and that it tips to the left noticeably.” More >>

25 July 2003 >> Some in this country still want our intelligence analysts to err on the side of caution, because doing so could thwart future attacks and would therefore save lives. Others believe that no action should ever be taken unless every scrap of intelligence data is unimpeachable and unambiguous. But if you complain that the administration wasn’t vigilant enough in interpreting pre-September 11th intelligence, you can’t credibly claim that the administration was too vigilant in interpreting the data pertaining to Iraq. More >>

12 June 2003 >> Saddam and Osama must not exist. Why? Because they cannot be found. And, as we all know from witnessing the recent hyperventilation about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, if something can’t be found, it must not exist. More >>

4 April 2003 >> Anti-Israeli sentiment ran strong at the San Francisco protest, in some cases suggesting an undercurrent of anti-Semitism. Is support for a Jewish state the same as ethnic cleansing? Should the Israelis be shipped to Madagascar? Some of the protesters thought so... More >>

18 February 2003 >> War is not the answer, or so they say. But what is the answer? I went to the peace protest to try and find out... More >>

10 February 2003 >> “We, the free people of the world, in recognition of the fact that freedom is a gift given to us through the selfless sacrifice of our ancestors, and in agreement on the belief that it is our moral obligation to share this gift with those who were not fortunate enough to be born into it, declare ourselves united in an Alliance of Liberty, whose purpose is to secure the freedom of every human everywhere.” More >>

29 January 2003 >> “Sometimes, there is no choice but to meet danger with force. To resort to war is not the sign of ultimate failure, as some argue, it’s just the sign of diplomacy’s failure. But we shouldn’t let failed diplomacy fester while stealthy enemies strengthen and scheme. Now that we’ve seen how easily terrorists can bring death to our door, we must prevent them from acquiring weapons from thugs like Saddam Hussein. The best way is to make sure there aren’t any thugs like Saddam Hussein.” More >>

4 December 2002 >> “If you don’t share Tom Daschle’s view of the media, you’re a right-wing nut. If you characterize his blocking of legislation as obstructionist, Daschle will compare you to a mullah stirring the passions of terrorists. And Gore believes it is so unthinkable for the media to present conservative viewpoints that it must really be part of some grand conspiracy secretly funded by evil fascist billionaire capitalist pigs whose wallets are made out of people who died because they couldn’t find affordable prescription drugs.” More >>

20 August 2002 >> As the Democrats spend the days leading up to the election trying to convince you that they are the party of the people, here are a few things to remember. More >>

3 June 2002 >> “How would you feel if you went to your local music store, bought a tape of your favorite band’s latest release, and discovered that playing it in your car damaged the stereo so severely that your entire car needed to be brought in for servicing? Or what if the tape you just bought were incompatible with your walkman, so you couldn’t listen to it at the gym or while jogging? What would you think if you found out that the music industry intentionally manufactured tapes so that their customers would suffer this damage and inconvenience?” More >>

27 March 2002 >> “Bill Clinton is a low-life thief, a petty swindler, and a smooth-talking scam artist more suited for Tammany Hall than the White House. He’s shallow because he was given remarkable gifts and the opportunity to do great things with them, yet he achieved nothing substantial. In the end, his presidency amounted to little more than talk and corruption. The man who spent the final days of his presidency fretting about his legacy will find it to be recorded quite accurately by history: Bill Clinton is a shallow, failed man.” More >>

11 September 2001 >> A trek through a chaotic Manhattan as the city struggles to absorb the attacks of September 11th. More >>