As IF Times

link The Years of Shame – NYTimes.com.

Some may be aware of the writings, or more correctly the rantings of Paul Krugmann.  By profession, he is an economist, yet somehow his unhinged opinions on politics is where he derives most of his notoriety these days.   In the most recent missive published in the New York Times, the true depth of his insanity is on full display for the world to see.

Even as the U.S. rightly commemorates the September 11 bombings from ten years ago, Krugmann fires some vile shots at Messrs. Bush and Giuliani for the heinous crime of happening to be in charge when the terrorist acts took place.   He calls them false heroes who capitalized on the incident to aggrandize themselves.  As I’ve said numerous times, everyone is entitled to their opinions, no matter how out of touch with reality they may be.  The greatest benefit of living in a free society is that any and every idiot is allowed a voice.   Only by comparing these opinions with actual facts can  people determine whether or not to listen to these idiots. 

Years ago, a golfer savant named Moe Norman was recognized for his genius in doing one thing; striking a golf ball.  Other than this very narrow area of human achievement, he was essentially unable to communicate with people.  As long as you didn’t expect anything sage from his unintelligible utterances, you could admire his innate skill.  Apart from his ball striking ability, you couldn’t depend on his opinion on whether or not the sun came out much less on a topic of any kind.  Certainly, no one would seek his opinion on the state of fiscal balances in the economy.

Krugmann seems to fall into this same category.  Although a past winner of a Nobel prize in economics, it’s worth noting that Al Gore and Barack Obama are also Nobel winners, so this in itself is not a validation of other-worldy brilliance.  Unlike Mr. Norman, Krugmann has the soapbox of The New York Times to express his nonsense and that’s where it gets evil.  There are those people out there that still think the Times is a legitimate news organization.  Over the past 30 years and increasingly in the past 10, the opinions espoused in that circular are more conspicuously out of sync with reality.  It’s as if they lived in their own delusional bizarro world where reality is an inconvenient nuisance.  To them, gravity is the product of some capitalist monopoly.

There will always be a market for this kind of ‘journalism’, but increasingly, that niche market of leftist drivel is shrinking as subscription levels prove.  According to their own statistics, the Times circulation has fallen to just about 830,000 in 2010,  a decline of 5% from a year ago which was also in decline from the year previous.   When they publish the opinions such as Krugmann’s it serves to marginalize them more and more from sane people.  Even Moe Norman would wince.

link How Islamic punk went from fiction to reality | Music | The Guardian.

I guess if you think about it, why should the Muslim culture be any different?  It’s not as if kids in that culture are blindly obeisant to their family dictates as perhaps portrayed by the popular media.  In our culture, you can’t even get kids to make their own beds or get a haircut.  Can you imagine telling Junior in the Muslim culture to strap on a bomb?  As my son would say, “equals no!”

When you think of the majority of wars in the history of the world, they are started by old men, but staffed and finished by young ones.  For this reason alone, youth can be skeptical of the judgement of their older generation.  Youth has a natural tendency to rebel against whatever status quo they are brought up with, regardless of how benign or oppressive it may be.  Think of the suburban kids in the west who emulate their rap star idols by looking ‘street’.  It’s like Sean Penn or Michael Moore looking ‘Castro”.  As if some white-bread kid from Connecticut is going to empathize with Rap Star X.   Apparently having a stable household and family life is not preferable to being an illiterate misogynist with bad taste in clothes. 

It’s easier to see the spawn of radical Muslim families rejecting their native culture since for women, it means subservience, camouflage and relegation to chattel status.  For boys, it means misogyny, praying 12 times a day and the occasional suicide mission.  I wonder why their response is not the opposite of kids in the west, ie turn to become family oriented, respectful and dressing properly. In the linked story, the kids featured may be a very small outcast minority, but that’s how things start.  Once other kids observe that they can thumb their noses at their parents, they will too.  It’s weird the things that kids find admirable. 

It may turn out that the thing that turns the tide in the Muslim world is to ship all punk and rap stars from the U.S.  into their midst to ferment social change. Boy that’s a win/win propostion for all.