link Anti-government protests in Libya – Yahoo! News Photos.
Here’s a brilliant idea for a business and it’s amazing no one has thought of it sooner. The effigy business. In particular of political figures. Naturally, the American figures will be the most popular since it’s pretty much expected that demand for them will be at a constant high level. We can be sure of both domestic and international demand. Someone could have a warehouse stocked with effigies of the current President at the ready, for immediate shipment to any hot spot in the world. Imagine the money that could have been made during George Bush’s term in office. It’s likely that he had more effigies and images burnt of him than even Ronald Reagan when he occupied the Presidency. The fact that they are burning Obama effigies is a bit surprising given that his ascent to power was supposed to appease the masses. But I guess there’s no pleasing some people.
On the other hand, sensibilities aren’t what they used to be. A president can be burnt in effigy now at the slightest of provocations. Because of the volatile temperaments of many in the middle east, the President’s effigy could be burnt only because he backed the wrong sports team, which by coincidence, he generally does. The recent round of Obama burning was caused by Qaddafi loyalists unhappy over the U.S.’s recent bombing campaign in Libya. Well, you just can’t win. If Obama had bombed the other side, perhaps someone would have torched an entire airplane of people in real life, never mind effigies.
However, these impolite acts of disrespect shouldn’t faze this or any President. Obviously, you can’t have all the people love you. There are people who don’t like Ronald McDonald and he represents food and laughter. What chance does a guy have who drops Prius-sized bombs on people? They should take the perspective of the Chinese. In that culture, images of consumer goods are burnt at the sending off of a deceased person so that they may receive them in the afterlife. Imagine if this were to actually work. When the Muslim martyrs arrive in heaven to receive their 24 virgins, they’ll also be met by the countless amounts of American Presidents they burnt during their protests. Allah may be great, but hopefully he also has a sense of humor.
link Report: Too many whites, men leading military – Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq – Navy Times.
Readers of the link will notice that the report was written by an “independent” group. Presumably, this was compiled without any bias or implication. I’m hardly an expert on the military, but I do know that to attain the rank of officer, you generally have to go through military school to learn about warfare strategy and leadership as well has having combat experience. When you have the lives of so many men as your responsibility, the process of assigning leadership roles should not be based on some kind of racial quota. Do equal numbers of minorities go to military school? The military is one of the last places where quotas should be at play. It has to be a meritocracy.
We hear about the notion of over-representation in other areas of society as well. Notably, those in prison seem to overwhelmingly be comprised of specific demographic groups. This may be of consternation to some, but what if they actually committed most of the crimes? Should the prison population reflect the constituency of the population at large in order to be a fair society? Of more significance perhaps is the over-representation of progressive liberals in the education and college system. Now there’s an area which needs some diversification.
I wonder if there’s such a survey which records the eating preferences of patrons at restaurants. Do most people disproportionately order chicken over beef? Should people be coerced or mandated to eat some equal representation of meats or veggies? What if one just happens to taste better. What about goats? They are vastly underrepresented in restaurants. According the website www.makeicecream.com, the most popular flavour of ice cream is….vanilla, by over a 3 to 1 margin over chocolate. So what.
What about basketball players? Most players are well over 6 feet in height. Do we then say that too many tall people are playing basketball? Clearly, short people are under-represented in their ranks. As most liberals and progressives try to frame any discussions involving race or sex issues as ones of unjust bias, they can never be taken seriously. It doesn’t register with them that to assign arbitrary race qoutas to any endeavour of skill or talent is in itself racist. When you buy a package of M & M’s, they’re all basically the same, but some people will choose red over blue. So what? On the other hand, in a jar of mixed nuts, some will pick out the pecans over all others. So what? Why do people choose any particular dog breed over another? Presumably, there is some trait that’s desired in that breed.
People who push the quota nonsense on the public usually have some agenda and that usually involves inhibiting free choice and market forces. It’s useful to invoke that famous quote by Deng Xiao Ping here. ” It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, only that it catches mice”.