JeruSalem Witch Trials

Back in 1995, Congress voted overwhelmingly (93 to 5 in the Senate and 374 to 37 in the House) to formally recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by 1999.  Every six months since, the sitting President has signed a waiver to postpone moving the embassy, up to and including the last time President Trump did so.  President Clinton was in office in 1995, and every President since (Bush, Obama, Trump) made campaign promises regarding Jerusalem as the Capital and the moving of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.  Bush lied.  Obama lied.  Trump told the truth.  We can finally party like it's 1999.

Jerusalem IS the Capital of Israel.  This is stating the obvious, and has not been all that controversial in Congress.  In fact, in June of THIS YEAR, the Senate voted 90-0 (you read that correctly) to reaffirm Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and acknowledge the 1995 law.  Yes, it was a non-binding resolution, and yes, it included language that the permanent status of Jerusalem was to be decided by Israel and Palestine negotiating a two-state solution (that still stands), but it reaffirmed the stance of the United States toward Jerusalem, unanimously.  That's a rarity in the Senate these days.  Even General James Mattis had a vote against him when he was confirmed 98-1 to serve as Secretary of Defense.  And yet, since Trump officially announced a few weeks ago that Jerusalem is the Capital and we will be moving our embassy there, there has been massive outcry from the Left.  Many on the Left are against it, and they're in good company with anti-Semites from all over the world.

My bad.  I didn't mean to call Leftists anti-Semites.  They could just be dumb.  Or maybe they really think that it's going to cause additional conflict in the Middle East, which has just been a bastion of peace with the frequent days of rage and all countries surrounding Israel wanting to wipe it off the map entirely.  Declining to officially recognize Jerusalem and move the embassy there for the last 22 years has worked so well.  Besides, President Trump is a raging anti-Semite.  Remember during the campaign when he was being all bigoted and racist and homophobic and shit?  Like hating people who came here from other countries after having married someone like that, and waving the gay pride flag on stage in the process of becoming the first President to have been in favor of gay marriage prior to taking office?  But on top of that, one of his campaign ads was like a dog whistle to anti-Semites and white nationalists or something.  Yeah, really.  Not the kind of guy who would let his daughter marry a dirty Jew.  And seeing as he's sexist, he would exercise his authoritarianism over her and stop that from ever happening.  ...Oh wait, she did what?  And they had kids?  Oops...

During Trump's campaign, I was pretty firmly in the Gary Johnson camp until I broke for Trump just before the election, but I would engage in political discourse on social media now and then.  A lot of negative things were being said about both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, which was fair, because they were two terrible candidates.  One of my friends on Facebook posted multiple negative things about Donald Trump daily, as many of them did, and I never commented on any of them until one day he posted about Trump being an anti-Semite.  By this point in his presidency, Obama had shown himself to be a not-so-great friend of Israel, and Trump seemed like he would not make a great President, but was not anti-Semitic and would at least be quite pro-Israel, so I commented.  A few comments and f-words directed at me later, and I was unfriended.  Looking back, this sort of interaction should have helped me realize that Trump was going to win the Presidency, but it wasn't until the early returns on election night started coming in when I realized that was even a possibility.  I was resigned to the fact that Hillary Clinton was going to be our 45th President, which thankfully turned out to be fake news.

Donald Trump was elected President, and President Obama refused to veto the United Nations vote condemning Israeli settlements in Palestine as a parting shot.  And today, the United Nations voted 128-9 to condemn President Trump's move on Jerusalem.  I haven't been able to say it very often until the past few weeks, but I am proud of President Trump.  If he can avoid saying dumb things on Twitter about TV ratings and whatever else, I might be able to start saying that regularly.  And Nikki Haley's speech at the UN made me proud as well.  There's a strong women that our girls should look up to as a role model.  There is a woman who I would love to vote into office if she even ran for President.  Not Sarah Palin, and certainly not Hillary Clinton, but Nikki Haley, who stood up in front of a largely anti-Semitic organization today and condemned it, echoing Trump.  They're both correct.  The United Nations is a garbage organization that regularly votes to condemn Israel more than they condemn any other country.  I hope Trump follows through and pulls funding, notably for any and all of the 128 countries who condemned the United States today.

O Jerusalem!  The ancient Capital of Israel, the eternal Capital of Israel.  Two reasons I believe we are right in recognizing it as the Capital are History and the current state of affairs.  You see, Israel recognizes that Jerusalem is a significant place for the religious history of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Israel allows people of all faiths to worship there freely.  Does anyone really believe--and answer honestly now--that if the Palestinians controlled Jerusalem, they would allow people of all faiths to come there and worship freely?  The answer is clearly no.  The Palestinian Government is basically a terrorist organization, paying people who murder Jews.  Many of the Muslims in the Middle East (though none that I've talked to personally in the United States) believe that Israel should be wiped off the map.  That is the definition of antisemitism.  I have zero respect for that point of view.

For purposes of full disclosure, I will state that I am a Christian, and that does inform my worldview, but that is not the sole reason I believe that Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel.  However, I will point out that it is an extremely small minority of Christians who are in favor of President Trump's recent actions because they are trying to hasten Armageddon.  That is a ridiculous view, and it is equally ridiculous for non-Christians to believe that it's anywhere close to a mainstream Christian view.  And being against President Trump's actions does not actually make you an anti-Semite.  There are plenty of reasons to be against it too, like hating Trump, being scared of Muslims in the Middle East getting angry and trying to blow more shit up, and, in the words of the great George Costanza, "Astroturf?  You know who's responsible for that, don't you?!  The Jews!  Ah, the Jews hate grass.  They always have, they always will."

Sexual Misdeeds Multiple Choice Exam

There seems to be some confusion these days as to what is and is not acceptable when it comes to sexual assault and sexual harassment, so I took a picture of a baseball card from 1981 and came up with ten questions to help steer everyone in the right direction.  Feel free to take the exam yourself and share with others who would like to test their knowledge.  Best of Luck, America!  You'll need it to get out of this giant hole we're in because of all the awful folks who went into smaller holes that they should not have been in.  Also, trigger warning.  For so many reasons.  Probably should have said that earlier...

1. When is it acceptable to engage in sexual intercourse with someone?
A: When the person is sleeping, passed out, or inebriated
B: When the person says "No" repeatedly but you know the person really means "Yes"
C: When the person says, "Mr. Clinton, please get off!"
D: When the person is a consenting adult, because it's not rape if it's consensual

2. When is it acceptable for an adult to engage in sexual acts with a child?
A: When the adult is a Muslim
B: When the adult is a Christian
C: When the adult is a U.S. Senator or a candidate for the U.S. Senate
D: It is never fucking acceptable for this to occur!  Are you fucking kidding me?

3. When is it acceptable to touch or grab a person's butt?
A: When you're taking a photo with the person in public
B: When you literally just can't even because dat ass tho
C: When you've cornered someone and they look nervous, so it will ease the tension
D: When you have a relationship with this person wherein this activity has been consented to

4. Which of the following people is fit to be a U.S. Congressman?
A: A Democrat from New Jersey allegedly involved with underage prostitutes
B: A Republican from Alabama who allegedly molested underage girls decades ago
C: A Democrat from Michigan accused of sexual harassment but called an icon by Nancy Pelosi
D: None of the above

5. In which of the following cases is sexual abuse or harassment considered acceptable?
A: Even if President Clinton raped someone, he's in favor of a woman's right to choose, so it's cool
B: Even if Judge Moore molested young girls, he's against murdering babies, so it's cool
C: Even if Senator Franken groped women, he's funny and has done a lot for women, so it's cool
D: There are different levels of abuse and harassment, but none of these are acceptable

6. Which beings should be able to get away with sexual abuse or harassment?
A: Big shots at Fox News or NBC, because they can make or break your career
B: Hollywood Elite, because they can make or break your career
C: Comedians, because they're hilarious
D: Pit bulls if they bite the cocks off of would-be rapists

7. When should women who come forward with sexual assault allegations be believed?
A: Always, because even if it takes some innocent men down, that's a price we're willing to pay
B: Never, because bitches are liars who are looking for money and fame
C: Sometimes, depending on the political party the person they are accusing belongs to
D: Dependent upon the credibility of their stories, disregarding admiration or disdain for the accused

8. When is it the victim's own fault for being raped?
A: When she was asking for it because of that tank top and those leggings
B: When she shouldn't have let herself be alone with a guy who suffers from sex addiction
C: When he shouldn't have gone to that party hosted by an older man who was interested in him
D: Literally never

9. Which of these cultures is inferior and should have no place in America?
A: One in which child brides are forced to marry older men, and beating women is permissible
B: One in which women are forced to commit sex acts and stay quiet about them to get acting gigs
C: Neither, because you're not allowed to judge whether or not a culture outside your own is inferior
D: Both, because you damn well can judge the inferiority of a culture if they're doing that shit

10: Which of the following reactions to finding out about sexual assault is acceptable?
A: Pretending it did not happen for the good of the school's top-tier college football program
B: Attempting to intimidate and silence your husband's victims and then running for President
C: Keeping quiet about it, but occasionally telling jokes about it, especially when in Hollywood
D: Beating the perpetrator senseless if you catch him or her in the act, then calling the police

Answer Key:  The answer to all 10 questions is D, which is also a part of the anatomy that one should control properly.  If you scored 100 percent on this exam, congratulations, you might not be a terrible human being!  If you answered anything other than D to any of these questions, please stay away from politics, the entertainment industry, and other human beings.

Harvey Danger

What is it that causes men like Harvey Weinstein to sexually abuse women?  And what is it that allows them to continue to abuse women over the course of many decades?  The answer to the first question is easy: lust and power.  All men lust (a.k.a. sin), but not all men have power.  Harvey thought he could get away with it (and he did, for a horrifyingly long time) because of his power, and without a solid moral compass, one most often found rooted in the principles set forth by God himself, Harvey sexually abused many women in disgusting ways.  We can use the word "allegedly" as much as we want to, but when dozens of women come forward with similar stories and Hollywood insiders claim to have known something about what he was doing, though perhaps not the full extent of it, it's hard to imagine that the man was innocent of all charges.  Just like Bill Cosby.  Just like Bill O'Reilly.  Just like Mark Halperin.  Just like Roger Ailes.  I mean, heck, our President himself had some keen insight on a hot mic over a decade ago--something along the lines of when you're a star, you can do what you want.  Grab them by the pussy.  Right?  Such a shame he didn't lose the election to a corrupt woman who tried to discredit and bring down all the women who accused her own dear husband of harassment, assault, abuse, and straight up rape.  Yeah, Trump's not great, but when it comes to sexually abusing women, former President Bill Clinton has him beat.  "Allegedly."

It doesn't matter where you are politically when it comes to sexual abuse.  The Clintons are on the left, as is Weinstein, as is Halperin, and Anthony Weiner, who is finally going to prison, although for some reason (money and powerful friends like the Clintons), not for nearly enough time.  And Ailes was on the right, which is where O'Reilly is.  I'm not really sure where to put Bill Cosby.  There are plenty of other examples.  But if there's no political affiliation specific to sexual abusers, what then do we attribute it to?  Well, first and foremost, a Judeo-Christian view of sex would help things a bit, as this would include treating women as people instead of objects, as well as viewing sex as something to be done in much more select circumstances, rather than whenever we want with whomever we please.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, that means marriage, but if you don't follow that, it can still be treated less flippantly that our culture treats it right now.  Sex is everywhere.

And to those on the far left, the third wave feminist bullshit must stop. Those of you who are traditional feminists who believe in equality for men and women, I'm with you.  But the man-hating, men-and-women-are-the-same, white-men-ruin-everything mentality is toxic.  Men and women are different, and their sex drives are different, whether you like it or not.  And white men did not ruin anything.  We can't even agree on what a white person is.  When my grandparents came here, they weren't considered white, because Italians weren't considered white at the time.  They were I-talians or wops and whatever other slur.  They did not enjoy this thing called "white privilege."  They did not own slaves.  Their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents did not own slaves.  They were despised: like the Irish, like the Blacks, like the Asians, who were put into interment camps during World War II.  Injustices abound.  No good comes from vilifying an entire race, or an entire sex, and no good comes from trying to be something that you're not.  No good comes from treating sex like it's no big deal, or that you have power and can prove it by having sex whenever you choose.  And no good comes from frequent one-night stands, abortions being touted as virtuous, and injecting sex into everything.

The #METOO hashtag is a way for people who have been sexually abused of harassed to share their stories, because a lot of women (and men) have been abused and/or harassed, and it's very sad, but we need to define and understand the difference between harassment and abuse and what is and it not acceptable.  For example, the story that came out about wheelchair-bound President George H.W. Bush touching the butt of an actresses during a photo opportunity and telling a lame joke is NOT on the same level as some other heinous acts.  The former President can barely move, probably can't get his arm much further up than ass-level from his chair, and did so in a very public and non-threatening setting, and, quite possibly, is suffering from dementia.  I'm not saying it's OK to do that if he's not suffering from dementia (it's not), but it's not even close to the level of harassing or sexually abusing women in private, in a threatening environment, where the man is someone who wouldn't probably die if you punched him with any amount of power...  Also, as far as #METOO goes, if the anonymity allows a sexually-abusive person still in power to potentially continue to abuse new victims, why not actually call these people out rather than waiting until everyone else does, like what happened with Harvey or Bill Cosby?

But I would be a hypocrite if I didn't tell my own #METOO story.  I don't believe that one-in-three women are raped in college or whatever bullshit statistic the left tries to jam down the throats of college students.  But I do believe that just about everyone is at least sexually harassed at some point; certainly women more often, but men too.  And sexual harassment is different than sexual abuse, and really, everyone is different in how they react to things.  It doesn't always necessitate reporting it to the authorities.  I've had both women and men say sexual things to me that were inappropriate, but these things did not impact me at all.  Perhaps the worst case of sexual harassment I experienced personally (and yes, I'm lucky in that) was when some guy grabbed my ass when I was walking into a party during college and said something along the lines of "Hey, sexy, I'd like to have some of that."  To this I replied some derivative of, "Get your hands the fuck off of me" and kept walking.  That was it.  And his behavior was not acceptable, but I'm the kind of person who that sort of thing did not impact.  It was minor, and I had no need to report him and impact his life negatively when he had zero impact on my life, although for someone else, that decision could have absolutely been the opposite.  But to me, it was probably just some gay guy I didn't know who had way too much to drink.  Whatever.  And quite honestly, if a woman did that to me, I would have probably smiled and laughed, and if she was attractive, who knows where that night could have gone, but I acknowledge that it's a double standard at work there.  Men should not do that to women, if only because men are (like it or not, in general) the stronger sex, and that sort of behavior could impact someone negatively, regardless of the sexes of the perpetrator and the victim.

That's what I have to say to the left, but my message to the right may be even more crass and less well-received, because the right is the place I was raised, and the church is the place I was raised, so I know all about its failures.  Yes, I still lean right, and I still go to church, but there are so many problems inherent to communities and churches on the right that allow for sexual assault to thrive.  And I will now call them out and rampage against them, because while people certainly can and should forgive those who have wronged them, sexual abuse is NEVER acceptable.  First and foremost, the church can never be a place that fosters sexual abuse in anyway, nor should it protect abusers.  Known abusers should immediately be reported to the police and proper authorities.  Forgiveness is indeed ideal, but punishment must also run its course, and known abusers should immediately be removed from any positions of power within the church.

I was talking to a good friend of mine last month.  We happened to first cross paths many years ago in a church that we both attended for a while, and though it was not the church I grew up in, it was the church that she grew up in for several formative years during her childhood.  It was a conservative independent fundamental Christian church.  She told me some disturbing things that I believe contribute to rape culture.  Apparently, the girls, often but not always in classes and Bible studies with only girls, were told how they should dress.  They need to wear loose-fitting clothing, fashion to the knee, and shirts that don't have a low enough neck-line such that guys can easily look down it.  And in that church, boys and girls weren't even allowed to swim together.  And don't get me started on the rules about guys and girls being alone together.  A pastor once questioned me when I drove a teenage girl home, from a family I had known since before she was born, with no one else in the car.
"So which part of the Bible did the use to justify what they were telling you?" I asked my friend.
"They were always saying that we needed to dress modestly.  You know, like no tank tops or short skirts or things like that. Because they said it could tempt the guys and cause them to stumble."
"Based on what?  Have they read the Bible?  Where does it say that?"

I Timothy 2:9 talks about modesty, saying ^"that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array" and I Peter 3:3 mentions that women ought to avoid "outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel."  I didn't have a Bible with me when we were having this discussion, but I shared my belief that Biblical modesty means not wearing over-the-top expensive things in order to bring attention to yourself above all others or show off your wealth.  This was likely something largely cultural, and it had nothing to do with how much skin a woman was showing.  No, I'm not saying it's acceptable to wear a bikini to church, for the same reason it's not acceptable to wear a bikini to work (unless you work at a pool or beach), but I am saying that it's fine to wear a bikini at a pool or beach if you want to.  You should wear what's appropriate in its place.  At least, there certainly isn't anything in the Bible that says you should not.
"Actually," I told my friend, "I think it's demeaning not just to women but to MEN if you take that point of view, as if we're basic animals and a man can't control himself when he sees a woman wearing a tank top or a shirt skirt?  You remember the story of David and Bathsheba?  David saw her bathing, naked, lusted after her, committed adultery with her, and had her husband killed.  Who does the Bible blame for that?  David!  It's David's own fault that he did that.  The Bible doesn't say anything about how Bathsheba shouldn't have been naked in public in the first place.  That's how they bathed back then.  So ridiculous!"

The truth is that men are going to lust after women, no matter what they are wearing.  I've lusted after women who were wearing layers of clothing and dressed according to every possible definition of modesty.  That doesn't matter, although it does matter that I did not act inappropriately on it.  The only thing that women not wearing "revealing" clothing does is reduce the immediate knee-jerk turned-on reaction of straight men seeing you for the first time dressed (or undressed) in that way.  If the man lusts or acts inappropriately at that point, it is entirely on the man.  Why should a woman not be allowed to wear what she wants or what she feels comfortable wearing?  I agree with the feminists here, including the crazy ones: A woman SHOULD be able to wear whatever she wants to, and it is NOT her fault if a man harasses, assaults, or rapes her.  That is victim-blaming, and that feeds into a rape culture mentality.  And too many--yes, too fucking many--conservative Christian churches play into this dangerous lie that perpetuates rape culture.  I've skinny-dipped with beautiful women and haven't assaulted or harassed them.  Yeah, take that, ye of sheltered ignorance.  I'm not an extraordinary person, and I do very much enjoy seeing naked women, but I simply respect women.  The Bible teaches respect for all human beings, and my dad and mom raised me to respect women, so I try to do so.  Nudity does not equal sex.  Naked or scantily-clad women are not necessarily looking for sex.  Sex is not an unimportant thing to be trifled with, and it ideally belongs only within a marriage.  And even if you have sex outside of marriage, no means no: simple as that.

"Well, did they ever teach you what to do when a guy did hit on you?" I asked my friend.
"No."
"What about how to hit on a guy that you're interested in?"
"No."
"So just what to wear so a guy doesn't hit on you?  Even though they'll eventually hit on you anyway?  You know, seeing as you're a beautiful girl no matter what you're wearing..."
"Yup."
"Wow.  Really useful.  I'm glad I left that church..."

The title of this post refers to the danger of situations like those that Harvey Weinstein put certain women in, but I feel it's appropriate, or perhaps inappropriate, to end the post with the first few lines of the most famous song by the rock band Harvey Danger.
"I had visions, I was in them, I was looking into the mirror, to see a little bit clearer, rottenness and evil in me.  Fingertips have memories, mine can't forget the curves of your body, and when I feel a bit naughty, I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes, but no one ever does..."

Ignoreland

Mainstream media has developed a nasty habit of largely ignoring things that don't fit a certain narrative.  A few months ago, the arrest of the IT staffer of Debbie Wasserman Schultz was largely ignored, as was the revelation that a Democratic agency set up the infamous Donald Trump, Jr. Russian meeting, though that meeting itself certainly got far more than its share of coverage.  It's continued to happen since then, with lesser stories and every stupid comment or tweet from President Trump dominating the headlines.  And now protests during the National Anthem at NFL games dominate the headlines, and today there was something about NCAA coaches in trouble for getting paid to steer athletes towards different agents or companies or something I don't care about.  Almost no one is talking about the shooting that happened at the church in Tennessee because it doesn't fit the mainstream media narrative.  The mess that is Puerto Rico isn't dominating the news for some reason (haven't figured that one out, because that does fit the narrative and the media can just try to blame it on Trump being bigoted or something--that asshole probably sent the hurricane there intentionally by pulling out of the Paris Agreement, obviously).  But I guess we would rather hear about how immigrants in the United States are like Jews in Nazi Germany (asinine), or how Hillary Clinton wrote a book and does yoga (boring and bad visual), and that NFL Players are being called brave for not standing in a show of respect for a flag that actual brave men and women fought to protect.  Fabulous.

Meanwhile, ESPN and late night "comedy" shows have turned into extensions of the mainstream media arm.  When I watch ESPN, I want to see and hear about sports highlights.  I don't want a fucking analysis of who did or didn't stand for the National Anthem and why.  When I watch late night comedy, I want to laugh and... Forget it.  I don't watch much late night comedy anymore except for the occasional Saturday Night where I find myself at home and SNL is in season.  Hopefully there will be no more sad eulogies of epic failures of Presidential campaigns of awful candidates, but I digress...  Late night comedians used to have funny monologues.  They would rip on the President and everyone else.  Now it's just constantly ripping on President Trump, and it's rarely funny.  And a lot of people are mad because Stephen Colbert "normalized" Sean Spicer at the Emmy Awards by allowing him to make a somewhat funny joke about himself.  This is the same Stephen Colbert who jokingly gave a Nazi salute a few weeks ago as a dig at--you guessed it--President Trump.

Look, President Trump has made A LOT of mistakes.  He's done some good things, but he's done (mostly said) some stupid and bad things.  It's fun to ridicule him sometimes, and South Park got it exactly right last week: he needs to put his phone down and stop with the tweets.  But he won't.  That's how he rolls.  That's how he gets his message out directly to (Bane voice) you, the people.  We'll just have to live with it and trust that generals James Mattis (thank you, God, for James Mattis) and John Kelly have enough control to prevent any major unwanted international incidents.  But no one was going to protect Trump from the ire of many in the NFL community after he called those kneeling for anthems sons-of-bitches, called for them to be fired, and then went on a twitter rant about the whole thing.  Naturally, this just caused more people in the NFL to protest.  And on a couch somewhere, Colin Kapernick was smiling, sitting next to his racist girlfriend in his stupid Fidel Castro t-shirt.

I'm fine with NFL players protesting to raise awareness for racial injustice or for any other reason.  I think Colin Kapernick is wrong, and wildly inconsistent (see Fidel Castro t-shirt and his girlfriend's tweet that cost him a backup Quarterback job with the Ravens--ask Ray Lewis about that one), but also not a very good Quarterback.  Others have done what he did though.  Marshawn Lynch sat down and ate a banana during the National Anthem a few weeks ago.  He has a job because he's still a pretty good Running Back.  Also, the banana thing was kind of funny and at least more consistent than touting Fidel Castro as anything even remotely good.  Many of the Cleveland Browns refuse to stand for the anthem, though they also forget to stand for most of the game.  And this weekend, it seemed like more players than ever decided to protest, mostly in response to President Trump's comments.  If nothing else, they showed that President Trump is decidedly not Fascist, because not only are they all still free men, but they are continuing to make millions of dollars.  President Trump has no power over the actions of NFL executives, owners, and players, nor will he ever.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has been quite vocal that his players will stand for the anthem.  On Monday Night, he locked arms with his team and they knelt and then stood back up together before the National Anthem, in a show of unity.  That, in my estimation, is a good way to protest, to raise awareness, and to show unity.  Don't drag the National Anthem or the flag into it.  A lot of us in this country have a high level of respect for these things and what they represent.  Yes, you're allowed to kneel if you want to, and you may mean no disrespect, but it's the men and women who died fighting for this country who gave us the freedom that we enjoy here, including the freedom to peacefully protest.

If we want unity, we need to strive for unity and stop intentionally dividing people for no real reason.  Another story from a week or so ago that didn't get much coverage (though it was covered by The Blaze, interestingly enough) was what happened when some people running a pro-Trump rally decided invited Black Lives Matter protestors to come up to the stage and get their message out.  I'll let you hunt for the story if you want to find out what happened, but I'll sum up the theme in one word: Unity.  These are the stories that should be covered more, because Americans don't hate each other.  On the whole, we are not a racist nation anymore.  Yes, terrible things happened here in the past, and there still are some racist idiots hanging around today, but it's no longer the norm, and it's no longer accepted.

Anyway, I'm going to keep watching football--unless it's nice outside or I'm busy doing something else.  I don't like it when players kneel for the anthem, but if that's what some of them want to do, I'm not going to act like it's the end of the world, which may not be far off actually...  Oh, also, Puerto Rico is part of the United States for those of you who don't know, and it looks like we sent over some planes and ships a few hours ago, so that's good.  Let's pay attention to the people in Puerto Rico for now (and still Texas and Florida, of course) and ignore those kneeling for the National Anthem and that fat Asian dwarf threatening everyone with his big missiles because he's compensating for something and wants attention.  Mad Dog can handle that situation.

Control Alt: Delete

The Nazi symbol is never something I like to see, but seeing it in a movie about World War II reminds us of the horrible ideology that we defeated--an ideology that was, at least initially, espoused by only a handful of people.  But many more came on board to fight for the wrong side, and we ended up with tens of millions of dead people.  My blood doesn't boil when I see the Nazi symbol in a movie, but it boils when I see it being flown on flags in the streets of America.  But then, my blood boils when I see an American flag burned too, and, to a lesser extent, when I see a Confederate flag flown.  I get that it has a non-racist meaning to some people, and I don't think it should be illegal to fly any flag actually, but I personally despise the Confederate flag.  The Nazi flag, however, has one very clear, very racist meaning.  And at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend, some neo-Nazis showed up, along with white supremacists, KKK members, and whatever other groups defined themselves as alt-right.

Apparently folks who live in Charlottesville decided to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee and rename a park named after him as "Emancipation Park", so Charlottesville became a meeting place for white supremacists and alt-right folks from all over the country to hold a rally.  And hold one they did.  Roughly 0.001 percent of Americans showed up, equating to a few thousand people--less than the average attendance of a Single-A minor league baseball game.  It was not a large crowd by any stretch of the imagination, but a loud and vile crowd, filled with hateful scum-of-the-earth people.  And, naturally, people came to protest the human trash cans showing up in Charlottesville, and this included some members of the Fascist group called Antifa.  So the most violent extremists from both groups clashed, the cops initially acted on stand-down orders, and some 20-year-old terrorist neo-Nazi piece of human excrement showed up and plowed his car into and out of a crowd of protestors, killing one woman and injuring 19 other people.  Pure evil.

There is no excuse for racism.  There is no defending racism.  There is nothing to do but to state, very clearly, that racism is wrong.  Hating people because of the color of their skin is wrong.  Hating people because of where they were born is wrong.  And there is nothing right about the alt-right, whether right is taken to mean conservative or the opposite of wrong.  Conservatives are in favor of the Constitution and small government.  White supremacists, simply by being white supremacists, are against the Constitution and many of the pillar values that America stands for.  And declaring one race as superior to another certainly does not lend itself to small government.  It lends itself to fascism, not unlike Adolf Hitler.  And say what you want about President Trump--I'll give some thoughts on him in a minute--but stop comparing him to Hitler.  Stop calling him a Nazi.  We saw real Nazis descend upon Virginia this weekend, and we got just a glimpse of what true hate looks like.

The problem with Trump is that he has often been slow to condemn white nationalists, and a bit vague.  He finally clearly called out all of the white supremacists hate groups that descended on Virginia and condemned them yesterday, though he's being criticized for taking too long to explicitly call them out, despite condemning racism itself on the day the white supremacist terrorist struck.  At least some of the criticism is justified though, as his vagueness and delay in making a very specific statement emboldened white supremacists, as they mistook it to mean that Trump was on their side.  However, now that he's finally made a a specific statement, white supremacists can no longer pretend that Trump is a Nazi just like them, and now they are speaking out against Trump.  And despite the Left implying causation on Trump, what happened in Charlottesville is not Trump's fault.  It's the fault of one specific domestic terrorist.  And the stuff that happened before it was the fault of the alt-right and the alt-left, and it's the same stuff that's been happening recently throughout the country, where a schism has been growing for years, but it never would have been as big of a story if this one terrorist didn't use his car as a weapon for murder.

At this particular point, the Left is most angry at Trump for saying that both sides were violent, despite the obvious fact, backed up by plenty of reporters on scene, that both sides were violent.  Many members of Antifa and the alt-left are violent, even attempting murder if you can remember as far back as the shooting of Republican members of Congress at baseball practice.  Many white supremacists, obviously, are violent, if you can remember anything from the ugly side of American history.  Both groups can be wrong, even if you don't try to create a moral equivalency between them.  The existence of Antifa is actually something that can drive more people to the alt-right who think that they must choose one extreme position against another extreme position.  And apparently some people on both sides really, really care whether or not Confederate statues are torn down.  I don't.  On one hand, I see the need to preserve history, and I'm in favor of keeping these statues as a reminder, even a somber one, of our history.  On the other hand. the Confederacy lost, and I hate what it stood for, so I really don't care if they are torn down.  But this sort of thing is how we end up with clashes between extremists on both sides, and the folks who decided to take the Charlottesville statue down in the first place weren't even extremists.  It was local government at work, working as local government should, but extremists on both sides invaded, and it turned into mayhem and murder, and that was even before the two police officers died in the helicopter accident trying to control the rioting.

Thanks to folks like Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos from the far-right media, in conjunction with the left-leaning mainstream media, the term alt-right has grown to apparently include a lot more people than folks who are actually alt-right white nationalists.  Bannon and Yiannopoulos, while not white supremacists themselves, provided platforms and excuses for the alt-right, making it seem like some folks could come under its umbrella even without identifying with its rotten core of white supremacist values.  The mainstream media pushed this narrative, as did much of the left, when they identified not just Bannon and Yiannopoulos as alt-right, but other Conservatives and decidedly non-alt-right personalities.  I laughed a little bit at the look on Ben Shapiro's face earlier this year when someone at a talk he was giving at a college shouted him down and called him a Nazi, which he responded to by pointing to the yamaka on his head.  Ben Shapiro is, decidedly, non-alt-right.  Ben Shapiro is a Jew and, in fact, a favorite target of the alt-right.  Even as recently as a few weeks ago, some were calling him alt-right.  If folks keep calling people Nazis and alt-right who are not that, it's going to get harder and harder to tell when they're telling the truth and someone is actually an alt-right Nazi, and it might actually drive more people into the wretched arms of the alt-right.

If we want to end the alt-right and the alt-left, we need to stop giving these people platforms and press.  Sure, they have the right to say what they want under the First Amendment, short of calling for violence, but the press doesn't have to cover them, and we have the right to not listen to them.  Sadly, some number of racists will always exist, and hopefully that number continues to dwindle, because racism makes zero fucking sense.  I can't even wrap my mind around why racism is a thing.  It's counter-intuitive and against human nature to judge someone by skin color or nationality instead of by personality or content of character.  There is something mentally wrong with racists, even more with those who are violent racists.  And as far as the alt-left, if you take pride in pointing out that this was a white terrorist and not a Muslim terrorist or black gang member who struck in Virginia, but you would hate it when someone pointed out the same thing if it were a Muslim terrorist or black gang member who struck, you're part of a problem too.  All terrorism and all murder is problematic, and we should focus on solutions and determining why a 20-year-old racist White supremacist can drive his car into a crowd of people or why Islamic extremists of roughly the same age can bomb the Boston Marathon.  And for fucks sake, stop regressing to segregation!  Blacks-only graduations or dorms or whatever makes me sick to my stomach.  Because history.  If you really want to do it, you have the right to in post-Jim Crow America.  But know that the KKK wants the same thing, which is a thing that people like Martin Luther King fought against.

Ideally, the alt-right will disappear, and groups like Antifa will disappear as well.  The massive majority of Americans in the relatively-sane and non-extremist category will prevail.  And General John Kelly will tell Steven Bannon he can keep his job if he can pass a very basic physical fitness test for a male: Maybe something like doing five push-ups, five sit-ups, and five pull-ups in forty-five seconds.  Bannon probably wouldn't even attempt it either.  He would just walk out of the White House, hopefully forever.  But then, because I just fat-shamed him and also implied something that can be deemed sexist by specifying the test was basic for males, someone out there will accuse me of being a member of the alt-right.

Government Inefficiency is Astounding

I just figured out that the earbuds I brought with me, for some reason, do not work in my phone. So much for listening to an Andrew Klavan podcast on my train ride to Washington, D.C.  But being on Amtrak headed to our nation's Capitol got me thinking about the inefficiencies of our Government on display for all to see every single day.  So since I won't arrive in D.C. until the wee hours of the morning, I have plenty of time to hammer out a blog post from my smart phone.  Hopefully not too much time though. We haven't arrived at Penn Station yet, which I hear is disastrous these days...

You see, the Government owns Amtrak. Amtrak isn't doing well.  Neither is the United States Postal Service, which is owned by the same Government, of course.  Our nation is in trillions of dollars of debt, and many states are billions in debt themselves.  So why does anyone think that it's a good idea to let the Government run more things?  We're kidding ourselves if we think the solution to failing Obamacare is a single-payer system run by the Government.  No, the Republican Bill that didn't have a prayer of passing in the Senate wasn't the solution either.  But anything that allows more freedom and more Capitalism would be a step in the right direction.  Health Insurance companies ought to compete for business just like other companies, which will lead to lower prices.  We can start by opening up competition across state lines and continue by working on a bipartisan effort to fix the mess we are in.

The cost of many procedures and medications in the United States far exceeds that of many other countries.  If things cost less in other places, an opportunity exists for companies to compete and drive down costs.  Republicans and Democrats should get together and figure out why this isn't happening to the extent it ought to be.  Are there regulations in place stifling competition and Capitalism?  Do we disallow certain companies to compete in certain places?  I don't know the answers, but I know the astronomical cost of some very basic and fast healthcare procedures, and it just simply does not add up in my mind or the mind of anyone who is paying attention.  An inefficiency exists, and it must be fixable.

I don't fully agree with Conservative Libertarian folks like Ben Shapiro on Obamacare though.  Notably, despite the cost, we should find a way to support what Obamacare did in making sure folks with pre-existing conditions can have affordable healthcare.  No, I don't like that Obamacare is a tax for people who opt out of coverage, but if healthcare savings are realized elsewhere, this particular clause ought to have no trouble maintaining its funding.   If not, well, there are plenty of less important things that the Government is funding.  Or we can legalize weed and tax the crap out of it (admittedly not a Libertarian idea here, but I like it's guaranteed to bring in money and marijuana should be legal anyway).

I'm stopped at Penn Station now.  Why is the person who gives the announcements always either loud and annoying or impossible to understand?  Oh, for fucks sake, I know where we are going and where the trash cans and bathrooms are.  Do you actually have anything relevant to say, sir?  Oh, we're being delayed because we are waiting for a train to come in from Montreal?  Big surprise there...  I can't wait until this 29-minute hyperloop thing connecting NYC and DC actually happens.  Hopefully the Government keeps its hand out of it as much as possible...

Anyway, other examples of Government waste that I've encountered just today?  On my drive to work (East Haven to Wallingford, CT), they were repaving the street near my house.  That's been going on for a week already.  There was nothing wrong with the street.  Barely any potholes.  And they just redid that very same street a few years ago.  Do we really need to close two lanes for a mile and hire a bunch of cops so a few guys can actually do work, each surrounded by several trucks of all sorts?  Then, just outside of where I work, continues a project that's been going on for over a year, wherein they are changing the location of the on-ramp for the Parkway.  Most of the time, no work is happening, but there are often cops and Department of Transportation trucks.  When work is being done, it's like one guy with a jackhammer being watched by ten guys, with two guys directing traffic and some others just standing around.  I saw a viral video where a much more difficult project in another country was shown on time lapse.  It took three days.  Where are we on that?

I'm still stuck at Penn Station.

What else?  How about all the rules and regulations and Government specifications?  Some are necessary, but others are not, and they drive the cost of the products my company makes through the roof whenever the Government is the end user.  It's fine for my company though.  No matter, the taxpayers foot those bills.  And I'm sure it's not just my company.  I've heard stories where the same hardware you can get from Home Depot is marked up more than a hundred fold when sold to the Government with the required certifications.  One of my favorite new regulations came about last year, where several companies we do business with flowed down requirements from the Government that our company had to have a procedure for combatting human trafficking.  That's all well and good because we are all against human trafficking, except we didn't have a procedure and the corporate legal team had to come up with one, because we are a defense contractor in America that happens to not engage in prostitution on our premesis.  At least that particular clause wasn't too expensive to implement...

While we're at it with Government finance ideas, let's push campaign finance reform.  We just set a record for the most money spent in a House campaign--right around $50 million, the larger portion of which was by the loser, Ossoff.  How does that shit get funded while we debate healthcare and ways to help the poor?  Actually, maybe this is a rare spot where an additional Government regulation can help.  How about we mandate that candidates only get a certain percentage of the money donated to them, while the rest goes into a massive fund to help pay for healthcare for the impoverished (not that they are refused treatment anyway in the U.S.)?  Or perhaps we can just have it go directly to local food banks and homeless shelters?  I'm full of ideas when I'm stuck on a train that isn't moving...

I haven't heard much about pushing for a flat tax lately either.  That would be nice.  By the way, is everyone familiar with the Laffer curve?  It's the most basic reason why Bernie Sanders and many of his supporters lack a basic understanding of how the economy works.  If you've never heard of it, do yourself a favor and look it up.

A larger woman just sat down next to me.  I'm glad I'm not on an airplane.  On an airplane though, they really ought to make you buy two seats if you're over a certain size.  And if you show up having only bought one seat and are unable to fit entirely in that one seat, those are the people who should get kicked off the flight.  The train is finally moving again!  I think it's time for a nap.  Maybe I'll wake up and we'll have a Libertarian Government.  Then I will realize that it's just a dream, because it's more likely that we'll just have more headlines about the current administration's alleged collusion with Russia instead...

Redskins Win! (Not at Football)

The Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously on Matal v. Tam, allowing the front man of a band called The Slants to register the band's name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.  In the case, SCOTUS ruled a ban on names deemed offensive by the government as unconstitutional.  This is great news for the Redskins, and the other shoe dropped today when The Justice Department told a federal appeals court that they are conceding that the Redskins of the NFL will not have a trademark revocation.

This was, in my opinion, the correct decision, and it makes me feel a bit better about my country that it was a unanimous decision, meaning that even the justices often considered to be far Left were in agreement with an obvious defense of the First Amendment.  Sure, The Slants are an Asian-American band, so it's accepted to be fine and not racist, like when an African-American uses the N-word.  But the point is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark office can't block things that it finds offensive, that other people might find offensive, or that someone can construe as hate speech.  This is a huge win for free speech.

While the Redskins are different than The Slants in that the Redskins are not an exclusively Native American football team, it's a name that's been around since the days of the Great Depression.  No one seemed to have a problem with it until recently, and even now, it seems to be a handful of people on the far Left who have nothing better to do than protest the names of things and search for Native Americans who will agree with them to legitimize their triggered state.  While I understand why "Redskins" is a poor choice for a football team and "The Slants" is a poor name for a band, because we live in a free country, it's really not my decision to make.  Nor should it be.  If people are really upset by the name of something, the free market would serve to punish the business owners.  If I opened up a business called The Mountain Wop Shop, that should be my decision, and not only because I'm Italian-American.  If I want to name a cleaning product Spic and Span, that should be my decision, even though I'm not Hispanic.  ...Oh wait, someone already did that?  Where are the protests for that?

Not too far down the road from where I live is Yale University, where they are changing the name of Calhoun College because of John Calhoun's dealings in the slave industry.  Although it amounts to caving to the demands of angry Leftists who are always looking for things to complain about, that's Yale's decision to make.  But if Yale students are really serious, I wonder why they aren't protesting for Yale University to change its name.  Elihu Yale was a slave trader.  Could it be because it would be directly opposed to their self-interest?  Yale is a prestigious school--arguably the best in the world.  It's a well-recognized and well-respected name.  Changing its name to Tubman University or something, while it may make some folks feel good or vindicated, would be an absolute disaster.  It would take a long time for Tubman University to become a household name.

And it would be a long time until the Washington Red Hats or Potato Skins or Red Potatoes or whatever they would be called in lieu of the Redskins became a household name (Washington Congress would be great because they lose a lot and have a low approval rating).  And while we're at it, we must consider the feelings of those on the far Right.  Somewhere out there, there are conservative Christian mothers angry that Eddie Vedder's band is called Pearl Jam, which is just a term that means semen.  How about we start calling them Raspberry Jam instead?

One day a student would escape the oppressive Leftist regime at Tubman University via an underground railroad, catch a Red Potatoes game at a local bar, and get invited to attend a Raspberry Jam concert with new friends.  But later, his new friends would decide to give his ticket to someone else because they were Indian givers all along.

Political Toxicity Beyond Fever Pitch

Last Thursday was a shitty day in our nation's history.  Former FBI Director James Comey was called to Capitol Hill to testify under oath, and neither Democrats nor Republicans could stop themselves from being partisan.  I listened to the beginning of the hearing streaming from Reuters on my computer at work, with one ear bud in.  I shut it off after a while and left to meet a friend for lunch.  We talked about a lot of things, but one of the things I told him I would be doing when I got back to work was checking the headlines on the various news sites and comparing them to each other.  The same testimony would certainly yield very different, very partisan headlines.  I was right.  Fox News was focused most on the inappropriate things former Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, while CNN and MSNBC were focused on the inappropriate things President Donald Trump said and discussing how it was probably obstruction of justice.  The conservative news organizations talked about how great it was that Trump was right about not being personally under investigation for collusion with Russia, killing the Left's narrative.  The liberal news organizations talked about how great it was that Comey said he was afraid Trump would lie and that he took Trump's statement about hoping Comey could let Flynn go as a directive that went unheeded.  Reuters was somewhere in the middle.  That's been a decent homepage for the last several months.

President Trump went on to say more dumb things after the hearing, calling out the credibility of Comey's under-oath testimony.  Predictably, the Left pivoted from the narrative of Trump lying about Comey having told him three times that he wasn't personally under investigation (CNN even made a rare retraction of a fake news story when Comey confirmed Trump's account there), and to the narrative of Trump obstructing justice by saying he hopes that Comey could let Flynn go.  Trump's son made a good point about that statement though, that most people who know anything about Trump would probably believe to be accurate, in that when his father tells someone to do something, there is no question that he is telling them to do something.  There is no, "I hope you can do this..."  Even Comey had to admit that he couldn't think of a time when someone was prosecuted for a comment of that nature.  Of course, he didn't go quite as far as he did with the Hillary Clinton investigation, where he inappropriately suggested that no reasonable person would try to prosecute her.  The way in which he "learns from his mistakes" seems rather partisan.  That was the reason cited for him refusing to say publicly that Trump wasn't under investigation anyway.

Whether or not a reasonable person would ever try to prosecute Trump for his statement to Comey about his hopes for Michael Flynn, Trump's statement was highly inappropriate and worrisome.  Comey was certainly right about that.  That is not how a President should act.  Though not criminal and not solid ground for impeachment, it's concerning and problematic that he said that.  And if I can admit that, the Left should be able to admit that Loretta Lynch's statement telling Comey to call the investigation into Hillary Clinton a "matter" rather than an investigation during the election cycle was highly inappropriate.  And don't even get me started on Eric Holder, Barack Obama, and Fast and Furious...  But the difference between Lynch's comment to Comey and Trump's statement to Comey was that Comey appeared to obey Lynch's suggestion and ignore Trump's suggestion.  He should have ignored both.

Ever since Comey was fired, I've said that he's going to get a multi-million dollar book deal, and that appears to be happening.  He's an intriguing and tragic character who I believe has inadvertently contributed to the deep political division of our country.  I think he started out with good intentions and ended up in some impossible no-win situations, with several unfortunate election-cycle announcements that likely impacted voters.  In my opinion, he's near the center politically, and he tried to stay out of politics, though he probably preferred Clinton to Trump.  When Trump got elected, he felt responsible and developed an extreme distrust of Trump, and the media helped fuel the fire, so he felt the duty to take detailed notes on all of his meetings with Trump and ultimately testify before Congress, having construed Trump's worrisome behaviors in the worst ways possible.

In the long run, Comey's testimony won't impact very much, though it's at least understandable why he testified before Congress.  Having Sessions testify was a waste of time.  Foghorn Leghorn isn't in cahoots with the Russians either.  But here we are in mid-June, with the NBA and NHL champions crowned, the dog days of summer just around the corner, and America's pastime, baseball, in full swing.  There's nothing like baseball to bring people together.  The Republican congressmen and Democratic congressmen were practicing for their ballgame against each other this morning, and a gunman opened fire on the players on the Republican diamond.

The gunman was a Leftist who volunteered for the Bernie Sanders campaign.  He was frustrated with "the one percent."  He disliked Trump, he disliked Republicans, and he was a complete lunatic.  If not for the policemen with guns on scene, there would have been many more deaths than just his.  As of now, there are some severe injuries, but thankfully no deaths.  The Democratic Congressional team got together and prayed for those who were hurt, a classy move.  And apart from a few crazy far Leftist reactions, the act was universally condemned by Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Independents.  For those few who suggested that it was a good thing, or normalized violence by saying it was self-defense for Republicans trying to repeal Obamacare, while being upset with people who normalize or even humanize Trump (a human being who is President of the United States whether you like it or not), you're even worse than the crazy people on the right you hate so much for being alright with the killing of abortion doctors or bombing of abortion clinics, although I can't even remember the last time that actually happened.

But the only person to blame for what happened this morning is the gunman.  The media was all about blaming the far right when a Democratic Congresswoman was shot, as well as in pretty much every crime that was even possibly politically-motivated where they could spin it in a way to blame Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump or whoever else.  Was Keith Olbermann the most recent pundit to play that card?  I don't remember, because it's happened so often.  But I don't blame him, or Bernie Sanders, or the actors in the plays portraying Trump being murdered, or even Kathy Griffin.  They have the right to say and do what they want under the First Amendment, short of actually calling for and inciting violence, shootings, and murders.  The blame rests squarely on the psychopath gunman, but the increasingly divisive political climate in our country certainly doesn't help.

And for fuck's sake, can we stop with the narrative that we need more gun control every time some psychopath goes on a rampage?  The idiot Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, said that it wasn't the time for that, but in the same breath called for more gun control and cried about the "93 million" people killed by guns in America every day.  That would leave us with a population of zero in four days, or roughly how many people would be left it all of the bad guys had guns and none of the good guys did.

Maybe we can start to bring this country back together.  Maybe all the cable news networks can air a live baseball game between Red and Blue members of Congress.  We can raise money for charities that both sides agree on as worthy, we can enjoy watching Rand Paul slide Brillo pad first into second base, and we can all just drink a beer and watch a ballgame together as Americans.  At least until Bernie Sanders complains that, "Eight Republicans came to bat in the same inning where only four Democrats came to bat.  It's an injustice!  Shouldn't both teams be allowed to send six men to bat?"
"Bernie, that's not how baseball works," Ted Cruz will say.  "Both teams are allowed three outs."
"Baseball is unfair!"

Manchester Divided

The horrific terror attack in Manchester has brought with it debates surrounding Islam.  Some people are saying that Islam is a problem, with a subset of them accusing all Muslims of being terrorists.  And some people are saying that Islamophobia must end, with a subset of them blaming the West (or Global Warming or poverty or something) for terror attacks like this.  So I decided to look up some straight up poll statistics in an attempt to see what's going on.  I know plenty of Muslims here in the United States, and I don't believe any of them to be extremists or terrorists, but that doesn't mean that none exist in the U.S., and it doesn't mean that what holds true in America holds true throughout the rest of the world.  I know more Christians, some of them extremists and some of them terrible people, though none who have ever committed terrorist attacks.  I know Jews, atheists, and people of other religions as well, but I don't know any terrorists.  Yet they exist, and it does indeed seem that, right now, the only people committing terrorist attacks in the name of their God are extremist Muslims.  If it's in a Western country, we hear about it, but in non-Western countries, these attacks happen quite often without receiving media attention.  So what's true?  Are there many or few Islamic extremists?  Let's look at what the statistics say (the article I'm using, from May 26, is seen in the picture).

According to the article, as of 2015, there were around 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, nearly a quarter of the world's population.  It's the second largest religion behind Christianity/Christendom.  In the United States, only about 1% (3.3 million) of the population identifies as Muslim, and 63% of the U.S. Muslim population consists of immigrants.  One of the main arguments you'll find against Islam is against those who support Sharia law as the law of the land.  If you're unfamiliar with Sharia law, look it up.  It a nutshell, it's actually sexist, but not nearly as sexist as it is flat out horrific.  I won't go over all of the crimes and punishments, but suffice to say that apostasy is punishable by DEATH.  Yeah.  So you would think that not many Muslims around the world support Sharia law, right?  Well, here's another graphic from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/

Well, fuck.  Yeah, that's the extent of my analysis on these numbers, but I think that sums it up nicely.  A lot of Muslims believe that Sharia should be the law of the land, and that is extremely disturbing, because Sharia is extremely disturbing.  And yes, I've heard the arguments comparing Islam and Christianity, and sure, there are some Christians who think that their laws should be the law of the land, but even the majority of very conservative Christians believe in separation of church and state.  But even if they didn't, it's not even comparable, because apostasy isn't punished by death in Christianity.

Missing from the Sharia graphic is the United States, but the article does go on to state that 86% of Muslims in the United States (according to a 2011 survey) believe that "suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified."  However, 7% say that they are sometimes justified, and 1% say that they are often justified.  In the United States, seven percent is 231,000 Muslims and one percent is 33,000 Muslims.  That's a bit disconcerting, but we also find that in the rest of the world in general, Muslims (in most countries) overwhelmingly view ISIS as negative, as this graphic from the same article cited before shows:

Here's my problem with this: Even if we ignore the disturbingly high percentage of respondents who said they don't know whether ISIS is bad or not, those small slivers of respondents who have favorable views of ISIS, when added together, represent many tens of millions of people.  So, folks saying that a very small percentage of Muslims are in favor of ISIS are correct, but folks saying that many Muslims are in favor of ISIS are also correct.  Remember that there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world.

Based on these numbers, it's right to be in favor of vetting for immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, but it's also clear why people would want to leave oppressive countries where Sharia is the the law of the land and seek refuge in the United States.  It's a delicate balance.  I have no problem with the vast majority of Muslims in the United States, who are peaceful people in general, but there is a problem with those who take a very strict and literal translation of the Quran, which can lead to supporting Sharia, and sometimes even ISIS and Jihad.  I also have a problem with Christians who take a very strict and fundamental view of the scriptures, but even the worst groups of Christians I can think of, such as Westboro Baptist Church, don't go around killing people.  They're hateful and terrible to people, but they don't kill them.  If there was a Christian group that took verses of the Old Testament out of context and out of the light of the fulfillment of the law by Christ Jesus, and decided it was a good idea to murder non-believers, that would be hugely problematic too, but also very much unsupported by the full weight of the Christian scriptures.  Also of note is that Jesus died as a 33-year-old virgin, while Muhammad had sex with little girls.

I don't say things like that to disparage Muslims.  I say them because they are largely uncontested and accepted facts that some folks ignore.  But people who follow religions that are rotten to their core are still people, and should be treated as people and judged based on their actions.  There are a lot of Muslims who are wonderful people, and hate crimes and physical attacks against Muslims are in no way acceptable.  They should not happen, but they do, as do hate crimes and physical attacks against Christians, Jews, and others.  Actually, antisemitism is still running rampant in America compared to attacks against folks of other religions.  We live in a world full of evil.  And there are those who will mistake my views shared here as "Islamophobic," but I am simply pointing out facts.  The majority of Muslims are not to be feared, and there are so many other groups of people with people in them who commit heinous acts.  The very vast majority of violent crimes in the United States are committed by non-Muslims, which is not surprising when you consider that Muslims only make up about one percent of the U.S. population anyway.  But a look at the numbers does us good, because it gives us a chance to calibrate where we are, and see that something is rotten before we allow it to create a stronghold.  God forbid Sharia law should ever be acceptable anywhere in the United States.

It's strange to me that the Left calls out Christians for anti-women sexist things, sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly, but rarely calls out Muslims for anti-women sexist things, when their prevalence and severity in Muslim culture, as evidenced by Sharia law and by every country under Muslim rule, is so great.  It is here that I can find common ground with some on the Left, such as Bill Maher.  But as for the handful on the far Left who are defending child marriages, or blaming them on global warming and poverty, or saying that forcing genital mutilation upon young girls falls under the umbrella or religious freedom, we have no common ground: you are a terrible person, and you should go visit a place under extreme Sharia law for a while.  Let me know how it went when you get back.  I won't expect to hear from you.