smile! it can make the world a difference.

chinese corner~
smile: 微笑 : wéi xiào. (may be used as a noun or a verb.)

A lot of people had regarded the year 2009 tragic. A lot of negative things has happened within the year: politically, environmentally…etc… even in kpop industry.(yes, i have been reading omonatheydidnt in my spare times ^_~;)

political: maguindanao. (omgsun right? o_o )
environment: ondoy, and other typhoons (but seriously. who’s at fault? mother nature? i think not.)
kpop: TVXQ lawsuit (to cassies: the 5 of em are family. I bet they treasure each other a lot. so don’t worry ne? things will work out right.), 2pm-jaebom (he’ll be back~), suicides (can’t say i blame them cause k-industry seems.. a bit off) ,h1n1 to them artists (i though h1n1 was over. guess not in korea o_O)

The world needs happiness (to balance out the sadness) and I don’t think there will be any happiness if the people would just linger in the passed mishaps that had occurred.

More of happiness here in this blog brought to you by jaejoong~ ♥

Wouldn’t you like to hear this every morning? (me like-y but I don’t think I’d wake up XD)

credit:dirah9305

CNN Psychoanalyzes Talk Radio Listeners, Cites Liberal Study on Format
October 19, 2009 by Matthew Balan

CNN’s Carol Costello began a new series on political talk radio on Monday’s American Morning, suggesting it was unfairly dominated by conservatives, and brought on a liberal psychiatrist who theorized that Rush Limbaugh has an audience because he’s “operating like the bully, and if you’re on the playground…you want to be…under the bully’s wing and go along with him and get…some power by proxy.”

The correspondent’s report, which aired just before the bottom of the 7 am Eastern hour, was the first installment in a “special series on talk radio,” according to anchor John Roberts. Costello zeroed in on the listeners and why the format “can capture people for such long periods of time.” A graphic on the screen during her report heralded “anger on the air: what listeners don’t know about talk radio.”

bias, bullies, ideology, indoctrination, left wing, liberalism, news media, pandering, propaganda, study

Citizen Link – Superior Judge William Cohen ruled last week that Lisa Miller, a former lesbian who is now a Christian, must hand her daughter, Isabelle, over to her former partner, Janet Jenkins by Jan. 1. Miller conceived Isabella through artificial insemination while she was in a civil union with Jenkins. About a year later, Miller left homosexuality. Jenkins sued for custody, even though she has no biological tie to the child. Miller admits she made mistakes, like signing a custody agreement while still in the relationship with Jenkins… Hat tip My Daily Trek.

If this judge had the child’s interests at heart, he would have kicked this case out and told the lesbian to get a life. But then these so-called progressives view children as mere accessories to be tossed around to make people feel good and be fashionable or something. Can you imagine the even bigger mess that this can turn into if the biological father decides he also wants a bit of the child. I can see such activist judges saying ‘no’ to him if he were a straight fellow, but do you think he/she would say ‘no’ to a homo man?

This is yet another reason why homosexuals and lesbians should not be allowed to get married, it ultimately does affect the children. You see even if the judge did not want to hand the child over and was not an activist judge, he/she still has to follow the law as the former lesbian signed a custody agreement. The fact that the current lesbian lives in some sort of lesbian stronghold and wants to indoctrinate the poor child with her lifestyle is of no relevance and cannot be used to prevent access to the child.

This is because the minute you say that this behavior is fine, which you are saying by allowing homo-marriage and homo-adoption, you can’t then turn around later when children are involved and say, oh no we can’t let this happen, blah, blah. You can only make that call when you see the evidence, as in when the child is all screwed up in the head and you’re able to prove that it’s because of the lesbian depravity.

This is but one example of what is at the bottom of the slippery slope that the regressive lefties want to pull us down. No to homo marriage, no to homo adoption and you won’t have this problem, the child would be with her biological mother where she belongs and the lesbo would have to find some other accessory to use in her activism.

Interesting and entertaining video containing numerous clips of Fox News over the past year.

Wang Lee Hom (王力宏) never seizes to amaze me. My love for him grows ♥

Ever since I have listened to his song 春雨裡洗過的太陽 (from the album《心跳》 or heart beat） I just can't stop listening to it.

I lol-ed when I heard "世界會等我 它會問我冬天過去了沒"
I thought: what an arrogant thing to say, yet it sounded so funny. ) i like it.

春雨裡洗過的太陽 is a "feel good song". It literally makes you feel good. from the sound of the raindrops, to the tune of the song… It'll make you feel light hearted.

for the lyrics, pinyin, and/or translation of the song see link

Some of my friends have been feeling down/hurt by some unnecessary actions by some of our other friends, so i sort of dedicate this entry to them.
(not that they even know i have a blog XD)

here’s another “cheer-up” video. )
I’m not an elmo fan (nor a hyunjoong/boys over flowers/SS501 fan), but this is just too funny.

sources: youtube, Pinyin Orchestral

So what does a supposedly fair and balanced news organization do when they are caught being unfair and biased? They feign incompetence.

Manusia adalah mesin penghancur diri sendiri yang terbaik. Inilah pelajaran dari sejarah manusia yang manusia sendiri tampak keberatan menerimanya.

Namun, kenyataan lebih banyak membuktikan itu. Berbagai peradaban dunia pupus dan lenyap karena ulah manusia. Bahkan, berbagai bencana alam pelenyap peradaban itu dicari sebab atau mendapatrasionalisasi dati kedegilan makhluk berakal yang membanguin peradaban sendiri.

Tampaknya, itulah yang belakangan kita hadapi. Terkuaknya rekaman pembicaraan yang membongkar drama rekayasa hukum untuk memangkas KPK dan menahan dua komisariatnya seperti banyak puncak gunung kekeliruan peradaban manusia Indonesia. Sedikitnya ada tiga alasan.

Pertama, bila rekaman itu sah dan benar, ia tak hanya membuktikan bagaimana selama ini sistem dan dunia hukum di Indonesia berlangsung lewat transaksi politik dan ekonomi. Kenyataan yang tak hanya menghina dan mengkhianati tujuan dan filosofi dasar dibangunnya sistem hukum, tetapi juga publik sebagai subyek dan obyek hukum itu sendiri.

Kedua, kekeliruan mendasar itu selain menjadi refleksi bagi praksis kehidupan di segmen vital lain – ekonomi, politik, sosial, keamanan, dan lainnya – menunjukkan bagaimana realitas hidup ini dibangun melalui rekayasa semiotik yang menyembunyikan fakta sebenarnya di balik aneka lapisan makna berita-berita yang kita konsumsi tiap hari pada berita utama aneka media massa.

Tragisnya, aneka lapisan tanda (semeio) yang tersembunyi itu tidak membawa kita pada makna yang lebih substansial dan kontemplatif, tetapi tidak lebih dari bongkaran kekerasan kekerasan dan kejahatan manusia yang kian mengerikan. Pengungkapan “kebenaran” melalui rekaman itu memberi lentera bagi pemahaman semiotik publik, tentang permainan keangkaraan apalagi yang masih tersembunyi dalam proses kenegaraan lainnya.

Kesadaran ini seharusnya membyka kita pada kekeliruan di tahap ketiga, di mana manusia Indonesia ternyata adalah pihak yang paling bertanggung jawab pada realitas semiotik yang gelap itu. Bila di permukaan (penanda pertama) manusia tampak cukup ideal dengan produk kulturalnya (seperti regulasi, UU, sistem, dan sebagainya), di lapisan makna berikutnya kita mendapati manusia yang sama, yang ternyata menjadi pengkhianat dan perusak utama produk kultural itu.

Tradisi dua milenia

Akan mencemaskan, bahkan mengerikan, bila pola yang sama ternyata tak berhenti di kalangan elite atau pengambil kebijakan (yang dipercaya dan mendapat fasilitas rakyat), tetapi juga berlangsung di berbagai lembaga lain, secara horizontal maupun vertikal. Di tempat yang bisa jadi kita menemukan diri ada di sotu sebagai pelaku. Inikah karakter dasar kita, sebagai manusia dan bangsa Indonesia ?

Kemungkinan jawaban untuk pertanyaan itu tidak dapat berbentuk pilihan ganda karena semua pilihan dapat benar. Jawaban lebih komprehensif berbentuk esaik, yang melukiskan aneka potensi dasar dari kultur masyarakat/manusia kepulauan yang amat fleksibel dan plastis. Ia bisa positif jika tuntutan dan kondisinya kondusif. Bisa pula bias dan deviatif bila ada keadaan negatif mendesak atau memaksa. Inilah kreativitas, yang selalu memiliki dua wajah (ambigu).

Maka, hal lebih krusial ketimbang tiga alasan kekeliruan adab itu adalah sebuah penegasan perlunya sebuah fondasi (sebuah sistem) nilai yang adekuat untuk mengereksi bangunan kehidupan (modern) yang megah. Dalam arti praktis, material, dan institusional. Dan penegasan ini secara wajar menggiring kita pada kebutuhan akan landasan kebudayaan yang harus dikonstruksi lebih dulu – dengan arsitektur yang kuat – sebagai fondasi gedung megah di atasnya. Bila tidak ingin, aneka bangunan hebat itu (misal sistem ekonomi, politik, hukum, dan sebagainya) rapuh dan rentan pada setiap guncangan pada dimensi apa pun.

Manusia komunal

Saya hanya hendak menyebutkan satu saja dari khazanah tradisi luar biasa itu, yaitu kesadaran manusia kepulauan ini, yang berlaku dalam tradisi di etnik atau subetnik mana pun di seluruh Nusantara, tentang keberadaan dirinya tidak sebagai individu bebas – secara idealis dan relistis – sebagaimana dipahami oleh perikehidupan material-pragmatis saat ini.

Namun, keberadaan itu selalu ada dalam ruang tertentu, dalam waktu tertentu, dalam konteks tertenti : konteks yang mengartikulasi kepentingan komunitas, dalam konteks komunalnya. Manusia adalah individu yang komunal. Demikianlah ekspresi dasar semua lapangan kebudayaan kiota : hidup sosial, ekonomi, artistik, hukum, dan seterusnya.

Apa pun yang dilakukan harus dalam referensi kepentingan komunal sehingga tanpa perlu diminta pertanggungjawabannya, seseorang akan menempatkan publik dalam modus dan tiap aksi eksistensialnya. Di sini publik, yang selalu diingkari, kembali mendapatkan jati dirinya. Dan penyimpangan, apa pun bentuk, tujuan atau maqam-nya, akan mendapat sanksi. Bahkan, sebelum publik atau hukum menjatuhkan dakwaannya.

Maka, di mana lagu peluang elite atau pengambil kebijakan menafikan peran kebudayaan dalam perikehidupan kita berbangsa dan bernegara ? Argumentasi dalam berbagai cara dan fakta, dan puluhan kali saya suarakan, di tengah ketidakpedulian yang ajek di kalangan mereka.

Sumber  :

Kekeliruan Adab Kita, Radhar Panca Dahana | Sastrawan
Kompas, 05.11.2009

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The Victorian State Government has basically ignored the request for funding for the “Rise of Atheism” Convention in Melbourne next March, while allocating $4.5m in funds for the “The Parliament of the World’s Religion”.

This decision to basically ignore the funding request shows gross contempt for Atheism and Atheists alike in favour of religion and religious organisations.

See article posted at the convention’s website Atheists Too Hot to Handle for Victorian Government.

Today in the “Comment & Debate” section of The Age devotes an entire column to this injustice. I see this as an odd reaction from the Government, who describes Australia as “multicultural and secular”.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Very succinctly put…

So, let me see if I get this correctly.  We cannot interrogate subversives and terrorists when we have them in custody.  We cannot gain any intel from those who want to kill us.  Putting women’s panties on the head of a captured terrorist is considered torture and our men and women in uniform must be prosecuted, stripped of rank and incarcerated for the act.

The Border Patrol cannot protect themselves against illegal aliens who are trying to kill them.  The military cannot protect themselves against terrorists who want to kill them because there might be civilians in the area.  Police officers cannot draw their weapons when threatened.

America, once the most respected country in the world, is now the laughing stock of every nation and group that wishes to do us harm.    And we are allowing ourselves the opportunity to be hurt.  Our enemies are using the political correctness of our government against us.  The more we let them, the stronger they are and the weaker we become.  They laugh at us; we try to “make nice” with them causing them to only laugh even harder.

Most recently, three Navy SEALS captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq.  Ahmed Hashim Abed masterminded the mutilation and hanging of security guards in Fallujah.  He was captured and told military investigators that his captors punched him.  Nobody witnessed the brutality that allegedly took place after he was confined, but Abed had a bloody lip so the SEALS, who should be commended for doing their job, will instead be court-martialed.  Abed might have done it himself knowing how timid we are now.

Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean (U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents) were sentenced to 11 and 12 years for doing their job.  They did their job; they went to jail.  The smuggler was granted a border pass and allowed to come and go at will until he was finally arrested for another drug smuggling operation.

Police officers are shot and killed in the line of duty daily because they hesitate to pull their weapons for fear of losing their jobs or their freedom.

Our government is prosecuting its own defenders in order to appease our enemies and outlaws.  The people we elect keep stealing our money for their own foolish self-aggrandizement.  CAIR continues to receive tax-exempt donations that they forward to Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda.  Our Constitution has been declared unconstitutional and the President of the United States still hasn’t identified himself.  How long can we honestly expect this nation last?

Call me a skeptic, but there seem to be inherent problems with the way we process information in our courts. I pose the following independent scenarios for your consideration.

We rush to judgement in order to assign reasons to what happens. If we can assign blame promptly, then we can create the illusion that we and our loved ones are safe once the source of the blame has been identified and removed. If you doubt this, watch the respect that is automatically given to a police witness’ testimony in District Court.

When a witness testifies, he can be cross-examined to show that he has a bias or an interest in the subject of his testimony. Incredibly, police witnesses are given the benefit of the doubt by disregarding their inherent interest in cases where they made the arrest. Do they not benefit just as a salesman benefits when he makes his quota of sales?

When an arresting officer testifies that a driver arrested for a DUI performed poorly on field sobriety tests, or that a driver admitted he had so many drinks before driving, or that he drove within minutes of drinking — why should the officer be believed in the absence of some form of externally verifiable corroboration?

Generally, a motorist who is stopped by an officer has a right to refuse to take any field sobriety tests. An officer is not required to tell the driver that he has this right of refusal. Yet, we consider the driver’s participation in such tests voluntary and freely made. this practice simply fosters distrust between citizens and the police.

As the scandal envelops more and more scientific bodies, and we pretty much find out that the entirety of global warming is a hoax, the media, Democrats, and the rest of the environmental left continue to ignore the story, pretend it doesn’t exist, and push to use Global Warming to remake society as they would like – just as I (and pretty much everyone else on the right) predicted several days ago.

This time it’s not working. Just like the big exposure of corruption at the heart of ACORN and the Democratic party, this story has legs, and informed readers aren’t letting it die down. The more the left ignores it, the sillier they end up looking. Truth and sunshine really are the best disinfectants.

So the New York Review of Books sent its e-subscribers a cheery note:

Below you will find links to the first forty-nine posts published on the NYRblog since its inception last month. If you haven’t been following the blog, we invite you to visit, participate in the comments, and send us your thoughts. You can also follow the Review online via Facebook and Twitter , or through our RSS feed.

Sounds jolly, until you scroll down and notice that among those 49 bloggers are two, and only two, women writers.  The percentage isn’t immediately obvious because two articles are co-authored, but I make the percentage of women authors 4%.

That is remarkable.  That’s what the percentage of full professors in physics used to look like before NSF and others got going on correcting the situation.  Now women show up in all sorts of fields.  For goodness sakes, what is going on with the NYRB? 

Is there a kind of male intellectual approach that shows up across many disciplines and that the NYR particularly values?  It would be interesting to figure out if that is so and why.  For example, why would they ask John Searle to write on Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge, rather than some feminist philosopher who might have been more balanced?  Did they think of the topic as sort of a guys’  thing?  Or perhaps they don’t know any women working in the field, much like our colleagues?

There’s a lot of regret that there aren’t more public intellectuals that gets expressed when we profess woe at the state of public discourse.  Perhaps if women have more venues, the dearth would seem less.

In all fairness:  I haven’t counted up the occurrences of women authors in the published journal.  In addition, the NYRB responded to an earlier complaint of ours, so I assume such issues matter to them at least a bit.

One convenient thing for limited government types is they get to avoid many of the tricky issues that develop when action is undertaken by the government on behalf of individuals. If you believe individuals should have the sole prerogative to their health decisions, for instance, you needn’t worry much whether they then choose to spend their money on silly things. Transfer that authority to the government on behalf of the polity, however, and wastefulness becomes less innocuous:

Prue Lewis listens as they explain their symptoms. Then Lewis — a thin, frail-looking woman from Columbia Heights — simply says, “I’ll go to work right away.” She hangs up, organizes her thoughts and begins treating her clients’ ailments the best way she knows how: She prays.

This is health care in the world of Christian Science, where the sick eschew conventional medicine and turn to God for healing. Christian Scientists call it “spiritual health care,” and it is a practice they are battling to insert into the health-care legislation being hammered out in Congress.

Leaders of the Church of Christ, Scientist, are pushing a proposal that would help patients pay someone like Lewis for prayer by having insurers reimburse the $20 to $40 cost.

The provision was stripped from the bill the House passed this month, and church leaders are trying to get it inserted into the Senate version. And the church has powerful allies there, including Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who represents the state where the church is based, and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who said the provision would “ensure that health-care reform law does not discriminate against any religion.”

This story is usually packaged to fit into a debate about church and state, but let’s slide that to the side and instead inquire about efficiency: could paying for prayer be a less wasteful use of tax dollars than the alternatives?

The instinctive answer is no because prayer can at best have a placebo effect–better to spend the money on more effectual ends. This answer is incomplete, however, because we have to specify at what margin we’re thinking: Are we talking about the first dollar one spends to cure an ailment, or the ten thousandth?

Most knowledgeable people seem to think Americans overspend on healthcare. That is, the extra dollar we spend doesn’t bring extra benefit. To reduce waste, we could reduce our spending to a level where we’re still getting a bang for our taxpayer buck, but this is the government after all, so we can forget about that. Instead, seeing as the extra treatment brings us no extra benefit, we could just select cheaper treatments in order to hie away waste. At the end of this line of reasoning lies the sort of counter-intuitive conclusion economists hold so dear: paying $20 buck a pop for prayer can be a more efficient use of healthcare spending than, say, paying for a $100 visit to the doctor.

It’s true that for the first dollars we spend we’re better off ignoring faith-based solutions, but at some margin, going to a witch doctor is just as worthwhile as going to the family doctor. And if we take a Hansonian view of heathcare, that margin is at a level lower than we think.

I explained what I mean by “omitted variable bias” in a previous post in this series, so go there first if the following isn’t immediately clear. (In a few words: you see a correlation between two variables, for example clever people wear fancy clothes. Then you assume that one variable must cause the other, in our case: a higher intellect gives people also a better sense of aesthetic taste, or good taste in clothing somehow also makes people smarter. In fact, you may be overlooking a third variable which explains the other two, as well as their correlation. In our case: clever people earn more money, which makes it easier to buy your clothes in shops which help you with your aesthetics. Nonsense, I know, but it’s just to make a point).

I gave a few examples in the previous post, but found some others in the meantime. This one’s from Nate Silver’s blog:

Gallup has some interesting data out on the percentage of Americans who pay a lot of attention to political news. Although the share of Americans following politics has increased substantially among partisans of all sides, it is considerably higher among Republicans than among Democrats:

The omitted variable here is age, and the data should be corrected for it in order to properly compare these two populations.

News tends to be consumed by people who are older and wealthier, which is more characteristic of Republicans than Democrats.

People don’t read more or less news because they are Republicans or Democrats. And here’s another one from Matthew Yglesias’ blog:

It’s true that surveys indicate that gay marriage is wildly popular among DC whites and moderately unpopular among DC blacks, but I think it’s a bit misleading to really see this as a “racial divide”. Nobody would be surprised to learn about a community where college educated people had substantially more left-wing views on gay rights than did working class people. And it just happens to be the case that there are hardly any working class white people living in DC. Meanwhile, with a 34-48 pro-con split it’s hardly as if black Washington stands uniformly in opposition—there’s a division of views reflecting the diverse nature of the city’s black population.

More on same-sex marriage here, here and here. More posts in this series here.

The conceit of deceit (The Economist):

YOU are deciding between two magazines to read. The one you choose just happens to feature photos of women in very small swimsuits. But you do not, you claim, pick that particular magazine for the bathing beauties; it happens to have more interesting articles, or better coverage of copper mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You will say this even in the midst of a lab experiment that has been set up so that the only possible difference between the two magazines is the presence (or absence) of swimsuits.

Such was the finding of Zoë Chance, a doctoral student, and Michael Norton, a marketing professor, both at Harvard Business School. The pair were investigating how people justify “questionable” behaviour (Mr Norton’s word) to themselves after the fact. They asked 23 male students to choose between two sports magazines, one with broader coverage and one with more feature articles. The magazine which also happened to contain a special swimsuit issue was picked three-quarters of the time, regardless of the other content. But asked why they chose that particular magazine, the subjects pointed to either the sports coverage or the greater number of features—whichever happened to accompany the bikinis.

This may not seem surprising: the joke about reading Playboy for the articles is so old Ms Chance and Mr Norton borrowed it for the title of their working paper. But it is the latest in a series of experiments exploring how people behave in ways they think might be frowned upon, and then explain how their motives are actually squeaky clean. Managers, for example, have been found to favour male applicants at hypothetical job interviews by claiming that they were searching for a candidate with either greater education or greater experience, depending on the attribute with which the man could trump the woman. In another experiment, people chose to watch a movie in a room already occupied by a person in a wheelchair when an adjoining room was showing the same film, but decamped when the movie in the next room was different (thus being able to claim that they were not avoiding the disabled person but just choosing a different film to watch). As Ms Chance puts it: “People will do what they want to do, and then find reasons to support it.”

[...]

Via MindHacks:

I recommend reading the original study. It’s very accessibly written, and if you read nothing else, skip to page 9 (page 10 of the pdf file) and read the section entitled ‘Are People Aware That They are Justifying?’.

One of the key insights from psychology and one of the most practically applicable findings (particularly in clinical work) is that people’s explanations for why they do something are not necessarily a reliable guide to what influences their behaviour.

This also goes for ourselves and there are probably many areas in our life where we justify our actions, good or bad, with comfortable, plausible, fantasies.

Links:

• The conceit of deceit (The Economist)
• I only read it for the articles (MindHacks)
• “I read Playboy for the articles”: Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences (HBS Working Knowledge)
• “I read Playboy for the articles”: Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences Full Working Paper Text (PDF)

You may have heard the flutter over UNAIDS’s report showing 17% reductions in HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa. Sounds like good news all around, right? Well, here are brief thoughts on a few concerns i have about those figures.

i’d prefer to not always play the pessimist, i just think that this one should be read a bit cautiously.

Obama’s now played more rounds of golf than Bush did during both terms. Somehow the media and Hollywood isn’t obsessing over this…

The Day Global Warming Stood Still
November 20, 2009 by Investor’s Business Daily

Climate Change: As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December.

It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria.

The collapse of the talks coupled with the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put off the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill, the Senate’s version of Waxman-Markey, until the spring thaw has led Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the leading Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, to declare victory over Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and the triumph of observable fact over junk science.

“I proudly declare 2009 as the ‘Year of the Skeptic,’ the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard,” Inhofe said to Boxer in a Senate speech. “Until this year, any scientist, reporter or politician who dared raise even the slightest suspicion about the science behind global warming was dismissed and repeatedly mocked.”

Inhofe added: “Today I have been vindicated.”

bias, corruption, environment, global warming, greenhouse, news, political correctness, politics, public policy, scandal, science, scientists

Military academies lack minority nominees
November 22, 2009 by Brian Witte (hat tip to Education Watch International)

As the nation’s military academies try to recruit more minorities, they aren’t getting much help from members of Congress from big-city districts with large numbers of blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

From New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, lawmakers from heavily minority areas rank at or near the bottom in the number of students they have nominated for appointment to West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy or the U.S. Air Force Academy, according to an Associated Press review of records from the past five years.

High school students applying to the academies must be nominated by a member of Congress or another high-ranking federal official. Congressional nominations account for about 75 percent of all students at the academies.

Academy records obtained by the AP through the Freedom of Information Act show that lawmakers in roughly half of the 435 House districts nominated more than 100 students each during the five-year period.

But Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez of New York City, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, nominated only four students, the lowest among House members who served the entire five-year period. Rep. Charles B. Rangel, whose New York City district includes Harlem, was second-lowest, with eight nominations. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose San Francisco district is 29 percent Asian, was also near the bottom, with 19.

In fact, the bottom 20 House members were all from districts where whites make up less than a majority.

“It’s beyond my imagination how someone that has the ability to nominate doesn’t do it,” Craig Duchossois said in December at his final meeting as chairman of the Naval Academy’s Board of Visitors.

He noted what an academy appointment means: a free four-year education and a guaranteed job as an officer for at least five years after graduation.

Ms. Velazquez, Mr. Rangel and Mrs. Pelosi, all Democrats, would not comment or did not return calls.

Let’s not try to make this a racist issue, it’s an elitist anti-military issue

Figures. Obama Commie Czar Wants Hannity & Rightwing Websites Censured
November 24, 2009 by Gateway Pundit

One of the communist-supporters and kooks working with Obama in the White House wants Sean Hannity and rightwing websites muzzled.
Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein wrote this in his latest book.
World Net Daily and FOX Nation reported:

Websites should be obliged to remove “false rumors” while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such “rumors,” argued Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar.

In his recently released book, “On Rumors,” Sunstein specifically cited as a primary example of “absurd” and “hateful” remarks, reports by “right-wing websites” alleging an association between President Obama and Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers.

He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for “attacking” Obama regarding the president’s “alleged associations.”

Ayers became a name in last year’s presidential campaign when it was disclosed the radical worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also was said to have launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers’ apartment.

Has anyone asked Mr. Sunstein what would have happened to Dan Rather during the scandal about Bush’s National Guard records had these proposed laws been in effect?

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