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Wanted in Saudi Arabia: Executioners

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Job seekers in Saudi Arabia who have a strong constitution and endorse strict Islamic law might consider new opportunities carrying out public beheadings and amputating the hands of convicted thieves.

The eight positions, as advertised on the website of the Ministry of Civil Service, require no specific skills or educational background for “carrying out the death sentence according to Islamic Shariah after it is ordered by a legal ruling.” But given the grisly nature of the job, a scarcity of qualified swordsmen in some regions of the country and a rise in the frequency of executions, candidates might face a heavy workload.

Excerpt from today's online

 New York Times edition

 

More on Highly Important Book

Irrespective of whether one agrees with the politics or proposals of Charles Murray, his new book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, contains indisputable data about the degraded and corrupt state of the U.S. today and a cogent analysis of how and why we have reached this point and the reasons that our divisive and poisonously polarized legal and political processes cannot bring about a recovery from it.

Strongly recommend that everyone read this book no matter where they stand politically.  Cannot overstate that recommendation.

Highly Recommended Book

Individuals who appreciate liberty, want to understand its erosion, and are interested in a possible strategy for restoring it, should read Charles Murray’s book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.

Ex Presidents Then and Now

When Harry Truman left the White House in 1953 he was far from secure financially.  Nevertheless, he rebuffed numerous lucrative speaking and corporate directorship offers, reportedly by saying:

You don't want me.  You want the office of the president, and that doesn't belong to me.  It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale.

Whether he ever used those exact words is debatable but he did express the sentiment in his 1960 book, Mr. Citizen:

I turned down all of those offers.  I knew that they were not interested in hiring Harry Truman, the person, but what they wanted to hire was the former President of the United States.  I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and the dignity of the office of the Presidency.

While comparing that example to the one currently being presented by Pay-the-Bill(s) Clinton, it should be noted that when Mr. Truman declined the numerous lucrative proposals that were presented to him he was under considerable financial pressures.  He left the presidency before any adequate pension was provided to former holders of the office.

 

Leader of Nothing and No One; Appeaser of Adversaries

Leaders of the Persian Gulf nations that still maintain friend relationships with the U.S. are declining to meet with America's president and that is a clear signal that the current holder of that office has debased it to the point that its holder no longer can in any meaningful sense be considered to be the leader of the free world.

Take heart though.  America's adversaries remain ready and even eager to meet with our president at every opportunity.  They know they can always extract some free or bargain goody from our great posturing orator, who has displaced the hapless Jimmie Carter as the most notable appeaser to appear on the world's stage since Neville Chamberlain.

Insults - Classic and Classy

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease. 
That depends, Sir, said Disraeli, whether I embrace your policies or your mistress. 
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He had delusions of adequacy.     
     - Walter Kerr
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He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
     - Winston Churchill
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I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
     - Clarence Darrow   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
     - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
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Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it.
     - Moses Hadas
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I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
     - Mark Twain
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He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
     - Oscar Wilde
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I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.
     - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second .... if there is one.
     - Winston Churchill, in response
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I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here.
     - Stephen Bishop    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
He is a self-made man and worships his creator.
     - John Bright
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I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.
     - Irvin S. Cobb
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 He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.
     - Samuel Johnson
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He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.
     - Paul Keating
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In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.
     - Charles, Count Talleyrand     ---------------------------------------------------------------------
He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.
     - Forrest Tucker
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Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
     - Mark Twain
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His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
     - Mae West
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 Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
     - Oscar Wilde
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He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.
     - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
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He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
     - Billy Wilder
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I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I'm afraid this wasn't it.
     - Groucho Marx

Rights as Defined by Progressives

America's New Normal: Shabby, Shoddy, and Shifty

In the long gone nation in which I grew up, I learned that in tennis, for example, one must always call for one's opponents any opponent's shot that lands close enough to the line to be debatable.  That of course was in sports before sports were displaced by big money athletic competitions that have nothing about them that is sporting, let alone gracious or even civil.

With bushels of dollars at stake, it's not surprising that we now have football teams trying to steal each others signals and monkeying with equipment to secure advantages, baseball players and boxers taking performance enhancing drugs, educators  falsifying test scores of students the educators have failed to teach, journalice disseminating information they know to be false, and so on.  The list goes on and on.

So it's no wonder that we now have and widely admire the nation's first fully-integrated self-contained public crime family -- the shady and evasive team of Bill and Hillary. 

Jovial and friendly Bill is the public face, joshing between the dots as he brazenly challenges anyone to try to connect them with enough evidence to prove criminal wrong doing.  His good humor is based on confidence that the media will help ensure that he and Hillary will remain above the law that applies to lesser mortals.  He is trotted out whenever there is a need to charmingly distract attention from the obvious fact that here is nothing good natured or friendly about Hillary.  She clearly is a coldly calculating, mean spirited, grasping and self-aggrandizing shrew.  But Bill's diversionary efforts always work until the obvious corruption is old news and therefore not news at all.  As a couple they constantly hungrily feed their respective insatiable appetites -- empty suit Bill for public acceptance, approval, and adulation, and voracious Hillary for money and power.

Such shameless leadership does serve a couple of purposes.  In addition to serving as exemplars on whom pond scum can look down
such leaders provide fresh evidence of the accuracy of the adage that scum rises to the top of every rain barrel.

But with such examples at the top, how can we expect our young people not to lie, cheat, and steal at every opportunity?  And what about the future of our country with a government designed to function properly only with virtuous leaders selected and overseen by a virtuous citizenry?

We've Arrived

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.  

. . . Thomas Jefferson 

Statists Detest and Blame Free Speech

Following their inherent authoritarian instincts, statists are blaming the organizers of that free speech event in Texas for having incited the armed attack on the event by a pair of adherents to the "religion of peace."

Their views are in line with those of the University of California chancellor who said he stood four square behind free speech so long as its exercise didn't disturb or offend anyone.

Terrific.  Never mind that speech that doesn't disturb or offend anyone does not require any defense.

The fact is that a free society constantly requires disturbing and offensive speech.  A right . . . any right . . . that is not exercised atrophies and dies.  And that is a result that authoritarian statists would welcome.  It is easier to control a silent population, than a raucous and outspoken one.

The Texas event provided the kind of exercise that maintenance of freedom of speech requires . . . and it had the added benefit of having resulted in the deaths of two Jihadists.

It's a sad commentary on the state of our supposedly free press that its leading components often engaged in self censorship as they did when they were too afraid of inciting Mad Muslim attacks such as the one in Texas to republish Danish and French satirical materials that led to Jihadist attacks there.

Finally, a Truly Honest Conversation About Race . . . and Today's Real Racists