Hey, who you f------ sayin' 'Good day' to, mate?

Ocularly challenged, but a champion in the
Flying Animal Special Olympics.

British bobbies have been strongly cautioned about their speech.

Thousands of police officers have been issued with a 140-page 'diversity handbook' containing tips such as 'Don't lean on a disabled person's wheelchair'.

The guide points out that it is unhelpful for officers to cover their mouths when talking to somebody who is lip-reading, and suggests the phrase 'blind as a bat' may cause offence.

Quite right. Bats are notoriously sensitive about their eyesight. And don't think you can get away with whispering the phrase in the ear of another officer. Bats have terrific hearing.

The book also points out that cheery traditional greetings such as 'hen', 'pet', 'love' and 'my dear' should never be addressed to a woman, the guide [says].

And officers are reminded that a woman who is provocatively dressed and 'paying attention to passing vehicles' may not necessarily be a prostitute.

Of course not. She might be a 12-year-old schoolgirl waiting for her mother to pick her up in the car.

Reflecting Light has obtained an advance copy of a supplemental edition of the guide. It can be revealed that the next iteration will include the following.

Do not use the phrase 'good day'. This may cause offence to a member of the public who is feeling distressed, implying as it does that you are capable of making the most of time but she-he is not.

Should you find yourself in the presence of an amputee, do not ask, 'Can I give you a hand?'

Regardless of a citizen's age, particularly if the citizen is a woman, do not hold the door or assist the citizen in crossing the road. This could easily be interpreted as ageism or a slight against the person's physical condition. Even should you be tempted, as in the case of an 85-year-old woman attempting to make her way across the Cromwell Road, to offer special assistance, the correct terminology is, 'Right, move your arse, get on with it'.

Use extreme care in uttering the word 'exceptional'. This might imply that others are less than exceptional. There are no exceptions to Equality.

No matter how provoked you may be in the heat of an incident, do not utter such oaths as, 'Oh, Christ'. This is deeply offensive to our Muslim citizens. If intense expression is uncontrollable, however, you are encouraged to exclaim, 'If Allah wills it so'.

And that's the news from Country Wobegone. Have a good, uh, have a day.

Fiat money

Obama to Chrysler: Sell yourself to Fiat
or we'll shoot this car.

The production of America: The Remake is bang on schedule. The president of the United States now holds the power of life and death over two of our traditional titans of car manufacturing. One day he tells the top dog at General Motors to hit the bricks. The next day he orders Chrysler to sell a large part of itself to Italy's Fiat. With every passing day, we move closer to a state-directed economy of the kind we were fighting a Cold War against not that long ago.

Because of the size of Chrysler's debt and costly union benefits, many observers believe that Chrysler may first be piloted through bankruptcy to restructure the company and eliminate the bulk of these obligations. … Fiat would later be allowed to increase its stake to a maximum of 49%, with much of the rest being held by unions and lenders in exchange for restructuring Chrysler's debt and worker benefits.

If Fiat wanted to increase its stake above 50%, Chrysler would first have to pay back its bail-out loans, according to the conditions set by Obama on Monday.

"The conditions set by Obama." Jesus.

According to one critic of aid to the auto industry, Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker, the Obama approach is basically giving Chrysler away to Fiat.

Obama to Chrysler:
We know where you live.

Aside from a quick injection of money into Chrysler, how is this supposed to help it? Fiat is not a respected brand. It probably survives only through government favoritism from the kind of political deal making that Italy is famous for. You rarely see Fiats on the road even in Europe outside Italy. Nor is Chrysler apt to sell many cars in Italy or Europe, until it comes up with a new line of vehicles designed for local conditions, which SUVs and big fat sedans are not.

Fiat was probably the wallflower of the international auto maker party, the only one Obama could get to dance with Chrysler. So what does the company bring to the table?

"The Italian automaker's cutting-edge technology in the production of fuel-efficient vehicles," says the story. This is hard to take seriously. I mean no disrespect to Italian engineers, who command the admiration of sports car and luxury brand buyers, and maybe they have come up with a nifty idea or two. But surely American engineers could do just as well if not better, provided Chrysler made a serious commitment. Which they should have done years ago, and still might today if the only alternative was bankruptcy with no federal skirts to hide under, a condition that concentrates the mind wonderfully.

So is this Obama's plan, to muscle troubled American companies into offering themselves to non-U.S. companies? Mergers and takeovers usually take place when the acquirer targets a successful company, not one that's just bought a cemetery plot. But Obama's idea of economics seems to be depending on the kindness of strangers, like China and Saudi Arabia, to keep buying U.S. debt. One source estimates we will have to sell $2 trillion worth of Treasury paper in the next year to fund bailouts.

PETA death squads

You've heard about PETA, People for [Allegedly] Ethical Treatment of Animals. Of course you have. They raid laboratories that conduct tests on animals, spray-paint fur coats, that kind of thing. PETA members are themselves a kind of animal species — publicity hounds.

Despite their over-the-top shenanigans, I've occasionally summoned up a drop of sympathy. For one thing, some of the people who bash them appear to be the sort who think it's ridiculous to worry about the feelings of mere animals. Only people matter, they say.

And I believe researchers who deliberately give mice, rats, rabbits, and sometimes even cats terrible diseases and injuries to test possible cures (half the animals so treated, the control group, are certain not to have their condition alleviated) do become desensitized to suffering. Somebody needs to slap them around periodically, whisper in their ears the lines from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as beautiful as anything I know in English literature:

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Now comes this:

WASHINGTON D.C. – Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) published documents online showing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed 95 percent of the adoptable pets in its care during 2008. Despite years of public outrage over its euthanasia program, the animal rights group kills an average of 5.8 pets every day at its Norfolk, VA headquarters.

According to public records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA killed 2,124 pets last year and placed only seven in adoptive homes. Since 1998, a total of 21,339 dogs and cats have died at the hands of PETA workers.

Despite having a $32 million budget, PETA does not operate an adoption shelter. PETA employees make no discernible effort to find homes for the thousands of pets they kill every year. Last year, the Center for Consumer Freedom petitioned Virginia’s State Veterinarian to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse.

PETA replies:

The source of the information posted is the deceitfully-named Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). CCF is a front group for Philip Morris, Outback Steakhouse, KFC, cattle ranchers, and other animal exploiters who kill millions of animals every year, not out of compassion, but out of greed (see BermanExposed.org and ConsumerDeception.com).

Most of the animals we took in and euthanized were not adoptable, and in fact, were taken in precisely because they were unadoptable. They could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives on heavy chains or isolated pens, for instance. They were severely unsocialized, having gone mad from confinement or made aggressive.

Others were indeed someone's companions, but they were aged, sick, injured, or dying, and PETA offered them a release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians. We offer our services to many impoverished residents who often can’t afford to provide for their animals even a dignified exit.

Okay, they score a few points (please read their whole rebuttal). This CCF outfit is not disinterested; it's a lobbying group, and its bills aren't paid by any humane society. PETA accomplishes a few good things, if its own claims are true. And of course, for some poor creatures euthanasia is the only compassionate treatment. I know; two of our cats with incurable diseases had to be put to sleep.

But the Web site Terrierman.com offers a more detailed, and convincing, indictment:

PETA injects killing solutions into almost all the animals handed over to the them, and then it contracts with a waste disposal company to have several tons of animals a month trucked away, out of sight and out of mind.

Why? Simple: they believe a dog in a shelter is better dead than kenneled for even a few days or a few weeks, and they oppose pet ownership entirely. PETA's Norfolk staff cannot be bothered to take time away from media-whoring in order to do the tough work involved in actually rehoming animals.

This, too, should be read in its entirety.

PETA may not be entirely evil, and among its stunt performers there are probably some kind-hearted but naive people. But PETA will never get a donation from me. They are not the only organization that spays and neuters animals to help prevent overpopulation — every animal shelter does. I'd rather support no-kill shelters.

Earth Hour strikes; women, minorities hardest hit

Headquarters, Earth Hour Is
Our Hour Foundation

While cursing the darkness of unredeemed mankind still wedded to the convenience of electric light, a Canadian family lit a candle.

Earth Hour candle sets Mississauga townhouse ablaze

A Mississauga family who tried to light a candle for Earth Hour nearly burned their Meadowvale townhouse down.

Afshan Khalid, 46, said her 8-year-old daughter tried to light a candle before Earth Hour started at 8:30 p.m. Saturday. “She was lighting up the candle and we thought it didn’t light up or the match fell somewhere that we didn’t notice and then we left,” said Ms. Khalid. The family was going to see friends and when getting ready, they lighted scented candles so they could see.

If you read pre-20th century history, you are constantly reminded of homes, towns, churches, ancient buildings, and cities (cf. London, 1666) catching fire and being reduced to ashes. It wasn't unusual in old times for cathedrals to be rebuilt several times, century after century, having burned to the ground.

Then that reprobate Edison came along and invented his damn bulb and everything went to electric double-plus-un-Greenness.

Finally the trend is being reversed. Earth Hour promises salvation, after the smoke clears.

Don't it make my blue eyes brown

Don't know when I've been so blue
Don't know what's come over you
You've found someone new
And don't it make my brown eyes blue

-- Crystal Gayle, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue"

"This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who thought they knew everything and now show they know nothing," Brazilian President Lula da Silva said the other day after meeting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose eyes, fortunately, are the color of his name.

Orator in Chief Barack Hussein Obama is hard at work making sure that future crises, insofar as the United States is on the playlist, will not be caused by blue-eyed devils. The Leftist Establishment's race for race replacement in the U.S. isn't going quite fast enough to suit them (whites are expected to become a minority only in 2042 at current levels of non-white immigration and fecundity), but in his own kingdom he'll see to it that it happens faster than the blue eye can follow.

In a story it's unlikely any mainstream U.S. news source would report, The Telegraph says:

While Mr Obama has played down the influence of race over his government and policies, Washington is abuzz that the president has handed control of domestic policy, all White House social events, environmental issues and food safety to African American women - seven senior government posts in all....

President Obama used his press conference last week to joke that interest in his own race lasted "about a day" after his election. But below the radar, Mr Obama has been quietly transforming the upper echelons of government. Black woman only hold 192,000 of more than 1.7 million government jobs, making up about one in nine of the federal workforce, but Mr Obama has given them one fifth of the most senior jobs in government.

I have my doubts about that figure of 192,000 XX chromosome blacks out of 1.7 million employees in the federal government. My impression -- admittedly, I haven't counted -- is that there are at least 192,000 in every federal office I've ever visited. Putting that aside, since when does a United States president act "below the radar"? FDR's lend-lease program to help Britain before the U.S. entered World War II was as euphemistic as it gets, but it was out there in plain sight. This is an ethnic Manhattan Project.

But presidents (and this applies not only to Obama; I said the same about Jorge W. Bush-Gonzales) are no longer servants of the people. Along with the federal judiciary, they are our rulers. Congress merely gets to dramatize itself, like the Roman Senate long after the Republic was beyond living memory.

Oh, and then the Muslims-he's-not-one-of, but with whom he has a special understanding, are also to be given a place in his sun. The Denver Post reports:

In a bid to get more Muslim Americans working in the Obama administration, a book with resumes of 45 of the nation's most qualified — Ivy League grads, Fortune 500 executives and public servants, all carefully vetted — has been submitted to the White House.

The effort, driven by community leaders and others, including U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., was bumped up two weeks because White House officials heard about the venture, said J. Saleh Williams, program coordinator for the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association, who sifted through more than 300 names.

"It was mostly under the radar," Williams said. "We thought it would put (the president) in a precarious position. We didn't know how closely he wanted to appear to be working with the Muslim American community." [Emphasis mine.]

Above the radar, speeches and TV talk-show gigs. Below the radar, well, Obama will tell you about it when it's a fait accompli.

Even in the Germany of 1935, it was necessary to apply a coat of legality to promulgate the notorious Nuremberg Laws, which provided for the ethnic classification of the Volk into Aryans and undesirables. From Wikipedia:

After the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, Hitler received telegrams of congratulation from all over the Arab and Muslim world, especially from Morocco and Palestine, where the Nazi propaganda had been most active.^[16]. Moreover, because of these, and the thousands of other racial laws promulgated during the Third Reich, a vast bureaucracy developed in Germany for the determination of people's "racial acceptability."^[17].

The Orator in Chief don't need no stinkin' laws. He's the Man.

Obama gives Islam speech therapy

Barack Obama and Secret Service members
practice upcoming address to Muslim world.

As everyone agrees, President for Life Barack Obama is a splendid talker, at least when he is accompanied by a certain technological crutch. He believes there is no problem so great that it will not yield to his skill at saying nothing, but with panache. Charming birds from trees is not worth his effort; he could persuade an asteroid set on pronging the earth to change its mind and reverse course, needing but to open a dialogue with it.

We have it on the authority of Time that his eloquence drive is to be turned on the Muslim World:

When President Obama visits Turkey early next month, some observers are expecting he will use the occasion to deliver on his promise to deliver a major foreign policy speech from a Muslim nation in his first 100 days. But indications are that he will not give the speech in Turkey. The White House and State Department have not yet decided on the location for the speech, which is meant to undo some of the damage done to America's image in the Muslim world during the George W. Bush Administration.

This reminds me of how, when I am negligent enough to pick up a copy of Time in a dentist's waiting room, it is like getting an extra root canal. "Undo some of the damage done to America's image in the Muslim world during the George W. Bush Administration"? What about the damage done to the United States of America by the Muslim world during every administration since Carter's?

Trouble is, Obama's handlers are dithering about where exactly in Dar-al-Islam he should pronounce his historic message of "forgive us for breathing." Jakarta? According to the CAIR spokesman Time quotes, it's a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to waste your golden breath there. Rabat, Morocco? "Too far west." Amman, Jordan? Don't call us, we'll call you. Mecca and Medina? Non-Muslims are not allowed, so Obama fetching up there might raise questions. Cairo? Too anti-U.S.; the president might not live long enough to sign the surrender document. "Baghdad? Still too dangerous. Riyadh? Obama would be seen as being in the pocket of the Saudi royal family. Oman, Bahrain ... the list could go on."

Look, I've got an idea. Forget Old Islam. The future lies with New Islam. How about Europe? Brussels, for instance.

In the end, though, Hooper believes that geography may be secondary to the content of Obama's speech. "What will resonate is [Obama's] words and policies," he says. Muslims will respond not only to the location but also to "the fact that he's trying to reach out — with rhetoric, and hopefully also with actions."

Regardless of where B. Hussein Obama chooses to do his resonating and reaching out, in the CAIR spokesman's words, he'd better take an extra teleprompter as a back-up. An unscripted remark could call forth one, two, many jihadists: "A powerful bloc of 57 Islamic states is again pushing for the UN to make it a criminal offense to criticise or ‘defame' Islam."