As the immigration debate rages on, one key criticism has been continually ignored by the supporters of the pseudo-amnesty and guest-worker plans circulating in Congress. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge that the argument that the illegal immigrants are merely doing jobs that Americans won’t do is a blatant lie. The truth is that these undocumented workers merely displace American workers who simply refuse to work for such low wages. There’s a great example of this occurring right now in decimated New Orleans, where construction contractors–many of them funded by FEMA and other government agencies–are dumping black resident workers, who are told “Go home!” as soon as they can get the chance to replace them with illegal immigrants (listen online or download the podcast segment entitled “Go Home!” under Bill Handel). Of course, not only are the Mexicans cheaper, but they speak little English, don’t unionize because of fears of deportation, and (as many will confirm anecdotally) are much harder workers than the Americans they replace.

Still, many don’t see this as a problem: This is simply the global labor market at work! Now, although I give the Wall Street Journal props for finally coming to the defense of this argument that illegal immigrants are simply filling jobs Americans won’t take, their reasoning is a little weak. Essentially their position is, “If they don’t come here, our jobs will go there”–except in neither case are they “our” jobs anymore, so what’s the point?

Imagine, for a minute, that China was our northern border, and India was our southern border. Would we continue to have no problem with 3 billion neighbors ready to come to America at a moment’s notice willing to work for as little as $5 a day–far more than they earn in their own countries? Mexico is poor to be sure, but Mexico’s got nothin’ on rural India or rural China.

Considering that a frighteningly high percentage of African-Americans are either high-school dropouts or not college graduates (not to mention the lower rates of white workers who fall into this category that nevertheless constitute millions of people in raw numbers), how can anyone morally justify displacing these people from a chance to work because unskilled immigrants are willing to work for less?

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I swear this will be my last South Park-related post of the night… :)

I still think this whole thing may be a publicity stunt, with Comedy Central and its “spokesmen” and “statements” all part of the joke. It could be like April Fools Day writ large — they might be working the blogosphere up into a mighty lather, only to start next week’s episode with something totally unexpected, like, oh I dunno, Muhammad randomly appearing at the very beginning of the episode and saying “Just kidding!”, followed by a regular show unrelated to “Cartoon Wars.” I’m not necessarily predicting this, but I definitely don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility.

One thing we’re forgetting amid all the talk about Mohammed carrying a salmon helmet and Jesus crapping on the American flag is what appeared at the end of the “Al Qaeda Films Production” that constituted the terrorist “retaliation” to the Family Guy episode: the words “THE END,” with a question mark:

The words appeared first, and then the question mark was “drawn” underneath them. You can see for yourself by downloading the last ten minutes of the episode here.

What does it mean, exactly? I suppose it could be interpreted as asking the same thing Glenn asked: Is this “the end” of South Park? But I think a more likely explanation is, they’re implying that this story, this saga, this brilliant bit of comedy isn’t really over just yet.

Why do I still suspect, all official statements to the contrary, that the censorship might not be real? Because, no matter how cynical I try to be, it still seems unbelieveable. The notion that a network as relatively edgy as Comedy Central would censor on first viewing something as objectively non-offensive as an image of Muhammed standing in a doorway with a football helmet — even though there have been no protests, no riots, no threats, nobody publicly demanding that they do so — strikes me as very, very fishy. It’s one thing to be intimidated into silence by real threats; it’s wrong, but it’s not hard to believe. But to be silenced by hypothetical intimidation? Is Comedy Central that timid? Would they really censor their biggest show because of a bunch of riots on a different continent regarding an unrelated matter? There was nothing to fear at all. There was no threat to “public safety.” Nobody was asking Comedy Central not to air the image… not CAIR, not anybody!

And yes, they pulled the Virgin Mary and Scientology episodes, but that was only a question of whether to re-run them — i.e., the censorship occurred after the episodes’ initial airing. And why were they pulled? In the first case, it was because of a massive outcry, and in the second case, it was because Tom Cruise threatened the network’s corporate parent with serious economic retaliation. Here, there is no outcry and no blackmail. The fact that Comedy Central caved under those first two circumstances does not necessarily imply that they would be likely to cave here. Indeed, this whole thing could be a very convoluted image rehabilitation effort for the network: by ultimately proclaiming that they were kidding, and allowing Muhammad to air next week, they could look like great defenders of free speech, and wipe the Catholic and Scientology controversies out of everyone’s minds.

Bottom line, we’re supposed to believe that the network which aired the “Super Best Friends” (and has had no problems re-running it) has a blanket policy against airing any images of Muhammad… even though he’s in their opening credits?! I smell a rat!!

So, yeah, I’m still skeptical of this. I will be watching next week, and I won’t be at all surprised if Matt and Trey have something else still up their sleeves.

A federal grand jury is hearing evidence about whether Barry Bonds may have lied in 2003 court testimony, multiple sources tell CNN. Visit CNN for the latest.

The video clip that’s floating around the Internet, supposedly the “uncensored” version of the Muhammad scene in last night’s South Park episode, is a fake. Upon close inspection, you can clearly tell that somebody did a bit of photoshopping and sound editing, trying to make it look like the real thing. I suppose it’s hypothetically possible that “somebody” is Parker and Stone, but that seems very unlikely. There is no actual new animation in the clip — it goes directly from the last frame before the screen went black (i.e., the censorship disclaimer) to the first frame afterwards. The fakers simply pasted images of Muhammad (presumably from the “Super Best Friends” episode) onto the relevant frames, moved the “salmon helmet,” and messed with the audio a bit. Here, I’ll show you what I mean…

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Okay, I guess this settles it:

Parker and Stone were angered when told by Comedy Central several weeks ago that they could not run an image of Muhammad, according to a person close to the show who didn’t want to be identified because of the issue’s sensitivity.

The network’s decision was made over concerns for public safety, the person said.

Comedy Central said in a statement issued Thursday: “In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision.” Its executives would not comment further.

(Hat tip: Phead.)

If you missed them, you can watch both Part 1 and Part 2 tonight at 9:30 and 10:00 PM.

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BREAKING NEWS: Comedy Central really did censor Muhammad!


Before and after: The image at left is from South Park’s “Super Best Friends” episode, nearly five years ago, long before Muslim extremists launched riots, destroyed embassies and committed murders in response to those Danish cartoons. The image at right is from last night. Ladies and gentlemen, the terrorists have won.

Stephen Spruiell has the scoop:

I’m not sure if it’s been reported yet, but for what it’s worth, I just got off the phone with a Comedy Central spokesman. I asked him about last night’s episode of South Park in which, at a moment right before the prophet Mohammed was supposed to make a cameo, the words, “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network” appeared on the screen.

I asked him whether this truly was Comedy Central’s decision or whether this was just another gag (with South Park, you never know). He said:

They reflected it accurately. That was a Comedy Central decision.

Just in case there was any confusion, that settles it. Comedy Central censored the image.

Well, either that, or Comedy Central is in on the joke. But that seems implausible, so I assume it was indeed a Comedy Central censor job, which means I was wrong and Bob was right… Comedy Central “pussed out,” as foreshadowed by the trailer at the end of Part 1. (”Will television executives fight for free speech? Or will Comedy Central puss out?”)

This is an absolutely ridiculous and abhorrent decision by Comedy Central, on so many levels. First of all, in the very same episode, they showed President Bush and Jesus Christ, among others, crapping on the American flag, which is obviously much more offensive than an image of Muhammad just standing in a doorway. Censoring the latter, but not the former, is totally unjustifiable by any reasonable standard. In fact, there were about a hundred things in “Cartoon Wars” that were more objectively offensive than an image of Muhammad in the doorway would have been! The fact that all images of Muhammad are prohibited in the Muslim faith doesn’t mean anything to Comedy Central, unless Comedy Central’s president is a Muslim or something. As Kyle said in Part 1, the prohibition on showing images of Muhammad means that Muslims can’t show his image, not that no one can show his image. That’s as nonsensical as claiming that the Torah’s prohibition on eating pork means that no one can eat pork, whether or not they’re a Jew! The rules in religious texts are only binding on the adherants of the religion in question! With the Danish cartoons, there was the added element that some of the cartoons were offensive in terms of what they showed Muhammad doing or saying, not just offensive because they showed him at all. But here, the image itself was (so far as we know) just Muhammad standing in a doorway, not doing anything that would offend the average non-radical-Muslim’s sensibilities. So censoring it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever from any principled standpoint.

Moreover, as I pointed out yesterday when I assumed South Park was just kidding about the censorship thing: “If by chance Comedy Central really did censor Muhammed, that really is outrageous, considering they’ve shown him before, almost five years ago. Of course, that was before the Danish cartoons fiasco. So, clearly, the only plausible explanation for why they would censor him now, when they didn’t censor him before, is the fear of violence — i.e., giving into fear and intimidation, letting the terrorists and extremists win.” Especially considering that there has been no Muhammad-cartoon-related violence in this country, the “Cartoon Wars” episodes have been getting very little attention in the press, and so far as we know, no one was actively threatening Comedy Central, it’s even more insane to give in to hypothetical threats of non-existant violence. But it would be absurd either way. Comedy Central (and its parent company Viacom) has completely and utterly caved to radical Islamism, to a degree that’s far worse than anything that happened before in the whole Cartoon Jihad scandal.

If that “spokesman” is telling the truth, that is.

To be honest, the more I think about it, the more I’m not entirely willing to let go of the possibility that Comedy Central is in on the joke, the “spokesman” is lying, and they’re still messing with us. Either that, or the image that the South Park animators submitted was of Muhammad naked, or Muhammad wearing a suicide bomb, or something like that. Don’t get me wrong, I have no trouble condemning the MSM and media corporations when they deserve it, and I have no illusions that they are pure or intellectually honest, but this act of censorship strikes me as so irrational, absurd and unbelieveable that I honestly have a hard time, well, believing it.

UPDATE: Aha! The Volokh Conspiracy got a slightly different answer from Comedy Central:

In response to my inquiries whether the statement aired on South Park on Wednesday night was accurate, early this morning an official with media relations at Comedy Central gave me an evasive answer, “Well, not exactly.” He then referred me to a Comedy Central VP who wasn’t answering his phone.

The words “not exactly,” in response to the question of whether Comedy Central’s decision was reflected accurately, would seem to lend credence to my theory that perhaps Parker and Stone submitted the cartoon with a genuinely, grossly offensive image of Muhammad (even more grossly offensive than Jesus crapping on the American flag??) that they knew Comedy Central would definitely censor, and then they had the President Bush character inaccurately describe the hidden image — “Hey, that wasn’t bad at all. They just showed Mohammed standing there, looking normal” — in order to make Comedy Central look bad. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

More blog reaction from Michelle Malkin (who, incidentally, gets a hat tip for pointing me to Stephen Spruiell’s scoop), Captain Ed (who, like me, believes — or believed, anyway — that it wasn’t really censored), The Anchoress, and InstaPundit.

Video of the episode here, in WMV format.

P.S. Re: “not exactly,” another possibility is that it was a Viacom decision, not a Comedy Central decision, but now they’re circling the wagons, and the corporation has ordered the network spokesmen to take responsibility for it and not blame Viacom, in order to put up a united front.

UPDATE 2: Here is Captain Ed’s reaction to the spokesman’s statement:

Comedy Central confirmed with NRO’s Steven Spruiell that they indeed censored the South Park episode to block the depiction of Mohammed. I’m flabbergasted; I cannot comprehend how they could do that while still leaving the “Super Best Friends” episode in the rotation and a depiction of Mohammed in the opening credits. After their cave-in on “Trapped In The Closet”, I suppose I should not have been so surprised, but I really am. And very disappointed.

I, too, am “flabbergasted,” which is why I remain somewhat skeptical. But until I hear otherwise, I have no choice but to assume that Comedy Central’s spokesman is telling the truth here, unbelieveably ridiculous as that truth may be.

UPDATE 3: Final, official confirmation — maybe — here. I still think this whole thing might be a publicity stunt.

Mumps. Look into them, they’re the Next Big Thing. :>

ATLANTA (April 13) - Two infected airline passengers may have helped spread Iowa’s mumps epidemic to six other Midwestern states, health officials said Wednesday, the latest example of how quickly disease can spread through air travel.

…As of Monday, Nebraska has 43 reported cases; Kansas, 33; Illinois, four; Missouri, four; Wisconsin, four; and Minnesota, one.

…The first traveler is executive director of a Waterloo, Iowa, downtown development organization who in late March was in a delegation that traveled to Washington, D.C.

The woman, Terry Poe Buschkamp, had earlier visited the Dominican Republic where she thinks she may have caught the bug…

…On March 26, she flew to Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport. During her visit, she shook hands with Iowa’s two U.S. senators, Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley, she said.

…During those six days, she had been to church and numerous work events, including an April 1 pub crawl that involved about 370 people…

…The second person was a young man returning from vacation in Arizona on April 1, Teale said.

…Mumps is a virus-caused illness spread by coughing and sneezing. The most common symptoms are fever, headache and swollen salivary glands under the jaw. But it can lead to more severe problems, such as hearing loss, meningitis and fertility-diminishing swollen testicles.

No deaths have been reported from the current epidemic.

But what I wanna know is, was Ms. Buschkamp’s pub crawl a Work event or a Church event? :) And, were Harkin & Grassley crawling along with her then, too? :>

I am not buying for a minute this Dominican Republic business. These will prove to be the dread Supermumps, released into the Environment by the notorious Misanthropocentric Biogenocidal Madman Dr. Eric R. Pianka after he’d got done Weaponizing the bugger so’s it will not only swell testicles fair to Bursting but Shrivel ovaries down to a veritable Singularity as well. Yes, courtesy of yer man the U. Texas Master of Massacre, the human race soon mumps to its Conclusion. Fie. :>

Read the whole thing. :)

A Baptist college in Kentucky has expelled a student for being gay — not for being caught engaging in homosexual conduct, but for being gay — under a policy which says that “Any student who engages in or promotes sexual behavior not consistent with Christian principles (including sex outside marriage and homosexuality) may be suspended or asked to withdraw from the University of the Cumberlands.”

It seems significant to me that it says “and homosexuality,” not “and homosexual conduct.” At the very least, that changes the burden of proof a bit, taking away the pesky necessity of proving that the student is actually in violation of prohibitions against having gay sex, which is what the Bible is really supposedly against (right?). Anyway, Jason Johnson was kicked out of school because officials discovered his MySpace profile, in which he “discussed his sexual orientation and boyfriend.” And before you say “well, he shouldn’t have gone to school there,” the policy didn’t exist when he started school. Back then, the student handbook merely prohibited “lewd and indecent conduct” and said students should “conduct themselves, on and off campus, in a manner which is consistent with the objects of the college and with its standards of conduct.”

Obviously, it would be helpful to know more about what exactly the MySpace profile said, but regardless of the details of this particular case, I find the school’s policy deeply disturbing, not only because I personally believe discrimination against gay people is wrong, but because the language of the policy seems at odds with the whole “love the sinner, hate the sin” concept that supposedly underlies Christian objections to homosexual activity. Given that the issue under the school’s rules is homosexuality, not just homosexual conduct, I would think that even devout anti-gay-rights Christians would have a problem with this.

The “or promotes” thing is also very concerning. As Mike (to whom, a hat tip) says:

I mean, it’s one thing for a religious institution to remove students who engage in behavior with which they have religious objections; to my mind, though, it’s a whole new level of frightening when students aren’t allowed to advocate something with which the university disagrees. The “or promotes” part of this actually bothers me more than does the “engages in”—if ND had that policy, for instance, students could be expelled for advocating use of condoms, regardless of whether they ever actually did use them.

Or, for another instance, if ND had that policy, students could be expelled for wearing those “Gay? Fine by me” t-shirts that I mentioned earlier today.

Anyway, I’m with Mike, who concludes: “They are within their legal rights here—as unfortunate as I find that—but morally, I find this utterly repugnant.”

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Everyone is pulling for Molly the Brit Deli Kitty. :)

NEW YORK (April 13) - Rescuers used drills, miniature cameras, cat food and even a 1-pound raw fish in a desperate effort Wednesday to entice an 11-month old cat named Molly from behind the basement wall of a Greenwich Village delicatessen where she has been trapped for 12 days.

…[Mike] Pastore [field director of Animal Care & Control of New York City] led the rescue team trying to locate the peripatetic pussycat with a tiny video camera attached to a plumber’s snake. But the sound of the drill may have spooked Molly to retreat further into the maze under the front wall of the 19th-century brick building, which extends back about 40 feet from the sidewalk.

…Neighbors left cans of cat food on the steps, and Renato Migliorini, proprietor of Piccolo Angolo, an Italian restaurant at Hudson Street, delivered a whole fresh fish called a branzino.

…The fact that the building is landmarked by the city makes breaking into the walls a more delicate proposition, Pastore said…

…Molly is the resident mouser at Myers of Keswick, a popular West Village delicatessen catering to a specialized clientele with clotted creme, Scotch eggs and other British food products not available in American stores.

…At midday, three observers from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission showed up to make sure no serious structural damage occurs. The four-story building, dating from the mid-19th century, is in one of Gotham’s historic districts.

Read the whole thing.

Go Molly! Come on Out, Molly!

It's another one of those beautiful days when no one wants to be inside, tons of people are out on the quad, and music is blasting from the dorms. Is spring here to stay this time?

Smellovision has arrived.

The National Hurricane Center announced today that it has discovered the 28th tropical storm of 2005, more than six months after-the-fact. As the Tropical Cyclone Report (PDF) for “Unnamed Subtropical Storm, 4 to 5 October 2005″ explains:

As part of its routine post-season review, the Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center (TPC/NHC) on rare occasions identifies from new data or meteorological interpretation a previously unnoted tropical or subtropical cyclone. The TPC/NHC re-analysis of 2005 has revealed a short-lived subtropical storm near the Azores Islands, which increases the record count of tropical/subtropical storms during 2005 to 28.

The NHC adds: “Operationally, it was treated as a non-tropical low. Post-storm analysis, including AMSU data that were not available in real time, indicated that the system had sufficient tropical cyclone characteristics to be considered a subtropical storm for 12-18 h.” The Storm Track offers a slightly different explanation for why the storm wasn’t “operationally” identified: “Like many of the storms last season, this system was located far outside the normal tropically active realm and was therefore overlooked.”

The Unnamed Storm’s short life occurred in between the formation dates of Hurricane Stan (October 1) and Tropical Storm Tammy (October 5). As such, if the Unnamed Storm had been identified in real time, it would have been named “Tammy,” meaning Tammy would have been “Vince,” Vince would have been “Wilma,” and Wilma — the strongest hurricane in the history of the Atlantic basin — would have been “Alpha.” Yup. The Storm Track elaborates:

Hurricane Wilma — which struck Cozumel, Mexico and then Southern Florida after becoming the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic — should have been named Alpha! Yes, the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic should have been named with a Greek letter, and that irreplaceable Greek letter should then have been retired. Some people may be happy such a media circus was avoided. However, one can’t help but wonder if this will be a clear signal to the World Meteorological Organization that perhaps it is time to reconsider the Atlantic tropical cyclone naming system.

It’s entertaining, in light of this, to read my first post about Wilma, announcing its formation and then stating:

If another tropical storm forms between now and the end of the hurricane season (November 30), it will be named Alpha, and we will proceed from there in the Greek alphabet. Imagine if a really bad hurricane forms, and its “name� has to be retired! The Greek alphabet would never be the same! ;)

Imagine, indeed. Wilma, if it had been named “Alpha,” would have been that “really bad hurricane”!

Under this alternate-reality scenario, the all-time record for the number of tropical cyclones in a season would have been broken on October 17, when “Alpha” (Wilma, in our reality) formed. That meants my October 22 blog post about the formation of the real Alpha, which was quoted in the Washington Post’s October 23 article about me (”It’s official: . . . ALPHA BECOMES THE TWENTY-SECOND NAMED STORM OF THE SEASON AND BREAKS THE ALL-TIME RECORD FOR THE MOST ACTIVE SEASON ON RECORD . . . I’ve been talking about this possibility for months, and it has seemed virtually inevitable for weeks, but I’m still sort of stunned that it’s actually happened”) would have been far less dramatic; I would have been blogging about the ho-hum formation of “Beta” rather than the historic storm that broke the record and forced us to dip into the Greek alphabet for the first time ever.

Additionally, if Wilma had been Alpha and Alpha had been Beta, all my talk about “Wilmalpha” would instead have concerned “Alphabeta” — Alphabet for short. :)

Last but not least, the final tropical storm of the season — which, incredibly, formed on December 30, Becky’s and my wedding day (a wedding gift to the weather nerd, Glenn Reynolds called it — should have been named “Eta,” not Zeta. “Zeta” should have been the name of the weirdest storm of the season, the “impossible storm” that “completely lost respect for the governing laws of thermodynamics” and caused the National Hurricane Center to give up — the storm that was, in this reality, known as Epsilon.

To be clear, none of the names will actually be changed. The Unnamed Storm will remain unnamed. But it’s interesting — for giant nerds like me and Bryan Woods, at least — to think about what might have been.

Drudge is currently headlining this story:

Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.

Iran will move to “industrial scale” uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

“Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,” Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow.

Is “produc[ing] enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon” the same thing as “making a nuclear bomb,” or is the reporter playing fast-and-loose with Rademaker’s words here?

UPDATE: Drudge has now moved that “16 days” story down a notch, and replaced it with the far more important issue of whether the fictional female president on ABC’s Commander in Chief will be “impeached.” Heh.

P.S. Here’s a rather different take on Iran’s nuclear progress. (Hat tip: Anonymous.)

I just woke up from a dream in which I wore my “Gay? Fine By Me” t-shirt to a sporting event (basketball, I think) in some midwestern city (possibly St. Louis - basically I think this was a re-enactment of the MVC tournament, with some twist that I can’t quite recall), whereupon I got into a passionate argument in a stadium bar with a homophobe (I remember him citing Andy Dick as an example of how gay people need to “get out of his face”… why is my subconscious thinking about Andy Dick?!?), only to find that about 75% of the patrons were on his side, and I was sort of shouted out of the bar. Later, a friendly, liberal-looking girl saw my shirt and my wedding ring, and congratulated me with this knowing smile on her face, clearly assuming that I was a gay person who had gotten married. I think she said something like “That’s so cute” (which, if I was gay, would be a little condescending, wouldn’t it?).

The strange thing was, I hadn’t intended to wear the shirt to the stadium at all, and certainly not as some kind of political statement. I had put it on earlier in the day not intending to wear it out (this is actually true — I changed from the white t-shirt that I wore to work into my “Gay?” shirt yesterday evening before eating dinner, so I wouldn’t risk spilling anything on my white t-shirt, and as a result, I am still wearing the “Gay?” shirt right now, as I type out this post — so that real-life event was obviously the basis for the dream) and then had somehow ended up unexpectedly going to this sporting event, but forgot to change my shirt beforehand. Somewhat disappointingly, in the dream I ended up buying a Bradley Sweet 16 t-shirt from a concession stand to cover it up, because I just didn’t want to deal anymore with all the trouble that the “Gay?” shirt was causing. Am I really that easy to intimidate? Was this dream a South Park-like metaphor for the importance of sticking up for free speech and stating your opinions in the face of fear? Heh. Matt and Trey are inside my head!!! AAAHH!!! :) But hey, at least I verbally smacked down that guy in the bar…

The dream ended with my realizing that I couldn’t remember what section of the stadium I was supposed to be sitting in, and Becky had my ticket, so I had no idea how I was going to find her. That crisis, however, was resolved by my alarm clock going off.