That cesspool of crime, Europe

Dymphna in Gates of Vienna looks at crime statistics of the US and of the "Old Europe":

[...] let’s compare the crime rate in lawless New Orleans with the crime rate in, say, the city it was named for: Orléans, France. In New Orleans, the per capita rate is given in the hundred thousands. Thus, according to this report, the 2004 rate for New Orleans, for all crime, was 6,110.3 per 100,000 population.

[...] Everyone knows Europe is more evolved than America, more sophisticated, more law-abiding – they sure have plenty of laws to abide by, don’t they? The European species is more restrained, civilized, blah blah, than the crude Homo americanus vulgaris.

Heh. Orléans’ crime rate is 109.24 per thousand people. In our terms, that translates to 10,100 per hundred thousand. So, extrapolating further, Orléans, France, has roughly sixty seven percent more crime than Mayor Nagin’s soggy fair city.

Germany, France, and the UK have - and have had for a while - significantly higher (and growing) crime rates than the US, where the crime has also been sharply declining for years. Interesting, isn't it?

The American Dream Has Come True

William Langley writes in The First Post:

It is much easier, and far more fashionable, to portray the United States as a dying empire mired in a misbegotten war, outstripped economically by China, and unable to keep even tin-pot states like North Korea in line.

Yet on a recent trip back to Washington DC where I lived for the Clinton years, it was impossible to escape the good news. Almost all of America's important social indicators - the measures of the true health of a nation - are pointing in the right direction.

He follows with a list of those indicators and concludes:

We don't hear much about it, because it doesn't fit our Euro-jaundiced view of what the United States is.

It's good to know that not all Western Eurpoeans buy into the US-bashing from their leftist elites. It's unfortunate, that too many of them do.

Gladiator, American Style

A beautiful tribute to American soldiers.

Indeed, freedom is not free.

Help them move

That annoying whackjob, Cindy Sheehan, is apparently filled with shame upon seeing the American flag. Good. I hope it lasts. Perhaps the day will come when she will bo so ashamed, that she'll move someplace else - I don't know, France? I really wish there were an exchange program, under which all these "Americans" who hate their own country would be given the option to settle elsewhere, in exchange for someone settling in the US. Wouldn't it be humanitarian? Wouldn't it make a lot of people happier and, by extension, the world a happier place?

It's an idea I keep coming back to. I even thought of creating a website with a database, where people willing to emigrate to the US could register, and eventually be matched with people, who would like to leave the US and live in their country. Say, a 3-person family from Turin, Italy could be exchanged for a family from San Franciso, perhaps taking account of their level of education and social status. (One needs to be fair and make sure that the other countries don't end up with all of our nutjobs, giving us their best and brightest in exchange. We've been already accused of sucking up talent from everywhere, even without a program like this.) Perhaps, with enough matches in the database, we could exert pressure on governments to sign up and allow the exchanges to happen? What would they have to lose, except a bunch of dissatisfied people?

(Alas, there is little hope that scoundrels like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky will leave. They are making a bundle of money on their hatred of the United States - doing it from outside wouldn't be nearly as profitable, and they might end up living in a cave like that "freedom fighter" Osama.)

Oh, by the way: seeing the American flag fills me with pride. It's hearing the idiotic pronouncements of people like Cindy Sheehan that fills me with disgust.

Happy Birthday, America!

Just relax...

This is hilarious. Just make sure you have your audio turned on - it's a big part of the humor. Enjoy.

Acting crazy

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway quotes an Autralian newspaper's report that "Israel threatened to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh if Hamas militants did not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed.", and calls it "stupid beyond belief".

I’m afraid that this (the report) is a canard, but boy, do I wish it were true! It is high time for Israel (and for the US for that matter), to start behaving a bit more irresponsibly, if not outright crazy in this war. World’s sympathy? Screw it! It ended for us soon after it became clear after 9/11 that the US would not roll over and die, but intends to punch back. Oh, the outrage! The condemnations! Israel should borrow a page from the playbook by that nutcase, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and start talking about wiping Palestine off the map, or nuking Tehran. Apparently, he gets results, with the Europeans offering a “package of incentives” so that Iran does not build The Bomb. How about a nice package of incentives from the Arab countries for not hanging a big mushroom cloud over Mecca?
You can’t get the attention of fanatical killers by playing nice. They’ve been chopping people’s heads in front of video cameras, and the world gets upset because American soldiers - the savages! - photographed naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and play-acted electrocution. If the world is going to hate the Jews and the Americans anyway, why not at least give them good reasons?

Gone to live on a farm

A very funny and poignant piece by David Zincavage at Never Yet Melted illustrating how American "intelligentsia today are like children. They have no first hand experience commonly of the harsh and difficult choices adults have to make. And, like children, they are naive, sentimental, and do not understand evil."

By all means, go and read the whole thing.