I’ve been hearing this stuff from the NRO crowd, most notably Chris Hitchens’ “tough-minded” orc-like understudy, Mark Steyn, about how Europe was turning into “Eurabia”, a Muslim-dominated continent. I had assumed there was at least a glimmer of truth to it, that the Muslim population might reach, say, 20% sometime reasonably soon. Turns out it’s all total bullshit:
The great sine qua non of Mr. Steyn’s argument is the idea that Muslims have more children than the rest of us. His article is based on a claim he has made repeatedly, including in a bestselling book, that Europe will have a plurality of Muslims, perhaps 40 per cent of the population, by 2020.
This number appears to have been plucked from space. Here’s the reality, which you can easily look up: Slightly more than 4 per cent of Europe’s population is “Muslim,” as defined by demographers (though about 80 per cent of these people are not religiously observant, so they are better defined as secular citizens who have escaped religious nations).
It is possible, though not certain, that this number could rise to 6 per cent by 2020. If current immigration and birth rates remain the same, it could even rise to 10 per cent within 100 years.
But it won’t, because “Muslims” don’t actually have more babies than other populations do under the same circumstances.
To repeat: there is some chance the Muslim population of Europe (where “Muslim population” includes secular, non-practicing immigrants from Muslim countries) might reach 10% within a 100 years but it probably won’t. And that’s the cause of this “soon they’ll have the whole of Europe” craziness on the right.
arguingwithsignposts
well, space is one word to describe it.
Omnes Omnibus
Where is Jan Sobieski when we need him? I mean we have El Cid, but we need more…
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: Space or something else very large and dark.
Dave L
Okay, okay, but they’re still running the international banking system and using the blood of Judaeo-Christian babies to bake Ramadan pita chips, so don’t expect me to drop my guard anytime soon Mr. Limp-wristed Liberal!
Punchy
Change “muslims” to “mormons” and he would have a rock-solid argument.
cermet
Facts? What good stupid thug needs those? Stupidity is the natural state of all repug-a-thugs.
Seanly
Pfft, as the wise man Homer once opined:
“Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!”
Mike G
Change “muslims” to “morons” and replace “Europe” with “America” and he would have a rock-solid argument.
Though I think we have substantially more than 4% of those already.
MattR
Heh. Gotta go read that article now. Sounds like it has promise.
Crashman
I left my Wingnut Hate Flowchart ™ at home, but someone remind me… Why would they care? Don’t they hate Europe?
Zifnab
@Punchy:
Change Muslims to Jews and he’d be a shoe in for German Chancellor circa 1932.
@Crashman:
Yes, but we still can’t let Europe fall to the New Mediterranean Caliphate! Someone should probably start bombing Turkey and Greece.
nalbar
Insanity is now the new reality.
nalbar
Brachiator
Oh, shit. Conservatives and more bad math. Will there be a test?
I kinda figured this was BS, but had no idea how ridiculously inflated the figure was.
arguingwithsignposts
@Zifnab:
well played on the reverse, triple-axle Godwin, good sir/ma’am. golf clap.
David Hunt
@Crashman:
Europe still = “White people”.
Muslims still = “Brown People”
White People > Brown People.
arguingwithsignposts
@Crashman:
Well, it’s not so much of a flowchart as a Jackson Pollock painting, y’know?
gwangung
Hmpf.
Johnny come lately Muslims.
WHy, back in my day, it was us Asians in America that they were worried about….
(And, damn, we tried to make good on that rising population gig)(what with all our practicin’ and all….)
Irony Abounds
All I can say is wow. The dissemination of utter bullshit by the whacked out right seems to be endless. The points raised in that articles are not minor little debating points. The right’s fear mongering Islam leads to wars and great expenditures of money and lives. I knew Styen was a noxious gasbag, but am still shocked at the his use of “facts” that have no basis in reality.
Tonal Crow
OT: Speaking of Orcs, Palin ‘said she is giving a presidential run “prayerful consideration.”‘. I told y’all that this was coming. (Beware, Yahoo link).
jl
Thanks for this post. Reminds me of the sad fate of the Pacific Coast, where Anglo-Saxon culture was crushed like a bug under the brutal infidel heel of the Chinese Yellow Peril after we could not ship them all back to their homeland after they built the western part of the transcontinental railroad.
So sad.
This is off topic, except it does concern total BS, so maybe the BJ front pagers could get a few good and socially useful posts out of it. In case I missed the outraged front page posts where Cole threatens to get very upset over it and declares himself without any hope or anything at all, ever again. If that is the case, I apologize.
That ‘this’ is the fate of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The summary is as follows:
GOPers made some demands for the final report: the phrases Wall Street” and “shadow banking” and the words “interconnection” and “deregulation” would NOT appear in the panel’s final report
GOP report is a slender package of bald assertions blaming the crisis all on the CRA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The economist Holtz-Eakin signed this thing.
One of the commissioners is Peter Wallison, and AEI is caught scrubbing its site of his role in the push for deregulation
Old quotes of Wallison emerge from before the panic, that blame Mae and Mac for NOT following the private sector into subprime loans for low income people:
“There are many lenders aggressively competing to make the higher-amount loans, and the GSEs are not doing the job they should for low-income homebuyers.
Fannie and Freddie should do a much better job of providing affordable home financing to a neglected portion of the mortgage market.”
See, back then it was convenient for private free market magic boosters to blame the government for not doing enough to push subprime loans to more people!
I will put up some links so people can follow this trainwreck themselves in a subsequent comment.
freelancer
@David Hunt:
But where do Short People fall on this spectrum?
Outraged Jackson Pollock Painting
@arguingwithsignposts: Hey, watch it, Bub!
Steaming Pile
Oh, and with a generation or two, their birth rate will drop to something approaching that of the general populace. That’s what happened here with the Irish and the Italians, and that’s what’ll happen in Germany with the much-maligned Turks. And then people will complain that there aren’t any more good Turkish restaurants in Berlin.
MattR
@Tonal Crow: Does that mean she is trying to figure out if she has a prayer of winning?
Anyone wanna take bets that she ends up saying that God told her to run? Or is that a foregone conclusion and all that’s left to bet on is the day she says it?
Omnes Omnibus
@freelancer: They are beneath consideration.
Joseph Nobles
Sign of the Impending Apocalypse #7: John Boehner just appointed Michele Bachmann to the Intelligence Committee.
dmsilev
@Joseph Nobles: Irony wept.
dms
jsfox
I am shocked, shocked I say that the right makes up data to gin up fear. Just about as shocked as I was to find that Fox viewers are the most misinformed.
Hunter Gathers
Comparing Mark Steyn to an orc is an insult to orcs everywhere, from Uruk-Hai to the lowest Morgul rat. I wouldn’t hire an army of Mark Steyns to guard any keep, pit, tower, or mine I might hold in my possession. Shit, if an army of Mark Steyns was guarding Isengard, Saruman could have been over-run by 2 hobbits riding a broken-down mule.
Dennis SGMM
@Joseph Nobles:
I’d say that war with Mexico is inevitable now. Catalina Island, also, too.
Shalimar
10%? No wonder everyone is alarmed. In 100 years, Muslims will control Europe as completely as African-Americans now control the United States. The only sane way of dealing with this is to allow people to put their Social Security money into private accounts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Joseph Nobles: Anyone reminded of Roman Hruska’s comments on Harrold Carswell’s nomination to the Supreme Court: Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.
arguingwithsignposts
@Joseph Nobles:
I think my ironymeter just busted (gets out hammer).
cyntax
@Crashman:
Yeah, but before applying something like the Wingnut Hate Flowchart™, ya gotta correct for their one guiding principle: never, ever be intellectually consistent if it constrains your argument in anyway.
Omnes Omnibus
@Shalimar: Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
jl
Links for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission trainwreck.
Krugman (and look at subsequent related posts up until this morning and today’s NYT column)
December 15, 2010, 9:24 am Invincible Ignorance
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/invincible-ignorance-2/
Brad DeLong (and look for subsequent related posts up until this morning)
December 15, 2010 We Have a Winner in the Stupidest Economist Alive Competition: Keith Hennessey, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Bill Thomas, and Peter Wallison
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/we-have-a-winner-in-the-stupidest-economist-alive-competition-keith-hennessey-douglas-holtz-eakin-bill-thomas-and-peter-w.html
Also, follow their links.
licensed to kill time
@MattR:
Amazing how often “God’s will” ends up being what the person wanted to do anyway. Just this once I’d like God to give a big ol’
” BWAAAAAAHAHAHA! snort snurgle gasp choke….excuse me, you were saying? “
Tonal Crow
@MattR: P = 0.9 +- 0.05 that she runs. And if she runs, P = 1.0 +0 -0.001 that she claims that “God” required it of her, and P = 0.8 +- 0.2 that the Republicans nominate her.
Your bets?
elmo
@Hunter Gathers:
Nerdgasm! I’m kvelling over here.
Kryptik
OT: Don’t look now, folks, but Lucy’s up to her old tricks:
Sen. Corker Threatens Reid: If You Bring DADT Repeal For A Vote, We’ll Walk Away From START.
David Hunt
@freelancer:
I’m pretty sure the Republicans understand that any correlation between height and access to wealth is secondary at best. Thus, I consider it unlikely that they track them for Hate.
bemused
If they are so hysterical about whites being outnumbered, they need to start popping out more babies asap. If the Duggar family, 19 and counting, can sacrifice and do their part, why can’t they?
Sko Hayes
@Joseph Nobles:
Okay, that made me LOL.
Of course, this could make for some interesting hearings on C-Span.
change
So, liberals, whats the problem with Europe turning Muslim though?
I thought all religions are equal, and anyone who thinks Islam just might be worse is a dirty “racist”?
Let’s open the borders and we can make Europe Muslim tomorrow!
Zifnab
@Joseph Nobles: Is this irony or an oxymoron?
Joseph Nobles
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s not so much the irony, although I do appreciate it. It’s that Bachmann is going to use her newfound “insider knowledge” like a whip to goad her nutso followers into even more of a frenzy than normal. She’ll never divulge actual information. Oh, no. All she has to do is speak in that wide-eyed way of hers, “I could, an if I would,” and the terrorists will have won in some horrible unimaginable way if the estate tax goes up to 55%.
cyntax
@Joseph Nobles:
Christ on a crutch, being on the west coast sure can suck sometimes–three more hours before I can get a drink.
Tonal Crow
@Joseph Nobles: “Intelligence” Committee? Oh, that’s going to be a blast…of repeated projectile GOP-encrusted hypervomitostupidiousness.
jwb
@Tonal Crow: Yes, I think you’re right it’s coming. But I no longer care. And I no longer care if Palin is the gooper nominee. And I am no longer any more worried about her becoming president than any other gooper, because it just won’t matter. Anyone the goopers run will be an utter disaster for the country if elected, and Palin does at least have a large number of liabilities that will make it more difficult for her to win.
Bill E Pilgrim
If you want to hear something really scary, I once read that the percentage of the US that’s Sarah Palin is 0.000000003257259.
Zifnab
@Kryptik:
YOU CAN’T THREATEN A VOTE YOU NEVER INTENDED TO GIVE TO BEGIN WITH!
I would be less disappointed in Dems always landing on their asses if Lucy at least had the decency to wipe out a real football. Tell Corker to go fuck himself. Then go back into the defense bill and slash every last military dollar going to his state.
les
@Tonal Crow:
Not happenin’. It would interfere with fleecing the rubes. At most she’ll “campaign” enough to pick up a few victim points, and then “write” a book and let the idiocracy shower her with money to ease her woes. A grifter knows a good scam when she hits one.
Omnes Omnibus
@Joseph Nobles: I see your point, but I tend to think that she will be a secret leaking machine. I don’t think she will be able to help herself.
Bill E Pilgrim
Christ on a crutch used to be my drink too!
Leave you legless.
jwb
@Tonal Crow: I’d say chances of nomination are far below 50/50. The only reason I think she even has a chance at this point is because the rest of the field is so weak and the strongest at the moment is a Mormon.
Tonal Crow
@les: You’re kidding, right? If she’s a candidate, she can slam the grifting appeals into overdrive, and double that if she wins the nomination. If she loses the nomination or the general election, she can go right back to what she’s doing now, with double the victimology and self-righteousness. And if she wins the election, well, then she’ll get the keys to a whole new universe of grifting possibilities, not to mention power fantasies made real.
She’s a runnin’.
Mnemosyne
Yep — first generation immigrants have the most number of children, but the second generation generally matches the birthrate of the rest of that country.
Funny how they keep using the same tropes over and over and over again and yet their dire future where the
NegroesAsiansItaliansIrishMuslims are going to outbreed us and … er … well, actually, I’ve never been sure why they’re so freaked out about the idea in the first place, but it’s come up over and over again for at least 200 years.jl
Not addressing this to anyone in particular, but I will just point out to less discerning readers here that the point of this post is that certain people are repeating things that are not true, and even after reliable data is repeatedly produced that shows that what they say is not true, these certain people keep repeating the same things that are not true.
The Muslim takeover of Europe by 2020 was total BS even without the lower birthrates, as the linked post by Saunders points out. This could have been checked by a simple look at any reference work on the ethnic make up of different European countries, and the ability to do HS math.
But, for the record, I welcome a takeover by any culture that is strictly secular in the public sphere, of whatever color, ethnicity or national origin.
MattR
@Tonal Crow: Well, you’re clearly right about the second part. I am not so sure about the first part. I might go just a bit lower – maybe between 77-87%. I think it depends on if she thinks she can stay relevant past 2012 without running, or if she thinks she will have a better chance of winning in 2016, or if she thinks the odds of her winning (which she will over value I am sure) are not high enough to be worth giving up her current lifestyle and money making gigs. But in the end, she is too much of a meglomaniac not too run if she thinks she has any sort of chance to win.
As for getting the nomination, it kinda depends on how many Republican voters leave the party before the primaries. I don’t think Palin will get the nomination but at the same time I don’t really see any alternatives in the field either. So I’ll go with about 35-40% chance she is nominated if she runs. And about a 15% chance she would win if nominated (is that too high?)
Steve M.
You liberals and your godless math.
cyntax
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Yeah, but on the third day your hangover was no where to be found.
David Hunt
@Kryptik:
Fixed for accuracy.
jwb
@Kryptik: Of course, it was only a question of what form it would take, not whether it would happen. Really, the only chance the rest of the stuff had was Obama saying he wouldn’t sign the tax bill without the other stuff, but since he didn’t want to make that wager it was clear this other stuff would only get through if the goopers made a serious mistake as they tried to pin the “failure” on the Dems.
Mnemosyne
@Tonal Crow:
You’re forgetting one thing: running for president is hard, and Sarah Palin is lazy as fuck. There is absolutely no way that she has the stamina to get through an entire election season.
She’s the Fred Thompson of 2012.
(W may be intellectually lazy and unwilling to actually govern, but he loved campaigning and he was good at it. Not all of those dirty tricks came from Rove.)
blahblahblah
Doug,
Why do you hate Amer…uh Europe?
jwb
@Tonal Crow: No, actually, I think if she wins the nomination but loses the election, she’s toast.
pragmatism
so much abuse of the slippery slope. IF THOSE SISSY EUROS LET ONE MORE MUSLIN IN, THEY WILL BE 110% CALIPHATED BY NEXT WEEK!!!!!1!!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: If you think about it, cumulatively “they” have outbred “us.” Adding them up, Poles, Germans, Swedes, Italians, Chinese, Koreans, African-Americans, etc., outnumber the descendants of the Jamestown, Plymouth, and Mass. Bay colony settlers. The thing is, most of those complaining would be in the “they” category.
MattR
@jwb: But will Palin think that?
EDIT: And this is the hard part about trying to predict what she will do. I have trouble getting my brain to shut down enough processing that it can mimic her thought process. And then blood starts dripping from my ears so I have to give up.
Calouste
@les:
Explicitly not running would damage her earnings potential, so she would have to come up with some sob story not to run. Once she runs, she’d be pretty much a lock on for the nomination (name recognition is the overwhelming factor in GOP primaries).
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@licensed to kill time: I want God start a new reality show, “Judgment of the Soul.” If He were to actually show what happened to Ken Lay and Ronald Reagan, it would clear some things up pretty quickly.
change
@Mnemosyne:
I remember when liberals like you said Ronald Reagan was “lazy” and that George W. Bush could never win because he was “stupid”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I don’t like horror shows.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@change: Less material to work with than your usual zero, huh change?
licensed to kill time
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yeah, and no lifelines or calling a friend allowed!
Roger Moore
@Kryptik:
Which is why Obama shouldn’t have signed the tax cut bill yet. He should have put it on his desk and threatened to veto it if the Republicans didn’t vote for cloture on DADT, DREAM, START, and a whole bunch of nominations.
Tax Analyst
But DougJ, you have to remember to reduce the projected non-Muslim population by the millions-and-millions of us “regular human beings” that those crazed, bloodthirsty Muslims behead on an ongoing daily basis. If you do that you will almost surely come up with a fully panic-worthy HitchenSteynian 20% type of result.
Calouste
@jwb:
Palin won’t “lose” the election, it will be “stolen” from her.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she drops out 3 weeks before election day blaming the librul media and biased polling.
David Hunt
@Calouste:
I state the counter-argument of GW Bush. I’m pretty sure that McCain had gobs more name recognition than GWB in 2000. Heck, I’ve lived in Texas all my life and McCain had more name recognition to me.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@change: If I remember correctly, he won because of the Supreme Court and the fact that the Framer’s didn’t quite understand statistics, being that the subject was still in its infancy.
Oh, yeah, and that liberals gave into those fucking conservative’s demands so that the country could be formed. And we’re still paying for it/compromising to this day.
burnspbesq
@Irony Abounds:
The problem with Steyn is he’s Teflon Man now. One of the goofy provincial human rights commissions went after him on hate speech charges over an article he wrote for Maclean’s a few years ago about the Mooslim Menace, and he’s now the poster child for freedom of the press in Canada.
“Loony” is not only the nickname of the $1 coin, eh?
Chyron HR
@change:
Did the same Republican “experts” who say Europe is ruled by Sharia Law also tell you that Reagan didn’t have Alzheimer’s?
les
@Tonal Crow:
Maybe, but I don’t think so. Campaigning is work, spending and expenses are scrutinized, it limits the scam. And she for sure has no interest in being elected–shit, gov. of Alaska was too much work and too limiting on the scam for her. She may claim to be running, get sniped for having no ideas and not talking to anyone but Fox, and gear up the money machine. The real money folks will never have anything to do with her, and winning shuts off the flow from the rubes.
Brachiator
@Joseph Nobles:
You have to go with the wingnuts you have, not the wingnuts you wish you had.
Goddamn, this is going to be a Clown Car Congress.
Tonal Crow
@Roger Moore:
This, or something very like it.
jonas
@change: Um, the whole point of Doug’s post was that Europe isn’t turning Muslim, so it’s a moot point. The idea that it is is a bunch of, yes, racist bullshit dreamed up by Mark Steyn who thinks Muslims are in fact inferior to white Christians, and I have no idea what your point is about the open borders. Whoever said anything about that?
So, challenge to liberals FAIL.
And speaking of Europeans and their Muslim minorities it occurred to me that we haven’t talked in a long time about Spain. Remember back in the wake of the Madrid train bombings, the right-wing president who was good buddies with George W. Bush and all on board with the Iraq War and everything lost to an outspoken socialist, Zapatero, who wasted no time in getting Spain’s troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and reaching out to Spanish Muslims to foster dialogue and reduce radicalism? Steyn, the NRO and other neocons were apoplectic about this and predicted that Spain was soon on its way to being once again reduced to an Muslim caliphate and would certainly suffer more attacks after such a brazen display of cowardice.
Well, Spain did get its ass kicked in the financial meltdown of 08-09. But it’s been pretty quiet as a front in the great global jihad. In fact, Zapatero’s government began bending over backwards to accommodate Muslims in Spain — legalizing illegal residents (holy shit!), teaching more Islamic history in schools, rejecting a bill to ban the hijab in schools, etc. So what happened? Shouldn’t Spain be occupied by the Taliban by now? This was supposedly the principle case study for the neocons on how not to handle Islamic radicalism. It’s no surprise they were wrong — but just how wrong they often are still surprises at times.
licensed to kill time
The only thing change ever brings here are lame-ass moronicate talking points. Shoot one down, it pulls out another as if it’s some brilliant insight. :::yawn:::
Suffern ACE
@jl: I for one, welcome our new Ainuan overlords.
burnspbesq
Umm, wait a sec.
Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is the date on that Globe & Mail article September 20, 2008?
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
Why is that so relevant?
Just Some Fuckhead
I’d like to see Europeans polled on whether they’d like 28% muslim population or 28% batshit crazy white American rightwingers.
I know which I prefer.
Legalize
Step 1: never assume that there is a shred of truth to anything these assholes say.
Everything else pretty much follows from there.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: There might have been a Eurabian baby boom in the past two years. What if it has gone unreported? Doomed! We are doomed!
ETA: Did I mention that we are DOOMED?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@DougJ: Because, your post is now entirely wrong. It should say withing 98 years. Now we can’t trust anything you say because you didn’t subtract 2 years.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
It would have been a totally empty threat. Obama could not veto the tax bill or let any of it carry over into next year. I don’t know why people continue to believe that this was ever an option. It is right up their with the myth that this was the best deal that could have been done.
It’s a crappy deal, but some kind of deal absolutely had to be done before the end of the year.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brachiator:
I get what yer saying but if you can’t walk away with nothing then yer already screwed at the negotiation table, particularly with this group of nihilists.
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
A couple of things.
Are you only now discovering that Steyn is always wrong about everything? I can remember dissections of Steyn on iamtrex going all the way back to right after David spun off from FDL.
The way the first couple of paragraphs of the post are written is (I assume unintentionally) a little misleading. My takeaway from an initial fast reading was that this was all new. Maybe that’s on me, but I doubt I was the only one who read it that way.
matoko_chan
@DougJ: the eurabia-shouters are also very worried about the global muslim vs christian rep and conversion rate.
that is wat the terror mosque freakout is all about.
muslims can come to western countries and proselytize, build churches ….xians that go to muslim countries and proselytize get jailed or get dead.
And like i said, because al-Islam evolved from xianity, Islam is EGT immune to xianity for the most part. Unless the muslimah in question is a 15 year old girl like rifqah bary.
al-Islam is definitely immune to xianity in situ.
just ax the toothbrush doctors.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fun fact: on one side of the family, I’m descended from William Bradford, first governor of Virginia. On the other, my grandfather came over on the boat from Italy when he was 2 years old (we even found his Ellis Island record).
Sometimes I love America.
Calouste
@Just Some Fuckhead:
They already have enough crazy white rightwingers, maybe not 28%, but people like LePen and Wilders get 16-18%.
Brachiator
@Just Some Fuckhead: RE: It’s a crappy deal, but some kind of deal absolutely had to be done before the end of the year.
Yep, that’s kinda where we are. Screwed.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
Yay muslim countries! um, yeah.
Hey, m_c, how’d your boy JL do in an Islamic country? Just curious if the system-killer would WAI in the absence of free speech?
I’m sure your co-religionists would love to hear that theory espoused in their countries as well.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Just Some Fuckhead: Believe me, Muslims win in that one, in a flash. Partly because they’re part of who’s doing the voting, for one.
What these Wingnuts who spread these fears and those who are susceptible to them don’t realize at all is that outside of the racist, right-wing fringes in Europe, not only is Muslim not a dirty word, there’s a huge romance with the parts of the world where Muslims traditionally lived, and the cultures. For the upper crust in France, owning a home in Morocco isn’t unusual just as one example. There’s also oppression and colonization and all the rest of it, but it’s a long history.
I remember when the French refused the US calls to invade Iraq, and people online Stateside would think they were being clever by pointing out “Well, the French have business interests in that part of the world”, as if that showed the real, cynical ulterior motive. Rather than realizing that yes, people who have a tradition of actually dealing with a certain region and culture are going to see it as a place where actual humans live rather than abstract cartoon villains you can just paint as pure evil in your imagination.
Mike in NC
Heh, indeed. In June we spent two weeks in five European countries, where we saw tens of thousands of people in airports, railway stations, shopping centers and public squares. Maybe five of them were in Muslim garb.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brachiator:
All we can do is choose how we’re screwed. And I woulda chose Screwed Option B, do nothing and let the chips fall where they may. Anything godawful coulda been fixed standalone, it it was that serious. As far as political fallout for “raising” taxes, after the shellacking we took in November sans nothing, I’m quite reluctant to do the politically expedient thing in hopes that something politically good comes out of it. There’s no evidence this would be the case.
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
I honestly thought that the Muslim population must be larger than that if the conservatives talked about it this much. Fool me twice, I know.
EDIT: So it was new to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Yes, I can do either Mass. Bay colony in the 1630s (3/4 of the people involved in the Salem witch trials are direct ancestors) or came from Sweden through Boston in 1900.
Brachiator
Semi OT. Maybe it’s just me, but I would think that anything we do in Afghanistan/Pakistan, including a withdrawal, is made more complicated when our supposed allies in Pakistan are double dealing (Pakistani Role Is Suspected in Revealing U.S. Spy’s Name):
And here is the sting in the scorpion’s tail:
schrodinger's cat
Wow, this is the same exact argument used by right wingnuttia of India. The Indian Government had a massive PSA, ad campaign in the seventies calling for two children per couple ( Roughly translated from Hindi, Two of us, with two of our own). Leaders of the Hindu right in India sneer, Five of us (since according to Sharia a muslim man can marry 4 times) with twenty five of our own.
burnspbesq
Muslims in Europe are going to get assimilated eventually. I remember sitting quietly at a table by the lake in Geneva on a Saturday afternoon a few summers ago, minding my own business, and suddenly being overrun by a gaggle of teenage girls in sprayed-on Dolce & Gabbana jeans, silk blouses of various colors and patters, FMPs … and headscarves.
Toss people into a consumerist society, put a little cash in their pockets, and … wallah! WAI.
P.S. CUDLIPS RULE!
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
OK. Got it.
schrodinger's cat
@schrodinger’s cat: I just want to make clear that the argument in the parenthesis is the argument that wingnuts make, pulling out of thin air without any evidence to back it up.
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: who is JL?
it is pretty standard history and evo theory of culture that Islam evolved from xianity, which in turn had evolved from judaism.
i already laboriously and tediously explained to your dumbass that Assanges system killer is being field tested against the US, because of a variety of reasons.
One thing that hasnt been discussed is just how much observation of Americas reaction to 9/11 and OBL influenced Assaenges system design.
If you think about it….Assange just did in cyberspace EXACTLY what OBL did in meatspace to America.
it seems like the US is reacting in the same way.
OBL probably wasnt out for much anything more than giving the hyperpower a bloody nose….but actually OBL destroyed Americas economy and her courage with a single blow.
same David and Goliath model for WL….only Assanges systemkiller is built to kill america’s closed information system with “surgical” accuracy.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
You know, for once, you are right. I meant JA, when I typed JL. Now answer the fucking question, cudlip. If JA were in a muslim country, how would he be being handled right about now?
As for islam evolving from xianity, that’s evo theory, not the religion. explain it to your own faith.
Brachiator
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ah, no.
This is what you would have to sign off on:
Tax filing for 2010 is delayed up to 6 weeks as the IRS has to reprogram computers to deal with the lack of an AMT patch and other fixes.
21 million taxpayers would see an average increase of $3900 in their 2010 taxes because the alternative minimum tax (AMT) affects them. I repeat. Their 2010 taxes.
People expecting a deduction for educator expenses or tuition and fees in 2010 no longer have them. Immediate increase in tax, again for 2010.
There are no IRS withholding tables for 2011 paychecks.
To fix any of this retroactively will require either that you delay processing of 2010 income tax returns, or force millions of people to later file amended returns to get their refunds. And now a shitload more people will be due refunds because you absolutely increased their tax liability.
And of course, the extended unemployment benefits would not go out to the people who needed them.
And this is before you get to any of the expiring Bush tax cuts.
So, exactly how would you sell this to the American people? You would play political games with their money so that you could stick it to the obstructionist Republicans in the Senate and expect people to sit still for that? Especially the people who didn’t vote for you?
Really?
A number of Balloon Juice posters persist in the absolutely erroneous belief that this tax law jumble only affected 2011 marginal tax rates and maybe the Estate Tax.
But, no. Also, too.
Obama didn’t simply do what was politically expedient. The dumbass Democrats didn’t give him any alternative plan, he didn’t draft one himself, and he had to do something to keep the tax system and the government functioning.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: My understanding is that Islam was revealed to Mohammed and did not evolve. At least, that is what the faithful believe.
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts:
what on earth are you talking about? every muslim knows the doctrine of the People of the Book. every muslim says we all worship the same Al-lah, christians, muslims, and jews all worship the SAME god.
i have made this crystal clear for all but the most intransigently braindead among you. Muslims dont give shit if xians want to believe in the jesus-godhead…we all believe in same god, the Al-lah of the People of the Book is our Al-lah….the Prophet made that VERY CLEAR.
We do, however, care passionately that xians want to MAKE us believe in the jesus-godhead also.
we CAN’T, because of surat iklas.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
And yet you still ignore the question I asked above. How convenient, cudlip.
Carol
@Tonal Crow: If she wins the nomination and loses the election, she can dine on that distinction for a lifetime as the first woman nominee of a major party. That’s good for at least another book and possibly a movie and a few good speeches. So she will run.
Her running and losing also clears the field of the 2008 also-rans and lets newer blood (i.e. Jeb Bush) run in 2016 against a field that will be wide open and against an unknown Democrat. So some people may just egg her on to run.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
That was my understanding, too, OO. I think we might harsh her buzz, though, if we brought that up.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: you have not demonstrated very good understanding, have you?
al-Islam is a process…therefore it evolves.
the uncreated revealed Qur’an exists outside time and space….our human understanding of it evolves to be relevent in localized spacetime.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: I have decided that she is not a bot, but that she is, while not dumb, simply not as smart as she thinks she is. She has taken 4 or 5 books and adopted their ideas uncritically. I am back to not engaging.
ETA: One does like the term cudlip though.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, it does have a certain je ne sais quoi, doesn’t it?
Silver
I still can’t believe that Steyn can get his tongue out of Conrad Black’s asshole long enough to actually write a column about anything.
I have low expectations though…
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: i answered your question.
the prototype that is running right naow is specifically targeting the US.
if Julian designed a prototype to target say ….the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would be vastly different in form if not function.
your question is nonsensical in context.
i expect an iranian systems-killer would function in much the same fashion, and the shariah legal system would now be convicting Julian of espionage and trying him in absenstia much like the powerless hyperpower is doing.
:)
mclaren
Typical.
Viva BrisVegas
I gotta say that Steyn’s fears sound entirely reasonable to me.
After all, the Conservative goal is to have the U.S. run by only 2% of its population, therefore it should be easy to run Europe with 6%.
matoko_chan
@Omnes Omnibus: it is accurate in describing you and AWS.
retarded or ‘sline would work too i guess.
matoko_chan
@Carol: i think…..that would be the smart move ….to run Palin in a sacrifice play. the problem is that 2012 may be the last time the GOP has a shot at the wh…in the forseeable future.
if the economy recovers, if HCR works as intended, and the pressure of the demographic timer continues to mount, the TP/GOP is going to go down to forever defeat.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
no, you ignored my question entirely, cudlip. I aske specifically what if JA was *in* an islamic country atm. what would be happening to his system killer? Let’s all change the color of our web sites to green again. Remember that? Yes. It’s all WAI, against the very systems that allow system-killers.
Your problem? You place too much faith in technology, cudlip.
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: you are cudlips, because you believe what others have told you.
like Cole agreeing with Douthat without ever reading the Bady post Douthat claimed proved Assanges strategy could never work.
that is what cudlips do.
Cole redeemed himself by reading Bady’s piece.
You seem uninterested in learning anything, so you remain unredeemed cudlips.
Stupid cattle chewing the poisoned cud of “american exceptionalism” that your masters gave you.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
Cudlips don’t answer questions that are posed to them. I guess we swim in the same gene pool, then, eh super troll?
ETA: The only reason you say Cole redeemed himself is because you saw your nym in the FP lights.
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts:
i have faith in science and in the Real.
what do you have faith in?
american exceptionalism?
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
You know, for someone who places so much faith in science, you sure do quote sky-fairies a lot.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Joseph Nobles:
And about time too, I say! I do wish the Intelligence Committee good luck trying to implant some higher intelligence into the empty body currently known as “Michele Bachmann”. That is what they do, isn’t it? They take in poor unfortunate people who weren’t properly gifted in the brains department and augment their intellig…
Why is everybody looking at me that way?
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: the reason im not a catholic is i could not reconcile science with catholicism.
science won and i was an atheist all thru high school.
but Islam and Science are are perfectly congruent.
it is very satisfactory for me.
Omnes Omnibus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Someone may have been thinking that when the committee assignments were doled out.
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: and my sky-faeries are far more real than your “american exceptionalism”.
land of the free and home of the brave!
more like the land of the willingly enslaved and the home of the worlds greatest cowards.
Church Lady
According to this, they are having babies at a faster rate:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5621482.ece
chopper
@arguingwithsignposts:
yeah, the joke really writes itself, doesn’t it?
TuiMel
@David Hunt:
Yup. Heard this very thing (in so many words in praise of Mark Steyn’s “America Alone”) from my Republican brother this summer. To Steyn and his disciples, Europe is the first line of defense from the overwhelming hoardes bringing Islamo-fascism to a town near you.
Mnemosyne
@Church Lady:
Church Lady, read your own damn link next time:
A higher birthrate is a factor, but it’s not the only one, and not even the most important one.
If you’re terrified of a group taking over Britain, that would be the “no religion at all” group, which is just barely behind the Christians and vastly outnumbers the Muslims.
lol
@Crashman:
It’s supposed to be a cautionary tale about allowing Mexicans into our country.
matoko_chan
@Mnemosyne: if i was a muse, id be Calliope.
Hob
I knew a guy who descended into mild wingnuttery (mild as in “I’ll say the most godawful right-wing shit because I like pissing people off, but I don’t really advocate voting or doing anything”) a few years ago, insisting that he was still a liberal… it was the Democrats who left him, etc. His two articles of faith were:
a) Sarah Palin is secretly very smart and a real feminist;
b) liberals need to realize that the Muslims are outbreeding us*, as demonstrated by Mark Steyn.
(* And liberals should fear this because the Muslims, unlike the Republicans, are intolerant.)
He originally read something by Steyn in National Review– which he honestly seemed to think was a non-partisan news magazine– and after that, no amount of debunking had any effect. You could point out all kinds of massive holes in the math and logic and he’d just shrug and say “Well, Steyn isn’t a social scientist or a politician… he’s a columnist… more of an entertainer really. I can’t verify all the numbers. But it really makes you think.“
Mnemosyne
@matoko_chan:
Everyone wants to be Calliope, but no one ever wants to be Melpomene.
the idler
@Tonal Crow: Thanks for the heads up. Have a BLESSED day!
And Another Thing...
@Hob: – Steyn’s evidence for the muslim hordes is the frequency of the name Muhammad. I bought a used copy of his America Alone & thought I’d fact check it. There are zero footnotes. There was at least one assertion per page that was either wildly misleading or out right false. It’s one of the sleasiest pieces of propaganda I’ve ever read.
THE
The problem with the forecasts is that they are really projections.
Whereas in history, it is the discontinuities that really matter, in the long run.
Projections work until they don’t.
I don’t believe any forecasts more than a few decades ahead.
Your wildest fantasies won’t even come close.
DougJ
@Hob:
You know, I am no fan of radical Islam, but everything I have read confirms that Islam, historically, has been more tolerant than Christianity.
DougJ
@Church Lady:
Does that mean shorter gestation period or a shorter gap between the birth of babies?
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
Who said I believe in american exceptionalism, cudlip? Your sky-faeries still rely on a faith of a book, a book that was delivered to a prophet, dependent on a sky-fairie who spoke to three different religions, apparently in different tones (not counting the mormons). Wallah, you can make science fit with whatever faith you want if you just believe.
BTW, you still haven’t answered my question from earlier. What would be happening to your superhacker JA in an islamic country like Saudi Arabia or Iran?
You can talk all your memetic selection and WAI you want, thanks to WEC free speech idealism. So you’re a bit of a hypocrite yourself, cudlip.
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: and you’re a bit of a retard.
relly stings doesn’t it?
american exceptionalism is a LIE.
america was built on land stolen from red men with labor stolen from black men.
and now Julian is DOING America just like OBL did.
only hes doin’ it in cyberspace instead of meatspace.
al-Islam kicked Americas fat white judeoxian ass, and you cant bear it.
your tears are delicious.
Hob
@DougJ: I think the idea is that we’re supposed to choose between (a) the Taliban and (b) the government of the City and County of San Francisco.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
hey fuckstick, did you even read wat i rote? read it again, cudlip. stings, don’t it? retard. i don’t think it would help you to know that i’m part native american, dumbass.
And yeah, you still haven’t answered the fucking question. because that’s just the sort of pos u are, m_c.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
Hey, dumbass, judeoxian is a WEC construct. Buy into it all you want, cudlip.
Tonal Crow
@matoko_chan: It is always easier to destroy than to create: the 2nd Law of thermodynamics will out. And “God” is a fantasy, sometimes of beneficent effect, sometimes a mere narcotic, far too often of evil intent and/or effect.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: If you meant the real “El Cid” (Ruy Diaz de Vivar), he wasn’t quite so much the anti-Moor crusader as he was a mercenary and ambitious sort himself.
Who fought alongside Moors when they worked with him. And ruled over a city-state integrated with both Moors and Christians.
Church Lady
@Mnemosyne: @DougJ:
Just thought it was interesting that the Muslim population in England is increasing at a rate 10x any other demographic group. The number of Muslims in the country has almost doubled in less than 10 years.
The real tell is in the age breakdowns. Muslims are the leading demographic group under age 4. Christians hold that title for the group over age 70.
Give it a generation and look at the demographic breakdown as those “under 4” kids start having babies of their own.
DW
Funny thing about birth rates – the New York Times magazine ran a big piece a while back on declining fertility rates in Europe. One of the key points in the story is that there isn’t a universal decline – some countries like Italy have sharp declines in fertility while others such as France have high levels of fertility. Before anyone asks, no it’s not Muslims keeping up the rate in France. There’s a curious correlation in Europe between female workforce participation and fertility – curious because it’s positive. Countries where women are more likely to have paid work are also countries with higher fertility levels.
Where am I going with all this? Well, when societies industrialize, the cost of raising and educating children fit for an industrial society rises dramatically and consequently birth rates drop. It takes a lot more effort to produce a modern literate citizen than it does to produce a peasant. And an illiterate citizen is a drag on a modern economy. The more the increased costs are dumped on women, the sharper the decline in fertility. So the French people and state assume a large chunk of the costs of raising children and consequently have relatively high fertility. Germans are less willing to subsidize such work and thus have lower fertility. The extreme case can be found in Japan and Singapore with unprecedented declines in fertility.
What this suggests is that the more patriarchal a society is, the more it expects women to make all the sacrifices for children, the sharper the decline in fertility will be. Even now Iran has a lower fertility rate than France. So in a generation or two we may see dramatic declines in fertility throughout the Muslim world, and perhaps a Muslim Mark Steyn bemoaning the demographic eclipse of Islam. Should be entertaining.
burnspbesq
I am matoko, destroyer of threads.
Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.
Kid, John Wooden once said something you would do well to repeat out loud at least four times a day.
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
Mnemosyne
@Church Lady:
Except that those “under 4” kids aren’t going to have four or six kids like their parents did. They’ll have one, maybe two, because that’s always the pattern for immigrants from developing countries who settle in first world countries.
The Steyn paranoia is based on the completely false assumption that each child in a large immigrant family will go on to have the same number of kids in their own families, and then their kids will have the same large families that their grandparents did, and so on. It doesn’t work like that and, frankly, never has, but Steyn needs to come up with some kind of scare tactic to justify his white supremacism, so that’s the one he chose.
bob h
Isn’t 4% about what we have here? A population that is above average in terms of economic achievement and respect for the law, too.
Snarla
It’s probably fair to assume he got his number from a Jack Chick tract published in 1994, in which Muslims with sinister eyebrows are “bringing England to its knees.”
Here’s a post I wrote last year: http://snarla.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/europe-not-overrun-by-muslims/
of course
‘They’ll have one, maybe two, because that’s always the pattern for immigrants from developing countries who settle in first world countries.’
Except Muslims. Oddly enough. Who would have thought?
But hey, don’t let us disturb your happy fantasy – dream on. De Nial’s just a river in Egypt, la de da de dum dum da.