Friday, September 28, 2007

another big AQI guy assumes room temperature

Our forces in Iraq have killed a guy (just a blog link for 'Inside DC and Red Carpets', might have to scroll down to find this story) named al Tunisi (which means, of course, the Tunisian), who was a very big fish.

It was an airstrike that killed him, and a note was found near his body, apparently a message he was trying to send away.

We're surrounded. Communications have been cut off. We're desperate, please send help.

Anecdotal evidence that the surge is working. :-)

even more frightening, even less press

Everyone heard little Mr. Cheapsuit when he said "we don't have that phenomenon... I don't know who's telling you this" when he was asked about government abuse of gays in Iran.

Liberal apologists have scrambled around to try to explain this away, to say he meant they don't have a gay culture or a gay cable network or a gay travel agency or some such, as can be found in this country. But of course Ahmadinejad was not trying to be coy. He meant to say there are no gays in Iran, and everyone knows it.

But if you don't believe that, read this story about a press conference he held. Toward the end, when told by that nervous Iranian female reporter "I know a few myself", he responded by asking for their addresses so that he could go and meet them to learn about them.

Gay activists try so hard to paint Christians this way, as cruel intolerants who would just as soonlive in a nation with no gay people. But when confronted by an actual head of government who chillingly asks for addresses so he can 'meet them', when it's well known that this government tortures, imprisons and executes them for the 'crime' of being gay, they say--

zip. nada. nothing.

I just don't get it.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Bankrupt candidates

IT's hard enough to believe that Dem candidate Mike Gravel proudly proclaimed yesterday that he had "stuck the credit card companies with $90k worth of bills.... they deserved it!"

But what still baffles me is why no Democrat politician and no leftist voter seems to understand that in cases like that, the 'credit card companies' do NOT pay that bill.

WE DO.

No company simply absorbs business write-offs without making their best effort to pass the cost along to its customers. And in the case of credit card banks, it's quite easy to do so with a simple adjustment of future rates and fees, mostly for the less wealthy customer.

You see, they have to compete fiercely for the good customers, the ones with good credit who demand low rates and can get them. But the less well-off, the 'working poor', they have to accept much higher rates because it's all they can get. Their credit is not sufficient to give them bargaining power. And they need the cards more than the wealthier people do, because they don't have any cash for daily purchases.

So yesterday's 15% rate becomes today's 15.5% rate for this kind of customer (the one who cannot afford any increase in monthly bills), and the rate creep is thanks to weasels like Mike Gravel, who proclaim they've stuck it to the banks but have actually stuck it to their own constituents.

Democrats simply don't live in the real world and don't get held accountable for the real world consequences of their ideas and actions. Gravel's perverse pride in his own bankruptcy, as if he had done it on behalf of the American public, is the twisted result of the constant Dem haranguing of 'the evil corporations'.

Eyes open, voter; these people should not be in charge of anything.

p.s. Please note these banks, like Citi and Bank of America, are making annual profits in the 30% range, compared to ExxonMobil's single digits. If Big Oil is EEEEVIL, then these banks are EEEeeeeeEEEEEeeEEVVIIILLLLLLLL........ but you don't hear much about 'em from Dems (excepting, of course, the perversely proud Gravel).

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Rhetorical question

Can a nude Alicia Silverstone persuade me to give up meat?

My first impulse is to point out that she hasn't yet tried-- but I'm free this afternoon.
"damage to planet inevitable; poor, minorities hardest hit."

Template news from the leftist newzoids. All the news that's printed to fit.

Although they do acknowledge that some parts of the planet might actually benefit from being a bit warmer, pardon me if I don't rush out and invest in the British wine industry.

Out front with abortion opinions....

Here's one you shouldn't miss if it the issue resonates with you.

And if it doesn't, of course, it SHOULD.

The author of this article (Amy Alkon) believes that, in the absence of definitive opinion on when it is that a fetus becomes a person, individual choice should rule, and compares it to other personal choices like food and whatnot.

But ask yourself this- if you were in the woods and had your rifle trained on a target, but you weren't sure whether it was a deer or another hunter in camo, what would be your 'choice' about pulling the trigger.....?

Liberals, of course, would shoot the hunter or else throw down the rifle in disgust, but that's not what this metaphor is about. It's about the uncertainty, and what to do (or refrain from doing) about it... is this a human being or not?

Traditionally, in the case of such uncertainty, civilized people hold their fire. If it's possible that this is a human being, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. But in abortion terms, if there is some doubt about whether it's a human being, then stick some scissors in its brain and get it over with. "Definitely not human anymore, hah hah.. toss this in the dumpster, would ya? "

"There's no definitive answer", she says. But what she means is that she herself has already concluded that a fetus is not a person, although she suggests a generous willingness on her own part to let others entertain the opposite belief without argument from her-- provided, presumably, they do not attempt to stop her from having an abortion.

She clarifies her view thusly; "While a clump of cells or even a large gathering of them that resembles a baby can become a person, they don’t constitute a full-fledged human being deserving of rights."

Okay, so it can become a person, but it isn't yet. How does she know?

She doesn't, and neither does anyone else, in her stated view; "no definitive answer".

Again, lacking a definitive answer, her proposal that everyone is thus free to act reveals a bias toward a definitive answer, namely NO, this is not a human being. How else could she be at all comfortable with 'choosing' to kill it?

Unless she is way way less civilized than me. Or less human.

Enjoy her self-absorption and unrestrained ego here. And accept her 'advice' at your own risk.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

the forecast for this weather story is FOGGY

Here's an illuminating story from the Times, UK that is.

Apparently La Nina is wrecking our world's weather. Whatever La Nina is.

Here's what the story in the Times says it is:

La Niña occurs when the tropical seas of the Pacific off the coast of Latin America cool down, while the waters turn warmer towards Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia. That lurch in ocean temperatures can send weather systems into havoc over vast areas, delivering huge deluges of rain over the Far East and tropical Australia, while western parts of Latin America turn much drier than usual. This is the flip side of El Niño, although La Niña lasts for a shorter time, usually no more than a year.

Clearly, the waters off Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia are getting warmer and it's time for us all to blame GLOBAL WARMENING (cue Vader theme from star wars), the evil corporate American plot by HalliBushitleroogabooga to ruin the world's weather.

But.... what on earth could be COOLING DOWN the waters of the Pacific off the coast of Latin America, they do not say, of course. Except to call it La Nina.

Does it seem to you that a critical bit of info is missing here?

Again, I want to know why the waters of the Pacific off Latin America are cooling! After all, we're supposed to be warmening the globe, increasing the temperature, you know? HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

At any rate, if it coolses in one spot and warmens in another, well the world's weather is in for some sharp turns, so say the scientists.

Yes, generally the same scientists who predicted so many horrible hurricanes in 2006. :-)

So, whatever La Nina is, it's going to be terrible, and nobody really knows what causes La Nina.

But hey, let's pour thousands of tons of IRON in the ocean and that should level things right out.....

Remember while you absorb this stuff--

in the 1970s a scientist named Hansen was one of the first to warn us of the coming ice age due to global coldening. Nowadays, the same scientist (presently funded by George Soros) is warning we must act now to stop global warmening or we'll all die.

Also in the 1970's there was a lefty envirowacko plan to use millions of old tires to create a reef off Florida to save the sea life. They built their reef.

The tires were scattered by the first storm and took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up. They were everywhere, and no sea life wanted anything to do with them.

Morons. They should not be in charge of anything. Especially NOW.

Because now they want to dump iron in the ocean to save us all.

DO NOT LET THESE PEOPLE NEAR any fax machines, cell phones or live internet connections. They should not be allowed to encourage each other except perhaps through the postal service or with messenger pigeons.


Spontaneous combustion-- with accelerants

George Soros is what the press used to call a shadowy figure.

He made billions, mostly by shorting US currency. Short-selling at a large scale can be self-insuring, flooding markets with 'sold' currency that then devalues, because of said market flooding, at which point the buyback takes place at lower value and the profits are made.

People who can short on this scale are few, but Soros is the biggest.

He's also just about the biggest single political activist, measured by spending anyway.

And you wouldn't believe what he's been up to.

Nothing is as it appears. Soros is up to some serious skullduggery. There should be laws that require transparency on a more timely and widespread basis than what Soros grudgingly gives us, and of course the press conceals even that by simply not reporting it.

Given he's spent tens of millions on our last two elections and probably even more than that on related issues, it's amazing we are not already a "People's Republic of the United Socialist States".

Just goes to show you that whatever our side is doing, it's keeping the wolves at bay; we cannot afford to go soft.

Monday, September 24, 2007

"We don't have this phenomenon"

Ahmadinejad said, among other absurdities, that when it comes to homosexuality, "we don't have this phenomenon, and I don't know who's told you that we have it".

You heard it straight from the 'strong horse's mouth'... there are no gays in Iran.

Perhaps not for long, anyway--- as long as his government is doing things like this (HT Captain Ed) and this.

Note the description of the sufferings of one gay Iranian at the hands of his own government--

"When I came to (after 100 lashes), I saw there were several dozen other gay guys in the cell with me. One of them told me that, after they had taken him in, they beat him and forced him to set up dates with people through chat rooms -- and each one of those people had been arrested, those were the other people in that cell with me.”

When I heard this tyrant say there were no gays in Iran, I thought "at last, something that will make liberals see how evil he is".

And there were boos and catcalls when he said it.

I predict, though, that nothing will come of it, no MSM airtime, no great wave of protest by American gay groups. They're all too busy hating Bush, and they simply refuse to stand up for their own principles if there is even a CHANCE that it might seem to help Bush.

Suicidal and sad. And dangerous, because they'll happily take us down with them.

Here's a good question....

If Columbia is proud of having hosted a tyrant, why did they black out the curtains behind him, rather than put up the Columbia University signage that decorates pretty much all other such occasions?

While I was there....

At the Gay Patriot, I also found this link to a video on Military Times' website.

It's the story of Channing Moss and the men who saved him.

Moss was delivered from the battlefield to a surgery center with a live RPG impaled in his body.

It could have injured or killed the men who lifted him into the chopper, the pilot and others on board the chopper, and every person who assisted in the surgery. And they all knew it and went ahead, trying to save one man.

There are heroes everywhere and anywhere United States Military uniforms are worn, even by doctors who do not see battle.

Compare this to IEDs, rapes and murders, beheadings... the acts of cowards and thugs....

The contrast couldn't be clearer. And even so, people like Sally Kohn prefer the vile disgusting cowards and thugs, knowing it means their own destruction.

Suicidal BDS

You can always count on Gay Patriot's blog to think about issues before taking a position (unlike most of America's blogging gays, his knees don't jerk).

And GP makes sense, as usual, when discussing Sally Kohn, a Jewish lesbian (self identified) who posts on the Daily Kos that she has a little crush on Ahmadinejad.

Oh, don't worry... she knows he'll probably have her killed, but she'll take that chance rather than accidentally be seen to support Bush indirectly by opposing his opponents.

After all, how crazy can a dictator really be if he says Bush is wrong and evil? Doesn't everybody think that?

In fact, she thinks he's cute and cuddly, like Kermit the frog, and she speculates that he may be attractive enough to turn her straight.

Suicidal, deranged, incomprehensible. In that regime, Ahmadinejad might indeed seek to turn her straight, but for that little conversion he would lean less on his own cuddly attractiveness than on his secret police torture teams.

If he should be overthrown in the next few years....

... Mahmoud Ahmedinejad could very easily be elected as a Democrat to congress, maybe from Louisiana, possibly from San Francisco. He's got the patter down.



Remember, the last speech he gave, before he got on his plane and flew to the Ritz Carlton in Manhattan, ended with DEATH TO AMERICA. There were missiles on parade, the Quds force marched (well, however many hadn't been sent to Iraq to kill Americans), and a couple of jeeps had large signs attached reading "death to America" and "death to Israel".

As I said, a perfect Democrat candidate for Congress.

HT Atlas.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

worse than oil

Some fuels are downright stupidly dangerous, but programs to flood the market with them continue apace.

One produces 70 percent more greenhouse gases than fossil fuel, another, 50 percent more.

The first is rapeseed ethanol biofuel, the second corn ethanol biofuel.

The southern English countryside is awash in rapeseed, which is used for partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. It makes acres and acres of stunning yellow flowers, and now one can see many more such acres due to future ethanol demand brought on by envirowackoes......

And all over the world forests and hedges and wilderness vistas are being flattened and planted with corn and maize, to take advantage of the coming biofuel boom. Slash and burn, they call it, and corn is the new cocaine. Money money money, for biofuel, because oil is evil.

Oh, and the previous estimates for how much nitrous oxide these crops produce in burning? Way low. Nitrous oxide is almost 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and now they estimate the amount of nitrous oxide produced by corn and rapeseed fuel burning is more than twice the previous estimate.

One professor is quoted thus:

The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuels are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto.”

And that's an understatement.

SO, let's summarize--

Ethanol from corn is 50% higher in greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuel.

Ethanol from rapeseed (the Euro-preferred source) is 70% higher.

Earth-broiling nitrous oxide gas is produced at more than double the previously estimated rate by these fuels, and in both cases is much more than fossil fuels.

Corn for ethanol, as a market factor, has been devastating to corn prices in general, and all over the world the poor are rioting due to rapid doubling and tripling of corn prices. And other crops will increase in price too, as more land is given over to corn and fewer other crops are grown due to fewer profits from them.

Fossil fuel is still the cheapest, most abundant and least destructive of all energy options at present. Liberals cannot be 'for the poor' or 'for the environment' and still be 'for' ethanol biofuel.

Those who continue to favor ethanol do so at risk of revealing their true motivation-- simple hatred of 'the rich', hatred of 'evil corporations', and of course hatred of George W. Bush.

They try to tell us they're morally good and we're morally bad. But no ideology can be good whose motive source is hatred. And that's a liberal for you.

Biofuel info link HT G. R. at Insta.

problems with LEGAL immigration

It makes me nauseous to say it, but I am now convinced that we are going to have to watch one of our cities vanish in mushroom cloud, leaving a radioactive crater and a million dead Americans, leading to 90% losses in our financial markets and a complete stoppage of American economic productivity, before the people holding elective offices are going to grow the spines they need to make unpopular decisions and take difficult steps.

Four years ago, the State Dept.'s inspector general recommended the closing of the 'diversity visa' program on the grounds that it did not prevent the arrival of people from nations that are state sponsors of terrorism. It is still going, and they are still coming.

In the past six years, almost 10,000 people have arrived from Sudan, Iran, Syria and Cuba, terrorism sponsors all. The United States government has no idea where most of these people are and what they are doing.

This will kill someone, a lot of someones. If you get the uncomfortable feeling that people like Osama are laughing at us, you're right.

How hard is it to figure out that we have to put a stop to this?

Apparently quite hard, as Mahmoud Ahmedinejad enjoys the Ritz-Carlton's luxury tonight in New York City.

HT Atlas.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

more on the Jena Six


The best summary yet I've found in the news on the Jena story is here.

Bottom line-- it's complicated, its mostly not about race, and the facts as the media constantly presents them are mostly wrong.

This is Justin Barker on the day of his injuries. Looks bad but not like attempted murder by kicking. It does raise doubts about the seriousness of the charges against Mychal Bell.

Then again, Bell is not the fresh daisy he has been portrayed in the media; he's had several recent charges of various violent acts, and it is traditional to make charges more serious as the count of such incidents increases.

Read the linked story and marvel at the number of 'facts' the media has presented over the past several days, all wrong wrong wrong.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Night of the Living Mandelas

Okay, this one is just silly.

Leftards and the media (I know, redundant, yada yada) have apparently decided that the president thinks Nelson Mandela is dead. What a moron, that Bush, eh?

This because the other day Bush used Ryan Crocker's metaphor in a presser, that is to say "where are Iraq's Mandelas? Mandela is dead... Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

A civil rights leader, a rallier of opposition during political crisis, a flagwaving bigger-than-life visionary who can carry political momentum all by himself-- that is exactly what Iraq needs, and of course Saddam DID kill anyone who had that kind of potential. They were all a threat to him.

This is partly why such attention was given four years ago to that exiled guy whose name currently escapes me. His most obvious qualification was that he wasn't dead, and that was because he wasn't IN Iraq all those years.

Crocker's Mandela metaphor was powerful, and Bush used it properly.

And the leftards always turn out to be the morons, whenever they try to prove that Bush is a moron.

Sinister Israelis, Criminal Americans, Death to Israel

Just passing it on.....



Thanks MEMRI, HT Michelle M.

Read Whitlock, Rev. Shrimpton and Jerkson, and weep

Jason Whitlock is a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star, and has written about the Jena Six.

Eye-opening stuff is here, including many of the facts which tell the reader the case is NOTHING like the media have presented it, and NOTHING like the race-hustlers and poverty pimps have been selling.

Key Graf:

There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.

Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.

The fact that he survived is not due to any restraint on the part of his attackers. These young men, if not actually trying to kill him, clearly did not care if he lived or died, and administered more than sufficient kicks to the head to have killed anyone. They knew what they were doing, the chance they were taking with his life, and thus 'attempted murder' is entirely accurate.

The whole story is bogus. The narrative in the media at present is a story about brave young black people taking a step against racism by demanding the same rights the white students enjoyed (the right to gather under a tree, apparently).

The result was nooses hanging, a flashback to the 1920's and provocation to righteous anger that couldn't help but explode into violence. They are not guilty; they are the aggrieved party.

Of course, the ringleader Mychal Bell has been charged with assault on two prior occasions, but nobody in the press talks about that. And the young man who was attacked had DONE NOTHING AT THAT TIME TO PROVOKE THEM, but nobody talks about that either.

Whitlock continues:

A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.

Whitlock thinks the charges are excessive; perhaps that is worth discussing, but not under the umbrella of egregious racism that has been erected above this case. Assault and battery? Is there such a thing as attempted manslaughter? Heh... probably not.

Whitlock (who himself is black, although it's sad that I feel it necessary to indicate this) has totally exposed the race hustlers here. Whatever part racism played in this whole nauseating episode, it was demonstrably NOT what the press is pretending that it was.

Perhaps young Mr. Bell and his chums believed that young man to be a racist and wanted to express their dissatisfaction with the flawed American political system. In that framework, I wonder just how many crimes and assaults and so forth are to be blamed on the agitation of Jerkson, Shrimpton et al.

But they jumped this kid from behind and knocked him unconscious. It wasn't a "fight" at all. It was an assault. And no matter how angry about racism a person might be, it is still illegal and wrong to assault someone over words or thoughts.

Leave it to the government to punish people for what they think; that's what a 'hate crime' means. But it is never right or legal for individuals to attack other individuals over thoughts or words. And any media member who encourages this line of thought should not complain when, a couple of years from now, somebody angry at what he's written or said on the air takes a tire iron to his skull to express righteous indignation.

HT INSTPNDT.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Liberals say the world is nuanced shades of gray

Even now, having lived forty seven years and seen and heard and studied the dark side of humanity at some length, I have great difficulty believing just how dreadful these men can be.

A couple of things not to forget--

1) They happily and repeatedly violate the 'moral tenets' of their faith, breezily proving that their religious motivation is a wholesale fraud and they are simply vile men in search of power (no wonder Democrats can't manage to speak against these guys... ).

I am reminded of the story an Israeli told me during a day together in Brussels, of a long ago Arab rape on a beach in Israel to which he was an unwilling witness. He told me the Arab removed his crescent-and-star necklace as a preliminary to raping the girl. "Can't have that on while I'm doing this", he cheerfully said. These men have no respect for their own religion and its rules, but will kill and torture others for failing to keep to them. Radical Islamists are no more than psychopaths, certainly not moral leaders or examples of any kind.

2) This is the kind of 'punishment' that is in store for your wives, girlfriends, daughters, and often times sons as well.

The man who is the subject of the linked story happily admits to American soldiers that he is homosexual, but participates in heterosexual rapes because all the other guys are doing it. And the world knows by now that Yassir Arafat was homosexual as well, and died of AIDS. Duplicity, hypocrisy, and lots and lots of blood and filth and death. They claim to ruthlessly oppose homosexuality, and often kill and imprison such people in their own countries. And yet homosexuality is no less prevalent among the ranks of the terrorists than in any other part of the world.

Hitler's Nazi party is infamous for the level of cruelty to which it stooped, often with a yawn, a pistol shot, and a few scribbles of notes on an archive paper. But these Islamists have so far gotten a pass from the Western media on the grounds of some wierd respect for their religion and culture (would that the press respected their own culture half as much).

But Islamists are more and more revealing themselves as garden variety dregs of humanity, rapists and thieves and murderers who appear to have no working conscience in spite of claiming moral superiority through their religion.

They call us decadent, but the story linked here shows the ugly truth. These men of God are nothing more than disgusting medieval pirates, taking what they want and killing everyone who disagrees with them, and raping the wives and daughters to teach the men a lesson.

Reality on the ground



Try and absorb this.... just try.

Video is from Powerline.

Columbia's Shi'ite list


It is now a list of at least one.

(relevance of kitten pic at end of story, read on)

Little Green Footballs has this gem, a Columbia University official explaining the decision to invite Ahmadinejad to speak-- said explanation made in the manner of an intellectual speaking to dolts. He says-

"It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas, or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible."

But here in the real world, hosting a despot to speak as if he were a respectable foreign leader causes great celebrations amongst our enemies, who rightly see it as a sign of great internal weakness.

And they are encouraged by it. They recruit heavily from the publicity surrounding American weakness such as this.

And yes, successful terrorist recruitment because of Columbia University's newest guest speaker means more American lives will be lost. In fact the act of hearing these ideas we supposedly 'deplore' does SPECIFICALLY imply endorsement of them, at least by some of us.

Leftists around the world share this blindness; they can never see the real world results of the things they say and do. None of them thinks that communism causes starvation and mass murder, in spite of the fact that everywhere it is tried, these things happen.

And none of them can see that their condescending attitude, their visible inability to make moral distinctions, their 'openmindedness' and 'intellectual superiority' are all seen by radical Islam as weakness, cowardice and looming surrender.

Islam says "our culture is superior, to be desired over all others, made by God and to be forced upon the world for its own good. Any who resist us are evil, working against God, unwilling to recognize the superiority of our culture, and must be enslaved or killed."

The American left says "all cultures are equal in terms of moral value, and difference between one and another doesn't mean one is good and another is bad. (Except of course for our own culture, which is usually bad, but that's another story)."

So in fact the radical Islamist is already dramatically at odds with American liberalism; while the liberal believes no culture is superior to any other, the Islamist believes that one is, specifically his. And the left's inability to address the obvious problems with Islamic society (its treatment of women and gays foremost on my mind at present) is another sign of weakness in the eyes of radical Islam. The left claims to be against such things, but when given a clear opportunity to speak out, they prefer to attack Bush again instead. It's almost as if they're... afraid.

And if it looks that way to ME, then it looks that way to Osama and to Ahmadinejad.

This moral ambiguity, this inability to make moral distinctions, is not only a philosophical disagreement with Islam as to the nature of man and society; it is a death sentence for American culture. Liberals do not believe it is worth defending and will not do it. Radical Islamists do EVERYTHING they do in defense (best defense is a good offense) of their culture.

Can half of us defend our culture, fighting the other half of us as well as our enemies?

We are, sadly, in the process of finding out the answer to that question. It is not looking particularly hopeful at present.

Meanwhile, conservative blogs are attempting a last-minute organization of an anti-Ahmadinejad mass protest at Ground Zero next week, which they hope will generate enough of a press of human bodies to block the dwarf's visit to the site.

And since this is New York, and since this dwarf likely paid for and supported in some measure the destruction of the towers and the murder of thousands in this city, it is entirely possible they will rally and make their point. I hope so.

If I had not recently adopted a sick kitten, I'd fly up there and join them.

But the little guy needs me. :-)

Gloria Estefan on Fox News....

I just saw her appearance on the FN morning show, and came away with this-- (pp)

"of course, you never want to celebrate death, but if Castro's death is what it takes to change Cuba for the better, then that's the way it's gotta be."

She should know, a Cubana with countless terrible stories from friends and relatives, some of the stories without ending to this day. Imprisonment, 'disappearings', beatings, 're-education' and of course lack of freedom to choose a life course (and the resultant poverty and despair) all these things have been part of Cuban daily life for decades.

Oh, can't forget the wonderful health care system where everyone gets top quality care.

Just ask El Gordo Michael Moore-o.

But I did want to offer a contrary view to that of Gloria Estefan.

I believe the entire world should celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, with no tears and plenty of jubilation. The net value of the deeds he has done in this life are so far overbalanced in favor of blackhearted, vile, murderous evil that a sensible human being cannot even consider that any good in him makes any difference at all. It is a philosophical musing, of no practical value, an inquiry into the nature of man but insufficient for the defense of one man.

Anyone who wants to publicly argue for Castro's good must step over a hundred thousand tombstones just to get to that podium.

I'm reminded of an acquaintance I made a couple of years ago, a man of about my age who left Cuba with his parents in the 1970s. Few were allowed to do so; a token couple of hundred a year, just so Castro could say he was allowing it.

I was told that the family was selected in the lottery for permission to leave, but that it took years afterward for the paperwork to clear. When it did, they were told they had two weeks to leave, and if they failed, they must stay.

So frantically they sold everything and bought tickets to Spain (they came to America soon afterward) and made their appearance at the airport.

The security men began to take everything from them but the clothes on their backs, contemptuously seizing his mother's wedding ring and telling her that nothing of any value was to be taken from Cuba. They left literally with the clothes they were wearing. He was twelve years old, fully aware of the injustices visited upon his family.

He told me of the 'sugar slavery', of men seized from their homes in the night and put to work on the other side of the country in the cane fields, a brutal task with long days and physically scarring conditions. Their families did not even know where they were, or if they were alive or dead. And of course, when there were no more men, they seized the women in the same manner.

Sugar, you see, was one of the few products of Cuba that had a decent market price and was worth producing, even if only with slave labor to keep costs down.

So, Ms. Estefan, remember the stories you hear and the people you love, and do not hesitate to celebrate the death of a man who deserves eternal flames if any man ever did.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

History wasn't my best subject... but...

... the way I remember it, the Soviet Union pretty much fought every war for a handful of reasons--

Self-preservation

Spreading communism and disturbing/damaging capitalism

growing its empire

*******

I can think of no war in which the Soviets fought for anyone else's freedom. And since their people didn't HAVE freedom, you can pretty much rule out the notion that the Soviets ever fought FOR freedom at all.

Unless you're an anonymous writer for the Washington Post's website. According to him/her/it/them, the Soviets' eight million war casualties are way way more than the casualties America suffered for the freedom of others.

Okay, there's an asterisk there, and the Post freely admits that some of the Soviet deaths might not entirely have been for someone else's freedom, sort of.

But since their point was to debunk and mock Fred Thompson, and Fred said that America has shed more blood on behalf of OTHER PEOPLE'S LIBERTY than all other nations combined, they kind of needed some big numbers to 'prove him wrong'.

So remember your rewritten history, kiddies. Brave Soviet soldiers gave all for the freedom of someone else, somewhere else, because that's the giving and sacrificial nature of communists.

The real takings from this are plain as day; at the Washington Post any twist of fact, any misreading of history, any lie is fair game so long as it's used to debunk a conservative speaking for American goodness.

And the WaPo has the gall to give Fred "Pinocchio points", which is a lot like Hillary telling General Petraeus she needs 'willing suspension of disbelief' to accept his report. It's just a cowardly way of calling a man a liar.

I've been to Colville-sur-Mer in Normandy, and strolled down the rows of crosses, now and then a Star of David, each bearing the name of a young man and his rank and the date of his death. There are many thousands of those there, most of the men having died within a week of each other in 1944. And while Colville-sur-Mer is a large piece of land, it is a very small part of France.

All we ever ask is enough land to bury our dead. And then we leave.

If we are imperialists, we're the most forgetful imperialists the world has ever known. We always leave our 'conquered' lands without stealing anything or committing genocide against any locals (or Jews) or even declaring ourselves dictator for life. We stay long enough to make the innocents safe and kill the bad guys, then we help the survivors with getting things back to normal again, then we go home as soon as we can. We did it in France, Japan, Germany and Korea, and on smaller levels in other places. And we will do it in Iraq if in fact the people are able to see the value and cling to it. But it always depends on the locals getting it right. And we always give theme every chance, because we really do want them to succeed.

We were even succeeding at this in Vietnam when the Libs pulled the funding for the troops. We had weaknesses of leadership then, military and otherwise, but the principle for which we fought was sound and just; saving an innocent and uneducated population from the very real and savage threat of communism.

And if someone at WaPo wants to poo-poo the relative savagery of the threat of communism, I have some big numbers for them too, WITHOUT asterisks.

Pol Pot-- killing fields-- TWO MILLION DEAD. Because we left and he felt he was free to do it.

Stalin -- THIRTY MILLION OR MORE, DEAD. Almost for no good reason, but Stalin didn't need reasons by then.

And God alone knows how many have died in China because of communism, but odds are that over the past half century or more, the number is bigger than Stalin's.

And you know, sometimes those other nations for whose freedom we've fought even recognize this, and show gratitude. I'll never forget a poster on the wall of a shop in Arromanche on the Normandy coast (where Mulberry Harbor was built, and where it remains in skeletal form). An American GI was in silhouette, walking toward the setting sun, helmet at jaunty angle but with a fatigued slump to his body, and in the foreground a small French boy and girl holding hands and calling to the departing GI, "Merci monsieur!"

Thank you sir, indeed.

It is likely the WaPo corps of anonymous debunkers wouldn't give that poster a second glance, but I shall forever remember it and weep when I do, for the men who were not able to walk off into the sunset when the fighting was over and the people were free.

Those men are still there. Every American should visit them once in a lifetime. And when preparing the bird cage and the catbox for your vacation, be sure and use some fresh sheets of Washington Post.

This ought to end Dem support of Palestinians


I look forward with glee to the upcoming press conference where Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and all the 'black leaders' in the Democrat party announce they've ended any support for the Palestinian people.

It's bound to happen.... because the circled words in this image from Hamas al-Aqsa TV (image copied from Atlas Shrugs blog-- Pamela, let me know if a big hat tip isn't enough for this image-grab) say "BLACK SNAKE" in Arabic.

The Palestinians are RACISTS!!!


RRRAAACCCIIISSSTTTSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Evil light-skinned racists, every one of them. Keepin' the people down, oppressing them, holding on to outmoded social divisions that cause hurt and heartbreak. Why, these pallies might as well have KKK on their foreheads!

I expect rallies, marches, press conferences, demands for reparations from Palestinian Authority funds, you know the deal.

Gonna happen. Any day now. It's comin'. A black Democrat declaration that Palestinian leadership and media are racists and support is hereby withdrawn. Go Israel!

(whistling randomly) shoo bee doo be dooooo... yep, that presser will start any minute now, just gotta get OJ off the screen... hmmm hm hm hmmmmmMMMmmmmmm

By golly, I'm beginning to believe the Dems and the black leadership aren't going to publicly condemn the Pals as racists after all.... gosh darn it, I sure didn't see THIS coming.

Why not just blow it up FOR him?

One of my readers has notified the other one (and me as well) of this story.

Ahmadinejad has plenty of American blood, and innumerable gallons of Iraqi blood, on his hands. He is a direct participant in a war against the United States, and has been up to no good ever since his 1979 ramrodding of the American Embassy storming. He held hostages, Americans, for over a year. He funds and trains and assists Hezbollah, which is of course the terrorist organization that has taken more American lives than any other, having murdered 243 United States Marines in Lebanon in 1983.

And Mayor Bloomberg is, apparently, serious about hosting this bloodthirsty freak on a tour of Ground Zero while he is at the UN.

If we were Muslims, we'd be declaring a fatwa against Bloomberg for this. He'd be dead within the week. And of course if we behaved that way, men like Bloomberg would never have the courage to oppose us and insult us in this fashion.

at the end of the story....

Several bloggers are keeping track of major crimes committed by illegals, and with tenacity and passion they are doing their best to publicize these crimes and support the victims. Fox News contributor and substitute host Michelle Malkin comes to mind, as does radio host and author Laura Ingraham.

The point is obvious; if these men were not here, these crimes would not be committed in America, and Americans would not be victims.

If you're Geraldo the Spitter, or a United States Senator, you poo-poo the crimes as aberrant anecdotes that do not reflect reality. But with each such crime publicized, the aberration comes closer to being the norm. (Perhaps that is why the media tries so hard not to publicize them.)

This one is a little bit different. Here in McKinney, Texas, we have a man whose crime appears to have been the solicitation of the murder of a police officer.

Pardon me if I assume that this is not the first run-in with the law that this man has experienced; why else would he be trying to put out a hit on a COP?

At any rate, it went down this way:

Police kicked in the door of his place, shouting POLICE POLICE and so forth, in the middle of the night. If it was me, even sound asleep, shouting policemen would be enough to make me yell "don't shoot I give up don't shoot I give up!!!" After all, POLICE and POLICIA are similar enough. And no matter what your national origin, everyone knows American police don't shoot if you give up.

But this man said nothing and fired the first shot.

Police responded with fire, and he was hit in the groin. The story (in the dead-tree edition of today's Dallas Morning News) drily notes that he has since undergone surgical castration for his wounds. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

So now he's been sentenced to five years in the slammer, not for solicitation of capital murder but for assault of a public servant (shooting at a cop). Some local libs are doubtless concerned about a railroad job, but for me the two crimes are so similar that it doesn't seem necessary to prosecute the original. The second crime is more easily proven.

The story in the Dallas Morning News is written by DMN's Tiara Ellis, and presumably went past editors before making it to print at the top of page 5B in the metro section today. I only make this clear because in the story, there are nine paragraphs. Only in the final paragraph is the reader informed of the fact that the convicted man, Guillermo Urquiza, is an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

And frankly, I"m surprised they mentioned it at all.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The many faces of martyrdom

Thanks to Atlas for this link.

Apparently a few dozen Syrian and Iranian chemical weapons 'experts' will need to be replaced.

The irony tastes a bit tangy and metallic, but its still delicious.

Abizaid wobbles left

Now that he's retired, we get to find out what General Abizaid really thinks.

He thinks the world could live with a nuclear-armed Iran.

Justification number one is, "look, we've lived with Russia and China".

Number two is "Iran is not a suicide nation".

In my view, number two is simply a dangerously ill-informed statement that simply ignores many things we already know about Iran. While it may be true that the larger part of the Iranian population is not fanatically Islamic, we can't forget that the Shia sect believes in the 12th Imam, an apocalyptic messianic figure whose coming signals the end of the world and the beginning of a new magical Islamic one. Ahmadinejad himself is a big fan of the 12th Imam, and some say he sees the 12th Imam when he looks into the mirror. At any rate, Ahmadinejad is certainly disposed toward hastening the apocalypse, and cannot be trusted to be completely sane on the subject of worldwide destruction. And the disposition of the population is at this stage irrelevant, as Ahmadinejad and the mad mullahs are currently and for the foreseeable future in possession of the state goodies.

The little imam has also said the nation of Israel should be wiped off the map, as well as numerous other antagonistic and provocative things which would imply the consideration of the future use of nukes.

And this problem I have outlined with the number two Abizaid justification is that it invalidates number one, which was an attempt to consider Iran on the same political level as Russia and China.

Clearly, Russia and China are secular leftist nations with no desire or tendency toward self-immolation as a part of the dawning of a new age. They would not launch nukes as an invitation to world destruction, only to try to win a preemptive war.

They want to own the world, not to destroy it.

General Abizaid's talents are now on the shelf. His views should remain there as well. But because his views are less 'trenchant' than those of Bush, he can be presented as a retired general who opposes the Bush doctrine, and thus we will hear no end of him in the lamestream media.

Why don't the American media do this?

Here's a great news piece from British television about the bloodyminded intolerance of Islam, even in the town of Bradford, England. A family is terrorized, literally threatened with death, all because a good man saw the spiritual value of Christianity. It's almost too painful to watch.

You'll never see its equal on American television, except maybe on Fox.

And of course it isn't BBC stuff either- Auntie Beeb is far too fond of Islam to tell this ugly truth.

HT LGF.

Well said

... Nidra Poller has written a magnificent tale of a visit to Normandy in the company of a survivor.

Included is this gem--

Anti-war is the upper face of a tarnished medal; the hidden face is pro-cowardice. How was that nearly unanimous courage mustered by our nation in WWII? Patriotism, national identity, heroism; the courage was individual and collective. And single-minded. Once you are in a war, you win. There is no other choice.

The leftist position ignores the fact that there is evil in the world and that weakness provokes it to rise up and attempt domination. Force is necessary for any kind of peace worth having. Peace without recourse to force is, of course, simply slavery and oppression.

If you're convinced that war is always evil and never necessary, then I'll just paraphrase a famous quote whose provenance escapes me--

If you're happy with a chain around your neck, and you wag your tail and go wherever your master pulls you, then nuzzle his hand and lick the scraps from it; but have no more to do with men, because you're not one anymore.

I can sort of understand how a man can be such a coward and so fearful of a fight that he accedes, for himself, to slavery. What I will NEVER understand is how he can will the same fate to his family, his children, the people who depend on him.

Truly, that kind of man isn't a man anymore.

Monday, September 17, 2007

How to go from the D list to the F list

Kathy Griffin has become unfunny, much like Al Franken did, jumping the gap straight to bitter and angry.

In accepting her Emmy for some show nobody watches, she said (pp) "Nobody had less to do with me winning this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now."

Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

1) What would happen to her if she had said "Mohammed had nothing to do with this, so suck it, Allah."?

Dead within the week, head separated from body, that's my guess.

I've often said that the only way Christians are going to command attention from arrogant lefties is to murder a few of them for effect; perhaps after that, we'd get some respect from them, the way they respect, er, um, fear Islam.

But Hollywood is fortunate in that we Christians regard the Islamist tendency to murder in God's name as proof that these fanatics are not, in fact, talking to God. We know Him better than that, and we could never bring ourselves to savagery in His name. (Look, the Crusades ended more than half a millenium ago, and were not really about religion anyway; it was just a convenient way of adding to the motivation of the troops for a wealth-and-politics venture. And the few loonies who have killed in God's name lately have, unlike Islamists, been quickly and completely repudiated by the huge majority of us.)

2) And on a more spiritual level, I'm trying to visualize Kathy Griffin's appearance before the Throne of God Almighty on Judgment Day... how awkward is THAT gonna be? :-)

It seems a sad and foolish thing for her to do, but don't miss the confirmation of a shift in tone here.

Christianity is no longer safe from public mocking by the elites. Politeness and respect for other views is out the window.

The path is clear, having already been followed in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Steady steps down that path include casual vandalism, random street violence, and the forcing of second-class citizenship. Jews in France are a bit further down this unfortunate path these days, but it is the same path.

And at the end of the path, as we all know, gulags and torture and mass murder. This is not speculation; it's happened in every country where the left has achieved absolute power.

It is happening today in China, where Christianity can get you killed. Stalin tore down thousands of churches and murdered many thousands of monks and priests. Likewise for Pol Pot, who even had anyone wearing glasses murdered on the grounds that they were 'intellectuals'. Try being a Christian in Vietnam any time during the last thirty years. Or, obviously, North Korea. Try it in ANY Muslim country. Saudi Arabia, friend and ally of the United States, searches suitcases at entry points and confiscates anything Christian, from Bibles to personal jewelry. If you preach Christianity in any of these countries, you will be caught and executed. And any Muslim who converts to Christianity inherits an automatic death sentence from someone, somewhere in Islam.

The reason leftists must destroy Christianity is that their vision of government is threatened by it. Christianity acknowledges a higher power, a higher loyalty, than to the state. Leftists cannot tolerate dissent, as it always represents a threat to their own power.

The right answer, of course, is to run the state in such a way that Christianity is not essentially opposed to it. This is the way our nation was designed. The Bible tells us to respect authority and obey government, on the grounds that "God raises up kings and sets them down", that God is watching over these things. It advocates against civil disobedience except in cases where the government is clearly going against God's wishes for human behavior, as in confiscatory taxation or political imprisonments or mass murders or repression of civil liberties. When governments respect these things, Christians respect government.

But somehow, leftists always manage to get around to doing those things. And they know in advance that they will, hence their infamous purges and mass killings, to get the church out of the way in advance of doing the things the church will oppose. Absolute leftism is congenitally and violently opposed to Christianity, and the more power the left gains here in the States, the worse Christians will fare, both in the public eye and at the hands of government.

Kathy Griffin likes to think of herself as edgy, pushing the envelope, saying what others are thinking. She revels in the publicity. But she is treading the first few steps of a time-worn and dreadful path, and will doubtless bleat when the violence begins that she is not responsible and did not advocate it.

Jesus knows better. :-)

But she is right in a sense; Jesus would probably agree that he didn't have anything to do with her winning that award.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Toothpaste out of the tube....

... cannot be put back in easily.

And words, once said in public, are hard to put back in private.

I was watching the Solheim Cup broadcast on the Golf Channel this morning, and when American team member Sherri Steinhauer missed a match-winning putt on the 18th, the broadcast team glumly mentioned they'd be back after a short break.

Then silence, but no break-away.

Then the female part of the team practically shouted, "Chokin' freakin' dogs!"

I haven't yet figured out who she is, but I might not need to.

She might not be there next week. :-)

Friday, September 14, 2007

Just keeping track....

... of events in the past few weeks.

Denmark.

Germany.

Austria.

Ankara, Turkey.

A park in Dearborn, Michigan.

And now Canada.

A timely reminder


Just as I was getting revved up below about the phony baloney 'journalistic code of ethics' that doesn't really exist, and how they've crafted this mystique for themselves to elevate the profession to heights it doesn't deserve, I came across an ad in the same paper....



It's been running a lot lately in the Dallas Morning News. It's about a third of a page, taller than it is long, and on black print. The human subject is a good looking, rugged sort of male, about thirty, with the upward hair and wet look the young people prefer today.

But he's not a male model. His name is Paul Meyer, and he is a DMN journalist.

I'm sure the fact that he's devilishly handsome is a sheer coincidence, playing no role whatsoever in his being chosen for this ad.

But there's more.

"When a child is stolen from her home, abused, and held captive for nearly half her life, Dallas Morning News writer Paul Meyer sees a story that needs to be told."

Well, thank goodness for Paul. Me, I'm a superficial, cold-hearted, morally disconnected modern American who would never have realized there was a human story there if not for sainted journalists like Paul Meyer. I'm too busy watching Nascar and playing video games and eating at McDonalds. Just a happy fat stupid American who doesn't even realize what's going on around him, that's me.

And of course, it might not be so bad if they had stopped there. But it got worse--

"Journalism is Paul's passion. And helping us understand what can happen in the blink of an eye- and how very important it is to simply be aware- is his own personal way of Helping You Live Better Here."

And no, I did not take liberties; the capitals in the final phrase are as written in the ad.

So, because Paul is a 'passionate journalist', he'll 'raise public awareness' and somehow all our lives will be better. Says so right in the ad.

Gawd, we're so LUCKY! (sob) To be blessed with men like this in our hometown paper, giants of compassion, good and decent men with enough heart and soul and conscience to share it with all of us regular joes who have NONE.....

Who else but these magnificent paragons of virtue would expend their own time and energy and effort 'Helping Us Live Better Here"??!?!?! WHO, I ask you?!?!?!


See the top of the ad? Journalists aren't here to tell us what happened, when, to whom, where, and why... that's just window dressing... they're really here TO TEACH US NEVER TO TURN A BLIND EYE.

That's right. Without a Journalist, clad in the armor of Pure Goodness and striding the earth like a Colossus of Conscience, we the redstate rednecks would be turning a blind eye to the kidnapped little girls of the world... we wouldn't be watching out for our own kids in parks and malls and stuff like that... we just can't manage to care enough, not without help.....

Aren't you just so darn glad we have Journalists in this old world, helping us overcome our own lack of wisdom and decency?

More phony news from ABC

I found an interesting story on Page 21A of the Dallas Morning News today, bylined AP.

The question asked by the editor of Politique Internationale was "how could we possibly doubt someone who worked for ABC, who worked for the Nixon Center? How could we possibly doubt someone from several thousand kilometers away?"

That last part? I have no idea.... but the gist of his rhetorical questions is this:

We trusted a 'journalist' because he had credentials as a 'journalist'.

Riiiighhht.

And while Alexis Debat has now acknowledged that he never conducted any of the interviews which appeared under his byline, including Pelosi, SecDef Gates, Greenspan, and even Barack Obama, the editor of this French magazine is saying things like "we are the first victims. I am falling from the moon. We were betrayed."

Again, Alexis Debat was a 'consultant' for ABC News. He authored, among other things, an interview with Barack Obama in which the candidate 'says' the Iraq war is "a defeat for America".

And now Obama, Greenspan, Pelosi, Gates, even Annan and Bloomberg, are saying they never spoke to Alexis Debat; the interviews published in Politique Internationale are fake.

The magazine is in full defense mode, calling Debat a "grand liar" and promising all sorts of lawsuits against him, presumably to retrieve the good name of Politique Internationale.

And yet, in one instance, Debat recalls how he drafted questions for the political figures, and the magazine accepted the questions and sent back "answers" which Debat then reworked and translated, and sent back with his byline. In other words, the magazine knowingly collaborated with him in producing these fake interviews.

This is another in a seemingly endless series of fake news stories, news fakers, enhancers and exaggerators. Each individual episode serves to undermine further this carefully crafted foundation of high ethics, high standards and devotion to the truth which has served journalists so well these past several decades, but was probably never true.

After all, how much special training does it really take to--

1) Ask questions

2) Find out what happened, to whom, when, and where

3) Assemble a narrative....?

In the good old days, a newspaperman was a shirtsleeved chainsmoking blue-collar type who could write about things because he had lived them. That was before the days of Columbia Journalism School and all the effete and elite academies where young soft brains were massaged leftward and an anti-Western subtext was taught for almost all stories.

This magazine printed fake journalism. Published a fraud. Now it's time to save the reputation, if in fact it can be done. Monsieur Debat will have something to say about this, I'm sure, given the tidbit he's already passed along about the magazine faking answers for his 'interviews'.

"I am falling from the moon. We were betrayed", whines the editor, with the distinct overtones of the guilty dog barking the loudest.

Somewhere there's a list of these episodes of fraudulent journalism. Whoever's keeping the list, add ABC News (again) and this French leftist political magazine to it, if you please...

And note that, even without the list, we can confidently say that of all the instances of fake stories and fake facts and fake photographs and fake interviews with fake people (including fake Lebanese women and fake Iraqi women with fake spent ammo and fake corpses and fake ambulances and fake victims), there is not one instance of any of these stunts being used to enhance or support the traditional, pro-western, pro-Israel, pro-American strength, pro-conservative point of view.

NOT ONE.

Out of dozens of instances that we've caught (and therefore presumably many more we haven't), every single known instance is designed to support the pro-left, anti-American, anti-Israel, pro socialism, pro-Muslim, anti-Bush point of view.

EVERY ONE.


And if you can't see this clearly, ask the guy next to you to give you a crisp backhand across the face. You need it.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Hard at work....

Muslim terrorists are laboring away, not so quietly these days, trying to kill people.

A really big bomb in Turkey didn't go off.

And there is new info about Austria to go along with the Germany story from last week.

That Turkish bomb, btw, was big enough to wipe out a several-story parking garage and anything else on that block, and probably other blocks too. 300 kilos, almost 700 pounds, of plastic explosive.

So far we've foiled them, through luck and hard work. But it's life and death out there--

unless you're a leftist, in which case it's all Bush's fault and all we need to to is execute Bush to show our good faith. Then the Muslims will magically do a Rodney King, swaying and singing with locked arms, 'can't we all just get along?'

Bells are ringing....

I saw a story today in the Dallas Morning News (I don't have it with me) about Russian church bells.

In 1930, these 18 bells were saved from Stalin by an American. He had them transported to the States so Joe couldn't melt them down and make guns out of them.

Stalin, you see, was on a rampage, destroying churches and mosques and temples and monasteries across all 11 Soviet time zones, mass-murdering priests and monks and religious folk of all stripes. And the American industrialist couldn't bear to see these great 200 year old bells destroyed for the sake of modern fanatical leftism.

Now the bells are going to be returned to Russia, and both nations are celebrating. The first has already gone back. Can you imagine thousands of churches destroyed and thousands of priests and monks murdered across an entire nation? It wasn't that long ago, you know.

And it struck me again-- lately the rhetoric from Osama and the Islamists has been virtually indistinguishable from that of the modern leftist Democrat party. Even though 'religion' is supposedly anathema to them, they are in a real way allied, politically, with Muslim fundamentalists, on account of having the same enemies.

Us.

But in the end, if the leftists succeed here and Judeo-Christian tradition is wiped out as a political and social force, will what's left for us be any different than what Islamic fundamentalists will leave us?

Stalin had religious people murdered by the thousands (for the good of the state), and he did not stop there. Perhaps 30 million Soviets died at his hands.

And one need look no further than Iraq and Afghanistan to see how cavalierly the Islamic fundamentalist treats human life, even that of his fellow Muslims. I remember a suicide bombing of a schoolyard a few years back, killing dozens of children, and then the following week another bomber was caught on his way to the funeral proceedings-- to finish off the parents of those children. Politics through bloodshed, the definition of terrorism, and the sign of a complete disregard for the sacredness of human life.

It is the Judeo-Christian tradition that gives us the concern for life that is a mark of Western civilisation. "Thou shalt not murder" is a fundamental principle of the Jew and the Christian. The abandonment of these traditions spells the end of the pricelessness of human life, and introduces the specter of mass murder and genocide. It always has, and always will.

Nazi Germany was the most advanced, most intellectual, most high minded society on the face of the earth, and from its lofty perch at the pinnacle of human achievement it gave us the 'showers' of Auschwitz. High human achievement is not only no barrier to savagery, it can even move people in that direction purposefully, for some 'higher cause'.

And Islam?

I can see almost no value there. Every principle of Islam appears to be either lifted from the Judeo-Christian tradition or put in place deliberately to refute such a principle.

Note how Islam states its case about God-- "there is only one God, and Mohammed is His prophet". This is a blunt refutation of what they perceive to be the Christian insistence on 'three Gods' (but is in fact a more nuanced proposition, the Holy Trinity).

They might as well say "Christians are wrong, there aren't three Gods, there's only one, and Jesus isn't THE prophet".

Not much of a foundational statement. "The other guys are wrong!" It is, in fact, the mark of a derivative, something which owes its existence to something else which was there first.

Like the shadow on the table, thrown by the lampshade. No lamp, no shadow. Islam is a second thing, not a first thing. It was invented for motivational purposes by a warlord who needed his thugs to fight harder and kill more people.

So, leftism or Islamism, the result is the same. Millions dead or enslaved. No hope.

Think about this future the next time you hear Democrats bloviating about how evil Bush is or about how Petraeus betrayed us. These men are fighting for western moral traditions, and the rest of the world is trying to exterminate those things. Including the Democrat party right here.

Do you want to live in a world like that?

They called it going-away money...

.. in all the old spy novels. That was the big score, the one payoff/ripoff a good spy needed to get enough money to get out of the biz. Either a government would pay it for big secrets from another one, or a criminal would pay it for info related to government's pursuit of him, or some such.

Going-away money.

Norman Hsu had it, $40 million worth. He stole it from Joel Rosenman, or rather misrepresented himself to Rosenman so that the man would just GIVE it to him.

So why on earth would Norman Hsu, who could finance a life in the far east, Macao or HK or somewhere hard to penetrate, choose instead to announce to everyone that he would commit suicide?

He did, of course, try that. Or at least he made a half hearted attempt. Pills, lots of them.

There is a rational course of thought for this; that Norman Hsu feared something much worse than being chased by western law enforcement, than a life on the lam with millions.

What could it be?

My first thought is that that the Clintons have left a trail of dead people behind them for decades, dozens of mysterious deaths that even now do not register in the media. It's called the Clinton Dead List, and you can google it if you're curious. It is becoming more interesting now that Kathleen Willey's and David Schippers' homes have been burglarized.

Second thoughts come very quickly after, thoughts of a determined and pugnacious Chinese Communist government, angry with Hsu for failing to make their investments pay in the way they intended. THAT could be something scary enough to kill yourself over. Unlike the American left, they have not forgotten what gulags and torture are.

Keep an ear open for news of Mr. Hsu. It will be hard to find, and it will fade quickly.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Not News....

.... Rosie O'Donnell has written a book, a small volume that purports to explain a few things.

It does. There is something about childhood abuse, that of others against her and her against herself as well... self-injury... and some hints about late night incidents not fully mentioned....

And as for me, not only I am not shocked that this strange and angry woman is a product of abuse and misery, it seems obvious.

Rosie even quietly admits to being addicted to celebrity, to feeling as if she is special and can get away with things ordinary people cannot.

I"m a long way from empathetic toward Rosie O'Donnell, but if someone I'm standing next to at a bus stop happens to have bought this book, I might even read a couple of pages over his shoulder.

But I won't be letting anyone SEE me do it. :-)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Never forget...

... what they did.

Remembering 9/11

Everyone's got a story, as they say.

I was in my seventh month of residence in Brussels, still learning my way around the town and buffing up my French for daily use. I had become accustomed to the 'web schedule' of my European life, finding my favorite radio programs and so forth were now on in the middle of the evening, and I would often abandon the spotty Belgian TV schedule in favor of better evening entertainment online.

So after a round of golf that morning, afternoon saw me settled into my computer chair and logged on to my day-trading website and the accompanying live forums. I was navigating to the Rush Limbaugh page when someone typed on a forum, "boy, that tower sure is burning hard". I asked what tower, and sat stunned by the words on the screen.

That's when I logged off of everything and raced back downstairs to switch on CNN International and the BBC, my two available 24 hour television cable news sites.

Just in time to see the second plane hit.

I called my wife's office and relayed the news, and then I became a sort of news source; I stayed on the phone so that I could tell her and her colleagues (French, Belgian, Dutch and others) what was being said and done, late afternoon Belgian time.

As for everyone, words fail to capture the sharpness and complexity and force of my emotions. But I was certain of one thing; whenever we allow ourselves to forget how EVIL human beings can be, we can always count on some of them to step up and remind us.

Radical Islam is little different than any fanatical ideology down through all the ages of mankind. Even the great Roman Empire had a touch of this fanaticism. It was taught and encouraged on all levels, the feeling that whatever you do for the good of Rome is the right thing, no matter how 'bad' it might seem in terms of basic human principles.

Stalin mastered it, of course. In his state, the 'new Soviet man' ignored God and the great human traditions and simply acted 'for the good of the State'. Even if the 'state' completely changed its view, and you were told tomorrow to do the opposite of what you did today, it would be settled by the words, 'it's for the good of the state'. Children were taught to notify the state if their parents were engaged in subversion, i.e. if they had a Bible beneath their bed. Conscience? Fuggitaboudit. Just do what you know your neighbourhood secret policeman would want you to do.

Radical Islam on the surface seems to be different, in that the previous 'statists' were elevating the state at the expense of religion, were silencing and oppressing religious activity. But in the end it is actions which define us all. Radical Islam today says 'God is so far above us, He doesn't even admit to the need for rationality. He can contradict Himself and still be right, just because He is God. We cannot understand Him. Just do what the Imam says."

It is unthinking obeissance, the disengaging of the mind from one's actions. And it is the hallmark of all fanatical ideologies, either irreligious or super-religious. The two come together as one, somewhere out there beyond the lunatic fringe.

Leftists say they are afraid of Christians in government on the grounds that we MIGHT do something like that, might insist on blind obedience. Yet they align themselves politically with a religious group who already DOES that, MUCH worse than any Christian would dream, and their alignment is for the express and stated purpose of limiting the power of Christians in the government we already have.

We are exhorted by St. Paul to compare words with deeds, by Christ to know trees by their fruit, in other words to DISCERN for ourselves using our own faculties whether someone is good or bad, right or wrong. Radical Islam, like Stalin's Soviet Union, does not look kindly upon discerners or questioners from without or within. A personal moral crisis is something a radical Islamist needs to keep to himself, if he wants to keep his head to himself as well.

That day I thought to myself, 'it is the beginning of the end of the world'. I expected endless explosions, an endless chain of cities and stories and horrors. I expected hundreds of thousands dead all over the world. I believed 50,000 had died in the towers.

Later, I was stunned to find that the murderers had in the end accomplished so LITTLE. A mighty sucker-punch, as the song goes, but they had been working on crashing planes by the dozens for many years before that (remember Bojinka in 1995?) and been unable to pull off such a day. And don't forget what it means when they use airplanes as weapons-- it means they don't have anything better.

And surely, in the intervening years, their ability to do such things is even more degraded. More people are looking out for them, security is harder, passengers will surely fight next time, and in all this time I am aware of almost nobody who is 'western in appearance' who has joined the jihad and is ready to sacrifice himself for Allah. There was an Australian, David Hicks, but he is now some sort of celebrity speaker and unlikely to be strapping on the Semtex anytime soon.

A strange and unforgettable day, was 9/11-- in spite of the fact that our media has done their level best to make us forget it. The most important day in the history of the world over the past 20 years is utterly unavailable on video or in photographs, in spite of enormous demand. The media has simply flushed it down the memory hole, with the lame excuse that we aren't ready.

As if they are the guardians of my delicate sensibilities! How many front page photos and lead-item TV videos would they NOT be showing if they were actually worried about upsetting us!?!?!

You'll be pleased to know that, in the days immediately following 9/11, many of my French neighbours in Brussels went to special lengths to offer their condolences to Americans they knew, and my mailbox often contained thoughtful notes and cards. I was stopped in the street for this as well, and they even made efforts to speak English with me (not an everyday occurrence with French speakers, for reasons of pride and whatnot).

It didn't last long, of course. But for a few days, as Blacques Jacques Chiraques said, "we are all Americans".


Clash of the liberals :-)

The fashionistas (fashion industry crowd) are nicknamed that for a reason; they are usually leftists of the extreme variety.

And one of the things that marks a leftist is hypocrisy, the claiming of certain principles which are then not lived out in their own lives.

Here's a classic-- Naomi Campbell, a black female celebrity fashion model (who by liberal definition is morally superior and always right, on account of being black and a female), complains that there aren't enough black and Asian fashion models being used in fashion shows.

The fashionistas may be leftists, but they don't let it interfere with making money. And clearly, in their view, following their own principles of diversity will put a ding in the sales of their clothing, and they just won't take that chance.

Nice to see one of their own calling them out on it. Fun, in fact. :-)

Hsuicide attempt?

Look around the web this morning for more on Norman Hsu, hustler and thief and embezzler and Ponzi schemer and multimillion dollar Hillary campaign financier.

The latest is on the circumstances of his capture on the train in Grand Junction last week.

He was unconscious on the floor of his sleeper, and some of his property had bounced out under the curtain and into the hallway of the car. That is why his fellow travellers alerted management to a problem in his sleeper.

When they went to see, they found him crumpled, shirtless, on the floor. As if he had fallen out of bed but not woken up.

When they picked him up, he couldn't stand on his own and didn't know where he was. He asked at one point if he was in jail.

And the really interesting part? Dozens of pills were rolling around on the floor of his sleeper.

All this is contained in several news stories on Hsu today, but look quickly-- they will disappear soon and we'll never hear about this again.

Hillary has now graduated from returning $23,000 of Hsu's money to returning $850,000 of it. She is in full bail mode, leaving Hsu hanging in the air, shrugging her shoulders, saying 'Hsu who?'.

For the millionth time, try to imagine how this story would be played if Hsu were a Republican financier trying to get Thompson or Giuliani elected. Investigative journalists would have a collective 0rga5m, great prizes would be given to the most industrious of them, and generations of new journalists would be trying to live up to their gallantry and heroism. New Woodwards and Bernsteins would be lauded and applauded, lecture fees would top six figures, and statues of these journalists would be erected in Central Park. Congressmen would be demanding answers in televised hearings for the next thousand years.

And everyone would want to know how far it went, whether Hsu's activities went 'all the way to the top'-- in other words, if it's Bush's fault.

But because it's Hillary and because it's Democrats, one has to cup his ear and strain to hear the thinnest of references to this. And if the cupping and straining come too late, they are to no avail.

I want to know:

Is Hsu connected to the Chinese government?

Is Hsu connected to Riady, Johnny Chung, John Huang, the Lippo group? Is this the same outfit that funded Bill Clinton and that managed to get high level guidance systems for ballistic missiles from the US during his presidency? Is this the same outfit that put Wen Ho Lee into our nuclear research facility to steal the data from those hard drives?

And--

Is Hsu going to be killed? Was this a real suicide attempt or was it staged?

And--

Will there ever be an official inquiry into Hsu's activities by the Justice Department or campaign finance authorities? Does anyone in the government care to follow this as far as it goes? Or do they all just want it to go away?

I"m afraid we all already know the answer to that.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

The grubby side...

I've been thinking a lot, and writing a little, lately about corruption. Sin. Venality. The human tendency to think of something bad as being 'good' for us, in some specific way, and thus as being worth the 'wrongness' of doing it in order to get the results, the benefits.

And the fact is that, without a heroic and consistent effort (beginning with self knowledge and ending with a knowledge of a real responsibility to God) to keep clean, this sort of corruption descends upon too many of us.

And corruption in some form most certainly is a part of every one of us.

The Bible is clear on this, as are all the great and wise minds of all the generations. It required the really really smart people of only the past few hundred years to be so blithely optimistic as to presume that there is either no necessity for man to concern himself with his own evil (because it's not really there), or (and this is even worse) that in the end there is no reason NOT to sin, that there is no God and no judgment and 'no worries, mate'.

Of course, ten minutes alone with our own consciences is enough for sensible people to understand that right and wrong is somehow important, that we 'ought' to do right and avoid wrong-- if for no other reason that it is a natural impulse and therefore should be given at least as much slack as all the rest of those.

But it is also a natural impulse to ignore our consciences and to do wrong in order to benefit ourselves.

So what impulses do we resist, and to which do we acquiesce? Clearly the impulses themselves are not going to provide the answer to that one; each insists that it alone is the most important.

In the linked article on Michelle Malkin's pages, we see to our own dismay how easy it is for people to simply abandon their ethics and moral decency (or perhaps for them to grow up and become adults without having developed any in the first place). And we'd all like to think we are better than these people, but until we have the real opportunity to give in to such temptations, we'll never really know.

One thing is certain, always, so certain it's been sound advice for thousands of years; put not your faith in any man. Build not your house on shifting sands, etc. People are corruptible.

Sadly, these men seem to have sold their souls for the price of a nice set of golf clubs or a cruise to the Bahamas. And the temptation? Seems like it's always the same.

The power to decide how to spend other people's money. Budgets for city councils and school districts, matters of insurance and services, huge dollar amounts which are not attached directly to anyone's well-being or lack thereof. What difference does it make who provides the insurance? Give the contract to whoever will line my pockets. No victims here. No harm done. Besides, I"m just getting one back on the man. I deserve this for my suffering, and that of my people.

If Congressman Jefferson of the cold cash is any guide, these men will not only not be thrown out of office, they'll be elected to HIGHER office.

Rome fell, and we will too, for much the same reasons.

p.s. Alarming, isn't it, how much of this kind of corruption is directly linkable to the Hillary for President campaign?

Friday, September 7, 2007

Norman Hsu update

I won't bore with too many details, as they're all over the news today, but Norman Hsu, fugitive from California justice, convicted Ponzi schemer, thief, hustler, and star Hillary campaign contribution bundler was found on an Amtrak in Grand Junction, CO.

He didn't make it all the way to China, but that doesn't mean he wasn't on his way there.

The other very very VERY interesting thing is that he's sick. Wierd sick, unable to feel his legs, delirious, etc. No word from the Colorado hospital about what's wrong with him, or if anyone even knows.

Somebody wave a Geiger counter over Hillary and see if she's been around any Polonium 210 lately. :-)

It's humorous, but that's only because it's POSSIBLE.

Keep an eye on the news of Mr. Hsu. If he dies, then I will call myself a prophet. For you see, dear reader, it was only a day ago that I told someone, 'he's got 50/50 odds-- he's in China, or he's dead.'

And have you noticed how, in all the stories about him, the news keeps saying he's going to have to go back to California 'to face charges'?

Folks, he's been a convict for 15 years. He's done. The hearing he skipped in the early 1990s was his SENTENCING hearing, not his trial. It's too late to face charges; he's already done that, and the charges won.

Meanwhile, nobody in the news is busily interviewing the Paw family, six people living on less than $50,000 a year who have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Dem candidates just in the past few years alone-- and who live in a house that Norman Hsu once claimed as a past residence of his.

Where are the Paw family interviews?

They're in an alternate universe, that's where. If this had been Republican fundraisers, the Paw family would have its own reality show by now.