Poor babies

Banagor just put up an excellent rant on his blog called Bemoaning Islam's Poor Image. Here's a bit of it:

What truly amazes me, even after I've ranted about it so often, is what a shithole the Muslim world is. There they are, all the rich Gulf States of Arabia, and they do what, exactly? What? Are they of any value at all aside from a convenient place to park our bombers before we have to go smack around the next fanatic dickhead who starts spouting off verses from the Koran about global domination?

These guys have all the money they want, and they do absolutely squat with it. It seems like the only time I ever read about Saudi Arabia spending money is finding new ways to "spread the good word of Allah" around the world, or by buying custom-made solid gold Rolex watches with encrusted diamonds.

I've made the point before that the Islam dominated Arab nations couldn't discover their own oil, pump their own oildeliverever it to their customers. They couldn't defend themselves if other nations didn't sell them weapons. Their Mullahs broadcast their psychotic hateful "sermons" over PA equipment that they couldn't build. They drive cars that they could not build. Fly planes that they could not build. They communicate on telephones that they couldn't have invented and cannot build. They use computers that they could not build and need to import technicians to operate, repair and program for them.

They have nothing that they actually created for themselves, yet they walk around with a massive sense of entitlement and a chip on their shoulders the size of Kansas.

Manifesto Against Islamism

Jay over at Stop The ACLU has posted the Manifesto Against Islamism. Go over and take a look.

Here is a sample:

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

Lemuel's pick of the day

Vasko Kohlmayer has a very good essay up on The American Thinker. Here is a sample. This is one of those you wish you had written yourself.

History unambiguously shows that all great civilizations collapsed as a result of internal weakness. Coming to their end by self-destructing, they in effect committed suicide. Sigmund Freud posited the existence of a death drive in individuals. It is my contention that a death drive also runs through whole
civilizations.

Everything we see around us indicates that the Left is the West’s instrument of self-destruction and, in fact, the incarnation in our time of the deleterious force that ultimately brings down great civilizations. The Left is the material manifestation of the West’s death drive. Even as individuals commit suicide by drowning or shooting or some other such means, so the West is in the process of committing suicide by the Left. If the West wants to survive, it must recognize the Left for what it is – a subversive internal force bent on our destruction.

The incarnation of the death drive that runs like a black lace through the fabric of great civilizations, the Left is the originator of our most grievous ills and the gravest danger that we face. It is at the root of the strife and tribulations that are tearing down the edifice of the Western world.

Perhaps this recognition will give us the moral strength to swerve from the road to perdition along which we have been dragged for so long. There is every indication that its terminal point is not too far away. One can almost hear the echo of the abyss as one after another the great pillars of our civilization come crumbling down. Mixed with the doom-bound calls for appeasement in the face of barbarism, it makes for a bloodcurdling sound. If we want to live we must take heed, for the next bend in this road may well be the last.

This is why I call the Democratic Party the Party of Treason.

The Other Iraq

Victor Davis Hanson is brilliant, as usual, and says what needs to be said, as usual. Here are some samples, but the whole thing is a must read.

Taji, Iraq — Screaming Iraqis and mangled body parts still dominate Americans' nightly two minutes of news from Iraq. And, indeed, Iraq is still a scary place within the Sunni Triangle.

Opposition politicians in the United States charge that our troops don't have enough body protection or heavily armored Humvees - suggesting that our fighters have been almost criminally ignored. On CNN, a journalist laments that a prominent news colleague severely wounded near Taji is emblematic of the mess of the entire American effort.

But Iraq, like all wars, is not static. What was supposedly true on the ground in Iraq in 2003 is not necessarily so in 2006 — in the way that the situation in Europe in 1943 hardly resembled that of May 1945.

Yet while things have changed radically in Iraq, the pessimistic tone of our reporting remains calcified. Little is written about the new Iraqi government, the emergence of the Iraqi security forces or the radically changing role of the American military.

The object of the dinosaur media's reporting is not to present an accurate picture of events to the American public. It is, rather, to present a view of the world tailored to the hopes, dreams, fears and prejudices of the "progressive" elite.

. . .Patience, more than anything, is now needed in Iraq. There are now 10 Iraqi divisions. The newest is the 9th Mechanized Division, at Taji, of Maj. Gen. Bashar Ayoub, trained under the auspices of Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey's officers of the Multinational Security Transition Command.

A Patton-like veteran of three bloody wars, Gen. Bashar Ayoub has fashioned ex nihilo a new division replete with refurbished Soviet T-72 tanks and scores of veteran officers from the old Iraqi army. He plans to take over most of the security of Taji, and was out on the streets with his men even before his division fully materialized.

Two years ago, the conventional wisdom was that we wrongly disbanded the Iraqi army and dumped shoddy equipment on what little we rounded up. Soon the new complaint will no doubt emerge that we have redeployed too many officers from the old corps, and that their brigades appear too lethal in new uniforms, body armor and mechanized vehicles.

It is an amazing thing to behold. Despite all that the enemies of the US and a free Iraq (that would be Sunni Fascist bitter-enders, Osama bin Laden and the Democratic Party and its Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment, otherwise known as the MSM) can do to stop it the process of rebuilding goes on. Like the tortoise plodding around the racetrack the US military just keeps rebuilding things and training a credible Iraqi security force.

Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq — butchering, traumatizing and dividing 25 million. His baleful legacy is clear from helicopter rides over the sewers of Baghdad or a visit to one of his repugnant palaces where non-potable water pours out of his gold faucets.

But I thought that the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam. Gov. Dean couldn't be wrong could he?

It was nearly an impossible task to remove Saddam Hussein, foster democracy in the heart of the ancient caliphate and restore on a relatively short timetable what took the Husseins three decades to destroy. Meanwhile, all this must be done surrounded by Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia; in the midst of a larger war against Islamic fundamentalism; and while under global scrutiny from a largely hostile audience.

Yet what amazes is not so much the audacity of even thinking the United States could attempt such a thing, but rather that it may just pull it off after all — if only we remain patient.

This is what scares me. "Remaining patient" isn't what the American public does best, or even well.

I'm skeered now

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Feb. 23 – The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) warned the United States not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations or it would face the “full might” of the elite military force, state television reported on Wednesday.

Lemuel stops what he's doing and laughs out loud for 58 minutes.

“The enemies do not have the capacity to launch a military strike against Iran”, he said, adding that if they did carry out such an action the Revolutionary Guards, the Bassij, and the regular armed forces would come down on them with their “full might”.

I'm sure that the USMC is cowering in fear. Someone should show them that video of Saddam's hole in the ground.

He said that Iran had the strongest military force in the Middle East.

This is why we're going to win.

Tonight's 24

It came as no surprise when Samwise Gamgee melted down and had to be relieved. It was a surprise that it came from within, however. As the guards dragged him out he was heard to mutter something about "strawberries".

President Weasel was prepared to let Mary Todd Weasel die in the ambush, but the palace coup in CTU prevented it.

President Suvarov is damn lucky he was in LA rather than Washington DC or he would be on his way to jail for having that handgun. Don't even think about what would have happened to him in London. Defending yourself is a major felony there.

How could Jack Bauer be stupid enough to let Peter Weller put him in that position. Didn't he see the Enterprise rerun last night? After Weller tried to destroy Starfleet Command with the Vertron Array did Jack think that cooking nerve gas for terrorists would be a problem for him?

Weller is in for it now. Blowing up Jack Bauer only pisses him off.

Geek Stuff

You belong in The Man Who Sold The Moon. You are a

dreamer. People don't understand you your

calling, and often get in your way.

Frontiers call to you, and you will breathe

your last breath as you gaze back from a

distant horizon.


Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been A Character In?
brought to you by Quizilla

Buzzards on a fencepost

I’m not the only person to have noticed the obscene way that the left is eagerly anticipating the prospect of an Iraqi civil war. This from PowerLine:

Elements of the MSM seem to await a civil war in Iraq with the same breathlessness that Marxists used to await the final crisis of capitalism. Each significant instance of violence between Sunni and Shia is viewed either as evidence that the civil war has started or is just around the corner. Last week's conflagration appears to have been just another false alarm. The Australian reports that "the movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, alleged to have played a role in the anti-Sunni violence over the last few days, publicly made peace with political and religious Sunni leaders overnight." In addition, "Salam al-Maliki, a cabinet minister allied to Sadr, and Iyad al-Sammaraie of the Sunni Islamic Party proclaimed their own reconciliation at a joint press conference, aired on Iraqi state television."

The Left wants civil war in Iraq as badly as Osama bin Laden does. What must it be like to be one of these people? How can the party of Jefferson and Jackson, the party that led the nation through WWII, have fallen so far?

Blogging for The GOP

Here's another blog alliance I recommend, GOP Bloggers.

Absolute Certainty

From Victor Davis Hanson:

Coming hard upon the heels of the cartoon riots and the election of the Hamas terrorists, the destruction of the Shi’ite mosque of the Golden Dome in Samarra by Sunni jihadists, and the subsequent Shi’ite bloody retaliation, should put to rest Western delusions about the true nature of Islam. But don’t hold your breath. Such displays of Islam’s violent intolerance have been coming thick and fast the last few decades, and can be found on every page of history going back to the 7th century, when Islam began its expansion with the blood of several hundred decapitated Jews.

Yet still some Westerners, enthralled to their own materialist assumptions and multicultural “we are the world” sentimentalism, wave away this evidence and reduce this destructive behavior to any and every cause except the one that counts: spiritual belief. So we hear that the violence is caused by a lack of jobs, or a lack of liberal-democratic institutions, or “frustration” and insecurity about the dismal backwardness of most Muslim states, or wounded pride in the face of Western success, or resentment of Western imperialist and colonialist sins, or oppressive autocrats, or . . . take your pick. The same therapeutic mentality that thinks destructive behavior in teens results from a “lack of self-esteem” reduces the religious values of Muslims to mere “epiphenomena,” as the Marxists see it, symptoms of some underlying condition rooted in material deprivation, political impotence, or psychological trauma.

Mr. Hanson makes the point that the West fails to understand the jihadists because it ascribes no value or power to religious faith. The fundamentalist Muslim does what he does not because he has a sincere and absolute belief in the doctrines of his religion, but because he can't get the Playboy Channel on TV. We have made this mistake before. Nobody in the Europe or America believed that Hitler really meant all that stuff he wrote about in Mien Kampf and we got WWII and the Holocaust because of it.

Anti-Hillary

I found a new blog alliance, Blogs Against Hillary . If you have a blog and you are sane go over and join.

Galactica Name Guide

Since there are multiple copies of Six and Sharon running around the Galactica universe I think that a guide to help tell them apart is in order.

Boomer: The reborn Sharon (Cylon model 8) who had (believing herself to be human) infiltrated the Galactica. Was outted as a Cylon when she shot Commander Adama on the bridge of the Galactica. She had also sabotaged the Galactica causing it to lose most of its water supply. Upon being "reborn" she was unable to reenter Cylon society and joined with Caprica Six in attempting to preach a new doctrine to the Cylon people.

Current status: Unknown

Sharon: The Sharon (Cylon model 8) who was placed in the company of Helo on Caprica in order to make him fall in love with her. She helped Starbuck and Helo escape from Caprica and is currently a prisoner on Galactica. She has given limited help to the humans, saving the Fleet on one occasion. Sharon's placement on Galactica is part of the Cylon Grand Plan. She just gave birth to the child she and Helo conceived on Caprica and currently believes the child to be dead.

Current Status: A prisoner on Galactica. She is angry at the President and Adama because she believes that one or both of them ordered the murder of her child.

Six: The Cylon model 6 who seduced Baltar on Caprica when he was a consultant to the Department of Defense. She was able to use her relationship with Baltar to gain access to the DOD mainframe and download all of the plans and access codes and upload a virus. The Cylon's used this information to devastating effect in their surprise attack on the Colonies. The virus disabled all the Colonial naval units except the Galactica (because Adama would not allow its computers to be networked).

Current Status: Physically deceased she now exists as a personality imprint on Baltar's brain. She is able to communicate with him as a fully interactive hallucination. She can exercise limited control over his body, causing him to harm himself when she is displeased with him. She has manipulated and "brainwashed" him into believing that he is an instrument of the Cylon god.

Caprica Six: The reborn version of the Cylon model 6 which seduced Baltar on Caprica. After Six was killed in the Cylon nuclear attack on Caprica City one copy of her memory/personality matrix was placed into Baltar and another was given a new body on Caprica. The reborn version is known to the other Cylons as "Caprica Six" and is considered a hero by the average Cylon. She is viewed as a threat by the Cylon priesthood who attempted to drive her insane by bringing her into contact with Boomer (see above). Her brain carries a partial imprint of Baltar's personality (possibly as a side effect of the process which put her into his head). She has joined with Boomer to spread a new message of love and tolerance to the Cylon people.

Current Status: Unknown

A true and utter fool

From Cox & Forkum

Is there anyone who has held the office of President in the 20th century (other than Woodrow Wilson) more deserving of contempt than Jimmuh Carter? I don't think so.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Richard Berry has an excellent essay on American Thinker called The 60/40 Nation. Here are some excerpts:

The Culture War raging among Americans has swamped and effectively subsumed the merely political elements of our national disagreements. Disagreements among the two American camps have become cultural and pointedly ideological precisely
because the American Left has, by its conduct and its rhetoric, insisted upon it. American liberalism, which began to be infected by radical Leftism in the 1960s, has now been largely taken over by that thoroughly alien ideology.

In allying with the post-modern Left, American liberalism has broken the national compact. It has stepped outside the 230 year stream of American consensus. It rails shrilly against the American creed, civic and spiritual. It unreasoningly indicts the phenomenally successful American economic system. It heaps scorn upon idealistic American purposes in the world and, indeed, actually impedes as best it can every exercise of American self-defense.

The American mainstream wants to preserve and protect America and take her triumphantly into the future. The liberal-Left wants to overthrow the historical and actually existing America and replace her with the sort of Euro-Lefty utopia presently self-destructing before our very eyes in Old Europe.

As you can see Mr. Berry's thesis is that the essential divide is not so much political as cultural. American society has reached the type of impasse not seen since the years leading up to the Civil War. I don't know if that is where we are heading now, but it becomes increasingly difficult not to think so.

I have simply become tired of living in the same country with these people, and I'm not about to leave. I have enough respect for the laws of God and man not to go out in the street and start shooting them down, but do they? Go and check out the left side of the blogosphere if you doubt that they hate us as much, or more, than we hate them. All you have to do is take a short wade through the sewer called The DailyKos to see a twisted carnival of psychotically deranged hate filled rhetorical vomit spewed all over your monitor. And this is the most popular blog on the 'net.

I don’t know where this is heading, but it can’t go on this way for too much longer. How do sane people continue to live in the same nation with people like the student body of the University of Washington whose student government just voted not to erect a memorial to Gregory Boyington, the WWII Marine fighter ace who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the Solomon Islands? The stated reason for the refusal. . . There were already too many monuments “celebrating war”, especially WWII the “most propagandized war in history”. It is, in their view, time to erect monuments which will show the “truth” about WWII.

To quote the great G. Gordon Liddy, “Lord help these ignorant, ungrateful students who don’t deserve to be protected by the United States Military”.

Goodby Barney

From Fox News:

LOS ANGELES — Don Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" and would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on "Three's Company," has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at a Los Angeles hospital, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs his two signature shows.

I have been a fan of Mr. Knotts since I was a small child. He will be missed.

What's in your magazine?

The best ammunition on the market. They now market Glaser Saftey Slugs and Pow'RBall ammo as well. Here is their website.

More on Portgate

The two lessons that Michelle Malkin learns from "Portgate" (see below) demonstrate the same pattern this White House showed in the Harriet Meiers debacle. Remember how anyone who raised substantive issues based on questions about her resume was dubbed a "sexist" or an "elitist". With some people this worked, but with the bulk of her right-of-center critics the tactic failed and her nomination was withdrawn.

This smear the opposition strategy will probably fail in this case as well. The Party of Treason is so insanely glad to have an issue which will finally let it appear to the right of the President on a national security matter that you won't be able to separate them from this controversy with dynamite. The Right, aside from some of the inside-the-beltway Republicans who make the mistake of actually reading the New York Times and the Washington Post (that isn't what those papers are for, they are provided as a service to fish mongers and parakeets) is used to brushing off these kind of accusations. The Left has been labeling anyone who opposes its plans to ruin the country as a racist/sexist/homophobe that doesn't care about The Children ™ for decades. If the people who want America to continue as a free and prosperous nation weren’t willing to be called names the US would have become a Stalinist gulag state 30 years ago.

Another tactic that those in favor of the port deal are using is to remind everyone that the port managers are not in charge of security at the port. That is the job of the Coast Guard and Customs. The port management is only involved in every step of drawing up the security plan and knows every detail of it. No cause for worry there. We are also told that the port manager will only be involved with “the loading and unloading of cargo”. Again no reason to worry there (no reason not to hire the convicted bank robber to drive the armored car since he will only be involved in the loading and unloading of the money).

Finally we are reminded that the port in Long Beach California and one of the terminals at Newark are run by COSCO (otherwise known as Communist China). Let me get this straight. If the Germans had bombed New York City on Dec. 8th that would have not been any big deal because the Japanese had already bombed Pearl Harbor in the 7th? Guys, you aren’t helping your cause. It also doesn’t help to remind us that only 2% of the containers coming into the country are ever inspected. The “our port security is already so lax that it couldn’t get any worse if Osama bin Ladden were personally put in charge” doesn’t inspire us to turn over and go back to sleep.

Battlestar Galactica

Tonight's episode was very interesting. Usually when something seems to go the human's way I get this "waiting for the other shoe to drop feeling". It seems that everything that happens, even the seemingly good things, to the human survivors is all part of the Great Cylon Plan ™. I didn’t get that feeling this time. It would seem that the Cylons have suffered a genuine setback.

Particular impressions. Well, first, when I saw Baltar standing beside Caprica 6’s giant Vat O’Snot I was. . . excited. I have had a theory for some time that Baltar died when his house was flattened in the Cylon attack. I believe that the Baltar on the Fleet is a clone prepared by the Cylons. This is why his brain contains Six’s complete personality, but the Doctor couldn’t find any sign of a chip in his brain.

Of course it turned out that only Caprica Six could see him, providing a kind of poetic counterbalance to the Six in Baltar’s head. Interesting also that the invisible Baltar manipulates Caprica Six in the same way that Six pulls Baltar’s strings back on Galactica. Could this phenomenon be a kind of unintended side effect of the process that put Six’s personality in Baltar?

The fact that Boomer and Caprica Six both have radically different attitudes from the rest of the Cylon collective is interesting, as are the things revealed about the Cylon mindset. I’m thinking of Cylon Zena’s “they don’t respect life like we do” as she was about to gleefully blow Pyramid Johnny’s head off. The humanity tainted twins are going to be apostles of true love and change the way the Cylons do business. This could wind up bringing about a Cylon religious civil war.

The birth of Sharon’s baby on Galactica was also interesting. It was born prematurely because of a detached placenta. This is not the first time Sharon has needed human medical help to keep the child alive. It would seem that the Cylon body is just not engineered to be a life-giving vessel (sort of like Darla on Angel).

The fact that Adama and the President were able to successfully hide the baby from the Baltar/Six collective consciousness was a good sign. I wonder if it never occurred to Six that if God were determined to raise the child up to lead the next generation of Cylons that He wouldn’t have let it die. I mean, if Herod’s soldiers had actually managed to kill the baby Jesus wouldn’t that have meant that he wasn’t the promised messiah?

I wonder if Galactica Sharon’s cooperation will dry up now that she blames Adama and the President for the child’s death.

One last thing. Did anyone else find Dr. Caudle’s “I don’t kill my patients” a little bit hypocritical since he earns cigarette money by doing freelance abortions?

PORTGATE

Michelle Malkin has a good roundup of the controversy surrounding the proposed acquisition of US ports by DP World.

Here's a sample:

Lesson One of Portgate: Scream "Islamophobia/xenophobia" often enough, and people will start to back down.

Lesson Two of Portgate: Mislead and mischaracterize your critics often enough, and people will start to back down.

The whole post is a good summary of the argument to date. Go read it if you have any interest in the affair.

In defense of the Camel Jockey

I am becoming fed up with these prissy conservatives who want to disavow or distance themselves from Ann Coulter for using the word “Rag Head” to describe our Arab/Muslim enemies. It, along with the term “Camel Jockey” is supposed to be a racist epithet and therefore unworthy of civilized conversation.

I disagree because neither “Rag Head” nor “Camel Jockey” is a truly racist. They are cultural rather than racial terms. “Rag Head” refers to an item of clothing customarily worn by some Arab men as protection from the sun. The appearance is distinctive and so became identified with Arabs in general much like the Scottish kilt or the Japanese kimono. Calling an Arab “Rag Head” is no more racist than calling an Englishman “Limey”; a term which refers to the practice of the British Navy of issuing limes to sailors to prevent scurvy. The emotional content of the term may be positive, negative or neutral depending on the attitude of the person using it.

“Camel Jockey” is a bit different. It refers to the fact that many Arabs once existed as nomads using the camel for transportation. This is a primitive way of life which the civilized world has long passed by. To call Arabs “Camel Jockeys” is to imply that their culture is stuck in the 8th or 9th century; that they are culturally stunted or retarded. This is without a doubt an insult. However is it a racial insult? I don’t think so. After all the United Arab Emirates is nothing more than a confederation of TRIBES which formed a government. The president of the UAE is just the chief of the most powerful tribe. The members of the Saudi royal family are just the descendants of the head of the Arab tribe that got the upper hand back in the Nineteenth Century. Allah and the crescent moon are the name and symbol of the god of Mohammad’s Qurush tribe in ancient Mecca. The cultures of most Arab nations are retrograde. The reason for that is found primarily in the Islamic religion. By denying any separation between Mosque and State, between the sacred and secular, and attempting to control every aspect of the believer’s life Islam cannot help but to entrap any culture which embraces it in a 9th century mindset like a fly in amber.

Does this mean that there are no truly racial epithets that are applied to Arab peoples? No, the term “Sand Nigger” is nothing but racial and people who use it are being bigoted.

Throughout history men who go to war are called upon to do some damn distasteful things. A part of the process which allows someone to do those things and retain his sanity is the dehumanization of the enemy. This applies not just to the men in the trenches, but to the society which sends it sons, husbands, brothers and fathers off to place their frail bodies between war’s desolation and their beloved homelands.

In the closing days of WWII every Japanese male who could carry a gun (I don’t mean every Japanese male who was old enough to join the army, I mean every Japanese male who was big enough to carry the weight of a rifle) was in uniform getting ready to face the coming invasion of the Home Islands. The cities of Japan were peopled by the old, the sick and lame, women, children and a few men whose skills made them essential to war production.

Over these cities our B-29 bombers flew dropping napalm on the wood and paper houses of the civilian population. In order to preserve their humanity our air crews needed to see those whom they were incinerating not as people like their own parents, wives and children but as “Filthy Japs”.

The crews of our destroyers in the Atlantic needed to see the Germans on the U-Boats they were depth charging not as fellow humans trapped in a steel pipe hundreds of feet beneath the waves crouching in sheer terror as the explosions came closer and closer until the one which ripped their hull open and sent them to their deaths. Not as men clutching pictures of beloved wives and children while they desperately begged God for another day of life. They needed to see the U-Boat crews as filthy murdering Krauts.

I say again, this is a necessary psychological adaptation to help us cope with the essential ugliness of warfare. We did not invent this. I do not know what the Greeks called the Persians or the Romans called the Parthians, but I doubt that it was polite.

Port Holes

From Cox & Forkum

Brave New World?

A friend sent this the other day. It is from the Financial Times.

An Ohio company has embedded silicon chips in two of its employees - the first known case in which US workers have been “tagged” electronically as a way of identifying them.

CityWatcher.com, a private video surveillance company, said it was testing the technology as a way of controlling access to a room where it holds security video footage for government agencies and the police.

Embedding slivers of silicon in workers is likely to add to the controversy over RFID technology, widely seen as one of the next big growth industries.

RFID chips – inexpensive radio transmitters that give off a unique identifying signal – have been implanted in pets or attached to goods so they can be tracked in transit.

“There are very serious privacy and civil liberty issues of having people permanently numbered,” said Liz McIntyre, who campaigns against the use of identification technology.

But Sean Darks, chief executive of CityWatcher, said the glass-encased chips were like identity cards. They are planted in the upper right arm of the recipient, and
“read” by a device similar to a cardreader.

“There’s nothing pulsing or sending out a signal,” said Mr Darks, who has had a chip in his own arm. “It’s not a GPS chip. My wife can’t tell where I am.”

The technology’s defenders say it is acceptable as long as it is not compulsory. But critics say any implanted device could be used to track the “wearer” without their
knowledge.

VeriChip – the US company that made the devices and claims to have the only chips that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration – said the implants were designed primarily for medical purposes.

So far around 70 people in the US have had the implants, the company said.

If this report is accurate I don't see anything sinister about this. The chips are like electronic ID cards and can be removed by a doctor. Now if you start implanting GPS chips in everyone we have a problem.

On the other hand, what would the parents of a missing child give to have a GPS chip telling them where their little girl is?

The Blond One speaks

From Ann Coulter:

The idea that the Democrats have any meaningful interest in America's national security is a joke, so I'm perfectly willing to believe there's more to this port story.

But Bush is going to need a better justification for turning over management of our ports to an Arab country than he's come up with so far — especially now that Jimmy Carter has said it's a good idea. Judging from his life's work to date, Carter's definition of a good idea is "an idea likely to hurt America and/or help its enemies."

Bush's defense of the port deal is to say that "those who are questioning it" need to "step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company."

First of all, it's not "all of a sudden." The phrase you're searching for, Mr. President, is "ever since the murderous attacks of Sept. 11." The Bush administration's obstinate refusal to profile Middle Easterners has been the one massive gaping hole in national security since the 9/11 attacks — attacks that received indirect support from the United Arab Emirates.

There is a rumor that there is a backroom deal with the government of the UAE to let us use their territory during the invasion of Iran. I have no idea if this is true, but it is the one thing that could justify this deal in my eyes. Otherwise I'm flummoxed.

Another thing Ann nails. The Party of Treason has no interest in national security. Their ONLY interest in this is a chance to bash Bush and fool some of the public into thinking that they would not be a screaming disaster if they were put in charge of defending the country.

RIP Andreas Katsulas

I heard on the radio today that actor Andreas Katsulas had passed away after a long illness (lung cancer). I went online as soon as I got home and found that the death had actually occurred on Feb. 13. This is sad news. Andreas played a number of Mafia type heavies in police shows, but is better known for his recurring character of Romulan Commander Tomaloc in Star Trek: The Next Generation and is best known as Ambassador G'Kar in all five seasons of Babylon 5.

It was Babylon 5 that gave Mr. Katsulas his chance to showcase his considerable acting talents. As G'Kar he had to act from beneath heavy reptilian makeup and a large enveloping costume. He had to communicate with body language and tone of voice what other actors do with facial expression. As the overall arc of Babylon 5 developed G'Kar was transformed from a strutting and scheming comic-opera figure into a statesman and humanitarian philosopher. Andreas' acting skills were up to every challenge.

He will be missed.

Lemuel's pick of the day

Go check out Shooting The Messenger. A good blog by a guy who knows his firearms.

More thoughts on 24

Samwise Gamgee is in a heap of trouble. His crackwhore sister and her junkie boyfriend stole his key card. This gives anyone who has it (and knows how to use it) access to anything that a CTU station chief has access to. This is a major breach of security and it was his duty to report it the instant that it happened. This will be the key to his downfall (unless he has a complete nervous breakdown before the key card business is discovered).

Since this is the 24 universe crackhead boyfriend will know someone who is plugged into the terrorist network and the chief Prior of the Ori will get his hands on the card. Then the entire nation will have to hallow the Ori or breathe nerve gas.

Will Daniel and Teal'c gate in from P4A759 in time to help Jack save the day? Will Teal'c give Jack one of those cool pain sticks to help him torture terrorists? Tune in next Monday night at 9:00 PM to find out.

Friends of Israel

This is a website where people can declare themselves as standing with the state of Israel.

The President speaks

Go check out the discussion of President Bush's statement about the UAE port deal on Blogs for Bush.

Tonight's 24

Tonight's body count: 6

Jack Bauer's body count: 3

Badger is now dead. I will miss him. It would have been better if he had kept the Irish accent and the bowler hat, but it was still good to see him.

Tonight was the annual "arrest Jack Bauer" episode. As I predicted someone at CTU would be arrested and charged for helping him. I thought it would be S4GF, but instead it was Col. McQueen. I didn't see that coming.

The terrorists looked like they were carrying the same kind of weapons that Cameron Mitchell is now carrying on Stargate: SG-1. I may be wrong about this. If anyone got a good look at them fill me in.

Mary Todd Weasel is riding with the Russian President and his wife. Will Pres. Weasel stop the motorcade or take the opportunity to get rid of her? I'm sure that his smarmey aid will tell him to sacrifice her. After all if his wife is killed in the ambush nobody will suspect that Pres. Weasel was in on it.

On an unrelated matter I have the documentary on Reagan that is being shown on TBN on in the background. It is EXCELLENT! I'm glad that I'm taping it. Reagan was the greatest president since Jefferson. Favorite quote from Reagan, "Communism is a form of insanity". He would say the same thing about fundamentalist Islam.

Hearing Reagan's voice again brings back that feeling that there is an unlimited future for America that he gave the nation.

Is there a man, or woman, out there who could step out in 2008 and pick up the standard? I don't know.

UPDATE:

Our friend White Trash Republican says, "WooHoo, this one was good. I loved seeing hobbitboy implode. He'll be screaming about the stolen frozen strawberries before too long."

Why the heck didn't I think of that one? I blame my writers! Someone is getting canned behind this!

UPDATE II:

It just hit me who the head terrorist (the one who knifed Badger) was. He also plays the head Prior of the Ori on Stargate SG-1. Jack Bauer is going to have to be very careful in going up against him. He should have S4GF contact her father (the Secretary of Defense) and have him put Bauer in contact with the SGC. He can use the technology that they have developed to block his powers. This will give him a window of opportunity to take him out.

ATF Hijinks

Irons in the Fire has a post up about the congressional hearings regarding the BATFE's misconduct at a Richmond, VA gun show.

The short version is that the ATF decended upon a Richmond gun show and engaged in a campaign of harasment of those who were making lawful purchases.

Countdown to 24

Less than a day until the next exciting episode of 24! Will the lovely, but useless, Kim make an appearence? Will the kill counter advance (no-brainer)? Who will Jack Bauer torture tonight?

Tune in and find out.

Submitted for your approval

From the Daily Times of Pakistan:

ISLAMABAD: Former US president Bill Clinton on Friday condemned the publication of Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) caricatures by European newspapers and urged countries concerned to convict the publishers.

Talking to reporters after meeting Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad, Clinton said he disagreed with the caricatures and that the publication was against religious and ethical norms. Clinton said he had no objection to peaceful demonstrations being held worldwide, but this was not the time for violence. He said it was the time to promote inter-faith harmony and stand together on the issue.

This story is a few days old. I have not posted anything about it because I am reluctant to believe it. It just does not seem credible to me that Clinton would be so stupid as to say something like this out loud. Not, at least, where it might be picked up and reported on in the English language media. Now understand, I hold Bill Clinton in absolute and perfect contempt. I believe that he is capable of saying something like this in private. Somewhere that he feels that there is no possibility of his words being broadcast, but not in any kind of public venue.

However, the story is getting legs in the blogoshpere and I think that it is going to be discussed on talk radio next week so I'm giving you a heads up. Follow the link. It is to a legitimate (if you can call any media source originating in the Islamic world legitimate) publication.

UPDATE:

As I predicted this is being discussed on talk radio. Rush Limbaugh is taking the report seriously and assuming that it is true. I hope Limbaugh is right. I hope that Clinton has lost it to the same degree that Al Gore has. I hope that he keeps this up so that his bitter-ender lickspittle defenders will have no choice but to come out and say, "I stand firmly with Bill Clinton on the side of the suicide bombers and nuclear mullahs against the United States of America. I, like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, am a blood enemy of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights."

More on the Cartoon Jihad

The rest is here.

When fear cows the media

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
February 19, 2006

THE PHOENIX is Boston's leading ''alternative" newspaper, the kind of brash, pull-no-punches weekly that might have been expected to print without hesitation the Mohammed cartoons that Islamists have been using to incite rage and riots across the Muslim world. Its willingness to push the envelope was memorably demonstrated in 2002, when it broke with most media to publish a grisly photograph of Daniel Pearl's severed head, and supplied a link on its website to the sickening video of the Wall Street Journal reporter's beheading.

But the Phoenix isn't publishing the Mohammed drawings, and in a brutally candid editorial it explained why.

''Our primary reason," the editors confessed, is ''fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history."

UPDATE:

When I posted this yesterday I didn't include any comment of my own becuase I didn't know what to say. I can understand the editors of THE PHOENIX's decision. After all what if they ran the cartoons and the newspaper was bombed resulting in some person who's only job was to come in and sweep the floor being killed.

The thing is that this isn't where it stops, it is where it starts. The Islam lobby in the US already excercises de facto script approval over the output of the Amercian entertainment industry (note that even the producers of 24 caved last season). Now they are seeking the same power over the Free World's news media (this is the real point of the Cartoon Jihad). The ultimate goal is to subject the civilized world to the state of dhimmitude. Dhimmi is the term Muslems use to describe a Christian or a Jew who lives in an Islamic nation being governed by Islamic law. The Dhimmi is required to pay a special tax for the continued privlage (not right) of keeping his head attached to his body and he must endure a series of humiliating regulations designed to never let him forget that he in inferior in every way to Muslems. All too many citizens of the West seem willing to go along with this, starting with the US news media (but not, to their eternal credit the European media).

Here is a serving military officer's take on the issue:

This US Army officer who blogs at 4 Mile Creek has this to say about media outlets which publish the newly released Abu Ghraib photos:

If a news organization refuses to publish cartoons of Muhammed because they are "culturally sensitive", does it make sense that they would rush to publish new photos from Abu Ghraib? After all, the US Army, and the US government, have already acknowledged that prisoners in Abu Ghraib were tortured. The new pictures won't add to anyone's knowledge of what happened there.

So does that make sense?

Try this scenario instead, and see if it makes more sense.
News organizations that did publish the infamous Muhammed cartoons have drawn the wrath of thin-skinned, often well armed, and always violent, muslims. News organizations that didn't publish them, have simply whistled by the graveyard. But they made it by, nonetheless. So it wasn't out of sensitivity, it was simply out of fear. Fear of sacrifice. The Abu Ghraib pictures will result in no threat to themselves, only a renewed and perhaps increased threat against me and my fellow coalition soldiers here in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and other hotspots around the globe. No threat to their safety, just ours. So it's okay to print them.

Fill in the blanks

From Cox & Forkum

Europe Awakens?

Victor Davis Hasnon has wrote a piece for Real Clear Politics about the apparent awakening of Europe to the danger posed by Islamofascism. The whole thing is here. What I want to draw your attention to is what I consider to be the money quote:

More importantly, despite distancing themselves from the United States, and spreading cash liberally around, the Europeans are beginning to fathom that the radical Islamists still hate them even more than they do the Americans — as if the fundamentalists add disdain for perceived European weakness in addition to the usual generic hatred of all things Western.

BINGO!

Islamic fundamentalists hate anyone who is not another Islamic fundamentalist. When an "infidel" is strong they hate him, but also fear and respect him and do not make him angry. When an "infidel" is weak he is hated and destroyed or enslaved. If Europe comes to understand this and act upon that understanding by joining the US in its war on terror fundamentalist Islam as a political/military force will be crushed like an ant that wandered into the path of an elephant.

John McCain is evil, part V

While we are hating RINO John McCain (R-The Media) let's not forget to hate his detestable little hand puppet Lindsay Graham (R-John McCain). You know that wretched phony-baloney cornpone lickspittle that follows McCain so closely that if McCain were to stop suddenly it would take a proctologist to separate them.

Graham willingly acts as McCain's butt boy in the hopes that he will be McCain's vice president. What he forgets is that the only thing that we can depend on about McCain is that he is a betrayer. If he had been alive 2000 years ago he would have fought Judas Iscariot to the death for those thirty pieces of silver. When and if McCain gets the Republican nomination he will defecate on Graham just like he does on every other Republican. The difference is that Graham will probably enjoy it.

The Blond One speaks

Ann Coulter's latest is out.

Here's a sample:

The amazing part of the great Danish cartoon caper isn't that Muslims immediately engage in acts of mob violence when things don't go their way. That is de rigueur for the Religion of Peace. Their immediate response to all bad news is mass violence. That's a "dog bites man" story and belongs on page B-34, next to the grade school hot lunch menu and the birth notices.

After an Egyptian ferry capsized recently, killing hundreds of passengers, a whole braying mob of passengers' relatives staged an organized attack on the company, throwing furniture out the window and burning the building to the ground. Witnesses say it was the most violent ocean liner-related incident since Carnival Cruise Lines fired Kathie Lee Gifford.

The "offense to Islam" ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire. These people have a serious anger management problem.

Now I would like to say this to all the conservative comentators who are upset by Ann's remarks at CPAC. Shut the frack up you whiney little bitches! I'll grant you that the term "ragheads" was not the best term to use to describe our enemies. "Lice-infested subhuman Neolithic Islamofascist vermin" would have been more accurate and to the point.

Fair and Balanced

In the interest of fairness I thought I would link to an average left-wing blog so that they could have their say as well.

Go here.

Battlestar Galactica

What in bloody hell is the hull plating of a battlestar made out of? Multiple nuclear detonations at contact distance and they are not only still there, but still fighting.

Lee Adama is banging Dee. After the hell that the Chief and Boomer caught. . .

Starbuck continues to prove that outside of a cockpit or a mission planning session she is pretty much useless. I would have added being in a gunfight to the things she does well, until she managed to shoot Apollo.

Less than 50000 humans left in the universe (as far as they know) and it is only now occurring to them that abortion on demand might not be a good idea.

If Baltar was any more of a weasel he would do every scene with a bloody chicken carcass in his mouth (apologies to the author, that one was just too good not to steal).

Less than a month after being promoted to major Apollo is again promoted to commander and given the Pegasus. I would like to have seen Col. Tigh's face when he realized that Lee was now his superior.

In a stand up one-on-one fight a battlestar can kick a base star's ass. Big time.

Battlestar's mount some fracking big guns up front. Very cool.

UPDATE:

Apollo and Dee are going to have a hard time getting one-on-one time now that they are stationed on different ships. Of course they are no longer in the same chain of command so their relationship might not be against regulations.

Other than the fighter craft that they carry the main armament of a base star seems to be missiles while a battlestar is armed with rail guns. I think that this is why battlestars are able to defeat base stars in a stand up fight. Missiles are slow moving compared with rail gun projectiles (which leave the rails moving at a high fraction of the speed of light). Missiles are large; rail gun rounds are not. Missiles present a large radar return while rail gun projectiles do not. All of these things combine to make missiles somewhat easy to intercept while rail gun rounds are not.

Rail guns also fire faster than missile tubes can be reloaded. The battlestar gets more hits and does more damage.

If it's not one damn thing its another

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran. Feb. 17 – Chinese economic cooperation with Iran has de-fanged the threat of possible international economic sanctions against Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapons development, a semi-official daily which represents the views of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote in its Saturday editorial.

The editorial, entitled “an Empty Drum” and signed by publisher Hossein Shariatmadari, a close confidante of Ayatollah Khamenei, said that the decision by Beijing to sign up to a 100 billion dollar oil deal with Tehran had far more political significance that it did economic.

It went on to describe the threat of UN action against Tehran over its nuclear program as “empty”.

It is clear that the PRC desires a nuclear Iran. This is because China is attempting to revive the Japanese dream of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere except with Beijing in charge instead of Tokyo. China believes that an Iran armed with atomic weapons will hold American interference in the Middle East at bay. This coupled with Beijing's naval build up, including its acquisition of Kelo class submarines from Russia, will allow them to assert sovereignty over Taiwan and the Spratley Islands.

In this scenario Japan will be to China what Finland was to the Soviet Union and the South Pacific will be a Chinese lake. The problem with this thinking is that Iran will not be content to be a Chinese satellite. In the mind of a radical Islamist anyone who is not Muslim is the enemy. They are perfectly willing to play one enemy off against another, as they took American help against the USSR, but in the end all agreements with "infidels" are temporary.

There is absolutely no chance, none whatsoever, that an Iran with atomic warheads and an effective delivery system, will not attack Israel. The Chinese do not believe this. They are used to spouting Marxist rhetoric as an empty justification for their totalitarian power. They are incapable of imagining that the Iranian tyrants are using Islam for any other purpose.

Israel knows this and the United States knows this as well. There is no chance that either of those nations will allow Iran to go online with a nuclear bomb. Iran's nuclear program is so dispersed and hardened that only troops on the ground can uproot it. If Iran does not stop of its own free will it will have to be conquered and occupied.

Israel can accomplish this, but at the cost of the entire Middle East exploding. America is aware of this and so it will do the job itself. The Middle East will still explode, but it will be the difference between a handgrenade and a hydrogen bomb.

China dreams of Asian hegemony. Their miscalculation in aligning themselves with Islamofascists could leave them instead with American military stationed on their border and an uncertain oil supply.

It is interesting, however, that even people as gone into full blown psychotic delusion as the Iranian Mullas have grasped the complete uselessness of the United Nations in a way that continues to elude the US Department of State.

Good Advice

This came from a gun related email list. It is good advice for anyone who hunts or carries/keeps a gun for self defence or duty.

The Paul Revere Network Discussion List ----

Re: Post Shooting ProceduresSpecial note to my customers, friends and fans --The following rules generally apply after a shooting incident (accidental or self-defense), whether you are the Vice President of the United States or not. Thanks to my friend Dr. Bruce Eimer, Ph.D., a clinical and forensic psychologist, for reminding me of these important basics, and providing facts. For some mysterious reason, little of this has come out in news reports.

1. All shooting incidents are traumatic for the good guys, especially when innocent people have been hurt.

2. Post-shooting trauma is REAL and every good person involved in a shooting incident gets it. Sleeplessness, flashbacks, disorientation, remorse, malaise and other post-trauma symptoms are routine, expected and must be dealt with.

3. You have no legal obligation to contact or talk to the press, and defense attorneys advise against doing so.

4. A person is least capable of making a coherent and consistent statement, with good word choices and chronological accuracy, immediately after a shooting incident, even though the urge to talk is typically great, and everyone around you will encourage it.

5. Knowing this, the police have adopted good standard procedures you can use as a guide. Remove yourself from all public contact, and go on "administrative leave" (with pay), until an official statement can be released in writing, in cooperation with a team of lawyers, within two weeks.

6. No statement of any kind should be made until conferring with attorneys.

7. You are advised against talking with police unless your lawyer is present.

8. The first concern must be for an injured party. Timely reporting to law enforcement authorities is also essential, and it would be improper for police to leak this to the press (both rules were observed in the Cheney incident).

9. Allow yourself time to appropriately psychologically process your post-shooting psychological trauma, and debrief this critical incident for 24 to 48 hours. Only then should you consider making a statement to the press, the authorities, or anyone. Expressing sadness, contrition and assuming FULL responsibility for the accident (as Cheney did in this case) is appropriate.

10. Do everything you can to avoid such situations.

Alan (with a lot of help from Bruce).Contact:Alan KorwinBLOOMFIELD PRESS"We publish the gun laws."4718 E. Cactus #440Phoenix, AZ 85032602-996-4020 Phone602-494-0679 FAX1-800-707-4020 Ordershttp://www.gunlaws.comalan@gunlaws.comCall, write, fax or click for a free full-color catalog.To reach Dr. Eimer --http://www.PersonalDefenseSolutions.netEncourage politicians to pass more laws...with expiration dates.

Shotgun Gate

If you are wondering why the White House Press Corps has turned itself into such a seething pool of molten rage over the Vice President allowing the ranch owner to notify a local paper of his hunting accident here is the likely reason.

There is precisely one thing which sets these people (who are, for the most part, utterly mediocre) apart and justifies their high salaries and newspaper column inches and TV face time. That thing is the fact that they are the conduit through which the administration in power communicates with the American public. They depend completely on the fact that the White House is willing to talk to them. Before the rise of the new media these men and women held a great deal of power to shape the public's perception of the administration. This power gave them a great deal of license in how they approached any president and his staff. Dan Rather's famous confrontation with Nixon comes to mind as well as almost any exchange between uber hag Helen Thomas and any Republican president. They could be contemptuous and disrespectful and the White House had to take it because the only picture of the president and his performance in office that the average American got was what the mainstream media chose to show him.

This is changing. The internet, talk radio and FOX News provide an alternate conduit through which the American people can access the news. The horrible sin that the Vice President committed was in allowing someone not connected with his or the President's press office inform a local newspaper of his accident. This bypassed the White House Press Corps, in fact it bypassed the entire Beltway media establishment. Like dinosaurs looking upward and seeing that light in the sky grow bigger and brighter every night or buggy whip manufacturers watching the first Model T roll off Henry Ford's assembly line the first faint whiff of their own extinction must be tickling their nostrils.

The fact that the American people could care less that the VP did an end run around them and that the accident itself, which in the old days could have been spun into a major scandal, is being greeted by a giant yawn have brought home the fact like nothing else could that the Old Media is living on borrowed time. When you shatter peoples self serving illusions they will hate you for it.

White House coverup

Dick Cheney tried to murder that man. It was part of a Haliburton conspiracy to steal the election. George W Bush ordered him to do it. Bush lied and people died. Blood for oil. Global warming is Bush's fault. Bush mined the levees in New Orleans after using voodoo to bring on Katrina. The Vice President rigged the voting machines in Florida. Bush ordered Cheney to order Libby to blow Valerie Plame's cover so that Iran would get nuclear weapons.

Regular readers ignore this post. I'm doing an experiment to see how many moonbat search engine hits I can generate.

Sour Grapes

Mat Drudge points us to this:

. . .some Democrats and competing broadcasters charged that Cheney chose to speak only with Fox News because of a perception that the cable channel is sympathetic to the Republican administration. They called for the vice president to hold a news conference with the rest of the media.

"Now that he feels forced to talk, he wants to restrict the discussion to a friendly news outlet, guaranteeing no hard questions from the press corps," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said in a statement.

On CNN, commentator Jack Cafferty called the interview "a little bit like Bonnie interviewing Clyde. ... I mean, running over there to the Fox network -- talk about seeking a safe haven."

If this is true then no Democrat can ever be interviewed by any member of the mainstream media except FOX.

Beaming planes

Detroit media is abuzz with reports about 16(!) pilots at Detroit Metro Airport being targeted with blinding laser pointers.

The business about laser pointers being a danger to airplanes is a tempest in a teapot. They pose no danger.

Some say that the purpose of the lasers is not just about distracting pilots, but measuring distances from the ground to plains, in order to judge possible strike range for surface-to-air missiles.

Then they would be laser range finders, not pointers. There are other ways of measuring the hight of planes than lasers that can be seen from the planes. Also, sholder fired surface-to-air missiles don't need to have the target altitude programed into them from an external source. They typically lock onto the heat signature of a jet engine. A larger SAM, like a Hawk, would illuminate the target with radar, not a laser pinpoint.

And guess where the laser pointers' strobes are coming from?

Surprise, surprise--law enforcement investigators have pinpointed the lasers to Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, Michigan--both comprising the HEART of Islamic America. We like to call it by a more appropriate appellation: "Little Ramallah."

In fact, Dearborn Heights is the location of the Hezbollah Mosque (at which the feds kowtowed). The mosque, the Islamic Center of America is headed by Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi, whom I've openly said was an agent of the Government of Iran. In his monthly Detroit News column, Elahi is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's most prominent U.S. ally.

Another location from which the laser pointers emanated, Michigan Avenue and Telegraph Road, is in the heart of Dearborn's most extremist Muslim population. A gas station not far from there was raided not long after 9/11 for funding the Holy Land Foundation--shut down by President Bush for funding HAMAS (HLF also had strong ties to Al-Qaeda).

There is some merit in this part. I doesn't matter if the laser pointers are a real danger to planes as long as they are perceived to be some kind of threat. If I had to guess what this was all about I would say that it is some kind of probe. An attempt to provoke authorities into taking some kind of action in order to study the response. As such anyone "beaming" a plane from these areas should be treated as a potential terrorist.

I can't vouch for any of the links in the above. I got this from Debbie Schlussel's website .

And they use the fat of Arab children to make their menorah candles too

From our friends at The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

On January 31, 2006, the Syrian government daily Al-Thawra published an article by columnist Abd Al-Rahman Ghunaym suggesting that Israel created the avian flu virus in order to damage "genes carried only by Arabs." The article further speculates that Israel may have planted the virus in East Asia in order to mislead the world, and that this is why the disease first appeared in that remote region. Another possibility given is that the virus was created to attack "the yellow race - especially in China and Vietnam" which are "rising powers" threatening "American hegemony over the world."

Is there anyone out there with an IQ even in the high double digits that thinks we can make peace with these people?

Lemuel's pick of the day

Go and check out White Trash Republican. It's a good blog.

This is the beginning of a mighty White Trash Empire. And I shall rule this empire with a rod of iron. Casting down all who would oppose me. I shall claim a white trash queen to rule beside me. Brittany Spears or maybe Paris Hilton (I'll flip a coin).

Life goes on

From The Washington Times:

City leaders, who said before the floodwaters even had receded that Mardi Gras festivities would occur, hope that this year's scaled-down version, the 150th, will be the first step back to carnivals that attract 1 million visitors and generate more than $1 billion for the local economy.

"We do expect crowds to be incrementally less that 1 million. However, we do anticipate the crowds to be sizable," said Erica R. Papillion, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Bob Wangler of Bourbon Street Balcony in the French Quarter said his private party rooms have been sold out. "People are coming," he said. "No one is saying not to go. We should have a Mardi Gras, and we will have a Mardi Gras."

Of the 36,000 New Orleans hotel rooms before Katrina hit, about 27,000 are back in operation, some of which still are housing displaced citizens and recovery workers. But a spokesman for the Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association predicts that more rooms will become available closer to when the festivities begin as more families and workers vacate the rooms.

"Everyone's scrambling for rooms," said Katherine Young, general manager of the Chateau LeMoyne hotel. "I think everybody is just about full."

The over the top spirit of Mardi Gras always embodied the best of New Orleans, a city who's motto is "let the good times roll". It is good that it will go on this year. Some have asked how a celebration can be held in a city where so many have died so recently. I believe that it is necessary because so many have died so recently. As human beings we have gone from cowering in caves to walking on the moon because it is our nature to hurl our defiance at all things that would hold us back.

Though lives are lost LIFE GOES ON!

The Blond One speaks

I just got around to looking at Ann Coulter's latest. As usual she is right on the money. This time out she deals with the cartoon riots. Here is a sample:

Largely unnoticed in this spectacle is the blinding fact that one nation is missing from the long list of Muslim countries (by which I mean France and England) with hundreds of crazy Muslims experiencing bipolar rage over some cartoons: Iraq. Hey — maybe this democracy thing does work! The barbaric behavior of Europe's Muslims suggests that the European welfare state may not be attracting your top-notch Muslims.

Anyone surprised?

Life & Style has learned exclusively that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have agreed to call off their wedding — and, ultimately, to split. Multiple insiders confirmed the story to Life & Style, with one longtime friend of Tom’s saying: “Their relationship is basically over.” Another friend adds: “They both agreed that the marriage wouldn’t work and they wanted to end it before they learned to hate each other.”

I'll bet I know what happened. She woke up and realized that Scientology was even more insane than Islam.

Tick tick tick. . .

From Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Feb. 14 – Iran confirmed on Tuesday that it had begun uranium enrichment at its nuclear installation in Natanz.Senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Javad Vaeidi said in Tehran that Iran had resumed enriching uranium based on a directive issued by hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.“This action has been carried out on the orders of the president”, Vaeidi said, adding that more time was needed before “industrial-scale” enrichment could be resumed.

Is anyone in Washington Awake? Does anyone doubt that the Mad Mullahs and their little hand puppet Ahmadinejad will use the nukes when they get them? The CIA says that it will be about 2 years before Iran has a working bomb. That means that they already have one or will by this time next week.

That we are going to have to act is certain. Sooner means less dead bodies than later. Does anyone care?

Hypocrite Alert!

A number of reporters are angry with the White House for not notifying them instantly of the Vice President's hunting accident. They are angry that the administration did not respect "the people's right to know". Well, if you work for an organization, print or TV, that has not shown the Danish Mohammad cartoon you have no moral right to bitch.

Our tax dollars at work

From The Washington Times:

In its rush to provide Katrina disaster aid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasted millions of dollars and overpaid for hotel rooms, including $438-a-day lodging in New York City, government investigators said yesterday.

This is a good example of what the federal government does when placed under pressure to "JUST DO SOMETHING". I remember when it was first announced that FEMA had contracted with cruise lines to house people on their ships. It was hailed as not just a good decision, but an inspired one. Then a few months later it was described as an act of irresponsibility bordering on moronic.

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, who chairs the committee, decried the findings, noting that a series of audits and hearings after hurricanes in Florida in 2004 highlighted similar accounting problems and had called on then-FEMA Director Michael D. Brown to make immediate changes.

"The problem, once again, is that FEMA failed to prepare for the very type of disaster that happens every year," Miss Collins said. "This 'pay first, ask questions later' approach has been an invitation to unscrupulous behavior."

Imagine the outcry from bloodsucking leach "community activists" like the "reverends" Jesse Jackson and Al Shaprton, their enablers in the Party of Treason and their cheerleaders in the MSM if FEMA had taken a slow and careful approach to Katrina relief. Fools from both parties and both houses of congress would have trampled each other to get to the nearest microphone to call for Brown's head on a plate.

1000 and still counting.

I will pass my 1000th visit sometime tonight. For a blog that is less than 3 months old, written by a nobody with no promotion or publicity and only a couple of links from other blogs that’s not bad.

I want to thank everyone who's stopped by for a look. I especially want to thank everyone who comes by again and again. I do this for myself, but it is still a pleasure to see some people spending the better part of an hour reading the current posts and all the archives.

The only thing that I need to cap off this milestone is to finally get that fatwa. Someone from Turkey stopped by after searching for drawings of Mohammad. Perhaps he was a venomous imam who is even now haranguing his Istanbul congregation with orders to hunt me down and kill me.

Come ahead Osama. I will be glad to send you to the lowest pit of Hell with your child-raping "prophet".

24 tonight!

Less than two hours remain until tonight's episode of 24. We are told that Kim will be making an appearance tonight. This means nothing to me. The actress is hot, but the character is useless. It will, however, make certain fans very happy.

What interests me is the possibility that an entire shopping mall full of Americans might be gassed.

UPDATE:

I have owned more than one surplus gas mask and none of them transmitted the wearer's voice as well as the masks worn by both the terrorists and the CTU team.

I have been taught that nerve gas kills on skin contact. In fact I have heard that even the smallest droplet on the skin is fatal without treatment. And what is this business about "weaponized nerve gas"? Is there a benign civilian nerve gas?

Tonight's death toll is between 14 and 24.

The previews for next week show orders beign given to take Jack into custody. No season would be complete without Jack "going rogue" and having orders put out to arrest him. Before the episode is over he will be reinstated. However someone at CTU will be charged with treason for helping him. My guess as to who will be S4GF (season 4 girl friend).

UPDATE II

Still no Kim. Fine with me.

John McCain is evil, part IV

Over at Power Line Paul Mirengoff writes the following:

. . .while I have tremendous respect for McCain the chances that I would vote for him in a Republican primary are poor. However, I certainly would expect to vote for him if he were the Republican nominee.

Mr. Mirengoff is filled up to the nose holes with smarts, but I have to differ with him on this one. A McCain presidency would do enormous damage to the Republican Party. It would be every bit as disastrous, if in a slightly different way, as a Lincoln Chaffee administration.

McCain is a political coward. Back home he talks like a conservative and in Washington he has his lips firmly planted on the backside of the leftist mainstream media. He routinely tailors his message to his audience; taking whatever position he needs to at the moment to pander to whoever he is speaking to. In this respect he is EXACTLY like Bill Clinton.

McCain is a political whore. He routinely stabs his fellow Republicans in the back in order to garner favor with the left-wing press. There is no Republican core position that he will not sell out to get face time on NBC or CNN.

McCain is a blood enemy of fundamentally important American freedoms. His campaign finance law gutted the First Amendment and his "F" rating from Gun Owners of America proves his hostility to the Second. John McCain has done more to harm American liberty than Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Osama bin Laden combined.

McCain is mentally unstable. Apparently his experiences as a POW left him psychically damaged and prone to outbursts of uncontrollable rage. This is not a fatal flaw in a senator, but could be tragic in a president.

It would be deeply immoral to vote for a Democrat in 2008 . There are other choices, however. Either the Constitution Party or the Libertarians would be acceptable protest votes. I know that would hand the White House to the Party of Treason but that is preferable to seeing the Republican Party shatter itself irreparably on the alter of "Anybody But Hillary".

At least somebody takes their borders seriously

Iran Focus:

Baghdad, Feb. 12 – Some 25 Iranians have been arrested in Iraq’s Diyala Province for illegally entering the country, the Iraqi border police announced on Sunday.The arrests have been made over the past week, Colonel Muhammad Nasser, chief of the Diyala border police, said.The United States and Iraqi officials have accused Iran’s radical Islamic government of sending agents and arms into Iraq to assist the insurgency.

It would seem that Iraq has a more serious border control policy than the United States. We are in the process of rebuilding and training their military and civil law enforcement and security services. The students have surpassed the teachers.

Funny, I don't remember stepping through a looking glass.

From the Washington Times:

A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the September 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism. The Bush administration considers the UAE an important ally in the fight against terrorism since the suicide hijackings and is not objecting to Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. The $6.8 billion sale is expected to be approved tomorrow. The British company is the fourth-largest ports company in the world,
and its sale would affect commercial U.S. port operations in Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.

I'd like to share my opinion of this with you, but right now I got nothing. This is right up there with Israel's "lets give Gaza to the terrorists so that they can more effectively kill us" move. Has life grown so boring in the years since 9/11 that we need to try to encourage another one?

The ultimate death match

What would the true Mother of All Battles look like?

Bun Bun
vs.

Jack Bauer

Two undefeatable opponents. Both unstoppable and willing to do whatever it takes to win. The results of such a battle could shatter the laws of physics and eradicate the universe.

For a sample of what Bun Bun can do go here. For a sample of what Jack Bauer can do watch 24 on Fox 9:00 PM on Monday night.

The first white flag in the Cartoon War.

Mark Steyn from the Chicago Sun-Times via Real Clear Politics:

The European Union's Justice and Security Commissioner, Franco Frattini, said on Thursday that the EU would set up a "media code" to encourage "prudence" in the way they cover, ah, certain sensitive subjects. As Signor Frattini explained it to the Daily Telegraph, "The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are ware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression. . . . We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right."

"Prudence"? "Self-regulate our free expression"? No, I'm afraid that's just giving the Muslim world the message: You've won, I surrender, please stop kicking me.

But they never do. Because, to use the Arabic proverb with which Robert Ferrigno opens his new novel, Prayers for the Assassin, set in an Islamic Republic of America, "A falling camel attracts many knives." In Denmark and France and the Netherlands and Britain, Islam senses the camel is falling and this is no time to stop knifing him.

The issue is not "freedom of speech" or "the responsibilities of the press" or "sensitivity to certain cultures." The issue, as it has been in all these loony tune controversies going back to the Salman Rushdie fatwa, is the point at which a free society musters the will to stand up to thugs. British Muslims march through the streets waving placards reading "BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM." If they mean that, bring it on. As my columnar confrere John O'Sullivan argued, we might as well fight in the first ditch as the last.

Tyrants NEVER see appeasement as anything but weakness. Hitler should have taught us that. A fight is coming. Where and when the battle will be fought is a decision that can be taken by us or by the savages. If we are smart enough to deserve to survive we will pick the battlefield.

More about the border

Via the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 - Mexican criminal syndicates are stepping up their attacks on American agents patrolling the border as officials of the Homeland Security Department intensify efforts to stem the flow of immigrants and drugs into the United States, American officials said this week.

In recent months, scores of Border Patrol agents have been fired upon or pelted with large stones as well as with cloth-covered stones that have been doused with flammable liquid and set ablaze. Since October, agents have been attacked in more than 190 cases, officials said on Thursday.

One of the pillars of a nation's sovereignty is its right and ability to control its borders. The article blames "criminal syndicates" for the violence, but does anyone with an IQ in the double digits doubt that the corrupt Mexican government is in this up to its armpits? It has become the vigorously promoted, if unofficial, policy of the Mexican government to export its surplus population to the United States. This serves the twin purposes of pumping billions of dollars into the Mexican economy as the illegals send money to family back in Mexico and reducing the pressure for genuine reforms of the dysfunctional Mexican political system.

The prospects for real change in the United States' border control policy seem slim given the current congress and the current president. The two political parties are in a life-or-death contest to secure the votes of the large Hispanic minority and business is reaping enormous savings in the cost of labor as wages are driven down by millions of illegal aliens willing to work for much less than native Americans.

Some observers, notably those with a libertarian bent, see the labor cost savings as a bonus for the US economy. After all the price of goods and services is held down and the US has low unemployment so Americans obviously aren't being driven out of work. This reasoning ignores the high cost illegal immigration imposes on taxpayers. State and local governments tax citizens to pay the cost of educating the children of illegals. Illegals tend to use hospital emergency rooms for primary care leaving bills that are never paid. This drives up the cost of healthcare as hospitals must recoup the lost revenue by charging more to their paying customers. This results in higher insurance premiums and the sometimes draconian cost cutting measures that have made "HMO" a swear word in some quarters. Taxpayers at the county and city level are also saddled with a growing bill for law enforcement as illegals clog court calendars and fill jails to overflowing.

As for the issue of which political party will benefit from the powerful Hispanic vote the answer is obviously going to be Democrats. Republicans seem to think that because a large number of Mexicans are religious and devoted to family that they represent a natural constituency. This ignores the fact that most Black Americans live their private lives as conservatives. The Black community is centered on the church and the greatest desire of most Black parents is to see a voucher program which will allow them to get their children out of the failing and downright dangerous public schools. Yet they continue to vote Democrat in the 90% range. The fact is that Republicans can never match the Santa Claus generosity (in spending other people's money) of the Democrats. The Republican "base" will not allow it.

What both political parties are missing is that the majority of Americans are fed up with illegal immigration. We are fed up with everything from bags of potato chips to our ATMs being labeled in Spanish as well as English. We are fed up roll call in our kid's schools sounding like the Tijuana telephone directory. We are fed up with going to the courthouse to pay our property tax and feeling like we've wandered into a casting call for a Zorro movie. We are fed up with paying higher taxes and insurance premiums (health and auto) and enduring higher crime rates and being told that cheap lettuce makes it all worthwhile.

In 2008 if a candidate, of either party, makes ending our policy of open borders the centerpiece of his/her campaign they could very well win with a substantial majority; a majority that could have the kind of coattails that change the character of the legislature (like Reagan in 1980).

John McCain is evil, part III

The latest issue of City Journal arrived a week ago and I am just getting around to reading it. The very first article I turn to provides a good reminder of just why I, and any right thinking American, should hate evil lunatic John McCain.

The rise of alternative media - political talk radio in the eighties, cable news in the nineties, and the blogosphere in the new millennium - has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The Left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party's current
electoral trouble on the influence of the new media's vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today's liberals quietly, relentlessly, and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance and media regulations. Their campaign represents the most sustained attack on free political speech in the United States since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. Though Republicans have the most to lose in the short run, all Americans who care about our most fundamental rights and the civic health of our democracy need to understand what's going on - and resist it.

We should not rest until McCain is driven out of American politics. Let him put a diaper on his head and go to Iran with the other censors.

Victor Davis Hanson nails it again.

Over at NRO VDH again says what needs to be said about the Danish cartoon affair. He reminds us that regression can happen just as easily as advancement.

The great wealth and leisure created by modern technology have confused some in the modern age into thinking that history is linear. We expect that each generation will inevitably improve upon the last, as if we, the blessed of the 21st century, would never chase out Anaxagoras or execute Socrates - or allow others to do so - in our modern polis.

. . . civilization can regress. Indeed, it can be nearly lost in a generation, especially so now, with technology acting as an afterburner of sorts which warps the rate of change, both good and bad.

The latest Islamic outrage over the Danish cartoons represents an erosion in the very notion of Western tolerance. Years ago, the death sentence handed down to Salman Rushdie was the dead canary in the mine. It should have warned us that the Western idea of free and unbridled expression, so difficultly won, can be so easily lost.

He identifies the nature of the Islamofascist enemies of civilization.

The radical Islamists are our generation's book burners who search for secular Galileos and Newtons. They are the new Nazi censors who sniff out anything favorable to the Jews. These fundamentalists are akin to the Soviet commissars who once decreed all art must serve political struggle — or else.

The Islamists are also sad bullies, who hunt out causes for offense in the most obscure places, but would recoil at the first sign of Western defiance. Turkey may say little to the Islamists now, but they would say lots if the European Union decided to pass on its inclusion into the union. Local imams sound fiery, but if the West is too debauched a place for any pure Muslim to endure, why then do they not lead, Moses-like, an exodus of the devout away from the rising flood of decadence, and back to the paradise of a purer Syria or Algeria?

He also correctly describes the Western enablers whose reaction to these savages is to grovel and appease.

While listening to the obfuscations of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about the Danish cartoons, I thought that next he was going to call for a bowdlerization of Dante's Inferno, where Dante and Virgil in the eighth rung of Hell gaze on the mutilated specters of Mahomet and his son Ali, along with the other Sowers of Discord. I grew up reading the text with the gruesome illustrations of Gustave Doré. Can Straw now damn that artist's judgment as well, when the next imam threatens global jihad, more terrorism, an oil cut-off, or to make things worse for Anglo-American troops who are trying to bring democracy to Iraq?

Since Bill Clinton mentioned nothing about free speech and expression or the rights of a newspaper to be offensive and tasteless, but lectured only about cultural insensitivity and the responsibility of the media not to be mean to Muslims, why did he stop with the Danish cartoonists? Surely someone who has apologized for everyone from General Sherman to the Shah could have lamented the work of every Western artist, from Rodin to Dali, who has rendered the Prophet in a bad light.

In the post-Osama bin Laden and suicide-belt world of our own, we shudder at these fanatical riots, convincing ourselves that perhaps the Salman Rushdies, Theo Van Goghs, and Danish cartoonists of the world had it coming. All the while, we think to ourselves about the fact that we do not threaten to kill Muslims when they promulgate daily streams of hate and racism in sermons and papers, and much less would we go about promising death to the creator of "Piss Christ" or the Da Vinci Code. How ironic that we now find politically-correct Westerners — those who formerly claimed they would defend to the last the right of an Andres Serrano or Dan Brown to offend Christians — turning on the far milder artists who rile Muslims.

We are in a war for the survival of civilization that is just as urgent as the one that was waged in the 1940's. Will anyone other than the Queen of Denmark, the conservative blogosphere and Ann Coulter wake up and start fighting it?