Final thoughts (I hope) on the Port Deal

I was driving along today and decided to tune in to Rush Limbaugh. I figured that since the Dubai port deal had fallen through he would be on to something else. I was wrong. He had a caller, one of his sycophants by the sound of him, saying that since the port deal had been killed by congressional/public objections that must mean that all forms of race based discrimination were now legally OK. Rush immediately agreed saying that there was just no way to tell where this could lead.

OK, so denying a nation which was involved in the 9/11 attacks control of major ports of entry into the US is EXACTLY THE SAME as “colored only” drinking fountains and “No Irish Need Apply” signs and “restricted”, no Jews welcome, country clubs?

Sean Hannity coined the term “sanctimonious talking point Republicans” to describe the chorus of Republican kool-aid drinkers who rushed out to defend the Deal. The tactics used by this crew were nearly identical to the ones employed to attack the critics of Harriet Meiers. Refuse to engage the substantive arguments of your opponents and instead accuse them of various low motives. In the Meiers case it was sexism and elitism. In the Dubai matter it is racism and xenophobia.

We are told that Dubai is a cosmopolitan place with high rise hotels by the sea and great restaurants. There are really cool upscale jewelry stores where you can get solid platinum Rolex watches crusted with diamonds. The UAE is said to be building a Hong Kong style bastion of laissez-faire capitalism in the heart of the Islamic Middle East. And they have call girls in every color of the rainbow too.

But let us tear ourselves away from the smoking-hot Dubai club scene and contemplate something else; the cockpit of hijacked United Airlines flight 175 a few seconds before crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The hijackers, two of whom were from the UAE, begin shouting “Allah Akbar” as they had been trained to do, so that they might die with praise to their “god” on their lips. Where on earth would these men get the idea that God might want them to throw their lives away in an appalling act of evil? I know exactly where they came across that idea. In a Wahhabi mosque.

Wahhabism is a virulent form of fundamental Islam that has been stripped of nearly everything that could be considered redeeming. Fulminating with hatred for any Christian, Jew, secularist or non-Wahhabi Muslim (especially them) Wahhabism is the brand of Islam embraced by the UAE. Strip away the yacht clubs and the indoor ski slope and you have an eighth century tribal kingdom using the trappings of modern secular technological society to advance a philosophy whose ultimate goal is the destruction of modern secular technological society.

They did, after all, allow their banking system to be the money laundry for Osama bin Laden. They did, after all, allow their excellently run ports to be the transshipment point for nuclear technology on its way to rogue states Iran and North Korea. They were, after all, the first nation to recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the last to withdraw that recognition. Of course when you point this out to any of the Deal defenders, especially the Libertarian ones, they start talking real fast about how beautiful the Dubai skyline is and how they have made artificial islands off the coast in the shape of every continent.

The defenders of the Port Deal, having internalized the defeat of the Deal, are now pitching a massive tantrum. We are told that we are “ignorant and offensive” by a Bush nephew. We are told that the apocalypse will be upon us when the Arab world punishes us by disinvesting in our economy. The UAE which is said to be building an aerospace industry [they are buying an aerospace industry, they could never build one – LC] and they may decide not to purchase airliners from Boeing. Instead giving the business to Airbus. Let them. The Airbus product is inferior to the Boeing jet. If the UAE is willing to shoot their shiny new aerospace industry in the foot because their nose is out of joint are they really the kind of people we need to be in business with?

In fact, if the Arab world is so stupid as to be willing to turn their back on the largest most vibrant economy on the globe because of injured pride how much good will they do us as economic partners anyway?

We are also told that the President is “livid” with the “betrayal” he has suffered and that retribution will be swift and sure. Karl Rove is said to have already sent out the faxes to the Party leaders in the states instructing them that those Republican “traitors” are to get nothing when running for reelection. Excuse me, but help from a president whose numbers are in the toilet would be highly unlikely to be of any use to congressmen who defied the strongly expressed will of a supermajority of the American people.

About this “betrayal” business . . . we heard this in the Meiers debacle as well. Does the President believe that loyalty moves in one direction only, from bottom to top? Is he completely incapable of getting his mind around the concept that if he hands his allies (you know, the people who worked and gave and prayed and voted to put his ass in the Oval Office) a situation that they absolutely cannot accept that the betrayal might he his and not ours?

Ever since he began campaigning for his first term the Left has been telling us that Mr. Bush is abysmally stupid. If he is willing to go to war with his own party because they won’t give him every gorram thing he wants then the Left was right about him all along. Of course the Harriet Meiers kool-aid drinkers were quick to tell us that if the Meiers nomination went down in flames that Bush would punish us by next nominating a true liberal judicial activist. Instead we got Samuel Alito.

I don’t believe that the President is a stupid man. I don’t think you can graduate from Yale and be a dunce. I don’t think you can earn a Harvard MBA and be a moron. I don’t believe that a borderline retard can be elected governor of Texas and twice President of the United States. I give him a great deal more credit than his supposed defenders. I think that he will pick himself up and lick his wounds and go on. Just like he did after the Meiers nomination imploded.

I predict that the final outcome of this mess is going to be positive. Just as the nomination of Harriet Meiers wound up setting a new, much higher, standard for Supreme Court nominees the DP World fiasco will shine the light on the truly shabby state of our internal security.

In November public attention on national security can only help Republicans. Democrats are going to rue the day they ever heard the word “Dubai”.

Just Like Drew Carey

Modern, Cool Nerd 56 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 34% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd. Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)! Congratulations! Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Professional Wrestling Love & Sexuality America/Politics Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

Port Deal Undone?

From CNN.com:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- United Arab Emirates-owned DP World said Thursday it would transfer its operations of American ports to a U.S. "entity" after congressional leaders reportedly told President Bush that the firm's takeover deal was essentially dead on Capitol Hill.

"Because of the strong relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the United States and to preserve that relationship ... DP World will transfer fully the U.S. operations of P&O Operations North America to a United States entity," Edward H. Bilkey, DP World's chief operating officer, said in a statement.

the announcement did not specify which U.S. company would be involved. (Read DP World's statement -- PDF)

The UAE firm's purchase of P&O, the British company that manages cargo and passenger terminals at several ports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, has stirred up bipartisan opposition.
Unusually rancorous debate on the issue has split Bush from his GOP allies in Congress at a time when the president's approval ratings have plunged and midterm elections approach. (Read a timeline of the ports deal)

This is what I predicted would happen, and it is all for the best. The fact is that this was a bad deal for two reasons.

One, the American people just didn't want it and were unwilling to be shamed off of it by name calling. If the president had dug in his heels over it it would have had devastating consequences this November in the congressional elections. As things stand now no one will remember by November.

Two, the deal as originally constructed would have created too many security problems. I'm not saying that the UAE went into the deal in order to create an easy way to smuggle WMD's or terrorists or anything else into the US. The fact is that they were making a good business deal for no more mysterious motive than financial profit. However due to the circumstances in the UAE, where there is undeniably a pro-Islamist element at work, it was just too likely that someone in the management chain-of-command would have placed his deeply held religious convictions ahead of his bank account balance and cooperated with terrorists.

After all, it’s not like our ports aren't already under the effective control of organized crime. We keep hearing that the security at the ports is the responsibility of the Coast Guard and the Customs part of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). This is technically true in that they are the only law enforcement agencies present (the New Jersey state Port Authority doesn't even have police stationed at the port in Newark). However the Coast Guard’s only task is to protect the port from an attack from the sea. Customs is only there to inspect 2 out of every 100 cargo containers. All other security is the responsibility of rent-a-cops hired by the port management company. Couple this with the fact that the unloading of the ships is work done by members of the longshoremen’s union, the most corrupt in the nation, and you can see that it would not take massive terrorist penetration in DP World’s management to bring about a disaster for the United States.

Just one or two middle management types who believe that Allah wants them to help cripple The Great Satan spreading around some of Osama’s cash (he has hundreds of millions that we can’t trace because the UAE won’t let us see the records) could see a dirty bomb, nerve gas or an actual atomic bomb making its way into the interior of the nation.


UPDATE:


James Lewis shares his thoughts about the port deal in The American Thinker.


In the world of pure economics, the sale of US ports to Dubai makes perfect sense. That is because only economic motivations matter. Dubai could own the ports, operate them for profit if possible, and sell them to somebody else if they found a better place to put their money.

The trouble is that economics is not the total of human motivations.

[snip]

Is Dubai like the Soviets during the height of Communist imperialism? The Sheikhs are devout Wahhabis. It would be nice to think that they will become another Switzerland, mainly interested in economics. But we don’t know that.

The Sheikhs of Dubai have more than economic motives, just as Islamic immigrants streaming into Europe have more than economic motives.

They are pursuing imperialism through emigration. When Muammar Khadafi surrendered his secret nuclear program after the Iraq invasion, he said that in time, Muslim immigration would conquer the world in due time.

The religious left makes an appearance

First off, sorry for no posting today. I had a busy schedule so this is all I have time or energy for.

My church has a Wednesday evening service consisting of a bible study followed by choir practice. My attendance at the bible study is considered helpful since I am the teacher. Today, however, we had a guest, a gentleman who is walking across the nation visiting all the churches in our denomination, and any other which will welcome him. I welcome any chance to sit and let someone else do the work so I was looking forward to his presentation.

It wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be.

First thing, he describes himself as “homeless” and compares himself to the robbery victim that the Good Samaritan helped. He is technically homeless because he chooses to spend his days walking from town to town, sleeping under bridges and so on, but this is a far cry from someone who is on the street because he has nowhere else to go. And as for being the Good Samaritan’s robbery victim, I don’t think so. If you go into the men’s room of the gas station and ram your own head through the mirror and then go out in the street and lay down hoping for someone to help you, you aint a victim.

He gave several reasons for his cross country walk, the environment, war, social justice, homelessness and one that actually made sense.

I’m inspired to put up several posts over the next week or so on each of these issues, including the one which was valid. But not tonight, I have to get some sleep so I can get up early and go to the range before work. I need to practice because I have a match Saturday.

24

By now everyone knows that Edgar is dead. Fan reaction was summed up on blogs4bauer by the epitaph “I loved making fun of you”. I see this move as part of an attempt by the producers to eliminate the more ridiculous parts of the show in an attempt to ensure that it continues for several more seasons.

Let’s face it. Right now the show is teetering on the edge of becoming a dark and violent version of Get Smart. Look at all the 24 clichés that we love to make fun of.

The annual “arrest Jack Bauer” episode.
The betting pool every season of who the mole in CTU is going to be.
The CTU director’s dysfunctional relative who always drops in on the worst day of the year.
Each season’s “Kim’s in danger” subplot.
The eternal battery in Jack’s cell phone, which also can get a signal at the bottom of a uranium mine in Uzbekistan.
The annual “Jack’s relationship can’t survive the demands of what he has to do to protect the nation” plotline.
This past couple of season’s “CTU office comes under attack” episode.
The annual “president’s wife creates problems” subplot

What will we see next, Jack getting his orders from the director under the cone of silence? Curtis hiding in a FedEx drop box?

Some things, like Jack never needing to take a drink of water or relive himself can be passed over; as can the fact that he can apparently travel from anywhere to anywhere in the greater LA metro area in the space of a commercial break. After all a teleplay is not a story, it is parts of a story positioned in such a way as to appear to be a story. There is a certain suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy any work of fiction.

However, when a show is appreciated because it is a parody of itself it cannot last. A joke becomes less funny each time you hear it.

OK a 24 post wouldn’t be complete without a prediction so here is mine.

Robocop is a good guy. His selling classified information to industry was to establish his cover. The evidence that Jack Bauer uncovered was the icing on the cake. When Robo was kicked out of CTU he “made his bones” with the Great Conspiracy” and became a true insider. The Big Boss is the Evil Vice President. Robocop’s trying to blow up Jack was part of the cover. When Jack finds out he will forgive everything. In fact if Jack had known he would have gladly let himself be blown up.

Range Report

Ok, here is my range report. If fact this is two range reports, as I am behind on reporting.

Today’s first. I went to Shooter’s Express in Belmont, NC. I took my Colt Combat Commander (series 70) in .38 super. The only ammo that they had in that caliber was Winchester white box (also called Winchester Paramilitary) in 130 gr. FMJ at $17.00 for 50 rounds. This was OK with me as hollow points would have been $15.95 for 20 rounds.

I had the range almost to myself so the distractions were kept to a minimum and I could concentrate on my shooting. I shot at 20 and 25 yards at the bullseye targets that the range has printed with their logo. The scoring area is about the size of a salad plate. Out of 50 rounds I had two flyers that stayed on the paper, but out of the scoring area. Almost everything else stayed in the black.

As regular readers of this blog know I am on a crusade to get people to practice shooting at longer ranges. The only other person at the range was shooting a 1911 at a full size human silhouette seven yards away. He was getting groups larger than mine. People, if you can shoot a group at 25 yards that you can cover with both hands you can hit someone dead center at 7 yards. If you can only shoot a group that size at 7 yards then at 25 you might manage to scare someone. Maybe.

If you own a gun for self defense practice regularly under conditions as realistic as you can make them. In a gunfight you will not “rise to the occasion”, instead you will default to your level of training. Train well.

This brings us to last week’s range session. I was shooting at Rex’s Indoor Range in Hendersonville, NC. It was Saturday so the place was crowded and Rex’s isn’t segregated into rifle/shotgun and handgun sections. This day the guy shooting next to me had an H&K G3 (select fire .308 caliber battle rifle) that had been modified to feed ammo from a linked belt. This meant that I got hammered by the concussive blast waves as he triggered short bursts downrange.

Now if I was a traditional NRA bullseye weenie (you know stand up straight, hold gun in one hand with the other hand in back pocket, check spotting scope every shot) I would have huffed to the management and complained. But since I’m practicing for a real-life encounter I loved it. In a real gunfight it is likely to be loud, with other folks shooting at you and you shooting back at them.

The more distracting shit you can overcome and still focus on your front sight the more likely it is that you’ll be the one who walks away alive. See above about training well.

I was shooting my 4” S&W 586. For those of you who don’t remember (or you kids who never learned) the S&W numbering system that is a blue steel .357 magnum revolver with the “L” frame. The “L” frame is a bit bigger and stronger than the older “K” frame in order to handle full time shooting of the full power magnum ammunition. This was made necessary back when the most popular police handgun was the .357. It occurred to a number of police departments that if the cops practiced with the same ammo that they carried there would be fewer dead cops.

The problem with this is that the lighter framed revolvers weren’t designed to shoot a steady diet of magnum ammo. They were designed to shoot a lot of .38 special and a little .357 magnum. So the guns (mostly S&W model 19 and 66 and Ruger Service Six and Security Six revolvers) began to wear out and break down.

Ruger was the first gun company to come up with an answer for this. The GP-100 was a big beefy revolver that could handle lots and lots of full power shooting. Smith and Wesson came along a little later with the “L” frame model 686 (stainless steel) and 586 (blue steel). The S&W isn’t as big or beefy as the Ruger because the S&W is hammer forged while the Ruger is an investment casting. But I’m digressing. . .

I bought a box of .357 magnum 158 gr. JSP (jacketed soft points). I would have preferred 125 gr. Hollow points, but they had none except for premium Cor-Bon at $15.95 for a box of 20. (Note to self. Set your fracking reloading press back up).

This is why it is important to practice regularly. I discovered that there is a problem with the 586. Every once in a while it would shave off some jacket material and throw it back into my face (always wear safety glasses). This is caused by a timing problem (the cylinder and barrel don’t line up exactly right). This doesn’t fix itself so it is off to the gunsmith. Some internet research shows that Andy Cannon is still out there working on S&W revolvers so I’ll send it off to him for the repair and as long as its there he can do the whole action job/carry package.

I finished shooting the box of .357’s at 20 and 25 yards. Accuracy was acceptable, all shots in the scoring area of a bullseye target.

By this time (after 50 rounds of full power magnum rounds) I was ready for a break so I shot 5 rounds through my S&W 642. This is a small five-shot 21/2 inch barrel “J” frame revolver with an aluminum frame to save weight. This gun is rated for +P ammunition, but it has a service life measured in several hundred rounds. So I don’t shoot it often, just once ever year or so to keep myself familiar with it. This is a gun that it is OK to shoot at seven yards. It is a short range last ditch emergency weapon. It shot a nice tight group with .38 spl. RNL. Coming right after shooting the magnum there was no detected recoil.

Next I gave myself a special treat. I rented a Glock in .45 GAP. I have been interested in this pistol/caliber ever since it came out and I have to say that I was impressed. It was very accurate and recoil was very mild. I was shooting American Eagle 185 gr. FMJ. From what I’ve seen the ballistics on this round are similar to the non + P .45 ACP. I will wait for some field reports of actual gunfight results before I’ll lay my money down for one, but I remain intrigued.

Last night's 24

I would have posted last night but blogger was sooooooooooooo slooooooooooow that I just went to bed. When I get home I'll put up my thoughts (along with a range report).

Latest on Angel

Here is the entire text of an email that I received from Gary Marbut. I have my theories about what is behind this but it is better to avoid speculation at this stage. The important thing is to let Angel's lawyers do their work. Knowing Angel as I do I can assure you that when this is all over we'll get the details.


Dear Friends of Angel,

For those of you receiving an Angel update for the first time, I'm sending these out to all of you who have been kind enough to help, probably by sending me a reference letter for Angel, or a donation to help with his legal expenses. Thanks loads for that help.

I've begun archiving these updates, as well as fundraising information and the reference letter information for Angel, at http://www.marbut.com/angel. If you've missed any of the previous information, see it there.

Angel spent over two hours with his attorney today (Monday). He's now comfortable with this attorney representing him. One thing he learned is that he should not release information about what has happened or is going on - releasing information could prejudice his case. However, there is nothing new that has any immediate legal consequence. Angel's attorney has the reputation in Michigan of being a tough and experienced litigator. We have also engaged co-counsel - an attorney with specialized expertise about the gun laws in Michigan.

We know that there are many of you out there who are anxious for detailed information about Angel's plight. Now that this matter is squarely in the hands of the attorneys, we must be circumspect and patient, and must not publish information that could compromise Angel's situation. Sorry about the scarcity of detailed news. We just want to preserve a climate for the best possible outcome for Angel.

Angel has been highly stressed by all of this, as you'd imagine - as you or I would be. However, he's coping. Folks in SE Michigan are beginning to rally and form a support network for Angel. This will help a lot. Donations are starting to come in. Your donations will help to make sure Angel has the best legal representation.

Angel would want me to be lavish in his thanks to you for your kind thoughts and support.
In the meantime, stay tuned - we'll get you more information as it is available.

Best wishes,
Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association
http://www.mtssa.org
author, Gun Laws of Montana
http://www.mtpublish.com

Range today?

I have to go to Charlotte on business today. It is early enough that I might get to stop at the indoor range at Belmont so I'm taking some guns with me. Just hope that I don't run afoul of some People's Republic of Charlotte law against transporting weapons and ammunition in the same vehicle.

You Might Be A Gun Nut If

I found this in my email box this morning. I put a star by the ones that apply to me.

- If You've ever dabbed a little Hoppe´s on your neck before going on a date...
- If you bought checkering tools, checkered all your gunstocks and are now starting on the bedposts...
- If you cannot really recall just how many guns you own... *
- Surplus ammunition suppliers call you to see if there was anything you were looking for...
- If you bought a gun from a gunshop, only to realize you used to own it years ago... *
- If you've ever shot out a 1911 barrel...
- If you save brass and have a case tumbler, but don´t reload...
- If you ever stripped the paint off of your car and then blued it...
- If you've ever bought ammo for a caliber you didn´t shoot, thinking that someday you might own a gun in that caliber... *
- If your computer passwords are gun related...
- If your five-year-old can detail strip and fully reassemble an M-1 Garand...
- If you take your guns out of the safe and handle them, just so you can wipe them down before going to bed...
- If your local gunsmith calls you for obsolete parts...
- If you home-school and use ballistic tables for math lessons...
- If your gun safe is bigger than your refrigerator...
- If the speedometer on your car is in both m.p.h. and fps...
- If you call Brownells and they recognize your voice...
- If you own reloading dies for calibers that you do not shoot... *
- If you understand Smith and Wesson´s model numbers... *
- If you ever bought two different brands of the same bullet just to see which one "shot better"...*
- If you've ever had to explain "that it´s not the same gun it's a variant!"... *
- If watching the Lion King gives you the itch for a .470 Nitro... *
- If you cut out your best groups and carry them in your wallet like photos...
- If you've ever gone to a gun show three times in one month, and were excited every time... *
- If you feel that a golf course is a willful and deliberate misuse of a perfectly good rifle range... *
- If you ever accidentally seasoned a steak with FFFFg black powder...
- If your brass tumbler used to be a small cement mixer... *
- If you identify the gun on the cover of Dillon´s Blue Press before you notice the girl... *
- If you make $30/hr at work and spent 35 minutes on your knees at the range looking for that last piece of .40 brass...
- If you have guns in your safes that you can´t for the life of you remember how you came by... *
- If the FBI asks you to identify firearms they can´t...
- If ammo manufacturers had to layoff workers when you went to Europe for a month´s vacation...
- If you know the range of every tree in the neighborhood...
- if you can tell the caliber of any spent casing just by feel... *
- If you plead with the gun shop to hold a rifle/shotgun until you have space for it...
- If you can´t figure out why your non-shooting friends laugh when you say "Bushmaster"...
- If you didn´t get that last one because you don´t have any "non-shooting" friends...
- If you drive´'s license says "must wear night vision goggles."...
- If your shoulder is callused...
- If manufactures ask you how their rifles hold up...
- If you get misty eyed every time you sell a gun... *
- If you alternate Silvertips, Hydra-Shoks and Black Talons in your magazines because they look prettier that way...
- If you guess windage and range every time you look at a road sign...
- If you went out to the range this weekend to shoot up ammo, just so you´d have some brass to reload...
- RCBS answers your phone calls, "What have YOU dreamed up this time?"...

The Spitfire turns 70

From The Scotsman:

THE Spitfire, the fighter plane whose speed and agility helped win the Battle of Britain, took to the skies again yesterday to mark its 70th birthday.

Wedged in the cockpit for the celebratory flight was the aircraft's chief test pilot, Alex Henshaw, who, at the age of 93, is wearing as well as his plane.

[Snip]

Mr Henshaw took control of the Spitfire while in the air yesterday and although he said he would still able to land it, there might be a few insurance problems, so his co-pilot would take over. "I doubt the insurance will allow me to land it, but if you can drive a car then you can fly a plane," he said.

He and his team, based at Castle Bromwich in the West Midlands, flew 37,000 test flights of the Spitfire from 1940 in what was a dangerous business, but one crucial to the war effort. During that time, there were 127 accidents and four pilots in Mr Henshaw's team were killed. He did not escape the drama of test flying: he was forced to bail out twice and was lucky to live.

Despite this, he is full of praise for the aircraft, which was recently voted a British icon, and he called on the government to award RJ Mitchell a posthumous knighthood for his work.
He said: "The Spitfire is the most outstanding low wing monoplane ever built. The Hurricane was a fantastic aircraft and contributed as much as the Spitfire, but although the Spitfire didn't win the war, it would have been lost without it."

The United Kingdom owes its life to the RAF and its victory over the Luftwaffe in the battle of Britan. No victory in the skys over Great Britan and WWII would have been won in Europe by the USSR alone. You don't have to be an historian to know that the entire European continent as a Soviet satellite would have had profound consequences for the post war world.

Truly never have so many owed so much to so few.

And so it begins. . .

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 06 – Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl reportedly told Iranian businessmen in Germany that he agreed with statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust was a “myth”, the semi-official Jomhouri Islami reported on Monday.

The government-owned daily wrote that at a dinner gala with Iranian hoteliers and entrepreneurs, Kohl said that he “heartily agreed” with ahmadinejad’s remarks about the Holocaust.

“What Ahmadinejad said about the Holocaust was in our bosoms”, the former German chancellor was quoted as saying. “For years we wanted to say this, but we did not have the courage to speak out”.

Ahmadinejad caused an international furore last year when he publicly declared that the Holocaust was a “myth” and threatened that Israel must be “wiped off the map”.

His comments were supported by senior Iranian officials, including Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The country’s state-run media have systematically defended the position of the Iranian president and given extensive coverage to historians and “experts” who deny the Holocaust took place.

Well, isn’t that special?

I don’t know why it surprises me that a former German head of state would out himself as a holocaust denier. Guilt and horror over the holocaust has been the only thing holding Europe back from full blown anti-Semitism since the end of WWII. It was only a matter of time before the dam broke and it all came pouring out.

Want to start a betting pool on how long it will be before prominent French politicians start echoing the same theme?

Fundraising for Angel

Here is the complete text of an email that I received from Gary Marbut. It lays out a fundraising plan for Angel's legal defense.

Dear Friends of Angel,

As you would suspect, Angel is exhausted with anxiety - didn't sleep well last night, and didn't get much rest the night before on the concrete bed of the Oakland County jail. We're all hoping he will get some rest tonight. All of your thoughtful letters are now in Angel's email in-box, for printing and delivery to his attorney tomorrow.

Many of you have asked where you can send a contribution to help with Angel's legal expenses. Thank you!

I have suggested a first-step fundraising process to help defray Angel's legal expenses. Angel and David agree that this is workable as a beginning, although we reserve the prerogative to revise the method in a week or so (maybe to a tax-exempt entity).

Here's what you can do: Send a check for whatever amount you wish, made payable to MSSA, and put "Angel" in the memo blank. I will deposit this in our account for the Montana Shooting Sports Association. I will write MSSA checks against the amount received for this purpose to Angel's attorney(s) for verified legal expenses. None (zero%) of the funds donated will be used for any MSSA administrative or handling fees. For oversight of this, I will be glad to provide documentation of receipts and disbursements on Angel's behalf to Angel, David and Nicki. Send any check to my personal address at:

Gary Marbut
P.O. Box 16106
Missoula, Montana 59808

If you prefer to use credit card and PayPal, there is a PayPal donation button on the MSSA Website. Mark "Angel" under special instructions if you use this option.

PLEASE NOTE: MSSA is NOT a tax exempt organization, so your donation will NOT be tax-deductible. MSSA is deliberately not tax exempt because that would limit our ability to operate as the pro-gun junkyard dog of politics (what some call us here in Montana).
BTW, Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation is in Germany for an international gun rights conference. Until such time as we can find a more permanent process to handle funds for Angel, MSSA will fill that void.
Feel free to forward and cross-post this message.
Best wishes,

Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association

http://www.mtssa.org
author, Gun Laws of Montana
http://www.mtpublish.com

Gays issue fatwa. Demand Jihad!

In a move which will surprise many and dissapoint some the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to honor race baiting rather than promotion of the homosexual agenda at this year's Oscars.

From Yahoo News:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Crash," the film drama that tells of racial bigotry and fear during a 36-hour period in Los Angeles, won the best film Oscar on Sunday in an upset victory over the favorite, gay romance "Brokeback Mountain."

"Crash" headed into the Oscar ceremony in a neck-and-neck race with "Brokeback" for the best film award, but "Brokeback" was favored because it had prevailed in many earlier award races.

When asked for comment Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee said, "I knew when that bitch Ann Coulter predicted we would win that we didn't stand a chance. There was no way that the Academy was going to let her be right. I should sue!" (Ok, I made that up, but you know he's thinking it.)

He made his bed

From The American Spectator:

Does party loyalty run both ways among Republican senators? That remains to be seen after Republican Majority for Choice (RMC), a pro-abortion caucus within the GOP, began a spirited attack on Sen. Rick Santorum this week. RMC launched full- and quarter-page ads in nearly every major daily newspaper in Pennsylvania -- mock "Help Wanted" announcements calling for "Real Republican Candidates for Senate." The ad advocates "the Big Tent philosophy Ronald Reagan helped to build," and warns in bold, "Candidates who claim to be Republicans but instead use the Party to further their own personal or religious agenda need not apply." While the ad never names Santorum explicitly, its pro-abortion and anti-religious opposition to him is unmistakable.

[Snip]

The RMC campaign places Sen. Arlen Specter in a precarious position, as he sits on the group's advisory committee. In a move widely viewed as placing party oyalty over conservative principles, Santorum backed the pro-abortion Specter in the 2004 Senate primary against kindred conservative then-Rep. Pat Toomey. Now with Santorum on the ropes, liberal Republicans are refusing to return the favor -- and Arlen Specter's name is attached to their effort.

I hope that Rick Santorum wins reelection because he almost always votes the right way, but I cannot have any real sympathy for him. Santorum knifed Pennsylvania conservatives in the back when he backed Specter over conservative Pat Toomey. He supported a dishonest, dishonorable RINO and this is the inevitable consequence. He brewed up this batch of ‘shine and he has no one to blame if it makes him go blind but himself (I’m a hillbilly, remember).

PS. Someone bitchslap that pro-abortion RINO group with a baseball bat for insulting Ronald Reagan’s memory.

All of this has happened before. . .

People often make the mistake of thinking that history began with their own birth, or to be more accurate with their first clear memory. It is good therefore to remind ourselves that those who came before us had to suffer fools just as wretched our own Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan. Even during WWII there were privileged persons in free societies who turned their backs on nation and culture and embraced even the most odious of liberty’s foes.

From The Scotsman:

NEWLY-RELEASED papers show the scale of suspicion and fear around the British High Command during the Second World War. It has emerged that intelligence chiefs faced a dilemma over how many aristocrats with Nazi sympathies they should arrest, amid fears that interning too many would inflate their importance.

Documents released today at the National Archives in Kew show MI5 spied on a god-daughter of the late King George V, Dowager Viscountess Dorothy Downe, noting her as a "most fanatical admirer of Hitler" and intercepting her mail.

It should be pointed out that this was going on while the bombs were falling on London and British sailors and merchant seamen were dying in the North Atlantic trying to keep a lifeline of supply open between the British Isles and North America.

The above may offer some comfort when confronted with the ravings of someone like Jackass Jack Murtha, who is rapidly replacing Dick Durban as America’s Lord Haw Haw. See here for the latest example of Murtha’s unhinged rhetoric.

Of course what does not offer any comfort is the certainty that if these morons have always been with us that they always will be with us.

Update on Angel

This is the entire text of an email sent out by Gary Marbut:


Dear Friends of Angel,

So many of you have asked for updates about Angel's situation, and I am sooo swamped dealing with this situation, that the only way I could hope to keep you informed is to add you all to a general email list - my "Friends of Angel" list. That's why you are getting this email.

The information I broadcast here will be somewhat generic, because I must consider it to be in the public domain.

Angel moved to Michigan to be close to his son, a very high priority in his life.

Because of a malicious complaint (my opinion) that Angel was dangerous and had unregistered guns, a SWAT team raided his domicile yesterday. I was tagged to be something of a nexus in the recovery effort partly because I was on the phone with Angel when the SWAT team showed up at his door, partly because I'm also a friend of Angel's, and partly because of the curse or blessing of my get-it-handled-now personality.

As soon as I knew that Angel was in jail, I called Alan Gottlieb of SAF to get a referral for a local attorney. I found one from the SAF list who had his cell number on his office answering machine, and who answered his cell phone promptly, a bit after 5 PM CST. This attorney got after Angel's situation immediately, and I phoned Nicki of KeepAndBearArms.com next to hatch a plan to get the word out and start the reference letters coming. These letters will be delivered to Angel's attorney electronically, Monday morning.

Today, an associate of the attorney I contacted yesterday appeared to represent Angel at the arraignment, and got him sprung from jail on a bond (the bond was not steep). I was out of the loop in the middle part of the day today because it was the scheduled Annual Meeting for MSSA in our State Capitol, Helena, Montana (yes, thank you, I am still president).
I talked to Angel on the phone within 20 minutes of his release (and several times since). Of course, he's angry, frustrated, bummed, and distraught - who wouldn't be under these circumstances? But, he's coping.

Angel has an immediate need of protection from the consequences of any more malicious police reports. We're working with some Michigan folks to provide Angel with company to document his whereabouts and activity until this is resolved. If you know anyone in Michigan (Detroit/Pontiac area) who might help with this, let me know.
We are also sketching out a fundraising plan for legal expenses that should come together within about 48 hours. Stay tuned for more about this.

In the mean time, Angel is facing four misdemeanor charges, three of which are for guns that were not yet registered properly under Michigan law, but which Angel was in the process of trying to get registered. Bad timing and a malicious complaint - what can I say.
But, I believe, your many and kind letters will help establish with the court that Angel is an upstanding guy.

Thanks loads for your concerns, your help, and your many offers to help more. I'm sure Angel would want me to go heavy on thanks to you too.
I am scheduled to teach the second day of a two-day precision riflery class tomorrow, and will be out of the loop all afternoon. Other than that period, I will keep you updated as new and significant information becomes available.

Best wishes.
Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association
http://www.mtssa.org
author, Gun Laws of Montana
http://www.mtpublish.com

A sad day for the Party of Treason

Rowan Scarborough reports in the Washington Times:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq yesterday declared an end to a 10-day wave of sectarian violence that killed an estimated 350 civilians, asserting that many reports of violence were "exaggerated."

"It appears that the crisis has passed," said Army Gen. George Casey, giving a detailed public report card. "But we all should be clear that Iraqis remain under threat of terrorist attacks by those who will stop at nothing to undermine the formation of this constitutionally elected government. ... They tried to have this [be] the straw that broke the camel's back, and it failed."

Once again the Left’s fondest wishes are denied to them. Their hopes for a bloody Iraqi civil war are not to be and they are left gnashing their teeth in helpless rage and frustration.

I have asked before and I will ask again, what must it be like to be these people? They have positioned themselves as a party in such a way that they must hope for the very worst news. They must pray for a massive terrorist attack on US soil or for our troops to be slaughtered in battle or our allies to descend into brutal internecine violence to have a hope of victory.

Can anyone imagine the Republican Party in 1944 hoping that the D-Day invasion would fail and that our forces would be butchered on Normandy Beach and pushed back into the Atlantic? That is the position that Democrats find themselves in today. This is why I call them the Party of Treason.

How much longer can a man of true decency and principle like Joe Lieberman remain in a political party which is rapidly transforming itself into a death cult?

Angel's Out

This was just posted on The War on Guns blog.

BREAKING NEWS: ANGEL OUT

I just got off the phone with Angel Shamaya.

He's out.

He's charged with 4 counts misdemeanor possession of unregistered firearms and 1 frivolous, unwarranted, vindictive count of misdemeanor menacing.

I know we all want more, especially with the last charge, but for now, we must defer to Angel's need to protect his legal rights. I know the background of the circumstances, but my advice to Angel is to not make a public statement about that without advice of counsel. Those who know me will trust me when I say that I am convinced Angel has been made a victim here.

Here is a statement from Angel that I can release at this time:


To all the people expressing support or concern, just knowing that you are aware of my situation made it easier to bear. I do have legal representation thanks to the Second Amendment Foundation, to whom I am grateful. Alan Gottlieb and his team moved swiftly and deftly to secure counsel for me, the result of which got me out much sooner than I would have been able to do on my own.


This isn't over. Angel may face trial and even jail if convicted. I don't know of any defense fund being set up yet but I would imagine that is a possibility. I'll keep you posted.

Baltar is a clone

I'm hearing that Baltar can't be a clone because it takes 36 hours to download memories into a new body and bring it to life. This comes from comments made between Caprica Six and Boomer after the apartment building bombing. The delay in that case was because of the large number of dead. It would just take that long to bring everyone back. Cylon Zena was the last to be killed (by Caprica Six) so she would be last in line. If the Cylons knew that Baltar was going to die and wanted to have his clone ready to go it would have taken much less than 36 hours.

Pearls Before Swine

This is one of the best comics out there.

Sometimes you need a break from the politics.

Breaking News?

I found this on NewsBusters:

Sammon Excoriates Media on Katrina Video: “Journalistic Fraud” & Disingenuous”

Posted by Brent Baker on March 2, 2006 - 20:26.

The media at all levels on Wednesday pounced on video released by the AP of government conference calls held as Hurricane Katrina hit last August, with most stories portraying them as containing a smoking gun about how President Bush was warned about potential levee failure. But as FNC's Brit Hume noted on his show Thursday night, the video, which MSNBC's Hardball hyped Wednesday as “breaking news,” was hardly any such thing, or “confidential video” as the AP hyped, since the video was made public at the time and the sessions were open to the press.

During Hume's panel segment, Bill Sammon, fresh to the Washington Examiner from the Washington Times, excoriated his press corps colleagues for “journalistic fraud” as well as “disingenuous” and "bogus" reporting. Referring to the video of a meeting President Bush participated in from his Texas ranch, Sammon charged: “It's held out today and yesterday as almost a smoking gun. I would say not only is it not a smoking bun gun, it's actually a journalistic fraud for some of the reasons you've outlined where they suggested it was ‘confidential' videotape where it wasn't. It was open press. Also, they make Max Mayfield out to sound like he was sounding the alarm bells when clearly he was ambivalent in the extreme....So, to suggest that was the warning that Bush should have heeded and didn't, is disingenuous in the extreme.” Sammon also took on the press for denigrating Michael Brown as an incompetent, but now they want to “rehabilitate him because he's now willing to trash the Department of Homeland Security....This is disingenuous of the mainstream media to suddenly rehabilitate Michael Brown for their own political purposes."

It would seem that the enemies of America’s latest "smoking gun" that will sink the Bush administration is another dud. The irony is that the Left has an issue which it can use to raise legitimate questions about the president's judgment, the UAE port deal. There are good augments to be made pro and con, but Mr. Bush mishandled his initial response to the revelation of the proposed sale and left himself open to attack.

Democrats were given the gift of an issue which was understandable to the average person and had a broad based appeal. If the Left had avoided the temptation to try to fit the port controversy into a broader narrative of presidential incompetence and their whole “Republican culture of corruption” theme they could have forged a bi-partisan congressional movement to derail the deal. Then when the congressional elections began to heat up they could have used their leadership on the issue to establish national security credentials.

Instead they once again proved themselves incapable of self control, unable to pass up the opportunity to spew their hatred at anyone or anything standing even one inch to the right of center they have squandered what may be their last chance to damage the Republican Party.

It also doesn’t help that the Party of Treason’s presumptive 2008 nominee’s husband (himself the party standard bearer) is working to help the UAE make the port deal happen. Of course I’m talking about the fact that while Hillary Clinton is trying to use the issue to craft an image of national security hawk Bill Clinton is taking vast sums of money from the UAE and advising them on how make the deal a reality.

Once again the Republicans step on a landmine and the Democrats get blown up. Perhaps this constitutes proof of a benevolent God.

A friend needs our help

This is posted at The War on Guns blog:

Angel Shamaya, founder of KeepAndBearArms.com is in jail in Michigan, having been arrested for possession of firearms not properly registered under Michigan law.

Angel's friends are working to help him with this problem, but we need your help, right now!

We need character references from you for Angel. There is a form letter for you to fill out and send back at: http://www.marbut.com/angel.

Go read the rest before acting. Then pass it along.

Angel is one of the good guys. If every gun owner was as committed and hard working as him Vermont carry would be the law in all 50 states. We should do all we can to help.

Galactica

Well, the rumors were right. The Chief did something really bad. He beat Callie nearly to death. He didn’t mean to. She woke him up from his recurring suicide nightmare. It seems that he has the deep seated fear that he is a Cylon. His pastor (Dean Stockwell – Al from Quantum Leap) told him to suck it up and get back to work. It seems that the gods help them who help themselves.

Sharon says that dark days are ahead. There is “something” out there, a dark time coming. Perhaps she senses that Baltar will win the election. Can you say Bill Clinton in space? Ron Moore says that Eblis is not going to be in this series. Somehow I have a feeling that he may have changed his mind.

Did anyone else notice that the SAR team from the Fleet was carrying the same fracking rifles that the Stargate teams are now carrying? Next the Cylons are going to want the humans to hallow the Ori.

Starbuck gets her wish. A rescue team is sent back to Caprica to get her boyfriend, Triad Johnny Jeets. One of the Raptors gets lost and finds a drab little world that will support human life. This gives Baltar a nice wedge issue to use in his campaign against Roslyn.

Next week the President spills the fact that Baltar is working with the Cylons. She remembered seeing Baltar with Six on Caprica before the attack. She knows that Six is a Cylon because of Gina. Even a politician who used to be a public school teacher can manage to add two and two.

I still think that Six will tell Baltar that he is a clone.

We hear rumors

There is a rumor that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is set to announce his resignation. Apparently Mr. Chertoff canceled a speech which he was to deliver today due to a summons from the White House.

Secretary Chertoff has taken heat for what many believe to have been government mistakes in the wake of hurricane Katrina. It is being speculated that his resignation will dampen criticism of the administration.

Fitzmas update.

On his radio show today Rush Limbaugh read part of this story that he found on American Thinker. You should read the whole thing. As Thomas Lifson points out John Stewart becomes a voice of sanity.

It is not my intent to plumb the possibility of mass psychosis in Washington, but nonetheless we must come to grips with the phenomenon of the world's most powerful capital spending so much of its intellectual energy chasing nightmares of its own imagining. Exhibit A here would be the fascinating case history of Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame.

If memory serves, those of us who expect to find value in tracking public events spent more than two years on an obsessive Beltway press search for who "outed" Valerie Plame. And this was a high crime insofar as Ms. Plame was a "covert agent" for the CIA. In someone's notion of political reality, this was a big deal. Its actual size was revealed in a federal court hearing last Friday, as described by National Review's quite grounded White House correspondent, Byron York:

"CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald argued . . . that as far as the perjury charges against former Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby are concerned, it does not matter whether or not Valerie Wilson was a covert CIA agent. . . . 'We're trying a perjury case', Fitzgerald told Judge Reggie Walton. Even if Plame had never worked for the CIA at all, Fitzgerald continued--even if she had been simply mistaken for a CIA agent--the charges against Libby would still stand. In addition, Fitzgerald said, he does not intend to offer 'any proof of actual damage' caused by the disclosure of Wilson's identity." No damage?

Jimmy Carter

Just when I thought that the well of contempt that I have for Jimmy Carter could not get any deeper this comes along:

President Carter personally called Secretary of State Rice to try to convince her to reverse her U.N. ambassador's position on changes to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the former president recalled yesterday in a talk in which he also criticized President Bush's Christian bona fides and misstated past American policies on Israel.

Mr. Carter said he made a personal promise to ambassadors from Egypt, Pakistan, and Cuba on the U.N. change issue that was undermined by America's ambassador, John Bolton. "My hope is that when the vote is taken," he told the Council on Foreign Relations, "the other members will outvote the United States."

While other former presidents have tried to refrain from attacking the sitting chief executive, Mr. Carter's attacks on President Bush have increased. The episode he recounted yesterday showed how he tried to undermine officials at lower levels in an effort to influence policy.

This is a line that I don't even think that Bill Clinton has crossed. Perhaps Clinton remembers how angry he was when Carter flew to North Korea behind his back and worked out a deal that helped North Korea's nuclear program.

Carter went on. . .

Asked yesterday about his views on religion, Mr. Carter said, "The essence of my faith is one of peace." In a clear swipe at Mr. Bush's faith, and to a round of applause, he then added, "We worship the prince of peace, not of pre-emptive war." Mr. Carter then went on to attack American Christians who support Israel.

He also reiterated his known view that most of the problems in the Israeli-Arab front derive from Israel's settlement policies and its building of a defensive barrier in what he insisted on calling "Palestine."

In case the allegedly Christian former president forgot, God promises that he will judge the Gentiles based on how they have treated the Jews (I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. Gen 12:3)

See, BS

Remember that CBS poll that showed the president with a 34% approval rating. Here is what you weren't told:

Total Republicans" contacted: 272 unweighted and 289 weighted.
Total Democrats" contacted: 409 unweighted and 381 weighted.
Total Independents" contacted: 337 unweighted and 348 weighted.

More people now identify themselves as Republicans than Democrats yet the poll contacted significantly more Democrats than Republicans. Read more here.

Go figure.

I know. Lets conduct a scientific poll of the members of the "Blogs Against Hillary" blogring on whether she would make a good president.

A Galactica Prediction

I'm going out on a limb here and make a prediction about what we will see in the season ending episode of Battlestar Galactica. We are told that there will be several shocking revelations in the final minutes of part II. I think I know what one of them will be.

Here it is.

Six will tell Baltar that he died on Caprica and that his memories were downloaded into a clone which was placed in the wreckage of his house. The scene will probably play out something like this.

Six: You're dead Gaius. You died in the attack on Caprica City. You were killed when your house collapsed on you. So was I as a matter of fact.

Baltar: Then what am I doing here? I don't feel dead.

Six: Remember when I told you that I put a chip in your brain while you were asleep?

Baltar: But there is no chip in my brain. I had an MRI. . .

Six: It was in your original body. It was constantly downloading your memories into the data bank of our resurrection machinery. When you died your memories were downloaded into a new body, along with my memories. That is how I'm in your head.

Baltar: (Becoming agitated) I don't believe you! I'm not dead! I remember waking up in the ruins of my house. I was injured!

Six: You had a small cut on your forehead. Do you remember seeing my body?

Baltar: Your body. . .

Six: Yes, my body. Do you remember seeing it? I died. That's how I got into your head, remember? Did you see my body when you awakened?

Baltar: No.

Six: That's because a team of Cylons took it away when they brought you there.

Balter (screaming) I'M NOT DEAD. . . I'M NOT DEAD!

I'm Smert

You Passed 8th Grade Science

Congratulations, you got 7/8 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?

Stop The Presses

I found this over at Stop The ACLU:

Leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981, an Italian parliamentary investigative commission said in a report.

A final draft of the report, which is due to be presented to parliament later this month, was made available to Reuters on Thursday by the commission president, Senator Paolo Guzzanti.

"This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul," the report said.

In an unrelated story the Vatican confirmed today that the Pope is a lifelong member of the Roman Catholic Church.

Wildlife biologists at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have released video of black bears defecating in the woods.

The United Nations Commission of Scientific Affairs announced that water is in fact wet.

Do it yourself

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 02 – Iran’s radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Thursday in Malaysia that Islam will be the dominant power in the “near future”, the official state news agency reported.

“The near future will be in the hands of Islam”, Ahmadinejad said after a meeting in Kuala Lumpur with the King of Malaysia. He cited the victory of the Islamist group Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections as a sign of the rise of Islamism in the world.

I'm tired. Supply your own punch lines.

Field report from the Crescent City

This Tee shirt was observed during Mardi Gras.

Drink Until Nagin Makes Sense

Abita may not be able to brew enough beer to make this possible.

Range Today!

I have a light workload today so I will have time to get in some range time this afternoon. What to take? I feel like shooting a wheel gun so it is out with the S&W 586.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Correction

It was pointed out to me that on this week's episode of 24 that during the ambush of the Russian President's motorcade the person who opened the door of Suvarov's limmo and returned fire was not President Suvarov, but was instead Secret Service Superagent Red Foreman.

Superagent Foreman displayed the drive, grit, determination, spunk, pluck, courage and fighting spirit which set the American Race off from all of the other inferior races of the world.

We apologize to Superagent Foreman for attributing his act of heroism to a Slavic despot who's contribution to the fight was only to cower in the back and attempt to cover himself with his wife's body.

The Blond One's Latest

The Blond One nails the Oscars. Go and see.

This is my first annual Oscar predictions column, for which I am uniquely qualified by not having seen a single one of the movies nominated in any category. I've never even watched an Oscar ceremony, except once when a friend called me 35 minutes into Halle Berry's acceptance speech and I managed to catch only the last 20 minutes of it.

I shall grant my awards based on the same criteria Hollywood studio executives now use to green-light movies: political correctness. Also, judging by most of the nominees this year, the awards committee prefers movies that are wildly unpopular with audiences.

Robin Williams

Every once in a while the urge to bitch slap Robin Williams becomes almost uncontrollable. Am I alone in this?

More thoughts on the port deal

For all those people who are wondering why the president could be so politically tone deaf, so plain stupid, as to still be pushing the DP World port deal go here.

What you will see is a map of the UAE in relation to the nation of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait is the choke point in the world's oil supply. If Iran were able to cut the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz for any length of time it could crash the economies of the free world.

There are two relatively easy ways that Iran could accomplish this. One would be to sink supertankers at the narrowest part of the strait. The other would be to mine the strait.
We know that the Iranians have, thanks to our good friends the Russians, bottom tethered mines that could sink a tanker, or an American aircraft carrier. The simple fact is that the UAE's geographic location makes it strategically essential both as a base for operations protecting the Strait of Hormuz and operations against Iran itself.

In the near future it may, in fact probably will, be necessary to strike Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program before they have functioning bombs or warheads. Surgical strikes will not work because the Iranian nuclear program is so dispersed and hardened. We will need soldiers on the ground and they will have to stay for some time. It will also be necessary to remove the theocratic regime in order to keep them from starting over once we're gone.

This thinking must be weighing heavily on Mr. Bush's mind. As the man constitutionally responsible for setting the nation's diplomatic and military policy he does not have the option (if he takes his duty seriously) of doing the politically expedient thing and calling the deal off. He must navigate through a political minefield, balancing the future strategic needs of the nation against the public's reasonable fears of turning over control of ports of entry to a nation with questionable past associations with murderous terrorists.

The best outcome would be for the UAE to drop the American ports from the deal with the British company and walk away with the 27 Asian ports which are what it really wants. The United States government should then find (or create) a domestic corporation that can manage the US ports. As the contracts with other nations that are currently managing American ports expire those ports can then be brought under American control as well.

It would be better if the compromise came at the behest of the UAE. That way everyone involved could save face and our strategic partnership with the UAE would not be threatened. The fact is that we need each other. We need them for their location and they need us for the same reason. They are positioned between two much larger and more powerful nations, each representing the two most fanatical, intolerant and generally malignant forms of Islam

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.