Tonight's music

This is Gaelic Storm.

Listen to enough Celtic music and you will begin to discren a pattern. Celtic music is almost always about sadness, warfare, death, heartbreak or drinking.

Frequently the drinking goes with one or more of the other topics, but not always.

The songs about just drinking tend to be the happy, upbeat ones.

BTY, Gaelic Storm was the "steerage band" in Titanic.

UPDATE:

I forgot to give the name of the song. It is Me And The Moon. Speaking for myself; been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Some good advice, no matter where it came from

I got this in my email. It is supposed to be from a speech that Microsoft founder Bill Gates gave in a high school. I present it here just in case any of you haven't seen it yet:

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you a test as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

No, it ain't Gates. A consultaion with snopes.com shows this:

this list didn't originate with Microsoft head Bill Gates. (It's frequently cited on the Internet as having come from his book Business @ The Speed of Thought, but it didn't.) Why it's attributed to Gates is a mystery to us; it doesn't really sound the least bit like something he would write. Possibly, the item the Internet-circulated version of the list generally ends with ("Be nice to nerds") struck a chord with someone who views Gates as the ultimate successful nerd of all time.

Still, like I said, everything said here is true.

Battling in the High Frontier

Another part of the American Thinker post which drew my attention was this tidbit:

To top it all off, Europe has embarked an a completely unnecessary doubling of the US GPS system for navigation; since the GPS system is free to users all over the world, it’s like building a second world-wide web. The EU has invited China’s and Russia’s participation, but now China has learned enough about the system to withdraw in order to make its own.

As the article's author notes the GPS system built by the US is free to users all over the world. Why does China feel the need to invest the billions that will be required to build a completely redundant system?

If they believe that there should be a backup to the US maintained system in case of some highly unlikely failure then why not continue in partnership with the EU? After all why not spread the cost around?

Could it be that China is planning some kind of anti-satellite warfare that would leave the US without its GPS system? And if they are planning to take out our GPS system is it logical to believe that they will spare our communications and surveillance satellites?

Do we have a plan to protect our orbital assets?

Why do I think the answer is "NO"?

With friends like these.. . .

From The American Thinker:

Like some overblown African dictatorship, the EU keeps confusing grandiose ego projects with sensible expenditures on defense; as a result of which Europe and Britain look increasingly vulnerable and defenseless. On the day after Milton Friedman’s passing it is a reminder of the bizarre and self-destructive nature of politicized decision-making—- because that’s the trouble, of course: Everything in the EU is political, and all large military projects are pork-barreled to ensure that enough bacon fat goes to France, Italy, Germany and Britain itself. It works about as well as nationalized health care.

Britain’s MOD spent almost twice as much money for a German anti-artillery radar than a US version would have cost. More than five hundred million dollars were wasted on a failed effort to produce European anti-tank missiles, which then had to be purchased from the US anyway. An armored vehicle had to be dumped after spending about 75 million dollars because it was too big to go into Hercules transport planes.

The Defense Ministry has ordered 232 Eurofighters at more than 90 million dollars each for “an acknowledged Cold War relic.” The Eurofighter can’t perform ground support or other bombing missions, but the terrorists don’t have fighter jets to knock out.

[snip]

All this would be funny if it weren’t tragic. British troops in Afghanistan do not have proper IED-car bomb protection. In Basra, the Brits have now taken a shrinking defensive role. One reason why the Europeans loudly proclaim their “pacifist values” is because the same story is repeated over and over again; pacifism in the face if Iranian nukes and Al Qaida bombs is the only option if you don’t have a functioning military. France has 359,000 military personnel, but it can’t keep Islamist “youth” from rioting and burning cars every day of the year.

A cynic might suspect that Europe keeps floundering on military matters because they want to postpone the day when they might have to handle their own defenses. Uncle Sam is so useful – he pays for Europe’s protection, gives it a nuclear umbrella, keeps Europe’s oil free of interference, and is willing to let his soldiers spill their blood—- all for the sake of 450 million welfare clients who are living it up, thousands of miles from American shores. And then he can be despised as a warmonger.

What a marvelous deal! Why would Europeans defend themselves when the United States is willing to carry the load?

Exactly! Why should Europe divert money from its bloated welfare bureaucracy for defense when the US is willing to do it for them?

The most tempting, no the most JUST response from America would be to withdraw from NATO and bring our troops home. However that is the one thing we can't do. Without America to protect them Europe would not "rise the occasion". What they would do is move completely into the Islamic orbit. We have to keep guaranteeing their protection for at least long enough to groom some new allies.

My suggestion for who these new allies should be are Eastern Europe, Japan and Ireland. Here are my reasons.

Eastern Europe. This part of the world has spend the last 50 years being ground down under the USSR. Now they are free and they still retain in their living memory the concrete fact that the bromides of the political left are damnable lies. The very fact that their economies have been raped and ruined by communism means that they have no place to go but up. Remember Japan after WWII. Their industries were in ruins and they rebuilt using the newest and best technology and produced a miracle of industrial power and efficiency. Eastern Europe could do the same with American help. Nations which are largely free of Muslim immigrants whose people hate the political left with every fiber of their beings and who are poised to become the world's next economic powerhouse will be very useful allies in the coming struggle to eradicate global Islam.

Ireland. This nation is already head and shoulders above the rest of Europe in terms of its economic climate. They have embraced the idea of low taxes and minimal regulation and are reaping the rewards as they become the "Hong Kong of Europe" attracting corporations from all over the continent. The fact that they have kept themselves free, for the most part, of Muslim immigrants means that they do not face the internal pressures to capitulate to the Islamic onslaught that other European nations must deal with.

Japan. One of the most racially and culturally homogeneous nations on the planet Japan faces no internal threat from Islam. However as a nation whose economy is totally dependant on imported petroleum they are highly vulnerable to economic blackmail from the Middle East. They know this and are eager to find a way out. They are also directly threatened by North Korea's insane dictator and his nuclear aspirations and they are fully aware that Kim is in bed with the Islamofascists. The old saying about the "enemy of my enemy" comes into play. Indications are that Japan is willing to step up and begin to play its part by increasing its military spending and abandoning its post WWII reluctance to engage in foreign military operations. We should encourage this.

While America might well be able to go it alone in the brave new world of the 21st Century it will be much easier with allies to share the load. While we should not abandon efforts to save "Old Europe" we should steel ourselves to the fact that it is almost certainly too late. The three new allies I have identified here, along with India (a nation which is locked in its own death struggle with Islamism) are a good place to start in building a new "confederation of free nations" to fight the coming war.

Of course all of that depends on defeating the political left here at home. If we cannot win that struggle no other will be possible.

One down, so many to go

From The Washington Post:

The Food and Drug Administration ended its 14-year ban on the cosmetic use of silicone breast implants yesterday, despite lingering safety concerns from some health advocates.

The FDA is requiring that manufacturers tell women that the implants "are not lifetime devices" and that most recipients will need at least one additional surgery to remove or replace their implants. The agency is requiring the makers, Mentor Corp. and Allergan Inc., to conduct an extensive study of at least 40,000 implant recipients over the next decade and provide their findings to the government.

[snip]

Silicone implants were first marketed more than 30 years ago, but a moratorium was placed on them in 1992 after many women who had received them reported pain, deformity and serious illness caused when the implants ruptured or leaked. At the time, the FDA concluded there was "inadequate information to demonstrate that breast implants were safe and effective." A major implant manufacturer, Dow Corning Corp., was pushed into bankruptcy because of lawsuits stemming from the problematic devices.

This is a victory for common sense and real science over trial lawyers and junk science.

There never was any good evidence that silicone breast implants were harmful but because trial lawyers realized that in a population of women as large as breast implant recipients there would be a certain number of them who would have diseases like cancer. The lawyers knew that because the women had breast implants as well as cancer that a jury could be made to believe that the two things were related.

The lawyers were correct. The juries figured that even if the implants didn't have anything to do with the women's suffering that Dow Corning was a huge company with billions of dollars and these women were suffering and why not award them a paycheck to help out (this is also the mentality of the Wal-Mart haters, but that is another post for another day).

This is how trial lawyer filth like John Edwards become rich men.

They are destructive parasites who prey upon the general public's ignorance and class resentments to destroy productive businesses which research and innovate and provide goods and services to millions and employment to tens of thousands.

It is no accident that men and women who are so utterly worthless in the sense of making any positive contribution to their culture and are in fact so destructive of a nation's prosperity should flock to the Democrat Party. Just as the vulture always finds itself in the company of the jackal and the maggot the trial lawyer always finds itself in the company of other enemies of a nation's freedom and wealth.

The trial lawyer, the environmental extremest, the "civil rights" hustler, the gender feminist and every other brand and stripe of societal tapeworm which can only live by attaching itself to something larger and better than itself and feeding off of it while returning nothing to it.

There are so many threats which are besetting our nation and culture. The war against Islamofascism, the battle to secure our borders and expel the alien invasion, the need for tort reform to keep scum like John Edwards from destroying our economy, the fight in the educational system to keep alive the teaching of the cultural heritage of the West and all the other fights which are being waged around us all have one thing in common.

In each of these issues the key to victory boils down to crushing the political left. The only thing keeping the West from gaining rapid victory in the war against Mohammed's medieval barbarian death-cult is the will to wage total war against it and the resistance to that is located in the political left.

The abandonment of the Cannon and the elevation of multiculturalism and moral relativism in the academy is entirely the work of the political left. Destroy the left and the nation's schools will once again provide the kind of excellent educations that they once did.

Go on down the list of every serious problem facing our culture today and remove the political left from the equation and the problem resolves itself rather quickly (although not necessarily easily).

They say that identifying the problem is half of the solution so I've done half the work already. Now get to work on the rest.

Private property - RIP

From TheDenverChannel.com:

GOLDEN, Colo. -- A judge has upheld a homeowners association's order barring a couple from smoking in the town house they own.

Colleen and Rodger Sauve, both smokers, filed a lawsuit in March after their condominium association amended its bylaws last December to prohibit smoking.

"We argued that the HOA was not being reasonable in restricting smoking in our own unit, nowhere on the premises, not in the parking lot or on our patio," Colleen Sauve said.

Mr. and Mrs. Sauve sell your townhouse and buy yourselves a real house on a lot which you own because as long as your wackjob neighbors even suspect that you might be lighting up IN YOUR OWN FRAKING HOME they will be absolutely convinced that giant billowing clouds of cigarette smoke are pouring into their units suffocating them and giving them every form of cancer known to man.

Stuff like this, coupled with the results of the past election, go about 90% of the way to convincing me that America has lasted too long and needs to be flushed down the great crapper of history.

Let the Beaners have the place and see how they like it when there is no native population to work and pay the taxes that fund their welfare.

Third World hijinks

From The Houston Chronicle:

MANILA, Philippines — A Filipino man who flew home from Cambodia said he was carrying live fish in his carry-on luggage, until a check at Manila airport revealed three 1.5-foot-long crocodiles, officials said.

The head of the Manila International Airport Authority said it wasn't clear how Enrique Yu Castillo, 50, was able to carry the Siamese crocodiles from Phnom Penh to Singapore to Manila.
The crocodiles are on an endangered species list and their importation is prohibited, airport manager Alfonso Cusi said in a statement.

He said charges were being readied against Castillo, while the reptiles were turned over to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

I wonder if they got sick of the mother***king crocodiles on that mother***king plane?

Tonight's video

Tonight's video is from the Irish group Clannad. The song is called Teir Abhaile. This was filmed all the way back in 1977.

Some good news

From The Washington Post:

A component of red wine recently shown to help lab mice live longer also protects animals from obesity and diabetes and boosts their physical endurance, researchers reported yesterday.

The new research helps confirm and extend the possible benefits of the substance, resveratrol, and offers new insight into how it works -- apparently by revving up the metabolism to make muscles burn more energy and work more efficiently. Mice fed large doses could run twice as far as they would normally.

In addition, the scientists for the first time produced evidence linking the biological pathway activated by the substance to human physiology, showing that the same genetic switch resveratrol mimics seems to naturally endow some people with faster metabolisms.

"It's very exciting," said Johan Auwerx, a professor of medicine at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Strasbourg, France, who led the research being published online and in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Cell. "This compound could have many applications -- treating obesity and diabetes, improving human endurance, helping the frail. There's a lot of potential."

You know the Romans used to say, "Vita Vinum Est" or "Wine is Life". It would seem that they knew what they were talking about in this, as in so many other things.

The Romans valued their wine so much that their advance through Europe only halted when they got so far north that the climate would not support the growing of grapes (and olives as well). The entire wine industry of France was started by Roman legions bringing grape vine cuttings from Italian vineyards with them. The growing of grapes for wine, grain for bread and olives for olive oil were the foundation of the Roman economy.

The Gauls learned to love wine so much that they would trade a slave for an amphora of wine (an amphora was a large pottery jar which would hold between 5 and 7 gallons of wine). After the Roman conquest of Gaul something like 40,000 amphora of wine were shipped every year from Italy to Gaul. The amount diminished as the Gallic vineyards became established.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West most of the French and Italian vineyards (those which survived) came under the care of the monasteries who developed a body of knowledge in wine making which is still in use today.

People in every area in which the grape is grown make wine and almost all cultures which consume wine credit it with health giving properties. It would seem that modern medical science is just now catching up with what the ancestors knew all along.

Now I'm going to have a nice glass of merlot.

Wal-Mart must have had evidence

From Breitbart:

John Edwards _ a vocal critic of the retailer _ asked his local Wal- Mart store for help in getting the potential 2008 presidential candidate a Sony PlayStation 3. Edwards said a volunteer did so by mistake.

And I'm sure that if the volunteer had managed to score the PS3 that Edwards would have taken it back as soon as he saw the receipt.

This is so far down on the very long list of reasons to despise John Edwards that it hardly bears mentioning. However it does fit into the bizarre society wide war which is being waged against Wal-Mart.

You see Wal-Mart has committed what the left considers the unpardonable sin. They have done what they do so well that they have grown very large and very rich. And having grown large and rich they have refused to do the politically correct thing and apologize for it.

They do not apologize for being so good at what they do that some of their competitors have gone out of business. They do not apologize for driving a hard bargain with suppliers so that their customers pay the lowest prices and they do not apologize for paying their employees market wages.

In the market you sell a product for as much as you can get for it and you buy a product for as little as you can pay for it. The point where the sellers desire to maximize profit and the buyers desire to minimize outlay intersect is called the "market price". This works for any product which can be bought and sold, from an apple to a firearm to human labor (which is just another product). What drives the Wal-Mart haters into paroxysms of foaming madness is the fact that they refuse to inflate the amount of money that they pay to their employees.

That's right, Wal-Mart is regarded as the corporate incarnation of Satan because they do not choose to pay more for a product than it is worth. You heat up the tar and I'll collect the feathers.

Tonight's video

Tonight's music video is another Celtic rock act that charted in the US. Dexy's Midnight Runners performing Come on Eileen.

DMR was almost a one hit wonder. Almost because their other semi-hit Celtic Soul Brothers did gain some notice.

Milton Friedman, 1912-2006

From Reuters:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the past century and winner of a 1976 Nobel Prize, died on Thursday morning of heart failure at a San Francisco area hospital, a spokeswoman for his family said. He was 94.

A free-market economist, Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated a monetary policy that called for steady growth in money supplies.

His ideas played a pivotal role in informing the governing philosophies of world leaders like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

This is sad. For his influence upon Reagan and Thatcher alone he deserves a place of honor in our memories.

He will be missed.

Democrats boot "Abscam Jack" Murtha

From UPI:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi lost her first vote Thursday when the Democratic caucus picked Steny Hoyer over John Murtha as majority leader.

Hoyer, who represents Maryland, beat Murtha, from western Pennsylvania, in a 149-86 vote. The vote followed the unanimous choice of Pelosi as the first woman speaker in the United States.

Some Hoyer supporters complained that Pelosi and Murtha used inappropriate pressure to try to get them to switch sides, The Washington Post said.
Pelosi openly endorsed Murtha after pledging to stay neutral. She argued that Murtha's outspoken criticism of U.S. President George Bush's Iraq policy helped the Democrats win control of Congress.

Hoyer, who held the minority whip position, was for many Democrats the logical choice for majority leader. Murtha also has a history of ethical scrapes going back to Abscam.

Just this morning Murtha was claiming that he had the votes. I guess he overestimated how much pull San Fran Nan was going to have.

I prepared this video clip to show the short but vigorous campaign which Murtha waged to become the majority leader. The voice at the end belongs to MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann.

Hey Nancy, don't unpack

Robert Novak dissects San Fran Nan's first big blunder:

WASHINGTON -- As the new House majority caucus prepared to pick its leadership today, Democrats were trying to make the best of the inevitability of ancy Pelosi as the party's first speaker in a dozen years. They have put out the word that she was not serious in endorsing Rep. John Murtha for majority leader. How much effort she has exerted for her longtime ally is irrelevant, but she has actively solicited votes this week.

The damage to her was irrevocable when she wrote her colleagues last weekend urging them to pick Murtha over Rep. Steny Hoyer. Close associates of Hoyer say her letter stunned him, and he was not alone. While Pelosi had made clear she would vote for Murtha, the public endorsement was unexpected.

[snip]

This is a no-win situation for Pelosi. If Murtha wins today, she will be accused of personal vindictiveness in derailing Hoyer, who is more popular in the caucus and better qualified for leadership. If Murtha loses, as is much more probable, she will be seen as bumbling her first attempt to lead the new Democratic majority. Pelosi could have avoided this dilemma by standing aside as Speaker-presumptive Newt Gingrich did when he voted for his ally Robert Walker as majority whip but did not ask members to oppose Tom DeLay.

Pelosi's mistake confirms longstanding, privately held Democratic apprehension about her abilities. Their concerns do not reflect the Republican indictment of her as a reflexive San Francisco liberal. Some of her most trenchant congressional critics are on the left wing of the party. These colleagues worry that her decision-making may be distorted by personal considerations.

[snip]

But Pelosi's personal pique was evident in opposing her rival diva from California, Rep. Jane Harman, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In line to replace Harman was Rep. Alcee Hastings, who had been impeached as a federal judge on bribery charges.

For a party that effectively stressed a Republican climate of corruption in the recent campaign to consider placing Murtha and Hastings in its leadership astonishes a wide range of Democrats. They do not believe Murtha can defeat Hoyer, but the imminence of Hastings stuns them. Well-placed Democrats have told Pelosi she cannot permit this to happen. What they hesitate to contemplate is what lies ahead based on Pelosi's performance before she has taken the oath.

When Nancy Pelosi ruthlessly squashed any talk of impeaching President Bush as almost her first act as Speaker presumptive I took that as a sign that she was an highly intelligent woman and would prove herself to be a deadly dangerous opponent for the next two years.

You see my hope was that the Democrats would find the temptation to impeach Mr. Bush to be too powerful to resist. I was hoping that the nation would be shown the spectacle of the dailykos wing of the Democrat Party running wild in fully televised congressional hearings.

I wanted the moonbat wing of the Jackass Party to egg their left wing congressmen on to lay out everything from "Bush lied, people died", to "the WTC blast was a controlled demolition", to "every Jew who worked in the WTC got a phone call the night before warning them to stay home the next day". And do all of this in the courtroom-type setting of impeachment hearings where the President's Republican defenders (in other words "Sane People") could pick them apart.

This would do two things. One it would show the public exactly what the party of FDR and JFK has become. The public would be so turned off at the Democrat's carnival of insanity that come 2008 a conservative president and congress could ride into power on a 50 state landslide.

The other thing that impeachment would do is to shatter the alliance which I sense forming between the congressional left and the President. Bush has a number of things which he wants to get done which a Republican congress would have never gone along with. Things like amnesty for illegal Mexicans. If he works with the new Democrat majority he just might be able to ram this down the public's throat.

But George W Bush is known for having a thin skin and for holding grudges and if he has to spend the next year defending himself against Democrat attempts to remove him from office in disgrace that just might be enough to cause him to get his back up and pull out his veto pen.

Which brings me back to why I thought Pelosi would be a formidable opponent. I thought she saw the same thing I did and moved to remove the threat before it get any legs in the new congress. However her current actions cause me to drastically lower my view of her.

She rides a wave of voter discontent which has at least as much to do with the public's perception of Republican corruption as it does with opposition to the war into power and promises to have the "most ethical congress in the nation's history" and then reaches into her party's ranks for the most visibly corrupt people she can find to fill key leadership positions.

Rudy Giuliani needs to take the White House tour and bring along a tape measure so he can get a head start on shopping for drapes.

Tonight's music

Not all Celtic rock is the product of small bands unknown outside of the Celitc sub-culture. Once in a while they hit the top 40, like Big Country with their hit In A Big Country.

Sadly the singer/songwriter, Stuart Adamson, passed away a few years ago.

I'm still here

I do this big post about how I now feel inspired to write because the Republican loss now frees me from the burden of defending the indefensible and then I don't post much.

Rest assured that the problem is not some lingering ennui relating to the political situation. I feel as inspired as ever, it is just that the real world has intruded on my blogging.

There is an interesting debate going on in the comment threads between an authentic European (Oxford by the sitemeter) and a couple of American readers/bloggers. What makes it especially interesting is that they who are upholding the American cause with what I would rate as a great deal of skill and intelligence are a pair of what I would call Truman Democrats.

I have definite thoughts on the issues raised and will post them starting tomorrow and through the weekend.

In the meantime I remind you that politics is only a tool which we use to achieve an end, which is the creation and maintenance of a free and prosperous society. A society which allows us to enjoy the things which fill our lives with both meaning and pleasure.

The very important things such as religion and family and the more lighthearted things such as food and wine and music.

To that end I recomend to you tonght's video to be found in the next post.

Tonight's video

This is Enter The Haggis performin the song Gasoline (OK, it's a "green" song but it is good nontheless).

Sorry Charlie

Here is some possible proof that the Church of England may have a little Christian spine left in it.

From The Daily Mail:

Prince Charles' hopes of a multi-faith coronation suffered a blow when the Church of England asserted the historic importance of a solely Christian service when he becomes King. In a rebuke to the Prince's hopes of inviting Muslims, Hindus and others to take an equal role in Westminster Abbey, the Church declared that Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams will design the coronation service.

The highly unusual statement was the Church's first official pronouncement on how the coronation will be handled and it comes amid intensifying controversy over the role of non-Christian faiths and non-Anglican Christian denominations.

Charles has long made clear his yearning for a ceremony in which Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Sikh beliefs take a place alongside the doctrines of the Church of England.

Dr Williams, however, has insisted that the Prince must restrain his interest in other faiths and stay within the 'constitutional framework' that makes him Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

You see HRH Charles, the Prince of Wales, is an inbred moron with a room temperature IQ. He apparently doesn't realize that as the English monarch he will be (or is supposed to be) the Realm's principal defender of the Protestant faith.

This is also why the law forbids a Roman Catholic from taking the throne since it would be hard to protect the Empire from Popish influences if you bow to the Roman Pontiff as the true Vicar of Christ on earth.

So it would seem that Charlie will not get his wish, unless he wants a civil coronation to be preformed by a magistrate down at the London City Hall.

It's a brave new world

From The Washington Post:

President Bush came under new pressure yesterday at home and abroad to alter his policies in the Middle East. British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed for a broader Arab-Israeli peace initiative to help stabilize Iraq, while the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee pledged to take a hard line on seeking early troop withdrawals.

[Snip]

In London, meanwhile, Blair suggested a desire for a more aggressive Western initiative to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a key to tamping down violence in the region, a recommendation that is also reportedly under consideration by the Iraq Study Group. Blair said that resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute, stabilizing Lebanon and pressuring Iran to halt its support of militants are key to helping reduce bloodshed in Iraq.

Blair is not a complete fool. He knows that from the Arab standpoint the only resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the destruction of Israel.

This highlights one of the central problems which the United States is going to face as we proceed into the 21st Century.

In the past century the great threats were the Axis powers who attempted to rule the world through direct conquest and the USSR which tried to control the world indirectly through subversion and intimidation. Today the Islamofascists are the Nazis and the People's Republic of China is the new Soviet Union. To beat the old threat we needed allies and to defeat the new threat we will need alliances as well.

However we are living in a world in which our former allies are becoming increasingly hostile to us. The foundational idea of multiculturalism is the proposition that all cultures are completely equal; that none is superior in any way to any other. In theory this means that Western culture and Christian tradition is just as valuable as the Eastern culture and Islamic tradition.

However in the real world all cultures are not equally valid. Picture the New Ager laying on the ground contemplating a cockroach and meditating on how he and the roach are really of equal worth. The cockroach is not being elevated. The human is being lowered.

When you contemplate the advances of Western culture and compare them to the stagnation of the Islamic cultures of the Middle East you are not declaring the Islamic to be equally valuable, you are stating that the Western is equally valueless. And that which has no value does not deserve to be defended.

Then anyone willing to defend themselves is viewed as at best a troublemaker and at worst a walking rebuke to your weakness. This is why half of Europe secretly breathed a sigh of relief when Theo van Gogh was gunned down (the other half of Europe openly breathed a sigh of relief).

The European Union is being colonized by the Islamic world and it is only a matter of time (2030 -2050, depending on how many Europeans get out or give up) before Europe is transformed into Eurabia. But long before the point in which a majority of Muslims and willing dhimminies actually gain power and vote to transform the European Union into the European Caliphate the still nominally European governments will read the handwriting on the wall and align themselves economically (already happening), Culturally (beginning to happen) and militarily (you can see the seeds of it being planted right now) with the Islamic world.

This will mean that the US will find itself isolated from its traditional friends. My best advice is to work on our relationship with Ireland and Eastern Europe as well as Japan.

Tonight's music

This video was put together by a YouTube user.

The song is called Mordred's Lullaby from the CD, Trial of Lancelot by Heather Dale. Dale is a Canadian singer whose cletic style music is inspired by myth and ledgend. In this CD she explores the Arthurian legends.

The video is from from an anime movie or a video game (not sure which) called Final Fantasy.

Trial of Lancelot is currently out of production, but this song is available on the CD, The Secret World of Celtic Rock.

Update:

Trial of Lancelot is available from Heather Dale's website. That's what I get for taking Amazon.com's word.

Worshiping the god of this world

From The Daily Mail:

The Church of England has broken with tradition dogma by calling for doctors to be allowed to let sick newborn babies die.

Christians have long argued that life should preserved at all costs - but a bishop representing the national church has now sparked controversy by arguing that there are occasions when it is compassionate to leave a severely disabled child to die.

And the Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, who is the vice chair of the Church of England's Mission and Public Affairs Council, has also argued that the high financial cost of keeping desperately ill babies alive should be a factor in life or death decisions.

The shock new policy from the church has caused outrage among the disabled.

Two words: STATE CHURCH

All of you left liberals and libertarian minded conservatives and outright Libertarians take a good look. You religious conservatives who think that the government won't be worthy of your support until it becomes openly "Christian" take an even better look.

When the Church becomes united with the secular state it will sooner or later become the SECULAR Church.

Come out from her, my people

More from The Brussels Journal on the great European exodus:

A quote from Roy Liddle in The Spectator, 11 November 2006

Apparently almost a million British citizens have left the country since 2000, to live somewhere else. Last year, according to the Office for National Statistics, 380,000 people left Britain, of whom about 200,000 were British citizens. At the same time, though, 565,000 immigrants arrived in Britain, the overwhelming majority from […] [Muslim] Pakistan and Bangladesh.

These facts were reported as if they were entirely unrelated. Nobody dared to venture that there was perhaps a very direct and causal relationship […] Even for our most free-thinking and dependable think-tank, Civitas, this was a bridge too far. Its spokesman, Robert Whelan, ventured that perhaps the parlous state of the [national] health service [NHS] was to blame for the exodus. You know, I suspect the majority of those who left had next to no contact with the NHS; they are, in the main, pre-middle-aged and healthy. No, it seems patently clear to me that an important reason […] that so many Brits are getting the hell out is that they think there are too many non-European foreigners here […]

Like I said before we need to reform our immigration laws so that these people can come here. A few million well educated productive Europeans in the prime of life to help bear the cost of the Boomers social security would be nice.

Not to mention a few million voters who know from experience that multiculturalism is national suicide.

Interesting times. . .

From The Washington Times:

A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected, The Washington Times has learned.

The surprise encounter highlights China's continuing efforts to prepare for a future conflict with the U.S., despite Pentagon efforts to try to boost relations with Beijing's communist-ruled military.

The submarine encounter with the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships also is an embarrassment to the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. William J. Fallon, who is engaged in an ambitious military exchange program with China aimed at improving relations between the two nations' militaries.

Disclosure of the incident comes as Adm. Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, is making his first visit to China. The four-star admiral was scheduled to meet senior Chinese military leaders during the weeklong visit, which began over the weekend.

According to the defense officials, the Chinese Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine shadowed the Kitty Hawk undetected and surfaced within five miles of the carrier Oct. 26.

The surfaced submarine was spotted by a routine surveillance flight by one of the carrier group's planes. The Kitty Hawk battle group includes an attack submarine and anti-submarine helicopters that are charged with protecting the warships from submarine attack. According to the officials, the submarine is equipped with Russian-made wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles.


The Navies of the USA and the USSR used to do this kind of thing all the time. The Russians don't have the capability of pulling something like this off any more and the US got slack. We are going to have to keep up our guard now because if that Chinese sub had launched nuclear torpedoes or missiles the Kitty Hawk would be gone now. The submarine would not have survived, but a sub for a carrier is a more than worthwhile trade.

What is important here is that the sub surfaced in order to be seen. The Chinese are sending a message.

The message is that the US surface fleet, which is built around its multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers, is not safe from the Chinese Navy. This is intended to make us think twice before intervening on behalf of Taiwan should the PRC attempt to regain control over what it still regards as a "rebel province".

When we couple this with the decision by the Chinese government to dump some portion of its dollar holdings, an act which will cause a sharp fall in the value of the dollar on world currency markets, we can only conclude that China is moving its relationship with the US into a new and much more aggressive phase.

Is the Chinese decision on the timing of this change in attitude based on the fact that the new congressional leadership is perceived to be more likely to appease than to confront? I can't say, but it is worth thinking about.

Another video treat

One of my favorite TV series of all time was Babylon 5. It was the first series, at least on American TV, to follow a pre-planned 5 year long story arc. Each season was conceived to be one novel within a 5 novel series.

After B5 other TV shows began to copy its format. Star Trek: Deep Space 9 with it mulit-season "Dominion War" arc and the entire Farscape series and to a lesser extent Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis.

The scene shown here is from one of the spinoff movies about the Earth-Minbari war. The war, in which the human race was almost destroyed forms the background for the series. Here we see the Centari Emperor Londo Mollari distracting some children from the horror of the destruction of their own capital city (in yet another war) by telling them of the courage he witnessed when he was the Centari Empire's ambassador to the Earth Alliance during their war with the Minbari Federation.

Tonight's music

Tonight's video is of the Glengarry Bhoys. I've seen them live once at the Grandfather Mt. Highland Games and they were pretty good. But they have since added a new fiddler named Miranda and she is one of the best celtic fiddlers that I've ever seen.

This clip features her.

I hope you enjoy it.

It's real good they did that; real good*

From The Scotsman:

DANGEROUS criminals will continue to be automatically freed from jail long before the end of their sentences, despite growing public anger at the controversial early release scheme.

Although the Scottish Executive faced demands to clamp down on the practice in the wake of the murder of Kriss Donald, Scotland on Sunday can reveal that ministers will continue the scheme.

The new law, to go before the Scottish Parliament, will say offenders must be released after three-quarters of their sentence, regardless of any danger they present to the public.

The shock move comes despite last week's revelation that the career criminal who led the gang that tortured and murdered 15-year-old Kriss had been released early from jail.

Jack McConnell is pressing ahead with the automatic release plan against the advice of the Sentencing Commission, which told ministers they should reserve the power to block early release of dangerous criminals.

Last night, a massive political row broke out over sentencing laws. Opposition politicians said they planned to bring forward an amendment to the bill that would prevent automatic early release. McConnell's critics said the policy was driven more by the need to cap Scotland's booming prison population than public safety.

Scotland's sentencing laws have been thrust back into the spotlight by the racist killing of Kriss, from Glasgow, who was abducted by an Asian gang, tortured, stabbed and set alight. Imran Shahid, the gang leader, and his two accomplices Zeeshan Shahid and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq were jailed for a total of 70 years last week. It emerged Imran Shahid was only free to commit the crime after early release from a 30-month sentence for assault.

Perhaps there is some strange comfort in knowing that other countries are even more fraked up than we are.

But not much.

*Twilight Zone reference.

Immigration reform that makes sense

From The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Expatica, 10 November 2006

In the first nine months of this year, almost 100,000 people left the Netherlands to settle elsewhere, 12,000 more than the same period last year. […] The net effect means the Dutch population was reduced in the 2004-06 period by 75,000. In the preceding three years, there was a positive net migration of 75,000. Despite the dramatic reversal, the number of immigrants is also on the increase.

And


A quote from the German weekly Der Spiegel, 10 November 2006

Faced with poor job prospects, high taxes and an intrusive bureaucracy, more and more Germans are choosing to emigrate. Most of those who leave, though, are highly qualified – which could mean devastating economic consequences. [...] They are fed up with living in a country where all opportunities already seem to be taken: opportunities to succeed in one’s career, to own property and to achieve prosperity.

Real immigration reform; the kind of reform which put the interests of the United States first would aim at lowering the barriers to this kind of immigrant.

There are hundreds of thousands of Europeans who can read the handwriting on the wall and are getting out now while they can dispose of their property in an orderly way and leave with their savings.

The time is coming when the new Islamic governments of Europe may impose penalties upon infidels who seek to leave. Not to mention the loss of property values when Europe becomes Eurabia.

Instead of figuring out more and better ways to flood the nation with ignorant Third-World peasants let's set things up so that these well educated, skilled CIVILIZED people (who already speak English in most cases) can come here. The fact that they are already fleeing Europe indicates that they know what a vicious lie multiculturalism is so they are already enemies of the left.

Also, most of them smoke so we will have more allies against the tobacco Nazis.

Delusion thy name is John

An ABC News exclusive:

Nov. 10, 2006 — His party may have taken "a thumpin'," in the words of President Bush, but ABC News has learned that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his political team have decided it's full steam ahead for his 2008 presidential campaign though he has yet to make the final, official decision.

Sources close to McCain say on Wednesday in Phoenix, he and a half dozen of his top aides huddled and decided to proceed more formally with his quest for the White House.

McCain told ABC News that his team will continue to meet and "go through the process of decision making." But, he added, "I certainly haven't made any decision."

A presidential exploratory committee is expected to be set up this month — perhaps as early as next week.

McCain's official, final decision will likely not come until after the Christmas holidays, after he's had a chance to talk it over with his wife, Cindy.

No comment necessary, other than to wonder what Lindsey Graham's reaction will be when McCain picks someone else to be his running mate.

Tonight's video

This band is called The Rogues and they are from Texas. The piper in the dark shirt and kilt is E J Jones. E J was the founder of the truly excellent celtic band Clandestine (I have video of them at the Grandfather Mt. Highland Games; if I can figure out how to upload it to YouTube I will show it to you).

This video was shot at the Maryland Ren-Fest.

Veterans' Day

Thank you doesn't even begin to cover it.

You have placed your frail bodies between your beloved homeland and war's desolation and you are owed gratitude beyond expression.

The Dems first project; tax cuts for the "rich"

Perhaps Jimmy Carter will hurry up and die so that he can roll over in his grave.

In another sign of just how badly messed up the Republican Party had become we find out that producing a true tax cut will be among the first priorities of the new Democrat majority.

From The Washington Post:

Democratic leaders this week vowed to make the alternative minimum tax a centerpiece of next year's budget debate, saying the levy threatens to unfairly increase tax bills for millions of middle-class families by the end of the decade.

The complex and expensive tax was designed to prevent the super-rich from using deductions, credits and other shelters to avoid paying the Internal Revenue Service. But because of rising incomes, the tax is expected to expand to more than 30 million taxpayers in 2010 from 3.8 million mostly well-off households in 2006.

Fixing the AMT has long been a top priority for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is in line to head the Senate Finance Committee. Last year, Baucus co-authored a bill to repeal the tax with Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), the presumptive chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, this week put fixing the AMT at the top of his agenda, calling it far more urgent than dealing with President Bush's request to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire in 2010.

[Snip]

In simple terms, the AMT is sort of a flat tax with two brackets, 26 and 28 percent, and fewer deductions. Credits for dependents, medical expenses, and state and local taxes are all disallowed. Instead, taxpayers get a single big deduction, called the AMT exemption, which is set this year at $62,550 for married couples and $42,500 for singles. Taxpayers must compute their taxes both ways and pay whichever is higher.

The impact is harshest on taxpayers with annual incomes of $100,000 to $500,000. The truly rich typically are not affected because their regular tax rates already are higher than under the AMT.

This year, the AMT is expected to ensnare 3.8 million taxpayers. Next year, the AMT exemption is scheduled to drop precipitously, causing that number to balloon to 23 million households, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The AMT is the handiwork of predatory liberals who were apoplectic at the thought that someone out there might be avoiding paying one penny of taxes that the government might otherwise be squeezing out of them.

The result is a classic example of the law of unintended consequences.

The new House leadership should be encouraged to take up this issue and returning Republicans need to use this issue as the ideal starting point in reaching out to the 52 "blue-dog" (conservative) Democrats (many of whom just got themselves elected by running to the right of their "Republican" opponents in the recent election).

One of the two keys to limiting the damage that can be done by the new ultra-left Democrats who comprise the new leadership of the House and Senate is going to be Republicans forging alliances with the new conservative Democrats (that is if they really are conservative).

One way that average Americans can do their part in this is by making it clear to their congressmen that the only acceptable "fix" for the AMT is the Baucus plan to simply repeal it.

If the President and house Republicans play their cards right they can get the AMT repeal bundled up in a bill which will outright repeal the death tax and extend at least some of the President's tax cuts. Those tax cuts are, after all, a big part of the reason why the economy is doing so well. Democrats, now that they are in a position to take at least partial credit for the good economy will not want to do anything to harm it.

Republicans are supposed to be the party of what's good for America, not just what's good for the Republican Party. Here is an opportunity to put that into practice.

Always Faithful

Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps!

To impeach or not to impeach?

Mayor Koch sounds a warning:

Some congressional leaders will push for President Bush's impeachment now that the Democrats have taken control of the House and possibly the Senate, former New York Mayor Ed Koch predicts.

"I expect that [Rep. John] Conyers as chairman [of the House Judiciary Committee], now with great freedom, will do anything he can to commence such impeachment or investigatory activity, and we'll see whether Pelosi will prevent it," Koch says.

Both Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean have said that Bush will not be impeached. And just today John Conyers issued a terse statement confirming that impeachment was "off the table".

However, at least at this point, Conyers has not withdraw his House bill which calls for the beginning of the impeachment process.

I believe that the impeachment issue is the key to limiting the damage that the Democrats will be able to do in the two years left until the next election. I intended to post about this today, but I had to spend the day on the road and I'm just too tired. I'll try to put it up tomorrow evening.

Lincoln Chafee may leave the GOP

From MSNBC:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Two days after losing a bid for a second term, Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he was unsure whether he would remain a Republican.

[Snip]

“I haven’t made any decisions. I just haven’t even thought about where my place is,” Chafee said at a news conference. When pressed on whether his comments indicated he might leave the GOP, he replied: “That’s fair.”

Dude, that dawning sense of uncertainty about where you belong is called a "CLUE". I understand your sense of confusion since this is the first one you've ever had.

Listen up because I'm going to give you the skinny. You have never been a Republican in anything but name. What you are is a Democrat. In fact you might even belong in the Green Party. The fact that you could have existed in the Republican Party as a Senator is a sign of exactly how badly fraked up the GOP had become.

So please leave the Republican Party and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Good luck in your career as a Democrat. You'll fit in very well there.

The Democrats get another endorsement

More from al Reuters:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.

[Snip]

Khamenei, a senior cleric in power since 1989, has the last word on matters of state in Iran's complex system of Islamic rule, while the government, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in charge of day-to-day decision making.

This Iranian nut-job also knows whose side he is on and who is on his side.

I wonder if he'll run for Dean's job?

Something interesting in al Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A purported audio recording by the leader of Iraq's al Qaeda wing gloated over the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as a top U.S. general said the military was preparing to recommend strategy changes.

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, said in the recording posted on the Internet on Friday that the group had 12,000 armed fighters and 10,000 others waiting to be equipped to fight U.S. troops in Iraq.

"I tell the lame duck (U.S. administration) do not rush to escape as did your defense minister...stay on the battle ground," he said.

He said his group would not rest until it had blown up the presidential mansion in Washington.

"I swear by God we shall not rest from jihad until we...blow up the filthiest house known as the White House," the voice on the recording said.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri knows whose side he is on and who is on his side.

See, I told you so

From The Hill:

Donald Rumsfeld's abrupt resignation from the Pentagon the day after Republicans lost both chambers of Congress has infuriated some GOP officials on and off Capitol Hill.

Members and staff still reeling from Tuesday's rout are furious about the administration's decision to dump the controversial defense secretary one day after their historic loss, they said in a series of interviews about the election results.

President Bush announced Rumsfeld's resignation on Wednesday and named Bob Gates, a former CIA chief and president of Texas A&M University, as his replacement.

"The White House said keeping the majority was a priority, but they failed to do the one thing that could have made a difference," one House GOP leadership aide said Thursday. "For them to toss Rumsfeld one day after the election was a slap in the face to everyone who worked hard to protect the majority."

Exit polling suggested that an overwhelming majority of voters disapproved of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq, and members and aides were frustrated with the timing of the announcement because an earlier resignation could have given them a boost on the campaign trail, they believe.

"They did this to protect themselves, but they couldn't protect us?" another Republican aide said yesterday.

No, they couldn't protect you because they didn't want to. Mr. Bush knows that he has gotten all he is going to get from a Republican congress which was beginning to return to its conservative roots and he wanted to liberal Democrat congress to help him pass his big government social agenda.

Bush wants to go back to Crawford in two years with a 60% approval rating and that means getting the media on his side and that means embracing domestic socialism.

What does Bush want?

When the Administration announced that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was leaving on the day after the elections I wondered why the announcement wasn't made before the election when it could have made a difference.

I wasn't alone. A Democrat commenter from Virginia said that dumping Rumsfeld a few weeks before the election could have been enough to put Allen over the top. Some elected Republicans are also wondering about the timing.

After all Rumsfeld did not wake up on Wednesday morning and say, "I'm not helping by staying in the Pentagon so I'd better leave". We know that the new Secretary designate was asked if he would accept the job a full month before the election.

So why the delay in the announcement?

Here is one possible answer. George W Bush wanted the Republicans to lose. Now I know that sounds crazy, but stay with me for a bit and see if it doesn't start to make sense.

Since his election in 2000 President Bush has been aggressive in pursuing his agenda. From the tax cuts which were his first priority to the prescription drug giveaway to the post 9/11 prosecution of the War on Terror he has single mindedly worked to achieve his goals.

I believe that sometime last year the President sat down with Rove and maybe Cheney and Laura and looked at what he wanted to accomplish in his last two years and what he could reasonably expect to accomplish and decided that he could get more done with a Democrat congress than with a Republican one.

He has already achieved his goals in the arena of the military and the War on Terror. We have the Patriot Act and the other legislation that he regards as necessary to protect the homeland from terrorism. We have troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam is sitting on death row and an elected government is in power in Baghdad. The fact is that the Democrats will not tamper with the Patriot Act and will not stop the surveillance of foreign terrorists electronic communications (even when they call numbers in the US) because they do not want terrorist acts in the US on their watch.

I believe that Bush even has a plan to ensure that the Democrats do not cut and run from Iraq, which I'll explain in a minute.

Now, what else does Bush want? Well we know that he is a passionate believer in big government. He sincerely believes that big powerful intrusive government can do wonderful things for the nation and its people. The problem was that he wasn't likely to get any more of that out of the Republicans in congress. They had started to stand up to him. It started with Harriet Meiers then went to the Dubai Ports deal and wound up costing him what he would have considered the crown jewel of his presidency, his amnesty/guest worker legislation for illegal Mexicans.

I think he soberly weighed his options and decided that it was time to get himself a congress that he could work with to accomplish the rest of his agenda, which will amount to a liberal's wet dream of domestic government expansion. In my estimation he thinks that he can protect the war effort in Iraq by one, offering up Rumsfeld's head and two, by trading his support for things like an increase in the minimum wage for their support in continuing the war.

You see the Democrats have spent so much time demonizing him as the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler that they don't realize, indeed they cannot afford to realize, how much like them Bush really is.

Is all of this true? Is any of it? I don't know for sure, but the rules of logical inquiry tell us that the simplest explanation which accounts for all the facts is most likely the correct one. Bush is not stupid. He has an above average IQ and has the benefit of an excellent Ivy League education. He also receives excellent political advice so what else could explain his behavior?

OK, I know that he stumped hard for Republicans in the closing days of the campaign season, but even that could have been calculated to be deliberately too little too late. After all it didn't affect the outcome did it?

Let's go gator hunting

From The Washington Post:

MIAMI -- More than 18,000 times last year, Florida wildlife biologists heard a complaint about an alligator.

There's a gator swimming in our lake.

There's a gator sunning itself in my back yard.

There's a gator who ate my dog.

Now, as more and more of the reptiles once prized as endangered are being tagged by Floridians as nuisances, the state wildlife commission is considering rules that would make it easier to trap and kill the black, scaly creatures slumbering on suburban patios. Some proposals might allow homeowners to trap the critters themselves, rather than calling in state-hired trappers. Other ideas include altering the animal's legal status from "species of special concern" to "game," and allowing more extensive hunting.

The state population of alligators is estimated at more than 1 million.

Animal rights activists will kick and scream at the idea of having a hunting season for alligators however it is the most sensible thing to do. The meat from the gator's tail is good when prepared correctly and the skin makes truly excellent leather.

I used to spend 10 to 20 dollars every year on a wallet made from calf skin. I needed a new one every year because they would wear out after being carried about that long. 8 years ago I bought an alligator wallet in New Orleans. It is still in good shape. In another two or three years I'll get another one. When you look at how many cow leather wallets I would have had to buy over that 10-11 year period the alligator is actually going to save me money.

Gators as game animals are useful to humans and animals that are useful to humans are never endangered. Gators that cannot be harvested for their meat and leather are a nuisance at best and a danger at worst and animals which annoy or threaten humans will always be at risk.

From what I've learned about Florida from reading Shooting the Messenger I don't doubt that Florida will do the right thing.

Free at last!

When Bill Clinton was elected president for the first time I was distressed. When he was RE-elected I was livid. So when I went into Tuesday's election facing the prospect of a Democrat victory in one or both houses of the national legislature I figured that if the worst happened I would be pretty bummed out.

As I woke up on Wednesday morning and turned on Fox news to see just how bad it was (I went to bed with Allen in VA having a comfortable lead) and saw that both the House and Senate had fallen to the party of surrender and appease European-style socialism I felt a strange sensation. A kind of buoyancy and a strong desire to sit down at this blog and write something.

Now understand this. For the past couple of months I have been finding it hard to write. I was filling space by doing a lot of cut-and-paste blogging and posting a lot of pictures. I don't have a problem with cut-and-paste blogging. If I find something on the 'net that I think you would find interesting or should know about I'll bring it to your attention. And I like taking pictures of the beautiful part of the country that I live in and love sharing them. And you seem to like them as well. In fact I get emails from people asking me to put together slide shows for them. However I was doing these things in order to avoid having to write and I started this blog so that I would have a chance to write.

So what was going on? Why did I not feel depressed and why was I once again eager to write? The answer came to me today as I was listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show. Rush was talking about how he felt a sense of release after the Republican losses because he no longer had to go out and carry water for people who didn't deserve to have their water carried.

I realized that I felt exactly the same way. I had become soul sick at the prospect of sitting down here every day and defending the indefensible and now I don't have to any more.

Why did I do it? Because as bad as the Republicans had become the Democrats are vastly worse. Cutting and running from Iraq will only bring the terrorists back to our own soil. I do not want to turn on the local news and see the mangled bodies of teenagers being carried out of the Asheville Mall because some Islamofascist suicide bomber walked into the food court wearing 20 pounds of C-4.

I do not want to see the the US economy, which is better now than it has been in decades, derailed by higher taxes and choking regulation. I do not want to see people unemployed because it has become too expensive to hire them. I do not want to see all the progress which our soldiers have fought and died for in Iraq wiped out and Iraq and Iran merge into a Shiite theocratic superstate which would control nearly half of the world's oil reserves and possess nuclear weapons.

All of these things are a realistic possibility now that the party of the left controls congress. I worked to keep Republicans in power because all of these things worried me greatly. They still do, but I am also happy.

I am happy because now we can start over. The Republican Party had been hijacked by creatures like John McCain and his little lickspittle Lindsey Graham and they were running it into the ground. Our Republican president was, on balance, more liberal than conservative and our congressional "leadership" seemed to have no stomach for a fight with the Democrats and no ability to impose discipline on its own RINO troublemakers.

All that is, at least potentially, over now. There are things that can be done to mitigate the worst that the Democrat moonbats in the new congressional leadership can do (more about that tomorrow) and the chance to rebuild the Republican Party into a conservative party once again is priceless. Two of McCain's treasonous "Gang of 7" are gone, McCain's presidential hopes are in the toilet with the rest of the turds and South Carolina Republicans are vetting a list of potential candidates to challenge Graham in the next primary even as I type this.

How could I not be happy.

Tonight's music

This group is called the Afro Celt Sound System. They take traditional African and Celtic musical instruments and musical forms and blend them. The results can be amazingly beautiful.

This is the video of the song Release, which was featured in the movie Stigmata. The female voice belongs to Sinead O'Conner, although she does not appear in the video.

The Blond One's take on the elections

History was made this week! For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated.

So the left won the House and also Nicaragua. They've had a good week. At least they don't have their finger on the atom bomb yet.

Democrats support surrender in Iraq, higher taxes and the impeachment of President Bush. They just won an election by pretending to be against all three.

Jon Tester, Bob Casey Jr., Heath Shuler, possibly Jim Webb — I've never seen so much raw testosterone in my life. The smell of sweaty jockstraps from the "new Democrats" is overwhelming.

Having predicted this paltry Democrat win, my next prediction is how long it will take all these new "gun totin' Democrats" to be fitted for leotards.

Now that they've won their elections and don't have to deal with the hicks anymore, Tester can cut lose the infernal buzz cut, Casey can start taking "Emily's List" money, and Webb can go back to writing more incestuously homoerotic fiction ... and just in time for Christmas!

But according to the media, this week's election results are a mandate for pulling out of Iraq (except in Connecticut where pro-war Joe Lieberman walloped anti-war "Ned the Red" Lamont).

In fact, if the Democrats' pathetic gains in a sixth-year election are a statement about the war in Iraq, Americans must love the war! As Roll Call put it back when Clinton was president: "Simply put, the party controlling the White House nearly always loses House seats in midterm elections" — especially in the sixth year.

In Franklin D. Roosevelt's sixth year in 1938, Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

In Dwight Eisenhower's sixth year in 1958, Republicans lost 47 House seats, 13 in the Senate.

In John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson's sixth year, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate.

In Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford's sixth year in office in 1974, Republicans lost 43 House seats and three Senate seats.

Even America's greatest president, Ronald Reagan, lost five House seats and eight Senate seats in his sixth year in office. But in the middle of what the media tell us is a massively unpopular war, the Democrats picked up about 30 House seats and five to six Senate seats in a sixth-year election, with lots of seats still too close to call. Only for half-brights with absolutely no concept of yesterday is this a "tsunami" — as MSNBC calls it — rather than the death throes of a dying party.

Can Rudy win?

I asked the who would be the Republican nominee in 2008 and reader and fellow blogger Patrick Kelly (of The Pagan Temple) had this to say:

Giulliani is your best bet. . . All he has to do is moderate a relative handful of positions and he is unbeatable.

It started me thinking. What would Rudy have to do to be a viable candidate in '08?

First of all his credentials on crime, national security and general leadership ability are not just good, but practically unassailable from either the left or right. As for his views on military and foreign policy I would not think that he would have too much trouble establishing his credibility.

However there are two areas in which he would be unacceptable to conservatives. One is abortion and the other is gun control. Both of these issues could be dealt with, but he would have to start now.

On the issue of abortion he would have to issue a statement something like this:

As a Roman Catholic I personally oppose abortion as a sin before God. However I also believe that a matter so deeply personal should be left between a woman, her doctor and her God. However as someone who comes before the Republican Party seeking to be its standard bearer in the 2008 presidential elections I am fully aware that the majority position of the Republican faithful is pro life. Let us be aware that abortion on demand is a legal right created by a Supreme Court decision and that no act by the Executive or the Legislature can overturn it. The only impact that a President, or a Senator can have on the legality of abortion in the United States is in the appointment and confirmation of Supreme Court judges. I acknowledge that Roe vs. Wade was bad law. I acknowledge that it was a decision which came out of the kind of naked judicial activism which all conservatives, myself included, abhor. In that vein I hereby pledge to you that when and if I, as president, am called upon to exercise the presidential duty of nominating a new justice to the Supreme Court that I will only nominate the kind of originalist jurist which everyone acknowledges would be the type of justice most likely to overturn Roe and cast the issue back to the states. I will not impose a litmus test on this or any other issue, but in appointing men like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito I believe that conservatives are very likely to get what they want.

On the Second Amendment issue his task would be even easier. All he need to to is read and heed the opinions of leading constitutional scholars like liberal Stanford Levinson who studied the issue and was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the constitution does in fact grant an individual right to keep and bear arms upon the individual citizen. He could then have a highly publicized sit down with researchers like John Lott and hear their presentation on how their empirical research proves that firearms in civilian hands reduce crime and save lives. He could then study the actual results of the wave of "shall issue" concealed carry legislation which has swept the nation in recent years and announce that he was completely wrong on the issue of firearms. He could then join the NRA as a life member and confirm what everyone already knows anyway; that he is a possessor of a rare New York City concealed carry permit. He can cap off his conversion by saying that he got tired of being a hypocrite by having a concealed handgun himself while ordinary citizens were denied the same.

This would not convince everyone, but it just might be enough to do the trick. If I am missing any issue which Rudy would need to "adjust" his position on let me know.

More autopsy results

Hugh Hewitt has his official post mortem colmun up on Townhall:


The post-mortems are accumulating, but I think the obvious has to be stated: John McCain and his colleagues in the Gang of 14 cost the GOP its Senate majority while the conduct of a handful of corrupt House members gave that body's leadership the Democrats.

[Snip]

As cooler heads sort through the returns, they will see not a Democratic wave but a long series of bitter fights most of which were lost by very thin margins, the sort of margin that could have been overcome had there been greater purpose and energy arrayed on the GOP's side. The country did not fundamentally change from 2004, but the Republicans had to defend very difficult terrain in very adverse circumstances. Step by step over the past two years the GOP painted themselves into a corner from which there was no escape. Congressional leadership time and time again took the easy way out and declared truces with Democrats over issues, which ought not to have been compromised. The easy way led to Tuesday's result.

The criminal activities of Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and Mark Foley were anchors around every Republican neck, and the damaged leadership could not figure out that the only way to slip that weight was by staying in town and working around the clock on issue after issue. The long recesses and the unwillingness to confront the issues head on --remember the House's inexplicable refusal to condemn the New York Times by name in a resolution over the SWIFT program leak?-- conveyed a smugness about the majority which was rooted in redistricting's false assurance of invulnerability. Only on rare occasions would the Republicans set up the sort of debate that sharpened the contrast between the parties. In wartime, the public expects much more from its leaders than they received from the GOP.

[Snip]

On April 15, 2005 --less than three months after President Bush had begun a second term won in part because of his pledge to fight for sound judges-- Senator McCain appeared on Hardball and announced he would not support the "constitutional option" to end Democratic filibusters. Then, stunned by the furious reaction, the senator from Arizona cobbled together the Gang of 14 "compromise" that in fact destroyed the ability of the Republican Party to campaign on Democratic obstructionism while throwing many fine nominees under the bus. Now in the ruins of Tuesday there is an almost certain end to the slow but steady restoration of originalism to the bench. Had McCain not abandoned his party and then sabotaged its plans, there would have been an important debate and a crucial decision taken on how the Constitution operates. The result was the complete opposite. Yes, President Bush got his two nominees to SCOTUS through a 55-45 Senate, but the door is now closed, and the court still tilted left. A once-in-a-generation opportunity was lost.

Like I've been trying to tell you since I started this blog. John McCain is evil and crazy and a true son of a bitch.

Go read the rest. It is all very worthwhile.