San Fran Nan plays it smart

From The Washington Post:

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has decided against naming either Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, or Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the panel's No. 2 Democrat, to chair the pivotal committee next year.

The decisions came despite lobbying by conservative Democrats on Harman's behalf and a full-throttled campaign by Hastings to overcome the stigma of the 1988 impeachment that drove him from his federal judgeship.

In this as in squashing the move to impeach President Bush Pelosi is showing an admirable tendency toward discretion. This seems to indicate that she possesses a trait very much lacking in her fellow members of the lunatic fringe of the Democrat Party's extreme left wing - the intelligence to realize and the honesty to admit that her views are representative of only a small percentage of the American people.

If you go over to the DU or the dailykos the people there seem absolutely convinced that the average American is just as much a barking moonbat as they are. This is somewhat understandable since most of the posters to left wing fever swamps like that are college student punks who don't associate off campus very much and therefore don't often encounter real human beings.

Pelosi seems to be cut from different cloth. Knowing that any attempt to implement her far left nutjob ideas during the next two years will frighten and disgust the public so badly that they will hand the White House and legislature back to Republicans for at least another decade in 2008 she seems to be committed to a long game.

Of course I do not believe for one second that she has changed. I do not believe for one second that she has abandoned her desire to turn America into a socialist gulag patterned after Castro's Cuba (except without the part where they throw homosexuals into concentration camps). She is just smart enough to realize that if the Democrats play it moderate for the next two years that helps Hillary gain the Oval Office in '08 and then they can declare a state of emergency and suspend the next election indefinitely.

Tonight's music

This is Dervish. They are another of the bands that will be performing at the Diana Wortham Theater in Asheville for their Celtic Series early next year.

The "Imam Incident" was a terrorist probe

From The Washington Times:

Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.

Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted "Allah" when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix.

"I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud," the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.

Passengers and flight attendants told law-enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.

"That would alarm me," said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. "They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane."

A pilot from another airline said: "That behavior has been identified as a terrorist probe in the airline industry."

I have been pointing out for some time that the odd behavior exhibited by some Muslims on airline flights are probes to test airline security and to desensitize the public and the airlines.

It is unlikely that any of these imams would carry a weapon onto an airplane and attempt to hijack it themselves, but you can bet that they will make sure that a detailed report of what happened will make it back to the terrorists who will do such things.

And just as importantly airline officials and passengers will be just a little less likely to raise objections to this kind of behavior from Muslims in the future.

As Americans we want to believe the founding principal of "innocent until proven guilty" however, as a Supreme Court Justice once observed", "the constitution is not a suicide pact". There are times when real and immediate dangers to the lives of the nation's citizens require a limitation or even suspension of some of the rights recognized by the constitution.

This is one of those times. While there are certainly innocent Muslims who hate the extremists and the acts of barbarity which they perpetrate they are indistinguishable from the terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers and so they must all fall under the same blanket of suspicion.

Everyone involved with airline security, from the ticket agents to the sky marshals to the airline passengers must view every person who appears to be an Arab/Middle Easterner/Muslim as a potential terrorist and act accordingly. It could very easily come to the point where we say that if you want to practice the religion of Islam openly then you need to go to a Muslim country to do it.

Also from the Times article:

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat, said the September 11 terrorist attacks "cannot be permitted to be used to justify racial profiling, harassment and discrimination of Muslim and Arab Americans."

"Understandably, the imams felt profiled, humiliated, and discriminated against by their treatment," she said.

While I pray to God that there is never another terrorist hijacking of an airplane anywhere in the world, I do hope that if there ever is one that Rep. Jackson-Lee is on that plane and that in the final seconds before the terrorists blow it up or fly it into a building that she has a moment of clarity and realizes that she is partly responsible for what is happening and that she richly deserves what is happening to her.

But I doubt that would happen. Even imminent death could not bring a moment of genuine truth telling to a creature such as her.

Give them more range time for starters

From The New York Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg convened an extraordinary meeting of black religious leaders and elected officials at City Hall yesterday to calm frayed tempers over the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Queens, calling the circumstances “inexplicable” and “unacceptable.”

The "black man" was armed with an automobile, which he was using to attempt to run down a police officer.

“It sounds to me like excessive force was used,” the mayor said of the conduct of the officers, who fired 50 shots outside a Queens nightclub early Saturday, killing Sean Bell, 23, hours before he was to be wed, and injuring two others. “I can tell you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired.”

Several factors go into this. One is that the 9mm round used by the NYPD is underpowered. Therefore it will take more shots to get the job done. Another is that the City of New York mandates that their police department modify their Glock handguns so that they will have a ridiculous 10-POUND trigger pull! This makes it difficult to shoot the NYPD Glock quickly with any degree of accuracy. Finally, NYPD cops don't get enough practice. Shooting is a skill which must be developed and maintained through constant practice. Because NYPD makes an effort to screen out "gun people" who would go shooting on their own for recreation the typical New York cop only shoots when the Department forces him too, and the Department doesn't force them to often enough.

Add to this the fact that when you perceive your life to be in danger, like it is when someone is using an automobile as a weapon against you, the biochemical reactions which take place in your body (the "flight or fight" response which is hard-wired into our genes) make it difficult to hit a target as small as the "kill zone" on a human body even when it isn't moving, or behind cover or poorly lit.

I understand why creatures like Al Sharpton and Charles Rangel are doing what they're doing. They don't care about the dead men, or the cops or the welfare of New York City. This is just a chance for them to strut and preen and mug for the cameras to demonstrate to their constituents how important and powerful they are. However Bloomberg is supposed to be the head of New York City's government with a duty to ensure that the City's workers, who all ultimately report to him, get a fair deal.

If Mr. Bloomberg truly believes that 50 rounds are "too much" then he needs to begin work right now to equip NYPD with handguns in .40 or .45 caliber with trigger pulls in the 5 lb. range and see that they shoot at least 100 rounds per week in practice in realistic training scenarios.

The 2006 midterm elections

Still aren't completely over.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 27 -- Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) won reelection Monday by a margin so slim that a recount will be required.

Unofficial results announced by Franklin County, the last to finish counting absentee and provisional ballots in central Ohio's 15th District, showed Pryce led Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by 1,055 votes, or 0.4 percent of the vote.

[. . .]


In North Carolina, election officials said a manual recount of randomly chosen precincts will take place Wednesday and Thursday in the 8th District race between Rep. Robin Hayes (R) and Democrat Larry Kissell. Hayes leads by 329 votes.

[. . .]

And no election would be truly complete without a Democrat loser whining about how the voting machines malfunctioned or the ballats being too complicated for Democrat voters to figure out:

And Florida officials will start an audit Tuesday of electronic voting machines in the 13th District House race between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings. The state certified Buchanan the winner by 369 votes, but Jennings contested, arguing that touch-screen voting machines had malfunctioned.

Tonight's music

This is Solas. I'm sorry about the poor quality of the audio. I would not have posted this except that I found out that they will be in Asheville in Feb.

They will be perfroming at the Diana Wortham Theater as a part of their annual Cletic series. Dervish will also be performing.

A lesson from history

The Washington Post looks back for examples of how past presidents whose party lost control of congress reacted. They offer up an example of how a president totally lacking in class handled the situation:

The president was in a funk. Morose from midterm elections that handed Congress to the opposition, he stewed in private, vented to friends, turned on aides and summoned self-help gurus to help him understand just what went wrong. He was left to argue with reporters that he was still "relevant."

They do go on and offer some observations that are actually helpful, but I thought their opening reminder that no matter how much we may feel disappointment at Bush the fact is that it could be worse was the most important.

The truth is that other than extending his tax cuts and staying the course in Iraq the President's agenda for his last two years was likely to be increasingly left leaning anyway. The fact that he now has a congress that wants to make the next two years an extended anal examination of his first six years may just save the nation just may prompt some much needed gridlock.

Reagan was correct when he noted that "that government which governs best governs least". Perhaps the circumstances will drag our government, kicking and screaming, back to the "best" form of governance.

Tonight's music

This is another video from the Cambridge Folk Festival. This is Julie Fowlis doing Puirt a beul.

Puirt a beul (mouth music) is not the name of a song, but a style of singing. It is meant to be danced to and the rhythm of the song takes precedence over the correct usage of the Gaelic. Most of the lyrics are meaningless or nonsensical and so are not generally translated.

Puirt a beul is accompanied by musical instruments today (especially the fiddle) but was originally intended as a substitute for musical instruments. Some believe that the origin of Puirt a beul came in the banning of the pipes after the 1745 uprising while others think it came out of religious opposition to musical instruments.

Either way the Scots and the Irish are going to dance and for that you need music, puirt is the plural of the word port which means "dance tune".

You can take the boy out of the KGB. . .

From The Washington Times:

LONDON -- British authorities said a rare and highly toxic radioactive substance was found in the body of a former KGB spy who accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of his killing in a statement dictated on his deathbed.

"You may succeed in silencing one man, but a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," Alexander Litvinenko said in a statement read aloud by friends outside the hospital where he died.

"May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me, but to beloved Russia and its people," said the statement, which Mr. Litvinenko dictated shortly before he died Thursday night.

Putin is a KGB operator from the days of the USSR and he has not changed.

Russia is not powerful enough to challenge the US any more and their military hardware is so obsolete and crappy that they do us a favor by selling it to our enemies. However they still have the wherewithal to make themselves a very large turd in the World's punchbowl.

I hope that George W Bush has the wit to be just a little bit embarrassed at his "I looked into his soul" prattle after his first meeting with the old murderer.

A new member for the Ecosystem

It has been too long since we had a new Hillbilly sign up for the Ecosystem. Well today we got us one and he's a good'un. Mushy's Mooching is a good conservative blog from Tennessee and the best part is he loves a good beer.

Go over and give him a big Hillbilly welcome!

Will she do the right thing, the wrong thing or the even more wrong thing?

From The Washington Post:

The intelligence community and Capitol Hill are awaiting House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi's choice to lead the chamber's intelligence panel, an explosive decision that will anger key members of her party no matter who she selects.

Even before Democrats won control of the House, reports surfaced that Mrs. Pelosi would skip over Rep. Jane Harman of California, the highest ranking
Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and opt instead for Rep. Alcee L. Hastings of Florida or Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the second- and third-ranking on the panel.

Mrs. Harman is backed by many centrists and is seen as hawkish on defense matters, while Mr. Hastings has the support of the powerful Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) but is tainted by his impeachment and removal as a federal judge in 1989.

This is just as important a test of Ms. Pelosi's character and leadership as the Murtha business was. If she is serious about running an ethical congress she will not attempt to elevate Alcee Hastings to such a sensitive post.

To make things worse knowledgeable insiders say that the animus which Pelosi feels for Harman stems from the fact that Ms. Harman has, for the past year or so, received more "face time" on the cable news shows. Petty jealousy is not a good foundation upon which to base governmental decisions.

And to make things even more worse we have this to throw into the mix. From Robert Novak:

A footnote: Senior CIA officials consider Harman a prima donna and say they dread the thought of dealing with her as chairman. They would much prefer Hastings, finding him consistently cooperative.

Naming someone that the Agency considers impossible to work with is not a good idea so it would appear that the best choice will be Silvestre Reyes. Does San Fran Nan have the wisdom to make it?

Technically it's not a robbery

From NewsMax:

U.S. and Argentine media reported that one of President Bush's 24-year-old twin daughters had her purse stolen while being guarded by the Secret Service during a visit here.

ABC News, citing unidentified law enforcement reports, reported on its Web site Tuesday that Barbara Bush's purse and cell phone were taken while she was dining in a Buenos Aires restaurant.

La Nacion newspaper, citing anonymous government sources, said in its online edition early Wednesday that one of Bush's daughters had her purse taken Sunday afternoon in the popular tourist district of San Telmo.

A pair of thieves removed the purse from under a table while Secret Service agents stood guard at a distance, La Nacion reported. La Nacion said its sources did not reveal which of the Bush daughters had her purse stolen.

I'm just filled right up to the nose holes with confidence in the Secret Service, ain't you?

The "Kramer Affair" finally touches bottom

In retrospect it was inevitable. Actors, talk show hosts and civil rights activists had fraked things up as badly as they could. To make things even more ridiculous required the participation of an attorney.

I had thought that the Michael Richards affair was dying down until I heard this:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Two men who say they were insulted by actor-comedian Michael Richards during his racist rant at a comedy club want a personal apology and maybe some money, their lawyer said Friday.

The men, Frank McBride and Kyle Doss, said they were part of a group of about 20 people who had gathered at West Hollywood's Laugh Factory to celebrate a friend's birthday. According to their attorney, Gloria Allred, they were ordering drinks when Richards berated them for interrupting his act.

When one of their group replied that he wasn't funny, Richards launched into a string of obscenities and repeatedly used the n-word. A video cell phone captured the outburst.
Richards, who played Jerry Seinfeld's wacky neighbor Kramer on the TV sitcom "Seinfeld," made a nationally televised apology on David Letterman's "Late Night" show earlier this week. He has since apologized to civil rights leaders the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
But Allred complained Friday that he "has not apologized to his victims directly, face to face, man to man."

Richards' publicist said his client wants to apologize to both men, who are black, but hasn't been able to locate them.

Allred, speaking by phone from Colorado, said Richards should meet McBride and Doss in front of a retired judge to "acknowledge his behavior and to apologize to them" and allow the judge to decide on monetary compensation.

"It's not enough to say 'I'm sorry,'" she said.

She did not mention a specific figure, but pitched the idea as a way for the comic to avoid a lawsuit.

"Our clients were vulnerable," Allred said. "He went after them. He singled them out and he taunted them, and he did it in a closed room where they were captive."

The video of Richards' outburst shows several people getting up and walking out as he shouts at the audience.

I wonder why the people who got up and walked out weren't "captive"?

I had thought that Gloria Allred, despite being a lawyer, a feminist and generally a woman of the left, retained some microscopic little sliver of dignity, integrity and class.

What a fool I was!.

Tonight's feel good moment

Some years ago when I first became interested in Celtic music I was listening to the local community college's radio station's Celtic music program on a Sunday afternoon and heard my first Capercaillie song. It was called The Tree and I was hooked.

So in celebration of Hillbilly White Trash's first birthday here is Capercaillie preforming The Tree at this year's Cambridge Folk Festival.

The Tree is from the Beautiful Wasteland CD. Here are the lyrics:

Crathadh d'aodaich a ghaoil / Thig thu'n taobh-sa mu Shamhainn / Crathadh d'aodaich a ghaoil / Thig thu ma bhios gaoth ann/ Bith thu nad ruith air a' rathad / Bith thu nad ruith air a' rathad / Bith thu nad ruith air a' rathad / Sior chrathadh d'aodaich

The English translation is:

With sails unfurled my love / you will come this way about Halloween (Shamhainn) / With sails unfurled my love / You will come if there is a fair wind / You will make haste on the way under full sail

Can America Survive?

Attention all of you conservative advocates for open borders and amnesty.

The reasoning of the minority of conservatives who are pushing for an open borders policy with Mexico and amnesty for the alien criminals who are already here rests on two pillars. One is the belief that Hispanic immigrants "do jobs that Americans won't do". Of course this means "jobs Americans won't do at the low wages Mexicans will work for". The other is that Mexicans are good church going devout Catholics who will vote Republican because they share the GOP's conservative family values.

I have long maintained that this is a pipe dream. As Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants flood the nation they will quickly find themselves drawn into the government funded (through the alphabet soup of government welfare agencies) "lowest common denominator" lifestyle of America's other racial minorities (excepting Asians).

The Democrat Party and their legions of shock troops in the social service bureaucracy will see to it that the nations new largest minority will be locked into a cycle of dependancy wich will guarentee that they will keep pulling the lever next to the picture of the Jackass for the next century, if America lasts that long.

Heather Mac Donald has some support for my thesis in this quarter's City Journal:

Unless the life chances of children raised by single mothers suddenly improve, the explosive growth of the U.S. Hispanic population over the next couple of decades does not bode well for American social stability. Hispanic immigrants bring near–Third World levels of fertility to America, coupled with what were once thought to be First World levels of illegitimacy. (In fact, family breakdown is higher in many Hispanic countries than here.) Nearly half of the children born to Hispanic mothers in the U.S. are born out of wedlock, a proportion that has been increasing rapidly with no signs of slowing down. Given what psychologists and sociologists now know about the much higher likelihood of social pathology among those who grow up in single-mother households, the Hispanic baby boom is certain to produce more juvenile delinquents, more school failure, more welfare use, and more teen pregnancy in the future.

The government social-services sector has already latched onto this new client base; as the Hispanic population expands, so will the demands for a larger welfare state. Since conservative open-borders advocates have yet to acknowledge the facts of Hispanic family breakdown, there is no way to know what their solution to it is. But they had better come up with one quickly, because the problem is here—and growing.

The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate—even more than unbounded levels of immigration—will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades. By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by mid-century, twice the current ratio. In states such as California and Texas, Hispanics will be in the clear majority. Nationally, whites will drop from near 70 percent of the total population in 2000 to just half by 2050. Hispanics will account for 46 percent of the nation’s added population over the next two decades, the Pew Hispanic Center reports.

But it’s the fertility surge among unwed Hispanics that should worry policymakers. Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country—over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for every 1,000 unmarried white women, 22 for every 1,000 unmarried Asian women, and 66 for every 1,000 unmarried black women. Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent of white births and 15 percent of Asian births. Only the percentage of black out-of-wedlock births—68 percent—exceeds the Hispanic rate. But the black population is not going to triple over the next few decades.

As if the unmarried Hispanic birthrate weren’t worrisome enough, it is increasing faster than among other groups. It jumped 5 percent from 2002 to 2003, whereas the rate for other unmarried women remained flat. Couple the high and increasing illegitimacy rate of Hispanics with their higher overall fertility rate, and you have a recipe for unstoppable family breakdown.

You should read the rest but maybe not tonight. It is the kind of thing that can give you nightmares.

Krammer says. . .

It is official. The Michael Richards story is over. The "real" Krammer has spoken:

For Kenny Kramer, role model for the "Seinfeld" character who shared his surname, each call was a reminder of the intersection between his real life and his sitcom doppelganger. Actor Michael Richards _ the on-air Cosmo Kramer _ made headlines this week with a racist rant in a Los Angeles comedy club.

[snip]

Kramer said he wasn't too worried that people would confuse Kramer, the character, with Kramer, the person.

Just in case, however, he issued a two-sentence statement drawing the distinction: "I know the public is smart enough to realize that Michael Richards' personal actions in no way reflect on the character he portrayed on television or me, Kenny Kramer, the real person that the character was based on."

[snip]

"You know what the good news is?" he asked. "Judith Regan is now on a plane to California, trying to sign Michael Richards to a book deal: `If I Were a Racist, Here's What I Would Have Said.'"

Can't add anything to that.

Could we get them to sell them some water pistols too?

From The Jerusalem Post:

Russia has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air defense missile systems to Iran, a Defense Ministry official said Friday, confirming that Moscow would proceed with arms deals with Tehran in spite of Western criticism.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, declined to specify when the deliveries had been made and how many systems had been delivered.

Ministry officials have previously said Moscow would supply 29 of the sophisticated missile systems to Iran under a US$700 million (€565 million) contract signed in December, according to Russian media reports.

The United States will complain about this in public but my guess is that the Pentagon is pretty happy about this.

Why would US military planners be happy about this?

Remember how many of our planes and helicopters Saddam's air defenses were able to shoot out of the sky during our two Gulf Wars? The Iranians don't seem to remember how poorly the Iraqi's Russian hardware preformed for them.

The fact is that Russian and Chinese (which is all based on Russian junk) hardware are vastly inferior to American equipment. Put Arabs at the controls and "inferior" turns into "disastrous" as people whose culture prepares them for nothing more technically sophisticated than milking a goat attempt to operate anything "radar guided" or "computer controlled".

In the Third World War which America has begun to fight, even if most of us don't realize it yet, our greatest strength will be the quality of our enemies.

Hat Tip: Shooting the Messenger

Will Europe awaken? Probably not.

From The Brussels Journal:

Let’s review where we stand, shall we? Since the French and Dutch “No” votes, five more states have approved the European Constitution, bringing to 18 the number of nations to have ratified. Meanwhile, every government remains devoted to the text.

Germany’s Angela Merkel says the European constitution is “vital to German interests.” Italy’s Romano Prodi says he interprets the “No” votes as “a demand for more Europe, not less.” Spain insists that its “Yes” vote be allowed to stand. Austria and Finland want ratification to be completed by the end of 2007, and Belgium suggests changing the rules so that this can happen by a majority vote rather than by unanimity.

In France, both main presidential candidates are committed to pushing ahead: Nicolas Sarkozy says he wants a “mini-treaty” that will contain all the constitution’s main elements, while Ségolène Royal says that, if Britain has problems with the constitution, the rest of the EU should go ahead without it. Not that the UK is trying to back out: it seems to have agreed in principle to the Sarkozy “mini-treaty” proposal.

Am I forgetting anyone? Oh yes, there is one solitary voice of dissent: that of the ordinary citizen who, whenever invited to express an opinion on the Constitution, keeps rejecting it. Opinion has swung against the constitution over the past two years, both in France and the Netherlands and in those countries whose governments went ahead with ratification – most spectacularly in Germany, where two thirds of people now say they would vote “No”. Not that any of the governments seems to care.

The people of Europe could change this any time they wanted too. All they would need to do is vote in different people.

However to do that they would have to vote for people that their news media and their political and academic elites tell them are dangerously unstable, neo-fascists, racists and probably pro-American as well.

The fact is that the average European has been conditioned by a lifetime of immersion in a suffocating cradle-to-grave welfare state to fear individual responsability. They do not want to take care of themselves. They have become what amounts to a giant herd of human sheep.

At the end of the day the sheep do not stand up to the shepherd or the sheep dog. Europe will have its Union and will "enjoy" it for better or worse for about the next 25-35 years. Then it will be transformed into the great Eurabian Caliphate under sharia.

One Today!

Hillbilly White Trash is ONE YEAR OLD TODAY!!!

I want to thank everyone who has stopped by and especially all those who come back regularly.

38,048 visitors since day one and 1280 posts, counting this one.

A trip down memory lane

There were only a few days left in November when I started this blog so I put up only a few posts that first month.

Here is my favorite of them:

Top 10 List

Since Firearms and politics are some of the things that this blog is about here is a list of 10 firearms related things that you can say to make a liberal involuntarily void his bowels.

10. Of course I'm carrying a gun, I'm always armed.

9. Yes its cocked, but the safety is on. Hell, Browning's original design didn't even have a safety!

8. I'm taking a few days off so I can take the kids hunting.

7. I've tried to get my wife to carry an automatic, but she insists on a revolver.

6. No, this isn't beef its venison. I shot it last fall. Bet you couldn't tell the difference, could you?

5. I met my wife in a concealed carry class.

4. I got into youth ministry when I volunteered to teach firearm's safety and marksmanship at my church's youth camp.

3. Have you seen how much ammunition costs nowadays? I can only afford to shoot once a week!

2. Let me take you to this indoor range, they have a couple of machine guns that they rent out.

1. My daughter is getting her first gun this Christmas.

Feel free to add your own suggestions.

Tonight's music video

This is the British group Slainte doing the Clumsey Lover Set.

Enjoy!

Carter proves that he can go even lower

Alan M. Dershowitz has reviewed Jimmy Carter's new book about the Middle East called, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. I could have set that up as a link to Amazon.com and made some money on anyone who used it to order the book, but I would hate to think that I had helped Carter sell any of this anti-Semitic diatribe. Here is what I consider the meat of Mr. Dershowitz's comments:

The Carter book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion. A mere listing of all of Carter’s mistakes and omissions would fill a volume the size of his book. Here are just a few of the most egregious:

• Carter emphasizes that “Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times,” but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.
• Carter repeatedly claims that the Palestinians have long supported a two-state solution and the Israelis have always opposed it. Yet he makes no mention of the fact that in 1938 the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution with Israel receiving a mere sliver of its ancient homeland and the Palestinians receiving the bulk of the land. The Jews accepted and the Palestinians rejected this proposal, because Arab leaders cared more about there being no Jewish state on Muslim holy land than about having a Palestinian state of their own.
• He barely mentions Israel’s acceptance, and the Palestinian rejection, of the U.N.’s division of the mandate in 1948.
• He claims that in 1967 Israel launched a preemptive attack against Jordan. The fact is that Jordan attacked Israel first, Israel tried desperately to persuade Jordan to remain out of the war, and Israel counterattacked after the Jordanian army surrounded Jerusalem, firing missiles into the center of the city. Only then did Israel capture the West Bank, which it was willing to return in exchange for peace and recognition from Jordan.
• Carter repeatedly mentions Security Council Resolution 242, which called for return of captured territories in exchange for peace, recognition and secure boundaries, but he ignores the fact that Israel accepted and all the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected this resolution. The Arabs met in Khartum and issued their three famous “no’s”: “No peace, no recognition, no negotiation” but you wouldn’t know that from reading the history according to Carter.
• Carter faults Israel for its “air strike that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor” without mentioning that Iraq had threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons if they succeeded in building a bomb.
• Carter faults Israel for its administration of Christian and Muslim religious sites, when in fact Israel is scrupulous about ensuring every religion the right to worship as they please—consistant, of course, with security needs. He fails to mention that between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Hashemites destroyed and desecrated Jewish religious sites and prevented Jews from praying at the Western Wall. He also never mentions Egypt’s brutal occupation of Gaza between 1949 and 1967.
• Carter blames Israel, and exonerates Arafat, for the Palestinian refusal to accept statehood on 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza pursuant to the Clinton-Barak offers of Camp David and Taba in 2000-2001. He accepts the Palestinian revisionist history, rejects the eye-witness accounts of President Clinton and Dennis Ross and ignores Saudi Prince Bandar’s accusation that Arafat’s rejection of the proposal was “a crime” and that Arafat’s account “was not truthful”—except, apparently, to Carter. The fact that Carter chooses to believe Yasir Arafat over Bill Clinton speaks volumes.
• Carter’s description of the recent Lebanon war is misleading. He begins by asserting that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. “Captured” suggest a military apprehension subject to the usual prisoner of war status. The soldiers were kidnapped, and have not been heard from—not even a sign of life. The rocket attacks that preceded Israel’s invasion are largely ignored, as is the fact that Hezbollah fired its rockets from civilian population centers.
• Carter gives virtually no credit to Israel’s superb legal system, falsely asserting (without any citation) that “confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts,” that prisoners are “executed” and that the “accusers” act “as judges.” Even Israel’s most severe critics acknowledge the fairness of the Israeli Supreme Court, but not Carter.
• Carter even blames Israel for the “exodus of Christians from the Holy Land,” totally ignoring the Islamization of the area by Hamas and the comparable exodus of Christian Arabs from Lebanon as a result of the increasing influence of Hezbollah and the repeated assassination of Christian leaders by Syria.
• Carter also blames every American administration but his own for the Mideast stalemate with particular emphasis on “a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years.” He employs hyperbole and overstatement when he says that “dialogue on controversial issues is a privilege to be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and withheld from those who reject U.S. demands.” He confuses terrorist states, such as Iran and Syria to which we do not extend dialogue, with states with whom we strongly disagree, such as France and China, with whom we have constant dialogue.

[snip]

The Carter book is so biased that it inevitably raises the question of what would motivate a decent man like Jimmy Carter to write such an indecent book. Whatever Carter’s motives may be, his authorship of this ahistorical, one-sided and simplistic brief against Israel forever disqualifies him from playing any positive role in fairly resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. That is a tragedy because the Carter Center, which has done much good in the world, could have been a force for peace if Jimmy Carter were as generous in spirit to the Israelis as he is to the Palestinians.

What is confusing Mr. Dershowitz is his mistaken belief that Jimmy Carter is a "decent man". He is not. Perhaps Carter was decent at one time. Maybe before running for President he was a good man. Possibly he was a good man during the first part of his presidency, however when his hopelessly naive worldview, contemptible in a person who aspires to the White House, showed him to be completely out of his depth in the real world he began to change. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the real Jimmy Carter began to emerge.

The amazing economic expansion caused by Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies due to Reagan's aggressive tone with the Soviets and his pushing ahead with development and/or deployment weapons systems which Carter had opposed, underfunded or outright canceled seemed to push Carter into a near total break with the real world.

From his position at the Carter Center "Jimmah" acts as though he were still the president, in control of the nation's foreign policy. From supporting "land for peace" between the Israelis and the Palestinians to brokering the deal with North Korea in which they were paid off handsomely for the transparently hollow promise not to develop nuclear weapons every incident which serves to prove how utterly wrong Carter is about utterly everything only serves to entrench Carter more deeply into his delusions.

In this latest Jew-hating screed disguised as a foreign policy tome Carter has reached his lowest point to date. I would say that he has bottomed out, however when looking at his past history I could not rule out a future flirtation with Christian Identity, Aryan Nations or the Klan.

Tonight's video

Another video from Enya. This song is Anywhere Is from the Memory of Trees CD.

The Blond one speaks

The Blond One gives us her take on the six imams ejected from a US Airways flight due to the excellent imitation of suicide hijackers they were putting on:

Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" – coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died.

Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the imams didn't perform was the signing of last wills and testaments.

After boarding, the imams did not sit together, and some asked for seat belt extensions, although none were morbidly obese. Three of the men had one-way tickets and no checked baggage.

Also, they were Muslims.

The idea that a Muslim boycott against US Airways would hurt the airline proves that Arabs are utterly tone-deaf. This is roughly the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan taking a vow of silence. How can we hope to deal with people with no sense of irony?

The next thing you know, New York City cab drivers will be threatening to bathe.

As usual she is funny and her humor is dead on accurate. Go read the rest.

Thank you Mr. Jones

The American Spectator has an article up about Libertarian Stan Jones:

"Stan Jones, a Montana libertarian widely known for his peculiar blue skin, can arguably be said to have recast the political complexion of the U.S. Senate, turning it from Republican red to the same color as his face," reported the Washington Post after the election.

Running as the most anti-government candidate in the field in the race for the U.S. Senate, Libertarian Party candidate Jones received 10,324 votes while Republican
candidate Conrad Burns lost to Democrat Jon Tester by just 2,565 votes.

Jones, a bit on the crazy side, once turned himself blue by sticking some electric wires into his drinking water to ward off the oncoming calamities of a predicted Y2K collapse. Now he's turned the Senate blue.

This is a big part of why I left the Libertarian Party.

I agree with a great deal of their ideas as far as domestic policy goes, however they are sadly naive when it comes to foreign policy and military affairs.

When you take the whole Libertarian package together it becomes nothing more than another in a long line of Utopian fantasies. Like the fanatical Muslims who believe that if the whole world can be terrorized into submission (the meaning of the world "Islam") paradise on earth will be the result. Like the Marxists who slaughtered around 100 million people in the Twentieth Century in the belief that if you could just put a bayonet to every one's back then the state would wither away and all men would live in perfect equality.

Like every single human "ism" which aims to perfect fallen Man Libertarianism would, if enacted, do nothing more than get a whole lot of people killed.

Choose Wisely

From The Telegraph:

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, wants Britain to choose between being a "vassal" of the United States, and embracing a French-led drive for European integration, her adviser on Europe has revealed.

Throughout Miss Royal's spectacularly successful campaign to sew up the Socialist nomination, she kept the details of her EU policy under wraps for fear of reopening deep splits within her party.

However, in the hours after her victory on Thursday, Gilles Savary, a French MEP and her spokesman and foreign affairs adviser, spoke exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, revealing her EU policies in detail.

[snip]

He demanded efforts to integrate foreign policy and cast that struggle in searingly anti-American tones. Mr Savary said: "The question that needs to be asked is – do we want to be vassals of the United States, do we want to be a 51st state?"

The Brussels Journal reproduced two graphs showing how much higher the rates of unemployment and taxation are in Europe than in America. The British should think carefully about that before giving Ms. Royal her answer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Keeping them down on the reservation

From The Washington Post:

MILWAUKEE -- Fifth-grade teacher Amy Tromp lights a match and then the small pile of sage she holds in a shell. The sage begins to smolder, its smell stinging the nose.

Her students, sitting in a circle on the floor, try to catch the smoke and bring it over their bodies to get ready for the school day. They then share their concerns and stories from the night before. Someone played a lot of video games. Another tells of his pregnant sister who might lose her baby.

This morning's activity, called smudging, is an ancient American Indian tradition. And for many students and staff members here, it is the way of the future, too.

[snip]

This is how a normal morning begins at the Indian Community School of Milwaukee, a place where tobacco and sage, both sacred instruments of thanksgiving and spirituality, are in every classroom. Outside, a sweat lodge and tepee stand ready. And the long list of possible field trips includes hours-long drives to northern Wisconsin to pick and dance over wild rice. Here, all 300 students have some kind of tribal affiliation.

The Indian Community School of Milwaukee, located in one of the city's rough neighborhoods, is one of at least 150 schools in the nation designed to help children connect to their native heritage. Located both on and off Indian reservations, the schools are growing in popularity.

[snip]

Student Logan Gott, 12, said he believes he has learned more about his spiritual life and the ways of his ancestors than he would have at a public school. Since he started at the school, he has learned how to sing and drum at sacred ceremonies and powwows, an honored opportunity.

This is wonderful! Help the Indians become even more marganalized and unable to compete in the greater American culture. That way they can stay on welfare or working at the most menial of low paying jobs. Or go to prison.

Just as long as they stay dependant and bitter and voting Democrat.

I wish I were an Indian-hating bigot so I could be happy about this.

Tonight's video

We return to Capercaillie tonight.

The song is called Mile Marbhaisg Air A Ghaol which translates to "A Thousand Curses On Love" It is from the Choice Language CD.

A thousand curses on love / Which has wearied me / Which broke my heart within my body

A Euro Beauty Queen has a setback

From The Brussels Journal:

Last September Halima Chehaïma, the 18-year old daughter of a Moroccan father and a Flemish mother, was elected Miss Brussels. Until next week Ms Chehaïma was also the absolute favorite of the bookmakers for the election of Miss Belgium next month. She was thought to be an excellent candidate to symbolize the multicultural paradise that Belgium has become. However, a girl’s dream was shattered.

Halima Chehaïma was a controversial candidate. Last October she stood for the Marxist-Leninist Labour Party in the local elections in Molenbeek, the predominantly Muslim Brussels borough where she lives. The party is so marginal that she did not get elected, but her declaration that Israel must be wiped off the map raised the eyebrows of the organizers of the Miss Belgium pageant. What really seems to have ruined her chances, however, is her connection with Bilal Ould Haj, a Belgian criminal of Moroccan origin.

Ould Haj, who has been convicted three times so far for armed robberies, is soon to stand trial for torturing the 84-year old Maria Reyntjes. When he broke into the latter’s home in November 2003 and found only 500 euros (650 dollars) he flew into a rage, broke the old lady’s legs with a hammer and set her hair on fire. At the time he was Chehaïma’s sweetheart, though she claims they were just friends.

Last July Ould Haj was able to escape from jail (easy in Belgium: he said he was someone else and was allowed to walk out). Meanwhile, however, Halima Chehaïma had fallen in love with an Albanian criminal. When Ould Haj encountered the Albanian last week the two men started quarrelling, whereupon the latter knifed the former twice in the neck. Ould Haj survived the assault, was taken to hospital and arrested. The police are currently investigating whether Miss Brussels had been visiting Ould Haj in his Brussels hide-out and whether she helped to keep him out of their hands.

In America beauty queens want to work for world peace or help orphans. In Europe they want to annihilate the Jews. I also love the way that she goes out and gets another criminal for a boyfriend no sooner than the current one winds up in jail.

She should come to America. She would have a bright future in the Democrat Party.

And the counting continues

It seems that even now the 2006 midterm elections aren't really over.

From The Washington Post:

More than a week after Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) claimed a razor-thin election victory, her Democratic challenger conceded yesterday, saying that a recount would cost too much and that there was no guarantee it would reverse the result.

In Ohio's 2nd District, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) also clinched reelection yesterday when additional ballot counts gave her an insurmountable edge of about 3,200 votes over Democratic challenger Victoria Wulsin.

[snip]

A handful of other House races remain contested:

· In North Carolina, a recount is underway in the 8th District. Rep. Robin Hayes (R) led Democrat Larry Kissell by 339 votes after the results were certified Friday night. Kissell then asked for the recount.

· In Ohio's 15th District, Rep. Deborah Pryce, a member of the House Republican leadership, led Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by 3,717 votes yesterday amid a count of provisional ballots.

· In Florida, state officials certified Republican Vern Buchanan the winner over Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes, or by less than 0.02 percent of the total. Jennings challenged the result Monday, asserting that touch-screen voting machines had malfunctioned. She asked a judge to order a new election.

Notice how it is almost always the Democrat who asks for the recount or files a legal challenge based on the voting machines not working or the ballot being too complex for Democrat voters to understand? It seems that so many of them cannot find it within themselves to lose gracefully.

And finally:

· Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the subject of an FBI bribery investigation, will face fellow Democrat Karen Carter in a Dec. 9 runoff, and Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Tex.) will face former congressman Ciro D. Rodriguez (D) in a Dec. 12 runoff.

If voters in Louisiana reelect the corrupt William Jefferson then I say kick Louisiana out of the Union.

Richards Rant, the fallout

By now everyone has heard about actor Michael Richards' meltdown at a California comedy club in which he responded to a couple of black hecklers by launching into an unhinged tirade in which he called them "nigger" and said that "50 years ago we would have hung you upside down with a f**king fork up your ass".

If you haven't seen it just go to YouTube and search "Michael Richards" and you can see it for yourself.

I think it was incredibly stupid of him to go off on a rant like that in public. However I am not upset with him. To be a good comic you have to be messed up in the head to some degree, with the best comics being the most messed up.

You doubt me? Two words. Andy Kaufman.

Also, look at Dave Chapel. He was the most brilliant young comic in the country and he had a mental breakdown and will probably never be able to perform again.

Jerry Lewis described the origin of his comedy like this. He said that it came from growing up a Jewish kid in an Irish Catholic slum in New York City. From being beaten and harassed every day and laying broken and bleeding in the gutter with his mouth open and the sewage from the gutter flowing into his mouth. That kind of life can make you a great comic, but it is also bound to leave scars.

There is another angle to this as well. If this had been a Black comic launching into a racist rant against White people it would not even have raised an eyebrow. If some Black rapper had stopped his concert to spew a hate filled screed against the White motherf**kers it also would not have raised any eyebrows.

Any criticism by any White person would be instantly denounced as racism and attempted censorship.

You want me to get upset and denounce Richards for what he said? Fine I'll get my underwear in a twist over Michael Richards the very nanosecond that the Black community gets as bent out of shape over Black racism as the White world was over What Richards said. But not before.

PS - I expect to hear any minute now that Kenny Kramer is suing Michael Richards for "damaging the Kramer franchise".

First Snow

I saw the first snow of the winter today. These were taken on the road between Newland, NC and Roan Mountain, TN.

Don't soak the rich - Thank them

A couple of commenters were kicking around the idea of imposing a special "war tax" on the "wealthy" to finance the nation's wars. This idea is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because the rich can simply pick up and leave. As a wealthy friend once told me, "what money is good for is mainly that it gives you options".

Make it hard enough on the rich and they will exercise their option to relocate, and they'll take their wealth with them.

The idea of soaking the rich to pay for wars is immoral because it is the nation's poor who benefit most from life in America.

Think about it. The rich are RICH they'll make out fine wherever they are. Just look at the apartment that Armand Hammer had in Moscow. It is the poor who live far better lives in America than they would have nearly anywhere else.

In most of the world the poor live on the edge of starvation. In America most of the poor are overweight due to the surplus of food they have.

In most of the world run the risk of death from easily treated diseases and conditions because they have no, or extremely limited, access to health care. In the US all a poor person has to do is present themselves at a hospital and they will, by law, receive "the same quality of care that the hospital would give the President of the United States if he showed up" (as a department head at a major teaching hospital told me once).

In America more than half the people who live below the poverty line own their own home, with electricity and running water. In the US most of the poor own a car and a cell phone.

What is it that makes America a nation so rich than even our lowest economic class lives a lifestyle that most of the people who have ever lived in the history of the world would regard as unbelievably opulent?

It is -- some of you have already guessed it, the rest of you brace yourselves -- THE RICH. That's right it is the rich who make the investments and own the businesses which provide the jobs and pay the salaries of the workers (not to mention the corporate income taxes and the income and payroll taxes paid by the workers).

It is the rich which are both the foundation upon which our economy rests and the engine which drives it. The rich could go anywhere and make out like bandits because THEY'RE RICH. But without the rich the poor would instantly find themselves reduced to the condition of misery enjoyed by the poor in most of the rest of the world.

And don't think that the government would, or could, ride to the rescue. Without the rich the government's revenue would dry up overnight because: The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes The Top 1% Pay More Than a Third: 34.27%.

That's right. No rich and no tax revenue.

If your main source of income is some kind of government payment, doesn't matter if it is a social security check, a VA pension, a welfare check or a paycheck from some government agency that you work for, then you should get down on your knees and thank God for the rich because they are the ones paying your bills.

Belated music

Sorry about not posting anything since yesterday morning. When I got home from work I found blogger tied up in knots (so, what else is new) and was unable to post.

I tried again this morning and it was still fraked.

So here is the music video that I would have put up last night. It is Enya doing On My Way Home from The Memory of Trees CD.




I'll have more tonight. Till then enjoy.

What comes next in the Middle East?

Also from Today's Washington Post:

The Pentagon's closely guarded review of how to improve the situation in Iraq has outlined three basic options: Send in more troops, shrink the force but stay longer, or pull out, according to senior defense officials.

Insiders have dubbed the options "Go Big," "Go Long" and "Go Home." The group conducting the review is likely to recommend a combination of a small, short-term increase in U.S. troops and a long-term commitment to stepped-up training and advising of Iraqi forces, the officials said.

Of the three I think that the second is probably the way we will go. It is described in this way:

The group has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one -- "Go Long" -- and calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts. Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the U.S. presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said.

The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a "Go Long" option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal.

Of course even this will not be enough if we do not do something to deal with the weakness of the Iraqi government. The fact is that it is looking more and more like the people who said that you can't bring democracy to an Arab/Muslim nation were correct.

It was an experiment that absolutely had to be tried. If Muslims cannot be civilized then they must be exterminated or utterly marganalized. While extermination is the most attractive from a purely emotional standpoint it is probably impractical given the sentiments of the age.

Marginalization will involve several components. One will be the disarming of the Muslim states. Another will be the the breakup of the Arab/Muslim nations into smaller states with logical borders. By logical borders I mean ethnically, religiously and tribally homogeneous countries. And finally placing the Middle East's oil under the control of a coalition of civilized nations led and controlled by the United States.

US control is vital because Europe has already proven itself hopelessly corrupt in their dealings with Saddam and China's totalitarian government doesn't qualify it as civilized. Russia's leadership can't seem to stop assassinating political opponents and critics and the Third World is, well, the Third World.

This leaves the United States, Eastern Europe, Japan, Ireland and India to administer the Middle East's oil reserves and ensure that petroleum is available on the world market at market prices. And to see to it that an appropriate percentage of the oil revenues are returned to the Arab world and used on things which will improve the quality of life there, instead of financing the global jihad.

Of course there is no chance that any of this will happen - right now. But humans have a great instinct for self preservation and tend to act in their own interests when they can. The necessity of finding a radical solution to the problem of radical Islam cannot be hidden from forever.

Renew the draft?

The old racist demagogue Charlie Rangel is at it again, calling for a draft. From today's Washington Post:

The incoming Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee said yesterday that he will push to renew the military draft, as lawmakers in both parties sharpened their criticisms of the situation in Iraq and struggled for consensus and solutions.

[snip]

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) has long advocated returning to the draft, but his efforts drew little attention during the 12 years that House Democrats were in the minority. Starting in January, however, he will chair the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Yesterday he said "you bet your life" he will renew his drive for a draft.

"I will be introducing that bill as soon as we start the new session," Rangel said on CBS's "Face the Nation." He portrayed the draft, suspended since 1973, as a means of spreading military obligations more equitably and prompting political leaders to think twice before starting wars.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," said Rangel, a Korean War veteran. "If we're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft."

I wonder if he remembers that the majority of servicemen who saw combat in WWII were draftees while the majority of servicemen who saw combat in Vietnam were volunteers?

While Rangel is nothing but a daft old fool grandstanding in his effort to make his pathetic little point about the Bush Administration and the Iraq war. The thing is though that the old idiot might be right.

There are already ONE BILLION Muslims in the world. We are told that only about 10% of them are radical terrorist or terrorist supporters but I don't believe that. If the 90% really didn't support the crimes of the 10% then they would have long ago risen up and slaughtered them and stacked their bodies up like cord wood for the rest of the world to see. Silence and inaction equal support.

Add to this the fact that Western Europe will be firmly in the Islamic world within the next 30 years, bringing their high technology with them, and that China is lining up with the Islamic world (for the oil and as a way to counter the power of the US) and we are going to need the kind of total mobilization of our entire society for total war that we haven't seen since WWII.

Of course this isn't what senile old moron Rangel wants to have a draft for, but like the old saying goes, "be careful what you ask for you just might get it".

Tonight's music

This is the video of Loreena McKennitt's song Mummer's Dance. This custom goes back to the ancient pre-Christian, even pre-Roman traditions of Briton.

Enjoy.

Why I hate James Bond

When I was a kid I loved James Bond movies. I now hate them to the point that when I hear the "Bond Theme" I feel physically ill.

The reason for this is, I think, bound up with the fact that when I was a child I actually took them seriously. I was born in 1960 so I literally grew up with the Bond franchise. When I went to a Bond movie I thought I was seeing secret agents the way they really were. Nobody clued me to the fact that they were really comedies.

I didn't know that I was supposed to be laughing at the cartoonish antics of the cartoon secret agent and the cartoon villains who were always opposing him.

Therefore when I grew old enough and learned enough to learn that Bond was actually an "Adam West's Batman" level satire I felt betrayed. I felt as though I had been the victim of a decade long practical joke which I had fell for hook, line and sinker.

This led to a resentment that I am not over to this day (yes, I hold a grudge).

I have heard that this latest Bond is a radical departure from the normal Bond and is much more true to the Ian Fleming novels. This Bond, I am told, is played as a stone cold killer without the camp, the gadgets and without the Saturday-morning-cartoon bad guys.

I may see this one.

What "The Left" wants

Also from The Brussels Journal:

A quote from The Irish Independent, 13 November 2006

Amnesty International, which is campaigning against the death penalty is, however, increasingly moving towards a position of supporting globalised abortion. The Catholic Church – which has opposed the death penalty since the 1940s (Pius XII was vehemently against it) – has stated that it will have to withdraw support for Amnesty if this measure goes ahead. In Britain, too, Anglican Bishops have simultaneously opposed the death penalty, while conceding that doctors may be moved to kill off disabled babies. Here again is a strange paradox in matters of life and death. Wrong to execute a convicted tyrant: right to extinguish an innocent new-born.

This is not difficult to understand when you grasp what the political left is at heart.

Every person's mind is an aggregate of differing emotions, drives, wants, needs, loves and hates. Every last one of us has some self-destructive component of his psyche. For most of us it manifests itself as something relatively mild like smoking, overeating or driving too fast. For others it is more powerful and shows itself in alcoholism or compulsive gambling or extreme risk taking. In a few it is so overwhelming that it leads to outright suicide.

A society has, in a sense, a mind of its own which is an aggregate of all the various people who make it up. In the Western "mind" the political left is the part of the collective psyche which manifests the self-destructive impulse.

To them the policy or attitude or cause which is most likely to lead to cultural suicide is always the preferred one. Thus protecting the lives of the horribly guilty and allowing the slaughter of the innocent are equally important and there is no perceived contradiction because both policies lead to cultural death.

In order for the leftist to properly live out the impulse to cultural suicide he or she must manifest a form of extreme moral leprosy in which the normal human reaction of shock, revulsion and outrage to moral evils like abortion, infanticide and euthanasia are not just deadened but are actually stood on their head and become approval!

This explains nearly every position taken by the left on every issue in every sphere of life from the moral to the political to the religious to the social. Whatever most likely leads to cultural death seems the right and natural path to the leftist.

I don't know if this explains everything about the left but I think it is a good starting point. I would be grateful for any input my readers would care to offer.

The East is awake

From The Brussels Journal:

A quote from Mart Laar at The Brussels Journal, 27 August 2005

It is very fortunate that I was not an economist. I had read only one book on economics – Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.” I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatisation, the flat tax and the abolition of all customs rights, was the result of economic reforms that had been put into practice in the West. It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia, despite warnings from Estonian economists that it could not be done. They said it was as impossible as walking on water. We did it: we just walked on the water because we did not know that it was impossible.

"We have done the impossible and that makes us mighty"
--Malcolm Reynolds

This is why I think Eastern Europe is going to be an important ally in the coming war.

Battlestar Galactica

At the beginning of the current season we were shown some previews of upcoming episodes. One of them was a clip of Adm. Adama confessing to his son Lee that the was responsible for the Cylon attack on the Colonies.

The episode which that clip was from aired this past Friday. I have to say that the way they framed the "Adama's guilt" aspect of the plot was rather lame. What happened was that about three years before the episode the Admiralty ordered Adama, who was commander of the Battlestar Valkyrie, to conduct a reconnaissance mission beyond the Cylon Armistice line.

It seems that the Admiralty was concerned that the Adar administration had grown complacent about the Cylon threat and was neglecting the military. The mission Adama was being sent on was designed to determine if the Cylons were amassing their forces for a possible attack on the Colonies.

The Tauran Colony had conveniently placed a tylium mining operation on a planet dangerously close to the armistice line so the Valkyrie's cover was to be a mission to remove the illegal mine.

So far everything was plausible, but then they got to the execution of the mission. What it amounted to was a pilot handpicked by Commander Adama flying a stealth recon ship into Cylon space and doing dradis scans. Where things got ridiculous was that the "stealth" ship was easily seen on the Valkyrie's dradis and it only penetrated the armistice line by two kilometers (only a little over a mile).

What could the small ship see on its dradis (which is nothing more than radar) that the Valkyrie couldn't see on its much more powerful dradis? And would the Cylons be stupid enough to park their fleet just across the line?

What happened was that Cylon raiders jumped in and attacked the stealth ship, damaging it so badly that it couldn't make it back to the Valkyrie. In order to keep the ship and pilot from falling into Cylon hands Adama ordered the launch of a missile to destroy it (and kill the pilot). The missile blew up the stealth ship, but the pilot ejected.

The pilot was picked up by the Cylons and kept a prisoner on a base ship for around 3 years. Then he was allowed to escape. Allowed to steal a raider (which he just happened to know how to fly) and he just happened to jump into range of the Galactica.

Of course the embittered Colonel Tigh told the pilot (his name escapes me) that he had not been shot down by renegade Taurans or Cylons, but by Adama. Of course he tells Adama that he needs to talk to him and when Adama shows up he attacks him, ties him up and starts to play out his "revenge of the betrayed" scenario.

Meanwhile Starbuck and Tigh figure out that the Cylons let the guy escape and Tigh goes to where he is about to beat Adama to death and stops him. Tigh, an old man who needed a cane to walk on New Capricia and has spent the past couple of weeks laying in bed in his quarters dead drunk and chain smoking, kicks the ass of the young man who has just spent the last three years in a cell on a base ship obsessively exercising. That's believable.

Tigh convinces the pilot to stand down and forgive Adama and in this we see the beginnings of Tigh's healing of himself.

So this is what is behind Adama's "I started the war" guilt trip. Adama thinks that because they got caught violating the armistice line that the Cylons figured that the humans were planning an attack and the attack on the Colonies was a preemptive strike.

I feel compelled to point out that the fleet was in space for at least three months after the Cylon attack upon the Colonies before they found New Capricia. That they were on New Capricia for one year before the Cylons found them and that they endured four months of occupation before the Galactica jumped back and rescued them. Add the two months, at least (based on the amount of weight Apollo has lost) since the rescue and you have the blown recon mission taking place only about 15 months before the Cylon attack.

Let us recall that the original Boomer had to enter the Fleet Academy and graduate then stay in service long enough to promoted to lieutenant and be given command of a Raptor. I'm pretty sure that all this takes longer than 15 months. Also No. 6 was working with Baltar long enough to help him write and test his navigation program then have the Admiralty test it to their satisfaction and upgrade all the Colonial military hardware with it. I rather think that took longer than 15 months. Then there is the time that it took Deanna (Lucy Lawless) to become established as a journalist. That most likely took longer than 15 months.

In other words the "I'm responsible" rap that Adama is singing doesn't hold water. The Cylons attacked because their "god" told them to destroy the flawed human race and start over. That is what every Cylon model we've seen to date has said and they don't seem to be lying.

Ron Moore's desire to "grey up" the moral landscape is an aspect of the show which has never really worked. What he really needs to do is answer, or at least begin to answer, the $64,000.00 question of the entire series.

Who told the Cylons what "god" wanted them to do?

What happens when you tell the cops to f**k off

Stop the ACLU has a YouTube video of an incident at the UCLA library in which an Arab student refused to produce his school ID when asked by campus police. The ID checks are routine at that time of night so the student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, was not being singled out.

After being told repeatedly to stand up by the officers Mr. Tabatabainejad said "f**k you" to the cops and continued to refuse to cooperate. The police, after warning Tabatabainejad that they would use a Taser on him if he didn't comply with their instructions Tasered him.

Of course a crowd of useless student trash gathered around demanding to know the officer's names and badge numbers (here is a clue - the badge number is stamped on the badge and the officer's name is on a nameplate on the front of his uniform, usually under the badge).

The ACLU and terrorist front organization CAIR are both demanding investigations.

Of course there will be investigations and the careers of the police officers are most likely over, even though they didn't do anything wrong.

Here are some tips for sane people when they have encounters with the police.

1. If they ask for your ID, show it to them. Even if you don't think they have the right to ask for it still show it to them.

2. If they tell you to stand then stand. Even if you don't think they have the right to ask you to stand; stand anyway.

3. If they intend to take you into custody cooperate even if they want to handcuff you. Do not resist.

If you have been wrongly arrested or harassed the place to establish this is in court with a lawyer to speak for you. If you resist you will be hit or Tasered and arrested.

Personally I miss the days when a person who mouthed off to cops who were just doing their jobs was beat around the head and shoulders until you could no longer tell his true skin color for all the blood. Then he was thrown into a cell down at the Sheriff's Dept. or police station where the officers who run the jail got to work on him for the night. The next day he would be taken before the judge where hizzhonor would see one large walking bruise, missing several teeth and most likely peeing blood, stand before him and hear all about how he broke from the booking officer and tried to run away, only to fall down a long flight of metal stairs onto a concrete floor. The judge would tell the SOB that he was lucky to be alive and let him off with a fine.

Ah, as Chairman Jeff was fond of saying, "The past is another country. They do things differently there".

What is at stake

From The Washington Post:

The weekend after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, Kenneth Adelman and a couple of other promoters of the Iraq war gathered at Vice President Cheney's residence to celebrate. The invasion had been the "cakewalk" Adelman predicted. Cheney and his guests raised their glasses, toasting President Bush and victory. "It was a euphoric moment," Adelman recalled.

Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling-out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that "the president is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls "the debacle that was Iraq."

IF Iraq is a failure then the blame, as Charles Krauthammer recently pointed out, belongs to the Iraqis themselves. If democracy in Iraq fails it will be because the Iraqi people could not rise above their sectarian or tribal allegiances and form a national identity.

The arrogance of the American mindset often dances on the borderline between the comic and the tragic. The cycles of solar activity lead to a small increase in temperature on earth and it must be because we drive Explorers. The lack of sunlight over the South Pole during winter leads to a thinning of the ozone layer (which is formed by ultraviolet light from the sun) and it must be because we use too much hairspray. The freely elected Iraqi government will not do what must be done to bring order to the nation and it must be because the US Did or didn't (insert your favorite Iraq War criticism).

I'm not saying that there isn't more that the US could do. There has to be some way we could get Turkey to sign off on partitioning Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish zones. We could also tell the al-Maliki government that we are going to bring in a great many more troops and take whatever actions we deem necessary to disarm the militias and arrest their leaders and that if he doesn't sign off on it that he will find himself twisting in the breeze without any American support whatsoever.

Of course everything depends on what the new congress decides to do. If they are going to cut and run then the sooner the better. There is no point in sticking around for another six months and taking another six months worth of casualties while we search for a public relations formula that will allow us to "declare victory and leave", only to see the nation dissolve into civil war.

If the Democrats are determined to leave before some kind of stability has been brought to Iraq then we should just get out and let whatever is going to happen happen.

If we choose to do that, however, we should do it in the full knowledge of what the likely outcome will be. What we will wind up with, after a great deal of bloodshed and $90.00 per barrel oil, is a militant Shiite government in Baghdad which will be closely aligned with Tehran.

Together this Shiite axis of evil will control the largest and best equipped military in the Muslim world (and the largest and most powerful in the Middle East except for Israel) and will soon be nuclear armed. They will also control around half of the world's proven oil reserves and some petroleum geologists believe that Iraq possesses greater reserves than Saudi Arabia, but they have not yet been proven.

The first result of this alignment (other than $110.00 per barrel oil) would be to bring Europe openly into alliance with the radical Islamofascists. The next result would be to bring China, whose appetite for oil is only going to grow, more fully into partnership with the Islamic world. With both Western European technology and Chinese manufacturing capacity feeding the Jihadist war machine a radical change in the world's balance of power will leave the United States much more isolated and threatened than it currently is.

To avoid this outcome is worth spending a great deal of both blood and treasure, however it will require the new Democrat leadership to be willing to bitterly disappoint the George Soros/dailykos lunatic fringe of their party and continue slogging ahead in Iraq, because right now that is the key to everything.