Slouching toward extinction

Paul Belien notes a disturbing fact in a post to The Brussels Journal:

Most popular name for newborn boys in Brussels, the “capital of Europe,” in 2005: Mohamed, followed by Adam, Ayoub, Rayan and Mehdi.

Of course this indicates that the majority of babies being born in Brussels are being born to Muslim parents. And we know that the Muslim population in Belgium, as in every other European nation, is unassimilated for the most part. The Muslim population of Europe is, again for the most part, hostile to the nations which have take them in and given them access to a quality of life that they simply could not have dreamed of in their ancestral homelands.

The above bit of data also points up another disturbing fact. That the native populations of Europe are not reproducing at a rate sufficient to replace themselves.

The are several reasons for a society to experience a decline in its birthrate. One is that when a society reaches a certain point of stability and prosperity that doors of possibility are opened up for the citizens. People simply have too much to do, too many things to experience to tie themselves down for years changing diapers and answering an endless series of "why, why why" questions.

Another reason, one on the opposite end of the scale, is that the people have lost hope for a better future. When Robert A Heinlein and his wife visited the Soviet Union in the early sixties Mrs. Heinlein, who had become proficient in Russian in preparation for their trip, made it a point to strike up conversations with as many of the ordinary people they encountered as she could. One of the questions she always made a point of asking people was about their families, children, grandchildren, siblings and so on.

Based on her data sample she calculated (she was a mathematician) that the Russians were not reproducing at the replacement rate. The people had been ground down under totalitarian communism to the point where they simply gave up. More and more of them reached the subconscious conclusion that it was better to end the line here and now rather than give another generation to the State to further grind down.

In the case of Western Europe I would guess that a combination of both factors are at work. On the one hand the comfort of their cradle-to-grave welfare states and their surplus of leisure time (35 hour work weeks and 2 full months of paid vacation every year) along with government subsidized contraception and abortion make having children an easily avoided distraction from all of the interesting and fun things they could otherwise be doing.

On the other hand the "one-two punch" of the loss of their traditional Christian faith, which has been replaced with the "dry wells" of socialism and scientism, and the rise of moral relativism and multiculturalism, which feed on the "White guilt" of their colonial past, have robbed them of any real hope for the future.

These two factors cooperate to produce slow motion cultural suicide. To people in the grip of this mindset the Muslim minority (soon to grow into a majority) within their borders is not a malignancy to be excised, but the elemental force of History which cannot be resisted but only submitted to.

Speaking truth to hustlers

Heather Mac Donald has an excellent essay up on the City Journal website about the police shooting of Sean Bell outside a strip club last month. In it she offers this advice to the Black "community leaders" who have summarily found the police officers guilty of first degree murder:

If the city’s black advocates paid even a tiny fraction of the attention they pay to shootings by criminals as they pay to shootings by police, they could change the face of the city. If demonstrators gathered outside the jail cell of every rapist and teen stick-up thug, cameras in tow, to shame them for their attacks on law-abiding minority residents, they could deglamorize the gangsta life. Think you’ll find Sharpton or Barron patrolling with the police in dark housing project stairways, trying to protect residents from predators? Not a chance. Among the crimes committed in minority communities since last week’s police shooting of Sean Bell there has been a 26-year-old man fatally shot in the Bronx; another man hit by stray bullets; a sandwich shop in Brownsville robbed by thugs who fired a gun; and three elderly men robbed at knifepoint by a parolee in Queens. Those minority victims who survived will have to rely on the police and the courts, not the race “advocates,” for vindication.

There is, of course, no chance whatsoever that detestable oxygen thieves like Sharpton, Jackson or Barron will do anything that could be remotely helpful. To actually fix the problems in the Black community would deprive them of their power base.

To see how the other Black "leaders" would react to any sane suggestion of how the Black community could reform itself and end its misery just look at what happened to Bill Cosby back in 2004 when he dared to stand up in a public forum and tell the truth.

Tonight's Christmas Music

This is Trans-Siberian Orchestra performing This Christmas Day from the Christmas Eve & Other Stories CD.

This video was filmed at a concert at Madison Square Garden in 2005.

Battlestar Galactica

Last night's episode of Battlestar Galactica was perhaps the weakest episode of the series to date. The premise was that the fleet's food supply had become tainted by some unspecified contaminant and had to be discarded. A new source of protein (algae) was discovered on the moon of a ringed gas giant, however harvesting it was a problem.

To get to the algae the fleet would be required to jump through a "star cluster" with intense radiation which would scramble the ship's navigational instruments and light so bright that the pilots would become disoriented. The fleet could not jump to the other end of the cluster because it was too far and they could not go around for the same reason. They would have to jump into the cluster then jump out of it. However estimates were that the radiation would kill 80% of the people on the fleet.

The plan they came up with involved breaking the fleet up into 5 groups and having a Raptor jump with each ship, giving it the jump coordinates to get it out of the cluster. It seems that the Raptor's electronics are hardened for nuclear war and can withstand the radiation from the "cluster". Each civilian ship would off load its passengers and most of its crew to the Galactica, whose shielding would protect the people from the radiation.

The problems with this episode do not begin here, but here is were we will begin to discuss them. The Raptors were all flown by Viper pilots, except for the one flown by Helo (a Raptor's electronic systems officer the last time we checked - not a pilot). Apparently the Raptor pilots, whose job, among other things, is to accompany squadrons of Vipers and doing their navigation for them as well as providing ECM and ECCM support, were not up to the task of providing navigational data to civilian ships.

Each pilot was given a dosimeter to monitor their exposure to radiation. Each pilot was expected to make every crossing, meaning that they would have to make 10 jumps through the cluster. Why these five and only these five pilots could fly the missions is never revealed.

The crossing is made and only one or two ships is lost. However on the last crossing Cat loses contact with her ship and remains behind to search for it. She finds it and brings it safely to the other side, but takes a lethal dose of radiation.

The episode had a subplot involving Cat's past. It seems that before the Cylon attack on the Colonies she was a smuggler, a "trucker" in Colonial slang. She and her partner would run drugs and other contraband - including people (including, possibly, Cylon infiltration agents) from the outer Colonies to the inner worlds, including Caprica. After the attack she used the name of someone who had died shortly before the attack to get through the background checks and joined the Navy, becoming a Viper pilot.

What brought all this out was the fact that she ran across her old smuggling partner/lover when the civilians were brought on board the Galactica. Starbuck saw them arguing and did some digging and confronted Cat. Cat begged Starbuck to let her tell the Admiral herself rather than Starbuck blowing the whistle on her. This is what fed her suicidal desire to not leave a civilian ship behind.

The episode also developed the "Baltar on the basestar" arc with Baltar finding out that the Deanna (Lucy Lawless) model that he and Capricia 6 have been having threesomes with has been killing herself every day so that she can download. It seems that she has been "seeing things" on the cusp between life and death and is repeating the experience in an attempt to clearly remember and understand the experience.

Baltar believes that her experience may be the key to determining whether he is one of the "final five" Cylon models and is eager to help her remember. He conceives of the idea of seeking help from the Hybrid (the humanoid Cylon hard-wired into the basestar serving as its intelligent control core). The Hybrid gives them clues which may point the way to Earth and may also suggest that there is a linkage between the Cylon's monotheistic god and the pagan pantheon of the Colonists.

Perhaps this answers the question that has been plaguing me since the first episode of the mini-series. Who the frak told the Cylons that there was only one god and what his will for them was. Maybe it was the Hybrids.

The biggest problem with this episode is the implausibility of the whole premise. A "star cluster" is nothing more than an unusually dense group of stars. But even in and "unusually dense" group of stars the stars are still light-years apart. Otherwise the cluster would collapse into a black hole. The only place in the real universe where the conditions of superheated plasma and intense radiation could be found is in a stellar nursery and then only in the collapsing cloud of gas and dust which is becoming a star.

However these protostars would have to be light-years apart (see the above part about turning into a black hole). Even if the whole super super dust cloud which was giving birth to the stars was illuminated it would not all be super-charged. It should not have been difficult for the ships of the fleet to jump into a stable part of the area. Stellar nurseries are also not all that large on the galactic scale. Ships that are expected to be able to navigate across the entire galaxy to find Earth should have been able to go around it easily. After all the ships of the fleet were able to make jumps every 36 minutes for around a week during the first season.

Basically the set-up for this episode was highly contrived and unrealistic. Clearly the writers and producers simply wanted an excuse to have the fleet make a dangerous passage with some losses to remind the viewers how grim and realistic the show is and to set up Cat's heroic death.

Given the political points that the show has been making this season I'm surprised that they weren't able to work in the fact that Cat was an illegal alien. I don't know if this episode's poor quality was due to the influence of NBC and their hand-puppet Bonnie Hammer, who now runs the Sci-fi Channel, or if Ron Moore simply doesn't care any more because he knows that this is the last season in which he will have any meaningful control over the show.

Either option doesn't bode well for the future of the series.

Some Europeans have balls

This video is of a group of Danes pouring pig's blood on the soil of the lot in which a mosque is scheduled to be built.

The theory is that the Muslims will not be able to build on a site defiled with unclean pig's blood.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, RIP

WASHINGTON (AP) - Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, an unabashed apostle of Reagan era conservatism and the first woman U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has died.

The death of the 80-year-old Kirkpatrick, who began her public life as a Hubert Humphrey Democrat, was announced Friday at the senior staff meeting of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

Spokesman Richard Grenell said that Ambassador John Bolton asked for a moment of silence. An announcement of her death also was posted on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-oriented think tank here where she was a senior fellow.

Kirkpatrick's assistant, Andrea Harrington, said that she died in her sleep at home in Bethesda, Md. late Thursday. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was the John Bolton of the Reagan era. Except in that time the Democrat Party had not gone completely insane so she was able to get Senate confirmation.

Ms. Kirkpatrick had the intelligence, and more importantly the wisdom, to see the truth and the courage to speak it without fear of consequence.

She will be missed. We need her kind now more than ever.

Tonight's music video

Tonight's video is another Celtic Woman number. This is Orlagh Fallon singing Siuil a run (Walk O Love).

The chorus is: Siuil, siuil, siul a run / Siuil go sochair agus siuil go ciuinSiuil / go doras agus ealaigh lion / Is go dte tu mo mhuirnin slan

Translation : Walk, walk, walk, O love / Walk quickly to me, softly move / Walk to the door, and away we'll flee / And safe may my darling be.

The song is about a young Irish woman whose lover has gone to make his fortune in France as a mercenary. She believes that there is little chance that she will see him again.

Another blog in the Ecosystem

Another international blog joins the Hillbilly Ecosystem. Camelot Destra Ideale comes to us all the way from warm and sunny Italy. The land of rich history, beautiful scenery, even more beautiful woman, fine wines and the best food in the world.

Go check them out and bid them welcome.

The closing of an era

From The New York Times:

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii, Dec. 7 — Since that terrible morning 65 years ago, the survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor have been called heroes, V.I.P.’s of the greatest generation, and the first American witnesses to the last world war. But more and more, the members of this exclusive group are being called something else: endangered.

With age and aching joints slowing even the most hardy of old sailors, marines and airmen, the major national survivors group has decided this year’s anniversary gathering will be its last in Hawaii.

“We’re getting about as extinct as the dodo bird,” said Mal Middlesworth, the president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, which traditionally meets here every five years. “The way it’s going, our next national convention here we could hold in a phone booth.”

This is so very sad. Time is a juggernaut which grinds down everything in its path. The generation which defeated the Axis and saved civilization is disappearing. I count myself extraordinarily lucky to have known my grandparents and had decades with them. They who had living memory of the Wright Brother's first flight, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the crash of '29, Pearl Harbor and VJ day.

These men and women saved the future.

Bush still has a spine, maybe

From The Washington Post:

President Bush vowed yesterday to come up with "a new strategy" in Iraq but expressed little enthusiasm for the central ideas of a bipartisan commission that advised him to ratchet back the U.S. military commitment in Iraq and launch an aggressive new diplomatic effort in the region.

On the day after the congressionally chartered Iraq Study Group released its widely anticipated report, much of Washington maneuvered to pick out the parts they like and pick apart those they do not. The report's authors were greeted with skepticism on Capitol Hill, and Democratic leaders used the occasion to press Bush to change course without embracing the commission's particular recipe themselves.

The group's 96-page report roiled some in the Middle East, particularly Israel, which rejected proposals for concessions to Syria. And it drew fire from current and former U.S. officials who called its diplomacy ideas unrealistic, unattainable and even misguided. The U.S. ground commander in Iraq, while welcoming the report's broad principles, warned that meeting its goal of withdrawing combat units by early 2008 could prove to "be very problematic."

On the day of the report's release I remember that the consensus on talk radio and the blogs seemed to be that Bush would accept the report and agree to implement all of its provisions. Which would have been a disaster because the Iraq Surrender Group's recommendations boil down to "surrender a little bit slower than the Democrats want to and as an afterthought destroy Israel too".

I am glad to see that the pundits were wrong this time. Cutting and running from Iraq would be an open invitation to every Islamofascist and Third World dictator to run wild.

The reason that Osama bin Laden thought that he could get away with 9/11 is because:

• The bombing of the USS Cole was treated as a law enforcement problem.
• The first World Trade Center bombing was treated as a law enforcement problem with Clinton even going on TV and urging the people "not to overreact".
• Bill Clinton responded to Saddam Hussein's dispatching of an assassination squad to murder George H W Bush in his usual way by firing a few cruise missiles at targets of absolutely no consequence.
• George H W Bush failed to send his forces into Baghdad in the first Gulf War and remove Saddam then.
• Jimmy Carter's entire reaction to the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis.
• And finally, the beginning of our nation's long slide into the graveyard of history the betrayal and abandonment of South Vietnam by a Democrat dominated congress.

Given all of these points Osama would have been stupid NOT to think that America's response to 9/11 would be to rage and roar for a bit then fire off some cruise missiles at empty patches of desert and then cut and run from the region, leaving Israel and Saudi Arabia twisting in the breeze behind us.

If we leave Iraq now or any time before the situation has stabilized with a pro-US Iraqi government firmly in control of the situation we tell the entire planet that Osama bin Laden was, for the most part right. We tell the world that to defeat the United States you do not have to beat our Army on the field of battle. To beat the US all you need to do is cause a trickle of death. A few bodies here, a few explosions there kept up over a few years and the American will to resist evaporates like the morning dew.

If we leave Iraq now the trickle of death will follow us home. A car bomb in Chicago today, a suicide bomber in the Asheville Mall tomorrow, a freeway overpass sniper in Atlanta next week. On and on for years with the expectation that sooner or later America will give the Muslims what they want.

And if the history of the past few decades is any guide - we will.

Tonight's music video

This is another video from Celtic Woman. This is Mairead Nesbitt preforming The Butterfly.

This performance is from The Celtic Woman DVD.

65 Years Ago Today

The Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack upon the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Here we see the USS Arizona burning.

This is the destroyer USS Shaw at the moment when its main magazine blew up, destroying the ship.

This is the USS Nevada silhouetted against the burning USS Shaw.

Her crew abandons the sinking battleship USS California.

After Pearl Harbor the United States converted its economy to a total war footing and put 16 million men under arms (when the population was only a little more than half of what it is today). We went to war with the intention of crushing our enemies and would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender.

The nation entered the war with the willingness to spend whatever price in blood and treasure was necessary and to take however long was necessary to win a total victory over our enemies.

Enemy soldiers captured on the battlefield were placed into POW camps without the right to legal counsel or hearings in US courts. Unlawful combatants, those not wearing uniforms and not obeying the rules of warfare, were shot on sight.

When victory was achieved the Allied powers set about reconstructing the societies of the vanquished Axis nations. In the case of Japan they were forced to make significant changes to their national religion.

All of this was accomplished by a nation which was caught in the grip of a severe economic depression at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Today the United States is nearly twice as populous as it was in 1941. We are orders of magnitude more wealthy and productive. Our military is the most powerful fighting force in the history of the world. It is better armed and trained than any other fighting force on the planet. Our military is so powerful, due to our advanced technology, that an army of 100000 today can do what it took millions to do 65 years ago.

Our nation is so wealthy and powerful that we can keep a large army in the field fighting indeffinately without our civilian population having to give up so much as one PS3 or iPod.

Yet today our nation is engaged in a life-or-death struggle against an enemy as malignant and evil as any we have ever faced and our people cannot be bothered to sustain the effort when the only price most of us have to pay is watching some highly biased mainstream news reporting which makes us feel uncomfortable.

Why is it that we who have so much more than those who came before us are so much less than they were?

Guys, don't forget the object is to WIN

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — In 142 stark pages, the Iraq Study Group report makes an impassioned plea for bipartisan consensus on the most divisive foreign policy issue of this generation. Without President Bush, that cannot happen.

The commissioners gave a nod to Mr. Bush, adopting his language in accepting the goal of an Iraq that can “govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.” But the administration’s talk of Iraq as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East is absent, as is any talk of victory.

Instead, the report confronts the president with a powerful argument that his policy in Iraq is not working and that he must move toward disengagement. For Mr. Bush to embrace the study group’s blueprint would mean accepting its implicit criticism of his democracy agenda, reversing course in Iraq and throughout the Middle East and meeting Democrats more than halfway.

Assuming he is not ready to go that far, despite some recent signals of flexibility, he faces the more general question of whether he is ready to embrace the spirit of the report —

Let us hope not. The work of what has come to be called the "Iraq Surrender Group" is deeply flawed. While there are some (a very few) good suggestions in the report the primary effect of adopting its recommendations would be to tell every Islamofascist terrorist and state terrorist sponsor to keep doing exactly what they have been doing, because it is producing victory.

While Mr. Bush will have to face the fact that Islam is not a "religion of peace" and that Arab/Muslim culture really is inferior to Western culture and unable to sustain true Western-style democracy it is still very possible to build a somewhat democratic system around a strong president.

The path to VICTORY in Iraq is admitting that European parlimentary democracy is not working and cannot work in a nation as fractured along tribal, ethnic and sectarian lines as Iraq. The current constitution needs to be modified to reform the government into a presidential system. The chief executive needs broad powers at the best of times with the elected legislature being able to grant him nearly dictatorial authority for a limited time during emergencies.

We then need to find a smart and tough and throughly Western leaning Iraqi to install as the first president and then devote the entire weight of the Iraqi and US military forces to sealing the borders with Iran and Syria and crushing the sectarian militis, Ba'ath bitter-enders and outside terrorist groups.

And by all means hurry up and hang Saddam. Seeing him swing will take the wind out of at least some of the "insurgency's" sails.

leaving the sinking ship

From The Washington Post:

A veteran Middle East scholar affiliated with the Carter Center in Atlanta resigned his position there Monday in an escalating controversy over former president Jimmy Carter's bestselling book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," traces the ups and downs of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process beginning with Carter's 1977-1980 presidency and the historic peace accord he negotiated between Israel and Egypt and continuing to the present. Although it apportions blame to Israel, the Palestinians and outside parties -- including the United States -- for the failure of decades of peace efforts, it is sharply critical of Israeli policy and concludes that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land."

Kenneth W. Stein, a professor at Emory University, accused Carter of factual errors, omissions and plagiarism in the book. "Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information," Stein wrote in a harshly worded e-mail to friends and colleagues explaining his resignation as the center's Middle East fellow.

It is just possible that this wretched book will be Carter's downfall. The lunatic fringe Krazy Kos Kids will never abandon him since the same moronic anti-Semitism that Carter spews is what motivates them. However the more mainstream Democrats understand that they at least have to pretend to not be neo-Nazis.

If the mainstream media detect that a tipping point has been reached they will throw Carter to the wolves and never look back. What will be priceless is the look on his face when he realizes that he's standing out there all alone.

Brokeback Galactica

Just don't be drinking your morning coffee while you watch this.

Tonight's music video

My first experience with a PBS fundraiser was about 27 years ago. I had just gotten cable TV and was channel surfing when I came across an episode of Dr. Who (with Tom Baker). I had never seen the Dr. before and liked it. After the episode was over the student volunteers from the University of North Carolina came on and said that if we liked Dr. Who we had better pony up some cash or he would be going away.

I was reminded of the National Lampoon cover with the picture of the cute dog with the gun to its head and the caption "buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog".

The next PBS fundraiser I saw was many years later when they were showing Riverdance. Then next year it was the All Star Bluegrass Celebration and after that Celtic Woman and tonight I see they are showing Celtic Woman: A New Journey.

Then a few years ago I tuned in when they weren't begging for money and I saw a naked black dude dancing to the refrain, "niggers and queers, niggers and queers".

Here is a word of advice to the good folks over at Public Television. More sublimely beautiful women with ethereally beautiful voices singing beautiful and uplifting songs and less "niggers and queers" and you won't have to beg for money. People will be lining up to fund you.

Which brings us to tonight's music video. This is Chloe Agnew singing Walking In The Air from the first Celtic Woman DVD.

I hope you enjoy this because youtube has several more Celtic Woman videos and I plan to show them all.

The purpose driven scam

In case anyone has ever wondered this is why I have never trusted Rick Warren.

From The American Spectator:

. . . Rick Warren, best-selling author of The Purpose-Driven Life, who is pastor of a large congregation in Lake Forest, California. The members of his flock number in the thousands. When Warren invites a speaker to man his pulpit, he is giving that person a huge endorsement within the evangelical community. Recently, he asked Senator Barack Obama of Illinois to address his parishioners on the subject of AIDS in Africa.

Many of Warren's coreligionists, along with prominent figures in the pro-life movement, have appealed to him to rescind his invitation. They point to the fact that Obama has not only been consistently pro-abortion, he even fought a law preventing children born alive in aborted abortions from being starved to death. Nightline asked Warren about that on the air, and he explained we must fight people where we disagree with them and work with them where there is common ground.

So the debate is framed for all denizens of TV Land. One side holds that being pro-abortion marks you as a pariah while the other believes in a more inclusive approach allowing for consensus-building and bipartisanship for the benefit of humankind. And you, dear viewer, can choose what side you're on. There is only one problem here; namely, the abortion issue is so far off-subject of Obama's appearance, it turns into nitpicking from left field. The flaw in the Warren-Obama love affair is its inherent ludicrous fraudulence.

Ask yourself this: what does Sen. Obama know about AIDS in Africa that you and I don't know? He has never done anything significant on the subject or studied it in some unique way. Sen. Frist, on the other hand, has spent extensive volunteer time there as a doctor treating actual patients. If the goal is to gain substantive knowledge and experiential insight, Frist is the man to hear, not Obama. All Obama will do is have a few of his aides throw together some stats anyone could get in five minutes on Google.

Why then Obama? Answer: for a series of reasons ranging from the cowardly to the cynical, all of them stylistic rather than substantive. 1) He is black, Frist is not. 2) He is a Democrat, Frist is not. 3) He has an African name, never mind his white mother and Harvard education. 4) He is a media darling, unlike Frist, whose volunteer work in Africa has never registered on the media radar screen.

In short, Rick Warren is pandering to a bunch of left-wing interest groups. If he wanted to engage Obama in a real quest to break new ground in working across the American cultural divide for meaningful goals, he could have asked him to come with a platform of new ideas how to help urban kids out of poverty. I would have liked to hear that address myself.

A very ill wind

A reader commented on the post about NYC's trans-fat ban that it was OK with him because taxpayers foot the bill for poor people who eat junk food and have health problems.

People down through history have noted that even very bad things can have some good side effects. Sayings like "it's an ill wind that blows no good" and "every dark cloud has a silver lining" express this observation.

I have often thought that the good unintended consequence of evil things like the war on tobacco and now trans-fats and junk food in general will be the collapse of the welfare state. You see the longer people live the more health care costs they rack up. A middle-aged man dying of lung cancer in his 50's will cost the taxpayers much less than an old person dying of old age related causes in his 80's.

I know that will be hard for a lot of people to believe, but it is absolutely true. When you figure in the cost of social security and medical care for a person living into his 80's the amount dwarfs the amount needed to provide medical care for a cancer patient or diabetic who clocks out young.

As things stand now within about 35-40 years the costs of social security and medicare will consume the entire federal budget. There won't be one dime left over for defense, law enforcement, parks, libraries, education, salaries of government workers or any other propose.

In order to fund the care of the old folks the bottom tax rate will have to be jacked up to something like 80-85%. Let me be clear about this. I'm not talking about the top rate charged to the "rich" but the bottom rate charged to the working stiffs.

The people will not put up with this. They will just stop paying. The whole social security ponzi scheme will collapse like the house of cards that it is.

It is for this reason that I have maintained that the most subversive, anti-government act that a person can commit is to stop smoking, lay off the Big Macs and get in shape. If massive numbers of people start living decades longer the cost to government will skyrocket much quicker than the current projections and bring the system down in 10-15 years instead of 35 or so.

Of course none of this addresses the issue of simple human freedom. If a restaurant owner wishes to serve food loaded with trans-fats, sugar or any other substance frowned upon by the health-Nazis and if customers freely choose to eat such food it is nobodies damn business - certainly not the government's. OR, if a bar or restaurant owner wishes to serve the niche market of people who wish to smoke while they eat it should not be anybody else's damn business either.

But the government isn't content to allow people to live their lives as they please, assume the risks associated with their choices and bear the consequences of those actions. The State, or rather the totalitarian leftists who are attracted to careers in the government, first assume the costs of people's unwise decisions and then criminalize those decisions, using the costs which it has voluntarily assumed as justification.

My answer to that is to stop government from underwriting people's stupidity. Do not take one penny of taxpayer money to pay the costs of someone's health care and allow insurance companies to charge people based on the true risk they assume in insuring them. That means that smokers or overweight people pay more for insurance or do without. And if they get sick then let them pay the costs out of their own pocket or seek a charity hospital funded by private donations.

New Ecosystem Member!

Allen Patterson has joined the Hillbilly Ecosystem. He has a darned fine blog and I urge you all to go over and pay him a visit. Leave a comment or two welcoming him to the family.

How are we going to free the Middle East

if we can't even keep our own freedom?

From The New York Times:

The New York City Board of Health voted yesterday to adopt the nation’s first major municipal ban on the use of all but tiny amounts of artificial trans fats in restaurant cooking, a move that would radically transform the way food is prepared in thousands of restaurants, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to Chinese take-outs.

That's OK with me! Fry my eggs in butter and make my biscuits with pure hog lard!

Of course this is evil. The next step will be mandatory gym memberships with reports of every citizen's participation in exercise programs, along with mandatory doctor visits being filed with the City's health department.

Think that's ridiculous? Think I'm using hyperbole? Go back to the New York City of 1960 and ask the people what they would think of a ban on smoking in bars and a ban on restaruants cooking with Crisco.

The camel's nose made it into the tent a long time ago and now his front legs are inside with his hump brushing the entrence as we speak.

Thanks for nothing guys

From The Washington Post:

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group plans to recommend to President Bush that he threaten to reduce economic and military support for Iraq's government if it fails to meet specific benchmarks intended to improve security in the country, a source familiar with the report said yesterday.

The congressionally chartered panel, which is due to deliver its much-anticipated report to Bush at the White House this morning and then unveil it to the public, outlined diplomatic and military ideas intended to change the course of the 44-month-old war. Among other things, the source said, the report urges Bush to aggressively tackle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to reduce the broader regional tensions fueling the Iraq conflict.

The latest details to emerge from the commission's report help flesh out a plan that also calls for the United States to withdraw nearly all combat units by early 2008 while leaving behind tens of thousands of troops to advise, train and embed with Iraqi forces. The report suggests that the Bush administration open talks with Iran and Syria about ways to end the violence in Iraq and proposes holding a regional conference to bring together all of Iraq's neighbors.

There is a great deal here to disagree with. First of all the Israeli-Palestinian "dispute" is not a factor in Iraq. If the Jews of Israel packed up and moved back to Europe and America that would not make the Islamofascists suddenly willing to tolerate a pro-Western democracy in Iraq. They hate Israel because it is a free Western-style state in the Middle East. If we are successful in turning Iraq into another free Western-style state the Jihadists will hate it just as much as they currently hate Israel.

Second, "opening talks" with Iran and Syria makes as much sense as the US government negotiating with the leaders of MS-13 about ways to reduce gang violence in our cities. Iran and Syria are the totalitarian outlaw-states which are the primary cause of the problems in Iraq. If they were not providing funding, training, weapons and explosives and safe passage across their borders to the terrorists in Iraq the "insurgency" would have ended long ago.

Talking to terrorist states like Iran and Syria only legitimizes them, increases their stature in the region and encourages them to keep sponsoring more terrorism (since it is already working so well for them). If the US wants to get serious about doing something about Iran and its lapdog Syria (think of the relationship between John McCain and Lindsey Graham and you will understand the relationship between Iran and Syria) then we need to strip most of our military forces out of Europe (where they are no longer needed to deter a Soviet invasion) and send them to the Iran/Iraq border.

There they need to begin very visible training for an invasion of Iran. This will send the only message that they are capable of understanding that we are serious about doing something about their interference in Iraq and their nuclear weapons program.

Of course the threat of force is useless unless there is a willingness to use force so we must be prepared to go through with the invasion if there is not a rapid change in both their retoric and their behavior.

There is, however, one thing in the Study Group report which I must agree with:

An early working draft from July stated that "there is even doubt that any level of resources could achieve the administration's stated goals, given the illiberal and undemocratic political forces, many of them Islamic fundamentalists, that will dominate large parts of the country for a long time."

It is an unfortunate fact that the culture of Iraq has been indelibly stamped with the influence of the greater Arab/Muslim culture of the region. This makes the Iraqi people unable to implement a genuinely tolerant, pluralistic, secular and democratic society and government. This isn't to say that they will never be able to do this, but it is going to take time. Remember how long it took the West to get from Athens to Philadelphia.

The bottom line is that the Iraq Study Group is made up of a bunch of political dinosaurs (not one career military person is a part of the group) who want to continue the failed policies which allowed the Middle East to degenerate into the snake-pit which it is today.

Some people have

Way too much time on their hands:




Apparently the big thing now is to sync your Christmas lights to music. This house is set up with a Trans-Syberian Orchestra number.

A video about the imams

This video was put together in response to the "Inmam Incident" If you are registered at YouTube go give it a hight rating because the left and their allies the jihadists are trying to drive down the rating and bury it.

In related news New Line Cinema has signed a deal to make a movie about the incident. Samuel L Jackson will star and the picture's tag line will be "I'm sick of these motherf**king imams on this motherf**king plane!

And in Hell Goebbels smiles

In today's Front Page Magazine we read of Iran's upcoming conference on the Holocaust, or rather Holocaust denial:

Iran, which has often proclaimed its intent to carry out a second Holocaust, this time against the Jews concentrated in Israel, will be holding a Holocaust-denial conference on December 11-12.

A certain illogic is evident: if you yourself find Jews so loathsome that you seek to exterminate them, why is it implausible that someone else should have had the same idea and acted on it, especially when so many people including all reputable historians say that is exactly what happened just six decades ago?

The illogic is compounded by the fact that just last August Teheran held an international Holocaust-cartoon contest in which the allegedly fictitious event served as material for the cartoonists’ creations.

[. . .]

Teheran may now be the epicenter of such attitudes, but they radiate extensively from it to the Arab and Muslim worlds and beyond. In Europe, where Holocaust denial is still mostly considered in poor taste, the impatience with Israel’s continued existence is very much in vogue as seen, for instance, in a recent BBC symposium on whether Israel will continue to exist in fifty years, or in the poll of EU countries three years ago that ranked Israel “the greatest danger to world peace.” In America, prestigious scholars and former top officials push the view that Israel is (with its supporters) the crux of America’s foreign policy problems and the cause of the world jihad movement.

This rising anti-Semitism which is becoming dominant in the nations of Europe and is finding itself more and more at home in the American left poses twin problems.

One, it is odius and evil in and of itself. People holding such views remove themselves from a place at the table of civilized humanity and align themselves with the world's oxygen thieves.

Two, and most important, it makes them the natural allies of the Islamofascists (other oxygen thieves) in the great World War whose opening battles we are currently fighting. If the West, which is the only cultural force on earth that can A, stand up to the Global Jihad and B, leave a world worth living in after victory, finds itself in agreement with the savages on such a fundamental doctrine then how will we summon the will to endure the pain, make the sacrifices and shed the ocean of blood that will be necessary to bring about victory?

I'm afraid that I can't argue with the aritcle's conclusion:

After not-quite six decades, the world, apart from still-substantial support in America and a few pockets of it elsewhere, has pretty much had it with the Jewish state and is content to trade or endlessly negotiate with Iran as it quite openly and brazenly pursues that state’s destruction. The depth of such animosity lies beyond psychological conjecture.

Why we fight

From The Washington Post:

KABUL -- The room was carpeted and cozy, warm from the wood stove and filled with the chatter of children. But the tales their mothers and older sisters told recently, speaking hesitantly even in the safety of a guarded private shelter, were bone-chilling.

Sahara, an angelic-looking young woman, said she was forcibly married at 11, widowed at 12 and kept as a virtual slave by her in-laws for the next eight years. Unable to endure more beatings, she slipped away early one morning, walked for two days and nights and finally ventured into a police station to ask for help.

Gulshan, a mother of three with a permanently worried look, said she was falsely accused of murdering her husband after he had an affair with her sister. She was sentenced to five years in jail, and her husband's brothers vowed to kill her upon her release. Under the law, they may also take custody of her small children, who are hidden with her at the shelter.

"They said I killed my husband, but I am very sad he died, even though he had a bad friendship with my sister," Gulshan said. "I need him, because of the children. Now I am alone in life, and in this society a woman alone is less than nothing."

Until recently, most of the 20 women at the shelter would probably have been either dead or in prison, hunted down by male relatives seeking revenge or hit with criminal charges for actions that would not be illegal in the West, such as eloping with a boyfriend or fleeing an abusive husband. Some might have committed suicide by burning themselves, as hundreds of desperate Afghan girls and women have done in the past several years.

Take a good look. This is Islam, stripped down to its essence and laid out for the world to see. This is the enemy. This is what we are fighting to rid the world of.

Any questions?

Taking our baby steps to the stars

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 — NASA announced plans on Monday for a permanent base on the Moon, to be started soon after astronauts return there around 2020.

The agency’s deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said.

Ms. Dale and other officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the agency envisioned a base at one of the lunar poles, to take advantage of the near-constant sunlight for solar power generation. It would have an “open architecture” design to which others could add the capabilities they want.

Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, said crews of four astronauts would make weeklong missions to the Moon starting around 2020.

I see that much is being made on talk radio and in the blogs about the fact that the return to the moon is going to take much longer than the original program which got us there in the first place.

The reason for that is simple. This time we are going there to stay and to accomplish something besides walking about and taking pictures (and leaving a few packages of scientific instruments almost as an afterthought). JFK's bold "we choose to go to the moon in this decade" was little more than a stunt to showcase American superiority over the Soviet Union. It worked and had the unintended side effect of advancing technology and returning a butt-load of money back into the economy.

The commercial development of the solar system will unlock wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, but getting there and building the infrastructure is going to be so expensive and risky that governments will have to be the ones to take the first steps.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is an exellent chance that none of this will happen. Plans made by government agencies for decades in the future are never written in stone. When the government finds that it needs billions of dollars to provide the social services of its new Mexican-American constituants things like space exploration and development will get bled white in a hurry.

Still it will be nice to dream about what might have been while we wile away the long hours in the trenches as we fight to keep the Army of The People's Republic of Aztlan from breaking through the Mississippi River defense line.

Tonight's music

Tonight's music is Trans-Siberian Orchestra performing Faith Noel. A box set of their three Christmas music CDs plus the DVD of The Ghosts of Christmas Eve are available. It is called the Christmas Trilogy.

A personal manifesto

Reader Syndi sent this in. It was written by a friend of hers who wishes it to be distributed.

The price of greatness is responsibility. If Americans continue in a mediocre station, absorbed by their own affairs and those of Britney Spears and other factors of no consequence, our nation will drift into obscurity.

There is no halting-place at this point in time. We have now reached a state in the journey with Islam where there can be no pause. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, what is impartial justice, what is personal freedom is a high regard especially among the weak. Confusion runs amok among society Americana. The empires of the future are empires of the mind. Too many bleed white with futile pacifism. Fewer among us will bear the burden and heat of the day and suffer under the flail of adversity.

Islam is our foe, whatever trappings or disguise it wears, whatever language it speaks or laws it uses against us. We must not let go of the securities we have found necessary to preserve our lives and liberties until we are quite sure we have something else to put in their place. More Americans need to become autodidacts -- read, investigate, and teach themselves about the ultimate intent of Islam's global plan. People will need to do this as our media outlets will never tell the brutal truth to sacrifice potential advertising revenue.

Enough of the "what is."

I remain steadfast in my belief we did not become what we are only to see Earth's envy slide into oblivion behind the Qur'an. The blood of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin implanted in each of us the molecule of greatness. Our "critical hour" has changed definition. Pearl Harbor was long ago and generations have forgotten what they could lose. Nothing will work soundly or for long without a united effort, and in that instant, we as a nation will rise to the full level of our duty and opportunity, convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its cause; remaining free of Islamic tyranny. Our nation is far from the gift of a common tongue; we are divided, but not hopelessly. I am optimistic that 19 year old video game addict can become a skilled soldier when his mother and sister are threatened.

What we can do -- is be the town crier; the news for our immediate sphere of influence. Use every opportunity to spread the word of Islam's intent for us: Conversion or death. Question their motives and actions. Make them and their "appeasers" accountable for statements. Take the argument back to THEM to show us the peace Islam purports to spread.

As for me; I know too much. I can no longer waste time or ink on anyone who cannot grasp our sovereignty is in danger. Soon, I will be targeted. They know I'm here.

I especially agree with the part about the need to educate ourselves about the true nature of Islam. I've been studying this for years and find myself having less and less patience with the "religion of peace" nonsense.

This just in

From The Washington Post:

WASHINGTON -- Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.

Bolton's nomination has languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a year, blocked by Democrats and several Republicans. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican who lost in the midterm elections Nov. 7 that swept Democrats to power in both houses of Congress, was adamantly opposed to Bolton.

Bolton is smart enough to know that now that the party which hates America and wants to see it destroyed is in control of the Senate that he has no chance of being confirmed.

It would be amusing if the President let the post go vacant unitl Congress went into recess again and then gave him another recess appointment, but I don't think Bush will go that route.

Just speculating. . .

This started me wondering where Americans could go after our new Democrat congress and our clueless President pass amnesty and open borders legislation next year.

From The Brussels Journal:


A quote from The Sunday Times [Johannesburg, South Africa], 26 November 2006

A report by Britain’s chief immigration think-tank, Migrationwatch, said more than 100,000 British-born Londoners have left the UK capital this year as immigrants stream into the city. Meanwhile, another report by private analysts predicts that the white exodus is set to accelerate further, and that London’s immigrant population will jump from 40% to 60% in just 12 years.

continue reading

There is always Canada. If every American who voted for the GOP in 2008 would liquidate their US assets and move to Canada our numbers would overwhelm the Canadian population. We could gain control of their parliment and repeal all of the socalism and turn Canada into a haven for laissez-fair capatialism. That giant sucking sound would be Free Canada pulling business away from the old United States.

Of course we would have to fortify our southern border. After the economy of the United States equalizes with that of Mexico (on a level slightly higher than Mexico's is now) the great northern migration will want to continue.

This will require Free Canada to erect a wall from the Atlantic to the Pacific unless it wants to avoid the fate of Old America. Part of the border between Alaska and the Yukon Territory would also have to be fortified, but I think most of that area is too cold and desloate for the new Wetbacks (Drybacks? Icebacks?) to cross.

America's death warrant

From The Washington Times:

Congress will approve an immigration bill that will grant citizenship rights to most of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. after Democrats take control next month, predict both sides on Capitol Hill.

While Republicans have been largely splintered on the issue of immigration reform, Democrats have been fairly unified behind the principle that the illegals currently in the country should get citizenship rights without having to first leave the country.

If this happens then it is all over. The United States of America is finished.

It won't happen overnight. If fact it is even possible that the Republicans could win big in 2008, however the fatal and incurable illness would have been contracted and will in the fullness of time assert itself and kill the patient.

As the Third World peasants gain voting rights the Republicans, in order to stand a chance of winning an election pretty much anywhere, will have to try to play catch-up with the Democrats on growing the welfare state. Small government conservatives, seeing that they no longer have a home in either major political party, will either migrate to a third party or begin sitting out elections as they work on stockpiling ammunition and freeze dried food.

This is the one to watch

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — Senator Barack Obama’s announcement that he might run for president is altering the early dynamics of the 2008 Democratic nominating contest. The move has created complications for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as she steps up her own preparations and is posing a threat to lesser-known Democrats trying to position themselves as alternatives to Mrs. Clinton, Democrats said Sunday.

The declaration six weeks ago by Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, has set off a surge of interest in Democratic circles, which party officials expect will only be fueled in the coming week as Mr. Obama prepares for a day of campaignlike events in New Hampshire next Sunday.

This is interesting. What does the enthusiasm with which Mr. Obama's announcement is being greeted say about the Democrat Party's true feelings about Mrs. Clinton?

Another question is, "what is Barack Obama really after"?

It is highly unlikely that the Clintons will allow a serious challenger to even get as far as the primaries - unless there is some kind of deal already worked out. This could be Mr. Obama's way of grabbing the Vice Presidential spot.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Either Mrs. Clinton will want him as her running mate in 2008 or he will become the new poster-boy for renewed gun control legislation after his bullet riddled body is found on some DC street at 3:00 AM, the victim of an apparent car jacking.

Coming back from the brink

From The Washington Post:

Two of the country's largest and most historic Episcopal congregations -- both in Fairfax County -- will vote next week on whether to leave the U.S. church on ideological grounds and affiliate instead with a controversial Nigerian archbishop. The decision could lead to a bitter court battle and the loss of $25 million in property.

Many members of The Falls Church and Truro Church, as well as some conservative leaders around the country, hope a split will establish a legal structure that would make it easier for dozens more like-minded congregations to also depart the national denomination.

Some conservatives in the Episcopal Church, the U.S. wing of the worldwide Anglican Communion, believe the church abandoned Scripture by installing a gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003, among other things. Those feelings of alienation were strengthened when Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori -- who supports the New Hampshire bishop -- was elected this summer to lead the national church.

[. . .]

William Fetsch was one of only two members of the 18-member Falls Church vestry who last month voted to recommend not splitting. A member since 1980, he said Saturday that he believes conservatives have an obligation to stay in the U.S. church and "bear witness" to their viewpoint on things such as homosexuality and the literal truth of Jesus's resurrection.

When the issues at stake include not just homosexuality but the "literal truth of Jesus's resurrection" it is past time to depart.

I have to confess that I have a hard time understanding what motivates the theological liberals. The only "source-book" we have for Christianity is the Bible. If you cannot stomach what the Bible teaches about something like homosexuality or the ordination of women or eternal hell then why not just drop the whole thing and find some other religion?

The Bible represents itself as an organic whole all equally inspired by God and all equally inerrant. You cannot legitemately say "I like what it says about forgiveness and love, but not what is says about women preachers or sexual morality so I'll keep what I like and toss out what I disagree with". To do that is to elevate your own word above God's Word and do what Lucifer wanted to do when he planned to "be like the Most High".

If you want to hang out with the Devil go join the Church of Satan and leave the Christians alone. Or if that's a little too hard-core for you try Wicca. Wiccans take anyone, gay or straight and anyone may assume leadership positions regardless of their sex (except in some of the fringe "goddess cults" that are only for women.

Tonight's video

In honor of the fact that they are coming to Jack of the Wood in January here is another video of Gaelic Storm.

Milking Gulf War Syndrome for all its worth

From The Washington Post:

Fifteen years after the end of the 1991 war with Iraq, a Texas researcher is in line to get as much as $75 million in federal funding to press his studies of "Gulf War syndrome," even though most other scientists long ago discounted his theories.

Epidemiologist Robert W. Haley has been trying for 10 years to prove that thousands of Persian Gulf War troops were poisoned by a combination of nerve gas, pesticides, insect repellents and a nerve-gas antidote. With the help of $16 million in past funding obtained by his backers in Congress and the Pentagon, Haley has argued that his "toxicity hypothesis" is the best explanation for the constellation of physical complaints that many veterans reported after returning from the Gulf.

Haley and his supporters, who also include a powerful cluster of veterans and government advisers, are undeterred by the scientific consensus against him.

As recently as September, a panel of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine reached the same conclusion that half a dozen other expert groups had: Gulf War syndrome does not exist. After reviewing 850 studies -- essentially all the scientific literature on the topic -- the 13 scientists wrote that "the nature of the symptoms suffered by many Gulf War veterans does not point to an obvious diagnosis, etiology [cause], or standard treatment."

In any group of people as large as the pool of men who served in the first Gulf War over the amount of time which has passed since the end of that war you are going to see a certain percentage of them experiencing health problems.

Much of what the Gulf War veterans are experiencing can be explained by nothing more mysterious than advancing age. Others were exposed to discrete toxins such as the dust from depleted uranium projectiles, or pesticides or even some of Saddam's chemical weapons. Many different causes bring about many different medical conditions.

It should go without saying that the more extreme and implausible of the reported symptoms such as glowing vomit are the products of either mental disturbance or outright fraud.

The entire "Gulf War Syndrome" phenomena is the result of a handful of veterans looking for a paycheck or attention (or both) and researchers looking for grant money and left-wing politicians looking for some way to throw mud on George H W Bush's outstanding victory in the Gulf War.

The great lesson here is that there is no area of scientific inquiry so ill founded or unlikely to produce results that hack scientists will not line up for taxpayer's money to research it.

Citizens and politicians contemplating requests for money to conduct embryonic stem cell research should keep this in mind.

Castro will be dead soon, the NYT is sad

From The New York Times:

HAVANA, Dec. 2 — In his day, Fidel Castro could not stop talking. He was Cuba’s talk show host as well as its president, with his frequent long speeches broadcast into homes on radio and television serving as something akin to background music in Cubans’ lives.

Anything that popped into his head was material, whether it was his reflections on Cuban history, his outrage at Washington or a meandering story that left audiences scratching their heads.

Now, though, Mr. Castro, Cuba’s ailing leader, is silent, leaving a gap on state-run broadcasts and confused audiences.

On Saturday, the final day of a weeklong belated birthday celebration for the 80-year-old Mr. Castro, Cubans expected one last discourse. But he was a no-show at a flashy military parade that capped the week of festivities. That left many Cubans convinced that their leader of nearly half a century had delivered his final speech.

One gets the feeling that the NYT reporter is sincerely sharing what he fantasises is the genuine grief of the Cuban people at the potential loss of such a great leader.

In other words the man and the paper he works for are as clueless as the rest of the political left. Like the Democrats in America who are trying to make James Webb into some kind of working class hero for proving that at any social function he needs to be assigned a seat at the children's table so that he won't bother the adults when he bangs his sippy cup and throws french fries the Times' man in Havana thinks that the average Cuban will weep bitter tears when Fidel finally makes his date with Satan's giant cast iron frying pan.

To further demonstrate what a moron he is our intrepid reporter gives us a lesson in Cuban socialism:

Mr. Castro’s Cuba is very much a work in progress. Its education and health care systems are universal, but socialism has not wiped out classism or racism, freedom to speak out is clearly restricted and life for most people is humble, at best.

Ah, but what does a little thing like no freedom count for when you have universal health care?

Of course Cuba is a prison. It is desperately poor, not because of the US embargo, but because it is a communist country. There is no private property and no capitalism so people do without things like reliable electric power, good medical care, adequate housing and live on a subsistence diet of the most basic staples.

Castro has a great deal to answer for. He will soon have the opportunity to before the ulitmate Judge. I would wish him luck, but he is going to need a great deal more than that.

Tonight's music video

Here is another Moya Brennan video. This is the song Perfect Time from the CD of the same name. Moya was the vocalist for the group Clannad and will be appearing with them in their first concert in 10 years next year.

Moya is also known for being the older sister of Enya.

50 Rounds!

Since I spend a good deal of time on the road I get to listen to a lot of talk radio. One of the things I've been hearing this past week is that a great many people cannot seem to get past the fact that the NYPD cops shot 50 rounds at the car which was attempting to run them down.

Many folks seem to believe that 50 shots fired just has to be excessive force.

OK, listen up. Here is the truth.

When you perceive that your life is in danger here is what you will do. You will shove your gun in the general direction of the threat and pull the trigger as fast as you can until the gun is empty. This is human nature. You will do it, I will do it. New York cops will do it.

It is possible to train people to the point where they will be able to fire two aimed shots then stop and evaluate the situation then shoot some more if the situation calls for it.

We call these people SEALS and Delta Force in the US. The SAS in the UK. GSG-9 in Germany and other names in other nations. To be able to preform like this under fire requires intensive training and almost daily practice.

NYPD does not train its officers to this level. It cannot afford to. To produce officers who could perform at this level with firearms would require them to devote almost their entire police academy experience to firearms training. Then they would have to spend at least 10 hours of their 40 hour work week on the firing range.

Five cops each with a gun which holds 17 rounds in the magazine plus one in the chamber and they only fired 50 times. This indicates extraordinary discipline, not recklessness or excessive force.

The "Webb Affair" ferments.

I want to thank everyone who commented on my post about Jim Webb's cloddish behavior at a White House function, especially Nathan Tabor, honcho of The Conservative Voice. As many irons as he has in the fire I'm amazed that he has time to read blogs.

To answer those who disagree with my characterization of Mr. Webb's actions I ask you to consider this. First, The White House is the President's home. I know that it is more than that, but it was designed first and foremost to be the residence of the President. When Webb accepted an invitation to a White House dinner he accepted an invitation to visit George W Bush and Mrs. Bush in their home. In polite society you do not enter a person's home as their invited guest in order to snub or insult them. To do so is extremely bad manners. If you despise someone so much that you can not maintain the civil amenities with them then do not visit them in their home.

Second, asking after someone's child who is deployed in a combat zone is not "flip" or a "frat-boy" stunt. To invite someone into your home and then fail to make a point of asking them about their son who you know to be in harm's way would be rude. It would, in effect, be saying "I detest you so much that I care nothing for the well being of your child".

George W Bush invited James Webb into his home. Webb accepted his hospitality by showing up then snubbed his host by refusing to go through the receiving line and shake the President's hand. Mr. Bush made a point of ignoring the insult and reached out to Mr. Webb on the one area in which any civilized person would assume that they could agree - the well being of Mr. Webb's son.

Instead of answering his hosts sincere question with a polite response like, "he's fine, I just heard from him", he chose to give an answer which said, in effect, "screw off, it's none of your business". Well I'm sorry Mr. Webb but as the Commander in Chief the welfare of an active duty Marine is damned well George Bush's business.

Also, consider how much political hay the left could have made if Bush had shown no concern whatsoever over Mr. Webb's son. Would not the mainstream media's action line be something like, "Bush sends Webb's kid to war and then can't even be bothered to ask how he's doing"?

I would also point out that there is history here. Before he ever ran for the Senate James Webb had a reputation for being an ass. I note that no one attempted to refute the points I raised in my brief biography of Mr. Webb. He did accept a job in the Reagan Administration and then leave in a snit when he wasn't treated as though he were the president instead of Ronald Reagan. Then while Reagan and his team were rebuilding the military, revitalizing the economy and defeating the Soviet Union Webb bitched and moaned and called Reagan incompetent.

In other words Webb revealed himself to be a classless oaf. A clod without the wit to realize when he is making a fool of himself and lacking the grace to care. Which is all fine with me. As a proud member of the Democrat Party Webb has found his home and I hope he is happy there.

I will give you this. When Webb made his thuggish reply to the President's question Mr. Bush did allow his "gracious host" mask to slip a bit. By answering back the way he did Bush did reveal that he has a very good idea of exactly what kind of man Webb is and that he holds him in exactly the esteem which he deserves to be held in. In other words Bush wouldn't piss in his face if his nose were on fire.

Cox & Forkum

If America was truly the "EMPIRE" that the moonbats keep screeching that it is how long do think that this cretin would have to live?

Tonights music

It is December which means that Hillbilly White Trash kicks off the Christmas season. Here is Irish singer Moya Brennan singing Joy To The World from her CD, An Irish Christmas.

Moya will be touring in the US this month. Check her website for details.

Webb gives us a foretaste

From The American Spectator:

As both our esteemed editor, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., and George Will have pointed out, it didn't take long for Senator-elect Jim Webb, representing the courtly Southern gentlemen of Virginia, to demonstrate that he himself is no gentleman. At a White House reception he publicly snubbed his host, President Bush, and took the occasion of the President's polite inquiry after his son, a Marine serving in Iraq, as an invitation to air his political differences with him. "Boor" (Mr. Will's word) and "cad" (Mr. Tyrrell's) do not seem terms too strong to describe such deplorable behavior, though some people might have pointed out that it could hardly be counted a surprise in a man who makes such a public fuss about his record of military service and uses it to belittle and intimidate others -- a man who, moreover, is apparently unashamed of having achieved his present eminence by turning his coat and betraying so many of his former friends and colleagues in the Republican party.

What Mr. Tyrrell is too much of a Southern gentleman to utter and Mr. Will is too prissy to say is that James Webb is an asshole.

James Webb took a job in Ronald Reagan's first administration as Secretary of the Navy. He held the job for a short time during which he managed to alienate everyone with whom he came into contact. He resigned his position in a huff because everyone he had to deal with in the Pentagon, the White House and Congress was not sufficiently deferential to him - to massive sighs of relief in the Pentagon, the White House and Congress. He then spent the next decade bad mouthing Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Webb used to describe Bill Clinton as the worst president in the history of the Republic, until he accepted Mr. Clinton's help in fundraising. He refused to shake hands with John Kerry because of Kerry's slanders of US servicemen serving in Vietnam. Now Mr. Kerry is his mentor and sponsor in the Senate.

Mr. Webb's war record proves beyond doubt that he possesses personal courage, aggressiveness and intelligence. All of these traits are necessary to make on a success on the battlefield, however none of these characteristics require a person to also possess integrity, loyalty, class, good taste or manners. Webb has none of these things.

Tigers do not change their stripes nor leopards their spots. Webb will stink up the Senate just like he stank up the Pentagon. Come 2012 there will be as many Democrats happy to see Webb go as there are Republicans now who are glad to see Lincoln Chaffee get the boot.

Learning the wrong lessons

From The Washington Post:

MIAMI, Nov. 30 -- Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman warned a somber and diminished gathering of GOP governors that the party will face years in the political wilderness unless it corrects the mistakes that led to last month's election losses.

"If we shrug our shoulders and say, 'It was just a fluke, a perfect storm of factors out of our control,' then we will lose again in 2008," Mehlman told the Republican Governors Association at its annual meeting, as he prepares to step down from the RNC at the end of the year.

"If that is the approach we take, then we are destined to spend far more than one term in the minority," Mehlman added. "And we as a party will deserve it."

So far so good. Someone seems to be getting the message.

Mehlman acknowledged voter anger about the Iraq war and a spate of GOP corruption scandals, but he pointed to a broader culprit: the erosion of the core conservative principles of small government and personal responsibility. As Republicans built up their Washington power base, he noted, the center of gravity shifted away from the statehouses that had been the traditional laboratories for policy ideas. The result was a vacuum that delivered little of interest to voters, while devaluing the national Republican brand.

For their part, the governors pointed to vivid images of federal incompetence that had dragged the party down, including the botched response to Hurricane Katrina and Congress's inability to curb spending or tackle issues that voters care about, such as illegal immigration. And they decried the ethics scandals that hurt the party, such as when then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned from Congress in September after revelations that he had sent sexually suggestive electronic messages to underage male pages and that House Republican leaders had known about his behavior but had not responded aggressively.

So far so good. But then this:

. . . Mehlman told the GOP governors, back to "good policy that makes good politics." He singled out an effort by outgoing Gov. Mitt Romney, another 2008 prospect, to expand health-care coverage to all Massachusetts residents. "That is the kind of innovation we need at the state level, and in Washington," Mehlman said.

If this is the lesson that the Republican Party takes away from the '06 losses then both the Republican Party and the United States of America are royally screwed.

Republicans did not lose control of the House and Senate because the weren't socialist enough!

Republican lost because the rash of scandals within the Party made them look like they had the morals of Democrats and their spending spree made them look like they had the fiscal indiscipline of Democrats.

When you give people a choice between a democrat and a Democrat they will usually choose the Democrat.

A response

To emailer Kevin K from Kalifornia:

The puppy in the middle picture is not dead. I did not shut the gate on it and kill it by squeezing the breath out of its little lungs. It was crawling under the gate so that it could attempt to run into the road and get squashed by a car (I didn't let it).

You are sick for suggesting that I would do anything like that to any innocent animal or White person.

Now go stoke up your bong and leave me alone.

Watching the watchers

WASHINGTON (AP) - Police and prosecutors are worried that a Web site claiming to identify more than 4,000 informants and undercover agents will cripple investigations and hang targets on witnesses.

The Web site, WhosaRat.com, first caught the attention of authorities after a Massachusetts man put it online and named a few dozen people as turncoats in 2004. Since then, it has grown into a clearinghouse for mug shots, court papers and rumors.

Federal prosecutors say the site was set up to encourage violence, and federal judges around the country were recently warned that witnesses in their courtrooms may be profiled online.
"My concern is making sure cooperators are adequately protected from retaliation," said Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, who alerted other judges in Washington's federal courthouse. He said he learned about the site from a federal judge in Maine.

The Web site is the latest unabashedly public effort to identify witnesses or discourage helping police. "Stop Snitching" T-shirts have been sold in cities around the country and popular hip-hop lyrics disparage or threaten people who help police.

I have been aware of this website for some time, but have not talked about it in print because I didn't want to help publicize it. Now that it has made the mainstream media I figure that the cat is out of the bag.

I'd love to say that I was outraged by this, but considering the way our society is deteriorating all I am is surprised that someone didn't do it sooner.

Not that the idea of trying to identify who undercover law enforcement officers are for the benefit of criminals is anything new. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is located just outside a small town in Georgia. To get to the center from the town there is a certain road that must be taken. Organized crime and, it is suspected, terrorist groups have agents living in that town with homes overlooking that road and they attempt to photograph anyone driving to the training center.

They also stake out the motels in the town where the agents who are there for training stay, as well as the restaurants and bars in the area.

Hillbilly Ecosystem housekeeping

An announcement for Ecosystem members. The blog E L Frederick has changed its name to
7.62MM Justice.

I guess this means that a .308 caliber, 180 grain boattail will be visiting a Jihadi any minute now.