9000 years old
MMMMMMM, beer
June 11, 2009
We're all going to die!
Why I no longer read Time Magazine.
via Insty
Silly promotion
May 28, 2009
Uuh, it, uh, speaks, uh, for.... itself
May 19, 2009
The sky at night
From this year's Texas Star Party-
Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.
Awesome. Via Gizmodo
May 12, 2009
Yikes
In the 80's this is what we thought the future was going to look like
The One, cont'd...
Hehe...
Obama is America's dreamy new blind date. Took her out to the classy restaurant. Told her she's beautiful. Oh, it's all candlelight and heaving bosoms at the moment.
I'll get back to you when he does a runner out the service entrance and sticks her with the bill.
May 10, 2009
The Interview With God
April 28, 2009
Jawjah's Stonehenge
Men today
An interesting post by Dr. Helen-
"I think depression in men goes largely unnoticed because men do not like to appear to be weak, even to the women & friends they trust. If, as a man, you find yourself feeling an overwhelming feeling of weakness, then the man you see in the bathroom mirror is a man drowning alone, because we see asking for help as admission of weakness."
"White middle aged males commit suicide the most ?
Gee, I wonder why ? Is it that they have lost their job/promotion to someone who is less qualified but has the correct gender/skin color? That they have few if any resources available to them ? That as a White Male, they are automatically the lowest on the Totem pole for help? When was the last time (if ever) you saw a blog or section for White males? Ever ? Bueller? Bueller?""Another interesting stat - middle aged white men who decide to commit suicide actually get the job done. Check stats on various groups that 'attempt' suicide but survive (take pills, call 911, pass out) and note who says 'AMF' and leaves us. Competence can be a curse."
Unemployment is a stone cold bitch.
April 27, 2009
April 23, 2009
The One should remember this
Tommy
I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.
I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.
Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.
We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.
You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!
Rudyard Kipling
Earth Day
As for Earth Day, I don't mind the planting-trees-and-picking-up-trash part - the kids did that last Saturday, which is good. Labor and sweat on behalf of a cleaner city. I put in eight trees last year, so I'm holding up my end. At least the arboreal part. But I'll have none of that YOUR FUTURE IS BLEAK stuff; I grew up with that, and it was a dark cloud hanging six inches over my head for most of my childhood. If it wasn't ecocatastrophe that would leave us all living underground or stuck in a small smelly apartment with Edward G. Robinson pedaling a bike for ten minutes of lights, it was nukes, or that "Late Great Planet Earth" stuff that really depressed me. I suppose some kids thought it would be keen to be around when God called the game on account of sin, but I thought it was a raw deal. Can I just have a life down here first ? What's the hurry? You have all the time in the world. You invented it.
I would give major body parts to be able to write with that much snark.
April 16, 2009
Sobering
It's tough to know where to begin. Which is pretty much the case with everything that's been happening since "The One" was sworn in in January. So many basic aspects of American life are being thrown under the wheels of the runaway left-wing train that focusing on any single abuse is automatically backpage trivia. Who could care when the economy is crashing and our new leader is busily remaking the world as well as the country?
Look here
I could be getting scared
Critters
Surely this is a hoax. Surely.
via Posthuman Blues
This was my life
ROFL it hurts 'cause it's true
Right Liz?
April 15, 2009
Businessman Burgled
I just love the headline and the whole concept of a dung-flinging catapult...
Cool picture of the day
from S. Weasel whom you all should be reading
[sigh]
April 12, 2009
OMFG
Kids, are you seeing this?
If'n I was you pitchforks, ropes, and nearby trees would be in order. You make your own world of course.
Aquaplaning
Sometimes you just step back and let the other guy speak.
April 08, 2009
Oh LOLOLOL
More of teh funny, via Ace again-
Why Hamas couldn't shoot Stinger Missiles in Gaza
They tried.
Really. After Hamas successfully smuggled anti-aircraft Stinger missiles into Gaza, they were given the order by Hamas commanders to shoot down IAF Apache helicopters during the past IDF "Cast Lead" offensive.
Yet when they targeted the helicopters, said "Alla hu Akbar" and pulled the trigger, the Stinger just beeped and flashed an error message...
It gets better...
The US manufactured Stinger anti-aircraft rockets have built in sensors that prevent firing upon friendly aircraft...Apache helicopters included.
"We were disappointed by them, and they were found to have been useless," a Hamas source said.
The payoff-
Another Hamas source said gunners deployed Stinger along with heavy machine guns in attacks on Israeli helicopters during the war in the Gaza Strip. The source said one Stinger surface-to-air missile was launched, but the projectile veered off course and struck a Hamas gunner squad.
"The Stinger was drawn by the heat of our guns rather than the engines of the Israeli helicopters," the source said. "At that point, we stopped using this weapon."
My day has been officially made. Dumbshits shot their own damn selves. With our stolen missles.
YJCMTSU
Who whoulda thunkit?
A small aside from Ace. Nothing to see here folks, just move along.
April 07, 2009
Geez, maybe they're innocent
...OK, of course they aren't. They are mercenaries after all.
Biggest story you've never heard.
Facial hair
I represent this statement
April 02, 2009
March 30, 2009
Mt. Redoubt
Very cool link. Be sure to watch the time-lapse video.
Redoubt Eruption March 27 2009 from Bretwood Higman on Vimeo.
Wagoner gone
Let me apologize in advance to my children, it seems my generation is determined to give up on the great experiment in Government that was the United States of America- pre The One.
March 24, 2009
Yikes
China's central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.
In an essay posted on the People's Bank of China's website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank's governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency "that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies".
Analysts said the proposal was an indication of Beijing's fears that actions being taken to save the domestic US economy would have a negative impact on China.
"This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money," said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist for HSBC.
Although Mr Zhou did not mention the US dollar, the essay gave a pointed critique of the current dollar-dominated monetary system.
Hope all you folk that voted for Hopiness and Changitude are happy with what you got; our children will be paying for it all their lives.
March 22, 2009
Foreboding
I want to say Brits are more cynical about government, but certainly Yanks can be plenty cynical. I am plenty cynical. But Brits somehow seem to expect their government to let them down. They accept tyranny, perfidy or incompetence as what government does the moment you look away. Whereas the American attitude seems to be, "we bled real blood to put you bastards in office because you said you were different."
And yet British politics is fundamentally miles less corrupt than the American kind.
I am tempted to say British resentment feels likelier to boil over into violence. And yet, the British public has already absorbed insult after terrible insult without demur. I am puzzled by that. I think a lot of Brits are puzzled by that, too.
The British. Famously unflappable, right up until they become howling savages.
It's hard to look at things honestly and not think we're doomed.
A thought
And regardless, this certainly explains, once again, why these guys are so comfortable with high taxes — they don't pay 'em anyway. A government of the tax cheats, for the tax cheats and, especially, by the tax cheats.
Power to the People
LoL, viz my earlier entry- I'm coming back out of my shell. A thought
These are challenging times for us, true. And large parts of America continue to feel stuck and confused. But they are waking up. You need to look down and across to understand the real strength of America - not up. That's especially so as the current administration seems incapable and un- or ill-prepared to offer much genuine leadership at all. But that's okay.
It has always been the people as a whole and a force that has made America great in our rather inconvenient history, not the leaders who have and will eventually emerge as convenient bookmarkers so that scholars can write new History books one day.
The phrase "Power to the People" has existed as little more than a Leftist chant for decades in America. That does not mean it contains no truth. And the truth of a strong and capable America that has always overcome its obstacles is there - in its people. You only have to look around, eventually shake yourself from your stupor to join it and jump on the bandwagon if you want to make it real.
And even if you don't, it remains a bit of still clumsy American History being written that will eventually sweep you up. The American Spirit, not our leaders, has a way of doing that throughout our history. And it's about to do it, again.
Have hope folks- right now it sucks but I have faith in us as a nation- look here and here.
As always, kudos to Insty.
Anybody noticed I've been staying strictly away from politics? Anybody, Bueller?...
I'm sick to death of it and absolutely frightened by what is happening today. Arm yourselves and be ready- the stormtroopers are coming.
March 20, 2009
Still here by god
Well, Heaven wouldn't have me and Hell is afraid I'll take over, so everything went fine. Can't type much because it is slightly painful. Thanks for your prayers and well-wishes.
March 19, 2009
While I'm still here
I'm having my ICD replaced tomorrow- supposedly minor surgery but there is a chance of death, so I'll send this out to anyone that cares.
I love you too and if the worst happens I'll be waiting on the other side with bawdy tales to tell, lies, and the usual bullshit you have all come to expect from me. As you get older these things start to seem bigger and the consequences larger. I don't expect tomorrow will be a lot of fun, but hey, this weekend is Bristol with a cool Legends race Saturday night. What could be better?
Either I go out with a flash or business as usual. I will or will not keep you posted.
March 13, 2009
Where we're going
March 06, 2009
Dang, ya'll have no idea how cool it is to just be able to post at will. (I will get serious shortly but it's just sooo nice)
Watchmen! Review later today...
February 10, 2009
Wow! Six years
Today is my sixth blogiversary. I know I have been posting sporadically lately, but I hope to change that situation soon. Stay tuned!
Six years- who woulda thunkit?
December 29, 2008
Pounding Hamas
From Confederate Yankee-
If I'm right, Israeli Air Force planes have been hitting Hamas fortifications filled with eager young terrorists who died waiting for an invasion that will never come. Hamas was suckered into putting their fighters in combat positions while the IAF simply waited for them to show up for their pre-planned bombing runs.
If Gazans weren't part of a genocide-mad death cult I might feel sorry for them, but then I remember that these same terrorists purposefully target Israeli civilians, and that even their kids dance in the streets when Israeli woman and children are killed by Hamas rockets, and I don't feel too bad, at all.
I don't feel sorry for them at all- they are like a mad death cult that the other Arabs use to pound Israel. They're a total waste of humanity and deserve much more than they are getting.
December 15, 2008
40 Inspirational Speeches
via the whole dang intarweb
Amusing Ourselves To Death
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
via American Digest
December 12, 2008
Signs
Wow, Gerard. Just wow.
In 5 B.C. "travel" was not something undertaken lightly. It involved, across distances that would seem trivial today, risks of life and death at every turn. It required wealth and endurance. Few traveled for pleasure. To travel at all required a motivation far beyond the ordinary. So, at the very least, while we cannot know what was in the sky in those days, we can be certain it was something very unusual.
In his short story, "The Star," Arthur C. Clarke's Jesuit narrator of the far future discovers the remnants of a civilization destroyed by a violent nova so that its light might announce the birth of Christ on Earth. The story has that ironic twist that is popular with authors and pleasing to readers. I remember it as making an impression on me when I was around 12 years old. But the story does not age well because the science of it, like all science, does not age well. The story is just 53 years old.
In 1957, when I was twelve years old, we all lived in a far smaller universe with far fewer stars for God to destroy by way of cosmic birth announcements. Now that the inventory of His stars has increased a billion fold, I think it is safe to say He could have found one to suit His purpose that didn't involve destroying a blameless alien race. He could simply pick one deeper in the field and, well, ramp up the volume. That sort of thing is just an afterthought once You've got omnipotence. It might even do double duty if You could use a star in an area that might need a few more heavy elements across the next brief one or two billion years of Your plan.
Sages and mystics, Eliot and Clarke, and a host of others have all had their turns with the story of The Star. In the end it remains what it was when it began, a story. The story of a road trip by three astrologers, kings, wise men. A journey by men who saw something special in the heavens and determined to follow it wherever it led, no matter what the cost.
I can't imagine what would keep you from it- Read It All.
December 05, 2008
Callousness
In a post at The Doctor is In, the good doctor muses on how our culture has become less compassionate:
The nurse — young, competent, smart, hard-working, the very best of the modern nursing profession — apprises me of his situation, closing with this knockout punch: "You know, we just passed that initiative — you know, the suicide one. He'd be an excellent candidate."
She wasn't joking.
Taken a bit off guard, I responded that it is most unwise to give physicians the power to kill you, for we will become very good at it, and impossible to stop once we are.
She continued: "No, I would love to work for a Dr. Kevorkian. Be an Angel of Death, you know?"
"I know", I muttered under my breath, as she ran off to another bedside, competently and with great efficiency, to adjust some ventilator or fine-tune some dopamine drip. And hopefully do nothing more.
These vignettes in modern medicine are really not about medicine at all. They are in truth about a culture which has lost its compassion. Our calloused and cynical society has become a raging river fed by a thousand foul and fetid streams. We have, by turns, taught our children that ethics are situational and values neutral; taught our women that compassion and service are signs of weakness, that they must become hard and heartless like the men they hate; taught our men that success and the respect of others comes not through character and integrity but through callousness, cynicism, and greed; and taught ourselves that we are a law unto ourselves, the sole and final arbiter of what is right and what is good.
We have, in our post-modern and post-Christian culture, inexorably and irrevocably turned from our roots in Christian morality and worldview, which was the foundation and font of that which we now know — or used to know — as Western Civilization. Yes, we have preserved the tinsel and the trappings, the gilded and glittering exterior of a decaying sarcophagus, where we speak self-righteously of rights while denying their origin in the divine spark within the human spirit, made in the image of God; where we bray about liberty, but are enslaved to its bejeweled impostor, the damsel of decadence and libertinism; where compassion is naught but another government program to address the consequences of our own aberrant and irresponsible behavior, duly justified, rationalized, and denied. Others must pay so that I may play, you know.
It doesn't matter that much how we got here- we could spend post after post on that topic- but the fact is we're becoming a hard, uncaring society just at a time where kindness and compassion are most needed. Where will this lead?
I don't like it but feel powerless in the face of it.
Sorry for no direct link- my rotten corporate firewall won't allow it. Go to here and scroll to the post "Revolution of the soul".
December 01, 2008
Plain Talk for a terrible time
Daphne states what should be obvious and what many are thinking but are, face it, afraid to say.
Watching the latest Islamic terrorist horror in India starts a rolling list in my head that can't be stopped; Iran, Beirut, USS Cole, Somalia, 9/11, Spain, London. Those are just the big ones, everyday around the world Islamists murder in the name of their politicized religion. They attack women, children, the old and infirm, coreligionists, non-believers, white, brown or yellow, it doesn't matter. An alarming portion of their fellow Muslims support their grisly agenda, some of them actively, others by dancing in the streets, expressing joy in the deaths of strangers. I hate these bastards.
...
I don't believe Mohamed was holy or a prophet. I think he was evil incarnate carrying the words of Satan himself to a crew of desert simpletons. Islam is a barbaric, unpeaceful, vile, unthinking distortion of worship. The fact that the majority of its adherents can't even read the Koran smacks of mindless ignorance. I see no enlightenment elevating individual singularity or acknowledging gifted greatness in this corner of archaic darkness. My lip curls at their love of theocracies, a willingness to subjugate themselves to the whims of dissolute rulers along side an ancient text they can't even begin to comprehend, subsuming their divine individuality to a tide of dogmatic mandates. I have no use, or respect, for the people who follow this religion. I'm past tired of their bombing, shooting, acid throwing, coup d'etat loving, rioting asses and it looks like the rest of the world could stand a break from these murdering bastards, too. According to a website that does nothing but track worldwide Islamic terrorism, there have been 12,328 Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11. Don't tell me this isn't an Islamic issue, the rest of us aren't practicing murder on a worldwide scale in the name of religion.
I'm fed up. Please don't start feeding me that lame 'Moderate Islam' load of bull. Sure, I know most Muslims aren't carrying out jihad, many don't financially support those activities, millions don't dance in the streets and rejoice death. Answer me this though, of all of those billions who don't participate, how many are actively fighting the Islamists?
What she said. When are we going to wake up? They HATE our civilization, they HATE our race, and want us all to die painfully. Their torture of the Jews this weekend in Mumbai was unspeakable. I for one refuse to think that they are somehow our moral equal- they are savages pure and simple, and extermination is too kind a fate for them.
via Gerard
November 25, 2008
The Past is Prologue
Jeff G. writes of how The One™ will soon be tested:
Bush has set conditions that could allow Obama, if he abandons the desire to be liked as the underlying principle of his foreign policy and sticks to the path the Bush administration has laid out, to preside over the greatest blossoming of liberal democracy and stability the Middle East has ever seen, and in all likelihood, to get the credit for it.
For all of this, Barack Obama owes George W. Bush a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Much of this will, of course, be met with howls of recrimination from the progressives who installed the new Messiah-in-Chief — but Obama himself must recognize that to all this there is a strong undercurrent of truth that he simply must accept as a condition of readying himself to lead.We've heard an awful lot about Obama's great intellect; now we'll get to see how he uses it: either in accepting the obvious, based on a disinterested surveying of the facts and regional conditions on the ground brought about by the Bush strategy for combating international Islamist terrorism; or in rationalizing away those gains and attempting to alter the strategy in the hopes of leaving his own seal on the fate of the middle east and surrounding environs.
The former would show the kind of post-partisan spirit to which his campaign has promised to lay claim (even if is born of a pragmatic assessment, one in which Obama recognizes that he will risk his presidency should he change course and the US is again attacked). The latter would should the hubris that the self-styled "thinkers" Obama hopes to surround himself with are apt to engage in, if history is any guide.
The past is prologue. The future is now.
Welcome to reality. Choices have consequences and we'll all have to live with yours, Mr. President-Elect.
Since Jules is Snark Central today...
...and I do like me some snark
Tragic irony alert. They hated Hill because she hearted the invasion of Iraq, and only turned against it in a naked bid to become president. They even bared their venerable breasts at her in their rage. They loved Obama because he was pure. He always hated the Iraq war, even before anyone cared what he thought. It was going to be a shining city on a hill, where AmeriKKKa would be Goddamned and humiliated in the world. Surrenderpalooza. But the standard bearer of change … has changed. How long now before the Change-Hoper is confronted with the breasts of wrath? Tragic irony alert. They hated Hill because she hearted the invasion of Iraq, and only turned against it in a naked bid to become president. They even bared their venerable breasts at her in their rage. They loved Obama because he was pure. He always hated the Iraq war, even before anyone cared what he thought. It was going to be a shining city on a hill, where AmeriKKKa would be Goddamned and humiliated in the world. Surrenderpalooza. But the standard bearer of change … has changed. How long now before the Change-Hoper is confronted with the breasts of wrath?
Funny stuff. Get ready for at least four more years of it. Hopiness and Changeitude We Can Believe In©
What other people think
About this blog...
The analysis indicates that the author of http://www.technochitlins.com is of the type:
INTP - The Thinkers [INTP]
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.
They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.
Insightful I think- I know I can come across as quite the asshole at times without meaning to. LOL sometimes I mean to though...
via Typealyzer
Remember Iraq
As Jules says- Ultimate Heroes
November 20, 2008
VI Day
Zombie said it, so I guess I'll go along-
I declare November 22, 2008 to be "Victory in Iraq Day." (Hereafter known as "VI Day.")
By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.
What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It's not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That's really not gonna happen. A declaration of victory by the media? Please. Don't make me laugh. A concession of surrender by what few remaining insurgents remain in hiding? Forget about it.
The moment has come to acknowledge the obvious. To overtly declare a fact that has already been true for quite some time now. Let me repeat:
WE WON THE WAR IN IRAQ
Of course now that The One is close to being anointed sworn in as President he should get all the credit. After all, he was right all along, never mind that "unwinnable" stuff.
November 18, 2008
Wrong mind
Gerard has an essay up that touches me in a very dark way by musing on the dark inner being some of us have. Mine I call "The Beast" and he manifests when I'm particularily stressed by dwelling on my upbringing.
We know it will never happen in our house because, as humans, we have an almost limitless ability to forget any hint of 'could' when it comes to horror. In those few moments when our forgetfulness fails us, we remain secure in our belief that we would never do such things to those we love. We know to an absolute certainty that anyone who could must not have been "in his right mind."
That's a common but still strange phrase -- "in his right mind." Everyone uses it as shorthand for things people do that are, large or small, somehow far outside what we normally expect them to do. Nobody that I know of takes it to the other side of that common phrase and looks at what a person does when he's "in his wrong mind."
Our right mind doesn't like to think it's got a wrong mind. It doesn't like to think it because it does indeed have one, and it is hardwired. Each of our right minds has a wrong mind and we are, with good reason, very, very frightened of it. So frightened that we don't think of it because to even think of our wrong mind gives it power, and it has far too much of that already. It has so much power that, once the wrong mind starts to control us, it takes, as they say, "a power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity."
I grow increasingly uncertain about many things in this life, but of that one thing I once became, and today remain, certain of without a scintilla of a doubt. Like most men, I tend to forget about that greater power when mucking about in the detritus of daily life. That really doesn't matter. Sooner or later I am always given a miraculous moment on the small scale of ordinary life that lets me know in no uncertain terms that, for human beings, only "a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity."
I'm trying to reach out to that "power" but my training for that was a High Episcopal upbringing and that's an institution I now consider totally morally bankrupt. I don't know, maybe I should grow dreadlocks and become Rastafari- I've heard the sacrament is very entertaining...
Seriously, we all have a dark side- it's how we deal with it that's the measure of us.
From the 52's to the 48's
November 13, 2008
In time of war
A new President will soon begin to make critical decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic crisis at home, and countless other matters. While the Iraq war began, then boiled and finally cooled before President-elect Obama will be sworn into office on January 20th, 2009, the Afghanistan-Pakistan spectacle is just getting started. He was always a fierce opponent of our involvement in Iraq. And, as with so many Democrats in the Senate, he argued frequently, during the campaign, that we should have been focused on Afghanistan all along, because it is the real incubator of the international terrorist threat. Timing being everything, our new President will get his wish. Afghanistan now moves to center stage. The conflicts in Afghanistan and between Afghanistan and Pakistan have the simmering potential to overshadow anything we've seen in Iraq. Here are a few things I hope he understands:
Our enemies are winning. The enemies know it. We know it. Who are they? The Taliban, with its deep local roots is enemy number one. Al Qaeda is hanging around to make trouble. Some Paks, who don't want to see a thriving Pushtun state on their border, are our enemies. They fund and shelter the Taliban even though we rely on them to help us defeat it. Nothing is straightforward in this part of the world. We have other enemies in Afghanistan who hate the Taliban.Most of our allies are not very helpful. With the exception of the British, Canadians, Dutch and a few others such as the Aussies, we are not fighting this with an "A-team" of international allies. With a few exceptions, our allies on the ground are comprised of several dozens of countries that mostly refuse to fight. The bulk of NATO amounts to little more than a "Taliban" Piñata. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is proving nearly worthless and provides no credible threat to Armed Opposition Groups (AOGs) in Afghanistan. Most of the NATO member countries seem to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of "Taliban." They piled in when the war looked easy, and largely humanitarian. But now that it's getting harder and more dangerous, they would like to pile out.
Welcome to the real world Mr. Obama.
Real War- on our back porch
At Power and Control is an immensely sober post on how well our nation's War on Drugs is going-
The War On Drugs has turned into a shooting war. In fact it has been a shooting war for quite some time in Afghanistan. So how is that working out? Not well.
*******
So there it is. Opium growing and heroin smuggling are financing the Taliban. So what makes a pile of vegetables worth its weight in gold? Prohibition. Those DEA guys are economic and military geniuses. Did I mention that they managed to increase the area of poppy growth in Afghanistan by 59%? Yes I did.
*******
How about a little closer to home? Mexico. It seems that Mexico is having a few drug problems too.
Mexico in some ways is the most worrying place in the Western hemisphere. A low-level civil war between the drug cartels and the federal government has been fought over the past two years, and the cartels are winning. Senior Mexican officials charged with suppression of the cartels have been moving their families quietly out of the country.
Wow. A narco state on our very own border. I wonder how the DEA never anticipated that. No doubt a failure of intelligence. Of the brains kind.
As they say, Read The Whole Thing. We need a radical rethinking of how we're going about this. I'm not recommending or encouraging drug use- far from it, I barely escaped that cage in times past. But when something is not working and has not worked for generations shouldn't we be looking for another way?
Governmentium
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.
The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
With apologies to Glenn- Heh. Indeed.
November 11, 2008
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
November 07, 2008
Bacon defeats Fries
Both of them are just, well, greasy
Rahm Emanuel
Insty's take on The One's first appointment
Emanuel will serve as Obama's hatchet-man and Dr. No, but the main targets will be Congressional Democrats and Democratic interest groups. Obama realizes that he's promised a lot more than he can deliver, and Emanuel's job will be to stave off all the claimants who -- as they realize that too -- will try to get to him before it's too late. Obama can stay the good cop, while Emanuel will be the bad. Republicans flatter themselves if they think they'll be the focus of Emanuel's attentions; they'll be an afterthought.
Yup.
November 05, 2008
O the 44th
Steve White at Rantburg says it well with this-
First, congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama. He will be the 44th president of the United States. His life is a remarkable journey and a testament to how far America has come. We're a fair, decent, tolerant, open-minded nation, and once again we demonstrate the old adage that "anyone can become President."
President Obama will deserve our support when he's right and our loyal opposition when he's wrong. Unlike some Democrats four and eight years ago, there will be no derogatory, childish name-calling from us conservatives. It was unseemly when the Democrats attacked George Bush they way they did, and it would be just as unseemly for us to do so now. We won't file for impeachment the first day Barack Obama is in office. We won't insult his intelligence. We will not pursue idiotic conspiracy theories.
The Democrats sounded insane over the last eight years and somehow got away with it. Republicans sounded insane in the later part of the 1990s and managed to get away with it.
Republicans won't be so lucky in the future. So we won't act insane. There cannot and must not be an 'Obama Derangement Syndrome'.
President Obama is going to need a loyal opposition. Joe Biden was both right and wrong when he said that "Obama would be tested." That's absolutely correct, but it will not be President Obama who will be tested, it will be America that is tested. If we waver then we, not just he, will flunk that test, and we'll be worse off because of it. America and American lives will be on the line. So when the challenge comes, we are the loyal opposition.
Pray for our country. RTWT here.
Oh well
Well, Lileks pretty well encapsulates my feelings right now:
Seriously, though: congratulations to President-elect Obama. Right or wrong - and I hope for more of the former, obviously - he's my President now, dammit, and I'm not going to spend four years treating him with the contempt the Kos side heaped on Chimpy McPretzelchoker. He could turn out to be a horrible President. He could turn out to be a great one. History pushes people in unexpected directions.
More to come, of course, but let's not spoil the moment.
Word.
November 03, 2008
A bit about McCain
From Glenn, an old(er) story about John McCain-
A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. "He's not going to wake up this time," McCain said.
On the way out of the parking lot, McCain recalled what it was like to be a nobody called upon by a somebody. As he did, his voice acquired the same warmth that colored Russell Feingold's speech when he described the first call from John McCain. "When you called Feingold … " I started to ask him. But before I could, he interrupted. "Yeah," he says, "I thought of Mo." And then, for maybe the third time that morning, McCain spoke of how it affected him when Udall took him in hand. It was a simple act of affection and admiration, and for that reason it meant all the more to McCain. It was one man saying to another, We disagree in politics but not in life.
The man is more real man than anyone today cares to admit.
October 29, 2008
On this day in history...
Remember, Election day - Nov 4 - marks the 29th anniversary of the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis. Iranian students kidnapped 52 U.S. diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. 444 days later they were released.
That is all.
October 28, 2008
Spengler: The world isn't flat, it's flattened
America's economy has caught a cold; the rest of the world is getting pneumonia-
It wasn't the world that got flat, contrary to New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman, but the emerging markets that got flattened.
Faddish conventional wisdom over the past few years held that American influence was fading as technology radiated to the far reaches of the world. When America's economy went into a ditch, though, the supposed economic superpowers of the future went flying, like children on skates holding onto the back of truck.
The American consumer, it turns out, played Atlas to the global economy, taking the exports of Asia, so that Asia could buy the commodities of Russia, Latin America and Africa. Remove the American consumer, and Asian exports crash, taking commodity prices along with them.
It's not just Asia- how about the Middle East?
Iran's theocrats, as I reported in June (Worst of times for Iran, Asia Times Online, June 24, 2008), managed to steal $35 billion from oil revenues. Luxury real estate prices rose to Parisian levels while poor Iranians lacked necessities. With the collapse of the oil price, subsidies for essential items will disappear and the regime will face economic collapse. Before it does so, I believe Iran will undertake an adventure to assert its hegemony in the region, probably at the expense of Iraq.
The low level of violence in Iraq during the past several months owes something to the skill of American arms in the so-called "surge", but it owes even more to a tacit agreement between Iran and the George W Bush administration: in return for leashing its irregular forces in Iraq, Iran would get a free hand with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and American forbearance with respect to its nuclear weapons program.
The Bush administration's motive to bribe Iran and avoid political damage in Iraq disappears on US presidential election day on November 4. Whether the US administration (or for that matter Israel) has the nerve to launch an air strike on Iran's nuclear facilities is anyone's guess (and everyone is guessing that the answer is negative). Nonetheless, Iran has created the strongest Shi'ite presence since the original battles that determined the succession to the Prophet Mohammed. It can watch the Shi'ite cause fade away with the price of oil, or it can attempt to use its capabilities before they are lost for another thousand years. Nothing at all that we know of the Iranians indicates that they would go quietly into another long night of Sunni oppression.
Our hemisphere doesn't escape either-
Argentina is now effectively broke, and the government of Cristina Kirchner has expropriated the country's private pension plans to obtain cash. Its foreign credit has collapsed completely.
Brazil's central bank still has formidable reserves, but the fragile political compromise that has kept a nominally leftist government in power cannot hold under present circumstances. Brazil's enormous underclass is ruled by drug gangs that are better armed than the police. A Brazilian congressional committee was told in February 2006 that corrupt elements in the Argentine army were selling heavy weapons to the Brazilian drug mobs, including anti-tank missiles.
Mexico in some ways is the most worrying place in the Western hemisphere. A low-level civil war between the drug cartels and the federal government has been fought over the past two years, and the cartels are winning. Senior Mexican officials charged with suppression of the cartels have been moving their families quietly out of the country. The collapse of the oil price and the likely collapse of remittances from Mexicans in the United States threaten the stability of the financial system, and the Mexican peso has lost nearly 40% of its value during the past several weeks. With the collapse of the American construction industry, a major source of employment for illegal Mexican immigrants to the US, the economic safety valve has broken, and the cartels have in inexhaustible supply of young men willing to risk their lives for a living.
All in all quite worrying and it could go from bad to worse with lightning speed. And if The One is elected and carries out the protectionist policies he has espoused we could be living in an awfully grim world. Think about that next Tuesday.
via Rantburg
October 27, 2008
Mexican violence
Insty points to Patterico who has a post up about the violence of the drug war in Mexico- and its probable effect on the USA. From the comments-
The politics and government of Mexico are worth analyzing, if only because they're a lesson Americans should keep in mind–certainly the ones in love with Obama–that a society greatly biased in favor of liberal politicians and governance certainly doesn't guarantee a damn thing that's good, including stability and prosperity.
The following is a very condensed rundown of the way that Mexico's answer to the US's Democrat Party has ruled Mexico for decades on end. Only a limited flirtation with the country's version of the US's Republican Party has occurred in the past 10 years or so—mainly because Mexico's liberal opponents (and voters) have split their vote.
So in spite of the mind-numbing, never-ending crime, poverty and corruption in Mexico, its far-left candidate for the presidency barely lost to the "conservative," who–thanks in part to the pervasive liberalism of Mexicans–really is his country's version of a "RINO." Or someone who's been influenced in a way that's reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger being pushed to the left by the brilliant voters of California.
RTWT here. Folks, if you think we're immune to this you're not paying attention. Glad I don't live in El Paso...
October 17, 2008
Test
A test, please ignore
September 15, 2008
The Lying King
I think this pretty much nails it. Thanks Gerard!
September 11, 2008
Some notes made from Brooklyn Heights...
...on September 11, 2001. Gerard van der Leun at his best.
Never forgive. Never forget.
September 10, 2008
Would you take a bullet?
From the commentary on this post at Rantburg:
Played golf in a foursome yesterday. Three Reagan Dems and me (sole Trunk). Bill sez..."so Z, whatcha think of Gov. Palin"? I said "she is Obama's worst nightmare: A strong, self-made, independent woman running on the Republican ticket. Woman isn't an affirmative action baby."
Bill sez..." don't know about you guys (referring to Mike and Ron the other two Reagan Dems in the group), but I think this woman is the real thing. She's no fake. I like her style. I like what she says and how she says it. I like how she lives her life."
Mike pipes and says...."aaah...you just like a woman who looks good in a skirt and heels." We all chuckle.
Bill says..."yeah...I like that too. But right now I'd be willing to take a bullet for that lady."
whoa...
Pause....
All agreed by nods of heads...yeah...yeah (all understand what Bill meant)...
I asked...."Anybody here willing to take a bullet for Obama or Biden?"
Laughter all around...no...no...no...
Just an anecdote to suggest a tide is turning....in Ohio...
Mwahahahaha....
September 05, 2008
When you're lost in the wilderness...
From Fred at Rantburg:
...and in 1996 the Pubs took Congress away from them because the Dems had become not only intellectually bankrupt, but too arrogant to even bother hiding their corruption.
The Pubs thereupon began acting remarkably like Dems for the next ten years, until they got dumped.
This left the body politic in the peculiar position of having a government run by reviled machine politicians and blatant demagogues -- remember that 13 percent approval rating -- while the Party of Ideas was reviled for whatcha might call "taking a wide stance" on the issues while it boodled.
The rest of us, who weren't office holders, found ourselves actually trying not to pay attention to politix as the housing bubble swelled and burst and gas prices went through the roof. The pols all tried to sound like Ronald Reagan without bothering to act like him or, even more important, to fire the rest of us with his zest and vision. G.W. Bush, bless his heart, had good intentions but, let's face it: he's no Great Communicator. The best Dick Cheney could do was to pot an occasional lawyer, eliciting a golf clap but not really getting the nation fired up.
All of which brings us back to Sarah Palin. When you're lost in the wilderness, it's good to find somebody who's at home there.
Yes. Yes it is. RTWT here and maybe find yourself smiling a little.
September 04, 2008
...and Ace is on fire!
ON FIRE I tell you!!
It's like we're fighting a war and we don't even have to bother coding our messages to the troops because we know there's no chance at all you'll even bother to pause to read our communications. "Don't bother us with your silly orders and tactics and strategies," you tell us, "We can figure out how to beat you silly people well enough on our own without any of your stupid-brained help."
You can? You sure about that? Well, whatever, buddy. If you think so. Seems to me you guys are 3-4 since 1994 -- a losing record -- but if you guys want to keep following the same game plan, be my guest.
Ultimately the liberals' sin is their smugness. Not even so much because most people recoil from the assumption of superiority, both intellectual and moral, by those who have accomplished nothing exceptional in life except for reliably voting and "thinking" liberal, as if casting a vote the "correct" way slaps 30 points on to your IQs and counts for 100 hours of community service and child mentoring.
No, the main problem with that smugness, that belief that you're sooo very fucking clever, is that you're actually not particularly clever at all, and the great gap between your personal estimation of your intelligence and the actual real-world measure of it is wide enough to stumble into and take a painful fall. Perhaps if you weren't so very convinced of your own innate entitlement to rule, you'd spend less time seething at a public unwilling to concede that rule to you, and less time trying to trick the public into voting for you by concealing your true beliefs, and more time trying to figure out what the public actually wants in its government, and how to provide with them with that.
You know the big difference between conservatives and liberals in terms of political acumen? You guys never see this stuff coming, because you're so convinced of your innate right to control other people's lives. You convince ourselves you're always the smartest guys in the room, and anyone who disagrees with you must either be so stupid or so luminescently evil they could never prevail in a campaign.
This is sooo much fun. I'm sitting here listening to the liberal pundits spluttering and spitting, and you know what I'm taking from them? The Republicans have their own gen-u-wine Rock Star.
Sarah
Wow! what a speech
Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.
Kidney, meet knife...
But with the support of the citizens of Alaska, we shook things up.
And in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people.
I came to office promising major ethics reform, to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is the law.
While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for.
That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.
I also drive myself to work.
Pure Heinlein- I'm loving this...
We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. I've noticed a pattern with our opponent.
Maybe you have, too.
We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.
And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.
But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.
This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.
Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.
Terrorist states are seeking new-clear (got to love the transcriber here- nuclear= new-clear, and earlier, haberdasher= habber-dasher LOL) weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it.
Congress spends too much ... he promises more.
Again, gut shot. I love this woman!
A leader who's not looking for a fight, but is not afraid of one either. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee.
He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man.
LOLOLOL
And to top it off-
There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.
It's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.
But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made.
It's the journey of an upright and honorable man — the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this country, only he was among those who came home.
To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless ... the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God ... the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and seen how evil is overcome. A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio, recalls looking through a pin-hole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway, by the guards, day after day.
As the story is told, "When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe's door and flash a grin and thumbs up" — as if to say, "We're going to pull through this." My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through these next four years.
Just wow. The bell got rung and this was the answer. I have hope again, and that is the biggest thing I take from last night. There is hope, if we're brave enough and smart enough to look past the fads of the moment and actually take our future seriously. But only if.
At least for tonight- There. Is. Hope.
UPDATE (can you tell I'm jazzed?) from Macleans via The Corner (who says "North of the Border, Andrew Coyne at Macleans isn't necessarily predisposed to liking Palin, but he admits he witnessed something very impressive, calling her "the best natural speechmaker since Reagan"":
It was that good. No, she's not qualified, and the substance was thin, but my God — that was perhaps the greatest bit of political theatre I have ever witnessed. Her critics in the media and in the opposition may regret having piled on quite so enthusiastically, and with so little heed for who they hurt — or angered. Watching the tumultuous, ecstatic reaction in the hall, I was reminded of the famous words of the Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbour: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve."
September 02, 2008
RNC news
Yeah, let's keep it classy guys and gals...
via James's twitter
Fundamental evolution
Glenn has a good post on recent discoveries in genetics. He quotes:
People who anchor their political beliefs in either supernatural religious or secular religious belief systems are going to find the foundations of their beliefs blown away by this coming torrent of discoveries.
The Singularity is coming!
August 29, 2008
Inside the OODA loop
Found in the commentary here, a very insightful take on McCain vs. Obama-
The fighter pilot vs the community organizer.
McCain is inside Obama's OODA loop. Speed of action forces the other guy to react. Once he is in the reactive mode he is lost.
How can you tell that is true? McCain is forcing Obama to make errors.
Take the house thing. Americans don't care how many - this is the land of opportunity. What they do care about is - were they honestly earned. Rezko.
Pull the trigger John!
Thanks, Glenn!
August 06, 2008
A little Heinlein...
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
Tell me how this is wrong.
July 25, 2008
Pat Condell
This Brit gets it!
via Posthuman Blues
July 24, 2008
A new award?
You're probably familiar with the Darwin Awards, handed out each year to the people who do humanity the service of removing themselves from the gene pool in creative ways. I think it's time for a new one, named after one of Isaac Asimov's characters in the brilliant Foundation. Lord Dorwin comes to Terminus representing the Galactic Empire. Here's the story:
"But then," interposed Sutt, "how would Mayor Hardin account for Lord Dorwin's assurances of Empire support? They seemed" he shrugged "Well, they seemed satisfactory."
RTWT. h/t Insty
July 23, 2008
Yup
Regarding the current view that the Obamessiah will probably win this November I found this line from the commentariat at the Belmont Club piquant-
"My favorite line from I Claudius is when Tiberius looks at his successor and tells him - "Rome deserves you.""
July 22, 2008
The Three Towers
Is this cool or what? I want to live in it...
Thanks to Posthumanblues
July 11, 2008
We'll miss him when he's gone
The Anchoress expresses my feelings exactly concerning Dubya. Be very careful what you wish for, lefties, for you may get it.
If it were possible, I'd vote for him again, but since it is not, I look forward to Bush's leaving. He'll naturally be blamed for everything that goes wrong over the next 6 years (I recall the Clinton's blamed any bad news on "12 years of Republican rule" until about 1998) and he will continue to be hated, reviled and lied about by the people who have given themselves over to hate, but he's earned his rest.
After him, the deluge.
July 03, 2008
Killing in Phoenix
Isn't this an act of war? Just askin'...
Lest we forget
The Declaration of Independence:
The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of AmericaWhen, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
So say we all. Enjoy the Fourth and remember what it means. These men were the Americans who risked everything.
June 19, 2008
Pennies for Wessa
June 18, 2008
Joe
True 'dat, Joe. I agree 100% with Joe. Joe is a smart man. Spread the word about Joe.
June 13, 2008
The Culture of Cool
Gerard nails it-
The American culture of cool sees itself as the real soul and real intelligence of America, even as it actually rides on the broad shoulders of America like some strangling old man of the sea that, once taken up, refuses to get down. It sees itself as the engine responsible for making the culture of America continually new, even as it only recycles one empty cultural container after another through the battered green bins of its rigid internal codes and fashions to pop them out as 'new, improved and even more impossibly hip.'
I despair for our country sometimes...
How uncool this man was to die for his country and his comrades. How uncool is the effort to liberate a country mired in the morass of the middle ages, when you could just stay home and play video games. How uncool to take the war to an enemy that has sworn to kill Americans wholesale and has done so. How very, very uncool.
I am uncool. And damn proud of it.
June 10, 2008
Whoops
If you're wondering why no posts for so long, it's simple- I've run out of room on my server. Major cleanup coming, or a new server, soon...
May 29, 2008
Severed Feet in Canada
This is passing strange:
Earlier this year, I posted that the third severed foot in six months had turned up on a beach in British Columbia. A fourth was found last week. All of them have been right feet inside size 12 sneakers
Conspiracy buffs- begin!
May 27, 2008
50 Pictures
May 19, 2008
It's almost over for the mother country
as I watched this video of the London police trying (and failing) to deal with Islamist radicals, I couldn't help but thinking of the streets of Rome full of Goths and Vandals in the mid 5th Century.
Sweet smokin' Jesus- I hope the Brits can get a handle on this, but my hope is fading.
May 16, 2008
Dads and babies switch heads- wha?
I don't know if this is creepy or funny or just plain weird:
GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!
Yeah. Weird FTW. Click pic for more if you dare...
via most of the morons on the innartubes
Sometimes the planets just align
May 09, 2008
Canadian train quarantined
This does not look good
A woman has died and 10 more in hospital after a flu-like outbreak on board a Via Rail train. The train, travelling from Vancouver to Toronto, is now under quarantine near Timmins.
Marc Depatie of the Foleyet OPP said that the female passenger was picked up in Jasper, Alberta with a tour group. Sgt Laura Nichols OPP said that she was called by CN at 8:35am Friday. "There was one person who had vital signs absent and five other people that were sick with flu-like symptoms," she reported.
That number quickly increased to ten, and all were taken to Timmins and District Hospital. "The Timmins District Hospital is a regional hospital, and I'm confident they can handle it," Nichols allowed.
The train is stopped in Foleyet. "The whole place is being overrun with ambulances and police cars, and we've got helicopters," said Deborah DesRochers, chairwoman of the town. "They've got the train quarantined. They're trying to isolate what it is."
Not good. Not good at all.
UPDATE Monday 5/12/2008 7:29 :
What initially looked to be a frightening infectious disease outbreak that led to the death of one woman aboard a Via Rail train turned out to be a remarkable series of unconnected coincidences, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David Williams, explained during a Friday afternoon press conference.
via Drudge
May 08, 2008
Slow-motion train wreck
...is what Hillary's presidential campaign has become. Wretchard writes
After decades of loyally supporting a liberal white candidate, the emergence of a viable "Black Candidate" means a significant bloc of the Democratic Party now feels entitled to take their turn. Hillary's people have no standing in selecting who this bloc candidate is going to be. Any objection that Obama, at 46 can wait his turn, misses the point. It's not Obama's turn. It is the Black Voter bloc's turn. The Faustian bargain has come due. And Hillary is welshing.
This might have been a good thing if Barack Obama were a moderate Democrat. But in addition to being the Black voter's candidate, he is also the chosen representative of the Party's Left. They too feel it is "their turn".
Hillary's campaign was one of those classic cases where the political past was used to predict the future. What worked in the past would work again. This time, though, the Clintons came across a discontinuity. A literal Black Swan. Past trends no longer held. The quiescent Black votes bloc has surged to the front of the bus and demanded their seat from the liberal white party elite.
This won't turn out well no matter who ends up winning. Race relations in America have been set back a generation at least. Color me appalled.
May 07, 2008
Dude, where's my misery?
Funny, funny...
"Whatever happened to the Great Depression? Not the real one from 70 years ago, the lost decade of unimagined misery and Steinbeckian angst, the worst period in the history of modern capitalism. I mean the replay we were promised this year. . . . Well, it's early days, to be fair, but so far the Great Depression 2008 is shaping up to be a Great Disappointment. Not so much The Grapes of Wrath as Raisins of Mild Inconvenience."
May 06, 2008
It's looking worse than I thought
Remember that uranium in Columbia I mentioned a while back? Well, looky here now-
Here is a partial list of what Colombian investigators found on the FARC terror leader's computer:
-- FARC connections with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa
-- Records of $300 million offerings from Hugo Chavez
-- Thank you notes from Hugo Chavez dating back to 1992
-- Uranium purchasing records
-- Admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria
-- Admit to planting a 2003 car bomb killing 36 at a Bogota upper crust club
-- Directions on how to make a Dirty Bomb
-- Information that led to the discovery of 60 pounds of uranium
-- Letter to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi asking for cash to buy surface-to-air missiles
-- Meetings with "gringos" about Barack Obama
-- Information on Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout who was later captured
-- FARC funding Correa's campaign
-- Cuban links to FARC
-- Links to US Democrats
-- $480,000 of FARC cash in Costa Rican safe house
-- $100,000 to President Correa's campaign for election
...And, more. [Emphasis mine]
Breathtaking.
via Glenn
May 02, 2008
Spike Lee weighs in
Ol' Spikey isn't happy with the Right Rev Wright spouting off:
Director Spike Lee has waded into the ongoing controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor whose provocative statements have proved a thorn in the side of Democrat frontrunner Barack Obama. Lee advises the preacher to do the right thing and keep quiet. "The more he opens his mouth, the more damage he does," he told the Guardian yesterday.
For good measure, Lee hinted at a political conspiracy behind Wright's recent, contentious attempts to justify his remarks. "It looks like he's being paid to keep talking," he said.
----
Wright has attracted criticism for sermons in which he invited God to "damn America" and claimed the US was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today". This has prompted renewed media scrutiny of Obama's own views. The Illinois senator was a long-term member of the pastor's church. Wright officiated at Obama's wedding and at the baptism of his two children.
----
"Jeremiah Wright needs to be quiet," Lee said yesterday. "If he loves Obama he needs to shut up right now. It makes me question his motives for talking. I'm starting to wonder whether somebody has been contributing to the building funds of his church. Seriously." [emph. mine]
"Jeremiah Wright needs to be quiet," Lee said
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
via Rantburg (and thanks to Excalibur in the comments for the popcorn vid)
April 30, 2008
Hope
This works on so many levels it transcends humor (warning- moonbat head explosion alert)
Judgement Day in 3, 2, 1...
'Kay now, this is starting to get creepy- self-repairing robots-
Yeah, yeah, this looks pretty crude. First steps, man, first steps. When do I get to see Asimov's Three Laws getting implemented?
via io9, my new go-to site for everything non-political and fantastic
April 28, 2008
RAH said it first
April 23, 2008
Food Pr0n
Stephen Green has himself some yummy
April 22, 2008
Aliens are... alien
Glenn links to an article by Jerry Pournelle. Key point:
...All I am saying is that both "sides" miss the point: we should be humble about ourselves and our place in the universe. We cannot know if a Creator exists. We can only believe if one exists, or does not. And we should definitely be humble about our own tools to probe the universe---they are sparse and primitive.
The Fundamentalists who say the most ignorant things about evolution are wrong on their side. And Dawkins and Myers and their ilk, who dare to call people of faith "stupid" (while their own atheism requires as much faith as any snake handling fundamentalist), revolt me.
Count me as revolted as well by fanatics of any stripe.
April 18, 2008
Freedom
Every once in a while I read something that gives me hope for humanity. This is the latest.
h/t Instapunk
Western Civilization
Some thoughts on where we are and how we got there.
Just to fire you up- I happen to agree that Christianity and the monogamy that is woven tightly into it are the reason European, and later, American civilization became ascendant. A quote from the comments:
whiskey_199 said...
I would argue the reverse Aenea. That Europe is central. Without it and Europeans, in their former state, the world is doomed to poverty and misery and repeating the cycle of Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, Hittites, etc. Flower, boom, decay, die. With the same misery, poverty, disease, lack of knowledge, and so on that characterized life outside of Europe circa 1500-present.
Europe, and Europe alone had the engine of prosperity: monogamy. Now it is true that most of humanity lacked that, and resembled a pride of lions, with the big man hoarding all the females (and wealth) and many long to return to that state. Among them many women it is safe to say.
Europe, and Europeans, were totally unlike ANYTHING that had came before. More cooperative. Less Big-Manish. Far more freeholder-ish. Spreading wealth and power DOWNWARD. Without Europe and Europeans, we'd see humanity living in something approximating the level of technology of 1200. Perhaps less than that. With a bit of fireworks.
China invented gunpowder, printed money, printing itself (the basics), and the first modern fleet of sailing ships. And did nothing with it because all that knowledge was locked up in Eunuchs and died with them. Whereas Europe took Chinese gifts and constantly improved upon them (for the benefit of family craftsmen and their sons) to the point where each generation, guns or printing or navigation (and ships themselves) were qualitatively better than before, and available in far greater numbers.
It isn't guns, germs and steel (Europe was province of ill-smelling barbarians who accomplished pretty much nothing before monogamy). Or Civic Militarism (Hanson). Europe was the punching bag for Vikings and Muslims before monogamy really took hold.
The explanation is cultural. It's decisive. China by contrast along with Islam have given the world relatively nothing. How can they with a few Emperors and a mass of Eunuchs.
Ouch. But it needs to be said.
April 17, 2008
Missing Rush Limbaugh
April 16, 2008
A Eulogy
Christopher Buckley's Eulogy for his Father
via Volokh
More popcorn please
Some gleefulness at Wizbang blog.
Disgusting doesn't begin to describe it
April 15, 2008
I'm a nut- with brown eyes
|
You Are A Peanut |
 You are popular, even with people who tend to have picky taste. Kids love you, as do dogs. From rednecks to snobs, most people have a place for you in their hearts. As popular as you are, there are some people who can't be near you. Don't take it too personally. There's just a few people you rub the wrong way. |
Odd that a displaced Georgia boy would get this result...
|
Your Eyes Should Be Brown |
 Your eyes reflect: Depth and wisdom What's hidden behind your eyes: A tender heart |
- and they are.
Idea shamelessly stolen from The Anchoress
April 09, 2008
Reality denial
Dr. Sanity has a brutal take on the congressional questioning of General Petraeus yesterday-
But then it's 2008 and we all know what that year signifies.
Yes, we all know what that year signifies. And you don't have to be a psychiatrist to understand the fundamental priority that motivates a narcissist.
The narcissistically driven denial of reality endures that they will never willingly or consciously reassess their socialist/leftist/PC ideology, or even question it.
Such reflection is far too threatening.
Anna Freud once wrote that the ego of a child in denial "refuses to become aware of some disagreeable reality.... It turns its back on it, and in imagination reverses the unwelcome facts."
The essence of psychologica denial is a refusal to look at, or acknowledge, reality.
..................................
Psychological denial and the avoidance of an unpleasant reality are certainly not confined to one side of the political spectrum or the other. But what I find endlessly fascinating is how the political left has created and fully integrated specific ideological tools that facilitate ongoing psychological denial.
It reminds me of all the paranoid patients I have observed over the years, who effortlessly are able to dismiss or explain away those facts that don't fit in with their carefully constructed conspiracy theories. If you get too assertive in pointing out those uncomfortable facts, you find yourself in no time fully integrated into the theory. For the paranoid, the case is closed and the argument is finished.
Smack! The question is, are we going to sit back and allow this to continue, or are we going to rid ourself of this pestilence? In the end it's "We the People" who decide.
Religion- and Courthouses
Glenn has an entry that notes that in Crossville, TN, there is a boldly religious statue right outside a courthouse! Oh, the humanity...
RFK
Wow. What could have been. I'll never ever forget 1968...
via The Anchoress
April 04, 2008
April 01, 2008
Wal-Mart to the rescue
So, for those of you who think all big box stores are eeevil, there's this. Rather heartwarming.
Blog rating
Since I'm a rather profane individual, this surprised me:
Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating
I guess when it comes down to "putting it on paper" I'm a chicken...
March 31, 2008
Poke Hollywood in the eye
...by going here and buying the DVD. I did, and look forward to watching it. A good way to show your support for our troops and your disdain of lefty Hollywood.
Astonishing happenings in Berzerkely
Berkeley pro-troops rally- what world did I just wake up to?
via the blogfadda
March 27, 2008
Things that make you say 'hmm'
BOGOTA, March 26 (Reuters) - Colombia said it seized at least 66 pounds (30 kg) of uranium from the country's biggest left-wing rebel group on Wednesday, the first time radioactive material has been linked to the four-decade-old guerrilla war.
via LGF. I don't know, but if freakin' FARC can get hold of 66 pounds, what may Al-Q have in mind? I'm just sayin'...
March 26, 2008
A thorn in the side of Islam
...is one Zakaria Botros.
Raymond Ibrahim's summary omits one key factor in Botros' success. It is factor hardest for the West to reproduce. Western intellectuals can also use the "new media"; learn to speak in Arabic; even learn Koranic theology. They potentially have everything but the one thing that Botros spontaneously possesses in spades. Faith.
Botros believes he has found the true religion and is eager to tell Muslims about it. Thus he offers them not only a critique of the absurdities of Islam but an invitation to embrace an alternative. He tells them not only what to turn away from but what to turn to. It is this last obstacle which the modern intellectual stumbles over.
A brave man indeed. Please go and read it all- in this day and age it is still possible for a man of faith to succeed.
March 25, 2008
Paterson
Oh LOLOL....
That said, this scandal a day thing is getting annoying. When people in Arkansas and Louisiana are laughing at you (and with good reason), you know you've got problems.
I feel sorry for the fine people of New York. Oh, wait a minute- no I don't! Morons.
March 20, 2008
Global Coldening
I guess Ace is doing all my posting for me today...
Ummm... can I ask a question?
Are these super-awesome climate models sophisticated enough to include a Sun and a spherical earth, rather than a flat one? Just want to make sure y'all aren't simplifying any other conditions to help your models run more smoothly.
Oh, and in these super-awesome climate models... What color are the infinite skies on your made-up world?
Just wanted to know.
Wouldn't want to lose that $5billion in grant money would we?
Words don't matter?
The new exciting remix all the morons are talking about. Ace's title says it best:
Rap By Rev. Jeremiah "J-Dog" Wright, With Special Guest Vocal By Barack "ChangeHope" Obama
March 19, 2008
The shrinking $
File this as NOT GOOD
The Last Master is gone
First Heinlein, then Asimov, now Arthur C. Clarke.
Godspeed sir, you one who changed my life.
I didn't do it for this
From Roger L. Simon:
Barack, I didn’t do it for this.
Barack, I dream of my kindergarten best friend Andy from Walden School, Manhattan, born one day after me, shot dead in Mississippi 1964.
Barack, I idolized Stokley Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Barack, I lost the full use of my left hand for life in South Carolina.
Barack, I didn’t do it for this.
What could I possibly add?
March 14, 2008
Prostitution
An interesting post, and a more interesting discussion in the comments- Megan McArdle on why she wouldn't want to be a hooker...
Look, first of all, there are lots of jobs that I would never want to do. I like to shoot a little hoops now and again, but I would never, ever want to be a professional basketball player. Nor would any of my friends--I mean, they might like to be Michael Jordan, but they wouldn't want to do the actual job of spending hours a day running up and down a court, practicing shots, and lifting weights. I do not therefore consider myself qualified to proclaim that no one in the entire world wants to be a professional basketball player.
And from the comments-
"Reasoning from first principles" is not a good way of going about thinking about human sexual relations. I reasoned from first principles about sex when I was 19. It made me an asshole. By the time you're in your thirties, hopefully, you've started to figure out how people work a little better. One of the things you discover is that actually, in this particular arena, men and women are rather different, and being "fair" means trying to accommodate those differences, not treating everyone alike.
The discussion provoked by a certain Governor's downfall has made me rethink a lot of my assumptions about prostitution- I have always had a certain libertarian attitude that "a woman should be able to do what she will with her body" but, at least in current society, that makes her susceptible to a real slavery to her keeper (ahem-PIMP). That said though, a certain Kristen is very much on the road to having her 15 minutes of fame and is liable to walk away with a pantload of money. Not bad for being reasonably attractive and compliant, for a fee.
via the Godfather
March 11, 2008
Get out the popcorn!
The Belmont Club:
Plausible deniability refers to informal arrangement through which a person may deny any connection to a disreputable activity he actually orders. The two ends to this clever arrangement are the protected principal and the secret agent acting on the mastermind's behalf. When Geraldine Ferraro said that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position" only to resign after Hillary Clinton expressed her high-minded indignation, were the two acts unrelated?
This meltdown is gettin more and more impressive...
The principle followed by kidnappers in Baghdad who sent five severed fingers belonging to "four Americans and an Austrian taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq" was that if you want to be taken seriously you have to demonstrate how far you are willing to go in order to get what you want. And although neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton have sent anyone actual severed fingers yet, both have amply shown their astonished supporters that they are willing to ignite race war, tear the Party apart or engage in political cannibalism to serve their own individual ambitions.
Can I have butter on that? RTWT here
March 05, 2008
...and I thought I was a Barbarian...
I Am A: Lawful Good Human Paladin/Sorcerer (3rd/3rd Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-12
Constitution-14
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-14
Charisma-12
Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.
Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Primary Class:
Paladins take their adventures seriously, and even a mundane mission is, in the heart of the paladin, a personal test an opportunity to demonstrate bravery, to learn tactics, and to find ways to do good. Divine power protects these warriors of virtue, warding off harm, protecting from disease, healing, and guarding against fear. The paladin can also direct this power to help others, healing wounds or curing diseases, and also use it to destroy evil. Experienced paladins can smite evil foes and turn away undead. A paladin's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast. Many of the paladin's special abilities also benefit from a high Charisma score.
Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)
R.I.P. Gary Gygax- your HP is now 0.
March 03, 2008
Aliens?
This post at Ace's is going to give me nightmares...
February 22, 2008
Hope. and Change.
It's over?
Ace seems to think so. I'm withholding judgment however, something tells me there's more fight in the old gal yet...
UPDATE 3/5/2008: Heh. Told'ja.
February 20, 2008
Obamamania
And to Barack Obama's credit he has carried a near-empty hand to triumph. That alone is testament to his political skill. But he has done it at the cost of not talking about the platform of his own party, which truth to tell, consists of a collection of rotting planks left over from the 1960s and which no one is safe treading upon. Instead of embarssing himself by talking about higher taxes, more appeasement and more special interest politics, Barack Obama has done the smart thing. He's talked about himself; about "us"; about the future, about Hope and most of all, about Change. The subliminal message is that we want to Move On. And part of what the electorate wants to Move On from is all the fermenting baggage that Hillary Clinton keeps hauling along. It's as neat a piece of conjury as has been seen for the last fifty years.
God help us all.
Da Flu
A world-class rumble develops at Ace's place- are you a dedicated worker when you come to work with a cold or the flu, or just a moron?
February 18, 2008
More outrage in Mississippi
The agnostic in me refuses to admit the possibility of the existence of Hell.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong. These f*cks need a couple of eternities of excruciating suffering, just as a good start.
I couldn't agree more. As someone who had an unfortunate brush with the law, I'm well aware how easily 'railroading' can happen- been there, got the t-shirt.
February 13, 2008
Which President am I?
This kind of surprised me...
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Which Great US President Are You Most Like? created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You scored as Abraham Lincoln 16th President, in office from 1861-1865
Born: 1809 Died: 1865 (assassainated)
|
February 12, 2008
They fight back
Things are getting interesting down Gaza way-
A new Facebook group is urging Sderot residents to use the Internet to learn how to build crude rockets, much like the Kassams launched at them from the Gaza Strip, and fire them back at the Palestinians. The group, which currently has 45 members, posts material from the Internet on how to manufacture rockets.
Facebook, a social networking site that has taken the on-line world by storm, allows anyone to create groups and to invite people to join.
The group's creators, Shai and Batya Messenberg from Petah Tikva, posted a description that reads: "It cannot be so difficult: If those retards from the Gaza Strip can do it then so can you."
LOL. If the government won't protect you, you must take things into your own hands. Thanks, Rantburg!
BTW, TechnoChitlins turned 5 last Sunday- hooray for me!
February 04, 2008
9/11 musings
Brian Tiemann decides to look up what IMDB commenters have to say about a movie, but ends up here-
But what I don't get is this... this narrative. This "We are a silenced minority voice, repressed and marginalized" conceit. The bizarre idea that speaking out against the administration is some noble and risky act of bravery, nay, something "tantamount to treason"—something that doesn't take place for hours on end every single weeknight on Comedy Central and in the multiplexes and even at the freaking White House.
I understand the angst. Read it all, please- the guy makes too much sense.
February 01, 2008
27 Daily Affirmations
1. When I post under an assumed name, I can get in closer touch with my Inner Sociopath.
2. Through block-quotes and fisking I have the power to transform even the most harmless statements of my enemies into concrete evidence of their evil plans to enslave mankind and rule the world.
3. In all humility I do not seek to rule the world. I seek only complete agreement and total capitulation.
4. I assume full responsibility for my posts, especially the good ones that are just links to someone else's.
Go here for the rest. #4 is my friend!
McCain Derangement Syndrome
Ace links to Karl, and the tumult in the comments begins.
For those on the Right who are going to Just Sit This One Out- 2006 worked really well, didn't it?
Update: DUH, I meant the comments at Protein Wisdom! Follow the link one Ace's site and just keep scrollin'...
January 25, 2008
Clear sight needed
Another gem from Breath of the Beast, which speaks to my previous post below:
Just so there is no room for misunderstanding here, let me say this explicitly, I leave it open that it is possible that America did not have to kill all of the Indians who were killed in the development of the continent. It is probable that a better understanding of the cultural issues at stake and a better grasp of the possible strategies might have brought about a solution to the problem without as much carnage as did happen. No one (at least no one with any power to change the course of events) was able to see and verbalize that the Indians and their way of life were being replaced by the leading edge of western civilization. If they had been able to frame the situation that way, the whole thing might have been handled with out the wasteful and disillusioning hypocrisy of treaties that promised autonomy and coexistence.
Likewise, I am not saying we have to kill a large number of Muslims. It might only be necessary to kill a few- the few that are actively trying to kill us. The fact is, though, that our current approach is without doubt the worst way to handle the problem and will end up costing more in suffering and blood than a more frank and aggressive tack. We must acknowledge that they do not consider us fully human, and that many of them take it as their sacred responsibility to either make us full humans in their eyes by converting us to their primitive and imbecilicly intolerant cult or KILL us.
They will continue killing us and forcing us to kill them until we solve the problem in some way and that solution will be impossible if our rules of discourse continue to outlaw the vocabulary to describe the problem and the concepts that define it.
If we are not going to speak plainly and without political correctness, we may just go the way of the American Indian. Is that what we want?
Or maybe we can either invent a replacement for oil or, perhaps just take it away from them. How we do it is debatable but unless we are able to speak frankly about it and consider the alternatives, we will continue to pretend it’s not really a problem until the Christians and Jews among us are all reduced to dhimmi status and the rest are forced to become Muslims and head the call to prayers five times a day.
I’m not necessarily advocating that we take and hold the oil fields, nor am I saying we must invade Iran next. I am merely saying that we have no idea what we can do to stop being picked off a few (or a few dozen or a few thousand) at a time. We have not yet made the commitment to define and solve the problem as it exists. As a result we are forced to make concessions to a parasitic cultural disease. Caliphate Islam is attempting to burrow into and control the heart and mind of Western Civilization. Unless we can reclaim the vocabulary with which to identify and talk about it, we are at its mercy. The only thing standing in our way is our misunderstanding of our own principals.
At least for now, it's our call.
January 24, 2008
Where do they come from?
From Wretchard:
And it turns out that most combat Jihadis didn't spring up spontaneously, radicalized and outraged by the "idea" of Israel or some television broadcast about Iraq. They came from ground long tilled and fertilized by extremism. "The West Point center's analysis notes that the home towns and regions listed by many fighters correlate with areas of high insurgent activity in the Arab world. More than half the Libyans came from in or around the coastal cities of Darnah and Benghazi. Both are long associated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which in November officially affiliated itself with the global al-Qaeda network headed by Osama bin Laden." This suggests a vital synergy between the effects of Jihadi propaganda and the efforts of extremist agitators. The suicide bomber, it's not surprising to learn, is the end product of long preparation and cultivation.
Perhaps one reason why the West has proved so helpless in the face of threats like al-Qaeda is that it is culturally unable to resist, or even to condemn, extremist Islamic agitation in its pre-militant phase. By fighting only those who have crossed the sharp legal border between religious hate-mongering (which is tolerated as a multicultural right) and actual belligerency it is permanently restricted to chipping away at the tip of the iceberg, while nine-tenths of it is allowed to grow unchecked beneath the surface.
The West Point analysis points out that many of the problems which beset Iraq have their origins elsewhere; in so-called allied countries and even within communities in the West. Iraq became a dumping ground, a mere outlet for the hate that is daily generated by radicalism in the Middle East, North Africa and in the West. A foreign suicide bomber is man who by definition was ready to explode before he even got to Iraq. The country itself provided him with a graveyard, but the process which gave him birth is still in full swing.
I am coming more and more to the opinion that this is all going to end up in nuclear fire- there are "moderate muslims" (see Marzouq in the comments) but they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the killers and the cowed. Sooner or later they will have to be faced, and it will be kill or be killed.
January 23, 2008
From the past
January 18, 2008
Troubling news
Mount St. Helens is grumbling again. Glad I live in Mobile!
January 16, 2008
Worse than we thought?
A light and friendly discussion about property in Minneapolis
Boomlet?
An examination of global data also shows that the United States has a higher fertility rate than every country in continental Europe, as well as Australia, Canada and Japan. Fertility levels in those countries have been lower than the U.S. rate for several years, although some are on the rise, most notably in France. . . . To many economists and policymakers, the increase in births is good news. The U.S. fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — reached 2.1. That's the "magic number" required for a population to replace itself.
Countries with much lower rates — such as Japan and Italy, both with a rate of 1.3 — face future labor shortages and eroding tax bases as they fail to reproduce enough to take care of their aging elders.
Interesting. I credit the Spears family.
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LOLOL!
Thank you
Recently, as it is wont to do in January, my ClustrMaps link reset. Usually I don't notice this, as I'm not narcissistic about who or how many read this site, but this year they sent me an email apologizing for, and explaining why they do it. Well, fine, OK.
Having that "on my horizon" if you will, I took a look at the new map- and was astounded. What a wonderful world when people from all over, and I mean ALL OVER, take the time to come see what I'm thinking about. It's profoundly humbling, and I just want to say thank you to each and every one of you for taking the time from your life to visit my humble little blog. You have no idea how much it means to me.
Thank you.
January 15, 2008
How addicted?
I guess I can still quit, though...
Infirmary bound
Pray for Tim Blair. Please.
Free speech
As most of you already know, Mark Steyn is under attack by Canada's Human Rights Commission in a baldfaced strike against free thought and speech. From the Belmont Club:
The really insidious thing about inquisitions, such as the one undertaken by the Human Rights Commission, is the secretly shameful gratitude those that are spared feel that it is being done others. Not to us; we are safe. But somewhere in the subconscious we know that've only postponed the trial, not overcome it. But what of it? That problem can be left for tomorrow. Today it's enough to be glad this is happening to someone else.
It gets lively in the comments, with posts by NahnCee and Zenster striking the most fire. We had all better wake up; this crap happens as much in the US as it does in Canada.
January 14, 2008
Clemency
January 11, 2008
Taunting the tiger
At Breath of the Beast, an electrifying post:
How many times do we have to win the argument? Time and again the left comes up short on ethical, rationality and logic points and long on emotional blackmail. Still, they keep coming back with the same old tired circle of indignation, evasion and juvenile posturing.
Sometimes, the order in which ideas present themselves to you is more important than their individual coherence or importance. Occasionally, the most trivial and unrelated things can serve as stepping stones to a entirely new vista, a new perception of an old, unsolved puzzle. I’ve tried for a few months now to complete my Cultural Insanity series on the dangerous evolutionary dead end that is the progressive, secular humanistic, socialist left. I had put up three posts that were quite well received (I, II and III) in July and August. I was on a roll. But as I approached the last post in the series I stalled.
I realized I had never really got beyond finding innovative ways of explaining how wrong and developmentally immature they are. When I started putting that last post together, the one in which I would put the coup-de-grace on the left by uncovering and laying out the underlying flaw in their philosophy and rational, I could not complete the series. The deep underlying flaw kept receding from my grasp. I knew most of the important pieces of the puzzle...
RTWT here, then start at his first post and continue through to the last. Just a great and penetrating mind.
Flakes
Whew
New exhibit finally installed- hooray! Mebbe I can post something worthwhile now that the excitement's over. I would post about the new exhibit but there's nothing I can put up here- these folk are protective. Just go to the Exploreum website and you'll see what's up. Come see us!
December 28, 2007
What we have to look forward to for the next four years...
Please. God. No.
December 27, 2007
429 tons of HE
via Belmont Club
Benazir Bhutto assassinated
Mark Steyn has a thought:
Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation. "Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them. That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan. Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death. Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.
December 26, 2007
Wasn't there a newsmagazine once that was called "Time"?
Jules Crittenden looks back in anger.
December 19, 2007
Fred!
December 17, 2007
Progressive tropes
A commenter on this post at the Belmont Club, Zenster, has written one of the most clear-minded tracts I've ever seen:
buddy larsen: makes one wonder why, exactly, so many of us boomers so blindly for so long a time followed what is now coming into focus as something best described as the Beast.
This should come as absolutely no surprise considering what America’s youth have been taught for the last several decades. Boomers were one of the first generations to grow up completely immeresed in liberal academia's toxic brew of uncertainty and nebulous definitions.
It is impossible to overstate how damaging to young minds modern academia’s school of nihilist “thought” truly is. Let’s examine its "tenets": (Try to recall how many times you told the following.)
1. You can never know anything for sure.
2. There's no right or wrong, just shades of grey.
3. Truth is subjective.
4. Logic is conditional.
5. There are no absolutes.
6. Life is without meaning.
All of the above—now commonly held—"tenets" engender belief in a malevolent universe. They spawn pessimism, insecurity, cynicism and the ready dismissal of established norms. All of these behaviors are prerequisites for the subordination of less capable minds by those who seek to control them. Loosing an individual from the moorings of rational philosophy makes those cut adrift extremely vulnerable to programming of any sort. Cults and brainwashers are notorious for using such methods in recruiting new members or inducing political defections.
Let’s examine these modern “tenets” one by one:
You can never know anything for sure.
I’ve had people actually try to argue with me about how I can be so sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. My simple reply is that such debate is irrelevant because if the sun does not rise, all life will end and further dispute serves no valid purpose. Ayn Rand addresses this in her law of identity: A=A. Certain laws do hold with a degree of immutability whereby they can be accepted as absolute. The lack of surety bred up by this one supposition is amongst the most damaging of all to young minds.
There's no right or wrong, just shades of grey.Whenever confronted with this utter nonsense simply ask, “When is rape permissible?” There are certain things in this world that are wrong and to think otherwise is indicates an unwholesome degree of moral flexibility. It fosters an ability to tolerate the intolerable. This particular “tenet” serves as a cornerstone of moral relativism and represents a core driver of Multiculturalism’s refusal to condemn even the most hideous of traditions.
Truth is subjective.
There can be no better way of undermining an individual’s personal convictions than by making truth circumstantial. Welcome to the brave new world of “truthiness”. When a person’s moral compass is demagnetized its poles become interchangeable and from thereon it’s all a downhill slide. Once you leave the mountaintop of moral clarity all perspective is lost and certainty perishes swiftly thereafter.
Logic is conditional.
This is how you strip the mind’s gearbox and destroy any transmission of meaningful reality. Critical analysis is impossible without the guideposts of logic. Once this guardian of intellect is slain any barbarian can crash the gates of reason. Constructive criticism and the assassination of ideas suddenly become indistinguishable. Deform this vital toolset and there is no way to repair the damage done by the preceding “tenets”.
There are no absolutes.
Tear out the moorings of mental discrimination and personal judgment becomes impossible. Witness the recent pejorative cast given to the word “discrimination”. Although wholly different in meaning, it is now demonized with the same negative connotations attributed to the word “prejudice”. Little value is held in the ability to discern between right and wrong. Especially so when the difference between right and wrong has already been denied. When people cannot make up their own minds the time is ripe for someone else to do it for them.
Life is without meaning.
Here is the grand finale for those who seek to subvert humanity and civilization. Eliminate a sense of individual purpose in life and blind obedience becomes—not just a welcome relief from crippling disorientation—but an easy descent into conformity and total lack of free thought. Communism sought to do this by alienating workers from their labor, product and compensation. Make a person’s work irrelevant to their daily living and life rapidly becomes meaningless. Have the result of human labor bear no direct relation to personal survival and existence loses its importance. Reward individuals in ways that have little connection to their efforts and soon they lose all contact with reality.
Authoritarian religions do this as well. They attempt to channel all human spirituality into a more narrow definition that serves only their own ends. True liberation of the mind represents a least desirable outcome. Life’s meaning can only be perceived within the limited confines of hidebound doctrine and not via an individual quest for uplift.
Now, combine all of these “tenets” together and you brew up an intellectual poison so toxic that there is little chance of escaping its fatal effects. The antidotes of reason, logic and morality have all been diluted into impotence and little more remains than being led to the slaughterhouse. Welcome to Htrae, the Bizarro World of Politically Correct thinking and Multiculturalism.
Sort of focuses the mind, doesn't it? I was in my late thirties before I could have understood that. Now, when I run into it, it just makes me shake my head.
December 13, 2007
Who for president?
I don't want a fun President. I want one who will do the job. Part of the job is scaring the shit out of autocratic and dictatorial leaders elsewhere on the globe. Sorry about that, but it's so.
December 07, 2007
Shootings in gun-free zones
A wise take, if a bit snarky.
Update 10:24- It's not a gun-free zone if you get shot there
The Flying Imams
If you think it can't happen here:
I have known three of the plaintiffs in the U.S. Airways suit for almost a decade. Soon after settling in Arizona in 1999, I became involved in the local Muslim community. Before moving to Scottsdale, I usually attended Friday congregational prayer services at the Islamic Community Center of Tempe, Arizona. Often, Ahmed Shqeirat, now the primary plaintiff, delivered sermons at the mosque where he has long been imam. I was struck by the political nature of his sermons. He repeatedly criticized both U.S. domestic and foreign policy and often exaggerated Muslim victimization. He advocated political unification of Muslims internationally and blamed the United States, Israel, and the West for perceived slights. He called for the political empowerment of Muslims in American society.
After hearing several sermons, I spoke and wrote to him to express my dismay at his emphasis of political over spiritual topics. He responded that “secularism is Godlessness” and asserted a right to “speak about political injustice.” The concept of purely spiritual Islam and creation of an intellectual environment welcoming to all Muslims regardless of political persuasion was anathema to him.
To give one example of his abuse of pulpit, during a Friday sermon in April 2004, he displayed an image, which CAIR had distributed, of an American soldier in Iraq with two young Iraqi boys. In the photo, the soldier held a sign saying, “Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad, then he knocked up my sister.”15 Shqeirat neither made any attempt to verify the image’s authenticity nor to determine, if real, whether it was representative. Nor, when he was asked, could he explain how such a display related to Islamic theology or spirituality. The goal of using faith identity to divide society highlights the incompatibility of Islamism with traditions of American culture and society.
Folks, y'better pay attention.
Pearl Harbor
via Chris Muir
December 05, 2007
The Daily Coyote
Just about the most heartwarming thing I've seen in years. Scroll to the end and start working back up. If it doesn't put a grin on your face check yourself for a pulse...
from James, who makes me smile and laugh every day. As he says, buy his book!
November 30, 2007
Inside the Postmodern Skeptic Tank
One Cosmos at his best. How does the Left see what it sees?
One of the key ideas of Orthodoxy is that we require a stable framework in order to think productively and deeply about reality, and that certain frameworks (Chesterton would say one framework) have been given to us from "on high," so to speak, in order to accomplish this. Naturally, the "radical" opposes this constraint on his freedom, but freedom in itself is not freeing, any more than progress in itself is progressive; without limits, or boundary conditions, the former is "nothingness" or "lostness," while the latter is just pointless change, drift, or entropy.
This reminds me of the distinction Polanyi drew between what he called the open society and the free society. He used the practice of science to illustrate the difference, pointing out that a truly free society does not merely consist of everyone believing whatever they want. Science, for example, is a free and spontaneous intellectual order that is nevertheless based on a distinctive set of beliefs about the world, through which the diverse actions of individual scientists are coordinated. Like the cells in your body, individual scientists independently go about their business, and yet, progress is made because their activities are channeled by the pursuit of real truth.
In contrast, in a merely "open" society, there is no such thing as transcendent truth: perception is reality and everyone is free to think and do as he pleases, with no objective standard by which to judge it. This kind of "bad freedom" eventually ramifies into the cognitively pathological situation we now see on the left, especially as it manifests in its purest form in academia (the liberal arts, not the sciences, except to the extent that science devolves into metaphysical scientism).
Ah, feminism
Ladies, this should make your blood boil.
Funny, looking elsewhere there's no end of information.
These people have no shame- none of them.
November 28, 2007
The fall of Camelot
How did we get where we are today? From whence did we come? Neptunus Lex hazards a guess...
Forty-four years ago last week, Sarajevo came to Dallas and the boy king of Camelot stood in the footsteps of Archduke Ferdinand. Rather than igniting a world-wide conflagration, when Lee Harvey Oswald fired those three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolhouse Depository he ignited what was to become the American culture war - a war whose volleys echo to this day.
Partisans of the handsome young president and his glamorous bride saw in him the manifestation of all their aspirations and prayers. His murder on the streets of Dallas sent them searching for an enemy to blame. They found it in Oliver Stone-style conspiratorial visions of an America divided by race and class, gender and age. They found in it a reason to hate themselves - or at least, to hate those among them who did not share their vision of the America-that-ought-to-be.
The truth was, as ever, hiding in plain view - effectively, as it turns out.
RTWT of course
November 26, 2007
More fun in Paris
AP reports "youths" firing "buckshot" at police in Paris, France. Dang Methodists!
via the godfather
November 21, 2007
What's my accent?
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
| Boston | |
| The West | |
| The Northeast | |
| The Inland North | |
| Philadelphia | |
| North Central | |
| The South | |
| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz | |
I have to admit this surprised me, ya'll...
Pr0n gone wild
November 20, 2007
He Hayts Him
Which 2008 candidate do you hate the most?
The candidate you like least is Democrat Dennis Kucinich. He is pro-choice, opposes the death penalty, is in favor of No Child Left Behind, opposes building a border fence, opposes Iran sanctions, opposes a troop surge for Iraq, wants universal healthcare, is in favor of banning assault weapons -- this guy is your worst nightmare!
Take the quiz at Buttafly.comYup.
November 16, 2007
Whack!
As you know, these voters are a bunch of people misled and numbed by the proselytizing, generalized, deceptive, romanticized discourse, which promises them black-eyed virgins and boys in Paradise, and such things. This discourse merely postpones the resolution of their problems - instead of resolving them today, let's resolve them in a billion years. This is escapism into the future. That's one thing. If those voters had managed to get a job and a visa to America, none of them would have voted, and nobody would have watched your show. You would be fired from Al-Jazeera and would be left jobless.
h/t Jules
November 14, 2007
Remember Iraq?
Things are getting better? Well, duh!
It’s a mystery. What caused that drop in violence? After enumerating the many indisputable indicators of less death, less violence, AP opines:
The reasons for the violence drop are less clear.
U.S. commanders cite the surge of nearly 30,000 troops sent by President Bush earlier this year. They also cite a change in tactics, moving more troops out of large camps and into neighborhoods to keep extremists from returning.
“The surge gave us combat fire to reach out and touch the enemy,” said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. troops along Baghdad’s southern rim. “We’ve denied the enemy those sanctuaries, and we couldn’t have done that without the surge.”
But the surge’s success was also due to a revolt against al-Qaida by some Sunni Arabs — first in Anbar province and later in Baghdad. Fearing al-Qaida’s brutal tactics, many fighters from rival insurgent groups such as the Islamic Army in Iraq began cooperating with U.S. forces to drive the extremists from their neighborhoods and villages.
Noticed that did you?
Alternative fuels
What about so-called green alternatives like electric cars, hydrogen fueled cars or biofuels? Can they compete with these alternative oil supplies? Let's start with bioethanol produced from corn. Bioethanol is almost as contentious a fuel as petroleum. Since ethanol is a refined fuel, the easier comparison is with the price of gasoline. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) notes even as oil prices have climbed, the price of a gallon of ethanol produced in the U.S. has generally been higher than the price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline. Also, one must take into account the how plowing up additional land to produce biofuel crops affects the natural environment and growing concerns about the effect of biofuels on the price of food. The EIA notes that if oil prices fall to below $50 per barrel that cellulosic ethanol based on current technologies will not be cost competitive.
What about the much-ballyhooed hydrogen economy? The idea is that cars would run on fuel cells that would burn hydrogen and emit only water vapor. But where will the hydrogen come from? Ideally it would be produced by electrolysis—splitting water molecules using electricity. As engineer Robert Zubrin notes, however, hydrogen currently costs about $100 per kilogram and a kilogram of hydrogen contains about as much energy as a gallon of gasoline. Other sources of hydrogen include methane or even coal which have all the environmental downsides discussed above. Besides why waste perfectly good electricity to make hydrogen which will be used to make more electricity in fuel cells to propel automobiles? Why not use electricity directly?
Read the whole thing; the outlook is changing.
via The Blogger of the Year
November 07, 2007
Islamonazi DOES work
My inner European
|
Your Inner European is Irish! |
 Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table. |
Erin go brah!
November 06, 2007
Zombies!
November 02, 2007
Hell freezes over
I never thought I'd ever say these words but...
November 01, 2007
The New Barbarians
A link in the comments at a post at The Belmont Club sends you to a fascinating analysis of how we might learn from history-
Much has been said over the past few years about the novelty of the security challenges now facing the United States. In what is still the most popular version of events, history started on 9/11, when “everything changed.” The global jihadist movement is an unexpected offshoot of the encounter between Western-driven modernization processes, now of global scale in the 21st century, and an Islamic world still struggling with the legacy of the 20th. One result of this encounter is a decentralized web of mobile, marauding Islamist terrorist organizations capable of complex attacks, highly adaptable in structure, often indistinguishable from the broader Muslim communities that succor or tolerate them, and reasonably skilled at public relations (at least with regard to those communities). In the worst scenario, al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates may use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies, marking the only time since Westphalia that a substate actor can credibly threaten the vital interests of not only a state, but of the strongest state in the international system. If that’s not novelty, nothing is.
That there is something new about this threat is undeniable. Substate actors with global reach and the technical skill of modern apocalyptical terrorists bear almost no resemblance to the main challenges to international security during the past several centuries, which were characterized by more or less rule-based competition among well-defined states. Another difference stands out, too: The modern state system enforced a separation of church and state on the international level with its doctrine of cuius regio, eius religio. Its 17th-century founders learned the lessons of the Thirty Years War and determined not to let the passions of religious disagreement inflame the necessities of political order. Today’s salafi warriors mean to destroy that separation utterly, a separation that even the Ottoman Empire, the seat of the Caliphate, came to accept in practice over time.
So there is novelty in our midst, but as this latter example suggests, only in comparison with what we generally call modernity. If we look at pre-modern history we find that the al-Qaeda menace does not appear so novel after all. Most pre-modern great powers—empires, they are commonly called—faced an obstinate and in some cases deadly menace from “barbarians.” In some ways, al-Qaeda and its franchises are the planetary-scale barbarians of the 21st century.
My use of “barbarian” implies no necessary moral judgment, but only objectively specifies small groups composed often of nomads and arranged in tribes rather than hierarchically structured states. Barbarians were also uncivilized—again, not in a moral but in a literal sense—because they did not live in cities. They preferred instead a highly mobile lifestyle based on pastoralism to the settled agriculture that enabled urban life. Think of Rome facing the Goths, and especially the highly mobile Huns, Vandals and Alans between the 3rd and 5th centuries; China under the Ming dynasty (14th–17th centuries) struggling to contain the persistent threat of the Mongols from the north; the Ottoman Empire being devastated in the 14th century by Central Asian hordes led by Tamerlane; 13th-century Russia invaded by the Mongols.
Be sure to read in full- the writer presents some possibilities that seem to offer hope.
Coffee alert
Royal band plays appropriate theme music for Saudi's visit...
Smack!
10 - er - 15 reasons to hate the cellphone industry. I completely agree.
via The King