Just a little old WHOOPS. Especially that last bullet...

A New Year's Toast

to my betters at the U.N.

Why I'm a Lutheran.

UPDATE on New Year's Eve: Maybe miracles DO happen after all. Unfortunately, it only lifts my opinion of the general behavior of the Vatican only a few inches out of the gutter. I'll watch for a trend though. But I'll be very careful not to turn blue...

More Projection: Today's Oppressed Spoiled Lib Bourgeois

Did I forget to mention that Orwell said "The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security."? Oh yeah, I did.

Did I forget to mention that the libs nowadays constitute the "oppressed" bourgeois? It must be true -- Hitler was a Christian you know so therefore W and me are the Nazis that are doing the oppressing ... ummmmmm ... did I mention that Hitler was a pagan atheist who killed probably more Christians than Jews? Did I mention that that's really saying something?

Well, OK then, let's not forget that I'm the only known Norwegian descendent of Ferdinand so that's all the libs need to know. That's the ticket! All those Nazi Gomer Christians all uniformly voting against the enlightened libs who with superior humanity agree with enlightened barbaric Muslims chanting that wiping the Jews from the earth will solve all the world's problems.

Did I mention that Ferdinand likely incinerated more Jews than Moors?

Did I mention that it's really the libs and Ferdinand -- and Hitler -- that are the real soulmates in this picture?

The Current Jaw Dropper
"In a series of e-mails I patiently explained that Bush couldn't be Hitler since Hitler was dead. He also couldn't be a "new Hitler" since the two men have policies almost diametrically opposed. Most significantly, Bush is attempting to replace genocidal dictatorships with secular democracies. Hitler did everything he could do to destroy democracies and replace them with genocidal dictators. I thought my sister might understand the difference. I also pointed out that Hitler was a starving artist who joined the National Socialist Party, supported gun control, abortion, government control of corporations, was an athiest with an affinity for paganism, hated Jews and allied himself with radical Muslims. I then noted that the Democratic Party, not the Republicans, had a platform which came closest to Hitler's. In other words, using objective reality, not delustional rantings, Hitler is closer politically to the Democrats than to Bush."

And that being on the other side like they are is "a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security."

And that their claim to being oppressed is pure horsepucky hip deep?

The libs don't understand what Emmet Fox calls the the greatest and most fundamental "Laws of Mind": What You Think Upon Grows.

What you think upon grows. This is an Eastern maxim, and it sums up neatly the greatest and most fundamental of all the Laws of Mind. What you think upon grows.

What you think upon grows. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your life. Whether the subject of your thoughts be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows. Any subject that you keep out of your mind tends to diminish in your life, because what you do not use atrophies.

The more you think about your indigestion or your rheumatism, the worse it will become. The more you think of yourself as healthy and well, the better will your body be.

The more you think about lack, bad times, etc., the worse will your business be; and the more you think of prosperity, abundance, and success, the more of these things will you bring into your life.

The more you think about your grievances or the injustices that you have suffered, the more such trials will you continue to receive; and the more you think of the good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you.

This is the basic, fundamental, all-inclusive Law of Mind, and actually all psychological and metaphysical teaching is little more than a commentary upon this.

What you think upon grows (Phillippians 4:8)

The Roe Effect will nicely accelerate the libs extinction. But Emmet Fox knew the real reason why they are toast -- it's the libs that are nihilism's soulmates.

Not us dim and happy Gomer Christians.

Did I mention that all the self-centered and ill-behaved lib whining and invective reminds me of my children on a bad day? Well, if I did I'm taking it back since it would be unfair to them...

And now you know why they're called the "Victocrats".

Did I mention that would be spelled with a "victim" and not a "victory"?

I Love My Two Little Entities

I love my two young sons dearly -- certainly right from when I saw them in mid-gestation courtesy of ultrasound technology. If you haven't had the experience of seeing ultrasounds of your child then I respectfully suggest you're rather less than qualified to flap your gums about when life starts.

James puts the libs problems with "entities" and the realities of life in a pretty stunning light with this entry:

Where Do Babies Come From?
You probably heard about this horrific story that broke just as we were leaving on vacation: A woman was charged with murdering another woman in Missouri. The victim was eight months pregnant, and the suspect, who wanted a baby, allegedly cut the victim's womb open and took the . . . well, what did she take exactly?

A Dec. 17 Associated Press headline read, "Search On for Fetus Cut From Mother's Womb." But the first sentence of the story reads: "Police were trying to find an infant they believe could still be alive after being cut from the womb of its mother." So was this a fetus or an infant? The young entity eventually was found alive, and a Dec. 19 CNN.com headline seems to answer the question definitively: "Dad United With Kidnapped Girl."

Read the rest...

Emmet Fox On Liars

"The punishment of the LIAR is that he cannot believe anyone else." -- Make Your Life Worthwhile, Harper Collins, p. 42

Who said the left is never punished?

Moi?

NORM MINETTA -- nuttier than a Cuckoo Clock. Sorry folks, but this one is signed, sealed and delivered...

Redux Deluxe

In "The Year Of Blogging Dangerously", I realized that I missed Beautiful Atrocities take on the liberal film critics -- don't you make the same mistake!

There is a war going on in Iraq, it's just not the one you read about in the mass media. How illegitimate of them!

Michelle knows why I call it the NYeT...

Roger on "The Khan Game" -- And Orwell On The AP

Roger has a great title for this post, don't you think? And one of his commenters nicely ties together Monsieur Khan with Saddam and the AP Fifth Column:

I keep waiting for the Saddam connection to surface in this. According to a story by William Safire about a year ago, Saddam was buying rocket propellant from China and having it transshipped through France into Syria. Saddam was also working with other terrorist states in the area, why not also with Col. Kadahfy. Saddam was certainly stealing enough money from the "Oil for Food" fiasco to front the money and he couldn't build it in Iraq with the American flyovers and Satellite coverage. Plans for a 10 kiloton bomb, that would certainly give the AP a story wouldn't it if they had their camera's all set up for a "demonstration" say in New York. Wonder if they would tip off the police or would that also be against their ethics of being neutral?

That would be correct -- absolutely against their ethics... And you won't find them quoting Orwell on the topic of themselves either:

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that ‘according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be “objectively pro-British”.’ But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

"[A] bourgeois illusion bred of money and security" pretty much nails the problem the West faces, doesn't it?

The AP's excuse for avoiding this sort of proper historical context provided by the true greats is that that would be too intellectual for you. No, I don't think that's it somehow. Orwell had a general ripost to that as well:

‘Mr Orwell is intellectual-hunting again’ (Mr Comfort). I have never attacked ‘the intellectuals’ or ‘the intelligentsia’ en bloc. I have used a lot of ink and done myself a lot of harm by attacking the successive literary cliques which have infested this country, not because they were intellectuals but precisely because they were not what I mean by true intellectuals. The life of a clique is about five years and I have been writing long enough to see three of them come and two go — the Catholic gang, the Stalinist gang, and the present pacifist or, as they are sometimes nicknamed, Fascifist gang. My case against all of them is that they write mentally dishonest propaganda and degrade literary criticism to mutual arse-licking. But even with these various schools I would differentiate between individuals. I would never think of coupling Christopher Dawson with Arnold Lunn, or Malraux with Palme Dutt, or Max Plowman with the Duke of Bedford. And even the work of one individual can exist at very different levels. For instance Mr Comfort himself wrote one poem I value greatly (‘The Atoll in the Mind’), and I wish he would write more of them instead of lifeless propaganda tracts dressed up as novels. But his letter he has chosen to send you is a different matter. Instead of answering what I have said he tries to prejudice an audience to whom I am little known by a misrepresentation of my general line and sneers about my ‘status’ in England. (A writer isn’t judged by his ‘status’, he is judged by his work.) That is on a par with ‘peace’ propaganda which has to avoid mention of Hitler’s invasion of Russia, and it is not what I mean by intellectual honesty. It is just because I do take the function of the intelligentsia seriously that I don’t like the sneers, libels, parrot phrased and financially profitable back-scratching which flourish in our English literary world, and perhaps in yours also.

Ra^ther I suspect the AP are quite glad to keep the word Fascifist from coming back into style at all costs lest it inevitably find its proper mark. Perhaps today Orwell would have noticed that "sneers, libels, parrot phrased and financially profitable back-scratching" has some application to AP's brand of "journalism", no?

Did I forget to mention that Orwell's "Pacifism and the War" is over right in my "Classics" section? I've cajoled you to read it before -- it's short. And timely for being written over sixty years ago...

The Coloradoan does still screw up once in a while and print something resembling a decent Conservative Soapbox. I think I can hear their teeth grinding all the way over here in the opposite corner of Fort Collins when they do!

And I neglected to make you aware of this Christmas laugh on time with all the hustle and bustle with the boys. But it's still worth reading! Nice job George!

Memory Hole Off The Port Bow...

I missed this one. It pretty much seals the existence of the MSMemory Hole:

John Hawkins: Do you think the left has largely gotten a pass for being so completely, utterly, and entirely wrong about the effects of Reagan's decision to abandon detente and challenge the Soviet Union?

Ann Coulter: The fact that there still is a Democratic Party proves that.

LOL

My New "Sunny" Attitude?

Wretchard has absolutely MUST READ thoughts on sunshine. As in, the AP where the sun don't shine...

A key item in the dictator's toolbox.

Quote Of The Year

"The great sweep of history is for freedom." Surely you know who said it?

In an effort to hang on to the CHRISTMAS SPIRIT, I'm going to refrain from the harsh words I was just about to use on the MSM and let Glenn sum things up somewhat more diplomatically ...

"Free speech can go so far"? Since it's Christmas Eve day I won't use the language I would like to -- Christian self-censorship if you will. But let's just say that Sikhs would seem to be intent on catching up to Muslims on the list that Christians would have if they weren't so -- well -- Christian. (Hat tip Glenn)

Ridiculous? Yes, that would pretty much describe the AP -- again given it's Christmas Eve day. But not those who don't believe a word they print anymore. Maybe they can become full-time Ra^ther apologists while they're at it...

OK, one final jab at the nutcase libs over the Ukraine -- by someone who knows a bit about the region -- before I finally go extract that cork... (Hat tip Glenn)

We all need a good laugh before Christmas eve... I don't know about you, but after a hard day of snow sledding and shoveling with the boys, it's time to go remove the cork on something...

All You Need To Know About Israel (And Europe)

Is well summarized in this article (for those who are very short on time).

And this longer but very worthwhile "View from the Eye of the Storm" which addresses the importance of Eurabia as the pivotal battleground -- as it has been for the past two millenia. [UPDATE: Well really more like one milennia, but it certainly feels like two...]

P.S. You do remember the scorecard -- don't you?

WE THE FREE CLASSICS WATCH: Just a reminder that everything you know may well be wrong...

This morning's food for thought... (Even if you're a lib!)

Rehabilitating The French?

out-of-band-introduction
Not sure why I have been holding off on posting this one for so long -- maybe it had turned into a sheltered child of some sort. Anyway, here is the last Soapbox left that I had submitted to the Fort Collins Coloradoan that they chose not to print. As I pointed out a few months ago when I de-anonymized We The Free, "Blogs are the letter to the editor that the editor does not want to print." So even though I was (sacre bleu!) underestimating the scale of corruption of the French and the U.N., I'm publishing it here unaltered as I submitted it -- I think it has obviously stood its nine-month test of time quite well... Enjoy!

P.S. Needless to say, one of the joys of the blog is no editors -- especially for titles! While I give the Coloradoan credit for printing my Soapbox bodies unaltered, they never would print my submitted titles. They probably would have headed this one "War Monger Hates Our Founding Fathers' Best Ally" if they had chosen to print it ;) Just one of the not-so-hidden secrets of the MSM...
/out-of-band-introduction

Rehabilitating The French?

No sooner than the Spanish had proven to Al Qaeda that European democracy was no match for terror than Osama’s targets grew and somehow the French are now in need of violent rehabilitation for their transgressions with “wine, pigs, loose morals and nudity” according to CNN.

As someone with a proven track record of psychoanalyzing the French, comments are in order.

But first – surprise! – I would like to give a big, solid B+ to Cheryl Distaso for her recent Soapbox in the Coloradoan (“Whether Bush’s or Clinton’s war, oppose it”, 3/18/04).

It’s OK -- I’ll pause now while the gentle reader climbs back onto their chair.

You see, the first thing that Cheryl did right was to actually pay attention to the counter-protesters at her organization’s recent event. This shows that she has some degree of consideration for alternate viewpoints.

And she must have had some level of respect for her critics – for how else to explain that she spent a meaningful portion of her column rebutting her critic’s charges of hypocrisy and clarifying that she protested Clinton’s wars also. I believe Cheryl is consistent.

Another mark in Cheryl’s favor is the somewhat levelheaded tone of her piece. While she did make reference to “the Bush administration is promoting violence”, her words about “Clinton’s ruthless military actions” were certainly negative.

Where Cheryl fell short was in the following two areas: putting real meat on the foundations of her position and admitting that she is likely a minority in her organization regarding consistency. Were the protest crowds locally and around the world opposing Kosovo even within an order of magnitude of those opposing Iraq II? I certainly don’t recall it – perhaps I can be proven wrong?

As for the foundations of her position, there are two likely alternatives: complete, consistent pacifism and “transnational progressivism”. If she is a complete pacifist then I grudgingly admire her consistency. It’s fascinating to contemplate a world where Lincoln didn’t fight the Civil War and Hitler was unopposed in WWII.

More likely (my best reading since she didn’t completely clarify it) she believes that wars should only be undertaken based on some form of “international law”. Most often, this seems to take the form of a “democratic” vote by the U.N.

The problem with this line of logic comes in when the “democratic vote” is cast by the ambassadors of dictators. Other than Israel, Turkey and someday the now fledgling Iraq, there are no democracies in the Middle East! How can voting rights for dictators not be an affront to the very concept of democracy?

And while the French and the rest of the Europeans may be largely democratic, they are vulnerable to bribery and corruption for their U.N. votes. You see the GAO now estimates that Saddam skimmed north of $10 billion through kickbacks under U.N. auspices in the “Oil for Food” program supposedly meant to feed starving Iraqi children. The U.N.’s Kofi Annan now admits “It is highly possible that there has been quite a lot of wrong-doing but we need to investigate and get to see who was responsible.”

Who do you suppose the new Iraqi government accuses of being a key player in taking Saddam’s corrupt “commissions” alongside Russians and Chinese? Anti-war for oil, tres bonne affaire?

So now the French need rehabilitation according to not just me and George Bush but the Islamists and shortly U.N. investigators.

Unless the French veto the U.N. investigators as well.

Alas, efficacious vetoes may be more difficult with the Islamists. “Fire sale” on Bordeaux wine anyone?

Bob Gronlund
Fort Collins
bob_wtf@comcast.net

Cool!

And thanks to Ravenwood's Universe for accepting my "Pulling Democracy From The Constant Memory Hole" for this week's Carnival of the Vanities! And as usual, thanks to Glenn for keeping COTV in his spotlight.

Another entry that you should DEFINITELY read this week is Dean Esmay's little vivisection of the latest "National Debt" panic.

Certified to be imperialism-free -- by thugs, a**holes and their leader. (Hat tip Centerfeud)

If You Forced Me To Guess ...

... I'd be guessing that posts like this are why Lynne Cheney loves Powerline:

By the way, we know families of fallen Marines who've been flown to sites where President Bush was speaking. He met with them privately after his event, never any press coverage, and the families have said that - after being given an agenda for their time with the President and being told that he's on a very tight schedule - Mr. Bush talked to every family member as long as they wanted to talk, never hurried anyone, cried with family, hugged everyone and they all felt like he had nothing else to do for the rest of the day but bring comfort to them. For that, George W. Bush has my eternal respect and gratitude. And there was NEVER one word of publicity surrounding any of these meetings with families. (I have pictures to dissuade doubters.)

Bottom line, we support Sec Rumsfeld. The people who are making a big deal about this have their heads up their collective a****. They need to have a serious priority check on what people in positions of responsibility should be doing with their time. They should also chat with some military families if they could figure out how to contact them.

I know they're why I do.

READ. THE. WHOLE. THING. IT'S. NOT. LONG.

Pulling Democracy From The Constant Memory Hole

... that the MSM is working overtime to maintain on Iraq:

What will you base your vote on?
Political agenda - 65% Factional origin - 14% Party Affiliation - 4% National Background - 12% Other reasons - 5%

Do you support dialog with the deposed Baathists?
Yes - 15% No - 84% Do not know - 1%

Do you support postponing the election?
Yes - 18% No - 80% Do not know - 2%

Do you think the elections will take place as scheduled?
Yes - 83% No - 13% Do not know - 4%

What's that you say? Dan Ra^thered not to report it? I'm SHOCKED I tell you!

The Victocrats would have you believe these people are too stupid to look for the truth after decades of experiencing one of the most Orwellian societies ever -- not one of them ever sneaking a peek at satellite television from the West.

Poppycock.

The real question is whether the Baathists and Jihadists will be broken after killing and jailing another 10-20,000 of them or whether it will take maybe ten times that to do it. Don't forget that there were perhaps millions of Sunnis corrupted with evil in varying degrees by Saddam's commands and threats.

We let it go on way too long folks -- and now there is a steep price to pay.

Today's MSM would have had us surrender to Japan after Pearl Harbor -- and just imagine what they would do with an Operation Tiger!

Can you say Sayonara Normandy?

TIME FOR AN UPDATE ALREADY: Strategy Page has an extension to this little Iraqi/American history lesson:

More likely, there will be more force applied by the new government, at least more than American troops are applying, plus negotiating with the tribal and religious leaders for deals to work out how much oil money, and how many government jobs, the Sunni Arabs will get. Al Qaeda is not interested in this kind of deal, but al Qaeda is widely hated by all Iraqis. It is only tolerated by Sunni Arabs now because al Qaeda suicide bomb attacks are seen as effective weapons. Once the majority of Sunni Arab groups have made their deals, al Qaeda will have no place to hide. If the Sunni Arabs do not settle down, it will get ugly. Americans forget that, at the end of the American Revolution, a third of the population still supported the king. At the end of the revolution, over five percent of the American population, those loyalists who would not tolerate this new democracy, was killed or driven into exile.

There you have it -- the uncomfortable truth.

And did I mention that if Iraq is judged to be an "illegitimate democracy" because only 70-80% of the electorate get to cast their ballots then by that standard the U.S. is also?

Wha-huh? you say?

I have often wondered where in history the self-righteous leftists REALLY think the U.S. turned the corner and became evil. I kept listening to Chomsky-ites imply it was with our victory in WWII -- we became the Nazis as part of the grand plan of (Democrat) FDR and (Democrat) Harry Truman.

But now I realize it all really DID start with the Republicans after all. That's right, I've finally admitted it.

The U.S. actually lost it's legitimacy and became "evil to the core" when that d**ned Republican Lincoln fought to free the slaves and hold the country together at the same time -- for you see in the process the South didn't vote in the election of 1864...

And the Iraqi majority of Shia and Kurds -- and what have they been but slaves? -- are now attempting to free themselves from the brutal repression of the Saddamite Sunnis while aiming still to hold Iraq together in the end. Like Lincoln, they're not showing any signs of letting a "difficult" election get in their way.

How illegitimate of them!!!

An "evil" -- and certainly very, very, very Republican -- Abraham Lincoln just winked I think...

STFU Update

Dale has some choice words for the loony left:

And while we're on the subject of things you drink a big, hot, steaming cup of STFU about, you can spare me the claptrap about how noble the UN is, at least until the UN manages to stop putting dictatorships like Libya in Charge of their Human rights efforts, manages to stop a genocide at least once, or manages to deploy peacekeeping troops without molesting everything--or everyone--that isn't nailed down.

If you still think the Afghan War was about some oil pipeline, and the oil-for-food scandal is just some puffed up attempt by conservatives to discredit the UN, then I'm just not interested in what you have to say. Because, really, you're a crank. I just don't have the time.

And, increasingly, neither does the rest of the electorate.

Did I mention that Stalin's sainted mother Russia actually went backwards in the Freedom House survey this year? But hey, dictatorships of all stripes are every bit as legitimate as democracies -- the left calls it "relativism". I call it horsepucky.

TODAY IN THE MEMORY HOLE

MSM IS ON THE OTHER SIDE: "It was fortunate for the AP that their photographer was accidentally there." ... Remembering the Paris Match account leaps to mind: "In any case, the target was mistaken for a military 747, though of course, the attackers had no way at all of knowing anything at all about the identity of the flight. The journalists discover only later that the "commandoes had fired on a DHL Airbus... A civilian target!" Sacre Bleu! So sorry. Such careless noncombatants."

I'm sure AP were framed ... and Karl Rove planted the forged CBS memos ... and Osama is glad Kerry lost ... and ... [wretching sounds...]

ACLU Redo: "The ACLU: Do as we say, not as we do." Sorry -- I just couldn't keep it in anymore and McQ nailed it to the floor...

"It's unclear how one accomplishes this mathematically." ... But flatter could help...

DON'T EVEN think it.

You haven't been reading Tammy have you?

What Can I Say?

But to give credit where credit is due -- it's just one of those days where Glenn has the world of betters beat to the draw by about a year. Or is that 60 years?

This is the disheartening tale of a noble people ignobly led. The Administration is both author and protagonist of that tale, and to the Administraiton must be read this indictment and this prophesy:

You have deceived once: now you must deceive again, for to tell the truth would be to admit having deceived. If your better judgment leads you near the road of rational policy, your critics will raise the ghost of your own deception, convict you out of your own mouth as appeaser and traitor, and stop you in your tracks...

You have told the people that American power has no limits, for flattery of the people is "good politics": now you must act as though you meant it.

Your own shouts, mingled with the outcry of the opposition, have befuddled your mind...

You will meet public opinion not at a point still compatible with the national interest, but rather where, regardless of the national interest, a deceived populace will support policies fashioned in the image of its own prejudices.

Where a knowing purdent and determined government would endeavor to raise the people to the level of its own understanding and purpose, an ignorant, improvident, and weak government will follow its own propaganda to that low level where uninformed passion dwells. You will become, in spite of your own better self, the voice not of what is noble, wise, and strong in the nation, but of what is vulgar, blind, and weak.

The leader will then have become the demagogue; as the mouthpiece of popular passion, you will at last have forsaken leadership altogether.

Follow the link to the punch if you haven't already. Can you say Memory Hole?

The more things change, the more they stay the same old chap. (Look up near the top of the page...)

Our Betters Update (Glenn Edition)

OUR BETTERS at the MSM. Here's hoping they don't spread suicidal depression any further. Or make people think that placebo is a viable treatment for people suffering from arthritis. One of my aunts died almost 10 years ago and suffered greatly from arthritis -- I can just hear her clicking her tongue over this. It's gotten so bad that I heard on the radio this morning that top management at Pfizer has had to come out and said they will personally keep taking it.

OUR BETTERS at the ACLU. Needs no comment whatsoever.

OUR BETTERS are not hypocritical about exposes on private lives. NYeT I mean...

And OUR BETTERS insist we fire Secretary Stimson:

Back in Washington, despite lofty rhetoric from the White House about the "liberation" of Europe, many had always been skeptical about the prospects for defeating Germany. As they correctly point out, the Germans are after all defending their homeland, and no matter how bad the alleged depravations of the Nazi regime, all familiar with the German character know that they can be depended on to fight to the death against any foreign invader, no matter how well intentioned. Many of the German dead or captured for the past few weeks have been adolescents, some only fourteen or fifteen years old, with dead, untrained yet willing hands clinging to their rifles. Seeing such images of dedication to the cause, it's difficult for many to believe that victory is possible.

As a result, the new setback has renewed rumbling among some that the time has come to seek an accord with the Nazi regime that could allow a withdrawal from Europe with honor, and not lose any more American troops in a hopeless cause, let alone bog them down for an unforeseeable period of time. "It was Japan that attacked us, not Germany," pointed out a Senate staffer. "We need to focus our resources on the true enemy in the Pacific."

Some staffers on Capitol Hill implied that the timing itself of the offensive was suspicious. "Hitler wanted Roosevelt to be reelected, so that he could continue to fight a war against a sick, senile incompetent. Had he started this offensive before the election back on November 7th, everyone would have seen what a disaster this president has been on foreign policy, and Hitler would have had to confront a young, vibrant Tom Dewey."

Others, representing moderate Democrats, seemed resigned. "We're stuck with a stubborn megalomaniac who's eventually going to have us at war with the rest of the world. How long will our Russian allies put up with this kind of behavior? How can we found or host a 'United Nations' when we ourselves are the author of so much aggression?"

Would it be snarky if I just said LOL? I thought you might understand...

Did I mention that the "reality-based" community is ON THE OTHER SIDE?

Bizarre bridges.

And "reality-based" ballot intent divination turns out to be mysteriously determined by the party of the ballot judges.

Armor-plated leftist brains resist all facts. The "reality-based" community in other words...

Of blind eyes and blind clerics.

The hate us, they hate us not...

A lump of Cole just in time for Christmas -- and so richly deserved...

Whoa Boy...

Just a wee bit altered -- and if I had any sense I'd censor it. Just so you're warned... (Hat tip INDC)

Don Kofi makes me want to puke ... and Amnesty possibly even more so ... UPDATE: and Glenn has thoughts about the vast right wing conspiracy against Kofi.

A conscience is like a chocolate bar ... no -- wait! -- like an SUV ... oh, I guess they've given up!

Duh-oh!

The Missing Middle: Iraq Edition

I heard Brett Baer comment on Fox news last week that there's a shortage of mid-level leadership in Iraq. He basically just mentioned this as a problem that continues to plague us that we're working to correct with training.

Let's see -- could there be some reason for this?

How about hazarding a guess that there was mid-level leadership in Iraq? It just happened to have a different focus than what Westerners would expect -- say, that of spooning out children's eyeballs in front of their parents, feeding them and their parents into plastic shredders feet first and then gleefully dumping the whole bloody mess into mass graves.

Now where could they have gone? Beheadings and roadside bombs anyone?

Duh-oh! We now openly call them terrorists; but they always were. A fine day for gassing the Kurds, no?

The difference now is that we now have Al Jazeera camera crews on scene to "glorify" the carnage. What's interesting is that it's not clear that Saddam's former middle management are actually able to kill as many innocents as they used to. Even lefty humanitarian organizations seemed to have low estimates on the order of 10,000 "disappeared" each year in Saddam's Iraq. On the other hand, National Geographic reported last spring that an Iraqi organization says there could be millions of "disappeared".

Gee, it's funny you never seem to read that in the MSM, huh?

The other factor in play here is that totalitarianism of all sorts -- including the Mideast variety -- is just is not very fertile soil for the initiative required to foster productive mid-level management. I know, I know, "productive mid-level management" is considered ra^ther an oxymoron in our "Dilbert saturated" society.

But if you look at the productivity of the U.S. vs. the old USSR you will find in any objective analysis that mid and low level productive initiative, adaptability and creativity was (and remains of course) vastly superior in the U.S. -- that's how we buried them. Likewise, the Israeli's ability to "smoke" superior numbers of Arabs in their various wars hinged heavily on the same sort of inequality as the Israelis were typically outmatched in numeric terms.

So on top of the "duh-oh" there is just a long road to slog digging out of the "totalitarian deficit". Russia and the slow recovery in Eastern Europe are living proof of this -- though some are doing better than others.

Iraq is a long term investment commitment brought on by the failed policies of the past:

Ewards 2008 is out of the gate like a rocket scientist!

They'd ra^ther have a whitewash. (Did I mention they're forgeries?)

The mission of our generation.

Can you say "Wahhabiski"? I thought you couldn't. Yuppers. Condoleeza knows nothing useful. Uh-huh.

Of totalitarianism -- Christianity and Capitalism that is...

Feminists For ...

... W!

Another Redux -- And Projection Re-appears

Who wrote this?

I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If [my critics] imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.

Beautiful. Simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.

That was the redux.

Here's the something new that caused me to remember it: I've started re-reading Lee Harris' "Civilization And Its Enemies". What an eye-opener this book is! Here's an excerpt from the Preface:

Civilized people forget how much work it is not to kill one's neighbors, simply because this work was all done by our ancestors so that it could be willed to us as an heirloom. They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish. They forget that to fight an enemy it is necessary to have a leader whom you trust, and how, at such times, this trust is a civic duty and not evidence of one's credulity. They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy.

That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct.

Our first task therefore is to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason and not ours. He does not hate us for our faults any more than for our virtues. He sees a different world from ours, and in the world he sees, we are his enemy. This is hard for us to comprehend, but we must if we are to grasp what the concept of the enemy means.

We have some very serious problems with projection as a civilization, don't we?

Carl's Jr. on ze separate race.

Cycles Recycled Cyclically

NOTE: This post can be originally found here, and then again here. After reading VDH's little number on the Ents and Tolkein's penchant for 11th hour recoveries, I realized it was once again time:

I can just imagine exactly this kind of debate going on in Rome right up to the point that the Huns kicked in the gates. It strikes me that any society that has to start asking itself if it is committing “professional suicide” by ignoring the threat posed by barbarians with a completely alien world view and bent on their destruction is already beyond help. Geopolitical navel-gazing must be the last stage in the evolution of a society before it is too morally ambivalent to defend its own sovereignty. (Or, maybe it results from the unwillingness to do so?)
Let me lay it out for you…

Stage 1: We need a revolution to set us free from tyranny!

Stage 2: Hey, what happened to our colonies?

Stage 3: Oh, yeah. Uh. Colonialism is bad. Yeah. That’s it. So, that must mean any use of military force against anyone anywhere is bad. Right?

Stage 4: Oh gosh, we just need to all be more tolerant of other people. And hey, at least all those imigrants always vote our way. Besides, aren't we all really just immigrants on this big old space ship we call Earth anyway?

Stage 5: Didn't we used to have elections this time of year? Hey, where’d all the Barbies go?

Stage 6: Now repeat after the nice man with the machine gun… “There is one God and Mohamed is his prophet.”

Stage 7: GoTo Stage: 1, repeat as necessary.

Or, the alternative evolution...

Stage 5: Hey, didn't there used to be a couple of big buildings right about here?

Stage 6: Jihad? I've got your Jihad right here baby!

Stage 7: Okay, so we got a litte rough there, but they deserved it.

Stage 8: GoTo Stage 3: repeat as necessary.

So you see, all the terrorists would have had to do to take America out of the equation was leave us alone for another 50 years or so and we would have evolved into sophisticated pro-globalization pacifists all by ourselves. But, nothing sets back political entropy like a good old Pearl Harbor style sucker-punch, eh?

Posted by: Dacotti on September 25, 2003 01:07 PM [NOTE FROM BOB: The address is Dacotti -at- hot mail dot com]

Luckily for U.S., we have selected the "alternative" cycle for now -- Europe has not of course...

Amsterdamned In Eurabia

turns out to be a pretty important read to get more than a surface understanding of developments in the murder of Theo Van Gogh. It's long with two parts but I'll whet your appetite with some sad commentary on where "tolerance" is leading the Dutch:

Qaradawi is the Muslim cleric who was controversially invited to London by Ken Livingstone, the city's mayor, to speak against the hijab ban in French schools. According to a dossier compiled by Livingstone's opponents, Qaradawi has written that homosexuality is a capital sin, that wife beating is justifiable, and of the existence of a Jewish world conspiracy. In these respects, at least, he would appear to be in accord with Sheikh Abu Bakr Jabir al-Jasairi, whose book The Muslim Way is on sale at a number of mosques in Holland. Van Gogh was fond of quoting from the book, especially the part which described the appropriate punishment of homosexuals. Sheikh Abu Bakr demands that they should be thrown off rooftops, and if they survive they should be stoned to death.

Elatik dismissed Qaradawi's alleged homophobia by arguing that it was typical of clerics of all faiths. 'All Muslims are really asking for in this country,' she concluded, 'is respect.'

Yes, of course. That would most certainly be typical of my pastor for instance. In case you've never heard of sarcasm before, here's how to interpret what I just said: Hell could freeze over and all gays that ever lived could arise from the dead and make all straights their slaves and even the vaguest notion of saying anything remotely homophobic would never occur to her. How's that for a refutation of Qaradawi's vile nonsense?

Another taxi driver, who did not want to give his name, seemed in no mood to offer respect. 'They hate us,' he told me, referring to Muslims. 'They hate our way of life. I don't understand. We're supposed to tolerate their culture, but they want to change ours. And if we protest, we're called racists. I like Italy, and when I go there I adapt to their culture, I don't expect them to adapt to mine. Van Gogh was rough with his words, but in Holland if you don't like what someone says you can go to court.'

There's another problem with Holland -- they have no concept of a First Amendment. Which leads us to the grand finale:

According to reports, one of the teachings of the al-Tawheed mosque is that it discourages contact with unbelievers. A young man, no more than 20, explained that no individual could talk to me because no one could speak on behalf of the whole mosque. I was given a phone number of a man called Farid, an apparent spokesman, who also told me that he could not speak. Farid sent me to a mosque down by the dockside, where, he said, someone would talk to me. But again, when I arrived, I was told that no one would meet me.

Since van Gogh's murder there have many calls for improved dialogue. But van Gogh was murdered for speaking out, the religious associates of his killer refuse to talk, and van Gogh's collaborator, Hirsi Ali, is in hiding, in fear of her life. The silence deafens the many words that have been written and spoken since that bloody Tuesday morning. The man who would have most dearly savoured a no-holds-barred debate is dead. Van Gogh, his friend and enemies agree, possessed a character that was larger than life. It remains to be seen if his legacy is larger than death.

The fact that this article was even printed in the Guardian is quite amazing -- please read it all to learn some important background about the real catastrophe gathering momentum on the continent.

And Melanie Phillip's has found a WOW essay in Britain. (Hat tip Roger)

But what will the Ents do?

Better Posted Than Never...

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

Warbloggers awards...

NYeT! Kofi must stay! He takes us out to lavish Saddam funded lunches! ... Mais non, says Jed ... But the DLC has not abandoned all logic quite yet...

A Eurabian update.

Did I mention that I'm a discardable Nazi object?

In a 1968 appearance at Harvard, Martin Luther King said, "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism." But Martin Luther King would not find a home at the United Nations or its allied nongovernmental human-rights organizations.

In sum, the divide is between the corrupt and the clean. And I know where Eurabia stands.

Some saying science: what you mean when you say I'm "mad as a hatter".

Today's MSM(idget) Watch

MSM rocket scientist at work here. And don't let my "From Dr. Newcomer's Evisceration of SeeBS" scroll away without reading it!

I found a great quote that pretty much nails my view of the situation: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge." -- Erwin Knoll

As an experienced computer scientist, I can assure you that Dr. Newcomer's evaluation is technically impressive.

Which leads me to that first-hand knowledge.

For instance, the "quotes" from me in the last half of this article were nearly made up from the whole cloth -- at least the quotes in paragraphs four and five were reasonably accurate (notice I didn't put scare quotes around the word quotes in the current sentence!).

And I have plenty of other instances of this in articles that thankfully aren't on the web any more.

But the most galling is when they just decide to throw every quote and idea out because it doesn't fit their pre-conceived story line. Sound familiar? You bet! And this is with "highly technical" journalists (scare quotes required) -- that is, journalists who write for publications sold to technologists and scientists.

And you know what? Before becoming initiated to the ways of "technical rags", I used to read them ra^ther quite a lot more too.

Which leads me to another quote: "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches becomes a journalist." -George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)

But of course that's different, somehow...

Nothing fails like failure...

Today's Polically Incorrect Recommendation

This morning Keith Wineman on KCOL pointed out that the word "Holiday" is derived from "Holy Days". Starting today, if I sense the need to proclaim a holiday it will be substantially "mispronounced" as well as filled with subversive thought.

And the book to go with it is Tammy Bruce's "The New Thought Police" which of course includes this 1984 quote: "The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about."

Give it to your favorite leftist relatives for a Holy Days gift ;)

Did I mention that Tammy's gay? But she'll have the leftists calling her a "queer" just like Clarence has them calling Blacks "stupid".

(Big) Bro^ther...

From Dr. Newcomer's Evisceration Of SeeBS

... defender David Hailey emerges the gem of the day:

A little-known feature of the U.S.S.R. under Communism was that when someone purchased a typewriter, it was delivered to the local police office. The people there took a razor blade and nicked various characters, then registered the owner, the serial number of the typewriter, and a complete sample of the typewritten output. Since the characters exhibited consistent errors, if a samizdat appeared, all that was necessary would be to compare the characters in the document in question with known samples from the registered typewriters, and the offending typewriter could be identified. This analysis required that the expected behavior, that characters always exhibited consistent defects, would be true. The government could at any time come in and type a new sample, and it was a crime to in any way have modified the type so that the type did not correspond to the "standard sample" for that typewriter. Since the government was not overly concerned with niceties of law we take for granted, anyone associated with, or who might have had access to, that typewriter could find themselves winning an all-expense-paid trip to the nearest gulag.

sa·miz·dat n. Literally, "self publishing" 1. a. The secret publication and distribution of government-banned literature in the former Soviet Union. b. The literature produced by this system. 2. An underground press.

Remember this?:

I can only repeat the painfully great Soviet dissident joke yet again: "The future is known, it's the past that keeps changing."

Did I mention that I do have an MSCS and I can vouch that Dr. Newcomer has this one signed, sealed and delivered? Sorry folks, but SeeBS' smelly little conspiracy is likely to come under withering fire again unless the "investigators" deliver a whole lot more than the portents currently indicate...

UPDATE: Gun shy????

UPDATED AGAIN: At half-time during the Super Bowl? ;)

Why Everything You Know About Social Security Reform

is wrong! Ain't none o' yew boys ... oh yeah, I mentioned that already ... NEVER MIND.

This makes my heart heavy too. Even though I have two boys -- who don't fully understand yet how lucky they are to live where they do...

Escape Innumeracy

and celebrate diversity!

Warning: Table 2 was missing when I read it but the text description of it seems sufficient to hold the argument...

"Ain't none o' yew boys got the sense to pee yer pants iff'n yer leg's on fire."

Eyeing the MSMemory Hole

Amazingly, Reuters actually carried ^this story about -- shall we say? -- potential problems in London though I'll bet dollars to donuts ^they ^thought hard about totally flushing it. It's down on ^their equivalent of ^the back page don't you know. Wouldn't want you to know we're actually at war or anything. Huh? What gap in lower Manhattan? Is ^there some problem?

And did I mention ^that we can now safely predict what a ridiculous whitewash ^the Eye's internal "investigation" of Ra^thergate will turn out to be? What? Talk to someone who actually knows something during an investigation? ^The ^throbbing returns.

And Hailey's comet comes up for air -- not smart enough to understand ^the ^thrashing he's been given by ^the good doc N. Who sums up ^the whole experience like ^this.

But of course, a farce must be met wi^th good humor...

SOME PERSPECTIVE on "going to war with the Army you have."

Deus ex machina in Iraq?

How You Can Really Help Wounded Troops

FROM HUGH'S BLOG:

Finally, from a naval officer I respect a great deal, an e-mail on how to aid wounded troops in the two weeks left before Christmas:

"Yellow ribbons tied around trees and red, white and blue stickers on the backs SUVs saying "Support our Troops" are things that make civilians feel good but do nothing for the men and women actually in uniform.

So please consider the following:

The number ONE request at Walter Reed hospital is phone cards. The government doesn't pay long distance phone charges and these wounded soldiers are rationing their calls home.

Many will be there throughout the holidays.

Really support our troops --Send phone cards of any amount to:

Medical Family Assistance Center
Walter Reed Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20307-5001

They say they need an "endless" supply of these -- any amount even $5 is greatly appreciated.

Walmart has good prices on AT&T cards, Sams Club is even better, if you are a member.

I am sure you would feel better about doing this, than to buy something for a third cousin, that would find it on the closet shelf six months later, and wonder where it came from.

Please pass this portion on, copy and paste it into your e-mail."

I'll be at Sam's this weekend with my wallet out -- please join me in doing so!

In The Big Picture

Thanks to "The Big Picture" for accepting my "Graphic Redux: The Local Root Cause" in this weeks Carnival of the Vanities. He even noticed the Last Jaw Dropper (over right) for extra credit so he's now over on the blogroll!

And thanks to Glenn for his constant support of COTV...

Natan On Democracy

An antidote to Victocrat negativity. But Ronald Reagan -- like most Conservatives -- knew nothing of course...

The Test

If you can read this post and not be absolutely shivering with rage at Eurabia then I would assert that you are a hateful misogynist pure and elemental.

Doesn't matter what you look like. Doesn't matter what you say otherwise. Doesn't matter how many buts you utter. You are a fully qualified cretin. PLEASE. LEAVE. NOW.

And if you're a female who doesn't pass this test then I'm just completely speechless. And that doesn't happen to me easily.

Did I mention that if you're going to probe me for hypocrisy on this one -- if you read a few entries down you may think up an indirect angle -- you will find yourself sorely disappointed and embarrassed.

Update on enlightened peas in a pod.

Scrappleface Homers On His MSM Watch Today

"And then American journalists can smugly celebrate the freedom of the press that Iraqi journalists will never know."

READ. AND. WEEP. (Hat tip Glenn)

Sadly, Mr. Bean proves libs don't know beans...

Da. It's The NYeT Victocrats Again...

You just gotta love the Victocrats. What else could good news about them be but a NEVER MIND.

UPDATED ALREADY: NYeT! NYeT! NYeT! Give us an order of 1968 weltanshauung!!!

In Memory Of Harry

In memory of my relative and friend Harry Ott -- a veteran of the Pacific Theatre. Thank God he survived and I was privileged to know him.

Today's Thoughts On Chomskyite Cluelessness Ruthlessness

Has it ever occurred to anyone that if the U.S. were as ruthless as we are accused of being by drooling Chomskyites that there'd be a whole lot more dead folks in Iraq and Afghanistan right now? Surely it can't be argued that we lack the firepower?

And did I forget to mention that there would be at least 6 million more of those world-dominating Jews still around to scheme with us nasty, ruthless Christians and fellow travelers?

And as further calibration, check out this little anecdote about David, my 7 year old:

Ruthlessly literate Dad that I am, I have a bad habit of letting David and Alex (age 6) pick out a reasonably-priced book for themselves on our frequent ruthless hot chocolate and pastry laden excursions to Barnes and Noble.

This time David picked out a book on FDR due to curiousity developed by various conversations we have had about WWII. It didn't take him long to come to Mom and point out that FDR had his picture taken with ruthless old Stalin and he couldn't believe that FDR would sit next to such a bad person.



She pointed out to him that good people often had to try to help bad people -- and upon a little further thought he put that together with my telling him many times that we nearly lost WWII by waiting so long to enter it and we had to ally with some ruthlessly bad people like Stalin to even keep our country given how bad things were.

Now if only Chomsky and his acolytes knew as much as my 7-year-old they'd turn into the pumpkins they ruthlessly deserve to be instead of spewing puerile drivel.

Did I mention that if we were actually ruthless we would have had multiple deep intelligence penetrations of Saddam's inner circle -- as opposed to the zero we had?

Oh -- and did I mention that the CIA still probably hasn't got enough ruthless Arabic speakers to fill a telephone booth?

Where's that ruthlessness again?

UPDATE: Here's a companion piece.

Did I forget to mention that French fiddling -- and more -- is all of a piece? Then I forgot to make sure you read this one by Wretchard...

Graphic Redux: The Local Root Cause

One of my favorite recent posts is "The Local Root Cause" and I have been remiss in showing you on how things ended up looking on my Outback:



Now you know you need to go read it don't you?

I haven't got the Greeley bumper sticker idea done yet though -- I feel it calling for more graphic creativity than I've been able to serve up. And no, it doesn't have to be based on cow graphics but thanks for the highly creative suggestion anyway :)

Oh yeah, and Bush actually came to visit Greeley near the end of the campaign so there. Put that in your stockyard and wade around in it.

It's Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Christmas...

Et voila...

A "Roe Effect" update.

Projection 301B: More Leftist Corruption -- And A Prescription

The Big Trunk sums up the sad state of attempting to engage the left in elections -- of ANY sort. He quotes Rocket Man thusly:

This is sickening, but typical. Kevin Aylward of Wizbang goes to a lot of trouble to set up a competition that is intended to recognize as many blogs as possible and introduce people to blogs they don't already know. It's done in a spirit of fun, and relies on a modicum of good faith among the participants. But liberals don't seem to be able to do anything honestly, to follow the most minimal standards of sportsmanship, or to do anything in a spirit of good will and good humor. Since Kevin hasn't designed the competition using national security-level safeguards against cheating, the liberals think it's OK to ruin the contest for everyone else by writing code that racks up thousands of fictitious votes for "their" blogs. Not only do they see nothing wrong with this, they brag about it openly.

I got to know Kevin during the Republican convention. He's a good guy and I know that he takes a lot of pride in the Weblog awards, and invests a lot of work in setting them up. Now he's been put in an impossible situation where he must either disqualify the liberal blogs en masse for cheating, or let them ruin the contest. Is this a big deal? No, but that's sort of the point. The liberals' instinct to cheat is so strong that they can't even participate in a fun little contest without trying to spoil it for everyone else. That's sad, but, as I said, it's also typical.

And then he closes with:

The impulse to cheat and destroy is natural -- we can of course observe it, for example, in the larger political picture to which Rocket Man alludes -- but it is ugly. In the rank ordering of human nature, it is low.

The existence or occurrence of wrongdoing does not prove that nature observes no moral distinctions. Rather, the distinction among the types of men and behavior is the impetus for our desire to learn the right, and to practice it. We must avail ourselves of education to learn that there is such a thing as good for man by nature, to learn what it is, to practice it, and to overcome the temptation to do wrong.

Otherwise we run the risk of ending up, morally speaking, shrivelled runts of men like the readers of Markos Moulitsas. (With apologies to Paul Simon for borrowing the heading above.)

This continuing lunatic drivel about how corrupt the Right is can only be understood as projection of the basest kind. This just disgusts me to no end.

I've been re-reading Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" -- what a classic book for improving your life both at work and at home as well as a surprising history lesson due to its original publication date (the current edition has been updated somewhat but retains much of the original flavor).

I have become convinced that no leftist has EVER read it. They would simply not behave so badly if they had -- it's that powerful of a book. The paperback edition is relatively cheap -- give one to every leftist loon you know for Christmas.

Another option I recommend strongly in this vein is Czeslaw Milosz' "The Captive Mind". While not a personal development book per se, it's one of the few winners of the Nobel Prize for literature that's really worth it's stuff as a damning and insightful indictment of the totalitarian mind. It's one of the few books with a rep for moderating leftists if not outright conversions.

And for the recalcitrant ones, give them BOTH. Even if their minds are unsalvageable due to years of Chomskyite puerility, you can rest with the knowledge that you gave it your best try.

A jaundiced look at the ultimate solution...

The (5 days ago) memory hole update.

Nazi Memory Hole Update

Did I forget to mention that we're back to the Nazi future in Europe? Because they can't remember it?

Indisputably our moral and intellectual betters? I'm too polite tonight to say what I really think. But you should be able to make a good guess.

OOPS, I FORGOT to reemphasize that there's somehow a coincidence between euthanasia, assisted suicide and the real thing. Can't imagine why -- I'm going to go think REAL HARD and see if I can figure it out...

The Donald

The REAL Donald is back and definitely worth reading again...

UPDATE: Now including an update on innumeracy.

What HMX?

All You Need To Know About Jimmy (And More)

Shamelessly stolen from James today:

A Blessed Absence
A New York Sun editorial offers an amusing observation on the disputed election in Ukraine: Jimmy Carter is nowhere to be found, even though "in recent years, scarcely a trouble spot has been spared the ministrations of our ex-president." The Sun asks "why he has left Ukraine alone":

Search for the dog that didn't bark. It's not the post-Soviet thugs who are seeking to rig the contest in favor of Moscow's candidate, for they are noisily preserving their privileges. Nor is it the democrats who bravely and brazenly wish to align with the West. They aren't Mr. Carter's kind and can't lay claim to any sort of leftist legitimacy. Why, it's Karl Marx who's missing from the field. Ukraine is thus rescued by virtue of the fact that the peanut farmer from Georgia hasn't got a dog in this fight.

Hoo Haw!

Come to think of it, it's a BOTW kind of day: Marc Rich illustrating the Clinton's corruption by surfacing in the middle of the Oil For Food scandal, Peter Beinart pining for the ADA to return to the roots that it now ruthlessly stuffs down the Memory Hole, the correct analysis of battered Victocrats and the Palestinian's Eugene Debs angles for the Nobel Prize! Go there, for it is good.

UPDATE: The Trunk wonders too...

HOO HAW! Ott is on a roll. You need to read ^this for sure. But just start at the top and keep scrolling...

Projection 301: Projecting Corruption

Here's an excerpt from Horowitz' recent "Why We Are In Iraq" that's a wonderful summary of how we got to where we are:

At this point, it might be appropriate to ask how the Democratic Party got to the place where it is a party of appeasement in the approach to war and a saboteur of the war when it is underway. How did the Democratic Party get to the point where its leaders would break a fifty-year tradition of bi-partisanship in foreign policy, and over matters of war and peace? How did it come so powerfully under the influence of an historically anti-American left as to allow its presidential politics to be dominated by that left?

The short answer to these questions is that the leftward slide of the Democratic Party began with the McGovern campaign, when the anti-Vietnam left marched into its ranks and assumed positions of power in its congressional party. Obviously, the circumstances of the Iraq war and the movement to oppose it have a lot to do with the Howard Dean campaign, in particular, which was funded this left and driven by its passions, and whose success in the primaries turned John Kerry and John Edwards against the war. It also has a lot to do with the fateful decision of Jimmy Carter and Al Gore to make the war a partisan issue and break a half-century's tradition. But even before this moment it has to do with the McGovern campaign of 30 years ago, which was the original "anti-war" political campaign, demanding that America abandon its ally in Vietnam and leave the field of battle. Virtually all leaders of the anti-Iraq movement, including most of the leaders of the Democratic Party who supported that movement, were veterans of or affected by the anti-Vietnam campaign.

The left has never learned the lessons of Vietnam, a fact underscored by the way in which Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy and leaders of the movement against the war in Iraq invoked the history of Vietnam as though it showed that they were right and their opponents were wrong. As you probably know, I began my life on the political left and was one of the founders of the movement against the Vietnam War. My parents were, in fact, card-carrying Communists, and my first political march was against an even earlier war. I was nine years old in 1948 and marched down 7th Avenue with my parents and their political comrades in New York chanting, "One, two, three, four, we don't want another war." "We" called ourselves "progressives" and supported the Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace, who had once been Franklin Roosevelt's Vice President but was now a captive of the Communist left. The war we marched against was Harry Truman's "Cold War" to prevent Joseph Stalin from conquering more of Europe than he had already acquired. The peace movement of that time wanted Stalin to "liberate" Eastern Europe, which he had in fact enslaved. This campaign was the seed of the anti-war movements of Vietnam and Iraq, and also of the political left's influence in the Democratic Party. George McGovern began his political career in the Progressive Party's 1948 campaign against the Cold War. The Democratic Party of Harry Truman was committed to the Cold War. But as far as the peace movements are concerned, not much has really changed in 50 years.

As a post-graduate student at Berkeley in the early Sixties, I was one of the organizers of the first demonstration against the Vietnam War. It was 1962 and I can tell you as someone who was there, everybody who organized that demonstration was a Marxist and a leftist who thought the Communists were liberating Vietnam the way Michael Moore thinks Zarqawi is liberating Iraq. By that time, I was a "new leftist," disillusioned with the Communism of my parents' generation, so I was aware that the North Vietnamese Communists were not Jeffersonian democrats as people like Jane Fonda and John Kerry seemed to think they were. I avoided the Winter Soldier Investigation into American "war crimes" that John Kerry and Jane Fonda were part of. Jane Fonda was an idiot (useful, to be sure) who had embraced the Communists and committed treason. Perhaps John Kerry didn't grasp that fact. He got himself in bed with people who had a hatred for the United States as intense as their current hatred of George Bush.

It is a curious hatred, suggesting that Democrats have collectively flipped their lids in their zeal to win this election. You may say many things about George Bush, but this is a decent, capable man. You may differ with George Bush, but he is not a "moron" or a bumbling incompetent. No one runs a successful national election campaign and a successful presidential administration without judgment that is fundamentally sound. This is a man you can disagree with, but you can't belittle or hate George Bush without those attitudes reflecting on yourself.

Loud, rudely mannered allegations of corruption supported on venomous, drooling gusts of hate. Yup -- take a look in that mirror. Or have they all been cracked into devilish opaqueness?

AND NOW: The Latrine-hadeen! And verrry eenteresting in light of this from Powerline...

Tolerance For The Intolerant

... is suicide.

No More

Victocrats and trial lawyers all in one fell swoop! Pray, pray, pray that this is true!

WOW! Go Ukraine!

The More Things Change

The more the Euros stay the same.

The Unbearable Stench Of Innumeracy

Smelly little innumeracy given a well-deserved Fisking. Enjoy...

UPDATE: And more on innumeracy...

Smelly Little Orthodoxies

Will hits one out of the park today with "Campus Conformists": (Hat tip Glenn)

"Schools of education, for instance, take constructivist theories of learning as definitive, excluding realists (in matters of knowledge) on principle, while the quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism. If you disapprove of affirmative action, forget pursuing a degree in African-American studies. If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women's studies."

This gives rise to what Bauerlein calls the "false consensus effect": Due to institutional provincialism, "people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population."

There also is what Cass Sunstein of University of Chicago, calls "the law of group polarization." Bauerlein explains: "When like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs." They become tone-deaf to the way they sound to others outside their closed circle of belief.

When John Kennedy brought to Washington such academics as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, McGeorge and William Bundy and Walt Rostow, it was said that the Charles River was flowing into the Potomac.

Academics, such as the next secretary of state, still decorate Washington, but academia is less listened to than it was. It has marginalized itself, partly by political shrillness and silliness that have something to do with the parochialism produced by what George Orwell called "smelly little orthodoxies."

Many campuses are intellectual versions of one-party nations — except such nations usually have the merit, such as it is, of candor about their ideological monopolies. In contrast, American campuses have more insistently proclaimed their commitment to diversity as they have become more intellectually monochrome.

They do indeed cultivate diversity — in race, skin color, ethnicity, sexual preference. In everything but thought.

And even better, now Hitchens has more or less defected from the left to a position more or less resembling Orwell himself.

But of course, Nazism and Communism aren't smelly little orthodoxies are they? Well, yes, actually. Just blown up to the rightful conclusion of all unchecked orthodoxies trusted with the power of the state. Eh tu, doc?

Dollywood values on the march...

"I write to my brothers and sisters," he said, "And I tell them that they do not know true Islam. If you want to see true Islam, you must come to America." (Hat tip Dean)

An update on the four-colored map problem... (Hat tip Glenn)

Legitimacy, schmelitimacy...

Michael Moore's Minutemen Nazis

Great piece by Wretchard on the Fallujan Sunni Nazis. And a nice comment to put it in perspective:

This is what you get when the enemy is allowed to write the news for you. According to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler was a thoughtful genius who loved dogs. In another not so coincidental bit of news, Hadid is the brother of the head of al-Jazeera in Iraq. And some wondered why al-Jazeera always seemed to be on the scene of suicide bombings.

From memri.org:
ONE OF ZARQAWI’S KEY AIDES WAS OMAR HADID, A MEMBER OF SADDAM’S PRIVATE GUARDS TEN YEARS AGO, WHO WENT TO AFGHANISTAN FOR TRAINING AT AN AL-QA’IDA BASE. OMAR IS THE BROTHER OF HAMID HADID, THE BUREAU CHIEF OF AL-JAZEERA IN IRAQ, WHICH WAS CLOSED THREE MONTHS AGO, BY THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT FOR INCITING VIOLENCE. (AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, LONDON, 11/19/04)

Lucky for us there are absolutely no links between Saddam and Osama -- or al Jazeera...

On our airhead a**hole "artists". (Hat tip Roger)

Happy Thanksgiving!

You will want to go read Hugh's site for Washington's original Thanksgiving proclamation!

Soon to be banned in California of course...

All You Need To Know ...

... about the (Nazi influenced) religion of peace.

Captain's Quarters gives a valiant try to allowing the imams an escape route:

Zarqawi's note clearly shows that Tawhid and Jihad is losing the battle for hearts and minds on the ground, even in the Sunni Triangle. He accuses the ulama for selling out "God's orders" in exchange for their "money and sons". It makes Islam sound like a cult of human sacrifice, and combined with the revolting beheadings that Zarqawi videotapes for the Internet, Muslim scholars may finally be waking up to the bastardization of Islam into a premonotheistic death worship.

Sorry folks but Islam means "submission", not peace. If it meant peace -- or had truly gone thru a meaningful "enlightenment" -- then it would not have the death penalty for apostasy.

Case closed.

No Need To Visit The Grocery For Your Nuts This Thanksgiving

No thanks(giving) for us -- we're victims, thanks(giving) very much.

This is what mental illness looks like. They are so unselfconscious that they can't figure out how pissed this is going to make everyone if it's dragged out.

And let's just imagine if they somehow cheated and hoodwinked their way to win Ohio in an avalanche of fraud. This still means that they've still lost the presidential nationwide vote by north of 3 million votes!

That would be a complete rip-roaring new definition for "selected not elected".

But don't worry, they're not hypocrites -- just victims of their own mental capacity.

And if they keep it up, their "victimization" in this election will seem small compared to two years from now.

Racists against FGM.

MSM (Goebbels) Watch [UPDATED]

Wretchard has the explanation for the weirdly obscure MSM reports of the assasinations of two "anti election" Sunni mullahs in as many days in Iraq:

Attempts to inflame the Kurds may eventually succeed.. The Associated Press reports that two Sunni clerics opposed to elections called by the interim government have been gunned down.

Sheik Ghalib Ali al-Zuhairi was a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group that has called for a boycott of nationwide elections scheduled for Jan. 30. He was shot as he was leaving a mosque in the town of Muqdadiyah and died in the local hospital, said police Col. Raisan Hussein. Muqdadiyah is about 60 miles north of Baghdad. A day earlier, unknown gunmen assassinated anotherprominent Sunni cleric in the northern city of Mosul Sheik Faidh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi, who was the brother of the group's spokesman. It as unclear whether the two attacks were related.

The former Ba'athists may still have plenty of money, weapons and explosives. But they have plenty of enemies too.

So the MSM is so stupid that they don't notice the possibility that their longed-for civil war may be starting? They can't even figure out when to launch into the BIG LIE properly.

Bro^ther.

Which reminds me. Good old corrupt, partisan Dan Ra^ther finally gave up the forgery racket today. Of course, he still won't admit that the memos are F-O-R-G-E-D -- not that he'd consult with one of the inventors of computer typography to learn any inconvenient facts. I'm sure Mary Mapes thinks that David Hailey will redeem them.

Did I mention that the investigation -- which has not to date contacted either Charles Johnson or Powerline(!) -- is almost certain to be a whitewash revealed on a Friday?

UPDATE: Now why was it that you don't read Stratgy Page again?

November 25, 2004: Over a thousand tons of weapons and munitions have been found in Fallujah. American and Iraqi troops will spend the next several weeks searching some 50,000 buildings and apartments in the city. Although some 1,450 men were arrested during the fighting in Fallujah, 400 have been released. About 60 foreigners were arrested in Fallujah. Dozens have been picked up in other parts of the country, and some may have already been killed while trying to make attacks elsewhere. Today, five more (two Egyptians and three Libyans) were arrested in Basra. They admitted they had come south to get away from the fighting in Fallujah, and to make more attacks, with less risk. All of the fighters possess a blind hatred of the West and a desire to spread their brand of Islam (Sunni) throughout the world. This, alas, includes punishing Moslem heretics like the Shia, who comprise the majority of Iraqis (and Iranians).

November 24, 2004: A force of 5,000 American, British and Iraqi troops began moving through Sunni Arab towns south of Baghdad. More raids in Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad were being prepared as well. The raids are going after known hostiles and safe houses. Hundreds of men have been arrested, and many tons of arms have been collected.

In the last week, two members of the Sunni Arab Association of Muslim Scholars have been assassinated. The Association has taken the lead in preaching resistance to the new government, elections and any Shia control of the government. This has caused much anger among the Shia majority. While many Shia have expressed this anger by joining the police or army, others have formed death squads, and gone after notorious murderers and hate mongers in the Sunni Arab community. This includes many Sunni Arab preachers. Shia Arabs and Kurds have thousands of names of Sunni Arabs who personally took part in supporting Saddams decades of repression. Nearly all of these Sunni Arabs have fled to the traditionally Sunni areas in, around, and to the west of, Baghdad. But Shia death squads have been going in and killing the murderers and preachers of hate. There are plenty of recent murders and atrocities to motivate these killers. Sunni Arab gangs have taken to setting up roadblocks and stopping Shia Arab or Kurd drivers, and torturing or killing them. The Shia get the most attention, because Sunni Arab clerics preach that Shia are heretics and blasphemers. This is a common attitude among Sunni Arabs, but usually does not result in violence. An exception is the Wahabi form of Sunni Islam. The Wahabi strain is popular in Saudi Arabia, and among al Qaeda members, and has become common among Iraqi Sunni Arabs as well. It's not just revenge minded Shia Arabs who are on to the central role of Sunni Arab clerics; the government has also started to arrest those who are most prominent in preaching hatred against Shia Arabs, and against anyone who denies Sunni Arab domination. The discovery of so many mosques in Fallujah being used as combat headquarters, and full of anti-Shia propaganda, has made it easier to go after the Sunni Arab clergy. The discovery of twenty "torture chambers" in Fallujah horrified many Iraqis, who were already angry at Sunni Arab thugs. Seeing the pictures of the blood splattered rooms where Iraqi and foreign kidnap victims were tortured and killed has made it pretty obvious what kind of people Iraqis are fighting against.

The UN, Arab nations and Iran continue to complain of "excessive force" in fighting against the Sunni Arabs. But to most Iraqis, too much restraint is being used. It all depends on whether you did business with Saddam, or had a friend tortured and killed by him.

Could it be that the MSM has superior skills? Yeah. Right.

Saddam, Yassar and ...

Adolf of course:

Mein Kampf was an influential text among the Arab Ba’ath Party activists. An Arabic edition of Mein Kampf has been published by Bisan publishers in Lebanon. It ranks on the best-seller list among Palestinian Arabs.

But, but, but, but ... you say it's the Jews that are the Nazis! You say you just feel it in your heart!

Now we're getting warmer. Hitler felt a lot of things in his heart too. Read the whole link -- it's short.

And then read THIS. Very, very carefully. Even if you're a liberal and realize that your feelings are getting uneasy...