Dalrymple On The Heart Of Suicide Hell

"Of course, hatred is the underlying emotion. A man in prison who told me that he wanted to be a suicide bomber was more hate-filled than any man I have ever met. The offspring of a broken marriage between a Muslim man and a female convert, he had followed the trajectory of many young men in his area: sex and drugs and rock and roll, untainted by anything resembling higher culture. Violent and aggressive by nature, intolerant of the slightest frustration to his will and frequently suicidal, he had experienced taunting during his childhood because of his mixed parentage. After a vicious rape for which he went to prison, he converted to a Salafist form of Islam and became convinced that any system of justice that could take the word of a mere woman over his own was irredeemably corrupt.

I noticed one day that his mood had greatly improved; he was communicative and almost jovial, which he had never been before. I asked him what had changed in his life for the better. He had made his decision, he said. Everything was resolved. He was not going to kill himself in an isolated way, as he had previously intended. Suicide was a mortal sin, according to the tenets of the Islamic faith. No, when he got out of prison he would not kill himself; he would make himself a martyr, and be rewarded eternally, by making himself into a bomb and taking as many enemies with him as he could.

Enemies, I asked; what enemies? How could he know that the people he killed at random would be enemies? They were enemies, he said, because they lived happily in our rotten and unjust society. Therefore, by definition, they were enemies—enemies in the objective sense, as Stalin might have put it—and hence were legitimate targets.

I asked him whether he thought that, in order to deter him from his course of action, it would be right for the state to threaten to kill his mother and his brothers and sisters—and to carry out this threat if he carried out his, in order to deter others like him.

The idea appalled him, not because it was yet another example of the wickedness of a Western democratic state, but because he could not conceive of such a state acting in this unprincipled way. In other words, he assumed a high degree of moral restraint on the part of the very organism that he wanted to attack and destroy."

(HT Charles) Dalrymple gets to the heart of the matter. One part mental illness and one part attacking us in -- and relying upon -- the heart of our virtue. And on reflection, it's nearly impossible to distinguish this from the moonbats...

As Wretchard pointed out, we have it correctly sized up as a long one. Well, on our more sanguine days anyway...

Miniter On ...

Pushing back the hands of the Tinfoil clock. It's a reasonably persuasive piece and I hope he's right. Unfortunately, it doesn't invalidate the basic Tinfoil Apocalypse thesis: Technology keeps growing but their minds don't...

JAW DROPPINGS a brewin': 9,000??? ... ?

TODAY'S INNUMERACY UPDATE: The reverse Ponzi scheme.

TODAY'S UPDATE from the "extremely complicated science" department.

"Islam has always been militant and the West only recently supine. In fairness, Islam's only fault may be that it retained a belief in itself long after the West embraced self-disgust. It may be that Gingrich's Long War is less about fighting Muslims than about the West rediscovering itself. While it's apparent battlefields may be in the mountains, jungles and desert fastnesses, the only frontier that matters is in its own heart."

"If the media wanted the US to lose this War in Iraq what would they change about their reporting today?"

COMMENT OF THE DAY -- AND MORE: "It is for these reasons that the eventual resolution of the war on terror is inextricably bound up with dismantling the welfare state, with one side in the civil war absolutely determined not to reopen the issue. The tipping point which leads to total war, our own Maginot Line, runs now through our own societies and will only be crossed in locality after locality as affluent professionals and their children, rather than immigrants, less educated citizens and inner city welfare recipients, are blown apart." As you can imagine, you need to read Wretchard's post first...

"Islamofascists are cowards. They attack unarmed civilians precisely because they know they cannot succeed with their activity any other way. Anyone who would plan and carry out this kind of crime has no sense of humanity, honor, or worth. The only rational response is to find them and kill them before they attack more children for their sick and twisted motives."

Speaking of which. You have seen PALLYWOOD by now, haven't you?

India pays the beheader's price today. Although it's nothing new, of course. And France RSN. They're both such mindless allies of BusHitler don't you know...

MSMemory Hole TODAY: Five days ago.

POST OF THE DAY: Marc and Scooter. Don't let the door hit you in the butt! I am curious though if there's still a romance / somebody used somebody angle here between Scooter and Judy...

Tinfoil. Apocalyse. Approacheth. David. Telleth.

"For the West, whose command centre is ultimately the White House, the question has been how to assess the ayatollahs’ intentions. Would they respond to external challenges, and internal decay, by gradually admitting the necessity of reforms? Might they capitulate? Or would they (in every sense of the phrase) “go nuclear”?

To people like me, the answer has been plain for several years now. It should now be plain to everyone else. President Ahmadinejad’s bold repetition of the promise to bring about a new Holocaust, in combination with Iran’s scarcely-concealed race to become a nuclear power with long-range missile delivery systems, leaves nothing ambiguous. But then, neither did Ahmadinejad’s recent underreported, psychopathic speech to the U.N. General Assembly. And it should be remembered that even his opponent in the Iranian presidential run-off last June, Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, had called repeatedly for Israel’s annihilation, as speaker of the Majlis through much of the 1980s.

The Iranian Holocaust policy is thus nothing new. What is new is the way it is being declared, openly and internationally. And as Tony Blair, the British prime minister, hinted aloud yesterday, we have come to the point where we must consider military means to make the Iranian policy change.

"To anybody in Europe knowing our history,” Mr Blair said, “when we hear statements like that made about Israel it makes us feel very angry.” He actually looked angry. "Ask yourself: A state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon?"

Condemnation came from many unusual quarters, including the Palestinian Authority, which must be uneasily aware that an Iranian nuclear strike that eradicates Israel, will also have the effect of eradicating them. Even Kofi Annan expressed his displeasure.

North American media have had no time to report these world-shaking events, this week, for President Bush has been manoeuvred into a political pit inside the Beltway, and that’s what they live for. That we cannot afford to have a U.S. President tied down with cheap domestic controversies, at a time like this, was one of my unstated reasons for luke-warmly supporting the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers.

I have myself been unsure whether the wiser course were sabotage rather than direct attack. For years I have thought the West should be trying harder not to appease, but rather to undermine, the Iranian regime, by aggressively supporting its domestic opponents. An external attack might help the regime rally domestic support. And of course it would have to be done over the demonstrating bodies of the worlds’ angry Left. Therefore try every option, short of open war.

I don’t think “every other option” is credible any more. We must look squarely at what is before us, and not for an excuse to look away.

It should be realized that President Ahmadinejad’s threats -- and his subsequent failure to retract them -- themselves constitute acts of war. The Israelis, at the least, are in a moral and legal position to act in self-defence; and all decent men and women are under a moral obligation to support them."

RTWT.

UPDATE: What "wipe"?

AND AGAIN: "... my guess is the UN's response will to be to name Iran to the Commission on Human Rights as the chair."

"Is he even sacrificing a good night's sleep? Is he sacrificing his future with his child? He is not sacrificing anything. He and his cabal of warmongering crooks are asking us Americans to give up our lives and our children's lives for his lies and mistakes and I am sure the grim milestone is barely causing a blip in their souls. ... In unrelated news in the past month, General MacArthur has retaken the Phillipines, many atolls continue to fall to American forces in the Pacific, and General Patton continues to roll through France on to Germany." (HT Glenn)

"... and things look likely to get worse." MOST EXCELLENT.

"Democracy, then, will not diminish either radicalism or anti-Americanism (or opposition to Israel) in the Arab Muslim world. But it will create many more active enemies of al Qaeda, and in this war the enemy of our enemy is definitely our friend. " (HT Roger)

Have they got there yet? Eh?

Who decided to do that?

Just sad.

"As it happens, I'm pro-choice, too, but I don't fool myself into believing that Roe v. Wade was anything other than pure sophistry. As it happens, I also think married couples should have free access to contraceptives, but that Griswold v. Connecticut was a complete travesty, with all its talk about penumbras and emanations. One notes the irony however, in that Roe is essentially an emanation of Griswold."

"Heh. Politicians. The only class of people stupid enough to commit felonies to cover up misdemeanors. Or, as it appears in this case, to cover up something that probably wasn't even a crime at all.

But, hey, it's only perjury, right? If memory serves, in 1999, some argued that a little perjury wasn't even a crime worth anyone's attention at all...

Any takers on the odds for a pardon for Karl Rove?"

What do (C)BS and Don Kofi have in common besides their excreble politics? Troubles understanding Word...

"Sadly, couples don't place a high priority on bringing children into the paradise they've created."

Hell From Space Yet Again

Una handa la.

Stopped clock rule today at 60 Minutes:

In his first U.S. television interview, the former U.S. Army sergeant who deserted to North Korea speaks for the first time about the abuse and control inflicted on him by the communist dictatorship over his nearly 40 years there. Charles Robert Jenkins tells Scott Pelley he Êhad a "U.S. Army" tattoo sliced off without anesthetic and was even told how often to have sex by his communist "leaders" in a 60 MINUTES interview to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 23 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Most leftists make excuses for this hellhole just as they claim the beheaders are oppressed by me.

That's right, me.

The f***ing imperialist pig dupe, me.

I've had enough today as you might notice.

By the way, this is one of the few countries in the world that's such a hellhole that Transparency International is stymied even gathering statistics about corruption. Off the scale in other words.

And a hellhole when viewed from space also:

...

(Gray on the map indicates 3 CPI polls were not available; TI suggests these countries could be among the most corrupt. [D'oh! --ed] Black on the night picture from space indicates countries that are indisputably hellholes. Period. Halt. Full Stop.)

Una handa la.

Will W grab the lifesaver?

ABLE to flee???

"Maybe O.J. can help Hezbollah look for the real killers!"

"We’re talking about real fanatics here. Fun reading, yes, but they kill a lot." (HT Roger)

"However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

LIBRARY? OR RE-ELECTION?: "Freeh's demands were not his top priority, gas prices were."

Condi Plays The Dating Game

Check this out from Ramos-Horta via DeMarche:

...I oppose wars as a matter of personal conviction. But because of my own experience, I also say that sometimes the use of force is necessary to put an end to tyranny and genocide. Can anyone condemn the U.S. for having intervened during World War II, to save the Jews from total annihilation? Can we condemn the NATO countries for intervening against Milosevic in 1998? For saving the Kosovars from annihilation? And moving to Afghanistan, it is often far too simplistic for blaming the U.S. But people forget that the U.S. gave an ultimatum to the Taliban regime to turn over Osama bin Laden. Pakistani diplomats traveled to Kabul twice, to persuade the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden. Here you have a state, Afghanistan, ruled by a regime that hosted a network and boasted about it, and defied the rest of the world about it. So, what should you do? The pacifists say "bring them to justice." Sure. Tell me how to bring them to justice without using force.

This little tour-de-force (pardon the pun) was just one from Ramos-Horta set in the context of DeMarche's support for Condi holding her ground during the "dating game" in her latest testimony before the Senate. Thankfully, she held her ground and refused to set any dates for withdrawing from Iraq, properly noting that:

"The terrorists want us to get discouraged and quit," Rice said. "They believe we do not have the will to see this through."

But the best line was reserved for one of DeMarche's commenters:

The next time someone on the left wants a date for withdrawal from Iraq, ask them for a date to give up on diplomacy with Iran. The Iraq date will be a month after the Iran date which will be 1 day before Iran is invaded. See if that doesn't stop the whining.

That about sums it up. Well, except for some "accidental" bombings in Syria as well. Why let the Palis have a monopoly on "bombing accidents"? But in our case, the bomber crew will come back safe and sound to load up for another mission. This time actually hitting Iran.

Well, only after a "severe" chastising of course. Oh so severe.

Really.

Fooled ya with that title, didn't I?

What has them so afraid?

"I also think it's interesting to see how many people are now pretending (1) that Miller's WMD/Iraq reporting didn't start until the Bush Administration's war buildup, when actually it goes back to the 1990s; and (2) that nobody else thought that we'd find vast WMD stockpiles when we invaded, when in fact everyone thought we would. (The valuable lesson for would-be Saddams -- don't run a bluff against the United States -- is also lost)."

TODAY"S YUCK: Emanating Harriet's Texas penumbras...

Here's what W is for. Here's the result of his ludicrous inattention to real immigration justice. But don't worry -- Karl Rove controls my brain at all times. Yeah, right...

Well, then, learn to think for yourself.

WARREN AGAIN: "Bali is a favoured target because it is the one large island in Indonesia that was never converted to Islam. It remains Hindu..."

Steyn Time

You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and that’s just the way the Western media intend to keep it. If you wake up one morning and switch on the TV to see the Empire State Building crumbling to dust, don’t be surprised if the announcer goes, “Insurging rebel militant forces today attacked key targets in New York. In other news, the president’s annual Ramadan banquet saw celebrities dancing into the small hours to Mullah Omar And His All-Girl Orchestra . . .

TODAY'S liberal innumeracy update...

Congratulations to the Iraqi people! And a just rebuff to the beheaders...

Covey Corner

Being a long-time "7 Habits" fan, I've been recommending Stephen Covey's "The 8th Habit" to all. One of my victims sends back this as his favorite excerpt so far:

The truth is you can never succeed with stockholders until you first succeed in the marketplace, and you can never succeed in the marketplace until you first succeed in the workplace. (page 110)

Now you know why you need to read it too...

T-SHIRT SPOTTING: "I'm trying to find myself. If I should get back before I return, please ask me to wait."

Glenn has an interesting and varied (read: this one isn't amenable to a 10-minute solution) post on the decline of American science. Check it out.

"Then Achmed the Saudi raises his hand. Now, you have to understand, Achmed is pretty much the team wiseass, so half the room was smiling and the other half was cringing when he stood up. “Imam,” he says, “let’s go back to phase number one on your waterfall chart. Ummmm, how does this expel-the-crusaders thing happen again?”

So Zawahiri just sorta stands there, mute for a minute, and says, “well, er, the vision statement is really very simple. We build mindshare with the masses with six-sigma beheading QC processes, and then the kaffirs will run away like in Vietnam. We just need to be ready for it, like the Vietnamese.”

Achmed just stands there and looks at him, completely deadpan.

“No seriously, this is exactly what happens with best-of-breed insurgencies, like Vietnam,” says Zawahiri. “It’s in all the books.”

So then, Achmed does this sarcastic confused look, and starts scratching his temple with his left stump. Man, it’s a good thing they broke for lunch, because I thought I was going to fucking crack up."

Today's Islamic Nihilism Update

Phares takes on Dr. Z's "old news". Actually, I think that the interesting part is of course not the old news -- although our peurile fascifist crowd could never digest that without their heads literally melting. No, the interesting stuff is the possibility that the Islamofascists are actually considering the need to stop machine gunning children to death so they can gain more sympathy from the populace.

Not that is a given mind you -- it's a worthy debate since Dr. al-Z has brought it up though.

Of course, anyone with an actual functioning brain would realize within about 12 nanoseconds that even the need for such a debate would be the very definition of nihilistic insanity.

End. Full Stop. Cuckoo.

About that (Reid-ian) Theocracy...

The Repulsive Chirac

CHECK THIS OUT:

"Perhaps Chirac's deepest friendship has been with Saddam Hussein.[30] The two first met in December 1974 when Prime Minister Chirac visited Baghdad to negotiate trade agreements, including the delivery of a nuclear reactor[31] later destroyed by an Israeli air raid in 1981. When Hussein visited France the following September—his only visit to a Western country[32]—then-prime minister Chirac said, "I welcome you as my personal friend. I assure you of my esteem, my consideration, and my affection."[33]

Resigning from government in 1976, Chirac founded the Rassemblement pour la Republique, which would soon become France's largest political party. There remain persistent rumors that Hussein helped finance the party, supported by allegations by Lebanese arms merchant Sarkis Soghanalian[34] and by various Iraqi politicians. In 1992, Saddam reportedly threatened to expose French leaders who had earlier accepted his largesse. "From Mr. Chirac to Mr. Chevènement, politicians and economic leaders were in open competition to spend time with us and flatter us," the Iraqi leader reportedly said. "We have now grasped the reality of the situation [of France's support for the 1991 Gulf War, a betrayal in Saddam's eyes]. If the trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public."[35] According to an aide, Chirac's friendship with Hussein was such that he would stop for a night in Baghdad whenever he traveled between Paris and Asia.[36]"

I'd tell you what I really think of Chirac and the French except it would scald your eyeballs. You might check out "The Wanted War" for a mild introduction though... [HT Power Line]

Like A Moth To The Drain

"It does, however, demonstrate the toxic combination of hyperbolic media and sensational events. Not content with reporting the news that happened before their eyes, media outlets had to reach beyond the news to report events that never happened, all without doing even basic research to determine the veracity of their reports. How difficult would it have been for NBC or the New York Times to get a test of the water before unleashing reports on the so-called toxic soup? How about getting reporters to verify accounts of rapes and murders by the score before airing such rumors to a repulsed nation?

How many people did these reports turn away who might otherwise have offered assistance? Laughably, the media gave itself a big pat on the back within days of the Katrina disaster, declaring themselves vindicated after a year of CBS memo debacles and Eason Jordan embarrassments. Only much later can we see that they learned nothing over that past year and have moved themselves even closer to the National Enquirer in terms of credibility. Instead of congratulating themselves, the media needs to eliminate the hysterics that drive the news coverage during unfolding catastrophes to make sure that they don't contribute even more damage to the victims and the nation."

TODAY'S NYeT: "Perhaps the Gray Lady finds democracy too distasteful for her scrubbed hands, but the rest of us find these developments very pleasing and reason for hope of eventual unity and peace.

Or if you can't cheer up, at least hire someone who knows how to write an honest editorial."

Brother Michael Is Back

"In a world like that, several things happen. Above all, creative activity ceases to exist, since culture depends on advancing knowledge and improving understanding. Neither of these interests the clerical fascists who rule the terror countries. They want good little Muslim androids, who will accept the preposterous belief that all knowledge was acquired several centuries ago and that man’s only worthwhile intellectual activity is to imbibe that knowledge in order to recite it when called for.

The most devastating critique of such a system is laughter, which the leaders of the terror regimes can not and dare not tolerate. Laughter bespeaks fun, and fun is totally forbidden. Remember the Taliban, from whose caves Osama bin Laden and his merry band of killers emerged about ten years ago? They not only locked away all the women, they banned music. Some French film producer went all over Afghanistan, filming eerie landscapes featuring poles driven into the ground, wrapped with audio tape. The only sound was the rustling of the tape in the wind. This was the country in which Osama et al. found the perfect atmosphere for their preparations for the jihad."

"If you had high hopes for the President Bush's shiny new Tax Reform Commission, then do yourself a favor and dash your hopes on some sharp pointy rocks right now."

And just keep scrolling while you're there...

Well, no, we didn't actually mean the really rich!

"No doubt the bien pensants will still be hooting at born-again Texans on the day the House of Lords gives a second reading to the Sharia Bill."

About that Caliphate...

"We suffered a stunning surprise attack at the hands of the Japanese in 1941, just as we have from al Qaeda. The Japanese believed that their religion (a divine Emperor) would provide the ultimate victory, and their kamikaze bombers destroyed themselves in attacking us in their emperor's name. Sound familiar?"

"something didn't still doesn't feel right."

Did I mention the high cost of high school failure?

I don't either.

Happy Columbus Day...

"But we are living in a strange world when cynical opportunism can masquerade as moral superiority, and get away with it."

"It's the same people who think that hatred consists of nothing more than a misunderstanding, and that a nice, friendly conversation cures evil."

UMPH... Pants're tight...

Looks like time for another Salvation Army donation...

"Why are we hearing this stuff from Beldar and not the Administration?"

"The expanding use of Iraqi police and soldiers has also led to passing control of areas to Iraqi commands. This month, the Iraqi 6th infantry division took over military control of Baghdad. Last month, Iraqi security forces assumed control of the southern city of Karbala (the home of many Shia shrines and holy places.) More such transfers of control will take place each month. This is scaring the Sunni Arab minority like nothing else. Control of the army and police was, for generations, the cornerstone of Sunni Arab control of Iraq. With Shia Arab and Kurdish police and soldiers taking effective control of more and more of the country, and working with American troops to root out Sunni Arab terrorist operations, the Sunni Arabs see their dream of regaining control of the country fading away, and turning into a nightmare of democracy and majority rule."

neo-neocon yet again:"We can sense this thing, but can't describe it. It spooked people long ago, and it fills us with dread now, to look into those empty, empty eyes." Just making sure I get caught up ...

WHOOPS! (HT neo-neocon)

Did Grandpa Olaf know it would be coming to this?

Dr. Sanity spys strategic similarities. Symbiosis sanely suspected?

Eavesdropping on the Z-men...

Yeah, and Goebbels was the "spiritual leader" of the Nazis...

Delusional disorder.

"Bush has brilliantly made the important connection between the Islamists of this century and the Communists of the last. Is it any wonder that groups like ANSWER and thier ilk are primarily supported by communists and quasi-communists? They understand fully what they are supporting."

Khobar Towers justice? Nah! Clinton Library of course!

Britain flips a blinder up off one eye. How long before the Beeb flushes this down the MSMemory Hole?

Grand jury shopping update.

No dancing. No gays. And no problem for Western leftists idiot fascifist dupes.

neo-neocon: (Apocalyptic) Nihilist Mass-Murderers

I am becoming impressed as impressed can be with neo-neocon:

Mass murderers tend to go back to the scene of the crime, or to target the same type of victim over and over again. In this, as in so many other things, terrorists resemble the compulsivity of the mass murderer. So we have another Bali bombing, and the World Trade Center was struck until it was finally destroyed.

Terrorists want power, and are frustrated that they don't have it. If you think about it, what weapons or power do they really have other than the power to blow innocent people--so-called "soft" targets--up? They can't win over an army; if they try to battle a conventional military or police force they are usually decimated. They also lack the power of argument and persuasion; only a small percentage of people on the face of the earth are going to convert to a rigid sect such as Wahabism or its ilk, since most people lack a natural temperament for and interest in fanaticism. Modern explosives have allowed a relatively small but determined group of power-hungry, frustrated, and otherwise impotent terrorists to make a relatively big bang, if they so desire--and terrorists do so desire, quite ardently.

Hoo haw! Go thou forthwith and readeth it all!!!!

Her analysis is just gorgeous. The problem omitted, of course, is that our heedless breaching of the "Prime Directive" means that the bangs will keep getting bigger and bigger.

How I wish it weren't being made so...

Yon Rocks

"When I first stepped off the plane in Iraq, the three most dangerous places were Baghdad, Al Anbar province, and Mosul. Somewhere in the span of nine months Mosul fell off that list. The rest of Iraq may yet devolve into a large civil war. Zarqawi clearly intends to incite full-on hostilities between the Sunnis who still follow his insurgency and the Shia majority who have so far resisted his call to Armageddon. I do not know if their forbearance will outlast his insurgency. But I do know it would be a mistake to think of this as a strictly "Sunni thing."

After all, the Kurdish regions to the north are an unqualified success, and the Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims. And Col Eid, and most of the men who serve under him on the Mosul Police Force are Sunni. Despite their key role in the problems in Iraq, the Sunnis are even more effective parts of the solution. The “full-spectrum” techniques that have shown so much promise in the Battle for Mosul, and before then, with the Kurdish resistance in the North, are also being used in other parts of Iraq."

Tell me that you knew the Kurds were Sunni? Not by listening to the MSM you didn't!

And Yon has some absolutely smashing stuff in here about leadership. If you don't read the whole thing you ABSOLUTELY MUST scan around in it. It's just beautiful photojournalism.

Yes, of course, Yon just got added to the blogroll! (HT Glenn)

Just askin'

NYeT that bombing...

"The Times. Always more informative for what it leaves out than for what it puts in." NYeT!

A Wow At Roger's

There is a horrid but obvious dynamic going on here: At some deep level, Europeans, European politicians, European culture are aware that almost without exception every European nation was complicit in Hitler's genocide. Some manned the death camps, others stamped the orders for the transport of the Jews to the death camps, everyone knew what was going on - and yet the Nazis -didn't have to use much if any force to make them accomplices. For the most part, Europeans volunteered. That is why "European civilization" will always be a kind of oxymoron for anyone who looks too closely at things, beginning with the foolish and unnecessary slaughters of World War I that paved the way for Hitler's more focused effort.

And so there is a need to blame someone else for the shame of "European civilization." To blame the victim. To blame the Jews. The more European nations can focus one-sidedly on the Israeli response to terror and not to the terror itself, the more they can portray the Jews as the real villains, the more salve to their collective conscience for their complicity in collective mass murder in the past. Hitler may have gone too far, and perhaps we shouldn't have been so cowardly and slavish in assisting him, but look at what the Jews are doing.

Does this resonate with moi? Check those Jaw Droppers over right...

Why Ask Why? (Hitchens again of course...)

"Arabs have gotten a close look at their heroes, and they don’t like what they see."

Katrina Intersects A Stopped Clock

Taranto points to WaPo acting like a stopped clock and using up its entire quantity of correctness for the year in one article:

Five weeks after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans, some local, state and federal officials have come to believe that exaggerations of mayhem by officials and rumors repeated uncritically in the news media helped slow the response to the disaster and tarnish the image of many of its victims.

Claims of widespread looting, gunfire directed at helicopters and rescuers, homicides, and rapes, including those of "babies" at the Louisiana Superdome, frequently turned out to be overblown, if not completely untrue, officials now say.

The sensational accounts delayed rescue and evacuation efforts already hampered by poor planning and a lack of coordination among local, state and federal agencies. People rushing to the Gulf Coast to fly rescue helicopters or to distribute food, water and other aid steeled themselves for battle. In communities near and far, the seeds were planted that the victims of Katrina should be kept away, or at least handled with extreme caution.

To which I say: Duoh. They did it because it sells. The MSM took the Weather Channel's grade school hurricane sensationalism and turned it into HURRICANE PORN. Frip.

Very. Very. Very.

Very. Very. Very. Bad. News:

But it's different with China. They have a total addressable market of 400 million upper- to middle-class spenders they can sell to without ever having to touch the U.S. And another thing China has done, just like we did during the Industrial Revolution: learning from the mistakes of others who have gone before you, and also learning from the things that work.

One of the things they found that works is stock options. And so stock options are very lucrative in China now, and there is no capital-gains tax. Now, do I think our politicians understand this? Absolutely not. And yet daily our politicians enact legislation without fully comprehending what's really going on in China at all.

What should politicians be doing to protect the U.S. technological lead?

Eliminate the cap on H1-B visas, because we don't grow enough math and science graduates here internally. We've got to increase research funding at the National Science Foundation. We've got to extend DARPA's (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the R&D arm of the U.S. Defense Dept.) horizon from 18 months to a longer time, because there's no Bell Labs doing basic research anymore.

And we've got to find a way to get kids interested in math and science. When I talk to people in the tech industry, we're all in such agreement, and yet nothing is happening.

The problem is that we're all in California and Texas and Massachusetts and New York. Beyond that, nobody cares. And not only do they not care, but they also think the people in the (tech) industry are a bunch of crooks and that their stock options are tools used by evil people for evil deeds. Tech people know tech issues.

But the President and the Congress aren't going to allocate dollars to Corporate America for something that people in the Midwest doesn't care about. They're looking for votes. You can explain textiles and farming. But almost everyone in Minnesota and Iowa has a cell phone and LCD TV or are about to get one. And they say we're still the leader in technology.

Unfortunately, you need to go read the whole thing.

Did I mention that China has no capital gains tax? Oh, yeah, I did.

But I forgot to tell you that China is now graduating approximately 3 TIMES as many engineers as the U.S.

It's looking more and more like adopting the "Fair Tax" and its elimination of the capital gains tax may be yet another "world historical" decision for us...

UPDATE: I hesitated to emphasize this since I work for Agilent but on further thought this is just so shocking I can't have you miss it:

Does China have an educational advantage?

I often tell a story that illustrates this. There's a major university in the (San Francisco) Bay Area that you would have thought was one of the best-funded universities in the world. And one of our fellows at National is a professor there. And he said they just got a new gift of a network analyzer from Agilent (NYSE:A - News). It's worth about $110,000 and they put it on a metal cart, and professors will hide it away and hoard it. And to use it, you have to sign up for it days in advance, and they roll it around from lab to lab.

And then he was invited over to China to give a speech and was given a tour of Tsinghua University. And he was shocked and amazed that every lab had one of those very same Agilent network analyzers. Some of them had never been used or turned on, but they had them just in case they ever needed one. The funding is incredible, and meanwhile we're sitting here thinking we're doing fine.

I think our politicians believe that that the leadership we have enjoyed since Sputnik has been God-ordained. It's not. Someone has to fund it. We're not asking for handouts for companies. But the vast majority of companies these days don't do R&D, they just do D. And we work with universities to get the R, and now the universities are saying that they can't do basic research anymore.

Look at Bell Labs back in the 1940s. It was very unsuccessful in that only 1 of 20 projects was successful. But look at the successes: the transistor, the laser, the Telstar satellite, stereophonic sound. That's my long-winded way of saying funding needs to increase for basic research.

Does that open your eyes just a bit? Is a third world America on the horizon?

Well, it would seem to me that 911 was simply inevitable with an idiot like this protecting us for most of the run-up period. Brother.

"Maybe there is some elasticity to petroleum demand after all..." (HT Drudge)

That's it. We now have irrefutable proof of global warming. That and me just having went out and drained my sprinkler system backflow valve so it doesn't freeze tonight...

Glenn links to a HEH that gets elevated to front page billing round these here fake VRWC parts:

C-C-C-Cuckoo About P-P-Piglet

"If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society?" (HT Glenn)

" ... bad things happen to you because you're a dumbass."

They. Are. Moving. Just. Not. To. The. Superdome. (HT Glenn)

"Schools, with their focus on raising students' self-esteem, are doing everything possible to raise our children as feelers. U.S. students do horribly on international math tests but get top marks in mathematical self-esteem. "

Top 10 Reasons You Might Be A Liberal ... (Early Fall 2005 Edition)

Yes, folks, we're long overdue for an updated Fascifist Gramscian neo-Syndicalist dupe liberal spotting tutorial.

You might be a liberal if:

10) You can't remember that there was a war in Kosovo but if reminded you're sure it was sanctioned by the U.N...

9) You believe that we are still in the "quagmire" that you shouted gleefully about in Oct 2001 regarding Afghanistan and you still shout down anyone who dares suggest we have actually captured Kabul.

8) You believe that we should have stopped the Coast Guard and "military occupation" of NOLA and just sent Sean Penn and his red bailing cup in instead since he had ever so much better intentions.

7) You believe that the NOLA Superdome and Convention Center were filled with raped and dead blacks because "those people" just can't control themselves and need your help.

6) You believe everything you see on 60 Minutes.

5) You can't remember anything from ABC news in the late 90's.

4) You're surprised to learn that the Iraqi left is fighting against your "insurgent" heroes.

3) You've never actually read the text of Earle's indictment of Delay. And if you did you wouldn't notice anything at all surprising about it... (UPDATE: Watch for the movie!)

2) You believe that Planned Parenthood's (via ABCL) Margaret Sanger was a great woman that had the best of intentions.

1) You believe a global war with a U.S. military death rate approximately twice that of normal peacetime operations is indisputable proof of unsustainability and impending defeat.

And your rationales for the Schadenfreude that sustains your self esteem are -- as those with pulses may have noticed by oh, say, #6 at the latest -- just a tad short of being "reality based"...

(more than) One Marine's View.

TigerHawk follows up with a post on Gen. Petraeus's recent speech at Princeton. You won't be reading about it in the media. But you really need to go read it! (HT Glenn)

In A Ruined Region

WARREN asks "what doctrine?": "At the very moment when the cause of democracy was finding voices in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere, Washington suddenly went silent."

In a lot of ways, Condi's recent Princeton speech was excellent -- especially for the job she did with historical context. And there can be no doubt whatsoever about her intellect. I TIVO'ed it and will be playing it over more than a few times.

But her hand-waving about there being some flexibility to absorb Hamas into the Pali political process was troubling. But now I'm reading Samuels' "In A Ruined Country" in The Atlantic which does a pretty good job of pulling together mostly things I knew along with some additional details of how Arafat's corruption machine really worked.

And most of all reminded me harshly of how awful Fatah is also. (It's pretty sad when PALLYWOOD actually cheers me up.) The sad truth is that there's about a dime's worth of difference between them, with Fatah leaning toward a corrupt rationality and Hamas leaning toward what I can only describe as a sort of insane integrity.

With this as the menu, I will cut Condi a bit more slack -- for now...