Read Wretchard, of course.

Surely ...

Surely you can guess this one:

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

OK then. A huge hint: Who on earth do you think that Wretchard would quote at a time when the Brits need a stiff upper lip?

"" Jay Rosen, if you're listening, if you changed the acronym DCCC to NRCC, and "Forest City" to "Halliburton," if Tom Delay had compared Kelo to 'the word of God,' if the family running Halliburton was also involved in legal defense for terrorists, and if the decision had also been heartily endorsed by Fox News, d'ya think I might have read about that in the Washington Post by now? ""

That pesky Hitch again on unintended intended consequences.

"... when the court becomes a political plaything, there is less reason for any of us to respect it." (HT Glenn)

Poetic justice.

I Can't Remember The Last Time

... I quoted Drudge. But this pants down on the hateful Schumer covers a lot of ground:

Schumer was overheard on a long cellphone conversation with an unknown political ally, and the DRUDGE REPORT was there!

Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, proudly declared, “We are contemplating how we are going to go to war over this.”

Schumer went on to say how hard it was to predict how a Supreme Court justice would turn out: “Even William Rehnquist is more moderate than they expected. The only ones that resulted how they predicted were [Antonin] Scalia and [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. So most of the time they've gotten their picks wrong, and that's what we want to do to them again.”

Schumer later went on to mock the “Gang of 14” judicial filibuster deal and said it wasn’t relevant in the Supreme Court debate.

“A Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown style appointment may not have been extraordinary to the appellate court but may be extraordinary to the Supreme Court.”

By the time the train hit New Jersey, Schumer shifted gears and called his friend and “Gang of 14” member, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. The two talked in a very friendly manner about doing an event sometime this week together.

Developing…

Happy INDEPENDENCE Day!

And Armed Liberal has an antidote to puerile Marxism Syndicalism.

Guilty-crats.

Hugh has the highlights of W's long-overdue speech. The Osama quote is really all you need to know...

The rare earth of China.

Hitch on sons... daughters... and something else that went down the MSMemory hole: Beslan.

Shredding fascifism.

Today's Quote

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. --Attributed to Mark Twain

"At least we got rid of Barbara Olson." Yes -- you go apologize Karl. NOT.

UPDATED already.

If It's Not Projection ...

It's displacement:

Oh my - well here I'll go again and say that it's pretty obvious that Americans are the new Jews. This has been obvious for quite some time now. The fundamental irrationality of anti-Americanism is a dead giveaway that a basic psychodynamic impulse is operative, in this case "displacement", which Wikipedia defines as "an unconscious defence mechanism, whereby the mind redirects emotion from a 'dangerous' object to a 'safe' object."

It's fairly obvious that America is the "safe object". One guess as to who or what the "dangerous object" is.

Pay no attention to the beheader with WMD behind the Iraqi curtain...

Me B POed 2

Title: Language & Abuse: A Poem Author: Guest Author

Abuse
by "PO'ed Poet"

in the newspaper: 'nazi', 'gulag'
in the kitchen: 'nuke'
in our minds, the words
overused
broken loose from horror
despair, anguish
gas chambers and crematoria
work details in the snow
shadows on blasted brick
molten light; blindness, burning
starvation
suffering amid ashes

when have you been hungry
seen your body emptied of flesh,
risen in rags to labor shoeless
enslaved, in snow,
found yourself burned blinded sick
calling for your children
when?
when?

and, if you have not lived
with horror sharing your bed
death for your bunk mate
risking murder to pray
how dare you use those words
turn them cheap and trivial
wear down the bone of their meaning
to disparage what is merely bad
how dare you bring us closer to forgetting
what evil is
closer to repeating the past

Send it to your lib friends...

Meanwhile, the real modern-day Pol Pots get passes from the MSM. Zimbabwe? What Zimbabwe? (HT Glenn)

Un.

F'ing.



Believable.

Florida. That was it. Florida.

Did I Forget To Mention That ...

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT FASCISM IS WRONG. (Added to the Classics links now of course!)

And then there's the small matter of Orwell's view of the fascifists.

The Great Surprise -- Not

D'UOH: "Just look at how the decision broke down: Justices Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer--the Court's liberals--voted to uphold the taking, while O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas dissented. I don't see how the ideological lineup could be clearer; if you care about property rights, vote for conservatives."

Glenn has his analysis here and has a quick link survey indicating that the leftist minions like those at Kos -- not Kos himself of course -- will line up with most conservatives (repeat after me: O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas dissented).

I think they're cynically anti-BusHitler enough that they'll change their tune as soon as they come down off their drugs enough to understand who they're really standing next to...

And Take Another!

YEEOUCH!:

As a recent veteran of Guantanamo Bay, I've been troubled by the willingness of some (namely this editorial page) to make uninformed inflammatory statements about the detention operations at GTMO. I believe that if any one of them had the opportunity to visit GTMO and witness the operation first hand, they would change their tone, if not their minds altogether.

Not only are the detainees treated humanely (top-notch medical care, hearty meals, recreational facilities, full access to religious observance, etc..) but I personally witnessed instances when detainees did not want to leave. It was not uncommon for my platoon to guard an airfield for hours in preparation for sending a detainee home, only to turn around and bring him back to the detention facility – because he refused to leave! These detainees are not stupid—they know that real torture and inhumane treatment await them at home. And while I know they’re not happy to be in GTMO, they rest assured that they will be treated well because Americans play by the rules.

I feel sheepish even having to defend this issue. While our servicemen (and innocent Iraqi citizens) are being blown-up and tortured overseas, the media obsesses over a handful of “mishandled” Korans and excessive air conditioning. (It’s also worth noting that these so-called instances of “abuse” at GTMO were all uncovered by internal Army investigations! It’s not as if the Army is torturing people and covering it up. On the contrary, the minute the Army gets wind of minor misconduct it swiftly removes and prosecutes those involved. This is an institution upholding the highest moral traditions of our country.) Would the terrorists do the same? No, I think they’d just wink at us…and then cut our heads off.

LT Peter Hegseth
Forest Lake, MN
U.S. Army National Guard, Infantry

Go Peter!

Bush doctrine light.

Is Britain snapping out of the "Jack Straw coma" on Iran?

VERY INTERESTING: "Since the media tilt heavily left, people on the right wanted alternative media. Since Republicans are better at grassroots organization, people on the left wanted grassroots organization. People on the left now have more political communities, while people on the right now have more freestanding pundits and alt-news sources."

Hugh Has The Guest To Follow-Up The Letter Of The Day

Check this out:

Pete: I tell you one thing, Hugh. I had a soldier in my platoon who spoke fluent Arabic, and so I'd go up in a tower and he'd interpret for me, and I am telling you, these guys are talking about, you know, how much they hate America and how much they would love to kill somebody if they could get their hands on them. These are not friendly guys, and given the opportunity, as I think someone put it, to spend the night at it with a few members of the editorial pages of the Star Tribune, I think that maybe they would take their statements back.

RTWT.

The left would disband our penitentiary system system too if they could...

Letter Of The Day

Check this out:

Your editorial "Durbin's Message/US Must End Prisoner Abuse" proves beyond any doubt that the Star Tribune Editorial Staff has no idea of who we are fighting and why! As a soldier in Iraq, I was highly insulted by the comments of Senator Durbin and his pathetic excuse of being "misunderstood." So I offer a suggestion. Let's divide up these victims of "the hellhole America's military has created" at Guantanamo and allow them to spend a weekend at the homes of the Star Tribune Editorial Staff and Senator Durbin. America's military will anxiously await the report on the impression they will make on you and your families.

Joseph Repya
LTC, Aviation
MNC-I LNO
101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)
Camp Victory South
Baghdad, Iraq

What? No takers???

Why I Call Them Dhimmi-crats

UPDATE: Did I forget to mention that these are the same people who sneer out the other side of their mouth that "everything is relative"?

... she was sitting at home watching the tube, and saw herself voting.

We're building a military and police organization bigger than the entire British army.

It was a bit more... (Did I forget to mention this *sshat STILL has a habit of using the n-word? But it's all OK since he's the dhimmi-crats elder stateman.)

al-inois trifecta eviscerated again. (HT Glenn)

Religion of Koran desecration, religion of peace (and torture). [Just in case you missed it.]

THE REAL THING, IRAQ EDITION.

MSMemory Hole Update

When was the last time you read anything from the MSM resembling this?:

June 19, 2005: In western Iraq, for the third time in the last six weeks, a battalion of U.S. Marines swept the area to find terrorists and their weapons. The marines have found over fifty weapons cashes so far this month, and killed or captured several hundred terrorists, both foreign and Iraqi. Two American battalions are currently sweeping the area between Baghdad and the Syrian border. Hundreds of foreign terrorists cross the border each month, and provide an increasing proportion of the manpower attacking government and coalition troops.

The terrorists have resorted to brutal treatment of local Iraqis (largely Sunni Arabs, many of them pro-Saddam or pro-al Qaeda) in order to maintain some control along the border. Local tribal and religious leaders have asked the government to clear out the terrorists, but recruiting local police has been difficult. Without enough local police to keep the terrorists out, when American troops leave, the terrorists just come back.

Bringing in outside police units has been slowed because there are not enough reliable (trained and well led) police to go around. But this time around, emphasis is placed on trapping the terrorists, not just running them out of villages, towns or remote rural compounds. The degree to which these terrorists are hard core can be seen by the fact that few of them have been captured. They don’t surrender, and fight to the death. In one battle yesterday, at Karabilah, an isolated village near the Syrian border, about a hundred terrorists fought to the death when surrounded by marines and Iraqi troops. Four local Iraqis, held captive and tortured, were found and rescued by the marines. Photos and vids of other Iraqis, being tortured and murdered, were also found, along with car bombs and roadside bombs. A car bomb workshop was found as well.

At least half of the terrorists encountered in western Iraq are foreigners. The Iraqi terrorists have been on the run as areas they set up housekeeping in are detected and raided. While the terrorists can scare Iraqis into not resisting with weapons, they cannot prevent them from tipping off police about where the bomb factories and weapons caches are. The terrorists torture and murder locals suspected of being informants, or who are kin to informants. The current American operations are meant to crush the terrorist groups that are too large for the locals to handle. Smaller groups of terrorists would be outnumbered by police, or groups of armed locals.

In Mosul, American troops captured Muhammad Khalaf Shakar, an al Qaeda leader and close associate of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Shakar was betrayed by an informer, and increasingly common problem terrorists are facing. The informants, and few captured terrorists, indicate that most of the car bombs and roadside bombs are coming out these western Iraqi locations.

Operation Lightning, which began on May 22nd, continues in and around Baghdad. The 40,000 Iraqi police and troops have rounded up over a thousand terrorists suspects, and brought peace to many neighborhoods. It only takes a dozen or so armed men to terrorize a neighborhood, and make it hospitable for anti-government forces. When the local bad guys are rounded up, or chased into the western desert, the police can patrol the neighborhood, and establish relationships with the locals. This makes it more difficult for the terrorists to come back, as the police will immediately find out, and go after the terrorists before they can establish any control.

The government is broadcasting the pictures and videos captured from the terrorists, showing how Iraqis are tortured or killed (often by beheading) for resisting. The fact that many of the terrorists are foreigners, especially Saudis, makes many Iraqis angry. These self-righteous foreigners preach how they are in Iraq to “liberate” Iraq from foreigners. Yet the terrorists are never seen doing any good works, like the Americans, only killing and torturing Iraqis. This is turning Iraq into the most anti-al Qaeda country in the Middle East. That, in turn, is resonating in other Moslem countries, where Islamic terrorism is becoming less popular, as more of it is directed against Iraqis.

I thought not.

Where was Dick Durbin when we needed him?

On The Excreble A.I.

CASE CLOSED. I'm no longer interested in hearing anything these venal people have to say. PERIOD.

The rest of the story...

'Kos the the fascifists have no brains.

But the true measure of the horror did not dawn on me until me and my fellow passengers were left taxiing on the O'Hare tarmack for over twenty minutes in the Auschwitzian Airbus A320 cattlecar, in temperatures approaching 85 degrees, not knowing our fates or whether we would make it to our fundraising dinners.

Much too stupid to be a United States Senator.

We have faces splodey-dopes before -- and of a much higher relative mettle.

Stop It And Wake The Hell Up!

Samuelson gets the unfolding Eurabian disaster. (HT Glenn)

Just what WILL it take to nab teflon Kofi anyway???

Rummy Shamelessly Stolen

from Radio Blogger (mp3):

Don Rumsfeld explaining the progress in Iraq.

In just over four minutes, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spontaneously orated a column which puts the American media to shame. If you ever wanted to know how Iraq is doing, in proper perspective, read and listen to this from earlier this morning:

On the political portion of it, that's obviously not the business of this department, but I can comment on it. The general feeling is as follows: That the election was held January 30th. It took a number of weeks to put a government together. Not a number of years, but a group of people, with no experience in democracy at all, took a number of weeks...a few months, to put together a government. A lot of tugging and hauling, a lot of negotiating about what it would mean in the assembly, a lot of negotiating about what it might mean with respect to the constitution drafting, a lot of negotiating about what it might mean as to who's in what ministry, and for what reasons, and the presidential council, I believe they call it. And they came to a conclusion. When the conclusion was made and announced, one could look at worst case and say it wouldn't be unreasonable to say the Shi'ia would say, okay, Sunnis, you didn't play in the election. You gave it to us for twenty-thirty years, and we didn't like it, and now it's our turn, and we're going to give it to you. Quite the contrary. The Shi'ia, at the top leadership down, have been saying, look. We want to have one country. Let's reach out to the Sunnis. Let's include them. Let's find a way, even though they made a mistake and didn't participate in the election. Let's see that they're involved in this. Let's get them involved in the drafting of the constitution. It's exactly the right instinct. The Sunnis, instead of saying, okay, we didn't get in the election. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe it wasn't. But now, we're not well represented, and we're not going to play, and go separately, and try to break the country into three pieces. The Sunnis didn't do that. I mean, everyone you talk to said we made a mistake. The Sunnis made a mistake. They should have gotten involved in the election. They didn't get involved in the election. They now know they should have gotten involved in the election, and thank the good Lord the Shi'ia are reaching out to them, and the Kurds are reaching out to them, and trying to include them. Now, what does it mean next? Well, they're going to have a lot of to'ing and fro'ing on the constitution. Fortunately, they made a lot of those decisions in the transitional administrative law, the so-called TAL. And it's there as a guidepost. It's not a mandate. It's not a speed limit or direction, but it is generally agreed to. And so it'll serve, I would think, as at least a touchstone for the very complicated task of trying to find a piece of paper that people, who have had historic hostilities to each other, that have been held together, not through love or respect, but through vicious dictatorship repressing them. That's how they've held together as a country. And now they're going to look for a piece of paper that will do that for them instead. Instead of a vicious dictatorship. Instead of repression. Instead of a police state. Instead of mass graves, filled with people...bodies, tens of thousands of bodies. There's going to be a piece of paper that those people are going to have to put their faith in. That is an enormous thing. And they're going to be debating that, and tugging on it, and to'ing and fro'ing, and they're going to, in my view, come up with one...just a minute...just a minute...And then they're going to take that to the Iraqi people and have them vote on it. And another 26 million people will have a chance, or population, or whoever's eligible to vote, men and women alike. Some large number is going to have a chance to go vote on that. And then, it'll be there, and then they'll vote on whatever that constitution says, for a president, or a prime minister, whatever, representatives, they'll have a chance to vote on that in December. This is amazing. This is historic. This is a gigantic step forward. This ought not to be dismissed or trivialized. This is a big deal. Will it happen? I think it'll happen. Can I guarantee anything in life? No. I can't. No one can. It's their country.

Amen.

Eurabian stupidity in a hypocritically deranged nutshell...

The Eurabian Thought Police

Are beautifully vivisected by Wretchard:

Perhaps the real reason ideological propositions are set up as "obvious" and "irreversible" facts is that they are actually so intellectually fragile they must be exempted from questioning. That's why the very act of discussing these unsupported articles of faith is declared a form of "intolerance" or "hate speech" so as to make the whole ideological edifice self-supporting. But as the recent rejections of the European Charter in France and the Netherlands proved, bankrupt ideas however armored with Newspeak are bankrupt all the same with one additional property. Newspeak coated projects are prone to a suddenly catastrophic -- and to the press -- and inexplicable collapse.

A work of art...

Introduction To A Singular Apocalypse

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." --Einstein

QotD

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character." --Einstein

... it now remains to be seen whether the remainder of its society can provide the rest.

MSMisogyny Chic Update

Remember this?



Well guess where this MSM vision of paradise was taken?



At least there's some more good news...



(PBT Roger)

The World Is Not Perfect

And we need to prioritize.

What can you make of men who are scared of women and dogs?

Christina Aguilera, torture mistress!

Beldar welcomes you to the Supreme Thought Police...

Wake up W and help them!

Plunging the MSM.

I Didn't Need Another Hug.

THE REAL THING.

Urine Saudi Arabia

I can imagine in late 2001 asking a question of myself in 2005:

What’s the main story? The smallpox quarantine? Fallout from the Iranian – Israeli exchange contaminating Indian crops? A series of bombings in heartland malls?

"Well, no – the big story today has to do with soldiers mishandling terrorists' holy texts at a detention center."

Mishandling? How? Like, you mean, they opened it up without first checking to see if it was ticking, and it blew up –

"No, they handled it in a way that disrespected it. Infidels are supposed to use gloves."

Oh. So we lost, then.

Don't get me wrong. I want us to do the right thing. I don't think there should be a policy that permits interrogators to treat the Qur'an like it was, oh, a Bible discovered in the Saudi airport customs line.

Did I mention that James is from my home town? Cool.

(HT Glenn)

Rule 18 and lots more down the latest MSMemory hole. (HT Glenn)

Spanish Flypaper Redux Apocalypse Interlude

Warren is back with the intersection of Iraq and Spain:

As the author of the much-mocked "flypaper theory" -- the phrase I used to describe the implicit strategy behind the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan -- I am more and more persuaded it has worked. All ground indications are that large numbers of Islamist terrorists who would otherwise remain dangerously under cover, not only across the region but in Europe and elsewhere, are irresistibly drawn towards these theatres of action, where they sooner or later get themselves killed.

As terrorists, they were, almost invariably, in a position to be more effective where they were. They are lured away for emotional reasons, or "spiritual" if that word can be applied to something that is essentially not Godly but demonic. It is the Islamist analogy to the way young socialists, anarchists, and adventurers from across Europe were drawn to Spain during its Civil War in the 1930s.

Not to mention a way too optimistic review of the Apocalypse:

In summary: the Bush administration has done, in the main, the right things to extinguish Islamism. This leaves us with other, and potentially worse problems elsewhere, on which it has done nothing at all, nor yet appears to have anything resembling a plan.

Yes, I said way too optimistic.

More details "soon".

Well, every good leftist knows that the Germans are an excellent source of foreign law to help shape the U.S. Constitution. Here's why they're mental midgets.

Downs with the MSM

Michael points out that the MSM persists in calling folks who do this "insurgents" when in fact they are nothing more than bigots with car bombs.

And no, that's not a typo in my title.

The MSM would never tell you this about the bloody beasts they effectively support with their "if it bleeds it leads" story line corruption. (HT WoC)

The MSM is trying with all their heart to throw open the doors of the sanctuary.

UPDATE: And, oh yes, the MSM really would have you believe they care oh so much about minorities. Right.

Depends On What The Meaning Of Soon Is...

Glenn summarizes this weekend's required reading at the Belmont Club. I would comment more tonight but as you probably noticed, I ran out of words in the last post. RTWT and go back and review the Three Conjectures and their postscript while your at it.

More words on the Tinfoil Apocalypse coming soon... (Well, soon is getting closer anyway...)

Babe Theory Update: But Still Without Driving

Red State is quoted thusly by WILLisms:

:...the "babe theory" is actually a clever way of expressing a profound point. The edifice of Middle Eastern autocracy and its particularly virulent outgrowth--terrorism--rests upon the repression of women. Liberate female energies from political cage of tyranny and the religious prison of Islamic doctrine and the authority of the bearded mullahs and "pious" terrorists and sexually repressed holy men will crumble like the desiccated dust of the mummies they are.
We are releasing a genie into the Middle East--and the world--whose power is incalcuable.

Kinda gets down to the nub of things, doesn't it?

I really, really want to see how our so-called women's rights activists -- who say not a peep about the stunning repression of women in the Muslim world -- would react if when Condi visits the Saudi nut-jobs she asks to drive a car and turns the brouhaha into a spotlight on their misogyny!

Any bets that Condi would somehow be the object of their venomous attacks?

Thought so.

Did I forget to mention that driving by women leads to evil?

I have now officially run out of words...

You Wonder Why Foul-Mouthed Howie

... is so foul-mouthed? So he can distract his minion loons from having to consider points like this:

Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism.

Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline.

Western Europeans seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence. Election results, whether in North Rhine-Westphalia or across France and the Netherlands, reveal electorates who have lost faith in their leaders, who are anxious about declining quality of life, who feel extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign competition - from the Chinese, the Americans, the Turks, even the Polish plumbers.

Mais Oui?

No new ideas from the Dims? The French are their heros after all...

Another fake message about the latest MSM fake story? Or a real message about a fake story? (HT WoC again)

You say Husayni, I say Husseini. Unfortunately the whole thing won't get called off until the death toll looks a lot more like that created by his patron: Hitler. (HT WoC)

Remembering Luther

My uncle Luther was a WWII vet who participated in the North African and Italian campaigns. Here's to you Luther! (I'll post a picture soon -- the technology fails me right now.)

And I just learned that my cousin's son Joe has joined the 82nd Airborne!

Our family salutes you both!

UPDATE: Here's that picture of Luther I promised...

......

A Warren Interlude

Warren is giving an extra grace period to the government that doesn't deserve it, eh?

But he rewards us for our patience with this from Davila's "Annotations on an Implicit Text":

-- Democratic parliaments are not places where debate occurs but where popular absolutism registers its edicts.

-- Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.

-- The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows.

-- The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation.

-- Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it.

-- To have opinions is the best way to escape the obligation of thinking.

-- Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities.

-- The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it.

-- An individual declares himself a member of some group with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name.

-- The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence.

-- "To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute.

Works for me...

Whoops!

You won't read this on the MSM:

May 27, 2005: What do Arabs really think about the problems that afflict them, and how is this related to the issues Islamic terrorists are fighting and dying (and killing) for? A recent "Opinion Survey of the Arab Street 2005" by Al Arabiya news network provides some interesting answers. The survey sought to see what Arabs thought about the relative lack of economic progress in the Arab world. In answer to the question, “What is stalling development in the Arab world?,” 81 percent chose "Governments are unwilling to implement change and reform.". Eight percent cited "The ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict," while seven percent selected "Civil society is failing to convince governments", and 4 percent chose "Terrorism".

Another question, "What is the fastest way to achieve development in the Arab world?", had 67 percent choosing "Ensuring the rule of law through justice and law enforcement", 23 percent chose "Enhancing freedom of speech", and 10 percent chose "Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict".

Islamic terrorists represent a small minority of Arab thinking, and interests. But most Arab media and governments, for obvious reasons, avoid the “bad government” issues and instead concentrate on the Arab-Israeli conflict as the cause of all that is bad in the Arab world. While few Arab governments support all Islamic terrorists, many support some (like the Palestinian terrorists, or Hizbollah in Lebanon). An Arab government will support terrorists as long as there is no terrorist attacks against themselves, and the terrorists are working against the government’s enemies. Syria has played this game enthusiastically, perhaps too much so, for decades. By getting behind terrorism and hostility towards Israel, Arab dictatorships believe this will distract their people from problems closer to home. But this ploy is working less well of late. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, the forcible removal of an Arab dictator and enthusiastic participation in democratic elections has terrified Arab despots throughout the Middle East. The Islamic terrorists are generally hostile to Arab dictators, but have made deals with the devil in order to survive. Increasingly, Arab people are fed up with the tyrants and terrorists, and are willing to do something about it.

Well was I right or what?

In Iran

"stoning someone to death is not against the law. Using the wrong stone is."



This is what our "liberals" have come defend. If you don't believe me, take a look at the commenters savagery against Danielle Crittenden's post about how risible the claims are that "women's rights" in the Muslim world are comparable to the West.

Oh, and about those stones:



Moral equivalence my *ss.

Smartland vs Heartland

LGF points out a stunning article by Orson Scott Card that ends thusly:

How long did it take for the people to be utterly disenchanted by government-by-fanatics, who see every opponent as evil and make every political decision an article of faith? Afghanistan longed to be free of the Taliban; the people of Iran hunger for freedom now. And when the Puritans were toppled in England, the people rejoiced.

Just so the fanatics who now rule the Democratic Party, serving the cause of Smartland at the expense of the Heartland, will find that if they ever really get control of government, they will quickly be the most hated rulers our country ever had.

Already large numbers of Americans seethe over the puritanical laws imposed on us by anti-democratic judges, who cannot wait for compromise and the political process to "purify" us. Already we are outraged by the propaganda they foist on our children in the schools, without reference to the values of the community or the roots of the American culture.

The Taliban of Smartland will be just as repugnant to the people of America as the Islamist Taliban was to most of the people of Afghanistan.

So as we watch the Democratic Party flush away democratic processes in order to get correct outcomes, it's worth remembering that we're not so different from "those wacky Muslims."

People who are so sure they're right that they are willing to eliminate democratic processes in order to get and keep power are the enemies of freedom for everyone. We may be slow to recognize the danger, but one thing is certain: Once the Puritans have power, everyone else will finally see the cost of their utopia.

And as the Iranians and North Koreans have learned, it's very very hard to get rid of a dictatorship with a puritan ideology. Sometimes you're lucky and a big country comes along and liberates you. But sometimes there's no country big enough to do it, and you just have to hunker down and pretend to think correct thoughts and live some kind of life below the radar.

You know, the way believing Christians do right now at American universities.

[Emphasis mine.]

WOW.

Needless to say, this one gets the RTWT rating -- AND gets added to the Classics links over right.

Kudos to OSC.

Cuckoo In The Dear Darkness

Did I mention that the (literal) King of surreal butchery wanted you to vote for John Kerry. Not that you would've been nuttier than a pecan plantation if you did. Absolutely not.

Lights out.



All the time.

In case you were wondering who the title of third member of the Axis had passed to...

In Support Of Fallaci Against FGM

Let me join Oriana by repeating number 15:

15) infibulation is “the mutilation that the Muslims force on little girls to prevent them, once they are grown . . . from enjoying the sexual act. It is a female castration that the Muslims practice in twenty-eight countries of Islamic Africa and because of which two million persons die each year from sepsis or loss of blood . . .”

I guess I can't travel to Eurabia now without being thrown in their soon to be burgeoning gulags -- along with W and Rummy of course...

Unfortunately, Oriana is probably too ill to travel to Eurabia now -- how she'd love to go gesture at them in person if she could!

Today's Fascifism Update

Michael has it nailed today by first drawing on Hitch:

For whatever it's worth, I know and admire both John Barry and Michael Isikoff, and I can quite imagine that—based on what they had already learned about the gruesome and illegal goings-on at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib—they found it more than plausible that the toilet incident, or something like it, had actually occurred. A second allegation, that a whole pile of Qurans had been stepped upon at Guantanamo, is equally credible. But mere objectivity requires us to note that this is partly because every prisoner is given a Quran, and that thus there are a lot of them lying around, and that none of this "scandal" would ever have occurred if the prison authorities were not at least attempting to respect Islamic codes.

And then lowering the boom:

For one thing, if Guantanamo were the new gulag, Irene Khan would be languishing in it herself right about now – and so would her family.

And then there's this little bit of perspective for the close:

Anyway, the gulag of our times is in North Korea.

To which a commenter correctly takes him to task:

The Gulag IS North Korea, not in North Korea. Its the world's largest prison.

That would look like this:



Of course, the Fascifists would argue that I'm all wrong. That NK is merely the vanguard of what implementing the Kyoto treaty would look like. And we are evil bastards for not following their enlightened lead. And the NorKorComs must be right since they were helping to campaign for John Kerry.

What more evidence could possibly be needed that they're right?

Right over on the other side that is.

And doing their best to generate funds for the enemy propaganda machine of course:

I'm sure that the real agenda here is that Amnesty donors really open their wallets for work like this. It's all about what message sparks your donors.

Did I mention that the enemy is just getting warmed up?

Bush, Other Top Officials Should Face Torture Probes, Says Amnesty; Urges Arrests if Warranted
Abid Aslam
OneWorld US
Thu., May. 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 26 (OneWorld) - Rights watchdog Amnesty International urged foreign governments Wednesday to investigate and prosecute President George W. Bush much as they once did former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

''If the United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free, then other nations should step into the breach,'' William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement launching Amnesty's annual report.

Bush is among a dozen former or current U.S. officials who should be probed by foreign governments because Washington has failed to conduct ''a genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation'' of torture allegations against U.S. troops, commanders, and their civilian overseers, Schulz said.

Others on the Amnesty list of potential targets for investigation and prosecution include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief George Tenet.

''If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal,'' Schulz said.

''If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,'' he added. ''The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''

Remember the race between sanity and technology?

If A.I.'s leadership were given the red button, do you think they'd push it?

I do too.

"Because the left is exactly like the Muslims!"

Zimbabwefication, Eh?

"I give him until Saturday." You go David, you go!

A.I. ... should simply be renamed F.I. -- Fascifism International.

CAN. I. MAKE. A. CALL?

... A WHAT?

Eurabian Sharia Watch

"Tom Wolfe once said that Fascism is forever descending on the United States, but that somehow it always lands on Europe. Perhaps the same is true with theocracy?"

I think the countdown clock just burped forward measurably.

Sometimes Slate is worth reading beyond Hitch. But corellated by Michael of course. (HT Glenn)

"This we'll defend."

Yon be there. MSM not.

On Gorgeous George Galloway's lilly white Saddam. Oh bother.

WHOOPS!

Nazi Israeli Watch: "Were we going to deny a victim of terror an ITU bed because that bed already had a terrorist in it?"

It's Not That Newsweek...

Has never written anything I agreed with. (Or Howeiaaarrggghhh! for that matter but I foreshadow too much.) For instance, there's this:

Trippi was planning on retiring to his farm in Maryland after the New Hampshire primary. Still, he wanted to take one last shot, to "bet it all" on Iowa and New Hampshire, knowing that in a protracted fight Dean's candor would kill him. "It's probably a f---ing miracle we're even sitting where we're at," he said, utterly despondent. He fell silent for a while. "The guy," Trippi said suddenly, referring to Dean, "is not ready for prime time. I mean, he's just f---ing not ready for prime time, and he never will be." There were 11 days left before the Iowa caucuses.

Well, actually Joe Trippi said it but Newsweek somehow managed not to edit out a rational assessment of the man who can't quite figure out who his enemies really are...

... unlike the edit job Newsweek's doing on their retraction!

How many different ways can you say Cuckoo?

But James points out that with a little editing it turns out that maybe it's Trippi that's wrong and ol' Howie isn't so crazy after all:

Russert: Republicans will say that the Democrats are speaking a different tune now than they did when they were in control. Robert Byrd, when he was a majority leader in '79, said, "Now, we are at the beginning of Congress. This Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past." And the filibuster used to need 67 votes. They changed it to 60.

Dean: Mm-hmm. . . .

Dean: When the Republicans were in power, they kept a much larger percentage of President Clinton's nominees to the bench. They didn't do it with the filibuster, they did it by bottling them up in committee and not allowing them to move forward.

Russert: The numbers are pretty similar actually.

Dean: OK. They're similar. . . .

Russert: Well, you said there were weapons of mass destruction.

Dean: Some of the things that the president said on our way into Iraq, they just weren't true, and I don't think that's right. So--

Russert: Such as?

Dean: Such as the weapons of mass destruction, which we have all known about, but the--

Russert: Well, you said there were weapons of mass destruction.

Dean: I said I wasn't sure, but I said I thought there probably were. . . .

Russert: When did the president ever suggest that Saddam Hussein was responsible for September 11?

Dean: He didn't. . . .

Russert: Let me stay on your rhetoric. January, I mentioned that [you said] "I hate the Republicans, what they stand for, good and evil, we are the good." In March, you said, "Republicans are brain dead." You mentioned you're a physician--and this is April. "[Dean] did draw howls of laughter by mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh. 'I'm not very dignified,' Dean said."

Dean: Well, that's true. A lot of people have accused me of not being dignified.

Yup. Not dignified. And can't tell the difference between Saddam and Obama or Osama or whatever.

But otherwise he seems reasonable to me.

I Remember Beslan

And so does Wretchard.



Do you?

On sleeping with worms. Eh?

Bush Country.

Canada: The coldest banana republic on earth.

"Leftists can remember that they're right about things; some of them just have a hard time remembering why." Actually, it's gotten to be pretty much all of them...

Let's go the other way...

It Could Be True!

Hitch has today's apocalypse update: Time to stop inventing mysteries where none exist... (HT Glenn)