Intent On Burying Drowning The Lede Leader

(UPDATED 9/11/05: With the latest leftie attack about Bush being a liar for saying that nobody anticipated the levees would breach now heating up, I went back to the PopSci article and added the relevant paragraph RE overtopping versus breaching to my excerpt. No surprise: it talks about overtopping, not breaching -- and then goes on to suggest that the levees would "serve as a bathtub"! They couldn't do that very well if they were breached could they now? It then goes on the say that this is a "highly improbably event" to close it out. But please do continue on to read at least the last half of this post -- I guarantee you'll still learn something interesting even if the first half has become somewhat dated!)

Since we have the Gramscian, emotive MSM and lefty bloggers spending most of their coverage playing the "blame game" with their bully pulpits,



us poor stupid righty bloggers are all that remains to actually consider the facts.

The two main MSMemes of the disaster are of course:

1) BusHitler hasn't done enough to cope with the immediate disaster (and what "little" has been done has come too slowly)

and

2) Shrub McChimpy is giving all our money to those da*n "brownies" in Iraq that are too stupid to be interested in democracy and therefore he's the one responsible for killing New Orleans since everything would have been just fine if part of the Louisiana National Guard wasn't gone and all that money hadn't been diverted from levee construction

Let's look at each in turn:

1) BusHitler Hasn't Done Enough Right Now!

Well, let's open with this from Power Line:

The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.

Whoops! The MSM has been trying to bury that one BIG TIME through the whole disaster. Unfortunately for them, that will likely mean they will have to stop covering Chertoff's press conferences since he made a point this afternoon of mentioning that W made the call!

So the left has done a face plant right out of the gate but are either too self-deluded, venal or dim to realize their position.

Did I forget to mention that both the governor and mayor are Democrats? And did you notice this little newsflash from Drudge?

WHY DIDN'T YOU DEPLOY THE BUSES DURING THE MANDATORY EVACUATION, MAYOR?...

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00

'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating'...

Then Drudge shows the picture of the New Orleans buses:



WHOOPS!

So W is supposed to sit on their shoulders and make the local Dem politicos implement their own plan? Junkyardblog has the nutshell:

As for Mayor Nagin, he and his profile in pathetic leadership police chief should resign as well. That city's government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of clowns iscapable of giving them.

If you're keeping track, these boobs let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans--in one trip--get ruined in the floods.

In other words, we have the "Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool" -- but of course it's all W's fault... (More here, here, and here.)

And then after the fact we have the MSM TV airwaves filled with right after reports of how things aren't so bad on Canal Street. Everybody just calm down. Just more of our standard fare of "Hurricane Porn".

Whoops! Maybe not this time. What the h**l? Why wasn't the National Guard here already? What? It takes more than a day to mobilize and move HUNDREDS of helicopters? Incompetence I tell you! Incompetence!

For every hurricane we're supposed to have sufficient resources constantly on the move for optimal delivery to disaster areas hundreds of miles on each dimension even if all the roads and bridges are wiped out? I'll make a deal with you to do this for only, oh, say, a cost equivalent of 10% of the U.S. GDP. Chinooks aren't cheap folks. And just imagine what shape we'd be in if we were France and didn't have a military capable of flying out of a brown paper bag!.

Did I forget to mention that all new buildings in the southeast may have to look like concrete bunkers? What's that? You say you're thinking of moving to Denver instead?

2) Without Bush, all the money for levee construction would have been there!

Being the nerd I am, and with a budding nerd 8-year-old son, you won't be surprised we have a subscription to Popular Science. Well, smart as David is, wouldn't you know that he pulls out the May issue with this little gem in it:

Hurricanes
At 20 feet below sea level, new orleans is a prime target. An ambitious new levee system would decrease the risk

By Michael Behar April 2005

It takes Scott Kiser only a split second to name the one city in the U.S., and probably the world, that would sustain the most catastrophic damage from a category-5 hurricane. "New Orleans," says Kiser, a tropical-cyclone program manager for the National Weather Service. "Because the city is below sea level—with the Mississippi River on one side and Lake Pontchartrain on the other—it is a hydrologic nightmare." The worst problem, he explains, would be a storm surge, a phenomenon in which high winds stack up huge waves along a hurricane’s leading edge. In New Orleans, a big enough surge would quickly drown the entire city.

...

UPDATE 9/11/05: ADDED THIS GRAPH TO THE QUOTE: The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale defines a category-5 storm as one with "winds greater than 155 miles per hour and storm surge generally greater than 18 feet." Although hurricanes of this magnitude slamming directly into New Orleans are extremely rare—occurring perhaps every 500 to 1,000 years—should one come ashore, the resulting storm surge would swell Lake Pontchartrain (a brackish sea adjoining the Gulf of Mexico), overtop the levees, and submerge the city under up to 40 feet of water. Once this happened, the levees would "serve as a bathtub," explains Harley Winer, chief of coastal engineering for the Army Corps’s New Orleans District. The water would get trapped between the Mississippi levees and the hurricane-protection levees. "This is a highly improbable event," Winer points out, "but within the realm of possibility."

New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.

Now, needless to say, my eyebrows nearly shoot through the ceiling! But not primarily because of the text of the article. (As I looked for blog links to this article, I found a number of folks like Jeff and Carol linking through to the Redstate reference to the PopSci article.)

But it turns out that the online article doesn't include the graphic -- and what REALLY blew me away was the graphic (that I have slightly modified here by adding a red rectangle):



Look at where the upgrade to Cat 5 protection (indicated by the red line) was planned to be built: between the city and the Gulf of course. What kind of dummy would do otherwise? But check out the location of the big red rectangle that I have added on the north side of N.O. That's where at least one of the major levee breaks was! As we all know now, the city was flooded at least largely by Lake Pontchartrain, not from the Gulf!!!

So basically the only prayer in h*ll we had to save the city from Katrina's trajectory would have been a complete upgrade of the levee system to Cat 5 protection!

And even that looks questionable to me if Katrina had hit N.O. full on like it did Mississippi. Look at how buildings there were just utterly splintered by the storm surge.

I hate to tell you this, but if you think the fact that that complete Cat 5 upgrade wasn't up yet was because of W and the war, you deserve the stupor you live in. This was a problem that stretched through multiple decades and multiple city, state and federal administrations. And even if W made saving N.O. from hurricanes his #1 priority in life immediately upon election in 2000, the odds of it being ready for Katrina are about the same as N.O. ever being restored to its former glory.

NIL.

And I leave the whole topic of rational cost/benefit analysis and scoping of various types of natural and man-made disasters for further posts. Lucky y'all...

The Perfectly Predictable Perfect Storm

Via Power Line, City Journal has something you need to read about the looting portion of the New Orleans Apocalypse:

This week’s looting was predictable. When Hurricane Georges, another potentially catastrophic storm (it spared New Orleans at the last minute) was about to hit in 1998, I foolishly refused to evacuate my Uptown apartment. More than one person said I should evacuate not due to the storm, but because looters would terrorize the city afterward.

Was this week’s looting preventable? Failure to put violent criminals behind bars in peacetime has led to chaos in disaster. New Orleans’ officials had only the remotest prayer on Monday of coordinating police officers with no electronic equipment to rescue survivors while at the same time stopping looting before it descended into wholesale terror. Now, those uncoordinated police officers are themselves victims—according to multiple accounts, dead officers, their bodies marked with gunshot wounds, litter the city.

WOW. RTWT.

My Good Friend James?

You know something's wrong with the picture when James Carville is your ally:

I think CNN would turn Noah's flood into a partisan attack on George Bush. Even such a hardened politico as James Carville had to tell their brain dead reporter to shut up and deal with the reality in front of him, rather than casting blame. What is wrong with these CNN people? What culture do they come from? Their lack of moral and psychological sophistication is truly stunning.

When I see this kind of reporting, I know we are doing the right thing at Pajamas Media in trying to organize the blogosphere, just a little bit, as the beginning of an antidote.

Keep your eye on the Pajamas. The one that remains after watching too much Communist News Network.

Perspective From The Trenches

This is straight through from one of Glenn's readers. You need to read the whole thing:

I run a trade association of tank truck carriers trying to assist in the relief efforts by transporting food and potable water. I'm in regular contact with many of the companies, and here are some "on the ground" facts: 1) Large trucks (80,000 lbs. gross weight) almost always have to use the Interstates. For trucks attempting to come in from outside the area, most of those roads (approaching the disaster area) are either closed or have bridges out. The so-called secondary roads may be somewhat passable, but their bridges (over rivers and streams) are not built to sustain such loads. Simply stated, you can't get there from here.

2) Trucks domicled in those areas (because that's where the companies traditionally serve customers) are still underwater, thus the equipment is not accessible;

3) Nobody in their right mind is going to take loads of gasoline and fuel oil into a city controlled by unfriendly folks carrying automatic weapons. A tank truck loaded with 8,000 gallons of gasoline can produce a very impressive fire;

4) Those local trucking companies can't contact their drivers. There's no power, thus (even) cellular is unavailable, and many of the drivers homes (in places like Kenner, Slidel, Metarie, etc) have been destroyed and families dispersed. I have one member with about 120 drivers and mechanics in that immediate area. To date, management has been able to contact 12. Those in the National Guard have been mobilized and are not available to drive.

5) Pumps -- needed to load the vehicles -- don't work because there's no power.

UPDATE: It keeps getting better and better:

Oh yeah, it [the venality of the press coverage] is just that bad. If anything Jeff understates the case. One begins to wonder if the founding fathers got that freedom of the press thing right, after all.

Okay, it's not that bad, but it has been pretty shameful. When all is said and done the press will be stunned to discover that the only people they have impressed are themselves.

Yup.

The problem with ankle-biting.

"They got that one right."

Things are getting tough when Beslan no longer seems quite so unthinkable.

The most sobering refugee tale you'll ever read...

And then there were 3 more.

Did I forget to mention that it's always all about W? But don't worry, they'll assure you it's not a psychological disorder as they blink blankly...

And just when I get done criticizing the Captain, he turns around and criticizes the Israelis -- and gets it right... (Yes, I know you're shocked but he's actually supporting Sharon after all.)

"Given how many local politicians whose fiefdoms would disappear, that will not happen, and so we will see this disaster occur again." ... If we're senseless enough to rebuild it.

At least Katrina got her to take a breather from assassination exhortations...

Stunned Atlantis-Gazing

Needless to say, I have been massively stunned watching and reading about the Katrina disaster and it has put quite a crimp on my posting productivity -- not to mention having quite a week at work. My last post finally did break the torpor a bit.

And it looks like my Salvation Army donation recommendation was even more prescient than I thought:

A lot is going on down here that is not in the news. First, our esteemed governor and the mayor of NO are both idiots. This is the real reason for problems. Second, the NO police force is second only to the mafia in corruption and much of the looting and theft are coming from them as well as their lassitude in doing their job. Third, all Louisiana communities need clothes of any kind. See if your local Salvation Army will send to the shelters throughout the state and blog to give any clothes to the [Salvation] Army. You notice I did not say the Red Cross, they do not have a sizable presence here and are only fishing for money like after 9/11.

WOW. Maybe I was going too easy on the Red Cross and mayor Nagin after all. That will teach me to be Christian :(

And then there's the small matter of the pecking order in congress. While -- ironically -- the leader of the House started to "channel" the somber reflections on rebuilding New Orleans of my previous post -- until his political instincts came back to life.

But one can count on Wretchard for some perspective on the sudden appearance of our modern-day Atlantis.

UPDATE: The Captain has more: "There is not enough money in the gross national product of the United States to dispose of the amount of hazardous material in the area." And in spite of this he doesn't want to throw in the towel! That IS optimism! I love the Captain -- but he needs to read his own posts more carefully once in a while :(

Please Help Our Southern Neighbors Recover From Their Apocalypse

Biblical. Sized. Help. Is. Needed.

Please. Give. Generously!

I just made a good-sized contribution to the Salvation Army -- and expect to make more contributions as the scope of this clarifies.

Glenn has a blogburst round-up of charitable donation options. I have some personal/political reservations about the Red Cross, but frankly this is such an awesome situation that it would be a mistake not to see that their substantial distribution network isn't fully utilized. If that doesn't give you some perspective on how bad I think this is then nothing will.

In fact, that's probably my key insight: We probably need to keep spreading donations among the major relief organizations so that no one of them burns out -- because they're going to be afterburners-on for MONTHS if not YEARS.

In fact, this situation is so sobering that I have trouble imagining rebuilding New Orleans like it was. And certainly not without an ENORMOUSLY expensive 3-ringed dyke system like the Netherlands finally invested in after their catastrophe in the 1950s...

And this just rips your heart out while making you want to scream. Frankly, it's probably not appropriate to tear Nagin a new one even though every fiber of my body wants to. Odds are that he and his administration as well as the police and fire leaders are probably now virtually sleepwalking -- and in the knowledge that they have personally lost everything as well.

All the usual puerile bile is now targetting W for how this is all his fault because of Iraq (funny how Clinton wasn't on national TV mobilizing the country to put a 3-ring dyke around the Big Easy -- or did I just happen to miss it?)

But in retrospect, we'll probably have to have some sort of FEMA team in future that can literally replace or spell a local administration trying to cope with this scale of disaster.

Oh, and by the way, this looks to be a dry run for what a small nuke will do to one of our major cities -- only not quite as severe. After all, there's still SOME chance that the residents may be able to move back within the next few years.

Did I forget to mention that we'll be really lucky if it's only one nuke and one city?

APOCALYPTIC UPDATE: "Or does it haunt the landscape like a ghost?" (HT Michael)

HEARTENING UPDATE: From Michelle.

Please be generous in your help to them -- it looks very bad for New Orleans and the surrounding states...

French Gone Missing (Part 36,359)

Callimachus suggests that there should have been this before this: "I solemnly withdraw the German signature from the declaration, extracted by force from a weak Government against its better judgment, that Germany was responsible for the War. "

Nicely done Calli!

Of course, the Gramscianization of our educational system is now so complete that Hitler's January 1937 speech is now as good as down the memory hole.

I have been pointing out the missed opportunity for a long time. It's one of the reasons I love the French so...

Foxy Chickens Huff And Puff...

... and only sometimes blow your house down.

I was teaching my 8-year-old about this tonight and used the analogy of Chicken Little. Slam dunk he got it. At first he couldn't believe that I was criticizing Fox about it too -- but I think he got that too...

"Probably the notion that half the country thinks their entire staff should be in jail hasn't quite sunk in yet."

BARKING BULEMIC BEAST BELLIES.

It's going to be fascinating watching the MSM ignore this one... I expect that by the time it's all over they'll be claiming all the men in the west are racist for not wearing burkas themselves...

ALL.
CREDIBILITY.
TOAST.

Hitch Delivers

the political equivalent of the Maxell commercial. Just to calibrate you, this is perhaps one of the least remarkable of its paragraphs:

At once, one sees that all the alternatives [to the invasion of Iraq] would have been infinitely worse, and would most likely have led to an implosion--as well as opportunistic invasions from Iran and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on behalf of their respective interests or confessional clienteles. This would in turn have necessitated a more costly and bloody intervention by some kind of coalition, much too late and on even worse terms and conditions. This is the lesson of Bosnia and Rwanda yesterday, and of Darfur today. When I have made this point in public, I have never had anyone offer an answer to it. A broken Iraq was in our future no matter what, and was a responsibility (somewhat conditioned by our past blunders) that no decent person could shirk. The only unthinkable policy was one of abstention.

When that's the thin gruel, you need to sit down in your comfy chair and savor this work of art and logic for the better part of the day...

W's perpetually blood-soaked Groundhog Day farce. It's clear to me that he's missed some critical history lessons -- or is keeping them inside of Al Gore's lock box...

More and more dangerous.

More On Democrats "Projecting" Democracy's Failure

The al-Reuters/ Liberal Democrat party line is that Democracy is bound to fail with (those stupid brownie) Muslims:



WHOOPS! Looks like al-Reuters let a dose of actual reality from Afghanistan get by their thought police! I'm sure it will be noticed and taken down soon. Problem is, I've linked to a copy on Power Line so just like my previous post on the Palestinians, they can memory hole to their hearts content but to no avail...

Has anyone noticed the irony of our "Democratic Party"?

They're the one's who don't think democracy is working in America! (W "stole" the election, yada, yada, yada... The last one to the tune of some 3 million votes as I recall -- did I forget to mention that I control Karl Rove?)

Is it any wonder they don't think democracy can work anywhere else?

Can you say projection?

The Trouble With The Internet

"Palestinians flying airplanes into New York. Hmm. Why does that not give me a warm, cozy feeling?"

The trouble with the internet is that it makes it harder to bury history like this over at LGF:

Atlas Shrugs on misogyny and apocalypse.

There are no more than, oh, say, tens of millions of conservatives a lot like this. But the lamestream brainwashing goes on...

Look around you. You might see some people like this.

I love the lamestream media. (HT Power Line for the terminology -- and a nice reminder what amazing folks are keeping us free...)

UPDATE: And check out WoC's take on it -- especially the last paragraph...

The very large distraction.

And then there were 3. Not to mention Mickey and Minuteman.

"To stay cheerful when involved in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is no inconsiderable art: yet what could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part."

He invented the internet war.

Did I forget to mention that tribal mysogyny leads to ... INBREEDING?

Rethinking Viral Terrorism

WOW:

"Cindy Sheehan just finished her morning media event. When asked by reporters, Sheehan said she believes that while she supports the continued hunt for Osama bin Laden she believes the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan and “stop bombing innocent people.” She also described Osama bin Laden as being “allegedly” behind the attacks of 9/11." -- The Buzz

In other words: Osama didn't do it, and we should withdraw from Afghanistan but still hunt for him.

Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

It appears that just as a meme has arisen about treating terrorism as a virus, the MSM/Dems have a virus of their own to contend with -- terror lunacy.

This raises the disturbing possibility that they're actually NOT Gramscian neo-Syndicalists.

They're just escaped inmates. Time to enforce the laws, folks.

Specter Into Danger???

One could be forgiven for reading this letter from Sen. Specter to FBI Director Mueller as evidence that Specter is not a lightweight after all.

Interestingly, the Captain seems to speculate that it's the FBI who refused the meetings -- but Shaffer seems to be saying that it was the Special Ops legal eagles that caused the Able Danger folks not to show up for the meetings.

Around and around we go ... orbiting the invisible Jamie Gorelick the whole time.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EUROPE: "A Belgian city, having banned wearing the burka, has convicted and fined the first offender. But since the woman is on benefits, the city will almost certainly pick up the 125 Euro fine. One wonders, had there been a prison sentence, whether the city would have provided someone to serve the time for her. " (HT WoC)

D'OH. (HT WoC)

"That's the difference between the terrorists and us," Chaplain Wilson kept saying. "Don't you understand? That's the difference." (HT Glenn)

UPDATE: Hugh reminds us that Thucydides had some words relevant to Michael Yon and the soldiers he follows: "The secret to happiness is freedom and the secret to freedom is courage."

My ELCA appears to have joined some wonderful racist company...

The Innumerate Left (Part 42,643)

I have made previous posts about the left's innumeracy in assessing the war's casualties. Now, Power Line hits one into the left field bleachers:

Sometimes it becomes necessary to state the obvious: being a soldier is a dangerous thing. This is why we honor our service members' courage. For a soldier, sailor or Marine, "courage" isn't an easily-abused abstraction--"it took a lot of courage to vote against the farm bill"--it's a requirement of the job.

Even in peacetime. The media's breathless tabulation of casualties in Iraq--now, over 1,800 deaths--is generally devoid of context. Here's some context: between 1983 and 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. That death rate of 1,286 per year exceeds the rate of combat deaths in Iraq by a ratio of nearly two to one.

That's right: all through the years when hardly anyone was paying attention, soldiers, sailors and Marines were dying in accidents, training and otherwise, at nearly twice the rate of combat deaths in Iraq from the start of the war in 2003 to the present. Somehow, though, when there was no political hay to be made, I don't recall any great outcry, or gleeful reporting, or erecting of crosses in the President's home town. In fact, I'll offer a free six-pack to the first person who can find evidence that any liberal expressed concern--any concern--about the 18,006 American service members who died accidentally in service of their country from 1983 to 1996.

The point? Being a soldier is not safe, and never will be. Driving in my car this afternoon, I heard a mainstream media reporter say that around 2,000 service men and women have died in Afghanistan and Iraq "on President Bush's watch." As though the job of the Commander in Chief were to make the jobs of our soldiers safe. They're not safe, and they never will be safe, in peacetime, let alone wartime.

Did I forget to mention that there are an average of over 40,000 TRAFFIC FATALITIES ALONE in the U.S. each year?

And they happened on McChimpy's watch! He simply MUST be impeached!!! Why even Hitler never killed this many innocent and gullible motorists!

Holy Ground Of Contrasts

Mr. Ott hits one out of the park. The meat of it starts like this:

Dear Mrs. Sheehan,
You have asked me to identify the noble cause for which your son died. I have not answered you personally out of respect for the nobility of your son's sacrifice.

Being president forces me into the spotlight, but I would rather stand in the shadows of men like Casey Sheehan.

Directing national attention on my response to your protest creates a distraction from what matters. The focus of our attention, and our admiration, should rest on people like Casey Sheehan, who stand in the breach when evil threatens to break out and consume a helpless people.

The running story on the news networks should be the valiant efforts of our troops -- the merchants of mercy who export freedom and import honor. They trade their own lives for the sake of others.

As a result, we live in a nation where a woman can camp outside of the president's house and verbally attack the president for weeks on end without fear of prison, torture or death. And the number of nations where such protest is possible has multiplied thanks to the work of our military.

You ask for what noble cause your son died?

In a sense he died so that people like you, who passionately oppose government policies, can freely express that opposition. As you camp in Crawford, you should take off your shoes, for you stand on holy ground. This land was bought with the blood of men like your son.

READ. IT. ALL.

The holy ground reference made me think about why there is no one monument for Christianity that would cause us to become unhinged if it were destroyed -- unlike the Muslims. Yes, the Catholics would get plenty mad if the Vatican were wiped out, and even us Protestants would be plenty ticked.

And maybe the Jews would get rather irritated were the wailing wall to really be destroyed. But I still can't imagine this being even close to the kind of fury that seems to be provoked in Muslims at even the thought of the destruction of their holy stone in Mecca.

But try as I might, I cannot strain my neck to see the kind of lunatic hatred that any slight to Mecca stimulates among Muslims ever being provoked from Christians over the destruction of any place or thing. Quite an irony for us Christian "materialists".

Because Christians are tasked with carrying the holy wherever they go -- even to near a ranch in Texas.

The contrast is stark:

The love of Christ infused with the wonders of Einstein on the one hand.

And the tribal idol worship and misogynistic hair-triggered hatred of the Caliphascists on the other.

We will pray. They will hate-in-rote.

The great mystery continues.

But how long is there before the apocalypse on the ground of Planet Zongo?

Cindy Sheehan -- useful idiot for Supreme Overlord Q'klogmu.

"Why did they take the word of two terrorists over that of two high-ranking American intelligence officers when constructing this timeline?"

A Wee Bit Of Perspective

... For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. ...

from Ben Franklin care of Glenn.

Of course, we do have some chutzpah trying to do this with what may be the original builders of Babel!

But I grow so weary of our Gramscian neo-Syndicalist Dems going on and on about how what they're effectively calling the "backward brown-skinned people" aren't "good enough" for democracy. And then they call me the racist...

"Thurgood Marshall, former chief counsel for the NAACP, lion of civil rights litigation and hero of Brown v. Board of Education, Sweatt v. Painter and Murray v. Pearson agreed with Roberts’s advocacy position 67 percent of the time — nearly the same as Scalia and Thomas and more than O’Connor, the justice who upon her retirement was praised as “moderate” by many of those now opposing Roberts.

Unless Roberts’s opponents are prepared to call Thurgood Marshall a civil-rights extremist they need to acknowledge that Roberts’s advocacy positions, as well as his judicial decisions are squarely within the mainstream."

Posted without requiring comment to non-Xenorxians.

The political hemophiliacs take on that old-time caliphascism.
UPDATE: If you found Bryan's post so mesmerizing that you forgot to click through to Frum and his letter writers, don't forget to do so!

UPDATED AGAIN: Glenn has more.

Very close to what even I would consider Jaw Dropper material. Not quite a cigar though...

200-1

"Can’t you just smell a peaceful state emerging?"

"... These Hollywood liberals spend their lives negotiating. They believe that when the time comes they will sit down with Osama bin Laden and cut a deal. Imagine how surprised they’ll be when the cold blade hits their necks..." (HT Roger)

Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear

I have always thought Pat Robertson a dope at best and a stain on the reputation of Christianity at worst. Lest there be any ambiguity, let me say the following: You're not a valid religious leader if you call for the killing of ANYONE, no matter how vile and brutal that person may be.

No double standards here: This means that Pat Robertson does not qualify as a religious leader in my book -- right along with what is probably the vast majority of Imam's in the world. Comprende padre?

With that out of the way, Scrappleface has nailed the big picture just beautifully:

Robertson Issues Fatwa Against Venezuela's Chavez
by Scott Ott
(2005-08-23) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez beefed up security at his residence and offices today after reports that Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of the South American communist dictator.

Venezuelan police have begun detaining and searching "clean cut, Bible-toting men in unfashionable clothing" as likely followers of the wealthy, charismatic religious personality. However, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immediately lodged a protest with the Venezuelan government over the "profiling" of '700 Club' devotees by security forces.

Mr. Robertson is revered among his fanatical TV viewers, who each year contribute millions of dollars to advance his so-called "ministry," as much as he's feared by the teams of U.S. journalists who track his movements and record his remarks.

The Pentagon immediately denied that Mr. Robertson's name had previously appeared on any Defense Department "watch list," but a spokesman discouraged news networks from airing video of the Robertson fatwa announcement, fearing his remarks might contain coded instructions for Christian cell groups around the world.

Hoo haw!

The ACLU will come to Pat Robertson's rescue right about the time of the rapture I would venture!

All the above said, Hugo Chavez is a vile and brutal blossoming devil -- Jimmy Carter's defense of his "election" is pretty much all you need to know in confirmation.

Like a stopped clock, Pat Robertson can be right twice a day. But I don't need waste my time listening for it -- I can count on the venal MSM to point those occasions out to me whether I want to know about them or not...

Maybe not so disastrous after all?

Ad Hominem Ad Nauseum

"Well, you've succeeded in thoroughly confusing us." Hello ELCA and Presbyterian puerile fascifists! Anybody home?

Accident? Theft? No -- something else to the Pharoah!

Phillpott pastes Prague poster.

Clement Attlee Channeled

... via Aristides over at Wretchard's:

"The Germans Islamists kill not only men, but ideas."

[Extra channeling help courtesy We The Free.]

WOW.

The connections are all over the place including here and here and here.

Steyn via Power Line was mighty fine...

More and more dangerous?

... a little Iraqi girl named Grace.

Hiding In Plain Sight Update

"The notion that Gorelick's memo had no effect outside the DoJ does not stand up to scrutiny at all, once the fact and intent of including Scruggs and the OIPR become known. This shows why Mary Jo White objected so strenuously to this memo and its implementation, and why she went out of her way to antagonize her bosses at the DoJ with a second and more heated memo predicting, correctly, that such a policy would leave America unprotected against the very people she had just successfully prosecuted.

It's bad enough that Gorelick erected that wall in 1995. It's ludicrous that four years after 9/11, people waste their time defending her and her participation in the 9/11 Commission as a panel member instead of a witness."

Big Mushroom Moderate Herbicide Considered

Shrinkwrapped over at Wretchard's has today's update on the looming mushroom clouds:

Blanknoone
said...

Wretchard,
The Pope is (mis)projecting a Christian philisophical perspective on the Muslim world, and it will fall on deaf ears. Muslims know what Islam teaches...and that is why there is virtually no denunciation of radical Islamists by the supposed Moderate Muslims...."

On the contrary, I think the Pope knows exactly what he is talking about. Much of what we are doing in Iraq, what the Israelis are doing in Palestine, and what the Pope is saying is designed to avoid a world wide conflagration which will occur if the West becomes frightened and enraged by further atrocities. Our responses remain measured, but an Islamic nuke, or a successful chemical weapon attack with mass deaths and, while no one can predict in advance what will tip us, once it happens we will "Let loose the dogs of war" and the Muslim world will be devastated. (I leave out bio attack because if an infectious disease spreads it will destroy the third world via "blowback" much more than damage us.) No one can truly desire such an outcome and thus we wage war with one hand tied behind our back. It is up to the Islamic world to recognize what they are risking and begin their reformation and join the civilized world. Thus far, the omens do not look good but we need to do all we can to diminish their risk and ours. 8:39 AM

However, if we are finally forced to let loose the dogs, any use of nukes by us will likely be quite limited. People forget the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden -- I have no doubt that we have modern "black programs" that will produce results just as deadly...

Faiths, Laws and Looming Apocalypse

Wretchard points out that the new pope comes to bat in an eerie and oh so tentative parallel to the fiery beginning of John Paul's reign:

Therefore, the Pope seems to say to the Muslims in the room, survival is in our hands and that means yours too. "You guide Muslim believers and train them in the Islamic faith. Teaching is the vehicle through which ideas and convictions are transmitted. Words are highly influential in the education of the mind. You, therefore, have a great responsibility for the formation of the younger generation."

But W and his State Beheader Apologist Department IS HAVING NONE OF IT. They know oh-so-much more than us little people.

UPDATE: Wretchard's commenters are sharp today. Herewith james h.m. :

Muslims might wish to take note that, for reasons both obvious and obscure, freedom of religion and equal rights for women go hand in hand with prosperity and advancing civilizations. (And so WHY is the US tolerating the prospect of a country we liberated from a hideous dictator becoming an Islamic republic in which individual liberties are circumscribed from the outset and surely will be restricted further in these Islamist times?) 9:24 AM

Has State come up with blackmail material on W?

HUGH: "Nothing yet at the Washington Post or the New York Times, where staffs are probably too focused on Crawford demonstrators to notice the news from London."

"The hard left in America needs to realize a bald, cruel fact: Anyone who sees no moral distinction between Israel and the mullahs of Iran, or sees the U.S. attempt to set up a constitutional republic in Iraq as equivalent to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, suffers from incurable moral cretinism. The more the fervent anti-war base embraces these ideas, the more they ensure that no one will trust the left with national security. Ever.

Will they learn the lesson? Even money says Sheehan will be sitting in the Michael Moore seat next to Jimmy Carter at the '08 Democratic convention."

Playing With Matches

"We blinked a few times, and then all consideration of terrorism was dropped from the task. But not before it was pointed out that we and DIA weren’t really counter-terrorism experts [although we were threat assessment experts], that the problem was probably being worked by so-&-so and such-&-such, and that they probably had better data, more experience, more resources than we did.

That is what Clinton and Gorelik's Wall culture did. It just didn't just prevent more effective cooperation and data sharing; it prevented the whole question of terrorism being addressed in a coherent fashion at all. No one was working the problem effectively, but I bet they all thought -- just like we were told – that someone else was. That’s the "I thought you brought the matches" school of intelligence analysis, and that was the end effect of Clinton's intelligence policy: it turned the whole process of intelligence into one big game of "Who brought the matches?"

And on 9/11 we found out who: Al Qaeda brought the matches."

READ THE WHOLE THING.

"Divert attention? Yeah, that's right Kerry, 9/11 was merely a diversion from the all important issues of goverment run health care, taxation, and the give-aways so favored by Democrats.

And they wonder why, even with the ineptness of Republican leadership, they can't win elections. "

You Didn't Read It Yet Did You?

"One wing of the party under it's leader Leon Blum saw early on that the new German Chancellor whose thugs had been smashing windows and brawling in the street for years was a potential threat and argued that France had to get ready to do something about him, the other wing argued against viewing Hitler in black and white terms. They had a more nuanced view of Herr Hitler. The latter faction were so eager to avoid another war that they ended up sabotaging France's ability to fight. It won't surprise those familiar with French history that a number of the anti-war Socialists ended up in the collaborationist Vichy Regime under German occupation. Or that Leon Blum ended up in Dachau."

You really need to...

"I wish this worked both ways so we could trade Cindy Sheehan for someone who wants to be an American." (HT Glenn)

Proximity Delays

Even CNN couldn't grasp the importance of the letter. They ended up giving more coverage to the impending E-Bay auction of Jennifer Anniston's old love letters than to the missive in which the top Al Queda leader in Mosul writes to the second most wanted man in the world, and describes in amazing detail the weaknesses and impending collapse of the terrorist network in Mosul and surrounds. Only then, did the military ask if wanted to write about the letter.

Every one, even a "higher up" deserves the benefit of the doubt, and should be entitled to one mistake. But how many times, and how many major stories have to be mangled into meaninglessness before someone connects the cables and lets the information flow in a direction other than down the mainstream media drain?

(HT Glenn)

Apparently, W has finally surrendered to hell in Iraq... *^%$&%!

And then there were 2. Or not?

UPDATE: But the only name he remembered? This one looks like it's going to take a while to sort out...

"In our search for root causes, we have blinded ourselves to the most basic of all: the content of the human heart."

"As nearly as I can tell, the Democrats' strategy for winning is simply to be patient and snipe from the sidelines until people get tired of the Republicans, then they'll win by default. OK, that'll probably work eventually—at least briefly—but somehow, I don't think that's how FDR would've played the game.

Of course, for many of us, we're perfectly happy to see the Democrats play it that way. After all, can you imagine Joe Biden being in charge of...well...anything? "

Oh. That OTHER job.

Anti-terror police in China? Really? Only if you consider terrorism to be riots against corruption I suppose. As has been noted elsewhere, the Chinese are curiously exempt from Islam's bloody borders -- since they're the hidden Hitler to the Muslim Mussolinis...

The gloved one yes, but John Wayne? Now there's a showstopper... (HT Drudge)

Exploitation Projection

And just how do you think the left would react if W had a TIA. I find Harry Reid to be puerile at best yet I completely sympathize with the Captain. This highlights perfectly why Christians and Jews are different.

"our confused leaders"

... "another useless diversion for the Democrats."

Today's MSMemory Hole update.

Republicans anti-idiotarians are breaking out all over.

Atta Be Gone

"who will rid me of these meddlesome intelligence agencies?"

Lileks is just too good today not to redux: "Next they can sue the company that sells buses to Israeli cities. All those tempting targets, packed with innocent people. How could an oppressed person resist killing them all? What sort of civilized nation would tempt them so? Especially because they don't have helicopters and night-vision goggles and tanks and missiles. Not that they'd use those devices against Israelis. That would risk a Presbyterian boycott."

Obviously, Bangladesh needs to get out of Iraq! And you haven't seen news of 100 300(!) bombs on the MSM because ... well, it doesn't fit their story line very well does it?

UPDATE: Michael says he told us.

The Peculiar Coincidence

"But they're not anti-Semites. Heavens, nay. Don't you dare question their philosemitism! No, they looked at the entire world, including countries that lop off your skull if you convert to Presbyterianism, and what did they choose as the object of their ire? A country the size of a potato chip hanging on the edge of a region noted for despotism and barbarity. By some peculiar coincidence, it happens to be full of Jews."

And I'm none too happy about my own Lutheran church either!

It's all about pork...

Keeping them poor and stupid...

The hell of puerile minds ... and the REAL pointy hats.

One Of My Cousin Jon's Sons ...

... is in the 82nd Airborne:

IRAQ: The Four Rs and the New Constitution
August 17, 2005: There is a horrific murder campaign going on in Baghdad, with more people being killed by gunfire than by terrorist bomb attacks. Over a thousand people a month are being killed in Baghdad, which is a death rate of 200 per 100,000 population. This is nearly twice what the rate was in Colombia, at the height of the drug and political violence in that country. What is going on in Baghdad is a war of terror and revenge. The terrorists are trying to intimidate people for political, religious or economic reasons. But most of the deaths appear to be revenge killings, with Kurds and Shia Arabs hunting down and killing Sunni Arabs who worked, and killed, for Saddam. These attacks have been going on since Saddam’s government fell, and have been increasing as Sunni Arab gangs lose, to the growing police force, control of their neighborhoods. This is the Sunni Arab nightmare, the a major reason (besides money) for Sunni Arabs supporting anti-government terrorism.

The U.S. 82nd Airborne division is sending one of its infantry battalions to Iraq for a special mission. It’s believed that the paratroopers will be used for the high speed raids against Sunni Arab gangs in western Iraq. These raids have been going on for most of this year and have led to a large number of arrests, and a decrease in terrorist attacks. Hundreds of arms caches, bomb workshops and safe houses have been seized, along with many terrorist leaders. The enemy is fighting back, because this is the homeland of the terrorists, they have nowhere else to go. If the American raids keep up, the terrorists will not be able to sustain their attacks, which is why the number of attacks are declining already.

One form of warfare is increasing in western Iraq. Battles between Al Qaeda gangs and Sunni Arab tribes continue, as the Sunni Arabs get fed up with bullying by foreign Sunni Arab al Qaeda religious fanatics. The al Qaeda gangs have created bases by taking over towns and neighborhoods. Those that do not go along with this, are terrorized into remaining silent, or killed if they appear openly hostile to al Qaeda. These religious fanatics also try to impose stricter life-style rules on the locals, which is really unpopular. Over the last six months, more and more towns, under the leadership of clan and tribal leaders, have offered armed resistance to al Qaeda. These same tribes will fight the Americans or Iraqi troops as well, but for the moment, the government offers medical, or other aid, after the tribes have tossed out al Qaeda gunmen.

The Iraqis did not deliver their new constitution by the August 15th deadline, and the legislature allowed another week to complete the task. What’s holding up the work are the four Rs; Revenge (how much amnesty and power to give the hated Sunni Arab minority), Regionalism (how much independence the Kurds have), Religion (how much influence Islam should have on the legal system) and Resources (who gets how much of the oil money).

The Sunni Arab leadership are trying to get safeguards in the constitution that would limit the revenge the Kurds and Shia Arabs will take on the Sunni Arab community for atrocities committed during the decades of Saddam’s rule. The Sunni Arabs are also in terror of Shia Arabs not only going along with Kurdish demands for permanent autonomy, but also setting up a similar system in the south. Since 1991, when British and American troops (mainly warplanes) kept Saddams troops out of the north, the Kurds have, in effect, been independent. The Kurds have prospered and been at peace. The Shia Arabs have noticed that, and the harsh treatment the Kurds have given to any Sunni Arab gunmen foolish enough to venture into “Kurdistan.”

Religion is an issue because Islamic conservatives in the Sunni and Shia community want the law of the land to reflect conservative Islam. Most Iraqis, especially the women, do not want this, but they do want honest government (which is very rare in the Moslem world), and also note that Islamic rule in neighboring Iran has not produced honest government, and has imposed unpleasant rules on the citizens. But Iran has supported a Islamic conservative militia (the Badr Brigade) in Iraq, and these thugs have been energetic in trying to bully Iraqis to support Islamic conservatism. This is often backfiring on the street, but at the moment, many of the people putting the new constitution together are controlled by the Badr gang, and similar organizations.

And then there’s the money. The Kurds have suggested that they, and the Shia Arabs, take complete control of the oil in their areas (this would be most of the nations oil), and leave the Sunni Arabs in central Iraq with nothing. The Sunni Arabs have been monopolizing the oil money for decades, and feel this freeze out proposal is something that could be done to them by vengeful Kurds and Shia Arabs. The Kurds and Shia Arabs appear willing to compromise by accepting a larger cut of the oil.

Godspeed Joe -- we love you "string pullers"!

What? You didn't hear this on the MS-#@$^*&-M tonight?

Of course it's not sedition -- they're just on the other side.

As I've hinted previously, we need to just start calling it the omission report.

LISTEN TO HIRSI!
UPDATE: It gets worse.

Something to hide?

Still Wall-Able (Danger)?

Via Glenn you need to read Podhoretz latest take that ends thus:

And that, once again, brings us back to...Jamie Gorelick. 9/11 Commissioner. And the architect of the growing "wall" -- the same "wall" that the 9/11 Commission all but ignored, surely in deference to its walking-conflict-of-interest commissioner Gorelick.

How long can she continue to hide in plain sight?

So Sioux him. (HT Hugh)