"The truth may set you free, but first you must have truth."

TODAY'S BUTTON: "Some People Are Married To Norwegians And Still Go On To Lead Normal Lives"

Steyn again: "A quarter-century ago, there was a minor British pop hit called “Ayatollah, Don’t Khomeini Closer.” If you’re a U.S. diplomat or a British novelist, a Croat Christian or an Argentine Jew, he’s already come way too close. How much closer do you want him to get?" READ. IT. ALL.

The Captain And Me: Peas In A Pod

The Captain wonders why his little ditty closing the case on Saddam = terrorism doesn't seem to fit the MSM story line and get picked up. Kind of like I wonder why this little mathematical exercise of mine doesn't. I'll give him credit that his fish is bigger -- if the Lefties were interested in rational analysis rather than 24/7 emoting. Then again, I think I face a similar problem.



Sigh.

"But since Kerry raised it, let me ask: What hadith of the Prophet influenced him the most, and why? And here I have a personal interest: Which of the injunctions of Leviticus and who among the Prophets have the most meaning for him? Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn't ask such personal questions of a politician. In the spirit of Jesus, Kerry will certainly forgive me for doing so." (HT Power Line)

"Tough Times for Terrorists" ... but corruption remains the real problem of course...

"So in the MSM, the liberals' false leaks are noble, while the administration's declassification of the report that shows them to be false, in response, is a scandal!"

Wretchard's take on the latest casualty picture and Baghdad's burning newstands: "... not the hunter but the hare."

On Idiotarian Innumeracy

UPDATE AND BUMP: Dean Esmay has his take on the phases of the Iraq war and the myth that casualties are "trending massively upward". And I have an update in the works on a more detailed breakdown of death rates that's looking VERY eeenteresting...

In "On Connecting Ugly Virgins and Innumeracy" last September, I pointed out what simpletons everyone is for letting the EneMedia brainwash us about how "disastrous" and "unsustainable" our casualties in Iraq are when the reality is that the total Military deaths we are now incurring including Iraq and Afghanistan is at worst roughly twice that of just operating a Military at all ... in peacetime!

I pointed out that it's frankly stunning that we are doing this well given the bloodthirsty nutcases we are tangling with.

I also pointed out that just having a Military at all is a dangerous thing for the soldiers. Well, while that may be true in the worst war scenarios, it turns out that I (brace yourself) was wrong about the the risk level of being in the military!

I was swallowing more EneMedia bile without researching it. Shame on me. So let's do some slicing and dicing and see what the REAL NUMBERS say.

What recently got my attention was Robin Burke's dissing of Proud Kaffir's attempt at a deconstruction of EneMedia despair mongering that included this chart:



Robin takes P.F. to the woodshed for not taking into account the declining size of the military.

I looked at this rather differently than Robin though. I looked at it with a big AHA about my own laziness last fall for not taking things to the level of this chart -- and beyond. So let's go where nobody seems to have gotten out their spreadsheets to go until now.

First, notice that it does nearly exactly illustrate my point about the war currently running at 2X of peacetime military casualties.

But what if we looked at per capita death rates in the context of the "big picture"? What's the big picture? Why that would be the death rates for the entire U.S. populace of course.

And what would they be?

Let's look at this "enhanced" version of the WoC chart:


I'll let you scrape your jaw up off the floor before I continue ... ... ... ... ...

That's right, the short answer is that even with the war on, it's actually SUBSTANTIALLY safer on an age adjusted basis to be in the U.S. Military than in the civilian population! And even if the entire military consisted of those aged 15 - 24 (the age group with the lowest mortality rate [mostly] eligible for service), being in the military would raise your yearly risk of death by at most 22%: from 0.09% to 0.11%!

That's rounding error around one-tenth of one percent!

And even if all military combat deaths occurred in Iraq -- which they don't of course -- and we counted the death rate against only the military population actually in Iraq we would be talking about roughly 0.5 deaths per 100 soldiers located in Iraq per year at current force levels. (Which is lower than than the death rate for the U.S. population as a whole -- but that's an unfair comparison as I note in the sources section below.)

And here's the real belly laugh: With no war in progress just before 9/11, the entire military -- including the oldsters who die off faster(!) -- suffered a death rate just 56% of the overall U.S. population's 15-24 age group!

So if the left actually cared about saving lives instead of crying crocodile tears, they would actually be herding young people into the military in droves -- war or no war.

And while every death matters, the overall death toll from the WoT is amazingly small when put in perspective of previous wars.



And how about our "betters" in the EneMedia giving us this incredibly innumerate story line as if it were Gospel, huh? Great? Gullible?

Or Goebbels-like?

You decide.

Sources:
CDC Death Rates
Military Age Distribution (page 24)
(Oh, and by the way the death rate for the entire U.S. population in 2003 was 832.7 per 100K -- WAY higher than anything I'm using here. If I was playing fast and loose I would have tried to foist that on you. I'm not.)
Another inspiration: Wretchard's Damned Lies and Statistics of course.

UPDATE: Added a link to a larger version of the spreadsheet. And para 15 should start with "And even if all military combat deaths occurred in Iraq" of course and has been corrected.

Brother Michael says to pray we are Prey.

"Still, for all the bungling in the dark the FBI has nothing to fear, not from a complicit Bush administration, not from a prostrate Congress, not from a bamboozled public. An e-mail sent to Agent Harry Samit on September 10, 2001 from a CIA Counterterrorism Center official identified only as "Cathy" points the way: "God help us all if the next terrorist attacks involves this same type of plane.""

"HARRY: And who doesn't, Nancy? Every Monday night at 9 on Fox, we see how a strong spy force is vital for protecting America from suprise biological attacks by conniving White House insiders. That's why I have directed former ambassador Joseph Wilson to form a new super top secret spy agency, to monitor communications between terrorist groups and Dick Cheney."

"The real question is, will Gen. Abizaid and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld do theirs?"

"No turmoil, then; just Iranian nukes."

"This has the effect of deleting morality entirely. So Yale is left with no way to tell good from evil, and I am left with Hashemi in my dining hall."

"Teheran must have spent this afternoon laughing up its collective sleeve. As Saddam did in the last years of his regime, the mullahs have spent their oil money wisely to capture at least one and probably two of the five vetoes on the UNSC. There will be no further progress on this matter, at least not at the UN, while we allow Russia to run interference for Iran long enough for them to develop working prototypes of nuclear weapons. "

“Power for me means that the Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.”

UPDATE: Did I forget to mention that there isn't much there there anyway? (HT Q&O)

"Sir, where was the Nuclear material transported to?"

Can you say "horse-shit"? I thought you could.

NYeT! Part 4,757,376

"Anybody disagree with that?" [...crickets...]

"The case of Abdul Rahman, like the organized Danish cartoon apoplexy (still continuing in some parts of the world, where Muslim demagogues are still using it to whoop up anti-Western hysteria), brings us face to face with Islamic doctrines inimical to the survival of our civilization. And here, I wish I could say “Islamist”, but the unpleasant truth is, Islamic doctrines. For the Shariah principles in question are shared by all four of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi'i), plus the Shia school. There is no “sixth school” that recognizes religious and civic freedom, in any way that resembles what these expressions mean in the West."

"When Nancy Pelosi signs on for this kind of humint, please let me know."

"This may also account for the fact that 95% of homicide warrants in Los Angeles county have illegal immigrants as their subjects."

Religion Cult of Pieces Update

The Koran’s sura 4:89 declares: “They would have you disbelieve as they themselves have disbelieved, so that you may all be alike. Do not befriend them until they have fled their homes for the cause of Allah. If they desert you, seize them and put them to death wherever you find them. Look for neither friends nor helpers among them.” (Emphasis added.) Koranic passages are taken by believers to be the words of God Himself.

To the extent there is interpretive gloss on these scriptures, most authoritative are the Hadiths — the traditions and admonitions of Mohammed and his companions. According to Abdullah Ibn Abbas, Mohammed’s cousin and among the most influential educators in both Sunni and Shiite traditions, the prophet’s instructions in this regard were quite clear: “Kill him who changes his religion.” Indeed, as Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer recounted in The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, the only real argument in Islam about apostasy pertains to the nature of the penalty — beheading or some different method. There is no credible dispute about whether it is a high crime or whether death is an appropriate sentence.

My beautifully brazen bud Bruce Bawer. A deadly Fisk in pink no less ;)

The Tinfoil Apocalypse: Version Cicero

Cicero points out that this is the headline that has already effectively come to pass -- we've just got our heads so far into the sand that we can't admit it:

"Hezbollah to Go Nuclear This Year, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah Says"

And here's a snippet to know why you need to go read it:

Looks pretty bad, doesn't it? Cultists dedicated to our destruction, answerable to no one but their vengeful god, playing with nukes? To not consider Hezbollah and Persian Shi'a as morally and strategically interchangeable is to tragically misinterpret the hallmark of our time.

A religious suicide cult funded by billions of our petrodollars obtaining weapons of mass destruction has no historical precedent. None. The rules of engagement will be completely upended. Familiar metaphors of superpower warring will be unworkable and irrelevant. Watching sovereign entities flail and dither like paper dolls before their ultimate post-sovereign challenger indicates that the threshold is beneath our feet, if we care to look down.

This is no satire. These are the stakes in 2006.

If Shi'a's radical mullahs manage to proliferate their nukes like smoke through their post-sovereign proxies, certain as-yet-to-be-named cities will unexpectedly fall through trapdoors. No one will lay claim to the atrocities. It need only happen once. If London, or Paris, or New York, or Detroit, or even Fresno falls into oblivion, our well-oiled socioeconomic global merry-go-round stops. Indefinitely. Because of the threat of mass destruction, all borders will be shut. All ports closed. All shipping stopped. Air travel halted. Since the very infrastructure of modern commerce will be the delivery device for Shi'a's nukes, that infrastructure will be indefinitely frozen solid. It won't be an option. There won't be a debate.

Got your attention yet? It's pretty sad when I'm an optimist with my theory that Katrina may have been worse than the Tinfoil Apocalypse...

ABDUL RAHMAN UPDATE: "Is it just me, or does it feel like a giant, cosmic gauntlet has been thrown down from on High? Like in this Lenten season, leading up to Easter, the Christian nations are being put to a test..."

"I was stunned to learn that a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents during slavery days than he or she is today, according to sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin." (HT Glenn)

Suicide Again

"To put it another way, we have used art as a means to break down our own narcissism; and over time, repeatedly, we have found the enemies of art to be fanatics.

Yet recently, from our society at large, we have been stripping the symbolism, the public imagery that recreates what we are and believe -- mostly to achieve the lowest common denominator of “multiculturalism”. And now, even our churches are becoming bare and "unwestern".

This is another aspect of the suicide of the West."

The many streams of Nazism...

ISRAEL: Yearning for normalcy...

Did I mention Bruce Bawer? Oh, yes. I did.

Benedict knows that Billy Graham is no Crusading fool...

Squaring The Circle

"Any way you look at it, the “democratization” project asks Muslims to cease to think as Muslims, and think as post-Christian “seculars” instead. This was the project Kemal Ataturk embarked upon, in trying to modernize Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In Turkey, it involved the suppression of nearly every visible manifestation of Islam in public life -- and it worked, for a while. Turkey became modern. But now, nearly a century later, Islam is visibly resurgent even there.

The Bush administration does not know how to square this circle. Does anyone?"

"At least now we know why the CIA and John Negroponte wanted these documents to remain sealed."

UPDATE: W has had enough of Pooty-Poot. "... Make no mistake about it, this goes far beyond just a little friendly coaching and the protection of Russian assets. ..."

How Do You Say "Hypocrite" In French?

"Kerry was an expert on the war because he was a soldier. It was what he based his presidential campaign on. But the Swifties were partisan scum.

Jack Murtha has credibility because....wait for it. He was a Marine! And those potential Democrat candidates that the party so wanted to run in 2006 against Republicans had credibility precisely because, they were soldiers!

But these men & women presently engaged and on the ground in harm's way, what the hell do they know? They're losers, idiots and worse. Until that is, one of them speaks out against his brothers and sisters in arms, then he'll be a hero."

Without comment.

Today's Cuckoo Team

"And in any case, if the kidnappers were according to the CPT itself composed of "criminals, rather than insurgents", whose "motive was believed to be money", and who for that money tortured and killed Tom Fox, how does the CPT's 'principled' refusal to cooperate differ in any way from a conscious decision to shield an ordinary murderer from the police? How is that different from being an accomplice after the fact? How different from covering up for the Mafia or the Crips?

Though CPT liberally uses the words "illegal" and "Christian" to justify its actions one wonders whether they have the slightest conception of the words. Or the slightest regard for Tom Fox."

UPDATE: "Vanity, not love is their watchword. Fortune and men's eyes and not God is who they worship."

"Cut off his head!"

NO. Iraq is definitively not a distraction. And, no, the Russians have not suddenly become our friends. In fact, with friends like these, we most definitively don't need any more enemies.

UPDATE: More here.

Proof of innocence? Ummmm... I would say ... not. Period.

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? "

There's something about those Infidels...

Civil war? Ummmm ....... Scratch that. Time to work on the next puerile story line...

"It is amazing how many innocent young lives have been sacrificed for a half-baked phrase."

Ummm... I think I have located the real quagmire! (HT Glenn)

Is This The Quagmire?

He also sent me a letter which has been circulating among soldiers for a month, from the mayor of Tal 'Afar, near the Syrian border, praising the "lion hearts" of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment who have changed the city from "ghost town in which terrorists spread death and destruction to a secure city flourishing with life".

The violence of revenge attacks on Sunnis across Iraq, after last month's bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra, led many commentators to declare the civil war they have been predicting for three years had arrived. But others point to signs the crisis has spurred Iraq's political leaders to sort out their differences and work to form a national unity government, three months after their third successful election. And as Sunni politicians engage in the process, there are encouraging reports of infighting among Sunni insurgents.

Time To Rehabilitate The Crusades...

How about them Crusades? Who knows? Maybe this Lutheran will "go the wrong way" and become a Catholic yet given a Pope who understands the sweep of history anyway...

"So far, nothing."

It's hard to be moderate...

The problem with Iranian "people power". Did I mention Tiananmen Square?

IRAN UPDATE: The League of Nations with a blue flag.

Today's Cuckoo Clock Tick-Tock

Let me make sure I've got this right: Hamas believes the Israelies are the walking personification of evil on this planet. They should be nuked immediately by all Iranian accounts (though perhaps 1 in 10 Palestinians might have enough of a scientific education to think better of this given the proxity effects, duoh -- but I suspect the Iranian position would come out the majority in a Palestinian opinion poll).

But Hamas is cooperating with the people it claims eat Arab childrens brains as a delicacy -- no compromises, they must be driven into the sea -- to combat avian flu???

How could Hamas discredit its argument any more than that to any rational observer? These people don't really completely believe the Israelies are evil or they could never do that. Or b), they're just simply nuts.

And there you have the crux of the Tinfoil Apocalypse.

The truth? NYeT! Correction to be found on page R97...

UPDATE: "There is no film on the planet that can change a charcoal jacket to maroon and a blue tie to the same maroon while miraculously rendering realistic fleshtones."

A troubling update on why Britain is being lost...

No Evidence Reprise #4689

Move along now, no connections to be found here. Scat, skedaddle, shoo...

Did I forget to mention that it was just pure coincidence that Mussolini and Hitler fought the Allies (all 9ish of them, BTW)? And there was no reason at all for Colonel Q to throw in the towel. Just a coincidence you know...

The same as it ever was...

An update on that critical infrastructure that the DemoPublicans are ever so smugly paying attention to ... not.

And so it came to pass that Saddam fooled everyone, including himself.

Today's stopped clock in Iraq.

The Fire This Time

"Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar said Tuesday that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told him five years ago that “setting Israel on fire” was the first order of business on the Iranian agenda.

Aznar, in Israel as the guest of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, related the story to Major General (Res.) Professor Yitzhak Ben-Israel, who later confirmed to Haaretz that the remarks had been made. Aznar’s aides refused to give Haaretz the exact quote, but mentioned an article Aznar has written in the past on his meeting with Khamenei.

“He received me politely,” Aznar wrote, “and at the beginning of the meeting he explained to me why Iran must declare war on Israel and the United States until they are completely destroyed. I made only one request of him: that he tell me the time of the planned attack.”"

The Race Begins...

MS: Well, I would very much hope that the only reason he's doing this is because Karl Rove has opened up a big bank account in the Cayman Islands for him, because it's hard to see how this can be of any advantage to the Democrats. It's amazing to me. Just as they've found this sort of rather shrill opportunist bit of good news for them on the Dubai ports deal, where they found a national security angle that somehow in crude political terms worked for them, then they go and blow it all back to...Russ Feingold, basically demanding that we censure the President for eavesdropping on al Qaeda phone calls. There is no good that can come for the Democratic Party out of that, and if Russ Feingold wants to pursue it, to shore himself up with the party base, good luck to him, because it's only going to make things worse for Hillary Clinton. Hillary will have to run to the left to avoid him peeling off significant support for her.

The not so gay Eurabia of Bruce Bawer. Lefties will want to wrestle with this one with great caution. It may cause sleepless re-examination of cherished beliefs.

"We want Kurdistan to be the 51st American state."

I did mention that the Tinfoil Apocalypse was coming, didn't I?

"Things seem to have changed much less than we had expected."

French surrender watch: "Until the nation completely collapses, the French will never change." Unfortunately, I think this is too optimistic. The French nation pretty much completely collapsed after WWII but I would argue they didn't really change much. It just exposed the Vichy -- the REAL French...

"The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state" RTWT RIGHT NOW! It will absolutely bowl you over! (HT Power Line)

And Mark Steyn has now apparently been banned in Britain! This is simply freaking unacceptable for a free country. Mark Britain off the list.

Comment of the Day on Iran and the Cycles of History

"All of this reminds me of a scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," in which Lancelot is charging toward a castle gate, brandishing his sword - while the two guards at the gate smile pleasantly at his onrush. He reaches the gate, kills one guard who doesn't even try to defend himself; the other guard blurts out a dismayed, "Hey!" before Lancelot cuts him down, too.

This is the kind of mindset that is going to bring back Churchill's ominous warning to Chamberlain after Munich; words to the effect of, "You were given a choice between appeasement and war; you chose appeasement, and you will have war.""

Ah, but what did Churchill know anyway? And read the whole thing for the history lesson about the open intentions of lunatics that we should never have to be excavating from the memory hole...

Let's see, is there anyone else left for Iran to kick sand in their faces? I'm guessing the Chinese will shortly step in and be about as [SARCASM] effective [/SARCASM] as they have been with the NorKorComs...

Why, yes, there is a civil war. But you won't hear about it from the EneMedia...

The Stone Age Trinity Meets The Tipping Point's Magic Number

It means we are likely to remain in a protracted struggle against Paleolithic instincts -- which, of course, translate into the zigzag of everyday politics. None of this is to argue that guilt, envy, or indignation are emotions we would always be better off without in contemporary Western society. But I would suggest that we'd all be better off localizing these urges in the confines of family and community. And we should continually ask ourselves in precisely what contexts these emotions are appropriate.

Given the tremendous good that is brought about by self-interested market exchange, it seems we'll have to teach ourselves time-and-again the intellectual lessons of prosperity in a complex economic order. We will also have to fight turf wars with those who think the sentiments of Stone Age Trinity can be wrapped up in intellectual claptrap (like Marxism), force fed to our students in the ivory towers, sold to us on the evening news, or foisted upon us inside marble domes.

Now you know you need to read the rest -- it's short -- to understand the critical concept of the magic number 150 that animates this piece. And the 150 years of misery its tardy discovery has caused...

Beauracracy's The Baseline

That post reminds me of a quote from President Truman. Upon Eisenhower's election he said, "I can't wait until that damn General gets in here (the Oval Office) and gives an order and nothing happens."

Looney Liberal Lawyers Lose Laughably

"Roberts's opinion does give rise to, and leaves unresolved, one nonlegal but rather large and disturbing question: How could so many law professors of such high rank and distinction be so wrong about such straightforward issues of constitutional law?

The losing party, the Forum for Academic and Individual Rights (FAIR), is an association of 36 law schools and law faculty, only 24 of which are willing to be named publicly. In addition, groups of faculty members from many of the leading law schools in the land filed separate friend of the court briefs on behalf of FAIR (alone among law faculty, members of George Mason filed a brief--in which I played no role--supporting the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment). These included a friend of the court brief signed by 40 Harvard Law School professors--including Dean Elena Kagan in her capacity as professor of law; University Professor Laurence Tribe; and University Professor Frank Michelman. The brief was prepared under the supervision of counsel of record Walter Dellinger, professor of law at Duke University and former solicitor general of the United States in the Clinton administration.

Another friend of the court brief was signed by 42 members of the Yale Law School Faculty, including Harold Hongju Koh, dean and professor of law; former dean and Sterling Professor of Law Anthony Kronman; and Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Bruce Ackerman. In addition, a joint friend of the court brief was submitted by Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. Their counsel of record was Seth Waxman, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown, and, like Dellinger, a former solicitor general in the Clinton administration.

This dazzling array of eminent law professors proved incapable--even after hiring the best Democratic party legal talent money could buy--of advancing a single legal argument persuasive enough to pick off even a single dissent from the four more progressive justices on the court--Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Stevens--or to provoke even a single concurrence expressing a single demurral on a single point of law from Chief Justice Roberts's opinion."

Jejune Jimmah

"That Carter gets away with passing off his jejune axioms as serious political thought is a barometer of the senescence of liberalism. Liberal Intellectuals once looked askance at Carter. When Carter first arrived on the national scene in the mid-1970s, his superficial references to Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and other thinkers set off alarm bells among LIs such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Schlesinger, who had been close to Niebuhr, could detect none of Niebuhr's hard-headed realism in Carter's use of Niebuhr's words, causing him to wonder "whether Mr. Carter can really have understood Niebuhr." Schlesinger was not alone among LIs, who grasped immediately Carter's essential fraudulence and warned that he would be a disaster for the Democratic party. Yet now liberals look the other way as Carter fetes Michael Moore in the presidential box at the Democratic National Convention."

Ummm ... Yale Comes To Mind

"The underlying reason why America is doing so poorly in the field of "information warfare" against the Jihad is that its traditional organs of articulation -- the academy, media, Hollywood -- are largely hostile to the War on Terror itself. It's conceivable that an Iranian might flee persecution only to be taught at a US university that he ought to embrace it by the many academic departments whose point of view is exactly that. In a fundamental sense, the War on Terror is twinned to the greatest single issue dividing the Left and Right, which is whether the United States, as a nation, is legitimate or whether, as some would maintain, it is Amerika: an abomination whose demise must be hastened by any means necessary."

Except of course, Yale won't take in the refugees -- only their oppressors. The refugees being too much like whitey...

The Problem Of Evil

"The question that always bothered me was whether that person -- or any man -- had any right to expect someone else to do the dirty job for him. Can we ever simultaneously acknowledge the necessity of a deed and the absolute immorality of doing it? That in a nutshell is the Problem of Evil: that evil exists and that by and by we will have to face it. The question Tom Fox should have posed is "how do you stand firm against a car-bomber headed straight for a schoolbus?" And if you say, "shoot to save the children" ask yourself if it ever justified to be glad that God had sent someone else to shoot the bomber and go hell in your stead. Tom Fox stood for his beliefs to the bitter end. And now the men who killed him are out there, waiting to kill again."

And while we're at it we should ban police departments too I suppose. They just oppress the poor you know.

WW0 In A Nutshell: NYeT Obliviousness Watch

"For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats"

Was The Enlightenment A Mistake?

Ummm ... no. Deafeningly, resoundingly no:

"Of course I realize that some disagree, and see any even possibly pejorative reference to Mohammed — or for that matter any depiction of Mohammed — as a horrible emotional injury. But their subjective feelings, real as they may be to them, are not sufficient reasons for the rest of us to change the way we talk or write. "I'm offended" cannot be justification enough, either in law or in manners, for the conclusion "therefore you must shut up." (Among other things, note that many people are quite understandably offended when others say "I'm offended, therefore you must shut up." If mere offense on some listeners' part is reason enough for the speakers to stop saying, then I take it that those who are offended have an obligation to themselves remain silent.)

This is why this issue is so important: Those who demand that the cartoons not be published or republished are cutting at the heart of public debate. They are either demanding that some ideologies not be criticized, or that they be handled with such kid gloves that normal debate about them — which is inevitably impassioned, given the magnitude of the issues involved — is practically impossible. This is why the West must resist this pressure to silence, both as a legal matter and as a matter of editorial judgment."

By Golly, We Have Them Surrounded Now, Don't We?

"Detainee was present at a clandestine meeting in October 2001 between Taliban and Iranian officials in which Iran pledged to assist the Taliban in their war with the United States."

Why doesn’t it matter if the UAE provides material support to Hamas?

NYeT Again

"Call it the Islamintern. Like the Comintern, it attracts the marginal, the disaffected, the petty thugs and common criminals, and gives them a clear and simple ideology to guide their actions. It allows them to continue in their customary ways — murdering, raping, stealing and extorting — while furnishing them with a mandate from Allah to do so. The Communists were following the dictates of History, and the Islamists are carrying out the will of God.

To the willing dupes in the West, there is no connection among all these groups, just as there was none among the Viet Cong and the FMLN and revolutionaries of Angola. But somehow all these native freedom fighters just happened to be fomenting violence in the same way at the same time.

And somehow all these terrorists spread all over the globe just happen to be murdering and maiming in the name of Allah. It’s just coincidence.

The Comintern, of course, was aided in its efforts by all the fools and shills in the West.

The 1930s had George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Walter Duranty, and The New York Times.

In the 21st century, the Islamintern has Dan Rather, Cindy Sheehan, Jimmy Carter, and The New York Times.

Every generation has its useful idiots."

On retroactively cancelling the Enlightenment...

"Right then. We’ll go do military-type things within sovereign states and call that a policy designed not to piss off the rest of the world (much less get them to potentially declare war on us, since those actions themselves, whether done by Special Forces operators or Predators would be an act of war). And the UN's "obsession" with soverignty won't stand in the way. Riiiight, that's going to play out well in the intrenational arena. "

"If they had not done it this place would still be a toilet."

And check out Michelle's post...

It turns out that some Sunnis know what it will actually take to avert a major spike in the Civil War. You know, the one that's been going on for DECADES. Unless you're so dim as to call Saddam and his thugs spooning children's eyeballs out as good governance.

No doubt the Post will soon be reporting that Jews in America are "often targeted for violence."

Good night and good luck Theo...

And don't forget that old-time rebellion...

Profound puerility.

Did I forget to mention all the help those moderate Germans gave us?

"Apparently when you combine a sub-par 4th grade education, a B+ college average in a special program, and a job history as a spokesperson for a regime that hates America, destroys priceless Buddhas, oppresses women, stones homosexuals, and enforces brutal sharia law in violation of UN Human Rights agreements, you have the magic formula for admission to Yale. Next time I get a phone call from a high school senior in tears over Yale's rejection, I'll tell them to visit a local museum and blow up some sacred Buddhas, stone a homosexual or threaten to beat his/her mother to death if she refuses to wear a burka.

Thank you very much for helping me understand Yale Admissions."

Dhimmis fall apart in data-mining civil war? Irony abounds. Although I don't think people who were never actually together can fall apart ;)

TAMMY: "Yay! From Geert Wilders, the populist member of the Netherlands's parliament as the Dutch consider completely banning the burqa. It is hostile, and should be considered the equivalent of having blacks walk around in leg-irons. And don't tell me it's okay because "the women want it that way." Yes, and we don't take seriously the insistence of battered women that they deserve it. Sure, some really believe they do, but that doesn't mean civilized society looks away and allows the brain-washed to dictate social policy."

EneMedia Vietnam Update

"The -- we do know, of course, that al Qaeda has media committees. We do know that they teach people exactly how to try to manipulate the media. They do this regularly. We see the intelligence that reports on their meetings and -- now, I can't take a string and tie it to a news report and then trace it back to an al Qaeda media committee meeting.

I'm not able to do that at all. We do know that their goal is to try to break the will -- that they consider the center of gravity of this not to be in Iraq -- because they know they can't win a battle out there -- they consider it to be in Washington, D.C., and in London, in the capitals of the Western world."

And in that regard, this IS just like Vietnam.

What Holocaust?

THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN OF COURSE: "Bob Persinger doesn't remember this scene. He remembers half-dead prisoners singing and cheering, and the way he was whipsawed between elation and horror: “They were celebrating like you wouldn't believe, they were so happy. So were we, but on the other hand, we were crying.” " (HT Power Line)

Did I forget to mention the most important lesson of the holocaust? You know, the one we refuse to learn?: "When a man says he wants to kill you ... you should believe him."

Apparently, this little girl is one of those hateful Jews controlling the world that need to be wiped off the map. Well, she would be perceived as such by complete lunatics anyway... I'm sorry but this just makes me want to wretch. Period.

Excellent quotations from "Oncoming" and much, much more in "Our Darkening Sky ..."
You should be able to tell you need to read this one.

"On the other hand, I suppose I'd be willing to trade direct election of the President for a return to the election of US Senators by state legislatures. "

Mullahs lied, Eurabians fried...

WHOOPS UPDATE: The comment of the day is found on this post also: "How many million Jews achieve "peace in our time" this go-round?"