Maybe I’m in the wrong business. I should be writing grants, getting funding to study the incandescently obvious.
Dr Reddy said: “Fake crying is one of the earliest forms of deception to emerge, and infants use it to get attention even though nothing is wrong. You can tell, as they will then pause while they wait to hear if their mother is responding, before crying again.
Gosh, thanks for the insight, Doctor. Because I guess I’ve never, you know, met a toddler before.
Operations against the Mahdi army are bearing fruit, including busting up some Iranian “secret cells“.
This follows a raid inside Sadr City on June 29 against the same network. One member of the Qazali Network was captured during the operation. “Intelligence reports indicate that the suspected terrorist targeted during the raid is associated with key leaders in the secret cell terrorist network and has ties to Iran,” Multinational Forces Iraq reported in a press release. “It is also believed that the suspected terrorist is responsible for numerous attacks on Iraqi civilians as well as Iraqi and Coalition Forces in Baghdad. The individual is also suspected of recruiting Iraqis to fill the ranks of Iranian terror groups operating in Iraq.”
Background here. (H/T: Instapundit)
Meanwhile, Michael Ledeen reads Blackfive and comes up with a gem.
For those who like to look at these events in a broader context, please notice that the traditional Shi’ite doctrine has some similarities with our insistence on separation of church and state, and that the war against the terror masters in Iran has some similarities with the Western wars against European religious absolutism. One of the great blessings of America is that most of the colonists, and most all of the founders, insisted that religion had to be a free choice. Indeed, Tocqueville rightly said that separation of church and state made American religion the most genuine and most successful of any religion in the West, and he called on his European confreres to take it to heart.
One Brown has appointed another to the Foreign Office. Mark Steyn points out why this is a very bad idea.
Anybody associated with Kofi Anan has to be considered corrupt until proven innocent. I’m afraid this signals yet another slide into violent dhimmitude for the UK.
I’m not a fan. I was out of the country when it happened. But this is a good moment for baseball in my book.
That’s going to be his name from now on.
And his Kerry-esque move was on purpose.
Update:
In case it’s not clear, here’s why he deserves the pejorative.
At last, the Wicked old Bill is dead!
Buttle’s World hereby expresses heartfelt thanks to talk radio.
makes me want to retch.
This morning Republicans announced that Reid’s amendment did not include the Sessions EITC provision in the touchback section, despite the fact that all previously passed amendments were supposed to be incorporated in the bill and the Clay Pigeon amendment. This oversight is the only mistake so far found, yet there may be other mistakes and intentional omissions in the 373 page amendment. This morning Reid put the floor back in morning business and sent his staff off to rewrite the mega amendment once again. Today, “the most deliberative body in the world,” is left to debate legislation that they do not have a copy of. When Republicans asked if the amendment could be read once it was written, Reid objected because “it would take up too much time.” Reid is promising the changes in the new amendment to be minimal, yet he has yet to allow Republicans to see the amendment, much less to check the changes.
Sorry, Ben. We tried.
Update:
There’s more.
if you want to know where gun registration leads.
The only rational reason to register guns is to confiscate them. The only rational reasons to confiscate guns is to enslave or kill their owners.
The world is full of sheep who help the wolves defang the sheepdogs. That’s not just irrational, it’s insane.
Update:
Ted Nugent may be weird, but he’s not insane.
Another sign of dhimmitude in the UK: 10 Downing Street in Arabic.
Thank goodness cultural capitulation like that would never happen here.
If you can follow and/or stomach it, here’s the memo.
I would like the chance to ask Reid one question at a live press conference:
“Are you honest in all your dealings with your fellow man?”
Mormons, and Reid is one, are asked a series of questions by their Bishops once per year if they want a Temple Recommend, the document that allows temple attendance. The above is one of the questions. If Reid holds a recommend, he’s bribed his bishop.
Is the “surge” working? It’s just barely starting. And it’s a whole new ball game.
The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore—and this is the major change in our strategy this year—protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby “hard-wire” the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That’s why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game—they are a distraction. We played the enemy’s game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.
I can only hope that this bit if inadvertant honesty helps kill the bill.
Melanie Phillips relates the story of a British Liberal whose eyes are “ruthlessly descaled“, and offers an explaination for Britain’s descent into dhimmitude.
Is there any sight more affecting that that of the British liberal whose eyes have just been ruthlessly descaled? As has been said in another context, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
Unfortunately large parts of Britain have long lost sight of rationality when it comes to the war against the free world. The fact that it has taken so long for someone of the calibre of David Goodhart finally to question what Ramadan is saying — and even now to plead with him for reassurance that the Guardian article was really just an aberration and that Goodhart can go back to believing in fairies — shows the extent of the problem.
Remember — Britain was, historically, first into the age of reason; and so often, first in is first out.
Good advice from Christopher Hitchens, who is really on his game about Islamic Rage Boy.
I wonder if the kid is kin to Green Helmet. Just two players in the Islamic Grievance Theatre troupe?
Michael Yon has his latest dispatch up. Michael Ledeen thinks this is a tacit endorsement of Bloomberg by al Qaeda:
The AQI installed Sharia court had sanctioned the amputation of the two “smoking fingers” for those who violated anti-smoking laws.
And Instapundit had the same reaction.
The “Drilling” in the title refers to a favorite power tool technique used in al Qaeda torture chambers.
Oh, wait. I forgot. There is no al Qaeda in Iraq.
This is the kind of vital political research only the blogosphere can provide.
(Hat tip: Dr. Molpus.)
I don’t think I’ve ever read a story like this about anybody, much less a politician.
“It says a lot about his character that his ex-wife and ex-girlfriends think he is fabulous,” said Mosbacher. “Character is important in a president.”
Drudge linked to a story about a trial of a therapeutic vaccine.
Early tests showed the vaccine is highly effective at breaking up the sticky protein that clogs the brain in Alzheimer’s, destroying vital connections between brain cells.
When the jab was given to mice suffering from a disease similar to Alzheimer’s, 80 per cent of the patches of amyloid protein were broken up.
The vaccine is now being tried out on 60 elderly Swedish patients in the early and middle stages of Alzheimer’s. Half of the men and women are being given the vaccine while half are being given dummy jabs.
Although the year-long trial is designed to show that the treatment is safe, the researchers will also look at its effect on the patients’ symptoms.
While the results are not due until early next year, the initial findings are promising. Dr Renner told a Zurich conference earlier this week: “I am glad to report that the vaccine is very well tolerated.”
Novartis is apparently setting up a trial here. That must be the study behind the recruiting commercials I’ve heard on local radio.
I really hope it works. Alzheimer’s scares me more than cancer. I could face death if I could still be me.
What do the brave representatives of the Religion of Peace do in Afghanistan?
Next time some idiot lefty wants to use “brave” and “Islam” in the same sentence, just remind them of this.
Update:
They don’t do that to little boys, though. No, sir. The brave Jihadis turn little boys into suicide bombers.
I’m running out of invective.
Every time I read something like this I get closer to pardoning him for his one anticonstitutional vote for McCain/Feingold. He writes of malpractice insurance reform in Texas, and concludes:
So many doctors have now requested Texas medical licenses that thousands are backlogged and an emergency appropriations was passed to help the Texas Medical Board speed up their processing. Now, other states are considering similar legislation to stop the loss of their own doctors to Texas. I consider this a small but important victory for the principles of Federalism.
No wonder Klo finds Fred Fever in Washington.
The Pentagon has their own news feed. And Michael Yon reports that while local Iraqi leadership in Baqubah is a mess, and the military’s PAO (Public Affairs Office) might as well be run by local Iraqis, our guys are winning. Al Qaeda in Baqubah is being given two choices: Surrender, or die. Perhaps the most surprizing part of the report is that several MSM reporters are actually getting it right.
“Full Page Ad” means full page ad, even if the page is shrinking.
In the jargon of strategic consulting, this sort of price increase, asset liquidation and quality cut is known as “milking a cash cow” and indicates that a company is “harvesting” a business – realizing that it has no growth prospects, and that its role is to provide cash to invest in other more promising ventures. How long the business will limp along is anyone’s guess. People still buy The Farmer’s Almanac today.
If this post had a music track, it would be played on the world’s smallest violin.
I’ve blogged about this documentary before. Please take a minute to request a screening at a local theatre, and get a couple of other people to do it, too.
According to an email from the IU folks, reviews are very positive from their advance screenings. They just need to get a lot of names to dangle in front of distributors. This is not the sort of project Hollywood will support without prodding.
I didn’t think it was possible to go beyond being a parody of a stupid Senator. Lott has shown me the light.
Namely, us. And we should be allowed to record them, audio and/or video, any time they are on duty.
There’s been a rash of arrests of late for videotaping police, and it’s a disturbing development. Last year, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly threatened Internet activist Mary T. Jean with arrest and felony prosecution for posting a video to her website of state police swarming a home and arresting a man without a warrant.
Michael Yon has a brief, but encouraging, dispatch.
The heat is intense for the enemy and for us. Soldiers, during any chance, would lay-down during the heat of day, and in complete body armor and helmets, fall asleep in the dirt. I took photos of course. Our guys are tough. The enemy in Baqubah is as good as any in Iraq, and better than most. That’s saying a lot. But our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.
A positive indicator on the 19th and the 20th is that most local people apparently are happy that al Qaeda is being trapped and killed. Civilians are pointing out IEDs and enemy fighters, so that’s not working so well for al Qaeda. Clearly, I cannot do a census, but that says something about the locals.
Also, note the 30:1 kill ratio. That’s more like it. Go for 100, guys!
but I didn’t think they’d take such direct action.
Last night the BBC confirmed the wording of the request was: “Are you in Iraq? Have you seen any troop movements? If you have any information you would like to share with the BBC, you can do so using the form below.”
Bill Roggio has details. The best news is that it seems we’re finally going to deal with that mutt Sadr.
The Iraqi government and Multinational Forces Iraq are sending a clear message to Sadr: when the fighting against al Qaeda is finished, the Iranian backed elements of the Mahdi Army are next on the list if they are not disbanded. Also, the Iraqi military and Multinational Forces Iraq possesses enough forces to take on Sadr’s militia if they attempt to interfere with current operations.
Or Global cooling?
People who live here in the Bay Area figured out the solution years ago.
Dress in layers.
Buttle's World 