8 January, 2009
7 January, 2009
First Sign of Obama Consistency
He’s been walking on water all over the map, but now it seems that He has one consistency: the ability to associate with nutjob preachers.
“Syria,” he told his viewers back home by video, is “a moderate country, and the official government rule and position is to not allow extremism of any kind.” This is a highly original way to describe a regime that is joined at the hip with the Iranian theocracy, that is the patron of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that is the official and unabashed host of the fugitive Hamas leadership whose military wing directs massacre operations from Damascus itself. (One might also add that the Syrian Baath Party’s veteran defense minister,* Mustafa Tlas, published a book under his own name that accused Jews of using the blood of non-Jewish children for the making of those ever-menacing Passover matzos. I suppose it depends how you define extremism.)
VDH Fires Up His Calculator
And the answer he gets about Gaza isn’t pretty, but it’s something.
Was there anything new in this latest round of endless six-decade fighting? Sort of. Hamas was isolated and learned that Arab authoritarians worried more about Iranian influence than Arab solidarity. Suicide bombing did not resurface in successful fashion, perhaps due to both exhaustion and the barrier, and its replacement strategy of rocketeering earned a terrible response that proved unsustainable for Hamas. Tanking oil prices are hurting Iran geopolitically, as its impoverished citizens wonder why they are doing without at home in order to provide scarce cash to go up in smoke in Lebanon and Gaza.
Again, what is Israel’s ultimate goal? To decouple Hamas and Gaza from Arab solidarity, to strengthen in comparison the PA, to discredit somewhat the value of being an Iranian proxy, to reestablish credibility in the IDF and to curb (though unfortunately not end entirely) rocket barrages into Israel, and to establish a future paradigm of overwhelming response to Hamas provocations.
What next? I think just as suicide bombing gave way to rockets, so too rockets will be followed by back-to-the-drawing board reappraisals. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian surrogates will have to try something newer and deadlier, maybe guided missiles or unconventional weapons. They will continue as they wait for Iran to get the bomb and give its terrorist appendages the sort of cover that Pakistan provides anti-Indian terrorists who are based on its soil.
Depressing, but that’s the world we live in — and the world that awaits President Obama.
6 January, 2009
Credit where Credit is Due
I must say that this is a pleasant surprise.
Gingrich and Muhamut said the Bidens didn’t ask for special treatment. They simply mulled over their movie options and left.
So, while I still think he’s an incompetent blowhard with only a passing familiarity with the truth, I have to hand it to him: He showed more class than certain other senators who would, no doubt, have played the “Do you know who I am?” card.
Astounding Stupidity
Want to look moronic beyond redemption? Just dress, and talk, like this idiot from the “Middle East Peace Forum” in Ohio.
Or dress, talk and act like any of these violent dimwits.
Ken Miller Smacks Down the DI
Miller did some guest blogging at Discover Magazine. You can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
The only relevant question at this point is why the Discovery Institute keeps highlighting its own failings in this way. Why are Casey and his employers now – three years after the Dover trial – trying to rehabilitate the tattered credibility of both Michael Behe and Pandas? What mischief are they planning now? The only conclusion I can draw is that they must be maneuvering for the next round of state board hearings or legislative sessions – and I’m concerned. These folks are a whole lot better at politics and public relations than they are at science, and that means that everyone who cares about science education should be on guard.
Woo Kills
Along with creeping socialism and Islamic jihad, one of the great dangers facing our culture is the advance of the anti-science “woo”: So-called “alternative” medicine, cultish beliefs in “detoxification”, anti-vaccine activism and all manner of quackery are invading our institutions and threatening to drive true, science-based medicine out the door.
This is not merely a matter of personal preference. It is the fight between reality and wishful thinking. As John Derbyshire said, the opposite of science is not religion, it is wishful thinking. Wishful thinking can kill you. It can kill your child. And your belief in woo can kill the rest of us.
Science is the only way to know reality. Denying reality is perilous.
Infidels Quagmired!
Jules Crittenden on the Taliban’s press agency, the Associated (with terrorists) Press.
I’d advise the Taliban just to reprint AP articles, or have mullahs read them out in the mosques, whatever. The version linked above doesn’t even include AP’s own 3,800 dead Taliban tally that was included, apparently as an afterthought, toward the bottom of a later version … but only after a lengthy, somehat irrelevant tangent of how U.S. estimates of Taliban and civilian death tolls sometimes change following investigations. It’s a given that small-scale American errors will always trump large-scale intentional acts on the part of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in AP and much of the other media coverage. In this case AP neglects to note, as usual, that the Taliban is responsible for the vast majority of nearly 2,000 civilian deaths last year, either through suicide bombs or through hiding and firing from civilian positions. Because … one more time … the AP sucks.
5 January, 2009
Ever wonder what a Copy Editor does?
Apparently many writers at The Nation don’t know, either. But a good one can deliver quite the smackdown.
A Modest Proposal
I was just reading about Congress’ nice little pay raise. Gosh, they sure did a swell job this year, huh? I think they all deserve an extra freezer-full of cash. Well, it got me thinking about how congressional pay should be determined.
So here’s a crazy idea: Tie congressional pay to Federal tax revenues.
“What?” you cry! “That will just motivate them to jack our taxes up even farther!”
It might. At first. But when they realize that their pay is tied to the reality that lower tax rates mean higher tax revenues…
Well, it’s a thought. Can’t be much worse than now, at any rate. What do you think?
Department of Homeland Bullies
As if the white-shirted goons at TSA (Too Stupid for Arby’s) weren’t bad enough, Michael Yon writes of an encounter with a moron from the so-called Department of Homeland Security’s ICE (Idiots Coercing Everybody) which will make your blood boil.
While the U.S. Immigration officer named Knapp rifled through all her belongings, Aew sat quietly. She was afraid of this man, who eventually pushed a keyboard to Aew and coerced her into giving up the password to her e-mail address. Officer Knapp read through Aew’s e-mails that were addressed to me, and mine to her. Aew would tell me later that she sat quietly, but “Inside I was crying.” She had been so excited to finally visit America. America, the only country ever to coerce her at the border. This is against everything I know about winning and losing the subtle wars. This is against everything I love about the United States. We are not supposed to behave like this. Aew would tell me later that she thought she would be arrested if she did not give the password.
Yet another part of the Bush Legacy which we’ll live to regret. If we survive the Obama Legacy, that is.
4 January, 2009
The Moral Battleground
Melanie Phillips, as is her wont, rocks.
The moral inversion in the west is so egregious, so monstrous, that the better Israel is shown to behave the worse the vilification that rains down upon it. What other country in the world would show such restraint in the face of more than 6000 rocket attacks upon its citizens – 6000! – that it took seven years before going to war to put a stop to it? What other country would treat individuals – including proven terrorists – from that enemy territory in its own hospitals? What other country would continue to provide essential foodstuffs and other supplies to those enemies who continued to fire rockets at it? What other country, when finally forced to go to war to stop the attacks, would show such concern to avoid the loss of civilian life that it contacts the population in enemy territory — even households containing identified terrorists – to warn them to flee from the imminent bombardment? And what other country would, for showing such unparalleled moral scrupulousness, be vilified and libelled as Israel is? Israel’s behaviour is moral, legal and proportionate. This conflict is revealing just who is on the side of morality, decency and sanity and who is not.
Shortest Honeymoon Ever?
Oh, dear. He can change the levels of the oceans, but He can’t make them like us. Nor Him.
3 January, 2009
Algore’s Climate Lies
They’re not news, but reading about them in the Huffington Post is.
The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be “ruled” by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.
So why would the HufPo suddenly allow this heresy? Gee, that’s a toughie.
“If Ah Had a Hammah”
“Ahd do fuh housin’ what I did tuh th’ cuntry“.
April Charney, a lawyer representing many of the 85 homeowners in Fairway Oaks, said she had no problems taking on Habitat for Humanity, despite its status as a “darling of liberal social activists”. She said the charity should have told people that part of the estate had been built on a rubbish dump.
The New Brown Shirts
Jihad comes to America’s streets.
As Glenn Reynolds often notes, they’re not anti-war. They’re just on the other side.
Like these “Palestinian” morons in San Francisco.
Well, I’m sure that once The One takes office later this month and unpreconditionally sings kumba-ya with the world’s Islamic terrorists that peace will prevail. Nothing to worry about here.
But stockpile ammo just in case.
Yes, We Can!
Depending, of course, on what the question is.
Or how much history you know.
Ray Bradbury: Seer
I gave my daughter a nice edition of Fahrenheit 451 for Christmas, and she just let me read it for the first time in more years than I can count. Many of Bradbury’s incidental predictions, like giant television screens replacing walls, and people wearing earbuds all the time, are pretty amazing. Then there’s this moment just before Montag frightens his wife’s friends with a book of poetry. Mildred asks to speak of politics.
“Sounds fine, said Mrs. Bowles. “I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest looking men ever became president.”
“Oh, but the man they ran against him!”
“He wasn’t much, was he? Kind of small and homely and he didn’t shave too close or comb his hair very well.”
“What posessed the ‘Outs’ to run him? You just don’t go running a little short man like that against a tall man. Besides–he mumbled. Half the time I couldn’t hear a word he said. And the words I did hear I didn’t understand!”
“Fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped. Compare Winston Noble to Hubert Hoag for ten seconds and you can almost figure the results.”
“Damn it!” cried Montag. “What do you know about Hoag and Noble!”
“Why, they were right in that parlor wall, not six months ago. One was always picking his nose; it drove me wild.”
“Well, Mr. Montag,” said Mrs. Phelps, “do you want to vote for a man like that?”
Except for the bit about the names it looks pretty prescient. I may well be using President Noble, Hoag and ‘Outs’ as code words for the next four years.
1 January, 2009
Fifty Weary Years
In an article so true I can’t believe it’s in the New York Times, fifty years of Castro are marked with a reminder of the real reason we have the Second Amendment.
She said her son had done all he could to change Cuba from the inside. “How can Cubans confront the government, with rocks and sticks?” Ms. Garcia said. “Everyone has nothing, and the people are afraid.”
The Elements of Spam
Strunk and White for spammers.
Comprise.
Means “include” or “embrace.” Not to be confused with constitute. Your free online pharmacy comprises no-prescription Lunesta, herbal Ecstasy, and a secret formula that will make her moan all of the night. These items constitute your online pharmacy.
30 December, 2008
Palestinian Propaganda 101
Lawhawk finds the latest version of “dead guy jumps back on stretcher“.
Apparently the Associated (with terrorists) Press and al Reuters still think we’re as thick-skulled, gullible and stupid as, say, this guy.
29 December, 2008
Abbott and Costello Go to Washington
I think Peter Kirsanow has it about right.
Abbott: The economy’s a wreck. People have a lot less money now then they did three months ago.
Costello: No problem. The federal government’s going to spend $1 trillion to put more money in our pockets.
Abbott: But the government doesn’t have any money either. The federal deficit’s already around $1 trillion. And the federal debt’s around $11 trillion.
Costello: No problem. The government will use tax money.
Abbott: But that’s our money in the first place. And we don’t have any more money.
Read the whole thing.
26 December, 2008
Today’s Exercise in the Incandescently Obvious
“I honestly don’t think women spend much time thinking about how they treat their husbands.”
25 December, 2008
Britain Death Watch, Christmas Edition
If this isn’t a marker of the complete, abject capitulation of a once-great nation I don’t know what is.
Update:
Well, that went well.
The irony of Britain’s channel 4 giving Ahmadinejad the pulpit in the name of free speech is that as he was speaking, Iranian authorities raided and closed down the BBC’s Tehran offices and, separately, in the spirit of goodwill to man, ordered Christmas trees banned from Iranian kindergartens.
