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July 31, 2006

Speculation On Muslim Proneness To Violence

First, let me give credit, where credit is due, to Always On Watch, whose references linked me to posts, in sequence-of-events order, at three really good blogs, here, here and here.

Thanks, AOW, you really got me to thinking about this.

We're at war, although you won't hear much about it from the left, with fundamentalist Islam.

This war isn't merely a war between people whose Sabbaths fall upon different days, it is a war between two profoundly different moralities. One advocates strangling your wife if she goes to the corner for a quart of milk and forgets to bring a male family member along. It experiences no problem with sacrificing innocent people as human shields for use as propaganda against its enemy, or of committing suicide in order to murder a few women and children, with an occasional toddler, just because.

The other side is our side, at least those of us who believe in liberty and justice {boy, did that sound noble!}, ahem. Um, ahem! .... or simple human decency.

All that said, what I started thinking about after reading about the Texas incident in the first above link, from Eyes All Around, was "what if the shooter was just a maniac who happened to be of Arabian descent?"

I don't know how many western born and parented readers have actually gotten to know any Arab Muslim immigrants (I don't mean as "how do you do" while walking your dogs, I mean as actually sociallizing with one anothers' families, etc). I'll wager that most have barely if ever even seen the inside of said Muslims homes, let alone relaxed in the living room with their missus and kids in evidence.

I've begun to wonder about this immediate attribution to jihad that becomes the immediate issue whenever an Arab goes on a murder spree.

I've found myself theorizing that a significant portion of Islam's violence output isn't necessarily religious, but instead employs religion as an excuse to destroy and murder, some strain of hereditary mass emotional disorder. I mean, a religious doctrine that literally revolves around mass murder in order to achieve its objectives must leave quite an interesting impression on its followers, especially if they've grown up among a society of fellow psychotics whose religious leaders and other teachers have been preaching them a menu of intolerance and hate since they were old enough to pay attention. No, no, I'm not by any means attempting to play the liberal "it's not this poor, hard-done-to creature's fault that he murdered all those people, it's society's fault game, I'll leave to the same idiots who believe street crime is the fault of the proletariat rather than that of the actual criminal. I chose the word "proletariat" because I want those who kollektively believe that way to feel also at home.

No, I'm from the school of thought that believes that a mad dog must be put down for the good of the community.

Imagine growing up in an Arab Muslim society. Here is a people who ceased to advance socially some fourteen centuries ago. Their issue from the days of the child molester Mohammed has grown up in a world that has been passing them by, a generation at a time, for 1400 years. The only reason they know about flushable commodes is that western countries taught them how to recover their oil, and made them rich. Today, only because they were born atop lots of black gold, instead of choosing between a dromedary and a bactiary, they can choose between a convertible and a hard top.

So yeah, I can see why centuries worth of a civilization like that unchanging, inflexible dogma of the religiously defined Muslim Middle East could have produced millions of mental basket cases over the centuries, each raising a crop of their own.

What other community, even in civilized countries, explodes into such violent, destructive riots and rampages, the tantrums from hell, over the slightest percieved offense? What other community will hang a retarded teenage girl for being taken advantage of by some sexually opportunistic adult aged grease bag? What other community bestows honor upon parents because their children sacrificed their lives to blow up innocent women and children? How many other societies raise children capable of torturing, mutilating and beheading others with the same casualness the rest of us might identify with going grocery shopping?

My point is that as in the case of the drive-by doctor, perhaps we needn't necessarily read jihad into his actions: Perhaps they were simply a biproduct of an Arab Muslim's inherited mental instability, as may be the sudden, reasonless violent acts of many other Arab non-members of Muslim terrorist organizations.

These are a people who have proven themselves unfit to coexist, given their collective demonstrations of bloody and senseless violence, on the same planet with civilized human beings. They are social and emotional troglodytes whose religious beliefs, like them, belong centuries in the past, and as long as we share the planet with them their violence will continue to threaten the rest of us.

Tell me I'm a bigot, call me racially insensitive, call me whatever you like, but to ignore what is coming out of the Middle East to infect the west is no figment of anybody's imagination. It's there, it's an in-your-face threat to the safety of the innocent and it lives inside all too many of the "dark complexioned Arab males" you pass on the street or otherwise encounter every day, the ACLU and CAIR protected species about whom you can say no wrong without being termed a racist.

Posted by Seth at 08:48 PM | Comments (7) |

July 29, 2006

The Black Vote, Hmmmm.....

In the Convolution Department, I have long wondered why the bulk of "the black vote" seems eternally bequeathed to the political party that has been black Americans' {no, I won't be PC and use the term "African Americans", because despite the left's attempts to create ethnic divides and feel-good solidarity with Kunta Kinte, black Americans are Americans, period. Not only those who were born here, but the ones who immigrated in recent years and of their own free will, from Africa}. I have friends from Senegal and Borkina Faso who now consider themselves "Americans, period" who apparently don't see any need in being "African Americans" like millions of black Americans do who have never been within thousands of miles of Africa . "African" Americans, like "Asian" Americans and "Mexican" Americans, bearing ethnic titles that distinguish them from "other" Americans is calculated to make them "different". You have to make somebody officially "different" in order to single them out as targets of "bigotry".

Wait! Something's wrong here!

The same Democrats who have rendered it illegal to ask any questions of job applicants that might be used to discriminate against them via age, race, gender, religious preference or political point of view, to the point of not even inquiring on a job application the years someone attended a school, college, whatever because it could be used to calculate age, suddenly champion the cause of defining just which "kinds" {flavors, brands?} of Americans they are by affixing a label to them. Ain't that grand! Luckily this is the left we're talking about here -- had Republicans first advanced this idea, we would have been immediately assailed as "racists!" The fine folks over there on the left could never be called that, because they are.... they are.... over there on the left, where racism has somehow been established as impossible to exist.

Just ask Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, or any opportunistic white Democrat that arse creeps the black community for votes. They'll tell you. "Nope, no racism on our side of the aisle. Want racism, go across there to the Republicans. We're the Democrats here (heavenly music in background, perhaps the Hallelujah Chorus), we don't know the meaning of the word 'racist', except that it only applies to Republicans."

This is, as any informed American (informed, as one who has long ago abandoned the mainstream media as a credible source of news, sought out and found more accurate alternative sources of information) can tell you, a crock filled with the scrapings from the bottoms of numerous ill-guided shoes.

To white Democrats, black Americans are little more than pieces of meat that vote and are susceptible to an eternal con job. If you actually examine the benefits blacks enjoy when they help elect white Democrats, you'll find that there are none -- in the 50 years or so that the left has enjoyed the "support" of the black community, they haven't gotten much of a return. The only blacks that have gotten ahead have been those who busted their touchases to do so, same as before the white Democrats took them under their dubious wing.

A fellow Republican blogger and friend who has run for state office here in North Carolina has told me of a conversation he had with a black man during a campaign, in which the black man praised his candidacy and his platform, but said he would still vote Democrat, because "I'm black."

This is ludicrous.

A column by Jeff Jacoby is as definitive as you can get as to why.

Of course the Republican Party's record on race is not without its blemishes. For example, at a 100th birthday party for Strom Thurmond in 2002, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi praised the former Dixiecrat's segregationist 1948 campaign for president. Republicans were scandalized and forced Lott to resign as Senate majority leader.

Democrats, by contrast, have never moved to purge Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan who wrote in 1947 that he would never agree to fight "with a Negro by my side" and would "rather . . . die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels." Byrd filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and is the only senator to have voted against both of the black justices named to the Supreme Court — the liberal Thurgood Marshall and the conservative Clarence Thomas. While Byrd has said his racism is a thing of the past, that didn't stop him from using the N-word twice in an interview on national TV in 2001. Remarkably, none of this has harmed Byrd's standing within the Democratic Party, nor the party's standing among black voters.

To Truncate a bit,

After all, it was the Democratic Party that vehemently defended slavery, the Democratic Party that supported the Dred Scott decision, and the Democratic Party that opposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. It was Democrats who founded the Ku Klux Klan, Democrats who repeatedly blocked anti-lynching bills, and Democrats who enacted Jim Crow segregation across the South.

Everyone knows that it was a 19th-century Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. But how many know that it was a 20th-century Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, who segregated the federal government, appointed unabashed racists to his Cabinet, and endorsed "The Birth of a Nation," D.W. Griffith's celluloid celebration of the Klan?

Speaking for myself, as a Jewish white guy from Queens, N.Y., who has been around the block a few times, I see absolutely no difference between the status of blacks as human beings and the status of whites as same. As a matter of fact, the most formidable opponent I ever had when I was playing chess at my best was a black man from San Jose, and all the black folks I know who have thrown off the idiotic "oppressed by white Republicans, can't achieve without Democrats" syndrome and taken their lives away from the left and into their own hands are now doing extremely well in life. They are living the American lifestyle without "help" from the left.

It's sad to see so many blacks forming their opinions via the propaganda they get from the liberal mainstream media and as a result, continuing to deny themselves the positive representation they would receive from right thinking America.

I won't even go into all the so-called "Blaxploitation" films of the early 1970s released by liberal Hollywood that influenced black youth to believe drug dealers and pimps were "cool" (personally, I'm partial to Pam Grier, ahem, no pimping or drug dealing there), or into the Rap music/videos of today that glorify "gangstas", "bling bling" bought with drug profits and womens' pumping up their derriers with silicone.

The left is forever making asses and dumbjohns out of our largest minority, and said minority simply follows along as though they were a lot less intelligent than they truly are.

Bummer.

Long and short? The bigotry actually resides on the left.

Read Jacoby's as usual on-point column in its entirety here.

Posted by Seth at 10:08 PM |

July 26, 2006

One Less Bedfellow For The Western Left?

According to a column by Dennis Prager, I may have been a little hasty in recent posts when I opined that the Israeli left might well, even in the face of the ongoing purely defensive Jewish State military action against terrorism, continue to emulate the American left in pure lemminglike fashion.

Happily, this doesn't seem to be the case -- Israeli liberals, unlike our own, are in touch, it would seem, with a much larger chunk of reality than one might give any liberals credit for.

The Left's anti-Israel positions until now were based, at least in theory, on its opposition to Israeli occupation of Arab land and its belief in the "cycle of violence" between Israel and its enemies. However, this time there is no occupied land involved and the violence is not a cycle with its implied lack of a beginning. There is a clear aggressor — a terror organization devoted to Islamicizing the Middle East and annihilating Israel — and no occupation.

That is why the Israeli Left is almost universally in favor of Israel's war against Hezbollah. Amos Oz, probably Israel's best-known novelist and leading spokesman of its Left, a lifetime critic of Israeli policy vis a vis the Palestinians, wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

"Many times in the past, the Israeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. . . . This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages. . . . There can be no moral equation between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hezbollah."

Given an identical situation in the U.S., if their conduct re our homeland's defense against terrorism is any indicator, our own liberals would be out in the streets in force, doing the usual blocking of intersections with a little gratuitous vandalism thrown in, the ACLU hammering out dozens of lawsuits against the government, the New York Times sabotaging our defensive efforts at every turn, Greenpeace, GBLT (-- I like the 2nd and 3rd letters in that order, it sounds like a certain popular sandwich, with granola added), NOW, The Sharpton-Jackson Axis, All Of Hollywood, Planned Parenthood, ELF, Everyone In Berkeley, 98% of Congressional Democrats, my personal favorite, Dykes On Bikes, and every other liberal organization "weighing in" against America. CAIR (the terrorist supporting Council for American-Islamic Relations) would be bending forward to allow PC liberals a better angle at which to perform "The Kiss Of Shame".

It's refreshing to know that there are some lefties out there who possess some quantity of common sense and have retained that most valuable commodity, the survival instinct. Too bad they don't live here.

I wonder if Israel would agree to an exchange -- their liberals for ours....

The entire column can be read here.

Posted by Seth at 10:38 PM | Comments (6) |

July 20, 2006

Another Must-Read

James Lileks' OpEd must be read.

Posted by Seth at 06:44 AM | Comments (2) |

Good Reasons To Let Israel Finish The Job

Former Undersecretary of Defense(Bush 1 Administration) and author Jed Babbin has some spot-on reasons why it would be irresponsible in an extreme for the "global community" to interfere with Israel's prosecution of their war with Hamas and Hezbollah, and by extension Syria and Iran.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair want to send an international force to separate Israel from Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Mr. Blair said a U.N. force should be sent to "stop the bombardment coming over into Israel and therefore [give] Israel a reason to stop its attacks on Hezbollah." Mr. Annan said such a force could "pursue the idea of stabilization." But their idea assumes, first, that a cease-fire would protect those worthy of protection and, second, that restoring the region's antebellum "stability" would promote long-term peace. Both assumptions are utterly false.

Hezbollah is not some small, ragged band scattered around Lebanon. It is a huge terrorist structure, built over decades, that includes thousands of men, weapons, positions, offices and everything that enables it to control southern Lebanon. Israel is now destroying that infrastructure. A cease-fire would benefit Hezbollah and threaten Israel. It would protect both Hezbollah and the nations that support it--Syria and Iran--as well as the Lebanese who have accepted the terrorist organization as a legitimate part of their government. A cease-fire would allow Hezbollah to rebuild its power base and enable it to resume its attacks whenever Damascus and Tehran desired. For Israel, a U.N. force would create no security whatever against future attacks.

It has become rather tiresome, over the years, watching the same stupid jackass politicians, including a President I happen to like, continuously pressuring Israel into cutting off defensive actions before they've been completed and forcing them to go through a whole lot of diplomatic posturing in order to engender "peace" in the Mideast. I say these politicians are jackasses in this regard because they are too liberal-like when it comes to negotiating with Arabs -- Hamas, Hezbollah and all the rest of Islam's terrorist organizations break every agreement, no matter what, and these stupid, moronic, imbecillic politician dumb-asses go right back the next time and do it again. Even during "peace" negotiations, Arab bombs go off on Israeli streets, in stores and restaurants and on buses.

And every time, their only accomplishment is to get the Arabs a break so they can regroup and be fresh for their next treaty violation. I'm sorry, but these western politicians are effin' boneheads -- the only way Israel will ever have any peace is if they are allowed to destroy all the terrorist infrastructure over there, root and branch, and waste every last one of the terrorists' leaders and supporters.

Sometimes the only way to achieve peace is through winning a war, and this is something the rest of the world has been keeping Israel from doing for a long time. These "peace" processes that all these Presidents of ours like to give themselves cudos for only serve to escalate terrorism and get more Israelis murdered.

I'm sorry, but when I hear Blair and some others want to pull the same crap yet again, it makes my blood boil. At least George W. Bush seems to have realized that his entire "Roadmap" enterprise was a complete waste of his time, to say nothing of a waste of the lives of innocent people killed by terrorists his "Roadmap" got released from Israeli prisons, and has given his blessing to Israel to do what they need to do, and that at least partly redeems him from some of the less delicate references in my above rant.

Anyway, read the rest of the OpEd here.

Finished? Good, because I'm not done yet.

Now let's talk about the damage Israel's liberals and the general complacency of their government have done.

Daniel Pipes is right on top of it.

For 45 years, 1948-93, Israel's strategic vision, tactical brilliance, technological innovation, and logistical cleverness won it a deterrence capability. A deep understanding of the country's predicament, complemented by money, will power, and dedication, enabled the Israeli state systematically to burnish its reputation for toughness.

The leadership focused on the enemy's mind and mood, adopting policies designed to degrade his morale, with the goal of inducing a sense of defeat, a realization that the Jewish state is permanent and cannot be undone. As a result, whoever attacked the Israel state paid for that mistake with captured terrorists, dead soldiers, stalled economies, and toppled regimes.

By 1993, this record of success imbued Israelis with a sense of overconfidence. They concluded they had won, ignoring the inconvenient fact that Palestinians and other enemies had not yet given up their goal of eliminating Israel. Two emotions long held in check, fatigue and hubris, came flooding out. Deciding that (1) they had enough of war and (2) they could end the war on their own terms, Israelis experimented with such exotica as "the peace process" and "disengagement." They permitted their enemies to create a quasi-governmental structure (the "Palestinian Authority") and to amass hoards of armaments (Hizbullah's nearly 12,000 Katyushas in southern Lebanon). They shamelessly traded captured terrorists for hostages.

And they gave the Palestinians -- Hamas, a terrorist organization whose goal is the destruction of Israel -- territory annexed in 1967 specifically for the purpose of having a security buffer zone in case of another invasion attempt by Syria. In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the IDF had to fight tooth and nail to kick the invading Syrians off the Golan escarpment. So now an enemy sponsored by Syria occupies the security buffer zone with Israel's blessing. Was that a brilliant move, or what?

Somewhere I was reading recently -- I can't recall exactly where, someone compared the "useful idiots" {western liberals, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's term}, of the USSR years who believed all the B.S. of Marxist propaganda spewed by communists and responded by joining the Communist Party, etc, and today's "useful idiots", who are this time swallowing all the "Religion Of Peace" folderol and to compound their gullibility, are so ignorant of Israel's history and current affairs that they believe all the "occupation" and "apartheid" rhetoric generated by Islamofascist propagandists.

Now, I can see where that might be the case with western liberals, who get all their "news" from leftist bastions of bullshit like the New York Times and who know absolutely nothing about people and human nature, but from Israelis who have lived with terrorism and broken peace agreements by Arabs for so many decades, you'd expect a little more intelligence, or at least the wisdom born of long experience.

UPDATE

My blogger friend Always On Watch has indicated that the Saudis and fellow travellers have done a John Kerry and flip-flopped on us, going from condemnation of the "irresponsibility" on Hezbollah's part that brought the wrath of Israel down on Lebanon to the standard form, general purpose condemnation and blame laid on Israel.

It is here.

These folks, and I'm speaking of Arab Muslim leaders, are about as mature as kindergartners.

Posted by Seth at 02:10 AM | Comments (12) |

July 18, 2006

Definitely Follow This Link

Always On Watch, an already great blog, links to this great commentary, which must be read.

Posted by Seth at 01:29 AM | Comments (7) |

Wow!

Read this!

Posted by Seth at 12:55 AM |

July 17, 2006

Yeah, Right!

So now, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is suddenly interested in complying with UN resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah. One can't help but wonder why his government made no effort to comply with the resolution until the Israeli Defense Force {IDF} began pounding the bloody crap out of his country.

Of course, the anti-Israel U.N. never enforced Lebanon's failure to comply with the resolution, since it was more a cosmetic kind of thing than anything the corrupt global organization actually intended to be taken seriously.

Siniora said the Israel Defense Forces assault had devastated his country, and called for international aid.

Go, IDF!

Deploying Lebanese troops on the southern border, now controlled by Hezbollah, would meet a repeated United Nations and U.S. demand. This demand is also backed by UN resolution 1559, calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah and deployment of the Lebanese army in its stead. But the government fears that using force against Hezbollah could trigger another sectarian conflict in Lebanon, which was ravaged by civil war between 1975 and 1990.

Hey, guy, who's running your country? A legitimate and responsible government, or a terrorist organization? If you expect anyone to take your government seriously, it has to enforce order in your country and has to be the only governing authority -- that means it needs to take whatever risks are necessary to do away with the power Hezbollah enjoys in Lebanon. If you have to deploy troops in the south to fight tooth and nail against Hezbollah guerillas, then that's what you have to do.

"I declare today that Lebanon is a disaster zone in need of a comprehensive and speedy Arab plan... and [it] pleads to its friends in the world to rush to its aid," he said.

The Lebanese army is about 70,000 strong, equipped with American, French and Russian weapons but virtually no air force.

The UN Security Council on Saturday again rejected pleas that it call for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon after the United States objected, diplomats said.

Emphasis mine. Bravo, Condi, Bolton & Bush!

If Fouad's government isn't "up to" addressing the Hezbollah problem, maybe they ought to sit back, break open a can of pomegranate cola and weather things out while Israel gives their country the terrorism-purging enema it so badly needs....

H/T James Taranto

I hate to say this, but the reference to French weapons brings to my mind a few thousands of cases of white flags on hand-held poles. France must be the only country in the world whose military employs personnel whose job it is to declare, "We Surrender!"

Later.

Posted by Seth at 11:59 PM |

Works For Me!

I love the way the media pounced on Bush's use of a four letter word, especially in this headline that says Mideast crisis drives Bush to colorful language.

Bush replied: "What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit." Shortly afterwards Blair noticed the microphone and hastily switched it off, but not before the recording had reached news media.

{The correction from "it" to "is" in the quoted text is mine, there is a typo in the actual article}.

Hmmm, reminds me of an occasion on which Ronald Reagan, purportedly not realizing a mic was live, scared the piss out of the Soviets with a quip about preparing to launch missiles.

I like the fact that the leaders of the U.S. and Britain are friendly and informal enough in their private conversations to speak without having to be "PR". The way the media sounds, you'd think this was an earth shaking event. Possibly even more earth shaking than when a President makes adulterous "whoopie" with his interns, lies to Congress, commits rape and serves up sexual harrassment as frequently as a server in a diner delivers coffee to customers.

Personally, I'd've preferred, "Tony, I hope Israel tears those terrorist motherfuckers a new asshole", but you can't have everything....

Posted by Seth at 11:25 PM | Comments (2) |

Steyn On Mideast Peace Efforts

Mark Steyn's current column has got to be the truest and funniest I've ever seen on Mideast peace efforts.

An excerpt --

It's easy to fly in a guy in a suit to hold a meeting. Half the fellows inside the Beltway have Middle East "peace plans" named after them. Bush flew in himself a year or two back to announce his "road map." Before that it was Cheney, who flew in with the Cheney plan, which was a plan to open up a road map back to the last plan, which would get us back to "Tenet," which would get us back to "Mitchell," which would get us back to "Wye River," which would get us back to "Oslo," which would get us back to Kansas.

LOL!

Posted by Seth at 12:43 PM | Comments (5) |

July 16, 2006

The Thunder Continues Over Beirut & Gaza

War is not a good thing, but it is sometimes an unfortunate necessity. That said, in forcing that necessity upon Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas have, to all intents and purposes, all but pleaded with the Israelis for the exciting experience they are having now.

BEIRUT -- Israel intensified its air assault on Lebanon yesterday, bombing central Beirut for the first time and pounding seaports and a key bridge as it tightened a noose around this reeling nation.

Trying to defuse the crisis, Lebanon's prime minister indicated he might send his army to take control of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah -- a move that might risk civil war.

Mighty nice of you, friend. You and your citizens have no problem whatsoever with a major terrorist organization being part and parcel of your country until they bring the wrath of the most powerful war machine in the Middle East down on your country. Suddenly, you are going to "take control", even at the risk of civil war. Now that the country you govern is being physically dismantled right before your eyes and well beyond your control, you want to get up on your hind legs and do what you should have done some time ago, except for your support of the terrorists and the support for the terrorists by most of your citizens.

Like the Israeli government has said on the subject, "Seeing is believing".

On Israel's second front, against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, Israeli aircraft yesterday struck the Economy Ministry of the Hamas-led Palestinian government and three other targets, killing two persons, Palestinian and Israeli officials reported.

Israeli tanks approached the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza this morning, residents and Palestinian security forces said. The town lies across the border from an Israeli town, Sderot, frequently hit by Hamas guerrilla rockets.

What did these Islamofascist zealots expect? That they could attack Israel forever and with impunity, and not eventually (like now) face the wrath the Jewish State's awesome military forces are capable of dishing out when it is time to defend the homefront?

In a recent post, I referred to an expression: If you mess around with the bandwagon, you have to expect to get hit with the horn.

Wellllllllllllllll...................

Washington Times bossman Wesley Pruden, as brutally frank as always, tells us,

If you're looking for a fight in a dark and dangerous neighborhood, you can usually find one. If you pick on the wrong man, you deserve the bloody nose, cracked teeth or broken jaw.

Hmmmmm, sounds sort of like what some critters in Lebanon and some other critters in the Gaza Strip are learning to identify with, even as we speak.

Read Wesley Pruden's OpEd Here.

If you're an American liberal, anybody at the NYT {except William Safire} or an Islamofascist, read it and weep.

Posted by Seth at 03:19 AM | Comments (6) |

July 15, 2006

Kicking Back

So it's the wee hours, I recently finished doing some work and have done some blogging, it's almost time I hit the rack and I'm kicking back with a large mug of Cafe Bustelo and some Sambuca on the side. I have some old music(rightnow, the theme from Romeo & Juliet, next I think Paul Mauriat's Love Is Blue) playing from my MusicMatch library via Logitech speakers I bought last December {Logitech gets my personal uncompensated endorsement, the sound is excellent} and I'm thinking about the state of things...

Israel is fighting a war against Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Gaza. We're talking war, not just a small counterterror Op, in which the IDF is fighting, for the moment, on 2 fronts.

The best President we've had since early 1988 is in the process of diminishing America's sovereignty several notches in the pursuit of forming a small-scale EU with Mexico and Canada. What's really disturbing about this is that we hear almost nothing from the media about this and even less from members of Congress.

Now, where the MSM's concerned, I can understand. Being liberals, they have been busting their touchases these last few years to propagandize we, the people, into casting off "the bonds" of American identity and love of country, and becoming "people of the world united" or something like that, becoming as much like France as possible and of course, offering our collective "guilty American neck" to the chopping block of Islam.

{Ah, Summer Place, by Percy Faith!}

It's really great to know that fellow Americans like the communists at the ACLU and the traitors folks at the New York Times are behind the nation 100% -- Actually, to judge from what they consider journalism, they have become what comes out of the nation's behind. Get some Charmins, clean 'em up. On the other hand, if you're in a priveleged position in a government security or intelligence agency, you can report on the latest defense secrets to the NYT and they guarantee to safeguard your identity while they print the details. Can't blame 'em, right? Someone's got to help fundamentalist Islam murder us, right? It may as well be Keller as anyone, right? Thank G-d he took the initiative to act on our behalf!

{Every Time We Touch, by Maggie Reilly, who had one of the most awesomely beautiful voices I've ever heard. She did some recordings with Mike Oldfield as well as her own great stuff back in the 1980s. I'd've loved to see her and Annie Haslam do a back-to-back concert, they'd have been highly compatible, or her and Annie's band, Renaissance, about tied as my second favorite with Yes, just behind my #1, Focus}

Wow, at half a century, the 1970s and 80s seem like contemporaries of the Boston Tea Party!

At 50, you also have memories of a time when nobody calling himself an American would disrespect our country and the principles upon which it was founded the way the Democratic Party, via its liberal element, does today.

At 50, you can rejoice that you won't be here to see the end result of what liberalism turns our country into over the next half century.

My prediction is the society Sly Stallone is defrosted into in Demolition Man, where cops, not even armed with lethal weapons, "request" that a criminal lay down his weapon and submit to arrest, and there's no enforcement procedure to respond to "Fuck you, make me!" because in the Utopian mindset of that time, citizens naturally respond as expected.

I'd hate, however, to be forced to learn how to use the 3 sea shells.

Posted by Seth at 01:22 AM | Comments (13) |

Just When You Thought It was Safe...

They're not showing much concern for the protection of your card info in their systems, though they're more than happy to take your money.

It would seem that in this age of identity theft, all too many retailers are chaffing at the bit to accept payment for their merchandise via your credit cards and debit cards while, at the same time, they're not quite as tenacious where protecting the confidential information -- your confidential information -- their card processing terminals collect to obtain transaction approval.

What's up with that?

Posted by Seth at 12:53 AM |

Mona Charen's View

Mona Charen is one of my favorite political columnists. I recently read her book, Do Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim To Help(And The Rest Of Us) and was really disappointed.... when I realized I'd hit the last page. It was so on-point and such a great read that I hated it to end. She really knows whereof she speaks, and hasn't got any problem with saying it point blank, PC be damned.

At any rate, her latest column weighs in on Israel's justification for the long overdue defensive action they are engaged in, even as I type this post.

Excerpt --

(The Washington)

Post starts with the swearing in of the Hamas government on March 29. Fair enough. But the next item is "June 9: Explosion kills seven members of a Gaza family. Witnesses blame Israeli artillery, but Israel denies it." Missing is any reference to the non-stop shelling of Israel from the Gaza strip that began in 2005 and has not let up since. Nearly 3,000 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel...

Read On.

Posted by Seth at 12:08 AM |

July 13, 2006

On Friends

Stepping completely away from politics for the moment, this is an e-card I received from a friend whom I haven't talked to, emailed or otherwise had contact with for some time, entirely my fault.

H/T Nikki

Posted by Seth at 11:37 PM | Comments (2) |

Putting Things Into Perspective...

.... is this excellent editorial at The New Republic.

What has been clarified by this round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, first and foremost, the character of Israel's adversaries. They are Islamist terrorists, and proud to be so. More ominously, they are Islamist terrorists come to power. Hamas is no longer only a movement; it is now also a government. In the months since Hamas was elected by the Palestinians to govern (or misgovern) them, the regime of Ismail Haniyeh and company has presided over the launching of hundreds of Qassam rockets into Israel, applauded a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv restaurant (it would have been hypocritical of them not to applaud it!), allowed an unprecedented escalation of the conflict with the firing of a souped-up rocket into Ashkelon--the first time such a strike has been made against a major Israeli city--and, of course, kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit. All of this, again, is the work of a government. When Hamas was elected, there was an eruption of assurances in the media that power will breed responsibility, that the drudgeries of governing will usurp the ecstasies of bombing, and so on. "Hamas?" the headline on the cover of The New York Review of Books asked hopefully. But the Hamas rulers of Palestine have made it plain that they see no contradiction between governing and bombing. Success at the ballot box has had no calming effect. It has merely conferred political legitimacy upon moral depravity.

The long and the short of it is that Israel is not defending herself against guerilla activities by a faction of "downtrodden" souls, they are defending themselves against an Act Of War by a sovereign government. If the Palestinians want terrorists as leaders, well, so be it -- they can reap what they've sown.

And as for Hezbollah and their Lebanese hosts, welllllll, they were warned a long time ago....

Hezbollah, of course, is not a government, but it is a part of a government. Its freedom of action, its unreconstructed radicalism, its pervasive presence in Lebanese politics: All this brings to mind nasty memories of a few decades ago, so that it is not incorrect to say that, over the last 30 years, Lebanon has exchanged a PLO mini-state within its borders for a Hezbollah mini-state within its borders. When Shalit was kidnapped, Hamas cited the precedent of Hezbollah's kidnappings (and prisoner-exchanges) in the past, as if in exoneration of its own extortion. Hezbollah has always been Hamas's teacher in the great madrassa of anti-Israeli terrorism. Now the teacher has taken a cue from the student and taken its own Israeli hostages. Israel must now remind its adversaries that it was deadly in earnest when, decades ago, it proclaimed that it would tolerate no such aggression along its northern border.

When you rent a DVD, you are deluged at the start of the feature with federal and international warnings regarding the illegality and criminal penalties of bootlegging the contents of the disc. When you see a no parking sign, there is, as often as not, a warning that if you park there, your car will be towed away and how much it will cost to get it back. A "No Trespassing" sign often makes sure you understand that if you trespass, you will be prosecuted. When I worked in a casino security department and we "86"ed someone from the property, we read them, from a card that everybody carried, a trespass warning that left no doubt that the next time the 86er was found in the casino or anyplace else on our property, he or she would be immediately arrested and sent to jail, and prosecuted. If the subject didn't understand English or purported not to, or even had the slightest foreign accent, we would call in an employee(a dealer, change person, whoever) that was fluent in the subject's native language and have them translate the trespass warning word-for-word. On highways, "No Littering" signs tell you how much you will be fined for littering.

The reason for all these warnings and posted explanations of the penalties for the transgressions indicated is to make unmistakeably plain what will happen if the warnings are not heeded, so that in court, the "I didn't know" defense would not hold any water. Unscrupulous, greasy, seedy, anal-cavity liberal trial lawyers and drooling left wing judges brought this necessity upon society, but that's one for another time.

My point being, decades ago, Israel warned the Lebanese and their terrorist Hezbollah butt-boys that there would be dire military consequences if there were any further cross border attacks -- the Lebanese government is responsible for dealing with its in-house terror factions. If they choose to let them do as they please, they, like the Palestinians who voted in terrorism as their choice of leadership, deserve whatever Israel feels like dishing out. Actions have consequences, and if you indulge in the first, you have to accept the second.

And make no mistake about the culpability of other countries as well, like Iran and Syria. This is war by every "legal" definition no matter what the "international community" says -- and it was declared on Israel, not the other way around, by governments that either enjoy legitimate sovereignty or, as in the case of the Palestinians, are recognized as such.

There is also a larger strategic dimension to the Hamas-Hezbollah offensive. These provocations stink of Assad and Ahmadinejad. The Hamas action in Gaza appears to have been ordered by Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader who resides in Damascus--which is to say, it is also a piece of Syrian intrigue. Nor can anything of significance take place in Lebanon without the sanction of Damascus; and Hezbollah enjoys not only the toleration of Syria but also the time-honored support of Iran, which is also Syria's great ally in a region that may be otherwise turning in a better direction. Perhaps Meshal's responsibility for the Gaza attack will now allow Haniyeh to masquerade as a moderate. (The Washington Post this week published an op-ed by Haniyeh that was full of outrageous assertions. It seems that an election is all that stands between terrorism and punditry.)

I sincerely hope that liberals in Israel (fat chance, if they're anything like American liberals) have now taken to heart the consequences of making concessions to the "my way or the highway" brand of terrorism that seems to be the driving force behind Islam.

I love the last paragraph in the editorial:

It is also worth noting that the Hamas-Hezbollah aggression is aimed at damaging precisely those political forces in Israel--now represented by Ehud Olmert's government--that withdrew Israeli settlers from Gaza and is committed to withdrawing Israeli settlers (70,000 of them) from the West Bank. It was one of the great ironies of recent times that Olmert's party rose in Israel at the exact moment that Hamas rose in Palestine; but the irony has turned deadly. They, the Palestinians, really do want everything. And so they are about to learn, yet again, that, as long as they want everything, they will get nothing. This may satisfy the nihilists in charge, since nihilists live for nothing.

Posted by Seth at 12:49 PM | Comments (8) |

Maritime Coyote Bites The Dust

Even though our own federal Immigration enforcement authorities seem to be having a problem with doing the job we pay them to do, it's great to know that the U.S. Coast Guard is on the ball.

On December 18, 2005 Rivero was seen operating a 33-foot Donzi (go-fast) heading north traveling at 38 knots when he was intercepted by a Coast Guard response boat. The Coast Guard crew energized their blue lights and attempted to communicate with the operator of the speeding go-fast. Rivero failed to stop his boat and on two occasions attempted to ram the Coast Guard boat.

The Coast Guard crew used warning shots to persuade Rivero to stop, but he continued operating the boat in a reckless manner. After failing to comply, the Coast Guard boarding team fire disabling fire into the go-fast's engines.

Once on board the stopped go-fast, the boarding team found 10 Cuban migrants in a sealed compartment. Rivero and a second smuggler had placed the migrants in a forward compartment shutting the hatch with a bungee cord from the outside.

In February, After picking up migrants in Cuba, he was chased by a Cuban gun boat when a female from his boat fell over board and drowned. Rivero was again intercepted by the Coast Guard with 21 illegal Cuban migrants on board a 30-foot go-fast 50 miles southeast of Key West, Fla.

Having been convicted, Rivero has been sentenced to 10, count 'em, ten years.

Way to go, Coasties!

Posted by Seth at 11:03 AM | Comments (2) |

July 12, 2006

Cheap Labor

This arrived in an email forward and I thought I'd share it.

The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie. There is no such thing as "cheap labor." Take, for example, an illegal Mexican who sneaks in here with his wife and five children. He takes a job for five or six dollars an hour. At that wage with six dependents he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free. He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent, food stamps, and free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care. His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school, and require bi-lingual teachers and books that taxpayers provide. He doesn't have to worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance. Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins, and printed material. He cannot be fired, harassed, or sued. He and his family receive the equivalent of $20 to $30 an hour in benefits, while working Americans are lucky to have $5 or $6 an hour left after paying their bills and his, to say nothing of paying for increased crime, graffiti, and trash cleanup. Cheap labor? My ass!

H/T Brenda

Posted by Seth at 09:55 PM | Comments (4) |

And Another War Begins....

This was bound to happen after Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians, especially with Hamas at the helm of the Palestinian Authority. The message they sent was, "Hey, look, Mohammed, terrorism really does work, see? You're getting Gaza! Now, keep up the good work, and remember -- the harder you terrorize, the more concessions we'll make!"

So it's come to another war, this one against terrorists {like the war the Bush Administration is prosecuting} rather than a specific government, though the latter, as the possibility is advanced in the second article I will be linking to in this post, is strong as well in the not-too-distant future.

Here is what happens when a country is forced, by way of self defense, to go to war:

The two-storey house was reduced to rubble and rescue teams frantically searched through the wreckage for survivors while a neighbouring house was close to collapse. The force of the blast had shattered nearby windows and flying masonry had blown holes in the walls of other buildings. Witnesses reported that the body of a child had been pulled from the wreckage of the house. Israel defended the attack, saying that members of the Hamas military wing had been meeting in the house. "Israel is compelled to take action against those planning to unleash lethal terror attacks against Israeli citizens," said David Baker, an official in the office of the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. "Palestinian terrorist leaders continue to take refuge amongst and hide behind their own civilians." But the strike is likely to heighten international condemnation of Israel's reoccupation of Gaza Strip. Last week the EU and UN criticised Israel for "disproportionate use of force" against Palestinians in the territory, while the Swiss government alluded to the Geneva conventions on the laws of war in stating that the Israeli campaign amounted to "collective punishment".

The EU and the UN can go to hell -- where are their condemnations when Palestinians butcher innocent Israeli men, women and children with their rocket attacks and their suicide bombs? Oh, wait, I forgot -- according to the EU, terrorism is acceptable when it doesn't happen on their turf, but against Israel, and according to the UN, any attrocity committed against Israelis is hunky-dory. It's fine, no problem. And what did the Swiss think when we bombed Germany during the Second World War? Did they howl then that it was "collective punishment"? I don't think so.

The Palestinians have no right to complain about anything Israel does to defend herself against their terrorist attacks. If someone comes up to you on the street and attacks you without provocation, it's your right to decimate them brutally and without mercy, simply because they forced you to fight against your will. Similarly, the Israelis, who have bent over backwards to achieve peace, including fulfilling their various treaty obligations on a totally one-sided basis, reserve the inalienable right to respond as forcefully as they deem necessary to protect themselves against these animals. If the Palestinians who claim to favor peaceful coexistence take umbrage with that, they shouldn't vote terrorists into power. What they should do, however, is clean their own house, thereby eliminating the need for the IDF to do it for them.

Back in my younger days of reading western shitkicker novels, one of writer Wayne D. Overholster's characters used an expression that has since stuck in my mind and sums things up rather well:

If you mess around with the bandwagon, you have to expect to get hit with the horn.

If the Palestinians can stand by and allow terrorism to be practiced on their behalf, then they can share in the penalties when payback time comes around.

Now, I was opposed to any surrender of land by Israel to the Palestinians, as were right thinkers and others with common sense everywhere, especially in Israel, as I've made more than plain on a number of occasions, but, with a hat tip to Stephanie Pearson for bringing this column to my attention, I tend to agree with Yossi Klein Halevi here regarding several factors pertinent to this post. A free suscription to The New Republic Online may be required to access the entire article.

The next Middle East war--Israel against genocidal Islamism--has begun. The first stage of the war started two weeks ago, with the Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim; now, with Hezbollah's latest attack, the war has spread to southern Lebanon. Ultimately, though, Israel's antagonists won't be Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.

To truncate a bit,

For the Israeli right, this is the moment of "We told you so." The fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern Lebanon and Gaza--precisely the areas from which Israel has unilaterally withdrawn--is proof, for right-wingers, of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral withdrawal. Those of us who have supported unilateralism didn't expect a quiet border in return for our withdrawal but simply the creation of a border from which we could more vigorously defend ourselves, with greater domestic consensus and international understanding. The anticipated outcome, then, wasn't an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with appropriate vigor to their continued aggression.

And of course, the unilateralists had no idea that the Arabs, with whose charactar they certainly must be quite familiar given their daily proximity, and the benefit of past experience, would view the withdrawal as a sign of defeat and press harder. No, of course not. Liberal reasoning is not restricted to the U.S., Canada and western Europe. No matter how many times a snake bites them, liberals will continue to try to reason with it.

So it wasn't the rocket attacks that were a blow to the unilateralist camp, but rather Israel's tepid responses to those attacks. If unilateralists made a mistake, it was in believing our political leaders--including Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert--when they promised a policy of zero tolerance against any attacks emanating from Gaza after Israel's withdrawal. That policy was not implemented--until two weeks ago. Now, belatedly, the Olmert government is trying to regain something of its lost credibility, and that is the real meaning of this initial phase of the war, both in Gaza and in Lebanon.

Still, many in Israel believe that, even now, the government is acting with excessive restraint. One centrist friend of mine, an Olmert voter, said to me, "If we had assassinated [Hamas leader] Haniyeh after the first kidnapping, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah would have thought twice about ordering another kidnapping." Israel, then, isn't paying for the failure of unilateral withdrawal, but for the failure to fulfill its promise to seriously respond to provocations after withdrawal.

Bullshit. They are paying for both.

More weighing in by the "international community":

Absurdly, despite Israel's withdrawal to the international borders with Lebanon and Gaza, much of the international community still sees the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate act of war: Just as Israel holds Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, so Hamas and Hezbollah now hold Israeli prisoners. One difference, though, is that inmates in Israeli jails receive visits from family and Red Cross representatives, while Israeli prisoners in Gaza and Lebanon disappear into oblivion. Like Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who was captured by Hezbollah 20 years ago, then sold to Iran, and whose fate has never been determined. That is one reason why Israelis are so maddened by the kidnapping of their soldiers.

Note that it doesn't matter to the "international community" that Israel treats its captured terrorists humanely, just as those who condemn America for the war in Iraq, including our very own liberals, do their best to ignore the beheadings and other mutilations of prisoners by the terrorists we are at war against, and equally ignore the humane treatment of the prisoners at GITMO, who fare much better than inmates of our own prisons. As I've written before, Israel's very existence is an inconvenience to the so-called "international community", so they could care less what is done to Israel, while they defend the terrorists' right to terrorize Israel as vigorously as they please.

In exchange for the return of captured Israeli soldiers, the terrorists demand the release of their brethren from Israeli jails, such nice believers in The Religion Of Peace and paragons of justice and virtue as one Samir Kuntar:

Another reason is the nature of the crimes committed by the prisoners whose release is being demanded by Hezbollah and Hamas. One of them is Samir Kuntar, a PLO terrorist who in 1979 broke into an apartment in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, took a father and child hostage, and smashed the child's head against a rock. In the Palestinian Authority, Kuntar is considered a hero, a role model for Palestinian children.

Why not free that frigging animal? Not only would he be a role model for Palestinian children, he'd also be a hero to every liberal on the planet. Perhaps he and Mr. Mumia could go on a lecture tour together.

Posted by Seth at 02:29 PM | Comments (2) |

Sounds Islamic To me

Indian officials would seem to attribute this to Pakistani Muslims.

Officials said eight explosions hit the evening rush-hour trains packed with thousands of people. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, the largest the city has experienced in years. Officials and security analysts said the coordinated explosions shared similarities to recent bomb attacks by Kashmiri militants, who in October set off three bomb blasts in markets in the capital city of New Delhi, killing more than 60 people.

Sorry, I just can't find it anywhere within myself to be surprised. This is how Islam operates.

Posted by Seth at 04:02 AM | Comments (3) |

July 11, 2006

On the Wichman Issue

This one is self explanatory, and shows how there is little to choose between liberals and Muslim activists. It came to yours truly in the form of a forwarded e-mail.

Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let's start at the top. The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman.

Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech." Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Moslem Association: As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burning of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France..

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West -- see the 1st Amendment -- you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially, I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering"

Well! As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding Wichman be reprimanded and mandatory diversity training for faculty and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman. How nice. But now the Michigan chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.

For its part, the university is standing its ground. They say the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks. That will probably change. Wichman says he never intended the e-mail to be made public, and wouldn't have used the same strong language if he'd known it was going to get out.

How's the left going to handle this one? If you're in favor of the freedom of speech, as in the case of Ward Churchill, will the same protections be demanded for Indrek Wichman? I doubt it. Hey guys send this to everybody and ask them to do the same and tell them to keep passing it around till the whole country gets it. We are in a war to the bitter end.

Hat Tip: BJS

Posted by Seth at 10:54 PM | Comments (2) |

July 09, 2006

Ha! Keller Missed One!

This would have been a real catastrophe, one that relegated even the descent on the Gulf Coast by Katrina the Bitch, the aftermath of that terrible visit and probably even 9/11 to Page 41.

The FBI has uncovered what officials consider a serious plot by jihadists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in hopes of causing a torrent of water to deluge lower Manhattan, the Daily News has learned. The terrorists sought to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina, sources said. They also wanted to attack subways and other tunnels.

Imagine something like this happening at, say, late afternoon rush hour, when New Yorkers, plus commuters from the liberal wasteland of New Jersey and more dignified Connecticut packed the streets and subways of Manhattan by the millions. Unlike during the Katrina disaster, these people would have absolutely no notice that anything out of the ordinary was afoot, they would simply be going about their respective business when massive tonnages of water bore down on them.

Experts also said that even if the tunnel cracked, the Financial District would not be flooded because it is above the level of the river.

As the venerable James Taranto would say, "What would we do without experts?"

I know, you're reading this post and wondering, "Seth, WTF's yer point?"

Well, how about this? Sorry, but it means repetition.

The FBI has uncovered what officials consider a serious plot by jihadists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in hopes of causing a torrent of water to deluge lower Manhattan, the Daily News has learned.

The Bureau unearthed a terrorist plot that would, on achieving fruition, have more than qualified for the term "holocaust"., only this time it wouldn't have victimized only my fellow Jews, it would have victimized seven digits' worth of every kind of human being, from religion to economic level (or lack thereof), every ethnicity to political belief.

This kind of discovery does not originate among the trappings of liberal dogma, it is the product of complex investigative strategies and pure investigative excellence and related technologies, our Homeland Security venue and all its related agencies hard at work in conjunction with the security services of other countries.

Thank G-d these pros discovered the planned Op when they did.

Also, thank G-d the New York Times didn't get wind of the Bureau's investigation in its early stages. If they had, they would have trumpeted every detail they could lay hands on, amid an orgasm by Bill Keller, on their front page, thereby providing the terrorists the opportunity to cover their tracks and get away with whatever they had done or intended to do.

Okay, y'all, here's my point: When the FBI is permitted to do what they're good at without attracting the dubious and treasonous attention of The NYT, they can protect us "hands down".

The NYT, on the other hand, has done and will do anything they can to sabotage anything the Bush Administration does to defend our country and its security for the simple reason that they can afterwards "blame Bush". It doesn't matter to liberals whether or not Islamofascists smash our country in to little bits, all they give a damn about is exposing or otherwise sabotaging our current administration's efforts to protect our country and we, the people, in order to replace the President with a Democrat in 2008.

As is the case where the bulk of their illogical Utopian ambitions for our government and we, the people are concerned, any considerations of our wellbeing play second fiddle to liberals' political agendas -- as with the rest of their fantasies, liberals think they can always repair the damage they do to our country via "reasoned" approaches to the problems they create.

Right-O, let's vote the likes of John Kerry, Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton or Jack Murtha into the Oval Office in 2008 and allow them to "negotiate with terrorists" on our behalf. Let's let them pull all our troops out of everyplace else and "redeploy" them to less hostile climes, release all the terrorists we have in custody at GITMO and organize a Maypole dance to celebrate the end of everything non-Muslim. While Keller, the ACLU, the entire populations of Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, neighboring Hollywood, New York, Chicago and other liberal enclaves line up for either decapitation or conversion to subjection to Islamism, the folks responsible for America's demise can make their explanations, but, alas and alack, there will be no turning back, no reprieve, only the choice between Caliphate and death.

As long as we even allow liberalism in this country, we are assuming the same level of existence as your common, everyday lemming.

It's great to know that our government is protecting us from terrorists as they are. As far as I'm concerned, my idol in the homeland security millieu is Jack Bauer. Too bad he doesn't really exist. :-(

If he did, I'd be his greatest fan....

Posted by Seth at 02:55 PM | Comments (6) |

July 07, 2006

More Harm From Political Correctness

Greg Crosby's written another of his usual winners, this one on political correctness in the obese children's arena.

...The way things are done now is tantamount to living in denial. Officials are so afraid of hurting the feelings of kids that they refuse to call their problem by its correct name — obesity. The overly delicate approach adopted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (and used by many doctors) avoids the word "obese" because of the stigma. So a kid who really is obese is simply called "overweight" by the CDC. A kid who is really overweight is called "at risk of overweight." Don't want to hurt the sensibilities of the little butterballs.

In my case, I was generally pretty thin until I was into my late twenties, when the indulgences of a "wine, women and song" lifestyle began to catch up with me. Even today, at fifty, I'm somewhat heavier than I'd like to be or than is healthy for me to be, and to that end I've enlisted the help of Matt Furey's Combat Conditioning, the best exercise regimen I've yet encountered, which is based on using your own body weight as your exercise machine and which is helping me take off pounds and feel better overall, but that's another story entirely.

Back on topic, when I was a lad, as Crosby points out as his own experience as well, there was none of this feel-good PC stuff a certain segment of our society has forced on the rest of us -- if you were fat, you were told so in no uncertain terms, and that was good. Sure, it might well have hurt the feelings, for some reason, of kids who already had to know they were fat, coming into daily contact as they did with other children who weren't fat, but it was also the best encouragement on earth to do something to remedy the situation, like eat less sweets and get more exercise. As an adult, I have met numerous acquaintances from my childhood days I hardly recognized because being called "fatty" et al finally got to them enough that they did something about it and were now in great shape.

Stroking them with neutral PC terminology doesn't cut it, and rarely if ever will. I call attention to a quote in Greg Crosby's OpEd,

According to Dr. Reginald Washington, a Denver pediatrician and co-chair of an American Academy of Pediatrics obesity task force, calling a child obese might "run the risk of making them angry, making the family angry,"

Instead of becoming angry, the family {In addition to the child subject of the diagnosis, I take this to mean the parents of same} should disconnect the kid from the tube, the X-Box or the computer and send him out for some exercise, refrain from over-feeding the child and counsel him/her regarding moderation during those supersized stops at the local fast food franchise after school. They should work at cultivating an interest on the part of the obese child in participating in competitive sports. Additional biproducts of a child's being physically fit are that it generally helps bring up his or her school grades while augmenting the development of baggage-free social skills.

This is a really relevant OpEd, what I'd call recommended reading, and can be read in its entirety here.

Posted by Seth at 08:26 AM | Comments (6) |

July 06, 2006

A World Without America

Greetings from the U.S.A., dart board of a largely ungrateful world!

When I look at all the sacrifices this country has made and continues to make on behalf of so many others, then listen to all the negative feedback we get for it, it almost makes me want to continue building that wall along the Mexican border.... until it completely surrounds this nation, and just tell all those other countries, "Good luck on the outside".

Peter Brookes sums things up as completely as I've ever seen them done in this regard, in an absolute must-read OpEd.

For all the worldwide whining and bellyaching about the United States, July 4th -- America's 230th birthday -- provides an opportune time for them to consider for just a moment what the world might be like without good ol' Uncle Sam.

The picture isn't pretty. Absent U.S. leadership, diplomatic influence, military might, economic power and unprecedented generosity, life aboard planet earth would likely be pretty grim, indeed. Set aside the differences America made last century -- just imagine a world where this country had vanished on Jan. 1, 2001.

On security, the United States is the global balance of power. While it's not our preference, we are the world's "cop on the beat," providing critical stability in some of the planet's toughest neighborhoods.

Further,

Also missing would be other gifts from "Uncle Sugar" -- starting with 22 percent of the U.N. budget. That includes half the operations of the World Food Program, which feeds over 100 million in 81 countries.

Gone would be 17 percent of UNICEF's costs to feed, vaccinate, educate and protect children in 157 countries -- and 31 percent of the budget of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which assists more than 19 million refugees across the globe.

In 2005, Washington dispensed $28 billion in foreign aid, more than double the amount of the next highest donor (Japan), contributing nearly 26 percent of all official development assistance from the large industrialized countries.

Moreover, President Bush's five-year $15 billion commitment under the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is the largest commitment by a single nation toward an international health initiative -- ever -- working in over 100 (mostly African) countries.

The United States is the world's economic engine. We not only have the largest economy, we spend 40 percent of the world's budget on R&D, driving mind-boggling innovation in areas like information technology, defense and medicine.

We're the world's ATM, too, providing 17 percent of the International Monetary Fund's resources for nations in fiscal crisis, and funding 13 percent of World Bank programs that dole out billions in development assistance to needy countries.

And what does Uncle Sam get in return? Mostly grief, especially from all the ungrateful freeloaders who benefit tremendously from the global "public goods" we so selflessly provide with our time, effort, blood and treasure. How easily -- and conveniently -- they forget . . . unless they need help, of course.

Brooks' OpEd is fantastic and seems to cover all the bases. Read the entire piece here.

Posted by Seth at 06:03 AM | Comments (2) |

July 05, 2006

Too Much Education?

I used to agree with the old saying that "you can never have too much education". Now, however, I'm not quite sure.

Oh, no, I'm not knocking education, it is important, hell, vital. What I'm thinking is that it seems like the majority of the media's {of course, it is the media} most-quoted "hallowed" intellectuals today are extreme liberals, and I thought of one possible reason for this: Too much education.

Look at it this way -- you get a teenager who has not fully developed a mature political viewpoint, purely due to a lack of "real-world" experience (you know, putting bread on the table, paying taxes, sweating overstrained household and personal budgets, worrying about corporate downsizing in their fields or from their own employers, looking for a job in a glutted market, etcetera). He/ she goes to college for four years and earns a BA or BS, then says "hasta la bye bye" and heads for the marketplace. For four years, he/ she has most likely been exposed to more than a little of the liberal political bias that seems to pervade on our campuses these days, but the new graduate's got a strong mind and still thinks for himself.

On the other hand, whether to quench a thirst for higher learning, earn more saleable credentials, both, or simply to get mom & dad to continue supporting him/her (sad to say, but from my own observations, the latter would appear to include significantly more "hims" than "hers"), the graduate might continue on to earn a Master's, then a PhD and end up branching off into other areas and earning other degrees, eventually going into teaching college.

We're talking career academics, people who do little else but teach others what others taught them. It would be like spending an entire military career in boot camp, first as a recruit trainee for 500 months or so, then becoming a drill instructor. Meanwhile, the country's been to war five times but our career boot camper has never been to any of them, and he's training other people to go to war.

Our academics, likewise, spend their entire lives buried in what amounts to society's training compound without ever being tested by the outside, and real, world. They are the theory side of Theory vs Practice. Consequently, they apply that theory to their opinions of what practice should be, which is more often than not like comparing an orangutang to an aardvark.

A concept (like socialism, or that diplomacy works well on people whose only demand is that you let them butcher you), even one that has repeatedly and historically proven not to work but looks good in theory is meat and drink to them. They become so immersed in their reality-sheltered world that the lives of large groups of people they don't know don't even matter to them, unless their circumstances help "prove" the theory at hand.

When confronted with practice-based evidence that their theories are 'way off base, they simply ignore the new facts because they don't fit the "accepted" scenario. This is a phenomenon known as "pontificating", a pomposity that often afflicts those who spend too many years walking among Plato's groves.

Somewhere along the line, one of their common theories has mankind living in harmony, good health, prosperity and peace as one global political entity, in which multiculturalism is playing an early role -- deprivation of national identity. In their Utopian myopia, they don't see the same rights they use to preach freely thus being taken away as one consequence of their theory. And remember what I said about previous failures of the concepts they espouse not mattering? We need only look to the European Union to see what happens when countries give up even an iota of their sovereignty to join in such a pact.

For some reason, too much education seems to lead to the taking of an adversarial position to the United States and our form of government as it was intended by our founding fathers, and as such has been the most successful political experiment in history. According to the output of these lifelong academics, too much education seems to cause support for failure and opposition to success.

If these people are the spokesmen for the "most educated" in this country, we're in baaaaaad shape.

Posted by Seth at 04:03 AM | Comments (4) |

Belatedly

There are 3 Frenchman in the world whom I respect, one I know personally and two I have never met, one of those latter of whom I would like to meet.

This one is a blogger I've mentioned before, one of my all-time favorites who, for reasons of which I have no idea as it is a loss, rarely posts anymore, and more's the pity because he is infinitely more a friend to America and the principles that make it great than the entire spectrum of American liberals.

Due to 4th of July activities, I only just saw his new post, and it is a wonderful Independence Day flash video tribute to America.

Thank You, Frogman!

Posted by Seth at 01:44 AM |

July 03, 2006

May You Be Blessed

This video is beautiful, and really must be shared.

H/T Brenda.

Posted by Seth at 06:05 AM | Comments (2) |

July 02, 2006

Now, this....

.... is funny!

The author links to PETA's anti-KFC website, at which I found the following {exerpted from an article called The Hidden Lives Of Chickens}:

Chickens understand sophisticated intellectual concepts, learn from watching each other, demonstrate self-control, worry about the future, and even have cultural knowledge that is passed from generation to generation

Excuse me while I move away from my keyboard to take a sip of coffee, so as not to spew the java all over it during my next convulsion of laughter....

Posted by Seth at 10:24 AM | Comments (4) |

Lib Law

I had never read anything by Dave Weinbaum before, then I bumped into an OpEd of his at Jewish World Review a few minutes ago. Based on the column of his I just read, I'd love to buy him a beer.

Posted by Seth at 01:53 AM |

The following comes from an email from Move America Forward

Unfortunately, it arrived in my G-mail with a zillion mile long Google-mail address, so linking it would be a major PITA.

It is an on-point message from Master Sergeant John Ubaldi:

On Tuesday, Americans across the nation will celebrate the 230th birthday of the United States of America. Everyone will be enjoying picnics, backyard barbeques, and the traditional fireworks display viewed throughout the country. Today, the armed forces of this republic are engaged in the monumental undertaking that determines if the democratic experiment begun on July 4th, 1776 will begin to sprout in the turbulent lands of the Middle East. It's easy to forget the noble undertaking begun so long ago, easy to forget the auspicious beginning that gave hope to a world that a government can be ruled by its citizens. President George Washington warned Americans that they had a new responsibility when he stated in his first inaugural address, "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." From the birth of this Republic, the foundation of this country was the proposition that all men are created equal. As President Abraham Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg Address, "That this nation under God, Shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln envisioned that the guiding principles of the Declaration of Independence and the rights conveyed in the United States Constitution would be the foundation that humanity rests on, eloquently written in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." It's instructive that many of our brave military men & women understand they are serving the cause of freedom enumerated in that cherished document, sacrificing and establishing the basic foundation of democracy in the unstable often volatile region of the Middle East. To the families of the fallen brings a special solemn meaning of sacrifice, as Margaret Johnson, mother of fallen Army Captain Christopher Johnson, stated in the Washington Times, "He knew the cost of freedom and that it was not free, and he volunteered to go to Iraq anyway." The many Gold Star Families who lost a loved one in the war against terrorism have the courage and satisfaction that their loved ones sacrificed all in freedom's cause. President Kennedy wrote in "Profiles in Courage" that, "In the days ahead, only the very courageous will be able to take the hard and unpopular decisions necessary for our survival in the struggle with a powerful enemy. And only the very courageous will be able to keep alive the spirit of individualism and dissent which gave birth to this nation, nourished it as an infant, and carried it through its severest tests upon the attainment of its maturity." As we celebrate the birth of this nation and the freedoms that we enjoy, we must remember the country's most treasured wealth; the youth who are engaged in the eternal fight against the adversary of darkness. Freedom cannot survive here if neighboring nations have lost theirs. The contemplation of the meaning of freedom is too often a vernacular of popular expression that easily reverberates in our dialogue as we discuss the rights embodied in the Constitution. Over time a tilt toward the direction of evil has contaminated the moral compass that we enjoy. Too often we have failed to realize that many regions and nations of the world still live under the cloud of totalitarianism, unable to enjoy the basic rights of man. Freedom and democracy include the participation of all, but too often many nations of the world are left in dark blanket of oppression that enslaves them to an endless abyss of misery. For freedom to be sowed, nations and individuals must be willing to stand up to the forces of evil or forever sentence future generations to a world without freedom. As the debate intensifies surrounding The War on Terror, many people throughout the vast expanse of the Middle East live as President Vaclav Havel lived under the banner of communism in Czechoslovakia. As the first President of his nation, after the fall of communism, stating in 1990, "That we live in a contaminated moral climate. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought." It seems many of us view July 4th as having little meaning beyond a day of watching fire works, and planning the backyard barbeque, but we fail as a nation to remember the history that is personified and articulated in the Declaration of Independence with the embodiment of individual liberty enshrined in the United States Constitution. Individual freedoms have been the hallmark and legacy that America brought to the world, not for the benefit of America, but for the benefit of humanity. We celebrate these rights, and cherish the fundamental rights of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion, but we fail to remember that millions around the world are denied these basic rights. Today in the spirit of that revolution that forever changed mankind, we are again building the fundamental foundation of democracy in a region that has only known terror and oppression. Americans too easily take for granted these basic rights, when we have been blessed with an overabundance of freedom that millions living under the yoke of oppression yearn for. Abraham Lincoln stated in a letter to Henry Pierce on April 6, 1859 that, "Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it." We often only look at our own circumstance without looking at the broader ramifications of our public discourse in regard to our intervention in Iraq. Alexander Solzhenitsyn stated in a Harvard Address in June 1978, "The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, and in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society." Opponents of the War on Terror, often speak of love of the basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution, that they are defending what we hold sacred. These same individuals hide behind the very foundations on what this nation was founded on, secure in the beliefs that they have nothing to fear from a tyrannical government. Those who protest against our troops and the missions they are serving in do not offer a practical solution to help those suffering under the suffocating burden of a despotic regime. It's easy to speak cavalierly about freedom if you are someone who has never fought for that freedom, when you live in the freest nation in the history of mankind. I note that those people seldom if ever mention the enslaved individuals behind the walls of tyranny in North Korea, Iran, and would have kept millions of Iraqi's under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. President Theodore Roosevelt said it best in Paris, France on April 23rd, 1910, "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." Having served in Operation Enduring Freeom (Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq), I witnessed first-hand the progress of people who are beginning to break the yoke of bondage that has enslaved them for generations. Many have stated that the people of the Arab and Muslim world do not want democracy imposed on them; we aren't imposing democracy, but establishing the foundations of democracy, that only they can choose to implement and embrace. Last year Iraq witnessed three monumental elections that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. I was moved as I stood there, looking into the faces of these eager pioneers who for the first time were controlling their own destiny. The elections in December 2005 witnessed over 70% of the Iraqi people voting in the first free election in the Middle East. Contrast that 70% turnout with our own election last month when we could barley get over 30% of eligible voters to participate in a primary election. I believe our founding fathers would have been embarrassed that so few Americans took part in the electoral process. What's our excuse? Nobody including those who serve want conflict! Ask those who served during World War II if they wanted to serve, they didn't of course, but they all knew that freedom is a cause worth defending. Those who find nothing important enough to them to be willing to defend and fight for, seem to me to be the sort of miserable creatures that John Stuart Mills wrote about. These people stand back and allow the forces of evil to gain a foothold in the hearts and minds of mankind. As Mills stated, "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." On this Fourth of July lets celebrate the principles of what this nation stands for: that freedom belongs to all mankind, and lets help lift the weight of tyranny so all mankind may enjoy the fruits of freedom. The revolution that started on July 4th 1776 sparked a desire in the hearts of men that man is destined to be free as our creator intended not to be enslaved, but free! Lets spread that same freedom to others or some day our own freedom will be in jeopardy! Lets stand for freedom for all!

Posted by Seth at 01:33 AM | Comments (2) |

Insecurity

Well,

One of the nation's largest unions has dispatched more than 100 organizers and members from around the country to Los Angeles as part of a full-scale two-week push to sign up thousands of licensed security guards for a new union local.

By "licensed security guards", they mean people who have a “guard card”, meaning that they took a 40 hour course in “security” and passed the simpleton-level “exam” the state collected a fee on. It’s like watching the PSTN (Professional Security Television Network)’s most rudimentary security officer courses, passing the super-easy quizzes that accompany them and then being issued “credentials” as a “professional” security officer. This is one way a state can collect lots of money off practitioners of a mostly unskilled job while contract security lobbyists gain a liability defense: “We hired our co-defendant based on his certification by the state as a licensed security officer.”

Meanwhile, most of these “licensed” personnel don’t have a clue where Security is concerned, they wear a uniform to earn their sawbuck an hour for whatever reason, nothing more, a tiny percentage even knowing about, let alone earning, even the very basic but effective CPO (Certified Protective Officer) certification.

Now here’s the Service Employees’ International Union, an organization representing waiters, bartenders, hotel employees and so forth, wanting to include “rent-a-cops” in their membership. Of course, they do: There are a whole lot of ‘security’ guards out there, certainly more than enough to make those potential union dues, collectively, a veritable pot of gold.

And they can negotiate on behalf of the security employee. Instead of standing around, doing nothing and knowing little for eight, ten or twelve bucks an hour, perhaps the union would be able to get them significantly more money and up their benefits for the same around-standing and total lack of real security skills.

The Service Employees International Union is expected to announce the public phase of the campaign, called Five Days for Freedom, today. Some organizers and union members — many from New York, Chicago, Oakland and Seattle — have been in Southern California since early last week, working with local union members and clergy who have been slipping in and out of office buildings and urging security officers to sign union cards.

The goal of the drive, say union and religious leaders, is to secure signatures from more than half of the approximately 6,000 licensed security guards who are employed by five large security contractors in office buildings around the county.

If they can collect about 3,500 cards, union officials said, they would be in a strong position to pressure security companies and building owners to quickly recognize a security officers' union. The service employees union and other unions prefer this strategy to the often costly and time-consuming step of holding a formal election.

When the feces finds the fan, most of these people will be utterly useless, probably among the fleeing rather than among those innate and deserving professionals protecting, restoring order and documenting events – after all, they only took the job because they were desperate for work.

And now the SEIU wants to unionize these folks? Fine, but only those who have taken it upon themselves to at least earn a CPO, thereby demonstrating that they are serious about doing security work rather than simply “making a living”.

If my business were big enough that I owned an office building, you can bet your life that the security personnel therein would be well trained, well compensated and experienced, and nothing a union could offer them would either equal or exceed what they they already had.

Instead, these L.A. unionistas want to make companies assume more responsibility for their unskilled proprietary security employees, or for the contract security personnel that work on their premises.

I’ve always been utterly contemptuous of the “guard card” laws that states like California employ because they’re geared more toward gaining employment for the unemployable {and collecting a fee, to boot}than they are towards ensuring that security people are in a job where they actually belong.

Hmmm, I wonder, out of sheer idle curiosity, if there are any liberals involved in this….

Extra, extra, read all about it here (free membership may be required)....

Posted by Seth at 12:38 AM |