Dewage Ex Machina

Yesterday I attended a Civil Rights Demonstration

2010-07-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

There was a civil rights demonstration in my town yesterday. It was a short distance from where I live and was organized to be a walk and a trash pickup as part of a community service theme. I feel very strongly about the issue, I support it deeply (it's the only issue that I'll cross party voting lines for), and I knew several of the participants. I wanted to participate in at least some small way to begin to conquer my fear of the state on this issue.

Instead I felt the corrosive effect of intimidation from the state first hand. I was at the beginning with the speeches and the tv cameras, but I didn't walk with them. I was intimidated. I let the fear of "being out of line" intimidate me. I think that means the state won through intimidation. That makes me feel inferior -- and a little ashamed.

Nothing happened during the walk. It was all very pastoral. There were no confrontations with counter-protesters. There was no intimidating police presence. No firehouses, no police dogs, no riots. They didn't do anything as severe as closing the Edmund Pettus bridge to stop us like they did to the Freedom Marchers in '65 outside of Montgomery. It was just an eight or ten block walk, then everyone went for coffee. In hindsight, it was very low key.

Oh, there were parts of town that the Chief of Police told us were "off limits": schools, government offices -- and parks. I think keeping civil rights protesters out of parks under the pretense of some new-fangled "Jim Crow" law is corrosive to the exercise of the right and intimidating. It limits our freedom of movement only because of the particular civil right we supported. However, our current City Council seems to lack the courage to support this particular civil right. (Income here is 50% higher than the county average and White, Asian and Latino make up 96.5% of the population, so you can draw your own conclusions about the 'Have Gots' in the homeland.)

The fear of some yahoo attacking the marchers because he thinks "it is wrong" and that the state's position gives him moral authority -- is also corrosive and intimidating. Let me be clear -- that didn't happen. But I was afraid it would happen to me. I was afraid, because if I would have defended myself, I would have been arrested. That's how the intimidating effect of the state becomes corrosive.

This is really where the erosion of a civil right hits home. Civil rights are inherent in people. They are inherent in each of us. When you are intimidated from exercising a civil right, you are not defending yourself. When you are afraid to defend your self or your family by exercising a civil right, you have been intimidated. If you have been intimidated into not voting by some thug with a baton standing in front of the Polling Place, you haven't defended yourself.

The heroes in this civil rights movement will come from the early days. The ones who are there at the beginning when the crowds are small and the stakes are high -- those are the brave ones. No lawyers by your side. Shunned by the politicians who are actively legislating against you. No celebrities by your side. You may be outnumbered. You may be reviled. You won't know what you're getting into until it is over. You may end having coffee with friends. You may not.

This is going to be a new journey for me. I have to create a new comfort zone and learn to live in it. I don't want to be intimidated. I don't want to be ashamed, I want to walk with them. I want to be brave. I want to think of myself as a hero. I want my civil rights. Next time, I want to be one of them. To do that, I am going to have to oppose the wishes of the state and put myself at risk for something I should be able to take for granted. Instead it is the wish and intention of the state to reserve it for the agents of the state.

Join me or not. Pass this note along, if you like. I can pretty much guarantee that no matter how many protesters there are, at some point you will feel alone. I can also pretty much guarantee you that those who oppose you will not be reasonable. You won't be able to "talk them down". You won't have the luxury of letting yourself be afraid of the consequences of lawful protest.

I can also guarantee you that YOU WILL understand HOW HARD it is to defend your civil rights when the state is opposed to them.

"May God give us the courage."

4th of July Boob Tour 2010

2010-07-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

Hermosa Beach is a small community in Los Angeles about five miles from LAX. It's a quiet town with a drinking problem. When I was on the city commission to revitalize the community, I suggested Jewelry stores, a diamond exchange. Instead -- and with my full approval -- they went for bars. People come here to drink. Some stay. Some stay and quit drinking (Hi!).*

It turns out that in Los Angeles (city pop. 4,094,764, county pop. 9,848,011), that there are A LOT of people who like to come to the beach and drink on the 4th of July. It's a zoo.

There's a Strand alongside the beach for people and bicycles that's runs the length of town (and about 20 mi outside of town). It's 20 feet wide. It gets so packed you can't ride a bike on it. You can sit on the bike and push yourself around, but there are places where you can't even do that.

In the morning, until about 1pm there is some incredible talent out there, let me tell you. Great weather, beach, bikinis, young beauties. It's a perfect storm. They've been drinking, giddy, haven't got the surly beginning of the hangover or vaguely upset stomach that starts after 4 hours of drinking.

Then between 1 and 2pm there's a shift change. The liquor kicks in. The good looking women know to leave or cover up -- or they'll get groped. Many don't mind. There's just too many people around to enforce infractions. They po-po got bigger fish to fry than these drunken boobs (big electric sign in the bar district says, "Alcohol fines are tripled on the 4th of July"). From then on, it's a festival of Ignorance.

Police from 10-20 jurisdictions come here for the overtime. They ride cars, motorcycles, SUVs, horses, Blart-mobiles, bicycles, foot patrol, helicopters, you name it. The lifeguards estimate 5,000 - 10,000 people come to Hermosa Beach every day on a typical summer weekend. On the 4th of July it's 50,000 to 75,000. The bars switch to plastic cups. People fill their Snapple bottles directly from the keg at private parties. Every block has a band, some of them fairly famous (Pennywise started around here if that means anything to anyone over 30).

My goddaughter showed up with a friend about noon. We found parking (unbelievable). Went to Hennessey's for a burger, right at the corner of Pier and Strand. Had a hard time talking from all the screaming in the bar. Walked out and the shift change had taken place. Whole new crowed, 2x people. An electric rock band on a large pull wagon was being manually towed down the strand by 10 guys. A couple of the women had bikini tops that were just painted on. Jenny was standing 20 feet from me and I couldn't see her from all the confusion.

People have told me that on their way home from work on the holiday, that the freeways are wide open and free flowing. Traffic on the surface streets is moderate. Make the turn into Hermosa Beach west of Pacific Coast Highway (a strip about 10 blocks wide) and there's congestion. Walk across Hermosa Avenue, the last major street before the beach and it becomes one huge party.

Most people eat from 3 to 7pm, so there's a lull. Then they reload, re-arm and fuel up. Fireworks are illegal in Los Angeles County. About 8pm, they come out. I talked to one guy who for years would come back from Mexico with 50,000 firecrackers in strings. He'd tape them to two 4'x8' sheets of plywood. They would haul them on the beach, light them off, then run back and sit down. The police would show up -- and watch. What else are they going to do? "Save" the plywood?

Naw, they pick up the passed out bodies, stop fights, talk to the pretty girls, confiscate liquor, break up parties, talk to the pretty girls. arrest the drunk drivers, respond to traffic collisions. Their patience is sorely tested. Over and over and over. I'll give them the chat with the pretty girls as a perk.

In the middle of all this, as my goddaughter and here friend and I are walking down to the Redondo Pier (about 2mi) we see a Crackberry lying in the Strand. She picks up up, she dials the last call - busy. I dial the one before that - Jackpot! "Omigod you are soooo nice! it's my friend's. I'm in Redondo - I CAN'T come pick it up" I give her my number. The next morning the owner calls. Where are you? I asked. "I'm in Palos Verdes (5mi away). I'm coming to Redondo to pick up my car. I can pick up my phone after I get back from the Emergency Room. I think I broke my arm." Now, THAT'S a party, I said. She got it about 2pm, but she hadn't been to the ER yet. Priorities, you know.

Feel free to come by next year. Parking's a bitch, but you gotta see the show at least once.

* I drink, but not like I used to. If I ever made a list of the reasons I should be dead, that would be top ten easy, maybe even top five. I'll have to think about what would be ahead of it though. Feel free to send me suggestions.

2010 U.S. Open - A Personal Perspective

2010-07-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

First off, I really did have a great time! Chuck Hanson was the host and was fantastically generous with the accommodations and tickets.

The venue, Pebble Beach, was incredible. What a great place for a "walk spoiled" as Mark Twain said. Saturday and Sunday were overcast and a little coolish, but it was much better than being baked in the sun all day. Chuck's house is a 1/2 mile from the Lodge. The worst part of the whole walking around thing was going up and down the small hill behind the house to get to and from the venue. Chuck provided Lodge Premier tickets, which meant nothing for watching the golf (first come, first served), but allowed us into the Lodge and Tavern for a break. On Saturday, we had a table in the Pavillion -- that was the schitzel. Open bar, all you can eat, tvs everywhere. Great place for a break and to re-group and try to figure out what you wanted to do and see.

The Main Gate funneled you right past the Merchandise tent -- huge doesn't really describe it. It was more like a portable CostCo than anything else. If it had a golf logo on it you could buy it there. From there it was all downhill to the course. We ended up not using the main entrance, but using a smaller one by the Lodge that dumped us right out onto the 1st Hole. That's where things get interesting.

There were grandstands at every tee and green. First come, first serve. Once you were in, there was a separate line to get back in if you needed a bio break or something to eat/drink/make merry. The only place I saw trouble was when some young punk like I used to be tried to force his way into the stands to an empty seat that was reserved for someone who left temporarily. He had four beers in his hands and was giving the Marshall grief, but because drinking was obviously more important, he ended up fading back into the crowd.

Everything at the concession stands starts close to $10 -- hot dogs, burgers, beers. Maybe not quite that but the $8 beers seemed to keep a lid on things. It would have been a completely different event if beers were $2 each, but I digress...

The golf itself was, well, interesting. Wed/Thurs/Fri there were some decent spots where you could park and watch them off the tee and actually see where the ball landed. Getting a spot to do both of those things on Sat/Sun wasn't really possible. Standing around all day in one spot was necessary. That's why I posted about watching the landing zone on the 1st Hole. There were other spots like that available, but how often can you watch these guys smash a long drive dead center into the fairway, or spank a short iron 230yds onto the green? They're amazing athletes and can do it every time, but after watching 20 of them do it...

This is where the venue falls a little short. It was never designed to provide a couple hundred thousand spectators a view of every tee, green, and landing zone. The landscaping would have had to be more stadium in design with wide hillsides supporting those views. That's not what a golf course is designed for. And following a Name Player was out of the question. Without doubt, the grandstand seats at 18 were where you wanted to be, but you had to get there at 8am for the 3pm finish. And getting in and out was a 30 minute wait AFTER you waited a couple hours to get seats.

So we had great tickets, stayed as close to the venue as was possible, could go anywhere we wanted to -- and ended up watching the leaders finish on tv back at the house.

I did see Tom Watson finish 17 (well, I saw his head and shoulders, anyway), then saw him tee off on 18 -- just tee off not where the ball went, then walked up 18 with him while he waited for the green to clear for his approach. Me and 10,000 of his closest friends that is. At that point, it struck me more as idol worship (OMG! Grass from Phil Mickelson's divot caught me in the FACE! I'll never wash my face again!), because golf -- for all its frustrations and rewards -- is meant to be played. A smaller tournament, following the players during a Pro/Am kinda thing, definitely. Arnie's Army is a thing of the past, too many people to move.

This gets back to my problem with the local courses in LA. I'd pay more for fewer tee times (10 minutes instead of 7 1/2, maybe?) or even limit it to fours instead of fives just to get a five our round instead of the 6-7 hours it is now (if you tee off after 8:30am). It's hard to believe the PGA could charge more for a ticket, and it WAS the U.S. Open, so fans really should be able to come to it. In the end, it was more about the spectacle and the crowd than the game.

I did pick up some nice tips just watching, though. "Ohh, they go under the trees!" and "Thaat's why you want to be in the fairway..." and the idea of driving the green on the 420-yd. 3rd Hole was absolutely brilliant. I'm going to have to try that one myself.

The cameras were set up to point away from the crowd, to prevent that young-guy-I-used-to-be-lik

e from crashing the tee box, I guess -- not that I was ever that disrespectful. The closest I came was standing five feet away from the drop zone on 17 where Phil Mickelson hit on after hitting into the camera cages a half hour before it actually happened. I know this because I was at the house watching on tv when Phil hit from there. So if you want to see the wrecks in person, you gotta be in the right place AND be patient.

Of course, if I would have been at the right spot, I would have found Dustin Johnson's ball. But, it wasn't meant to be.

True Story

2010-07-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

Honest. Would I make up something this embarrassing?

I was working remotely for a company in San Diego and had to drive down for an "all hands" departmental meeting. Tuesday night the whole group is out to dinner, three tables worth. We're in a back room and the restaurant is waiting for the kitchen to clear so they can serve us as a group. I'm sitting there after two hours of appetizers and a few drinks, zoning out and pushing around the bread crumbs on my plate because chasing that dang crumb was a lot more interesting than the table conversation about movies that we've seen and liked.

Just when I almost had the last bread crumb on my fork (no hands!), I hear one woman say, "You know my husband likes to watch porn movies." Well, needless to say my ears perk up.

Man, I thought. Get a few drinks in this group and they'll venture waaay off-road.

Now everybody knows that porn movies tell the story in the title. I mean, if you hear about a porn movie titled "Through the Back Door," you pretty much know everything about it except for the hats they're wearing. So now the conversation has my full attention again. "And," this woman continues, "he was watching 'Through the Rabbit Fence' last night."

My mind started racing. Wow, I thought, is she going to tell us the story from her husband's porn movie? What the heck is 'rabbit fencing', anyway? I've never even heard of that. Is it like with the gerbils? Do you need special pants?

"It was a story about these three aboriginal women in Australia," this woman says, "who walk across the outback to get home after being separated by the state from their families and how they got across the rabbit fence that divides the continent in half."

There was a very loud CLICK in my mind as the light went on. I swear the woman sitting next to me heard it. "Oh!", I said out loud to her. "She said 'FOREIGN movies'..."

Turns out I'd seen it. Good movie.

D'oh!

2010-07-12T19:20:00.001-07:00

Several weeks ago a woman in our department had a birthday. As part of the celebration we were told to surprise her when she was in a meeting with our manager. About eight of us did and as her present was brought in, I could see it was a clear plastic package with just a bow on it. As it went by me I looked at it and thought, "That looks like a fuzzy hemorrhoid cushion! Ah, a gag gift!"

We sang Happy Birthday and handed it to her. "Oh!", she said. "I can use this!"

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said.

"I can wear it around my neck when I sleep to keep from getting a stiff neck!" Then I looked at the package again and realized that next to the fuzzy hemorrhoid cushion was a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers and a fuzzy sleep mask.

'D'oh!' I thought and slapped my forehead. 'It's a neck pillow!' The woman standing next to me got it.

She didn't stop laughing for five minutes. This is not the first time something like this has happened to me.

The End of the Hi-Def Wars

2008-01-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

According to Godwin's Law, it's over: The Downfall of HD-DVD

Roadmap to Victory

2007-10-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

Remember the lesson of 2000: The Electoral College ballots choose the President, not the electorate's votes. The question to be answered is how will ANY Republican pry a Kerry-state away from Hillary in 2008? Christ, if they voted for Kerry, what kind of Republican could possibly entice them?

"Responding to statements by some Democratic rivals that she is not electable because her negative ratings are too high, she pointed to her increasing lead in national polls. "I am winning," she said. "That's a good place to start."

She sketched out a road to victory in the general election if she becomes the Democratic nominee, saying she expected to win every state that Senator John F. Kerry won in 2004 (251), plus Florida (27), Ohio (20), Arkansas (6), and probably Louisiana (9), New Mexico (5), and Nevada (5)."

Electoral Votes 2004 (269 needed to win):
Bush: 286
Kerry: 251

Electoral Votes 2008 (Hillary's est.):
(Rep TBD): 233 to 214
Hillary: 304 to 323

Republicans can lose 17 EC ballots in 2008 from 2004. If the Dems pick up AR/NM/NV, or LA and one of the previous, the Republicans still win. The Republicans CANNOT win if they they keep the previous four and lose either Florida OR Ohio and don't pick up 10 or three ballots respectively.

So, which states do you think Hillary could lose? Your choices are WA, OR, CA, WI, IL, MI, MN, PA, VT, NY, NH, RI, MA, CT, NJ, DE, MD, DC.

In addtion, Nebraska and Maine now parcel their electoral votes based on percentage of votes cast. A Republican can expect to lose 2/5 ballots from NE, and gain 1/4 (maybe 2) from Maine.

Climateaudit.org is outscoring AGW single-handedly

2007-08-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

Because we're all nerdly here and skeptics about Anthropological Global Warming, I'd like to share this site with you. Canadian Steve McIntyre's Climateaudit.org parses weather data for careful scrutiny on data collection and computing errors.

The net result is that Climateaudit.org is single-handedly beating AGW. It's somewhat technical, but if you think of graphs the way the Liberals think of pretty pictures, it's a good site.

By the way, he's the one who reverse engineered the the NASA data to show that there was a Y2K error in the data that showed 1998 was the warmest year on record. His conclusion? 1934 was the warmest year on record, and five of the hottest years were before WWII, not in the 1990's which look rather, well, average by comparison.Have fun!

Add this guy to your bookmarks and give him a bump now and then!

Plan 'B'

2007-06-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

Let's see, China burning four times the coal they do now to raise themselves to our western standards or radiation sickness from the unregulated emissions of their nuclear power plants. Tough call.

I go back and forth on this. The thing that sets me off is someone saying, "Global Warming will wipe out humanity." Okaaay, if that's true than anything that wipes out less than all humanity is ... better? Yes, it has to be. So a toxic, radioactive stew that limits human lifespan to 30 years IS technically better than "wiping out humanity."

There is another solution. I call it, "Plan B". Plan B will be the result of a long journey, of course how long depends on how short the plank is. But when we get there, we'll look around, slap our foreheads and say, "Of course! Why didn't we do this YEARS ago! It would be all over now and we could be drinking mojitos at the beach!"

But as I've been saying about the Iraq War, we can't win until the Left let's us win. As soon as the Left loses their lattes to jihadi curfews, the base history of socialism shows that it will do what it does best: Implement forced solutions with totalitarian authority. When that happens, we'll admit that the real problem is too many humans and use the blunt instruments we've been whistling past the graveyard for the last 60 years, resort to our basest animal instints, and kill off the rest of the world so that 'humanity', America, and socialism will survive. "It sucks to be you," will become a popular bumper sticker.

The biggest regret will be that we stewed ourselves for as long as we did before we turned up the heat.

Warming, cooling: Count the sunspots

2007-06-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

From:
Read the Sunspots
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

More grist for the mill. This ridiculous (koff) prediction says that based on diatom evidence found in western Canadian fjordic mud (say THAT three times real fast!) we're heading into an extreme low sunspot cycle and that, if history holds, global temperatures should plummet. (You didn't really say that three times real fast, did you?)

One other interesting note:

[T]wo-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Will the global warming advocates be persistent enough to build enough nuclear reactors during an Ice Age to bring us out the other side in balance with nature?

Ah, so many babies, so little bathwater....

Drilling Down to Iran

2007-06-09T14:27:00.001-07:00

Just so you know there IS an English translation the MSM chooses to not use for some reason:

Al Qods = The Blessed
Al Qods al Sharif = The Blessed site of Our Fathers (which is the Muslim name for 'Jerusalem')

Therefore, the Iranian Al Qods Brigade is NEVER referred to as the "Jerusalem Brigade", because that would be illuminating and show bias....

Most of you have heard me refer you to Richard Fernandez who posts on his blog The Belmont Club. Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail is another good blogger with a military mind who is providing insight not found in the paper of record (that would be the New York Times, for those of you still playing catch up). One of his recent posts is on Targeting the Iranian "Secret Cells" operating in Iraq who are the ones using Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs) against American troops. These are the next gen Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) used by the 'insurgents' operating in Baghdad.

(By the way, this has not been an easy war for the Mainstream Media (MSM) to choose sides on, linguistically speaking. If "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and the MSM's enemy is GWB, then HIS enemy in Iraq is the MSM "friend du jour". (GWB's enemy in America is the Democrats, so that shows you how they checked their math.) Their problem is that the US Coalition Forces originally referred to the Iraqi Sunni resistance as "insurgents" and the MSM picked it up without realizing what they had done. Now that "insurgent" is part of the vernacular, they can't quite figure out how to refer to the Iranian sponsored Shiite resistance in Iraq from the Mahdi and Badr Brigades. They lamely refer to these groups as "militias", while referring elsewhere to Hizbollah and Hamas interchangeably as "armies". And then when Hamas went and got itself elected head of Palestine, the inbreeding of the nomenclature collapsed and they pretty much ran out of euphemisms for "the enemy of my enemy". If you are truly cynical, you should expect the MSM to start referring to the Iranians as "Our friends" (using the imperial 'Our') and just cut to the chase. If you want to have fun when They do this, send a letter to your newspaper's ombudsman demanding They correct the use of 'our' to 'Our' and then sit back and watch Their little heads spin around.)

Back to Bill Roggio. He is detailing two Iranian cells: the Sheibani network and the Qazali network. The Qazali network was described as, "as a radical splinter Mahdi Army unit which operates under the aegis of the Sheibani network." Roggio further points out that General Petraeus stated the Qazali network received "substantial funding, training on Iranian soil, advanced explosive munitions and technologies as well as run of the mill arms and ammunition, in some cases advice and in some cases even a degree of direction."

I think it was Roggio's blog where I found out that satellite imagery had found a replica of a Mahdi Headquarters shrine (replica sites are used for practicing tactics by SOP forces) in Iran just prior to the snatching of five US Army soldiers last January who were part of a team occupying that shrine.

Soooo anyway, check this guy out from time to time as you hit the web. You'll learn more from him than from reading the NY Times, the (harumph) "paper of record" as they refer to themselves.

Did the NICS push a killer into a deadlier attack?

2007-04-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I've heard the federal NICS background check referred to as "a loop-hole." The Brady Campaign appears to be pushing for both federal and state background checks on long guns and handguns. They want to add medical records (mental health) to the approval process, and are lauding the Troy Police Department for denying a handgun license on subjective grounds -- which implies of course they feel a 'license' is warranted.

So what would happen if someone who supported the 2nd Amendment had written the article? How about "Gun control laws funnel killers to deadlier weapons." Or maybe this would just be a local news story, and this story would be national news: Man Uses Concealed Weapon To Stop Robber

-Dewey Ex Machina
NRA Endowed Lifetime Member

Denied handgun, alleged killer bought shotgun
Legal loophole apparently helped Mich. accountant carry out office shooting
LANSING, Mich. - Despite being denied a permit by police to buy a handgun last month, Anthony LaCalamita III had no trouble buying a shotgun a few weeks later.

Police say the accountant bought the 12-gauge shotgun Friday — the day after he was fired — and used it Monday to shoot three people at his former office in a Detroit suburb, killing a secretary and wounding two executives.

LaCalamita, 38, was able to buy the shotgun because Michigan, like all but four states, doesn’t require a permit to buy a shotgun or rifle. The state is one of only 12 states that require background checks for handgun buyers, but those buying shotguns or rifles need only pass an FBI criminal background check.

The discrepency is a legal loophole that needs to be closed, say gun control advocates like Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

“The bottom line is, we make it awfully easy in this country to get weapons,” Helmke said.

Only 15 states do their own background checks on long gun buyers, while 26 do their own checks on people buying handguns, according to the Brady Campaign.

Helmke said more states should do background checks because they have better access to criminal databases than federal authorities do and state checks are often more thorough.

No mental health check

Despite what his estranged wife’s attorney said is a history of depression and mental health problems, there was apparently nothing in LaCalamita’s FBI background check that prevented him from buying the shotgun. It’s left up to applicants to admit on their FBI background check form if they have psychological problems.

When LaCalamita requested a handgun permit last month from the Troy Police Department, the check was much more extensive.

Department spokesman Lt. Gerry Scherlinck said he couldn’t comment on why the department chief turned down LaCalamita’s request for a handgun permit. But he said the department looks at records that go beyond arrests or convictions.

“Theoretically, you could have a clear criminal history but still have contacts with law enforcement that would not rise to the level of an arrest or conviction,” Scherlinck said. A police chief “can use those contacts to deny a permit whether or not those involved arrests that might show up on a criminal history.”

LaCalamita was arraigned Wednesday on one count of first-degree murder, two counts of intent to commit murder, three counts of possessing a firearm in the commission of a felony, and one count of fleeing and eluding police. A not guilty plea was entered for LaCalamita by the judge.

Police say LaCalamita walked into his former office as employees were scrambling to beat the approaching federal tax deadline and opened fire with the shotgun.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

On Global Warming

2007-03-27T20:13:00.000-07:00

Anthropogenic Global Warming is threatening to become the breakout religion of the 21st Century. By re-codifying the definition of hysteria (see also conversion disorder) as Post Normal Science, the high priests of the Church of Ecology are not only waging a war for the hearts and minds of advertising-addled, blurb-fed, spin-meistered, atheistic consumers void of the third leg of humanity (reason, empathy and faith), but for their pocketbooks as well.

Consider this: Instead of fear-mongering for AGW with a hand-wringing search for a savior leading to the old camel’s nose under the tent of global taxation managed by corrupt U.N. bureaucrats, why not state the problem to encourage a free-market solution? Instead of saying, “What shall we do? Somebody help us!,” say, “We need a solution that provides ten times the power at one-tenth of the cost with no carbon footprint.”

Simple, isn’t it? Which one do you think is more likely to generate a solution? Would you rather let the former lead to someone telling you to run hither and yon in the work camp, or the latter where you can control your own destiny? Here’s the problem: the 'environmentalists' won’t support the latter.

The 'environmentalists' won’t support “a solution that provides ten times the power at one-tenth of the cost with no carbon footprint,” for many reasons:

It takes control of the solution out of their hands, and hence their ability to levy taxes.
More power for less cost will produce affluence, leisure and quite likely, more children. That means more people straining their perception of the limits of a global Gaia.
Phrasing the problem in this way leads to a dead-end answer in their minds: Nuclear power.

That’s the bottom line. Ten times the power at one-tenth of the cost with no carbon footprint can only mean more nuclear power. So ultimately, their FEAR of nuclear contamination is stronger than their belief in AGW. The problem with that is in a consequential reality Global Warming can be measured and dealt with scientifically, while the only place fear can be dealt with in their minds.

In order to solve an urgency created through hysterical fear-mongering (AGW), you have to discard a valid solution previously dismissed by hysterical fear mongering (nuclear contamination). The old adage of, “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself” has never been more true.

Any time someone talks to me about AGW:

I immediately agree that we need “a solution that provides ten times the power at one-tenth of the cost with no carbon footprint.”
I ask them if they would support that as well.
When they answer, point out that solution already exists and demand to know if they would support the solution if it meant more nuclear power plants.
Restate their original position, yes or no, do they believe that Anthropogenic Global Warning will “wipe out humanity.”
Point out that in their minds, their FEAR of nuclear contamination is stronger than their belief in Global Warming and therefore either they do not believe the consequences of Global Warming are as bad as they think, or else they have to give up their fear of nuclear power. Which is it going to be fear of the unknown or fear of the known? This is the Sophie’s Choice that needs to be made.
If a solution that provides ten times the power at one-tenth of the cost with no carbon footprint were developed, you could use 99% of the solution to recapture carbon and still be even.
99% of the costs associated with producing nuclear power are regulatory which can be wiped out with a stroke of the pen.
If AGW is going to wipe out humanity, why wouldn’t they accept a solution that would only wipe out half of humanity? If you could save half of humanity and completely anthropogenic carbon from the atmosphere, why wouldn’t you do that? In reality, if you removed regulatory restraints, and let them come back as PROVEN necessary, then you are still waaay ahead of the game.
Had we gone on building nuclear plants at the rate we were building them in the 1960s, we’d be in a lot better shape with regard to air quality, greenhouse emissions, and energy independence. Environmental concerns stopped that, but now environmentalists are beginning to look more favorably on greenhouse-friendly nuclear power.

Suddenly AGW isn’t the bogey man it is being puffed up to be, just as nuclear power isn’t the demon we were led to think it was.

An Iranian timeline vis-a-vis the Brits

2007-03-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

(This blogger has put together a timeline of (mostly) relevant activities by the Iranians vis-à-vis the kidnapping of the British Marines. Go to his site for updates. I post here because it is an excellent summary. -Jim)

Verum Serum

Timeline: Iran vs. the US in Iraq (Updated)
Posted by John at 11:37 pm on March 26th, 2007

I’m assembling a timeline of events leading up to the kidnapping of 15 British sailors and marines based primarily on work done by FrontPage magazine, HotAir, Regime Change Iran and myself. Mistakes are likely mine. It’s possible not all these events are relevant or that some that are relevant aren’t included. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments. I may continue adding info to the timeline as I assemble more info (i.e. this may develop if I have time). [Note: I’m adding a few things per Allahpundit’s suggestion.]

August 2003: (link) First EFP (explosively formed projectile) attack in Iraq.

May 29, 2005: (link) An EFP attack near Amara kills 21-year-old British lance corporal, Alan Brackenbury.

June 2005: (link) A Japanese convoy near Samawa is struck by a roadside bomb which uses a remote control firing device typically provided by Iran or Hezbollah.

July 19, 2005: (link) The United States secretly sends Iran a diplomatic protest through Swiss intermediaries charging that Tehran is supplying lethal roadside explosive devices (EFPs) to Shiite extremists in Iraq. “Message from the United States to the Government of Iran” — informed the Iranians of the May 29th attack on Cpl. Brackenbury and notes that the Shiite militants who planted the device had longstanding ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran.

August 2005: (link) Iran denies any connection to the EFPs being used in Iraq.

September 2005: (link) British forces arrest Ahmad Jawwad al-Fartusi, the leader of a splinter group of the Mahdi Army that carried out E.F.P. attacks against British forces in southern Iraq. American intelligence concludes that his fighters might have received training and E.F.P. components from Hezbollah.

October 2005: (link) British ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, tells reporters in London that Iran is supplying lethal technology that had been used against British troops. Prime Minister Tony Blair adds, “The particular nature of those devices lead us to either to Iranian elements or to Hezbollah.”

April 2006: (link) EFP attacks in Iraq rise sharply.
October-December, 2006: (link) Excluding casualty data for the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, where the explosives have not been found, the devices (EFPs) account for about 30 percent of American and allied deaths this quarter of the year.

November 2, 2006: (link) Cpl. Daniel James –interpreter for Gen David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan — is charged with “prejudicing the safety of the state” by passing information “calculated to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy”. It was said he had communicated with a “foreign power” in the incident on Nov 2, believed to be Iran.

November 15, 2006: (link) The Telegraph reports on links between Al-Quaeda and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard:
“From the evidence we have seen, Iran’s links to al-Qa’eda go far deeper than simply supplying them with equipment,” said a senior Western intelligence official. “They are allowing them the use of training facilities so that they can ensure their attacks are as effective as possible.”

December 9, 2006: (link) Iran really wants peace, says Time magazine:
“TIME’s sources, in contrast to U.S. charges that Tehran is fueling instability there…indicate that Iranian officials essentially agree with the Baker-Hamilton conclusion that while Iran gains an advantage from having the U.S. mired in Iraq, its long-term interests are not served by Iraqi chaos and territorial disintegration.”

December 20, 2006: (link) The US announces that it is moving a second carrier group to the Gulf “in a display of military resolve toward Iran.”

December 21, 2006: (link) On a tip, US forces raid the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shia leader, and arrest two senior members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force including Brig. Gen. Amir Mohsen Shirazi (link) (other reports call him Moshin Chizari or simply Chizari). Chizari is the #3 commander of the Revolutionary Guard (link). (Note that the only story to give the exact date is this one from ABC)

According to the Washington Post, Chizari has on him (link):
detailed weapons lists, documents pertaining to shipments of weapons into Iraq, organizational charts, telephone records and maps, among other sensitive intelligence information. Officials were particularly concerned by the fact that the Iranians had information about importing modern, specially shaped explosive charges into Iraq, weapons that have been used in roadside bombs to target U.S. military armored vehicles.

Michael Ledeen’s summarized the find this way (link):

He was carrying documents, one of which was in essence a wiring diagram of Iranian operations in Iraq. That wiring diagram included both Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist groups, and was of such magnitude that American officials were flabbergasted.
Ledeen goes on to say that the information had (by Jan 2 when his post was published) reached the President.

Late December 2006: (link) After the President “was given new intelligence on the scale of Iranian operations to foment violence in Iraq” he signed a “clandestine directive” ordering “US forces to launch a military offensive against Iranian officials and Revolutionary Guards…in Iraq”

December 29, 2006: (link) Against the wishes of the US, the two captured Iranians are returned to Iran by al-Maliki’s Iraqi government.

January 10, 2007: (link) President Bush addresses the nation saying, in part:
Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

January 11, 2007: A US led raid on a consular office in Irbil, Iraq leads to the capture of six Iranians including (link):
Hassan Abbassi, a strategist “close to” President Ahmedinejad and the only individual with any diplomatic credentials.
Mohammad Jaafari, an aid to National Security advisor Ali Larijani
Jalal Sharifi, a professional intelligence officer.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Djafari Sahraroudi, a Kurdish affairs expert wanted by Interpol
Mojhadi
Safderi, two Revolutionary Guard officers (link).
One of the six, (Hassan?) is released. The other five remain in custody.

Mid-January, 2007: (link) Immediately after the capture of the Irbil six, “Ayatollah Khamenei hastily convened a national security damage control committee to devise new strategies for reducing Iran’s footprint in Iraq. It was staffed almost exclusively with top Rev. Guards officers, including the head of IRGC intelligence, Maj. Gen. Morteza Rezai, and former deputy IRGC commander, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqr Zolqadr.”

January 17, 2007: (link) “Iraqi intelligence sources disclosed to The Daily Telegraph that Iran plans to reap the huge financial rewards presented by the southern oil fields and prevent Western businesses from gaining a foothold inside Basra.”

January 19, 2007: (link) The Brits are skeptical: “As for the anxious U.S. warnings of Iranian support for the insurgency in Iraq, a British officer was not so sure. “We have no hard evidence that the Iranians are directly involved in the attacks against coalition forces here. We have some suspicions, but so far we have found no direct proof,” the officer said.”

January 20, 2007: (link) A team of twelve men disguised as U.S. soldiers entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, where U.S. soldiers conducted a meeting with local officials, and kidnaps five US soldiers. They are later killed. Within a week, investigators have a suspect “this raid appears to have been directed and executed by the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps.”

January 26, 2007: (link) CBS News:
For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have been catching Iranian agents, interviewing them and letting them go. A report in Friday’s Washington Post says the administration is now convinced that was ineffective because Iran paid no penalty for its mischief.
As one senior administration official told the Post, “There were no costs for the Iranians. They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back.”

January 31, 2007: (link) Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Wednesday “We will not accept Iran to use Iraq to attack the American forces, but does this not exist? It exists, and I assure you it exists.” Also: “We have told the Iranians and the Americans, ‘We know that you have a problem with each other, but we are asking you, please solve your problems outside Iraq,”

(link) Half as many US deaths caused by EFPs imported from Iran as in December.

February 1, 2007: (link) The NY Times editorial desk says the US must stop “bullying “Iran:
Mr. Bush’s…disastrous war in Iraq has done so much damage to America’s credibility…that it no longer frightens America’s enemies. The only ones really frightened are Americans and America’s friends.

February 6, 2007: (link) Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad is kidnapped by 30 gunmen wearing the uniforms of a special Iraqi army unit that often works with United States military forces in Iraq. The next day, Iran’s ambassador to Bagdad accused the US of being behind the abduction (link).

February 7, 2007: (link via HotAir) Gen. Alireza Asgari disappears from his hotel room in Istanbul, Turkey. He is believed to have defected to the US.

February 8, 2007: (link via HotAir) Gen. Soltani — said to have intimate knowledge of foreign intelligence operations — travels to Bandar Abbas and then disappears.
According to the Frontpage article, “the generals revealed the names of nearly a dozen top Iraqi politicians who were on the payroll of the Iranian government.”

February 11, 2007: (link) At an intelligence briefing in Bagdad, the Pentagon puts on display weapons captured in Iraq with Iranian markings. The main culprit is a type of bomb called an EFP or “explosively formed penetrator.” They pentagon estimates the damage caused by such weapons as “more than 170 Americans killed in action and more than 600 wounded”

That Night In Iran: (link) The office of former reformist president Khatami is raided and all computers, files and fax machines are taken. Only a couple of small, independent papers mention the raid.

February 12, 2007: (link) A cache of more than 100 fifty-calibre sniper rifles manufactured in Austria and sold legally to Iran is discovered in Iraq. The rifles cost nearly $20,000 each.

Early February: (link) Fox News reports: “Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has fled his Baghdad stronghold for the friendly confines of Iran’s capital…within the past few weeks out of fear for his safety and security.”

And take this one with a grain of salt, but a report from a Kurdish news site claims to have uncovered a letter from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warning Muqtada al-Sadr to keep his Iranian connections under wraps. Oddly, the Kurdish site is down but a reference to the report including an image of the letter can be found here.

March 9, 2007: (link) US General Mixon, commander of Multinational Division-North and the 25th Infantry Brigade in Iraq, seizes a large cache of Iranian made weapons and says “I’ve got momentum and want to press forward.” Gen. Mixon is responsible for the area of Eastern Iraq known as Diyala.

March 15, 2007 (link) An EFP attack in in eastern Baghdad kills four American service members and wounded two others.

March 18, 2007: (link) In an article in Subhi Sadek, the Revolutionary Guard’s weekly paper, Reza Faker, a writer believed to have close links to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned that Iran would strike back.

“We’ve got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks,” he said. “Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis.”

The same day: (link) Jerusalem Post reports that a senior Iranian military official said Saturday that the decision to capture the soldiers was made during a March 18 emergency meeting of the High Council for Security following a report by the Al-Quds contingent commander, Kassem Suleimani, to the Iranian chief of the armed forces, Maj.Gen. Hassan Firouz Abadi. In the report, according to Asharq al-Awsat, Suleimani warned Abadi that Al Quds and Revolutionary Guards’ operations had become transparent to US and British intelligence following the arrest of a senior Al Quds officer and four of his deputies in Irbil.

March 21, 2007: (link via HotAir) The Associated Press reports:
“the Mahdi Army is breaking into splinter groups, with up to 3,000 gunmen now financed directly by Iran.” Furthermore, “hundreds of these fighters have crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.”

March 22, 2007: (link) The Khazali brothers — former ranking members of al-Sadr’s Shia movement — are arrested by US forces near Basra. The brothers are believed responsible for the Karbala raid on January 20, 2007. Mehdi Army commanders claim that the Khazalis had split with al-Sadr and lead 3,000 fighters with financing from Iran.

March 23, 2007: (link) Lt Col Justin Maciejewski tells the BBC that while he had no “smoking gun” to prove Iranian interference in Basra, local community leaders informed him that Iranian agents were paying local men 500 US dollars a month to carry out attacks and providing them with sophisticated modern weapons.

Later the same day: (link) Fifteen British Navy personnel taken at gunpoint by Iranian forces off the coast of Iraq.

March 25, 2007: (link) The Sunday Mirror reports:
According to Western intelligence sources, intercepted radio communications show Tehran has been panicking over key operatives being picked up by Coalition forces in Iraq.

An Israeli source told The Sunday Mirror that Iranian undercover units in Iraq have been ordered to mount hostage-taking operations against Coalition forces in retaliation.

Later the same day: (link) The U.N. Security Council unanimously approves new arms and financial sanctions against Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.

Starting a "Right to Carry Roadshow"

2007-03-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

INTRODUCTION

I would like to put together a proposal for a CCW "Road Show" similar to the one organized by the New Jersey Coalition for Self-Defense and the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Ranges. This proposal would provide the required Florida paperwork to assist people in meeting the standards for the State of Florida to issue a CCW to a non-resident, and shepherd them through the process.

In discussing this, one of the questions that came up was if the California "Handgun Safety Certificate" (HSC) met Florida requirements for "training". The CA HSC is issued after taking a test from a certified instructor, and is a state requirement to purchase a handgun. Most stores that sell firearms have one or more of the sales people certified as an instructor.

COMPLIANCE WITH FLORIDA LAW

I would like to find out if the CA HSC meets the requirements defined for "training" under FL 790.06 (20)(h) "Demonstrates competence with a firearm by any one of the following". The CA HSC certificate may meet the criteria for any one or more of the following sub-sections:

1. Completion of any hunter education or hunter safety course approved by the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission or a similar agency of another state;

3. Completion of any firearms safety or training course or class available to the general public offered by a law enforcement, junior college, college, or private or public institution or organization or firearms training school, utilizing instructors certified by the National Rifle Association, Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission, or the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services;

7. Completion of any firearms training or safety course or class conducted by a state-certified or National Rifle Association certified firearms instructor;

DEFINITION OF THE CALIFORNIA HANDGUN SAFETY CERTIFICATE

The California statute that applies to the HSC is as follows:

12801. (a) As used in this article, the following definitions shall apply:...

(2) "DOJ Certified Instructor" or "certified instructor" means a person designated as a handgun safety instructor by the Department of Justice pursuant to subdivision (d) of Section 12804.
12804. (a) The department shall develop an instruction manual in English and in Spanish by October 1, 2002. The department shall make the instructional manual available to firearms dealers licensed pursuant to Section 12071, who shall make it available to the general public. Essential portions of the manual may be included in the pamphlet described in Section 12080...

(d) The department shall prescribe a minimum level of skill, knowledge and competency to be required of all handgun safety certificate instructors.

The instruction manual is available as a PDF from this site.

Please note: THERE IS NO CLASSROOM REQUIREMENT TO OBTAIN A CA HSC. I do not know if this is meets Florida requirements or not.

In addition, anyone purchasing a handgun must demonstrate a knowledge of the safe handling of the firearm by demonstrating the manual of arms as coded in law under CA 12071. (b)(8)(D)(i).

The Seven Sisters of Oil

2007-03-15T08:50:00.001-07:00

Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club posts on the new Seven Sisters of Oil, where he relays that according to the Financial Times, the original seven have been replaced.

It strikes me that this speaks to the heart of the "This is a War for Oil" anti-war meme. The idea is that the Iraq War is being fought by Bush who has been bought and paid for by American oil interests, as embodied in the 20th Century by The Seven Sisters. The problem with that is there are no longer any American interests in the Seven Sisters. The game has changed. The original Seven Sisters are now consumers, and are not the "rule-makers", but instead are the "rule-takers".

Fernandez point is that 40% of the world's oil was produced by Western countries in the middle of the 20th Century, and that within a few years 90% or the world's oil will be produced by Third World countries. Exporting oil production to these unstable reasons implies inherent risks. What the anti-war argument SHOULD be is that the Iraqi war is about stabilizing unstable parts of the world. Which as I think about it, is probably bad if you're a tree-hugging environmentalist who wants oil production stopped.

So the next time anyone tells you "this war is about oil", you can ask them to explain to you what they mean, and know that ultimately, they only answer they'll be able to give you is 'Haliburton,' a smallish international bit player in the "Oil Wars", or shake their fist in a "curse you Red Baron" while blaming Dubya for destabilizing the Middle East, which is what they really want in the first place…

The Original Seven Sisters of Oil (OLD), now referred to as the "Supermajors" group:

1. ExxonMobil (formerly Esso, formerly Standard Oil of New Jersey)
a. ExxonMobil (formerly Mobil, formerly Standard Oil of New York/Socony)
2. Shell (formerly Royal Dutch Shell Anglo-Dutch)
3. BP (formerly BP Amoco, formerly Amoco, formerly Standard Oil of Indiana, formerly British Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC))
4. Chevron (formerly ChevronTexaco, formerly Chevron, formerly Standard Oil of California/Socal)
a. Chevron/BP/Cumberland Farms (formerly Gulf Oil)
b. Chevron (formerly ChevronTexaco, formerly Texaco)

The 21st Century Seven Sisters of Oil (NEW):

1. Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia)
2. Gazprom (Russia)
3. CNPC (China)
4. NIOC (Iran)
5. PDVSA/Citgo (Venezuela)
6. Petrobas (Brazil)
7. Petronis (Malaysia)

I can't help but notice that there are no U.S. companies in the list. Even Mexico's PEMEX is missing. Oh, and notice how neatly the original Seven have cannibalized each other as their market matured and they consolidated for economic efficiency. Do you think Petrobas will buy Citgo in 20 years or so? Or maybe CNPC might buy Gazprom? Umm, no. They'll stay separate and slowly grind down under dilapidated infrastructures until the governments they feed demand prices so high that they'll go to war instead of cutting benefits. But, then again, that's why this war is about Oil, isn't it?

OPEC
1. Saudi Arabia (Saudi Aramco)
2. Iran (NIOC)
3. Venezuela (PDVSA/Citgo)
4. Algeria
5. Angola
6. Indonesia
7. Iraq
8. Kuwait
9. Libya
10. Nigeria
11. Qatar
12. United Arab Emirates

Not OPEC:
Russia, China, Brazil, Malaysia

There is now talk that Russia may form a Gasoline consortium (link missing) to control the refining price of gasoline vis-a-vis ethanol.

If a poll falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it mean anything?

2007-02-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club discusses a BBC survey that asked people in eleven countries whether they thought a conflict between the West and Islam was inevitable. Because this is the first time the poll has been surveyed, there is no historical perspective in the change of opinion. We don’t know what they would have said a year ago, or 10 years ago, or 1,000 years ago during the Crusades. So, let’s make stuff up.

According to the poll, currently, 39% of Germans believe that "violent conflict was inevitable", as do 31% of Americans. Indonesia has a high degree of belief that a conflict is coming. Lebanon has a low degree of belief.

Then Richard curiously asks what the number of Americans, New Yorkers say, might have thought about an “inevitable conflict” with Islam six years ago. Good question, as far as it goes, but let’s take it a little farther. Let’s assume the question is really about “inevitable conflict” leading to penultimate destruction instead of about a paltry disagreement between Islam and the West.

Substitute “Russia” for “Islam” and ask the question again. The percentages would have been higher previously than now. In fact, it is now to the point that practically NO ONE thinks any longer that “a conflict between Russia and the West is inevitable.” Sure, there are some dead-ender anti-Communists that won’t let go, or those who think that a conflict is inevitable between any two different entities. You could suppose that you might get the same answer by asking if conflict was inevitable between Teddy Bears and the West.

Let’s ask another question: Is it likely that an asteroid will lead to the inevitable destruction of humanity? Yes, of course, asteroids wiped out the dinosaurs. No, don’t be ridiculous, that only happens once in 200 million years. “Umm, I don’t know,” is the correct answer.

Or, “Will anthropogenic Global Warming destroy the world?” Of course, don’t be stupid, you read the papers don’t you? Besides, Al Gore says so. Hysteria obviously throws much greater weight than a private, reasonable opinion does.

So, let’s suppose one more question, and let’s ask it of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Marxists, Zoroastrians, Muslims, everyone. “Should [insert your religion here] be the world’s one true religion?” And maybe there should be one follow up question. “Should your religion destroy the world to do that?” All it takes is one sect to say, "Yes," and it's 'game on'.

Now that would be a poll we could use! But when the answer is known, the question changes to: “What are YOU going to do about that (or them)?”

What DO you do about people who would destroy the world in the name of their religion? I think he who shoots first, most often, loudest and biggest wins this one.

A penalty of affluence

2007-02-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

I had an amusing experience the other night.

Some Stanford friends came in from out of town with their daughter, a high school Junior (I'm not that old, am I?), and brought along a friend of the daughter's for a SoCal college tour. It's been over 30 years since I had to answer that question, so it was a fun, nostalgic trip. It was fun to re-explore that whole time of life. They have different answers than I did.

So I started asking questions. Where have you been? (Many different schools.) What kind of schools are you looking for? (Smaller, 10-20K, liberal arts, not for hard science or engineering.) Stanford? (No.) Why qualities are you looking for in a school? (A good sports reputation.) Academics? (No.) Party school? (No. We're looking for a school with good diversity.)

Diversity? Like Republicans AND tree-huggers, living together under the same roof? No, not exactly. Mom explained to me that daughter wants a school with a higher proportion of black students than was typical, 10-15% or so (statistically it is 6% or less). Not gimongous and flooded with Orientals (Asians, buttwipe). I see. The unspoken reason for the daughter's preference is because her boyfriend is black (she's not). That's fine by me, of course, but I don't know how that fits in with choosing a college, but whatever floats your boat, you know?

So, I played the game a little more. East of the Mississippi, west of the Mississippi? (Shrug.) I pretty much gave up at that point and Mom and Dad and I chatted about schools. I made some suggestions they hadn't thought of. The conversation turned to other subjects. The evening passed and it was good to have a chance to chat with old friends.

A couple days later, it occured to me that what those affluent, suburban kids were doing was completely different than what I did. I figured college is college, Michigan State was right next door and as good a choice as any. I also applied to Michigan and because I was a good swimmer, talked to several other schools trying to snare a scholarship, but didn't. In the end, I applied to Stanford because my High School Swim Coach said I should. Basically, I applied on a dare and got in. There, I said it.

Now, these kids were choosing a school more to live a fantasy. Athletic jocks, personal attention, anything that feeds their affluent lifestyle. I was also struck by the idea that the daughter didn't want to go to a tradionally Black College. I think she wanted as much choice as she could get without having to give up being in the majority.

So, it appears to me that for these girls, picking a college is sort of like practicing for planning their wedding. Let's face it, they're bored. They have too many options and no needs. The Unabomber was right.

They don't need diversity, they need adversity.

I totally missed that part

2007-02-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

You know how that hijacker from Mauritania was overcome by the passengers? Passengers thwart hijacking, end of story. Right?

Umm, well, no. It turns out the hijacker opened the cockpit door, walked in, pointed one revolver at the pilot and another revolver at the copilot and said, "Take me to Paris."

According to the papers, his request for asylum had been turned down several times and he wanted to get in this time.

According to the pilot, when asked why he wanted to go to Paris the hijacker replied, "Can’t you see all the bad things they are doing to Muslims?"

See, I totally missed that part of the story when I read about it on the major news media. It must have been my misunderstanding.

See "The most underplayed story in France so far this year"

Losing the Big One

2007-01-25T00:36:00.000-08:00

I am a proponent of the idea that Iraq is a campaign in the "Long War". As I look at the progress, or lack thereof, I think more about how the world will appear to us after we have lost the Long War.

We will look back at Iraq as the "last, best chance" to have turned it around. The demographics in Europe as those nations depopulate their native races will shift from Christian to Muslim. Within 20 years, France will be dominated by Islam, with Germany, Italy and England following within 50 years. Russia as we know it will cease to exist, having been split up the middle through the 'Stans and Chechnya into an Islamic dominated Siberia.

Just 50 years from now, most of southern Europe will be Islamic, and so the EU and probably Canada. America will be a second class nation to the Islamic Caliphate and China. There will be no "Terrorist Watch Lists" because we will not be able to enforce it; anyone with malevolent intent who wants to come to America, will have to be let in. If China is even slightly capitalistic, it will be our best friend and Overlord.

The dollar will not be the international currency, but Euros will be, causing our system of financing international debt to fail. English will not be the lingua franca, but Arabic and Chinese will. We will need to learn these languages early in school to do business with them. We will teach the Koran in public schools, not as a religious text, but as an international legal text so we can travel abroad without being arrested.

When we want to visit the Mosque of the Notre Dame as tourists in Paris, we will remove our shoes and carry a prayer mat inside while American women dressed in burqas wait outside for their husbands. American women who are unaccompanied by their husbands outside of these waiting areas will be beaten by the Religious Police. Dhimmis (Christians) may even need religious papers to get work permits domestically. Kafirs (Jews), of course will not be tolerated.

I think it will happen this way, because this is the way we did it. We got big and powerful and inflicted our beliefs on the rest of the world, then took it for granted. Democracy, phhfft! What were we thinking. Tribal religious values are the way of the future.

In the meantime, I suggest we re-evaluate this whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach to our domestic treatment of our international policy. This idea that Bushitler is our enemy is immature, if for no other reason than there is nothing about radical Islam that advances Feminism, equality or justice. The enemy is clear, the battle joined. While it is true that the fastest way to end a war is to lose it, the consequences of that approach should be well considered.

It All Comes Out the Same

2006-09-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

Putting the GWOT in perspective is extremely difficult because it is so vast. The ‘enemy’ is diffused throughout an entire culture. Their religious texts, their religious leaders, their schools, all their fundamental beliefs are dug in square up against ours. To ‘win’ they need to do nothing. And they are more capable of digging in their heels and doing nothing than we are.

Currently American morale is suffering. Support for a military reprisal for 9/11 is ebbing. Consider the following two observations:

1. Kopi Luwak is a rare Indonesian or Vietnamese coffee (kopi) made from beans that have “passed through” the digestive track of a luwak, otherwise known as a palm civet or civet cat. The luwak eats the ripe coffee cherry and passes the bean, which is then harvested from the ground and shipped to coffee roasters where it is processed into “gourmet” coffee. Research has determined that coffee passed by a luwak has been changed chemically. Specifically the process seems to break down some of the bean’s proteins which are known to contribute to the bitterness of coffee, making it more palatable.

2. Regardless of when Osama bin Laden is caught, if it happens during President Bush’s administration, he will be accused of staging it for political advantage. This is part of what I am going to refer to as the ‘poisoned well’ approach to the GWOT.

How are these two observations linked in my tiny little reptilian brain? It appears to me that the current political climate for the Long War is now in a state where the necessary commitment exceeds the public’s will to support. Honestly, this may or may not be a function of politics; it’s entirely likely that people have just gotten tired of bad news and want to be rid of it. Except for the fact the war isn’t over, this is understandable.

One of the great observations I read lately was that the fastest way to end a war was to lose it. It may be that now when anyone says they want the war over at any cost, that is exactly what they mean. There has been no recent, immediate strike; no 9/11-like attack, only the slow low-volume meat-grinder of Iraq and the looming threat of the alliance between the two remaining Axis of Evil members. People are getting tired, want to wave their hand at the problem and make it go away. They no longer have a concept of what “losing” means in the way they did on 9/12.

The next administration will have no choice but to scale back.

Consider, though, the nature of the war from the other point of view . Long term, low level, almost evolutionary in it’s approach, this type of change has been called “parlimentary revolutionism” when it was plotted by the Communists. Their idea was that short, violent wars of revolution kill the host economy and make the implementation of socialism a social structure that redistributes poverty instead of wealth -- not much of a selling proposition. Obviously, it is much better from their perspective to start with a wealthy country and use the system to implent change slowly enough that socialism is still inevitable, but not so destructive as to destroy the underlying wealth of the country. Socialism will then have a much longer life and slower decline, appearing almost as stasis.

Along come the radical Islamists, well schooled in the political science of Arabic-centric socialism. They asked the question, that instead of secular socialism with it’s long, gray, inevitable slide to totalitarianism, why not Islamic socialism, ending with the installation of a theocratic caliphate? Certainly there is history behind it, this would be the third Great Jihad. Praise Allah that no one really reads history anymore and that the Christians seem to be out of favor and they can probably take the Jews down while no one is watching.

Great theory. Even though we are watching, of course, we are impotent to do anything about it. We are tired. We are not devoted. It’s been years since we were attacked and that’s over now. The bad people have gone away, we want to party.

Except the the bad people haven’t gone away.

Within a generation or two, absent a bloody, vigilante-style civil war, Europe will be Muslim. The great cathedrals will eventually be sacked and torn down, replaced by the grandest mosques in the world. It will all come down to numbers, demographics, babies and birth control. It will all be legal, fairly elected. There will be a small Muslim party that will grow into a large Islamist party that dominates the legislatures of one or two, then three and more European countries.

That will mean that England, Europe, Arabia through to Pacifica, most of Africa and even large parts of Russia and China will be dominated by Islam. It will take years for this to happen, 30 to 80 years or more, but it will happen. The last holdouts will be Austrailia/New Zealand, South/Central America, maybe Mexico although a good socialist upheaval will pave the way for conversion, and the U.S. Canada, as part of the British Empire, has already granted Islam a toe-hold via Pakistani immigrants and won’t be sufficiently blood-thirsty enough to play nasty. Nope, they’ll roll over and say, “It’s the will of the people. PBUH.”

The only hope is that the Islamists get greedy or can be provoked into a shooting war. A couple strikes against the U.S., half a dozen nukes or other mass terror attacks and the U.S. mood will change. The coffee cherry will come out the other end. But not now. For the foreseeable future, we are going to have to take a beating before we are ready to fight and kill and win. If they play the slow, evolution not revolution gambit, they will win in the long run.

You and I are coffee cherries; Islamist politics, the civet. Soon, when their world is big and ours is small, we will understand the price we paid for growing weary. When that happens, when we’re surrounded and our lifestyles are under attack, when homosexuality is punishable by death, when women cannot drive or leave the house without being covered and escorted by a male, then we will understand why the USAF put together a plan to drop 2,000lbs of bombs on every one of the 14,000 mosques in Iran on a sunny Saturday morning at 10:17am in the year of our Lord 2008 during High Service.

What we will not understand, is why anyone ever thought it was reckless to put the plan together in the first place. Until then, we need to do everything we can to make their world smaller:

Confront and destroy the radical Islamists
Destroy their havens
Make true peace with the moderates
Instill democracy
Integrate our values into their culture
Live our lives without fear of death

From The Defense Forum Washington, DC (Aug. 2008), Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester reports that Dr. David J. Kilcullen (a reserve LtCol in the Australian Army, currently on loan to the State Department, at the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism) argued that insurgents can adapt faster than we can, and can exploit the media better. He referenced a video of Zawahiri from some time ago in which he described the strategy to be used against the US: We “can beat Americans by being slower than them because they have attention deficit disorder.” This ability to think differently in terms of time is key to Al Qaeda’s abilities.

Re: Addiction to Firearm Regulation

2006-08-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

(I posted a comment at David Hardy's Of Arms and the Law on his post "Addiction to firearm regulation" and have reposted it both his piece and my response here.)

Just had a thought, based on the previous entry. In my experience, most legislation follows one of two courses: (1) after enactment, it endures without much change for decades. Its advocates got what they wanted; from there on they bring test cases to interpret or enforce it. National Environmental Protection Act, Administrative Procedure Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act would be laws of this type that we handled at Interior. Alternately, (2) the law is tinkered with in minor ways. The Endangered Species Act falls into this class, with the tinkering generally being aimed at loosening it.
Firearm regulations are entirely different. No matter how much is enacted, its political proponents insist that they must have more. As I noted in the previous post, even New York and Massachusetts politicians want more, more. If the laws are failing, it just proves they must be made nationwide, not that something is wrong with the approach.
Given this, can we fairly speak of an addiction to firearms regulation? The behavioral pattern matches the most severe chemical addictions. There is no such thing as enough. Whatever is obtained soon ceases to satisfy. In chemical addiction, because the body compensates by creating more natural depressants or stimulants, in legislation, because crime continues or rises).
The concept of "enough" does not even exist. I think Dave Kopel once pointed out to me that no antigun organization has ever laid out a real platform -- "this is what we want, and if we get it, we'll be satisfied and stop there."
The only parallel I can think of is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which has really won all that they sought (.08, no drinking under 21, stiff sanctions, severe punishment for repeat offenders), but keeps coming for more action. Even there, most of their recent push is for more enforcement and stiffer sanctions, wanting roving checkpoints and license plate seizures -- they don't seem to be pushing for lowering the level still farther, or raising the drinking age to 25, or things like that.
What could we regard as symptoms of a legislative addiction? I'd suggest:
1. No level of regulation is "enough."
2. That a problem continues despite regulation does not prompt an examination of whether the regulation itself is ineffective, but only the claim that it is insufficient. Logically, there will be situations where the legislation is potentially effective, but insufficient. The key here is that the proponents of it are incapable of examining it in this light: the thought that it is ineffective is literally inconceivable. Evidence to the contrary is simply ignored. They MUST HAVE MORE.
3. As a consequence of 1 and 2, the proponents lack a true platform. They have at best a time-bound agenda of what they think they might get in the near future.
4. If the addiction cannot be fed well, anything will suffice, even if it has no real impact ("cop-killer bullets," "assault weapons").
5. The addiction must be fed, even in the face of suggestions that it is harmful. The loss of both houses to the GOP, liberal support despite harm to other liberal objectives such as civil liberties, the tendency of opponents to counter-legislate with stiffer penalties and even the death penalty, etc. These consequences, which would meet with proponents' strong objections if they came about in isolation, are acceptable costs if the addiction can be fed.
[Guy Smith adds, in a comment stopped for some reason by the spam filter:
I'm not sure it is an "addiction", but more like self reinforcing diagnosis.Contrast gun control logic with "medicine" as practiced by barber doctors of medieval times. If you were ill and went to the barber, they would let some blood. The loss of blood made you feel woozy, so to cure this condition they would ... let some more blood. The resulting drop in blood pressure would make you nauseous and lethargic, so the learned barber would ... let some more blood.Repeat until the patient dies from "vile vapors" or some other contrived explanation.The modern scenario is one where the unintended consequence -- emboldened criminals, street level violence, hot home invasions -- bring calls for yet more gun control ... repeat until we look like the
U.K.]

(My response:)

An addiction? Certainly not a physical one, no, not like to heroin or nicotine. An emotional or psychological one, perhaps, but substantially different from an addiction to gambling or pornography -- although alluding to an addiction to the "pornography of gun control" or to "gambling on victimization" has potential.

I think the Anti's position reflects commitment to their ideology rather than an 'addiction' to legislation. Their commitment reflects blindness from the thick veneer of ideology to an agenda they dare not verbalize, because to state it would be to destroy any hope of achieving it. In this case they have gone down the slippery slope from perspective to bias to prejudice to bigotry.

Call it the guilt of wealth, the fear of responsibility or the safety of surrender, it all leads to authoritarian government where the promise of safety is more valuable than the price of freedom.

The question for all of us is how much will we lose before we are willing to give up everything we have left to fight for what we believe in? What do THEY have to lose before they embrace the rights of self-defense through the responsibilities of firearms? What do WE have to lose before we accept total disarmament?

Ultimately, the side that gets the opponent to accept those goals first becomes the winner. The path for our side to their goals is shortest, because we give up a little more every year. They want to be subjugated, therefore our victory instead depends on them being abandoned and preyed upon until they are reduced by attrition. We need to keep our guns while at the same time they become segregated.

This War is for Real!

2006-08-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

(Quoted in its entirety.)

This WAR is for REAL!
Dr. Vernon Chong, Major General, USAF, Retired
Tuesday, July 12, 2005

To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII).

The deadly seriousness is greatly compounded by the fact that there are very few of us who think we can possibly lose this war and even fewer who realize what losing really means. First, let's examine a few basics:

1. When did the threat to us start? Many will say September 11, 2001. The answer as far as the United State is concerned is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us:
* Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979;
* Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983;
* Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983;
* Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988;
* First New York World Trade Center attack 1993;
* Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996;
* Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998;
* Dares Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998;
* Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000;
* New York World Trade Center 2001,
* Pentagon 2001.
(Note that during the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide).

2. Why were we attacked? Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush.1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors, Presidents Ford or Carter.

3. Who were the attackers? In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims.

4. What is the Muslim population of the World? 25%.

5. Isn't the Muslim Religion peaceful? Hopefully, but that is really not material. There is no doubt that the predominately Christian population of Germany was peaceful, but under the dictatorial leadership of Hitler (who was also Christian), that made no difference. You either went along with the administration or you were eliminated. There were 5 to 6 million Christians killed by the Nazis for political reasons (including 7,000 Polish priests). (see (http://www.nazis.testimony.co.uk/7-a.htm) )

Thus, almost the same number of Christians were killed by the Nazis, as the six million holocaust Jews who were killed by them, and we seldom heard of anything other than the Jewish atrocities. Although Hitler kept the world focused on the Jews, he had no hesitancy about killing anyone who got in his way of exterminating the Jews or of taking over the world – German, Christian or any others.

Same with the Muslim terrorists. They focus the world on the US, but kill all in the way – their own people or the Spanish, French or anyone else. The point here is that just like the peaceful Germans were of no protection to anyone from the Nazis, no matter how many peaceful Muslims there may be, they are no protection for us from the terrorist Muslim leaders and what they are fanatically bent on doing – by their own pronouncements – killing all of us “infidels.” I don’t blame the peaceful Muslims. What would you do if the choice was shut up or die?

6. So who are we at war with? There is no way we can honestly respond that it is anyone other than the Muslim terrorists. Trying to be politically correct and avoid verbalizing this conclusion can well be fatal. There is no way to win if you don't clearly recognize and articulate who you are fighting.

So with that background, now to the two major questions:
1. Can we lose this war?
2. What does losing really mean?

If we are to win, we must clearly answer these two pivotal questions
We can definitely lose this war, and as anomalous as it may sound, the major reason we can lose is that so many of us simply do not fathom the answer to the second question - What does losing mean?

It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means hanging our heads, bringing the troops home and going on about our business, like post Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get.

What losing really means is:

We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not subside, but rather will steadily increase. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced an increasing series of attacks against us, over the past 18 years. The plan was clearly, for terrorist to attack us, until we were neutered and submissive to them.

We would of course have no future support from other nations, for fear of reprisals and for the reason that they would see, we are impotent and cannot help them.
They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage.

It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do will be done. Spain is finished.

The next will probably be France. Our one hope on France is that they might see the light and realize that if we don't win, they are finished too, in that they can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. However, it may already be too late for France. France is already 20% Muslim and fading fast!

If we lose the war, our production, income, exports and way of life will all vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us, if they were threatened by the Muslims. If we can't stop the Muslims, how could anyone else?

The Muslims fully know what is riding on this war, and therefore are completely committed to winning, at any cost. We better know it too and be likewise committed to winning at any cost.
Why do I go on at such lengths about the results of losing? Simple. Until we recognize the costs of losing, we cannot unite and really put 100% of our thoughts and efforts into winning. And it is going to take that 100% effort towin.

So, how can we lose the war?

Again, the answer is simple. We can lose the war by "imploding." That is, defeating ourselves by refusing to recognize the enemy and their purpose, and really digging in and lending full support to the war effort if we are united, there is no way that we can lose. If we continue to be divided, there is no way that we can win!

Let me give you a few examples of how we simply don't comprehend the life and death seriousness of this situation.

President Bush selects Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation. Although all of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslim men between 17 and 40 years of age, Secretary Mineta refuses to allow profiling. Does that sound like we are taking this thing seriously? This is war! For the duration, we are going to have to give up some of the civil rights we have become accustomed to. We had better be prepared to lose some of our civil rights temporarily or we will most certainly lose all of them permanently.

And don't worry that it is a slippery slope. We gave up plenty of civil rights during WWII, and immediately restored them after the victory and in fact added many more since then.
Do I blame President Bush or President Clinton before him?

No, I blame us for blithely assuming we can maintain all of our Political Correctness, and all of our civil rights during this conflict and have a clean, lawful, honorable war. None of those words apply to war. Get them out of your head.

Some have gone so far in their criticism of the war and/or the Administration that it almost seems they would literally like to see us lose

I hasten to add that this isn't because they are disloyal. It is because they just don't recognize what losing means. Nevertheless, that conduct gives the impression to the enemy that we are divided and weakening. It concerns our friends, and it does great damage to our cause.
Of more recent vintage, the uproar fueled by the politicians and media regarding the treatment of some prisoners of war, perhaps exemplifies best what I am saying. We have recently had an issue, involving the treatment of a few Muslim prisoners of war, by a small group of our military police. These are the type prisoners who just a few months ago were throwing their own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues and otherwise murdering their own people just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein.

And just a few years ago these same type prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own people for the same reason. They are also the same type of enemy fighters, who recently were burning Americans, and dragging their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq.
And still more recently, the same type of enemy that was and is providing videos to all news sources internationally, of the beheading of American prisoners they held.

Compare this with some of our press and politicians, who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners -- not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them.

Can this be for real?

The politicians and pundits have even talked of impeachment of the Secretary of Defense. If this doesn't show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, the life and death struggle we are in and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can.

To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over this prisoner issue makes us look like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned -- totally oblivious to what is going on in the real world. Neither we, nor any other country, can survive this internal strife. Again I say, this does not mean that some of our politicians or media people are disloyal. It simply means that they are absolutely oblivious to the magnitude, of the situation we are in and into which the Muslim terrorists have been pushing us, for many years.

Remember, the Muslim terrorists stated goal is to kill all infidels! That translates into ALL non-Muslims -- not just in the United State, but throughout the world.

We are the last bastion of defense.

We have been criticized for many years as being 'arrogant.' That charge is valid in at least one respect. We are arrogant in that we believe that we are so good, powerful and smart, that we can win the hearts and minds of all those who attack us, and that with both hands tied behind our back, we can defeat anything bad in the world!

We can't!

If we don't recognize this, our nation as we know it will not survive, and no other free country in the world will survive if we are defeated. And finally, name any Muslim countries throughout the world that allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equal rights for anyone -- let alone everyone, equal status or any status for women , or that have been productive in one single way that contributes to the good of the world.
This has been a long way of saying that we must be united on this war or we will be equated in the history books to the self-inflicted fall of the Roman Empire. If, that is, the Muslim leaders will allow history books to be written or read.

If we don't win this war right now, keep a close eye on how the Muslims take over France in the next 5 years or less. They will continue to increase the Muslim population of France and continue to encroach little by little, on the established French traditions. The French will be fighting among themselves, over what should or should not be done, which will continue to weaken them and keep them from any united resolve. Doesn't that sound eerily familiar?
Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece.
And they are giving those freedoms away to those who have shown, worldwide that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power.
They have universally shown that when they have taken over, they then start brutally killing each other over who will be the few who control the masses. Will we ever stop hearing from the politically correct, about the "peaceful Muslims"?

I close on a hopeful note, by repeating what I said above. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. I hope now after the election, the factions in our country will begin to focus on the critical situation we are in, and will unite to save our country. It is your future we are talking about! Do whatever you can to preserve it.

After reading the above, we all must do this not only for ourselves, but our children, our grandchildren, our country and the world.

Whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal and that include the Politicians and media of our country and the free world!

Please forward this to any you feel may want, or NEED to read it. Our "leaders" in Congress ought to read it, too. There are those that find fault with our country, but it is obvious to anyone who truly thinks through this, that we must UNITE!

The Power of Hindsight: An Interactive Game!

2006-08-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

A type of question I like to pose involves knowing the future, the benefit of hindsight and freedom of choice based on that in the present. The old example is if you knew Hitler would start WWII, what would you do in the 1930’s to stop him?

Today my question is what would you do NOW to stop a nuclear WW3 three, five or 10 years in the future? Assume that WW3 is nuclear, inevitable once certain conditions are reached and preventable by taking the right actions now.

Well, you’d first have to define the causes, the participants, the belligerents and propose the solutions. My fear, of course that we do know the first three and are now quibbling over the fourth. ‘Do Nothing’ seems to be a common suggestion, otherwise known as ‘Harass by Inspection’, or ‘Strengthen the Black Market Through Sanctions’.

The most commonly proposed solutions for WWII are not really in vogue now: 1) Assassinate Hitler and take your chances with Ernst Rohlm, Von Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Goering; 2) End appeasement by not ceding the Sudetenland, and military resistance of the invasion of the Rhineland (because it came so late in the process, there wasn’t really a whole lot that could be done to prevent the Blitzkrieg of Poland).

In this case, assuming we still have enough time to stop WW3, who do we assassinate? Bin Laden? Pernicious beast he is. Not that we aren’t trying already, but we’d have to go into Waziristan in force for that option, and as far as WW3 goes, he’s “always relied on the kindness of others.” Ahmadinajad? Maybe, but he’s not the world dominating, charismatic dictator-type. Besides, there is probably someone with the same intent waiting in the wings who will step up and use the Iranian war machine the same way as Mad Tom. And more importantly, in the end, assassination doesn’t do anything to dismantle the nuclear production line and destroy Iran’s bomb-making capabilities. Power corrupts, and if there is a vacuum for the leadership of the next emerging nuclear power, any/some Joe will step up and make it happen so long as a path to nuclear hegemony is available.

You can’t have a nuclear war if the belligerents don’t have a nuclear bomb. So the game is either dismantle their ability to develop nuclear weapons, or remove their initiative for making the Bomb. Let’s pretend the former option is the last choice and address their initiative. Regime change is about it. The Iranian Theocracy has to go down, and it’s most likely that will take military action.

We can take it a step farther. Let’s assume we know who the players will be (were going to be?) and that there are three key players. Wouldn’t a prudent course of action be to take them out one at time so they don’t strengthen to the point where catastrophic war is required against all three at once? Attack one at a time by diplomacy to reform their initiative for war, or by force to destroy their ability to wage war as necessary.

Think about how much easier WWII would have been if Europe could have been solved in the 30’s and Japan in the 40’s. Both halves would still most likely have required war, but turning the Western World’s resources on one half of the Axis at time would also most likely have shortened the conflicts and resulted in less carnage.

So here we have the Axis of Evil consisting of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. As soon as we crushed Iraq, Iran and the NorKs saw the game clearly and realized how deep and abiding their friendships and alliances really were. Their best, and most likely only choice was to work together and use alliances with their sponsors to fight a delaying action until their nuclear capabilities were developed enough for hegemony.

I think Iran is next. The big question is whether or not we are in time to prevent a nuclear suicide attack by a state sponsor.

Four Questions

2006-07-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

Will there ever be Peace in the Middle East? To focus the issue, I ask four questions:

1) Will the Jews ever surrender Israel?
2) Will the Jews ever outnumber the Islamists/Arabs in the Middle East?
3) Will the Islamists/Arabs ever accept the Jewish State of Israel as occupiers of the Holy City of Al Quds al Sharif (Jerusalem)?

(Hint: The correct answers to the first three questions are No, No, and No.)

So, (IMHO) there will be peace in the Middle East when the Islamists/Arabs exterminate the Jews and drive them out of the Holy Land. Then as victors, they will write the History books and there will be peace in the Middle East.

My last question:

4) What are you going to do about it?

Sun Tzu in the 21st Century

2006-07-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens. Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom. Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
- President George W. Bush, in his “State of the Union” speech, January 29, 2002

Create an uproar in the East and attack in the West.
- Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

North Korea shakes its mighty fist at the sky. “Curse you Red Baron!” it says and lobs half a dozen missles into the sea, frightening the Antique Media. “Why did they do this!?” we ask plaintively. Well, to answer a rhetorical question, we were told it was to draw attention to themselves. As in, “Hey! HEY! Over here, in the East! Look at me! LOOK AT ME!”

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Hamas and Hizbolla miraculously adopt the same strategy and invade Israel and kidnap Israeli soldiers. For those of you keeping score at home, Hamas and Hizbollah are late inning substitutions setting up Iran for the close.

Syria? Well, remember when you grew up and there were two brothers, the smart one and the dumb one? The smart one always started trouble and the dumb one always got caught for it. That’s Syria and Iran. Syria: dumb. Iran: smart. Syria is going to get the snot beat out of it, while Iran buys time to make nukes.

Remember the “Axis of Evil” speech? The Axis powers were Iraq, Iran and North Korea. He kind of called that one didn’t he. Here we are four years later and the remaining Axis partners are acting in concert, almost like they talk to each other or something, like they had an Axis summit and planned it all out. North Korea makes the strategic plans, Iran creates chaos for the Twelvers, the Great Satan looks right, looks left, then right again and can’t decide what to do.

Meanwhile, six months after Kim’s strange train ride through China into Siberia, the Ruskies and China won’t support actions against either player.

I think it’s about time Taiwan trades nukes to Japan in exchange for missles and test fires and ICBM over Peking and Moscow on its way to splashdown off the coast of Venezuela.

So, how's married life treating you?

2006-07-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

From the "It sucks to be you" Department:

"Wife Of LAPD Officer Charged With Attempted Murder"
KNBC-TV
12:56 p.m. PDT July 5, 2006

LOS ANGELES - The wife of a Los Angeles Police Department officer was charged Wednesday with attempted murder for allegedly shooting him twice and trying to run him over with a car. Police said the alleged attack occurred Saturday at the newlyweds' Reseda apartment.

Yolanda Yvette Cade, 38, was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Van Nuys Superior Court. The officer was treated at a hospital and released.

Is America Too Rich to Lead?

2006-07-02T19:30:00.000-07:00

Several day ago, a link to a link to a link led me to this website about IQ, a definition and what amounts to a differential diagnosis between Gifted (130-144), Very Gifted (145-159) and Profoundly Gifted (160+) in terms of social characteristics. People on the plus side of the curve are more introverted than the people on the minus side. At least that’s what lured me in the first place.

Buried way down on the page is this little tidbit:

“[T]here is a direct ratio between the intelligence of the leader and that of the led. A leadership pattern will not form, or it will break up, when a discrepancy of more than approximately 30 points of IQ comes to exist between the leader and the led.”

That’s interesting, and sort of explains a lot. This info was unattributed, and there are no details that explain why, but I suspect that goals change with IQ and what is wanted by someone with a higher IQ is not interesting to the lower IQ side. My guess, you understand, I’d be curious to see more research on the study, but you have to remember that I’m below gifted -- just Bright (115-129) -- and compensate by being a smart-ass. (It’s a bad habit, but unfortunately, it seems to work. – Ed.) This works out to two standards of deviation on the chart shown at the above site.

What if there is a similar principle in economics and how do you measure it? Consider this: In the U.S. during the 19th Century, people admired the wealthy, but hated being at their mercy. It’s pretty close to the same as earlier centuries being ruled by an aristocracy. Love/resentment, loyalty/jealousy, “It’s my country, my King – but he’s really making me mad!”

Today the U.S. is resented by “the rest of the world,” if you believe the NY Times (I don’t). But if Americans go overseas, they are generally very well accepted by the people of the host country, foreigners still want to emigrate to the U.S. and enjoy the benefits of a successful capitalistic democracy – but they HATE being told what to do by the U.S.

What I’ve been worried about lately is the shrinking middle-class and how it will effect the political process. I think™ that the U.S. will end up being ruled by a wealthy aristocracy, beloved and the rest of the country will remain loyal, but jealous and the rule will be resented.

Globally, how do you compensate for this? Well, you have to bring the whole world up a couple standards of deviation and somehow keep so many of the super rich from running away from the pack.

Thomas Barnett in his Rumsfeld-touted book “The Pentagon’s New Map” touches on this a little, referring to the Core and the Gap countries as to where a military presence will be needed. He points out that once you get the average annual wage above $3,000 in a country, trouble stops and prosperity starts to take hold. People basically quit fighting because they have something to lose.

Anyway, that just an interesting thought that popped into my head. Not very capitalistic, I should say that even though I enjoyed Barnett’s book tremendously, overall it lean’s a little too Divine-Rights Absolutist for my Libertarian tastes. I don’t think I like the idea of ‘exporting security’ without developing prosperity also.

Home-grown non-state actors

2006-06-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

So, regarding Hamadan v. US, if one of the several States (Alabama) calls up the unregulated Militia, and ships them to, oh I don't know, say France, or maybe Luxembourg or Tahiti, would they be treated any differently than if they went to the U.S. Territories of Puerto Rico or Guam? Would the Governor then be an international non-state actor like Hamadan or Bin Laden? Would Puerto Rico then become South Alabama?

What if Schwarzenegger sent the California Guard into, ummm, Mexico, for example, or if Montana invaded Canada? Not far, you understand, just far enough to secure the border and rename Tijuana to 'South San Diego Adjacent' and assert jurisdiction for taxation purposes over the drug cartels.

If Hamadan can come to the U.S. to wage war and receive the protection of the Geneva Convention, why can’t U.S. citizen William Walker and his army of volunteers secure a toehold in a foreign country and declare soveriegnty? Oh, because THAT foreign country doesn’t have a the same Constitution we do. Does International Law stop at the border or not?

Come on now, we're all asymmetrical here. If we're going to think outside the box, let's REALLY think outside the box. If a private company can equip an army and wage war under the protection of the Geneva Convention, why can't a separate State under the direction of the Governor, or the Nye County Sheriff?

What about you and me? Is a DBA good enough to separate us from the rabble of the common criminal? Remember when all the cowboys had to turn in their guns when they rode into Dodge City except for the guy riding shotgun on the Wells Fargo stagecoach? Was he exempt because he worked for a (big, important) company or was his gun protected as interstate transportaton under the 19th Century interpretation of the Commerce Clause? Do we need the wink-wink, nod-nod of the POTUS and Congress as quid-pro-quo for getting them all elected to become, harrumph, legitimate?

Does this decision promote Individual Rights, State’s Rights, Federalism or Internationalism? Will this 21st Century decision promote the End of the Era of Nation-States that operate under the Peace of Westphalia? That seems to me the direction the world is trending, and this decision plays in very nicely, thank you. “International Human Rights” are for suckers who play the game ‘lawfully’, i.e., not hard enough.

Americans Deserve Better

2006-06-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

From "Robert Cox: Americans deserve better than Keller’s open letter":

Robert Cox, The ExaminerJun 29, 2006 7:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Who can argue when Bill Keller of The New York Times writes, as he did last Sunday, that the Founders “saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government” or that they were right to reject “the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the president at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.”

Yet during the past week, many have questioned The New York Times’ decision to publish a story detailing an ongoing counter-terrorism operation to monitor information about wire transfers through the SWIFT system, an international consortium founded by the world’s leading money center banks. Many have questioned what public interest The New York Times served by disclosing a duly authorized and appropriately disclosed counter-terrorist program that Keller acknowledges has helped to “catch and prosecute financiers of terror” and for which The Times has “not identified any serious abuses of privacy.”

This past Sunday, The Times’ executive editor published an open letter in which Keller incoherently weaves together disparate threads of past Times coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bay of Pigs invasion, administration criticism of media reporting of terror attacks in Iraq and other recent disclosures of covert intelligence operations appends a detailed critique of what purports to be the Bush administration’s case for holding off on the SWIFT story and ties up the entire package with the risible assertion that The Times decision was not borne of “any animus toward the current administration.” Nowhere does Keller address the particulars of why he felt it necessary to run the SWIFT story last Friday.

Americans deserve better.

Keller claims, “some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality” but the article cites only one expert, L. Richard Fischer, and presents him as unfamiliar with the details of the program. The New York Times quotes a “former senior counterterrorism official,” saying, “The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you’re sitting, troubling “the potential for abuse is enormous” without disclosing whether this former official might have some axe to grind against the administration. Richard Clarke, anyone? The paper claims “Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified.” Why is it “nearly 20” and not “19.” Will the Times go back to those 19 people and get them on the record now that the program has been made public? The Times’ claims “Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program.” How many is “some?” Fifteen? Two? If two, then which two?

It comes down to a matter of trust, something in short supply for most Americans when it comes to The New York Times. Since Sept. 11, The Times has published fabricated quotations (Maureen Dowd), fabricated datelines (Rick Bragg) and stories manufactured out of whole cloth (Jayson Blair). The Times, by many estimates, made the administration’s case for war by publishing now-discredited claims about Iraq’s WMD program (Judith Miller). Dan Rather may have made “fake but accurate” famous, but it was The New York Times that honed the practice to an art form. Maybe they could sell T-shirts?

It may not be wise to always take a president at his word, but The New York Times has not exactly cornered the market on journalistic integrity. Yet Keller exposes a vital counter-terrorist program in a story based almost entirely on anonymous sources and asks that we take him at his word. Sorry Bill, that ship sailed long ago.

We will never know the full extent of the damage caused by The New York Times in disclosing the SWIFT monitoring program but have no doubt it was not a benign act. Whatever agony Keller may have gone through in deciding to publish the story will pale in comparison to the agony of the victims of the next terror attack, an attack that might have been prevented save for Keller’s choice.

Playwright David Mamet once wrote of elites “you’re all the same … It’s always ‘What I’m going to do for you.’ Then you screw up and then its ‘we did the best we could. I’m dreadfully sorry’ and people like us live with your mistakes the rest of our lives.”

We may be living with Keller’s mistake for a long time to come.

Robert Cox is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors and president of the Media Bloggers Association. Examiner

Envy, Fear of Envy and Black Magic

2006-06-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

We’ve all got the “been there, done that” scars from High School, but most of us have forgotten what the effect a dense-cluster peer group has on the individual. Jack Wheeler, writing for the Freedom Research Foundation, inadvertently brushes against it while disassembling the liberal mind’s bent to cultural suicide in his article The Secret of the Suicidal Liberal Mind.

Inner city schools have cultural acceptance issues that seem to go beyond the us-against-them teenage mindset. ‘Trying’ is discouraged because ‘failing’ is subject to ridicule, is the common meme, therefore let no one fail.

Wheeler instead points to research done by cultural anthropologists that the primitive culture’s belief in black magic and witchcraft is associated with envy and the fear of envy. His thesis is that, “What the Left calls ‘exploitation’ is what anthropologists call ‘black magic.’”

What may be more important in educational examples is that peer pressure is envy of success, and that fear of envy is keeping the man down. You stick out, you become a target. Better we all suffer than anyone leave the hood.

Read the article. Some of you may have to wash it through your mind to get past the neo-con agitprop, but bear in mind the rest of us have to do the same thing from the other side every day with the daily newspaper.

Fight Jihadis through Haiku

2006-06-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Belmont Club has a thread with haikus in the comments worth reading. Any takers here?

"Slug strains against the coming dawn, slides across the knife edge lest he bake."

"Sailors watched in awe shaking fists at plunging zeros. Now Murtha drools."

"Dumb Jihadis. China skins who it kills; Europe buys for cosmetics."

"Jihadi, your hell is eternity spent with others just like you."

"Youssifiyah dust brings tears, but it won’t jam a weapon’s receiver."

"Cut and run? Cut Jihadi throats. Let their blood run. After that we leave."

Illegal Immigration and Theocracies vs. Nation-states

2006-06-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Much of the “Immigration issue“ obviously comes from people who are not following the rules. The debate gets clouded when it becomes obvious that no one knows what the rules really are. A lot of similar discussions happen with modern politics versus the Constitution when someone jumps up and says, “I don’t care what it says, that’s not what it means!” Some good examples are the Drug Exemption to the 4th Amendment, double-jeapordy not attaching for civil suits, well-regulated militia means the National Guard -- and don’t even get me started on abortion!

A great thread I picked up in "Camus' Catch: How Democracies Can Defeat Totalitarian Political Islam" from Democratiya began discussing the concept of how non-state actors obviate the Peace of Westphalia, and whether or not we are witnessing the end of the era of Nation-states.

OK, that’s a mouthful. This is a huge and complex subject, generally unexplored in the public’s mind, and quickly shows how the Geneva Conventions have become antiquated. To address one specific issue, what happens when a religion demands its tenents be enforced as the law of the land? Are there any exceptions that do not lead to the slippery slope where a secular government evolves into a religious government? What does a government do when any religion/group of people band together and demand exception? When does religion bear responsibility to maintain peace under the common international doctrine of Westphalean diplomacy?

Secular states simply cannot except religious adherents from its laws.
Discuss. Compare and contrast the Branch Davidians with Islamists vis a vis religious freedom and justifiable state actions.

Second Issue:

At what point does Mexico bear the responsibility for ‘encouraging’ diaspora? When does it become an act of War? If you read carefully the second parameter of criteria from the Failed State Index by the Fund for Peace developed using U.N. definitions of genocide, it is clear that Mexico’s actions border on genocide (emphasis mine):

2. Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally Displaced Persons creating Complex Humanitarian Emergencies.
Forced uprooting of large communities as a result of random or targeted violence and/or repression, causing food shortages, disease, lack of clean water, land competition, and turmoil that can spiral into larger humanitarian and security problems, both within and between countries.

Is the Mexican diaspora 1) forced and 2) repression? (Hint: ‘Yes’ is the correct answer.)

If you believe the Mexican government is pursuing policy at the state level to ‘encourage’ its citizens to leave and get jobs in the U.S., then when does encouraged become coerced becomes forced?

"Zarqawi's End"

2006-06-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

"Video: The Airstrike Remix"

Video courtesy of the U.S. military.
Re-mix courtesy of Michelle Malkin.
Airspace courtesy of free Iraq.
Motivation courtesy of 9/11.

You didn't hear about this on the news, did you?

2006-05-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

Katrina survivors are building the USS New York, a USMC amphibian assault ship, using the steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Two sister ships, the USS Arlington (where the Penatgon is) and the USS Sommerset (the county in Pennsylvania where Flight 93 crashed) are also planned.

As reported by the Times (UK):

Warship built out of Twin Towers wreckage
BY TOM BALDWIN

In a shipyard in New Orleans, survivors of one disaster are building a monument to another

The USS New York is being built in New Orleans using steel from the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre (PAIGE EATON)

IN A city still emerging from the floods of Hurricane Katrina, a ship has begun to rise from the ashes of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Bringing together America’s two great calamities of the 21st century, the USS New York is being built in New Orleans with 24 tonnes of steel taken from the collapsed World Trade Centre.

There is no shortage of scrap metal in New Orleans these days, but the girders taken from Ground Zero have been treated with a reverence usually accorded to religious relics. After a brief ceremony in 2003, about seven tonnes of steel were melted down and poured into a cast to make the bow section of the ship’s hull.

Some shipworkers say the hairs stood up on the backs of their necks the first time they touched it. Others have postponed their retirement so they can be part of the project.

One worker, Tony Quaglino, said: “I was going to go in October 2004 after 40 years here, but I put it off when I found out I could be working on New York. This is sacred and it makes me very proud.” Glen Clement, a paint superintendent, said: “Nobody passes by that bow section without knocking on it. Everybody knows what it is made from and what it’s about.”

The ship is being built by Northrop Grumman on the banks of the Mississippi. It should be ready to join the US Navy in 2007.

Later vessels in its class will include USS Arlington — named after the section of the Pentagon that was also hit by an airliner on September 11 — and USS Somerset, in memory of United Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, on the same day as passengers struggled with al-Qaeda hijackers.
Mr Clement said it would be fitting if USS New York’s first mission was to capture Osama bin Laden. He said: “They hit us first, but out of a tragedy a good thing has come, in that we’re building a ship which can help take those people out.”

The $1 billion vessel is one of a new generation of amphibious assault ships capable of landing a 700-strong Marines assault force on a coastline almost anywhere without the need for a port.

Woody Oge, Northrop Grumman’s director of operations in New Orleans, was keen to play down suggestions that the ship might be used to spearhead invasions.

He pointed out that LPD vessels had been used as much for humanitarian assistance as for war. One such ship, USS Boxer, was dispatched to help to deal with the aftermath of Katrina.

Although the hurricane smashed its way through the shipyard last summer, the half-completed New York survived intact. The same cannot be said for the homes of some of its builders. About 200 are still living at the shipyard in the hastily set up “Camp Katrina”.
They include Earl Jones. More than eight months after Katrina, he does not know if his home in the Lower Ninth ward will be rebuilt. “The insurance company won’t even talk to us,” he said. “We’re having to hire lawyers to chase ’em. I don’t like this, but I don’t want to be out of work.”

Mr Jones’s wife was evacuated to Baton Rouge and is seriously ill with breast cancer and pneumonia. He said: “She ain’t handling very well me being away all the time.”

Katrina and 9/11 are two disasters that continue to produce very different responses from America. Mr Jones does not want his old home enshrined in a $1 billion fighting machine, but a small cheque from the insurance firm might help.

FORCE OF LIBERTY

- USS New York, USS Arlington and USS Somerset will be part of a nine-vessel fleet of new amphibious transport ships

- Length: 208.5m (684ft) — more than twice as long as the Statue of Liberty

- Beam: 31.9m (105ft); weight: 24,900 tonnes; speed: 22 knots

- Equipment: helicopters, landing craft, amphibious vehicles, missile launchers

- Crew: more than 1,000, comprising 361 ship’s company plus 699 marines

A Beginner's Guide to Blogging

2006-05-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

The PBS website (no, not that one, the other one!) has posted a primer on blogging that provides a concise startup guide to hosting, posting and roasting on the Internet.

There are TONS of hosting sites available, all vary by degrees as much as cell phone service, pick yer poison. This one is Blogspot (aka Blogger), but there is also HostingMatters, JournalSpace and many others you can google and search for yourself.

It Beats Working

2006-05-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Why Isn't Socialism Dead?" by Lee Harris over at Tech Central Station Daily. A bit of a read, but worth it in my view.

The article speaks to what could be described similarly to Dianetics almost as a "religion without divinity", in that the reason Socialism doesn't die in spite of many catastrophic failures is due to the hope engendered by its core myth:

"[T]he revolutionary socialist's life is transformed because he accepts the myth that one day socialism will triumph, and justice for all will prevail."

"The myth of socialism is a useful illusion that turns ordinary men into comrades and revolutionaries united in a common struggle -- a band of brothers, so to speak."

The well-known reasons for the failure of Socialism are not addressed, except in passing:

"The Nazis regarded themselves as genuine revolutionaries, and they call themselves revolutionaries, just as they always referred to their take-over of the German state as their revolution: for the Nazi, their revolution, and not the Bolshevik revolution, represented true socialism -- national socialism."

And the conclusion is that like the promise of immediate gratification in Protestantism from spiritual satisfaction on Earth vs. the Catholic promise of redemption in the afterlife, that:

"[U]ntil capitalism can come up with a transformative myth of its own, it may well be that many men will prefer to find their myths in the same place they found them in the first part of the twentieth century -- the myth of revolutionary socialism."

Libertarianism is a poor model for organizing the masses and Capitalism is not the promise of an easy life that Socialism is. Marx believed that because Socialism was the natural out-growth of Capitalism, revolution was unnecessary. But the myth of Hope for Justice under Socialism seems much more of a lure than the hope for prosperity under Capitalism.

The May Day Riots at MacArthur Park, Los Angeles

2006-05-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

Peaceful my ass. Rioters collected at MacArthur Park and as darkness fell began to cause damage and loot. Police moved in to break up the crowd and were attacked.

Be sure to click on the links in the right pane for more videos.

According to Lou Dobbs, the organizers of this march were from ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the organizing arm of the World Workers Party (WWP) aka, the American Communist Party.

These demonstrations are not about 'amnesty', but about recruiting for socialism. Look around and find me any signs that point to the root cause of the Hispanic diaspora that say, "¡Fijemos México!" (Let's fix Mexico).

I think a good solid movement for the Mexican diaspora would be to instill in them the idea that civil rights are inherent in people, and they CAN take them home with them would do wonders to solve the problems. "Bring your Civil Rights Home with you!"

Comments

2006-04-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the delay in posting comments. It took me awhile to figure out there were comments pending. I promise to check for them more often from now on!

Preparing the Battlefield

2006-04-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

LAObserved, a blog by Kevin Roderick that provides commentary on LA politics vis-a-vis the LA Times and media reporting, has posted an email sent out after a "delegation of progressives met with the top opinion editors at the L.A. Times to complain about the axing of Robert Scheer's column and push for more anti-war voices on the op-ed page."

For more information on their program strategy and agenda, please follow the link to the lengthy article: Anatomy of a left-wing cause.

The delegation consisted of Marcy Winograd (Pres., Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles), Wayne Williams (active in SoCal Grassroots), Brad Parker (VP, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles), Carole Myers (active in SoCal Grassroots), and Bob Elias (Chicano Moratorium). The meeting was scheduled two weeks in advance. Tom Hayden's Op Ed piece "The Myth of the Super-Preditor" ran the day after the meeting. The next day, Huffington's "It's Dirty Tricks all over Again" ran. On Sunday, five days after the meeting, the LA Times ran "America Kidnapped Me," Khaled E-Msri's story of CIA torture.

The email is their "how-to" guide on to influence the LA Times's editors so that the Op Ed pages reflect their progressive opinions. With a few modifications, this strategy can be adapted to any cause, including RKBA issues. It is my hope that the members of this list review these suggestions and pursue a course of action through their MC's as unaffiliated individuals, or in conjunction with state leadership as a larger co-ordinated voice. Not to dump work on him, but I understand Paul would be the contact for anything other than unaffiliated individual opinion.

I am summarizing their recommendations contained in the email for the progressive's side of the argument below. Some specific links and recommended contacts may not be directly helpful to us.

They recommend the following course of action:

1) "Call Evonne Geller in Circulation at (xxx) xxx-xxxx and tell her you are [want to be] a "contingency re-subscriber for 3 months or until March 20th." If, for some reason, you have trouble reaching Evonne, re-subscribe by calling: (xxx-xxx-xxxx)." (NOTE: The email points out that by "canceling our subscriptions for a month and re-subscribing on a contingency basis, we exercise our influence as readers." -Jim)

2) "[Join] a well-organized Media Rapid Response group that evolved from SoCal Grassroots efforts, please feel free to contact Wayne Williams at xxx@xxx.net. When requesting membership, write the phrase "LA Times Watch" in the subject heading of your email." (NOTE: the LA Times Watch is probably not our friend, but may provide some fun reading for counter-intel purposes. -Jim)

3) "Commit to writing at least one letter a month, affirming or challenging LA Times content, paying special attention to columnists such as Max Boot and Jonah Goldberg who repeat the views of corporate-driven think tanks advancing a neo-con agenda. It will be our job to reveal misleading statements, lies and distortions and demand truth and accuracy. Support those progressive editorial and opinion articles that do uncover the truth, as Hayden, Huffington, Cockburn and Brooks did last week. To contact a writer or editor at the LA Times, you can email the person by writing their first name, followed by a period, then their last name @latimes.com Example: xxxx.xxxx@latimes.com (Opinion Page Editor)"

4) "We embrace an inside/outside strategy, whereby subscribers lobby from within and non-subscribers, withholding their subscriptions, exert pressure from without. Please let us know (pdlavote@aol.com) if you want to pursue an inside (subscribe) or outside (boycott) strategy."

5) "[S]tay involved in what the local media publishes and promotes."

6) "Let the editors ([Andres.Martinez@latimes.com and Nick.Goldberg@latimes.com]) know you are re-subscribing on a contingency basis; or that you are not re-subscribing until the LA Times hires a second nationally-recognized progressive weekly columnist."

7) The delegates "provided a list and sample columns of recommended journalists: Robert Scheer, Arianna Huffington, Bill Press, Jim Hightower, Frank Rich, Seymour Hersh, Paul Krugman, William Rivers Pitt, Tom Hartman, Naomi Klein, Norman Solomon, Marjorie Cohn, Andrew Greeley, and a dozen more, later talking up Tom Hayden and the need for a strong anti-war voice on the Opinion page." (NOTE: They later go on to say that the LA Times has a policy of not running syndicated writers, unless the writer originated with the Times, and that Huffington had been dropped by a former editor who became peeved when she ran for Governor. -Jim)

Among some notable comments from the email, Max Boot was equated with Hitler, "6,000 readers emailed and faxed the LA Times to protest Scheer's firing," and "two-hundred of us demonstrated in front of the LA Times building" in a co-ordinated media photo op.

CONTACTS:

LA Times Circulation Dept.: Evonne.Geller@latimes.com (800) 252-9141
LA Times Editorial Dept. Editor: Andres.Martinez@latimes.com
LA Times Op Ed Editor: Nick.Goldberg@latimes.com

The Los Angeles Times welcomes expressions of all views. Letters should be brief and become the property of The Times. They may be edited and republished in any format. They must include valid mailing address and telephone number. Pseudonyms and initials will not be used. Letters should be in plain text and not include attachments.
letters@latimes.com

The Times welcomes manuscripts for possible publication. Each commentary must be exclusive to The Times. Unpublished manuscripts will not be returned. For a recorded explanation of Op-Ed requirements, please call (213) 237-2121. Articles may be sent to oped@latimes.com (not as an attachment) or faxed to (213) 237-7968.

How the Brady Campaign Uses the Internet to Raise Funds

2006-04-29T17:45:00.000-07:00

I have reformatted the following text in an effort to make the salient points more accessable.

Maximizing ROI in an Integrated Context

In the fall of 2003, the Brady Campaign grew its email list from an original 38,000 to 175,000 via an innovative micro-site that was followed by petition campaigns that focused on urgent federal legislation. A vast majority of these constituents were non-donors. Throughout two legislative battles in 2004, the Brady Campaign sent a series of appeals that included:
- A link to contacting Congress,
- A “tell-a-friend” option, and
- A strong ask for funds that often included examples of specific print or TV ads.

Typical responses ranged from 0.19 - 0.37 percent and average gifts ranged from $24 to $46. This compares to typical email acquisition response rates of 0.1 percent [2-4x better. -Ed.].

New donors via the Internet grew from 311 in 2002 to 3,244 [10.4x better. -Ed.] in 2004. The Brady Campaign acquired these new donors at a very positive ROI since sending an email appeal does not have any marginal costs once the software is in place.

The organization decided to test other channels to drive incremental conversion of these online sourced constituents to donors. Having collected postal mailing addresses for about 23 percent of its email list, the Brady Campaign sent a direct mail solicitation to online non-donors asking them to join.

The result was a 1.26 percent response rate. This response rate was 11 percent higher than the overall mailing response rate of 1.11 percent to the group’s standard direct mail rental lists.

The average gift from email constituents in response to the direct mail appeal was 19 percent higher ($24.22), compared to their overall mailing average gift of $20.52.

The key acquisition metric, the net cost per acquired donor for the email list, was $6.22 compared with $15.71 for the overall mailing.

The Brady Campaign also contacted non-donors on the email list via phone. It matched about 20,000 records of e-constituents who had taken at least one advocacy action.

Telemarketing drove a 21 percent pledge rate with an average gift of $27.38.

About the Author: Vinay Bhagat founded and heads strategy for Convio, Inc., a provider of on-demand software and services to help nonprofit organizations use the Internet to become more effective at fundraising, mobilizing support and managing constituent relationships. For more information, please visit www.convio.com. This article first appeared in the the March edition of FundRaising Success magazine.

Jed Babbin: Keep the Big Dog running

2006-04-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

A reasonable dissent from the other side of the "let's sack Rumsfeld" movement. Key grafs:

"Rumsfeld was hired by George W. Bush to do precisely what he has done to the consternation of the generals who are now coming out to complain about him."

"Rumsfeld is the Big Dog, and those whose feathers he has ruffled in the Pentagon, the press and Congress are the poodles who chase after him. They should follow the principle one Southern gent often reminds me of: If you can’t run with the big dog, you’d better go sit on the porch."

Hey, nice shirt!

2006-04-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

Be the first on your block to own one!

Why do I have to work after I get home after work?

2006-04-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

Today I recieved in the mail no less than three letters from my mortgage companies. This was intriging, because I only have one mortgage -- but it's apparently been sold and then suddenly resold yet again. The first mortgage company sent me my monthly payment statement at the old amount. The second mortgage company sent me a letter saying they had sold my account. The third company sent me a letter with a payment coupon that was $80 more than the first one. They had decided to escrow more of my money for me.

So I called them. I had to call four times to figure out how to talk to a real person, but I don't remember how I did it, so I'll have to wing it next time, too. I remember I had to hold for awhile. The first idiot was nice enough, but was an idiot. It told him they had sent the statement to the wrong address, so he took my new information -- all of it, I was waiting for him to ask for my shoe size when he said, "Is there anything else I can help you with?" I was momentarily taken aback before I realized it was my turn now.

I asked for an itemized statement of my escrowed account. Umm, he said. Really, that was the first word out of his mouth. Then he told me he couldn't send out that information until Monday, because my address had changed, but he could tell me what was on it now.

Umm, I said, OK... (Twist my arm.) So much was escrowed for taxes, this much was escrowed for Insurance, both were the same as before, and $80 was escrowed for mortgage insurance. That started a whole new conversation. I asked him what the assessed value of my house was, he told me. I asked him what the balance of my account was, he told me. I told him that was a value of 62% and then asked him what amount was the cutoff for "mortgage insurance". He said he'd have to transfer me to another department. Apparently, the Math Department.

I held again. The next lady was no idiot. I asked her where she got the assessed value for my house used to calculate the mortgage insurance. Three times. Apparently that question either wasn't in her script, or else had a footnote that said "Never answer this question." I tried re-communicating the question in another vernacular. Ah, let me check your record to see if we have your account paperwork yet, she said. Finally (months later, it seemed), after holding twice more we came to an agreement.

They would get back to me in four days.

A heart-to-heart talk

2006-04-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

A heart-to-heart talk:

"Thank you Major Bloomberg."

His quote from a story kicked me into action.

"Illegal guns are hurting innocent people across America, whether you are east of the Mississippi or north or south of the Mason-Dixon line," Bloomberg said yesterday.

Well I marched my unregistered guns out and gave them a good talking to. It seems that most of them knew they should not go out after dark or let themselves be found on the street. Except my Mossberg. He smelled of cheap booze and refused to look me in the eye. His "Whatever dude!" comments started to get on my nerves. I'm so worried he will end up in a life of crime and other sorry deeds.

What is a dad to do?

A California Lawyer's Perspective on Iraq War

2006-04-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

by Raymond S. Kraft

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor.

The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.France was not an ally; the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally; it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally; it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.

America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler's Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because none of them could produce all they needed for themselves.

All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WW I and throughout the depression. At the outbreak of W W II there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler. Actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could. Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain. Britain was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.

Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.

Had Russia surrendered then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won that war.

Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe; England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle; and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich. And, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse. I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.

France, Germany and Russia have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the "Oil For Food" program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs -- they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win -- the Inquisition, or the Reformation.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins -- that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st -- then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition; i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist. Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

The Euros could have done this, but they didn't, and they won't. We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans and Russians were selling them arms -- we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq. If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons?

And Iraq was paying for French, German and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine and education for Iraqi children.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It beganwith the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17-year war -- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again . . a 27-year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 killed in action and nearly 100,000 still missing in action. [The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 1,800 American lives, which is roughly 1/2 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.] But the cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 60-minute TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

If we do this thing in Iraq successfully, it is probable that the Reformation will ultimately prevail. Many Muslims in the Middle East hope it will. We will be there to support it. It has begun in some countries, Libya, for instance. And Dubai. And Saudi Arabia. If we fail, the Inquisition will probably prevail, and terrorism from Islam will be with us for all the foreseeable future, because the Inquisition, or Jihad, believes they are called by Allah to kill all the Infidels, and that death in Jihad is glorious.

The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.

The Iraq war is expensive, and uncertain, yes. But the consequences of not fighting it and winning it will be horrifically greater. We have four options --

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.

Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede surrender to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WW I), Nazi Imperialism (WW II) and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle (commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.

The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.

Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims:

1. We went to Iraq without enough troops.

We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.

The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice -- we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B-52's, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile -- but we don't. We're trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient's head. The Jihadis amputate heads.

2. We went to Iraq with too little planning.

This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had "the right plan" the war would have been easy, cheap, quick and clean.

That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick and clean. This is not TV.

3. We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security.

This too is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening. The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq.

It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten-year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken a little more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights and personal freedoms -- or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.

300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.

(Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California. Please consider passing along copies of this to students in high school, college and university as it contains information about the American past that is very meaningful TODAY - - history about America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors, too). By being denied the facts and truth of our history, they are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda driven.)