Just a glimpse into my Sunday afternoon news safari:
"I think it's important for us as women and feminists to not let this statement be made without any sort of resistance,'' said Jane, 24. "I want to let them know they can't come in and just do and say what they want."
Gotta love those progressives. I feel MY civil rights being championed. Don't you?
(via The Corner on National Review Online)
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Saturday Required Reading
1. Scroll down and read my "In Our Time" post.
2. Go to American Digest and read Van der Luen's repost of Joe Katz's excellent essay.
3. Read the comments, and follow the link provided by commenter Spartacus.
The war between Western civilization and Islam has been hot for half a century. Very soon it will become something our grandparents will instantly recognize: total war.
The only question I have is how many millions we are prepared to lose before we decide to fight. Five thousand plus and counting KIA since 2001 and we aren't near ready yet.
I have heard it said "We can't kill a billion people". Strangely enough, nobody ever wonders if the Islamists have any doubts along those lines.
2. Go to American Digest and read Van der Luen's repost of Joe Katz's excellent essay.
3. Read the comments, and follow the link provided by commenter Spartacus.
The war between Western civilization and Islam has been hot for half a century. Very soon it will become something our grandparents will instantly recognize: total war.
The only question I have is how many millions we are prepared to lose before we decide to fight. Five thousand plus and counting KIA since 2001 and we aren't near ready yet.
I have heard it said "We can't kill a billion people". Strangely enough, nobody ever wonders if the Islamists have any doubts along those lines.
White What?
"They took people at face value," writes Vincent of Ned's teammates, a plumber, an appliance repairman and a construction worker. "If you did your job or held up your end, and treated them with the passing respect they accorded you, you were all right."
That's how civilized men treat anyone - white, black, brown, yellow, or any combination of flavors. Not should treat, but simply how business is done out here in the howling wilderness west of Manhattan.
I've always been white (my Sioux ancestry fraction included) trash to the New York Times. I tend to not vote democrat.
Ms. Vincent's book sounds like an interesting read.
(via Instapundit)
That's how civilized men treat anyone - white, black, brown, yellow, or any combination of flavors. Not should treat, but simply how business is done out here in the howling wilderness west of Manhattan.
I've always been white (my Sioux ancestry fraction included) trash to the New York Times. I tend to not vote democrat.
Ms. Vincent's book sounds like an interesting read.
(via Instapundit)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Troubled Times
The Others waited with their leader in the lee of the sunken road. Some smoked. They talked quietly (as quietly as the rising wind allowed) of the things rough men in rough places will always talk about. The only other sound was the stamping of their heavy, muddy boots as they unconsciously fought off the piercing cold. They wore bulky clothes, gloves, and a dozen different hats between the ten of them. From time to time they would look over at the man they waited for, hoping he would pick up his staff and show the way.
There was much, much work to be done. They waited in the cold.
The man was tired. His staff, spattered with mud, was propped against the bench almost as an afterthought. He had grappled with many trying and subtle puzzles for too many hours under the lowering gray sky. The bitterly cold wind buffeted him as he bent over his workbench and split his attention between solving the riddle before him and preserving his pencil, papers, and notes. The storm was approaching so quickly but the answer continued to escape him. He could feel the damp in his scarred hands and the wrist he'd broken so long ago twinged as the horizon shrank under a bar of steel colored clouds.
The scrolls offered no answers. Even his box of numbers, so often the key to untangling the knottiest of problems, served only as a paperweight in this moment of vexation. His silent staff trembled in the rising wind. Vanity goaded him to tidy it whenever opportunity offered. In this time and place so marked by disorder and casual filth the white luster of the staff stood as his icon for the order that was meant to come.
Nothing. The lines and columns of careful ciphers mocked him. Their sums and products climaxed into silent gibberish. The careful effort and attention of hours had come to naught. He checked the figures and drawings, and checked again as the howling wind tore at the pages and the first hard spatters of frozen rain beat down on his back. He looked at one page and another and another and then the answer leapt out: the scrolls were flawed - on a vexingly simple point - but the failing was only now apparent after time had run out and the storm was upon him.
His anger was instant and white hot. Sweeping the sodden scrolls and pages of notes and careful calculations into a ball in one hand and grasping the shabby staff in the other he scrambled, stumbling, to the top of the streaming bank to face the full force of the blinding snow. He howled obscenities into the wind, his face purple with rage.
The others watched in silence as the man screamed at the storm. Finally he fell silent, spent, and slumped against his staff. He let slip the useless papers and they scattered and quickly disappeared downwind into the formless white oblivion that had become the world.
Finally, the leader of the others stepped forward.
"I guess this means I can't get the sewer past the 10"X10"X14" tee, the proposed power vault, and the natural gas crossing without putting in another manhole, right?"
And how was YOUR day?
There was much, much work to be done. They waited in the cold.
The man was tired. His staff, spattered with mud, was propped against the bench almost as an afterthought. He had grappled with many trying and subtle puzzles for too many hours under the lowering gray sky. The bitterly cold wind buffeted him as he bent over his workbench and split his attention between solving the riddle before him and preserving his pencil, papers, and notes. The storm was approaching so quickly but the answer continued to escape him. He could feel the damp in his scarred hands and the wrist he'd broken so long ago twinged as the horizon shrank under a bar of steel colored clouds.
The scrolls offered no answers. Even his box of numbers, so often the key to untangling the knottiest of problems, served only as a paperweight in this moment of vexation. His silent staff trembled in the rising wind. Vanity goaded him to tidy it whenever opportunity offered. In this time and place so marked by disorder and casual filth the white luster of the staff stood as his icon for the order that was meant to come.
Nothing. The lines and columns of careful ciphers mocked him. Their sums and products climaxed into silent gibberish. The careful effort and attention of hours had come to naught. He checked the figures and drawings, and checked again as the howling wind tore at the pages and the first hard spatters of frozen rain beat down on his back. He looked at one page and another and another and then the answer leapt out: the scrolls were flawed - on a vexingly simple point - but the failing was only now apparent after time had run out and the storm was upon him.
His anger was instant and white hot. Sweeping the sodden scrolls and pages of notes and careful calculations into a ball in one hand and grasping the shabby staff in the other he scrambled, stumbling, to the top of the streaming bank to face the full force of the blinding snow. He howled obscenities into the wind, his face purple with rage.
The others watched in silence as the man screamed at the storm. Finally he fell silent, spent, and slumped against his staff. He let slip the useless papers and they scattered and quickly disappeared downwind into the formless white oblivion that had become the world.
Finally, the leader of the others stepped forward.
"I guess this means I can't get the sewer past the 10"X10"X14" tee, the proposed power vault, and the natural gas crossing without putting in another manhole, right?"
And how was YOUR day?
Sunday, January 15, 2006
In Our Time
We stand at the dawn of history, you and I.
Well, not exactly dawn. Not if we want to be completely honest. It's just after noon, mountain standard time, here in Utah. That doesn't change the fact that what happened five minutes back (sausage, eggs, toast, and coffee, if you must know) is immutable fact and unchangeable as far as it is in our power to change anything.
One of the ongoing crises taking up bandwidth these days revolves around the Iranian march to offensive nuclear capability:
"Iran's "red line" step in Western eyes was removing IAEA seals to access equipment that purifies uranium, a key component in nuclear power or, if enriched to a higher level, in weaponry."
The mullahs and their hand-picked "president" are intent on pulling out every stop to give progressive multiculturalist westerners a chance to assist in their own annihilation:
"Why are you damaging the good name of the security council and IAEA for you own political purposes?' he asked. 'Don't take away the credibility of legitimate forums. Your arsenals are full to the brim, yet when it's the turn of a nation such as mine to develop peaceful nuclear technology you object and resort to threats."
Our weapons have been on the shelf for fifty years, with two exceptions of combat that ended a world war and others for testing.
If somebody - specifically the french - had exercised force on a bullet/infantry scale in 1936 when Hitler reoccupied Rhineland, there probably wouldn't have been a mushroom cloud over Trinity site in 1945. Probably is as close as I can say - history takes many paths. But without a megalomaniac like Hitler the leadership of Nazi Germany would certainly have dissolved into bickering criminal fiefdoms.
Consider the situation in Iran. Their president is merely the figurehead chosen by the mullahs. There is no popular majority support for either him or the mullahs, nor is their much pretence of one. What to do...what to do?
Kicking the Wehrmacht out of the Rhur would have destroyed Hitler's facade of invulnerability in 1936. The failure on the part of france (possessor of the largest army on the planet at that time) to crush what amounted to battalion-sized military invasion was the top step of the rapid descent into appeasement, paralysis, and complacency that marked the beginning of the German march to World War II: involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Krystal Nacht, occupation of Austria, "Peace in our time" at Munich, the von Ribbentrop/Molotov non-aggression pact with the Soviets, the invasion of Czechoslovakia (violating the Munich agreement), and finally the invasion of Poland... which triggered mutual assistance treaties ala 1914.
Jeff Goldstein posts on an article speculating on a possible 2007 war.
Belmont Club weighs in as well:
"Both the regime in Teheran and Washington are like Olympic wrestlers grappling within a narrowly bounded mat. The instant anyone should step or be forced outside the mat the buzzer will sound and a new and deadlier match will begin. Unfortunately the boundaries of the arena are invisible to both sides. How far can America push Iran? How far can Iran push America? Iran has the advantage of knowing that the US will stop short of overt military action against them -- for the time being. But it has the disadvantage of not knowing how far it can let Al Qaeda and Hezbollah go without bringing down the spectators from the stands."
And lastly, but closest to my own take, is Victor Davis Hanson:
"Finally, the public must be warned that dealing with a nuclear Iran is not a matter of a good versus a bad choice, but between a very bad one now and something far, far worse to come."
I believe that history pivots on the actions of individuals. The "Great Man" theory is mentioned as being out of favor in the linked Wiki entry... but they explain "out of favor" being based on:
"In general there is a belief that history which only follows around "great men", especially when "greatness" is determined primarily by political status, is a shallow view of the past, and additionally one which excludes entire groups of people from being part of "history", including labor forces, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, and, as the name "Great men" would suggest, women. As such, "Great man history" is, within the historical profession today, usually used as a pejorative term."
Just because they don't like the implications or possible focus of the Great Man school doesn't make them right. Societies move on inertia.
Only individuals take the hard roads as a wilfull act.
In my opinion, George W. Bush is one of history's great men. The conventional wisdoms that run behind or through the above linked articles seems to range from "Iran won't act until after 2008" - thus begging the question "what then?" to "Military action is physically/politically impossible at this time" to which I say bullshit.
On one side we have a mullahocracy figureheaded by a suicide bomber waiting only for his special bomb. On the other we have the elected representative of the world's foremost republic, a leader already on record as stating that there will not be a nuclear armed Iran.
(UPDATE:) We have the history of missed opportunities of the twentieth century, and the subsequent costs, as a backdrop. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Mohammed wrote the Koran. RTFM, as they say in customer support...(end UPDATE).
I am convinced that we will move militarily against Iran before the end of this spring. The targets will be leadership and military infrastructure. We will occupy key sites within Iran. Beyond that, I don't have a clue.
Discuss? All one or two of you, I mean. Lol...
Well, not exactly dawn. Not if we want to be completely honest. It's just after noon, mountain standard time, here in Utah. That doesn't change the fact that what happened five minutes back (sausage, eggs, toast, and coffee, if you must know) is immutable fact and unchangeable as far as it is in our power to change anything.
One of the ongoing crises taking up bandwidth these days revolves around the Iranian march to offensive nuclear capability:
"Iran's "red line" step in Western eyes was removing IAEA seals to access equipment that purifies uranium, a key component in nuclear power or, if enriched to a higher level, in weaponry."
The mullahs and their hand-picked "president" are intent on pulling out every stop to give progressive multiculturalist westerners a chance to assist in their own annihilation:
"Why are you damaging the good name of the security council and IAEA for you own political purposes?' he asked. 'Don't take away the credibility of legitimate forums. Your arsenals are full to the brim, yet when it's the turn of a nation such as mine to develop peaceful nuclear technology you object and resort to threats."
Our weapons have been on the shelf for fifty years, with two exceptions of combat that ended a world war and others for testing.
If somebody - specifically the french - had exercised force on a bullet/infantry scale in 1936 when Hitler reoccupied Rhineland, there probably wouldn't have been a mushroom cloud over Trinity site in 1945. Probably is as close as I can say - history takes many paths. But without a megalomaniac like Hitler the leadership of Nazi Germany would certainly have dissolved into bickering criminal fiefdoms.
Consider the situation in Iran. Their president is merely the figurehead chosen by the mullahs. There is no popular majority support for either him or the mullahs, nor is their much pretence of one. What to do...what to do?
Kicking the Wehrmacht out of the Rhur would have destroyed Hitler's facade of invulnerability in 1936. The failure on the part of france (possessor of the largest army on the planet at that time) to crush what amounted to battalion-sized military invasion was the top step of the rapid descent into appeasement, paralysis, and complacency that marked the beginning of the German march to World War II: involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Krystal Nacht, occupation of Austria, "Peace in our time" at Munich, the von Ribbentrop/Molotov non-aggression pact with the Soviets, the invasion of Czechoslovakia (violating the Munich agreement), and finally the invasion of Poland... which triggered mutual assistance treaties ala 1914.
Jeff Goldstein posts on an article speculating on a possible 2007 war.
Belmont Club weighs in as well:
"Both the regime in Teheran and Washington are like Olympic wrestlers grappling within a narrowly bounded mat. The instant anyone should step or be forced outside the mat the buzzer will sound and a new and deadlier match will begin. Unfortunately the boundaries of the arena are invisible to both sides. How far can America push Iran? How far can Iran push America? Iran has the advantage of knowing that the US will stop short of overt military action against them -- for the time being. But it has the disadvantage of not knowing how far it can let Al Qaeda and Hezbollah go without bringing down the spectators from the stands."
And lastly, but closest to my own take, is Victor Davis Hanson:
"Finally, the public must be warned that dealing with a nuclear Iran is not a matter of a good versus a bad choice, but between a very bad one now and something far, far worse to come."
I believe that history pivots on the actions of individuals. The "Great Man" theory is mentioned as being out of favor in the linked Wiki entry... but they explain "out of favor" being based on:
"In general there is a belief that history which only follows around "great men", especially when "greatness" is determined primarily by political status, is a shallow view of the past, and additionally one which excludes entire groups of people from being part of "history", including labor forces, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, and, as the name "Great men" would suggest, women. As such, "Great man history" is, within the historical profession today, usually used as a pejorative term."
Just because they don't like the implications or possible focus of the Great Man school doesn't make them right. Societies move on inertia.
Only individuals take the hard roads as a wilfull act.
In my opinion, George W. Bush is one of history's great men. The conventional wisdoms that run behind or through the above linked articles seems to range from "Iran won't act until after 2008" - thus begging the question "what then?" to "Military action is physically/politically impossible at this time" to which I say bullshit.
On one side we have a mullahocracy figureheaded by a suicide bomber waiting only for his special bomb. On the other we have the elected representative of the world's foremost republic, a leader already on record as stating that there will not be a nuclear armed Iran.
(UPDATE:) We have the history of missed opportunities of the twentieth century, and the subsequent costs, as a backdrop. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Mohammed wrote the Koran. RTFM, as they say in customer support...(end UPDATE).
I am convinced that we will move militarily against Iran before the end of this spring. The targets will be leadership and military infrastructure. We will occupy key sites within Iran. Beyond that, I don't have a clue.
Discuss? All one or two of you, I mean. Lol...
Sunday, January 08, 2006
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