Item: The Supremes followed law and precedent and ruled that the President overstepped his authority by establishing military tribunals for terrorists.
That they referred to Geneva in how prisoners - in this case individuals who are clearly illegal combatants under Geneva - should be treated is probably going to be revisited under seperate brief just shortly after ...
Item: The Supremes didn't even hint at relief. This Court contains a majority of constitutionalist jurists. Not conservative - constitutionalist. This matter is going to the Congress. That body that was established to solve critical issues through legislation but has for a long time now often retired behind judges cloaks or cynically acquiesced to executive orders, instead, when the issues were... complicated.
Four months before elections now. Less, actually.
So who is serious about prosecuting this war? Who will put down in law just what price illegal combatants will pay when they wage war against Americans? What will the debate look like?
Item: Karl Rove, you maginificent bastard*!
* He'll get credit, at least from the enemy.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Confluence Leads to Cusp
Happy Sunday, random traveler. It's an achingly beautiful day here in Utah. Blue skies, ninety degrees, and a whisper of a breeze that cools sufficient for comfort as long as you've got a shred of shade to relax in.
We live in wondrous times. I am grateful to be aware of and part of just how wondrous they truly are, one day at a time.
The twenty second day of June 2006 marked the sixth anniversary of my last beer. The past six years haven't been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, much less without challenges and stresses, but at least I've been alive during the time. Knowledge is thought to be a curse by some; our reality based polity has certainly gone out of their way to avoid the burden, with ample support from their putative leadership and chosen information portals.
Back in 2001 I watched and listened along with millions of other people as we finally entered combat in the Long War against militant Islam. I told Mrs. Tmj that we were at war the moment we watched the second WTC strike.
I also told her I don't know if we have what it takes to win. That's still very much an open question.
Back in 2001 the enemy attacked based on a lot of perceptions, some valid and others wildly off. Our flagship media told the world on a daily basis that our presidency was illegitimate, that our economy was in shambles, and that our civil liberties were vanishing - none of which were true then, and are most certainly not true even today. The enemy also had observed literally decades of non-response to their best efforts at striking us. Embassy bombings, bombing the WTC the first time around, the COLE incident in Yemen, Somalia, and all the random murders that pass for diplomatic discourse when Islamists are involved... even the widely circulated OBL declaration of war on the infidel world failed to provoke any meaningful response from us. They thought that our leadership was paralyzed, and that our people wouldn't fight.
The decade of the nineties seemed to demonstrate that domestic U.S. political considerations were perceived by most office holders to trump national security cold, and worse, national honor and credibility were tossed where inconvenient allies such as the Kurds or Israelis were concerned. That the jihadis overreached in their analysis is a fact - but it's on open question on just how far. Post 9/11, the situation remains in flux still, sadly.
Our self-proclaimed progressives and their hostage Democrat party are committed to defeat. Not because our cause is unjust, nor because our enemy is by any stretch a victim of any policy of ours. The Democrats cannot win national elections when the economy is robust, when people can work and save and succeed on their own, when citizens base their relationships on character and not color, and when the citizenry sees foreign threats as direct and personal dangers to their family's' lives.
They see beating one political opponent - Bush, who can't even run for office again - as important enough to repeat the disasters that marked the end of Vietnam. They will again serve up millions of former allies for reeducation and murder. They will abandon a satellite battlefield and millions of allies not to an evil, if mostly rational, state that was even then teetering on the brink of ideological and economic stagnation, but instead to an ascendant international cult of mystic madness that will be funded by the free world's own energy purchases for decades to come.
Now in 2006 we have a robust economy to the point that employers can't fill the jobs they have open, but you couldn't tell it from cursory reading of newspapers or watching TV. Iraq has an elected government, as does Afghanistan; both countries are seeing violence on a daily basis but the enemy can only resist - never win - unless we leave before the governments of those two countries are ready to provide their own security. Bush's numbers are down. Regardless of whether they are down because people think he's not doing enough to fight the war, or because we are fighting the war, is never discussed by MSM. Flagship MSM, in alliance with political opponents to the president within various government agencies, is sabotaging our best intelligence weapons against the enemy. The Democrats are now public that we are the enemy, and not the jihadis. MSM also reports that we can't handle North Korea if push comes to shove - because we are too busy elsewhere - which is unmitigated bullshit. Handle, yes, without cost and pain, no, especially to central South Korea, but since conflict = defeat to the MSM, the story continues to be told. But Reuters and AP and Time and the NYT are all over stories quoting Republicans that we can't get by without direct talks with the Norks.
Iran won't be allowed a nuclear arsenal by this administration. DoD's recent statements linking Iran's security services to the Iraqi insurgency must be a clear signal that we are about to begin taking steps to bring down the mullahs. They know we can do it, too...
It seems to me we are about due for an attack here at home, or at least the jihadis will give it their best shot. Confluence again - we have elections coming this November, and I fear the jihadis still don't understand that what works in Spain won't work here at all. But they've got nothing else to try. Maybe they feel beholden to their best allies. They should.
We are in a war that will end only with the annihilation of Islam as a state religion in any country on the planet. In the end, that is what it took to kill Nazism and Japanese militarism. The fact that militant Islam is so decentralized, and so psychotic, means that the threat will manifest in random murder more often than mass casualty attacks just means that it will take still more time for the civilized world to recognize and embrace the one path that will lead to victory, then peace.
It's a beautiful day here. I hope that yours is, too.
We live in wondrous times. I am grateful to be aware of and part of just how wondrous they truly are, one day at a time.
The twenty second day of June 2006 marked the sixth anniversary of my last beer. The past six years haven't been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, much less without challenges and stresses, but at least I've been alive during the time. Knowledge is thought to be a curse by some; our reality based polity has certainly gone out of their way to avoid the burden, with ample support from their putative leadership and chosen information portals.
Back in 2001 I watched and listened along with millions of other people as we finally entered combat in the Long War against militant Islam. I told Mrs. Tmj that we were at war the moment we watched the second WTC strike.
I also told her I don't know if we have what it takes to win. That's still very much an open question.
Back in 2001 the enemy attacked based on a lot of perceptions, some valid and others wildly off. Our flagship media told the world on a daily basis that our presidency was illegitimate, that our economy was in shambles, and that our civil liberties were vanishing - none of which were true then, and are most certainly not true even today. The enemy also had observed literally decades of non-response to their best efforts at striking us. Embassy bombings, bombing the WTC the first time around, the COLE incident in Yemen, Somalia, and all the random murders that pass for diplomatic discourse when Islamists are involved... even the widely circulated OBL declaration of war on the infidel world failed to provoke any meaningful response from us. They thought that our leadership was paralyzed, and that our people wouldn't fight.
The decade of the nineties seemed to demonstrate that domestic U.S. political considerations were perceived by most office holders to trump national security cold, and worse, national honor and credibility were tossed where inconvenient allies such as the Kurds or Israelis were concerned. That the jihadis overreached in their analysis is a fact - but it's on open question on just how far. Post 9/11, the situation remains in flux still, sadly.
Our self-proclaimed progressives and their hostage Democrat party are committed to defeat. Not because our cause is unjust, nor because our enemy is by any stretch a victim of any policy of ours. The Democrats cannot win national elections when the economy is robust, when people can work and save and succeed on their own, when citizens base their relationships on character and not color, and when the citizenry sees foreign threats as direct and personal dangers to their family's' lives.
They see beating one political opponent - Bush, who can't even run for office again - as important enough to repeat the disasters that marked the end of Vietnam. They will again serve up millions of former allies for reeducation and murder. They will abandon a satellite battlefield and millions of allies not to an evil, if mostly rational, state that was even then teetering on the brink of ideological and economic stagnation, but instead to an ascendant international cult of mystic madness that will be funded by the free world's own energy purchases for decades to come.
Now in 2006 we have a robust economy to the point that employers can't fill the jobs they have open, but you couldn't tell it from cursory reading of newspapers or watching TV. Iraq has an elected government, as does Afghanistan; both countries are seeing violence on a daily basis but the enemy can only resist - never win - unless we leave before the governments of those two countries are ready to provide their own security. Bush's numbers are down. Regardless of whether they are down because people think he's not doing enough to fight the war, or because we are fighting the war, is never discussed by MSM. Flagship MSM, in alliance with political opponents to the president within various government agencies, is sabotaging our best intelligence weapons against the enemy. The Democrats are now public that we are the enemy, and not the jihadis. MSM also reports that we can't handle North Korea if push comes to shove - because we are too busy elsewhere - which is unmitigated bullshit. Handle, yes, without cost and pain, no, especially to central South Korea, but since conflict = defeat to the MSM, the story continues to be told. But Reuters and AP and Time and the NYT are all over stories quoting Republicans that we can't get by without direct talks with the Norks.
Iran won't be allowed a nuclear arsenal by this administration. DoD's recent statements linking Iran's security services to the Iraqi insurgency must be a clear signal that we are about to begin taking steps to bring down the mullahs. They know we can do it, too...
It seems to me we are about due for an attack here at home, or at least the jihadis will give it their best shot. Confluence again - we have elections coming this November, and I fear the jihadis still don't understand that what works in Spain won't work here at all. But they've got nothing else to try. Maybe they feel beholden to their best allies. They should.
We are in a war that will end only with the annihilation of Islam as a state religion in any country on the planet. In the end, that is what it took to kill Nazism and Japanese militarism. The fact that militant Islam is so decentralized, and so psychotic, means that the threat will manifest in random murder more often than mass casualty attacks just means that it will take still more time for the civilized world to recognize and embrace the one path that will lead to victory, then peace.
It's a beautiful day here. I hope that yours is, too.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Heads Up!
Bill Whittle has a new post up.
"We are not blind, and we are not crippled, and the world is not a novel or a treatise or a theory or a manifesto. It exists. We can go look for ourselves. And on the way up, when those desperate elitist bastards start clutching at your ankles and implore you to stay below where it’s safe and argue some more…be sure to kick those sons of bitches right in the teeth. Their blind obedience to their Big Ideas have killed more people in history than anything except disease. Boot to the the teeth, I say."
Too bad we won't really fight until thousands more die on the "intellectuals'" tab, though. All luxuries come with a price; we foot the bill for intelligentsia devoid of intellect and their host, the higher education industry, which is more concerned with maintaining dogma than any Inquisition that ever set out to supress a Galileo or Copernicus.
We live in wondrous times. Interesting times. Dangerous times.
(via The Geek With A .45)
"We are not blind, and we are not crippled, and the world is not a novel or a treatise or a theory or a manifesto. It exists. We can go look for ourselves. And on the way up, when those desperate elitist bastards start clutching at your ankles and implore you to stay below where it’s safe and argue some more…be sure to kick those sons of bitches right in the teeth. Their blind obedience to their Big Ideas have killed more people in history than anything except disease. Boot to the the teeth, I say."
Too bad we won't really fight until thousands more die on the "intellectuals'" tab, though. All luxuries come with a price; we foot the bill for intelligentsia devoid of intellect and their host, the higher education industry, which is more concerned with maintaining dogma than any Inquisition that ever set out to supress a Galileo or Copernicus.
We live in wondrous times. Interesting times. Dangerous times.
(via The Geek With A .45)
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Range Date
I am going to be at the Lee Kay Hunter Education Center in West Valley City, Utah from 0800 to about noon this Saturday (3 June). Mrs. Tmj, The Goddesses, and some family/work friends and their friends will be in attendance. We will be shooting everything from .22 to 8mm Mauser and I'm bringing enough ammo for everybody to get a lick in.
We'll be shooting on both the pistol and centerfire rifle ranges. If you would like to partake, just show up and look behind the firing line for a wheeled wooden cart stuffed with rifles. I will be on the firing point in front of that, or coaching near it. I'll be wearing a khaki vest with a Springfield Armory patch on the back. Ask for Andy.
Bring your own hearing/eye protection, or buy it at the check in desk. The same goes for targets - but I prefer NRA 100 YD smallbore bullseye targets over what the range sells. I recommend a long sleeve shirt or jacket if you intend to shoot high power rifle from their benches - the concrete can tear up your elbows even when shooting from bags.
We'll be shooting on both the pistol and centerfire rifle ranges. If you would like to partake, just show up and look behind the firing line for a wheeled wooden cart stuffed with rifles. I will be on the firing point in front of that, or coaching near it. I'll be wearing a khaki vest with a Springfield Armory patch on the back. Ask for Andy.
Bring your own hearing/eye protection, or buy it at the check in desk. The same goes for targets - but I prefer NRA 100 YD smallbore bullseye targets over what the range sells. I recommend a long sleeve shirt or jacket if you intend to shoot high power rifle from their benches - the concrete can tear up your elbows even when shooting from bags.
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