Judicious Asininity

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Thu Apr 28, 2005

Hold Their Feet to the Fire

Bungling on the Borders

Malkin on immigration, particularly Hillary's chameleon act and Bush's failure to address one of our most pressing problems:

What a pair: Sen. Conniver and President Clueless. Pick your poison. Either way, we're committing national suicide.

I have said often that the only thing saving the Republicans on the immigration issue is the Democrats' stupidity. No more. Hillary may only be playing dress-up on border security, but that's far more than most of the cowering GOP elite in Washington is willing to do. And she's not alone among Democrats who are beginning to exploit the White House's vulnerability. Sounding positively O'Reillyian, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) complained that an agricultural illegal alien amnesty bill sponsored by GOP Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and defeated last week would have been a "huge magnet" for illegal immigration. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) sponsored a successful amendment funding Border Patrol agents, immigration investigators, and interior enforcement agents that the Bush administration had shortchanged.

And as Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald reported on our group website, The Immigration Blog (www.michellemalkin.com/immigration),"Maxine Waters, who represents South Los Angeles, erupted in a tirade against Hispanic and black gang members last week" on illegal alien gangs.

Railed Rep. Waters: "Why isn't anyone talking about the Mexican Mafia (a gang of illegal Mexicans that controls the California prison system)?" she thundered. 'I don't care if you're pink or purple or white or black or brown, I want you out if you're committing crimes." There is no excuse not to control the border, she said. 'I'm a liberal with a capital 'L',' she said, 'but I'm sick of it.'

You listening Bush? How about you Rove?
American's want some serious action on illegal immigration. You best deliver. Comprende?
At least Hillary understands the potential of this issue and is trying to give the impression of changing her spots. She knows one thing quite well. This issue has the potential of becoming the Republican slayer. Maybe, just maybe, Republicans should do what needs doing. After all, they have the Whitehouse and majorities in both houses of Congress and will be held to account for their inaction on a matter that is causing problems for all Americans every day. As such, there is no excuse for failure to take substantial and effective measures on this issue. Either political self interest or common sense provides plenty of incentive for the G.O.P. to move on this. What's the hold up?

Wed Apr 27, 2005

Steyn is brilliant eviscerating Ohio's senator Voinovich

Senate Republicans should see the Wizard of Oz and ask for a spine

Go read. I'll quote just a snippet:

Sinking Bolton means handing a huge psychological victory to a federal bureaucracy that so spectacularly failed America on 9/11 and to a U.N. bureaucracy eager for any distraction from its own mess. The Democrats' interest in derailing Bush foreign policy is crude but understandable.

When will the Republicans learn that the best defense is offense, the more the better?

The Senate Republicans need to go see The Untouchables and commit these lines to heart:"He pulls out a knife, you pull out a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue...that's the Chicago way!"

When Republicans are up against the Democrats, they need to remember that gentlemen went extinct shortly after WW2, and play the Chicago way.

Here's how to do it. Reporter says filibuster, Republican Senator says "Byrd filibustered the Civil Rights Act. Is that a good precedent?" Reporter says Kennedy, Republican Senator says "unanswered questions on Chappaquiddick". Reporter says Bolton, Republican Senator says "Oil for Fraud", "Darfur", "Rwanda", or "Cambodia".

Zimbabwe goes from bad to worse

And the world stands by again

According to this report via Lucianne, Mugabe's regime is going to slaughter the animals in their wildlife reserves to feed the starving peasants. And, when the animals are gone, what will be left? Certainly not tourism. And the peasants? Weeds and tree bark? Mugabe is going to go down in history as the first despot to commit genocide by incompetence.

Meanwhile, environmentalists fret about obscure animals under threat from housing developments, the NAACP attacks Bush as a racist, and the UN ignores Mugabe's crimes against black and white Zimbabweans.

If Bolton fails to be confirmed

Bush should renominate him for this position

Secretary of Transportation.

Tue Apr 26, 2005

Blair must win

And if the Democrats followed his example, they'd win

Christopher Hitchens, writing in Frontpage Magazine, explains why he is a strong supporter of Tony Blair. One sentence caught my attention:

After Sept. 11, 2001, Blair told Bush that he would send ground troops to Afghanistan even if the United States would not.

Perhaps that was just to stiffen Bush's resolve. Without more context, it's impossible to say. But, it's a pretty amazing thing to hear from a leftist/centrist European leader. It would have been even more amazing to hear from a leading Democrat.

But imagine where we'd be if the Democrats had followed Blair's example. The country would not have been nearly as divided on the war in Iraq had they followed Blair's example. Quoting Hitchens again:

In 1999, when Bush was still an isolationist governor of Texas, Blair made a speech in Chicago pointing out that Saddam Hussein's defiance of international law made a future confrontation with him inevitable.

But the Democrats, sensing political advantage in the difficulties posed by the insurgency in Iraq, chose to attack Bush on the war. They chose a known anti-war candidate and lost. But they made WMD (or the lack thereof) a major campaign issue. The problem is that we now face a dire WMD threat from a nuclear armed Iran. Instead of having the country united to face down that threat, we are divided. The Democrats and their MSM allies can say, "you were wrong on Iraq's WMD, how we can we trust you again". Of course, they ignore Libya's nuclear program, the Khan network that supplied it (both exposed, courtesy of John Bolton). They also ignore Saddam's efforts to maintain his capabilities until sanctions and inspections were suspended.

The result of their efforts to undermine Bush has been to undermine the security of the United States and its allies. They simply made it much harder for Bush to take decisive action. But, with an ally like Blair, Bush stands on much firmer ground and the Democrats are exposed for what they are; not principled liberals but hard-left political opportunists willing to undermine their own country in their pursuit of political advantage. Had they followed Blair and been aggressive in the pursuit of America's enemies, the electorate would have trusted them with the keys to the country.

The British conservative party has proven to be a mirror image of the Democrats, undermining Blair from the right. It's a funny old world where the left-wing British Labour Party is more closely aligned with the Republicans than the Democrats. Try to imagine a meeting between Tony Blair and John Kerry. Then again, WW2 saw the great alliance between Democrat FDR and Conservative Winston Churchill. But then, Bush is starting to look a lot like Roosevelt, good and bad.

Mon Apr 25, 2005

The filibuster fight

There is only one deal the Republicans need to make

All the Republicans have to do is promise that they won't filibuster the next Democratic President's judicial candidates. This would have the virtue of reminding the Democrats that setting the filibuster precedent will backfire on them when their turn comes.

But then again, maybe that's why the Democrats want to filibuster -- they don't rate their chances of regaining the Presidency very highly.

How to Destroy a Country

THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA---FROM WITHIN

Michelle Malkin links this from Bonnie Eggle over at the Immigration Blog who points out these chilling thoughts from Dick Lamm, the former Governor of Colorado, who asks:

Will we still be the "Country of Choice" and still be America if we continue to make the changes forced on us by the people from other countries that come to live in America because we have made America the "Country of Choice"?

Common sense and history provide some strong hints to the proper answer to that one. Bonnie leads off with this intro:

The following remarks by Richard Lamm are remarkable and hard-hitting. I was one of the many attendees at this conference and was as spellbound as the rest of the crowd. Please read and think of the 8 points....how many are already accomplished? That is a frightening thought.

Looking at history and the numerous lessons from the present it should be obvious that most of the world's problems are due to the mixture of different cultures, belief systems, or religions. That is patently obvious, but here in the U.S. it seems that even the obvious is easily ignored by certain peoples. So, despite the fact that 'Balkanization' seems to be a fairly well known problem, we here, or more properly, some here, still find multiculturalism a fascinating and much sought after condition. For those people and as a reminder to the rest of us, Mr. Lamm has some rather sobering news in the form of 8 steps to destroying America. Here's a start:

No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'"

"Here is how they do it," Lamm said: "Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.

"The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way: 'The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy.' Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans."

Lamm went on: "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.

Head on over and read the rest of the steps that we seem well on our way to completing.
Then you should be able to confidently tell the 'enlightened' ones who proclaim the wonders of multiculturalism where they can put their wonderful ideas.

Like Michelle says: Hold their feet to the fire. Bush and our congressional leaders need to get their heads out of ~~their asses~~ the sand and heed the call of immigration reform. This is a genie out of the bottle type of situation. Once that genie gets out it is a bit difficult to get it back in. Just look to France and other living, breathing examples of how not to run a country for inspiration then call your elected officials and light some fires.

Fri Apr 22, 2005

The slaughter of Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Turks

No apologies - just a coverup by Turkey

Andrew G. Bostom at American Thinker discusses Professor Vahakn Dadrian’s study of the Armenian genocide that took place early last century. It makes horrific reading. It seems no one really wants to talk about what really happened but Dadrian has been meticulous in his research. This passage reads like something out of The Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes but with religious overtones that makes the crimes even more horrific, if that is possible:

In a 2003 essay collection [2], Dadrian recounted the harrowing details of this particular slaughter, its Islamic religious motifs unexpurgated. Six thousand four hundred Armenian children, young girls, and women from Yozgad, were decamped by their Turkish captors at a promontory some distance from the city. Then,
To save shell and powder, the gendarmerie commander in charge of this large convoy had gathered 10,000-12,000 Turkish peasants and other villagers, and armed with “hatchets, meat cleavers, saddler’s knives, cudgels, axes, pickaxes, shovels”, the latter attacked and for some 4-5 hours mercilessly butchered the victims while crying “Oh God, Oh God” (Allah, Allah). In a moment of rare candor, this gendarmerie commander confided to the priest-author, whom he did not expect to survive the mass murder, that after each massacre episode, he spread his little prayer rug and performed the namaz, the ritual of worship, centered on prayer, with a great sense of redemption in the service of Almighty God.

Why is this important now? Bostrom writes:

Yet ninety years after the events of April 24, 1915, the Turkish government persists in its denials of the Armenian genocide, abetted by a well-endowed network of unsavory political and pseudo-academic sycophants operating with the imprimatur of morphing geostrategic rationales—formerly, “Turkey as a bulwark against Communism”, and now, “Turkey as a bulwark against radical Islam”. This leeway afforded Turkey is both illogical and morally indefensible. West Germany was arguably a much more direct and important ally against the Soviet Communist bloc, while each successive post-World War II West German administration, from Adenauer through Kohl, made Holocaust denial a punishable crime. Moreover, there is burgeoning evidence, available almost daily, that both Turkey’s government under the Muslim ideologue Erdogan (see here as well) and large swaths of the Turkish media and intelligentsia (see, “Turkish Media Project”) hardly qualify as “bulwarks against radical Islam”. Indeed, Turkey’s contemporary Islamic “revival” is of particular relevance to the tragic events that transpired between 1894 and the end of World War I, because the Armenian genocide was in large measure a jihad genocide.

So, the big question is, in the war against Radical Islam, is Turkey an ally or playing a long-term game going back to the last Caliph? The Turk's refusal to allow the allies to open a northern front against Saddam, an action that arguably cost thousands of allied soldiers and Iraqi people their lives, does not bode well.

Why Bolton is the man

In three words, Proliferation Security Initiative

PatriotBlog notes that:

Bolton was the inspiration for the Bush administration's proliferation security initiative (PSI), which seeks to curtail the sale and trade in weapons materials through such things as joint ship inspections. And Bolton was seen as effective in negotiating European and Asian participation in the PSI - even though it is a signature Bush administration "coalition of the willing" initiative that sidesteps the UN.

"His idea was to create a new initiative without any international institution participation at all, so it's hard to see that as a recommendation for making him ambassador to the UN," says Nancy Soderberg, a security expert at the International Crisis Group in New York ... Ms. Soderberg ... was also on the National Security Council in the Clinton White House

Ms. Soderberg and like-minded critics are too concerned about pleasing the international community and not enough about results or America's interests. The PSI has been far more effective in stopping nuclear proliferation than the United Nations body, the IAEA. The PSI uncovered Khan's nuclear market and Libya's nuclear weapons program, not the IAEA. If the UN is to be of any use in promoting peace and security it needs to become more effective. To date it has been useless across the globe. East Timor - no use. Rwanda - no use. Sudan - no use. The Balkans - no real use. Millions have died or been turned into refugees because the UN is worse than useless. Meanwhile, a lucky few have become incredibly rich through the UN's oil-for-fraud program. That's why the UN is worse than useless.

The UN desperately needs reformation. John Bolton is the man to start the process.

Wed Apr 20, 2005

The Boston Marathon

You'll never play in the NLF, the NBA or MLB but you can run the Boston Marathon

It isn't easy. The Boston Athletic Association does give entries to those runners who raise money for charities and their own members. But the rest of us have to earn our way by meeting the qualifying standards. I did that last year. But I'm not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination.

In 1984 I smoked two packs a day. I stopped cold turkey. In 2000 I couldn't run 10 yards without being winded. That 50+ pounds I'd put on since I'd quit smoking didn't help. But I got started on aerobic exercise and evenually graduated to marathoning.

The average person thinks that running further than your average commute would be sheer torture. That would be true if you were forced to run home without any training. But if you were training to run long distance races, the idea of running 10 miles would barely raise an eyebrow. Running 20 miles would be a more serious matter, and you wouldn't do that more than two or three times before a marathon. I think the critical point is around 3 miles. Once you can run that, no matter how long it takes you, you can seriously consider running a marathon.

If you start running marathons you soon learn that qualifying for the Boston Marathon is a big deal. The gifted can do it first time out. The rest of us have to work at it. But it can be done. I did it at a ripe old age. The good news is that the qualifying time for oldies is easier than it is for runners in their prime. The bad news is that we have to use our creaking old bodies to do it.

So, here I am back from Boston. What a wonderful experience. We marathoners were treated like the victorious Red Sox by the people of Boston. Read more »

I got to Boston by running the Columbus Marathon on a cool day. It came as a complete surprise because I thought I'd be lucky to do 3:55 given a nagging ab injury and a couple of horrible long runs on hot days. But I beat the 3:45:59 time I needed to qualify for Boston with minutes to spare. My wife had missed me qualifying at Columbus, so there was no question but she was coming to Boston. Boston training had gone well although I'd only been able to wear shorts about twice in the whole training cycle. It's tough for northerners when you train in the ice and snow but have to race in the heat.

I woke at 5:00 Monday and boarded the bus at Boston Common at 7:00 for the long bus ride up to Hopkinton. The bus seemed to spend most of the time going uphill. For reasons of tradition Boston starts at noon, so you wait for hours before the race actually starts. All the while the temperature rises. Eventually it's time to start. We shuffled forward, and after about 15 minutes, made it to the start line. It was already over 70 and I knew it was going to be a tough day.

The crowds were loud and supportive. I had fun high-fiving with the kids lining the route. I really appreciated the ice that people handed out. I put some in my cap and held the rest in my hands in an attempt to keep cooler. But it was still too hot for me. My water stop routine consisted of grabbing one cup, drinking half, tipping half on my head, grabbing a second cup, tipping it on my left shoulder, grabbing a third cup, tipping it on my right shoulder, and then grabbing Gatorade for a few more sips. The first half of Boston is not a gradual descent. It's rolling hills with some fairly sharp turns and it is hard to settle down to a steady pace. At Columbus I'd felt like I was on cruise control; at Boston I felt like I was driving a stick shift through hills and traffic. From the half-way mark I knew two things: I'd finish but it was going to get a lot tougher. The uphills were not hard compared to where we'd trained. My problem was that the downhills were too steep for me to pick up the time I'd lost on the uphills. A lady dressed as Wonder Woman flew by me on one of the first downhills. I'd pass her on the up hills and then she'd come flying by me on the downhills. It must have been the cape that helped her.

At mile 22 I saw close to my Columbus time showing on the time clock. That was discouraging - take off the 15 minutes shuffling to the start and add on the 4 miles to go. I was heading for my second to worst time and this was my Boston debut. Nothing was really hurting but I was feeling very hot and beat-up. Knowing we were in the last few miles of Boston and listening to the crowd kept me going. I was scanning the left side of the course looking for my wife. Opposite the Lennox hotel, around mile 26 I heard her and the people around her yelling out my name. She'd been able to work her way forward to the fence. I ran over to her, hugged and kissed her for a while until the women next to us told me to get a move on; I had a race to finish. So I ran to the finish of my first Boston marathon. Final time was way over 4:20. That was disappointing but I took comfort in the fact I placed better than my bib number.

So, that was my introduction to the Boston marathon. It was by far the toughest race I'd ever run. But it was an exciting race and I had a great time running it, despite the heat and pain. Will I do it next year? I think so. I want to learn how to run Boston. I need to learn how to run downhills more efficiently. But the main thing I learned is that there are marathons and then there is Boston, tempting but unconquerable, at least by mere mortals.

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French Wine makers in trouble

Could demographics be a problem?

Lucianne links to an Independent article indicating a certain amount of unrest in French wine growing regions. The first sign that they are are deep trouble is the fact that nobody wants to drink all the "wine" that French wine makers produce.

The EU routinely destroys a billion litres of wine a year by buying it up and turning it into alcohol for use in industry. The French growers have asked for an extra billion litres to be destroyed this year, including 250 million litres from France, mostly Bordeaux "appellation" wines from the low end of the middle market.

The domestic French market is declining. The fastest growing French demographic, Muslims, are not exactly big wine drinkers. Like various Christian denominations and Hinduism, Islam prohibits believers from imbibing. Not much growth potential there.

The UK is a big market for French wine but the Australians have made huge inroads. The US is also a big market but New World wines are beating out the French, more so since France supported Saddam instead of the US. After I ran the Boston Marathon my wife and I went to a snitzy restaurant in Kerry country to celebrate. The wine list was all French except for a little corner with a few American wines. We chose from there. I bet a lot more Republicans are now celebrating special events with American rather than French wines.

In a market economy the marginal French producers would have switched to other crops. In France they strike and burn stuff, trying to get a special deal from the government. The expanded EU is closing off that option.

We in the US should not be so smug about the problems of the French wine producers. Check out ethanol production and you'll see a mirror image of the French ethanol problem. Politics too often trumps economic sense and the problem appears wherever government thinks it has a role in economics beyond creating an environmemt in which a free market can operate.

Tue Apr 19, 2005

Popes and Asses

New Pontiff Riles Some Folks

Xriq sums up the various reactions to the new pope very well:

The good news, if you’re Professor Bainbridge, is that we have a new Pope. The bad news, if you’re Andrew Sullivan, is that he’s Catholic.

And speaking of Professor Bainbridge. He has come to the belated conclusion that Andrew Sullivan is an ass:

So why is Sullivan so worked up? Here's his real gripe in his own words:

... the impermissibility of any sexual act that does not involve the depositing of semen in a fertile uterus ....

It's always about sex with Andrew, isn't it?

Yeah, thousands of years of beliefs should be thrown out to accommodate the Andy Sullivans of the world. Well, Andy and the rest of the rabid bereaved certainly have good reason to worry about this pope. He seems to have their number:

We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.

Well yeah, your holiness, but what's wrong with that?

Paul at Wizbang offers this:

BTW Look out for words like "lost opportunity." As in, "The Catholic church had a great opportunity to open itself up to a broader base. They could have supported premarital sex, adultery and abortion on demand but they lost that opportunity when they selected someone who actually believed in the teachings of their own religion."

Uh huh.
Isn't it unbelievable that some people actually have the gall to believe in their beliefs?

Thu Apr 14, 2005

Blogging will be light for a few days

I'm off to Boston to run the marathon

OK, the race doesn't start until 12pm Monday, but I head there on Saturday and don't come back until Tuesday. The Boston Marathon is 109 years old. It's a tradition. You have to meet the Boston Athletic Association's qualifying time to run it. Miss by 3 seconds and you're out of luck. If you run for a charity you can run without qualifying; about 3000 out of the 20,000 runners fit that category. They run for worthy causes but they haven't actually qualified or Boston, or BQ'd as we "elite" runners say.

Twenty years ago I smoked two packs a day. I built software fuelled by nicotine and caffeine. In 1984 I stopped smoking cold turkey -- and wrote some of the worst software ever written over the next few months -- but at least I'd stopped smoking. It was hard and I rested on my laurels for too long.

Fifty pounds and twenty years later I realized I was running out of time to actually get in shape. I'd had some chest pains and done a stress test and failed miserably. The Doctor told me I had below average fitness for a 50 year old male. That hurt.

Eventually, under sharp prodding from my exercise conscious wife, I started walking on a treadmill for 20 minutes 3 times a week. I'd negotiated her down from 25 minutes 4 times a week, so I was happy.

Boring. Very boring. Let's try jogging 5 minutes, walking 5, jogging 5. Lot's of puffing and panting, but at least it wasn't boring. Eventually, I could jog for 25 minutes without stopping. So I bought some sneakers and ventured out onto the streets.

Here I was, a lot lighter, jogging around the neighborhood, doing 3 miles at a time, and then my knee started to hurt. What's a little pain, says I, and carry on running. For a week. And then I couldn't do stairs, or run, or walk. Oh, oh, I think, my running career is over before I really got started . But two months later I found I could jog again.

Big lesson learned. Your aerobic capacity (heart, lungs and muscles) improve faster than your bones, joints and tendons. Push too hard and you get hurt. The other lesson I learned is running is more complicated than putting on a pair of sneakers and racing around the neighborhood. So I used sites like Runner's World to learn more.

I saw a 5K (3.1 mile race) advertised on TV and signed up for. I wasn't last. In fact I was 4th in my age group, mainly because the "elite" runners were all doing the 1/2 marathon.

But I was hooked on the sport. I could do it. I wasn't the worst, not that that mattered, but I could actually run a few miles with maximum effort. The 5K led to a 5 miler which led to a 10K which led to a 1/2 marathon (13.1 miles). That race was hot, humid and horrible. For redemption, I carried on training and ran a marathon.

Finishing your first marathon can be a transformational experience, especially if you do it from nowhere. It tells you that you have endurance, strength and will-power beyond your wildest dreams. I had a wonderful time. Being intimidated by the distance, I ran slowly. Too slowly, probably, but it paid off in enjoyment. The last six miles, where I passed so many people walking, limping and struggling to finish, was a blast.

Some people run one marathon and move on. To them, it is a life-goal and they move on to other things. They can say, with justifiable pride, that they ran a marathon. Others see marathoning as an enduring challenge. They want to run more. And they soon learn that there is one marathon that all marathoners want to run. That is Boston. But, to run Boston, you have to qualify. For a young man in his prime, 3:10 will do it. When he hits 60, 4:00 is enough. For women, add 30 minutes to those times. Those are not easy times. The average marathoner takes more than 4 hours.

Qualifying for Boston is the next rite of passage after running a marathon. It is a challenging target but doable. Few of us can go to the Olympics or play pro sports. But almost anyone can train for and run a marathon. Boston is the 11 on the marathon 1-10 scale.

Wed Apr 13, 2005

Our victories aren't news

Their victories are

Cori Dauber at Ranting Profs wonders why:

a major indictment of top al Queda officials rates barely more than a yawn over at the Washington Post.

The answer is pretty simple: because the terrorists did not succeed in their plot to blow up financial buildings in Washington, New York and New Jersey.

Imagine if a competent FBI (pretty hard to imagine, but try) had connected the dots between Moussaoui and the rest of the 9/11 hijackers and foiled the plot on 9/10. Would that have been headline news? Maybe for a day or two. Then we'd have stories about ACLU lawyers trying to get Atta and company released on their own cognizance or any charges against them dropped because the FBI did not observe all the niceties accorded to petty criminals in the US justice system. Heck, they're still trying to spring Moussaoui.

A generation ago, the capture, trial and execution of Soviet spies -- the Rosenbergs -- was headline news. But times have changed. Or rather, the media has changed. Now it roots for every anti-American underdog and minimizes any threat against America until after the fact.

Tue Apr 12, 2005

The FBI Arabic translation service may be worse than useless

PC strikes again in the "war" on terror

Jamie Glazov of Frontpage Magazine interviews Paul Sperry, author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington. In the interview he describes the how the FBI's Muslim Arabic translators are failing to do their part to protect America:

Sperry: Absolutely. In fact, they've infiltrated every security agency from the FBI to the Pentagon to the prison system, which is the top recruiting ground for al-Qaida right now, and they've also worked their way into the public school system. But let's just take the FBI. Remember how after 9/11 we hired Arab and Muslim translators to clear the huge backlog of Al-Qaida chatter?

FP: Yeah, the same backlog where clues to the next planned attack may be buried.

Sperry: Right. Well some of them have sold us out. Case agents I talked to say they can't trust these guys. They say some have tipped off targets of terror investigations, while others are holding back key information from case agents they're working with -- who are completely at their mercy because they don't speak Arabic and these other tongues. The Muslim translators are claiming the information is "NOT PERTINENT" to their investigations when in fact it is. They've also had a problem with laptops with classified al-Qaida information disappearing from that translation unit at FBI's Washington field office. It's a mess there, a veritable Muslim "mole house," as one bureau source put it. Some devout Muslims in the unit have gotten so cocky they're actually demanding separate potties from the "infidel" agents so they won't get dirty sitting on the same toilets. Others go around the language squad saying America had 9/11 coming to it because of our pro-Israel policies. It's outrageous, it's flat-out betrayal, and these are the people who are supposed to be protecting us from another 9/11.

It gets worse. Non-Muslim Arabic speakers who could do the same job and check whether or not the Muslim translators are reliable cannot be used. Why? According to Aaron's CC:

Others familiar with the FBI’s foreign language program say the reason the FBI snubbed the Jewish
applicants has more to do with politics than security. They say headquarters didn’t want to offend Muslim translators, who would have to work alongside Jews.

“There’s already tension between the Hebrew and Arabic desks,” an FBI source said. “If they hired Arab Jews to translate Arabic, there would be bloodshed. Arabs would never accept it.”

Glick notes that Mueller has pandered to Muslim groups, even ones that support Hamas and other
terrorist groups. He’s also mandated Muslim-sensitivity training for agents.

“In people such as the Sephardic Arabic speakers whose applications were apparently rejected by the FBI, the U.S. has a valuable store of capital for its war on terror,” Glick said. “Better it be used than squandered for the sake of pandering to radical Arab groups.”

Shelomo Alfassa, vice president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture in New York, agrees.

“Imagine if during the war against Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt felt that having Jews fight the Nazis might upset the everyday German?” he said.

That's a darn good analogy.

Note: My bolds in the quotes.

Sun Apr 10, 2005

Egypt's tourist industry under attack

Been there, done that, but never again

An Egyptian friend encouraged us to visit Egypt. He told us we would be safe in Egypt. In 1990 my wife and I visited Egypt. We had a wonderful trip, partly because our Egyptian friend hosted us. One of his students gave us a personalized tour of Cairo's mosques, museums and bazaar. Out host took us to his seaside house near the Suez canal and showed us the point where the Israeli army crossed in the 1972 war.

On our own steam we did the Nile cruise. We spent two days touring the Valley of the Kings. We even walked over the hills to the next valley to see the temple of Hatshepsut, a beautiful and startlingly modern looking structure. In 1997 Islamic terrorists linked to the blind sheik massacred 58 tourists in the large open area in front of the temple. Just this month a suicide bomber attacked the tourist bazaar we had visited, killing two other people.

Austin Bay writes about the attacks, the motives of the terrorists and the impact on Egypt. He concludes:

Attacks in Egypt are not new; radical Islamist organizations have attacked tourists, attacked Coptic Christians, and set off bombs for years. A quick scan of the Internet shows a couple of stories with “insurgency” in the title (including the ABC News bulletin I quoted). Here’s the Guardian with a story titled “Egypt Blast Raises Concerns of Insurgency.”

That echoes “Iraqi insurgency.” How organized are Islamist militants inside Egypt? I’ll bet the Egyptian government doesn’t know. Terrorists are always looking for “soft targets,” and tourists are soft targets. There could be an extortion angle – big tourist agencies and hotels might be asked to pay “protection” to insure attacks don’t occur. That raises money for other operations.

The attack at Luxor told us that Egypt was no longer a safe tourist destination. We sure won't be going back until Egypt is a free democratic country and every terrorist has been captured or killed.

Thu Apr 07, 2005

Contempt for the Contemptuous

Liberal Senator Lives Up to Expectations

Jay Nordlinger lays into one fine example of liberalism:

And here's Sen. Barbara Boxer, on John Bolton, Bush's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: "He's been very contemptuous of the U.N." Well, no sh**, senator. And you haven't? You weren't contemptuous when Saddam Hussein's government chaired the nuclear-disarmament committee? You weren't contemptuous when Qaddafi's Libya and Assad's Syria chaired the human-rights committee? You're not contemptuous that China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, and other beauts sit on that committee?

You weren't contemptuous when the U.N. stood by as thousands were slaughtered in the Balkans? You haven't been contemptuous at the U.N.'s performance in Rwanda, and Congo, and Sudan?

Sounds like someone has their wires crossed up real bad.
Must be contagious among people of a certain persuasion.

Advice Awaiting Consent

Republicans Have a Job to Do, Fix the Illegal Immigration Problem, Now

Lorie Byrd of Polipundit has some good advise for Republicans:

Polipundit and Michelle Malkin (and people like me who agree with them) are right when they warn the GOP that the immigration issue will kill them if they don’t start taking some serious, positive action on the issue. I said positive action, because some of the actions being taken on the issue are definitely not positve.

For many years, Republicans were painted as bigots and racists if they wanted to do anything to curb illegal immigration or if they opposed illegals receiving taxpayer funded benefits. That was pre-911, and now the public realizes that issues more important than economic considerations are in play. Democrats have demagogued this issue for many years, while they opposed many efforts to control illegal immigration. Their past positions make them extremely vulnerable on this issue, but Republicans current positions prevent them from claiming it as their own.

Maybe Republicans need a little kick in the pants to convince them that they should be more worried about what will surely happen, including enemies of this country being allowed easy access to their prime target, if they don’t address it, than worrying about being painted as racists. Democrats will do that no matter what Republicans say or do. If Republicans don’t get serious, that kick in the pants just might come in the next election.

Maybe they will listen but I suspect the electorate's nuclear option will be needed at the polls to drive home the point that American's are sick of being overrun by ILLEGAL immigration. Real solutions for this problem are long overdue. Do it now, or pay later. Your choice.

Christian converts faith death under Islamic law

Where's the outrage at Muslim assaults on Christianity?

Via the Jawa Report, ASSIST News Service reports that:

Christians in Iran have expressed great fears for the life of pastor Hamid Pourmand, a lay leader in a church and a convert from Islam, who will appear before an Islamic court next week to face charges of apostasy. If found guilty he is likely to face the death penalty.

That's not an idle threat. Further on we read that:

In the last 16 years three Iranian church leaders have been charged with apostasy and found guilty. All three were sentenced to death. Pastor Hussein Soodman was hanged in 1989. Deacon Maher already had a noose around his neck when he signaled his willingness to recant and was released after signing a paper to that effect in 1992. Pastor Mehdi Dibaj was condemned to death in December 1993. He was released three weeks later after a strong international outcry, only to be found murdered six months later.

Imagine the outcry if a Christian nation made it a crime for a Christian to convert to another religion? But that's what Islamic countries do. Under Sharia law the penallty is death. In Iran, they execute converts to Christianity.

Along the same lines, it is perfectly acceptable for Muslims to build mosques in Christian countries and convert their citizens to Islam. Yet Christians cannot build churches in Iran or Saudi Arabia and most other Muslim countries. Christians cannot preach the gospel of Christ to Muslims.

What is just as sickening is how mainstream Christian churches pander to Islamic terrorists. Take the Presbyterian Church and its divestiture in companies that operate in Israel. How can they can take the side of terrorists whose sole aim is to wipe out every Jew in the Holy Land?

What will it take for Christians to realize that radical Islam has declared war on the West and its values? An Iranian nuclear attack on Israel? Another dozen 9/11s? A few more hundred thousand black Christians murdered by Muslims in Sudan or Nigeria?

Even the late Pope seemed more interested in appeasing Islam instead of defending Christians against Muslim outrages. The time to apologize for the Crusades is the day Islam apologizes for the forcible conversion of millions of Christians and Jews to Islam and allows their descendents the freedom to convert back.

Disclosure: I'm not religious. In my youth I was a nominal Presbyterian.

Wed Apr 06, 2005

One of the few the MSM will ignore

Read the story of one soldier's fight in Fallujah

It's at 2Slick's blog. Be proud we are served by such men.

Tue Apr 05, 2005

Blair goes to the polls

But who do we want to win?

Tony Blair has called a general election. According to the latest opinion polls, Blair and the Labour Party hold a slight lead over Howard and the Conservatives. Under normal circumstances a GOP supporter would be rooting for the party of Margaret Thatcher. But these are not normal circumstances. Tony Blair took a larger political risk than George Bush in joining the coalition that destroyed the Baathist regime in Iraq. He stayed the course despite intense opposition within his own party and from much of the British public.

Michael Howard and some of his Tory cronies tried to exploit Blair's unpopular stand on Iraq for political gain. That did not sit well with the White House. According to this Atlantic Bridge article:

Four months ago, before Bush's historic victory, Howard was parading his credentials as a man who would take on the Bush administration by attacking Blair over the war. 'If it displeases those in the White House, that's tough,' he said. With those words, a nuclear winter descended over relations between the one-time Cold War allies. The Bush administration saw an ally in Blair; in Howard, it saw a turncoat. The President can forgive hostility, but never forgets disloyalty.

This time around, a Blair victory would be deeply satisfying; better a loyal liberal than a faux conservative.

Sun Apr 03, 2005

Why the UN is useless

Process trumps results

Ombudsgod writes:

Under pressure from the United States, in October of last year the United Nations finally initiated an investigation into what then-Secretary of State Colin Powell described as ongoing genocide in Darfur in Sudan.

Five months later, in a report leaked in advance to the Sudanese government, the UN investigation absolved the government of genocide, which also absolves the international community of their obligation to intervene. They concluded there is no “genocidal intent.”

Instead the UN investigation pledged to refer individual cases to the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, Muslim Arab militias, having wiped out countless non-Arab Christians and Animists, have turned their guns on black Muslims. The killing continues unabated and the UN can do nothing except, maybe, refer a few patsies to the ICC.

The problem is that the UN gives equal weight to the civilized and the uncivilized.

There are many ways to stop the genocide. The easiest is to attack the Sudanese leadership with Western military technology. Cut off the head and the body soon fails. Can the UN do that? No way. Who can do it? Uncle Sam. But, unfortunately, Uncle Sam has enough on his hands dealing with lunatic Muslims threatening the economic security of the world. So countless poor black people will be raped, starved, and murdered while the UN goes through some moronic process that will bring no guilty person to justice and will leave unguarded millions of poor black people.

Baseball Wisdom from a Sabermetrician

Quotes from Bill James, Senior Baseball Operations Advisor for the Boston Red Sox

This interview contains much fascinating material for baseball fans, but there are some other pearls of wisdom with wider applicability:

James T: What's your opinion of the comportment of fans today as compared to throughout baseball history?

Bill James: Well, what do I know about manners? I’m pretty much an unreformed lout, myself.

There were a couple of books published in the late 90s, one by Robert Bork and one by a prissy woman named Gertrude something, bitching and moaning about the degeneration of civility in our culture. I read the books, but the thesis doesn’t ring true to me. These books create the impression that our culture is in rapid decay. But they create that impression by (a) selective editing of the facts—for example, pointing to “exploding” crime rates, when in fact crime rates have declined throughout most of the last century, were declining at the time the books were published and are declining now—and (b) simply ignoring most of the ways in which things are getting better. Forty years ago, tolerance for racism and violence was at levels it is hard to imagine today. Thirty years ago, comedians made jokes about rape. Twenty years ago, you went to a baseball game, people would drink themselves silly and fights would break out all over the park.

At the same time, we have problems now that we didn’t have 30 years ago. Public vulgarity is rampant; that’s not a good thing, because for one thing it takes all the fun out of private vulgarity. In some ways people are ruder and less considerate than they used to be, I think. I don’t know how to sum up the gains and the losses, honestly, but I’m an optimist by nature. Things always seem better to me.

There is truth in what Bill James says. The far left and far right both tell us that things are bad and getting worse, be it racism, pollution, government or whatever. In reality, things are getting better. Some things are worse but many things are better.

James T: I remember announcers saying, for years, that in Tiger Stadium the Tigers were letting the infield grass grow very high. Can teams really do that with impunity, create hay fields to protect their groundball staffs?

Bill James: I think so. . .there may be some MLB policy regulating the length of grass, but I’m not aware of it. Honestly, major league baseball—and all sports—would be far better off if they would permit teams to do more to make one park distinctive from another—even so far as making the bases 85 feet apart in one park and 95 in another. Standardization is an evil idea. Let’s pound everybody flat, so that nobody has any unfair advantage. Diversity enriches us, almost without exception. Who would want to live in a world in which all women looked the same, or all restaurants were the same, or all TV shows used the same format?

People forget that into the 1960s, NBA basketball courts were not all the same size--and the NBA would be a far better game today if they had never standardized the courts. What has happened to the NBA is, the players have gotten too large for the court. If they hadn’t standardized the courts, they would have eventually noticed that a larger court makes a better game—a more open, active game. And the same in baseball. We would have a better game, ultimately, if the teams were more free to experiment with different options.

The only reason baseball didn’t standardize its park dimensions, honestly, is that at the time that standardization was a dominant idea, they just couldn’t. Because of Fenway and a few other parks, baseball couldn’t standardize its field dimensions in the 1960s—and thus dodged a mistake that they would otherwise quite certainly have made.

Standardization destroys the ability to adapt. Take the high mounds of the 1960s. We “standardized” that by enforcing the rules, and I’m in favor of enforcing the rules, but suppose that the rules allowed some reasonable variation in the height of the pitching mound? What would have happened then would have been that, in the mid-1990s, when the hitting numbers began to explode, teams would have begun to push their pitching mounds up higher in order to offset the hitting explosion. The game would have adapted naturally to prevent the home run hitters from entirely having their own way. Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.

That just about sums up the difference between socialism and capitalism, or America and Europe.

Sat Apr 02, 2005

Montrous Buffoonery

Ultimate Madness in Political Correctness

Yeah, let's all join the EU:

EUROPEAN bureaucrats will push forward legislation today to force the Scottish Executive to change place-names that offend or discriminate on the grounds of race and gender.

In a move the Nationalists described as the "ultimate madness in political correctness", it has taken only a quorum of four Euro commissioners from Italy, Germany, France and Spain to redraw Scotland’s map.

"This is monstrous buffoonery, an outrageous waste of resources and politically correct madness".

No doubt about that, but what did you expect?
Reason, logic, common sense from Eurocrats?
Yeah, right!

Fri Apr 01, 2005

Fun Factoid Too

Wouldn't This Be a Hoot?

Things are looking rough for certain proponents of EUland:

Supporters of the EU's constitution have watched horrified over the last two weeks as five successive opinion polls have put the "no" campaign for the May 29 referendum in the lead with between 51 and 55 percent of the vote.

The growth of the "no" camp has been strongest on the political left, fed by a wave of social discontent as voters increasingly identify the EU with their most pressing concerns: ten percent unemployment, stagnant wage packets and the flight of jobs to low-protection economies in the east.

Jacque's dream seems to be in a bit of trouble. Apparently even the leftists are having serious reservations about expanding current losing political and economic policies continent wide. No wonder, considering the present dismal economic outlook and double digit unemployment in certain EU advocate's home lands:

Gloom about Europe's economic outlook intensified markedly on Thursday after a plunge in economic confidence across the continent and further rises in French and German unemployment.

The French and German governments, meanwhile, face increasing political pressures caused by high unemployment. Patrick Devedjian, French industry minister, described as “very bad” figures showing the country's jobless rate at a five-year high of 10.1 per cent in February.

Nothing like spreading the misery continent-wide. Perhaps wiser heads will prevail and Jacque and company will get their just reward after all. Wouldn't it be a hoot if French voters said no thanks to the EU constitution?

Stray dogs and mass murderers die better than Terri Schiavo did

This was not right

The priest who was with Terri in her last hours described her panting, her tortured expesssion and her dehydrated condition. If she had a glimmer of consciousness then she was tortured to death. If she had no consciousness, then she should have been killed mercifully, as was Timothy McVeigh.

Unfortunately, we may never know what state she was in. The judicial system could not wait to kill her and defied the will of the people, as expressed by Congress, to do it. Instead of a review by specialists, armed with the best technology, to determine her condition, she got a death warrant. The autopsy may shed some light, but that is just a little late, at least for Terri.

Terri was a Catholic yet her "husband" will deny her a Catholic burial. Terri's family loved her to the end of the world, yet her "husband" would not permit them to see her off to the next, be it heaven or eternal silence. Nice guy?

This case will tell America a lot about its core values. Despite MSM attempts to portray it as a battle between the religious right and the secularist left, it should be noted that many Democrats shared the concerns of most Republicans and avowed atheists, such as Nat Hentoff, were deeply distressed.

"Fun" factoid of the day

Harley Davidson is worth more than GM

Link via Two-Four. Prestopundit reports that:

Harley-Davidson now boasts a market capitalization — that is, the total value of all its stock market shares — of about $17 billion, $1 billion more than once-huge General Motors.

The joys of being unionized. No wonder Honda and Toyota are thriving.

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