RIP Hugo Chavez

From a purely human point of view, I would never wish a lingering death from cancer on anyone. So on that basis, my condolences.

He was of course the most prominent face on Latin America's general leftward tilt over the past decade. The fact that he looted the nation's economy while being fawned over by First World proggs is a banality at this point, after the 20th Century's long and disgraceful history of the same phenomenon in other workers' paradises.

Give him this, though: he was indeed conspicuously un-murderous, for a socialist maximum leader. And who knows, maybe he would not have later instituted gulags, had he lasted and had a free hand. Unlike most of his marxist predecessors, he never used the pretext of This Present Hour Of Armageddon to institute mass jailings and executions of opponents, nor random terror to keep the people off balance and in political disarray. (If I missed it, someone please let me know.) So low has the bar been for socialist Second and Third World governments that this minimum, this simple refraining from launching a blood bath, seems like an actual achievement by contrast.

So why does Latin America keep throwing up people like this? Blessed as I am with near perfect ignorance of most details of the continent's history, I'd say that it's founding was awry. Instead of a sturdy, independent anglo-protestant yeomenry as in northern North America, Latin America was settled by a thin scum of violent, sleazy Iberian nobility, lording it over a vast sweating under-mass of suffering peons, with very little in between. It's rather as if all of North America had consisted of a small aristocratic planter class, slaves and indentured servants, and little else. The imbalance has perturbed Latin America's course ever after. They don't need revolutions, they need a free, robust, enfranchised middle class, with a rule of law that inspires respect.

He survived a coup attempt, and he was re-elected a couple of times. But I'd still rather be governed by my last twenty county commissioners than by someone like him. When politics is dictated by a single person, whether or not under the guise of some -ism or other, political life withers into simple alignment for or against him. It barely matters if he's Idi Amin or Frederick The Great--Dear Leaders are bad for democracy.

Here's hoping for the best for Venezuela's future, may God guide her.

Vietnam vet not allowed to own a gun due to 1968 misdemeanor - Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5

Remember, class:  Only the government can be trusted with guns.

Vietnam vet not allowed to own a gun due to 1968 misdemeanor - Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5

Dennis Rodman in North Korea

In the 30s, serious intellectuals traveled to the Soviet Union to hail it as the future of humanity. In the 60s and 70s, writers, actors & other assorted glitterati went to Cuba to be schmoozed by El Jefe. And now North Korea has hauled in...a retired basketball player with a penchant for shock publicity. The quality of useful idiots is on a definite downward trajectory.

Well, at least he didn't go there to label the conditions of the ordinary people trapped in that hellhole of a country as being the wave of the future. Unlike the intellectuals of the 30s oohing & ahhing over their Potemkin tours of the Soviet Union, or the celebrity radicals of the 60s & 70s, Rodman apparently doesn't claim any higher political acumen. "I'm not a politician. Kim Jung Un & North Korean people are basketball fans. I love everyone. Period. End of story," he tweeted. But he's still appallingly wrong for saying things like this in public: "About the relationship, no one man can do anything. His country and his people love him. I love him, he is an awesome guy."

For any un- or mis-informed readers, here's what the problem is. North Korea is the grimmest, most murderous, most total of all remaining totalitarian states in the world. Yes, our client South Korea was a police state until the late 1980s. But the communist North usurped their people's very souls, stripping away all intermediary institutions--church, family, non-government organizations--leaving the people naked before the whims of the state. See for yourself:



It is shameful for anyone who enjoys the very best of the free, prosperous West, as Rodman does, to give legitimacy to that horror show.

Saturday night ADHD linklets

So, how will the snakes get the mice out of their parachutes?

Donald Sensing calls out feminists in Colorado for being soft on rape. How do feminists advise their daughters to protect themselves from rape, anyway? I've never gotten an answer beyond "Sexist!".

"Put simply, the bills tell us that this is not about interfering in a free market. It’s about facing the reality that our largest consumer product by far — one-fifth of our economy — does not operate in a free market."

Newscaster bloopers are funny even when they are in a foreign language.

I love stories of veterans being reunited with long-lost personal items:
WWII Normandy veteran has missing canteen returned to him.
Silver Star, Purple Heart, belonging to WWII soldier, killed in final weeks of the war, is returned to his daughter who never knew him.

A buyer's market in zero-day cyber weapons.

Thawing permafrost concerns climatologists.


Tiny people swim with the fishes.

Happy Black History Month Day #18!

You may enjoy this roundup of predictions from 1900, on The Future Of The Negro. I can't figure out how to permalink the exact page, so just click the little blue Next link until you come to it.

Happy 10th Blogoversary to Patterico!

Here!

This blog has broken national stories, which have been cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among other Big Media rags. Stories published here have been featured on national TV news networks and discussed by late-night comedians. I have published op-eds in the Los Angeles Times. The blog has broken a story that contributed to the downfall of a Congressman, published another national story that got a Big Media journalist reassigned, defended a federal judge against misleading accusations, and appeared on radio programs all across the country.

He then gets all modest and self-deprecating, but you can justly nevermind that bit. He's a big-time blogger who enjoyed the success most of us only dreamed of, made the correct kind of enemies but no more than that, and kept his head on straight. Congratulations to him!

"There is no gun control, only people control"

Is it okay for the government to target Americans for elimination in the WOT?

Remember Molly Norris. She's the cartoonist who had to go into hiding because the "American" al-Awlaki had issued credible threats against her, from his terrorist base in Yemen. He's been dead for a year and a half, but she's still in hiding. So let no one doubt the international and the Islamic nature of the enemy, no matter what citizenship they hold. I believe a lot of conservatives are outraged about the drone program solely because the President is a Dem. Me, I just can't get all that moist and sniffly about people who were born in New Mexico and chose to go kill their "fellow" Americans from al-Qaeda cells in Yemen. They deserve having themselves zeroed in on someone's FLIR monitor.

Mills Brothers: I Ain't Got Nobody - 1930's

Happy Black History Month Day #11!  Here's where that old David Lee Roth song came from.

I still love Michael Yon, but...

...I have reluctantly had to temporarily (I hope) de-link his fine blog from my blogroll. Chrome has bird-dogged on Michael Yon Online as a malware distributor, and is blocking visitors from proceeding to my blog. I'm sure the issue has already been cleared up, and we're just waiting for Google's catalog of trouble spots to be cleared up. But it's been awhile, and so I'll just have to take this step in order to keep Atlanta ROFTERS accessible to Chrome users.

Happy Black History Month, Day #10!

Here is an album of 100 year old photos from Harbison Agricultural College, in Irmo, SC. The pictures are encoded oddly, so I can't post an entire example here. Just click through and scroll, if you like old photos.

Send the Taliban to Chicago?

I admit, that actually made sense for a few seconds...

Taliban to Send Peace-Keeping Advisers to Chicago

When the Assassin Calls…

Mark Steyn links to a Bruce Bawer column about an attempted jihadist hit on one of his anti-Islamist colleagues.
When the Assassin Calls… 
The multi-lingual Bawer is your porthole into Scandinavian and Low Countries politics, especially as the Islamization of those parts of Europe are concerned.

James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965)

Happy Black History Month Day #4!  Yes, I skipped one... Towards the end of Baldwin's speech, he derides the idea that in 40 years there could be a black president.  Or rather, he derides Bobby Kennedy saying so, since RFK's ancestory came to America only yesterday, compared to Baldwin's.

Ram Trucks Super Bowl Commercial "Farmer"

This was a pleasant surprise, watching the Super Bowl.  It was inspired to revive this old Paul Harvey bit, rather than run yet more "manly man" cliches, for this truck commercial.  Good old Paul Harvey...As he said of other people when they died, Someone will take his job, but no will ever take his place....

Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman: "Scandalize My Name" 15 / 22

Happy Black History Month, Day #2!

Billy Eckstine - Prisoner of Love

Happy Black History Month, Day One!

The Ohio Players - Fire

RIP Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner.  They were part of my school years.  I would often hear their music coming out of the eight-track boom boxes the black kids would bring to school, as well as on the radio.  I'm glad he lived long enough to enjoy the renewed celebrity that YouTube-fueled nostalgia brought.

A new way of recruiting sources (What next? Take a number and stand in line?)

A new way of recruiting sources (What next? Take a number and stand in line?)

Rest easy, dear reader.  I would never stoop so low as to compromise either of our principles in this way.  At least not until I was reduced to actually trying to make a buck off of my scribblings on this blog...

Is it safe to criticize Scientology now?

I'm looking forward to reading Lawrence Wright's book about Scientology, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief There have always been memoirs from defectors from the cult, who for their troubles got sued into bankruptcy. Even mighty TIME magazine spent a decade in libel court after they ran their expose'. Limitlessly funded by their stable of gulled Hollywood mega-celebrities, aggressively suing, harassing (and perhaps worse) opponents, the cult seems impervious. But Wright is a distinguished journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author, not one to be lightly stalked by the cult's enforcers. Even though some of his overseas publishers have been intimidated into withdrawing the book, this might leave a mark, this time.

I used to peruse an anti-Scientology usenet group years ago, which seems to be thriving still, other than that I've had no direct connection with the cult. The cosmology of it reeks of kitschy 1950s science fiction, more Plan 9 From Outer Space than spiritual enterprise. You can't reason people out of notions they were never reasoned into, though. If Scientology is the only religion spiritually receptive people encounter, they are very likely to be and remain imprinted with the initial stamp of belief. But if there are those with ears to hear, this time around they may hear.

I salute Mr. Wright's bravery, and all those before him who have stood up to Scientology.

Related:

15 Scientology Revelations From Lawrence Wright’s ‘Going Clear’

Why You Could Have Fallen for Scientology, Too

Lawrence Wright Publisher Defends Book Against Church Of Scientology Claims

Scientology creates 'atmosphere of fear,' says 'Going Clear' author Lawrence Wright

MLK & Inauguration Day ADHD Linklets...

Hope you had a good and/or inspiring day today (although it's gonna be Tuesday by the time I get done with this.)

Justice Antonin Scalia wears Thomas More's cap to the inauguration. "Wearing the cap of a statesman who defended liberty of church and integrity of Christian conscience to the inauguration of a president whose policies have imperiled both: Make of it what you will."

Sperm Whales Adopt A Dolphin With Spine Deformity

Four Siberian volcanoes erupt at once, as seen from space.

The producer of the forthcoming documentary Guilt Is My God reports that he has been seriously injured & will be laid up for a couple of months. He also says that he is still getting death threats, for making this film about people who have left Islam.

More attempted SWATting, this time not against a conservative blogger.

The Chinese Navy
Is getting tremendous
The results for us
Could be horrendous

Rejection Therapy Day #47: Offer to pump gas for strangers.

Still no idea why Google's Eric Schmidt went to North Korea--does he want to be the present age's Ted Turner? Good to see that his daughter wasn't fooled by the Potemkin treatment they were given.

Is a prominent creationist close to coming around from the dark side?

Patterico hated the inauguration speech. Well, there's nothing that Romney would have done differently in the late economic crisis. There just wasn't any choice this time around.

God bless America...

Chilling eugenic envy at Edge.org?

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of
humanity.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed
that uses it.

--Rabindranath Tagore

Every now and then I like to go over to Edge.org and scan the thoughts of the current era's leading intellectuals. I really have no business going there. Most of the stuff is over my head, and I'm old enough for that fact to inspire respect, rather than dismissal. This entry on Chinese eugenics just gives me the creeps, however. (Click on Respondents if you land on the front page, and then search for Geoffrey Miller. The individual contributions don't seem to be permalinkable.) Dr. Miller describes how the Chinese, in keeping with tradition of seeking out the well-bred, are sequencing the genome of high IQ people from around the world, in hopes of breeding an ever-more intelligent overclass. But that's not the disquieting part. What loosened my jaw was that Dr. Miller seems to approve of this. Thinks it right, good, and necessary:

There is unusually close cooperation in China between government, academia, medicine, education, media, parents, and consumerism in promoting a utopian Han ethno-state. Given what I understand of evolutionary behavior genetics, I expect—and hope—that they will succeed. The welfare and happiness of the world's most populous country depends upon it.

My real worry is the Western response. The most likely response, given Euro-American ideological biases, would be a bioethical panic that leads to criticism of Chinese population policy with the same self-righteous hypocrisy that we have shown in criticizing various Chinese socio-cultural policies. But the global stakes are too high for us to act that stupidly and short-sightedly. A more mature response would be based on mutual civilizational respect, asking—what can we learn from what the Chinese are doing, how can we help them, and how can they help us to keep up as they create their brave new world?

Now, I'm a literal-minded fellow, endowed with a pesky case of Dunning-Kruger Effect, and those last three words in the passage seem to indicate that this is a bitter spoof. But, as infested with deracinated relativists as higher education has been in recent decades, who knows? If you're reading, Dr. Miller, please...tell me you're kidding.

Presidential inauguration firsts

Cool photo-trivia at Reuters.

PolitiFact Concedes Their 'Lie of the Year' is the 'Literal Truth'

PolitiFact Concedes Their 'Lie of the Year' is the 'Literal Truth'

Chrysler will indeed produce Jeeps in China.

"We have more teachers that have joined the Communist Party than any other professions," he said.

Inexplicably, it is still illegal for members of the Communist Party to teach school in California. Guess it's kinda superfluous at this point in the Golden State's ongoing political necrosis.

French troops face combat with Mali rebels ‘within hours’ - World - News - London Evening Standard

La bataille commence.

French troops face combat with Mali rebels ‘within hours’ - World - News - London Evening Standard

The French are going to get in the first blows against Al Qaeda in Maghreb, it looks like.  We've had special forces creeping around the Sahara for years, of course.  But now that the Arab Spring has really stirred up the hornets' nest, the French and by means of them the civilized West will shortly close with the Holy Warriors.  Best of success to them.  And no jokes, please--the French military is quite seasoned at operating in North and West Africa, and they've rescued our nationals a time or two in Ivory Coast, when unrest threatened.

Hiroshima and Detroit: The Damage Democrats Do to the Poor Lasts Longer Than a Nuclear Bomb

The five most important sentences you'll read today are at the bottom of this post:

Hiroshima and Detroit: The Damage Democrats Do to the Poor Lasts Longer Than a Nuclear Bomb

Random Rock Bloggage

A good song for enjoying a nice mood of obsolescence...

NEA takes up women and climate change--taxpayers hardest hit.

Translate This: HERadventure, YOURmoney

Meanwhile, in Australia

The stealth jihad continues.  A CHANCE TO ESCAPE RIBA  Why live among those icky Sydney infidels, when you can live in "100% halal" housing, carved right out of the Little Satan's body politic?  "Riba" = mortgage interest.

That trillion dollar coin

Whose image should be on the trillion dollar coin? Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the discoverer of black holes.

Random Rock Bloggage

My favorite song by the Elvoid.  Evocative of some sweet, long-ago memories...

Random Rock Bloggage

Had an ear itch for this old power pop classic today....

Cornered Mama Bear defends children from burglar

LOGANVILLE, Ga. — A woman hiding in her attic with children shot an intruder multiple times before fleeing to safety Friday.

Wall-to-wall national media coverage in 5...4...3...

Black conservatives not fair game after all!

Meanwhile, on Twitter, an author hurls a racial epithet at a Republican black woman, and gets dumped by his publisher.

Support the troops? Michael Moore says no, you don't

The relationship advice of multiply divorced people may be ignored in good conscience. Wealth-building plans from the chronically improvident needn't take up anyone's time. Weight-loss tips from the morbidly obese may be passed over in tactful silence. And it is simple common decency to forcefully reject the national security advice--and moralizing--of people who've spent the last decade proclaiming that America deserved 9/11.

No Tea Party Connection = No National MSM Coverage

New York City trustafarian and Occutard boyfriend busted for arsenal in Greenwich Village apartment. “You don’t understand the class structure of American society,” said Smetana, “or you would not ask such a question. In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are Communists.” — Whittaker Chambers, Witness, pg. 616

Christmas Day ADHD linklets

Bored on Christmas? Sorry to hear it--let me help you, even if it's only to help you be more bored.

Finally, something that LinkedIn is good for.

Social studies textbooks:  feeble but not harmless.

Spirits merry and bright... "Behind blast walls and with police nearby, 200 worshippers attended Christmas mass Monday at Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation Church, which officially reopened this month after a massacre in 2010."

Meanwhile... Syria rebels threaten to attack two Christian towns.

It's no surprise, then, that the current wave of Islamic persecution may be the one to finally do Middle Eastern Christianity in.

And what will happen, once the compassionate, civilizing effect of Christianity is removed from Islamic lands? Something very like this, maybe: "Abbas Reneges on Promise to Reform “Honor Killing” Laws" Yes--secular, Westernized Mahmoud Abbas wants to continue letting Arab men get away with murdering the wimminfolk, in order to preserve their honor.

Jingle bells, shotgun shells...

Oldest known Christmas recordings: Story here, recordings here.

Hasidic women to feminists: Buzz off!

Need a smartphone as big as a mini-tablet? Here y'go! This is trend is marketing genius--like whoever it was in the 90s who figured out that people would pay for extra-large minivans. Say that to yourself, slowly...Extra-large...minivans...

Things never to say to white colleagues. I hope I'm not as tender-eared as all that--I want people to be able to relax around me!

Merry Christmas

Wishing you all best for a joyous holiday and big things for the New Year.

Blame the NRA? Well....

I don't know that I would pin the totality of the blame for what is obviously a pervasive societal sickness solely on the NRA. But definitely something has curdled in our national life, in just the past few decades. Compare & contrast:

http://bit.ly/Rb5BBo

http://bit.ly/UR36BR

Thursday night ADHD linklets

Silent film of 1927 Bolivian execution found, is being restored. And according to the story, the execution was a mistake.

Old photos of previously unknown Russian crown jewels found in rare book, in U.S. Geological Survey library.

"The Orleans Parish School Board "OK'd policies that prohibit the teaching of creationism or so-called 'intelligent design' in its half-dozen direct-run schools, or the purchasing of textbooks that promulgate those perspectives," according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune." Take that, Bobby Jindal!

Our ally Uzbekistan arrests Christians for meeting in "unregistered" place of worship.

Syrian Violence Becoming 'Overly Sectarian', Report Finds. Stop the presses. You only have to be aware of the Sunni-Alawi divide, and listen to the YouTube videos of the rebels Allah Akbaring, to realize that.

The Stolen Child

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world`s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
-- William Butler Yeats, The Stolen Child, 1889

News coverage of mass shootings should change

I'd be happy if the Newtown atrocity gets the news media to rethink the whole marketing model of the 24-hour news cycle. Going out in a sunburst of notoriety, thanks to an ever-on news machine waiting for fodder, must have attractions for some of these shooters. Remember how NBC obliged the Virginia Tech killer by airing his videotaped rant for him? The graph I posted previously tracks with the rise of 24 hours news programming.

How to prevent future mass shootings? I don't know. Simply wishing away guns and mental illness won't do it. But ceasing to make these killers international celebrities seems to be a good, achievable start.

School shooting at Newtown CT elementary school

No, I don't have any news, sorry. At this writing, the reports are coming in fast and conflicting, as is sadly familiar in these sadly familiar atrocities. This is the latest so far. God...

Still here? Then let me share with you this marker of societal necrosis, that I discovered with Google's Ngram Viewer. It tabulates the occurrences of words, in this case "school shooting" in books and magazines over a given period of time, in this case 200 years. (I haven't figured out what "smoothing" means yet).

In brief, in 100 years we've gone from this:

The War Department has taken an interest in a form of training which certain public schools have adopted. Acting Secretary of War Oliver has written to the governor of every Educational state asking that action be taken to put rifle practice in the public schools directly in charge of the National Guards, and urges that every boy over twelve years of age be put under instruction in the handling of firearms. Furthermore, Secretary Oliver announces that the Department will offer a trophy to be awarded to that school which shows the highest degree of efficiency in marksmanship. This trophy is to be competed for by clubs of ten boys from each school.
Shooting is recommended by the Secretary on a variety of grounds. In the first place, it is a form of exercise which gives training in accuracy. In the second place, it teaches the dangers of abuse of firearms as well as the value of their use. Finally, it is a form of training which can be taken up by each individual, rather than a form of training which can be participated in only by the few boys who are members of a limited team.

To this:

What evil spirit is abroad in our land, to impel people to these horrors?

Color Me Unflabbergasted

UN Hosts Art Depicting Palestine as All of Israel

and

Google, #3 Contributor to Obama's Reelection, Sheltering Billions Overseas

Both via The Jawa Report.

A Conversation With New York Times Best Selling Author W. Craig Reed About Submarine Espionage and the Cold War

A Conversation With New York Times Best Selling Author W. Craig Reed About Submarine Espionage and the Cold War

Podcast.  Look at the legend for the topic tabs.

FISCAL CLIFF, OH NOES!!

Tuesday Afternoon ADHD Linklets

As of today, there are nearly 56,000 results on Google for the phrase "Google-proof trivia".

"As management experts such as Peter Drucker have observed, the goal of a successful business must be to find and serve customers. Do that, and the numbers take care of themselves. The Hostess approach was entirely backward — meeting the numbers became Job One, and figuring out how to grow the business became Job None."

A union-built tablet? Yes...

If I was any good at song parodies, I would write a biting critique of the fiscal cliff negotiations, based on this Beatles song, and I'd call it "You Can't Do Math".

Because of tribalism, Bashir Assad has nowhere to run.

Michael Totten is off into harm's way again.

David Thompson rounds up some pithy quotes on current woes.

The war on Christians in northern Nigeria continues...and the new Syria...and flippin' Bulgaria!...

Ha Ha Islamophobia

Another stiff dose of harsh reality from Pat Condell.

Cats secret life

Not nabbing many mice, in this one!

Peace in the Middle East

Pat Condell nails it again.

Inner-City Wizard School

Via IMAO

Top Gear 50 Years of Bond Cars HDTV XviD AFG

Via Ghost of a Flea

Pallywood pic...

...found on Twitter:

To those who think the late election means it's time to give up: Don't!

I've been reading some quite pessimistic posts in the aftermath of the Presidential election, especially on conservative Christian blogs. After a few of them, I penned this response:

It may be best to adopt the attitude of Winston Churchill: "I am an optimist. It seems to me not much use to be anything else."

I would be dismayed to see further disengagement by Christians from society. To cite only one means of doing so, in my area private Christian schools proliferate. They cost money, and people dislocate their finances to get their kids into them, even though the actual educations are in some way no better than public schools. These students, along with their heavily involved parents, could have a great leavening effect on the wider society if they weren't cloistered away on their own. Light, bushel, and all that... Secularists are as ignorant of the Christian blessings in public life as fish are ignorant of water, and even the most radical, spotty-bearded coffeehouse subversive would miss them if they were gone. In time, if we are not too thin-skinned, we may persuade them that this is so. Sure, the light of Christ seems to shine more brightly in Kenya and South Korea these days than in the tired old First World. But I don't believe that America has bestowed her final God-given gifts on humanity just quite yet.

"How Free Speech Died On Campus"

An interview with free speech activist--and lifelong Democrat--Greg Lukianoff.

"The people who believe that colleges and universities are places where we want less freedom of speech have won," Mr. Lukianoff says. "If anything, there should be even greater freedom of speech on college campuses. But now things have been turned around to give campus communities the expectation that if someone's feelings are hurt by something that is said, the university will protect that person. As soon as you allow something as vague as Big Brother protecting your feelings, anything and everything can be punished."

[...]

Administrative self-interest is also at work. "There's been this huge expansion in the bureaucratic class at universities," Mr. Lukianoff explains. "They passed the number of people involved in instruction sometime around 2006. So you get this ever-renewing crop of administrators, and their jobs aren't instruction but to police student behavior. In the worst cases, they see it as their duty to intervene on students' deepest beliefs."

The trouble is that students are usually intimidated into submission. "The startling majority of students don't bother. They're too concerned about their careers, too concerned about their grades, to bother fighting back," he says. Parents and alumni dismiss free-speech restrictions as something that only happens to conservatives, or that will never affect their own children.

"I make the point that this is happening, and even if it's happening to people you don't like, it's a fundamental violation of what the university means," says Mr. Lukianoff. "Free speech is about protecting minority rights. Free speech is about admitting you don't know everything. Free speech is about protecting oddballs. It means protecting dissenters."

...bunch'a little stalins, hope I can get my children into colleges without this nonsense.

Zombieland - The Last box of Twinkies

What would you do, or what would you face, for the last twinkie on earth?

IDF Pinpoint Strike on Ahmed Jabari, Head of Hamas Military Wing

Nothing like a big helping of Roast Terrorist Surprise--easy recipe, just grease, sear and toss.

Listening to the BBC World News on my local NPR station just now, I heard the host and a guest chewing over the events. The guest dismissed the 100+ rockets launched this past week as a cause of the strike, instead blaming Israeli election season grandstanding. The proximate cause was dismissed as a mere "drizzle of rockets", which are not accurate and hardly ever kill anyone. I nearly threw up in my mouth a little, as the morality inversion this guy was lost in was like biting into a rotten fruit.

So, with higher taxes looming, will the recovery continue?

Resourceful business people will find ways to adapt and carry on. What's been spooking them thus far has been the uncertainty--will Obamacare go through or not?--because they don't want to lay out long green for much of anything, if they don't know what to plan for. There was plenty of grousing at Bill Clinton's tax hikes at the beginning of his term, but because things didn't drag on for ages the business world pulled up their socks and got used to it, producing the 90s boom. We'll just have to see if that happens in Obama's 2nd term. If formerly viable businesses get torpedoed because of Obamacare, we'll surely hear about it and have this fight again in '14.

A view from Britain

From the Telegraph, via Sense of Events:

So Europe got the American president it wanted – the one who would present no threat to its own delusions. The United States is now officially one of us: an Old World country complete with class hatred, ethnic Balkanisation, bourgeois guilt and a paternalist ruling elite. And it is locked into the same death spiral of high public spending and self-defeating wealth redistribution as we are. Welcome to the future, and the beginning of what may turn out to be the terminal decline of the West.

Sobering to think so...Of course, the British have a running head start down that road, compared to us:

Many of us still fondly imagine that we have more in common with 'our American cousins' than with our continental neighbors. It may have been true once (though I find it hard to say exactly when). But it is certainly not true now. Travel to the United States and then to the other European Union states, and you will see: The typical British family looks much more like the typical German family than the typical
American family. We eat Italian food. We watch Spanish soccer. We drive German cars. We work Belgian hours. And we buy second homes in France. Above all, we bow before central government as only true Europeans can.
-- Niall Ferguson, 2004

Sunday ADHD linklets

A bronze bust of Indo-British ’spy princess’ Noor Inayat Khan, who worked in France during World War II before being tortured and shot by the Germans, was unveiled in Gordon Square Gardens in London this week, near the house where she lived as a child.
It is said to be the first such memorial in Britain dedicated to a Muslim and the first in honour of an Asian woman.

Trove of World War I pictures found in a chest in France

Freeway construction digs up mammoths

Has Karl Rove shot his bolt? According to this Politico article, he's shaping up to be one of the scapegoats of Romney's loss.

Michael Totten says no shenanigans afoot in Petraeus resignation.

The election must have epochal indeed, since it drew Steven den Beste away from his anime blogging back into political commentary:

...the Democrats seem to want to destroy the US as we know it now. The catastrophe I see coming appears to be a feature, not a bug, from their point of view. That scares me most of all.

They think that Americans buy too much, own too much, use too much. They want prices to rise relative to wages so that we can't afford as much. They want to make energy expensive so that we won't use as much. Anything that they can't make expensive they'll try to ban outright, like coal.

They've already done some of that, and they want to do more. And they're willing to lie and cheat and steal to make it happen.

I think they'll succeed. But I don't think they truly understand the consequences. I don't think they know just how awful it will become.

"Live not by lies..."

At the mostly-dead pundit ranch Onery.org, Orson Scott Card blames the media for shoving Obama over the finish line. Sorry, that's weak tea. There really are that many more people who believe in the direction Obama is taking the country, than otherwise. The news media is not the gatekeeper in the Information Age, the wall are down. What we saw is who we are. However, he is right on target about how Obama's gotten a pass for FEMA's bungling of Sandy, as opposed to Bush's very humanity being condemned in the wake of Cat 5 Katrina.

The decline of American leadership, viewed in the 1830s

"Many people in Europe are apt to believe without saying it, or to say without believing it, that one of the great advantages of universal suffrage is, that it entrusts the direction of public affairs to men who are worthy of the public confidence. They admit that the people is unable to govern for itself, but they aver that it is always sincerely disposed to promote the welfare of the State, and that it instinctively designates those persons who are animated by the same good wishes, and who are the most fit to wield the supreme authority. I confess that the observations I made in America by no means coincide with these opinions. On my arrival in the United States I was surprised to find so much distinguished talent among the subjects, and so little among the heads of the Government. It is a well authenticated fact, that at the present day the most able men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs; and it must be acknowledged that such has been the result in proportion as democracy has out stepped all its former limits. The race of American statesmen has evidently dwindled most remarkably in the course of the last fifty years." -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1838

A cordial election...238 years ago

“I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them: 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy; 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against; and 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.” —John Wesley, journal entry dated October 3, 1774

Obama Re-elected

Congratulations to the President for his re-election, and may Providence rightly guide his decisions in his second term. All our futures depend on it! I'm watching the FreeStuffians celebrate in Times Square, and am resenting it. But, there is no safer place to store popular political power than in the people themselves.

Happy election day!

For the special day, I offer you this thrilling re-cut of the greatest political rock anthem ever.  Be sure to click through and let Torghoover know how great it is.  God bless our fair Republic!

Random Rock Bloggage

Friday Night ADHD Linklets

If you bought a Hyundai or Kia in the past three years, you may be eligible for a bit of cash back. This is because they overstated the vehicles' MPG, and so they are making restitution. Go to Enter your VIN number and email and you'll be sent instructions on how to apply. https://kiampginfo.com/ and https://hyundaimpginfo.com/ are the places to go for more info.

Angkor Wat: Mystery of how temple was built may have finally been solved.

How to help Hurricane Sandy victims, without gumming up the pros' work.

WWII carrier pigeon finally delivers secret message.

I used to laugh at Konglish, until I realized that their English was streets better than my Korean was ever going to be.

I would have liked to post an appreciation of Jacques Barzun, but modesty forbids. I'm unfit to edit his drycleaning list.

Happy 6th blogoversary to Samizdata, the British libertarian blog! I really enjoy their Quotations category.

There is no bottom of the hill.

Keep On Chooglin...

Are Somalians committing voter fraud in Minnesota?

I doubt it. Or, I should say, Pics, or it didn't happen. I heard this same story in the 2000 election. Only in that case, it was supposed to be Haitian immigrants bused to inner-city Miami precincts, where they were handed multiple ballots and instructed to mark them Democrat. So this is either a Dem dirty trick of long standing, or an urban legend in a new guise. I must admit that I wouldn't be too surprised whichever one it is, given that Democrats committed voter fraud on national TV at their own convention.

LENA DUNHAM: YOUR FIRST TIME PARODY! #MoreFreeCrap

Andrew Sullivan "Goes There"

But I doubt it'll stick. Mormonism is more nutty than malevolent. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, it neither slits my throat nor bombs my bus. I’d guess that black Americans have been more abused by Southern Baptists over the years than by Mormons–yet no one could seriously call Jimmy Carter racist.

No, the admittedly small percentage of black Americans who will be voting for Romney will do so because they believe his policies will revive the economy--not because they want to join his church, nor because they fear it. For many it may well be a distasteful compromise, but not so very different than others such that they've been compelled to make, in our nation's history.

@ProjectVeritas_ : Jim Moran's (D-Va.) Field Director Conspires to Commi...

Weekend ADHD Linklets

What killed Best Buy? Apple. Although this has been coming for quite some time, for some familiar reasons.

Trove of WW II-era Spitfires could be unearthed in Burma

Some people lived next door to the most totalitarian ideology in Europe and didn't learn a thing.

This is not the Droid they're looking for.

Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis. Screw the revisionists, who after sheltering for half a century behind American freedom and resolve, claim that there was no difference between Kennedy and Khrushchev, and it didn't matter if nuclear missiles were in Cuba or not. What celestial grandstand do they imagine that they are sitting in anyway, watching events unfold from their Olympian perch?

This planet is a girl's best friend. Oops, was that sexist?

The challenges of translating humor to other languages.

All political commentary from now until the election is going to be weaponized, created for the sake of impact only, so I'm not going to bother writing any, let alone reading much of it. The campaign is like the NBA season: Too long, but only the last four weeks will matter. Still, Roger Kimball notes an interesting curiosity here: Will we have no October Surprise this time?

Cuba to end exit visa requirement

Any regime that imprisons and executes librarians is still scum.  However, this is a positive sign:

In a country of limits, it is the restriction that many Cubans hate the most: the exit visa that the government requires for travel abroad, discouraging all but the favored or fortunate from leaving the island.
Now that bureaucratic barrier is on its way out. The Cuban government announced on Tuesday that it would terminate the exit visa requirement by Jan. 14, possibly letting many more Cubans depart for vacations, or forever, with only a passport and a visa from the country where they plan to go.
The new policy — promised by President Raúl Castro last year, and finally announced in the Communist Party newspaper — represents the latest significant step by the Cuban government to answer demands for change from Cubans, without relinquishing control.

Plenty of progressives over the decades have wished for the United States to "soften" its position towards communist Cuba. This is because so many of the doddering old Reds were imprinted by El Jefe during their youth, invested so much hope in Che and Fidel and the communist dictatorship as a slap at the establishment/their parents/the system/etc. Now they can't bear to think that they will die unvindicated by history. Since the 80s, as European communism disappeared, and Chinese communism shifted gears, North Korean and Cuban communism became more merciless, although you'd never have known about Cuba, to read most news outlets. So, if a progg you know starts sighing over when will the U.S. ever "soften" its stance towards Cuba--or "the Cuban people" as he or she will likely put it--just ask in return: When will Cuba soften its position towards Cuba?

Romney Obama Debate Tonight

I've got a feeling that this election campaign is going to be like the NBA season:  only the last four weeks is going to matter.

The Biden - Ryan vice-presidential debate

A draw.  I say this after having slept on it overnight, and avoiding any post-debate spin or analysis.  These debates are intended to sway the undecideds, and the people who are only now starting to pay attention to the race.  Those folks will have a hard time choosing between the strong performances offered last night.

Random Rock Bloggage

Another cover of Foreplay/Long Time, by a kid who really has some fun with it.  If you enjoy this song, go ahead and spend the eight minutes on this.

Random Rock Bloggage

A really fun amateur cover of Boston's "Foreplay / Long Time" from 2009, for those who haven't seen it, in case either of you are interested.  Best enjoyed loud, or on headphones, or both.

Yes, This Ad Is Offensive. But Free Speech Rides Public Transit, Too

Yes, This Ad Is Offensive. But Free Speech Rides Public Transit, Too

Meh.  If I have to put up with looking at leftist graffiti, other people can put up with looking at bought-and-paid-for anti-terrorism ads.

Teen Attacked By Teacher For Romney Shirt!

Yeah, likening a girl to the KKK is "just a joke".  Off to the rubber room with this teacher!

That allegedly racially incendiary Obama speech video from 2007

Drudge, The Daily Caller, and Hannity gave this video clip of a 2007 speech a big buildup.  It will soon be seen if it will have any effect on the undecideds.  Me, I think it gives a whiff of desperation to deploy it.  If this sort of thing was going to stick, it would have stuck in the '08 campaign.  Much better to instead slam O on his record in office.

"I’m Legally Blind, and I support Mitt Romney"

The Last Tradition: I’m Legally Blind, and I support Mitt Romney:

In response to the Obama campaign using a Down syndrome woman in an ad, this man went on the counter-offensive:

I’ve been a conservative since the days of the Iran Hostage crisis and my first vote for president was for Ronald Reagan.  He inherited a much worse economy from Jimmy Carter and never once blamed him for the mess he had to fix.  But, unlike President Obama, Reagan came into office having been a governor of a state.  He knew how to fix the problem with pro growth policies that helped create 25 million jobs.  Romney can do the same.  

President Obama is a Leftist ideologue who has no clue how the economy runs other than taxing the private sector to increase the size and scope of government.  President Obama measures America’s greatness by how many people get a government check as opposed to a private sector job.  That’s his vision and it’s wrong for America.  He prefers giving out 16 million free cells phones instead creating 16 million jobs. President Obama is not a leader. He’s an aggregator of government power who offers false hopes for the millions he misleads. People are hurting because of him and that’s why he needs to go. I may be legally blind, I see well enough to know he’s wrong for the country.  

Mark Steyn: Obama a better president of the future

Mark Steyn: Obama a better president of the future | future, belong, obama - Opinion - The Orange County Register

In this article in the OCR, Steyn riffs on the notion of President Obama as being so enraptured of the Golden Future, that present necessity quite escapes his notice.  It's smashingly witty, as all Steyn's stuff is, but it put me in mind of this old Belmont Club post by Richard Fernandez, under his old nom de blogue Wretchard.  It seemed to me amazingly perceptive at the time, and still does, and so I once again offer these extracts:

[The Internationale] set the theme which was to endure for more than a hundred years: that the familiar world is not worth fighting for. Only the unseen tomorrow gives life any meaning. ... From its earliest inception, the Left cried that the world was not good enough. It held that any attempts to find happiness in the present were not only doomed, but immoral. ... What they forgot to add was that the world would never be good enough. That not a single Marxist state ever managed to provide either the food or electricity in adequate quantities remained beside the point. Shortages were always in the present and the present was unimportant anyway. When capitalism provided wealth in quantities that Lenin could only dream of, then food and electricity themselves became hated in turn, the way starvation once was. ... 
Lenin's future was attractive only for so long as it didn't exist and was legitimate only when its promises were not provided by capitalism. John Buchan could tell his son, when he wrote "Memory Hold The Door", which described friends who died in the Great War, that "they held up the world for you". But a true Leftist could only ever dream of boasting to his progeny that 'I tore down the world for you'. ...

Apple apologizes

They make the coolest apologies!

Fatwa on the permissibility of killing of American ambassadors

At the invaluable Jihadica blog, Joas Wagemakers parses a fatwa by an imam named Abu l-Mundhir al-Shinqiti. He does a fine job of explaining the "reasoning" behind the statement, but it boils down to this:

“Killing all American ambassadors and destroying all American embassies won’t quench our thirst for those who have attacked the sanctity of our Prophet”, al-Shinqiti states. Muslims should therefore not show sympathy for the American ambassador and the other diplomats killed in Libya, as many did, and neither should they call for non-violence, as other Muslim scholars have done. Instead, al-Shinqiti insists, the proper response to the film is “to attack [American] interests, to attack their security, to attack their existence and to attack their economy because this is the language they understand”.

It's only one fatwa by one person, of course. But the justification is out there, for jihadists needing any further goad.

Andy Williams RIP - Moon River 1960's performance

Used to enjoy his show, growing up...RIP...& thanks for the memories...

Tuesday Night ADHD Linklets

World War II commando finally gets his Bronze Star

Track your very own great white shark from your computer.

Fun with Google, for lovers of serendipity: Go to Google Images search, and type in the year of your birth (or marriage, or graduation). Then type in the county (or province) you were born or raised in. Then see if there are any interesting pictures in the results. This one came up in my results--although I'm not from there, and I'm not that old!

New Evidence of Neolithic Dentistry

Previously undiscovered Edward Hopper painting surfaces

World's first color movie reconstructed. Tykes look like they could have been filmed yesterday.

A recording of William Jennings Bryan denouncing corporate financing of elections--100 years ago.

One of my recent Motifakes.

Nigeria: Catholic cathedral in Bauchi bombed in second attack on Christians in the space of a week. And the U.S. MSM would report it, if only there were Christians fighting back. Then they could avoid judgements and just report a "cycle of violence".

Did dinosaurs swim?

Should we have the right to disobey Islamic law?

Over at Hot Air, Laura Curtis is dismayed to ponder that it has lately become an open question.

Liberals don’t care about protecting the tender feelings of the religious, as evidenced by decades of offenses against Christians and every other faith. They are simply afraid of a group who is willing to kill because they’re offended. And what liberals are really saying, if they were honest, is that we have a moral obligation to obey Islamic law in order to prevent more bloodshed.

They are saying that non-Muslims, living in non-Muslim countries, should voluntarily adhere to Muslim law.

These same people who scream like a goth in the sun at the sight of a nativity scene on public property, are suggesting that non-Muslim governments should use their non-Muslim citizens’ tax dollars to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws.

That’s insane.

I would only object that libs are afraid of more than being killed by RoPers, although that's in the back of everyone's mind. They are also afraid, and possibly more consciously afraid, of having their heads explode figuratively as well as literally. That is, they are loathe to undergo the painful self-examination that might disabuse them of their treasured fixations: To be brown foreign and angry at America is to be right by definition, the straight white male conservative taxpayer is the root of all evil, America deserves every terrorist attack that happens, and so forth. To abandon these notions, and actually take the side of the United States against a foreign enemy--hell, to even acknowledge that in the hippy-dippy happy-clappy multi-culti world of their imagination we even have enemies--would cause too much psychic indigestion for them to bear.

Conservatives are more charitable than liberals

Over at Chicago Boyz, Shannon Love takes another look at the 2007 book Who Really Cares, which marshals facts and figures to show that conservatives give more to charity than liberals do.

It has always been a great puzzle to Leftists why their compassionate programs don’t seem to transform the poor into paragons of virtue. Perhaps it has something to do with welfare subsidizing irresponsible, self-destructive behaviors while at the same Leftists telling the poor that nothing in their lives is their fault and by extension nothing that happens to them is under their control. Leftists’ rationales for welfare create recipients who exhibit a dangerous mix of feeling helpless combined with a profound sense of entitlement. The working poor know better. The school of hard knocks is the best teacher.

Of particular interest to me is that Brooks carefully controls for all variables that might skew the relationship between religion, politics and giving. For example, by reflex Leftists claim that Brooks is counting Religious-Conservatives’ tithes to churches which Leftists argue is more akin to paying country club dues than charity. Nope, he corrected for that. Religious-Conservatives still give a higher percentage of their time and money to purely secular charities.

Brooks also accounts for race, ethnicity, and any other factor you could think of. It all comes out the same. Secular-Leftists fall far short of Religious-Conservatives when it comes to donating their own time and money to help others.

As for the church tithes, many of those, in mainstream denominations at least, go to the churches' well-run disaster relief organizations. Check my link farm to the right and click through to sites like UMCOR and Mennonite Disaster Service, for instance. The next time I see the Bertrand Russell Society out helping tornado victims will be the first time.

Prager University: Proving Media Bias

Honey, You Didn't Build That

A word to rioting Muslims

California prisoners make historic call for peace between racial groups in California prisons and jails

California prisoners make historic call for peace between racial groups in California prisons and jails

Sounds like this guy has had success at peacemaking among criminals in the past, hope it works out this time.

Libyan crowd was trying to save Ambassador Stevens

I thought so when I saw those photos. But here's confirmation, via Michael Totten.

Video taken by al-Bakoush and posted on YouTube shows Stevens being carried out of a dark room through a window with a raised shutter by a crowd of men. “The man is alive. Move out of the way,” others shout. “Just bring him out, man.”

“Move, move, he is still alive!”

“Alive, Alive! God is great,” the crowd erupts, while someone calls to take Stevens to a car.

This restores my faith in human nature, to a degree visible to the naked eye. It would just curdle my soul, not for the first time these past eleven years, to think of Muslim mobs exulting over the corpses of Americans who came to help them. So, Libya stays in the Good column, for now. They've got a steep slog ahead of them though, trying to stay out of Al Qaeda Maghreb's clutches while trying to build a civic society from scratch. If they succeed, that'll be one good legacy of Ambassador Stevens' work there.

Romney gaffe?

No. It's just that awkward feeling that descends, when a politician inadvertently tells the truth about something, especially about the public. That's what's getting everyone's hackles up.

Rick Santorum: "Smart People Will Never Be on Our Side"

Rick Santorum: "Smart People Will Never Be on Our Side"

Over at LGF, Charles Johnson pounces on what he takes to be a self-damning gaffe by Rick Santorum.  But it's obvious to most, and if there had been video included it would be obvious to all--that Santorum was speaking derisively of progressives' image of themselves.  To imagine oneself to be a lone, desperate voice of sanity, crying out in the midst of a world of unthinking knuckle-draggers, is not without its appeal, to certain personalities. Yes, the "values" set-list gets to seem like a distraction, frequently. But without a sub-set of the population with a firm grounding in morals and liberty, smart people may become misled into thinking that this is a good idea:

And we sure wouldn't want that to happen, now would we?

Enforcing Islamic Blasphemy Laws in California.

Go read Reynolds. Now.

When taking office, the President does not swear to create jobs. He does not swear to “grow the economy.” He does not swear to institute “fairness.” The only oath the President takes is this one:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

By sending — literally — brownshirted enforcers to engage in — literally — a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated that oath. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.
-- Glenn Reynolds, Why Barack Obama Should Resign

Enforcing sharia anti-blasphemy laws in California? I'm tempted to curse my eyes, for allowing me to see this sight in my own, my own, my own native country.

Mitt Romney Rap

So, have you seen an anti-Mitt Romney rap delivered by a WWII Flying Fortress veteran today? Yes? Well, this one's cooler! This dude's 87, and I don't even care about his political opinion. I just hope I'm that lively and adventurous at his age--heck, I hope I'm that way if I get to within twenty years of his age!

Obamacare Summed Up in One Sentence

Via Before Its News

2016: Dinesh D’Souza’s Misguided Film | First Things

2016: Dinesh D’Souza’s Misguided Film | First Things

Pretty much my thoughts, too.  Obama's an urban, Ivy League liberal--not an invader from outer space, nor anything like that.

DNC apology for backdrop of Russian ships - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

DNC apology for backdrop of Russian ships - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Very embarrassing.  Their graphic arts supplier must not be used to military themes, or else doesn't bother to pay close attention to what Google Images brings up in a search.  Thank goodness this didn't happen during the Cold War, or the Dem candidate would have been sunk.  "Sunk", ha!  See what I did there?