Saturday, July 30, 2005

Friday Fiver (7/29/05 Edition)

1. How many weddings have you attended?

Not too many. Maybe a couple of dozen, lifelong?

2. Wedding registries: buy from the list or freestyle it?

Have girlfriend handle it.

3. Are you more likely to slow dance or participate in the chicken dance?

Slow dance.

4. The garter find/toss experience: cute or tacky?

Depends on how drunk you are. It always seems some 5'9" guy with Scott Baio hair and a mustache that makes you want to ask where the refrigerators are at in the store catches the garter and one of the 5-yr. old flowe girls gets the bouquet and then the DJ plays "The Stripper" for that part of the show.

5. If you could marry someone famous, who would it be?"

Duh.

Zsa Zsa Huffington Clears Rove!!!! NYT Reporter Source of Plame Leak?!?

The psycho hose beat whom Bill Maher used to lovingly refer to as "lovely, but evil" (when she was married to empty suit and failed Stupid Party Senatorial candidate Mikey Huff) gives us a stunning look into the corroded and spongiformed mind of the typical liberal moonbat as she demands of media martyr Judy Miller, "Do We Want To Know Everything or Don't We?"

It has as its thesis something I wrote about here TWO WEEKS AGO - read Dirkworld, or its sources, and you'll be bored of the Truth loooooong before the rest of the world catches up; the UN Oil-For-Food ripoff was old to me BEFORE the Iraq War - the idea that the reason Miller is sitting in the pokey isn't to protect Darth Rove, but to protect HERSELF from having to reveal that she was Leaker Zero.

Now, it's interesting that Zsa Zsa frames it this way because if Miller is Leaker Zero, and likely blabbing all over town, that means that poor Randi Rhodes and the rest of the child-money-stealing fascist liars at Air AmeriKKKa have been shrieking "TREASON!!!!!!!" all for naught. (And don't think they knew this was what was gonna happen.) She also works from the premise that all the moonbats hold: That every single thing that Dubya said was a lie and that everything is his fault.

I've written repeatedly here and elsewhere, trying to warn the Left that they were heading into certain defeat because while Dubya was fundamentally incompetant and dishonest - conservative, my ASS! - instead of going after him for what he's actually done wrong, like blow up the Fed budget like a maniac Democrat; they've continuously opted to go for the Big Lie Takedown in the hopes that the public will stampede to the voting booths and yank the donkey lever and return them to power based on the fantasia on Michael Moore and Dan Rather.

Yeah, that worked real good, didn't it?

I'd always wondered why they didn't hit Dubya for being so weak on border security and bloating Medicare with a vote-buying giveaway to greedy geezers until it dawned on me that the reason they don't attack is because they wish to the exact same thing, albeit under their chosen hammer-and-sickle flag. The only beef the Dems have is that they aren't the ones in power to spend our money.

Because the Left is permantly locked into "MUST!!! DESTROY!!!! BUSH!!!!" mode, they repeatedly make themselves look the ass and that's why they get trumped at every turn, while being incapable of understanding that the reason they lose politically is because PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THEM and not because of Darth's ability to manipulate vote totals. So sorry, you po' widdle moonbats. [sniffle]

Go read the whole piece, keeping in mind its fatally-flawed premises, but here's the punchline:

It's nice that Bill Keller is visiting Judy in jail giving updates about how hard this is for her, having to be away from her family and friends. But it would be even nicer if we'd had some acknowledgement from Miller of her complicity in sending 138,000 American soldiers away from their family and friends. And, unlike Miller, they won't be returning home in October. Indeed, as of today, 1,785 of them won't be returning home at all.

This story gets deeper with every twist and revelation, including the reminder (via Podhoretz) that Fitzgerald had a previous run in with Miller over her actions in a national security case, and the speculation (via Jeralyn at Talk Left) that Fitzgerald is considering seeking to put Miller under criminal contempt, rather than the civil contempt she's now under.

But one thing is inescapable: Miller -- intentionally or unintentionally -- worked hand in glove in helping the White House propaganda machine (for a prime example, check out this Newsweek story on how the aluminum tubes tall tale went from a government source to Miller to page one of the New York Times to Cheney and Rice going on the Sunday shows to confirm the story to Bush pushing that same story at the UN).

So, once again, the question arises (and you can't have it both ways, Frank): when it comes to this scandal, do you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or do you want the truth -- except for what Judy Miller wants to keep to herself?


Zsa and her ilk deny that the Clinton Regime said everything that they now denounce Team Dubya as liars for. They pretend that the UN Resolutions and kiddie-sized genocides that Iraq had been sanctioned for over a decade didn't exist and that Dubya woke up one day to a wake-up call from Halliburton and was storming Bagdhad by the afternoon.

As a result, thet can't admit that Castro and Saddam are monsters; that Darth Rove doesn't control everying; the Clintons are hated by the Right because they're REAL traitors (*cough*Loral*cough) who pardon terrorists to get votes for the wife; there is a war on, blah-blah-woof-woof. They see everything thru glasses that are possessed by a Reality Distortion Effect that makes up down, day night and good evil.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Freedom of Speech Doesn't Extend to Criticizing the "Religion of Peace"?!?

Certainly looks that way according to this bundle of depressing bits from Michelle Malkin-Belligerent. (Just warming that up.)

Go read the whole thing and its linked stories, but the short form is that a conservative talker got suspended for a column and saying on the air:

I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth:

Islam is a terror organization.

For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.

Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."

But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."

Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."


Despite Islam's current run as the most savage threat to freedom and safety in the world, anti-Western dogma demands that anyone pointing out that the mullah has no caftan gets a free trip to Golgotha for their apostasy.

Perhaps you heard about the so-called fatwa condemning Islamic terrorisim on the news yesterday and today? NPR had a bit this morning with a local (suburban Detroit) imam who was making the appropriate nice-nice noises before returning to his (likely) calls for jihad.

Well, according to The Counterterrorism Blog, it's a scam:

In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate. In fact, officials of both organizations have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organizations. One of them is an unindicted co-conspirator in a current terrorist case; another previous member was a financier to Al-Qaeda.

Is the MSM reporting this aspect of the story or are they just telling us that the nice Arab fellows - not the woman, natch - are saying that they aren't our enemies and that this is all Karl Rove's fault?

Duh.

Laptop update...

I'm not so sure about the battery life of this thing and as I posted on Notebook Forums:

I got my laptop a week ago and was wondering why it seemed to be running down too fast, especially since it has the 9-cell battery and a constant praise item has been the long battery life.

Last night, while watching DVDs, chatting and surfing with the thing set to Max Battery and the screen dimmed to half-brightness, it drained to 3% and went into hibernation after about 3-1/2 hours. I had an optical mouse and a Kensington Flight Lite 2.0 plugged in at half-brightness, but that's not going to eat up 1-1/2 of the supposed run time, is it? (I also have Omega drivers and set Powerplay to Balanced while on battery.)

Do I have a duff battery or unit or what?


Others and reviews spoke as if this thing would last 5+ hours. Drat.

What if Fox News Channel got money stolen from children?

Michelle Malkin has links to further coverage of the "Air America taking money from poor children" scandal. The best one is this fisking of Air America's contradictory mea culpa which implicates them while they try to say they're not responsible.

She also mentions that the MSM isn't spending any time or ink on covering this story. I supposed that dead girl in Aruba - c'mon, you knew she was dead two months ago! - and the failed witchhunt against Karl Rove are more important. But, as the headline mentioned, what if Fox News Channel was being propped up by money stolen from poor youth groups? Zounds! Dead girls in Aruba would be replaced by pitchforks and torches for Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.

Yep, another day, another liberal hypocrisy.

The Washington Times - I can hear the fascist moonbats squealing "MOONIES!!!" now - has an editorial and primer as to what's it all about, Al Franken?

Did Al Franken's liberal radio network Air America divert city money for the elderly and inner-city children to itself? That's the question people should be asking this week after the revelation that the New York Department of Investigation is looking into whether hundreds of thousands of dollars were illegally transferred from a Bronx community center to Air America. Only a community paper and a few Internet bloggers seem interested in what could be an egregious case of illegal funneling of tax dollars to a private, partisan organization.

In late June, city officials designated the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, a nonprofit organization that runs mentoring programs for children and day care for Alzheimer's patients, a "non-responsible city contractor." Investigators found "significant inappropriate transactions and falsified documents that were submitted to various City agencies." The city subsequently suspended the club's contracts, which run well into the millions.

It turns out, according to sources quoted anonymously by the Bronx News, that the mishandled money went to Air America. One source claims that $480,000 was wrongly transferred. The city investigation is concentrating on Charles Rosen, the club's president for 15 years, and Evan Cohen, the development director, who is a former chairman of Air America. Mr. Cohen resigned from Air America in May after the network's leasing plans in Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere fell through.

No one has claimed that Messrs. Cohen or Rosen sought to profit personally from any transfers. The money was said to have been a "loan" from the community center to Air America, which Air America would repay with interest at some point in the future. But why the public till should be tapped to rescue a foundering news outlet was a question no one seemed to consider. Maybe Air America officers thought spending public funds on their network was a truly compelling public interest. It isn't, of course, and if the allegations are true, they reveal a misuse of tax dollars to support a partisan organization.

Air America's parent corporation Piquant LLC issued an "explanation" yesterday but did not deny the allegations. It instead tried to pin them on Air America's previous owners, on whose watch the transfer is said to have occured. That won't wash.

Most of the mainstream newspapers have ignored this story. We only found out about it through the reporting of Brian Maloney, who pieced a story together on his blog "The Radio Equalizer" which was picked up by syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin. The New York Daily News buried an item at the end of a column of news briefs. There was nothing in the New York Times, which has heaped flattering coverage on the flailing network.

Air America is struggling to find listeners, leaders and reliable funding. But should it take money from children and the ailing elderly? Al Franken and Randi Rhodes, ever the defenders of the "little guy," should explain this one.


I'm almost winning to bet money that Randi will be snarling about "Rove treason" and "Bush Mein Kampf" tonight - like EVERY night - and won't have a peep coming out of her shrill noise hole about how her paycheck is funded by the downtrodden she pretends she speaks for.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

What the Well-Dressed Jihadi Wears.

The Times Online has a piece about how "Beards and scarves aren't Muslim. They're simply adverts for al-Qaeda." Good stuff and a sign that non-fascist Muslims are starting to speak out against the thugs who are destroying the Religion of Peace.

But Muslims everywhere need to get to grips with a phenomenon that threatens all Muslim countries and Islamic communities in the West. This requires Muslim opinion-makers to take a number of steps.

The first is to discard the notion that anyone who is not a Muslim is an “infidel” and thus not a proper human being. Next, it is important to reject the belief that, since the goal of converting mankind to Islam is a noble one, any means to do so are justified. Muslims should accept diversity and compete in the global market place of faiths through normal channels, rather than ghazvas (raids) against “infidel” centres.


What?!? And be like........CHRISTIANS?!?!? The nerve!!!

Muslims could also help by stopping the use of their bodies as advertising space for al-Qaeda. Muslim women should cast aside the so-called hijab, which has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with tribal wear on the Arabian peninsula. The hijab was reinvented in the 1970s as a symbol of militancy, and is now a visual prop of terrorism. If some women have been hoodwinked into believing that they cannot be Muslims without covering their hair, they could at least use headgears other than black (the colour of al-Qaeda) or white (the colour of the Taleban). Green headgear would be less offensive, if only because green is the colour of the House of Hashem, the family of the Prophet.

Muslim men should consider doing away with Taleban and al-Qaeda-style beards. Growing a beard has nothing to do with Islam; the Prophet himself never sported anything more than a vandyke. The bushy beards you see on Oxford Street are symbols of the Salafi ideology that has produced al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

Some Muslims also use al-Qaeda and Taleban-style clothing to advertise their Salafi sentiments. For men this consists of a long shirt and baggy trousers, known as the khaksari (down-to-earth) style and first popularised by Abu Ala al-Maudoodi, the ideological godfather of Islamist terrorism. Muslims who wear such clothes in the belief that it shows their piety, in most cases, are unwittingly giving succour to a brand of Islamist extremism.


This reminds me of a co-worker at my last job who griped about how guys wore their jeans "slouched" - that's "hanging so far off yer ass that sixe inches of yer drawers are showing" for white folks - obviously didn't understand what it signified. (i.e. That you won't resist prison rape.)

It would also be useful if Muslim preachers paid a bit more attention to God, which means doing some theology, rather than making speeches about Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq which are, after all, political, and not religious issues. The excessive politicisation of Islam has created a situation in which the best-known Muslim today is Osama bin Laden.

Islam must decide whether it wants to be a faith or a political movement. It cannot be both without being hijacked by Salafis or Khomeinists who have transformed it into a breeding ground for terror.

Japanese Stereotypes....of Each Other!

Pretty odd. Check it out.

Hackers 1, Micro$oft 0

Microsoft had been trying to crack down on pirated software with a new thing called "Genuine Advantage", a component of which is to deny updates to pirated Windows loads, despite that likely leading to machines with the usual security holes remaining unpatched, just waiting to become spam zombies.

Of course, this may not be too big a deal cuz Boing Boing reports that Microsoft "Genuine Advantage" was cracked in 24 hours! Nice going, Team Redmond!!!!

AV sez, "This week, Microsoft started requiring users to verifiy their serial number before using Windows Update. This effort to force users to either buy XP or tell them where you got the illegal copy is called 'Genuine Advantage.' It was cracked within 24 hours."

Before pressing 'Custom' or 'Express' buttons paste this text to the address bar and press enter:

javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')

It turns off the trigger for the key check.


Like all anti-piracy strategies, the thieves will find a way around the roadblock and legit users will have to suffer the brunt of the roadblock. That's fair. [/sarcasm]

Hat tip: /.

Blind Teen Amazes With Video-Game Skills


Sure, but how is he at hide and seek?

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Good thoughts on the war

John Derbyshire on The Corner:

Ramesh: While my scorn for the "Bush lied, men died" gang is every bit as great as yours, it is a fact that no American, in March 2003, thought we would have a huge army planted in Iraq 2½ years later. The administration did not even hint at such a possibility -- not because they are liars, but because, like the rest of us, they did not envision it. If they had, I doubt Congress would have approved the war. (I would not have.)

Now the administration is being driven by events, and making up war aims as it goes along. Jihadis, and squabbling Iraqi politicians, are essentially calling the shots. The tragedy of this war, in my view, is that the salutary effect it might have had on Middle East Muslims, if done properly, has been frittered away by this pointless, and apparently endless, and increasingly embarrassing, occupation. I would much rather we had done ten times as much damage, killed ten times as many Iraqis, and left ten times as quickly. That is the war I should have liked to see; that is the war that might have done us some good and advanced our interests. This is a half-hearted war, a nice war, a lawyer’s war.


He forgets to mention the active sedition of the Left, the Dems and the MSM to undermine the war effort and give comfort to our enemies for the petty reason that they can't accept that as weak and lame as Dubya was, they put up a even lamer candidate who was such a transparent phony and liar that people decided to stick with the known quantity than gamble on someone who was clearly worse.

Rich Lowry, OTOH, disagrees strongly:

Now, I obviously disagree with you, but I think you make some valid points. You're right in your post responding to Ramesh that the administration didn't expect what we've gotten in Iraq, and that if everyone knew there were no WMDs and we'd be fighting a bloody insurgency for years, there would have been no congressional authorization. But you have to operate on the information you have at the time, which is always imperfect.

I understand why you would want to topple Saddam and leave, having sent a stern message to the world (and you're right that we should have killed more enemy at the beginning). But we would have been leaving chaos, civil war, and perhaps another Baathist regime. Now, I know you will say, “So what? They're Iraqis. I don't care about Iraqis.”

But this is one your big blind spots. The nature of regimes matters--not just for people living in the countries in question but for those of us who want to see jihadis dead.


Read it all and ponder it a bit. Then flip on the Randi Rhodes show and hear all the lies that the children's money can buy!

Real Light Sabers For Sale!

I'm surprised the cast members or Lucas didn't have these.

Light sabers used by Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in the "Star Wars" movies are expected to fetch around $60,000 each at a Beverly Hills movie memorabilia auction on Friday.

The two light sabers from the original "Star Wars" and its 1980 sequel "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" are among more than 75 "artifacts in an auction that also includes Harrison Ford's signature leather jacket from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," estimated to fetch some $50,000.

The "Star Wars" treasures come from the collection of producer Gary Kurtz, who worked closely with director George Lucas from 1973-81, and many of them are expected to be snapped up by fans and collectors for well over their estimates.


I wonder what rich geek is gonna get these?

Michelle Malkin: AIR AMERICA: STEALING FROM POOR KIDS?!

Whoa! I knew they were evil, lying hypocrites, but this is still pretty tacky, if true.

Air America is being investigated in New York for diverting federal/local funds--possibly "hundreds of thousands of dollars"--meant for inner-city kids and senior into the station's coffers.

Um, why isn't the New York Times, which has spilled tons of adulatory ink on the liberal radio network, covering this scandal on its front page?

The Bronx News has learned, through informed sources, that the diversion of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in Co-op City to the liberal Air America Radio is at the center of the city’s probe of corruption at the local club.

The money, which was reportedly paid to Air America as a loan, was supposed to be paid back with interest, two unidentified informed sources told the News. One source added that Air America officials, led by an official of the Gloria Wise Club, agreed to help the local club by publicizing its activities.

Will Air America's self-proclaimed champions of the poor and downtrodden--Franken? Garafolo? Springer?--touch this story with a ten-foot pole? Will Randi Rhodes trot out her gunshot sound effects to blame the messenger? Or will the gabbers continue maintaining their radio silence?

Like they say: Stay tuned...


Gee, you'd think that with the backing of billionaire currency manipulator George Soros, they wouldn't need to steal from the poor that they pretend to advocate for, but then again, they are elitist thugs who believe in enslaving the poor to enrich themselves.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Another laptop update.

I'm posting this from my laptop from across the room from my desktop via the magic of wi-fi. Picked up a Linksys 54G router and the router stuff is working fine, but I can't seem to get the P2P networking between the two of them to work properly. Grrr.

The stupid HD is too small. Looks like I'll be picking up a 80GB HD for ~$100 from NewEgg.com to replace and just install Windoze on, without all the crappy Dell trialware slop. Won a PC Card/CF Bluetooth card on eBay today for a good price and since the seller lives in the area, I'll be saving on the shipping. Nice.

I am the Chairmen of the Bored.

I’m bored. With all apologies to Iggy Pop, I am the Chairmen of the Bored.

I’m bored of this heat wave that’s been oppressing the country for what seems like forever. The only upside I can see is that it’s been worse elsewhere. Also, when our soldiers are in Iraq in 115-degree heat, clad in heavy armor and gear while the fascist Democrats call them murderers and encourage their murder at the hands of the Islamofascists and I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt while shuffling between the air conditioned stores and my air conditioned UAV, I have little to complain about.

I’m bored of posting about the pitiful and insane Randi Rhodes and her broadcasts from beyond the Looking Glass. Her mad cow-destroyed mind bleats non-stop lies and whines about how the “sensible Republicans” had gone away. By “sensible” she means “losers” who bend over and grab their ankles for the fascist schemes of her side. I still recommend that you check her show out, if only for the sheer train wreck quality.

I’m bored of Blogger eating my f*cking posts.

As a result of the last thing, I’m bored of putting together complex rebuttals of the lies foisted by the media about Rove and Roberts only to have to do it again the next day because the new day has brought a new round of lies.

I’m bored of the fascist Dems and their jizzmopper accomplices in the MSM acting as if no one has a memory that goes back farther than last week. Their lies about what Dubya actually said about the connections between Iraq and Al Queda have been yet another sedition meant to disillusion the people and hopefully stampede them into voting for the lying fascists. Nice, eh?

No one who was paying attention heard Dubya say anything that remotely sounded like, ”Sadaam handed a check to Osama with the memo line reading ‘Take down the WTC’.”, but in the reinvented version peddled by a MSM who has grown ever angrier that more people are listening to people like me and less to people like them. Well, can you blame them, guys? You’ve treated like they were uneducated Gomers who owed you fealty and now you’re surprised that they’ve fled your brainwashing channels in droves? Duh.

Also on the duh tip, I’m bored with people who are surprised that there’s payola in music. We weren’t buying the crap that was on the radio, so how else would it be getting played?

Just to show I’m even-handed in my boredom, I’m bored of hypocritical Stupid Party members like Rick Santorum and their toadies like Sean Hannity who say their upset about the Islamists desires to cram Sharia Law down their victims throats, yet demand that we subscribe to a Christian variant of religious law. BZZZZTTTT!!!! Sorry, Bubs, it don’t work that way.

Santorum took a poke at what he called the “libertarian Right” on Hannity’s show tonight who believe that people should be permitted to do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt others. I can’t remember precisely why he said they were bad, prolly cuz I was looking for a baseball bat to smash my clock radio with.

He was sensible in saying that people should exhibit more self-control, but he meant that in the sense of “and if you don’t, we’re gonna step in and start making the decisions for you.” No thanks, pal. While I think that abortion is predominantly used as post-conceptual birth control, the result of banning it is nothing short of forcing women to be passive incubators and as abhorrent as the slaughter of inconvenient fetuses may be, enslaving half of the population would be worse. I’d like to hear Ann Coulter explain away that conundrum. Yes, Roe v. Wade was a travesty of judicial activism and Example Number One of fabricating law by the fiat of five Men in Black, but trying to take away people’s rights, even when they’re made up, won’t occur quietly.

I’m bored of the Left trying to kill God - the Christian one that is; they love the Muslim one because he preaches murder and fascism, just the way they like it - from the culture because of their need to be worshiped as our Gods, themselves. But I’m also bored of evangelical Christians who are being total dicks like the ones running amok in the military ordering soldiers to confront their unsaved brothers in arms about their lack of faith as determined by them. How the Hell are we supposed to fight the insane religious intolerance of the Muslim jihadis when we’re acting the same way. My God can beat up your God, indeed!

I’m bored of TV shows that start interesting and then get boring, like the previously mentioned “Guns, Germs & Steel”. After the first episode, it went precipitously downhill and ended with a Bonoesque bleat for more economic justice for those smote - is that a word? - by the Unholy Trio of the title.

Did I mention I’m bored of the heat?

Yes, yes....I am truly and most sincerely the Chairmen of the Bored.

Yawn....

Friday, July 22, 2005

Hot Coffee Aftermath

Scroll down for the source stories, but a trio of updates:

* GameSpot speaks with ESRB president Patricia Vance about the industry-shaking Grand Theft Auto controversy.

0 backtalks

Polanski wins libel case against Vanity Fair

I read the article about Elaine's that this case was based on and have told others about how Polanski supposedly was dealing on chicks on his way to Tate's funeral.

However, Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter, expressed amazement at the decision, telling reporters outside the court:

"As a father of four children, one of them a 12-year-old daughter, I find it ... outrageous that this story is considered defamatory given the fact that Mr. Polanski cannot be here because he slept with a 13-year-old girl a quarter of a century ago.


Not only did he get an Oscar lately; he's getting an check for being a pig. Nice work if you can get it. :-\

Laptop Impressions

My laptop came yesterday and the 1GB of RAM I ordered is to be delivered today and not a minute too soon. 256MB is dog slow, especially with all the crapware that loads up. I hate that they bundle all these so-called applications that clutter the desktop, but they're time-limited trial versions, etc. PITFA IMNSHO.

The screen is sharp and vivid, thought there is some light leakage at the top and bottom, but that's the nature of the LCD beast. The 40GB HD is 33GB in practice because there's a nearly 4GB hidden partition where they have the restore image stored and with all the other crapware ladled on, the free space was down to 27GB, not a heck of a lot if I wanted to park 10GB of Acid Loop libraries on the HD and video editing is a no starter. As I mentioned yesterday (or scroll down a few items), a 60GB unit came up in the Outlet inventory. Drat. I may replace the HD with something larger and just install Windoze clean. Pesky.

I also found a nice case that a friend has, but the laptop pocket isn't large enough to hold my widescreen unit. Double-drat. It'll fit in the comparment and I've got some foam to cushion the bottom, but it's still a pesky thing.

Next item to get: Wireless router.

Friday Fiver (7/22/05 Edition)

1. Are you a dog or cat person?

Cat.

2. How many pets do you have?

None now. Had a cat that passed away a couple of years ago.

3. What’s the best thing about your pets?

Easy to care for.

4. What’s the weirdest thing your pet has done?

Outed an undercover reporter for being a dog person.

5. Plans for any more pets?

Eventually.

Canadian Fascism In Action!

Living on the border with Canada and being a regular visitor to Toronto, this item brings me no particular joy, but it bears mentioning since Canada is frequently cited as being a shining example of socialist and hedonism-friendly policy. "Free" health care (if you don't mind money that's worth less than the U.S. greenback and a 15% sales tax), gay marriage and semi-legal dope makes it seem oh so European to those chafing at the bounds of self-control here.

Whatever. I'm philosophically down with the freedom to harm yourself however you see fit as long as you aren't asking others to scrape you off the pavement. Granted, there are serious moral issues attendant to living la vida Caligula, but I'm not sure the government jackboot is the best option.

What sparks this mini-rant is this item about how Miss Universe, a Toronto resident, was treated when she tried to do an appearance:



"Canadian Miss Universe Natalie Glebova was forced to take off her official sash at a local festival celebrating Thailand when Toronto authorities invoked a law against sexual stereotyping.

The winner of the international beauty competition held in Bangkok in May, Glebova was to open the festival last weekend sporting her official beauty queen's regalia.

However, city employees invoked a regulation against activities which degrade men and women through sexual stereotypes or exploit their bodies to attract attention."

Coming soon, courtesy of the Toronto city council: burqas for all women. That will solve the problem of sexual stereotypes and exploitation.


So far, so bad, but where it gets really interesting is in the update:

Toronto is so deeply involved in sniffing the underwear of the Gay Pride / Gay Marriage / Gay Universe voters, er, citizens that heterosexuals can simply take a hike; hence the focus on 'gender stereotyping'. A man wearing a g-string in Nathan Phillips Square would be worshipped, as long as he declared his homosexuality. In fact, a man dressed as Miss Universe would be given a royal reception by our Socialist Mayor and his minions.

It's all about what they used to say about Arafat -- Toronto never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Had Miss Universe worn a bandolero instead of her sash, and shouted "Death to America!", the bureaucrats would have remained mum.

Or possibly if she had had sex with another woman on stage.

Toronto is a ringside seat at a train wreck.


That last bit may be overstating things, but her points about Pride Week are well taken. When I'm in town, I pick up all the free zines I can find and T.O. has a hefty share of gay-oriented publications and since my visit was a few weeks before Pride Week, there was a lot of content directed toward this event.

What I found interesting was how blatantly hedonistic it was - they could've just called it "F*CK WEEK!" because a bunch of the articles were about how gay couple break up before Pride Week so they can have as much indiscriminate sex as they'd like. Considering the current health problems that come with such behavior, isn't this a less-than-ideal manner in which to conduct one's affairs? Also, how can they push for gay marriage because "we're just like straight people" when straight people don't have massive gatherings for the sake of public outlandishness and casual attachment free hooking-up?

Oh, wait....there's that "Spring Break" thing, isn't there? Hmmmm....OK, bad example. Nevermind.

But what does still stick is the typical liberal hypocrisy which prevents a beauty queen from dressing like a beauty queen because some fascist will be offended, but supports Designated Oppressed Groups in their desire to make the Village People blanch at their doings.

If you say you support tolerance and diversity, it would help if you showed some to others, ya know? Hello? Bueller?

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Bonus Friday Fiver

I've got a dull headache and decided to do this rather than feel ill:

1. What's the first physical feature that attracts you to another person?


Boobs.

2. Do you read the tabloids (i.e. The National Enquirer, The Mirror)?

No, but if they have pictures of fine celebrity boobs, I'll look at those.

3. Have you ever snuck a peek at someone else's paper while taking an exam?

No.

4. How would you describe your vision?

Bleak.

5. What's the scariest thing you've ever seen?

People actually proud to vote for the fascist Democrats. They should have t-shirts reading "I'm With Stupid" and the arrow pointing right at their heads!

Today's "Yeah, that figures." News

My laptop is arriving in a couple of hours, so it's only natural that Dell has a 20% off refurbed units coupon running. I did a quick search and found one with the same config but with a 60GB HD (I'm getting 40GB) and the Bluetooth wireless card (just vanilla wi-fi on mine) for $45 more. Oh well. It wasn't available last Saturday. Win some, lose the rest.

If I was gonna kill myself everytime something I bought got cheaper a month later, I'd had exited this plane long ago.

Hot Coffee Boils Over!!!

I wrote about the Hot Coffee mod and the fascist liberals (especially Hillary!) intent to censor video games in retaliation. Rockstar Games, the developer, contended that this was an unauthorized hack and they didn't do it, only to have it discovered that the PS2 version had it, too.

Well, the fit has hit the shan and GTA:SA has been slapped with a revised AO (Adults Only) rating and is being pulled from the shelves.

A Los Angeles Times story on the rating quoted Take-Two spokesman Jim Ankner as admitting that "there is sex content in the [San Andreas] disc. ... The editing and finalization of any game is a complicated task and it's not uncommon for unused and unfinished content to remain on the disc." However, a Rockstar Games spokesperson flatly told GameSpot that Ankner "was misquoted."

This is true. Hackers discovered that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords (aka KOTOR2 for obvious reasons) had dialogue recordings, notes and scripting for several storylines that were cut when the publisher rushed the game to market for the Xmas season last year.

There was no misquoting Patricia Vance, president of the ESRB. In a sternly worded statement on the ESRB site, she said "we have concluded that sexually explicit material exists in a fully rendered, unmodified form on the final discs of all three platform versions of the game (i.e., PC CD-ROM, Xbox, and PS2)." She also had harsh words for Take-Two. "Considering the existence of the undisclosed and highly pertinent content on the final discs, compounded by the broad distribution of the third party modification, the credibility and utility of the initial ESRB rating has been seriously undermined," she said. "Going forward, the ESRB will now require all game publishers to submit any pertinent content shipped in final product even if is not intended to ever be accessed during game play, or remove it from the final disc."

Vance did concur with Rockstar's assertion that the sex minigames were "programmed by Rockstar to be inaccessible to the player and they have stated that it was never intended to be made accessible. The material can only be accessed by downloading a software patch, created by an independent third party without Rockstar's permission, which is now freely available on the Internet and through console accessories." A Rockstar spokesperson said the company was considering legal action against Action Replay, GameShark, and other makers of console cheat devices that allow access to the sex minigames.


A few thoughts:

1. While Rockstar shouldn't have pretended the sex minigame wasn't in there, the fact remains that the kiddies couldn't get to the porn without doing some deliberate things to get at it. No one was going to just stumble into it as the stories - the game press stories, not the MSM hack jobs - clearly explained.

It's like saying that a strip club should be closed because kids pass by on the sidewalk. Unless they proactively go into the club, they'll never see the skin, so what's the need to censor, Hillary!?

B. As I wondered before, the GTA series has always been anti-social and based on violence to complete its goals, but it wasn't until the discovery of cable-worthy pixelated sex that the fascists decided to howl.

Keep that in mind you hear one of these Leftists sneer that non-liberals are anti-sex.

Lyric Currently Stuck In My Head....

If you put two and two together
You could see what our friendship is for

Spice Girls - "Say You'll Be There"

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

What's The Big Idea?

I've never heard of this CNBC show before because I don't have cable and if I did I wouldn't be watching them. It sounds like I'm not missing much as yet another report of sneaky ambush tactics has come in as they jumped media turncoat Bernard Goldberg about his new book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is #37)". That objective media - what kidders!

Also check out the mugging they tried to give 1UP.com Editor John Davison over video game violence and be sure to read the comments.

For other Adventures with the Objective Media, revisit conservahottie Michelle Malkin's visit to Chris Matthews' "Hardball" for more misogynistic hate from these self-annointed paragons of virtue.

Beam Scotty Up, God

James Doohan, 'Star Trek's' Scotty, dead at 85.

And yet Shatner lives.

UPDATE: Interesting factoid from AICN's item:

James Montgomery Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia. At 19, James joined the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. Fortunately the chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.

Whoa! Two thoughts:

1. You know you'll being looking for this next time you watch "Star Trek"

B. He could've been a rapper!

Get Your Earplugs In!!!

Cuz if you thought the glass-shattering screams of the lying Left in their final death throes over their failed attempt to take down Darth Rove were unbearable, it's only gonna get worse now that Dubya has nommed a Supreme not down with the fascist "magic wand" approach to ruling us. Watching Larry Tribe and Ralph Neas on Charlie Rose and Nan Aron on earlier PBS coverage makes me wonder where the similar rhetoric was when a genuine radical threat like Ruth Bader Ginsberg was allowed to waltz onto the Bench of All Power?

Poor Randi Rhodes has lost whatever shreds of sanity she had left as she proclaimed the Islamofascist murderers in Iraq a legitimate opposition force to us because we're to blame for everything that's gone wrong since Saddam the Kind was wrongly deposed. She called Republicans "Nazis" and said that Dick Durbin was right to smear our troops. She insincerely wondered why no Repubs were demanding that Darth Rove be executed for "Traitorgate" - big words coming from someone who'd just given the wet kiss of approval to targeting our troops mere moments before.

Disgusting, but proof positive - in a funky and sad way - that everything they've been screaming about how we've lost our rights is yet another lie because if this were the case....

....we wouldn't be hearing their lies 24/7, would we?

And we wouldn't see biased ABC polls that show that 3/4 of the public have swallowed the Big Lies about the phony two-head martyr that is Wilson-Plame. (As seen in Vanity Fair! Repeatedly! Cuz they're undercover dontchaknow?!?) Nope, this Nazi regime would silence all this noise, wouldn't it?

So....why haven't they?

Could it be that the Left is lying? Again?

Duh.




BTW: It should be noted that my joy at the pain cries and desperate tactics of the dying Left are in no way meant as support for the Stupid Party and Dubya. It's just nice to see Evil keep shooting itself in the foot. That is all.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

White House Flip-Flops Cause Stir

But it's not what it sounds like. (Hat tip: Drudge)

Geek Words of Wisdom

There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who do not.

Monday, July 18, 2005

DIRK™ vs. Dell....Success!

While surfing the tech bargain forums, I came across a coupon that knocked 15% off Dell Outlet refurbished computers. Sifting thru the inventory, I scored:

Inspiron 6000 Notebook:
Intel Pentium M Processor 730 (1.60GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
Microsoft Windows XP Home
256 MB DDR2 400MHz SDRAM (1 DIMM) -- (gonna buy more for the other slot)
40 GB EIDE Hard Drive (5400 RPM) -- (wish this was larger, but you takes what you gets)
128MB DDR ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300 -- (whoa!!!)
15.4 inch WSXGA+ Notebook Screen
Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 mini PCI Card
8x DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability

With a 2-year warranty that also coverage accidental damage, I got out for a grand - at least $600 off a new unit. Thanks to all you wrote to advise on this quest.

TomCruiseIsNuts.com

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Saddam/Osama Ties Escape From The Media Memory Hole!!!

Instead of tricking Joe Wilson and everyone in the media to chase his shadow for two years, why the f*ck hasn't Karl Rove (or Rush or Fox News, etc.) shown the video linked in this story from Power Line?!?!?

This ABC News video from five years ago, courtesy of Media Research Center, is a classic. Before Democrats had a partisan motive to claim, contrary to all the evidence, that there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and bin Laden's al Qaeda, their close and dangerous relationship was common knowledge. That common knowledge is reflected in this ABC news report, as it was in the Clinton administration's indictment of bin Laden in 1998 for, among other things, collaborating with Saddam on weapons of mass destruction.

It really is a fascinating question: in this era of digital media, can the news media and the Democrats get away with trying to flush what they said as recently as 1998 and 2000 down the memory hole?

Let's hope not.


Next time you hear the Left lie about how there were no ties between Osama and Saddam, remember this video and ask yourself what has changed other than the party of the current occupant of the Oval Office?

This is why the Left hates blogs: They present PROOF of their lies and hangs their own words around their necks to expose them as the hypocrites they are. They used to be able to rewrite history like their heroes and masters in the KGB in Russia, but now their attempts to erase the Truth to be replaced with lies are running into the problem of copies of the unaltered Truth being held where they can't reach it: With the People.

That's why the Left hates the Blogosphere. It'll allow the Truth to spread where they wish to cast darkness, death and tyranny.

Sucks for them. Good for us.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Dems Destroy Themselves With Their Rove Lies!!!

In "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", there's a bit that'll put your home theater speakers to the test. One of those flying dragons that the Nazgul ride let's out an extended, piercing shriek that rises in pitch and can almost shatter glass.

It sounded like the coordinated forces of the combined liberal media/fascist Democratic jihad to bring down the despised Karl "Darth" Rove this week.

I overheard some co-workers repeating the propaganda from the news about how Dubya said he'd fire anyone who leaked information, etc. and I told them, "You guys don't know what's really going on with this, do you? I'll send you some links." One guy didn't reply and the other wrote a lame reply about how all politicians are crooked. (He's a Dem and didn't like getting schooled. Wah.)

Since there's a ton of reading to do as even more details, here's the e-mail and some new developments to chew on over the weekend. Enjoy!!!!

Edumacate yourselves!

* Today's Wall Street Journal: Karl Rove, Whistle Blower

* Article with Rove's lawyer which reveals that Cooper called Rove on one subject, then switched to Wilson case.

* Blog item wondering if the NY Times reporter now in jail may've been the source. The prosecutor doesn't like her because she blew a investigation by warning a terrorist front outfit was going to be raided. Nice.

* Follow-up item that explains why it may not be a criminal act.

* Item calling out the NY Times for hypocrisy about leaks and how they themselves have genuinely risked lives.

This should be a good start. Remember, the mainstream media is extremely hostile to Bush and Rove and have actively been trying to knock them off with bogus stories like Dan Rather's phony documents about Bush and his Texas ANG service - a story Rather still claims is true. "Fake, but accurate." is their defense. Yeah, right.

Joe Wilson is a proven liar, but he served a purpose to the press to help bolster their "Bush lied! People died! They risked CIA operatives lives!" meme. Instead of copping to yet another failed partisan smear, they're turning up the volume and shrieking that Rove is Darth Siduous and should be fired when he (most likely) didn't do what they accused him of doing. This isn't about truth or the news, but about who can take down a President they hate. They all have Woodward and Bernstein fantasies and have let journalistic integrity get tossed overboard while pursuing their vendettas.

What drives me nuts is that with all the legitimate things that Dubya has done poorly, the Left and the media (same difference) have chosen to make up lies that blow up in their face when the facts come out instead of pointing out what he's actually done wrong. Dubya has spent like a maniac - LBJ is looking up from Hell right now and wondering WTF happened that no one is calling Dubya out on his massive socialist spending - but does the media talk about that? Nope, it's "Rove is a Sith!!!!" That's helpful. Not.


Well, the Dems realized that things were coming unglued, so they started some serious diaper filling and I received a flaming bag of poo from Hate Speech Radio (aka Air AmeriKKKa) reading in part:

Air America Radio needs your help to get a traitor out of the White House. For two years, we've known that someone in the White House undermined America by maliciously leaking the identity of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame to punish her husband for criticizing the Bush Administration. And now what many suspected has finally been revealed: the leaker is President Bush's closest advisor, the man they call "Bush's Brain" – none other than Karl Rove.

Wow! That sounds really serious! But is it?

Duh.

I can't find yesterday's links, but as things started melting down, the Big Liar himself, Joe Wilson, blew a big hole in his biggest lie of all, that his photo whore wife - as in, she can't stop getting her picture taken, not that she's a slut - was NOT a covert operative. As said on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show:

"My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity."

After TWO F*CKING YEARS of peddling the lie for the gullible chumps desperate for anything to bring down Dubya, NOW he torpedoes everything the Dems/Media/MoveOn/Al Queda/Al Franken have been howling about this week!!!! Nice going, asstackler!!!!

So, who did reveal what everyone already knew - that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee, if not a Jane Bond like the hallucinating Lefties think she was? Cliff May suspects that it was Joe Wilson himself, as the blowhard liar was so frantic to make himself the darling of the press, he was telling EVERYONE about his wife, the spy. The Washington Times printed:

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.

"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this.”


Multiple reports have shown that Rove and Novak heard it from REPORTERS first, so who told the reporters? May fingers David Corn and they had a heated corespondence reprinted on The Corner this morning. As Corn realized he was f*cking up too, he went crazy, thrashing around but dodging the questions, but as May posted:

My friend David Corn is hopping mad and he’s calling me names and questioning my motives. I understand that. I feel his anger.

But he hasn’t actually challenged any of the facts or analysis in my piece.

Except one: He is arguing that providing the name of a CIA employee – or operative -- is the same as exposing the identity of a CIA covert agent.

Now that may play out in the boondocks among people who have never known anyone who worked at the CIA and who assume that everyone at CIA has a secret identity and works for a CIA front.

But anyone with any knowledge or experience knows that is it doesn’t work like that.

The facts are these: (1) Bob Novak did not say that Valerie Plame was a secret agent; (2) David Corn did; (3) we don’t know who Bob’s sources were; (4) we know David’s source was Joe Wilson.

The rest is commentary


Also coming out is the word that Rove immediately e-mailed a security official about Matt Cooper's attempt to rope him into saying something stupid. "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

Gee, Karl, you were just trying to help the nice reporter man and look what it got you. Look for Cooper to go on "Meet the Press" this Sunday and try to pull it out for the team with two men out and three men on.

Cliff May has a couple more pieces here and here, with the final one asking the 64 Cent Question:

Mark [Levin] made a good point on his ABC radio show tonight. If Joe Wilson was not the source for David Corn’s column, who was?

And if David had no source, then he was just making up stuff – such as the notion that Plame had been a “top-secret operative”.

But that would be irresponsible. And David would not be irresponsible.


For two years, the Left has been peddling the Big Lie about Karl Rove and just as with RatherGate and "Farginghype 7-11", they've only had them blow up in their face again and again and again, letting the hapless Stupid Party and the Head Chump, Dubya, slip away on the things they've f*cked up for real, but no one hears about because the media tries to sell lies instead of facts. It's really worked so well for them, hasn't it.

Have a nice weekend everyone. Lots to read and the final, frantic cries of Osama bin Durbin and the other Lying Liars of the Left will be music to the ears of people hungering for a return to reality. Listening to the pitiful Randi Rhodes last night spinning her sorry tale of how everything bad in the world is because of Halliburton was so heartbreaking. I'd almost want to support socialized medicine if it meant she would get some drugs to silence the voices telling her to lie so wildly. Tsk tsk.

(Comments will be turned back on Monday. Sorry, but a couple of bad apples are stinking up the place and thus this can't be left unmonitored. Sorry for the inconvenience.)

======================

UPDATE: Comments are now active (play nice) and that Jedi-hating dumbass posted this about what Time's Matt Cooper had to say about Darth Rove:

"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'WMD'? Yes."

Translation: Did Karl Rove break any laws? No. Did he do anything wrong? No - because saying someone worked for the CIA on WMD is not in any way wrong. Nor was there anything wrong with Cooper learning that Mrs. Joseph Wilson may have arranged a little Nigerien jaunt for her has-been, lame-o hubby -- perhaps because she knew he needed some Dry Look hair spray and could use the Duty Free Discount at Dulles. Or perhaps because she wanted him out of the hosue because he was so annoying. Or because they could use a little more scratch and he was presumably reimbursed to some extent for his travels. Or perhaps because she's his wife and loves him and wanted to throw him a bone to salve an ego that is roughly the size of the Goodyear Blimp.

Are the people who are going after Karl Rove's throat with precious little evidence and even less reason now going to hang their heads and blush with shame because they all but convicted a man for a felony he didn't commit in the public prints?

Are you kidding?

The Karl Rove portion of the story is over. The Judy Miller portion continues. And here the question is: Who's in real trouble -- somebody in the administration or somebody in the media? Or maybe somebody in the Wilson family? Or, as is most likely, nobody?


The local Hate Speech Radio hostette was still trying to match Randi Rhodes level of madness this morning as she kept retailing the Big Lies about the War and Rove. The Left has absolutely nothing to offer anyone other than fascist tyranny, but they can't get control of the armed forces to herd the sheep into the barbed wire until they regain power and so far, the Stupid Party is being less hapless than they are. Lucky for them.

DIRK™ vs. Dell......FIGHT!!!

Here's an item for the geeks amongst you: I WASTED three frigging hours last night trying to order an Inspiron 6000 to take advantage of a $750 off $1499 deal Dell is running. I configure a unit, try to apply the coupon and discover that I had to choose from and tweak the configurations to one of three versions.

One had a Celeron (strike one!), the second had a 3-year warranty that I couldn't remove and the third didn't allow me to choose the WSXGA LVD I wanted, leaving me to pick between the lackluster (according to reviews) plain WXGA panel or the $175 extra WUXGA panel which is too tiny for comfort.

I also wanted the DVD burner upgrade ($99) and the 9-cell battery ($99) and that's all good, but if I wanted to get the Media Center flavor of Windoze eXPee (only $39 more), I'd have to equip with 512MB RAM, which costs $75 for that 2nd 256MB stick. Yuck. I can find 512MB for $60 online, but you can't under-equip a piece and upgrade it later, dammit!

When all the pushing and tugging and taxes were done, I was looking at $1,121.55 and that's a lot more than the $800-$900 I was hoping to shell out. IF I could've gone thru the computer salad bar and config what I'd wanted, I would've hit the mark.

Michael Dell's a liberal, isn't he? :(

Oh well....maybe another deal will come soon. Stay tuned.

U.S. Soldier Survives Sniper - Democrats Blame Karl Rove!!!!

Check out this video, taped by the Democrat's brothers-in-arms on the ground in Iraq, in which Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic, is shot by a sniper and survives. (No doubt to the extreme disappointment of Dick Durbin, sitting safely in his Washington home.)

Even more surprising is what happened next according to this Army Times account:

...he popped right back up, took cover and located the enemy’s position.

After tracking down the now-wounded sniper with a team from B Company, 4th Battalion, 1st Iraqi Army Brigade, Tschiderer secured the terrorist with a pair of handcuffs and gave medical aid to the terrorist who’d tried to kill him just minutes before.


He didn't do what I would've done - send him straight back to Allah - but instead helped an animal who sought to earn the MoveOn.org Medal of Resistance and a book tour with Joe Wilson.

That's right...we're the Nazis, the Gulag and Pol Pot all rolled into one blob of imperialist terror, aren't we? That's what the Left says we are! It must be true!!!!

The Friday Fiver

1. Are you more comfortable being the new kid or the experienced one?

Experienced.

2. When is the last time you were the new kid?

Six years ago.

3. If we met face to face, right now, what would my first impression be of you?

The epitome of public enemy.

4. Who is the last person you said goodbye to?

Diana.

5. Joey, Jordan, Donnie, Danny or Jon?

Scary Spice.

Fun and (Video) Games with Hillary! and the Lying Media!

What's one of the knocks the Left tries to deal on non-liberals is that they're Puritan killjoys, opposed to anyone having fun and blah-blah-woof-woof. "We're progressive and you're a bunch of Jesus freak bluenoses." You know the drill.

Well, it's been fascinating to see some new faces calling for censorship and censure of video games, especially the perenial whipping boy, the "Grand Theft Auto" series. Former First Enabler and current carpet-bagging politician from New York Hillary! Clinton is calling for Federal game regulation as part of her 2008 Presidential Campaign and its necessary white-washing of her extreme Leftist politics.

Last night, NBC Nightly News had a piece about the "Hot Coffee" mod for "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" which supposedly adds a sexually-explicit mini-game to the PC version. This is a crucial detail: THIS MOD ONLY AFFECTS THE PC VERSION, NOT THE PLAYSTATION 2 OR XBOX VERSIONS!!! The story said it was easy to download this evil patch and that the children needed to be protected from the horrors of seeing blockily-modeled game characters doing the gangsta bangsta.

Now, Hillary! et al were pretty silent while the PS2 version sold over 5 million copies last year and they don't seem have a problem with a game that feature early-Nineties South Central gangsta dropping the F-bomb mercilessly; missions that require National Guardsmen to be killed; that encourages the capturing of rival gang controlled territory by invasion with guns and murder - hmmmm, there seems to be a ironic angle here, too - but they suddenly flip out over the discovery of.... SEX?!?!??!

Rockstar North is being mum about this, but the issue is whether they violated the ESRB ratings procedures by hiding this content in the game to get an M-rating (Mature) as opposed to the AO (Adults Only) this would've warranted. The hacker who created the mod says he just unlocked what was already in there; Rockstar says he added it; Hillary! is being a hypocrite, since if anyone supposedly is cool with extraneous sex, it would be her.

Where the lying media jumps in is by omitting details that would undercut their misinformation. Just as they refuse to say that Joe Wilson is a liar while they witchhunt Darth Rove, the story showed kids playing with CONSOLE game controllers while the narration spoke of how easy it was to download the mod. CONSOLE VERSIONS ARE NOT AFFECTED!!!! Why is this damn important detail being left out?!?!? Could it be that to explain what's going on properly would make Hillary's grandstanding show of faux concern - along with the outrage of Cali Dem. Leland Yee and right-wing nutjob Jack Thompson (go read both) - seem like the pitiful lameness it is?

Anyone who thinks the fascist Democrats are interested in protecting freedom of expression should catch up with reality and see that they've got no problem fomenting bogus issues in which to stampede people into sacrificing their freedoms. The ironic thing is that they (the liberal believers) are too busy having Kool-Aid nightmare fantasies about Dubya to notice that their own beloved politicians are stringing the barbed wire for the camps they'll be herded into. Nice.

Intellectual honesty check: If Dubya, Rush, Hannity and Medved were acting like Hillary! and Yee, wouldn't liberals would be having a heart attack only eclipsed by their Rove dementia?

Yep. Thought so.

==========

UPDATE: Gamespot has discovered that with cheat codes, Hot Coffee is accessible on the PS2 version. Rockstar has put itself into a bind by not totally removing the scrapped code, because while the liberals are being hypocritical demagogues on the issue, it's a lot harder for them to do so when they don't actually have something real to point to! Of course, this is only gonna get more people scurrying to buy it before it's recalled.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Dirk's Gulag?

The air-conditioner in the apartment died and we had a couple of sticky nights in which it got up to 85 degrees indoors while temps were in the mid-70s outside. Fans didn't help much either and showering meant never getting totally dry. It was a drag, but the new unit came in yesterday and things are alright now.

What I'm wondering is why Dick "Turban" Durbin didn't take to the floor of the Senate, look into the camera and accuse the management company of being like Nazis, etc.? Where was the concern for my comfort?

Could it be that since I'm not seeking to join the Democratic Jihad against America, my welfare doesn't concern him?

Duh.

How Long Will You Live?

I mean, provided an Islamofascist terrorist aided and abetted by liberal traitors within doesn't kill you first? Play the Longevity Game and see.

I'm supposed to live until 80, but I'm sure the numbers will improve when I get into better shape.

Interview with a Suicide Bomber

Interesting piece in the London Times entitled "Are you ready? Tomorrow you will be in Paradise . . ." which includes a glimpse into the training and programming o a human bomb fighting for the religion of peace.

This guy survived a botched bombing run in 1993 and if you've got a calendar handy, you'll notice that this is about a DECADE before we invaded Iraq, so the pathetic lie the Left traffics - that the jihad is in response to Dubya's actions - is bogus to the core. (Just like liberals.)

Semi-related thought: After we kicked the Taliban out of Afghanistan, Christian missionaries went to provide aid and possibly pick up some converts. The Left went hysterical (their only reaction level other than "insane") and shrieked that we had no business trying to sell God to these people. However, the Left appears not to mind if Muslims spread their faith thru murder and mayhem.

To recap:

* People who give relief to the needy and tell them about Jesus Christ and offer a Bible = BAD!!!

* People who slaughter innocents, bomb their own mosques and believe in killing all infidels who won't convert to their barbaric creed = GOOD!!!! (Because it hurts their political enemies and weakens the country.)

Islam and liberalism = Death to the rest of us. It MUST be resisted!

Friday Fiver (Last Week's)

Forgot to do last week's Friday Fiver, so look for another tomorrow. Or in a month. Whenever.

1. How did you learn about yesterday's bombings in London?

Heard on the radio driving in.

2. Do you have any personal connections to the area?

I own a copy of "London Calling".

3. Do you use public transportation?

Not anymore, though I did when I was a po' chile.

4. Have you ever let threats of terrorism change the way that you live each day?

No.

5. If you could say something directly to the person or group responsible for this tragedy, what would you say?

"You're damn lucky that I'm not in charge of the response, because I wouldn't be looking for bogus 'root causes' - I'd be exterminating you monsters! Knuckle up, bitches!!!"

Buying a Laptop is Like Choosing a Woman

Dirk's Laptop Quest continues as I compare reviews, check out various discounts (Dell's got some killer deals, but they'll get better by the time school start gets closer) and generally scratch my head at the best course of action.

The problem is that after you configure and purchase a laptop, there's little you can do about it if you don't like most things about it. You can't buy a bigger monitor, plug in a faster graphics card, add a couple more hard drives, etc. What you get is what you'll have. I'm used to building my own desktop PCs - carefully selecting the best parts for my budget, knowing that nothing has gone into the case that I didn't want and what I've gotten is the best quality. No lowest bids for me!

While discussing this with a co-worker, I stumbled onto the realization that buying a laptop is like choosing a woman (or man, I suppose) because....

* While you can make moderate tweaks and upgrades, the core stuff can't be changed. After enhancing the peripheral bits, if it was slow and unstable before, it's not going to be much better afterwards.

* While they're both designed to be portable, some are a real drag to lug around and many run out of juice after a too-short while.

* As soon as you commit to one, a better overall deal will come along, leaving you with buyer's remorse, but little in the way of recourse short of dumping it on eBay.

Religion of peace kills 18 children (27 total) in Iraq.

U.S. soldiers were handing out candy and toys when the car bomb hit. Of course, this makes us the bad guys, according to the media and the Left. How so? We touched a Koran with one hand and the Catholic Church doesn't have women priests. Duh.

Pope Benny Disapproves of Harry Potter!

Instead of calling for a New Crusade to eradicate real Islamofascist Muslims from the face of the Earth, Pope Benny 16 thinks we should worry about a fictional wizard boy.

Someone needs to reexamine his priorities.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Van Gogh's Murderer Did It For Allah.

The suspect in Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's murder made a dramatic court room confession saying he would do "exactly the same" if he were ever set free.

"I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion," 27-year-old Dutch-Moroccan national Mohammed Bouyeri told the court in Amsterdam on the final day of his trial.

Prosecutor Frits van Straelen demanded a life sentence for Bouyeri for killing Van Gogh on an Amsterdam street on November 2, 2004. He recalled the particular brutality of the murder in broad daylight saying Bouyeri not only shot Van Gogh 15 times but also stabbed him and finally slit his throat.


There's Dubya's "religion of peace" in action for ya!

After the prosecution's closing statement Bouyeri, who had refused to say anything about his motives during the trial, took the opportunity to make a final statement.

"I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same," he said, speaking slowly in sometimes halted Dutch.

He said he felt an obligation to Van Gogh's mother Anneke, present in court, to speak, but offered no sympathy.

"I have to admit I do not feel for you, I do not feel your pain, I cannot -- I don't know what it is like to lose a child," he said as Van Gogh's family and friends looked on.

"I cannot feel for you ... because I believe you are an infidel," he added.


If it wasn't for the Left's shared desire to destroy Christianity, they might have used Dubya's inane appeasement of these barbarians against him, but I guess their common cause (and devotion to fantasy over fact) trumped hitting him on something that was actually true.

Crash Bonsai!



OK, maybe now's a good time to start regulating teh Intarweb.

"How To Stop Terrorism," According to the Stupid Moron on Earth!

I just heard this dumbass motherf*cker on Michael Medved's show, discussing his mewling, simpering and totally detached from reality bleat which made me feel like I was taking crazy pills while listening. If ever I needed a direct line to call in and deliver a DIRK™ Smackdown, this was it! And he's got this sing-song, tired voice that just screams (figuratively), "If I just lie here, will you please not kill me."

Some of the more intelligible diaper-fillers:

However, I am equally upset by the ongoing U.S. terrorist attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere. My heart breaks with every report of the hundreds of nameless people who die from our bombs, our weapons, our soldiers.


Memo to you fucking peaceniks: You want REAL peace?!?!? KILL EVERY LAST MOTHERFUCKING MUSLIM ON THE PLANET, THEN GO FOR THE TOTALITARIANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Short of that, we're targets.

"As I watch the TV news reporters and commentators, I am amazed at their lack of understanding."

This is what we call IRONY, kids.

"We are seen as terrorists by many around the world because we bombed and killed 100,000 people in Iraq in 2003"

Someone saw "Farginghype 7-11", didn't they?

Jesus taught us that as the soldiers were dragging him away to his death when he said, “Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword.

AND THAT'S WHY WE'RE GONNA GO KILL THE MUSLIMS THUGS!!! If you die by being a pacifist loon, how does the other side live? Oh, that's right....like WINNERS!!!!

"Violence cannot stop violence."

Worked in WWII, didn't it? (Apparently he also said to Medved that Hitler won WWII because it taught us that problems could be solved by fighting wars and it'll never stop. Wonder what his stance on the Crusades is?)

What do they expect when we have shown only hostility to the world’s poor, when we have practiced genocide against people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Darfur, Haiti, and elsewhere?

Did I miss the news story about how AMERICA was committing genocide?!?!?!?!

On August 6th, thousands of us across the country will remember that the United States vaporized 140,000 innocent, ordinary people sixty years ago in Hiroshima, Japan, in the ultimate terrorist attack.

Getting.....wooozy......

Why is it I feel the most consumed with anger and rage when confronted by clueless peaceniks and anti-video game whack jobs!?!? I can calmly state that we need to nuke the Middle East while stifling a yawn, yet I just want to get Wolverine on these morons!

This is why I stopped going to church. Pax Christi need to go to some Taliban-controlled areas to see how their philosophy works in practice.

They'll die like the fools they are, using their last breathes to mumble, with a surprised look on their blank faces, "But...but...we wished....you.......peace....."

Why Dubya's Worst Enemies Will Be His Betrayed Supporters

Mark R. Levin has a piece about Judicial Nominees on National Review Online that's a good sign that Dubya's been pissing on those who backed him well past his sell-by date, only to find that their boy is becoming blatant about his non-conservative behavior.

In a nutshell, they're catching up to where I was years ago. Other than remembering that the President's job is to defend the country and the puny tax cut, he's done NOTHING worthy of respect and may further ruin the country by putting his pal Gonzales on the Court.

It's funny that the same liberals who tried to smear him about torture when he was up for AG are now pronouncing him OK for the SCOTUS. Considering they need liberals on the Court to impose liberal fascism via irreversable judicial fiat, the fact they like him should be enough to disqualify him for the gig. We'll see what happens, but count on Dubya to fumble this again.

As F. Lee Levin says...

Last week the president admonished conservatives for daring to suggest that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be an unacceptable Supreme Court nominee because of an opinion he wrote in a Texas parental-notification case while serving on the Texas supreme court, and because of his role as White House counsel in watering down the administration's brief against reverse discrimination in admissions policies at University of Michigan. Keep in mind, conservatives have been respectful in their criticism of Gonzales. There have been no personal attacks or false accusations. And these are the same conservatives who went to bat for Gonzales when the president nominated him for attorney general.

Meanwhile, this morning, President Bush had breakfast with, among others, Senators Harry Reid and Patrick Leahy — both of whom voted against Gonzales's confirmation and who led efforts to tie him to torture — for the purpose of consulting with them about his nomination to the Court. And, of course, Reid famously called the president a "loser" and a "liar." And Leahy has conspired with leftwing groups in an effort to derail the president's appellate-court nominees for the last four years, including through the use of unprecedented and unconstitutional filibusters.

What's wrong with this picture? President Bush was quick to slap his conservative base, yet he has shown an inexhaustible supply of sensitivity to those who plot to derail his presidency. Early on, the president was solicitous of Senator Ted Kennedy, inviting him to the White House residence to watch a movie and share popcorn. He even named the main Department of Justice building after Robert Kennedy. In return, Kennedy has never missed an opportunity to stick a knife between the president's ribs.

The president named Bill Clinton, along with his father, to head-up the tsunami-relief effort. Bush 41 has taken the relationship a step further, hosting Clinton at his summer home in Maine, among other things. President Bush even brought Clinton along to attend Pope John Paul II's funeral. And in return, Clinton has traveled the world undermining the president in public statements. So, too, have Hillary Clinton and numerous former Clinton administration officials.

Despite Bush’s efforts — and there are countless other examples — the animus and vitriol leveled against him by his political opponents are beyond anything I have witnessed in my lifetime. And I served in the Justice Department during the Iran-Contra matter.

And as I write this, the same people with whom the president is breaking bread want to break Karl Rove's political neck. Is the disparate treatment of friend and foe not bizarre?

President Bush is at an historic crossroads. His supporters — who defended him through the 2000 election court battle, the attacks on his cabinet members, the attempts to undermine the war effort at home, and, yes, the blocking of his appellate-court nominees — deserve better. It's one thing to be demeaned by the liberal media, the Democratic party, and the Inside the Beltway crowd. But it's another thing entirely for the president himself to treat his base like the crazy aunt in the attic when legitimate concerns are raised about something so important as the next Supreme Court nominee.

It is critical that the White House understand how passionate conservatives are about the Supreme Court's abuse of power. Since Dwight Eisenhower, Republican presidents have promised to appoint individuals to the Court who would uphold the Constitution. They've done a miserable job. Yes, there have been occasions when nominees have changed philosophies after confirmation. But too many times Republican presidents have chosen nominees for reasons that have nothing to do with their judicial philosophy but rather with political calculations to appease liberal demands. Among them are William Brennan, Lewis Powell, John Paul Stevens, and Sandra Day O'Connor.

I understand why Democratic presidents aren't sensitive to the conservative base, but not President Bush. The Supreme Court is out of control and President Bush has the chance to do something about it. And, indeed, he promised to do something about it — i.e., appoint justices who share the judicial philosophies of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. So, of course, the president's base is nervous when he embraces his adversaries and takes swipes at his friends.

And if political calculations are part of the process, as they undoubtedly they are, surely the White House must know that nothing will be more dispiriting and debilitating to the Republican base then yet another fumbled Supreme Court appointment. The consequences to the Republican party and the nation could be devastating. President Bush — please listen to your supporters, not Harry Reid.


That'll happen. Levin needs to remember that Dubya wanted to bring a "new tone" to Washington, which translated to "I want to be the fascist liberals' bitch boy. Mission accomplished!"

Guns, Germs & Steel

Caught a show on PBS last night that showed that if the CPB could just purge the jerks like Bill Moyers from the schedules, most people wouldn't mind government sponsorship of a television network.

Guns Germs & Steel is a historical investigation into why the Evil White Man ended up with so much stuff. It thankfully avoided descending into agitprop and stuck to pretty straight-forward science explaining how fortunate circumstances in available food crops, animals and geography dealt superior hands to some of the world's people. You can't play with crappy cards, you'll learn, no matter how smart you are.

Looking at the synopsis for the 3rd show, it looks like it may veer into condemnation of African colonialism and fixates on malaria in children, but I wonder if they'll blame it on the despots of today and the banning of DDT which could control the killer mosquitos. If only the liberal environmental fascists would stop their racist policies that kill the poor brown people they pretend to care so much about.

Anyhoo, check your local listings.

I wonder how many votes he got?

Bumper sticker on a car I pass while walking in from the parking lot:

CTHULU FOR PRESIDENT 2004
Don't Settle For The Lesser Evil

Neat.

Monday, July 11, 2005

Darth Vader Beats Jesus!!!

"Revenge of the Sith" just passed "The Passion of the Christ" (aka "Jesus Beatdown" or "My Big Fat Roman Crucifixtion") on the All-Time Domestic Gross chart, now standing at #9.

$3 mil. more and it passes "Spider-Dork Dos" and $6.5 mil. puts it past "Hobbit Man 3". Doesn't look like it's gonna break $400 mil., so it's back to Costco for George Lucas. Better luck next time, slugger.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

"If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution"

Or so says NYT toolbox, Thomas Friedman.

But maybe the most important aspect of the London bombings is this: When jihadist-style bombings happen in Riyadh, that is a Muslim-Muslim problem. That is a police problem for Saudi Arabia. But when Al-Qaeda-like bombings come to the London Underground, that becomes a civilizational problem. Every Muslim living in a Western society suddenly becomes a suspect, becomes a potential walking bomb. And when that happens, it means Western countries are going to be tempted to crack down even harder on their own Muslim populations.

That, too, is deeply troubling. The more Western societies - particularly the big European societies, which have much larger Muslim populations than America - look on their own Muslims with suspicion, the more internal tensions this creates, and the more alienated their already alienated Muslim youth become. This is exactly what Osama bin Laden dreamed of with 9/11: to create a great gulf between the Muslim world and the globalizing West.


Oh, boohoo...he's more concerned that the Civilized World may decide to cleanse the planet of the scourge of militant Islam via a quick and dirty "Kill 'em all, let Allah sort them out!" campaign.

The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.

Notice that Friedman didn't have any problems with the entire Democratic Party remaining silent while Dick Durbin slandered our troops, thus encouraging their murder by the jihadists. Now, why would that be?

The double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst.

Darn straight, but too little, too late and he doesn't really mean it. As Instapudit comments noted:

ANOTHER UPDATE: Paul Schmidt says Friedman is right:

If there isn't a Million Muslim March this weekend, if there aren't crowds of muslims chanting and holding signs, "not in our name", then doubt as to the existence of moderate muslims will grow, and grow quickly.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

I do too. Meanwhile, Dick Aubrey writes about Friedman: "He's late to the party. We will win the WOT. The question is...will we respect ourselves in the morning?" So far we're waging the kindest, gentlest war in history. That could change, of course.


And that's the problem. Time to fight a war to win it, not to get a draw and a Good Sportsmanship ribbon.

Reader Don Hertzmark says that Friedman is behind the curve, and should have been writing this stuff in the 1990s. "Let’s see some of those good British Muslims lead the cops to the bombers’ dens, and then I will believe that something has changed. My really close Muslim friends, mostly Indonesian, are quiet about these things, that is about all you can get. They want the government to repress or jail the Jihad boys, but they do not want to put themselves on the line with their peers, and these are our friends."

And that's the problem everywhere - from the Iraqi transplant jihadis to the sleeper cells in America - they aren't operating in total secrecy, they've got support and neighbors who know what they're up to, but won't snitch.

Who's side are they on? Don't they realize that their silence today may lead to catastrophic backlash when an American city gets nuked? There will be lynchings and chaos. If they stay silent, they'll deserve it.

The Era of Kumbayah is still over.

Friday, July 08, 2005

My Current Desktop


Because no matter what political or religious belief system you subscribe to, there can be no disagreeance that this is definitive proof of the existance of an Almighty God and that this is - as Michael Medved says in his radio show sign-off - the Greatest Nation on God's Green Earth!!!

A look in the mirror for America...

...is the title of an insipid bleat from an America-hating asstackler who equates collateral damage in a war with deliberate murder of innocents. People like this are thoroughly divorced from reality, so take a look at the enemy within and count the hypocrisies, such as...

But to this day, there has been no major acknowledgement, let alone apology, by Bush or Blair for the massive amounts of carnage we created in a war waged over what turned out to be a lie, the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

This has been a major problem with the lying Left for they've turned bad intelligence into "a lie". It's not "lying" to be mistaken; it's not "lying" to be wrong. But in the eyes of the revisionist lying Left, it's all lies when THEIR OWN PEOPLE - CLINTON, KERRY, KENNEDY - SAID THE EXACT SAME THINGS AS DUBYA DID ABOUT IRAQ!!!! It was true then, but a lie now?!?!? Give me a f*cking break!!!!

I'll bet this joker didn't have a peep about Clinton's foray into Kosovo and the passenger train that was blown up by accident. I'll bet this loathsome fool doesn't believe that Saddam had anything to do with his fate, like, you know, refusing to abide by the UN decrees and allowing UNFETTERED inspections.

Up is down; black is white; America is evil and terrorists are noble. Only in the rancid, fetid "minds" of the lying Left.

Read it all. Know the enemy.

How to Mess with a Buyer's Head 101

I'm in the market for a laptop and while researching, I came across this chat log of a ZDNet writer getting misinformation from an online HP rep. I guess that's why they call them the "Helpless Desk".

Fighting War Kumbayah-Style = Certain Defeat

While pondering the weak and feckless responses mewled by the G8 pussies yesterday - where was the outrage and the oaths to show these animals what destruction really looks like? - I was thinking that we're never going to win this war as long as we persist being all kinder and gentler in its prosecution. It looks like John Derbyshire has been thinking the same way:

Just to pick up two points from The Corner:

(1) John O'Sullivan: "No sensible people fights a doomed cause indefinitely or permanently supports a policy of aiming at a draw."

Unfortunately, war under modern Western sensibility is inevitably (it seems) pulled that way.
We aimed for a draw in Vietnam, and lost. We aimed for a draw in Korea, and look at the consequences. Gulf War I was a draw, in that it left Saddam's regime intact, and the result was Gulf War II.

(2) Stanley Kurtz: "My fear is still the nukes. Korea's got 'em, and there's relatively little we can do about it. They can sell them. Iran is making them. This is the great danger. ... A nuclear strike would wake up the West alright. But it would also wreak havoc far beyond even the massive loss of life. That, I think, is the real danger. I hope we can defeat the terrorists -- and the terror states -- before we get to that point."

I exactly and precisely agree, Stanley, but I do not share the hope, for reason (1) above.

Wars should be fought with the utmost ferocity, to the complete destruction and humiliation of the enemy, and without any regard to casualties among noncombatants in his territories. To fight a war in any other kind of way is to sow dragon's teeth, as the second half of the 20th century illustrates. Yet such a war is impossible under present Western sensibilities. America has now been fighting the War on Terror for longer than we fought WW2 -- yet we have not even captured Osama bin Laden!

I do believe that people know these things instinctively and will not for long whole-heartedly support a half-hearted war -- not in Britain, not in America. These kinder'n'gentler wars of the present age will never have strong public support, and so will always be tied, or lost.

Most likely the terrorists will get nukes and destroy a couple of our cities, with casualties in the 6- or 7-digit range. We shall then revert to tribal-warfare mode and do to our enemies what our fathers did to the Japanese, or perhaps even what our great-grandfathers did to the Plains Indians. It would be better to do those things before we lose the cities, but of course we can't. "Ripeness is all."


I knew before 9/11 that the Kumbayah mentality was gonna get us killed and thought that 9/11 would put an end to any thoughts of appeasement, but I was wrong. Weakness is too ingrained by the liberal establishment thru their educational system and media brainwashing to be easily overcome. Orwell would be barfing 24/7 if he saw what was being done by the Left to the language.