Can Anyone There Actually Play This Game?

Tack onto the list of mystifying f-ups committed as of late by the allegedly press-savvy White House the lamely staged press conference between Dubya and soldiers in Iraq which was preceded by a live feed of the "spontaneous" event being REHEARSED.

For the MSM, it was a sweet gift and allowed them to clobber Team Dubya with something stupid that actually happened instead of something fabricated. (Now they can save that for another time.)

Dubya Does What The Left Couldn't: Get His Supporters To Abandon Him

On a forum I used to frequent before it turned into a seething fever swamp of Bush Derangement Syndrome victims, the whole year of 2004 was filled with threads hijacked by Gore losers who sought revenge for Mr. No Controlling Legal Authority's inability to steal the 2000 Election.

As one of the few non-Communists posting there, I had the lonely job of speaking Truth to partisan insanity and was extremely unpopular for pointing out after John Kerry won Iowa that they didn't stand a chance of beating Dubya.

So blinded by their rage and hate, they chronically ignored my advice as to how they could beat Dubya. Now, America would be in smoking ruins under the joint UN-France occupation forces that Kerry would've ushered in and it was marginally better for us that Dubya got re-elected, but I'm interested in facts - something the Left had and has no use for.

I tried to point out that they were doomed because they were hoping that their Big Lie Smear Campaign would convince people to turn on Dubya. They pinned their hopes on Michael Moore and Dan Rather trying to foist dastardly lies designed to smear and cripple Dubya and tacitly endorsed the slaughter of our soldiers in combat to muster public opposition to Dubya.

The proof that liberals are a threat to the country is perfectly embodied by their willingness to kill our young men and women in uniform to gain political power for themselves and it's for this reason that they must never be allowed access to control of the government. That the banning of Dems from office leaves the Stupid Party as the default rulers isn't a good thing either, but at least we'll stumble towards Hell as opposed to running full tilt into the flames.

Anyways, the strategy they didn't try was THE TRUTH and getting the awful truth about Dubya's non-conservatism out to depress conservative turnout. Point out that he signed an unconsitutional abridgement of free speech in signing McCain-Feingold after saying he wouldn't sign, in hopes that the SCOTUS would bail him out (they didn't); point out that he refuses to defend the borders; point out that he's blown up the deficit, not because of the tax cuts (like the Lying Left says) but because he refuses to veto pork sent up by the Stupid Party; point out that he's mismanaged Iraq by pussy-footing instead of flattening and killing our enemies; and many more betrayals of his base's values.

Harriet Miers is his greatest FU to those who slaved for the cause and this posting on David Frum's Diary on National Review Online sums up the devastation Dubya has brought down own his own dumb head. Read it all, but here's some good juice:

These words need to be taken seriously. A Miers defeat, if it could be made to happen, would deal a serious blow to the Bush presidency. Conservatives need to think hard about that.

But Bush defenders like Hewitt need to consider this: A Miers win would also deal serious blows - to the Republican party, to the conservative movement, and, yes, to the Bush presidency.

Consider these hard political facts:

1) Hewitt foresees all kinds of Republican political opportunities in 2006. He's deluding himself. 2006 will be a high-intensity, high-turnout year for Democrats, as was 2004. The only way Republicans avoid disaster is by doing an even better job with turnout and intensity. And how intense are you feeling right now? The right nomination could have helped save Rick Santorum and Mike DeWine. This nomination could well demoralize the Republican voting base enough - in conjunction with immigration, over-spending, and the mishandling of Katrina, plus continuing trouble in Iraq - to cost at least two Senate seats.

2) The damage dealt to the conservative movement will be huge and lasting. As the conservative movement has grown and matured, it has necessarily compromised some of its early fierceness and idealism. Broad coalitions have to be built, elections have to be won, leaders have to be supported despite their inevitable personal imperfections. Through the Bush years, conservatives have shown tremendous discipline. They have accepted minor disappointments for the sake of higher priorities: the war, the courts. But if they accept this, they will be jettisoning every principle in favor of just this one: the leader is always right. That's not just unconservative. It's un-American.

3) At his press conference Tuesday, the president said he has "plenty" of political capital. He's wrong about that. If political capital means the ability to get your supporters to persuade people to do things they would not otherwise want to do - well then the president has just spent it all. It's too late for him to reach out across the aisle; he must depend on his core political supporters - and the harder he pushes this nomination, the more he will alienate them. His only hope to recoup is to reconnect with conservatives - and abandoning this nomination is essential.

Here is the fundamental reason why this is true:

George Bush has again and again called on conservatives to sacrifice for the success of his presidency. Whether it was McCain-Feingold or racial quotas or immigration or "Islam is peace," conservatives were urged not to let petty personal considerations distract them from the big picture.

But when it was the president's turn to make the biggest domestic-policy decision of his presidency, to fill the swing seat on the US Supreme Court, did he sacrifice? Did he point the general good ahead of his own petty personal considerations? He did not. He abandoned his principles, his party, his loyal followers all to indulge his personal favoritism.

He has done himself terrible damage, and he cannot fix it until and unless he breaks free - or is helped to break free - from this bad decision.

The benighted BDS victims refused to listen to my wise council when I told them victory could be theirs if only they gave up on trying to tell lies and opted to tell the Truth.

Dubya has shown us his Truth: He rewards his friends for their loyalty to him, but shows no loyalty to those who got him where he is.

The Stupid Party is going to pay for their stupidity. Unfortunately, that means the return to power of the fascist enemies within and thus the end of America.

Nice going, Dubya. You f*cking loser.

Lost in Translation

It's a bit glitchy, but it's kinda fun in premise. I've done this manually and it can get crazy.

Classic Examples: "I'm a little tea pot, short and stout." translates to "They are a small POTENTIOMETER, short circuits and a beer of malzes of the tea."

Schumer's Plumbers

Investor's Business Daily takes a look at liberal hypocrite Chuck Schumer's involvement in dumpster diving against a black conservative.

Staff members for a champion of the right to privacy and a leading critic of identity theft fraudulently obtained the credit report of a rising black political star. Your turn for tough questions, Sen. Schumer.

While the media focus on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's alleged skirting of campaign laws to get Republicans elected, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett's alleged racially insensitive hypothetical regarding blacks, crime and abortion, and Sen. Bill Frist's recent sale of stock, a real crime against a black politician has been committed in virtual silence.

Apparently nothing frightens the DSCC more than an articulate and charismatic black American who also happens to be a Reagan conservative. How else to explain the behavior of two of Schumer's campaign committee members — research director Katie Barge and junior staffer Lauren Weiner — who dug for dirt using Steele's Social Security number, reportedly culled from court records, to fraudulently and illegally obtain his credit report?

Columnist Michelle Malkin has reported that as of Sept. 30, according to Steele staffers, Schumer, who is a longtime crusader against identity theft and denies any knowledge of the scheme, had offered no apology for the invasion of Steele's privacy by people in his employ or given any hint as to what they were after or why they did it.

Can you imagine the media firestorm if staffers for, say, Frist, had used Barack Obama's Social Security number to fraudulently obtain his credit report looking for stuff to derail his Senate campaign? Frist would have been before a media firing squad faster than you can say Bill Bennett.

Go read it all and wonder what a Democrat has to do to get some coverage for their malfeasance.

Is this the long way we wanted our babies to go?

Remember the old Virginia Slims ads and their slogan, "You've come a long way, baby."? Well, it appears that young girls are going a lot farther now than before.

Freewheeling young women in the United States and Canada first have intercourse at the age of 15, partake more in oral sex than previous generations and are far less prudish, according to a landmark new report by researchers at California's San Diego State University.

Between 1943 and 1999, the age of first intercourse dropped to 15 from 19 for females, while the percentage of sexually active young women rose to 47 percent from just 13 percent in 1943, according to the study that appears in the most recent issue of the Review of General Psychology.

"Feelings of sexual guilt plummeted, especially among young women. Attitudes toward premarital sex became dramatically more liberal over the same period," the analysis of 530 studies spanning five decades and involving more than a quarter of a million young people said.

Over the same 56-year period, approval of premarital sex increased from 12 percent to 73 percent among young women, while the figure rose from 40 percent to 79 percent among young men, according to the study.

The study revealed that the massive cultural revolution that swept North America in the past 30 years had contributed dramatically to the shift as movies and television shows tacked formerly taboo topics such as teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases and rape.

Is this really "progress"? Having our children engaging in potentially dangerous and destructive behaviors as a statement of liberation?

Of course, the moment anyone suggests restraint, the pro-promiscuity side shrieks about how rights are being trampled, male domination of woman, blah-blah-woof-woof. What has gone so haywire with society that the mere suggestion that girls wait a while and get to know the guy who's gherkin they're jerkin' is out of bounds?

Harriet Miers's Blog!!!

The blog of the #1 smartest President ever's #1 pick to be the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court!

Killer!

Dubya Slaps His Supporters in the Face. Again.

Michelle Malkin has a good round-up on reax to the shocking nomination of Harriet Miers to replace Sandy "Swing Vote" O'Connor on the SCOTUS. In a word: Underwhelmed.

The VRWC is getting more and more vocal about Dubya's non-conservatism (welcome to my world of several years ago, chumps), but until Rush and Hannity turn on Dubya and realize that for the few good things he's done, he's utterly failed at the rest and been plain clumsy about being a numbnuts to boot, things aren't going to change.

Things are gonna get bloody for the Stupid Party in '06 because while the moonbat fascists that control the Dems are absolutely dangerous to freedom, the Stupid Party has aggressively insulted its base and f*cked-up BIG TIME in its basic tasks and that's going to make the base damn reluctant to step up to defend Team Dubya, even when it's being unjustly smeared by the MSM.

Nice going, Dub. Loser.

Hurricane Katrina: Folklore vs. Fact

After they managed to whip up hurricane of smears against Team Dubya, some less-duplicitous members of the MSM are letting slip that a LOT of what had been reported as fact may not be true.

Well...duh!

For those who think that people were murdered at the Superdome or are wondering where these 10,000 bodies we were promised are at, they need to check Gateway Pundit as they knocks down a lot of the myths surrounding Katrina reporting.

It's fitting that Dan "Fake, But Useful To Our Cause" Rather thinks the reporting was a fine moment in journalism. Well, if that doesn't prove that it was all lies, nothing else will!

Fear the Kittens! They're Communists!!!

Flash strikes again!

Friday Fiver Double Catch Up Edition 2

Sorry that the updates have been so sparse, but I've been swamped with writing jobs and C&Ping the latest Dem outrages had to keep. Before I dash off, here's a pair of Friday Fivers to mull over.

1. What kind of lighting is around you?

Fluorecent.

2. What do you think of your singing voice?

Pretty good.

3. Who do you try to please?

Those who pay me.

4. Describe your last dream:

Can't remember.

5. When is the last time you bought flowers?

Same answer as #4.

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

1. Name one thing you've quit:

Putting up with people.

2. Name something you've won:

The undying hatred of jealous losers. And a guitar.

3. Describe a subject in school you do poorly in:

Math.

4. Have you ever purposely not done your best?

No, but sometimes I don't work that hard on something. There is a difference.

5. Do you lead, follow, or get out of the way?

Lead, crush and conquer!

How To Turn Your Hamster into a Fighting Machine!!

This is freaking hysterical!!!

"Don't get stuck on stupid!"

Lt. Gen. Russel Honore - 1, MSM Weasels - 0:.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

Cronyism or Just MSM Nitpicking?

While stuck in traffic - four car fender-bender - I was running so late that I heard the start of Laura Ingrams show. She was saying that the MSM seems to be sensing Dubya's blood in the water and are attacking like the jackals they are. (Jackals swim?)

One thing she was laughing about was Julie Myers, President Bush's nominee to head the the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security. Ingram mentioned that her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and that she married Homeland Security boss Michael Chertoff's current chief of staff, John F. Wood, on Saturday. She thought this was just a sign that the Stupid Party needed to stand up against the lies of the Left and blah-blah-woof-woof. Whatever.

Well, I make it to work, fire up the usual VRWC sites and see that
Michelle Malkin has the headline: "NO MORE CRONYISM: BUSH DHS NOMINEE DOESN'T DESERVE THE JOB". Here's why....

Oh, give me a ^*&%$# break and a half! This nomination is a monumental political and policy blunder in the wake of the Michael Brown/FEMA fiasco. And I can tell you that contrary to the Miss Mary Sunshine White House spokeswoman's comments, rank-and-file DHS employees and immigration enforcement officials are absolutely livid about Myers' nomination.

This e-mail I received last week says it all:

"It’s almost like the old INS days where they just throw out the political favors. Maybe she’s getting the job because she’s tight with Chertoff. Maybe it’s because she’s the niece of General Myers (Chair Joint Chiefs of Staff). Who knows, but I guarantee you this, the next time some illegal aliens commit a terrorist act on U.S. soil, people are going to be scrutinizing her resume.

Sorry to ramble but unfortunately the majority of DHS is being run by hacks, snot nose youngsters who couldn’t find an illegal alien in Tijuana, and other “connected” people with no knowledge, experience, or business being in the Homeland Security sector. I guess it’s a good resume line to have these days."

Indeed.

Everything was supposed to change after 9/11. No more business as usual, blah blah blah. But when it comes to immigration enforcement and border security, Bush keeps installing clueless cronies.

[A]s long as the borders are broken and al Qaeda continues to exploit lax immigration enforcement, I don't want her in charge of ICE. Why hire someone who needs to "seek out" those "who know more than I do" in order to her job? Why wait until the next mass terrorist attack to put those more knowledgeable people in leadership positions now and leave the paper-pushers in their cubicles?

Why the president wants Myers to head ICE at this critical moment in time--and why his supposedly brilliant strategists don't see the stupidity of Myers' nomination--defies comprehension.

White House, meet clue-by-four. Find someone better before this blows up in your faces.

Go read it all. I wonder why I don't hear Dubya knob-polishers like Hannity actually going after Team Dubya about this. Oh, he SAYS that he's critical, but it's lip-service in between the blind rimmings he delivers daily.

Malkin was the first on the Right to call for Brownie's head, so I take her concerns more seriously than Ingram's comments. Immigration is the Achille's Heel of Team Dubya and despite the Dems generally being in favor of illegals coming over and absorbing our services, taking our jobs and illegally getting to vote for Dems, they will be able to lie and say they're concerned because it's obvious that Team Dubya has no interest in REALLY securing our nation and that will make conservatives stay home in 2006 and 2008.

Candy Striper Death Orgy Luvs Dubya!

Shawn Macomber at National Review Online found another one of those non-fascist musicians and writes about this guy who runs a chain adult bookstores and loves Bush. Uh...

“The commies have closed more porno stores from us than the Bible thumpers ever did,” he said authoritatively. “There are people on both sides that want to take away everyone’s fun, whether it’s for the kids or the environment or whatever. They’d have no porn stores and we’d all be riding horse-drawn buggies to work if it were up to them. Still, nobody believes me, but the Republican party really is the party of tolerance these days.

As one might imagine, supporting Bush in the last election cycle wasn’t exactly a cause celeb in the underground music scene and Paone took more than a little guff for his politics at shows and on online metal gossip forums. He’s been mocked and blacklisted, but never defeated, only emboldened. In fact, the worse he’s treated the closer he assumes he is to the truth, he said.

Paone’s experience speaks to a larger truth: There always has been a delicious-yet-maddening irony in anarchists and punk rockers — for who the individual is supposed to be supreme — vociferously supporting candidates that want to expand government and narrow the ability of individuals to function as they choose.

“These bands and kids are dumping on government all the time, talking about all this conspiracy theory stuff and how we’re like this Nazi fascist state, and then when it comes time to vote they fall for this mindless talk and vote liberal,” Paone said. “They vote for more government. They fall into the trap. They hate the government but they’re basically asking for it to run their lives.”

\m/

Clinton: "Thanks W, now here's a knife for your back."

Impeached perjurer and all-around treasonous despot, Bill Clinton, rewarded Dubya's gesture of returning the disgraced rat-bastard to semi-relevence by making him "Co-Tin Cupper-in-Chief" with his pop, Bush 41, by attacking him for, well, not selling out nuke tech to his Commie pals in N. Korea, I suppose.

Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."

He goes on to blame FEMA for the failures of the Dems in NOLA, but what else can you expect from hypcrites and criminals like this gang?

========

BIG UPDATE: Powerline shreds the Big He for lying beyond his usual capabilities in "Uncharted Territory, Once Again":

In recent years, the Democrats have violated many of the tacit conventions of civility that have enabled our political system to work for more than two centuries. Yesterday another barrier fell, and once again, we entered uncharted waters: former President Bill Clinton launched a vicious attack on President Bush on ABC's "This Week" program.

This has never happened before. Until now, both parties have recognized a patriotism that, at some level, supersedes partisanship. Consistent with that belief, former Presidents of both parties have stayed out of politics and have avoided criticizing their successors. Until now. The Democrats appear bent on destroying every element of the fabric that has united us as Americans.

Clinton's vicious attack is even worse in the context of his wife's Presidential bid: it is fair to assume that he was motivated not only by partisanship, but by his own desire to re-occupy the White House, and, most likely, wield once more the levers of power.

AFP reports:

Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."

This attack was false in every respect. The invasion of Iraq had the support of dozens of nations. The UN's inspections could never be "completed," but the UN itself had reported that large quantities of WMDs remained unaccounted for. On the other hand, Clinton's suggestion that there was "no real urgency" about the situation in Iraq was probably sincere, as it typified Clinton's approach to terrorism: he perceived no urgency after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, or after al Qaeda's attempt to simultaneously destroy a dozen American airplanes over the Pacific in 1995; or after the attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998; or after Saddam's attempt to assassinate former President Bush; or after Saddam repeatedly tried to shoot down American aircraft; or after the Cole bombing in 2000; or after the Taliban took over Afghanistan and converted it into a training ground for anti-American mass murderers; or after any number of other provocations. So, naturally, Clinton saw no urgency with respect to dealing with Saddam's regime. Of course, had Saddam facilitated a post-9/11 attack on the U.S. using chemical or biological weapons, you can imagine how harshly Clinton would have criticized Bush for his lack of foresight.

Clinton's assertion that there was "no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction" is a flat-out lie.

[snipped the litany of lies debunked - please go read them]

Again and again, President Bush has tried to work with the Democrats as if they were loyal Americans first, and partisans second. He has treated Bill Clinton with a friendship and respect that, candidly, is disproportionate to Clinton's meager accomplishments. Again and again, the Democrats have rebuffed Bush's overtures and taken advantage of his patriotism and good faith. Clinton's politically-motivated tissue of lies and distortions is just the latest example out of many. But it is unprecedented, coming from a former President. That is a sad thing: the latest wound inflicted on the body politic by the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Tefft sends this Clinton quote from July 23, 2003:

[I]t is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.

That was then, I guess; this is now. And 2008 is just a few short years away. So it's time, apparently, to revise the historical record.

Happy Birthday, DIRKWORLD!

Hard to believe that it's been a year and 524 posts already, but that's what's happened. So much has been done, so much more to do. Thanks for reading! :)

Stalinism at CAIR: photo doctored for Islamic correctness

Jihad Watch is on the case. Is Dan Rather now working at CAIR?

This is a small thing, of course. Just a bit of silliness. But coming from an organization that brands the truth about Islam "Islamophobia" and has never answered uncomfortable questions about its own loyalties and affiliations, it raises larger issues of trust. Why do the mainstream media and many government organizations still give CAIR a free pass as a neutral civil rights group when its commitment to the truth is so manifestly tenuous?

Spot the differences between the doctored (top) and undoctored (bottom) photos:

FLIGHT 93, RE-HIJACKED

The same idiotic America-hating nimrods who are trying to make the Ground Zero Memorial into a diatribe excoriating the victims and showing liberal love for the attackers are now at work turning the Flight 93 Memorial into something that appears to praise the Islamofacist killers. Mark Steyn sets 'em up and knocks 'em down.

Flight 93 was supposed to be the fourth of Osama’s flying bombs, its destination either the White House or the Capitol. Had it reached its target, the following morning’s headlines would have included “The Vice-President is still among the missing, presumed dead”. Had Flight 93 sheared the top off the White House, that would have been the day’s “money shot”, as it was in the alien-invasion flick Independence Day - the shattered façade, smoke billowing, the seat of American power reduced to rubble.

But the dopey hijackers assigned to Flight 93 were halfway across the continent before they made their move and started meandering back east. And, by the time the passengers began calling home on their cellphones, their families knew what had happened in New York. Todd Beamer couldn’t get through to his wife, so the last conversation of his life was with the GTE telephone operator, who stayed on the line with him and overheard his final words: “Are you ready, guys? Let’s roll!” And then a brave group of passengers jumped their hijackers and, at the cost of their own lives, prevented that day’s grim toll rising even higher. At a terrible moment for America, their heroism was the only victory of the day.

Okay, let’s get all the “of courses” out of the way – of course, the overwhelmingly majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists; of course, we all know “Islam” means “peace” and “jihad” means “healthy-lifestyle lo-carb granola bar”; etc, etc. Nevertheless, the men who hijacked Flight 93 did it in the name of Islam and their last words as they hit the Pennsylvania sod were no doubt “Allahu Akhbar”. One would be unlikely even today to come across an Allied D-Day memorial so misconceived in its spirit of reconciliation as to be called the Swastika of Embrace. Yet Paul Murdoch, the architect, has somehow managed to produce a design whose two most obvious interpretations are a) a big nothing or b) a splendid memorial to the hijackers rather than their victims.

in its feeble cultural cringe, the Crescent of Embrace hands the terrorists of Flight 93 the victory they were denied on September 11th. And it profoundly dishonours Todd Beamer, Thomas Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham and other forgotten heroes of that flight.

Most of us are all but resigned to losing New York’s Ground Zero memorial to a pile of non-judgmental if not explicitly anti-American pap: The minute you involve big-city politicians and foundations and funding bodies and “artists” you’re on an express chute to the default mode of the cultural elite. But surely it’s not too much to hope that in Pennsylvania the very precise, specific, individual, human scale of one great act of American heroism need not be buried under another soggy dollop of generic prettified passivity. A culture that goes to such perverse lengths to disdain its heroes cannot survive and doesn’t deserve to.

Four years ago, Todd Beamer’s rallying cry was quoted by Presidents and rock stars alike. That’s all that’s needed in that field: the kind of simple dignified memorial you see on small-town commons saluting Civil war veterans, a granite block with the names of the passengers and the words “LET’S ROLL.” The “crescent of embrace”, in its desperation to see no enemies and stand for nothing, represents the precise opposite of Beamer, Glick, Burnett and co: Are you ready, guys? Let’s roll over.

There are lunatics who actually froth at the mouth at the mention of Flight 93 and insist that it was shot down by an F-16 and it's been covered up and a myth promulgated in its stead. Of course, they're insane, but that's the state of the liberal mind these days: Rotted and pus-filled, devoid of truth and consumed by madness.

Porn Star or Pop Star?

I scored 80% (450 pts.) - beat that!

New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes

Job one for liberals? GRAB THE GUNS!!!

Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here.

No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.

Nice. In a city where some of the police JOINED IN with the looters, it's telling that the fascist-Democratic government feels the PEOPLE are the threat and need to be disarmed. That worked so well for the Jews in the European ghettos, didn't it?