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December 31, 2006

Saddam Hussein and the depravity of the left

The reaction to the execution of Saddam Hussein predictably falls along partisan lines: those who recognize the difference between good and evil (i.e., conservatives) celebrate the death of this monster as Justice with a capital "J"; those who pay obeisance to the credo of moral relativism, literary deconstructionism and America, democracy and capitalism as the root of all evil (i.e., the Left) mourn his death as a savage indictment of the United States and its bloodthirsty, retrograde "Christianist" neo-cons.

There are round-ups giving you a sense of the depths of moonbat-rage, revealed in spittle-flecked rants on sites like the Huffington Post, but I think this passage from a New York Times piece (what a surprise!) is as good as any for lifting the lid on the tangled mess that is the psyche of a very modern Western liberal.

NOBODY who experienced Iraq under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein could imagine, at the height of the terror he imposed on his countrymen, ever pitying him. Pitiless himself, he sent hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to miserable deaths, in the wars he started against Iran and Kuwait, in the torture chambers of his secret police, or on the gallows that became an industry at Abu Ghraib and other charnel houses across Iraq. Iraqis who were caught in his spider’s web of evil, and survived, tell of countless tortures, of the psychopathic pleasure the former dictator appeared to take from inflicting suffering and death.

Yet there was a moment when I pitied him, and it came back to me after the nine Iraqi appeal judges upheld the death sentence against Saddam last week, setting off the countdown to his execution.

[...]

Many Iraqis, perhaps most, will spare no sympathies for him. However much he may have suffered in the end, they will say, it could never be enough to atone for a long dark night he imposed on his people. Still, there was that moment, on July 1, 2004, when Saddam became, for me, if only briefly, an object of compassion.

[...]

From 20 feet away on an observer’s bench, seated beside the late Peter Jennings of ABC News and Christiane Amanpour of CNN, I caught my first glimpse of the man who had become in my years of visiting Iraq under his rule, a figure of mythic brutality, a man so feared that the mention of his name would set the hard, unsmiling men assigned to visiting reporters as “minders” to shaking with fear, and on one occasion, in my experience, to abject weeping.

But this was not that Saddam. The man who stepped into the court had the demeanor of a condemned man, his eyes swiveling left, then right, his gait unsteady, his curious, lisping voice raised to a tenor that resonated fear.

[...]

At that instant, I felt sorry for him, as a man in distress and perhaps, too, as a once almighty figure reduced to ignominy. But the expression of that pity to the Iraqis present marked the distance between those, like me, who had taken the measure of Saddam’s terror as a visitor, shielded from the worst of it by the minders and the claustrophobic world of closely guarded hotels and supervised Information Ministry trips, and Iraqis who lived through it with no shield.

That I could feel pity for him struck the Iraqis with whom I talked as evidence of a profound moral corruption. I came to understand how a Westerner used to the civilities of democracy and due process — even a reporter who thought he grasped the depths of Saddam’s depravity — fell short of the Iraqis’ sense, forged by years of brutality, of the power of his unmitigated evil.

I can't think of a better way to describe the expression of pity for a sadistic, tyrannical, mass-murdering aficionado of torture like Hussein than "evidence of a profound moral corruption."

It is to the author's credit that he was self-aware enough to pen the words, but it is to his everlasting shame that he could feel anything for the barbaric Iraqi other than contempt and relief that he would soon draw his last breath.

And my contempt for the writer is fed by this statement near the beginning of the article.

As I write this, flying hurriedly back to Baghdad from an interrupted Christmas break, Saddam makes his own trip to the gallows with an indecent haste, without the mercy of family farewells and other spare acts of compassion that lend at least a pretense of civility to executions under law in kinder jurisdictions. From all we know of the preparations, Saddam’s death was to be a miserable and lonely one, as stark and undignified as Iraq’s new rulers can devise.

Please, spare me the hand-wringing concern over the poor treatment meted out to the condemned fiend, who was denied access to the most valued concepts in the liberal lexicon: "mercy," "compassion," and "civility" for those who not only denied the same to their victims, but gloried, reveled in the suffering of their victims.

What Hussein got was justice -- not the full measure, for even the Iraqis would not stoop so far as to inflict upon their tormentor the same fiendishly perverse punishments he meted out during his long reign of terror.

And thanks to the swift imposition of the death sentence, other tyrants must sleep just a little less soundly, which ain't a bad thing, either.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 29, 2006

Canine linguist

I'm sitting on the couch, chatting with the wife, the animals scattered throughout the room: Pepper the cat half buried beneath the blanket on the wife's lap, Squeaks asleep on top of the kitty condo, Bogie sitting by my feet.

The dog gets up and puts his muzzle on the keyboard of my laptop, then sits, looking at me, then the wife, listening to us talk.

As I glance at him, I use the word "give" in a sentence, and suddenly Bogie whips his head around and locks eyes with me, staring intently into my eyes. His pupils are dilated and his concentration is complete.

I start laughing, amazed at his cognitive abilities; he knows the words "treat," "ride," "ball," and the names of his toys: Sheriff Bob, Mean Kitty, Kong, Leo the Lion, Bear Head, Boney-Bone, and the classic, Weiner Dog.

But this is something different. We've taken to spelling "treat" around him: "Do you think the boy should get a t-r-e-a-t?" If the time is right, I'll tell him, "Bogie, should I give you a treat?" He then licks his chops and trots over to the cupboard, where we keep the vittles.

Apparently, he's come to associate the word "give" with "treat," which seems to lend credence to the theory that dogs have the language skills of a two-to-three-year-old human child -- at least as to comprehension.

Which brings me back to Bogie staring at me with an unblinking gaze, a result of me saying "give."

I'm laughing, and he's not reacting to the laughter, not moving a muscle (except for his tail), trying to work some sort of canine-Jedi mind control. I finally catch my breath and ask, "Would you like me to give you a ... " He leans in a little, waiting for the magic word. " ... Treat?"

He licks his lips, and I'd swear I see him smile at the weak-minded suggestibility of his human, as he trots over to the cupboard to retrieve his snack.

And, well trained owner that I am, I obediently follow him, using my opposable thumbs to retrieve and open the box, handing Bogie the treat that I decided -- on my own! -- to give him.

Life is never dull with a dog.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Well, this is good news!

Good thing the tyrannical, mass-murdering, barbaric ex-dictator isn't in within the purview of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- although that fact isn't stopping his supporters from trying to get the U.S. courts involved.

For Pete's sake, can you believe it? It's no exaggeration to say that if today's muddle-headed human rights fetishists were transported back to 1946, they'd be arguing on behalf of the Nazi hierarchy to save the architects of the Holocaust from the hangman.

And, given that Saddam Hussein was the Grand Poobah of his thugocracy, it's analogous to Hitler having been captured and these bozos trying to save him, too.

Nota Bene: I realized too late that calling these morons "bozos" is an insult to clowns the world over. Sorry, Bozo.

Posted by Mike Lief at 02:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Death to dictators! Right? Anyone? Is this thing on? Hello?

Would you like proof that the rest of the world has lost its collective mind?

Check out these quotes from notable quotables about the hangman's date with Saddam Hussein.

A perfect storm of stupidity would never be complete without a few words from the always reliable Jesse Jackson, and he doesn't let us down.

"It will not increase our moral authority in the world. ... Saddam's heinous crimes against humanity can never be diminished, but he was our ally while he was doing it. ... Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth will make us blind and disfigured. ... Saddam as a war trophy only deepens the catastrophe to which we are indelibly linked." -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Perfect. There are more pearls of poisoned wisdom for your perusal here.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 28, 2006

Christmas morning

Somewhere in Somis, California, I wandered the hillsides, peering closely at flora and fauna, until the faint scent of lox and creamcheese drew me back indoors -- that and the siren-song of the sesame-seed bagel, keening its mournful lament:

"Whattaya mean there's no red onion and tomato?"

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 26, 2006

Gerald R. Ford, 1913-2006

With the death of Pres. Ford today, I thought it was appropriate to remember him a little differently from the way he'd been portrayed in the popular media when he was in office.

Saturday Night Live got a lot of mileage from a couple of falls Pres. Ford took, earning him a reputation as being a bumbling, uncoordinated stumble-bum nincompoop, spoofed most famously by Chevy Chase, who would fall off a ladder, destroy a podium, tumble off the presidential stage, then grin moronically and announce, "Live from New York!"

On the gridiron during his time at the University of Michigan during the early 1930s.

The irony is that there may never have been a more gifted natural athlete occupying the Oval Office. According to his obituary, "Ford played center on the University of Michigan's 1932 and 1933 national champion football teams. He got professional offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose to study law at Yale, working his way through as an assistant varsity football coach and freshman boxing coach."

And this photo is one of those interesting moments when a man is captured on film, years before he achieves the station in life fate -- and destiny -- have in store.

Pres. Ford was a Navy officer during World War II, killing time aboard ship in a game of basketball played on one of his aircraft carrier's elevators, as the crew looked on, unaware that the tall towhead getting air while fighting for the ball would someday be the Commander in Chief.

Lt. Ford enjoys a party ashore with his fellow officers from the USS Monterey in 1944.

His service during the war included participation in a number of campaigns and invasions -- and a chilling moment that almost cost him his life, detailed in this account from the Navy's official web site.

Ford was sent in May 1943 to the pre-commissioning detachment for a new light aircraft carrier, USS Monterey (CVL-26) at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. From the ship's commissioning on 17 June 1943 until the end of December 1944, Ford served as the assistant navigator, Athletic Officer, and antiaircraft battery officer on board Monterey.

While he was on board, Monterey participated in many actions in the Pacific with the Third and Fifth Fleets during the fall of 1943 and in 1944. In 1943, the carrier helped secure Makin Island in the Gilberts, and participated in carrier strikes against Kavieng, New Ireland in 1943.

During the spring of 1944, Monterey supported landings at Kwajalein and Eniwetok and participlated in carrier strikes in the Marianas, Western Carolines, and northern New Guinea, as well as in the Battle of Philippine Sea. After overhaul, from September to November 1944, aircraft from Monterey launched strikes against Wake Island, participated in strikes in the Philippines and Ryukus, and supported the landings at Leyte and Mindoro.

Although the ship was not damaged by the Japanese forces, Monterey was one of several ships damaged by the typhoon, which hit Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet on 18-19 December 1944. The Third Fleet lost three destroyers and over 800 men during the typhoon.

Monterey was damaged by a fire which was started by several of the ship's aircarft tearing loose from their cables and colliding during the storm. During the storm, Ford narrowly missed being a casualty himself.

After Ford left his battle station on the bridge of the ship in the early morning of 18 December, the ship rolled twenty-five degrees which caused Ford to lose his footing and slide toward the edge of the deck. The two inch steel ridge around the edge of the carrier slowed him enough so he could roll and twisted into the catwalk below the deck. As he later stated, "I was lucky; I could have easily gone overboard."

He proved to be good man who infuriated many Americans when he pardoned disgraced ex-President Nixon, an act that Ford believed was necessary to end the national trauma arising from the Watergate scandal. That act also resulted in an even worse tragedy: his loss in the presidential campaign of 1976, ushering in the four-year national hairshirt, aka the Carter presidency.

Blech.

Ninety-three years is a good run; we should all live so long -- and so well.

Rest in peace.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:27 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

John Kerry: Chow hall leper (UPDATED)

Remember when Sen. John Kerry (Dem-Paris) said that only idiots and losers join the military and end up in Iraq -- and then did a double-back flip to say he was really talking about Pres. Bush?

In the aftermath of the sleazy hit-job on the troops, Kerry said over and over that he would never say anything to demean the GIs, and that he knew for a fact that the troops understood that he supported them, and that they certainly bore him no grudge for his poorly-worded attempt at humor.

Apparently, the GIs have neither forgiven nor forgotten.

The picture above was taken during Kerry's recent visit to Iraq. The accompanying post gave further details on the reception the senator received from those understanding soldiers.

Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

What is amazing is Bill O'Reilly came to visit with us and the troops at the CSH the same day and the line for autographs extended through the palace and people waited for two hours to shake his hand.

You decide who is more respected and loved by us servicemen and women!

Has there ever been a more pathetic former presidential candidate?

Yeah, I know, but Carter wins every "Worst Of" contest; I meant more pathetic than anyone other than St. Jimmah of Peanut Holler.

That picture is priceless.

UPDATE

Darleen has another photo, as well as more details, for those of you wondering about the authenticity of this sad, lonely moment for Kerry.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Et tu, Flipper?

The latest atrocity from the front lines.

A 27-year-old woman was seriously injured after she was hit by a leaping dolphin near Slipper Island in the western reaches of the Bay of Plenty this afternoon.

A spokesman for the Auckland rescue helicopter said the woman was sitting in the bow of a small pleasure craft around 2.30pm today when it appeared a dolphin miscalculated its leap out of the water.

"It jumped up out of the water and hit the woman, giving her a number of injuries," the spokesman said.

No further information on the woman's injuries was available, but she is Auckland Hospital's intensive care unit in a serious condition.

The dolphin swam off unharmed.

The spokesman said the call-out was a first for the Auckland rescue helicopter.

"I've never heard of a dolphin hitting someone on a boat. You can't even catch them on lures when you go gamefishing. They're too smart."

It appeared the dolphin leapt from quite a distance and just didn't see the boat, he said.

Yeah, right. The dolphin, too smart to fall prey to the fisherman's lure just happens to look the other way.

I don't think so.

Remember, this is the same year that the stingrays took out their greatest nemesis: Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin.

I'll add this one to my file.

Incidence of humans bodyslammed into the ICU by fish mammals ashamed to admit they're really fish while on the couch: .000000000023 per trillion.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 25, 2006

Israeli deathwish

Are the Israelis intent on committing national suicide? Well, accidental-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appears to be hell-bent on making it easy for terrorists to kill his countrymen.

In case you haven't noticed, the reason for the increasing number of rocket attacks into Israel has been the incredible success of the border checkpoints in preventing terrorists from carrying bomb-laden vests from Arab-controlled lands into the Jewish state. The number of splodey-dopes who succeeded in taking Israeli men, women and children with them in gore-flecked, shrapnel laced blasts has dropped to zero thanks to the checkpoints.

And the response from Olmert?

Despite opposition within the IDF, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert approved in principle on Monday the removal of several West Bank roadblocks as part of a series of gestures aimed at boosting Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Following an afternoon meeting with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh, Olmert decided to remove 27 roadblocks.

And what was happening to encourage this incredible, one-sided display of stupidity? What good-faith efforts had been made by the Arabs to justify this gesture?

During the day, four Kassam rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip. One of them hit a strategic installation in southern Ashkelon.

A statement from Olmert's office said he approved streamlining checkpoints and removing roadblocks "to strengthen moderate [Palestinian] elements."

I'm not sure how to say, "Kick me!" in Hebrew, but it must sound a lot like "to strengthen moderate [Palestininan] elements."

This has been a busy week; Olmert must be part of an Arab sleeper-cell.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested on Sunday he could release some Palestinian prisoners this week, even though Gaza militants have yet to free a captured Israeli soldier.

Israel has been under U.S. and European pressure to take steps to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a power struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which ousted Abbas's Fatah faction in a parliamentary poll last year.

At their first formal meeting on Saturday, Olmert pledged to release $100 million in withheld tax revenues to Abbas, bypassing the Hamas-led government.

Of course, that money will never be used to pay for the explosives that blow Israelis to bits, nor to reward the families of the bombers.

Do Israelis realize that Olmert has effectively surrendered?

Golda Meir weeps.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Life at sea ain't what it used to be

More evidence -- from the "Give Me A Freakin' Break File" -- that our efforts to make the military seem like summer camp knows no bounds.

The U.S. Navy is having a morale problem with the Internet access it provides for sailors at sea. The problem is that the capacity (bandwidth) available to sailors is quite low. Think typical dial-up speeds, then cut that by 50-90 percent. It's so slow that web pages often time out before loading.

Sailors are not happy. To make them even less happy, many lower ranking sailors are not allowed to access the Internet on their work PCs, but must line up and wait for a turn at the public access ones on the ship.

Now all this is a case of, "no good deed goes unpunished." As ships at sea got more and more Internet access over the last ten years, morale rose. But the increased access could not keep up with sailor expectations.

Back at home, sailors were increasingly getting high speed access, while the shipboard access was stuck at a fraction (24 kps or less) of the old dial-up speeds (56 kps). This was happening just as more sailors were becoming more dependent on Internet access. For example, many of the navy educational programs, some of which are mandatory if you want to get promoted, are conducted over the web.

The internet?

Y'know, life aboard a warship has always involved isolation from the landlubbers, be they friends or family, for extended periods of time. While the initial days may prove depressing, with time, the isolation became liberating.

Even the most dedicated of family men appeared to enjoy, at some level, the camaraderie, the focus on completing the mission, the life at sea, things that came with having no contact with home.

And when we finally pulled into some foreign port o' call and waited for the yeomen to return with bulging mailbags, the tension was excruciating as the roll-call began, the lucky recipients answering up and reaching for tossed, flimsy airmail envelopes and crudely wrapped, strapped and taped bundles.

That's why being at sea was bittersweet; although confined within the cramped pressure hull of our submarine, we had freedom, the ability to ignore the mundane land-locked chores of our civilian brethren, as we instead fell into the familiar rhythms of life at sea: stand watch, chow, rack-time, chow, maintenance, cards, movie, back on watch, with occasional fires and flooding.

Lather, rinse, repeat, until we entered port.

But now, in a misguided effort to boost morale, the Navy offers near-realtime communications to the outside world, an effort that can only serve to distract the men from their focus on the mission.

And did I mention the difficulty maintaining operational security when every enlisted man can talk to any Tom Dick or Hamid via e-mail?

I can't think of any cruise that would have benefitted from my shipmates finding out on a daily basis all that was going wrong at home. In fact, as a radioman, I often carried teletype messages to the Skipper, bearing word of death, divorce and ill tidings; he often decided to wait until we were in port before delivering the bad news to the crewman, so as to avoid imperiling the rest of us while submerged and dodging the Soviets, because we needed every man to be able to do his job.

Furthermore, every enlisted man who wanted to study for the rate-related promotional exams had access through the Naval educational system to all the publications necessary to prepare, using things called "books."

The fellows at StrategyPage.com had it right when they quoted Mark Twain: "No good deed goes unpunished."

More warrior, less wussy. Iron men in iron ships.

Or at least HY-80 steel subs.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Merry Christmas, Sandy

Posted by Mike Lief at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 24, 2006

Carter scares former fan

America's worst ex-president -- and worst president, too! -- has lost yet another long-time admirer, thanks to his growing ... distaste for those damnable Jews Israelis.

For me, it means the loss of one of my greatest heroes. I have never allowed a snide remark about Jimmy Carter's "failed" presidency to pass without contradicting it. I have said countless times that he is the greatest former president, setting a new standard for that role.

I don't recognize Carter any more. I am afraid of him now, for myself and for my children. He has not just turned his back on the balance and fairness that all peacemaking depends on. He has become a spokesman for the enemies of my people. He has become an apologist for terrorists.

[...]

He has said or hinted repeatedly that Jews control the Congress and the media, a classic anti-Semitic slur. It seems that Cuban-Americans can speak up on Cuba, Irish-Americans can support the IRA, Mexican-Americans can lobby on immigration law, but when Jewish-Americans speak our minds about Israel, we don't deserve the same constitutional protections and a former president can try to silence us.

Carter has changed. Something has happened to his judgment. I don't understand what it is, but I know it is very dangerous. At a minimum, his legacy is irrevocably tarnished, and he will never again be a factor in the quest for Middle East peace. At worst, he is emboldening terrorists and their apologists in the Arab world, encouraging them to go on with their terror campaign and refuse even to recognize Israel's right to just exist.

That Jimmah, toadying sycophant to and voluptuary of human-rights denying dictators and totalitarians, remains popular with members of the American Jewish community -- including members of my own family -- can only be attributed to an appalling ignorance of what the man is actually saying.

The alternative explanation for the continued popularity of St. Jimmah is a deeply unsettling need amongst liberal Jews to deny the reality of the increasing strain of anti-semitism in mainstream "liberalism" and growing portions of the Democratic Party; this ugly, hateful and deeply stupid obsession with the power and influence of the Eternal Yid is simply incomprehensible to Jews who have historically allied themselves with the Left in post-Depression America.

The only possible reaction, short of admitting that their sociopolitical compatriots are willing to accept them only if they reject their Jewish culture and identity (and support for Israel), is to deny the existence of the anti-semitic aspect of modern liberal politics, dismissing the critics as mere shills for the dreaded "Christianist" VRWC (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy).

Therefore, it's fascinating to see increasing numbers of dedicated, life-long liberals and Carter intimates publicly disavowing their fealty to the embittered ex-president, men like Kenneth Stein, who served for more than 20 years at the Carter Center at Emory University -- as well as 10 years as the first Executive Director, before severing his ties to Jimmah in a public letter of resignation.

One has to wonder if time, age, and possibly illness have served to loosen the ties that kept his pious, grinning, public mask in place, revealing the true nature of the man -- and his obsession with the Jews and their nation.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:43 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 21, 2006

A son remembers his dad, the hero

This is possbily the finest euology delivered by a son to memorialize the passing of his warrior father.

And, yes, it's yet another piece of writing by Pat Conroy, but damn, it's good.

The children of fighter pilots tell different stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flu shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft carriers at pitch-black night with the wind howling out of the China Sea.

Our fathers wiped out aircraft batteries in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the ground.

Your Dads ran the barber shops and worked at the post office and delivered the packages on time and sold the cars, while our Dads were blowing up fuel depots near Seoul, were providing extraordinarily courageous close air support to the beleaguered Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and who once turned the Naktong River red with blood of a retreating North Korean battalion.

We tell of men who made widows of the wives of our nations' enemies and who made orphans out of all their children.

You don't like war or violence? Or napalm? Or rockets? Or cannons or death rained down from the sky?

Then let's talk about your fathers, not ours. When we talk about the aviators who raised us and the Marines who loved us, we can look you in the eye and say "you would not like to have been America's enemies when our fathers passed overhead".

We were raised by the men who made the United States of America the safest country on earth in the bloodiest century in all recorded history.

Our fathers made sacred those strange, singing names of battlefields across the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand more. We grew up attending the funerals of Marines slain in these battles.

Your fathers made communities like Beaufort decent and prosperous and functional; our fathers made the world safe for democracy.

[...]

Don Conroy was a simple man and an American hero. His wit was remarkable; his intelligence frightening; and his sophistication next to none.

He was a man's man and I would bet he hadn't spend a thousand dollars in his whole life on his wardrobe ... He was a beer drinker who thought wine was for Frenchmen or effete social climbers like his children.

Ah! His children.

Here is how God gets a Marine Corps fighter pilot. He sends him seven squirrelly, mealy-mouth children who march in peace demonstrations, wear Birkenstocks, flirt with vegetarianism, invite cross-dressers to dinner and vote for candidates that Dad would line up and shoot.

If my father knew how many tears his children had shed since his death, he would be mortally ashamed of us all and begin yelling that he should've been tougher on us all, knocked us into better shape - that he certainly didn't mean to raise a passel of kids so weak and tacky they would cry at his death.

Don Conroy was the best uncle I ever saw, the best brother, the best grandfather, the best friend-and my God, what a father. After my mother divorced him and The Great Santini was published, Don Conroy had the best second act I ever saw. He never was simply a father. This was The Great Santini.

[...]

Let us leave you and say goodbye, Dad, with the passwords that bind all Marines and their wives and their children forever. The Corps was always the most important thing.

Semper Fi, Dad

Semper Fi, O Great Santini.

Do I really have to tell you to read the whole thing?

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 20, 2006

An American coward

I told you last month about Pat Conroy, the author of The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline and The Prince of Tides, and of his vivid, thumbnail sketch of his fighter-pilot father.

Well, Conroy -- who graduated from The Citadel but rejected military service in favor of anti-war activism -- has revisited his decision to avoid going to Vietnam, in this passage from his book, My Losing Season.

The author tracked down a classmate who went to Vietnam as a Marine aviator, was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese.

When I was demonstrating in America against Nixon and the Christmas bombings in Hanoi, Al [Kroboth] and his fellow prisoners were holding hands under the full fury of those bombings, singing "God Bless America." It was those bombs that convinced Hanoi they would do well to release the American POWs, including my college teammate.

When he told me about the C-141 landing in Hanoi to pick up the prisoners, Al said he felt no emotion, none at all, until he saw the giant American flag painted on the plane's tail. I stopped writing as Al wept over the memory of that flag on that plane, on that morning, during that time in the life of America.

It was that same long night, after listening to Al's story, that I began to make judgments about how I had conducted myself during the Vietnam War.

In the darkness of the sleeping Kroboth household, lying in the third-floor guest bedroom, I began to assess my role as a citizen in the '60s, when my country called my name and I shot her the bird. Unlike the stupid boys who wrapped themselves in Viet Cong flags and burned the American one, I knew how to demonstrate against the war without flirting with treason or astonishingly bad taste. I had come directly from the warrior culture of this country and I knew how to act.

[...]

Now, at this moment in New Jersey, I come to a conclusion about my actions as a young man when Vietnam was a dirty word to me. I wish I'd led a platoon of Marines in Vietnam. I would like to think I would have trained my troops well and that the Viet Cong would have had their hands full if they entered a firefight with us.

From the day of my birth, I was programmed to enter the Marine Corps. I was the son of a Marine fighter pilot, and I had grown up on Marine bases where I had watched the men of the corps perform simulated war games in the forests of my childhood. That a novelist and poet bloomed darkly in the house of Santini strikes me as a remarkable irony.

My mother and father had raised me to be an Al Kroboth, and during the Vietnam era they watched in horror as I metamorphosed into another breed of fanatic entirely. I understand now that I should have protested the war after my return from Vietnam, after I had done my duty for my country. I have come to a conclusion about my country that I knew then in my bones but lacked the courage to act on: America is good enough to die for even when she is wrong.

I looked for some conclusion, a summation of this trip to my teammate's house. I wanted to come to the single right thing, a true thing that I may not like but that I could live with. After hearing Al Kroboth's story of his walk across Vietnam and his brutal imprisonment in the North, I found myself passing harrowing, remorseless judgment on myself. I had not turned out to be the man I had once envisioned myself to be. I thought I would be the kind of man that America could point to and say, "There. That's the guy. That's the one who got it right. The whole package. The one I can depend on."

It had never once occurred to me that I would find myself in the position I did on that night in Al Kroboth's house in Roselle, New Jersey: an American coward spending the night with an American hero.

It takes a man of honor to realize the folly of his youth, and some measure of moral integrity to admit his cowardice. I wonder if Conroy ever got a chance to tell his father how wrong he'd been, rejecting military service, demonstrating in the streets, while the real Great Santini -- his father -- was fighting the very war so reviled by the son.

Read the rest of the essay; it's worth a few minutes of your time.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Charlie Brown Scrubs-mas

I've got a soft spot in my heart for A Charlie Brown Christmas. Despite the crude (by Warner Bros. standards) animation, the voice acting, writing, and most of all, the incredible music all manage to turn the clock back almost 40 years to a time when kids were still allowed to sing Christmas carols in public school pageants, and a major television network commissioned an animated special that featured a dramatic reading of a passage from the Bible.

Notwithstanding the affection I have for the cartoon, there's a new twist available for viewing, courtesy of the internet.

The cast of Scrubs produced a parody, intended for their Christmas Party -- and most certainly not for public consumption. It's pretty funny, but you won't find it terribly amusing unless you're enough of a fan to recognize the voices of the sitcom's characters.

Enjoy.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 19, 2006

More wisdom from the mind of Sean Penn

Sean Penn was in Moonbat Central New York City last night to receive the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition.

Spicoli Penn delivered a drug-induced passionate crie de cour against the depredations of Pres. Bush, which often lapsed into deranged arrangements of random words, seemingly straight from the crack-pipe blistered lips of a junkie sleeping on a subway grate Barbara Streisand.

[Penn] lamented how the U.S. public was allegedly tricked into backing the Iraq invasion and derided those media figures who did that, describing Rush Limbaugh as “high as a kite on OxyContin,” Bill O'Reilly as “factually impaired”, and Sean Hannity as “simply a whore to the cause of his pimps - Murdoch and Ailes?” He then rapped Mark Foley, Joe Lieberman and even Toby Keith.

With that he imagined listeners thinking, "Oh, there goes Sean ... he had to go and name-call. They say he can't help himself."

But he asked: “Or, did I name-call? Maybe I just quickly summed up seven or eight little truths. Oh, no, you're right - I name-called. I said, ‘putz.’ I take it back. Or, do I? Did I say whore? Pimp? These are questions. But, the real and great questions of conscience and accountability would not loom so ominously -- unanswered or evaded at such tremendous cost -- without our day-to-day failure to insist on genuine accountability.

O-kaaaay. I don't know about you folks, but that last bit was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs in my book.

Penn shared his take on the complexities of international politics, as well as the damage done to Saddam Hussein's Babylonian paradise by the evil legions of the American Reich.

I'm sure many people who I met in Baghdad, both in my trips prior to and during the occupation, now similarly cannot just look forward. With lives so entirely shattered by a violence of occupation - an ongoing U.S. war effort and the civil war that it has catalyzed. All on the back of a crumbled infrastructure, following eleven years of devastating U.N. sanctions...

Did you get that last bit about the U.N.? Remember, the biggest problem with our going to war with Iraq was that (according to Sean and his buds) the U.N. sanctions were working, that all we needed to do was let the U.N. inspectors do their jobs, and Saddam Hussein would evolve to a higher state of being, join PETA and open the first Gay, Lesbian and Trans-Gendered chapter of the ACLU in the Middle East.

But now it seems the U.N. sanctions were simply a means of imposing the American hegemonic world order on the poor Iraqi people, who wanted nothing more than to fly kites, chase rainbows, and sit in sun-dappled verdant fields while reading their well-worn copies of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull."

It's the final passage that really moves the listener. I know it moved the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.

Christopher Reeve promised to get out of that chair. Well, I don't know about you, but it feels like he's up now and I wouldn't be standing here if it weren't on his shoulders. Let it be for something.

Whoa.

Dude, you're, like, sitting on a crippled dead guy's shoulders. That's, like, incomprehensibly deep.

Sigh.

Can you believe that Sean Penn is one of the most esteemed deep thinkers of the far, far, way-out-in-left-field Left?

And well deserving of this award, too.

The best part of the evening is noted near the end of the article.

Other honorees were Branford Marsalis, Harvey Keitel and Marcia Gay Harden.

I don't know much about their politics, other than they're probably at least sympathetic to Penn, given their willingness to accept an award from this [ahem] deeply distinguished organization. But at some point they must have looked at each other and whispered, "Will someone get this guy away from the mic?"

As bad as the Stupid Party (aka the GOP) has been in recent years, nothing could help return them to power more than the realization that lunatics like Penn have access to the new Congressional leadership -- and access is most definitely influence.

Gnarly, eh?

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 18, 2006

What is this thing you call "winter"?

I've been thinking about moving to Texas (one of these days), and noticed an amusing exchange on a bike-related bulletin board about riding during the winter.

KevinTX: I live in south Texas man. I would go for a ride for you tomorrow, but it's 55 outside. Way too cold for me.

oilman: 55, have they declared a state of emergency and called FEMA?

KevinTX: Yes, FEMA brought use a supply of these weird looking clothes. These things look like shirts but they have longer sleeves that go to your wrist. And some odd hats without any visors, that cover your ears. The FEMA rep told my family that this should help us stay warm during our "winter." Apparantly there is a forth season, who knew? I have never heard of it until recently.

G-d bless Texas -- and smartass Texans, too.

Heh.

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December 17, 2006

Mmmmmm, feet

It was oddly unsettling to slip my feet into Homer's gaping, slack-jawed maw; I'd swear I heard him murmur in the same gluttonous tones he uses for blessed donuts and beer, "Mmmmmm, feet."

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Kosher canary in a coal mine

Why am I so pessimistic about the future of the West? Because of things like the reaction to the Holocaust-denying hate-fest in Iran, presided over by the malignant dwarf Ahmadinejad.

For the last seventy years or thereabouts, Jews have been the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world, taking the Devil's pulse, providing a benchmark against which we may gauge our own sensitivity -- or receptiveness -- to evil.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the murder of more than 6 million Jews, the guilt-stricken West pledged, "Never again!"

But a large -- and growing larger -- portion of the world rejected the call for vigilance, as they rejected the very existence of the underlying state-sponsored, industrialized slaughter.

For instance, take this account by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali immigrant who served as a Dutch legislator until she was forced into hiding after Muslim fanatics murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who filmed "Submission," based on her screenplay.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews.

Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews.

For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

And that's why the conference if Iran is so disturbing; with the knowledge of what was promulgated in Germany a mere 73 years ago, the West appears to be quietly busying itself with less ... distasteful affairs, as the mad mullahs confer with an international assortment of homicidal maniacs, to deny the greatest crime against humanity in recorded history, and, perhaps lay the groundwork for a resumption of the slaughter, as the true inheritors of the Thousand Year Reich continue the quest for a world that's Jude Frei.

Ali points to the disturbing silence from the so-called moderate Muslim community, whom we are constantly reassured are just like the rest of us -- and nothing like the hate-filled jihadis.

What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?

Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed — that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.

"Never again" seems risible, pathetic, really; "Sooner than you think" is more fitting, don't you think?

And don't forget, first the canary, then the coalminers.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Courage & common sense where you least expect it

This is priceless. An insane moonbat leftoid conspiracy theorist named John Connor confronts Danny Bonaduce as the celeb tries to eat his lunch, and tries to convince him that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job.

To his dismay, Bonaduce ain't buying, and, after the moonbat suffers a tongue lashing from the angry actor, he tries to shrug it off as the ill-informed ravings of a Hollywood personality.

Which is hilarious, as it's obvious that the only reason why this doof wanted to talk to Bonaduce in the first place was because he's famous, and had the actor agreed with him, he'd clearly have been an enlightened citizen of the world.

Who knew Danny Bonaduce had the wherewithal to put a member of the tinfoil helmet brigades in his place?

Good for him.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 16, 2006

December in the Ventura Keys

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Jimmy Carter: Coward

Not content with his resurgent popularity as the latest high-profile Jew-hater anti-Israeli, terrorist apologist, worst-ex-president-ever Jimmah Carter adds hypocritical coward to his CV.

BOSTON - Former President Carter turned down a request to debate Alan Dershowitz about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying the outspoken Harvard law professor "knows nothing about the situation."

Carter, author of a new book advocating "peace not apartheid" in the region, said he will not visit Brandeis University to discuss the book because the university requested he debate Dershowitz.

"I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter said in Friday's Boston Globe. "There is no need ... to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."

The school's debate request, Carter said, is proof that many in the United States are unwilling to hear an alternative view on the nation's most taboo foreign policy issue, Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.

He said the goal of his book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," is to provoke dialogue and action.

"There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel," he said.

The reference to "apartheid," the word for South Africa's former system of state-sanctioned racial segregation, has angered some rabbis because it appears to equate that system with the treatment of Palestinians.

Brandeis was founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian university under the sponsorship of the American Jewish community. Carter said he initially was interested in going there.

"I thought it would be a good idea to go to a campus that had a lot of Jewish students and get a lot questions," he said. But then the initial proposal evolved into a plan for a debate.

Did you get that?

Carter said, "There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel," but when challenged to do exactly that -- debate the issue -- by a knowledgeable, articulate lefty who disagrees, well, "There is no need ... to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."

Which is just the perfect response from the only president to flee a killer rabbit; allow an American embassy and its staff to be held by a pissant Third-World nation for more than a year; and to travel the world in his dotage bad-mouthing his own country.

Shameful.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 15, 2006

Vienna is for idiots

In an effort to prove that the United States is not a world leader in all arenas, the Austrian city of Vienna proudly proclaims its primacy as an international leader in moonbat political correctness.

A green exit sign shows a woman, rather than a man, running for the door, while a traffic light features another crossing the street in a new initiative by the City of Vienna to raise awareness about gender equality.

The campaign, launched on Thursday and entitled "Wien sieht's anders" (Vienna sees it differently) is part of the City's "Gender Mainstreaming" project.

Its aim is to "give both genders the same exposure and ensure an equal distribution of chances, opportunities and duties" by changing the gender of figures pictured on familiar signs, City Hall said in a statement.

"Because it clashes with fixed visual habits, the campaign compels (people) to think, look and act differently," Sonja Wehsely, city councillor in charge of women's affairs, said in the statement.

Thus, signs using male characters will have their female equivalent, while the opposite will also be true.

Female exit signs and pictograms in bathrooms featuring a man, rather than a woman, changing a baby, will be introduced at City Hall to start with, the statement said.

Seats reserved for the elderly and pregnant women on Vienna's buses and trams will soon also picture a man carrying a child on his lap.

A roadworks sign picturing a woman in a skirt digging into a pile of dirt and used on a campaign poster will not see the light of day however because of traffic regulations.

If there's a story that better captures the inane, insane obsession with changing things that don't matter in the pursuit of some bizarre notion of "equality," will someone please point it out to me?

Take a look at the international symbols for men and women.

The figure on the right looks pretty generic to me. It could be Martina Navratilova or George Clooney, for all I know.

Two arms, two legs, one head, no visible genitalia or outsized breasts; I can't tell if it's a man or a woman. It's only because the one next to it has a dress and Leo DiCaprio-narrow shoulders that I know it's supposed to be a woman.

So, tell me, who's reading too much into that universal figure on the right?

What's (unintentionally) high-larious about the program are the ever-so-retro stylistic touches that ought to be driving feminists insane: boots, purses and dresses on the girl lady female womyn icons.

And who really believes this Viennese folly will accomplish anything, other than prove once again that the Western liberal intelligentsia will sip its chardonnay and debate the most innocuous of gender issues, as Muslim jihadis stone rape victims and demand the imposition of sharia law in their portions of Eurabia.

The West is doomed, I tell you, doomed.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hope for diabetics

Exciting news out of the Great White North for diabetics: one shot may "reset" the pancreas and begin insulin production, even for sufferers of the more serious Type-I diabetes.

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

"I couldn't believe it," said Dr. Michael Salter, a pain expert at the Hospital for Sick Children and one of the scientists. "Mice with diabetes suddenly didn't have diabetes any more."

[...]

Dr. Dosch had concluded in a 1999 paper that there were surprising similarities between diabetes and multiple sclerosis, a central nervous system disease. His interest was also piqued by the presence around the insulin-producing islets of an "enormous" number of nerves, pain neurons primarily used to signal the brain that tissue has been damaged.

Suspecting a link between the nerves and diabetes, he and Dr. Salter used an old experimental trick -- injecting capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot chili peppers, to kill the pancreatic sensory nerves in mice that had an equivalent of Type 1 diabetes.

"Then we had the biggest shock of our lives," Dr. Dosch said. Almost immediately, the islets began producing insulin normally.

[...]

So next they injected the neuropeptide "substance P" in the pancreases of diabetic mice, a demanding task given the tiny size of the rodent organs. The results were dramatic.

The islet inflammation cleared up and the diabetes was gone. Some have remained in that state for as long as four months, with just one injection.

My father became a Type-I, adult-onset diabetic during the Korean War. Dad always said he thought it was the shock of almost being washed overboard in a heavy storm that caused his pancreas to shut down -- a theory that was considered highly suspect by most experts.

Now it seems that he may have been on to something. And, given Dad's fondness for extremely spicy foods, how great would it be if a dose of Tobasco to the old Islets of Langerhans frees him from 55 years of injections and insulin reactions?

Hey Doc, please pass the hot sauce -- to the FDA, ASAP.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 13, 2006

Learning from Lincoln

Columnist Tony Blankley can't fathom the fecklessness of the American character -- or, more correctly, the character of the American political class -- when it comes to fighting and winning wars.

Official Washington, the media and much of the public have fallen under the unconscionable thrall of defeatism. Which is to say that they cannot conceive of a set of policies -- for a nation of 300 million with an annual GDP of over $12 trillion and all the skills and technologies known to man -- to subdue the city of Baghdad and environs. Do you think Gen. Patton or Abe Lincoln or Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin would have thrown their hands up and said, "I give up, there's nothing we can do"?

Or do you suppose they would have said, let's send in as many troops as we can assemble to hold on while we raise more troops to finish the job. If the victory is that important -- and it is -- then failure must be unthinkable, even if it takes another five or 10 years.

[...]

Sometimes, current tactical logistical weaknesses must not be used as an excuse for, or a signal of, strategic failure.

In 1861, newly elected President Abraham Lincoln faced such a dilemma over the siege of Ft. Sumter. He had decided to ignore his military advice to surrender the fort.

While the final published version of his explanation for this decision in his July 4, 1861 Message to Congress did not reflect his personal anxiety in coming to that decision, it might be useful to President Bush to read Lincoln's first, unpublished, draft -- which did reflect his mental anguish as he tried to decide. All his military advisers, after due consideration, believed that Fort Sumter had to be evacuated. But Lincoln's first draft read:

"In a purely military point of view, this reduced the duty of the administration, in this case, to the mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of the Fort -- in fact, General Scott advised that this should be done at once -- I believed, however, that to do so would be utterly ruinous -- that the necessity under which it was to be done, would not be fully understood -- that, by many, it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy -- that at home, it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its foes, and insure to the latter a recognition of independence abroad -- that, in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated. I hesitated."

Lincoln was alone in the self-same rooms now occupied by George Bush. All his cabinet and all his military advisors had counseled a path Lincoln thought would lead to disaster. He was only a month in office and judged by most of Washington -- including much of his cabinet -- to be a country bumpkin who was out of his league, an accidental president. Alone, and against all advice he made the right decision -- as he would do constantly until victory.

This ultimately comes down to deciding what we're willing to do to achieve victory. The grey-haired members of the Inside-the-Beltway club that produced GeezerPalooza 2006 (aka the ISG Report), for all their (alleged) wisdom, never asked any scholars of Islam and the Middle East how our withdrawal from Iraq would be perceived by our friends and enemies.

The answer, of course, is: Weak, afraid, unwilling to honor commitments, defend friends or offend our enemies.

There is no question that we have the soldiers, the weapons and the battleplans to win; what we lack now -- as Lincoln did then -- are leaders who understand that some retreats cost far more than the gain they promise.

There's much I don't like about Pres. Bush's leadership, but his unwillingness to follow the ebb and flow of popular opinion, the whimsy of the chattering classes, does seem to contain echoes of the solitary determination of Lincoln.

And, as with Abe, history -- and victory -- will be the arbiter of Pres. Bush's success or failure.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spengler's grim message

Are you feeling a little more hopeful about the world as this year draws to a close in a glow of Yule tide cheer? Then you haven't read Spengler's take on why things are worse than you think.

Issues that seem trivial and even grotesque to Westerners, such as the veiling of women, are life-and-death matters for the survival of Islam, as Muslims in the West know better than their Western critics.

Christianity recruits individual souls into a new Israel: Islam enlists converts into an army to defend traditional life against the depredations of encroaching empires. Islam cannot withstand the final dissolution of traditional society that comes with the triumph of globalization. Its entire raison d'etre is a stubborn refusal to adapt, in the fashion that the Chinese have adapted, to a new world with new ground rules.

To intervene in the Islamic world is to hasten the dissolution of traditional society and with it the world of Islam. For all his good intentions, Bush appears to Iraqis as the worst thing to visit them since the Mongols in the 14th century.

[...]

By and large American Christians do not understand what it is that makes them Christians, and why their religion has flourished while European Christianity has perished. Once having abandoned their own culture by becoming American, Americans cease to understand why others will die rather than let their culture be stripped from them.

Because American Christians do not quite understand what they are, they cannot understand what makes Muslims so different. Bush, Rice and other well-meaning American Christians will operate on the presumption that Muslims can be persuaded to act like them, with tragic consequences.

It is not what the United States does that threatens Islam, but rather what the United States is: a global avalanche of creative destruction that rips apart the bindings of traditional life. The US has offered a world in which traditional society has no place. The portions of the world that have turned their back to the sword's edge face chaos. An endearing quality of the Americans is that they find the truth too horrible to contemplate.

Therein we see the essential problem: the most distinctive of American qualities -- our innate optimism -- blinds us to the intractable nature of this civilizational-conceptual conflict.

We don't understand that the very things that we champion -- equality, individual liberty, tolerance -- are loathsome, poisonous to traditional (read: Muslim) societies. Much as we want -- no, need to believe that we're all the same, that everyone will negotiate in good faith, peaceful coexistence the goal, the unbearable-to-Americans truth is that we cannot give them what they want.

For the only thing that will satisfy our enemies in this most existential of conflicts is our complete and utter destruction.

Merry Christmas.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 12, 2006

Name game

Courtesy of The Corner's Cliff May comes this thought.

Did you ever stop to think that if Barack Obama married Ehud Barak he’d be Barack Barak?

Of course if he then divorced Ehud Barak and married Hosni Mubarak he’d be Barack Barak Mubarak.

Damn! I wish I'd thought of that. It's like a political Roseanne Roseanna Danna.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Judges packing heat

I can't say that I'm surprised to hear this; rumor has it that judges in my county have been packing heat for decades. According to local lore, one retired jurist held the distinction of having been the only member of the bench to have killed a crook, although it was in a previous career as an FBI special agent.

Despite increased security at courthouses following shootings in Chicago and Atlanta about one year ago, many judges are bringing their own guns into their courtrooms for protection.

In May, a judicial ethics committee of the New York State Unified Court System found that it was ethical for a judge to carry a pistol into his courtroom.

In Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas, incidences of violence in the past year have prompted new laws or solidified rules allowing judges to bring guns into courtrooms.

"Judges in our courthouse have been carrying guns almost all the time," said Cynthia Stevens Kent, a Texas judge in the 114th District Court, where a man in a family law case killed his ex-wife and son last year on the steps of a Tyler courthouse.

"We feel strongly about providing adequate security, but it comes down to personal responsibility. And you've got to take responsibility for your own safety," Kent said.

Security concerns were raised last year after a rape suspect grabbed a deputy's gun and killed an Atlanta judge and others. One month earlier, a litigant had killed the husband and mother of a Chicago federal judge who ruled against him.

Some states allow judges to arm themselves.

In June, a man shot the Nevada judge overseeing his divorce case through the window of his courtroom. Chuck Weller, a judge in the Nevada 2nd Judicial District Court in Reno, who survived the incident, said that judges in Nevada are allowed to carry weapons into the courtroom if they obtain permission from the chief judge.

He declined to say whether he keeps a gun in his courtroom, but noted, "I'm not opposed to it at all. The culture in the community I live accepts firearms."

The shooting prompted U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., to introduce legislation to enhance security at both state and federal courthouses.

[...]

In Texas, which permits state judges to carry concealed handguns into courtrooms, a new law became effective that expands that right to include federal judges and district attorneys. The law followed the Tyler shooting.

"We believe each judge should be able to make sure he has a system of self-defense," said Kent, who wears a shoulder harness and carries a gun at all times. "One of our biggest areas of target is when we're in the court making decisions."

In May, New York's Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics issued an opinion that found it ethical for a judge to carry a pistol while on the bench.

In Florida, where Bay County Judge Michael Hauversburk recently threatened a defense attorney with his handgun, state law permits concealed weapons. But a bill that died last year would have specifically allowed judges to bring concealed firearms into courtrooms. Similar bills were introduced and failed last year in North Carolina and Illinois.

On Jan. 1, Kansas plans to permit judges and whomever they designate to carry concealed firearms in the courtroom. Phillip Journey, the state senator who authored the bill and a practicing attorney, said he spent a decade seeking to overturn a blanket prohibition on firearms in the courthouse.

"If I had a judge's permission, I'd do it every day," he said of bringing a gun into the courtroom. "Guns are like lawyers: Better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it."

I like that Texas recognizes that prosecutors are especially trustworthy; in my neck of the woods, DAs stand in line with defendants to enter the courthouse, lifting hands in the air and turning in circles per the barked commands of the rent-a-cops checking for contraband.

There was some talk of exempting DAs from the searches, seeing as how they presented little (read NO) risk to public safety, but the reactionary but-it-wouldn't-be-fair brigades sprang into action: Zut alors! 'Ow can we exempt ze prosecootors, an' not ze mem'bairs of ze d'fenz bar?

Well, my knee-jerk beret-wearing friend, when was the last time you heard of a DA smuggling drugs into the jail for an inmate? Or having a torrid adults-only retelling of Humpty Dumpty while ostensibly (ahem) discussing defense strategy in a jail interview room with an inmate?

While judges, elected officials and newly-hired peace officers bypass the metal detectors and wand-wielding indeterminate-gendered securi-trolls, thirty-year prosecutors meekly lift the cuff of their pants to expose their pale legs before shuffling toward the elevators, in the courthouse equivalent of strip-searching the granny at the airport, while the six sweaty swarthy types with the "I heart Bin Laden" t-shirts breeze through as their shoelaces smoke and sizzle.

We wouldn't want to pay extra attention to the -- what do you call them? -- oh, right, the CROOKS, would ya?

Sigh.

Did you notice that the courthouse killings last year were done after the bad guy wrestled the gun away from a bailiff? The killer murdered more people once he escaped the courthouse; good thing there weren't any armed judges or DAs around to maybe -- just maybe -- put an end to his spree before he hit the streets.

Of course, we'll never see a common-sense approach taken with courthouse security in California, so long as the judges and the pols don't have to stand in line with the plebs.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Pump it

What do you get when you take a bunch of aviators, put 'em on a carrier, keep them away from liberty ports for a few months, then give 'em a videocam and a Black Eyed Peas CD?

Something like this.

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December 11, 2006

Cox & Forkum

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Narcissism (mis)guides GeezerPalooza

ShrinkWrapped thinks the James Baker GeezerPalooza (2006 Edition) merits no serious consideration and just might belong in the DSM IV.

The ISG seems like a study in Applied Diplomatic Narcissism. The Commission treat the Iraq problem as primarily an American problem; the victims of any American failure in the region, those very people most like us and most committed to a democratic and free future in the Middle East, are treated as mere afterthoughts, as if they are a nuisance rather than the people we most need to support.

Our enemies, Utopian fantasists who treat people as objects to be used to support their messianic and power lusting dreams, are imagined to be men with whom we can talk and who can help us solve the problem they are currently involved in causing.

The fact is that the world view of the Islamists is incompatible with ours; they proclaim the fact on a regular basis (although our Media seem deaf and dumb to their pronouncements) and it requires an act of willful ignorance to avoid understanding that they mean what they say and have been acting in consonance with their beliefs for at least the last 27 years.

The hall mark of Narcissism is the failure of the Narcissist to fully grasp that another person's mind does not necessarily operate in precisely the way their mind operates.

[...]

The Diplomatic Narcissist fails to understand what all Narcissists fail to understand. Not every person who is urbane and well dressed, well groomed and well spoken, with a sophisticated vocabulary and cultured tastes, is a civilized man. Some are barbarians dressed up as civilized men. Barbarians can mimic the language of civilized men but it is a facade that only fools those who are easily fooled.

Whether we refer to the barbarians of the HISH Alliance as Sociopaths or as religious extremists matters little; what matters greatly is that they believe and behave as if their lives depend on destroying us. Talking to them in order to gain their assistance is foolhardy in the extreme.

That these "realists" believe that we can -- and should! -- talk with Iran and Syria is reason alone to toss their report in the circular file.

It's also reassuring to see that Baker, who famously said "F**k the Jews," thinks Israel is the key to solving the woes of the world, provided that they don't participate in his solution.

The difference between Baker and Mel Gibson is that one channels his obsessions into producing idiosyncratic entertainments, and the other works to ensure that the Jews are well and truly f**ked.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 10, 2006

Liberals behaving badly

I've always thought that a significant portion of the America-hating, Western civilization-loathing, left-wing chorus is comprised of people dealing with significant levels of guilt arising from their own misdeeds.

Consider, for instance, "journalist" Bill Moyers.

He's a constant presence on PBS, using dollars gleaned from taxpayers and liberal foundations to produce a seemingly endless series of shows lauding the glory of the Fourth Estate, the perfidy of conservatives, and the poisonous effect capitalism -- and American patriotism -- has had on this nation, and the world.

As you may have guessed, I believe Billy Boy has issues, and doth protest too much.

A couple of paragraphs from an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal gives some insight into the hypocrisy at the root of Moyers' Ameri-phobic tendencies.

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too.

It's too delicious, really. The stalwart defender of civil rights and civil liberties, the Grand Poobah of PBS Pledge Week, conspiring with the closeted Hoover to catch a Republican staffer engaging in some light-loafered slap & tickle, so that LBJ could use blackmail to cover-up a political pal's public pissoir peccadilloes.

Bill, you were so right. What do your children think? They must be so very proud.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Who will defeat Hillary-Obama?

It's time for the December straw poll; cast your ballot and see how the field is shaping up amongst fellow conservatives.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

CSI Memphis

That's one way to get a crook's prints.

Memphis robbery detectives Tuesday charged a man they say literally fingered himself for a violent home invasion robbery.

Terence Stewart, 28, is wanted for four counts of aggravated robbery, four counts of attempted aggravated robbery and burglary in the Nov. 4 break-in at a home on the 3000 block of Dothan.

During the robbery, the tip of Stewart's right trigger finger was cut off by one of the victims wielding a sword.

The fingertip was large enough and in good enough condition for crime scene detectives to get a clear print, which matched immediately to Stewart, police said.

Stewart's prints were on file for his arrest in 1996 for breaking into the homes of Hispanic victims and robbing them at gunpoint.

He was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison, and was released in May 2005, according to court records.

Early on Nov. 4, eight men sleeping inside the home on Dothan were awakened by the sound of the door being kicked in by two robbers and several gunshots.

The robbers pistol-whipped Guillermo Tovar Sr. and left him unconscious on a couch while they robbed the other seven men.

Tovar regained consciousness as the robbers were exiting and swung into action.

He grabbed a sword from under the couch, and struck at one of the robbers' guns just as he was about to fire.

Tovar's swipe took off the gunman's right trigger finger, which was left behind when the robbers ran out.

The tip was inked and printed, and run through the AFIS (automatic fingerprint identification system), where it touched off a perfect match.

Police said they have been looking for Stewart ever since the fingertip pointed his way.

For good measure the fingertip has been sent off for DNA analysis that will be used to confirm the identity of the robber.

Tovar told police that the sword, described as a cavalry-type weapon, was used for cutting down weeds in the yard.

I can't wait for the defense to try and have the finger thrown out of court.

Gawd, I never thought anything could be better than a crime victim assisting a crook across the River Styx, but this comes close.

Heh.

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December 08, 2006

A passion for teaching

American philosopher and poet George Santayana (1863-1952) said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," a phrase used to great effect by men like Winston Churchill, as well as author William Shirer in his seminal account, "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich."

Here is a history professor who really, really cared about the importance of remembrance; none of his students ever forgot this lecture.

Mild profanity.

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Telling it like it was

On December 9, 1941, FDR delivered a radio address to the American people, speaking to them about the challenge thrust upon the nation by the Japanese sneak attack.

FDR spoke of things that are as relevant today as they were 65 years ago. These paragraphs are bitterly ironic when applied to the proudly trans-national 21st Century media.

It must be remembered by each and every one of us that our free and rapid communication must be greatly restricted in wartime. It is not possible to receive full, speedy, accurate reports from distant areas of combat. This is particularly true where naval operations are concerned. For in these days of the marvels of radio it is often impossible for the commanders of various units to report their activities by radio, for the very simple reason that this information would become available to the
enemy, and would disclose their position and their plan of defense or attack.

Of necessity there will be delays in officially confirming or denying reports of operations but we will not hide facts from the country if we know the facts and if the enemy will not be aided by their disclosure.

To all newspapers and radio stations-all those who reach the eyes and ears of the American people-I say this: You have a most grave responsibility to the Nation now and for the duration of this war.

If you feel that your Government is not disclosing enough of the truth, you have very right to say so. But -- in the absence of all the facts, as revealed by official sources -- you have no right to deal out unconfirmed reports in such a way as to make people believe they are gospel truth.

Every citizen, in every walk of life, shares this same responsibility. The lives of our soldiers and sailors -- the whole future of this Nation -- depend upon the manner in which each and every one of us fulfills his obligation to our country.

Of course, 61 years ago we knew for whom the journalists were rooting; you'll forgive me if I find their protestations and proclamations of loyalty to our national interest to be perfunctory at best.

Listen to FDR explain the task at hand, and how America would respond.

[T]he United States can accept no result save victory, final and complete. Not only must the shame of Japanese treachery be wiped out, but the sources of international brutality, wherever they exist, must be absolutely and finally broken.

In my Message to the Congress yesterday I said that we "will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again." In order to achieve that certainty, we must begin the great task that is before us by abandoning once and for all the illusion that we can ever again isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity.

In these past few years -- and, most violently, in the past few days -- we have learned a terrible lesson.

It is our obligation to our dead -- it is our sacred obligation to their children and our children -- that we must never forget what we have learned.

And what we all have learned is this:

There is no such thing as security for any nation -- or any individual -- in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism.

There is no such thing as impregnable defense against powerful aggressors who sneak up in the dark and strike without warning.

We have learned that our ocean-girt hemisphere is not immune from severe attack -- that we cannot measure our safety in terms of miles on any map.

We may acknowledge that our enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill. It was a thoroughly dishonorable deed, but we must face the fact that modern warfare as conducted in the Nazi manner is a dirty business. We don't like it -- we didn't want to get in it -- but we are in it and we're going to fight it with everything we've got.

I fear that as a nation we've lost the grit and determination that our grandparents had, born of the Depression and the memory of the Great War. Rather than the righteous anger and determination of 1941, the current zeitgeist seems more attuned to the fantastically misguided optimism of 1938, and the bipartisan folderol of the ISG's report reeks of "Peace in Our Time."

And, unlike FDR's audience, I don't hear anyone telling the American people that we're going to fight our enemies "with everything we've got."

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:57 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Day of Infamy, the day after

President Roosevelt addresses Congress the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

As Americans scoured the papers for information and listened to the radio for the latest news from Hawaii, Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a blockbuster speech to Congress -- and the nation.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Film of infamy

On the day after the 65th anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, what better way to remember the way we marked the 60th year than with a 2001 Mark Steyn review of the craptastic Michael Bay-Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster, "Oahu Armageddon" "Pearl Harbor."

Those Krauts and Japs have all the luck. They may have lost the war, but they're getting a shorter print of Pearl Harbor: Disney execs have been busy snipping out bits of dialogue in order to avoid giving offence to German and Japanese audiences. To avoid giving offence to English speaking audiences, they should have cut all the dialogue.

Connoisseurs will have their favourite moments. I greatly enjoyed the scene between Danny and Evelyn. It begins with a subtitle: 'Three months later.' Then Danny says, 'I can't believe it's been three months since I saw you.' But Evelyn also loves Rafe (and no, it's not pronounced 'Ralph'). She enters his room and sees him packing. 'Packing?' she says. Michael Bay then cuts to a close-up of the suitcase, with folded clothes inside. In its exquisite laboriousness, this encapsulates the picture's style more than any of the explosions.

I hated-hated-HATED this film. For Americans who give a damn about history, heroism and the brave men who fought and died in the biggest foreign attack on U.S. soil (until 9-11), letting an ass-clown like Michael Bay make the definitive big-budget pic on our Day of Infamy is staggering.

Whatever its shortcomings, "Saving Private Ryan" was a heartfelt tribute to the men who stormed the beaches of Festung Europa, and Steven Spielberg did a terrific job putting the viewer on the beaches of Normandy -- all without the benefit of inexpressive Hollywood prettyboys, or a ridiculous love triangle.

The rest of Steyn's review is a hoot; because he doesn't leave these posted on a permanent page, you can read the whole thing by clicking the link below.

Those Krauts and Japs have all the luck. They may have lost the war, but they're getting a shorter print of Pearl Harbor: Disney execs have been busy snipping out bits of dialogue in order to avoid giving offence to German and Japanese audiences. To avoid giving offence to English speaking audiences, they should have cut all the dialogue.

Connoisseurs will have their favourite moments. I greatly enjoyed the scene between Danny and Evelyn. It begins with a subtitle: 'Three months later.' Then Danny says, 'I can't believe it's been three months since I saw you.' But Evelyn also loves Rafe (and no, it's not pronounced 'Ralph'). She enters his room and sees him packing. 'Packing?' she says. Michael Bay then cuts to a close-up of the suitcase, with folded clothes inside. In its exquisite laboriousness, this encapsulates the picture's style more than any of the explosions. Bay's last blockbuster, Armageddon, was criticised for being fast-moving but shallow. So he's now made a film that's slow-moving but even shallower.

We begin in lyrical, cornpone Tennessee, where two little boys have two little toys.Gaily they'd play each summer's day, warriors both, of course. One boy is Rafe (Ben Affleck), who as the male lead has been given the designated trait: he's dyslexic, which may well be an advantage with a screenplay by Randall Wallace. Danny (Josh Hartnett) is The Buddy, so he has no trait. The years roll by to 1940 and Rafe and Danny are now flyboys playing chicken during training sessions on Long Island.Those nitpicky historians hung up on obscure facts and stuff will be reassured to know that Hollywood has an equally shaky grip on East Coast topography: this Long Island has spectacular mountains, presumably bulldozed when they built Alec Baldwin's place in the Hamptons.

Speaking of which, here's Alec himself as Colonel Doolittle handing Rafe his official papers immediately ordering him to England to fly with the RAF. Between 1939 and 1941, many brave Yank airmen volunteered as individuals for the RAF and RCAF but they weren't assigned to foreign air forces by their American commanders as that would have been in breach of US neutrality. Still, it does give Rafe's sweetheart, Evelyn, the opportunity to see him off at Grand Central Station: apparently, in those days, to get from New York to England, you took the train.

When it pulls in at Victoria, Rafe discovers that England is hell. Not only is it damp but, unlike back home, where the pilots have the healthy glow of a 1950s gay bodybuilding magazine, the local air aces are weedy, pasty, thin-lipped anti-hunks whose feeble Battle of Britain is sorely in need of a bit of Yankee derring-do. 'The German Luftwaffe relentlessly bombards downtown London, ' intones the newsreel announcer, the authentic period flavour of his script matched only by the bass reverb of his Kiss-FM delivery, 'while Churchill's Royal Air Force struggles to maintain control of the British skies.' Fortunately, Rafe is there to save downtown London.

But half a world away Imperial Japan is preparing to attack Pearl Harbor to protest the US oil embargo. Hmm. If you're doing a GCSE essay on root causes of the second world war, don't quote me on that one. Soon, Admiral Yamamoto (Mako) is going full steam ahead and cabling Tokyo with his own subtitles, translated from the original gibberish: 'The rise and fall of our empire is at stake!' Both the rise and the fall are at stake? Simultaneously? Wow.

There follows 40 minutes of carnage that come as a welcome respite from the interminable triangle of Evelyn, Danny and Rafe. Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) seems vaguely to resent the interruption. It's been difficult enough trying to deal with her feelings, she says irritably, 'and then all this happened', 'this' being the surrounding scenes of widespread devastation. The attack itself is played virtually in real time, a la Saving Private Ryan , but is completely uninvolving. Who's being bombed? Who's doing the bombing? I counted over 100 names in the cast list, yet the film has a total absence of humanity. On a Hawaii with no Hawaiians, anonymous Japs battle cardboard Yankees. Who cares?

Still, having wiped out America's Pacific Fleet, Yamamoto remarks, 'I fear all we have done is to waken a sleeping giant.'

That would be me, I thought, waking with a start. So I got up to leave. But, amazingly, the movie hadn't ended, and suddenly lurched into what seems like an entirely separate film about the Doolittle Raid (it already is a separate film: 30 Seconds Over Tokyo), in which four months after Pearl Harbor Colonel Doolittle led a couple of dozen bomber pilots on a crazy but morale-boosting raid. Hitherto in this movie, Danny and Rafe have been fighter pilots, not bomber pilots, and in reality there were no fighter pilots on the Doolittle Raid, but they're hand-picked for the gig anyway.

Bay's model was clearly Titanic: a love story set against the sweep of history. But, in Titanic, the love-across-the-classes romance sharpened the bigger picture.Here, the love story doesn't arise organically from the war, and doesn't illuminate any aspects of it: it's just a lame triangle. And Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid aren't really connected, either. The Americans are not temperamentally inclined to the Dunkirk Spirit, and those of us who wondered what Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer were doing making a movie about a US military debacle are forced to the conclusion that maybe they only discovered it was a Jap victory halfway through shooting.

In tacking a happy ending on to Pearl Harbor, they wind up missing the significance of the event: the only occasion in modern warfare when the US has been playing at home - when its own territory briefly came under the kind of assault that for Britain, France, Belgium et al is par for the course. Pearl Harbor was, as they say, a 'defining moment', the end of American isolationism. Pearl Harbor The Film testifies only to the new American cultural isolationism in which even the recent past is beyond the comprehension of Hollywood.

And why worry about Japanese sensitivity? Shortly after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese took Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands and arrested 22 British watchkeepers. The following year, they tied them to trees, beheaded them and burned their bodies in a pit. The Japs fought a filthy war whose depravities they've never been made to confront. It does 'em good to be reminded every so often. And, if Hollywood is too craven even to be jingoistic, then what exactly is it for?

The Spectator, June 2nd 2001

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December 07, 2006

Day of Infamy

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAMMING!

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a sneak attack on the U.S. sailors, airmen and Marines stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, bringing Americans into a war most opposed fighting.

That opposition changed in the aftermath of the attack, and the Japanese guaranteed not victory, but their own eventual destruction. In another blunder, Hitler declared war on the U.S., ensuring that Germany would be forced to fight a war on two fronts.

As the few remaining survivors of the attack gather today to remember their fallen comrades, here is a visual record of the attack, made possible in part by the large number of Japanese pilots and crew who brought cameras with them and managed to take pictures during the attack.

The Japanese fleet steams toward the unsuspecting Americans, hiding behind stormy seas. Luck was on their side; they avoided American patrols and escaped detection.

Japanese planes on deck, waiting for the right time to begin the attack. Months of intensive training was about to pay off.

The pilots throttle up, waiting for the order to launch, their planes straining at the brakes, Mitsubishi radial engines screaming.

As one of the first torpedo bombers races down the deck, Japanese crewmen cry, "Banzai!" and lift their arms in tribute.

The planes lift off slowly, weighed down by the bombs and torpedoes destined for the American fleet, and the fuel needed to carry them to Pearl Harbor. They struggle into the air and move into formation for the journey to Hawaii.

The Japanese arrive and begin their attack. It had been a quiet Sunday morning, the Americans expecting a lazy day aboard ship, or liberty on the beach.

They target the battleships, lined up neatly, unsuspecting giants awaiting their fates. The harbor appeared remarkably similar to the model the Japanese used for practice.

Flak bursts fill the air as the American sailors begin to fight back, targetting the Japanese planes. While some were downed by the U.S. guns, far too often the planes clawed their way back into the sky for another run at the burning ships below.

Japanese bombs pierce the forward magazine of the USS Arizona, triggering an enormous explosion. Witnesses said the entire ship appeared to momentarily rise out of the water. These color images are frames taken from a 16mm motion picture of the attack.

The aftermath is devastating to behold; the Pacific Fleet in ruins, the American West Coast undefended. Fires rage and thousands of sailors remain trapped below decks in the blazing, capsized hulks.

But the Japanese have made two mistakes that will prove fatal to their dream of Empire. The admiral in charge of the attack has cancelled the third wave of planes, leaving intact the oil tanks holding the fuel the Americans will need for their fleet in its defense of the Mainland.

And they've left the American carriers -- out at sea -- untouched.

In a few short months, these carriers will launch dive bombers and torpedo bombers at the Battle of Midway, handing the Imperial Japanese Navy a devastating defeat, dooming their plans for an empire spanning the Pacific.

Dauntless dive bombers, like these pictured above, will make full use of the American torpedo bombers' sacrifice; wiped out by the Japanese as they flew low and slow, they lured the fighters down to sea level, leaving an opening for the high-flying U.S. dive bombers to hurtle down at the enemy fleet, delivering their weapons with incredible accuracy, sending the Jap carriers to the bottom.

And American aces depleted the ranks of experienced Japanese aircrews; by the end of the war, inexperienced cadets were flying their planes on one-way Kamikaze suicide missions, never having had to learn how to land their aircraft.

December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in infamy, marked the beginning. The beginning of a titanic struggle for the American people, and the beginning of the end for the Japanese.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 05, 2006

"Happy Holidays" my butt!

I loathe the watery, bland, non-denominational "Happy Holidays!" foisted upon us by the sensitivity brigades.

Although I'm Jewish, I was raised in a decidedly Christian culture, learning all the traditional Christmas carols, singing them in the Riverside Drive Elementary School Yule Tide Pageant. Years later, I still hum along when I hear the tunes -- they make me smile, too -- and they haven't harmed my self-esteem or diminished my Jewish identity.

I hate it when people wish me "Happy Holidays!" For Pete's sake, pick a holiday and commit to it, will you? Whenever a cashier says the dreaded words, I respond by telling her, "Merry Christmas." Usually she looks relieved and says, "Merry Christmas," too.

Am I offended when someone gives me the Christian greeting, instead of the Chanukah version? Never. I enjoy the feeling of fellowship, of a stranger wishing me good tidings.

When I see a commercial on TV with "Christmas" replaced with "Holidays," I make a point of shopping elsewhere.

So, this memo from the governor of Missouri was like a breath of eggnog- and chesnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire scented fresh air.

From: Governor Matt Blunt
To: Department Directors
Date: December 4, 2006
Re: "Merry Christmas"

Last year there was a great deal of public discussion regarding the Christmas season. Specifically, we heard from those who believe that the Christmas break should be called by a non-religious name such as "Winter Holiday." They also argued that traditional Christmas greetings such as "Merry Christmas" should not be used.

Missouri state government employees should not have to worry about this matter. To ensure that there is no confusion regarding our state policy I am directing that each of you inform all members of your department that they should feel at ease using traditional holiday phrases, including "Merry Christmas" and they should have no fear of official reprisal. I also ask that you inform your staff that the objections of those who are offended by these phrases be given due consideration, but that no state employee will be reprimanded or in any way disciplined for saying "Merry Christmas."

This holiday season should not give state employees reason to feel as though they must check their religious views at the door of a government building. Instead, it is my hope that each state employee enjoys the holiday season with full confidence that their government exists to preserve their liberty rather than constrict it.

Holy Moses! It took the governor to make it kosher to say "Merry Christmas"?

Oy vey.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah; it's all good, baby.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:44 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Selfish parents try for kids with genetic defects

Didja hear about the parents who want their kids to be born with genetic abnormalities?

[A] coming article in the journal Fertility and Sterility offers a fascinating glimpse into how far some parents may go to ensure that their children stay in their world — by intentionally choosing malfunctioning genes that produce disabilities like deafness or dwarfism.
[...]

In other words, some parents had the painful and expensive fertility procedure for the express purpose of having children with a defective gene. It turns out that some mothers and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture.

Yeah, engaging in some sort of reverse eugenics is a sure-fire way to find a nurturing community for your children, seeing as how you've already denied them a shot at winning the genetic lottery. Who wants their children to enjoy seeing the world, when the blind can be part of a close-knit group with hyper-developed hearing and a keen sense of smell? Why have normal kids when you can raise bipedal bloodhounds?

Or how 'bout populating your very own Munchkinland?

Mary Ellen Little, a New Jersey nurse with dwarfism, had her first daughter before a prenatal test for achondroplasia was available. For her second child, she had amniocentesis. “I prayed for a little one,” meaning a dwarf, she told me.

The wait, she recalled, was grueling, since “I figured I couldn’t be blessed twice, but I was.” Both her daughters, now 11 and 7, are “little people.”

The major barrier to Ms. Little’s simply choosing her children’s height is ease. To her, P.G.D. to select for dwarfism is too invasive; however, if having dwarf children were simply a matter of trying to conceive at a certain time of the month or taking a pill, she said, “I would do that.”

In the interest of fairness -- and not wanting this Little broad to feel like she's getting special treatment -- I think she ought to get her pint-sized ass kicked from one side of her very small house to the other for making her kid's lives more difficult than they had to be; life was going to be tough enough for normal-sized kids with an insane, selfish moonbat mother.

This is simply the latest manifesitation of the rot at the core of modern society. It goes hand in hand with the inability of multi-culti relativists to pronounce anything better or worse — only different.

It’s like deaf activists opposing cochlear implants for children, because to give them the gift of hearing implies that being deaf is in some way a handicap.

Well, read my lips: Duh.

Can you imagine denying your child the opportunity to hear music? To thrill to Kenneth Branagh’s St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V?

Not yet being a parent, I’d like to think that I’d want my children to be better than me, to enjoy more opportunities; therefore I’d never do anything to ensure that they’d have some disabilities that would make life more difficult for them.

And, yeah, I said “disabilities,” ’cause midgets and the deaf and blind aren’t “differently abled,” they’re at a significant disadvantage when compared to those without handicaps.

If I had a way to guarantee that my kids were short and stocky, with no athletic ability, poor vision and prone to hypertension, would I choose those characteristics so they'd be just like Dad, so we'd have something in common?

Only a narcissistic moron would think twice about doing that to their kids.

Or a dwarf named Little.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

UPDATE: Our head-chopping friends

Gerard Van Der Leun has taken the interview with the Saudi executioner and turned it into a graphic novel.

It really captures the flavor of the video. I love how this jolly fellow chats about his blood-spattered and gore-flecked work as his kids surround him, adorable daughter on his lap.

The interviewers are a hoot, too, all wide-eyed interest and earnest curiosity about his slicing and dicing.

And these are our allies.

Check out the comments to Gerard's post; the multi-culti leftist moonbats can't wait to play the moral-equivalence card, 'cause Americans are exactly the same as the Saudis. Hell, we even execute more people than they do!

Yup, no difference; no difference at all.

I can't tell you how many shoplifters have had their hands chopped off after my office won a conviction. Oh, and did I mention the adulterers and homosexuals we prosecuted? Their executions were a hoot, too.

Like I said, America, Saudia Arabia; same-same.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 04, 2006

End of an era

The 146th Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard marked the end of an era with the last flight of their C-130E Hercules transports on Saturday. I was on base for the weekend drill and was in the JAG shop when we heard the two planes overhead. I ran outside with another officer, just in time to see one of the transports go roaring by, not more than 100 feet above the Ops building, in about a 60-degree bank.

We walked out to the flight line, where a crowd -- and a military marching band -- waited for the two veterans to land and disgorge their payload of soon-to-be obsolescent crew members.

Y'see, the E models were throwbacks to the old Air Force, with cable-actuated control surfaces and analog dials covering the control panels; their late-1940's design heritage was apparent from the moment you entered the flight deck. The new planes, the C-130J models, are bigger -- with an extended fuselauge -- as well as the ability to fly faster and farther, thanks in part to the distinctive curved blades of their high-efficiency props. But the most significant upgrade on the new Js can be seen when you settle into the pilot's seat: the dizzying array of dials have been replaced by multi-function displays, just like on fighters. Electronics abound, and fly-by-wire has replaced pulleys and cables with silicon chips and servos.

The use of computers to monitor and control the plane, as well as the integration of military-grade GPS equipment means that the number of highly-trained flightdeck crewmembers needed to operate the planes has been cut by 50 percent: Navigators and Flight Engineers have gone the way of the elevator operator.

In the old days, it took a skilled engineer to keep four engines running in synch, and the pilots were too busy flying the plane to troubleshoot the mechanical problems that invariably cropped up. And then there was the navigator, using his charts and sextant, Loran-C and navigational beacons to ensure the planes arrived at their destinations safely, without recreating the exploits of Wrongway Corrigan -- or charting a course into the side of a mountain range.

No more. And so Saturday's flight was a bittersweet one on the flightdecks; these professionals are no longer needed to complete the mission.

The planes landed, then slowly taxied toward us, passing through a triumphal -- and fleeting -- arch, provided by the two firepumpers on the tarmac. They parked at right-angles to each other, one plane flying the U.S. flag from the cockpit, the other the California Bear flag, both snapping-to in the stiff, 30-knot Santa Ana winds. The groundcrew gave the signal and the engines shut down, the big four-bladed props spinning to a halt.

The flightcrew emerged from the planes and gathered beneath one wing, spraying each other with champagne -- between sips, of course -- confident that the stray tear would go unnoticed amidst all the bubbly and bonhomie.

One of the pilots gave a gloriously politically incorrect quote to the paper, one that wouldn't have been out of place coming from a grizzled veteran of the Eighth Air Force after finishing a tour of duty bombing the Krauts in his trusty B-17.

"It's like making love to a woman," said Lt. Col. Brian Rourke after he flew the plane for his last time. "There are things they like and don't like, and when you get to know what they like, it really performs."

I'll bet the Public Affairs Officer crapped his britches over that one, but dammit, that's how pilots are supposed to sound.

The two planes that made the final flight for the Guard were older than most of their crews; commissioned in 1960, they were transferred to the 146th in the mid-70s, and have flown more than 30 years-worth of missions ferrying troops to combat zones; carrying supplies to disaster areas; and fighting fires from the air.

Their service -- planes and crew -- was invaluable, and they'll be missed.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 03, 2006

Reading assignment

The Wall Street Journal periodically posts suggested reading on a variety of topics; last week's focused on classic American humor.

Of the five, I haven't read these three -- although I am familiar with the authors, Thurber primarily for his late-career cartoons, and Lardner more for his son, who penned the screenplay for the film version of M*A*S*H; I may have to give them a read.

1. "You Know Me Al" by Ring Lardner (Scribner's, 1916).

Ring Lardner thought of himself as primarily a sports columnist whose stuff wasn't destined to last, and he held to that absurd belief even after his first masterpiece, "You Know Me Al," was published in 1916 and earned the awed appreciation of Virginia Woolf, among other very serious, unfunny people.

Ostensibly a collection of letters to a friend back home in Bedford, Ind., it traces the first season of a rookie hurler for the Chicago White Sox. Jack Keefe is at once cocky and guileless, suspicious and gullible, innocent and--you get hints of this along the way--doomed. But really, really funny.

2. "My Life and Hard Times" by James Thurber (Harper, 1933).

"The clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus." This is easily the most beautiful sentence ever written about what is now the largest city in Ohio, and Thurber, alone among the Buckeyes, was the one who was destined to write it.

Thurber's tossed-off cartoons ("Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?") seem to be wearing better than his painstaking prose, at least among highbrow critics. But this brief memoir of growing up in an eccentric family in Columbus before and during World War I is nearly perfect--and still the funniest and most accessible Thurber.

[...]

4. "Westward Ha!" by S.J. Perelman (Simon & Schuster, 1948).

Seventy years ago "nonsense" was an honored subclass of American humor, heavy on pointless paradox and wordplay for its own sake. The closest thing to nonsense that's worth reading today: the short pieces of S.J. Perelman, onetime scriptwriter for the Marx Brothers.

His work can seem bloodless and slight--he created nothing as heartfelt as Jack Keefe or as charming as Thurber's Columbus--but for sheer verbal virtuosity, for his dizzy manipulation of language, Perelman deserves a place at the top of the trade.

"Westward Ha!" is an account of a trip to the Far East ("The whole business began with an unfavorable astrological conjunction, Virgo being in the house of Alcohol"). As a travel book it is more closely tethered to reality than most Perelman stuff and thus easier to enjoy. The witty illustrations by his friend Al Hirschfeld are lagniappe.

In case you were wondering about that last sentence (I know I was!):

la·gniappe
NOUN: Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi 1. A small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer's purchase. 2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit.

I hope the books are less ... pretentious in their writing than the recommendation, which would be an unexpected gift, indeed.

Lagniappe.

Sheesh.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

G'day, Mac!

There's nothing quite like a bored Marine in the combat zone. Except for a Marine who can do a decent Crocodile Hunter impression. And has a camcorder to capture the results.

Very, very funny.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Religion of Peace update

The Multi-Culti Left wants us to believe that America has no right to lecture the rest of the world about morality; our history is replete with examples of racism, cruelty and genocide (or so they say), thereby knocking us off our high horse.

The Left reflexively makes common cause with the non-European, non-Judeo-Christian societies -- despite the absence of ... sensitivity toward alternate lifestyles in much of the kumbiyah-esque regions.

So it comes as a bracing dose of reality of see what's happening in the Muslim world, courtesy of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), whose experts translate the articles and programs we'd never know about without their help.

Take this one, for instance, detailing the fascinating career of a Koran-following, Sharia-enforcing Saudi executioner.

Reporter: "This is the most renowned executioner in Saudi Arabia, Abdallah Bin Sa'id Al-Bishi, who carries out the executions. His sword delineates the border between seriousness and play. There is no negotiating with him once the heads have ripened. When it's harvesting time, he is the most suited for the job."

Abdallah Al-Bishi: "I started to work in this field after the death of my father - about a week or 10 days after his death, in 1412 [1991-92]. I was surprised that the people who supervise this field summoned me, saying I had a mission. Allah be praised. Of course, I did not have swords or anything back then, but I used the swords of my father, may he rest in peace, and carried out the execution. My first mission was to execute three people."

Reporter: "Abu Bader's swords have cut off a hundred heads and more. His eldest son, Badr, is training in the same profession. He inherited this profession from his father, Sa'id Al-Bishi. He remembers how, when still a small boy, he accompanied him to the beheading of a criminal in Mecca. That sight, Abu Badr says, was the turning point in his life."

[...]

First TV host: "Like we said at the beginning of the show, the executioner Abdallah Al-Bishi will be joining us shortly. He is delayed because he is busy carrying out an execution. He is coming to the show straight from work, and will be joining us soon.

[...]

First TV host: "Do you cut off hands, or do you just do beheadings?"

Abdallah Al-Bishi: "Yes, yes. I carry out the punishment of cutting off thieves' hands, as well as the cutting off of a hand and a leg on alternate sides, as is written in the Koran."

[...]

Second TV host: "Abdallah, what was your most difficult beheading? Have you ever beheaded someone you knew?"

Abdallah Al-Bishi: "Yes, I have beheaded many people who were my friends, but whoever commits an offense brings it on himself."

[...]

First TV host: "When you behead more than three or four people at once, does it affect you? My second question is: Do you need a break between executions? Does it affect you or not?"

Abdallah Al-Bishi: "Allah be praised, there is nothing to it. Three, four, five, or six - there is nothing to it. It's entirely normal. An execution is an execution, and as long as the person stands straight... As long as the person stands straight, it makes our job much easier."

[...]

First TV host: "Are you training your eldest son Badr or one of his brothers to do the same job in the future, especially since you inherited this profession from your father?"

Abdallah Al-Bishi: "Allah be praised, Badr is about to be appointed to the position in Riyadh.

To get the full flavor, read the rest of the transcript, or, if you can stomach it, watch the video.

It's like something out of the Middle Ages. Will someone please explain to me how the self-loathing Western elites can continue to insist that we're in no position to judge? That our culture is cruel and coarse, but the rest of the world is populated by tree-hugging pacifists and Jimmah Carter-worshipping yabbos.

MEMRI should be on your daily reading list, for an unfiltered look at what the Muslim world is saying when they think you're not listening.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:20 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack