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August 31, 2007

Wanna see my nightmare?


I've tried to think of something profound to say about this -- other than, "Holy crap!" -- but words fail this arachnophobe.

WILLS POINT, Tex., Aug. 29 — Most spiders are solitary creatures. So the discovery of a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is causing a stir among scientists, and park visitors.

Sheets of web have encased several mature oak trees and are thick enough in places to block out the sun along a nature trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, near this town about 50 miles east of Dallas.

The gossamer strands, slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk. The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds.

Allen Dean, a spider expert at Texas A&M University, has seen a lot of webs, but even he described this one as “rather spooky, kind of like Halloween.”

Mr. Dean and several other scientists said they had never seen a web of this size outside of the tropics, where the relatively few species of “social” spiders that build communal webs are most active.

Aye, carumba! This one's good for weeks of nightmares.

Holy crap!

UPDATE

Thanks to andrewdb, who left a comment with this link. And don't miss out on this one, either.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Where are the military historians?

David French offers this observation about the ignorance in academia about all things martial:

It is fascinating to me that the shrinking pool of true military historians has corresponded almost exactly with the rise of an almost-total academic consensus on military matters. As academic ignorance has increased, so has the academy’s sense of certainty on military matters.

Sadly, students don’t realize that the English or sociology or even history professor who is sneering about “Bush’s war” knows virtually nothing about the facts on the ground, knows nothing about counterinsurgency, and knows nothing about the history of the region other than what they can read in the Nation or in the latest Chomsky tome.

With history departments overrun with critical race and gender theorists, the opinion of groups like “Historians Against the War” becomes no more relevant or informative than the opinions of a (hypothetical) competing group called “Mary Kay Beauty Consultants Against al Qaeda”. After all, what can experts in “Medieval sexuality” or the “oppressed pregnant body” teach us about Fallujah or Anbar?

I posted previously about Victor Davis Hanson's essay on the lack of military historians in academia here.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Our GIs fear lawyers more than death

The rules of engagement under which our troops fight represent the unrealistic -- some might say insane -- belief that wars can be fought in a surgical, antiseptic fashion. This expectation is risible, propounded only by politicans who have never served in harm's way and academics who have never studied military history.

Blogger Herschel Smith puts the current dysfuntional rules in historical prespective, before turning to a real-world example of how bad things have become for our fighting men.

A recent Washington Times commentary gives us food for thought concerning application of rules of engagement in combat action in Afghanistan.

Now that Marcus Luttrell’s book “Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10″ is a national bestseller, maybe Americans are ready to start discussing the core issue his story brings to light: the inverted morality, even insanity, of the American military’s rules of engagement (ROE).

On a stark mountaintop in Afghanistan in 2005, Leading Petty Officer Luttrell and three Navy SEAL teammates found themselves having just such a discussion. Dropped behind enemy lines to kill or capture a Taliban kingpin who commanded between 150-200 fighters, the SEAL team was unexpectedly discovered in the early stages of a mission whose success, of course, depended on secrecy. Three unarmed Afghan goatherds, one a teenager, had stumbled across the Americans’ position.

This presented the soldiers with an urgent dilemma: What should they do? If they let the Afghans go, they would probably alert the Taliban to the their whereabouts. This would mean a battle in which the Americans were outnumbered by at least 35 to 1. “Little Big Horn in turbans,” as Marcus Luttrell would describe it. If the Americans didn’t let the goatherds go — if they killed them, there being no way to hold them — the Americans would avoid detection and, most likely, leave the area safely. On a treeless mountainscape far from home, four of our bravest patriots came to the ghastly conclusion that the only way to save themselves was forbidden by the rules of engagement. Such an action would set off a media firestorm, and lead to murder charges for all.

It is agonizing to read their tense debate as Mr. Luttrell recounts it, the “lone survivor” of the disastrous mission. Each of the SEALs was aware of “the strictly correct military decision” — namely, that it would be suicide to let the goatherds live. But they were also aware that their own country, for which they were fighting, would ultimately turn on them if they made that decision. It was as if committing suicide had become the only politically correct option. For fighting men ordered behind enemy lines, such rules are not only insane. They’re immoral.

The SEALs sent the goatherds on their way. One hour later, a sizeable Taliban force attacked, beginning a horrendous battle that resulted not only in the deaths of Mr. Luttrell’s three SEAL teammates, but also the deaths of 16 would-be rescuers — eight additional SEALS and eight Army special operations soldiers whose helicopter was shot down by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade.

“Look at me right now in my story,” Mr. Luttrell writes. “Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it’s worth: If you don’t want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.”

It might have been that firing on the goatherds would have divulged their position to the enemy. But assuming the accuracy of the scenario given to us above, i.e., it is possible for Luttrell and his team to have killed the goatherds and avoided the combat caused by divulging their position, then a different choice should have been made in this instance.

Another complicating factor is that the Luttrells’s team could only surmise that the goatherds would give away their position. They could not know with absolute certainty. In the end, they were right in their suspicion, but either way, the moral of the story is that in such situations certainty is not possible and thus should not be required.

[N]o one wants to see teams of U.S. forces hamstrung by rules that are made out to be rigid and inflexible when taught to them, but which cannot possibly be applied that way in a broken and complex world. Latitude and professional judgment should be the order of the day.

Unfortunately, politicians and lawyers have forced the troops into the unbelievable position of choosing death and defeat over survival and victory. Because death in battle is preferable to dishonor in a court of law.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:32 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 29, 2007

Archaeological barbarism in the Holy Land

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is at the summit of the Western Wall, the most sacred site in Judaism. The Arabs who have been ceded control of the site by cowardly Israeli politicians are engaged in acts of archaeological barbarism, wreaking havoc on the Temple Mount in a manner that has more in common with dogs pissing on trees to mark their territory than maintaining a historical location of great importance to more than one faith.

Shocking, shameful, and appalling.

Go here and sign the petition, before it's too late.

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August 28, 2007

It's straw poll time

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August 27, 2007

Kerry gets another chance ...

Beldar makes Sen. John Kerry a generous offer.

Why do I suspect the failed presidential candidate will say, "Non, merci!"

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Always faithful

This is a tremendously moving tribute to Marine Cpl. Frank Clark Fisher, and to Lance Cpl. William D. Mignini of Baltimore, 2nd Lt. Clifton B. Robertson of Los Angeles, Cpl. Raymond Fort of Arizona and Cpl. John A. Jensen of Washington State, from the kid who never forgot his Cousin Frankie.

May G-d bless and watch over all our fighting men, especially our Marines, and Navy Corpsmen like Doc Drake, who care for them.

Semper Fi!

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

They're horrifically good!

How about a series of TV commercials from Spain (I think) for Doritos, each one done in the style of a famous horror movie.

Some are pretty intense, others are funny (check out the zombies in No. 11), but they all look great.

Awesome ad campaign ... but for the fact that they don't make me want to eat the chips, and are likely to scare the bejabbers out of any kids in the room.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 26, 2007

FNS: Bill Moyers gets spanked

Chris Wallace just delivered a world-class verbal beating to taxpayer-supported windbag Bill Moyers, the likes of which I've never seen on a Sunday morning news show.

Wallace was responding to a letter from Moyers, who was unhappy with last week's interview with Karl Rove.

Here's how it went down. Rove, the political strategist widely credited with Pres. Bush's early successes and the surprise GOP congressional victories in 2004, announced his resignation from the president's administration earlier this month.

He sat down for an interview with the Wallace on August 19, one that took up half Fox News Sunday's airtime; Rove answered a variety of questions, but also refused some, citing executive privilege.

Wallace moved to Rove's status as the Boogeyman of the political Left.

WALLACE: When you disclosed on Monday to the Wall Street Journal your plans to leave, you said the following, "I'm not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob." Question: Who's the mob?

ROVE: Well, we were — this particular context, we were talking about — Paul Gigot asked me, "Well, you know, don't you think the people on Capitol Hill who are after you are — you know, are you leaving because of them?" And so I was referring to this gaggle of politicians on the Hill who seem to be after me. It's interesting. A week or two ago, there was an article in one of these Hill publications where they quoted the Democrat staffers as saying, "Rove is the big fish." You know, I feel like I'm Moby Dick and we've got a couple people on Capitol Hill auditioning for the role of Captain Ahab. But look. I'm going to make a decision and made a decision a year ago on what's best for my family, not on the basis of any consideration about what they will do. They'll keep after me. Let's face it. I mean, I'm a myth, and they're — you know, I'm Beowulf. You know, I'm Grendel. I don't know who I am. But they're after me.

WALLACE: I'm going to get to that in a second. After you resigned, Bill Moyers — some would say he's part of the mob — went after you as an agnostic who flim-flammed the Christian right. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL MOYERS, JOURNALIST: You have to wonder how all those folks on the Christian right must feel discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a skeptic, a secular manipulator.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Your response.

ROVE: I'm a Christian. I go to church. I'm an Episcopalian. I think he may have taken a comment that I made where I was talking about how — I have had colleagues at the White House — Mike Gerson, Pete Wayner (ph), Leslie Drune (ph), Josh Bolten and others — who I'm really impressed about how their faith has informed their lives and made them really better people. And it took a comment where I acknowledged my shortcomings in living up to the beliefs of my faith and contrasted it with how these extraordinary people have made their faith a part of their fiber. And somehow or another he goes from taking it from me being an Episcopalian wishing I was a better Christian to somehow making me into a agnostic. You know, Mr. Moyers ought to do a little bit better research before he does another drive-by slander.

At the the end of today's show, Wallace devoted the entire viewer-mail segment to Moyers' letter. He spoke to the camera, reading the liberal broadcaster's response, as a graphic of the text appeared on screen.


FNS Moyers quote.jpg


Wallace responded in part, "Of course, you never called Rove. That's reporting 101, but it would have gotten in the way of a tasty story line about a non-believer flimflamming the Christian right. I guess Bill, reporting is easy when you don't worry about the facts."

Take a look at the video:



Ouch! That was a pundit beatdown, something Moyers -- who cultivates a thoughtful, sweater-clad image, sort of a Mr. Rogers of the Left (when he's not hurling invective-filled broadsides at conservatives he loathes) -- isn't used to.

PBS took some flak, too, for Moyers' comments on his taxpayer-funded program.

Rove called the PBS ombudsman to complain.

“If someone says he is a believer, why is that not accepted? He (Moyers) has decided he will be the judge and the jury about whether I’m a believer. He attributes this to unknown parties and then defends it in a letter to Chris Wallace, with no personal interface with me at all. How does the San Antonio Express know? They don’t. They don’t know me well. He (Moyers) then relies on a blogger who says ‘I could be wrong here.’ Well, he is wrong.”…

My faith is my business. This is just beyond the pale.”

The PBS ombudsman noted that most of the mail to him was anti-Moyers.

Will someone remind me why I -- and millions of other taxpayers -- pay Moyers' salary, when there are hundreds of channels available to TV viewers, many (read, "most") only too happy to air anti-BushChaneyRoveHalliburton propaganda masquerading as impartial reporting?

Moyers could easily find a home for his attacks on a variety of nets sympathetic to his world-view: ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN are all buying what Moyers is selling. And it lets the taxpayers off the hook, too.

Sounds like a win-win.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 25, 2007

Firearms for Dummies

The Dissident Frogman provides a video rebuttal to press reports featuring an Iraqi woman holding what were said to be the bullets fired at her house by American forces.

It's hilarious, if you know anything about shooting.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Time to go shopping

The Smallest Minority says something's going on with the price of ammunition; riflemen and pistoleros should pay close attention.

Heard this afternoon at a local gun shop (I paraphrase):

Sept. 1, expect a 22% retail price increase.

Nov. 1 or thereabouts, expect a 13% retail price increase.

Jan. 1 or thereabouts, expect a 35% price increase.

That's an 86% increase in less than six months. The person relating this information was standing behind the counter, not in front of it.

Take this as you wish, but I think I'll be stocking up on components before the end of the year.

UPDATE: Confederate Yankee has an excellent post concerning ammunition availability and pricing. It isn't just metals pricing nor the war. Demand is at an all-time high from police agencies - and the cops buy their ammunition not from the Lake City Arsenal, but from the same manufacturing plants that you and I do.

Beat the increase, my friends, and stock up. You'll make your wallet happy and upset the GFWs, too.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How's that gun ban working out for England?

Reason takes a look at the U.K., ten years after most guns were banned.

Following the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, in which seventeen people were killed by a man armed with two 9mm pistols, Britain passed a law outlawing the ownership of most handguns, despite researchers finding "no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession." It's a law so severe that the Britain's Olympic shooting team is forced to train abroad, lest one of its members try to shoot up a grammar school. So how effective has the law been? A doubling in gun-related crimes since the ban, naturally. The London Times on the spate of gun crime in Merseyside:

Senior police officers have been warning for several months that a growing number of teenagers in big cities are becoming involved in gun crime.

The age of victims and suspects has fallen over the past three years as the availability of firearms in some cities has risen. Liverpool and Manchester are the cities where illegal guns are most readily available, with criminals claiming that some weapons are being smuggled from Ireland. Sawn-off shotguns are now being sold for as little as £50, and handguns for £150.

Despite a ban on handguns introduced in 1997 after 16 children and their teacher were shot dead in the Dunblane massacre the previous year, their use in crimes has almost doubled to reach 4,671 in 2005-06. Official figures show that although Britain has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the world, firearm use in crime has risen steadily. This year eight young people have been killed in gun attacks: six in London and one each in Manchester and Liverpool.

According to the Times, Merseyside alone has seen 552 "gun crime incidents" this year, but, miraculously, only 8 murders.

Well, whattaya know? Criminals pay no attention to gun bans, whilst law abiding citizens (aka, "victims") turn in their weapons and unilaterally disarm.

Shocking.

Americans are often urged to emulate the supposedly more sophisticated Europeans when it comes to social policy, foreign policy, enviro policy; you name it, they do it better than us rubes.

Based on poor John Bull's experience, I'd hope that the gun prohibitionists would be willing to concede the failure of their policies, but I'm not holding my breath. Real-world consequences aren't nearly as interesting to them as forcing reality to conform to their theories about how the elimination of guns ought to work.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Celebrity justice

What is it with the criminal justice system and celebrities? Americans traditionally have delighted in the troubles of the rich and famous, a rejection of the respect (or toadying) often given to 18th century European royalty. The former colonists -- now Americans -- established a society that strove to be meritocratic, and no part of America was (supposedly) better at ignoring one's social status than the justice system.

Yeah, right.

Although some defense attorneys may be skeptical, I've never seen my office file more serious charges against a poor black or latino defendant than we would against a rich, white one, and I have heard many DAs complain about a judge who would give an unconscionably light sentence to an upper-middle class defendant, something he'd be loathe to do for a poor latino fieldworker.

It's even worse when you throw in an (supposedly) attractive celebrity.

A few months back Paris Hilton's early release unleashed a torrent of criticism on L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca. This past week came word that Nicole Ritchie spent 82 minutes in custody, satisfying a four-day jail sentence for DUI.

It wasn't the first time for the anorexic, no-talent daughter of pop-star singer Lionel Ritchie, but it was the most egregious offense. She was driving the wrong way -- against traffic -- on the Burbank Freeway. When the police arrived, she was parked, jabbering on the cell phone. Ritchie admitted being high on Vicodin and smoking pot before driving. That she avoided killing anyone is only a result of pure luck -- and the quick reflexes of the other drivers who managed to avoid a head-on collision.

The spoiled, do-nothing, know-nothing celebrity had previously been convicted of DUI, when she had a blood alcohol level of .15 percent; and was later cited for driving on a suspended license and possessing heroin.

The wrong-way freeway conviction netted her the laughable four-day sentence, but even luckier for her, she was being handed over to the celebrity-crazed L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

What Would Tyler Durden Do?, a blog about Hollywood and celebrities, commented on the incident (and Lindsay Lohan's recent plea bargain) in the post, The Chupacabra served 82 minutes in jail.

It's kind of inspiring to see the LA county sheriffs department and district attorney say "f**k you" so blatantly. They have to know everyone is watching these cases to see if they're going to give celebrities preferential treatment, and yet they do it anyway. They don't give a f**k what anyone thinks, they're determined to not enforce the laws they are entrusted to enforce.

I'm surprised they even made Nicole come down to the jail cell. They should get a portable cell that comes to the celebrities from now on. Maybe one of those inflatable things you jump around in. That's sort of shaped like a cell. Ooo, be sure to get one with a slide. And maybe one of those funnel cake carts too. And a wack-a-mole. People love wack-a-mole. But it's still jail, so therefore you're sentenced to feel only "glee". No "delight", or you're in big trouble.

What he said.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 24, 2007

White supremacists, Islamofascists and other hate-filled thugs

I receive law enforcement e-mail updates from the Anti-Defamation League, in their words, "to assist in the monitoring of extremist groups." This is a useful resource, provided by an organization dedicated to keeping tabs on hate groups that often seem to move below the radar of the media and local law enforcement agencies.

However ... well, let's just say there's a problem with the ADL, one that should become obvious by the time you finish reading this post.

Today's update targets various subsets of the hate culture; these are the headlines from the entries, broken up by the nature of the "extremist group."

White Supremacist Activity

Two Aryan Brotherhood Members to Receive Life Sentences

Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty Again After Jury Deadlocks in Santa Ana Public Enemy Number 1 Trial

Public Enemy Number 1 Member Charged With Murder in Orange County

Felony Hate Crime Assault Charges for Possible White Supremacist in Lakeside

French Camp Hate Crime Suspect Possible White Supremacist Gang Member Neo-Nazi Group Distributes Racist Flyers in Northern California

Three Arrested For "White Pride" Freeway Obstruction in Wildomar

Family of Inland Hate Crime Attackers Must Pay Damages

Trial of Man Accused of Attacking Elie Wiesel Underway in San Francisco

The ADL also discusses the latest unsavory activities of another bunch of thugs.

ISLAMIC EXTREMISM

San Jose Man Indicted on Terror Charges

Let's recap: Eight entries on Neo-Nazis, detailing crimes of violence, distribution of racist materials, and a drunken protest; and one entry on an American Muslim indicted by the feds for conspiring with foreign Muslim terrorists who want to kill Americans and Jews.

Got all that?

Now, let's move on to the last group of hate-filled extremists kept under the watchful eye of the ADL and law enforcement.

ANTI-IMMIGRATION EXTREMISM

Anti-Immigration Protest in Laguna

Minuteman Leader Spoke in Visalia

Anti-immigration Activists Accused of Destroying Migrant Worker Camp

The ADL betrays its own bias, identifying the groups and individuals as being "anti-immigrant extremists." I've never heard the Minutemen -- or any other reputable group -- oppose legal immigration. The issue that infuriates miilions of Americans (as well as those foreign nationals stupid enough to play by the rules) is illegal immigration.

Apparently, being opposed to illegal immigration and participating in an anti-illegal immigration rally -- or attending a speech by the head of a group opposed to illegal immigration -- makes you a radical, violent, hate-filled thug, no different from skin-head Neo-Nazis or Islamofascist terrorists.

Are you okay with that?

Posted by Mike Lief at 02:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Michael Ramirez


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Skeptical about the whole heroin thing

David Copperfield, the British cop who pseudonymously posts at The Policeman's Blog says what many line workers in the sausage factory that is the criminal justice system think -- on both sides of the Atlantic.

I’ve long suspected that heroin addiction may not be as bad as all that. Probably because all the heroin addicts I meet are pathetic losers who would be just as pathetic if they weren’t addicted to drugs. It all strikes me as something of a winge, “Oh, the thing is officer, I just want the help.” “I started taking heroin when a close family friend died.” “I’m not on heroin any more, I’m on a ‘scrip, so I don’t know why I stole the DVD.”

When you compare the worries a heroin addict has (getting a fix, are there any more hot chocolate maxpacks in custody) to the concerns of non-addicted taxpayers (can I pay the mortgage this month, where are my kids, has the wife crashed the car, will I get the sack from work) there doesn’t seem to be any comparison.

The crime argument is even less compelling, “Heroin is so addictive, I have to mug old ladies.” Nonsense. As I look at the addicts coming into custody from the local shopping centre, I cannot believe that the absence of heroin would magically turn them into productive (or failing that, honest) people.

I’ve always had a nagging doubt that everything we get told about addiction is a lie and that heroin addicts get a free ride from honest people who’ve been conned into being sympathetic by the legal and medical establishment. And now I’ve found someone who agrees with me!

I think that Theodore Dalrymple’s “Junk Medicine: Doctors, Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy” is a reprint of “Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureacuracy” Which is a very good book. Dalrymple himself was on the Radio 4 Today programme arguing with a heroin addict, the latter claiming that he has to steal constantly to fund his addiction. Unfortunately, Dalrymple doesn’t come across on the radio as well as he does in his books, which is a shame, because his arguments are very compelling.

So here are five questions about heroin and addiction that I need answering:

1. If addiction is a disease how come it can be cured by group-therapy?

2. If methadone works how come all the people I arrest are on it?

3. If heroin requires so much money, why are so many heroin addicts unemployed?

4. If heroin is so expensive, why do all the addicts I arrest wear designer clothes?

5. If drugs cause crime, why do all the drug addicts I arrest have criminal records beginning before they actually started on heroin?

I think I've asked myself these same questions -- usually while in court, listening to some pathetic loser's unoriginal tale of woe.

Much interesting debate follows in the comments to Copperfield's post.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 23, 2007

Guess who hates clean energy


Interesting. Greenpeace is creating ads attacking Democratic Poobah Sen. Edward Kennedy because of his opposition to a windfarm off the Massachusetts coastline -- something that would lessen our dependence on those eeeeevil oil companies.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Who's reading the paper?

Sippican Cottage explains what's wrong with newspapers -- and why he hasn't read them for ages.

I noticed that there were two sorts of topics in the papers. They were topics I had first-hand knowledge of, and things of which I knew little. And I noticed that without fail, articles written about anything I had intimate knowledge about were absolute nonsense. And I began to notice the little word shifts and shimmies and angles that the authors and editors would use to grind whatever sort of ax they had. And I'm pretty dumb, of course, just like God made us all, but I figured out that it was unlikely that the newspaper was only getting the stuff I knew about wrong, on purpose. And by looking for the method of obfuscation I recognized in things I knew about, I could see what they were trying to fool me with in things I knew nothing about.

You can read the newspaper and find things out, still. But the process is like panning for gold. There's a lot of sand you've got to swish around to get the tiny, glittering pieces of information. And so I abandoned the papers with a heavy heart, because I loved them so. They were the nursemaids of Twain, and Mencken, and Bierce, and a multitude of others that I adore. The people working there now can't even spell, or figure out the difference between nouns and verbs. I wouldn't allow them anywhere near an adjective, even though if they could, they'd print only adjectives. Nouns and verbs lead to the reporting of facts. I think they'd get a rash if they tried it now.

The New York Times et al., like to tell people that the internet is killing their business. Please. I can't be the only one that noticed that the front page is the editorial section now, and the editorial page has the quality and usefulness of unhinged rants. I'm not really in the market for either. And I'm too young to read the obituaries.

I certainly do get my information in glittering pixels every day. But as usual, they're either fooling themselves, or trying to fool you. I buried you, Mr. Newspaper, in a shallow grave, a decade before I saw that magnificent arial text on that tiny little 486 intel computer over a modem. And I'm not interested in whether they're fooling themselves, or trying to fool me, trying to blame the internet.

Because I'm not interested. Period.

Me too, buddy. I long ago cancelled by subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star, not long after I noticed the cat refused to use the litter box when lined with their pages.

I still take the Wall Street Journal, but I get much more news on-line, from a huge number of sources of my own choosing. I read the web version of the local fishwrap, casting a jaundiced eye on the poorly-written articles, the garbled and misleading partial quotes, noting with genuine surprise when they get a story right.

It pains me -- a recovering newspaperman -- to say it, but the papers are truly awful. I can't imagine a scenario where the reportage improves, short of dynamiting the journalism schools and turning it from a profession back into a trade.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Penal idiocy

In the sissyfied society that is 21st Century America, we wouldn't want convicts to get the idea that prison is supposed to be unpleasant -- starting with the menu.

MIAMI — Jewish inmates who follow strict religious diets at Florida prisons are no longer provided meals in line with their beliefs. Muslims must now eat vegan food to satisfy their religious requirements.

The Corrections Department has ended the Jewish Dietary Accommodation Program, which provided kosher meals to not only Jews, but to Muslims as well, because the state prison system does not offer halal food. Cost — and fairness — were cited as factors.

[...]

The department has suspended use of pork products in an attempt to appease religious adherents and will continue to serve vegetarian and vegan meals. It said many Jews and Muslims could choose the vegan option, which is free of any animal products, to adhere to their faiths.

But for the strict followers of kosher and halal diets, it is far from ideal.

[...]

The Corrections Department halted new enrollment in the state's Jewish Dietary Accommodation Program in April — when it had 259 inmates enrolled and another 95 seeking inclusion — and commissioned a review. Last year, the department opened the kosher meal program to non-Jews and officials have feared it would burgeon, along with the bill.

[...]

The state said it costs about $2.66 (euro1.96) daily to serve inmates three regular meals. Kosher meals cost the same, but with costs for disposable containers and transportation, since the food was not prepared in each facility, the price came to about $4.71 (euro3.47) daily. Prepackaged kosher meals would have cost roughly $12 (euro8.84) to $15 (euro11.05) daily per prisoner, according to the department, but also may have come with additional costs for transport and supplementation with additional food items.

A survey included in the study group's recommendations found that nationally, among 34 states that responded, 26 had kosher menus available. Out of 33 state responses, just five offered halal food.

Florida state regulations mandate three meals — at least two of them hot — be served to inmates each day, and that "inmates who wish to observe religious dietary laws receive a diet sufficient to sustain them in good health without violating those dietary laws."

The state was already the target of a still-unresolved lawsuit filed last year by the Florida Justice Institute on behalf of Muslim inmates denied meals in accordance with their diets. It was unclear if the latest move, which was effective last week, could bring further litigation.

Harry Dammer, a criminal justice professor at the University of Scranton who studies religion in prisons, said he did expect more lawsuits.

"The trend is to come up with this one alternative meal that will sort of encompass all of these parties," he said, "and it's not going to be easy to do."

Really? It's not all that difficult; check out what inmates get in Maricopa County, thanks to Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

This year's Christmas dinner in tent city will cost taxpayers only 3 cents per meal. Compare that to the usual cost of 35 cents per meal and you'll agree there's a little ho-ho-ho in this jolly old man.

Arpaio has been in his current job for 14 years ... Arpaio also runs a high school/GED program and an English speaking program. "The inmates need to speak English; my guards don't need to speak Spanish. We're in America."

Criticism of his methods (pink underwear for prisoners, summer temps of 115 degrees in the tents, green baloney, etc.), has not softened Arpaio through the years.

"I just get tougher and tougher. I'm tough, but humane. After all the investigations, I'm still here."

With regard to the quality of the food, other prisons in the State and around the nation will average a dollar to a buck and a half per meal. But Arpaio says he doesn't do it to save money...he does cause "the prisoners deserve to be punished."

"Punished." What a concept.

I'm heartened that Florida has seen the light -- but a real fix won't come until lawmakers change the regulations requiring such gustatory coddling. I'm just as troubled by how many other states cater (literally) to the dietary demands of convicted rapists, killers, dopers and grifters.

Twenty-six states offer kosher food for crooks? Oy vey!

I'd feed 'em all almost rancid pork-based bologna -- Jews, Muslims, everybody. Just one more reason to never want to go back to prison.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 22, 2007

Kim's guide to being a good manager

Kim Du Toit offers his thoughts on the proper role of management in a successful business.

[In 1985] I was offered a job as Group Marketing Manager for one of my retail clients ... a chain which contained several department stores, “super” grocery stores (large, wide range), neighborhood stores, small urban stores, and half a dozen massive hypermarkets: all told, about 180 stores doing about 2 billion rand in sales (about $1 billion in 1985 dollars).

The job required me to supervise the running of the advertising department (four ad managers, several clerks, all working with three ad agencies—yes, our account was that big), the research “department” (a research manager, the work being mostly outsourced to the various research companies), and the signage studio (twenty-odd artists).

I had worked at two ad agencies prior to this, and at the Great Big Research Company when I was hired away, so I had a general idea of where I wanted to go with this job. What I did not know was exactly how the departments worked, how the work was actually performed.

So I called in the advertising managers and the studio head, and gave them a little speech. From memory, it went like this:

“I don’t know how your jobs work, and I’m not going to learn how. I’m not going to ask you for progress reports each day, and I’m never going to ask you ‘How’s it going?’—I expect you to keep me abreast of things, at times where it seems appropriate for you to do so, or only when you have a problem. Otherwise, I will assume you are all doing your job, and everything’s running smoothly.

“Now, about problems: I’m not going to solve them for you, because once again, I don’t know how your jobs work. So if you come to me with a problem, I’m going to chase you out of my office and tell you to find the solution. I expect you to come to me with a problem with two or three possible solutions, and you can’t decide which one would be the best. (Obviously, if there’s only one solution, you don’t have to tell me anything.) If we discuss the solutions, and the ‘best’ solution still doesn’t present itself, then I’ll make the decision, because that’s my job, my responsibility.

“If anyone from another department is giving you any trouble, and you can’t resolve it, tell me and I’ll take it up with their manager. If it’s their manager who’s giving you the problem, tell me and I’ll try to straighten it out with him; or if I can’t, then I’m going to go to my boss, and let him straighten it out after hearing my suggestions—because he too, is going to want options and not complaints.

“Don’t send me memos, because I won’t read them. Talk to me, and if you feel compelled to put the results of our discussion onto paper, go ahead, and put me on copy. Give the memo to my secretary and tell her to file it wherever.

“The mark of a successful manager is how long he could be dead at his desk before any of his staff notices it. I’m shooting for two weeks.”

There were no questions.

[...]

None of this is designed to make me look like some kind of superhero manager. But it is intended to make people think about the proper way to manage people:

1. Give them responsibility to go with their accountability.

2. Force them to live up to your expectations of them. Trust them to do a good job.

3. If they make an honest mistake in an otherwise exemplary job, forget about it, and cover for them if the Corner Office starts causing trouble.

4. Don’t sweat the little things. If someone needs a little extra time off to look after a sick child or have their hair done, let them go.

5. Eschew paperwork and bureaucracy (other than when mandated like for hourly workers and time cards). Show me a manager who demands constant progress reports from his staff, and I’ll show you an insecure manager who doesn’t trust them.

I've had one manager who fit this description; best manager I ever had.

There's a military variation, one mentioned in the comments to Kim's post, that's spot on.

My major points were:

Weekly staff meetings are discontinued. If I don’t know what you’re doing without a meeting, one of us isn’t doing it right.

Weekly inspections are discontinued. If you don’t look good every day, one of us isn’t doing it right.

My door is always open. If you show up in my office, and your boss doesn’t know you’re there, you’re both fired.

Morale and productivity improved dramatically. The only complaints were from those who depended upon obfuscation for their “success.”

The funny thing is, none of this is exactly a secret, yet so few organizations encourage it, even thought it seems to work -- at least with Americans (and Afrikaaners) -- darn near every time.

Will some one explain to me why Kim hasn't been snapped up by an executive recruiter yet?

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 21, 2007

Final approach


I took this shot aboard a battleship, the USS New Jersey (BB-62), during my spring break in 1989, having transitioned from diesel submarines while on active duty in the Navy, to the dreadnoughts of the seas while in the Naval Reserve.

The Jersey was a magnificent ship, powerful yet sleek, capable of astonishing speed (in excess of 30 knots), inflicting massive damage on the enemy (more than 30 miles with her massive 16-inch cannons hurling shells weighing more than 3,000 pounds over the horizon), and protected with armor so thick we joked that if we took a hit from the French-made Exocet missiles that had devastated the British ships during the Falkland Islands War, the appropriate response would be broadcast over the 1MC announcing systems:

"Missile impact, midships, starboard side! Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms!"

What a ship.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The scoop on the "Peace Racket"

City Journal is publishing some of the most thought-provoking articles I've seen in recent memory, like the one I discussed in the previous post below by Victor Davis Hanson. The current issue is a blockbuster, with this piece on the "peace racket" and its tyrant-loving, America-hating founder.

If you want peace, prepare for war.” Thus counseled Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus over 1,600 years ago. Nine centuries before that, Sun Tzu offered essentially the same advice, and it’s to him that Vegetius’s line is attributed at the beginning of a film that I saw recently at Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center. Yet the film cites this ancient wisdom only to reject it. After serving up a perverse potted history of the cold war, the thrust of which is that the peace movement brought down the Berlin Wall, the movie ends with words that turn Vegetius’s insight on its head: “If you want peace, prepare for peace.”

This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it’s wishful thinking that doesn’t follow logically from the history of the cold war, or of any war. For the cold war’s real lesson is the same one that Sun Tzu and Vegetius taught: conflict happens; power matters. It’s better to be strong than to be weak; you’re safer if others know that you’re ready to stand up for yourself than if you’re proudly outspoken about your defenselessness or your unwillingness to fight. There’s nothing mysterious about this truth. Yet it’s denied not only by the Peace Center film but also by the fast-growing, troubling movement that the center symbolizes and promotes.

Call it the Peace Racket.

[...]

At the movement’s heart, though, are programs whose purported emphasis is on international relations. Their founding father is a 77-year-old Norwegian professor, Johan Galtung, who established the International Peace Research Institute in 1959 and the Journal of Peace Research five years later. Invariably portrayed in the media as a charismatic and (these days) grandfatherly champion of decency, Galtung is in fact a lifelong enemy of freedom. In 1973, he thundered that “our time’s grotesque reality” was—no, not the Gulag or the Cultural Revolution, but rather the West’s “structural fascism.” He’s called America a “killer country,” accused it of “neo-fascist state terrorism,” and gleefully prophesied that it will soon follow Britain “into the graveyard of empires.”

No fan of Britain either, Galtung has faulted “Anglo-Americans” for trying to “stop the wind from blowing.” If the U.S. and the U.K. oppose a dangerous development, in his view, we’re causing trouble—Milošević, Saddam, and Osama are just the way the wind is blowing. Galtung’s kind of thinking leads inexorably to the conclusion that one should never challenge any tyrant. Fittingly, he urged Hungarians not to resist the Soviet Army in 1956, and his views on World War II suggest that he’d have preferred it if the Allies had allowed Hitler to finish off the Jews and invade Britain.

The entire article is worth reading, especially for its look at how college students are being taught that America's "obsession" with freedom endangers the entire world, because Americans are acting under the irrational belief that this thing called freedom is actually worth fighting for.

It makes me question the utility of sending our recent graduates on to university, where they are subject to this kind of indoctrination by a professoriat dedicated to undermining every belief, value and characteristic that has made America great.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What we lose when we won't study war

Historian Victor Davis Hanson offers a compelling argument in favor of studying military history, lamenting the current lack of interest in the lessons offered from past triumphs -- and disasters.

Try explaining to a college student that Tet was an American military victory. You’ll provoke not a counterargument—let alone an assent—but a blank stare: Who or what was Tet? Doing interviews about the recent hit movie 300, I encountered similar bewilderment from listeners and hosts. Not only did most of them not know who the 300 were or what Thermopylae was; they seemed clueless about the Persian Wars altogether.

It’s no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history—understood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery, national will, and culture in determining a conflict’s outcome and its consequences—had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less receptive to the subject.

This state of affairs is profoundly troubling, for democratic citizenship requires knowledge of war—and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever.

[...]

Military history teaches us, contrary to popular belief these days, that wars aren’t necessarily the most costly of human calamities. The first Gulf War took few lives in getting Saddam out of Kuwait; doing nothing in Rwanda allowed savage gangs and militias to murder hundreds of thousands with impunity. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin killed far more off the battlefield than on it. The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic brought down more people than World War I did. And more Americans—over 3.2 million—lost their lives driving over the last 90 years than died in combat in this nation’s 231-year history. Perhaps what bothers us about wars, though, isn’t just their horrific lethality but also that people choose to wage them—which makes them seem avoidable, unlike a flu virus or a car wreck, and their tolls unduly grievous. Yet military history also reminds us that war sometimes has an eerie utility: as British strategist Basil H. Liddell Hart put it, “War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.” Wars—or threats of wars—put an end to chattel slavery, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism.

Military history is as often the story of appeasement as of warmongering. The destructive military careers of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler would all have ended early had any of their numerous enemies united when the odds favored them. Western air power stopped Slobodan Milošević’s reign of terror at little cost to NATO forces—but only after a near-decade of inaction and dialogue had made possible the slaughter of tens of thousands. Affluent Western societies have often proved reluctant to use force to prevent greater future violence. “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things,” observed the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. “The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”

[...]

Finally, military history has the moral purpose of educating us about past sacrifices that have secured our present freedom and security. If we know nothing of Shiloh, Belleau Wood, Tarawa, and Chosun, the crosses in our military cemeteries are just pleasant white stones on lush green lawns. They no longer serve as reminders that thousands endured pain and hardship for our right to listen to what we wish on our iPods and to shop at Wal-Mart in safety—or that they expected future generations, links in this great chain of obligation, to do the same for those not yet born. The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, should escape that terrible knowledge.

Military history takes up more shelf-space in my library than any other topic, so it's no surprise that I agree with Hanson's assessment. Only good will come from the study of the martial past; defeat and disaster are the bastard children borne of ignorance, appeasement and pacifism. Choosing victory -- for it is certainly a choice -- instead of defeat begins with Hanson's suggested reading list (at the end of his article).

Get reading.

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

August 20, 2007

Justice is irrelevant in New Jersey

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08192007/postopinion/editorials/jersey_justice_editorials_.htm

Almost as shocking as the execution-murders of three college students in Newark two weeks ago is the governmental - and moral - paralysis that has informed New Jersey's reaction to the crimes.
On Thursday, Gov. Jon Corzine and Newark Mayor Cory Booker proudly announced yet another crackdown on guns - even though the state already has some of the toughest gun-purchasing laws in the county.
But neither Corzine nor Booker has said nearly enough about the systemic failures that led to the slaughter.
Happily, state Senate President Richard Codey gets it.
He and Attorney General Anne Milgram have launched an investigation into the actions of the Essex County criminal-justice system in its dealings with suspected murderer Jose Larchira Carranza, an illegal alien, over the last 10 months.
So why is Corzine sitting around dumb as a doorknob? Why didn't he take the initiative?
Fixing the judicial system that per mitted a violent child molester to go free, allegedly to engineer the Newark murders, demands the immediate, undivided attention of the entire New Jersey governing establishment.
AG Milgram has a lot to look at:
* Carranza was first arrested on Oct. 1 after a bar fight and charged with aggravated assault and weapons possession (using a bottle on three men in the fight). The processing judge set bail at $50,000.
Three days later, Judge JoAnne Watson reduced bail to $20,000, with the consent of the Essex County prosecutor's office. After posting $2,000 cash bond, Carranza was set free that day.
* On Jan. 18, he was arrested on 10 counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, 15 counts of child endangerment and five counts of sexual assault of a child under the age of five.
The same Judge Watson set bail at $200,000.
On Jan. 29, Superior Court Judge John Kennedy reduced bail to $150,000 with the consent of Essex Assistant Prosecutor Dawn Scott.
Carranza posted a $150,000 bond on Feb. 6 and was out the next day.
* On May 3, Carranza was arrested on six counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child, two counts of sexual assault on a four-year-old and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
Judge Michael Ravin set bail at $300,000.
On May 17, Superior Court Judge Thomas Vena consolidated Carranza's two sexual-abuse cases - and lowered bail to $150,000.
As The Newark Star-Ledger reported, the vacationing Vena dropped by his chambers - with neither defense attorneys nor prosecutors present - to reduce and consolidate the bail.
Having already posted $150,000, Carranza walked without having to put up an additional dime.
Prosecutor Margarita Rivera claims she consented to reducing Carranza's bail to $300,000, not $150,000.
But that's irrelevant.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:14 AM

What was that about "free" Canadian healthcare?

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2007/08/17/no-room-at-the-inn/

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/story.html?id=41ccae74-8325-449a-b89f-e68957ca25ae&k=79546

The Dionne quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934, to a humble, French-speaking couple in a farmhouse outside of Callander, Ontario, Canada. They were identical sisters and for the first 10 years of their lives, the five girls were the No. 1 tourism attraction in Canada.

Then came free health care for all Canadians. Which is why the four identical Jepp sisters were born in Great Falls, Mont., instead of Calgary this weekend. The Canadian parents flew 325 miles to get to an American hospital.


Can you imagine being about to go into labor for four births, and then flying 325 miles to get to the hospital in another country? Incredible. Michelle Lang, Calgary Herald, reported:

Their mother, Calgarian Karen Jepp, was transferred to Benefis Hospital in Montana last week when she began showing signs of going into labour, and no Canadian hospital had enough neonatal intensive-care beds for all four babies.

73 years ago, a poor French Canadian mother was successfully able to give birth to five girls in a farmhouse in Ontario, but then the Canadian government took over the health system and — voila — Karen Jepp has to go to an American hospital 325 miles away.

It’s not like Great Falls, Mont., is a teeming metropolis. With 56,215 people, it is slightly larger than Charleston, W.Va. Calgary has more than a million people. This is like being demoted from the Milwaukee Brewers to the Charleston Alley Cats. (OK, they changed the team’s name to West Virginia Power.)

There is a difference between health care and health insurance. In capitalistic America, the concentration is on health. In socialistic Canada, the emphasis is on paying the bills. The story ended with how much the American hospital charged. Looks like a quarter-million bucks for a 5-day stay. Given that it was the quadruple birth of 2-pound babies two months premature, I’d say it was a bargain.

This is not to piss all over Canada. Nice nation. Great people. I’m sure most Canadians like their health system. Just remember, though, that Canada’s backup system is in Montana. Americans spend 15% of their income on health care. That’s why Great Falls has enough neo-natal units to handle quadruple births — and a “universal health” nation doesn’t.

After all, they didn’t fly Mrs. Jepp to Cuba, did they?

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:10 AM

Mark Steyn: Why do we tolerate killer illegal aliens?

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/newark-illegal-new-1813357-carranza-one

At the funeral of Iofemi Hightower, her classmate Mecca Ali wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Tell Me Why They Had To Die."
"They" are Miss Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel, three young citizens of Newark, New Jersey, lined up against a schoolyard wall, forced to kneel and then shot in the head.
Miss Ali poses an interesting question. No one can say why they "had" to die, but it ought to be possible to advance theories as to what factors make violent death in Newark a more-likely proposition than it should be. That's usually what happens when lurid cases make national headlines: When Matthew Shepard was beaten and hung on a fence in Wyoming, Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times that it was merely the latest stage in a "war" against homosexuals loosed by the forces of intolerance. Mr. Shepard's murder was dramatized in plays and movies and innumerable songs by Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, Peter, Paul and Mary, etc. The fact that this vile crucifixion was a grisly one-off and that American gays have never been less at risk from getting bashed did not deter pundits and politicians and lobby groups galore from arguing that this freak case demonstrated the need for special legislation.
By contrast, there's been a succession of prominent stories with one common feature that the very same pundits, politicians and lobby groups have a curious reluctance to go anywhere near. In a New York Times report headlined "Sorrow And Anger As Newark Buries Slain Youth," the limpidly tasteful Times prose prioritized "sorrow" over "anger," and offered only the following reference to the perpetrators: "The authorities have said robbery appeared to be the motive. Three suspects – two 15-year-olds and a 28-year-old construction worker from Peru – have been arrested."
So, this Peruvian guy was here on a green card? Or did he apply for a temporary construction-work visa from the U.S. Embassy in Lima?
Not exactly. Jose Carranza is an "undocumented" immigrant. His criminal career did not begin with the triple murder he's alleged to have committed, nor with the barroom assault from earlier this year, nor with the 31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year-old child, for which Mr. Carranza had been released on bail. (His $50,000 bail on the assault charge and $150,000 bail on the child-rape charges have now been revoked.) No, Mr. Carranza's criminal career in the United States began when he decided to live in this country unlawfully.
Jose Carranza isn't exactly a member of an exclusive club. Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media that he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim named Muhammad accompanied by an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America's newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated that Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia' groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Mr. Muhammad's hair in the only available mug shot. As for his illegal sidekick, Malvo was detained and released by the INS in breach of their own procedures.
America has a high murder rate: Murdering people is definitely one of the jobs Americans can do. But that's what ties young Malvo to Jose Carranza: He's just another killer let loose in this country to kill Americans by the bureaucracy's boundless sensitivity toward the "undocumented." Will the Newark murders change anything? Will there be an Ioefemi Hightower Act of Congress like the Matthew Shepard Act passed by the House of Representatives? No. Three thousand people died Sept. 11, 2001, in an act of murder facilitated by the illegal-immigration support structures in this country, and, if that didn't rouse Americans to action, another trio of victims seems unlikely to tip the scales. As Michelle Malkin documented in her book "Invasion," four of the killers boarded the plane with photo ID obtained through the "undocumented worker" network at the 7-Eleven in Falls Church, Va. That's to say, officialdom's tolerance of the illegal immigration shadow-state enabled 9/11. And what did we do? Not only did we not shut it down, we enshrined the shadow-state's charade as part of the new tough post-slaughter security procedures.
Go take a flight from Newark Airport. The TSA guy will ask for your driver's license, glance at the name and picture, and hand it back to you. Feel safer? The terrorists could pass that test, and the morning of 9/11 they did: 19 foreign "visitors" had, between them, 63 valid U.S. driver's licenses. Did government agencies then make it harder to obtain lawful photo ID? No. Since 9/11, the likes of Maryland and New Mexico have joined those states that issue legal driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Newark is the logical end point of these policies. It is a failed city: 60 percent of its children are being raised in households without fathers. Into that vacuum pour all kinds of alternative authority structures: Mr. Carranza is alleged to have committed his crime with various teenage members of MS-13, a gang with origins in El Salvador's civil war of the 1980s that now operates in some 30 U.S. states. In its toughest redoubts, immigrants don't assimilate with America, America assimilates to the immigrants, and a Fairfax, Va., teenager finds himself getting hacked at by machete wielders.
One could, I suppose, regard this as one of those unforeseen incremental consequences that happens in the darkest shadows of society. But that doesn't extend to Newark's official status as an illegal-immigrant "sanctuary city." Like Los Angeles, New York and untold others, Newark has formally erased the distinction between U.S. citizens and the armies of the undocumented. This is the active collusion by multiple cities and states in the subversion of U.S. sovereignty. In Newark, N.J., it means an illegal-immigrant child rapist is free to murder on a Saturday night. In Somerville, Mass., it means two deaf girls are raped by MS-13 members. And in Falls Church, Va., it means Saudi Wahhabists figuring out that, if the "sanctuary nation" (in Michelle Malkin's phrases) offers such rich pickings to imported killers and imported gangs, why not to jihadists?
"Tell Me Why They Had To Die"? Hard to answer. But tell me why, no matter how many Jose Carranzas it spawns, the nationwide undocumented-immigration protection program erected by this country's political class remains untouchable and ever-expanding.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:05 AM

August 19, 2007

"Duh!" of the Day

Nude nutjobs on glacier.jpg


Does this seem like the most effective way to make their point?

ALETSCH GLACIER, Switzerland (Reuters) - Hundreds of people posed naked on Switzerland's shrinking Aletsch glacier on Saturday for U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick as part of a Greenpeace campaign to raise awareness of global warming.

Tunick, perched on a ladder and using a megaphone, directed nearly 600 volunteers from all over Europe and photographed them on a rocky outcrop overlooking the glacier, which is the largest in the Alps.

Later he took pictures of them standing in groups on the mass of ice and lying down. Camera crews were staged at five different points on the glacier to take photographs.

[...]

The environmental group Greenpeace, which organized the shoot, said the aim was to "establish a symbolic relationship between the vulnerability of the melting glacier and the human body."

Greenpeace said if global warming continues unabated, most glaciers will disappear from the Earth by 2080.

Hey, geniuses! Cold thingies -- like glaciers -- melt faster when warm thingies -- like naked moonbats and photographers and assistants -- are in close proximity.

Take a look at this wideangle view.


Nude nuts on glacier.jpg


Look at all those people, destroying the pristine beauty of this magnificent vista. Why do they hate Nature? Why do they hate Gaia?

How much damage did they do, how much CO2 did they dump into the atmosphere, traveling to the glacier, how much faster did the river of ice melt, thanks to their self-obsessed, fame-seeking stunt.

What a bunch of maroons hypocrites.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

FNS: Rove and Romney's dog

Chris Wallace interviewed Karl Rove for the first half of Fox News Sunday, subjecting the departing political strategist to a grilling about his refusal to testify under oath in front of a hostile, Democrat-led Congress, as well as his role in the Plame-Wilson non-scandal.

Wallace asked, "Why won't you go to Congress and testify?"

Rove answered, "Because of the Constitution," explaining that the separation of powers allows a president to keep confidential his consultations with advisors and staff, adding that the president had offered to allow Rove and other members to answer questions from Congress in a closed-door-session, an offer the Dems rejected.

Wallace persisted, asking Rove about his role in the firings of the U.S. attorneys; Rove smiled and said, "Nice try," saying executive privilege prevented him from answering.

The host said that executive privilege protected the president from the legislative branch, not the press. Rove replied that Wallace was in essence an agent of the Congress in this context, asking the same questions they wanted answered -- and he wasn't gonna play.

The conversation moved on to Plame-Wilson, with Wallace hammering Rove on speaking to the press about the former CIA analyst. Rove said that, when asked by Time Magazine's Matt Cooper about rumors of Plame's involvement in getting her husband -- Joe "I wouldn't know the truth if it bit me in the butt" Wilson -- sent to Niger, he answered, "I heard that, too."

Wallace pressed him for more information, but Rove parried, saying that there was an ongoing lawsuit brought by Plame-Wilson, and he was only going to discuss that which was already a matter of public record.

Rove said that he never confirmed that Plame worked for the CIA, only agreeing with Cooper that he'd been hearing the same kind of scuttlebutt around D.C. Wallace then played three clips from 2003: Pres. Bush saying he'd fire anyone who leaked information about a CIA officer's status; and two clips of former White House Spokesman Scott McClellan denying any involvement of White House staff in the hubbub.

Wallace turned to Rove in a GOTCHA! moment and asked, "Well?"

Rove said -- again -- that he never revealed Plame's status, didn't even know it, and pointed out that if she had been working covertly and protected by the law, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have and would have indicted Richard Armitage, the in-the-pocket-of-the-Dems former State Department big cheese, who has admitted being the source for Robert Novak's column wherein he mentioned Plame and her CIA job.

Wallace asked what Rove thought about Joe Wilson; Rove smiled and threw it back at the host, asking Wallace, "What do you think about Joe Wilson?"

Wallace smiled tightly and answered, "Nice try."

At the end of the show, Wallace read some viewer mail, all of which dealt with last week's interview with Mitt Romney, and his aggressive questioning about the candidate transporting the family dog in a kennel strapped to the roof of the family car -- twenty-four years ago.

One person wrote that it was silly to spend so much time on the matter, adding that people see dogs riding all over the interior of cars -- including on the driver's lap -- as well as in the beds of pickups and the backs of SUVs. Furthermore, twenty-four years ago, kids (and dogs, too) used to ride in the backs of trucks, because it was fun.

But another letter writer was deeply offended by Romney's excuses for the dog's wild ride, particularly the line that the dog "liked" riding in the kennel. Moved to high dudgeon by the candidate's -- presumed -- recklessness, the writer said many dog lovers would refuse to vote for him because of this dastardly 1983 incident.

Well, I'm coo-coo-for-cocoa-puffs about my dog, and I wasn't bothered in the least by Romney's answer (other than the fact that it was kind of weird to justify the conduct by saying that the dog "liked" it). No, what really bothered me was the fact that Wallace wasted so much time during the interview on such an ancient, meaningless story.

Times have changed and so have safety standards and practices.

Like the first letter-writer noted, kids used to ride untethered in every conceivable space in a car. I have fond memories of piling into the back of the Red Bomber, a 1963 Dodge Dart wagon owned by my friend's parents, and having a non-stop roughhouse party -- with that big rear window down, too. Heck, I travelled from L.A. to Humboldt in the back of a stake-bed truck on a camping trip with the YMCA, with nary a safety device to be had, other than bales of hay to cushion the fall if we bounced out.

The question was stupid; it diminished the asker in my eyes. Chris, I'm disappointed in you.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 18, 2007

Flight of the Conchords


This duo, Jemaine Clement (left) and Bret Mckenzie (right), who comprise Flight of the Conchords, are quite funny -- in a droll, off-kilter way; their humor is very ... British -- even though (yes, yes, I know!) they're from New Zealand.

Clement may look vaguely familiar; he starred in a series of TV ads for Outback Steakhouse this past year. At the time I thought he was an American actor with a cheesy Aussie accent. I was half right: he was a Kiwi actor with a cheesy Aussie accent.

Anyhow, they have a series on HBO -- that I've never seen -- just renewed for a second season.

Some friends played this video for me; I found it quite funny. Your mileage may vary. More of their stuff can be found on Youtube -- I liked "Jenny," too.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

There is a consensus on global warming -- er, never mind

Joel Schwartz posted the latest findings on global warming over at National Review's Planet Gore; they're sure to increase the temperature in the fever-dream fantasies of the Goreacle and his acolytes.

New research from Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes. Schwartz’s study is “in press” at the Journal of Geophysical Research and you can download a preprint of the study here.

[...]

Based on Schwartz’s results, we should expect about a 0.6 degrees Celcius additional increase in temperature between now and 2070 due to this additional CO2. That doesn’t seem particularly alarming.

[...]

Schwartz is careful to include the appropriate caveats to his results. But he also shows that his estimates are consistent with much of the previous literature on the subject. His study also has the virtue of relying largely on empirical measurements of actual climate behavior during the 20th Century, rather than on climate models.

Stephen Schwartz is a pretty mainstream climate scientist. Yet along with dozens of other studies in the scientific literature, his new study belies Al Gore’s claim that there is no legitimate scholarly alternative to climate catastrophism.

Indeed, if Schwartz’s results are correct, that alone would be enough to overturn in one fell swoop the IPCC’s scientific “consensus”, the environmentalists’ climate hysteria, and the political pretext for the energy-restriction policies that have become so popular with the world’s environmental regulators, elected officials, and corporations. The question is, will anyone in the mainstream media notice?

I'm not holding my breath, waiting for the dinosaur media to run with stories like this; they're too heavily vested in the Goreacle's apocalyptic vision of neocon, Halliburton-based global warming destroying the planet.

At some point, 'though, the growing consensus that there is no consensus on global warming will force its proponents to retreat, issuing carefully worded statements that shift the focus to some new, Americans-suck global crisis.

Posted by Mike Lief at 04:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 15, 2007

Macs are too damn expensive!

At least that's been the common wisdom for years: Yeah, they're nice computers, but you get much more bang for the buck from PCs.

Except that's not really true, at least if you're interested in something more than a stripped-down, bare-bones model, according to the folks at ComputerWorld.

[W]hat I have found in my research is that neither side has a lock on good value. If you start with Apple's relatively short list of SKUs (three or four model variations for each of its lines, such as MacBook Pro, MacBook and iMac) and then look for comparable Windows machines, you'll find that Apple bests the competition in some ways and not in others, but the pricing overall is surprisingly on par.

Only a few years ago, it seemed like a no-brainer that Windows hardware was much cheaper. But if you're talking name-brand hardware, that's just no longer the case.

[...]

Let's look at some hard numbers. I started my research with top-of-the-line notebooks -- I spent an hour on Dell's site trying to find the cheapest notebook that offered everything Apple's $2,799 MacBook Pro 17 provides.

[...]

I was a little surprised to find that Dell's Inspiron line doesn't currently offer processing power equaling that of the MacBook Pro. To get a 2.33-GHz Core 2 Duo processor (a 2.4-GHz version isn't available yet), you have to move up to Dell's more expensive XPS M1710 with Vista Home Premium.

Once I did that, though, and tricked out the M1710 with only those extras it had to have to compete with the MacBook Pro, I was surprised to see the Dell come in at a whopping $3,459, some $650 more than the Apple product. Now, it's true that the Dell has some additional features (higher-end video and six USB ports instead of three, for example), but it also weighs nearly two pounds more and is much chunkier (1.69-in. thick, compared with 1 in.).

[...]

Bottom line: When you configure low-end and midrange notebooks and desktops, you'll find that except at the very bottom of the heap, Windows machines are roughly comparable in price to Macs. There are fewer Mac models, so if your needs vary from what Apple has decided on, you may find a Windows model that costs less for you. But Apple's choices make a lot of sense for most people, and when you do the point-by-point comparison, Apple is actually a better value for some needs.

There's more to the article, with head-to-head comparisons of PCs to Macs, with price and feature breakdowns.

But one thing seems clear: price is no longer the deciding factor in deciding whether to escape from Windows to OS-X.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

They did what?


DOCTORS and health workers have been banned from eating lunch at their desks - in case it offends their Muslim colleagues.

Health chiefs believe the sight of food will upset Muslim workers when they are celebrating the religious festival Ramadan. The lunch trolley is also to be wheeled out of bounds as the 30-day fast begins next month ... and [a spokesman said] all vending machines should be removed from areas where Muslims work.

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

He said what?

The [Roman Catholic] Bishop of Breda, [Netherlands], Tiny Muskens, wants people to start calling God Allah.

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Real-life Minority Report

Patterico asks, "What can legally be done about this creep?"

The creep in question is an admitted pedophile, who's all-too-willing to discuss his attraction to little girls, but claims (so far) to not yet have acted on his perverse desires.

Jack McClellan publicizes his attraction to young girls, does the rounds of television news and talk shows, and cooperates with the police.

When Santa Monica police confronted him last week at a Jack in the Box — after he had been spotted in the children’s section of the city’s main library by a nervous mother who called police — he agreed to let officers photograph him.

. . . .

As he did in the Seattle area where he lived previously, McClellan set up a website — now dismantled — to rate the summer festivals, parks and other places he has sought out as venues for catching a glimpse of young girls.

“Basically it advises pedophiles where to go to find children whom he identifies as LGs — little girls — and he rates the locations 1 to 5 with five being the best,” said [Sheriff’s Capt. Joe] Gutierrez, who confirmed he had seen the website and that the “information on it did not amount to the level of a crime.”

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge issued a remarkably broad restraining order against this perv, prohibiting him from coming within 10 yards of any child in California. The consensus amongst legal experts is that the order is impermissibly overbroad.

We'll soon find out; he was arrested twice yesterday, once for violating the ban.

The discussion in the Comments is interesting, with two main factions seeming to be: "He's a loathsome toad but we can't violate his rights to prevent uncommitted crimes," and, "Rights? How about a bullet in the back of his head?"

It's a dilemma, one that really cuts to the core rationale for a legal system: the social compact that the public enters into, forgoing vigilante justice in return for an orderly, safe society.

An amoral monster like this guy tests that agreement, strains it to the breaking point, as parents wait and hope it won't be their kid who finally provides the legal justification for incarcerating him for decades, the price of admission to prison being a broken, battered and abused child.

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

August 14, 2007

More news from Iraq you won't find in your paper

Michael Yon posts another compelling report from the front lines in Iraq. His conclusions about the progress being made -- and who the Iraqis credit and respect -- is eye opening.

There may be little progress [in Iraq] on political goals crafted in America, to meet American concerns, by politicians who have a cushion of 200 years of democracy.

Washington might as well be on the moon. Iraqis don’t respond well to rules imposed from outside their acknowledged authorities, though I have many times seen Iraqi Police and Army of all ranks responding very well to American Marines and soldiers who they have come to respect, and in many cases actually admire and try to emulate.

Our military has increasing moral authority in Iraq, but the same cannot be said for our government at home. In fact, it’s in moral deficit because many Iraqis are increasingly frightened we will abandon them to genocide.

The Iraqis I speak with couldn’t care less what is said from Washington but large numbers of them pay close attention to what some Marine Gunny says, or what American battalion commanders all over Iraq say. Some of our commanders could probably run for local offices in Iraq, and win.

To say there has been no political progress in Iraq in 2007 is patently absurd, completely wrong and dangerously dismissive of the significant changes and improvements happening all across Iraq. Whether or not Americans are seeing it on the nightly news or reading it in their local papers, Iraqis are actively writing their children’s history.

Yon's contact with Iraqis -- as well as American troops -- makes possible a very different account of how we're doing over there, nothing like the "reportage" in the dinosaur media.

Command Sergeant Major, James Pippin, was shot just before Memorial Day. He and his soldiers were in a large ambush near Yarmook Traffic Circle. When the ambush kicked off, Pippin ordered his driver to head straight into the heart of the attack where there were enemy machine guns, rockets and so forth.

Pippin ran out and shot one enemy. The guy had an RPG aimed at the Humvee, but the Humvee came right at him, Pippin jumped out. Pippin told me it was a lucky shot, but he hit the man in the face. A big firefight ensued, and Pippin got some bullet holes, but made his people keep fighting that day until they broke the ambush.

This kind of stuff freaks out the enemy: our guys didn’t get them with jets or fancy machines from a distance, but just rushed into them and outfought them. Despite an enemy with perfect surprise, our guys still killed four of them and CSM Pippin was the only American casualty. Countless acts like these around Iraq are a large part of what has given our guys moral authority with Iraqi Police and Army.

Before the war, the Iraqis clearly questioned the courage of our fighters. They no longer question the courage of our fighters, or the abilities of our military leaders.

Large numbers of Iraqis detested us after the prisoner abuse stories, and some over-the-top attacks on Fallujah, for example. But through time, somehow the American military has managed to establish a moral authority in Iraq. It’s not the only authority, but the military has serious and increasing moral clout.

In the beginning, our influence flowed from guns, or dropped from the wings of jets. Later it was the money. Today, the clout still is partially from the gun, and definitely the money is key, but there is an intangible and growing moral clout and it flows from an increasing respect among Iraqis for our military.

Washington has no moral clout in Iraq. Washington looks like a circus act. The authority is coming from our military. The importance of this fact would be difficult to understate.

In some ways, Iraqis and Americans are very much alike; two peoples joined by a common contempt for Washington politicians, as well as a deep affection for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

As Yon points out, the courage of our fighting men not only inspires our allies, it also undermines the fighting spirit of our enemies. Why do I suspect that those Americans opposed to the war do not count themselves amongst those inspired by the fighting prowess of the U.S. troops?

The rest of Yon's dispatch features more vivid details and thoughtful observations from the frontlines of this war, with photos that are often breathtaking.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

And the say TV wasn't edgy in the old days ...

Merv Griffin, the billionaire creator-producer of gameshows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, died this week. Griffin, who got his start as an overweight crooner during the bigband era, dropped the weight and got a movie contract, but I first saw him on his TV talkshow, a staple of my childhood during afternoons at my Grandmother's apartment.

One thing I most definitely don't remember seeing is this 1974 comedy routine by perrenial presidential candidate Pat Paulsen.

It is jaw-droppingly politically incorrect; Merv and his guest flee the stage a minute into it, and you'll not be surprised when you learn it never aired.

Paulsen -- the most droll of comics -- makes his point about ethnic stereotyping in a bit of absurdist theater that is either in unforgivably poor taste ... or a brilliant way of making racist humor look ridiculous.

Don't watch it if you're easily offended.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 13, 2007

Pithiest campaign commentary ...

Comes from Jim Geraghty, over at National Review's Campaign Spot.

Tonight, Tommy Thompson pulled the plug on his presidential campaign.

When asked how they were taking the news, both of his supporters said they were disappointed.

Thompson gave us the most idiotic moment in last week's debate. At the end, each candidate was given a free-form question to talk about something transformative in his life. He started babbling about all the women in his life who had breast cancer -- and it was a tragically long list.

Then Thompson stared into the camera with that befuddled expression and gravely announced that if elected he'd cure breast cancer by the end of the Thompson Administration.

Huh?

Wrong -- and weird -- on so many levels. Politicians pandering on a disfiguring, potentially fatal illness is distasteful; personally guaranteeing a cure takes it to a new high (or low).

Why this illness? Why not testicular cancer? No joke -- a friend's brother was dead within months of being diagnosed. It's a fast-moving killer, but not a particularly media-friendly disease.

Why not eliminate heart disease, which kills more people each year than all cancers combined?

If a candidate really wanted to make a difference, tell the audience to get off their fat asses, put down the chalupas and start exercising; obesity is a completely curable condition adversely affecting millions of Americans and the cure is already known: You can pack it in faster through your piehole than you can get rid of it on the other end.

But we all know that Thompson figured he'd snag the women's vote with his breast cancer ploy -- a more effective strategy than telling the voters they're fat and lazy.

Over at Power Line, Paul Mirengoff discusses why Thompson -- a partner at his lawfirm -- never seemed to gain traction with the voters.

Thompson said, "I felt my record as Governor of Wisconsin and Secretary of Health and Human Services gave me the experience I needed to serve as President, but I respect the decision of the voters."

Thompson is correct about what he brought to the table. He was a hugely popular governor with a strong record of innovation. His work as HHS Secretary was also widely respected. If credentials and track record were the key to running for president, Thompson certainly would have been a first tier candidate, just as Orrin Hatch would have been in 2000. On the Democratic side, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd would be leading contenders this cycle. Barack Obama and John Edwards would be blips.

Why can't candidates like Thompson, Hatch, Richardson, Biden, and Dodd get traction in the modern era? The three factors that occur to me are (1) television, (2) the vastly diminished influence of party leaders in the selection process, and (3) the discounting of, and indeed near-contempt for, experience gained in Washington.

The problem with the de facto disqualification of uncharismatic contenders and the bias against Washington experience is not that the process fails to produce nominees with good credentials and track records. For the most, it does produce such candidates, and likely will do so again this year. The problem is that it effectively reduces the number of high caliber contenders for the nomination, and thus increases the likelihood that the well credentialed contender who obtains the nomination will be flawed in other respects.

With all due respect to Mirengoff, his analysis seems suspect when he includes Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Orrin Hatch as examples of well-qualified candidates. They exemplify the very essence of Washington insiders, backslappers, two-faced dissemblers -- in Hatch's case, far too interested in maintaining the gentlemen's club atmosphere of the Senate to notice that the Democrats have been fighting a bare-knuckles political street fight for years, comity be damned.

That the party base rejects men like this for the nomination is a good thing; that we end up with nominees like Dole and Kerry is not.

The field begins to shrink; who will be the next to leave the stage? My money's on Brownback and Tancredo.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 12, 2007

The Mexifornia version of "The 300"


Perhaps you've seen the ads heralding the video release of The 300, the dramatic retelling of the Spartans' last stand at Thermopylae, as envisioned by author/artist Frank Miller; they feature the incredibly ripped actor Gerard Butler portraying King Leonidas, shouting through gritted teeth, "Spartans! This is where we hold them! This is where we fight! This is where they die!"

Heady stuff.

King Leonidas also tells his warriors, "Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty ... For tonight, we dine in hell!

Remember that line.

Anyhow, the Latino Comedy Project has released a parody that is so on-target that it inspires laughs and grimaces in equal measure.

Hot Air has the CNN report detailing the reality underlying the parody.

Posted by Mike Lief at 04:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Video: Terrorist's family full of crap

The extensive network of surveillance cameras in Jerusalem's Old City provides a graphic rebuttal to claims -- put forth by the dead terrorist's family -- that Israeli security forces murdered an Arab in cold blood.

In reality, the video reveals a brazen, homicidal terrorist who stalks the guards, snatches a pistol and shoots the Israeli at point-blank range.

Of course, the video also reveals the wounded Israeli's partner chase down and dispatch the assailant, reducing by one the number of terrorists Israel needs to worry about.

Bravo.

Update: And now we have confirmation that this was not a lone nutjob, looking to commit suicide, but a terrorist scumbag, carrying out the orders of a depraved, terrorist organization.

But it's more accurate to say that this is an ex-terrorist; he is no more; he has ceased to be. He's expired and gone to meet his maker.

With the terrorists taking credit for this attack, I'm forced to upgrade the previous "Bravo" to a standing ovation for the security guard who reduced by one the number of homicidal maniacs targeting Israelis for death.

I wish a speedy recover to the ten people injured in the shootout.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 08, 2007

It's an internecine Moonbat dogfight

According to The Hill, the non-partisan newspaper covering Congress, the Democratic Party's inability to win any political fights with the Bush administration on the Iraq War has produced what I prefer to call a Psycho Schism -- although more charitable types (like Ed Morrisey) use the less alliterative "split on the Left" to describe the dustup.

The Hill says:

Congress’s failure to secure a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq has split anti-war activists on the tactical question of whether to attack Democrats, who now control Capitol Hill.
The split has also underlined accusations among some activists that MoveOn has abandoned its credentials as an issue-based advocacy group and now instead provides cover for Democratic Party leaders.

Anti-war activists throughout the country are united in spending August pressing lawmakers to bring U.S. troops home. But tensions within the movement have been bubbling for months over tactics and whether their fire should be aimed exclusively at Republicans.

The divisions underscore the tough position Democrats are in — short of the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass binding restrictions on the war and far shy of the two-thirds majority in both chambers required to override a presidential veto.

Ed Morrisey says the Democrats who haven't drunk the Kool Aide know the ideological fervor (foam-flecked, rabid anti-Western and anti-Americanism with a dash of Bush Derangement Syndrome) of the hard-Left wing of their party is ballot-booth poison.

The sixty-vote threshold argument may have worked until last weekend. When the Bush administration pushed for its controversial FISA rewrite -- which gave some conservatives pause -- they didn't use the 60-vote threshold to their advantage to block it. Instead, sixteen Democrats crossed the aisle to give Republicans 60 votes to pass it.

In effect, a substantial number of Democrats endorsed and legitimized a program that they decried as unconstitutional in the last elections, on the way to a majority that was supposed to end that program.

Now the hard Left feels betrayed, and they should. MoveOn, however, has continued to engage in the kind of enabling one needs to hang onto a majority in Congress. They have revealed themselves to be an annex of the Democratic Party rather than any kind of issues-based political action group. Despite the obvious failures of their majority to deliver on their hysterical and unrealistic election promises, MoveOn keeps prescribing the hair of the dog as the path to those goals.

Quite obviously, the Democrats have decided that they cannot win the next election on the platform of United for Peace and Justice, or Code Pink, or Voices for Creative Non-Violence. They represent the fringe of American political thought, and that path takes the Democrats right back to 1995.

That's why they can't vote to defund the troops in Iraq, and why they couldn't stand up to the supposedly-irrelevant George Bush on FISA. In short, they want to take the money from the fringe-Left groups, but they won't deliver on their agendas -- for which we should all be grateful indeed.

That sets up an interesting dynamic for 2008. If the Democrats lose the fringe-Left to Ralph Nader again, with MoveOn losing that edge in financing for its more mainstream veneer, they could find themselves unable to hold the House as these groups target conservative Democrats. It could even endanger what should be an advantage for them in next year's Presidential race. This is what happens when political parties and groups overpromise and underdeliver -- which the Republicans found out in 2006.

Thus we have Left and Right in agreement (see the previous post below): the key to a Democratic victory in November '08 depends on the ability to ignore and render powerless the far-Left.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Prospects for Dems dim, according to big-league Lefty

Leftist lesbian professor and cultural warrior Camille Paglia laments the endless campaign, dragging through the dog days of Summer, with a long, l-o-n-g way to go until November after next.

Despite her allegiance to the Democrats, Paglia is afraid that their (mis)handling of the Iraq war all but guarantees a GOP victory and retention of the presidency.

Meanwhile, the war drags on in Iraq, where the worthless Baghdad government has fled the blistering summer heat while American soldiers, laden with their battle gear, suffer and die. When will this fruitless exercise in nation building end? No one will ever resolve the eternal hatreds and ethnic rivalries of the Middle East, which have been churning and festering for 5,000 years. The extremist Muslim drama is only half the story.

As I replied to a Salon reader in my last column, yes, if the United States makes a strategic retreat from Iraq, we may well be returning in a decade or two, this time with regional allies. But things will be vastly different: no more happy facade of pacification and reconstruction; no more corrupt protectionism of commercial contractors; no more costly police or military training of volatile, faithless local recruits; no more intrusive neighborhood patrols with our soldiers blown to smithereens by cheap booby traps. It will be real war, heavily applied by air force, with maximum damage inflicted at minimal cost to our troops.

The thick-headed Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triad may have grotesquely bungled the Iraq incursion, but Republicans (barring a breakaway third party) will still comfortably retake the White House next year if my fellow Democrats don't get their act together on the cardinal issue of geopolitics. Terrorism isn't going to go away if and when we withdraw from Iraq. We need to recalibrate our global strategy and more intelligently address the fractured, dispersed nature of jihadism, which is germinating everywhere from Indonesia and the Philippines to the Western world. Throwing billions into the desert morass of Iraq isn't getting us anywhere -- especially with our porous domestic security and our alarmingly decaying infrastructure needing urgent remediation.

I disagree with some of her premises, but think she's right on the political analysis; despite the bumbling of the Stupid Party, the candidates likely to win the GOP nomination (Romney, Giuliani, Thompson) are not in favor of cut-and-run in Iraq -- and the American voters will not reward the Democrats for their feckless attitude on national security, Bush fatigue notwithstanding.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 07, 2007

Inventing Interpreting the law


Posted by Mike Lief at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Defending the U.S. against the law

Who would be so stupid as to think that the U.S. ought not be allowed to defend itself? Who would buy into the lunatic arguments of animal rights groups that the U.S. Navy cannot use sonar designed to detect the submarines of our nation's enemies?

Allow me to introduce you to Florence-Marie Cooper, military strategist, marine biologist, anti-submarine warfare expert, and -- did I mention? -- federal judge.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The United States Navy was on Monday barred from using an ear-splitting sonar in upcoming wargames off the California coast alleged to be harmful to whales and other marine life.

In the latest twist to a long-running legal saga, federal judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled there was a "near certainty" that the Navy's active sonar was harmful to the environment.

The judge issued a preliminary injunction against use of the sonar after rejecting a request by the Navy to dismiss the case against it lodged by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other environmental groups.

[...]

"(The ruling) confirms that, during sonar testing and training, the Navy can and must protect whales and other marine life in the extraordinarily rich waters off our Southern California coast," NRDC lawyer Joel Reynolds said.

The Navy had argued that the tests were necessary in order to properly train personnel on how to detect quiet submarines.

"The US Navy's use of sonar, and the ability to test and train with it, is critical to the national security of the United States," the government argued in papers before the hearing.

"The proliferation of quiet diesel submarines during the last decade has created a serious threat to the United States and its allies.

[...]

Captain Neil May, assistant chief of staff for training and readiness for the Navy's 3rd Fleet, said after Monday's hearing that the injunction would impact the fleet's ability to train to the required standards.

He said the effects of the ruling was akin to "defending against one of the most lethal predators partially blinded and deaf.

Who do we have to thank for this black-robed idiot? Would it surprise you if I said "Bill Clinton"?

Sigh.

The press release from 1999 -- when Pres. Clinton gave her a lifetime appointment to the federal bench -- provides just a glimpse into this intellectual titan's background.

Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, of Pacific Palisades, California, has served as a Judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court since 1991. Prior to her appointment to the Superior Court, she served as a Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge from 1990 to 1991; a Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner from 1983 to 1990; and a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Los Angeles in 1977. Judge Cooper attended City College of San Francisco and received her J.D., magna cum laude, in 1975 from Whittier College School of Law. Following law school she clerked for Judge Alarcon of the Los Angeles Superior Court from 1975 to 1977; for Justice Alarcon of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District from 1978 to 1980; and for Justice Woods of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District from 1980 to 1983.

Eight years as a federal judge; eight years as a judge in L.A.; seven years as a commisioner; seven years clerking for judges; and one freaking year as a city attorney!

Well, she sounds extremely well qualified to be revising our naval warfighting strategies.

We're doomed.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Ouch!

pencil in brain.jpg

I got a headache just reading about this.

A 59-year-old German woman has had most of a pencil removed from inside her head after suffering nearly her whole life with the headaches and nosebleeds it caused, Bild newspaper reported today.

Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil in her hand when she was four.

"The pencil went right through my skin – and disappeared into my head," Wegner told the newspaper.

It narrowly missed vital parts of her brain. At the time no one dared operate, but now technology has improved sufficiently for doctors to be able to remove it.

The majority of the pencil, some 8cm (3.1 inches) long, was taken out in an operation at a private Berlin clinic, but the 2cm tip had grown in so firmly that it was impossible to remove.

It's still not as miraculous as this guy -- knives are always more impressive than pencils -- but she gets extra points for the duration of the cranial trespass.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Guide to the best (and worst) jurists

The Robing Room is a site where lawyers judge federal judges.

The number of opinions upon which the ratings are based appears to be pretty small, but the comments are interesting.

Check it out.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 06, 2007

Oh, no he isn't!

I'm always disappointed for some reason when I discover an actor I like is a barking-at-the-moon crazy member of a cult Scientologist. It always detracts from my enjoyment of the performance, knowing that he's bought into some ludicrous scam invented by a failed science fiction writer, willingly giving the organization -- famed for bullying critics and using lawsuits against their detractors -- gobs of cash and respectability.

These guys have compiled a list of the Top 10 Secret Celebrity Scientologists; it's a hoot, and you'll be gobsmacked when you hear who was a cult member -- before deciding the group was just too crazy even for him.

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

Where's the outrage?

Interesting how international human rights activists have nothing to say about these public executions.

If you're so inclined, you can see a series of photos documenting the last moments of these men before they're hoisted aloft by cranes and allowed to strangle at the end of their blue nylon nooses, as crowds watch.

The accompanying article explained:

صبح امروز و در ملاعام
عاملان ترور قاضي مقدس به دار مجازات آويخته شدند
خبرگزاري فارس: دو تن از عاملان ترور شهيد حسن مقدس، معاون دادستان تهران و سرپرست دادسراي ارشاد، ساعت 9:40 صبح امروز مصادف با سالروز شهادت وي در مقابل دادسراي ارشاد و در ملا عام به دار مجازات آويخته شدند.*

It's not as exciting as the stoning last month of a man accused of adultery, but the Iranians can't always provide extreme executions.

*I find it rather interesting that the English version of the site doesn't happen to have any links to this story. Are they trying to make it more difficult for the West to track these kind of stories down in English?

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Picture of the day

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Courtesy of a patriotic New Yorker with some serious lawnmower skills.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 05, 2007

Mmmmm, wine

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I stepped outside of my red wine comfort zone and picked up a couple of bottles of white at Costco.

Kim Crawford 2006 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is a light, crisp wine from New Zealand, with a hint of citrus -- grapefruit, I think -- and another fruit I can't quite identify (pear, maybe?) when I inhale deeply before taking a sip. The nose is so appealing my mouth actually started watering -- something I can't ever remember happening with a red.

It's tremendous when chilled, tasty and refreshing on a hot summer evening. We had it with salmon a few nights ago, and with Chinese food tonight; it was great with both.

I hope they still have it at the warehouse.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Challenger disaster explained

This is about the clearest explanation of what happened to the Space Shuttle Challenger I've ever seen, with photos and diagrams, too.

Posted by Mike Lief at 02:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Required reading

Helen says, "I am putting this book on my list."

Not only that but I am going to suggest that it be made compulsory reading for every fatheaded undergraduate and academic, not to mention organizers of art exhibitions.

How can you resist a book called "Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him".

Humberto Fontova, who has already written about Cuba under Fidel Castro, the author of this extremely useful tome, has given a long interview on the subject to CNS News, which has published the first half of it.

To sum up briefly: Fontova describes Che as Castro's Himmler, a psychopathic mass-murderer and trigger-happy executioner, trained by the Soviet military intelligence, the GRU. Eventually, he proved to be too much even for Castro who packed him off to South America, where he proceeded to create mayhem and murder many more people. It seems he was particularly fond of killing young boys.

Interestingly, when captured in Bolivia he showed himself to be an arrant coward. Far from facing the enemy courageously, he pleaded desperately for his life.

I think I'll add this to my list, too.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Good work, Obama

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Pakistani protesters burn a U.S. flag to condemn U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama's remarks, Friday, Aug. 3, 2007, in Karachi, Pakistan. Pakistan criticized Obama for saying that, if elected, he might order unilateral military strikes inside this Islamic nation to root out terrorists. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)


Wasn't the primary critique of the Bush Administration from the Left that Pres. Bush's actions have turned world opinion against the U.S.? That we needed statesmen, ever-so-sophisticated thinkers, intellectuals, to prove that America -- Americans -- care what the rest of the world thinks about us?

Wow.

Mission accomplished, eh?

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

August 04, 2007

Reasons to vote for Rudy

A New York columnist has resurrected an incident from Rudy Giuliani's years as mayor as proof of his unsuitability for the Oval Office.

Gail Collins slams the GOP candidates on a variety of animal-related issues in the NY Times, but Rudy really sets her off with his 1999 attack on a weasel-loving moonbat who called in to a radio show on which the mayor was appearing. The caller had a problem with the Manhattan ban on ferrets -- and reality.

Collins excerpts only a portion of Giuliani's advice to weasel lovers, but you need to read all of it (in this column from another ferret lover); the man is on fire.

"I think you have totally and absolutely misinterpreted the law, because there's something deranged about you. The excessive concern that you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist. Not with me. I'm not insulting you. I'm being honest with you. Maybe no one in your life has ever been honest with you. This conversation is over, David. Thank you. There is something really, really, very sad about you. You need help. You need somebody to help you. I know you feel insulted by that, but I'm being honest with you.

"This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness. I'm sorry. That's my opinion. You don't have to accept it. There are probably very few people who would be as honest with you about that. But you should go consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and have him help you with this excessive concern, how you are devoting your life to weasels."

Have you ever seen a politician more unwilling to kiss PC butt? It's a dream two-fer: taking on animal activists and the mentally ill.

Actually, now that I think about it, that's only a one-fer.

But it still makes me want to vote for Rudy.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:54 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 01, 2007

Your tax dollars pay to dishonor our war dead


More than 54,000 Americans were killed during the Korean War, fighting to push the Communist invaders back across the 38th Parallel. More than 103,000 GIs and Marines were wounded; more than 3,700 were captured by the enemy; and more than 8,100 are still missing in action.

All in all, the United States suffered more than 169,000 casualties from 1950-1954.

When we include the dead, wounded, missing and POWs of our allies (South Korea, Great Britain, Turkey, Australia, Canada, France, Thailand, Greece, Holland, Colombia, Eithiopia, Philippines, Belgium, New Zealand and South Africa), more than 1,000,000 men spilled their blood on behalf of the United Nations mandate to free the Koreans from the Chinese invaders and their Communist allies in the north.

Keep that in mind when you read how your tax dollars are being spent by the "Americans" at National Public Radio.

Mona Charen reports at National Review's The Corner:

I haven't listened to NPR in a while. So glad to see they haven't changed.

At the top of hour news roundup this morning I heard this tease:

"The largest army in the world turns 80 today. We'll go to China to celebrate."

Celebrate? Can you imagine that NPR would mark the anniversary of the US Marine Corps or Army with the word celebrate?

You don't have to be frothing at the mouth about China to find this enthusiasm for the Red Army head snapping.

"Head snapping" doesn't quite capture my sentiments.

Revolting, treasonous, gross disrespect for our war dead, evidence of societal self-loathing approaching pathological levels seem more appropriate.

NPR, celebrating the birthday of a repressive regime's military, responsible for the deaths of millions of people over the last 80 years.

Paid for by you.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack