The future of our civilization may be in doubt

American Thinker: The Mickey Martyr Club:

"Hamas, the Islamofascist party that now controls half the Palestinian population, is giving the world an important object lesson on civilization; or rather, on the crucial difference between civilization and barbarism. In a West that has dulled the edge of its moral sense after years of "all cultures are equal" propaganda, it is high time for us to learn again what seemed so simple and obvious to previous generations: That civilization is better than bloody, vengeful barbarism, both in war and peace.
. . .
the world has been introduced to the Mickey Martyr Club (Music please, Maestro!). Here come the kids marching in. Palestinian toddlers are being taught the glories of suicide-killing the Jews of Israel, using a Mickey Mouse rip-off on Hamas TV. Walt Disney's cartoon mouse is now Mickey Martyr, on his way to paradise-after-death in a thousand bloody shreds.
. . .
war raises the most agonizing moral questions, starting with the decision to kill, because other options have simply run out. Clear thinking about morality is the essence of civilized warfare, and civilized warfare is the only justifiable kind.

Given these considerations, what are we to make of the Mickey Martyr Club on Hamas TV? Has any cause ever discredited itself so completely?

What makes Hamas TV indoctrination of the very young even worse is that Hamas could have a peace agreement with Israel tomorrow. Don't believe that Hamas doesn't know that. They know perfectly well that the great majority of Israelis aspire to peace, and they despise them for it. Hamas represents a profoundly reactionary, fanatical, religious martyrdom creed, straight from the clan vendettas of the desert, twelve centuries ago.

Those tiny kids on Hamas TV could have a good life. They could grow and thrive, if only they were taught to accept their neighbors. All it takes is a decision by the adults, their mothers and fathers.

For Westerners who fastidiously turn their eyes away from Islamic primitivism, the time to take a stand is coming. Soon, no one will have the luxury of sitting this one out"

This rather long article has a good discussion of "just war" on it's way to this disturbing conclusion. It is worth reading in it's entirety at the link above.

Don't make the mistake of believing that Hamas is the only barbarian group and Israel the only victim. They're funded very well by people in other middle eastern countries, including some countries that pose as our allies. Techniques that work in this corner of the Middle East will be used again in Europe and eventually here in the US unless we have the will to stop them in the only way possible - with force.

Diabetes drug Avandia is latest FDA Scandal

Latest drug scare shows need for FDA overhaul - Yahoo! News:

"On Monday, The New England Journal of Medicine rushed out an analysis by prominent cardiologist Steven Nissen of data about patients taking Avandia. It suggests they have a 43% higher chance of suffering a heart attack.

The exact numbers aren't known and may be quite small. Glaxo says that the analysis is flawed and that its own studies show the opposite. Either way, users of the drug have a problem. If Avandia boosts the risk of cardiac disease, that is particularly frightening to diabetics, two-thirds of whom die of heart problems. On the other hand, if Glaxo is right, patients would increase their risk by quitting the drug. The FDA isn't helping them make that choice.

Only as the report came out did the FDA acknowledge potential problems and advise people on Avandia to consult with their doctors. It stopped short of warning against taking the drug. It said it was reanalyzing data that Glaxo had provided 'recently.' Recently would be last August, a full nine months ago.
. . .
The Vioxx scandal should have forced big, quick changes at FDA. It hasn't. Last year, the
Government Accountability Office, Congress' watchdog arm, issued a scathing report describing an agency hobbled by turf battles, insufficient resources, poor management and passivity in tracking adverse reactions once drugs are approved.

The FDA is convening an advisory board of experts in September to look at all the evidence it has about Avandia. But it shouldn't have taken alarm bells from an independent analyst to prompt one - and the September date suggests a disturbing lack of urgency."

This is what happens in bureaucracies - they start out with the best intentions and end up squabbling about internal politics. We taxpayers are not getting the protection we're paying for, and we're not getting the medicine we're paying for either. Perhaps big government solutions are actually part of the problem ...

One key question to always ask your doctor - "does this prescription increase or reduce mortality rates?" In other words, find out if it is proven to make you live longer, or just masks symptoms your doctor doesn't like seeing in your lab tests.

Also, you can always do your own comparisons for interactions with other drugs, vitamins, & supplements you take, One web-site for comparisons is Medscape from WebMD, but there are many others to be found with a simple Google search.

Is Ethanol ready as an alternative fuel?

Hidden costs of corn-based ethanol | csmonitor.com:

"Policymakers and legislators often fail to consider the law of unintended consequences. The latest example is their attempt to reduce the United States' dependence on imported oil by shifting a big share of the nation's largest crop – corn – to the production of ethanol for fueling automobiles.

Good goal, bad policy. In fact, ethanol will do little to reduce the large percentage of our fuel that is imported (more than 60 percent), and the ethanol policy will have ripple effects on other markets. Corn farmers and ethanol refiners are ecstatic about the ethanol boom and are enjoying the windfall of artificially enhanced demand. But it will be an expensive and dangerous experiment for the rest of us.

President Bush has set a target of replacing 15 percent of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) during the next 10 years, which would require almost a fivefold increase in mandatory biofuel use, to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no feasible alternative.

American legislators and policy­makers seem oblivious to the scientific and economic realities of ethanol production. Brazil and other major sugar cane-producing nations enjoy significant advantages over the US in producing ethanol, including ample agricultural land, warm climates amenable to vast plantations, and on-site distilleries that can process cane immediately after harvest.

Thus, in the absence of cost-effective, domestically available sources for producing ethanol, rather than using corn, it would make far more sense to import ethanol from Brazil and other countries that can produce it efficiently."

Lets see, we'll double the cost of food so we can produce fuel that is more expensive per mile than the oil we have sitting in the ground? Sounds like government planning to me.

OpinionJournal - Potomac Watch:

"It's taken politicians a while to catch on to these anti-ethanol vibes, but they've now got the picture. At an agriculture conference in Indianapolis last fall, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson spoke, delivering their usual fare about how ethanol was the greatest thing since sliced corn bread. They expected warm applause; in the past the entire ag community united around helping their brother corn farmers make a buck. But now that ethanol is literally taking food from their beasts' mouths, much of that community has grown less friendly. According to one attendee, Messrs. Daniels, Johanns and Johnson were later slammed with snippy ethanol questions from angry livestock owners, much to their dazed surprise. Word is that even the presidential candidates--who usually can say no wrong about ethanol while touring the Midwest--are having to be more selective about where they make their remarks.

Things are even hotter in Washington, where lobbying groups are firming up their positions against corn ethanol. The hugely influential National Cattlemen's Beef Association has gone so far as to outline a series of public demands, including an end to any government tax credits (subsidies) for ethanol and an axe to the import tariff on foreign ethanol. Put another way, the cattlemen are so angry that they are demanding free markets and free trade--a first. Maybe ethanol really is a miracle fuel. In any event, expect the ethanol call to get harder for Plains state senators such as Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Byron Dorgan."

Note: 60% of corn production has been used to feed animals in the US - those costs have doubled also...

Have you switched to Vista?

KFYI - "The Valley's Talk Station":

"Dell, which is tied with HP as the largest computer maker in the country, quietly announced it was going to offer Windows XP again on models in two of its lines, the Inspiron and Dimension.

This follows an intense series of posts on Dell's 'IdeaStorm' blog, which was designed to allow direct feedback from consumers and end users to Dell's management.

(Dell, if you have not been following the company, has been hammered of late for poor management and terrible customer service.)

'We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings,' said Dell on its blog.

Why is this significant?

This is a clear shot across the bow of Microsoft and sends two messages I think are really interesting:
1. you shipped Vista before it was ready and without any compelling, must-have features and
2. Windows XP is good enough for most people and we don't really care to learn a different way of doing things."

I'm not planning to use Vista for at least a year - Win XP is working fine, and I even have Win98 on some computers. The only person I've talked to who knew someone with Vista said that laptop couldn't connect to their home LAN, despite the best efforts of several computer savvy folks who were strongly motivated to get it working.
Gateway decided to keep offering WinXP earlier this year.

A Cure for Tennis Elbow - Robotic Bagpipe Player

McBlare - Robotic Bagpipe Player:

"'McBlare' is a robotic bagpipe player. It plays an ordinary set of bagpipes using an air compressor to provide air and electro-magnetic devices to power the 'fingers' that open and close tone holes that determine the musical pitch. McBlare is controlled by a computer that has many traditional bagpipe tunes in its memory."

OK - it has nothing to do with Tennis Elbow. I found this at Dave Barry's site: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/

Happy Friday

Not your father's GTI

Video: Unveiling a W12-Powered Volkswagen Golf GTI:

"There's fast and then there's uber fast. The 200hp Volkswagen GTI is pretty peppy in its own right, but the German carmaker was far from satisfied. Thus, they created the Golf GTI W12 650 concept vehicle at Worthersee 2007 in Austria. They're saying that this is 'the ultimate GTI in every way', with its 0-62mph time of just 3.7 seconds. Keep the pedal to the metal and this rabbit on steroids will keep going and going until it tops out at around 325 km/h (201mph)."

Actually a 200 HP GTI doesn't sound too bad - 650 is just a bit over the top ;-)

Seven Stages of Legal Activism

Eliot Spitzer's Pro-Abortion Zealotry | Redstate:

"Most of you should be familiar by now with the Seven Stages of Liberal Legal Activism:

1. It's a free country, X should not be illegal.
2. The Constitution prohibits X from being made illegal.
3. If the Constitution protects a right to X, how can it be immoral? Anyone who disagrees is a bigot.
4. If X is a Constitutional right, how can we deny it to the poor? Taxpayer money must be given to people to get X.
5. The Constitution requires that taxpayer money be given to people to get X.
6. People who refuse to participate in X are criminals.
7. People who publicly disagree with X are criminals."

Regardless of how you feel about the rest of this article, these 7 stages of activism deserve some consideration.

A key question I sometimes ask pastors is whether they want their religious beliefs expressed as the law of the land. If they do, then I walk on - the same should be applied for some of these social issues.

There is an enormous difference between living in a country where abortion is permitted, and living in a country where discouraging abortion is a criminal act. The same is true of many other issues.

I would much prefer that my government not have an opinion on an issue, than have my government regulate what my opinions should be.

Jerry Falwell - RIP

Jerry Falwell -- Say Hello to Ronald Reagan! by Ann Coulter - HUMAN EVENTS:

"No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that 'All men will hate you because of me' than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates [Ann Coulter's] warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals.

Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN."

All the reporting I've ever seen about Falwell has been very one-sided. His fans speak of his generosity & his faith - on balance, I prefer to believe them. The rest of Ann Coulter's column quoted above illustrates how the media frequently does a 180 when conservatives comment (as Falwell often did) on their sacred cows.

Compact Fluorescent Lights contain mercury - get over it.

American Thinker Blog: If you break a CFL light bulb...:

"A quick calculation shows that the 5 mg of mercury in an energy-conserving CFL is enough to fill an average size room (100 cubic meters volume) with the 0.05 mg/cubic meter vapor concentration that is considered hazardous for long term chronic exposure. Since this is the rule for laboratories, it probably does not account for people who might be especially sensitive, including infants, small children and pregnant women. As with allergies, different people can have vastly different responses to exposures to toxins.

The admonition to open the window for 15 minutes after a CFL break does not account for the various sizes / shapes of rooms, placement of windows (or absence thereof) and whether there is adequate cross-ventilation. And of course, it is not so convenient to ventilate a room thoroughly with outdoor air during the dead of winter in a northern clime."

Mercury is a useful element that happens to be harmful to humans. Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) are made overseas and contain mercury. I have seen both of these facts cited recently as reasons to avoid using them. I disagree - CFLs emit good light and much less heat while using less energy and lasting a very long time. If those attributes are useful to you, then try some.

If you're worried about mercury, you could avoid breaking them and save used ones for your local hazardous waste collection, or get LED bulbs instead.

The desire to limit energy consumption doesn't always have to be linked to social causes - sometimes, it is just a matter of saving money.

What is the logic of Hate Crimes legislation?

Do some victims deserve less justice? - The Boston Globe:

"why should 'hate crimes' motivated by racial, religious, or sexual bigotry be punished more severely than equally hateful crimes motivated by contempt for the homeless? If a bunch of hoodlums murder a man by setting him on fire in his wheelchair, what moral difference does it make whether they despised him for being disabled (covered by the new bill) or for being a street person (not covered)? Is it worse to douse a man with gasoline and strike a match while shouting, 'We hate cripples!' than to do the exact same thing while shouting 'We hate the homeless' -- or 'We hate skinheads' or 'We hate Communists'?
It is indecent for the government to declare that a murder or mugging or rape is somehow more terrible when the murderer or mugger or rapist is motivated by bigotry against certain favored groups. The inescapable implication is that murders, muggings, and rapes committed against other groups are less terrible."

In a society dedicated to the ideal of "equal justice under law" -- the words are chiseled above the entrance to the Supreme Court -- it is immoral and grotesque to enact legal rules that make some victims of hatred are more equal than others.

In fact, the law has no business intensifying the punishment for violent crimes motivated by bigotry at all. Murderers should be prosecuted and punished with equal vehemence no matter why they murder -- whether out of hatred or sadistic thrill-seeking or revenge or the promise of money. It is not the criminal's evil thoughts that society has a right to punish, but his evil deeds.

I have always believed that attacks are equally hurtful to those involved & society at large, regardless of the motives of the attackers. Hate crimes legislation is really an attempt to regulate thought, but society should only be concerned with behavior.

I imagine that prosecutors & defense attorneys spend a lot of time trying to define the motive for an attack. While that is probably useful, I hope it doesn't take investigative time away from proving who committed an attack. It would be a shame to convict the wrong parties, or only some parties involved, because valuable time was wasted trying to prove that this was a Hate Crime.

Daimler sells Chrysler for $7.4 Billion, keeping $1.6 billion in debt

Chrysler Sold to Cerberus for $7.4 Billion:

"The Chrysler Group has been sold to Cerberus Capital Management LP for $7.4 billion dollars. This also means that Chrysler is the first of the big three that is privately-owned.

Cerberus will own 80.1 percent of the company, whereas Daimler will continue to own the remaining 19.9 percent (for what reason, we cannot say). By transferring the new holding company -- to be called Chrysler Holding LLC -- to Cerberus free of debt, Daimler has to foot an additional bill of $1.6 billion. Cerberus will be on the hook for pension and health care obligations, however.

In terms of the future, things look pretty muddled. Cerberus is known for buying companies on the brink of bankruptcy and then 'instituting drastic measures to make them profitable again.' Could this mean the selling off of certain brands to the highest bidder? (Selling Jeep to GM comes to mind.) Could this mean the scrapping of certain projects? (Goodbye Challenger?) Could it mean some serious cutbacks in employee benefits? "

Daimler taking on over a billion dollars in debt to get out illustrates just how bad the situation is for American auto companies - they owe so much to their former employees (and future retirees) as pension & medical benefits that we'll probably see all three of them get out of their obligations via bankruptcy or legislation.
Ultimately, the American public will pay for these benefits as either inflated prices on American cars, increased taxes, and/or profits going overseas.

News-Leader.com | Business:

"'The Germans never knew really quite what to do with Chrysler,' Cheetham said. 'Managing across the pond and managing this very, very different business is very difficult.'

It all looked different in the mid-1990s. Daimler-Benz was eagerly searching for new markets and opportunities, at the dawn of what many thought would be an age of global consolidation. Chrysler was an ideal target, with cleverly designed, efficiently built minivans, pickups and Jeeps.

Throw in a rich country that was car crazy and it made perfect sense.

Daimler and Chrysler said it was a 'merger of equals,' but then-Chief Executive Juergen Schrempp later dismissed that in an interview, leading to a lawsuit from billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian. He lost, and it was clear the center of power had shifted to Stuttgart, Germany."

With the American leadership chased out in the '90s and the German leadership leaving now, it will be difficult to stay focused on the business of building cars & trucks. I hope they bring in some good talent and don't just hold a big garage sale.

Retooling likely for newly purchased Chrysler - Los Angeles Times:

"Although Cerberus is ponying up all those billions, most of the money will be pumped directly into the new Chrysler Corp.'s automotive and financial operations. Only $1.35 billion would go directly to Daimler, which in turn would lend Chrysler $400 million and pay a variety of closing costs and other fees that would result in a net cost to the German automaker of $650 million.

'In effect, Daimler is paying Cerberus to assume the risk of owning Chrysler and its $19 billion of underfunded healthcare liabilities,' "

. . .

"In addition to the automotive organization, Cerberus would gain control of Chrysler Financial, the company's $57-billion lending arm.

It is expected to meld some of that unit into another of its recent acquisitions, GMAC Financial Services, to shave costs.

"I looked at this deal and didn't see at first glance how it made sense," said Tulane University finance professor Peter Ricchiuti, a former Wall Street broker and an equity market specialist. "I wasn't sure what Cerberus could do that DaimlerChrysler couldn't. But if they can somehow combine a lot of the operation of Chrysler Financial with GMAC, that would help make a difference."

Ricchiuti and other analysts see Cerberus as being in a better position to extract wage and benefit concessions from Chrysler's unions than was DaimlerChrysler.

That's not a process that can be accomplished overnight, but one potential advantage Cerberus gains is that Chrysler has acknowledged its failings and begun to develop small cars and fuel-efficient engines to help it weather the changing market.

Chrysler has launched a major housecleaning aimed at eliminating 13,000 North American manufacturing and salaried jobs and shutting several factories. Those are cost-cutting moves Cerberus won't have to make, freeing the company to concentrate its turnaround efforts on improving Chrysler's operating efficiencies and its product portfolio."

This all sounds good, but American manufacturers make big vehicles because that's what the public wants to drive - despite the cost of fuel. Retooling to compete head to head with the imports puts them at a disadvantage making lower profit vehicles in competition with the world's experts in that market. This sounds like tough times coming for the auto-workers.

Scientology vs the BBC

BBC NEWS | The Editors:

"It's not a question of us setting out to call Scientology a cult - it's just a question of us asking legitimate questions, and their organisation being unwilling to engage seriously with us. And when you go in as a journalist to try and deal with that, it's explosive. I'm now dealing with a situation in which the Church of Scientology has released a video to all MPs and peers accusing Panorama, of staging a demonstration outside one of their offices in London and making a death threat - or as they call it, a terrorist death threat - against Scientologists. The BBC, accused of terrorism.

The Church did, at first, agree to be involved. Over a day and a half, they organised formal interviews for us - they wanted us to talk to actresses Anne Archer and Kirstie Alley, as well as other celebrities and sports stars. They lined them all up, one after the other, and they talked about what Scientology meant to them. They were convincing and strong - Kirstie Alley in particular was very persuasive. John asked why some people say that it's a sinister cult, and about claims of brainwashing. Which, for the record, is not an allegation we've made - I don't want Scientologists in the UK to think that that's our view.

We completed the interviews, then three or four days before transmission, we received solicitors' letters from California saying that the interviewees no longer wanted to take part. So we were obliged to remove them.

In a sense, they've shot themselves in the foot by refusing to allow us to broadcast those viewpoints, when that was what we wanted to do. The Church rejects all criticism, and disputes that they offered us conditions on access which we couldn't accept."

Religions that are intentionally opaque to outsiders are frightening to the general public. In this era of terrorism, their leaders need to understand that the world is bigger than just their group - and that mankind is cruel to frightening things we don't understand. On the other hand, mankind generally ignores things that have been demystified. A little positive PR could have gone along way towards providing the freedom they desire.

Opening a racial Pandora's Box in California

American Thinker Blog: Opening a racial Pandora's Box in California:

"Yesterday, America moved one baby step closer to apartheid, a society in which racial groups are officially considered unequal and consigned to their own separate spheres under the law. California's supreme court granted a temporary stay in a murder trial about to begin, on the unprecedented ground that the county where the crime took place and the trial was to be held does not have enough residents of the same color as the defendant, who is black.
. . .
Since we are guaranteed a jury of our peers, if the stay is upheld and a change of venue required by the California supremes, the justices would in effect be ruling that being of a different race can make one not a peer and unable to judge fairly in the eyes of the law."

We need to get back to the basics that made this country great - Balkanizing the country does not improve anyone's life.

Polar Bears having babies - haven't they heard about Global Warming?

Polar Bear Baby Boom Occurring in Eastern Arctic, Will Media Notice? | NewsBusters.org:

"Despite all the carping and whining by folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore and his not so merry band of sycophant devotees about global warming killing polar bears, there is actually a baby boom occurring in this species in Canada’s eastern Arctic."

In the early 70's, when Earth Day was first celebrated, "they" were concerned about a new Ice Age coming (I was there to hear the spiel & read the handouts) - now it's global warming. Perhaps weather cycles occur in patterns that are longer than the average TV show, and need to be viewed with a little historical perspective and an understanding of outside influences - like the Sun.

For some people, life is all about controlling other people's activities. We shouldn't let them control us - we should educate ourselves and make decisions on our own.

PBS Suppression of the Film : "Islam vs. Islamists"

Pajamas Media: Film Review: "Islam vs. Islamists":

"Burke’s doc is a riveting and creatively made film about the most important subject of our time: what to do about radical Islam? It confronts this dilemma in a sly, novelistic manner, inter-weaving the stories of good, moderate Muslims with the Imams and supposedly “true Muslims” who, not surprisingly, accuse the moderate Muslims of not being Muslims at all. Soon enough we learn these Imams are apologists for terrorism and for the worst kind of medieval religious sadism.
... our Public Broadcasting network, an organization supported by taxpayer money, is practicing the most obvious censorship. PBS is operating here in the manner of similar institutions in the former Soviet Union and in modern day Iran – financing artists and then withholding distribution of their work when it is not deemed ideologically “correct”. It’s a form of thought-control and it’s unconscionable.
HOW CAN I SEE THIS FILM?

As of now, you can’t. There have been three public screenings so far, two in Washington and one in New York (standing room only). Another is under discussion for Los Angeles. Pajamas Media will keep you apprised if this happens.

WHAT CAN I DO?

You can sign the petition protesting PBS’ censorship here (http://www.freethefilm.net/)."

Why our taxpayer dollars are spent on the arts when there are people starving in Africa is beyond me . . . with 500 channels on your local Cable or Satellite system, there is absolutely no need for government funded propaganda.

Modern cars have "black boxes" - some people worry about that

Security Watch: Is your car spying on you? - CNET reviews:

"In California, aides to Governor Schwarzenegger have floated an idea in which these same MVEDRs could be enlisted to record mileage and thus impose an additional mileage tax on those drivers who drove greater distances between refuelings. In Oregon, a similar proposal calls for MVEDRs to include GPS transponders in order to tax cars only while driving within the state boundaries."

So if you work hard to improve your gas mileage, the state will increase your taxes! Might as well just put the pedal to the metal....

Most of the comments on this article are concerned about privacy violations. None of them cite actual violations. These devices are installed to help manufacturers improve their products, fight lawsuits, and provide better service to their customers.

Folks who're worried about their privacy should take it up with their legislators - asking them to determine who should own this data, how it is to be controlled, and what penalties should be available for violations.

The Blame-Bush reflex - is it really good for Democrats?

American Thinker Blog: Blame-Bush buffoonery:

"Apparently my current leftist Governor Kathleen Sebelius doesn't though, nor does she comprehend the availability of heavy equipment assets.
It was hard for me to hold my lunch down when I heard her craft an anti-Bush spin on the disaster that befell the good people of Greensburg. Slow recovery? This statement is disingenuous at best but in local lingo better understood as a downright lie.
We need trucks? It seems the good Governor doesn't get out of Topeka much. Western Kansas is wheat country, and where there's wheat there's wheat trucks. Incidentally, they fill in quite nicely for hauling away debris when they aren't filled with grain. Why do they really need Hum-vees in the mix? What can they accomplish that a regular old four wheel drive pick-up can't? Other equipment? You can't spit without hitting a tractor, spit a little harder and you'll hit one that has a handy scoop.
As far as the people go, they are salt of the earth good people, regardless of race, class or creed in the country. Unlike certain areas affected by disaster, the people of Greensburg will take care of their current problems themselves. They will not wait for the government to do this or that, because in the country people still know what it means to be a good neighbor."

Personal responsibility? What a concept!

Currently Democrats get to say anything they want as long as they slam our President. Eventually they will motivate enough conservative voters to take away their jobs . . .

Another stable democracy in the Mid-East - Turkey

American Thinker: The Relative Stablity of Turkey:

"
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was one of the most fascinating, impressive, and unlikely figures of the past century. A Muslim from birth who became a champion of the secular state, a dictator who established the sole working democracy in the Muslim world, an ascetic visionary who died of complications of alcoholism, Kemal deserves to be much better known than he is. He accomplished with Turkey what many insist even today is an impossibility: dragging a battered, defeated, nearly medieval Muslim state into the modern era by main force, and without the wholesale brutality demonstrated by nearly all other nationalist leaders of his era."

Israel is usually cited as the only democracy in the Middle East - we forget that Turkey is a Muslim democracy (with Iraq struggling to enter the scene).

What Iran thinks of the French elections

Pajamas Media: Bonjour Sarkozy - Islamic Police Eject French Woman from Tehran Book Fair:

"The Cultural Heritage News Agency of Iran reported today that a French woman who attended the Tehran Book Fair on behalf of the French government was taken against her will from the French booth by the Islamic police and ejected from the fair site for an improper hijab. (A new campaign against laxity in the wearing of the hijab is in progress in Iran.)"
A CHN correspondent at the location reports that while the French representative was explaining about the books for the Iranian students and other visitors, the outside police rushed into the French booth and forced her out onto the fair grounds.

As people watched in disbelief, an Islamic Guidance and Culture ministry representative who happened to be there and witnessed the incident told the CHN reporter that he did not understand why the uniformed police entered, since the fair has its own custodial security force. He added that this type of behavior concerning a woman from a different culture is an indication of incompetence in the handling of the foreign visitors and guests of this fair."

Incompetence, or intentional abuse out of anger at the French election? The French have apparently gotten a clue out Islamic terrorism - making Iran's plans for world domination a bit more difficult to carry out.

The UN still doesn't get it

American Thinker Blog: More Kafkaesque behavior from the UN:

"Zimbabwe is about to become head of UN's Commission on Sustainable Development. This goes beyond Orwell; it is Kafkaesque.

Under the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, all indexes of economic well-being, let alone political freedom, have plummeted. Life expectancy at birth for males has dramatically declined from 60 to 37 since 1990 (for women it is even lower), making it the lowest in the world. The infant mortality rate has climbed from 53 to 81 deaths per 1000 live births in the same period. Five and a half million Zimbabweans currently live with HIV. Inflation has soared; trade unions are repressed; opponents are tortured. "

We (the USA) are paying more for this than the rest of the world combined. Do you really think your tax dollars are being well spent?

Europe (finally!) gets the War on Terror

American Thinker: Europe (finally!) gets the War on Terror:

"Two headline-grabbing signals came from Europe this week, one from Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, and the other from Nicolas Sarkozy, the presidential front-runner in France. Both show a new desire to heal the Atlantic alliance, which has been badly strained in the last several years.

The media on both continents naturally blame the Bush Administration for the breach; but there is no doubt that ex-Chancellor Schroeder and outgoing President Jacques Chirac exploited and worsened policy differences for their own political gain. Their aim was to separate Europe from America, in order to build up their own power by way of the European Union. Chirac was scheming to become the first full-term president of the EU. Schroeder kept his office by scapegoating the Bush Administration. The EU Constitution was supposed to carry it all over the top, and the European Union was supposed to sail into everlasting paradise. Breaking away from America was the key.

Well, it didn't happen that way."

Europe took many small steps towards PC & socialist lunacy - perhaps they're now ready to take some steps back from the brink of destruction.

"The US would be wise to attempt to bring Russia into the Western defense perimeter, while continuing to pressure Putin to act more responsibly at home and abroad. It will not be easy, but a shared anti-missile defense agreement would be a powerful incentive for better Russian behavior. Russia has always been torn between the West and its long history of Asiatic autocracy. It should be possible to encourage Russian Westernization against a common threat."

Now that is a truly interesting idea.

"Ideally, Europe wishes to control America as its own foreign legion; but Americans would be fools not to demand commensurate contributions from the 450 million people of Europe. Today Europe pays less than half of what we do for defense, but they still expect to be protected by us. That is an exploitative and one-sided arrangement. France and Germany must do much more for the common defense."

Add a renewed British navy to this list - it is essential.

"Over the longer term the EU still aims to emerge as an autonomous superpower, in competition with the United States. The European Left is extremely powerful, and it has indoctrinated four successive generations into wanting a United States of Europe. Such ambitions can be carried out in a rational and civilized way, but Europe's anti-American hysteria should not be indulged. The US has a tendency to overlook verbal slander by our nominal allies. But over the longer term, such 'allies' are ambivalent at best, and should not be treated as friends. We should not reward sabotage."

Amen

"In retrospect, the Bush Administration may look much like the Truman Administration, which first confronted the Stalin challenge in the Cold War. George W. Bush is a conviction politician just as Harry S Truman was. He has taken his stand, and it will have historic impact, just as Truman's did."

. . .

"The Iraq War may turn out to be much like the Korean War, a test of American resolve, and also of the limits of American commitment to an important but remote war. At the end of the Korean War, American forces withdrew from North Korea but not from the South. Because of that American willingness to hold firm, South Korea grew into a formidable bulwark against Asian Communist expansion, as it remains to this day. China's new prosperity can be attributed to the democratic capitalist successes of South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, all of them dependent upon American support."

That's a hell of a good model to promote for the Middle East.

Bureaucracy - a necessary evil that isn't working well

American Thinker: Bureaucratic Failure:

"The reason bureaucracies fail, Fox tells us, is '...because they are, in some sense, inhuman.' By this he doesn't {mean} that they are vicious or cruel (although they can be), but that they are, by their very nature, at odds with human nature as it exists. Bureaucracies operate according to a certain fixed set of procedures. They are an attempt - heroic or otherwise - to force the world to conform to a rational system. But human beings, much as we pride ourselves on our rational thinking, are actually a grab-bag of instincts, intuition, and habit, with a handful of rationality thrown in to pull everything else together. This serves us well because it matches how the universe actually works, but it also means that there will always be a conflict between bureaucracies and human beings. "

This explains a lot. If you've ever been around government & it's workers, you realize that they're no more perfect, and frequently just as fallible as anyone else. Legislators may have had the best intentions in mind, but laws are implemented by people who are often more interested in their own concerns that yours.

"nothing is more irrational than warfare. We practice it only because it can accomplish things that rational behavior can't. The British forgot this. The Iranians did not."

hmmmm

"Bureaucratic functionalism had taken the place of the military virtues. Somehow the Iranians sensed this. Perhaps by observing the routine, perhaps by intercepting radio traffic. Perhaps simply through noticing that women were driving the boats. Seeing that they were not, in the strict sense, dealing with a military operation, they made their move, and they got away with it."

War is not politically correct ... don't expect it to be pretty or easy.

"a legendary navy, the navy of Gravelines, and Trafalgar, and the Falklands, the navy that destroyed the slave trade and the Nazi U-boats, is gone with scarcely a whimper."

. . .

"with this human bomb in their midst, what did the administration of Virginia Tech decide to do? They declared the campus a 'gun-free zone', apparently under the impression that stating the fact would make it so. This assured Cho that he could operate without being interfered with in any way whatsoever. (The legacy media has failed to grasp that 'gun-free' also applied to the school's security forces, who were effectively disarmed.)"

Repeat 5,000 times: "criminals don't obey laws", then explain to me why taking guns away from the innocent helps any situation.

"we're depending on this form of organization for our survival - and it is failing us. Bureaucracy is a major tool of our civilization, to a greater extent than any other before us. We can't get by without it, but we're rapidly approaching a point where we can't live with it either.

It used to be understood that there were situations where you threw out the rulebook. When FDR wanted to start a covert operations service, he ignored the established bureaucracy and turned instead to 'Wild Bill' Donovan, a Manhattan businessman (and Republican to boot). The result was the Office of Strategic Services, a ripe gaggle of New York socialites, lawyers, communists, homosexuals, and adventurers who got the job done while breaking every rule in existence. As soon as the war was over, the OSS was rolled up - there was never any hope it would fit in with a peacetime bureaucracy."

If you haven't done it, definitely find the time to read about the early days of the OSS .

"what can we do? There is no possibility of reform. 'The ‘internal contradictions' of bureaucracy,' Fox tells us, 'are indeed chronic; they are incurable. No amount of social science tinkering is going to do more than cover the patient with bandaids.'

Any attempted reforms will be carried out under bureaucratic procedure. They will meet all the criteria, they will be approved by every committee, and they will be perfectly satisfactory right up until the appearance of the next maniac with a pistol or gang of Jihadis attempting to flatten an American city.

Similarly, there's little point in asking for higher-quality, more spirited personnel. Such individuals will seldom attempt a career as a bureaucrat in the first place, and when they do, the bureaucracy often moves heaven and earth to stymie them. (See the recent adventures of Paul Wolfowitz.)

In the end we'll simply have to depend on ourselves. Forget all the bureaucratic procedures, promises, and guarantees. Events have proven them empty."

Survivalists living far from cities may have come to this conclusion earlier than most of us, but we can't all live like that - we must teach ourselves to survive in cities.

Are you getting the news you need?

American Thinker: Freak Porn News:

"On every controversial issue of the day, the mainstream media weighs in with advocacy in the guise of information, creating a demonstrably misinformed electorate.

For example, many people live in a carefully cultivated fear of the radiation from nuclear power plants, unaware that the coal-fired plants that are often built in their place emit far more radiation due to the uranium contained in coal. The Iraq War is declared an unsustainable and pointless loss of life that must be ended immediately by ignominious retreat, yet Salmonella kills more Americans every year. And Lord only knows how many Americans are killed by illegal aliens every year, because the media simply isn't going to keep track. Clearly, not all loss of life is equal when a debate is raging."

Media bias - what's that? :-)

"there's a more insidious bias that I've been thinking about increasingly: the media's love of freaks. When a man in Uzbekistan is found to have eaten his cousins, or some guy in Seattle wants to marry a goat, this is now international 'news.' But what is the relevance? What decision does this help you make? Suppose your precious 'right to know' went unfilled in regard to the goat groom, how are you intellectually impoverished exactly?"

AMEN!

Freedom vs. Security - Army Style

Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death -:

"'This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging,' said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. 'No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced.'"

It seems the military needs to create some sort of monitored blogging facility - a soldier writes their blog, but it doesn't go public until after review by the censors. They either don't have the budget (thanks Congress!), or the will to do this. Telling a soldier to get permission from a senior officer before blogging is absurd - ignoring the intimidation factor, those officers a re way too busy to review blogs in a timely manner (and know their superior officer will review the blog will intimidate most soldiers & result in less interesting blogs). The military certainly has a need to control information coming out of a war zone & other areas, but this isn't an effective way of obtaining full compliance - instead people will be finding creative ways to circumvent the policy.