How the West could lose

How on Earth did I miss this?

Daniel Pipes, in a few short paragraphs, gives us a way to talk about why we may well be losing the war (and not just the "War on Terror" either, but the whole megilla, the clash of civilizations, the war between enlightenment and medieval brutality and tyranny).

Now if only our leaders in Washington who agree with him would speak as clearly...

Yeah, I know, who am I kidding? Churchill said it best: "Americans will always do the right thing...After they've exhausted all the other options."

Let's hope so, and let's hope we're not too late when we do.

The Troops Speak

One thing that has been driving me nuts for a looooong time is that inane claim "I can support the troops even if I don't support the war."

Newflash: No, no you can't.

Although I can hear it now..."Those poor troops, they've just been duped by the evil liar Bush...If they'd really had a choice, they'd never have gone to Iraq, or joined the military at all..."

Which is all code for "We're liberals, we know better than you what you should feel, should want and should do!"

And of course, "liberal" is really code-speak for "freedom for those who agree with us."

With friends like these

Stephen reports that George Soros is at it again, comparing Americans to Nazis, but this time he's doing it in practically the same breath with which he pledged to support Barack Obama for President!

Gee, I might be persuaded to feel sorry for poor Barack after this one!

More proof there is a God

Not that I needed *more* proof mind you, but it's always nice to find just the same!

This week? The proof is that this useful idiot is NOT--I repeat--NOT our current President and Commander in Chief.

Gives ya chill bumps doesn't it?

Deutschland Deutschland, Unter Allah

Lee reports on a disturbing-but-unsurprising development in Germany. Apparently, the same mentality that enabled Hitler to rise to power is at work today, only this time the tyranny-of-choice is Islam.

Salim Abdullah speaks of "defiant reactions" in the face of the constant criticism brought against Islam, although he's also familiar with converts who appreciate the "clear rules for behavior" provided by the Koran.

What? You mean a country with a strong authoritarian tradition would find its citizens becoming attracted to a religion with an even stronger authoritarian tradition? A country which invented industrialized antisemitism is now finding more and more of its citizens attracted to the most antisemitic religion in the world? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!

I'm sure the mullahs are running their hands together in glee at the thought of getting ahold of I.G. Farben's incinerator technology.

All I can say is, I lived there, and in Austria, and I can vouch for one thing: This is a people who LIKE TO BE LED, and they need scapegoats like they need air and water, no doubt about it. I went there in hopes of finding otherwise, and my worst fears were confirmed. And I can't think of anything scarier--frankly--than Germans turned into jihadis. Take religious devotion and mix in solid adminstrative and organizational skills, and you have some seriously terrifying individuals.

History stretched-to-fit

I thought the left-wing moonbat brigade had gone about as far as they could go. I thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was lunacy, I thought the 9/11 conspiracy theorists were certifiable, but NOTHING compares with what the LA Times had to say about 9/11 today:

Was 9/11 really that bad?
The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting.
By David A. Bell
January 28, 2007

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

It also raises several questions. Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

So now the benchmark of suffering or tragedy is the Soviet-friggin'-Union during WWII? Unless we lose tens of millions of people, we're "overreacting" to a threat? Wow. The Democrats will be thrilled. This provides all the justification they'll need for gutting the new anti-terror laws if and when they take the White House. Closing GITMO? A no brainer following this logic. Allowing Imams free-reign to recruit in our prisons and universities? Why not? I mean, until the Muslims have slaughtered the ENTIRE populations of Manhattan and DC, we really have no reason to fear, we're just being drama queens going off half-cocked, using an uzzi to kill a mosquito, or something like that.

I find this fascinating coming from the same paper--and same group of people--who would have you believe that my ability to own a handgun would mean the beginning of the end of civilized society as we know it! If I can own a gun, why, gun violence will make the streets run red with the blood of little children! And if I can own an assault weapon? Oh.My.God, the end of the world is nigh!

(coughing sarcastically)

I'd like to believe the LA Times is engaging in some wishful thinking, some theraputic denial, aimed soley at quashing their own demons, for the purpose of enabling *them* to stop wetting their pants in fear, but I'm smarter than that. I know full well this is just part of the larger concerted effort to lay down a nice soft eider-down for Democratic Presidential hopefuls to land in (face first of course) when confronted by questions from those of us who *do* see reality for what it is, those of us who do not wish to underestimate the "capacity" of such a determined and intractable enemy, or who at least see that we choose to do so at our peril.

You see, what they hope the rest of us have forgotten (or more likely, hope we never learned, since after all, they designed the dreck that passes for a history curriculum in our nations schools and universities) is that history ALSO teaches us that those 20 million souls who perished in the Soviet Union did so at the hands of a man who inspired only laughter until he became dictator. Throughout his rise to power, there were naysayers scoffing at the notion that this little man with the funny moustache would or could ever pose a threat to our way of life.

Mr. Bell acts as though it's hubris of sorts, or simplemindedness, or just reactionary provincial fear-mongering to take the islamomaniacs at their word. We're not supposed to consider their words, apparently, and should instead look only to their conventional military "capabilities," at least those (I suppose) that we know about.

He also discounts completely the nature of terrorism as a tactic, as well as the nature of people who would employ such a tactic. They count on attitudes such as his. They rely on there being the constant erosive friction between those who fear them, and those who refuse to fear them. They know that such polarization helps them because it divides us against ourselves. When we read articles such as these and are swayed by them, the terrorists win, just as much as if the terrorists blew up a bus in LA. Whether we fear them or not, as long as we're working hard to blame ourselves for every problem we face, we aren't putting energy towards blaming THEM, and that's really all they care about.

That's why I don't like the term "War on Terror." It's a misnomer, and a big one. We're not at "war," in the traditional sense, and surely we're not at war with a tactic or an emotion. What we are is engaged in an epic struggle between the forces of civilization and those of barbarism. The struggle takes many forms, not just those of "battle." Sometimes (often lately) it takes the form of intimidation litigation in our courts--lawsuits designed to use our freedoms to impose restrictions on our behavior towards our enemy, restrictions that will ultimately weaken our ability to fight that same enemy. Other times it takes the form of propaganda such as the many anti-war, anti-America, anti-GITMO protests that are--at least in part--funded by those who would very much like to see our enemy improve its chances, especially from within our borders.

During WWII the Nazis didn't have quite so much success sneaking into our country, setting up shop in houses of worship, preaching their hateful message in the open and calling it "protected speech," or using our courts to advance their efforts. They didn't spend millions secretly funding protest efforts, editorials, websites and other "information" sources to discredit our efforts to fight them (or to downplay the threat they posed), and they didn't hide their hatred behind a cloak of "faith" in any God.

Most importantly, the few Americans they had unwittingly supporting their cause were (justifiably) ridiculed and marginalized once we were actually at war. Today, our enemy has useful idiots in every corner of our world, in every aspect of our civil and cultural life. They use words like "tolerance" and insist that Islam is a "religion of peace," which is merely a way to prevent us from calling our enemy by their proper name: Holy Warriors, or Jihadis, specifically of the Islamic persuasion. Whatever Islam's potential for peace, it is not being used to advance "peace" at this moment in history, that's for certain.

Now add to all of this the fact that the Nazis at least had the decency to wear uniforms, fly marked planes, drive marked tanks, etc...making theirs, at the very least, a visible, quantifiable COMPREHENSIBLE threat. But their declaration of war was the same--made out loud, and in writing, just as the Jihadis have done and continue to do, while Mr. Bell is apparently asleep or just choosing not to listen.

I am by no means trying to minimize the threat to the world posed by the Third Reich or Tojo's Japan. I am merely asking that "historians" such as Mr. Bell not minimize the Islamist threat by drawing a bogus analogy between it and the ones we faced in WWII. It doesn't fit, no matter how far he stretches it, no matter how hard he tries to ignore another truth history teaches us--most importantly that those who declare war on you will not cease to be your enemy simply because you refuse to acknowledge the threat they pose, or worse, because you refuse to fight when called upon to do so, until it's too late. Just ask Ghengis Khan how THAT kind of hubris worked out for HIM!

How to make a baby go (Whiffen)poof

Grab a bucket and read what Dawn Patrol discovered during a recent trip to Yale:

Meanwhile, on the other side of New Haven, student groups at Yale were gearing up for Roe vs. Wade Week. According to the Yale Daily News, the event, presumably subsidized by student activity funds, does more than just promote abortion. The organizers plan to teach attendees--not just medical students, but anyone who shows up--how to perform the "simple procedure":

On Thursday, the Yale Medical Students for Choice will host workshop on manual vacuum aspiration for medical students, using a papaya as a uterine model. Manual vacuum aspiration is a surgical abortion method that uses a syringe to remove the fetus from a woman's uterus. Merritt Evans MED '09 said she thought it was important to have the workshop because the procedure can be used for a variety of different purposes--including miscarriage management and the treatment of a failed medical abortion or ectopic pregnancy--and is inconsistently taught in medical school.

While the workshop is targeted towards medical students, undergraduates are also invited to attend.

"The reason I wanted to include other people is that it is such a simple procedure, but the media attention around it... makes this an emotionally traumatic and a complicated thing," Evans said. "It’s just to be like, 'Here is what actually happens, here is what the medical procedure is like, this is what an aborted yolk sac looks like.' It looks like a piece of cotton."

Please tell me if I'm reading this correctly: The presenter of this "workshop" would be HAPPY if people walked away from it thinking "Oh, the human yolk sack is just like a piece of cotton" in the "just as disposable as that thing I used to remove my mascara last night" kind of way?

Did I miss something there?

(Commence vomiting at your leisure)

To think, Clinton kissed this man

...On the cheek, but who gives a crap?

How Arafat Got Away with Murder
The State Department covered up his responsibility for the 1973 slaughter of two American diplomats.
by Scott W. Johnson
01/29/2007, Volume 012, Issue 19

Twenty years before he joined Bill Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin in Washington for that famous handshake--and proceeded to become Clinton's most frequent foreign guest at the White House--Yasser Arafat planned and directed the murder of an American ambassador and his deputy chief of mission. From the first moment of the deadly operation, which took place in Khartoum on March 1, 1973, the State Department possessed direct evidence of Arafat's responsibility, yet neither the State Department nor any other government agency made public its knowledge. Indeed, as recently as the summer of 2002, the State Department denied that such evidence existed. Across seven administrations, the State Department hewed to silence and denial.

Until last spring. In June 2006, the department's Office of the Historian quietly posted an authoritative summary of the events dated June 1973. The source of the summary is not given, but the CIA had previously produced it in redacted form in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Prepared by the CIA on the basis of intercepted communications, it baldly states: "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat."

Not that I'm excusing the other Presidents who presided over this massive cover-up, but shit! Hillary Clinton hugged and kissed this murderer's wife and called her a "friend!"

As my Dad said:

And the apeasers in Congress would have American and Israeli leaders shake the hands and negotiate with Syrian, Palestinian, and Iranian leaders who have murdered Americans and Israelis and have pledged themselves to continue doing so until at least the en tire MIddle East and perhaps the entire planet is rid of Jews and Christians: with leadership like that, the US is in for troubled times.

I couldn't agree more.

Intolerant Mommies

I've been meaning to blog more for a long time now, but I was caught up in some stupidity that (thankfully) collapsed under its own weight late last week.

I'm talking about the inordinate amount of time I wasted posting to the local Mommies site here in Charlotte, in particular to their "controversial" discussion forum known as the "Sandbox."

I probably had no business being in there to begin with. I mean, it was obvious from day one that I was in the minority as a conservative, never mind a conservative who also supported Israel, homeschooling, stay-at-home moms and all things decidedly non-"liberal." I should have known I would spark anger in people when I saw post after post of verbal adulation for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore (and his movie), socialized medicine, and weeping emoticons over the plight of the poor put-upon Palestinians.

Yes, I should have known, but this is me, which means that even though I *did* know, I trampled on into the sand anyway, ready to defend truth, justice and the American way no matter how much sand got flung in my eyes.

And how did that work out for me? Well, let's just say that I presented such a threat to their idyllic little fantasy world--which cast them as the "good guys" and people like me as the "selfish, rapacious, greedy, uncaring, racist, jingoistic, anti-intellectual warmongering idiots"--that they felt the need to organize and conspire to get rid of me!

How did I manage it you ask? How did I drive a bunch of women to behave like, well, a bunch of women? Well, how does any conservative manage to tip a bunch of hyper-emotional, ill-informed, holier-than-thou, estrogen-overdosed liberals over the edge of reason and sanity (to which they were only clinging by a fingernail anyway)?

I bombarded them with facts.

And what happens when such people are confronted with facts (especially if they are presented in posts longer than one paragraph that are replete with "big" words like "replete")? Do they simply fire back obscenities, launch into personal attacks and openly mock the conservative (that would be me in this story)? Well they do that, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Because when they realize (all-too-quickly for them I'm sure) that you aren't running off to lick your wounds after their first or even second salvo, they call out the big guns...They ORGANIZE, they plot, they scheme and they manipulate, all with one goal in mind:

To disqualify you from participating in the discussion in the first place!

And how do they do that?

First: Start a thread *asking* other members of the forum if they "feel" the forum is turning into something it should not be...

Second: Suggest that that "something" is a place where people write posts with all the style markers of the enemy (highlight things like length of posts, use of links to sources, use of vocabulary words above eigth grade level, use of quotations from other posters in the forum). Make abundantly clear that "people" who write such posts are creating a "hostile" environment for others who want to share their opinions because such posts are "intimidating." And to cap it off, complain bitterly about the choice of topics--namely politics--citing a lack of interest in such "divisive" topics (belied by the fact of course that within seconds of making this complaint, the same poster will be clicking over to gleefully celebrate Obama's candidacy in another thread!), and accusing those who have an interest in them of being "unsupportive" of other mothers in the forum!

More plainly put, they ganged up on me to write a post about me without naming my name, just using a detailed description of my writing style, and when I (and a few of my gutsy friends) called them on it, they pulled the typical junior-high-catty clique maneuver of saying "AS IF! Get over yourself!"

But we *all* knew exactly who they were talking about, and it was clearly ME.

To make matters worse, the way they constructed their argument, their "talking points memo" if you will, was to ensure that any challenge to their premise--that people like me make the sandbox "intimidating"--would come across as proof of their argument! If you quoted one of them, you were using quotes, "calling people out" and they said that was bad. If you tried to write a response longer than a short pithy paragraph, you were "boring them with lengthy posts," and if you had the nerve to praise someone like me for her "temerity" you were using those pesky big words again! Most importantly, if you said you liked to read or write about politics, you were (gasp) clearly someone who doesn't understand that the purpose of the forum is to be "supportive" of women, and since the "majority" of the women there either don't like to talk about politics, or only like to discuss politics they can agree with, challenging them in any way is automatically taboo and "unsupportive."

I almost bailed after reading this one thread (which went on for 8 or 9 pages by the way), but then I realized that I had a right to speak *my* piece too! So I posted a separate thread as an open letter to the forum to speak to the complaints, one by one, from my point of view. I figured I'd play their game right along with them! If they were going to use intimidation to talk about how awful intimidation was, I was going to talk about their hypocrisy by giving them an opportunity to demonstrate it!

So they don't like my posts, they're too long and big-wordy? OK, here's one I'm starting, obviously authored by me, thus easy to avoid for people who want to avoid me--people who feel "intimidated" or "offended" by me. And they don't want to talk about politics, so OK, this won't be about that, so presumably if they respond, we can assume they *were* at least interested in the subject matter!

But did they stay away? No. They did for a day or so, during which time I got tons of support from those conservatives who felt targeted vicariously through me--who felt that I was their sacrificial lamb of sorts because they enjoyed my posts, just didn't post that much to say so in public for fear of being torn asunder by the other side. I had no such fear, so I had no trouble "representin'" our side!

Then the cats clawed their way in and let me have it right between the eyes. One even went so far as to *admit* that her foremost concern was making sure that I didn't read the many notes of support as evidence that I wasn't the most offensive person in the forum! Another just wanted to call me names. And mind you, this was in a thread in which I only attempted to say that I never meant to intimidate anyone, hurt anyone or offend anyone, but rather that I was only interested in intelligent debate. Rather than taking me at my word, these women accused me of lying and said they knew better than I what my intentions were, and clearly they were malicious.

Yes kids, presenting facts to the ignorant is "malicious" apparently. You read it here first. Couldn't make this up if I tried.

Anyway, after several posts insisting that I was evil incarnate, the moderators FINALLY did something about what was happening. But do you think they banned the individuals who were mud-slinging and breaking forum rules? Nope. Do you think these support-obsessed women checked in with me to see how I was taking being viciously attacked in an open public forum? Nope again. All they did, after several hours of allowing me to take this abuse, was close the entire forum for everyone. It was the classic "If you can't share the toy, no one gets to play with it" instead of just taking the toy from the selfish kid who won't share!

And what do you think happened next? Do you think these cats got the message? Nope again!!! They went into one of the other forums and started a thread to explain to those mommies who missed all the high drama why their sandbox was no more. And since those women never got to read my post, it was open season on reinventing history to suit their aims! Straight out of the Democratic Playbook again! When the facts are unprovable, MAKE THEM UP TO SUIT YOUR SIDE! The most famous example is probably to be found in Hillary's book when she says she had no idea about Bill and Monica, but there are countless others.

These women even went so far as to take a private message I'd sent to another mother--one who complained bitterly about being "forced" to read my opinions in the forum--and parse it all to hell so that it would appear that I threatened the woman with a gun! What I wrote was a simple question as to whether she had a gun against her head, and if not, why she would even bother opening a post of mine in the first place. What she wrote was that I had sent her a "private message" referencing guns to her head!

So I went from just being an uppity conservative daring to pop her head up out of her gopher hole to voice an opinion or three, to a would-be gun-totin' attacker!

I swear to you, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried! I'm conservative remember? We have our talents, but creativity in the fiction department (outside of military fiction anyway) ain't our thang!

Epilogue? The sandbox is no more, I'm sure at least a few hundred women blame me (if only I'd had the good sense to just take a hint and leave in the first place, they wouldn't have had to resort to such verbal violence, just ask the Palestinians from whom they got their inspiration, they had "no choice!"), but luckily, at least a dozen don't. In fact, the same dozen (or more actually) have written to me in support of my assessment of this situation (so I know I'm not paranoid or narcissistic) and in support of my specific views and style. I daresay I've even made a few friends from this horror.

But on balance, it was awful, it was proof positive that women in groups are some of the most vile, hateful, MEAN creatures on the planet. So remember this tale when you consider voting for Hillary, and remember it when you hear how great it would be to have a woman running things, and remember it when you hear large groups of women expounding on how vital it is to do what they want you to do "for the chiiiiiiiiildren!"

They sure didn't give a fiddler's fart about *my* children this week! Considering we all have to live in this city and might bump into each other (or have our kids bump into each other) in the not-so-distant future, it would have behooved them to set an example at least and simply be POLITE in their disagreement.

But then they wouldn't be liberals at all now would they?

"Stop! Or I'll say stop again!"

Can someone please tell me how a Muslim policewoman can "perform her duties" if she refuses to touch a man other than her husband, brother or son?

LONDON -- Police said Sunday that a Muslim woman officer had refused to shake hands with London's police chief during a graduation ceremony last month due to her religious beliefs, fanning a debate in Britain over the assimilation of Muslims into society.

The woman - whose identity was not revealed - asked to be excused from the customary handshake with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair during the ceremony, saying her faith prohibited her from touching a man other than her husband or a close relative.

In a nation where the police don't even carry guns, how is she supposed to subdue a perp?

Can you imagine?

What's next?
"Um, I'd like to be a football referee, but my religion precludes me from working on Sundays. Oh, and I'm blind."

And the world slumbers on, blissfully (and willfully) ignorant of the cancer lurking within...

I Heart Huckabee

Can we draft him for President if he won't run? Seriously! If nothing else, he's Veep material for sure.

I just watched him on Hannity & Colmes, and he was great. Cool, calm, collected, articulate, defended the President's troop surge plan but didn't come off like a water-carrier or lap dog. He knows the issues cold, understands the geo-polical implications of failure for us, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, he "gets" that the only way we can truly protect ourselves is to (in his words) "render Middle Eastern oil increasingly irrelevant by investing in alternative fuels."

Hear fuckin' HEAR!

How I long for the day when we can tell the entire region (other than Israel) to not only go "pound" sand, but to go EAT SAND as well. Because after they stop selling us oil, that's about all they'll have to eat without a strong US!

Anyway, I didn't know much about Huckabee before this show, and in one appearance they guy has me as gaga about him as those nutty Obama babes are for him!

Help Bruce buy an A-KAY

Now that he's escaped from the People's Republic of "Only the Government can be Trusted with Guns,"

So let's help Bruce buy an AK-47. As he says

(or other equally scary-looking, banned-in-Massachusetts firearm, the mere sight of which would cause Speaker Pelosi to lose control of her bodily functions - the Kel-Tec PLR-16 looks fun)

I'm gonna kick in for a few, now it's your turn!